#and yeah there are a lot of cool applications of machine learning

[dashiellqvverty]

i really don’t love takes that are like “how can you be anti copyright but also against ai” because it’s like. well first of all i don’t think ai itself, or specifically generative ai (because “ai” alone is imo a pretty meaningless term that refers to so many things at this point), is like. inherently evil. it’s a tool and in fact it is a tool that you can do some pretty cool or even useful things with! and like my issue honestly is not even really with people using ai to generate art, but rather with the gen ai software itself because that’s the actual product.

i often think of a post i saw comparing generative ai that pulls from various artists to like. heavily referencing or emulating specific artists in art. and i don’t think that’s necessarily a bad comparison when it comes to the people entering the prompts and generating the images. HOWEVER i just feel like. if someone downloaded a bunch of pictures from the internet and compiled them into a book or a document and then SOLD it as a book of art references without any credit much less compensation to the artists behind those pictures, whether you consider that theft or not i think it definitely constitutes a Dick Move.

there was another post that was like “oh everyone made fun of nft bros about right clicking their bored ape pics but those same people see it as theft when those images on the internet that anyone can see are used for generative ai” or whatever and it’s like. idk, for ME my line is that when SOMEONE is making money (in this case tech ceos) off of a piece of art, but not the person who made it, that is a problem. and maybe this is just a Strong Autism Conviction thing for me bc i’ve felt this way for a long time but like downloading something for free is one thing but downloading something for free AND THEN SELLING it is another. in my opinion

BUT ALSO there is a difference between what i personally think is right/wrong and what i think should be the law. and personally i think that any legislation about ai meant to target stuff like this is almost certain to do a lot more harm than good. like we don’t need copyright laws getting any stronger 😐

[roach-works]

I just learned about the existence of plasma cutting machines from your blog which sent me down a fun little reading trail, so thanks! It’s so strange studying plasma physics and recognizing that there are many many many industrial applications for this field, but I’ve hardly ever learned about them? There’s a lot of focus on fusion and space plasmas - which is understandable, because hell yeah fusion, and who doesn’t love space? But all of the plasma-related tech that is currently used by people to make everyday things is hardly ever mentioned. And I mean, this is clearly because scientists who are interested in materials processing or manufacturing probably left academia to work for industry, and plasma physics is an ENORMOUS field, but I don’t think I’ve ever had someone sit down and say “here are all of the tools used today which are based on plasma technology.” Maybe it’s because that list is too expansive, or the details of certain devices might fall under patent laws, or a lot of the stuff related to their function is interdisciplinary and hard to cover in classes without presumed knowledge of a very broad array of topics, I dunno. It’s just funny to me that I’m picking up pieces of info relevant to my PhD on tumblr dot com. Also, the context of the post where you mentioned plasma cutting machines - that is, the alienation of some workers from tangible physical products - seems to relate somehow to this gap in my education in a way I can’t quite articulate.

that's very cool! this is what i babysit all night:

or at least something a lot like it. beams go in one end, get cut up by the arm, come out the other end and then i stack them. i also debug it like, constantly. it is not a smart machine or very good at its job. the great machine uprising is going to skip this particular dude.

[duhragonball]

Was rereading your liveblogs of the Uub vs Baby fight, and one thing I noted was the part about how all the merger of Uub and Buu accomplished was giving him the Candy Beam, and I felt such a sense of disappointment all over again. Of all Buu's powers, they gave him the one that ends the fight immediately if it hits (with the exception of Vegito I guess) so he can never successfully use it because the story can't allow it.

And that especially sucks because Buu, particularly Kid Buu, had so many cool applications of other abilities. His stretching and shapeshifting make him unpredictable and allow for unique approaches to combat, which could've helped Uub stand out more from the other fighters. Obviously GT's "Goku Time" philosophy means there's not that much competition, and they don't have a great track record for creative or well-animated choreography, but I can't help but think of how awesome it would've been to have a Dragon Ball character with the cartoonish, rubbery fighting style of Luffy.

I've got some time to kill, so I'll start going through my backlog of asks. This one is about Dragon Ball GT 33, which we talked about at the beginning of the year. Yeah, I really shouldn't have let these pile up so much.

Anyway, I get what you're saying, in that Uub could have gotten more interesting powers from combining with Buu, but the thing to keep in mind is that GT wouldn't have made good use of stretchy limbs or shapeshifting or anything else. Remember, they already had a character who could do all of that: Majin Buu, and they basically wrote him out of the story.

Now, a GT fanficcer could still do a lot with the idea of Uub discovering new abilities from the merger. He may not have known about them during the Baby fight, but he could continue training and find out he can do other stuff that Buu could do. But GT was never going to put that kind of focus on Uub. They lost interest in Trunks partway through, and he was one of the three main characters.

I'll go a step further, though, and submit that merging Buu with Uub defeats the point of Uub's introduction to the story. Kid Buu absorbed all those other characters to transform, becoming a more defined personality, but it wasn't authentic because Fat Buu and Super Buu weren't really him. They were Buu with other people's personalities stacked on top. But without those other people, Kid Buu is just a hollow killing machine, he could never grow or evolve on his own... until he got killed and reincarnated as a human. Than Goku could train him and make him into a greater fighter than he ever was before.

Recombining him with Fat Buu undermines that whole idea. That just takes them back where they started, when they were all one character as the Fat Buu we first saw hatch out of that magic ball. GT presents it as a reunification, sort of like Kami and Piccolo fusing back into their original self. But Majin Buu doesn't work that way. Kid Buu was the pure version of the character, and the other versions were dilutions of that. The whole point of Uub is that he can become greater and stronger than he ever could by absorbing other people as Kid Buu.

I suppose I can give GT some credit and suggest that they may have understood this perfectly well. After all, "Majuub" never really got very far, so one could argue that the merger was a mistake all along. But Fat Buu couldn't have understood that, and Uub didn't even know what was going on, so they had to find out the hard way. That could be a good subplot for a supporting character, but they never gave Uub enough screentime to learn his lesson. More grist for the fanfic mill, I suppose.

[snickerdoodlles]

@emberfaye ooohh okay, re: profit-making with genAI-- there is, uh. a lot to unpack about this and i couldn't condense it into a text post even if i wanted to, but i'll try to expand a bit on the specific thing i was thinking about when i wrote my tags.

okay so, very briefly: something really important to note about generative AI is that most versions you see nowadays are actually two models in a trenchcoat. for a long while in machine learning, people were working with individual small models that were trained on smaller and often niche training datasets for very specific tasks/applications. however, after the huge success with transformer architecture and some hardware improvement, people started developing foundation models, which are the huge AI models that are trained on massive and broad datasets that can be adapted to a bunch of smaller downstream tasks. and this was a big deal because we could pair the foundation models with the smaller, more specific AI models we were previously using.

(to put this into names that are more familiar: OpenAI's GPT series (ie GPT-1 thru GPT-4) are foundation models. ChatGPT is a LLM trained to fulfill the specific use-case/downstream task of "chatbot". )

and there's actually a lot of benefit to a two-model system! genAI is significantly better the more data it's trained on, but these huge foundation models are extremely expensive to make, it takes a significant amount of power and hardware, and these are so big they start to get too general for most tasks, so it's not really practical to build these up for any specific tasks. pairing them with a small/smaller use-case model narrows the focus of the foundation model's capability to a specific task, and its cheaper and faster to develop a smaller model for this system since the foundation model will provide a lot of the "power" and content generation.

i'm really skimming over how exactly they're setup, but i hope that makes sense? really, the specifics of how exactly these things work isn't important, i'm just trying to highlight that a lot genAI uses this sort of two-model system. because imo, the most viable line of profit AI developers have right now is licensing the APIs of the foundation models out to businesses and organizations who have or will develop their own specific use-case models to aid/streamline tasks or integrate into their workflow.

and they do do this! there's a lot of cool stuff coming out in how people are developing smaller use-case models rn! however, for a business to develop their own AI model, they have to:

identify a use-case

create a workforce team that knows and understands how to work with genAI

curate and develop their own databank to fine-tune their model for their use-case (which can range from data that's easy to input, such as tokenizing a PDF or handbook, to data that has to be specially formatted, labeled, and/or created in a format that the AI can process, which is about 250x more complex than anyone is willing to admit)

create an interface for users to interact with, and stress test their system with enough users and enough time to get it to mostly functional, and stress test some more to fix and patch over the holes made from genAI's brittleness, and

...yeah. so there are a lot of steps to this, all of which require time, personnel, and resources to be allocated to developing and implementing these things, and AI developers are desperately trying to market genAI as something easy.

there is so much obfuscation around how genAI actually works or what it's actually capable of doing, that most businesses and organizations don't have a clue on how to even identify a viable use-case for genAI. everyone really likes the idea of ~just plugging in~ AI to their workflow, but that's straight up not an option for any business or organization. (even the ones that did just ~plug-in~ ChatGPT quickly ran up against the issue that ChatGPT has a specific use-case, and that use-case is chatbot.)

to throw AI developers the smallest of bones, some of the confusion around genAI's potential capability is occurring because people are...well, human. humans love to anthropomorphize. we will make friends of rocks and vacuums. and while this is one of our most charming traits as a species, it makes us especially vulnerable to fall for genAI's mimicry and cast it as human.

but that's the extent to which i give them leniency, because the AI business absolutely exploits the shit out of this anthropomorphism. some of this "genAI has human-like intelligence" bullshit is coming from AI people who genuinely believe genAI is capable of or adequately represents human intelligence (this is idiotic. i am shoving Bender's stochastic parrot paper down their throats and nailing it to their foreheads for good measure as we speak. i could rave for days about the terrible benchmarks used to label """smartness""").

most of this though is AI developers obscuring the true extent of human labor that goes in to making the genAI puppet move. culturally, we so heavily associate "AI" with "substituting human work" that we're blind to both the human labor running it and the extent of our assumptions in its capability. we're so focused on the internet corpus these models eat we don't see the terabytes of human annotated or human generated training data needed to make them functional. we so heavily anthropomorphize we can't even conceive of the utterly alien way genAI processes data. and it's this sort of blindness that allows AI businessmen like sam fucking altman to make increasingly outrageous claims like us being on the brink of unlocking artificial general intelligence and not be immediately laughed out of the room.

as one reporter put it, "ChatGPT seems so human because it was trained by an AI that was mimicking humans who were rating an AI that was mimicking humans who were pretending to be a better version of an AI that was trained on human writing." (x <- a very good article on the unspoken human work that goes into genAI btws)

(seriously, there's a lot of unspoken labor that goes into genAI and even more than what that article covers, but the annotation work alone is massive. we figured out some things with unsupervised learning, but genAI heavily relies on human labeled data, because genAI is brittle as fuck.)

i actually don't mean to soapbox here (oops 😂💦), so kicking myself back to the profit thing: all the anthropomorphization and obfuscation of genAI means that a lot of people just straight up don't understand how to use it or even what it can actually do. genAI is a billion dollar investment searching for a trillion dollar problem. the area of it that currently holds the most potential, the smaller use-case models, is largely overshadowed by the claims that genAI is easy and simple and those promises immediately fall to pieces once you get past individual user cases.

rn, there is exactly one person living the AI dream promised by the AI tech-bros and he is a Kenyan data annotator on multiple accounts in multiple countries, using ChatGPT to speed through $10 annotation tasks. that man is a fucking king.

akdj profit-making monster

bold fucking choice of words for a company that's several hundred million in the red in its yearly income

[deepnerdblog]

nerd shit redux

Reaper has a looper program called Super8 that basically lets you set midi trigger pads to turn Reaper into a livelooper setup, basically a script to enable looping features. I plan on learning it because I love loops and loop based song writing. So each trigger can set a lane active, or mute a lane, or maybe set a lane to be 4 times longer, or jump to a lane that has fx for lead or drum, or what have you. I have a usb keyboard that used to let you assign midi signals but the software currently stopped working. Old Axiom keyboards had awesome customizing software so each knob could be assigned any midi variable. Be cool if it worked but now I have transport tape style buttons that give Midi instrument change sequences instead of easier to use Midi CC code or some such. Solution? Either find a way to filter those midi codes and turn them into Midi CC, or simply label actual black note keys at a specific octave for my live loop controller. I really am curious if there is a good generic control footpedal pedal that can output ctrl voltage for eurorack, midi CC, on/off, sliding pedal CC, all the bells and whistles in a convenient pedal box. I know there are good utility midi foot pedals, but when you add in voltage out and whatchamacallit, the voltage that sets the amount on pedals/multifx (similar to eurorack CV but not 1 to 1 the same). So yeah, going to tap a keyboard and set it up for looping synths, guitar, drum machines live into reaper with the Super8. *But wait there is more fiddly bits*, there is a secondary recording medium. QSC mixers can have external midi to trigger transport buttons like rewind, record, and goto time, as well as arming and disarming channels- so that with super8 can mean I can have one surface triggering recording on both devices. Also reapers super8 can't record midi if i read that correctly, so maybe i can make a setup that puts midi in the laptop but also syncs the recording/tranport buttons on both devices (which is nice to have regardless of live looping). QSC made the firmware for their entry level digital mixer do a lot of the cool shit the fancier models can do. I love the sound of a SM7b mic recording a acoustic guitar into the QSC mixer/recorder with Kush Omega series vst to give it that teeny bit of mastering. I realized a little bit ago that suddenly I can record guitar and not hate the sound, and it's been a challenge how to make that fit into synths, drum machines, and 'writing music in the box'. Thus I need to learn super8, and also having both recording systems start on one button press is pretty sweet. (ideally sync doesn't shit the bed and i don't have to use LTC/MTC timecode as a master clock or anything).

so that's an ongoing project - meanwhile I also need to learn more songs on guitar and piano and improve my sense of pitch. its coming together nicely but it behooves me to be both playful and architectural in my approach. building a framework to vibe out on, but also improving the application of playing keyboards or multitracking things without having to fuck with it in editing.

multitracking

whats been useful is multitracking without headphones, as well as having vintage headphones with a really warm ear soothing midrange tone. i believe i saw concert footage where J Mayer was wearing vintage headphones. trying different things and the options help prevent ear fatigue. i've been making forays into mixing miced guitar with amped electric guitar. At some point I'm probably going to tackle full tracks with arbitrary limits to instruments, and layer classical, acoustic, electric tracks. Even a doubletrack of the same instrument sounds nice and 'phasey' thicc, but switching up instrument timbres and layering them is just appealing and feels musical. meanwhile i've tried layering piano chords from the triton behind acoustic guitar and it also sounds 'thicc' and charming. it is also finicky as all get out as a skill.

fucking with a odd idea wearing headphones until my ears hurt this morning.

i've been trying to fuck with some crazy not quite chocolate and peanutbutter type mixing elements to loop a particularly swingy classical sample with a improvised beat. i hit an entertaining wall this morning because i was trying to shoehorn a loose recording of this piano genius into a eccentric beat along with snips of riffing on guitar with a chewy bassy guitar humbucker sound. Competing tinny and shiny piano (with a elegant recording from fifty or more years ago) versus Triton drums versus the trimmed out random guitar pulsing experiment. And I kind of liked it, but the piano had been tweaked to fight a accelerating swingy performance, and there were some neat edits, but between the goofy beat and a lot of time stretching and trimming, the whole thing is chaotic af. Will have to return to it after resting my ears. years ago i filtered a movie sound track theme and alternated the filter and the sweeping sound of the chords slowed down and then added a buzzy detuned bassline - which didn't suck, but it didn't not suck enough either. why didn't it not suck? partially because i chopped it up, made three unrelated loops out of it that didnt glue back together as a song, and also because the buzzy detuned bassline was *not in key*. So now I'm fucking with a genius spanish piano sample and in the back of my mind I'm thinking 'should i learn to play a simplified version of this on piano? or do i just run this thing through melodyne and write out the main part of the theme so i can verify how things fit note per note.

One thing that really stood out as i time stretched and trimmed these loops is that when the edits were nudged 'just so' the beat underlaying the loop really would give a 'driving feel' or nudged the other way would be backbeat style off but in a close groovy kind of way.

[heyheydidjaknow]

What is this witchcraft? Me? Not posting after midnight? I’m shocked to my very core. Anyways, this is one of my longer chapters. If you have any feedback, do not hesitate. As always, previous chapter (and next when applicable) is at the bottom.

Chapter 5

“Dude, hear me out here.” You are vibrating like a kid on pixie sticks. You slide your hands apart as if to display written words. “Lightsaber.”

“What’s a—”

“Donnie.” You put your hand up before he can continue. “Imma stop you right there. I am going to take your hand and kindly ask you to tell me that you know of, or at least have heard of, Star Wars.”

“I do not.”

“That is a fucking crime.”

You have been sitting with him for approximately an hour, watching him dismantle a “Kraang bot” as you register for school and start ordering supplies. You are quickly starting to realize his knowledge of anything outside the bounds of science is limited to whatever he read by virtue of his father, which consisted of one book on Greek mythology, one on the Italian renaissance, one on ancient Japanese history, and one on Japanese folklore, or anything he learned via the interests of his brothers. Because of this, he seems to know exactly jack-shit about things you consider common knowledge, such as the concept of foreshadowing or Poptarts or Hitler outside of a general association with the name and emotion of some sort, leading to interactions like the one you’re having right now.

“It’s not a crime,” he defended. “It's just I was never really interested in that kinda stuff.”

“But it’s Star Wars!” You throw your hands up. “How do you not know of Star Wars, at least?”

“Look, you’re saying it’s really good, right?”

“Well, yeah.” Your voice lowered.

“Why would somebody throw out a good movie?”

You sigh. “Yeah, that’s fair. But!” You point at him. “But I need to watch it with you, if only out of principle. Besides,” you settle down, “it’s a very… traditionally plotted story. I still have to give you that lesson.”

“Yeah, but after I finish this.” He pushes his laptop to the side, picking up the soldering iron and moving back over to the pile of metal you know will become Metalhead.

You nod in agreement, leaning forward in your chair to watch him fuse wires. “You know what?” You smile. “I may give you shit, but it is really cool watching your whole process.”

“Hm?” He looks up at you from his lean forward.

“Well,” you shrug, folding your legs on the chair, “I just mean that it’s cool seeing how you go about building all this junk that is just… what’s the word?”

“Untraditional?”

“Revolutionary.”

He has a funny look on his face. “You think so?”

“Oh, totally.” You nod eagerly. “I told you that I thought you were one of fiction’s greatest minds, didn’t I?”

“No, you didn’t.” His face is turning red.

“Really? I swear I did the day I met you…” Your eyebrows furrow as you try to remember.

“You said something about inspiration.” He smiled softly, voice airy.

“Oh, then I—well, it kinda is the same thing.” You rub the back of your neck, feeling your own face heat up. “Must’ve—uh—misspoke. I do that,” you trail off, “kinda a lot.”

“I think it’s cute.”

You feel your heart skip a beat. ‘Oh come the fuck on. Really?’ “See,” you hear your voice rise a register, “that is so not fair.”

“Huh?” The color drains from his face as he tries to remember what sounds just came out of his mouth. “What did I say?”

“You’re not allowed to just say shit like that.” You cover your face with your hands, feeling your heart swell. “You’re not my boyfriend or anything.”

“Wait, what did I say?”

“Nope. Shut up.” You try to calm yourself down. “You didn’t mean it, whatever it was. It’s fine.”

