#but i press delete and its still there i close out of the files and reopen and its still there

[husband]

i have this gif of a distorted griffin mcelroy with gamzee horns and makeup edited on and not only do i have zero memory of saving this to my computer but it will not let me delete it

[gxr25256]

Perilous Illusion - Overlord x reader (5)

🌵 Story belongs to PotatooftheLand (they deleted the work and I'm really sad).

🌵 I just rewrote the story according to what I remember reading and according to my imagination.

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

He knows now. You’re lost to him, you’ve abandoned him for good...

But, like a hungry predator circling its prey, he’s not ready to let you go. He knows better, no matter what, he can still possess you.

There’s a deep-rooted possessiveness that coils in his spark, a fire that refuses to die, no matter how harsh your words, how fierce your scorn. Even as you glare at him, even as you twist and struggle, he tightens his hold, feeling the warmth of your body against his armor. It’s a hollow warmth, one-sided. But it’s enough to fan the flames of his obsession, enough to remind him that he can still possess you, even if he’s lost your love. Even if he knows he’ll never have your devotion again, he can have your presence—he can press you against him, imagine the way you used to smile, conjure the echo of your laughter from fragments he’s stored in the deepest recesses of his mind.

In truth, he’s done it a thousand times before. After all, relying on his memory files to simulate those cherished moments. He can replay every look, every word, every laugh in his processor with perfect clarity, constructing a world where you still loved him. In that fabricated universe, you smiled just for him, spoke to him with warmth, and looked at him with something other than fear or hatred. If he simply closes his optics, shuts out the present, he can sink back into those comforting illusions where you haven’t yet turned away, where you’re still the doting partner he remembers.

It’s a cheap substitute, he knows. But for him, it’s enough. Or at least, he tells himself that it is.

Now, standing here with you so close yet so far, he could almost close his optics, ignore the hatred in your gaze, and pretend that you’re his again. He could wrap his arms around you, press you against his frame, feel the ghostly warmth that still lingers in his memory files, and, if he doesn’t look at your face, he could pretend. Pretend that you’re not looking at him with such loathing, pretend that you’re smiling up at him the way you used to, with trust, with devotion, with love.

Your servos press against his chest, nails digging into the reinforced plates with a desperation that borders on feral, and he barely feels it. The sting of your struggle is nothing compared to the agony of knowing that the love of his life despises him. He’s endured wounds, both physical and emotional, that would break a lesser being, but this—the sheer finality of your contempt—cuts deeper than anything he’s faced. Every angry word, every look of disgust you cast his way, feels like another nail sealing away the last remnants of hope he’s clung to.

And yet, even as you push him away, even as you fight with all the strength you can muster, he holds on, refusing to let go.

Some dark part of him revels in the struggle, in the way you claw at him as if you could actually escape. It’s a cruel irony, really; you may scratch and bruise, you may even manage to chip the paint on his chest plate, but you’re hopelessly outmatched. There’s a twisted satisfaction in knowing you’re powerless against him, that despite everything, he still has that hold over you. It’s not love—not in any way he wants to admit—but it’s control. It’s possession. And right now, it’s all he has left.

He watches the anger in your eyes, sees the spark of defiance burning there, and it only fuels his obsession further. He’s come to rely on that fire, that spirit of yours, as the last anchor in his spiraling existence. Even now, when you’re staring up at him with barely disguised hatred, that fierce light in your optics reminds him of everything he once admired about you. Everything he still admires, even if he knows it’s hopeless. And so, he clings to that, feeds off it, drawing strength from your anger like a leech siphoning life from its host.

With a smirk that’s as empty as his spark, he leans close, his voice a low, mocking whisper in your audio receptors.

“You haven’t even seen the worst that I can do.”

After all, Overlord is Overlord—he has always taken what he wants, and this moment is no exception.

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

[officialclangen]

I don't know if this'll be helpful to all the folks who want to see dead cats' relationships, but there is a way of keeping that information that I use all the time. It only works if a cat has just died, though. So:

Step 0: Before you start doing things in Clangen, keep your data directory open in the background. This is accessed from the main menu by going to "setting + info" and then in the bottom left corner "open data directory." You can access your saves in the "saves" folder. Just keep this tab open in the background as you play.

Step 1: Oh no! You have JUST gotten the message that a cat has died, either on moon change or patrol. But remember! None of these changes are retained until you save. As long as you don't save, that cat's relationship info is still acessible! Do NOT close out of Clangen, and do NOT save.

Simply open that tab from earlier with the data directory. In your "saves" folder, you will see folders for all of your clans. Open the folder for the Clan you're playing right now.

Step 2: There should be a file in this folder called "clan_cats.json." Open it. If it asks how you want to open it, Notepad is perfectly fine to use and everybody's got it. This file is where information like your cat's appearance and traits are kept, but we're looking for something a lot more simple here.

Step 3: Look for the cat that just died and write down/remember its ID. You can cntrl+F a cat's prefix or suffix on its own to find them easier, but you will not find them if you cntrl+F their full name because prefix and suffix are on separate lines. Once you've found the dead cat's name, you will see a line above the prefix and the suffix listing its ID. This number is important because it is what identifies the cat in relationship files.

Step 4: Close out of "clan_cats.json" (and of it asks if you want to save changes, say no; we're not looking to make changes here, but maybe you accidentally pressed a key while searching for your cat, it happens; so just don't save when you close out), OR minimize it/keep it in the background.

Then, still within the "saves" folder for your clan, go into the "relationships" folder and look for the json file with the ID of the cat that just died-- the number you recorded/recall from the previous step. For example, if the ID for your dead cat is 913, the file you want is "913_relations.json"

You can either open this file right now or copy and paste it somewhere else so you can access it later. I prefer to copy/paste it to a separate folder on my flashdrive where I store all of the Clangen notes I take.

This file is basically all of the information on your dead cat's relationships, just laid out less prettily than in-game Clangen. It even keeps a log of moon change interactions this cat has had. But everything here is laid out using cats' IDs instead of their names. You can sometimes see who is who by taking note of any moon change interactions in the log, but some of the time if you want to understand which cats the info is for, you'll have to go back to your "clan_cats.json" from earlier and reference the IDs listed. Every cat, dead or alive, can be found in "clan_cats.json" but when a cats dies and you save your game, its corresponding ID_relations.json is deleted.

I would highly recommend against keeping copies of dead cat relations.json files long term. It is a lot of bloat that can add up fast, and it can get hard to find the particular file you want if you keep building a bigger and bigger pile of files. I personally prefer to keep this file copied in a separate folder until I'm ready to write any major notes on what's been happening in my Clan. Then, I open it up as well as "clan_cats.json", and I write down any final notes on that dead cat's relationships, tabbing over to clan_cats.json to cntrl+F any IDs I need to match up with names. When I've written down all the info I need, I finally delete the copy of the dead cat's relations.json. But regardless...

Step 5: Whatever you've decided to do with your recently deceased cat's relations.json file, whether you've taken any notes you need to take already or saved a copy for later, now is when you can finally go back to playing Clangen and officially save your game.

Remember! Once you save your game, the relations.json of your newly dead cat will be deleted from your Clan's save file! So once again: make sure you've written down any info you'd like from that file or made a copy before you save.

This was probably way too long-winded, but I wanted to make it as easy as possible to follow along! Hope it helped somebody!

Posting for y'all to have as reference!! Very smart, I hadn't thought of that myself

☆ Fable ☆

[pikxelbit]

Please excuse any writing errors here, I'm kinda tired to go over this whole thing and I don't want to pay a website to check my spelling

Chapter 3: Introductions

Word Count: 6,611 words

Warnings: Not that much, Mentions of death and somewhat near death experiences

Chapter Prompt: Everyone gets a check-up

Turbo x Reader | Chapter 2

It's now the next day and currently you started to practice your skills. Your abilities includes, opening and closing files, self-updating when possible, running diagnostics, coding simple assets into the game such as background items and even simple colouring, you can even try to repair errors and do anything once given enough information.

Your code can work somewhat similarly to a video game characters' code. You can interact with anything that's either a different game or app. However, unlike video game characters though, since you are accustomed to work in a computer, you don't exactly need a door to go inside and interact within the application itself. As long as the file has been opened, you can enter and leave as much as you'd like.

Furthermore though, when a file is opened and a window would appear, showing the contents of the folder or file that has been pressed. Once open, that's where you can step inside and interact with its contents.

Regarding how you do move inside the computer, you just hover and fly here and there. It's much more easier to reach files and do your tasks this way.

...

"Ok, let's start with your simple skills. Start by opening a few files and then organize them in an alphabetical order please," Danny spoke towards you.

Abiding, you opened a few random folders before organizing it in alphabetical order.

"Ok...next, open the file to the background of Turbo Time and right after, try to run a simple test on it."

Nodding your head, you opened the file to the environment of Turbo Time before trying to inspect if anything would break. Looking around, you observed how the background would move when being interacted to. Running through the fields and tracks, you confirmed that it is stable before trying to play the audio. Listening through, it didn't glitch at all like the theme song in RoadBlasters.

After all that, you brought out a notepad wherein you took note of every detail you perceived as important. This notepad could be accessed by Danny as it would automatically be saved into another separate file in the computer.

"Ok... So this is kind of your big day Y/N. To continue your practice for the day, I want you to run some tests on all the characters okay? Don't delete anything, just run a simple 'check-up' and list down the errors you might find. We still don't know how things happened so it would be good to do a check-up on how the characters are for the time being. I already checked the codes but I was way too sleepy last night so I need you to test them for me. I'll come back later to check on what you've done," and just like that, he went off.

By now it was normal for you to do certain things by yourself. Early on, he would usually leave the computer running for a few hours sometimes and try to record what you'd do without him. Danny used to do that, before he would come up with a notepad as a replacement of recording. The notepad would also serve as somewhere for you to journal the things you've done and other important information you might have gathered when he's gone. So sometimes you'd just be left alone in the room.

After sometime though, you did feel somewhat... alone. It's a bit silly to think of, but being left alone by yourself in the house made you sometimes wonder what could be happening right outside this computer. You didn't do anything important, sometimes Danny would accidentally leave the computer open so you'd usually use that time to try and look through files you have access to.

The computer didn't have a lot of games installed into the system, but even then the games that are available were one's without any characters at all. Still thankful though, you would oftentimes play the games just to kill time. But, sometimes, you could just shut yourself down when there's nothing to do.

Using your journal, you would often write simple things and observations. Usually just certain things such as, listing simple actions you did for the day, or listing the many times you've reassembled a few files. A few times though, your entries really do show how lonely you are...

You admit, a lot of the times it is quite lonely. With no one to speak to other than Danny, Kiara, and even their parents, you had a limited range of people to talk to.

But now, right after your encounter with Turbo, you felt somewhat glad to have someone else besides yourself in this computer. Four new people to talk to...

...

Opening a file, you started with the first character on the list, Max..

The racer from RoadBlasters. It seemed she was the only character the developers made for the game. You did somewhat understand, the game did look very polished so perhaps they just didn't have enough money for more characters.

She was characterized as a bit of a vigilante, driving a racecar through different tracks and places. Well, when speaking of the arcade games, disregarding other materials, that's how she is. Not much talking, just the driver of the vehicle to be controlled by the player.

The game is clear-cut, it was a racing game, just like Turbo Time. Danny and Kiara told you about the two games and a few details as well about the characters, so you did know their names and such, but as for the cause of damage to the games, you all didn't exactly know yet.

Sure the theory that has been formed is adequate enough for the outcome. A virus in the game, perhaps someone tampered with both games the night before and managed to do this. But other than that all of you were completely clueless on the possibility of this happening because of malice.

Stepping into the 'window', you went onwards until you're standing right in front of Max. For a moment, you wait as her code slowly started. Like a lifeless husk, she stood still for a solid 15 seconds before waking up. Once she did, she widened his eyes slightly before landing it on you. She was slightly taller than you are.

"Greetings, I am Y/N an assistant in the current repair of your game."

Raising her eyebrows, she nodded slowly, while looking around trying to ground herself to the whole situation.

"Oh...I'm sorry, maybe I should give you some time to process first," you spoke with a small sheepish smile on your face.

She took a while, closing her eyes, she seemed to recall something in the same way Turbo does. Pausing for another moment her eyes gazed at the big rectangle shaped window seemingly the exit out of this abyss. Returning her gaze back at you, she tilted her head in confusion, her brain puzzled with a million questions flooding her mind as she tried to make sense of this, 'Who is this again? Where am I? What's going on? What happened again?' she thought to herself.

"Alright, I assume you want a whole explanation of how you got here, where you are, and what's happening?" You spoke, summing up all the possible questions she might ask as you noticed her quiet demeanor.

Swiftly, she nods back, "Yes, that would really help."

So, you explained how she got here, why she's here, where is here, who you were, and what you do, "...as for why you are currently in this dark room, right now you are separated as a different element to your game. All the other things from your game are separated and are placed in different rooms just like this, so apologies if it looks bleak. Do not worry though, in due time, you'll be transferred into a much more pleasing place."

"Ah...ok..." Max mutters, slightly gaining more insight on how everything currently is. She still looked a bit baffled though, and understandably so, waking up from a near death experience is... absolutely strange.

'That's right... I crashed into someone..? Then the whole game fell apart,' she thought to herself, her mind going on to recall what might have happened before her awakening in this dark, empty room.

She pondered for a while, leaving only a few seconds of silence before noticing that she might have been unnatentive. However, it didn't seem to bother you that much as you took to your own devices. Writing on your notebook, you took note of a few things. In silence, he took this time to try and interpret how you looked. You were a few inches shorter than he was. You looked like an accountant with a notebook, well you did fit the description you gave yourself, an assistant. She thanked you in her mind, Mr. Litwak and the others. Her game was only plugged in a few weeks ago and suddenly a whole accident happened. She thought she was going to die. Although this feels like a dream, she's still glad to even be here right now. After a short while, you stopped writing and placed your notebook somewhere before continuing to speak.

"Sorry about that, just had to take note of something. Moving onwards though, as you know I am an assistant of sorts, and right now I am here currently to see and test if you're working fine. Don't worry, it won't take long. So...are you comfortable with that?" You asked her politely.

Well if it's for the better, you are just going to do this test to know if something's wrong, so she supposes why not. Nodding her head in approval, she lets you start.

Getting tested was strange, although characters might have nearly never got checked-up or went to the doctor, they still did somehow got background knowledge of this because of a few chatterboxes arriving in the arcade. A few kids here and there, speaking about nurses and doctors... The tests went by as quick as you said, you asked her to do certain things and took some notes that's most likely just for reference.

From her vision, to her mobility, and right to her health, she felt like she was she was visiting a doctor. You didn't exactly need to test everything that's included in a typical diagnostics test for humans, you just had to make sure that the assets, in this case, the characters can work well. Questionably, you somehow brought something out of nowhere. And now, the only thing left is her ability to grab objects. 'Most likely some computer assistant thing' she thought to himself.

Grabbing the item firmly, nothing happened, but then, only after a few seconds her hands soon started to glitch. Gasping, she dropped the object. Whatever happened, it made her hands displace without her needing to move it. For a moment she felt her hands disappear.

Catching the item, you held it on your hands and gave her a reassuring smile, "Ok...don't worry we'll get you fixed up in no time," you spoke calmly.

"What was that?!" She asked, understandably perplexed by what happened.

"Well, that was because of something that's not supposed to be in your code. Perhaps it was tampered with..." You spoke, tapping your pen on your chin, "But just as I said, don't worry, I'll make sure you'll get repaired soon."

Nodding his head, she still was confused and a bit freaked out. But with your reassuring words she put his trust in you. She might have met you only an hour ago, but being someone who actively participated on repairing her game was something she can't deny as outright really kind and generous. With that in mind, she managed to calm down knowing she's in good hands.

The glitching stopped as quickly as it happened. She managed to stand up by herself, her hands feeling slightly numb for only a second before turning back to normal. You asked a few things, making sure she wasn't in any pain all the while as getting more information on what happened.

After writing on your notebook, you bowed slightly and thanked her for letting you run a diagnostics test. Max calmed down surprisingly quick after that, it seems your reassurance helped. Before you left though, you had to explain one last thing.

"Before I leave, I'd like to know if you're comfortable with me closing that window?" You pointed at the rectangle opening right in front, "When I close it, you'll somewhat go to sleep... Is that okay? I promise it won't hurt," you tried to explain properly.

Well, she's been alive for this long and you have helped her a lot already. Extending more trust, she replies, "Alright, if it's necessary."

"Well then, see you later. Once more, thank you Max," bidding her goodbye, she waved her arm before you stepped out into the rectangle window and disappeared. Weird. 'Must be another computer assistant type of thing,' she thought.

Leaving the file, you then pressed the [X] button to close it. Clicking your pen, you held out your notebook.

_________________________________________

Ticking off Max's name, you lowered your pen downwards to see the names... Dash and Flash, (I changed their names).

Dash is a side character, he's the youngest of the three. Although, strange, the three are somewhat brothers, with Dash being the last of them. Looking just like a bot of some sort. His outfit was simple like the others, no doubt this game was made with a small budget.

...

Dash wakes up, the bright light of a huge rectangular figure making him squint his eyes. Taking in a breath he realizes it's not game over! He touched his own face, unsure if this was a dream or not. All he could remember was the big yellow poster sign blocking the screen before their game got unplugged shortly afterwards.

Taking in another breath, he closes his eyes for a moment before asking a lot of questions to himself. 'Where am I? Where is everyone? Did someone save me?' Looking around, all he saw was the cold, and dark empty space covering the room. It was a chilling sight to see. So he turns, facing what he guessed was the screen and the only thing that brings light into this room.

Stepping forward though, he soon realizes he's not alone. He stares into your direction, you looked fancy, well somewhat. From what he guessed, you most likely are a doctor or an accountant of some sort. You're most likely are taller than him by the looks of it. Other than that, you didn't look threatening. Though, it seemed like you held something close to your chest... Upon closer inspection it was a notebook.

"Who are you?" Dash asked before you could say anything.

"I am Y/N, an assistant to help with certain tasks," you reply shortly, "You are Dash, correct?"

"Yup, the one and only," he nods his head before looking around in a baffled manner.

"Y/N may I ask, where am I? Why am I here? And do you know where my friends are?" He politely asked.

