#anyway. i go back to the pits of lab work hell now.

[becauseplot]

Opening my dash and seeing everyone posting/reblogging stuff about remembering that it’s all roleplay and that emotional reactions from the ccs are normal and to curate your own online space and to remember to take breaks like,, oh man what happened this time lmao.

[kneelbeforeyourdogbabylon]

Sins of Knowledge

🌟NOW COMPLETE!🌟

Hear that ka-chunk-crash-smash-splat? Yep. It's the final chap of Sins of Knowledge, my Good Omens sex pollen AU fic, dropping like a glass beaker full of unknown volatile chemicals all over that pristine lab floor!

Clocking in at a final word count of: 143,582 👀 I am so proud of this one, and I still can't believe it's actually finished. Many many thanks to the mods and participants of the High Pollen Count Event for instigating, to @gaiaseyes451 and @cheeseplants for being the most patient and amazing betas in existence, to @goodomensafterdark for being the best most feral most fertile and most friendly goblin pit on reddit, and to everyone who read along or is reading now 🥰

Click for CW/TW, summary, and excerpt!

CW/TW and tags:

sex pollen, explicit content, dubious consent, ethical concerns, human AU, university AU, more tags at AO3. New warnings for this chapter include: mind control (LOTS of mind control, group mind control, ugly not sexy), catering hell, classist shit, health events, body horror/body transformation, lightning striking people, threat of cop/law enforcement interrogation, human rights violations probably incoming, fighting, threatening, when animals attack, gore, blood, offscreen mauling. If you'd like more info, or if there are any tags you want me to add, please feel free to DM me!

For fun, here’s the original summary for the whole work, back when chap 1 posted in April. (APRIL. APRIL! WOW):

Anthony J. Crowley and Aziraphale Fell are just two typical at-odds doctoral students fighting over a university library study room, when they get caught up in an illicit science plot with mind-controlling formulas brewed by an evil chemistry dean! There are Potions! Science labs! Creepy Surveillance! Corporate crap! Libraries and librarians! Sushi! Audited classes! GRADES and FINAL RESEARCH PAPERS! Wheee! Mwhaha! Anyway: will Aziraphale and Crowley stop fucking long enough to beat the devil and save the day? Or will the formulas change them in ways they never dreamed possible? A Human AU (but also a monster/creature AU).

Chapter 16 summary:

Picks up right where chapter 15 left off, at Dr Lanchester’s big presentation. Aziraphale and his crew infiltrate the event as caterers. Things go pear-shaped. The end is nigh!

Chapter 16 excerpt:

A cold harsh whisper then, in his ear: “Don’t move.” Somewhere in between his reaching out to Anthony and coming back, the lights in Geoffrey Hall had been dimmed. There were small electric candles at each table so the guests could still see their plates, but otherwise the only light was trained on the stage. The white sheet-swathed boxes glowed under hanging spots, and Lanchester stood at the center alongside a podium, affixing an earpiece mic to his head. “Sorry for the TEDtalk atmosphere,” he intoned, his voice suddenly deep and resonant and rolling over the room. Knowing chuckles rippled through the audience. “But I tend to present better when I can move about. And I think you’ll all thank me tonight for doing my best.” The needle dug harder into Aziraphale’s neck as Lanchester looked directly at him.

Read it at the AO3!

Or start from the beginning here

[scrollsfromarebornrealm]

another way to die-- sharlayan interlude

"What do you mean your contact got eaten?!" Astrid exclaimed. "How did that happen?!"

"He was running from the Turali authorities, fell into a cenote, and then apparently got chewed on by a seedkin living down there. I don't know what to tell you." Helena replied. She watched as Astrid set her teeth, swiping at the tomestone she was holding in her hands.

"I hate this thing, I hate this thing, I hate it so very much! Why can't you give me your notes on paper like any normal sane person would?!"

"Because you need to learn how to use it." Helena was merciless. "You're lucky that the Forum had access to some of these with enough functionality that they're usable for information-taking. Master one of these and you'll have an extremely rare skill among your peers."

"I don't want to." Astrid grumbled. Helena exhaled, lowering her voice.

"Riven knows how to use one." She uttered.

"Riven is far younger than I and has practically been swimming in Allagan tech." Astrid sniped back, but Helena could see the stubborn lines on her face. She'd said the magic words--if Riven could do it, Astrid would learn how to do the same.

"What in the seven hells is a cenote anyway?"

"Some type of pit or sinkhole. Anyroad. I'm working on getting someone else out there, but it'll take time, especially since the Turalis are cracking down on anyone who asks questions about the you-know-whats. The research teams over there have run into even more restrictions, and if you even so much as sneeze the wrong way you're being put on the next boat back here."

"What about Raz-at-Han?"

"Dealings with the Turali are directly under the dragons' purview." Helena watched as Astrid continued to fight with the tomestone.

"No letter from Riven?" She asked.

"The moogles have decided to have a postal strike, the furry little shites." Astrid bared her teeth at the screen. "If there is one, it's with them." Closing her eyes, she made herself unclench her jaw and drop her shoulders.

"Your people in the Ilsabard Contingent?"

"The Garleans are too focused right now on rebuilding, resettling, and on the moon project. Not to mention they don't have the manpower to build airships any more, a lot of that was slave labor." Helena answered. Astrid inhaled, opening her eyes.

"A fleet of airships just magically appear out of thin air over a major city, and then just as magically a moon later, vanish." She said. "Not to mention, rumors of man-sized mammets and a massacre in said city. And the only place that could confirm the truth isn't talking, and daring to poke around in Ishgard more than likely will bring Riven's foster family running." She recited, a glower on her features.

"Keep reading." Helena advised. Astrid glared at her friend, then returned to swiping on the tomestone's screen. Moments later her eyes narrowed.

"Did you confirm this?" She asked, holding up the tomestone so that Helena could see it.

"I did. And you're not going to like what's next, either. He left on the most recent research ship heading to Tural." Astrid cursed under her breath at Helena's words, turning the tomestone screen back towards her.

"I knew the Bibliothecs had been too quiet during the most recent meeting!" She swore.

"It could be nothing." Helena countered. "With the Turali information lockdown, I doubt he'd get very far over there. Besides, they've been too busy cozying up to the Garlean refugees that have moved here."

"Not to mention if Riven or any of the other boys spot him he's effectively dead on sight." Astrid muttered. "Still." Coming to the end of Helena's report, the older woman sighed and deactivated the tomestone. At least she knew how to do that much.

"I need the latest aetherical current forecast." She said. "And the weather, too."

"What are you going to do?" Helena asked, puzzled.

"I am going to get in contact with Riven the old-fashioned way. Or at the very least, leave her a message." Astrid put the tomestone into one of her lab coat's pockets. "I am going to tell her that Sebastian's ex-boyfriend is on his way to Tural--with support from the Bibliothecs."

"I very much doubt she'll tell you something of substance as repayment!" Helena exclaimed, raising an eyebrow. "If she's in the Turalis' good graces, she's going to be keeping it!"

"Which is exactly the point. She and the others will be on the alert for that skeezy elezen, and more than likely will bind him up nice and neat to be sent quietly back over the sea. She knows she'll owe me a favor then, and will endeavor to repay it as quickly as possible." Astrid hummed.

"More than likely, I should be able to get an answer or two out of her about what is going on."

------

another way to die masterpost

[fizzle-fag]

(AO3)

You often found yourself in Donnie’s lab. You aren’t sure how you kept ending up there, considering there was always shit going on all throughout the rest of the lair and whatever hell broke loose on the surface. Though at the moment, Donnie and you were the only conscious creatures under the city. Donnie’s sleeping schedule was absolute dogshit, and since you knew you’d end up not sleeping anyway, you stayed with him. Most of the time you just watched, and now was no different. He didn’t mind having you around, but would never voice such.

“Hey Dontron,” you began, staring him down as he tinkered with some invention. “You wanna play Mario Kart?” He stopped and looked up at you, confusion plastered to his features. He quickly shook any emotion from his face and went back to work.

“No. I’ve told you before, I have to finish this project.” You consistently tried to get him to stop working and just watch a cheesy horror film from the 80s, or play video games together and drink coffee, but he refused as often as you offered. He looked up again, visible annoyance growing. “And don’t try to talk me into it again. I’m not in the mood.”

You frowned, narrowing your eyes. You turned around, placing a hand dramatically on your chest. Donnie couldn’t see it, but there was a smug grin spread wide across your face.

“Oh you’re right, dear Donatello. Gaming with a master like myself could never be in store for a turtle like you. You certainly wouldn’t want to have your ass handed to you by me again now, would you?” You blinked open an eye, watching him closely out of your peripheral vision.

His eye twitched and he instantly dropped his screwdriver. He glared up at you, basically staring though your soul.

“I’m not falling for your pitiful trickery. You are the one who constantly loses and we both know it.” Donnie picked his tool back up and went back to work. What he was working on was a mystery to anyone whose IQ wasn’t ninety points north of genius.

“Mhm. You’re just terrified of losing. Some fear of yours?” Time for your favorite game: annoy the living hell out of Donnie until he plays video games with you.

“Oh? Is that what you think it is? Fine then, I’ll play your stupid game, and I won’t lose to your dumb ass either,” he retorted, storming past you. He muttered to himself in annoyance, blazing scowl prominent on his face. His feet loudly hit the concrete as he went for the door. He grabbed you by the sleeve and dragged you out of the lab, tossing you and your shit-eating grin into their “common area.” It was surprisingly comfortable for being a cement pit in a sewer, but not incredibly. You landed in the pit with a thud. A satisfied thud.

“Mhm. You’re toootally gonna beat me,” you shot back sarcastically. Donnie semi-violently tossed a controller at you. You didn’t catch it, but he was never violent enough to actually hurt you. He’s too smart for that. You came to the lair often enough to have a controller reserved as “yours.” You didn’t own it, per se, but you used it every time you played on the Switch, and only you. This was a strange, fucked-up family of ninja turtle mutants, their half alien sister, some random punk, and a rat—but it was your family now too.

“You’re always such a pain in the ass…” Donnie scoffed, grabbing his usual controller as well. He slumped down next to you as the Nintendo booted up. He huffed out an angry sigh, staring dead ahead. You both slipped the controller straps onto your wrists. They were a fun new addition, token of Raph’s Mikey-induced black eye (which then led Mikey to having a Raph-induced black eye.)

You shot him a toothy, pompous leer, which only ticked him off more. He bumped into you with his shoulder, shoving your smug ass away from him. His attention zipped back to the television the moment the game loaded. He was under no circumstances going to lose to you. You, being the smug bastard you are, crossed your legs with a flourish and sighed, your mere breath teeming with drama.

“Oh? Is that fear on you I smell? Sweet, sweet Donnie, oh what a fool you are to face me,” you crowed, leaning your back against him. You could feel his body tense at the touch, but he didn’t bother objecting to it. He rolled his eyes, attempting to focus fully on the bright screen before you. It was around the fabricated time of 4 in the morning, the only nearby lighting the TV.

You both played as your usual characters. Donnie made sure you could never unsee Rosalina being a girl boss terrifying goddess of death, and you made Donnie unable to not see Waluigi as some strange queer man who made terrible jokes with the humor of a twelve year old.

When the game was about to begin finally, the two of you stiffened, sitting with hunched over posture and rigid forms. The very millisecond you could, you both hauled ass forward, bashing ruthlessly against whatever or whoever you needed to. Which in truth was mostly each other, but still. No one was safe from your driving wrath. The intense silence in the air air was thick enough to cut, broken only by cartoony game sound affects and your harsh breaths.

You were finally able to strike a lucky block not even a second before Donnie, you managed to regain lead. His breath stopped in his throat at being shoved into second.

“Oh dude- a banana peel!? Really?” Donnie criticized I’m frustration, glowering at you for a split second.

Your heated gaming and “mature” trash talk continued for maybe another hour or two before you were both worn to the bone. The two of you had ended up laying down facing the TV, ankles overlapping each other. At some point you’d gotten cold and grabbed about a million blankets, building a small temple over and around you and Donnie. Both of you could feel your eyes drooping, your skills slowly becoming drowsy and weak.

“Hey.”

“What the hell do you want?” Donnie was exhausted, but not in the slightest less salty than before. A smug smirk grew on your face. You would turn to face the mutant, if there weren’t a massive heap of blankets covering both of you.

“I beat your sorry ass,” you taunted, sticking your tongue out. The turtle couldn’t see any of your expressions, but you could do whatever the hell you wanted. Donnie’s foot hit you in the back of the shin.

“Oh fuck you…” you could almost hear his eye roll. He yawned, causing you to yawn as well.

“No you.” A very mature response from a very mature person. You pulled a blanket over your nose. Your game had timed out by now, the screen frozen in place like a nightlight now. You could feel your eyelids beginning to fall shut.

“Ugh. I’m gonna end you one of these days,” Donnie scoffed out. He yawned again, not being able to stop it. He let his arms fall out to his sides, Nintendo controller clattering softly beside him, not even partially laced with his fingers anymore. “I hate you, you know that?”

“Mhm.” You replied sleepily. You were both moments away from sweet sweet unconsciousness. “Love you too, loser.”

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

A random one shot I made at like. 5 to 7 AM. AO3 liked it so I might as well put it here as well. I have not played Mario Kart since I was six so ignore any inaccuracies.

[qillmhi]

💜🐢Donatello x Male!Reader

Enter: New Rival!

For the first time in forever, THE Donatello Hamato and Casey Jones found themselves on a truce. That's right. A truce. The rest of the turtle brothers thought it was odd that the two hormonal teens weren't bumping heads or fighting each other to get the red head's attention like usual. Instead they would somewhat greet each other with a silent nod before disappearing into the brainiac's lab. Donnie's brothers just shrugged it off. Maybe they're all chill now? But seeing as they were both still pinned on the goal for April's heart, that was most unlikely. But it was very weird to see the two rivals agreeing and teaming up with each other. The reason?

April has a crush.

The guy in question was a human boy, a new addition to their school. April had met him when they were partnered for a science project.

Donnie was delighted at first. He knew his sweet April would rely on him the most when it comes to these sort of things. It doesn't matter to him who partners up with April because she would end up coming back to him anyway, but instead this new guy was apparently intelligent and capable enough for the job, hence no opening for Donnie to step in.

"S-So April! I uh.. heard you got a science project coming in!" Donnie started "You know you could always come to me for help!" He coolly leaned against the table.

April blushed "A-Actually I already had someone to work with..."

Donnie's smile deflated "Oh really? That's uh... good? May I ask who you're working with? I mean I'm sure I can whip you up something better than a baking soda volcano..." He trailed off.

"We're not making a baking soda volcano, Donnie." April laughed it off "And (y/n) is actually really sweet! He planned to make a Fire Glass pit for our project and give away marshmallows so our class can have s'mores!" The girl swooned "Isn't he so considerate? And it's a great way to bond with our classmates! You guys are great but it's been so long since I hung out with other people!" She excitedly beamed.

His heart fell heavy. The terrapin did a fake laugh trying not to sound hurt by her last comment  "Yeah he sounds.. great.."

*ping!*

"Oh I just got his text! Gotta go, bye Don!" April hurriedly exited the lair without looking back.

"Bye.. April..."

Not only that, Casey had been having a hard time catching up to April as well. As soon as the bell rung, she would zoom towards her crush, then other girls--if not the soccer team, would surround them like a barrier!

"Hey Red! Wanna ha-"

"Not now Casey I gotta go!" April ran past Casey making a B line towards a crowd of the school's popular kids, squeezing herself in to get into the middle. Casey raised an eyebrow feeling a bit offended by how quickly he was ignored. But since when did April become a part of the popular club anyway? The boy found himself hopping on a random chair in the hall, standing on his tiptoes to get a look at what was going on.

Lo and behold in the middle of the crowd was the new guy and the school's soccer team surrounded by giggling fangirls and---is that April smiling and clinging on the (h/c)'s arm?!?!?

This (y/n) whatever-his-lastname manage to not only be a star member of the soccer team, he is also the new school heartthrob and basically stole all the hot babes at school in less than a week?? Seriously what the hell!?

Things had just gone from bad to worse when April started stay on campus grounds and ditch hangout plans just to watch this asshole practice. It became worrisome for the others at how they were seeing their friend less and less. On the other hand, it was driving both Donnie and Casey insane! What is so good about watching a sweaty guy run around and kicking ball into nets anyway?!

So what if he's good looking or smart or sporty? Donnie and Casey were still better than him right? Well sure they would still get the redhead's attention but as soon as she caught the one and only (y/n) from the corner of her eye? Poof. She's gone. Legit teleported to the teen boy's side. Yeah sure teenagers are supposed to be crazy with all that hormones at that age but come on!!

Damn this new rival is a strong one. The blood in their bodies are basically boiling at the thought of that boy putting his greasy dirty little hands on their April.

But the two love sick morons aren't going to give up so easily. No sir!

So they came up with a plan.

The plan was to embarrass this (girl)friend stealer by making Donnie sneak into the soccer team's locker (ya know cuz he's a sneaky ninja) with a bucket of sewage water. He was supposed to pour it all over the unsuspecting victim's head, then scare the shit out of him so bad that he runs out of the locker room--into the halls butt naked and drenched in stinky sewage water for the whole student body to see! The newspaper club will eat that up!

Last but not the least they added a special touch to the plan.

Casey would purposely take April down the hall for the perfect moment to see all of it unfold with front row seats  (possibly with popcorn and a camera ready to catch that ass in 4k) and then April would never want to get involved with that stupid (y/n) ever again!

Although it wasn't Donatello's style to do something so petty as a stink prank, he gave in. (Casey handled most of the planning when Donnie started to suggest they should involve chainsaws and bodybags) It would be a pretty satisfying and hilarious scene so the turtle agreed to Casey's plan.

Hey if things go accordingly, this other kid (y/n) might just switch schools! Which is great for him! One less rival out of the way.

