#but my feed refreshed and i lost the bloody link to it

[tragedy-machine]

The last time Edwin saw his own face was probably when he was still alive and the most recent glimpse at himself in hell was when his face was covered in blood with deep claw marks running through almost half of it, so I imagine his image of himself has to be quite murky as of now

So when Charles draws him (as an act of love) and Edwin sees the drawing, he goes

"Oh that's very skillful of you, Charles. You are quite good at portraits. And this one even has a bow tie like me, how delightful! Do keep at it."

And since the drawing is just so beautiful, he can't even imagine it being of him

Charles can only groan and facepalm

[libermachinae]

Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part II: Breathe - Chapter 5:  Thoughts Expand in Blooms

Also available on AO3! Summary: The consequences of Ratchet and Rodimus' chase become known. Chapter Word Count: 2644

---

“Try again.”

“Yes, sir. Rodimus, come in Rodimus. This is Blaster, coming to you live from the Lost Light command deck. Do you read me? Status and further instruction requested. Over.”

Years of handling the Wreckers’ fluctuating schedules meant it was no effort for Ultra Magnus to resist rubbing his optics as he watched the progress of their three recovery speeders. Siren, Crossblades, and Waverider had launched with minimal deviations from standard procedure (Crossblades would receive a write-up for nonessential helical rotation) and tracked Arcee’s shuttle up to acceptable pursuit range. That was where the chase had stalled, as Rodimus had provided no further instructions and protocol required command from a captain before they could proceed. Either captain.

Protocol fell apart when one refused to leave his hab and the other had stopped answering his comms. Magnus started mentally writing up a proposal for temporary transfer of pursuit command responsibilities while they waited.

The control panel refreshed as the latest information poured in. The speeders were entering upper atmosphere, rotating in pyramid formation in the shuttle’s trail. Acceleration had decreased to the minimum required to maintain orbit and altitude held steady as they sailed through Scarvix’s exosphere.

“Ultra Magnus, I have a visual on Rodimus’ ship,” Bluestreak reported.

“Pull it up.”

The datafeeds compressed to the right of the screen, replaced with the compound live feed from the speeders, displaying the shuttle’s stern, the glow of its thrusters closer to a lightbulb than anything spaceworthy. The engines were keeping it aloft, but there was an unnatural stillness about it, like debris floating through space.

“Again.”

Blaster adjusted settings on the ship’s communications hub and leaned into the mic.

“Rodimus, come in Rodimus. This—”

There was a crackle and buzz as the ship’s receiver finally picked up a signal.

“This is Rodi—ack, Ratchet, this is Ratchet. We read you.”

Blaster’s shoulders relaxed as he transferred primary input to the third in command’s station, but Magnus did not match his relief. Underneath the fritz of the shuttle’s poorly maintained equipment, Ratchet’s voice was shaking.

“Ratchet, this is Ultra Magnus. Report.”

“Report. Report… um, Arcee’s gone. We lost her. Satellite. Crash. Is Cyclonus there?”

“No. What is your—”

“Get him,” Ratchet interrupted.

“Where is Rodimus?” Magnus asked. Ratchet was supposed to be one of the good ones, recognizing his place within the chain of commands. Making demands was out of character for him.

“Here! I’m here,” Rodimus’ voice crackled down the line. “Present. Available. Get Cyclonus.”

Magnus sent the ping and tagged it urgent. Cyclonus had never been known for tardiness, but that put it on the record.

“What is your status?” he asked as he acknowledged Cyclonus’ response.

“Good! Weird? Ratchet is banged up, which is bad. He suffered impact shock in his lower spinal strut, chance there’s a disk… how do I…”

Magnus’ orbital ridge twitched, a coding bug when expression protocols tried to assign a profile to stress of unknown origin. He wiped the cache, regaining his neutral set, and sent a command to have the speeders approach the shuttle. Visual on the command deck would be helpful, but flight integrity was his main concern. If neither Rodimus nor Ratchet was in the right mind to pilot, they would need to engage in emergency grounding maneuvers.

“Ratchet, are you still there? Rodimus sounds incoherent; what is his status?”

“He’s fine.” His voice was briefly drowned out by shuffling and crashing on the other end. “—cessor’s functioning normally. It’s loud, but it’s working.”

“He’s overheating?” Magnus asked.

“Not his fans, his thoughts.”

“Is his comm link malfunctioning?”

“He’s bright like the goddamn sun. I can barely get two words in. Will you shut that off? ”

“Ratchet?” Speeders were closing in.

“Not you.”