Just like when you met Max, you did your best to explain what has been happening, how he got here, and why he's here. However, as you were about to continue explaining, he interupts you for a moment.

"Ok, sorry for interrupting... So if I'm getting this right... You're someone who's helping Mr. Litwak's neice and nephew to fix our game?" He paused looking for some reassurance. Right after you nodded your head, he then continued, "So Turbo Time is still busted, and since they wanted to look into the code and fix it they just transferred us here? In a computer?" He paused once more, and you nodded once again, "Ok...what about my friends/brothers? Flash...and Turbo... Where are they?" He asked you with a tint of confusion and concern noticable on his face.

"That's what I was about to explain earlier. You see, all of you are currently saved into different rooms for now at least. We don't exactly know yet what went wrong in the game but for now at least all of you will be separated in order to easily check if there is something wrong in each of your codes," you finish explaining, leading him to nod his head.

"Ok... So, I'm guessing you're here to do a check-up?" Dash correctly guesses.

"Well, if that's alright with you?" You respond back, holding your notebook firmly on your hand.

"Sure, I guess I won't mind," shrugging his shoulders he stepped closer.

Starting from his vision, to his mobility, health, and lastly his ability to interact with other objects, the check-up was happening quite a bit faster than usual. During the start though, he felt as if he was visiting a doctor, and because he did start to feel comfortable after only a short period of time, he was starting to see you in a doctor-assistant role.

...

In the midst of the 'check-up' though, Dash decided to talk. It was awfully quiet at the moment and perhaps he should shed light on something. It might help make sense of the situation, guessing with his gut, he hopes you can keep a secret.

"Y/N, is it okay to call you doc?" He asked.

Looking up from your notebook, you nodded swiftly, "Yes, it doesn't bother me at all."

"So doc, you don't really have any background information right?" He spoke.

"Yes...at the moment, we have guessed perhaps there was a virus of some sort that somehow corrupted both Turbo Time, and RoadBlasters, the only two racing games in the arcade," you replied, placing your pen up to your lips as you gave it a bit more thought.

"Well, I don't really think that's it. You see there's a story here," he scratched the back of his head, becoming a bit unsure if he should say it.

"There is?" You asked, now fully interested.

"Before I tell you though, don't tell Kiara nor Danny or any other human about any of this, it's just between us characters okay? You can ask Flash later about this..." Dash spoke with a tinge of unease in his voice making it clear to you this was most likely a private matter.

You nod, dropping your notebook to the side.

Sighing, he soon starts explaining, his gaze looming to the side.

"Well, a certain person I know kind of went bonkers and tried to do something with RoadBlasters. He went on and on about hating the game before and I'm pretty sure he was jealous or something... I can't really tell you his name for now though," he finished off, with a hurt look on his face, "He went missing after that. I'm not sure where he went, but right after day, an orange poster was quickly pasted on the screen. Me and Flash couldn't really leave the game because the cabinet was quickly unplugged right after, and now here I am."

Nodding your head, you thanked him greatly, "Thank you for sharing this with me, this will really be of great help in fixing things. Do not worry about missing a few details, I'm sure even without it, the information you've given right now is enough to help."

...

Right after the exchange, the diagnostic test was completed quickly. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary and he passed with flying colours. There wasn't any bugs, nor glitches, or anything else.

"...and that's all," you spoke, closing your notebook.

"So how did I do doc?" He asked a bit nervously.

"Well, good news, you did really well," you smiled, "No glitches and everything is working fine. No repairs needed as far as I can tell."

He smiled back, jumping in happiness as you both share a good laugh for a moment.

"Well that's a relief, I thought there's something bad..." He sighed.

"Nope, nothing at all. And might I say, thank you for letting me run a diagnostic test."

"No problem doc."

A few minutes after though, soon you did have to go. Bidding him goodbye, he wishes you farewell as well. But before you did, just like last time, you explained how closing the window might make him "sleep". Although a bit spooked, he trusts you and accepts right after you promised it will be painless and that absolutely nothing bad will happen to him.

So just like that, another check up was done. Ticking another box, your pen went lower... Up next was... Flash.

_________________________________________

As you were about to continue, Danny was just in time to catch up on what you've done so far.

"So how's it going buddy?" Danny asks, sitting down.

"It went well. So far I've detected an error from Max, but Dash did really well on the check-up," you answered.

"Oh, well I'll make sure to fix it up sooner or later, but good work," he replies with a smile.

"Shall I...continue?" You asked, hovering close to another file.

"Uhh, no, it's okay," he responds, his attention now towards the time, "It's getting late so let's continue tomorrow yeah."

"Alright," you agreed, fixing up your things.

"Goodnight bud," Danny spoke as he turned off the computer.

...

The very next day, Danny woke up early and booted up the computer. He instructed you to continue with the check-ups before going to school.

Nodding, you do as he says. Before anything else though, you refreshed yourself before taking your notebook and pen. Now ready for the day, you opened a file.

_________________________________________

Just like Dash, Flash is another side character. With the same design, anyone could mistake them as twins. He's the eldest of the group, a bit more low on the energy, but still, manages to beat Turbo a few times in a race.

...

Gaining sentience once more, he opens his eyes, heaving a sigh from his mouth. Looking around, he tries to take in where he's at. Strangely enough, he's in a dark empty room, akin to an abyss.

He's...alive? Looking down at his hands, his face reflects an expression of extreme confusion and wonder. But if he's alive then where...

"Hello?" He jumps slightly in surprise, turning around, he gets flashed by a the bright light behind you. You step in the way of the light, shading his face from the bright rectangular figure.

"Apologies, the light from outside hasn't been adjusted," you comment, staying still for him to properly take a good look on you.

_________________________________________

Just like the others, you went on once more to explain how he got here, where is here, who you are, what you do, and why he's here. He didn't interrupt all that much, he didn't speak all that much either, just nodding a few times, humming as well for you to continue.

He was silent, but attentive. Although, still looking a bit baffled right after the explanation.

"Ok, so, you're a computer assistant of sorts helping out on repairing our games. Right now I'm in some kind of room separated for you to check up on me?" He asked, clarifying.

You nod, agreeing to his summarization, "Are you alright with me running a diagnostics test?"

"I mean, I guess I won't mind," he responds, shrugging his shoulder before approaching you.

"But first though... Did you meet the others?" He asked, his voice showing signs of worry.

"Yes I have. So far Dash is alright. I conducted a check-up on him before meeting you and nothing is out of the ordinary," you spoke while checking your notebook, your words easing him slightly from worry, "Turbo though..." But right as you said 'Turbo', his gaze turned ever so slightly bitter but it still was tainted with concern. Flash may be upset towards Turbo, however he can't really help but still feel some sort of distress for him.

"Last time I encountered him, he glitched a bit uncontrollably... But nothing too much for me to handle. I'll help him get better as soon as possible. He's the next person I'll be checking up on," you spoke, flipping a page from your notes.

'Dang it Turbo, look at this mess,' Flash thought to himself. Flash knew Turbo was jealous of RoadBlasters, but he didn't have to do all this. Honestly they're so lucky to not be shipped to a local hardware store right now.

"Ok, is it alright for you if I conduct the check up now?" You asked politely, bringing him back to reality.

Nodding, he huffed out another sigh before once more settling himself in front of you. And so, you conducted another check-up. Doing your best, you managed to go through half of the required tests. During it, you managed to make some small talk and discussed a few things with him as well.

"So, how'd your meeting with Dash go?" Flash asks suddenly, as his hands played with the makeshift rubix cube you gave him for testing.

"Oh, well it went fine. He was polite and cheery all the way through," you replied keeping track of a few things.

"Ah so he's polite with other people...interesting," Flash spoke once more, this time with a slightly smug face.

You chuckled, "So it seems..."

"However...he did say something a bit odd," you spoke, gaining his interest.

"Dash told me there is a story that happened before the incident, regarding someone he knows?" You spoke, looking back at him curiously, "Do you know anything about this? Knowing the cause may help fix the games quicker."

Flash sighs, nodding his head, "Well, I'll tell you what I know..."

Flash contemplated if he should say or not, but deciding that it should be for the best, he confessed who did it.

"You see, Turbo Time was by far the most successful game in the arcade and let me tell you, Turbo loved the attention," Flash spoke, smiling slightly as he explained, "But when RoadBlasters came in a few weeks ago, the popularity of our game started to dwindle. So Turbo got jealous, and he grew more... aggressive," he continues, his smile disappearing, "And well, one thing led to another, he took his kart and started to drive out of the game, leaving me and Dash behind. Through our screen, we saw him drive and crash into RoadBlasters."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," you answer, now becoming the one who's perplexed.

"Ah well I should've seen it coming. Even though what he did was really terrible, I think there's something more to the way he acted." Flash, spoke, turning his attention back to the rubix cube, "So, what are you gonna do now?" He asked.

"Now...at least I'll eliminate a few other theories I've had regarding the reason for this whole incident," you answered.

"Oh yeah? Let me hear one," Flash spoke, turning the conversation around.

"Well one is about a virus getting a hold of both games for some reason," you spoke.

"Yeah I can see that," Flash responds back.

...

The check up went smoothly right after. With new information currently at arms length, it helped you analyze further that Turbo most likely had the most damage than the of the three... Well perhaps both Max and Turbo took the most damage.

Clicking your pen, you refused to write this information down and just finished up with Flash's check-up. Finishing another entry on your notebook, you closed it back up.

"So, what's the matter with me Doc?" Flash comments right after you closed your notebook, it seemed that nickname will not be going away soon.

"Nothing's wrong at all, just like Dash you are perfectly fine," you conveyed with a smile.

"Well at least that's good," he replies back.

"Ok well, now that we're done, I'm afraid I'll need to leave now," you spoke, giving a slightly sorry look as you both began to walk towards the bright rectangular figure "I truly am sorry to cut this short."

"Don't be... The sooner you'll meet Turbo, the sooner you'll get to fix him," Flash spoke, shrugging his shoulders slightly in a nonchalant way.

"Well, I suppose that is true. Do you want me to pass a message to him?" You asked, stopping your tracks.

"Nah, the message I want him to hear is something I'd rather deliver myself," Flash replied.

"Ok well, if you say so," right after you were about to leave though, you once more explained that he might go to "sleep" when you leave as the rectangular window will close. He only nods for a moment before shrugging it off, "Don't worry, it's okay," he respond before both of you bid farewell to each other.

Being left in alone in the dark, he wished you luck on handling that little gremlin. Flash gazes into the screen for a moment before feeling his whole being shut down.

_________________________________________

Finally, after some time, you ticked off Flash's name. Now for the last but not the least, Turbo was next for check up. Taking a breath, you closed your eyes for a moment. This task is quite a bit tiring...

Turbo had a different set of colour pallete. It was typical, he is the main lead of the game after all so it was understandable. However, he may be shorter than Dash, he's absolutely much more older than he is.

Before continuing though, you sat down beside Turbo's file for a moment. You had to think about something first.

The possibility of this happening because of jealousy wasn't what you'd expect. Although you might not be very knowledgeable to how game cabinets work, you did know characters like Turbo and the others could gain enough sentience to have enough complexity driven in their code in order to feel strong emotions.

Your talk earlier with Flash and Dash brought light into the situation. With Turbo standing right in the middle of the spotlight. Both Dash, and Flash didn't exactly know why he did this so that's something you plan on searching an answer for...later. It did explain why only Max and Turbo was the only ones to glitch the first time you've met them, and why Dash and Flash are completely fine.

With the knowledge that Turbo caused all this, you didn't exactly feel unease or worry as you remembered what Flash said, there's something else happening inside Turbo. Perhaps he's not that mentally well, however that's what check-ups are for right?

Standing up, you felt ready to continue. With your notebook on hand, and your pen on the other, you opened a window headed to Turbo.

_________________________________________

Slowly, just like the others, Turbo gains consciousness in the same void room he's woken up to yesterday. Breathing heavily, all he could remember was a faint "Goodbye" in your voice and a memory of the screen shutting down.

He's back, and alive once more. Holding his face, for reassurance but suddenly he glitched. Gasping in surprise, he recoiled. Ah yes, that. Recalling all that has happened last night, he remembers your name. "Y/N..." He mumbles under his breath.

Gazing into the the bright light before him, he sees you.

"Greetings Turbo, we meet again," you spoke, as you hovered close to him.

"It's...you," he mumbles once more.

"Yes it is, I hope you didn't get too surprised last night," recalling the sudden end of your conversation, a sheepish smile crawled up your face, "I'm sorry that our interaction the last time was ended prematurely."

"Eh, it didn't spook me at all, nothing too much for someone like me," Turbo smiled smugly.

Chuckling, you nodded your head, "I see...well I suppose I don't need to explain a few things other than where your brothers/friends are, Dash and Flash."

Right as you said their name, he felt as if his heart skipped a beat. His whole demeanor seemed to change quickly.

When he drove outside Turbo Time, he recalls them screaming for him to come back. When he crashed right in RoadBlasters, he thought that was the last time he'd seen them. And honestly, he somewhat hopes so. He hopes that they got out and stayed in Game Central Station, he hoped they would never meet again, because as much as he hates to admit it, he knows how badly he messed up. He didn't want to face them. He didn't want to-

"They're currently fine, I checked up on them recently and it's safe to say that Dash and Flash are not injured nor are they defective," you continued.

"They're...here?" Turbo asked, his voice drained from it's charismatic tone.

'Interesting...' you thought. "Yes, perhaps after you're fixed from your current state, you'll be reunited with them."

Right after you said that, he suddenly glitched. Gasping, he couldn't control it for a moment.

"Whoa there... Calm down," you spoke, holding out your hands to grab him at the right second when he stopped glitching, "Take a breath, it'll help," you calmy spoke.

Breathing in and out, he slowly calmed down.

"There you go," you spoke in a lower tone, your hands on his shoulders.

'That was even worse than the last time, it's even worse than Max's... Oh dear...' you thought to yourself.

"Ok...I'm fine alright," slightly panting, he took your hands off him, "I told you, this is nothing," he insisted, looking a bit pale.

"Uh huh..." Nodding your, head you took out your notebook.

"What's that?" he pointed towards your notebook.

"It's my notebook, I just need it for journaling," you respond.

"What like a diary?" he asked, his smile slightly returning.

"Well, somewhat yes. It's to list important observations and for me to keep track of a few things," explaining, your hands firmly grip the notebook as you show it to him.

"What you're going to journal what just happened? It wasn't even anything important at all..." Slowly gaining more energy, he scoffs at you.

"Well, even so, there is something else I'll journal for this interaction," bringing out a few things out of nowhere, you flipped your notebook open.

"And that is..?" Confused, and now in a stable condition, he asked.

"Well, I am here to run a check-up on you. It's to check on a few things and it will also help quickly pinpoint what may be wrong and how it could be fixed," explaining, you clicked your pen and wrote something down.

"So what, I'm your little test subject now?" he asked, looking up at you.

Returning his gaze, you replied, "What? Not at all," shaking your head, you continued, "Remember what I told you last time, I am an assistant, and I'm simply here to assist."

For a moment, Turbo thought about it. He doesn't exactly like the feeling of being vulnerable. But thinking about it, does he really want to deal with this stupid glitch and possible deformities he might have caught right after the crash?

Sighing, he agrees, "Alright, alright..."

_________________________________________

Holding up an object from a distant place, you tested his vision first. Slightly squinting his eyes, he managed to answer correctly each time. Doing the eyes test was also something you conducted, pulling up the Snellen chart, he managed to get a good score.

Moving forward to his mobility, you made him walk and run a few times. Panting, by the end, you rewarded him with a bit of a break afterwards.

Sitting down he panted slightly as he took his well deserved rest. Taking a seat beside him, you took note that he's doing well for now. As for his voice, he didn't seem to have that much trouble speaking so you decided to skip that part of the test.

Looking up from your notebook, you asked him, "You ready for the next one?"

"Yup, just give me a minute..." He answered, taking one last breath before standing up.

"Ok..." Looking back down at your notes, you held out your hand.

Something was supposed to appear on your palm. He gazed at you for a moment, feeling slightly confused, but going through what he considered was a strange check-up so far, he let out a sigh and didn't question further.

Then, you felt something on your hand. Raising one of your eyebrows, your eyes quickly averted from your notes and saw his hand holding yours. Noticing your reaction, he returns the same confusion you felt.

"What?" he asked raising his shoulders.

Well...that's one way to test his abilities to hold objects. Then, the rubix cube he was supposed to interact with appeared on top of your intertwined hands. He stared at the object, before it fell down. "Uhm..." You muttered quietly.

Quickly realizing his mistake, Turbo felt his cheeks flare up because of embarrassment.

Quickly removing his hand from yours, he spoke, "I thought..."

"No, no it's alright," you spoke, shaking your hands as you smiled awkwardly.

"Let's just... Forget that happened," he muttered quickly, his cheeks still noticably red.

You agreed and went onwards with the test, picking up the rubix cube, you handed it to Turbo. It was awkwardly quiet for a while. You wrote on your notebook, and he just aimlessly played with the cube.

"You're doing quite well," you spoke, breaking the ice.

"Of course, you shouldn't even be surprised," he responds, trying to sound confident.

Smiling, you replied back, "Well, so far you hadn't glitch so fa-" His hand suddenly glitches. He was surprised, but he didn't drop the cube immediately.

"What...a comedic timing..?" You spoke.

He chuckled slightly, and you followed suit. Inspecting his hands, he responds, "How'd this even manage to happen?"

Thinking back to the crash, you shook your head and explained, "Most likely because your code might have been mangled slightly. It's not enough to change a part of your appearance long-term, but it still isn't all that stable enough to avoid that."

"You're kind of a smarty pants Y/N...or should I call you doc?" Turbo spoke, his playful demeanor starting to appear.

Letting out another chuckle, you reply, "As long as it's appropriate, then any nickname is fine," it seems the nickname 'Doc' is common among Flash, Turbo, and Dash.

...

Since the test has been finished, there was nothing left to do. Everything has been finished and all that is wrong with Turbo was currently his glitching.

"I'm guessing we're finished Doc?" Turbo asked.

"Yes, we are. You've done well for the most part. But don't worry I'll make sure you'll get fixed up in not time," you spoke, making your notebook disappear somewhere, "Which means..." you muttered, gazing outwards the screen.

