#because my new medication is backfiring

[thenightshadowqueen]

As a chronically ill person, I find Pinocchio extremely relatable. Like, I am also shit at being real.

[deathbyday]

˚ 𖥔˚Anya x implied f!Reader - sticking up for her˚ 𖥔˚

Written By: DeathByDay

+++

You sat around the lounge room’s table with the rest of the crew. Anya sat to your left, her hands intertwined with yours on her thigh. Swansea was just right across from you, Daisuke beside him. Curly and Jimmy sat on the ends of the table, staring at each other.

You all had just gotten word from Curly that Pony Express has finally shut down and this would be the last time the crew was together. Everyone became upset at the news, rightfully so, but Jimmy was angry.

He ranted about how Curly was selfish and heading for “bigger and better” than the five of you. You raised a brow, realizing how idiotic this fight between the two became.

You weren’t going to say anything about it, but that backfired when Jimmy began going around the table stating everyone’s struggles. And of course, he just had to start with your girlfriend.

“Anya never got into medical school because she’s, well, let’s be real..” He trailed off, glancing at the poor girl. He turned to you and opened his mouth to speak, but you immediately cut him off.

“Oh, fuck you, Jim!” You shouted, slamming your hands on the table and standing up. You pointed a finger towards him, continuing on. “You don’t have any right to go around the table saying that shit. What about you? Why don’t you share with all of us what Curly meant by a ‘struggle of a life’?”

You glared at the man, your eyes full of hatred. His brows furrowed even more as he stood up, his voice rising to match your energy.

“Who the fuck do you think you are to shout at me like that?” He yelled, his body acting like it was ready to pounce on you. “Don’t ignore my question!” You replied, voice raising. Everyone else stayed silent, watching the two of you argue.

That was until you eventually ran around Anya’s chair and slapped the brunette across the face, causing him to push you. You gripped his hair and slammed him into the ground with all your force, not thinking about how much more strength he had than you.

You two continued fighting, punches and kicks being thrown around. Daisuke had his hand clasped around his mouth in shock, looking like he was about to burst into tears and giggle like a kid.

Curly got up from his seat and shouted at the both of you in attempt to stop the fight, but failed miserably. As his attempted failed, Swansea stood up and grabbed you from underneath your arms and dragged you back, stopping the chaos.

“C’mon, kid!” He muttered a bit loudly, struggling as you fought back. Anya stood by the older man, a few tears in her eyes. As Swansea let you go, you were about to pounce on the brunette once again, but your girlfriend held you down by placing her hands on your shoulders.

“Y/N, stop!” She scolded, her grip tightening. You glanced up at the woman, obeying her order. You turned back towards Jimmy, seeing his face bruised up. You lightly chuckled, knowing that you fucked his face up.

Anya helped you up before dragging you away from everyone, walking to the medical room.

“Baby, I’m fine..” You muttered, dragging out your words as if you were pouting. She shook her head, concern written all over her face. “No, you aren’t. Your face is all bruised, not to mention the blood coming out of your nose.” She replied. She seemed mad, but her features told a different story.

After a few seconds of walking, you finally got to the medical room. You sat down in the red chair beside her desk, waiting for her to get the supplies to help you. She quickly grabbed them and set them down on the table.

She brung a few tissues that were wrapped around each other and pressed them against your nose, stopping the bleeding. You groan, feeling the red liquid drop onto your lip. “You shouldn’t have done that.” She mumbled, shaking her head in disappointment.

“But he came at you for no reason! I can’t just not step in.” You defend yourself, slightly giggling as you recall his bruised face. She sighed, taking the tissue away from your nose.

She then grabbed an ice pack, placing it against your cheek. You grumble, squirming in your seat at the new temperature. “Do you really think this is necessary? I swear, I’m fine.” You pout, feeling uncomfortable as she held you in place.

“This is necessary. If we don’t get this treated, the bruising can get worse.” She explained, gently tapping the ice around your face. You nod, taking a glance around the room as she did so.

After a few minutes, she pulled away, causing you to turn to her. “Did I do good?” You murmur, hoping for her praise. She fights back a smile and gives you a light chuckle. She places her hands on her hips before exhaling, the worry in her face gone.

“You did great, honey. Just please promise me you won’t pick a fight with anyone else? We really don’t need you getting fired.” She smiles down at you, bending over and giving you a light kiss on your forehead before leaving the room, taking the ice pack and extra tissue with her to deal with Jimmy.

+++

authors note

I’m so sorry if this isn’t as good as you were expecting, my eyes are literally fighting to stay open💔

But thank you for the request!! I appreciate it very much<3

[fanaticsnail]

Hi! This is anon with the doctor oc.

I have not a request but just a thought. Imagine Doc revealing to the crew that flowers can be edible (I think it can be new info for most of them) just for it to backfire immediately because someone is trying to eat a poisonous flower the next minute

What Did You Eat, Bubblegum?

Hey Doc Masterlist Here

Word Count: 1,600+

Synopsis: Sharing your passion has ended in un very foreseen circumstances, but leaving you a little upset regardless.

Themes: Platonic!Bubblegum x gn!reader, Platonic!Killer x gn!reader, softness, little bit of flirting, allergic reaction, poisoning, venting, swearing, medical practice, patient x doctor, terms of endearment, reader is referred to as "Doc" - the doctor of the Kid Pirates

Notes: As someone who has a basic guide for foraging on edible weeds and native plants in my home country, this is very dear to my heart. I use flowers in most of my cooking, especially as garnishes. Onion Weed (three corner leek) is my favorite edible flower. Screengrab from this clip.

Tag List: @mfreedomstuff @daydreamer-in-training @sinning-23 @gingernut1314 @i-am-vita @indydonuts @feral-artistry @since-im-already-here @sordidmusings @nerium-lil

“Oh, come on,” you whisper beneath your breath, hastily rolling back the sanitary lining sheet for your treatment cot to house its next victim. 

“Hey Doc," the voice of the hulking first mate called over from the threshold of your office door, "Got another one for you.” Bubblegum was heaped over his shoulders, his face three-times what it ought to have been. 

Bubblegum was hastily placed down in a heaping thud, his head immediately flopping backwards and his mouth hastily gasping and gulping for air. His skin was blotchy and donning the same vibrant hue of purple as his lengthy hair. 

“What did you eat, Bubblegum?” you gently coax your sensitive crewmate, noticing the rise in welts and pus-filled boils forming beneath the surface of his skin. Bubblegum attempted to smile at you, his teeth drawing back to reveal a sheepish grimace. 

“Wih wahs’ah fauwah,” he muffled past his abnormally puffy lips. Your puzzlement was depicted on your brow as you looked to Killer. He sighed, rotating his head on his shoulders and donning the 'hat' of 'muffle-translator.' 

“It was a flower,” he nodded to you, gently walking to perch his hips against the back of your office chair. 

“And where did you find it, sweety?” you asked Bubblegum as you donned your hands with latex gloves. 

“Doun bai n’dah wayah n’ groien’ i’da reyds,” you nodded along to Bubblegum's muffled words before looking over to Killer. 

“Down by the water and growing in the reeds,” Killer bobbed his mask along with each nonchalant explanation. You nodded, looking over to Bubblegum and readying an aloe-based balm for his itching skin. 

“And what color was it?” you bit back your growing smile as you added, “Be as descriptive as you can, sweetheart. It helps with every detail to know how to treat you.” Killer rumbled a soft growl below his breath as Bubblegum began to explain himself. 

“N’ah sem ehz woit n’dah pels ‘er ewow,” you sucked your entire bottom lip into your mouth as you turned away from both men, overcome with the ridiculousness of the encounter, and stifling a laugh with knowing Killer would have to translate for you. “N'ah miwow ehz weyd n’deyre wahz bwaek speirz grewin’ aouda n’dah senn’r. D’ehr wayah wah’z pewlin’ inah cwoiyew ahda boyum.” 

Without missing a beat, you straightened your back and bore your eyes directly into Killer's mask and waited for his translation. He huffed back a guttural growl, inhaling deeply as he translated for you. 

“The stem was white and the petals were yellow, the middle was red and there were black spikes growing out of the center,” he uttered concisely, “The water was pooling in a coil at the bottom.” You nodded, gently mincing up a remedy with your mortar and pestle and bringing up a drawstring bag. 

“Mm-hmm,” you nodded along, placing down your mortar and pestle and removing a portion of the creamy aloe concoction and pasting it on his features, “And what did you learn?” Bubblegum’s face blushed a soft hue of pink as he widened his eyes to depict his innocence. 

“Notta gow fowahjin’ ithow m’hawaht doktnar,” he uttered sorrowfully. You smiled down at him as Killer translated for you. 

“Not to go foraging without the ship's doctor,” Killer uttered nonchalantly with a soft shrug. 

“My hot doctor, you mean,” you nod back at him over your shoulder, finishing off with Bubblegum and giving his shoulder a soft squeeze. “Use this balm until the itching, swelling and bruising goes down. Okay, sweet pea?” 

Bubblegum nodded along and gave you as much of a close-lipped smile as he could muster. The purple-haired crewman exited your office and closed the door behind him, prompting you to exhale while removing your latex gloves with a curt ‘snap.’

Just as you began to relax, two arms snaked around your waist and tugged you back into the wall of flesh and muscle behind you. You shrieked in response, your whole body growing tense with fright. 

“You little shit,” a husky pur called down into your ear, forcing lighting to surge from your coccyx up to your cranium in a fizzling crackle, “You could understand Bubblegum the whole time, couldn't you?” A small squeak was pulled from your throat. 

His arms felt like everything all at once, overwhelming your senses. Secure and welcoming, taunting and warning, strong and intimidating: all of the things you knew Massacre Soldier Killer to be. You lulled your head back on his chest, looking up at his mask adorned face and giving him a coy, pouty smile. 

“I didn't want anything to get lost in translation,” you shrugged in his arms, clicking your tongue up at him with a mocking taunt painted on your lips, “Didn't want to miss an opportunity for you to use that pretty voice I love so much, big guy. It's always a joy to fuck with you a little bit.” 

“Oh, you're a little bratty today,” he purred down at you, the hue of his icy blue orbs gazing dangerously down at you through the several holes in the mask, “What's got you in such a shit mood, hm? Wanna tell Daddy about it?” You refused to pay his comment any mind, instead shrugging out of his arms and tidying up your work bench. 

“You know, if you keep using that one slip up against me, it's gonna lose its charm,” you scoffed at him, ridding the cot of the sanitary lining and throwing it into the trash compartment beside the bench. You spray down the leather lining to sanitize it, wiping it down and casting away the disposable material in the same trash compartment. 

Killer continued to watch you, eying you off and reading your body language with ease. 

“So you don't want to talk about it?” he offered you, spinning your desk chair around to watch it rotate with a soft squeak at the metal base, “Gonna do that thing you do and pretend you're fine until you explode?” You huff out a puff of exasperated air and turn back around to him. 

“Look, I'm just a little pissed that my idea of fun turned around and detonated in my face, is all,” you pout at him, folding your arms and glaring at the trash compartment at the side of your bed. “When I borrowed that book on edible plants for remedial purposes from the Blackleg chef, I should've known it'd turn to shit. Sometimes I forget the crew I serve with, I should've known better.”

“You shouldn't feel apologetic for your enthusiasm,” his tone was solid and baring a hint of warning, “We love your enthusiasm. I-... I love your enthusiasm.” His stutter caught you off guard, prompting you to arch your brow at him. 

“I'm fully aware of how much you all enjoy my enthusiasm,” you arch your neck and look down your nose at him, your pout still evident on your features, “I just wish you'd all check in with me before eating random shit you find on the side of the bay.” 

Killer’s soft, high-pitched giggle prompted you to drop your pout and offer him a soft, half-smile. His laugh continued as you joined yours alongside his, softly reaching forward and placing your hand on his scarred, left forearm. 

“Alright, alright,” you squeeze his arm and teeter off your joint laughter, “Let's get back to work, yeah? I've gotta do some paperwork correspondence with Trafalgar.”

“Trafalgar?” you could hear the audible arch in his brow, his disdain depicted in his tone, “Why?” 

“He was asking about something, is all. Something to do with my dissertation paper back when I graduated,” you shrug, gently releasing his arm and turning back to your desk. “I don't get to geek out about my thesis often, and getting his questions via Den-Den made me feel passionate about my studies again.” 

Killer nodded along with you, slowly returning your desk chair back towards your desk and gently coaxing you to sit down in it. 

“Dinner’s in about about thirty to forty, if you're coming,” he uttered beneath his breath. As he turned away, he felt your hand clutch his wrist and hold him in place. He gently glanced down to look at you, your face not leaving your desk as you withheld your growing fluster. 

“Thanks, Kil,” you continued to hold your eyes fixed on the desk in front of you, “For listening to me, I mean. It means-... It means a lot to me.”

He leaned down, his mask brushing it's brow gently against your temple. 

“I'm happy to be on ‘Doc Diffusal Duty’ any time,” he whispered softly before pulling away, “You wanna talk, know I'm here, alright?” 

