#but bill would never ban them entirely. he should be able to call his friends whatever he wants after all

[irregularbillcipher]

*teeth voice* our boss just banned overly specific nicknames from anyone but him and now all of us are staring at Rat Snitch Kryptos The Good Time Ruiner

[in-tua-deep]

Prompt idea that I sincerely don't know anywhere else to put out, but what if, one mother of the seven like... delayed giving up the baby idk why, but like, in the end the child goes to the academy, but like... they know the world outside this mansion full of all sorts of abuse and violence, and so is trying to bring good sense and awareness to all of other children somehow, even though like... you don't know very much or correctly the things in general, but is trying anyway because yeah

okay okay i will bite

it's gonna be Five bc u know how I roll by now and you didn't specify a child, so this is a non-twin world uwu

I see some people naming him Fievel so we're gonna have to go with that, nicknamed Five by the other kids who thought it was absolutely hilarious to ask "which one?" whenever Reginald snaps “Five!”

Though officially, of course, Five is number seven.

So Fievel is born in a park to a mother who was never prepared to have achild, but held him in the hospital and looked into the eyes of a man offering her money for her newborn and she says - no. 

Because she’s poor, yes, and she’s working two jobs to make ends meet, and this man might be able to provide for her child but - she doesn’t like the fact that he offered her money. As though he could place a price on a human life.

(His stupid mustache might have played a role as well. Bastard.)

So she keeps little Fievel, and it’s hard. It’s so hard. Babies are expensive, and she was barely making enough as it was, but her best friend works from home and offers to take him sometimes during the day instead of a more expensive daycare. Some of her other friends ask around relatives and friends and hunt through garage sales until she has a passable amount of baby items.

It would be easier if Fievel wasn’t such a precocious child. He’s curious and into everything, a loud baby that demands attention. 

“C’mon Fi,” She begs her three-year-old son from where she’s draped across the sofa. Aren’t kids supposed to sleep a lot? Why did she end up with the one kid in the world who is on the go twenty four seven? “Can we please take a nap?”

“No.” Fievel says with a mulish look in his eyes and he shoves a book towards her face and almost takes her eye out with a corner of it, “Wead to me.”

And she sighs, and she’s so tired, but she hauls herself up and pats the sofa next to her and her little boy beams at her with such - such love that it almost takes her breath away. “Dogger, again? How many times have we read this?”

Fievel kicks at her with his little soft foot, and she catches it in a hand and smiles and she drops the book in her lap to bring her other hard over to dust feather light fingertips against her baby’s sides.

He’s terribly ticklish and giggles even as he shrieks “NO” loud enough that their neighbors will probably complain to her about it again. But in that moment she doesn’t care as she brings her head down to blow raspberries on her son’s stomach and make him laugh.

She loves him so much. 

(But she never has any time. Her friendships are more distant now, because she’s either at work or spending time with her son. She’s always exhausted because she works such long hours and Fievel keeps her awake when she’s a home. She doesn’t blame him, he didn’t ask to be born into the world any more than she asked for him, really. But it’s hard.)

Fievel is a curious child. She takes him to children’s museums and zoos on the discount days and watches him run around with seemingly endless energy. She has to keep a careful eye on him otherwise he will disappear, get distracted and wander off no matter how many times she’s tried to tell him to never do so.

Then he turns four.

Her baby is so smart. And he’s restless. And even though the place she works has a daycare through them, the people there are one incident away from banning Fievel. She thinks that’s dumb, considering they’re the ones that didn’t watch Fievel closely enough and lost him almost four times in recent months. 

So she signs him up for preschool.

She gets him a brand new outfit for the day, fussing over him until he’s all squirmy and pouty and slapping her hands away with all the grump that a four-year-old can muster. 

She sends him off to daycare with ruffled hair and a wide smile and tries not to worry too much.

She’s at work when she gets a call from the school informing her that they’ve lost her son. She hurriedly lets her boss know and sweeps out of work without a backwards glance, showing up at the school just as her phone rings again and a flustered individual informs her that they’ve located him.

“I have no idea how he got out.” The frazzled teacher looks close to tears when she meets with the poor woman, giving Fievel a fierce look that promises that they will be having a talk about this. 

“I din’t do anything.” Fievel pipes up mulishly, “I didn’t go nowhere, the class did.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose, and faces the teacher apologetically. After a pointed comment from a friend, she’s been vaguely looking into ADHD since her kid is like this, “I’ll have a talk with him.”

“I’ll - I’ll make sure to keep a better eye on him.” The woman looks floored that she isn’t tearing strips out of the school administration for losing her toddler. Actually when it’s phrased like that she probably should be more pissed off. But she also knows her kid and what a handful her is.

So she takes him home and sits him down.

“This can’t happen again, Fi.” She tells him, and he’s got his little arms crossed and he’s pouting with his entire body. “I mean it. I had to leave work, and you know I have to work.”

“You don’t hafta.” Fievel says harshly, “What about me?”

She sits on the couch next to him, heart heavy, “Baby, you know I have to work so that we can have things and go places.”

Her son scrabbles up on his knees and puts his hand on her arms and gives her big eyes, “I don’t need lotsa toys. An’ we don’t hafta go to the zoo.”

“Oh baby,” She pulls him into her arms and lets him snuggle into her, “I gotta work. And you gotta go to school and be good. Okay? You can’t be leaving the classroom again.”

“I din’t mean to.” Fievel sniffles, and she hugs him just a little tighter as the tears start to flow.

“It’s okay.” She murmurs into his hair, “I got you.”

To his credit, Fievel does his best. He still manages to leave the classroom somehow, seemingly whenever the teacher is looking away. No one seems to know how he does it. Emma who sits next to him exclaims that he just vanished like he went BAM and wasn’t there all of a sudden!

(Oh, the imagination of four-year-olds, the teacher thinks to herself.)

But whenever he does he seems to come back within fifteen to thirty minutes. Sometimes the teacher doesn’t even notice he’s gone before he’s knocking on the (locked) classroom door to be let back in. They don’t call his mother about the incidents anymore and the teachers nickname him Houdini with a sort of despair. 

Fievel is four-and-a-half when he’s taking a walk with his mother down to the park. He’s got his little rainboots on because he always wades into the pond and he likes the slosh of the water on his feet when it goes over the top, and his little duck shirt. He’s making loud quacking noises which don’t actually sound anything like a duck but when he looks at her for approval she nods with a smile.

They’re crossing the road at the crosswalk, holding hands because they always do, when the car comes careening around the corner.

She can’t react in time, eyes widening and she’s hollering and she moves to push her son and she only has eyes for him as she places her body between him and the car and - 

She watches his eyes go wide and afraid and she 

watches

him

disappear

and then the car clips her and she’s sent sprawling and that’s the last thing she remembers.

She wakes up in the hospital hours later with a concussion, a broken arm, several broken ribs, and a lots of scrapes. She’s lucky, they tell her. She demands to know where her son is. 

Hours later, when she’s worked herself up into a right tizzy, her son sprints into the room followed shortly by some very harried looking cops and she has to haul him into the bed so that he doesn’t hurt himself getting up.

“Gentle, gentle.” She warms him, wincing when he bangs a knee into her bad ribs, “I’m a little tender at the moment, baby.”

“You got hurt!” Fievel yells at the tops of his lungs and then immediately bursts into loud and terrified tears. So she ignores her bad ribs and messed up arm and cradles him close to her making shushing noises and stroking his back until he’s cried himself out and drops off right there in the hospital bed.

She gets out of the hospital with a cast and a bill she can’t afford right now and she sits Fievel down on the couch.

She wants to write off the fact that her son literally vanished before her eyes to the concussion. But - she thinks about a locked preschool classroom and a son that has a tendency to vanish when she takes her eyes off of him and -

It makes too much sense.

“Baby.” She asks, “Can you teleport?”

“What’s tell-ee-port?” Fievel asks, scrunching up his nose.

“Do you find yourself in other places without getting up and going to them?”

“Yeah.” Fievel states it so easily, like she’s dumb. “I told you so.”

She pressed her fingers to her face, “Can you do it now?”

Fievel frowns and then scrunches up his face real hard and then -

He’s gone. And then he’s opening his bedroom door and scurrying back out. He runs over and tugs at her pants eagerly, “I did it! Did I do good?”

She crouches down and ruffles his hair even though it kills her ribs, because she can’t pick him up with a broken arm. “Yeah baby,” She praises him, mind moving at an hour a minute, “You did good.”

That night she lays in her bed and watches Fievel’s chest rise and fall as he sleeps. He sprawls out like a starfish but sometimes in the night always buries himself into her side like a tick. She’s put a pillow in between them to try and spare her poor ribs, but she has doubts it will work.

Her son can fucking teleport.

That’s when she cries. Because she loves her son, but he’s a handful. She didn’t even notice. She didn’t notice that he son has a superpower. Doesn’t that make her the worst mother in the world?

Crying is a terrible idea. Her ribs are painful enough that she can’t sleep. She needs to ration her pain medication because they really can’t afford it. 

How is she supposed to handle this? How is she supposed to raise a child that can vanish without a second thought? Her bright beautiful boy who loves feeding the ducks and being pushed on the swings and playing unfathomable games with his friend Emma that she can’t even begin to understand the plot of.

(She’s almost certain one of them is supposed to be a cheetah for some reason? Or a lion? There’s a lot of running involved in the game, and hiding.)

It’s a few months later when her arm is healed and her ribs are better and Fievel is turning five when everything comes crashing down. Because she doesn’t get a call from the school. She gets a call from the police.

Apparently Fievel managed to get out of the school far enough away that he got lost. He admits tearfully to her that he’s been getting further and further away when he ‘jumps’ - and it’s not his fault. He tries not to jump. But it happens whether he wants it to or not and if he keeps getting further and further away then -

She thinks of a car and a road and putting her body between death and her son. And she thinks about the fact that when he jumps, she isn’t there.

Look. She’s not stupid. She always knew that her kid wasn’t exactly a normal child.

(Hello. He’s practically a miracle. She wasn’t exactly a virgin but that doesn’t really matter when she was very suddenly nine months pregnant where she hadn’t been before.)

So she reckons that the powers have something to do with that. And who does she know that definitely has a child who was also one of the miracle babies?

(He’d mentioned he’d already acquired like, what, four kids when he came to see her. As though that was supposed to make her want to give up her kid even more.)

So she requests some vacation days (that she can’t afford) and she pulls Fievel out of preschool for a week (it’s preschool it’s not that important) and they fly over to a city where she can hopefully get some answers.

(Fievel spends the whole flight with his face pressed to the window and his plane toy clutched tightly in one hand and his stuffed dog in the other as he enthusiastically makes whooshing noises.)

And she goes up the the big mansion thing and knocks and goes inside where she smiles at Fievel and tells him to go play with the other children while she talks to Mr. Hargreeves, thank you baby.

As she clenches her hands into fists and listens to Sir Reginald Hargreeves condescend to her about her ability as a mother, Fievel enthusiastically bounces over to the kids his age who stare at him like they’ve never seen anything like him before in their life.

(“I’m Fievel!” He introduces himself loudly, “And this is Doggy! My mama is here to speak to your dad.”

“Uh. I’m Six.” A bewildered little girl says back.

Fievel blinks, “Oh! I just turned five.”

The girl giggles, “No! No I mean my name’s Six. but I’m five-years-old as well.”

“That’s a funny name.” Fievel says.

“Nuh uh.” The girl refutes, “Your name is weird. See, ‘cause we’re all numbers ‘n you’re not.”

And he’s introduced to them all. One is tall and awkward looks. Two hides behind the others a little bit. Three has her hands on her hips and she looks at him, but softens when he tells her that he likes her hair. Four is a skinny wisp of a kid, with big wide eyes and no sense of personal space. Five sticks pretty close to Four. And Six, of course, is the one who talked to him first which obviously means that they’re temporary best friends.

Temporary, because of course Emma is his best friend. ‘Cause she’s in his class and they sit near each other and play together with each other first.)

And his mother comes out to Fievel bossing the others around and them going with it, all with bewildered little expressions on their faces. Fievel is balancing on the back of the sofa next to a little girl who is holding Doggy, possibly in the middle of an evil villain speech? The little girl is solemnly petting Doggy like she’s a Bond villain at the very least.

It makes her smile, just a little bit. 

“Fievel, baby, can you come here for a second?” She asks, and her son beams at him and vanishes from his seat over to by her leg where he pulls on her leg so that she’ll sweep him up into her arms. 

(The children gape at him, all wide eyes and staring between them and their father like they’re shocked. And they probably are. Reginald has informed her that none of them can teleport, but they do have a variety of weird powers between them.)

“You know that you’re getting big.” She says, and she tries not to cry, “And you’re not going to be in preschool soon enough.”

“Yeah!” He enthuses, “Gonna learn real stuff!”

And that’s just like her son. Voraciously hungry for knowledge. 

“Well, this is a school for very special people.” She tells him, and watches his eyes go big and round, “People who... can teleport, for example.”

Fievel considers that. And then twists around to look at the other children, “You can teleport?” He demands loudly, like it’s a betrayal of the highest form that they’ve been friends for an hour and this hasn’t been brought up. And maybe it is. She doesn’t claim to understand the intricacies of children’s hierarchy.

“Uh uh!” A little boy exclaims, frowning. “I can just throw stuff real good.”

“I’m strong.” Another little boy offers. And then proceeds to demonstrate this by picking up half the couch and sending the little girl careening onto the floor with a shout, but she gets up and dusts herself off easily enough.

“Okay.” Fievel says brightly, appeased by this somehow as he twists back to his mother expectantly. 

“Okay.” She says, her mouth dry. “Well. This is a special school for special kids. It’s, uh. It’s a boarding school.”

“What’s that?”

“It means you stay here.” She tells him. “I’ll - I’ll come and see you when I can. And you can call me whenever you want. But you have to stay here.”

“Like a sleepover?” Fievel asks, scrunching his face up in confusion.

“A little bit.” Her smile feels weak and forced and she can’t even see it. “Like a lot of sleepovers all in a row. And when you wake up, you don’t need to go anywhere because you live at the school.”

“Uh uh. I live at home.”

“Baby...” She cards her fingers through his hair. “I know it’s scary. I don’t want you to go either - ”

“Then I don’t gotta.” Fievel says, matter of fact as he starts wiggling to get down. She hefts him up in her arms.

“Baby. Fievel. Listen to me.” She says firmly, “I can’t take care of you well enough.”

He looks at her with betrayed eyes.

“It’s not your fault. You can’t control your powers.” She tells him softly, because she loves him and she doesn’t want to give him up but - “I can’t keep you safe, baby. And the teachers can’t keep you safe. But you’ll be safe here.”

“I don’t want to.” Fievel says, loudly. In the tone which says that a tantrum is approaching.

“You’ll learn how to control your powers!” She says in a forced cheery voice.

“I’m going to school with Emma.” Fievel insists in a slightly louder voice.

“You’re already getting along great with the other kids.” She insists.

“NO.” Fievel says, at maximum volume, and then he’s gone from her arms and she’s stumbling because it’s weird to go from holding something to nothing.

“He’ll show up in a bit.” She assures Sir Hargreeves, beyond tired. He’s been watching the whole interaction and she hopes he hasn’t gotten a negative impression of her son. 

If he’s able to handle six other super powered children then surely he can handle hers. No matter what he asks. No matter how difficult it was to sign over the rights to her child. He promised that she can visit Fievel on weekends whenever she wants, for however long her son wants to do so.

He’s going to keep her child safe. He won’t be running out onto streets. He’ll be able to train his powers, be able to control them, and maybe one day - 

(Maybe one day she’ll get her baby back. Safe and sound in her arms and able to control his powers so she doesn’t have to worry at all.)

So she leaves, and she leaves Fievel alone. And no matter how much he screams and cries and begs, no one lets him go back to his mother. He tries to run off, tries to jump away and follow after her - but a blond woman in pristine skirts comes and retrieves him. 

(He tries to jump away, but she keeps coming and finding him until he’s too tired to protest when she carries him back to his new (prison) school in her arms.)

Reginald tries to lock him in his room. He jumps out. Reginald tries to put him in time out. He jumps out. Reginald says he doesn’t get any dinner. Fievel jumps downstairs and raids the cupboards in the night.

It becomes an intense battle of wills between Sir Reginald Hargreeves and little Fievel.

Locks go on the cabinets, Fievel breaks them off by bashing them with one of the bookends he manages to snag. Reginald refuses to let Fievel play with the others. Fievel runs away again and has to be brought back by the blond lady. 

(“You can call me Grace if you’re so against mom.” she had told him demurely, after he yelled himself hoarse telling her that she’s not his mother that he has a mother and that she’s so much better in every way)

Then Reginald takes Doggy away, and Fievel begrudgingly has to fall in line lest he risk his stuffed companion. One of the only links to his real life he has.

(He doesn’t even get to keep his clothes. He has to wear the stiff awful uniform that the other kids wear. It’s the absolute worst. He looks stupid but no one listens to him.)

When his mother comes to visit, Fievel is sullen and still angry with her for abandoning him. He sulks and doesn’t talk to her a lot.

He grows like this. The Umbrella Academy turns six, and then others receive names after Fievel loudly points out that having numbers for names is weird and that no one should ever trust a man who names his kids numbers it’s lazy and stupid.

So One becomes Luther and Two becomes Diego and Three becomes Allison and Four becomes Klaus and Five becomes Ben and Six becomes Vanya.

And Fievel becomes Five.

They all think it’s really funny, that they all get names instead of numbers and Five gets a number instead of a name.

He’s six and Reginald sits him down and tells him in no uncertain terns that his mother essentially sold him. That Reginald controls him. And if Five isn’t a good boy then... well. Bad boys don’t get to visit their mothers.

(Reginald finds a far more... effective way of controlling Five than a stuffed animal.)

(Good boys also don’t talk to their mothers about their training. They smile and act happy and lie because they want to keep seeing her. They don’t tell her about how scary it is, how they desperately want to come home, how maybe their mother could take all the kids because they don’t even have mothers and it isn’t fair.)

So Five grows bigger, gets new uniform, clashes with Reginald as much as he dares, and settles in to life at the academy. He sprawls across Vanya’s floor and tries to remember all the story books he read with his mother.

(There’s only grown up books in the manor that they’re expected to read. And Five likes them, he loves to learn, but - he misses storytime. He misses the wonderful books about adventure and other worlds. He misses when he felt like he was going to go on an adventure because he had powers and was special!

He doesn’t wish he’s special anymore.)

Vanya asks him once why he hangs out with her, because she’s normal. Because she doesn’t have powers.

And Five looks at her and tells her that that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. He spend years surrounded by people without powers. He tells her about his best friend Emma, who definitely didn’t have powers. 

“I wish I had a best friend.” Vanya tells him, face sad and drawn and Five pulls her into the fiercest hug he can.

“You’re not my best friend,” He tells her, and she looks even sadder until he finishes it up with, “You’re my sister.”

“But you have a mother.” She says, sounding confused.

Five shrugs, “Doesn’t matter. Reginald is legally my dad, and he’s legally your dad, and so we share a dad. That makes us siblings.”

“Is a sibling better than a best friend?” Vanya asks after a long moment of silence.

Five doesn’t think so. He misses Emma. He misses his preschool. He misses his life, the life before the Academy. But Vanya looks so sad and pale that he hugs her again and says “Yeah, of course. We’re family.”

The others tolerate him in varied amounts. Luther thinks he’s dumb because he’s always mean to Reginald. Five thinks Luther is dumb, and he’s definitely right. Allison constantly bugs him for information about what she terms “the outside world” and Five has told her about birthday parties at least a dozen times and she still looks wistful and asks him to tell her about them again.

(They turn eight and Five produces a paper crown for his sister because she looked so wistful when he described Emma’s birthday tiara. Allison wears it until Reginald snaps at her to get rid of it, but Five sees her tuck it in the waistband of her skirt rather than throw it away.)

When Reginald snaps at Diego for his stutter, Five snarls and snaps back, getting between the man and his new brother and yelling because he knows that’s not how you help kids! Yelling doesn’t help! His teacher said so! And his mama!

Diego is never particularly thankful for his interference, but Five doesn’t care. 

Five is nine and he jumps into the mausoleum with Klaus and holds his most fragile brother and snarls, threatens to run away. To take Klaus and just go, that they’d go to Five’s mother and she would take them away from Reginald and this place and - 

Klaus always buries himself into Five’s side with his hands over his ears until the morning when Five either jumps away or glares with furious eyes at Reginald even when he’s punished after.

He’s nine when he gets into a screaming match with Diego who says that Five isn’t one of them that he has his mother and if he had the chance he would abandon them in a heartbeat.

Reginald threatens to cut off his mother’s visits if he finds Five interfering with “Number Four’s training” one more time.

Five looks at Klaus, who is his brother. Who is frail and skinny and pale with dark bags underneath his eyes.

Reginald looks satisfied because Five has always backed down before when his mother is threatened. It’s his ultimate trump card.

Five is so very very tired of his mother being used against him. And he loves Klaus. And these kids, they are his siblings. (He tries not to think about the fact that next year he’ll have officially been here just as long as he was with his mother. He hates it.)

Reginald finds Five in the mausoleum with cobwebs in his hair and his brother against his side and a glare on his face and Reginald forbids his next visit with his mother.

Five keeps jumping into the mausoleum. Klaus looks at him with wonder in his eyes and Five pries up the floorboard that hides Doggy (because even after Reginald found a better way to threaten him, he remembers) and cries himself to sleep. 

“You chose us.” Ben states instead of asks, very quietly, when they’re studying together. 

“My mother can look after herself.” Five says stiffly, not taking his eyes off the page. “Klaus can’t.”

Ben doesn’t say anything more, but Five feels eyes on his back for a good long while after that.

When Five is ten, they debut for the first time. They go to the bank, and stop the robbers.

(“We can’t send Ben in,” Five insists, “They’ll die!”

“They’re robbers.” Luther scoffs, crossing his arms.

“Doesn’t matter. They’re still people.” Five insists. “You definitely aren’t supposed to kill people. It’s a law.”

“Shut up, Five.” Diego says grouchily, “We just need to get this over with.”

“Dad’ll be pissed off if we let any of them escape.” Allison says, and the whole group goes quiet as they consider their father’s disappointed fury.

“I’ll go.” Ben mutters reluctantly, and Five tries to meet his eyes but the other boy slips into the vault before he can. The group stands silently as they listen to the screams and watch the blood splatter.

“This is wrong.” Five whispers.

“This is how it is.” Klaus whispers back, sounding defeated.

They don’t talk about it, after.)

Five smiles for the camera and lets Klaus lean on his shoulder and steals a thing of tissues from a reporter’s purse and uses them to wipe more of the blood from Ben’s face with a tight smile and the world goes on.

(He doesn’t know his mother watched. Doesn’t know the fury she flew into. Her son was supposed to be safe - he was supposed to be at a school. Why the fuck was he stopping a bank robbery like some kind of little child soldier?

She becomes a problem. And Reginald can be awfully practical about problems.)

Five is ten-and-a-half and he hasn’t seen his mother in a year and a half. And he’s tired and he’s rebellious so one day he sneaks out and finds a pay phone and the only reason he remembers his number is because his mother made him memorize it and quizzed him frequently.

(He’d gotten lost so often from wandering away and accidentally jumping. His rules were to approach either women with children or people who worked wherever and ask them to call her.)

Except the call can’t connect. Disconnected number. 

Five frowns, and end up doing some research which involves massive lies to the library, and then he has a picture of a newspaper obituary in his hands and a hole in his heart.

Car accident, the paper says.

Five crumbles it up, and then smoothes it out again because there’s a picture of his mother next to the article and Five doesn’t have any pictures of his mother. So he hides it under the floorboards next to Doggy and cries himself to sleep and then he gets up and does his training and doesn’t talk about it.

He doesn’t tell his siblings. Not even when Luther blows up and calls him a stuck up brat who can go cry to his mommy if he think it’s so bad here. Not even when Klaus jokes about running away with a cracking voice in the mausoleum, not really jokes at all. Not even when Vanya asked him for another of his mother’s stories and he started crying in the middle of them. He’d just told her it had been a hard day of training.

(Vanya never asks him questions if he mentions training. He feels bad about lying to her and using it as an excuse but...)

He waits for Reginald to tell him. He waits, because surely someone would tell him that his mother is dead. He’s her son. 