You didn't really have anything else to do for the day. Danny left the computer open for you to finish this job, but you didn't exactly have any plans for the day. Loneliness...wasn't something you ever were prepared nor ever will love, but now having all these people to talk to, you wanted to honestly spend time with at least someone while the computer is left open.

Noticing you were quiet for a while, Turbo stared at you with confusion. Your eyes looked empty, thinking about something most likely.

"Hello..?" He asked.

"Ah... sorry, all of a sudden my mind pondered somewhere else. Anyways, as I was saying, we are finished so I suppose I'll leave," you replied, retracting your eyes from the screen.

"Uh huh..." nodding his head, still somewhat confused by the quick turn of your emotions, you both stood up.

Slowly approaching the exit, your mind started to think of how quiet and lonely it will get once you exit this window. Although it will only be for a few hours, it wasn't something you were looking forward to. Then, you felt something tug at you. You don't need to go yet... Right?

Ok, this was quite a very long chapter. I've never written this long before so it took me quite a while to get this thing wrapped up.

Take note btw that I'm not really all that experience with writing long fics so bare with me on this one lol

Still haven't finished the storyline inside my head too so...I'll most likely edit the chapters even if it's unfinished as I try to work up a few things as time goes by

[ficyorick]

[BE] deleted scenes clean-up :) - ch3

i always put scenes im cutting out into a separate file, just in case i get to reuse them but these r definitely goners so i can share

Originally, the trip back from Pennsylvania to the cabin was a bit longer. I sort of cannibalized that moment to make the transition from Billy's being mad at Kessler to Billy taking it out on HL more of a punchy moment:

"Get the fuck out of my car." Billy turned towards the road and flipped the headlight control, switching to low beam. 

"I'm not in your car, buckaroo. I'm inside you." Kessler smiled his wide grin.

"Where were you taking me?" Butcher didn't acknowledge anything his dying brain was saying to him. "Where are we?" 

Kessler sighed like a parent who knew they just weren't getting through to their moody teen. He closed the glove compartment with a click, but not before dropping a pack of wet wipes on Butcher's knees. "On the way back. Figured you needed a distraction. We just got on 219, keep going straight and we'll be out of Pennsylvania soon."  

Butcher reached into the packet he himself dropped in his lap. He wordlessly wiped at his face and his hands, getting most of the already crusting blood off. The rest would have to wait till the cabin. Slowly, he released the handbrake and let the van start properly. Kessler leaned back in his seat, getting comfortable. 

"I could drive for you." He offered casually.

"No. I need to think." Butcher squeezed the gas pedal, eyes glued to the road. 

Kessler made a doubting noise in response but didn't press. 

It took them another day to get back where the cabin was. At some point, Butcher had to pull over and catch some shuteye in the back of the van. Kessler stayed in the passenger's seat while Billy changed his clothes to slightly less bloody and rolled a makeshift pillow from his jacket. He closed his eyes and saw only red, the bright red of the bunker corridor and the dark red of the blood from the Supes he ripped apart. Supes and whoever else was down there. 

Becca. Becca was down there too. 

Was she hoping to stop him? Stop Kessler? It was way too late now, she had to have known that. And even though she also was just a byproduct of his neurons dying off one by one, Butcher was mad that it was Kessler who got to see her. She wasn't real, she wasn't his Becca, she was just a hallucination. She was just him. Like Kessler. 

But he still wanted to hear her voice again.

When Billy woke up, he was in the driver's seat again and it was night already. This time, the control was given to him carefully, sensation by sensation, not all at once like after the bunker. 

"Oi, you twat." Butcher gripped the steering wheel again, feeling his hands as his again. 

Kessler was sitting back in the passenger's seat. "We're almost at the cabin. You're welcome." 

"I said I wanted to drive." Billy very quickly realized they were about to arrive at the very familiar driveway into the forest. He added more gas as soon as the surroundings began to make sense. 

"No, I know what you want." Kessler said and didn't elaborate, but the way Butcher sped up was enough of an answer for both of them. "You’ve been thinking about it ever since that gas station."

___________________

and if ur still reading... the original ending to the ch3 looked like this. before the very painstaking edit process the whole HL-on-Butchers-lap scene was WAY more... you know. more handsy. i decided to downplay it considerably bc I felt i was jumping the gun too early and im glad i did, i prefer butcher more tortured about the whole thing. this ending is like. its rly good but its basically the same moment from ch5 when homelander leans into the touch and calls butcher scared. i had to choose which one of these moments i get to keep and i went with the one in ch5 bc its one of the first scenes i ever wrote for this fic haha:

Homelander convulsed a few more times underneath his palm, groaning and half-sobbing violently. Butcher managed to start and flick away another cigarette before the body underneath his palm finally grew still. He realized he still hadn't taken his hand away. Homelander made another pathetic noise and spat loudly into the bowl, before shakily lifting himself away. He could barely hold his head up and had to immediately rest it on the toilet seat, pressing his cheek against it. His face was red, completely exhausted. Skin covered in sweat, both his eyes and his nose leaking fluids, a thread of drool on his lips. He looked completely devoid of coherent thoughts in his head, just complete blankness. Until he finally regained some focus in those wet, blue eyes. Homelander sluggishly blinked at Butcher. His eyes squinted, flicking downwards. And suddenly Homelander was smiling at him. A small, sleepy smile. 

"Are you hard right now?" He asked him, already knowing the answer.

Butcher looked down. And stormed out of the bathroom.

[shivvroys]

a quiet apology (what are you worth if you don't make a sound?)

karolina-centric oneshot set during chapters 5 & 6 of beneath the underdog

read below or on ao3

i know I’ve lived as a quiet apology,

i’m sorry to you, and i’m sorry to me

Karolina wakes up with a pounding headache and a two-tonne weight pressing on her chest. As the gin from the previous night pours out of her, the shame fills her right back up. Treacherous fucking mouth.

It’s not the first time she’s done this. Not the first time she’s let it fester inside, the longing and the loneliness, and all that fucking hunger.

It starts the same, every time. A face, either the wrong one in the right place, or the right one in the wrong place, and Karolina’s eyes, like the hands of Eve reaching out towards the apple. Her father had always warned her about her eyes. About how they spoke too much, and would bring her nothing but trouble. About how a man’s greatest weapon is not what he has to show the world, but how well he can hide from it. Okno do duše, Karolina!

-

She ignores Shiv, which she has learnt is the sharpest sword she can wield against the other woman, and the wound that bleeds the hardest. She knows it’s wrong, and resigns in the face of the well of shame that settles at her core. She is a coward and a liar, and she knows she only has herself to blame. Shiv isn’t some pure, innocent soul, which makes Karolina feel even more disgusted with herself for hurting her. For extending her hand in the first place, only to reveal an empty palm, a ghost of a promise she never intended to keep. With serpent hands, eyes and mouth that grab at things that aren’t meant for her, Karolina knows she’s fucked. Damned if she does, and she always fucking does.

She responds to e-mails with punctuation marks that aim to sever, and keeps her personal phone on silent and on the far edge of her desk, face down at all times. She sews her ears shut and realizes too late that the screaming is coming from inside out.

She deletes Shiv’s texts before any replies start to form in her mind, and throws her phone under the covers to muffle its vibrations.��Out of sight, out of mind.

Except Siobhan Roy, it turns out, is not someone her eyes can burn the sight of away, nor someone her mind can file away in some hidden corner to gather dust.

When her phone lights up at night, when she knows it’s past three am in Stockholm, she gives in to the plague of her skipping heartbeat, and lets the text burn brightly on her retinas.

“I wasn’t the one who made that fucking call.”  

And she’s right. It’s all Karolina’s fault—had been since that goddamn night on the balcony. With the weight of Logan gone, she’d felt like a cockroach suddenly bathed in light, scurrying to and fro without cover. So, she’d let her hands  wander, and grabbed at the one beside her like the pin of a grenade.  The blood is all on her hands.

“I’m sorry, but I think this is for the best. Please, respect that.”

With eyes closed, the phone ringing in her hands feels like a blast going off.

-

Suddenly, like a severed chord, the e-mails stop coming in. Her phone stops lighting up. She allows herself maybe one second of guilty relief, before her nerves turn into bleeding wounds. She learns from Shiv’s team that she’s stopped going into work. They don’t know who they should report to in her absence, so they flock to Karolina like orphaned puppies to a stray cat.

It’s fine, she tells herself, though she knows by now how bad of a liar she really is. That telling tall tales only works when you’re telling them to people who weren’t there to see the carnage. In the time she’s gotten to know Shiv she’s learnt what this means. How loud of a warning siren silence is when it comes to her. But still, Karolina tells herself everything is fine. That bad things don’t happen to people like Shiv—that her wealth is a shield that will protect her against herself, like it has done for her brothers time and time again. That it somehow makes what Karolina’s done inconsequential.

That, like Logan, Shiv can put a price on hurt and swipe her card without blinking.

-

Tom flies out to Sweden in the middle of the night, and Karolina has a panic attack in a dirty bathroom stall.

She grips her phone tightly and sends an okay to Gerri with trembling fingers. In front of her, she sees you’ve got this scribbled on the stall door, with an arrow pointing towards it that leads to a sharpied-in fuck off. She splashes her face with water and wonders just when her eyes had grown the same violet tendrils under them as her mother’s.

Does she have more years behind than in front? Has she made something of them?

She leaves the café without her to-go cup, not trusting her hands to keep it from spilling. She reaches out to a few trusted contacts in Sweden—just to make sure, she tells herself. To keep the company image clean, in case of anything. She doesn’t trust herself to fool Gerri, so she doesn’t ask her any questions about Tom’s impromptu trip. Still, she feels her chest burn under the other woman’s gaze during their scheduled meeting.

When she finally gets home, she drinks half a bottle of wine and sleeps with her phone shoved under the bed.

Tom comes back two days later with slumped shoulders and a short temper. For the first time since Logan’s passing, Karolina feels like a dog waiting for its owner to find some dried up puddle of piss behind the couch. Her unreliable mouth gets the better of her, and she finds herself asking Tom about Shiv, under the guise of pacifying the Swedish team’s anxiety. She hopes that his newfound status had kept Tom from mingling with the masses and reaching out to Shiv’s team himself, and her foundation is enough to cover the heat she feels spreading across her face.

“Right. Siobhan has taken a leave of absence, which might become permanent. So, um, I trust you will be able to offer them some guidance while we sort that out.”

“Oh. Alright.” she grips the pen she is holding and prays it doesn’t break in her hand.

“Yeah.” His eyes remain uncharacteristically empty, though she can see his neck straining under the rigid collar of his shirt. “It’s not a certainty yet, though, so…Just some unofficial forewarning.”

He offers her a tight smile that Karolina can’t scrub off of the back of her eyelids for the remainder of the day.

That night, she follows up with her contacts and comes up empty, which frightens her more than she can admit. She isn’t Shiv’s anything, but she thinks she might know her. And the Siobhan she knows is not an absence. Karolina can’t accept that. She stays up all night trying to find something, anything that will lead her to Shiv. Just to be sure. Really, she’s just being diligent—preparing for the next fire she’ll have to put out.

Her eyes keep darting to her phone, the link she’d severed because of her own cowardice. Because she’d clung so tightly to the cage she’d built around herself. The life she keeps telling herself she’s living, though she’s starting to realize this life has grown more as an idea than a dent in the world. That, for all the living she has done, Karolina might actually leave this world unaffected, the ground forced to carry her bones like dirt at the bottom of a handbag. A crumpled up receipt of a life.

She makes a list of reasons why she shouldn’t call. Mostly, she just reminds herself that she has no right to. She isn’t Shiv’s anything. Why should she be privy to her unraveling, when she’s the one who’d pulled at loose threads in the first place? What would she even say?

It’s only right to disappear when I’m the one who’s doing it. I’m worried about you, about the hurt I caused. I’ve never let myself hold things, I’m sorry I broke it.

Ultimately, she doesn’t call, resigning herself to her own misery. She had been too afraid to let Shiv in, so she figures it’s only fair to suffer being kept out.

She goes to work the next day with red-rimmed eyes and a tension headache, and avoids Gerri’s increasingly suspicious looks.

-

She needs to get out more. That’s the story she decides to go with, anyway. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, so she figures burying them in someone, at least for the night, might keep them from breaking more things. A right face in the right place, and she’ll sort herself out, remind herself that small pleasures are all that her small flicker of a life needs anyway. That she wouldn’t even know what to do with something bigger than a spark, so why risk running straight into a blazing fire.

That’s how she finds herself in a bar, some gentrified hole-in-the-wall with good enough alcohol and lighting just dark enough to let her hands wander towards the first warm body she can find.

And they do, those wretched things.

She introduces herself as Caroline, and learns that Laura, besides having terribly inviting lips and a mesmerizing head of dark, luscious hair, owns a luxury beauty salon. Or is about to open one. Or she’d just gotten back from getting her hair done. Something or the other. It doesn’t matter, though, because Karolina is happy to nod and let her head fill up with static as long as she gets to watch Laura’s mouth move and her cleavage rise and fall with every breath.

Something shifts, though, and she realizes Laura also has an awful interest in getting to know her, which means Karolina has to start taking longer sips to fill the spaces between the careful omissions she is twisting into stories for the other woman. 

“What’s your favorite color?” Laura asks after a while, eyes sparkling in Karolina’s gin-induced haze.

Karolina feels a knot tightening in her chest, and downs the rest of her drink, signaling the bartender for another. The lamest question you could’ve fucking asked.

Her answer is a clipped black, and the other woman sighs in disappointment. They trade similarly lackluster answers until Karolina feels herself start to grow annoyed. Here she is, with a beautiful woman who wants her, wants to listen to what she has to say and store that information away like it’s meaningful, like what they are doing could ever exist outside of a bar or a bedroom, and all Karolina can feel is annoyed. Like she can’t quite remember if she’d left the curling iron on. Like the fact that she is sitting at a bar with a beautiful woman is not what she is here for, but what’s keeping her from something.

She’d already ruined one thing by drinking too much, so she decides another drink is just what she needs to keep this from becoming a thing in the first place. The more she drinks, the more her hands wander, and before long she’s got her tongue down the woman’s throat and her clumsy fingers gripping at her thigh. Laura doesn’t seem to mind, resigning her dream of romance for this dirty dalliance across a beer soaked bar-top.

They’re just shy of classifying as an act of public indecency when Karolina spots them across the bar.

Roman.

He doesn’t notice her, too engrossed in conversation with the leggy blonde he’d come in with. Tabitha? A millionaire heiress with model friends, a penchant for champagne and a relatively low profile. Out of every woman Roman had paraded in front of his father, Tabitha had been the only one Karolina hadn’t needed to keep a bookmark on her computer about, so she’s almost relieved when she sees they’ve kept in touch.

She withdraws her hands from Laura’s leg as if burnt, and excuses herself to the bathroom. Once there, she stares at her reflection in the mirror and tries to count the drinks she’s had. She can’t decide between four or five, until she looks down at her hands and feels all the blood rush to her face. So, one too many.

As she makes to leave the bathroom she almost gets run over by a pair of slender legs and a mass of blonde curls. Tabitha. She smells like lily of the valley, and laughs lightly as they almost crash into each other.

“Sorry.” Karolina catches the woman squint in vague recognition, but she doesn’t give her the chance to say anything before bolting out of the bathroom.

To her misfortune, Roman is right outside.

“Oh, shit, hi, Karolina!” he shakes his head.

Karolina blinks, trying to keep herself from hurling all over Roman’s pointy shoes.

“Roman, hi.” she manages to say, though it comes out all strangled.

“What, uh—fuck, how are you, I guess?” he shrugs.

She had been perfectly content to keep the sum of her interactions with the Roy’s youngest son within the single digits.

“Good. Um—I’m okay. You?” she says, swallowing harshly to keep the gin from crawling its way back out.

“Oh, great. Lost the family business I was taught practically since birth to fight over, but nothing much besides that.” he smiles wickedly. Right.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” she tries.

“Nah, fuck it! It’s fine. I’ve actually never been better.” Besides the too-closely-shaven fade, Karolina could actually be inclined to believe him. “How’re things over at fuck factory, anyway?”

“Good.” Karolina gulps. “Great.”

She thanks God for Roman’s inability to keep an interest for long, because he takes in her answers with feigned acknowledgment, his eyes looking glazed-over already.

Karolina’s spared from having to come up with a more detailed answer by Roman’s date returning. The woman looks down at Karolina, wearing the same shark-like smile she’s used to seeing on Roman. If she didn’t know better, she would find their relationship balanced against their similarities at least vaguely creepy.

“Oh, hey, roadrunner.” Tabitha grins.

“Hi.” she blinks. “Sorry, I have to go. It was nice seeing you.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer before turning around and all but running back to the bar, though she does catch the faint echo of Tabitha’s laughter.  

-

“Hey, you still with me?” she blinks to find Laura smiling at her, a trace of concern etched on her features.

“Yeah, sorry.” she clears her throat. “Just a bit tired.”

From their position at the bar, Karolina can’t see any trace of Roman or Tabitha, but the moment they’d walked in her night had turned sour.

Again, she finds herself with an incredibly beautiful woman, soft and pliant under her wavering hands, and all she can think about is how terribly inconvenienced she feels. How relieved she’d feel if Laura suddenly decided Karolina wasn’t worth the tight skirt and middle-shelf alcohol. She tries and fails to keep some semblance of a conversation going. She decides to save herself further embarrassment and just take the other woman to bed, but then some errant memory of a messy living room or a dirty kitchen island opens itself up to her like a great escape. The more she wrestles with herself, the more morose of a companion she becomes—though, to her benefit, Laura remains just as sweet and charming. The realization that this woman is not only gorgeous, but might also turn out to be a kind human being turns Karolina’s stomach, twisting something deep and ugly within herself.

She looks down at her phone, checking the time. Without meaning to, she corrects the time to Sweden’s. The pit at the bottom of her stomach threatens to swallow her whole. She lifts her gaze up to Laura’s face, her rosy cheeks and soft lips. What a terrible waste.

“I have to use the restroom.” she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing until she’s pushing through the now crowded bar, planting herself in front of Roman’s table. “Can we talk?”

Their table is right next to the crowded dance floor, so all she gets in response from the table are two sets of furrowed brows. The lights are dark and her head feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton, so she isn’t sure how she manages it, but a minute later she is dragging Roman out to the dirty alley behind the club. Behind her, Roman is exchanging bewildered shrugs with Tabitha, who’d somehow also trailed along.

