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imagining-in-the-margins · 5 years ago

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Here to Misbehave (Pt. 14 | S.R.)

Summary: Separated and terrified, Spencer and Reader rely on their unique skills to survive. The team, minus Penelope and Derek, don’t know who the strange girl in the bank is, but they find out very interesting things about her history.

A/N: I don’t know how banks work. Idk how heists work. I know nothing. I hope you enjoy it anyway! Couple: Spencer/Fem!Reader   Category: ANGST. Just. All of it. All of the angst. Every bit.   Content Warning: Gun violence, discussions of death and dying Word Count: 10k

MASTERLIST

—————————————————

“Hello, my name is (y/n)(y/l/n) and I’m calling from the Bank of America on K St. Northwest to report shots fired. The shots sounded like burst-fire from multiple semiautomatics.”

When adrenaline kicks in, there are a lot of things that don’t feel real. Time seems to warp into some ominous presence weighing down on you, but your body has never felt lighter.

“Ma’am, where are you?” Her voice sounded so far away. My own just felt foreign, like it belonged to someone else entirely.

“I’m inside the bathroom. Listen, I might not have a lot of time. There’s a federal agent inside the bank. His name is SSA Dr. Spencer Reid with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. Call...”

My mouth blanked on the names of the two men Spencer talked about the most. I’d met them both, why couldn’t I remember?

Several more shots rang through the building as an answer. It was enough to shake loose the names, which flowed from me before I could even comprehend where they came from.

“Call SSA Aaron Hotchner and… Derek Morgan.”

“Can you remain on the line?” She sounded insistent — which is against their protocol by the way. My eyes were glued to the bathroom door’s hinges.

“Only until the door opens.”

The sentence conveyed my thoughts without actually forming the words. Once that door opens, I’m probably going to die. It wasn’t a completely irrational fear.

“Okay. I need you to remain calm. Did you see any of the gunmen?”

Jesus, it was like everything I’d just told her had gone completely over her head. “No, I’m in the bathroom.”

“Does the agent have his service weapon?”

“No.”

If she didn’t ask me a question I could say yes to soon, I was going to lose my fucking mind.

I tried not to think about Spencer outside, but I couldn’t help it. All of my thoughts were on him, even before the commotion.

Was he even still alive?

“Help is on the way, Ms. (Y/l/n).”

“Please hurry.”

My entire body shook from the hormones, my instincts telling me to do anything besides sit crouched on a toilet in a bathroom stall. I don’t even know why I bothered hiding. They would definitely kick them in, or just shoot straight through the doors.

“We’ve contacted Agent Hotchner and he’s also on his way.”

Finally, some good fucking news. I released my breath as quietly as I could, closing my eyes for just a moment to compensate for the fact I hadn’t blinked in several minutes.

“Thank you,” I whispered, clutching the phone like it could actually do something for me past this point. But it couldn’t. No amount of breathing exercises would help me through this one.

Suddenly, there was movement outside the door. A crowd of people were shuffling past the door, and I heard the distinct sound of a toddler wailing.

“I have to go.”

“Wait, don’t hang up—“

I couldn’t wait, though. With trembling hands, I erased the evidence that I’d ever called them in the first place. And then I resumed my position as a sitting duck; quietly and as ready as I ever could be.

I listened for his voice, but I never heard it.

—————————————————

Three seconds.

Did you know that a semiautomatic weapon can fire up to three rounds per second, depending on how fast the user can pull the trigger?

After the first shot is fired, no one moves. Puzzled and alert, people are paralyzed. Your first reaction is to look for the source of the sound. It’d been a second before I turned to see the three armed people and two dead security guards behind me.

It takes the average person one and a half seconds to cognitively process that they're in a potentially life-threatening situation. It takes another .7 seconds for a physical response to kick in.

Three seconds.That was long enough for a maximum of nine shots per person to be fired- twenty-seven shots in total; it was long enough for the air to be filled with the sudden outburst of helpless screams the patrons of the bank, and it was long enough for me to realize that I didn’t have my gun and that my girlfriend wasn’t by my side.

“Everybody get down on the ground!”

Amid the chaos, I felt that all too familiar twisting sensation in my gut that begged time to reverse just enough for this to be a dream. Enough time to reverse the decisions that led us here.

But time was a cruel mistress, and she did not plan to bend to the whims of mankind, no matter how desperate.

Another deafening burst of sound rang through the air, shots fired into the ceiling now as myself and the others fell to the ground.

My gaze was fixed on the bathroom entrance. I couldn’t breathe. Please, I begged, stay hidden.

“Listen up! If everyone does what we say, you can all go back to your boring fucking lives.”

Injuries occur in less than two percent of bank robberies. Deaths occur in less than one. Saturdays are the second to least likely day for a robbery to take place. In the past 5 years, less than 10 people have been killed in bank robberies, and most of them were the perpetrators. Statistics usually calmed me down and helped me focus.

But these people didn’t care about statistics. They were defying the odds I had just recited to myself. They had already killed two people. Our luck was already stacked against us.

“Take everything out of your pockets and put it in front of you.”

As soon as the order was given, I was running through an inventory of everything in my pockets. It didn’t take me long to realize that with a cursory inspection of the items, they would figure out who I was.

But what were the odds that they would actually scrutinize them? I figured they were fairly low; you don’t rob a bank to get cheap jewelry and petty cash, even in a bank. What were the odds they would notice if I left something in my pocket — especially if my wallet was in front of me. If it wasn’t large enough to be a weapon, and I put out my objects of value, why wouldn’t I put out the rest of the contents?

So I decided to take the risk, removing my wallet while retaining my separate identification.

Luckily, the attention seemed pretty far removed from me. If I wasn’t too busy being extremely grateful, I might have been offended that they didn’t consider me a threat in the building.

“Alright ladies, all of you get up and follow my lovely friend here. You’re going on a little trip. Fellas, you stay right where you are.”

The sound of my heart pounding drowned out the instructions that weren’t intended for me. It was fine, I hadn’t planned on moving, anyway. As long as I could see the door to the bathroom, I was perfectly fine right where I was.

But I still felt for the terrified women that were shakily rising to their feet. To my right, I saw a woman struggling to hold a small infant. My heart was fracturing at the struggle, wishing I could help her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk doing anything that might draw attention to myself.

I felt like a traitor. I felt useless. I was quite literally trained to handle this exact situation, but now that I was here, I couldn’t move. I wasn’t thinking about strategy or how to maximize efficiency; all I was thinking about was her.

“Jake!” A woman’s voice screamed from the other side of the room. When I turned, I heard the sound of a rifle cracking against bone before the man hit the ground.

“Jake, huh?” The man above him laughed, using the business end of the rifle to turn the disoriented man on his side. “Well, Jake, how would you feel about your girlfriend watching you die?”

“Please don’t hurt him!” The woman sobbed, scrambling up off the floor that she’d resisted leaving. I wondered if (y/n) would have refused to leave me, too.

The man prodded the woman with the gun, urging her to follow the rest while simultaneously providing easy enough instructions. The man apparently named Jake made a few noises of desperate protest as he watched her leave.

“Shut the fuck up!”

“I’m sorry,” Jake pleaded, “I’m sorry, please don’t hurt her. I’ll be quiet.”

Smart man. I understood his hesitancy, though. His girlfriend kept her neck craned back until she was no longer in sight, gazing back at him for as long as she physically could. I closed my eyes just for a moment, to try and combat their current strain.

Unfortunately, just like it always seems to happen, that’s when they spoke the words I had been dreading.

“Hey, you check the bathrooms yet?”

“Nah, I got it.”

I closed my eyes tighter now, scared that if I opened them, I’d give myself away. There was no possible way that I could hide the terror I currently felt. To be fair, I think it was only natural to be scared — but not like this.

There was a loud crashing noise of doors slamming, and the voice I knew better than I knew my own reached my ears, making sounds I’d never heard from her before.

Don’t fight them. I pleaded again, Please, don’t fight them.

“Let go of me!” She screamed as the door to the bathroom swung open. Unable to keep my eyes shut any longer, I opened them to see her clawing at the ground as she was dragged out by her ankle. “I can walk by myself! Let go of me!”

I wasn’t sure if she didn’t see me in the commotion, or if she’d just made the decision to act like she hadn’t. Either way, I was grateful. Still, my worries were justified as one of the three unsubs walked over to me.

“Why are you looking at her like that? You know her?”

Craning my head up, I shook my head no. It must not have been very convincing; the rage in my heart at them for thrusting her into this situation evident in my eyes.

“You wanna play hero, kid?”

“Sorry. No.” I muttered, taking a deep breath in a failed attempt to regulate my heart rate or my voice, “She’s… very loud. I get headaches.”

“Yeah well, deal with it.”

That might have been the end of it, if I’d played my hand better. But it turned out that the risk I had previously elected to take was woefully miscalculated. I didn’t meet their eyes anymore, knowing that doing so might threaten whatever frail illusion of masculinity they possessed.

It still didn’t stop them from holding the gun to my head.

“Empty your pockets.”

“Okay. I can do that, but I have to put my hand in my pocket.” I explained, moving my shaking hand to my back pocket, “It’s not a weapon.”

For once, I was grateful that I was the resident wimp when it came to stressful situations. Sure, I could handle myself, but I definitely didn’t look like I wanted to be there. Had I been any more of a visible threat, I was certain they would have figured out my identity long before this point. They might even have killed me right away.

“Hurry up.”

Swallowing hard, I pulled the identification from my pocket, flipping it open and holding it up for him to see, my gaze aimed fully forward. He snatched the badge away, a cheeky chuckle and a smile in his words.

“FBI, huh? Well, aren’t we lucky. You just became our most valuable player.”

—————————————————

Morgan arrived on the scene relatively unhurried and mostly just curious. The information Garcia had sent over text message was vague, likely due to the crime being a local one. Nothing about this seemed to be the BAU’s usual fare.

It took him almost no time to find Hotch, dressed in casual clothing, surrounded by the massive response team swarming around the bank. But Hotch hadn’t spotted him yet, fully involved with SWAT.

“What’s going on?”

Finally turning to notice his arrival, Hotch gave his normal matter-of-fact report in his simple, succinct manner. “Three people stormed the bank approximately 20 minutes ago and killed two security guards. There are 19 confirmed hostages inside the bank.”

But there was one significant detail that seemed to be missing, and Morgan started to scan the crowd for familiar faces as he spoke. “Hotch, this doesn’t sound like anything we’ve been working on. Why are we responding?”

“The caller alerted us that Reid is inside.”

The words were so unexpected that Morgan actually did a double take, his eyebrows furrowed and bowed as he replayed them in his head. “Wait, how did the caller know that?”

“I don’t know,” Hotch said with an equally perplexed look, gripping tighter to the communicator in his hand, “but she referred to us and him by name.”

‘She?’ Morgan thought, his heart stopping for a second as he excused himself from Hotch’s side, pulling out his phone and frantically calling Garcia, who had already made her way to the BAU.

“Hey there handsome.” It was a mild nickname for the famed Penelope Garcia, but Derek knew that she was probably already in a tough spot. After all, it’s not every day that one of their own is in these situations. At least, not unexpectedly.

“Hey Garcia, do you have eyes on the people in the bank?”

He could hear the feverish click-clacking of keys on the other end, followed closely by her equally frantic voice. “I’m working on it but so far I can only see the main lobby. They separated the women and the men for some reason. Why would they do that?”

“Just focus,” he calmly reminded, “Can you see the women?”

“No. All the women and children were moved to the back.”

Rubbing his face to try and relieve the tension that had quickly made its home over his jaw, Morgan glanced over at the entrance to the bank. It was strange to think that so much had happened so quickly.

Garcia had mentioned twice now that the women had been moved to the back, and he was trying to figure out why they would do that beyond the usual control mechanisms.

“I’m trying to see in the back now, but apparently banks take their video surveillance far more seriously than everything else. Last I checked, a camera never stole money or fired a gun!”

“Focus, babygirl.” It was an instruction for himself just as much as it was for her.

“Sorry, I’m nervous, and you know how I get when I’m nervous!” She squeaked, “I don’t like seeing you guys on my screens. I’d much rather see you in person, safe and sound and preferably smiling.”

Trying not to lose his patience, Morgan just sighed. It wasn’t her fault. It was no one’s fault, except that of the bastards who just had to go and ruin a perfectly nice weekend.

“Can you at least tell me who the caller was? Did they call from inside?”

“They were inside and, one second, let me check, it was... oh.” Her voice cut off abruptly, dropping into a high pitched, desperate whisper. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“It’s... the girl from the movies,” Garcia’s voice got faster and more panicked, “Derek, it’s (y/n). It’s Reid’s girlfriend. Reid’s girlfriend is inside the bank.”

Now that his suspicions had been confirmed, he wasn’t really sure what to do with the information. Because now that he knew Reid wasn’t alone, he felt the need to tell Hotch.

A profiler with a loved one involved was in dangerous territory. It wasn’t just Reid, but Morgan had personally seen just how unhinged Reid could get when it came to (y/n).

“Can you see her?” He asked, his voice lower than it was before.

“Oh, god, yes! I can!” It was not the kind of excited exclamation Morgan had hoped to hear, but at least he had confirmation she was alive. “She was in the bathroom but… They’re dragging her away…”

Morgan had tried not to pry too far in his best friend’s life before, and he took a moment to consider whether his next request was honestly necessary, or if he was just trying to find a reason to snoop.

But he wasn’t. There was something off about that girl. It wasn’t that she was bad or wrong, but she was far too comfortable in situations that didn’t call for it. The way she carried herself told him that she had held her own hand too often.

“Garcia, I know I’ve already done this to you once but... I need you to tell me everything you can find on her.”

—————————————————

My entire body ached; the sensation of an unfamiliar hand clenched tightly around my ankle burned long after I was released. It was definitely sprained, at the very least. I didn’t dare try to touch it, though. It wouldn’t be worth the trouble, and the bristling discomfort kept me where I was.

Which, for now was on my knees in the backroom of a bank lobby. Beside us was a large, heavily reinforced steel door with way too many different contraptions. I decided then that this whole arms race between burglars and corporate America had gotten a little fucking ridiculous.

