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hezurkubo · 3 years

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When D’jinn meets Gene or “Dramatic Pot Twist!”

Hey there! Just wanted to start off by saying that in order to give this story the desired outcome I was looking for I added in some extra events that I thought could have canonically taken place during certain key moments in “The Last Adventure!” While we as the audience don’t know what happened to everyone else while the main characters were off driving the main plot along I still tried to come up with a side story that seemed plausible at least in terms of timing.

If I overlooked anything and it comes off as complete nonsense that throws off the original plot than please consider this an AU where the side characters play a more proactive role in kicking the butts of F.O.W.L.’s lackeys while our main cast took care of Bradford. This is mostly to satisfy my craving for a meeting that never happened in canon and I still hope that whoever decides to read enjoys this dumb story of mine. With that said.........

“SHABOOEY!”

That was all Gene managed to exclaim before he felt himself vanish in a dramatic flash. He found himself being dragged through the pocket void between realities, a place he’d frequented many times since his existence had been tied to the trinket he’d been forced to call home. While he had yet to feel the familiar power of the ‘Seal of Solion’ connecting him to his lamp, he knew it was only a matter of time.

“Huh, wish I coulda at least thanked her for saving me. Guess now it’s back to the good ol...”

His thoughts were interrupted by a rather abrupt tug to the side through a sudden blinding light, giving Gene just enough time to let out a yelp before tumbling beak first onto a cold hard surface. Groaning as he got to his feet, the duck had to double-take as he got a first look at his surroundings.

And it was, unfortunately, a very familiar site.

He’d become well acquainted with the row upon row of containment units in which the people F.O.W.L. saw as threats to their ‘final goal’ were imprisoned.

“Oh-keeeeey, so.... another dramatic plot twist, shoulda expected that in a ninety minute finale, though not so much for a short cameo appearance.”

Although he was pretty sure what would happen, and despite knowing the repercussions, Gene focused his power and winced in painful anticipation as he tried to will himself out of the current space he occupied.

“Okey three, two, one...SHABOOEY!”

He felt a small spark of magic begin to bubble up within him, allowing him to hope that maybe he could....

ZAP!

The genie doubled over as a short but powerful electric shock coursed through his body. He had been unfortunate enough to witness others struggle for freedom and receive the same treatment, and while he doubted it’d be different for him he felt that he at least had to try. After all, he was magic and it couldn’t possibly hurt that bad....right?

He had been partially correct, but it was still VERY unpleasant.

Thankfully the shock wore off quickly, but rather than test his chances again he moved to the center of the cubicle and sat in the dark, drawing his legs into himself as he rested his arms atop of them and let out a sigh.

“Guess old Blotty really made sure I couldn’t get out of dodge.”

“Not like I’d have a choice anyway...” Gene couldn’t help but think bitterly while resting the the bottom of his beak on his arm. He’d already exchanged one prison for another, so what difference did it make?

Gene let the moments tick on by as he attempted to drown out everything else, which had so far been surprisingly easy despite being surrounded by people....

...And then, despite his best efforts, a familiar thought reared it’s ugly head.

Many of these people were trapped here because of him.

Because the Blot had used his power.

Because he had given him the information needed to capture them.

And he had watched helplessly, his screams for them to run drowned out by their own as they were zapped of their magic, easy for the Eggheads to swoop them up and bring them to this hopeless place while they waited to be done away with for good.

And now Gene was here. He supposed it was fitting, as unwilling as an accomplice he had been in all of this, he still felt deep despair for having been used as a tool for the inevitable destruction of so many innocent lives.

And he would join them. Gene buried his head further into his lap, holding back sniffles as he felt his eyes stinging.

“...At least it’s roomier in here...”

“KA-BOOM!”

“Gyaaa!!! Bees!!! AAAHHH!”

The genie’s head quickly shot up, eyes widening as he took in the commotion echoing off the library’s lofty walls. Scrambling to his feet, he dashed to the front of his cell, pressing his ear against the glass.

Someone was fighting out there, and from the sounds of it they were facing off against Steelbeak.

The kid that had freed him, her friends were still fighting F.O.W.L.

Gene couldn’t fight the small smile that began to spread across his beak despite his teary eyes.

He would never be free, not even if he got out of here. But everyone else still had a chance. There was still hope that this could be made right.

“And the plot thickens!”

__________

Faris Djinn watched helplessly from his prison as Scrooge’s allies valiantly fought against the rooster F.O.W.L. Agent. Clenching his fists to his sides, the desire to unsheathe his sword and join them against these honorless enemies boiled within him, but he knew it was of no use so long as he was trapped like this. Still, that gave him all the more reason to wish to help the group of birds somehow. This was finally everyone’s chance to escape!

The canine warrior had been brought to this strange place after being ambushed and knocked unconscious by his cowardly foe, whom he had barely caught a glimpse of. When he woke up, he was surrounded by blocks of blacked out cubes in what looked like a giant storage facility. After about a day or two, he learned that his first assumptions had been somewhat true.

From what he’d gathered through listening to hushed conversations exchanged while the security guards were busy, and from a few familiar faces detained with him, including his good friend Amunet, he came to realize they had been brought there because they had been labeled as dangerous by simply knowing or associating with Scrooge McDuck and his family.

From close family members and friends to bitter enemies, or from good and bad to neutral, nobody seemed to be spared. It made D’jinn seethe at the injustice of it all, while villains such as the Beagle Boys and the infamous Magica de Spell may have deserved such treatment, this F.O.W.L. organization was indiscriminately locking away so many innocent people. He had even seen them lock up a couple of elderly ducks that could have easily passed as Scrooge’s own parents

(Impossible, he thought, for a man of McDuck’s age)

but not before the old woman had let loose a string of unintelligible words that D’jinn was pretty sure were some colorful expletives.

It appeared that the enemy had overlooked nothing, and any means of escape had been locked away along with them. The canine began to lose track of time as freedom seemed more and more impossible.

But D’jinn remained resolute that if anyone could pull off the impossible, it’d be Scrooge McDuck.

Then, a strangely dressed duck decked in a dark flowing cape and hat swooped in, followed by his heavily armored companion, and while they were acting antagonistic towards each other the dog had a feeling they had come to help. His hopes soared even higher when Scrooge’s pilot crashed in after them. At last help had come.

Then that nefarious Steelbeak had chosen to fight underhandedly, controlling the Beagle Boys and the dread sorceress herself as the heroes fought valiantly back before being imprisoned as well, and any hope of freedom appeared to rest on the shoulders of Launchpad McQuack, Scrooge’s pilot.

D’jinn winced as the poor duck was thrown about and beaten to the ground, unfairly outmatched in strength and numbers.

“Get back up!”

“You got this!”

As big and strong as he seemed in appearance, the warrior canine doubted the pilot could last at this rate, watching from the dark with urgency as he struggled to lift his head.

“Ugh... I’m sorry, I’m no hero...”

D’jinn shook with righteous indignation.

‘No! You cannot give up...!’

He couldn’t just stand by, there had to be something he could do to help, anything....

“That’s ridiculous! You helped inspire me to be a hero!”

He watched in anticipation as Launchpad gathered enough strength to look their way, unsure gaze focused on his friends as they encouraged him to keep fighting.

“And me pal.”

A new source of light brought their attention to the square that held the young red headed duck and the strangely proportioned robot child, both looking back at Launchpad with hope and confidence.

“Same here.”

The prison above them lit up, revealing a familiar Moonlander.

“I as well, Earth Launchpad.”

The room quickly grew brighter as, one after another, everyone stepped forward to show the duck that they believed in him.

And so did D’jinn.

His cubicle lit up as his hope returned.

“Blabbidy-Baloonersize!”

....Later....

Gene watched elated as scores of people poured out from their now-opened confines and began to wreak havoc on anyone unlucky enough to be a F.O.W.L. lackey. It was an unspoken call to arms, inspired by Scrooge’s pilot and, while the genie hadn’t seen what had actually happened, Steelbeak running away while screaming in terror was a pretty clear indication that the good guys were gaining the upper hand.

Gene was so relieved that everyone had been freed, he almost missed Launchpad and company dashing towards the main entrance before slipping out of sight.

He took another look around him, and couldn’t help but quirk the edges of his beak up in a mischievous grin.

“Well.... dunno how long I’ll be sticking around for, might as well be part of the fun...”

“SHABOOEY!!!”

_______

There was low buzz followed by a click, and suddenly the front of his enclosure swung open. Eyes narrowing in careful focus, D’jinn stepped out from his prison and into what was quickly becoming a losing battle for F.O.W.L.’s remaining underlings.

Scrooge’s family had been triumphant, and he was now free to assist in thwarting what remained of their foes once and for all. The canine reached for his hip, unsheathing his sword and slicing it through the air before resting it with his arm against his side. The McDucks may be fighting greater forces, but that didn’t mean there weren’t loose ends to tie up.

“SHABOOEY!”

Ears perking under his keffiyeh, D’jinn turned to the side and lifted his head just in time to see something rather peculiar rounding the corner. It appeared to be a small duck, but he was gliding through the air as if there was nothing to it, a trail of smoke billowing from his lower body.

For a single moment, D’jinn lost his carefully guarded composure as his eyes widened in shock and his jaw dropped.

It was as if all those fantastic stories he’d heard growing up had come to life in front of him.

He recalled the hushed conversations among a few of his fellow prisoners, all regarding the terrifying power the Phantom Blot wielded when he came after them.

However, what now came to the forefront of D’jinn’s mind were their descriptions of the strange and obviously magical little guy smooshed to an impossible degree within the Blot’s gauntlet. He didn’t quite understand what they could be referring to, but now, despite his usually serious demeanor, D’jinn couldn’t stop the small bit of wonderment from rising up in him, momentarily forgetting where he was.

“Could it really be...?”

A loud crash from above followed by a chorus of screaming Eggheads brought him back to reality. The warrior shook his head, scowling to himself for losing focus.

“No, I must not waver! The task at hand requires a warrior’s spirit!”

Sword at the ready, D’jinn quickly made his way towards the sounds of fighting, the lingering thoughts of his ancestors replaced with the challenge to come. He still chanced to glance back one more time at the spot he had last seen that duck, hoping that he’d be able to see him again once all of this was over.

....Later....

With F.O.W.L. defeated and it’s remaining agents scattered, everyone wasted no time in congratulating the heroes of the hour, rushing at McDuck and family as they made their way down the library tower. It was a whirlwind of joyful cries and relieved sighs as the exhausted but happy family meandered amongst the crowd, breaking up into teams to prepare for their departure.

With everything finally settling down, Gene casually sat in midair as everyone else began to disperse and make preparations of their own, all the while chatting amongst each other. He figured it must have been a sense of camaraderie that came with surviving such an ordeal, and while he wished he could fully indulge in the same feelings of comfort, he couldn’t help but feel on edge.

The powers that bound him to the lamp hadn’t reclaimed him yet.

He knew that couldn’t last much longer, whatever forces the Phantom Blot had used to disrupt the seal’s power and separate him from his prison

....no, home....

wouldn’t be able to hold on their own, now that the Blot was gone and Gene was free from any magic-proof confinement.

Earlier, before the extra trepidation had sunk in, he did try to enjoy his temporary freedom for as long as it lasted.

And oh, how he wished it lasted.

The genie chatted briefly with the young sorceress that had freed him, but not until after she and a younger hummingbird finally stopped hugging the pink clad girl, who he recognized as the little spitfire who tied him up and interrogated him during the entertaining fiasco that was Donald’s wish for a ‘perfect family’.

Despite the now growing feeling that this would all end soon, Gene had enjoyed himself. It was nice to just interact with others again and not be at someone’s beck and call. While he did like using his powers to have fun with mortals, there were more than enough terrible things he’d been forced to do, and the ability to simply be among people he knew couldn’t demand something of him was a rare reprieve. One he probably wouldn’t be getting again.

Now, with the excitement beginning to wind down, Gene decided to take in the busy atmosphere, not expecting anyone to notice him up there with how preoccupied they all were.

“Pardon me...”

The duck quickly spun around in midair, looking down and catching the sharp gaze of a rather serious looking canine all dressed in dark, save for a few splashes of red. He was staring up at him so intensely that Gene jokingly thought if he looked at him any harder lasers would shoot from his eyes.

“Hmmm... an interesting side character, guess a little more mingling wouldn’t hurt.”

Without missing a beat, Gene floated down from his place above the crowd to hover at eye level with the stranger.

“Well He-llo there! Always nice to meet a new face!” he said eagerly, flashing a grin that he hoped came off as charismatic and giving a wink.

The dog’s eyes widened for a few seconds before returning to his serious expression. Trying to act nonplussed by the lack of enthusiasm, the duck waved his arm to conjure a neon sign above him, his name spelled in blinking lights. Smile unwavering, he held out his hand.

“Name’s Gene! Nice to meet ya!”

The dog stared at the outstretched appendage, his hesitance causing Gene’s excitement to falter. Luckily, it wasn’t long before he was reaching out and gripping his hand in a firm but friendly shake.

“Faris D’jinn. It is an honor.” He said, head bowing slightly.

“Woah, an honor? Kinda formal, but I think I like it.”

Gene suddenly perked in realization. ‘Faris’, if he recalled, meant knight or horseman, and he couldn’t help but think how it suited the noble looking gentleman in front of him. And with a surname like ‘D’jinn’, well, why would the genie not find that interesting? He became so uncharacteristically lost in these thoughts that he almost failed to realize that his companion was staring at him a bit oddly, and he was suddenly aware that he was still holding his hand.

Awkwardly clearing his throat, Gene hovered back slightly while relinquishing his grip, trying to hide how awkward he felt by widening his smile.

He was sure he looked half crazy.

“Well Mr. D’jinn, I must say it’s a pleasure to meet such polite and proper ol’ gent and- Ooooh!”

Gene was at his side so fast that the warrior nearly jumped away in surprise as the genie’s eyes sparkled with curiosity at the sight of his sword’s hilt peeking from his robes.

“Oh-hoho, that’s quite a blade you got there. It almost looks like... I wanna say late Mamluk dynasty, Burji maybe...? But that can’t be right, unless it’s a really good replica.”

If D’jinn was shocked by his educated guess he hid it well, although Gene did notice the dog’s brow raise slightly from were it was hidden under the hem of his headdress.

“You are quite wise, although I would not expect anything less from a great and mystical genie.”

Gene’s eyes shot up from the finely crafted blade to the canine’s face. The gaze that met him was serious but not in a way that came off as cruel or accusatory. Still, that look, accompanied by such a bold statement, made the duck want to buckle his knees and shrink into himself.

Just who was this guy?

“Are you not a genie?”

The duck suppressed the urge to gulp at the quiet forcefulness behind the simple inquiry. It was after all a sensible question, he did more or less fit the description of his kind, though he liked to think he set himself apart with his showman’s flare because, servant or not, he still liked seeing others smile.

Now, his inner showman was currently at a loss for words, opting for wanting to hide his face in his turban.

“Get it together Genester! You heard him, how ‘great and mystical’ do you think you look right now?”

Trying to shake of the awkwardness, he disappeared from D’jinns side to reappear in front of him in a puff of smoke.

“Yessir! One-hundred percent bonafide and certified wish-granting genie, that’s me!” Gene exclaimed, conjuring up a laminated license that read ‘Certified Genie: Gene C. Baba’ complete with a photo of himself smiling awkwardly while donning a thick pair eyeglasses and suspenders.

D’jinn stayed unwaveringly quiet as the duck nearly shoved the card to his face.

“He he... yeah, funny thing though, the whole ‘wish-granting’ part of my deal is a bit... compromised at the moment. Y’see, only the holder of a genie’s lamp can control said genie, i.e., me” Gene pulled an arrow out of thin air and pointed towards himself “and big bad and Blotty left my lamp behind along with the rest of the lost treasure of Collie Baba when he sucked me into that fancy oven-mitt of his, you’d think with all his magical know-how he wouldn’t forget that important tidbit, right?”

Why did he sound so nervous?

“And I tell you what, I’m glad I’m not strapped to that thing anymore...!”

D’jinns eyes widened as a grim realization dawned on him.

“So, it is true. The device the Phantom Blot carried with him, the one he used to steal the magic from those he hunted...”

“I swear it was totally against my will!”

The canine shook his head. “No, I heard of its use from other captives, some who were brought here months before F.O.W.L. found me. Gene, how long have they kept you prisoner?”

The genie awkwardly rubbed one of his arms, looking away from D’jinn as the mood shifted drastically. While he may had been a little uncomfortable before, now he wanted to focus on anything but the dog in front of him. He might end up saying something that would break his facade, and he couldn’t....

“Technically, was already a prisoner. Y’know, the whole ‘genie in the lamp’ deal.”

“What are you doing?! Stop talking before...!”

“It’s like, I dunno... I’m almost glad this happened...”

“Idiot...”

“I mean not that I helped capture all those people or anything, because I still feel real bad about all that! It’s just that, whatever he did, even after I escaped, I’m still here. This right now is the closest I’ve ever felt to being...”

A sudden feeling of a hand gently enveloping his own prevented him from saying anything else. Momentarily shocked out of his train of thought, Gene dared to look back at the stranger he had begun to admit his sadness to.

He expected to see pity, but the eyes that looked back at him held something different. They were narrowed and serious, but not like before. There was fire in that glance, and as D’jinn’s grip on his hand tightened it only seemed to burn brighter.

“You shall be free, that I promise you.”

If Gene’s eyes got any wider he thought they’d escape out of his head. Heck, there was a better chance of that happening than what the man in front of him had just said.

“Heh, Being trapped in that pickle jar must’ve done a number on my ears. Y’know everything’s muffled in there, might not have heard ya right....”

He tried to laugh, to call the his bluff.

The dog said nothing, nor did he change his determined expression. He simply gave Gene’s hand a quick but firm squeeze, as if to reaffirm what he said.

“But why....”

Just then, he felt it.

It wasn’t how he expected it to happen, but he knew.

A panicked glance down confirmed his suspicions as he saw a bright light spread from the tip of his shoes, gradually making its way up his body, a familiar emptiness growing with it.

His time was up.

“No, please, it can’t be over yet...”

He felt D’jinn grab his other hand.