“You're the best, big guy,” you give his wrist two rapid squeezes before letting go of it, returning back to your writing. Killer halted at your door, glancing back at you and watching as you returned to scratching and marking your journal and shifting through the papers. 

“It's paella, by the way,” he called back over to you, “Just in case you were wondering.”

“I'll have an epinephrine on standby for Wire,” you called over your shoulder, “We both know there's no holding him back from your cooking.”

“Oh, Doc,” he clutched his heart in feigned dramatical emphasis, “You flatter me, but there's really no need.” You paused, cocking your head to the side and your brows knit in puzzlement. Killer giggled softly before his regular baritone cadence returned. 

“I used chorizo as a substitute for shellfish, just to give you a bit of a break.” 

Before you had the opportunity to turn the entire way around, you noticed Killer was already away from darkening the threshold of the doorway. Your bottom lip quivered at the thought that he changed the menu just to suit both Wire’s anaphylaxis, and to give you a break from playing disciplinary warden and watchdog. 

You were definitely going to volunteer for washing up duty as payment for his thoughtfulness.

[dragonagitator]

House MD fans: You wake up in the PPTH ER in summer 2004. What you doing?

Scenario parameters:

All your memories of the show and the past 20 years are intact.

You are stuck there/then and cannot return to our universe/year.

You have nothing but the hospital gown on your back.

Questions:

So, what do you do?

How much would you tell House?

How would you get him to believe you?

Who else would you tell?

How much would you tell them?

Inspiration:

The author self-insert isekai fanfic "Intervention" by VivatRex (aka @acrownforaking). They've been writing it for the past 11+ years and are still updating. It's already nearly 300k words long despite only being up to the events of S02E15. I AM IN AWE.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this scenario ever since I read that fanfic a month ago. I'd love to discuss it with other House MD fans and hear what you would do.

(Apologies to the mutuals for the abrupt blog topic change. A new brainrot has taken hold.)

My short answer:

My long answers are below the cut.

So, what do you do?

My primary objective would be to enlist House in averting the pandemic.

My reasoning: If anyone can nip it in the bud before it gets out of Wuhan, I figure that a world-renowned genius doctor who is an infectious diseases specialist, speaks Mandarin, and now has a 15-year head start would have the best chance.

Difficulty level: Babysitting a narcissistic manchild with the self-preservation instincts of a toddler until the year 2020 so that he makes it there then alive, out of prison, and with his sanity, medical license, and professional reputation intact. To quote Quantum Leap, "Ohhhhhh boooooooy."

Strategy: I'm in the "I could fix him, but whatever's wrong with him is way funnier" camp, so I wouldn't try to change him (that always backfires anyway). Instead, I'd try to change his circumstances:

A stable romantic relationship would help, so I'd seduce him if I can (I'm not his type but a gal's gotta shoot her shot), try to get him together with Dominika earlier if I can't, and tell him how horribly his relationship with Cuddy ended so he knows better than to even start it.

Avert the shooting. Moriaty was a patient so his info is in the PPTH files. I AM THE ONE WHO KNOCKS. Or for a less murdery approach, try to get him arrested in April 2006 for violating New Jersey's strict gun laws.

Warn House about Tritter so he can switch patients with another clinic doctor.

Warn House to never get on a bus with Amber.

Tell Kutner I'm from the future and he's the only one who can prevent something horrible from happening (he's a Trekkie so he'll want to believe), then unfurl my big timeline poster and point at the "Kutner suicide early 2009" stickynote and ask him "so what's up with that, dude?"

Tell Wilson everything I can remember about his cancer -- he's an oncologist and thus can work backwards from there to figure out when to start checking for it so he can cut the tumor out while it's still just a tiny baby.

I would take a harm reduction approach to House's drug use, e.g., suggest that he try microdosing psilocybin and extend his liver's lifespan by substituting cannabis for some of his Vicodin and alcohol consumption.

Methods: Even though he doesn't have one for most of the show, House mentions a few times that he's entitled to hire an assistant, and I happen to be excellent at administrative work.

I think he'd be willing to hire me because working as his executive assistant / department secretary would position me to recognize patients as they come in so that I can discreetly pass along anything I remember, e.g., the kindergarten teacher has pork worms in her brain, ask the scientist in Antarctica to show you her feet, etc.

Meanwhile, I could lurk around the hospital preventing miscellaneous shit, e.g., get the gift shop volunteer from S01E04 to go home sick, ensure that the gunman from S05E09 is promptly admitted, diagnosed, and treated before he snaps and takes hostages, etc.

Possible sidequests:

Use my foreknowlege to get rich by milking online poker bonuses until the passage of the UIGEA in 2006, use my poker money to start flipping houses until 2007, get in on the "Big Short" in 2008, and set a Google Alert for "Bitcoin" so I can start mining/buying it from day one. Unfortunately, I haven't paid enough attention to individual stocks to play the market other than knowing that Amazon would be a good long-term buy & hold.

Use my riches to change the outcome of the 2016 election and try to steer the development of the internet and society in general in a slightly less stupid direction.

Send Pete Carroll a letter postdated just before the 2013 Superbowl telling him the outcome, then suggest for the final play of the 2014 Superbowl that the Seahawks try handing the ball off to Marshawn Lynch instead of throwing it because that throw will be intercepted. PRIORITIES.

How much would you tell House? How would you get him to believe you?

Your story about being from the future of an alternate universe in which House and everyone he knows are characters on a fictional TV show is already too batshit crazy to believe even without his kneejerk "everybody lies" skepticism. How would you differentiate yourself from all the patients who pull crazy stunts to try to get him to take their case?

My answer: For the "from the future" part, I'm hoping there's some sort of test that House could run to confirm that I was indeed vaccinated with a mRNA vaccine against the COVID-19/SARS-COV-2 virus. Given that neither of those things existed in 2004, that would be physical evidence that I'm not from around here now.

If producing physical evidence isn't possible, then I know that Vegetative State Guy from S03E15 is already a patient at PPTH because he'd been there for 10 years, so I'd find him and tell House about his son. I could also tell House enough about the cases from the first few episodes that I'm pretty sure he'd believe me by Christmas. I want in on Chinese food with Wilson.

I would wait until House accepted the "from the future" part before broaching the "fictional TV show" issue. Until then, "I watched a TV show about your life and cases" is a 100% true statement and it's not my fault if he assumes that show was a documentary. :)

Once he believed me, I'd tell him everything.

Who else would you tell? How much would you tell them?

There are people out there who would literally kill for your knowledge of the future, so going public or being too open about it seems highly risky.

My answer: I'd tell House, Wilson, and Chase right away. Kutner but not before Jan 2009. Maybe eventually Cuddy and the rest of the Diagnostics team if keeping my foreknowledge of the future from them proves too difficult.

House is the only one who gets to know everything. Everyone else is on a "need to know" basis.

I might also bring Bill Arnello (the brother/lawyer of the mob informant in S01E15 "Mob Rules") into the circle of trust because he could be a very useful resource for some of my sidequests, e.g., changing the outcome of the 2016 election far far far in advance and in the most direct way possible. (Hi, Secret Service! This is a purely hypothetical discussion about time travel and not at all indicative of any real criminal intent, pls do not pay me a visit, kthxbai.)

I think the only people I would tell the "fictional TV show" part to would be House, Wilson, and Chase, because there are things I need to warn them about that definitely wouldn't have been in a documentary. Like Chase needs to know that killing Diballa is 100% the right thing to do but he seriously needs to work on his OpSec. Everyone else gets the implied documentary lie of omission.

If I get caught knowing too much by random patients, I'll just claim to be psychic. Way more people believe in that than would believe in time travel.

What would you do?

[motheroftheantichrist]

I started watching House while in the middle of a Saw phase last summer, so I ended up creating the weirdest AU in my head where Adam and Lawrence both end up working at Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

Amanda saved Adam, but she knew she had to take him to a hospital far off so that John wouldn't find him, so he ends up at Plainsboro. House takes his case because of course he would be fascinated by Jigsaw and wants to be able to say he worked on a Jigsaw victim. Adam can't pay the medical bills, so Cuddy lets him work off the debt and he ends up as House's personal assistant partially because he's completely useless at everything else, but mostly because Cuddy wants to fuck with House. This of course backfires because they end up being a chaotic power team destined to give her a migraine, but she doesn't know that.

Enter Lawrence, who has moved and his switches hospitals to try and get a fresh start after the trap. He has no idea that Adam is alive until he's being given a tour by Wilson and is being brought over to meet House, who is in the middle of the world's weirdest argument with his new asshole assistant with a prosthetic arm.

Amanda gets herself constantly admitted into the ER at first to be able to check on Adam because she still feels guilty and wants to make sure he's recovering, but later because she thinks Dr. Lynn Denlon is cute and doesn't know any other way to approach her. She and Adam end up becoming friends, and he convinces her that getting a job at the hospital would be a way easier way to see Lynn.

I don't know if anyone else is seeing the vision, but I just had to put it down in a post because it has been bugging me for a full year now, and I'm about to start watching more House so I know it'll be back full force. I just think it would be hilarious.

[charliemwrites]

I have one question and one funny mental image. Mental image funny: Saint tiring an alpha pre teen out like humans do puppies before training sessions, so that they’re more focused and less likely to be jump/excited by all the new stuff. Question. The one thing I rarely see explained or discussed in abo fics is reproduction. Typically a heat cycle in animals indicates that the female is ready to reproduce. In abo fics though the ones in heat don’t seem to be at risk of this. They also typically have some kind of suppressant in most fics to prevent going into heat, however that usually backfires the second the drug wears off. If you feel up to it. How would you go about explaining reproduction heats and ruts for the abos in your fic?

Hi hi!! Saint is for sure tiring out their mentee before things like Omega interaction or large crowd settings. Get all that energy and aggression out now, because it’s not acceptable to do so in public.

As for reproduction! I haven’t worked out the fine details, or really know enough about several parts of the science behind these things irl for it to be realistic, but here’s my take for my a/b/o au.

The general concept I have rn is that heats and ruts are sort of a hormonal cycle for the specific hormones that make someone lean alpha or omega. By that token, a heat or rut severity might coincide with how far along the spectrum an alpha or omega is.

contraception (of the chemical variety, ie a pill) is usually for Alphas and it just prevents them from actually reproducing, not from a rut. The same goes for the few Omega contraceptives. The general doc recommendation is to go through normal heat and rut cycles. They only happen every two or three months and last 3-4 days.

Severe heat/rut might prompt medical intervention the same way intense/irregular periods might but this goes for both Alphas and Omegas. Regulation and balance is key, not total suppression.

If an alpha or omega does stop taking their contraceptives/hormone regulators, I would expect it would be a gradual return to their body’s “normal” as the meds flush from the system, including symptoms that one might find when someone with a uterus stops taking theirs

[nardos-primetime]

first thing that pops up on my for you page from your blog:

i am so lost from where this guy came from. is this an au? also i am extremely jealous of their hair, i want it for no good reason. lmfao sorry for the weird question/ask.

He's from a newer au I haven't talked about yet! Don't feel weird for asking at all!

The whole au is like. Heavily inspired by Cyberpunk 2077 (a guilty pleasure of mine), it could technically be a crossover au, I guess? I dunno, but I'm lazy/like to do stuff for fun, so certain aspects are obviously going to be changed. I'm not totally settled on designs, but I think I'm gonna keep most of the design aspects from this drawing for the "finalized" concepts.

The main plot centers on Casey Jr being put under the care of the turtles by "Mother" soon after having a whole (unwilling) relic insert situation in his brain, leading to former star Lou Jitsu to be revived within his mind!

The issue is that all of the turtles aren't really. The best father figures. None of them even want anything akin to a child, and even if Casey is 19, these guys are Mercs. Outside of their own clubbing and shows they do gigs for cash, including dangerous ones, ESPECIALLY dangerous ones. Having this new guy is like, a total roadblock, especially because Casey still, somehow, despite Night City's clutches and the last group he was pressured into before this, has some morals about him. The only reason they didn't kill him and stage an accident is because Mother promised them financial compensation for caring for him.

So he's stuck with four new "dads" who mostly all hate him or find him annoying, and Lou is not any different, he also finds him naive but he dislikes the turtles as well because he's a jaded old fuck (major hypocrite, too).

While the turtles are baseline all mercenaries, they share some traits between each other instead of leaving it to a "one guy only" job in most cases.

Donnie has the most technical skill, falling mostly under Techie and Net/Edgerunner, he adores tech after all, he also has illegally dabbles in being a ripperdoc, primarily for his brothers.

Mikey is actually the fallback for general medical issues, including those involving backfiring implants. He's only better at this because he's dabbled in researching (and using) tons of remedies, mainly for pain. He's the guy who's helped Donnie when working on inserting implants in the others. He's even stayed awake during his own surgeries to help Donnie during his fuck ups and implants.

Leo, while not extreme netrunner levels, does hold some hacking knowledge, just what he needs to make things a little easier with anything but combat most of the time, as combat is what he enjoys the most within jobs. He also tends to be the one to make their deals with Mother.

Raph is mainly muscle. Not to say he's simple, it's just his main role and main focus, having grown much more protective over the years, often acting as a bodyguard for the others during their own shows (hence he has the least involvement with any of their music). He's the least of the bad influences for Casey, at least directly.