But however annoyed I was by that, I was far more irritated by the hushed bickering between the man and woman holding rifles on the other side of the room. I could only hear every couple of words, but I got the gist of what they were arguing about.

Apparently, they’d never heard of an alarm system that’s connected to locks, which seemed extremely stupid for people who had gotten this far. In hindsight, that should have been my first clue that something was off about this entire situation.

Still, I couldn’t deal with them making the same fucking arguments over and over, so eventually I blurted out what I’m certain any millennial in the room would know. “The keycard won’t work if they’ve sounded the alarm.”

The statement earned me a gun to my face, and after a brief second of confusion, I flinched away from the cold metal of the barrel.

“What was that, sweetheart?” She was clearly looking to gauge my reaction rather than actually ask me to repeat the information. That was fine. I wasn’t exactly a talented actress, and I didn’t see the point in pretending to be meek.

If she was going to kill me, she was going to do it. Although I was certain Spencer would disagree, I chose to believe that our fate is dictated long before it happens. I was not a profiler; if I survived, it would be because I had been taught to survive through brute force and spite rather than calm negotiation.

“The keycard system is linked to the alarms,” I said, slower now, “Someone hit the alarm, so the cards aren’t going to work. You’ll need to use the old school keys.”

Her eyes narrowed, her voice dropping to a much lower register as she crouched down to my height. “How would you know? You work here?”

“No, my dad worked security.” It wasn’t a lie as much as it was an understatement, but she didn’t need to know that. I guess that’s one of those good things growing up with the dad I did; I got very comfortable speaking in vague generalities. Spencer hated it.

“Well, your daddy isn’t here to help you now.”

Wasn’t that the damn truth. But that didn’t mean I was alone, I reminded myself. Despite being dragged and my vision turned literally upside down, I had caught a glimpse of him in the lobby. He was alive. That thought alone was keeping me sane right now.

“The different keys you need for an override are probably kept on separate people so one person can’t do it alone. Probably the different managers.” I muttered, nodding to the side where one of the employees flinched at my words. Anything to get away from the fucking gun in my face.

“Is she right?” The woman sneered to the manager, turning her full attention to someone else. I felt a little guilty, since the poor manager seemed a lot less put together than I was. But hey, they needed her, too.

“Yes, I already gave you my keys,” she squeaked, holding her trembling hands up, “Th-There’s another set behind the desk I think.”

“Would you look at that...” It was the first time the man in the room addressed me since he had pulled me out of the stall, and I had to admit I wasn’t exactly a fan of his. But at the same time, I knew that he was going to be remarkably more receptive to me than the woman. She seemed to be the one who was actually in charge.

“Little miss problem was actually helpful,” he cheered, raising his weapon to point to the ceiling as he approached me. I chewed nervously on my cheeks, trying to meet his eyes but finding them uncomfortably bare.

“You should turn off the camera too, I’m just saying.” This time I didn’t nod, using one cautious finger to point to the small device that was currently staring right at me. I understood that it was probably helpful to Spencer’s team to be able to see, but I wasn’t really keen on my death being videotaped... as well as anything else I might end up doing.

‘Never leave a trace.’ That’s what I’d always heard.

‘Keep’em guessing. Even if you think it’s gonna kill you, because you don’t want to live with that over your head.’

“Fine. Do that and go get the keys.” He sounded intrigued, and I felt his searing gaze against my face.

“I think you should do it.”

The tension from before, when the two were arguing, had quickly resurfaced. She clearly didn’t trust him to be alone in the room, which solidified my belief that she was calling the shots, and he was just being dragged along for the ride.

In another life, I might have respected her ability to order stupid men around.

“Why the fuck is that?” He snapped, earning a bored roll of her eyes. The next thing out of her mouth was expected, but unfortunately the last thing I wanted to hear.

“I want to talk to her alone.”

Great. And naturally, her idea of ‘talking’ to me included weaponry. Using the end of the gun to tilt my head up to her, she gave a suspicious smile.

“Why are you helping us?”

“I want to go home.” It was my immediate and instinctual answer. It was the truth. I was helping them because I wanted to get the fuck out of here.

But you know, people expect everyone to have a squeaky-clean moral compass, so I decided to give a few more reasons.

“And I don’t give a shit about a massive corporate bank. I was just here to go to the bathroom– I don’t even have an account here.”

Maybe that was too many reasons, because just as her hesitance waned, it was back in full force. Shoving the barrel against my throat, she sneered, “I don’t believe you. You’re too comfortable with a gun in your face. You a cop, too?”

Cop?

I tilted my head to the side, baring more of my throat to her as I drawled, “Who’s a cop?”

For once, I was glad that Spencer had made such a point of reassuring me that he was not ‘a cop,’ because otherwise I’m certain the terror would have been obvious in my eyes. But for now, I could trust the numb apathy that was washing over me.

Please don’t be talking about Spencer. Please don’t know that. Good things never happened to law enforcement in situations like this. Hell, the two security guards had been dead in seconds.

“I think you know.” She was smiling, and I realized that this fucking psychopath was sharper than she wanted me to think.

“I don’t.” The words were said through clenched teeth, and I prayed that she would see them as insistent anger over the fear that lie beneath them, “And why would you kill me if I was helping you?”

She smiled, drawing the weapon up and down my throat until it landed lower at my chest. The movements were slow and light, a playful glint in her eyes when they met mine again.

“For fun.”

I didn’t move a muscle, my body remaining tense under her ministrations as I forced myself to hold my gaze steady. If she wanted fear, she wouldn’t get it from me.

“Then do it.”

The look she gave me told me she had seriously considered it, probably a little annoyed with my presence. But there was something else there, too, that same soft recognition that in another reality we might have been friends. I’m sure she saw herself in me a little bit; or at least somebody useful.

This confirmed my suspicion that I’d never really be able to read a psychopath. I didn’t understand how Spencer could do it every day. It’d only been a few minutes alone with her and I could feel myself losing the happy memories of the day.

Luckily, the man returned at the same time I saw a plan developing in her mind.

“Hey, come help me,” he called to her. Her response was surprisingly swift, the metal that was tracing over my collar bones disappearing without another word. He was holding a small bag of money, which seemed to seriously irritate the woman.

“Did you get that money from behind the counter?” I asked it before she had a chance. I wanted him to trust me. Or at least look at me more. It wasn’t that I wanted his attention as much as I knew I could distract him fairly easily.

He looked over at me, a dumbfounded look on his face. Men are so fucking stupid, I thought. The pissed off expression on his partner’s face told me that she agreed.

“It’s going to explode if you mess with it or it leaves the area. Probably with tear gas. If you’re escaping in a car, you’re not gonna want it.”

“Yeah, we know about dye packs, bitch.” She snapped, grabbing the bag of money and tossing it to the side of the door they intended to use.

I stared at the locks they hadn’t even bothered trying to touch. The same locks they apparently didn’t look up or know anything about when they came. Suddenly it hit me why this all felt so very off.

It was strange enough that no one was wearing a mask, and as far as I’d heard, no one was really trying to get out of this situation. I was certain that by this point there was a large crowd of armored men outside.

“Just trying to help,” I muttered as I started to scan the room, looking for telltale signs of tampering. The anxious whispering of the man distracted me just long enough to get more information.

“Won’t that set off some shit? Chain reaction shit?”

“Shut the fuck up,” the woman responded with a swift elbow to his gut as she started to walk away, “you are an absolute moron.”

As soon as she was out of earshot, I heard the faint curses that fell from his lips. As he picked up the bag just to toss it away again, I noticed the presence of odd packages in the corner of the room. He really did not want exploding dye packs near those boxes, which seemed remarkably out of place.

“Why does she think she’s in charge?” I asked, finally ripping my eyes away from the objects that now seemed glaringly obvious. “You two guys outnumber her.”

“You’ve got quite the mouth on you.”

Relaxing my body as much as I could, I shifted back and forth on my knees, rubbing the tired muscles of my thighs. “I may have been told that once or twice.”

He actually chuckled; his eyes drawn to my legs like the absolute moron he so obviously was. She definitely had gotten that one right. The other women in the room were watching me, but I tried not to pay them any mind.

I didn’t know when or why they decided to let me do whatever I wanted, but I appreciated their apparent comfort in letting me try to kill myself. He made his way over to the boxes, each a specific size and shape. He carried them so carefully.

“I figure there’s no point in being scared if I’m going to die anyway.” I finally said. Shocked gasps and whispers filled the room, but I didn’t divert my attention to them– No matter how much I wanted to tell them to shut the fuck up.

They would distract me from the way his mouth curled into a smile when he closed the gap between us, his hand sliding down my head and over my shoulder to follow the braid Spencer had meticulously woven an hour before.

“How about you just shut up and sit pretty for me, sweetheart.” I tried not to let the disgust show as his hand slid behind my neck, holding my head so that I had to look up at him. “You seem like you’d be real good at that.”

Ha! If only Spencer could hear him say that. But I could play the good girl for just long enough.

“Do you need help?” I asked with a tiny shrug, “I might be little but I’m pretty strong.” Strong enough to break your fucking hand if you don’t get it off of me.

“Nah.” He ordered, his hand on my neck getting tighter. “But I don’t doubt that you could be useful. You look real good on your knees.”

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might be visible through my ribs. I just needed an excuse to move. If he could give me an excuse to move, I could do so many things.

“Please let me help,” I begged, raising my hand to his forearm against my shoulder. His eyes began to shift, moving just enough to tell me that he wanted to look to the hallway. He could hear her footsteps, too. She was coming back, and I only had a few seconds left.

Once both of my hands were on his arm, I got the feeling he knew something even worse was coming for him.

“I’d love a chance to get to show you how helpful I really am.”

—————————————————

Hotch had spent the past five minutes on the phone with the male unsub in the lobby, and the conversation was going absolutely nowhere. For whatever reason, they just seemed to deflect any opportunity provided to them.

They didn’t seem to give a shit about anything beyond pushing the buttons of each person they interacted with. Which, they did quite successfully.

“Didn’t realize one pig would bring the whole flock of you here,” he laughed, clearly motioning to Spencer on the video, “How bad do you want him back?”

“What do you want?” He responded without hesitation or a surprise. It was such an expected question to ask that he’d barely even thought about his words before they came out.

“Easy. A chopper, and for you to fuck off.”

That was the equally stereotypical response, meaning it was entirely unhelpful to them. From what they could deduce, they were equally confused as to why this heist seemed to follow all the rules, but match none of the motivations. It was like it was a show, a game, rather than an actual attempt to maximize profits.

“We can do the helicopter, but we can’t give you a pilot.”

“That’s fine,” he responded with a shrug, “Don’t need one.”

It was the first piece of useful information he’d gotten so far on the call. Because if they didn’t need a pilot, it meant one of two things: either one of them possessed the skill themselves, or they weren’t ever intending to use the helicopter.

Briefly pulling the phone away, Hotch turned to Morgan. “Tell Garcia to check our list with people with pilot’s licenses or any other connection that might provide them the skills to fly a helicopter.”

He returned to the call, continuing the usual script for these situations, trying not to act like he’d learned anything new.

“Can you release the women and children?”

“Nah,” the guy said with a chuckle, “I’ll wait.”

Hotch listened to the sound of the receiver for a moment, staring at the entrance to the bank like it would provide him the answers he still needed. He had his suspicions of what might be happening, but with no eyes in the back anymore and the trigger-happy group that had formed around him, he wouldn’t have the resources to convince them not to go in guns blazing.

“We’re ready to move in.” Which is exactly what they had requested.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He stated before finally moving to look at the man next to him, “Something isn’t right here.”

“Yeah, a lot isn’t right here. There’s 19 innocent people in there.”

It didn’t really matter how many times he went through this situation; the results always seemed to be the same. No one listened, even when it wasn’t one of their men inside.

“Storming the building isn’t going to help them. There are three armed perpetrators inside, and they’re each in a different area. It would be impossible for us to take out all three at once. Especially now that we can’t see in the back. There could be explosives in there for all we know.”

The man was unpersuaded.

“If we can’t save them all, minimizing casualties is the name of the game.”

“Wait a few more minutes. I’m waiting to hear back from our analyst. If they have the capability of flying a plane, its highly likely they also have the knowledge and skills to create weapons that we aren’t currently prepared to handle.”

Although still unconvinced, the man grudgingly gave in to the request. Hotch closed his eyes, trying to be grateful for the extremely small victory; they’d gained a few more minutes. But the relief was short lived, with Morgan putting his phone aside for a second to mutter the same thing Hotch was thinking.

“Hotch, these people are way too confident. It’s like they know there’s a way out.”

As soon as he said the words, the two just looked at each other.

“Garcia, can you also check for any other way out of the bank?” He asked, walking back over to the table laid out under the nearby tent. This would have been a great time for Reid to be here, he thought as he stared at the ridiculously complicated schematics.

He understood they didn’t want people to be able to figure them out (so they couldn’t rob the bank), but this was just ridiculous. It looked ancient.

“Sure thing, but… Morgan, I think there’s something else you should see.” The nerves dancing in her voice told him that they were about to switch subjects. “You know how the guy disabled the camera feed in the back room. I was reviewing the footage we do have and it looks like… (y/n) told him to.”

“Why would she do that?” He asked, furrowing his brow as he glanced over to the ornate bank doors. Part of him wanted to joke that things would’ve been a lot simpler if he didn’t have to worry about Reid’s weird girlfriend, but it didn’t feel as funny when they were both in danger.

Maybe later, he thought hopefully, when they were all together again.

“I… don’t know why. But I did what you asked, and I went through her record and found a ton of sealed files on her and also her dad…”

Morgan’s attention was definitely piqued at that point, but he wasn’t entirely sure what to say. In the stunned silence, Penelope spoke again.

“Should… Should I unseal them?”

It was the same question he was debating in his head, and he honestly didn’t know. Although a long shot, he hoped that she could provide at least the bare minimum of context before they made that kind of decision.

“What kind of files are we talking about?”