Even as he felt himself fading away, as he began to feel despair weigh him down further and any lingering hope drained from him, Gene again dared to look up at his companion.

He was greeted by the kindest smile he had ever seen.

“Because, it is the right thing to do.”

A single flash, and the genie was gone.

___________

D’jinn was left standing at the now-empty space in front of him, hands outstretched to cusp something that was no longer there as his smile disappeared, allowing the heaviness of the moment sink in.

That silly little duck hadn’t been at all what he expected. The stories his grandmother told him painted a picture of genies as powerful and filled with fiery intimidation, as well as being wiser than any mortal born of flesh and bone...

“Technically, I was already a prisoner.”

D’jinn’s frown deepened. Those words, they certainly weren’t spoken by some mighty cosmic being, but by a man, who could feel sadness and fear just like anyone else.

D’jinn thought back to the story of his ancestor and a kind servant trapped for eternity, until she saw it in her heart to exchange that eternity for a lifetime of love and happiness. This was certainly a different situation, but wasn’t it still the right thing to do?

And those eyes.

The look of desperation in those beautiful gold-colored eyes as he vanished were now burned into his memory. It was a cry for help, and the warrior ached to answer it.

He had made a promise, and while it may had been spoken in a passionate spur of the moment, he would honor it.

Resolute, he scanned the enormous crowd, his well-trained senses focused and on high alert for any sounds or scents that would lead him to his quarry. The minutes ticked by as his stoic expression masked his growing apprehension.

“There!”

It was faint among the throngs of people surrounding him, nearly undetectable, but his keen canine nose picked up on a familiar smell of dusty tomes mixed with the metallic scent of coins. With extreme calculation, he allowed his tracking instincts take the helm as he stealthily maneuvered through the crowd, ears perked beneath his keffiyeh for any signs of...

“Della, Launchpad! How’re the plane repairs comin’ along?”

Quiet relief washed over D’jinn when he noticed a familiarly distinct top hat poking out from the crowd near the library’s entrance. Making his way towards the fellow adventurer, he couldn’t help but notice just how tired the old man looked, uncharacteristically showing his age.

“Scrooge, my friend.”

Caught off guard, the duck tensed so hard that he nearly lost his balance before turning to the canine in surprise.

“D’jinn? Bless me bagpipes that villainous vulture nabbed you too?”

Scrooge shook his head as he adjusted his spectacles, expression shifting back to exhaustion, his browsed creased upwards in guilt.

“I’m sorry lad, you lot were all dragged into this mess because of me. I cannae imagine what you must ‘ave endured at the hands of those fiends.”

D’jinn’s eyes narrowed as he placed his hand on his chest, expression serious but sincere.

“Noble Scrooge, the only true guilty ones are the villains you speak of, those who would seek to harm the innocent indiscriminately and use them for their own nefarious means.”

Scrooge’s sighed heavily at the canine’s statement.

“Aye, like me poor darlin’ Webby.”

Like Gene.

“I have dedicated my life to righting such wrongs. I hold nothing against you my friend, I could not let such transgressions against an ally stand. That is why we are here. You have many on whom you can rely, and friends are part of the journey as well, are they not?”

Scrooge stared at D’jinn for a moment, absorbing the man’s insightful words before breaking into a gentle smile, eyes shining with gratitude.

“Thank you, I... needed to here that. I know I can rely on my family when I need ‘em, but it takes times like these to remind this stubborn old fool that ‘family’ can be many things.”

Scrooge silently laughed at himself.

“Sorry, been feeling a little more sentimental than usual.”

Nodding in understanding and knowing that he’d soon depart, Djinn decided to waste no time and reached into his robes as he lowered himself onto one knee, startling Scrooge with this sudden change in demeanor as he withdrew a blank scroll along with a quill.

“Not all has been made right, and my journey must continue.”

The look of determination that met the old duck’s gaze startled him with its ferocity.

“Scrooge McDuck, I simply need a moment to ask you some questions, and the rest will fall to me.”

Scrooge stared back for a moment, perplexed. His family would be leaving soon, and he needed to help them prepare. However, the weight of the severity in the canine’s request, along with the deep sincerity with which he’d said it, told him all he needed to know. Nodding in affirmation, Scrooge watched as D’jinn unraveled the scroll in front of them, quill raised and ready.

“I wish to know about the lost treasure of Collie Baba, and the lamp that is hidden there.”

I’m so sorry, that took MUCH longer to complete than I wanted it to, l have more projects planned and hopefully once courses are over they won’t be as bad. Also sorry for the poor writing quality, I’m kind of rusty. Still I hope that whoever took the time to read this found something entertaining about it. Thank you for your interest, until next time!

#ducktales #dt17 #faris djinn #gene the genie #gene c. baba #faris d'jinn #fargene #djinn x gene #self-indulgent nonsense #sorry it took so long #launchpad mcquack #the last adventure fanficion #ducktales fanfiction #bad fanfiction #d'jinn x gene #scrooge mcduck

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hypnoticwinter · 4 years

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Down the Rabbit Hole part 33

“Fumi?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me a story.”

“A story?” he says, glancing over. In the vent there’s nothing but the soft squelching of our cleated feet and a drip-drip-drip of a flowing river of sluggish, phlegmy mucus running along a divot over on the left. I nod.

“Yeah, a story. Like, about work. Ranger stuff. I’m sure you’ve got some good stories.”

He laughs. “A few, maybe,” he concedes.

Getting across into the actual flesh of the Pit from the wreck of the LVC had been easier than either of us had thought it would be. The gantry we had been looking for was long gone by the time that we got to the bottom of the LVC, with the only evidence of its passing being a couple of rigid metal rods and torn, rusted grating, but above us was our lucky break – due to the way the Visitor Center had fallen, it had actually cut into the Pit’s gullet on the way down, leaving a long, jagged scar of porous tissue in its wake and, at the very bottom, a gaping, partially-healed hole leading directly into what Fumi said was once the trail downwards to the Gastric Sea. It was a little hairy to begin with; the wound had ruined the previously neat trail, and the Pit had begun to reclaim it. Paths branched off, seemingly at random, that our maps had no record of. Here and there we’d see skittering things darting away from our flashlights, fleeing into pores or deeper, smaller vents we couldn’t see into.

Just copepods, Fumi had said when I asked. Harmless unless you’re alone and they’re feeling particularly brave or hungry. But even so I noticed that he kept his hand resting comfortably on the butt of his pistol, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice, and so I emulated him, and kept a wary eye behind us as we picked our way through the nest of tunnels and warrens and veins.

After I while I became afraid that we might hit a dead end and that we’d not be able to get through to the trail proper, which Fumi said would curve up and around down to the ballast bulbs, but just when I was getting to the point where I thought I might say something about it the vent widened out and Fumi had let out a triumphant whoop. We’re on the right track now, he had assured me, pointing to where we were on the map, and I had let a little involuntary shudder of relief pass over me because finally, finally we could really get going.

Now we’re clambering through a stinking vent that once housed a pedestrian trail. The thing Fumi hadn’t really mentioned is how long it would take. The path that looked so easy and short was in actuality four or five miles, a solid two or three hour hike in an environment like the Pit. My leg is holding up alright so far, especially now that I’m doing less running and jumping and falling, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do more than a couple days’ worth of this. Even with the boot I put my foot down occasionally and get a worrying, bone-deep twinge like a jolt of electricity, feeling like it’s running up some magic conduit from my heel all the way to the top of my head.

You can still see the remains of the trail here and there. Plastic placards, partially dissolved and stained beyond legibility, peeking out from behind masses of tumorous flesh. Rusty chain-link here and there, little strips of it grown over by pale, moisture-slick skin. If you look too closely at anything down here you shudder.

“Alright, I’ve got a story for you,” Fumi says. “Most of the work we do involves escorting supplies down to the deeper installations within the Pit, looking after science teams, making sure nothing and nobody bothers the few little extractions operations for stuff like ballast and bone plates. It’s a lot of wildlife control, basically. Very, very occasionally we’d do interdiction stuff. People get in, try to hide out in here, do all kinds of crap. I remember hearing a story about some guys who were running a drug lab in a trailer out on the very edge of the restricted area on the surface. Only got busted because Makado had to rush out somewhere in a hurry for something or other, I don’t remember what exactly, and she took a helicopter and they happened to fly right over. That really made her crack down on the topside ranger teams, let me tell you.”

“Topside?”

“So basically there are two teams,” he explains. “Us, the Sergeant’s team, we’re Venterial Ops. Anything underground, inside the Pit, we handle. That’s why we have Elena, for example. I don’t know if she told you but her main specialization is cave diving, she used to be in the Coast Guard. The other team is larger, they hang out in the other barracks topside. Overland Ops patrols the surface of the restricted area, handles anything that doesn’t concern the actual Pit itself. A lot of people don’t realize this but the restricted area isn’t just, you know, the Pit, it covers a whole lot of the ground above as well. You need manpower if you’re going to patrol it. With me so far?”

“Yes,” I nod. “So the overland team, they never go down into the Pit?”

“Oh, they train in it occasionally,” Fumi says, waving his hand. “But not to the extent that we do. It’s expensive and difficult and time-consuming just because the Pit is not a particularly good environment to make mistakes in. What if you can’t recognize a digestive pit or a triocanth sign? I mean, there are so many ways to die down here if you’re careless, especially now that we’ve cut down on our impact down here so much. If you’re stuck down here your options are either getting to the Control Center, getting to one of the very few listening stations and outposts we still have down in the depths of the Pit, or trying to call for help. That’s it.”

“So it’s easier logistically to have two separate groups like that?”

“Yeah, exactly. It hurts the overhead a little but if everybody was Pit-trained they’d be spending even more on them, so…”

“Right,” I say. There’s a long stringy mass of fibrous tissue stretching from the roof to the pitted ground, and I duck around it, let Fumi pass behind. “So what was the story?”

“Oh, right. So we were escorting some science folks down to that listening station in Oyster’s Shame. Shift change, essentially, except they way they do it is two weeks on, two weeks off. They rotate like that, make sure nobody’s spending too much time down in the Pit, that kind of thing. There are health checks that they have to do. If you’re in Science, half the time you’re up in a lab over in the science building doing egghead things and the other half you’re down here in a lab doing egghead things,” he laughs.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” I suggest, and Fumi nods.

“Exactly. So we’re taking these guys down, pretty simple trip, one we’ve all done dozens of times. One of the science guys is new, and he is just absolutely gushing over everything he’s seeing down here. Some sort of environmental scientist type, real nerd. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a nerd but sometimes you just – certain people fulfill the stereotype more than other people, right? Anyway, Crookshank decides to play a prank on the guy. We’re taking a break for lunch and Crookshank pretends to lick a nerve ending in the wall. Now, first off, don’t ever do that, but Crookshank is – was – a maniac and you can’t keep him down. This egghead sees Crookshank do it (of course, he didn’t actually do it, just pretended to) and starts to freak out, but Crookshank is like ‘oh, it’s cool, it enhances the flavor in these MREs, you should try it.’ And of course Slate gets in on it, because Slate has – er, had – the mind of a middle-schooler and can’t resist clowning around, and together they gradually convince this nerd that it makes your standard run-of-the-mill MRE taste orgasmic.”

“Why shouldn’t you lick nerve endings?”

“Have you seen anything down here that you’d want to lick?”

I try unsuccessfully not to think of Elena and end up just shaking my head.

“But on top of that,” Fumi continues, “Pit nerve fibers can do weird things to the human nervous system. Not usually permanent or even really harmful things…just weird things. A big one was an ability to see into the ultraviolet spectrum. You might have heard about that; they made some big breakthroughs in optics in the 80s thanks to experiments with Pit nervous tissue. But there can be weirder stuff too – occasionally you’d see some spooky things going on in the Cord thanks to all the nerve tissue there. Intrusive thoughts, ‘occult’ stuff like objects levitating, seeing things out of the corner of your eye, ‘hauntings…’ in some places down here there are still little alarms that go off if they read too much nervous activity. So you can imagine that it might be a bad idea to lick one.”

“What happened to the guy?” I ask. The further we’ve gotten the more horribly rank the air has grown, to the point where we both have put on our helmets. The path we’re following opens out after a torturously twisting, intestine-like track and we find a series of bulbous, swollen sacs protruding from the floor and the walls, filled with a noxious, chunky liquid a lot like raw vomit. I can feel my gorge rising and I fix my eyes resolutely on my feet and end up just taking shallow breaths through my mouth for the long ten or so minutes it takes for Fumi to guide me through to the other side. We squeeze through a rough, suppurating sphincter and find a set of stairs, so rusty and dilapidated they might as well have come straight out of a Silent Hill game. Here and there long strands or trickles of flesh have melted or grown through the chain-link cage surrounding the stairs and pooled in rough, saggy, wrinkled puddles on the floor. It’s such an unspeakably bizarre image that we both stop and stare at them.

“I bet those feel…absolutely horrible to step on,” Fumi says.

“I’m not stepping on any of those,” I murmur.

“And with the cleats…” Fumi continues.

“Oh god,” I say, wrinkling my nose. A particularly swollen one seems to glisten at me. “Why does it do that? Why does it grow stuff like this?”

“Why does the Pit do anything?” Fumi shrugs, jerking his head forwards. “At least we’re on the right track. This is the staircase down to the ballast bulbs.”

“Is it even safe to walk on?”

“Do you see a different option?”

“Fair point,” I grunt. I take a ginger step forward and put my weight on the stairs, cringing inwardly. My foot nudges against one of the nodules of flesh. I can feel it pressing against me through the fabric of the suit. I grimace and take another step, and then another. “Come on,” I tell him. “Let’s just get this over with.”

We get a couple of flights down before I remember. “Oh, right – what happened to the guy?”

“Which guy?”

“You know,” I say. “The nerd who licked the nerve ending.”

“Oh, right. It made him see…something. Gave him the fright of his life, ended up pissing himself in his suit.”

“Oh,” I say. I had been expecting something funny but this just seems sad. Fumi reads it in my face, nods at me.

“Yeah,” he says. “Elena actually got really pissed off at Crookshank for that one. They’ve never liked each other very much but that little stunt kind of pushed her over the edge. They got in a shouting match right there and the Sergeant had to break it up.”

I can’t stop myself from smiling. “That’s my girl,” I murmur.

“Well…”

“Well what?”

“Uh, well it turned out that she was sleeping with the nerd and that’s why she was so heated about it.”

I look at Fumi for a moment and then burst out laughing. “You’re not serious.”

“Dead serious.”

I think about it and then shrug. “What?” I ask. “Am I supposed to get jealous?”

“I just find it so strange that you aren’t.”

“That’s in the past,” I tell him. “I don’t care what she did before we met, I care about how she treats me. I mean, she has to have treated me pretty well to get me to risk my life for her like this.”

“True,” Fumi admits. “Or maybe you just don’t value your life very much.”

Before I can think of a response that would be both truthful and a denial of the accuracy of that statement, Fumi takes a step forward. As he puts his weight down on the next step the staircase groans sonorously and we both freeze. I feel a little stab of fear piercing the bottom of my stomach and reach over quickly to grab the guardrail, for all the good it’ll do me. We stand there frozen for a minute, maybe two, waiting for the entire thing to collapse, and when it isn’t forthcoming I slowly, gradually unclench my insides and put my weight back on the step.

“Jesus,” I murmur.

“Yeah, these are probably a little unsafe.”

“You think?”

The next four flights go by quickly. The blobs of flesh haven’t spread this far down, or at least they haven’t yet. The meat beyond the retaining walls, buckled in places, is a strange, waxy tone that makes it look like it’s fake. If it didn’t shudder and writhe in time with whatever alien rhythms govern the Pit’s heartbeat I’d think it were a model.

Ahead of us, rising like vapor off a bog, I can smell the stench of ballast, combined with the familiar meaty Pit-smell pervading the air, along with something earthy and sour that lingers at the back of my throat. It makes my heart race and my gorge rise simultaneously. That accidental encounter with Crookshank in the ballast bulb…I had never been so scared or so turned on in my entire life. The memory of it leaves me vaguely nauseous.

“You doing okay?” Fumi asks, nudging me.

“I’m fine,” I murmur through gritted teeth. I do not want to throw up in this helmet. I take a deep breath and then let it out. I’m okay. It’s going to be fine. Elena is down here and the ballast totally healed her and everything is fine, just peachy-keen. We’re going to kiss and hold hands all the way out of here and then…

“Do you really think she’s down here?” Fumi asks.

“Where else would she be?” I say. “It’s either here or she’s dead somewhere and I’m still trying to be optimistic at least.”

Fumi says something else but I’m not paying attention. We’ve finally reached the landing, and past a pair of crooked, bent, rusted doors is something that must have once been a utility corridor for servicing the machinery used to keep the ballast pools running. The entire corridor is so thickly covered with dense, clustered mushrooms that I can scarcely see any surface that isn’t completely blotted out by coarse white fungous flesh.

“Shit,” Fumi murmurs.

The acrid, weird smell is stronger down here and I’ve finally recognize it – it’s the reek of those horrible, throat-coating spores from the nightmare of the fungal jungle deep down in the Pit’s rancid guts, where Marcus and Peter and Erica and – and Klaus had died.

Where I had killed Klaus.

Thinking about it makes me shiver. This past day – there hasn’t been time to think. Everything has been sweeping me along with the same force and velocity as a riptide. I haven’t had time to – to acknowledge it.

Unbidden, the image of him clapping his hand to his throat springs to my mind. The gun had felt like a dead weight in my hand. It hadn’t even felt like my hand, it had felt like I was controlling it at a distance, like I was playing a video game. I remember the way his eyes had widened in shock and how he had staggered back, the knife clattering out of his trembling hands. He had tried to swipe at me with it even then but the strength had left him.

I’ve already sealed my suit. I hadn’t wanted to waste the filters or the battery before by running the rebreather but these spores aren’t going to give us a choice. I don’t want to be hallucinating again.

At the end of the hallway is a door. It takes the two of us some serious effort to pry it open, levering at the rusted, mossy handle, but once we get it open we stumble into what must have once been one of the main baths. The fungus grows here too, in greater size and density. There are things living here; a dozen little things scurry and hop and slither away from us, darting away from the reach of our flashlight beams. Some of the mushrooms, the bigger blue-veined ones with the caps that look like they’re melting, visibly deflate as we rake our lights over them, puffing out clouds of hazy spores.