They used to have another member of the group a few years ago, a media. Or a media wannabe, at least.

They normally have some reference to her, even if small, hidden within their shows.

This is all, of course, not tapping into their mystics, which are a bit different in this au as well with how they work. Lets just say Mother allows them special permissions when it comes to mystic usage.

...at least those are some of the basic ideas I've been throwing around in my head for the story, lol. I like to throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks to me. The whole thing is technically a wip still but so are 90% of my aus tbh lmao, this onrs just a lot more wippy because it's mainly a "for fun" au and I also haven't been able to play cyberpunk for myself to brush up on things outside of research and sometimes a man is just... not up for that, especially lately with my attention span, I hope to brush up a little more again sometime soon and maybe even delve into some aspects from the og ttrpg perhaps, I'm not sure yet, though, haha.

Oops long post, huh? My bad </3

[farfromstrange]

Do No Harm

CHAPTER THREE: Broken Glass

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Summary: You have a really shitty night, and it only gets worse until a man in a black mask saves your life.

Warnings for this chapter: ANGST, graphic description of domestic violence (flashback), panic attack, mention of blood & injury, alcohol abuse, sexual assault, Reader tries to play the hero and it backfires (might piss you off)

Word Count: 7.6k

A/n: I worked very long and hard on this one, that's why I didn't post it last week. This is very heavy, so heed the warnings. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! I’m spending New Year’s in London, and I won’t have my Laptop, so I’m already wishing you guys a happy new year! Spend the day with people you love. Do something that you love. Just enjoy yourselves and we’ll see each other again in 2024!

Read Chapter 3: Broken Glass here on AO3

The loneliness eats you alive like a parasite. As soon as the door of your apartment shuts behind you, the noise coming from the city disappears into the distance, and you are faced with the silent reality of being utterly alone. 

It feels like you are living in a haunted house in the middle of nowhere, not a small apartment in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen.

There are no picture frames on the dresser in the hallway. The two plants you bought for yourself are slowly dying of thirst. The fridge is empty. You don’t own any decorations—you don’t even have a shelf for all of your books, and more than half of them are medical research material, anyway. 

You may be living in this place, but it isn’t yours. After two years, you are no closer to settling down than you were when you first came to New York.

Every day, you ask yourself how long this peace is going to last, and every day ends the same—you’re still safe, but you are deeply unsettled. Your thoughts keep turning against you like demons that you can’t exorcize. Every day, you wonder when you will have to run away again because your past has a way of catching up to you when you least expect it, so you remain on edge. That’s how you live your life. 

If you knew how to accept peace, maybe you would have settled down and personalized your apartment by now, but then again, do you even know who you are? Do you remember the girl you once were? Your memories of the past are scrambled.

You can only remember what it was like to live in a bubble, to be forced into a cage like a bird and turned into someone you never thought you would become. You remember running. You haven’t been yourself in years. Even if you wanted to, there is nothing left for you to put up that would feel like it belongs to you without feeling like pretentious bullshit at the same time. So, you don’t even bother. 

It’s lonely though, having nothing and no one. Claire is your friend, sure, but you had nothing and no one back then, and you still barely have anyone now. She’s your friend, but that’s all she is.

You can’t admit it out loud, of course. You can’t admit that you feel lonely, and you can’t pick up your phone and call the one friend you do have to take up on her offer because of reasons not even the rational part of your brain wants to understand. 

The lamp in the living room casts a dim light over the main area of the apartment and the open kitchen. You place Matt’s business card on the kitchen counter.

Should you call him? A million questions go through your mind, firing rapidly like bullets from an automatic gun. You’re not even sure if you want to call him. You felt comfortable around him, but enough to abandon all your principles? If you call him, he might ask you out, and what do you do then? You don’t date, not anymore, and you definitely won’t let a stranger into the mess that is your life. You can’t do that to a kind soul like him. Matthew is special in a way that you can’t put into words, and that makes the decision so much harder. 

You know exactly what’s holding you back. It’s the same invisible string of feelings that is keeping you from personalizing your living space. You don’t know when you might need to run, and then what? 

Your lungs contract. Air is a lot harder to come by when you’re all wound up. You hope that a nice glass of white wine will help put some things into perspective. Fooling around with someone can’t hurt, but anything more than that could lead to a catastrophe. You have had enough of those for a lifetime. 

You like keeping to yourself. It keeps your heart safe. What happened today, meeting Matthew after you so miserably sought a place to be alone, it was a coincidence—a welcome distraction. And you seemed so like-minded at first glance. He was intriguing and you’re still wondering about his injuries and how he got them, but that’s not the point. None of this is. 

The point is that you are not the kind of person he thinks you are. That’s why you can’t call him. And strangely, that hurts a lot more than simple heartbreak, knowing that you have been ruined for all relationships to come because you made one wrong choice and fell down the rabbit hole—unfortunately not into Wonderland. 

“Shit!” you curse when a drop of wine lands beside the glass.

You lick your finger, trying to wipe the liquid on the counter with a paper towel. In the process, your hand accidentally brushes against the glass, and the sole touch sends it hurdling to the floor. You try to catch it, but the fragile glass has already hit the tiles of your kitchen floor. It shatters into a million pieces. 

The sound reverberates in your ears. Like a shot in the dark, your body is jolted awake into a state of panic. The crash reminds you of hell, and the all-too-familiar flames start touching your skin again, set out to burn you alive. It’s a feeling you know by heart—a feeling you wish you weren’t so painfully aware of. 

Glass breaks before your inner eye. 

You were trying to make him a drink, you remember. He wanted Whiskey, no ice, and at perfect room temperature—it was always the same. After the first black eye that you had to hide under mountains of concealer, you taught yourself to perfect it. You didn’t want to disappoint him. You didn’t want to get into trouble. 

You spent more money than you could afford on the one brand of Whiskey he always told you to get, even if that meant traveling to a store miles away from home. He always wanted that Whiskey, and who were you to deny him?

You didn’t pay attention for one second, and the glass shattered on the kitchen floor. Your heart stopped. The last drops of the brown liquid spilled everywhere, including your clothes. The glass was his favorite. Expensive, too. It broke because you weren’t looking. You were so stupid. 

Fear froze the blood in your veins. Your heart stopped beating. You couldn’t breathe. You reached for a cloth with shaky hands, trying to pick up the pieces in time, but the sound of the glass breaking—that godforsaken loud sound that reminded you of obnoxious screaming—was instantly followed by an even louder echo of angry footsteps. 

Over time, you became painfully aware of those footsteps. You knew how they sounded on wooden floorboards, carpet, and the stairs in the hallway of the apartment building. You still remember how they sounded when he was wearing those squeaky sneakers on the linoleum floors of the hospital.

It’s a sound that always sends shivers down your spine; everyone has those sneakers, but his footsteps were much heavier, much more demanding even when he wasn’t demanding anything. 

And back then, you knew what would follow as soon as you heard them.

“What is this?” his voice reached your ears. 

Your throat tightened. You didn’t even dare to look up. If you had met his eyes, you would have seen your fate in them, and the empty black hole that was his soul. “I’m sorry, I– I lost my grip and–and I dropped it,” you said. You thought that would fix it. How foolish of you, to have faith in someone who never had faith in you. “I’m so sorry,” you couldn’t stop repeating it. 

You thought this time, he would listen to your apology. He would let you fix what you broke. You would have done anything for his approval, for his praise, and for him not to be mad at you. You didn’t want to fight. The evening had started so well. He even kissed you when he came home because you finished dinner in time. He smiled because you managed to clean even the last crevices of his apartment after your shift. He promised he would reward you. 

You fucked up. You knew you fucked up, but you prayed to God that his good mood would keep you safe this time. That he would give you a pass because you have been so incredibly good. You’ve been the best girlfriend he could have asked for, so obedient, never questioning, and always on his side—you were wrong. So, so wrong. 

He saw the empty bottle of Whiskey. He picked it up. “That was the last sip of my good Whiskey,” he remarked. 

You stopped moving. 

“I’ll pick up a new one,” your voice was barely above a whisper. “Stores are still open. This is my fault. Let me clean this up and I will–”

“You had one job.”

The sound of his voice turned cold, colder than usual. You exhaled a shaky breath. 

“You had one job,” he said. “I go to work, I save lives, and I teach young, useless doctors like you how to do the same. All I asked of you was to cook dinner, clean the apartment and make me a fucking drink.” 

With each word, his volume ascended. Your shoulder started vibrating, but you forced yourself to hold your breath. You couldn’t let the fear show. Being afraid, in his eyes, equaled weakness, and he would prove to you time and time again what weakness truly meant to him. He would turn you into a weak mess and laugh about it. You were trying your hardest to avoid any more unnecessary punishment. You had to tread lightly. He was in charge, not you. 

And you breaking the glass was so stupid, all you wanted was to surrender. In your twisted mind, he was right. It was just a glass, but he told you how useless you were many times before, and you were slowly starting to believe it. 

Without him, you were nothing. No one else could have possibly put up with you.

“What do you do?” He reached out and slammed the empty bottle on the ground. 

You barely had time to react before some of the bigger shards hit your cheek, slicing the skin. It took you a second to process, the pain not even kicking in because you expected his hand to come down on you, not an entire glass bottle. The trajectory almost hit your eye. Almost. 

“You spill my fucking drink!” this time, he yelled. 

A sob escaped your lips. There it was, the smallest sign of fear and pain. 

He rolled his eyes. You shouldn’t have sobbed, you knew that. “Get up,” he said. 

You winced when he grabbed you and yanked you off the floor. The trail of blood ran hot on your cold cheek. It stung. Your heart was pounding in your chest, hammering against your ribcage and the fresh bruise that still hadn’t healed. 

You were scared, and the tighter he grabbed you, forcing your chin upward to look him dead in the eyes, the harder it got to hide what you were truly feeling. In his eyes, you were nothing. And you were so weak, all you could do was to submit. 

“Look at me,” he said. His eyes roamed your face. 

You couldn’t not look at him. It was impossible. What you saw made you sick to your very stomach. It tied a noose around your neck, threatening to kick you off the high chair. Your feet were dangling dangerously close to the cliff. 

“You’re pathetic, you hear me? Useless. You had one job. One. And you couldn’t even do that right.”

You opened your mouth, but instead of letting you speak, his hand tangled in your hair and he pulled, hard. “No!” he bellowed. “You have lost the right to speak to me.” 

He said your name. He always said it in a way that made you want to vomit. Your first and last names were tainted because of him. He used them in vain. He used you. He used everything as he saw fit and believed he was entitled to it. 

You hated him, but you also loved him.

“You’re going to clean up the mess you made, and then you’re going to go to the store, buy me another bottle of Whiskey, and you’re going to make me another drink. I don’t want to hear a single word out of you,” he said. “Are we clear?”

You nodded. He pulled a little harder. 

“What was that?”

“Yes, sir,” you choked out. 

When he finally let you go, you fell to the floor, your chest heaving with dry sobs. Perhaps he was too annoyed or maybe leaving you alone, finally, was a display of humanity. 

The man you once believed to have loved you turned out to be a monster that would not have wept, not possibly, if you had died. He only wanted to control you, and whenever he felt like he couldn’t, he punished you. You stayed way too long because you believed in someone who was never there in the first place. The real him you believed to know once had never been real. He had been a fraud. He did anything he possibly could to lure you in, and then you were stuck. 

But even knowing this, you wanted to please him, and you took what he gave you. You ate it up like a starved cavewoman. You had no one else but him, and that alone is a sad thought that you keep entertaining now. 

The sound of broken glass has haunted you since that day. Whenever it happens, either to you or someone else, you find yourself in a state of shock. It’s never the same memory, but always alike. And it hurts. It hurts so much, you can’t breathe. 

You touch your left cheek. The scar is barely visible anymore, but whenever you touch it, it feels like a mountain of regret. You can still feel the blood pooling under your fingertips, the liquid as sticky as it was hot. 

You stumble over to the sink, circling the broken glass. Cold water; your senses need a sudden slap across the face or you will cower in a corner and surely die. Your heartbeat is racing in your ears, and your fingers shake as you form a bowl with your hands to catch the water from the tap. 

Air returns to your lungs. Burying your face in the cold water, you focus on the way it seeps into your hot skin.

Broken glass triggers you. Squeaky footsteps in the hospital hallways trigger you. You zone out so easily. You can’t talk to strangers without suspecting the worst. Every time you pass the hospital administrator’s office, you’re scared you will get fired—that you will lose your job and your entire career. 

He took everything from you. He broke you and the optimistic young woman you used to be. You were so bright, so ready to change your life for the better. You worked hard to escape the toxicity of your childhood, and you still managed to run into the arms of an abusive narcissist who saw you as nothing but his property. 

It’s sad, and it’s utterly ironic; you told yourself you would never make the same mistake your mom made before she died, and you still did. You were foolish, and you’re still foolish now. 

You can’t call Matthew. You can’t trust anyone, not even yourself, and even if he is trustworthy, he doesn’t deserve someone as damaged as you. 

