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fedzkun · 4 years ago

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Villain Hunt Arc Meta: All For One’s Horrific Guide to Methodically Breaking Down Your Local OFA Holder

Ft. Turning the ‘Overpoweredness’ of OFA into a Setback, and AFO’s Successful Manipulations Of Midoriya Izuku

In which I also give AFO too much credit for all the pain he’s probably caused, and theorize that his plans to break Izuku actually started getting enacted even before he’d escaped Tartarus.

(A.k.a. me loving the angst because this is really good angst writing, but also hating it because the manga doesn’t come with a Angst with A Happy Ending tag unless you count Izuku’s ‘this is the story of how I became the greatest hero’ which isn’t really a guarantee of happiness )

So. What an arc! In the span of ten chapters (starting from the end of the War arc) Hori delivered a full-on Villain-looking, Vigilante Midoriya Izuku. Congratulations, Horikoshi, for finally introducing Akatani Mikumo!

The fast pacing and lack of breather panels are so fitting for this arc truly. AFO never gave them a moment’s rest. Yes, from henceforth as he’d promised... It’s always going to be his turn.

Izuku is making amazing progress with unlocking the full power of One For All. In his words, his abilities might as well already be on par with what a healthier All Might could do, and with no recoil to boot. Plus, there’s only one last quirk to unlock. For villain fights, I don’t think we need to worry about him losing, or him breaking anymore bones at this time.

Which, some might argue, makes Izuku too ‘OP.’

To start with, I want to talk first about the ‘overpoweredness’ of the One For All quirk. It’s a wonderful quirk truly, having inspired and amazed so many because of its sheer power. Used well, it could grant instant victories and restore the people’s wavering faith to the heroes. Because with a quirk like that on your side, everything’s going to be alright, right? There’s always gonna be that bit of hope that something is still strong enough to stand against the looming evil...right?

Yeah. That’s what the people who’d lived under All Might’s Era of Peace thought so too. History repeats.

OFA’s ‘OP-ness’ is both a great blessing and a great burden.

Here are some points on how the narrative has made OFA's 'overpoweredness' a setback:

1. All For One—that bastard—exploits the urge that comes with OFA. Just as ‘AFO the quirk’s’ goal is to steal OFA, OFA’s job is to defeat AFO, and Izuku is sacrificing himself to its cause.

Here’s another thing I want to point out: The conclusion that the heroes drew about AFO planning to capture Midoriya Izuku alive? In rereading, I’m starting to believe it’s nothing but a mere assumption of his plans. Aside from the deal made with Lady Nagant—of which I think AFO didn’t take seriously anyway and set her up for failure— (and while we as readers are already aware of his true intentions to wear Izuku down) it’s weird that nowhere had AFO directly mentioned to Izuku that he’s going to kidnap him and take his quirk from him.

2. OFA made Izuku so brilliant (e.g. Pros and former Pros alike going “This kid...”) that they really can't help but place all their hopes on him. Sighs. In an ideal world, this would be a dream come true of Izuku getting his due credit for all his heroic achievements Pro heroes have started to do to Izuku what they’ve done all their lives to All Might--which is to put him on the pedestal, while they fall back to cover him like guards/safety net. Hence, falling back to the One Pillar Model mindset.

3. OFA makes Izuku untouchable, not only to the villains, but also to his allies. Prime material to reinforce isolation. And if Izuku doesn't want to be caught, he won't make it easy for either side.

4. OFA IS SUS AF, OKAY? What are the Holders doing?! While gaining access to them makes it easier and convenient to have personal trainers in handling OFA, the vestiges prove to add a lot to Izuku’s mental load. If they’d allowed Izuku to come to the point of being caked with blood and filth, they’re not doing very well at guiding him. Realize that most of their arc interactions with Izuku is Quirk Talk. They, of all people, should know how AFO’s machinations work! Hey First, for the love of god, warn Izuku! He’s showing so many signs of being manipulated that you should be picking up on. please /sobs ;;

Tbf, like, I’m pretty sure that the Holders haven’t been as mentally okay either, which would feed into Izuku’s current mindset.

Now that the setbacks have been listed, let’s dive in to AFO’s plans to toy with Midoriya Izuku.

PHASE 1: Pre-Tartarus Breakout

Speaking of OFA being sus, there’s something that has been niggling at the back of my mind.

All For One basically tells Izuku: “You were my main interest that entire time I was in prison”. So, to pass the time in Tartarus (since he can’t use any(?) of his quirks), AFO has been doing nothing but apparently daydreaming and designing a personal hell for the Ninth Holder during that entire period. HOWEVER, it also made me wonder…

…Even before he’d broken out, had AFO made any moves at all in enacting his plans to break Izuku?

Yeah?

And here’s the kicker: he says that before Blackwhip bursted out.

AFO is a master manipulator. Assuming that Izuku doesn’t have any latent AFO quirk (for whatever reason *coughs* maybe dfo if you're a believer) or that Quirk Singularity has anything to do with it, what is the trigger to Izuku suddenly having access to Blackwhip?

I’d argue that it is All For One himself.

Why? What’s his goal? If you notice during the Joint Training arc, Izuku is feeling pretty confident about his progress. He’s rather happy and feeling blessed, and he is making leaps and bounds with base power OFA.

AFO can’t have that. He can’t allow the Ninth Holder to become too emotionally stable, or else he’d have a stronger will. So by somehow activating Blackwhip, AFO makes Izuku feel like he hasn’t made any progress with his quirk at all. During the evaluations, Izuku mentions that he still needs a lot to work on, and while not all of it is visible, with the way he behaves, it’s pretty evident that his self-confidence has taken a rather large hit.

But, wait! If AFO had tampered with OFA during the JT arc, paving the way to unlocking the rest (like he’d also done during the War arc when he tried to ‘steal’ it then), then wouldn’t AFO be sabotaging himself since he’d be making Izuku a more formidable opponent?

Sure. Except that the quirks inside OFA are mostly useless when it comes to the mental part of the fighting. The only thing they’re useful for is for the current Holder to be able to play keep-away in the physical realm. And AFO could easily just find counters for those through his work on Tomura.

You know how else the situation becomes advantageous for AFO? With every quirk unlocked, Izuku’s goalposts keep on getting away from him, and Izuku will always feel like he isn’t ready or prepared enough. Izuku will push and push himself to master OFA to its fullest, to become more powerful, at the cost of his mental/emotional stability and physical wellbeing as he wears himself down.

And every time Izuku grew more powerful, and became more ‘OP,’ he is burdened with all the aforementioned setbacks that came with it. He could be the most powerful person in the world, but it’s all for naught if he doesn’t take care of himself. This plan is both a high risk and high reward on AFO’s part, and as of the moment, with a bloody Izuku staggering all over, AFO is visibly reaping these high rewards.

PHASE 2: Post-Tartarus Breakout

He’s going to toy with Izuku until Izuku fucking breaks. What follows is his series of actions that instills the desired responses from Midoriya Izuku. Let’s see how the master manipulator plays this game of chess, shall we?

Izuku’s plan: Reach out to villains and try to save them.

AFO’s counter: Kill off those who turn their back against villainy and/or acknowledge Izuku as a true hero.

Izuku’s resulting response: Stop reaching out to villains. Gain an instant victory and move on.

After all, what do you get when you block a hero from showing sympathy? You get an unfeeling living weapon.

---

Izuku’s plan: Work with the top pro heroes to bring down AFO.

AFO’s counter: Make plans that will serve to highlight how the top pros are just slowing Izuku down. (e.g. Making moves while it’s raining, so as to divide them, but also to bring out No. 1 Hero Endeavor’s "slowness" in the rain. Nope, I don’t think that’s a throwaway line at all.)

Izuku’s resulting response: Grows more reckless, often leading the charge.

---

Izuku’s plan: Track AFO down.

AFO’s counter: Lead them to dead-ends. Or when they do supposedly reach something, endanger them.

Izuku’s resulting response: His tunnel vision worsens, as he grows more desperate.

---

Izuku’s plan: All Might following him around is okay since it would help All Might from worrying so much, and Izuku could simultaneously keep an eye on and protect All Might.

AFO’s counters: There are a lot to really fuck with this bond, damn you AFO.

Taint that passing the torch memory of ‘You’re Next.’

Declare that All Might no longer interests him. Liar. He outright stated before that he’s one for keeping a grudge

Send another assassin to Izuku [Underlying Message: You yourself are a walking danger zone to those whom you dearly care for.]

Izuku’s resulting response:

Interpret that memory of ‘You’re Next’ as taking up the position of being AFO’s shiny new plaything, and therefore supposedly sparing All Might from the torment (Unfortunately, making Izuku push AM away is just part of the torment ;A;)

Think that AM is no longer in the direct line of fire as long as AFO focuses on Izuku

Finally, push his last line of morale support away, and completely isolate himself.

Btw, I wonder how All Might feels about Izuku using Nana's quirk to get away from him.

---

The suffering doesn’t end.

Izuku’s plan: Save people.

AFO’s counters: (possibly offscreen) Send more villains and assassins to torment Izuku some more with the knowledge that he can’t save them. Sending villains out also puts innocents in danger.

Izuku’s resulting response: He won’t stop for anything. He won’t sleep, won’t eat, won’t slow down. He will always do his best to save as long as someone is in danger.

His body will keep on moving and moving and MOVING on its own.

--- All For One is very effective as a supervillain. He has managed to make the heroes think that his only goal is to capture Izuku alive for his quirk. He has Izuku right where he wants him: dancing to his tune at the palm of his hand, utterly toyed with, left with no escape in sight.

Psychologically vaulted.

PHASE 3

And so, if Izuku is being manipulated to drive himself further and further into self-destruction, what then is there left for All For One to do?

So much more. Because, my god, I think AFO has mastered the art of traumatizing the OFA Holders.

All For One once told All Might, “I will destroy all that you’ve protected.” And boy, is he delivering. He's definitely not done with AM btw.

First, he destroys All Might's image. And he is manipulating Izuku to drive himself to that point. To looking into his absolute worst.

And when that point arrives, AFO will hammer the final nail home.

Something like...

BEHOLD

JAPAN’S SYMBOL OF PEACE.

And oh, how it'll hurt. To see All Might's pride and joy be flaunted about as looking nothing like a hero to the masses, for him to be so utterly humiliated.

"See what I did to All Might's successor."

AFO will be banking upon the possibility that the angry masses will not want to be saved by whom they're tricked into viewing as someone that's the cause of all the pain. Izuku might have the willpower to stay true to his resolve, but with him on the verge of total breakdown, what would happen when he is shunned by the very people he is trying to help?

I once wrote a post about how the current events seem to be a bastardization of Izuku's wildest fantasies: he's working with the top pros, he has the most powerful quirk, and he's working with All Might (whom technically acts as a sidekick to him rn).

AFO has warped all that into a never-ending nightmare. And Izuku...

Izuku is really in need of saving.

Last thoughts:

Let me just say that it shouldn't be a competition about who gets to get through to Izuku. Right now, he’s gonna need all the help he can get, and it can’t be delivered by only one or two people. Saving Izuku is going to be a team effort, a solid support system that sees Izuku as their classmate/friend/student/actual person that they care about. And there’s sufficient space for that.

More hands reaching out means more chances to catch him if he falls.

#bnha #bnha 317 #bnha manga #bnha analysis #bnha meta #all for one #afo #midoriya izuku #all might #toshinori yagi

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heyitssmiller · 4 years ago

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Clandestine

It’s here! The Sweater Weather/Coast to Coast Spy AU has officially begun! Thanks to everyone who’s asked questions/thought of ideas/showed excitement for this!! As always, characters belong to the lovely @lumosinlove! And thank you, @donttouchmycarrots for proofreading this!

Here’s the Clandestine Masterlist

Chapter One

Remus Lupin was being followed.

He hadn’t been out in the field for years now, but some habits would always stick with him. Surreptitiously glancing over his shoulder as he walked down the street towards his flat, listening for falling footsteps or sudden noises, and – most importantly – trusting his gut.

He could feel eyes on the back of his head and knew from experience that he wasn’t just being paranoid.

He took a few seconds to think about it, then grabbed his phone, pretending to be oblivious, and called Potter before slipping his phone back into his pocket and keeping his steps even and casual. Sure enough, his follower tried to take advantage of his supposed slip in focus and grabbed his arm. But Remus knew it was coming and caught the assailant by the forearm, using their forward momentum to pin him to a nearby wall.

“Why are you following me?” Remus demanded, breath clouding in the cool night air before he recognized his attacker. Dark curls, dove-gray eyes, high cheekbones.

Sirius Black, a prominent member of the Snakes, the Slytherin mafia. Sirius Black, who was actively being hunted down by the intelligence agency Remus worked for.

Sirius Black, who wasn’t even trying to fight back or break free. For some unknown reason, he was in Gryffindor - where an entire intelligence agency was trying to take him and the organization he was a part of down - and yet he seemed completely calm. Nonchalant, even. As if this were just a walk in the park on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Remus narrowed his eyes at Black. “What’s going on?”

Black reached into Remus’ pocket, pulled out his phone, and ended the call to Potter. “Not here. Do you have somewhere quiet we can talk?”

Remus arched an eyebrow. “Yes, but I’ll need to call that guy back. If I don’t he’ll panic and he won’t hesitate to shoot on sight if he thinks I’m in trouble.”

That wasn’t necessarily true, but Black didn’t need to know that.

After quickly calling Potter back and explaining what was going on, he hung up and led the way back to his flat. He knew that was a better option that going back to Gryffindor Intelligence. If he felt like this put him in danger, he could move pretty easily. It’s not like he had many belongings to begin with. Uprooting the agency would be next to impossible.

“If people end up breaking into my house after this, I will hunt you down.”

“Yeah,” Black scoffed, kicking a rock farther down the sidewalk, then kicking it again when he caught up with it. “You’ve done a great job of that so far.”

“And yet you’re here for some reason. That can only mean two possible things.”

Black had to abandon the rock as they took the stairs up to Remus’ flat. “Oh? Do tell.”

“One, this is a crazy scheme to slowly kill off Gryffindor Intelligence one by one and, for whatever reason, you decided to start with me.” Remus fished his keys out of his pocket and unlocked his door. “Or two, which is more likely, you need our help. The only question I have left is why the great Sirius Black is stooping to ask us for help.”

He closed the door behind them and watched as Black took in his surroundings. It wasn’t much: a ratty old couch, a coffee table, warm brown-toned walls, and too many dying potted plants.

He really needed to remember to water those.

“I ran away from the Snakes and I can help you take them down once and for all.”

Remus blinked at the suddenness of that statement. This… this could change everything. They might actually be able to take the Snakes down, after years of trying and failing. He had so many questions. What changed to make him want to leave? Why now? But none of those seemed to matter at that moment. There was only one question Remus needed to know the answer to immediately.

“What’s in it for you?”

Black shifted on his feet. “My brother…” He sighed, refusing to look at Remus. “He’s still there. And he’s innocent in all this – as innocent as he can be, in a situation like that. I need you to ensure that you can get him out safely before we take them down.”

“I’m sure something can be arranged.” Remus agreed. He knew of Regulus, of course. It was his job, after all. And he didn’t seem as innocent as his older brother was trying to paint him out to be. At the end of the day, though, it didn’t really matter. Letting Regulus go free, guilty or not, would be a small price to pay for taking down one of the biggest mafias in the country. “What’s your plan?”

For the first time Remus had ever seen, Black smiled. “It’s all in the flash drives.”

Remus called Pots and Moody over; this was too much for him to deal with on his own. James he trusted with everything - it didn’t even cross his mind not to call his friend. He was probably dying of curiosity after that phone call, anyways. Remus wouldn’t have been surprised if he was already on his way to Remus’ flat before he got the call. And Moody could sniff out a liar like no one Remus had ever seen. If Black was lying - about any of this - Moody would know.

James opened the door then, making a beeline for Remus and dragging him into the kitchen to talk to him in private. “Alright, Loops?”

“I’m fine.”

Pots relaxed, but only slightly. “So he just... showed up?”

“Tried to grab my arm on the way home.”

“So you brought him back to your flat? I mean, I know you voted for him as the most attractive in Criminal Choice Awards, but come on, Loops.” He said, referencing the game they’d played with the rest of Gryffindor Intelligence over New Year’s while outrageously drunk.

“First of all, we don’t talk about that game. That was a fiasco and should be considered top secret intel. Second of all, what else was I supposed to do? He said he could help us take down the Snakes. I couldn’t just let an opportunity like that pass us by.”

“Ok, fine.” James agreed reluctantly. “We’ll hear him out, but I can’t promise we’ll do anything else.” He then turned to walk back into the living room and glared at the stranger in the room. “Black.”

“Potter.” Black said with a taunting smile. “How’s the kid?”

“Don’t you dare – ”

Moody walked into his flat with his gun already drawn and aimed at Black. Remus sighed. “Is that really necessary?”

“You can never be too vigilant.” He mumbled, not taking his eyes off Black, who just grinned and sent Moody a sarcastic wave.

“If we’re going to get this done,” Remus interrupted, still clutching James’ arm in a firm grip to hold him back. “We need to work together. So stop antagonizing each other and let’s get to work. Black, you mentioned flash drives?”

Black nodded. “Riddle keeps all the information about the Snakes on seven separate flash drives. I could tell you some of the information, but there’s too many groups and people that I don’t have memorized. If you want to catch all the members and informants and organizations under the Snakes’ control, you need those flash drives. As soon as you try to take the Snakes down, they’ll all scatter and you’ll never find them again if you don’t already know who you’re looking for. Do you have coffee? It’s quite late and this is bound to be a long conversation.”

“I don’t drink coffee.” Remus lied, although he could tell Black saw right through him. “Keep talking.”

He sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes, leaning back on the couch to get more comfortable and staring up at the ceiling as he continued in a bored tone, “He keeps the drives in different locations. One he keeps with him at all times. One’s in a safe in his office, and two are with his most-trusted men – Bellatrix and my brother.”

“And yet your brother is innocent?” Remus asked skeptically.

Black glared at him, all sense of nonchalance gone. When he spoke, his voice was deadly. “He’s done more in terms of taking the Snakes down than you have. We’ve been trying to destroy them from the inside for years, but there’s only so much two people can do.”

Remus understood now why people were so afraid of him. That piercing gray gaze was chilling.

“Ok, fine. Where are the rest of the drives?”

Like a flip had been switched, Black reverted back to casual as if nothing had happened. “There’s three in separate safes across the city – one’s in the police station, and two are in safety deposit boxes in different banks. That’s seven.”

James met Remus’ gaze. “Winter? He’s the best at cracking safes.”

Black grimaced. “And there’s our biggest roadblock. The Snakes know who you are.”

“What?”

“All of your active agents, the ones who have tried to take the Snakes down previously, they have files on.”

Moody looked like he was about to have a stroke. Black shrugged. “Their informants are no joke.”

“So what do you expect us to do, if we’ll be recognized as soon as we step foot into the city?” Remus demanded, running a list of their agents through his head and eliminating nearly all of them one by one.

“Surely you have some agents who haven’t gone up against the Snakes yet.”

Remus blinked. “You’re joking. This is your grand plan? That eliminates about ninety-five percent of our candidates. And those five percent left? Maybe two percent are trained and ready to go out into the field. This is a huge op - we can’t just send anyone.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Hang on,” James said, and Remus groaned. He could see that glint in his eyes. The glint that meant he had an idea brewing.

Nothing good ever came from that glint.

“We can send O’Hara.”

“See? We already have a candidate!” Black cheered, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. Remus bristled. “Who’s O’Hara?”

“We recruited him right after he graduated from Harvard last year. He’s got a near perfect memory, and he’s really good with people. He normally does stake outs or reconnaissance and the occasional honeypot.”

“He’d be good for this,” Moody gruffly added. “He can charm the pants off of just about anybody. Makes it easy to get what you want.”

“I think Tremblay would be a good fit, too.” Remus chimed in, thinking it through. They’d work well together. Finn might drive Logan insane, but they’d get the job done. Hopefully. “Bring in some extra muscle just in case things get dicey, which they always do with the Snakes.”

“He hasn’t worked a Snakes mission before?” James asked.

Remus shook his head. “He’s been back and forth between here and Beauxbatons, remember? Since he’s fluent in French.”

“Can he crack open safes?” Black asked impatiently.

“No,” James said, but he was still smiling. “But we know someone who can.”

Remus thought about it for a second, then turned to gape at James when he figured it out. “James, you can’t be serious.”

“Why not? He’s a perfect fit! And the only other person besides Winter who can consistently crack a safe.”

“He’s a kid.”

“He’s not that much younger than O’Hara or Tremblay, and you’re fine with sending them.”

“He’s never even been out in the field before!”

“Winter says he’s almost as good as himself.”

“He’s inexperienced, and he’s going to get himself or one of the others killed.”

“Ok, so then what do you suggest?” James demanded, throwing up his arms in frustration. “Do you know anyone else who could do it?”

Remus stared at him at a loss, much to his chagrin. They’d never had to worry about this before - Winter did all their missions when they needed to break into something. They’d never needed anyone else before.

Now it seemed like their biggest operation to date would be in the hands of a rookie.

After a beat of silence, Moody spoke up. “I agree with Potter. He’s our only option, if the rest of our agents are compromised. We can talk to Winter in the morning, see if he’s ready for this.”

Remus sighed, but didn’t argue.

“I’m sorry,” Black said. “But who are we talking about?”

James grinned. “Nut.”

“That’s his name?”

“Oh my god.” Remus groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

***

Leo Knut (it’s pronounced newt, thank you very much) sat at his work station with twelve different locks in front of him, along with his pick, rake, and tension wrench. He took a deep, steadying breath and started his timer before instantly getting his hands on his first lock.

Insert tension wrench. Use the pick to find the binding pin and set it. Set the rest of the pins. Turn the tension wrench and…

The lock clicked open.

Leo quickly set it down and picked the next one up, repeating the same steps and singing along quietly to the song playing on his phone.

“All I want, all I want is you, your violet disposition, my unsound intuit – aaah!” He shouted when someone suddenly sat down on the bench next to him. “Fuck, Winter.”

Kasey raised an eyebrow. “You need to pay more attention to your surroundings when you’re on the job. Also, you’re tone deaf.”

“Thanks.” Leo muttered, reaching over to stop his timer and turn his music off. “Why are you here so early? Aren’t you usually asleep right now?”

“Yeah, but I got a call from Loops.”

Leo, always one to keep his hands busy, began messing with another lock. “You got another job?”

“No,” Kasey said, drawing out the vowel. “But you might.”

Leo laughed. “You’re kidding.” After a few seconds of silence, he looked back up again. Kasey’s face was dead serious. Leo set his lock and tools down. “You’re not kidding. What the hell? What’s the job?”

“You’d be going after the Snakes.”

Normally, Leo appreciated being direct and straightforward.

This was not one of those times.

“As in the mafia? Those Snakes?”

“Yup.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yup.”

Leo knew of the Snakes, of course. And he knew that Gryffindor had been after them for years, which meant it was a big deal. So why were they putting him on the job and not Winter? He had experience in pickpocketing tourists in the streets of New Orleans and opening locks. He’d only started cracking safes under Winter’s instructions eight months ago. Why him?

“Is Loops insane? This would be my first job!”

“It was technically Pots’ idea.”

“Oh. Well, that makes a lot more sense.”

“Nut – ”

“That’s not my name – ”

“This is big for a first job.”

Leo fiddled with another lock, listening to the soothingly repetitive sound of pins setting. It was familiar, solid ground.

This, though, would be uncharted territory.

“I know.” He said anyways, trying to settle his nerves.

“You think you’re ready for it?”

Leo looked down, collecting his thoughts before speaking. “I’ve got to prove myself somehow, right? What better way to do that than by taking down one of the biggest gangs in the country?”

Kasey laughed. “You’re crazy.”

“I’m from Louisiana – it’s in our blood.”

“Okay, you crazy Cajun. You’ve got your first debriefing at 10:30. Please don’t be late your first day on the job.”

“Who am I working with?” Leo asked, tilting his head. “I mean, I’ve got to have partners, right?”

Kasey just smiled. “Trust me, Nut. You’re going to love them.”

***

Logan and Loops were the only ones in the briefing room so far.

And it was awkward.

Obviously Logan knew who he was – everyone knew his story – but they weren’t talking. The briefing room with the almost-hilariously large table was completely silent besides the occasional rustling of paper or the sound of the air conditioning turning on again. Logan couldn’t remember ever talking to the handler before. Maybe briefly, at that disastrous New Year’s party.

God, that party.

Logan steadfastly refused to think of the New Year’s party.

That is, until a familiar face walked through the door.

The redhead looked up, doe-eyes widening as he recognized Logan. “It’s you!”

Fuck, he was even more attractive now that Logan was sober.

Logan forcefully pushed aside hazy memories of laughing too loud at a story the redhead was telling, cuddled up on the couch with red solo cups in their hands and an almost-kiss as the clock struck midnight that Logan had wanted more than anything. He smiled faintly instead. “It’s you!”

The agent sat down excitedly next to Logan, eager eyes peering out at him from behind tortoiseshell glasses. “How’ve you been? Guess we’re partners now, huh?”

“Guess so.” He said faintly, the word fuck rattling around in his brain on an endless loop.

“I don’t think I caught your name at the party.”

“Oh. Logan. Logan Tremblay.”

“Finn O’Hara.” He replied, holding a hand out for Logan to shake. He then looked over to Loops. “We’ve still got a few more coming, right?”

He nodded reluctantly. “Unless one of you knows how to crack a safe, by any chance.”

Logan snorted, then shook his head. He wasn’t good at small, delicate things like that. Bashing heads in and upper cuts, though... “Nope.” He said simply, leaving it at that.

“Absolutely not.” Finn agreed.

Loops sighed. “That’s what I – ”

The door slowly opened to reveal a tall, blond boy with messy hair and cornflower blue eyes. He looked at the three of them, seeming a little nervous. “Uh, hey. I’m Leo – is this the right room?” He asked in a softly-accented voice.

“Yeah, come on in.” Loops said, which made Leo smile and –

Dimples.

Logan quickly shifted his focus back to Loops as he began to talk again. “Knut, meet O’Hara and Tremblay. They’re your partners for this mission. We have one more person coming before we can get started,” He glanced down at his watch. “But apparently he’s running late.”

“Oh, Lupin, you almost sound concerned.”

Logan’s head shot up at the voice. Sirius Black strode through the door, giving Loops a flirty wink before looking at the three of them. He grinned. “So which one if you is unfortunate enough to have the last name Nut?”

Leo sighed, while the other two fought to keep their laughter at bay. “It’s pronounced newt.”

“Not anymore. You can’t expect people to pass up a nickname like that, kid.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“What? Nut or kid?”

“Both.”

Black just grinned again. “Not a chance.”

“Are you done harassing our operatives, Black?”

“Why? Are you feeling left out?”

Loops glared at him, but his cheeks turned slightly pink. “Why don’t you start debriefing them instead.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

“Buzzkill.” He muttered, but threw himself into one of the chairs. “You might want to write this down – I’m only saying it once and I don’t have any of it in files or anything.”

Logan couldn’t decide whether he should be impressed or repulsed by the lack of professionalism. He looked over at Nut, who was already waiting with a pen and notepad, clicking his pen repeatedly. Logan gritted his teeth and tried to tune out the noise. O’Hara was just sitting back in his chair, content to listen apparently. Logan settled for somewhere in the middle and grabbed one piece of paper and a pencil.