“Stop yelling at me!” Rodimus snapped, volume raising and lowering like he was pacing around the microphone. “I heard you the first time.”

“I don’t see how. I can barely hear myself.”

“Aw, poor Rodimus, doesn’t get to hear his own voice.”

“ You’re Rodimus, that’s my line.”

“Rodimus, Ratchet, Waverider is en route to board,” Ultra Magnus interjected. “If you are able, please lower the hatch for arrival, otherwise he will engage emergency stove—”

“No, don’t!”

It wasn’t just that they shouted at the same time, but that Rodimus and Ratchet’s voices matched in pitch, tone, and cadence which caused Magnus, for the third time in his life, to forget what he had been saying.

“Is Cyclonus there?” Rodimus asked.

“There’s something on board,” Ratchet said. “Don’t know what it is, but you can’t let anyone else get near it.”

“It did a weird thing. I’m Rodimus, but also I’m Ratchet? And both?”

“Those sound like the same things, Rodimus,” Magnus said, half distracted as he instructed Waverider to return to position.

“They’re not,” Ratchet said.

“Sir?” Cyclonus’ voice came as a blessing. Magnus gestured him forward.

“Cyclonus just arrived,” he announced. “Cyclonus, Rodimus and Ratchet uncovered something on Arcee’s shuttle. It’s…” He blanked.

“I can feel Ratchet’s processor,” Rodimus said, rushing like it would make any of this comprehensible. “He’s thinking and it’s all really fast and hard, but it’s not rough like you would expect? Like, the feeling of grit in your gears, I thought it would be like that, but it’s more like there’s just a lot of gears and it takes a lot of power to turn them all, and it’s too hard to decide whether to focus on just one or the entire thing. And he keeps thinking about me and my thoughts and how they’re not like that, and I’m thinking about him, and then I get stuck because all the thoughts start to sound the same and I don’t know which ones came from me or which are Ratchet or even which me is me. It’s all a big thought reservoir, a—a thought battle, an entire brain war and I don’t know which side I’m on!”

Cyclonus’ gaze was steady at the screen. Once it was clear that Rodimus was done, he leaned over the microphone.

“Can you send an image of the object?” he asked.

“Sure,” Ratchet said.

Blaster raised his hand.

“Image received.”

Ultra Magnus nodded and the feed of the shuttle was replaced with a still capture, a calamity of wires and light that took his visual center a full millisecond to parse.

“It’s the Enigma of Combination,” Cyclonus said.

“What’s that?” He could differentiate the orbital plating of the object itself and the red dwarf dew drop at its center, but the light it cast on its surroundings made his spark flicker with a disturbing fuzz.

“A plague,” Cyclonus said. “Considered a long-lost relic even in my own time. I would doubt this was the legitimate article, if Rodimus hadn’t so perfectly summarized its less infamous effects.”

“It can do more?” Magnus asked. What it had already done— whatever it had done, he still was not clear on the details—seemed itself too much for a bot to handle. Or two.

Cyclonus hesitated.

“Well, you see…”

“No. No, no, so much no, you’re kidding. Ratchet, tell me they’re kidding!”

“I don’t bloody well know!” he snapped back. He had sunk back into the pilot’s chair while Rodimus paced the bridge. His spark was spinning like a centrifuge, its engine overfed by the deluge of panicked thoughts tumbling through his mind. It was all Cyclonus and shuttle and Arcee and combination and Drift, new threads knocking each other out of the way so nothing could reach a conclusion, just endless half-thoughts pinged repeatedly. Worst was when Rodimus tripped over the junk now scattered across the bridge as it brought everything to a shuddering halt, like a whole expressway’s worth of engines seized up simultaneously.

He pressed his hands to his face and tried to focus on keeping his vents open, ignoring the storm of queries of Is Ratchet overheating? and Drift is going to kill me.

“I can’t be in a combiner with Ratchet!”

He hates me he hates me he hates me rattled around their processors like screws in a box.

“The Enigma has determined otherwise,” Cyclonus said.

So now the damn thing was having its own thoughts?

“It’s thinking ?” Rodimus asked, earning an additional glare from Ratchet.

“No one knows,” Cyclonus said. “It’s ancient technology, built on the same principles that govern sparks.” Principles that even modern science knew so little about. Ratchet was going to say it but froze when he felt Rodimus grab for it, tossing at it a hundred questions he had no answers to: Is that thing a person and Where do sparks come from and Would this stop if we broke it followed by another run of apologies.

“The Enigma has you in a holding pattern,” Cyclonus went on. “There aren’t enough of you to form the combiner, so it’s keeping your sparks connected until it can interface with at least one more Cybertronian.”

