#and also now you have to clean your scanner

[ladyyatexel]

Hanbee Abara just deciding to dedicate every facet of his life to Juuzou Suzuya fucking gets me in the guts, okay?

[nebraskas]

4/26/24 Nebraska/IA Tornadoes

a continuously updated list of resources

last updated 4/27/24 at 8:13 AM CST; find how to help those affected at the bottom

All

Aid/Assistance/Reunification

If you are disabled and impacted by tornadoes, call Disability & Disaster Hotline 800-626-4959 or email hotline@disasterstrategies.org (per The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies on X)

Nebraska Humane Society can house animals that need emergency shelter. Contact Animal Control at 402-444-7800 ext. 1. (per NE Humane Society on X)

Footage

Images and videos from across the storm's path.

Bennington

Aid/Assistance/Reunification

Three Timbers Church - S 2nd and Warehouse Street, St. John's Lutheran Church - N Molly Street and Howard Lane, and City Hall - 156th Street and Warehouse Street are all locations to find assistance. (per KETV7)

Clean Up

13505 N. 216th St. in Bennington needs to keep several things in mind:

The landfill will be open 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.

Green debris limbs must be cut into pieces 4 feet or smaller.

Debris can be mixed.

Home appliances and hazardous materials are not accepted.

(per KETV7)

Blair

Aid/Assistance/Reunification

The Red Cross has set up a location at First Lutheran Church at 2146 Wright Street (per KETV7)

Elkhorn

Aid/Assistance/Reunification

A Facebook page where people are offering resources

Common Ground Recreation Center at 1701 Veterans Drive will serve as an overnight shelter for those affected and pets. (per KETV7)

Anyone needing relief or assistance due to the storms, St. Patrick’s at 204th and Maple Street is your go to. Do not go for unrelated reasons. (per Omaha Scanner on X)

Command Post has moved to 204th and West Maple in St Patrick’s Church parking lot. Media staging is now at the Walgreens parking lot at 202 W Maple (per OPD on X)

Currently there is a reunification center being established at Elkhorn Middle School located at 3200 N 207th street for parents. (per Douglas County 911 on X)

PETS: PetSmart Veterinary Services is at the Walgreens at 202nd and Maple in Elkhorn for pet triage and stabilizing services for animals needing care from tornado injuries. (per Brian Beech on X)

Clean Up

Pheasant Point Landfill as a debris drop-off location, closes at 3 PM today (per KETV7)

Damage

Residents who have suffered damage to their homes in today's severe weather event should call 2-1-1 or go online at http://dogis.org/211 to make a report. (per Douglas County on X)

Omaha

Aid/Assistance/Reunification

Heartland Hope Mission has two locations in west and south O that offer help. West - 15555 Industrial Road, South - 2021 U Street (per KETV7)

How to Help

NE Humane Society is taking food and litter donations at 8929 Fort Street; also accepting monetary donations. (per NE Humane Society on X)

On 4/27/24 at 7:30 AM there will be a meeting at Relevant Church 21220 Elkhorn Drive held by Rapid Response America to help with disaster relief. Bring your own PPE (gloves, long sleeved shirts, closed toed shoes) and you will have to sign a waiver. More info here.

A Facebook page where people can offer help

My City Church is partnering with other area churches to offer assistance. It's asking for volunteers to help in a variety of ways:

Meet at the Relevant center at 212th Street and West Maple Road at 7:30 a.m. Saturday. Volunteers are asked to bring chainsaws, trucks, trailers, shovels, rakes, brooms, garbage bags, etc. to help clean up

Meet at Brookside Elkhorn Campus at 9 a.m. Saturday. Volunteers need to bring necessary tools and work gloves.

(per KETV7)

[rampantram]

(traductor bc i'm Bad in English)

I love how you draw and until recently I realized that your drawings are almost all traditional (🤯) I wanted to ask, what kind of light/Filters do you use to take your photos and make them look so clear?

(And if by some chance I got confused and you do everything digital, it's a wow for my little brain)

No worries! Thank you for taking the time to submit your question~

I’ve done primarily digital art in the past (it always started with pencil on paper, but I later traced over it in Photoshop or CSP) but all of my Cult of the Lamb art has been traditional with some digital edits.

You asking about this got me thinking on how to put together a full run-down of how I do my art, but since I’m away from home (my scanner, computer, etc.) I’ll just give a short(ish) answer for now:

- Starting off, I try to keep my lines as clean as possible, and a kneadable eraser really helps with this since you can pinch the ends to a point to clean up in smaller areas and rub it over your sketch lines without completely erasing them or leaving behind marks or residue (I definitely recommend the Faber-Castell brand because they’re the most pliable ones I’ve used, last a long time so long as you keep them clean, and are widely available in arts & crafts stores as well as online)

- Obviously adjust these to your preferences, but when taking pictures of art on my phone (what I’ve been doing the last week or so) I reduce the Saturation to 0 to make it completely grayscale, up the Brightness (brightening the white of the paper), as well as raise the Black Point (darkening the pencil lines) ((also these are how those settings are named for iPhone, so it might vary between devices))

- When working with digital art software, the Levels tool is going to be the version of the Brightness & Black Point adjustments mentioned for mobile pictures; definitely have the Preview option applied, if available, so you can see the changes you’re making before accepting them (of course you can always Undo said change if you don’t like it).

Overall, though, the more work you put in when working on paper, the less adjustments and edits you’ll have to do later, so don’t skip on cleaning up lines, stray dots, graphite scratches, etc.

Anyway, I’m gonna’ leave things there, but I hope this helps for now! Happy drawing~! ✏️✨

[lets-try-some-writing]

I know that you're super busy with class stuff, but (no rush) do you have anything else in that Ratchet snippet where he was stuck in a pocket dimension for many vorns being punished by Primus?

Its not a lot because Ratchet decided to go get milk for a few weeks, but here is what I have managed to write for this fic. I believe I may get a burst of inspiration and finish it soon.

Previous snippet here.

Time Locked: Snippet #2

When Ratchet woke, he was practically shaking. He paced around his garden frantically, his optics on the only real entrance to his prison. He marched around the borders of his garden, checking his crystals and tending to shoots that had grown out of place. He even dug up fresh earth for some of the new sprouts. Anything to keep his servos moving.

Then, by some miracle, Orion Pax returned to the garden just as the nearest star fully began its rise.

“Pax! It’s good to see you!” Ratchet’s servos shook, and despite the fact that he was covered in dirt from his anxiety driven gardening, he hurried forward to greet the archivist. Orion regarded him with a curious helm tilt before nodding. Only then did Ratchet notice that the Archivist had brought something with him.

“Likewise. I assume you have more questions, so I took the liberty of bringing a few items with me.” Orion stepped into the center of the clearing and unfolded a small table, the kind one would use to serve only one or two individuals. He clicked everything into place, locking the table into formation before putting down a box on top of it. Ratchet raised an optical ridge, but he was too excited to question further as he rested on his knees across the table from Orion.

“Based on your previous queries, I have come up with some explanations for you as well as these items of interest.” Orion placed down a datapad beside the box. That alone left Ratchet gawking. The thing was so thin and transportable. The datapads Ratchet used when he was free of his prison were bulky unwieldy things meant to be stored in huge archives just to ensure nothing was lost or broken.

“Here, take this. It is a collection of major historical events and changes across Cybertron.” Orion slid over the datapad and Ratchet was almost too afraid to touch it. Even when he was the CMO, he was forbidden to put a digit on the records the archives kept. He had to have an archivist grant him a copy or access to the documentation. To just be handed such valuable data-

He paused as he held the datapad. Orion didn’t know about Ratchet’s curse. The datapad would be all but useless when left exposed to the elements. Ratchet sighed as he enjoyed the clean and sleek look of the device. Modern technology… If this was a common item, how much had changed?

“I have also brought a selection of other devices to sate your curiosity.” Orion smiled in a cunning manner that had Ratchet instinctively clutching his new datapad against himself. However, the Archivist merely slid the box over, prompting Ratchet to glare at it in suspicion. 

“Open it doctor. I promise you that no harm shall come to you.” Ratchet hesitated before he carefully put the datapad back down and reached for the box. He searched for the series of hooks he was used to when it came to packaging, but his search was short lived as the box opened with a series of clicks. The lid came undone, and within was some sort of scanner and what looked to be a communicator. 

Looking up at Orion, the Archivist maintained his smile as he pulled the items out and laid them on the table.

“This is an identifier. I thought you might appreciate having the ability to know more about the flora which you cultivate.” Ratchet gawked at the device and its many glowing buttons. He never had anything nearly as high tech as this during his time as CMO. And it was a mere gardening tool? By the Allspark, he had missed a lot.

“And this is a communicator that you may use to contact me from now on if you so desire.” Orion held up the communicator as Ratchet placed the scanner with his new datapad. Ratchet glared at the device, feeling the mark on his spark flare in disagreement. He was not permitted outside communication, that much was clear.

“I can’t use that thing. It is forbidden.” Ratchet’s voice came out low as he leaned back, instinctually driven away from the thing before him. Orion’s helm tilted in curiosity, or perhaps confusion. Then, before Ratchet could react, Pax pressed the device into his servos.

“FRAG!” Ratchet screamed as he threw the communicator, watching as it fritzed and then exploded mere moments after he came into contact with it. He whipped around to glare at his companion, anger running hot in his processors.

“I TOLD you that it is forbidden! I can’t use those things!” He all but snarled. Orion for his part merely hummed and closed the box with a thoughtful expression.

“I see. I believe I may have begun to understand this situation.” Then without missing a beat, Orion turned on the datapad and passed it to Ratchet. The smile returned and Pax laid out his own datapad in turn.

“Since I am here, shall we discuss more of Cybertron’s history?” This mech was strange. Very strange. What mech found a random doctor in a garden in the middle of nowhere who acted as out of touch as Ratchet was and then decided to return for a second visit? Why was Orion so accommodating? Why was he here at all? Ratchet of course had no interest in complaining, but he could see an ulterior motive from a mile away. Pax wanted something, and Ratchet was unsure he could give whatever Orion was looking for.

Ratchet held his datapad and nodded distantly as Orion directed him toward a certain set of files. Ratchet obeyed and listened closely as Orion began to describe everything following the Quintessons wars. He nodded along in the beginning, having already learned a good portion of what was being told to him. He noted a few differences, small details and events that the Council had evidently seen fit to censor. In those instances he spoke up and Orion hastily made notes before continuing. But past a certain point, all Ratchet could do was listen with wide optics and look at the various pictures Orion showed him.

So much time had passed, so much had changed. And everything would continue to move on without him-

So long as he was trapped in his prison. 

“After the failure of Project Regen, the High Council diverted their efforts and implemented more restrictions on the castes. Too much freedom resulted in the death of the CMO of the time, a Prime, and quite a few well known scientists.” Ratchet’s optics widened as he listened closely. Everything up until this point had been largely information that he had been distantly aware of during his functioning but had paid little attention to. This was new.

“Castes were made more regimented, but also not quite as obvious. Social procedures took the place of numerical designators to denote castes and function. Medical knowledge also increased by leaps and bounds after the disaster of Project Regen.” Pax spoke with a smooth voice that hinted at vorns of performing this very function for others. Ratchet wasn’t startled much by the supposed leap in medical understanding. That was to be expected. When he was CMO he was already quite well aware of the new studies being conducted.

No, what caught his attention was the change from numerical designation to social procedures regarding caste.

“Once you have finished catching me up on our history, I would like to learn about the castes and the new medical system.” Ratchet made his request as he looked over the pictures of shining cities he hardly recognized. The history was all well and good, but it was the change in culture that mattered to him more. One had to know history to be familiar with culture, and by becoming familiar with culture, he could finally figure out just how out of touch he was.

Once he was the finest doctor on Cybertron. Once, he had sat upon one of the highest pedestals capable of being reached by a mech of his station. Did his knowledge and skill mean anything anymore?

“Of course, although I do believe we will not have enough time this cycle to complete this discussion of history.” Orion looked up, and it was only then that Ratchet noticed the nearest star beginning to set. He scrambled to his pedes, taking his scanner and datapad and hurrying toward the techtite tree in the center of his garden. It wasn’t much, but it would at least partially guard his new gifts from the weather. 

“What are you doing?” Pax questioned as Ratchet slid his gains into a small gap in the trunk of the tree. 

“Keeping these things safe. I can’t take them with me, and I don’t want them destroyed.” Orion made a curious sound and Ratchet shook his dirtied servos covered in grime. He felt the beginnings of exhaustion starting to weigh on his frame as he turned and tried to smile.

“Thank you for coming to my garden again. It has… it has been a very long time since I have seen anyone at all.” Again, Pax looked at him curiously with those cycling optics of his. Ratchet momentarily feared he had scared his newfound conversational partner away, but that fear eased as Orion nodded. That seemed to be his preferred reaction to just about anything.

“Please, come back to my garden on this cycle next vorn. I would like to know more.” Ratchet did not bow, he refused to sink that low. But he did try to make his genuine desire for further interactions clear with his tone. He had to keep this acquaintanceship. He had to. He wasn’t sure he could remain sane after being given a small taste of normal interactions again.

“You are quite fortunate that I am an archivist. My function is to teach and to preserve knowledge. Based on our interactions, it seems aiding you fulfills both those criterias.” Pax turned away, leaving the table he brought with him and only taking his belongings. Ratchet watched on quizzically but did not comment as the Archivist left his garden. 

Settling down against the trunk of his tree, Ratchet vented deeply. He did not think it was fair, but the fate he endured was a little less tormenting now that he had someone to talk to.

His digits brushed over the datapad in its hiding place as the light faded. His optics cycled slowly and his frame relaxed as weariness settled in. For once, it was a peaceful restfulness that overcame him. If Pax returned once, there was a good chance he would return again.

[photogirl894]

"Sun and Rain Part 2: Age of the Empire"

Chapter 30

"A Tense Rescue"

A "Bad Batch" fanfic!

Pairing: Hunter x fem OC, Echo (more best friend pairing)

A/N: Well, here we are again! Though after how things went last time, I'd imagine y'all aren't too thrilled with me 😅 Haha well, that might be the same this time...so strap in and enjoy the ride you're about to take through episode 9 of Bad Batch season 1 😜 Love you all!