“Alright, here’s the deal. I’m sure you know who I am: Sirius Black, ex-member of the Snakes, blah blah blah. You get it. Well, I’m here to help you take the Snakes down. All the evidence we need of importing drugs, trafficking, laundering, bribery, blackmail – Christ, this list is long. You get the picture. Everything illegal they’ve done, the evidence is on seven flash drives. We need you to get all seven and get my brother out safely before we can officially take them down. Easy enough, right?”

“This is going to be a long op,” Loops cut in, making meaningful eye contact with the three of them. “I’m talking weeks to months here. We’ve got a lot of intel we still need, a lot of planning to do. And it’s not going to be easy. If you don’t feel like you’re up for the task, speak up now.”

Logan sent a surreptitious glance at his new partners. O’Hara looked excited at the prospect of a mission like this. Nut still looked nervous, but his eyes were determined, focused.

They all stayed silent.

“Perfect. Then let’s get started.”

#lumosinlove #sweater weather #coast to coast #coops #sirius black #remus lupin #o'knutzy #finn o'hara #logan tremblay #leo knut #clandestine

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smhalltheurlsaretaken · 5 years ago

Text

Birthday prompt #6

Read on Ao3 Birthday prompts masterlist

@phenixy-dunnhart

[Sinon, j'adore l'amitié juste excellent entre Rios et Raffi, si tu veux une variation (Cris qui se sacrifie pour protéger Raffi) -> Cris getting hurt protecting Raffi]

Some time after leaving Coppelius to gallivant around the cosmos with their motley crew, Raffi collapsed in the ops seat next to Seven and Cris and loudly announced that they had to go out for drinks, and not replicated ones. They had to find a suitably shady Space Station, go out, find a bar, and get absolutely smashed.

“We’re tired, we have time on our hands, and your replicators can’t get Romulan ale right for some reason,” she told Cris as an explanation.

(It was true, he’d messed that up the one time he had drunkenly tried to disable the Hospitality Hologram’s ability to talk.)

The dark circles under her eyes alone would have convinced him anyway. The last week had been tiring. They had spent it avoiding uncharted asteroid belts that really had no business being so large (seriously, what the hell), fixing navigation issues that Enoch swore had nothing to do with the corrupted 23rd century holos he’d helped Soji illegally download for Elnor, and chasing around the four neutered tribble-rabbit hybrids the kids had smuggled aboard.

“Why just the three of us?” Seven asked with a raised eyebrow, legs propped up on the console and disinclined to move, even for drinks.

Raffi snorted.

“Well I wasn’t going to invite JL, obviously.”

That got Seven and Cris to roll their eyes in concert. Yeah, obviously. Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, retired, was too posh and too old to have any concept of fun – or, more specifically, to be able to understand the appeal of marinating your liver in real alcohol and crawl your way back to your quarters to pass out for a day straight.

“But what about Agnes and the kids?” Cris inquired, gracelessly sprawled on the Captain’s seat with a cigar in one hand and a book in another, feeling just as lazy as Seven.

“I asked, she offered to babysit,” Raffi replied. “I don’t want to be responsible for Elnor and Soji’s first hangover.”

“Not to mention that we’d have to keep an eye out for them,” Seven agreed with a nod. “Fair enough. Let’s go to DS 11.”

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Whoever had deemed synthehol an adequate substitute to good old ethanol was a complete fool with appalling taste. That was Raffi’s professional opinion, and she told Cris and Seven just that as she finished her third glass of that vibrant blue liquor that made green sparks when you shook it.

(What was it again? A Bajoran jungle beer?)

Cris snorted in his own glass, full of plain Earth liquor. Seven smirked as she gulped her cocktail down, an unholy mix that was part Klingon mead, part Romulan ale and part cranberry juice. The stuff of nightmares, honestly.

“I get drunk faster on synthehol,” Seven commented idly. “Don’t produce enough of the enzyme that breaks it down into smaller molecules. Hate the taste, though.”

“Yeah, because taste is clearly of capital importance to you,” Cris snorted again. “What’s in your glass right now? That’s toxic waste, that’s not a beverage.”

“Pssht,” she slurred. “First time I got drunk, it was after one flute of champagne. Forgive me for having learned to handle my drink.”

Raffi hazily smiled at her and got herself another drink, letting her head fall on Cris’ shoulder as she leaned against him for balance. She didn’t think she could sit up straight on her own anymore. Seven studied her intently, blinking in surprise when Cris showed no sign of discomfort and even shifted his posture so she’d be more comfortable. Noticing Seven’s stare, he gave her a wry look but made no complaint about his demotion to human pillow.

Seven was getting a bit intoxicated, so she watched them for a few more seconds and returned to her drink.

“You guys are cute,” she chuckled.

“Hmm,” Raffi mumbled in turn. “Cris is very sweet. Very very sweet. He’s the best.”

Rios was silently laughing, still nursing his aguardiente. “She gets sentimental,” he mouthed without making any actual sound, a smile in his normally dark eyes. Seven smiled too, because she was getting quite intoxicated. And also, they were very cute.

“Hey, how’d you two meet?”

The question had been on her mind for a while now, but aboard la Sirena, you didn’t ask about anyone’s past. They volunteered finite amounts of information, and you had to be content with that. But Cristóbal and Raffi had always felt like kindred spirits, despite knowing them for such a short time, far more than any of the others. Picard was an xB like her, sure, and he was also a damn idealist with a Messiah complex who understood very little about her. Soji had trouble with her humanity, yes, but she was also a kid and a synth, and she had siblings, and she was ultimately nothing like Seven. Agnes was tiny and mousy and probably no good in a fistfight, with just enough teeth to not get eaten, and eyes full of stars and a bleeding heart that hadn’t learned to put on a shell. Elnor was young and innocent and very dangerous, reminding her of the ‘Annika of old,’ someone long dead and buried.

But Raffi and Rios…

They were older, they were more jaded, they were disillusioned with a fleet, a Federation and a galaxy that had completely screwed them over – and they coped with it by helping, by drinking like idiots and smoking nasty stuff, and helping some more. They were both broken and aware of it, not like the shiny kids, and they never offered empty words of comfort or grand and hollow speeches about hope and love.

(And they were badass.)

(Like her.)

(Seven was getting very intoxicated.)

So she watched Raffi drunkenly lean on Rios and she asked, because while their friendship seemed self-evident, she wanted to know how they’d found each other. How it was that they each made the other a better person instead of dragging each other down. It tugged at her own soul, brought about some memories of Icheb, and Voyager, and of the Rangers before Bjayzl.

It made her smile.

Rios and Raffi exchanged puzzled glances. They were both too drunk to delve into her reasons for asking the question, and Raffi just pursed her lips, assuming that it came from finding their interactions cute.

“Don’t think I remember,” she told Seven blearily, still nestled against Cris. “It was a while ago. S- six? Seven? Six or seven years?”

“Eight,” Cris corrected. “I don’t really remember either. We must have met in a bar.”

Seven frowned, dimly disappointed. The feeling was too fuzzy to dwell on, but she still sniffed sadly.

“You don’t remember?” She asked mournfully. “I’d remember meeting my best friend.”

“We don’t,” Cris said, carefully shrugging the one shoulder that wasn’t supporting half of Raffi’s weight. “She hired me for a job or two, I think. Then we were mostly drinking buddies. It wasn’t spectacular or anything.”

“But something must have happened,” Seven pressed.

People didn’t just casually adopt each other. (Didn’t they? She wasn’t sure. She’d kind of casually adopted them, when she thought about it. Were giant galactic conspiracies, reclaimed broken Borg cubes and synthetic apocalypses casual? Seven was completely intoxicated.)

“Oh yeah,” Raffi mumbled. “Saved my life one time.”

“We were already friends though,” Cris elaborated, adding to Seven’s ever growing list of questions. “Got upgraded to honey and babe after that.”

“An’ you called me hermana,” Raffi sighed contently.

Seven looked back and forth between them.

“Okay, you have to tell me that story.”

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“Raf,” Cris complained as she ordered her eighth drink of the night, “slow down on the drinks. You said you wouldn’t need to spend the night on my ship.”

“Piss off,” Raffi grumbled. “Don’t need your stupid ship. Don’t need your stupid hovering.”

Cris, because he was wise, never argued with Raffi. He didn’t try this time either. Muttering Spanish profanities under his breath, he got up and paced a bit, before throwing a credit chip at the bartender.

“If she spends it all, the rest is on her,” he told the Andorian.

The guy gave a noncommittal grunt, and Cris made his way to the exit. He was two steps from the door when he head a crash, the sound of a glass being smashed to the ground. He whirled around out of instinct, his hand going for his phaser. His eyes widened as he realized where the sound had come from.

Raffi was staring down at a Nausicaan twice her size (how?), the guy who’d been sprawled on of one of the corner sofas with his buddies up until a few moments ago. She was snapping at him – about what, Cris didn’t know, didn’t care – and the man looked ready to turn her into Raffi juice.

Cris ran to them without a second’s hesitation, heart seizing painfully as frozen sludge trudged through his veins instead of blood. There were ice spikes in his throat too.

“Hey,” he yelled, getting the Nausicaan’s attention, but not Raf’s, “hey! What’s going on here?”

“Get lost,” the man growled.

“No no no,” Cris refused, words tumbling out without him even knowing whether he was speaking Standard or Spanish. “Not doing that.”

“She you friend?” The Nausicaan asked as two of his own buddies slowly got up and walked to them, ready for a fight.

Raffi finally registered that Cris had come back and blinked in surprise.

“Yeah,” Cris gritted out, looking straight into the man’s eyes. “Yeah, she’s my friend. What’s the problem?”

“She needs to learn some manners.”

“Old news,” Cris muttered under his breath, but his gaze hardened and his hand went for his phaser again. “It’s fine, we’re leaving.”

“No, you’re not,” the second Nausicaan snorted, and the third one crossed his arms and smiled with that messed-up mouth of his.

“Your friend here should apologize to ours,” he leered. “And considering how rude she was, it’d better be a nice apology.”

“I’m not kissing his freak face,” Raffi spluttered. “I already told him!”

Cris would have facepalmed, except there really wasn’t time. Grabbing Raffi by the arm, he threw her behind him and pointed his phaser at the first Nausicaan.

“It’s not on stun,” he warned.

The man snorted derisively.

“I don’t much care,” he said, tapping a finger to his thick skin and metal plated clothing. And then he cracked his knuckles. “If you want to leave, you’ll have to make me allow it.”

Cris considered the mountain of muscles, the two goons behind it and the drunk Raffi behind him.

“Yeah, fuck that,” he muttered.

Whipping around, he snatched Raffi, threw her bony frame on his shoulder despite her vehement protests, and dashed for the exit. The Nausicaans were slower to react, but Cris’ superior speed wasn’t much of an advantage in a crowded bar where nobody cared enough to pay attention to the fight or help in any way. They had almost caught up with his by the time he reached the entrance.

So naturally, Cris did the only reasonable thing he could think of. He tossed Raffi out of the bar – the bar that was shielded against transporters for security reasons, like most of the buildings in the planet’s capital city – and barked an order into his communicator for Ian. The holo had been online dealing with an issue in the antimatter ignition chamber. As luck would have it, he hadn’t powered off yet, and Cris was gratified to see Raffi dissolve away.

And then he was pulled back and forced to turned around, and he was met with three very angry Nausicaans and the naked blades of their sword-sized daggers.

“Mierda,” Cris sighed.

“Shouldn’t have done that,” one of the men growled, and Cris had no idea if he was the first, the second or the third Nausicaan, because they all looked so damn alike. “You’re toast.”

Two of them had his arm in a duranium grip, making any escape attempt impossible.

“I told you, she’s my friend,” he said with defiant glare. “Go ahead.”

He didn’t care. They could drag it out, make it painful, make it frightening, but at the end of the day death was just the one comfort he’d been desperately awaiting for over a year now. He wouldn’t dream anymore if they pummeled him to death, and that was quite a reward for saving the life of his only friend.

(Maybe she’s miss him though. He didn’t think so. He hoped not. Raffi was too messed up on her own to add him to it.)

(Would she care? Please, let her not care.)

(He’d cared.)

(He’d cared that he had P— that he had somebody’s death on his head.)

(Please let Raffi not care.)

(She would care.)

Mierda, I can’t die.

The first kick slammed the air out of his lungs, snapping two of his ribs like twigs under a standard issue boot. It felt like he’d blacked out, but he couldn’t have – he hadn’t seen any bloody bulkheads.

The second kick caught him in the stomach and made him retch.

The third kick never came, because the transporter beam got him first. It took just long enough spiriting him away for one of the Nausicaan to throw one of his daggers though, leaving a bloody slash across Cris’ shoulder.

Cris materialized on la Sirena’s transporter pad, hurt and very confused, and was greeted by Raffi’s panicked face.

“Cris!” She yelped, falling to her knees next to him. “Are you alright?”

He groaned and tried to sit up, but his ribs wouldn’t allow so much moving around.

“Activate EMH,” he sighed.

It really fucking hurt.

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“You didn’t say when you called her hermana,” Seven pointed out as Cris finished his slightly slurred tale. “Or when she called you honey.”

Raffi was half-asleep by that point, but she still somehow managed to retain enough coherence to mumble an answer. Cris heard it, and smiled at Seven.

“It was after. She was so upset over the whole thing that we both slept in her quarters. She got very fussy. Didn’t ever stop fussing after that.”

“And you called her hermana,” Seven insisted, because it was the best part.

“I was too tired to remember other words,” Cris said, sounding amused. “I think I was trying to say friend, or something like that. Y’know, to explain why I’d done it. But my Standard was all messed up.”

“You ever found out if she was the one who started the fight or if it was the horny Nausicaan?” Seven asked.

“Never,” he replied, finishing his last drink. “She couldn’t remember. I did bump into the same guy once after that. Used three phasers to stun his ass into a nice nap and dumped him at the local authorities’ doorstep for weapon trafficking.”

Seven smirked and raised her glass to that, the smirk turning into a fond look when Cris turned around to gather Raffi in his arms and gently lift her up her seat. As he carried her like that, Raffi’s head resting against his chest trustingly, Seven noticed how alike they looked.

“Space siblings,” she giggled.

(Seven was smashed.)

#my writing #birthday prompts #save tag #star trek: picard #star trek picard #cristobal rios #cris rios #raffi musiker #seven of nine

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hey-hamlet · 5 years ago

Text

BNHA AU Ideas: Child of Fate (Parts 1 and 2)

Also on AO3!

TL;DR:

Chosen by the Fates for his many monumental futures, Izuku is gifted a 'quirk' at the age of 5. The ability to see and influence the strings of fate.

He will become a Hero.

But fate does not smile upon a hero any more than it smiles upon a worm.

basically, the 3 fates from norse myths are still kicking

w all the crazy shit that's gone on since the rise of quirks, fates are constantly getting harder and harder to predict or manipulate so they are kinda out of a job

so they say "fuck it, lets throw our hat in the ring" and decide to pick a "champion" of sorts

out of everyone, there is one child that sticks out a lot. he's plain-looking, but every future he's in is incredible. he's not always a good person, but he always brings about change of some sort, for reasons he believes are good ones

and they look at this child with his shining fate and think "this one"

bc the fates know what it's like to be jerked around by the universe, they ask him

"this is a deal we've done before, but we'll give more to you. trade us an eye and our powers will be yours to wield as your quirk, all we ask is that you live up to your fate"

they do the deal, the 4-year-old izuku gives up the sight of one of his eyes for the power of the fates

the quirk is registered as "all the odds" aka: he can see the odds of a certain thing happening

but that's not his quirk. he can see the strings of fate, follow them to see the different future outcomes, or pull at them, making some options more likely than others

the only person he tells the full details of his quirk to is Katsuki, bc the fates tell him he literally always tells Katsuki in the end, and it'll "save a lot of trouble", not that he knows that

Katsuki is very excited to know he becomes a top hero, but he makes Izuku promise that he won't change his future bc he wants to make it there alone

also, the major downside of izukus quirk? he can't see his own fate

and the futures he sees are only as complete as the information he has

ie, he could witness kamino ward, but the future wouldn't show afo or mini might beyond a vague blob

anyway izuku gets teased for his lame quirk for a bit, then stops bc everyone who teases him gets weirdly bad luck

its the fates, they love their baby champion and he said no killing people

but people who are good to him get good luck, so he's got the nickname cat, for black cat and lucky cat!

anyway, episode one kinda happens normalishhh, but he doesn't ask if he can be a hero, because he's going to be a hero, he doesn't care what anyone says, he will be

but when he sees all mights strings of fact he gets a really weird look at them, because something unnatural is holding one of them above the others. so he asks "who tried to seal your fate?" bc he has no brain to mouth filter

and all might, understandably, is confused by this tiny boy asking him a very very weird question

he doesn't even get a chance to go tiny before izuku does dead pale, and whispers "shit" allmight poofs tiny, izuku looks at him, yells "I WONT SAY ANYTHING" and running jumps off the roof. all might coughs up a lung but the kid was 'lucky' and stuck the landing

basically, w the appearance of the sludge villain, the weird fate he saw for katsuki that morning suddenly made a whole lot more sense

the fates guide him to katsuki as fast as they can, he arrives there just before allmight

anyway izuku is calling out for katsuki and lays eyes on someone in the sludge, he doesnt see who it is, he doesnt see their fate. he sees that flash of a hand reaching out for help and he's already leapt over the barrier

he grabs a bit of rubble from the ground and throws it at the villain's eyes, nails him right in the fucking eye, gets katsuki half out. but the villain is baring down again and its all izuku can do to try to keep katsuki's mouth free

allmight saves them

anyway, when izuku is walking home all might pops out of fucking nowhere and gives izuku a heart attack

"I SAID I WONT TELL ANYONE PLEASE DONT HURT ME MR ALL MIGHT SIR"

"KID NO WAIT"

does the: you are so stupidly heroic, do you want to be a hero?, izuku says: i sure fucking do

“whats ur quirk”

"oh funny that its,,, its a little weird."

"oh?"

"i can,,,, see and influence the strings of fate"

"oH THATS WHY YOU SAID THAT WEIRD THING"

"wait yoU JUST THoUghT I wAs CRAZY?"

",,,,, people say weird things around me ok"

anyway all might basically says "ur crazy, your quirk is cool, take one for all."

and izuku says "OK YEAH"

all might asks a little how izuku was going to get into the hero course and he just pauses

"you know i was wondering about that but the fates told me id be fine." they both pause, staring at each other "wait,,, did they,,," "the fates totally knew huh"

anyway he eye glow when he use the fates quirk

all might sees izuku and he's like,,,, its baby nighteye

he honestly, for a hot minute, thinks nighteye might be izukus dad

bc like; green hair, gold eyes (well, eye), smart, analytic? thats nighteye baby

all might asks lowkey like "oh you don't talk much ab ur dad huh?" and izuku explains he doesn't know the guy. all might mentally tells off nighteye for having a child and ditching the mother

todoroki’s question literally is "are you all might and nighteye's illegitimate love child"

and izuku, who has no filter, blinks and responds with

"who said i was illegitimate"

anyway, back to the training

izuku who has been training to be a hero forever is pretty damn fit for a kid, but hes not one for all fit

anyway katsuki is like "izuku why are u following an old man around is he a pedo, and izuku wheezes like "NO OH MY GOD KASTUKI NO" and he explains like,,, a little of it

"like so i might have a strength quirk now too"

"izuku what the fuck why are you so op"

"im sorry katsuki im just better than you l m a o"

"COME HERE U LITTLE S H I T E"

so a brief overview of his quirk:

he gave an eye to use it so one of his eyes is just like,,, white. the whole thing is white. bc,,, its not really a quirk lmao,,,

anyway: he can view the future as much as he wants, it just takes some time, if he wants to take a quick look he doesn't need to stop paying attention, but its two slow and branching to be used like nighteye's in a fight (think like doctor strange in infinity war)

unlike nighteye, he has a third-person view of the events in question, and has,, some sounds? not many. mostly like breaking shit or oneliners he's heard before

changing the future, however, is more difficult by a long way

viewing the future has no real cost other than the fact he's not paying total attention at the time

changing the future, however, causes pain

nerve pain proportional to the change. little things, like flipping a coin heads? to make it more likely, its like a prick of the finger. to make it a 100% chance its like badly stubbing your toe. to change something big, like to move where a blow hits, feels like your arms have been plunged into burning oil. to change something massive, like, to stop something that was almost certain to happen, can cause enough pain to not only render him unconscious but can cause nerve damage leaving him with chronic pain/numbness/lack of function

the pain is normally in his arms bc its izuku and he break he arm

anyway! bc he was fitter and caught a glimpse of gran yelling at him about something called full cowl in the future + he cleaned the beach faster, he has like 2% full cowl for the entrance exam and had the quirk 2 months beforehand

katsuki avoids izuku for the day literally bc he doesn't want izuku to know if he passed before he did. which,,, is fair. he does explain this too so there isn't any random angst, izuku is just nervous

(oh also he can see the fate of someone he's looking at, he can change the fate of an event he's already seen to a different option he's already seen)

so we get the ochako bit, plus a bit of comedy bc katsuki is in a fucking beanie and sunglasses so izuku doesnt recognise him

he totally does but he doesn't say anything bc he's trying real hard

so izuku is kicking some ass in the exam and the bAMN 0 pointer like a fucking b a s t a r d hes like "what's the chances of this thing just like,,, breaking" and unfortunately they are v e r y low

so he is like "well i guess it's punchy time"

but before he gets there he sees a piece of rubble about to hit ochako. and he sees there isn't a small chance of it crushing her leg, so he changes the odds of that and gets a lovely few seconds of burning pain for his trouble

(he’s,,, pretty used to it by now so the boy has a scary pain tolerance)

bc he doesn't want to break his poor arms he jumps up the sides of the robot and tears out some wiring in the back and they start to fall

and he's like "oh shit the chance of my getting hurt is pretty high huh i should change that too" and ochako saves him with her quirk

and then he has a bit of a horrifying realisation while he's trying not to cry from pain

because

his quirk never changed the actions of other people before. ofa made it stronger

but, as he is now understanding, that hurts like a motherfucker, and his not-eye burns too and boy that's really unpleasant

this is another au where shinsou gets in on rescue points from saving katsukis ass + using him to save someone else

katsuki is a little salty but hes like "yeah tbh i really wouldn't have saved them alone, its fine" and then forces him to meet izuku bc hes still a total quirk nerd

izuku drags them + ochako out for ramen bc hes celebrating. shinsou is like "its a little early to celebrate getting in" and izuku just turns looking a lil confused "no im celebrating surviving the exam"

ok so, first day its wild

izuku's quirk is listed as "lucky punch" aka he can see odds and he's strong and no he doesn't know why stop looking at him like that

izuku and katsuki walked to school together bc they are baby and secretly nervous

izuku doesnt really look at katsuki's future all that often bc he doesn't like it, no real deal w izukus quirk he just wants to be successful by himself. so izuku, who can't look into his own future, has no idea how this day is going to go

they rock up to class, get inside and aizawa shows up, izuku has a brief heart attack, the quirk assessment starts. this time aizawa doesnt even have like a problem w izuku he's just trying to prove a point ab them being little baby heroes and sucking ass and izuku looked nice enough not to be mad about it for the rest of the year

so aizawa erases his quirk which, fair and izuku is confused and trying to use it

both of them

but

erasure didn't touch the fate quirk

so when he turns to look at aizawa he gets a face full of the USJ incident and he goes dead pale. aizawa is a touch confused but continues his whole thing, gives izuku his quirk back. he's still shaking. he throws the ball, it goes,,, less than it could have but far enough to be impressive

izuku stands next to katsuki shaking while they wait for the test to end. shinsou and uraraka are kinda distressed and all 3 of them are angry at aizawa even if they have no idea why. izuku bolts from the field right after and throws up in the bathrooms, followed by a quick panic attack. he was so freaked he was using ofa to get there so now uraraka, katsuki and shinsou are trying to find the boy

and aizawa is faintly confused

shinsou finds him first, shaking and sick in the bathroom. he grabs shinsou by the arm and says "staffroom, now." shinsou, who really doesn't know what's going on but is 100% shook, takes him there. he basically has to half carry izuku there bc he can't support himself

they get there and izuku knocks saying "i need to speak to yagi-san, now." and he sounds so scared and the whole office jumps bc why does a kid know allmights name, and all might jumps bc what happened to his boy

so he rushes out, grabs izuku and hurries him into a private office aizawa gives shinsou a look and shinsou just glares at him lmao bc its his fault izuku is like this. even though,, he's not really sure how

anyway, through sobs, izuku explains what he saw

and all might feels sick bc his boy didn't need to see all of that horrific violence, see his teachers torn to shreds and crushed to bits while the other students watch on helplessly

nezu doesn't know the extent of izukus quirk, mostly just because they didn't think ab telling him. they tell him now

aizawa is brought in to see smallmight trying to comfort his poor shaking student, who looks up and him and flinches and aizawa is like "ok guys the fuck did i do" nezu explains and then aizawa feels like a right dick to be honest, not that it was really anyone's fault

then the horrifying implications of "villains inside UA" sinks in and he's suddenly very on edge. now, izukus quirk isn't 100%. he had such a brief look at the vision he doesn't even know how likely it is. and while he offers to take a better look, its clear he really, really doesn't want to, so they all basically say

"right. so. we should probably be pretty careful tomorrow, huh?"

so when the usj attack starts, they have all might with his full 3 hours, mic, aizawa, and 13, w other heroes on standby, they hope, hope, that this wasn't very likely

but

they were wrong.

they were basically praying that the villains wouldn't make it into the usj

they've already altered the fate izuku saw by bringing allmight from the start, and present mic

but its not enough

the villains arrive and shigiraki is angry from the beginning, two unlisted teachers are waiting for them. shigiraki is childish but he's not stupid. he looks at the only child truly rattled, already protecting his friends, and he thinks he's found the cheater

they may not know the children's quirks, but present mic? 13? they know those quirks very well. mic is warped to the ruin zone, too unstable to freely use his quirk. kurogiri sends bakugo, kirishima and jirou after him

All Might is warped right to the nomu, kurogiri and shigiraki on standby for support. 13 has been taken out, aizawa is fighting through the villains to get to the nomu, to maybe offer some support to all might. he doesn't go after mic. he has to believe mic can handle himself or he'll break down where he stands.

izuku is warped to the shipwreck zone. alone. from a quick look at the future, the fates for anyone warped with him were grizly. he is confident in his choice to stop anyone from warping with him. he's ignoring the steadily climbing number of futures where he alone meets a terrible end

he's missing so much information on the villains every future he sees is hazy at best. all he knows is that if he doesn't get off this boat, aizawa gets hurt and that's not something he can abide

he busts the fuel tanks, letting the flammable liquid float across the water. he drops a match. in the chaos, he uses as much of ofa as he dares to jump to the shore. he steadfastly ignores the smell of burning meat.

he is one the opposite shoreline to canon, approaching the fight from the side, rather than the front. aizawa is hurt, battered from various villains, bleeding sluggishly from a headwound. he looks dazed

4 of shigiraki's fingers are wrapped around his neck

all might is at a standstill. if he strikes against the nomu, shigiraki will put his thumb down. he stands there and takes blow after blow, smile long gone from his face

izuku looks at the strings of Aizawa's fate. so many end here in so many ways.

he pushes his quirk into getting shigiraki away from his teacher. without direction, he's just baring against his quirk, begging it to give him a chance.

it does.

the bright flash of an explosive blonde draws the eyes of kurogiri and shigiraki. he uses the moment of distraction to launch towards his teacher, yanking him from shigiraki's hand. he loses a large chunk of skin for his trouble

all might defeats the nomu, but hes not looking good

bakugo, a limping mic, dazed aizawa, battered all might and bleeding izuku are the last stand, all praying the other students are ok.