Reginald never tells him. He tells Five that he’s bad and still hasn’t earned back his visiting privileges. Five hates him so much. So so much. 

Five is twelve-years-old and he is sprawled across Vanya’s bed after a particularly brutal day of training. Reginald has been trying to overtrain Five the day before he puts Klaus in the mausoleum overnight so that Five will be too tired to jump in. It doesn’t work, but it’s an exhausting enough punishment. 

“I wish I didn’t have powers.” He tells Vanya.

“No you don’t.” Vanya says back fiercely, fists clenching in her blankets, “Not having powers sucks.”

Five tilts his head and looks at her, “No.” He says gently, “No one knew I had powers. And I was loved. I was so loved, Vanya.”

“Stop it.” Vanya says, face tight. “If you were so loved, why did she leave you here?”

And Five opens his mouth and nothing comes out, because it hurts. 

“You don’t wish you had powers, Vanya.” Five tells her finally, and there are tears in his eyes but he’s looking at the ceiling not at her so it doesn’t matter. “You wish you had a family. A proper family. Not this - this stupid academy. I hate it. I hate it here.”

“Don’t call it stupid.” Vanya says, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you have a family and we just - we just have the academy, okay? So don’t call it stupid.”

“We deserve better. We deserve a childhood.”

“We have a childhood.” Vanya scowls, “Just because it’s not as nice as yours was or whatever - ”

“This is my childhood, Vanya.” Five snarls, propping himself up to face her, “I know you all think I’m so spoiled and - and I’m not one of you or whatever, but I came here when I was five. My memories of before - Vanya they’re fading. I couldn’t pick Emma out of a crowd if I tried. I’ve been here for years longer than I was ever there, and it’s not fair.”

“You still have a mother - ”

“No I don’t.” Five cuts her off, his voice ice. Vanya’s eyes are wide, startled by his tone. “Vanya, look around you. When was the last time I saw my mother?”

Vanya’s lip wobbles as she realized she can’t remember.

“It’s been three years.” Five tells her, eyes hard and cold and angry, “She’s gone. I made a choice, and I chose you. I chose the academy. Because despite everything, I love you guys. You’re my siblings, even if sometimes you don’t act like it.”

“Five - ” Vanya tries.

“No.” Five cuts her off, hopping off the bed and shaking his head, “I’m going to - I’m going to go to my room. You get some more practice in or something. I think Pogo picked out this piece and you know what he’s like.”

He doesn’t let her get a word in before he jumps up to his room.

Five is twelve when he stands in front of Reginald and says “I’m not using my powers anymore.”

“You have an assignment.” Reginald says severely.

“No.” Five refuses politely, and his family watches with wide eyes from the sidelines. The only family he has left. “I’ve got control now. I’ve decided I’m going to be normal now.��

Reginald locks Klaus is the mausoleum early and watches with unimpressed eyes as Five picks the lock and strolls in. 

Reginald handcuffs Five to a rail. Five plucks a paperclip from his sock and picks those as well.

Reginald locks Five in a room from the outside and tells him that he’ll get dinner when he jumps out. 

Five opens the window and shimmies down the drainpipe and has to be picked up at Griddy’s where he’s charmed the owner out of a free doughnut and hot chocolate with a sob story about school bullies to explain his grubby appearance (the shimmy down the drainpipe hadn’t exactly been graceful. or clean.)

He locks Five in the basement in a weird room that’s soundproofed. Five tries to hunger strike but - it’s so quiet. He can hear the sound of his own heartbeat. He can’t stand it. It’s like the room was made specifically to torture him.

(He looks at the little bed in the room. The sheets were dusty. This room has been around for a very long time. He wonders who it’s for, Allison, perhaps? She’s always been fairly obedient, maybe this is the reason why.)

He jumps out on the second day, and doesn’t talk to anybody. Reginald is smug like the cat the got the canary, and Five hates it.

Then Five is messing around, and something slots into place, and he realizes - oh, he might be able to time travel. 

Once he figures it out, he’s desperate. He’ll save his siblings that way. He’ll take the to a time where Reginald can’t get them. They’ll be out of reach.

(maybe - maybe they can travel back in time. maybe he can save his mother -)

Five is thirteen-years-old when he time travels for the first time. When he runs out of the house like he’s done so very many times before, except he’s angry and frustrated and he’d tried to bait Reginald into telling him his mother’s dead again and he hadn’t and - 

Five jumps. It’s snowing. He did it. He jumps again, laughing. He jumps again - 

Ash.

He tries to jump, but his power fizzles out. He calls for his siblings. No one answers. He finds the academy - rubble.

So Five lives in the apocalypse. He tries to go home, he does. He buries his siblings as well as he can. He wanders around gathering food and textbooks. He picks up a mannequin and names it Dolores.

(He searches the rubble of the academy, but he can’t find Doggy or the picture of his mother. Either they were found and removed years ago, or they’re buried beneath too much rubble. Five doesn’t know.)

 He takes Dolores on a road trip. He tells her it’s to see if they can find any people, any survivors.

he arrives in a graveyard and traces his mother’s name with trembling fingers. this is the first time he’s been to visit her grave. this is the first time he’s seen her in four years.

So he survives. He grows up, desperately clinging to life by his fingernails. He does complex calculations, wondering what his mother would think of him now.

He meets the Handler. He becomes an assassin.

(he’s glad his mother is dead, so that she will never see what he has become.)

And then one day, he gets home. He falls into the courtyard, and looks at the faces of his grown up siblings and - 

(he’s so tired of losing people. he’s so tired of being taken away from his family.)

He hops to Griddy’s, he gets into a fight with assassins, he cuts a tracker from his arm, and he goes to Vanya’s apartment.

And he’s Five, but he’s also Fievel. And somewhere inside he’s still that same kid who loved his mother and wanted her to fix thing, who trusted her even though she didn’t have powers. His mother wasn’t ordinary, and he’s never seen Vanya as such.

So he asks her for her help.

(Later, she tells him that they hunted down his mother when they were fifteen, because they’d been absolutely convinced he’d just run away and gone back to herno matter how much Reginald insisted he was dead.

That’s when they found out about her death. Her date of death.

“I’m so sorry, Five.” Vanya says, tears in her eyes as the whole family shuffles and looks away.

And Five puts his hand on Vanya’s. “I knew, Van.”

Her head snaps up. Klaus blurts out a what in the background.

Five shrugs, “I’ve known since we were ten. It’s okay.”)

Five sends Vanya to investigate the eye. 

(He asks Klaus - “Have you - ”

“No.” Klaus says instantly, shaking his head. He knows what Five is asking. 

Five considers that answer, then shrugs. He’s not sure if it would be better or worse for his mother to be one of the ghosts that tormented Klaus. “After I - after, did dad get worse?”

“Yeah.” Klaus says simply, because it’s true.

Five hadn’t been there to jump into the mausoleum and try and shield his brother from invisible enemies. 

“I’m sorry.” Five says quietly.

“Me too.”)

Vanya comes back and the eye hasn’t been made yet. Five swears, loudly and at length.

And maybe in another world Five snaps at Klaus and denies Vanya and goes off on his own and ignores Allison but - 

In this one, Five was the only kid who not only didn’t care that Vanya was ‘ordinary’ but actively challenged her on it. Who told her in no uncertain terms that he was jealous of her. 

(It’s a very different book that comes out.)

In this world, Five shielded Klaus and challenged Reginald. He jumped into the mausoleum and hugged his brother and, most importantly, he chose Klaus over his mother. And Klaus knows that. Klaus has... a lot of loyalty to Five, and even though he’d though for a long time that Five abandoned him... he knows better now and he feels - he feels guilty for doubting his brother. That guilt may or may not manifest in being a bit clingy.

In this world, Allison thought Five was fascinating because he’d been in the real world. He’d been to real school. She remembers him telling her about his mother, about trips to the zoo and the museums and the birthday parties, about sleepovers and playdates and parks.

(She has a daughter, and she takes Claire to the children’s museums and to zoos. She tries her best for her daughter and hears Five’s voice telling stories in her ears. She does her best to be a good mother, she tries so hard.)

It’s a slightly more united family that stands against the apocalypse.

But there’s always something with them, isn’t there?

“Don’t you know?” The Handler says, with her perfect lipstick smile, “I don’t have to win, I just have to take you out of the game. Your weak spot has always been the same, hasn’t it?”

“You don’t have shit.” Five says, unimpressed. “My family is fine.”

“Are you so sure about that, Fievel?”

(Five already chose his siblings over his mother the first time. The choice is... much more difficult the second time.)

[fangirlauthor]

Lok Boarding School

For weeks now, the candy ban had caused student after student to burst into tears as their beloved sweets were taken from them by every teacher, including the Dean. The teachers were confused, not at why the students were so upset about their candy, because every teacher understood that, but because there seemed to be an endless supply of candy to be taken away. 

The logic had been that a total candy ban would result in no candy in the school, but somehow candy seemed to be getting around anyway. The teachers, determined to find out where the candy was coming from, assigned a student to the task, since they hadn’t had any success finding the source on their own. 

“So the Search for the Source of the Malevolent Candy that is Unhealthy for Students to Consume begins,” said one teacher when the decision was made.

This inspired the other teachers to glance over and give him the side eye, and even motivated one to say, “How about we just call it the Search for Candy? ‘The Search for the Source of the Malevolent Candy that is Unhealthy for Students to Consume’ is a bit lengthy and, frankly, denotes the drama otherwise present.”

So the Search for the Candy - or, rather, the Search for the Source of the Malevolent Candy that is Unhealthy for Students to Consume, began. 

----

Deep in the halls of the esteemed boarding school, which sat on a cliff taller than its reputation, young Korra and her friend Bolin were hard at work in the library. Their teachers were pleased - to all, it looked as if they were determinedly studying the material, conferring together to learn the lessons being taught to their young minds. To their fellow students, it looked suspicious. Everyone knew Korra and Bolin never studied like they seemed to be studying right now - they did study, sometimes, but they got decent grades even if they didn’t, which annoyed almost everyone - and the fact that they hadn’t touched their schoolbooks made them all the more suspicious. 

No one could do their homework without even glancing at the textbook or their notes, no one except Asami Sato, the star student at the school, the person who never broke the rules - or so it seemed to everyone, anyway. the truth was, Asami Sato broke the rules more than Bill - the resident trouble maker and lover of cabbages extraordinaire - but no one knew, because she never got caught. 

By this time, Korra and Bolin were scribbling furiously on their papers, the computers being for the older students, and were talking very fast, very quietly. After a moment, they both stopped, glanced around in an obvious effort to act casual, stood up, gathered their things, and waved goodbye to the librarian, who looked dismayed that their study session hadn’t been longer. 

From two opposite ends of the library, two people were watching closely. One of them Mako, and the other Asami Sato. Neither followed or glanced across the library to each other, instead, taking a few short, quick steps out the back of the library and into the hallway on the other side of the building. 

Let the search begin, they thought.

Let the search begin, indeed.

----

Deep in the basement accessible only by teachers with a key and very determined students who are aware of secret passageways, an auction was taking place. On the table were two snickers bars, a giant twix, a caramel apple, and a medium-sized gray bag of mystery candy that sounded suspiciously like dum-dums. Students weren’t bidding money since the “sellers” didn’t accept it, so the hall was chaos as each student argued, yelled, and did their best to claim the candy for themselves or their friend group.

From one corner, a single student watched but did not participate. He was there to find out who the “sellers” were and where they were getting their candy, not buy himself any. Unfortunately, the situation was quickly diffused by the person guarding the candy - someone who Mako had already questioned and discovered that she had no part in the actual selling of the candy; she only guarded it until people figured out who got what.

Usually that took a while, but today was different - from another corner a girl walked up to Korra, the person guarding the candy, pulled her hat and scarf down far enough that Korra could see her face, said a few words that made Korra turn bright red, step aside, and allow the girl to take the candy. 

Just like that, the auction was over. There were complaints, of course, but Korra and, likely, the “sellers” vanished before the crowd could get angrier, and the girl who had successfully procured the candy had left almost as quickly.

----

“We need to make a deal.” Asami Sato, the star student, was sitting across from Mako at a small table in the back of the library, hidden by towering shelves of books on all sides. 

Mako eyed her suspiciously and did his best to make his voice lower and, therefore, more mysterious. “What for?”

“You’re trying to find the Source, I’m trying to find the Source, we can help each other out.”

“What d’you mean, the Source?” 

Asami looked at Mako like he was an idiot. “The Source of the candy? The people “selling” the candy? What even have you been doing your entire search? Reading magazines?”

Mako blinked and decided that he should have figured that out without help. “What makes you think you can help me?”

Asami rolled her eyes. “First of all, stop doing that thing with your voice, it sounds ridiculous. Second of all, it’s not about what I can do for you but what we can do for each other. We both need to find the Source, great; I have more information than you’ll ever be able to find out, and I need an extra person if my plan is going to work.”

Mako frowned, cleared his throat so he could speak in his normal voice, and said, an air of caution in his voice, “What plan?”

----

Once again, the “sellers” were giving away candy. This time, there were two people watching from afar; both in one corner, unlike the last few times. And this time, they had a plan. 

“Okay. Remember, I’m going to go up and set up a meeting with the “sellers” while you pretend to be an excited person in the crowd.” Asami jerked her chin toward where Korra was standing, guarding the candy that was currently up for grabs. 

Before Mako could argue, question, or otherwise delay the completion of Asami’s plan, Asami pulled her scarf over her face and tipped her hat low so no one knew who she was. 

It took her two minutes to convince Korra to set up a meeting with the “sellers,” the entirety of which took no effort on Asami’s part, except for deciphering what flustered Korra was saying, because that made things slightly more difficult. 

Once the auction was over, Asami and Mako prepared for the next phase of their plan - it was time to find the source. 

----

Sneaking into the basement at two in the morning to meet with secret candy “sellers” was a gamble on Mako and Asami’s part, but since one of them had been assigned to rooting out the Source and the other was known to the teachers as the person least likely to make trouble, they figured they wouldn’t get in too much trouble if they got caught. 

Neither of them knew the secret passages as well as they would have hoped, but Asami had spent some time down there and knew how to get to the meeting point. (Asami spent most of her time focusing on not getting caught breaking the rules, whereas Mako tended to refuse to break the rules unless it was absolutely necessary. 

In the small room that stored supplies that hadn’t been used in ages, the “sellers” awaited. 

Now was the time. 

----

Asami’s head was buzzing. She had been surprised when the “sellers” had revealed themselves, and even more surprised when they had offered to let Asami and Mako join them and the kitchen baker who had been supplying them with sweets. Not nearly as surprised as Mako had been when he found out his brother was running a secret candy smuggling business that supplied students with candy, but surprised. 

It was late now, and Asami was almost sick from eating so much candy, but she couldn’t help - Mako and Korra and Bolin feeling the same way - feeling like she finally had some friends here. 

And, though her ten year-old mind wasn’t thinking of it at the time, maybe feisty, flustered Korra would become something more, would turn out to be more...

Only time would tell where their friendship would go, how long it would last. 

But they could at least enjoy it while it did. 

[wc-ff]

VII.

Agents Morris and Steele were under a lot of pressure being that the two women they had just found brutally murdered in an abandoned home were the immediate family members of the mayor. One of the most important men in the city. The case was highly publicized for that reason and the media had constantly made up more crazy theories about what had happened every other day. They couldn’t even walk out of the precinct without being flooded by reporters that wanted to know if they had found any suspects yet.

It had been almost a week since the double homicide and the two detectives could tell that the press wasn’t going to die down any time soon. Especially not with the mayor still speaking out about it.

The phone they had found as evidence was fingerprinted that same day, but they couldn’t find a match out of the millions of people in their database. So now, they were just trying to get the phone to turn on. It had gotten pretty damaged when it crashed down onto the concrete and was left there overnight. But it was the only major key that they had.

They knew that whoever owned that phone would most likely be vital in figuring out the killer and closing the case for good. Everything they needed was right in the palms of their hands but they just couldn’t quite get ahold of it.

“Have you tried putting it in rice?” Ronald questioned with a loud snort causing Sandra to cut her eyes at him menacingly.

This was constantly her issue with him; he was never serious when he needed to be and it drove her crazy. “This isn’t a joke, Ronald. The entire city is depending on us to find out who killed these girls and this phone is literally the only thing we have that can get us there. Now, are you gonna keep fucking around or are you actually gonna do your damn job?”

Morris took the seat beside her with an annoyed huff but decided against saying anything at that moment. He was beginning to learn Sandra and one thing he figured out was that he had to choose his battles with her. He didn’t mind taking one small loss if it meant an even greater victory in the future, so he was going to keep his mouth shut for now.

“What do you want me to do, eh? Use my special mind powers to make it work or somethin’?” He shot back sarcastically, his strong Italian accent shining through with each word he spoke.

“Yes, Ronald. It’s called a brain.” Steele retorted sternly with the roll of her eyes as her head shook from side to side in disapproval. She swore she was one more formal complaint away from being banned from filing any more.

She had been trying to get the phone to charge and turn on for the past several days but to no avail. The phone had clearly endured a lot of damage due to the hard fall it took against the asphalt. She let out a frustrated sigh as Agent Morris sat quietly beside her since she had deemed all of his ideas to get the phone working were ‘idiotic’ or 'unintelligible.’ It was why he barely put any effort into helping her and would just try it out on his own time.

Sandra had a way of demeaning the men she came in contact with. She loved emasculating them and crushing their unnecessarily oversized egos. She felt that she could do anything that a man could do, if not better so there was no need to submit to them or make their lives easier. They didn’t need to be catered to.

She hadn’t had a boyfriend since she was in college and she was fine with that. She didn’t need a man to feel happy or better about herself. She was a strong willed woman and it showed.

But at that moment, she had just about given up on trying to get the cell phone to work. It seemed hopeless.

Sandra sighed and threw the phone back down onto the table as she frustratedly ran her hand through her slick black hair. “This crap is useless.”

“You tried taking out the SIM card?” Ronald spoke absentmindedly as he picked at the slight amount of dirt in his nails. He was big on keeping his hands and nails clean just in case he needed to use them later on in the after hours.

“Yes, but this damn phone just won’t open up.” She retorted, attempting to pry the back of the phone off from the rest of the device once again.

Agent Morris looked over at the cracked iPhone sitting on the table with a raised brow. All of a sudden, a crippling laughter overtook his body as he struggled to breathe, slapping his knees multiple times. He had forgot she was a damn Android user. As far as he knew, her phone still had a battery sitting inside of it.

Sandra gave him a stern glare, feeling as if he was making fun of her and she didn’t like it. It seemed as if she was the only one that was actually trying to solve this case. If she brought the suspect down, it would be the highlight of her career and she’d be damned if she allowed Ronald to mess that up for her.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Morris taunted her in a condescending tone. “iPhone’s don’t open up. You need something small and sharp to get the SIM card out.”

Amusement was laced in his voice and it was obviously making his partner’s blood boil. He was enjoying every moment of it after hearing her attempts to tear him down all day.

Instead of waiting for her though, he took it upon himself to grab the phone from off of the charger it was on and reach over to Sandra’s ear to remove one of her small stud earrings. She looked as if she was a lioness ready to attack her prey with every movement he made, but he just ignored her and continued to remove the SIM card from the broken phone. It would have all of the information they needed.

To make things easier, Agent Morris decided to use his own phone for further investigation since his was already unlocked from any specific phone company and removed his own SIM card before inserting the other one. Once that was done, he allowed everything from the card to settle into the phone in time before they began to copy down the person who owned the phone’s information.

They were able to grab the suspect’s phone number, carrier the phone was paid under, and billing information, which in turn held the phone owner’s name.

“Sage Medina… let’s see if the name comes up in our database.” Sandra spoke from over Ronald’s shoulder as he continued to scroll through his phone with a chance of anything else they might find.

Agent Steele moved over and sat in front of one of the hefty computers, typing in the name she had just repeated mere seconds ago. Her heart hammered in her chest as she impatiently waited to see the results, a small frown growing on her face once their database came up empty meaning that whoever’s phone it was didn’t have a criminal record themselves. This was making their jobs much harder than it had to be.

They now would have to go to the surrounding areas asking people if they recognized the name, especially since both of the detectives had no clue what this Sage person looked like. But it was a step closer in the direction they needed to be in if they were going to solve this case and neither one of them could rest until they did.

They wasted no time in gathering their things and making their rounds in a cop car that Sandra decided to drive. She was very cautious about who she hopped in a car with and she didn’t trust Ronald to get her anywhere safely in the slightest.

The two detectives visited restaurants, convenience stores, retail shops, and houses in the surrounding areas of the crime scene asking pedestrians if they knew of this Sage person. No one seemed to know who the individual was. It was almost as if having her name was a dead end in itself.

As they knocked on the last door on the block, Ronald gave Sandra a slightly discouraged look feeling as if this lead would have gotten them so far but also nowhere. She stared back at him expressionless, but she wasn’t feeling too good about how things were looking either.

They both turned their attentions back to the door once they heard it unlock, swinging open only moments later as a petite, caramel toned woman came into the frame. “Can I help you?”

“Hi, my name is Agent Steele and this is my partner here, Agent Morris.” Ronald gave a slight wave to the woman as he took in her figure and Sandra continued to speak, explaining the situation to her.

Her toes were painted a clean cocaine white and her smooth cocoa butter covered legs could be seen glistening even to the dullest of eyes due to the skin tight white shorts she was wearing. An oversized blue jersey was clad on her body and her natural hair was up into a curly puff. She wasn’t even trying in the slightest, but she was beautiful.

Ronald had already tuned his partner out by now as the woman invited them inside. They sat in her living room, her home smelling strongly of incense.

“You said you’re looking for Sage Medina, huh?” The gorgeous woman questioned as they all took a seat, one of her legs gracefully crossing over the other. “Yea, I know that bitch.”

The two detectives glanced at each other in shock, not expecting the harshness of her words to flow out so quickly. This woman obviously didn’t like the girl, which could have meant either a good thing or a bad thing for them. Only time would tell.

“She’s my boyfriend’s best friend and let me just say, shorty got a nasty attitude.” Chantell continued to rant off as Sandra turned to raise a brow at Ronald.

It could have meant something but it wasn’t like everyone with a bad attitude committed murder. Though, Steele knew it was something she should keep in mind, especially when it came time to profile this person of interest.

“Do you know where Sage lives?” Sandra interrogated further as she pointedly wrote a few quick notes down on her notepad.

Chantell shook her head. “Nope. You would have to ask De'Angelo about that. If I did know where she lived, I would have been pulled up on her.”

The two detectives shared another look, realizing how rowdy this girl was becoming. She was getting hype as if Sage was right in front of her. Though, they didn’t allow that to hinder their investigation as they asked a few more questions about the woman’s appearance before getting the boyfriend’s information so they’d be able to question him. Sandra recognized the description of Sage to be awfully familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on who it could have been.

Agents Morris and Steele began to gather their things as they thanked Chantell for her time, both of them sharing a handshake with her. Sandra started towards the door with purpose, but Ronald hung back a bit as he slid one of his contact cards out of his front shirt pocket.

“If you ever find out any new information on her or her whereabouts or need anything else in general, don’t be afraid to let us know.” His tone was professional but low as he handed her the small rectangular paper.

Chantell had noticed the detective eyeing her from the time she opened the door and she couldn’t say she didn’t appreciate the attention. It might have been a good idea to have him in her corner. After all, he was law enforcement.

She slightly tilted her head with the bat of her long mink eyelashes, her bottom lip loosely embedded between her teeth as their fingers brushed up against each other lightly. “I’ll make sure I call if anything comes up.” Her voice was smooth and enticing, like a siren singing to trap her man.

Ronald could nearly feel the blood beginning to rush to his lower half and at that moment, he knew he needed to get out of there before he did something else that gave Sandra a reason to report him. The thoughts that were now running through his mind were enough to make her write up a full page on him. He cleared his throat and Chantell smiled, knowing good and well that she was already making him weak. “You have a nice rest of your day, ma'am.”

“You too, Agent Morris.”

*******

Sage grabbed the brand new phone she had bought for herself a few days ago off her dresser due to her receiving an incoming call. A small smile graced her face once she saw her best friend’s name flash across the screen.

She had been pulling double shifts for the past few days to make up for the money she had to spend to buy herself a new phone, so they had barely seen each other and she honestly missed getting on his nerves. The good thing about working so much was that it kept her mind off of her troubling situation.