Taglist: @the-sad-batch , @nimata-beroya , @intrepidmare , @cole-kenxbi , @tech-aficionado , @ladykatakuri , @d1n0-dan , @sammi9498 , @darthzero22 , @scarlettrose9901 , @thebadbatchscyare , @chxpsi , @ilikemymendarkandfictional , @4pplecider , @locitapurplepink , @l-lend , @nekotaetae , @eternalwaffle , @merkitty49 , @avathebestx , @idoubleswearimawriter , @techs-stitches , @fantasyproductions , @sverdgeir , @totallyunidentified

《 Chapter 29

》 Chapter 31

All chapters (Part 2) (Part 1)

Explanation: Tensions are high on the Marauder after Omega's capture and Kimber must answer to the Clones for her mistake. Will they forgive her easily or will there be division among them?

The Marauder zoomed through the sky, evading the gunfire of the Imperial shuttle tailing them. It didn’t take them long to realize that it was Crosshair’s shuttle chasing them and as predicted, he was not giving them an easy time. 

Echo had taken care of Kimber’s wounded leg first--at Hunter’s surprising yet also not surprising insistence--and had carefully applied what bacta they had to the wound before bandaging it. Her whole armor set had been removed and she was just left in her blacks. Then Hunter was dealt with; Echo had him remove the top half of his armor and sit in one of the chairs so he could bandage Hunter’s chest where he’d been shot. 

Just as Echo finished up with him, Hunter asked Tech, “Any sign of that bounty hunter?”

“The only vessel in our scanners is Crosshair’s and he’s right on top of us,” Tech replied as he continued to maneuver the ship. 

“It’s getting hot back here!” Wrecker cried out from the tail gun. 

Tech hit a couple of the buttons on the console and stated, “Prepping to jump.”

“Not without Omega,’ Hunter countered.

Echo turned back in his co-pilot’s chair and refuted, “The bounty hunter who took her is long gone. We’ll have no chance of finding them if Crosshair shoots us down.”

The Sergeant looked conflicted as to what to do. As Tech informed everyone that their rear deflector shields were failing, Kimber decided to speak up, even though she had a feeling her opinion wasn’t welcome at the moment. 

“Hunter, we need to go,” she urged him. “If we're going to save Omega, then we need to save ourselves first.”

He heaved a heavy sigh in response before telling Tech, “Make the jump.”

Without hesitation, Tech pushed hard on the lever that made the ship jump into hyperspace. Seconds later, the familiar blue tunnel engulfed their ship and they were finally free from Crosshair’s pursuit. 

Once they made the jump, Kimber sighed and let her head fall back against her chair, relieved that they had finally shaken off Crosshair. Her guilt at leading him to them was still eating away at her. Now that they were finally alone and away from the Empire’s sights for now, it was time to come clean about everything…if the boys even wanted to hear anything from her. 

However, Tech beat her to it by saying as he turned his chair around, “Now, Kimber, I believe we are owed an explanation behind your actions regarding Crosshair.”

She let out a small scoff. “You waste no time, do you?” she asked back.

Hunter, however, wasn’t amused. “Tell us the truth,” he demanded. “Why would you tell Crosshair where we were? What possessed you to do such a thing?”

“More than that, why were you sending him secret transmissions in the first place?” then added Echo.

Her stomach churned nervously as she prepared herself to answer their questions. “Look, lads, I'm sorry--”

“Sorry isn't gonna cut it this time,” Hunter cut her off, his stern gaze never leaving hers. “You need to do better than that.”

“Did Crosshair reach out to you first?” asked Wrecker, though his tone wasn't nearly as hardened as the others’.

Kimber fiddled anxiously with her braid. “N--no,” she said. “I reached out on my own. But I never told him anything and I used the encrypted device Rina gave me so he couldn't trace the transmissions!”

“How many times did you do this?” inquired Echo. 

For a second, she hesitated, looking down at the ground before answering, “Three times.”

“Three?” Hunter repeated, aghast.

“I cannot fathom as to why you would do this,” Tech stated.

“All I ever really said was I wanted him to come back; that I wanted to understand why he turned on us…and how much I missed him,” she told them, melancholy in her expression and voice. “Though, that was before we found out the truth about the inhibitor chips.”

Hunter heaved a frustrated sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What changed this time?” 

Her grip on her braid tightened. “I had thought to reach out to him about getting his chip removed like you guys did…but he actually contacted me  instead. I had no idea he would.” She paused for a moment and Hunter raised his eyebrows expectantly, indicating for her to continue. She went on, “It was just after Rex left that Crosshair reached out to me and given the timing of it, I just…got too eager.”

“Oh, Kim…,” Echo sighed, exasperated.

“So you revealed our mission and location to him,” Tech concluded. 

“It's not that simple,” she said back. 

Standing up from his chair, Hunter responded, looking down at her, “It seems simple to me. We tried so hard to stay under Crosshair's radar and the first chance you got, you told him everything we didn't want him to know.”

“It was only because of why we were on Bracca to begin with,” Kimber said. “I thought we could get his chip out, too, and then--”

“That's the point, Kimber: he still has the chip,” Hunter interrupted, his voice raised, “and he's still serving the Empire. He wouldn't jump at the chance to remove it if he's been led to believe otherwise. You left yourself open and he took advantage of that, which put all of us at risk. Do you even realize that? We trusted you! I can’t believe you would do something so selfish!”

Kimber turned away, ashamed.

Then she felt a large hand on her shoulder followed by Wrecker's voice saying, “Come on, guys, cut her some slack. She didn't know this would happen.”

“Wrecker, she endangered all of us by bringing the Empire right to us,” Hunter tried to argue. 

Finally, Kimber snapped and yelled, “Do you think I wanted this to happen? Do you think I asked for this? Crosshair lied to me and he used me! I know now what I did was wrong, but I was only doing what I thought was right at the time!” 

“A bit hypocritical of you to be angry that Crosshair lied to you when that's exactly what you did to us, too,” Hunter fired back.

“Hunter…!” Echo said cautiously. 

By this point, Kimber was not about to take anymore comments lying down. She forced herself to stand up by pushing on the arms of the chair and leaning her hand on the navicomputer next to her, clenching her teeth together as she pushed through the still lingering pain in her leg. 

Facing Hunter and the others with a hurt and mad look in her eyes, she cried back, her tone turning icy, “Well, maybe if I felt I could talk to you or any of you about Crosshair, I wouldn't have felt the need to keep this from you to begin with!” As all the Clones’ eyes went wide at her comment, she kept going, getting even more heated, “You guys won't talk about Crosshair! You know how many times we've talked about him in all the time he's been gone? Once! And even then it was a short conversation. How else was I supposed to cope with him leaving us when I felt I couldn't come to any of you about him? I miss him terribly and I have felt all alone in dealing with that since Kamino. I did what I felt was right for me and I know it was an error in judgment. I admit that. I don’t need you all berating me about it, especially you, Hunter!” Then she kept her focus on Hunter, who was staying silent, as she continued on, her voice rising, “I already feel guilty for leading Crosshair to us in my desperation! I know I betrayed your trust! I’m angry at him for lying to me and manipulating me! I failed to protect Omega from the bounty hunter and more than everything else, I nearly lost all hope because I thought you were dead!”

The way she nearly screamed the word “dead” made Hunter rear back and Echo, Wrecker and Tech were surprised to hear her raise her voice in a way they’d never heard before. 

“I thought not only had I lost Omega, but that I’d lost you, too!” she said as began to cry, her emotions spilling through like a broken dam. “I thought I was about to lose everything because of my mistakes! I’m sorry for all that I’ve done. I know you have every right to be angry, but please…understand that I never meant any harm to this squad. Never! I’m sorry!” 

Finally, she couldn’t bear it any longer and fell back into her chair, turned away from everyone and wept bitterly, her guilt, anger and sorrow tearing her apart. Even though she knew she deserved all of this, it still didn’t make it hurt any less. She wished to take back everything she had done. She should’ve known better than to reach out to Crosshair in the first place. Better yet, she should’ve known him suddenly showing interest in reuniting was too good to be true. Her foolishness and hubris had almost cost them so much so quickly. 

A few seconds later, Kimber felt someone’s arms slide under her and carefully pick her up off the chair. When she lifted her head, she found herself looking up at Wrecker, who said nothing to either her or the others and he simply turned and walked towards the back of the ship towards the bunk area. He activated the door to Hunter’s bunk and walked inside, closing the door behind him and then setting Kimber down carefully onto the bed.

She sniffled and brushed away her tears. “Thank you, Wrecker,” she told him shakily.

He knelt down in front of her, a sorrowful look on his face. “I miss Crosshair, too, you know,” he told her. “I’m sorry I never really talked about him and made you feel lonely.” 

“Wrecker…,” she said sadly, feeling even more guilty about Wrecker apologizing to her.

“I get why you did what you did and I’m sorry things went wrong. You didn’t deserve any of it,” he then added.

“Why…why are you apologizing? Why aren’t you mad at me?” she asked, puzzled.

The gentle giant of a Clone shook his head. “I was confused at first about why you contacted him, but I get it now. You didn’t know what was going to happen and you were only trying to help. You wanted Crosshair back…I know how that feels.” He then laid a consoling hand on her shoulder. “I think you need to take some time alone. It’ll give you and the others all time to cool down. We’ve been through a lot today.”

After smoothing away a couple more stray tears, she declared, “We need to focus on finding Omega.”

“We will,” he promised, “but I don’t want any of us to kill each other before we find her.”

She gave a nod, understanding his point.

“It’ll be okay. Hunter, Echo and Tech won’t be mad forever,” he reassured her.

“I would deserve it, though,” she replied, downtrodden. 

Wrecker wasn’t going to accept that answer. “Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said. “We’ve gotten through worse before. We’ll get through this. I promise.”

With a gentle grasp of her shoulder, he stood back up and left Kimber alone in the room. After he left, she held her face in her hands, inhaling and exhaling deeply to keep herself from crying some more. Her guilt over her actions weighed heavily on her heart and her mind, wondering how she would ever be able to atone for what she’d done. On top of that, she kept wondering and asking so many questions in her mind. What had happened to Crosshair back on Bracca? Who was the bounty hunter that had kidnapped Omega? Where had they gone? How were they ever going to find him? Was Omega still okay? Would Hunter ever forgive her for losing the kid they all had grown attached to?

They had to find her. Somehow, they had to. If anything happened to Omega, Kimber would never forgive herself. 

Around half an hour or so later, Kimber decided she wanted to go back out into the main cabin. Sitting in her room alone with her thoughts wasn't doing her much good. Though, the main area of the ship maybe wouldn't be much better, if the boys were still angry at her, but she'd take her chances. Either way, she just didn't want to be alone. Luckily, one of the boys had brought her armor and weapons back to the room when Echo had been tending to her leg, so she took up her sniper rifle at the end of the cot, stood it upright with the barrel on the floor and used it to brace herself as she stood up. She positioned the back end underneath her arm and made her rifle into a makeshift crutch. Even though any of the Clones could easily carry her around, she didn't want them doing that. Especially since some of them maybe wouldn't want to right now, so she thought of a way to take care of herself. After that, she took a step forward, testing it out. The rifle seemed to suffice enough for her to walk. The bacta, luckily, was working its magic as the pain in her leg was beginning to dull. Not fully, but enough to where walking would be just tolerable enough. She opened up the door and, with a deep breath, hobbled out into the ship. 

As she came out, she heard Echo ask, “What did the bounty hunter look like?”

Then Hunter's voice answered, “He was a Duros.”

“There are a few different Duros bounty hunters. Anything that can narrow it down?” Echo replied. 

Kimber clarified as she entered the cabin, “He had a wide-brimmed hat, if that helps.” 

She noticed Wrecker and Hunter were gathered around the navicomputer with Echo sitting in the seat in front of it. They all turned to face her once they heard her voice, looks of sad uncertainty in their eyes.

“Look, it doesn't matter how you boys feel about me right now,” she told them as she slowly made her way over to them. “What matters is finding Omega and we're going to have to work together to do that.”

For a moment, Hunter still appeared unsure, but then he lightly sighed and shook his head. “You’re right,” he relented. “We can figure everything else out later.”

Kimber gave him a grateful nod.

A few seconds later, after typing out some things on the computer, Echo pulled up an image and stated, “Your description of the bounty hunter is a match to one from the Republic's files.”

Sure enough, the image he’d pulled up was the Duros bounty hunter that both Hunter and Kimber had gone up against. His outfit was a little different with a long, brown overcoat and his hat had a much wider brim, but they both recognized him right away and confirmed it.

“Cad Bane,” Echo told them. “He had multiple run-ins with the Jedi and was responsible for attempting to abduct Chancellor Palpatine.”

“Well, now we can add child kidnapping to that list,” Kimber added, glaring up at the image of Cad Bane as she made sure to lock that name away.

“First the bounty hunter on Pantora and now this guy? Why are they after the kid?” Wrecker demanded in irritation.

Then Tech emerged from the cockpit with his datapad like usual and answered Wrecker’s question, saying, “Because she is more valuable than we realized.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hunter.

Tech clarified, “I further analyzed Omega's genetic profile and discovered she has pure, first-generation DNA.”

Everyone’s eyes went wide with surprise.

“Whoa! Wait. W-W-What does that mean?” Wrecker asked, puzzled.

“First-generation? Like Rex? How is that possible?” Kimber then questioned, looking at Hunter and then back to Tech.

Tech then went on to explain, “All clones were created from a host named Jango Fett. While our genetic structure was modified for growth acceleration and obedience, Omega is a pure genetic replication.”

“How many Clones like that exist?” Hunter inquired.

The answer Tech gave him was a curious one: there was only one other Clone in existence like Omega. It was another male Clone with the code-name of Alpha, but was later called Boba. Then Tech mentioned that Boba had disappeared near the start of the Clone Wars and that left Omega as the sole living source of Jango Fett’s raw genetic material…which could only mean one thing.

“The Kaminoans…!” Kimber deduced aloud.

Echo seemed to have come to the same conclusion as he said right after her to Hunter, “If she's vital to the Kaminoans' cloning operation, they must have put the bounty on her.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” said Kimber.

Then Wrecker posed the question, “So how do we find this bounty hunter?”

Hunter told Tech to check with Cid and see if she had any contacts that could help while the rest of them could keep monitoring comms for any incoming signals. With that, he retreated into the cockpit and went over to the communications panel.

“I would ask the girls to help, but Irys told me that getting information on bounty hunters is one of the few things she can’t do. Anything within the bounty hunter’s guild is locked pretty tight, even for her,” Kimber told the others.