Ratchet saw the image that formed in Rodimus’ mind and his glower deepened.

“I don’t have the knowledge or the skills to disconnect something like that,” he said. “Sparks are complicated, Rodimus, and there’s still so much we don’t know about them. I didn’t even think it was possible to maintain a connection of this magnitude without direct contact.” Rodimus’ next idea was even worse. “Have you met your crew? The moment you put it in a box and tell no one to look, Brainstorm, Skids, and Whirl are all going to make breaking into it their personal quest.”

“Isolating the Enigma will not contain its effects,” Cyclonus added. “Because the holding pattern is an open channel, you have become conduits for the Enigma’s energies. If even one of you encounters another compatible component, it will complete the process, regardless of its distance from you.”

Rodimus stilled, then sunk to the floor, his thoughts miserably coalescing into a single thread.

“So, either we drag someone else into this mess, or we’re stuck in this shuttle, trying to think over each other forever?” Forever was steeped in darker emotions that caught Ratchet off-guard, which Rodimus immediately covered up with nonsense branches of observations about the junk on the floor. A negativity storm, Drift would have called it.

From behind, he heard Rodimus chuckle, though his thoughts betrayed little amusement.

“If I may,” Cyclonus said, interrupting no one. “Ratchet, I do respect you as a physician, but modern medicine is not the only source of knowledge concerning the Cybertronian body. Even modern theology, shallow thought it may be, offers insights to the nature of sparks that your specialty lacks.”

“No.” Ratchet scowled and shook his head, though more so at the way he felt Rodimus stirring that observation than the idea itself. “None of the woo-woo nonsense. Drift’s mindfulness agility course was bad enough.”

Unfortunately, his words made Rodimus’s thoughts expand in blooms, accompanied by shuffling as he stood to lean over the pilot’s chair.

“Drift was always trying to get me into his meditation thing,” he said. “He—he talked about the Rossum connection, how the mind impacts the spark and vice-versa. It was mostly, you know, power poses and cool sword moves, but there was more advanced stuff we didn’t get around to.”

“It could be a lead,” Cyclonus said, his grave voice somehow failing to make a dent in Rodimus’ growing enthusiasm. “I know very little about Spectralism, but if it involves manipulation of spark energies, there is a chance it could be used to counteract the effects of the Enigma.”

“Yeah, remember how Drift can see auras?” Rodimus said. “Maybe he can see where we’re tangled and just undo the knot.”

“There is no scientific backing to that kind of pandering—”

But we don’t have any other ideas.

Rodimus drew him up short, his own dearth of creativity reflected back to him as though in a mirror. Loathe though he was to admit it, Rodimus was right: they had nothing else. No leads, no one to fall back on. Cybertron’s history, the ancient mythologies that might have shed light on this technology, was lost to war and time, and all that was left was the third, fourth-hand accounts of people who claimed to know what was lost.

There was a chance Drift would have nothing to offer them, but even the possibility of guidance was an improvement over the helplessness Ratchet felt when he tried to imagine them fixing this on their own.

He received an image burst: Drift, wild and beautifully unhinged, leaping for the chance to care for Ratchet with literally open arms. Rodimus shut it down, distracting himself by counting rivets in the bridge ceiling, but vibrating embarrassment persisted between them.

“Would it be appropriate to call Drift for this?” Ultra Magnus asked, pulling the further from their internal squirming. “The truth about his role in the Overlord plan came out months ago, and since we’ve made no effort to contact him. To approach him now so he can solve this seems exploitative.”

Ratchet caught only the yellow of Rodimus’ hand before the captain vaulted over the back of the pilots’ chair, landing with a solid bang.

“I’ll take the blame,” he said.

“For what?” Ratchet asked, though he could already see it.

“For not fixing this sooner,” Rodimus said. He shrugged, a movement so automatic Ratchet did not pick up who it had been directed to. “I’m the captain. It was my responsibility and I failed. That shouldn’t doom Ratchet to having to live with my mistakes.”

He avoided Ratchet’s optics as he spoke, but Ratchet still caught his expression, the shiver of his spoiler as he spoke. It struck him that the reason Rodimus was so hard to read from an external perspective was because a single look meant so many things: frustration, guilt, grief, and hope piling on top of each other too quickly to discern where any one emotion rooted. His thoughts were going in so many directions all the time, of course it would be a challenge for everyone else to keep up.

“How do you intend to locate Drift?” Ultra Magnus asked, ever pragmatic.

“I have a tracker,” Ratchet said.