And so the day finally arrived. Donnie successfully snuck into the school soccer team's locker room in one of the shower stalls. Casey told Donnie earlier that (y/n) and April were supposed to have a study session for their History exam, so (y/n) should be leaving their sports practice early. Perfect!

The bo staff wielding ninja was nervous. During the planning stage this sounded like a good plan, but now that he was here; he kind of felt bad now. Maybe this is a little too much? I mean... we're talking about ruining a person's entire reputation and having possible PTSD or at least a trauma for the rest of their life. Maybe he can still back out. Talk to Casey and tone down the plan? Donnie's train of thought was interrupted by a text from the blockhead.

CaveMouth👎: 'The poop is in the toilet. I repeat! The poop is in the toilet. Ready Operation: Flush!' it reads.

Donnie cringed in disgust. Seriously? Operation: Flush? Can he think of an even more lame name to give?

Just in time, the locker room's door opened. Donnie froze and waited a few minutes for the shuffling of feet. He listened in the target whistling as he put away his stuff, some locker opening before Donnie finally heard the running water from the stall next to his.

The purple terrapin started to contemplate his life choices again. This was his last chance to back out on this shot. His fingers were nervously drumming on the seal of the bucket with one hand supporting it. Maybe he should leave now while he still can? Then again... If he did this then April wouldn't be so fixated on a random guy who most likely didn't deserve her. He was probably some sports jerk anyway!

Donnie gasped in realization. Yeah that's right! He could be a jerk and be playing around with April's feelings! Casey did say the soccer team always had at least a platoon of girls pinning after them. It's those popular jockey sports guys that always does that kind of thing right? And it was the popular girls that always bully the pretty main characters because of a jock in movies! His poor April!

With his anger jealousy over clouding his reasoning (accompanied by knowledge of cliché highschool stereotypes) Donatello huffed his chest, determined to save his April from the guy who plans to steal his girl!

Donnie readied up his bucket for the attack but almost lost his footing when the running water finally stopped and someone stepped out of the stall. Damn.

He must've been thinking for so long that (y/n) finished his shower! Nevermind that, even an hour long bath won't be enough to get rid of this stench anyway. However, Donatello got a little curious. Just what exactly did April see in (y/n) that made her so jittery anyway? Surely he can't be that good looking right?

He thought it wouldn't hurt to take a quick peek at his rival. Master Splinter said that as a ninja, he needs to always analyse his opponents before he strikes. He bet that this boy was not even that good. Donnie could totally beat him in a fight! He doubt with all the sports he did, he wouldn't even be strong enough to protect April! With that in mind, Donatello inched closer to the edge of the shower stall. Just for a quick look and....

Donnie's heart stopped.

That's (y/n)?!

The tall turtle's jaw drop at the sight. What he saw was a boy, slightly taller than him with a well toned body clad in nothing but a towel wrapped low around his hips, showing off his incredible body with another towel drying his short (h/c) hair.

Donatello gulped unable to look away. He heard that (y/n) was attractive but he didn't expect.... this! No way. It must be a mistake. Thos couldn't be (y/n). But the name taped on the locker said otherwise.

It was as if the boy was moving in slow motion. The background soon blurred into a soft misty pink color with hearts popping up around the human male. Small droplets of water trailed down his neck, his chest down his well sculptured abs before disappearing under the white towel cloth. Donnie felt a small drip from his nose.

Then the moment (y/n) finally opened his eyes? Oh he knew he was done for. (Y/n) had the most magnificent pair of (e/c) eyes that sent shivers down the turtle's shell. The kind of eyes he would gladly get lost in. Donnie leaned closer to get a better look but his foot made a squeak against the tiled floor.

Fuck.

"Hello?" Oh my god his voice. It sounds so smooth like butter. Donatello didn't dare move. (Y/n) merely shrugged and dismissed the noise. This gave the olive skinned turtle to look back again. He absent mindedly locked his lips as he watched the (h/c)'s muscles flex with each movement.

Donatello gasped and looked away when (y/n) dropped his towel. Donnie's face was burning bright red, silently screaming in his head when he heard the shuffling of clothes. He didn't dare look back in there again due to embarrassment. Not even when he heard (y/n)'s locker shut close. Not even when (y/n) grabbed his bag from the bench. Nor even when (y/n) left the room, leaving a wheezing giant turtle alone in the stalls. Donnie's whole body was still on fire and hyper sensitive.

The masked turtle could only place his hand on his chest, feeling his small fragile little organ hammer away violently against his plastron. What was going on?! What on earth was that?! Why did he do that?! He acted like some creep!

Suddenly the locker room's door bursts open with Casey dashing for his friend. When (y/n) came out looking fine, Casey thought Donnie got in trouble. He hesitantly left April (technically it was April who left Casey when she saw (y/n) walking by) and ran towards the lockers. Casey looked at Donnie who was on the floor with the bucket by his side. He was staring at the ceiling with a nosebleed, mouth agape and face fully flushed red.

"Dude what the heck happened?!" Casey panicked at the sight of his friend's nose bleeding. Did he get punched or something?!

Copper eyes continued staring into the ceiling not bothering to look at Casey. All his thoughts were currently filled with dripping wet abs, white towels and shades of (e/c). "I.... I dunno..." Donatello drunkly murmured.

Part 2 here

[runtedfiction]

nicer

day 1: facade @zelinkweek2021

ao3

* * *

Years later, when Link faces the castle’s crumbling walls, he thinks about the Princess.

* * *

The day King Rhoam announces this year’s Harvest Festival is also the day his subjects know they're doomed. Officially, it’s supposed to be a normal holiday. Unofficially, the language in the announcement—“the last celebration before the fight against Calamity Ganon”, “the last time the palace will be open to Castletown until the fight is over”—convinces everyone that they’re partying in the face of the apocalypse.

“They have no faith in me,” Zelda says, putting down her pen. “Ganon is brewing deep beneath the castle. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows I can’t stop it. This is their last chance to let loose before all hell breaks loose.”

Impa frowns and hands her the final page of raw Guardian data to clean. “You're too hard on yourself. You still have time.”

“I just have Mount Lanayru next week.” She focuses on the Silent Princess above her desk. It's wilting. “Do you think I’ll be wise enough? Maybe Hylia will smite me right then and there for being an idiot.”

“Princess!”

“I know, I know.”

* * *

They wrap up that afternoon’s study, an incredibly useful session in quantifying the powers of the Guardians, to get ready for the ball.

Zelda’s dress is her signature blue, but a bit more fluid and feminine than the one she normally wears. Made for dancing and a summer night.

“Collarbones,” Impa notes, and Zelda laughs. “A little off the shoulder as well! And the subtle constellation pattern in the tulle--how stunning!”

“Don’t act as if you didn’t design it.”

“Guilty.”

Impa’s dress, an even deeper blue, is similarly gorgeous. It’s long sleeved, form fitting, and silky.

“Impa, I just want to say—” Zelda pauses, looking at their reflections in the mirror. When will they ever look this nice again? “Thank you for being my friend.”

Impa' smiles. “Of course. And Princess—if I may.”

“Yes?”

“With all your talk of the world ending, of doom coming.” Her voice gets small. “Do you think it would be worth telling him?”

Zelda stiffens. She thinks of him somewhere in the castle, dressed in his best uniform, walking to find her.

She lies. “No.”

Three quiet, efficient raps sound against her door. Zelda’s heart lurches.

* * *

In the hot, overcrowded ballroom, she can’t stop wondering if he thinks she looks pretty.

There are important people here she needs to talk to: researchers from the Royal Ancient Tech Lab, religious leaders, captains of industry, and so on. She finds her father and tries to reach some common ground on the one night they aren’t preparing for Evil Incarnate. (She fails.) She should find the court poet and give him the dance he’s been writing about for the past month.

But all she wants is for Link to look at her.

He’s indeed in his best uniform. His gloves and boots are blindingly white; his collar sits high and stiff against his neck. He’s uncommonly handsome, and the uniform emphasizes it. When someone pulls him in to dance (technically he should be keeping watch, but that someone really insists), she hates the jealousy that blooms in her chest and takes the hand of the poet. When she twirls, when she makes conversation, when she curtsies--she tries to see it all from Link’s perspective, if he can even find her in the crowd.

“Princess, are you feeling alright?”

“Oh.”

The poet looks at her in the way that a puppy looks at its master. The neediness satisfies and repulses her.

“Yes,” she says, smiling quickly. “Thank you for asking. How are you?”

“Wonderful. I was sitting in the courtyard the other day and...”

It’s easy to tune him out and appear to be interested with the right amount of “mhmm” and “oh?” and eye contact. But every time he twirls her around, she tries to spot the top of a Royal Guard cap in the crowd.

She knows she’s being stupid. Even in the incredibly unlikely scenario where Link’s interested, what could they do? Given that her powers aren’t working, there’s only a sixty percent chance they’ll get through the Calamity. She thinks back to what Impa said earlier. Something about letting him know in the face of impending doom.

(Maybe it doesn’t make sense to do something that would possibly be useless, a tiny voice in the back of her head says. But on the flip side, it’s also possible that nothing will matter soon, so why not tell him?)

She scowls and lets the poet dip her far too low for common courtesy.

* * *

Link is definitely lost in the crowd now. The next song requires that they rotate between multiple partners, and she can’t spot him anywhere. There’s no way that he’d be looking at her anyway, because why would he? He’s the chosen one, kind and strong and handsome and blessed. She’s the failed reincarnation, mean and headstrong and cursed.

If (when) the world ends, it’ll be on her.

Zelda admits to herself, swaying in the arms of someone else who doesn’t matter, that because the world has an uncomfortably high probability of ending, it follows that maybe, possibly, probably it makes sense for her to say something.

A sense of urgency unfurls in the pit of her stomach. Where is he?

* * *

She tries to find him. She doesn’t know what she’d do--ask for a dance? Strike up a conversation? Maybe it's the heat getting to her, but it worries her that she's lost him. She walks the length of the ballroom and comes up with nothing.

There’s no way she could summon him, but…

She grabs a glass of water and walks out the ballroom to the nearest balcony.

Except in this very specific circumstance, it’s infuriating how easy it is for him to find her. Even when she doesn't want to be found, even when she’s actively running away (and nearly dying in the process), there he is. The knowledge that he’s almost always aware of her presence burns.

“Hello,” she says after a respectable amount of time.

He steps out behind her. Unfortunately, the moonlight’s softness makes him look angelic. “Hi.”

Zelda very rarely has no plan. She’s the one always bossing him around, deciding where they’ll go next and how they’ll get there and what they’ll do. She’s at a loss for words right now.

“Ah--hm.” A cooling night breeze passes by. “Are you--are you enjoying the festival?”

“Yes?” He looks confused. And hot, her unhelpful brain adds. Very hot. “Are you?”

“Yes. It’s quite warm inside, but I enjoy the music and the dancing.”

“The band is nice.”

She agrees and scrambles to find another conversation topic. Damn it. Still no plan. Think, think.

“Uh--” he starts the same time she asks, “Are you ready for Mount Lanayru next week?”

He nods, and she hates how she made the conversation about work. But he looks more confident now--talking about work is easier than trying to have whatever kind of conversation she had in mind. “Yeah. I read about the region and it seems relatively safe. We might see Naydra too.”

“That would be incredible,” she says. “I’d love to capture it on the Slate.”

He nods again. A silence passes (a horribly awkward one that eats at her) before she asks: “What were you going to say before I interrupted you?”

“Oh yes.” Link clears his throat, and the fact that he looks a bit nervous sends her heart pounding. Can he tell what her subconscious is trying to do? “I’ve been meaning to ask (oh God, oh God, what has he been meaning to ask)--are you avoiding me?”

She blinks. “What?”

He won’t make eye contact with her. Triforce of courage, my ass. “Are you avoiding me?”

“No?” She’s stunned. Avoiding? All she’s been doing for the past week is pining!

“But, I feel like.” He pauses to look at her briefly. Again, his nerves kick off her own. “Ever since we got back from the desert, you haven’t really talked to me.”

She needs to think. A week ago, what happened?

They were at the Kara Kara Bazaar, and she nearly died because she intentionally (stupidly) lost him. She relives the feeling of it now--the panic that came with facing certain death when she realized it wasn’t Link following her, but the Yiga, then the shock when he appeared out of thin air wielding the sword. His back, so strong and sure. His concern as he helped her get up afterwards.

How once she could process what happened, something kicked in her chest, and everything was so obvious so suddenly.

Then getting back from the desert, what did she do? She wrote a diary entry, spent a sleepless night deciding she had feelings for him that she didn’t want to name, and tried as hard as possible to conceal them. The pining was unbearable, and--oh. Looking at him made her face burn, so she turned away. She never knew what to say around him, so she chose to say nothing at all.

Perhaps she approached her yearning by offsetting it with its opposite.

They really haven’t spoken. Zelda shakes her head, and mentally kicks herself. How can someone like you back if you don’t even talk to them? “I promise, I’m not trying to avoid you.”

He furrows his brow a little. Cute. Unfair. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Ok. If you do--if you ever need more space, let me know.” He smiles a little. “I do have to follow you, but I can do it farther away or something.”

She smiles back. Please always follow me. “Thanks. No need.”

“Alright,” he says. He glances at her arms.“Do you want to go back inside? It’s a bit cold. You’re getting goosebumps.”

She didn’t even notice. An idea is forming in her mind, bright and hot and something that needs to rush out right now or she’s going to overthink it to death.

“Going back inside sounds good. When we do, would you--would you like to dance with me?”

The question leaves so quickly that she’s not too sure if he understood it. She holds her breath; she might throw up.

“Sure,” he says, and the disappointment that she expected to punch her gut doesn’t come; a flood of something wonderful washes over her instead. Sure is yes, her mind sings. “How about I find you before the last song? I’ve been doing a bad job of keeping watch.”

“Sure,” she echoes. Hopefully her excitement isn’t too obvious when she turns back and nearly runs into the ballroom.

* * *

When the band announces the last song of the night, Zelda lets go of the poet and steps back immediately.

“My Princess,” he says, and the normal repulsion she would feel turns into joy when she spots a navy blue cap making its way through the crowd. “I would be honored to have your final dance, if you would have me.”

“Another time,” she says, already turning to pick up her skirt and mosey her way through the last group of people separating her from a flash of sandy blonde hair. “Thank you though!”

She doesn’t wait for the poet’s response because the crowd is gone and Link is right in front of her, handsome and smiling slightly. Her heart is at a million miles a minute when she drops her skirt and steps forward to place her hand in his.

This isn’t like her. He must think she’s acting so strange. Either that, or it’s obvious just from looking at her what she’s thinking. It’s a frenzied array of thoughts, ranging from the obvious (handsome, handsome, smells so good?, handsome, kind eyes) and the embarrassing (The smallest, least repressed part of me has dreamed about this all week.)

The music starts and swells and she’s still dreaming. His hand on her back is firm. Thanks to the design of the dress, she can feel his glove pressing into her. She wonders if he can feel the heat of her skin.

“How are you doing?” he asks when they fall into a rhythm, and she smiles too fast, idiot, calm down.

“Great, how are you?”

“Good,” he says, and they spin. He smiles back. “Good to know you’re not avoiding me.”

“Of course not.” Stupid, you avoided him!

He dips her a perfectly appropriate amount.

She feels brave. It’s the adrenaline getting to her, because the rational part of her can’t stop (giddily) telling her that she’s dumb when she asks, “Why would you think that I'd avoid you?”

“Hm.” He looks away to consider the question. The tips of his eyelashes catch the chandelier light. “I thought that maybe last week was a bit too much.”

She thinks about how warm his hand was when he helped her get up after saving her life. “It wasn’t.”

“It’s ok if it was.”

“No, no, you’re too kind.”

Link clears his throat. “So you’re not avoiding me because I kept trying to follow you through the bazaar when you clearly didn’t want me to?”

She laughs. “No, it’s also incredibly stupid that I tried to lose you. Besides, what would’ve happened if you hadn’t?”

Link clears his throat.

She chooses to change the subject by asking an easy “What did you make for dinner tonight?” in an attempt to soak up the final minutes she has in his arms. He starts talking about mushroom risotto, and she can’t stop smiling.

* * *

At the end of the night, when he escorts her to her room, it’s late enough that silence is acceptable.

She’s decided that she needs to do something, but she doesn’t know what. A hug would be different, but too strange. I like you is simple, but too plain. Thinking about you makes my heart soft is embarrassing. I know I’ve been an incorrigible bitch but now my walls are down and I like you is too honest.

She turns around when they reach her doors.

“Tonight was fun,” she says.

He smiles. Zelda knows romance books don’t lie when her heart jumps at the sight of it. “It was.”

This is the moment. She takes a deep breath as quietly as she can. She has that nauseous feeling again. If nothing matters, tell him. Everyone knows the apocalypse is coming.

“Hey, listen,” he says right when she opens her mouth. He pauses to look at her. If she thought he looked nervous earlier when he asked her if she was avoiding him, it’s nothing compared to now. He does a visible gulp, and—

“I think I have feelings for you.”

She blinks. What?

“And I understand if you don’t feel the same way,” he continues, tense and fast, looking right at her, “especially in light of everything going on right now. But I just had to put that out there.”

What?!

She closes her eyes--what is happening right now--and when she opens them he’s still there. This isn’t a dream.

Holy fuck. “Really?”

He nods. “Really.”

“Huh,” she says. He beat her to it. “Huh.”

“Huh?”

She laughs. He beat her to it, and now all she has to do is the easiest thing in the world.

“I think I have feelings for you too,” she says. It’s so dark now she can’t see the blue of his eyes, but she can imagine it easily.

He’s surprised. “Really?”

“Really. In fact, I was meaning to tell you just now.”

“Really?”

She laughs. “Really.”

She smiles and takes his hand. He stiffens at first, then relaxes as she threads her fingers through his.

“Oh, actually, here, let me—” He lets go. Disappointment hits her briefly before she sees that he’s taking off his glove. Some of his scars are alabaster in the moonlight. He has so many.

