#bulldozer swamp shoes

[veeples-archive]

the breaking of routines

pairing: nat sewell x charlie rosewall

rating: g

word count: 1.5 k

warnings: light swearing for charlie's potty mouth

an unedited fic for @wayhavensummer day 2: cuddling that's mostly Some Thoughts about charlie and secretly being a cuddler

***

Routine is the ruling force over Charlie’s life.

From her carefully planned breakfasts in the morning to the outfit she hangs on her door to her neat color coded files lined up on her desk, Charlie is the face of practiced discipline. It keeps her neat, it keeps her sane.

It’s too bad no amount of journaling, planning, and preparation could stop her from the fucking trainwreck that was that day.

When the batteries in her alarm died overnight, leaving her to wake drowsy and already half an hour late, she might not have been suspicious. When she bulldozed her way through the police department, hair sloppy and staticky and only half of her shirt buttons done up to the stormy face of her very annoyed Captain, she started to have an inkling of dread that maybe today was just not in the cards for her.

That was fine. Charlie could handle the verbal lashing she got from Captain Sung with a stony face that even Ava might be proud to witness. Even the thunderous look of aggravated disappointment that darkened Sung’s already severe features when Charlie realized she’d forgotten the reports in her morning haste only felt a little ominous.

No, the final fucking straw to her already strained patience was when the cooling went out at the precinct.

That the department had any updated centralized cooling at all was a very generous gift Mayor Friedman included during departmental upgrades Douglas’s employment swept in. Some businesses, the oldest of them at least, and most homes in Wayhaven didn’t have air conditioning. It was damn England, after all. They were a people built for the bitter winters, not for the blistering summers.

And it had been a godforsaken August week.

By mid morning Charlie had shucked off her blazer. By noon she’d pushed up the sleeves of her blouse and pinned back the front bangs of her hair. By the late afternoon she was sticky, she was hot, and she was in one of her sourest of moods when she sniped a curt goodbye to the volunteer sweating at the welcome desk.

Going back to her flat was out of the question.

The warehouse, with all its luxuries of a fully functioning kitchen, indoor laundry, and blessed chilled air to keep the vampires cool during the summer, was her target as Charlie peeled out into the street and headed towards the forest’s edge at the other end of town.

Her only grace when she finally shouldered out of the elevator and into the cool hallway of the warehouse living quarters was that no one, not even Farah, passed her.

Nat looked up from her arm chair tucked into a corner, curious but silent, when Charlie barged into her -- their -- shared room. That was still new to her. They’d only decided to move Charlie’s things into Nat’s slightly larger bedroom a couple of months prior when Charlie realized she’d only used the room as a glorified storage unit instead of a place for her to sleep in.

There was much to be said about Nat’s taste of luxurious living after all. Her mattress and her sheets were far better than her own.

“God fuck this weather, and god bless that the Agency gifted you all with air conditioning,” Charlie muttered, kicking off her shoes. Nat winced as they clattered against the shoe rack. At least they were in the general area, she’d pick them up later. “The blasted air conditioning went out at the department and my arse feels like a swamp.”

Nat snorted, such an unpretty noise, and covered her mouth with her hand. “Yes, you do look a bit wilted today, Charlie. The shower is open, though you might hurry before Ava and Morgan finish their sparring.”

“Right,” Charlie sighs, tugging off her blouse and stepping out of trousers and depositing them into their laundry bin. Already some of her heated moodiness is falling away now that she’s in the relative coolness of her and Nat’s room, notwithstanding her unable to keep up the angry bit against Nat’s calm demeanor.

She crosses the room, threads her fingers into the waves of Nat’s brown hair as she leans down, and presses their lips together in a brief kiss.

“Hello, by the way,” Charlie murmurs against Nat’s lips.

“Hello to you too.”

“Sorry to come barging in here like that, I had a bit of a day,” Nat leans into her hand cradling the side of her head, eyes fluttering closed. “I’ll be in a better mood once I wash off all of this nasty sweat.”