Karolina only hears fractures of their whispered conversation.

“Okay, I am not getting into a threesome with the lady who made my pee-pee disappear from the internet.”

She catches Tabitha wiggling her eyebrows at him suggestively. “Mind if I get into a twosome, then?”

“Can I watch?” he fires back. Tabitha nods solemnly.

“Sorry to drag you out here.” Karolina clears her throat, effectively ending their exchange before she lets her stomach express her opinion on the matter.

“Oh, no, I like what they’ve done with this area. The pungent smell of piss really ties the place together.” Roman fires back, gesturing to the sketchy alleyway.

“I was just wondering—have you heard from Shiv, lately? She’s taken a leave of absence.” she tries to maintain eye-contact, despite the horrible dread rising inside of her.

“Oh! Uh huh, yeah, sure. We’ve, um—we’ve spoken.”

Roman’s facial expressions betray only his bewilderment at being asked about his sister by Karolina, of all people.

“Oh, good! Good, that’s—great. Is she—how is she?” out of the corner of her eye, she sees Tabitha watching her intently. Under her gaze, Karolina feels herself shrink down to the gravel on the ground.

“You know, she’s, um, yeah she’s good. Good as ever!” he nods, as if satisfied with the version he’s decided on.

Despite the alcohol, Karolina’s mind sets off like a firework, accustomed to what good means in their language. Sensing her alarm, Roman starts shifting on his feet, before raising a pointed eyebrow in Karolina’s direction.

“What’s it to `ya, anyway? Pretty sure if you propped a mop up in her chair it would get the same amount of work done.”

What is it to her?

“I just…” she trails off. What right does she have to know, when she isn’t Shiv’s anything? When she’d made an absence of herself in the first place. Karolina shakes her head, the weight of the night bearing its full force down on her. She should go home.

Before she can come up with an excuse to drop the entire conversation altogether, Tabitha speaks up. “She’s not okay.” 

“What?!” she blurts out, at the same time as Roman shrieks “Tabs—the fuck?”

“She’s worried about her, Rome.” she says softly, tilting her head in Karolina’s direction. Again, Karolina feels herself shrink under the other woman’s knowing stare. She feels like she’s wearing her skin inside out.

“Yeah, I don’t think dad programmed them to do that.”

“Rome.”

“Fine—fuck it.” he turns to Karolina. “You’re probably gonna have to deal with all of that so, uh, it might be lights out on the…” he points to his stomach.

Karolina feels something collapse within herself. Something like panic, or low blood sugar, or the weight of everything she’s broken washes over her. She needs to sit down.

She finds a tall curb and unceremoniously drops herself down on it, the trim of her trousers soaking up the mud beneath her shoes. She feels her blood rush to her ears, and a knot tighten around her chest. She thinks Roman and Tabitha might be talking to her, but she covers her face with her hands, trying to get her breathing under control.

Every step of the fucking way, she’d promised, before grabbing the first exit out.

“But she’s alone.” she blurts out, failing to keep her voice from shaking.

Tabitha looks like she might understand, which makes Karolina even sicker to her stomach. No one says anything, letting that truth linger in the air like poisonous gas.

“Does she even know any doctors in Stockholm!?”

She doesn’t have a mirror to lash out at, so she spills her anger out onto Roman. Her hands are shaking, and she’s starting to feel the soaked up muddy water on the back of her ankles. In front of her, she sees a cockroach frozen on the ground, as if terrorized by its newfound company. She resists the urge to stomp it out.

“Relax, I’m pretty sure she’s not gonna pull out the old coat hanger.” Roman says. “They got abortion clinics in Sweden, right Tabs?”

“Yeah, they do. The medical care system is kind of the best, actually.” her voice is carefully light, as if Karolina’s got a detonator strapped to her chest.

She should have never done this. She should have taken that woman home and kept her thick head in the sand. When she’d told Shiv she’d gotten a piece of herself back, she hadn’t known she was emptying the other woman out. That the little inconsequential escape they’d been building had outgrown its carved out hole in the world, had spilled into their lives and swallowed everything up like a great wave. That she’d left Shiv to drown in it. 

The door opens loudly, all three of them turning harshly towards the intruder.

Laura.

“Oh, hi, excuse me, who the fuck are you?” Roman sticks a thumb out towards the woman.

Laura takes a step forward, leaning down slightly to Karolina’s huddled form.

“Caroline?” Roman mouths the name at Tabitha, frowning. “Are you okay, do you know these guys?” she sweeps her eyes cautiously over them both.

“Yeah, I’m her smack dealer.” Roman says, before pointing towards Tabitha. “This is my hired muscle.”

The woman fixes him with a weary gaze, taking another step towards Karolina. The less distance between them, the more the knot in Karolina’s chest tightens. She feels everyone’s gaze burn every inch of her skin.

“Laura, sorry—I think you should go.” she tries keep her voice steady.

Laura takes another step towards her. A shiver runs down Karolina’s spine, sending her nerves on edge.

“What? But I thought—“

She cuts Laura off.

“Look, can you just—fuck off, please?”

For the first time that night, she sees the woman’s face shift to an expression she feels worthy of. Anger mixed with disgust. Karolina welcomes it like soft silk between her fingers.

“Yeah, sure, no problem. Don’t fucking call me!”

With that, the other woman is gone, her heels echoing like a judge’s gavel in Karolina’s ears.

Tabitha is the first to turn her attention away from the now closed door. “She seems nice.”  

As if reminding herself of their little meeting’s order of business, she shakes herself lightly, before patting Roman’s forearm.

“What?!” he shrugs, his arms planted firmly on his hips. Together, they look like a pair of exasperated parents dealing with a sullen child.

Karolina tunes them out, still trying to wrap her mind around Roman’s earlier revelation. She closes her eyes and can only see Shiv, small and alone in a hospital bed, skin made translucent by the harsh glare of neon lights. Her husband a shadow on the other side of the ocean, and the last text from Karolina a brazen declaration of what was for the best.

Whole lot of good that best had done for the both of them. 

Roman and Tabitha’s evolving argument pulls her out of her thoughts.

“Okay, may I be excused from this thrilling showing of The Vagina Monologues?”

Karolina can hear Shiv’s voice in her head, making some remark about Roman being scared of vaginas. She shrugs it away like a tremor. She watches Roman pull out his phone, at Tabitha’s excitement. Her brain’s still soaking up all the gin she’s consumed, so Karolina doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he starts speaking into the phone.

“Oh, hi sis! What are you doing up?”

Karolina sits up suddenly, almost stumbling over herself. She clenches her jaw, shaking her head at Roman. She can’t hear what Shiv’s actually saying, only the soft sound of her voice.

 “Okay, crabby. I was just, uh, out with Tabs— she says hi, by the way.”

Roman extends the phone above his ear, allowing Tabitha to get closer to it.

“Hi, Shiv!” she yells out, before Roman returns the phone to his ear.

“Anyway, we were just out at this bar, and you’ll never guess who we just bumped into.” he locks eyes with Karolina, wiggling his eyebrows.

Karolina continues shaking her head, trying to get Roman’s attention.

“Ew, I said we were at a bar, Shiv, not a daycare.” Roman continues, slapping away Karolina’s protest.

“Roman, don’t.” she tries to keep her voice down so Shiv won’t hear her, a coward till the end.

She catches glimpses of Shiv voice. She sounds tired.

“No, I actually already told Tabs that would be weird. And turns out, she’s already got one Roy kid’s nipples in a twist.” he winks in Karolina’s direction. “Here, bitch, she wants to talk to you.”

Before she has a chance to protest, Karolina finds herself holding Roman’s phone, a picture of Shiv glaring up at her. With shaky hands, she puts the phone to her ear. 

“Shiv?”

She hears the other woman exhale roughly.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Karolina bites her lip, taking a few steps away from Roman and Tabitha, trying to find some kind of privacy within the miles of static separating them.

“Roman told me, about…” she finally says, almost whispering.

“Oh.” she hears Shiv scoff lowly.

“I just wanted to see if you were—” she begins to say, before being interrupted by Shiv’s sharp tone.

“You wanted to check up on me?” she almost laughs. “Yeah, I could tell how worried you’ve been about me. So worried you couldn’t pick up the fucking phone.”

She can picture Shiv’s furrowed brow, thumb pressed harshly between her teeth. She doesn’t turn around, but she can feel Roman and Tabitha’s eyes burning holes in the back of her head.

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice starts shaking again.

“Uh, huh. Well, I’m fine.” Shiv interrupts bluntly.

What right does Karolina have to contest that? How could she tell Shiv she doesn’t believe her, when she’d lied and hid like a coward? Like a broken fucking clock, only able to tell the truth when she’s drunk in dirty alleyways.

What could she say to Shiv that would prove more than her absence?

“Okay.” Karolina sighs. “Could we talk? Maybe I could call you tomorrow and—.” she tries.

She hears Shiv take a sharp inhale.

“Could we talk? I don’t know, Karolina, are you going to sober up and pretend I don’t exist again?”

Karolina fixes her gaze on the ground, wrapping an arm around herself. By her foot, she sees another cockroach frozen in place, as if begging to her for mercy like a God. She scuffs her shoe next to it, sending the creature scurrying away.

“Yeah, I deserve that.” she relents.

She thinks she may deserve worse, and she knows Shiv is capable of giving her just that, but she doesn’t want to put her in that position. Mostly, she just wants to see Shiv, to see her real and burning with life and not as a ghost haunting the corners of her mind.

“No, like is it a kink or something?” she hears Shiv swallow harshly. “Do you pretend or do you actually get drunk when you make these calls? Do you roofie yourself and let random girls fingerbang you in the bathroom?”

Karolina lets the shame fill her up, takes all of Shiv’s anger and makes a home of it, if only to feel held by the other woman.

“Shiv, stop.”

For all of her million dollar paycheck, she finds herself running out of words. She’s never really been good at it anyway—not when it comes to telling the truth. Not when it comes to Shiv. They’ve mostly spoken through touch, her careless hands claiming what she’d never allow herself to say she wants. Her eyes breaking their sacred duty of hiding her desire from the world. How can she apologize to Shiv when she can’t see her, can only grasp at static?

“Fuck you, Karolina. Don’t fucking call me.”

The call disconnects and Karolina remains frozen in place, begging some merciful God to crush her into the gravel.

She turns to find Roman and Tabitha watching her, a mix of pity and amusement lighting up their features under the dim streetlights.

“Sounds like you guys sorted everything out.” Roman gives her a thumbs up, receiving a sharp elbow in his side from Tabitha.

Karolina doesn’t respond, can’t find any words to explain, hide or defend what they’d witnessed—what she’s just let spill onto the cold damp street. She just hopes it’ll all get washed down the drain by the rain. She’s gotten so good at hiding things for others, it only makes sense she’d forgotten how to hide herself—always found it easier to be a shield than something that needs protection.

Her jester-gods, in a divine act of kindness, don’t ask her any questions, calling a car and letting her scurry back to her dark apartment with a simple wave. Once home, she goes to bed feeling like a prisoner on death row who’d finally received his final date—in a fever hold of dread and relief.   

-

“Got any plans for New Year’s?”

Karolina drags her attention back to Gerri. She’s been doing it a lot lately, letting her thoughts slip away from herself—sloppily so. She knows Gerri’s grown increasingly suspicious of her near-constant state of distraction.

“No. Honestly, I’ve barely kept track of the calendar.” she sighs, hoping it registers as their usual brand of exhaustion. “I didn’t even realize when Christmas passed.”

Gerri quirks her head to the side, features painted with a lingering curiosity that she doesn’t seem sure she wants to engage.

“I guess the sweatshop’s kept us pretty busy.” she finally says, though she still looks as if she’s drafting approach strategies.

They lapse into silence, which only drives Karolina’s mind further away from herself. She looks out of the tall office windows, at the angry clouds painting the horizon almost apocalyptic. She can’t remember the last New Year’s she’d celebrated properly, before she stopped looking forward at time. She’d been keeping her back turned to the future for so long, she can’t even remember. Maybe when the world was still an open map, and her job was just something she could shake off of her shoulders at the end of each day, in a dingy bar with cheap beer and a stereo stuck on one-hit-wonders.

“Do you think this is it, for us?” she doesn’t realize she’d even spoken out loud until she blinks herself awake from her daydream, and turns to find Gerri looking at her oddly.

“What?” the other woman shakes her head.

“Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.” she swallows a nervous breath.

She doesn’t know how she’s become so hell-bent on destroying her reputation with every person around her, but she finds herself unable to stop. The feeling of taking a step forward and feeling the ground behind crumble under her foot gives her a dangerous sort of thrill—like she’s twenty again, and crowding bathroom stalls with friends for whatever they could find to dull the edges of the world. Like death was just a cautionary tale, and life was whatever her fingers could reach. 

She looks at Gerri, wondering if she feels the same. If she’d spent her life like it was a newly bought couch, wrapped in plastic, never letting herself sink into it properly. Waiting for some right moment to feel worthy of letting that life wrap around her.

But Gerri has daughters that she speaks fondly of, and a husband that she’s loved and lost and now gracefully holds the memory of, which looks a terrible lot like living.

All Karolina has is a cold apartment and a heartache an ocean away. She looks down at her fidgeting hands—numb now, without something to rip apart. She clears her throat, grasping the loose thread of her previous question.

“Well, do you think, in terms of our careers, and barring—you know, becoming a dictator or something, is there…more?” she sees Gerri’s face light up with concern, and realizes she must sound vaguely suicidal. “How do you know you’ve finally conquered the mountain?” She finally settles on a less desperate version of her existential problem. Ironic, to experience existential dread when one barely has any existence to show for all her dread.

The version she settles on doesn’t seem to dissuade Gerri from looking worried.

“Well, do you like the view?” she says, voice carefully controlled. “If you don’t, then you haven’t climbed high enough.”

It sounds easy when Gerri talks about it, though awfully lonely. Karolina decides to press harder on the bruise blossoming on her heart.

“What if you’re climbing the wrong mountain?” she can’t raise her voice above a quiet murmur, afraid of the walls trapping her thoughts like cigarette smoke.

“A mountain is a mountain, Karolina.” Gerri concludes.

And with that, Karolina knows the conversation has ended and been tossed into the shredder, already forgotten.

One of the most important lessons she’s learnt from Gerri is how valuable a short memory can be in a place like Waystar. How easy it can be to teach herself how to forget, at least until she starts smelling the smoke in the walls.

-

There’s a box in the back of Karolina’s closet that houses everything she’s gathered from back there. The life she could have had housed between thin cardboard walls. Black and white pictures crumbling at the edges, of people she’s never known but grew up feeling close to.

Her parents had never forced religion on her, and she figures this is why. That her small hands could never wrap around some far-away God. But these things—pictures, tiny porcelain figures, worn out cassette tapes that spark to crackling life in tongues she’s only ever grasped at, this she could hold to be holier than any ancient proverb. That, even as a child, she could feel the weight of the scale they’d put her life on, the weight of what they’d traded. All of back there, the familiar roads and wild bloom of life enduring despite the violence surrounding it. All of that, for Karolina’s here.

And what has she done with it?

Kept it all in an even smaller box. Shrunk herself down to a matchbox of a life. Spent the years that stretch further back than ahead building everybody else’s box. Let others live here and now for some imagined promise of making time for herself too—someday.

She thinks about the past year, and sees it sketched out on a monitor like a flat-line, more power wasted in keeping it turned on than the life it’s meant to be showing. Then, just at the tail end of it, she sees it—a small spike, the faintest trace of a pulse, a tiny hill of pixels come to life.

That night, she tries to sleep and can’t help but think of mountains. Of the sights they promise and the biting cold they offer. Of how dreadfully lonely and small a person can feel once they’ve reached the top, and how the greatest mountains can only be climbed by stepping over bodies like landmarks.

The more Karolina contemplates the mountain she’s been climbing, the more she feels the urge to look down. There, at the foot of the mountain, she sees a hill, with flush green grass and a bright patch of light shining down on it.

A mountain is a mountain.

In quiet desperation, she briefly weighs the risk of calling her mother. She wants to know what it took. What gave them the strength to give up everything for one shaky promise—a faint silhouette of a hill on the horizon. And if she thinks there might be some of that strength in Karolina, too. If her eyes carry more than a loud hunger, her hands more than a weak grip. If she can gather more than shadows under eyes to put in a box at the end of it all. More than a crumpled up receipt.

She picks up her phone, but she doesn’t call. Instead, she lets the drumming noise of her heart echo in her ears like a siren call, and follows it into a cab.

-

The man checking her passport asks her if she’s there on holiday. She flashes him a polite smile, grip tightening on the handle of her carry-on. Something like that.

The car ride is shorter than she’d anticipated, and they’re almost there when Karolina starts to wonder whether Roman had even given her the right address, or she’s about to end up at some brothel on the wrong side of the tracks.

Whatever side of the tracks she ends up on, she steps out of the car and looks up at the tall building in front of her. All she’d gotten from Roman was a street name and a building number, and she starts to feel the adrenaline slowly rush out of her, making room for the familiar grip of anxiety.

As she takes a few reluctant steps towards the building, she sees a flash of red out of the corner of her eye. She feels her lungs expand like a vacuum sealed bag sliced open, taking in air as if she’d been held underwater until now.

Karolina watches her for a second, hair a bit longer, clothes wrinkled and loose, but still the Shiv she remembers—still burning bright, with cold-bitten cheeks and a secretive smile.

Not an absence, but an abundance of life. A clear path bathed in light.   

Karolina takes a step forward.

“Shiv?”

[sanguinarysanguinity]

I’m majorly retooling the most recent chapter of Langstroth on Bees; below is a section I’m deleting, as it no longer fits the tone and trajectory of the section. However, I like it too well to just drop it into a deletions file and never look at it again, so here, have some beekeeping angst!

Set during Last Bow, when Holmes has taken off for America and left Watson in charge of his bees. You may think of this as a companion piece to “From Allegany,” if you like.

~

After breakfast, I suited up in Holmes' beekeeping gear and loaded his barrow with his apiarist's notebook, his smoker, and a collection of empty supers, and proceeded to the copse that held his apiary.