iida did not escape

they have no backup coming.

shigiraki is fuming, but kurogiri can see the heroes are flagging. izuku is putting his all into his quirk, trying to give them all a lucky break

for the second time, it comes through

the rest of the students run towards them, joining them shoulder to shoulder. all of them are scared, some are hurt, but none of them are going to lay down and let shigiraki win. the villains escape

izuku falls

damages:

aizawa has a concussion + post-concussion syndrome. he has chronic migraines for the next year, and trouble with his long term memory for a few months

izuku is suffering from massive quirk overuse, his hands don't feel 'right' again for weeks

all might has lost only 20 minutes, but it's time he'd rather have

mic broke an ankle, but it's quickly fixed. Still, it aches from time to time

the other students had mild cuts/bruises and were left shaken

aizawa cries that night. a mix of the head injury, his hurt students, the look of fear he saw in their eyes. he holds mic and he sobs

izuku and his mother had a real relationship breakdown when she tore down his dream, even when izuku got a 'quirk' it never recovered. they don't talk. he doesn't tell her what happened. she doesn't find out.

izuku wanders the city the next day, unwilling to explain why he had no school today. he runs into mic who takes one look at this shaken student, outside and unprotected, and basically kidnaps the guy

izuku is forcibly dragged to the place mic/shinsou/aizawa share

when shinsou and aizawa find out izuku's mother basically just sent him off to school, not taking a day off work? they go full protective mode. shinsou wraps him up in the biggest blanket they own, grabs his own and forces izuku to play videogames with him on the couch. aizawa fumes in the kitchen over a cup of hot chocolate, mic fumes with him honestly

so, izukus kinda a mess, never tells his mother anything, etc, aizawa kidnapped him and he and shinsou played video games. izuku didn't go home that night, he just hopped on a train and rode it until it was time to go to UA

so when they get back everyone is just glad so see izuku alive tbh

so, sports festival! its a lot like canon

izuku doesn't use his fate quirk to change the future, but he does look at the possible futures and he sees that iida never makes it to the podium. he thinks for a second and makes a horrible realisation

the hero killer is in hosu

iida's brother is in hosu

iida’s brother is a hero

just before the event starts he finds aizawa and he's pale already

he gets out 'i need to see allmight' and aizawa gets a horrible feeling because last time this kid was worried they all almost died, so they run to find all might. seeing aizawa run around with a concerned look on his face? the stuff of nightmares at UA. everyone practically dives out of their way

izuku tells all might who swears a blue streak and pulls some strings to get extra heroes in hosu. izuku doesn't breathe a word to iida, because he just can't. not only does iida not know about the fate quirk, he can't scare him like that

bakugo knows something is wrong, but izuku won't breathe a word so he lets it lie

anyway, todoroki does his lil speech and izuku is honestly too burnt out to be intimidated, he sees his own death daily during just casual use of his quirk. boi ain't scared of much. bakugo gets pissy bc "FUCK YOU HALF AND HALF THAT'S MY RIVAL" and basically all of 1A is trying to claim izuku as their rival, either out of admiration or the desire to annoy bakugo

so izuku has to give the speech. which he's not happy ab because p e o p l e

and also because well,,, he's got no one at home to watch him

his speech basically goes along the lines of "we are here to fight fate. the odds are against us but we will win no matter what. not because it's easy, but because we have to. no matter what course we are in, we are all at this school fighting for a better future, for ourselves, our loved ones and the world. it doesn't matter if the odds aren't in your favour - the chance of any of us being here to see this moment is so small it may as well be impossible. its nothing to beat those odds again."

and everyone is like "owo how inspirational" but like anyone who knows him sees,,, layers

aizawa sees the bitterness about the USJ

all might sees izuku reducing his fight to be a hero as a quirk of fate, reducing his own involvement to 'it could have happened to anyone' when thats not true, because he is special

katsuki sees the bitterness that even though he had a good quirk, people tried to grind him into dust because he couldn't talk about it.

if inko was watching, she'd see how badly she betrayed her son

#bnha au #child of fate au #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #aizawa shouta #midoriya #bnha #All Might #Toshinori Yagi #aizawa #eraserhead #Izuku #bakugo #Iida Tenya

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siribear · 5 years ago

Text

dear claire,

she stares at the handwriting she’s become familiar with, with a particular scrutiny. his letter is much too soon. normally, they’d come after a few weeks. maybe a month, if his regiment was on the move. but she just sent off own letter the other day. no way he’s gotten it so soon. and yet.

i know this letter is early. no kidding. but i couldn’t wait for yours to arrive. you’ll have to forgive me for putting this in writing.

claire brushes a stray strand of hair behind her ear and forces herself to sit still in her chair. her roommate is already squirming in her own seat, waiting for her reaction.

if i know you, you’re waiting for me to get to the point. but first, tell rachel i said hello. she does, and her roommate’s smile only grows wider. so, whatever this is, she’s in on it. i’m coming home soon. within the month. but that’s not why i’m writing. claire only realizes she’s biting her nails when she begins to taste nail polish. claire, i want to start a family. with you. i know this is sudden. but i wanted to give you some time to consider. i’ll - and here the handwriting shifts. still his, but rougher. - understand if you say no.

i can’t wait to see you. i love you.

nathaniel ward.

she reads it. and reads it again. and once more, before she shoots up from her seat, letter still in her hand, eyes boring into the paper.

‘so?’ rachel asks, sing-song.

‘rachel, find my stationary, please,’ claire responds, eyes not leaving the letter. rachel bolts from her chair and runs into their room. she returns carrying a piece of paper and pen.

claire sits, turns back to their kitchen table. a family.

dear nate, she writes.

start thinking up names.

i love you.

claire (soon-to-be) ward.

‘that vault up there has quite the interesting history,’ deacon says, after they’ve had their breakfast in her kitchen.

whisper blinks at him from across the kitchen table. ‘and what’s that?’

he leans forward, elbows on the table like her mother hated. ‘never been opened. everyone knows about the other vaults in the commonwealth, but 111?’ he clicks his tongue. ‘nothing.’

she frowns. ‘you want to go vault diving?’

‘i would, but it’s locked up. no one’s ever been able to get in, either.’

she shrugs. ‘as long as monsters don’t come out of it, it doesn’t matter to me. wonder what’s down there, though.’ she avoids his gaze, looking down at her pipboy, pretending to double-triple check their next destination.

deacon chuckles. ‘yeah, i wonder.’

preston approaches them before they leave, giving deacon a casual nod. ‘if i could talk to the general for a moment, uh, dingo?’ whisper nods, and deacon strolls over to dogmeat to play fetch, pretending he’s not going to be listening to their conversation anyway.

‘is everything okay, preston?’ she asks with a hand on her hip. she knows she’s been gone longer than she’s been here, leaving preston in charge of sanctuary and the budding minutemen. but he’s built them up well. even a few of the newer faces are dressed uniformly, carrying their own laser muskets.

he tears his gaze away from dogmeat bowling into deacon. ‘more than fine, general. in fact, with the other settlements you’ve established, we’re having trouble communicating with them all. it’s a good problem to have,’ he assures her. ‘the only way we can get further word out right now is from carla; she’s the only caravan that’s come this far up north. otherwise, i’ve sent out one of our newer scouts, but it’s not ideal.’

‘so we need a way to communicate more easily. like - another radio station? broadcast updates on each settlement so we know if anyone needs help or extra supplies.’ she looks up at him and his bright eyes. ‘you have a plan.’

‘i do.’ he practically vibrates with an excitement she never saw in him, weeks ago. at least, not before she agreed to help him. he’s a far cry from when they first met. ‘the minutemen used to have another headquarters, far out east. before the war, it was called fort independence. but we knew it as the castle.’

she has a vague image in her head of fort independence. too much information crammed into her head in college now useless and discarded. that, and she and nate hardly traveled far from boston’s city limits. ‘used to. what happened to it?’

he grimaces. ‘they say a monster from the sea breached the walls. all anyone knows is, most of the minutemen leadership died.’ he drops his gaze, voice going thoughtful. ‘i think that’s where all of our problems began.’

‘a... sea monster?’

‘uh, yes. but i think if we retake the castle and reestablish radio freedom, we stand a better chance of keeping our allies, and the greater commonwealth, safe.’

she blinks. ‘a sea monster,’ she repeats. ‘okay. that sounds reasonable - ’

he steps closer. ‘should i have a group meet us outside the castle?’

‘ - but i think we’ll have to table it, for now.’ she watches his enthusiasm fade. ‘preston, it’s a great idea, don’t get me wrong. but if there is some... giant sea monster, it doesn’t do the minutemen any good if both of us die taking back the place. train up a few more people. i’m going to clear out sunshine tidings co-op, make a few more... stops.’ she chances a gaze at deacon, sitting on the side of the road rubbing dogmeat’s belly. ‘and we’ll come back to this, okay?’

he salutes her. ‘yes, ma’am.’

whisper frowns. ‘hey.’ she gently lowers his hand from the salute. ‘i’m sorry i haven’t been around. but you and the others are doing a wonderful job here. we’ll take the castle, i just have a few loose ends to tie up before i throw myself at a sea monster.’

preston squeezes her hand. ‘yes, ma’am,’ he says again, softer.

she withdraws, slowly. ‘i should go get de-dingo. he gets restless.’ she turns to see deacon tying what looks like a third bandanna around dogmeat’s neck, to complement the small pair of welder’s goggles upon his head. preston keeps his eyes on her. ‘i’ll try to be back soon.’

he steps away. ‘stay safe, general.’

‘what do you know about the castle?’ whisper asks deacon along the way to the co-op.

‘a lot of your people - minutemen,’ he clarifies, ‘died there. it’s a mirelurk nesting ground now.’

she hums. ‘those would be the sea monsters preston mentioned, then.’ she rubs at her eyes. ‘great.’

they cross a bridge over to the co-op, weaving around abandoned cars. he helps her over a barricade as the first set of buildings looms over the hill. a short gravel path leads them up a hill into the co-op proper. wind blows heavily through the co-op, kicking up dirt from the expansive planting grounds that surround a large barn.

the puttering sound of an approaching mister handy prompts them to draw their weapons. the robot stops in front of them, seems to look them over, then, in a rough voice, says, ‘groovy,’ long, drawn-out, and airy, and floats away.

whisper lowers her gun. ‘deacon, what just happened?’

‘you take me to the best places, partner,’ he says, grinning.

in the barn, she accesses the logs on a dusty computer. ‘oh wow,’ she whispers. then laughs. ‘this was a hippie commune, pre-war. they... stole and reprogrammed a mister handy. they, uh, named him professor goodfeels. i guess that’s where the graffiti comes from.’ she waves a hand toward the wall and the painted free the robots on a piece of plywood. she turns to deacon. ‘origins of the railroad?’

she imagines he rolls his eyes at her. ‘funny. this place is... mostly quiet. wonder why no one’s picked this place back up since.’

‘you’re the intel guy.’ she pulls herself away from the terminal. ‘shall we see why?’

they see why. beginning at the first house, they explore counter-clockwise around the co-op, clearing out the feral ghouls sleeping in the buildings. in a far building, up another hill, they find the first body that isn’t a skeleton. someone else apparently had the same idea as the minutemen, but didn’t survive the ferals. the mess hall completes their circle in addition to housing another group of ferals, easily sniped through the broken windows. radio beacon up, whisper returns to the terminal.

‘what to do with the professor?’ there’s a few options listed on the terminal: return for repairs, guard protocols, and... just be.

‘i say leave him. if anything, he’s good for a laugh.’ on cue, professor goodfeels floats by with a slurred whoa man.

whisper sighs. ‘people are going to think we’re crazy.’

‘maybe that’s my plan. discredit the minutemen with beatnik mister handys.’

deacon suggests they head back to hq to see if there’s anything else that needs doing. now that the railroad has another heavy, it’s only fair they take on another job so glory can have a day off. besides, she can check in at goodneighbor along the way, see if hancock has found anything on kellogg. they head west across the commonwealth, traveling north of boston and weaving south of lexington. deacon draws her into the shadows near the corvega factory, and they pass by without incident.

that is, until the sound of gunfire brings them to the outskirts of the town. curious, whisper grabs deacon by the wrist and pulls him against the side of a building. ‘sure you want to do this?’ he asks over her shoulder. ‘looks like gunners got someone pinned down there.’

she peeks around the corner. ‘close to bunker hill, aren’t they? maybe it’s a caravan in danger.’

‘not the gunner MO, partner. behind that car.’ he points, and she sees it, a head poking out behind a rusted bumper.

whisper squints. ‘hang on. that’s - that’s maccready.’

‘the merc that hangs around goodneighbor? what’d he do to the gunners?’

‘doesn’t matter.’ she crouches, edges around the building to get closer to the gunners. a bullet whizzes past her, flying off down the road. too close. ‘deacon.’

she feels, doesn’t see, deacon’s rifle lower next to her. ‘one on the right is mine.’

whisper aims deliverer at the left gunner. near the hip, just below the plating of his combat armor. the gunners don’t notice them, too busy aiming at maccready. she counts down from three. in sync, they fire. deacon’s gunner goes down in a shower of red, head missing. hers shouts, drops his gun, and grabs at the hole in his hip. the third gunner only has a chance to look at his comrade before deacon finishes him off. her gunner falls to his knees. she finishes him off with one more quick shot.

‘you good?’ she nods, rising. he puts a hand on her shoulder, stilling her. ‘don’t be so quick to rise above cover, there. never know if there are more. or a sniper.’

she remains in her crouch, at that, his hand still on her shoulder. one moment passes. another. then, ‘boss? did i hit you?’ maccready yells, his voice growing closer. deacon releases her then, using the same hand to help her up.

‘i’m okay, maccready.’ she gestures at the dead gunners behind him. ‘this have anything to do with those two at the third rail?’

‘winlock and barnes? yeah, guess someone saw me picking around the commonwealth.’ he sighs. ‘gunners don’t like it when their people leave and start taking jobs away from them.’

‘huh,’ she says. ‘so they’re going to hound you until... what? they bring you back in?’

maccready laughs, bitter. ‘i doubt that. they’ll kill me and be done with it. i hoped to buy them out before that. get them off my back.’

‘good luck with that,’ deacon pipes up.

‘what can i do?’ she asks him.

his eyes widen in surprise. ‘what?’

‘i’m offering to help you, maccready. you already have most of my caps, though. what else can we do?’

‘i know where they’re stationed,’ he says quickly, as if she’s going to take it back. he looks between her and deacon. ‘mass pike interchange. there’s a lift up to the interchange, that’s where they’re stationed.’

‘what kind of resistance are we looking at, maccready?’ deacon eyes him.

maccready winces. ‘a dozen or more gunners, plus defensive turrets. barnes usually wears a suit of power armor.’ he pauses. ‘and an assaultron.’

‘jesus,’ deacon curses under his breath. ‘you really want to do this?’

whisper shrugs. ‘he’s in danger unless we do. i’m sorry, i know you said - ’

‘glory hates days off anyway,’ he finishes. ‘any plans?’

‘we’re three snipers,’ she says. ‘and maccready knows the layout. we hit them before they can hit us.’

#siri drabbles #oc: alice ward #series: we will all go together when we go #hey maccready is back

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steve0discusses · 5 years ago

Text

Yugioh S4 Ep6: Gozaburo Kaiba Just Casually Started WWIII And Only This One Guy Cares

Welcome to November, where we celebrate writing a 50,000 word book as if I don’t do that every single time I write about an episode of Yugioh. Hello, this is my season. It’s wordy season. I’m so freakin good at doing this. I can’t say most of what I’ve made is any good, but I CAN say at least I’m prolific. Do enough content to fill that bitter pit and walk right over it, that’s been my motto for the past 5 years.

Anyway, I had an awful flu this past week. (Everyone I live with had it so every bathroom was like ground zero) It was SO bad. I still can’t eat spicy food over a week later (Which is so hard for me because usually I can keep up with my Indian friends, that’s my spicy level--max spicy, please--but since this illness, my white taste genes went into overdrive and I tried putting pepperoncini slices in my sandwich and it set my mouth on fire. Pepperoncini. It’s v embarrassing.)

I did attempt to write this post. Unfortunately I never made it past this cap because I got VERY distracted by the emblem on Alister’s face, and how it isn’t proportionally adjusted to match the angle of his face, and it was like three paragraphs of just wanting to talk about it. And then at some point I got very distracted talking about how many empty glasses I was given at my place setting at this baby shower I went to during the flu epidemic, and it mattered a whole lot to me at the time, but I think, overall, was mostly just some sort of nonsense. The things I’ve spared you.

(bro has just informed me that the 4 gold-lipped crystal goblets I was given at this baby shower was actually very distressing and a very big deal and that I should absolutely talk to at least someone about it, but maybe he’s just saying that to make me feel better, but I have no idea. I am too sick for sarcasm at this time but my god why was I given so many glasses????)

I straight up have no memory of if I’ve made this joke before. Maybe.

(read more under the cut)

Since it feels like 8 years since the last time I could just eat chicken without feeling like I consumed an entire Thanksgiving meal, a little recap:

-Alister pretended he was Pegasus to lure Kaiba and then, off screen, murdered everyone in Pegasus’ castle

-Pegasus got murdered by I’m pretty sure Mai (which is like...OK then...)

-Yugi and Co went on vacation by driving directly through San Francisco and peeking out the window and saying “yeah that’s enough for me”

-No adults, not even Roland, bothered to come with their kids this time, so the only adult of the entire crew--Pegasus--is dead

-Rex and Weevil are luggage

-The Eye of Sauron showed up and it was the end of the world but Yugi threw a dragon at it so I guess everything is OK now

-Monsters are real but they are hard to animate so we’ll just pretend like they’re causing havoc everywhere although most of the planet seems basically unaffected by this.

-The Grim Reaper is a friendly monster that hangs out in a Japanese park and that feels fairly on brand.

And I think that was all that was happening so far.

In a weird twist of fate, Mokuba is the only one in this room that isn’t trapped which sort of...if you’re the only one NOT kidnapped wouldn’t that also be a type of being kidnapped?

And we finally get to figure out why Alister wants to Murder Kaiba so bad and, spoiler, it reaches.

???

I’m gonna get more to the obvious problems with Alister’s devotion to murdering all the Kaibas in a bit but yes, Alister is in fact going to try and Kill Kaiba on this kid’s show because of Kaiba’s Dad, who is such a horrible and abusive person that Kaiba essentially drove the bastard out of Japan and straight to the bottom of the ocean.

Just kinda feels like Alister has been living under a rock...which, I guess he has been. He has been living in some weird Atlantis structure so I guess he never got the memo that Gozaburo Kaiba is hella dead.

So that’s what they’re up to. How’s Sausalito?

Um.

Huh.

So the North Bay is a really classic scenery. It’s rolling hills. It’s NAPA. It’s like...definitely not Arizona. California has a couple of mesas but they’re no where near here and the Monument Valley style Mesas really only exist in Monument Valley.

And I know it’s because the background artist for Yugioh is all horny for horny rock structures but like...this couldn’t be farther from the Bay Area in the way that it is drawn and it is such a shock after all the work they did last episode to research that Bay Area lore. Once they crossed the Golden Gate they were like “well no one will care about this part” which is true not only of Yugioh but also of real life Californian politics.

Anyway, I have been making a map, but unfortunately my original file will not suffice. time to fix it.

There we go. Now they’re in the right place. Just smack dab in Monument Valley, Arizona, smack dab in the middle of the Navajo Nation and so hypothetically, not even in the United States anymore.

While in the car, Yugi has just been anxious as hell the entire time, and just going “y’all I have a bad feeling I’m uncomfortable I have a bad feeling” while Joey and Tea just patiently stared at him flipping out in the corner. So...kinda like a normal trip with someone who has high anxiety/possessed by a ghost. I kinda feel like this is every girls trip to Disneyland for me. There’s always one Yugi who’s like “no one said anything about CROWDS.” and you kinda just gotta let them do their thing. Just let them get it out of their system and hide in the bathroom when they need to hide in the bathroom and don’t fight it, they’ll be fine. Just hold their spot in line when they desperately look for a secret place to medicinally vape because there’s too many freakin children at Disneyland.

And it is HILARIOUS that Yugi is able to have this type of premonition but cannot figure out that they have somehow missed San Fransisco and have wandered into a DESERT.

Back in Pegasus’ California (an island that legitimately looks more like California than actual Yugioh California) Alister has decided to go completely off the rails and it happens so fast and without any warning.

the line is actually “This doll used to be my brother’s” which is a very different meaning but both are likely from weird ass Alister and this weird ass show, so I’ll leave the cap like this (although yes, this is what I thought Alister was saying for kind of a while until I recorded it for this blog and was like “oh shoot I heard the line wrong when I had the flu huh.”)

Man, RIP Noah, he would have been excellent this episode.

Honestly seems like just yesterday when Seto and Noah were pitted against eachother by a cyberdemon Dad-head floating in the sky, Mokuba was possessed for some reason and being used as a human shield, Tristan was a robot monkey, and Yugi was just shrugging at Kaiba from across the field like “Kaiba if you don’t play good you die--oh my gods, he died. Well that was bound to happen...again.” Man.

Alister should be their best friend, this is nonsense.

So lets do the math to 7 years before 2002.

I searched Wikipedia for wars during 1995 (they do have a list of 90′s wars) and looked for any that involved heavy use of tanks and their artillery fire (on big swatches of cities like this), inner city western architecture, temperate landscapes, and western clothing that match Alister and Mikey (AKA WWII vibes) and found out:

Nothing fits that description

UNLESS Alister and Mikey are time travelers from a WWII bombing in Europe. This is Yugioh. That could happen. Probably not, but youknow...it’s not too late for Yugioh to bring in time travel.

I mean if you don’t want to get super political in your cartoon just invent a world war I guess? We’ve already clarified that Gozaburo was Big Boss, so at this point I can easily see him inventing wars just to sell ships.

(I could probably add thousands of more deaths at this point but I have no idea where they are, if they’re on a tiny island or an entire country so I’ll just...leave the count alone but just now it’s implied that a hell ton of people died during this episode)

People going off about how Sesame Street is so amazing for talking about issues like you’re Dad going to prison while Yugioh was straight up talking about the intricacy of the War Economy. Yugioh being all “don’t forget kids, your good capitalist economy survives off of the undeserved bloodshed of civilians in other countries! Eat the poor!” and it’s like hot damn this heavy commentary came out of freakin no where.

Anyways, this is stuff most kid’s shows will delicately skip over but nah, Yugioh is going to go here, and they are going to steamroll directly through it with massive tanks.

So, lets kill this kid’s entire family and talk about the terrors of the World War of 1995 and all the war orphans who get recruited to become soldiers at the ripe old age of 9. Alister was 9 when he was recruited to be a child card soldier.

This kid’s show.

Alister is...basically Raiden, right? Like as long as we’re talking about Metal Gear, this kid is just one step away from cyborg implants and weird colored blood?

Better wear bright red when you visit the war crime scene, surprised Gozaburo didn’t invite like an entire photo -op crew to incriminate him even further.

Now we did look up “where the hell is Alister from Yugioh from?” (there is no answer) and we did find out a little factoid. In the Japanese version of the show, Gozaburo had bought the land and was just forcibly evicting Alister and his family from their home with tanks.

Which is wild.

He just straight up evicted an entire metropolitan city????

Like the dub did a way better job than the sub at this one, I’ll give them that.

It’s just so weird that Gozoboro just didn’t like...raise the rent like a normal bad landlord. Instead he was like “rather than gentrify my land and save me a ton of money, I’ll just destroy everything I just bought and murder everyone here” which is like...

...Seto did the world so many favors when he kicked out his Dad, right? Like Damn. I don't understand why Alister isn’t freakin worshiping Seto right now when his whole deal is “I must kill Gozaburo” and Seto’s like “yo I already did that. Twice. I didn’t even have to literally kill him either, I just embarrassed him so bad that he killed himself. His stupid tank company sells joke games now. I literally turned the man into a joke.”

Then again, Alister is on the green magic and like I think it alters your brain chemistry somewhat.

(How ripped did Alister get in this episode, by the way? The kid is like 16 years old or something so how did this happen? ...The perpetual horny line running straight through Yugioh, man. Look at it run. That 16 year old is drawn like he’s 28 and really into Crossfit and his crop top gets smaller and smaller like every scene.)

So like this is a very gray issue that I cannot believe they brought up in a kid’s show (like can you imagine if Scrooge McDuck had to face facts that his company murdered tons of people???), but also this is Seto Kaiba. Seto grew up in the system, so like he doesn’t need to be lectured to about dirty money because he was on the losing end of that not too long ago. Seto is himself basically a upscale war orphan since he was adopted by Gozaburo to continue the machine like a freakin maniac (a Solidus Snake, if you will) so of all the people on this show I don’t get why Seto would care about this. This is just how Seto views the entire world as either losing or winning and no reason to feel bad about it because he’s been both.

Also...Seto stopped the machine. Kind of. He was unaware that cards were the same thing as weapons, but at least he stopped the sale of huge child-stealing tanks.

So they play the game for a little while and Seto does kind of poorly as usual, and just when I thought this episode couldn’t get any weirder...

And just like that, Seto peaces out. Like he does almost every single time he has ever played a card game solo except for that one time he was playing Joey Wheeler. (Which was also one of the few times Seto ever won.)

Like I just want to remind you that this segment is in the same episode as WWIII and the tonal whiplash is pretty remarkable.

That’s right, we’re back in the Unnamed Monster World, which is not the Shadow Realm, and which I thought you could only access if you were dreaming and able to search through the puzzle maze.

Apparently this can just happen at any time and all that stuff with the guiding Kuriboh and Yugi and Pharaoh trying to find this place was just...them wasting time.

Again he ditches the legendary sword so freakin fast because who needs a sword when you have a dragon? Only this anime.

And that’s how Seto, who was absolutely going to lose this game, somehow just barely came to a draw.

So just to recap, Seto has yet to win a card game that he didn’t get prophetic help for via a hallucination or Yugi telling him what to do. Unless you count Joey and grandpa.

Then, the one last adult I forgot about, the driver of Yugi’s car, decides that it’s about time that he also died and left this show as adult free as possible.

THE HELL ARE THEY?

Also...maybe it’s the angle but the writing on that gas station looks a lot like kanji.

Yo, what if this is the backgrounds for a different show and they’re just sharing? I mean I doubt it because Yugioh had a good enough budget but...what if? What if that’s why they’re in Arizona?

Anyway, next time we’ll find out if this guy just drops dead or has been a Yugioh monster this whole time, and I think maybe both?

And if you just got here, this is a link to read all my Yugioh recaps in chrono order

#yugioh #ygo #photo recap #episode recap #yugi muto #seto kaiba #mokuba #alister #joey wheeler #tea gardner #tristan taylor #Arizona

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emma-nation · 6 years ago

Text

Thinking Of You (Mona x MC Fanfiction) - Chapter 2

You said move on Where do I go? I guess second best Is all I will know

Summary: Years later, Allison has everything she wants, a brand-new internship as a doctor, a handsome boyfriend… but her first nightshift won’t go as expected…

Genre: Romance, Angst

Tag list: @zoe6111, @simsvetements, @mvrinettes, @whoinvitedalx, @scarlet-letter-a0114, @abunchofbadchoices, @kamilahmademedoit, @janurary, @talkinlikeateen, @eagle-one-1, @andreear17, @tia-bi, @monagf, @monahott (let me know if you want to be tagged!)

Notes:

- English is my second language, please forgive me for any mistakes.