The business card lands in the trash can under the sink. You give it one last teary-eyed look before slamming it shut. It’s better this way. The excitement you felt when you first held it in your hands was bound to only be temporary. You knew reality would screw it up, maybe it truly is for the best. Or maybe this is the trauma talking and you’re sabotaging yourself, but even then it’s better this way. 

It’s early in the morning, and you leave the broken glass on the sticky kitchen floor. You can’t touch it, not even with gloves. Every time you do, the scar on your cheek stings, and you lose your breath. Every bone, muscle, and nerve is hurting in your body, and every breath tears right through your soul. 

You don’t want to live like this anymore.

The warm water of your small shower rains down on your clothes frame. The bottle of wine in your hand is no longer cold and mixed with water, but you don’t care. Your mind is fuzzy, intoxicated, and in agony. It’s a raging wave of anger with no possible point of release. You’re drowning in despair, buried in a grave of your own making. Alcohol knowingly doesn’t mix well with heartache, but it’s the only thing that will make the voices go away. It silences your thoughts just long enough for you to find a sliver of rest in this stormy ocean, something to hold onto so you won’t drown completely. 

Your heartbeat aligns with the rhythmic pattering of the water. It serenades you. The fog engulfs your brain, weakening your already strained muscles. The cocktail in your veins is poisonous. You should know better than to do this to yourself. You’re a doctor, after all. You are well aware that liquor is not medicine, but it’s the closest you can get. You don’t care as much about your own well-being as you should. 

Getting drunk all by yourself under the hot shower stream fits right into your miserable state.

The sun rises and falls over the next couple of hours. Your alarm goes as night befalls Hell’s Kitchen, but you don’t hear it. Only after it has gotten dark and your phone has started ringing with calls from the hospital does your mind registers that something isn’t quite right. 

You wake up in a cold sweat. Your head is pounding. The wine bottle lies empty on the nightstand next to you, together with a bottle of tequila that you decided to open. Glasses are strewn around with empty takeout containers that are more than a few days old. At first, you’re disoriented, reaching beside you for your phone, which is still in the living room next door. 

You forgot to close the blinds, but you were so out of it that you didn’t notice the hours pass by. The analog clock on the bedside table tells you that it’s a few hours before eleven. At night. 

Your shift was supposed to start at ten. 

The information takes a moment to connect and process, but as soon as it does, you snap out of whatever hungover state you are in and force yourself out of bed. You stumble over empty bottles and dirty laundry on your way to your phone.

“Shit, shit, shit!” you curse. You almost step into the pile of broken glass in the kitchen. “Fuck me! Shit!”

You are screwed, you know that. You’re not even sure if all the alcohol has left your system. You might as well lose your job tonight. 

With one hand, you dial the hospital administrator’s number, who called you over thirty times over the past hour, while you try to find something to wear with your other hand. 

The line finally clicks after what feels like an eternity. “You better have a damn good reason why you aren’t here, Olivia, or I swear to God–”

You cut her off. “I’m so sorry, Shelly,” you say. Your voice is slightly shaky, but you keep it together. “I didn’t hear my alarm a-and I slept in. This has never happened before. I’m usually a very light sleeper. I… I’m already halfway out the door, I promise. I’m sorry.”

“You slept in?!” Shelly answers, her voice resembling a screech. “What— Liv, seriously, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just… I slept in, that’s all. I’m so, so sorry. I know I screwed up.”

“Unbelievable. First Claire calls out with a mystery illness that apparently still hasn’t gone away, and then my best trauma surgeon sleeps in.” You can hear her shake her head over the noise of the hospital in the background. She sighs. “You’re lucky that this is your first tardy,” she says. “I’ll let it slide just this once. Just… hurry, okay?”

A weight falls off your shoulders. You let out an audible sigh of relief. “Thank you,” you tell her. “You have no idea how much this means to me. I–”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just make sure you get here before midnight. And you will have to work the time that you’ve missed, even if that puts you at risk of having to pull a double shift. This is not up for debate. I feel like I’m working at a children’s daycare.”

You’re not sure if that was meant for you or if she simply forgot to hang up.

You grab your bag and your keys in one swift motion. “I’m leaving now. See ya!”

The bus you usually take to work at this time of night is long gone. There is one more that could take you to your destination, but you arrive at the bus stop just a millisecond too late. It takes off right in front of you, refusing to turn back even when you start sprinting after it, flailing your arms around wildly. 

It’s late, it’s dark, and you’re all alone. The walk to the hospital is over half an hour long, and you promised Shelly you would make it in time before midnight. The next cab is miles away; you’ve checked the app twice, and anything beyond that would be too expensive. 

Hell’s Kitchen is dangerous at this time of night, but you don’t have much of a choice. If you don’t try, there is a high chance Shelly will fire you. If she fires you, you would have to find another country to start over in—you burned bridges in all possible States, and anything closer to where you came from would be too dangerous for you. 

Darkness doesn’t scare you; broken glass and loud footsteps scare you, but the dark of the night has always been somewhat of a soothing companion to you. What scares you is what could be lurking in that very darkness, and the thought makes you walk a little faster. 

Your head is still pounding. Every step you take delivers a punch to your temples. You can feel your heartbeat in your throat. The streetlights are suddenly too bright for your sensitive eyes, but you push through. You have to. 

“So stupid,” you mutter under your breath. “Universe, if you can hear me, just kill me now.”

Passing a particularly dark part of town with the mace on your keychain clutched tightly in your hand, a loud scream pierces the air. Your feet glue themselves to the ground. 

Some things you can only understand if you have experienced the paralyzing feeling of dread that would cause a human being to scream bloody murder. 

You would be lying if you said that the scream you heard coming from that alley wasn’t in any way familiar to you. Perhaps that’s why you choose to abandon all rational thought and run toward danger rather than away from it. Adrenaline is a funny thing, and when it interacts with trauma and anger that has been building for years, there is no knowing what the human body might be capable of doing. 

With the mace in your hand, you walk toward the alley. The closer you get, the louder the desperate pleas grow. The helplessness in the woman’s voice paints a clear picture of what is happening. 

“Hey!” your voice resembles a shout in the poorly lit alley. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” you ask. Your voice becomes a foreign language. 

The man, dressed in a pair of ripped jeans and a hoodie, is towering over a terrified woman. The bottom of her dress is slightly ripped, and it keeps riding up as she struggles against his grip. 

From the corner of your eye, you can see the shiny handle of a knife sticking out of his boot; there is no telling when or if he will pull it. And when you look into his empty eyes, you realize you overestimated yourself. 

“Get lost!” the man tells you. He must be around your age, judging from his features. 

You shake your head. “I have no intention of letting you live out your disgusting rape fantasies on a real-life human being,” you retort. “Let her go, or I will call the cops.”

He takes a step toward you, his hand reaching for the knife. Instinctively, you extend your keychain and spray the pepper directly into his eyes. You empty the entire bottle on him, the adrenaline in your veins locking your thumb to the fragile button.

The woman slides out of her attacker’s grasp when he topples over in agony. He cries out. The spray is quickly causing the skin around his eyes to redden and swell. For a moment, he’s completely incapacitated. 

You can tell that he didn’t calculate for this to happen. He also doesn’t seem to know the woman he decided to attack personally. He just saw a woman walking alone at night and thought he could take what he wanted like the animal he is. 

Your eyes flick toward the woman. Sweat is starting to pool from your pores, mixing with the adrenaline. 

She adjusts her dress, her sobs turning into heavy panting. You know that look on her face all too well. She has scratches on her thighs and arms. It’s hard to tell just how badly he already hurt her before you came along, at least in this lighting and from where you’re standing. 

You reach out to support her. “Are you alright?” you ask her. 

She looks down at her shaky hands, then back at you. She reminds you of a deer in headlights. With a gentle tug, you pull her further out of the alley. The man who attacked her is still blinded, clutching his skull and scratching at his eyes, making the effects of the pepper spray worse. In your mind, he can’t hurt you anymore, but you still need to get her away from him—as far as possible, too. 

“A few cuts and bruises,” you observe, trying not to touch her as you assess her injuries. “Listen, I’m going to call the cops and we’re gonna get you to a hospital, alright?” You search her eyes until she finally looks back at you. “This is nothing I can’t stitch up in a few minutes,” you say, “and then I’ll get you someone who can help you process what happened. Just know that he can’t hurt you anymore. I promise. I’m a witness, and I will make sure he gets what he deserves.”

You should know better than to make promises, especially in the heat of the moment. This is not something you can confidently promise because things might not turn out in your favor. 

The woman pulls her arms away suddenly. “No! No cops, no hospitals,” she pleads. 

“I know you’re scared, believe me, I do, but–”

“No!” She shakes her head again, her voice becoming more determined as the seconds tick by. 

You wish the world wasn’t as cruel as it is. You can’t force her. If it were easy, you probably would have turned to law enforcement too, but it’s not easy. What hurts the most is that you understand why she is so adamant about not calling the police and not going to a hospital, even with so many variables still unknown; you understand too well what it is like. 

Shame and fear are powerful emotions—when all else fails, they take over. 

“I’m sorry,” the woman’s voice quivers. She looks between you and her attacker once more. “Thank you, really, but I can’t—I have to go. I’m so sorry.”

“Wait!” You try to stop her, but she slips through your fingers before you can convince her otherwise. 

She disappears down the street. Calling the police seems almost futile now. You look down at your phone. You’re still a witness to a crime. You should speak up about what you saw. You should try to get justice, even if it will be your word against his. 

Your finger hovers above the call button, but a dark voice from the alley stops you in your tracks. “You bitch!” the man shouts. His voice carries, making you shiver. Now that you’re alone with him, you realize how helpless the situation really is. 

You can’t move. You can’t run. You can’t hide. Your eyes widen. Even half-blind, he has managed to pull the dirty knife from his boot, and he is charging right at you. As if you are the substitute for the woman you just saved. You should have run with her. This was a bad idea. 

“Fuck,” you curse under your breath. You press down on your keychain, but it’s empty now. You’re weaponless with a lot of fake confidence that is slowly swindling, and somehow, you still can’t move. 

You’re frozen in place. Your own recklessness will get you killed. No one will miss you. Your corpse will be buried in a strange cemetery in a strange city that has only been your home for two years, and no one will ever know who you truly were because you told Claire to take your secrets to the grave with her. You will die alone with the familiar feeling of fear and despair spreading through your veins like wildfire. 

Something inside of you cracks, and it melts your frozen muscles. You snap out of your haze when he is only a few inches away from you. In an instant, you have started backing out of the alley almost entirely. You’re running, and you’re running fast. 

You believe that karma comes back around, but sometimes, it takes the wrong direction. You lose your footing suddenly, stumbling over your own shoes, and your ass hits the pavement with a force that knocks the breath out of your lungs. Your wrists bend at a painful angle as you catch yourself, and you look up into the red eyes of what you expect to be your certain demise. 

The impact from the knife never comes. You know what it feels like to be impaled by a sharp object. You know what pain feels like—but it never comes. 

You open your eyes when your ears pick up on the sound of bone breaking—the sight you’re met with startles you, and for a second, you wonder if you’re still alive. You touch your wrist to check for a pulse; it’s still there. You’re not dead, and you’re not hallucinating, either. This is real. 

You’ve seen the news reporting on a man in a black mask scouring the streets of Hell’s Kitchen at night. For weeks now, gang bangers, suspected rapists, and drug dealers have been piling up in the emergency room with several fractures, some of them severe enough to require extensive surgery, but none of them were ever hurt enough to die from their injuries. 

A Russian was dropped from a building a while back. He fell into a coma and then died suddenly a few nights ago, but that was the only patient who got beat up by the infamous Devil of Hell’s Kitchen who lost all quality of life. 

You don’t like to judge, but there is something about him that makes you feel safe rather than afraid. He only beats up those who are in the business of committing injustice and pose a danger to innocent lives. He’s there when the law fails. And so far, he has never killed anyone. The injuries on the patients you treated were quite severe and suggested that whoever did it has a great collection of anger issues, but he has enough self-control not to kill. 

He’s not a threat to people like you. He is, however, a threat to the kind of man who tried to rape an innocent woman and then threatened you with a knife. 

Your attacker drops to the ground with a pained grunt. The man in the mask is towering over him, his chest heaving. You admire his physique for a moment too long. Your eyes trail from his toned chest in that tight black shirt to his backside in those tight-fitting black pants. 

He seems oddly familiar yet, at the same time, he is a total stranger. A stranger in a mask. A stranger who throws fists like a professional boxer. A stranger who could crush your head within seconds. And still, there is something about him that reminds you of someone else, someone you just recently met, but you can’t put your finger on it. It wouldn’t even make sense if you tried. 

You’re still sitting on the cold asphalt, staring up at the man who saved you. He turns his head toward you, slowly. His plump lips glisten in the moonlight. 

“You hurt?” he asks. 

Your throat is all dried up. One glance down at your palms tells you that you only scraped the skin, but you’re not injured. So, you shake your head. Maybe there is a little fear mixed into your stunned eyes, but only because this is a very strange situation to find yourself in, and you have been in a lot of very strange situations in the past. 

He tilts his head ever so slightly. His nostrils flare. “You’re bleeding.”

