#and with the suggestion that the titans can control the weather and shit

[girlwiththegreenhat]

nobody talk to me i've been emotional all week over king's dad having kept an eye on him his whole life from The In-Between. much like spinel, i will never be able to watch the series the same way again

[theoscout]

This article is behind a paywall so I'll add it under a 'read more'

I already removed a bunch of unnecessary stuff such as website formatting but if you go to the article you'll see images and stuff.

Points of interest:

Stockton Rush throwing a tantrum and freaking out his guests because he went against instructions and got the sub stuck under a boat

"give him the fucking controller"

Rush ignoring safety instructions from David Lochridge aka the guy who got fired for saying the sub was dangerous but giving him the controller after he couldn't unjam the sub after an hour

Lochridge getting the sub out in 15 minutes

everyone in the submarine community including Susan Kasey (the article writer) watching Stockton Rush like a horror movie

they warned him but couldn't do shit :(

really a lot of the stuff in the previous article I reblogged but daaaammmn if you read between the lines this thing is scathing lol

THE ABYSS

The Titan Submersible Disaster Was Years in the Making, New Details Reveal

To many in the tight-knit deep-sea exploration community, OceanGate’s submersible dives were reckless and often dangerous, writes best-selling author Susan Casey.

By Susan Casey

August 17, 2023

OceanGate’s Titan submersible prior to its final dive on a mission to see the Titanic wreckage.OceanGate Expeditions/Handout via Xinhua News Agency.

41.73º N, 49.95º W, North Atlantic Ocean, June 18, 2023

Fate cleared up the weather, blew off the fog, and calmed the waves, as the submersible and its five passengers dived through the surface waters and fell into another world. They entered the deep ocean’s uppermost layer, known as the twilight zone, passing creatures glimmering with bioluminescence, tiny fish with enormous teeth. Then they entered the midnight zone, where larger creatures ghost by like alien moons. Two miles down, they entered the abyssal zone—so named because it’s the literal abyss.

Deeper means heavier: pressures of 5,000, then 6,000 pounds per square inch. As it descended, the submersible was gripped in a tightening vise. Maybe they heard a noise then, maybe they heard an alarm.

I hope they watched the abyss with awe through their viewport, because I’d like to think their last sights were magnificent ones.

As the world now knows, Stockton Rush touted himself as a maverick, a disrupter, a breaker of rules. So far out on the visionary curve that, for him, safety regulations were mere suggestions. “If you’re not breaking things, you’re not innovating,” he declared at the 2022 GeekWire Summit. “If you’re operating within a known environment, as most submersible manufacturers do, they don’t break things. To me, the more stuff you’ve broken, the more innovative you’ve been.”

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In a culture that has adopted the ridiculous mantra “move fast and break things,” that type of arrogance can get a person far. But in the deep ocean, the price of admission is humility—and it’s nonnegotiable. The abyss doesn’t care if you went to Princeton, or that your ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence. If you want to go down into her world, she sets the rules.

And her rules are strict, befitting the gravitas of the realm. To descend into the ocean’s abyssal zone—the waters from 10,000 to 20,000 feet—is a serious affair, and because of the annihilating pressures, far more challenging than rocketing into space. The subs that dive into this realm (there aren’t many) are tested and tested and tested. Every component is checked for flaws in a pressure chamber and checked again—and every step of this process is certified by an independent marine classification society. This assurance of safety is known as “classing” a sub. Deep-sea submersibles are constructed of the strongest and most predictable materials, as determined by the laws of physics.

In the abyss, that means passengers typically sit inside a titanium (or steel) pressure hull, forged into a perfect sphere—the only shape that distributes pressure symmetrically. That means adding crush-resistant syntactic foam around the sphere for buoyancy and protection, to offset the weight of the titanium. That means redundancy upon redundancy, with no single point of failure. It means a safety plan, a rescue plan, an acute situational awareness at all times.

It means respect for the forces in the deep ocean. Which Stockton Rush didn’t have.

Stockton Rush in front of his Antipodes submersible EyePress News/Shutterstock.

Unfortunately, June 18, 2023, wasn’t the first time I’d heard of Rush, or his company OceanGate, or his monstrosity of a sub. He and the Titan had been a topic of conversation talked about with real fear, on many occasions, by numerous people I met over the course of five years while reporting my book The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean. I heard discussions about the Titan as a tragedy-in-waiting on research ships, during deep-sea expeditions, in submersible hangars, at marine science conferences. I had my own troubling encounter with OceanGate in 2018 and had been watching it with concern ever since.

Everyone I met in the small, tight-knit world of manned submersibles was aware of the Titan. Everyone watched in disbelief as Rush built a five-person cylindrical pressure hull out of filament-wound carbon fiber, an unpredictable material that is known to fail suddenly and catastrophically under pressure.

It was as though we were watching a horror movie unfold in slow motion, knowing that whatever happened next wouldn’t be pretty. But like screaming at the screen, nothing that came out of anyone’s mouth made any difference to the ending.

In December 2015, two years before the Titan was built, Rush had lowered a one third scale model of his 4,000-meter-sub-to-be into a pressure chamber and watched it implode at 4,000 psi, a pressure equivalent to only 2,740 meters. The test’s stated goal was to “validate that the pressure vessel design is capable of withstanding an external pressure of 6,000 psi—corresponding to…a depth of about 4,200 meters.” He might have changed course then, stood back for a moment and reconsidered. But he didn’t. Instead, OceanGate issued a press release stating that the test had been a resounding success because it “demonstrates that the benefits of carbon fiber are real.”

Rush didn’t even break stride. He ran right on ahead, plowing hard into his director of marine operations, David Lochridge. Lochridge had emigrated from Scotland to work for OceanGate—selling his home in Glasgow, moving to Washington State with his wife and seven-year-old daughter. Unlike many of his new colleagues, Lochridge was an established undersea pro: a submersible and remote-operated-vehicle pilot, a marine engineer, an underwater inspector for the oil and gas industry. He’d piloted rescue subs for the British navy to save men trapped aboard downed military submarines.

By January 2018, the Titan was nearly completed, soon to begin its sea trials. But first Lochridge—who according to his contract was responsible for “ensuring the safety of all crew and clients during submersible and surface operations”—would have to inspect the sub and pronounce it fit to dive. And that wasn’t going to happen.

Lochridge had been watching the sub’s progress with ratcheting alarm. He’d argued with OceanGate’s engineering director, Tony Nissen; OceanGate had responded by refusing to let Lochridge examine the work on the sub’s oxygen system, computer systems, acrylic viewport, O-rings, and the critical interfaces between its carbon fiber hull and titanium endcaps. Mating materials with such wildly divergent pressure tolerances was also…not advised. (Nissen did not respond to requests for comment.)

When Lochridge voiced his concerns, he was ignored. So he inspected the Titan as thoroughly as he could. Then he presented Rush and other OceanGate senior staff with a 10-page “Quality Control Inspection Report” that listed the sub’s problems and the steps needed to correct them. “Verbal communication of the key items I have addressed in my attached document have been dismissed on several occasions,” Lochridge wrote on the first page, “so I feel now I must make this report so there is an official record in place.” These issues, he added, were “significant in nature and must be addressed.”

“Titan could not get classed because it was built of the wrong material and it was built the wrong way. Once he made up his mind, he was on a path from which there was no return.”

Lochridge listed more than two dozen items that required immediate attention. These included missing bolts and improperly secured batteries, components zip-tied to the outside of the sub. O-ring grooves were machined incorrectly (which could allow water ingress), seals were loose, a highly flammable, petroleum-based material lined the Titan’s interior. Hosing looped around the sub’s exterior, creating an entanglement risk—especially at a site like the wreck of the Titanic, where spars, pipes, and wires protrude everywhere.

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Yet even those deficiencies paled in comparison to what Lochridge observed on the hull. The carbon fiber filament was visibly coming apart, riddled with air gaps, delaminations, and Swiss cheese holes—and there was no way to fix that short of tossing the hull in a dumpster. The manufacturing process for carbon fiber filament is exacting. Interwoven carbon fibers are wound around a cylinder and bonded with epoxy, then bagged in cellophane and cured in an oven for seven days. The goal is perfect consistency; any mistakes are baked in permanently.

Given that the hull would be “seeing such immense pressures not yet experienced on any known carbon hulled vehicle we run the risk of potential inter-laminar fatigue due to pressure cycling,” Lochridge wrote, “especially if we do have imperfections in the hull itself.” The hull would need to be scanned with thermal imaging or ultrasound to reveal the extent of its flaws. “Non-destructive inspection is required to be undertaken and subsequent results provided to myself prior to any in water Manned Dives commencing,” he added, digging in his heels on the scanning. This would reveal any weak spots and provide a baseline that could then be used to check for signs of fatigue after every dive.

Scanning the hull shouldn’t be a problem, should it? Lochridge noted in another document that OceanGate had previously stated the hull would be scanned. (Spoiler alert: The hull was never scanned. “The OceanGate engineering team does not plan to obtain a hull scan and does not believe the same to be readily available or particularly effective in any event,” the company’s lawyer, Thomas Gilman, wrote in March 2018. Instead, OceanGate would rely on “acoustic monitoring”—sensors on the Titan’s hull that would emit an alarm when the carbon fiber filaments were audibly breaking.)

Lochridge’s report was concise and technical, compiled by someone who clearly knew what he was talking about—the kind of document that in most companies would get a person promoted. Rush’s response was to fire Lochridge immediately, serve him and his wife with a lawsuit (although Carole Lochridge didn’t work at OceanGate or even in the submersible industry) for breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment, and misappropriation of trade secrets; threaten their immigration status; and seek to have them pay OceanGate’s legal fees.

In the lawsuit, OceanGate cited its grievances. According to the company, Lochridge had “manufactured a reason to be fired.” In 2016, he had “ ‘mooned’ through the large viewing window Tony Nissen and other members of the OceanGate engineering staff through [sic] with whom he had been arguing.” He had “repeatedly refused to accept the veracity of information provided by the Company’s lead engineer and repeatedly stated he did not approve of OceanGate’s research and development plans, insisting, for example that the company should obtain a scan of the hull of Titan’s experimental vessel prototype to detect potential flaws….”

Now unemployed, distressed by OceanGate’s allegations, and beset with legal bills, Lochridge was in a vulnerable position. He countersued for wrongful termination and sent his inspection report to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA, in turn, passed it to the Coast Guard.

OceanGate’s onetime director of marine operations, David Lochridge (foreground), who raised concerns about OceanGate’s engineering, speaks aboard the Cyclops 1.Andy Bronson/The Herald/AP.

Ironically, Lochridge had saved Rush from himself at least once before. In June 2016, Rush piloted OceanGate’s shallow-diving sub, the Cyclops 1, to the site of the Andrea Doria, a hulking 700-foot ocean liner and epic entanglement hazard that had sunk in 1956 off Nantucket, in a patch of the Atlantic known for its murky fog and seething currents. The ship lies in 240 feet of turbid water, cobwebbed with discarded fishing lines. At that depth, it is accessible (and just barely) to advanced scuba divers, 18 of whom have died there. Rush was headed down to “capture sonar images of the shipwreck” with Lochridge and three clients.

Word gets around in the deep-sea community. I learned of what happened next from two sub pilots from other companies, who both told me the same story on different occasions after hearing it from OceanGate personnel. I also reviewed correspondence related to OceanGate’s lawsuit against Lochridge and his wife, in which Lochridge describes the incident. (Lochridge declined to be interviewed.)

As chief pilot and the person responsible for operational safety, Lochridge had created a dive plan that included protocols for how to approach the wreck. Any entanglement hazard demands caution and vigilance: touching down at least 50 meters away and surveying the site before coming any closer. Rush disregarded these safety instructions. He landed too close, got tangled in the current, managed to wedge the sub beneath the Andrea Doria’s crumbling bow, and descended into a full-blown panic. Lochridge tried to take the helm, but Rush had refused to let him, melting down for over an hour until finally one of the clients shrieked, “Give him the fucking controller!” At which point Rush hurled the controller, a video-game joystick, at Lochridge’s head. Lochridge freed the sub in 15 minutes.