- It’s my first time writing this pairing so, I hope you like it :)

“It’s like a long drive… You just… keep your foot on the gas. For hundreds of miles, this country looks like the same thing. Nothing changes… But if you just… keep your foot on the gas… eventually, you’ll find yourself a thousand miles away… somewhere better than you’ve ever been. And you barely remember where you came from.”

Allison spent the entire night thinking. Part of her wanted to give up, go to Dr. Carlson’s office and ask him to get her out of Mona’s case. But the other part, that same part that enjoyed the adrenaline of being part of Mercy Park Crew, eight years ago, wanted to stay and see where that new wild road would take her…

Before leaving bed to get ready for work, her phone started buzzing. It was Griffin. He was unexpectedly assigned for a special charity work in Africa and wanted to see her for dinner, before his departure.

“It’s better this way,” Allison thought. “So he won’t notice the mess inside my head.”

After getting dressed, she headed downstairs. Her breakfast, as usual, was waiting for her. Dad though, was caught in a what seemed an important phone call.

“Another one?!” He asked. “I’ll be in the office as soon as possible. They’re definitely related…”

He hung up.

“Morning, dad. Working already?”

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he joined her at the table. “No, it’s just a new case… These college kids, losing their minds over… nevermind, let’s talk about your job. How is it been going?”

“Different from what I expected,” she took a sip of her coffee, trying to hide her discomfort.

“In a good or a bad way?”

“Hmmm… both.”

She told him about a few of the cases she had seen and other interns she met. As dad seemed happy and relaxed, she found a perfect opportunity to get into the subject she intended to.

“Yeah, I can’t believe I almost threw it all away for… Speaking of which, have you heard anything about them? MPC, I mean.”

Her question almost made her father choke with his coffee. His expression quickly changed.

“Why are you asking? I hope none of them contacted you, now you’re back in LA.”

“N-No,” Allison tried to calm him. “I was just wondering.”

“Good, because if any of them try to mess with your head again, I’ll make sure they’ll never leave jail in this lifetime.”

The mood between them became tense. Allison decided to leave earlier for work, but before, she grabbed something in her bedroom.

———-

Empty. Mona’s room was empty. A hint of disappointment appeared in Allison’s face. She had probably ran away like she always did, for multiple reasons, including the fact she was assigned as her doctor.

“This is it. She has completely moved on and maybe I should too.”

“Looking for me, Doc?” A known voice behind her made her freeze in place.

“Mona,” she turned around to face her. She was returning from a vending machine, bringing some candy. “Hey, you're not supposed to have any of these!”

Mona shrugged, sitting on the edge of the bed and opening a chocolate bar.

“Whatever, my body will be getting rid of it real soon,” her expression darkened.

“This is why you must go through this surgery as soon as possible. I spoke to my supervisor and the rest of the team, we’ve scheduled it for this evening.”

For the next minutes Allison explained her the procedure, the treatment and the post-op.

“What about the risks?” Mona wanted to know.

“The risks are minor. They’re definitely higher if you don’t treat it immediately. This lesion could become worse, compromising your liver functions and leading to hepatic failure.”

When she finished, Mona let out a little laugh.

“What’s funny?”

“Nothing, just seeing you talking in all these medical terms and acting professional. It’s kinda hot.”

Allison felt her cheeks burning.

“Mona!”

“Oh, I forgot about Mr. Diamond there,” she pointed to her engagement ring.

“It’s not…” Allison sighed. “There’s a thing called doctor-patient protocol.”

“I don’t usually follow protocols. Otherwise…” she pointed to the gunshot wound in her abdomen, “I wouldn’t be here, right after earning my freedom.”

“So, you’ve just left prison,” Allison sat on the armchair next to her bed.

“It has been two weeks. Going through a surgery is the last thing I expected to do. It’d be so unfair if I died now.”

“D-Don’t say that, okay? The risks are minor! It’s not a complex surgery.”

“Relax,” Mona grinned again. “I was only toying with you, Doc. I still intend to be around for a while. Especially now…”

She said the last two words staring directly into her eyes, what made Allison’s stomach flip. After a quiet moment, she broke the silence, wondering if she was about to do the right thing.

“I brought you something… to bring good luck,” from her pocket, she handed Mona the fuzzy dice she gave her, years ago. She looked surprised.

“You still have it.”

Allison nodded.

“You weren’t able to forget this face at all, were you?”

“How could…” her pager beeping interrupted what she was about to say. “I’m sorry, I must check another patient now. If I don’t see you again before your surgery, I just wanted you to know I wish you good luck.”

“Thank you, Allison,” Mona smiled. That smile Allison knew very well. “Anyways, in either case, I win. If I die, the last thing I’ve seen is your pretty face so…”

Allison let out a nervous laugh and shook her head. Before she left, Mona called her again, swaying the dice playfully between her fingers.

“Hey Doc, I’ve got a 6-6, it seems like I’m going to live after all.”

“I’m definitely hoping so.”

———-

"Allison?” Griffin’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts. “Is everything alright? You’ve barely touched your food.”

“Y-Yeah, I’m just…” Allison sighed. “My very first patient is having a surgery right now and I’m quite worried.”

He touched her hand in a comforting, reassuring manner.

“Hey, it’s like my father always says, you cannot allow yourself to get so attached. The less attached you get, sooner these feelings will go away.”

“I know, but I just can’t treat it like it’s nothing. It’s a life and it matters to me.”

“It’s only because it’s your first case. You’ll get used with time.”

“Or maybe I’m in the wrong career,” Allison thought, nervously checking her pager again.

They entered Griffin’s car, but instead of driving her home, he was driving somewhere else.

“Where are we going?”

“I prepared you a surprise. Maybe it can help you to relax a little.”

When he parked at the entrance of The Palmer hotel, she knew it not only wouldn’t relax her, but it’d make her more tense. That place brought her a lot of memories…

“You really want me, don’t you? I can tell.”

“Did you like it?” Griffin asked as he opened the door of the most luxurious suite. “We still haven’t had a chance of properly celebrating our engagement.”

From behind, he moved her hair aside, exposing her neck and planting soft kisses on her skin. It made her shiver, not like before, but in an uncomfortable manner. Just like when they started dating and she was still getting used to the idea he was her only and best option at the moment. When she was forcing herself to develop an affection for him, trying to sink what was left of those feelings Mona once called ’an illusion’, ’a blanket’.

“I wish you had consulted me first about this,” she took a step away from him.

“Come on, baby. You always liked surprises.”

She sat down at the bed, looking at her pager again. No news were a sign of good news. In case anything had gone wrong, her presence would be requested. Griffin approached, kissing her cheek as his hand caressed her tight.

“Look, Griff,” Allison took a deep breath. “I know you had planned a special night for us and that you’ll be out of the country for weeks, but… I’m not really in the mood. This is really consuming me right now. I’m so sorry.”

“Okay,” she noticed he had a little bit of frustration in his voice. “So let’s talk about this patient, if it’s going to make you feel better.”

“Uh, it’s a… woman. She has a lesion on her liver, from a previous gunshot wound that wasn’t properly treated.”

Griffin’s eyes widened a little in surprise.

“Wait, is it the ex-con my father was talking about? Her presence is causing a huge buzz at the hospital, the nurses keep gossiping she used to be part of a gang and she’s extremely dangerous. I can’t believe he assigned you to this case!”

“And I can’t honestly believe what I’m hearing…” she got up, headed to the window. “Extremely dangerous,” she shook her head in denial.

“Promise me you’ll be careful, just in case. If you want I can talk to my father, tell him you didn’t know…”

“Yes, I did know and it doesn’t change anything! About the ‘extremely dangerous’ part, it depends on how you see it. My father is a detective and I’ve seen people that are truly evil and never went to jail!”

She grabbed her purse and headed to the door.

“Allison, come on,” Griffin held her arm, trying to stop her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound nasty or anything, but that chick has a bad reputation.”

Allison opened her mouth in shock. She never expected that behavior from such a kind-hearted person as her fiancée.

“I couldn’t care less about her reputation, I care about her life. I’m going back to the hospital.”

“Stay here with me,” he embraced her. “Only for a few minutes. We can cuddle and talk about our future, like old times.”

“Our future. Of course.”

Resting her head on Griffin’s chest, while he spoke about his mission in Africa and the plans for their engagement party when he returned, Allison thought about her own future. Her apartment, her insecurities about her career and… Mona.

She remembered how Langston and being a doctor became her dream after her mother passed away. She wanted to go to the same University as her mom and make a difference saving lives. Unlike hers, that couldn’t be saved.

But… would her dreams have been the same, if her mom had survived that car crash?

———-

Wiping some tears from her face, she left the hospital’s chapel, where she said a prayer for Mona’s life and asked for guidance. She had just sat at the waiting room when a surgeon came to meet her.

“Dr. Wheeler?” He said. “Everything went as expected. The patient is recovering in her room.”

“Are you sure?” She wanted to know. “Because when she was shot, after the bullet was removed, she had internal bleeding in the middle of the night and nearly died. She spent two weeks in coma.”

“We’ll ask a nurse to monitor her closer.”

“I can do it myself.”

She didn’t want to go home anyways. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. After drinking a massive cup of coffee, she walked to Mona’s room. Though she was unconscious, her vitals were good and strong. Allison approached the bed, squeezing her hand softly. Noticing several new scars on her skin, she wondered what she had gone through during all those years.

She sat down at the armchair near the bed, monitoring her breathing and how she slowly started moving her hands and legs. Tired, she eventually drifted off.

Hours later, she woke up in a hurry, scared by the beeping sound of a monitor.

“Relax, gorgeous. It was the guy next door, it seems like things went bad for him.”

Hearing Mona’s drowsy and weak voice made her heartbeats return to normal. She took a deep breath, recomposing herself.

“Please, tell me you didn’t stay here all night.”

“N-No,” Allison lied. “I arrived earlier, to check another patient. I sat down here and fell asleep.”

“In my room?” Mona raised an eyebrow.

“Fine… I was worried, okay?” Allison finally admitted, as it was obvious Mona woke up before she did. “I was reading your chart, about your previous surgery and I was afraid to leave you unsupervised.”

“VIP treatment? I like it.”

Allison stood up and started to examine her and ask questions.

“How are you feeling?”

“Still high on meds, so I’m feeling nothing. I was having some nice dreams though,” she grinned broadly. “I was still a goody two-shoes teenager in Bronx, I got a crappy job on a fast-food restaurant to help my mom… my grades dropped, yet, I was such a nerd they granted me a full scholarship in Langston and then… I met you.”

Allison quite didn’t know what to say.

“It’s… uh, an interesting dream.”

“Do you wonder sometimes? How it could’ve been… if you had chosen a different path?”

“Sometimes,” Allison answered. “Right now, for example, I’m wondering if I picked the right career. I don’t feel I’m gonna be a good doctor.”

“You’ve just saved me.”

“No, I only diagnosed you. The surgeons did the rest, and you. You survived.”

They both laughed. Then Mona touched her hand.

“Man, instead of taking you to that stupid prom, I should have ran away with you.”

Their eyes locked for a moment. Allison didn’t pull away for a few seconds, enjoying the contact of Mona’s touch. Then, she sighed and cleared her throat.

“Doctor-patient protocol, remember?”

“Yeah… forget what I’ve just said, I’m high on meds anyways.”

She yawned, before closing her eyes and going back to sleep.

———-

The following days passed quickly, while Allison was busy most of the time, she’d often sneak into Mona’s room. She was showing good signs of recovery, being her usual self, complaining about the nurses and the hospital food. That morning, Allison received the news she was ready to be discharged.

“Morning, I’m bringing you the news you’ve been waiting for.”

“Am I finally be able to eat anything I want?”

“Uhhh no, but… your latest exams came just fine and you can go home, with some restrictions.”

“What kind of them?”

“You’ll need a lot of resting, no physical effort for a couple of months and you’ll need a special diet for a while. It’s all here in this paper.”

Mona read the instructions carefully before bursting into laughs.

“Yeah, I’m sure they’ll provide all of this in the streets and the shelter I sleep at night.”

#playchoices #choices stories you play #ride or die #mona #mona x mc #mona rod #ride or die fanfiction

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makeste · 6 years ago

Text

BnHA Chapter 007: Costumes and Comforting White Rice

Previously on BnHA: Aizawa had everyone do fitness tests. Turns out superpowered children are very talented. Deku broke his finger.

Today on BnHA: COSTUMES. AND A GUY NAMED LUNCH RUSH

Notes: As always, all comments not prefaced by an ETA are my unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’ve read up through chapter 11 now, so any ETAs will reflect that.

so the title is “costume change”, ooh I’m intrigued

All Might is helpfully rehashing the shit that just went down in the last chapter in case we missed it or weren’t paying attention

basically “Deku fucked up his finger but it was actually somehow the coolest thing ever”

right away Izuku is still crying his gritted-teeth pain!tears, so the unbroken streak continues!

aw Ocha is really happy that he did well and now won’t get expelled

I think Bakugou is broken

[waves a hand in front of his face] you okay there pal. deep breaths. it’s going to be all right

and now he’s fucking launching himself at Deku, presumably with the intent to beat the living shit out of him, oh dear

but teacher’s not having that shit

OH MY GOD AN ACTUAL EXPLANATION FOR THE MAGIC SCARF

YEEES THIS IS HOW WE DO THINGS IN GROWN-UP MANGA! WE EXPLAIN OUR PLOT HOLES LIKE ADULTS

THIS IS SUCH A FUCKING RUSH GUYS

also these panels are hilarious

voop

god bless, the logical explanations for everything just keep on coming. now EH is explaining that the reason he always looks so fucking shake-and-baked is because he has to maintain eye contact in order for his powers to work. I love this, it explains so much. the goggles, the eye drops, the creepy intense staring. and it’s such a good handicap for what would otherwise be an insanely OP quirk

just. thank you jesus. thank you oprah winfrey. thank you tom cruise

do you know, so far I haven’t had a single plot thing to complain about in this entire manga series. (except maybe the whole “surrounding community somehow doesn’t notice the beach cleanup happening right under their noses for ten entire months” thing.) can they possibly keep this up?

“is your finger okay?” “yeah.” NO

HGUMNANAA A FLASHBACKKKKKK A BAKUDEKU FLASHBACK. HOLD ME. I NEED TO SIT DOWN

they’re so cute they’re so fucking cute. Izuku following him around fanboying about quirks. Baku saying Deku’s probably won’t be as cool as his. trampsing along through the woods catching bugs. using the nicknames

and now Baku is FREAKING THE FUCK OUT because he’s been the special one all this time and now Izu finally has a quirk too. like, he seems pissed off, but also strangely threatened. like he’s really nervous that Deku might all of a sudden outshine him. once again, I am speculating if there are possibly secret self-esteem issues. I know it’s too early to be theorizing and I’m just going to look like an idiot but I CAN’T HELP IT. Deku is so good and pure and kind and smart, like he has everything going for him, but because he didn’t have a quirk, Bakugou could always rest assured that he was still better! but now DEKU HAS A FUCKING QUIRK. that’s like the ONE thing he solidly had on him and now the gap is narrowing by the minute. hmm. hmmmmmmmmm

disclaimer, he’s probably just an asshole and I’m projecting character development onto him that doesn’t exist sob I know

BUT MAYBE NOT?????

anyway we’ve apparently seen all we needed to see of these tests, because Deku sums up the rest of it in a couple of summary bubbles. “after this we finished up and I hung in there but it sucked”

yay now the results. which sad son of a bitch gets kicked out I wonder. it’s occurred to me that it might not be anyone and EH might just have been fucking with them, but you never know

HAHAHA

[SLAMS HAND ON TABLE]

NOT TO TOOT MY OWN HORN BUT I CALLED IT AND I��M A FUCKING GENIUS. [drinks a glass of water too fast and chokes]

this motherfucker is such a troll

Izuku appears to be phasing into another dimension from the shock of this news. meanwhile this smug-looking girl with a ponytail standing next to him is all like “I already fucking knew”

you know what, smug ponytail girl, ANYONE can say that AFTER the big reveal. the real MVPs are the ones who saw it coming a whole entire page before it actually happened, so you can shove it okay

and now Eraser Head is saying “we’re done here”? but I want to see the rankings, damn it

(ETA: funny how in the anime he shows the rankings first thing and THEN all the rest of this goes down. somehow he’s an even bigger troll there.)

and he finally takes pity on Izuku and sends him to the nurse’s office. you really shouldn’t need a teacher’s permission to go see the nurse, but I guess it’s the thought that counts

and there we go! rankings. so Izu’s all the way down at the bottom. and surprisingly Bakugou is not quite at the top? AND WHAT’S THIS?

THIS IS A NAME I RECOGNIZE. THAT’S DISCOUNT ZUKO BY GEORGE 8D

please be introduced soon, I’m excited to meet you

no idea who that person is at the very top. but hey good for them

hey guys. guess who ships All Might/Aizawa ever since their rivalish history was established in the previous chapter. [points to self]

so this is good stuff

look at this shade being thrown back and forth. or rather, EH throwing shade and AM struggling to throw it back but he’s too much of a straight arrow for it to really work lmao. “april fool’s day was over a week ago”

also oh shit last year he threw out the whole damn bunch. those guys must have SUCKED

oh my god now All Might is smugly confirming that EH likes Izuku too

hey guys here’s a closeup of All Might’s reaction to this:

you like krabby patties don’t you squidward

my boy Izuku out here accumulating mentors like... something... that accumulates a lot

that’s right, he has TWO whole mentors. what a legend

I got really confused for a second when the following panel said Izu was going home after the first day. even though I know it’s not a boarding school, I somehow tricked myself into thinking it was for a sec

oh hey it’s Iida. he wants to know how Deku’s finger is

lol he didn’t remember being healed last time. thank you for that, information bubble

I’m serious, it’s not essential information but it helps the series to remain consistent with itself, and it shows that the mangaka so far is remembering even minor details like this, and I’m honestly really impressed

Horikoshi Kouhei is the author. just looked it up. I gotta remember that. Good job so far Horikoshi-sensei. also he’s apparently younger than me?? nice to know that some of us millennials are out there crushing it at least

oh snap Recovery Girl cautions him that if he keeps getting hurt he’ll eventually run out of stamina and die. wtf. is “stamina” really a finite resource like that? can’t he just get a good night’s sleep and replenish that shit

I’m genuinely wondering how long him not being able to control his powers is going to be an issue then. I’m starting to think not that long. at first I thought it would be a very slow process, because if he got too strong too quickly it would be bad for the story. but on further reflection, it’s really the other way around. there’s only so many times he can be the only guy without any powers and trying to figure out what to do before that shit gets really old. basically right now he’s TOO nerfed

“I thought Iida was scary but he’s actually just super-serious.” he’s very nice for a 40-year-old trying to hang out with a bunch of teenagers. I’m sure you two will be good friends

Ochako!

Iida’s calling her “Infinity Girl” since she threw the ball so high it registered as “infinity meters” on Aizawa’s scale. I wonder if this name will stick, cuz I like it

haha Ochako doesn’t know Izuku’s actual first name and calls him Deku. he was listed as “Izuku” on the results board, though. you could hardly fail to notice that, since he was in last place. she just wants to call him by the cute nickname. fucking sly move there

hmm apparently he doesn’t like the name Deku? or he’s just trying to play it cool with the Girl He Likes

(ETA: now I know the whole sad story of “Deku” and its various meanings. I wonder just how much work Horikoshi put into selecting this name and its kanji)

like he said, he fucking loves that name

“it’s like the Copernican Revolution” hahaha what. a quick Google search confirms that this was the whole shift from people thinking the sun revolved around the earth to realizing it was the other way around. I completely fail to understand what this has to do with the situation of Deku letting Ocha call him “Deku” because she thinks it’s cute. this metaphor is beyond my fucking grasp

(ETA: I must have been tired or something because it’s obviously just that he’s done a 180 from hating the name to embracing it. still a weird analogy but whatever.)

ohhhhhh here come the feels ready or not

SHIELDS UP. IT’S THE PURE, GENTLE HAPPINESS OF A BLOSSOMING SHOUNEN FRIENDSHIP. THE PROTAGONIST’S FIRST FRIENDS EVER. NO, I MUST BE STRONG, DAMN IT. DAMN ITT

oh what the fresh hell, All Might

first the training!! ten months! grueling!! then the entrance exam!! fighting a bunch of giant robots! not having the slightest clue about how to actually use his brand new powers! then the first day of school!! you think you’re finally safe, but NO we’re going to have a trial that may possibly expel you! but he somehow makes it past that too! surely he’s in the clear NOW, right? he has to be?? but nooo, the SECOND day of school, THAT’S when tHE REAL FUCKING TEST BEGINS, FUCK

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE THIRD DAY GOING TO BE. THE END OF THE WORLD?

lmao Mic teaching them English

lmaaaaao everyone is bored out of their fucking minds except fucking Izuku, that FUCKING NERD

the school chef is a sentient humanoid vacuum cleaner named Lunch Rush

nice try with that gimmick there Lunch Rush, but you’re no Best Fucking Jeanist

“the white rice is comforting, so I go with that!” fucking damn, Deku. maybe try branching out just a little

by the way, Izu is narrating all of this like it’s already an established routine, but isn’t it still just the second day? or was All Might just talking out of his ass before about that “real test”

omg

it’s All Might’s class. don’t tell me this was what he was talking about when he was going on about the “real test” fjksj

PROFESSOR LOCKHART. PROFESSOR GILDEROY LOCKHART IS THAT YOU

yet again they talk about how differently he’s drawn sob I can’t

everyone: [turns and winks at the camera] WE KNOW WE’RE CARTOOOONS

what is this pose

gri gri gri

“today’s activity is [holds up a card that says BATTLE] BATTLE”

UNIFOOOOOOORMS

I MEAN COSTUMES

YEEEES. I’VE SEEN DEKU’S COSTUME IN TUMBLR POSTS. I WANT TO SEE HIM WEAR IT YES PLEASE

HERE WE GO

-- PFFFFFFT

Bakugou looks... I’ll let you know when I stop laughing

Ochako looks like your standard Marvel heroine really but the two little buttons on her chest give it an extra dash of cuteness

Iida looks like a fucking super sentai with that helmet

Yuri on Ice, Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog, and Tall Guy with Pterodactyl Arms look fine, I guess

do not fucking tell me the chapter’s going to end before we actually see Izuku

...

the chapter ended before we actually saw Izuku

I’m going to kick you you stupid chapter

there isn’t even a bonus character bio at the end, it’s just a thing about all of Horikoshi’s assistants. good for them, I guess, I know they work fucking hard and they’re doing a good job so far

guess what I’m going to do. “read the next chapter.” yep

#bnha #boku no hero academia #makeste reads bnha #I want a miniseries all about the previous generation of u.a.#featuring the coming of age of all might best jeanist and lunch rush #and aizawa too I guess #lunch rush growing up with his quirk the power of lunch #'you can't be a superhero with lunch powers' everyone said #but he never gave up on his dreams goddammit

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witchfall · 6 years ago

Text

the silver lining still remains: ch. 8

what hides in ephemera

SUMMARY: He looks at her and he understands, all at once, why Markus paints.

A Connor x F!OC fanfic. Read on AO3. master post.

((sorry mobiles…there IS a read more!))

---

Emma is bundled in a black car with two UN officers and Simon. Connor watches as they drive away down the idyllic cobblestone driveway in the back of the house, hand up in farewell, mouth pressed into a line. He swears he can see Emma watching him through the back window, her brown eyes like two points of warmth, until the car is far down the road. But perhaps it is wishful thinking. A useless process. A dangerous one.

[MISSION FAILURE] [MISSION FAILURE] [MISSION FAILURE]

Markus…

She’s under our protection now. We don’t have a choice.

Don’t make me leave her alone.

She won’t be alone. But we’re going to need you. And you can’t put that on her.

[MISSION ACCEPTED: REDIRECT EFFORTS TOWARD INVESTIGATION]

[MISSION ACC*&$&^^????/////]

[INTERFERENCE DETECTED.]

Emma is not an interference.

Your people are depending on you.

Don’t you remember? The nothing you feared...once so long ago on a winter’s night...it was there. It was in that android’s eyes.

[MOVE.]

He remembers beginning to walk. He does not recall the journey. He is suddenly at the conference table in House Manfred mid-conversation, Markus standing before the group, talking of press statements and political strategy, silhouetted by the rising sun.

Abel is close to getting what he wants and all you can do is watch her leave.

“We arrange an op,” North says, as if that settles everything.

“We’re under extreme scrutiny right now,” Josh counters. “We can’t afford to do anything under the table.”

Connor can’t stop parts of his body from moving. His leg bounces in his chair. His fingers twist and twist and twist together...

“What are we supposed to do?” North’s voice, pitching higher. “We can’t wait. He’s already made his first move. He’ll just keep making everything worse !”

Markus raises his hands in conciliation. Connor nearly jolts out of his chair when he realizes Markus has been watching him this whole time.

“What does he want?” he asks Connor. “Does he just hate us? I mean, what’s the apparent leverage here?”

“Ms. Cho believed it may have had something to do with Emma’s parents and their knowledge of Genesis Biotech,” he says as if by rote. “A Project Nazirite that may or may not exist.”

Something triggers his lie detector -- it’s the closest process that makes any sense. Hank would perhaps call it a hunch. Because Emma’s made it clear that she knows next to nothing about what her parents would have done, and nothing about her life screams “hoarding secrets” other than the itinerant life she inherited. Can Abel truly afford to risk everything for a daughter that may know nothing at all?

That can’t be it, can it?

That can’t be the only reason he’d inflict this horrorshow on everyone?

“Well, that doesn’t...help us,” Markus admits. “We need more information before we act. Josh, what’s the schedule?”

Josh lists appearances on television networks, interviews with approved press outlets and the potential delaying of the Remembrance Ceremony. The to-do list is long. The day has barely begun -- or perhaps it’s never ended, still tripping over yesterday’s track, skipping like one of Hank’s old tape decks, over and over and over.

Carisa’s autopsy. Examining their cyber defenses. Triple vetting Emma’s new UN guards. Calling Kamski about the androids…

He thinks of the darkness in their gazes, the nothingness, the disappearance of who they might have been, and fear rips his processors apart.

It sounds like Carisa’s dying shrieks. It sounds like Emma, screaming no.

---

The guards, somewhat obvious in white and dark blue, hover just outside Valerie’s office at the old Detroit municipal center, small but white-bright and warm, lined with thin windows -- a hold over from an older era. Colorful cross stitch patterns peek over the shelves behind the desk, spouting various ironic phrases, including one framed with tulips that said “When life shuts a door, open it again, that’s how doors work.”

Valerie watches, a perfectly manicured hand tapping her dark-tawny cheek, as anger simmers around Emma like exhaust fumes.

Everything is all wrong, now, but no one expects her to do anything except...wait. Answers feel just out of her reach. Her group, her Corps , is completely thrown under the bus by some freak, likely the same freak who stole Raina’s life away and prompted Carisa’s brain to melt out of her skull, and she’s left to muddle through it, wordless and tired, without Connor.

And now...

“So all that work I did was for nothing, after all,” Emma mutters. Her frustration strains the edge of her voice.

“I said the ceremony is delayed, not cancelled.” Valerie’s thin gold bracelets chime as she gestures to a chair in front of her desk for the third time. Emma shakes her head. Valerie casts an unreadable look to Simon, who hangs by the window.

“It’s on the same day as Veteran’s Day, anyway, so we’d been talking of choosing a different date to prevent...battle with other emotional displays of patriotism,” Simon says, voice dry.

“That’s not why,” Emma says flatly, unable to look at either of them. “You’re letting him win.”

Valerie narrows her eyes. “Sweetheart, sit down before I write you up.”