“I can’t be sure until I unseal them b-but, I mean, they’re sealed for a reason and I’m talking scary sealed. Like, it might take me a minute sealed. Giving me the heebie-jeebies sealed.” She grew more frantic as she continued. Morgan knew they were running out of time.

“I get it.”

“Is Reid okay?” She switched gears, recognizing that Morgan’s hesitance meant it was probably a bad idea. She wasn’t going to push it unless he did. They didn’t even know if she could help even if they unsealed the files. Especially without a visual.

“They know he’s with us,” Morgan sadly admitted, “I don’t know what’s going on. Did you find another way out of the bank?”

“Right.” The conversation was going to give everyone involved whiplash at this point. “Yes! There is an access way through tunnels underneath the bank but it would take a massive distraction for all three of them to be able to get out of there without us meeting them on the other side. I’m talking earth shatterin–.”

She didn’t finish the sentence, her tongue halting the second her mind caught up with her voice. Morgan was equally concerned, recognizing the kind of distraction that this might require and the perfect way to escape with maximum damage.

But that wasn’t what got his attention. There was no fiery explosion or shouted epiphany, because at that same time there were the muffled sounds of gunshots coming from inside.

“Oh my god, what was that?!” Garcia yelled, accompanied by frantic clicking as she filtered through each individual camera to try and locate the source of the noise.

“Garcia, do you have eyes on the main room?”

“Yes! But it wasn’t in the main room, Derek, it was in the back!”

It was a difficult and necessary job, to consider what those sounds might mean for the young girl they’d met only a few weeks earlier. Morgan’s thoughts went even further, not only worried about her safety, but his best friend’s sanity. Lord knows Reid didn’t need another thing weighing on his conscience. Especially not about her; it just might destroy him.

“What does the unsub in the main area look like? Does he look confused? Surprised?” The words were coming, but he didn’t know where from. His body was on autopilot, desperately seeking any validation that they could still save everyone.

“I-I don’t know! He looks grainy! The image is like an inch wide!” She was clearly growing frustrated, which was a feeling they all shared at this point. “This camera is from before I was even born!”

“Try, Penelope,” Morgan pleaded, “Give me something.”

But the other men weren’t willing to wait.

“That’s it. We’re moving in.”

Morgan turned to them, his hand clutching tighter to the phone just in time for her to speak.

“He’s calling for them but they’re not coming out. He looks… Oh no. He’s yelling at Reid now. And... And it looks like someone is coming down the hallway? But he’s not looking–”

It was impossible to focus on everything that was happening, heavy boots and massive commotion as people began to take their positions. But if someone was coming down the hallway, and the unsub didn’t know, that could only mean a few things. Either he was about to be proven disposable, or someone else had fired those shots.

Either way, one thing was clear.

“Wait! We can’t go in there yet!”

—————————————————

There was a point in time where I might have questioned whether I would ever get used to a gun in my face. There was also a point where I actually had gotten used to it. But nothing could have prepared me for this moment, this terrifying realization while staring down the barrel of an assault rifle that I didn’t want to die yet.

I used to think that my life was somewhat disposable. Sure, I was helpful and useful for my job, but ultimately, I considered myself replaceable. The next person to come might not have the same credentials, but they probably wouldn’t also have half the flaws I do.

But now I wasn’t thinking of work. I wasn’t thinking about how replaceable I was, because it wasn’t my life that mattered.

I didn’t want to die yet, because I wanted to see her again.

So I just stared at the weapon, trying to remember that it was still a great possibility that I could. I tried not to think about what was in front of me, choosing to use most of my brainpower to picture what it would feel like when I had her in my arms again.

The vision inside my head ended swiftly, with the sound of rapidly fired weaponry coming from down the hall. Through the commotion of screaming, I surmised that at least two guns had been fired.

Silence followed. It was a stifling, exhausting, painful silence.

What broke it was even worse, with the gun in my face smacking into the side of my head as the man holding it lost his grip at the sound.

“What the fuck was that?!”

He looked at me like he expected me to have the answers, but I didn’t.

“I don’t know. I-I don’t—“ Not only did I not understand why two guns would fire, I didn’t know who had shot them or for what reason. There was one thing I did know. “It sounded like your weapons.”

“Hey, what’s going on back there?!” He shouted, twisting his body just enough to see around the corner.

There was no reply.

“Did your people get in here somehow?” The panic was obvious, and I didn’t know how to calm him down without arousing suspicion. He was continuing to devolve, stepping closer to me as he stuck with his original thought, “How the fuck could they have done that, huh?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there anything you do know?”

It was a question I’d been asking myself. The longer the silence continued in the back, the more rapidly my anxiety rose. There are only a few reasons why we wouldn’t hear more screaming.

Either someone had managed to get remarkable control over the situation, or all of the hostages were dead. Including (y/n). I forced myself to consider the far less likely, but still possible third option: She was dying, and I could still help her.

“I know that there is still a way for you to get out of this.” I barely recognized my own voice as I rambled, “Is it possible your partners… Is it possible they were planning on leaving together?”

“What?” He sounded disgusted and exhausted, but simultaneously insecure. It didn’t take much effort to realize that he was the weakest of the crew. I’d already had my suspicions that whatever the next step in this journey was, he wasn’t going to be making it with them regardless.

“It was their decision to leave you out here, right? In the place with the most windows and the first access to the door? They put you with all the people most likely to fight back. And now it sounds like…”

I paused, my lips unable to make the next words without a deep breath. “It sounds like they killed the people in the back as a diversion to send in SWAT. Does that sound like something they would do?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

That was enough confirmation for me. It was definitely something they would do, and he knew it. He probably suspected it himself. Thankfully, it gave me enough courage to push back for the first time in this encounter. “Then go back there and see if they’re still there.”

“And just let you be hero and save all these guys? No chance.”

I wanted to laugh; if only he knew the real reason I wanted him to go back there. As terrible as it was, I didn’t care at all about the rest of these men right now. As far as I knew, they were relatively safe. In fact, they were in a better position if what I’d deduced was true. This man, while violent, wasn’t the kind to murder everyone in sight, even when cornered. He’d more likely be shot by SWAT.

“I’ll come with you.” It was a plea, a desperate attempt to get more information that I both wanted and feared. He watched me carefully, trying to read the terror on my face to determine where exactly it was coming from. He knew the hostages were useless to him if he had me, so I wasn’t particularly scared for my life.

At least, not just yet.

“Fine. Get up.”

I willed my legs to stop shaking; to just carry me far enough that I could see her face. I just needed to know that she was okay.

But then I felt a fine mist over my skin— it almost felt like the noise happened after, but I knew logically that couldn’t be true.

A gun fires before the bullets hit their target.

Time seemed to move slower as his body fell to the ground in front of me. My eyes followed him to the floor, but only until I saw the person holding the gun through my peripherals.

“...(y/n)?”

And there she was, clutching tightly onto a rifle, her body barely upright as she staggered forward. There was something remarkably off-putting about the sight of her holding on for dear life to something so morbid. A jarring contrast I would not soon be able to forget, if I ever could.

There was something even more unsettling about the ease with which she carried the weapon, and the fact that she had managed to fire something that powerful without a single stray bullet.

“They’re dead!” She boomed across the room, dropping the weapon onto the floor before she yelled again, “Everyone get out! Hurry!”

No one moved. All of the men, myself included, stared at the tiny girl who’d just saved all of our lives.

“Get out now! There’s a bomb in the back!”

Those were the magic words to stir a panicked crowd into action, people stampeding to the single double door at the entrance, but my eyes were fixed on her. She staggered forward, her arm around her waist and her eyes beginning to roll back.

Perhaps I was just clueless, my one-track mind too slow to navigate the scene in front of me, but it took me that long to see it. My brain rioted against the visuals it took in, the dark crimson dripping down her body. It looked like it would swallow her whole.

I tried to will my body to move, to run to her and do something, anything to help her. But I couldn’t, frozen in place as her small steps got weaker. It wasn’t until I saw her begin to sway that I lunged forward just in time to catch her before she hit the ground.

“Wait!” I screamed to anyone who would listen, my eyes frantically trying to meet someone in the crowd, “Someone get a medic!”

The woman with a child was the last one to pass. She stopped among the commotion, looking down at the carnage in my lap before bolting towards the door.

I had to trust that she would care enough to do something, because from that point on my attention wouldn’t be leaving (y/n). Her eyes were glassy, staring off into the distance and wandering aimlessly despite my face being in view.

“Hey, hey little girl.” My voice crackled as I held her cheek, “Hey, look at me.”

She was finally able to meet my gaze, her eyes filling with love with a small, delirious smile gracing her lips.

“Hey old man.”

The grin didn’t last long, the sounds of her choking and coughing replacing it as blood filled her mouth. I tried to turn her enough that she could spit it out, but it was obvious she was struggling to get any air at all.

“We’re gonna get you some help, okay?” I said with a false confidence, the twisted curve of my lips not even barely resembling a smile.

“It hurts,” she sobbed, her hands slipping in the blood on her stomach.

“I know.”

There wasn’t anything I could do; all I could do was sit there and stare, trying to decide where my hands should be. She was applying pressure to her wound on the front, but I could see the wreckage that was once her back. My hands wouldn’t be enough.

“I’m sleepy.”

“I know.” I was trembling, tears dripping from my face and mixing with the bloody mess; they still couldn’t dilute it, somehow make it vanish. “I know you’re tired. But you’ve gotta stay awake, okay?”

“Okay, I’ll try.”

At first, I wanted to say the innocence in her voice was surprising, but it wasn’t. She was innocent. She was just a young girl, trying to live a happy, normal life before she met me.

“You’re doing great.” I tried to convince myself this wasn’t my fault, but it didn’t work. She had said it herself — she wouldn’t have ever come to a bank on her own. The statistics of the rarity of this situation kept playing on a loop in the back of my head, but it was just a low hum beneath the sound of her pained whimpers.

“Spencer, I need to tell you something.” The newfound insistence in her voice twisted in my gut, and my hands held tighter to her arm.

“No, don’t,” I begged, already anticipating what was going to happen. “Please, don’t do this.”

“I have to tell you right now.” And then her voice was calm, a smile on her face as her blood-soaked hand left her stomach, trying to raise to touch me. It didn’t make it.

“No, you can tell me later.”

The words were so slurred and pathetic, I’m surprised she understood them. But she did, taking a deep, whistling breath. It was clear it hurt her to speak, and I wanted to tell her to be quiet, but the masochist in me needed to hear the words all the same.

“Spencer, please. Just listen to me.”

This sounded too much like a goodbye.

“I love you.”

Our bodies rocked as I realized I hadn’t taken a breath of my own in too long, the pain in my oxygen deprived lungs not nearly enough to distract me from the genuine softness of her voice.

“I love you so much,” she whispered, “Do you know that?”

I don’t know how she wasn’t crying, her eyes barely open but too tired to blink. That rosy complexion had faded, her skin blanching the longer she lay in my arms.

“Yes, I know.”

“I love you with my whole heart.”

My mind was flashing images from only a couple hours prior, her warm laugh as she laid on my lap, the way her hair slipped between my fingers while I wove it together.

‘You think you’ll still be around?’

‘If you’ll have me.’

The memories were blurring together, creating a symphony of promises that were about to be shattered in front of my eyes.

‘Forever,’ she’d said. ‘Forever.’

‘A white picket fence. Two little bratty genius babies. Just a normal, domestic life with Dr. and Mrs. Reid.’

Rejecting the thought, I shook my head, “You’re going to be fine.”

“I understand what you meant when…” Her voice was too quiet, too distant, to be this warm. “When you said it was nice to be able to say it.”

The heavy footfalls and sound of a transport bed wheeling across the floor alerted me that I would have to let her go soon. Whether this would be the last time I ever held her, I couldn’t be sure.

“They’re gonna come take you now, but I’ll be right behind them. I promise.” I barely got the words out before their hands were all over her, those tired eyes shooting wide open as unfamiliar hands replaced mine.

“Wait, Spencer!” She cried out, her body too limp to make a meaningful attempt to stop them, “Don’t leave me!”

Her screams and sobs were ringing louder than the gunshots had, my body slowly making its way upright as I watched them place her on the bed.

“I’m not leaving you, I promise.” I tried not to let the panic bleed through, raising the volume as she started to be taken away from me, “Stay awake as long as you can.”

I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her attempts to scream. If she was calling my name, it wasn’t recognizable. I’m not sure which hurt worse— the sound of her tired lips butchering my name, or the silence that followed.

She wasn’t able to scream anymore.

When I emerged from the bank, the sun burned my eyes just as much as the sight of my team shocked to see me covered in blood. But I couldn’t focus on them at all, immediately bolting after the paramedics without another thought.

The extra time it took them to carefully load her allowed me to jump into the back of the vehicle before the doors shut. There were no words to describe this situation, nor make it any better.

So I just stared in horrified fascination, trying to gauge her odds as they rapidly changed in front of me. Of 107,141 firearm injuries last year, 31% died. How many of the 69% had assault rifle wounds? I couldn’t remember any other statistics. My brain had turned itself off, focusing only on the frantic beeping and scrambled voices.

“Where is he?” Her tiny voice cut through both the internal and external noise.

“I’m right here.” I nearly shouted from my precarious position standing in the back of the rattling ambulance. I wanted to move closer, but I was too scared. There were so many hands on her, and I didn’t want to get in the way.

“I’m scared.” She said, mirroring my exact thoughts.

“I’m right here.” I repeated, closing my eyes to hide from the carnage long enough to put words together that might make her feel any ounce of comfort, “You’re doing so well. I’m so proud of you.”

Taking an experimental step forward once the paramedics seemed settled in their places, I came to stand behind her. My hands were tinted red and trembled as they reached out to touch her cheeks.

She took a sharp inhale at the sensation, just barely holding her head up straight. I couldn’t tell if she was leaning into my touch or just couldn’t control her neck any longer. Her skin felt like ice, and although she was still beautiful, the blue tint creeping over her face struck fear in my heart.

“How much longer until we get to the hospital? Her body temperature is dropping.”