“Nigga who you is calling my girl phone?” Sage answered the call in the deepest voice she could muster up.

She could hear De'Angelo suck his teeth on the other end of the line. “Sage, I ain’t 'bout to play with your ass.” He shot back causing them both to burst out into a fit of laughter.

“How’d you know it was me?” She asked in between her laughs. “I wasn’t aggressive enough, huh? I should have called you a bitch.”

That only caused her best friend to chuckle even more. She knew that was one word he hated with a passion because he heard his father call his mother that so many times while he was growing up. It was then that he vowed to never call a woman out of her name; hearing it always took him back to when he was a helpless little boy. “Now, you know damn well you wouldn’t sound like a nigga even if you did call me that.”

Sage huffed lowly at her failed attempt, playfully rolling her eyes as if he could see her. She actually thought she did pretty well. Her voice was giving her very much manly vibes.

“Aye, but look. The feds just left my house and they were asking all kinds of questions about you.” De'Angelo just ripped the bandaid off as well as he could. He didn’t want to beat around the bush because he knew how her anxiety could get and this was bad enough news as it is.

Her heart immediately sunk to the pit of her stomach as she processed his words, the thoughts she was trying to push to the back of her head now rushing forward all at once. She gulped hard, but it did nothing for the desert-like dryness she could feel in the back of her throat. “How—What did they say?” She struggled to form her words correctly, her mind racing wildly as her heart pumped so hard that it shook her entire body.

“They were talking about the murder of those two girls… but I told them that you’ve been my friend since elementary and that there was no way you could do something like that. But I know they’re still gonna wanna talk to you about it so I just wanted to give you a heads up first.”

Sage buried her head in her hands for a second before she quickly removed them to hold her phone up closer to her mouth so he could hear her clearly. “How’d they find you? Why didn’t they just come to me to begin with?”

“That, I honestly don’t know Sage.” De'Angelo paused to think back for a minute or two. “Don’t they have your phone? Maybe that’s how.”

She sighed and stood up, beginning to nervously pace the floor as she subconsciously gnawed on the sides of her cheeks. The taste of blood filled her mouth instantly. “But that still doesn’t make sense on why they came to you. You have enough going on and I’m not trying to get you involved in this.”

“There’s nothing that could ever be going on with me to where I wouldn’t be there for you and you know that. If I could, I’d make this all go away for you but I can’t. So, all I can do is the best I can to comfort you when you’re down and help you out when you need it.”

Salty tears began to cascade down Sage’s cheeks as she remained silent. She didn’t want him to know that she was crying because it was a mix of appreciation that he was there for her and also being scared shitless. So, she wasn’t sure whether she could say they were happy tears or sad tears.

“Sage…” De'Angelo called out to her to make sure that she was still on the line. “You ok?”

She quickly wiped the clear liquid from her face and cleared her throat to rid her of that bubble forming in the back of it. “Yea, I’m good. I didn’t do anything so I’ll be fine.” She wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him of that or herself. She wasn’t sure about anything.

“You need me to come over?” He questioned, honestly hoping she would say yes. Chantell still wasn’t responding to him and he knew that he and Sage both needed to relax and relieve a bit of stress. When they were with each other, they forgot all about their other problems and they needed that in that moment.

“No, I’m just gonna head to sleep.” She responded, her eyes continuously leaking fluids.

Her main goal right now was not bringing anybody else down with her if it came down to it and that meant their spirits too. She felt she had already cried to him about the situation too much and didn’t want to seem annoying or overly emotional, so she just decided to handle this one herself. The fact that she was even still crying had angered her alone.

“Oh, well alright.” De'Angelo’s voice was evidently laced with disappointment but he would respect her choice anyway. “Sweet dreams then and if you need anything, call me.”

She nodded more so to herself and without saying another word, she ended the call before allowing the second wave of tears to come rushing out.

[rboooks]

Dimension Hoppers Part 2

Part two of this  since I have no impulse control.  May be the last one hoenstly. 

Again you should all go read the fic C’est La Vie by the ever talented @cywscross   It’s so good!  

 The wind chimes released pleasant twinkling sounds when he pushed the door open. The noise had quickly become familiar to the young werewolf over the last few weeks he’s been visiting the establishment.

His tense shoulders relax instantly, taking a second to breathe in the calming scents of the store, his new safe haven from the many pointed stares of Diagon Alley. He picks up one scent in particular that has his heart racing and his hands sweaty. 

Right on cue, Orion hears Hadrian call in a friendly voice from behind the counter   “Welcome to Dimension Hoppers. Please have a look around. If you need anything don’t hesitate to ask.” 

He turns to find his best friend - isn’t that a crazy thought? He, Orion Black, has a best friend!- standing on a step stool. He was attempting to push a box onto one of the shelves, but it wasn’t going all too well, seeing as Hadrian’s hands could barely even reach the top shelves much less push something upwards onto it.

Orion could barely pick up the other’s soft swearing with his werewolf hearing, nothing that would make Father’s nose wrinkle, but frustrated none the less.  “Stupid heavy box. Stupid Fate making me short again. Stupid Will, and his stupid long legs. Stupid no underage magic law. Dang, it get up there already!” 

A smile quirk onto his lips as he is unable to fight it completely. Luckily Orion was able to swallow the chuckle that wanted to escape his mouth as Hadrian started to hop up and down in an ill-fated attempt to ram the box upwards.

He was fortunate that his friend hadn’t seen the smile yet, giving him time to shove it off his face as best he could. Marlin knows Hadrian’s dislike of comments on his hight.

 Will took lots of pleasure in pointing out his height any chance he could because of said dislike. The oldest Evans didn’t seem all that faze by Hadrian’s admittedly terrifying wrath, consistently comparing it to “being threatened by a cupcake with a knife”. (How Will had survived this long Orion may never know)

 He rounded the counter, barely aware of soft hum as the Barrier Runes. They recognize him easily, deeming him a non-threat and letting him pass without much fuss. Will had coded him into them a few days back when the store got a large rush and Orion had jumped in to assist the overwhelm brothers. 

Seeing as he been here every day for nearly three weeks beforehand, he was far familiar with the layout of the store and after a few instructions, was cashing out customers like a pro.

Orion had been an unofficial employee ever since. They paid him by the hours he worked, and even giving him a discount of “Take whatever you want from the shelves.” 

Dad had been ecstatic about that particular benefit. This was the only Wizarding store that sold his favorite Muggle band shirts and he wasn’t shy about letting his excitement show. Father, on the other hand, had simply picked up entire chocolate basket acting as casually as he could while doing so. Hadrian had been highly amused. 

“Need help?” He asks taking the box before Hadrian could answer. Since the other didn’t so much as twitch, he knew that his friend had been aware of his presence behind him the whole time. Sometimes that was a bit scary, other times it was humbling. 

Green eyes narrowed with a warning even as he steps back to allow Orion to climb up. “I’m not little.”

“You’re not. You just need to hit a growth spurt is all.”  

Hadrian’s frown would have made his stomach twist with cold uncertainty when they first meet but now nearly three months of their friendship he knows he’s done no real offense.  “Once I hit puberty, you will cower”

“I’m shaking in my boots”  Orion mocked, smiling when it causes a snort of amusement from Hadrian. His heart did a little flip in his chest. He tries not to think about the why as Hadrian starts talking about the new shipment of rare exotic hair products Will has ordered.

While doing so Hadrian is already handing over a white apron that has the store’s logo printed on the front without prompting. The young werewolf often compares this to when Dad knows what Father wants without words and the content feeling of Pack almost makes him dizzy. 

“He thinks it’ll help with the frizz. I told him it’s useless but he’s still convinced he will have silky smooth hair if he tries hard enough-” Hadrian cuts his words off turning to the door as the chimes sing once more.  “ “Welcome to Dimension Hoppers. Please have a look around. If you need anything don’t hesitate to ask”

Orion never says the greeting himself but the brothers were nearly religious about it. Will said that his old boss beat it into his head to always be polite even when the customers weren’t. Apparently, said boss never lets go of grudges and he had learned to listen quickly.

Hadrian went along with it but he wasn’t very willing to be polite if the customer wasn’t. (Already he’s thrown out three families after hearing the remarks they said about Orion. Will had made the wards not allow them back in and officially “banning” them from the store)

Orion felt his smile fall, retreating into himself when he recognizes the family of redheads. He had been lucky, having never run into anyone in his school year, just some upperclassmen who had all avoid him as much as he had them. For the most part, they left him alone if he did nothing other then stand behind the counter. 

Dimension Hoppers may be one of the greatest stores he’s ever seen but it was still relatively new and most people haven’t wandered in yet. Just a few regulars who happen to find the rare exotic selection by chance. 

It may not be the best for business but it was the best for him.

But looking at the expression of Ron Weasely his luck was about to run out. 

“You know them?” Hadrian asks softly, voice lowered so only Orion can hear. There is a strange emotion in his words, something that says sorrow but not quite. The Evans brothers sound like that at odd times.  

“Something like that” Orion mumbles back. He shifts to stand closer to Hadrian wanting to protect him even though he knows there is nothing to protect from. The wolf in him just felt Orion’s unease and demanded to make sure the pack was safe. 

The Red-haired family has dispersed throughout the store. The Twins all but tripping over themselves for the joke section while Percy had stopped before the books and not moved, looking like he was going to self combust from excitement. Mr. Weasely and Mrs. Weasly were looking at the children potions kits while Grinny had dragged a narrow-eyed Ron to the Quidditch section. 

The eldest, Bill, was calmly looking over the hair products with a thoughtful air about him. The only one misses was Charlie. He lost sight of the youngest two when they rounded one of the aisles but the store Runes was keeping track of them.

Hadrian hummed in a non-commenting way before his hand shoot out and squeezed Orion’s own. For a heart-stopping moment, the werewolf almost squealed. “Whatever your history is with them I’ll make sure they leave you alone.”

His fingers pulled away and he instantly missed their warmth. Marlin, what did Hadrian say? Orion’s brain wasn’t really working right now. “Ugh. Yeah. Protect. Sure” 

Hadrian smiled at him, never judging him for his fumbling words. It eases the nervousness in his chest a little. 

The door leading to the upper apartment, where the Evans lived, open then. Since the doorway was placed in a little hall it was kind of far from the counter. It was only because he was watching Hadrian’s face, that he saw the flash of worry melt over his face before it was gone in a blink of an eye.  “Will, you need to go back upstairs.” 

Orion is used to being surprised by his friend but the command in those words really throw him for a curve.  It was the first time he ever heard anything resembling an actual fight between the brothers and it baffled him.

Apparently, Will felt the same way.  “Why? I felt the Runes flare that a shoplifter-”

“Will, I can handle that but you aren’t in the mental state to deal with-”

“Mental state? What the hell are you talking-”

“How much for these?” Orion jerked his head over the counter. He was mentally kicking himself for being so distracted by the drama unfolding before him than paying attention to the customers. Will had said the shoplifter rune had flared (though that may due with the person holding the item too close to the door. It tended to happen sometimes), he should be watching them!

The Weasly Twins had piled a bunch of prank objects onto the counter,  mischevious glee etched into their grins. Next, to him, Will made a choked sound that sounded suspiciously like “Fred” but was too low for him to be sure.

Hadrian had snatched him by the arm yanking him further into the back before his brother could move to the counter. Briefly, his eyes meet Orion’s, his brilliant green nearly pleading.

Orion took the initiative and stepped forward. If Hadrian wanted him to serve them instead of Will then he would.  “That will be seven Sickles for everything together on our Back-to-Hogwarts Sale. ”

“Back-to-Hogwarts Sale is my new favorite words,” Said one of the twins (Orion can never tell them apart) eagerly plopping three Sickles on the counter while his brother placed the last four. He eyed Orion with a look that meant a nasty prank was on the way.  “Do you work here now, Starlightkins?”

Orion tried not to show how the nickname, filled with mocking, stung  “I volunteer here. Would you care for a bag?”

“Volunteer? Why that-”

“-Sounds very interesting. What exactly-”

“-does one do when volunteering?” 

“You manage the counter and sell things.”  He puts as much sarcasm as he can into his words, gently bagging the items.

At once the twins stand straighter. Together they say “Sell things? You can sell here? Anything? What does one do to be able to sell their products here and how much do they make?”

“You’ll have to ask management.” Do they know how creepy it is, when they speak perfectly simultaneously? They should stick to finishing each other's sentences that won’t give nightmares. “I can’t make those kinds of calls”

One twin tilted his head. “Alright. Where is management?”

“Right here,” Will says finally coming out from the back. Orion does a double take. Will’s eyes are glossy, not enough to gather tears but not unnoticeable to him. He’s never seen the Evans show anything other than calm friendly, so seeing the man he’s come to see as a big brother close to crying- or as close as he’s ever been- is very upsetting. “What can I do for you boys?”

The twins look like cats standing over a mouse.  “We got an offer you can’t refuse. How would you like to be one of the first stores to ever sell Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes?”

Will looked confused for a moment before his eyes light up. “The owl-ordered prank items? I read about them but haven’t had the chance of ordering yet. Impressive potential.  Are you two the brilliant minds behind them then?”

One of the brothers beams “We are in did. Care to do business?”

Well, they certainly don’t miss a chance, do they? Orion wonders what it’s like to have that much confidence. 

There is a moment while the eldest Evans considers them before shrugging. “Eh what the heck. Sure, come into my office and I’ll hear you two out but I won’t promise anything yet. Hadrian, can you stock the new Mermaid Locks for me?”

“Give up Will,” Hadrian answers sounding normal again and Orion relaxes. Whatever had happened a while seems to have passed.  “You’ll never have straight hair. Stop ordering new products that promise you lies.”

“ These ones will work.”  The twenty-two-year-old smooths out some of his hair almost subconsciously. The strands stick out of his ponytail even more by the action, making him frown. “Just go do it, you brat”

Hadrian gives him a cheeky grin, patting Orion’s shoulder on his way to do as he’s told, bending down for the shipment box.

 The werewolf’s lips quirk when he sees Will shoot Bill a longing look as he leads the twins away.  Surprisingly the Weasleys say nothing but they no doubt saw the same look their new possible business partner had.

The grins on their faces are knowing enough.

Once the party of three are out of earshot, he leans in to tell Hadrian. “I think your brother has a crush”  He jerks his head to the eldest Weasley who is stocking up on all kinds of hair products as if though it’s going out of style.  “Must be the hair.”

Hadrian looks honestly startled before he roars with laughter. It’s the first time he’s ever laughed this hard or this long, his voice gaining the attention of the rest of Weaselys. 

Orion has never seen anything more beautiful than that smile so he’s a little too stunned by it to really notice the pairs of eyes now watching them. 

“That was almost as funny as the time we went to get ice cream without telling him” Hadrian wheezes. “Do you remember?”

Orion does remember that day, how could he possibly forget? It was the first time he went out with a friend for ice cream. 

The two had finished a shift early, the younger Evans famished with the urge to have something cold and suggested ice cream. In their excitement to have some, the twelve-year-olds forgot to inform Will, leaving after locking up. 

Will had been in the workshop which was located in the basement testing out new products, specially designed for Cruse Breaking work. It was only about an hour later that the young man stumbled upon them eating at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour looking half craze in worry.  

“Empty store! You two gone! With No note! No sign! Not even a verbal warning! What were you two thinking!? You could have been kidnapped! You could have died! And I would have been none the wiser!” Will had shrieked at the boys before suddenly looking horrified. In a small voice he had whispered  “Oh no, I’ve become my mother”

Hadrian had nearly snorted his ice-cream through his nose.

 Orion grins at the memory.  “How do you think he’ll handle us going to Hogwarts next week? Think he’ll go insane?”

“Not with Remus checking up on him,” Hadrian says with a soft smile. “Your parents seem to really care for him.”

“For both you.” Orion corrects firmly. “They care for both of you”

Hadrian tilts his head but says nothing, shrugging in an uncaring matter. Sometimes Orion really hates that about his best friend. Does he not know his own value? How can he not see just how wonderful he is? 

Again, the Black Heir swears to himself he will do everything he could to make Hadrian Evans know he’s important. Even if he has to spend the rest of his life doing so.

Secretly, he hopes he will able to spend the rest of his life at Hadrian’s side, be it as a best friend or as something...more.  

Mrs. Weasely puts five potion kits on the counter then and he turns to her without fuss, aware that Hadrian has gone over to stock up the bottles of Mermaid Locks.   

Her buying her kids' school supplies remind him that in only five days, Orion and Hadrian would be boarding a train for Hogwarts. All the fun new adventures that the castle could bring him now with a friend by his side, not to mention no longer having to stay near Harry.

Who knows what this year will be like.  But whatever the case may be, whatever the future may bring, he would gladly spend it by running Dimension Hoppers with the Evans. 

[wayward-river]

Initiation

Sweet Pea x Reader 

AN: Alright this is a long one! I hope y’all enjoy! All mistakes are my own. I do not own the gif.

Warnings : Violence, fight scene, angst

AN 2: Thanks to @xserpentlife​ for going over and making sure everything looked good and for helping out when I got stuck!

So have exactly 4000 words! Enjoy!

Sweet Pea POV

 Sweet Pea smiled as he watched you lean across the bar talking with Toni about orders probably, you were on shift tonight. Even though you weren’t an official serpent your older brother Chris was, before a deal went wrong and Chris had paid the price with his life. Sweet Pea had never seen you so broken, in all the time he knew you it was only you and Chris no parents around which wasn’t out of the ordinary by any means on the southside. He spent months by your side, you would awake to the nightmares unable to get back to sleep without him.  The serpents took care of you, even more after Chris’s death they protect their own. So FP had given you a few shifts here and there at the Wyrm to help keep you in the trailer and pay the bills. You had also picked up a few shifts at Pops unknown to most, but Sweet Pea had caught you red handed one night when he went in after a late job and there you stood looking so beautiful in a Pops uniform. Not that you didn’t look any less beautiful out of it.

He was pulled out of his thoughts at the snap of a finger in front of his face. He looked to Fangs a scowl on his face.

“What?”

Fangs chuckled “It's your shot, she’s not going to disappear”

Sweet Pea rolled his eyes as he took a few shots glancing up ever so often his eyes searching for your neon green tank top as you fluttered around the scruffy old men and younger serpents who gave you flirty smiles as you refilled and talked with them.

You were making your way over to the pool tables so Sweet Pea took his eyes off you to make his shot. Hearing your giggle he glanced up as he watched you lean into Fangs and kiss his cheek.

Sweet Pea tensed at the small affection given to Fangs his hand clenched around the pool stick. Fangs was the only one that knew his actual feelings for you. He wasn’t able to hide it from him after one too many beers about a year ago. Unknown to him you had confessed to Fangs about two months ago about your feelings for the tall serpent. Fangs had spent multiple nights trying to convince the both of you to just come clean but so far nothing has been done. Toni knew of your feelings but she had yet to know of Sweet Peas.

You moved away from Fangs your y/e/c locking with Sweet Peas you moved and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.

“Can I get you something Sweets?” your soft voice making him loosen his grip on the pool cue.

He watched as you got closer to him, bringing up your hand as it lightly touched his arm. Your Y/E/C staring into his making sure he was good.

Sweet Pea took a deep breath. He should be used to the contact by now you have been friends for years but lately he was unable to reign his feelings in.

Sweet Pea placed his hand over yours.

“I’m good princess, but how about a milkshake at Pops later?” His voice lowering so he didn’t let your secret out.

He couldn’t contain the smile on his face as he watched yours light up as you nodded gently squeezing his arm and walking back to the bar.

He shook his head his smile still plastered on his face as he ignored Fangs’s knowing smirk. You were the only girl he called princess being as your brother was FPs right hand man. Jughead had been adamant on you being his right hand not wanting to break the tradition but you wouldn’t have it until he let you do the Gauntlet instead of the dance. Jughead was just as stubborn as you were not letting you do it.

Sweet Pea watched as you ducked out the back heading to your next destination. He would follow shortly he just had to finish beating Fangs.

Y/N POV

It had been about an hour and a half into the late night shift, you sat at the counter picking at the chipping nail polish on your fingernails. The place was dead. You were just about to give in to doing some work in the back when the bell chimed and Sweet Pea sauntered in giving you that smile that made your knees weak as he took a seat in an empty booth. You gave him a quick wave as you tore off the order sheet and handed it back to Earl.

Why did he have to be so .. him? You thought to yourself as you wiped your hands nervously on your apron. Why were you so nervous, it was just Pea.

Seeing as the entire diner was just you two and Earl, you sat across from him as you waited for his milkshake to be done.

“Your milkshake should be up shortly.”  

Sweet Pea was silent as you watched him internally fight about something. Being slightly anxious every since you lost Chris you couldn’t help the way you tapped your fingers against the table, or the way you fidgeted with your hands as you sat in silence.

“I want to talk to you Y/N/N” Sweet Pea looked up at you finally grabbing your hand that was fidgeting on the table.

You gave a slight nod your eyes still downcasted at the table.

You heard a sigh leave Sweet Pea. “I want you to be an official serpent, and I know you want that too Y/N, so just please please do the damn dance”

Your eyes flew up to meet Sweet Peas the anger evident in them. Your jaw clenched as you ripped your hand out of his grip.

“No.”

“Y/N, come on just-” Sweet Pea started until you cut him off.

“I will not do the dance Pea. Its degrading, outdated, and should be banned. Some dance isn’t going to protect me when I get into a fight on a job, or get” your voice cracked as your eyes glossed over with unshed tears. “Ambushed by ghoulies.”

Sweet Pea dropped his head at your words, he was not winning this fight with you. You were dead set on doing this. There was no way around it, and no way of talking you out of it. Before he could get words out Earl yelled to you for the order.

You slid out of the booth your hands shaking as you walked to grab his milkshake bringing it over and setting it down on the table.

You stood at the front of the table. Your face set still pissed. “Can I get you anything else?”

“I’m good Y/N/N, but listen” Sweet Pea tried again.

“Unless the words out of your mouth are I’ll drop it or Okay, I don’t want to hear it Sweets”

Sweet Pea sat contemplating he knew you would do it with or without him. He grabbed a hold of your hands pulling you closer to him. “Okay, fine you win”

You let a small smile grace your face as you leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss against his cheek. “Thanks Pea” you whispered.

He nodded as he let go of your hands.

“I have to get some work done before my shift is up, but you are more than welcome to stay I just can’t sit with you”

Sweet Pea POV

Sweet Pea nodded again clearing his throat trying to calm his beating heart after having your soft lips pressed against him. It’s not like it hadn’t happened before so why was this working him up more than it normally did.

He watched as you cleaned offering his help but you declining every time swatting him with the wet rag until you were done and off for the night.

“Can I take you home?” Sweets asked as you took of your apron.

You smiled and nodded as Sweet Pea led you to his truck. He always took his truck on the nights you worked late knowing you were most likely going to drift off to sleep against him or the window.

The ride was silent, the old school country playing softly from the radio, not his favorite but it was yours. It seemed to calm you a trick he learned when he needed it the most.

He smiled as he heard you softly singing along as he pulled up to your trailer.

You slid over as you gave him an attempted hug. “Thanks Pea, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes, go get some sleep princess” He responded as he playfully pushed you towards the truck door.

He stayed idled as he watched you unlock the door and disappear into your trailer.

Sweet Pea headed home knowing he had to do something difficult the next day.

-

Sweet Pea drove to Jugheads trailer the next morning banging on the door.

“Jones!”

Finally a messy haired Jughead appeared rubbing his eyes.

“What do you want Sweet Pea?”

“We need to talk about Y/N and her doing the gauntlet.” Sweet Pea mustered as he made his way inside the trailer.

Jughead looked puzzled. “You have been the one who has been against this the most. What changed?”

“Y/N/N, she won’t do it unless it's that way. We protect her but it needs to be official. I know she wants it, hell you want her at your side.”  Sweet Pea rambled.

Jughead brought his hands up. “Okay, we need to have a meeting, everyone needs to be on board, it also needs to be a serpent only meeting”

Sweet Pea nodded as he pulled out his phone sending a few texts off.

“Soon Jones” Sweet Pea pleaded.

“Give me a few hours Sweet Pea”

Sweet Pea made his way out of the trailer and headed for the Wyrm, knowing it would be a few hours but he couldn’t just sit.

-

Sweet Pea watched as Jughead walked to the stage grabbing the microphone.