He blinks, very confused. “You sure?”

“Totally.” Your voice is tight. “One hundred and ten percent sure.”

“You can’t be one hundred ten percent sure.” He looks back down at his project, writing your behavior off. “It’s mathematically impossible

“You wanna bet?” You start looking around the room, prior embarrassment now replaced with a desire to win this artificial conflict. “Got graph paper?”

He scoffs. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding right now?” You lean across the table, tilting his head up to face you properly, determination burning in your eyes. Your voice lowers. “I am going to show you one hundred and ten present sure right here and now as a matter of principle.”

He swallowed, face going red again. “One moment, please.” He fumbles around for a piece of paper and hands it to you, along with a marker.

“Thank you.” You smile sweetly, acting as if nothing happened as you start to sketch. “Give me a bit of time and I will show you one hundred and ten percent sure.”

He rolls his eyes, a smile coming back to his face as he calms down. “Sure you will.”

You stick your tongue out at him. “Go back to your transformer while I blow your freakin mind, kay?”

“What’s—”

“Don’t even.”

“Gotcha.”

You chew on your tongue absentmindedly, remembering how much you love spacing out pixels when you hear a notification on your phone. You pull it out, read it, sigh, slide out of your chair. “I’ll be right back,” you promise, heading for the door. “I gotta make sure plot shit happens.”

“You know where to find me.”

“Always do.” You shoot him finger guns as you drag the door closed. You walk over to the brothers, currently engaged in their digital hockey match. You watch, waiting for Raphael’s inevitable victory— ‘Wow, my life is getting pretty damn predictable.’—before clearing your throat to catch their attention.

“So,” you smile, “what’s the game plan for tonight?”

They seem to not understand the question. “Yeah, Leo,” Raphael prompts, shooting a look at him, “what’s the game plan for tonight?”

He paused. “Is there some sort of sport thing happening?”

Your heart drops. “Leonardo,” you ask again, voice lowering, “you have a plan for the thing happening tonight, right?”

“What thing?”

You grab his shoulders. “The spill,” you clarify, voice quiet and sharp. “The mutagen spill. The spill I told you about three days ago?”

His eyes widen. “You said that was happening Friday!”

“Today is Friday!” You let go, throwing your hands in the air out of pure frustration. “That’s why I told you today is Friday! What, did you think I just liked talking about days of the week? That it’s my hobby to keep track of how many days I haven’t died?” ‘I mean, it is, but that’s not the point.’

“Well, it can’t be that important if you forgot about it.” Raphael leaned against the machine. “We’ll just go in and bust some heads. No problem.”

You groan. “Do you guys just have something against planning? I swear everything with you guys has to happen at the very last minute.”

“We don’t need the time to plan. I dunno if you noticed, Y/N, but our ‘plans’ aren’t exactly plan worthy.” He shrugged. “You just have to beat the Kraang out of them and that’s the end of it. It’d be like planning to raid a trailer home.”

You sigh. ‘They’re teenage boys. This is only episode six. Deep breaths.’ “Just… please try to heed my warnings in the future, alright? The last thing we need is for something to sneak up on us.”

“Alright, alright.” Leo focuses his eyes on you. “When is the mutagen getting spilled?”

“Tomorrow. The show wasn’t very specific on times, but some time tomorrow.”

“Then let’s air on the side of caution and assume they mean midnight. What’s the time?”

You pull out your phone. “Seven forty-five.”

“That should be enough time to get there, scope out the place, and be home before dinner.”

You feel the ground shake under you as a metallic clang pierces the air.

That is your cue to leave for fear of getting hit with a laser. “You can’t beat Metalhead. Also, Mikey calls him Metalhead.” You start heading out. “I’d stay and watch you guys waste time trying, but I haven’t eaten today, so I’m gonna grab food and meet you there.” You run out before they can ask any more questions.

If nothing else, all the running has been helping you get in shape. You are not typically the type to take runs, but you also are not typically the type to be pressed to see people. Loneliness is one hell of a motivator, as it turns out, and you were starving in more ways than one. You stop by the first place you see, grabbing some food item with a name you already forget—some sort of burrito, you think—and climb a fire escape belonging to a building overlooking the warehouse in question. You sit on the edge of the building, dangling your legs over the side as you wait for them to get here.

‘Do I like him?’ You pause at your question, mid-bite. ‘I mean, I had a crush on him when I watched the show, but this attachment isn’t romantic affection, is it? I’ve had crushes before, and I’m acting too suave for this to be that.’ You swallow, taking a drink out from your nameless cup. ‘Considering my emotional state? It’s highly likely I’m just latching onto him for lack of anyone or anything truly familiar in my life right now.’ You sigh. ‘But, then again, if that were the case, this feeling what be more familial, wouldn’t it?’ You conclude, whether you are attracted to him romantically or not, it is entirely unfair to both of you to pursue a romantic relationship with him unless he makes the first move. You have more faith in his critical thinking skills than in your own, anyhow. Besides, he acted irrationally enough around April as is; introducing a proper romantic relationship into the mix sounds a bit too risky, especially at such a vulnerable time in his development.

You hear the distant sounds of mechanical joints approaching. ‘Already liking this better than ninja silence.’ You spin around, hopping off the ledge and onto the roof proper as you go to properly admire the metal wonder.

It looks infinitely cooler than the show would have you believe, if possible. Each piece of its hull has a past and you can see it in every scratch, every dent. It wasn’t anywhere near perfect; you can easily see where Donatello had hammered out the shell of the artificial terrapin, where he had had to settle for using concrete, even the faintest ghosts of the pennies making up its chest piece. It was a glorious collage.

You run over, going down on your knees to look it over. “This thing is so fucking cool,” you gush, shuffling around it. “Like, totally fucking awesome!”

You can hear the pride in his voice, the excitement. “I know, right?”

You hop back to your feet, keeping yourself from jumping up and down for the sake of pride. “That is the coolest shit ever!” You grin, sitting back down and taking a drink from your soda. “You never cease to amaze, Hamato.”

“You think?” He sounds almost like a puppy, excited as he is.

“Dude, totally.” You sigh, feeling yourself mellow out a little. “But, more importantly,” you continue, clapping your hands together once, “we should be properly watching the warehouse in case they need backup.”

“Oh, right!” The robot stomped over to you, standing slightly behind you as you dangle your feet over the edge.

You take another drink of soda, feeling the excitement in the air dying down as you look out over the buildings. ‘It’s oddly peaceful up here. Must not have started the attack yet.’ You swing your legs back and forth as silence settled between you two.

After a moment, he cleared his throat. “I meant to ask you before,” he said stiffly, “but how did you know this was happening today? You never explained it.”

You silently thank him for cutting the tension, turning around to face him properly. “Well,” you start, lacing your fingers together around your cup, “remember when I said that the show Leo watches shows up a lot in episodes?”

“Yeah.” You are not exactly sure why he sounds so interested in a detail like this.

“And you know how you watch on cable?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, as it turns out,” you dig into your jacket pocket, “they release television guides, telling people when certain shows are playing, what times they’re playing, shit like that. So,” you conclude, admittedly smug that you had reasoned this part out, “as long as I know what episode is playing during that episode, I can accurately predict any actions that happen during the periods in which you guys have cable access.”

“So, you map out what episodes are scheduled to play on what days and create a timeline around that?”

“Exactly. Not a bad plan.” You pull up a document, showing him the timeline you’ve created with this information. “As long as you guys are on the grid, and as long as Leo sticks to watching that specific channel, I’ll be able to predict the movements of every major player in the series, which means I’ll be able to determine who we can and can’t fuck with based off how they act later down the line, and I’ll be able to give you proper foresight when the situation—”

Your plan is interrupted by a section of the ledge directly next to you to gain a new hole. You leap to your feet, quickly backing up and almost tripping on Metalhead as you regain your senses and hear Mikey’s panicked yelling.

“That doesn’t look good.” You watch the machine starts backing up. “I’m gonna go in and help.”

Something strikes you. “Donnie, real quick, be careful not to run into anything. The technology you’re using is susceptible to Kraang influence.”

“Relax. I got this.” Metalhead gives you a thumbs up before running and leaping off the building, crashing through the glass roof feet first.

You sigh, getting to your feet. ‘Theme of today’s episode is not to rely on technology. Granted,’ you muse, starting to climb down the fire escape, ‘this probably could’ve been solved by adopting a more intuitive controller and having a bit more experience, but I digress.’ You hop the last few feet down. ‘In any case, I’ve done all I can. If that isn’t enough, so be it.’

You hear the explosion as you start walking back to your apartment. ‘He should be coming here in about three or so minutes.’

If you did not know how this would end, you would be much more concerned. As it stands? You know the score before the game is even played.

You wave hello to the doorman as you walk to the elevator. You tap your foot absentmindedly to the elevator music, walk to your apartment, unlock the door, and step inside, picking a large box off the ground in front of it before locking the door.

You walk over and set the box down on your bed, walking back to the kitchen. You pull a Tupperware box from on top of it, pulling a red velvet cupcake from the container and setting it on the counter.

You had died the first time you had made cupcakes. When you had tried making them again from your mother’s recipe, you had found yourself surprisingly unintimidated as you slid them into the oven. Of course, you had sat directly in front of the oven and stared at it during the entirety of the baking process, but you were hardly going to let the worst experience of your life separate you and the most nostalgic, joy-inducing feeling there was. Who else was going to make cupcakes?

You dry your hands, not realizing you had washed them as you pick the confection off the counter. You peel off a portion of the wrapper, biting into the savory and sweet bundle of joy in your mouth. You moan softly in satisfaction, licking the icing off your lips as you walk back over to your bed, sitting down and reaching for the knife under your pillow. You slice the tape, sliding your baby out of its packaging with a soft smile. You reach back in, taking another bite as you pull out a smaller bag. You set the box on the ground, tossing the now-empty wrapper into it and wiping the excess frosting on your jeans, pulling the instrument from its packaging.

Your father had taught you how to play a couple of years back. You never thought you would get weepy over a musical instrument, and yet, here you are, cradling a hunk of wood costing a little more than one day’s allowance. You purse your lips, running your fingers along the neck as you check for any defects in its construction. You crack open the bag and, after about half an hour of fiddling and research, manage to get the strings onto the violin bass without snapping it. It wasn’t an exact replica, but it was close enough that you feel comfortable holding it, feel joy hearing it come in tune.

You play a scale. It sounds like heaven to you.

You put the rest of the trash in the box, laying down next to the first item you have bought. A stand for it would be arriving tomorrow. That makes you smile.

This is the start of something healthy for you. Ironically, it has started with you eating a cupcake, but, still, you have begun to come to terms with your situation. Granted, you have a long way to go; you still have not deleted your social media, wanting to look out for photographs and clips from the funeral, but this is a step in the right direction. You have to believe that.

One small accomplishment: you have kept your apartment sparklingly clean. It is not as if you have much to do, but none the less.

You find your fingers playing an almost lullaby. You stop yourself, not wanting to fall asleep before getting yourself situated. You set your instrument to the side, getting up to close and shelve your cupcake box for future use. You wash your hands again.

You slide your jacket off and throw it onto a seat, knowing you will likely need it tomorrow. You make it a habit to at least get outside once per day, now. You understand that, even if it is not vital, you need to establish a routine. You must keep moving, if only for your sake of mind.

You check to see the curtains are closed, strip, put your clothes in a hamper. You take a shower, comb out your hair, brush your teeth. You do these things consciously, now. You change into a shirt for sleeping, crawling into bed and turning off the light. Tomorrow, you will have to go down to the laundromat to wash your few changes of clothes. You will eat three meals. You will drink eight glasses of water.

You set your phone on the nightstand, plugging it in. You reach over, fingers curling around the handle of the kitchen knife as you slide it under your pillow.

You close your eyes, feeling your heart pang again tonight.

“Goodnight,” you call to no one. “Love you.”

Silence.

It is better than it was. You do not cry tonight, wrapping your arms around your pillow.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” you mumble, feeling yourself drift into unconsciousness. “Love you too.”

Table of Contents

Chapter 4 Chapter 6 part 1

[sappyspeare]

alternate thief lord ending that has been in my mind rent free for about 4 years

 OK SO

back in fifth grade, we had to read a book for an English literature class, and it was Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. it was a goddamned masterpiece and I loved it. 

now, I've reread it, and now I’m reminded of how much I adored that book and how much I miss the innocence of my childhood and also how similar it is to six of crows. honestly, the emotional attachment I have to this book is astronomical. 

so the ending (uh, SPOILERS) is that Scipio, aka the Thief Lord, gets his age bass boosted by a magical carousel and becomes like. 20 something-year-old dude. and the ending is pretty good ?? like, for a kids book ?? and also because Scipio is an impulsive idiot ??

BUT. I am a die-hard proscipio shipper. and now looking back. the ending doesn’t sit right.

so. ALTERNATE ENDING:

SCIPIO: head-canon: demisexual; gay; he/they

alternate future: I feel like Scipio wanting to be older was a cute plot point and part of his character, but what would have been far BETTER is if he STAYED a child. because when he’s 20 something in the ending, he’s still mentally a teenager. his mentality hasn’t exactly changed. so the first thing, Barbarossa still gets turned into a child, but Scipio gets pulled back from that, and he accepts his fate for the next few years, pools his assets until he’s 18, then promptly tugs the rug out from under his father’s feet, and leaves. he then uses his assets, and his knowledge from his schooling as a capitalists son, and opens schools, orphanages, and maybe a museum or something. a library. he also revives the Theater, because I said so. he gets a nice house in Venice overlooking the square, reading, writing, helping out with his various projects, being a philanthropist, etc.

Prosper:

head-canon: ace; bisexual (he/him) [no, I’m not projecting at all]

alternate future: Prosper stays in Venice. he grows up in Ida’s care until he’s 18, goes to college to study art history or something cute and fun and becomes a teacher at a local college. he learns to take a chill pill, and is the one who often calls the gang back together for reunions. after he gets into college though, he and Scipio move in together and the two of them live happily ever after because they are boyfriends and they are in love, your honour. at some point, after he becomes a teacher, they get married and adopt a little orphan girl, and they are also Best Dads.  

Hornet/Caterina: head-canon: lesbian; they/them

alternate future: oh my god. first of all, I love Hornet. second of all, I feel like they’re very curious about the world as a whole, so after they graduate high school (also raised in Ida’s care), they take a year or so to travel the world. when they come back to Venice, they have a cool girlfriend and settles down as a writer, and helps out Scipio with his projects and ventures. they eventually become a world-renowned writer, and the whole squad is so mcfricking proud of them.

Riccio: head-canon: bisexual; he/they [ya’ll cant tell me my man didn’t have a thing for Prosper]

alternate future: Riccio and Mosca are best boys and I will stand by that until the day I die. they start a gondola business together, and Scipio also gives them charge of taking care of the Theater. Riccio eventually buys a small apartment next to the canals and close to the town for him and Mosca. they also take in kids on the streets and help them out.

Mosca: head-canon: ace; pansexual; they/them

alternate future: as far as I remember, Mosca likes gadgets and mechanics and machines and stuff so I think they opened a little mechanics shop!! and of course, they moved in with Riccio, they take care of the gondolas and the theater's upkeep, and Mosca also helps out Hornet when they need help for a story about a mechanic or something. I also think they would take up art/painting in their free time.

Boniface/Bo:

head-canon: demisexual; he/him 

alternate future: okay so Bo is an interesting character for the future! I think of course he spent the rest of his childhood days with Prosper and Hornet and Ida, then probably went to school somewhere abroad. to me, it seems fitting that he comes back in his early twenties or so, settles into an apartment near his brother and everyone else, and helps Victor with the Private Investigator stuff like Scipio does in canon. given his chemistry with Victor and how he’s kind of a father figure to Bo, I thought it would be cute and fitting. Bo is smart, and he’s a curious soul like Hornet, so I do think he’s the type to seek out puzzles and try to solve them. he checks in on Ida every week, and they have tea together.

Ida Spavento: 

head-canon: lesbian; she\her 

alternate future: she raises the kids, helps Scipio with her connections to get him on his feet when he first starts his projects for orphanages and schools and such. she gets featured in some international photography magazine, which brings her a lot of renown and stuff. she takes care of the kids even when they’re older, they have dinner with her every month as tradition and she and Victor spend a lot of time bickering to each other practically every week.

Victor:

head-canon: aromantic; gay; he/him [he and Ida are wlw/mlm solidarity don’t @ me]

alternate future: he continues to be a PI because this man is magnificent and I would die for him. he helps Ida with the kids when they’re young, most of the gang call him Dad, he helps Hornet with her travels abroad, Prosper with his college applications, and helps Mosca and Riccio kick-start their stuff, like the Theater and the mechanic shop. later, Bo becomes his assistant and after a few years, he retires with Ida, but can still be found with Bo in his office at late hours, trying to piece together some case or another. 

So yeah! those are my ideal endings for each character. again, I love this book and the canon universe is incredible and I love it so much. I’m just a lonely gay idiot. 

I did not include Barbarossa or the aunt or the villains because I don’t like any of them and they got the ending I believe they fully deserved in canon. 