If she heard me, she didn’t respond. I stared at the paramedic who was obviously more concerned with other things at the moment. They were kind enough to give me a response, even if it wasn’t a satisfying one.

“Just a few more minutes. We can’t do anything until we stop the bleeding, sir.”

“Spencer…” Each time she spoke was simultaneously terrifying and comforting. It was confirmation she was alive, but also troublesome, because I knew that she should be reserving her efforts for staying alive.

“Hang in there, little girl. We’re almost there.”

She opened her eyes, staring up at me with clouded vision. I could see the pain so clearly it might as well have been me on the table.

“Please help me,” she sobbed, “help me.”

“I-I can’t.” They were the two hardest words I’d ever had to say. Frustration mounted in me, but none of it was directed at her. She didn’t do anything wrong. Myself, on the other hand, I hated myself in that moment.

She was begging for me to help her, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but stand here and watch as she bled out in the back of an ambulance, a stranger’s hands practically inside of her stomach.

“I don’t want to die.”

The way her voice cracked took whatever was left of my sanity with it, and I felt my fingertips slip in the blood as I pressed against her face.

“You won’t,” I tried to assure her, “You’re going to be fine. Just stay awake.”

“I can’t.” The usual spunk in her voice had faded, leaving behind the sound of a twenty year old girl with no fight left in her. “I’m so sorry, Spencer…”

‘Sorry?’ I thought below the horror, ‘for what?’

When her eyes shut, they couldn’t even make it all the way. It was an expression I’d seen before on the field. I wasn’t meant to see it on her.

“No. No, no, wake up.” I urged, patting her cheeks softly before closing my hands around them more tightly, “Wake up, little girl, please.”

I was talking to no one, because I don’t think she could hear me anymore. Absolutely nothing in her body changed, even as the paramedics became more rushed.

“I’ve located the bleed!” The woman beside me yelled as the ambulance began to rapidly slow down. “I’m sorry sir, but we need you to move.”

“Whatever you need. Please, just help her.” I’d said the words, but my actions didn’t follow. She stared down at my hands that were still tethered to (y/n)’s face, trying to provide the warmth that she desperately needed.

Somehow, I was able to wrench them away, only then realizing the bloody handprints I’d left behind. Her face still wasn’t moving.

“Please, I—“

Before I could say another word, they were already out of the ambulance. I followed as closely as I could behind them, trying to focus enough to ensure that every word said could be played again in my mind. Because the second she crossed the threshold into the surgery suite, I wouldn’t be able to hear them anymore.

I would have to wait. I would have to wait for her to be better, or wait for a declaration. And in that vast silence, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop from torturing myself with every single word uttered in this building before the doors closed.

The doors were ahead of us now, and I wished time could slow down enough that I could give her one more kiss and tell her to be strong one more time before she went into the Schrodinger’s Box that was the emergency room operating table.

I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and when the thought crossed my mind, I realized that I’d never said it back. She’d said it three times, but in my adamant denial I’d failed to return it.

It was so much like us, I’d almost laughed. She’d made such a point of worrying about me leaving her, neither of us had ever stopped to think about how I’d live without her.

How would I live without her? The only person I trusted to have an answer was wheeled into the room, the door shutting abruptly in front of me.

In the reflection of the metal door I saw myself, drenched in the dark liquid. I tried to clean my face with my hand only to realize that they, too, were dirty with her blood.

The world had fallen silent, and I let myself be crushed by the overwhelming loneliness of an existence without her.

‘Don’t miss me too much, Dr. Reid.’

It was too late.

—————————————————

| Part 15 |

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid imagine #Criminal Minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds self insert #spencer reid angst #criminal minds angst #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid series #reid series #dr spencer reid #h2m #spence reid #spencer reid request #reid request

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amayawolfe · 4 years ago

Text

Itsy Bitsy Spider (Chrollo x Fem.Reader)

A/N: fluff, spiders, angst, some harsh language

Word Count: 5262

Summary: Having been born in Meteor City, the majority of your life has been nothing but hardships. Looking back on it, you often wondered how you even made it to adulthood let alone become the treasured partner and wife of eight years to the head of the Phantom Troupe and mother to yours and Chrollo's son.

In the middle of prepping dinner, Chrollo and some of the troupe return from a successful mission. Your husband fills you in on the details as he and a couple of the members begin to help in the kitchen. The peace is suddenly shattered when your six year old comes running into the kitchen terrified, screaming, and claiming there is a monster in his room!

taglist: @to-move-on-means-to-grow @daisies-write

The menu music to the DVD you were watching gently woke you from your unintentional nap. You blinked your eyes a few times to bring them into focus and stretched your curled up body along the large, overstuffed couch. This particular spot on the couch was often your place of rest unless your husband was home; in which case the couch was hardly ever used.

Using the remote you turned off the tv and player then pushed yourself up into a sitting position. You snatched up your phone from it's place on the coffee table and checked the time. It was nearly early evening.

"Guess I should start thinking about what to make for dinner," you said to yourself as you swipe through your phone to check for messages.

Down in this underground hideout beneath Meteor City, phone signal alone was nearly impossible to receive. Thankfully, one of the family was able to figure out how to set up a computer that would broadcast Wi-Fi into the hideout from a line that went to the surface where a receiver was carefully hidden. This way, you could at least send and receive messages between the family and yourself.

Your eyebrows rose and a smile touched your lips when you saw that you had a message from your husband, Chrollo.

Luci: Shopping run was successful, we should be home in the evening.

You smirked a little at the cryptic message. The "shopping run" Chrollo was talking about was actually a heist during a gem and jewelry show. A heist in which you had helped plan out with your husband and three other family members.

You glowered down at your phone when you realized the message had been sent a little over an hour ago while you were asleep.

"I really need to get a louder phone," you muttered to yourself as you began to type a response.

You: I just woke up...

You: I haven't started dinner yet, is there anything you or the others would like?

Phone still in hand you got to your feet and head in the direction of your son's room. As you walk through the hideout your sock covered foot falls are silent from a lifetime of practice. You pass a collection of pictures hanging along the walls. There are photos of you, Chrollo, your son, as well as the rest of the family doing random things a family would do.

There were a couple from around the holidays and you and Chrollo are watching your son open gifts. Another was on Chrollo's birthday and two of the members had sandwiched his face between two pieces of vanilla cake with strawberry frosting. The look of shock and horror on Chrollo's face had been perfectly captured. While it was one of your favorite photos, he despised it. Chrollo's favorite picture on the wall was of you and him stretched out on the day bed in the library reading a book together while his head was resting on your nearly full term pregnant belly. You had to admit, it was a very cute picture.

The home was enormous, consisting of s/n's room and his own bathroom, yours and Chrollo's large master bedroom with a large bathroom, a gourmet kitchen, library, study, massive living room, dining hall, training area along with a gym and a pool, a giant vault for looted treasures, multiple guests rooms with their own bathrooms, there was even a "war room" where missions and strategies were discussed.

All the rooms in the place were lavishly decorated and furnished for maximal comfort. Any electronics and appliances were always top of line. Your husband always insisted on the best of the best for you and the family.

Upon reaching your son's open door way you peeked in on him and found him laying on his belly on the floor reading a book aloud softly. He had his collection of stuffed animals surrounding him as though they were an audience listening to the story he was telling. A majority of them were a variety of teddy bears of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Ever since he saw a picture of a tiny teddy bear defending a sleeping child from a large monster he had taken a great liking to them.

S/n's favorite teddy bear was one that Chrollo had asked Machi to make for him during a difficult time for s/n where he was greatly missing his father whenever he went on missions. It was of average size for a teddy bear and had medium brown fur. The button eyes were the same shade of grey blue as Chrollo's and it even had a dark long coat with white fur lining. But how Machi really outdid herself were the little details of a tiny book with a felt cover sewn to the teddy bears paw, the same mark on it's forehead as Chrollo's, and giving the bear little blue green glass bead earrings.

Your son had been so happy to the point of joyous tears when his father gave him the bear made especially for him. He decided right there and then to name the bear "Sir Brollo." Upon s/n announcing this, you had to bite your tongue so hard it bled to keep yourself from laughing at the bright red look that came over your husband's face. Sir Brollo had a front row seat sitting right beside s/n as he read. That bear rarely ever left your son's side.

You rest your head against the door frame as you leaned against it and listened to your son read to his "friends." It saddened you knowing your son had no one to play with except for you and the family when ever they were home. But being the son of the head of the heavily feared and all powerful Phantom Troupe, precautions had to be taken. There had been a few dangerously close calls of s/n being taken away to be used as revenge or leverage against the Phantom Troupe. Close calls that resulted in a sense of dread and anxiety that never fully went away. Even after Chrollo had gathered the nen techniques needed to build you, your son, and the family this safe place, the possible threat of invasion always weighed heavy in the back of your mind. And poor s/n was never allowed out of the hide out unless he had you or Chrollo and at least three other members of the family with him.

These constant negative feelings that lingered in the air had taken a toll on your son causing him to become a very nervous and skittish child with a fear of nearly everything. You and the others hoped that, over time, he would be able to shake these fears and stand up to them.

When your son finished the chapter he was on you lifted your head and gently called his name. "s/n"

The child jumped and looked up at you with wide blue grey eyes. His father's eyes. You could feel the sadness in your own eyes form at his frightened expression.

"I'm sorry kiddo," you said softly and entered his room to kneel down close to him. "I didn't mean to startle you, I just wanted to let you know that your father and some of the family will be home soon."

"Oh, okay, thank you mommy," s/n replied softly.

"Is there something special you want for dinner tonight?" you asked.

"Hmmm, not really. Just, no fish, please," your son wrinkled his nose, "I really don't like fish."

You couldn't help but laugh aloud at his response. Stroking his soft hair you leaned forward, and kissed him on the forehead.

"I know, baby, I know. I promise, no fish."

s/n smiled at your words and he began to kick his feet in the air just above him. "Who else will be home?" "I think your uncles Fei, Phinks, and Shal will be coming in with your dad."

Right then your phone pinged and vibrated alerting you to a message response. Glancing down at it you saw Chrollo had responded to your previous question.

"Oh," you said, "speak of the devil."

Luci: I have been asked to put in a request for your famous stew.

You looked down at s/n, "How does stew sound for dinner?"

His eyes grew wide and he smiled happily.

"Yeah!" he cheered as he rolled to one side and pumped a tiny fist into the air. You couldn't help but laugh again and ruffled your son's hair.

"Alright my silly boy, would you like to help me in the kitchen?"

"No, I want to keep reading to Sir Brollo and the others," he answered honestly. "I want to finish a few more chapters before time to eat."

"Okay, I'll come get you when it's time to eat then." You rose to your feet and started to leave the room. At the door way you turned and added, "I love you, sweetie."

"I love you too, mommy," s/n beamed then returned to his book.

As you made your way to the kitchen you messaged your husband a reply.

You: I can do that, I'll go ahead and get started. See you soon?

Luci: See you soon, princess.

You felt the warmth of a blush touch your cheeks. A reaction that always occurred when Chrollo called you by his favorite pet name for you.

When you entered the massive kitchen you set some upbeat classical music to play from your phone. You loved listening to music while you cooked and baked. You then brought down a large stock pot as well as collected a peeler, knife, mixing bowl, and cutting bored. From the fridge you set out a large chunk of beef, bacon, carrots, and celery. The pantry had the potatoes, flour, beef stock, onions, a bottle of red wine and garlic you needed.

You really felt like you were getting into the grove as you gave your hands a good scrub. You diced up a few slices of bacon and tossed them into the stock put and turned the stove flame on to a medium high heat. While the bacon started to cook and release the greasy fat you were going to brown the beef cubes in, you cut the beef chunk into bite size pieces with impressive speed and accuracy. Chrollo wasn't the only one good with a knife.

Once the meat was all cubed you tossed it into the mixing bowl along with some olive oil. Tossing the meat and oil in the bowl until the meat was evenly coated you then added flour, garlic powder, onion powder, season salt, and pepper; stirring it until it the meat was all evenly coated.

Checking on the bacon and giving it a stir, you decided to let the bacon bits crisp a bit more and started working on dicing up a large yellow onion. Humming along with a playful piece of classical music known as "Thunder and Lightning polka" by Johann Strauss II, you really felt like you had a good rhythm going and was very much engrossed in your work.

So much so you didn't even notice someone quietly enter the kitchen and walk up behind you. You didn't notice them watching while you worked, waiting for a pause in your actions before placing their hands on your waist.

You let out a small yelp of surprise as you knocked the persons hands aside and spun around quickly, bringing the sharp edge of the kitchen knife up to your would be assailant's throat. You had expected to see the face of a dangerous stranger. But instead, you where greeted by the warm, familiar face of your husband. There was a small playful smile on his lips and an extra little gleam in his eyes. Chrollo normally wasn't one to sneak up on you like he just did, but he did tend to become mischievously playful after a successful mission. You figured it was most likely from the adrenaline high.

"Damnit, Chrollo," you hissed as you removed the knife from his neck and leaned back against the counter, "You know better than that. What if I had cut your neck wide open?" "Mmm, but you didn't," he replied softly.

You sighed and rolled your eyes, Chrollo was never one to dwell on the "what ifs" of life.

"I got you a little something, my dear," he stated as he reached into the pocket of his favorite long coat. Your husband was always bringing you little gifts when ever he went on a mission without you.

From his pocket he with drew a small, dark navy blue velvet box and held it before you. You quickly washed and dried your hands so as to not to get the box all dirty, carefully took the box from his hand and let out a small gasp upon opening it.

Inside the dainty box was a small rose charm necklace. The piece was masterfully crafted as the delicate petals of the rose were made from chips of rubies while the petals were made of dark green chrome tourmaline chips. Both gems were set in fine gold which also made up the delicate stem of the rose. The chain was made of fine delicate links also in gold.

"Oh Chrollo," you breathed in awe, "it's absolutely gorgeous."

Your husband smiled at your reaction, pleased to see you so happy with the piece he had picked out for you. He held up his hand to take back the box.

"May I?"