“Alright Serpents we have to have a vote on the status of Y/N L/N” Jughead informed the serpents in the Wyrm.

He began to hear the grumbles of all the serpents mostly mad thinking you were going to be exiled or not around.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa we need to talk about her becoming an official serpent” He added.

Sweet Pea smiled as the Wyrm bursted into whistles and cheers.

“Okay settle down the only way she will do it is if she does the gauntlet so all in favor” Jughead stated.

Everyone seemed to fall into an eerie silence a few people looking back to Sweet Pea.

Sweet Pea muttered a small fuck as he put his hand up and nudged Fangs to do the same. Pretty soon one by one the younger serpents had voted outnumbering a few of the older ones against it.

“Thats final Y/N will do the gauntlet, I will let her know she has done all of the other trials except for this one, so if she’s up for it she does it tonight.”

Sweet Pea smirked remembering the way you lost it on Jughead when he told you the final step, refusing to step foot onto that stage in that kind of manner.

Jughead made his way off the stage and over to Toni, Fangs, and Sweet Pea.

“Thanks Jones, but I need one more favor.” Sweet Pea started.

Jughead sighed as he brought his hand up covering his face. “What now Sweet Pea?”

“I can’t be at the end of the line” Sweet Pea lowered his voice making sure that only the group heard him.

Jughead began to argue, both him and Sweet Pea going back and forth.

“Why! Why can’t you do it Sweet Pea!” Jughead yelled

“BECAUSE I LOVE HER” Sweet Peas voice boomed throughout the Wyrm causing it to go silent.

Jughead stood processing, getting ready to apologize but unable to allow it. Before anything was said. Fangs spoke up.

“I’ll be at the end of the line”

Sweet Peas head whipped towards his bestfriend his eyes wide.

“It has to be someone close if not at Sweet Peas status, and a younger serpent, plus Sweet Pea trusts me. I’ll do it, don’t make him do it Jones” Fangs defended himself.

Jughead nodded. “You still use the brass knuckles.”

Fangs nodded as he turned and patted Sweet Peas shoulder walking out of the Wyrm not letting Sweet Pea talk him out of it.

-

Y/N POV

You walked into the Whyte Wyrm for your bar shift, luckily the Wyrm was all you were working tonight. As soon as you walked in all eyes seemed to turn to you, you gave an awkward smile as you continued your walk to the bar.

“Did I miss something today?” you asked Toni as you bent down to tie the small black apron across your waist.

Before Toni could answer. Jughead appeared asking you to meet him upstairs in the office. You gave a slight nod as your face went pale.

“It’s good babe I promise” Toni assured.

You made your way up the steps slowly until you came to the door. Knocking lightly you heard a faint come in.

You opened the door to see Jughead and Fangs in the office.

“Y/N come in, sit down” Jughead motioned to the spot next to Fangs. You took your seat and placed your hands in your lap, fidgeting slightly as your knee bounced up and down afraid of what was happening.

“Okay Y/N/N you wore me down, as well as Sweet Pea. We had a vote today, if you still want you do the gauntlet to finish out your trials.” Jughead paused. You looked at him with wide eyes until a smile stretched across your face.

“YES!, uh yes I want to, when can I?” You shouted bringing your voice back down as Jughead chuckled lightly.

“You can do it tonight … if you want, Fangs here will be at the end.” Jughead answered for you.

Your stomach dropped. Why wasn’t it Sweet Pea?

Fangs seemed to be able to sense your confusion as he placed his hand on your knee.

“He couldn’t do it. I offered.”

You nodded. “Tonight it is.” you slowly got up giving a small thanks to Jughead.

“Oh Y/N,” Jughead stopped you as you got to the door. “I want you by my side, like your brother was to my dad”

You nodded back at Jughead. “I want that too”

You made your way down the stairs as your eyes scanned the bar searching for Sweet Pea, you found him at the pool tables. You couldn’t control your anger as you marched over shoving him.

“YOU JUST HAD TO CHANGE SOMETHING HUH?” You shouted at him.

He stood there letting you hit him until he pulled you against his chest. “I can’t do that to you Y/N/N, I’m sorry I just, I can’t”

You pushed away from him still seething with anger. “Whatever Pea.”

You walked out of the Wyrm back to your trailer getting ready for the night.

-

You had chosen a small park near your trailer to do your gauntlet, the same place your brother had his.

You took a deep breath as you looked around at the serpents you’ve known pretty much your whole life, your breath catching as you locked eyes with Sweet Pea, you were so mad at him yet he still came to support you, a smile stretched across your face as you watched him give you a wink, your sign of you’ve got this.

You looked to Jughead “Y/N L/N you ready for this?”

Your face went stone cold as you braced yourself. “Let's do it”

Sweet Pea POV

I stood behind a few guys purposefully telling them to stop me if I tried anything. Toni had a grip on my arm as well telling me it was going to be fine. I winced as I watched Y/N take hit after hit, stumbling but never falling down. Finally after what seemed like the longest time in my life. She stood in front of Fangs.

He looked to her and then back to me. I gave him a small nod appreciating the small gesture.

I chuckled as I watched Y/N spit some blood onto the grass, and per usual sass Fangs.

“C’mon Fangsy give me your best shot”

I watched Fangs take a deep breath as he closed his eyes his hand clenching around the brass knuckles, I could see he didn’t want to do it but he had to. His arm raised grip tight to the cold metal wrapped around his fingers. He took the swing his hand connecting with the side of her face right along her cheek bone, blood spilling from her mouth once again but more this time as she fell to the bloody grass below her feet. The hit was one of the worst I’ve seen Fangs deliver to someone I was pissed to say the least as I watched her fall, but Y/N would’ve been pissed beyond belief if Fangs had held back. The grip on my arm tightened as I went to move forward, I looked down seeing “Don’t” fall from Tonis lips. As much as I wanted to run to her and pull her in my arms I knew that was not how this worked. So I watched helplessly, “c’mon Y/N/N get up” I muttered softly under my breath.

I released the breath I was holding as I watched her get up slowly, she smirked at Fangs, but I knew her better than anyone. I could see the concealment of the pain surging through her right now.

I watched as Jughead moved beside Fangs a jacket held in his hands but not just any jacket.

“We’ve kept this safe for you for awhile now, but after that you have earned it, you can have your own but your brother always told us it would be yours when he was gone.”

He watched as the tears fell down your cheeks the salty tears mixing with the blood and cuts as you brought your hand up to cover your mouth a choked sob coming from you as your knees went weak. Fangs acting fast as he gripped you.

Jughead placed the jacket around your shoulders as the serpents surrounded you patting your back and pulling you in for hugs.

I wasn’t getting anywhere near you yet so I walked over to Fangs.

“You just had to hold nothing back didn’t you!” I harshly whispered to him.

“Sweet Pea I had to do it the way I did, you know Y/N she would have known, she would have done the whole thing again!” Fangs defended.

Our argument going back and forth for a while not even noticing you standing a few feet away watching it all unfold.

Y/N POV

You stood shocked as you watched Sweet Pea berate Fangs for doing what he was supposed to. You gripped the jacket around me tighter as you scoffed. You were hoping you could finally tell Sweet Pea how you had felt, You had been so scared that he wouldn’t want you as you weren’t a full fledged serpent. You waited for a few minutes before deciding to slip away, heading home to take care of yourself. You had just made it home and grabbed my first aid kit when you heard the pounding on my front door.

You must not have been as sneaky as you thought you had been as you heard Sweets voice from the other side.

“C’mon Y/N/N let me in!”

You rolled your eyes. “I don’t need you Pea!” You shouted back.

“Fine! You want to do this the hard way, we can do this the hard way!”

“What is that even supposed to mean?!” You quipped back. You heard no response. What did he mean the hard way? What was he going to do break in? A small giggle escaped me as you thought about Sweet Pea trying to break in.

“Told you I’d do it the hard way”

You jumped letting out a small scream. “WHAT THE FUCK PEA?”

He moved towards you and grabbed the first aid kit off the floor where you had dropped it.

“I wasn’t leaving you all alone like this. Now sit, so I can patch you up.”

You crossed your arms grumbling a fine as you hopped onto the kitchen counter making it easier for Sweets to get to me.

He moved closer, settling in between my legs as he brought up the warm cloth to my face. As gently as he could he cleaned up my cuts on my face. Gently his thumb rubbed the spot where Fangs brass knuckles had connected with my cheek the purple already blooming. I closed my eyes at the touch.

“Pea?”

“Yeah” His response quiet his breath warm on my face.

“You shouldn’t have yelled at Fangs, he stood up and did the thing you weren’t able to do.” You paused, the question itching in the back of your mind “Why Pea? Why couldn’t you do it?”

Silence.

He looked down shaking his head. You knew deep down why he couldn’t do it. You’ve known it since you were in the third grade.

You took a deep breath, if you could handle the gauntlet, you could handle this. “I love you.”

His thumb stilled. His eyes locking with yours.

“If your lip wasn’t so busted open, I would kiss you right now” He muttered.

You grabbed the dog tags dangling from his neck and pulled him closer, and as soft as you could placed my lips against his. He kissed back tenderly before pulling away.

“You just wait until that lip is healed princess.”

You moved forward, wrapping my arms around him. “I can’t even begin to tell you how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

Sweet Pea smiled. “I think I know princess, I think I know.”

-

A few weeks later you were sitting at the Wyrm. Your head leaned against Sweet Pea as you were surrounded by your friends. These last few weeks had been the best you’ve had in awhile. You had shared many stolen kisses, and received such elated responses when your friends found out about the two of you finally dating. You weren’t really sure how your life could get any better than this. You were pulled from your thoughts as Sweet Pea leaned in closer to you.

“Hey Princess”

“Hmmmm?”

“I have something for you.” You looked to Sweet Pea as he placed a small box in front of you. You looked around at your friends, there was no way they didn’t know what trick Sweet Pea had up his sleeve. You took your time opening the box knowing it annoyed Sweet Pea, slightly laughing when he nudged you to hurry up. You looked down into the box and found your brothers pair of brass knuckles staring back up at you.

You were speechless. You looked up to Sweet Pea noticing his eyes a little glossy as well.

He cleared his throat. “I know how much he meant to you Y/N/N and I know how much you miss him.”

You turned fully in the booth and threw your arms around Sweet Peas neck, mumbling a small thank you as the watery tears mixed of sadness and happiness cascaded down your cheeks.

“I - I thought he lost this in the deal”

Sweet Pea tightened his grip on you. “I went back for them when the coast was clear.”

You kissed the tattoo on his neck knowing what it did to him as a silent thank you.

Sweet Pea kissed the top of your head. “Anything for you princess.”

[hachama]

Democratic debate analysis

I’ve read the transcripts.  I read the fact-checkers’ analysis.  I have ranked them. 

Due to the size of the field, I’ll be splitting my analysis into four groups.  This first one will be the Please Do Not Make Me Vote For Them group: 

Ryan, Hickenlooper, Williamson, Bennet, Delaney, O’Rourke, and Biden.

Under the break, I’ll be analyzing their debate performance, how effectively they represented themselves on the issues, and how much I hate them, in reverse order of preference. Let’s begin.

20) Biden

Biden is so… so out of touch.  Even the moderators asked if he was out of touch, and when the moderators of a debate you’re participating in think you don’t know what you’re talking about?  For a career politician, that has got to hurt.  Frankly, they were right.  Biden thinks that the reason people can’t pay their student loans without sacrificing everything else they want to do with their lives is because we’re not earning more than $25k a year, that freezing payments and interest until the graduated student crosses that threshold would magically make everything ok.  If he were right, there’d be no Fight for 15.  A $15 minimum wage, assuming full time hours, is more than $30k per year.  

His response to accusations of racism was to point to his “black friend,” former President Obama, which… dude.  You’ve got to know better than that by now.  Please tell me you know having been the first and only black President’s VP does not immediately absolve you of being an old white guy who worked with Southern Segregationists against integrating schools.  

His entire platform seems to be “remember when I was a senator/the vice president?  Wasn’t I great, back when I had ideas and did things?” and I gotta say, No.  No, you weren’t that great, Joe.  Even his closing comments were lackluster, talking about “restoring the soul of America,” and “restoring the dignity of the middle class,” and “building national unity.”  His answers to simple questions were, frankly, terrible.

Joe, what would you do, day one, if you knew you’d only be able to accomplish one thing with your Presidency?  Thanks for asking, I’d BEAT DONALD TRUMP!  Joe.  Joe, that’s how you get to Day One.  Unless you mean “grab him by the collar, haul him out on the White House lawn, and bludgeon him with heavy objects,” you’re not answering the question.   Joe, which one country do you think we need to repair diplomatic ties with most?  NATO!  Joe.  Joe, NATO is more than one country.  I just… *sigh*

To his credit, Biden trotted out many of the same old campaign promises Democrats have been making for as long as I can remember.  Closing tax loopholes, universal pre-K and increased educational funding, let Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices.  These are tried and true campaign promises because they’re things we can all generally agree we want.  But they’re old, a lot like Biden.  They’re not the bold solutions we need.  His newer ideas all sound pretty moderate and old, too: free community college (not 4 year public university), creating a public option for healthcare so people can choose between insurance companies and Medicare, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, and instituting national gun buybacks.  His suggestion of requiring all guns to have a biometric safety is also a vague gesture in the direction of a solution.

Biden is too old, too timid, and too arrogant to understand that he’s got nothing to offer in an election where Millenials and Gen Z are going to be the largest portion of the electorate.

19) O’Rourke 

Beto, or as I like to call him, Captain Wrongerpants, got off to a roaring start by giving a non-answer in two languages.  This incredible display of pandering, and wasting precious time, made him seem pretentious and obnoxious in twice the number of languages most politicians aspire to.

Possibly more than any other candidate, O’Rourke completely failed to answer any question he was asked.  He presented a few good ideas, saying that he sees climate change as the most pressing threat to America and calling for an end to fossil fuel use.  He supports universal background checks and reinstating the assault weapons ban.  He wants comprehensive immigration reform, to reunite families separated by the Trump administration, and to increase the corporate tax rate.  

Unfortunately, he wants to increase the tax rate from the new-for-2019 level of 21% to a lower-than-2018 28%.  He wants immigration reform to protect asylum seekers, but thinks other immigrants should “follow our laws” and makes no guarantee to decriminalize undocumented border crossings.  Like Biden, he supports healthcare “choice,” meaning that for-profit healthcare would continue in this country until everyone, in every city, state, county, and cave, can be convinced that insurance companies don’t care about them.

In short, O’Rourke reaches for relevance and relatability, and lands in pretension and centrism.  

18) Delaney

John Delaney is the first candidate on my list to have been caught in a bald-faced lie by Politifact. Good job, John.  His lie, by the way, was about Medicare for All.  He claimed that the bill currently before Congress required that Medicare pay rates stay at the current levels, and that if every hospital in America had been paid at Medicare levels for all services, every hospital would have to close.  The truth?  The Medicare for All bill does not require that pay rates stay at current levels, and even if it did no one knows what effect that would have on the country’s hospitals.  There is no data to support his assertion, even if he was right about the terms of the legislation being considered.

Unsurprisingly, John is another healthcare “choice” advocate.  I think I’ve said enough about why this position doesn’t fly for me, so I won’t rehash it again.  

In a discussion of family separation, he interjected that his grandfather was also a victim of family separation, which must make him feel so relevant.  He also referred to company owners as “job creators,” a lovely little conservative talking point, and claimed that America “saved the world,” in some vague appeal to American Exceptionalism.  He also agrees with Nancy Pelosi about not pursuing impeachment proceedings.  

On the “I don’t hate him quite as much as Beto and Biden” front, he’s in favor of tax breaks for the middle class, increasing the minimum wage, funding education, family leave policies, a carbon tax (which he imagines would fund a tax dividend paid to individual citizens, rather than, I don’t know, paying for green infrastructure development?), thinks China is our biggest geopolitical threat, and is scared of nuclear weapons (a very sane, reasonable position, really).

If you want to pick a candidate based on who your moderately conservative uncle will yell about least if they win the White House, Delaney might be your guy.  If you want to pick a candidate based on issues like student loan debt and healthcare, keep looking.

17) Bennet

I had never heard of Michael Bennet before the debates.  In fact, I just Googled him to find out his first name.  After the debates, though?  You guessed it: I hate him.

His closing statement was an appeal to the American Dream.  He thinks there are too many people in America to make a single payer healthcare system work.  Asked to identify one country to prioritize diplomatic repairs with, he named two continents.  And he believes the world is looking to America for leadership.  

However, he did rate higher than three whole candidates, and here’s why: He supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.  He wants to end gerrymandering and overturn Citizens United.  He wants to expand voting rights and electoral accessibility. He considers climate change and Russia to be the biggest threats to America, and he didn’t use any obvious racist dogwhistles.  He’s from Colorado, so he’s kinda proud of the state’s marijuana legalization and reproductive health policies, but he’s way too quick to see partnership with private businesses as the ideal path forward.

16) Williamson

Oh man.  Marianne Williamson.  I almost threw something every time she opened her mouth.  She is like a walking, talking, uninformed Tumblr guilt trip post.  At a nationally televised debate, she asked why no one was talking about… something. I didn’t write it down in my notes because I would have had to gouge out my own eyes if I had.  According to Google, she is a self-help speaker and that explains So Much.

In her closing statement, Williamson claimed that she would be the candidate to beat Trump, not because she has any plans, but because she will harness love to counter the fear that fuels Trump’s campaign.  I am not making this up and I wish I was.  

She claimed that Americans have more chronic health issues than anywhere else in the world, and attributed this to all sorts of factors, starting with diet and chemical contamination and extending, I assume, to solar activity and Bigfoot.  According to Politifact, the only American demographic with a higher incidence of chronic illness than other countries is senior citizens, and I’m going to guess that has a lot more to do with our crappy healthcare system than it does a lack of detox teas.

When asked what policy she would enact if she could only get one, she said that on her first day in the White House she’d call the Prime Minister of New Zealand and tell her that New Zealand is not the best place in the world to raise a child, America is.  

When asked which one country she’d make a diplomatic priority, she said “European leaders.”

By now you must be wondering how she rated higher than the bottom four, and I can sum it up in eight words: She supports reparations and the Green New Deal.

Please, please do not make me vote for Marianne Williamson.

15) Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper is the former Governor of Colorado, and proudly takes credit for everything good that has ever happened in the state.  He is also proud of being a small business owner, a statement that makes me immediately suspicious of any politician.

To his credit, he supports “police diversity,” a charmingly non-specific term that could mean one gay Latine nonbinary single parent in an otherwise entirely white male department, or could mean he wants the demographics of the police force to match the demographics of the population being policed.  He also considers climate change a serious threat, and China.  The best thing he said all night?  He supports civilian oversight of police, a policy which has improved police relations with citizens.

Sounds pretty good, right? Wrong.

He also supports ICE “reform,” as if there is anything redeemable about that agency, and thinks that the worst thing the eventual Democratic candidate could do is allow their name to be connected to anything socialist.  He said it twice, it wasn’t an accident.  

14) Ryan

That brings us to the last of the worst, Tim Ryan.  Tim here cannot stop using conservative dogwhistles, like talking about “coastal elites,” and saying that acknowledging differences between people is divisive.  He is a basic ass white boy in the worst, most boring sense.

He wants to bring about a green tech boom, supports decriminalizing border crossing, supports gun reform, and thinks China is a serious threat to America.  He also thinks that, in addition to dealing with the issues that allow school shootings to happen, we need to address the trauma kids are growing up with as a result.  Unfortunately, he thinks that school shooters are misunderstood victims of bullying.

His confrontation with Tulsi Gabbard was very instructive and possibly the most damning exchange all night.  He mis-identified the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center as being “the Taliban” (they were Al-Qaeda) and said that our military forces have to “stay engaged” for… stability?  I guess? As a veteran, I’m with Tulsi on this one: that’s not acceptable.

[the-twin-trollhunters]

it’s been literal ages since i’ve actively DONE anything with this blog but i really wanna get back into developing this au since i love it a lot,, even if “developing” is more just. writing scattered drabbles and snippits instead of writing through it chronologically so...

if you have questions or prompt ideas or cool thoughts about any particular era, please do let me know, i love talking about this crossover! 

the 5 eras of this crossover:

Era 1: (August 1967- June 1968) Glass Shard Beach/Quartz Shard Cove Era 2: (1968-1982) Stan in Trollmarket/Ford’s research years Era 3: (1982-2012) Wilderness Years Era 4: (2012-2016) Summer 2012 and beyond Era 5: (Spring 2016~) The new trollhunters

(a ton more rando ideas under the cut)

Era 1: (August 1967- June 1968) Glass Shard Beach/Quartz Shard Cove

Big ideas: -Stan finds amulet, discovers underground civilization of trolls alongside Ford -Helps protect Quartz Shard Cove, the troll city below them, over the course of senior year -Major foes are Korsiva (a disgraced ex-general of Gunmar who’s been in hibernation for years) and an east coast branch of the Janus Order -Stan and Ford’s baby nephew (son of their big brother Shermie), Alexander, gets swapped out for a changeling. Chaos ensues. -Carla- Stan’s best friend- is brought into the fold/fights alongside the twins. -That time they recovered a single piece of the Killahead that was unguarded- they learn the changelings are trying to rebuilt it early in this AU. The piece is stowed away for safekeeping in Trollmarket, deep in the catacombs.  -Over time there’s found family themes with Alex the changeling, and he ends up defecting from the Janus Order entirely.. after experiencing all the horror of the Darklands, he just wants the chance to live a good and honest life. Through ancient magic, he finds a way to wipe the evidence of his existence from the Order. -Blinky and Aaarrrgghh pretty much slam adopt on all of these humans. -Stan and Ford’s relationship becomes more and more strained as the year goes on because Stan keeps pushing him away (thinking he’s protecting him by doing so)

Era 2: (1968-1982) Stan in Trollmarket/Ford’s research years

Big ideas: -After Stan is kicked out, he moves with Blinky and Aaarrrgghh back to Trollmarket. -Ford, to college. -Stan becomes really close with Draal during this time. -A lot of Stan’s work during this time is working to maintain peace in the troll world with the continuing threat of Killahead bridge being knowingly rebuilt, and trying to figure out WHERE the bridge pieces are being stored. (Currently it’s being hidden in a place far away from Arcadia.) -Ford still goes to Gravity Falls to research the strange and bizzare, and the Bill Cipher stuff still happens, except in this AU the Nightmare Realm and the Darklands are the same place, just this interdimensional dumping ground that Bill and Gunmar are both trapped within. They’re pretty much both competing to see who can get out first.  -Stan sent to go investigate the going-ons in Gravity Falls bc the trolls sensed an open portal to the Darklands there. He’s pissed and confused to realize it was his brother’s doing. -Ford gets sucked through the portal, along with Stan’s amulet.

Era 3: (1982-2012) Wilderness Years

Big ideas:  -The troll Tribunal forbids Stan from setting foot in any troll settlement in punishment for losing the amulet to Gunmar’s clutches. They’re essentially without a trollhunter for these 30 years. -Stan realizes the truth about Ford, that he was manipulated by an ancient eldritch being. Now feeling insanely guilty for leaving him to the whims of something like that, he begins to rebuild the thrashed portal. It may be ultimate treason to the trollkind he once swore to protect, but his family is forever more important to him than law. -Ford, meanwhile, discovers a shocking fact- the amulet calls his name too, and he can wield the armor and Daylight as well. He travels the multiverse for 30 years, learning more about the amulet and what it means to be a trollhunter along the way... crossing into dimensions where other trollhunters exist, gathering stones to use in it, gaining proficiency at fighting... -Alex- or as he comes to call himself, Lex- grows up, moves to California, falls in love with a human woman, and to his great surprise they’re able to have kids- twins. As far as he knows at that point, they’re essentially fully human- but they all know about his changeling nature. -They raise their kids in Arcadia. Occasionally, Lex does reconnaissance work for the trolls- Blinky and Vendel specifically.