(She wants to kiss all of them.)

His hand is warm and rough and lovely when he slips it back into hers.

“This feels nicer,” he says, and his voice is almost shy.

There are a million things she wants to say--what are we going to do if I end the world, what are we going to do if you save the world, how long have you known for, Hylia is going to smite both of us for being fools--but she settles on squeezing his hand instead. He squeezes back.

“Yes,” she agrees. Very gently, she cups his cheek with her other hand and leans in. He’s closed his eyes already. “Much nicer.”

[trexy225]

TPYH-Chapter 3: Insert Funny Title Here

Summary: Ur dad is overprotective and u prove yourself to be the insane animal lady.

Authors Note: So for a while we're just gonna get a lot of relationship build up, personal growth, animals, regular life, etc. So that I can emotionally scar y'all even more later XOXO

Another Authors note at bottom and another photo (I did not make these photos I just laugh at them)

Norman strode into Otto's lab and glared at him. “What the hell was that?” He asked.

“What the hell was what?” Otto asked, taking off his goggles.

“You got too close to my daughter.”

“You heard what she went through, I was there to comfort her-” “And then what were you going to do?” Norman snapped. Otto looked at him, shocked. “I would never do anything to her Norman you know I wouldn’t.” Otto pulled him into a hug.

“I just-I just can’t lose anyone else.” Norman sniffed.

“I know… I know…” Otto patted him on the head.

“And I’m sorry I accused you of anything other than helping y/n, I mean you see her as a daughter to you, right?” Norman continued.

“...Right.” Otto lied, he didn’t know how he felt about you, but he never wanted to see you as a daughter to him, that didn’t feel right. But he knew Norman needed to hear what he wanted to hear. 

“I need to start getting paid if I’m going to be the Osborne’s therapist.” Otto joked.

Norman chuckled. “You don’t want to unpack Harry’s baggage, Otto.” 

Otto shook his head. “Is there anything else you need from me?” 

“No. You keep on working.” Norman rubbed his eyes as he walked out. Otto gave a small smile as he put his glasses back on and continued working.

You open the door to your townhome, you forgot to tell Otto that you moved, it wasn’t like he was coming over anyway. Either way, it wasn’t your townhome, it was basically the animals at this point. Your bird, Olivia flew towards you, she was an Eclectus Parrot, with bright red feathers with dark blue undertones and a jet black beak, she reminded you of Spiderman. She climbed on top of your head and her eyes dilated as her head bobbed up and down, she was happy you were home. You smiled as she started whistling “Take on Me” you kept the radio on for her so she wouldn’t get bored, you knew she wanted treats though, you smiled as you handed her a shelled macadamia nut, hopefully, that would keep her occupied. You went into the Reptile room and took out your personal favorite animal, a ball python named Monty. You got him after your mom died, he’s been with you through it all. He wrapped around your neck and gave a relaxed puff, you went through your animals, changing their bedding, water, and food as well as enrichment. Monty would just stay draped around you, even though it was a lot of work you loved taking care of them, they were all from bad situations, and you were happy to save them and give them a better life. You set down the ball pit for the ferrets and put the chinchillas in their dust baths, you restocked the chews and put Monty away. 

That was how the rest of the week went, you caught up on the National Geographic Magazines and then gave them to your animals to shred. You also got some foster kittens, they still needed to be bottle-fed so that ended up taking up a lot of your energy. Luckily Olivia loved them, as usual, she would coo and pet them, it was adorable. And your cat, Bip already decided to be their surrogate mother, you just had to monitor their health as well as feed them, it was a lot of work but you enjoyed it, you couldn’t stop working, and if you stopped taking care of them, who would? They needed you, and it felt good to be needed. You dreaded going back to work, you didn’t know how you were going to handle the treatment of their animals, ideally, there would be no animal testing. But you knew how stubborn your father was, and all you could do now was be their advocate. You looked at the kittens and Olivia, who got along well enough with the animals, but you knew she wanted to be with you. You gave a smile and grabbed your old lab coat, you wanted to wear Ottos, but yours already had a special perch for Olivia, you put it in your backpack to wear later. You tapped your shoulder and Olivia squawked excitedly as she flew to her shoulder, you put the kittens in their carrier, Bip in the other, and stuffed Olivia's foldable perch, food, water, and towels, as well as some treats in your bookbag along with the kittens heating pad, soft blankets, and bottles. You left the townhome, Olivia perched on your shoulder, the tiny kittens mewling in the carrier. You could hear Bip meow back, trying to comfort them. You sighed, you didn’t think you would be where you were now, but you just had to make the best of this.

Authors note!

So a lot of the animal stuff is based on my own experiences, I did an internship at a zoo and I'm currently volunteering at a parrot rescue so I just put a lot of animals in here because it's my story and I don't see that many animals. And I love animals so yeah.

Also here's where I get sentimental, I've been just in a strange spot mentally, emotionally, and socially. I had the cringe 13-year-old phase where I wrote fanfiction (it's deleted go away) and I never thought 5 years ago I would go back to writing fanfiction and such but it's become my way to escape again. I just needed to embrace my cringyness I guess. I'm very private about it and a lil' embarrassed but y'all make me feel better overall. Which is why a lot of the titles and summaries are just shitposts I don't know

I'm ranting so thanks idk.

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Does Archaeology - Part 4

(As before, if you’re only seeing this part 4, the rest of them have the tag KyidylCL)

THE ARTEFACTS

Ok, so I’ve talked about the site and what we’ve been digging in and such, but I’m gonna be honest with you guys: I like lab work exponentially more than field work.  So I am the one who has been processing the vast majority of the finds and ergo have lots of stuff.  That’s why I sometimes make jokes about the stuff in my basement - I’m storing the majority of it here in my basement.  I’ve gotten the question before about ownership, so here is how that works.  The dig is on private land so anything we get technically belongs to the owner of the land.  Now, as far as I know, he has no interest in keeping any of it so it’ll likely end up in the hands of the arch society, who will basically just be custodians of it but not owners.  It might end up in a museum, too.  I don’t really know, but that determination won’t be made until we’re finished, and not by me.  

So every site has its own sort of categories of stuff that you find depending on who lived there (although for ease, archaeologists often categorize this stuff based on location and time - more on that later.).  For our site the majority of it falls into these categories: animal bone, shell, lithics, pottery, charcoal, modern contaminants, and artefacts.  And, to lend a bit of clarity here...lithics are anything made of rock.  So they include fire cracked rocks, flakes from stone tool making, material that was used in construction, material that was crushed to make temper for pottery paste (more on that later, too.), etc.  If it came from a rock it’s a lithic.  

And imma tell you a secret: I hate lithics.  Everyone has their thing, their category of human refuse that they simply do not like.  A prof of mine hated teeth and pottery.  That’s just how it is, and mine is lithics.  I think they’re boring, I can’t tell a flake from a blade, I don’t give a single fuck what material they are, I don’t care about the style or craftsmanship...I just don’t care.  I call them all rocks, and I do it so much that everyone on the site has started accidentally calling them rocks, too, which amuses me.  Rocks, to an archaeologist, means “stone that wasn’t altered or used by people”.  They’re worthless.  Not that I think lithics are worthless - far from it - I just really hate them and this site has so.  goddamned.  many.  Lucky for me, we have a Rock Guy aka someone who really loves lithics and actually has gotten pretty good at flint knapping and just, y’know, is really into rocks.  

And to clarify about artefacts.  When you’re out in the field everything you find is either an artefact or a find.  The collection of these things is called an assemblage.  When you’re doing lab work and sorting through it all later on an artefact is, well...like a thing.  I’m explaining this poorly....it’s a complete object with a specific function.  So, a whole pot = artefact, broken pieces = sherds (not shards, sherds.). Complete arrowhead = artefact, flakes or a broken one = lithic.  Artefacts also tend to be somewhat unique, or at least something you don’t have a lot of.  They don’t always have to be complete, anything that is a specific object can go in here.  Like, for example, this piece of pipe we found: 

To recap, we’ve got pottery, charcoal, lithics, shell, bone (animal - we haven’t found human. But I’m just gonna say bone.), and artefacts.  If you are sensitive to things like that, this is your warning that this post is going to have pictures of animal bone and you should scroll quickly.  

Now, for reference, this is what it all looks like before I clean it and after it’s been dying out for a day or two (the ground has natural moisture, so I basically just open the bags and let them air out.): 

And, yes....I am cleaning them off on an actual antique blotter with real silver edges that my mom gave me for this express purpose.  A factoid I’m only sharing because it amuses me in that sort of “bet they never envisioned this use for this thing” sort of way.  Normally, if I was in a real lab, you’d do this over a metal tray.  When you’re working with an assemblage you never hold it over empty space, you always hold it over the bench and preferably over whatever your work surface is.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t dropped my fair share of stuff anyway, but most of it just lands on the work surface and not the floor, which is why you hold it over a work surface.  But anyway, as you can see, it just looks like a brown, dirty mess.  I usually do a quick sort of the stuff I know for sure what it is and then I wash it with a soft toothbrush and some water.  The rocks I just submerge and swoosh around because they’re rocks and I can’t really damage them and there’s SO FRIKKIN MANY that I refuse to clean them individually.  

So now that you’ve gotten through that long-winded but necessary explanation of terms, where are we at? Since I’m a bioarchaeologist and I prefer things that were once alive to the general detritus of human society, we’re gonna start with the bone.  Specifically, we’re gonna start with how I know those two pits from yesterday’s post are one pit.  This is how: 

This is a deer bone.  Don’t ask me which one bc I’m really not good at ID’ing species and animal anatomy, but it’s a leg bone of some kind.  See how it’s broken? One piece was found in one hole and the other piece was in the other.  Clearly it’s the same animal, ergo the pits are related to each other.  The vast majority of what came out of that particular feature was bone, with the rest being charcoal and the occasional pot sherd.  This means it was probably used for cooking and not as a garbage pit. Also there was food in it, if you recall the cooking accident from yesterday.  but sometimes y’know, stuff falls into the fire pit or it’s put in there as a way of disposing of it.  

But wait, I have more cool animal bones!! 

Ok, so there’s this one: 

This bone has a special place in my heart. IDK what species it is (I *think* it’s a fragment of deer long bone.), but that’s not why it’s cool.  This single bone is strong evidence for the presence of dogs.  =D See that circular mark on the right? That is the impression of a canine tooth from a carnivore.  Human teeth can’t make those marks in bones - our teeth aren’t strong enough to do significant damage to bone, and anyway we tend to crack bones open with rocks (a form of damage called percussion marks.) and not with our teeth.  Those other longer scratch marks are also likely from chewing, not butchery, because they’re in the right places and they’re the right shape.  Now we know this was a settlement, and this bone was found smack in the middle surrounded by human detritus and not on the fringes or outskirts.  There were no domesticated felines in the Americas at the time BC this is from the lower pre-contact level, so what’s really the only carnivore that would be wandering around a human settlement? Dogs.  I love this kinda stuff because it’s so easy see them chilling around the fire pit, talking and eating, teasing whomever it was that spilled dinner, and then tossing the bones to their dogs to gnaw on after dinner.  It’s just such a people kind of thing, you know? All from one small, circular mark.  I actually found more on later bones that came out of other places, so it’s pretty safe to say there were dogs living here with their people even though we have found neither people nor dogs.  

So here’s another cool bone: 

Again, no idea what species it is bc I’m not a zooarch (yes, there are archaeologists that specialize in animals and wooooo boy can they tell you a LOT about migration and eating habits of people.). It’s about the size of half my thumb, IE, not large.  This one is cool, and it’s the only one I have like this, because of that notch you can see vertically in the image on the right hand side.  I don’t know what it was for, but I DO know that it was an intentionally made modification to the bone.  Those striations aren’t natural - natural bone is smooth or has a very specific texture and this isn’t that.  It’s probably not damage done to the bone after it was deposited in the archaeological record.  It has the same patina as the majority of the rest of the bone, which you can compare to the lighter area there on the right hand end of the bone.  That lighter area does not have the patina of age that the rest of the bone does, and is the result of damage in a much more recent time - probably as we were taking it out of the ground.  Small bones are fragile.  So someone gouged this channel intentionally in this bone, either because they were going to use it as decoration or it served some purpose as a tool.  I’m not really sure what though.  Hell, they could have just been bored and fidgeting after eating.  Either way, it’s a human modification to this bone that has nothing to do with cooking or consumption (damage from human consumption is cracks and breaks, not scrapes.).  It could also be a butchery mark, although it’s a bit deep for that.  Butchery marks are there from separation of meat from bone - they’re usually just shallow scrapes.  

Ok, last cool bone I’m gonna show you.  Well, bones, plural.  

Ok so this is part of the same assemblage as the ones above, and if I remember correctly these were the ones that came out of that pit.  You can see the same bone with the canine tooth mark there in the center.  There’s also some interesting things like some pottery on the left and a couple teeth off to the right (one is a deer and I *think* that curved on is a squirrel.), but the really interesting thing is the series of 3 shiny bones that are in the center.  There’s a lot of ways to cook meat, and they all do different things to bones.  You will often find the dry, brown looking ones like you can see here in the non-shiny bones. That’s like...your basic “this bone had meat on it when it was cooked”. Then you’ll see ones that are black, and that’s “this bone probably didn’t have meat when it was cooked, or someone tossed it back in the fire when they were done”. Lastly, you’ll see white bone, and that’s a bone that has been burned at a high temperature for a long time.  Usually it’s done on purpose (you can use burned, powdered bone to make stuff.).  

But the shiny ones were in a soup.  And the reason I know that is *because* they’re shiny.  Bones, especially old ones, aren’t shiny.  I mean...you can see that.  You have to do stuff to ‘em.  And bones are porous, but those weren’t.  They felt like hard plastic. And they get that way by being boiled.  The shiny patina is what we call pot polish - they were stirred in the soup while it was cooking and rubbed against the side of the pot and each other, and it gives them a smoother texture.  

All of these collections of bones tell us what and how they ate things.  I know from what I can ID here (which isn’t everything, trust me.) that they ate a lot of deer and wild turkey (we have an entire almost completely intact turkey long bone.). There is also, I believe, squirrel (I found a portion of a skull and jaw that I’m pretty sure belong to a squirrel), and an assortment of other small rodents and birds.  Lots of birds.  Bird bone is really distinctive, it’s light and the spongy bone has a distinct texture.  A zooarchaeologist can look at bones like this and ID species and age, and from there tell you what time year something was probably killed.  Societies that hunted a lot tended to do it seasonally so that they wouldn’t damage the populations.  Plus especially with fish and stuff they have very specific growing cycles and short lifespans, so they can also tell you a lot about where the people were hunting and when.  Like certain fish will only spawn in certain places, so it’s really informative.  Zooarchs are so important and there just aren’t enough of them.  

Anyway, there are other cool things in the bones but I’m trying to strike a balance here between too much and not enough and I really love bone so I’m going to stop here for today.  Tomorrow is going to be other artefacts (yeah, sadly, even lithics, lol), and what they tell us about the site and the people who lived there.   As an aside: if anyone has any like just general “how do they know this?” sort of questions about history and archaeology those would be fun to answer.  I love to tell people how we do things but I don’t just wanna infodump.  I DO want to explain procedure in what I hope is a readable way because I think understanding how we make the sausage will help people have more trust in science.  So if you have any questions, please, send asks.  If I don’t know the answer I’ll research it or pass it on to someone who does.  

[beelspillowpet]

If your doing headcanons how about some for a MC that has a cat and dog that they brought with them. The dog is either a husky or pomoranian

Alright so I love Huskies with a strong passion. I have 1 chocolate lab, a pit/sharpei mix, a pit/lab mix, and a pomeranian/chihuahua mix. So this feeds me...

Thanks for the ask, anon!

MC Has A Pet Pomeranian/Husky!

Lucifer

God dammit. God dammit! Another dog!? Hope you like keeping your dog down in the “basement” with Cerberus. He’s not letting dog poop or piss on anything in his home!

Is what I would say. You’re not letting your babies go someplace dark and cold, with big ol Cebby. They’re staying with you, and you’ll scream for Diavolo to allow it. And Diavolo probably does. Poor Lulu.

Truth be told, after that situation, he’s calm about it. He likes your dogs. he will kill someone if they ever catch him petting, or baby-talking them. He loves dogs, as he clearly loves Cerberus. Will offer to take your dogs on walks for you.

If your dog(s) were untamed before, now they’re perfectly trained. If he’s going to allow animals in his home, they will abide by his rules as well. He didn’t manage to get a simulation of Cerberus to obey him at ease without having some sort of powerful authority. His pride wouldn’t let it!

Mammon

DOGS DOG DOGS DOGS DOGS AFKNSNZGKHXJFNKH

ANOTHER DOG AND THIS TIME IT DOESN’T HATE HIS GUTS!!!! Will NOT let anyone speak to him until he’s at least pat their heads. Does that thing where he gets down on the floor and challenges them to a little wrestling match. Will destroy the house in the process.

If any of the dogs get hurt, all hell will break loose. Don’t you DARE hurt his little babies. They aren’t even your dogs anymore. Those are his doggies. Especially the husky. Probably has full-blown conversations with it.

Pampers the dogs too. Will dog sit without question. Spoils them rotten with treats and takes them on walks often. If you want to pet your own dogs, you’ll probably have to fight Mammon for the right. Or at least pay him a handsome sum for it.

Leviathan

Doggies! How cute! They aren’t allowed in my room!

He’s a fan of the pomeranian. Tiny dogs are just... precious. They aren’t as “scary” as bigger dogs. They’re manageable and if they ever bite you, it feels like a tickle.

Still probably won’t spend too much time with them though. It’s not like they’re sea animals. Will timidly try to pet them, and if they get too rowdy he runs and hides.

Kinda feels insecure that he can’t handle two dogs. I mean, he’s been able to tame Lotan and countless other dangerous animals. But dogs is where he draws the line!? Pathetic, am I right?

Satan

Aw fuck. I can’t believe you’re flexing on him like this.