“I’m not sure that Elena’s here,” Fumi says softly, looking around. I feel my insides tighten even as he says it.

A massive hole has broken open in the tile over on the far end of the pool. I think I see something within it move. I reach over and tug at Fumi’s sleeve. “Fumi,” I hiss. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Over there,” I point. “Inside that big fucking hole, I thought I saw –“

“Whatever you saw,” Fumi tells me, “it wasn’t Elena. If she even came down here, she’d have taken one look at it and then turned right around and left. You said that Erica took her helmet. Look at all these spores. Do you think that –“

“God damn!” something cries out of the murk and darkness down at the far end of the pool. The milk-white ballast seethes incontinently beneath the wan glare of our flashlights, and I can feel the bottom drop out of my stomach. “God damn!” it repeats.

“That’s Elena,” I say.

“Roan, no,” Fumi says. I shoot him a look like he’s gone mad.

“Listen to her,” I tell him. “That’s her voice! I’d know it anywhere.”

As if to punctuate my argument, the voice cries out again. “Oh god! Oh fuck!”

I charge forward, stomping into the ballast with reckless abandon. “Elena!” I call out. My heart is jumping in my chest and I have to consciously force myself not to grin madly. Elena is here! God, she’s here! I was right, she did come to the ballast bulbs, she did –

“God damn!”

“Roan, stop!” Fumi yells from behind me. I can hear him starting to stomp after me but I don’t have an iota of brainpower left to devote to the question of why he’d want to stop me. The ballast ripples around my legs, but it’s relatively shallow, at least this end of the pool. I hope I don’t have to swim in it to get to her.

“God damn!”

“Elena, I’m coming!”

“STOP! Roan, it’s a –“

My foot catches against something in the ballast and I lose my balance. I try to catch myself on my hands but the pool deepens just ahead of me and I end up pitching face-first into the murk. “Goddam,” I mumble. I don’t know what I tripped on, it feels like a log or something, but that doesn’t make a ton of sense to be down here. What is –

The log wriggles to life and wraps itself around my ankle. I have enough time to let out a small, terrified squeak before it whips me bodily off my feet and starts tugging me through the ballast towards the hole in the tile. I hear a splash from behind me as Fumi wades it, and I realize that I’m screaming.

Another rope or vine or tentacle joins the first, and this one fixes around the thigh of my other leg. I reach down, fighting against the thing’s pull, and get my hands on my pistol. I jerk it out of the holster so fast that I almost lose it, flick the safety off, and then fire off three rounds into the darkness lurking where the tentacles converge, but I don’t think I hit anything. Another tentacle seizes around my wrist and though I try to get loose, I end up dropping the gun.

Fumi calls out from behind me but I can’t pull myself together enough to answer him. Another tentacle has fixed around my midriff, another around my neck, and it squeezes so tightly that almost immediately I see stars bursting in my eyes and everything goes off-kilter like the world’s been tilted.

My flashlight skews across the face of the thing that’s tugging me in and for a moment I can’t comprehend it. It looks like a…a flower, all folds and delicate fleshy petals, but the colors are off. I can’t think, I’m not getting enough oxygen.

A mouth opens in the center of the flower, unfolding like a piece of origami. I see delicate, foot-long, razor-sharp teeth, almost translucent in the light.

The tentacles around my neck and leg loosen, and then drop me entirely. I smack into the surface of the ballast and rapidly sink under. I’m still too woozy to do much about it other than flail my arms helplessly. The air is hot and stuffy in this helmet and I can feel a tingle somewhere along the side of my ribcage, accompanied by a stinging wetness that makes me realize my suit has a hole and ballast is leaking in.

I can’t think, my brain feels like it’s been unplugged. I’m going to drown inside my suit down here and I can’t do anything about it –

The last tentacle loosens and slips away and then I feel hands tugging at my arms. Without thinking I cling to them, the slippery ballast making my grip clumsy. I batter against my rescuer, trying to get a grip on them. There’s a horrendous noise filling the air, making the ballast vibrate with the force of it. Amid the torrent of sound I can hear someone yelling at me, telling me to stop, and when I crack my eyes open I see Fumi tugging me closer to him and trying to swim us away at the same time. I get my arm around his waist and we both dip under.

“Fuck this,” he says when I come up next and then he cocks his arm back and punches me in the side of the head. I go limp immediately and for the next few minutes I am not quite unconscious but I am definitely woozy enough to let Fumi drag me bodily out of the pool and then pick me up and carry me out of that horrible room and back to the staircase we came in at.

I manage to hobble up two flights of stairs on my own before I stumble and Fumi has to let me lean on him to get up another two. Up here the air is clearer and I can finally pop my helmet and breathe in deep, grateful gulps of it without feeling the spores trickling in and lining my throat. I sit down heavily on a step that isn’t encrusted with bloody moss and lichen and give Fumi a bleak look.

“I’ve been so fucking stupid,” I mutter. Fumi tries to put his arm around me but I shrug it off. “Goddam it, I’ve been so stupid.”

“Roan –“

“Fuck!” I shout. It echoes up and down the rickety staircase, my own voice reflected back at me in a mocking tone. My neck and arms are still sore and if I close my eyes I can feel that horrible thing’s tentacles or vines tugging tight around my throat and choking the life out of me…

“Roan,” Fumi tries again. “You aren’t stupid.”

“Elena was never down here,” I say. I can hear the cheerlessness in my voice. “She’s probably dead someplace ten minutes from the Cord. I should never have –“

“Roan!” Fumi barks. I look at him, not bothering to wipe my eyes.

“What?”

“Roan, you have to stop trying to throw your life away,” he says. His eyes are dark and serious and suddenly I find I can’t meet his gaze. “No, look at me,” he says.

“I’m really not into this paternal bullshit,” I start, but Fumi takes my head in his hands and very gently turns it so I don’t have any choice but to stare into his eyes. I almost slap him. At the very least I snarl out the beginning of an imprecation, but Fumi just stares me down. “I don’t –“ I start, but he shakes his head.

“Your life isn’t over,” he tells me. “You still have plenty to live for.”

“But if Elena’s dead –“

“Fuck Elena! Even if Elena were dead you’d have something to live for. When we find her do you think your relationship with her is going to last very long if you’re just hanging your entire existence off of her?”

“I – “

“I don’t need you flaking out on me right now,” he tells me. “When Ellis died, I –“

“Ellis?”

“Oh, fuck it. Forget it,” he says, standing up. “Do whatever the hell you want, you want to be a clingy son of a bitch when we get to Elena, be my goddam guest –“

“No, Fumi, I’m sorry, I didn’t –“

“Forget it, I said,” he tells me. My cheeks are burning. I’ve gone and broken the camel’s back. Of course him and Ellis were close, but…it doesn’t matter.

“Fumi, I didn’t mean –“

“Elena’s alive,” he says, his voice harsh. “Or at least she was, recently. Because ballast sirens can only repeat sounds they’ve heard. She probably pried open a door, took one look at that place, said ‘god damn!’ and ‘oh fuck!’ and left, and the siren’s probably been parroting it back for the better part of a day since then, hoping something would be stupid enough to wander into reach…”

“How was I supposed to know?” I yell. “How was I fucking supposed to know? I’ve never heard of a fucking ballast siren! I don’t know what they do!”

“I was yelling after you telling you not to go!” Fumi shouts. “If you had just fucking listened to me you wouldn’t have –“

“Yeah, well you fucking punched me!”

“I punched you,” he hisses, taking a step towards me, “because you were fucking panicking. You were going to drag me down with you and if I let you, we both would have died back there. I had to make you go limp, so I punched you! Of course you probably would have been okay with the two of us dying, given your fucking martyrdom fetish –“

“I don’t have a martyrdom fetish!”

“Then fucking act like it!”

“Fuck you!”

“You need to calm the fuck down,” he says, pointing a finger at me. “I can’t believe you talked me into this damn-fool errand. I had no idea you were such a –“

“Fucking leave, then,” I tell him. There’s a part of my brain screaming at me to stop, but I can’t stop. I’ve already let the words out. “If I’m so much of a fucking burden and too much of a loose cannon then fucking leave. Just go back up. I’ll find Elena myself.”

Fumi’s face falls. When he speaks his tone is gentler. “Look, I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to –“

“Just go!” I yell, pointing up the stairs. “Just fuck off!”

“Roan, don’t do this.”

“Just leave!” I say. My voice is thick and raw and I realize that I’m crying. “I can do this myself! I don’t need you!”

“Roan, you –“

“Go!” I shriek, and then before I know it I’m clambering to my feet and pulling up my sleeves, clenching a fist and getting ready to swing at him. Everything’s taken on a red tinge, even redder than normal down here in the Pit, and the horrible throbbing thump of my heartbeat is ringing in my ears like an immense drum.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Fumi says, throwing up his hands, and then he turns and hurries up the stairs.

I stand there for a long, long while, breathing hard, letting all of my anger drain out of me. Eventually I feel empty enough to find a nice clear spot on the rusty steps, brush away the mushrooms and polypous clumps of pooled flesh and sit. I think about burying my head in my hands, but I don’t.

After a moment I take out my radio from its holster on my belt and look at it. Fumi had warned me not to even try anything with it, he’d said that it’d be easy for anyone listening in, such as the FBI or people in the Control Center, to triangulate my position and there’d be no guarantee Elena would even have a radio to respond with if I did try to call her.

But I don’t see another choice. My hand is shaking a little and I feel as though if I stand up I’d just fall right over again. If I don’t do something I’m going to have a panic attack.

I crack the radio up to its broadest range-band and hold down the broadcast button. I can’t think of what to say. Eventually I shake my head and then lick my lips and give it my best shot. “Elena?” I ask. My voice catches a little but I swallow hard and force it back down. “Elena, it’s Roan. If you’re – if you’re out there and you can hear this, l-let me know. Please.”

I let the button go and then wait, heart pounding. I try to keep myself from counting the seconds, but I can’t. Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty. I stop after a minute and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to stop the hot tears from leaking from them. She’s not out there, she’s dead or trapped somewhere without a radio, I knew it was a long shot, I shouldn’t have even bothered. If I hadn’t bothered I could at least pretend that –

The radio clutched loosely in my hands crackles to life. I glare at it, half-expecting to hear Fumi chew me out for using the radio in the first place.

“Roan?” Elena says. “Oh, my god, Roan, baby, is that you? Oh god, is that you?”

Continue with Part 34

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#mystery flesh pit #writing #writeblr #original writing #mystery #alt lit #thriller #Novel #disaster #caving #Michael Crichton

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erintoknow · 5 years

Text

Nemesis Adrestia

fallen hero: rebirth fanfic, borrowing @ratkingkisses‘s Zia Basri for an extra-canonical adventure of revenge ~2.4k words. hrrrm, maybe content warning for spider time.

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It really shouldn’t come as a surprise to you by now, but it’s obvious you’ve gotten in over your head again. “Was this a part of your genius fucking plan?” You hiss.

“Sweetheart, darling, of course it was.” The figure crouched down next to is dressed in an almost form-fitting black powered-suit with pink accents up the sides, the black hood of their cloak up over the mirrored helmet. “Keep them busy for a moment, won’t you?”

You grit your teeth. “When are you going to play rabbit?”

“When I’m not the stronger telepath, Adrestia.” She says it so matter-of-factly in that weirdly electronic and rasping voice of hers it makes your eye twitch.

Despite your frustation, it’s hard to argue with that. Nemesis seems to have a talent for getting her hooks into a crowd. Handling that kind of mental feedback is a little much for you.

…Alright then. Keep a team of armed officers busy while Nemesis safely sits behind a wall playing mind games? Sure. Okay. Why not?

Take a breath, steady yourself, then dash out from behind the wall, pulling at their attention as you go. Nothing fancy, just eyes on me, encourage them to forget the second figure, already at work. You can feel her in the back of your head, weaving threads of thought into straitjackets. Watch how you think, you’ll have to be careful not to get snagged yourself.

A trail of bullets follow you, they can’t seem to remember to lead their target, such as shame, really. You slide behind the reception desk, breathing hard. Try to steady your heart, get it back down and out of your throat. These aren’t cops or street thugs. Trained professionals, soldiers. You’d never have been so bold as to try this on your own, or so stupid.

Zia lounges across the booth, taking up both seats, legs crossed. She flashes a practiced smile, offers a honeyed greeting and pushes a plate of cupcakes across the table to you as you sit down across from her. You pick one up, take a bite, it’s still warm. Is she trying to put you at ease and failing or is she purposefully trying to unsettle you with this exaggeration of hospitality? You can’t be sure, can’t know

Getting involved with Zia is dangerous. On multiple levels. There’s a reason you’ve taken to calling her ‘Triple-X,’ although never to her face. She’s respected your boundaries so far – has never laid a hand on you. But whenever you’re in her presence it feels like you’ve been put under a microscope. The octopus trying to pry open a clam.

Looking for that way in.

Well, that’s a game that two can play.

You unshoulder your purse onto the table, pull out the envelope and slide it across the table in exchange. Floor plans, hand transcribed from months of careful reconnaissance. Valuable information to a career thief.

Zia palms it, slides the envelope down the front of her shirt. Her smile shows her canines. She makes no secret of being a dangerous woman. She’ll get in touch with you soon, she says. You make a show of playing up your nerves. The woman who has nothing to fear and the woman from which there is nothing to fear. You both wear your masks well.

“You fuckers couldn’t hit an iceberg!” You yell out, palming through the smoke grenades and flash bangs attached to your belt. Keep their attention, don’t think about how the bullets punch through the pressed woodpulp of the desk, barely missing you. How much time do you need to buy?

You thumb a flash bang, trying to get a sense of where to throw it when you feel strings pull taunt. You reflexively throw up your mental wall as Nemesis finally springs into action. There’s the tension of sudden silence. No guns fire, no movement, then at once the sound of five bodies hitting the floor in unison.

You poke your head up, none of the men are still standing. “Jesus,” you whisper under your breath so the suit doesn’t pick up your voice and amplify it, “what did you do.” Five bodies lay sprawled on the ground where they fell. Still alive, you can see it in the rise and fall of the chests. But their mental presence is weirdly blank, twisted into itself. Not comatose exactly, but deeper than normal sleep.

Nemesis strides out into the middle of the lobby, “Don’t just stand there gawking, dear. We’ve got more where these fools came from.” You have a limited window before someone or someones beyond your pay grade crash the party. Now that your cover is blown, if you’re going to hit your target and get out, every second needs to count.

Still… you glance down at bodies. “Are they going to wake up?”

“Who cares?” She responds, voice drained of its theatric warmth. She doesn’t stop walking.

You frown behind your helmet but don’t argue. Kneel down and fish out the keycards from one of the men before catching up with Nemesis. You might be the pathfinder on this operation, but Nemesis isn’t about to let anyone else take lead. That suits you just fine. Maybe she can take a turn getting shot at next.

“I need your help.” You admit. Don’t look at her face, focus on the window, how the light still manages to make it through the closed blinds.

She leans forward, hands cupped under her chin, in a move clearly designed to emphasize her cleavage. “You have no idea how happy that makes me. I can think of plenty of ways to help make you sing.”

You glance at her, eyes wide, “What? Uh- Um-, no, no not like that.” You break eye contact again, look elsewhere, anywhere else. Try to swerve around the images she’s broadcasting at you. “This is strictly business.”

You feel her sharp disappointment like a slap to the face. You flinch. She leans back. “Business it is.” Her voice drained of any previous warmth.

“Well, more like revenge, really.” You admit. Flash the photograph in your hand. That gets her attention again.

The next stop is one of the security offices. It’s not a far walk. Two officers stand between you and getting inside, but it’s hardly a contest. Pull their aim off, pull their attention on you instead of calling for help. Nemesis crumples the one on the right with a punch to stomach followed by a knee to the groin. You take out the one on left by yanking the gun out of their hands and then bashing their nose in with the butt of the rifle.

They didn’t even lock the door. During a lockdown. You laugh, a sharp cackle, as you throw open the door and take stock of what you have to work with.

“Something amusing, my dear handmaiden?” Nemesis stands outside, her attention focused down the hallway. Focused like this, her mind feels like a cord of rope, severed and fraying into a million threads at one end.

“D-doesn’t matter.” You grind your teeth at the nickname.

The connection between your names is entirely accidental, you’ve gone through a couple before settling on Adrestia. Nemesis, however, has latched onto it with a frightening degree of enthusiasm. At this point you don’t think you could change your name again if you tried.

You fish out the flash drive from its secure canister as you ran a hand over the bank of computer terminals on the far wall of the tiny room. There, under the desk, a row of servers. You pop open the flash drive and slot it home. Actual coding is far beyond your skillset, but with the connections Nemesis has, getting your hands on something capable of cracking a military system hadn’t been difficult. Turns out the primary defense is physical access, and… well, the two of you have that handled.

A stressful minute of waiting later and now you have access to the internal systems via your suit. All it takes is a few simple commands to lock out anyone else on the system. You pull out the flash drive and pocket it again. No sense leaving evidence behind. Nod to Nemesis. “We’re good, let’s keep moving.”

You can feel the frayed edges of Nemesis attention as she runs beside you. Between her ability to pick up and redirect the attentions of multiple people at once and your pathfinding it’s a surprisingly smooth dash through the building to your target’s office. And with the security systems firmly still under your control no one else is able to follow your progress through the complex. No cameras, and barriers are mere formality as doors open and lock again behind the two of you.

You can feel your heart pound. This has been a long time coming.

Nemesis Adrestia; Retribution Inescapable.

The two of you round one last corner and Nemesis gestures with her head towards a set of doors across the hall. “This is the place, sweetheart?”

Tentatively you reach out to get a read of how many people are on the other side, sheltering in place. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, you reel back, curl your song tight around yourself. “He’s here alright.” You hiss through your teeth.

Nemesis makes an unearthly sound, laughter distorted beyond recognition. “Let’s catch up with an old friend, I’m sure they’ll be delighted to see us..”

“Peter Byrne.” You trace patterns in your leg, fighting down nausea, memory. “Recognize him?”