“That and most likely, they’re busy helping Rina by this point,” added Echo. “She and Kida should’ve made it back to Ord Mantell by now.”

“I’m sure they did,” said Kimber back, hobbling over to the chair on the opposite side of the cabin. 

Just as she turned around and leaned on her rifle to carefully lower herself down into the seat, Echo suddenly appeared in front of her and took her free hand in his, bracing under her arm with his scomp. He gave her a kind smile that surprised her and he helped her sit down, letting her use his arm to lean on more than her rifle. 

“Thanks,” she said timidly.

He sat back down in the seat across the aisle and said to her calmly, “Listen, Kim…I know dealing with Crosshair’s absence has been hard for you…but you should’ve come to us. You shouldn’t have kept secrets from us. We’re a squad; we look out for each other.”

She hung her head. “I know,” she said softly.

Then Tech put in his two credits by saying, “Echo is right. If all of us were to act on our own accord in all we do, then the synergy of our squad would be imbalanced. We all rely on each other, both in battle and in other matters. While loss is not something most of us are, indeed, too familiar with, it is still something we must now all endure together…and that includes you, Kimber.”

Kimber lifted her head and looked up at him, her eyes glistening slightly.

“I suppose it was a slight on our part to not have suspected your pain would be different than ours when Crosshair joined the Empire, seeing as you had a close connection to him…but we will no longer let you suffer alone,” Tech vowed.

“The point is: we should’ve been there for you more, from the beginning of all this,” said Echo. “Had we done that, maybe you wouldn’t have felt the need to resort to desperate measures.”

However, she shook her head. “It’s not your fault. Like Tech said, we’ve been dealing with things you guys aren’t entirely familiar with and therefore, I shouldn’t expect you to know how to handle it any better than me.”

Echo stood up from his chair and knelt down on a knee in front of Kimber, grasping her hand and saying her name to prompt her to look at him. When she met his soft gaze, he assured her, “We’re a squad and we help each other. All of us. Even if we don’t fully understand how to cope with some things, we’ll figure it out. That’s what we do.” He tightened his hold on her hand just a bit. “Don’t isolate your feelings just because you don’t think we’d understand. We do, more than you know. Please, don’t keep us in the dark or keep secrets from us again, okay?”

She stole a look up at Tech, as well, and he gave her a sincere nod. It astonished her how quickly Echo and Tech were to forgive her for this. Though, she wasn’t going to take it for granted. In response, she simply nodded and replied, “I won’t. I promise.”

Satisfied with that, Tech then declared, “Echo and I shall reach out to Cid.” After that, the two of them proceeded to start typing things out on the computer as well as the datapad.

Wrecker came up beside Kimber and said, laying a hand on her upper back, “See? I told you they’d come around.”

“Yeah…but there’s still Hunter,” she responded. 

“Don’t worry. He might be mad right now, but…he loves you more than anything,” Wrecker told her gently. “I know you guys will work through it. You always do.”

“I hope so…I feel like I’ve disappointed him more than the rest of you,” she admitted. 

He rubbed her back. “Love is stronger than disappointment.”

She snickered lightly and turned her gaze up to him. “It would seem love has also made you wiser,” she observed. 

The big guy said nothing, but smiled encouragingly. 

Then Kimber stole a look down the way to where she could see Hunter sitting in the cockpit, continuously pushing buttons on the console to monitor their comm channels. She could tell he was already determined to work himself to the bone until they found Omega, despite his injury. She knew she was going to have to keep an eye on him. Hopefully, once Omega was found, she'd have a chance to talk things over with him and make amends for what she'd done. 

If he'd let her. 

Not long later, Kimber decided to join Hunter in the cockpit. Not to try and apologize just yet; he was too distracted for that, but to see if she could help and perhaps keep him company…and possibly help him stay sane. 

When she limped into the front of the ship, Hunter was sitting there, his arm propped up against the side console and his hand resting against his forehead. Then he flinched a little and his other hand came up to his bandaged chest, sharply sucking in air through his teeth. Kimber’s heart ached at seeing him in pain, both physically and emotionally.

“I can take over if you need a break,” she spoke up.

He glanced up briefly over his shoulder upon hearing her voice, but then turned back to the console, stating through a grunt, “I’m fine.”

“Darling…you’re still in pain,” she told him.

“I’ll worry about that after we find Omega,” he simply replied, not even looking back at her as he resumed tapping keys on the console. 

She hobbled up next to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, feeling his body instinctively relax a little at her touch. “Neglecting yourself isn’t going to help us find her any faster, Hunter, and we will find her… but you need to pace yourself. We still need you here, too, as much as she does.”

For a second, his head turned her way slightly and she thought he was going to try and argue some more, but instead, he let out a frustrated sigh, his head hanging low. Then he reached over and grasped her hand on his shoulder, his grip tight with need, and she curled her fingers around his. It seemed that, despite how angry he was at her, he still couldn’t deny the comfort she was offering him. Not when he desperately needed it in the moment.

Then he said, his voice low and despondent, “I just hope she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she is,” she responded. “If it’s the Kaminoans that want her, I have no doubt that they’ll want her unharmed. Besides, she’s a smart girl. I’m sure she’ll be able to look out for herself until we find her.” She wanted so much to lean down and kiss his brow, but decided against it as he might not welcome such a gesture just yet. Instead, she just tightened her grip on his hand, which he returned. Though, he still didn’t look back at her.

A few seconds later, Echo came into the room, declaring with irritation, “Yeah, Cid knows all about Bane, but not how to find him. She said we're on our own.”

“Of course,” replied Kimber, rolling her eyes. Cid was never useful when they needed her to be.

Just then, they heard a faint, tiny voice come in over their comm channel, “Come in. Come in. Anyone?”

Echo, Hunter and Kimber all exchanged looks of shock. It was Omega’s voice!

“Omega?” Wrecker cried out, running in from the back with Tech behind him.

“Omega, are you there? Omega!” Hunter cried out into the communication panel, but there was no reply.

“It’s long-range. I’ll try to boost the signal,” Echo declared, darting back to the front controls. 

After putting in a few codes to boost the comm signal, they heard Omega’s voice come through, “Is anyone there?” Even though they could hear her, it was still staticy and hard to hear at first.

“Omega, do you copy?” Hunter asked.

They heard her gasp Hunter’s name with joy before saying, “I'm here. I got away, but you have to hurry!”

“I knew you’d find a way! Where are you, Omega?” Kimber then asked.

There was a glitch in the signal for a second before they heard her answer, “I don’t know where I am.”

“Hang on, kid. We’re comin’ for ya!” Wrecker cried out.

Echo was trying to trace the signal, but he groaned aloud and stated, “The signal's too weak to establish a direct connection trace.”

Tech then came forward and began instructing Omega over the comm on how to give them a relay on her position, asking her to create a power surge where she was. They all waited in anticipation for Omega’s responses to Tech’s instructions and were relieved every time they could hear her voice. However, at one point, Tech gave her another set of instructions and there wasn’t a reply. Tech spoke her name to get her attention and there was nothing but static and the sounds of a struggle on the other end.

“What’s happening?” Kimber questioned.

“I still can’t get a good read,” Tech answered.

Then they all jumped slightly as they heard Omega’s fearful voice suddenly cry, “Hunter, I need you!”

Hunter shoved Tech aside to get to the comm panel, yelling Omega’s name in a panic. Then the signal was suddenly lost.

“No!” Kimber cried out, slamming a fist on the dash. “The bounty hunter must’ve found her and cut off her communications.”

“Can you find her signal again?” Hunter asked Tech, urgency in his voice.

Tech shook his head. “It was still too weak for me to pinpoint her exact location.”

“We need to get it back,” said Hunter.

“Calm down,” Kimber told him, grabbing his arm. When he looked at her, slightly irritated that she was stopping him, she continued, “Like I told you, she’s a smart girl. She already found a way to get a signal to us, she can do it again. All we can do for her right now is wait, continue monitoring our comm channels and be ready when we hear from her again.”

He clenched his teeth together impatiently. They had finally gotten word from Omega and just as soon as they’d heard from her, they lost her again. Where could she even be? But the steadfast look in Kimber’s eyes directed at him gave him pause. He knew Kimber was right and he had to remind himself that Omega was indeed an intelligent girl. She’d managed to get away from the bounty hunter long enough to get a message to them without their help. If she’d managed to do it once already, then she could surely do it again. 

With a deep breath to calm his anxiety, Hunter gave her a nod of understanding.

Then, turning to Tech, Kimber inquired, “Were you able to get any sort of reading at all as to where she might possibly be?” 

He turned to his datapad and answered, “There was nothing substantial, but it seemed as though it was coming from somewhere in a system not far from us.”

“Then why don’t we just head that way and get a headstart?” suggested Wrecker.

“There are still several planets in that part of the galaxy. If we bypass the correct one, that could prove detrimental to Omega’s rescue,” Tech pointed out.

The four of them continued to debate on different possible options they could do until a few minutes later, they heard beeping coming from the main computer and Echo declared from the co-pilot’s seat, “I think I've got her. She's in the Lido system.” 

“Where in the Lido system?” Wrecker asked as they all rushed forward to the computer to see what it was displaying.

Echo pushed a few keys and stated, “I'm pinpointing the exact coordinates. Hang on!”

Within seconds, the Marauder was back in hyperspace, heading towards Omega’s location and all they could do was hope they’d be able to reach her in time. Not much time passed when they exited hyperspace and they soon ended up in an unknown planet’s red-orange and cloudy atmosphere. They were all searching out the viewport for any sign of Omega or any nearby civilization.

The ship’s proximity sensor began to chirp and Tech informed the others, “I’m picking up a nearby vessel, but it’s descending fast towards the surface.”

As they kept watch out the window, Kimber spotted what the proximity sensor had picked up: it was a round flight pod soaring downward through the sky.

“There!” she cried, pointing through the viewport. “It’s a flight pod. That must be her!”

“Tech, take over the controls,” said Echo. “I’ll prep the docking clamp.” 

Echo and Tech seamlessly transitioned as Tech jumped into the pilot’s seat and took control of the ship, angling it down after the flight pod, while Echo ran to the back of the ship and started getting the docking clamp ready to catch the flight pod. Hunter and Wrecker ran after him with Kimber limping behind them on her rifle crutch. After a moment of quiet anticipation, they heard the clang on the underbelly of the ship as the flight pod was caught on the clamp and the Marauder docked on top of it. Echo opened the docking port, gas releasing from inside the pod as it opened, and Wrecker knelt down and peered inside. 

“Omega! Are you in there?” he called down.

To everyone’s relief, they heard Omega’s small, trembling voice cry out Wrecker’s name from down below. They had found her!

Wrecker reached down and pulled her out of the pod, happy to have her back. Once she was safely inside, Echo released the flight pod from the ship and Tech flew it back up into the sky, preparing to exit the planet’s atmosphere.

The poor girl had her hands in cuffs and she looked so scared, which made Kimber’s heart ache. She grew even sadder when Omega turned and leaned against Hunter, making him flinch in pain. Kimber knew Omega probably had shared the same fear as she did, thinking Hunter had died back on Bracca and now, she was relieved to see he was alive. Ignoring the pain from his injury, Hunter still smiled sweetly as he looked down at Omega, just happy to have her back.

He knelt down and asked her, taking her gently by the shoulders, “Are you okay, Omega? Are you hurt?”

She sniffled and asked tearfully, “Why is this happening? Why are the Kaminoans after me?”

With that one question, the squad’s suspicions were confirmed. It had been the Kaminoans who had sent Cad Bane after her and she’d found out about it. 

“Hunter…you have to tell her,” Echo urged their Sergeant.

With a pained expression in his eyes and face, Hunter explained to Omega, “You're…valuable to them. More than all the other Clones, even more than us. You're…different.” 

Apprehensively, she asked him, “Different? How?”

The conversation Hunter and the rest of the squad had with Omega following her rescue was not an easy one. Explaining to her that she was a vital key to the Cloning process wasn’t easy for her to hear, but she held herself together surprisingly well. For someone that had just been through a kidnapping, she was doing better than they expected. Hunter soon ordered that everyone get rest once Tech found a spot in space to just let the ship hover for a while.

However, as Kimber tried to rest, she found it hard to go to sleep. Hunter had elected to stay out in the cockpit for a while, saying he would keep watch. Though, Kimber wasn’t sure she bought that excuse. There really wasn’t any reason for him to keep watch for anything, especially now that their ship’s signature was scrambled and the Empire couldn’t track them. No…she had a feeling it was because he still wasn’t happy with her and didn’t want to share the room with her at the moment. Not having him beside her was making it hard for her to sleep, not to mention the dull aching in her injured leg. After determining she wasn’t going to get rest anytime soon, she decided she was going to go out and finally speak to Hunter. He would be alone and he was the last one she needed to make amends with. The others were quicker to forgive her for what she’d done, but she knew Hunter would need more convincing. 

She took up her rifle again and made her way out of the bunk. Though, as she got to the cabin of the ship, she could hear voices from further in. She peeked around the corner and saw Hunter speaking to Omega in the cockpit. 

“If I'm as valuable as you say, Lama Su will keep sending bounty hunters after me,” she heard Omega say. 

Then Hunter responded with conviction, “He can send everyone in the galaxy. You have us.”

Kimber smiled to herself. Hunter’s determination to keep Omega safe honestly just made her fall even more in love with him. For someone who had never cared for a child before, he was doing rather well with Omega. Then she heard Omega tell him that he couldn’t fight everyone and she watched as Hunter got out of his chair, crouched in front of Omega, turned her chair to face him and lovingly told her she had nothing to worry about, vowing that she would never have to return to Kamino. Kimber could only pray deep down that he wasn’t making a promise he couldn’t keep. Of course, they all would do everything in their power to keep the kid safe…but would it prove to be enough?

Once Omega seemed calm enough, Hunter told her to go try and sleep, which she obeyed. As she walked towards the gunner’s mount, Omega caught sight of Kimber waiting near the back, jogged over to her and hugged her around the waist. Kimber lightly chuckled, touched by the young Clone’s affection, and softly smoothed her hair. When she pulled away, Omega simply smiled gratefully up at Kimber and then climbed up into her makeshift room in the gunner’s mount, pulling the curtain shut behind her.