[fipindustries]

getting back to this because i had another conversation on the topic with some friends and i was able to clarify my own inner thoughts on the matter a bit better.

i am undoubtedly playing a definitions games here, yes. im playing the game where magic evokes thoughts of wonderful supernatural powers and fireballs and lightning and such but using it to describe current mundane studies of history of myths and superstitions, theology, symbolism, and the practisce of rituals that at best have a purely placebo or psychological effect on the person that does them and not much else. imbuing the second cluster of ideas with the awe and wonder of the first cluster of ideas when that awe and wonder should be saved for things that merit it, like actually shooting lightning out of your hands or whatever.

but why am i doing this, why am i willing to use the word "magic" in this way? well.

when i was a kid i had a childish idea of what "science" was. i grew up watching dexter's lab and jimmy neutron and other sci fi stories that left me with a very skewed view of science. and even after i grew up i had a very "fuck yeah science" attitude towards it, where i glorified in my head this glamorous view of science and physics in particular as this magical discipline that dabbled in faster than light travel, creating worm holes, developing teleportation through quantum entaglement, time machines, building cool laser guns capable of destroying the moon and making anti gravity devices.

eventually i came to learn that first of all, as far as we know, many of those things are basically impossible, and furthermore that a lot of physics work is fairly unglamorous work of mainly taking precise measurements of small lasers, collecting data and parsing giant spreadsheets of numbers, etc.

same happened with a lot of other disciplines where i thought they would work like this

but in reality they were more like this

and this was fine, i came to appreciate these things for what they were. i grew up and matured and can see the beauty and the virtue of the current study of the universe and the development of models to descrive and predict its behavior through the application of mathematical tools and the scientific method of developing hypothesis and empirically testing them. and there is a lot of wonder and amazement to find in the amazing tools that technology has given us.

a part of that is growing up and accepting that this is the universe in which we live and these are the physics that we are going to get out of it and so we should appreciate it for what it is. it would be silly, and even childish of me to say this is not "real physics" just because is not the idea i had of it that i got from cartoons and sci fi stories.

likewise, the study of the esoteric is an actual discipline that actual scholars have studied in actual academic settings and just because i have an idea of what magic is, that i got from reading harry potter, i think it would be silly of me to say that what they study is not "actual magic". just as silly as the people who claim that current LLMs are not "actual Artifical Intelligence" because they are not "intelligent" because something something spark of creativity something something stochastic parrot, something something fancy autocomplete. there is a discipline dedicated to the study of "artificial intelligence" and within that discipline LLMs are considered "artificial intelligence". likewise with magic in my opinion.

i am still a materialist, i dont believe in the supernatural, i dont believe in spirits, im not a spiritual person by any stretch of the imagination, at the end of the day cold hard rationality and empiricism are the only way to attain any fundamental truth about the universe.

but if the study of ancient rites and religions and esoteric alchemical beliefs (with a hefty side of poetic florid language, metaphors, word play and some almost concerning ammounts of self delusion and magical thinking) is the only kind of magic there is in this universe then i dont have a problem in using the M word to descrive it.

words of magic

someone close to me has been talking to me about magic and trying to get me into that whole thing and because i love them and have a lot of respect for them i have kept an open mind and genuenly considered their arguments.

afterwards i had a discussion with another friend about the nature of magic and we realized we had to define what we even thought magic was and the deffinition they arrived at was essentially "magic is when something impossible happens or is done, something that cannot be explained by science"

and something bothered me about that deffinition because it feels a bit tautological, or circular, magic is what cannot exist. sure its convenient to make magic impossible by deffinition. it feels unsatisfying, philosophically speaking, to make "magic" and "impossible" mean the same thing.

my personal thoughts about magic lie on the sufficiently advanced science side of things, on those posts about how "welding rare metals into the shape of arcane runes can make rocks think" style of posts. in all of fiction magic is always shown as something that can be studied and manipulated and understood, even if at the core of it lie ineffable mysteries, well, so is the case with modern science.

any magic that were to exist irl would eventually be subsumed by the scientific method in turn. if we cant call the things we do in advanced physics, elctronics and engineering magic then we cant call most of the magic systems we thought of in fiction magic either, honestly.

am i saying that magic and science are the same? not really, im just charting how confused my thoughts are regarding the deffinition of magic and what does the word really means, what the concept is trying to encapsulate.

i know there are magic practitioners irl, people who claim to do rituals and spells and usually what happens is that when they try to explain what is it that they do (which tends to be a mix of psychology, hypnotism, emotional priming, narrative engineering, and projecting meaning over chance) and people who dont study magic find the answer dissapointing, dismissing it by saying that that "is not really magic, magic is when you throw fireballs out of your hands, etc". im not sure who gets to claim what the word means.

maybe what it really means is "the feeling of wonder over something that feels unexplainable by mundane causal means, when things seemingly happen by no clear underlying mechanism". perhaps that is the more honest deffinition but i also find it unsatisfying because it makes it subjective. it makes it tied to our own inner state of ignorance rather than to the nature of the world.

but then so is the word luck and the word probability. in the real world, outside of human perception and our limited understanding of what is to come, things happen deterministically as they were always going to happen. things that we percieve as "probable" dont exist in a fuzzy undertermined state until they coalesce into what is, when something happened a certain way that is the way it was always going to happen. luck and probablity are also fake things that "exist" only as a phenomena of our ignorance, and yet we are more than comfortable to use them all the time.

words are harlequins indeed

[quickspinner]

Killer Combo - Ch 4 Finding the Groove

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 Epilogue | Bonus Tidbits | ART inspired by this story! | AO3 | Fiction Master Post

Marinette felt awkward, walking up the steps of the gangway connecting the péniche to the bank. Luka was nowhere in sight, and she stood in the middle of the narrow ramp, a hand on each rail and her index finger tapping lightly. She was already a little rattled from anxiety over the project she’d been working on at home, from arguing with herself over whether it was weird or too much, and now coming here and not knowing what to do was getting to her a little bit. Luka hadn’t given her any instructions except the location of the boat, and it wasn’t as if she could just ring the doorbell, so…

“Are you going to stand there all day, lass?” a booming, accented, female voice demanded, and Marinette jumped, looking around frantically for a moment before spotting the woman standing on the cluttered deck, two fists on her hips and her feet firmly planted. Imposing as her figure was, the expression on her face was friendly amusement and, like Luka, she had gentle eyes behind her round glasses. 

“Oh, I—I wasn’t sure how to—I mean, I’m here to see Luka? I guess I thought, uh…” Marinette’s shoulders hunched slightly, her eyes taking in the flowered headband and thick chunky jewelry and the amp cord necklace. 

“Ah, yes, he mentioned he had company coming over today. So you’re the lass from the tournament, eh? I’m Luka’s mother and the captain of this little floating paradise. Name’s Anarka, or Captain Anarka if you can’t stomach anything else. Don’t call me Madam and we’ll get along fine.”

“O-okay, M—uh, Captain,” Marinette said quickly.  

The grey-haired woman smiled, her eyes crinkling at the edges, and jerked her head. “Well come aboard, lass. Luka’s playing on the upper deck, I’m sure he lost track of time or he’d have been down here to meet you. Those stairs, right there. Watch your step; clutter’s a way of life around here.” Anarka pointed, and Marinette came carefully onto the boat, picking her way across the deck towards the stairs. 

Anarka made no move to follow her, so Marinette just went on up the stairs, hoping Luka would be easy to find. She didn’t even register the music playing until she got to the top of the stairs, though it was probably audible from the bank even; she’d just had other things on her mind.

At least Luka was easy to find sitting half-reclined in a deck chair, one boot planted on a crate and an electric guitar in his lap, a pair of electric blue mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes and flashing in the bright sun as he bobbed his head in time to the music coming from both his amp beside him and the stereo speakers behind him. The track playing was the album cut, but Luka was playing over it, his guitar blending in beautifully with the existing instrumentation and giving it a bit more edge and a more complex sound. It sounded really cool, actually. Nino would love it, Marinette thought absently.

Then Luka opened his mouth and that smooth voice that had always been so soft and gentle rang out strong and clear as he sang along with the track, body swaying to the music, hands still moving over the guitar. “They tell me think with my head, not that thing in my chest, they got their hands at my neck this time. But you’re the one that I want, if that’s really so wrong, then you don’t know what that feeling is like.” 

She thought his eyes must have been closed behind his sunglasses because he didn’t react to her at all until she called his name.

“Oh, hey,” he said, pulling off his shades to blink at her. “Crap, sorry, I—” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the time, and then grinned sheepishly at her. “I guess I lost track of time.”

“It’s okay,” Marinette smiled. “It sounded good.”

Luka’s face lit up. “Yeah, you liked it?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, tucking a strand of hair back. “You’re really good.” 

“Thanks,” he grinned, putting both feet on the deck and straightening up. “Hang on, we’re all set up, just let me turn this off and we can get started. I was just killing time, but I didn’t realize how much I guess. I get into the zone and—” He gestured vaguely. “Well. You probably know how it is.”  

“I do,” Marinette smiled. “I’m not in a hurry.” Marinette watched as he turned off the sound system and put his guitar back in the case with practiced care. “I made sure I had the whole afternoon free. How long have you been playing? Guitar, I mean, not UMS.”

“Practically all my life,” he told her as he zipped up the case. “Learned from my mom, she was a rock guitarist back in the day. I was just messing around, though. If I really wanted to practice I’d go down on the stage and hook up the big amp.” 

Marinette’s eyebrows raised. “You have an entire stage whenever you just feel like practicing?”

Luka shrugged and gave her that roguish grin and wink that made her knees weak. “Welcome to the Liberty. Everything we do here is dramatic and over the top.”

“That...doesn’t sound like you at all, actually,” Marinette giggled.  

Luka chuckled. “Well, you don’t actually know me all that well. You’ve never seen me perform. Or get angry.”

Marinette smirked. “I wouldn’t like you when you’re angry?” 

Luka’s laugh rang out, and here in his home, in the open air, it was loud and unrestrained, and Marinette had to smile. “You’re funny,” he said, shaking his head as he straightened up and motioned for her to follow him. “Come on, I love the sun myself but I figured you might not want to fry out here so I set us up in the shade where the glare isn’t so bad.” 

Marinette followed him around the wheelhouse to an area shaded with a tarp, with two deck chairs in front of a TV strapped to a crate with bungee cords. The crate itself was similarly strapped to the rail. “Sorry it’s not exactly a high tech setup,” he said, picking up a pair of controllers out of the chair and handing one to her. 

“I like it, actually,” Marinette replied, taking the controller and sitting down in one of the chairs. “It’s comfortable.” 

“Way better than those damn pods,” Luka agreed with a grin. “You’d think they could at least put a chair in the stupid things. I hate playing standing up.” 

Marinette giggled as he turned on the TV and started up the game. A piece of paper taped to the side of the TV fluttered in the breeze and she leaned to the side. “What’s that?”

“Oh, I forgot that was there,” Luka said, reaching around to pull off the paper. “I guess you could call it my goal poster. Not as fancy or as detailed as yours, but…” He shook his head slightly, handing her an ad from a music store with a picture of an electric guitar. “That’s my dream girl.” 

“Wow,” Marinette said rather blankly.

Luka chuckled as he took it back from her. “I know it probably doesn’t look like much to you, but trust me, she’s worth it. They’re going to start throwing me out of the shop if I don’t buy her soon, I’ve been in there playing the demo so often. She’s just got such a sleek body and a great sound, she’s absolutely gorgeous.” 

Marinette couldn’t contain her giggles any longer. “I’m sorry,” she laughed. “I don’t mean to make fun of you, it’s just the way you talk about it is funny to me. I’m not belittling your passion, I promise. Did you buy that one the last time?” She nodded toward the case he’d set aside when she arrived.

“Ah, no, that one’s actually my mom’s,” Luka said, sticking the paper back onto the side of the TV. “My mom never gets rid of anything, least of all an instrument, so she’s got a bunch of different models she lets me use, but...” He sighed, his lips tightening slightly. “It’s not the same as having my own. It’s...hard to explain.” 

“I think I get it, sort of,” Marinette shrugged slightly. “Different machines have a different feel even when they’re all doing the same stitch. You find one you’re comfortable with, you stick with it. It’s probably even more true with instruments, I imagine.” She blushed and brushed back some stray hair that the breeze was whipping into her face. “I mean, I’m not a musician, so maybe I should just shut up.”

“No,” Luka smiled, and her heart fluttered at the softness in it. “It’s okay. Even if you don’t quite get it, it means a lot that you try to understand.” He threw himself back in his chair and gave her a lopsided grin that was more guarded. “So do you hate me now that you know you’re trying to fund your dream and I’m just trying to do what I love?”

“Of course not,” Marinette said in surprise. “If you’re a better player than me, you should win. It’s not about deciding whose intentions for the prize money are the most worthy. It’s a game, not a grant application. I’ll make my dreams happen another way. Winning just makes it easier.” She dared a wink of her own and felt a thrill of satisfaction when a more genuine grin took over and his shoulders lowered slightly. She hadn’t realized he was tense until that moment, but he was visibly more relaxed now. Feeling brave, she quirked an eyebrow at him. “You’re thinking small, though. Surely you don’t need the whole prize pot to pay for one guitar. I hope you’ve got plans for the rest.”

“I do,” he said simply, and Marinette felt a stab of guilt as he tensed up again. Now that she knew what to look for it was easy to see. She shouldn’t have said that. She remembered how she’d felt when he pressed her about her plans. It had felt invasive and intimidating, even though she had nothing to be ashamed of. She fell back on what had always worked to deflect the deeper conversations. 

“Well, whatever your plans are, I’m sure they’ll be great,” she said brightly, and then smirked at him. “Or they would have been, if it weren’t for me. You’re still going down, Viperion.” 

That worked, as he grinned back at her. “We’ll see, Ladybug,” he said, sitting back into his chair. “Well. For now we’re on the same side, so—ready to kick some ass or what?” 

Marinette grinned. “I’m always ready.” 

They were definitely better this time than they had been the last, more in sync. They discussed and made adjustments and Marinette was feeling very encouraged at their prospects when Luka threw his arms up with his victory whoop at a particularly difficult victory, and the familiar sound of tearing fabric hit her ears.

Luka’s tired old hoodie, it seemed, had finally had enough. He cursed softly, inspecting the damage along one shoulder. It was a pretty bad tear on a seam that was clearly already weak. “I guess it had to go sometime…” Luka sighed. “I was really hoping I’d get a little more wear out of it—” Marinette snorted, as it looked like he’d gotten plenty of wear out of it to her, but Luka ignored her. “I got it in Scotland when we were visiting family,” he continued. “It’s my favorite.”

“By the looks of it you’ve worn it every day since,” Marinette observed dryly, folding her arms.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Luka said reluctantly, pulling the hoodie off and regarding it with sad, fond affection that both tugged at her heart and made her want to laugh. “I guess it’s paid its dues.”

Marinette sighed and dropped her head back, rolling her eyes. “Oh my God, fine, stop with the kicked puppy look, give it here.” 

“Huh?” Luka looked up at her. 

“Give it to me, I’ll fix it,” Marinette said, with a wry smile. “You big baby.” 

Luka’s face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. “Really, you think you can fix it? I’d hate to give it up, I’ve had it forever.” 

“Obviously,” Marinette snorted as he handed over the hoodie. She examined the torn seam, and then the other seams. “All of these need reinforcement,” she commented, and saw Luka’s face fall as she looked up. “It’s okay, I can do it,” she said, with some amusement. “If you trust your beloved pile of rags to my possession. I don’t deny the urge to chuck it overboard is strong. Do you want the repairs to show or should I try to hide them?” 

“I don’t mind if it shows,” Luka said, ruffling his hair. “But whichever is faster. I know how to sew a button back on but that’s it so whatever you say works for me. Are you sure you want to do it now? We’re supposed to be practicing and I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“It won’t take that long and we’re due for a break anyway,” Marinette shrugged. She draped the hoodie over her shoulder and picked up her purse, pulling out a small (well...smallish) plastic box and handing it to him. “Pick a color.”

“Wow, you carry this stuff with you all the time?” he asked, opening the box and looking at the neatly arranged contents. He deliberated a moment and then selected a spool. 

Marinette took the kit back and pulled out a needle and a pair of folding scissors. “Really?” she said, holding up the spool of bright red thread. 

Luka shrugged and grinned. “That way I’ll think of you. I don’t know, maybe it’s stupid, but it’s kind of what you said about putting a piece of yourself in the things you make. If you’re doing that for me, I don’t want it to be invisible.”

Marinette’s face turned as red as the thread in her hand, she was certain, and she was equally certain that Luka saw, with the way his grin widened and he averted his eyes, trying to pretend that he wasn’t holding back laughter. Marinette’s eyes narrowed slightly in both annoyance and sudden suspicion. “When did I say that?” 

Luka froze—just an instant, but Marinette caught it. “Ah—on your instagram,” he replied in a way that would have sounded completely casual if she hadn’t seen that quick moment of...whatever. “Your business instagram was on your poster,” he added, shrugging one shoulder. “I told you I love your team gear, so I checked it out on the subway ride home. Just for something to do.”

Marinette hummed an affirmative, the corner of her mouth quirking up. 

Luka glanced at her. “Your work is really amazing, actually. I didn’t have time to look through very much but I loved what I saw.” 

Marinette flashed him a quick smile, trying not to let on how many butterflies it felt like she’d swallowed in the last two minutes. “Thanks.” 

The pause that followed was slightly awkward as Luka ran his finger through his turquoise locks and added, “Anyway, I owe you big, thanks for doing this. Above and beyond, even for a teammate.”

“Please, you’re already helping me out, this is the least I can do,” she snorted, and then she dared to dart a smile at him. “Play for me while I work and we’ll call it even,” she added as she sat down and arranged the hoodie in her lap. 

“Really, you want me too?” He sounded so happy, Marinette was afraid to look at him. She firmly told the butterflies to settle down and waited until she was sure her voice would be steady before she answered. “Yeah, I’d love to hear it. You sounded really good before.” She shrugged one shoulder. “A little bit of you for a little bit of me, right?”  

“Well all right then,” he said, still grinning as he went to get his guitar. “Sounds like a fair trade to me.” 

Instead of going back to his perch in the sunshine he sat down in the deck chair next to her, and true to his word, he played while she sewed, occasionally asking if she had a preference, but she just shook her head. “You pick,” she said around the needle clamped between her lips as she unspooled and cut a length of thread. 

She glanced to the right only once and nearly stabbed herself with her needle at the sight of Luka’s bare arms moving as he played Stairway to Heaven, too absorbed in the music to notice her choking on her own spit, thankfully. Penchant for video games aside, Luka clearly led an active lifestyle and his arms were toned and defined without having the bulk of somebody who worked at getting that way, and that subtle swell of muscle was more than enough to send her thoughts scattering to the wind. She’d managed to keep her eyes on the game when he’d been in her room, but now, with nothing but her sewing to distract herself, and Luka absorbed in his music...Marinette sighed. As if she needed him to be any more attractive.

Fortunately Marinette was more than capable of sewing with only half of her brain online. She fixed her eyes on the fabric and resolved not to look at Luka again. She failed only once, glancing up as he suddenly sang softly, “ooh, it makes me wonder…” She met his eye and the soft look and the crooked smile he gave her as he added, “it really makes me wonder…” made her drop her gaze again, hoping he wouldn’t see the blush rising to her cheeks. He chuckled and fell silent again, focusing on his guitar again.

Her foot tapped and her head began to bob along with his as he moved into the more energetic part of the song, and Marinette couldn’t help but think this was nice. It was nice, sewing here while he made music, with the gentle rock of the boat and the open air and fabric in her hands.

A few songs later, he was playing a Jagged Stone song when Marinette caught herself singing along and stopped abruptly, glancing quickly at Luka as she felt her face go hot. 

“Don’t stop,” he grinned at her. “You sounded great.” 

Marinette snorted. “Would you want to sew one of these seams in front of me?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. 

Luka laughed that unrestrained laugh again and she tried not to feel too pleased about it. “Point taken,” he chuckled. “But really, it was good.” 

Marinette made a small noise that was neither agreement or disagreement and focused back on her task. Luka played a tune she didn’t know for a while, and Marinette fell back into her easy rhythm with the needle.

“It relaxes you, doesn’t?” 

Marinette jumped. “S-sorry?” she said, glancing at Luka for just a moment. 

“Sewing relaxes you. Usually, you’re kind of…” He interrupted the calm melody he’d been playing to play something more energetic, more powerful, but also more tense. “But the longer you work on that you get more…” he lapsed back into the calm tune he’d been playing. 

“It does,” Marinette admitted. “Simple stuff like this, anyway.” She tried to change the subject. “I don’t know that song. The one you were playing just now.” 

“Yeah,” Luka smiled. “Me neither.” Marinette looked at him sharply, frowning. Luka shrugged. “I’m just messing around,” he told her. “Just, being here like this, hanging out with you. This is how it feels. It’s nice.” 

“Yeah,” Marinette agreed, smiling down at her flashing needle. “It really is.” She reached for her folding scissors but missed, and they clattered to the deck. “Ugh, could you grab those for me?” Marinette sighed as they skittered to a stop by Luka’s foot. When he didn’t answer, she glanced up and found Luka staring at her, much like he had the other day. Marinette raised her eyebrows. “Luka? Could you get my scissors?”

Luka jerked back into motion, setting the guitar aside as he reached down and scooped her scissors up off the deck. “Sorry, guess I spaced out for a second,” he muttered, cheeks pink as Marinette took the scissors and unfolded them to clip the thread. He didn’t quite meet her eyes as he took the hoodie she held out to him.