Without a need for question you handed the box back to him. You watched him take the necklace out of the box and he returned the box back to his pocket. You turned around as he held up the necklace and you moved your hair at the way so Chrollo could have unobstructed access to your neck. He stepped closer as undid the delicate little clasp and carefully hung the necklace around your neck.

After he redid the clasp behind your neck he slid his hands to your shoulders and placed a soft, warm kiss on your neck. Chrollo's breath tickled the fine hairs on the delicate skin causing goosebumps to erupt down your arms.

"A piece fit for a princess," he whispered against your ear in a low, sultry voice.

His hands moved down your sides to your waist and pulled you closer to him. Your back flush against his chest, you tilted your head to one side allowing him easy access as his he ran a trail of soft kisses from just below where you neck and shoulder connect to your ear. Chrollo's arms came around your waist and he hugged you tightly as he nuzzled his nose against your ear and breathed against the sensitive flesh. You braced your hands against the counter as your knees started to feel weak.

Mischievous and playful were not the only moods that overcame Chrollo after a successful job. You looked forward to the private activities that were most likely to take place between you and your husband behind the closed bedroom door later that night.

"Hey boss, we finished placing all the merchandise into the vault," called a familiar voice, ending the tender moment between you and your husband. As romantic as he could be, Chrollo was never really comfortable showing physical affection in front of the others. Something that both amused and annoyed you the entire eight plus years the two of you had been together. Your husband gave you one last chaste kiss just below the earlobe before turning to Shalnark walking through the kitchen doorway.

"Thank you, Shalnark. And what are the others up to?"

"Oh, they're arguing over what to watch until dinner is done," Shal laughed.

"Why am I not surprised," you said over your shoulder as you started to scoop the crispy bacon bits out of the stock pot with a slotted spoon. "Say, since you two are here why don't you help me out with peeling and cutting the vegetables? The sooner everything gets into the pot the sooner it'll be done and we can eat."

"Sure thing!" Shal beamed, causing you to smile. He always seemed so happy to you and reminded you of a little ball of sunshine.

"I'll go put my coat up and then I'll come back and help," Chrollo replied and strode from the kitchen. Shalnark came over and washed his hands.

"If you don't mind, could you go ahead and peel and chop up the carrots first?" you asked as you started to add the coated beef cubes to the bacon fat.

"Yea, I can do that," Shal chirped. He dried his hands and set to work peeling the carrots. "How's everything been here the last few weeks?"

"Dull and quiet," you said with a sigh as you turned the meat cubes, "it's pretty much the same routine when everyone else is away. Not that I am complaining, really." "I would hope not," Chrollo entered back into the kitchen without his coat. He was wearing a dark sleeveless shirt with a high collar and some white bands creating a pattern down the front, a dark pair of jeans and white socks. The shirt showed off his toned arms, chest, and shoulders and it enticed you to take a nice, long looks at your beloved.

"'Dull and quiet' means 'safe' for my two greatest treasures." Chrollo took his turn at washing his hands before asking, "Now, what shall you have me do, dearest?"

Deciding against speaking aloud the first thing that came to your mind and causing your husband to blush in front of a family member, you set him to work on peeling and cutting potatoes.

You had removed the meat from the stock pot and added some red whine to deglaze the bottom of the pot when Feitan came in mumbling.

"Did you lose the coin toss, Feitan?" Shal asked while he was chopping the carrots.

"Yes," he sighed, then added bitterly" and I would much rather help here than watch another sports game."

Chrollo smirked and Shalnark chuckled while you bit back a laugh. The three of you knew that Feitan would have greatly prefered watch some documentaries on famous criminals; yet somehow Phinks normally won the coin toss on what they would watch when it came to what those two would watch.

"Well, Fei, in that case you can get the dinner roll dough out of the fridge, space them out in a greased baking then cover them with a towel so they can start rising."

You felt the look Feitan shot at you more so than saw it. He had obviously been kidding about wanting to help out on the kitchen. Or, at the very least, he was putting on a show pretending that he actually didn't want to help out when in truth he did.

When you didn't look back over your shoulder at him after a bit he sighed and went to go do as you had asked. You had made sure to give Feitan an easy enough task where he didn't have to ask someone to help get something down or where he would have to get a chair. You knew he could sometimes be a sensitive and prideful when it came to matters of his height.

"So tell me, love, how did the mis-" your question to your husband was suddenly interrupted by the terrified screams of your son coming from his bedroom.

"MONSTER!! MOMMY THERE'S A MONSTER!!!"

Your heart nearly stopped as you dropped what you were doing and started to turn to run out of the kitchen along with Chrollo and the other two.

Chrollo was the first to the door but came to an abrupt stop as s/n came around the corner and ran into his father. Your husband grabbed hold of him to keep him from falling backwards then maneuvered your son away from the door towards you so Feitan and Shalnark could pass to go investigate s/n's room.

Keeping himself between the doorway and you and your son, Chrollo knelt down beside s/n who was now clinging to you and shaking with tears forming in his eyes. He placed a gentle hand on his son's upper back while you stroked his head.

"Tell me what happened, son," he calmly ordered.

"I was r-reading my book and a big monster c-came out of the corner of m-my room." s/n stammered.

"What kind of monster, sweetie?" you asked.

"We couldn't find anything, boss," Shalnark reported as he and Feitan returned.

"It looked like a b-big spider!" s/n added.

Chrollo's eyebrows started to creep up his forehead, "Spider?"

Your son nodded.

"PHINKS!" you nearly roared. Phinks had been known to play pranks on s/n in the past. Pranks that didn't go as he had planned and usually scared the poor kid senseless. The Troupe member claimed he was just trying to help s/n get over his fears, you usually ended up beating the crap out of him regardless.

"It wasn't me!" came Phinks's response as he quickly joined Shalnark and Feitan. "I swear!"

He shied away and stood behind the other two when you locked a deadly glare onto him.

"No, mommy, it wasn't Uncle Phinks," s/n sniffled, "I was reading in my book and it got to a part with monster spiders then a huge spider appeared in my room!"

There was a silent pause before nearly all the adults let out a collective sigh and their guards dropped.

"See, I told you it wasn't me," Phinks muttered as he went back to watch the game.

"Another false alarm," Feitan sighed while walking back into the kitchen. "That's some imagination," Shalnark stated and gave s/n a pat head, "you must have thought the spider was one of those creature right out of your book, huh?"

S/n nodded his head. His face was starting to turn red as he began to realize he had most likely been afraid of nothing once again.

"But," he whispered sadly, "there really was a big spider in my room. And, I'm afraid it's going to hurt Sir Brollo."

"Sir Brollo will be fine, love," you assured gently. "Give me a minute and daddy and I will come help look for the spider, okay?"

s/n nodded and released his grip from you to stand a little closer to his father who rested a hand atop his sons head in means of comfort.

You went to the stove, reduced it to medium low heat, added in the beef stock and spices then turned to Feitan and Shalnark.

"Could you two please finish cutting up the vegetables and add them to the pot? Once that's done add in the meat last, give it a good stir then put the lid on. It should be good on it's own after that."

"Can do, boss lady," Shalnark beamed.

You thank them both and join your son and husband and the three of you head towards s/n's room with Chrollo in the lead. Upon entering the room everything seemed normal. S/n held onto you at the doorway and Chrollo walked a few steps further in while looking around carefully. As he rounded the end of s/n's bed, looking down at a part of the floor you and s/n couldn't see, Chrollo actually jumped a little and a look of surprise appeared on his face.

"Well, I was not expecting that." He blinked a couple times then began to look around the room for something.

"What is it?" you asked. Chrollo smiled a little as he took a large clear plastic container and dumped out the contents to one side. He then went back over to the part of the floor you could not see, turned the container sideways and slowly knelt down.

"An understandably good reason for our son to be scared," he replied softly, "at least at first."

All you could see your husband do was make some slow, careful arm movements. He was speaking softly, to softly for you to here. You wanted to move forward to see what he was messing with but your son didn't want you to leave nor did he want to go farther into the room.

You didn't have to wait long though, as Chrollo began to stand you could now see what he had corralled into the plastic container. It was indeed a spider, but not just any spider, this sider was enormous. With it's legs fanned out it was easily larger than your husbands face.

"It's a snowy tarantula," Chrollo explained as he slowly walked over to the two of you, "it's sort of an ironic name considering it usually lives in hot, arid climates like the desserts around Meteor City."

Once he was within a couple meters of you and s/n he knelt down and gently set the container on the floor. The creature inside barely moved as it seemed to turn and look up at Chrollo.

"It's called a 'snowy' tarantula due to the white hairs all over it's body. The hairs actually shimmer and reflect the light just like fresh fallen snow. An evolutionary trait that developed to help reflect the dessert heat away from it's body and keep it cooler. A magnificent specimen to behold when the light hits it just right. Come see, s/n. She's actually quite docile."

S/n looked up at you and you gave him a warm smile and a nod. He slowly let go of you and took one slow, cautious step after another towards his father and the spider that had frightened him so. You carefully followed behind your son wanting to get a look at the tarantula as well.

As the two of you came closer, the tarantula daintily turned and looked up at you. You gasped slightly at the beautiful deep blue eyes that now stared up at you.

"Now watch," your husband instructed and he began to carefully rotate the container in a circular side to side motion causing the light to dance across the hairs of the tarantula.

"Whhoooaaaa." Your son's eyes grew wide in awe as a rainbow of prismed light moved over the hairs of the tarantula, giving her the effect of a living gem. "She's so pretty. I've never seen anything like it, daddy."

Chrollo stopped the rotation of the container and carefully set it on the floor. He then reached over, placed his hand on the back of his son's head and gently pulled s/n's head towards his own as he too began to lean forward. The two touched foreheads over the tarantula and looked into each others eyes.

"There is no shame in having fear, s/n, but do not let that fear keep you from learning and understanding the unknown. What once was scary and ugly could turn out to be something wonderful and beautiful once you find the courage to face it. Do you understand?"

Your son smiled and nodded slightly, "Yes, daddy, I understand. I'll try harder to be brave, just like you, mommy, and the rest of the family."

Your husband returned the smiled and closed his eyes, "Very good, my son."

S/n closed his eyes as well and the two shared an unspoken bonding moment over the snowy tarantula who just looked up at them. You smiled down at the two you held most dear and felt your heart swell with love and emotion.

Your son was the first to break the silence.

"Do you think we could keep her?" he asked as he gently pulled away from his father. "She could be our mascot!"

"Ah-ha, I don't think so, sweetie," you said firmly. "I'm sure she would be a lot happier on the surface where she has room to find food and make a home." "Awwww," s/o whined in disappointment, "when is she going back then?"

"Probably the sooner the better." Chrollo added, backing you up before s/n had a chance to ask him as well.

"Can I show her to the others before she goes back outside?"

Chrollo chuckled, "I don't see why not. Just be sure to carry her gently and don't shake her. You don't want to hurt her before we let her back outside."

"Okay!" s/n said with excitement. He carefully picked up the plastic container and walked with precise hurried steps out of the room, eager to show his uncles that he hadn't been afraid of just nothing.

As soon as s/n was out of ear shot you turned to your husband who was now standing beside you.

"I'm not going to lie, had that thing snuck up on me while I was reading I probably would have screamed, too," you admitted with light laughter sounding in your words. Chrollo smiled and wrapped his arms around your waist bringing the two of you close.

"How did something like that even get in here? The airducts, maybe?"

"It's possible," Chrollo agreed, "I'll ask Shalnark to run a check on the ventilation system just in case."

You stood on your tip toes and kissed his nose, "I'd appreciate that. Also, you might want to ask Shal and Fei how the hell they missed such a big spider when they came in here to check for intruders."

"When s/n jumped up and ran out of here screaming it probably startled her and she hid among all the stuffed toys," your husband made a gesture with his head to your son's mass collection. You looked down and realized that, even though the spider had been huge, she could have easily hid between some of the bigger plushies blocking her from view.

"Good point," you chuckled, "Okay, one more question, 'Who's taking the spider top side?'"

"Once s/n is done showing the others I'll take them all top side to let her go," your husband volunteered, "we won't go far just to release her."

"He's getting better at recovering from scares like this," you observed. "But still... I worry about him..."

"Of course you worry about him," Chrollo said softly, bringing his head down to now touch his marked forehead to yours, "you're his mother. I suspect you will worry for him one way or another for the rest of your life."

"And what about you? Don't you worry about our son?" you asked in the same softness Chrollo was expressing.

"Of course I do, y/n, he's my son. But, seeing how the two of us are, and what we survived to get here, I feel s/n is going to -" "AAAHHHH!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?" Phinks screamed, "WAS THAT IN YOUR ROOM!?!?! NO!! I DO NOT WANT A CLOSER LOOK!"

Chrollo threw back his head and let out a genuine laugh. A laugh that made you smile and laugh along with him.

"Hey! I can hear you two! Shut the hell up!" Phinks yelled, his voice cracking in embarrassment.

His words made the two of you laugh even harder for several minutes.

By the time you two had settled down and caught your breath there were tears in your eyes from laughing so hard. Chrollo looked down at you with a smile still on his face and gave you a long, warm, soft kiss right on the lips. It gave the moment an almost surreal feel to it.

He was the first to break away from the kiss. Your husband chuckled as he swept some hair behind you ear with his finger tips. "As I was saying, I think our son is going to be just fine."

158 notes · View notes

notebooknebula · 3 years ago

Video

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Casey Ames’s Negotiation Technique To Close A Deal | Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority

https://www.jayconner.com/casey-amess-negotiation-technique-to-close-a-deal-jay-conner-the-private-money-authority/

Casey Ames goes deep dive in explaining his negotiation techniques while closing a wholesale deal.

Casey Ames is a Luxury Homebuilder, multi-family Developer, SFH developer. He runs a large wholesale outfit averaging over 100 per year. A mentor and has been in the Real Estate business for 5 years.

Taylor Jene Homes builds high-quality homes and renovated older homes with care and a spirit of revival. No matter if starting from bare land or existing structure, President and founder Casey Ames ponders possibilities, develops and embraces a vision, and delivers excellence with quality and creative design.

