#but where k live it’s hard to predict weather

[spoofyleaf]

The warmest it’s gonna be this week is 55 f, and I for one am not complaining

[nanoseven]

wrote based off of this fanart by android

T-rating for some petting, and unbetaed, maybe ooc

"Let's pretend there was never any bad blood, just for a while."

Jou swings his left arm, being aware of the danger of dropping his beer can below on the snowy ground. The weather is supposed to be -20 degrees Celsius, yet the cold doesn't penetrate his coated exterior as much as the man's presence next to him.

Jou hears Kaiba's scarf ruffle, but doesn't bother to turn and look. Out of the corner of his eye, Kaiba's elbow comes into view, where instead of holding onto the handrail, he crosses his arms instead.

They both stay silent.

True, Jou acknowledges that they had their differences. Both of them come from different classes in the same caste, with Jou growing up with an alcoholic father and Kaiba with his corrupt stepfather. Both of them hold separate values and beliefs. Jou values friendships, Kaiba detests.

Jou sighs. All this time, where did they go wrong?

He finally takes the chance to peek. Kaiba's been staying silent the whole time, ever since Jou made that statement. He has seen a silent Kaiba, especially moments back at Battle City where he's standing confident and observant. Not this version of Kaiba where he's radiating vibes of uncertainty.

Not gonna lie, it's uncomfortable to see Kaiba like this. A person being unsure of his caliber is a rarity, Jou thinks, digging through his mind if he's ever seen an insecure CEO on TV. The answer is no.

Jou's mind travels to the cold, half-finished beer can he's holding. He takes a quick swing at it and closes his eyes, pretending for a brief moment he's not stuck in this situation.

"I'm gonna head back. Pretend that I neve-"

"Okay."

Jou stops in his tracks, and turns.

"What?"

Kaiba doesn't move from his spot, at first. But eventually, he turns to profile view, his left eye peering back at Jou.

An unreadable glimmer and... hope?

"Let's pretend there was never any bad blood."

A shudder goes up Jou's spine. Whether it's from the cold, or by Kaiba's surprising answer, it's hard to tell. Some days, he's predictable to read, much like back in Battle City.

And rarely, impossible. Just like now.

Jou returns back to the same spot.

"Alright, then," he breathes, and just as he lifts his arm to drink, it slips through his fingers.

"Aw, fuck!"

It doesn't take long before the can decreases in size and hits the snow, creating a small crater. Jou wonders if the contents that spilled out would cause a complaint with the tenants living below his apartment.

Surprisingly, he hears chuckling.

Jou turns to see Kaiba giving a small smile. It's the first time he's witnessing it. He's quickly recalling a time if he's ever seen it, and mentally shakes his head: no. Always the arrogant smirks, never anything genuine.

The volume beats in his ears grow large.

"Not the first time you've made that mistake," he remarks.

Another snide comment. Nevermind what he just thought now. Blood is starting to rush Jou's body, toes to head, before Jou remembers what he said earlier.

He takes a deep breath. "I know, I know," waving his hand off as he's trying to push through his silly mistake. Kaiba has never stopped to remind Jou of all the little faux pas he's made during their encounters, and this was no exception.

Think, Katsuya, think, he scrambles to find something, what can he ask? Since they're pretending now.

"Have you always had dimples?" He blurts.

Kaiba blinks multiple times. He glances down, and draws his hand up to the sides of his cheeks.

"I don't know if what you just asked was a rhetorical question, but yes, I have. I don't recall if it was from my mother or father.

"Nobody personally commented on it, until now."

Jou turns his head. Either the snow that's gently falling down, or the soft, neon lights coming from below, it's presenting Kaiba as a male lead out of a K-drama, with his three fingers holding on his chin area while wearing his winter coat and white scarf.

Jou's feeling his cheeks bloom, pretending that he's not feeling anything in his stomach.

"Well, you look... nice, like that."

Man, what is up with him today? Complimenting Kaiba, pretending that everything's fine between them.

There's tension. Kaiba doesn't respond, and instead his elbows are on the handrails again. And as per usual, Jou fucks up once again. He wonders if this is the last time they're gonna have a chance to at least be civil.

But his eyes must be deceiving him, because was Kaiba pink on the cheeks? Or was it from being cold?

"...Thank you."

It catches Jou off-guard.

"Yeah."

He pauses once more, before he clears his throat.

"You know-"

"I-"

They both interrupt each other. Jou couldn't help but laugh at the absurd coincidence.

"Alright, you go," he gestures to Kaiba.

Kaiba stands properly. He pauses for a few seconds, before he speaks.

"It's pretend, right?"

Jou is about to clench his fists, but stops himself.

"Yeah... yeah, it's just pretend." He repeats.

Sure. Pretending to not be hostile towards one another, but also: something else?

Kaiba sighs. "We can pretend we went off on the right foot. And how I never snapped at you."

Jou slowly nods.

"Pretend that I never gave you any terrible nicknames, but rather ones more on the cheeky side."

"Cheeky?"

"...Yes."

Kaiba steps closer. Jou's not sure what's happening. Either he's really into this roleplay, or he's also playing a cruel joke. Cheeky his ass.

But…

He doesn't want to break what's happening between them, so he plays along. Jou’s smart enough to know when to pick up. "We can also--" he clears his throat, "we can also be real good friends, ones where we can pick up a conversation from where we left off."

Play it safe.

Kaiba is standing much closer than the personal space they developed. More than when they threw insults at each other on a regular basis.

"We can pretend that at one point, even before we were good friends, I had feelings, and later when it felt safe, I confessed to you.

“And you said yes.”

Jou’s eyes go wide.

Kaiba is towering over him by this point. Jou can smell the faint whiff of mint coming off him. Not that he ever noticed, since he didn’t really give a shit originally. But it smells nice. 

“And what?” Scratching his head, Jou chuckles nervously. “Have it so that you confess to me on this very spot? After I accidentally dropped my half-finished can?”

Kaiba doesn’t react at first, but his eyes give everything away.

“Why not.”

He raises his manicured hand, and places it on Jou’s cheek. It feels colder, but gentle. He raises his own hand in response, rough calluses from working in the construction field onto the back of the soft, piano hand skin. 

“Kaiba, I -” he sighs again. “I wanna ask you something before we continue this thing.”

The aforementioned man raises his eyebrow.

Jou’s body shudders, and he can’t help but close his eyes. He takes his brief pause, before he asks.

“You weren’t pretending about having feelings… were you?”

He opens it again.

Kaiba’s staring back at him. His thumb is rubbing on Jou’s upper cheek.

“No, I wasn’t.”

The thumb stops moving. Jou’s heart is pounding in his ears, a confirmation stirring in his stomach, deep down from all the way back when Kaiba snarks about Jou’s class status and appearance, and Jou retorts back the same thing. 

“What about you?” Kaiba comes back with the same question.

Two dragons, swirling and snarling at one another, a never ending cycle of revolving through the sins of fire. Each breathing out flames of pride and envy. 

Any and all the memories of the arguments have vanished out of the dark crevices within Jou’s mind, leaving behind only fragments of red rose petals.

Jou’s eyes flutter, and shakes his head.

“I feel the same way.”

In a quick second, Jou’s head gets lifted with the same manicured hands before Kaiba lands a kiss. His lips are dry, yet it feels more warmth than Jou has ever experienced. He doesn’t take long to return the favour by grappling his coat lapels and opening his mouth to let him in.

He briefly flashes back to a comment he made to Kaiba about his lack of sexual experience. It’s being proven now, with Kaiba only having some bit of control. He’s clumsy, lips nor tongue not knowing the pressure points. His passion makes up for it, making Jou take the lead and subconsciously guide Kaiba, nipping his bottom lips and dragging his tongue from one side to another. 

Before he pushes any further and lets his baser desires take over, Jou gently takes Kaiba’s hands and releases his kiss away from him. Kaiba’s eyes glaze over Jou, still reeling from the aftereffect.��

Jou drops his head on Kaiba’s scarf, and laughs.

“Out of all things I’ve expected, this was not part of it.”

Hands cross over to Jou’s back, and pull him forward. Even though it’s quiet, Jou’s able to feel and hear Kaiba’s pumping heart rate.

“It’s better than having bad blood,” Kaiba’s voice rumbles. 

Jou closes his eyes once more.

“It’s a start.”

[tsuchiman]

Review: Cyberpunk 2077

Recently finished this after playing it on-and-off for the last 3 months. I started it last year, it didn't hook me so I dropped it but picked it back up and got into the swing of things.

At first, the vanilla game was mostly enjoyable but certain things started to irritate me. I noticed that most guns didn't do any damage to foes, which led me down the rabbit hole of modding via Nexus Mods. After adding in a realistic combat mod, I started fooling around with other mods just to fully customize the experience. Most of it modified minor things: crowd behaviors, water textures, more diverse weather rotation, increased traffic density, etc. The mod that hit the nail on the head was an EBM music modifier, adding in songs from bands like Nine Inch Nails and Front 242 as you ride around the city.

After the mods came the post-processing. I work with Reshade in a lot of games to add in some usually much needed zest into the final image, and this game needed it. The raw image isn't as impressive as I was expecting, so after much tweaking I finalized an image that I would prefer to see. It all made for better looking screenshots. Although, I didn't play it with an RTX driven card, so no ray-tracing. But even without the high-end rig to run ray-tracing, the game does a great job creating a realistic environment while maintaining a steady 60 fps on my RX 6700 XT at 2K resolution.

The game itself was interesting and about as accurate as you would expect the title to imply. If you've read any William Gibson or Philip K. Dick, or watched pretty much any cyberpunkish sci-fi, then the experience was either familiar or felt like you walked into a mashing of those stories. Everything in this universe looks as if it's been built onto something else, creating an embedded, living greeble effect. The lingo that people use is quirky but unique; "preem", "gonk", have been set into my head as new terms. The design language is stuck between a retro-vision of what the future could have looked like from the perspective of the 80's-90's cyberpunk scene, and with modern-influenced perspectives about how the internet of our day actually works, how AI has actually come to function, etc. The cyberspace environments were somewhat predictable in their design, but functionally worked without being overwhelming, visually or conceptually.

The inclusion of transgender or trans-sexual themes should be noted, since in this universe, body modification is the norm. There is one character I came across that after some time building the relationship, you find out that she was previously a he. The game doesn't focus on it much, but the inclusion of transgender themes makes me ask why there's a lack of transracial themes. The body-modding mechanic is integral to the world-building of the story. It would have been interesting to experience more people who's identities were pushed to all sorts of extremes: differenced sexes, spliced sexes, spliced races, possibly even spliced with animals. Where's the gene modification? Where are the cyber cat girls?