I was still agitated in my mind, however, a state to which his bees must have objected, for I was stung while installing the supers -- my first sting while working with Holmes' hives. I swore and stalked off beyond the edge of the copse, yanking off my gauntlet to get at the welt on my wrist, lifting my veil and twisting my arm this way and that against the sky in an attempt to see the stinger. My arms were not long enough to see the stinger without a glass, but I scraped at the cursed thing with my hive tool, succeeding only in smearing my wrist with propolis and in no way preventing the stinger from pumping its full load of venom into me. The thing smarted abominably. Holmes would have said a few words of sentimental eulogy for the bee who had died for my sins, but I could only summon up a hatred for the wretched creature and all its brethren.

All seemed futile in that moment; I lay back in the tall grasses of the Downs, just below the lip of the hollow that cradled Holmes' apiary, and sucked at my wrist in hopes of drawing the venom out. I only succeeded in coating my front teeth with propolis. Frustrated, I bit at the welt viciously, so that one pain might supersede the other. I should have gone back to the cottage for a chip of ice for my wound, or barring that, back to the apiary to close up the hive box and retrieve my beekeeping equipment, but I did neither, laying back and watching the clouds scuttle across the sky while I chewed at my wrist.

It occurred to me, as I watched the sky, that the editor of the Bee Journal might know Holmes' location; that Holmes, in communicating with him, had trusted his fellow apiarist where he had not trusted me. Or Holmes might only have sent his letter to some trusted intermediary to forward to the Journal: his brother or Captain Kell, or perhaps a now-grown Irregular. It would not be the first time he had trusted his brother or an Irregular before trusting me.

It was useless to speculate on Holmes' methods. The upshot was that Holmes did not wish me to know where he was. I would only drive myself mad brooding upon it. Mad and bee-stung, both, apparently.

But as I gazed upon the warm blue sky, I thought of Holmes, laying aside his false persona and Irish accent to write a letter about his beloved bees. Perhaps he did so even now, in the pink, cold light of an American dawn, while his criminal compatriots still slept. Did he miss his bees? Did he wish, as I did, for the opportunity to lay here beside me near his apiary, the both of us watching the clouds together? Would he have teased me for my first sting, or earnestly scolded me for it? Would he have gently tended to my wound? Would he have treated it as a badge of honour?

Even as I thought on such things, I tried to summon the bitter thought that if he was lonely in America he had no one to blame for it but himself. But I knew that to be a lie. He had never wanted this case; I had pressed him to take it. His preference would have been to bask in his retirement, with his bees before him and me at his side, as we had done the long summer before.

For a single summer, I, too, had been content with that. Another long summer stretched before me, and it seemed impossible that I should be content with it again.

By this time the welt on my wrist was bruised and riddled with tooth marks; the damage the bee had wrought on me was minor compared to what I had done to myself. Holmes would certainly have scolded me for it had he been there to see it. 

I missed him, then, missed him with a fierce, simple longing, unsullied by my resentment at being left behind. 

But even as I longed for him, there was no solace to be found: Holmes was in America, possibly in peril of his life, but certainly unreachable. Meanwhile, I was stranded in Sussex, pretending to be a beekeeper.

It was all wrong, all of it.

I took up my veil and gauntlet, and went to see to his bees.

[forbidden-creepypasta]

The Red Star

As most nostalgic, pre-Playstation oldfag gamers know, Chrono Trigger was one of the best RPG's of its time, and continues to maintain a huge fan base to this day.

Among the most hardcore Chrono Trigger fans, many movements to produce 3D renditions of the old Super Nintendo game in a "nextgen" feel have been attempted, but SquareSoft has shut every operation down with threats of licensing rights lawsuits and prosecution. For this reason, many talented game developers took to modding their own versions of the game to play with close friends or by themselves, because releasing these fan-mods on the internet would result in a huge risk.

One such game freak who lived in Silicon Valley the year that the primary CT remake was released decided that he was fed up with SquareSoft's attempt at butchering a classic story line that was already strong enough as it stood without introducing an entirely new continent with a complicated back story (Chrono Break). His online handle is known as "Anderson," but no other information about his whereabouts have surfaced since he released a small, two gigabyte mod based on the original SNES game entitled "Red Star."

The file mirror where the mod could be located has been lost since 2005, and only five people have reported their experiences with the game on the private forum tracker where the game was first uploaded.The forum posts are less than three sentences long and consist of nonsensical, cryptic statements, such as "This can't be the way it ends" and "won't stop falling, won't stop falling, redstarwontstopfallingpleasestopfallingpleasestop," and "You can't save Crono. Don't try. Forget about this game...."

I am one of those five, and the last remaining player who is willing to tell my story. The others have cut themselves off from technology completely. They don't even have computers or consoles anymore. Mostly, they stick to the outdoors or confine themselves to an almost Amish existence.Two of them are dead. I found the game by rifling through one of the deceased player's garbage bin outside their apartment until I could recover her hard drive.

Before playing the game, I had a lot of questions, but was only able to physically locate one other person who'd downloaded the modded file. I swore that I wouldn't reveal his identity, but he lives in the Rocky Mountains, in complete isolation. He doesn't own a phone, and when I knocked on his door to request his findings to compare to my own, he brandished a twelve gauge shotgun and told me never to bring up "that thing under the earth" again. I could only assume that he was referring to Lavos, but the fear in his eyes suggested that he thought the game was real. That's the only way I can explain it.

Being an almost religious Chrono Trigger fan, I took a week of vacation at work before I finally switched out my hard drive for the one I found in the trash outside the dead girl's place. After firing up my computer, I found the file in the recycle bin, but it had not been permanently deleted. The icon was a red knife, similar to the sprite of the knife that the "prophet" Magus used to attempt to destroy Lavos after the Mammon Machine disaster in the Ocean Palace. I restored it and double clicked my mouse.

The program immediately full-screened itself, and when I attempted to alt+enter and shrink the playing window, the game didn't respond. It was like its own hacked instance of a ZSNES emulator, except the graphics and textures were nextgen quality. The title screen still consisted of the game's name, but instead of a swinging pendulum back and forth to symbolize the theme of time travel in the game, it just sits, completely motionless.

When I pressed start and proceeded to start a new game, I didn't get the chance to name Crono or choose "Active" or "Wait" for my battle status.

I expected Crono to wake up in a nextgen 3D rendition of his upstairs bedroom with the sound of chirping birds and his mother pestering him to wake up and get to the Millenial Fair.

Instead, the opening shot is a pan over of West Cape, where the player can choose to fight or recruit Magus as a party member in the original game. In Red Star, Magus isn't there, and Crono should be dead at that stage in the game.... but he's not. Chrono is standing over what appears to be a group of graves, which would be identical to each other except for certain key items that adorn the tombstones.

Crono himself is wielding his sword and staring at the ground with his eyes closed. He is clearly weeping, and at this point in the game, I decided that I was a little upset with the game designer for providing no explanation whatsoever of what was going on. I felt like a troll had doctored a fucked up scene in the game to insult CT fans everywhere. However, that's when I noticed the symbols carved on the tombstones.

From left to right, each of them had some sort of illustration etched in the stone. The first was a sparkling pendant, which most unanimously agree is Marle's, from when she first bumps in to Crono at the fair and triggers the disastrous time travel sequence that kicks off the original game's plot line. The other easily distinguishable graves are Frog's, where a drawing of the Masamune is clearly visible in the stone with the Hero's Medal draped around the blade. On the tombstone to the right of Frog's, a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses with the left lense busted out rest on its top surface.

The other graves have been rubbed off or filed away with the intense winds of the 12,000 BC time period. I knew they were Crono's teammates, but I didn't understand why they were dead at the very beginning of the game. In the nextgen graphic system, I suddenly felt a very real connection with Crono, as he was no longer a small 16-bit sprite on the screen, but a 3D rendered model who appeared to be in a great amount of pain.

After witnessing Crono's fit of depression and his moment of reflection at the graves, I gained control of his player model. I immediately opened the menu to see if he retained any of his abilities from the first game, and to scope out my inventory, status, and items.

The major difference I found from the start of a normal game is that Crono is completely maxed out, almost as if he had every item and possible stat point from a previous run through, but he has no equipment except a sword with a glitched out title for its name (it's undiscernable, but it looks like "Egg Reaver."

However, having not chosen New Game +, I was surprised to see that all of his techniques were learned, with one addition to the list past Luminaire. The spell was called "Double Jeopardy."

When I lead Crono out to the world map, I discovered that the futuristic ruin of 2300 A.D. had arrived thousands of years earlier in the timeline. Instead of domes, there were only wiped out huts and burned out continents as a result of the Day of Lavos, which I could only assume occurred in 12,000 B.C. instead of 2300 A.D.

I spent a good three hours walking around random places, looking for an actual blip on the map that would lead me to something new, but with every empty hut I walked in to, Crono seemed to glance at me through the screen for a second, as if irritated. His face seemed to say "Why are you wasting my time?" Every hut held nothing but an empty fireplace. There were no save points or chests or vendors. I didn't understand what I had to do, and there was a stabbing in my head that got worse the more I explored the wasteland of snow and destruction. Instead of taking twenty seconds to travel from one place to another like in the SNES game, the 3D rendered 12,000 BC was harsh and I often found myself getting lost because there was only an occasional tree in the harsh snowy landscape. It was like trying to navigate through the Icicle fields in FFVII, except without red flags to mark your position.

Eventually, I found a skygate in the middle of nothing but burned out plains and snow that continually fell, and melted because the ground was scorching hot. I assumed that Lavos must be directly underneath the Earth, having already risen up to destroy humanity. I expected to see a Death Peak or a Black Omen ---- SOMETHING that would signify Lavos's reign over the world, but the peculiar skygate on the burning pitch was the only thing of note I'd discovered in my ordeal of playing through Red Star, almost five hours ago.

Confused by this and exhausted with walking around an empty scorched continent after almost four hours, I took a break and walked downstairs, leaving Crono in the middle of the skygate. I didn't press the A button yet, but instead of waving his arms at me to hurry up, he just stared at me blankly, looking defeated. I decided I desperately needed a glass of water and some Advil. I would need to be ready to confront whatever was on the other end of that teleporter ---- which I assumed would be a modded, hacked out version of Lavos that was insanely hard and had to be solo'd by Crono himself.

I was wrong.

When I returned to my computer, Crono's demeanor had changed for the better. I can't say that I was eager to return to playing when he was basically mourning and moping around in the blizzard like an emo kid, but my discovery of the skygate changed his expression somewhat. I started to think that maybe I was one of the first players to find this small area in the huge, mile long expanse of nothingness. Crono started waving his arms at me like in the SNES version, but instead of looking like a puppet sprite, he looked ready to kick some ass. This was the Crono I remembered ---- even though it seemed as though his entire party had perished, he was still ready to face Lavos by himself, just as he sacrificed himself the first time in the original game.

I pressed the button and used the skygate. I couldn't have been prepared for what I would see. Neither could my spiky, red haired, katana wielding friend.

The game wasn't a game anymore. The growing headache that I had experienced since I had gained control of Crono a few hours before instantly culminated in to an explosion of hallucinations and a feeling of "swirling" in my brain.

I didn't feel as if I were possessing the player model, but I was having an out of body experience. I could see myself playing, far away in my darkened room, my eyes glued to the screen for a moment I'd been anticipating for a decade.

Closer to home, though, I was more aware of the game environment. I felt as though I was standing right next to Crono, but I could control him at the same time. I didn't feel my fingers on a keyboard or control pad. I simply thought of what putting the commands in to the menu would feel like when I played the game, and Crono obeyed. I felt myself being dragged along as he moved up a wet corridor that resembled the tunnel to the second form of Lavos in the original copy. I was a passive observer who decided the hero's actions, but whatever I chose, I felt privy to the mercy of my own commands.

I knew that when we faced Lavos, I would be terrified, and I also knew that the tunnel wasn't very long. We were almost there. The ground was burning in to my feet, if I even had any feet in this place.

I expected to see a powerful being, unlike anything I'd ever witnessed before, but there was nothing in the chamber except for an egg.

The Time Egg --- or Chrono Trigger.

Confused by this, I moved Crono closer to it, but I couldn't figure out why the egg would exist here when it shattered to bring back the deceased Crono on Death Peak in the SNES port.

I tried "pressing" every button, skirting the corners of the chamber --- everything. I wasn't in combat. There was nothing to do here.

That's when I started checking menus in my head. My inventory was empty except the Egg Reaver sword, but one thing had changed between the West Cape loadout and the one I had now.

Double Jeopardy was now yellow on the tech list instead of white. I could use it.

And I did.

Crono fell instantly to his knees. I couldn't move him. In the same moment, the egg exploded, and in a burst of hot light, the only thing I could focus on was the figure of beautiful, blue-haired girl. I recognized her as Schala after some time, as her graceful figure was much different than the small Nintendo mode, but the blue hair was a real giveaway.

She ripped the sword from Crono's paralyzed grip and ran him straight through the heart with it. He fell in a lifeless clump, the life from his sharp green eyes draining in to a nullified, blank stare, all in the course of a few seconds.

She turned her sharp gaze to me, and I'll never forget what she said next.

There's a second Red Star. A second Lavos.

I could think of nothing to say. I was only puzzled by her actions, and simulataneously distraught that the coolest character out of every role playing game ever made had just been murdered in front of my own eyes.

"Why did you kill him? He's the only hope you had against another Red Star." I sounded like a fool, and I felt like a helpless, gaseous spirit in her presence, but I tried to reason with her.

He was destroyed by the first Time Devourer. The Chrono Trigger brought him back to save us, but he had to meet his fate. No one before you came this far.

"I killed Crono." I said in shocked disbelief.

Yes, but you've also ended the ice age and saved us from the second reign of Lavos. Time has been restored, and it will progress as it should have before the second red star began to fall.

I stared at her, and although I was a fan of her resistance to Lavos in the first game, she'd just destroyed the best piece of my nostalgic, RPG childhood. I hated her. In the next moment, I could feel my feet on the ground, and I was suddenly aware of my eyes, my hands, my physical body.

I was in the game, and that's where I wanted to be. I had one last question for her.

I picked up Crono's sword, and it felt light and powerful in my grasp. I felt an electric surge of energy in my arm that seemd to beg for me to start moving, to start harnessing that power as a weapon.

I stepped forward, and I could still see the command menu in my head. I lined up my arrow on my favorite tech of all, and one that I believed would be fitting for Crono's killer. I selected "Confuse."

"Why are you still here, Schala?" I asked.

I don't know. The fabric of time and fate has been protected for eternity, but the Kingdom of Zeal has passed, and I have no further place in the world. Neither do you. We are stuck here. It seems that Anderson did not provide scripts for an instance in which the game was actually completed.

"You know, Schala, for a Chrono Trigger sequel, there's not a lot of combat in this game." I said.

Lavos has been vanquished. There is no further need for violence in our world

I gripped the sword a little tighter. It sizzled in my grip, aching for my target.

"I beg to differ." I said with a smile.

Credit to: Violent Harvest

[eyeballtank]

Recommending Hydrus Network

One of the most convinient programs i use is Hydrus, which lets me organize files with tags and i feel a lot of people could learn about it. So i thought of writing some basic things and tips based on my experience and if it would interest people on it. But it's worth nothing:

Depending on how many files you put in your Hydrus gallery, the filesize may be worth considering

There's still stuff that i don't know about the program

The program gets updates over weeks because of how dedicated the dev is and my version is almost a year old, so some info here might be outdated

You can learn more about Hydrus here: https://hydrusnetwork.github.io/hydrus/index.html https://github.com/hydrusnetwork/hydrus

What is Hydrus Newtork?

A program that lets you organize and host files with a tagging system in case folders aren't good enough. It's partially based off the "booru" style of galleries/websites (If you're aware of Gelbooru or Danbooru, you might kinda get it). It also has extra features like being able to download images off certain sites but i haven't done that yet. I used it for a while and it's where i save some files. Because i host a variety of images, i tend to upon Hydrus and make it part of the references i use when drawing on Krita.

So anyway:

General

The program has "tabs" and when you open it or right-click and choose "new page", you have 3 options: file search, download or special. Pick file search. File search > my files > Look at the left side and click the bar with a star on its right (Not the star itself) and i usually select "system:inbox" You can open more tabs with this On the left side, the white empty box (With "search" written on top) displays the tags you've selected to see stuff: For example, if you tagged some images "sci-fi" and select "sci-fi", sci-fi shows up in the box and you only see images tagged that. And if you click sci-fi again in the same box, you no longer see only images that have the tag in them. And the below box (Which is under the bar and star button) shows other tags you can click to see more images. If you select some tags, they show up in the same box where "sci-fi" as an example was said to be in. Imagine 100 images tagged "sci-fi" and you select the tag, some images are tagged "robot" or "alien". "robot" and "alien" show up in the lower box as optional searchable tags. There could be other tags like "laser_gun" or "spaceship" but if you select "robot" and "alien", you'll again restrict your search to images containing those tags as they're in the upper box. Those are the "search box" and the "selection tag box"

There's also options to organize the images in update order, filesize, last time viewed, number of frames (Because it also supports gifs and videos) and even the reverse orders of those along with random.

You can select various images at the same time with SHIFT/CTRL and right-click for options. If you simply click an image, you press left/right to view images like a slideshow. You can also drag them with your mouse and zoom in/out. With videos/animations, you can mess with the timer.

Image display

When you double click an image, you display it in a window (And you can have more than one window) If you close the window, a box under the "Selection Tags" box shows the image you recently viewed (And said "Selection Tags" box shows its tags") You can also simply click once in an image (As opposed to double click it to open it) to see the image displayed in that same small box

Importing files

The most common way i do it is by selecting File > Import File and then "Add files" in that new box. There is an option to "delete original files after successful import" meaning that the file is hosted on Hydrus (And the database somewhere) but not in your Desktop or where it originally was before being imported to Hydrus (It ends up in the trash bin, since you're technically copying a file and deleting its original version). Before you press "Import now", look at the gear icon and options to see how you can set things. Might be wrong but pretty sure there's options to change acceptable file sizes and stuff.

After pressing "Import now", you go to a page with the recently imported files: This is where you right-click the images (Or directly click them and move your mouse to the left, where you can click the tag section) to tag them.