He doesn’t hate you or anything. He just wishes he could have a cat. To your dog. Dogs. I mean what the hell, right? He used to have a kitten, but then one turned into two, into ten, into 50-

It’s not fair. But he won’t complain too much. At least your little pomeranian, which he affectionately calls “pom-pom”,likes him a lot. It’s a shame it barks too much.

Probably would buy as many toys and such as possible for the pets. Spends time training them if needed, and will care for them in your place should you be too busy for it at some point.

Asmodeus

B-lines for the pomeranian instantly.

Tiny!? CUTE!? Aesthetically pleasing for all this photos!?!?!? CHECK!

This is now his dog. He will pamper that little pomeranian, just like Mammon. Buys diamond-studded collars and only the HIGHEST quality dog food for the little cutie.

Uhm... good luck getting that dog back from him, though. It probably falls in love with him, and sticks by him a lot anyways. He must have charmed it, huh...?

Beelzebub

Mammon x2. DOGS? DOGS! DOGGIES! DOG DOG DOG ASDASFFHFGDHKHGFHK;

He’s not containing his excitement. Look at the husky!! PRETTY EYES! Cute baby. Excited baby. Doggo will love Beel, and Beel’s new best friend is a big ol husky baby.

Will sit on the floor and roll around with doggo. Will feed doggo good doggo foods. Will take doggie on walks frequently. Will let sleepy dogg-e sleep on his bed with him.

You ever see someone baby talk a dog while laying it on its back against you, on the floor? Rubbing it’s tummy? It’s Beel. The dog is his life now, enough said.

Belphegor

Cuddle buddy. Pillow pet. New friend. Will lay on the floor with it.

Both dogs are his treasures now. He doesn’t really want to do much work with taking care of them. Will enjoy laying on the floor and scratching their favorite spots.

Probably picks up the habit of wagging his tail from a dog too. Everyone talks mad shit about it but he ignores them.

Will probably make a nest out of his bed. Of spare blankets that are old and worn (as well as pillows) for the dogs to lay on with him. Doesn’t let them sleep in his bed, but at the foot of it, every single night.

[lilblog-asatreat]

#5 from this prompt list: "Let me bandage you up."

"Fucking hell!" Lup shouts to the heavens.

"I told you there was a ditch nearby," Merle says blandly.

"This isn't a ditch, Merle. This is a giant fucking crevice in the earth that just broke my fucking leg!"

Needless to say, Lup and Merle's forest expedition wasn't exactly going to plan. Their entire team split off into pairs to explore in search for the Light, (with the exception of Taako who wanted to stay behind on the ship), and so far Lup and Merle had to swim through a raging flooded river, fight off two chimeras, break their way through a giant "haunted" bramble patch which turned out to be hiding a small community of very hostile gnomes, and get so hopelessly turned around and lost that their hope of ever finding their way back to the Starblaster was getting slimmer and slimmer.

Their latest misadventure involved Merle scouting slightly ahead, warning her of a well hidden "ditch", and failing to mention it was actually a drop off to an eight foot deep hole, which tripped her and made her land with her full weight on her right leg while it was bent at a weird angle.

"Alright, I'm coming down, just give me a moment." Merle readjusts his backpack and starts carefully picking his way down the side. When he finally makes it to Lup's side, she's leaning up against the wall with her head pressed back against it, eyes squinted shut in pain. Merle takes out his holy symbol and mutters a prayer while moving it slowly over her leg.

Nothing happens.

"Shit!" Merle grumbles.

Lup opens up one eye to look at him and grimaces. "You don't have anymore-"

"Spell slots, no I don't."

"Oooffff fucking course." She closes her eye again and focuses on breathing.

Merle takes off his backpack and rummages around in it. "Luckily I brought more medical supplies than just me and my holy powers. Do you see any good sized branches near us?"

Lup opens her eyes again to look around. "There might be some branches over there." She points to the opposite side of the hole where the branches of a fallen tree lay against a slightly gentler slope back upward and out of the pit.

Merle takes a roll of bandages out and sets it on top of his bag before pulling out Lil Choppy and setting to work on getting branches that are viable for setting her broken leg.

After a few minutes of silence, save for the hacking of the hand ax, Lup asks, "So uh, do you think the others were able to find the Light?"

Merle takes a beat to wipe some sweat from his forehead. "Maybe. At the very least, they're probably having more luck than we are just trying to get around this place."

Lup gives a pained laugh as Merle goes back to hacking at branches. When he's gotten a few he's satisfied will get the job done, he moves back over to Lup and sets them down beside her leg. "Now, let me bandage you up."

Lup cries out in pain as Merle moves her leg in position and begins wrapping the bandages around it and the branches supporting it. He mumbles an apology but keeps going. After he's finished, he scoots up against the wall next to his friend and sighs. "So uh... how are we going to get out of this one?"

"I don't know," Lup sighs. "I can cast a spell that could levitate me, and you'd be able to pull me around without having to worry about putting weight on my leg, but uh that only lasts for ten minutes, and we still don't know where the Starblaster is. Not to mention, I... don't know if I have spell slots to cast that right now, now that I think about it."

They're both quiet for a beat. Then Merle laughs a little. "Well, at least if we die out here, we'll come back next year, right?"

Lup bites her lip. "Mmhmm?"

Merle looks over at her and quirks an eyebrow. "You don't sound very convinced."

"Well," Lup begins slowly, "yes, we will come back... at least, I'm 85% sure we'll come back..." She trails off and looks at him sheepishly.

Merle stares at her. "You're only 85% sure? You and Barry spent an entire year testing this theory! You told us we'd be alright!"

"There's always room for error in science and arcane studies, and we always have to take that into account. But 85% is a solid B, so we're pretty sure we'll all be fine. Sure enough to reassure everyone else at least." Lup explains defensively.

"What about the other 15%?" Merle asks incredulously. "That's a huge percentage of uncertainty!"

"Try not to think about it," Lup waves him off.

"Try not to-"

"Look, we'd be more sure if we actually had a chance to really test it, but it's only been four years, and so far the only time someone's actually died was Magnus back in year one. The fact that you and Magnus go back to having the same injuries as the ones you had when we first left is key evidence to support our theory that we just go back to our recorded state, but until someone else dies and comes back to life, there's only so many experiments we can do to try and replicate the real deal."

"So now the scientist has become the lab rat and dragged me along with you." Merle crosses his arms.

"Arcanist, for one," Lup says hotly, "I'm not that big of a nerd, and for two, technically Davenport dragged you into this because he's the one who paired you with me. And I'm so sorry that being paired with me was such a disastrous choice for you."

"That's not what I meant," Merle says, but Lup crosses her arms and looks away from him.

He sighs and digs through his bag again. It takes a minute, but he finally pulls out his prize, a little baggie of baby carrots that he swiped from the kitchen before they left. He crunches on one before silently offering Lup another one. She looks over for a second and rolls her eyes in annoyance but accepts the offering anyway.

"There's got to be a way out of this situation," Merle says after a while of chewing on carrots. "Maybe I can go back to the gnome village and see if I can get a healing potion or at least a way of contacting the ship."

Lup snorts. "They'll just run you out of town again. I don't know if you remember, but they weren't keen on listening to us last time, and I doubt they'd be too impressed with us now that we've accidentally burned down a few of their buildings."

"Not our fault they kept attacking us," Merle shrugs. "But I'm sure I can sneak past the guards, find their apothecary, and steal whatever we need to get you on your feet again."

Lup laughs. "In that armor? Merle, you are the single loudest dwarf I have ever met!"

Merle chuckles despite being mildly annoyed. "I mean, do you have any other ideas?"

Lup's smile fades a little. "I mean... I could send up a flare and hope Taako sees it? Prestidigitation is a cantrip, so I can just keep burning that until someone finds us."

"If they ever find us."

Lup grabs another carrot and chews on it contemplativly. "You know, I woke up today ready to take on anything and find the Light, but now all I want to do is be with my brother and complain to him how shitty our day has been while he makes me tea and jokes about it to make me feel better. It's... been a while since we've done that. We spend so much time researching and working and being too exhausted to do little more than sleep that we haven't just sat down to hang out and complain about just how shitty this all is."

"Well, I'm not Taako," Merle begins carefully, "but I'm still your friend, and I'm still here for you. You can complain to me all you want, and right now I can't offer you tea, but I do have some jerky once we run out of baby carrots."

Lup looks over at him and smiles. "Thanks, Merle," she says quietly.

Merle nods, and the two of them spend the rest of the late afternoon talking about the past four years and how much they miss home. When night begins to fall, Lup starts shooting sparks into the air, and the contrast of the bright colors against the darkening sky does catch the attention of one extremely worried elf. He sighs in relief and directs his captain to sail the ship westward toward the colors of hope.

[milstrim]

Comfort in My Shadow

Chapter 4: Uninvited

By @iwritedumbshit for @iron-mum

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Ned Leeds, James “Rhodey” Rhodes

Summary: Soulmates are definite in the universe. Nobody knows exactly why they exist, or what dictates who is bonded to who, the only thing known is that they are never wrong. But Peter’s not so sure about that.

Living at the group home had taught Peter a lot about laying low and how to stay alive when nobody cares. But he’d always clung to the hope of the shadow at his feet reflecting his soulmate that had watched over him for years.

Typical that his soulmate is actually a superhero that Peter is convinced shouldn’t want anything to do with him. Maybe, just this once, the Universe was wrong.

But Tony Stark is desperate to prove that it is right.

Ch 1 // Ch 2 // Ch 3 // Ch 5 // Ch 6 // Ch 7 // Ch 8

---

Peter didn't really wake up the next morning, because he hadn't really fallen asleep last night. He'd been incredibly tired, but his hair hadn't been able to lay flat and he hadn't been able to block out the overwhelmingly disgusting smell of Mr. Fowler's closet. He'd been it the entirety of the day and even throughout the night when Mr. Fowler stomped into the room and passed out on the bed. The lilting stumbles in his steps made Peter think he'd been drunk and had likely forgotten about the kid trapped in his closet.

So he hadn't really slept, but his eyes had been closed--the darkness of his eyes was better than that of the closet--until the door had finally swung open, allowing Peter his first full breath in almost a whole day. The dankness of Mr. Fowler's room was a thousand times better than the closet. An arm had grabbed his own, pulling him roughly to his feet and out of the closet. His legs had ached with the disuse, but he'd stumbled to his feet nonetheless.

"Are you going to talk back to me again, son?" Mr. Fowler had asked, a horrible pleasantness to his voice. Peter had shaken his head. Something had been shoved into his hands, and he'd fumbled only to realize it was his wallet. "There. The card doesn't work anymore, so you can have that piece of shit back. Now get out of here."

"O-okay. Thank you," he'd said, stumbling out of the room and into the bathroom that he'd been deprived of for almost twenty-four hours. Once he'd finished and washed his hands, he'd searched through his wallet.

His few crumpled bills had been taken, but the pictures stuffed inside had been left alone, and the black card had sat crammed in a pocket. He'd grabbed it with fumbling fingers, brows furrowing. It didn't work anymore? Had the man maxed it out? Peter had swallowed, a pit forming in his stomach as he thought about what the hell he'd bought to do that. Probably a lot of alcohol had been his guess.

He really, really hoped that Mr. Stark couldn't see his purchases.

After a quick shower, in which he'd had to sit down his vision had swam so much, he'd rushed out the door with his beaten up backpack swinging off of his shoulder. He knew he probably should have stayed to check on the other kids who'd had to listen to the fight last night and might need help with homework, but the teenager couldn't stand to be in that house for any longer. Everything smelled like Mr. Fowler's awful closet and he just needed to be out in the bright Sunday sun. He wanted to find just a little comfort in his shadow that he'd been deprived of the night before.

So he'd changed into his suit and swung around for most of the day, flipping for some overly excited middle schoolers and directing an old man from Ukraine visiting his son who lived in Harlem and ignoring the pain in his stomach. When there was a lull in the late afternoon, he strung a web between two buildings and just did as many daring flips and handstands as he could. It was a feeble attempt to distract himself from the events of the past few days.

Hits and threats from Mr. Fowler were nothing new, in fact, they were a staple in the Queens Pinehill Group Home for Boys, but last night had been different. He'd never been trapped like that in the group home. He'd always had a lot of free reign as long as he operated within the curfew and got his chores done, but yesterday was like someone had flipped a switch on that, and he was still reeling from the terror.

Or that could be the hunger eating through his stomach. Peter stopped flipping on the web for a moment, instead laying down and balancing himself on the thin string as his stomach growled so hard he flinched. He wouldn't even be getting anything today. When did his grounding end again? He was pretty sure it was Thursday, but he wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Fowler extended it after last night. Maybe he could stop by Ned's and get a granola bar or something.

The teenager looked down at the ground to stare at Mr. Stark's shadow, blinking as he realized it was no longer clothed in normal attire, or a sharp business suit, but rather the larger outline of what he could now identify as the Iron Man armor. He narrowed his eyes, wondering what the man must be doing. Probably something really important.

Peter sighed, moving to sit up, when a sound made him pause. He cocked his head before finally turning in the direction of the mechanical whine to make out the Iron Man suit flying towards him.

Huh.

He tried to feign disinterest, laying back down on the web and placing his hands underneath his head as the suit landed on the nearest building rooftop and Mr. Stark stepped out, but Peter couldn't lie to himself about how excited he really was to see the man.

"Hey, Mr. Stark," he greeted from the web.

"Hey, kid."

"Um, thanks for the letter." Please don't ask about the card. Please don't ask about the card. "Are you sure about the phone, though? I mean, that thing looks like it could cost as much as a house."

"Keep it, kid, I gave it to you for a reason," Mr. Stark said, waving him off. Peter watched him warily as he sat down on the edge of the building, shuffling nervously. Peter smiled to see the man very clearly out of his element, as if he would let him fall anyway. "So, how's your day been?"

Peter shrugged. "Fine."

"No hangovers or anything?" Peter froze. "Can you even get drunk? Cap can't."

The teenager hesitated before answering. It was either 'I bought a bunch of adult stuff with your credit card' or 'My foster father bought a bunch of adult stuff with your credit card.' He wasn't sure which one was better, but there didn't seem to be much to win from lying, not that there was much to gain from telling the truth either.

"I don't know," Peter responded honestly as he sat up on the web to stare at the shadow on the ground. The imitation felt more comforting than the real thing at that moment.

"You don't know? You bought three hundred dollars of pure liquor."

"Three hundred--Oh, jeez. I'm really sorry, Mr. Stark."

Mr. Stark blinked at him for a second before his gaze softened.

"You didn't buy any of that stuff, did you?" Peter shook his head. "Who? Andrew Fowler?" A moment. A nod. "Okay, I'll just deactivate that card and give you a new one."

"No, it's fine, Mr. Stark," Peter said, pulling his wallet out of his hoodie pocket and showing him the black card. "He gave it back. I think he was annoyed that it was, like, maxed out or something."

"Well, it is most definitely not maxed out--there's a lot more than three hundred on that, kid--but I'm glad you got it back."

"Thanks."

There was a minute of awkward silence before Mr. Stark rolled his shoulders and sat up straighter.

"So, no tower yesterday?"

Peter suddenly remembered the little note at the end of his letter. He shrugged bashfully, mumbling, "Yeah, sorry, uh Mr--Mr. Fowler kept us pretty busy yesterday. Chore day, so."

"Wanna stop by now?"

Peter looked up at him in surprise. It was a wonder this man didn't hate him yet. The foster parents Peter had before Mr. Fowler had gotten sick of him pretty quickly, or just hadn't been very attached in the first place, while the majority of his teachers regarded him with either pity or disdain at his situation and record. As far as Mr. Stark knew, he had an accident-prone, snotty teenager as a soulmate whose favorite pass time was to be a juvenile delinquent.

And yet, the mechanic regarded him with a soft smile. A little strained, but welcoming nonetheless. It unfurled something in his chest.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Yeah!--I mean, sure sure, that'd be fun." Mr. Stark gave him an amused smile as the teenager stepped off of his web and onto the roof of the building. With a quick glance and a rare smile, Peter leaped off the roof, enjoying the way Mr. Stark yelped in surprise. Peter called, "Beat you there!!"

He did not, in fact, beat Mr. Stark to the tower. To be fair, the man was in a suit that flew faster than a jet and Peter was only propelled by physics and muscles.

The teenager watched from a short distance as the Iron Man suit paused in front of a higher point in the tower, faced him for a moment, and then dove through the window. He raised an eyebrow, but doubled down in catching up to the man, only barely managing to swing himself high enough so that he wouldn't have to crawl his way up more than a couple of stories.

Finally, just a few minutes later than Mr. Stark, he rolled through the window and landed hard on the floor just a little unsteadily, not that he cared in the slightest. There were much more interesting things to care about in that moment.

"Whoa..."

"You like it?" Mr. Stark called from across the lab. Peter nodded dumbly, staring, widemouthed, at the state of the art equipment decorating just about every inch of the room. There were cases of Iron Man armor lining the walls, robots rolling around--he managed a laugh at one with a dunce cap sweeping the ground with a broom inefficiently--and tables filled with projects Peter couldn't even begin to dream of. "You can take your mask off here, kid. No one's going to see you."

Mr. Stark's voice pulled him back to reality, drawing him further into the room hesitantly. He glanced at the man, but realized dimly that his spider sense had finally calmed down. This wasn't the danger he'd felt after being fished out of the lake, or the feeling that had been following him since, it was a normal calm mixed with just a hint of nerves.

He tugged his mask off.

Mr. Stark stared at him, a soft look on his face, before finally tearing his gaze away when Peter shuffled uncomfortably.

"Sorry, kid," he apologized. "Didn't mean to freak you out. Just..."

"Just what?"

"It's just nice to see you, Peter."

He didn't know what to say to that, so he just offered the billionaire a strained smile and stepped over to the desk the man was standing at. He felt more than a little out of place, but his curiosity overwhelmed his discomfort as he glanced over a shiny metal case held lightly in the billionaire's hands in interest. Mr. Stark tapped it when he caught the boy looking.