Constantly improving on processes along with the use of technology and systems, Taylor Jene Homes empowers its crews to execute plans with clarity. Add in the singular focus of subcontractors and trades, city and county officials, professional engineers, and others to do what they do best within the project plan, a well-orchestrated collaboration results in remarkable home and new development creations.

For more valuable information click on this link and watch the complete episode: https://youtu.be/rDCWEZA0O6A – “Casey Ames on Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority”

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Real Estate Investing With Jay Conner

Jay Conner:

I want to make sure that we understand the negotiation techniques. So let’s say you got a referral from the photography guy and you contact the listing agent. That’s getting ready to list that house. And let’s say, so walk us through one more time, give us a hypothetical. So you call them up. You say, “Hey, what were you going to list the house for?” Walk us through one more time, that negotiation technique and what you offer in order to get the offer accepted.

Casey Ames:

Right. Well, it’s early seeds planted. So keep in mind, these photographers know that they get paid. If I close a deal, right? Any deal that I closed, they’re going to get paid. So those conversations usually are started with the listing agent before I even hear about the deal. So hypothetical situation, a photographer gets a call to go out to one, two, three front street. He goes out, it’s the listing agent, him and the seller, maybe just him in the listing agent. He starts snapping the picks. And he says, “So when are you going live on this thing?” And they say Friday, and it’s Monday. He said, “Monday or Friday. Huh? Okay. What were you going to list for?” And they’re like, “Well, we’re going to probably go at 800,000.” I have them trained up to where they go. So if I could get you that 800,000 then, or real close, or maybe even more, I’m not sure where he’ll come in exact.

If I can get that to you and in your bank account by Friday, would your seller consider selling right now the cash for cash? And they say, “Yeah, I think so.” And then he goes, “Okay, well, let me put you in contact with Casey Ames.” And I’m pretty sure he’s gonna want this house. And they know what I’m looking for usually. And then I either call that agent or most of the time they call me. Once again, it goes down to the name. Our company has a pretty good name for ourselves, so they know that we’re going to handle our business and cover it. But so if I talk to the agent now, and the guy hasn’t said anything, that photographer hasn’t said anything, then I just ask the questions, you know? So are you guys listening to sing and as is condition?

No. We don’t have to listen to it as is condition. It’s a nice home. Okay, perfect. What is it been fully renovated? Well, they did a renovation back in 2018, and it could use some updates. All right. What were you guys going to go live at all? We were going to go live at 800. Okay. I call you back in like 30 minutes and I’ll run some comps on it real quick, but if the numbers do come back and I can give you the eight or close to it or even more, I got to check the comps. What would your seller be interested in and just closing out cash. I’ll make it easy. Five-day close, no inspection, no appraisal. We’ll just wrap it up.

We go through Cassie Johnson at pioneer title and you know, we can just get it done real quick. Yeah. My seller might be interested in that. And then the other one that I use a lot is big earnest money because I deal with a lot of private money and our money is pretty good. And so I’ll say, “Just to be clear so that your seller doesn’t think he’s wasting his time, we’ll throw a 20,000 down on earnest just to just about a minute, it’ll be released to the seller on acceptance of the offer.” So then the seller is like, “Well, okay. I stand to make 20 grand if he backs out and I only have to wait a week for the rest of my money.” And I’m not saying nine out of 10 times, but it works a lot.

#Jay Conner #Private Money Lender #Real Estate Business #Real Estate #Real Estate Investing #Real Estate Investor #Real Estate Profit #The Private Money Authority #Flip Your House

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kookiepredictions · 4 years ago

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Jungkook Ideal Type

This was a request so I thought I’d start from here.

Jungkook has high expectations in terms of ideal type because he actually has very small expectations from them. This is obviously confusing so I will explain.

As mentioned in an earlier post, in a relationship, Jungkook is a very giving person. He hardly ever thinks about what he can get from the person he loves. Most of his fantasies are about what wants to give to them. However, he is pretty aware of this personality trait in himself and knows that it is something that can be easily manipulated. This is why his screening process of letting people in is so strict and fussy. He wants to make sure that the person who will be the subject of all of this generous affection, is someone who naturally understands what he needs without him having to ask or demand, because it’s not his natural personality to ask for anything. Even if he needs something, which everyone does, he will just keep it to himself and stay hurting on his own when no one understands it. He is quite aware of this whole process and cycle and therefore feels that he needs to be extra careful of who he brings into this. This is why his ideal type personality traits are so nit-picky-like. They mainly cover the aspects of the ability to understand his own personality traits, which are complex and quite confusing, often even to himself.

Now getting to the specifics, the previous point leads to the most important characteristic that Jungkook wants in his partner: someone who understands him in all his myriad moods. When Jungkook is in his best form, he is the best partner, friend, son, brother, colleague that anyone can even hope to have in a lifetime. But no one is always is their best form and Jungkook is no exception. But what sets him apart from most people is that he has a general awareness of this, and therefore knows that when he goes into his dark place, he is also a really difficult person to handle. And he thinks it would take someone exceptionally understanding to stand by him in those moments. He fears that anyone who gets into a relationship with him only for his good, brighter moments, will stand to be shocked at his not-so-bright moments and then will start unloving or possibly even hating him and it will leave him with a heartbreak that he will never recover from. It’s also a possibility that he has already had an experience of this kind and therefore is even more careful about who he chooses now.

Jungkook has an innate ability of aesthetically appreciating beauty and his head is bound to turn at the sight of someone pretty, but the majority of it is in a more artistic manner, so the subject of beauty can be a woman, or a man or an object or anything else, without always having a romantic or sexual connotation. So although he is a “man” man who enjoys looking at beautiful people with the occasional thought of “smash-worthy” in his mind, he’s also the type to judge a face on its closeness to the golden ratio. It’s just the artist in him lol. When it comes to relationships, Jungkook is definitely the type to find someone a lot more beautiful when he develops feelings for them. Someone can look really average in the books, but if Jungkook is in love with them, they are the MOST BEAUTIFUL person in the world and no Maxim cover model can ever compare to them in his eyes.

Having said that, he appreciates a person who takes care of themselves. It’s an often misunderstood demand because people might think he wants someone skinny and perfect but his mindset behind it is really his own principle of prioritizing health and fitness in life. It’s something he does for himself because he believes it to be important and right. Therefore someone he would spend his whole life with should naturally prioritize this as well, because he doesn’t want to spend his whole life convincing or arguing about something that should be considered as a necessity. However, he doesn’t have a set body type that he idealizes. For him, the personality trumps looks and if he does expect his partner to look a certain way, especially now that he is a famous idol, it’s because he knows that whoever will become his partner will be subjected to a lot of judgement and criticism from really harsh people and the media, so he feels that someone who naturally has an understanding and love of their physical upkeep, will not have to go through an unnecessarily rough time adapting to these societal demands. Interestingly though, personally, Jungkook is a lot more lenient about his partner’s looks. Being a K Pop idol has actually desensitized him to physical appearances because he constantly sees both the before and after glam-room changes, and he now values the things that do not change with or without makeup. Even at his age, he’s the type of mature who knows that no one, no matter how beautiful, will always stay looking the same way, and that if one’s love is dependent on such a fleeting thing, they will never find true fulfillment in life. Peep the old interview in Sydney where BTS members were asked to describe their ideal type in one word and Jungkook said “nice girl”. He has the makings of being the type of husband who, you know how women’s bodies change when they give birth, would shower even more compliments about how great they look so that they don’t feel insecure about themselves. The flipside of this is that if he ends up disliking someone, they’d better run for the hills because Jungkook will say and do everything to make them feel worse about everything about themselves even though he actually doesn’t mean it nor does he consider anyone unattractive for their physical appearance. He tends to be a lot more critical about his own looks that others’.

Besides being someone who can fully and patiently understand him, Jungkook has no other “demands” from his partner. He’s flexible about everything else. It’s just that understanding Jungkook automatically means that his partner has to have a set of really complex and nimble personality traits themselves. Patience and empathy are key elements here. Don’t be too quick to judge him. Like any other 22 year old, he’s in a stage of forming and crafting his own life view, so there are plenty of rough edges that show through without him intending as such. Be willing to listen to his viewpoints without instantly adjudging him wrong. Be open-minded as well as aware of your own limitations. Are you judging him because he is wrong or are you judging him because of your own limitations in thoughts and beliefs? There is that little window of exchange that Jungkook opens and if he feels violated off his own freedom of thought and speech, he quickly shuts it down. On the contrary, the more space he is given to be himself and figure things out for himself, the bigger that window gets and eventually one day, there is no wall at all.

Jungkook admires someone with their own goals and ambitions. It doesn’t have to a very big goal, it just has to be your own and something you are really passionate about. He doesn’t expect his partner to be a hugely successful anything or bring in a lot of money to the table. Jungkook tends to hold this concept that he has to be the bread-earner of his family, so he doesn’t depend on anyone else for his own material needs (kind of a reason why he moved out of his home to follow his own career path so early in his life), so it’s really not about the money or the status. Rather, because of this wanting to be the provider, he tends to feel insecure if his partner is a little too passionate or successful in their own career because then he starts to worry if he will ever mange to match up to that, but that is a minor egocentric blockage that he has to work on which I feel like he will. The reason why he wants his partner to have their own passion is because Jungkook himself doesn’t work solely for money. He works (or at least really wants to) for his ideas and visions. And he needs someone to understand the importance of this in his life.

Although he seems quiet and introverted, Jungkook really enjoys a good conversation. His Aquarius dominated chart really shows through here. It is a stimulant for him to the point that it can be foreplay lol. Jungkook doesn’t engage in any and every conversation because 1) he’s not interested in superficial small talk all the time, and 2) it’s sad really that he has been, for the most part of his life, not taken seriously for his speaking or even thinking skills. He’s been more treated as this person with the “body” and everything a body can do (I’m mostly talking about singing, dancing, exercise, but yeah what you’re all thinking about as well), so he keeps the “mind” part more to himself and only opens up when he feels like he won’t be judged or belittled for what he has to say, because secretly though, he knows that he’s a lot smarter than a lot of people around him. But since he has been directly or tactically told to shut the hell up all his life, he now does it on his own without having to be told. But of course, he wants the one he chooses to spend his whole life with, to be someone who wouldn’t do that and with whom he can have many hours of conversations with.

This directly says that his ideal type can’t be someone who is overcritical of them. That is because Jungkook is overcritical of himself and what he needs is someone to balance that out by encouraging and motivating him to see his better side, and even when he needs to be corrected or critiqued, which he actually wants his partner to do for him, it has to be with genuine love and understanding and not with the intent of insulting him. His own mind and self-talk is pretty demeaning to himself that erodes his self esteem every day, and he doesn’t need someone to add to that.

He likes someone who speaks with love and gentleness but he can also tell when someone is being a fake sweet talker so don’t try that on him lol. He likes honesty with respect. Also when he said in his interviews that he wants someone who can teach him new things via a relationship, he wasn’t lying. A lot of things he wants in his ideal partner are also things that he wants to learn for himself. So if he wants his partner to be honest and respectful, it doesn’t mean he only wants them to be that way while he gets the clean chit to do whatever he wants. Rather, he wants his partner to be that way because he wants to learn to fully embody those qualities too.

Jungkook has a very dominant masculine type personality, and deep down, he longs for that to be balanced. This is why he actually craves for someone with an equally strong personality as his own, who won’t be daunted by the strong aspects of him, yet be fluid enough to fill in the cracks and crevices as needed. The yin to his yang. Like I said, Jungkook’s ideal type right now is flexible for the most part. It is less of ticking from a list of “I want this and this and that” or how she looks and is on the outside, and more of who will best match and adapt with his personality which is also changing every day. This “match” also has to be beneficial for his partner because he believes that an ideal relationship is about the happiness of both people, and when he’s interested in someone, he’s often obsessed with the thought of whether he can keep them happy. So his ideal type is someone who not only fulfills him, but someone whose needs he can fulfill as well.

#jungkookprediction #jungkook #jeon jeongguk #jeonjungkook #BTS jungkook #bts jeongguk #jeongguk #jungkook prediction #bts prediction #btsprediction #jungkook ideal type #jungkookidealtype

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sweetbitterimpossiblecreature · 3 years ago

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Feysand: An Objective Perspective

Is Rhysand An Abuser?

First, if we mean to be objective, we must use an objective classification. What is domestic abuse? According to facs.nsw.gov.au, “It’s when there is violent, abusive or bullying behaviour or actions towards a partner or former partner to scare and control them. It can happen at home or outside the home. It causes fear and harm to the body, mind and spirit.”

The Domestic Abuse Hotline also has this to say: “Domestic violence (also referred to as intimate partner violence (IPV), dating abuse, or relationship abuse) is a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship.”

Hopefully, we can agree on those two definitions. Now, does Rhysand demonstrate “violent, abusive or bullying behaviour”? Do his actions fall into “a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control”?

The simple answer: it’s complicated. Because of the way Sarah J. Maas has written this series, Rhysand is The Ultimate Man Male. He can essentially do no wrong. Any bad behavior is swept under the guise of his “mask”- i.e., the scene in the Court of Nightmares. Or, if he hurts her, it is brushed off as for her own good- like the time Under The Mountain. This makes it difficult to figure out whether or not he is an abuser, or whether he’s just… like that. In order to understand this, I’m going to give a few examples of things that Tamlin, the known abuser of the series, has done to Feyre.

He infringed on her autonomy by preventing her from leaving the house, thereby limiting her rights.

He lost his temper and exploded a room with her inside of it, thereby putting her in danger.

Let’s look at examples of Rhysand, and what I believe to be some MAJOR red flags.

He purposefully does not tell her about vital information to do with her pregnancy. She almost dies because of this. This omission of information, to me, demonstrated a very clear lack of respect. Maybe, if she had known that there was a possibility she could die, she would have chosen to have an abortion- or, if he had told her beforehand, when she gave him her xmas present, she might not have chosen to have a baby at all. I don’t want to make this a pro-choice issue… but at some level, it is.