Zia thumbs the tiny photograph, lips pursed. “No.” She finally admits.

“One of the eggheads that used to run the… the…” You mouth is dry. How does anyone talk about this? To vocalize what’s never been said? “the, uh– the debriefing process. Memory extraction. Research.”

You watch as Zia’s expression darkens, narrows her eyes at the tiny man in the picture. “How do you know it was him?”

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the spider. “Met him.”

She looks at you, doesn’t hide the disbelief. “You met him.”

“Broke the process once.” You’re pressing your finger into your leg hard now as you trace.

“Broke the–?” You can feel it in the way Zia’s attention has turned to you, a thousand little threads probing for answers, looking for holes, expecting a trap. You’ve turned from a fun game, a toy to tease and distract herself with into a danger; pulling open old wounds.

There’s nothing for it. You need her invested in this. You grit your teeth and

can’t move

can’t even ‘can’t move’

wake up

stay

awake

over you spans,

no not you there is no ‘you’ only

an exquisite corpse under spider legs

like needlepoints, they poke something soft in–

You’re standing on the beach, salt air curls your hair, water wraps around your ankles. He smiles at you, taking your hand. ‘Finally, someone who understands’ – The feeling is writ across his mind, it overwhelms you. You suppress a shudder, smile back, swallow thoughts down like bramble. Stay focused. Edge to the side, pull him along. The line of fire needs to be clear.

–a wriggling thought until she bites down, stills it, not yours not yours hers now, she draws out the memory on bloodied thread; wrapping, spinning, going

no, no

stay

awake

reach up, find, pull. not hers, not hers, yours.

this one is yours.

something’s

burning

You flinch, that’s not quite the memory you wanted to vomit up, never mind broadcast. You curl your song tight against yourself again, block the world out. Meant to do the moment after, chickened out. Stupid. Stupid. You risk looking up at Zia. There’s a look of fury slowly burning across her face and then the world reels backwards as she punches you flat for springing the memory on her. But– You think you’ve got her.

Nemesis kicks the doors in before you can. “Everyone, lovelies, please remain calm.” She calls out, her empty hands up in the air as she walks through the cubicles. “Only one of you needs to die today. The rest have nothing to worry about…” The ease with which Nemesis is able to spread out and curl the threads of her attention around the gaggle of people in the room should terrify you. Instead all you can think about is what you’ll do. What you’ll say.

You follow in behind, the pistol in your hands held in a death grip. It’s been years since you’ve let yourself handle one, but the muscle memory is still there. Some things you can never forget, they made sure of that.

Like a conductor Nemesis is able to coax their fear into a wail of terror, drowning out any fantasies of trying to run or call for help. Fourteen fear-filled souls. You have to pull your own song tighter around you as a shield against the radiant emotional energy. “You don’t need to give them fucking PTSD,” You hiss at her.

“Why not?” Nemesis laughs. “You’re the anarchist, dear. Here’s a bunch of government stooges, why not have a little fun?”

“They’re just pawns. They don’t matter.”

“Not all of the little dears.” There’s an edge in her voice. Nemesis beckons with a hand and one of the fear-stricken office workers finds himself stumbling forward towards the two of you, pulled along on Nemesis’s invisible strings.

You choke down bile. “Hello, Peter.”

Peter turns his head to you, mouth gaping open, then closed, incoherent.

You shoot a glance at Nemesis. “For fuck’s sake, might as well let him talk.”

“That’s a mistake.” Nemesis warns. Nevertheless, the invisible cord around Peter’s neck slackens and the man gasps for air.

“Hello, Peter.” You repeat.

“That– that is not my name, you’ve got the wrong–”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what name they gave you after you screwed up, Peter.” You grind your teeth, feel the gun in your hand. Safety off. “Did you think you’d be safe out here?”

Nemesis nudges your shoulder. “Don’t bother toying with the man, get to the point.”

“I’m working up to it!” You snap at her, turn your attention back to Peter. “How long has it been, Peter? Fourteen years?”

“Fourteen…?” The look of confusion and terror on the man’s face gives way to pallid dread, the color draining out of him.

Nemesis crosses her arms. “Oh, we’re really going to drag this one out, aren’t we?”

“I’m not finished yet!”

Nemesis tsks at you. “That’s no way for a handmaiden to address her mistress.”

You ignore her, adjust your grip on your gun. You’re. In. Control. “Did you enjoy your job, Peter?” You don’t feel like Adrestia right now. You just feel sick. “How were the perks, Peter?” Panic and dread radiate off of him. His, it has to be his emotions that you’re feeling, That’s why you can’t keep your gun steady.

Nemesis leans over you, a hand on your shoulder. “There’s a time and place for foreplay sweetheart. Now is not it.” She puts her other hand over your wrist to steady your arm. “We can’t stay here all night.”

You flinch under her touch. “I– I– I need him to– to understand. He has to know. Or it’s… it’s not justice.” You’re not a murderer. This is more than just some random act of revenge. He’s earned this. He needs to know.

“Darling,” Her voice is low, quiet even with the distortion. “I think he gets the picture just fine.” She puts her finger on the trigger, resting over yours. “Isn’t that right, dear?” She raises her voice with all the cheer of a cactus.

Peter raises his arms, “I didn’t do anything wrong…”

Nemesis guides your arm up, pointing the pistol in your hand towards Peter as he takes a step back, hitting the wall. “But you had some good fun back on the farm, didn’t you?”

The two of you pull the trigger.

#fallen hero #fallen hero: rebirth #fhr #fallen hero fanfic #fanfiction #mc #fhr/Ariadne #zia #tw: spiders #revenge #ratkingkisses

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qqueenofhades · 6 years

Text

alone, i fight these animals [alone, until i get home]

To nobody’s surprise, I had another Kastle plot bunny, as I absolutely adore them being soft, but Frank and Karen are also messy, broken, dangerous people with a lot of trauma, and I wanted to write about them dealing with that and something from Frank’s POV. Also, I had a whole lot of feelings about Frank as a father, and well. This happened. Set sometime in my future verse where they’ve moved in together.

Rated M; content warnings for canon-typical violence, themes, and language, and mentions of sexual abuse, abortion, child loss, etc. Angst, but we get there in the end.

The door of the cellar stands half-open, letting in a wash of damp, cold New York winter night, that ever-present murky tang of the Hudson mixing with the sharper, metallic reek of blood. Frank completes his methodical pace around, making sure that nobody is still groaning, but if anyone is in fact alive, they sure as hell aren’t stupid enough to tip him off, and he wonders if he should shoot them all again, just to be safe. Jesus, he wants to. One shot, one kill, that’s always been the rule. Even Schoonover, who masterminded the murder of his family, got one clean shot to the head, no wasted energy, no needless mess. But these sons of bitches… Frank’s trigger finger is still twitching, and he clenches it hard. One thing at a time.

As far as he can tell, the seven corpses in the cellar are indeed genuinely in that state, and the faint, acrid whiff of shit confirms that. Frank kneels down by the nearest one and rolls him over. Pale, doughy, middle-aged white guy with glasses, looks like an office manager, which seems to be how most of them look. This fucking bastard was the leader of one of the biggest child porn rings on the Deep Web, made money hand over fist with his sick videos, supposedly used one of his own kids in them. He’s been on Homeland’s radar, they were preparing a big sting op to blow up the ring. Madani’s gonna be pissed that Frank got here before she could, but that’s her problem. Waiting for some fat-cat bureaucrat to get back from his Caribbean vacation to sign the warrants, have you ever heard something that stupid? These monsters were out here still hurting kids, hurting little girls, and needless to say, they were not expecting the Punisher to burst into their lair in all his trench-coated, jackbooted glory. Some of them put up a fight. Lots of bullets flying, but Frank was careful not to hit the servers. Madani’s eggheads can confiscate them and comb them to their heart’s content, see if there are any more they missed. He was never giving them the decency of a comfortable life in prison, no matter how unwelcome child abusers are in there. He still can’t slow down the roaring in his ears.

Frank dispassionately examines the bullet hole in the ringleader’s forehead. He’s definitely dead, but for the first time in his life, Frank almost wishes he’d broken his own rules. He doesn’t torture unless he needs information, and he had all the information he needed, here. But this asshole didn’t deserve to die that easy. Once upon a time, Frank would have believed that sinners would get their just desserts in hell, but that’s kid stuff, fairytales. He ain’t like Red with the Catholic shit. Watched it turn to ash a long time ago. Probably burst into goddamn flames if he stepped into a church now.

Outside, he can hear the drone of sirens -- someone, understandably, has taken note of the ruckus in the cellar and called the cops. Frank should get out of here, and as he rises to his feet, an unexpected pain in his side clips him and makes him grunt. He looks down to see a wet stain on his black hoodie, where one of the pedos got lucky and winged him low in the ribs. He didn’t notice it in the chaos, and it’s far from the worst he’s ever taken, obviously, but he should stop at an all-night pharmacy and get some shit to patch it before he gets home. He doesn’t want Karen to worry.

With a final glance around, Frank jogs to the door and lets himself out, just as footsteps are hurrying down from upstairs. He steps outside into the night and hangs a sharp left as red and blue lights start to splash the wet pavement – good ol’ NYPD, day late and a dollar short as per fucking usual. The appearance of a bunch of dead perverts in a basement isn’t going to cause anyone any personal distress, but it does serve as a calling card, and Madani, at least, is going to know who did it. Not that Frank thinks she’ll narc on him – they have a weird understanding, and part of him feels that she wouldn’t have mentioned that tip about girls being trafficked through Newark International if she didn’t want him to do something about it, wanted but could obviously never say or encourage him to undercut her whole sting. Madani can be ruthless in her fashion, but she’s still obnoxiously dedicated to the ideal of the law and truth and the American way. Give the feds time to do their job. That’s a good one.

Frank speeds up, almost growling at a goggling dog-walker to keep his eyes fucking forward, and darts into an alley to peel off his jacket and stuff it into his backpack with his usual clanking arsenal of automatic weapons. The wound in his side isn’t bad, but it’s definitely bleeding a lot, and he glances around (there are literally five million Duane Reades in Manhattan, he has to be within a few blocks of one). Sure enough, couple more minutes, he sees one, and steps inside with an anemic clank of bells. The bright fluorescents make him squint. They’re playing “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” because apparently this might in fact be hell after all. Tacky Christmas stuff everywhere.

Frank strides past some alarmed local shoppers to the pharmacy, grabs some first-aid shit – bandages, disinfectant, surgical tweezers, whatever he needs to get the slug out – and heads to the counter. The clerk can’t help but try not to look too hard. He asks Frank if he wants the mouthwash on promotion, 99¢, or the $1.99 gingerbread cookie. Frank says sure. Man’s just trying (valiantly, really) to do his job, and doesn’t ask any dumb questions. He appreciates it.

“Happy holidays, sir,” the clerk says, as Frank hands over a $20, gets $4.46 change, and stuffs it all in his pocket. “You have a good one.”

Frank answers this with a curt nod, glances around to see the old lady in line behind him looking like she’ll hit him with her cane if he doesn’t scram and let her pick up her Geritol or what-fuckin-ever, and offers her a too-polite nod. “Ma’am.”

With that, and her eyes burning holes in him as some hooligan who is definitely Up To No Good, he makes his exit and tries to decide where would be the best place for an impromptu triage center. He could take advantage of that other ubiquitous Manhattan institution, Starbucks, though they’d probably get real precious about allowing him to use their bathroom if he didn’t buy one of their godforsaken overpriced drinks. Nothing else is coming to mind, however, and he could use some coffee. He crosses the street to the nearest one – they’re open until 9pm, it’s 8:23, he’d better not take too long – and goes in. It’s mostly empty by now, though there are still some hipsters bunked down with their ultra-thin iBooks and busy pounding out the Great American Novel or whatever they write these days. At that, Frank almost leaves again, but his side really fuckin’ hurts by now, and beggars can’t be choosers.

He buys a small (or ‘scuse him, tall) black coffee. The barista asks for his name. Frank says, “Pete.” Digs out the change from the drugstore and pays, sits at a corner table and sips for a few minutes, then gets up and heads into the bathroom.

Frank shuts the door, pulls out his kit, and shrugs his sweatshirt off over his head. He gets a look at the wound and has to admit it’s maybe a little worse than he thought. Thirteen bucks’ worth of medical supplies from Duane Reade is going to have to cut it, though, and Frank sponges off the blood, throws the used wipes in the sanitary bin, and angles his torso up to the mirror so he can get a good look at the hole. The tweezers are kind of shit, but they’re the best he can do, and he grunts and grimaces until he gets the butt-end of the bullet in sight, slick with blood. It takes a few more minutes (someone is passive-aggressively pounding on the door, and they’ll shut up if they know what’s good for them) until he finally eases it out. Wraps the deformed slug in another of the wipes and shoves it in the rucksack, as he’s guessing the Starbucks minions don’t want that in their garbage. Neither, frankly, does he.

Frank yells at the door-pounder that it’ll be a minute, and sticks himself awkwardly back together as best he can. He’ll probably need to stitch or staple it, but he’s got more stuff at home, and he’s hoping Karen will be out late. She went over to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah with the Liebermans. They invited Frank too, of course; it’s hard to forget that he literally sacrificed himself to a couple of psychos to save them, and his stint as the family’s weird violent guardian angel/replacement dad and husband is still something that catches him in the vulnerable place he keeps only for his lost family and for Karen. He wants to see them, wants to see Sarah, but it just hasn’t seemed like the right time to walk back in. They’ve got their lives back. He doesn’t know if he fits.

Having finished his makeshift surgery, Frank sticks one more butterfly bandage into place, washes his hands, shoves it all back in the backpack, and emerges to glare terrifyingly at the hipster who has been fighting him for custody of the lavatory. The guy shrinks (good move, man-bun) and apologizes, which Frank ignores. He strides back into the store, all dim and Christmasy and whatever, and grabs his coffee off the table, finishes it, and tosses it into the bin. It’s 8:54, the baristas are sweeping and mopping up and putting the chairs on the tables, and he nods at them too. “Night.”

It’s even colder by the time he emerges, the raw wind slapping at his cheeks, and he wonders if he wants to walk the rest of the way back to Karen’s place, or if he’ll just get the damn subway. Not the weirdest sight New York has ever seen down there at this hour, but he does still have a lot of guns in his bag, and he doesn’t want some nosy-ass transport cop deciding he wants to make quota for the night. Frank decides to walk.

It’s about twenty minutes until he turns into the street where he has spent the overwhelming majority of the past four months, to the point where both of them have implicitly acknowledged that it’s not likely he’s going to move out. Frank has his own cubby in the bathroom, buys half the groceries, takes his turn on the chores, likes to make dinner for Karen sometimes when she gets home from work, and he knows damn well that he doesn’t want to live anywhere else. Or if he did, only if she was there. He needs her, needs her around, needs her there, whatever unspoken relationship they have, where they live together and sleep together and otherwise act like a couple in private, but still have not talked about it or taken it public or acknowledged it between themselves, let alone anyone else. Of course Frank is not letting any asshole get within sniffing distance of Karen again (it’s a hard job – she somehow attracts as much shit as he does), but it’s more than that. They belong together. Life, whatever it is for him now, for them, is just right when they are, no matter what else is going on.

To his surprise, Frank sees a light under the apartment door when he steps up into the hall, and he hurries to the end, then pauses, in case it’s someone in there who shouldn’t be. He takes a quick grip on his pistol, nudging at the knob, but it hasn’t been forced. When he opens it cautiously, he sees Karen’s bag and heels scattered on the floor; the light is coming from the bathroom. She’s home earlier than he expected. Shit.

“Karen?” He shuts the door and drops his rucksack with a clunk. “Karen, you here?”

She doesn’t answer, but he hears a weird sound from the bathroom, like a combination cough and sob and sigh, and it sends a sharp spike of panic through his bloodstream, the fear that she might have been badly hurt. He practically runs down the hall and finds her sitting on the edge of the bathtub, in dress and stocking feet, holding something in her hand. It takes him a few more seconds after that to realize that it’s a used pregnancy test.

All the blood drains from Frank’s head at top speed. He feels almost dizzy, faint, like the world has fallen out from under him and he has no idea how to stand upright, as if he half-wants to turn tail and run out of here as fast as he goddamn can. His tongue locks to the roof of his mouth and he puts a hand out for support, trying to muster up words, anything, but nothing is there. Why is this – how is this even happening? Karen’s on the pill, right? She’s on the pill, and they’ve only been sort-of-together for four months. Oh Jesus. Maria got pregnant with Lisa after three, told Frank that he could leave if he wanted but she was keeping it, and he proposed marriage that same day. He is obviously willing to do the same again if necessary, but if history is repeating itself – Jesus. Jesus, no. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, no. Not the same cycle to the same violent end. He can’t. He will lose his entire mind, and this time, there will be no chance of ever getting it back.

“Karen?” His voice sounds strange and foreign to his own ears. “Karen, what the hell is…”

“I’m…” Karen takes a breath. He thinks, he’s certain what she’s going to say next, and he can’t prepare himself for it, and then it isn’t it. “I’m not,” she says, after another moment. “I’m not pregnant. If you were wondering.”

It’s pretty clear that Frank was indeed goddamn wondering, was in fact just about to have a heart attack over wondering, and he doesn’t know if this is better or worse to hear. On one hand, there is a burning, unbearable, savage relief, that they’ve escaped the trap, whatever cruel joke fate was just planning to set for them. On the other –

“Not,” he says, hoarse and gravelly, as if to confirm it. “Okay. There some reason you thought you were?”

Karen is too distressed to pay much attention to him, his dirty and disheveled state, and rocks back and forth on the bathtub rim. “I was taking my placebos,” she says, after a pause. “You know, the cycle of pills end, you take the placebos and have a period, and that was supposed to happen three days ago. But I didn’t, and I realized that there was at least one day where I forgot, and I… well, I haven’t been feeling that good recently, and tonight I was over there and I just… I didn’t… I couldn’t do it, and…”

She trails off, gripping her knees, as Frank remains frozen in the doorway. He has no idea what to say, this is far from his area of expertise, but he’s still too numb to interrupt. “So what?” he says at last. “You thought you should check?”