“I memorized the specifications for his shuttle,” Rodimus added, his processor spitting out the codes in full.

“And will that ship be adequate? Do you need additional supplies?”

Ratchet turned in the seat, looking around the scattered contents of the bridge, to say nothing of what their collision might have done to the storage down below. Despite the mess, he saw what looked like intact crates of potable energon, and the shuttle’s own systems were not in imminent danger of running dry.

“We’re stocked,” he said, and catching Rodimus’ primary concern, went on, “Unless Cyclonus know how far the Enigma’s effect extends, it’s going to be too risky to dock back in the Lost Light. We’ll make due with what’s here.”

“I’ll have Rewind compile you a list of known energon distributors with minority Cybertronian populations. That will be your best opportunity to refuel without risking exposure, should the need arise.”

Could the Enigma grab non-Cybertronian mechanicals? Rodimus wondered, a query Ratchet did not have the energy to entertain.

“Thanks, Mags,” Rodimus said out loud. “Take care of the place while we’re gone; you know the drill.”

“Of course, Rodimus. Uh, stay safe?”

Rodimus laughed, a sound that Ratchet felt as a golden thread, spun in a ripple through space before vanishing to nothing. He squinted, trying to make sense of what the hell that had been, but Rodimus’ burst of enthusiasm and plans for the coming journey overwhelmed him.

“Don’t worry, Ratchet’s pride will make sure I get back in one piece.”

You—!

It was going to be a long journey to the outer rim. Though Rodimus was grinning cheekily, the tense coil at the center of his thoughts agreed.

[anneedmonds]

Trying Out Barre Class: Exercise with Crilly

[AD info: this is not a paid-for post. There is an affiliate link marked *. I am a founder of the Colab Dry Shampoo brand. Beauty items here are press samples apart from the dry shampoo.]

Well I do apologise; it has been a while since my last fitness post, Sex Burns and Sanitary Towels. That’s because I haven’t actually done any exercise since then – not purposefully, anyway. I mean there’s always the “rushing around after toddlers” fitness and the “going up and down the stairs” exercise (that old chestnut!), but in terms of actual, put-your-trainers-on-and-wish-you-were-still-in-bed fitness, I have done nothing.

I don’t know what possessed me to book a Barre class at 00.21 in the morning – perhaps I was just overjoyed that I’d managed to successfully change my password for the House Seven app, which is what you use to book cinema tickets and gym classes and events at the various Soho House outposts. I’d been trying to get back in to the bloody thing for about three months and it wouldn’t send me a reset link, so when I finally managed to crack the code, at a quarter past midnight, I was so excited I booked in to do every event for the next year. Flower arranging, artisan gin-making, learning how to forage, discovering bee-keeping. All of it.

But when this morning rolled around and I’d only had three hours of uninterrupted sleep (I was solo night-shifting and I’m sure the sproglings sense my weakness) I regretted my booking immensely. I had work to do. I could have gone back to bed and had an extra hour’s sleep. A bath. A snack. I could have hoovered up the dead ladybirds from underneath my window (constant deaths) or put a wash on. I had to send some image files, edit a video, upload some copy for some brand work, take some still life shots of a load of beauty products. A hundred things to do and not one of them was “exercise”. It just wasn’t on the agenda.

However I had booked the class and so I had to go. Also (and this is terrible), I had treated myself to the Manette bed from Soho Home (see this post) in the wee hours of the morning and it was a highly indulgent purchase and so the warped part of my brain told me that if I went and saw the Barre class through, all would be forgiven on the financial front. (Because we all know that you can cycle off a debt! Put too much on the Amex? Hold that superman pose and pulse, pulse, PULSE that extended leg!)

So off I went to Barre. I knew that Barre was a kind of intense muscle-toning session because my friend, Louisa Drake, told me about it years and years ago before it was even a thing. (She has a highly successful fitness brand now, the Louisa Drake Method – you can find her website here.) I knew that it involved ballet moves, or ballet-esque moves, and that it concentrated on legs, glutes (ugh that word) and abs but that it didn’t involve running or jumping.

“Great,” I thought last night, “an exercise class where I don’t have to worry about weeing myself.”

I text my friend Alice, who is a connoisseur of Babington House fitness classes.

“I’ve booked barre class at Babington. Talk me down. Is it good? It’s at 10.45 and I’ve had about three hours sleep…”

She answered: “It’s brilliant. But you may die. I’ve retched in it.”