When Kimber looked back towards the cockpit, Hunter was standing there staring at her. He looked a little startled to see her, but there was also still hurt in his eyes as well as yearning; yearning to just understand everything she had done. 

“Hunter…,” she simply said, beginning her walk towards the front of the ship on her rifle.

Though, after she took a couple steps, he told her, “Put that down.” Then he walked towards her and said, holding out a hand to her, “Come here.”

Timidly, she listened and set her rifle against the wall, bracing herself on one of the chairs as she did so. Then she reached out and took Hunter’s hand and he proceeded to guide her arm over his head and across his shoulders, letting her put her weight on him as he walked her towards the cockpit. Once they got there, he carefully eased her down into the seat Omega had occupied not minutes prior before sitting back down in the other chair as she thanked him. 

Still at least thinking he’d be cordial, he asked her, “How are you doing?”

Kimber wasn’t expecting him to be so at ease with her, but maybe getting Omega back had softened him up a bit, she supposed. With a light scoff, she replied, “Remember when we first met? I was so much worse than this. That and I’ve been shot and stabbed before, so this is nothing to me.” Then flashes of Hunter being shot by Cad Bane crossed her mind and tears began to fill her eyes at the memory.

Right away, Hunter noticed her tears and sensed her emotions were rising. “What's wrong?” he asked. 

Her voice cracked as she answered tearfully, turning away from him, “The pain of my wound...and all other wounds I've suffered...was nothing compared to the pain that grew in my heart when I saw Bane shoot you.” She turned back to him. “I thought we'd lost you, Hunter...I thought I had lost you.”

He reassured her, “I'm not going anywhere, sweetheart.”

Even though hearing him call her “sweetheart” seemed like a good sign, her fears weren’t put at ease by his words. “ You can say that all you like...but think about it: we both got shot and Omega was taken from us in nothing flat,” she went on to tell him. “You may not go anywhere willingly, but that doesn't mean it won't happen in ways that we don't expect. We're not untouchable, Hunter, and it's unwise to think we are if we simply promise to be, not in the world we live in now. The galaxy is against us and we need to take better care. I know you were protecting Omega, as was I, and I would never tell you not to, but you were almost killed...and I couldn't bear it. It was my worst nightmares coming true. I can't watch that happen to you again. I can't lose you.” Then her head fell as she felt her tears threatening to seep out of her eyes, squeezing them shut tightly to keep herself from crying and remembering the devastation she’d felt momentarily at seeing Hunter being shot.

A few seconds passed and she suddenly felt Hunter take her hands in his. When she opened her eyes, he was kneeling in front of her, looking up at her with soft sympathy in his eyes. “Kimber, I'm here. Bane didn't kill me,” he consoled her. Then he brought her hand up to his chest and held her open palm over his heart. “Feel me...I'm here with you,” he said.

Kimber nearly cried some more at this gesture. Normally, that was her tactic to calm him down when anything had nearly happened to her. This was the first time he had used it to help her. Feeling his steady heartbeat thumping in his chest gave her the comforting reminder she needed. Her nightmares were still only dreams; they hadn’t come true and Hunter was still with her, alive and well. She let herself fall forward until her forehead gently made contact with his. There they stayed for a moment that she wished would last forever, relishing in each other’s presence, as if to remind themselves that neither of them were dead and that they were still together. 

Then Kimber broke the silence by saying, “You’re here…and so is Omega. We got her back. All is well now.”

However, Hunter sighed quietly and responded, “Not quite.” Then he pulled away and sat himself back in the chair, a conflicted look on his face. 

This was the moment Kimber had been dreading and she tensed up, anticipating whatever Hunter was about to throw at her.

He brought a hand up to his forehead and rubbed between his eyes in vexation. “Kimber…I just…I have so many questions,” he said with a sigh. Then he looked back at her and continued calmly yet still with a hint of disappointment, “Help me understand…why you reached out to Crosshair. Why did you do it?”

Ashamed, she turned away and hugged her arms tightly. “I…I missed him…and I didn’t know what else to do. It was the only thing I could think of doing to help cope with his absence,” she answered.

“Does anyone else know?” he then inquired.

“Only Irys,” she told him, “but it was only because she overheard me sending a message and quickly figured it out.”

There was silence briefly and then he asked next, “When did this start?”

She released a breath slowly, preparing her explanation and readying herself for however Hunter would react. “When we crashed on that moon some time ago…after the one singular time we talked about Crosshair. I was emotional thinking about him and when I went back to our bunk to be alone…I just acted impulsively and sent him a message, just pleading to understand why he left us and to come back. This was before we fully understood the significance of the inhibitor chips.” She paused for a moment, waiting for him to say anything, but he kept quiet, his sights focused outside the viewport. When he didn’t respond, she kept going, “Then I messaged him again when we were first going to Ord Mantell and then shortly before the Imperial gala. On that subject…he was there, Hunter.”

That was what made Hunter finally turn and look at her again. “What?”

Giving him an affirming nod, she said, “Crosshair was there at the gala. I saw him as we were escaping…and I found out he saw me when he contacted me on Bracca.”

Hunter ran his hand over his face, exasperated. He had no idea things with Kimber and Crosshair had gone so far. He was confused, trepidatious and concerned, unsure of just how to react to any of this information. Then he said, his tone still composed yet with no less bite to it, “Even though you knew he has the chip in his head, you still told him where we were. How could you do something so reckless?”

She rubbed her arms for self-comfort. “I was only trying to help him,” she said in a low voice. “I know now I wasn’t thinking clearly, I was just…desperate. I thought we could remove his chip and he would return to us. I was….” She was about to say something, but then a realization came to her mind and she stopped herself at first. Then, with a defeated sigh, she admitted, “I was thinking of the squad, at first…but now I see that I was only thinking of myself. In doing so, I put all of us at risk.”

“Why did you keep all this from me?”

“I just knew, after what he did, you wouldn’t react well to anything involving Crosshair. I felt alone and didn’t know what to do.”

“Kimber, you know you can talk to me about anything.”

“Not about this.” Kimber turned back to Hunter, melancholy written all over her face. “You shut down when Crosshair is brought up, which was what happened on that moon the first time.”

Somehow, Hunter hadn't fully recognized the way he'd handled Crosshair's absence and betrayal. Whenever he was reminded of it, he didn't want to think about it lest it make him more upset…but he never realized that avoiding that subject affected Kimber so much. A small wave of remorse washed over him as his gaze drifted away.

Kimber added, “Though…I can’t really blame you. This kind of loss is new for you; for all of us. He hurt you and he hurt me, too”

“Guess we both haven’t been coping with it very well…and all of us not talking about him didn’t help things,” he commented warily.

“Not really,” she affirmed.

There was another moment of awkward silence between the two of them. Both of them were experiencing guilt over the days’ circumstances and just weren’t sure of what to say to each other. The tension was heavy and uncomfortable, both of them waiting for the other to speak.

Then finally, Kimber said, her voice quiet yet resolute, “Listen…I’m sorry for what I did. I never should’ve reached out to Crosshair in the first place and I definitely shouldn’t have told him where we were. I only ever had good intentions…but I know that isn’t a good enough excuse. Even Omega getting captured was my fault because I failed to protect her. I put all of us in danger and I messed everything up. I broke the squad’s trust…I broke your trust. You have every right to not trust me right now, but please know I would never intentionally endanger this squad. I made a mistake, I know that. I’m so sorry and I hope you can forgive me eventually. I’ll do anything to earn your trust again.”

At first, Hunter didn’t reply. His head hung down and he appeared lost in thought. Kimber supposed he was probably thinking of how awful she was or maybe he didn’t fully believe her apology. So many worst-case scenarios ran through her head that filled her with fear; fear of how her actions were ultimately going to affect her greatest relationship. Then a few seconds later, he stood up from his seat, knelt down on one leg in front of her and grabbed hold of her hands again, running his thumbs over the back of her hands.

“Can you at least promise that you won’t do anything like that again?” he requested. 

Immediately, she nodded. “I promise. Even though he still is being controlled by the chip…Crosshair still betrayed me a second time and I have no desire to try contacting him again. I've learned my lesson.” 

The corners of his lips twitched up ever so slightly with satisfaction. His hand came up and cradled her cheek ever so gently, making her instinctively lean into his touch. “Then I forgive you,” he told her.

Her heart leapt for joy at hearing those words. Her hands came up and grasped his that held her face as she turned her head and pressed her lips gratefully into his palm. She’d believed it would’ve taken a lot to earn his trust again, but she was relieved that her Sergeant was quicker to forgive her this time. 

Holding his hand against her cheek, she looked at him and said lastly, “I’m sorry I disappointed you.”

With a small shrug, he replied, “Well…love is stronger than disappointment.”

She blinked, taken aback at hearing those familiar words from earlier. “Wrecker said the exact same thing to me.”

“I know…I heard him,” he stated. Then he removed his hand and his expression turned sad and full of regret as he said, “And he was right. I reacted too harshly and in my anger, I said some hurtful things to you. What Wrecker said made me realize that that isn’t how I should treat the woman I love.”

“You had every right to be mad at me,” she said back.

Shaking his head, he countered, “But I accused you of being the reason Omega was kidnapped, even though Cad Bane being there had nothing to do with what you had done. That wasn’t fair to you and I shouldn’t have done that.” He heaved a loud sigh. “I hate it when we fight.”

She agreed, “So do I.”

He took hold of her hands again, brought them up to his lips and pressed a firm kiss to her knuckles on each hand. He then returned his apologetic gaze to her and said, “I’m sorry, Kimber. Can you forgive me?”

With a content smile of relief, she traced his cheek lightly and answered, “Of course, darling.”

Pleased that she too was willing to forgive him, he pressed a kiss to her palm. As her hand lowered back to her lap, he then said, “No more secrets?”

“No more secrets,” she repeated. 

With that promise now between them, Hunter leaned forward until their foreheads met, his nose gently brushing hers. “I love you, sweetheart.”

Kimber smiled again, her gladness almost overpowering her now. “I love you, too.” After a short moment, she pulled back and went on to ask him, “Will you come to bed?”

He released a tiny scoff and relented, saying, “All right. I will…but you're not going back to the room using that.” Then he gestured with his head back to her rifle still propped against the wall.

“What? It was the best I could do, given the circumstances,” she replied with a grin.

“There's no need for a crutch when you have me,” he said back. Then without waiting for a response, he stood up and pulled her up with him, draping her arm over his shoulders and supporting her around the waist. “But hopefully, your leg will heal in no time.”

Nestling her head into his neck, she purred, “I'll still choose to lean on you even then, my darling.”

She felt him kiss her hair and with all being said and done, they retreated back to their bunk for some much-needed rest after a long and stressful day.

[roguemonsterfucker]

Hmm so there's this theory in the TheHunter community that you can trick the game into spawning more higher level animals.

Basically, they think that when the game goes to spawn in a new animal, after an animal has died, it looks at the average total score of the living animals and will try to balance it out. So if the score is leaning low, it'll balance it by spawning a high one.

So people say the best way to take advantage of this is to leave all the low level animals alone, start by culling out all the medium ones, and then finally take on the high level ones which then will be reliably replaced with high levels.

Some people say this theory is bull. That the spawning of animals is mostly random and the game doesn't look at what currently exists when making the choice of what to spawn.

My original thought about the flaws in this theory was: well, if you kill off all the medium animals, of course it will *look* like your game has a ton of high level ones. You've killed all the others!

So I set out to test this on crocodiles. There's a small population, compared to other species, and they spawn in limited areas and don't wander so it's perfect.

And what I've found is... interesting.

Using the Population Scanner, I can see a record of the crocs I killed and the crocs that spawn.

Now, just a day or so of playing this way certainly isn't enough to start making bold claims, but... Pretty reliably, the crocs that spawn are *not* the level of the crocs I killed.

I haven't done enough damage yet to be seeing results from messing with the average score, so this is something else, I think.

I killed 48 crocs in this session. (I killed 70 earlier but it didn't save that data). 42 crocs spawned to replace them.

Of my 48, all were level 5 and 6, except for one level 7 (not sure how that happened? I was trying just for 5s and 6s but oh well). So 47 level 5 and 6 crocs were killed.

of the 42 that spawned, only 18 were levels 5 and 6. 9 of them spawned in at a lower level than 5. 15 spawned in at a level higher than 6, including TWO that are diamond quality (which is decently rare, I think).

Also, even though the data from my 70 crocs earlier didn't save, I can tell you that I got the impression that this trend applied to them as well, but it's harder to say because I was killing higher level crocs in that session. ALSO it's important to note that not all 70 of those crocs spawned back in before I started the second session so it's possible some of the ones in the 42 were actually caused by the previous round of hunting.

So... I'm not quite sure what this all means. More testing is certainly needed. Like... what happens if I only kill high levels? What happens if I only kill low levels? What happens if I kill all levels equally? I may not be able to test all of those things on my map, though. We'll have to see because as it is, it's quite the undertaking to test one of these methods. And I can't test them all on the same map. I'll need to start with a clean slate.

There definitely seems to be something here, though. I'm just not sure what yet. And maybe it's just coincidence that most of them spawned in at either higher or lower levels than the ones killed. We won't know without further testing.

[mylifeisactuallyamess]

Chapter 8: Medcentre

A/N: Still contributing to Tech Tuesday with my meagre offerings 🥹

Warnings: Bit of a Hunter centric chapter but Tech still features heavily. Mentions of panic, stress, Tech is right there with his voice and comfort. Description of injuries and medical talk, mild assault (Stitch is grabbed). Small time jump. (I was going through a Hunter stage when I wrote this and it shows. I’m sorry 🫠)

Word Count: 5.5k+

3 months later.

“I may recharge for the night.”

“Yeah sure,” you told Beetoo. “I can clean up here.” As you gathered things to put in the sterilisation chamber you heard the door open and close. “Come tomorrow, I have no more appointments.”

“And here I thought we didn’t need them.” You whirled round to see Hunter slumped in the doorway, a hand spread on his side under his chest-plate. Long strands of dark auburn hair drifted across his face, covering the expression that spread over his features, he was in a great deal of pain and it showed.

“Hunter!” You helped him to the bed. “What am I dealing with?” Your hand hovered, ready to act.

“I don’t think it’s penetrative,” he grunted. “Possible fractured rib.” You noticed when he breathed in his entire body stuttered, like he couldn’t fill his lungs properly.