"This, kid," he said, sliding it over, "is for you."

Peter caught it effortlessly, his fingers light and hesitant as he glanced from it to Mr. Stark, his head down.

"I can't accept this, Mr. Stark. You already--"

Mr. Stark interrupted by reaching over and pressing something on the case. It sprang open, spooking Peter enough for him to take a step back but holding his attention as he caught sight of the bright red fabric. The eyes were what really caught his attention, looking unreasonably cool and intimidating. Peter mumbled, "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen."

Mr. Stark chuckled. "Good thing it's yours."

"It's--" He gaped at the man. "Mr. Stark, I really can't accept--"

"Too bad," he interrupted. "It's a gift and it's rude to turn down a gift. So, there's a bathroom right over there if you want to try it on. Give it a whirl?"

After a moment of hesitation, he closed the case, thanked Mr. Stark, and headed to the bathroom to change.

  ---

When Peter stepped out of the bathroom in the new suit, Tony couldn't help but frown. He covered it up as quickly as possible, but the sentiment still remained as his eyes roamed over the kid. He was muscular, sure, but he was so thin that it practically hurt. The teenager's ribs were practically there just for him to count and worry about. He filed it away for later as Peter turned to look at him, the mask's eyes narrowing.

"Looking good, hotshot," Tony said. "How's it feel?"

"It's awesome, Mr. Stark," Peter responded, his hands held out in front of him as he tapped the webshooters. "It smells like a new car!"

Tony couldn't help his laugh. "If you think that's cool, just wait. Friday, Babysitter Protocol."

"Babysitter--" Peter cut off with a confused yelp as his suit lit up blue, the AI in his suit supposedly greeting him. The kid cocked his head. "Oh, hi. Nice to meet you too."

Tony turned away, letting the kid and the AI get acquainted as he pulled out his phone and ordered a few pizzas. Five might be enough. Steve had always eaten a lot, and even if he didn't manage to burn through the best pizza in the city, the kid could definitely use leftovers. He entered the order and shifted back to observe the kid again.

"--uh, Liz? No, no, that's weird. How about Karen?" A moment as he waited for a response. "Fun. Nice. Cool, this is so cool."

Tony smiled, unable to tear his eyes away from the kid. His soulmate. His little shadow. 

Peter turned to look at him after a few minutes, muttering a quick goodbye to the AI--Karen, he guessed--before tugging the mask off again. There was a hesitant smile tugging at his thin face. Much too thin. How many pizzas would it take to get the kid back to even a semi-healthy weight? Probably way too many.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Stark," Peter said. "I really can't thank you enough."

"Please, you can thank me by not thanking me. Pepper says my ego's already a little off of the charts." Peter laughed and Tony couldn't help his grin. "Wanna stay over for dinner? I ordered pizza."

Peter hesitated, but after a moment he answered, "Alright," which was so much better than the kid regarding him defensively or looking like he was constantly on the edge of running away again. And, as it turned out, Peter fit more easily into his life than he could have thought.

In barely thirty minutes, the kid was sat beside him at a desk filled with vials of web fluid and pieces of Iron Man armor, an old, frayed hoodie of Tony's slipped over the suit, and a stack of freshly baked pizza laid out in front of them. Peter sat in the chair next to him as the mechanic ran through the schematics of his suit, hanging on every single word.

"...most of the framing is between the protective layers of your suit, completely waterproof by the way, if you ever get yourself into another lake. You also have a parachute if you pass the three thousand feet threshold."

Peter glanced over his shoulder in surprise. "There's a parachute in this thing? How?"

Tony tapped his back where he knew the spider logo was. "A magician never reveals their secrets."

"Did you compress all the air out of it? Or build it into the wiring on the patch on my back somehow?"

"Both are true." He took a bite of pizza. "You're pretty smart, huh?"

Peter ducked his head with a shrug. "Sorta. I can figure out chemistry, but that's about it."

"I don't believe that for a second, but we'll stick with the modesty for now." Peter huffed out a laugh, spinning the hologram of his suit and staring at it in complete adoration. It dragged a smile onto Tony's face.

Peter had a sort of ruggedness to him, a desperate scrappiness, but it was embarrassingly easy to see that that wasn't all there was to the teenager. His rambles were fast and excited, his scarce smiles adorably bright and always lighting up his doe eyes. There was a kind of spark to Peter that Tony couldn't explain, and, though he was sorry that the kid was saddled with him, he couldn't have wished for a better soulmate.

Apparently, five pizzas ended up being a great number, because Peter ate everything Tony offered him. He was practically a human garbage disposal, though much more polite. Tony was glad that the kid was filling up, but it made him seriously question how much he was getting at that group home. After letting the kid get comfortable for about an hour, he voiced it.

"Do they feed you where you live, kid? I swear, you just put down over ten thousand calories."

Peter paused on the slice he was eating, swallowing before putting it back on the plate nervously, and Tony immediately regretted ever opening his big, fat mouth.

"Yeah. They--Mr. Fowler feeds us fine. Just, enhanced metabolism, so." He shrugged. It was said so nervously that it felt like an outright lie, but Tony left it alone.

"Okay. Good to know. Just make sure to use that card whenever you get hungry, kid. I'm not having my soulmate starve."

At his mention of being soulmates, Peter glanced over his shoulder to stare at their shadows. Right now they almost looked like their own shadows, mirror images of each other, but if you looked hard enough you could see the slight difference in hair texture and the distinctive widths of their shoulders.

"It must've been weird," Peter said. Tony glanced at him in confusion. "Not having a shadow. You didn't get one until I was born, right?"

"Oh. Yeah," Tony agreed. He swallowed as he admitted, "Thought I was broken for the longest time. It was the best day of my life when your tiny little baby shadow appeared at my feet... What about you? Always had a grown man following you around, huh?"

"That sounded creepy, Mr. Stark." Tony just grinned cheekily. "It was nice, actually, always having you there. Like--like a guardian or something."

"And now you've got the real thing." Peter rolled his eyes and Tony pointed at him. "Ah, there's that good ol' sass I was looking for. I was afraid I'd lost it."

"Uhuh. You're kinda weird, Mr. Stark."

"Right back at you, little shadow." Peter smiled at the nickname before glancing out the window where the sky was a deep russet red. "Time for you to head out?"

"Yeah. I've still got some homework to do."

The two stood up and walked over to the window. Peter moved to take the hoodie he'd been wearing off, but Tony stopped him. "Keep it. I've got plenty."

"Oh, thanks, Mr. Stark."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm so generous. Have fun with the suit, kid, I'll see you soon."

"When?"

Tony paused, looking over at the kid who had only just begun to pull the mask over his head, hopeful eyes staring at him. He desperately wanted to tell the kid he'd pick him up from school tomorrow so that they could hang out in the lab again, but he knew he genuinely didn't have any time. He'd been putting off packing for a few too many days.

"After we move. I'll pick you up from school on Friday. We can go explore the compound together. Sound good?"

Peter nodded. "Yep. Real good, Mr. Stark."

"You can call me Tony, Mr. Parker," he joked.

Peter pulled the mask down and jumped out the window with a call of. "See you Friday, Mr. Stark!"

Tony's shoulders shook with laughter.

  ---

Friday. Peter couldn't wait for Friday. With a burst of excitement and energy he hadn't had in a while, Peter flipped in the air and let out a WHOOO! only catching himself at the last second before flipping back up.

"Wow, this suit is so intuitive!" he exclaimed, shooting another web.

"I am glad you think so, Peter," Karen responded, shocking him so bad he nearly let go of his web. Oh, yeah, he'd forgotten he had an AI now. Man, Mr. Stark was so cool. "I am currently taking feedback for the suit's systems in case anything needs to be changed on Friday. Would you like to rate the suit's webshooters?"

"Oh, full eleven out of ten, Karen. It's great."

"Thank you for the feedback, Peter, I have sent a note to Mr. Stark."

"Oh." Peter blushed. "You didn't have to tell him that, Karen."

"Why not? He has asked for feedback."

"No, it's not--" He cut himself off, sighing as he flipped himself into a large arc. "I just don't want to bother him. He's already been so nice to me."

"Mr. Stark has asked for feedback, Peter."

"It's not the--it's not the feedback, Karen," he tried to explain.

"I do not understand."

He spluttered and then sighed, waving it off. "Whatever. It's fine, Karen, just forget it."

"Of course, Peter. Would you like me to show you the quickest route home?"

Peter hesitated. He did have a lot of homework to do, and Eric probably needed help with his reading, but he had to swallow down fear at the thought of being in the same room as Mr. Fowler again. It was irrational--it was so stupid--and Peter knew it, but he couldn't stop the way his hands seemed to shake and his entire body quail.

"Actually, let's take the scenic route. Really test out the suit, y'know?"

"Of course, Peter. Planning now."

A blue line appeared on screen, leading Peter back to the group home. He muttered, "So cool."

Spider-Man was only halfway back to the Queens Pinehill Group Home for Boys, finally across the bridge and back into his home territory, when his spider sense went off again. He immediately glanced down at his shadow, which had lengthened as the sun set, for some kind of comfort or guidance. But of course, there wasn't one. It was just a shadow.

A little put off by the shiver that had run down his spine, he attached himself to the side of the building, staring out over the street. Nothing too out of the normal. People hurrying on the sidewalk, cars honking down the street, and shadows following along aimlessly.

"Karen. What's going on?"

"What do you mean, Peter?" the AI asked.

"It's just--there's something wrong. Maybe--" At a second shiver up his spine, Peter turned to look at where his senses were directing him at the ringing of a bell.

It was a small bodega, its door swung open as two men stepped inside in unreasonably thick coats for the warm weather. He narrowed his eyes, and the suit zoomed in with him, scanning the men before they disappeared through the door.

"What's the time, Karen?"

"7:30."

"Alright, we're good then. Plenty of time." He swung over to the bodega, attaching himself to the wall above the door, out of sight of the occupants inside. His senses had yet to calm down, so he assumed that he was right about this being a robbery. "Ready to test out the suit, Karry Berry?"

"I am always ready, Peter."

"Y'know, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."

"Does that mean I should assign you a nickname too?"

"Definitely! Think about it for a moment and get back to me after we do this," Peter exclaimed in an excited mumble, straining his ears to hear whatever was going on inside. There was the tense calm of nothing for a moment, and then a shuffle and a squeak followed by a spike in his senses. He muttered to himself. "Finally."

He kept his ears strained on the actions going on inside, dropping down in front of the door quietly to watch what was happening. There was a teenager at the register, her hands fumbling with the register while the two men from earlier in their dark coats pointed shotguns at her. He could see tears streaming down the girl's face, clearly terrified.

Peter crept forward, picking up on the muttered conversation inside.

"--just open the register, keep it quiet," the closest man said in a raspy voice. "Hand everything over nice and quick."

"It's--it doesn't open," the girl cried. "It doesn't open unless a purchase is made and--"

The man flinched forward. "Do I look like I care? Just open it!"

Finally having heard enough, Peter placed his fingers against the door and pulled it open as quietly as possible.

Ding!

Peter froze. Heads turned. Curses flew.

The superhero darted forward as the gun pointed at him, firing a shot that missed him completely as he dove behind a grocery aisle of gummies and pregnancy tests. Bodegas really were something. Peter crouched down, muttering under his breath, "Fuck that stupid bell."

"Would you like me to alert Mr. Stark to your predicament?" Karen asked.

"What? No! I can deal with this, Karen, just watch."

"I like the new look," came the voice of the man that had shot at him. "New government sugar daddy or something?"

Peter blanched. "I really wish that that would stop being people's first assumption. People can be platonic y'know!"

There was a scoff and the sound of something warping. Peter's eyes narrowed, peeking around the grocery shelf and then immediately ducking back. The man, the one who hadn't shot at him, had pulled out a large and glowing weapon that looked incredibly similar to the one that had been at the ATM robbery. Man, he was getting really sick of those things.

The teenage girl had looked okay, shivering behind the desk and thankfully not making any moves to alert the police, as far as he could tell anyway. The last thing he needed was cops showing up in such a tense situation. And his first time using the new suit! That would be just plain embarrassing.

"Platonic or not, I don't give a shit," Normal Gun Man said. "A new look isn't going to change your situation. So either come out, or we shoot you."

"I don't know if you can shoot me while I'm back here soooo."

There was a click and a squeak. "Yeah? What about her?"

Okay. So that was a little different.

Without hesitation, Peter stepped out from behind the aisle shelf, his arms raised half-heartedly in the air. The two men had ski masks over their face--not quite as fun as the Avengers masks, but it'd do--but he could still see the honestly nervous smile of the man holding the gun. Clearly he hadn't expected the arrival of Queens favorite vigilante.

"Good to know that you can comply," Normal Gun Guy said. Alien Gun Guy had the weird blue gun pointed at Peter, but the shotgun was still directed at the worker. He chose his target.

"Not really."

With a flick, he webbed the shotgun and slammed it into the wall. There was a startled scream at the same moment his hairs stood on end. Peter only managed to jump forward before he was encased in a blue light that gave him quite possibly the worst headache of his entire life. He hated the feeling of that stupid thing. He didn't quite know what it was, but it felt like something out of The Incredibles. Like Syndrome and shit.

"Ugh! This thing is so weird!" Peter complained in a warped yell. Alien Gun Guy gave him a brutish look and then swung him through the window.

Peter grunted as he crashed through the window, wincing at the clinking shatter of glass that broke under him, but, surprisingly, none of the glass managed to grab at him and slice through his skin, even as he was shot across the street from the force of the alien weapon, only stopping when he thudded against the wall. He groaned as the air was forced out of him.

At least the suit had kept him from getting cut.

"Ugh... The hell." The teenager shook his head, forcing himself back to his feet, clinging to the wall for just a moment as he blinked out dizziness. Remembering himself, he turned back to the bodega across the street, panicking when his head pounded. That wasn't from being hit, that was his spider sense.

The men ran out of the door, hulking along a cash register and a handful of cigarette packs, but the teenage girl had yet to leave and his head only pounded harder. Spider-Man dashed across the road, leaping through the already broken window, his breath catching as he caught sight of the purple thing sitting on the ground in the middle of the bodega. It whined, louder and louder.

Bomb. Bomb!

Peter's head shot around so fast he physically winced, but he caught sight of the teenager behind the counter. Working on instinct, he jumped over the counter as the whine reached its apex, wrapping his arms around the girl and pushing himself between her and the bomb. He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as possible, gritting his teeth.

The world shook and she let out a surprised cry into his shoulder but didn't let go. Peter barely managed to hold down a whimper of fear. Be brave, be a hero. Be brave, be a hero. He could do it. He was fine.

He was fine.

Peter blinked his eyes open, moving carefully to peer over the counter.

"Dammit," he muttered. The rest of the windows had shattered, and just about every product in the store had been knocked back and now littered the ground. A tile fell from the ceiling, making him tense his shoulders. They'd gotten away. Some hero he was.

"I have a nickname for you, Peter," Karen said in his ear. He frowned in annoyance. Well, he had told her to tell him once the situation was over.

"Great," he snapped, stepping over the counter, his boot crunching on the glass. "What is it?"

"Peter-butter!"

"...Okay that's actually pretty good."

  ---

After double checking that the cashier was alright, Peter had fled the scene, cursing himself for how bad it had gone. Nobody had died, but that wasn't really the standard he was looking for. If anything, he'd really just made everything worse. Stupid, Parker, stupid!

The teenager sighed, dipping into the dark alleyway where his backpack had been left earlier. He grabbed it from under the crate of boxes where he'd hidden it, pressing the spider emblem on his chest, allowing the suit to cascade off of him. Frustrated, Peter ripped the mask off and untangled himself from the fabric at his feet, stuffing the items in his faded blue bag and jumping back into his own clothes, and, after a moment of hesitation, slipped into the hoodie that Mr. Stark had given him.

He pulled the bag over his shoulder and buried his hands into his pockets as he stepped out of the alleyway and back onto the streets in the direction of the Queens Pinehill Group Home for Boys. His brows were furrowed and his face squished into a deep frown. He couldn't believe he'd been given a superhero suit by literally Iron Man and he'd screwed it up immediately. He chittered nervously at the thought of Mr. Stark seeing what had happened at the bodega and realizing just how shit of a superhero his soulmate was.

As he was debating the likely-hood of Mr. Stark taking the suit back and never talking to him again for his screw up, his phone buzzed. Hesitantly, Peter pulled it out to find two texts waiting for him. One from Ned and one from Mr. Stark.

He clicked on the one from Ned first. The text app opened up to show Peter a grainy picture of him in his new suit followed by Ned's message of 'Excuse me??? tf is this?? tell me everything rn or im going to die'

Peter smiled faintly, making a mental note to call his friend in a few minutes. With a deep breath, he clicked on Mr. Stark's message.

Mr. Stark: I saw the news. You okay?

Peter blinked. He wasn't mad? He chewed on his lip as he sent a response, 'All good. Sorry I freaked you out.' 

Mr. Stark texted back almost immediately, 'No problem. Just glad you're good. Text ya later, kiddo.'

And that was that, Peter supposed. No...no nothing, really. He'd expected a lot more resistance or opposition from the billionaire, but he wasn't mad that he hadn't gotten any. He was about to call Ned when his phone buzzed again.

Mr. Stark: 'P.S. You can talk to and text Karen through your phone. Knock yourself out, Peter-butter.'

Well, that was embarrassing. But still kinda cool.

With a shake of his head, he finally dialed Ned's number. His friend only picked up after two rings with a breathless greeting.

"Yo, what the hell is up with that suit? Did Mr. Stark make it for you? Are you super hero buddies now!!? Officially his sidekick!!?"

Peter smiled, shaking his head in amusement as he stopped at a streetlight. "Yeah, Mr. Stark made it for me. It's cool right? It even has an AI!"

"It has an AI!!? Please, please, tell me you'll let me look at it."