The romance between you and the characters you end up working with was an interesting mechanic. I picked female V, but didn't necessarily have to try too hard to pick who I romanced. The game seemed to favor offering your lady companions as possible romance partners instead of the male companions, but maybe I'm biased since all the women are quite attractive. As conversations IRL usually have a hint of innuendo, adding in sex as an outcome adds a touch of realism since most games don't use it or can't. Flirtation and the inevitable sex scenes were half-way between intimate and comical, but this game isn't designed to be a porno. But again, if the developers are going to include sex as an option, why not push to the extremes?

The only thing that kept me motivated throughout the game was the unraveling of Johnny Silverhand's past and current attachment to you. I won't say any spoilers here, but it was genuinely interesting to experience the dynamic between you and him. It's an interesting take on psychology, implants, cybernetics, the concepts of "soul" and "personality" locations, and the morality entwined between all of these. I chose a more amicable path with Johnny, so the outcome was beneficial for both of us. But there are options where you can essentially stay combative with him, and I'm guessing eventually rejecting him outright like a parasite.

The criticisms I do have for the overall structure of the game is how open-world design can both be a benefit and a hazard. The environments were well crafted, everything fit perfectly into the name "cyberpunk", and after modding a bit, it was accentuated that much more. The drawback with the open-world element is that eventually everything starts to look the same in the city, and I quickly started watching the minimap when navigating, instead of tracking by environmental cues. I felt as lost as I do when I'm using Google Maps.

The environments could have instead been designed by something like "old" versus "new" city designs. The old city would have had an aesthetic that looked like everything was retro-fitted. The new city could have been more like Mirror's Edge. Perhaps there could have been a dome-city, for high-end-profile people only, with no air pollution from some future fancy air filtration system. Perhaps contrast this with a slum-city. Excluding the cyberspace scenes, the visual change between environments only became apparent when you travelled into the desert, or after adding in an increased weather cycle mod. Besides that, the neon eye-candy and megacity flora-fauna was like being lost inside a pinball machine. Eventually it all blurs into a revolving same-ness. In a way, it makes me wonder how the game would have been had it been designed more linearly, with a semi-open world design, something like the Metro 2033 series.

On the topic of environmental design, the faction system that's present, or not present, felt a bit lackluster as well. As it is, there isn't much weight to your decisions other than defining the personalized storyline. You end up working with people from particular factions, yet you yourself never get tied to these factions. I would have found it interesting if the factions you ally with start to define other faction behavior. Choosing to work with the police should affect how other gangs trust you, and vice versa. Maybe you can develop a relationship with a gang, only to infiltrate them for a job for the government. Maybe the government is revealed to have splinter factions within, so that a job becomes difficult with an either-or decision. Territories could be defined by faction influence and control, so maybe you could have a bounty on your head under certain territories, or given special permissions in areas with groups you've been good with. This could have come with access to special items, vehicles, body mods, etc.

Overall, the game is most definitely the definition of "cool". It takes itself seriously, pushing the tech-noir aspect while keeping the zaniness of a future one awry out of the picture. Did it break the sound barrier for me? Not necessarily. But it is rare for me to finish a game. I still haven't finished Witcher 3, which is approaching a decade old soon. So for Cyberpunk 2077 to keep me hooked until the end says something. Or maybe it was just Panam's ass.

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

The Story of Oil in Western Pennsylvania: What, How, and Why?

by Hannah Smith

I am a fries-on-salad, haluski dinner, dairy farm heritage kind of Western Pennsylvanian. I grew up near Venango and Crawford County and had a rural childhood. I went to a small school with about 300 kids in K-6th grade. Around 4th grade, I remember taking a field trip to Titusville, Pennsylvania. I remember seeing the familiar road signs and buildings as our bus gassed along the back roads. I had family in the Titusville and Oil City area, so it was a familiar route to take with my parents. I remember thinking, even at that young age, that the area looked worn and just, well, tired. But I was too young to grasp how this tired little town’s geology had changed the global economy and course of human history. When I was older, I pursued a degree in geology and began to understand more about my local community.

Our field trip took us to Titusville, Pennsylvania to visit Drake’s Well, the first commercial oil well in the United States. The site is named after the well’s driller, Edwin L. Drake who in 1859 struck oil outside of Titusville for the Seneca Oil Company. The company took the name from the Seneca Nation, one of the original Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy, who had long made use of the resource Drake sought by skimming naturally-occurring slicks of petroleum, or unrefined oil, from the surface of local waters. These Indigenous people, who were removed from their native lands in the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s, did not benefit from the Seneca Oil Company.

In the early 1800s oil was an unwanted by-product from salt wells (wells used to mine salt), and before that, a traditional medicine. In small doses, oil was used to treat respiratory diseases, epilepsy, scabies, and other ailments¹. Even today, chemicals made from the refining of petroleum are responsible for many of our modern medicines. Ointments, antihistamines, antibacterials, cough syrups, and even aspirin are created from chemical reactions created from petrochemicals².

However, the purpose of Drake’s Well was to produce oil for refining into kerosene for lamps, and thereby provide an alternative to the whale oil then used to illuminate homes and workplaces. Salt wells used water to dissolve salt source rock, and then carry the resulting brine through piping to the surface where it would be evaporated to leave salt as a solid residue. Although this method works for producing salt, it was far less efficient for producing oil. Productive oil drilling required new techniques, and one of Drake’s most important innovations was the “drive pipe,” sections of cast iron pipe driven into the shaft to protect the drill bit from water and cave-ins. Through experimentation and innovation, on August 27, 1859, Drake struck oil when his drill reached a depth of 69.5 feet.

While Drake’s Well was not the most productive, or largest oil well, the Titusville site is globally significant because it kick-started the petroleum drilling revolution that eventually changed global economies and environments. While Edwin Drake lived a hard life even after his discovery, he is still considered the father of the modern petroleum practices and industry³.

When my field trip class arrived at the Drake’s Well Museum I remember seeing an odd looking wooden building with an awkward chimney-like structure on one side. We were led through single-file so everyone could get a look at the steel machinery used in the drill, and the pipes that dispersed oil into wooden barrels clustered in the building. In my 10-year-old brain there is no way I could properly fathom that this discovery was related to many of the comforts and conveniences I took for granted in my life, such as cars, heating, electricity, plastics, medicines, and even the asphalt roads that we drove on. Why was Titusville special? More specifically, why did western Pennsylvania have oil in the ground?

From about 490 to 360 million years ago, during the span of geological time known as the Ordovician Period and Devonian Period, most of what is now Pennsylvania was an ocean basin teeming with life. Pre-Appalachian Mountains systems eroded over time and deposited sediment of sand, silt, and mud that mixed on the seafloor with the dead plant material.  Currents at the ocean bottom were minimal, leaving the accumulating sediments and organic material relatively undisturbed and oxygen-free.  Without oxygen, bacteria that normally break down organic material could not act.  A thick, black, anoxic ooze formed, preserving the organic material.  Over millions of years, forces caused by plate tectonics generated enough heat and pressure to compact the sediments into rock and “cook” the organic material into petroleum.

If you’re from western Pennsylvania, you’ve probably heard of the Marcellus and Utica shales. The natural gas extracted from these rock units formed in a similar way to petroleum but was subjected to a much longer period of heat and pressure.

With Edwin Drake’s success, and layers of oil-bearing rock relatively close to the surface, Titusville boomed. The year Drake drilled his first oil well, Titusville only had 250 residents. However, by 1865 the population increased to 10,000. Nearby Pithole City, now a ghost town, had 50 hotels during the oil peak of the area around 1866. This boom was short lived as other drilling companies began operations in the area and excess production lowered oil prices. Companies picked up to look elsewhere almost as quickly as they appeared⁵. While Titusville boomed and busted, the oil industry itself was growing. Drake drilled for a product to compete with whale oil, but the oil industry underwent phenomenal growth because the demand for its product grew as a lubricant for engines and many other types of machines, a resource for heating on a distributed scale, and as a refined fuel for developing motorized vehicles. Two World Wars during the first half of the 20th Century and the population explosion of the 1950s further increased demand for petroleum. During the Century’s latter half advancements in oil drilling technology made ocean drilling platforms a reality, and with them an increase in oil production as well as an increase in negative impacts due to devastating oil spills.

As of 2016, the world consumed over 97 million barrels daily⁶. So what does combusting 97 million barrels of oil a day, a resource from below the surface, mean for the Earth’s atmosphere? The burning of fossil fuels produces greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. Greenhouse gases absorb heat from the sun that the earth’s surface reflects back out into the atmosphere, similar to how a blanket traps in body heat. Burning fossil fuels causes climate change by increasing the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, thickening the “blanket” around the earth, and increasing the global average temperature. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2019 greenhouse gas CO₂ emissions totaled 33 gigatons, or 1 billion metric tons, or about the weight of 1.5 billion school buses⁸. Climate change is responsible for increased frequency and severity of weather disasters, wildfires, and flooding, to name a few negative impacts. The abundant CO₂ in our atmosphere equilibrates with and diffuses into our oceans, causing the water to become more acidic and eroding the calcium carbonate structures of coral and other marine organisms. Climate change does not just affect wildlife, it also affects the lives of Pennsylvanians. In Pennsylvania climate change is likely to lead to increasing home insurance rates, higher taxes to replace infrastructure, longer allergy seasons, increasing heat stroke rates in citizens, rising food costs due to crops damaged by erratic weather and higher temperatures, and decreasing water quality and availability due to large storms causing water contamination⁷.

Early organisms were buried by sediment 488 to 360 million years ago and altered into petroleum by heat and pressure. For thousands of years, Earth’s petroleum reserves were largely untouched. Innovator Edwin Drake changed petroleum’s role by successfully drilling the first commercial oil well in North America that August day in 1859. Petroleum became a global commodity, eventually fueling a fast paced modern life. Now in the 21st century, the burning of fossil fuels, such as petroleum, is causing worldwide rapid climate change.

When I was on that field trip to Drake’s Well in 4th grade, we did not discuss the global or local implications of petroleum. This resource is responsible for many of the  day to day conveniences that have come to define contemporary life, but it also feeds environmental change  that is forcing  a “new normal,” and will cause an existential threat to humanity. I could not have fathomed that this global resource had its start in my own family’s backyard. I think that Drake’s Well is a good reminder that Earth-changing innovations can happen anywhere. I don’t think Drake could have predicted the scale to which his discovery would change society and the environment over the next 160 years, in the same way that most people do not realize how their small individual actions are affecting the larger social-ecological systems, and sustainability of all life on Earth. Although individual actions can negatively affect Earth, they can also be positive. Who knows, the next innovation to combat anthropogenic climate change may be happening in your backyard. Wind and solar farms have been developing and growing throughout Pennsylvania since 2007, providing an alternative option for electric energy use.