He looked pleased as he examined it, and Marinette felt a rush of pride. She’d used a slightly decorative stitch since he wanted it to show and it was a neat job if she did say so herself. Luka pulled it on, checked the damaged seam one more time, and then grinned at her.

“You’re the best, seriously. I can’t thank you enough.” 

“Yes, you can,” Marinette said, putting her sewing things away. “And you have. So let’s not worry about it any more. Break’s over and we have ass to kick.” She grinned at him and reached for his controller.

Luka laughed, sending another frisson of satisfaction through her, and put his guitar away, grabbing his controller as he sat back down. “Let’s do this.” She glanced over at Luka just in time to catch the roguish grin and wink he sent her way, and she could only pray he looked away before her face went completely red. 

The sun was setting again when they finally decided to call it a day, congratulating each other on their mutual progress. 

“I think we’re really going to be ready,” Marinette grinned. “Team Lucky Charm coming in hot. It’s going to be epic.”

“No doubt,” Luka chuckled, and they shared a quick fist bump. 

“I should go,” Marinette said, glancing at the time and standing up to gather her few things. Luka got to his feet as well as she continued, “I think if we just practice online from here, we’ll—”  

“Luka, Maman said—,” called a mellow, rather low feminine voice behind them, much too softly to be Anarka. Luka and Marinette both turned and the speaker, a tall girl with a cascade of black hair and a face that Marinette found familiar despite the years that had passed, faltered. “Oh, sorry. She didn’t tell me you had company.”

“Juleka!” Marinette smiled, turning to face her properly. “It’s so good to see you. Wow, you look amazing! Oh, you—” She bit her lip. “You might not remember me, um, I’m...I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng? We went to school together back at...back at um…”

“I remember,” Juleka said quietly, tilting her head slightly. 

“Yeah? That’s great.” Marinette’s conversation with Luka earlier in the week flashed through her mind, and she pursed her lips for a moment, and then plunged. “Um,” she began, fidgeting a little. “We—it doesn’t have to be now, if you don’t want to, but, I, I was hoping maybe we could...talk? I mean I didn’t come here to talk but since I’m here, and...and you’re here, and there’s really some things I feel like I ought to say to you, and I...well...anyway, now’s good for me, but later would be good too, we could go grab a drink, I mean not a drink-drink, like orange juice or something, not if there’s anything wrong with it if you’d like a drink-drink, I just don’t usually—and the places that serve those drinks are so noisy anyway, and—” Marinette jumped as Luka’s hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed gently, and she stared at the deck, stomach churning and cheeks burning for far less pleasant reasons than they had been earlier. She glanced hesitantly up at Juleka. 

Juleka’s eyes seemed to flick between the two of them, but Marinette didn’t dare look up to see Luka’s expression. “Now’s good,” Juleka said finally, tilting her head slightly. “Come on, we can talk below.” Her eyes narrowed slightly at her brother. “You stay here.”

“Yes ma’am,” Luka chuckled. “Unless you were going to tell me that Mom wanted you to remind me to fix that hole in the rigging?”

Juleka looked surprised, and then sheepish. “Oh. Right.”

“I’ll get on it,” Luka said, making a shooing motion towards them. “You two go have your talk.”

When Marinette emerged from below the deck nearly an hour later, somewhat tearstained but smiling, Luka was coiling rope on the main deck. He glanced up at her and smiled, even as Marinette raised a self-conscious hand to wipe uselessly at her probably-ruined makeup. 

“Good talk?” he asked, and Marinette nodded. “Good. I hope you both feel better with the air cleared.” 

“I think we do,” Marinette said, still holding her hand uncertainly over her face. “Thanks for the push. Ugh, I must look a mess, I’m sorry, I should’ve found a mirror...” 

Luka shook his head. “You’re fine.” He beckoned her forward, and Marinette went to him. “You’ve got a streak right—” he reached out and wiped at the corner of her eye with his thumb gently. “There, that should be good enough for you to get home.” He added softly, “That was really brave, Marinette. You didn’t have to do that, but I’m glad you did.” His fingers brushed her cheek lightly as his hand fell away, making her breath hitch and he turned back to the ropes quickly. “I’ll see you at the tournament in a few days,” he said, looking back to smile at her briefly. 

“Y-yeah,” Marinette stammered, backing away, before fleeing across the gangway. She stopped just before she hit the bank and turned back, not wanting to leave on such a frazzled, cowardly note, or she’d never be able to face him at the tournament and all this work would be for nothing and she could not let Max down that way. “Luka.” 

He jumped slightly before he looked up again, bringing one hand up to shield his eyes from the sun behind her. “Thanks for the music,” was all she could think of to say, but it was enough to let her smile at him and walk calmly down the steps with her head held high. 

Somewhere behind her she heard a soft, “Yeah, sure, anytime,” in a sort of blank voice, and she cringed a bit internally; he probably thought it was weird, after they’d already said goodbye, but it mattered to her, and so she took a deep breath and straightened her back and marched towards home with purpose.

Marinette had a bit of an internal crisis later that evening as she stood over her sewing machine and the project currently in pieces on it, fingering one diamond shaped piece of fabric as she remembered how much he loved his tattered old hoodie. She wondered whether she was overstepping. But, it was kind of too late now. She had to see this through. She couldn’t not finish it, not now. The vision was too clear and there wasn’t any repurposing the work she’d already done. She could always just...not give it to him, she supposed. It was still an option. Either way, though, there was no point quitting halfway through. Licking her lips and taking a deep breath to settle herself, she sat down at the machine, determined to finish what she started and worry about the rest later.

[tonystarkbingo]

Tony Stark Bingo Prompt Meme

So, we did another Prompt Meme game, and came up with these summaries based on a three-tag prompt. This is an open prompt, if any of these summaries look like fun to you, please feel free to write them!! Tag us or the writer of the prompt when you do so we can all see how cool you are and what you’ve given us for the promot

@summerpipedream - Winteriron - All Tony wanted to do after finishing up at MIT was to pack up his desk at Stark Industries and quietly fade into obscurity. Sure money was tight, but he never expected Jan to actually sign him up for one of those social media reality shows. Now, he was stuck in a house, with no phone, no internet, or access to the outside world, trying to avoid the sexy Bucky Barnes, who's mission in life seemed to be to never wear a shirt around him.

@darthbloodorange - The world is ending, an alien race has all but taken over the world, it is an apocalypse of devastating proportions, most of the world is dead. The Avengers, those who are left, have retreated to a bunker built a fourth of the way down into the Earth’s core. Tony and Steve have been growing closer, when they are not working together to find a way to fight back against the aliens, they are fuck buddies. Tony’s a genius, he knows the odd of surviving this are not in their favour. Odds were that they were going to die… and well, Tony doesn’t want to die without letting Steve know how he feels. Before the battle Tony corners Steve in the armoury and confesses that he loves him. Steve is aromatic, has been since project rebirth.  They are both so very sorry. 

@newnewyorker93 - After a series of strange killings where the victims are found set up kneeling like they're praying, Tony Stark (a private detective) is on the case. An initial (false) suspect is the local priest, Matt Murdoch, who ends up being a helpful ally in solving the case (and possibly more)

@27dragons - Winteriron: You'd think that Tony Stark would have learned to ski when he was growing up. You'd think wrong; Howard never saw the point in it. So here he is, almost done with his PhD, and his friends have decided on a spring break trip to go skiing. He doesn't want to admit to them that he doesn't know how, so their first night at the lodge, he offers one of the ski instructors a large sum of money to sneak him up onto the slopes for a few lessons that night. Against his better judgment -- but desperately needing the cash -- Ski instructor Bucky Barnes takes Tony up on the slopes. Unfortunately, just as Tony's starting to get the hang of things, it starts snowing. Hard. Even more unfortunately, the newfallen snow disguises a patch of ice and Tony tumbles out of control. By the time Bucky catches up to him and verifies that he's not badly hurt, the snow is coming down too hard to see the lodge -- so what else are they to do but seek shelter in a caretaker's cabin conveniently (TM) nearby and wait for morning...?

@gavilansblog - Tony is kidnapped as part of an Evil Plot (TM). He's handling things just fine, tyvm, until his would-be rescuer (who he's been pining for, obviously), gets dragged in and handcuffed back to back with him. Seriously, dude? If you insist on breaking the kidnapping procedure at least actually rescue me! The taxes come in when the Evil Plot Master does his monologue and reveals that the kidnapping is part of a Villain Logic scheme to get Stark Industries to throw money behind the campaign to get a new law requiring actually taxing billionaires to fail. Evil Plot Master is, naturally, a billionaire. Tony would facepalm if he weren't handcuffed to his idiot rescuer, seriously. And then the kidnapping protocol kicks in and Jarvis shuts the whole facility down only instead of being handcuffed by himself Tony is now handcuffed to his rescuer so they have to do the whole escaping part of the plan while handcuffed together, resulting is the standard Tension (TM) moments and possibly an almost-kiss.

Fey Relay - Bruce, Tony, and Peter, resident science geeks, get de-aged and really want to play in the lab. You know, the one that has lots of things that can kill them in it? But they're still sort of mentally in there, just cranky and smol. So they get assigned their own Non-Science Adults who they hand-hold and point to do their sciency bidding. Thor, Steve, and Natasha oblige them and have great fun!

@rise-up-ting-ting-like-glitter Dragons were real. Okay they were actually just souped-up dinosaurs, but that didn’t mean Tony wasn’t being hunted—with intent—by lizards. He hadn’t wanted to come to this stupid Island in the first place. SI funding had explicitly been removed from the crackpot idea to return dinosaurs to the food chain. He could have told everyone that this was going to happen. Instead he was climbing through a jungle with a one-armed man who refused to give his name and if they didn’t get to the raptor enclave, retrieve the anti-venom, and return in time, people Tony loved were going to die.

His guide had better live up to his scruffy wild-man appearance or Tony was going to lose everything.

@somesortofitalianroast - Nurse Bucky Barnes wasn’t sure what exactly was going on. The vigilante known as Nomad had just crashed through the (luckily) open fire escape window. While he was lucky not to have any broken bones, he was unlucky enough to have a bad concussion. A really bad one. One that meant he couldn’t fall asleep. Also unfortunately, he only had the one bed and the enormous Nomad wouldn’t fit on his couch, so they’d have to share. It was only after he helped Nomad into his bed that he noticed the blood, and, unthinking, he pulled the cowl off to check for another, serious injury. And gasped. Nomad was Steve Rogers, his best friend in school, who’d died in an IED attack in Iraq 5 years earlier.

@polizwrites Natasha Romanov and Virginia Potts are the proprietors  of  Chaykus -  a Russian tea room on the seedy side of town.  Its new mission  is to be a sanctuary for women  who have been smuggled into the country for sex trafficking purposes.  As for the men who engage in such practices? Well, they are quickly discovering that their days are numbered.

@dixiehellcat - Pepper is the manager of the heavy metal band War Machine. James Rhodes, lead guitarist and founder of the band, is looking for a new lead singer. He did not expect the woo-loving Virginia to get horoscopes cast for the applicants and decide based on that. He just wants somebody who can sing, dammit. This Stark kid is uncomfortably attractive, yeah, but he's been thrown out of two bands already. what? the shower sex? it was only that one time after a show, and they were both wasted...

@dracusfyre Tony was born without a soul mark. Bucky's was lost forever when Hydra took his arm.  Without the universe to give you a hint that this person is The One, falling in love is gambling with your heart. But soulmates don't have to be born, they can be made - and Bucky and Tony decide that the same should be true of soul marks, as well

@ceealaina Tony was like nerd prime growing up. Normally he doesn’t let it bother him too much — he’s got inventions to invent, after all. But all of a sudden he realizes that he’s almost 20, he’s got two degrees under his belt, and has no idea how to do much more than kiss. He’s not entirely sure how he manages to convince Rhodey to sleep with him to “get it out of the way,” or how he manages to convince him to keep sleeping with him to “help improve my technique,” but it’s the best sex of his life (not that he has much to compare it to) and he never wants it to end. But it’s the night when they’re watching movies, and Tony’s ends up dozing against Rhodey’s shoulder only to wake up to a feather light kiss against his forehead that he realizes he might be in trouble. 

@thudworm - King Anthony considers it part of his royal duties to protect his people by going out and taking care of any monsters harassing them. Of course, no one can know that the knight Iron Man is really the king, which leads to some fun assumptions about Iron Man’s identity.

@jacarandabanyan Tony’s mom forbid him to purposefully drive out his roommates so that he can have a room all to himself where he can tinker until morning light. She had to hear about it from friends, acquaintances, and other well-known socialites often enough when Tony went to boarding school and ran his roommates off there. Now that he’s in college, that behavior must stop. Luckily for Tony, he doesn’t even have to try to get the first two roommates at MIT to request a room switch. But then he meets his third roommate- a tall, handsome, funny man named James Rhodes. At first it was just natural joy at having a fellow competent engineer to hang out with, and perhaps the occasional dirty thought. But his crush on the man quickly grows. Before he knows it, Tony’s pining hard for his best friend. Every once in a while he thinks Rhodey might be interested too- but then he hears Rhodey lecturing a computer science senior for plying Tony with :beer: alcohol at a party because “come on, man, kid’s only 16. Have a little class and try chasing skirts a little closer to your age.” After that, he’s convinced Rhodey will only ever see him as a friend and a kid.

psychiccatpanda - Tony works hard and puts in long hours.  So what if some of his long nights turn into very early mornings at CHew 2 OH.  The only drawback is his business partner and head baker, Steve, with his disappointed looks and his continual arguing.  When Steve's friend Bucky starts hanging around the shop, though, Tony notices.  Oh lord, he notices. A month or so later, one night when he and Steve are working after hours at Steve's place to plan their seasonal menu, Steve tells him that he's noticed him checking out Bucky.  Tony hits him with a decorative pillow and things kind of get out of hand.  Surveying the damage (let's face it - Steve's coffee table was never going to be quite right again), Steve turns to him, "I was just going to suggest you get some practice kissing before asking him out."  Oh.  Oh...

@tisfan So... the problem with being a necromancer is being able to practice one's skill. The local cemeteries won't even let you look at a dead body if you're not a relative. Tony Stark, budding necromancer, forges a marriage certificate for the John Doe so that he can practice his craft. Only to find that it works perfectly. Bucky is No Longer Dead, and 100% interested in staying married...

@abrighterdarkness He didn’t mean to snoop.  He knew that wasn’t what he was being paid for here--the loud laughter of the party echoing from down the hall where he was actually supposed to be, was clear enough reminder of that fact. All Tony wanted was two short minutes to breathe without being pawed at--yes, yes, that might be his job but breathing room was much appreciated just the same--and now he was stuck in this closet sized bathroom with what sounded like a mob-hit being discuss right outside the door.  He knew he should’ve turned this job down.

magica - Howard Stark had an idea. Some people - alright, most people, stop hitting me, Maria! - would say it was a terrible idea. But it was only a little injection of stuff based on that strange glowing blue cube they'd found in the Arctic. And Tony was absolutely willing, let's get that straight, Maria! How was Howard supposed to know that it'd enable Tony to open up his own portals? And if some mystical green energy happened to swamp Tony just as he was opening a portal to Egypt? Well, that wasn't his fault. The dark-haired, well-built Priest of Anubis that Tony manages to bring back with him? That is not his fault either, damn it, Maria!

@festiveferret - Tony could say with absolute confidence - at least, if he could say anything at all in his current predicament - that this was not the way his PR rep, Pepper, would have wanted him to come out. There were, he figured, several hundred ways that the day could have gone better, but if asked to rank the top three, he'd put them thusly: 

1) That he decided to come out by having a wild, unabashed make out session with none other than Captain America, in the middle of a busy New York street.

2) That it was, in fact, the morning after their first "date" - a term he was applying loosely here - and not a tasteful reveal of a long-standing, safe, secure, adult relationship.

And 3) That at some point between the first floor lobby of his apartment building and the front door off his penthouse suite he'd suddenly, unexpectedly, and so-far permanently been turned into a ferret and no one knew.

It would also probably concern her to discover that of all these rather bewildering turns in his life, the one at the forefront of his mind was that ferrets couldn't send morning-after texts, and he didn't want Steve to think their little dalliance had been nothing more than an - albeit unfortunately public - one night stand.

Of one thing he was sure, however: Pepper was going to need a raise.

[tjkiahgb]

Episode Recap: 3.17, “Arts and Inhumanities”

The episode starts with some glamour shots of Andi’s art piece. It shows off a lot of the cool little details of it.

Then it shows this...

...which isn’t as impressive.

Or this one...

I feel like the crushed can of La Croix wasn’t Andi’s addition. I think someone was leaving lunch and saw a pile of trash and thought, “Oh, I guess we’re just doing this now,” and they threw it on the pile.

Bex takes pictures of the piece like a proud mother.

Is this in a different part of the school? Did they move this cumbersome thing across the school? How many people did that take? There must be paper shreddings everywhere.

Bex continues to take pictures and ask questions and make attempts to impress passersby.

Bex asks Andi where she learned to do art and Andi tries to play it down, saying it’s not art like Picasso or... you know... other artists whose names don’t come to mind.

Andi says she knows crafts, not art, and, after all, it’s arts and crafts, not arts are crafts. Bex still wants to know where she learned to make this and Andi isn’t sure.

“The rage just took over my body. I blacked out and when I woke up, I was standing in the middle of school and there it was.”

Another kid comes over and asks if Andi is the artist and Bex gets excited as Andi tries to put an end to the whole discussion.

But, listen Andi, you know how you become an artist? You call yourself an artist. That’s it. And you just keep doing that until people are too scared to look stupid by saying they don’t get your art. That’s what the guy who painted the drips did and now his paintings sell for the GDP of a small island nation.

That’s right, Jackson Pollock, I’m calling you out. Meet me in the parking lot of the Waffle House and we’ll throw hands, unless you’re a coward.

Buffy and Cyrus hang out at the bowling alley.

Cyrus does some light calisthenics to prepare.

Buffy tries to figure out what he’s doing. He says according to his research a bowling ball should be about 10% of the bowler’s weight, which, fine, but how is this measuring 10% of his body weight? The balls say how much they weigh on them. Why does he need to do this strange dance like he’s trying to sacrifice his bowling ball to the sun god?

Also, I don’t think they make bowling balls that are seven pounds soaking wet.

Buffy heads off to put their names in the name machine.

Cyrus, you’ve had your Bar Mitzvah. You’re a Bumper Man now.

Buffy gimps badly through the alley.

She spots Marty. He immediately asks her what’s up with her limp. She deflects. He asks her seriously if she’s okay and, panicking because she might have to admit to weakness, she’s turns and goes, oh!

New person!

Marty introduces Rachel as his girlfriend and Buffy cracks a few jokes about not thinking she was real, that maybe she was one of those imaginary girlfriends who “lives in Canada.”

Rachel’s like, EXCUSE ME?! CANADA?? How dare you even suggest I’d ever go to such a place?!

Buffy and Marty try desperately to explain it was just a joke.

Buffy, realizing she’s just created an air of awkwardness so thick you could shape it into a ball and use it to bowl, excuses herself.