You don’t even want to know how he knows that.

“Just a scratch,” you finally manage to speak up, although your voice sounds embarrassingly small.

You wipe your palms on your pants and slowly rise to your feet. Every bone in your body hurts. Standing across from him, you realize how much taller he is in person. 

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he says. 

“I know.”

He stops. You can’t see his eyes, but the lower part of his face reveals the confusion that has taken him over. 

“I’ve dealt with men worse than you,” you state. “I’m not scared.”

He chuckles darkly. “You’re welcome.”

People usually don’t talk back at him, it seems. At least those he saves usually don’t. 

“I could’ve defended myself. In fact, I already did.” You lift your keychain. “I don’t know if playing the hero is your thing, but I’m not a victim.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Excuse me?”

“I wasn’t trying to play hero,” he clarifies, a humorless smirk resting on his lips, “I was saving your life ‘cause you were trying to play the hero. Next time, I suggest you don’t bring mace to a knife fight.”

“And I suggest you don’t put your nose where it doesn’t belong,” you retort. 

You were grateful for no longer than a second. Now, you’re just annoyed. 

The alley is still. The atmosphere is heavy with the aftermath of the danger you only narrowly escaped—thanks to him, and you hate admitting that even to yourself. He seems unfazed, almost amused, by your attempts at asserting your independence, and the arrogance radiating off him is hitting the wrong nerve.

“This guy was gonna kill you because you decided to do the right thing,” he says, adjusting his leather gloves. “I decided to save your life. We both made decisions tonight, and it doesn’t matter whether we are happy with them or not. What matters is that no one got hurt.”

“Tell that to the woman he traumatized for life.”

He sighs at your words. “You still did the right thing.”

“I know,” you say.

“Are you always this feisty?”

“Only to masked vigilantes who think I’m some damsel in distress that needs saving and that everything can be solved with their pretty little fists.”

“Well, my pretty little fists are the reason you didn’t end up stabbed, so,” he answers, and his lips curl into a smug smirk. He shrugs, his black shirt riding up only slightly, revealing a sliver of marble skin. You can’t help but let your eyes wander.

“I don’t need a thank you,” he says, “but you need to be more careful next time. Don’t go into dark alleys alone, especially at night. It’s not safe.”

You want to give a snarky remark, but the sound of church bells in the background signal to you that it’s midnight, and you are supposed to be at work. Checking your phone would be a death sentence. Sirens can be heard in the background, but they are not headed for you. 

Maybe Shelly won’t fire you if you’re honest with her about what conspired tonight—if you bare you allow her a glimpse into your soul—but you will suffer the consequences of your own stupidity gravely in the days to come, that much you do know. 

You exhale an exasperated sigh. “I don’t have time for this,” you mutter. 

“Got somewhere to be?” the masked man asks you. 

“As a matter of fact, I do. But that’s none of your business.”

You wonder if he’s frowning under that thin cloth that is hiding his real identity. He still seems so familiar to you. How can he fight if he’s keeping his eyes covered? It’s not the first question you have asked yourself about him, but it surely is the most prominent one because no explanation for it makes sense to you; at least not one you can think of. You want to ask, but you also don’t want to keep encouraging him. You shouldn’t care.

You look back down at the man he knocked out. He’s still unconscious, and he’s bleeding profusely. The angry woman in you wants to let him rot here and let the masked man have his fun, but the doctor in you can’t just leave him there. 

“What about him?” you hear yourself asking, but your mind is far away. 

He tilts his head toward where you’re pointing, not actively looking. How could he? His eyes are covered. His eyes… You can’t make sense of this, and it is affecting your judgment. It’s making you frustrated. 

“He can’t touch you anymore,” his dark voice suddenly sounds so soft. 

A sliver of humanity shines through his facade. Your angry demeanor cracks. “You beat him up pretty good. He could have lasting brain damage,” you remark. 

He pauses, tilting his head further toward the man on the ground. “No,” he says, pouting a little. “He’s still breathing.”

“He could still have brain damage.”

“He has a few broken bones, cuts, bruises, but he’s alive.”

“Those things are totally unrelated. You’re not a doctor, you wouldn’t understand. I’ve already treated more bad guys in the past month than I could possibly count on my fingers, and all of them seemed to fear the same man. Now, not many things can scare a gangbanger to death. Not many people can deliver blows so deliberately without actually fatally wounding anyone. I know it was you,” you say. “Everyone knows it was you, and they’re afraid of you. I’m not, but I am a doctor, and I took an oath to do no harm. I vowed to help those in need, including those I believe may not be worthy of my help. This has nothing to do with judgment. I know you don’t kill; I see it with my own eyes every damn night, but the Russian you beat up a couple days ago?”

That catches his attention. His head whips back around to you, his upper lip twitching slightly as if he is tasting the air. His attention is entirely on you. The question, “What?” gets lost as nothing but a breathless whisper in the cold night air. 

“He was in a coma,” you continue, “and then he died. It’s probably unrelated to what you did, but there was only a small chance he would have ever woken up again anyway. Just because someone is still breathing doesn’t mean their brain is alive. What makes us human, who we are, that is all anchored in our brains. We can’t survive without it. You may not have killed him, but that guy barely had any brain activity left, and that is not something you can consider life.”

You didn’t expect him to sneer. You must have hit a nerve with your words, but it must have hurt him deeply. 

“My point is, I am not letting you do the same to this guy. I’m calling an ambulance and the police, and I will let them figure this out.”

“He’ll walk,” he says, and his voice is dark again. It sends shivers down your spine. 

You look at him, your confidence not wavering this time. “Then so be it, but I am not letting him die,” you say. 

“How is having a rapist walk the streets of this city not doing harm?”

You raise your eyebrows. “Beg your pardon?”

“He will do this again, and maybe next time there will be no one to step in and he will hurt another woman.”

“So what, you want to kill him instead of surrendering him to the authorities?”

“That’s not what I do.”

“Then what do you do?”

“I’m trying to make this city a better place!”

His voice bounces off the walls building a cage around the alley. “And I’m just trying to save a human life, even if it’s a shitty one!” you shoot back. “It’s not our choice who gets to play God, okay? Death would be too kind for a man like him, and leaving him here won’t solve anything either. Like it or not, but I’m not breaking my oath.”

You made a promise when you became a doctor, and you are not going to risk letting someone die on your watch. That could get you into a lot of trouble. 

You approach your attacker’s limp body. When you kneel next to him, a gush of wind blows through your hair. You assess his skull, his abdomen, and his limbs. So far, all you can see are superficial wounds, and the same fractures you have seen pass through the emergency room more than once in the past couple of weeks. He did a number on him, but his pulse feels normal and he is breathing. 

You lift your head, but when you do, you find the spot before you empty. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen has disappeared into the darkness, leaving you to fend for yourself. You should have seen this coming. 

The ambulance takes a while to arrive after you’ve dialed 911. You try your best to keep the man stabilized, but he remains unresponsive. When help finally arrives, the emergency responders are followed by police, and you don’t hesitate to give your statement. You leave the masked vigilante that saved your life out of it—you may not have seen eye to eye just now, but you don’t want to rat him out either. You owe him as much. 

Just as you’re picking your purse off the dirty ground to follow the EMTs to the hospital in the ambulance, giving you the perfect excuse to give to Shelly on why you are even later than you already were, a glimpse of silver in the shadows catches your attention. 

“You did the right thing,” the Devil speaks only loud enough for you to hear, hiding in the darkness protecting the fire escape of the nearest building. 

You swallow your pride. “Thank you,” you finally tell him. 

He chuckles. “For telling you that or saving your life?”

“Both,” and you even offer him a small smile with your gratitude. That is all you’re capable of giving him, for now. 

“Take care,” he says. 

The glimpse of silver disappears, causing the metal of the fire escape to shake under his weight, and he is long gone before you even whisper, “You too.”

Tag List: @shiorimakibawrites @allllium @siampie @auroraslibrary @roseallisonparker @abucketofweird @thatonegamefish @capylore @kniselle @sumo-b98 @peachstarliight @danzer8705 @kakamixo @littlehappyperson @atemydadforbreakfast @stevenknightmarc @zheezs14

[fatuismooches]

SMOOOOCHES!!! hello sweetheart!! ໒꒰ྀིᵔ ᵕ ᵔ ꒱ྀི১

I hope you’ve been well since the last time I came on here!! (little update on my test results: everything came back clean except a few things came back indecisive but nothing to worry about! Chronic illness doesn’t seem to be getting any worse as of right now.) but asides from that here’s a little drabble as I was re-reading a few of my earlier drabbles from last year!

We know fragile!reader despises examinations and having to endure the painful injections every few weeks when Dottore batches up a new medicine. However, what if it backfires completely? Causing fragile!reader to be in an even weaker condition, barely able to move and clinging onto Dottore as tightly as they can. Perhaps running a fever, feeling miserable as they feel as if though their whole body is being pricked by thousands of needles as they shake from their fever. Dottore would try his best to not let his emotions show, but deep down he’s panicking and trying to figure out how he can cancel out the current “medicine” running through their body. To say Dottore feels guilt is an understatement, he knows that any medicine that they take can easily backfire quickly, but he never would’ve thought the symptoms would be so severe. :( once their condition stabilizes I like to think Dottore keeps them close for at least a few days, just to make sure everything is fine. Even if it means they’ll be all clingy to him, he’d rather they be safe and alive rather than induced in a coma once again.

A bit of fluff: I like to think Zandy definitely also tries to cheer you up after the whole ordeal. He’s not sure why you weren’t visiting or reading books to him anymore, other than that “you were busy with Dottore”, is what you had told him. But even the little baby knows you look more weaker (even if it’s been a few days, your condition had still worsened anyways). So perhaps he tries to draw you adorable silly drawings, and also show you his “safe” experiments. (Lest he get a scolding from Zandik or the clones again…)

‘m giving you so many chu chus n cuddles like always smooches hehe gonna make your cheeks all rosy pinky! <33 I hope you have a lovely day n spend it with a smile like always!

-from your dear boo boo bear 🎐 anon! ౨ৎ

HELLO MY DEAR 🎐 ANON!! Ahh I'm so glad your results were okay! I'm so happy for you and for getting through all of this! *hugs you* And I LOVE this brainrot! ❤️ I've always brainrotted about this idea hehe because angst of Dottore failing... teehee.

Dottore, being the skilled scholar he is, never fails to concoct new medications and treatments for you in hopes of creating something that sticks, along with the actual cure. These meds always go through a few rounds of testing, on his experiments of course (as you said before) but sometimes there is only so little that can be done. After all, your body is very different from the average person's. So, there have been times when the things he's given you didn't agree with your body very well, but they were never anything drastic. However, that was until this instance.

Dottore is a confident man. He's smart, he plans ten steps ahead, and things always go exactly as he orchestrated or predicted them to. So that's why he expected nothing different to be with this batch, maybe you'd have a few minor side effects that he'd note and so on, but he expected you to be fine, to then whine about how all of this was so much work, and he'd only hum at your complains to which you'd pout at. In the beginning, you seemed fine. Looked fine, your vitals were fine. But in a matter of minutes, when you got off the operating table, all of that changed, as dizziness and blurriness.

You tried to wave off Dottore's concern, observing your worsened state immediately, but your resistance was futile as your knees buckled, though your husband caught you before you could fall. Your skin was on fire, sapping away your strength as you couldn't even bring your hand up to stop your hacking and coughing. You try to speak but everything hurts far too much for you to muster your words, and you can barely process the muffled voices, footsteps against the floor, and hands running over your body (he must have called a few segments in too.) You pass out soon after, unable to see the blank look on Dottore's face, how his hands don't shake, how he is unfaltering and flawless in his steady work to counteract what he put in his body. Unable to see what only you can see - what he's really feeling underneath everything.

You don't wake up until a few days later, to which Dottore spent trying to figure out where he went wrong constructing this medication. If only he had been more careful, if he had run more tests, perhaps this may not have happened. Perhaps he wouldn't be the cause of your even weaker state. But even when you wake up, you just smile at him, assuring him that you're okay. You'd never blame him. Even though this was all this fault. He despises it sometimes, how you're so kind and forgiving. It's a weakness.

Sure, Dottore has a lot of work to be done, and having you around so much serves as a distraction to his work... but he'll let it slide. Just for a bit. At least it is a reminder to him that you're not permanently sleeping again.

Zandy, despite being left out of the loop many times, mostly due to your insistence that he not be burdened with your own troubles, can still sense something is wrong after a while. Yes, he's a child, but he's a rather smart one. And a very attentive one when it comes to his favorite person, you. He can see how much time you spend for "check-ups" with the segments and Prime now, far more than what it used to be... how you always look exhausted but force yourself to perk up and smile around him, assuring him you'll play with him "next time", even though numerous "next times" have passed. Zandy doesn't know the exact details, but that's okay, he can see what you're going through. So obviously he's going to try and make you smile! In the time he's not with you, he spends it doing all the things you like to do too. Drawing you two together of course, in a happy little house in Sumeru where the two of you play outside together all day with no worries! Maybe he even tried baking by himself to surprise you with something yummy (quickly stopped by a segment before he hurt himself or perhaps blew up the lab.) Maybe the child should take up sewing... maybe he can sew a little Puffttore squish ball for you! Oh, but you always told him to stay away from needles... well, it's okay if you don't find out until after the fact, right?