I started having more appreciation for the Earth Sciences as I got older. This eventually led me to obtaining a bachelor’s degree in geology, interning with the National Park Service at the Hagerman Fossil Beds in Idaho, and working in mapping for a few years before returning to school for illustration and design in hopes to marry the sciences and arts together. While obtaining my geology degree I met my now husband who has a Master’s in Structural Geology, and worked in the natural gas field for five years before making the switch to environmental geology. Our family's income was supported by the fossil fuels industry for a time, and therefore we understand a decent amount of the ethics and controversy that is in the industry. However we are both very invested in the earth sciences and look forward to more sustainable tech preserving a better environment for the future.

Hannah Smith is an intern in the Section of Anthropocene Studies. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

References:

1 Early Medicinal Uses of Petroleum 2015

https://daily.jstor.org/petroleum-used-medicine/

2 Modern Uses for Petroleum in Medicine 2019

https://context.capp.ca/articles/2019/feature_petroleum-in-real-life_pills

3 Drake’s Well History of Petroleum 2016

https://www.aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/american-oil-history/

4 Description of petroleum formation 2014

http://elibrary.dcnr.pa.gov/GetDocument?docId=1752503&DocName=ES8_Oil-Gas_Pa.pdf

5 The boom and bust cycle of the oil industry 2015

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/business/energy-environment/oil-makes-a-comeback-in-pennsylvania.html

6 World Oil Statistics 2016-Current

https://www.worldometers.info/oil/

7 List of the Effects of Climate Change on People and how to protect yourself 2019

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/12/27/climate-change-impacts-everyone/

8 International Energy Agency 2019

https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019

9 Drake’s Well Museum

https://www.drakewell.org/

10 Seneca-Iroquois National Museum

https://www.senecamuseum.org/

11 Seneca Nation Oil Process in New York State

https://nyhistoric.com/2013/10/seneca-oil-spring/

[sherreenwrites]

— It’s always a Sunday.

it’s always a sunday. this time, it’s the second sunday in may — when the days are long and the nights are pretty and the weather is hot but not quite too hot that you can’t breathe. two years ago, i had different words to say. two years ago, i had no idea it would come to this. or maybe i knew but i just played pretend and hoped it would delay the predictable. there is still a lingering breeze. just a wisp of a teasing touch of the air on my face as i walk out. the uber driver asks if it’s okay to stop for gas, and i say it’s fine. i’m not in a hurry to get anywhere. and so i sit in the backseat of the car, looking out of the window onto the glittering city.

it’s the same street but it’s so different now. last time, there was wreckage on the corner. there were leftovers of what once was, empty and dust and broken. and now, there are buildings. buildings i sat in with my friends. buildings full of light and a café and people laughing and living. there are buildings where there was wreckage. i wish i could say the same for myself, but my wreckage remains untouched, still. every time i try to put it back together, it is a ricket house that i leep trying to build, and every time, it falls back down. my edges are sharp. my broken pieces are everywhere. i am a puzzle of a broken heart, a wreckage of mistakes and a once upon a time love. if i think about it, i know so much time has passed. months and months. seasons changed. a year, crossed over. so much has changed, so much is different, but the ruin in me remains the same.

i look out the window, and i blink— and there is a jolt of familiarity that i cannot place. it’s almost as if it’s a stranger. as if it’s no one. as if it doesn’t bear any significance. and then it clicks. something inside me knows. realizes. sees. i look away, from the glittering city lights and the speeding cars and the familiar faces i wish i didn’t recognize anymore, but i do. behind me, cars are honking loudly. the smell of gasoline fills the air. my thoughts are coming out, too fast to grasp, too many to filter, to count, to hold onto and focus.

i can’t focus.

i want to focus but i can’t. this car is too dark and this honking is too loud and all of these past hours, i was waiting. i know it now. i have been waiting. i said i wasn’t, i convinced myself i wasn’t, but now i know that i was waiting. i am always waiting. and i’m thinking about how if the uber driver didn’t need to stop for gas, i wouldn’t be sitting here, watching it all slip away from my hands again. and maybe it’s not slipping from my hands. maybe this glimpse. this glance. this momentary encounter that only i am aware of is for a reason. everything happens for a reason. this moment was always meant to be. but what does it mean?

i don’t know. i don’t know. i don’t know. but i know this car is too dark and the air is getting hotter and my heart beats, beats, beats so hard against my chest and my head is light, but it always is, but this feels different and i need to get out. i need to get out. i need to get out. and i do. my hands shake as i open the door and get out of the car and the air is kinder to my lungs and i breathe and i breathe but i still want to get out even though i am outside. and the driver asks comes to my side of the door and asks if something is wrong. and i want to say, everything. can’t you see it? can’t you see? it’s all of it. it’s none of it. everything is wrong. but i tell him that it’s not but i just can’t wait any longer— isn’t it funny? all my life i’ve been waiting. my body is pulsing with something strange and familiar and it’s taking me a second, and then two, and then whole minutes to let myself grasp it. understand it. accept it. because once i do, things will fall apart. things i have been trying to hold into place. things i have been trying to forgo. the wreckage will still be wreckage. and so i walk, and the cars blur past me on the opposite side of the road, and my hands are shaking but i don’t want them to shake, and i’m looking for something but i know it’s long gone. my feet walk the familiar streets i know by heart, but i feel lost, and it takes me a few more moments to realize the feeling is within.

and eventually, i get in another car, where the driver is nice, turns the radio on, and i sit in the backseat, once more, and i look out the window, again, and i bite down on my lips when the tears are trying to claw their way out of my eyes. and i’m acutely aware of how this feels like a scene in a movie, and i’m also aware of how it’s nor as charming or as romantic as it seems in the movies: sitting in the backseat od a car driven by a stranger, trying not to cry. and at last, i’m aware of what this is: i haven’t moved on at all. i live within the broken pieces of my heart, still.

[dakotacrisis]

Cherry Blossoms (2)

Kagami comes to a horrifying realization

Read on AO3

---

One thing Kagami did dislike about spring time was all the pollen in the air. Allergies had hit her hard these past coming weeks. Her eyes were watery, she couldn’t stop sneezing, and there was a persistent tickle in her throat that would not go away. Medicine helped but it didn’t block out everything which was a shame. Especially when Kagami was at home and trying to be quiet around her mother and she had to clear her throat every ten minutes.

She could not afford to be dogged down by allergies today though. In the days that had passed since Kagami had met Marinette, the girl that made Kagami’s world pink, they had gotten closer. Adrien was not joking about how easy it was to want to be Marinette’s friend. She was like a large blooming flower and everyone around her were buzzing bees or fluttering butterflies.

While the stand out feature about Marinette was her overwhelming kindness and positivity Kagami was noticing that there was a lot more to her. Marinette could be a bit of a dork. She made bad jokes just like Adrien and got excited about really mundane stuff. She was also incredibly smart. Not just booksmart, the girl was legitimately very clever. Coming up with new solutions to problems that work spectacularly well. She was a leader but treated everyone as equals when they worked together. She never talked down to someone, even when their ideas were stupid.

Kagami was starting to wonder if Marinette had any faults. She seemed too perfect to be real.

Then came the day that they went out to the pool. While the weather had gotten warmer everyone was impatient to get to warmer weather and summer time. So to chase away the hay fever blues Kagami and her friends had decided to go to the swimming pool at the local gym.

Kagami came out in a conservative red one piece bathing suit that was more practical than pretty. The others came out in full in their own swimming attire. Then Marinette walked into the room and all eyes turned. Kagami breathed out in relief when she saw the large yellow cover up Marinette was wearing. Maybe Marinette was one of those people that just liked to sit at the edge with her feet in the water. That would be the safest option. No need for anyone to have a sudden nose bleed at seeing her in a swimsuit.

Just as Kagami had predicted Marinette sat on the sidelines talking with her friends with her feet in the water. Kagami swam up to her.

“This was a nice idea,” Kagami said, “Getting everyone together to go swimming. Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun.”

“Some more than others,” Marinette giggled and pointed across the pool where Kim was trying to get his girlfriend Ondine on his shoulders for a chicken fight. “They do know that the lifeguard is going to yell at them for that, right?”

“The lifeguard is too busy eyeing up Juleka to notice,” Kagami said.

“Oh geez,” Marinette cupped her hands around her mouth, “She has a girlfriend! Stop ogling! She’s way too young for you anyway!”

Kagami stifled a snort. “Wow, didn’t know you were just gonna yell at him like that. I didn’t think it was possible for you to get mad anyone.”

“Oh my sweet Kagami,” Marinette said, “You don’t know how fired up I can really get. That was tame in comparison.”

“Really?” she smirked, “Didn’t peg you as the hotheaded type. What does it take to get you of all people angry?”

“Having a lack of human decency for one--gimme a second--” she shouted at the lifeguard again, “She’s sixteen, gay, and in the three foot end of the pool! How about you pay attention to the idiots on each other’s shoulders over this way!”

The lifeguard sneered but blew his whistle to get the others to stop.

“Marinette!” Alix whined from atop Ivan’s shoulders, “I was just about to win!”

“Boo!” Kim called, “Marinette’s a rat!”

“Don’t get upset at me because you were being irresponsible.” Marinette called back.

The four teenagers shared a look and as one pulled themselves out of the pool and started making their way towards where Marinette and Kagami were. What were they planning? Marinette seemed to sense what was about to happen and scrambled to her feet.

“Oh no you don’t!” Kim grabbed before she could escape, “Ivan, get her feet!”

Ivan scooped up Marinette’s flailing feet.

“Don’t you dare!” Marinette screeched but there was a playful smile on her face, “Kim, I swear if you throw me in the pool you will live to regret it.”

“I think I can live with that,” he smiled back, “On three. One...two...three!” the boys tossed Marinette into the deep end of the pool in a mass of flailing noodle limbs.

She surfaced again sputtering and coughing as she cleared the water from her nose. Everyone was laughing and having a good time.

“You okay?” Kagami swam over to her.

“I’m fine, they’re just a bunch of jokesters who are going to get their comeuppance one day. You hear me, Kim!”

“I’ll believe it when I see it, girly!” Kim cackled and took off with the others once more.