Nat hums her agreement. She turns her head towards Charlie’s palm, presses a kiss to the center, and nudges her away.

“Off you go then. And please, Charlie, please put away your shoes properly on your way out.”

---

Freshly cleaned, hair wet against the back of her neck, and smelling of sweet oatmeal and honey, Charlie feels renewed.

Morgan’s outside the bathroom when she leaves, looking as grumpy faced and twice as sweaty as Charlie did before her shower. They bump shoulders as a way of rude, familial kind of greeting. Charlie tells her she smells like shit, Morgan asks if she missed her face while cleaning up.

Neither of them miss the bemused smirk they share as Morgan steps into the bathroom.

Nat’s still in her armchair nursing the book in her lap, The Fingersmith Charlie notes this time, having not paid much attention to her choice earlier, but new to the room is a pitcher of water with slices of cucumber and lemon bobbing alongside cubes of ice, two frosty glasses, and a plate of artfully cut fruit on a silver tray close to the armchairs.

“What’s all this now?” Charlie asks, stepping closer and popping a slice of strawberry into her mouth. It’s perfectly sweet.

“I thought we might like something fresh to enjoy since it is so hot today,” Nat looks up, a knowing smile curving at her lips. “Bit too hot for your afternoon cuppa and biscuits, don’t you think?”

Ah, right. Indulging in a warm cup of tea and a couple of ginger biscuits is how Charlie usually likes to wind down from a long day at work barring the heat. The fruit does look tempting, the water too, but even more tempting is their bed.

Her back, aching slightly as it usually does, seems to agree a lay down would be nice.

“Maybe later,” Charlie nods her head at the bed. “I know it’s also a bit too hot for this, but I could go for a cuddle.” Charlie sticks out her hand, offering her a small smile. “If you’d like. You can read if you prefer.”

Nat brightens. Instantly she marks her place with a decorative bookmark and sets it aside, and takes her hand as she stands. “Now how could I ever turn down some cuddling in favor of reading about fictional cuddling, my darling?”

Charlie laughs. “You are certainly not reading that book for its notorious cuddling scenes, Natalie.”

Together they climb into the bed, favoring laying on top of the silk soft comforter instead of slipping underneath. They slot together with Nat’s arms around her waist and the comforting warmth of Nat’s chest pressed against her back. It’s nice. Different from her usual preference of slotting in behind Nat and tucking her in the best she can given their massive size difference (much to her chagrin -- over 22 centimeters of difference was frankly ridiculous), but nice.

Nat rests her chin on her shoulder as they fully settle in. “Are you certain you’re feeling alright? Would you like to talk about your day?”

The day and all of its annoyances seem far away now wrapped up in her girlfriend’s arms, wrapped in the scent of warm leather and old books. Her hands find Nat’s interlaced at her stomach, her thumbs rubbing thoughtful circles to the back of Nat’s hands -- wide palmed with distinct knuckles and thin, long fingers, a mismatched coupling makes her think they’re perfect for holding and perfect for creating -- and considers.

This, too, is new. Openness, she means. Charlie’s trying her damn best with Nat, knows when Nat asks she is not prying open her ribs to see inside, she is only knocking politely to be let inside, if she’ll have her. It’s not easy exactly, not when it feels like who she is is welded tight to her chest, but it’s not as painful when she is blanketed by Nat and knows she is safe to unfurl should she choose.

“I promise I am not being dismissive when I say I am fine,” Charlie begins. “But for once my bad day was just a bad day. It’s better now.” She squeezes Nat’s fingers as her eyes slide shut. “You make it better.”

In response Nat tugs in her closer, her nose snuggling against her shoulder, whispering against the line of her neck before retreating away. “I will always be here for you.” A kiss to her shoulder. “Sleep, Charlotte. I’ll wake you before dinner.”

Sleep’s already creeping in, darkening the edges of her thoughts. Warm, protected, held she lulls into it, thinking briefly about routines shifting, and how she might include a post work cuddle in with Nat more frequently.