"Duh. Yeah, you can look at it. We can go to your house after school." Peter thought for a moment, thinking of the alien weapons. He'd messed up today, probably disappointed Mr. Stark, but if he could take the whole operation down... "Besides, I need your help with something."

Ch 1 // Ch 2 // Ch 3 // Ch 5 // Ch 6 // Ch 7 // Ch 8

[ransomedrogue]

Tales of Woe - Scenes from S1

hi, it’s fic time again... 1.5 this time, swoon, what an episode! I don’t usually fic complete existing scenes but it felt right for this one.

1.5

Since Jane's arrival in his life, Kurt Weller had experienced emotional extremes he'd forgotten were possible; not to mention some of the most intense moments of his FBI career. Yet he still would never have guessed that he'd end up pointing his weapon at the deputy director of the CIA, waiting to see if his entire team was going to die in an inter-agency shootout.

Weller stood there, aiming his gun at Tom Carter, his finger twitching a bit as he remembered the CIA agent's interest in Jane earlier that day. His heart started pounding once more, just as it had finally settled down from the chase for Dodi – plus seeing Jane almost get shot in the head while she clung to a radioactive device.

And then, it felt like his head was about to explode too; with the same intensity and fallout that had just been narrowly avoided when Jane caught the deadly football. Because, just then, Carter began bargaining for Jane again. Asking to borrow her, as if the CIA would just "question" her and give her back once their interview was over. Thankfully, though, Mayfair's initial response was clear and immediate.

"Go to hell," she fired at Carter's smug face.

"Do you really want to start a war with us now?" Carter threatened.

Weller watched as his boss reconsidered her options, his pulse hammering as he waited for someone to fire the first shot. He wasn't entirely sure why Mayfair had come to the scene but he was very glad she had, even if she wasn't defending Jane as fervently as he'd like. Because, despite the rage pulsating through him, Kurt was still able to recognize that shooting the Deputy Director of the CIA would have some dire consequences for everyone involved, especially the rest of his team. So, it was a good thing he wasn't in charge right then; not when murder was so close to his mind.

Yet, if Mayfair went through with the deal, things were going to get ugly.

He didn't know what he would do if she tried to hand Jane over to Tom Carter but he was certain it would end a relationship he held close to his heart. Mayfair wasn't just his boss - she was his mentor and confidant. But he couldn't think of anything that would convince him to let the CIA take Jane, even for a minute.

The standoff seemed to last ages, though it didn't actually take Mayfair long to come to a decision. Weller's jaw clenched as she told him to give Dodi to the CIA and he voiced his displeasure, even though he recognized it was the only choice that protected Jane and avoided a shootout. His team had done all the work in recapturing Dodi, risking their own lives. So of course it pissed him off to hand him over to an agency that shouldn't even be operating domestically.

Yet the fact remained that they were outnumbered and short on options. They had to give on something so Weller did as he was told; feeling disgusted as he let the CIA goons take the prisoner. But at least he wasn't homicidal, as he would have been if Mayfair had tired to let them have Jane.

Still, Weller seethed at letting Tom Carter have any power on US soil. Instead of letting the wheels of justice run its course, Dodi would end up in another black site, getting tortured into making false confessions. Then dumped in a nameless grave once he'd given up all the information they could extract.

Weller glared at the CIA team as they walked away, his heart rate finally starting to settle again. It was a strange thing, coming down from the physical high of being primed for death. He felt tight and loose at the same time; extremely relieved that Jane was safe, yet still furious at what had just occurred.

As they began to walk away from the scene Weller sidled up beside Jane and glanced his hand against her shoulder as they headed for the SUV. He noted that she was wire tight, which wasn't exactly surprising. She'd nearly been the spark to light a volatile situation and none of it was her fault.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked, reluctantly letting his hand slide back down beside him as they separated from the rest of the team.

Jane flashed him a look that irradiated fire and fear. Yet she stayed silent for awhile longer, as her eyes returned to her feet.

She didn't answer for so long that Weller wondered if she'd chosen to ignore his question. But then he glanced over and got the sense that Jane was still processing how to reply. So they just walked quietly until, eventually, she exhaled audibly and looked up at him.

"Yeah," she finally said. "I was scared for a moment though."

Me too, Weller thought, before clamping down hard on that admission.

"Mayfair wouldn't do that," he replied gruffly.

"Anyways, I would never let her trade you to Carter."

Jane scoffed, but then softened her expression as she looked him in the eye.

"She's the boss, Weller. What were you going to do?"

Something drastic, he mused, frowning at the mere thought of it.

"I would have thought of something," he grumbled.

"I'm not going to let anyone take you again."

He knew he shouldn't put so much pressure on her, all his guilt about what happened. Yet it was also the absolute truth, something he would swear to.

Jane was giving him that look that killed him every time. Part beseeching and part gratitude, but still firmly backed with fierce determination.

"I know you won't," she said. "I trust you."

It was everything he needed to hear and nearly more than he could bear, so Weller chewed back his emotion and fought the urge to reach out and grab onto her. Balling up his hands into fists to resist the temptation, all he could do was stare at her in awe.

She trusted him to keep her safe and that was what he was going to do, no matter what it took. He was not going to have regrets this time around.

###

Weller insisted on driving her home, as if he were reluctant to let her out of his sight. But somehow his attentiveness didn't feel like pressure anymore, even though he was still looking at her the same way.

Warmth flared up Jane's spine as he led her from the office to the SUV, his hand hovering behind her back possessively. After everything that had happened that day, it felt good knowing she had someone she could rely on. Because there was something about Tom Carter that scared her, more than just his desire to interrogate her. And Mayfair hadn't exactly been reassuring when Jane thanked her for not trading her to the CIA.

The ride to the safe house was quiet, yet the air between them still felt charged. Jane thought back to dinner the previous night, how she'd panicked and run away. At the time, it had been overwhelming to realize how much she meant to him. As if his happiness rested on her being Taylor. But she was coming to understand that he meant just as much to her – that he was her anchor in a storm-filled life.

As Weller pulled up in front of her safe house, Jane was surprised that he parked the SUV while she was unbuckling herself. She was about to remind him that her detail was right in front of them and would sweep her place before she entered but stopped short when she saw the intensity of his blue eyes.

"I know you don't need me to," Weller said. "But I'm going to see you in."

Jane wondered what was spurring on his bout of protectiveness and suddenly recalled the memory that had been pulling at her the entire day. Being led down the stairs into a dingy basement full of frightened kids. The realization that bad things had happened to her there, an understanding she felt in the pit of her stomach.

The memory wasn't as vivid when she brought it back purposely, but Jane still flashed back to how hard it had hit her in the lab, how fast her heart had been beating when Kurt came out to steady her.

For a brief moment the panic threatened to return, as her brain cascaded through the day's events. She'd likely been abused as a child, experienced some horrible things. And she'd almost been traded to the CIA for a terrorist, to be tortured for information she didn't have.

As her heart rate rose, Jane found herself looking over at Weller's concerned expression and her nervous system immediately began to settle again, just from knowing he was there with her. So she didn't really argue about his decision to show her in, despite how unnecessary it was.

Weller waited for her detail to clear the place and then walked her inside, which made warmth flare all the way up her spine. Especially when she tried to deflect his concern by reminding him that it wasn't necessary and he stammered out an adorable reply.

"It's more for me than you. I just wanna check out the new place make sure it's okay.".

Weller paused slightly, as if he might stop there. But then the next words spilled out too, a little rushed and unsure.

"Make sure you're okay."

His sudden protectiveness was endearing but again Jane wondered what had brought it on so strongly. Maybe he hadn't been all that confident in Mayfair himself and had thought the boss might actually ship her off with Carter. Or maybe he was just asking because she'd nearly had an emotional breakdown earlier that day and had almost gone back to the same place in the SUV.

"I'm fine, I-I- was just a little…" she stammered, not quite finding the words to describe what had happened. Yet Jane was determined not to fall apart on him again -really didn't want him to worry about her.

"I'll be fine."

Weller nodded seriously, like he was still concerned.

"I'm sorry I lost it today," she added.

"It's okay, it happens," he replied kindly, like he really wasn't judging her for having a freak out on the job.

Weller started to head for the door then and Jane wondered if that was really all that he was going to say. Now that he was there, she didn't want him to leave. So when he turned back, her heart began to thump, even before his words started spilling out.

"You've been through so much," he said, his voice crackling with sadness. "And if I'm making this harder for you then just tell me. Cause that's the last thing that I want."

He paused, as if searching for words through a sea of emotion.

"All these expectations, I should never have put you in that situation."

Jane's chest was tight and everything felt constricted. But this time it wasn't an overwhelming pressure, like at dinner the night before. She wasn't worried about who she was and what she meant to him. Instead, her heart was seized by the hurt she could see in him.

Jane shook her head, trying to make him understand that wasn't what she meant, that she didn't blame him for the way he looked at her. She just didn't know what to do with all the emotions it brought out in her.

"Kurt," she interjected.

But Weller didn't stop, and Jane could see a lifetime of regret pouring through his expression as he struggled his way through an absolutely heart-breaking apology.

"I should never have let them take you. I'm … I'm sorry."

He had tears in his eyes and, for the first time she clearly saw the boy inside of her gruff FBI agent; the child full of self-blame who'd become this man that had never stopped searching. She'd glimpsed him before, but Weller had always thrown up his walls as soon as the hurt emerged. Now, though, it was all pouring out and she didn't know how to stop the pain flowing through him. Because it was clear that all of his guilt hadn't just dissipated when they got the DNA results.

"It wasn't your fault," Jane stated, as sure as she could be about anything. He'd been a child and she was certain little Kurt Weller would have been as diligent a babysitter as a ten-year-old could be.

"I've heard that, my whole life," Kurt replied, in a tone that told her he'd never once believed it.

"But you haven't heard it from me," she said, instinctively edging closer.

"You told me that Taylor was my starting point. I think you're wrong."

She hadn't intended for things to go in that direction but Weller was struggling in front of her and she had nothing but the truth to offer him. Jane reached out for his hand and placed it over her heart, the same way he'd steadied her earlier when she'd nearly lost it. He just looked stunned, his eyes searching for her in desperation.

Jane remembered how it had felt, sinking into the dark and then being thrown a lifeline. A physical connection with another person, someone she could hold onto.

"You. You're my starting point," she declared, knowing right then that she'd stated a fundamental fact. Taylor Shaw was just a name that her five-year-old self once had. Weller was where her connection to this world began, both now and then.

Having Kurt's hand on her chest and feeling his trauma surging through his skin was just as intense as pressing up against his heartbeat earlier that day. She could tell that he was barely keeping himself together and got a peek at his walls crumbling to the ground before Weller choked out a goodbye and ran out the door.

Jane stood there and watched him leave, her body still tense with emotion.

She wondered if she'd said too much; she still felt so new at everything. But then again, it had been the truth, the one thing she had to hang onto.

Just that morning, she'd told him that she didn't know how to be his lost girl; that the way he looked at her held too much expectation. But Jane was coming to realize that was how she looked at him too.

Somewhere along the way he'd also become everything to her.

[hailing-stars]

@febuwhump day 24 memory loss

some kind of dad

summary

Tony walked over and opened the balcony door, just as his suit landed with Spider-Boy in its arms.

“Peter,” said Tony. “There was glass there.”

All he got was a muffled groan filled with pain.

Tony directed his suit to lay Peter on the couch, where the boy ripped off his spidey mask and revealed a head full of blood caked hair.

“Jesus, kid, did you really hit the window that hard?”

OR

Peter interrupts Tony’s peaceful evening at home with some blood and a head injury. 

Tony kicked his feet up on the coffee table, and nursed a glass of scotch. His eyes lingered on the fireplace. Logs crackled under the pressure from the flames, and it was incredibly relaxing when paired with the scene outside of his penthouse window, the New York City skyline peppered with giant, puffy snowflakes.

He took a sip of scotch and savored the moment. A moment of peace was a rare oddity in the life of Tony Stark. Even rarer after acquiring an intern with zero self-preservation skill and an annoyingly large and burdensome sense of responsibility.

Tony had to enjoy the tranquility while he could. It was sure to be short-lived.

So Tony wasn’t shocked when it happened. When his peaceful night was disrupted. Actually, he saw it coming. Literally. He took his eyes off the fireplace, and glanced at the window. He saw a blue and red blur quickly approaching his penthouse.

He was wondering what kind of trouble this visit would bring when Peter hit the penthouse window like an insect against a windshield. Peter began to fall, and with a tired sigh, Tony told Friday to have a suit fly down and catch him before there were spider-guts all over the sidewalk.

Tony walked over and opened the balcony door, just as his suit landed with Spider-Boy in its arms.

“Peter,” said Tony. “There was glass there.”

All he got was a muffled groan filled with pain.

Tony directed his suit to lay Peter on the couch, where the boy ripped off his spidey mask and revealed a head full of blood caked hair.

“Jesus, kid, did you really hit the window that hard?”

“This happened before the window, actually,” he muttered with a grimace.

Tony figured that it made sense why he hadn’t noticed the glass and had smacked right into it. He’d already obtained a pretty gruesome head injury.

“That glass is hard,” whined Peter. He stared straight up, at the ceiling, and Tony felt his face crease with worry.

“Yeah, genius, it’s bulletproof.” It was more than bulletproof, actually. It was strong enough to withstand most blows. After aliens visited your planet, you didn’t take chances on home security.  

“And Spider-Man proof.” He sounded

Tony sat on the edge of the couch, and rested his hand on his leg in some foreign and awkward attempt to provide some comfort.

“How’s the pain?”

“Awful,” said Peter. He wiggled around on the couch, getting blood all over the cushion, while he tried and failed to get comfortable. “Downsize of fast healing is that it hurts like hell.”

“Better let me have a look at it.”

“No way,” said Peter. Tensing up.

“I’m just gonna look and see if it’s bad enough to warrant a trip to the medbay.”

The look of disgust and annoyance that flashed across Peter’s face was purely teenager.

“Either that, or I can just have Helen get a bed ready for you without me checking.”

“Fine,” said Peter, with a huff. “Just be… careful.”

“You act like I’ve never had to do this before,” said Tony.

The Avengers were prone to hurting themselves. Not even on missions, but in everyday, mundane situations, like that time Bruce slipped and hit his head in the lab, or when Clint had gotten stuck in the ceiling vent.

Tony stood above him, while Peter watched him warily. He gently swiped some of Peter’s bloody hair to the side to get a glimpse of the nasty gash on his head.

“It doesn’t look that bad, actually,” said Tony.

“Easy for you to say,” said Peter, through gritted teeth, and with closed eyes.

“Well running into a glass window probably made it worse.”

Peter popped a single eye open. “Does this mean I don’t have to go to medbay?”

“Yep.”

“Good.”

Tony chuckled. “I have no idea why you hate it so much.”

“Overexposure.”

“That’s a fair point.”

He felt the strange urge to give him a lecture about being careful. Felt parental. Felt like something he’d promised himself he’d never do again again he’d wagged his finger around at the boy after that ferry incident, like he was somebody’s dad.

“Okay.” He clapped his hands together. “Medicine time.”

“I need the special -”

“Specially strong stuff for strangely superpowered kids,” finished Tony. “Yes, I know. I keep them stashed all over the place. With how often you get hurt, it’s like I have a damn pharmacy in my kitchen.”

Tony strolled over to the kitchen, and unlocked the cabinet he kept the pills in. He’s about to search for a bottle of water, when Peter started shouting requests from the couch.

“Got any ice cream, Mr. Stark?”

“You have a head injury and you want ice cream?”

“Sure,” said Peter. “It’ll give me brain freeze, and it’ll make my head injury so numb, I won’t be able to feel it.”

Tony rolled his eyes, though he wished the world worked according to Peter Parker’s logic.

“That’s what the medicine is for,” said Tony. He handed Peter the bottle and two small pills, and watched as he struggled a bit to sit up, ignoring Tony’s offer of assistance.

“No ice cream?” asked Peter, with the puppy dog eyes.

“Medicine first,” said Tony. “Then we’ll see if you feel like eating ice cream.’

“Fine.” He threw the pills in his mouth, and gulped down some water to wash them down. “Still think ice cream might’ve been more effective than pain relievers.”

“Yeah, maybe in a movie,” said Tony. “What were you doing out in a blizzard anyway? Don’t the weirdass villains you fight take snow days?”

“Wasn’t fighting a villain,” he grumbled. “I slipped on some ice outside of Delmar’s.”

“You make it a habit to go and get sandwiches dressed in your Spidey suit? And in the middle of a blizzard?” Tony didn’t think he could stress the blizzard part enough.

“That was just a pit stop,” said Peter. “You know, May’s stuck at the hospital for an overnight shift, and the apartment was kind of empty, so I just figured we could hang out? If you didn’t already have any plans -”

“I’d love to hang out, Pete.” Tony cut him off, stopping the kid mid-ramble, when it clicked that the kid got injured on the way over to see him, and that he wasn’t just coming to see him because he’d gotten hurt. “Besides, you’ve already bled out on my couch. It’d be just rude to leave now.”

Peter laughed.

“How’s the head feeling now? Double vision? Memory loss?”

“No,” he said. “I’m - I’m good.”

“Good,” said Tony. “Think you can manage changing into PJs without falling over? And cleaning some of that blood out of your hair?”

Peter’s nod was slow and uncertain enough to convince Tony that he definitely couldn’t manage it on his own.

Tony helped him to the guest room, where Peter had his own drawer of clothes. It didn’t strike Tony as odd until that moment.

His penthouse had changed in small, but significant ways, since Peter Parker had crashed into his life and made himself at home. The guest room might as well be called Peter’s room, the stashes of extra painkillers, the textbook Tony had pulled out of his couch cushions just a week earlier and had to deliver to Peter while he was at school.

He thought about this while Peter sat on his bed, and while Tony searched the drawer for something comfortable for him to wear. He stopped. Took another glance at the kid.

“You trickster.”

“What?” asked Peter.