Emma glares at the floor but she complies, flopping into the plush magenta chair before Valerie’s desk. She has at least enough sense not to put her job in jeopardy because she was feeling flighty. But only just enough. “We can’t just do nothing.”

“We’re not doing nothing,” Valerie says. Her tone is pointed, even for her city-born sharpness. “But we can’t do something half-baked. Don’t be stupid with me, honey.”

Emma crosses her arms to hold it all in, thinking of the chaos. And though she feels the same pressing desperation filling her lungs that she’s felt for weeks on weeks on weeks, the same strange desolation from being shunted off for her own supposed safety, she pushes her tongue to the top of her mouth and says nothing at all. She can’t stop hearing Carisa screaming in her head.

“What we need is a more immediate and individual way to signal our unity,” Simon says, as ever seeking the common ground. “And that may mean we just keep working hard. Setting up a good foundation.”

“That won’t keep the kids’ morale up,” Valerie admits, pulling a tablet to her desktop. “We gotta spin it better than that. And that still leaves Emma with nothing to do.”

“What about the HAIT?” Emma says. Her unlicensed dalliances with the HAIT are fodder for jokes amongst the Corps, but Valerie doesn’t even crack a smile and Emma doesn’t feel much like joking, anyway.

“What about it?” Valerie asks, eyes still on her tablet.

Emma taps the arm of the chair. “We’ve not really done as much as we could with it.”

“We haven’t had much time to experiment with it,” Simon says, tone neutral.

Humans and androids. What do they offer each other?

What does she do for Connor?

“And the name...I mean, it’s all there. Human-Android interfacing,” she says into the quiet. “I could help with that. I’m already approved--”

Valerie sets the tablet down suddenly and turns her gaze, dark as mahogany, on Emma. “Do you really think you are in a state to use the damn HAIT, Emma?”

Emma leans back in her chair. “What? Yeah--”

“You’ve barely been sleeping, I can see it in your face.” Valerie’s expression is hard as tiger’s eye. “You really wanna take on everyone else’s problems on top of that?”

Something inside her starts shivering. “It’s easier when it’s not me,” she says, shocked into truth by Valerie’s blunt nature. “And you know I understand it. I’m not a counselor but--”

“Exactly, and that’s reason enough I should say no,” Valerie snaps. She sighs, perhaps noticing the crack that forms in Emma’s facade. “...you haven’t had a thorough psych check by one of our own, for starters...”

“We have a number of androids who specialized in psychological evaluation looking for work,” Simon volunteers. “It may be good for you to speak with one, anyway, Emma.”

Emma sinks further into her chair when he says her name, finding it impossible to look into those giant icy eyes. They see everything. “If I do this,” Emma says, hardly able to believe her own words as they come out of her mouth, “and I go to a counselor, can I at least help test the HAIT?”

Valerie looks at her over tortoiseshell glasses. She’s silent for so long that Emma is sure she is about to point toward her office door. But then she relents.

“Something’s eatin’ you, honey,” she says, voice dangerously kind. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. But,” she says, lifting a hand to stop Emma, mouth open in protest, “I’ll keep it on the docket. For now. If you see someone.”

True to his word, Simon arranges Emma a meeting with a counselor. Same day.

She tries to drown her fear with determination. If she has to be treated like a bomb waiting to trigger, maybe, finally, she can do something useful while time ticks down.

The counselor is a lovely android woman named Natalie, with warm hazel eyes and blonde hair set in a soft wave. Her smile is perfectly charming and her voice utterly disarming. Her LED spins yellow a moment as she overlooks Emma’s Corps profile.

Emma presses her body firmly into the burgundy, itchy sofa, looking intently at the scraggly carpet of the back office of a Corps-established medical center. She plants her feet on the floor and thinks, pointedly, of her toes.

“I’m glad to see you, Emma,” Natalie says, with a tone of warm sincerity Emma can’t help but take seriously in turn. “Everything you say will be confidential. I’ll simply provide an answer to Corps regarding whether or not you are capable of using the HAIT devices.”

The questions start, and she’s struck by their familiarity. Where were you born? Somewhere not far from Detroit, actually. Where did you live? All over the map. How would you describe yourself? Hard-working, reliable, busy as fuck, honestly a little over this not-being-able-to-help situation, kind of helpless right now, generally, if we’re being real. Which I guess we are. Do you have any siblings? Not that I know of.

What was your relationship with your parents like? They were...my rock. Yes, they’re dead now. I was 18 when it happened. Yes, I still think about it… Do you have any living family? My aunt and uncle, but I’m not allowed to talk to them just yet. You know about all that, right? My whole...situation?

Natalie just nodded sweetly at that.

Tell me about your past experience with psychotherapy. Well...I had a grief counselor for a while after my parents died. And...when I was really young I had a therapist after I was adopted. I don’t remember a lot from it, though.

Suddenly, the questions stop. Natalie looks down at her tablet for a long moment. Emma clutches her knees at this unusual pause. It stretches, on and on.

“Emma, can you tell me your very first memory?”

Emma blinks, face burning, but she clears her throat and dives in: She’s six years old, “helping” bring groceries inside, when she drops the single thing she is carrying -- a goldenrod gallon of milk -- on the floor. It breaks instantly, splattering all over the linoleum in the kitchen. The bright trill of anxiety still rings as clear today as it did then: her abject fear that mom and dad would send her away forever for a simple mistake, like she had to prove her worth. She remembers her dad’s startled laugh at the sight, in fact. Little bug, it’s okay. Why are you crying over spilled milk?

Natalie nods down at her tablet a moment. “You know what is very interesting, Emma, is that that’s the same memory you told your counselors when you were seven years old.”

Emma’s blood turns to ice, even if the importance of that doesn’t slot in properly. “What’s interesting about that? How do you know that?”

“I found your old files from your last counselor. It took me a little searching.” Natalie leans back, face betraying no emotion, even as Emma feels the world stutter to a stop. “Memory loss from time is natural. It’s how human brains sort through information. So it would make sense that, at 26, that would be your clearest original memory. But at 7...one would expect you’d remember something from your time as a three-year-old, perhaps. But you never have.”

Her foot begins to tap against the floor. “Well, I was adopted. Mom and dad always said it was probably because of...foster care experiences or whatever. I was in therapy pretty much from when I can remember until about nine years old…”

Natalie nods, confirming this on her tablet. Her brow crinkles, the only emotional tell on her face. “Tell me about your experience with that.”

A memory comes shaking out of the dirt. “I, uh, used to have night terrors as a kid. And...a lot of phobias.” Lightning, crashing, screaming into a pillow, everything hurts. “And then I didn’t. I honestly...” She thinks back, as far as she can go, but it’s like trying to wipe tar off a window. “I don’t remember much of it. Just that it was.”

Natalie’s hazel eyes rest on Emma in a way that makes her lean into her chair, like she could see far back into her head -- all the way back, as far as the film will go. “There are notes in your record that point to hypnotherapy. Did you know about that?”

Emma gulps down the stilted air of the room and for a long moment, finds herself unable to speak.

“No. What’s it for?”

“It’s...controversial, but it has been historically used to help patients with various anxiety disorders walk through traumas that may underpin some of their worst anxious impulses. Some scholars in the field...though there are few...believe it could also be used to change your perception of an impulse, such as pain. But keep in mind that not all scholars agree that it does what it says it does.”

Emma settles back in her chair as the weight of this hits her. “Are you...sure?”

“Unless your record through the blockchain is lying, I am sure, yes. And if it is a lie, it’s a strange one.”

“But I don’t remember it.”

Natalie adjusts her legs, pinned together in a pencil skirt. “I know,” she says softly. “And that’s the part that confuses me the most. You’re supposed to be taught tools in hypnotherapy you can apply in your daily life. You’re supposed to remember it.”

“Maybe it’s just...one of those kid things,” Emma says, half-hearted, and her face falls when she sees Natalie’s pained, subtle frown.

“Maybe,” Natalie says.

The events of the past few days click by in her head. Electricity. Fire. The shadow of the company is long. They didn’t have friends. Two bright stars.

How much would remain outside her reach forever? What didn’t her parents want her to know?

“Can I get those memories back?”

Natalie’s LED spins a bright, solid yellow for a good 10 seconds. “I am trained in hypnotherapy, but there would be no guarantees whatsoever.”

“Let’s do it,” Emma says, not giving herself time to think.

“Hold on. It’s very important to consider, Emma…” Natalie extends a conciliatory hand outward. “There might be nothing there. Or maybe you forgot for a reason. Sometimes the brain does this to protect you, and there’s nothing to be gained from opening old wounds. You might just find pain.”

Emma shrugs. She’d been toeing the deep end of the pool of things she didn’t like ever since she got shot. “It’s better than the nothing I have.”

Natalie smiles so sadly that it sends chills through her spine. “It might not be.”

The cold settles on Connor’s sensors, just like before, snow sharpening the silhouette of the house like before. There is a human saying about this feeling, this unease settling in the pit of his abdomen, on the back of his neck -- it all makes one hairs stand on end.

Elijah Kamski’s smirk (holding out a gun like so, the Kamski test, he says, like it means something to Connor) is an etching out of ash -- the dark remains of a flashbomb on his memory cores that comes from a center point: this geometric block of obsidian etched into the lakeside landscape that Kamski calls a home.

[&^&^*INSTABILITY]

An important distinction separates this visit from the last: Elijah called them to him.

No offense, Connor, but do you think DPD’s Cybercrime Division has the best encryption protection money can buy? On the city’s dime? Doubtful.

“Our maker lives here, huh,” Josh says. He holds his limbs close to his body despite not feeling the cold. “It looks like a bunker for the end of the world.”

But Kamski’s facilities for technological study, tucked into an underground laboratory lit by diffused blue light, are indeed top of the line. Kamski gestures toward the set up, allowing Josh access to the various haptic panels connected to a clear tube. Empty glass tubes of various sizes, all the way to something that could fit something the size of an android, line the wall.

Josh shuts up. Connor’s doubts intensify.

Carisa’s brain implant sits in the attached tube -- clear of blood and brain matter, but still caked with a strange kind of rust. Charring? A vague resistance repulses his programming from scanning it directly.

Twilight had barely set in and somehow Kamski had pulled enough strings to prompt an expedited autopsy and forward that evidence directly to his home -- with Connor’s express approval, of course, but…

It all sits wrong, like puzzle pieces jumbling in a plastic bag.

Kamski’s interest could be explicitly business. The situation with the blue blood patent would be aggravating for any sharp-eyed inventor. But Kamski, who is usually never without his advantage, takes a strange tack these days. Showing up in public. Taking at least a feigned interest in android welfare. This…

“What do you get out of this?” Connor asks the man. Kamski, understated in a maroon v-neck and dark jeans, stands to the side, arms crossed in front of his chest. He looks askance to Connor. Something deeply dark flickers there.

“Well, Detective, ” he says, spitting out Connor’s role, pushing him back with formality, “I’ve been doing some searching of my own. Some remembering.”

Connor raises an eyebrow. “Explain.”

Kamski looks away, far off into elsewhere. “In 2022, we were looking to expand...and one company in dire straits came to me. I was 20 years old and thought I knew everything. Even more than I do now.” A snort. “We took them all in. Hired them for their biotech expertise, took their warehouse and started developing androids for mass production right here in Detroit…”

[CONSTRUCTING...]

[PROFILE COMPLETE.]

Connor takes a step toward Kamski. “Genesis Biotech.”

“They were calling themselves something else, then,” Kamski says. “Jubilee Technologies, I think. But I asked Josh to look into it for me and my suspicion was right. They shared many of the same executives, one of which is still on the Cyberlife board, today. Even with the state it’s in.”

Josh continues to work on the computer interface.

“Either someone turned on me and pulled one of the longest cons of recent memory to create a poor reconstruction of my thirium recipe,” Kamski continues. “Or I sheltered something else.” A pointed look at the implant, stained with human effluence.

Connor struggles to reconcile this man with the one who was willing to risk Chloe’s death -- the same Chloe he kindly asked to remain upstairs. “What if it has nothing to do with you?” Connor asks, sharper than he expects. “You left Cyberlife.”

Another snort from Kamski. But then he frowns, like he’s watching a memory tinged with blue -- like a ghost is waiting when he shuts his eyes. “Everything with androids has something to do with me.” His frown turns into a dark smirk, and that flash of melancholy is gone.

“Holy shit,” Josh says -- the first exclamation from him since he began his work. “I’m finally in.”

Connor and Kamski both gather around his navy dark interface as white code begins to cross the screen. “Holy shit…” Josh says again, but his tone shifts downward -- from excited curiosity to horror in an instant.

Kamski blinks a few times, brows furrowing in annoyance. “I’m not sure what you’re seeing here.”

“Are those old firewall scripts?” Connor asks.

“Yes...okay. You might want to be sitting down for this one, Connor,” Josh says, but Connor finds this notion ridiculous and does not move. Luckily, it appears to be only an expression. “She had access to all of our data at some point...I’m trying to work backward on access logs.”

All of our data?

“Including everything on Emma’s case? On all the disappearances?” Connor presses. All of their careful investigations into the fake companies, all of their studies on the taken androids, all of their notes on Emma’s status and where she is living...

“Yes. I...oh god.” Josh steps back from the computer a moment, and Connor feels a deep, instantaneous thrum of red-hot energy sweep his systems. What? What? Kamski, too, leans inward, looking like an iceberg 2.3 seconds away from angrily snapping apart.

“From what I can tell,” Josh continues, “Carisa had figured out we were doing some intel on her through some base trolling of our datastreams, so she dug deeper. That’s why I was seeing more data sweeps. That’s why she approached Emma. I think she knew we were onto her, and she knew her...business partner wanted Emma for some reason, so she decided to act on her own accord. To find a better deal.”

“A solid analysis.” Connor does his best to keep his impatience out of his tone.

Josh points to his lines of code. “So at some point she goes back and does some reconnaissance of her own on Genesis Biotech, pulling up all sorts of old files. Old addresses, personnel…”

“That must have been when she summoned the information on the tablet,” Connor says, unsure where he’s going with this.

“But when she did that--” Josh points to a particularly angry line of code that makes both Connor and Kamski recoil slightly. Clear signs of firewall breakage. “Someone got the message and started hacking back, using that connection she’d formed with the data streams to take info from her, instead. All of what Carisa saw on our stuff.” Josh puts a hand up. “I cannot say enough how impressive this hacking is. It’s insanely good. Nigh impossible access to wetware and almost at an instant. Someone that knew about her and likely had warning triggers on that information. Even top of the line hackers couldn’t get this far without that insight.”

The reconstruction sequence begins in his head. Blocks form, fast-forwarding through time, space, backward, forward...

“Abel,” Connor breathes.

“But why didn’t he just do that before?” Kamski presses, cool and logical. “Why wait, in that case? He clearly had the androids trailing her.”

“The announcement,” Connor says. “He saw an opportunity to sow resentment. But why wait until the moment of truth?”

“Wetware interfaces are banned for a reason,” Kamski explains. “They’re hard to hack because bizarre organic connections start forming that literally no one can explain or predict properly. But any hacking that does break through can threaten the entire organic function.”

Josh points to where the coding abruptly ends. “A dump began here, like a hard reset, but it didn't complete. That action plus the android electrocuting her must have literally overloaded her system.” A horrified pause. “Melted her brain.”

“That’s what the autopsy confirms,” Kamski mutters.

“He literally threw her away!” Josh says, aghast. “Just to make a point?”

Kamksi shrugs, a put-upon act of nonchalance that his widened eyes betrays. “That's business for you.”

But Connor can say nothing else. He feels a realization wrapping tightly around his throat.

Abel knows.

He doesn’t just know Carisa betrayed him. He knows they’re on his trail. He knows everything they know about the investigation. He knows where Emma is being kept.

He knows everything.

I don't want to leave my friend, momma.

I know, baby, I know. But you want to go on an adventure, right? We’re going to see the whole world.

Her mother's hands are soft and warm against her cheeks, thumbs rubbing her cheekbones. Sterile white light shines just beyond her mother's round face, her big brown eyes, her smile that makes Emma’s whole heart yearn for the sun. For a hug. She reaches her small arms outward.

Only if Momma and Dadda are there.

Momma picks her up off the ground and squeezes her so tightly she forgets to breathe. Forgets the fear squeezing all of her insides. Forgets everything that's ever hurt her, if only for a moment.

I love you so much, baby girl.

Love you more, Emma says, certain.

Momma pokes Emma’s nose. Let's go find Dadda. Remember our secret?

Emma.

Emma!

She gasps into consciousness, head lulling on cold tile. Someone's hands are tight around her upper arms. She blinks hard, twice, to clear the fuzz in her vision before she realizes who is leaning over her.

Connor, back-lit by Hank’s yellow kitchen lighting, looks down upon her like she’s fallen down from somewhere.

Her body floods with such intense warmth that she smiles against her will. Relief.

He's finally here…the mold of some angel, sculpted from the sky…

“Why are you on the floor?” he asks, shaken. Her smile falters.

She leans up on her elbows, and for a moment their faces are close enough that their noses nearly touch. The world still spins with the thickness of sleep. The relief coursing through her system pulses to the rhythm of one of Hank's old jazz songs playing from the living room. But why does he look so afraid?

“Hank said you'd probably come here first...but he went to bed...”

And I had to see you after the day I had.

She swallows those words back, swallows down the slow heat building everywhere in her body, the old fears, the new ones.

He finally leans away far enough that she can sit upright.

“You were thrashing,” he says, voice flat. “I thought something happened…”

“I was just asleep,” she says. Her eyes finally fall on the cardboard box of items next to her, labeled FRAGILE. The real world outside this moment of time, this moment alone in the kitchen with the person she'd been waiting for, comes rushing back. A pause. “You really think someone somehow snuck in past both the UN guards and Sumo?”

He doesn't smile at all, and neither does she. His hands are still around her arms. Something amorphous and shadowy chases the light in the back of his eyes.

He finally breaks away and looks into the box. His mouth twitches downward, but his voice is soft. “What are all these?”

She'd cajoled Hank into taking her to her apartment through a mix of tears and frustration so she could find it. Photographs, old art projects, dumb tchotchkes her dad would buy for them both in every airport he visited…

“I went to a counselor,” Emma says.

Connor falls back into an actual sitting position, expression unreadable. He watches her carefully.

“It’s so I can use the HAIT,” she says, a little faster than she intends, emotion suddenly rising up like water reaching a boil. He tilts his head, eyes squinting, and she keeps talking before he can interrupt. “Someone did hypnotherapy on me once upon a time and I don't remember any of it, like I'm in some fucking movie. And she tried to put me under and I…”

Facing a field of soybeans, swinging on a swing on a rickety old playground. Swinging and swinging and swinging…

Just stay here, little bug. Her dad's voice. Isn't it nice here?

“...there was nothing.”

I can't do this therapy with you, Emma. I've never seen someone twitch so much during a trance. Like you were in pain.

I wasn't. I didn't feel anything.

I'm sorry, Emma. But no.

“There was nothing,” she says, “and maybe there will always be nothing.”

He watches her. Maybe he doesn't understand. Maybe he could never understand what it was like, to be a person built on a foundation smothered in shadow.

He lays his hand next to hers. “What did you want to find?”

That question shakes her. Proof? Something that signaled her parents weren’t the kind of people that would get involved in something like all this?

“Anything, I guess,” she says. “A sign that I didn’t remember a lie.”

He taps the top of her hand, pausing a moment in thought. The contact is so small, but a thrum of blue energy sweeps her whole body anyway -- a keen reminder of all the things she doesn’t have.

“It’s just one android’s opinion,” he says, “but I don’t think anyone can take their love from you.”

Maybe.

She looks away.

“You should go back to the Speaker's house,” he says quietly. “I'd feel better if you slept there.”

“Will you be coming with?”

He doesn't answer right away. Another moment passes and he doesn't answer at all. Panic builds in her chest. Panic and a kind of pain, like her heart tearing. Disappointment, heavy as rain, presses out all logical sense, pressing and pressing and pressing until she can feel tears hiding behind her eyes.

“Okay, well,” she says, voice barely bridging the gap forming in her throat, “consider. Maybe I don’t want to do that.”

She grabs the box and stands up fast enough that she's lightheaded for a second. She sets the box on the table and leans against it, letting the world spin. He lingers close by as if ready to catch her, which makes the tsunami build and build.

“Maybe I don’t want to be followed around by two people I don’t know.”

“Emma…”

“Don’t Emma me. Just stop it.” Her fingers wrap around the edges of the cardboard, softened with time and abuse. “I missed you.” She tries to sound annoyed but her voice breaks. She can’t look at him. “It was just one stupid day. But I...”

I felt so alone.

A new song comes on over the sound system, one of her favorites on this disc, and she starts moving her shoulders to it, slowly, like she's working out some kinks in her body. She closes her eyes a moment.

“...Emma?”

Heat blooms on her cheeks. She turns around, slowly, afraid to see what he's asking after -- and he’s moving his shoulders, too, copying her.

Oh no.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“What are you doing?”

He continues his jerky movements and doesn’t answer, watching her ever so carefully.

“...are you trying to dance?”

“I am just following your lead,” he says.

A chalky laugh bubbles just under her heart, despite everything. “Really?”

Something in his expression softens as he looks down upon her, leaning down just slightly. “I know you like this song,” he says. “It feels...boppy, as you said.”

A sound like a water droplet plinking into a sink. A realization. A funny one. “You don’t know how to dance.”

“It is not among my social protocol programs.”

“No. You don’t say.”

“I have looked a few things up.”

She smiles, despite herself.

And then, as if she'd just given him permission, his movements get worse. Wider and wider, more expressionist, face still even as his arms swing wide. He looks like he’s competing for the World’s Best Shuffler award. It’s awful. It’s perfect.

“Stop it! You're embarrassing me,” she says, laugh finally bursting free. “Watch this.”

She closes her eyes a moment, moving to the music, following its mismatched beats, the jumble of random shit that works in spite of music’s laws. Her legs jam, her hips shake with a flow that an android can’t replicate.

Connor then does an approximation of what can only be the ancient and persisting Robot, looking dumb as hell and beautiful as the dawn. She laughs again.

“Please don’t stop,” he says, soft enough she nearly misses it. “I’ve missed your laugh.”

So she laughs more and more, and they dance like fools for a while.

And then, after too little time has passed, the song changes. It’s slow and silky and winding. Her heart skips a beat.

Her body betrays her (just as the music does, just as the universe seems willing to do) and she reaches out, hands on his shoulders. “That doesn’t fit this song anymore,” she says of his robot dance, her jamming. “We have to do something else.”

So she pulls him into a sway, slow and circular. They’re spinning in a choppy circle for a few moments, her palms on his shoulders, his legs locking in confusion.

“Work with me,” she whispers.

He looks down upon her, mystified, as she pulls one of his hands to her waist, where it is supposed to go. His legs finally loosen as he seems to understand, his LED settling between yellow and blue. They spin and he pulls her ever so slightly closer -- but not close enough that, from an outsider’s perspective, they couldn’t be spotted at a high school dance. The thought makes her smile again.

“This is called slow dancing,” she says, letting her gaze linger on his lapel. He was busy today. No sweaters when detective work calls.

“I remember,” he says softly. “From movies.”

Her face burns but God does it feel right. They spin on in relative silence, the music softly sweeping the room. She tries to absorb the entirety of him through her fingertips -- his shocking warmth, the careful ways he holds himself, whatever pushes him on through the day so that she can try to remember it for tomorrow. She spreads her fingers across his chest and allows herself this moment of weakness.

"I have to tell you something," he says.

Her heart rises in her throat. All of a sudden the music stops. He stops. Their toes nearly touch. His hands rest on her waist. His LED spins yellow and red, too close for her not to watch it, and her ears go fuzzy…

It feels something like hope.

“Did you just wifi my music--”

“I'm going to be going on a mission tonight,” he says softly.

Her chest hollows out in an instant. Hope sputters and dies.

“I don't want you to worry. But that's why I want you to stay at the Speaker's house.”

“The op?” Her voice feels tinny, far away. “I thought Markus didn't want any sudden moves.”

He blinks a few times. Something is off in how long it takes for him to answer, like he's pressing through a block in his programming. “New variables have moved the timetable up. It's all right,” he adds, moving a hand to her shoulder, as if anticipating the bile churning in her gut.

“I don’t like this,” she says. “I don't like this sneaking off into the night bullshit.” I don't like you being gone. I don't like this new arrangement at all. I don't like my new guards. They don't even talk to me. I want the old arrangement back. I liked my old one. I loved the old one, despite everything it represented, I loved…

I love…

“This is my job,” he says, so soft and so sad. She's going dizzy. No. No. She can't be thinking about this right now. This timing is terrible. This is out of the wrong movie. This isn't right.

“Yeah,” she says, “I get that. But are you sure about this?”

His jaw twitches and he leans forward, just a touch. “Very.”

She takes in a sharp breath. “But what if…”

What if it all goes wrong? What if the universe strikes, like it always does, eventually?

What if every limitation between human-android interfacing becomes extraordinarily, undoubtedly clear in a flash of a single instant, a single sentence that breaks everything they've built?

What if she's in love with him and she wants him to stay?

What if he couldn't understand?

“Nothing will happen,” he says.

His hand brushes her hair out of her face a moment. Her whole body, alight with new understanding, nearly vibrates as his fingers reach her bare skin.

“I don't fail,” he says. “It’s not in my programming.”

She doesn't argue when he insists she take a sleeping pill.

She needed the sleep. And Connor…

[MISSION FAILED MISSION FAILED MISSION FAILED]

He needed her to sleep because he couldn't watch the wavering light in her eyes as he decided, then and there, to take matters into his own hands. He couldn't stand her asking after him, couldn't stand the fact that he is the one who will make her cry again after these awful days, couldn't stand any more deception in his life or hers even as he perpetrates it.

And a small part, a part of his programming that he's ashamed of, a part that he wants to press away away away because of how selfish it is, wanted to see her like this once more before he dove into the dark.

He never should have gone to Hank’s, like it was a normal day. He should have just gone. Because now...

Her mouth is partly open in deep sleep, chest rising slowly. Her hair is a halo, spread across the silky pillow Markus found in a linen closet. Her face is struck through with a beam of moonlight, casting her freckles in a shimmering glow akin to the stars he imagines them to be.

He looks at her and he understands, all at once, why Markus paints.

Why artists try to capture beauty in a moment. Why it matters at all, to try and save the ephemera, the passing, the few. Why Emma’s memory bothers her so much. Why slow dancing exists.

Something itches in the back of his mind, processes of an unknowable sort lurching to life in the ruins of that old red wall, and he reaches out a careful hand.

He lays the backs of his fingers against her cheek, where the moonlight touches. He runs his fingers across the light, across her skin, soft as bedsheets.

Her warmth sends hot electricity up his arm, through his core and into his head. Thoughts scatter and then solidify in an instant. She's so breakable. Everything about her fragile, like the word on the box -- dirty and ephemeral and painfully organic -- even as she proves him wrong, even as she pushes through the day to day with a strength that he can’t fathom. She dances to music and laughs at his jokes and glares at her guards and flips everyone off.

He wants so badly to see that every day.

He wants this, a painting in motion.

He wants.

So he has calculated the odds.

In every calculation, they are against him; there is only a 43% chance of success for his current plan. If he does nothing at all, Emma’s chance of death or total disappearance hovers near 30% -- an unacceptable range, as is anything above near-0. He cannot be the one who makes her laugh to keep her safe this time, and the thought whirs like a drill to his right eye.

[*&^%PAIN]

Even so. His processors cycle with cold certainty.

If he doesn't move -- if he doesn't become the hunter, the weapon -- all of this will shatter. He’ll never get to explore why he likes to rest his hands on her waist, never get to sway in time to a rhythm, never hear her voice again.