[sonicasura]

Balan Wonderworld Review: Favorite Costumes Part 2

Before we get started, I like to say something. I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE TIM TRAPS. If you don't know, there is a specific plant that tends to appear in certain levels called Tim Traps. A carnivorous orange flower that's favorite meal is TIMS. If you kick the plants, you can free your Trapped Tim or prevent one from getting trapped for a short period of time. Problem is if the Tim is trapped for too long, your baby is gone for good. Chapter 3 and Chapter 5's Act 3 are loaded with these annoying plants. To the point if I can't find the trapped Tims, I exit out of the game just to save my poor fluffballs. Ain't sacrificing my little birds for Drops and Trophies! Mini rant over.

Rules are the same as before. I'd be ranking both a Common Costume and Rare Costume. Common Costumes are easily to find whether it be in multiple levels and Rare Costumes are those that rarely appear or are difficult to get.

I'll be doing my favorite Secret Costume after playing all Act 3s for each chapter. Now let's begin.

Chapter 7

Common Costume- Floaty Flower

The Flower Fairy and greatest glider found in the main story. Floaty Flower is a costume that can be found in the Act 1, 2 and the Boss Act, it offers a slower descent but faster movement than the hover for Soaring Sheep.

I love this costume not for its aesthetic but a cute Easter Egg I found in Chapter 7 Act 1. On rare occasions, this costume is an NPC that actually flirts with you! Some NPCs in certain chapters act differently from their standard counterpart. They often try to disguise themselves or runaway. Catching them grants you a free costume of the one you caught.

Floaty Flower will appear and follow you, similar to a shy school girl with a crush. If you go to her, she will run which is a similar action to any shy person getting approached by their crush. Also... I think there is some lore hidden in this one that might be quite sad if it's directly linked to Cal, the human whose heart created this particular world. If so then... OOF.

Rare Costume - Paladin Puncher

A knight fights with his fists than a sword. This costume can be found in Act 2 and is a stronger version of the Pumpkin Puncher that can break iron or ice blocks. He's a bit slower than his Chapter 6 counterpart but perfect breaking the more blocks and defeating spiky enemies.

I also love the fact this costume goes against the traditional tools of a knight. Knights often fight using swords, shields, lances and rare occasions bows or axes. If you give me one who PUNCHES or straight uses martial arts to fight then you got my vote in seconds.

Chapter 8

Common Costume - Snow Fairy

Elegant dancer of ice and snow. The Snow Fairy costume allows the wearer to walk on air for a short period of time and can in found in Act 1 and Act 2. This costume does have a shorter usage time than Air Cat but makes up for it with the added elevation.

I absolutely adore how elegant and beautiful this particular costume is. You can compare the Snow Fairy to myths often related to fae or hidden in the freezing mountains. An otherworldly beauty that makes any hardship worth seeing just a being before your eyes. Being a reindeer type Faun just adds to the mystique and creating snowflakes to walk on is a perfect extra touch.

Rare Costume - Amadeus

Sophisticated pianist. A costume that can only be found in Act 1 and is a performing costume. Now I am a big fan of piano covers, whether it be covers of game osts or actual songs, there is rarely any piano music I don't like.

I love the fact he's wearing piano keys as a collar and even has a tutu made out of those very keys. A very creative take to a normally grounded instrument. And the big white wig is a nice touch since it's often portrayed with pianists in various media.

Chapter 9

Common Costume- Iron Panda

Adorable crusher. Iron Panda is a costume found in Act 1 and Act 2 with the ability to break iron blocks using both its jump and weight. This costume is surprisingly fast for a rather large and heavy form, perfect for fast stomps on enemies or quick getaways if you have rare costumes you don't want to lose.

This costume reminds of a rolling Russian Doll with a panda theme. Very adorable, the bluish purple color suits the white very nicely and I love that sleepy look on its face. The large blue dots on its sides are actually the arms too, they mimic panels! Only thing that unnerves me is when the costume turns their head by a 90 degree angle. Super creepy when using it.