Tony didn’t elaborate. He went back pulling out t-shirts and pajamas pants, mentally mulling over the fact that Peter Parker had turned him into some kind of dad, forever cancelling out any chance he ever had at a bit of peace and quiet, and he actually didn’t mind it that much.

Peace and quiet was overrated. Tony lived for the interruptions. 

[snarktheater]

Ready Player Two — Opening Cutscene & Chapter 0

Hello again.

It’s been a while. I haven’t been active on this blog since, fittingly enough, Ready Player One. I was going to do this sooner—even had an alarm set up and everything—but then, it turns out, I’m feeling so much negativity about the world in general that a book just pales in comparison.

Seriously, I had to scrap this post’s entire intro because it’s not even 2020 anymore as I write this. And you know, maybe that’s for the best. I’m not really in the mood for doom and gloom and bitching anymore. I uninstalled Twitter from my phone a while back, I’ve been doing good at my daily writing sprints, my biggest fanfic project concluded on a positive note from people I didn’t even realize had been following it for years.

So I don’t know what this is going to be like. My commentary, I mean; I’ve heard echoes of what the book is like, so I’m not expecting a surprise there.

The book opens right after the end of Ready Player One, in a “Cutscene” where Wade recounts to us what happened after he won Halliday’s contest. It also assumes you remember exactly who the main characters of the book are, which is a bold move for a sequel that came out almost a decade after the original.

Technically, I could just look up the details I’m fuzzy about. But also, I think it’s more authentic if I don’t. I trust my memory enough that if I’m wrong, it’ll be in subtle enough ways that it’ll almost be a private jokes between all of us. An “if you know, you know” sort of error system. And I don’t think there’s anything more true to the spirit of this book than that.

Shoto had flown back home to Japan to take over operations at GSS’s Hokkaido division.

So Wade starts his tenure with nepotism. Wasn’t Shoto really young? Why is he qualified to run anything?

Aech was enjoying an extended vacation in Senegal, a country she’d dreamed of visiting her whole life, because her ancestors had come from there.

You know what, I’m not touching “send the token black character back to Africa.” This isn’t my lane.

And Samantha had flown back to Vancouver to pack up her belongings and say goodbye to her grandmother, Evelyn.

Why is she saying goodbye? Why, she’s moving to Columbus to be with Wade, of course! It’s not like there was anything else in her life. Was there? And why isn’t she referred to as Art3mis? I’m pretty sure Wade found out all of their offline names in the last book, and the inconsistency mildly bothers me.

These three sentences are back to back, by the way. Someone—I forget who—once described Ready Player One as a book that’s fun to write a wiki about, because it’s got fun concepts to summarize about until you realize that all the emotional connective tissue you need to turn a list of things into a story is missing, and that’s roughly how this first page feels.

Hell, the first line of the book is Wade telling us he remained offline for nine whole days after winning the contest, but by the end of the second paragraph we’re already to him logging back into the OASIS to "distract himself from [his and Samantha’s] reunion.

I’ll give Ernest Cline one thing: it feels like he wrote this opening nine days after the first book and did about as much maturing as a teenage boy would do between the two books.

Way more time is spent describing Wade’s OASIS rig, or the in-game planet where the climax of the last book happened, than anything else in this introduction. He is immediately greeted by a crowd of adoring fans who have been waiting over a week for him to come back in the game, because they’re all grateful that our protagonist and his friends restored their avatars after they were annihilated by the Sixers.

You’d think the adoring fans would serve some kind of purpose, or that something would happen, but no. Wade immediately goes “ew, people” and teleports away, since he essentially has ultimate powers within the game. With a caveat: the powers are actually coming from the Robes of Anorak he’s wearing, and I’m mentioning that in the hopes that it will pay off sometime in the book’s future, assuming Cline at least learned to do that. But still, let’s not skip too fast the fact that we introduced that crowd of adoring fans for no other purpose than to tell us they’re out there, because it fits right in with the last book’s attempts at saying as little as humanly possible in as many words as possible.

Anyway, Wade went back into Anorak’s study, where he arbitrarily checks out the Easter Egg he got at the end of the last book, and finds an inscription on it. I was dreading another riddle, but no, it’s just straight-up instructions to a vault in the GSS archives, so Wade logs off and goes to check it out.

Of course Halliday had put [the archives] [on the 13th floor]. In one of his favorite TV shows, Max Headroom, Network 23’s hidden research-and-development lab was located on the thirteenth floor. And The Thirteenth Floor was also the title of an old sci-fi film about virtual reality, released in 1999, right on the heels of both The Matrix and eXistenZ.

I’m equally shocked that it took two whole pages (on my ereader) to get to the first slew of references, and that one of these references is from 1999. I didn’t know we were allowed to think of anything that isn’t the 80s. Speaking of which, I’ll spare you the whole paragraph, but the book does feel the need to explain why it’s vault 42.

Inside the vault, there’s another egg containing a super-fancy and advanced OASIS headset. The egg also has a video monitor that plays a video message from James Halliday shortly before his death.

But despite his condition, he hadn’t used his OASIS avatar to record this message like he had with Anorak’s Invitation. For some reason, he’d chosen to appear in the flesh this time, under the brutal, unforgiving light of reality.

That oh-so-important message? An infodump about the headset’s working. He called it an OASIS Neural Interface, ONI for short. It basically lets you experience the OASIS through all your senses with sensory input just like the real thing, you know, that thing Wade had to get a fancy suit and massive rig to do in the first book. And yes, Wade does spend a paragraph or two comparing it to other works of science fiction. Of course he does.

More importantly, it also records all the sensory input into a separate file, which can then be replayed over to re-experience said sensations, or live someone else’s experiences. Halliday tries to frame it as a tool to generate communication and empathy, seemingly all without acknowledging the potential creepiness of that. But hey. Who knows. Maybe that’s because this is the setup stage, and it’ll pay off eventually.

I also wondered about the name Halliday had chosen for his invention. I’d seen enough anime to know that oni was also a Japanese word for a giant horned demon from the pits of hell.

Add “reducing Japan to anime” to the list of things the book has failed to improve upon. By the way, the narration insisted on spelling out ONI letter by letter earlier, so it’s weird to make that link now. It’s also just kind of inelegant to just tell us “this is the symbolism behind the name”, but that’s just the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from this book.

Anyway, the reason Halliday kept this for his successor to find is he wants Wade to test out the technology and decide if humanity is ready for it. Why Halliday thinks the most glorified pop culture trivia / video game competition qualifies you for such a decision should be a problem, but sadly, a lot of billionaires have said and done a lot of dumb and eerily similar things in the past few years since I read Ready Player One, so actually, I can’t fault the book for that one. Tragically, our fates really are in the hands of people who should rightfully be cartoon villains.

To his credit, Wade does question Halliday’s motives in keeping this under wraps at all rather than releasing it himself. So hey, maybe it really is setting something up.

Wade goes back to his office with the ONI, and we’re treated with this lovely piece of narration:

I was grateful that Samantha wasn’t there. I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to talk me out of testing the ONI. Because I was worried she might try to, and if she did, she would’ve succeeded. (I’d recently discovered that when you’re madly in love with someone they can persuade you to do pretty much anything.)

There’s a lot to unpack about the implications this has for their relationship, but it’s way too early in the book for me to editorialize when one character hasn’t even been on the page yet. So I’ll just leave it here for the record. Hopefully you see the problem without me needing to point it out anyway. If not, feel free to hit my inbox.

So Wade, confident in the fact that Halliday would have warned him if there were any risks to using the ONI, decides to try it out. Even though he immediately follows up that statement with this:

According to the ONI documentation, forcibly removing the headset while it was in operation could severely damage the wearer’s brain and/or leave them in a permanent coma. So the titanium-reinforced safety bands made certain this couldn’t happen. I found this little detail comforting instead of unsettling. Riding in an automobile was risky, too, if you didn’t wear your seatbelt…

Wade. My dude. What the fuck is this simile. And why don’t you see that maybe a machine where you’re forcibly trapping yourself inside a virtual reality might be dangerous? Hell, when I said this was setting something up, I was expecting something vaguely interesting about the potential breach of privacy, or how you don’t need to literally walk in someone’s shoes to feel empathy for them, or anything substantial, but now I’m worried it’ll just end up as “man, sometimes science fiction machines will scramble your brain, isn’t that weird”?

Like, I don’t know, to me “it will put you in a coma” sounds like a good reason for Halliday not to release the ONI. Maybe we can still make it into a commentary on how corporations will sell stuff they know is directly harmful if it can make them a profit. Who knows.

The book waffles on about more risks, and the mechanics of how the ONI activates, and the warning disclaimer when it does turn on. Specifically, there’s a time limit of twelve consecutive hours, after which you’ll be automatically logged out, because yes, using the thing for too long can also cause brain damage.

Gregarious Simulation Systems will not be held responsible for any injuries caused by improper use of the OASIS Neural Interface.

See, now there’s the sort of thing that could be a source for commentary, but no, instead it’s thrown in there like it’s nothing and Wade glosses over the entire warning, and instead keep wondering why Halliday didn’t just release the ONI if even the safety disclaimers were in place.

By the way: this whole system has apparently gone through several independent human trials already, so I’m finding it hard to imagine that it’s actually a secret Halliday took to the grave as Wade says. Unless he also had everyone involved in those trials killed afterwards. Or maybe they all ended up with brain damage which rendered them incapable of talking about it.

And before you think I’m being unfair and maybe we’re supposed to understand that ourselves even if the protagonist doesn’t, I’ll remind you that the book didn’t trust its reader to know what the number 42 is a reference to, or what an oni is, even though I don’t think anyone in the target audience wouldn’t know about these two things.

There’s also the fact that, since this book came out, a video game did release with a scene intentionally designed to cause seizures, and it had countless fans flocking to defend it over that fact. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not assuming this book’s stance on whether your video game console causes brain damage and possibly coma is actually a bad thing, or just an acceptable risk.

Wade certainly seems to think so, since he agrees to the terms of service.

As the timestamp faded away, it was replaced by a short message, just three words long—the last thing I would see before I left the real world and entered the virtual one. But they weren’t the three words I was used to seeing. I—like every other ONI user to come—was greeted by a new message Halliday had created, to welcome those visitors who had adopted his new technology: READY PLAYER TWO

Well now that’s just silly.

And that’s our opening cutscene. And while this post is already long enough, I feel like I have to go on to chapter 0, because it feels like barely anything has happened so far. We didn’t even introduce any new character motivation or conflict, or a mystery to set the plot into motion, unless I’m supposed to think “why didn’t Halliday release this?” counts.

So Wade is back into the OASIS, and tells us about how much more real it all feels thanks to the ONI. I especially have to question how he can smell or taste anything—both of which he tells us he can. Like, who coded that? Did Halliday implement every single smell and taste himself, without anyone noticing? I hope you don’t need me to tell you that’s not typically how features are added to a large-scale video game.

If it feels like I’m nitpicking at the logic of the book, even though I always say I’m not very interested in that and would rather talk themes, it’s because I am, because there isn’t much else to discuss so far. Wade is happy about tasting virtual fruit. That’s the scene.

He tests out if he can feel pain, but no, the ONI reduces pain (a gunshot is translated as “a hard pinch”). On one hand, good, it would be a nightmare otherwise. On the other hand, I sort of hope there’s a setting for that in there, because otherwise, you just lost an entire clientele of kinksters.

This was it—the final, inevitable step in the evolution of videogames and virtual reality. The simulation had now become indistinguishable from real life.

Ah, now we have some juicy themes. Because if you think this is the inevitable final step in the evolution of video games, I invite you to look at literally any other art form, and what happened to them once hyperrealism became easy. Hint: they didn’t stop evolving, because it turns out realism isn’t the only goal one can achieve with art.

The realism discussion is not a new one in video games, mind you. In case you’re out of the loop: most of the big-budget blockbuster games (“AAA” as they’re known) are aiming for hyperrealism nowadays, and it results in development teams being forced to work in horrible conditions (known with the equally horrible euphemism of “crunch”). And, because it turns out that 1) humans working themselves to the bones isn’t healthy and 2) racing for realism with little to no vision besides it makes for poor creativity, a lot of these games come out as disappointments. Oh, there are hordes of Gamers™ who will defend them to the bitter end, but inevitably, in the months following release, the defense cools off while the criticism keeps on going, because the defense was a knee-jerk reaction born of a mix of people hyping themselves up for a game they hadn’t seen that much of yet, then attaching a part of their identity to liking that thing.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that this throwaway line feels like it comes from someone who is so out of touch as to accidentally support a world view that has in fact resulted in the biggest part of the industry stagnating artistically while growing more toxic for the people working in it. All the while, more and more independent games come out every year, proving that that realism is nowhere near the most important thing to making a game good, and that you can achieve much better results with a small team.

What I’m trying to say is: watch Jim Sterling’s channel, they’ve been bleeding out subscribers since they came out as nonbinary and make much better commentary on this topic than I could, and play Hades.

Back to the book, which sadly hasn’t become any more interesting since I decided to go on a tangent. Wade tests the ONI functions some more, all the while musing on how he knows Samantha would disapprove but that he doesn’t care, because what loving relationship doesn’t consist of that?

Among the functions, he tries the ONI files, the aforementioned recordings of someone else’s experiences. Specifically, a woman, which Wade tells us by telling us he suddenly has breasts, I suppose because Ernest Cline saw that subreddit about men writing women and went “I want a piece of that”. Oh, and also, those sample files were recorded from real people, in the real world. And yes, this goes exactly where you think it does.

SEX-M-F.oni, SEX-F-F.oni, and SEX-Nonbinary.oni

Look, I actually started writing a complaint about the boobs thing, and I deleted it, but now Cline is doing it on purpose. So, here goes: I saw a quote from this book on Twitter that looked like Cline attempting to make up for Wade’s casual transphobia in the first book. It wasn’t good, but it at least sounded like he was trying. So to immediately get this is…a lot? Let’s go for a lot.

I can almost excuse the use of “M” and “F”. You gotta name your files and you could excuse a non-exhaustive list. But…nonbinary? On one hand, I want to know what Cline means. On the other hand, I don’t think he can come up with an answer I’ll find satisfactory.

We are thankfully spared from finding out because Wade has just lost his virginity to Samantha a few days ago and he’s 1) not ready for this and 2) pretty sure this counts as cheating. You could make a case that this is more like porn, but I can see that this is more of a personal distinction anyway, and I can respect that one. Plus, you know. I don’t want to find out.

Wade logs off, and he can’t tell the difference between the OASIS with the ONI, and decides this will change the world. And then it’s back to the “how did he do it and keep it a secret”, even though Wade now finds out in the documentation that this had been in development for twenty-five years, basically since the OASIS launched. So it’s not really that it’s a secret, so much as there are a lot of people under very strict NDAs out there. Or, again, they’re all dead and/or otherwise incapacitated.

The ONI is the product of the Accessibility Research Lab, and Wade tells us about other stuff that the lab has produced using similar technology, mostly for medical purposes.

GSS patented each of the Accessibility Research Lab’s inventions, but Halliday never made any effort to profit from them. Instead, he set up a program to give these neuroprosthetic implants away, to any OASIS users who could benefit from them. GSS even subsidized the cost of their implant surgery.

Look, it’s nice that you want Halliday to be the good guy through and through, but it’s kind of hard to take any social commentary seriously when you think this is how a billionaire is made. Hell, even when he shut down the lab and fired its entire staff, he gave them a big enough severance package to set them for life. You know. Capitalism!

Hey, remember when Samantha said she was going to end world hunger if she won the contest, a thing billionaires right now could be doing, but aren’t, and she is now the co-owner of GSS? Yeah, I kind of hope the book remembers that too.

Speaking of the co-owners, the book just completely skips over the debate that our four main characters have over whether or not to release the ONI to the world. All we know is that they voted, and the vote goes in favor of releasing it. I mean, why have characters who could have opinions and feelings that could create a discussion? That might make us care about them! And who wants to care about characters in a story?

We put them on sale at the lowest possible price, to make sure as many people as possible could experience the OASIS Neural Interface for themselves.

What exactly is “the lowest possible price” here? Your company literally owns money. Like, OASIS money is real money. There is literally nothing stopping you from giving them away, especially because what you’re giving away is access to the platform you’re already running for a profit.

It’s almost like, even trying to make “good billionaires” out of its protagonists, the book can’t stop and actually make them significantly good.

Oh, I should mention. If you thought my Ready Player One review was angry at capitalism, wait until you see what the past couple years have done to me.

Anyway, once they his 7,777,777 simultaneous ONI users, a new riddle shows up on Halliday’s website. Because yep: our plot is apparently not about the implications of releasing the ONI, or any of the potential ideological discussions associated with that, it’s another riddle. Oh boy, do I wish I’d known that.

Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role For each fragment my heir must pay a toll To once again make the Siren whole

I cannot wait to have the book give me just not enough information to solve the riddle until it’s solved by the book itself. That was so much fun the other…what was it, five times? Six times? Something like that. Wade already tells us the Siren might be Kira Morrow, because her alias was named after one of the sirens of Greek myth, so I can’t wait for that plot point to stick around. It was so fun to hear all about this man pining for another man’s wife the first time!

So this is the “Shard Riddle”. People are apparently convinced it was made by Wade and his crew as a publicity stunt, but of course, they know that that isn’t the case, and they also don’t know what that riddle is supposed to lead to. So, that’s great. We have a puzzle, and we also don’t know what the stakes are. All we know is that Wade wants to solve the puzzle essentially because it’s a challenge.

We skip over a year, and Wade tells us about how IOI collapses and gets absorbed by GSS because of the ONI’s launch. Remember IOI? They were the bad guys, so I guess we have to cheer?

GSS absorbed IOI and all of its assets, transforming us into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the world’s most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform.To celebrate, we released all of IOI’s indentured servants and forgave their outstanding debts.

On one hand: good for the slave. On the other hand: not gonna cheer for a monopoly, you guys.