Marty mentions her foot again. Buffy tries to play it off once more as just sore. In fact, she says, it’s getting better. You know, how injuries work. They start out a little painful, then get worse and worse and worse until you can barely walk, and then one day, they’re fully healed and you’re good to go. The human body is so mysterious. No one truly understands it.

Marty texts Buffy info on a foot doctor, even as she insists she doesn’t need one. “I’m fine! Honestly, I hope it just falls off. I don’t even want it anymore. Two working feet? Who can even be bothered?”

Rachel’s like, are we just going to stand around here all day talking about feet or are we gonna bowl?

Buffy limps back to Cyrus. She tells him how unpleasant it was meeting Marty’s girlfriend, even though she’s happy he’s got one. Cyrus is like, give that a minute, because Rachel is over there doing some weird thing where she whisper-screams at Marty.

You can really see why Marty fell for Rachel. Sure, on one hand, she has no sense of humor, but she’s also quickly prone to jealousy and anger. That’s what they call the total package.

Also, what does she mean “How did she know?” How did Buffy know what? Wait. Is Rachel actually Canadian? Is this like some horrible secret she didn’t want anybody to know? “If anyone finds out, it’s nothing but poutine jokes and people saying ‘Eh?’ to me from here on out! I can’t live like that!”

I mean, it’s either that or that she’s actually imaginary.

Cyrus is like, you think she’s talking about you? Buffy’s like, no, she’s probably gesticulating angrily at someone else in this direction.

Rachel storms off and Marty chases after her.

Buffy and Cyrus go back to their bowling. Cyrus finally picks a ball and gives it the gentlest of pushes down the lane.

It rolls as slow as it can get before being considered technically immobile and knocks over a single pin.

At least there’s room for improvement.

At Red Rooster, Jonah plays guitar and hides from Amber in the place she’d most expect to find him.

This is just a rookie mistake on Jonah’s part. He kept his back to the door! Any crime lord will tell you, you always keep your eyes on the door so they can’t sneak up on you and ask you if you’re writing them a song.

Amber’s like, I’m just kidding about you writing me a song, though if you wanted to, here are some words.

I like gerrymander. If this comes together right, could be the next great political protest/love song.

Jonah wants to know what Amber wants. Amber wants to hang out. She says she tried texting him and wants to know if something’s wrong with his phone. He’s like, yeah, it keeps giving you ways to try and get in touch with me.

He says it was on silent. Amber wants to ask him a question.

Well, see, the thing is Amber, okay means different things to different people. For some people it means that the relationship is going well. For others... well, you’re both still alive and breathing so...

Jonah insists things are fine, but then Amber asks to hang out and watch him practice guitar and Jonah’s like, CAN’T! CHESS!

He says he’s going to meet Cyrus for lessons. Amber’s like, you don’t seem like a chess guy, you know, because of the whole inability to think about stuff thing.

Jonah’s like, yeah, well, that’s why I’m practicing. He heads for the door. Amber asks about tomorrow. Jonah says to text him. She jokes to make sure his phone isn’t on silent and Jonah’s like, *finger guns*

And Amber’s like, okay, *finger guns* we’re doomed...

And I’m like, Amber, look at the sign, girl!

I mean, literally, look at that sign behind you.

The prop guys know what’s up.

Over at Andi’s, Andi works in her room when Bex comes in asking if Andi got her email. Andi reasserts that no one uses email. Bex tells her to just check her email, so Andi opens her computer, where she has a folder for pictures and another, separate folder for “Pictures o’ Stuff”

Aren’t all pictures pictures of stuff? How does this filing system help at all?

She opens up her email.

Oh, nobody opens email anymore? Then explain to me why you checked two emails from Social Post yesterday! What’s the truth?!

Oh, and by the way, Olivia sent you help with the files and you didn’t even have the common courtesy to at least reply with a “Thanks”? Rude.

Anyway, Bex sent Andi a link to the website for the Shadyside Academy of Visual Arts, or SAVA.

SAVA is a high school for the arts that Bex thinks Andi should apply to. She says the application is due by the end of the month, so think about it, but think quickly.

Andi checks out the application. First it asks her to upload her portfolio, which is preposterous because how can you upload a trash sculpture into a computer? I mean, come on.

Andi skips that and looks at the next screen, which tells her to list any rewards she’s received.

That’s not nothing. She skips that question, too.

The last thing asks for three recommendations from her art instructors. She has no art instructors.

Andi shuts down her computer and goes back to her school work.

Hear me out, though. What better way to showcase your creativity than craft an entire résumé out of whole cloth? Say that you won the blue ribbon at the “Cloud Ten Art Show”. Bex will lie for you. Invent three art instructors and their recommendations and if someone asks you for their contact info, say that they all decided to retire and live off the grid. Tell Metcalf you're doing a social experiment on high school admissions officers and he’ll back you up.

Back at the bowling alley, Buffy tries to order food while a couple has an uncomfortably loud fight in public behind her.

Marty swears to Rachel that Buffy is just a friend, but Rachel thinks Buffy’s interested in him. Rachel is positive that there’s something going on and that Marty wishes he was with Buffy instead of her. Marty tries to insist otherwise.

Buffy, trying to sneak away from the scene in a hurry, steps too hard on her foot and screams out in pain.

In a totally healthy way, though. It was a scream of pain in acknowledgment that her foot was almost all better.

Marty runs towards her and Rachel’s like, I knew it.

You ran to help someone in pain? Final straw, mister!

That night, at Bex’s, the family gathers for dinner. Bex asks Andi if she filled out the application to SAVA, but Andi says she didn’t. She doesn’t have a portfolio, or awards, or any letters of recommendation. Bowie asks if Andi really needs art school when she has Andi Shack. Bex says he hasn’t seen the place, but Andi points out that neither has she.

Oh really? If that’s true, then explain this!

You can’t! There’s no explanation for it existing in the year of our Lord 2019.

Bowie points out that neither of them has actually been to the school, and maybe before they decide anything, that would be a useful thing to do.

For having this insight, he is viciously attacked.

At the movies the next day, Jonah points out to Cyrus how films about people who have magic powers but don’t use them effectively are dumb as hell.

Cyrus spots Amber and calls her over. This upsets Jonah because that was the last thing he wanted to happen.

Amber’s like, no lesson today? Jonah’s like, we’re about to lesson! She asks Cyrus how Jonah’s doing.

Jonah says it’s going slow. Honestly, he could see himself wrapped up in trying to learn chess for the next three to four years. Amber wishes them luck and walks away.

Cyrus asks Jonah what that was all about. Jonah explains that Amber was getting too clingy so he lied to her about learning chess from Cyrus to get away. That presents a slight problem.

Jonah’s like, that’s fine, I’m not really taking lessons.

This, obviously, opens him up to easily getting caught in a lie. He should’ve gone with something he knew for sure that Cyrus could’ve taught him, like Hebrew or how to run in an awkward fashion.

Later, at Cyrus’s house, Amber sits down with Cyrus for a therapy session. He says let’s dive in, and Amber says, yes, let’s. And then she reaches down under the table...

and she pulls out an entire chess set from out of nowhere!

And not just a chess set. A fully-prepared chess set. Where the hell did this come from?!

Hold on, I gotta to try and figure this out.

She pulled it out from under the table like it was already there, like it was Cyrus’s parents’ set, but then you’d think Cyrus wouldn’t be so caught off-guard. He’d probably think, oh, Amber is coming over and there’s that whole thing about me pretending to teach Jonah chess, I should probably hide the fully-prepared chess set my parents keep under the table at all times, just to be safe. Just so I don’t get caught in a situation where my lack of chess knowledge is exposed.

Plus, Amber’s plan here requires a chess set, so she couldn’t leave this to chance. Even if she saw it there before, it could’ve been moved or it might not be fully-prepared.

No, she brought this chess set from home. But how could she bring a fully-prepared chess set from home and sneak it in when Cyrus would be the one letting her in the house? He’d surely notice her holding something like that.

No. No, no no no. No. She came ahead of time. She came ahead of time and either got one of Cyrus’s parents to let her in while he wasn’t home, or, and this is my guess, she broke into the house with a chess set, snuck upstairs with it, and prepared it under the table. Then she snuck out and scheduled an appointment with Cyrus to talk so she could spring this on him! The dedication to this scheme is unbelievable!

Cyrus tries to get Amber to stay on topic, but Amber says this is the topic. She starts pressing Cyrus on his chess knowledge and his story immediately starts to fall apart.

Then Amber mentions she knows a thing or two about chess.

You know, she says that, but I don’t know if I believe it. Seeing how the rest of this plan went, I’m guessing she pulled an all-nighter last night and learned the ins-and-outs of chess out of spite.

Cyrus makes two moves and Amber checkmates him. This is the very rare -- though appropriately named -- scenario known as the “Fool’s mate.”

See, it’s called that because you’d have to commit a very serious blunder for it to happen, like agreeing to play chess when you know hardly anything about chess instead of insisting that you stick to the topic or ending the volunteer therapy session.

Amber’s upset that Jonah lied to her and that Cyrus stood there and let him lie. That’s fair, but also, the two of them are only standing in this room at this moment because of a series of her lies and deceptions, so, are any of us truly free from sin?

Amber’s like, why would you do that? Cyrus says Jonah’s his friend. Amber wants to know what about her? Cyrus says she’s his friend, too.

I mean, yeah? Let’s be honest, we’ve all ranked our friends. If you don’t know which of your friends you’d lie to to help your other friends, you’re not properly prepared.

Amber walks out. And without her chess set? She bought it just for this ambush, didn’t she?

Cyrus feels bad about the whole thing.

Maybe psychology isn’t for him anyway. Maybe he might do better in something like... law?

At school, Buffy takes off her shoe to check on her totally-fine, better than ever foot.

Marty shows up and tells her to get it checked on. She’s like, don’t tell me how to live my life, I don’t tell you how to live yours.

Like getting sad and disappearing for a year and a half.

Marty says he broke up with Rachel, or rather, Rachel broke up with him. Either way, it’s over and he’s fine with it. I find that hard to believe. He says that now, but in a couple of weeks, he’s really going to miss how she always never laughed at his jokes.

Buffy says she hopes the breakup wasn’t over her, but Marty says no matter how many times he told Rachel he and Buffy were just friends, she insisted it was more.

He’s like, don’t worry, I’m not into you. And Buffy’s like, oh good. Wait.

Marty says they really work as friends. The bell rings and Buffy sends Marty off with a promise she’ll talk to a doctor.

Bex and Andi tour SAVA, where they’re doing all kinds of cool art stuff.

Like these pipes. Or those lines on the wall. Really demystifies art, huh?

Back at school, Jonah heads out and Cyrus runs to catch up. Jonah gives him props for doing something physical without wheezing.

Cyrus warns Jonah that Amber figured out the chess was a ruse. Jonah panics. He realizes he needs to find a new reason to hide from her. He’s like this close to faking his own death and coming back with a fake mustache as Jonah’s long lost twin, Jonas.

Amber shows up. She’s like, I know how you can avoid spending time with me: break up with me.

Cyrus apologizes but Amber’s like, eh, forget it, I’ve already lost interest.

Cyrus excuses himself.

Amber and Jonah talk. He apologizes, says he didn’t want to hurt her, and says he hopes they can still be friends.

Amber says, for future reference, don’t drag out a break up and make the person you’re breaking up with feel like an idiot. Amber walks off, leaving Jonah saddened.

I feel like maybe they’ve both learned a valuable lesson.

Jonah should just be forward with a break up if that’s what he really wants, and maybe Amber shouldn’t date 8th graders when she’s a sophomore in high school and expect a loving, mature relationship.

At SAVA, Andi returns to Bex to see what she thinks of the place.

Bex thinks it’s impressive. Andi asks her how hard she thinks it is to get in. Bex is like, I don’t know, we should probably look that up. Probably. Could be really good knowledge to have in this situation.

Especially because Andi’s really buying in to this school.

I mean, yeah. If you were designing a school from scratch to match Andi’s personality, it would look just like this. This would be like if Buffy went to check out a high school and when the bell rung after class, all the kids raced through an American Gladiators-style obstacle course in the halls to their next class.

Andi asks Bex if she still thinks she can get in and Bex says of course, but then Andi walks off and Bex is like...

Ehhh, I hope so.

[fantasticescapism]

Brothers in Everything but Blood - Chapter 1: Meeting Peter Parker

Summary:  Harley knew Peter Parker but they weren’t close, not yet at least. More like long-distance classmates? Fellow interns? Something like that. In an alternate universe, it may have been different. Maybe they could’ve been best friends, brothers even, but now that they’re only link was gone, Harley’s sure - as with most things in his life - this one’s gonna end as well.

Part 4 of the Never Truly Gone series

Also available at AO3.

Harley’s first impression of Peter Parker was of a perfect student, then again, he first heard of the guy from Tony Stark. It was in one of Tony’s frequent calls, around a month since Peter became Tony’s official intern.

“He’s really good. Awesome in robotics and mechanical engineering but definitely a genius in chemical engineering.” Tony sounded happy and excited. “I think you’ll like him.”

“If you say so, old man.” Harley was a bit distracted as he drew up a few schematics for one of the SI projects Tony assigned to him.

“Hey, I’m not old!” Harley snorted at Tony’s mock indignation.

“You saying that proved my point, old man.” He grinned as he made sure to emphasize the word ‘old’. “Next thing I know, Pew-pew Man’s got a cane.” Tony scoffed.

“Okay first, the suit in itself is a high-tech prosthesis. No cane needed.” Harley smirked as he pictured Tony’s narrowed eyes. “And second, stop calling it that.”

“What? Pew-pew Man?”

“Yeah, that.”

“The kids here like it, just like Iron Patriot.”

“Oh lordy!” Harley cackled at Tony. His mentor didn’t need to know that Harley introduced the nickname to the local kids and it stuck. “You’re a menace, Harley! I should’ve run the other way when I had the chance.”

“Oh please, you won’t get rid of me. We’re connected.” Tony chuckled at that.

“I guess you’re right.” Harley could hear the smile from Tony’s voice. “Okay, so when should I expect the schematics?”

“It should be done by tomorrow morning.”

“Kid, take your time. Don’t lose sleep for that. I don’t want to get another phone call from your mom complaining about your lack of sleep.”

“That was one time! And that’s rich coming from you!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I expect those two days from now. Not earlier, Keener.”

“Fine.”

“Then we’ll set a date for you to come to the compound so you could meet Peter.”

“Okay.” Harley’s a bit apprehensive and it seemed Tony sensed it.

“He’s a good kid, Harley. I know you’ll be good friends.”

“If you say so.” And that was that. Harley didn’t think more on that impending meeting. He thought Peter’s just some guy Tony found in some high school field trip in SI or something; just someone Tony knew and will be out of his hair after.

---

Boy, was he wrong. Peter’s like an… an… an overeager puppy. The abundance of positive friendly energy from him was overwhelming! He’s just so… genuine.

Tony, with a wide grin, introduced them to each other in his workshop; his arm around Peter’s shoulders as if to rein in the guy’s excitement.

“Harley, this is Peter. Peter, Harley.”

“Hi, I’m-I’m Peter.” Peter held out his hand for a handshake. “Mr. Stark’s been telling me a lot about you.”

“Really?” He looked at Tony with disbelief. Tony just smirked at him.

“Y-yeah. Like the time you helped him with Mark 42’s repairs-” Peter stepped closer and Harley knew Tony had been hyping him up to the guy.

“After I broke off one of its fingers-”

“Then designed the retroreflective panels for the quinjet-”

“For stealth mode-” Harley looked at Tony as if to ask where he found Peter but all he got was a fond smile as the man enjoyed the scene in front of him.

“The machines you designed and built for SI, they’re so cool!” Peter finished with a grin.

“Dude, I’m just a mechanic.” He patted Peter on his arm. “I just build stuff.”

“Awesome stuff!” Peter was genuinely at awe that it flattered Harley but, in true Harley style, he simply smirked and shrugged. He kinda felt bad that he knew next to nothing about Peter. He should’ve asked Tony more.

“Okay boys, gotta go for a bit. Pep’s been hounding me to go to this meeting for days.” Tony looked at them both with a stern glare and pointed. “Do not blow up the workshop. No dangerous machines or chemicals. No hacking of any government servers, I’m looking at you Harley.”

“In my defense, I was left unsupervised.” Harley said as Peter looked at him with disbelief. “Besides, it’s your fault,” he smirked, “you’re the one who taught me how.” Peter’s wide eyes turned to Tony.

“Shut up! FRIDAY’s in charge. Got that baby girl?”

“Got it, boss.” FRIDAY’s amusement was evident in her voice.

“Okay, see you boys in two to three hours or so. Then, it’s movie marathon tonight.” Tony waved back as he walked towards the elevator.

“See you, Mr. Stark!”

“Yeah, yeah, just get out of here, Tony.” Tony raised his hand in a peace sign before he disappeared from view.

“Hey, you must be hungry.” Peter walked towards the pantry. “We should have enough for a sandwich here.”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.” Harley started to follow but a sudden idea struck him like lightning that it stopped him in his tracks. Peter sent him a questioning look. “Peter, what if...”

---

Harley found that the best way to get to know a person was via working on a project. He got to know who the slackers, the opportunists, the cocky shits and the know-it-alls were in only a few hours of work. It didn’t take long for Peter to open up though. Apparently, Tony found him through the September Foundation grant application. Harley thought that was odd. The foundation doesn’t offer grants to high schoolers and Harley’s familiar with every program Tony and Pepper started. He shelved that info for later.

He’s delighted to find out that Peter’s a very fast learner. Not only that, Harley could really see that Peter’s eager to learn. He understood why Tony likes the guy. Even he liked the way Peter understood the concepts without overly explaining them. He wouldn’t admit it but working with Peter was kinda reminiscent of the times Harley taught his little sister some stuff, mostly for pranks. Damn, this guy triggered his big brother emotions.

“You okay there, Peter?”

“Yeah, almost done… There.” Peter wiped his brow with his sleeve, socket wrench in his hand. “That should do it.”

“Let me see.” As he expected, the work was perfect. “Awesome, let’s test this baby!”

“Umm…” Peter nervously picked on the socket wrench in his hand. “Are you sure this is okay?”

“Yeah.” Harley frowned a little. Was there something wrong with their work? “Why?”

“It’s just that- Won’t Mr. Stark get mad?” Oh. Harley chuckled.

“Nah! Don’t worry, I got you. Besides, this isn’t dangerous, right FRIDAY?”

“Yup. Potentially messy but definitely not dangerous.” FRIDAY answered.

“See?” Harley grinned. “You do have quick reflexes, right?” Peter nodded. “There you go. It’s gonna be fine. Alright, FRIDAY log ASM Mark 1.0 test 1.”

“Sure, Harley.”

---

It worked beautifully! Well, granted they had to make some adjustments here and there; also there were some unfortunate mishaps but it was awesome. Harley smiled as he bit his tuna fish sandwich. He’s sure Tony would-

“What in the-” Tony walked in the workshop, bewilderment plainly seen on his face. “Why is- is that a plate stuck on my wall?!” There was indeed a plate on a hole in the wall. The plate remained remarkably intact.

“H-hey, Mr. Stark.” Peter was beside Harley as he nervously waved at Tony, grilled cheese sandwich in his hand. “Sorry about the mess.” Tony visibly sighed and closed his eyes. A giggle was heard by the elevator and sure enough, Pepper was there.