Rare Costume- Merry Ghost

Cute and Spooky! The Merry Ghost is a costume that can be found in Act 2 and gives the ability to constantly float. It's main purpose is to avoid ground hazards like poison swamps and has a larger slightly floaty jump. The only downside is that you can't harm enemies with this, it's only for quick mobility.

Very adorable especially with the stitched rag cloak covering the body. It has this Mimikyu sort of vibe but also a Casper the Friendly Ghost aura too. Friendly spirits are often tossed aside for more vicious or antagonistic ones in a lot of media. Getting an adorable friendly one just adds points in my book and a good pal for Casper.

Chapter 10

Common Costume - Inky Blaster

Yuji Naka's take on a squid kid. This costume can be found in Act 1, Act 2 and the Boss Act. She allows the wearer to throw fast globs of rainbow paint at opponents or targets and is decently agile.

Love that her hands are paintbrushes and is based on the octopus. Tentacles mimicking the frills of a dress and used for hair and feet? A very creative take and splattering rainbow paint on the annoying types of Negati (looking at you ya divebomb happy Pelican and destroyer of most of my good costumes) is very therapeutic.

Rare Costume- Air Unicorn

The first unicorn I like?! This costume can only be found in Act 1 and allows the user to walk on air farther than Air Cat. The practical godfather of mobility, and recovery. You won't believe how many times this costume has gotten me to very difficult areas and saved me from death via falling into the abyss.

It is a very tricky costume to find but if you turn around, there's a large paintbrush on the wall. You need the Double Jumper to get on top but you'll be able to see a hidden mirror. That is where the Air Unicorn is located.

I won't lie that unicorns are not my preferred mythological creature. I live in America where unicorns tend to be oversaturated to oblivion and don't get me started on My Little Pony. The show isn't my cup of tea but I do have some followers and friends who are fans. People have their own opinions and it's rude to question them about it.

I honestly love the elegant but cute design, the purple, pale pink and cyan just fit well with the white, I also love that the mane mimics a paintbrush tip and the large light purple collar of fur is a perfect touch to this fine design.

Chapter 11

Common Costume - Bulldozer

A man's punny best friend! This costume can be in Act 1, Act 2 (?), and the Boss Act. It lets you push special construction blocks and you can boost the push speed by button mashing.

They definitely took a lot of creative for costumes in Chapter 11 amongst the other ones in my opinion. Fire Stations tend to have some animal companions with dogs being the most common but instead of a Dalmatian for the design they used a Bulldog! 😍

Like the aforementioned machine, this good boy is bulky, has the appropriate color scheme and even the hands turn into bulldozer's shovel when using the ability! I love the fact his tail is wagging when you push a block and it wags faster if ya button mash!

Also the name is a pun!

Rare Costume - Fiery Blaster

Pyromancer of Lions. The Fiery Blaster costume can only be found in Act 2. It gives the wearer that ability to throw large fireballs alongside fire and lava immunity. If you hate lava levels or have difficulty with this Chapter's boss then I recommend getting this Costume.

First thing I like to say about this particular design is how they use the colors. Looking at the mane, you can see how the red and darker red are patterned in a way to mimic flames. The dark red fur on the feet are even in fire like a pattern. The outfit such as the yellow and brownish kilt alongside the gloves spewing fire around the wrists just reminds me of a fire dancer.

I can see this fella wielding one of the torches a fire dancer uses and just put on a spectacular show.

Chapter 12

Another loveable version of a beloved icon. The Invisible Man costume can be found in Act 1, Act 2 and the Boss Act. It has the power to turn the wearer invisible for a period of time and become undetected to enemies that aren't bosses.

Agile and perfect to deal with enemies who are very annoying or are difficult snipers. You don't know how satisfying it is to give the more aggravating Negati an invisible middle finger by sneak attacking them. I have lost many costumes whenever enemies got the drop on me so it's fair to dish out payback.

I love how this design takes aspect from the popular icon but also have it relate to their human counterpart. Bandages were used by the original Invisible Man to cover skin his normal clothing couldn't cover in public and made it easier for him to disappear when needed.