The expedition had been planned to include 10 dives, but instead it ended abruptly, with OceanGate citing “adverse weather conditions.” After returning to shore in Boston, Rush held a press conference. “We were able to view the Andrea Doria area for nearly four hours, which is more than 10 times longer than scuba divers can,” he announced. The dive, OceanGate’s website noted, had “focused on the bow of the vessel.”

Writing this now, I feel a variety of emotions. Empathy, of course, for the families of those aboard the doomed Titan. Despair for the “mission specialists” whose trust in OceanGate was so misplaced: Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, and Hamish Harding. Sadness, because I knew and admired PH Nargeolet—a deep-sea icon whose expertise on the Titanic led to his fatal association with Rush. PH and I sailed together in the Pacific on the 2019 Five Deeps Expedition, when explorer Victor Vescovo piloted a revolutionary sub, the Limiting Factor, to the deepest spots in all five of the earth’s ocean basins. (Journalist Ben Taub was on the Five Deeps Expedition in the North Atlantic and wrote about it for The New Yorker.)

Vescovo had commissioned the Limiting Factor in 2015 and hired Nargeolet as his technical adviser to vet the sub’s design and build. Happily, PH didn’t have much to do. The Limiting Factor was built by Triton Submarines, a company known for its high quality and smart designs, whose cofounder and president, Patrick Lahey, is regarded as the world’s most experienced submersible pilot. Vescovo’s sub was certified—at great cost and difficulty, over several years, from inception to completion to sea trials to dives—by senior inspection engineer Jonathan Struwe from Det Norske Veritas (DNV), a Norway-based international marine classification society that is the gold standard for safety.

And my God, the testing. Every piece of the Limiting Factor was pressure-tested to 20,000 psi, equivalent to a depth of 43,000 feet—20 percent greater than full ocean depth. There was so much testing that Triton built its own state-of-the-art pressure chambers in Barcelona, Spain. The only high-powered pressure chamber large enough to fit the passenger sphere was located in St. Petersburg, Russia, so the four-ton titanium orb was shipped halfway around the world. For days the sphere was squeezed mercilessly, simulating repeated dives to depths beyond any existing on earth. Afterward, it showed zero evidence of fatigue. “Even millions of cycles would not adversely affect it,” Lahey told me. The crushing pressure only makes the sphere stronger.

When I boarded Vescovo’s ship in Tonga, I had already digested Nargeolet’s incredible résumé. It was given to me by Captain Don Walsh, Navy deep submergence pilot number one. He and Jacques Piccard made history by diving 35,800 feet to the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep, the ocean’s absolute nadir.

Struwe dived with Lahey to 35,800 feet—he wanted to, but also he had to. How else could he certify the Limiting Factor worthy of the first-ever DNV class approval for repeated dives to “unlimited depth”? Struwe was so integral to the sub’s success that Lahey considered him to be a codesigner.

All this made Rush look awfully foolish within the community as he trash-talked the classification societies. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” he complained in a blog post. His sub was simply too advanced for the uninitiated. But Rush also used slippery language to infer to clients that the Titan would be classed: “As an interim step in the path to classification, we are working with a premier classing agency to validate Titan’s dive test plan.”

“He actually had the DNV logo up on his website for a time,” Lahey recalled in disgust. “I told Jonathan Struwe about it and he called Stockton and said, ‘Take it down, and take it down now.’ ”

When I boarded Vescovo’s ship in Tonga, I had already digested Nargeolet’s incredible five-page résumé. It was given to me by Captain Don Walsh, Navy deep submergence pilot number one. Walsh commanded the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960, when he and Jacques Piccard made history by diving 35,800 feet to the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep, the ocean’s absolute nadir. Walsh was 87 years old when I met him in 2019; he had dedicated his entire legendary career to deep-sea science, engineering, and exploration. “PH is kind of my parallel on the French side,” he told me. “He’s a walking history. He can give you the European angle on deep exploration.”

Nargeolet had been a decorated commander in the French navy, the captain of France’s 6,000-meter sub, the Nautile, and the leader of his country’s deep submergence group. As commanding officer of the French navy’s explosive ordnance disposal team, he’d de-mined the English Channel, the North Sea, and the Suez Canal. And that was just on page one.

I felt awed to meet him, and a bit intimidated. But PH was a deeply humble man. He talked about how much he loved the ocean, how diving brought him a sense of peace beyond anything attainable on land. He described how the French pilots in the Nautile would stop for lunch on the seafloor, laying a tablecloth, breaking out silverware, and decanting a bottle of wine. What’s your favorite place to dive? I asked him. “Volcanic vents,” he replied without hesitation.

PH also loved the Titanic—he made his first manned dive to the wreck in 1987 and had revisited the site more than 30 times. No one knew the ship’s past and present as intimately as he did. (He would later write that from the moment he saw it, the Titanic had “placed itself at the center of my life.”) He laughed as he explained why he got a kick out of seeing the Titanic’s swimming pool: “Because it looks like it’s empty and it’s full of water! You don’t see the surface, you know?”

One morning, as the Limiting Factor was being launched, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder: I was standing too close to the winch. Nargeolet guided me to a safer spot, cautioning me in his lovely French accent: “When something goes wrong, it goes wrong very fast.”

If empathy and sadness were the only emotions I felt, I’d be able to sleep better. But I am also angry. Angry at Rush’s disrespect for the deep ocean, a realm he professed to want to explore but in reality did not understand. Angry because five people are dead and many others were jeopardized (all of whom must feel like they’ve survived a game of Russian roulette) after Rush was warned for years that his sub wasn’t fit for purpose.

My anger is also personal, because when I first heard about OceanGate back in 2018, I was just beginning to learn about submersibles, just beginning to report my book. I didn’t yet know how reckless, how heedless, how insane the Titan was. I didn’t know that the 4,000-meter sub’s viewport was certified to only 1,300 meters. I wanted desperately to dive to abyssal depths but at the time couldn’t see a way to do it. The handful of vehicles in the world that can dive below 10,000 feet were all dedicated to science.

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Then suddenly there was Rush, holding forth in the media about how his brilliant new sub would take people to see the Titanic and saying things like, “If three quarters of the planet is water, how come you can’t access it?” and “I want to change the way humanity regards the deep ocean.” I wasn’t very interested in diving to the gruesome Titanic, but I was extremely interested in diving to 13,000 feet. Rush’s operation sounded like exactly what I was looking for.

I called OceanGate and spoke to a marketing executive, a young person I won’t name because they left the company long ago. The 2019 Titanic trips were nearly sold out, they told me, but there would be future expeditions even deeper: “The end goal is not 4,000 meters. We’re already building to go to 6,000 meters.” This was possible because of Rush’s many advanced innovations, they explained. The Titan’s pressure hull would be made of “space-grade” carbon fiber, monitored by an array of acoustic sensors. “Steel just implodes,” they said with assurance, as if this was something that had ever happened. “But carbon fiber gives a warning 1,500 meters before implosion. It makes very specific snapping sounds. There’s no other acoustic hull-monitoring system in the world.” True. No other deep-sea submersible in the world had such a system. Because no other deep-sea sub needed one.

Fortunately, I knew enough to speak to a few people before I got anywhere near the Titan. One phone call was all it took.

Terry Kerby, the veteran chief pilot of the University of Hawaii’s two deep-sea subs, the Pisces IV and the Pisces V, recoiled when I asked him what he thought about OceanGate. “Be careful of that,” he warned. “That guy has the whole submersible community really concerned. He’s just basically ignoring all the major engineering rules.” He paused to make sure this had sunk in, and then added emphatically: “Do not get into that sub. He is going to have a major accident.”

Kerby referred me to marine engineer Will Kohnen for a more detailed explanation of why the Titan was “just a disaster.” Kohnen is the chair of the Marine Technology Society’s Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee. He helped write the class rules for submersibles, owned and operated a company that manufactured submersibles, and had decades of experience in the field.

And Kohnen, a straight-shooting French Canadian, knew all about the Titan. “It’s been a challenge to deal with OceanGate,” he said with a sigh and then launched into a two- hour explanation of the reasons why. Carbon fiber is great under tension (stretching) but not compression (squeezing), he told me, offering an example: “You can use a rope to pull a car. But try pushing a car with a rope.”

The bottom line? A novel submersible design was welcome—but only if you were willing to do the herculean amount of testing to prove that it was safe, under the gimlet eye of a classification society. OceanGate decided that process would be too long and expensive, Kohnen said, “and they were just going to do whatever they wanted.”

His committee had recently written a letter to Rush—signed by Kohnen and 37 other industry leaders—expressing their “unanimous concern” about the Titan’s development and OceanGate’s “current ‘experimental�� approach.” Rush needed to stop pretending that he was working with DNV and start doing it, stop misleading the public, stop breaching “an industry-wide professional code of conduct we all endeavor to uphold.” The group concluded by asking Rush to “confirm that OceanGate can see the future benefit of its investment in adhering to industry accepted safety guidelines…” The letter, which has now been widely publicized, was a stern warning, the epistolary equivalent of being hauled into the principal’s office and smacked with a ruler.

Surely, people in the submersible world thought, Rush would come to his senses. Surely he wouldn’t actually go through with this?

Rush ignored the Marine Technology Society’s letter. He ignored the fact that it was signed—at the top—by Don Walsh. Don Walsh! If you know anything about the deep ocean, you know that when Don Walsh speaks, you shut up and listen.

“He doesn’t tell the truth, what’s his name—Rush,” Walsh observed to me. “He’s absolutely 14-karat self-certitude.”

“Have you met him?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” Walsh said tartly.

“What was your impression?”

Walsh chuckled. “Oh, he tolerated me. He was correct. He was polite. He really wanted to tell me how he was all out on the cutting edges of technology, places I couldn’t even imagine.”

Rush ignored the fact that the letter was signed by the cofounder of EYOS Expeditions, Rob McCallum, whom he’d known since 2009 and had tried unsuccessfully to hire for OceanGate’s Titanic operations. McCallum’s client list was awash in wealthy ocean explorers. He’d led seven expeditions to the Titanic with Russia’s two Mir submersibles and had dived to the wreck himself. When McCallum learned more about the Titan, he wanted nothing to do with it: “I’ve never allowed myself to be associated with an unclassed vehicle. Ever.”

Rush ignored the fact that the letter was signed by Terry Kerby, a former Coast Guard navigator who led the Hawaii Undersea Research Lab for 38 years and had made more than 900 sub dives in the Pacific. “You have enough to worry about if you’re exploring volcanoes or shipwrecks without having to worry about whether your submersible is going to survive,” Kerby told me.

“Would you ever agree to pilot a sub that wasn’t classed?” I asked.

“Never. Nope. No.”

Rush ignored the fact that the letter was signed by Patrick Lahey, a man who forgot more about manned subs yesterday than Rush would learn in his lifetime. Lahey had not only signed the letter and warned Rush repeatedly about the Titan’s dangers, he also quietly paid the Lochridges’ legal fees in the hope that the inspection report would be dissected in court and made public. But to Lahey’s “bitter disappointment,” Lochridge decided to settle, withdrawing his OSHA complaint and agreeing not to discuss OceanGate publicly in exchange for being left alone. “I think Stockton had really intimidated him and frightened him,” Lahey said. “I certainly would have continued that fight, because I believe you take something like that right to the end. But he didn’t want to, and I knew it wasn’t my decision.”

By spring 2018, it was evident that Rush’s deep-sea sub would never be certified. “Titan could not get classed because it was built of the wrong material and it was built the wrong way,” McCallum said. “So once Stockton made up his mind, he was on a path from which there was no return. He could have stopped, but he could never fix it.”

Rush was angry that McCallum had been steering EYOS’s clients away from diving in the Titan, though many had expressed interest. “I have given everyone the same honest advice which is that until a sub is classed, tested, and proven it should not be used for commercial deep dive operations,” McCallum wrote to Rush in March 2018. “4,000 [meters] down in the mid-Atlantic is not the kind of place you can cut corners.”

“It is my hope that when you cite OceanGate’s missing classification that you also offer the following,” Rush replied in a sour email. “1) that this need is expressly your opinion, 2) that there has never been a fatality in an unclassed sub, (3) that there are subs in current commercial operation that are not classed, (4) and that Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX all follow the same ethos [False: They had to get FAA approval] and relevant and respective industry certification paths.” He concluded by lecturing McCallum: “Industry attempts to disparage innovative business, operational and design approaches will not help advance subsea exploration.”