You can also import files by having dedicated paths to specific folders: This means if you add new images to a folder, you can "revisit these paths" to add the new images. But if you remove/relocate the folder, the path is broken. You see it on "import and export folders" > "Manage Import Folders". Then you press "add" and are met with options: NOT just the path of the desires folder but also a schedule/time based thing that checks the files and what to do with files once they're on Hydrus. You can also edit these paths.

NOW ONTO SPECIFICS: Import Options > "default options" > change to "set custom file import options just for this importer" and you can decide whether or not to delete duplicates or limit size of imported files This is special because sometimes you'll wonder why the program isn't importing files you wanted to import

TAGS

At this point, you have a basic idea of the feature. Because of the booru influence, if you type for example "character:juri_han", the text is green. This is because of predefined tags. "character" is green, "feature" is light blue, "meta" is black, "series" is purple You can change and add colored tag categories in "File" > "Options" > "Tag Presentation" and add/edit tags in the colors/sections of your choice

When tagging or managing tags in images, Hydrus shows recently added tags. But if you get too many tags, add them to favorites by right-click > favorites > adding the tag to favorites: This makes it so when you tag, you go to a thing called "favorites" (Next to "results" and under a box with the image's current tags) and see a selection of tags. I faved all my tags so i have a clear list of the tags present in my collection

Duplicates

If you do this: New page > Special > Duplicates Processing, you can see an options to detect duplicates in your gallery and even how far the program tries to analyze them by setting up the "speculation" feature (This can take a while). You press the play icon button and wait. This is on the "Preperation" tag, if the progess is complete and has results, select the "Filtering" tab and see if you can "Launch the Filter".

You get this "slideshow" thing where you can swap between different versions of an image (And this part also comes in "rounds", sometimes because an image can have more than 1 duplicate). You can also see the date of images like filesize and their tags. Normally i select "THEY ARE NOT RELATED" to keep both versions of an image. If i want to delete a version of an image, i simply select ""THIS IS BETTER AND DELETE THE OTHER"". However, if you want to keep both images, you may not want to select "THIS IS BETTER BUT KEEP BOTH" because even if an image is kept, it ends up in an obscure annoying place and you don't want that. Maybe there's better options but this is how i do things.

Sharing an image

If you select an image and right-click, there is an option to "share": Select copy and then go to your Desktop and right-click > paste. You just copied the image from your Hydrus gallery and can share it to anyone, even if the filename is the way it is because of booru influence. There are other methods or sharing an image but this is the only one i know.

"Removing" which is hiding vs actual deletion

To delete a file, pretty sure you right-click and select "delete from my giles" and in the "New Page" option, you can visit your trash page. I think Hydrus keeps some files in the Trash section before they end up in your computer's trash bin. But the button "remove" just makes an image disappear and if you select "Refresh" it returns: This is basically a "hide" feature in case you feel like search through files and want to get others in the way i guess.

Anyway

There's probably more to add, specially based on how i use it but hope this is good enough.

If you understand the program better than i do, feel free to correct me.

Also here's a rentry version of this post https://rentry.co/8ikhf

[012mashi]

Baby's 1st virus experience

1/10 would not recommend. Particularly nasty and almost caused a panic attack :) Posting this in case it helps a fellow computer noob out, because by the end of this journey I realized how unprepared I was and was close to tears.

There's this shitty antivirus called Rav antivirus that often gets automatically installed if you're not careful when reading through what you press agree on, when downloading things, as people want to make an extra buck, or someone is a cunt and just slips it in. There's a virus that pretends to be said shit antivirus program.

I was not so lucky and got the actual virus, while downloading an unrelated audio recording software that honest to god had quite a lot of good reviews. While the software worked as intended, it brought in an unwanted guest that popped up in my hidden icons bar. I managed to notice and uninstall "rav antivirus" almost immediately, or so it seemed, then wiped every trace of its leftover files (both rav and mcafee web advisor, as it had included that in the package, which quite unceremoniously manifested in my computer). Everything I could find of them, searching through my entire computer.

So, when you download an antivirus, it usually works priority style, as opposed to your regular old windows virus protection, and windows indicates it as "you're using another antivirus service :)". What's particularly scary with this "antivirus" virus that, it blocked real time protection and other security settings, to the point of scans not working or being automatically denied, the good old "IT admin limited access" and "you're already using an antivirus". I could not toggle anything, at first virus scans worked but they seemed to cancel automatically. In hindsight, it seems more like someone taking partial control of my computer through it and hijacking virus security options, but weirdly nothing else, as no files or functions were "locked" or deleted. I don't know enough about computer viruses to know if that's possible or not.

I tried various recommended legit programs that were reported to catch shit like this, including Malwarebytes and ESET, but they found absolutely nothing wrong after multiple in depth scans. Revo uninstaller also found nothing out of the ordinary for me to uninstall.

By this point, the realization of shit hitting the fan kicked in full force and I was shaking really bad. I was about to panic more and start hyperventilating in front of my PC at 1 am, as my CPU percentage did flips and real time/ tamper protection virus settings were still turned off, but I continued googling problem solving about real time protection not turning on and the notification that will haunt my nightmares:

In the end, the only thing that helped me was going through the windows services manager through run (services.msc) and turning off whatever wasn't strictly windows related or recognizable, aka a bunch of remote and/or remote access options that were created, presumably, by the virus. Settings returned to functioning and so did virus scans. Offline defender scan was successful and notified of unwanted malware, with subsequent scans everything seems to be back to normal.

My sense of relief is immeasurable and, while it may seem over the top, idk how many gigabytes of cute animal images I'll need to fully recover, cause this was scary as hell

[randomartsideblog]

OKAY SO IN THE LAST HOUR:

My train of thought is Rollin along as I sit doing nothing in a chair

Train pulls up into "Sailor moon" like usual

Trains passes by "that one sailor moon game I was gonna download like 2 weeks ago but called quits bc I didn't know wtf am emulator was"

Hold up

Shoots up from chair, hits my desk; my neck is also somewhat sore because I torture my body with weird resting positions

Takes a moment to do neck stretches in an attempt to ease uncomfortable feeling

Anyways

THE GAME

Furiously opens computer, types Sailor Moon Another Story English ver

Clicks on website

I take the time to learn what an emulator is (by skimming through the 1st two articles)

Which, BTW I didn't read the 3rd. That's important

Okay. Finds an emulator. Downloads

Downloads the patched file only for the English ver of the game

Got patched n prepatched mixed up like an idiot

Deletes, re-downloads the right file

Creates folder for this stuff because this is a new power I am going to use

Struggles to open game before realizing I'm in the wrong folder

Successfully launches game!

Accidentally skips intro part of the game

Restarts game

Sits through the entire intro cutscene (which I have a recording of and I might make a gameplay video for that/stream the game)

And I press space, ready to play and I'm stuck at the loading screen because THE BUTTONS ARENT WORKING???

Checks control section of the little manual file, and then I pause and reread

"Oh this is for Nintendo super controllers"

Stupid moment

I skipped the 3rd page of the explanation meaning I didn't know you needed it or playing any game would be hell

Sighs, and presses buttons randomly. Loads new game. Oh. So v does that.

But now this is gonna suck bc I don't know any of the controls

Well. Better get a controller

Closes out game

Does some research

Sets sight on a controller that may work

Sudden remembrance that family member who's a friggin nerd (affectionate) had game controllers for their PC

Issue: it's very late so I can't call for details, that's a tmmrw problem

Pro: I GO DIGGING THROUGH THEIR OLD STUFF I HAVE!

I find: Gameboy, and apparently there's a Pokémon game too?? It still works so I just need to find the game

A pair of probably broken headphones, layer confirmed its broken. Sad, but hey who knows, I can learn to fix it <- idiot

And I have tiny hands so I have to take those for now but the 2 keyboards, one of which is a potential chunky guy that makes satisfying noises does not go unnoticed

I run off to set my treasures down, return for the keyboards shoved in the back

Success

Put my findings on my desk

Pull out phone, open Tumblr, and recount the entire past hour

AS MENTIONED: I might stream the game, probably on twitch! I want to get a controller first for it but, when that's said and done, I'm gonna try streaming. I'm terribly socially awkward and a nervous wreck who lives with maniacs so chances of how it would go: bad.

Thank you if you've read this far abt my silly shenanigans.

[mortia]

Custom Regions in SC4 for TS2: Part 3

Now that we’ve got our 2 basic Height Map images, let’s open them up in SC4 and see what we are working with. 

Load up SC4 and go to the Test region that we made last time. 

PART 1

PART 2

On this screen, simultaneously press the Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R keys to bring up this window.  

Once there, navigate to wherever you saved your .bmp from the last tutorial and hit “OK”. I’ll start with the 3D generated Height Map. 

If it has been saved out correctly, you will see a slight lag and then you should be presented with your new region and something resembling your 3D map that you drew at the start of all of this. 

You can see here what I meant when I said in the last post that those darker areas were going to be problematic. See the deep ravines around the bases of the hills? That shouldn’t be there at all. So while the map has the basic shape of what we designed originally, it’s really not accurate at all.

Let’s try out the other image that we drew as a Topographical Map. Close down SC4, doesn’t matter if you save, and then Delete the existing “City - New City.sc4″ file that has appeared in your Documents\SimCity 4\Regions\Test directory. This will allow your Region to open as empty the next time you start SC4; as once you have terraformed using a grayscale image, you can’t redo it with another until the region is back to its original state. 

So, open up SC4 again, Load your test region and go through the process above again, but this time use the topographical map that you saved earlier at 65x65 pixels. Wait for it to load and then see what you have. 

Well, I have an asston of water! This is because (according to what I’ve read online) I did something to my files when I was messing with mods and made it so that my game doesn’t read depth properly. You may or may not see an island at this point BUT if you do, don’t panic! There is a fix which I will talk about a bit later. 

If your SC4 is behaving properly, then you should see something like this:

Much more accurate to our drawing than the 3D generated height map was! Of course, it’s not a perfectly smooth slope, but that can easily be fixed by adding additional rings to your topo map: the more segments, the smoother the result. 

So let’s say you look at this and decide you want to have a river running straight through your hill, no problem! 

head back into your photoshop file (I hope you remembered to undo after changing that size to 65x65!) and add another Solid Color layer. Mask it out and draw your river on there at whatever depth you’d prefer. I made mine 70. 

Resize and resave your bmp image, delete the City in your Regions folder and open up SC4 again. use this new image to generate your region terrain and take a look at what’s changed! 

Yay! A River Runs through It! 

Now, before we move on, what to do when your map is being flooded by water?! the answer is the SC4 Terraformer tool. This is a third-party program that allows editing of SC4 maps outside of SC4. It’s still pretty jank as far as controls go BUT it is still a lot better than trying to work entirely in SC4. The most important thing we’re going to use it for, however, is Raising or Lowering the terrain. 

*You will need to register for the site in order to download the program and, keep in mind that this is old software. It can be installed on Win 10 (not sure about 11) but you will need to read the comments on the download page to find the workarounds to make it work. I promise, it’s not difficult. 

Once you’ve downloaded SC4Terraformer, go ahead and launch it. I should open up to your SC4 Directory but if not, locate that and scroll down to find your “Test” folder that you made in Regions. 

You will see your Region pop up with your lone little dot up top. Don’t change anything and just click “OK”

And this is what you should see! Get yourself familiarized with the controls and center your water-flooded map so that you can see everything. 

Under the Dropdown on the left labeled “Global Tools” you will find buttons for several things, but what we want to focus on right now is “Raise Terrain”.

Click that and you will be asked how much you would like to raise the terrain by. I usually start with 20 and then lower the number as I get closer to revealing the land beneath the water. 

Repeat the “Raise Terrain” action until you are happy with the result. 

There we go! Now our map looks correct and is not an island. Click “Save” when you are happy with the result.

*You may have noticed, but you can do all of the same terraforming that you can in SC4 with this tool. You can also move freely which is a huge step up form SC4′s static isometric views. If you want to do any smoothing, or edits, this is a good place to try things out. You CAN Undo, but only directly after you perform an action. There is no infinite undo. So work slowly and carefully. 

Once you’ve saved and opened up SC4 again, you may notice that your region thumbnail looks a little bit different from usual. This is normal and it’s just because we used Terraformer to make edits. Once you enter the Region it will look totally normal. 

So if your map looks good to you, start adding roads and finishing up your planning in SC4! You can make further tweaks to the terrain now or wait until you get the map into TS2 to do some terrain editing. Once you are happy, save your City/Region and transfer it over to TS2 the way you normally would. 

And that is it for making Custom Regions in SC4 for TS2! It’s...a process, but it’s a process that you can control and tweak to your liking as long as you have patience and the willingness to experiment. 

If anyone can figure out how to make 3D height maps work flawlessly without needing to go a 2D route, I would be so grateful if you’d share, but this is what has worked great for me so far with this round of experimentation. 

Here are some links that were immensely helpful to me when making maps. 

LAND AND WATER RGB VALUES

C.O.R.I.M.A.P.S. FOR SIMCITY4

GRAYSCALE VALUES VS SC4 REGION HEIGHT

This should be the end (my fingers hurt) but I’ll just show you one more thing: How to use that 2D map you drew in 3D for further fun! 

Remember that segmented Plane that we made at the very beginning of the tutorial? 

Even if you didn’t use 3D to plan your map initially, you can definitely use it now!

Go back into Photoshop and Save a larger version of that Topo Map that you used to make your SC4 .bmp. 

Then, back in 3D, use that map as a basis for Displacement on your segmented plane. Displacement tools are going to be different from program to program so I can’t tell you how it works in yours, but a bit of Google-fu should tell you what you need to know. Adjust your heights till they look correct to eye and then...

You’ll have a scale-accurate(ish) 3D map of your TS2 terrain! “How is this useful, mortia?” you ask? It’s super useful! With this you can build ‘hood deco that is accurate to your ‘hood! Existing deco doesn’t fit right? Bring it into 3D and adjust it to fit perfectly! Wanna make rocky cliffs to cover your mountainsides that you can see from lot view? Make them in here and adjust till you’re happy!

Again, it’s NOT perfect BUT it is a solid place to start. You will need to tweak heights and things once you see your custom pieces in the game, but I hope that all of this will ultimately be helpful to some of you out there!

[pictureamoebae]

Sims 4 Studio Batch Export/Import Cheats

I’m minded not everyone may know about the batch export and import cheats in Sims 4 Studio. They make it a lot, lot easier to get your files in and out of the program (which is especially welcome when making walls and/or anything with a lot of swatches).

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Open S4S and ready your package by creating your swatches (the easiest way to do this is to load a colour palette you’ve already prepared using Tools > Color Palette but you can do it manually if you need to)

Step 2: Once you have your swatches in place, press CTRL+SHIFT+C (the same command to open the cheats window in TS4) and type studio.exportall

S4S will create a folder in the same location as your package that has all the various texture files associated with your package in PNG format. 

Go into that folder and delete everything that isn’t a main diffuse texture (all the files highlighted in the picture below are the ones you want to delete). You’ll be left with the same amount of identical diffuse textures as there are swatches in your package.

Step 3: Create your recolours/textures and save them with the file names of the corresponding diffuse textures/swatches you have in the folder S4S made. (You have to save them as PNG.)

Step 4: This is why it’s important to save the files in the same folder and with the names S4S created. Go back to S4S and in the cheats window (CTRL+SHIFT+C) type studio.importall and watch as it imports all of those nice new textures for you. It will likely throw an error at the end, but you can safely ignore it and close the error window (close it with the little red x in the top right corner).

(At first you won’t see any change. You have to click on a new swatch to see it’s imported them all.)

You’re done! You now have 48 (or a far more sensible number of) nice new textures and can save your package and check it in game.

This works for all objects and walls and floors. I haven’t tried it on cas objects because I don’t make them. 

Sometimes when importing wall textures if you’ve been using S4S for a while its memory can get a little overloaded and it won’t import them all. If this happens you can either close the program and start again, which will clear the memory, or you can just keep typing the batch import cheat and eventually it will import them all. It just needs a little coaxing. 

And for walls and floors S4S will automatically create the thumbnails for you. You still have to generate them yourself for all other objects by viewing them in game (or add your own in S4S).

This makes creating recolours in particular quick and easy. The most time consuming part is doing the recolouring itself. Gone are the days of individually importing hundreds of textures.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

CTRL+ALT+DECEIT

Warnings: non-consent sex and rape; oral, fucking, stalking, hacking, threats, implied violence.

This is dark!Jake Jensen x reader and explicit. 18+ only.  Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Synopsis: You find your pictures on someone else’s Insta but that’s not the only thing he’s stolen.

Note: Yay, another Jensen fic at last. I’m probably gonna try to work in more one shots between my series. I’m looking at Andy Barber, Ransom Drysdale, or Lee Bodecker right now for next week but we’ll see.

Thanks to everyone for sticking around and putting up with me and thanks in advance for all your feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 Let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

The chirp of the chat pierced your eardrum once more as you ignored it for the spreadsheet of dates on your other monitor. Working from home could be both peaceful and distracting but the third bing had you muting and pushing your headset to your neck with a grumble. You switched windows as the chat box blinked.

‘So why didn’t u tell me u had a bf?’ Zia’s bubble blipped up followed by impatient emojis.

“Wat r u talking bout?’ you typed back and clicked back to the spreadsheet to update the status of each course. That noise came again and you flipped back.

‘I’m not stupid! Come on. He’s far away but he’s cute.’

You frowned and tapped the space bar lightly. You were utterly confused. The only activity in your daily life were the general notifications from Tindr. You repeated the question and she sent an emoji rolling its eyes.

‘I’m serious.’ you replied.

She sent a link and then a laughing GIF attached to another bubbled response, ‘I’m not buyin it.’

You clicked on the hyperlink and a new tab opened. You scrolled down on the Insta as the air was knocked out of you at the sight of your own face. Not only were their pics taken from your public profile but several you’d never even posted. Your skin crawled and the bing sounded again.

‘So… an online thing huh.’ Zia pressed on.

‘I gotta work.’ you closed out of the window entirely but stayed on the Insta.

You scrolled through about a dozen or so selfies of you, each labeled as ‘missing my lady’ or ‘she’s so sweet, sending me pics to keep me company’. Your stomached roiled with mortification and the unsettling sensation of intrusion. It was easy enough to guess you’d been hacked but to think this was what the creep did with it was even more startling.