The shoes and arms being covered in bandages and some of the bandages being used as bangs for the hair is a nice touch.

Rare Costume - Jolt Tiger

Immovable Taser. This costume can only be found in Act 2. It grants electricity immunity and create a barrier when you stand still. One of the better costumes for baiting particular enemies. You do have to be careful because a single itch will stop the barrier.

If you don't know, the Tiger is my Chinese Zodiac and electricity is one of my favorite elements. Love the yellow lightning bolt flairs and even the black stripes mimic lightning too! I also like the will o' wisp pattern on the stomach and the large tuft of grayish fur around the chest. The design puts it above the Sun Walker.

And that is it! The next thing I will cover is the level design and it's music. The bosses will be done last since it's good to save the best for last!

Until next time folks, see you back in Wonderworld.

[xtptrackundercarriages]

dozer track shoes video excavator track shoes video bulldozer track shoe...

[jkottke]

Revisiting Chernobyl

I've spent the last few years fascinated by the Chernobyl disaster. This fascination partly grew out of my interest in the Flint Water Crisis, which was directly compared to Chernobyl in a story I wrote about it. (One of the things people forget is that Chernobyl poisoned the water table for a huge region.)

"Looking Again At Chernobyl" reviews two books: Midnight In Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, by Adam Higginbotham, and Manual For Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, by Kate Brown.

The similarities with Flint start in the opening paragraph:

Catastrophes happen when a large system gets so out of sync with its environment that a tiny tweak can crash it to the ground. It's happened to oil rigs, spacecraft and mines. Afterward, committees blame the people who did the tweaking. But what matters is how the system became unstable and crashed, the atmosphere that caused it and the aftereffects. In these two books about the April 1986 explosion of the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, "Midnight in Chernobyl" focuses on the first and second, "Manual for Survival" on the third.

It's probably fair to say that we've spent the last thirty years acting as if we don't live in a post-Chernobyl world.

Robert P. Crease, the reviewer, seems most taken with Higginbotham's book:

Adam Higginbotham's "Midnight in Chernobyl" is a gripping, miss-your-subway-stop read. The details of the disaster pile up inexorably. They include worn control rod switches, the 2,000-ton reactor lid nicknamed Elena, a core so huge that understanding its behavior was impossible. Politicians lacked the technical knowledge to take action, while scientists who had the knowledge feared to provide it lest they lose their jobs or lives...

The explosion occurs less than 100 pages into this 366-page book (plus more than 100 pages of notes, glossary, cast of characters and explanation of radiation units). But what follows is equally gripping. Radio-controlled repair bulldozers became stuck in the rubble. Exposure to radiation made voices grow high and squeaky. A dying man whispered to his nurse to step back because he was too radioactive. A workman's radioactive shoe was the first sign in Sweden of a nuclear accident 1,000 miles upwind. Soviet bigwigs entered the area with high-tech dosimeters they didn't know how to turn on. Investigations blamed the accident on six tweakers, portrayed them as "hooligans" and convicted them. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (Unscear), which is to radiation studies something like what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.) is to assessing human-induced climate effects, struggled to make sense of changing and confusing information.

Brown's book is trying to do something very different, and Crease finds it correspondingly more complicated to evaluate:

Kate Brown's "Manual for Survival" has a different style and emphasis. Its aim is to be an exposé of the attempts to minimize the impact of Chernobyl. The disaster was less an accident, says Brown, a historian at M.I.T., than "an exclamation point in a chain of toxic exposures that restructured the landscape, bodies and politics." Unscear's publications were cover-ups, and radiation-related maladies are "a dark horseman riding wild across the Chernobyl territories." Brown undertook the book so as not to become "one of those duped comrades who found out too late that the survival manual contained a pack of lies."