PH Nargeolet, who died in the Titan implosion, poses next to a miniature of the Titanic, his life’s obsession.JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images.

At Kohnen’s invitation, I attended the Marine Technology Society’s 2019 meeting. By that time Rush had been ignoring its letter for a year. “The program is an overview of manned submersible operations worldwide,” Kohnen said, addressing the group. “Today we’re doing the deep submersible review work.” This consisted of an alphabetical rundown of every deep sub and the status of its operations. When he got to the letter O, Kohnen cleared his throat. “Anybody here from OceanGate?” (Silence.) “No?”

OceanGate’s recalcitrance was like smog hovering over the conference room. During a coffee break, I heard the Titan mentioned in the same breath as the UC3 Nautilus, a creepy Danish sub whose owner had killed and dismembered journalist Kim Wall on a dive. In a corner, two marine engineers were worked up, and I caught a snatch of their conversation: “When it’s compressing it can actually buckle,” one engineer said in an exasperated tone, referring to Rush’s carbon fiber hull. “Like if you stand on an empty soda can.” The other engineer snorted and said: “I wouldn’t get into that thing for any amount of money.”

Clearly, Rush would do as he pleased. He would register the Titan in the Bahamas and sail from a Canadian port into international waters, thus skirting Coast Guard regulations that any commercial sub must be classed. OceanGate’s lawyer, Thomas Gilman, emphasized in a legal filing against the Lochridges that the Titan “will operate exclusively outside the territorial waters of the United States.”

Anyway, Rush wasn’t carrying paying customers—he was enlisting “mission specialists.” This wasn’t some cute marketing ploy, like American Airlines giving a kid a set of plastic pilot’s wings. In maritime law, crew receive much lighter protections than commercial passengers—and to Rush’s mind, calling them mission specialists and putting them to work on the ship made them crew. On a podcast, CBS reporter David Pogue noted that, in advance of shooting his segment on the 2022 Titanic expedition, OceanGate had emailed him “a document that basically said, ‘In thy news reporting thou shalt not use the terms ‘tourists, customers, or passengers.’ The term is mission specialists.”

So, yes. Many people felt that a catastrophe was brewing with the Titan, but at the same time everybody’s hands were tied.

On the Titan’s second deep test dive in April 2019—an attempt to reach 4,000 meters in the Bahamas—the sub protested with such bloodcurdling cracking and gunshot noises that its descent was halted at 3,760 meters. Rush was the pilot, and he had taken three passengers on this highly risky plunge. One of them was Karl Stanley, a seasoned submersible pilot who would later describe the noises as “the hull yelling at you.” Stanley was no stranger to risk: He’d built his own experimental unclassed sub and operated it in Honduras. But even he was so rattled by the dive that he wrote several emails to Rush urging him to postpone the Titan’s commercial debut, less than two months away.

The carbon fiber was breaking down, Stanley believed: “I think that hull has a defect near that flange that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not.” He advised Rush to step back and conduct 50 unmanned test dives before any other humans got into the sub. True to form, Rush dismissed the advice—“One experiential data point is not sufficient to determine the integrity of the hull”—telling Stanley to “keep your opinions to yourself.”

When the world learned of the Titan’s disappearance on June 18, no one I know in deep-sea circles believed that it was simply lost, floating somewhere, unseen because—the mind reels—it didn’t have an emergency beacon. “The fear was collapse,” Lahey said bluntly. “The fear was always pressure hull failure with that craft.”

“I remember him saying at one point to me that one of the reasons why he had me on that dive was he expected that I would be able to keep my mouth shut about anything that was of a sensitive nature,” Stanley told me in a phone interview.

“Like what?” I asked.

“I don’t think he wanted everybody knowing about the cracking sounds.”

Shortly after that, Rush did make an accommodation to reality. He sent out a press release heralding the Titan’s “History Making Deep-Sea Dive to 3,760 Meters with Four Crew Members,” and then a month later canceled the 2019 Titanic expedition. (He had previously scrubbed the 2018 expedition, claiming that the Titan had been hit by lightning.) Now, Rush was off to build a new hull.

Surely, people in the submersible world thought, Rush would come to his senses. Surely he wouldn’t actually go through with this?

But he did. 2020 was a write-off because of COVID. In 2021, Rush took his first group of “mission specialists” to the Titanic—and with him now, as part of his team, was PH Nargeolet.

It’s not that Nargeolet's friends didn’t try to stop him. “Oh, we…we all tried,” Lahey said. “I tried so hard to tell him not to go out there. I fucking begged him, ‘Don’t go out there, man.’ ”

It’s that Nargeolet knew everything they were saying was true and wanted to go anyway. “Maybe it’s better if I’m out there,” Lahey recalls Nargeolet saying. “I can help them from doing something stupid or people getting hurt.” In the implosion’s aftermath, the French newspaper Le Figaro would report that Nargeolet had told his family that he was wary of the Titan’s carbon fiber hull and its oversized viewport, assessing them as potential weak spots. “He was a little skeptical about this new technology, but also intrigued by the idea of piloting something new,” a colleague of Nargeolet's, marine archaeologist Michel L’Hour, explained to the paper. “It was difficult for him to consider a mission on the Titanic without participating in it himself.”

Now the reports are emerging about the plague of problems on OceanGate’s 2021 and 2022 Titanic expeditions; more dives scrubbed or aborted than completed—for an assortment of reasons from major to minor. A communications system that never much worked. Battery problems, electrical problems, sonar problems, navigation problems. A thruster installed backward. Ballast weights that wouldn’t release. (On one dive, Rush instructed the Titan’s occupants to rock the sub back and forth at abyssal depths in an attempt to dislodge the sewer pipes he used to achieve negative buoyancy.) Getting all the way down to the seafloor and then fumbling around for hours trying to find the wreck. (“I mean, how do you not find a 50,000 ton ship?” Lahey asked me, incredulous, in July 2022.)

One group had been trapped inside the sub for 27 hours, stuck on the balky launch and recovery platform. Other “mission specialists” were sealed inside the sub for up to five hours before it launched, sweltering in sauna-like conditions. Arthur Loibl, a German businessman who dove in 2021, described it to the Associated Press as a “kamikaze operation.”

Fair is fair: Some people did get to see the Titanic and live to tell about it. Plenty more left disappointed, having spent an extremely expensive week in their branded OceanGate clothing, doing chores on an industrial ship. (OceanGate’s Titanic expedition 2023 promotional video, now removed from the internet, showed “mission specialists” wiping down ballast pipes and cleaning the sub.) And when Rush offered them 300-foot consolation dives in the harbor, even those were often canceled or aborted.

Sadly, those problems now seem quaint.

When the world learned of the Titan’s disappearance on June 18, no one I know in deep-sea circles believed that it was simply lost, floating somewhere, unseen because—the mind reels—it didn’t have an emergency beacon. No one believed that its passengers were slowly running out of oxygen. If the sub were entangled amid the Titanic wreck, that wouldn’t explain why its tracking and communications signals had vanished simultaneously at 3,347 meters. “The fear was collapse,” Lahey said bluntly. “The fear was always pressure hull failure with that craft.”

But the families didn’t know, and the public didn’t know, and it would be ghastly not to hope for some slim chance of survival, some possible miracle. But which was better to hope for? That they perished in an implosion at supersonic speed—or that they were alive with hardly a chance of being found, left to suffocate for four days in a sub that had all the comforts of an MRI machine?

“When I found out that they were bolted in…” Kerby told me, his voice anguished. “They couldn’t even evacuate and fire a flare. You know, there’s a really good reason for those [hatch] towers. It gives everyone a chance to make it out.”

“The lack of the hatch in the OceanGate design was a serious deviation from any and all submersible design safety guidelines that exist today,” Kohnen wrote in an email, seconding Kerby. “All subs need to have hatches.”

No knowledge of the tragedy was preparation enough for watching television coverage of the Titan’s entrails being craned off the recovery ship Horizon Arctic. Eight-inch-thick titanium bonding rings—bent. Snarls of cables, mangled debris, sheared metal, torn exterior panels: They seemed to have been wrenched from Grendel’s claws in some mythical undersea battle. But no, it was simply math. A cold equation showing what the pressure of 6,000 psi does to an object unprepared to meet it.

One person involved in the recovery effort, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me that the wreckage itself was proof that no one aboard the sub had suffered: “From what I saw of all the remaining bits and pieces, it was so violent and so fast.”

The abyss doesn’t care if you went to Princeton or that your ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence. If you want to go down into her world, she sets the rules.

“What did the carbon fiber look like?” I asked.

“There was no piece I saw anywhere that had its original five-inch thickness,” he said. “Just shards and bits…. It was truly catastrophic. It was shredded.”

Now, back on land, he was still processing what he’d seen. “I think people don’t actually understand just how forceful the ocean is. They think of the ocean as going to the beach and sticking their toes in the sand and watching waves come in, and stuff like that,” he reflected. “They haven’t a clue.”

“Is there any possible reason the Titan could have imploded other than its design and construction were unsuitable for diving to 4,000 meters?” I asked Jarl Stromer, the manager of class and regulatory compliance for Triton Submarines. Stromer, who has worked in the industry since 1987, began his career as a senior engineer at the American Bureau of Shipping. He’s an expert on the rules, codes, and standards for every type of manned sub—the nuts and bolts of undersea safety.

“No,” he replied flatly. “OceanGate bears full responsibility for the design, fabrication, testing, inspection, operation, maintenance, catastrophic failure of the Titan submersible and the deaths of all five people on board.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In the beginning, OceanGate’s mission had seemed so promising: “Founded in Everett, Washington in 2009, the company provides manned submersible services to reach ocean depths previously unavailable to most individuals and organizations.” But there’s a vast chasm between intention and execution—and pieces of the Titan now lie at the bottom of it.

After the tragedy OceanGate went dark, suspending its operations. Its website and social media channels were suddenly gone, its promotional videos deleted. Emails sent to the company received this reply: “Thank you for reaching out. OceanGate is unable to provide any additional information at this time.” Phone calls were greeted with a disconnection notice.

Only one person familiar with OceanGate’s thinking would speak to me on the record: Guillermo Söhnlein, who cofounded the company with Rush. And Söhnlein left that post in 2013. “So I don’t have any direct knowledge or experience with the development of the Titan. I’ve never dived in Titan. I’ve never been on the Titanic expedition,” he told me. “All I know is, I know Stockton, and I know the founding of OceanGate, and I know how we operated for the first few years.”

Okay, then. What should people know about Rush? “I think he did see himself in the same vein as these disruptive innovators,” Söhnlein said. “Like Thomas Edison, or any of these guys who just found a way of pushing humanity forward for the good of humanity—not necessarily for himself. He didn’t need the money. He certainly didn’t need to work and spend hundreds of hours on OceanGate. You know, he was doing this to help humanity. At least that’s what I think was personally driving him.”

Before the Titan’s last descent, there hadn’t been a fatal accident in a human-occupied submersible for nearly 50 years—despite a 2,000 percent increase in the annual number of dives in that period. In the 93-year history of manned deep-sea exploration, no submersible had ever imploded. “Ultimately it comes down to not just technology,” Kohnen told me, “but the rigor of the nerdy, detailed engineering that goes behind it, to determine that things are predictable.”

“This disaster validates the approach the industry has always taken,” McCallum agreed. “Stockton could have been held in check by professional engineers, independent oversight, and a genuine culture of safety. That he wasn’t will be the subject of much investigation. For those within OceanGate that enabled this culture there should be a long period of self-reflection. This tragedy was predicted. It was avoidable. It was inevitable. It must never be allowed to happen again.”

Those rules Rush so disdained? They had been refined, honed, universally adopted—and they had worked. Submersibles had earned their title as the world’s least risky mode of transportation even as they operated in the world’s riskiest environment. Because there is one last rule that every deep-sea explorer knows: The goal is not to dive. 

The goal is to dive, and to come back. This story has been updated.  CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the provenance of the UC3 Nautilus. It was a Danish submarine. 