“Tony, what do you expect? You introduced two genius kids to one another.” Pepper walked closer and carefully walked over spots of mustard, mayonnaise and slices of pickles on the floor. “Hi, kids.”

“Hey, Pepper!”

“Hi. Ms. Potts!”

“Okay honey, you got me there.” Tony must’ve finished with his round of cleansing breath. He was calmer when he turned to them. “Boys, what’s this?”

“It’s an automatic sandwich maker or ASM Mark 1.3.” Harley stood proud as he presented their joint creation.

“Three?!” Tony exclaimed.

“Yeah, umm.” Peter walked closer to the machine. “In the first version, the machine blew up-”

“Blew-blew up?” Tony looked like he’s gonna blow up himself.

“That explains the food everywhere.” Pepper looked around.

“Yeah and then after we fixed that, we thought it would be cool if the sandwiches come with plates but…” Peter said.

“But it came out too fast and too hard.” Harley pointed at the plate on the wall. “Projectile plate.” Tony facepalmed. “You guys got heavy duty plates!”

“Any of you hurt? Please tell me no one was in front of that thing when it happened.” Tony pleaded.

“Well…” Peter scratched the back of his head.

“This guy’s got crazy quick reflexes!” Harley playfully punched Peter’s arm.

“Didn’t I specifically say ‘no dangerous machines’?! FRIDAY?!”

“Peter does have quick reflexes and therefore not in danger. Besides, it only happened once.” FRIDAY cheekily answered.

“Did she just-” Tony sighed. “My children rallied against me. Oh god, is this karma? This is karma, isn’t?” Tony looked miserably at his fiance but Pepper just laughed.

“It seems so honey, but it’s okay. Now you know how I feel when you do crazy stuff. You’ll survive.” She smiled at him and rubbed his arm before she turned back towards the kids. “Is this version good then? Would you boys make me a sandwich?”

“Yeah, what do you want?” Harley walked closer to the machine and gently tapped the side. “This baby can make any sandwich. Well, depends on the available ingredients.”

“So far we got mustard, mayo, butter, ketchup,” Peter pointed at the containers on the machine, “tuna, pickles, cheese, ham, bacon, white bread and wheat bread.”

“Ham and cheese in wheat bread, please.”

“Alright, one ham and cheese in wheat bread sandwich coming right up.” Harley entered the order via a holo-screen and they all watched as the machine did its job. Harley was proud of the machine he made with Peter and when he looked at the guy, it seemed he was too.

“Wow,” Pepper was impressed when a plate of beautifully made sandwich was gently pushed out of the machine, “would you boys modify this so we can place it at the canteen at SI?”

Harley and Peter looked at each other, excitement in their eyes and twin smiles on their faces.

“You got it, Pepper!”

“Sure, Ms. Potts!”

“Okay but,” Tony interrupted, “you’ll only work on this when I’m here. You guys need supervision.”

“But we did fine!” Harley protested.

“Uh-uh, my workshop, my rules.”

“Fine.” Harley sighed.

“Got it, Peter?”

“Yes, Mr. Stark.”

“Good, now,” Tony looked at the mess around the workshop, “clean this up then we’ll order pizza for movie night. Dum-E and U will help you out.”

As both boys retrieved the mops and rags from the closet, they listed the modifications and features they could add to the ASM. They had a lot of work to do but that only made visiting New York a lot more exciting. At the end of the day, Harley not only had fun, he also gained a new friend.

He cannot deny however that there’s still something unusual with Peter. The Stark Foundation grant? The crazy quick reflexes? At first he brushed it off but, the nagging feeling that something’s going on was still there. Ah well, he’ll find out sooner or later.

[crsinclair]

Enter Eraser

FINALLY I have the next installment for What a Villain Deserves. This piece takes place pretty much directly after Cliché Hero Versus Villain, which was mostly Present Mic being confused.  In this one we only see our beloved Eraserhead for a small bit, but we learn a LOT about him!

“Ah, Thanks for coming, Present Mic.”

Hizashi gave Tsukauchi a smile.  “Not a problem!  Though I wasn't really expecting to get a call about this,” he said, nodding his head towards the back of the station.  More specifically, the interrogation rooms.

Tsukauchi gave him a tired smile.  “Honestly, we weren't expecting to be calling you, either.”

Hizashi raised a brow at that, frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. What exactly did that mean?  When the detective directed him towards his office instead of the back rooms, the confusion he felt only grew.  The two of them walked down the hall, a few officers stopping to greet the two of them before Tsukauchi was closing the door to his little office and directing the Hero to take a seat. “So, why did you call me?  Other than the fact that I'm cool.”

“Coffee?” the detective asked after he was done chuckling, moving to help himself to the coffee machine he kept in the corner of his office.

“Ah, sure, thanks.”  Alright, not getting an answer to his question right away.  Got it.

Tsukauchi nodded and pulled out a spare mug and got to pouring.  “It took a bit, but we managed to get some indentification off the villain,” he started explaining, turning around to place a steaming mug in front of Hizashi along with a container holding packets of sugar and creamer.  “Very smart of him to burn his fingerprints.”

“That doesn't last forever, though,” Hizashi said as he started dumping in as many creamers as he could into the mug.

“True – from what our specialists could tell, he burns his fingerprints off regularly.”  Tsukauchi sat down in his chair with a small sigh of relief, clutching his own mug close to him.  “Plus he wears gloves, keeps his hair bound, face covered, and from his equipment we've been able to tell he's very, very thorough in getting blood stains cleaned up.  He's been avoiding law enforcement for a long time.”

Hizashi hummed, dumping in several packets of sugar into his mug.  “So who is this guy?”

Tuskauchi took a sip of his coffee and pulled the folder on top of the stack closest to him open.  “Aizawa Shouta.  30 years old, lives alone in a small apartment complex in Musutafu, job title he has down in his apartment application as 'freelance contractor',” he says dryly.

Hizashi rolled his eyes.  “I guess that's one way to describe villainy.”

A smile flit across Tsukauchi's face.  He turned his eyes towards the information in the folder, skimming the lines.  “We got a team to check out where he lives,” he continued, pausing to take another sip.  “We're pretty sure half the apartment was dedicated to his equipment.”

“Well, I've got a room at home for just my Hero gear.”

“Mic, I'm not exaggerating.” Tsukauchi tugged some pictures out of the folder and slid them across the desk for Hizashi to look at.  “I mean that he had a single sleeping bag for furniture, some juice and jelly packets in the fridge, some hygiene products, and then the rest of his entire home was covered in various tools and equipment.”

Hizashi's eyebrows shot up as he leaned forward to take a look at the pictures. Indeed, there was a single sleeping bag next to a window, and then shelf after shelf after storage cabinet stuffed full of all sorts of things.  Knives, caltrops, poisons, lockpicks – so many lockpicks – what Hizashi could only assume were smoke bombs, and many more tools crammed into what looked to be a very small apartment.  “Well then.” He cleared his throat.  “Half of his apartment dedicated to his, ah, career choice.”

“There were also a number of cats,” Tsukauchi said.

“...Cats.”

“Cats.” Tsukauchi shook his head.  “We had to call in animal control to get all the cats out of the apartment.  Fifteen in total.”

“Fifteen cats?”

Tsukauchi tossed him a grin.  “Fifteen cats.”

The grin slid off his face after a moment, giving him a serious look.  He leaned forward, placing his coffee to the side to pull another picture out of the folder.  “My team also found these in his apartment.”

He slid the picture over.  Hizashi squinted at the detective, confused, and peered down at the small photo.  With a single look, staring at the object depicted, the Hero knew exactly why he'd been called into the precinct to have a chat with Tsukauchi about this particular villain.

“Hey,” he laughed, a little anxious but doing his best to not let it show. “You guys found my headphones.  Nice.”

“Mic, can you tell me why your headphones were in with his equipment?” Tsukauchi asked, folding his hands together in a calm steeple.

Hizashi cracked a grin.  “Oh, come on, you really gonna question me about that?”  When the detective simply blinked at him, he sighed. “Okay, you are...

“Look, it's nothing big.  Nothing to worry about, really.”  He shrugged, swirling the coffee in his mug and doing his best to calm his nerves. Because this wasn't something he needed to worry about.  'Just tell the truth and you'll be fine,' he thought to himself.

Yeah, because the cops thinking he had some sort of connection with a Villain that had a known connection with a group that wanted All Might dead was totally fine.

“I've had a few run-ins with this Villain while on patrol,” Hizashi explained.  “Never managed to catch him – can't tell if it's because I haven't been on patrol in a while or if he's just a slippery bastard – and during one of our encounters he stole my headphones.  That's all.”

Tsukauchi stared at him for a moment longer, one of his fingers tapping over the knuckles of his opposite hand, and then relaxed.  Hizashi could feel the tension drain from his own shoulders seeing Tsukauchi pick his coffee up again.  “Really?  You've never managed to get him? Wouldn't your quirk make it so most people can't even crawl away?”

Hizashi pouted.  “Normally, yeah, but.  I dunno, Tsukauchi, I think it has something to do with his quirk.”

“Ah, yes.”  Tsukauchi shuffled a few of the papers in the folder around until he found the one he was looking for.  “According to his file, he's got a quirk called 'Erasure'.  It allows him to erase the quirk of anyone within sight, so long as he doesn't blink.”

Hizashi hummed at that.  “Interesting.  Man, if he'd been a hero that would be dead useful against Villains using their quirks against civilians.”

“Well, now he's using it to take down Heroes,” Tsukauchi said.

“Wait, really?”  Hizashi frowned.  Well, sure, the guy was hanging out with the League of Villains, which couldn't be good news. The League of Villains, who brought a Noumu to a school field trip and attempted to murder the number one hero and nearly killed him.  But during any of his encounters on patrol the man hadn't really done anything...villainous. Nothing extreme anyway, if one didn't count fighting a Hero and stealing from him as villainous.

Tsukauchi nodded.  “After we managed to identify him and get his information, we ran the few things we had through records to see if perhaps there were any matches for crimes or other incidents.”  He reached for another folder and flipped it open.  “Nothing recently up until the other day when we caught him, but his hair matches perfectly with evidence found in unsolved cases that other precincts and mine have been trying to get leads on for years.”

Hizashi's mouth ran dry, looking down at the folder the detective was flipping through.  It was...thick.  “Years.”

“Yep. And what with him showing to regularly burn away his prints and the careful way he seems to keep traces his his presence away from scenes, I'd wager that there are many, many more crimes he's been apart of.”  Tsukauchi frowned down at the folder.  “With this information, we've been able to link him to heists, grand-theft auto, severe battery, kidnappings, murder...”

Hizashi felt his blood run cold.  The mug in his hand was warm, but with this new information he could barely tell.  Murder.  Kidnapping.  Years. This man, who'd been casually pranking him over the past several weeks during patrols, had murdered people.

Hizashi was a Hero.  He's seen some pretty messed up people.  Villains with bombs strapped to their chests and threatening to blow up a mall. Villains madly laughing as they slaughter the innocent people in front of them.  Villains diving into the sewers to get away after brutally beating a Hero within an inch of their life.

But...

“No. We're not hurting the kids.”

It was hard to picture the man who had saved Asui's life as someone who could take another's.

The phone on Tuskauchi's desk rang once before the detective picked it up.  “Tsukauchi.”

Hizashi listened numbly as the detective talked business with whoever was on the other line, sipping distractedly at his over-sweet coffee. Honestly, he wasn't entirely sure how to feel about what he'd just learned.  It was like the person in the files was a separate person from the asshole he'd kept running into on patrols.  If they were the same person, then that meant that this Aizawa was...well, it meant that Aizawa had a soft spot for kids, for one.  Maybe?  

Man, he felt more confused about all of this than he'd been before running into the man the first time on the streets.

“Mic?” Hizashi jerked his head up and found Tsukauchi standing from his desk.  “I was going to go watch Aizawa being questioned.  Would you like to join me?”

“Uh, sure.  Why not, right?”  He raised the mug.  “Mind if I take this with me?”

“Not at all.  This way.”

The walk back to the interrogation rooms was a short one.  Hizashi waved at the officers in the halls, both to be polite and to get his head on straight again.  The past few minutes had been weird, and he didn't like how all the new information was conflicting with what he'd observed himself.  Better to smile and be cheerful to get himself back together than dwell on it too much.

Of course, given that he'd heard all this new info and it was conflicting for him, Hizashi really should have thought about how actually seeing the man in question would affect him.

The viewing room for interrogations was dark, an officer sitting at the computer in there nodding at the two of them when they walked in. Hizashi heard the woman say something about how she wasn't expecting a Pro to come in, but he wasn't paying attention.  His eyes were looking through the one way mirror at the man sitting alone at the table in the other room.

Aizawa Shouta.

Long dark hair feel in messy waves around a scruffy, tired face, body slumped boredly in the chair.  His hands were cuffed to the table, a finger tapping occasionally on the wooden surface in no rhythm in particular.  The man had been put into a clean uniform, orange on white – a prisoners uniform.  And two dark eyes, bloodshot and bags underneath them, were staring unerringly at the mirror.

Hizashi couldn't help feel like those eyes were staring straight at him.

'Unnerving.' But he shook it off, jerking back to the conversation happening around him and greeting the officer with a smile and a handshake. “So!  Are we ready to get this show on the road?”

Tsukauchi smiled.  “I'll tell them to get started.”

Within just a couple minutes an officer walked into the other room, files under one arm and face impassive.  Hizashi stood behind where the detective took a seat, idly sipping at his coffee and watched the interrogation begin.  Old case after old case were shown and explained to Aizawa, and charge after charge were piled up in front of him as well.  It seemed never ending.  And the more time went on, the more Hizashi watched, the more he could tell that the man sitting cuffed to the table?  Was barely paying attention.

He frowned, tilting his head and pursing his lips.  The man was basically going to be in prison for life, maybe the next ten lives if he was lucky, and he was just...sitting there?  Hizashi liked to think he was pretty good at reading people – he had to be, as a teacher and a Pro and as an entertainer – and the vibes coming off this guy were not that of a villain that knew he was caught.  He legitimately didn't seem to care.  He seemed bored, like this whole interrogation was a waste of his time.

How could a man charged with all these things not care about the turn his life was about to take?

For a moment, Hizashi debated saying anything.  But it wouldn't leave him alone.  He stepped forward, turning his eyes down to look at the detective sitting just in front of him“Hey, Tsukauchi, I don't think – “

“Wait a second, what's he doing?”

Hizashi snapped his eyes back to Aizawa.  Who was now angling his head down just a bit, as if he had something stuck in his back teeth and was trying to get at with his tongue.  Why would he – “Oh, shit, Tsukauchi, get a medic in there now!”

Aizawa tilted his head back up, smirking, and said his first words in the room to the confused officer with him.  “They call me Eraser.”

And then he swallowed.

Hizashi could only watch with wide eyes as chaos happened around him.  Aizawa started convulsing, officers and medics swarmed the room, and everyone was shouting.  The interrogation was forgotten.  Aizawa was pulled onto a stretcher and carried swiftly out.  No one was sure why the man had done it.  It all happened so fast, and all he could do was stare in shock.

Eraser.

Somehow, no matter what happened next...Hizashi had a sinking feeling he'd be seeing the man again.

[adolphuslongestaffe]

Like it Always Should Have Been

How do you tell your best friend you’re in love with him? The answer, of course, is you don’t. Because in real life, people don’t fall in love with their best friend and hide it for years and let it fester like an infected tooth until every smile hurts so bad they give up and confess just to be rid of the ache. If they do, it doesn’t end in a nice way. Friends don’t tend to respond well to, “I’ve been secretly in love with you all these years when you thought I was your best friend. Surprise!” Because that’s creepy as fuck.

But what if you really were his best friend and you loved him like a brother, and those other feelings were something that grew out of that. Slowly, over long years of seeing each other through trial and hardship, sticking together through thick and thin, and by the time you even admitted it to yourself, you were too far gone to do anything about it. And what if you felt like a piece of shit for letting him think he was still just a pal to you, so you decided to tell him, no matter how he might react, because you had to get it off your chest.

And what if you kept meaning to tell him, but every time you were just getting up enough courage to do it, a war happened. Or you were kidnapped by Nazis. Or you fell off a train and sort of but not really died and then came back brainwashed seventy-odd years later and tried really hard to kill him. Like, seriously, you shot him a bunch of times, then beat the living shit out of him with your cybernetic arm. You did drag his heavy ass out of that river, though. Hypothetically.

The point is, people don’t secretly fall in love with their best friend, wait seven decades to tell him, do all that shit with the Nazis and kind of dying and coming back and shooting and punching, and then confess their love and expect to get back a “holy shit I love you too” and live happily ever after. It doesn’t happen. It especially doesn’t happen when your best friend is Captain fucking America, and you’ve been sleeping on his pull-out sofa for three months because, technically, you’re a dead Soviet assassin with no credit score or bank account, and that doesn’t look great on a rental application.

This was absolutely not the situation James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, formerly-deceased war hero and currently-unemployed ex-assassin found himself in. Even if he had found himself in such a hypothetical conundrum, he would never have dreamed of admitting it to said hypothetical best friend, because, as previously stated, that doesn’t get you a happy ending in real life.

In real life, you shut the fuck up, be grateful you’re not locked up in a steel box for the safety of your fellow man, and try not to stare at Steve’s perfect ass while he’s cooking steak and eggs. Again. It’s like he doesn’t eat anything else. Hypothetically.

Bucky, being the pragmatic, real-life type of man, swallowed his excellent black coffee and Steve’s passable steak—and godawful scrambled eggs—and kept his feelings and his eyes to himself. Just like his dad taught him. In 1935. Because that’s what real men do. Or, they did in the 1930s. He’s seen an awful lot of men crying and talking about their feelings since he woke up out of that fucking nightmare.

“Hm?” he said, emerging from his reverie just in time to realize he was being spoken to, and hadn’t heard a word of it. “Sorry, what’d you say? My mind was…wandering.”

“You’re getting senile, old man,” Steve said, waving the cast-iron pan at him. “I asked if you want some more eggs. I made plenty.”

“Oh, no thanks. I’m watching my figure, you know?”

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Buck,” Steve admonished, with that mixture of paternal firmness and youthful buoyancy that only he seemed capable of. He walked over to the table and scraped another helping onto Bucky’s plate anyway. “Your body is an engine and if you don’t fuel it properly, it won’t keep running. Now eat your eggs.”

Steve sat down and dug into his breakfast with hearty enthusiasm, while Bucky took up his fork and poked at the yellowish pile on his plate. He’d just gotten up enough resolve to shove a rubbery wad into his mouth and start chewing through them, when Steve burst out laughing.

“What?” Bucky frowned. “What’s the joke, wise guy?”

“Buck, why don’t you just admit you hate the eggs?”

Bucky blinked. “Why don’t I—wait, you knew?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, though his laughter. “I’ve been watching you struggling to choke them down for three months.”

“Oh, I am going to kick your ass to the moon, Rogers, you rotten little sneak! Why didn’t you say something before?”

“I wanted to see how long you’d keep it up, but it’s just getting mean at this point. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I was being polite!” Bucky exclaimed, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“Your face wasn’t. You’re not very hard to read, for a spy. Everything in there is all out here,” Steve replied, gesturing toward Bucky’s cranium and face respectively.