You released the gription so the armour loosened; gently putting the chest-plate on the floor, eyes exploring the broad plain of his chest. The padding was still intact and that was a good sign. You released his spaulders and removed the vambraces, followed by his gloves.

“I’m going to remove your padding now.” Gently you tugged the material away, helping him slip out of it to reveal his tanned, toned, tattooed skin. The tattoo on his face extended down his chest but it did nothing to hinder the bruise that blackened his side.

Grabbing your handheld scanner you pressed the sensor onto his skin, “Breathe,” you ordered. He sucked in a breath through his nose, face pulling as he tried not to make a noise. You watched his breathing pattern on the screen and looked for any anomalies. “I don’t see pneumothorax…lay back.” He complied, settling back on the bed so you could feel his stomach. Your fingers glided over his skin, looking for anything that wasn’t rock hard muscle. You found a soft area and he bit back a yell, his entire body reacting to the pain. “No hemothorax either, I do need to get a look inside.” You moved away to start the tomography machine, pressing the necessary programmes you needed on the screen.

You helped him take the rest of his armour off, removing his boots and greaves, placing them carefully to one side. Soon he was stripped to the waist, only his tan coloured trousers remained. He moved slowly; not the sure footed Hunter you were used to.

He hesitated, eyeing the machine like it was going to bite him. “It’s just to take a picture so I can see where the fracture is and if you have any bleeding.” Approaching him cautiously you could see distrust in the downturn of his mouth. “You’re not leaving here without this scan, Hunter.” He nodded, still holding his side as though it was making him feel better.

“I just, lay down?”

“Yes, but first…” you reached up to slip his bandana off releasing the messy top of his hair. He really had the best hair of the whole Batch.

He took the material from your grip, tossing it in the pile with his armour. “Now you’re ready.” He moved away, easing himself onto the bed with a held back grunt when the pain got almost too much. It lit up around him, the soft blue glow casting shadows across his face as he tried to get comfortable. You started it, listening to the whirring that seemed to clear your mind better than meditation.

Quickly the picture was put up before you and it was worse than Hunter was letting on. “Now I know why you didn’t want a picture,” you told him. “I see two non-displaced rib fractures in ribs eight and nine. Also, your temperature is currently sitting at 38°C which means you are now under observation.”

“No I can’t… we have…”

“And they’re going to have to do it without you,” you spoke over him, crossing your arms in a very Hunter-like stance.

“Can’t you just give me something for the pain?” Hunter asked hopefully.

“You walk out this door and go hanging off cliffs or rolling around the floor in shoot ‘em ups, those ribs are going to dislodge and then you won’t be breathing, let alone anything else.”

“Stitch…” he made that face, the one where he was going to ask you to do something you shouldn’t with those big brown eyes…

“No!” You held up a hand and turned away from him. “I am doing my job, what I am paid for, something you encouraged me to do!” Angrily you gathered up the droid's utensils and shoved them in the sterilisation chamber.

“How long am I out of commission?” Hunter grumbled the words, his posture slumped on the end of the tomography machine.

“You are banned, banned from any heavy lifting or strenuous activity for at least three weeks. You need to sleep upright for 5 days or until you feel able to lay down comfortably. If you cough hold a pillow against your chest.” While you were talking your hands were busy making a shot of painkillers to give him, loading the vial into the injector and coming to a stop at his side. Placing a hand on his bare shoulder you leaned in to find the perfect spot on his neck to administer the dose. The injector hissed but he didn’t even wince, just kept his rich, caf coloured eyes trained on your concentrating face.

“You said I’m under observation?” He was so close, you could feel the heat radiating off his skin and you made yourself back away.

“Yes. Your temperature is higher than it should be so you need to spend one night here.” He looked away, clearly mulling over the information you’d given him.

“I need to contact Echo,” said as he stood up. Nodding you bent down and picked up his comlink.

“I’ll find you some clothes.” The supply cupboard was nice and cool, the glow panels blinking to life when you walked in. You had so much in here, you really should do an inventory soon.

When you returned Hunter was waiting patiently for the fresh clothes, a grey hoodie and some loose fitting trousers. Wordlessly he took them and you left him to change, moving his armour into the small private room you had for patients staying the night. You put in an extra pillow in case he needed it in the night, smoothing out the covers and stepping back to make sure everything was perfect.

His hand caught you, stopping you from bumping into him and you jolted like he’d burnt you, “Sorry,” he muttered.

“N-no it’s ok,” hating the way your voice wavered because of the unexpected contact. “If you need anything just press this, I don’t sleep much so chances are you’ll catch me awake.” He was looking at you with such a soft expression it made your whole throat dry up and you had to cough to continue talking. “If your pain worsens or you start feeling unwell, struggling to breathe…well the sensors will alert me anyway. Goodnight,” you breathed, skirting round him when he stepped back to allow you to pass. You weren’t finished in the medbay but you had to distance yourself. Knowing that any of the Batch were hurt sent you in a spiral so you did the only thing that would calm you down.

“Havoc-2, do you read me?”

“I read you, Havoc Medic.” There…that’s what you wanted to hear.

“Are you sure this is a secure channel?” You turned the com over in your hands, still marvelling at Tech’s technical genius. He had given you these coms a couple of months ago but you’d only used them once or twice. You had held them much more than that, frightened to push the button and find him out of range or just…busy. But even holding them helped you in a way, knowing that Tech gave you this was enough sometimes.

“I programmed these coms myself, someone would have to be cleverer than me to hack them. No one alive like that exists.” Even over the com you could hear the touch of steadfast pride in Tech’s voice at his own abilities.

“I’m sure a droid could eventually crack them open,” you responded slyly.

“A droid is not a sentient and therefore, not classed as alive.” There was a pause where he waited for you to respond but you had no idea what to say. “Are we going to hold a conversation or was there a specific reason you contacted me?”

“I…I was just wondering how the big ships in the war worked?” You could just imagine the disappointed grimace on his face at your vague description, the adjustment of his goggles as he prepared to launch himself into this stream of information retelling.

“I am going to need you to be more specific, to which ships are you referring? Republic or Separatist? All ships are large to someone, are you asking about ships that house over seven thousand crew or ones that only need 200 hundred but can carry 100,000 tonnes…”

“Tech. Pick a favourite.” You rolled onto your back and stared up at the ceiling, laying the com on the pillow beside you and resting your hand behind your head.

“Ah. If you had just asked that in the first place,” there was a slight scuffle and you were sure you heard the buzz of his tools as he spoke. “What systems were you interested in?”

“The engines, tell me about the engines.”

“Very well. My particular favourite is the Venator class star destroyer. Primarily used as flag ships for the Jedi Generals during the Clones Wars era. These ships had 4 primary drive engines…” closing your eyes you breathed in deeply, letting it out in a controlled way as Tech emptied his mind of every scrap of information about these ships you really had no interest in. You weren’t even sure how long he talked at you, not even bothered if you were still listening, he was just happy someone had asked for information he could give. It wasn’t until you realised he’d stopped and your heart picked up at the idea you could have fallen asleep and it might offend him.

“Havoc-2?” You whispered.

“I had assumed you’d fallen asleep.”

“Sorry.”

“Do not be, it is late and your appointments are rather full for the next few weeks.”

“Tech, did you download my appointments?”

“Well I…” he cleared his throat and again you imagined the quick goggle adjustment probably a finger to the middle of them this time. “Yes. That is how Hunter knew you were done for the day.”

“How long did he wait until he came to see me?”

“He did not seem that injured, so he decided to complete the mission before seeking your assistance.”

“Tech.”

“He waited approximately 15 standard hours and 48 standard minutes. I understand now that might not have been the best course of action.” Pinching the bridge of your nose you wondered why the Galaxy had thrown you in the path of these reckless maniacs.

“I should get some sleep. Thank you Tech.”

“I should hope, next time we meet, you can tell me the fuel consumption rate of a Venator at full light speed.”

“Maybe I will,” you teased.

“Goodnight, Havoc Medic.”

“Night Havoc-2. Medic out.”

You woke the next morning, groggy and heavy lidded. Another night of restless sleep haunted by deep voices with no name and painful reminders. You changed, moving to the kitchen and making two cups of caf. You could never eat in the morning, whether it was a habit because you were used to rations or it was just who you were as a person—you couldn’t tell anymore.

You knocked on Hunter’s door but got no response so you left the cup on the floor to the side and went to set up for the day. Beetoo woke up, her receptors blinking like a tired human and you appreciated that touch from Tech.

“Good morning Stitch,” he said in her melodic voice. “Another full day ahead.”

“So it would seem,” you replied as you emptied the sterilising chamber.

“We have a guest,” the droid stated. “And yet there is nothing on my records.” That you didn’t appreciate, she really sounded like Tech sometimes.

“He came in late. I’ll do it today.” Which reminded you, he needed some meds. “Make me a dose of this please?” You showed the droid the meds you gave Hunter last night and she instantly went to work.

“How long is his observation?” The headpiece swivelled around to look at you, the arms still flawlessly doing their job.

“Just for 24 standard hours, as long as his temperature comes down.” You took the injector off her but this time you didn’t knock. The door slid open and you expected to see him sitting up or waking up with the noise. Hunter didn’t move, staying slumped in his semi upright position.

“Blast it!” The sensors hadn’t been switched on because you were too distracted last night and now his condition had deteriorated. “Beetoo! Bring me the kit!” Your instincts kicked in, checking his pulse, watching his breaths, listening for any wheezing and noticing the fine sheen of sweat that covered his marked face. “Hunter. Hunter, can you hear me?” He groaned softly, his brow wrinkling at your loud, firm voice. The torch flickered over his eyes and you saw a good reaction from both, next you pressed the scanner to his chest, watching the lines on the screen as it registered his breathing and heart rate.

He showed no obvious signs of distress aside from the elevated temperature and a racing heart so you went ahead and gave him the shot, smoothing down his damp hair as you did.

“Should we move him to the bays?” The droid asked but you shook your head.

“We are full today, leave him here and we’ll keep checking on him. Set a timer for the next lot of meds he needs.” The door com sounded and you groaned, your day was going to be a whirlwind.

Beetoo and you checked in on Hunter often. His temperature dipped and he stopped sweating but he didn’t wake up fully, only managing to open his eyes for some water before passing out again. If he didn’t improve you were going to have to scan him again.

Beetoo was clearing up after the busy day while you dealt with the last patient. A Rodian, bright green skin and brilliant starry eyes. He had a nasty slice in his forearm but refused to tell you how he’d acquired such a laceration. Still, you took the time to numb him and sew it up, some of your best work. Bacta was great in emergencies and it prevented infection but it didn’t stop the scarring from such a deep wound. Nothing but perfect stitches could minimise that risk.

“Keep the bandage on for a week, you’ll need to come back to have it redressed and if you feel unwell or the pain doesn’t subside you’ll need to return.” You grabbed the datapad that Tech had modified for your use in the medcentre and held it out. “If you could just enter your chaincode, payment will be taken automatically.” You had rules, if Cid sent someone to you they made it known and you used a modified code for their payment, otherwise everyone else had to input their own code in. You weren’t a charity, you needed to survive.

“No.” Instantly you were on the defensive, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in your gut.

“I just need your code…”

“I said, no.” Before you could react the Rodian jumped you. His hand clamped over your mouth to stop you screaming and to your horror, you froze. Eyes rolling, mind shattering at the sensation of confinement, the squeezing of his arms, the ragged breath, it brought forward all your demons.

Your heart throbbed in fear, your legs sagging refusing to hold your weight so he hauled you upright; dragging you towards the door. Small whimpers passed involuntarily through your lips, tears wetting your face but still the Rodian kept his tight grip on you.

“Going somewhere?” A deep voice penetrated the hazy fog you’d fallen into and it kicked you to react. If the Rodian got hold of Hunter he could seriously hurt him. You brought a heel down on his foot, an elbow jab to the solar plexus had him loosening his grip and you managed to free yourself gasping wildly for air. Thankfully your patient took one look at Hunter glaring at him from the doorway and fled outside.

You used the wall as support, trying to calm yourself and concentrate on Hunter who had gone to check everything was clear. When he came back his attention was on you.

“Stitch? Are you still with me?” Tentatively he reached for your shoulders, putting his concerned face right in your unfocused eye line.

“Y-yes! Y-you shouldn’t b-be out of bed y-yet.” Get a grip, Needles. Closing your eyes and swallowing down the excess fear only to move it from your throat to your insides.

“I felt something was wrong.” Hunter and his senses. Of course he did. Your hand was shaking badly when you reached for his neck and tried to take his pulse. Most people would have frowned, told you not to do that, ushered you somewhere else and made you sit down, but not Hunter. He gazed at you with those beautiful eyes, letting you feel the beat of his body through his skin, watching your lips mouth silently as you counted.

It calmed you, centred your mind and gave control of your body back. With a quiet exhale you rested your hand on Hunter’s shoulder, feeling the softness of his hair brushing over your fingers.

“Thank you,” the words were barely a whisper but he gave you a small smile, just in the corner of his mouth. He turned back towards the door, hauling you roughly behind him as it opened to reveal the rest of the Batch.

“Hunter! Oh…” Omega drew up quickly, bringing Tech, Echo and Wrecker to a halt. Hunter dropped his defensive stance straight away and moved aside.

“Is everything all right?” Tech shoved his goggles up his nose a little harder than necessary as he peered at you both.

“What’s happened?” Echo demanded with a frown.

“It’s fine,” Hunter held his hands out to try and calm the squad before they ran off to find whoever had upset you. “It’s been dealt with.”

“You’ve been crying,” Omega innocently pointed out, her look of concern almost a mirror of Hunter’s.

“I’m fine. Just someone refused to pay…” you told them, wiping at your eyes.

“Are you hurt?” Tech stepped forward and you gave him a shaky smile, appreciating the softened tone when he spoke to you.

“Who was it?” Wrecker snarled from the doorway. “Want us to find ‘em?”

“I really don’t think they will be back.” Turning your attention back to Hunter you saw him favouring his side. “Sit down at least, medics orders.” You went to help him but Echo was already there, taking Hunter’s weight on one side and leading him back to the bays. Omega followed, her deep hazel brown eyes watching her brother closely.

“Did you want me to pinpoint who had registered to the medcentre and trace them that way?” Tech was already tapping on his datapad, probably hunting down whoever it was.

“No, Tech. I can lose the payment for this one.”