Marinette pulled herself back out of the water and stripped off her now soaked cover up. Kagami almost had a stroke. Underneath her modesty saving cover up was a black two piece that complimented her petite figure perfectly. Kagami turned away so she couldn’t see her blushing face.

Stop it! Stop getting so flustered! She’s just one girl!

Kagami glanced up and noticed that the pervy life guard that had been ogling Juleka was now looking their way. Was he mad that they called him out on being a creep? No...that wasn’t the face of someone who was angry. She looked back at Marinette who was ringing out her coverup and settling it over a chair to dry.

Not today captain pervert! Kagami climbed out of the pool and threw her towel over Marinette. She looked up at Kagami confused. “Hi there, why did you--”

“That lifeguard needs to get reported or something. His eyes were practically glued to your butt, the pig.” Kagami sneered.

“Gross!” Marinette pulled Kagami’s towel closer, shielding herself from any unwanted attention. “I was thinking about getting in the pool but I really don’t want to now.”

“There’s a hot tub in that room over there that no one is using and the lifeguard can’t see into. Did you wanna go in there for a bit?” Kagami suggested.

“Perfect,” the girls adjourned to the hot tub, all the while glaring daggers at the perverted lifeguard. Kagami was going to report him before they left today. Now safely away from the prying eyes the girls sunk into the steaming, bubbling water with sighs of relief.

“Swimming is well and good but I think there’s something very nice about just being able to lounge like this.” Marinette sunk down in her seat so the water lapped at her chin.

“It is rather nice to be able to unwind after a long day, maybe I should try to talk my mother into getting one of these at home. It’d be a god send to have it for after fencing practice.” Kagami hummed in agreement. “Hopefully the steam can also help with my allergies. They have been a nightmare recently.”

“That sucks. Medicine doesn’t help?”

“Not as well as it should.” as if to prove her point Kagami’s throat began to scratch and tickle again. “Ugh,” she coughed, “I think the steam is trying to dislodge the mucus so that’s a plus at least.”

Oh god she just talked about mucus in front of Marinette.

“Poor Kagami,” Marinette wrapped her thin arms around her. She rested her head on Kagami’s shoulder. “It’s such a shame you have to suffer during one of the most beautiful times of the year.”

“Yeah…” Kagami stifled another cough, “Really stinks…”

Marinette let go but didn’t move back to her spot on the other side of the hot tub. Instead opting to sit right next to Kagami to talk. Kagami was thankful for the heat since it hid the hot red blush in her cheeks. How could Marinette be this comfortable when Kagami was fighting to keep herself together?

A few minutes later everyone had to leave. Apparently the pervy lifeguard from before hadn’t learned his lesson and turned his gaze on Alya. Nino rightfully got pissed that this creep was eyeing his girlfriend and they got into a fight. Not the best way to end what was supposed to be a fun outing but at least the lifeguard had gotten what was coming to him.

“We should do this again when someone less creepy isn’t on lifeguard duty.” Marinette sat on the edge of the hot tub, reluctant to leave the sweet warmth just yet.

Kagami nodded in agreement. She had already gotten out and was toweling off. She was trying her best not to stare at Marinette. The last thing she needed was to get caught admiring the way the ends of her hair curled when they dried or the sprinkling of freckles along her shoulders. Or how her face was extra rosy and dewy looking from being in the steam. Or how jealous she was of the droplets of water that ran down her arms and back like a sweet caress--

Oh for the love of teenage hormones! Stop it!

“Since we had to cut this short what do you think about grabbing some juice?” Marinette swung her legs out and slipped.

“Marinette!” Kagami caught her just before she could fall and righted her back on the edge of the hot tub. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks for catching me,” Marinette had settled her arms on Kagami’s shoulders for stability. It was at this moment Kagami realized that she had grabbed hold of Marinette’s waist and was now standing between her spread legs. Marinette smiled down at her like none of this bothered her in the least. It probably didn’t. Of course it wouldn’t. Why should it? She was Marinette and Kagami was just the nice friend that kept her from slipping off the edge of the hot tub. Nothing more to think of. Certainly nothing that would make one combust from raging hormones.

“Of course,” Kagami let go but stayed close enough to help if Marinette fell. She didn’t. Good. For numerous reasons.

“Now I have to insist on getting juice,” Marinette said as she started drying off, “A thank you for saving me.”

“It was really nothing. Don’t feel like you have to award me for being a decent person.” Kagami told her.

“Nonsense, besides, it’s just juice.”

“Alright then,” Kagami couldn’t say no to her, “Juice sounds wonderful.”

“Great! I’ll ask the others if they wanna come too!” Marinette bounced happily out of the room to talk to the others.

Once Kagami was sure she was alone she balled up her towel and screamed into it. This cannot be happening! She cannot be catching feelings for Marinette! Why did god have to put such a beautiful and perfect specimen of a girl in front of her and expect her not to fall? She was like the first warm breeze of spring that cut through the wintry cold. What was Kagami next to her but a chipmunk in hibernation waiting for her to return and be awoken? There were probably a million people that felt that exact same way and yet none of them probably thought of her as anything more than a friend while Kagami had to suffer with her pitched emotions. Every day since she met her those feelings bubbled closer and closer to the service and Kagami wasn’t sure how long she would be able to keep them in.

Most of the class went to get juice after they finished changing. At least in a crowd Kagami could put some distance between her and Marinette. She seated herself at the other end of the table next to Adrien and sucked down her drink to avoid talking.

“You okay?” Adrien asked, “You’ve barely said a word since we left the pool. Did the lifeguard put you off? I can understand if he did.”

“It’s not that,” Kagami sighed, her gaze flicking over to Marinette for the briefest moment, “I just have a lot on my mind.”

“Anything you want to talk about? I’m always here if you need someone.”

“Thanks, Adrien, but I don’t know how you can help in a situation like this. It’s nothing really. Just stupid teenage crap that I am terrible at handling because I have never had to deal with something like it before.”

“You unable to handle something? That’s a first. What could have the great and fearless Kagami Tsurugi so thoroughly flummoxed?”

More like who. Kagami thought sadly. This time when she glanced at Marinette she saw her and waved. Kagami swallowed back another gulp of juice before waving back.

“You know,” Adrien said, “If you don’t feel comfortable talking to me about it maybe you can ask Marinette. She loves helping her friends and she’s seen and dealt with all of our teen drama. There’s nothing the girl can’t handle.”

“I’m sure but it really is nothing. Certainly nothing to bother Marinette about.” How would that conversation even go? Hello, Marinette, I believe I like you and may even be falling in love with you the more I get to know you and I don’t know how to handle that while still remaining your friend. Thoughts? She may as well tear out her heart and offer it up on a silver platter for her to eat while she’s at it. It would certainly be less painful and a lot quicker.

The group adjourned for the day and Kagami said a quick goodbye but not before Marinette grabbed hold of her and pulled her into a hug. “Have a nice evening, Kagami. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Bye!”

“Goodbye,” Kagami whispered the word but Marinette was already huffing it away from the cafe.

“Hey! How come I didn’t get a goodbye hug?” Adrien pouted, “Lucky you, I knew you two would get along great.”

“Yep.” Kagami coughed, “Lucky me.”

She locked herself in her room when she returned home. Her cough had come back with a vengeance and no allergy or cold medicine would relieve it. Her thoughts would not still either. Every time she closed her eyes visions of Marinette from today assaulted her. It felt like she was back in the hot tub choking on the heat and steam. Marinette’s head on her shoulder, Kagami’s hands on her waist, that dazzling smile beaming down at her with gratitude.

So pure. So kind. Like a bundle of pink cotton candy that melted into decadent sugary sweetness on her tongue. Goodness, this girl was turning her into a poet if nothing else. Just saying that she was beautiful and kind and fantastic wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

Another raucous round of coughing wracked her body and tears sprung to her eyes with the intensity of it. When it finally ended she rubbed the tears from her eyes and gazed down at the three little pink cherry blossom petals in her lap. She picked one up and inspected the delicate flower in the waning light of the setting sun. Where on earth did these…

A hand flew to her throat.

Oh...

Oh no.

For the second time that day she grabbed for something to smother the intensity of her screams.

---

(Previous) (Next)

[saiki-in-jsl]

No Powers Saiki AU (3k)

Where he also has anxiety and selective mutism. (But also, nobody has powers. And that volcano issue never happens because I SAID SO.)

Uhm uhhhh, in no way am I a doctor, so this may not be very accurate. Sorry!!

TW: Panic attack, I don’t think this one needs a skip so I’ll just leave it as that (but if you need one, tell me :eyes:)

Also on my ao3!

Also well shit, I do like myself some good Kusuo and Akechi friendship :,)

Also also, ugggghhhhhh, the italics stuff don’t go through when I copy and paste from my docs rip. This is why I prefer ao3 more (and because their tagging system is HEAVENLY) so if you wanna read with all them proper italics I suggest switching to my ao3

ALSO ALSO ALSO, RIGHT WHEN I FINISHED THIS, I DISCOVERED ASL AND JSL ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SO D A R N H E C K I’M SORRY. I did a big oopsie,,,let’s,,,pretend that asl,,,is,,default,,?

Saiki Kusuo was not your typical boy.

Since he was young, it had been painfully obvious that he was a gifted child, surpassing his brother by intelligence and strength. This had drawn many curious scientists to him, and after several tests that went on for hours and hours, he finally broke. He stopped talking and he stopped wanting to be around people.

His mother, equally as tired of the scientists as her son was, decided to hide his identity away from the public, constantly moving from location to location to avoid the people who knew of her son’s abilities.

This barely helped with Kusuo’s social development as a child, so the more he moved, the more he decided that he would much rather live in an isolated world than a world filled with people with prying eyes and loud mouths.

He did make a friend once though, but it barely lasted due to unforeseen circumstances that involved a few beat up bullies, and it had surprisingly hurt when he had to move away again. Akechi was his first real friend, and realizing that he won’t be seeing him again felt weird.

As much as he loved being alone, a friend would’ve been nice.

So the night before they moved away, he had pushed open his parents’ door, gripping his pajama top tightly, and whispered really really softly to his mother, “Mama. Will I ever make a friend?”

It was the first time he had spoken in a very long time, in fact, his mother couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to her without pointing and hand gestures. So predictably, she cried and hugged him tight, mumbling how sorry she was for ruining his chance at making a friend, too caught up with trying to avoid those nosey scientists.