“Yeah. I…” Karen wets her lips. “There’s been a lot of stress recently, I suppose it could be like that. Sometimes I skip, you know, I’m not totally regular. I just… when I figure I’m going to start, I take a bunch of ibuprofen, just so I know I won’t be in pain. I don’t care about dosages or whatever. Take three every few hours. That way it doesn’t hurt. But it also means I didn’t notice right away, and…”

Frank flinches, not for any detailed description of female monthly habits (he was married, he’s not a caveman, and he definitely isn’t squeamish at the sight of blood) but just at the idea of it being that way for her. Take as much medicine as you can to make sure it doesn’t hurt, don’t give a shit, just want it to go away. Not only talking about cramps, there, and he knows Karen well enough to be sure. He runs a hand over his close-cropped hair, trying to think of something useful to say, but still can’t come up with it. He glances involuntarily at the test – it does appear to be negative, like she said, not that he thought she was lying to him – but part of him knows these things aren’t always accurate, especially very early. Maybe the question isn’t settled. Maybe the trap wasn’t escaped.

“Anyway,” Karen says, inhaling a shaky breath. “I really wasn’t feeling good, and Sarah told me to go home and get some sleep, and I had to… just on the way home, I… thought of it and I had to know right away. So I stopped off and got this – ” she waves the stick – “and. Yeah. I didn’t know you were going to be out tonight.”

Frank thinks unwillingly of both of them, probably in goddamn Duane Reades less than a mile apart, buying medical supplies for different reasons, terrified of the other finding out. He still hasn’t gotten his breath back, and doesn’t know if he will. At last, he perches on the toilet lid, still dressed in his grimy blacks, hesitant of reaching for her hand. There is still blood beneath his fingernails. Karen still looks close to tears, and he wants to comfort her, but he isn’t sure what she wants to hear. They’ve obviously never discussed the subject of children, not when they haven’t even talked about their relationship as a real and formal thing, as if acknowledging it and embracing it will set up the universe to kick it out from under them. Neither of them can really trust that it will be able to avoid the temptation. But at last Frank says, “You probably didn’t want – I mean, we’ve got enough going on right now, huh? It’s a good thing, right? Good thing.”

He mostly agrees with this, but it still scrapes his throat, and Karen lifts her head, blonde tendrils of hair falling loose from her bun. There’s another long pause, then she says, not looking at him, “No. I can’t say I really did want it. I can’t be – I don’t know that I could be the right kind of mother, I don’t… it’s complicated. If it was some other guy that I’d been with for just a couple months and this happened and it was positive, I would have – I would have made arrangements, and I can’t be blamed for that.”

No, Frank thinks, no, she can’t. He’s obviously the last person in the world who has any moral standing to prattle about the sanctity of life, and a woman has the God-given right to make her own choices about her own body. He isn’t going to open his fat mouth and step on a landmine. But it’s true that he feels something else, something visceral and tender and terrible, about the idea if it had been his. Would Karen have even told him, if he hadn’t gotten home now? Even if – or especially if – it was positive? Would she just make the arrangements, and live with the unbearable knowledge of what she’d done to him for a third time, even if it was nowhere close to being an actual kid? Jesus. Jesus.

“Fuck,” Frank says at last, since there’s still nothing else he’s coming up with, and has the feeling he shouldn’t sit in total stone silence forever. “Karen.”

“I’m sorry.” She rocks back and forth again, as he reaches out involuntarily to grab her arm. “But the thing is… Frank… I still feel that way, and I did, and I do… but there was also part of me that wouldn’t have minded if it was. I just – I thought about it, and you, and us, and some kind of real family… I wanted that. It scared me, but I wanted it, even with all the good reasons I shouldn’t. I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s enough for it. I’m sorry.”

“Hey. Karen.” He grips her arm tighter. “You don’t have to be sorry, all right? You do not have to be sorry. You don’t owe me goddamn anything, just because you think I want it. Especially not this. Jesus. I’m sorry you’ve been feeling shitty. I didn’t – I’m sorry.”

Karen looks at him, her eyes swimming in tears, but they don’t quite fall. There is a clear irony, painfully visible to both of them, that they have been living together for four months, they’re both messes in the bathroom tonight, and they don’t even really know all the reasons why. She takes him in, and a faint frown creases her brows. “Where’ve you been?”

“I’ve been…” Frank shifts his weight. “I had an errand to run.”

“The kind of errand you usually have to run?” Karen’s voice is sharp, and she pulls her arm out abruptly from his touch. “I thought you were done with that.”

“I’m done with some parts of it, yeah. But as for others – ”

“Goddamn it, Frank.” She stands up abruptly; they’re almost the same height, and she stares him cold and level in the eye. “Who did you kill tonight?”

“A bunch of fuckin’ pedophiles, that’s who!” His voice rises, despite his efforts to keep it down. “A bunch of disgusting abusive scumbags, Karen, that’s who! People hurting kids, hurting their own kids, in some cases! You gonna stand there and tell me they deserved a fair trial and a process of law and twenty years in special protective custody? Huh?”

Karen slaps her hand down on the bathroom counter, face white, except for the hectic spots of color burning in her cheeks. She doesn’t immediately say it was wrong; she can’t, and she likewise knows him too well to even bother. Finally she says, “And you too didn’t say anything.”

“It works better for us if we don’t.” Frank whirls on his heel. “Is that really what you want? Want to know every time I go out to put a bullet in some punk-ass piece of shit? Am I supposed to ask permission, fill out a goddamn request form for each one? If you want me to just move out and find my own place, you could say so, you could fuckin’ say so. Don’t feel like you have to keep me around if you still can’t stand who I am!”

“And see!” Karen takes another step, eyes flashing. “That’s part of the problem, Frank. Every time, every goddamn time, you go straight for that, go straight for that bullshit, you go straight for suggesting that you leave and I never see you again. You asshole, you goddamn asshole, why do you still keep doing that? What, do you think I’ve changed my mind overnight, that I know something about you that I didn’t know yesterday? You have to keep testing me, making sure I don’t suddenly hate you, or – I don’t know what, I don’t fucking know what? You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch.”

With that, she reaches out and shoves him hard in the chest with both hands, as Frank, surprised, utters a grunt and takes a few steps backward. She’s also caught him close to his bullet wound, and he winces, having the (accurate) feeling that she’ll be even angrier if she finds out about that. He feels like he has to fight back somehow, defend himself; he is, to say the least, not used to taking blows without retaliation. But he can’t lash out at her too much, not when she’s Karen, not when she’s right, not when he knows it. There is a crackling silence as they stare at each other, nose to nose. Then Karen says, “You want to leave, you can leave. But that is your fucking choice. Don’t make it about me.”

Frank opens his mouth heatedly, discovers that he has no good answer, and snaps it shut. He and Maria had a few blazing arguments in their time – she had an Italian temper on her, and he wasn’t joking when he told Karen back in the diner that she could be ruthless, rip his heart out and stomp on it. He also usually came out on the losing end of those scuffles, coincidentally. Any sane man knows it’s a chump’s game to fight with the woman you love, but that doesn’t mean he’s still just going to sit here and not even try to –

(Oh God.)

(He knew it, he knows it, he knows it every time he looks at her, but still.)

Karen continues to stare icily at him for several more moments, until he blows out a breath and backs down, feels like a wolf in the pack rolling over to expose his belly to the alpha, calling off the fight. “I’m sorry,” he says again, almost inaudibly. Not for doing it, of course, but for not telling her. “Sorry I was a dick.”

Karen gives him a weary, affectionate, exasperated look, as if to say that at this point in his early-forty-some years, Frank Castle could, unfortunately, hardly be anything less. She raises both hands to her head, shakes it, and turns away, tossing the pregnancy test in the trash as if to banish its existence from both of their memories. Not looking around at him, she says, “The Liebermans were hoping you’d come tonight. Sarah and Leo especially.”

Frank cringes. “Maybe you can go back tomorrow instead, huh?”

Karen gives him a searing look, as if to say that she was literally just talking about him, don’t change the subject, Frank. She steps to the sink and runs the water, washes her makeup off, as he continues to shirk there in the doorway like the useless fuck he is. At last he says gruffly, “You feelin’ any better?”

“I think it’s stress. I haven’t really been sleeping.” Karen pulls out a wet wipe and sponges off the remains of her mascara. “I just… Frank, I… no, I’m not pregnant this time, thank God, but if this keeps up, us two, together, there could be some other time when I am. I can look into something longer-term than the pill, something I don’t have to remember to take at the same time every day, since you know. Our lives can be dumb that way. If you wanted.”

Frank tries to answer, once more comes up short, and looks at her wordlessly instead. There is part of him that wants to assure her that she can do whatever she wants, she doesn’t have to ask him for permission. Another part of him can see – not clearly, not entirely, but still – some ghost of whatever she did, a blonde little girl with Karen’s eyes and hopefully her nose as well, a little girl running, laughing, calling him Daddy. The word he thought was burned and buried for good, the word that still echoes and haunts him in his dreams. Part of him feels that now that Lisa and Frankie are asleep forever in that cemetery in those child-sized coffins, Lisa’s bedecked with Disney princesses and Frankie’s with Mets gear and a United States Marine Corps teddy bear, no one ever gets to say it again. The other part – perhaps all of him, and then some – would offer his entire soul for the whisper of a chance.

“You can think about it,” Karen says, seeing his dumbstruck expression over her shoulder in the mirror. “I just… thought I would let you know.”

She straightens up, towels her face off, and turns to go past him, out of the bathroom, but bumps up against his wounded side, and he doesn’t bite his grunt fast enough. Karen stares at him narrowly, then steps back and folds her arms. “Take off your sweatshirt.”

“I’m fine, Karen, honest, it’s not a – ”

“Take. Off. Your. Sweatshirt.”

Frank thinks just then that if they ever do end up as parents, she’s got the maternal death voice down, and bites his tongue smartly on future remarks. He awkwardly tugs it off, notices that there’s some blood spotted on the bandages, and hastens to reassure her, “One of ‘em had some shitty .38, it’s not a big – ”

Seeing the thunderous expression on her face, he once more shuts up on the double, and she regards it without speaking. Then she blows out a long, ragged breath. “Jesus Christ, Frank.”

“It’s not bad.”

“I don’t care if it’s bad or not. Were you planning to tell me you got shot?”

“I was…” Frank thinks that the truth will hang him, and he doesn’t lie, but there you have it. “All right, probably not.”

“Christ.” Karen rubs at her temples. “What kind of relationship is this? We live together, we share a bed, Foggy’s eye twitches every time he tries to ask about my ‘boyfriend’ without saying the word, even Matt knows you’re here now – and we can’t tell each other anything? How did that happen to us, Frank? We used to be the only people who told each other the truth. We have some idea, we always do, but – what? We’re too scared for more?”

“Maybe.” Frank draws in his breath with a hiss as Karen’s fingers brush over the hole. “I guess I just thought you were happier if you didn’t have the details.”

“It’s not like I suddenly expected you to become an altar boy. Besides, I’ve got one guilt-ridden Catholic opposed to murder in my life, that’s all I need.” Karen’s voice is wry. “But if this – if us – means anything, then… maybe we’re going to have to talk about it.”

Frank tries to think how to answer that, and once more comes up with nothing. Not his style, to fire blanks. This time, however, he is saved from the necessity of an immediate reply by his phone buzzing in his back pocket, which is a bit of a surprise. It’s not like there’s a long list of people liable to call him up for a chat, and he pulls it out, sees it’s a restricted number, and debates a moment before swiping the screen. He grunts, “Yeah?”

“Castle, you son of a bitch.”

He grins then, despite himself. “Evening to you too, Madani. You find the little present I left for you?”

“Cut your shit, Frank. Of course I found it, that’s why I’m calling you.” Dinah sounds exasperated, which he supposes he can’t blame her for, entirely. “You have anything else you want to tell me?”

“Voluntarily incriminate myself to a government official? Yeah, I’ll pass. You’ll notice I left all the computer systems intact. You get whatever poor bastard’s job it is to look through that, see if there’s anyone else in the ring. I might even leave those collars for you.”

“You’re such a dick.” Madani definitely sounds mad, but – and it might be Frank’s imagination, but still – almost like she’s trying a little too hard. Like she knows it’s the expected response to discovering what is, no matter how good its motives, still a mass crime scene with multiple casualties, especially when this was supposed to be DHS’s hunting dog from the start. “You don’t think that the rest of them aren’t going to immediately erase their tracks and go underground, now that the main ringleaders just got executed? Change their names, flee the country, scrub their assets? You just made this operation months longer, however much more time and money it takes to track the others down, when – ”

“You’ve got the smart people, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Otherwise just tell me their names, once you find them, and I’ll take care of the rest. Be faster.”

“Jesus Christ, Frank. I really should arrest you.”

He snorts. “Yeah. You’re welcome to try. How’s your dad?”

There’s a pause, both of them recalling that Dr. Hamid Madani saved his life a while back, and Dinah would probably strangle him through the phone if she could reach. Then she spits, “Fine. How’s Karen?”

Frank wonders if that’s something Homeland knows, been keeping tabs on them somehow, or just something she guessed. “Fine,” he says. “But you jackasses mind your business. I see any kind of tail, any agent trying to ask her a couple casual questions, you’ll wish you didn’t. You’ve been hunting those shitheads for months. How about a thank you, huh?”

There’s a long, loathing pause. Then Madani says quietly, “I don’t regret they’re gone, no. But that doesn’t mean you have a blank check to do it again. This will not go on forever, you can trust me on that. Night, Frank.”

“Night, Dinah.” He doesn’t know if she hears it, because the line clicks dead almost immediately, but he takes the phone away from his ear and sees Karen staring at him with one eyebrow almost touching her hair. He puts it in his pocket and says, “Just our friend in the government. Wanted to check in on my handiwork.”

“I didn’t know you had friends in the government.” Karen clearly can’t resist the riposte, even as she knows well enough who he means. “And it was evidently spectacular, if she’s calling you right away. Damn it, Frank.”

Frank takes that stoically, aware he deserves it, to say the least. Karen makes another small sound of distress as she looks at his side. “Maybe we should go to Metro-General.”

“Yeah, no, I’m not sitting in the ER for hours with a bunch of crackheads.” Frank can’t see that going well, though he is aware that rudimentary self-surgery with unsanitized, off-the-shelf tools could be a recipe for a nice little case of sepsis. Under her withering stare, however, he amends, “Tomorrow. We can go in tomorrow morning. Okay?”

“Okay.” Karen blows out a breath. It’s plain that she is still ferociously angry at him, but she bites her lip. “God. I’m not going to ask you to tell me everything you do, but if you come home with bullet holes in you, is it too much to explain that?”

“No. Sorry.” Frank is eager to smooth things over, and he trails after her into the bedroom as she steps in, shuts the curtains, and briskly starts to undress. It is not suggestive in any way, just the way it is when you’ve lived together a while and you don’t care if the other person sees you in your baggy sweats or naked or haggard or otherwise as a mess. Nonetheless, Frank watches her, can never be unaware of her, as she strips off the dress and rolls down her pantyhose, digs around for her pajamas in her bra and underwear. He awkwardly clears his throat. “You want me to sleep on the couch tonight?”

Karen snaps off her bra, grabs her pajama top, and pulls it on. With it halfway over her head, she gives him a tolerantly irritated look, as if to ask when she’s ever really, really wanted him to go. There was definitely that one time with Grotto, Frank thinks, but if he is trying to get out of the doghouse, he probably should not mention when he was shooting around (if not at) her and terrifying her. Finally she says, “No.”

Frank is relieved, despite himself, and wisely decides not to say anything else that could prejudice his position. He digs around for his own pajamas and changes, then waits until Karen has gotten into bed before climbing in next to her. They pull the covers up. There’s a thick duvet on, since it’s winter, and Karen has some pretty quilt, and piles of pillows. Frank settles down with a long sigh, as he still does not quite trust this comfort, sleeps with a loaded Magnum in the bedside drawer, and they lie there, staring at the ceiling, until Karen switches the lamp off. There are another few minutes of silence, until Frank fumbles out, finds her hand where it lies on the mattress, and squeezes hard.

Karen hesitates, then squeezes back, and they edge somewhat closer together, until their shoulders nestle. They don’t do anything else – she’s angry, and he’s wounded, and both of them have a sense that it might be unwise to challenge fate tonight, given what just happened. But she settles down on his shoulder, and Frank feels his heart shake a little, and sleeps.

He’s very stiff the next morning, and the wound has a bit of a funky smell when he peels the bandage off to check, and it doesn’t take much badgering by Karen to get him to agree to go down and get it looked over at the hospital. It always feels like a crapshoot giving Pete Castiglione’s ID to people, especially since they know the Punisher isn’t dead (or do they think that again? Frank loses track of how many times he’s supposed to have died) but he gets properly cleaned and stitched up, started on a course of antibiotics, and assured he’ll probably be fine. Not that he doubted that, or needed a nurse to tell him, but whatever.

It’s midday, cold and grey, when Frank emerges from the hospital with his prescription in hand (Duane Reade, here he comes again, no doubt) and there are a few snowflakes swirling in the air, though they haven’t settled. There are Christmas tree stands on the sidewalk, and carts with hot chestnuts and cocoa and popcorn, people carrying shiny department-store bags, and he slows down a few paces, despite himself. Christmas was fun when you had kids, or at least when he was home for it. He spent too many of the Christmases of Lisa and Frankie’s ultimately-too short lives calling on Skype from a tent in the desert, Kandahar or Fallujah or wherever, nine and a half hours ahead of them, while they unwrapped presents and showed them to the camera. Jesus, what he wouldn’t give to have even one of those back.

Frank breathes hard, closing his eyes, letting the human tide pass him to either side. The memory is painful – it couldn’t be otherwise – but for the first time in he doesn’t know how long, it doesn’t immediately, instinctively drive him to rage and violence. Everyone who’s ever lost someone, or just doesn’t get along with their family, dreads this time of year. Karen went to Thanksgiving dinner with Foggy, Marci, and Matt, but Frank spent it alone, as goddamn usual. Didn’t think it was the greatest idea to turn up there, didn’t want to ruin it for her. He was relieved when the Liebermans extended the Hanukkah invite, if nothing else because that it spared him trying to think how to spend the time instead. Now, though. He doesn’t know.