“Logically, you can’t afford to lose any payments, not only does it support you, it repays Cid and the small amount of our debt you so selflessly offered to cover.”

“Tech,” Echo scowled slightly and tried to convey a silent message, which was not received.

“I was just stating the truth,” Tech replied.

“Not the best time,” Echo started, pushing you to step between them.

“He’s right though,” you started, holding out a hand to placate Echo before turning to Tech. “Maybe it’s something I can think about tomorrow, hmm?”

“Yes, I suppose that is acceptable,” Tech conceded with a quick nudge of his goggles. Hunter chose that moment to moan, his effort to hide it was caught by you and it hit you that he hadn’t been given his last dose.

“As lovely as it is for you all to visit, Hunter is still under observation and I need to give him some meds.” You winced as Wrecker clapped Hunter on the shoulder, making him gasp in shock from the pain.

“Oops. Did I break more ribs?”

“No. Not quite, Wrecker,” Hunter curled a hand around his side, leaning heavily on his wrist that was perched on his knee.

“See you soon Hunter,” Omega sadly waved as she followed Echo to the door. Wrecker went next and then Tech almost reluctantly followed.

“I need to find my droid,” you huffed. “Go back to bed, Hunter .”

“Yes ma’am!” He called after you.

Beetoo was standing in front of the sterilisation chamber, all her tools were inside but her photoreceptors were off. Tutting softly you wheeled her over to the charging port and pushed her in until it clicked. You were going to have to ask Tech to run a diagnostic, but it explained why she didn’t come to your aid.

You filled the vial and took it straight to the private room, leaning over your patient and giving him the shot in the neck like always. “You’ve definitely improved. I would like to see another scan before you go, just to be sure.”

“I can do that.” He watched you walk to the door where you made sure the sensors were on this time. “Are you sure you’re ok?” For a second you considered spilling everything, how the Rodian had made you feel, how it just brought back all your deepest and darkest—instead you plastered on that well versed smile.

“Yes I’m sure. I’m going to lock up, get some rest,” you ordered with a finger to emphasise your point.

Reaching the front door had your mind reeling. Part of you wondered what the Rodian was going to do with you and part of you really didn’t want to dwell. With shaking hands you locked the door and retreated with hurried footsteps back to your room. Walking backwards you climbed onto your bed, eyes fixed on the closed door as your heart quickened. No no no! Not now! Gathering your legs, you began to rock, squeezing your eyes shut but that just made your feelings worse.

The tightening started in your chest, restricting your breathing enough to make you drag a gasping breath in. Your com sounded and you nearly leapt off the bed in shock. It took a few attempts to grab it but finally you did and answered the call.

“Havoc medic, do you read me?” Tech. Tech went back to the ship and called you as soon as he got there. “I repeat, do you read me?” There was an edge of urgency to his tone and your face scrunched up as you tried not to cry.

“Tech…” the waver in your voice couldn’t be disguised.

“You sound distressed. Do I need to come back? Is Hunter ok?”

“Hunter—Hunter is fine.” You sniffed and rubbed the back of your hand over your cheek.

“But you are not.” It wasn’t a question and he couldn’t see you, but still you nodded dumbly at his words. “What can I do?”

“Just keep talking,” you whispered.

“That I can do. Any particular topic or would you like a briefing of todays events?”

“Today, what happened would be good.”

“Very well. It started in Cid’s parlour of course, she told us she needed something picking up…” closing your eyes you let out a shaky breath. His voice was calming, his descriptions so detailed it allowed you to zone out and detach, to tell your demons to go away and that they wouldn’t get the better of you.

You muffled the sobbing, hoping Tech didn’t notice, if he did he chose to ignore it; continuing on to tell you about the Mantell Mix incident. Eventually you laughed, a hiccuped giggle and he did pause at the sound. Laying down and wrapping yourself in a blanket you stared at the com, wishing you were brave enough to ask him to come back.

“And that is why Cid has a rather sizeable bill for Mantell Mix.”

“Can’t deprive Wrecker and Omega of that,” you said quietly, wiping at your face as you did and sniffing slightly.

“Well, she could. But I don’t think even Cid would want to face those consequences.” There was a silence, but you were used to them with Tech, sometimes he just needed to have a think before saying anything else.

“Thanks for this, Tech. I didn’t expect to hear from you tonight.”

“I felt compelled to make sure you were all right. I deduced you might not be. Turns out, I was correct.”

“I am better now, talking to you.”

“I had hoped it would be sufficient.” There was another pause where you realised you didn’t want to cut the call off just yet. “Was it sufficient?”

“Yes, Tech. It helped more than you know.”

“Good. It is late, you need some rest.” The panic threatened to claw its way free but you managed to keep it at bay.

“Yes, Goodnight Havoc-2.”

“Goodnight Havoc Medic.” The light died before your eyes and you reached for it, curling your fingers round the small device and feeling the edges biting into your skin. It was the closest you could get to Tech right now and you didn’t want to let it go.

The fire was so hot, it seared at your skin when you threw up your hands to try and protect your eyes. Part of the ceiling came loose, dropping to the floor and adding to the burning pile that used to be the Academy library. The wet cloth you’d tied around your face was barely working anymore, the smoke was curling and burning as it entered your lungs making you cough.

You knew there was a door nearby but you were disoriented, trying not to fall into the pit of blind panic as you felt your way along. Your eyes were closing against the thick smoke, your lungs bunching in your chest with every breath and you knew you had to get out.

You didn’t see the arms as they stretched through the haze but you did feel them. Scales that pinched your skin, their sharp edges cutting in to the softness of your lips. Long black claws dug into you, drawing blood and making it ooze slowly from the wounds. You tried to fight but they overpowered you, dragging you deeper into the smog filled place only to burst out of a door and fresh air cascaded over you.

The Trandoshan threw you to the ground where you sputtered and heaved air into your suffering body, lungs squeezing and vibrating as they struggled to cope. The grass was cool on your skin and you fingers curled in the stalks, crushing them in relief that you weren’t in the building anymore.

A flat reptilian foot kicked you over, disturbing your brief moment of sanctuary and drawing you back to your predicament. There was a group of them, long serrated teeth and glowing green and yellow eyes that stared hungrily at you.

“Thisssss her?” You recoiled from them, your eyes fixating on their long tongues as they licked their teeth.

“Yessss.”

“We got what we came for. Move out.” Their pleased guttural cries rang out into the darkness, a hand grabbed your throat and hauled you upright. On instinct you spat in his face, awarding yourself a slap across the face that split your lip and rattled your brain. “Ssssseems she needsssss some manners.” When you regained your vision all you could see was the Academy burning down. The only place you had belonged and stayed in for more than a few rotations. Bodies littered the ground, just humps in the dark but you knew what they were.

You screamed, you couldn’t help it. Sounding like a wounded animal as your brain began to shut down. You tried to stop seeing but it was too much, too overwhelming. You cried until your throat gave up, your tears stopped flowing and you barely had the energy to lift you head.

The Trandoshans let you have your melt down, sniggering and pointing as they dragged you along the ground. Your eyes began to close, the fire touching the stars was the last thing you saw.

Screaming…you could hear screaming. Desperately you tried to get your body to wake up, to move but it felt like you were covered in a sheet of thick durasteel. The noise grew louder, such a noise of pure anguish, you wanted to help them.

“Stitch!!” Was that…? Hunter? “Stitch! Wake up!” Your eyes snapped open and you launched up from the bed covers straight into Hunter’s solid body. He grunted and grit his teeth when you collided with him, your breath ragged as you realised you’d been the one screaming.

You sobbed into his shoulder, your entire body shaking and he gently encircled you with his arms. “You’re safe,” he murmured over and over again, stroking your hair as he soothed you. Quickly you managed to bring yourself back from the brink, refusing to fall into the yawning chasm in your soul.

“You can let go.” Immediately he released you, sliding down the bed so he wasn’t touching you but he wasn’t leaving you either. Your lips quivered, struggling not to draw back with the anguish that stalked you all day, everyday.

You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him, choosing to stare at your hands as they shook in your lap. Get a grip, Needles. Ironic—that Cid’s voice was the one you used to shock yourself back to being…normal.

“I’m sorry,” Hunter murmured. “I couldn’t leave you.”

“No, I imagine I was pretty loud.”

“That’s not…”

“I know,” you reassured him. “I was trying to make a funny.” Glancing up you gave him a trembling smile and he gently shrugged one in return. “How are you feeling?” You forced yourself off the bed, grateful you had fallen asleep in your clothes last night.

“No temperature and the pain is, less.” Cocking an eyebrow you looked back at him.

“Are you just saying that so you can go back to the squad?” He didn’t give you an answer, twisting his mouth and looking to the side as he avoided your accusing glare. “It’s fine. I just need the scan and then you can go, someone should come and get you though. Tech or Echo, hell, even Omega so I can pass your meds on to a sensible person.” Hunter stood up, his presence large behind you but it wasn’t scary. Usually you hated people approaching you from behind but somewhere inside, you knew this man would never lay an unwanted hand on you.

“I’ll contact Echo.” You nodded, hearing him leave your room and only then did your shoulders slump. Face scrunching up as you fought a fresh wave of tears, pushing them away and breathing through the urge until it subsided. You needed to put the mask back on.

“The scans look good, you can go back but,” you locked eyes with Echo who visibly swallowed at the change in your tone. “If I find he’s been lifting things or being a hero, you will all face my medic wrath.” Lifting up a black box you handed it to Echo. “This holds his meds, the vials are all measured out exactly, he needs one in the morning and one in the evening. I will be checking.”

“Tech has already rigged up a reminder system in the ship,” Echo hastily told you. “Don’t worry, Hunter will be on light duties for the foreseeable.”

“I need you back here in a couple of weeks for another scan,” your voice softened as you addressed Hunter.

“Yes ma’am.” You noticed the amusement in his hazel rich eyes, the slight smile and it almost made him look younger in that moment, as though someone finally caring about him had shed years from the lines on his face.

“Go on, get out of here.” You turned your back on them letting Echo help Hunter into his gear.

“She sounds more like Cid everyday,” you heard Echo grumble and smirked to yourself.

Already the bays were full of people, most of them minor ailments that Beetoo could deal with while you updated your notes. You stripped Hunter’s bed, taking peace in doing it yourself rather than waiting for the droid. The rest of the day passed in a blur until, finally you flopped onto your bed and thankfully fell into a dreamless sleep.

[attyrocious]

heyyy I'm new to digital art, would you mind sharing some tips regarding programs and tutorials and etc? also on how to turn a real life piece into a beautiful and clean digital piece... really love your art

oh good luck with your art journey! my experience with digital art is pretty dated (as in a decade + levels dated) and i might be too out of touch to give beginner tips but regardless, allow me to attempt

Programs: it would help to know which hardware you have for digital but ill put down some i have experience in 1. Clip Studio Paint Pro - PC/Android/ipad/everywhere i think? unfortunately they betrayed humankind and its now a subscription everywhere but on PC. i bought a one-time license years years years ago on sale and its probably the best available on my end. I also got it on subscription on android so i can sync works between my PC and tablet. its very flexible in a way that you can draw with it in the most basic way single layer sketches or whatever but they have so many features and keep adding more.

2. procreate - ipad only never been an apple user but my friend is, and he's been a procreate user forever. he recently tried CSP on ipad though and he still claims he likes procreate better for ease of use and compatibility with tablet ergonomics and apple pen

3. medibang paint - pc/android/ipad

free forever. and out of all the free programs i recommended my other digital art newbie friend this is what he liked best.

4. adobe photoshop - dont even look at this the only reason i have one is im leeching off company license. its still unfortunately the industry standard tho but CSP is much cheaper and has the same controls and most of the basic functions 5. Paint Tool SAI - my first art program but i haven't tried it again. honestly still think this has the best brush flexibility and pen pressure control ----- As for tutorials, i find digital art has such a steep and high skill ceiling and its a challenge im still tackling and probably will forever tackle haha. I'm trying to osmosis painting techniques from splash art painters from League of Legends who most of them post complete timelapses (my favorite being Bo Chen) where you can study not just their techniques but like, art directions that make their pieces striking. Anyway, I also promised a friend I would make a simple coloring tutorial so maybe after inktober hustle, I would look for a piece there I'd use for the guide.

---- Traditional to digital is never a satisfactory process to me but if you can, invest on a scanner. I use an epson v39, had it for years.

scanned vs edited. the goal is to at least get the white of the paper as white as possible and the blacks the blackest, without whitewashing/burning the rest of the colors. Level correction function is your best friend here and most art programs have that.

Then i just clean dust and errors and slide the contrasts around until it looks as close to the original piece

If you have a decent phone camera, you can get away just posting instagram aesthetic pics with materials framing it or smth and just edit as usual. natural light tends to be a lot more forgiving than the harsh light of scanners anyway.

Anyway I hope this helps and have fun learning!

[k00299539]

Animation Brief 01 - Week 2 - Parallax Background

Above: Snufkin just chillin

Putting together a full parallaxed background was the biggest individual step in our "World Building" brief, which is why I kept putting it off. I was told by Yvonne that the work had to be produced physically before being digitally composited, for someone who hates painting this was bad news.

I guess like always, the first step was research and gathering reference. I chose Tove Jansson as my artist-to-emulate which proved a bit of a headache in itself. Jansson was prolific and diverse, working with different styles in different mediums regularly in her seven decades long career. A lot of my favourite works of hers are simple black ink on white paper illustrations. But mimicking that style would've gone against the spirit of the project.

I decided to buy a beginners set of gouache paint for a tenner and try to emulate her painted work, the likes of which can be seen on the covers for her children's books. I'd never used gouache before so I don't really know what I was thinking, other than that I knew I was sick of acrylic. Anyway, the first step was a sketch.

Above: Yeah not much going on...

Honestly looking back on this I probably should have spent more time drafting a good composition and actually thinking through the shot I was intending to make. It's not that I didn't give it any thought, just that when you're on a tight schedule and commit to an idea, you're stuck with it. The longer I worked on this project the less I liked it, a bit more foresight at the beginning could've helped prevent that. Ah well.

The composition I went with was a combination of a couple of my landscape sketches. I decided with my "mini-me" limited to being shot from the shoulder up, a horizontal parallax would work best. Basically a simple side-scrolling shot, like holding a camera out a car window. I took the forest backdrop from Cratloe Woods, the classic Irish dry-stone wall from the farm, and I threw in some road signs (and Snufkin) for a bit of fun. The only problem was now I had to paint it...