Middle school went by like a blur, aside from the occasional school switch that still happened, yet not as often as elementary. He didn’t remember a single thing that happened during those school days, maybe a few anxiety attacks in the bathroom and a sad attempt at trying to socialize, but that was it. Maybe it really was easier to be alone, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about losing his breathing from the sheer amount of stress he got from the assembly hall.

Highschool came and Kusuo had a new plan: Accept that having friends are not necessary and speaking with your mouth is dumb. 

He quickly learnt how to use ASL, much preferring that language over vocally speaking, and made sure his grades were as average as possible. He had excelled through middle school and elementary school like it was nothing, but it had led him to be placed on stage many times because of this. So no more of that, because that was a recipe for disaster to him.

Kusuo made sure everything was in perfect place before heading to school. He made sure the school knew about his condition, and he also made sure to let them know he didn’t want to be publicly known as the school’s “mute kid”, so he’d definitely blend in without an issue.

Kusuo couldn’t believe what was happening. He hadn’t even fully registered his first year of highschool properly and his second year was already here. 

To start off, he had friends, something he did not expect to have. He could predict many things, the weather, what people were thinking, and if he tried hard enough, he could even predict who would walk by his classroom in the next second. But he did not see this one coming.

He didn’t even know how. Nendou was a dunce who went from copying his homework to hanging around and inviting him out for ramen and Kaidou was a chuunibyou who thought Kusuo’s hand gestures was some sort of secret language and ended up perceiving Kusuo as some ally to Jet Black Wings.

Yumehara, for no reason other than the fact that Kusuo looked cute, decided she was meant to be with him. A lot of effort was taken to avoid her, but just as she lost interest in him, the class- no, the world’s idol decided she’d have a crush on him too. Then there was the class representative, Hairo, who constantly screamed and moved and how does he not get tired? 

Then there was Kuboyasu, Toritsuka, Aiura, and so many people it made his head spin.

But they all had one thing in common when they communicated with him, and that was the fact that they all thought he was deaf. Granted, people who use ASL were commonly deaf, so he wasn’t blaming them for assuming so, and it did help him a little since this made them talk less around him and gave him a good excuse for ignoring them half the time.

Two years he spent in this highschool, and not once had he fired rapid ASL before. He never got the chance to, and he didn’t have much care for doing so. Mostly because most of the people around him didn’t even understand sign language.

But sometimes, listening to Toritsuka talk on and on about some cute girl could really put you on edge. Especially when he kept egging Kusuo on about the type of girls he liked.

The thing was, Kusuo didn’t like romance. He liked observing it and the idea of it, but he would never want to be a part of it. Frankly enough, he didn’t find any joy in it, he much preferred a life of solitude.

“C’mon, I know you can understand me, Saiki,” Toritsuka poked, grinning widely. “What kind of girls are you into? Or perhaps are into boys? Seriously, tell me, maybe we can go on a double date sometime. What about Teruhashi--“

Kusuo scowled, taking a step back and suddenly flying into fast ASL that roughly translated to several insults and long explanations as to why Kusuo wasn’t going to tell him. Toritsuka only blinked in surprise, because he swore he just saw the middle finger between those fast hand gestures, and he took a step back, raising his hands in defeat.

“Relax! Alright!” Toritsuka said, dropping the subject for good. “Next time fling me a note or something, that is seriously intimidating!”

Kusuo winced, feeling the third piece of paper Kaidou had just flung at him hit his head. This had been going on for the whole period, and Kusuo wondered why the teacher hadn’t noticed it yet. Most of the notes Kaidou sent weren’t serious anyways, and clearly not worth writing back to him.

He barely understood the references the boy was making anyways. 

“How about we hang out after school? Do you like cake?” The last note read.

Kusuo smiled softly. “Yes, I do like cake.” He wrote, and with ease, he strategically threw it back so it would land perfectly on Kaidou’s table.

Being around Teruhashi was not ideal at all, because wherever she went, many people would follow. Kusuo hated crowds more than anything, it made his throat close up and his face a little sweaty, though his facial expression would never express his discomfort.

It would always remain blank and devoid of emotions.

Which always peaked Teruhashi’s interest. She found it a challenge to make the “deaf” kid who barely spoke gasp at her beauty, it would be a mighty achievement, yet no matter how hard she tried, it just never worked, which only pushed her to try harder. It resulted in her falling in love with him, unfortunately.

“Saiki does have a cute face though,” Teruhashi mumbled under her breath right as she walked along with Kusuo. She assumed he couldn’t hear her, so she regularly said things like those quietly to herself whenever he wasn’t looking her way. He appreciated the compliment at times, but sometimes, they do get a little creepy.

Nendou probably didn’t understand the idea of deaf people, or perhaps he thought his idea was pretty smart. Either ways, Kusuo sometimes couldn’t understand why he had to shout at him to communicate.

Did Nendou think deaf people just had very very poor hearing? Probably. But it often got annoying when they were in public places, and Kusuo couldn’t even tell him to quiet down because he couldn’t tell when exactly he was actually shouting.

Both his shouting and talking volume were around the same range.

But, it was rather nice of him to go out of his way to learn a bit of sign language just so he wouldn’t have to shout at Kusuo anymore. It was actually pretty nice having an ASL buddy.

Note to self, do not use ASL around Kuboyasu too much. He will and can mistake them as gang signs and get either sappy or angry. Kusuo said in his head as he watched Kuboyasu stare off into the distance with his fists clenched, reminiscing about his gang days.

Several times Kusuo had mistaken Hairo’s sad attempt at ASL as actual words and once spent half an hour straight wondering why the boy had signed refrigerator geese to him during that dodgeball game.

Saiko had once walked up to him and declared that whatever “nonsense” Kusuo was going to sign, he’d know right away what they would mean. At first, Kusuo found it hard to believe that the rich boy had taken time to learn ASL within his one day of being in this school, but as it turned out, all Saiko did was hire a translator to follow him around to translate Kusuo’s words.

That was possibly the most amount of effort he’d ever seen from Saiko, and it was good enough.

Kusuo wondered if learning ASL had magically made him more attractive. Aiura would not leave him alone, with her blonde hair, tanned skin, overly accessorized things, and bubbly personality. She wasn’t like Teruhashi, who attracted more men than Kusuo could count on his fingers, so she wasn’t as annoying to be around with.

But then again, she was more forward than Teruhashi too, so it didn’t make her more appealing either.

Seeing Akechi again resurfaced too many feelings. He hadn’t really realized how much he missed his first friend, but then again, the same boy was probably very aware of Kusuo’s high intelligence and may accidentally reveal his secret with that blabbering mouth of his.

Though, Kusuo had to admit, Akechi hadn’t changed one bit since the last time he saw him. Besides the haircut of course, and some other details, like how good he was at deducting now.

Being around Akechi was always strangely comforting back then, there was just something about listening to him talk that made Kusuo feel comfortable. You could say his talking was like white noise to Kusuo.

“Why does everyone assume you’re deaf? You’re not deaf, you just don’t like talking a lot, right? Why don’t you tell them that? Is it because you find it easier to pretend to be deaf? I can understand that, you were always really quiet, which was nice because you were a great listener too. I never found out why you up and left our elementary school without saying goodbye, but you were crazy sma--” Okay, that was when Kusuo made him stop talking, and Akechi took this as a hint to keep it a secret. There was a pause before Kusuo finally signed something to him.

Sorry. 

“Nothing to apologize! I don’t think it was your fault anyways, but your plan worked like a charm honestly,” Akechi smiled. “I hope you missed me, because I know I missed you. We have a lot of catching up to do, I’ll start! So basically…”

Kusuo did. He really did miss him.

A play. Their class was doing a play.

After all that effort of trying to stay off the stage, he still couldn’t avoid it.

He’d feel bad if he didn’t show up to contribute, so he definitely couldn’t just ditch them. The most he could do was play a background role, but even then he’d still be painfully aware that he would be in front of the whole school, and he just couldn’t handle that.

But seeing everyone giving their all to make this play work, Kusuo couldn’t help but join along, regardless of his own condition.

Practice for the play went smoothly, and he found himself being able to cope with it. All he did was sway around like seaweed, since that was his role, and then walk off when his scene ends. Easy, nothing too complicated, he would be fine.

Until Saiko got his sensitive feelings hurt and decided to pull their budget on literally everything, including the costumes. Now, Kusuo couldn’t care less about that issue if it weren’t for the fact that; if the other cast didn’t have their costumes, they wouldn’t stand out as much, and there’d be a higher chance of the audience staring at him.

Yet there wasn’t much time to do last minute preparations for props and clothing, so everyone was encouraged to try their best in making their own costumes before the deadline. Kusuo predicted that no one would actually follow through, and for once, he wished he was wrong.

Apparently he didn’t wish hard enough, because that was exactly what had happened during the play. Everyone mostly came in their gym clothes, some with small props to make it look like they’ve tried, and some who just didn’t do anything at all.

When Kusuo’s scene finally came up, he and the rest of the people who played as seaweed scrambled onto stage, making waving motions with their arms to simulate seaweed underwater. Things went well for the most part, Kusuo did as practiced and waved around just like his other seaweed playing classmates, but the longer he stayed, the more aware he became.

Eyes, everywhere, in front of him, staring too hard, too long. Their mouths are moving, but he can’t hear what they’re saying, it was like they were on the other end of a glass wall. Were they talking about him among themselves? 

Had it always been this warm on stage? Was it normal for his hands to shake? Was he breathing? He didn’t remember exhaling, nor inhaling. His throat went dry, his whole body rigid from...fear?

Someone was pushing him, someone else was pulling him, but he can’t properly grasp what was happening. 

The world went a bit blurry before he completely went dark.

Kusuo woke up in the nurse’s office, body aching and throat dry. He wondered how long it took for him to wake up, but depending on the sun outside, it may have been an hour or so. He sat up slowly, groaning slightly from the pain, before suddenly being attacked by a hug from a familiar person.

“Pal! You’re okay,” Nendou cheered, finally pulling away from the hug to double check on his friend. He lifted his hands, proceeding to sign to him, You just suddenly fell over after they pulled you off stage.

My bad, Kusuo signed back tiredly. Sorry.

“What’d he say?” Kaidou nudged Nendou. Did he really have to ask? It was quite obvious.

“He says he’s fine.” Nendou answered, completely leaving out Kusuo’s apology, which he found strangely comforting yet offensive.

“He literally had a panic attack on stage, what do you mean he’s fine?” Kaidou argued, then he looked over at Kusuo with a deeper frown. “Why didn’t you tell us you were having an attack?”

“He wasn't being attacked,” Nendou said blankly.

“A panic attack, it’s different,” Kaidou huffed. “Saiki, not to be intrusive, but do you have anxiety?”