Bucky’s traitorous face, of course, flushed with heat at the idea that what was going on in his head was so plainly visible to Steve, which made his war buddy and best friend laugh even harder.

“I wasn’t a spy, I was an assassin,” he grumbled into his mug. “You don’t have to hide your feelings from people you’re gonna kill anyway. Sorry about the eggs. I didn’t want to offend you.”

“It’s just eggs, why would I be offended?” Steve said, hopping up to clear the dishes. “You have to learn to say what you’re thinking, though, Buck. That’s how people are nowadays. They expect you to be a lot more forward than the way we were taught. Otherwise, they won’t know what you really want.”

Bucky decided he’d best disregard this advice for the moment, since what he really wanted was for Steve to stop talking and put his mouth on his mouth, and there was no way he’d ever heard of to say that kind of thing to another man without getting socked for it. He turned to look out the window, lest his apparently legible face divulge this tidbit to his friend, and sipped morosely at his coffee.

“How you doing?” Steve asked, as he reseated himself at the table with a glass of milk, which he still insisted upon drinking with every meal. “You feeling up to this thing tonight?”

From anyone else, this kind of treatment would’ve made Bucky’s stomach turn. Steve, however, had more than earned the right to frankly address his condition, and his particular brand of steady, tenacious concern didn’t carry the same sting as would the saccharine sympathy of others.

“I’m doing as well as usual,” Bucky answered stiffly, pre-WWII habits regarding talking about feelings being hard to break. “I’m not sure about the thing tonight, though. Dr. Barenbaum thinks I need to try some low pressure social situations before I jump headfirst into trying to make friends.”

“That’s why it’s perfect,” Steve smiled. “It’s just a casual get-together. They do this kind of thing all the time.”

“I don’t know if hanging out with the Avengers in Stark Tower counts as low pressure. Maybe for you, but you’re Captain America. I’m just…the guy who tried to kill Captain America.”

“No, you’re my best friend, a war hero, and an original Howling Commando. There wouldn’t even be an Avengers without you guys and every one of them knows it.”

“That’s not true,” Bucky said, wavering.

“Come on, Buck, you have to come,” Steve cajoled, amping up the intensity of his already devastating smile. “I told them you’d be there. Besides, I need another old guy around to not get anyone’s references with me.”

“Ugh…alright, fine. But I’m gonna sit in the corner and look really dark and broody the whole time.”

“You will if you want me to entertain everyone with stories about you from when we were kids. I think they’d enjoy hearing about the time you threw up on the Cyclone at Coney Island.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I would.”

“You’re a real hardass, Rogers, you know that?”

“That’s what they tell me,” Steve said, looking eminently pleased with himself.

Bucky raised a doubtful eyebrow “Do they really?”

“Well…no. But they would if I weren’t so intimidating. I am their boss, you know.”

“Yeah, you keep saying.”

“And you keep not being impressed by it. Would it kill you to fake a little starstruck giddiness?”

“I think it might.”

“Ok, but you have to at least act like you think I’m cool at the party.”

“Nope,” Bucky said, getting up to carry his mug to the sink. “They’ll see right through that.”

“I changed my mind,” Steve called after him. “You’re uninvited.”

“Well, now I’m definitely coming.”

    Several hours later, just after sunset, Bucky found himself standing before the entrance to the massively ostentatious Stark Tower, wrought in glittering steel and glass, and erected in the heart of most famous city in the world, a monument to technological superiority (not to mention its owner’s titanic ego). He followed Steve across the palatial lobby to the bank of elevators, and they began their ascent.

As they drew nearer the stratosphere, he found his courage swiftly waning. He had tried to kill a lot of these people, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect some of them to be harboring some negative feelings about that. To add to this, was his difficulty with anxiety and hypervigilance, especially in crowds, since the Soviet sickos torn his brain apart and rebuilt him as a killing machine.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said, halting abruptly as they stepped off the elevator. “It seemed like an ok idea before we got here, but I’m, uh…kind of panicking.”

Steve smiled encouragingly, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be alright, I promise. If it’s not, just tell me and we’ll get out of here, ok? I’m not trying to torture you.”

Compelled by Steve’s charismatic sanguinity, Bucky reluctantly allowed himself to be led through the marble-floored foyer into a rather large, posh lounge. The place was already fairly full, mostly with people he didn’t recognize at all, sitting at tables and on couches, or standing about in groups and pairs, laughing and chatting energetically. There was jazzy piano music coming from somewhere, and the wall on the far end was basically a huge window, with doors that opened on a wide patio.

“Hey old timers,” a smooth, smoky voice said beside them. “Glad you could make it.”

Bucky turned to see a beautiful, auburn-haired woman in a tight, black cocktail dress, smiling up at Steve.

“Hey, Nat, you look lovely this evening,” Steve said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “You remember Bucky.”

“I do.” Natasha turned her big, green eyes on him. “Nice to see you again, Bucky.”

“Likewise,” Bucky said awkwardly. “I’m, uh…sorry I shot you.”

“Well, I’d say I’m sorry I tried to strangle you with piano wire, but I’m doing a new thing where I don’t lie unless I have to for work.” Natasha said, with a sly twinkle in her eye. She held out her hand. “Let’s call it even?”

“Deal,” Bucky laughed, shaking her proffered hand.

“So, there are a lot of people here you guys don’t know, but they’re not that important,” she said, getting right to business. “The team is scattered around. Sam and Clint are at the bar arguing about whether pinball is a legitimate e-sport, Thor’s over there by the fireplace, Wanda is smoking on the patio, and Tony is late.”

“Tony is not late because this is Tony’s party,” Tony’s voice cut in. The three turned to see him strolling up behind them. “Hey look, it’s the Captain and Tennille!”

Steve and Bucky stared blankly at him.

“The Captain and Tennille,” he repeated.

Steve cocked his head perplexedly. “Um. He’s Bucky.”

“Come on, that was funny,” Tony sighed. “Nat, tell them how funny that was.”

“Eh,” Natasha shrugged.

“Traitor. Am I allowed to fire you?”

“Nope,” she grinned. “And Steve knows exactly who the Captain and Tennille are. He was fucking with you. Which actually was pretty funny.”

“Thank you, Nat,” Steve beamed.

“I really don’t know who they are,” Bucky offered. “Are they Avengers?”

“Musicians,” Tony corrected. “Well. Sort of.”

“Hey Nat, who’s that guy talking to Thor?” Steve asked, indicating to the fireplace a few yards away, where the god of thunder was engaged in conversation with another tall, blonde, athletic-looking man. “He looks familiar.”

“Oh, that’s the unhinged psychopath Nat keeps letting into my house,” Tony answered for her. “What is he doing here, Nat?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Natasha said. “You don’t want him here, go tell his Asgardian boyfriend yourself.”

Tony made a sour face. “Boyfriend, huh? Great. Thor has bad taste in men, so now we’re stuck with him and the alien tapeworm.”

“I thought Thor liked women,” Steve said, frowning thoughtfully.

“He does,” Natasha laughed. “People can be bisexual, Steve.”

“Bisexual?” Steve and Bucky asked in unison.

“And that’s my cue,” Tony interjected. “Enjoy your sex-ed talk, have some free booze, and try not to break anything too expensive. Oh, and don’t kill anyone. It’s a nightmare for the PR department.”

“Later, Tony,” Natasha called after him, as he retreated into the crowd. She turned back to Steve and Bucky, who were still peering curiously at Thor and his male companion. “Hey grandpas, I don’t really have to explain to you what bisexual means, do I?”

“Of course not!” Steve said, crossing his arms on his chest. “We are adults.”

“Yeah, adults who totally know what that means,” Bucky agreed, adopting a similar posture.

“Even if we didn’t, we could figure it out from context clues,” Steve continued staunchly.

“But we definitely did,” Bucky added.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “If you two get any more adorable, I might actually puke. I’m going to go check on Wanda. I’ll catch up with you in a little while, ok?”

“Ok, Nat. See ya,” Steve said cheerfully.

“It means liking men and women, right?” Bucky asked, once she was out of earshot. “I’ve actually never heard that before.”

“Neither have I. I mean, I knew that was a thing, but I didn’t know there was word for it.” Steve’s blue eyes flickered over Bucky’s face, then quickly away. “Let’s go get a drink, huh?”

Bucky felt an odd little wrench in his gut at this, and he cast an apprehensive glance at his friend as he followed him to the bar. What was that look about? Did Steve suspect something about him? As his anxiety spiked, of course, his dull, reticent demeanor returned. Fortunately, Sam and Clint spotted Steve and waved them over as soon as they had ordered.

“Hey, Cap,” Clint said, as they approached with their drinks. “Tell me you’re not actually drinking an old fashioned.”

“That’s right,” Steve said, with mock sternness. “What about you? Do they make a drink called a mouthy punk?”

“You’re pretty sharp, old man,” Sam laughed, as both men shook hands with Steve. “Hey, Buck, how you doing? Keeping this guy out of trouble?”

“I try, but he’s a real pain in the ass,” Bucky said. “I’m thinking about putting him in a home.”

Sam and Clint voiced hearty approval of this idea, and the ice thus broken, quickly drew Steve into their lively conversation. Bucky was more than happy with this arrangement, since it meant he didn’t have to do much, aside from hide in his drink and make sure to smile when everyone else did.

Things proceeded comfortably enough for a while, but he found that his energy was so engaged in not whipping his head around to investigate every flash of movement in his peripheral vision, he didn’t have any to expend in blocking out the din of voices and laughter, punctuated incessantly by the clinking of glassware. His head began to swim, and his jacket suddenly felt overly warm and constricting. He couldn’t take it off without exposing his very noticeable metallic arm, however, so he persevered as long as he could.

Finally, beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. He nudged Steve and said he was going out to get some fresh air, then escaped to the patio as quickly as he could without attracting attention. Steve looked after him, but let him go, understanding his need for a moment alone to decompress.

Once out of the stifling atmosphere of lights and motion and noise, the tight feeling in Bucky’s chest eased somewhat. He chose a spot well away from the few other people who were outside, and leaned on the patio railing, letting the cool night air wash over his clammy skin.

Calling to the mind a coping technique his doctor—or therapist or whatever they were calling headshrinkers these days—had been teaching him, he took some deep, meditative breaths, and concentrated on being aware of each part of his body, one by one. Gradually, the vague nausea dissipated, and his hands stopped shaking. The human one did, at least. The cybernetic prosthesis was always steady as stone.

He’d trained himself many years ago to stop reaching up reflexively to clutch his shoulder every time he thought of the thing, but that didn’t stop the mangled nerve fibers from making their displeasure known, with hot, itching little needles of pain. He sighed and stretched the arm out to the side, then across his chest, then dropped it and shook it out, till the nerves calmed down and returned to proper operation.

His enhanced hearing made him aware of a purposeful step headed in his direction, well before its owner got near him. He leaned on the railing again, body relaxed, pretending not to notice. It’s not an enemy, here. No need to wind up your muscles for a fight. No need to brace your pain receptors against the slip of a hidden blade.

The steps halted a few feet back and Steve’s voice said, “Hey, Buck,” before he came closer. A habit developed through years of familiarity with soldiers who’d seen heavy combat, and a wise procedure for approaching jumpy PTSD cases possessed of superhuman strength and speed, and trained to kill without thinking.

“Hey,” Bucky said, keeping his eyes on the city lights, twinkling far below like a chaos of multicolored stars.

Steve leaned on the railing beside him. “This city’s gotten so big since we were kids. I hardly recognize it.”

“I don’t think I’d recognize it from up here anyway. Even if my memory of it wasn’t buried under a hundred layers of coordinates and terrain maps and blueprints of every manmade structure from here to New Rochelle.”

“They did that? Put all that stuff in your head?”

“Yep. Every major city in the world. Sort of takes the thrill out of exploring new places.”

“At least you’ll never have to worry about getting lost,” Steve said, with a resigned sigh.

Bucky cast a sidelong glance at him. “I’m ok on my own, you know. You should be inside with your friends.”

Steve shook his head. “They’re not my friends. They’re my team.”

“Oh, give it a rest. Your team are your friends. You’re the one who always says the best teams are the ones that bond.”

“The best teams are the ones who do their jobs. A leader who lets emotional attachments affect his judgement is not doing his job.”

Bucky bridled at this, detecting something personal in it. “So, you weren’t doing your job when you risked your life to pull me out of that Nazi prison camp?”

“That was different. I didn’t put anyone in danger but myself.”

“What about on the helicarrier? Millions of lives were in danger, then. So why didn’t you just kill me?”

Steve gave him a look, then turned back to stare out at the city, his jaw muscles visibly working beneath his skin.

“Exactly,” Bucky persisted. “You didn’t do it because we were friends. Because you cared about me.”

“We are still friends and I still care about you. I don’t regret it,” Steve replied flatly. “But it was extremely reckless, you’re right. Thank you for reminding me.”

“Don’t fucking do that!” Bucky said, with sudden heat. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean, Buck?” Steve asked, turning to face him again. “Please tell me, because I’m honestly at a loss.”

“I mean that I’m stronger than you and faster than you—I’m a literal combat machine—but I could never be Captain fucking America, and do you know why? Because I’m not a leader. You are. You care about people and it shows in everything you do. That’s why they’re willing to follow you, no matter what. So don’t give me that ‘they’re my team not my friends’ shit. They are your friends, and that’s a good thing.”

Steve gazed at him silently for a long moment. “You know…being an assassin has sure done a number on your language, Sergeant Barnes.”

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Rogers,” Bucky retorted. “How about I show you how colorful I can get.”

Steve cocked an eyebrow. “Be my guest. I’ll smack the sass right out of your mouth, soldier.”

“You can try,” Bucky said, with a wicked grin. “Hit me, assho—”

Steve’s fist flew like a shot toward his face, but the blow never connected. Quicker than sight, Bucky’s cybernetic hand caught his wrist and clamped down like a vise. In fractions of a second, he had twisted Steve’s arm behind his back, flipped him around, and pinned him to the balcony railing with his body.

“Come on, Steve,” he laughed, releasing the hold. “You’re not even trying.”

Steve turned around and leaned his back against the railing, chafing the wrist Bucky had twisted with his other hand. “We can’t play-fight like that, Buck. We’re not kids anymore.”

Bucky’s smile dissolved as he studied his friend’s face. Steve kept his eyes fixed on the ground, avoiding his gaze, but his brow was furrowed and there was a flush of color in his angular cheeks. So it was that. It must be. He must have perceived Bucky’s feelings for him, and now things were going to be weird and tense and fucked up between them. Bucky would rather die than have this lifelong friendship disintegrate that way.

“I didn’t mean to—” he began, then immediately realized there was no way to disembark this conversational train except to jump off before a full-on crash. “I’m sorry.”

Steve lifted his head to squint up at him. “What? Why are you sorry?”

“I thought…I hurt you or something,” Bucky said lamely.

“Are you kidding me?” Steve smirked, the spark instantly jumping back into his blue eyes. “Remember when you shot me a bunch of times and I still kicked your ass?”

“I mean, it wasn’t a bunch of times. And I kicked your ass. And you watch your language!”

“You know I just lecture people about swearing because I think it’s funny, right?”

“Yes. I knew that. Obviously.”

“You didn’t.”

“I should have,” Bucky grinned. “You’re still the same sarcastic little shit under all that muscle.”

“I am,” Steve said, in uncharacteristically serious tone. “And you’re still the guy who took care of me after mom died, and made sure I didn’t get killed for shooting my mouth off to the wrong people. Everything has changed but you, Buck. You’re the only one who comes from the world I remember. You’re all I have left.”

Bucky’s voice choked in his throat at this unexpected onslaught, and he could only nod in response.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you when you brought up the helicarrier,” Steve continued. “I was angry because you made me see something I didn’t want to admit. It wasn’t that I endangered lives hoping to get through to you. It was that I wouldn’t have done the same for anyone else. So, maybe those people on my team are my friends, but not like you. There’s no one I care about more than you. I love you.”

“I know,” Bucky said, a bit hoarsely. “There’s no one I care about more than you, either.”

He leaned on the railing beside his friend and clapped him on the shoulder in a companionable fashion, thinking this was the end of the interchange, but Steve went on.

“You know, for all the trouble my mouth got me into, that was the one thing I regretted not saying,” he said, with a sad smile. “Then I thought you died. A couple of times. When you came back…it was like I’d been given another chance. No one gets another chance. I couldn’t risk you dying again without ever knowing what you mean to me. Anyway, thanks for letting me get it off my chest. And for not freaking out.”

“Get what off your chest?” Bucky asked, bewildered. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

Steve frowned. “I don’t know how much clearer I can be than ‘I love you’, Buck.”

Feeling himself poised on the bleeding edge of something terrifying and spectacular, and finally goaded past the point of caution, Bucky took Steve by both shoulders and looked fiercely into his exasperatingly handsome face.

“Listen to me very carefully, Steve,” he said slowly. “There is a huge difference between ‘I love you’ and ‘I am in love with you.’ Which one are you saying?”

“Ohhhh, got it,” Steve nodded. “I see how that’s confusing now. The second one. I’m in love with you.”

Bucky’s stomach lurched, pulse pounding in his ears, as the concrete patio seemed to tilt beneath his feet. He already had a hold of Steve’s shoulders, or he may have actually lost his balance and fallen. Instead, he let his weight pitch forward into his friend, wrapping his arms tightly around him. Steve’s arms came up to encircle his waist as Bucky’s mouth covered his, devouring it with half-starved desperation.

Steve gasped and groaned in his throat. He’d been entirely unprepared for the intensity of the kiss, and the crushing force of Bucky’s embrace. He probably should have been, having experienced his friend’s power firsthand in a more violent context. In all fairness, though, he’d never been kissed by a man before, let alone a superhuman man with almost a century of stifled desire burning in his body like rocket fuel.

He let go, losing himself entirely in the moment he had longed for since he was a teenaged kid with a crush on his handsome, older best friend, but no words with which to articulate it, even to himself. Strong arms pulling him close, bodies pressed together, breathing the same breath. Holding and touching and tasting him, until he permeated every sense, and there was nothing in the world but them, together. Like it always should have been.

Bucky pulled away at last, leaving him flushed and hazy-eyed, panting through wet, kiss-bruised lips. Intoxicated and reeling himself, he buried his face in the crook of Steve’s neck, inhaling his masculine scent, and feeling the reassuring warmth and solidity of his body. Steve’s arms tightened around him and his chest vibrated with a soft laugh.

“What are you laughing at, you snarky little shit,” Bucky mumbled into his shoulder.

“It’s just that, I’m a hundred years old, I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen, and I only heard the term bisexual for the first time tonight. That’s pretty funny.”

Bucky lifted his head to look at him. “Is that what you are?”

“I guess so. Is that ok?”

“As long as you’re aware that your ass belongs to me, now.”

“Uh, no, your ass belongs to me,” Steve retorted, sliding his hand down onto the specified area of his friend’s anatomy.

“Hey! Cut that out!” Bucky said, swatting it away. “I’m not that kind of guy, mister.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? What kind are you?”

“Why don’t you take me home and find out.”

Bucky leaned in for another kiss, but at this perhaps belated moment, it occurred to him that the wall dividing the lounge and the very well-lit patio was comprised entirely of glass panels, making it essentially one massive, floor to ceiling window.

“Shit,” he winced. “You don’t think anyone saw us, do you?”