Well that put the fear into me! But off I went, in my too-tight leggings, shiny crop top, oversized t-shirt and pinchy trainers (I had twenty seconds to find a gym kit and get out of the door) and made my way into the attic space above the pool which is where they hold indoor classes at Babington. When I say that this room is smaller than a box room I’m barely joking – there was space to swing a cat but only if the other five ladies didn’t mind being walloped in the face by one.

Whatever, you don’t need much room for Barre – just a bar. Barre? Bar. And you hold onto this bar whilst doing excruciatingly tiny and painful leg movements whilst squeezing your bum cheeks and remembering to keep your feet turned out the right way. It’s relatively tortuous, a bit like having your leg muscles set on fire and trying not to scream, all whilst trying to hold in a poo, but I actually really enjoyed it. Yes my face was puce, yes my M&S briefs were an unwise lingerie decision (they runkled up inside the too-small leggings and shuffled their way into my main crevice so that I was basically garrotted at the wrong end) but I didn’t need to do any running, my knees felt nice and supported and the floaty arms made me feel as though I should immediately be casting for a ballerina role in a big budget Hollywood movie. I’d be great.

So it looks as though I’ll be going back. I write this chomping on a Tracker bar (choc chip) and having lost all feeling in my shoulders, legs and torso but at least my fingers still work. I reckon if I can make it to Barre once a week and then maybe boxing (need to report back on that, don’t I – that’s another one I “loved”, but then only managed three sessions of) I’ll basically be superhumanly fit. Ripped. Gisele-like. I’ll be cracking nuts with my thighs and sprinting up the stairs four at a time. God, I’m tired just thinking about it.

  By the way, I’m well aware that the photos on this page don’t really reflect the post content; I’d like to supply you with a highly amusing image of me gurning my way through the pain barrier but I was concentrating too much to stop and take a selfie. Also I’d have looked like a pillock.

So instead you have a some (heavily styled, admittedly) pictures of the contents of my gym bag. (I say gym bag, I mean nappy-changing bag because I don’t actually own a gym bag.) I removed the pair of used pants and the cashew nuts that were inexplicably covering the bottom of the bag, I’ve left out the crushed Tampax and the broken biro. What are we left with?

Firstly, my post-exercise smell-buster of choice, the spray-on deodorant – or “shower in a can”. I have these sprays in many different scents, including Tom Ford’s Soleil Blanc (glorious) but the Carven one seems to be my most-used. It has a comforting, clean smell.

The spiky bottle is a BKR glass bottle from the “spiked” collection – you can find them here online.

And the other bits? My Colab Active dry shampoo, which is the hair equivalent of a shower-in-a-can – you can find it at Boots.com here – and a couple of post-workout essentials, including the most cooling foot cream I’ve found (Weleda’s Foot Balm, here) and a new face spritz discovery, the Workout Glow from Pretty Athletic.

I need to do another post on Colab Active, to refresh your memories, but it’s actually quite the lifesaver if you use the gym or run or do any kind of exercise and don’t have time to wash and re-style your hair afterwards. If you spray into your roots before you do your workout – leave, don’t brush out – then you’ll find that it really helps with that awful, sweaty, flat hair that you (I) get. I’m not suggesting you skip on the showering, but if washing and drying your hair takes up half of your lunch break then this stuff is your saviour. It’s currently a third off (£2.33) at Boots here.

The foot balm is an emergency measure because sometimes I do exercise and it feels as though my feet are on fire. On this particular occasion I was glad to have it because we were working in our bare feet, something that gives me shudders despite the fact I’m not particularly germ-phobic. I think it’s memories of verrucas and athlete’s foot and that awful foot bath you had to walk through before getting to the main swimming pool. (Was that just our local baths or what?) So yes, I used the Weleda balm (it’s £8.99 here*, I highly recommend) as a sort of rudimentary disinfectant until I got home and scrubbed my feet with bleach and a brillo pad.

The face spritz? It seemed fitting because it had the word “athletic” written on the bottle but actually, it’s rather lovely – very gentle and soothing and not at all what you’d expect from the jazzy bottle. The packaging colours remind me a bit of eighties shellsuits, but the formula inside is so, so pretty. I thoroughly enjoyed spritzing and shall spritz some more. You can find it online here – there are other exercise-centric beauty products on there too, I will endeavour to try them and report back. With all of the fitness I’m going to be doing…

  The post Trying Out Barre Class: Exercise with Crilly appeared first on A Model Recommends.

Trying Out Barre Class: Exercise with Crilly was first posted on February 23, 2019 at 7:07 am. ©2018 "A Model Recommends". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at contact@amodelrecommends.com Trying Out Barre Class: Exercise with Crilly published first on https://medium.com/@SkinAlley