Did...he? He honestly never thought about it properly. Sure, he did have anxiety attacks every now and then when he was a kid, but this was the first one he had after a long time, so he never really considered he might’ve had anxiety.

Actually, it was starting to all make sense to him now that he thought about it.

“I’m going to take that as a yes but you didn’t know,” Kaidou said slowly, concern laced in his tone. It made sense that Kaidou would know, it did seem like he used to have the same issue.

“Oh for sure, can’t you tell from the way his eyes had widened just now by half a centimetre?” Akechi piped up from behind. 

Good freaking grief.

He knew his mother didn’t trust doctors, but Kusuo really needed to see one after literally fainting in school. Not only that, it wasn’t his first time having an attack either, this was just the first time it had gotten this bad.

Sitting in a psychiatrist's waiting room felt odd, because it seemed a lot more homey than a regular doctor’s waiting room, with paintings hung on the walls and carpeted floor. He wasn’t particularly nervous, but he knew his mother was, because the hand she was using to hold onto him was shaking.

It’ll be okay, he reassured, squeezing his mother’s hand tight.

And it was okay. The lady was really nice to him, gentle and understanding, she barely pried and most of the questions she asked were pretty normal. She was a little surprised to learn that Kusuo could speak, but not in a way that was obvious, only Kusuo could tell that she was.

Communication with her was sorta slow. He had to type onto his notes app on his phone for her to read to answer her questions instead of hand signing, which he didn’t really mind all that much.

His mother, who had been waiting outside for them to be done, immediately got up when Kusuo was finished and asked several questions, one being: Did he need to take medication now?

Fortunately enough, it seemed like his case wasn’t too severe yet, mostly because he could still handle being around people without an issue, so he didn’t need to take any meds for now. Although his selective mutism was pretty serious, it wasn’t too bad either in his case, due to the fact that Kusuo spoke through sign language rather than verbally, so he wasn’t completely mute per se.

He came back next week, and the next, and many more weeks after that. He really liked this therapy thing.

“So your friends think you’re deaf, so you’re using that as an excuse to ignore them sometimes?”

Oh, when she put it like that, it just made him sound like an asshole. But yeah, he pretty much was doing that.

“Is there a particular reason why?”

Kusuo drummed his fingers on his lap. There were many reasons why, but those reasons had long lost their meaning. At first, it was because he didn’t want any friends, but now that he did have friends, there wasn’t any reason for him to keep following them through. No matter how many times he told himself he didn’t like them, they were still his friends.

“And why do you not want any friends?”

“Making friends was hard, keeping friends was hard, and losing them was even harder.” Kusuo typed out. “I guess I stopped trying. But then they started coming to me, and it was weird because I had already accepted it.”

“So you got scared?”

She could say that.

She uncrossed her legs, only to cross them back moments later, and adjusted her glasses, leaning forward, “It’s okay to feel scared about losing your friends, but if you’re going to push everyone who wants to be with you away, then how are you going to know if they’ll truly leave you? There’s nothing wrong with wanting space, but people do need other people to survive.”

One of the many things he did like about his friends was the fact that they all knew he enjoyed sweets. It was pretty obvious that he did, with the way his face would smile softly and soften at the taste of coffee jelly.

Surprisingly, they never notice that he’d much rather be left alone. Either that, or they don’t care.

It was a small outing event, they were mainly just eating and talking, but also trying their best to include Kusuo as much as possible, even though he didn’t mind being left alone with his coffee jelly and cakes.

“Man, I feel bad not including Saiki in conversations sometimes,” Kaidou mumbled, assuming Kusuo didn’t know what he had just said because he wasn’t reading Kaidou’s lips. “Since it’s hard to talk to him sometimes.”

“I’m sure we’re trying our best,” Teruhashi beamed, making Kaidou flush red.

“We should probably just learn sign language like Nendou did.” Kaidou hummed, rolling a fork between his thumb and finger. “It’d be a lot easier.” Though possibly soul crushing for him, considering Kaidou had cram school and such already on his schedule.

“Sounds fun,” Kuboyasu commented. “I’d be down. Maybe we can surprise him.” Oh that was just too much, too nice, Kusuo didn’t even know what he did to earn this much love.

Nendou snorted, grinning widely as he pumped his fist on his chest, “I can teach you all!”

“That would save a lot of money.”

Kusuo stopped eating, a rare sight to see despite him being undisturbed, and he placed his spoon down. Everyone stopped talking, looking over at him in confusion before he finally opened his mouth, surprising them even more.

“I can hear you,” Kusuo managed out. “I always could.”

Teruhashi was the first to react, eyes widening and her face turning bright red. All those comments she muttered, he had heard them all.

Nendou blinked, smiling widely with his arms spread wide, “Congratulations on learning how to hear, pal!” Not quite there, but appreciated.

“Uh, uhm, OF COURSE! I knew the whole time,” Kaidou flashed a charming grin, which would’ve worked if it weren’t for the awkward pose he was doing.

Kuboyasu only stared, and drank his tea, “Oh. Well.”

“Sorry.” Then Kusuo paused, and raised his hands to sign. Felt more comfortable being like this, but you all are too nice to me. So the least I could do was tell you the truth. I don’t talk because I have selective mutism.

Nendou translated for them, and they all softened hearing this. Kusuo pressed his back against the booth seat and fiddled with his spoon before taking another bite. That felt easy, and weight lifting. Now that they know, he didn’t have to feel so bad about them going out of their way to do things for him just because they thought he was deaf.

“Of course I knew from the beginning,” Akechi boasted slightly, eyeing Aiura and Toritsuka with a smug grin. Aiura rolled her eyes at him, but pointed at Kusuo with a narrowed look.

“So you, like, could hear us the whole time,” she confirmed with him again. “I always thought you were just stupid smart, or something, at figuring things out despite not being able to hear, y’know?” Well, she wasn’t wrong about the smart part.

“That is so annoying!” Toritsuka blurted. “You’re annoying! Jeez! Would’ve been so much easier! Did you not tell us because you want an excuse to ignore us?” Kusuo recounted the number of times he avoided Toritsuka running towards him from behind, pretending he couldn’t hear him.

He proceeded to shake his head, very very slowly.

“He’s lying, by the way,” Akechi whispered. Kusuo clicked his tongue at that, earning himself a cheeky grin from Akechi.

Well that was that, now they all knew Kusuo wasn’t some deaf kid, even though that info might’ve spread throughout the school, which he really couldn’t care less about.

It was really nice, though, having friends he could trust.

[maydave]

I joined Tumblr 10 years ago

And I found that in one of my first posts I did this A-Z quiz... Let’s compare. Then and now!

(2010/2020)

A

- Available: Yup / Still yep - Age: 20. / 30 (O.O) - Animal: Zebra. / Bees

B - Birthday: April 7th.  - Best weather: Cold and/or Cloudy /Still cold or cloudy - Been on stage?: Yes  - Believe in magic: Very Much! :) / Yes, magic and energy - Believe in God: Yup / Believe there is something bigger than us, whatever you want to call it - Believe in Santa: Not anymore. haha 

C - Candy: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups / Dark Chocolate Truffles - Color: Green /Green & Turquoise - Chinese/Mexican: Mexican /Mexican! FOREVER - Cake or pie: Cake /Pie - Cheese: Gouda / Blue Cheese (Though I currently do not eat dairy anymore)

D - Day or Night: Night / Night - Dance in the rain?: Yup. / Yes

E - Eggs: Fried. / Scrambled - Eyes: Brown :) - Ever failed a class?: NEVER! / NEVER HAVE, NEVER WILL

F - First crush: A kid in my kindergarden class - First thoughts waking up: 5 more minutes? / I gotta pee... I want COFFEE  - Food: Sushi <3 / Noodles (In every way)

G - Greatest fear: Being Abducted by Aliens or failing school -.- / Losing another loved one - Goals: Be as good as I can / Be happy - Gum: Peppermint / Cinnamon or peppermint

- Get along with your parents: Yes, very much so. / Actually gotten closer to them - Good luck charm: Don’t have one / Positive attitude!

H - Hair color: “Golden Brown” :) / Redhead - Height: 5’6 / I am actually 5′5″ lol - Happy: Most of the time / I strive to be every day - Holiday: Christmas :) / Still Christmas, though I have not really celebrated it well in a while - How do you want to die: Asleep / Peacefully

I - Ice cream: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough / Pistachio - Instrument: Violin / I always have wanted to learn to play the Violin (I love it’s sound). Though I am currently learning how to play the Ukelele! 

J - Jewellery: Long Necklaces / Small, and fun earrings - Job: Dream Job? Designer for Music Industry, right now? Assistant Designer at a firm. /I am a professional chef, though I still do some graphic design.

K - Kids: 2 at max I guess / Not really in my life plans

- Kickboxing or karate: Kickboxing / KUNG FU - Keep a journal: Nope / Never have been good at it...

L - Love: Music <3 and my fam and friends / Music, food, traveling, concerts, my family, and my friends <3 - Laughed so hard you cried: Many times / MANY MORE TIMES

M - Milk flavor: Vanilla / French Vanilla (gotta be more fancy!) - Movie: Grease / I have no idea, to be honest... - Mooned anyone: Nope. XD / No, no, no - Marriage: One day I guess / Not really in my plans. If it happens, cool, if not, cool was well. - Motion sickness: Nope / Not really, though it has happened!

N - Number of siblings: 1 / Still one (that I know of) - Number of piercings: 4 2 on each earlobe :S / 2... two of them closed off - Number: 7 / 7

O - Overused Phrases: lol, LMAO, “In fact” / LOL, fuck, Meh, shit

- One wish: Meet Simple Plan / (I HAVE MET THEM!! - 12 times now) I wish to find the right place for me.

P - Place you’d like to live: Canada / London, Montreal or San Francisco (My 3 favorite cities in the world) - Perfect Pizza: Pepperoni, Mushrooms, Ham and Onion / Mushroom, onion, bell peppers, and a bit of garlic. - Pepsi/Coke: Coke / Coke

Q - Questionnaires: Are a way to pass time / I wonder why I still do them

R - Reason to cry: Stress / STRESS - Reality T.V.: Not into it / Not my thing still... - Radio station: Idobi “Music that doesn’t suck” :) / I still listen to Idobi! haha for the podcasts mostly... but I mostly now listen to “The Beatles Channel”  & “Pop Rocks” on Sirius :) - Roll your tongue in a circle: Tongue Taco!  - Ring Size: 10 XD / 7... My fingers are thinner now, I guess?