[ceasarslegion]

Every time I have a cold bad enough to knock me out of work for the day I think of how many new agers probably got off track with how there's a very big difference between a cure and a remedy that isn't well-taught when you grow up. They are both important, both have a medicinal value, but the difference is that a remedy is all about making you feel better while a cure doesn't give a shit about how you feel, it's about getting the sickness at the source. I wonder how any new age medicine types got lost because they crossed the lines here

Like, a remedy is what you will use the most. Because the vast majority of illnesses the average otherwise healthy person gets do not need proper medical intervention. And in a lot of cases overusing cures can backfire because a lot of everyday endemic pathogens in the world need to be fought off naturally in childhood to build a good resistance to them as an adult. Obviously this doesn't apply to like, deadly diseases we vaccinate for, I'm talking about the various common cold viruses that form a fine film atop every outdoor surface.

If you can get it over the counter, it's a remedy. That includes things like ibuprofen. Because that just deals with the pain of your headaches, not the actual source of them. Nyquil, Epsom salt baths, ginger tea, are all likewise remedies. They do legitimately make you feel better and help to manage the symptoms but they don't fight the virus, they make you more comfortable while your immune system does its job. But like, if you don't know that, I can see how someone can get lost in the placebo effect of "well I took a hot Epsom salt bath, drank some ginger tea, and tried a shot of my grandma's cold remedy of chili paste in hot lemon water. And then all my sinuses were cleared and my aches and pains were gone, and then the next day my cold was gone. Wow, that was real medicine." And then they see what things like proper antivirals are made of and the side effects they can have and go "oh, that's dreadful :(( here, I have something much better" and then they stumble down the anti medicine rabbit hole.

The thing is though that if something actually works against a pathogen it will have side effects. Thats why I said that cures don't care about how you feel. And if medical intervention is needed it's because that cold has progressed to the point where the benefits of the effects outweigh the cons of the side effects. Biochemistry is a tricky thing.

[random-mailbox]

Random-Mailbox's Favorite Sailor Moon Fics - Week 45 - Reviving Shitennou

This week’s post is about bringing Shitennou back into the fold of the team. I wish that had happened in the manga / anime and am a little disappointed we did not get that in Cosmos. BUT that is what fanfiction is for! (To help us collectively right the wrongs / misses in original materials).

We are exactly ONE week away from @usamamoweek2023! Are you excited? Because I am very excited and am trying to finish my own submissions for this year's prompts

@smquickies2023 prompts are out too - that event is taking place August 6-12 (and is open to any SM pairings).

As always, my apologies in advance for spoiling some of these for you (Fic Titles are linked to either FFN or AO3 entries).

Deal Breaker - ninashtia

Keeping his shitennou being alive and well as a secret from his princess is bound to backfire on Mamoru. But not in the way he had expected.

Reunion - bashfulglowfly

In this story we get to witness the aftermath of the Dark Kingdom arc, but in an AU where Usagi didn't fight alongside our senshi and Tuxedo Mask in Tokyo (she still participated but from halfway across the world).

Embrace the Chaos - @serpentinred

Ami is thrust into keeping secrets and weighing possibilities, when her supervisor introduces her to someone who looks suspiciously like Kunzite. I love the art that @smokingbomber did for this one!

all things that are dark - @fated-addiction

Although this is technically just the first chapter of a fic that will hopefully get finished one day, it could stand as a one-shot as well. It gives glimpses of post-Galaxia thoughts Usagi has as she readies for the future.

The Shitennou Return! A Trip to the Beach in Peril - @chuplayswithfire

Mamoru has been keeping a secret from Usagi, something that she takes in stride and decides that a beach-day together with the girls would be the best way to get everything out in the open and see how it could all work. This fic has art by @mochibuni!

all my friends are dead and they bloody haunt me - @smokingbomber

Usagi, noticing some strange behaviour from Mamoru, takes a peek at what he could be up to. And decides that she can help fix everything.

---

That's it for this week. Reminder - no post next week since it will be UsaMamo Week. We will return to regular posts on July 31st with "Tutoring"

Here are the links to the previous Tumblr posts in these series to explore more amazing works based on different themes - make sure to check them out if you haven't had a chance! (Click on title name to go to the post) - I will keep updating the list every week as new posts come up:

Week 1 - Groundhog Day

Week 2 - Established Relationships

Week 3 - Sex Positivity

Week 4 - Unfinished Stories

Week 5 - Darker Stories

Week 6 - Potions 🧪

Week 7 - Reveals

Week 8 - 👻Halloween🎃

Week 9 - Wrong Perceptions

Week 10 - Non-Senshi AU

Week 11 - In-Progress Fics

Week 12 - Mutual Pining

Week 13 - Enemies to Lovers

Week 14 - Slow Burn

Week 15 - Christmas Part 1 - Ugly Christmas Sweaters and Santa!

Week 16 - Christmas Part 2

Week 17 - New Years

Week 18 - High School AU

Week 19 - Slice of Life

Week 20 - Coffee shop AU

Week 21 - Huddle for Warmth

Week 22 - Friends to Lovers

Week 23 - ❤️Valentines Day❤️

Week 24 - Do a Grouch a Favour Day (or Cheer Up Fics)

Week 25 - Soulmate AU

Week 26 - Amnesia Fics (and resources)

Week 27 - 🍀St Patrick's Day🍀

Week 28 - Fix it Fics

Week 29 - Prompt: Mug

Week 30 - Flowers

Week 31 - Traditions

Week 32 - Dreams

Week 33 - Friends

Week 34 - Body-Swap

Week 35 - Medical Assistance

Week 36 - Sex Pollen

Week 37 - Psychometry

Week 38 - What If

Week 39 - Missing Scenes Part I

Week 40 - Green Jacket

Week 41 - Dr Chiba

Week 42 - Birthdays

Week 43 - Fluff

Week 44 - First Kiss

[moreespressoformydepresso]

More TBOSAS fix-it food!! Instead of bombing the arena, the rebels bomb the capitol zoo while the tour is happening. Because throwing kids in a zoo enclosure is kind of fucked up actually, and it’s just as much a symbol of the capitol’s rampant dehumanization of the districts as the arena where the yearly underage death match takes place. Thanks to this, the kids obviously can’t be placed back in the zoo because, you know, it was destroyed. So what now? Well…

As I’ve stated in previous posts, I’m convinced the mentor program was an attempt at stopping the games in the long run that backfired horribly. Seeing that not enough progress is being made, dean Highbottom decides that the tributes should stay with their mentors. Peacekeepers will be around to make sure no funny business occurs, of course, but despite the outrage of some mentors (cough Livia cough) and all the mentors’ families the plan goes through. As much as I think the tributes dying was necessary to truly drive home the horror of the games for the mentors, it clearly didn’t work and the kids deserve to live so this is the next best thing.

At first, the tributes don’t have a good time, because the families they’re forced to stay with treat them like animals. Worse, actually, because most people don’t go out of their way to make things as unpleasant as possible for animals. However, it doesn’t take long for at least parts of the families to warm up to the tributes. Who stay jumpy and mistrustful and scared out of their damn minds because one wrong move means death, but hey they’ll live. The peacekeepers got a free hand to dish out whatever punishment they wanted so long as the family the kid’s staying with approves, which turns out to be in Highbottom’s plan’s favor because now capitol citizens get to see firsthand just how cruel and inhumane capitol punishment is in the districts. These families have private doctors too, so while at first the veterinarian responsible for the tributes is working overtime her work slowly diminishes. The mentors’ families are so influential that the initial denial of medical care is quickly retracted.

By the time the games are supposed to happen, the president has grown such a soft spot for Dill that he makes up an excuse to postpone them, and when the new date rolls around the tributes have spent enough time with people even outside of their mentor’s family that they’ve endeared themselves to all the important people in the capitol. The games weren’t popular anyways, so the president doesn’t feel a risk to his career when he cancels them.

I may post little tidbits of plot ideas I have floating in my head for this AU, but for now imagine Felix sitting in one of the massive living rooms in the presidential mansion, showing Dill some cool capitol stuff as she looks on with doe-eyes full of curiosity, while the president loses his mind in the background as he suffers a severe moral crisis.

[azuralnguyendd]

This is a new fanfic I'm writing, and with the help and motivation my sister is giving me, hopefully I could finish it.

This was inspired by her and the "Russian Mythology" tag from AO3. I don't know how I ended up here, but yeah, here we are.

Hope you all enjoy reading this, because I think I was trying too hard to sound cool and professional.

Just Like Cupid and Psyche

(Ships included: Heavy/Medic, Spy/Scout's Ma, Demo/Soldier/Zhanna, Scout/Ms. Pauling)

[Or course, these ships will be featured in later chapters]

"If you saw me, perhaps you would fear me, perhaps adore me, but all I ask of you is to love me. I would rather you would love me as an equal than adore me as a god."

Chapter 1:

This famous quote is known by many, and even if one doesn't know it, they could also guess. This famous quote came from Cupid, the god of love. Despite this, however, he himself is not immune to the powers of love and his own arrows. Many know how this story goes: A goddess who was jealous of a mortal woman's beauty sent out her son to embarrass her. Stricken by the woman's beauty, he succumbed to his own love arrows. Their love was so strong that it carried them through impossible challenges and denial. They came together in the end, forever in love.

Now, we're going to focus on the quote shown. To Cupid and Psyche, they were a god and a human, respectively. But what about mythological creatures and humans instead of gods and humans? Not common, but not uncommon either.