Around 2014, Brown began interviewing people in the affected areas, and sought measurements of radioactivity in such things as wool, livestock and swamps. Her stories are affecting, yet it is hard to evaluate memories and anecdotes. It is also hard to evaluate measurements. These are meaningful only within the tangled web of factors that radiation epidemiologists consider -- including type and time-span of dose, pathways through the body, susceptibility of individual tissues and background radiation -- as well as health issues like alcohol, obesity and stress.

Brown deserves credit, though, for wading into these murkier waters, because the murky waters is where we are. Part of reckoning with Chernobyl means admitting everything we don't know. We don't know the full health effects of the disaster. We don't know how many people died. We don't know how many lives were lost to neglect and cover-up. We don't know how many could have been saved.

Part of what it means to actually live in a post-Chernobyl world is to accept that our most vital infrastructure is always threatened; that the threats it poses are always disproportionately affecting a society's most vulnerable citizens; and that its threats are always downplayed by a society's most powerful and directly responsible members, out of ignorance and fear.

That's the lesson of Chernobyl. That's the lesson of Flint. That's the lesson of the future, which it never seems to hesitate to teach.

[undercarriage-parts-leo]

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[afniel]

Hoosiers, that is to say for people who don't know, Indiana natives, don't really know what their homes are built on. It looks like fields, so it must be fields, as far as the eye can see, but what most no longer realize is that Central Indiana is old, old swampland. The elevation is low, and the water table is high, atop a state-sized slab of limestone that's still packed with fossils. The entire region lies on the billions of skeletons of an ancient ocean. We forgot. The land never did. It rains, and suddenly the fields are flooding, drainage ditches failing, streams long-plowed-over flowing over banks of drowning corn and soy. It's going to be an ocean again, damn it. Worms float to the top, robins rejoice loudly, and underneath every house, a sump pump thrums, desperately shoving fertilizer-foul water against the slow brown tide. If it gets as high as your floorboards...well, you're ruined, that's just how it is.

You hope it doesn't get that high. It's not like you can afford to replace the entire floor, not in one of the most broke states in the country. Might as well just vacate -- nobody will buy it -- and let it join the ranks of the other falling-apart house frames, and someday some bored kid will torch it. (That's happened twice in my hometown while I was growing up. Arson is a sadly common pastime in a place where standing around at Walmart counts as high entertainment.)

I found a spring, once, on top of a hill in a trailer park as a child. You wouldn't expect one there at all, but there were three patches of cattails nearby where even the bulldozer couldn't tame the swamp, and the water rolled down the hill into the mud. I accidentally stepped right into the source, and my shoes sucked in up to the ankle. I had to get three other kids to pull me and my shoes loose separately.

The fields near my hometown -- a flyspeck of 180 people on a good day, with neither stop sign nor light on the main highway -- are orange with hard clay, and gray with limestone. But take the highway to the nearest town, and the Blue River, and the soil is black as coal in the tiny valley, rich with silt. The Blue River is fifteen feet across, but it floods like a miniature Nile. Nobody told it that it shouldn't be a mile broad. It hasn't forgotten either.

There's a bridge near my old church with no sides. There's a covered bridge built in 1829, if memory serves, not that far from it. It survived an arson in the mid-aughts that stripped the sideboards but didn't even begin to touch the old-growth frame, solid as stone and still flexible despite its age. There's an iron frame bridge near it that you can only find if you're very carefully not looking for it. There are road signs on which I swear I've watched the letters change when I went looking for the iron bridge while it wasn't feeling sociable.

It's never actually feeling sociable. It just gets too lazy to move when the sun's out and warm, I'm convinced. At night, it wakes up and I think it resents the tractors that rattle across it all day in the spring and fall.

Wooly worms cross the roads this time of year. All in the same direction, going nowhere I can discern. They say you can tell how long and harsh the winter will be by the size of the black stripe on their middle. I don't think that's necessarily true...but I do think I've seen a lot more all black ones when I've visited lately.

And don't get me going about the Native mounds. We've destroyed more of those than we've ever enshrined in parks, and I don't think we've been forgiven for it, nor should we be.