S - Song: Right now its “The Rhythm of Love” - Plain White T’s / Currently,  “Where I Belong” - Simple Plan & State Champs (Feat. We The Kings) - Shoe size: 10, 10 ½ / 10 - Salad dressing: Cesar or Ranch / Caesar or sesame/ginger - Sushi: <3 Sushi wa totemo oishi desu! Watashi wa sushi wa totemo suki desu! / (WTF) I like nigiris: Salmon, yellowtail, scallops or toro (though I no longer eat fish! I still cannot deny those are/were my favorites) - Skipped school: Never! Ok 3 times the same class, and 2 of them I fell asleep / During culinary school I did skip a few, I was the top student, and I lived 8 mins away from school, so I knew my limits on absences and sometimes slept in and missed one or simply did not go... - Slept outside: Yup / Even camped outside a venue once... - Shower daily?:  Yes :) / Still yes. - Sing well?: So so / Not too good, but I try - In the shower?: yes / Full on concerts - Strawberries/Blueberries: Strawberries / Raspberries!

T - Time for bed: Lately 1-2 am :p / Usually 10-11 PM. Because of Rona... back to 1-2 AM  - Thunderstorms: Rule! (except when the lights go off, no internet D:) / Still marvelous. - TV: I don’t watch much, but i do like Series DVD sets! / Don’t really watch much still... - Touch your tongue to your nose: Nope / No, still can’t

U - Unpredictable: Sort of / I am pretty predictable, to be honest.

V - Vegetable you hate: Cauliflower / (I really like cauliflower now) I still dislike broccoli a bit. - Vacation spot: Orlando, Florida / (HA! I was there a month ago...) Going back to Cabo is now the spot.

W - Weakness: My dad and mum / My mom, and my friends - Wanted to be a model: Once for Torrid :3 / That was an opportunity I missed, but nope, not really a wish of mine. - Which one of your friends acts the most like you: Isaac, we are such losers / Still Isaac, though Mara is a close second. - Who makes you laugh the most: Isaac / All my friends. - Worst weather: extreme HEAT / Fucking heat...

X - X-rays: Many times / Many MORE times

Y - Year it is now: 2010 / 2020 - Yellow: By Coldplay rocks! / Sill a good song LOL

Z - Zoo animal: Zebras / Elephants and Zebras (still) - Zodiac sign: Aries 

[starswallowingsea]

Growing Up

Fandom: One Piece 

Word Count: 3797 

This easily marks the longest fic I’ve written and I really enjoyed it. The premise is an alternate AU where Nami, Nojiko, and Law all grew up together as adopted siblings at Cocoyashi, ending with a reunion of Law and Nami at Punk Hazard. I do hope to create at least two more works to go along with it, which hopefully you can figure out what I want to write once you get to that spot in the work. This can also be found on my AO3 under the same name! Enjoy! 

Major Character Death CW

Bellemere was walking through the remnants of the village that had burned down during the battle, where ashes covered the ground and polluted the air. Here she had found two children a few days ago, separated from their parents who were probably dead anyway. She was looking for any human remains that might need to be identified and interred properly, and maybe she’d find the kids’ parents to give them some sort of a proper funeral.  

She didn’t expect to find anyone alive out there. 

There was a tall, blond man staggering through the ashes with a child in tow, not much older than five. The man didn’t look like he was in good shape, stumbling over everything around him, but as it was a village in shambles Bellemere didn’t think much of it. Most of the civilians were injured as it was. She ran over to try and help them get to the field hospital set up for survivors. 

“Are you okay?” She asked. 

The man fiddled with his hands, sign language she assumed, as the child translated for her. 

“We were running away from someone and had to stop here to get more food and water. We don’t know what happened to the city here but Corasan needs help!” he said, voice cracking as he finished. 

Bellemere lifted the child onto her back despite the pain screaming at her to keep him on the ground, and took the man, Corasan as the child had called him, and put his arm around her and the child to help balance him until they got to the hospital. 

“What are your names?” She asked through gritted teeth. The hospital would need to know anyway and she didn’t know how long they would be able to stay awake. 

“I’m Law, and that’s Corasan.” The child said, and the man nodded in agreement. 

“Okay. I’ll make sure you don’t get separated at the hospital. My name is Bellemere and I promise you’ll be okay.” 

But she couldn’t. There was no way she could predict the future and she knew that if something happened and made her words empty, she could never live with herself for lying to a child. Not when she had just saved two children a few days earlier who knew better than to believe that. 

The three of them made it to the tents set up at the edge of the rubble and Bellemere made sure that they would stay together through recovery help before she was ushered off to see another doctor who would scold her for overexerting herself after almost dying just a few days before. 

Bellemere didn’t expect to see them again. The doctors insisted that she remain in the hospital under supervision so she wouldn’t accidentally kill herself by trying to help others. The two girls that she had found were near her make-shift bed and she talked with an official to let her take them back to her own island of Cocoyashi. They already knew her, she said. They would trust her more than a stranger. 

So she took the little girls back to her island. While they were boarding her ship, someone bumped into her and she stumbled forward, almost dropping the orange-haired baby into the water. 

“What the hell was that?” She exclaimed, turning around to slap whoever had run into her. 

Unfortunately for the man behind her, Bellemere’s hand reacted quicker than her brain, and she slapped his face, causing him to stumble backwards. 

“Hey watch it!” Shouted a tiny voice from next to her. Bellemere’s eyes went wide as she realized who it was. 

“What are you two doing here?” She asked, looking down at the boy, getting a better look at him now. He had tan skin covered in pale blotches and looked almost sickly but fighting. His clothes were ragged and his hat looked like it should be white fur with brown spots, but it had been soiled on his journey, she assumed.  

“They asked us if we had anywhere to go and Corasan said we should go with you to wherever you’re going.” 

Bellemere stared at the child, processing what he had just said. She thought that she had seen the last of them after helping them to the tents set up in the field. 

She finally started nodding, saying “Okay, okay. I just want to know one thing, who, or what, are you two running from?” 

Law turned to look at Corasan, signing back and forth for a few seconds before turning back to her and saying “It’s a long story, we can tell you on the way. Where are you going anyway?” 

“I’m going home.” 

---

It took about a week for their ship to pull into port at Cocoyashi, and by that time Bellemere had learned of the threat following Law and Corazon, which she had finally realized was his name. Corasan was just how six-year-old Law pronounced it. 

The pair had hoped that by leaving North Blue they would have time to figure out what to do about the man that was chasing them. A small island in East Blue was the perfect hiding spot they said. 

During the journey, Bellemere also realized that the two girls she had saved from Oykot didn’t have anywhere to go, and she didn’t want to put them up for adoption. She didn’t want them to be separated from each other. 

However, the day before they docked it began storming, and bad. Nojiko and Nami had fallen ill and she needed to get them treated by the doctor in her village. 

As soon as she could, Bellemere sprinted through the pouring rain, using only her officer’s jacket as protection for the girls, and made her way into the village. 

Law and Corazon couldn’t keep up and waited on the ship for the weather to clear up. 

--- 

“I’m adopting them.” 

“Aren’t you too young to be a mother? And reckless too if I may add.” 

“I think I can be a good mom to these girls. I don’t want them to feel alone in the world.” 

“But the orphanage would take much better care of them, don’t you think?” 

“My mind’s made up. I want to adopt them as my own daughters and you won’t change my mind.” 

--- 

Bellemere had invited Corazon and Law to live with her and her daughters. 

Daughters, she thought. Mom would never believe that I have two girls of my own now. 

Corazon and Law signed for a minute before Law said they accepted. 

--- 

The house wasn’t big, but it felt like a home. They had to make another mattress and money was tight, but it was home. 

--- 

It went like that for a few years. Law had been about six years old when he had moved in, and now he was about 12. Nojiko was eight and loved to chase her older brother around the house while Nami, now six, threw overripe tangerines at them.

Just kids being kids. 

This was one of the few moments where Bellemere felt content with herself, watching the children she had worked so hard to raise run and play with each other without a care in the world. It had been hard trying to raise three kids with a clumsy deaf man. Although communicating with Corazon had become easier over the years, there were still a lot of miscommunication between them. 

Are you hungry? Bellemere had meant to ask one day. 

Corazon looked shocked as Bellemere asked if he was horny. 

Why are you asking in front of the children? 

What do you mean? 

Corazon signed horny again, then tried his best to mime what it meant to her. 

Bellemere went red realizing her mistake, both in embarrassment and at the implications it had about their relationship.

HORNY! Damn, guess I should watch my language huh. 

--- 

The week after that Law told Bellemere that he and Corasan had to leave. The man chasing them was sure to find them soon. It had been too long since they had seen anything from him and they didn’t want to risk dragging everyone else into it. 

He said to tell Nami and Nojiko that they were dead. 

--- 

After they had left that night, Bellemere broke the news to her daughters. She told them that Law had gone swimming with Corazon and a rip current had taken him too far out to sea. Corazon went out to try and bring him back, but he also got carried away. They both drowned. 

The whole village held a simple funeral service for them, using makeshift gravestones placed atop a cliff overlooking the sea, Law and Corazon’s favorite place to relax. 

--- 

It never felt the same in the house after that. Nami and Nojiko felt the emptiness in their home now, missing the two presences that they had grown up around. It took months for a feeling of normalcy to come back. 

Nojiko would chase a stray dog around the tangerine bushes while Nami tossed tangerine peels at her and ate the fruit. 

--- 

Four years later, Nami now 10 and Nojiko 12, there was a group of pirates that invaded the island. Nami had yelled at Bellemere over getting hand me downs from Nojiko, said that she didn’t think Nojiko was her real sister because they weren’t related by blood, even though she had never had an issue saying that before.  

She regretted saying that now. 

She had seen the pirates terrorizing the town around her, and she saw the smoke from Bellemere’s tangerine fields, where their house was, and she knew that they didn’t have the money the pirate captain was asking for to keep all three of them alive. 

Nami ran back to the house, screaming for her mom with Nojiko right behind her. They had to make it, they had to. She couldn’t lose her mom too. 

Nojiko pulled Nami behind one of the tangerine bushes as they watched Bellemere hold a gun to the captain’s mouth. 

And in the blink of an eye, the scene was reversed. Bellemere was standing with a gun aimed at her head. 

Time seemed to slow down as Nami watched the fish-like man pull the trigger. Bellemere fell to the ground with a thud as Nami and Nojiko ran out to try and save her. 

I’m sorry.

I love you. 