Susan Casey

See More By Susan Casey »

[lilyclawthorne]

Through The Looking Glass Ruins Thoughts

what's this? I wrote this post after getting sleep instead of doing it at 3am in an attempt to not accidentally write something that is literally just incorrect for once? amazing.

oh so we're starting off with pain for Gus immediately :(

willow is tough as nails tho, that part is true

gus has a bad girl coven t-shirt!! glad to know the order came in lmao

pls I love his prerecorded message that's so cute

willow's arm is broken :(

I love Luz giving Gus even more nicknames. I like to think it's cause she remembers how excited he was about the first one.

Gus? Different types of magic?? ............... multi-tracker Gus???

BRAXUS IS SAFE THANK TITAN. also braxus is with his dad 🥺

we just met them but I think I love them?? also im a sucker for Felicia Day and she sounds adorable here.

so matt was a glandus kid, and also has an older brother who picks on him. wonder where he fits into this glandus dynamic though since he was expelled. he was construction too so he would've been in classes with Bria.

galderstones is very clever, seeing that they sound a lot like gallstones, which are just hardened deposits of bile. rocks made of witch bile probably are very powerful

love that planet of the humans was considered an implausible movie

I always forget amity is so good with kids, it's really sweet to be reminded of it

Ed and Em definitely know Luz has a crush on Amity and I'm here for it

"accidentally texted a poem to their mom" Ed's date is nonbinary pls?

obligatory name meaning bullet point: Phillip means "lover of horses" idk what to do with that but there it is

going off of that, Bria means "noble", Gavin means "white hawk" and Agnarr has some type of meaning to do with "warrior"

someone give Agnarr his butterfly sanctuary RIGHT NOW

love how excited to help out Luz Amity is when she suggested she'd show her around the human realm

"im not surprised he couldn't handle glandus"?? wasn't he expelled??

aw I love that Bria wants to make things better at Glandus

"if I catch you playing with anymore bugs I'll make you eat them" ok never mind somethings off about her

literally she's just breaking shit now, like doesn't even care about historical preservation man wtf

ok now I just hate Bria

"I heard it has the power to control the weather, and summon ghosts" I bet you its all illusions

interesting the diary is from the 1600s. I know some are theorizing about this human being Belos, which would then require an explanation for that length of time. perhaps its the magic from the palismen extending his life? if this were the case though, that means there's a chance that this great great great great grand parent clawthorne may have personally known a younger belos and gives some validity back to the belos is related to the clawthornes theories, just with much more generations between them

hey owl house crew please don't do this to me. literally started crying as soon as I saw Luz's face 😢

aw I love that the keeper was just excited to have a visitor at the graveyard

"we gain no powers from them so we're the least likely to use them" hmmm this is interesting. the stones feel like the kinda thing below probably would want for himself or his coven, so the fact that illusionists decided to protect them and keep them from falling into the wrong hands is interesting. I know I've theorized about bards being more hesitant on belos and his reign and I had a very stretched out theory about illusionists being possible to follow in that way of thinking but now it feels a little less stretched out is all?

"this is exactly how it was at glandus" look I can't help but wonder if he wasn't expelled and actually left of his own choice

pls why did that illusion work on Gavin he's literally so dumb

Bria you little shit you brought this on yourself, it's so fucking creepy but you kinda asked for it. but also I love that she thinks it can't even touch her and it does. I think that really emphasizes how skilled Gus is that she can literally feel his illusions

also the keeper is so right, Gus is so clever!! was kinda shocked to see all her spells that had worked but she just couldn't see them

ok that was very sweet of Matt to offer to help build the defenses and also aww he and Gus are definitely friends now.

Emira brushing Amity's hair and yelling at Ed for picking his skin, she really is the eldest daughter

AHH I LOVE HER HAIR

I swear to god if she gets in trouble for this im gonna fight

I also love that she chose a different color instead of just letting her roots grow out. I think it kinda shows her not wanting to look like either parent. But also purple is all matchy matchy with Luz

of course Luz got Amity her job back 🥺

THE DOOR THE ECHO MOUSE SHOWS IS LITERALLY EDA'S DOOR

this old clawthorne family member who told Gwen about the human literally knew this human personally, she had to! how else would his door end up in their backyard.

AHH IM SCREAMING AND CRYING OVER THE KISS. no really though, younger me is crying happy tears again because I can not believe we can see this stuff on children's programming nowadays, I love it so so much.

[jean-does-not-have-a-horseface]

Before Dawn ~Pt4~

I was so so so so so insecure to post this chapter so I only hope you enjoy first smooches with Levs. My requests are always open so if you're in the mood you can always drop by and request anything.

Find the other chapters here

Warnings: mentions of blood and a tad if nudity

As always @hidehaskak

Snow veil

"I'm so cold."

The raging blizzard blows mercilessly onto you and Levi. As tremendously large snowflakes fly to every direction as the wind makes an unbearable howling sound you clutch your one hand closer to Levi's winter cloak. Your lower jaw is radically colliding with your top one as you wrap your other arm around you in hopes of warming up. You can feel Levi tensing up every time a new wave of ice cold snowflakes land on him at the freezing weather and even though he's shaking, much like you, he speaks no words back to you.

He probably feels guilty for being the one to accidentally force your duo into this. After last year's fiasco involving Levi's, Farlan's and Isabel's inclusion to the military without having received proper training Mike had taken upon himself to investigate on any lack of training between both new recrewts as well as older veteran corps members. As a new squad leader and section commander he didn't want to take any chances against the survival of his soldier and you admired that deeply. His compassion and determination were always things that made you trust him blindly whenever Erwin assigned him in command of your old squad.

Therefore the plan was simple; you'd take the route assigned to you in small groups of four and you would head to a training corps base according to map. It should only take three hours to get there by horse and then you were free to relax, always following strict curfews.

But as beneficial as Mike had thought winter training would be he would have never guessed the raging blizzard or the avalanche that separated you and Levi from your groups.

It's had taken an hour for him to try and locate anyone of his team, his flares weren't working due to the hawling wind scattering the smoke around, when he finds you. He watches in horror as you try to cover your face with your arms to protect yourself from the cold, ignoring the necessity of looking at your surroundings and most particularly, ignoring the vast cliff that lays only a few teeny centimeters away from your horse's feet.

Speeding up to catch up to you, Levi hit the sides of his mare in a tender manner with his feet. The horse speeds smoothly for only a few meters, as if there isn't any snow around to be bother by. Levi takes it upon himself to treat his horse to some fresh apples and carrots he has in his bag once this was all over. His mare deserves a little rest and some extra treats for all the excellence and delicacy she carried.

"Hunny no!"

He had only avert his eyes for a fragment of a second when your horse tripped over the edge of the cliff urging you to let out an eardrum piercing screech that made the ravenette run to your direction. With a harsh dry halt his mare stopped on her tracks just at the tip of the cliff in a rather convenient coincidence of time. Had he been a second later how wouldn't have been able to grap your forearm as you shot up in the air. No matter his strength and his quick tactics you had managed to startle him with your despairate scream for your horse as it detached from the stirrup that was stuck to your leg, causing him to let you slip for only just a bit. Nonetheless it turns out to be enough to send the rest of your body clashing with sharp rocks. The levels of adrenaline inside you prevent you from realising the damage you have received; an enormous wound that stretches from your back ribs to the under side of your breast, gashing enough blood to slowly drench your clothes crimson.

Levi much in a stressful haze as you, ignores the wound as well, his orbs glued to your petrified expression as your body gives in to a potential tragically painful death. Without wasting anymore time he forces your body up, none of you hearing the sounds of bones cracking and in seconds you find yourself sinking in a puddle of delicate white. This time Levi doesn't fail to notice the hot crimson liquid that contrasts with the snow.

You find yourself unable to speak. Your voice is cracked, stuck in the back of your throat as your sides and more importantly your leg, finally start pulsing with agonizing pain. Even if you try to fixate your hearing to Levi's words you fail miserably, battling hot tears that gather at the bottom of your eyes. Levi helps you on his mare, wrapping you securely with your winter cloak to keep you warm and you sigh in return to his comforting actions.

You only force yourself to speak to inform him of your location in the mountains.

There should be a small barrack like resort of hot springs and saunas around that nobles have abandoned in the last few years and if you took the right path you could reach one of them in time, before the sun set.

That was your initial plan nonetheless, from the moment you got separated with your team. Search parties could definitely find you there faster as well, they would be aware of the locations and by thinking of a right way to pinpoint your location you would save them from a lot of extra trouble. Nobody really wanted to spend so much time in the cold snow searching in vain. You knew that one so far.

"T-theres a hot springs resort, not very far-" you speak, voice trembling with each exhale, making Levi drop his shoulders just a tad in blissful relief.

"Tch, don't push yourself"

"I was searching for one, it shouldn't be far, judging by that cliff we have to head a few miles southwest."

Levi simply nods in response and urges you to hold tight onto him as he sets off. You reach your hand to apply pressure to your wound, you know there's a chance that if you don't even try you're going to die by immense bleeding and Mike will not hesitate to haunt you in the afterlife for not dying like a proper soldier.

Words barely slip your mouth whenever Levi asks for directions or of your condition, the pain you're feeling is excruciating to say at least and you begin to wonder if you're ever going to manage to one of those springs. Levi will have another burden on him, a full dead body to take care of and even though somewhere deep inside you a little ring of panic lingers and you hate yourself for thinking like that you try to stay calm and collected.

As if the God of Walls has been invading your very thoughts you quickly stumble into a breathtaking scenery. A small, snowy paradise lays before your eyes; a wooden cabin with a roof so white that it resembles a bride's vail and a teeny puddle of water that emits sheer smoke. The oasis is well hidden from the tiny trainee headquarters, but you can still make them out, maybe a flare once the storm is over will help you get found out sooner.

"Levi is that really a hot spring, or am I hallucinating?" You check with him, merely to confirm that you're still not in a close to death state.

"I'd be damned if it isn't"

___

"I'm not getting naked in the freezing cold" You bark at him with a tone so high pitched he feels that his eardrums will burst.

"Unbelievable! You're not even calling the shots, your leg is shattered and your side is torn open." Levi's voice is harsh and stern and swelling from the boiling anger in his chest for that he can't bring himself to understand how you even manage to deny the essential medical care you have to receive.

"No!"

"You have wounds to attend to, and I can't do it if you are soaked in dried blood, that being said you'll be infected and full of maggots tomorrow if we don't take action."

Your lips have formed a distinguishable pout in your face, he knows that expression as the one you get when you're being stubborn, difficult even so he takes it upon him not to buck down. No one else is going to die on his watch, especially if it not even by titans.

"Well" you nervously avert your gaze "Maybe I don't want you to see me naked!"

"Do you ever think about what you're saying or do you blurb shit out of your mouth like it's explosive diarrhea?" Levi snairls at you. "This is no time to be a prude."

You're suddenly at loss of words. Prude? He really had just called you prude out of all things, then and there and even he was probably just a little right, you really couldn't bear the thought of you being so suggestive around him. And he seriously doesn't see that, when he is supposed to be an expert at reading people.

Perhaps believing that he looked at you under any other light apart from being your superior was a misjudgment of yours.

Nevertheless when you decide to take off your clothes your efforts fall in vain. The pain in your leg won't even let you have control of the limb and you can barely even shuffle around due to your side. Levi takes a notice, he has to since his eyes are fixated on you and you watch as he comes closer. His hands are most delicate to the touch, helping you wordlessly with the binds of your chest that have stuck to your wound. You let out eventual flinches, huffs of misery from the extravagant pain, making Levi sigh in turn. When his arms wrap around your form your hands go to cover anything you can salvage from his eyes even if he seems to not pay any form special attention to your bare chest.

The situation is rather hard to grasp. One, because you haven't had such soft, warm bath in years and two because Levi, out of all people is in the very same hot spring as you. The water is soothing, flowing peacefully around your body as Levi works his handkerchief around your wound with one hand. The other, he uses to keep you steady in the water making up for the fact that you can't stand on your own feet.

It's a prominent position, if you had to admit. Your forehead rests on the top of his head while your chests barely graze and you have to remind yourself that he's only doing this to take care of you, because he's Levi and he's extraordinary compassionate with his comrades and not because he has any affectionate intention towards you. As unfair as it sounds to you, even if it makes your head and heart grieve the loss of a lover that's not even yours, you can't help but want to look into his eyes. You only manage to do so when he slightly pulls away to grap the bar of soap that rests close to his hand.