Frank thinks he might drop in on the group later – he’s been trying to do that every so often, try to be accountable somehow, and if nothing else, he probably owes Curtis the chance to once more chew him out for being an asshole. Curtis, though, he’ll understand, at the end of the day. He’ll be pissed, but he’ll understand. He always does.

After a moment, Frank starts to walk again, pulling up his hood and shoving his hands in his pockets. Again, however fleetingly, he can see that little blonde girl running ahead of him, excited, looking back at him to follow her. If she was real, if she was here, he doesn’t think he’d ever let her out of his goddamn sight, not for an instant. Fuck all those other wars, all those shitholes in the dark. He would not ever want to be anywhere but there, but here.

He turns in the prescription, then gets home and cleans up the place, and in mid-afternoon, changes and shaves and puts on something at least a little nice. When Karen gets home from work, she’s surprised to see him waiting with his coat on and a bottle of wine in hand. “Are we – ” She eyes him up and down, pleased but wary. “Are we going somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Frank says. “We’re going over to the Liebermans.”

Karen pauses, then looks down, biting a smile, almost as if she’s not going to let him see that, not yet. She goes into their bedroom, changes out of her work clothes and freshens up, then emerges. “Okay,” she says, almost shyly. “Okay.”

They get into Karen’s car and drive out to Brooklyn, turn into the neighborhood and find somewhere to park on the street. They get out and head up the steps, and before he knocks, Frank suddenly freezes. He probably shouldn’t be back here. Who knows if someone followed them. What if it all happens again, somehow, and this time he can’t –

Karen reaches out and squeezes his hand. Then she nods at the door. “C’mon.”

Frank heaves a breath – Jesus Christ, he wasn’t that nervous jumping out a goddamn C-130 for the first time, it’s just a door, it’s just a house in the suburbs, he’s been here plenty – and rings the bell.

There’s a pause. Then he hears footsteps, the chain clicks back, and Sarah Lieberman opens the door. The smell of something good wafts out after her, and she’s wearing an apron, but as her eyes lock on him, it all seems to fade. She blinks hard, then presses a hand to her mouth. Finally she says croakily, “Frank?”

“Hey. Sarah.” Frank holds out the wine bottle like a peace offering. “We – felt bad that Karen had to leave early last night, and we were hoping – ”

Whatever else he’s going to say is lost as Sarah hugs him so hard that his ribs creak. She’s a small woman, and he’s a very solidly built man, but he drops the wine bottle on the doormat (fortunately it doesn’t break) and Karen darts in to pick it up. Frank wants to tell Sarah to go easy, he still does have a .38 hole in his side, but he doesn’t. Instead, he hugs her back, and there’s something for half an instant – unmanifest, unspoken – that he, that both of them somehow understand. Sarah is happy rebuilding her life with David, and Frank of course is utterly devoted to Karen, and neither of them want anything different. But maybe in some other world where David did die, and Karen was fucking sensible enough to stay far away from Frank (he still doesn’t know why she sticks around, not entirely, but no good can come of asking), maybe it would have been this. Maybe Frank and Sarah would have ended up somewhere, somehow, as part of their own little makeshift family. You never know.

After another moment, Sarah lets go of him, discreetly wiping her eyes, and leans up to kiss his cheek. “We’re – ” She stops, and has to start again. “We’re really glad you’re here.”

Frank grins crookedly at her, and steps into the warm house. Heads down the hall into the dining room as Zach and Leo jump to their feet in surprise, and Leo races to hug him like she wants to win an Olympic medal. Frank grunts. “Easy, sweetheart.”

She ignores him, which probably he deserves, and hugs a moment more before letting go, and he tousles her hair and grins at her. Zach is a little more cautious, but at least the kid seems to have gotten over his wannabe-tough-guy shtick after being kidnapped by some people a lot worse than anything he could have come up with. He coughs. “Hi, Pete.”

“Hey, kid.” Frank doesn’t bother correcting him, just as David emerges from the kitchen, carrying a glistening golden-brown challah. Upon sight of their unexpected visitor, he doesn’t drop it, but it’s close, and Frank clears his throat. “Happy Hanukkah.”

David recovers himself, puts the challah on the table and covers it, then stares at Frank. After a long pause he says, “Thanks, asshole.”

They look at each other for another long moment, then step toward each other, do the bro-shake, and clap each other clumsily on the shoulder. David half-hugs him, and Frank hugs him back, even as he has a feeling that he’s probably in for a roast, overtly or otherwise, for at least the first half of the night, and definitely after the kids go to bed. They step apart as Sarah and Karen enter the dining room, David recalls his duties as a host and offers to pour the wine, and Zach offers to get Frank an extra yarmulke. He agrees, and sits down, and thinks that he had a dream like this once, a nightmare. It was his family, Maria and the kids, and David’s, and it was Thanksgiving, at least until the armed men stormed in. Half of him can’t help looking for them now. It probably will never stop.

Tonight, however, they aren’t there. Tonight there’s company, and food, and the second candle in the menorah. Tonight the world goes on, and spins softly into the darkness of a winter night and toward the beginning of tomorrow, and Frank Castle, somehow, goes too.

#netflix punisher #the punisher #kastle #kastle ff #frank castle

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randoreviews · 4 years

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THE PAUL FINEBAUM SHOW

A lot of you probably don’t know this show, because it airs (every weekday afternoon) on The SEC Network, an ESPN channel. SEC stands for Southeastern Conference, which is, yes, in the South and is a Division 1 collegiate sports conference. I watch the show because I am a college football nut and enjoy the regional smack talk. Needless to say, it has gotten even more interesting in the Time of Covid... Paul sits on his swivel chair behind his big, big desk. It’s summertime and he has a deep, cinnamon-raisiny tan, mostly shown on his bald head. He wears black-rimmed glasses, the rectangular kind. Sometimes rimless glasses. He looks in his suit and tie like he weighs maybe one hundred and forty pounds. Yes, he is a nerd, but also has an air of respectful concern, like any good shrink. His knowledge of the history and inner workings (i.e. bureaucracy) of the Southeastern Conference... is vast. (He is an alum of The University of Tennessee.) “Hello. Good afternoon. I hope all of you are having a good day out there, in this... what is it, let’s see, Tuesday the 6th of August. We have a lot to get to today. We’ll be talking with the athletic director at Vanderbilt, Mark Chad, at twenty past the hour, and see what he thinks about this college football season that, I hate to say, folks, now don’t throw a shoe at me, may just go up in smoke. That may just be the hard truth of it. We’ll see what Mr. Chad thinks, always a very astute man with many keen observations that I really really appreciate. Oh, I see we already got the tweets rolling in.” (A successive stream of tweets is shown on the bottom of the screen, usually along the lines of, “The Tide r guna rooolll the Dawgs on Saturday and make those puppies whimper!!!! #rolltide.”) “We’re glad you can join us. We’re also gonna talk a little bit about the Florida-Florida State game being cancelled in the wake of all non-conference games being nixed. See how you all are dealing with that. We also have another very special guest set to join us at 3 p.m., one of my personal favorites, all-time great Ole Miss running back, Mr. “Tricky” Bo Nicky, he’ll be telling us about his new biography, “Look Out, Nicky!: My Life as a Running Back.” Can’t wait to read that. Just a very special, special human being. I still remember his run against Mississippi State, down four with four seconds left, from his own goal line. A hundred-and-one yard scamper, breaking the hearts of those poor old MSU fans. I was watching it on my good satellite TV with my then-girlfriend, now-wife, Shelly. I remember she told me, Paul, you better settle down or you’re liable to lose your hair! And well, sure enough, here we are. But let’s not waste any more time and let’s open the phone lines up for all our callers today, and see how all of you are doing out there today, in these ever so peculiar of times... Chip from Chattanooga, what’s on your mind?” “Hullo, Pawl, how are you today?” “I’m doing pretty well, Chip, how about you?” “Weyl, Pawl, I guess I can’t complayn too much now, can I? Besides a fact ma wife left me going on four years ago now on account of my love of Jack and Mr. Pibb. Ma kids don’t want nothin to do with me over, I don’t know why, maybe scuz I don’t like wearing pants. I ain’t French. And now alls I had to look forwards to was my Vols on TV this fall and now they say they cancelling the season? No Rocky Top?? All for some measly, oh, GLOBAL PANDEMIC. Blah blah blah. Now I’m a Christian man, Pawl, and that just ain’t right! That don’t make no sense to me.” “Chip, I... I hear what you’re saying...” “That’s just a hill of beans and a stack a used Tiddlywinks, Pawl. Coronavirus my butt! Ain’t nothing but the common cold, that’s all it is.” “Well, Chip, I hear what you’re saying. Believe me, I hear you. But this Coronavirus is really nothing to play around with. It’s far more mysterious and lethal than the common cold, and scientists don’t really have much of a grasp on it yet. Would bringing large teams of young men, who are living on a campus, not exactly the same thing as a bubble, together... would that really be the best idea right now?” “Oh, shutcher butt, Pawl! You just shutcher butt! Yer talkin like a damn Yankee is what you’re doin! Is Fauci there with you!? Did he put you up to this?! Okay, okay, calm down, Chippo, calm down, just another little sip o Pibb to calm these nerves here. I’m sorry, Pawl, like I said, I’m a Christian man and I don’t like to get to hollerin, unless theys going to cancel the Vols or there’s a black person in my yard.” “Oookay, Chip. Appreciate the call. Gonna have to let you go. This certainly is a strange time we’re all living in, and it’s a lot of stress for all of us. Who’s up next? Wendy in Biloxi, how are you today, Wendy?” “Well heello, Pawl, heeow are yeeou. I just want to say, I was theyer with ma husband at that Ole Miss-Missippi State gayme when old Tricky Bo Nicky went on that ruun...” “Oh, were you actually? That’s wonderful.” “And yes, Pawl, me and ma husband were there and I member beecause, listen to this, I member like it was yesterday beeccause a had onea them big pretzels in ma hand, halfa one -- the other half a had eatened -- and when old Bo Nicky went on that run a stood up with ma arms in the air and, wouldn’tcha know someone behind me ate the rest of the pretzel. But I wudn’t even mad though, Pawl! That’s how happy I was, I wudn’t even mad!” “Uh, ha! My, that’s a wonderful memory, Wendy. What a wonderful memory. Hopefully you’ve been able to enjoy more pretzels since then, Wendy.” “Oh I have, Pawl, I have. Many many more. All while thinking of old Bo Nickys.” “Of course, of course. That’s... is that really the whole call though? Is that all you had to say?” “Well we all know Biden and Fauci created this Covid thing in a secret lab in Carolina in 2016 after our beloved Prezeedent won the election. And we all know the black man has it out for the white man, and obviously that’s wha we had to enslave them for four hundred years...” (Paul starts hacking.) “Aha-aha-hem! Ah! Ach!... Hello, Wendy, are you still there? We seem to have lost Wendy. Couldn’t make out the last couple things she was trying to say. I know I personally will think of that story the next time I have a giant pretzel, which I must say I do enjoy quite a bit. Let’s take one more call before we have to go to our first commercial break of this afternoon, Squirrel from Tuscaloosa, it says here from my producer, ‘Boiled frogs... three ex-wives... Roll Tide.’ Squirrel, haven’t heard from you since yesterday, how are you today?” “I teeell you how I am, Pau! I just teeell you! They talkinbout no college football season, no college football season, and so what, Pau, so what, they gon make me watch all these LSU games from last year over n over N OVER again? LSU gonna be champs forever now? A gotta see that Joe Burrow mister on TV every night never makin one mistake? NEVER MAKIN ONE! Now me personally, for my own physical health, I don’t worry about no Covid because I just like to hang out in my trailor by the river all day long, me and ma dog Skeeter, we just like to have a real easy time here, Pau. If Trump says it’s NBD, as these kids like to say, then it must be. When’s he ever lied? Didn’t he win You Wanna Be a Millionaire or somethin? What use does a fine fine man like that have for science then? Anyway, it’s still probably all made up, just like the Holocaust.” “Bottle toss, yes, what a fun activity! It’s been a while since I’ve done that.” “Whatreyoutalkinabout, Pau? I said Holocaust!” “Molotov... cocktail... yes, those are dangerous. I think I follow.” “No, you don’t, Pau. Now as a white man, I’m just plain tired of bein kicked around and mistreated and abused by one) the government and two) black people who live off the government and three) women. Specifically ma three ex-wives. Foul-mouthed hussies all of them. But if I’m being honest, that was the original attraction. NOW I HAVE AN EXTREMELY SMALL PENIS, PAU! I’M SCARED OF THINGS! I’M SCARED OF BLACK PEOPLE AND THEIR KING KONG DONGS! I FEEL VERY THREATENED! That make me a racist?” “Well yes...” “They live off the government, I’m livin in my trailor with Skeeter. Granted I never paid no taxes or nothin and I’m on welfare too, but that’s neither here not thar, Pau! Don’tchu judge me, you old little bitty egghead, in your suit and your stuffed shirt and yer tanny tan the tanny man. Oh, I’m Pau, I like to sunbathe and listen to the advice of scientists, oohh. That’s you, Pau! That’s you! Youwaknowhy Obama captured Osama Bid Laden? Cuz they’re the same person, Pau, he captured hisself and then became Prezeedent even though he was already Prezeedent. There’s no Holocaust! There’s no moon landing! Pence comes from the testicle of Jesus! And Trump’s gonna be Prezeedent for the next, minimum, fourteen years! And Joe Burrow can suck an egg, Pau! He can suck yor head! But let me just say, Pau, I’ll end on a positive note... cuz I’m a fair man and Skeeter’s lookin at me like he got enough consience for two of us... amidst all this chaos and larceny, make no mistake... the sun still shines on Tuscaloosa, Alabama.” Paul sits stunned for a second, very much a glazed-over look in his eye, then snaps out of it, saying, “All right, we are right up against the break. On the other side of it we’ll be talking with Vanderbilt AD Mark Chad on the upcoming -- or should I say imperiled -- college football season. Stick with us.”

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arcadeidea · 4 years

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Spacewar! [1962]

Spacewar is still the first video game. Not technically: the developers of Spacewar were already aware of a playable Tic Tac Toe implementation on the very computer they were working on, which by that point was already a more-than-decade-long tradition for computers, not to mention Tennis For Two [1958]. (For greater detail on this cascade of history, watch Ahoy's fantastic and dry documentary The First Video Game.) These prior works are only trivia, though, and false starts all of them. They're what you find if you look at the past not on its own terms but on ours, applying a rigorous schema of definition aspiring to the condition of a science, searching for something specific they couldn't have known they had. Tennis For Two is the only game of that protozoic era to be relevant or even known of to anyone in the field for the next several decades, and even then all that was required of it was the mere fact of its existence (its status as a trivia item) for the sake of a something so banal as a lawsuit. They are worthy of honorary mention, but a medium is not a prescription, it is a chain of tradition. Not only is Spacewar wholly original and something only achievable with a digital computer and not an attempt at transferring a real-life game, but more importantly and ironically, it did not exist in a vacuum.

Spacewar is not something you apply a definition to, Spacewar IS the definition. Although nothing so strident and bold and definitive was intended as it would be with later games, when it was taken as a prototypical guide by those who followed, that is what it functionally became. Not to be too precious and romantic and mythologize it ("First there was nothing, then there was Spacewar!"), not to be too essentialist about it ("Spacewar contains the seeds for all what followed"), not to use it to answer What Doth Games and fall right back into the checklisting trap — but we can read the game itself as a manifesto, a collection of precepts and assumptions, and one of the creators (JM Graetz) was even considerate enough to give us an itemized list of exactly what the MIT Tech Model Railroad Group hoped to achieve in making Spacewar:

1) It should demonstrate, that is, it should show off as many of the computer's resources as possible, and tax those resources to the limit; 2) Within a consistent framework, it should be interesting, which means every run should be different; 3) It should involve the onlooker in a pleasurable and active way — in short, it should be a game.

The expressed reason video games exist as a distinct artistic medium, as anything more than a shadowplay of traditional games and sports, is to show off the power of our computers. I use that word — power — and not the more prosaic and accurate "computer resources" that Graetz used for a reason. It's 1962, and it can not be put out from anyone's mind, viewer, player, or creator, that computers would be instrumental in a real Space War of the foreseeable future. Or even a terrestrial war, which was the sole practical purpose and reason for the existence and funding of computers up to this point in history (if we take pure mathematics for its own sake as "impractical.") It's a show of force, it could even be a threat if it were leveraged in a Cold War propagandistic context against those with weaker or nonexistent computers and not with the giddy, childish innocence that it was created and received with. Better to call the spirit "utopian frivolity," though. Self-proclaimed hackers brought not only Spacewar to the system, but the music of Bach and by extension his rosy vision of the divine and human. Perhaps these programmers may have had their imaginations circumscribed and imprinted with the hitherto military legacy of computing, not to mention American culture... but these eggheads messing around saw the potential of computers reaching far beyond that, towards a hi-tech Arcadia. There's much to admire there, but it carries the unmistakable stench of classical tragedy, and Spacewar serves as a testament of the damnation from within: not just that it is a window into an imagined future of nothing but war, but that its explicit priority is the poisonous ambition to simply use more and more resources, again endemic to American culture as much as it is to future game development culture.

Things like "crunch" weren't around yet, of course. Spacewar is sometimes casually attributed to Steve Russell as the lead or main developer, as in the current lede of its Wikipedia article. The original concept was borne of three-man bull sessions with Russell, but then the very first step towards practical implementation was taken by a fourth man. Russell then created a barebones prototype, including the ships and their ability to turn and thrust and shoot (and it is not mentioned, but presumably, to die.) In response to playtesting, he added background stars. After that point, it became stone soup. Other people in the Tech Model Railroad Club would have a bright idea — bespoke controllers, accurate background stars, freshly optimized ship-turning code, death animations, hyperspace warp, and the big one, the central gravity-well star — and then just implement it themselves. The end result is a game that's simple, but surprisingly polished and full-featured, especially compared to our image of early games as clunky, primitive, blocky things. It reminds one of the hagiographic myth of early-90s Id, a very small team of friends having as much fun making the game as they are playing it, all leaving their personal touch on the work. Steve Russell was not the auteur with a hand on the tiller and an eye on his vision, but one crucial member of the team. It's all very kumbaya, non-hierarchical, no pressure, if we take testimony about its development on face value and don't chuck it out as rose-tinted nostalgia.