Above: A real Artíst's palette...

I had no idea how to use gouache. I even used the regular ass paper from my sketchook which was probably a mistake considering the number the water did on it. I started out dampening the paper a bit before going over the major areas with a wash of an approximate colour. You can really tell I worked left to right on the wall because it gets slightly less shitting as your eyes pan across it. The wall was great fun in general, basically just laying down shadows, darkening the crevices and building up the tone. I think I overworked it looking back, although that's true for the painting in general.

Above: Cameos

Don't have much to say about these sketches, I was working fast and trying to have fun with them while keeping in Jansson's style. Also if it's not obvious I take all these photos at night when there's no natural light cause I'm stupid...

Above: Ignore the giant pile of rubbish, I cleaned it up after I promise

At first I really wasn't happy with the treeline in my first painting so I tested out some ideas on another sheet. I liked how it turned out, and I was thinking of incorporating it into the animation, but as the trees are the furthest element in the composition, they will move the least in the parallax shot, making it a bit infeasible. I did reuse the bushes as a foreground element though.

The next step was a tedious one, scan the water-warped paintings on my shitty scanner, disassemble them in Photoshop and stitch the edges as to make them tileable. Honestly I actually enjoy this kind of tedious Photoshop work, I just hated my painting and the shot in general so having to look at them over and over wasn't exactly fun.

Anyway, having made liberal use of the offset filter in Photoshop I had all the layers cut and tileable and ready to import into After Effects. I kind of suck at After Effects so this took longer than it should have. I tried to create the parallax effect in an old school manner by parenting all the layers together and setting a keyframe on their position, and adjusting their start position individually to control the speed at which each layer scrolled. Sounds easy.

I wasn't. Apparently I can't parent properly cause it was anarchy trying to control the speed of the individual layers. Eventually I just watched a Youtube tutorial and used that guy's method, creating a new camera and parenting everything to a null object, then moving the individual layers back in z-space to create the parallax effect as the camera pans.

I'm tired as I write this and I'm unsure how intelligible it is. Here's the horses mouth explaining things if you want to watch for yourselves:

The worst part is after all that it's still just a rough composite. Even beyond the obvious absence of my mini-me, there's a lot of problems in regards to the speed of the individual layers, the foreground elements look more like they're moving on a treadmill than receding in space. A particular cardinal sin I committed was not matching the speed of the grounded elements to the ground on which they're well, grounded.

Anyway I can fix all that later, I'm just sick of looking at it for now.

[gudgurkan]

Hi Oscar! First of all I adore your work, your lines, your style - you've quickly become both my go-to dose of cool armor & fantasy items, as well as an inspiration for improving my art!

This is a bit of a silly question, but if you still draw traditionally (I saw you tagging some posts with #fineliner), how do you get your art to look so clear and clean when you post?

Also, where do you draw your inspiration from when you draw armor? 😊

Hi Muis-daydreams!

Thank you for your message and the very kind words!

Line art

I do a lot of my art traditionally which I then scan at a high resolution (1200 dpi with my CanoScan LiDE 400) and bring in to Clip Studio. In Clip Studio I use the "Binarization" option under "Tonal Correction". A good threshold value and a clean scan will give me a nice layer of line art, though often I need to erase some dots or dirt that came with the paper.

Before I had my scanner I'd photograph my drawings under decent light and use the "Level Correction" option under "Tonal Correction" to flatten any paper to completely white and ink to completely black.

Extra Clip Studio pro tip: Since I work with high res monochrome line art in clip studio I can convert the layer to Monochrome to save a lot of space on my hard drive.

Armor Design

Often I'll either start with a description, such as "Dark knight with spikes" or I'll imagine a scenario, such as "Knight X is walking to Y" and lay down in my sofa thinking about it until I have some kind of vague idea. Then I'll doodle a bunch until I find something or like a shape that could be a cool knight design. Once I have a decent idea I'll look for armor references to make it believable. Both online museums and Pinterest have lots of armor photos which I use to mix and match different parts that I like.

I've found that it's much easier to come up with ideas if I'm not by my phone or computer looking at references, but that references help after I've come up with an idea.

That's how I do it right now! Hope it helps!

[thepavementsings-archive]

Sorry this is insane under the cut. Literally written for an audience of one (me) but i could not stop thinking about it.

i know what you're all thinking. you saw this photo and you also thought: pierresteban m-preg, didnt you? naturally.

Because obviously Pierre and Esteban have been fucking throughout the season. A dry hand job in the sim hallway closet is better than their PR meetings after another double DNF, right?

But then one weekend Pierre is out on lap 2 with an engine failure and Esteban gets a P4 and Pierre, loses it a bit. And Esteban hates losing to Pierre just as much as Pierre hates losing to Esteban, but Pierre is running the engineers down about engine mapping and understeer and... Esteban's slow pitstop costing them a podium? Like it was Pierre's to lose. And look. Esteban can fight his own battles.

So it's a tense walk out of the paddock. Pierre wont even look at Esteban as he shoves his bags into an awaiting car, his coach clearly receiving a getaway text halfway through the meeting. Esteban leaves for the summer break feeling unsteady.

It's halfway through the summer break when Pierre drags Charles to his appointment with him. He's happier today, genuinely laughing at Charles' gossip for the first time since Pierre told him. He's keeping it. The baby. There are a million questions, first of which is: how are you going to tell the team? Which really means, how are you going to tell him?

But Pierre is happier today. He is squirming around when the doctor spreads the gel over his stomach and laughing as he tries to shove the phone out of Charles hands, yelling something about no paparazzi in a doctors office calamar!

Charles thinks he will be glad eventually. To have photos of it all.

Esteban is trying not to stare. He thinks he can't really be blamed for it, what with Pierre practically waddling around with a scanner in hand, picking out seemingly the most expensive version of every bottle, crib and stroller in the store.

It had been hard at first. When Alpine had sat him down to tell him that Jack would be finishing out the season as his teammate. When Pierre had decided for him, for them, that he could do it on his own. Esteban missed the whole second trimester because of it. Fighting him to prove that it could be both of them this time. Needed to be both of them.

So he's not quite used to it yet. But when Pierre holds up two identical looking car seats and looks at Esteban expectantly, smirking when Esteban manages to choose the right one, he thinks he will be one day.

He thinks Pierre must be joking, when he comes into Esteban's bedroom with Amélie in one arm and the travel bag in the other. He's pulling the trophy off of Esteban's mantle before Esteban can even protest though, echoes of trust me! I saw it on instagram, you just have to see the vision! floating behind him from the hallway.

He's not entirely convinced this isn't some sort of child neglect. But he has to admit that she fits perfectly, wrapped up in her blanket inside the trophy. Esteban spent the majority of the car ride to the photographer's studio cleaning the possible remnants of champagne out with baby wipes, just in case. Mine and yours. Pierre has said it so quickly Esteban thought he had misheard him, eyes straight on the road ahead of him.

Pierre had been on the pitwall that day, 8 months pregnant and insistent that his babymoon be trackside. Beside him now, he is fussing with the buttons of his shirt, still stretching slightly around his belly. Esteban takes the hem in his hands, dragging his hands up to meet Pierre's and pushing the button carefully through the hole. Pierre smiled at him, opening his mouth to speak before a babble from across the room draws his attention away.

Ours, Esteban thinks to himself, following him.

[the-black-dragons-den]

seeking advice if you have experience with cannabis cessation, addiction recovery, substance use disorder, and/or mental health issues, specifically depression, anxiety, and/or borderline personality disorder

tldr; I have to quit cannabis and i'm having a hard time because of my mental health symptoms, specifically being irritable as fuck and i need help/advice on how to get a handle on that

even if you don't have any advice for me, please reblog

background info:

so i've been diagnosed with major depressive disorder (highly treatment resistant), generalized anxiety disorder, and borderline personality disorder.

for the past several years, i've been using cannabis quite effectively to combat the various symptoms of my mental health diagnoses. but in my state, you can't get a medical marijuana card for mental health diagnoses.

i'm starting a trade training program soon, and it's free, and part of the requirement is to be drug-free, including cannabis, since it's still federally illegal. it's not like a "fail-once-you're-out" kind of thing (for cannabis), it's that over a series of drug tests, your levels have to start going down, and they want you clean by the 3rd week of the program.

the program starts at the beginning of september. i've had one drug test at orientation that I definitely failed, but i've been reducing my intake dramatically. used to smoke several bowls a day and in the course of a month, i've gotten myself off of flower entirely. i hit a concentrate pen a couple times a day, and i'm weaning myself off of that too.

lucky for me the withdrawal symptoms from cannabis are basically the mental health symptoms i use cannabis to combat

the difficulty:

i've definitely been feeling the effects of lessening my intake. the anxiety hasn't been too much of an issue but the depression is creeping in. however. i have lived in the pit of depression and anxiety for so long that that stuff doesn't even worry me any more. i'll be able to deal with that okay. i've also come too fucking far with my mental health to give up now, depression is a weak bitch and i've grown strong.

what i'm struggling with is a particular symptom of the BPD. overreactive emotions, particularly irritation. i get irritated by. the littlest things.

like if someone's rude to me (or if i perceive it that way). or if someone's going under the speed limit. or when they stock the shelves too full at the store and stuff falls on me while i'm working. or not getting enough sleep. when someone in the apartment parking lot thinks the "no back-in parking" rule doesn't apply to them. the AC being broken in my car, during our fucking 90 degree summer. little stuff.

it sticks into my brain like a metaphorical porcupine spine and it lives there the rest of the day. and by the end of the day i have like 85 porcupine spines in my brain and i'm ready to lose my shit. it feels, in a way, like my brain is on fire - raw and exposed and vulnerable and like the tiniest thing is going to make it melt entirely.

this is going to sound like an overreaction (but hey that's BPD for you) but i feel like the world has been designed to be sandpaper against my brain, and i'm not allowed to show any signs of discomfort. i am doing my best to put into words how fucking uncomfortable it is for me to live like this, and the words do not feel like enough.

being 100% sober from cannabis is actual hell for me, because the cannabis is the only thing i've been able to find that calms that rage, the irritation, the frustration. it lets the porcupine spines slide out. it puts out the flame and puts a balm on the raw, sandpapered embodiment of my resilience.

this morning i had a tough morning. slept terribly, woke up sweaty and cold, had the worst headache of my life last night. the meat we set out (in the fridge) to thaw for the crockpot didn't thaw. went to work exhausted. aforementioned overstocked-things-fall-on-me. scanner shits out 45 minutes into my day. customers asking me for things when i clearly am not an actual store employee. that's like 8 porcupine spines by 9 am. by the time i had my break, i was overwhelmed, totally pissed off, totally irritated, just rage-swirling in my brain. on my break, i took a hearty puff from my concentrate pen. and then. i was fine. for pretty much the rest of the day. like irritations still came up but they didn't stick like they did before, they rolled off much easier. because that's what cannabis does for me.

but i don't get to use cannabis to de-rage anymore. and that's the problem.

the advice/help i need:

suggestions for handling irritation in the moment so it doesn't get to the point of being overwhelming, therapy tricks, etc

suggestions on anything natural i can take or introduce into my diet that will help with the withdrawal

suggestions on how to avoid going back to cannabis (and therefore blowing my chance for this program)

basically any anger management suggestions

i really ought to get back into therapy, but since i'm not working while i'm taking the class, i can't super afford therapy right now

this is a sincere plea. most people think i'm a really nice person and they don't realize that it's because i'm on at least a little bit of cannabis almost all the time. without it, i'm such a bitch, and not because i want to be a bitch but because i feel like my brain is getting clawed to pieces and i just react, because, BPD.

anything you've got. help. please.

[calciumwitch-calcisoya]

Hello, Project Moonblr, I have some info about WCorp, that some of you may not know. This info is the result of me dumpster diving through the rich person’s house that is Library of Ruina’s Key Page stories. Have fun!

And to those that don’t want to know about WCorp, due to any reasons, waiting for the limbus chapter (if there is one), not being interested etc, I’ll put the info down below. :)

Where do I start? Easy, why not start with what is easily their most famous shared invention: WARP Trains!

I say shared invention because their singularity isn’t opening up rifts in dimensions, or instant teleportation, the former is merely the tech of a not very well known fallen wing, that that wing couldn’t bring to proper use, and the latter isn’t possible to my knowledge. This tech was then purchased by WCorp, which pondered what to do with it, found a way to safely exit and enter portals after a bit.

Then, they partnered with TCorp, who make devices related to time. So now, inside every WARP Train, there is a device that “collects each and every second that passes on the train”, so even if not a single second passes in the City, all the time gotten from the thousands of years spent on the train is collected and used in TCorps singularity.

Here I simply must go off topic for one sec, I think (I don’t remember the exact wording but I’m pretty sure that this was the case) I read in LoR, that TCorp uses that collected time for different things, the example that I know of is pots that can stew any food for thousands of years, so foods that need to age a lot, can be done within seconds. Yum!

So, now you must be wondering, what is WCorps Singularity? I like to think that the W in WCorp stand for Winding, as in Rewinding, or as the term in game is used, their Singularity is Restoration. They restore the WARP Trains passengers to a previous point in time, after they arrive at their location. But how does this work, I would ask myself…

Well here’s the answer! All seats have scanners in them, which is why all WARP Trains have seatbelts for a ten second ride! They are supposed to keep you still and in place to scan you properly. (They scan genomic data, molecular structure and a bunch of other info.)

This data is then sent to that specific train's transmission device, which is in turn further sent to the restoration machine, which, after all the passenger’s pieces have been found and brought to their seats by clean-up agents, restores the passengers to that snapshot in time before the train departed. Thousands of years of suffering, gone from their memories too. Wowie! This isn’t because of amnestics either, these memories simply didn't exist at that point, and as such, they’re gone.

But like all singularities there are side effects, especially if you move too much in your seats during the scan, scanners don't like that. For example! When you leave a WARP Train, you could be a bit taller or shorter, not enough to not be shrugged off, or noticed tho. Still, there is a difference. Happens in the restoration process.

Besides, if any pieces are missing at restoration time, there is going to be a lotta trouble, since all the pieces are important, and if any are missing… yea, not everything’s gonna be restored.

Fun fact! WCorps weaponry, which is mostly all about cutting and tearing, also uses the dimension opening tech used in WARP Trains, which is why they need charge to work properly and effectively.