Steve turned to look toward the lounge, where it appeared that nearly every patron was watching through the glass, like he and Bucky were fish in an aquarium. He smiled and gave a sheepish wave, at which point the entire place erupted in thunderous applause, complete with shouts of “get it, Cap!” and “God bless America!” and other expressions of ribald encouragement.

He turned back to Bucky and shook his head. “Nope. I don’t think they did.”

[osmw1]

Dimension Wave   Chapter 29 — Dimension Wave: Conclusion

—?!

It wasn’t clear who landed the final blow, but Cerberus let out as if he had been torn apart. At the same time, a flash of white light blinded everybody in the instance as they braced themselves for the next attack. The light dissipated and revealed white clouds on a backdrop of blue… just as the skies had been before all of this happened. White petals blew across the battlefield; we were now in a field of flowers in full bloom.

“We did it!”

Everybody was in high spirits and some were crying out from our shared triumph.

“Good job, team.” “Well done!” “That was a doozy.” “Hell yeah.”

A victory fanfare played in the background—this is an MMO, so of course it did. I sat down on the bed of flower as both my—as both Kizuna†Exceed’s body and mind were exhausted. The tension and anxiety I was holding back crushed me all at once now. It was extremely stressful avoiding getting hit as a Spirit.

—The first wave of Dimension Wave has been defeated!

The game popped up a message in my vision. There was also a ranking of who contributed the most. Let’s see where I placed…

—Overall rank #77: Kizuna†Exceed

Looks like I’m 77th place among all other players. There were a few other rankings as well.

—Total damage given rank #1: Tsugumi†Exceed

No surprise there. That scythe was great for crowd control.

Oh, there’s a ranking for resources contribution as well. Alto and Romina were in the top 10. They did a lot to back us up, eh?

Another category was “Everyday”. I assume that’s for like activities, like cooking and other roleplaying elements? I’m at #542 for that.

“Holy! Look! There’s someone who took 80,000 points of damage!”

That guy was #2 for most damage received, but who’s #1?

—Total damage received rank #1: Kizuna†Exceed

… hey, that name looks familiar! I fell prostrate on the ground. Now that I look at myself, my clothes had been unequipped, leaving me in my underwear.

Name/ Kizuna†Exceed Race/ Spirit Energy/ 19,550 Mana/ 8,100 Serin/ 46,780

Skills/ Energy Production X, Mana Production VII, Fishing Mastery IV, Hate & Lure I, Gutting Mastery IV, Cleaver III, Speed Gutting III, Naval Combat IV, Transmutation I

… well, that makes sense.

“Required level to equip… Energy, in my case…”

I never knew there was a level requirement for my clothes. They got unequipped because I don’t have enough Energy now, I assumed. Guess I don’t have much of a choice but to use my old equipment. I’m glad I kept everything in my inventory. I clicked out of the rankings and looked through other information.

—Buffs and item usage

There were patch notes for new skills, equipment, and other changes as well. More weapon types were added too. Something I was just talking about is the new specialization for scythes, called war scythes; dual blades derived from one-handed swords; and katanas from two-handed swords. I can’t tell for sure unless I check with the next one, but I’m sure there are new items and skills that are affected by each Dimension Wave.

Oh, hey, it said that fishing rods can now be equipped with reels. I’ve gotta get me one of those. I kept scrolling through the notes.

“Racial powers unlocked?”

That line caught my attention while I was skimming. First off, lemme see what’s in store for Spirits.

—Stone of Mediation implemented.

A crystal that allows its user to project their soul. Or, at least, that’s what this Spirit-exclusive rock claims to be able to do. Every Stone of Mediation has a different effect. Some may shorten the amount of time needed to produce Energy or reduce skills’ Energy usage.

Finally, it looks like we all get something from participating in Dimension Wave. Ranks 1-5, 6-100, 101-1,000, 1,001-5,000 all get different items.

And since I’m number 77, I should be getting something pretty decent. I clicked Yes on the dialog box asking me whether I’d like to receive my reward. Then, a slot machine with numbers and fruits on its reels popped up in my vision. After a quick spin, three icons of souls lined up in the center.

—Energy Blade obtained.

It looked so fitting for a Spirit like me, though the description looked far from normal.

Energy Blade Weapon type/ Not applicable Attack/ 0 Prerequisites/ Must be a Spirit User must have at least 2 Energy to equip this weapon. The user charges up the blade with Energy then unleashes all of it in one single blow. Beware that all charged Energy will be expended upon making an attack, regardless of its success.

All that’s there to the weapon is just its handle. It’s reminiscent of old movies and anime, like how the blade part would only appear if the sword chooses its wielder. It sounds cool and all, but I’ll hold off judgement until I try it out. Personally, I don’t have strong feelings either way. Since it’s a Spirit-exclusive weapon, it’s quite the oddball. I bet it’ll be tricky to use as well. At the very least, it’s not an option for me in my current state. It won’t be long until I’m back in business, so I’ll just keep it safe for now.

“Kizuna.”

Shouko showed up just as I had finished stowing away the Energy Blade into my inventory. Just like everybody else, I congratulated her with a “Well done out there”. But even though we’ve defeated the Dimension Wave, she looked less than happy. I couldn’t help but worry about her.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” “No, it’s just that… I overdid it out on the battlefield, causing you to suffer such terrible damage…” “Oh, that’s what’s bothering you? Don’t worry about it. The true winners in games are ones who enjoy themselves, isn’t that right?” “Still—”

Shouko seemed to be bothered about me losing my Energy. I had been swarmed by the mob, hurt myself in trying to protect Tsugumi, and nearly lost my life when I was drawing the boss’ aggro. Even if I had voluntarily done all that, she must be feeling guilty about all of the damage I faced. But I knew. I knew Shouko had tirelessly used her counterattack skill to protect me. Still, the fan-type weapon needs to be charged so, of course, she couldn’t block 100% of Cerberus’ attacks. Nevertheless, it was touching to hear that she had been thinking of me the entire time.

“More importantly, the sea! I mean, I’d love to head back out onto the water, but with the little Energy I have left, I’ll just be dead weight.” “Nonsense. I will help you reach… no, rather, I wish to be by your side and reach beyond the horizon together.” “I couldn’t ask for anybody better. I knew that before, but seeing you out there today, I’m even more sure of it.”

I can’t forget how graceful of an acrobatic Shouko was when facing Cerberus. And frighteningly, she’s as skilled as Tsugumi. Even though her prowess suits the frontlines much better, knowing her and her personality, I’m sure she’ll choose to stay with me. But I know better than to outright ask her to return to the frontlines.

“It’s been a long day. Let’s head back to the First and get some rest.” “Oh, but…” “Hmm?”

Shouko pressed her index finger to her lips, cueing me to stay quiet. Then, she looked over at Cerberus’ corpse. I get it now… gutting, eh? I was going to tell Roz and his party about the power of gutting-type weapons, but I didn’t get the chance to do so. I definitely had a hard time keeping cool back there. I mean, it’s only natural to get mad when someone insults you and your friends, right?

We made our way over to where Cerberus fell and eyed the other players. Many of them were already teleporting out of the instance since the raid was finished. The thriftier ones were walking home while the frontliners didn’t even bat an eye when they used their Tomes of Returning. Some of the braver ones were even saying how they’re headed off for the next battle. There were still too many people around for me to start gutting—that is if I still wanted to keep this a secret.

“Shall we stay here for a while? It’d be a waste to not enjoy the scenery.” “… yeah, why not?”

The bed of flowers was simply fantastic—both in the sense that it was beautiful but also unrealistically so. It’s almost as if the devs put it in here for us players to relax after the raid. Well, Cerberus’ corpse lying there kinda spoils the view though.

“Miss Kizuna!” “Oh, hey, Yamikage. Good work back there.” “I thank ye, but I bear exciting news.” “Ooh, what is it?” “I am now the highest ranked Spirit!” “Number one in the Energy rankings, eh?”

It’s no surprise for someone who has accumulated a total of more than a million Energy. I bet Circle Drain contributed a lot to her growth too.

“Where’s Sheryl anyway?” “… I have been here the whole time.” “Agh! Don’t scare me like that.”

Sheryl suddenly spoke up from behind me. I had no idea she was with us. It’s almost like she concealed herself or something. Well, I’m probably unperceptive because I’m just too tired.

Near the end of the raid, Sheryl was still fighting the mob to not get in our way. It’s boring, but someone’s gotta do it. Or rather, it shows exactly how considerate and attentive Sheryl is. Like that time with the bird-type monster who tried to run from us. She’s always there to back us up and to take care of loose ends. Anyway, it looks like we’re all back together now.

“I don’t think I need to explain much, but let’s enjoy the garden here while we’re waiting to do that thing I always do.” “‘Tis a splendid idea!” “‘kay.” “Yes, let’s.”

I’ll be honest. I’ve never sat around in a park to enjoy the cherry blossoms or anything like that in real life. But perhaps I’m still feeling the adrenaline rush from the fight, this was a little exciting. … I mean, as exciting as looking as flowers can be.

“It’s a little boring to sit around with nothing. I’ll make sure I take up cooking next time, so we can have a picnic or something.” “Will it not be straining your Energy reserves, Miss Kizuna?” “You’re right, but it’s something I should learn sooner or later. It’ll be useful for our voyage on the seas.” “That would not be a bad idea. We bring some food on board, but if we run out, we can rely on cooking.” “Since we have Shouko and Yamikage as specced purely for combat and Sheryl for crafting. I guess that leaves me as the team’s cook.” “… only if you’re okay with it.” “It’ll synergize well with my weapon type too.”

I’ll catch and cook our meals. Now that I think about it, I don’t do much with the fish after I catch them. Why didn’t I take up cooking sooner? The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Hmm? It sounds like someone’s running up to us. It was Tsugumi and Roz’s party.

“Big brooooo!”

She barreled towards me and squeezed me tightly in her arms. Maybe because I’m low on Energy, but I didn’t have the strength to pry her off of me.

“That was some amazing support there, Kizuna.” “You too, Roz. Almost all of you are ranked in the top 100, right?” “Ah, we were just lucky.” “You guys wanna join us? We were just about to celebrate our victory.”

Roz looked like he thought about it for a quick second. Well, I don’t blame him for being hesitant in front of total strangers.

“I hate to say no, but we’ve got to get going.” “You guys heading out for more grinding?” “Nah, but we’ve gotta figure out our equipment and skills.” “Frontliners sure have it rough. Well, good luck with that then.”

They’re throwing themselves back out onto the battlefield right after a huge raid battle. Honestly, I’m ready to pass out already. Frontliners are just so impressive. Well, I mean, I’ve been in their position before too. I know just how addictive games can be. Roz didn’t look like he was here just to say hi.

“Anyways, I was hoping to talk to the girl with the fan.” “Yes? What is it?”

Shouko looked at him with suspicion. He’s gonna ask her to join their party, I bet. Well, after seeing Shouko perform like that during the raid, everybody should be begging her to join their parties.

“I was wondering if you’d like to join—” “No, thank you.”

She cut Roz off before he could even finish his sentence. Yamikage and Sheryl looked like they wanted to say something but judging by how quickly she rejected him, I don’t think anyone could change Shouko’s mind. It was a bit of a shock, frankly speaking. I wouldn’t have expected her to flatly reject him like that, given how considerate Shouko is. She was quick to understand what he wanted as well. But even for being such an upright and proper lady, Shouko has her brash moments too, I guess. To refuse him like that is not unimaginable. Rosette seemed a little taken aback as well.

“But with your skill, you’d be perfect for the frontlines.” “I will follow Kizuna no matter what.”

… I’ve knew from the get-go that Shouko is like that, but still, that’s super embarrassing for me. I can still remember how politely she bowed to me when we first met.

“I see… sorry for trying to poach your party member like that, Kizuna.” “No worries. That’s just how Shouko is.” “Yeah, I can tell… those bastards have no idea what they’re missing out on.”

I’m guessing he’s referring to Shouko’s previous party members. It’s easy to judge us Spirits by the rumors that surround us. A lot of people fall into a bad habit of blindly listening to whatever strategy sites or wiki pages instead of seeing it for themselves. It really is a shame for them. I’ve really hit it off with Shouko. Not only is she a great person, she’s real skilled at combat too.

“Alrighty, then we’ll be heading off.” “Gotcha. I can’t wait to fight alongside you guys again.”

Roz and his party waved goodbye before teleporting away. But my sister, Tsugumi, is still clung onto me like a koala.

“Listen…” “What’s good, bro?” “Your party’s gone already, y’know?”

Tsugumi looked over her shoulder to see no traces of her teammates anywhere. Then, she shook her head and looked at me.

“What’s up?” “… big bro, are you guys going to sit here and chill for a bit?” “That’s what we’re planning to do. What about it?” “…”

For some reason, Tsugumi was staring straight into my eyes. She only looks like this when she’s really concentrating at her games. She must be thinking long and hard about something. No one—not even Kanata—can break her concentration. It’s like Tsugumi gets into some sort of a trance. Shouko gets into a hyper-aware state like this sometimes too. But Tsugumi? She only gets like this when she’s doing something she likes… that is to say when only when she’s gaming. And seemingly as if she’s figured it all out, she beamed with a smile.

“Alright! I’ve made up my mind! See ya, big bro!”

Then, she disappears after using a Tome of Returning. What was that all about?

“Anyway. Let’s go enjoy the flowers, shall we?”

We sat around chatting until everyone around us had left.

contents: /prologue/ /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /ch005/ /ch006/ /ch007/ /ch008/ /ch009/ /ch010/ /ch011/ /ch012/ /ch013/ /ch014/ /ch015/ /ch016/ /ch017/ /ch018/ /ch019/ /ch020/ /ch021/ /ch022/ /ch023/ /ch024/ /ch025/ /ch026/ /ch027/ /ch028/ /ch029/ /next/

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[botanyshitposts]

gene guns? 👀

ooooo boy okay so 

the problem with gene editing in general isn’t the gene editing itself, but getting the gene into an organism in a way that it can modify the stuff inside of it. this is surprisingly difficult to do.

so in modern applications, we have stuff like CRISPR. CRISPR is essentially a modified viral structure. to back up even further here, viruses aren’t traditionally considered organisms so much as they’re considered molecular machines; a virus reproduces itself by injecting its own RNA (an offset of DNA that can be easily replicated by the cell) into a cell; this results in the cell integrating the invading RNA into the genome of the cell, where it then can be converted into proteins that make up more viruses. once the viruses become too numerous for the cell to handle, the cell literally explodes, and the viruses that burst out of the cell go to other cells and repeat the process. 

now, CRISPR doesn’t work exactly like that. CRISPR is comprised of a virus, yes, but instead of infecting a host with a terrible virus that kills cells and things, CRISPR uses the starting machinery- the stuff that cuts and pastes- plus whatever gene you want, and instead of an infection just introduces the modified genes into the cell’s genome, where after a number of tries, the cell might decide to integrate it fully and begin expressing it. i’m not educated enough on the exact mechanisms of CRISPR to explain it in any further detail here, but know as a clarification that you couldn’t really ‘catch’ a CRISPR ‘virus’; technically what CRISPR is based off of is a bacteriophage, witch is a simple virus that specifically infects bacteria, not humans. 

UPDATE/CORRECTION: ive been informed that CRISPR isn’t in fact a virus in and of itself, but rather a piece of genetic material isolated from the immune systems of bacteria, which preforms a variety of functions with RNA and DNA of the cell including, but not limited to, fighting viruses to an extent. 

so imagine this: your friend is in a manhole on a construction site. the ladder in the manhole is broken, and to free themselves, they’ll need to fix it with your help. to do this, you will have to help them modify the ladder by replacing a broken rung, so you get some supplies in a bucket to lower down to them. it’s very dark in the manhole, and they can’t see what they’re supposed to cut, so you first put in the bucket 1. a glow in the dark map to show them where the broken rung is on the ladder. then, you put in 2. a special pair of scissors to cut the old rung out. finally, you put in 3. a new rung. your friend already has glue because they’re just like that. you lure the bucket in with a rope, and using the supplies in the bucket your friend replaces the broken parts. your friend is pretty smart; sometimes, there are multiple rungs that are broken with all different instructions, and your friend can replace them all!

the bucket, and the things in the bucket, represent CRISPR and what it does; the only thing we change are the instructions on what to cut and the rung to replace it. (this was a rambling analogy that is completely unnecessary to answer the gene gun question but i wanted to learn about it and repeating it like that here helps me learn the topic so yeah.)

i’ve never used it myself, but i’ve been told that in plant applications, CRISPR physically manifests as a weird jelly that you load up with whatever fun stuff you want (the actual gene editing has to be done via another process in advance) and rub on the plant, and the machinery takes it from there. it’s really cool technology. 

now, here’s the thing. CRISPR is pretty new technology, too. it’s cheap, it’s effective, it’s very clean, and it doesn’t mess things up too much. 

now, before we had nice rad slime to put on things that would change an organism’s genome for us, we had people in the corn business in the mid-80s who wanted to genetically modify corn faster. so they did the normal, sane thing to do, which is to just fucking shoot the cells. like. with cell-sized bullets, bc fuck those guys.

so a ‘gene gun’ works like this: you got ur metal box equipped with an airsoft-rifle-like discharge, in the sense that it discharges a high-pressure air blast. you got ur DNA that u want put in the cells. you got ur cells, in plant contexts in the form of weird lumps of cells that can just regenerate into a full plant the same way a weed could fully regenerate from a single root, because plants are just like that. finally, you got ur nanoparticles, usually of a heavy element like gold or tungsten. 

you coat your heavy particles in the DNA in advance. u put them under the high-pressure air blast. under that, you put your poor plant cells that literally just want to live their lives. then, you turn on the gun, and it literally shoots the particles into the cells with the hope that at least one of the metal particles will just by chance happen to land inside the nucleus of a cell. like literally this is called ‘biolistics’. like ‘ballistics’ but it makes no fucking sense. 

here’s an analogy: your friend is trapped in a manhole on a construction site. instead of lowering down a bucket of supplies to help them like a normal person, you just tape the new rung to the front of a gun and just fucking shoot at the old rung. ‘dude!’ cries ur friend, ‘dude, what the fuck man!’. you do not listen bc u do not care. this may not sound like it would properly insert the rung like, at all, and a lot of the time it doesn’t, but sometimes it does. more often it just makes ur friend upset and sometimes injures them. it’s a very ‘then perish’ approach to gene editing, but that’s literally how we did it before we had the magic that is CRISPR. if you would like to try this yourself, there are multiple videos on youtube that apparently instruct you on how to build your own, just like the Dupont Pioneer corn scientists that originally jerryrigged the very first one in a corn breeding center lab in the mid 80s! wow! 

here’s a video of one firing. its a lot less climatic then i expected it to be (i’ve never seen one fired before in person); after a minute of the pressure building, the scientist flips a switch, and we see one of the protective coverings in the chamber just fucking break under the air pressure. i have no idea if its supposed to do that or not, but regardless i think its very symbolic of gene guns in general lmao. according to the description on the video, this is a test fire of tungsten particles coated with the DNA to make the successfully transformed cells glow. they’re firing at onion cells, which are commonly used in these test fires because they’re huge and make for bigger targets. they also note that if they’re lucky, about 1% of cells will end up actually glowing like they hope they will. thank god we have CRISPR now or we would never get anything done