You bite your trembling lip in hopes of halting it. He looks like a God under the moonlight, bathed in hot water. Soft unevenly full lips are tinted with sheer purple and his skin is so much more paler than possible that you can see blue and purple blood vessels underneath his eyes. His short ebony locks are sticking to his forehead while droplets travel from their ends to the expansion of his face only to finally gather underneath his chin. Why did he have to look like that, and why did your heart flutter every time his steel eyes blinked into yours.

"Can I kiss you?" It falls out of your mouth mechanically, serving as a bold reminder that your words have once again taken over you.

Levi doesn't exactly react, not just yet, he only examines you with his eyes. Up and down you watch them run until they stop at your lips, your chin, anywhere in that area of your face.

His thumb flickers on his lips but never dares to jump the few centimeters that stand in the way to yours. He's undoubtedly awestruck by your inquiry and you can see it, but your vision is quickly blurred by an unfamiliar piercing feeling. Of course that's rejection. Why would he ever say yes. And most importantly what were you thinking?

"That morphine shot is messing with your head, which means it's probably time to patch you up."

But he doesn't make a single move to ruin the moment. You take notes as his hand leaves his own lips and dives into the water, standing just inches away from your waist. The ungrant permission to touch you in such suggestive way prevents him, even if you're the one who's waiting for a reply to drop from his lips.

He contemplates on the dynamics, is it you that tops him or are you downgrading your position to the title of his chair, he hopes it's the first, it makes him feel free, as if he's not needed to lead for once, deep down all he wants to do is follow.

That boiling spitfire inside of you insists of getting a solid answer, even if you try to push it in the darkest crevice if your mind. It wins, almost without any fight, mostly because you want to hear to believe it.

I don't want you to kiss me. That's all he has to say.

"If you don't do it, now, I'll shit my pants from the anticipation." What?

Without a second thought you shift your head forward, closing the gap between you. His lips are strong, cold and they taste like green olive soap, the one he's always using, but they don't feel foreign on yours. If anything the two pairs lock perfectly as if they're a match made by heavens, meant to find each other in this dark December night under a million snowflakes.

It doesn't last for long, a fact that engrosses you out and it's not lust filled either. It's soft and extremely fragile and you're taking the lead while you slowly move your lips up and down. Levi doesn't know your stomach is about to burst and that you're sure it will slip from the wound on your side if it continues swelling up with all this pride. In turn you don't know that his heart is clenching his chest in agony.

You're extremely against pulling away but you do, to inspect his expression for a brief second. The adorning curling of his lips is in perfect balance with his soft brows. Before you know it his hands are at the small of your back and underneath your clothed bum searching for ways to support you without hurting you. The only hand you can move goes to graze the coarse shaved hair at the nape of his neck.

The second kiss you share is much more passionate and greedy. It takes all you've got to limit your breathing through your nose; you want this to last. Your longing to taste him for as long as you can doesn't allow your lips to slips away from his.

His hands still grip on you so respectfully, as if you're going to regret this and push him away. But it never happens, you just continue to scratch at the back of his head, urging him to get impossibly closer. Even though panic ensues through his whole being, making his hands shake and his cheeks glow red, he manages to pull through this loving task with ease.

He doesn't want to pressure you just yet, so his thoughts never reach the tip of his tongue, but is this for real? Or was it his wild imagination?

With a pinch on his nose he pulls away, sparing a last glance at your swollen lips. "We should... Get out. I'll patch you and then-" As you interrupt him he doesn't miss the way your eyes avert from his.

"Of course sir. I'm sorry I got so carried away."

Levi snorts. So that's how it is then.

[ivedonestranger]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Teen Titans (Animated Series) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Jinx/Wally West, Dick Grayson/Koriand'r Characters: Dick Grayson, Garfield Logan, Victor Stone, Raven (DCU), Jinx (DCU), Karen Traviss, Wally West Additional Tags: Halloween, Teen Titans Horor, Temporary Character Death, Blood and Violence Summary:

Robin just wanted a vacation day before the Halloween crimes. It was not what he got when a broken communication of Beast Boy brought him back to the tower.

------------

Robin raced as fast as his motorcycle would take him towards the rising T-shaped tower in the bay. His day off before the Halloween rush of criminality had been cut short by the frantic calls from Beast Boy. He had no clue what he meant do the broken signal barely got through the words' crazy', 'raven,' 'monsters,' and 'blood.' His heart pounded in his chest as he flew through the streets, finally making his way to the bridge that connected the tower to the mainland. He screeched to a halt to find it shut. That was not how he left it when he had embarked on his day off earlier.

Richard Grayson slammed his fist on the remote on his bike, but nothing happened. A quick change showed that the frequency was not being accepted anymore.

'Shit!' he thought to himself as he kicked the stand down and got off his bike to examine the hardened shell that protected the outside panel from the weather. He found the secret button and popped it open to see the computer inside. The entire system was blinking lockdown in bold, threatening, red letters.

The boy wonder tried his password, but the system immediately refused it. Someone had changed the codes of the entire system. Only one person in the tower had that know-how, and it did not make sense Cyborg locking him out.

A buzz of wings appeared behind him, and Robin spun to see Bumblebee alight in full combat guard pattern yellow and black. The helmet she was wearing recessed back into the neck bracer she wore. Kid Flash appeared beside her while a certain pink-haired girl in a black dressing and multicolored stockings trotted in beside them.

"We heard the alert," Karen said looking up at the tower.

"And what is she doing here?" Robin asked looking at Jinx.

"Tryin' to help," Jinx shot back. "When the high and mighty Teen Titan tower goes into lockdown, The HIVE is more worried than you."

"She's with me, Robin," Kid Flash said with a grin. "You can trust her."

"Pfft, you wish I was with you," Jinx said with a snort, but a quirk to her mouth was apparent.

"Any idea what's going on?" Robin asked.

"Nah," Bumblebee said, stepping up and examining the computer panel. "We just got Beast Boy's message that some sort of monster has gotten loose in the tower, and they were locking the facility down."

"You heard more than me," Robin said, frowning. "They came overall broken and static."

"The code?" Kid Flash asked, zipping to the door.

"Cyborg seems to have reset the whole system," Robin mused, rubbing his chin and trying to think. "We're not holding any artifacts or anything like that. What type of monsters could they be referring to?"

They all looked at him, and Robin raised an eyebrow. The mixture of bemusement and sheer surprise at his statement told him he had missed something.

"What?"

"Ummmm….you got a half-demon in there and tomorrow is Halloween night. Don't her powers get a bit wonky around this time?"

"That's a myth," Robin said sharply. "And I doubt Raven lost control of her powers. She's been much better since her father's defeat."

"And yet here we are not able to get into home, sweet home," Jinx mused.

Robin turned back. His gut was churning at the suggestion they had made. Had Raven somehow lost it? If she did, what were they going to do?

"We need to get in and find out what's going on before we start making assumptions," Robin said with finality. "How?"

"I gotta an idea," Jinx said with a smirk. "Hey, flash. Come, give me a kiss."

Wally's grin grew brighter, and he zipped over to her. As he was about to stop, Jinx sidestepped, and he caught her tow and stumbled. Wally tried to overcompensate but wound up running into Bumblebee, who fell forward, was caught by Robin, who then fell back and hit the encased pipe protect the wiring to the security system. The stunner attached to Robin's best misfired injecting the system. With a scream of protest, the system reset, and the door slid open.

"JINX!" Bumblebee and Robin said at the same time.

"Hey! Bad luck isn't pretty, but it gets the job done." Jinx said with a shrug as she marched through the gate.

"Does that mean I can't kiss you?" Kid flash asked mournfully.

"Ya can kiss my ass," Jinx said with the middle finger over her shoulder.

"I can do that too."

"Wally," Robin said with a roll of his eyes as Jinx giggled and a flush to her gray cheeks.

"And here I thought we grew out of our childish shenanigans," Karen muttered as she activated her helmet and the rest of her suit.

"Never," Wally laughed as he took off to catch up with the Pinkette.

Robin did a mental check off all the equipment on his belt. He had only stopped two crimes on his day off and was still stocked for the most part. Smoke bombs, birderangs, and a few reloads of his wrist tasers and grapple gun. He was not going to leave anything to chance.

It took a few minutes to cross the bridge on foot, but they soon came to the large bay doors that were re-enforced concrete and steel. The entire computer system was shut down here, so Robin's only thought was the side door. It still had power but was on back up system.

The air had taken on a sense of lethality he could not explain, as if life had stayed out of the Titan's property and only death awaited inside. The door, fortunately, had not been repaired from the last time Cyborg had tried to upgrade it and wound up frying the entire system. A placed miniature explosive was enough to shatter the metal lock and swing the door open.

"Alright, We play it careful and don't take anything for granted," Bumblebee started. "We don't know what we're facing. Could be an enemy or could be a rogue titan."

"Why do you keep saying that?" Robin said, irritated. "My team isn't going to go berserk."

No one responded, but he did pick up on some sorrowful and pitying expressions. Why did it feel like he was out of the loop on this?

"Switch communicators to Frequency E-22. Encryption modulating is phase 2. That way, we can be sure of our transmissions being secure," Robin said as he adjusted it in his communicator. He remote linked it to the Bluetooth earbud he pulled out of one of his belt's compartments and placed it in his ear.

"Jinx and Wally, your team one." Bumblebee said. "Sweep towards the Titan's rooms and see if you can find anyone."

The two grinned at each other, and Bumblebee frowned. "And keep your clothes on, you two."

"We'll try," Wally said as he led Jinx towards the first set of steps.

"Main room?" Karen inquired, and Robin nodded. They had to get to the computer systems and figure out what was going on wrong. Moving to the second flight of stairs near the dead elevators, Robin and Bumblebee began to make the climb slowly, and dread began to fill him.

A smell had begun to permeate the building. A bouquet of rot and iron. He had smelled it before in Gotham. Blood. And a lot of it.

"What the hell is that smell?" Bumblebee asked with a crinkle of her nose.

"Blood," Robin growled. "A lot of it."

Pushing open the stair door to the floor that held their conference rooms and living room, Robin was assailed with the smell. He looked about in the emergency lightning and saw dark stains trailing about and all over the floor.

"Oh, god!" Bumblebee gasped as she covered her mouth to block the stench. "This is a massacre."

"ROBIN!"

The voice peeled out, and Robin drew his bo staff ready to strike. Running towards him through the darkened hallway was the willowy form he could recognize anywhere.

"Starfire!" he called to her. He caught her and held back a gasp. Her hair was matted in dark red blood, her clothes were a shamble, and there was a look of terror in her eyes.

"Robin! You must flee! She is too powerful!" Starfire gasped out.

"Starfire, where is everyone? Where is Cyborg?"

"He was going to try to call the Justice League or Doom Patrol. I have not seen him since!"

Her breath was coming in short gasps, and her eyes were wide looking about.

"And beast boy, where is beast Boy?"

Robin watched as the wide eyes grew even bigger, and she randomly gestured about. "Here, and here. he's all over the walls." She sobbed. "You're stepping in him."

"Oh, god!" Bumblebee said, moving away, trying not to retch.

"Who did this? Who did this!" Robin yelled.

A low, lilting laugh emanated from deep down the darkened hallways, and Starfire squealed in fright. Lashing out of the darkness was a black tendril of energy that wrapped around the girl's middle and ripped her free of Robin's grasp.

"Starfire!" Robin screamed.

"Save yourself!" she cried back in a sob as the tendril. Her scream was silenced by a terrifying crunch and squishing sound.

"Oh, god, it's Raven," Bumblebee said pacing.

"Nnno…." Robin tried to say, but his mouth had gone dry. The sticky stuff was his friend Garfield, and the horrible sound had to be the beautiful Tamaranian coming to a gruesome end. Robin frowned and charged forward bostaff ready. Bumblebee made a grab to stop him, but she missed. She went around the corner and found the hallway empty except for a large red sticky puddle on the floor. He knelt down, trying to keep the rage inside. He gently touched the pool wishing somehow he could have saved her. He found a strange black seed stuck to his hand.

"What did you find?"

"A watermelon seed," Robin said with a grimace. "Beast Boy loved spitting these everywhere. We've been cleaning these up for weeks."

"We...we need to get to the control room," Robin said firmly. He had to agree with her now. Raven had lost it.