Era 4: (2012-2016) Summer 2012 and beyond

Big ideas: -Lex sends his kids to GF for the summer for Stan to watch, paranoid that the Janus Order discovered what he did to their records and found him again  -Much of the summer is spent trying to uncover their Grunkle’s hidden past (he’s kept all the trollhunting stuff on the down low from family as a result of his disgrace from troll society. only lex knows the full story.) and what’s up with this mysterious journal in the woods. -The journal is p much the same except it has a toooon of troll stuff in it too. Ford’s a nerd. -Wendy is a changeling. Originally she was stationed in Gravity Falls to keep an eye on Stan and make sure he’s not up to no good, but she’s never actually gotten the chance to sneak into his basement to see what he’s working on. His security is too top-notch. When she’s finally a teen in human years she gets a job in the shack so she can get closer to him.  -Honestly I think she also flips. Just, all the changelings eventually flip when they see how great found family and friendships and anything that’s not Gunmar is, okay? XDD -Fiddleford isn’t actually entirely insane- but he’s still not all mentally there. Long story. He lives with his son and actually wears clothes most of the time. -Yknow I’m pretty sure Dipper and Mabel prob catch Wendy shifting between forms and that’s how they esp bond -Also let’s be real the two of them definitely end up exploring the troll civilization under Gravity Falls -the Wham moment where Ford walks out of the portal wearing the Armor of Daylight and everyone’s like :O OOO two trollhunters!!! ! -Weirdmageddon’s weirdness wave activates long dormant changeling genes for Dipper and Mabel, and they shift into troll forms. They’re a unique case of changeling because they are their own familiars. -Post 2012, the full story of what happened with the amulet becomes known to trollkind, and Stan’s ban from underground is lifted. He and Ford together continue trollhunting business, and they’re still a force to be reckoned with, even with their age. -In early 2016, the amulet leaves Stan and Ford, and stops responding to them both. The assumption made is that it senses the two of them are unable to carry out their duty anymore at their age, and has made the choice to move on. (normally a trollhunter just... would die long before they grew old enough for this to be a problem, so...)

Era 5: (Spring 2016~) The new trollhunters

-Dipper and Mabel are both 18, in senior year. They are fully able to shift between forms at whim by now. -Amulet picks Jim. A lot of broad canon strokes remain the same, but the trolls already are aware of the changelings still existing, and of the Killahead bridge’s threat- and have made the appropriate precautions. Tbh I still need to develop more logical divergences this new canon would make in what happens. -But I do know for sure that the changelings have to infiltrate Trollmarket to steal the stone Stan retrieved LOOONG ago in 1968 to even open the Killahead bridge at all.   -And I think Bular’s been out and about for some time trying to sniff out where this piece was being kept. His hunt has only recently brought him back to Arcadia. -Dipper and Mabel accidentally out themselves to Bular during the equivalent of the ep Young Atlas as they try to rescue Jim. This also outs the fact that ONE of their parents must be a changeling to the Janus Order.  -There is a Kidnapping that occurs,,, as Strickler is trying to pry info on where the last piece is from Lex, using Dip and Mab as collateral. Strickler gets the info he wants, sigh. -Through the battle of Killahead that eventually ensues, both Nomura AND Lex are sucked through into the Darklands. Not only does everyone want to rescue Claire’s baby brother, but they want to rescue Lex too. (There’s also some interesting ethics on whether or not they should rescue the REAL baby Alexander Pines afforded the opportunity, too. I’m still not sure if they do or not.) -When Jim goes into the Darklands, Stan and Ford return from their sailing expedition to keep the peace as best they can in Trollmarket/Arcadia. Sans amulet, of course, bc it won’t respond to them anymore but.. it’s something. -They’re there for the remainder of “S2-3.” -Ford ends up trying to defend Jim at the tribunal, but despite his eloquence still fails to convince them of anything. -When the Merlin quest happens, Dipper and Mabel are there as well. They can’t shift forms because of the magic ban, but their addition is enough to help fight off/kill Angor Rot and save Draal. -Ford knows from his journeys through the multiverse what Merlin aims to do (he’s met a future half-troll version of Jim, he Suspects) and is Against It. They fight alone at one point. -Battle stuff... Except the battle goes Fucking Wrong because of some key elements (no Angor Rot to blindside Morgana) and it ends up with the eternal night becoming permanent and some hellish frickin stuff, Morgana murders Merlin, she reconstitutes the shattered fragments of Bill Cipher within Stan’s mind (those two have History and that’s literally a whole nother Story please do ask me about it) and whisks him away in seconds to GF to go break Bill’s full essence free from his stone prison because she wants to p much steal his power for herself. -Ford found a sort of special amulet stone whilst in the multiverse that he’s been keeping all this time in case of emergencies... it allows the bearer to jump backwards in time, but only once. Only thing is, it’s also. in Gravity Falls. Kept safe in Fiddleford’s mansion. -Claire jumps them to GF via shadow staff. -Jim gets the stone and is able to use it like, just before they pretty much all die. He jumps back to RIGHT when Merlin wakes up in the tomb. -He realizes that the only real way he can stop all of this from going to hell completely is by making sure that all the shards of Bill in Stan’s mind are well and truly destroyed forever... and so they do just that. It’s a big dramatic mind demon eternal exorcism, a family/friends effort.

-there’s probably more but I’ve literally been rambling on like a noob. that’s pretty much the highlights. please do ask me questions about events/character relationships/places/timeline stuff/etc etc etc i would love to see them!

[fordanoia]

(I was gonna just post this when I had it all together, but you know what - we’re gonna play this doublet series loose here)

Hey Now, Hey Now (1/?)

Words: 2,900~ || CW: —  || Mabel’s Dream Bubble - But if Ford had been there for it. 

They rushed the waffle-guard armed castle, and it was easy enough to reach Mabel. However, the issue in the rescue turned out to not be any of the precautions around them.

She liked it here. She wanted to stay. Something sunk his heart to see Mabel going right in for the prison Bill had made for her, but he couldn’t get himself to say anything. Not when she talked about Dipper staying for the apprenticeship as the reason behind staying. He had thought it was a wonderful idea! However, listening to Mabel talk about it like this... he’d rather not think about it for now.

Soos and Wendy ran off with their utmost desires and Dipper and himself turned off elsewhere. He assured him he would go find Soos or Wendy and talk to them. The desires seemed like one time instances after all so it should be easy enough to convince Soos to come along after he got a few minutes of tossing ball with his ‘Dad.’

Ford didn’t blame them. It took a strong will to cast off the thing you desired most. Frankly though, he was glad Mabel had not gotten to his ‘turn.’ A triangular corpse really was not something he wanted to inadvertently expose to the kids. Chances were likely it would have been heavily mangled as well, all things considered.

He was walking out from Mabel’s castle along the beach trying to find Soos somewhere nearby. It was unlikely he would go far. However, someone calling out his name happened quicker than he had a chance to do so.

“Hey, Sixer!” It was a familiar gruff voice, that took him off guard as he spun around preparing for the worse - whipping out a gun.

Practically right behind him was a relatively small boat that had just come up on shore and Stan at the bow looking to him. He looked surprised at the gun though. “Woah there, don’t worry it’s just me.”

No.

Stan reached down towards him, bending over the edge of the boat. “Hey, hop on up here already. Don’t you wanna go sailing?”

His chest felt cold. “No,” he rebuffed icily, “no, I don’t.”

Stan’s hand retracted only a slight degree. “What’s got you in such a twist?”

You do. “The apocalypse is happening and I am not going to be so ridiculous as to go on some immaterial boat with a product of this damn bubble.” He spat out bitterly.

“All that apocalypse stuff is outside, right? I doubt it’s going anywhere.”

“That’s the problem.” Ford replied turning on his heels before the thing could waste anymore of his time. He stopped after a couple steps when he heard a set of new feet crunching down into the sand.

Looking over his shoulder he saw Stan who’d just hopped over the boat and started walking towards him in a casual demeanor.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He practically hissed at him. Stan paused momentarily, seeming hurt for a second causing Ford a slight jab of guilt which he crushed down with logic. This wasn’t Stan. Even if it were some inane desire to sail at now of all possible times was utterly ridiculous.

“Well, hey, I could go for a dock visit you know.” He said, walking again, with a smile. “You gotta stop on land now and then.”

Thus far none of the creatures here intended harm. He’d keep wary, but he’d just ignore it until he found Soos.

Stan walked beside him, seeming perfectly content doing so.

“Jeez Mabel really is all about the glitter, isn’t she? I mean I knew the kid was into it, but all this shiny stuff messes with the eyes a little bit doesn’t it.”

It did, but Ford said nothing. Where was Soos?

Stan continued. “Still nice though. Just not my cup of tea. She’s really happy here though and I’ve got nothing to complain about.”

... He’d probably leave once he was far enough from the boat or something, Ford told himself.

“Heck you should have seen the inside of the boat. That’s the Stan O War II back there, you know. It’s just like the old one, ‘Cept better than we built it.” Stan added with a grin.

“We used rotten drift wood for half the patches, not the best materials.” Ford responded, immediately internally cursing at himself for doing so. It was just a comment, but he should have just been ignoring him entirely.

“Hey, it worked though, didn’t it? Never got to take it for a real spin, but we at least got it off of the sand.”

Why did he even said anything in the first place? “Well, obviously, it was a waste of time.” Ford said derisively.

“Maybe, but it was still fun.” Stan replied, unbothered.

Ford didn’t say anything back and it seemed like Stan settled into silence as well. Not entire silence though. Every now and then Stan would make a joke or comment on something or other.

When Ford found himself almost smiling at something said, a bout of frustration quickly bubbled to the surface.

“What are you doing here?” He asked with a pointed look at him.

“What? You want some alone time?”

“I want to find the others so we can get out of this godforsaken bubble!”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so. I can help you find them, no sweat.” Stan said before he pointed off. “Kid should still be at the school with her friends.”

Ford glanced off in the direction and there were technically buildings in that direction. Although, he really didn’t want to take directions from any extension of Bill... even if he was certain Bill did not have any active eyes or control inside the bubble.

“Don’t really get why you’re wanting out of Mabel Land so quick though. I mean yeah, the bouncy ground deal is a little distracting, but the boat’s actually solid.” Stan said, perfectly casual. Trying to make him stay.

Ford rounded on him. “Listen here, I am not sticking in some sealed off getaway! I have things to do, Stan! Even if-“ No, no this wasn’t Stan. It was some cobbled fantasy version of him that talked to him and made jokes to him and tried to get him to smile and-

“WHY would I even want to be here with Stanley?!” He finally snapped, gesturing to him sharply. “The last time I even had a good moment with him was-“ that first night at the bottom of the stairs with the brief laughter in front of the mirror- “was DECADES ago when we were teenagers!” He grabbed onto his head with a hand. “And sailing?!”

He laughed bitterly. All the stress of weirdmageddon splitting apart his usual patience. If he’d been more careful this apocalypse would never have happened. Everyone was going through the most horrendous time of their lives. As well, it was rather obvious now that he’d been having negative effects on Dipper and Mabel without meaning to with his apprenticeship. He’d thought it was fine, but obviously it’d been enough to drive Mabel to complacency inside this prison.

“Why would I want to go sailing?!” Ford started freely ranting now. “Stuck on some tiny boat with my brother that would rather die than actually apologize for anything!” His eyes were burning. “Then he spent-“ Ford’s gut turned guiltily, but he pushed past it, “wasted 30 years to fix that damned machine at the risk of the whole world! Just to assuage his own guilt!”

“I was just five seconds away from finally fixing everything too!” His voice finally started to taper down, and he breathed out heavily. He thought finally getting to lash out about everything would be cathartic, but it wasn’t. It just opened up all the old wounds he’d been trying to ignore. “Look at what-“ This was all his fault. Stan had activated the portal again, but if Ford had kept the rift safe this never would have happened.

“Hey,” Stan’s voice gently brought out of his thoughts and Ford glanced back at him. “Listen, you’re right. Let me help, let me make it up to you.”

The genuine offer stung him, and Ford drew back before he crossed his arms behind his back, holding his head up. Then he brushed past the other, in the direction he’d pointed out before. Chances were it was the right direction.

Stan followed after him quietly, soon walking beside him.

Thankfully, this time he remained entirely quiet as they found the high school which - though sparkly - was not overall that different from how the actual building must have looked.

“Nerd Central, here we are.” Stan went up the steps to open up the door and held it open with a hand, looking back at him.

“Why are you still here?” Ford muttered in passing as he walked through the door.

Stan frowned, letting the door drop after himself. “Because you’re my brother and I’m sorry.”

Ford stopped, not quite daring to look back as he felt a sore ache in his chest.

“Sixer, look - I’m sorry I broke your project and ruined your chances at your dream school. I know I can’t fix that now. I wasn’t thinking straight, and I had years to apologize, but I just...didn’t. You deserved that apology over 40 years ago and that’s on me.” A warm hand went to his shoulder.

Burning tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and he’d admonish himself for that if he was able to properly align his thoughts.

The hand reassuringly squeezed his shoulder and Ford had to shut his eyes tight.

The apocalypse was going on outside and everything was absolutely Hell. It wasn’t the most difficult thing he had to survive through, but the knowledge and lack of options weighing so heavily was what made it so much worse. Just... one thing going right would have been a blessing...

He took in an even breath and opened his eyes. This was not Stan. This was a construct of the bubble. An atypical prison that was largely banned in most dimensions.

Ford put his hand over the one currently on his shoulder in order to calmly and slowly remove it. Before he could though, Stan talked.

“I missed ya, poindexter.”

A sound stopped, halfway up his throat and threatening to come all the way out if he wasn’t careful. Ford shoved the hand off of him and jerked away from Stan. He refused to look at him, looking instead at the wall so that he could see the other in his peripherals.

“Ford-“

“Don’t.” He immediately interrupted him, voice sharp. “Don’t even think about talking about any of that again. Stanley never apologized to me because he was never sorry about what happened.”

“Listening to any lies otherwise is a waste of time, which I don’t have the luxury or desire to indulge in.” He said concisely, never once looking at him, before he turned back down the hall.

He’d find Wendy, then Soos if Dipper hadn’t. By that point... hopefully they could convince Mabel to leave.

He can hear him following after him a dozen feet back, behind him in the halls. Waste of time and energy. He should never have even acknowledged him in the first place. From this point on he’d make sure to just completely ignore him.

Eventually, he could hear the loud sound of teenagers. He eventually tracked it down to a bathroom. Inside were Wendy, her faux friends, and a figure suspended in the air via several layers of toilet paper with a plunger stuck to his head.

Wendy was laughing as she rolled out toilet paper around what he presumed was their principal and up around the rafters. “Hold him steady, guys!”

“Now, that’s a prank.” Stan’s voice came from beside him.

Ford cleared his throat. “Wendy.... Wendy!” He had to speak up to be heard over the loud chatter.

When he did though, Wendy looked over at him. “Oh, hey- Mr. Pines?” Her gaze caught to his side. “Why’re you here in that outfit? Is that actually you or like... what?”

“Hey, suits aren’t good on the sea.” He said with a grin to her. “Might not be as classy, but trust me, kid - It’s a good look.”

“Just ignore it.” Ford said. “I understand the appeal of- well, this,” he said gesturing to the entrapped principle. “However, there are important things at stake, and we need to talk to Mabel in order to-”

“Oh, no. I’m on board with you.” Wendy said flipping down from the rafters with a ‘hup.’

“What?” Ford looked at her taken aback.

“Totally. I already was, just,” she made a face, tapping fingers together, “I figured hey-” She shrugged. “Ten minutes, right?” She lowered her hands into her pockets. “I’m satisfied though. I mean, look at that.” Wendy proudly gestured back to the principal. “This is going to be on my mental highlight reel for like the entire year.”

“Hey!” She yelled to the teens not even ten feet away from her. “Keep wrapping him for me okay!”

Several thumbs up went up and a chorus of agreements went up in reply.

Wendy gave a double thumbs up back to the crowd. “See?” She said, smiling back to him. “It’s covered anyways.”

“So what’s the plan, Stan-Two?” That nickname again...

“Well-” A snort from his side made him stop, and he barely held back from sending a look in the direction. “Well,” he started again, “we’ll find Soos and Dipper then redouble our efforts.”

“So... there’s really not a plan?” Wendy asked, eyeing him.

“It’s a plan- we’re just going to preferably not disband this time around.” Ford stated. “Even if this place is fun for her, Mabel will do the right thing.”

Stan shrugged. “She’s a good kid, the little ball of sunshine.”

“Something tells me there’s going to be a lot more steps to this, but alright,” Wendy said, walking back into the hall and leading the charge, “let’s grab Soos and Dipper!”

“That’s the spirit!” Stan encouraged.

Wendy paused briefly. “So uh, wait is that somehow Stan or...?”

“Starting to feel like chopped liver here, kid.”

“No, it’s not.” He told her, ignoring the thing beside him. “Again, just ignore it.”

“Well, I can avoid eye contact.” Wendy said. “It’s kind of awkward to straight up ignore my boss though. Like completely, you know. Everyone ignores their boss here and there.”

Ford waved a hand. “That’s fine.” He’d admit, completely ignoring it was rather hard. “Now, we just have to get Soos away from his ah... situation. Thankfully, Dipper should already be looking for him. I suspect as well that by the time we find Soos he’ll be fine leaving.”

“What did Soos get?” She asked.

“His father playing catch with him.”

Wendy made a half-pained face. “Ouch... I mean don’t get me wrong, but you know...”

He actually wasn’t entirely sure what she was alluding to, but nodded anyways.

“Yeah,” the voice beside him said, “at least he had the chance for it though.”

“Anyways,” Ford started, brushing past the comment, “we need to find Soos. Do you know where he might go to play catch?” He asked Wendy.

“I told ya, Sixer, I can tell you right where-“

“I didn’t ask you.” He finally turned his head to glare at him.

Stan put his hands up, seemingly not thrown off by the hostility. “Sorry, my bad. Just tryin’ to help here.”

“Woah,” Wendy started. “Mr uh- Mr. Pines.” She said looking to Ford.

“You can call me Ford, it’s fine, really. Doctor if you insist on an honorific.” Ford said speaking to her calmly. “Apologies, I shouldn’t have snipped like that in front of you. It’s just been... frustrating.”

“Uh, Okay. Listen, this is kinda off,” she said gesturing to Stan. “No offense, but you’re a lot less glittery and bright than Mabel would probably come up with.”

“Small victories.” Stan said with a smile, and a short hand wave.

“But you know where Soos is, right?” She asked.

“Yeah.” He nodded his head.

“He could be lying.” Ford said pettily as he crossed his arms, though he really didn’t quite believe that himself.

Wendy looked back to Ford. “No offense, Doc, but I really don’t think he is. Think about it, everyone in Mabel Land is helpful and nice.” She shrugged. “He’s really fine. More than my Stan. Like, there’s zero grump coming off of him.”

“Fair point.” Ford conceded.

“So,” she started, “if he knows where Soos is then let’s just let him lead the way.”

“A good conclusion. It would definitely save time.” Ford begrudgingly continued. “And a lack of foreseeable harm.” He withheld a sigh in favor of a deep breath before nodding. “Alright.”

Stan beamed beside him. “Alright!” He said, clapping a hand on Ford’s shoulder. “Kid’s right on a grassy hill by the park. We can talk to him, all you probably gotta do is just ask him. This’ll be smooth sailing, I promise.”

“A promise from you.” He said simply.

“Hey, say what you want, but it’s better than a promise from Ma, isn’t it?”

“That’s not a very hard competition to beat.” Ford said, the reply coming out easily.

Stan shrugged, putting his hands up in the air. “Hey, not everything is gonna be a fair fight. What can I say?”

Ford let out a huff that was nearly a short laugh, and he saw Wendy glance over at him from the corner of his eye.

“Come on,” Stan said, turning around and beginning to lead the way.

[icespur]

It AU:Look What I Found Ideas

I write stories, not many of my stories are online yet though, cause hardly any of my stories are finished! But I write stories of the current fandoms I’m in, and now I’m obsessed with IT 2017 and Pennywise

And I have some story ideas I’m working on, I’ve bothered and mentioned my ideas in reblog comments but now that I figured out how to post I can actually tell you my ideas here!

So here’s one of my IT AU story ideas

The story is called “Look What I Found” and it’s a alternate timeline of when Pennywise came to earth, in the book he came to earth in a asteroid and crashed years ago and then became active when human civilization was built.

Well in here he still comes to earth the same way, BUT——-

He’s an egg....

The asteroid has the egg inside and when the asteroid crashes on earth it cracks open revealing the unscathed egg.

Years go by, creatures die, new creature born, Humans come in. The egg sits in the background as life goes on until in 1988 October when a little 7 year old child loses his paper boat in a sewer gutter, he’s too small to reach it and his parents would kill him if he were to go down into a dirty old sewer. So he has no choice but to go home and break the news to his older brother that he lost his boat, his brother tells him that he’ll look for it for him tomorrow and not to worry.

The next day Bill and his friends go down into the sewers to look for the missing paper boat, they eventually find it—— along with a mysterious black egg.....

Eddie is hesitant and says that they should ignore it but curiosity gets the better of them, thinking this egg is some “new discovery” or maybe it’s a real life dragon egg! So they take the egg with them

Oh boy was that a bad idea.

It seems the more the egg develops the more creepy sh*t it does

* At first it randomly glowed, but as time goes on it seems sometimes glowing is tied to it’s emotions... sometimes.

* If you are brave enough (stupid enough) to put your face up to the egg or put the egg up to a light, you will see a bunch of glowing lights, that gets brighter and brighter as time goes on. It wasn’t until a very weird incident at the park where the egg came in contact with a pregnant woman’s belly that may or may not have caused the woman to bleed, that now if you look at the embryo you will see a normal human fetus

*Can hear and mimic music and voices

*Whatever is in there has two glowing yellow orbs for eyes and it’s creepy!

*Georgie seems very attached to it, he talks to it as if it’s alive and can hear him, Bill’s starting to worry if letting Georgie get so close to the egg is safe.

*The losers have contemplated destroying the egg many times and have come very close to crushing it to bits with a hammer but usually Georgie begs them not to and talks them out of it, or the egg letting out human infant sounding cries stopping them.

* Especially once it become clear that the egg is draining life and certain movement of other people’s organs and limbs so it can have working body parts.

*Gets a very concerning childish disturbing glee from the losers fighting or any negative energy in general, making the egg glow revealing the silhouette of a fetus clapping.

*Eventully starts being able to make noises, squeals, squeaks, weird chattering gibberish, etc.

*Not even technically born yet and it already keeps them up at night. 11:00 pm on a school night the children are trying to get a good night sleep all of a sudden the egg starts glowing and rocking back and forth and loud carnival music starts playing on full blast

*Parts of the egg start to crack leaving a hole where it’s yellow eyes can peak out. Everyone is creeped out by this, except for Georgie who happily walked around the entire house with the egg giving it a tour of the Denbrough house

(I have a bunch of different versions of how the hatching scene would play out)

*It’s chaos when the egg hatches, once the storm clears and everyone is able to hold their breath a small baby clown is revealed.

Raising baby Pennywise........

*He’s a a**hole

*Baby-mutant-clown or whatever he is exactly, apparently develop differently then human infants. The first few days nothing seems too out of the ordinary, sleeps a lot, (to the point where Richie and the rest sometimes wonder if he’s dead so they poke him to make sure he’s still alive which upsets him causing him to curl into a furry auburn ball) But then eventually he randomly learns to stand up in his crib and stares at them standing up......at one week old—— normally a baby doesn’t stand up on it’s two legs for a couple months! He’s only a week old!