Hoosiers have forgotten the swamp, but the swamp forgets nothing. It's just waiting for one terminal, apocalyptic rain to wipe Indiana off the map, and then it'll be back to business as usual for another geological epoch, as far as it cares.

it’s all you americans talk about… liminal space this… cryptid that

[caphasamericasass]

The Tin Man and the Viper PART TWO

Bucky Barnes x OC

Sucky Summary: AU Post Civil War Steve Rogers returns from Wakanda with a partially repaired Bucky Barnes to the Avengers compound.  Excited to introduce his first best friend to his BFF of the 21st century (OC), he’s shocked to discover that a deep change has occurred in her from when they were last united.  Bucky’s never been one for puzzles but finds some solace in her silence in a new world that’s spinning out of their control.  

Word Count: 1.1+

Characters: Steve, Bucky, Natasha, OC

Warnings: None Yet

PART ONE

Bucky’s POV

It’s hard not to watch her spar, I’ll give her that.  Her movements are fluid and graceful—a young Natalia Romanova still learning. Romanoff is the only person she has allowed to train with her since her return.  We sat down with the iron twat my first official night with the Avengers after our run in in the kitchen.  Stark doesn’t seem concerned, but it doesn’t appear to be that whatever is happening with her is something the Avengers want to talk about aside from Steve.  I myself don’t see what the big deal is either, I mean pretty, mute, and a little neurotic to keep things interesting sounds like the about ideal dame to me.  

I can see her perfectly from the weight bench sending high kicks right over Romanoff’s head as she ducks gracefully out of Estella’s way.  Steve asked her this morning if she might want to get in the ring with us today as he bragged to her about me being a boxing champ back in the day, but she just smiled sweetly and shook her no.

Suddenly there’s a blur of flesh obstructing my view, it belongs to Steve—I’m momentarily impressed with myself for knowing that without meeting his eyes or tuning into his voice. I peel my eyes from the dueling girls somewhat reluctantly, and grunt, “whadya want, Steve?”

“Stark called a team meeting,” he replies.

“Isn’t that your job?”

Steve scoffs.  “I let him be second in command to coddle his delicate ego.  He get his knickers in a twist since he, you know,” he gestures at all the equipment surrounding us in the Tower’s gym, “pays for all this stuff.”  I nod with a sense of understanding, but I don’t recall Howard being so controlling.  Of course things always change after war.  

Steve is smirking at me and I briefly wonder if I’ve missed something.  “What?”

“Should I get the girls or would you like to do the honors?”

“Punk,” I mutter.  I stand and toss my towel into my standard army issue duffle bag with no intent on saying anything to the assassin and the mute.

Steve chuckles. “Widow! Error! Meeting in the eighty-first floor conference room in fifteen minutes!”

They pause instantly for Romanoff to respond.  “You want us to walk in there smelling like Maximoff’s running shoes?”

I look up to see Estelle crack an out of place smile and wrinkle her nose slightly.  It’s almost cute.  Almost.

“Apparently Stark has a fetish for stinky teammates.”

I’d never heard anyone address Estelle as anything aside from that, or more affectionately as Stella. “Where does that codename come from?”

“Oh, Error?  It’s short for ‘User Error’.  When Stella was brought to the attention of the Avengers, it was because she hit Stark’s radar as an alleged hacker.  Her abilities include technology and electrical energy manipulation and she wreaked havoc on the Stark Enterprise servers to use his GPS to locate missing mutants on an X-Men mission.  Normally the X-Men would avoid any interaction with the Avengers or other any government agencies for that matter, but it was an emergency and they thought with her abilities she’d be able to get in and out completely undetected.  But the truth is, at the time Stella knew about as much about computers as I do.”

“That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” I say, mostly because I don’t know a damn thing about the X-Men.  Steve mentioned them once or twice in Wakanda, but genetic mutations occurring in nature outside of Hydra reek of suspicious activity.  It’s hard for me to grasp that normal people are born this way, born like the twins.  Steve said that there’s genetic explanation to that too but it all goes right over my head. I don’t think he knows what he’s talking about.