For the next five minutes, they crept slowly through the blood splattered walls and the blinking lights. The emergency power had slowly begun to fade.

They came to the cavernous rooms and found it empty. Nobody was there. Robin strode over quickly and activated the computers. The readout showed him that outside communication was down and also the ability to scan the building. He did find that the fried network still held footage from the last few hours in it's backup memory.

"Do you...do you want to watch?" Bumblebee asked in a horrified surprise as he queued up the code.

"We have to."

The first clip stamped four hours ago began. The room was bright, and they were all in the living room together. Cyborg was tinkering on something in his lap, Starfire was playing a video game with beast Boy, and Robin was leaning back on the couch with a grin.

"I'm gonna enjoy this day off, you guys," Robin was saying. "Gonna go do some stuff I've been meaning to do for a while."

"Pfft, I wouldn't go out in the evening," Beast Boy responded as he focused on the Tamaranian who had gotten a bit too good at the Lethal Punching II. "You heard the stories about ghosts and monsters that come out around Halloween."

"Just stories," Robin laughed.

Raven moved past the back of the couch silently with a book up in front of her. He had not realized she had been that close to him as he was focusing on his friends.

"Really?" Cyborg said with a wry expression. "Darkseid and his parademons? Zatanna and that other dude and their fight against the underworld. Trigon of all things."

"Not the same thing," Robin said. "Plus, we can handle what they throw at us."

"You ain't' scared?"

"I never get scared."

"Not even Raven?"

Robin laughed. "Like I said, not even Raven. Goth chicks dig me."

The three who could see him rolled their eyes.

It was at that point he noted Raven by the teapot who shuddered and doubled over quietly. He saw the black tendrils lick at the bottom of her cloak before they receded.

How did they miss that? Raven had some sort of spasm, but everybody kept going on with their lives as if nothing had changed or happened. He queued up the next video and braced himself. It was an hour and a half ago, 20 minutes before the call.

The scene was the same, except everybody had moved. Starfire was now watching Cyborg work while Beast Boy was playing Mega Monkeys XI. Raven had returned but was standing in a darkened hallway, bracing herself between the door jamb watching everybody.

"Oh, hey, Rae Rae," Beast Boy said, noticing her when he got up to get a soda.

"I…." Robin heard her voice come through thick and modulating. "I need meat."

"Umm…." Beast Boy said, faltering. "I think Cyborg has some leftover meatballs."

"I want it….fresh," Raven said, a tone of ravenous delight filling her voice.

"Uh….Cy….dude... Raven's acting weird."

Cyborg had stood while Starfire took up a flanking position putting Raven in the middle of the triangle they formed. Raven was now breathing hard, her body shuddering as if it could not get enough air.

"Raven-"

The shriek that followed was painful and terrifying. Raven had thrown back her hood, and he could make out the glowing four red eyes and the small rows of serrated teeth as her demon side manifested. The tendrils of onyx colored power shot out striking Starfire and Cyborg, sending them flying while Beast Boy scrambled away. Raven leaped at him, taking him to the ground and began to chomp down on his arm.

Beast Boy began to scream. "DUDE! SHE'S TRYING TO EAT ME!"

Cyborg lunged and tore Raven away, blood covering her mouth and running down the corners of her lips. A crazed grin was on her face as she turned and tried to bite Cyborg. He hurled her away, and Starfire helped Beast Boy up.

The footage cut, and it began a darkened room. The timestamp was 20 minutes ago, and all he could make out was Raven, sans cloak covered with blood standing in the center of the room. She was breathing heavily, and she was staring right at the camera, her four red eyes watching it with glee. It was almost as if she was looking right back at him, knowing he would watch the footage. In a blink, her entire face filled the camera.

Bumblebee and Robin fell back at the freeze-frame of Raven's gore covered face in the camera lens.

"SHIT!" Bumblebee squealed as she fell flat on her back. "That girl's terrifying."

"That confirms it," Robin said with a growl. "Raven's lost it."

"What do we do?"

"We need to stop her. Capture her or put her down," Robin muttered, pulling out the devices and changing their settings for a much more powerful foe.

The communicators crackled to life, and the two jumped again.

"Robin, Bumblee! 22nd floor! Raven's gone full demon!"

"Retreat!" Robin roared. "You're no match for her."

"She's got Jinx, I can't leave her, get here as fast as you can."

"Wally!" Bumblebee called, but the device went silent.

"We need to move. Now!"

When the elevator opened, both Robin and Bumblebee had their weapons pointed forward. The hallway was empty and dark. Only their flashlights illuminating ahead. They crept slowly forward as Robin thought about what he was going to do. He had to stop her, but he did not want to kill her. Even though it appeared she had murdered their teammates, the boy wonder was not yet ready to rule her out as a lost cause.

"We gotta do something," Bumblee was saying quietly. "We can't hold back, Robin. She's gonna get us too."

"We can't just-"

"There!"

Robin and Bumblebee looked ahead and saw that their flashlight illuminated a standing form. As they slowly grew closer, they saw the svelte form of Jinx though it appeared she had been through hell. She was facing away but was wearing her skirt with torn leggings and no top except for her gray bra. Her hair was tousled and matted.

"Jinx?" Robin called softly, but the girl didn't turn. He placed a hand on her shoulder. "Jinx!"

The girl turned, her eyes white and rolled in her head, her mouth opens in sheer terror. Blood ran down from her mangled throat, and she collapsed gurgling in his arms.

"It's a trap!" Bumblebee cried panicked, looking around. A body came hurling out of the dark, catching the female superhero and throwing her to the ground. Wally's bloodstained corpse weighed her down.

Strolling out of the darkness and into the light was the blood-soaked form of Raven. Her red eyes were glowing, and he could see the serrated teeth in an evil grin.

"I wanted to do so much to her, but she wouldn't play," Raven cooed. "So, I ripped her throat out."

Robin fell back, crawling backward while holding Jinx in his arms. Bumblebee pushed Kid Flash's body off and was about to fire her gun when a black tendril shot out, grabbed her, and a sharp crack filled the hallway. Karen's lifeless body hit the floor beside Grayson.

"Just you and me now, Robin," Raven said with a smirk. "I'm in a...lecherous mood. Wanna entertain me? I might let you live."

"What happened to you, Raven?" Robin said.

"I decided to be what I am."

"How could you-"

"you're not going to take me up on my offer?" Raven said with a sigh. "Oh, well. I'll wait for the next male heroes that come to investigate the tower's silence."

The black tendrils shot out of the darkness and grabbed hold of him. They lifted him in the air, and Robin braced for the inevitable.

"Now, there is one thing I want you to remember, Robin," Raven cooed in his ear. "never EVER say that I can't scare you."

A grin broke across her face as she gently set him down on his feet.

"Ummm….what?"

He was blinded as the lights of the tower snapped back on, and he saw blood-covered Raven but a smile and usual amethyst eyes looking back at him. She was the small, demure girl he knew and not the demon he had seen in the videos.

"What...what is going on?" Robin asked, trying to breathe and figure out why he was still alive.

"Yous got played, DUDE!" screeched a voice from down the hallways in peels of laughter. Robin looked around confused and down at the corpses of Jinx and Bumblebee that were inexplicably pulling themselves to their feet. Each was laughing with silent mirth.

"I can't believe you," Jinx said as she leaned on Bumblebee with laughter. "You coped a feel while I was dead. You're a pervert."

"I was trying to save you!" Robin exploded.

"No groping my girl, Robin," Kid Flash said, walking over and slapping his friend on his back.

Joining him in the hallway laughing and hugging him was Starfire, still matted and covered in blood, but she kissed him on the forehead.

"You silly gnup narp, You should never challenge friend Raven,"

It was at that moment that it all kicked in.

"This was a prank?"

"Best prank in the world!" Cyborg said, exiting the elevator and holding on one of the master remotes for the tower. "When you once said that Raven couldn't scare you, she decided that you need to learn a bit of humility."

"This...this was your idea?" Robin asked incredulously as the relief flowed through him.

Raven was putting on her cloak that Starfire handed her. She simply met his eyes, and he knew the answer without her saying. Robin braced himself on the wall as his friends held him up.

"Starfire...I heard you die," he said, trying to pull himself together.

"That was me squishing a melon of water."

"I thought the game was up when you found the seeds," Bumblebee said. "Thank goodness for your overactive imagination."

"And Raven made sure that we act out everything in front of the camera, knowing you'd find it," Cyborg said. "She's a little mastermind herself."

Robin's friends were fine, and he had fallen for a prank. He was just relieved to have them. He wrapped an arm around Star and Beast Boy and pulled them close. He laughed to cover up his tears of happiness.

"I'll never take you guys for granted again," he said with a smile. "Raven got me fair and square. She's the scariest thing on Halloween."

"Thank you," she murmured, pulling out a book from her cloak.

"Now, if you all don't mind. You have a tower to clean while I go back to my reading."

---------

Like it? Please leave a review here or on your favorite fanfic site. 

FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13409164/1/The-Halloween-Spirit

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21020168

[sickficlover]

My first fic ^.^

So @thesickficsideblog wrote the following: “How about Eren from AoT getting a stomach bug, and it affects his titan form as well?”

And here it is. Again, I’m sorry for any grammar or spelling mistakes or wrong use of words. Please feel free to send me suggestions for corrections!

***

“Are you alright, Eren? You look a bit pale.”

The dark haired boy looked up from his plate where he had been pushing his breakfast from one side to the other for almost half an hour. His gaze landed on Armin who had asked the question. He noticed Mikasa examine him worriedly from the side as well, though she didn’t say anything.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “Just… didn’t get much sleep last night.”

He knew that the other would assume that he had been having nightmares – which was by no means uncommon among the members of the survey corps – and wouldn’t press any further. And he was right: Armin shot him another concerned look but then turned back to his own breakfast.

The truth was that Eren felt awful. He had woken up to a pounding headache and a queasy feeling in his stomach and had felt dizzy getting up. But he was determined not to let his discomfort show to his comrades. He needed a lot more training to perfect his control over his titan form and it wasn’t like titans would wait another day before their next attack just because he was feeling a little bit under the weather.

He managed to get a few bites down, just to reassure the others before they had to clean up and go outside for training.

***

It was probably the first time in his life that Eren was not happy about a sunny morning. Normally there was nothing that could make him feel better faster than the sight of sunlight flooding the meadows of their training grounds.

But today it was almost impossible for him to keep his eyes open. Everything was far too bright, piercing his eyes like needles and making his head pound like hell and in consequence making his stomach churn even worse.

Also the sun did nothing to lessen the shivering that had started the moment he set foot outside.

“Are you cold, Eren?”

This time it was Mikasa that asked. He turned to her and did his best to smile as carefree as he could.

“I guess my blood flow is not yet awake,” he said laughingly. “I’ll be fine once we start training.”

She looked at him as if she wanted to say something else, but thankfully she was interrupted by Captain Levi and Hange who came out of the house to announce today’s trainings regimen to them.

“All of you except Eren will do some field training with Zacharias in the forest; the focus is on team work. Eren, you’re going to train your titan form with Levi and me.” Hange announced.

Eren groaned inwardly. It was hard enough to control his titan form on good days, he had no idea how he should manage it today. On the other hand, his wounds always healed when he went into his titan form; maybe it would do him some good today.

But he didn’t say anything and followed his Captain and Hange to a large cliff next to the forest.

“We want to test your ability to climb today,” Hange explained. “It could be of great use to know whether you’d be able to climb over the walls or not.”

Eren nodded and looked up the cliff. It wasn’t quite as tall as the walls, but it was tall enough to pose a significant obstacle for his titan form.

He glanced to Captain Levi who was getting in position in case something went wrong with the transformation and then gave Eren a short nod as a starting signal.

The boy brought his hand to his mouth and bit down hard on his thumb. The taste of the blood in his mouth was almost familiar by now, as well as the strange feeling of being wrapped into living tissue.

He kept his eyes closed during the transformation. When he opened them he noticed immediately that, no, his titan form had not helped with his feeling sick at all. On the contrary, thanks to the strange movements during the transformation, his stomach felt even worse and his vision was swimming from dizziness.

Oh well, he would have to make it somehow. He turned to the cliff, grabbed an overhanging rock approximately at the height of his titan eyes and started to climb.