You changed the password on your Insta and went through the process of doing so with all of your accounts and ran a scan on your PC. You would likely have to file a ticket for a proper inspection with a specialist. You couldn’t help but shake as you went back to the profile after checking your bank account and PayPal to make sure it wasn’t worse than just pics.

You went back to the profile and found photos of the culprit. His spiky blond hair and glasses were unsurprising and his comic book tee shirt was even less. Your disgust was quickly replaced with anger as you hit the chat icon above his info.

‘Hey, jackass, care to tell me how you have my photos on your profile?!’

The read icon appeared almost and you saw him typing. It stopped and then started again.

‘You’re so beautiful, I wanted to share it with everyone.’

You scoffed at the message and cringed at the screen. ‘Are you nuts? Like actually. You stole my photos! You hacked me. Creep.’

You blocked him immediately after hitting send and logged out. You opened Excel again and tried to focus on the coloured cells. You could hardly process what you were doing as your phone began to vibe on the corner of your desk. It didn’t let up and you couldn’t focus past the incessant buzzing.

You snatched it up and several messages covered the screen as you unlocked it. ‘You really think that’s gonna work’; ‘You can’t block me’... several in a similar vein that you deleted before blocking the number. You silenced your phone and turned back to your monitor.

Suddenly the screen went black and you blinked. You hit the keyboard and clicked, assuming it fell asleep. It lit up again but all you saw was yourself staring back. Your mouth fell open and you ripped the clip-on cam from atop your monitor. You disconnected it as the notepad opened and typing flicked up across the white space.

‘I didn’t want it to be like this.’

You could move the mouse or backspace. All control was lost and you sat there helplessly watching the scrawl.

‘I think we’d be really good together if you only gave me a chance. Can’t you see I worship you?’

Your phone began to shake constantly and a private number flashed. You picked it up and hollered into the speaker, “leave me alone”. You hung up but it kept on and your screen turned to black once more. Your PC was still on but there was no reaction from the machine.

Fuck, you sat back and looked at your phone. You couldn’t even call work to tell them because the damn thing wouldn’t stop ringing. You put your head in your hands and grunted in frustration. How the fuck did all this happen?

🖱️

After your initial panic died down, you disconnected your tower and shut off your phone. You left your cell behind as it was just as useless. You hauled the PC down to IT at your work and filled out the ticket without giving intricate details on everything the weirdo had taken.

You left with a borrowed laptop. You wouldn’t sign into your personal accounts and stick to the company portal. You were embarrassed but happy to have a temporary solution. You got home and set up the new computer and reconfigured your wi-fi. You finished the last of the day’s work and ended the day with a glass of wine.

When you dared to turn your phone on again the next morning, it was filled with notifications from all platforms but each one you clicked on errored and prompted you to sign-in. All your new passwords were wrong and you knew it was him. 

You checked the Insta and found a screenshot on his profile from the day before, your mouth agape in horror that could easily mistaken for surprise.

‘Her face when you pop the question on the call’. The caption made your stomach curdle and you nearly flung the phone away. You couldn’t comment without logging in or message. So you created a shell account with a throwaway email you used on Reddit.

‘Why won’t you stop?’ you sent the message through as you waited for your coffee to brew.

‘Stop what?’ he added a winky face with his reply and you growled.

‘You know who this is! Why are you doing this?’

‘Hmmm…’ he let the message hang there and you sat down with your mug and listened to the birds outside. ‘Imagine what someone else would do with everything I have.’

‘Look at what you’re doing. You’re ruining my life.’

‘Ruining? Sweetie, I’m watching over you. Protecting you.’

Your nostrils flared and you burnt your tongue on the coffee and planted it on the table so it sloshed over the sides.

‘Love you, sweetie. See ya soon.’

The chat box turned grey as you realised he blocked you. That pissed you off more than anything and you lobbed your phone away with a shout of anguish. This guy was fucked!  

You were shaking so much you couldn’t even drink your coffee. You got up and paced until you could think straight. You dialed into work and told them you were taking the day off for a personal emergency and shut down your phone. You were too afraid he would find a way onto your work laptop and you didn’t want to have to explain that to IT too.

🖱️

Zia showed up on Saturday and she wasn’t happy. She buzzed up and banged on your door impatiently. You let her in and she crossed her arms over the strap of her purse as she crooked her hip.

“I know I shouldn’t have snooped but if you’re mad at me, you should’ve just said so. I would’ve backed off,” she scowled.

“I’m not mad,” you said as you backed into the front room and dragged your feet over the rug.

“Sure, you’re just ignoring all my messages by accident,” she stayed at the other side of the room.

“Not exactly, no,” you shrugged, “it’s a long story.”

“And you couldn’t shoot me a message to say that at least?”

“Look, I’m stressed the fuck out. I’m sorry but the only reason I didn’t answer you is because I can’t.” 

“You can’t?”

“I can’t even turn my phone on anymore.”

“What--”

“Just--” you touched your temples, “I don’t even know how to explain--”

“Jesus, are you okay?” her anger slaked away as her voice softened.

“No, I’m not,” you sniffed, “I’ve been trapped in this apartment and I can’t think straight and I can’t even talk to anyone because my phone and my life is totally fucked.”

“How about we get a coffee and you can tell me once you’ve calmed down,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so worked up.”

“You don’t know how bad it is. I really fucked up,” you whined, “I don’t even know how it happened.”

“Is this about the boyfriend?”

You huffed and shook your head, “I told you, he’s not my boyfriend-- Let me get dressed.”

After you felt presentable enough to leave the apartment, the thought of getting away ushered you down the winding stairwell and onto the sidewalk. You and Zia walked down to the cafe on the corner where you always overspent on their specialty drink and caught up.

You ordered but when you tried to use your card, the machine beeped in rejection. You tried again but still no luck. Zia offered to pay and you promised you’d pay her back. Anxiety pitted deep in your stomach as you sat. You’d have to call the bank and figure out why eight dollars would bounce.

“So,” Zia said as she shaded her eyes against the sunlight streaming onto the open patio, “he’s not your boyfriend?”

“I don’t even know the dude,” you hissed as you almost overturned your cup, “Zee, those pictures, they were all on my phone. I never sent them to anyone. I don’t even know his real name and when I confronted him, he crashed my whole system and blew up my phone. I haven’t been able to log into anything because of him.”

“You’re shitting me,” she chuckled.

“Zee, I’m not fucking kidding,” you blinked, “don’t you think if I was dating some dude out in who knows where, you’d be the first to know? You think I’m wasting my time with the idiots on Tindr for fun?”

“No way,” she scoffed.

“Zia, look me in the eye,” you said as you gave her a stern look, “I’m freaking the fuck out.”

“Did you call the police?” she asked.

You sat back and closed your eyes. You were so swept up in the panic, you hadn’t even thought. You could report it to the police, just get a record of it even if they didn’t do anything else. You heard horror stories of hackers and how little could be done but you had to at least try.

“I guess I should go down to the station today,” you ran your fingertips along your chin, “I don’t know, I felt so alone, I thought--”

“And call your bank right now,” she slid her phone over, “figure out what’s going on with your accounts.”

You took her cell and dialed the number on the back of the card. You dragged your finger down the side of your cup as you listened to the automated message and hit the buttons to direct you to customer service. The hold song bubbled in your head and finally picked up as you finished the last of your mocha.

You explained the issue after giving your information as Zia sat patiently across from you. She watched the other patrons and looked out across the street as you waited on the representative on the other end.

“Looks like your account has been locked. Your savings and checking have been placed on hold citing possible fraud,” the woman explained.

“Well, can’t you unlock them? Why would they be flagged?”

“Hmm, well I see no suspicious spending so possibly… it could be due to an external lock, not us.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can’t speak to that. Have you received any communications from the Revenue service?”

“Revenue service? I don’t--no,” you gulped.

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing else I can tell you,” she said, “you should consider contacting federal services.”

You hung up and handed Zia her phone back. “Apparently, I’m under investigation for fraud? I don’t know.”

“Shit,” she took her cell, “are you sure?”

“It sounded like it but-- I gotta check my credit card,” you stood and grabbed your empty cup and your purse.

You stormed down the street to the ATM at the corner and inserted your card. LOCKED the machine made a hideous noise and you pulled out your card in irritation. You put your wallet and touched the sides of your neck as the heat swelled through you.

“I don’t understand--”

“Um, you should see this,” Zia said.

Zia turned her screen towards you and your heart dropped to your toes. There was a picture softened by a blush Insta filter and the caption read, ‘just got into town, surprising bae with flowers’. Over the cluster of petals at the bottom of the image were you and Zia sitting at the cafe patio.

You spun and searched around for any sign of the man and the bouquet. You could hardly breath as it felt like you were being squished between invisible walls. You clapped your hand against the wall and steadied yourself as Zia gently rubbed your arm.

“Let’s go to the station,” you croaked as tears welled in your eyes, “please.”

🖱️

The police told you everything you expected. Even as you showed them the photos and explained how you never met that man in your life, they only offered you words on a piece of paper. They’d file the report and follow-up in case of any further escalation. It was a non-answer, a cold shrug.

Zia went home with you as she offered to stay the night. You gladly accepted and the two of you cozied up on your bed and spent the night watching early 00s rom coms. You found it hard to relax even with her there. You couldn’t stop thinking about how close he’d been without you even knowing.

You at last began to doze off as Reese Witherspoon triumphed and exhausted by the endless maelstrom of dread, you slipped into a deep but perilous sleep. You were locked in limbo between waking and slumber, almost as if you could hear everything around you but remained blind and unknowing all the same.

You woke with a start as you felt like you were falling. You sat up and reached to the other side of the bed. Zia was gone. She must have got up to get water or use the bathroom. You took a breath and turned your legs over the edge. You got up groggily and lumbered across the room, your mouth dry and head aching. Some tylenol and water would do you well.

You hesitated as you noticed the bloom of light just around the corner from your doorway. Zia must be having trouble sleeping, you guessed as you kept on. As you came in sight of the front room, you heard a whimper and you backed up against the wall as tall figure stood before the coffee table. The flowers laid across the wood, slightly crumpled from a struggle.

As Zia whined, he jabbed her with his foot and she grunted around the rag tied around her mouth. Her arms and legs were bound behind her as the man loomed over her. You recognized his blond hair and glasses, the menacing blue eyes as he raised his chin and crossed his arms.

“Been waiting on you,” he stepped over her, “I was disappointed when I realised it was her. Good friend though, hanging around…”

“Don’t hurt her, please. What do you want?”

“You can’t figure that out?” he taunted, “huh, I’m sure you can guess what it will take for me to leave her in one piece.”

Zia wiggled and received another boot. You pushed yourself forward and he stepped closer, predatory as he dropped his arms and clenched then unclenched his fists. He chuckled as you stopped short and gaped up at him.

“She’s cute,” he said, “she can join us if that makes it easier for you.”

“You’re disgusting,” you snarled and winced as he reached out to touch your cheek. You fought not to shove him away, your eyes on Zia’s bound figure.

“Play nice and I will,” he warned, “every time I hurt her, that’s on you. I wish I didn’t have to do this to show you how much I love you.”

You shook your head as your lip trembled. He pressed his palms to your cheek and ran his thumb along your lips. He leaned in and you cowered as you realised how big he was. You didn’t expect that looking at him from the other side of a screen.

“Do we put on a show for her or did you want a little privacy?”

“You won’t get away with this,” you hissed.

“Oh yeah? I locked you out of your social media, your pc, your bank… do you really want to see how far I can take this?”

He smothered your murmured answer with his mouth and kissed you gruffly. He pulled away and looked you in the eye. He bit his lip and hummed.

“So, do we do this here?”

“You’re sick,” you grabbed his hand and wrenched it away from your face. You yanked him and directed him to the bedroom, “you monster.”

“Now come on,” he twisted his wrist around and grabbed your elbow, “I could’ve killed her. Don’t think I won’t.”

You quivered as he forced you back into your bedroom, the street lights casting shadows between your curtains. He flung you ahead of him, as strong as his thick arms would suggest. You stumbled and caught yourself on the side of the bed. You turned as the door slammed and he prowled towards you like a wild cat.

“Well,” he threw his hands up and you caught a glint of light against the lens of his glasses, “you want me to undress you or you think you can handle that, sweetie?”

You puffed in repulsion and looked away from him. Even in the dark, you could feel his eyes on you. You jittered as you reached to the neck of your loose tee and slowly raised it over your head. You dropped it to crumple on the floor and you touched the top of your shorts. You heard him moving around and shied away as he flipped the switch and light shone across the room.

You pushed down your shorts as you heard a thump from the next room. His jaw twitched as his eyes lingered on you and he reluctantly glanced away. He swung the door open and stormed out into the front room. You went to the door and heard his snarl.

“Stop fucking moving,” he rasped, “every time I have to tell you, I’ll pop another out.”

Zia gave a muffled sob as you heard a sickly crack and you hurried to look around the wall into the room. He blocked your sight with his broad chest and pointed you back to the room.

“I didn’t say you could leave the room,” he spun you and slapped your bare ass, “fast, fast, fast… before I lose my patience.”

Your skin stung from the strike and you tripped through the doorway as he followed quickly. Another slam and he poked you further into the room with his knuckle. You stepped away from him and tried to cover yourself as you faced him in horror.

He quickly swooped his shirt over his head and revealed a buff chest thick with blond hair. He kicked off his shoes and fumbled to undo his fly. He tilted his head as he looked you over and groped himself through his jeans.

“You know what to do,” he said, “I’ve seen the way you touch yourself… cyber security 101, cover your webcam.”

You shuddered as he beckoned you closer. He stopped you and put your hands on the waist of his jeans. He leaned in and nuzzled your temple as his hot breath seeped into your goosebumped skin.

“My turn,” he pushed on your hands until you pulled down the denim on your own strength.

He stepped out of his jeans and snapped the elastic of his boxers. You stood and latched onto those shakily. He ran his fingers along your arms as you pulled them past his erection and they fell to the floor with a whisper. You didn’t look down, instead staring past him as his hand swept up to cup your tits.

His fingers crawled up your chest and his hands wrapped around your neck. He squeezed and turned you so that your back was to the bed. He marched you backwards as you felt his dick bobbing between your bodies. You gasped as he pushed you down onto your mattress, your legs dangling over the edge as he came up to straddle you.

“Such a good girl,” he taunted, “look at you… I bet you’re wet already.”

He pulled a hand away and stroked his length as he raised himself on his knees. He clung to your neck as he leaned over you and planted his hand on the bed above you. He hovered his dick over your head and you closed your eyes.

“Put it in your mouth,” he ordered, “now, or I’m putting it in your ass.”

You reached up blindly and angled his tip against your lips. He dipped his hips down and you choked as he prodded at your throat. Your legs twitched as he forced his cock past your gag reflex and your whole body tensed at the intrusion.

He balanced on the hand above your head and the one on your neck. He thrust harder and harder as sloppy sucking reverberated around the room between his dark groans.

“That’s it,” he purred, “look at you taking my cock. I can only imagine how tight that cunt of yours is.”

Your eyes welled and you flicked your lashes as you tried to bat them away. You kept your hand at the base of his dick as you tried to ease his motion. He ignored your reluctance and only delved deeper as he brought himself to his limit, your lips touching the fuzz along his pelvis.

When you couldn’t breath, you slapped his hard stomach and he reared out of you abruptly. You coughed up spit as he sat back on his heels and released you. He huffed as he looked down at his glistening dick and climbed off of you.

“Stand up, turn around,” he snarled as his eyes flashed. 

His glasses were low on his nose and he slipped them off entirely and folded them up on your night table. He squinted as he watched you stand and turn stiffly. He smacked his hand in the middle of your back and pushed you over impatiently. He stepped closer and tapped his tip against your cunt as you were exposed to him.

He bent his legs and poked along your slick folds. You were wet enough for him to glide in and fill you up completely. He was so big it was painful and you arched your back as you tried to take it. He pulled back and slammed into you harshly. You let out a garble and he repeated the motion, taking you off your feet.

He leaned over you and grabbed your knees, lifting them on the bed as he urged you forward. His hand brushed up over your ass and he pressed between your shoulder blades until your face was flush to the mattress, your arms bent around you like a broken doll.

He thrust again and the loud slap made you wince. He jerked his hips roughly until he found his motion, rutting into you with hissy breaths as his other hand groped your ass. He hummed as your body shook before him, ruled by his touch as your walls clenched him.

He pushed his thumb down between your cheeks and circled your asshole. You strained and lifted your head in alarm. His other hand quickly stretched over your crown and pinned your face to the bed. He felt along your cunt and slickened his thumb before trailing back to your puckered ring.

He pushed lightly at first and as he broke through you gasped and whined. You gripped the blankets as he moved his thumb in and out of you, his hips still rocking steadily into you. He slid his thumb out entirely and prodded with two fingers instead. Before you could react, he forced them inside and you cried out in surprise and pain.

“I know you want it, sweetheart,” he groaned, “I can feel…” he kept fucking you, “I can fucking hear it.”

Your holes tightened around you as he carried the pace. A new pressure began to bloom inside of you, unlike anything you’d felt before. The burning in your ass and the stretching of your cunt mingled to an agonized bliss. You sobbed into the blankets as you came uncontrollably around him, shamed by the unwanted release.

“Fuck,” he drew out the word as both his hand and his hips sped up, “look at you cumming for me. Cumming for this creep.”

You moaned and curled your fingers around the duvet tighter. You felt the same knotting deep inside and you came again as he reached a tantamount. This time, you gushed around his cock and felt the deluge down your thighs as the noise grew wetter and louder.

“Look at you, sweetheart, you can’t handle it, can you?” He snorted as he sucked in a breath suddenly and his hips staggered.

He pushed his fingers deeper and kept them there as he fucked you as hard as he could. He slammed into your cunt over and over. Your hips throbbed with each tilt of his pelvis and you smothered your cries as you felt him coat your walls in his release. 

He stopped just as suddenly and dragged his fingers out of your ass. He leaned against you until your legs collapsed and fell onto you with a sigh. He covered your body with his as his shallow breaths hazed around you. 

Your own heart raced as you stretched your arms out stiffly and quivered. You tried to pull yourself from beneath him. He kept you pinned under his weight and jolted you with a cruel thrust.

“Oh, we’re not done, sweetheart,” he muttered along the shell of your ear, “not even close.”