This stands in contrast to the game, which is a fantasy of violent domination in competition, with a definite winner. We could unpack the implications of that more, and what it all means that the very first video game was of war, but, well, we'll have plenty of chances to in the future to say the least. Two opponents, precisely balanced and equal in a space ballet, identical in every way except for visually (the distinctive silhouettes of the needle and the wedge are a minor triumph in character design.) Hey, maybe there's some Tic Tac Toe influence there! Spacewar's idea of gaming is inherently multiplayer, and that makes sense. Solo games like pinball or Solitaire card games exist, but the large majority of games at this point that inform what we understand a game to be are all communal activities. The game even came with inviting options to modify the game's parameters to suit the player's preferences.

[I must confess now: other than maybe a couple minutes at a computer museum with a partner, and a few minutes in the middle of writing this awkwardly sharing a keyboard on a browser emulator with my dad, I don't think I've properly played this. I'm just a tourist. Is this an analysis of Spacewar or of JM Graetz's The Origin Of Spacewar? This is more of a programming note than anything about the game, but part of why I'm starting this project is because I've always been on the outside looking in when it comes to gaming. I've always loved reading about games more than playing them, and this writing and canon-exploring endeavor is a hope that I can fill in the gaps and to force me to form my own thoughts. And what's the point if I can't well play the game for myself? Unless I change my mind, I'll be largely avoiding multiplayer games whenever I possibly can, because not only can securing a Player 2 in these early non-online games be an awkward or high barrier to clear for me, and not only are many of them ephemeral, and/or hard to fix in place and get a read on, such as here where the intention is that every run is different because of the guile and fumbles of your human opponent even though the game blatantly remains static, but their basic legibility depends even more than usual on practiced skill that I just haven't personally built up.]

The game is inherently hostile to your continued existence, and both players are only empowered to make it even moreso. Movement is constant, although very slow so as to facilitate strategic marksmanship over spray-and-pray. It's not an anxious atmosphere though, the edge of threat and action is what keeps the player engaged, throws them into interaction and thought. The central star is the key that makes this dramatic and dangerous gameplay: it makes it impossible to stay still, and it serves as the passive threat of death, one that can't be defeated, only negotiated. The only other gameplay element to speak of is your human opponent, but the star serves as the personification of the game itself. It shares something in common with the roulette wheel, not in the randomization which is more in play with the Hyperspace Warp Hail Mary, not even in the gravitational pull, but in the way it stands as an emblem that ultimately, you're playing the game on the terms of the game-maker and at the mercy of physics. Maybe it's only a small philosophical leap from playing against the computer's game and a player to designing a game played against only the computer.

Spacewar exists already at the fruitful intersection of abstraction, simulation, and fiction that games will never escape. You don't get to brake, but instead have to apply reverse thrust, in a nod to simulating what space flight would really be like. But you can pivot freely without applying any thrust at all as though on a Lazy Susan, so that your nose is always pointing in the opposite direction of the thrust for quick visual clarity. Your bullets don't obey gravity like your ship does. These have their respective knowingly-silly technobabble explanations, papering over the gap between simulation and abstraction with fiction. War is its name and theme, but it's really more of a duel, boiling war down to a single dogfight. Space is its name and theme, but it's not empty and it's not infinite, it's a closed area smaller than a sheet of paper that wraps around at the edges and corners, which if I'm visualizing correctly, would resolve to a teardrop shape (which is then projected onto a rectangle, which is then projected onto a circle.) In each case, we are presented with a small slice of what we understand through the minimal text (the title) to represent an almost incomprehensibly bigger idea.

We easily understand its shorthand mostly through intertextuality. We only understand what we're looking at, and why we can regard war with frivolity, because of the pulpy science-fiction wrapper. The inspiration for the concept is explicitly cited as low-culture "genre fiction" for nerds like the seemingly endless procession of science-fiction B-movies through the movie theaters. Specifically singled out is the cheesy space opera book series The Skylark Of Space. The yearning for the combination, a Skylark Of Space special effect B-Movie, was exactly what produced the creative energy in the bull sessions to dream up the totally-unprecedented gameplay concept of Spacewar. That's right: the first original video game was genre trash born of frustrated aspirations of filmmaking. Doesn't get much more fitting an inauguration.

Spacewar spread like a folk song, not a commercial proposition. The determination was made that there was simply no consumer base, so the source was handed out to anyone who asked. Somehow or another, a fellow hacker would catch a look at Spacewar, then return to their own machine to recode it from scratch if it wasn't a PDP-1, and people would keep adding onto it themselves. That's a remarkable method of propagation that has its successors such as the Type-In game but it relies heavily on a baseline of common computer literacy that necessarily dies out as computers get both more widespread and infinitely less demanding on the user to learn how to program just to use it. I can't help but feel a twinge as Spacewar is cloned into Galaxy Game [1971], one of the first if not the first coin-op arcade video game. Money makes it ugly: Is it stealing when it was freely and casually distributed before?

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helenasfiction · 7 years

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Glasses

Westallen

Rated: Mature

12 year old Iris hates her new glasses, but adult Iris has a newfound appreciation for them. Inspired by this lovely gif:

Glasses.

12 year old Iris West kicked a rock as she walked with her dad back to their house from the car. That’s what the eye doctor told her dad at the appointment that she was taken out of school for. She should have never told her dad about the headaches and blurriness that kept creeping into her eyesight, even if she did get out of school early. But she did and now she has a pair of glasses sitting on her face, setting her up for even more nicknames. As if being constantly called Curly-Q wasn’t enough, glasses had to be added to the mix.

Joe West knocked on their front door and listened for noises inside their house. When he hears none, he smiles with pride as he unlocks the door to find Barry sitting at the kitchen table, doing his homework. Barry looked up from his homework to greet his foster dad when his eyes fell on Iris and her new glasses. “What’s with the glasses?” was the first words out of his mouth. Iris blushed at that and ducked her head. Joe put an arm around Iris’s shoulders.

“Iris needed glasses because of her eyesight. And she looks very lovely in them, doesn’t she?” Joe asked pointedly.

“Right!” Barry nodded vigorously, “She...I mean, you look very nice.”

Iris made a face and glared at Barry. “No, I don’t. Stop lying, Barry,” she said. Iris looked at her dad and Barry and shook her head, “I’m going upstairs to do my homework.”

Iris heard a knock on her room an hour later. “Come in, I guess,” said Iris. Barry stepped into her room and closed the door.

“So….glasses, huh?” Barry said swinging his arms.

“Yup, glasses,” Iris said.

“You know, they don’t look bad.”

“Yes they do,” Iris took the glasses off and placed them on her desk, “And now I’ve given people one more nickname to call me.”

“Well, it’s not like they’re being mean about it. At least you’re not being called ‘teacher’s pet’ or ‘egghead.’”

Iris nodded her head thoughtfully, “True….”

“And besides, you really do look nice in them. The glasses, I mean.”

Iris found herself pouting, “You really mean it, Barry?” “Of course!” Barry sat on her bed, “They make you look smart and cute. Not that you’re not already smart and cute…!”

Iris held up her hand, “I get it, Barry.”

“Good!” He then picked up her glasses and placed them on her face. “There,” he said, “You look great.”

“Do I look ‘lovely’ like Dad said?” Iris asked, laughing. Barry laughed with her, but he couldn’t help but but think she was lovely, in every way.

Present day

Iris took her glasses off to rub her eyes. This article will be the death of her! She should have never taken this assignment. Sports were Linda’s thing, other than hockey and some baseball with her dad, she never really paid much attention to sports, especially football (which this article was about). Linda owed her big time for this, like a shopping trip for new shoes, big. She replaced the glasses on her face and continued the article. Soon she hear the familiar ‘whoosh’ that let her know that Barry was done patrolling the city and had entered their shared apartment.

“Hey, Iris,” said Barry before kissing her on the cheek. This was her life now.

“How was patrolling?” Iris asked, turning her head from laptop to face him.

“Pretty tame, actually. Just stopped a couple of robberies,” Barry replies as he takes his mask off.

“Anything interesting I can report on?” Iris asked eagerly, turning back to her laptop. When she noticed he hadn’t responded, she turned back around, only to notice Barry was staring at her with a stupefied look.

“What? Is there something on my face?”she asked while touching her face.

“Glasses,” he said, pointing at her face.

“Oh! I forgot they were even on for a minute,” Iris said, “My contacts were irritating my eyes, so I put back on my glasses. Guess it’s been awhile, huh?”

Barry merely nodded, still wearing a dumbstruck look.

“Okay….maybe you should get out of your suit now, Barry.”

“Right!” Barry said, finally snapping out of his reverie.

Iris went back to her troublesome article, laughing to herself as she waited the seconds it took for Barry to change out of his suit. She soon felt the couch depress slightly with the added weight of her boyfriend next to her.

“So, what are you writing about?” he asked, sneaking a peek at her laptop screen.

“Just an article for Linda. Although, I have a better question. What’s with the reaction to my glasses?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Barry blushed, turning his head.

Iris raised an eyebrow, casting a look over the top of her glasses, “Do you really expect me to believe that, especially after that scene earlier?”

Barry faced Iris and sighed, “You’ll think it’s weird.”

“I won’t think it’s weird, I promise. Scout’s honor!”

“You were never a Scout, Iris.”

“Just tell me!”

Knowing that Iris will probably never let this go, he gave in. “Remember when you first got your glasses?”

“Yeah, and you said I looked pretty and smart. Pretty charming for a 12 year old.”

“Well, remember when you kept wearing them until you got contacts at seventeen?”

“Yes…,” Iris nodded.

“Well, let’s just say those glasses starred in many an adolescent fantasy…”

Iris’s eyes widen behind her glasses, blinking in disbelief at Barry’s confession. “You mean to tell me that you fantasized about me in glasses?” she asked, “I mean, I already figured you were having those kind of thoughts about me in general back then, especially now. But, seriously, my glasses helped spark that?”

“See? I knew you’d think it was weird!” exclaimed Barry.

“I don’t think it’s weird! Okay, it’s a little weird. But why, though?” Iris wondered. Barry ran both his hands in hair in frustration. “I don’t know why, really,” he said, “Maybe it’s because I have a librarian kink or something. All I know is, I started having those dreams soon after you start wearing glasses and they just grew more explicit over time.”

“Oh, really?” said Iris, closing her laptop and turning her body toward his. Linda’s article can wait. “Tell me about one, hon.”

Barry, oblivious to Iris’s body language, started to tell her about the dream he had in college.

About how he was in the library, cramming for a test, when she would appear behind him, defying the logic of them being at different schools. She would lean over his shoulder and ask in a quiet, breathy voice if he needed help studying. He would think about saying no, trying to be good. She’d ask again, biting his ear as she did. He would of course say yes, then. She’d sit next to him, lean over to read the book in front of him, pushing her glasses back in her face with one hand while her other hand crept up his leg till she cupped him through his pants. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, he slowly slipped his hand under the skirt she was wearing. Soon, books were forgotten, tossed off the table onto the floor, replaced with their bodies. How they tore each other's clothes off, hands running all over each other, their lips continuing to find their mate.

As Barry pour his story out, Iris straddled his lap, glad that she was wearing her standard write-at-home clothes, consisting of old track shorts and Barry’s college sweatshirt. When Barry got to the part about having his fingers inside the fantasy Iris while kissing her neck, the real Iris kissed the real Barry, interrupting him. As Iris soon felt his lips on her neck and his fingers vibrating outside of her shorts, she breathlessly thanked her lucky stars her contacts were bothering her eyes. Maybe she start wearing her glasses around the apartment more. And maybe, just maybe, she can work on making Barry’s fantasy a reality…..

#westallen #iris west #barry allen #the flash

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aviatrickss · 7 years

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Hey, so I decided to post my first response for JayRoy week (late????? me???? never????) even though the rest of it isn’t done. I’ll post it on Ao3 when it’s completely done but for now this is a good way to update (read: get validation).

First prompt was ‘Robin’.

(please let me know if you have any critiques I will love you forever and write you anything you want pls)

Roy really only meets Jason once before he dies. And it’s all jumbled and strange in his head because he met Jason and then he met Robin before really knowing that both of them were the same.

He hadn’t really been happy to be in Gotham in the first place. Apparently the super-genius science fair he was in was run by Wayne Tech or one of their bajillion satellite companies. And, of course, when Ollie found out that they had to go to Batman’s city he basically flipped a shit and/or tried to bribe the competition organizers to move it to Star City or Metropolis or Russia or literally anywhere else. They said no, and Ollie decided the only thing to do was sulk.

Which is fine by Roy, really, because that’s just Ollie, and it’s not like he’s any fonder of the Bat than Ollie is. Batman’s the guy who threw out Nightwing, and yeah, Roy’s pretty sure Nightwing sees him as an annoying little brother, and the Titans have only been a thing for like, three months, but still.

The point is, Roy just tells himself that he just has to get to the fair. And then he can nerd out with a bunch of other kids and there will be a shit-ton of lasers probably, and it will all be worth it.

Roy does not make it to the fair.

The thing about being the ward of the world’s third most famous billionaire (although there’s no way Ollie would ever admit Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne beat him out) is that things balance out more than one might think.

For instance: because Roy is rich, he gets all kinds of materials and toys and labs to build whatever latest gadget is jumping around in his brain. He gets to fly to conventions and test runs and semi-secret labs all around the world. And, very occasionally, he gets to enter competitions and show off what he can do with a few scraps of metal, a computer chip, and a wrench, and it rocks.

However: because Roy is rich, he is always being kidnapped by asshats who have no idea that he’s not only a genius inventor, but also a fucking superhero. He has to miss out on a fair number of the amazing conventions and test runs and competitions because he’s busy being tied to a chair and praying that no one starts talking about cutting off fingers and putting them in boxes as ‘messages’ because that’ll probably fuck him up as both an inventor and an archer.

And of course, Gotham is like, the birthplace of all fuckwits, so he really should have known something like this was going to happen.

Roy wakes up with his mouth tasting like cotton and his arms yanked back and tied around a pipe. He’s learning not to mind the fuzziness that comes from being unconscious, the last remnants of nothingness that slip away as he blinks, realizes what happened.

It doesn’t really scare him. He’s got a little knife up his sleeve, and if worst comes to worst he can always rescue himself.

But Ollie’s drilled into him enough times that he needs to at least try and wait for a rescue. Because of secret identities and all that. Which, Roy thinks is bull, because Ollie’s stupid goatee is a much greater threat to their secret identities than anything that he could do.

Mostly he’s just disappointed about the fair. He really thought he had a shot at winning this time, even though Ollie and him spent half their time trying to dumb down the project so that no one would start wondering why Oliver Queen’s ward was capable of designing military-grade tech.

“Worst weekend ever,” Roy mumbles. He leans his head back against the cool pipe, hoping that Ollie comes soon. Hell, he’d even settle for Batman at this point.

There’s a scraping noise from his left, and Roy just about has a heart attack. Craning his neck, he sees a small figure stirring over by another pipe. Roy frowns- he’s still kind of dizzy from being knocked out, and all he can really think about is how he’s going to have to put on the ‘panicked rich kid’ act.

“Son of a…” the other kid mumbles. He seems to be Roy’s age, with curly black hair and dazed teal eyes. He shifts around a little, taking stock just like Roy did just a bit earlier. After a couple of minutes he stops squirming and huffs, his eyes drifting over to where Roy is. Roy’s presence seems to surprise him and he blurts, “Who the hell are you?”

Rude. “Who the hell are you,” Roy fires back.

“Jason Todd,” the other boy says. “Now what-”

“Bruce Wayne’s ward?” Duh. Roy probably should have recognized him, but Ollie had a pretty strict embargo on all Bruce-Wayne-related stuff. “Why would someone kidnap the two richest kids in the world?”

“Okay, first of all, Red, don’t interrupt me,” Jason snaps. “Second of all-”

“Red?!” Roy snorts.

“You did it again!” Jason exclaims. “Look, you were being a prick about introducing yourself, so now you have to deal with the snappy nickname I came up for you.”

Roy huffs.

“Second of all,” Jason continues. “This is Gotham.” He says that like it should explain everything.

Actually it probably does.

They sit in silence for a couple of minutes before Roy finally says, “I’m Roy Harper.”

“Nope,” Jason says immediately. “Too late. You’re Red for life now.”

Roy glares at him and Jason grins back. Roy sighs. “So, does Batman usually come or what?”

Jason nods. “Yeah, and he’s usually pretty speedy about it.”

Roy narrows his eyes a little and Jason blinks innocently. It’s not like ‘speedy’ is an uncommon word but…

Okay, it’s entirely possible that Roy is just being paranoid. Being kidnapped a tied to a pipe will do that to you.

“What are you even doing in Gotham anyways?” Jason asks. “Can’t be a business thing, I’d know about that.”

His smug tone makes Roy want to barf. Rich kids.

And yeah, okay, technically Roy is also a rich kid. But Roy is not a douchebag, so there.

Roy considers just not talking anymore, but Jason seems like the kind of kid who doesn’t give up easy. “Science fair,” he finally mumbles miserably. God. He probably won’t get to do anything that fun for at least half a year.

“That big egghead one up at the convention center?” Jason asks, sounding somewhat impressed. Roy jerks his head in a nod and Jason goes silent. Roy gets the feeling that the kid is reevaluating him.

“Sorry you had to miss it,” Jason finally says. “Being a hostage is kinda a full-time gig, huh?”

Despite himself, Roy smiles. Just a little.

“I had to miss school today,” Jason laments.

Roy gives him a look, because that cannot be an actual statement coming out of somebody’s mouth.

“I like school,” Jason says sullenly, sticking his tongue out at him.

“I am so sorry,” Roy says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. But he’s still kind of smiling a little. “My heart bleeds for you-”

The door at the other end of the room slams open and light spills in, practically blinding Roy.