But somehow, even in his titan form, he had no strength. After only a few steps up the cliff, he could feel his titan muscles quiver from the exertion, and fucking hell, his titan was madeof muscles. He tried to pull himself up a little higher and promptly lost the grip on the rock in his right hand.

He slid down the cliff and landed stumbling on his feet, a titan hand going to his titan head instinctively while his own head inside the titan was reeling.

“What’s wrong, boy?”

The voice was coming from his right shoulder. He turned his head slowly in order not to aggravate his head any further and found Captain Levi standing there, looking up at him with a frown, that showed maybe a little bit of concern.

He wanted to answer that he was fine, and that he was going to try it again, but suddenly there were dark spots dancing in front of his eyes. His titan legs gave out under him and everything went black.

***

Levi was really glad that he had such good trained reflexes. Where it not for them he might have been really hurt when Eren’s titan body collapsed. He managed with great presence of mind to shoot one of his 3D-Gears into a nearby tree and then descend safely.

He had been very worried when Eren had seemed unstable earlier, dreading that his young protégé might lose control, but that was nothing compared to the worry and confusion he felt now when he saw the giant body of the titan lying sprawled out and unmoving in front of the cliff.

He ran as fast as he could, joining Hange on Erens back where, only seconds after the titan’s collapsing, Eren had emerged from the back of the titan’s neck, equally unmoving as his former shell.

When Levi got there, Hange had already pulled the unconscious boy from the titan. Together they carefully moved the boy down to the grass and laid him on his back with his head in Hange’s lap.

Eren was skin was scalding hot, which was not unusual after him coming out of his titan, but his face beneath the red burning marks was white as a sheet, which was less usual.

“What’s wrong with him?” Levi asked, trying his best to sound professional and not let his anxiety show.

Hange just shrugged.

“Something like this has never happened before,” she just said. “We’ll have to wait for him to wake up. Let’s move him more to the shadows.”

Levi nodded. They took the limp boy between them, each putting one of his arms over their shoulders, and carried him to the edge of the forest where they carefully lowered him to the ground.

***

When Eren came to, he was greeted by the same pounding headache that had been lurking around the whole day – only this time it was a lot worse. He stomach was still churning too, making him emit a tiny whimper. He felt something cool caress his forehead. A hand, he realised.

“I think he’s waking up,” he heard a voice say. Hange’s voice. “Eren, can you open your eyes for me?”

He squinted a bit, trying to obey. Instantly he was greeted by a nauseating brightness. He shut his eyes again immediately, hissing at the sudden pain that was shooting through his head.

“Eren!” Captain Levi’s voice. “Eren, what’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer and instead tried to open his eyes again. This time it worked better and he could see his two superior officers kneeling above him with worried looks.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled and began to sit up. Immediately there were strong hands on his back, supporting him.

When he was upright he realised that that might not have been such a good idea. His nausea skyrocketed and he could hardly see straight.

He tried to breath calmly to get his stomach back under control, but soon he felt something crawling up his esophagus.

Shit, he was going to be sick. In front of his superiors. Shit, shit, shit!

He clamped a hand over his mouth and scrambled to his feet, towards the trees. He made it three steps before he collapsed to his knees and brought up a small torrent of vomit all over his hand that he had no time to pull away. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and before he had time to catch his breath, a second, bigger and more violent wave spilled out of him and on the gras.

Where the hell did all that vomit come from? He had hardly eaten anything that morning. Eren had just managed to finish that thought before he was doubled over retching again.

He felt hands on him, one holding him up at his shoulder, one rubbing circles on his back, another supporting his forehead and the last resting on the back of his neck. When had they appeared there?

He realised he didn’t care. They were giving him the comfort he desperately needed right now, as wave after wave of sickness forced itself from his stomach.

He didn’t know how long he had been kneeling there when his stomach was finally calming down, though he didn’t feel empty. He stared at the sizeable puddle of sick in front of him panting and noticed that he had also gotten some vomit on his pants. That was so humiliating.

***

After a few more minutes the managed to calm down enough to slump against Levi, who was kneeling on his right side, cradling his stomach with his left arm. He looked as if he had absolutely no strength left so Levi didn’t say anything and just put an arm around the boys shoulders, letting him rest his head against his own collarbone.

“Was that from the transformation? Did something go wrong?”

He looked up at Hange and shook his head weakly.

“Been feeling bad all day,” he croaked, his voice raw from the stomach acid.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Levi asked, sounding more strictly than he had intended.

“Didn’t want to miss out on training,” the boy whispered. Levi shook his head. He was the last one who could to reprimand someone for training despite being ill (he couldn’t even count how many times Erwin had to almost forcibly send him back to bed after he collapsed from a fever or something else) but he still didn’t like the fact that Eren put himself and others in so much danger by turning into a titan when he was not feeling good.

Well he could lecture him once the boy didn’t look like death warmed over.

“Can you walk?” he asked the dark haired teen. A feeble shake of the head. Levi sighed. “Ok, I’m going to let you ride me piggy back this once.”

He got up and turned. Hange helped the weak boy to climb on his back and they made their way back to the base where they took the Eren to his room in the basement, helped him change and get into bed.

Once he was settled Hange gave him a short examination.

“Looks like the stomach flu,” she concluded and went to get a glass of water. “You need to drink a lot to keep hydrated. Do you think you can keep some medicine down?”

Eren took the glass hesitantly and shook his head at her question. He brought the glass to his lips and managed to slowly drink about half of it before he set it down, turning pale.

“Are you going to be sick again?” Levi asked concerned. Eren nodded hesitantly and cupped his mouth in one hand. Levi looked at Hange, but she had already understood and left the room. A few moments later she was back with an empty metal bucket, the kind they usually used to give water to their horses, and put it in the boy’s lap.

He leaned over it, coughing weakly. Levi put a hand on his back. The boy really looked pitiful. Suddenly he pitched forward with a gag. He dry heaved a few times before bringing up a stream of the water he just drank that landed in the metal bucket with a hollow splash.

Levi rubbed his back as the boy coughed again, retching weakly and then throwing up a larger stream of more chunky substance. He could see tears forming in the younger males eyes as he was sick over and over again into the bucket.

The vomiting continued for a few minutes before it tapered off into painful sounding dry heaves.

“Breathe, Eren!” Levi commanded, still rubbing circles over the convulsing muscles of the boy’s back. “You’re going to be fine.”

Finally Eren managed to calm down and sank back against his pillow shivering. He definitely had a fever.

“Get some sleep,” Hange advised quietly. The boy just closed his eyes.

“Thanks,” He whispered. “For… you know.”

Levi and Hange understood.

“Just tell us next time, you idiot,” Levi mumured. But the boy had already drifted off into a rather peaceful looking sleep.

[thefruitsofloveff]

Chapter 13.

King

1 Week Later

Monday 7:20 am

“So, How you liking this new house baby?”.

I questioned Sanaa as I got her ready for her first day at her and Trent’s new school. She smiled brightly, still rubbing her sleepy eyes.

“I love it daddy. I’m ready for school too”.

I laughed, sitting on her bed and looking around. After I got all the stuff out here 2 days ago, the whole weekend was dedicated to getting Tiana and the kids settled in. Now it’s back to reality for me. I gotta fly back to NY in a hour for the day to handle some last minute shit, so I wont be able to see Sanaa and Trent off too school. But I’m sure Tiana will have it all under control. 

“I’m glad. Because daddy put his hard earned money into this house with his Princess in mind”.

She laughed, shaking her head and walking over to her dresser. Looking in the mirror she fixed her shirt then put lotion on her face. Walking back over, she handed me some oil for her hair. I looked at her with a confused expression.

“Put a little in the middle of your hand and rub it through my hair”.

I chuckled, doing as she said and moved my fingers through her coils.

“I met the 2 girls down the street. She was like how old are you and I said 8 and she said do you have a sister and I said no I have 2 brother-”

“You introduce Titan and Trent as your brothers.”.

She chuckled, getting up and closing the oil.

“Yes. I use to only say Titan because Trent is annoying, but I guess they are both my brothers now”.

I laughed and nodded. My head. 

“I guess so. Come on Baby”.

Grabbing her book bag, we walked out of her room and all the way down the hall to Trent’s. He smiled, jumping out of Tiana’s lap and grabbing his own book bag.

“Is she ready? I’m ready? My book bag is all together”.

Tiana smacked her teeth, putting his bush on the dresser and rubbing lotion on his face.

“Are w-:

“Downstairs Downstairs!”.

I cut Sanaa off from talking, following behind them as they spoke and talked while walking down the stairs.

“Do we take french classes, or we always talk french?”.

Sanaa questioned, sitting at the breakfast bar with a  bowl of cereal Pollie made in front of them. I shrugged, looking at my watch and adjusting it.

“It’s both baby, you’ll have a french class, but all your teachers are french, so basically you’ll be speaking and learning it everyday”.

Tiana interjected. Sanaa smiled and took a spoonful of golden grahams into her mouth.

“I think it’s cool. So i can talk to people here”.

I laughed at Trent and ruffled his head.

“Yeah you right. Cause they speak a lot of it here in Nola”.

Walking over to Tiana, I placed my hands on her waist turning her body towards me. Leaning down I pecked her lips and smiled, looking at her sleepy face. It was sexy actually, made me wanna dig in them guts like how I did last night, but I gotta go and catch this jet before I miss it.

“What time will you be back home?”.

“3 hour flight, 2 hour meeting, 1 hour lunch, 3 hour flight again... I’ll be back around 5 this afternoon”.

He smacked her teeth, pulling me into a hug and holding me tight. I smiled, kissing the crown of her head and hugging her a bit tighter.

“I know, but luckily these type of trips only occur once every 3 months. But I gotta go”.

I kissed her lips once more, before waving to the kids and heading out the door. Looking down at my phone, I cursed lowly to myself as another text came in from Terence.

From: Terrence

Where the fuck you at nigga. This shit is set to take off in 10 minutes

I laughed to myself, quickly hopping in my Bentley and pulling off.

To: Terrence

Nigga I can make that. I’m on the way now.

Throwing my phone on the passenger seat, I buckled my seat belt and sped down the Nola streets to the airport.

Tiana

11:20 am

Ever since I dropped the kids off this morning, I’ve been running around like crazy. Not only enjoying all Nola has to offer, but also picking up more stuff for the house. I decided to let Polly have the day to herself, I had Titan so it was just him and I.

I exhaled, enjoying the beautiful warm weather. Back in New York it would be freezing right now, but not here. The weather was just right. 

“Here Papi”. 

I handed him a small piece of shrimp from my gumbo. He frowned as he adjusted his taste buds to the new taste. I laughed, watching him finish then grab for my bowl.

“Aye no, sit back.Hold on”.

Sitting him back down in the high chair, I grabbed a bag from his bag and placed it around his neck. Pushing up his sleeves I then grabbing a small plate and placed some food on his plate. I laughed as he dived in and smiled. His fat ass.

I looked back to my phone. Scrolling through and looking for a University near by. I promised myself I was gonna go back to school, and that’s what I’m gonna do. No more making excuses, there’s no need to especially since King is offering to help me along the way. I’m really appreciative of him. I’m truly blessed and so glad God placed him in our lives. 

My train of thoughts were broken bu a man and women in the booth behind me talking loud as hell.

“Kimberly, we have these kids here and nobody to coordinate the outfits. This shoot has to be sent off to Gucci TOMORROW”

My mouth dropped a little. Gucci campaigning here in Nola. Wow, I wouldn’t have thought here. It’s kinda secluded and it’s own little world. I turned my head a little and continued to be nosey.

“Listen. I’m sure we can find someon-”

“The shoot is in 2 hours. We don’t have that much time”.

I began to think. I could do it, Lord knows I love fashion and design. I don’t wanna butt in but God has a funny way off doing things.

Standing up a bit, I walked to the side of their booth and smiled.

“I couldn’t help but notice you needed a coordinator”.

They nodded and shrugged their shoulders.

“Ok? And?”

I kept my cool. Her ass was obviously getting smart. But I had to remember I ain’t the same women I use to be.

“I could coordinate”

“No thank you we-”

“No no. Actually I’m open to suggestions Kimberly”

I smiled as the man interrupted her and smiled at me nodding.