Some would love to have a romantic partner who is not of the same species. It's sort of a way of flaunting; showing off your unique partner to provoke envy, admiration, or fear, perhaps. Of course, not everyone would do the same thing. Some like to keep the relationship a secret. We don't blame them; everyone has their preferences.

~~~~

It was like any other normal day. Obviously, one doesn't need to list out the activities they do in a day throughout their life. All the days in everyone's life start out with them getting up, brushing their teeth then their hair, and then accidentally slipping down the stairs because they slipped on a discarded paper on the ground. Wait, not many people get into that problem. Not for Jeremy, he gets into that a lot because of his untidiness.

He landed near the foot of the staircase. His back pressed painfully against the stair steps, arms propped on both sides and head titled back. The attempt to stop himself from falling any further down the stairs backfired on him. Ouch, he'll probably get more bruises now.

It is not uncommon for the youngest brother of the family to get into such troubles. While he hasn't yet gotten to his job, all his other brothers have probably already left at an early hour. He goes to the kitchen to prepare himself some breakfast. Toast and eggs with a side of bacon surely will do. He sits down at the table and munches on his food.

"Good morning, sweetheart," said a woman's voice coming into the kitchen. She had on light makeup and her hair in an 80s style. She smiled brightly at Jeremy as she walked over to the counter to prepare her own breakfast. A small stack of pancakes with syrup and blueberries was then placed beside him, and the woman sat next to him.

"Hey ma, how did you sleep?" Jeremy asked fondly, watching as his mother gracefully ate her breakfast. His mother nodded, not wanting to talk while food was in her mouth. Really, that would be gross.

"I slept alright, darling. Better hurry with that plate of yours, you don't want to be late for work now." His mother said, pinching her son's cheek in a teasing, motherly way. Jeremy chuckled, but did as he was advised. He finished his breakfast and said goodbye to his mother before heading to work.

His chosen transportation is a red bike that sat proudly in the garage. Unlike his other brothers, Jeremy prefers riding on a motorbike, perhaps because it gives him a sense of freedom and independence. He puts on his helmet - safety first - and climbs on, inserting and twisting the key. The engine begins purring as it comes to life and Jeremy speeds out onto the open streets.

The place he worked at was a diner a few minutes away from his house. Because of his almost inexperienced life, he had no other choice than to choose the one job that would at least provide enough money to keep one person alive. Upon arriving at the diner, he parked his bike and casually entered the diner. The bell above the door chimed as he did so. He never really liked the damn thing.

Inside the diner wasn't so busy, but it wasn't devoid of customers either. He started working almost immediately, taking orders and bringing out drinks and food to the customers. The diner wasn't big, fancy, or anything special, but it still got regulars daily. In fact, Jeremy was good friends with one or two of the regulars there, and he knew that they were coming.

Waiting around when he had nothing to do, he glances at the clock ever so often to time his greeting perfectly. Then, at the perfect moment, Jeremy went to open the door as soon as two customers approached. One was a tall, slim lady with black hair and mint green eyes. She wore black glasses that hung on her nose bridge, along with a matching purple dress and heels. Walking beside her was a stout man. On his head he wore a hardhat, a pair of black-tinted goggles so his eyes are almost invisible, with black overalls and a red shirt.

"Hey Ms. Pauling, hey Dell!" Jeremy greeted his friends with joy and energy. They sat in the furthest corner booth of the diner and, without looking at the menu, ordered their usual meal. Jeremy didn't need to listen to half of the ramblings of theirs to note down their meals. He sped off to the kitchen to give the note, then back to the front to make them both steaming hot cups of coffee.

These two workaholics come here only on Thursdays, and when they first came, Jeremy had already taken an interest in the young lady. He wouldn't say it, but as soon as he saw her, he changed his mind completely about nerdy-looking girls. He had tried to flirt with her on multiple occasions, almost all of his attempts fell on deaf ears. Dell noticed though, but he couldn't help, or didn't want to.

"So, what's new?" Jeremy sat down beside Dell, putting his face into his hand as it propped itself on the white, plastic table. His break doesn't last long; he could be doing anything during those short minutes, but he'd rather hang around his friends.

Dell swallowed a large gulp of coffee and set the cup down with a 'thunk' sound. "Ah, nothing much, just the usual," Dell replied neutrally, a small smile plastered on his face.

Ms. Pauling didn't look exactly into the conversation, considering how she looked up with confusion. Jeremy hated when they told him "the usual" when it came to the topic of work. Nothing new ever came up, and even if there was, it was always kept secret.

Jeremy got tired of pestering Dell to tell him something else about his work, and even attempted to ask Ms. Pauling, which obviously did not work out. Looking for a change of topic, Jeremy played with the notepad that sat in his breast pocket, occasionally clicking the ballpoint pen a few times. He knew some of Dell and Ms. Pauling's friends, but never met them or even knew their names. He knows them through their occupation.

"So, how's the doc then? He still crazy like how you told me?" Jeremy asked in a joking manner, poking at Dell's bicep to get his attention. Of course, the engineer responded with a breathy laugh, almost like an exhale.

"He's doing alright, son. You don't have to worry about him," Dell said, ruffling Jeremy's hair. He chuckled and slapped at Dell's hand; the scene displayed was almost that of a father and son moment. He had always seen Dell as a father figure, more so than his own biological father. He was always away for work, had never been there for almost half of Jeremy's life. It was a sad thought, knowing you see a potential father in a friend but acknowledging the fact that your own father was still there.

Jeremy pushed those thoughts to the back of his head. He could always vent about that later. Right now, he needs to focus on getting information from Dell. He poked him again, using it as an excuse so the engineer would ask him about his intentions. Surely enough, it worked, and Dell looked a little bit more irritated.

"You never told me the guy's name," Jeremy started, his face in a pout. Soon, Dell's own expression calmed down as he leaned back and relaxed.

"His name's Ludwig, Jeremy. If you'd like, I could always introduce you two on the weekends," Del said finally after a pause, probably taken aback by Jeremy's question. The boy doesn't often care for people outside of his social circle unless he takes a liking to them, like Ms. Pauling and him.

Jeremy beamed at him, hitting his friend's shoulder lightly and playfully before getting back to work. He practically jumped out of his seat and sped to the counter, where three friends were hanging out and chatting. Ms. Pauling, after the conversation, finally looked up to meet Dell's eyes.

"Why did you have to tell him that? You know that guy is a little too unhinged for Jeremy to handle. Even he acknowledges that fact." Ms. Pauling said in a calm manner, almost scolding Dell for giving in to Jeremy's request.

Dell shrugged with a huff. Ms. Pauling did not ask any further.

End of chapter one, people! Anyways, I'm sure I'll be posting and updating more on this fanfic.

[lovelyladylavie]

"you gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful", surprise me 💛

Sorry Em, this ask is super duper old, but I finally found the perfect thing for this prompt and you already know it, but imma write it anyway

@jojo-rolo you might be interested too!

-----

The hospital bed was about as comfortable as it could be for Lizo. He was 69 now, and he was dying.

He had had his yearly xenogenetic physical to check on his health about a year ago and for the first time, it didn't look good. Lizo, you see, was a genetic hybrid mutant. Humanoid genes fused with reptilian DNA. He was a beta experiment, "Lizard-Zero" (Liz-0 for short), the first successful one of Dr. Natura Blossana. The first one that lived beyond about a day.

But to her surprise, he fought for life, and kept on living until he became a strange infant she didn't know how to care for. She logged every failure and success with her AI assistant, NEMFA, who kept steady track of his progress as an experiment. Every meal he ate, how much he slept, if he got sick, and everything else. The doctor would make sure he had stimulation, education, and enrichment. But due to her own issues with her own scientist parents, refused to be called 'mother'. She preferred 'creator' and that's what he called her as he learned to speak. Until a medical assistant said that that was silly and told him he should call Dr. Blossana "mother" or "mama" or "mom".

It was an innocent enough gesture, trying to normalize the boy's childhood a bit. But it had consequences.

"Mother? You're my mother, right?" Lizo asked one day as he was dropped off to daycare.

Natura's face darkened. "No, a mother births you. I created you in a lab. You're my experiment and therefore you are my responsibility as your 'creator'." She said each word as if she were picking them carefully out of ice. "THAT’s what you call me. Not a thing ELSE."

She had never taken such a frosty tone with him before. It changed things. It scared him. Put a wall of ice between them. He started engaging more with her staff than her. They were a caring bunch, but he didn't trust them much either, for a reason he couldn't come to understand until later, which was that they caused the rift between him and his creator. They might have other dangerous ideas that might backfire as well.

But soon, the more clinical way his mother treated him became more and more stiff. She stopped picking him up. Told him to stop crying instead of soothing him.

Eventually, he grew to resent her. He started to call her mother or Mom as a way to needle her, because it was the only way to get an emotional response out of her.

He became a scientist as well, downloading the newest banks of knowledge into his head and passing the exams to become a Xenogeneticist like her, if only because he realized he'd have to, in order to keep up his own health without her help. She'd moved on to different experiments as well, bored of the new form of life she'd brought into the world.

His teen years were cold and sterile, but at least he was wearing the white coat this time. He had his own lab now, his own experiments to run to better their organization and keep their agents safe in the field.

He didn't leave the homebase or his mother's house that often. Why should he? He had occupation with his work, and people to talk to there.

What need did he have for fun anymore? It was a waste of time he could be using to help people.

He thought that way until he was seventeen.

Until he met her.

Lavie Crane was lost, and had wandered into his lab to ask for directions. Not unusual, but he'd just dropped a pot of coffee all over himself and his worktable.

She saved his life by stopping him from absent-mindedly plugging in a tool in the soaked outlet and it made him stop short. He'd almost died of electrical shock! His mother would've laughed smugly at the funeral! Such a foolish mistake!

And as he was pondering death, Lavie Crane was rewriting his equations on his whiteboard, apologizing while doing so, but according to her calculations, he would've blown himself up because he forgot to carry the 3!

She was a fascinating specimen of a human. Wild, brash, intelligent as hell, but would make stupid mistakes like trying to fight a pro cage fighter, or jumping into a wild space-sheep's pen. He knew this because she became his first friend.

Then, he pined for her. It was like she'd blown open the windows and let in a refreshing breeze, drawing him outside the lab and experiencing life together. One could've made jokes about her being a 'manic pixie dream girl', but no. While she was impulsive, she knew exactly what she wanted and had goals to do cool shit just because it was, in fact, cool. Build ships. Build mecha armor. Learn to fight, which they both went to do together. He was glad just to be close to her, and she was on his wavelength, making even his own projects more fun to converse about.

After much pining and lollygagging and a few end-of-the-world adventures that turned out just fine, thank you very much...

He asked her to marry him. And oh, she did. She loved him back. There was no one in the universe she wanted more than her best friend.

They married and went on to create many implausible inventions together. Fusing inspiring biology and space age mechanics into strange and delightful machines.

They had no children, as he did not want to continue a cycle of pain. Could they have worked together and continued his mother's research? Sure. But his new younger siblings, who looked more human than his monstrous lizard-man form, were already as perfect as the science would allow. He had to help them recover from being raised by his mother, after all.

Natura and Lizo eventually made peace, as he finally understood where she came from. A similar harsh environment where she was a labrat herself. When she was found wanting, she had been ejected. She wanted to prove she could create better life than her parents. Her family, all five of her children, told her that grandma and gramps weren't here to be shocked or impressed. Their opinion didn't matter. What would it get her, if the children were to their standards? Nothing.

And Natura broke down. She loved her children. She wished she'd given them a better childhood, with more love and warmth instead of iron clad structure. What she never had. And technically speaking, they had more freedom than she had had. Better conditions, even if it wasn't anywhere near normal. But still she was found wanting and... owned up to it.

She changed. She loosened up. She organized outings and dinners and they spent their adult years at peace with one another, the tumultuous emotions of their childhood soothed and smoothed away.

Lizo and his mother still had legendary debates and arguments, but they didn't end in harsh feelings anymore. They bickered until the day she died, Lavie often playing referee.

Forty-odd years of marriage later, here he was. In a hospital bed, Lavie holding his hand, making him comfortable.

Dr. Lizard-Zero Blossana-Crane was never made to last. It was only sheer luck and grit that he did. His DNA was unraveling. His organs were failing. His body was breaking down.

He said goodbye to his love a dozen times, just in case. They called his family and they came, each to say goodbye. His mutant brothers and sister, each an artist in their own now. Street artist, musician, magician, and comedian. They’d never been happier, and he was happy for them.

They left to wait in the lobby, or until responsibilities drew them home, and it was soon only Lavie and Lizo.

Lavie gripped his hand as she watched his vitals start to decline.

"Not yet! Please! We have so much to do still!"

He chuckled, "You gave me forever within numbered days. And I'm grateful. You made me live my life, my love. I'll love you forever."

And he died. Softly.

The Grim Reaper took him by the hand, though she was rather baffled as to *where* to take him. Where does a worldless, unique being go?

Lavie sobbed at his side, but was soon interrupted by a 'pin-pon!' beep above her from the speakers.

NEMFA made note, for all to hear:

["Experiment Lizard-0 Complete."]

["Experiment Successful."]

[popculturebuffet]

Monthly Muppet Madness: Survival Street Review: Brought to You by the Letter's F and C for Fuck Captalisim (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Today's review is courtsey of viewers like you.. specifically you. Kevin. Thank you

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Monthly Muppets Madness, my look at all things muppety. And after last month's adventure with mean green mother's from outer space, we're back to more felty corners of the muppet globe with Surivial Street, a 4 issue mini series from 2022 by the writing team of James Asmus and Jim Fesante with art by Abbylay Kussainov.

Asmus is a longtime comic book writer whose work I have read before with his decent runs on Gambit, Quantum and Woody and All New Inhumans. He also co-wrote the second arc of Robert Kirkman's Thief of Theives. So while not someone I seek out, he's a solid writer.

As you can guess by the title and that awesome cover, Survival Street is a parody of Seasame Street, though heavily on the affectionte side: it's very clear from the writing Asmus really loves the show and it's goals of free education for children who might not have acess to it and teaching love and kindness are core to this book.

That said Survival Street is also over the top as hell. It's messages are as subtle as a brick to the head saying "Corproations Bad' and a lot of the book can come off as

Okay some are.. but most of them probably aren't going to listen to their bullshit being called out in the first place, let alone by muppets. The question is can this book ballance it's over the top satire with it's heart, fairly well thought out characters and comedy? Find out under the cut won't you?

We open with America: A Timeline. In 2025 in this timeline, Jury's out on ours, the Supreme Court voted to make Corporations able to run for public office. Naturally this backfired and soon corprations pulled their money out from other candidates and ran themselves, and by 2028 they've taken over the country, privitazed everything and in our proper oppening scene, invade Salutation Street, our Seasame Street expy and shut it down. It's also clear there's rampant anti-muppet xenophobia in this universe, something that will only grow worse as we cut to present day: 2031, in New Best America TM.