She will be taken. From him.

He hopes she will be able to forgive him for the lies. This one and all the rest, all his attempts to become someone who isn’t this version of himself. He knows who he has to be. Doesn't that matter more than who he could be?

[MISSION: FIND ABEL]

[CONFLICTING PRIORITY. SPEAKER MARKUS DID NOT GIVE THIS ORDER.]

[PRIORITY SELECTED.]

[FIND ABEL NOW.]

He leaves in the night, guns holstered under his shoulder. He tells no one, not even North. The odds she will turn him in to Markus are too high.

His eyes burn from tears unshed.

He wishes he was wrong.

#dbh fic #detroit become human #dbh connor #connor rk800 #dbh connor x oc #dbh connor x reader #connor x reader #the silver lining still remains #kathryn writes

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artificialqueens · 7 years ago

Text

hollywoof hills [vet au] - chapter 3 - akita

A/N: this took a lot longer than expected, but hey, i got it done! i dont think any triggers apply really except one case of misgendering someone. theres a little bit of set up in this chapter for later events

It was a quiet day today. There weren’t many appointments booked, and all the calls so far had been to book things in later that week. The phone wasn’t even ringing much, and while you’d think that would be a nice thing for the two on reception, it was not. Since they didn’t have anything to do, they’d both been asked to sort the Pet Health Plan monthly flea treatments. It was a lot of checking info, labelling, and putting things in packets. Farrah looked frustrated and restless, and Manila looked like she was ready to end it.

“Why can’t the nurses do this?” The pink haired girl mewled, “They all have to sign them off anyway.” “I know! We have other things to do.” “Like what?” Adore barked, having been sat at her desk, “I don’t see you handling any animals, or having to do a fuckload of paperwork.” “You wouldn’t have a ‘fuckload of paperwork’ if you filled it in when you got it,” Manila cockily returned, and yelped when a pen lid hit her neck, “Oi! Don’t throw things. I’ll tell on you.” “You’ll tell on me? Good luck, Jinkx loves me and Max can’t touch me.” “Go back to your paperwork, Delano.”

They fell into a quiet again, making small talk over the crinkle of plastic packets. Then, a moment of salvation - the door alarm rung as someone came through. It was Brutus, his saggy lips slobbering, and his bald belly swinging. For someone who’d had a major bowel op, he was looking pretty happy. “There’s our hedgehog eater!” Farrah cooed as she stood up, before glancing up at the person walking him. She didn’t recognise them at all, having only ever seen this dog with a middle aged woman, but she noticed that they were much prettier than the typical owner, and definitely younger. “What’re you looking at?” They said with a biting tone, though their face followed it with a smirk. “Sorry, I’ve only seen him with your… mum?” “Yeah, she made me bring him in today.”

There was a brief pause, Farrah still getting a grip on herself. They were quite cute, and though they were coming off a little brusque, she wanted to know more. However, she did need to do her job, and eventually asked, “Can you just put him on the scales?” “Why? He’s not gonna have lost weight since yesterday.” “I don’t know, but I’m told I have to ask anyone who comes in with a dog to get their weight.” After pulling a face, they put the canine up on the scales, calling over, “84.5 kilos, the fat fuck.” They affectionately pet his side, “What was he yesterday?” “He was 84.5 kilos.” She returned. “Told you.” “Take a seat, Miss Kween.” “Ew, don’t. Call me Aja.” With that, they wandered off to the chairs, large dog lumbering after.

When Farrah turned back to Manila, she caught her sniggering at her. Pulling a face, she tried to go back to sorting the flea treatment, but there was a fluster on her face, and she kept glimpsing up at the person sat on the chairs, pretty chilled out, fussing the dog and telling him how handsome and brave he was. When Jinkx came out to call them through into the consult, they greeted them pleasantly, like they knew each other. As soon as that door closed, the dark haired receptionist started on Farrah.

“Look at you getting all nervous!” “Fuck all the way off.” She was quick to snap, “So what? I didn’t expect to see anyone my age, or cute, this morning.” “You think they’re cute?” “I don’t not think that, leave me alone,” Whining, she threw one of the empty flea treatment boxes at her. “Why is everyone chucking things at me?” “We wouldn’t if you weren’t annoying,” Adore chimed, getting up to join Jinkx in the consult, realising she was meant to follow. Once she was gone, Farrah mumbled, “Even if I do think sh-” “They.” “-They’re cute, they’re a client, I’m not really gonna get a chance.” “You never know.” She smirked, “We’ll see what happens when they come back out.”

Max was a very polite woman. Politeness was something she’d prided herself on, particularly in this line of work, where you sometimes did have difficult clients. This pre-op check, however, was testing her a little bit. The cat was fine, it was a young male, 5 months old, in for a castrate. He was the right weight for the operation, so that wasn’t an issue. He was looking healthy and happy - or at least, as happy as a Persian could look. In fact, he would be the perfect pet to operate on, until she noticed that in his fur, there was some cat food.

It was necessary to ask anyway, though it was now a lot more important to do it. “Has he had any breakfast?” “I had to give him something, he kept meowing for food.” “So he has eaten this morning?” “Yes.” The owner seemed a little irate at the questioning. Max took a deep breath, trying not to show the annoyance she felt, “Unfortunately, we won’t be able to operate today. When you booked him in, you were informed that he must have food withdrawn the night before, at 8pm.” “But I can’t just not feed him! It’s cruel!”

For a moment, she considered getting someone else into the room. She considered seeing if Jinkx was free, because they were a more seasoned vet, and they must have dealt with this before. But Max couldn’t always go running for help, and after a moment’s consideration, she re-explained the exact risks she’d listed for the owner three days ago when the cat was booked in. “The anaesthetic can make the cat feel poorly, and it can make them vomit. Because of that, we need them to come in on an empty stomach so that they don’t vomit while unconscious on the table, as they can then end up choking, and in many cases, it can kill them. We can rebook you in for later this week, but please, you must not feed him after 8pm the night before the operation.” “Fine. I better not have to pay for this waste of time appointment.” “The pre-op check is free.” Putting the cat back in the basket, she saw the owner off. Milk quickly slipped into the room, saying a quick goodbye to the client.

As soon as the door was shut, Max pulled a face in the direction of where the owner exited. Perhaps it was immature, but it got a light laugh from her nurse, who sprayed down the table and scales with disinfectant. It wasn’t much, but it saved the vet the hassle of wiping things down before another appointment. “The dog for its dental’s here, you want me to start setting up in prep for him?” “I’d say yes but I don’t know yet if his owner knows how to follow instructions.” “I’ll do it anyway,” Milk laughed, “Try not to get too stressed out, if anything, it gives us essentially a free break to catch up on stuff.”

Not long after the cat went, and the dog came through, Aja left the consult room, slobbering Brutus lumbering behind them, elizabethan collar clanging loudly on the doorframe on the way out to reception. He was healing well, and they’d been instructed to just keep a close eye on him, and to bring him back again the next day. As they came up to book in again, Farrah near scurried out from the vet’s desk area, where she’d been meaninglessly flipping through worming packets, trying to actually manifest some confidence.

“How’s he doing?” She cooed, sitting in her chair and leaning forward on the wood. “Well, his insides are still in him, so that’s good. And he’s not too inflamed around them or anything. They said I’ve gotta bring him back tomorrow?” “Of course,” she opened to book an appointment, “Is 9.40 tomorrow okay?” “Should be fine, yeah.” After a pause, punctuated by taking one of the business cards, they asked, “You working tomorrow?” “Yeah - Monday, Wednesday, Thursday are my days.” “Guess I’ll see you in the morning then.” With a smirk, Aja waved with their free hand as they headed outside.

When they’d walked out, Farrah turned toward Manila with an incredulous expression. She didn’t want to be getting her hopes up, but there was something promising about the way they asked about her shifts. It could have been just pleasant conversation, but that wasn’t what she wanted it to be. There wasn’t much time for chatting about it though, as the phones were quick to provide an interruption. The black haired receptionist picked up, leaving the other to turn to speak with a bored Adore, who was now on the couch, cuddling a dozy Major.

“Did you finish the paperwork?” “Fuck no,” She snorted, “I have to get Jinkx to double check like all of it as well.” “How much you got left?” “Not a lot but it’s all stuff to be signed off. I’ve filed a few things away though.” “You’ve only got 2 appointments and they’re both after 5, so you have to go clean the groomer’s room out.” She grinned as soon as the woman groaned. “How many appointments Jinkx got?” Moving off the couch, she looked over Farrah’s chair, chin resting on the back of it, “Oh they’ve got like a free morning. They’re helping me now then.”

This room was full of just any old garbage. There were rusted dog crates, a broken cat basket, half a broken computer chair, a fold away table that was for some reason not folded away, and several boxes and bags of decorations. A couple of boxes in the corner, it turned out much to Jinkx’s delight, was full of leashes and collars, clearly put here as spares, which were quite needed. They had a couple of slip leads on the hangers by prep, but they were worn through, and several of them had just disappeared.

Adore was currently focused on the unopened packages with ‘VET BED’ scrawled over them in scruffy writing. This room had clearly been meant for storing things they needed, but most of it had gotten completely forgotten about. Opening the box, it was full of the soft wooly bedding, which she decided she would suggest to Chad to use in replacement of the old, overwashed strips of it they were using. There was a lot of the new stuff, so much so that she checked it was from their own order, and not for the groomer. It was delivered a year ago.

“There’s a lot of good stuff in here,” Jinkx mused, “but there’s also a whole lot of… junk?” “You’re free for ages, and Max just has one op, should we take some of this shit out to the dump?” “Why not? It’ll probably take until lunch, so I guess it’s McDonalds today.” “Fuck yeah! We offering to anyone else to pitch in for it or are we just getting it for us?” “I’ll go ask them now, you start moving stuff nearer the door so we can get it out quicker.”

As Jinkx left, she focused quite intently on rearranging the room. This wasn’t Adore’s favourite type of job, tidying up was boring and exhausting and she’d rather be doing something more productive, but the promise of food was good incentive. Plus, she absolutely loved going in the car with Jinkx, as silly as it sounded, because it was always fun. Even if they were going on the worst home visit, the car ride was light and entertaining. Dragging the broken chair to be beside the door, she hoped this wouldn’t take too long, now excited to get out. When Jinkx was back, they helped drag everything toward the door. Once they’d sorted what was going in the tip, they encouraged Adore to help load the car.

Sat on the floor in front of one of the kennels, Max was doing the fun job of hand feeding a dog wet food. She’d been warned by the owner that he would wolf it down, so to try and prevent him from aspirating it, she elected not to just leave a bowl of food in his crate, as was the usual protocol. Originally, she’d offered it on a spoon, but he was clanking his gums off it and whining, so the best option was feeding him by hand. Sure, she had a rubber glove on, but she didn’t find it any less disgusting. Milk slumped down beside her, greeting the greedy yorkie with a polite hello.

“For someone whose hands have been inside of animals, you’d think I could manage this without feeling ill.” “Well, animal insides aren’t usually cold.” Nudging her elbow, she offered, “I’ll feed him, if you want.” “No, it’s fine, I’m getting used to it.” Max smiled a little towards her, before focusing again on the dog. After a pause, Milk asked, “How long you been working here? 4 months now?” “I think so, it’s gone by fast…” “Chad was really proud of you, you know. You’ve come on quick for someone so new.” “It wasn’t really a choice, I couldn’t be bad at it, or I’d be out of a job.” “Take the secondhand compliment.”

When the dog was fed, they both decided to hang around the in the room, mostly to make sure the little canine kept his food down. Max had brought her laptop in, and was sat at the prep table, making notes on the yorkie’s file. Milk was now restocking the syringe cupboard, having noticed when prepping the pup that they were running low of 1mls.

“We aren’t shifted for tomorrow, right?” “We never work thursdays, but we have to come in at lunch for a meeting.” “That’s enough time to recover - you want to go out for drinks tonight?” Max raised a brow, “I suppose, who else is going?” “Adore, Farrah, some girls I know from outside of here.” “Alright, sure.”

At closing up time, everyone was more than ready to go. Adore had hurt her wrist in moving things out of the car, but had got by her day alright, and was still planning on going on the night out. There was a stray dog handed in, which was reunited last minute, and the owner was kind enough to put a donation in the Guide Dogs box. Farrah was making her last Pet Health Plan call for the day, and when the phone clicked down into place, she cried a loud hurrah, pushing away from the desk to go and pet Major.

“Your turn to cash up tonight ‘Nila!” The door swung open, and in walked Raja. With a snidy tone, Manila turned to the girl on the couch, “Joke’s on you, my ride’s here.” “Didn’t realise I was your Uber driver now, as well as your personal shopper and all around slave.” “You knew what you were getting into when you asked me to get with you, that’s all I’m saying.”

As she gathered her bag and coat, she pointed to the til, “I cleared it with Chad that I could leave early, so this is actually your problem now. See you tomorrow at 12!” When Manila and her partner left, Farrah flipped her off, returning to the desk, but calling the dog with her. If she was going to have to tediously count money, she was having a canine friend to help her. She would have asked Adore, but she was even worse at getting the cashing up done. Knowing she’d be having a miserable time, and done writing up their notes, Jinkx came to sit with her.

“You count the notes, I’ll count the change.” “Thanks Jinkxy!” Now that the ginger was here, the dog had abandoned her to sit by his owner. With the two of them doing the job, it was a lot quicker, and it also meant she didn’t have to wait around for someone to sign off on the amount. “So, I seen you talking to Aja, do you know them?” “No, I’d only seen their mum here. Do you know them?” “They come to the group I run in the art centre, they’ve been coming for about a year.” “Really?” Farrah tilted her head, “What’re they like?” “When they let down the front, they’re sweet. But they like to come off… I wouldn’t say tough, but you get what I mean?” Nodding, Farrah closed the envelope, signing it, and pushing it over to Jinkx, who did the same. It was then put in the locked draw.

“What night does your group run again?” “It’s on Fridays, from 8pm to 10pm, and also Saturday, from 4pm til 8pm.” The group Jinkx hosted in the art centre was an LGBTQ+ support group, mostly for people to make friends, and get advice. They also hosted fundraisers from time to time, and it was something they’d become proud of. It had been running for 6 years now, and they’d been running it since the start. “I might start coming again.” Farrah used to go; that was a leading factor in her getting this job. She’d met Jinkx there 3 years ago, and attended the group for a year. In that time, she’d lost her original job, and they let her know almost as soon as they found out that there was a vacancy for a receptionist position. She’d been here ever since. She only stopped going to the group when she’d started a night class.

When everyone was ready to leave, all having changed into their non-work clothes, the going out girls converged into a group outside as Farrah locked up. A sweet routine that had started was that before Jinkx put him into the car, Major would go around to everyone who’d finished so he could get a fuss before he left. As Jinkx drove away, they would wave out the window, and Major would jump up at the the back seat windows, looking out with a dropped jaw and a happy face. Once the vet’s car out of sight, the girls hit the pub.

#farrah moan #manila luzon #max malanaphy #jinkx monsoon #milk #adore delano #vet au #group fic #akita #rpdr fanfiction #submission #hollywoof hills

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trbl-will-find-me · 7 years ago

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Every Exit, An Entrance (8/?)

There are two (and only two) possibilities: either she led XCOM to victory and they are now engaged in a clean up operation of alien forces, or XCOM was overrun, clearing the way for an alien-controlled puppet government to seize control of the planet.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option. Read the rest here

To say the call with the Council does not go well is an understatement.

No matter how she approaches the matter, there is no escaping her rather glaring oversight. That, combined with her continued refusal to hand over the weapons research, leads to a very pointed questioning of her fitness to continue as the project’s Commander.

So, with two hours until her shift starts, yes, she feels justified in playing darts in her office.

Someone knocks on the door as she’s yanking them out of the board for another go. “Come in!” She calls.

“I’m taking it your meeting went poorly?” Central asks.

“Let’s see,” she says, chucking a dart at the board. “No funding, no Fog Pod, and oh, maybe no more commanding.”

“What?”

“Uh-huh,” she says, chucking another dart. “You heard me.”

“Why?”

“Because,” a third dart. “And I quote ‘you were recruited for your strategic aptitude and expertise in biological defense procedures.” A fourth. “If you no longer meet those requirements and you are unwilling to honor other sections of the charter as signed, then,” she hurls another dart, missing the board entirely and wedging in the cork tile underneath. “It may be time to reconsider your command.”

“They’d have to have the backing of the other senior staff. They’ll never get it.”

“Not you or Shen,” she says, yanking the darts from the board again. “But Vahlen?”

“You’ve put your foot down once. I still think you made the right call on that, by the way.”

“Yeah, but if they don’t?” She shakes her head. “Anyway, it can’t be our focus now. We’ve got a bigger problem. Who are we still on good terms with?”

“Country-wise?”

She nods.

“Peru, Chile, Italy, Ireland, Kenya, Morocco. Belgium, Switzerland. Probably more, but that’s who comes to mind.”

“And every one of those countries, except for Belgium, saw alien activity, yeah?”

“I believe so.”

“Good,” she says, stepping back and readying another throw. “My next question is strictly off the record.”

“Understood.”

“How fucked are we if we go behind the Council’s back?”

Central considers this for a moment, crossing his arms and leaning back against the door. “There’s nothing that strictly prohibits it. But they’ve probably got a close eye on you.”

“So, we’re out of luck.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She pauses mid-throw. “Are you … are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

“I’m not on the Council’s radar.”

“If they catch you, that’s a dishonorable discharge at best, a court martial at worst.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“Central---“

“Commander, you do your job. I’ll do mine.”

Her shoulders slump. “It’s an awful risk.”

“Think I’ve earned getting to say I’ve survived worse. Besides,” he shrugs. “What’s the point of an intel officer who can’t handle a covert op?”

She offers him a small, worried smile. “You’re sure?”

He nods. “Give me a few days. You’ll have your Fog Pod.”

“What do we tell Shen and Vahlen?”

He laughs. “Come on. When has Vahlen ever asked where something came from?”

“Fair. But what about the Council? What do we tell them?”

“Who says they have to find out?”

A storm rolls in just after dinner, low, deep rumbling and the promise of a good soak. The air is hot and muggy, settling heavy over their corner of the universe, making her head throb a little worse than usual. She’s settled herself on the Avenger’s ramp, mug of tea in hand, to watch the show.

“Commander?” A voice calls from behind her. “’m I intruding?”

“Even if you were, pretty sure the errand I sent you on today would earn you a pass, Royston.” “I guess asking if you’re okay is pretty dumb, but ---“ she shrugs. “It feels weird not asking.”

“I’ll be fine. It’s all long enough ago --- sorry to dump that on you, by the way. Wasn’t exactly fair. How’d he take it?”

“He took it … okay is probably not the right word, but he didn’t throw anything,” she offers, sitting down. “And last I heard from Jane, he’s not passed out on the bar.”

“How did Kelly get babysitting duty?”

Royston brushes her hair behind her shoulder. “Well, originally, it was me and Lily and Lily’s dad who made up the entirety of the list of people who could reason with Central. Dr. Shen’s gone and I’m pretty solidly not on that list anymore, so that left it to Lily, which is sort of a tall order. When Jane showed up, she was fresh from fighting her way halfway across the US. She was smart and capable and completely external to the history everyone else had with each other. Throw in the fact that she’s a good shot and was willing to trust him, and well. The list of people who can reason with him when he’s drunk is now Kelly and Shen, and Kelly’s farther from burnout.”

In the distance, thunder rumbles, low and insistent.

“Hell of a job,” the Commander offers.

“Don’t envy her.”

It’s then that the Commander really registers the younger Royston’s legwear. “Sally, not that I’m complaining here, but what’s with the fishnets?”

Her face lights up. “Snatched them out of a house somewhere in … Missouri, I think? They drive Central nuts, but he let Thomas into the field in a pair of leather booty shorts, so he can’t complain about these.”

“Weren’t they … a little less colorful earlier? A little less … neon?”

The girl grins. “Yeah, but these are my off duty ones.”

The Commander laughs, burying her face in her hands. “Sartorial passive aggression. Clever.”

“If I ever wanna see the field, it’s not like I can openly flout his authority again. Besides, he’s had, like, four years to build up a tolerance to them.”

“You must’ve given him a run for his money, growing up.”

She nods. “Yeah, I could be a pain in the ass. “ Slowly, the smile fades from her face. “Uh, Commander, is that open door policy---“

“Out with it, Sal.”

“What were you two like before the Invasion? Were you, y’know, happy?”

It’s the first question to really catch her off her guard. “What makes you think there was ever an ‘us two’?”

Royston bites down on her tongue, trapping it between her teeth. “If I tell you, are you gonna kick me off the ship?”

“That’s a hell of a lede.”

“Are you?”

“No, but I’d really like to know where this is going.”

Thunder booms in the distance.

Sally groans. “He always said I’d overplay my hand one of these days.” She shakes her head. “Okay, so Papa had the gift, yeah? Maman developed it when she was pregnant with me. So, surprise, surprise, I’ve got it too. But, after what happened to him, and with what happened to other people who had it, well, Maman was adamant about my hiding it -- It’s why she wanted to make sure I wasn’t on my own when … you know.-- so I’ve got almost no control and, well, you would be amazed how much people just … broadcast.”

The Commander can feel her eyebrows rising towards her hairline. “Oh.”

“Yeah, that’s not it. I mean, it’s not just that. I’ve, um. I’ve got memories that … aren’t mine? I mean, they’re my parents’ so it’s not totally foreign, but um. Yeah. Please don’t kick me off the ship. It’s the only home I’ve got. And I’d worry about Central.”

“I’m not … you may be grounded, but you’re still an XCOM operative. Who else knows about your situation?”

“Just Central and Lily. And even then, I think it’s really only Central who knows the full scope.” She shrugs. “He kind of had to field a lot of questions about ‘whose memory is this’ after Maman. Well.” She shrugs.

The Commander nods, considering the admission. “I’m not kicking you off the ship, Sally. This is home. And, about your question,” she sighs, biting her lip. “It’s hard to give you a straight answer. There were always … complications. But yeah, I’d say we were happy.”

Outside the ship, rain begins to fall.

Sally nods. “I think … I think he’s gonna come around. I think he’s still gotta pout for a while because he’s himself, but ---“

“I don’t pout, Sally.”

“It’s always nice to announce yourself,” she grumbles, twisting to face him. “How long have you been lurking there?”

“Long enough. Scoot,” he says, gesturing back into the ship,

She rolls her eyes, but there’s not the hostility that usually accompanies the gesture. “Good luck,” she says to the Commander, standing. “Throw’im off the ship if he’s an ass again.”

“I can still hear you, you know.”

“Good,” she says, stopping to pat his arm. “You’re supposed to.”

“In. And take the damn fishnets off!” He calls after her.

“Soon as you tell Thomas he can’t wear leather booty shorts into the field. It’s a combat zone, not a sex dungeon!”

Central rolls his eyes. “Can I sit?”

She nods. “Sal’s cute.”

“She’s a pain the ass, but yeah, she’s a good kid. Gonna owe her mother a thank you one of these days.”

“Not in the near future, yeah? Don’t think anyone else could keep us running.”

Lighting splits the sky and the downpour intensifies.

“You’ve always been a quick study. You’d adapt.”

She shakes her head.

“I went through the files,” he says after a few minutes. “Pretty sure Sal did, too.”

“I … sort of told her to. I thought totally blindsiding you would be … in poor taste.”

They sit in silence again.

“Commander, I don’t know how to have this conversation.”

“We’re not yelling, so that’s a start. You feel better after what you saw?”

“Better isn’t the word I’d use.”

“You get your proof?”

“I shouldn’t have needed it in the first place.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He shakes his head. “Yeah, I got my proof.” He swallows hard. “How long did they…?” “Two weeks is my guess, but I wouldn’t trust it. I’ve got things that are missing, things that are out of order. It’s all pretty fragmented. More flashbulb than continuous. Don’t know if I’m grateful for that or not.”

“You’d rather remember it all?” She shrugs. “There might be good intel. But, no. I’d really rather not.”

They’re quiet again.

“What was it like?” “In the tank?”

He nods. “It felt real. It all felt real,” she shakes her had. “You were there. And Shen and Vahlen. Royston, Martin, Hershel, Bernard, Molchetti, everybody. I look at it now and …” She rolls her eyes. “It’s like some fucked up Wizard of Oz. Except swap out the ruby slippers for that goddamn suit and the tornado for a brain implant.”

“’m afraid Toto might have to be a Chryssalid.”

“No, thanks,” she chuckles.

Thunder rolls in from the distance.

“I’m glad you didn’t … you know. Find a way.”

“Now you sound like Sal.”

He shrugs. “Comment was over the line.”

“That’s sometimes the nature of honesty.”

He shakes his head. “Spent twenty years trying to find you. Would have been a little put off if I’d found out you’d …”

“Found a way?”

He nods. “I would have missed you.” A moment passes. “I did miss you.” He stares out at the storm. “I’d also like to retract that statement about you having blood on your hands.”

“That … that’s arguable,” she sighs. “Base fell on my watch.”

“Kind of hard to command mind-controlled personnel.”

“Still. I should have seen something like that coming.”

“The whole point of a surprise attack, Commander, is that it’s a surprise. That’s not on your head.”

She shrugs. “Maybe. Doesn’t feel like it though.”

“You’re not … you’re not responsible for it. Or the things that happened after.”

“But if I’d been able to head it off in the first place? We might have a lot more of our people with us.” “Don’t go down that path.”

“It’s true, though. I’m sure you’ve thought it.”

“I saw what they did.”

“Like I said, if I could have headed that off…” She trails off.

They’re both quiet again.

“You’ve run damn good ops,” he says after a few minutes.

“You put together a good team. Colorful, but a good team.” She chuckles. “Where did you pull Thomas from, though?”

He grins, sheepish. “Some bar in a haven outside of Montreal. He got tossed out on his ass --- literally.”

She nods. “Somehow, that’s fitting.

The rain hardens into a downpour.

“Commander,” he asks, turning to look at her for the first time since he sat down. “How do we … how do I unfuck this?”

She meets his gaze, considering him for a minute “Well, you’re talking to me. Wasn’t sure we’d even get that far.”

“Yeah, neither was I.”

“I’m guessing I probably have to re-earn your trust, for starters. That’s fine. Nothing gets fixed over night. We both know that. Just … do me a favor, and don’t cut me out like that again, alright?”

“Deal.”

“Good,” she says, letting out the tension she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

#xcom #fic #commander/central #look! communication skills #every exit an entrance

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waqasblog2 · 6 years ago

Text

19 SEO Tips To Increase 📈 Your Search Rank🔍👍 [With Proof!]

Last Updated - 2019-03-11

One of my 2018 New Year's resolutions was to make organic search traffic a top priority.

And you know what it worked!

For transparency sake in March 2018 this site appeared almost 180,000 in Google search results. This translated to 61,000 page views. For any given month in 2017 I was lucky to earn 5000 impressions.

By November 2018, 8 months later, I had improved my organic search traffic to over 160,000, which continued to climb in December, despite the holiday lull.

The good news is you can follow my lead and improve your organic traffic and Google results. You may not see the large numbers I had, but you will see improved traffic.

The actual traffic volume will vary by niche and target market. My numbers increased because there is a lot of search volume for web development. But if you have basically 0 visitors from Google each month, which most sites experience, 100 or 500 new visitors could make a positive impact on your business.

After making many deliberate technical changes to this site and changing my content strategy things improved. My next goal is to reach 1 million monthly search impressions.