“She grew up in the Swamps, Buck.  It’s not exactly like Silicon Valley.”  I have no idea where ‘Silicon Valley’ is, but apparently it’s not the Everglades.  We headed towards the exit of the gym after gathering our belongings whereas the girls bee lined towards the locker room. “She wasn’t incredibly computer literate outside of the basics.  She had raw ability and had just joined the X-Men to figure out how to use it.  Long story short, she basically ended up triggering all these crazy alarms that Stark had installed in his systems as emergency contingency plans for incredibly advanced hackers.  He said it should have been impossible for someone of her incompetency to bulldoze their way through the system like a digital bull in a china shop.  At first he was mad, but he called me a soon as he discovered the identity of the girl.”

“Granddaughter of a Howling Commando?  How’d the Frenchy even end up in the states anyhow?”

“You don’t happen to remember a nurse by the name of Gloria Sayre?  Tiny little thing with a nice, slow southern drawl.”

Doesn’t ring a single bell. I shake my head from right to left.

“Well after you…were no longer in action…they got together.  Funny thing is, she told him she was from New Orleans, the Paris of America,” Steve says.  He’s got a glimmer of far away nostalgia in his eyes as we step into an elevator that will take us to the eighty-first floor.  I nearly wish I was capable of remembering enough things to feel nostalgic about them, but instinct immediately screams that an unnecessary weakness and I brush my envy aside.  “But as it turned out, old Gloria lived a few cities and one state away, in the swampland of Biloxi, Mississippi.  I heard all this from Tony who said that Howard had written it in an old journal of his he started keeping at the end of the war when record keeping became an afforded luxury.  Howard had written that Jacques was livid, but by the time they reached the south Gloria was already pregnant.  Stella just about confirmed all of this when we finally met.  I was fairly adamant about getting her on the team—a descendant of Jacques, a genetic modern marvel!  Who could have imagined.”

“So does that mean that Frenchy was…well was Frenchy a mutant too then, and he never told anyone? Was that why he was so good with explosions?”  I ask, my brain beginning to run wild faster than common sense can catch up to it.  

“Of course not, Buck. You spent all that time with him in the POW cells, I think you’d remember that.”

Not likely, I think.  We step out of the elevator and begin down a maze of hallways as Steve tries reassure me that Jacques was not a freak like his offspring.

“Mutation is a gene that can be dormant if possessed.  Jacques could’ve had it and never known, or Gloria, or more likely it came from Arthur Sinclair’s line.  Stella’s father.”

“Yeah?  What’s Sinclair’s deal?” I ask as we step into the room.  The Maximoff’s, the android, Stark, and Bird Brain are already there in civilian clothes not drenched in sweat.

Steve sighs.  “That’s a whole other story.”

PART THREE

[thedreamingmoon]

“Hard Rain” by Tony Hoagland

After I heard It's a Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

played softly by an accordion quartet

through the ceiling speakers at the Springdale Shopping Mall,

I understood: there's nothing

we can't pluck the stinger from,

nothing we can't turn into a soft-drink flavor or a t-shirt.

Even serenity can become something horrible

if you make a commercial about it

using smiling, white-haired people

quoting Thoreau to sell retirement homes

in the Everglades, where the swamp has been

drained and bulldozed into a nineteen-hole golf course

with electrified alligator barriers.

"You can't keep beating yourself up, Billy,"

I heard the therapist say on television

                                                          to the teenage murderer,

"about all those people you killed—

You just have to be the best person you can be,

one day at a time—"

And everybody in the audience claps and weeps a little,

because the level of deep feeling has been touched,

and they want to believe that

the power of Forgiveness is greater

than the power of Consequence, or History.

Dear Abby:

My father is a businessman who travels.

Each time he returns from one of his trips,

his shoes and trousers

    are covered with blood—

but he never forgets to bring me a nice present;

Should I say something?

                                      Signed, America.

I used to think I was not part of this,

that I could mind my own business and get along,

but that was just another song

that had been taught to me since birth—

whose words I was humming under my breath,

as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.

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