[itsallyscorner]

For Tom x

Pairing: Tom Holland x singer!reader

Summary: You have a surprise for Tom:)

Warnings: none, just pure teeth rotting Fluff:)

A/n: Hello my loves! This is literally a rewrite because I accidentally deleted the original version of this story on Tumblr RIGHT before I was gonna post it😭 Anyway here it is, I hope you all like it! Ally x

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

look at my sunshine🥺

꘎♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡꘎

Your giggles filled the hallway as you lead Tom into your makeshift studio. Since you were quarantining with him and his mates in their shared home in London, you were miles away from your crew and studio. Which, yes, made it difficult to record an entire album on your own—but it did give you the creative freedom to do whatever you pleased for the album.

The boys had their own creative outlets; for example putting together a puzzle or having a movie marathon. While you found those activities enjoyable, the inner singer in you couldn’t stop thinking of beats or coming up with lyrics in your head. You needed the studio—you needed to bring those beats and lyrics to life before you could forget them. So with the help of the houses’ tech lord himself, Harry made it possible for you to have your own little studio in the spare guest room of the house. There, you spent endless days writing and recording things like harmonies and building melodies. Little did you know that this would lead to the creation of your sixth album. Now a couple months later, your latest album is currently in its final stages and would soon be released to the world.

Tom adoringly watched your figure, which was drowned in one of his oversized jumpers, excitedly skip towards the guest room. As soon as you were both inside, you rushed to close the door and eagerly pushed him to sit on the edge of the bed.

“What have you been up to, lovey?” He teasingly asks you. He knew you were up to something, he just didn’t know if it were bad or good.

Your figure was bent over the desk where your laptop was located. Turning over your shoulder you tell him, “It’s nothing bad, I promise!” You’re met with an amused grin on his blush pink lips.

Gathering your laptop into your arms, you move to sit beside Tom on the bed. He curiously leans forward, trying to get a glance at what’s on your screen.

“Nuh uh, it’s a surprise, Thomas.” You playfully scold him and gently push his face away from your laptop. He responds with a pout against your palm before pressing a kiss onto your skin. You continue to click around on your laptop, looking through your documents for the specific file.

Meanwhile, Tom shuffles further up the bed, getting comfortable. He notices the new distance between you and him and decides that he’s unsatisfied with the additional inches. He choses to snake his arms around your waist and lifts you up, happily placing you on the empty and lonely space on his lap. Laying down on his back, he takes a moment to admire the way you look in his jumper. It was a few sizes bigger than you and stopped right above your knees. The jumper may have looked good on him, but it looked absolutely perfect on you.

“You look so cute in my jumper.” He hums, hands lazily rubbing up and down your thighs. Your nose scrunches up as you lightly slap his chest; your silent way of saying “shut up” whenever Tom would say something that made you blush.

You finally find the file you were looking for and place your laptop on your lap. You nervously glance at your screen, biting down on your lip out of habit.

“Ok, so I did something.” You started. Tom squints his eyes at you, “That sounds like the beginning of a really bad something.”

You huff, “I just told you it wasn’t anything bad! Do you want your surprise or not?”

Tom chuckles and grasps onto your thighs, “Yes—yes, sorry, keep going.”

“So you know how I’ve already finished my album?” You question him. Tom nods, staring up at you while you sit on his thighs.

“Well, I wrote a few more songs that were supposed to be on the album. But I don’t know, I felt a bit greedy and decided to keep them for myself.” You explain. Tom raises a brow at you, “Baby, you don’t have to feel guilty about keeping songs to yourself. If you don’t want to share them, you don’t have to.”

“No, it’s just that, they’re about you.” You pause, staring down at your fingers that fiddled together. “Like I wrote them specifically for you to listen to. I wanted to include them on the album, but it just didn’t feel right to share something that was meant only for you.”

You place your laptop on the bed and turn it so the screen is facing Tom.

“So...as a solution, I made you your own album.” You were too busy avoiding his stare, that you missed the twinkle in Tom’s coffee colored orbs. He carefully sits up, his arms around you getting tighter, as he pulls you closer into his chest. Tom ducks his head down to yours, nudging your nose with his to get you to look at him. When your eyes finally meet, the lopsided grin on his features grows wider.

“You made me my own album?”

“Yeah.” You shyly answer. Tom softly coos at you, cupping your face and pressing a chaste kiss onto both of your cheeks.

“You are the most precious thing in the world, sunshine, I swear.” He squishes your cheeks together and began to cover your face with butterfly like kisses. Sweet laughs erupt from you, the sounds making Tom’s heart swell.

You stuff your face in the space between his neck and shoulder, using it as a place to hide from his lips. Instead, Tom opts to lay his kisses along the side of your face, your neck, and your shoulder.

“Lemme kiss you!” He whines. You chuckle at him, finally moving away from his neck. His attention darts towards your lips more than once, prompting you to lean forward and connect them with his. Tom’s lips were soft against yours, like clouds or cushiony pillows. The kiss was short and sweet; though it didn’t prevent you from feeling the adoration and passion he felt for you in that moment. In fact, he felt it all the time, but right now, his love for you was coursing through his veins.

He finally pulls away, leaving the taste of him linger in your mouth. “Can I have a listen?” He motions his head towards your laptop beside him.

“Go ahead.” Tom’s arms unravel from your waist, the area they once occupied left cold and yearning for his warmth. He uses one of his elbows to hold himself up and the other to control the touchpad. His eyes scan the file.

For Tom x

someone like u

test drive

worst behavior

main thing

He glances at you, “I start with ‘someone like u’, right?” You reply with a quiet “mhm”.

Tom clicks on the link. The opening notes of ‘someone like u’ begin to play followed by your angelic voice. You hear him release a content sigh, making a small smile to form on your lips. His arms make their way around you again, this time holding you closer against him. He rests his head on your chest and sneakily presses a kiss onto your neck. You fondly run a hand through his curly hair and rest your chin on the top of his head, listening to the songs you’ve made for him.

The two of you listen through the album in one go with no stops. You found joy in Tom’s reactions towards every song. Sometimes he would make little comments or sounds of shock whenever he heard you hit a certain note. He nodded along to the beats of ‘test drive’ and ‘worst behavior’, dancing around in his seat and making you join him. This time, you didn’t miss the twinkle in his eyes when he listened closely to the lyrics. ‘Main thing’ got him the most, leaving him with a goofy-lovesick grin plastered onto his face.

When ‘main thing’ came to a close, the room became silent, leaving Tom enough time to process the four songs you wrote about him and the meanings behind them.

You were the first to speak, “So did you like it?” You scan his face looking for any signs of dislike.

Tom’s eyes widen, “Are you kidding me? That was bloody fantastic—that was the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard! I’m obsessed with it, oh my god!” He expressed, arms moving around as he spoke.

His face was radiating with happiness, “You are the most talented and loving woman in the world. And I honestly don’t know what I did to deserve you or your love—but I just love you so fucking much.”

“I love you so fucking much too, you dork.” You laugh, pecking his lips.

“No, but seriously, thank you so much. I know you’re used to writing songs, but the fact that you actually took the time to write songs about me means a lot. They’re just a bunch of songs, but they mean the world to me and I cherish each and every one of them.” He admits, taking one of your hands and placing it onto his heart. Your palm feels the faint rhythm of his heart beating against his chest.

You tilt your head at him, mirroring the smile on his face, “I’ll always write songs about you. You somehow manage to inspire them anyway.”

Tom smirks, “Well I am Tom Holland.” You snort and roll your eyes at his humble brag.

“You’re still a dork, Tommy.” You comment.

Tom shrugs, “I’m a special dork because I’m your dork. Therefore making me superior to the other existing dorks—there’s a difference, darling.”

“And where did you come up with this hypothesis, Mr. Holland?” You question him, playing along with his antics.

“It’s Tom’s Theory.” He answers with feign seriousness. You burst out laughing, “Oh is it?”

Tom leans down to your laptop and restarts his album. “Yes, and now Tom’s Theory, believes that we should listen to the album again until I learn all the lyrics to every single song.” He proclaims.

“Babe, you don’t have to—” Tom stops you, “I’m dead serious.”

It was going to be a long night.

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

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Tom Holland + characters Taglist

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General Taglist

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[scriveyner]

always summer #26

always summer #26: sex tape | bungou stray dogs |👿🐯 & 🎩🤕 | #kinktober 🔞| ~1900 words

Atsushi’s phone vibrated a few times in his pocket, and he edged it out just enough to check that it wasn’t a world-ending calamity and that he could safely ignore what was likely Dazai-san double and triple-texting. Akutagawa rolled his head against Atsushi’s shoulder and let out an annoyed huff through his nose; Atsushi sensed the gaze would be disapproving if he could see it.

Continue on ao3 or:

“Sorry,” Atsushi murmured softly, his voice nearly lost under the audio mix of the movie they were in as he slid the offending phone and its light back into his pocket.

The theater was only about half full, and most people streamed out during the credits—Akutagawa sat up then, popping some cold popcorn into his mouth and making a sly comment about the fact that Atsushi had not emptied the container, while Atsushi pulled his phone out properly to investigate the interruption in their date. There were enough notifications to stack, and the top one was a video file, with no preview available.

“Huh,” Atsushi said, and unlocked his phone.

“What did Dazai-san want?” Akutagawa asked, eyes on the scroll of the credits; the popcorn in his hand missed his mouth when an obscene squelching noise, followed by a heavy moan, came from the auto-play on the video before Atsushi could stop it. He bobbled his phone for a second and nearly dropped it trying to pause or mute the video, face one solid shade of red to his hairline. Once he got it shut off, he immediately slumped all the way down in his seat in the hopes that no one overheard.

Akutagawa stared at him. Atsushi stared back, wide-eyed and face flushed.

“Give me your phone,” Akutagawa said, and Atsushi shook his head, phone clutched to his chest. “What on earth did he send you, weretiger, give me your phone—”

“I didn’t ask for him to send me that!” Atsushi somehow wailed in a pseudo-whisper.

Rashomon looped around Atsushi’s other side, and he was caught off guard—when he turned to fend off the tendril Akutagawa leaned over the armrest and plucked the phone from his hand. The ability use surprised the remaining patrons and most of them exited quickly, no longer waiting for the end of the reel. Akutagawa ignored them, making certain the phone was set to silent this time and pressed play on the video.

Atsushi covered his face with both hands, the only thing visible was his still incredibly pink ears. Akutagawa closed the video immediately, locking the phone. “Dazai-san sent you a sex tape.”

“Not on purpose!” Akutagawa cocked his head, and Atsushi glared at him. “I didn’t ask—”

“No, I know you wouldn’t,” Akutagawa eyed him thoughtfully. “Shall we watch it?”

Now Atsushi tilted all the way ‘round to scandalized. “What? No! I would never watch that, are you kidding? I’d never be able to look Dazai-san in the eye again!”

Akutagawa put his elbow on the armrest and his chin in his hand and gave Atsushi the flattest look of disbelief he had ever seen. Atsushi looked away angrily and stared at the screen. Tersely, he asked, “can I have my phone back?”

“Not until I’ve had a chance to watch them, I don’t trust you not to delete anything.”

Atsushi turned to face him and hissed, “not here!”

“Of course, not here, weretiger, I do have a least one shred of decency.”

By the time the lights came up they were the only ones remaining in the theater; Atsushi wisely chose to leave via one of the exit doors because he sensed at least one person went to an employee to report ability use inside the building. Akutagawa followed him, pocketing Atsushi’s phone.

“If you’re going to hold on to my phone, at least give me yours,” Atsushi said, squinting in the daylight.

“No.”

He sighed in aggravation. “Fine. Fine. Where are we gonna watch it, huh?” Gonna take it back to the cabin with us where they have been doing…that,” he gestured with his hand dramatically, clearly unable to use the language outside of the bedroom.

Akutagawa considered the problem. He looked around. The movie theater was part of an entertainment complex that was full of people enjoying the bright afternoon sun. The buildings were close together, and mostly the same size—the exit had dumped them in an alley between the two. After a few quick calculations, Rashomon looped around Atsushi’s waist, and they were both on top of the theater before Atsushi could even open his mouth to protest.

“What,” he yelped, put down on his feet in a surprisingly gentle manner, “the fuck?”

Akutagawa looked around; the roof of the building was mostly flat and exposed to the elements, though behind the massive façade there was plenty of shade. He strode purposefully toward it and found an area someone—likely employees—had cleaned up and hauled a few crates up to use as seats. He nudged one with his foot, and looked back toward Atsushi, before scooting two together.

“This is a terrible idea,” Atsushi said. “For the record.” He sat on one of the crates. “I don’t want to watch it, I’ll just…supervise.”

“Whatever makes you feel better, weretiger,” Akutagawa said and kicked the sound on before opening the first of the videos sent to Atsushi’s phone.

This was the one Atsushi had accidentally opened in the theater, full of wet noises, flesh smacking into flesh, and breathy moaning sounds—he kept his head turned away for just a minute, and then Atsushi was leaning against Akutagawa’s shoulder, both peering down into the shaky video full-screened on Atsushi’s phone.

It was dark, for a moment, and then the screen blurred and shifted, and suddenly there was Chuuya in frame, lit from behind by sunlight in what was clearly the master bedroom. He had Dazai’s leg up over his shoulder and a sheen of sweat on his skin, and his expression slid into cross when he caught sight of the phone in Dazai’s hand. “What the fuck are y’ doin’?”

Atsushi startled a little, it sounded for a moment like it was directed toward them, and Akutagawa didn’t move at all when Atsushi wound his arm through Akutagawa’s. After a moment, though, Rashomon rose and took the phone from Akutagawa’s hand and held it for them—probably safer, all things considered.

“Just taking memories of the most gorgeous thing I’ve seen in my life,” Dazai’s voice was breathy, he sounded wrung out—and when Chuuya shifted, leaning in close and reaching for the phone, they both could clearly hear the way Dazai’s breath caught, and he moaned—which quickly slid into a laugh. The camera angle changed again as he kept the camera out of Chuuya’s limited range, after a moment he rotated it in his grip, and they could see the entire top-down view of Dazai naked on the bed and Chuuya between his legs.

“You shitty fuck, I told you no.”

“Mm, I’ll send it to you,” Dazai sank into the mattress as he spoke and that made the entire angle shift again, almost dizzily. It seemed like that was enough to make Chuuya stop trying to remove the phone from Dazai, though Dazai let out a disappointed whine. “After you make me come, of course. We can watch it later.”

“Asshole.”

“You love me for it.” Dazai pulled the shot in again, framing Chuuya once more. Atsushi swallowed; eyes drawn to watching Chuuya’s abs tighten as he fucked into Dazai, one arm looped around the leg held to his shoulder. He made sure, precise movements and the angle changed again, held up high, enough now that he could see the thickness of Chuuya’s cock, and, shit, it was gonna get weird if he got hard watching this, right?

Atsushi moved restlessly, pressed to Akutagawa’s side, realized that ship had sailed and groaned softly.

Akutagawa’s eyes were trained on the video as well, and his usually cool exterior was cracked along the edges because he had a bright red flush spread across his face. Atsushi was satisfied that at least he wasn’t the only one, and hesitated—then he moved right back into ‘fuck it’ territory and pushed his palm over Akutagawa’s shorts.

Yup, hard.

“What,” Akutagawa captured his wrist, “are you doing—” He gulped when Atsushi’s grip switched around, and he yanked Akutagawa’s hand, so his hand was pressing over the bulge in Atsushi’s shorts. Akutagawa took a deep, gasping breath, glancing at Atsushi instead of the video.

They stared at each other for a few moments, faces matching shades of crimson, and the on the still-playing video Dazai let out an obscene moan that Atsushi had only ever really heard muffled through the walls, and their attention both snapped back to the scene playing out before them.

Somehow, he was still holding the camera mostly steady, but Chuuya had leaned forward, planting one hand out of sight of the camera and the other was now wrapped around Dazai’s naked erection, stroking it in time with his thrusts.

“Come on, Dazai,” Chuuya purred, and oh the way that coiled in Atsushi’s gut, his fingers curled around Akutagawa’s length from the outside of his shorts. Akutagawa gulped air and ground his palm against Atsushi’s trapped cock. “I need you to come all pretty for me.”

Dazai was making little breathy “ah, ah, ah” sounds, like each sharp thrust of Chuuya’s hips was driving the air from his lungs, and Atsushi bucked his hips against Akutagawa’s palm. Both their eyes were glued to the phone though, as Dazai let out a deep moan of satisfaction, and white began to spill over Chuuya’s fist.

Abruptly, the video stopped, half of Chuuya cut off, Dazai’s cock still mostly in frame. They both stared at it, bewildered, before Akutagawa shifted and yanked Atsushi’s shorts down with his hand. Atsushi couldn’t focus, pulling at Akutagawa’s at the same time, the breath exploding from his lungs as Akutagawa finally wrapped his hand completely around Atsushi’s straining cock. “Fuck,” Atsushi moaned, groping blindly and getting his hand into Akutagawa’s pants, sliding his palm over the head of Akutagawa’s dripping cock.

It was an unintentional race that Atsushi knew he was going to lose, Akutagawa’s grip sure and strong. Atsushi pressed his thumb into the slit and felt Akutagawa tense up, he could imagine feeling his balls get tight and hot, but he couldn’t dip his hand lower from here, not with Akutagawa holding him tight in place. He couldn’t help but think of what Dazai’s face would have looked like at that moment when he came—but then he was thinking of Chuuya’s thick cock pushing in, and Atsushi’s other hand pulled at the back of Akutagawa’s shirt, hips trembling.

Akutagawa choked against his shoulder, and Atsushi realized with a shock that he had climaxed first, hot fluid spitting into his palm. There was a joke to be had here, surely, but he couldn’t find it, needing Akutagawa’s hand, or his mouth, or…

With a groan, still trembling, Akutagawa pushed Atsushi back just enough and fell to his knees in front of him, wrapping his mouth around Atsushi’s dick.

That did it for him, Atsushi arched his back as he came, one hand pressed to the back of Akutagawa’s head. It was over quick, and he was left spent and gasping while Akutagawa picked himself up and wiped his mouth. “Fuck,” Atsushi said, dazed, pants still bunched around his thighs.

“And that was only the first video,” Akutagawa said raggedly. Before Atsushi could protest, or even beg for a moment to gather himself, Akutagawa scrolled to the next video and hit play.