These tips are not related to building backlinks, at least not directly, they are mostly related to on-page and technical SEO. This means how you can clean up your site's code to make it faster and easier to use. These tips

After reading these tips you will want to audit your site to see how many of these tips can be applied to your site to make it rank better.

How did I do it? How can you replicate my success?

In this article you will learn 20 actionable tips you can implement today, for free, to start reaping the rewards of increased traffic to your web site.

Full disclosure, my results are mine. Your results can and will vary. I do use some paid tools, but you can implement these tips for free. The services and tools I use help me scale and complete tasks faster.

Intentional Effort and Motivation

I wont lie, I invested 10-20 hours a week for the first two months of 2018 making changes, one by one. I have not stopped making changes and will continue to make upgrades.

Good SEO is hard and takes a lot of intentional effort. But anything worth doing does.

The good news is there are many FREE things you can start doing today that will have an immediate impact.

Last week I got involved in a conversation with fellow Microsoft MVPs about our annual contributions. You see we were in the last week of our award renewal period, which means everyone is evaluating what we have done the past year.

A key area for MVPs is their blogs. How many, how much reach, how to get more reach etc.

Of course great content is the goal, but reaching the developer and IT community is more important for our MVP award status.

If no one reads the content we pour our soul into then does it really matter?

The good news is you can get the eyeballs you are after. And you don't have to be a Microsoft MVP to win big.

As MVPs we are motivated to reach others and provide good advice so everyone can succeed. Hopefully that is your first goal.

The second goal of course is to use our platforms to confirm our expertise and work ethics to earn great paying gigs and sell our products. Right now my main revenue goal is to enroll students in my Progressive Web App Course.

So between the MVP program, developer projects and my course I have lots of motivation to make this blog popular.

Organic Search Engine Optimization

Over 93% of web traffic originates with search.

The best news is that traffic is FREE! But it is not easy to earn.

That means a solid SEO strategy is important for anyone wanting to reach folks with their message. Compared to all the paid traffic channels, organic SEO is by far the best source of traffic.

Search engine optimization or SEO is the art of creating content and earning good placement on tarageted search or keyword phrases in search engines.

I emphasize earning because you can't buy your way to the top. At least not for a reasonable return.

The algorithms used by Google, Bing and other search engines are highly gaurded trade secrets. But they boil down to these requirements:

That's it!

Simple, right?

Win these two categories and you will earn things like backlinks, etc.

The tips I share in this article are designed help you meet these two requirements. Plus this is not limited to just Microsoft MVPs. These tips will work for any web site.

Here is the Proof

I had neglected my SEO for a few years. I neglected checking my analytics and just assumed things were still humming along like they were several years ago.

After an MVP meeting in Boston I went and checked my analytics. I was sad, because there was almost no traffic.

Last year I made an intentional effort to grow my reach, but honestly I went down the wrong path. I listened to successful marketers talk about their channels, mostly paid.

So like them I spent a lot of time and money trying to grow an audience through things like Facebook ads. And to be honest I grew an audience. I have over 6000 Facebook fans and an email list I grew from 0 to 1400+ in the past year.

What was I doing wrong? I mean I try to author content I think other developers need to know. My site is fast, That is something I preach about, so I have to load fast!

Turns out despite writing good content (yes that is arbitrary 😃) no one was reading the content.

Bad search rankings were the big reason why. So over Christmas I decided to focus 100% of my effort to grow my organic search.

It was not an overnight success, but so far it was close.

I really started to see results in mid February. That is roughly when the items I am sharing in this post were fully implemented.

Over the course of the year my traffic gradually improved as articles accrued better rankings. I also added more articles over time.

Note: There were a couple of short periods where I made changes and the analytics code was omitted. Also, note a seasonal drop off over the Christmas holidays. Tech traffic drops when developers go on vacation, who knew!

Not every article is a success by my standards, most are. A few seem to be stuck on page 2-4. But over time I tweak the content and they gradually improve.

So what did I do?

Author Greenfield Content

Back in the 2010 time frame I was challenged by my manager to author more 'thought leadership' content.

What does that mean?

I wrote what I will call vanity content. These are articles I felt others needed to hear or that I felt were important.

Often they are more op-ed than substantive or actionable.

In short, developers really want to know how to get their job done, not theories.

Anyway, I wrote a lot of articles that were more editorials than practical. An example of these areticles is one I wrote about Mark Zuckerberg comments at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Lots of pontifications and yeah it tells you what I think.

But who the heck cares?

That page ranks for absolutely 0 keywords!!!!

Turns out I had hundreds of URLs ranking for 0 keywords, which means they were just dead weight.

Unless I share those articles on social media no one will ever read the article. And even then it is questionable. Most tweets and Facebook posts have little to no engagement to speak of.

Heck I am looking over that article and just see words, lots and lots of words.

I don't even want to read it!

I may apply one of my later tips to this article, I will let you guess which one!

Up to that point (2010) I typically wrote about things I thought were helpful. Typically it was how to write code, which should be what I write about! I want to help developers write better code.

At the same time I want business decision makers to know what they need to use for their business. So explaining technology is the other key content area.

But I can't just write things I get a fancy for. I need to write for what others are searching for.

So, in mid February I switched back to focusing on that strategy. I started writing on topics I would have never dreamed of 4 months ago. And you know what, people are reading those articles!

These articles fall in the category of Greenfield content. The difference between these articles and the vainity posts are they have a long traffic life. Sometimes vanity articles get a great initial bump, but quickly fade into obscurity.

Greenfield content targets common search phrases with decent or large volumes. Those searches are pretty steady over time.

The HTML Input Placeholder Color article is just an example. That page basks in 5-20 victors a day.

Did you know most web sites can't even get 25 real visitors a day!

Aggregate those view over 365 days and I should have 1,825-7,300 readers over the course of the year.

And you know what, I should get even more. I am not fully ranking as high as I can for that page's keywords yet. I am almost there! I am betting I can get to 30-50 readers a day by the end of April! #BOOM

To target these topics I needed to discover what people were searching for. This means keyword mining.

The best place to start is the Google Adwords keyword planner. You will need an Adwords account and I think it needs to be active for a while before you have full access. I also think they recently changed the rules to require some paid activity.

Bing has a similar tool, but it not near as good.

There are great paid services like AHrefs, which I now subscribe and SEMRush.

These tools should give you a good idea what phrases people are entering in search engines to find answers to their questions. They will also tell you estimated volumes, etc. The paid services will also help you understand how stiff the competition is, so you can target simple topics first.

There are other free keyword tools available online. Even with the paid services you will need to take time to identify target keywords to create content.

Key takeaway: Write What People Are Searching For

Write Differently Than Your English Teacher Taught, Write for the Web

I have mixed feelings about my experiences in English classes. I enjoyed the reading, but not the subsequent book reports. To this day I still get 'critiques' about my grammar and writing style. Somehow it never seemed like it followed a formula like math and chemistry.

Writing has changed in the past 30 years, thanks to the Internet.

In school we were and still are taught to write for print, not for digital.

There is a difference and knowing how to write for online makes a difference.

Most of us were taught a 'Chicago Style' of writing. 5 paragraphs, intro and conclusion. Each paragraph at least 3 sentences.

I still fight to avoid this style today.

But as you may have noticed this article avoids that style.

And for good reason.

Research says it does not work online. I call it 'Internet Style'.

Even if you still read the morning paper or physical books, you no longer need to write for print.

Internet readers don't want long paragraphs, instead use short paragraphs.

Make sure there is margin or spacing between the paragraphs.

You should also 'bridge' paragraphs. Brian Dean has the best advice, I love Bucket Brigades.

Make your content skimmable. This way your readers can scroll down the page before committing to a full article. I often look for lists and main headers to get the general idea before committing.

79% of your audience is only going to skim your content. That’s not likely to change.

Don't be hurt knowing everyone will not read your content.

Instead, create content that is easily skimmable and still provides value. Your goal is to help them, not consume their time.

You should also try your best to tell a story. A problem in my primary niche here on Love2Dev is being too technical. Most the content in the development space reads like documentation.

Over the past year I have authored a new Progressive Web Application book and articles for other publications. At least on two occasions my editors pushed me to tell a story with my content. As a developer my mind struggles with the concept of making technical content read more like a novel.

Don't worry you won't have to write the next Harry Potter, just something that engages your audience. Over the past year I have been working more and more with C# Corner to improve the site's SEO. The idea of producing and updating content from documentation and example style articles into something more engaging has been a struggle.

Since the authors are developers and general learn development concepts from documentation the creative side is often overlooked. But not only will incorporating a story based approach engage more readers, it will help your search profile.

Why?

Because your content will be better quality and over time you will be rewarded.

Appeal to the reader's person, and don't just produce dry content that bores them. Make them engage deeper than just scanning your articles by telling a story they can relate.

Telling a story is also a great way to acheive my next tip, writing long!

Write Long

Research shows longer content ranks better. But this is not the whole story.

Just because this research shows longer articles rank better does not mean this rule applies 100% of the time.

Sometimes short content is the right content. I still try to hit at least 500 words an article.

My workflow is to identify a primary keyword phrase and look at the top 10-20 results. How long are there articles? Especially the top 3 results, they matter the most.

More may not be better.

Sometimes the question (keyword) can be answered in a sentance or two.

This does not mean to write 2 sentance articles! Answer the provide an answer as quickly and succinctly as you can, but always provide more depth to the topic.

Recently I have been producing a series of 'how to' on topics I consider very beginner. For example JavaScript for loops. The funny thing is everytime I start on these 'simple' topics I find some intermediate or advanced topic to cover in the article.

I do find authoring longer articles gives me an opportunity to prove my skill level, show off a little and cover a broad range of keyword opportunities.

If I can produce an article that ranks in the top 30 for 500 or more keyword phrases means I have a winner that will generate traffic for years to come. The CSS Placeholder Color article ranks for over 400 keywords I know about.

Think about that reach?

Bonus : Make sure you mention your primary keywords or keywords in the first two paragraphs. You don't want your primary keyword to show up around word 1500!

Backlinks Matter

There are two types of backlinks, external and internal. Google and other search engines use them to find pages as well as apply value to the page. Basically, they are the most important ranking factor.

An Authority Hacker research study confirms backlinks “are still the most strongly correlated factor for SEO success.” They are not alone, other studies back up their findings.

While the correlation between links and search position is weakening, it does not seem to be completely fading. Until search engines can find a more reliable mechanism to rank content they will continue to be important.

This means you should focus on acquiring links to your content. You should also plan your internal linking strategy. The goal is not just earn a large quantity of links, but earn links from topically relevant pages that also have authority or equity to pass to your page.

Use Media (Images & Videos)

I know we tend to write toward developers, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

Research has shown content with pictures and videos rank better.

Way back in 2009 Moz did a study that found posts with images, lists and videos attracted the most domain backlinks.

But who has time to find and sometimes pay for photos?

I don't.

These are just some of the free sites I use for artwork. Sometimes I pay for photos and design work. It depends on the content and potential pay back.

I was spending time creating illustrations. But honestly there is little return in the time it takes to create a decent illustration. Sometimes it took longer to make the feature illustration than it took to write the content.

Today I have changed to a good photo. I may overlay some text, but that is rare. I limit my effort to uploading the original and then letting a set of AWS Lambdas optimize the image and create a responsive array to include in my pages. The Lambdas even create the HTML, CSS and JSON I need to render any page I might create.

For technical content, which most MVPs produce, you should also include screen shots. Phones have made that super easy. On Android just hold the power and down volume button down.

iPhones are similar, push the power button and home button at the same time and quickly release.

On Windows you can hit the Windows + PrtScn button on most keyboards. Windows also has the Snipping tool. Just hit the start button and start typing snipping and it will show up.

The snipping tool allows you to isolate an area of the screen for a screen capture. You can then annotate the image. There are a few of these in this article.

I have also started making screen captures of source code because I have been having markdown to HTML rendering issues with HTML. I hope to fix that soon.

There are many opportunities for you to add artwork in your content. Images are an easy improvement.

But there are more opportunities...

Start a YouTube Channel

Last year one of the first things I did was get serious about video. I had grand visions of becoming a YouTube star.

I got a green screen, tripod, lavaliere microphones and of course editing software.

Video production is way more complicated than I anticipated. Not to mention getting people to watch developer videos on YouTube is not easy.

In fact, I will warn to not expect much traffic from YouTube in terms of traffic to your channel. Developer topics are not highly sought after.

Which is a shame because there is some great content on how to develop great software.

I got a little depressed about my results. But then I looked at the subscription and view numbers of what I consider to be my YouTube competition. You know what, their numbers sucked too!

I was making my expectations against different niches. So basically here is the honest truth, developers are missing out on great YouTube content.

But the rest of the world loves YouTube. I have learned so much about everything, including development the past year watching YouTube each morning when I get up.

So why I am telling you to start a YouTube channel?

That last point is important, but first what is OBS?

Open Broadcast Studio is a free, open source video recording tool. Thanks to Kevin Griffen for turning me on this great piece of software.

It can record your screen and create the videos you need for YouTube. But that is not where it shines.

You can use it for YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Twitch and other live media platforms!

Live is where the action is.

I still use Camtasia to record my screen for code walk throughs and slide decks. I should probably switch. But when I stream live from my desktop I use OBS.

While I was at the summit I forgot my phone tripod and needed to get creative. So I used OBS from my Surface to interview Greg Whitworth about CSS. I live streamed the interview and now it is a permanent video on my YouTube channel.

The cool thing is when you stream a live video on YouTube you can then post it as a regular video!

Did I say no editing and production involved?

Plus it was all FREE! Heck Yeah!!!!!

But wait there is more! I have not forgotten the SEO part.

Now the hard part starts. You need to write a blog post on the topic. When you are done writing, embed the YouTube video in the article. Google loves this!

YouTube is one of their properties. So they love anyone that promotes their properties. When you embed a video in your blog post you are killing two birds at once.

You are promoting your video on YouTube, but you are also adding multi-media to your article.

Images, videos and anything that adds non-text value to your content makes it rank better.

Users are four times more likely to consume video content than written copy.

In fact anywhere you can, embed the video. Add it to LinkedIn, Google Plus, Facebook, etc. There are literally thousands of sites you can embed your YouTube video.

Make sure you put a link to the blog post in the video's description. Even though it is a nofollow link, it still has some juice. I get site traffic from these links.

Today, I don't worry about my YouTube traffic. Its great if it happens. But I know the real value is embedding the video in the article.

For the record I will record a video for this article and embed it....right here looks good!

I don't always record the video first, sometimes it takes a few days to get around to it. But I try. I can testify when I add that video I typically see a rankings boost within 24 hours. Sometimes that is the difference between a position 25 and a place in the top 10!

Publish to a YouTube channel and embed the videos in your articles, Google loves to promote its own properties!

Video is hot, duh I just wrote about it.

Attaching short videos with your social media posts is a great way to increase your engagement numbers.

But who has time to make all those 15 second videos? I don't.

Initially I signed up for Shakr, which costs $100/month. I made lots of videos using this service. They provide templates for 10-120 second videos. The best part is they render in the cloud, so your computer is not tied up with an intense video rendering process.

Most videos take 5-10 minutes to produce.

But $100, too much for my needs.

Then one day I found Lumen 5. I honestly have no idea how I found it.

They have paid plans, but I don't pay at all. I use the free service.

You can add your RSS feed and they will periodically grab your latest post, extract text and add background images. All that left is you hitting a button to render the video.

You can customize the video, but honestly I don't.

If you have followed my social media the past year you have seen these videos. Maybe you are following me thanks to the attention those videos gave my social channels!

You can also add these videos to your posts for that media bump.

Once you create a Lumen5 account add your RSS feed and it will make promo videos you can add to social media to promote your posts.

Attaching these videos to Tweets, Facebook and other social media posts will increase your aggregate engagement rates!

Emojis Increase Engagement Rates

Add emojis to your post titles and make sure you share the emojis in your social media shares.

Thanks to Kirupa for sharing how to use emojis in HTML. He explains how to get code points and add them to your text.

Go to Emojipedia.com to get the code points, it has a built in feature to copy them to your clipboard. You can then paste the emoji in your text.

The emojis show in the search results, which makes more people click your result, and that will move you up the ranks.

That's right, the number of times searchers click or chose your link in the search results affects how well it ranks. If you are in the top 10 for a week and have zero clicks then most likely you will be dropped down.

Having the visual pop provided by an emoji can grab the attention that earns a few extra clicks. Those clicks translate into better rankings.

The emojis also get better social response rates.

Its all about the visual attraction. Remember we like to look at pictures more than we like to read and emojis are just fun!

Ask Brian Terlson!

Embed Slide Decks

Even if you don't speak at conferences and user groups like I do slide decks can be your SEO friend.

I use PowerPoint to help me outline content. Plus I can create diagrams and currate images.

You can export your slides as images and PDFs. The images can then be repurposed in your written articles or videos.

You may also want to use the slide deck to record a video or do a YouTube live stream. Of course then you can embed the recording!

You should also create accounts on SlideShare and SpeakerDeck and upload your slide decks. Make sure you include a good description with a link back to your article.

You should also include links to your content in the slides. Google can read those links and give you backlink credit.

Exporting to a PDF can be valuable as well. There are thousands of document sharing sites you can upload to, like Scribd. Google can also parse the PDF for those links and give you a backlink.

I also use some of my slide decks as free lead magnets to grow my e-mail list. I typically reformat the slides to make them more 'book' appropriate and keep the content a little different since it is a lead magent.

Slide decks are an often overlooked tool to increase your search engine visibility.

Make Infographics

Just like slide decks infographics can be powerful SEO tools.

People like pictures and infographics are informative graphics (see how they are combined to a cool word?)

You can also share those on image sharing sites and of course earn links back to your site.

Pro Tip: Turn your slide decks into InfoGraphics!

I have created a few infographics and they seem to be well liked. I do pay graphic design specialist to create them for me. I spend about $40-50 for each one, but it is well worth the inevestment.

FYI: I have ordered an infographic for this article 😁

Use HTTPS

As of this summer I doubt any site using HTTP will be listed in any search results.

Google has made it clear in recent years HTTPS is a ranking signal. Chrome and other browsers are getting more aggressive with visual messages when a page does not use HTTPS.

This means consumers will not visit insecure sites.

The evidence is clear, if you are not using HTTPS you probably are not listed in the first page for any search today. There are some exceptions to this rule.

My anecdotal survey says less than 10% of the searches I perform or research include pages using HTTP.

Another observation about sites using HTTTP, they tend to be abandoned. By that I mean the content has not been updated in a year or more, in most cases. Which is probably why they have not been upgraded to use HTTPS.

When I find sites using HTTP I tend to review them and find what they rank for and put that content on my to do list because I know I should be able to out rank that page within a month or so.

Certificates are free today, so there is not real excuse to use HTTP anymore. Upgrade, today if you have not.

Be Fast - Real Fast

I have been saying this for over a decade. I still encounter developers that argue web performance does not matter.

The reality is consumers, real people, want pages to load fast. Like before they click a link fast. On mobile cellular connections no less.

Google has been clear, speed matters for search engine ranking. Marketers know this.

In fact they write more about web performance optimization than developers do. And those are the people that hire developers, think about that...

The first rule is you need to have meaningful content painted on the screen within a second. You should also be usable between 3-5 seconds after the user perceives they requested the page.

At 3 seconds you have lost 50% of the customers that wanted to read or interact with your page.

Mobile makes this harder.

Always test your site and pages on real mobile hardward and by that I mean average mobile phones, not an iPhone X or Pixel 2.

You can use the Chrome developer tools to perform simulated tests. WebPageTest is another great way to audit your pages. Your goal is to achieve a speed index of 1000 or less.

I wont hijack this article with web performance optimization advice. I have enough of that on the site already!

Do Not Use Fast Food Frameworks

I know I get lots of grief about this topic. But I am 100% right.

Sites that use Angular, React, Vue, Ember and other fast food frameworks don't rank well.

The #1 reason is they load too damn slow!

JavaScript is the #1 reason your pages don't render fast.

Plus Google deprecated their AJAX cralwing policy a couple of years ago, which means single page apps and AJAX heavy sites won't index well in the first place.

If you want to rank well, ditch the framework and focus on pre-rendered static web sites using thin JavaScript.

Remember the average web page takes 22 seconds to render on mobile phones. JavaScript is the reason. My pages average 3-4 seconds, just sayin.

Fix Your Broken Backlinks

The first thing I did over Christmas was repairing my backlink profile. These are links to your site. They account for about 33% of your ability to rank, or so the experts say.

I did the research and found about 2000 broken backlinks to my site! That was more than were active. No wonder my organic SEO had fallen so much.

Most were pointing to my original blog engine's routes. I spent about 30 minutes each night going through the list and identifying the URLs they pointed to and setup a 301 redirect to a new page.

Sometimes this was redirecting the link to the new route. Other times I had removed the content all together. I either pointed them to my blog's home page, my home page or a related page.

If you are not familiar with a 301 redirect it refers to the HTTP status code returned from the server when a resource is requested but has been moved to a new address. It tells the client (browser) the resource has permanently moved and what the new URL is. The user agent should then load the new location.

By configuring 301 redirects you are reclaiming these links. For Love2Dev this had a big impact on the domain rating. This is a common KPI different search engine optimization tools have created to indicate the domain's health in terms of SEO. Each service has their own algorithm so I won't try to provide details.

The irony to this story is one of the first blog posts I wrote was how to setup a 301 redirect in ASP.NET.

Claim Your Site in the Google & Bing Web Master Tools

The first place to identify your broken links is in the Google & Bing web master tools.

This is your 'official' window into how the search engines view your site. You can see what backlinks you have been credited, what search phrases you rank for and how much traffic they send.

Just as important you can also see if there are crawl errors. The main thing I look for are 404 or not found URLs on my site.

Google reports these URLs and what source pointed to the missing URL. You can then configure a 301 to direct that traffic to a new URL.

If you have not configured your site in these web master tools you should read the instructions. You will need to either add a special HTML page or a DNS record to verify ownership.

In Google you should also claim up to a combination of 4 variations: http://domain.com, http://www.domain.com, https://domain.com and https://www.domain.com. I can't remember why this is important, but do it. The stats and information will be available for your cononical protocol and domain.

Canonical Tag

Speaking of cononical, you should add a rel="cononical" META tag to every page. Its value should be the final or single source of truth for the page.

You should setup 301 redirects for anyone entering your site using HTTP and the domain configuration you are not using.

For example I route everyone to https://love2dev.com/{slug}. You may route to your www version, it is up to you. Just route them to a single source.

Search engines use the cononical tag to give the authoritative URL all the credit. This keeps your link juice from being distributed to other versions, which reduces your ability to rank.

Open Graph & Structured Data

There is no proven correlation between structured data and your ability to rank, yet. But it can be helpful for social media marketing and the potential to be listed in a position 0 resource.

Position 0 are the useful content boxes above the first listing. The content can be in a variety of forms, like lists, image packs or paragraphs. The content is 'scraped' from one of the top 10 listings, not nessecarily the #1 listing.

I have a few pages benefiting from position 0 right now. I can attest they drive a higher volume of traffic than normal search listings.

Sometimes structure data is used for these resources.

Structured data is also used for local SEO, but that is an entirely different subject.

Re-Purpose Old Content

If you are like me and started blogging over a decade ago you have old, crusty articles. Some of then have some value, they just need to be refurbished.

Before you throw out those old articles, evaluate if their core value or points are still valid today. If so refresh the content.

Not only do you get a new article, but you don't have to start fresh.

Remember to 301 the old URL before publishing to a new URL.

One thing I am doing as I refresh old articles is use shorter URLs, you may want to do this as well.

Delete Dead Weight Pages

Remember that Zuckerberg article I mentioned earlier? Dead weight. I need to delete it.

I wont now, because it is an example for this post.

But I have deleted around 400 dead posts on this blog since the first of the year. I am removing 40 this week alone.

Removing dead pages helps your site rank better because Google has a clearer picture of what your site is about. Plus those old post that no longer have backlinks or talk about technology that no longer exists dont offer value to anyone.

Google Gary Illyes unpacked this topic in a Q&A with Stone Temple Consulting a few years ago. Its about having high quality content. If you think about those pages are not bringing you traffic but they consume spidering time from the Googlebot and create 'noise' that keeps potential visitors from reading your core message.

I think removing those posts was a big reason why my newer posts started doing better.

Make sure you setup a 301 redirect from these posts to something live on your site. For me, most of those URLs now point to my main blog page.

Use Mobile First Responsive Design

This should not even need to be mentioned, but I will anyway. Google is aggresively swapping their mobile index to be their primary index right now. That's because the majority of searches originate on mobile devices.

By June mobile will be the primary index. This means Google will spider or evaluate your site as it renders on a phone more than it will as a desktop. Perform poorly on small view ports and you risk not ranking in search results.

This should emphasize the need to have a mobile first responsive layout on your site. You need to be able to render nicely on any device and any viewport.

Shoot For Big Targets - Hit Long Tails

Its easy to start digging into keyword data. I know I am fascinated by the terms and volumes I am finding in my research. Its important you understand how to read the data to form a realistic strategy.

Remember how I said the placeholder color article ranked for hundreds of phrases? The vast majority of those terms are lucky to see 10-20 searches a month.

Sure there are about 10-12 with over 500 searches a month globally. And yes those are the primary terms I am targeting. But I am careful to identify different 'long tail' phrases.

About 20% of the billions of searches Google handles each day are entered for the first time! This means there was no way for you to know to target those phrases.

For what it's worth this is where their RankBrain AI engine kicks in. But that's another complex topic....

Think about 20% of a billion. That is a lot of potential traffic to your site. And it does not stop with new searches. The vast majority of search keyword phrases are entered less than 20-30 times a month.

Search engines do their best to interpret the user's intention and deliver the best result set. It helps when you know how to pepper your content with latent semantic phrases.

These are words and phrases that relate to the target keyword. For example, writing about Toyota automobiles should be surrounded by phrases related to driving or repairing a car.

Knowing what semantic or contextual phrases helps, a lot.

You can manually try to harvest search suggestions by entering primary phrases in the search to see what the auto suggest tool returns.

But free tools are always better!

Nile Patel's free uber suggest tool is very helpful.

There are also many services you can pay for, and full disclosure, I recommend this if you are serious. I subscribe to aHrefs and it is worth every penny.

I have refreshed and updated dozens of articles with additional phrases over the past few months and seen immediate impacts. But I need to know what to add and these tools help guide me to the right phrases.

I have to say this may be one of the biggest improvements I made. In the past most of my articles would have some rank on 5-10 phrases. Today it is rare I have an article with less than 100 phrases with some SEO ranking.

Wrapping it Up

These tips have focused on how you can modify a combination of on page/technical SEO and your content/editorial strategy.

Some should be obvious, but if you are like most you neglect the easy things more than you should. Others you probably never considered.

I know there are items in this list I never applied till I took a leap of faith. Letting go of hundreds of old posts is a good example.

Organic search should be a primary goal of any content strategy. It is where the majority of web journeys begin. The traffic is free, but not easy to earn.

Writing content people need is important, but making sure you provide the best experience means your great content is sure to rank high and earns lots of free, reoccuring traffic.

This content was originally published here.

0 notes

kpopfanfictrash · 8 years ago

Text

Binary Star (IV)

Author: kpopfanfictrash

Pairing: You / Jaebum / Mark

Rating: PG

Word Count: 3,749

Summary: “In some cases, these close binary systems can exchange mass, which may bring their evolution to stages that single stars cannot attain.”

You and Jaebum have been dating forever when Mark Tuan shows up in your classroom. You’ve always been against change - a bit debilitating, being a writer - but for some reason this new kid has you thinking there might be an upside to chaos.