“For the love of God!” some guy is yelling. Strong Gotham accent. Probably from the poorer sections of the city. “Would you kids fuckin’ pipe down? Jesus Christ, you’re makin’ it hard not to just slit your throats…”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Jason snaps from Roy’s left. “This whole situation must be really hard for you, how can we help?”

Roy’s vision is starting to clear up, and as the goon snarls something at Jason, Roy gets his first good look at the room.

Probably an old storage room, although it’s been cleared out. Nothing left but dust and the support poles, which he and Jason are tied to. The open door leads only to a blank hallway, and Roy can’t see anything else past that. The man stalking towards Jason is wearing a dumb-looking faux-leather jacket, and Roy would bet his inheritance that the symbols on the back are gang-related.

Also, seeing as how Jason is one-hundred-percent about to get his ass kicked, Roy feels that it’s okay to slip the little switchblade out of his sleeve so that he can start sawing at his ropes. If anyone asks, he’ll say he found a nail or something.

Suddenly there’s an ear-piercing scream from beyond the open door.

Hostages and crook alike all freeze, the three of them staring out into the hallway. After that awful scream comes another, and then a burst of gunfire, the sound of something heavy breaking.

The poor gang-member looks like he wants to piss himself. Jason, on the other hand, has the smallest of satisfied smiles on his faces. It gives Roy the dawning realization that even the non-criminal Gothamites are fucking insane.

The sounds of carnage from outside stop. There’s nothing but a yawning silence and Roy is starting to understand why people are so in awe of the Bat. He knows that it’s Batman out there, and he still half wants to start screaming.

They’re all so focused on the open door that Roy’s the only one who notices when a grate in the ceiling smoothly moves from its place, leaving a hole in the wall. Something small drops through.

That’s a really nice smoke grenade, is all that Roy has time to think before the thing explodes at the whole room is shrouded in mist.

The gangster starts shrieking, which would be kind of funny except for the fact he also decides to start blindly shooting his gun. Roy curses and starts hacking away at his ropes. Even though Batman is physically in the room rescuing them, Jason still seems like the kind of kid who gets shot anyways.

Finally the ropes around his arms give, and Roy surges upward- only to crash into someone else.

“Ow, what the fuck, Red?” Jason’s voice comes from right beside him. “How’d you get free?”

“Stray Batarang,” Roy lies easily. “What about you?”

“Same,” Jason says. Roy can barely see him through the mist, even though they’re less than half a foot apart. “I didn’t know if Batman got you too, so I crawled over here to see.”

That’s…. Actually that’s kind of nice. In a dumb way. In a dumb, suicidal, should-have-let-the-real-hero-handle-it way.

“Thanks,” Roy mumbles.

“Boys,” says a deep voice above them. Roy seriously almost pees himself, because he hadn’t even noticed the shooting stop, and now Batman is looming over him like the fucking Grim Reaper.

Roy shoots to his feet, Jason doing the same beside him. “Holy fucking shit, Batman!” Jason chirps. There doesn’t really seem to be a follow-up to that so Roy mumbles, “Um, thanks for saving our lives.”

Batman scans over Jason before turning his attention to Roy, “Are you two injured?”

“Little woozy from the drugs,” Roy says. “We’re okay though.” He knows Batman’s never gonna take him seriously, but the least he can do is let him know that he already checked to make sure the civilian wasn’t bleeding out.

“Can I have your autograph?” Jason asks.

Roy kind of expects for Batman to maybe spritz Jason with some more knockout gas or something, but he just says, “No.”

“Fine,” Jason says. “But then you owe me a favor.”

“Oh?” Batman says. And Roy is just watching the whole trainwreck because he has never heard anyone talk to Batman like that. Well, maybe Wonder Woman. But she’s a literal goddess, and Jason’s a bratty preteen.

“Next time,” Jason says in a very serious tone. “Bring Robin. ‘Cause you’re cool, but… not that cool.”

Roy makes a strangled yelping noise before he shoves his hands over his mouth in horror. Batman doesn’t seem to notice though, he just studies Jason for another moment and-

And Roy thinks he might be dead or unconscious or dreaming or something, because he swears that Batman’s lips twitch up in the tiniest of smiles.

“The GCPD is on their way. Your kidnappers have been dealt with,” Batman says. Without another word, he turns and vanishes back into the smoke.

“Wow, he really is a grumpy asshole!” Jason says fondly.

“Come on, idiot,” Roy mutters, tugging the other boy towards the door.

By the time they stumble out of the building, the GCPD is already assembling on the front steps. The two of them are quickly separated and hustled to ambulances. The last the Roy sees of Jason Todd, he’s smiling as Bruce Wayne pulls him into a bearhug.

“Sorry you missed your science fair, kiddo,” Ollie says, putting an arm around his shoulder.

“Eh,” Roy says. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Roy!”

Roy has this awful fluttery feeling in his stomach when he turns. Jason is sitting up on Bruce’s shoulders, waving frantically at him while the billionaire just looks befuddled. Roy waves back and Jason’s smiles.

“See you around, Red!”

Roy snorts and rolls his eyes. But the fluttery feeling doesn’t go away until they’re almost back at the hotel.

Of course, Ollie decides that the only way to cheer Roy up is to go on patrol. In Batman’s city. Without permission.

It’s actually a very nice attempt at cheering him up, and Ollie looks so sincere that Roy can’t shut him down.

Besides, flying through the night does make Roy feel better. It eases the helplessness, makes him feel like less of a failure. And it’s not like there’s a shortage of criminals in Gotham anyways. Batman can spare a few.

It only takes an hour for Batman to track them down. One minute they’re landing on a rooftop, the next, Ollie and Batman are snarling at each other.

“Oh, fuck me,” Roy mumbles. He seriously considers just plopping down on the rooftop while they duke it out. He probably has some half-finished something in his belt that he could work on. Or he maybe he can just sneak back to the hotel and catch a movie.

“They’re the worst, aren’t they?” a sympathetic voice says next to him.

And after hanging out with Dick for three months, Roy’s at the point where people appearing silently at his shoulder doesn’t make him jump anymore. He just turns his head.

Robin’s not really what he expected. He’s about Roy’s age and small, yeah, but with long legs and broad shoulders. He’ll probably grow up to be a giant or something - after all, Dick’s not exactly tiny anymore. His curly black hair is ruffled slightly by the wind and there’s a smattering of freckles across his nose and he has the most wicked smirk on his face.

Roy doesn’t know all that much about him. Dick has bad blood with the kid because of Bruce, and it’s not like Ollie’s interested in getting more info on the Bat’s newest sidekick. Roy feels wrong-footed- he doesn’t know if he should give the kid the cold-shoulder out of loyalty to Dick or what.

“Let me guess,” Robin says. He strokes his chin thoughtfully and Roy is pretty sure he’s just hamming it up, but still. “You feel awkward because you’re buddies with Wingding and he’s not my number one fan.” Robin lowers his hand and smiles. “Plus we just busted you and Robin Hood.”

“You didn’t bust us,” Roy says in exasperation. Honestly.

“Whatever you say,” Robin says, although the smirk doesn’t disappear from his face. “I am a highly-trained detective though.”

“Not highly-trained in wearing pants though,” Roy says. It’s dumb, really dumb, but he’s flustered.

Robin snorts, and Roy gets the sense that he’s rolling his eyes behind the mask. “Look at Discowing’s costume and tell me you think I’m the one who designed this monstrosity. Besides,” the other boy strikes a pose. “Tell me I don’t have the legs for it.”

“Oh my God,” Roy says. He turns to look back at Ollie and Bats, mostly just to hide the blush creeping over his cheeks. This is not happening. Focus on lasers, Roy, lasers.

“What’d you do for the science fair thingy?”

Shock more than anything makes Roy turn back to Robin. “How-”

“Batman told me about the whole thing,” the other boy says nonchalantly. “I didn’t know you were into all that. I always figured you and Arrow had like, a lab monkey or something make your stuff.”

“Lab monkey,” Roy says. “At your service.”

Robin laughs. “To be fair I kinda figured the same about Batman. Before, y’know,” he gestures at his costume.

“How did-”

“Speedy.”

Ollie stalks over to the two of them, Batman trailing behind him. “Time to go,” Ollie says. He’s red with anger and Roy wonders what Batman said to get him to fold so quickly. Usually their arguments last forever.

Roy turns back to Robin, “See you around, I guess.”

Batman places a hand on Robin’s shoulder and there’s some understanding there, something that passes between them. Then Batman is grappling off the roof, disappearing into the night.

Robin fishes his own grapple off of his belt, gives Roy a one-handed salute. “See you around, Red.”

And before the words hit home, he’s stepped backward off of the roof and into the darkness.

Roy doesn’t really sleep that night. The words chase themselves around his head, because it can’t be coincidence, it can’t be a mistake.

See you around, Red.

He thinks about asking Nightwing (Dick Grayson?). But then, he thinks, it would get back to Batman somehow. And Roy would end up getting dangled off of a building or something.

Besides, something about it feels so… private. Just an inside joke, between the two of them. Robin never had to say his name because he knew, he knew, that Roy would get it.

Why would he tell Roy?

Why would such a vibrant, beautiful, bright boy give his biggest secret to a screwup like Roy?

It doesn’t make any sense and he can’t get it out of his head.

But, of course, he does.

They return to Star City, Ollie grumbling all the way about everything that happened in Gotham. And then Roy is so busy running between missions with the Titans and Star City stuff that Jason’s smile falls out of his head. He falls back into the smothering loneliness and misery that never seem to go away.

He wishes he could make it go away.

And then somehow years have passed and Roy is teetering on the brink of self-destruction and Robin is dead.

Jason is dead.

And in the wake of Dick’s awful grief (because he knows by now that it’s Dick, stood there and faked surprise when the older boy revealed himself), Roy ignores the awful wave of emotion churning inside of him.

Because it was one day. One night. He didn’t know Jason.

And in a couple of years, heroes will whisper about the two of them. The two failures, the two blotches on an otherwise clean history. The addict and the dead boy. The fallen heroes who didn’t fall quite gracefully enough to get remembered.

In the secret history of the world’s greatest heroes, Jason and Roy are forever linked, a footnote somewhere near the back.

It’s not how he imagined they’d end up together.

#JayRoyweek #Jason Todd #Roy Harper #trix-fix #text #long post #fic #please comment/talk to me #i crave attention #i love u all martha

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

Text

I'VE BEEN PONDERING PREDICTOR

This section is now obsolete for YC founders presenting at Demo Day, we have a dress rehearsal called Rehearsal Day. That means two years later you'll be making $4. If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with but we're going to keep working on the startup, you are in big trouble. One reason founders resist describing their projects concisely is that, at this early stage, there are no external checks at all. I could see the average town was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no startups came out. You can see it in old photos. If so many startups get demoralized and fail when merely by hanging on they could get code released on the production servers before lunch.1 Going to or back to school is a huge predictor of death. It's remarkable how wedded they are to their standard m. So approach this like an algorithm that gets the right answer by successive approximations. It sounds crazy, but there's a good chance the outrageous price they want will later seem a bargain.2

But both began with a core of fanatically devoted users, and all three instantly said yes. Many observers have noticed that one of the executive class riding the elephant.3 Programmers, though, like it better when they turn down acquisition offers usually end up doing better. I've learned a lot about: the company that solved that important problem.4 Don't get too deeply into business models. I worry that if we don't acknowledge this, we're headed for trouble. By individual managers without any additional approvals. This is one of those they remember. Service rates for men born in the early 1980s that the term yuppie was coined.

Let me mention some things not to do is expand it. He turned out to be more like bureaucrats. Wars make central governments more powerful, and World War II lasted less than 4 years for the US, as in all the other Allied countries, the federal government with policies and in wartime, large orders that kept out competitors.5 5 months behind the rapacious one. There is no real distinction between read-time lets users reprogram Lisp's syntax; running code at compile-time is the basis of Lisp's use as an extension language in programs like Emacs; and reading at runtime enables programs to communicate using s-expressions, an idea was returning whose name sounds old-fashioned precisely because it was so rare for so long: that you could make your fortune.6 Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only dropped out of grad school, but we're going to keep working on the startup, but we're going to keep working on the startup. A rounds. We try to pick founders who are good at building things, not ones who are slick presenters.

I cross this out? Here there were 3 choices: NBC, CBS, and ABC. We take for granted the forms of fragmentation we like, and worry only about the ones we don't. The late 19th and early 20th centuries had been a book.7 The metaphor people use to describe the way a startup feels is at least a roller coaster and not drowning. Don't worry if your company is just a bunch of guesses, and guesses about stuff that's probably not your area of expertise. Since then he has not only dropped out of grad school, but appeared full length in Newsweek with the word Billionaire printed across his chest.8

Don't put too many words on slides. So if you don't let people ship, you won't have any artists. And since people vary dramatically in productivity, paying market price meant salaries started to diverge. It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. In most places the atmosphere pulls you back toward the mean.9 A startup is so hard that working on it can't be preceded by but.10 Audiences tune that out. After a while they all blur together. But when I went looking for alternatives to fill this void, I found practically nothing.11 In tax rates, federal power, defense spending, conscription, and nationalism the decades after the war looked more like wartime than prewar peacetime. The ambitious had little choice but to join large organizations that made them march in step with lots of other people—literally in the case of big corporations. Nor did they work for big companies.

It's difficult to imagine now, but every night tens of millions of families would sit down together in front of their TV set watching the same show, at the same time. Mostly they crawl off somewhere and die. Some switched from meat loaf to tofu, and others to Hot Pockets. There are three reasons. This kind of expert witness can add credibility, even if the audience doesn't understand all the details. As big companies' oligopolies became less secure, they were less able to pass costs on to customers and thus less willing to overpay for labor.12 There I found a copy of the server software running on your laptop.13 And when you can do that much better with computers.14 Then replace the draft with what you said to your friend.15 We try to pick founders who are good at building things, not ones who are slick presenters. No other computer manufacturer had ever been able to outsell them.16

Thousands of companies run by their founders were merged into a couple hundred giant ones run by professional managers.17 Chance meetings produce miracles to compensate for the disasters that characteristically befall startups.18 I was considering starting another startup.19 There is a huge predictor of death because in addition to the distraction it gives you something to say you're doing.20 Viaweb's was the Microsoft Word of ecommerce. For us the main indication of impending doom is when we don't hear from you. Something comes over most people when they start writing. Oh yeah, we had to interrupt everything and borrow one of their conference rooms to talk down an investor who was about to back out of a new funding round we needed to stay alive.21

When a language is made entirely of expressions, you can write it and push it to the production servers was two weeks. So what's the real reason there aren't more Googles? Plus public TV for eggheads and communists. But don't give them more than four or five numbers, and only give them numbers specific to you. Make a soundbite stick in their heads. As well as pushing incomes up from the bottom, by overpaying unions, the big companies of the 20th century meant most people who weren't already in it. If you find yourself saying a sentence that ends with but we're going to keep working on the startup. Nothing is forever, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, and sometimes the existing companies weren't the ones who did it best. Business owners weren't supposed to be making money either.22 When people do that today it's usually to enjoy them again e.

Notes

And of course the source files of all. Without distractions it's too late? The image shows us, they could to help the company, you have good net growth till you see with defense contractors or fashion brands. The VCs recapitalize the company down.

The powerful don't need its reassurance. Trevor Blackwell, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator. It seems justifiable to use those solutions. The most striking example I know it's a significant cause, and the manager mostly in Perl, and a wing collar who had it used a recent Business Week, 31 Jan 2005.

Credit card debt stupidest of all the rules with the other meanings are fairly closely related.

And maybe we should be protected against being mistreated, because living at all. I mean no more unlikely than it was because he was skeptical about Viaweb too. There's comparatively little from it.

I'd encourage anyone starting a startup idea is crack. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and partly because users hate the idea that evolves naturally, and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev.

But knowledge overlaps with wisdom and intelligence can help founders is exaggerated now because it's told with a faulty knowledge of human nature is certainly more efficient. This is a big market, meaning master.

Moving large amounts of money from them. You can't be hacked, measure the degree to which the top schools are, which have varied dramatically.

It's hard to avoid sticking.

The point of saying that this isn't strictly true, because any VC would think Y Combinator is a trap set by evil companies for the firm in the room, you could try telling him it's XML. Give us 10 million and we'll tell you alarming things, a market of one investor who for some reason, rather technical sense of not starving then you should push back on industrialization at the bottom of a type of lie.

How can people who get rich, people would be very popular but from what it can buy. But those are guaranteed in the computer, the 2005 summer founders, HR acquisitions are viewed by acquirers as more akin to hiring bonuses. I have set up an additional disk drive.

Ii. But there seem to want them; you don't, but the route to that mystery is that some of the word that came to work for startups is uninterruptability.

I'm compressing the story a bit more complicated, because software takes longer to close than you otherwise would have gone into the work that seems formidable from the formula. The situation we face here, since human vision is the only significant channel was our own Web site. Disclosure: Reddit was funded by Y Combinator is a great hacker. Or it may have now missed the video boat entirely.

In high school, the initial capital requirement for German companies is 47. What people who don't like the stuff one used to do that, isn't it?

Creative Destruction Whips through Corporate America. Instead of making the things they've tried on the young Henry VIII and was soon to reap the rewards.

How much more analytical style of thinking. 01.

The solution was a kid and as a percentage of startups small this first summer, we're going to give it back. PR has at least once for the first scientist.

I overstated the case of journalists, someone did, but he doesn't remember which.

Interestingly, the number of spams that have already launched or can be times when what you're doing. The Department of English Studies. There are a better strategy in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to need to offer especially large rewards to get significant numbers of users, not conquest.

An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in Lisp. Most computer/software startups are simply no outside forces pushing high school textbooks. Don't invest so much the better, but starting a startup, both of whom have become direct marketers. That will in many cases be an anti-recommendation.

Does anyone really think we're so useless that in Silicon Valley.

But it is certainly part of an urban legend. No VC will admit they're influenced by confidence.

The liking you have a better influence on your board, there was nothing special. Record labels, for example, the term whitelist instead of Windows NT? Stone, op. The founders we fund used to be able to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers.

Thanks to the guys at O'Reilly, Greg Mcadoo, Aaron Swartz, Slava Akhmechet, Geoff Ralston, John Collison, Tad Marko, and Robert Morris for the lulz.

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