* Stan bought a “baby month development guide” book and that soon proves to be no help*

*Learns to sit and crawl very early (too stubborn to walk though)*

*Tries to eat and put every possible non edible object in sight in his mouth. Even before he starts teething*

*Georgie and him are still close, he’s like the younger sibling that Bill and Georgie never asked for. Georgie and Penny have become partners in crime and like to harass Bill. But at the same time Penny also sometimes sees Georgie as food and gets very interested in his arms..... luckily it will be a long while til Penny gets teeth*

*Pennywise is very attached to Beverly, sees her as his mom, and acts like a angel only for her. But when she’s not around—-his true nature comes out. Beverly thinks the boys are overreacting when they complain about how much of a little monster he is*

*Can shapeshift But not as well, he’s just a baby so he’s still learning. Only parts of him will shapeshift, like instead of turning into a full werewolf only werewolf ears will sprout on his head, instead of a full spider——only spider legs will sprout from his waist. sneezing and hiccuping affect his shapeshifting hiccups will make him rapidly change forms (like Maui in Moana when he first tries shapeshifting with his hook) and sneezing will cause parts of him to shapeshift “ah, ah, ah, ACHOO” (werewolf ears spring out on top of his head)*

*He can float.......Well, the actual wording for it would be levitate but he refers to it as floating. Which as you can imagine makes baby proofing impossible*

*Speaking of floating, instead of sleepwalking he also “sleep floats” meaning in the middle of the night randomly while fast asleep he will levitate/float out of his crib and around the house, making the losers freak out once they find out he’s not in the crib anymore and so they have to get a butterfly net and chase him around the house and catch him without waking anybody in the house or him up*

*Oh boy, changing diapers———Well first off, baby clown poop and pee smells even worse then normal human baby bodily fluids. In the words of Richie “It smells like something died in there” for the actual changing part sometimes Penny won’t want to sit still and will try to roll off of the changing mat, or he’ll float off the mat and in the air. Other things to worry about is——he can shapeshift, he can change his gender in the middle of a change throwing everyone off, will shapeshift different wieners or will shapeshift multiple wieners so you have multiple wieners spraying pee at you meaning by the time you are done you are going to be soaked in urine*

*his throw up is like acid. One time his tummy wasn’t feeling too good and one of the boys were playing around with him and lifted him up in the air and “BLEGH” all over their shirt. Penny is all happy and smiley now cause he feels all better while the loser is screaming that it burns and that it’s burning through his shirt*

*Eddie has unintentionally become——maybe just a, teeny tiny bit overprotective of Penny——-just a little bit..... Richie always jokes he’s become just like his mom. Eddie gears him with a helmet (that’s way to big and heavy for his head) they go swimming and he goes overboard with putting the swimming gear on him to the point where he’s just a blob of protective swimming gear*

*Since the losers all live in different homes with their own family they all take turns taking Pennywise home for the day, leading to interesting outcomes. Even though Penny is a toddler he catches on quite quickly that Alvin marsh isn’t a good person and quickly dispises him and brings it upon himself to f*ck with him every chance he gets, non of the adults can see penny so Alvin is 100% convinced a ghost baby is trying to kill him. Every time it’s Richie’s day to take Penny home with him penny always comes back with a new curse word, and they all know who probably taught it to him..... eventually Richie is banned from watching Pennywise...... Mike lives on a farm, oh those poor poor animals..... Ben is kinda scared of Pennywise since Pennywise sees Ben as food since he’s so chubby. Penny pokes Ben’s skin fat, and calls him things like “Pig” or Yum” But since Ben is into reasearch and history Ben would probably try to show him all the newspapers and stuff he’s collected, and then have to take them away from Pennywise since whatever you hand to him his first instinct is to shove it in his mouth or chew on it. Ben also would try to do research to find out what the heck Pennywise is exactly, Stan would be too busy with studying for his Bar Mitzvah to play with Pennywise. Although one doesn’t simply ignore Pennywise, when Pennywise wants attention you give Pennywise f***ing attention. Penny would listen to Stan read for a while but then get bored and decide that Stan has read enough for the day and start tearing the pages out of the book much to Stan’s panic and anger*

*Pennywise is very mischievous, all toddlers are mischievous usually. But Pennywise does things intentionally just to get a reaction out of you. He knows he’s not supposed to do it, but he’s gonna do it anyway. In fact saying “No” only seems to encourage him. The words “No” and “Spit that out” have never been yelled so many times with little results. He seems to run on reverse logic “No! Don’t touch that!” Pennywise stares at the loser—- frozen in place with his arm reached out in mid touch of said forbidden object. His eyes flicking looking at the loser, to the object, loser——object, loser——object, touch, no touch, touch, no touch, as if contemplating his next move. Still looking at the loser, Penny slowly extended his hand out, before the loser scolded him again making him freeze, Penny looked at the loser again. The loser shook his head, “No, you don’t do that” Penny mimicked his head movement, shaking his head. The loser nodded “yes, that’s right, “no”” Penny slowly nodded along with him.... and extended his hand again “NO!” Penny shook his head again then nodded and finally make contact with the object, knocking it down and smashing it to a thousand pieces. “Spit that out!” Pennywise slowly shoves the object farther and farther down his mouth with every “No” the losers yell.*

*he eventually learns to talk, can’t say a full sentence but can say some words clearly or if he tries to say a sentence it’s not the full sentence, a couple words unintentionally skipped. “Where going?” Instead of “where are you (or we) going” “Wha doing?” (What are you doing?) etc. Can say all the losers names “Bill” Eddie” “Richie” “Stan” “Ben” “Bev” or “mama” “Mike” and calls Georgie “George” can say “float” of course, can say his full name or short name surpriseingly. “Pennywise” or “Penny” (he’s very proud of his name for some reason)

*In the movie there was going to be a “smoke hole scene” where we would’ve got to see Pennywise coming to earth but due to budget we didn’t get that scene cause it would cause to much cgi. Well in here they don’t have to do a special ritual cause they can just ask Pennywise! Who is happy to tell them except he’s a baby and all that comes out is gibberish since his vocabularie is still very limited so instead he tried to show them by drawing! But he’s a baby and his drawing and coloring skills aren’t that——readable.... so it becomes a guessing game trying to figure out what the heck that drawing is supposed to be.*

*his intelligence is very selectable, he chooses when he wants to do something, and some things just don’t make sense. Like he can write his full name in a style that would make any professional artist jealous but his drawing and coloring is that of a toddler (which does make sense cause he’s a toddler) he likes Henry a lot and calls him “Bow Wow” (bowers, bow wow) Why? Nobody knows. And sometimes calls him Henry but yet for some reason he can’t pronounce Patrick Hocksetters last name and the H turns into a C..... for once Richie did not teach him this but is very proud of him. And one day out of the blue penny started responding to the losers in Swedish...... no one knows why, there isn’t anything Swedish that he was exposed to lately but they now have a Swedish translation dictionary to find out what the heck he’s saying...*

*Always maneges to steal Eddie’s inhaler and then Eddie has to chase him to get it back*

*Loves water. So bath time is a lot of fun, that also mean they gotta keep him from trying to eat the bath products and the water etc..... also has a fascination with the sewers and always tries to go there but of course the losers stop him*

*when penny gets mad he pouts, making his pudgy little cheek puff out and he’ll refuse to look at said person that made him angry and maneuver himself so he’s facing the opposite direction of that person*

[sh-dafugup]

a year ago last week i started that manager job (that i quit in october) so i’ve been reminiscing.

recovered memories from my previous job for when the one i have now feels like the worst thing in the world:

*i made thirty 911 calls in six months

*PARENTS LETTING THEIR KIDS HAVE BABY-POWDER FIGHTS, parents teaching their kids to shoplift, parents teaching their kids how to properly curse out and threaten employees for asking them to not ride carts through the store

*throwing out $100 in stolen half-eaten food a night (mostly vienna sausages and coconut water)

*professional pan-handlers chasing customers through the parking lot asking for specific amounts of money, professional shoplifters filling up backpacks with whatever they could and meeting their boss across the street to empty out and get paid,

*a cashier overdosed twice in two weeks while on the clock,

*another cashier who gave me some kind of antibiotic-resistant virus that lasted six weeks (who also let her toddler go with pink eye for so long her eyes crusted shut) brought in her boyfriends to shoplift during her shifts. She stole thousands of dollars from the registers and the safe (inside heist before i started working there that was never solved) over the course of two years. She was filmed by a customer stealing money from another customer by ringing up a sale and voiding it without opening the register after the first customer left. and she started stalking me when she found out the vigilant customer came to me with the video of her stealing and that i'd reported it and opened an investigation. I had to beg my boss to fire her even after he saw the video. when we met and i was introduced as her new manager, she asked me if i liked to party and said she "used to smoke crack" but she promised she "didn't anymore."

*a homeless man from the tent city behind the shopping center tried to murder another homeless man by the dumpsters behind our store by beating his head in with a pipe.

*the mafia landlord threatened me because i wouldn't let him shop after hours, his girlfriend filled her purse with whatever she felt like on a regular basis and corporate told me to back off when i reported it. i was told "just because i felt threatened doesn't mean I was".

uhhhh...

*being threatened by customers on a daily basis for refusing to process returns with fake or outdated receipts for $1 brooms, being threatened by customers for not breaking hundred dollar bills on sunday afternoons for one-dollar sales, being threatened by customers for not having more than one register open at 6 on a monday night (guy told me he was gonna take me outside and show me what customer service really meant), being threatened by customers for making closing announcements.

a man who ran a popular Dominican nightclub across the street came in at five minutes to closing on Cinco de Mayo, asked what colors were on the Mexican flag and asked for 50 helium balloons in each color. He got flustered and left when he realized it would take more than five minutes to inflate 150 mylar balloons. none of us understood why he was trying to capitalize on a holiday Dominicans don't celebrate but it moves booze and he figured it was worth a shot.

a cashier got fired for stealing money and merchandise and under-ringing hundreds of dollars of food for her friends. she came back to shop all the time. last time i saw her she tried to steal frozen pork chops but got nervous and left them by the doors when she thought we weren't distracted enough. she went to a hiring event at another value store up the road owned by our company, but she was turned away because they had her arrested a few weeks prior for retail theft.

one time we had about ten to fifteen associates come visit from other stores for a special merchandising remodel and they were all from stores in nicer areas where people are normal. none of them understood why we didn't have the doors propped open for our customers that morning. even the district manager at the time tried to warn them that it was a bad idea, but the visitors insisted it would be more welcoming to the neighborhood. we were robbed three times before noon. twice by the same guy. he liked to fill shopping carts with socks and just run for it.

uhhh....

the freezers breaking three times in one week and losing $4K in food, having to receive DC trucks until the day of a special mid-year inventory (red flag store) because my DM was the antichrist and refused to delay the trucks, and then receiving two more full trailers the next day cause another store in the district had a fire and they gifted us their shipments

i had to lock myself in the back office to get away from a screaming middle-aged white woman who was insistent that i was lying about the restaurant next to us having a public bathroom because we weren't allowed to let the public in our stock room to use the barely operational employee bathroom.

the shopping center supposedly being built on legit-i-shit-you-not INDIAN BURIAL GROUND and there being some kind of demonic force or presence in our storage basement that gave people what i can only describe as a sense of dread and violent mood swings from moments after entering the store until they left. it was kind of like a SHINING experience crossed with what happened to the dad in the original Amityville Horror. outside the store, people were completely different, like the moment they went outside the rage stopped. and sometimes homeless people would sneak in the basement and live there for a while. and the basement was full of chiggers and dust mites and bed bugs. any time we had to bring fixtures or seasonal pack-away's up we had to tape our clothes around our ankles and wrists.

one day someone hit a transformer so the entire south end of town had a blackout and when i closed the store until the power came back, one elderly customer refused to leave and stood around for an entire hour until he could make his purchase. GREATEST GENERATION, MY ASS. others outside ignored the fact that the restaurants, nail salon, grocery store and urgent care center had evacuated and tried to forcibly enter my store while cursing at me for locking the doors in the dark. our system stayed offline for hours after that and every sale we made wasn't entered in the system until we realized our registers were showing hundreds of dollars in "excess" cash. while we were on the phone with the help desk getting it sorted out, two people didn't show up for their shifts and another (the one with the needle habit) showed up early and overdosed behind the register in front of a nurse from the UC next door just trying to buy a soda on her lunch break.

and one time a Puerto Rican cashier made a remark about her neighbors playing Dominican music in the middle of the night in front of a Dominican customer and they physically fought while while the Dominican customer announced to the entire store in Spanish to any Dominicans in there that we were discriminating against them and that they should all get together and "do something about it." I had to call the cops to break up the fight. no citations issued, i just had the cops tell her she was banned for life.

this one time one of my cashiers attempted to physically discipline a customer who threatened one of my managers when she'd said something to the customer about their kid running around and screaming and throwing things. cops had to break that one up too.

oh and one day i went in on a mid-to-close shift and the bank next door had closed down in response to "OUR" bank down the street being robbed so we couldn't run our deposit or get change from anywhere in the area. and the opening manager who told me so also casually mentioned that a delivery driver told her that morning that the power box on the back of the building had been hit by a truck "or something" and that electricians would be by to look at it later in the day. when they showed up, it HAD been hit with something and I was told un-regulated power was pouring into the building, that it was a fire hazard, but power and light wouldn't be able to fix it for approximately two weeks. corporate insisted we stay open for business--they said a chance of an explosion didn't mean it necessarily would. when the electricians took the door off the box to check out the guts inside, they mentioned that the wires leading into the building looked out of regulation but were interrupted by a swarm of live hornets nesting in the meter box that poured out into their faces.

our phone line was split with someone else's in town so sometimes our store phone just didn't work. calls would cut out, we'd hear other people talking on the line. most of the 911 calls i made went like, "what's the number there at the store?" "oh, i'm calling from my personal cell, our phone is out of service." we never had it fixed.

human resources tried to fire me because an associate said i was cursing in the employee bathroom after a customer chewed me out for something trivial. I handed her my keys and walked out. I was the fifth person to hold that position in two years. at least two other people have had it since I left seven months ago.

[surveysonfleek]

907.

Is popularity a social disease? if it matters that much to you, then yes, it’s a social disease. Would you want to be a hippie? not really. i respect the lifestyle and culture, i’m just not into it. In college, were you ever given exams with extremely broad and deep questions such as, ‘Why?’ or 'What is truth?’ it wasn’t a ‘what is the truth?’ type situation, it was more about what our opinion on the topic was. Have you knowingly destroyed an endangered plant or animal? nope. Did your parents bronze your first pair of baby shoes? i don’t think so... i’d know if it still existed if they did.

Do you check for a train when crossing tracks in your car even though the arms aren’t down? there aren’t many train crossings in my city tbh. i’ve never actually crossed one after all these years of driving. Is there gossip going around about you right now? i don’t think so. i live a pretty drama free life these days. How many comic strips do you read daily: none. If you were hiding from a burglar, would you hide in the closet or under the bed? under the bed i think. What do you most commonly use milk for: drinking or cooking? cooking. Who should provide the condoms in a relationship: the man or the woman? both should be responsible but the man should definitely always have some. imagine being the woman and always having to provide that? Are you ever afraid that people hate you and they’re just acting like they don’t? haha it’s definitely happened before. When you’re crossing the street with other people, do you ever feel a need to get to the other side first? nope. i just walk in the clearest path possible. Should people be able to go to college without a high school diploma if they score high enough on entrance tests? i mean, i think so. everyone has a right to an education. i don’t think entrance tests would be that easy either. Would you be embarrassed if people could hear you talking to your pets? haha no. If elephants were bred to a smaller size and sold as house pets, would you want one? it’d be a cool idea but probably not. Do you refer to people as 'dude’? no. Do you remember the last time you wrote a 'snail mail’ letter? haha nope. i’m assuming it would’ve been a greeting card though. Do you think beards/mustaches make men look older than they actually are? not particularly. Are you usually the one to initiate sex with your significant other? my boyfriend and i are pretty equal in this situation. When you’re having trouble burping when you feel like you need to, does patting yourself on the chest seem to help? haha no. i just do it. Do you have your wallet with you right now? yes. If it ever came down to a final battle between good and evil and you knew that evil was going to win, who would you fight for? i’d stay away as far from this battle as possible. i hate getting involved in conflict. Do you feel guilty when you borrow money from your parents? haha yes. Do you constantly have times where you have no money and then earn a lot of money and you don’t know what to do with it? no. my money always goes to bills etc. Do you always see yourself as the protagonist in the story of your life? of course. it’s my life. Can you drive by a car accident without staring? yes. i’ll have a quick glance but this shit causes soooo much traffic, even on the lanes going the opposite way. it drives me nuts. Do you find it a challenge to congratulate your opponent who just beat you in a game or competition? haha yes. Do you think that no matter how cold or heartless someone seems there is always at least one thing in the world that they love? yes, definitely. im sure 99.9% of people have a soft spot for something/someone. Who is worse: Someone who doesn’t repay a loan or someone that steals your CDs? someone who doesn’t repay a loan because i don’t own any cds haha. Why do you think so many homosexual men still go without condoms: because they don’t know of the dangers, or because they don’t care? both tbh. When you think about morality, do you think more in terms of good/bad people, or good/bad actions? actions. Which of these female comedians is funnier: Ellen Degeneres or Margaret Cho? i haven’t seen much of magaret cho’s stuff so i’ll just say ellen. Are you scared of dying alone? yes. dying in general. Are you most comfortable being treated by a doctor of the same sex as you? of course. Do you take daily walks? nope. i mean i walk everyday but i not like for exercise. Are there some slang terms you refuse to use? i hate the slang ‘litty’ lol. so cringy. Do you have a favorite pen that you use all the time? haha no. i have ones that i prefer writing with but i don’t have one fave. Have you ever changed an adult’s diaper? no. Do you think it’s dangerous or a good thing when two very depressed people start to date each other? dangerous. it’ll either go one of two ways. down a spiral of negativity if they’re feeding off each other’s problems or positive if they find true happiness within each other.

Do you know a game that is very stupid, yet very addicting? most iphone games haha. i’m totally guilty on this. Do you plan on having your children Christened/Baptised? probably.  Would regularly seeing videos of you interacting with people significantly improve your overall human effectiveness? that’d be cool. i think it’d work lol. Have you ever misspelled 'misspell’? i haven’t ever had to use it much. Have you ever stayed up for more than 24 hours to study for an exam? nope. Have you ever been in the back of a moving truck? yes haha. When you were young, did you know some pop stars were gay? probably. Do you have control over how much peace there is in your mind? sure. If you got a backstage pass at a concert, would you feel better than everyone else? um, yes duh.  Is your microwave any other color besides white? it’s black. Would you prefer a bagel or an entire breakfast in the morning? i’d prefer the bagel as long as there’s cream cheese. Do you think that couples that elope have a better chance of staying together? every couple is different. i’m not one to make a call on this. Do you know of a frozen dinner that tastes good? ugh, not at all. i hate them. Will public restrooms no longer be separated by gender in the near future? probably. If you do not eat red meat but eat fish are you a vegetarian? isn’t that a pescatarian? When you discard a piece of paper, which of the following are you more likely to do: rip it apart in pieces or crumple it? i’ve done both. if it’s a confidential document i’ll rip it up. Do you wear your pants and shorts above or below your waist line? above usually. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a sex change operation? yes. i’m assuming it’d be a mentally and physically draining experience. as long as they’re happy though. Do you call margarine 'butter,’ even though you know the difference? haha nope, i’ll call it margarine. Do you bathe less when you are depressed? yes. Should the ASPCA and RSPCA ban the practice of kidney transplants in cats, since cats can’t give consent for the surgery? i have no knowledge on this. Would you ever drink from a bowl or cup made out of human bones? probably not. just a creepy feeling. Does your car normally smell good? i guess so. i’m obsessed with air fresheners. Do you think 9/11 will be the worst thing you will see in your life? i mean it’s up there as one of the most memorable news stories of my childhood. but since i wasn’t there in person, i’m sure there could be worse things i experience personally throughout my life. Do you tend to do more research for school or papers at the library or on the internet? internet. Do you have an outfit you wear that makes you feel like a star? haha no. i’m yet to find the perfect outfit. You are working at McDonald’s frying meat. Your manager is being a jerk and you are ticked. A customer comes in and orders a 20-piece box of nuggets. Out of anger towards your manager, would you pack 20 or more, or 19 or less in that box? 20 or more. the customer didn’t do anything, why should they suffer? Once you’ve made up your mind about the kind of person someone is, can anything they say or do change it? yeah, it’s possible. Is there a single person whose whole existence you might be interested in studying? not seriously. a quick google search will do lol. Do you think that cuddling with a member of the opposite sex, with no intention of sexual relations, is cheating? i think it’s odd. why would you be cuddling someone that wasn’t your significant other in the first place?  Which would you be willing to give up the internet for: world peace or immortality? world peace. i cbf being immortal if it means i can never go on the internet anymore. Are you a redneck? no. Do you think by 2050 there will be flying cars? i wouldn’t be surprised. Should politicians be allowed to have a private life? sure. Do you avoid going over to other people’s houses because it makes you feel uncomfortable or out of place? omg yes. i don’t mind it but i always feel so awkward. i’m just so comfortable in my own home, i’d prefer my friends coming over instead. If someone you don’t know too well puts you in the buddy list of his or her profile, would you be suspicious, or would it be OK that he or she did that? depends who it is. Do you have a trash can in every room of your home? most rooms. Who said “I love you” first: you, or your partner? me lol. Do you ever lay down and watch a movie, only to fall asleep in the very beginning and wake up when the movie is over? all the damn time. Do you say 'thank you’ before leaving a store, even though you may not have purchased anything? if someone’s helped me out, then yes definitely. Would you approve if your significant other wanted to have a nude painting done? sure. lol. If there were nine guilty people and one innocent, and they all had to be together, would you put them all in jail or set them all free? depends on the crime. Is your pet also your best friend? of course :) When the toilet backs up, do you call someone to fix it or do you do it yourself? i try to fix it myself. then i pass it on to my parents and then plumber if need be. Have you ever recited a love poem to your significant other? nope. Would you rather be 'all head and no heart’ or 'all heart and no head’? i’d rather be all heart and no head even though i’m probably the opposite. Are your teeth discolored? slightly. When you were a child, did you make or buy your Halloween costumes? mostly make thanks to my mum. Have you ever seen a movie and liked it but upon further viewing come to like it a lot less? nope. If your father was a minister, would you want him to preside over your wedding ceremony? nope. i’d want him to be my father on my special day, not as a minister. Would you prefer to watch porn or a really good comedy? comedy. How long did your longest phone conversation ever last? over 24 hours but technically it was on skype. Do you put your initials on everything you own? no. Do you like or dislike people based on who else likes or dislikes them? no. even with a bad rep, i’d figure them out on my own. Do you have a friend who you hang out with only when there is nothing else to do? haha no, that’s mean. Which is harder: calculus or trigonometry? i hate them both. Do you often find yourself correcting your parents? when it comes to technology...always. If you could stop aging at a certain age, do you know what that age would be? 25ish. Do you more often eat off of real plates or paper plates? real plates. Have you ever had tape over your mouth? i tried it out myself as a kid. haha. If you encountered someone you totally didn’t know and he or she seemed to tell you the solutions to your uniquely specific problems without having been told what they were, would you be more thankful or freaked out? i’d freak out. i’m skeptical about everything. Would you rather eat a raw egg or a scoop of raw hamburger? omg neither. Do shy kids tend to grow up to be freaks? whaaat? not at all. When you put on a shirt, do you button up or down? i button down. Do you scent your letters when you write to a special someone? haha yes, i did it years ago. Is punk influenced more by music or attitude? music. actually idk. Did you ever start a thread that got at least 40 posts? yes. Can you recall the ending of the last story you read? nope. Have you ever had your head stuck in an unusual place? no. Do you have any weird or funny local slang? haha yes. chat, ceebs etc. When you come online, is there always one person you look for? back in the msn days, yes. not anymore. Do lava lamps make you sick looking at them? i never had one, so no. i find them fascinating still. Will Hollywood ever run out of ideas for movies? they’ve already run out. i feel like everything is a remake of something these days. Does P. Diddy telling everyone that he is the new Frank Sinatra make you want to roll your eyes? haha he could not be serious. Do you think the state of the global environment will be better or worse in 50 years? wors. Do you eat dinner in the dining room or in the living room? both. Which Mike Judge cartoon do you prefer: Beavis and Butthead or King of the Hill? neither. never watched them. Have you ever fallen off your chair in public? no. When sleeping, do you face the doorway or have your back to it? face it. Do you find poetry that expresses pain and suffering to be more intriguing than other types? i hate poetry. Do you only pretend looks don’t matter because you’re ugly yourself? haha i don’t pretend. looks matter to an extent. Do you find limericks to be funny and clever or annoying? funny when i was a kid. Do you think you’d be capable of representing yourself in court rather than hiring an attorney to do it for you? no. When you flirt with someone, is it obvious or more subtle? awkward if anything. Which character do you think weighs more: Jabba the Hutt or Fat Bastard? idk lol. Do you think couples break up mainly because of differences they can’t resolve or because they have found someone new? it’s possible to simply fall out of love without having someone else in the picture. Do you reread things that are written well? yes. What hurts more: getting poked in the eye or biting your tongue? poked in the eye. Do you prefer merry-go-rounds or ferris wheels? ferris wheels. better views. Which do you prefer: original or flavored Tootsie Rolls? original. If you had three children, would you rather have two boys and a girl, or two girls and a boy? two girls and a boy. Is having a threesome basically approved cheating? if it’s approved, it’s not cheating. Is it a turn off to you if the woman has a deep, manly voice or if the man has a high, pre-pubescent voice? no. Have you copied (or “ripped”) your entire CD collection onto your computer? yep lol. Do you have buns of steel? i wish! Did you use floaties on your arms when you were learning to swim? yep. Did your first ever snog involve French kissing? no. there was a lot of pecking involved first. Do you know a person who is physically unattractive and yet a flirt? haha yes. Are there a lot of programs on your computer that you don’t know how to use? yep. like half of the adobe cs. Do you live in an uncomfortable environment, such as where you feel you cannot be yourself? nope. If you had discovered a body on the side of the road would you see if it was still alive? i’d be scared shitless but i would and call emergency. Does punishing everyone for the actions of the few get us closer to utopia? hell no. Can you finish an entire 2-liter bottle of soda by yourself in a single sitting? no way. i’d feel like shit. Have your parents ever forbidden you to play a certain type of music in their house? nope. Since you reached dating age, have you been single for more than three years? nope haha. i’ve been taken for most of my dating life. When buying shampoo or soap, do you choose one because of what they put in it, or because you like the smell? i buy based on what they’re supposed to do to my hair. Have you ever had writer’s block? never really had to write since uni, so no.