It's in this new corprate hellscape we meet our heroes who are traveling around america in an RV. Driving it is an expy of Gordon, Mr. Burton whose dealing with a checkpoint. As it turns out though roads are now privitazed and upon seeing a family hassled over this, our grover stand-in, Herbert decides to take a more hands on approach

This does save the people there.. but is quickly used as propoganda by the local fox news stand in. Because of a course a corporate hellscape still has fox news, every hellscape needs one or it's just not a hellscape. Their anchor is Irma, our ernie stand in, who spouts out the usual racist drivel but about muppets this time. I do like the touch of having the two headed monster be their right and left wing commentators.

We then ove to the a-plot: Junior, the president is auctoning off detained children of illegal immigrants to the highest bidder in florida, with our heroes sneaking in to stop this via the global warming flooded ocean outside.

I mean a bunch of rich assholes auctoning off children is both plausable and has likely actually happened, but it dosen't make that funny or entertaining. Junior himself is, from saying his assitant asking about his medication he stole from his daughter is a HIPPA violation to how over the top he is and it keeps things from being too GET IT GET IT CAPTALISIM BAD GET IT. It's enoguh to take me out but not enoguh to make me leave.

So our ABC team break in and we properly meet them all as they make their way through. And since the comic has really fun intro captions for each of them...

Their leader, Bert stand in and the one holding the brain cell

Kind to a fault and mostly a "master of disguise" because he's the only human they have.

Like Burton we've seen him before. Explosives expert with a short fuse. ANd god I love that gag: it's so damn dark and it should not work but it does.

Our Cookie Monster with traces of Zoey given the pigtails. I also thought Elmo but we'll meet our equilvent for him in isue 3. Kind, good at inflitration but struggling with staying clean.

Our big bird, a good strong boy whose basically big bird if he was a grown man and could also suplex you.

Their tech guy and oscar the grouch.

Our heroes begin their plan once they get it: THey found about this thanks to a fellow muppet calling for help, so now their inside they can excute the plan: Gurgle and their inside man will use card scanners that burton stole and rigged to steal all the money from the auction, explaning how they keep funded when public funding no longer exists. Hippy resuces the prisoners using his massive strength to free the kids and his kindness to help calmly guide them out, and Herbert.. nearly snaps and kills everyone and everything in his path after finding out these bastards are using the children for their organs. Thankfully Birdie is able to calm him down in one of my faviorite jokes of the mini

It's what makes this work: while the satire is about as subtle as a chainsaw through your front door wielded by a screaming goat man, the muppets in the thick of it.. still ACT like muppets on seasame street. They still have the same kindness and sensiblities.. it's just tempered into bloody action by being the only source of hope and freedom in a dystopian hellscape.

Birdie and Tony set up signal jammers so they can hyjack the procedings.. only to find out that Irma is here, gladly promoting this shit show like any republican. Birdie is naturally just the slightest bit livid her ex is promoting child organ farming but she soon has bigger issues.... desert is being served early.. and ice cream is present.

And with that Gurgle is exactly no days sober of ice cream and shit officallly hit the fan. On the bright side Shit is our word of the day. So at least there's that. Anyways our heroes are soon outgunned and out manned, with Birdie barely saving gurgle by tearing herself open and using her string to sew her up, but the two are soon cornered and Birdie does the whole save yourself i'll hold them back routine. Thankfully , Herbet dosen't listen well and when , as seen in the panels above, told not to go out loud.. he didn't listen. He rigged the place with explosives, blows up the wall holding out the water real good and floods the bitch. Our heroes valantly escape, but not before Hippy beats the every loving shit out of Junior, showing he may be nice but he has limits.

Birdie however makes a late exit as she and Irma have some words, with Birdie hyjacking her limo. So Birdie, needing some answers... asks irma a very important question

I love this page.. mostly for making Irma a more complex villian. She could easily jsut be "birdies very obvious ex who sold out"... but you see she's just someone who got broken by the fact that nothing they did mattered. She's still not a good person: she still sold out muppetkind for her own profit and is still bad.. but it's more intresting to hav ea reason why she ended up the sack of shit she is instead of just, as Birdie wondered, always having been like this.

Birdie isn't swayed and goes on with the rest of our heroes.

Issue 2. I love the structure of this series as the first three issues are all made so they can be read done in one for the most part. Ther'es a cliffhanger at the end of issue 3 but it's nice when a comic makes good use of the isdsue by issue format. Issue 4 ties it all together well, but it's still essentailly three connected stories that lead up to one big finish.

Anyways issue 2 begins with our heroes hiding in a church under a hail of gunfire: Burton and the RV are halfway across town, and it dosen't look good. We flash back to how they got there and find out WHERE they are: Hollow Point, a company town ran by the WRA, the NRA's legally distinct cousin. Yup this is a gun rights issue, with the town having become a conceal and carry paradise where people can just.. have gun duels to decide whatever and Charlton heston is naturally given an honrary statue.. and Clint Eastwood an expy in Cain Westwood.

The head of the WRA is present and naturally gives a gun to a baby.. and the satire works a BIT better this issue as frankly.. none of it's exagerated. The NRA GENUINELY want this, they genuinely talk about crying "lib tears". Clint Eastwood is an advocate for them. Their extremists probably would argue the right ot carry begins at conception. I"m not saying ALL gun owners or even nra members are this fucked, I have a friend who owns guns and keeps them in a safe, locked up where no child can get to it. But the NRA as an orginzation sure as hell is.

Our heroes try using this dueling strategy to call the WRA chairman's bluff.. but he turns it on them: since their basically challenging the law itself witht heir duel they've challenged the orginzation.. which means it's 5 muppets against a whole damn town armed to the teeth.

We then get a flashback to Herbert's childhood on M'Na N'Nam, part of the snufflpogaos islands. A muppet paradise.. until a shady buisness man shows up offering a partnership for a chemical they can find on the island.

I'm going to go ahead and cover all of this now for simplicties sake as the flashback's only two parts: Years later their leader.. has shown her true colors, fully selling out to ethe corpration and the mine as it's poinsing her people and end sup casuing an explosin.. and rather than help , the company pulls out, leaving the villiage to die in fire and Herbert forced to immigrate, barely scraping by thanks to racisim until he got the job on Salutation Street.. only to find out later his parents died on the island. It's a well done story too as horrible things like this happened all the time and without the hyper exagerated satire... it's something entirely real and entirley painful: a culture exploited and destroyed by greedy white assholery.

Back in the present the fight continues, as our heroes are held down. Thankfully Hippy and Gurgle make a distraction and do one of my faviorite manuvers: having the smaller characteer on the bigger characters shoulder. Mostly for this one scene from x-factor

Sadly Flint Westwood decides to join the party.. as does anamatronic charlton heston, so our heroes are soon on the backfoot... but not before Tony is able to complete his plan, hyjacking their cars and easily taking down the mob since, naturally their cars are also mad max murder mobiles. As for the head of the HRA himself.. well given he's sorta the lead this issue.. Herbet takes care of him personally.

He then challenges the man to a duel, though Birdie IS able to talk him down from shooting the man on live tv... but not from killing him as he shoots out the camera and impliclity finished the job offscreen.

But that leaves a vacum.. and Westwood is promoted to the job.. and given the job to hunt down our heroes. More on that later

So issue 3 introduces us to Milo, our Elmo expy. He's rich and like irma is working in the corprate hellscape. Unlike her though he's still in kids television , still talks to the others even if things are understandibly tense with most of them, and while reluctant to their request has a good reason for both taking the seemingly easier route and being reluctnat to help.

It's a scene I love a lot. Milo comes off at first like a smug asshole.. but then it's clear beneath that is someone who GENUINELY values what he's doing. It's a reminder of how important children's intertainment is... and how important it is that when you have the power to do something good and necessary, you do it, regardless of the risk.

Our heroes go to rescue the kids, who are fire fire fighters and make a good entrance enough, coming in in a garbage made recycled buggy, saving them.. but soon our party is left trecking through the wild fire. THey got in thanks to milo's friends, but it was one way. So while Gurgle finds an ice cream truck, the kids tell their tale: turns out in this dystopian hellhole future they outlawed abortion.... keep in mind this comic launched just two months after Roe V Wade was overturned, so the timing is eerie as hell. The kid they talk two's mother didn't want her born into this hellscape, got arrested for it and she got sold to corproations using her as a proxy for their crimes. The fact any of this sounds like it could become actual law at some point should spoeak to how horrifying it is. While this book isn't subtle, and it's a weakness.. it's strength is that Asmus goes just a TOUCH beyond what we have now after the first issue. The first issue is plausable, but a bit over the top. With the nra having a whole lawless western town or children being sold into slavery to work off corprate crimes... it's a lot more plausable given how fucked our legal system is and it makes it that much easier to buy.

Our heroes naturally wepp at this waking nightmare, so it's a good thing they get distracted.. the bad thing is that it's by Gurgle, trying to save her from more fire. Birdie gets horribly injured in the process and needs help NOW.

Things.. look bad as they hit a corprate checkpoint, by the same monsters that turned off the water the fire kids were using, and there's no hope of escape or out shooting them. This causes the team to break down playing the blame game.. which is bad enough.. until HIPPY of all people breaks.

This.. destroyed me. Up to this point Hippy had been the unbreakable optimis they needed.. but now .. we see that beneath his sunshine is a lot of regret, a lot of doing this because he had nothing else and feeling what thier doing.. simply isn't enough. But Mr. Burton's message is right.. and it's the messasge the book goes for: things are bad, they will probably get worse.. but we can't just give up and do nothing. As a wise vampire once said "If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do". And to prove that point.. an old friend drops in to help

So the asholes are left to die, Milo implicitly adopts the kids having them play in his pool and Birdie wants to see them all.. only Gurgle's missing, having left in Milo's tesla. Because of course he has a tesla. Gurgle's gone.. and she's gone to the enemy

I was nervous going into this one when I first read it. The fact is this book while optimistic is still fairly dark so while I felt our heroes MIGHT win, they could just as easily loose or barely get away.

They could... but instead we get something way better.

Though to start things aren't looking great: Rufus, head of F News, is talking to a bunch of other corprate overlords including Elon Musk, suprising no one. THeir not happy that his propoganda machine isn't keeping the puppets from having an impact: Junior is facing public backlash for his child selling, the babies carrying firearms bill has been blocked.. this needs to stop. So the network cranks up i'ts proogranda, with anti-muppet racisim rising and a a puppet child attacked by some other kids. When one human girl tries to help him she gets maced.. thankfully

Things still aren't great: Birdie's recovering and Faux News trots out Gurgle.. and somehow makes a valid point, making them somehow have a point abovfe the actual fox news: apparently Gurgle used to be called "Sundae Fiend". While she says "it was a diffrent time" being remidned of it clearly bothers her.. while Rufus wants more answers: where. are. your friends.

And it seems he got them as we see a heavily armed WRA troops, with junior and westwood along for the ride and livestreaming the whole debalce. Turns out the Muppets main hq is a Salutation Station theme park. Not disneyland as Senator Disney does not want to be associated iwth muppet terrorists... again. That was their joke by the way, great stuff. Also means we might meet kermit and friends counterparts if this ever gets a sequel.

What follows.. is one of the most awesome cilmaxes to an arc i've seen in a comic. Turns out... our heroes were ready for them: they aren't the ones trapped... the WRA are. Not only that for once it's entirely legal: since Salutation Street is it' sown corpration, the park is soverign terriotiry and they entered illegally. So after all their racist, anti-immigraint retoric.. their the ones who are the actual invaders.. and are soon wiped out with rides, from a cyclotron type thing spinning some to oblivion.

To the recyling troll melting a bunch of mooks with acid and recyling Charlton Hestron into scrao abd cumilating in a one on one brawl between Bernie and Westwood which ends with Bernie killing the motherfucker via rollercoaster

The moment after it is easily my faviorite of the whole book though, with Bernie confronting the mooks left

It's a reminder that while Bernie is the quickest to kill among them, easily.. he's still a kind, good person. Just one who will cap your ass when necessary.

Faux News TRIES to use Gugle to get the narrtive under contorl.. but as you likely guessed by now, she too was part of the plan

I fucking love this issue for the setup: you EXPECT it to be our heroes darkest hour and them to barely make it out or Gurgle to at least still be a traitor.. instead? It was a plan the whole time: Gurgle finally kicked her addiction after last issue, our heroes easily take out their enemies with the home field advantage and to cap it off, we get one hell of a chekovs gun: earlier we saw mascot suits... so Birdie sends junior out, his mouth taped up in one with the recording to talk. THey shoot him down thinking hie's hippie.. and thus the presiden't sson whose also the president I guess is dead, everyone involved int he raid is entirley to blame and our heroes just got free publiclity showing THIER not the bad guys here. We wrap up as Irma flees to her dressing room... only to find a letter from birdie

And that's survivial street. It's heavy handed.. but damn if it isn't good. The jokes present land, the action is beautifully drawn and the characters are compelling. It takes what COULD'VE been a lazy joke premise, and fills it with heart and character, deconstructing PARTS of seasame street.. while at the same time remaining true to it's spirit. It's out in trade from darkhorse if your intrested, I HIGHLY recommend picking it up. And hopefully we'll see more of it again some day. But for now, we got something specil here and i"m glad I got to share it with you all.

[tomkeirblyth]

Idk I just feel like it needs to be understood that Iris isn’t like every other neurotypical regular joe. She’s medicated because she has a mental illness. She doesn’t see her questioning as rude, she’s not even trying to be funny. She’s literally asking TK questions because she wants to know the answers.

And TK doesn’t come across as hurt by her questions to me either? He’s taken aback because yeah it’s a little much to have someone you just met shooting so many questions at you, some that probably should have been inside thoughts instead. He looks at Carlos and Carlos reassures him that she’s not overstepping, just being curious. He would step in if she crossed a line, but this is Iris, someone he has known a long time. She was his best friend, he knows her and knows this isn’t something to be worried about. Yet he reassures TK with his looks, he’s right there and he knows that his fiancé can handle some reasonably harmless questions.

The people I’ve seen on other platforms bending over backwards to act like Carlos is a bad partner for not “defending TK from being attacked” is just doing my head in. There was no attack, there was no malicious intent and Carlos made sure to pre warn TK that she might be a little on the nose, but she doesn’t mean to be rude.

He knows his fiancé could easily take this personally if he let his thoughts take him down that path, but he knows both of these people intimately. He wants them to get along, and maybe that will backfire, but from this scene alone he’s respecting both of them. He’s not cutting Iris off and making her feel uncomfortable, and he’s doing his best to subtly comfort TK whenever he looks at him with his reactions. TK isn’t upset here he’s just processing this new person who is firing questions at him that he doesn’t know how to answer, and doesn’t have a rapport with yet.