Fun Stories to cap off the post:

One is about a team captain and their subordinate talking about ticket prices, and the other is about a Color Fixer sneaking into an economy class seat on a WARP Train.

Fun Fact! Color fixers, or key association members, or anyone who is known to be very powerful, are not allowed in economy class seats, at all. The second story will show why they’re only allowed in First Class seats.

Tickets:

A captain asks himself if the higher ups are going to raise the ticket prices, or reduce train traffic, because LCorp went poof. The subordinate asks if this has happened before.

The higher up responds that it has, when the LCorp before Lobotomy Corp was in place, they were awfully stingy with their energy, and had many restrictions in place.

This made it unpopular in partner companies. They ponder about this and then go back to work.

Color:

One time a color fixer hid their identity and rode the WARP Train in economy class seats, then, once it had departed, he took up a leading role in that train ride, people started training under them, reason for that training being stated to be some sort of enlightenment.

The cleanup crew sent to take care of the passengers once the train arrived found themselves in a dangerous spot, and most of them died, before even seeing the color.

It was a total mess, and RCorp had to be called (WCorp also has a contract with RCorp, similar how Lobotomy Corp had). This is why powerful people are NEVER to ride in economy seats, only first class, so that they sleep through the ride.

Fun Fact!

Economy class tickets are more affordable, however you have to expect to lose your mind, get dismembered and feel pain and agony no one should ever feel.

While First Class tickets put you into, i think it was a sleep or stasis pod, to slumber through the entire trip, and avoid all the years spent in there, even if they cost a fortune.

[iraprince]

hi ira! im p sure i remember u regulary scan ur traditional stuff n also times where u said u didnt do it for a while or smthg. do u have any tip on where tf to start w a big backlog...i didnt have acess to a good scanner or camera for a long time and now i do but i have so much shit i wanna scan in (both sketchbooks n loose papers) i have no idea where and how to start :')

[wheezing softly] yeah "regularly" is the goal, but hitting big backlogs every few weeks is more accurate to reality lmfao. but that means i have a lot of little things i've folded into my workflow to make it more doable!

that being said, i'm sure what works best will vary person to person, but the core rule that works best for me is: scan the backlog in batches, but digitally clean/edit/organize each batch in one sitting. picking up in the middle of where you left off in a physical stack is easy; picking up where you left off in a bunch of nebulous digital files is a fucking nightmare.

what i mean by that is, like, let's say i have a stack of 60 sheets of paper to scan in. maybe i don't have the time/energy/attention span to scan all 60; i start running out of steam at page 20 or something. in that case, that's fine, set the rest of the pages aside; but if i sit down to start cleaning/editing that folder of 20 scans, i should do them ALL NOW. if i don't think i can clean them all tonight, i'm going to wait and start tomorrow.

the reason i'm adamant about that is like, say i get through cleaning scans 1-6 out of 20, then i want to pick them up tomorrow.... frankly unless i remember to write myself a note (and i probably won't) i'm going to forget which one i was on. it's a pain to open a bunch of the scans trying to remember which one i did, i lose the "flow" that you can kind of get into when doing tedious stuff like this, etc... these are all tiny problems that i know ppl can come up w a million simple solutions for but the fact of the matter is for a task that is already kind of overwhelming + tedious that i'm already dreading, ANY AND ALL sources of friction are going to make it more likely that i'm just going to keep putting it off, and then it just Won't Get Done.

basically, discover anything that potentially throws you off or makes you lose your spot or just makes the whole thing more of a pain in the ass (i can't remember where i saved everything, the papers are disorganized and i can't remember what i've already scanned, etc) and ELIMINATE IT (throw everything into sub-folders of one big folder called "SCANS" even if it's ugly, gather ALL the stuff u need to scan into big piles in one place even if it's ugly and then move them elsewhere when scanned, etc). it's tempting to want to be like "i will get all my shit perfectly color-coded studyblr organized first and THEN i'll do my scans" but realistically that just means you're never ever going to do it. shit does not need to be organized. shit needs to be EASY!!!!!!

now some technical stuff, which is again super personalized to what works for me but maybe it'll give ideas!

i use a free scanning software called NAPS2 and it's a godsend. there's a batch scan setting where u can tell it how many pages u have to scan, then set how many seconds it waits between each scan (i.e. 10 seconds, just enough to take each finished page off and swap in the next one/flip to the next page of ur sketchbook) and then it'll just automatically keep scanning/waiting 10 secs for the next one/scanning until the stack is done, WITHOUT having to click "scan" every time. ymmv but for me this is really nice bc my scanner is on the opposite side of the room from my computer lmao (walking back and forth to hit "scan" every time is a friction point. ELIMINATE.)

NAPS2 also makes batch-saving things really easy with placeholders! for example, let's say i have 120 pages to scan and i want to save them to a folder. instead of having to save and name each one individually as i go (friction point. ELIMINATE.), when i'm done scanning i can batch save and name them "april 7 scan $(nnn)" and the program will automatically name each one "april 7 scan 001.png," "april 7 scan 002.png," etc etc all the way up to "april 7 scan 120.png." it saves me an incredible amount of time. (you can also do placeholders for current date/year/etc if that's useful to you, but i already tend to manually sort my files into monthly folders so the placeholder numbering is the only thing i've used personally.)

if you have one of those "all-in-one" home office printers that has a top-loading feeder you can use for stacks of loose pages instead of putting them directly on the scanner glass, that can also be a good way to get a high volume done without having to open and close the scanner/place each individual page on the glass/hit scan every time etc; but i would only advise that for casual scans where the quality/alignment doesn't matter much, bc there's a higher risk of jamming/wrinkling and sometimes a lot of the scans come out a bit crooked that way.

when you're digitally cleaning (this is clip studio specific but i'm assuming a lot of software operates similarly): once i've done whatever correction/adjustment layers i need to crisp up my scans, usually a tone curve + saturation adjustment in my case, i hold off on merging the adjustments down right away!!! you can copy those adjustment layers and then paste them on top of all the other scans you have to edit. i.e. copy the tone curve layer from scan 1.png, switch tabs into scan 2.png, ctrl+v. scan 3, ctrl+v. scan 4, ctrl+v. rinse and repeat and now look, you basically only had to do the tone curve once and then you can get the rest of the batch 90% done with one keyboard shortcut each. depending on each image you'll probably have to tweak them for them to look their best, but it's still way faster than navigating the menus and redoing your tone curve/level adjustments/etc from scratch every time (friction point. ELIMINATE.), especially if you're trying to fight your way through dozens of files.

uhhhh what else. well here's just a quick flowchart of my scan process in case it helps visualize! my philosophy is for everything to be in service of the end goal (get scans organized into patreon sketchbook compilations/set aside for later refinement/ready to upload, then i'm probably never going to look at them much again); i organize just enough to make that EASY, but i don't bother with any form of organization that i won't need to reference later. again, more steps just = more reasons the shit is not going to get done. ELIMINATE. STREAMLINE. WIN

(there's also a folder by year but i forgot to stick that in and also who cares. i hope this makes, like, any sense at all)

[pinktwingirl]

Hi. I'm not sure if you are familiar with testimonies on the Israeli side about the massacre on 7.10, but I'd like to share some with you:

There was a woman who went missing, her family did not know what had happened to her until the found a video of her being gang raped by 5-6 men while she begged them to stop. They parroted and mimicked her pleas while raping here, then shot her in the head 15 times and urinated on her body.

There were bodies of little girls found with their pelvises crushed.

There was an 8 year old girl found still alive with her arm being chopped off from the elbow. She did not survive.

someone who managed to hide reported they saw a woman being bent down while bleeding. The terrorist who raped her pulled her hair and then proceeded to shoot her in the head while still raping her. Him and other people then just disfigured her body horribly. Cutting off her breasts and playing with them

There were dead women found naked and tied, or naked and burnet, or even naked from the waist down, with signs of forced entry.

There were bodies burnet to a crisp, with forensic evidence proving they were burnt alive. There was one mass that was so mangled doctors could not identify it. After putting it into a ct scanner they realized it was a mother holding her child to her chest

There were bodies found with parts chopped off. In one especially gruesome scene, volunteers found a family dead and tied in their home, kids in one side and parents on the other. They were facing each other. Both had missing fingers and one had an eye gouged out. Now we don’t know for sure if they removed limbs before or after they died (imagine the situation) but them facing one another in such a matter might indicate they were tortured alive before being murdered.

The saddest part is that is not all and I can go on and on.

Some people in the west say it's propaganda, I find that infuriating. There are video evidence for some of it, and forensic evidence as well. I especially find it horrific that some people who say to believe the victim all of the sudden discredit any testimony of rape when it's an Israeli woman or girl. I am Israeli, and unfortunately I know some of these stories personally.

I wanted to share my thoughts with you. Thank you for reading and I hope you have a peaceful day 🙏🏻

So I want to make something very clear: I do not and have never condoned the killing and assault of civilians. Some people seem to have this idea that every Israeli citizen is a violent settler committing colonial terrorism like in the videos that they've seen from the West Bank, and that's not true. The people who were killed on October 7th were not settlers; they were normal civilians. One of the hostages that was released was an Israeli peace activist who took people in Gaza to hospitals to get medical care they needed. There are good people in Israel just as much as there are good people in Gaza. And while it is true that the IDF has made false claims about what Hamas has done, I also don't think it's fair to accuse every Israeli of lying about their crimes either. Even though I will always maintain that the Israeli government has committed infinitely more atrocities than Hamas, war crimes are still war crimes and people who commit them should be tried and condemned for them regardless of which side they are on. The message that I am trying to get across to Israeli citizens (and to their credit, the majority of them already seem to recognize this) is that your government is not interested in protecting you, and the violence is not going to be solved by bombing Gaza into oblivion. Apartheid states are not, and never have been a sustainable system. Violence is inherently necessary to maintain them, and that violence is only going to beget more violence. I don't want more people to be killed. I want people with empathy to be given the ability to make things right instead of keeping violent right-wing politicians who only want genocide and ethnic cleansing in power.

I find it extremely frustrating that so many people are viewing this issue through a simple "us vs. them" lens and assuming that anyone who criticizes Israel must be a Hamas supporter who wants all Israelis to die. Analyzing where violence comes from is not the same thing as justifying it, and if people can't look at this situation with any kind of nuance, then none of this is ever going to get better.

I'm so sorry that people you know have been hurt or killed. That is not what I want and I don't want people to think that's what I'm advocating for. Hope you're doing ok and staying safe.

[procrastinatorproject]

Bed Rest (Seven) for the WIP ask game, please. Also, if you want to talk about the other Bed Rest fics, too.

Seven's installment literally consist of only this handful of sentences so far:

“I understand that your xB physiology renders you much more resilient than humans, and I’m willing to give you a lot of leeway, but I draw the line at exposure to hard vacuum. You’re coming to sickbay with me right now.” Seven arched her eyebrow and drew a rasping breath. “Deactivate —” “No,” Emil said calmly. “You’re on medical lockout from all computer systems and will remain so until I give you a clean bill of health. Now, will you come downstairs voluntarily? Or will I have to ask Ms Musiker to drag you?”

I do like it quite a bit :D But haven't managed to do all the writing that needs to go around it yet.

As for the other Bed Rest fics... When I started writing them, it was just Soji, then I had an idea for Raffi, then Ian, Rios... and eventually, it settled in my brain as "one day, this series will have a story of Emil telling people to lie the fuck down already for every major and a whole lot of minor characters from Star Trek: La Sirena" 😅

We'll see how far I get. The one I wrote for Picard doesn't actually fit the description as well as I'd like it to, and I should probably just post it as a short slice of life standalone (it's basically done and I find it pretty funny, if I say so myself).

And the Agnes WIP that is still technically labelled "bed rest" also veered into a different direction (much more emotional angst and post-Borg-trauma, less the sickfic vibe I'm going for with the rest of the series). So I might turn that into a standalone at some point, though it would involve having to acknowledge season 2 happenings, even in a strongly altered form...

BUT! A while ago, @regionalpancake pointed out that probably a bunch of OC stories in my "never to be pulished" folder would only need very minor rewrites to work for Agnes (and for readers who haven't spent the last four years in my brain and thus don't know the reams and reams of intricate worldbuilding that underly the Private Stories). And I think that assessment is very accurate for the fic currently titled "Check up", which also has some holo bits in it that I just... adore so much! And want to share with the world! Like...

Emil nodded. “Your fever has gone up in the last few hours.” Her eyes went wide. “I thought the meds would help with that?” The EMH tilted his head and his expression turned slightly admonishing. “They are helping. They’re supporting your body’s immune system in fighting off the virus. Which inevitably involves a certain level of fever.” He lowered his scanner and frowned. “Honestly, you’re nearly as bad as the captain with his impatience. Healing takes time. The human body isn’t a machine where you can replace a broken part and everything just runs smoothly again straight away.” “Well now.” Over at the table, Ian leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands under his arms. “A repair is rarely done with a simple replacement. There’s always adjustments that need to happen afterwards and usually a lot of recalibration to —” “Yes, thank you Ian,” Emil said curtly without turning around, “I was speaking metaphorically.” “I’m just saying that if you want the repair done properly, you can’t just shove a new part in place and call it a day. There are a lot of protocols and follow-ups that need to happen.” “Actually, that makes the metaphor better, don’t you think?” Enoch mused. “Even with a machine, repairs take time and don’t lead to instantaneous improvement.” Ian leaned towards the ENH. “Yes, but he said the human body wasn’t like a machine, so he got the metaphor exactly backwards.” Emil rolled his eyes as the two holograms at the table started to argue over whether an accidentally good metaphor was still good if it was deployed incorrectly. Behind them, Emmet was leisurely swapping cards from his hand for better ones from the discard pile.

So that one is probably gonna be Agnes's installment (eventually).

Beyond that, who knows? There are still a few crew members (organic, cybernetic, and holographic) that need to have a moment with their snarky ship's physician! And one of these days, I will finally get over myself and edit the two paragraphs that have thus far kept me from posting Rios's part of the series 😅

I really enjoy the bed rest stories, though. I will never get enough of Emil being an exasperated, snarky, but ultimately really kind and competent doctor! And since there aren't as many stories of that out there in the wild as I'd like, I guess I'll just have to keep writing them myself XD

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(I'm still very happy to answer questions or post snippets of the many things in my WIP folder :D Here's the original list of titles if you want to see what's available!