[zennyshoneybunch]

Mystically Destined – The Musical (Chapter 1 – When We Were Young)

Damn it! She was running late. Madam would be furious if she was late again today and she couldn’t take the risk of being banned from her classes.

Rushing to get her gym bag and jacket out of the locker, she could barely hear her boss nagging about something in the store. Sure, she needed that job but it was not her fault if that last client was taking an eternity to pick a CD. Besides it was agreed that on days she had lessons she needed to leave in time, even if the store was not closed yet or the floor was not fully mopped.

Closing the locker with a (louder than she was expecting) BAM she shouted a “see you tomorrow” and flew to the store doors as fast as she could, not noticing the tall silhouette on the other side trying to enter until she was right in his arms.

- Oh, please forgive me. We’re closed for…

Looking up she was met with a beautiful boyish (and quite surprised) face and she completely forgot what she was going to say. Embaressed she looked back down and saw that both her hands were resting against the boy’s chest in a rather intimate way. Frantically she moved away, not daring to look at him again so he wouldn’t see the massive blush in her face.

- I’m sorry. – was all she could squeeze out before she sprinted away, trying to outrun her embarrassment.

———————————————————————————

 He hardly knew what had happened. With his arms still slightly opened, he just stood there, watching the girl run like the devil was chasing her.

He had never been on that particular street before. Neither his house nor his school were on the way so he never really had a reason to go. Which was very silly, he thought, since he had lived all his life in that same town.

That’s why he was there. Well, that and the fact that he didn’t want to go home until he found a good way to convince his father to let him participate in the singing contest that was taking place at his school.

But at that moment, looking at the runaway girl, he forgot everything else.

He could still feel her hands against his chest. His face felt hotter just remembering it. That girl literally fell into his arms… and she was pretty. She had shiny light gingery hair and big clear eyes. And that was pretty much all he could see before she darted away across the street. He barely even heard what she said.

Scratching the back of his head he looked down and that was when he saw it. A sparkling silvery thing on the ground, close to his feet. He leaned down and picked it up. It was a cute charm bracelet. He whirled it around his fingers and realized that between the numerous charms there was one with a name: Elizabeth.

Would that be the girl’s bracelet? Could Elizabeth be her name? He looked at the other side of the street but she had already disappeared behind the corner. How could he return it? He didn’t even knew who she was.

Then he heard a noise coming from behind him. There was a lady closing the window grids of the store he was about to check out before the girl ran into him. What did she say at the time? “We’re closed”? That was it wasn’t it? She probably worked there.

The lady was locking the store doors now, she should be the owner. Perhaps he could ask her…

- Excuse me, madam, could you please help me?

 ———————————————————————————

 - Another day in paradise…

Lizzy entered the school gates feeling drained already. She was sad and angry at herself and overall in a terrible mood. She have spent the entire morning looking for her charm bracelet and she could not find it anywhere. She didn’t remember taking it off but she knew she already didn’t have it at the dance studio. And the worst part was she didn’t remember when she wore it last. Was it at school? Was it at the store? What if she really lost it?

Spotting her friend Lucy by the benches, talking to a trio of boys, she waved at her.

Boy, she was so tired! Apart from the intense search, she stayed up late finishing her homework, which between her job and her lessons was incredibly behind, so she barely slept. But that was the only way for her to keep having her dance lessons. They were very expensive and her father already had way too many bills to pay for.

They lived in the cheap side of town, but it was still rather pricey and so was her school. She couldn’t ask him to pay for her lessons too; and even if she could, he probably wouldn’t be able to anyways.

She looked at her friend again. Lucy looked flawless as ever in her tight jeans and soft green blouse. On the other hand, Lizzy looked like a hot mess in her worn-out jeans and plain salmon shirt. Her hair was tied in a loose braid, with strands falling of everywhere. But she had left the house in such a hurry that she had little to any time to do better.

Of course she knew she was lying to herself. She always looked like a mess. Lizzy was a bit of a tomboy. Not that she was very masculine or wouldn’t enjoy more feminine things, it was just the way she was brought up. Her mother died right after Lizzy’s birth so her father raised her all by himself. He did the best he could, of course, but she ended up playing in the dirt looking for worms rather than having tea parties when she was younger.

That cost her some girl friends since she had nothing in common with them. And her boy friends started to drift away when puberty kicked in. So now Lucy was not only her best friend but pretty much her only real friend. And she was moving away to go live with her mom and stepfather in two weeks.

With a small wave Lucy ditched the boys and ran to her, hugging her fiercely, like she did every morning.

- Lizzy-buns!!!!

- Lucy! Must you call me that out loud?

Lucy laughed. And hugged her friend even tighter.

- I must, because you’re my Lizzy-bunny-buns!

- You know, one day I will get you an incredibly embarrassing nickname as well, and no matter how much you ask me not to use it I will shout it from the rooftops!

Lucy let her go and smirked.

- That’s what I’ve been waiting for all this time, girl, but you’re not delivering it!

Lizzy was about to answer, but she noticed the change in her friends face – looking straight ahead of her, flabbergasted.

Then she heard a voice coming from behind her.

- Hello, are you Elizabeth?

Slowly she looked back and was astonished to see the handsome guy with mint colored hair smiling at her.

  ———————————————————————————-

The girl’s already big eyes were as round as saucers when she turned around to face him. Cute, he thought.

- Yes, I’m Elizabeth… may I help you?

She managed to answer. Oh… so she didn’t remember him. That was a little disappointing. But then again, she was in such a hurry the day before.

- No, I’m just here to give you something.

- T-to give me something?

With a smile he shoved his hand in his jacket pocket and took her bracelet out, extending it to her.

- I think you have lost this.

- Oh… my bracelet, you found it!

- Yes, it fell when you…

He couldn’t finish explaining because she was hugging him. His heart started beating so much he was sure she could hear it.

- I thought I’d lost it thank you so much! Oh…

Realizing what she was doing, she clumsily backed away from him.

- I’m sorry, I’m…

She cleared her throat, a deep red blush colouring her cheeks.

Could she be any cuter?

- Thank you very much. This bracelet means a lot to me and it was very nice of you to take the trouble of bringing it back to me.

- It sure was…

Lucy whispered behind them. Elizabeth’s face turned even redder and Jihyun felt his face flush as well.

- Oh, I… it was no trouble at all. It was actually my pleasure.

Not knowing what else to say, and feeling very self-conscious at that point, he shoved his hands back in his pockets and motioned to leave.

- Well, I must go now.

The girl’s friend lightly pushed her in his direction and the girl cried out.

- Wait! I’ll… accompany you to the gate.

The girl looked at her smiling friend with a scolding face that, in Jihyun’s opinion, only made her look prettier and followed him timidly.

They fell into deep silence. He was walking as slowly as he possibly could, thinking of something to say when she broke the awkward silence herself, in a small voice.

- I’m so sorry for jumping on you like I did!

He laughed, relieved to be able to talk to her a little more.

- Please don’t worry about it.

- It’s just that this was my mother’s bracelet and all I have left of her and I was really worried I had lost it.

- Oh, I’m sorry for your loss.

- Thank you. She died right after giving birth to me, so… it was a long time ago.

She fiddled with her hair nervously, but he wanted to know more about her.

- So Elizabeth is your mother’s name?

- Yes but it’s also mine. And my grandmother’s. I’m the 3rd generation of Elizabeth’s.

- Oh that’s interesting.

She let out a small laugh.

- Hardly.

They stopped at the entrance and he turned to her.

- Well thank you for accompanying me to the gates, Elizabeth.

- Please it was the least I could do. And… you can call me Lizzy, if you’d like… everyone does.

- Lizzy… - he repeated with a soft smile. She smiled back, her cheeks faintly pink and her eyes shining brightly.

Blue. Her eyes were the most beautiful shade of turquoise blue he had ever seen.

- I’m Jihyun.

He extended his hand at her and she shyly took it. Her hand was so small and soft.

- Nice to meet you. And thank you again, Jihyun.

She jiggled the bracelet and smiled sweetly at him.

Oh boy… his heart was beating like it wanted to jump out of his chest. And since his tongue apparently became tied, he waved the girl goodbye and walked away to the car waiting for him, one single thought on his mind: he wanted to see her again and as soon as he possibly could.

  ———————————————————————————-

She spent the entire morning thinking about him. The entire lunch time talking about him with her curious and overly excited friend. And the entire afternoon day dreaming about his handsome face and unique hair and eye color.

By the time she was ending her shift at the CD store, Jihyun was all she could think about and how much she would love to see him again.

The bell hanging in the door rang signaling someone was entering the store. Lizzy was rearranging some of the CD’s in their places with her back to the door. She rolled her eyes. Great another late costumer to keep her from closing up shop.

She was about to fake a smile and look at the late costumer like a good shopgirl when she recognized his voice and her entire body froze.

- Hello Lizzy.

Her heart stopped. He was there, she couldn’t believe she was able to see him again. Slowly she turned on her heels, barely able to speak.

- Jihyun…

- Hi…

- What a coincidence, have you come to buy some CD’s?

- Yes, I’m…

He moved closer but then stopped and sighed.

- No, not really, I came here to see you.

He scratched his neck, speaking in a soft voice and looking mortified. But she felt over the moon with his answer. She gave him a big, genuinely happy smile and was rewarded with a beautiful smile of his own.

- Tell me I didn’t lost anything today as well!

He laughed, cheerfully. He seemed just as happy to see her as she was to see him.

- No, not this time.

- So you really are just here to see me.

- I am… is that okay with you?

- Yes… it’s more than okay with me.

They stared into each other’s eyes. He had the calmest and sweetest expression on his, which was the opposite of how she was feeling inside. She felt like a turmoil of nervousness and excitement was rising inside her body.

- If you’re about to close can I walk you home? Unless you rather run?

She giggled.

- Walk is fine.

She got her things from her locker and said goodbye to her boss while he waited by the door, which he opened to let her out.

They talked all the way to her house; about their classes, families, friends, her job, their daily schedule. Phone numbers were exchanged. They talked about everything and nothing. Laughing merrily as young people so often do.

When they arrived at her house’s fence, the silence was settled again. But a comfortable silence this time. Jihyun was the first to break it.

- I can’t believe I’ve never seen you before.

- Perhaps you did and don’t remember.

- … No. No, I don’t think that would be possible. Do you think we’ve seen each other before?

- No, I wouldn’t forget it either.

They smiled warmly at each other. His beautiful minty eyes gazing at her in a way that made her feel the only girl in the world.

- Lizzy do you think, maybe, I could see you again tomorrow?

- I would love to, but tomorrow I have my dance lessons.

- Dance lessons?              

- Yes! I want to be a ballerina.

He took a strand of her messy hair and carefully tucked it behind her ear.

- It suits you.

Her heart was beating furiously.

- You could walk me to the studio though, if you would like.

The porch light suddenly went on and she realized her father was probably aware of their presence and was signaling her it was time to get inside.

- Oh, it’s my dad, I have to go!

Getting on the tips of her toes she leaned into him and laid a kiss on his cheek. Then run to her front door, waving goodbye.

  ———————————————————————————-

Jihuyn had never felt as happy as he was feeling at that moment. He lightly touched his face, where Lizzy had kissed him and laughed quietly. He felt so lighthearted when he was with her.

Unexpectedly his phone started to vibrate in his pocket. Was his father calling him? With his heart beating fast he saw Lizzy’s name on the screen. He immediately answered.

- Lizzy?

- Jihyun, I forgot to tell you, tomorrow is my day off, so… I was wondering…

- Do you want to go see a movie?

He asked impulsively. Immediately he heard her giggling on the other end. Smooth, he thought to himself. But she answered enthusiastically.

- Yes! There are some great movies in the theater this week.

- Great! It’s a… date then.

- Oh… yes, it’s a date.

She answered softly.

- Oh, my dad’s calling me I need to go. Bye.

The call was disconnected and Jihyun stood there stuned. A date… a real date with Lizzy!

He was feeling so excited he could just set off running home. He wouldn’t of course, that was not the way he was raised, so he just walked. But this feeling wouldn’t leave. A lovingly smile formed in his lips…

- Lizzy…

He squeezed his phone lightly and put it back in his pocket.

~ “I hung up the phone tonight, something happened for the first time deep inside. It was a rush, what a rush.”

He looked up at the bright moon.

~ “‘Cause the possibility that you would ever feel the same way about me; it’s just too much, just too much.”

Looking shyly at his feet he smiled to himself, sticking his hands in his jeans’ pockets.

~”Why do I keep running from the truth? All I ever think about is you. You got me hypnotized, so mesmerized; and I’ve just got to knoww.”

Looking straight ahead he pictured Lizzy’s smiling face.

~”Do you ever think when you’re all alone; all that we can be, where this thing can go? Am I crazy or falling in love? Is it real or just another crush?”

Blushing slightly, he looked behind his shoulder at Lizzy’s house once more before turning the corner of the street.

~“Do you catch a breath when I look at you? Are you holding back like the way I do? 'Cause I’m trying and trying to walk away, but I know this crush ain’t goin’ away-ay-ay-ay-ayy. Goin’ away-ay-ay-ay-ayy.”

He rubbed the back of his head, feeling embarrassed.

~“Has it ever crossed your mind; when we’re hanging, spending time girl, are we just friends? Is there more, is there more?”

Taking his phone back out he looked lovingly at the screen, where her name was written in the call log.

~“See it’s a chance we’ve gotta take, 'cause I believe that we can make this into something that will last, last forever, forever.”

He placed the phone close to his heart before he tucked it in his back pocket.

~“Do you ever think when you’re all alone; all that we can be, where this thing can go? Am I crazy or falling in love? Is it real or just another crush?

He reached a set of long stairs that would take him through a shortcut and paused before taking them.

~“Do you catch a breath when I look at you? Are you holding back like the way I do? 'Cause I’m trying and trying to walk away”

He closed his eyes, thinking about Lizzy.

~”But I know this crush ain’t goin’ away-ay-ay-ay-ayy. Goin’ away-ay-ay-ay-ayy.”

Suddenly the Town’s folks started coming out of their doors, windows, coffee shops and singing along, but Jihyun, forgetting is high upbringing, just started running up the stairs, not even noticing.

TF - ~“Why do I keep running from the truth?”

J - ~”Why do I keep running?”

TF - ~“All I ever think about is you.”

J - ~”All I ever think about.”

TF - ~“You got me hypnotized.”

J - ~”Hypnotized.”

TF - ~“So mesmerized.”

J - ~”Mesmerized.”

TF - ~“And I’ve just got to.”

He reached the top of the stairs and opened his arms wide like he’d won some great prize.

J - ~”Knowww.”

Smiling widely, he resumed walking home, still unnoticing the town’s folks.

TF - ~“Do you ever think.”

J - ~”Ever think.”

TF - ~“When you’re all alone.”

J - ~”All alone.”

TF - ~“All that we could be, where this thing could go?”

J - ~”Gooo.”

TF - ~“Am I crazy or falling in love?”

He jumped over a small cement bollard and crossed the road.

J - ~”Crazy.”

Passing through a small space between buildings, he could finally see the tall iron grids that surrounded his dad’s private estate.

TF - ~“Is this real or just another crush?”

He lightly touched the grids, while making his way to the front gates.

J - ~”Another cruuuuush yeah yeah.”

He waved at the guard patrolling entrance who opened the imposing and fancily worked iron gates so he could pass through.

TF & J - ~“Do you catch a breath, when I look at you, are you holding back, like the way I do. 'Cause I’m trying, trying to walk away.”

He walked along the big gardens that were flanking the huge entrance.

J - ~”But I know this crush ain’t going away-ay-ay-ay-ayy.”

The voices of the town folks could still be heard as he walked his way to the front doors.

TF - ~“This crush ain't…”

J - ~”Going away-ay-ay-ay-ayy.”

He passed the exquisite fountain his father was so proud about.

TF - ~“Goin’ away.”

J - ~”Going away-ay-ay-ay-ayy.”

TF - ~“When you’re all alone. All that we could be, where this thing could go.”

J - ~”Going awaaaaaaay-ay-ay-ay-ayy.”

He entered his house and closed the door behind him, leaning against it. He could hardly wait for the next day.

*** Song: Crush by David Archuleta

[misadventuresofthatoregongirl]

A little background... I am 27 years old. I have a 9 year old. I have been with his father since I was 12 years old, I have never “dated” anyone else. I have seen others, but never been in a relationship with anyone else. in January 2019 my little brother (we were 4 years apart and very lose) was left for dead by police after he got in a car wreck and had a head injury. He had a pulse for 30 minutes yet was never taken to the hospital, that was 10 minutes away. A week later some rich yuppie blew their entire head off with a shotgun, 80 miles away from the hospital, had no pulse, but was air lifted to the hospital. I strongly feel my brother was left for dead due to the fact he had unpaid fines. Mostly due to no car insurance or “driving while suspended” over no car insurance. But I know only blacks matter in this country, not some mutt who is half native american half white. That has been made ABUNDUNTLY CLEAR. 

If you are one of those stupid cunts with the “driving is a privilege” bullshit mindset, (driving to work should not be a privilege should be a basic human right and “ride the bus” only big cities have busses and many people have to commute to larger cities in Oregon) when basic liability insurance is about $300 a month for people who are never on mommy and daddys insurance, please kindly fuck off. Housing in Oregon is insane, already, most people have half or more of their money going to rent if they can manage to get somewhere to rent to them at all, they should not have to have another 1/4th or more of their income going to basic liability insurance when they have never even had a ticket. I went through the same shit. Eventually police would just wait in the parking lot for me to leave work and just ticket me over and over, I was denied a hardship permit that is also such a scam. Pay a bunch of money for something you aren’t even guaranteed to get. I drove 1000 miles a week just to get to work, because I could not find work in the rural area I live in not could I afford the $1500 a month rent in the city that has jobs (that’s basically how much I made a month) it is what is is. I had no choice. 

Paying for car insurance crippled me financially. I was actually split up with his father at that time but had to come crawling back begging for money due to my $300 basic liability insurance. The tickets are not even on my record anymore, for driving with no insurance and driving while suspended but its still $260 a month. Absolutely sickening. I don’t have a fucking dime left over after i pay bills, and my boyfriend works and we STILL have no fucking money. Ever. We don’t get to go on vacations, we live in the shittiest neighborhood in the entire county, in a shit trailer, drive shitty cars, I assure you we have nothing nice. Nicest thing he had is probably his work boots which were paid for by his boss, working your ass off in Oregon does not pay off. “Get a better job” no shit sherlock, did it ever occur to you its difficult to not get fired from your job you are currently working, and still go to interviews? Employers be like “I know you have a job currently but can you drop everything and come in an hour?” Oh yeah, totally. And if you try and schedule it for a time maybe you won’t get fired its usually “Nevermind.” And the interview process is a begging a groveling process like you’re a god damn peasant. Why do I want this job? MONEY! Why else! Why does anyone want any job? I worked at a staffing agency for 4 years and I can not tell you how many people did well at those stupid cookie cutter questions but were shit workers. I wish places would just let you work a day or two and see. 

Then I got laid off as soon as stupid corona hit in March, they already fired my office manager and a sales person “over discounted bill rates”. Kinda like how the Dollar Tree stays in business because its cheap but more volume is sold (worked there before too that was horrible) so they have just as much profit if not more, as say Walgreens or something. With corporate clowns coming down and saying to clients basically pay the full rate or we are taking you to court, to 3/4 of the clients, sales tanked. They tried to blame corona but the sales were complete shit before that as soon as they fired the two people who had most of the sales, with discounted bill rates. I am still friends with someone who managed to not get fired. They said in a conference call this week they announced they would be lowering bill rates. *Face palm* now that you fired hundreds of people, you are lowering bill rates. How many lives did you ruin before coming to your senses? Companies here are just so fucking awful!

A few years ago I decided I wanted to move out of the country. However if you have a child, both parents have to sign a passport form unless you don’t have the father listed on the birth certificate. Norway in particular I like, its beautiful, free healthcare, minimum wage twice that of Oregon with cheaper rent and free healthcare, they also help with childcare. They claim they do in Oregon but your “copay” is usually so high you might as well just pay out of pocket and not deal with all the states controlling bullshit you have to deal with when you get state assistance. People like to say “Norway has higher taxes” please shut up and go look at Oregon’s income tax rate. One of the highest in the country. Expensive gas, INSANE housing, its just not possible to have a decent life here in Oregon. I love the ocean also. Norway is beautiful and comes in the top countries for quality of life every year, meanwhile USA is at the very bottom. 

Everyone called me paranoid all those years, I just had a bad feeling that something bad was going to happen also and I needed to get out while I still could. Next remark “how can you afford to get there if you are so broke?” Simple don’t pay my outrageous rent and insurance for 1 month problem solved. My child’s father finally agreed to sign the passport form now that its too late and Americans are banned from basically every country in the world, once the racism and virus bullshit started. Super awesome. He will never hear the end of that from me. Its been months and I still do not even have the passport. Even if I did I AM TRAPPED HERE!!!!!!!!!! I can not even go to fucking Canada!

I decided ok, I will try and move to Montana/Idaho/North Dakota or something. Give up my ocean in attempts to get the hell away from all this mask and the non existent “racism” bullshit. Go somewhere with a lower cost of living, more jobs with higher wages. I absolutely can not stand wearing the face masks. There is no evidence they work, just go look at Sweden. Or the states I just named which have no mask laws. Also a lot of rural areas in Oregon do not wear them seems like the entire populations would have been sick or dead. I am not looking to argue with scared little sheep over this. Before you say “I hope your grandparents die” because I don’t wear them, something that I have seen many people say to myself and anyone else without a mask, my grandparents have said many times they would rather be dead than be completely isolated over some bullshit virus with a higher survival rate than the flu. Plus the media has lied so much, how can you believe a word they say? Seriously? They are all left winged biased. I am not even a conservative and I can see it. But people just eat the shit up. That 26 year old who they claimed died in Oregon from coronavirus, turns out did not even have the virus the CDC medical examiner said. So you choose for yourself what to believe. 

I did get a job in Montana very easily. In six fucking months in Oregon I had maybe 5 phone calls for a job, all minimum wage no benefit shit jobs. I did 2 years of business and law classes, 4 years of heavy payroll and accounting for work so its not like I have absolutely no experience in anything worth a fuck. Plus 8 years total of customer service or more I have been working since I was 18 with gaps here and there between jobs. But with my boyfriend and son back in Oregon, 900 miles away, it was really difficult. I had never been alone like that or even stayed a night away from my child. Never in 9 years. First of all staying in some shitty hotel... I hate hotels in general I like my little nest, as shitty as my house may be, even at a nice hotel I would rather sleep in my own shitty bed. I lasted 2 weeks, only having $100  week leftover for food and other bills spending $400 a week at the cheapest motel I could find, before I gave up. I could not save money for a deposit or loan and my boyfriend has absolutely no credit so he could not get approved for a loan or rental either. He also had absolutely no one to watch our child back in Oregon with everything being closed so he could not work during that time and almost lost the job he had. Done landscaping for 11 years and still only makes $2 above minimum wage because companies treat employees like such shit in Oregon. I was so close, had a decent pay (way more than I ever made in Oregon even though Montana has a lower minimum wage) with benefits, but it was impossible to move into a rental. My credit is good enough for a loan, but I could not save money for a down payment staying in a hotel. Plus I was so lonely and miserable. Now winter is coming and we will not be able to go back and forth in that snow in little cars anyways.