He sends her to the home of a cannibalistic, highly dangerous, ancient, powerful, vicious being to get a piece of jewelry, thereby putting her in a massive amount of danger. I cannot emphasize this enough. Putting someone in a situation where they could be eaten alive does not demonstrate your respect for them. I know Maas was trying to write him as a Sexy Consent King, like “hey babe i respect u SO much i’m going to send you to a monster’s lair because I TRUST YOUR aBILITIES BABE”, but… no. No.

Under The Mountain, he drugs her and puts her on his lap, thereby limiting her rights. Not even going to bother to elaborate. Y’all know this by heart.

In conclusion: It isn’t black and white. I believe he positions himself as the king of consent and giving her choices while maneuvering it so that she has less and less choices as they go along (i.e. him not telling her about the crucial pregnancy info), which definitely qualifies as abusive behavior. But someone else might see it differently. From my perspective, it is abuse. But because I swore this was going to be objective, I’m going to say my final answer is: think about it.

On The Issue Of Rhysand And “Consent”

Again, for the people in the back: Putting someone in a situation where they could be eaten alive does not demonstrate your respect for them. Here’s a post that talks about consent much better than I could. In her words, “idolizing consent over lives” is dangerous, harmful, and very real. Do NOT blindly regurgitate every *woke* maxim on consent that you read! Let’s not, as a society, get to a point where it’s like: “Do I have your consent to pour this drink over your head because you said something beyond offensive about my ethnicity?” or “Do I have your consent to take away your car keys so you won’t drive drunk and possible harm others/yourself?” Trust your gut.

How does this relate to Rhysand? Well, first of all, he undeniably puts her in danger. This is justified by the contrast between him and Tamlin. Maas essentially is telling us that Tamlin limits her by keeping her out of danger, and Rhysand empowers her by giving her access to danger. And it’s very easy to get caught in the undertow of this strange logic. Believe me, it is. When I first read the ACOTAR series, I was jiving along with all of your Fuck Tamlin Let Him Die playlists. But here’s a radical idea: imperilment is not a love language. I am not saying that Tamlin was a better option. I am saying that it is possible to respect someone and their right to their own decisions without putting them in danger.

On Making Her High Lady

While it’s fucked up that before Feyre, there were no High Ladies, Feyre incontrovertibly should not be High Lady. Why? Because in fae terms, she is an infant. She learned to read a few years ago. (I am not ridiculing her for her illiteracy, because I understand that the circumstances in which she grew up did not allow for a literate education. That is completely understandable! However, what is not understandable is putting this woman into a position of staggering political power. Learning to read a few years ago means that her comprehension rate is likely a lot lower than the average Velaris citizen. It is… not good for the ruler of a territory to be less capable than the average citizen. This would be like if the president didn’t have a high school diploma.). She has no knowledge of the political landscape. She does not understand etiquette (i.e. her physically attacking someone because of an insult, although to be 100% fair, Rhysand did the same.)

Hey, Feyre! Someone slut-shaming your mate for sleeping with Fae Hitler is not grounds for murder! In ordinary life, it would be grounds for slapping him in the face or something similar, but YOU ARE TRYING TO HAVE A CRISIS COMMITTEE BETWEEN TERRITORIES, WHICH HAS THE POTENTIAL TO SAVE THOUSANDS OF LIVES. An inability to sacrifice one’s ego, even at the potential loss of life, is a worrying characteristic in a ruler.

In Conclusion:

Feyre is not unproblematic when one looks at her decisions as a whole. While the narrative positions events so that they all turn out in her favor, as one would expect given that authors not only write character but plots, in a real-life situation - or just a more realistic plot - her actions would harm many, many people. Rhysand’s behavior towards Feyre is worrying as well, and objectively I think it’s fair to say qualify as signs, if not absolute empirical evidence of abuse.

#meta #my post #sjm critical #anti sjm #acomaf #anti acomaf #acowar #anti acowar #acosf #anti acosf #acotar critical #anti acotar #acosaf #anti acosaf

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peekbackstage · 4 years ago

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What are your views about some brands banning turtles from fanmeetings. Doesn’t it also defeat the argument that ggdd allow bjyx to continue for commercial reasons?

I have written pretty extensively before in terms of how artists are often evaluated by talent buyers - which use pretty similar criteria as brands when it comes to artist valuation.

When it comes to marketing, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that pretty much all brands care about in some way globally. These KPIs largely shape the brand’s marketing campaigns, and also allow brands to set clear, measurable goals and milestones.

When a brand chooses to partner with a celebrity, they must consider a few KPIs:

Reach - The celebrity’s total market reach, which includes social media metrics and media impressions. This allows the brand to approximate the market capitalization an artist may have.

Engagement - How much overall engagement (both online and offline) that a celebrity can generate. On social media, this would include likes, sharing posts, talking about/posting about a celebrity, producing fan works, watching videos, etc. Offline, this would include watching TV shows the artist is on, attending events, buying products to support the artist (music, merchandise, film, etc.)

Sales Growth - Normally, this would be called “conversions,” but I’m just going to make it easy to understand and call this “sales growth.” This would be the amount of product sales a celebrity generates.

Social Media Growth - A celebrity’s involvement with a brand can give all their social media channels a significant boost from the celebrity’s fans following the brand’s social media platforms. This is a measurable KPI that brands track.

Sentiment - What is the market sentiment of a celebrity? This is essentially a celebrity’s reputation score, which more or less can be approximated through a combination of media coverage and social media mentions.

Rankings - There are a number of research companies that regularly put out rankings for celebrities that include the celebrity’s popularity, star power index, social media power, brand power, etc. The combined average of all of these rankings can help a celebrity determine how much overall power an artist may have. Rankings that focus specifically on a celebrity’s brand power or selling power would be more heavily weighted if the primary focus of a brand campaign is to generate more sales.

There are other KPIs such as cost of customer acquisition, customer retention/loyalty, average lifetime spend per customer, etc. that would be important to a brand, but the aforementioned KPIs above are among the most important factors when brands consider working with celebrities.

However, KPIs alone are not enough for a brand to determine whether or not a celebrity would make a good brand ambassador. In addition to all the aforementioned KPIs, a brand must also consider the following:

Image - The celebrity’s overall image. Is this celebrity a bit of a “bad boy” or are they boy-next-door?

Compatibility - How well the celebrity represents/matches with the brand’s values and identity. (This is also known as “image congruity.”)

Credibility - How much credibility the public might place in the celebrity representing the brand. A celebrity who clearly would know nothing about a certain product might not be the best person to represent a brand or their interests.

Affect transfer - Describes the process by which a celebrity’s fan base might transfer their feeling about a celebrity to the brand. If fans have a positive relationship with the celebrity, then this relationship will transfer. If there is negativity, however, that may also unfortunately transfer.

Controversy - Whether or not there is any controversy associated with the celebrity.

I actually went ahead and conducted research to ensure that my comments are actually accurate for the Chinese market. The primary source materials that inform the rest of this post are “Assessing Celebrity Endorsement Effects in China: A Consumer-Celebrity Relational Approach,” (Hung, Tse, Chan 2011) and “Insiders’ Views: The Current Practice of Using Celebrities in Marketing Communications in Greater China” (Leung, Cheng, Tse 2018).

According to Hung et al, there are three types of relationships fans have with celebrities. Since no one is here for a super academic report, I’ll just summarize these relationships as: 1.) regular fans (“entertainment motivated”); 2.) super fans (“intense attachment”); and 3.) sasaeng (“pathological”).

Due to the fact that the type of relationship a fan has with the celebrity has a direct correlation with the relationship that the consumer has with the brand, brands must carefully consider each type of relationship when they choose to work with a celebrity.

Even if a celebrity has incredible KPIs, if the celebrity has a segment of fans that the brand perceives to be “unfavorable” to their marketing goals or their brand image, then the brand may wish to prioritize one market segment over another.

In the case of a brand banning a CP from fan meetings, it is possible that a brand may take the following into consideration:

It is a known fact that solos and CP fans do not get along.

It is a known fact that XZ solos and WYB solos do not get along.

It is a known fact that not only do these three groups not get along, they have full-blown fan wars which can often spiral out of control online.

CP fans account for 5% of the artist’s overall fanbase. Therefore, it is a fact that the remaining 95% are solo fans.

Because the brand can’t predict what will happen at a fan meeting, they have no way of knowing whether or not any sort of controversial issue may arise from having an artist’s solo fans, who are known to be “at war” with the artist’s CP fans in the same room. As a result, they may perceive that CP fans are a risk factor they simply do not want to engage, which may be why a brand might dissuade CP fans from attending a fan meeting.

Moreover, a brand might not want to associate with CP fans because they may feel that CP fans are not representative of the kind of consumer they want to target. Specifically, they may believe that CP fans represent values that are not in line with the brand’s values. (In other words, the brand is homophobic and they do not want anyone who supports a same-sex CP to talk about their brand, as that would associate the brand with a same-sex CP.)

Additionally, the brand may be wary of CP fans due to the fact that solos are known to be anti-CP in both camps, and antis are known to have pathologically obsessive, destructive tendencies. Trying to distance themselves from CP may essentially be a way for the brand to distance themselves from antis.

Most importantly, a brand may find the very idea of a CP to be controversial, or they may perceive the other celebrity in the CP to be “controversial.” According to Leung et al, “a controversial celebrity might bring extra media publicity, yet consumers might ultimately focus their attention on the celebrity instead of the brand being promoted.” Anson Shum, who once ran marketing and communications for Bluebell Group in Greater China, also states in the article, “If I invited [a controversial celebrity] to come to the event … [their] presence might attract many paparazzi, but would the attention be diverted to the brand or focused only on [them]? That’s why I rarely invite controversial celebrities.”

We might also recall that in China, fans and brands alike may consider CP fans to support an artist only because of the CP - and not for their solo endeavors. As such, a brand may believe that CP fans do not have the same consumer value when it comes to customer retention as solo fans may have, especially if the brand wants to have a long-lasting relationship with an artist, such as Wang Leehom and Wahaha Mineral Water, which lasted twenty years.

If the brand’s primary goal for the fan meet is to develop customer retention, which would essentially increase the lifetime value of a customer, then they may (falsely) believe that catering at all to CP fans would not be good for their brand’s goals - especially if there is limited space at the fan meet. They would therefore instead want to maximize all seats for their true target audience, which are not CP fans, but solo fans.

Obviously, I think that a brand choosing to deter CP fans from a fan meeting is stupid as hell, because that deterrence would result in a negative association with the brand, and they more or less shot themselves in the foot. For all that brand knew, the CP fans they excluded from the event could have been whales (i.e. big spenders) who could have given a massive boost to their bottom line. Alienating an entire market segment is literally one of the dumbest things any brand could ever do.

However, at the same time, if the brand is opting to alienate that group on account of their homophobic values, then the brand really doesn’t deserve the consumer’s money to begin with.

In any case, I hope this helped to answer your question.

Works Cited

Hung, Kineta; Chan, Kimmy; and Tse, Caleb. (2011). “Assessing Celebrity Endorsement Effects in China: A Consumer-Celebrity Relational Approach.” Journal of Advertising Research. 51. 608. 10.2501/JAR-51-4-608-623.

Leung, Vivienne; Cheng, Kimmy; and Tse Tommy. (2018) “Insiders’ Views: The Current Practice of Using Celebrities in Marketing Communications in Greater China.” Intercultural Communication Studies XXVII: 1 96-113.

#bjyx #endorsements #brand marketing #fan meetings #ask #jiyamjain-blog #peek answers

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entropy-game-dev · 4 years ago

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Balancing (Part 1) - Overall considerations

In this blog, I’d like to share with you guys some rules of thumb/tips/methodology that I’ve picked up over the course of my first round of inputting robot/move/part data into my various databases. I’ve had this first pass finished for some time now, and I wanted to write up what I’ve found while it’s still somewhat fresh in my mind.

Just as a recap, here’s what I was looking at for each category:

Robots: Stats, elemental affinities, moves, part slots, rewards, recruit conditions

Moves: Element(s) Costs, damage, targeting, secondary effects, status effects

Parts: Stats, elemental affinities, moves, power cost

All these aspects needed to be balanced against one another, and as you can see, there are a lot of things to take into account! I initially found this task quite overwhelming, but began to tackle it one bit at a time.

Primarily, I wanted my robots, moves, and parts to be memorable! My favourite RPGs have really really strong enemy identities, primarily a function of their affinities (if hitting weaknesses was a big part of the battle system), and their moveset. When you have enemies that can seriously affect your action economy by absorbing, reflecting, or take double/triple damage from a particular attack, it really mixes up how you approach any one encounter.

Even parts and moves can be memorable! The Final Fantasy games (I’m thinking mainly of 9 and Tactics Advance here) where equipment grants skills always made it super fun to pick up new gear. Similarly, moves with varying ranges, costs, and conditional effects (such as in Dofus, Wakfu, and Super Robot Wars), made them feel really good to use! Nothing annoys me more than having multiple spells be just copy-pasted with differing elements attached (Final Fantasy and SMT/Persona suffer from this greatly).

Thematic integrity - absolutely no compromises!

I really strugged to come up with the right word here - organic, ludonarrative harmony, thematic, flavor were all considerations - but the exact word doesn't really matter. My main consideration when designing content was that it absolutely MUST make narrative and mechanical sense in-universe. At a basic level, robots built for attacking would have strong offensive stats, and sturdy robots would have strong defensive stats.

Moving deeper, I also wanted their elemental resistances to tell a story. The rubbery-looking robot would reflect kinetic attacks, and a robot with a large generator would be charged by electomagnetive waves. A primitive communications device might act as a vulnerability point that spreads data damage to allies, and a robot made of particularly volatile materials would be sensitive to temporal damage. The same goes for their moves, I mean, if you have a robot that has a move that folds space in on itself, it better have a good reason for doing so!

So when I say no compromise, I mean it! If it meant the robot would be overly hard or easy due to an odd distribution of strengths, weaknesses, or stats, that's just how things have to be. Of course, I made sure that each unit has at the very minimum, one element it was weak to. A physically sturdy unit might have outdated architecture, making it vulnerable to data attacks, or a precisely calibrated timekeeper might be heavily disrupted by precise particle damage.