Another year’s skip, and now 99% of the OASIS users are using the ONI, and yes, that includes trading their experiences with one another too. And I guess we’re still hand-waving any possible problems associated with that technology, because the technology is made so that all recordings must be shared and played through the OASIS.

This allowed us to weed out unsavory or illegal recordings before they could be shared with other users.

How? Do you know any of the problems associated with content moderations on the current platforms? I don’t know if I want to point to Youtube’s extremely faulty algorithm, Twitter’s complete apathy towards its Nazis, or Facebook doing moderation by making underpaid staff watch all potentially problematic content, which resulted in serious psychological damage to said staff.

You can’t just say that as if it solved everything. The chapter later says this is handled by an AI called “CenSoft”, and as an AI engineer myself, let me tell you: this is not going to work. Again: Youtube is the way it is for a reason.

It also let us maintain our monopoly on what was rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the history of the world.

And again, monopolies are totally a good thing as long as it’s in the right hands!

When I’m implying that the book does not care for any of these potential problems, I mean it. These enormous ethical issues are sidestepped in cold narratin, and we just keep going on introducing new slang that I hate, but have to quote so help you keep up.

“Sims” were recordings made inside the OASIS, and “Recs” were ONI recordings made in reality. Except that most kids no longer referred to it as “reality.” They called it “the Earl.” (A term derived from the initialism IRL.) And “Ito” was slang for “in the OASIS.” So Recs were recorded in the Earl, and Sims were created Ito.

There. You have been infodumped.

In the midst of all this (still extremely dry) exposition about how this changed media, we also get this tidbit:

You could take any drug, eat any kind of food, and have any kind of sex, without worrying about addiction, calories, or consequences.

Now, I was going to rant about this, but then, a page later, this happens and spares me the trouble:

I’d struggled with OASIS addiction before the ONI was released. Now logging on to the simulation was like mainlining some sort of chemically engineered superheroin.

So, you are aware that addiction isn’t just possible, but extremely facilitated by this. But sure, no worries! It’s perfectly safe! Because our protagonists are good.

Also, remember how the last book ended on a weak attempt at having a moral that maybe the real world is good, actually? Yeah, Wade tells us the ONI helps poor people live enjoyable lives in the OASIS. So. Fuck that message, I guess. It only applies if you’re the literal wealthiest man on Earth.

And me? All my dreams had come true. I’d gotten stupidly rich and absurdly famous. I’d fallen in love with my dream girl and she had fallen in love with me. Surely I was happy, right? Not so much, as this account will show.

Aside from the aforementioned returning OASIS affiction, there’s the Shard riddle that Wade is now obsessed with, to the point of offering a billion-dollar reward to anyone with information about the riddle’s answer.

I announced this reward with a stylized short film that I modeled after Anorak’s Invitation. I hoped it would seem like a lighthearted play on Halliday’s contest instead of a desperate cry for help. It seemed to work.

On one hand: good, Wade finally has a character flaw that the book actually acknowledges as a character flaw. I can work with that. On the other hand: this is all told to me in such a dispassionate that I am dreading how the book will handle this character flaw. Which is to say, I’m not expecting it to be very good.

(For a brief time, some of the younger, more idealistic shard hunters referred to themselves as “shunters” to differentiate themselves from their elder counterparts. But when everyone began to call them “sharters” instead, they changed their minds and started to call themselves gunters too. The moniker still fit. The Seven Shards were Easter eggs hidden by Halliday, and we were all hunting for them.)

Especially when this is something the narration feels is more important to tell me about.

Anyway, skip another year, and a gunter finally leads Wade to the First Shard. Solved that riddle, I guess. And wait, wasn’t part of why IOI was ~evil~ in the first book that they were paying people to find the Easter Egg for them? How is this any different, Wade?

And when I picked it up, I set in motion a series of events that would drastically alter the fate of the human race. As one of the only eyewitnesses to these historic events, I feel obligated to give my own written account of what occurred. So that future generations—if there are any—will have all the facts at their disposal when they decide how to judge my actions.

And that is the end of our chapter 0. And can I just say: what a mess already. I don’t think my snark can properly convey how utterly devoid of emotion this book’s writing is, and that alone is honestly more of a turn-off than anything else in the book so far. Even, knowing that I railed about it in the first book, I still feel newly unprepared for it. And it’s not like this double-prologue is making me hopeful that the book will show an ounce more critical thinking—or decent fucking humanity towards marginalized groups—as its predecessor.

So, that’s a lot to look forward to! For the sake of my sanity and schedule, don’t expect me to do such big posts every time. I’ll probably do one chapter a week from now on, if that. We’re in for a long ride, but I hope it’s worth it, at least.

[aries-writingblog]

Atlas (1)

Summary: After years of being imprisoned on the Raft, Tony negotiates freedom for his sister Tessa. When she’s free- so is her past, and it will never stop hunting her.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OC(Stark)

Chapter Word count: 1,666

Warnings: PTSD (subtle ish), trauma, torture (in later parts), suicidal behaviors and thoughts, mentions of death, character death, injury, violence, angst, and a lil bit of fluff in there

Disclaimer: Atlas is my own, original work with characters belonging to Marvel (except Tessa and Dr. Clifton). Plagiarism is not cool kids.

A/N: this is my first work Im posting to this platform and I’m really excited and nervous about it. Hope you enjoy- constructive criticism is always helpful as well!!

The Avengers Tower. Former Stark Tower. 93 floors of office space, labs- people carrying out their business. People going about their day. At the top of all of them is Tony Stark. Waiting. Waiting in silence. Typically, he isn’t one to wait on anything or anyone but today... today is different. Today is special. Finally, the silence is broken by a shrill ring of his phone. Tony snaps it up, immediately accepting the call.

“Mr. Stark? Reid Kerrings.” The man’s voice carried through the phone, introducing himself. “Listen, I hear you’re trying to to negotiate a prisoners freedom?”

“She shouldn’t even be a prisoner,” Tony grumbled before plastering on a thick business tone. “Yes, that’s what I’m trying to do here. Thing is, I have a plan that I ran by Fury and Coulson and they seem to think it’s a great idea. Only thing is- that prisoner of yours is apparently ‘dangerous’ and she’d need stipulations on if she were to be released into my care.”

Tony hated this- speaking about her as if she were a terrorist. He hated that she’d been in maximum security prisons for six years. He hated that she was on the raft now. But, if he wanted to play ball, he had to agree to the terms. And unfortunately, that was one of the terms. He’d tried it his way two years ago and it got shut down. Several times.

“Well... you’re a damn maniac- prisoner 067112 is a psycho-“

“Her name is Tessa and that’s my sister you’re talking about so if you’d like to see your job another day I’d keep quiet.” Tony snapped, clenching his jaw. The phone fell silent before Kerrings cleared his throat.

“She would have to meet with an appointed therapist three days a week. She would also have to have a check in twice a week with a parole officer. If there is any flare up of her enhancement that is not accounted for by a member of your team, she comes back here and is no longer allowed parole. She is to be on a tight leash.” Kerrings read through the conditions of the agreement that Tony and Fury had worked out. “She must agree to these terms before her release. If she does, she will be escorted to your property tomorrow at 10:00 AM. Do you agree to these statements made today?”

“Yes.” Tony felt an excited, nervous bubble form in his stomach. He was doing it. His sister was almost free.

“Excellent. The escort team will run a security check on the building and perimeter.”

“Oh, well, not to brag or anything but- it’s the Avengers Tower. I ’m pretty sure this is the best it gets in terms of security.” Tony scoffed, turning when he heard the door opening. Steve Rogers stepped into the room, intending on speaking with Tony about another comm unit. He broke his. Again. He stopped short, hearing the man on the phone.

“This woman shouldn’t even be out of her cell here- she’s dangerous, I don’t care if shes your sister or not. The power of this woman is something that should be contained. not roaming around New York on a Thursday afternoon.”

“She’s a human being. No telling what you freaks have put her through in the raft- that’s probably why she’s going insane. You don’t even allow sunlight in that dingy of a prison. You treat someone like an animal, that’s what they become. Now, if you’ll excuse me, i’m going to run my own safety diagnostics on my own tower.” Tony quickly ended the call and lifted his eyes to meet Steve’s. “Can I help you, o wise elder of the yonder village?”

“Just... a new comm piece.” Steve stepped forward and tossed the broken pieces to the desk before meeting Tony’s eyes again. “What was that all about?”

“That is a surprise for the team I’m arranging.” Tony sat down at his desk, pulling up an image of a new weapon system, one that they’d encountered a few weeks ago on a mission. “These thugs were dealing with now... they’re sophisticated. They’re playing on a new ball field. So... I’m leveling it.”

“You can’t just do that without consulting the team first.” Steve scolded, his arms crossing over his chest. “What are you doing?”

“You’ll see- tomorrow morning at ten, have the team all meet in the conference room. I’ll bring my surprise to you.” Tony grinned, feeling strangely optimistic for once. Steve only sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Tony.

“Fine- I’ll call a meeting.” Steve spun on his heel and marched out of the office. Tony sank further into his chair, spinning it to look out of the window.

“Friday, make sure floor ninety two is fireproof.” Tony called out, a twinge of doubt forming in his mind. He was quick to shake the thought from his mind, funneling all his belief into his sister. It had to work. For her sake.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sitting at the oval conference table, Bucky felt an impatience he hadn’t felt in months. Steve had let it slip- more like Bucky could tell there was something and kept prying- that Tony was on the phone with someone, talking about a prisoner. A woman prisoner. Bucky wasn’t sure what to expect and that caused a great deal of anxiety to pit in his chest. He didn’t like being kept in the dark.

Beside him, Steve sighed heavily, leaning his head on his fist, resting on the table. Being roommates with the guy, he knew Steve hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night, like most nights. He knew this because he himself was also up, roaming the apartment, watching tv and staring off the balcony.

“Anyone know what this surprise it stark mentioned?” Natasha pressed, becoming quite impatient herself. They’d all been sitting at the table for fifteen minutes. Waiting.

“No clue- I hope it’s better than the last surprise- the one that exploded while in use on the field.” Sam commented, scrolling absentmindedly on his phone.

Finally, the door to the room burst open, revealing Tony Stark marching in with purpose. Behind him, a woman in heavy chains, with metal cylinders encasing her hands, was being escorted in by two men in fire retardant kevlar uniforms. Her head was bowed, dark brown hair shifting to cover her face. Bucky sat up, seeing the woman marched in, heavily restrained. Tony clapped his hands, rubbing them together afterward. He gave the crowd a large smile and nodded once.

“Surprise, Avengers! This is my favorite sister, Tessa Stark, Tess, this is everyone. I’m sure you were given the brochure.” He turned to the two men. “You fulfilled your duties, you can go now.”

The men unclipped the chains and then pressed their thumbprints to the pads on the cylinders. They released with a hiss of steam, Tessa rubbing her wrists once they were free.

“I know you.” Sam’s voice broke into the conversation. Tessa’s jaw clenched and her eyes stared into the floor. She swallowed harshly, keeping her back ramrod straight and her hands in front of her. “Stark... oh, shit- where have I seen you...”

“Anyways folks, she is here to help out on our new group of rogues... she has a, ah... particular set of skills. Mostly explosives and fire. And since that’s what we’re dealing with, I’ve brought in the big guns.” Tony explained, settling in his chair and gesturing for Tessa to take a seat as well. She seemed wary of sitting beside Wanda but did it anyways, sitting barely on the edge of the chair. “Now, we’re gonna need a new plan of attack with-“

“Atlas!” Sam snapped his fingers, pointing at her. Tessa stiffened, caught off guard by the level of his voice. “That’s it! Code Name Atlas, Operation Dry Sands! You served in the army- I’m Sam Wilson, I flew with-“

“Riley...” her voice was raspy and low, rusted with disuse. “I remember you.” Bucky watched as she seemingly tried to melt into the chair, trying to hide herself.

“You were baller, man! She cleared missions like it was nothing!” Sam praised her, excited to finally meet her. “There was talk of her all over camps- everywhere!”

“Atlas?” Natasha asked, a brow raising. “That’s a peculiar code name- sounds... specific.” Tessa didn’t respond, keeping her head low. When the room fell silent, Steve took control.

“Right, well, Tony you mentioned a new plan of attack?” He expertly guided the topic over to a new path. Bucky couldn’t help but let his attention drift back to the new mystery in the room. He allowed his eyes to scan over her, stopping on her forearm where there was black ink. A tattoo of the army symbol, numbers below it. Maybe her squad number? Her arm shifted and Bucky looked up, meeting her eyes. He knew he’d fucked up.

Her dark brown eyes smoldered- a red tint glowing under her irises. Her lips were pulled into a scowl. He quickly lowered his gaze, catching a glance of her veins in her arms. glowing lightly orange. Bucky clenched his jaw and leaned back into his chair, a fierce scowl building on his lips. He didn’t like this woman, She seemed... violent. closed off. Hell- maybe she was just too much like him. And maybe he shouldn’t make a snap assumption but for some reason...

“Alright well, that’s all for now, Tessa- welcome to the team, please make yourself comfortable and if there’s anything we can do to help out- let us know.” Steve nodded as he stood up.

Tessa only nodded, stood up and spun on her heel- leaving the room without a word. Everyone glanced to Tony. He only shrugged and stood up.

“I’m gonna go make her feel at home- just got out of prison and all, see you around.” Tony gave a small wave over his shoulder and walked out, trailing out after his explosive sister.

[queerbutstillhere]

Jason had thought he had known pain, back when he was living on the street. He thought he knew pain, working with Bruce, sparing nearly nightly, fighting criminals and goons and stopping petty crime. But he had been so wrong. He didn’t know pain. He didn’t know pain until he was forced to watch Dick and Wally interact for nearly a week straight.

Here’s what had happened. Dick had been injured, broke his foot, got put on bedrest for a week, so says Alfred. Except bedrest for a Bat means just staying in the manor, but they still can go wherever the hell they please.

And since Dick was all laid up, Wally West, his “best friend” decided to come and keep his company and wait on him hand and foot. It drove Jason insane. They would just lay around on the sofa, or in Dick’s room, playing video games and chatting or whatever, and it was so painfully obvious how in love with each other they were, but so closeted and it was so annoying. Just get over your gay pining stage and kiss already, numbskulls!

An example of this. They were laying on the sofa, Dick’s head in Wally’s lap, foot up on the arm rest as they watched a movie, Cast Away, actually. Jason was in the armchair, trying to study. He had a lot of catching up to do with his classes. Dick randomly just sighed heavily and looked up at Wally.

“Why won’t babs date me?”

“I don’t know man, You’re amazing, anyone would be lucky to have you.”

Jason looked up, mouth falling open. Dick blushed and looked back to the tv.

“Thanks bro.”

“Are you fuc-”

The two “Friends” looked over at him, confused.

“What?”

“She won’t date you cuz she aint fucking blind!”

Dick’s eyebrows furrowed together.

“What does that mean?”

“If she isn’t dating him then she is blind???” Wally asked, clearly confused.

“Oh my god I fucking can’t-” Jason snapped, jumping up and grabbing his book and speed walking out.

It just drove him absolutely bonkers, watching those two dance around each other and never do anything. And like, he gets it, they’re not out, to anyone, that he knows of anyway. But seriously, it was so painfully obvious that they were in love with each other. Everyone could see with how they looked at each other, those sappy gazes and the soft, encouraging speeches. He wanted to throw up whenever he was left in a room with them.

It got so bad that he just at this stage, didn’t even pretend to not be joking about them anymore, they’d do anything and he’d just mutter out a tease like “Gross” or something and then move on. Neither one seemed to realize what he was talking about. Which was annoying, but not the end of the world. Hell even Bruce seemed to notice it, and if Bruce notices something like this, you know it’s obvious. Not to say he’s bad with emotions, but. . . . Well he is.

Now, spoiler alert, if you didn’t know.

Jason died.

Yup, poor kid went boom in a warehouse after being beaten by a crazed clown with a crowbar.

He was dead for a while, and then boom he wasn’t anymore. The Al Ghul’s decided to pop him in a lazarus pit and he was just alive again, albeit very fucked up. LIke, murderous rages about every time he inhaled, fucked up. It took him a while, and I mean a while, to finally make it back to Gotham, and even longer to decide he didn’t need to murder Bruce or any of his brothers anymore. By the time he even started feeling accepted in the family, it had been several years since his return.

Now imagine his fucking suprise and rage when he walked into the batcave one day to borrow Bruce’s forensics equipment and found Dick sitting in Wally’s lap.

He slammed on the breaks and just stared at them for a moment. They were laughing about something, and then Dick leaned in and gently kissed Wally.

“Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME!” Jason all but screamed.

Dick fell backwards off of Wally, who nearly shot up, eyes wide.

“Holy Shit, Jason!” Dick screamed back, hand on his chest as he laid on the floor.

“It’s been like EIGHT YEARS.”

“What??” Wally asked, staring at him like a shocked deer or something.

“I FUCKING MISSED IT!?!?!?!”

“MISSED WHAT?”

“You two!!!!”

They stared at him, Dick sitting up and leaning against Wally’s knee.

“Wait, What the hell does that mean!?”

“It means that the whole time I was Robin, I had to watch you two assholes flirting and pining and being gay!!!”

“What!?”

“Oh my god you two were so oblivious, I wanted to drive a rock through my skull!!”

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you!”

“I’m the one who had to watch you two and you can’t believe me?!? God, fucking finally!”

Jason was torn between being so glad they finally got out of the closet and asked each other out, and being pissed that he hadn’t been there to see it and laugh in their faces the whole time. Dick just stared at him, mortified. Wally was starting to look amused.

“I’m so done, I can’t even with you two,” Jason grumbled, spinning on his heel and stalking away to the lab equipment.

“Jason Peter Todd, get back here!”

“Fuck off, Dick!” Jason yelled back, not stopping.

He can’t believe they got together and he fucking missed it.

For @hyperactive-lectiophile ! I hope this is satisfactory!!! <3