If we would have succeeded, I would have gotten us into a rental and then quit as soon as he got a job because we never have anyone to watch our child and the cost of living is so much lower we would not HAVE to both work like we do here in Oregon. Especially now. Seriously, what the fuck do they expect people with kids to do? Schools are closed and even if they weren’t there is no way in hell I would send my kid wearing a mask all day. SO bad for you! They have to wear them all day “except at lunch” ok so might as well just take the damn things off the entire day. These rules don’t even make sense how do people not see that? Or in a restaurant you have to wear them if you walk to the bathroom but not at the table what logic is that? How do people not see through this bullshit? And children are gross they touch everything masks are going to do shit at schools. Notice the schools that did open, masks or no masks still had a shitload of cases. Single parents are especially screwed in particular. I guess if you could somehow both find employers willing to work with your schedule (good luck with that) you could constantly work opposite shifts as your partner/spouse and never seen them and work. 

Anyways, jobs for him paid more up there too, rent is fucking half of what it is in Oregon. Their average rent is the price of “low income housing” in Oregon. But we just could not do it. I tried. I tried so hard. I even learned Norwegian jeg snakker norsk und ich spreche auch Deutsch because Austria was another country I was interested in. You can try and try and try here, but unless you get lucky, or your parents help you, I do not know how people do it. All the old people I know here don’t have enough money to live off either after working 50 years. Its so sad.

I am no perfect person either. I am pretty bitchy, I have horrible anxiety I quit public school at age 12 and finished online, yes I have a high school diploma. I actually did all my high school schooling in 2 years after skipping 3 years of school with no problem. I never even really went to middle school and still managed. I am not stupid. I just have a hard time doing things I am absolutely miserable doing.

I will go into more detail, year by year on what a shitshow it is to live in the USA but in particular Oregon. The entire west Coast really. I hate it here and I just want out but I have tried everything. 

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: February 2018

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of February 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

While not retweeting dangerously ill-informed articles from The Sun, foppish front that does a poor job of disguising a remarkably intolerant inner core Jacob Rees-Mogg managed to spend the entire month forgetting to give an opinion on Britain First throwing their unwavering support behind him, the same Britain First who happen to have been found to have indoctrinated Finsbury Park attacker Darren Osborne.  Come to think of it, Rees-Mogg also had difficulty condemning the actions of his white-shirted, woman-punching, Nazi uniform aficionado supporter Paul Townsley.

On the other side of the Atlantic, we had the usual suspects trotting off the usual nonsensical arguments about gun ownership who couldn't wait until the smoke had cleared after the Parkland shooting to point so many fingers to try and blame everyone but the NRA for somebody being able to freely buy a semi-automatic weapon to kill seventeen people.  Special mention has to go to Dinesh D’Souza, though, after his remarkably snide series of tweets mocking the Parkland survivors after Florida lawmakers rejected a bill banning assault rifle sales in the state, because in his mind it’s appropriate to laugh at friends and family of shooting victims.

Long-term hate preacher Richard Littlejohn thought it would be wise to spew a long strain of homophobic slurs in his column.  He didn’t think it was so wise when it cost his Daily Mail paymasters several advertising contracts.

When faced with a long list of allegations about what their staff were doing in Haiti, Oxfam really did not cover themselves in glory.  They covered themselves in something, but glory it most certainly wasn’t.  First of all we had deputy chief executive Penny Lawrence had the genius idea of saying all other aid agencies were doing the exact same things that Oxfam workers were accused of - and was somehow surprised that she was asked for her resignation almost as soon as she paused for breath.  Then we had Mark Goldring try and clear the organization’s name in a similar fashion by saying the response to the scandal had been over the top - which failed to steer the conversation away from the fact that Oxfam representatives were guilty of the accusations being aimed at them, overblown response or not.

Twitter troll and occasional Tory MP for Mansfield Ben Bradley had the bright idea of tweeting that Jeremy Corbyn had sold British secrets to the Communists during the Cold War.  One call from Corbyn’s solicitor later and the tweet was deleted, as if the tweet hadn't been screencapped dozens of times by then and his libellous claim hadn't been widely reported.

For some inexplicable reason  Dawn Butler thought it was a good idea to appoint certifiable headcase Munroe Bergdorf to her independent LGBT advisory panel, somehow blind to the obvious issues this would cause: at best it gives people reason to wonder why somebody with a recent track record of inflammatory outbursts such as Bergdorf would be appointed to a panel, at worst it gave plenty of people (not least the BBC and Daily Mail) free reign to run completely misleading “Labour employ certifiable headcase as LGBT Advisor” headlines that a disturbingly large number of people swallowed hook, line, and sinker.

Ex-UKIP leader Henry Bolton said that neither he nor his girlfriend Jo Marney were private racists.  Of course they aren’t - because the tweets that Marney posted saying Meghan Markle would taint the royal bloodline were very much in public.

Having already faced trial for pulling a gun on a Valencia fan during a bar argument in January, you would think Ruben Semedo would have at least attempted to rein in his behaviour.  You’d be wrong, as instead he and a couple of his mates broke into someone's house, tied him up before working him over, and then robbing the their house - actions which have slightly affected Villarreal’s plans for the remainder of the season now that Semedo has been charged with attempted murder.

Person seemingly asking for jokes to be made about his name Richard La Ruina has been on an insecure rampage through what appears to be every single Youtube gaming channel that says anything bad about his “game” Super Seducer, going so far as to not only publicly threaten to issue a fraudulent DMCA against Youtuber IAmPattyJack in spite doing so being illegal, he then went through with it - which, of course, Youtube and Valve were both oblivious to in spite of numerous people highlighting the issue.

Gatekeepers of all borish and ill-informed pub conversations about football Joey Barton & Alan Brazil thought they were making a valid point about Tottenham’s Mousa Dembele not being very good by highlighting the fact he hasn’t been capped by France...somehow missing the seventy Belgium caps he's picked up since 2006 that would prevent him from playing for France.

If there was a Winter Olympic medal for Worst Cock & Bull Excuse For Being Sent Home it’s likely that Adam Pengilly would have received it for trying to suggest the incident that saw him sent home from Pyeongchang involved a Korean security officer somehow fall flat on their backside with scratches on them after an argument with Pengilly outside team GB’s hotel without Pengilly having anything to do with either the scratches or said security guard’s backside-landing-on.

Finally, once again running away to the Mar A Lago golf course at the first sign of pressure, we have Donald Trump - although he’ll probably blame the FBI for this one before saying all Tumblr mods should be armed in spite of their funding having been cut...

[coruscantholonet]

Sim ongoing

Soooo,first a small update on the sim in that work on it is still going down.  We’d love to have an opening date but playing it by ear.  Real life comes first, and I’ve been dealing with a lot of health issues so progress is a lot slower than it normally would be for me.  Fortunately have had several talented volunteers who are doing great with the build, so expect some more updates soon.

Some things we’re looking for include;

1. Getting a few rigs done.

2. Have a few staff positions as well in both the GM and storyteller department. As always longstanding policy is that we only take on those who do not have staff/responsibility positions elsewhere. 

------------Skip below if you don’t like rubbernecking.

Next, I need to apologize.  I fucked up.  Recently I went at some people who didn’t really deserve the “wrath” which seemed to be a catalyst in a domino effect that crippled “Unification”.  I still have many criticisms of it, but that chain reaction allowed for something much worse to fill the void that was created and I speak of “SWU” and “Taris”.  While 0% of what I said was a “lie” there was of course items that were speculation and a bit harsh and in retrospect it was regrettable.  I had some people with real life connections to Cyprus in my ear and it was very much a fire which was extensively fed by those with a malicious agenda.  For all the flaws Loosh and others may have, they would be far favorable to Cyprus.  In the entire decade I’ve been here I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone so corrupt, someone who has not an ounce of integrity or any idea what fair play is.  Over the last few weeks I’ve had to hear so many of the regulars here speak of how they’ve been screwed over there and it’s been a bit gut wrenching with the knowledge that I am partly responsible. 

One example I will provide of how he and his clique engineered the feud was that they were the ones leaking information from Unification chat.  I’ve always aspired to be the same in public as in private, so I’m not usually too concerned with “leaks”, but in this case it was a clear effort to escalate the fighting so that he could benefit from it.

Some other examples during this was when two votes where occurring in Unification at the same time.  One of them to take away Loosh’s server admin position, the other on banning me. 

So to make that clear.  Both Cyprus and Sabastiion/JOINASR traded votes in order to gain support for their effort to oust Loosh.  When that didn’t happen and they couldn’t obtain virtual “power” through Unification they instead broke off to make SWU.  

Everybody knows I don’t mind a “fight”, to some extent I’ll embrace it.  That’s just who I am, but in this case I do think that was used against me as I swallowed the bait and didn’t really take pause to see the agendas at play.  In retrospect, with the history Cyprus and Sabastiion/JOINASR have for this kind of thing, I should have seen it from a mile away.

So let’s start with their last sim, in 2017 they made a Corellia sim back when we were Coruscant.  We had been under construction much like now, however we had a major setback when those two saw the build then offered the builder a much higher sum than we were able to pay.  So they pretty much bought the build out from under us, then there was even some griefing during this period as they sought to do what they could to keep us from re-opening.. much like the present in which they’ve bribed several people over.  Eventually their co-admins got fed up with their antics and voted to remove their admin status.  In response they returned the build, several builders who had worked on parts of the sim where negatively affected by this and I’m not even sure it ever opened again.  Here is what their co-admins sent out at the time..

“ Tonight, (9/4/2017), the ownership team voted on the removal of another owner (Talon) and an Admin (Cyprus). The two of them had continually goaded another SWRP sim into conflict. That sim being Fourth Dimension/Legacies. They bought a build out from under the owner of that sim, trying to use it as their own and rushed to open before 4D was fully able to, and are now pinning that on us. They griefed said sim, and harrassed its players in their group chats on multiple occasions in attempts to either poach from them, or simply troll them. Talon, as an owner did not actually pay into monthly sim tier, and never passed along the money from rentals to the ownership team. We still don't know where that money is. Cyprus, controlled the tip jar in the landing zone, and we haven't seen a dime from that. This sim was started on the idea of civilizing Star Wars roleplay, and being done with this sort of drama. We, the ownership team are deeply sorry that this occurred, and we are going to be working as hard as possible to get the sim back open, and on a clean slate, starting from square one. We will have a skybox area open for roleplay ASAP as we complete the entire sim build. We greatly appreciate your support and patience during this time, and we hope to be back to full scale RP soon! Any further questions, please contact torresalpha12 “

And here is one of the builders of that sim;

[18:34] RedactedA: Eesh, Talon just did a seriously fucked up thing to Corellia. 

[18:35] RedactedB: yeah I heard he returned the whole sim

[18:35] RedactedA: He deleted the sim and is now advertising 4D in the groups. [18:35] RedactedA: That's seriously poor form. 

[18:35] RedactedB: wat 

[18:35] RedactedA: [18:31] Φ Brother Talon (sabastiion): Fourth Dimension (148,128,4083) ((Builds were stolen from here, and they also have 31 people. Looking for more RP outside of corellia? Consider this) 

[18:36] RedactedA: I worked on the build there too, I'm a little less than pleased my work was deleted as well. [18:36] RedactedB: He's such a cunt

So, they got removed from position, returned the build then started advertising for my sim.. this after they bought our builder out from under us.  I guess they figured they needed to get back on our good side after alienating everyone who had worked with them on that sim.  

They didn't even end up paying the builder all the money they'd promised, after they rage returned the sim they blamed the 150USD that never got delivered on the people who they had just left build-less that had nothing to do with the deal.

They turned around and offered us the build parts that the people they tried to stick with the bill didn't even have access to.  Trying to get back in good favor with us, we declined though, we pretty much sat there and watched that sim implode like "huh".  

09/06/2017 [00:08] Φ Cyprus (DarthWyyrlok Resident): Btw, the hutt palace that [redacted] made for us, probably one of the better things hes every made, did you want to use it?

There are countless other stories like this, they’ve ripped off many people over the years. 

[Redacted C]Years ago he was attempting to make a sim. He asked if i wanted to help out and be an admin. Said sure. Paid him 10k and he immediately banned me. Called me a dopey retard for believing him.  Part of me agrees with him.Ever since, if he shows up, i typically warn the fuck out of people and avoid him like a herpes ridden 3rd avenue hooker.

[Redacted D]Havent seen him on sim. But he sounds like a cunt.

[Redacted C] he's the lead for the empire on taris

This pattern of underhanded behavior extends to the roleplay itself.  I don’t think I’ve seen many cases of worse meta-gaming than from that circle of real life friends with Cyprus, Sabastiion and Nessa.   Here is just one example in which Cyprus plays both a Darth and a Jedi Master at the same time.. and...hunts himself.. clearly using one character to inflate the other, this is perhaps one of the worst abuses of alt accounts I’ve seen in my decade in SWRP...

[ Have cut out irrelevant posts from other people ]

[01:46] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1) walked in slowly, a shadow casted over his face as he stood on the dance area for a few moments before continuing forward. His footsteps where silent as if he was trained to walk in silence and his breathing nominalized. He hooded figure would proceed to the bar area where he would slowly sit down on the stool. Once again keeping the silence he had brought in with him

[02:11] Lord Talon walked in slowly his face hidden from all to see. The force around him pulsated as he walked in, each step he took created a soft tick that would echo across the room before drowed out by music. He then looked at the grey robed figure, his scent was masked but he could easily distinguish it from their past incounters. “Ah master Raven Tal” he said with a grin “It seems we meet again”

[02:13] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1) chuckled lightly as his head remained facing forward "It seems I've found you" he said in a low tone of voice as he stood up from his chair and faced Cyprus. Feeling the immense hate that radiated off of the sith warrior. His hands would extend outwards as the jedi warrior's lightsaber flew to his hands and ignighted, the blue blade humming to life.

[02:19] Lord Talon would simply grin at the comment that ordered him out. Instead he would enclose both muscular hands slowly around the hilt of the customized duel phase fouth generation saber as his skilled digets of his fingers locked into place. The weapon reacted to the brush of his touch in which followed a sudden snap and hiss igniting forth an extensive blood shine blade that illuminated the dark room. He gave a slight flourish of the imense blade as he twirled it between his hands before grasping it in a double djem power stance as he looked at the jedi that stood before him as a slight growle escaped from his teeth

[02:20] -Shiva- X -Shev'la Dinii- (ellisa01.turbo) drew her blaster pistols them, aiming one at the sith and then another at the jedi. With her fingers over the trigger she would then shout. "Oi, the fuck out of the establishment, now. Yo uare ruining business."

[02:21] Cyprus Talon (arijonas1) inclined his head slowly, tiping forth his chin in a silent acknowledgement of Lord Talon's invitation. His immense hands had enclosed around the enlongated staff hilt of his legendary blade and drew it close in a duel handed battle stance of Djem So in mirror of Talon's own. The laser blade gave a banshee wail as it whirled about suddenly in a brilliant flourish within the skilled flow of his hands, creating a whirlwind like effect of weaving blue blade before him as he approached abruptly foward, unleashing a controled thrust foward of the extensively long blade towards Talochest as he looked at the mando figure "I wouldnt shoot if I where you my friend" he said as he lunged forward

[ As if the style and names didn’t give it away, here he posted Raven’s post from the Cyprus account, then tries to cover in OOC ]

[02:23] Cyprus Talon (arijonas1): (whoops trying to send that back to him) [02:23] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): (i sent him that post lol and he was meant to check it and send it back incase i missed something lol) [02:23] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): (so just count that as my post so i dont have to re post lol)

[02:27] Lord Talon grinned slightly as he saw him lundge at him. He was more than prepared to dodge such an attack. He would side step away from the blade as he used his own to push it aside as he spun inwards and attempted to knock the side of the saber into Raven's head using his immense speed and strength that was fuled by his darkside enriched powers.

[ Some OOC arguing happened here, as Cyprus did not seem happy other people where interjecting in his fight..with himself, so back to the IC..]

[02:37] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1) moved around the woman standing there as he took into account the woman standing there as he simply rolled around her preventing her from getting in the middle. having maintained direct control over the fluid motion of the drive of the blazing red blade as it plunged forth from Lord Talon to his head, he would not overextend his balance and thus allowed him to counteract the strike to his head from Talon's own saber. There was a cracking hiss as the searing blades would connect he would extend a hand to Talons stomach he would attempt to push the Sith outward of the club to prevent any other distubance of the people inside, this was a jedi's fight, not theirds. And he would do whatever it took to finish it

[02:39] Lord Talon Eyes opened wide as he got hit by the force push, he was send flying out of the room as he then regained his balance by sliding across the floors with his boots that brought him to a halt. As he griped his lightsaber once more ready for Raven. He knew the jedi wouldn’t let the others get in the way so he left them alone and would focus on the jedi who he faced.

[ More OOC arguing about other people interjecting who then called for defenders choice RHCS, admin sides with them. ]

[02:49] Sihivus Verne: ((While V may not have been directly attacked, it is a club. Considering their club is being shot up, they are welcome to take action as judging per group defender roles)) [02:49] Cyprus Talon (arijonas1): (sighs  fine just let me and Raven finish because this was an really important rp taht had to be done and this was a sim we chose to meet at we didnt think others would get involved like this and lead to this ooc)

[ Extra hillarious when it is fairly obvious they’re the same ^  argument continues, eventually RHCS fight happens, Cyprus losses to the club bouncer. Of course the Jedi was mysteriously afk during the fight.. ]

[03:17] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): (ugg sorry about that everyone can someone fill me in on what happened, if anything happened in ims thanks!))

.[03:20] Eva Lekach: ( It's ok they got the Sith you are saved. )

[03:20] Eva Lekach: ( back ic )

[03:20] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): (i could have taken him lol)

[03:22] Lord Talon: m would be dragged out into the sidewalk of the the streets of the undercity as he chuckled lightly as he cluched his shoulder which had a bullet wound in it. after she let him go he would get onto a knee placeing on hand on the ground to stabalize himself as his sith coloed eyes looked at Shiva with long hatred. "I will find you and I will kill you, if you have family I sudgest you hide them for I will kill them.  You will cry out in pain beggin for death and i will not grant it to you, your pain will be that of 1000 dying souls.: he said as he collapesed onto his back and attempted to roll of the edge of the platform

[03:29] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1) shook his head "An interesting character Cyprus is, as stupid as his creator aparently" he said with a sigh looking to Sparrow "I'm sorry if he disturbed anything here, I mearly came by word of mouth that whe would be here, now it seems that I didnt need them." he said turning to Shiva "As for me, I do need them"

[03:29] Raven Tal (aaronsterling1) "when I leave"

[ The End.  Now while that was a few years back, he can’t use the “I was young” excuse, he was in his 20′s at the time as he’s now pushing 30, so this isn’t a case of ‘kids being dumb’.  This is a blatant abuse of alts IC, and clear attempts of deception OOC.  This pattern continued OOC elsewhere.. ]

[2013/11/02 01:34]  Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): And there is one thing I want to get clear, whats the big deal if I am an alt, or an old account of someone, which I am my old account got deleted and couldnt be recovered, Look the only reason im still in swrp is to get the rp back up and going between groups, thats why i cam because I know you guys are doing that do. Otherwise I would have given up swrp a long time ago, we all see it deteriating slowly and all I want to do is fix that, and I dont want to do this if people have anegative aditute twoards it. Honestly if I did something that got you upset please tell me and I can fix it! Please, I'm not sure what I did wrong, mearly came to say hello oocly thats all, nothign more nothing less then I got bombarded with questions. Im just confused is all [2013/11/02 01:35]  Chaos DarkRose (nymph.zenith): alts are fine, but pretending to be an elder ooc is not and might get you banned in some places. [2013/11/02 01:37]  Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): what are you talking about lol Ive been around for a very long time in swrp. Back when the soverignty existed and besipin was still going strong and coursant was a dominant system, Ive been around for a while, my old sith master was MagmaRyu, he was one of the most well respected sith back when I was an apprentice and I was very luck to have him as a master otherwise I woulndt be her today [2013/11/02 01:37]  Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): So I'm not making anything up [2013/11/02 01:37]  Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): there would be no reason to [2013/11/02 01:38]  Chaos DarkRose (nymph.zenith): that is not old [2013/11/02 01:39]  Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): thats about 5 years ago that im talking about [2013/11/02 01:39]  Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): 6 probably now [2013/11/02 01:39]  Chaos DarkRose (nymph.zenith): well log on and lets see, if you are as old as ranogar [2013/11/02 01:39]  Chaos DarkRose (nymph.zenith): he would remember back then [2013/11/02 01:40]  Raven Tal (aaronsterling1): i cant, my account was deleted my some ass, honestly how else can i prove this to you haha [2013/11/02 01:40]  Chaos DarkRose (nymph.zenith): do you realize how many times i've heard this? Over the span of almost 8 years?

[00:57] Cyprus Talon (arijonas1): Raven came to me earlier today and seemed upset and confused by something you said, hes a dear friend of mine so if I could, what did you say to him? [00:58] Chaos DarkRose (nymph.zenith): i have no idea what you are talking about [00:58] Cyprus Talon (arijonas1): Raven Tal, he said he talked to you the other day...

Besides learning how to use spell check? there has been little growth in Cyprus, he’s still someone who utilizes OOC methods to gain IC power.  When he failed to make a mark legitimately, he now tries to buy the status. Rewarding those who support him with high combat system ranks or even real money in some cases.  So like I said, going after Loosh and Uni was dumb on my part as I enabled the rise of the most corrupt motherfucker in SWRP.  So there is some obligation to raise transparency and awareness of some of his past antics. Some of his past names even seem to be banned by Linden Labs, I couldn’t tell you why but found that interesting. Take all of that for what you will. I’ve provided materials to backup pretty much everything I’ve ever said on him, it is a rarity when you have to speculate so little to illustrate what a colossal garbage person someone is.   Play where you wanna play and do what you wanna do, but do it with eyes wide open.

Their platform is the exact same pledge they made in 2017, just a couple weeks before they destroyed a sim many people had worked hard on..

8-22-17 “Star Wars Universe Town Hall Agenda”; created by Sebastiion

“This notecard will explain what we will be talking about in more detail during the Townhall Meeting, as well as explaining a little more about Star Wars Universe. The purpose of Star Wars Universe is to strive to create a multi sim roleplay experience, executed through Star Wars Roleplay groups within the community. In light of recent events, and in the past couple of years of roleplay, the community has drifted far from what is used to be. By working together and by leaders stepping up to the plate we can accomplish a community that speaks for all of us instead of only one individual.

What will we be talking about?

*Why has Star Wars Roleplay fallen apart.*

*How Star Wars Universe can play a huge role in restoring trust within our community.*

*How Corellia, Dantooine, and other key sims can play a supporting role in this.**

Why it's important that the leadership within the community drives their ideas from its *entire* player base, and not just from a *few* key leaders.*

*The future of Star Wars Roleplay and how we can make this project a success.*

Once these topics have been addressed there will be a time for questions, comments, suggestions, etc. Remember this movement is a grassroots movement that starts with you. Attending this town hall and making your voice's heard can help shape the future of Star Wars Universe. The link will be posted in a notice an hour before we begin.”

I guess they changed their mind by  9/4/2017 when they returned the sim :(, point being, they are full of false promises, and pretty much anyone would be a favorable alternative to having these meta-gaming scam artists continue to assert influence over the community.   

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

“Dark Lord”  lolo, not sure if I’ve ever seen a case of someone less deserving.

[03:22] Lord Talon: m would be dragged out into the sidewalk of the the streets of the undercity as he chuckled lightly as he cluched his shoulder which had a bullet wound in it. after she let him go he would get onto a knee placeing on hand on the ground to stabalize himself as his sith coloed eyes looked at Shiva with long hatred. "I will find you and I will kill you, if you have family I sudgest you hide them for I will kill them.  You will cry out in pain beggin for death and i will not grant it to you, your pain will be that of 1000 dying souls.: he said as he collapesed onto his back and attempted to roll of the edge of the platform