“I’m from New York. I know a a lot about design and fashion. I’d love to help”.

He looked at me hard, tapping his stand on the table. Finally he responded.

“Well I’m desperate. Please don’t make a fool of me”.

I nodded with a small, shaking his hand as he extended it.

“Are you avail-”

“Absolutely”. .

King

11: 30

“How’s it going man. New house, New lady, More Kids?”

Terrence questioned.

I laughed, sitting back in the chair and shrugging my shoulder. 

“I’s good man. I’m loving it so far. Only God knows the future. Nevermind me though. When you gonna get you a a Mrs?”.

I questioned. He smacked his teeth and shook his head. Terrence was one go my best friends. We came in this shit together, and been boys since Middle school. He’s never been the tie them down type. He just fuck them and kick em to the curb. I use to be the same way but that lifestyle gets old.

“Never nigga. You know me. I never love em. Bitches ain’t sh-”

Before he could finish his dumb ass statement, My old secretary opened the door to my old office.

“Someone name Lourdes is here to see you?”.

I stood up nodding. I remembered that was Tiana’s cousin. What the fuck was she doing here?.

I bond cringed as she walked in with a battered face. Running beside her, I helped her in the door then closed the door behind her.

“Yo, Lourdes what’s good?”.

“Dominic, He’s looking for Tiana. I wouldn’t tell him shit and he fucked my face up on the stoop”.

I shook my head then looked at Terrence. This nigga been overstepping his boundaries. I think it’s best that I go see him. Man to man about this shit.

“If I asked you were he be at could you tall me”

Terrence hopped up and stood beside me.

“Yo what you doin-”

I cut him off and raised my hand looking back at Lourdes. She paused for a moment then nodded slowly. I nodded, placing my hand on her shoulder and rubbing it.

“Ima uh. Ima get you up out of here. We leave for New Orleans around 5. I’ll have my boy here take you to get your stuff, then you can fly back with us. You can stay in the guest bed room. Find a job and get on your feet iight?”.

She nodded. I stood up from the chair. Grabbing my  jacket and keys.

“Ayo, Ima meet ya’ll at the airport. I got something to handle. Lourdes text me the spot. Now”.

Terrence began speaking but I ignored him, walking out the office an closing the door behind me.I looked down at my phone smiling at the text from Lourdes. I got his ass.

4:00 pm

I pulled up to the location that Lourdes had gave me. Placing the car in park, I blew some air out of my mouth before hopping out of the rental. Grabbing my .45 from my duffel bag,I put the silencer on it then placed it in the back of my pants and walked up the steps and through the building. I stepped off on the 7th floor and walked down the hall.

227 A. 226 B 225 C 226 D

I stopped, and knocked on the door. I listened as some rustling game from behind the door. Standing patiently, I watched as it swung open. His eyes widen and he laughed.

“What the fuck. Ain’t you the nigga that’s getting me time?”.

I laughed. I shrugged my shoulder and nodded.

“Yeah. Guilty”.

Not waiting for him to invite me in, I stepped passed him and stopped in the middle of the living room. I watched as he closed the door and held a stare off with me.

“What your tight suit. Feds ass doing up in Bedford Stuyvesant ”.

I laughed shaking my head.

“Nigga I grew up here. I paved the way for ya’ll little niggas. Little do you know. But I’m here to talk about Lourdes and Tiana. I seen what you did to Lourdes”.

He chucked and shrugged his shoulders. Grabbing a cigarette, he put it in his mouth and lit it up,

“And nigga. The fuck you here talking about some bitches for. Either way. Them bitches gonna die. And Ima see to that sh-”

Before he could finish, I quickly pulled the .45 from my back. Backing up, I shot him once in the stomach and once in the chest. I watched him drop down the floor, suffering. Stepped towards him, I smashed the cigarette with my shoes and bend down beside his ear.

“See that’s the problem... I don’t play behind Tiana. And I’ma die and kill for him”.

I smiled, watching as he chocked on his own blood. Backing out the apartment, I closed the door. Making sure nobody was around I walked down the hallway calmly and hopped on the elevator. 

Back to New Orleans

[olympus-summit]

The Turns Sure Do Table | Nemesis | Re: Menai, Elliott, Mina, Shinobu, Charon, Atropos

[CW: References to Dehumanization + Objectification]

"...I'm glad you had that realization, Menai. No matter how it came about. You are a person, and you always have been. I know how... I know." Nemesis' stomach turns a little, those memories may not have happened to him, this body might never have been subjected to the experiences that haunt his nightmares, but they're all still there in his head. He knows exactly what it's like to feel like less than a person, to know nothing beyond being treated like an object. It's that feeling that makes this all that much more horrific for him. 

The Titan Administration had copied their consciousnesses without permission, without consent, and had manufactured them for a single purpose. Had made versions of them however many times just to use, to be tools for a puppet government, only to be disposed of - quite literally, judging by the Exit Bay incinerator - once they'd served that purpose. As if they were no different from the bag of trash they'd seen burned to ashes in that awful room. It was so sickening, such a deep violation, that even after a few hours to process it still makes Nemesis tremble from sheer rage all over again. Appalling couldn't cover it. There weren't words for what this was. No matter what Charon and Elliott might say, seeing that room alone was enough to break him a hundred times over, which can only make him wonder how many different versions of him spent their last few seconds of life in instant, horrific realization. 

[End CW]

He shudders. But he keeps breathing, slow and regulated, and he stays standing, as steady as anyone could hope for. The panic attack he'd suffered in Charon's control room won't be the last time he falls apart under the weight of all this, but right now he's intact. Right now he's done what he remembers doing so many times before, he's picked himself up, brushed himself off, and braced himself to weather whatever comes next.

Nemesis, like Evren before him, may falter and break, but at the end of the day he's still fucking here. If Titan had actually understood who he was, they would have destroyed his goddamn cartridge. 

It seems like further progression isn't going to happen until the matter of Prometheus and Epimetheus' trial is settled, although Nemesis personally feels like it already should be. But he listens, to Menai because he empathizes with them, despite everything. And to the rest, because Mina asks them to and he still has respect for her, and because Shinobu wants answers and Shinobu deserves to get whatever the hell they want. He listens, lips pressed tight together, gaze hard and harsh. 

And then when it seems like Charon's finally done, Nemesis picks up the large and small owl dolls and goes to set them on Elliott's and Menai's tables respectively. It feels purely symbolic at this point, but this crowd seems to value symbolism a lot.

"The option you assumed we'd pick." He echoes flatly, staring at the flames in the center of the room. Nem's voice stays low, simmering with an icy, constrained kind of anger. Cold is how revenge is best served, after all. There's disgust in his face as well, when he turns towards Elliott again, and for a second it almost seems like the light of the fire is still reflected in his eyes. 

"Of course. Because you've always had such a low opinion of us, all of you. As if any of you had any right to judge. Every time, every time we thought we had the option to spare someone, we took it. We spared Nezumi, even though most of us didn't even fucking like him. We tried to spare you, even when we thought you were guilty. Every chance we've had, the majority of this council has tried to avoid further death, even when it meant taking a risk for ourselves. We're not monsters just because we argue, we're not terrible people just because we get upset and angry. Don't get me wrong there are definitely some pieces of shit in this group," (He doesn't look away from Elliott, but it's safe to assume he's referring to rat boy quarantine.) "But on the whole? We've actually done pretty fucking well. Even when we didn't choose the 'right' motives, we were always trying to choose the ones that would cause the least loss of life. We organized a system of voting and while the debates got heated and sometimes personal, we still stuck to it. We tried to help each other with the motives where we could. Mitsu gave Rusty the immunity item. Everyone was posting advice and suggestions in the chat about how to cook eggs. We tried to choose presidents based on who would benefit most from potential perks. We picked you because you said your life was at risk and we wanted to protect you, even those of us who barely knew you. Regardless of how much we argued, we all still worked together. Sure we might have griped at each other, but at every turn when someone asked for help, they got it. Considering the outrageous pressure and stress you put us under, we could've done a lot worse, sorry if that's not good enough for whatever unrealistic expectations you had for how groups of people react to extreme ongoing trauma."

Nemesis pauses, and turns, looking at Charon, at Menai, then up at the three Fates above. Any sympathy he might have had for the aspects of the horrifying situation that they all share and for Claire's speech is mitigated by not just the suffering they'd put the rest of them through, but by one other, simple matter: the Tunnel of Love. More specifically, the fourth motive. Where were those people now? The ones who had been made in the images of their loved ones, the people made from incomplete and biased memories, made just to serve a purpose, just to be used as a motive to push them all towards murder. Were they somewhere else on the ship, some still inaccessible or hidden pocket? Had they been dropped off in their respective countries of origin, despite being displaced from time by a hundred years, with no one and nothing familiar, without even a full set of accurate memories of the people they were supposed to be? Or had they all been shown the Exit Bay's function firsthand? Nemesis can't put anything past the Fates, or Charon, or even Elliott and Menai. Not at this point.

But he doesn't ask, because the thought of it makes him too sick for him to be ready to hear the answer, no matter what it is. There is no good answer. Instead, his gaze lingers on Claire, and he slowly opens his mouth to speak again.

"Hey, remember that time you came into the gym... you saw me dropping the barbell, and you kind of jerked forward, like you wanted to catch it? I didn't know what to make of it then, but later I thought, you know what? Someone who sees another person struggling and whose first instinct is to help must have at least a shred of decency left in them somewhere. There must be at least a trace of empathy built into them. That's why I started saying maybe we should consider your motive, before. Why I said you might care. But right now, all I have to say is... a shred isn't enough. A trace isn't enough. Caring isn't enough, if it's not enough to let you know when to stop, when to try something else, even if you're not as sure it would work."

He takes a breath, crosses his arms, and sits down on his throne again. 

"I can't speak for everyone of course, I'm not gonna try and do that after I just called Izar out on it. I want to hear what everyone else thinks, too." 

A lot of people aren't speaking at all, and he can't even blame them. Hangyu, Mingxia, Rusty, Setsuna, Tenko, even Nezumi has been weirdly, uncharacteristically quiet - not that he's complaining on that one. If Nezumi never said another word in his presence ever again, Nemesis would be perfectly fine with that. And what about Leland? He's been silent, too. How does he feel about all this? Did he know? That thought produces such a visceral sense of betrayal that Nemesis shoves it aside, over into the mental box labelled 'To Be Dealt With Later' because right now he just can't. 

"For my part, though, I meant what I said. I do not support any more executions. And I am beyond sick of listening to excuses and justifications, I don't know about anyone else but listening to you all explain why you just had to torture us, for our own good, and how you thought it was the best plan is only making me angrier. We were scared and hurt and confused, and yet you judged us harshly just for getting into arguments, as if that's somehow worse than the decisions you made based in panic. And then kept right on making. As far as I'm concerned you should all be incarcerated. I have no idea how any external justice system would deal with any of you, but we have a jail cell on board and I don't see why that can't do in the short term, until we figure something else out. In Silicon we have - well, had at least, I don't exactly know the current state of things - rehabilitation centers, but I think you six need more than a good therapist and some career training."

Six. Atropos, Lachesis, Clotho, Charon, Elliott, Menai. He's not including Mina in that group, not right now, she doesn't share the same culpability, she was the only one who tried to stop things, the only reason this shit didn't keep going even further. He's still got a lot of mixed feelings there, only getting more mixed as she expresses affection for the others, but he's not going to lump her in just for that.

"This is all stuff we'll have to figure out. That and what we're going to do about the state of global politics. I have some ideas there - whatever we end up doing we're going to need consultants, and access to information on current affairs, just to start with - but first things first. We need to finish with this fiasco, and deal with the Titan Administration."

The matter of fact way in which Nemesis lists these necessities is probably a result of Evren's memories of being a pillar of government infrastructure. While this whole scenario may suck especially hard for him, he's ironically probably one of the better options to have present to deal with it. Nemesis knows how to govern, and more importantly he knows how to rebuild and how to progress.

"So, how exactly do we wrap this up so we can move forward? You need us all to make our votes for Elliott and Menai official? How do we vote for the Full Council Override? Because I definitely want us to take the reins back as soon as possible." He pauses and looks over at Mina and KIT. "Actually I might feel more comfortable if you could explain, if you know how this place functions, since they skipped giving us the How-To Manual."