So I've spoken about this "organic" design moving beyond the specified bounds of balance, but I haven't yet defined what those bounds should be! Let’s have a look at that graph at the top of the blog. There are two axes, with easy/hard on the vertical and variable/homogenized on the horizontal. This represents my two primary considerations when designing interesting and challenging content, and the two areas show off my target zone (purple area) and how willing I am to stray from this (the red area). Importantly, I don't want EVERY enemy to land in the center of this purple zone, but rather, the optimal is to fill the purple zone as much as possible with different, interesting units, some hard, some easy!

The easy-hard axis

The vertical axis is simple to understand - being an indicator of how easy or hard a player would find a particular enemy at the appropriate level, or how much brain power should go into using a particular part or move. Enemies are intuitively easy to understand - challenging amounts of stats, a good spread of resists, interesting moves... basically nothing that'll stop the enemy from appropriately challenging the player.

For parts/moves, “hard” in this case represents those that were difficult but rewarding to use. For example, moves generally have costs that make the prohibitive to spam, and targeting ranges that need to be maximized to get the most use out of them. Parts too followed the same logic, both having bonuses and detriments to stats and affinities + a power cost such that you can’t just equip everything you find without purpose.

I believe that enemies/moves/parts that are harder to fight against/use will most likely more memorable and make for an overall better experience, and this is reflected in my graph's shadings. This is because you'll have to think more carefully and change up your tactics when dealing with them. I feel like this is more reflective of a harsher and more dangerous universe. Especially for someone coming from the past, it wouldn't make sense that some human is easily able to subdue ultra-advanced war machines! That’s not to say that there won’t be easy robots to fight, because fighting only hard things eventually becomes a slog, but on average I aim to make encounters feel dangerous.

The variable-homogenized axis

This one’s a bit tougher to conceptualise, but to me, this represents how much variance something could have relative to the average. An extremely homogenized unit might have 5′s in all stats, and no affinities. Completely run-of-the-mill. On the other hand, a unit that would be considered highly variable would have all its stats at extremes (~1s and ~10s) and no neutral element affinities - you’d always be hitting a strength or weakness no matter what element was used.

Parts and moves are also subject to balancing on this axis. A more "variable" move would have more of it's databases boxes ticked - it might have hp, energy, AND ammo costs, AND do multiple elemental damage, AND have a weird targeting mechanic, AND have an extra effect attached to the move, AND also apply a status effect... that's a lot of "and"s! Same story for parts, parts would be giving bonuses/negatives to almost all stats and resistances, as well as enable usage of several moves. Here, part and move variability is tied somewhat to how easy/hard they are to use.

Overall I wanted content that does require some thought into their pros and cons both inside and outside of battle, but not so much that the player gets overloaded and burnt out due to taking minutes assessing every possible move/target. As a result, there'll naturally be some easier to use moves and parts as well, especially earlier on!

In summary

I didn't want enemies to have too much OR too little going on. They had to be in the realm of "oh no, not this thing - I have to remember it gets healed by chemical damage and can dish out some nasty aoe attacks! Good thing it's slow!" Parts and moves had to have some benefit to using them, and not have any strictly better counterpart. This blog is getting super long so I'm breaking into two parts, with part 2 focusing on some of the tips and tricks I used to help make sure things were kept within reasonable limits.

#game #videogame #devblog #gamedev #scifi #spacegame #dungeon crawler #rpg #entropy #gamemaker #programming #pixel art #robot #indiedev

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historic-old-guard-lover · 4 years ago

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How many languages and which of them would the cast speak if we’re going to be completely historically accurate ?

This a great question that I can’t quite answer, but I spent six hours researching to give it a shot. I think that there’s a broad range of plausible languages and you’ve got leeway to choose how many. The first part is that different people have different affinities for languages. Some people can speak ten different languages fluently (or near-fluency), while others will struggle juggling three different ones in their brains. The range in the languages can affect this, too: it’s easy to mess up between similar languages. I personally have trouble speaking Spanish because in the middle of the sentence, I’ll drop a French word without even realizing it. The same thing doesn’t happen to me in other languages like German, though. By the same token as I’ve discussed before, similar languages are easier to learn. Going from English to Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet? More difficult than English to French, which makes up about a third of modern English. These are languages that are still in the same family (Proto-Indo-European, PIE), though, so it holds nothing to the difficulty of going from English to a language like Mandarin.

I’m breaking this answer into two parts: 1) how many?; 2) which ones? and I’m going to get carried away because I’m me so it’s below the break to spare you if this comes across your dash and you’re not a nerd...

PART 1: What’s a realistic number for them to speak?

I think that each member of the old guard probably has a certain number of languages which they’re comfortable with, a few more that they can understand/get by in, and a few that they may only know phrases from. The number of each isn’t the same for everyone. The average human being is able to speak ~1.5 languages. The most talented polyglots can speak upwards of 50 languages, maybe one guy even spoke 65 (mostly I want to mention he loved translating the phrase “kiss my ass”). This hyperpolyglot, Kreb aka “Kiss My Ass” Stan, had his brain dissected after his death and it showed a lot of “abnormalities”. That leads neuroscientists and me to believe that being able to study and learn 65 languages is either 1) a major skill that rewired his brain because he was flexing it so much; or 2) very abnormal and facilitated by his brain differences. Since their powers don’t make them stop being limited by the human brain (they can forget), I would say that it is unlikely that one of them is fluent/near fluent/comfortable in more than ~65 languages.

Getting past twelve languages is considered a feat, so I think only Andy, Quynh, Nicky, and Joe could be anywhere near the upper-bounds of languages. Remember, these hyperpolyglots spend their entire lives studying languages and often need refreshers. The members of the Old Guard don’t have the luxury of reading grammar books all day, and they also have to remember a bunch of combat training. You can argue that a lot of fighting is “muscle memory” aka located in the cerebellum and nowhere near language processing areas, but there’s still things like math, navigation, etc. that they need to remember. I doubt they have a list of their safe houses just lying around. The older members can speak more languages by virtue of being around longer and having that time to learn, but if we’re being realistic they should probably speak no more than ~45-55 languages comfortably. This doesn’t mean that they only *know* that many, but the other languages would be more like bad high school Spanish in America than able to wax poetic. Aside: that Joe is able to be poetic in what is AT LEAST his fourth or so language is very impressive and we should talk about that more.

How Many Each Member is Maximally Proficient In/Knowledgeable Of at the end of the film/Opening Fire comics run:

Lykon (comics): proficient in ~15, knowledgeable of ~30*

Lykon (movies): proficient in ~45, knowledgeable of ~80*

Andy: proficient in ~50, knowledgeable of ~100**

Quynh | Noriko: proficient in ~51, knowledgeable of ~90**

Joe: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Nicky: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Booker: proficient in ~10, knowledgeable of ~30

Nile: proficient in ~2 (maybe 3), knowledgeable of ~5

*In the comics, he is younger than Andy and Quynh and I assume he dies young. In the movie, it is strongly implied that he was the oldest. The reason why his numbers are not larger, however, is because at some point there were fewer languages as humanity had not dispersed as much as it eventually did. He’s also long before written language which facilitates learning for most people. RIP Lykon.

**I’m not saying that Quynh is smarter than Andy, just that she comes after written language and it should be slightly easier for her to pick things up. I’m giving Andy access to more languages, however, because PIE alone covers Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. More on this later.

PART 2: Which languages would each of them speak?

I’ve covered this question a little in a previous post that was broadly about proto-indo-european/Andy-centric (check it out if you want), but I’ll give a broader survey of each character here.

A Quick Aside on Lykon: We don’t know enough about this character, and the fact that the comics and movie diverge so sharply does not help at all. I’m going to headcannon that he was from Eastern Africa, where most archaeologists agree that modern humans first appeared in the Horn of Africa aka modern Ethiopia and Somolia and neighbors, and predates Andy by ~3,000 years. For future purposes below and assuming a birth date for Andy in the range ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE, this puts his birth at around ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE. This is wild speculation, however. Maybe the early immortals should be spaced by warfare types (Stone Age, Bronze, Iron, Steel?) or maybe they pop up once a cultural region reaches a certain historic point or maybe they just sorta pop up and then live for six or seven thousands years. I’m working off the last assumption because it’s the simplest. The only thing I’m certain of is that Greg Rucka probably didn’t sit down and think this pattern through. If I’m wrong, oh well. I’m mad at him for all his historical inaccuracies. With dating from ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE, I’m having trouble finding a name for the cultures that scientists/historians know were living there at the time. It’s probably because the region has been continually occupied since the first humans, which one can safely assume makes abandoned and undisturbed sites hard to fine.

A Quick Aside on Quynh | Noriko: I like the film better, so I’ll be working with Quynh. If there’s enough interest, I can add on Japanese for Noriko. I’m going to date Quynh to be ~1,500 years after Andy (maybe this should be the new date system, before Andy “BA” and after Andy “AA”). This puts her in the time range of ~3,500BCE - 2,500BCE which could place her in either the Đa Bút neolithic culture of modern-day Vietnam or the Phùng Nguyên bronze age culture of modern-day Vietnam. Those names are archaeological in nature, based on the location where sites have been found and dated to those ranges.

Other Origins: Because we have diverging cannons, I’m going to just state the backgrounds that I’ve assigned. Joe is from 1066CE with a background in the Arab-controlled Maghreb (more specifically, modern-day Tunisia and Northern Algeria). Nicky is from 1069CE with a background from the Italian maritime republic and city-state of Genoa. Booker is from 1770 southern France. Nile is from 1994 Chicago in the United States. Andy is from ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE in the Caucasus (modern-day Georgia and Azerbaijan) or the South Western Eurasian Steppes, probably the Shulaveri-Shomu culture assuming that location.

The first language everyone learned, their “mother tongue” or “native language” is one that they definitely speak. It’s the language that they think in and would be hard-pressed to lose. This even includes now-dead languages, because, again, it’s the one that they learned to think with. Of course, it is possible to lose a language when you have no one to speak it with if you wanted to do something tragic, but I think that these things are too deeply ingrained for it it to happen by accident.

What Each One’s First Language Would Be:

Nile: American English, possibly African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) at home

Booker: Provençal/Occitan, possibly “standard French” (school and other places outside the home)

Nicky: Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize

Joe: Tunisian Derja/Tunisian Arabic/Tunisian, and possibly one of the dialects of the native Zenati language group based on where more precisely you place him

Quynh: Proto-Viet–Muong (which isn’t well documented because it’s so old)

Andy: Proto-Indo-European (PIE), but if you’re curious the Classical Scythian Language for which she is probably named is only off by a factor of 10 (4000 vs 400 BCE) *cue distressed sighing*

Lykon: Proto-Cushitic (also suffering a lack of documentation from being old as heck)

Other than their first languages, what else they learn depends on where they go. People learned languages back then for the same reasons that they do today: to communicate (and to read, after the invention of writing).

Additional Confirmed or Likely Cannon Languages:

Nile: Spanish because of the American school system for sure. French is listed on the IG account, but she probably speaks only Spanish or French to a degree of fluency, definitely one better than the other. Very Basic Pashto, which we see her use some obviously-memorized phrases with in the film.

Booker: The IG promo things asserts that he knows (modern, standard) Italian and Greek. Why not? He also probably knows Spanish depending on where more specifically in southern France he is from. He’s probably also picked up on at least Very Basic Arabic from Joe and Nicky, but actually learning the language would take commitment from him. He also clearly speaks English.

Nicky: Other Italian dialects, and it would be fairly easy for him to have picked up modern Italian. He definitely reads Latin. If he was from a wealthy family, he probably also speaks Greek. If he was from a trading family, he probably speaks the trading pidgin of Sabir. The IG account confirms Arabic (vague, but okay I’ll be generous and say modern standard Arabic) and Romanche (they meant to write Romansh). I think Romansh is poorly chosen to characterize him in Northern Italy, but I’m feeling generous. He also clearly speaks English.

Joe: He definitely speaks standard Arabic to have been able to communicate with other Arabic-speakers in Jerusalem. Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize because of the love of his life, which also means he probably picked up modern Italian at some point. The IG account confirms Farsi (they call it “Persian” *cue screaming*), which works if he was a merchant who traveled far to eastward on the Silk Road...and if you go with the comic cannon makes more sense. I’m going to say that he speaks the Mediterranean trading pidgin Sabir because of his location in Tunisia. If he was from a wealthy merchant family and could afford schooling, he probably learned Greek and maybe also Latin. There’s a good chance that he knows conversational-levels of other native Zenati languages thanks to colonialism discouraging their usage. He also clearly speaks English.

Quynh: We don’t actually know if she speaks English, but it’s safe to assume she does speak at least some of it. She’s probably learned Vietnamese and Mường because of her mastery of their proto-language. Because I see her returning to modern-day Vietnam to fight the Chinese colonization, I think that she might know Cantonese or Mandarin. Based on her travels with Andy, I’d like to propose Greek, Latin, and Mongolian. I’m sure that Andy and her share a language, but who knows which one they were each speaking when they met!

Andy: The IG account says “all,” but I’ve discussed this elsewhere (*major eye rolling*). She almost certainly picked up Scythian and Greek based on her chosen name. Latin isn’t as likely as you’d think, but is possible. I’d like to think that she’s also partial to learning Russian (or some earlier form of the language), Mongolian, and Armenian. Based on her travels with Quynh, I imagine that she speaks Cantonese or Mandarin and Vietnamese or Mu’o’ng. There is some mystery language shared with Quynh, too. She also clearly speaks English.

Lykon: I really don’t know enough about him to hazard any guesses. He should share at least one language in common with Andy and Quynh. If his date of death is ~2,000- 1,000 BCE like I’m supposing, there’s a good chance that he only speaks one or two currently-named languages. Sorry, OP.

#asks #lovely anon #linguistics #neuroscience #the old guard #andromache the scythian #andy #quynh #noriko #lykon #yusuf al kaysani #joe #nicolo di genova #nicky #sebastien le livre #booker #nile freeman #nile

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