Before you know it, you’re at the back. At the back during your song. The one Jaebum wrote for you and you’re struggling not to feel upset about that fact. Struggling to hang onto the bubble of excitement you felt when the music started. It’s hard though, when Jaebum is still singing to the crowd as though nothing happened. Is still singing to the idea of you, not to you.

This song is a hit. A smash, actually. All around you the club is out of control. This is the song that could get them famous. But do you want that?

Even having to ask yourself that hurts.

It’s been three weeks since Jaebum’s concert. Three weeks since the blur of meetings and discussions about whether or not Jaebum and his band have ‘potential.’ The whole thing ended with James saying he would call as soon as he heard.

Apparently James now submits a review to his higher-ups. Who submit a review to their higher-ups. Somewhere above that lies the final say in whether or not On the Shore gets signed. When Jaebum asked how long this process takes, James couldn’t say.

“Hard to tell,” he said, packing up his briefcase. “Sometimes a week – sometimes months. Once time I had a band on the ropes for a whole year before someone at corporate finally decided to let them in.”

On the ropes. That’s what agents call their waiting bands. They have signed bands, potential bands and bands who are on the ropes. Jaebum’s band is currently one of these. As more and more days tick by, you know Jaebum is internally freaking out. Every word he says is on edge and you find yourself tiptoeing more than usual. Not that this bothers you – much.

It’s just that with Jaebum so wrapped up in his own problems – there’s no one to talk to about yours.

Mark slides into the seat next to you, glancing sideways as the bell rings. “Hey.” He nods. “What’s up?”

“What’s up?” you ask, trying not to smile. “Not much, homie.”

“Oh, god.” Mark winces. “Never say that again.”

“It’s my new thing!” you protest, tapping your pencil on your desk. This is an inside joke with you two now – you doing mundane things and calling them special to get a rise from Mark.

Mark rolls his eyes. “You know you’re completely misusing my concept.”

“Poor Mark,” you sigh. “Lost in a sea of angst. Continually made fun of by the evil Y/N.”

Mark starts to laugh as Mr. David enters the room. “Settle down, settle down,” the teacher says, turning towards the board.

Raising your eyebrows, you grin at Mark. “He means you, giggle nuts. No one else is speaking.”

“Giggle nuts.” Mark starts to laugh even harder.

Mr. David turns with a frown, effectively sobering you both. Mark straightens in his seat, ducking his head into his notebook. He’s still smiling though, as are you reading through the lines of chalk on the whiteboard. It looks like today’s lesson is on solar systems. The suns of solar systems, to be exact.

When the bell rings at exactly 9:00 am, Mr. Davis clears his throat. “Good morning class,” he drones, not waiting for an answer. “Today’s lesson is about the sun. Last class we breached the topic of galaxies – groups of celestial bodies associated with natural law and bound by gravity. This class we’ll delve deeper.”

Flipping to a new page in your notebook, you smooth out the corners. Your previous page is filled with drawings of star clusters. General rules and theory on galaxy formation as well as its degeneration. Concentrating on Mr. Davis’ words, you sketch today’s date at the top of the page.

“Most planetary systems are single star systems,” he lectures. “Meaning there is only one sun. All non-stellar objects rotate around this, drawn in by the gravitational pull. This is not the case in all systems.” Continuing on, Mr. David finds a blank space on the board. “There also exist multiple and binary star systems.”

Raising his hand, Mark waits until Mr. Davis notices. “What’s a binary star system?”

“Good question.” Nodding, Mr. Davis scribbles Mark’s comment down on the board. “A binary star system is one whose systems contains two suns orbiting a common center of mass. These systems balance each other in careful harmony, continuously influencing as they rotate.”

Your hand pauses halfway through your drawing. On the left-hand side of your page lies the singular star system. One sun with its planets drawn orbiting, accepting a singular star’s light. On the other side is a binary system. Two stars circling one another, coexisting together. Both stars are strong, powerful – equal in their light.

You can’t help but think the singular system is Jaebum. Bright, gravitational, drawing everyone into his orbit. In that system, you’re a planet. Maybe the closest planet, but circling him regardless. Allowing him to pull you onward, always thinking you’re surviving while secretly knowing you’re following.

The thought makes you dizzy and you exhale through your nose to steady yourself. Do you really see your relationship with Jaebum that way? No, of course you don’t. He might be a strong presence, sure – but so are you. You’re intelligent, confident and creative. What does it matter if he’s currently successful and you are not? Jaebum is the exception in that regard.

So is the star, though. You fall quiet for the rest of the class, barely even glancing from your notebooks. When the bell rings for second period, you gather your books tightly to your chest.

“Y/N?”

Mark is staring at you. Has been for several minutes, actually. “Sorry, what?” you blink, shaking your head.

Mark frowns. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” you say, playing absentmindedly with your pencil case. “Everything is fine.”

Stepping before you, Mark effectively stops your walk. “Liar,” he says, eyes glinting with humor. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Have you filled out all your college applications?” you ask, avoiding eye contact.

Mark’s forehead wrinkles. “Some. Why?”

“What major did you list?”

“Biology.”

This surprises you. “Really?”

Mark nods, a small smile on his lips. “Yeah. After everything that happened to me, I want to do something in medicine. I’m not sure if I want to do research or pre-med yet, though.”

Rather than make you feel better, this only serves to increase your nausea. “Right. Good,” you say, a laugh escaping. “Everyone seems to know exactly what they’re doing except for me.”

Mark gives you a curious look. “That’s not true. You want to be a writer.”

“Ah, yes. How practical,” you laugh. You feel breathless, unable to regain control over yourself. “I need to find a real job.”

“A real job?” Mark folds his arms over his chest. “Writing is a real career.”

Staring past, you start to walk again. “I know,” you sigh, voice hesitant. “I know that if you’re successful writing can be a career. But if you’re not…” Trailing into silence, you allow your lack of words to speak for you.

Mark’s pace is even, footsteps lost in the deafening shouts in the corridor.

“Look,” you say, turning to face him. “I’m not being self-deprecating or searching for compliments. I’m just saying a lot of people are talented. There are a lot of good writers and there’s only a small chance I’ll succeed, even with talent.”

Rather than object, Mark falls silent. “That’s true,” he admits.

“So you agree?” you ask, raising your eyebrows.

“Yes,” Mark nods. “But I don’t think that’s a good enough reason not to try.”

His words give you pause and somewhere inside, a voice you’ve been shoving aside lately grows slightly louder. “No?”

“No.” Mark looks thoughtful. “Put it this way. If you try, you have two options: either you fail or you succeed. If you don’t try, there’s only one: you fail.”

Considering this, your heart beats strangely. A new kind of courage enters you and for the first time in a long time, you find yourself wanting to try. Wanting to fight, wanting to fly - or wanting to fall trying.

Mark grins at your expression. “There it is.”

“Fine,” you exhale, turning towards your classroom. “I’m doing it. I’ll apply to college as an English major.”

Mark lets out a whooping noise. “Thank god! I was scared I’d have to do a covert ops mission. Sneak into your house, switch out your application – something like that.”

Shaking your head, you shove him away as you enter your classroom. Sliding into your seat as your front pocket vibrates. The teacher is still busy setting up for lecture, so you chance a glance at your screen.

Hey, babe <3 excited for tonight?

Tonight. Tonight; your and Jaebum’s four year anniversary. He’s had something special planned for months now – dropping hints while unable to hide his grin. You quickly type back.

Tell me what we’re doinggggg

The bell rings then, so you shove your phone into your pocket. Jaebum won’t answer before lunch anyways, which is the next time you’ll see him. The rest of the morning flies by like this, filled with people and notes. At lunchtime Jaebum still refuses to tell you where you’re going. He grins each time you ask, folding his arms over his chest. Today he’s pushed his hair back, which he only does when you’re going somewhere nice.

“How nice is nice, though?” you whine, poking him. “Should I wear a floor-length dress? Would a high schooler even be allowed into a place fancy enough to wear a floor-length dress?”

Jaebum just grins. “It’s not that fancy. Just wear something you like.”

“I like sweatpants. Is that good?”

Jaebum shrugs. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

He’s being stupid but he says it with such sincerity that you groan and lean into him. Allow his arm to wrap around your waist and pull you close. “Fine,” you mutter, kissing his cheek. “I’ll dress nicely.”

Hours later, you’re regretting this edict.

Your mouth is pursed, hands on your hips while you stare into the mirror. Pushing your hair back with both hands to see what it would look like off your neck. You let it drop - down, definitely down. Grabbing your purse from your table, you hurry downstairs.

Jaebum said he would be here at 7:00 pm and its 6:58 pm now. He won’t be there a second before 7:00 though, he’s just like that. So now you sink into your kitchen chair, watching your mom work on her laptop.

“Happy anniversary.” She glances up from her work. “What has it been now, four years?”

Nodding, you find yourself happy she remembered. “Four years exactly.”

Your mom sighs, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Growing up so fast,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “Your dad would’ve loved to see this.”

“Would he have?” You laugh quietly. “I seem to remember him threatening Jaebum every time he came over.”

“Yeah,” Robbie nods, entering. “It’s why I’ve taken up the mantle. Fight Jaebum always.”

Your mom laughs at this, leaning back in her chair. “Your father loved Jaebum,” she counters. “Or rather – he loved how much he loved you. It was always terrifying how much you loved Jaebum.”

This is the first your mom has ever spoken of this and you find yourself wanting to hear more. “What?” you ask. “Why?” From the corner of your eye, you see headlights swing into your driveway.

“Well.” Your mom shrugs. “Losing the people you love hurts, even if it’s losing them by choice.”

You blink at her words. Even if it’s by choice.

It’s been two years since your dad passed away. It’s just now getting to the part where it doesn’t hurt as much to talk about him. But saying that it doesn’t hurt as much is like saying you’re only hit by one lightning bolt, not five. One may hurt less than five, but even one is enough to kill you.

You usually think of your dad in terms of your own emotions. Never really in the light of your mother. She lost her husband though – her partner, life, love. Lost the man she thought she’d be spending the rest of her years with, not just his. This makes you think of Jaebum and when you do, your heart clenches. Losing someone you love hurts.

Leaning over, you give your mom a quick kiss on the cheek. “Love you,” you say, drawing back. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t ask what your gratitude is for. Your mom knows there are things your family do that go without saying. That’s one thing about loss – it either tears you apart or makes you stronger. The three of you are stronger now than you were before. Even Robbie has had to grow overnight.

Like now. He stands before you, arms folded in the doorway. Frowning as you walk past. “Be home by eleven,” he scolds.

From behind him, your mom laughs. “Midnight,” she corrects.

You wave at both when you leave, blowing Robbie a big, exaggerated kiss. Jaebum sits in his car, immersed in some game on his phone when you slide into the passenger seat. “Hi,” you greet him, leaning over.

Jaebum kisses you, lingering for just a second before pulling away. “Happy anniversary,” he grins, putting the car in reverse. “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go … to the park?” you ask, settling back in his seat. “To the circus? To an airplane show?”

“No, yes and no.”

“We’re going to the circus?”

Jaebum looks over. “You’re so crazy already, why not give in completely?”

He’s in a good mood tonight and you find yourself giggling, sliding lower in your seat as you turn to face him. Jaebum’s hand finds yours on the console, pulling your fingers into his lap. He lowers the windows, allowing the early breeze to caress your cheeks. Curling into your own seat, you watch him. Watch the sun play across his face.

“What?” Jaebum asks, glancing sideways.

“Nothing,” you smile. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The drive is quiet after that, silent except for the music on the car’s speakers. Jaebum turns the volume up, sliding his fingers over yours and humming in time to the music. Before long he pulls into a parking lot, coming to a stop beside a restaurant.

A restaurant you recognize. “Really?” you ask, starting to laugh.

Jaebum nods, eyes sparkling. “This time we’re eating inside.”

You laugh unbuckling your seat belt. This restaurant is known for its food and amazing views and on your fifth date, Jaebum tried to take you here. After just one glance at the menu though, you realized there was no way in hell you could afford this. The two of you ended up out on the cliffs, just sitting and talking.

That day was also the first time Jaebum kissed you.

Now though, Jaebum takes your hand in his, pulling you forward. You’re glad you decided to wear a dress when you enter the lobby, realizing this place is even fancier than you remembered. Jaebum blends right in, completely at home in a button-down and slacks, blazer thrown over top.

“Im,” Jaebum says, walking up to the hostess. “Reservation for two.”

The hostess nods thumbing through her booklet. “Here – Im.” Grabbing two menus, she smiles back at you. “Follow me.”

Raising both eyebrows, Jaebum gestures for you first. At the table, Jaebum pulls out your chair, holding it while you sit. Sitting across the table, he watches the waiter fill your glasses with water. When the waiter leaves you peruse the menu, flipping open to the first page. Smiling gently when you travel back to that fifth date.

“You’re smiling.” Jaebum sounds suspicious. “Why are you smiling?”

You set your menu down. “I was thinking about the first time we visited.”

Lowering his head, Jaebum hangs a few centimeters from the table. “Will you never let me live that down?” he groans.

Starting to laugh, you reach over. Lifting his chin with your finger. “I was thinking about the end of the day,” you correct.

Jaebum’s frown lifts in a smile. “Oh.”

After leaving the restaurant that day, the two of you hiked over the tops of the cliffs. You talked about a lot that night – both about everything and nothing at all. Whatever thoughts popped into your mind. That was the thing you liked most about Jaebum. It was so easy to be with him, like you could say anything and he wouldn’t judge you for it.

Jaebum was a great listener. He took everything you said with a grain of salt, listening with a small tilt to his head. You noticed that that day on the cliffs. It was the first time you ever felt close to Jaebum - the two of you sitting close enough to feel but not touch.

You kept glancing at one another. Looking sideways until one of your eyes met the other’s. His gaze was enticing, entrapping in a way you couldn’t get out of. It’s often said that the last hour before sunset is called the golden hour. Called so because the light at this time of day is so soft, muted with diffused rays of the sun. People are most flattering during the golden hour.

The way Jaebum stared at you was as though he saw you clearly for the first time. As rays of sun slipped from his cheeks, they illuminating hair half-ruffled by the wind. When Jaebum leaned in, you hardly knew what he was doing.

When his lips met yours, you understood.

It was your first kiss. The first time you’d even considered kissing someone. As Jaebum kissed you, his lips pressed firmly to yours, you wondered if Jaebum might also be the last.

Now he sits across the table from you, smiling in the same way he did that night. You find yourself ashamed for the emotions which have churned your stomach since his band’s last performance. Ashamed of the fear you felt. The fear of him pulling away. Of him embarking on a new part of life which you can’t follow.

Or won’t. Because now you’re realizing that although you’ve applied to college, Jaebum hasn’t. He keeps holding this in his back pocket, patiently waiting for the call from James Marolin. His future is at fork in the road, while yours is at an arrow.

It’s just as you’re thinking this Jaebum’s phone rings. Wincing, he shoves his hand deep in his pocket. “Sorry,” he sighs. “I thought I turned it off – let me just check if it’s my mom, she –"

He stops talking. At the look on his face, you feel yourself sinking. Stomach churning, thoughts scrambling because you know exactly who is calling him.

“Hello?” Jaebum answers, switching his phone to his other ear. “Mr. Marolin?”

You can’t hear the other side of his conversation. Can’t hear what the other man is saying but you watch Jaebum’s eyes widen. Watch his mouth drops and no words come. Instead he just nods, suddenly recalling that he’s on the phone and can’t be seen. “Yes,” he blurts, continuing to nod. “Yes. This is amazing news – thank you so, so much! We won’t let you down.”

Jaebum hangs up. He doesn’t speak at first, just staring at the phone in his hand. Reaching across the table, you touch his arm. “Jaebum?”

His gaze snaps to yours and suddenly – brilliantly – he smiles. “Y/N,” he gasps. “Y/N, They want us to sign. They want us to sign and record an album. An album,” he laughs, full of disbelief.

“That’s amazing,” you say, struggling to smile. “Congratulations!”

It is amazing. It’s amazing and wonderful and perfect. Jaebum’s eyes find yours when he jumps up, fumbling across the table to grab your face. His lips press quickly to yours and you start to laugh. “Wow,” you say, grinning when he sits back down. “I guess now there’s two things to celebrate tonight, huh?”

“Oh.” Jaebum freezes. Glances at his phone. “I just – ah, shit.”

The knot in your stomach tightens. “What? What is it?”

Jaebum looks away, unable to meet your gaze. “I was just thinking… It would be nice to tell the guys in person.”

It’s a reasonable request. You know this, know you’re stupid for wishing it otherwise. Of course Jaebum would want to tell them himself. Of course he would want to see their faces at the news. Of course, of course, of course.

Your gaze drops to your lap.

“Y/N?” Jaebum asks.

Exhaling softly, you look up. “You should go.”

Jaebum doesn’t move. “Are you sure?” he asks, watching you carefully. “This is our night, Y/N. It’s our night and if you want me to stay, the news can wait until tomorrow morning.”

If you want me to stay. These words echo in your mind, making you feel guilty for wanting this. You do want Jaebum to stay. You want Jaebum to be yours, want him beside you because right now every step he takes seems further and further away from you.

Lifting your gaze, you force a smile. “Of course,” you say, though your voice sounds robotic, unsure. “You should go. Our night is any night – tonight is about the band.”

Jaebum smiles. “Thank you,” he says, jumping up. Kissing you briefly before helping you upwards. “Let’s go,” he grins, lacing your fingers with his.

You’re practically pulled from the restaurant, Jaebum stops quickly at the hostess to mumble an apology. Then you’re outside, in his car. Speeding down the highway, barely able to hold yourself together. You think you respond to everything – you must, because Jaebum doesn’t seem to realize something is wrong.

Once you’re dropped off in front of your house, you wrap your arms around your waist. You don’t want to go inside, not yet. You’re afraid that if you see your mom and hear her questions, you might cry. Tears are already threatening to spill over onto your cheeks.

You don’t want to cry and so you walk over to the tree in your front yard. Folding your legs beneath you to lean against the rough bark. You’re not sure when you began to feel like you couldn’t tell Jaebum things. It used to be you told him too much. Told him everything, no matter how difficult or sad.

Not anymore.

Sighing, you look down at your phone in your hand. There’s a small kernel of anger growing larger by the second. Yes, you should have told Jaebum this tonight was important to you. Should have said you wanted to celebrate his most recent success together.

But should you have had to tell him?

Without stopping to think about what you’re doing, you unlock your phone.

Hey.

It only takes a few minutes before Mark texts back.

Hey?

He sounds confused and you don’t blame him. The two of you rarely text on weekends.

What are you doing tomorrow? Something crazy?

Maybe. Why? Want to join?

After staring at your phone for a long second, you lower your fingers. Fighting every natural instinct in your body to respond.

Yes.

[Master List]

264 notes · View notes

proteportainternational · 6 years ago

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The 10 Best & Worst of Automotive Tech in 2018

Because there's too much going on to wait for December.

We love Top 10 lists, but it's the 10 Worst lists that really get our hearts pumping. A lot of automotive "journalists" pull their punches so as not to endanger those sweet, sweet junkets. I don't have that problem. I was blacklisted years ago by just about everyone. Am I too honest? Maybe. Too unpredictable? Probably. But I say you can't trust someone who hasn't said something negative about someone. If everything was great, cars wouldn't need warranties. If software-based tech functioned as promised, I wouldn't have a column.

Here's my list of the 10 Best & Worst in Automotive Technology in 2018. Feel free to disagree.

10. Most Embarrassing New Mobility Strategy Implosion

Cadillac Book. WTF is going on at GM? With $1B invested in Cruise Automation to develop self-driving Chevy Bolts, you'd think CEO Mary Barra would have the nerve to support Cadillac's Book subscription service until it found its feet. But no, they pulled the plug just under two years since launch. What went wrong? Was it the pricing, which started at $1500, then rose to $1800? The marketing? NYC as the first market? The wonky Book app? The departure of Melody Lee, who really seemed to get it? The concept itself? Rivals like Volvo, BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche who have recently launched competing services should take notice. An unlimited PR budget ≠ profits, let alone cash flow.

9. Most Disappointing Technology from a Car Company We Love

Volvo Pilot Assist. I love Volvo, and so should you. Every new Volvo is so cool, they make their malaise era cars cool too. I would drive one in a heartbeat. The look. The feel. Who doesn't love clean design? The Nordic school really gets it. Polestar? Awesome. But there's a problem. Volvo — the original car brand built on safety — isn't leading on driver assistance systems, otherwise known as ADAS. Volvo's ADAS suite is called Pilot Assist. The Automatic Emergency Braking is good. The lane keeping, display, and transition warnings? Not so much. What's going on? Volvo should own this. Instead, Tesla leads on lane keeping and Cadillac on safety and driver monitoring. Come on Volvo, you can do better.

8. Best Tech From a Company that Needs Better Management

Cadillac SuperCruise. Where Volvo is falling short, Cadillac is killing it on driver assistance. I remember when people made fun of GM for failing to deploy SuperCruise, which marinated in R&D for years before Tesla released Autopilot in late 2015. But one drive in a SuperCruise-equipped CT6 made it clear: GM's R&D had done its job not only correctly, but brilliantly. SuperCruise includes Seeing Machines' driver monitoring system (DMS) — an infrared camera pointed at the driver — solving Tesla's biggest omission, and adds a class-leading, steering wheel mounted mode indicator. So what's Cadillac's problem? GM management. SuperCruise should have been an option on everyCadillac two years ago, if not every GM vehicle. Why isn't it? Because GM's attention and money is being showered on their self-driving division Cruise Automation, whose cars will only see limited deployment next year, maybe. SuperCruise is GM's killer tech, and every day they don't deploy it they're squandering their lead. Come on, GM.

7. The How-Not-To-Market-Your-Cars Trophy

BMW. I'm a BMW guy. Always have been. But Klaus Fröhlich, BMW development chief and board member, sure does make it hard. When asked about the E46 CSL being "the last real 3 series," he replied "I do no want to hear that shit any more." But it gets worse. Fröhlich's words are a noose: "First thing and this is for me the most important thing; you can drive fast and completely relaxed. You don't feel how fast you are." When it comes to driving, feedback is everything. That means feeling. Who doesn't want to know how fast they're going? Passengers. Who wants to feel how fast they're going? People buying The Ultimate Driving Machine. Fröhlich is the wrong man, in the wrong job, saying the wrong things. Let him retire.

6. Best Electric Vehicle On The Market Today

Tesla Model S. Yeah, yeah. Everyone wants to talk about the Model 3. Do I love it? Sure. But the Model S—the original premium EV that invented the segment and woke up an industry—is better than ever. Six years and countless invisible hardware and software updates later, it's still light years ahead of everyone else for EV and driver assistance tech. Cadillac's SuperCruise equipped CT6 still runs on gas, and the upcoming Porsche Taycan's ADAS suite is unlikely to touch Tesla Autopilot. By why the S over the Model 3? You can get a great used S for the price of a loaded Model 3 Performance, and the S is quieter, more comfortable, has more storage, rides better, has a better sounding stereo, has a traditional dashboard, a bigger/better GPS display, and Tesla's killer situational awareness display. I'd take a base S over a 3 any day. I recommend getting a Model S now, before Tesla swaps out the interior for the 3's, and loses what makes human driving an S something special.

5. Best Autonomy Car On The Market Today

Any Jeep. Forget autonomous cars. We want autonomy cars, as in cars that increase our freedom. What is autonomy anyway? It's liberation from boundaries, which are the only thing the self-driving lobby can promise. As I said in my recent op-ed Autonomous Cars? We Want Autonomy Cars, "get in a prepped Jeep with some jerrycans and you've got more autonomy than most of the humans ever born." A vehicle that can go anywhere, anytime is what people really want. If it can drive itself part of the time, great. Who cares how safe it is if it actually limits where you can go, because you're no longer allowed to own a car with a steering wheel? I'm all for safety, but not at the expense of human autonomy. Would you like to know more? Follow the Human Driving Association and read our manifesto.

4. Dumbest Use Of The Word "Autonomous"

David Pogue. Beware anyone called an expert, especially a technology expert, and especially a technology expert writing about cars. The latest outrage? "Tech critic" David Pogue's article "What it's like to use Tesla's newest self-driving car technology" is PR journalism at its penultimate, surpassed only by the garbage from the Tesla shills at Electrek. It's impossible to know if Pogue actually drove the car. He claims to own one, but there's no evidence in the article that he does. He gets so much wrong—from language to functionality—it would be better for his reputation if he didn't. There's so much to pillory here I'm going to devote an entire article to Pogue's article, so let's move on.

3. Worst YouTuber Most Likely To Inspire Self-Driving Apocalypse

Alex Choi. When the self-driving lobby gets moving on trying to ban human driving, there'll be no shortage of videos they can present to a Senate hearing demonstrating why. At the top of the list? Youtuber Alex Choi, who nearly kills a passing motorcyclist on Mulholland Highway while... being Alex Choi. As the founder of the Human Driving Association, I'll be the first to say there are people who shouldn't be driving. It's a privilege, not a right. And people like Choi are unlikely to keep it in the future. If you believe in freedom, Choi is one of those who should shunned, because he's not on our side.

2. Worst Performance From A Car Company Executive, Part 2

BMW's Klaus Fröhlich is just the gift that keeps on giving. My friends in Munich need to muzzle this guy or fire him. Every time I see his name, he is hurting BMW's brand. The latest outrage? This story: Electric Cars Will Always Be More Expensive Than Gas Cars—in which he says exactly what you think he did. If he's right, what is accomplished? Nothing...except he sounds like someone who doesn't understand EVs at all. Tesla has shown that EVs don't need to be cheaper than ICE to sell and that people will pay UP from ICE to own a Tesla, but not necessarily other EVs. Not that BMW would know or understand that, since their EV strategy is dead on arrival no matter what happens, at least for the next few years, during which the Porsche Taycan will do what BMW failed to. And if Fröhlich is wrong—and EVs do eventually become cheaper than ICE—he was just another legacy industry exec who missed the boat. FYI, when cars were invented, they were more expensive than horses. But people still preferred cars. Products don't exist in a vacuum, and big company execs should understand that better than Fröhlich.

1. Most Despicable Fansite For A Major Car Company

Electrek. For those who don't give a s**t about Tesla, consider yourself lucky, for you've been spared exposure to one of the most toxic of modern media outlets, the news/fansite Electrek, whose existence is an intellectual and moral blight on those who like the cars, or believe in the vision. Helmed by bald-faced shill Frederic Lambert, Electrek will spin any story to make Tesla—in which Lambert is admittedly long—look good. Lambert never met a fact he wouldn't omit, or clickbait headline he wouldn't run if he could get $TSLA a little higher for the day. Lambert's history is well documented here and here, but the most bizarro chapter in the Electrek saga happened when Lambert turned against Musk for dropping the price of the Model 3 Performance by $4000...two months after Lambert bought one. Lambert got dismantled by his own fans for his hypocrisy, then again by long-time critics, then he doubled down, then reversed himself again to get back in Musk's good graces. To call Lambert a whore is an insult to those who chose sex work because they lack a better alternative. Lambert has a choice, and always chooses the low road. Lambert is the gift that keeps on taking, a bad actor in a show he doesn't understand, occupying a secondary role anyone could, if only they were willing to work for less than the perks of living off the star's discarded script. There are a lot of reasons to root for Tesla, but there is one big reason to pray for their failure, and that's to prevent people like Lambert from being financially rewarded for lowering the informational bar and gutting ethics. If you think I'm being harsh, you're wrong. I LOVE Tesla. Not because I'm blind to their failures, but despite them.

What else might attract my love or ire in 2018? We'll find in two months.

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