--- 

Although Law had gone through a lot to get rid of his disease, something he had barely thought of while he was on Cocoyashi, there was only so much he could do to keep the symptoms at bay. 

When he and Corazon left, he had guessed he had maybe a year left to live. If he was lucky. If he wasn’t he could be dead in a matter of days. 

He thought back to Nami and Nojiko, who he had considered sisters now, and he missed them greatly. He wondered what they thought of him now that he was “dead”. 

Dead. 

He didn’t want to think about it. Law would rather have them be angry at him for lying than to actually die and have them unaware of his real death. Dying at sea was the last way he wanted to go. 

He put his head in his hands and let out a sob. Then another, and another. And another. He cried until he felt like he couldn’t anymore.

---

Corazon had finally found the fruit that he had been researching for years. The Ope-Ope fruit would allow Law to remove the harmful Amber Lead from his body and keep it from shutting his organs down. He just had to pray that his brother didn’t find it first. 

--- 

Corazon barely made it back to the makeshift raft where Law was waiting. He had managed to get the fruit but at a huge cost to himself. He knew he probably wouldn’t make it another week with the wounds he had, unless Law learned quickly enough to get a grip on the powers he would get from the fruit. 

He just had to hope. 

Law woke up from his nap, one of the ways he tried to save energy now that his body was slowly shutting down, and hugged Corazon’s legs. He knew that it was only a matter of time before his body killed him if they didn’t find this fruit. 

Corazon bent down and held the fruit out for Law to take, which he did. He took a few bites, forcing the bitter fruit down his throat. 

When it was finished, he felt a difference in his body, but he couldn’t figure out how to control it. 

--- 

Corazon collapsed in front of him and asked Law to deliver a letter to a marine on the island. Tell them the mission was done and he wasn’t going to make it much longer. 

There was a second letter, addressed to Cocoyashi village.  

---

That same day, the man Law delivered the first letter to came to their raft. Corasan hid Law in a chest and used the last of his strength to hide the boy. 

The last thing Law saw of his father was a smile, and the last thing he heard was a gunshot. 

--- 

It would be eight years before Law and Nami would see each other again. Law was 24 now and Nami was 18. 

Nami had always kept Law at the back of her mind, wary of the sea that she believed had stolen his life away too early. Law thought of Nami and Nojiko often too, wondering how they would react to him still being alive. He kept a copy of Nami’s wanted poster in his personal room on his ship. He knew they would run into each other at some point, and he wanted it to be soon but also never. 

--- 

The Thousand Sunny pulled into port at the Sabaody Archipelago after a long year of travelling the Grand Line. They were almost halfway done with their journey now. They just had to get their ship coated with the tree resin and restock on provisions. 

Nami divided up the beli that they had earned amongst the crew. Sanji got more than the others to buy food, and someone had to make sure Luffy and Franky wouldn’t buy something absolutely idiotic like the last time, where they had gotten scammed out of thier beli for a piece of paper with their names on it. 

Nami walked around the archipelago, looking for anything that would catch her eye: clothes, jewelry, food, cartography supplies. And she saw something white with black spots float above the crowd. 

Could that be…. No. He died years ago, right?

--- 

Law was walking around the archipelago, looking for Nami. He knew she was here, he had seen her crew’s ship pull into port, and it was hard to miss the Thousand Sunny. He was looking for her bright orange hair, hoping she still smelled like the tangerines he had grown up around all those years ago. 

--- 

Nami saw the white and black spotted hat a few times before she decided to track it down. There was no way it could all be a coincidence. She hadn’t seen that hat in over ten years, but she would recognize it anywhere. 

--- 

Law caught a fleeting glance of Nami before she turned around and got lost in the crowd again. 

Dammit, he sighed. I might not get another chance if I miss it now. 

He followed where he thought she was going, watching her go from shop to shop, until she turned around and her eyes met his. 

--- 

Nami’s eyes locked onto Law’s, and she knew it was him. She pushed her way through the crowd, not caring who was in her way. 

--- 

Law stood still as he watched Nami run up to him through the crowd. 

---

“I thought you died!” 

“I….” 

Nami slapped him across the face before pulling him into a hug. 

“We missed you, a lot.” 

Law stood in shock for a second before wrapping his arms around Nami. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Bellemere is dead.” 

“Corasan died.” 

They said it at the same time, pulling away from each other, watching tears form in their eyes before pulling back into an embrace they hadn’t felt in over 10 years. 

“I can’t believe you’re still alive.” 

“I’m sorry for lying to you. We didn’t have any other choice.” 

“I know, but it still hurt to think you were dead for over ten years, and then losing Bellemere too….” 

They stood in silence for a minute. Then two, three, four minutes. It wasn’t until they were forcibly ripped apart that they let go. Law’s crew dragged him away to go do something else, and Sanji had appeared out of nowhere to pull Nami away into his own antics. 

But they didn’t mind. Knowing each other was alive was all they needed.  

---

After Luffy had announced his change of plans for the crew, Nami, who had ended up on a sky island, couldn’t stop thinking of Law. 

She wanted so desperately to catch up with him on the last 10 years of their lives, to know what adventures he had gone on, what powers his devil fruit gave him, what happened to Corazon. 

The first few days afterwards were the hardest. Nami sat with her head in her hands for hours, crying and thinking about Law and Nojiko and Bellemere and Corazon and what could have been and what would happen now and and and. 

And what? She couldn’t get stuck in the past and she had to move forward. Maybe writing a letter or two that could get delivered to Nojiko and Cocoyashi would help her move on. 

--- 

Law flipped through the newspaper, thinking about Nami and how nice it was to see her again. She still smelled like tangerines and he loved how she had grown so much and wished that they could have been together for it. Maybe everything would be different if he hadn’t left Cocoyashi or if he didn’t have Bellemere lie that they were dead or if he had left a letter or something for Nami and Nojiko to find or or or. 

He too, was stuck in the past and needed to do something about it. Law put the newspaper down and grabbed some paper and a pen and started to write. 

--- 

Two years. 

Two whole years. 

That’s how long it was before they saw each other again. Law had moved to Punk Hazard during that time, after becoming a warlord and beginning a very long and tedious plan to take down not only Doflamingo, but also Kaido. 

He never forgot about Nami in those two years and he still didn’t know how much he wanted to let her back into his life. Would she still accept him after knowing his whole story? Did he even know hers? He left when she was still young, there’s no way he could know everything that had happened to her in the last 15 years. 

And then Ceaser talked about seeing her crew’s ship on the other side of the island and he knew that he had to make a decision soon. 

--- 

After Nami woke up from the gas attack, she had no idea where she was. The others were laying on the floor around her, except for Brook? She could figure that out later but she needed to find a way out and soon. There was no telling what could happen to them if they stayed. 

Nami started waking the others up and as soon as they were all awake, Franky blasted a hole through the door allowing them to escape. 

Five minutes later they ran into what looked like a daycare center full of giant children, regular sized children, and every size in between. What the hell was going on here. 

--- 

There was a commotion going on outside, the navy had arrived and wanted to ask some questions. Law knew that he had to lie to keep them from investigating any further. He didn’t really know what Caesar was doing but if he wanted to keep working on the island, the navy couldn’t find out about the experiments Caesar was conducting. Those were hidden even from Law. 

He had fought navy admirals and vice admirals before and survived, so he wasn’t too worried about that. His powers would distract most of the other soldiers and keep them from fighting at their best. 

While he was fighting after an interrogation gone wrong, there was a sudden loud noise behind him followed by shouts encouraging an escape. 

Her long, orange hair drew his attention for a brief second, wondering what she was doing here before he returned to the fight. 

Nami paused for a moment, taking in the scene around her.

“We need to talk later, Law!” She called out to him as she and the children ran back inside. 

“Shambles.” He said, switching all of her crew into different bodies, ensuring that they would have to speak later. 

--- 

Nami felt like she was a ghost for a second while they were running back into the lab, before she came back to her senses. But her body didn’t quite feel right, it was much bigger than she remembered and…. Metal?? 

“Fuck you, Law.” She whispered under her breath. 

---

A day passed before she saw him again and while she was no longer in Franky’s body, she still wasn’t in her own and that was an issue. Sanji’s body was better than Franky’s she supposed. 

“We need to talk.” 

“I know. It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other.” 

“I spent 12 years thinking you were dead and you show up one day and you suddenly aren’t? You better have a good explanation for that.” 

“I do,” He said, taking a deep breath before filling Nami in on the last decade of his life. 

---

Nami couldn’t stop her tears and Law looked like he was close to letting them fall too. 

“I would say it’s okay but it isn’t and you don’t need to hear that right now.” 

Law pulled Nami into a hug, much like the one they shared at the Sabaody Archipelago two years ago. 

“Bellemere died... while protecting me and Nojiko. We watched her get shot and….” She let the tears fall freely, sobbing into Law’s chest as he tried his best to comfort her. He’d never been good at that even when they were kids but it felt good to have someone to hold on to, even if it was while they were both crying and trying to talk but unable to form the right words. 

And it was nice. 

They stayed like that for a long time, rocking back and forth, not really talking. Just taking in each other’s presence. 

“Thank you, for not being dead.” 

[sp4c3-0ddity]

Jumpstart Your Heart

it feels like it’s been a while right?? well, it’s been raining for a few days every week for about a month, so take ~4400 words of post-canon fluff (where Allura lived though it doesn’t really matter tbh). enjoy!! 

Pidge’s car refuses to start.

Fat raindrops steadily pelt her windshield, the lights in the Target parking lot blurring through the streaks of water on the glass. The chill of the winter air fills the interior, her breath misting out in front of her, and when she turns her key in the ignition, all she gets is a stuttering choking sound.

Pidge growls as her forehead falls against the steering wheel. All she wanted from Target was a jar of peanut butter and a bottle of orange juice for tomorrow’s breakfast, but all she got was stranded.

(Well, and the peanut butter and juice; those, along with a bag of cherry-flavored licorice that looked really good on the shelf but tasted awful the instant she tore apart the first strip, lay safely inside a paper grocery bag on the backseat.)

This is fine though! She was a Defender of the Universe - she was in worse situations before launching into space in a blue, lion-shaped weapon of mass destruction. What’s a little car trouble to a Paladin of Voltron?

Pidge drums her fingers on the steering wheel, thinking…she has a jumper cable in the trunk, right? Or, no, she let Hunk borrow it last time he was on Earth and forgot to ask for it back. Maybe another total stranger in the parking lot would have one - and a working car battery - and be willing to help her out? If they need convincing, she can even put on the old gremlin Pidge voice for them.

What drained her battery anyway? It’s not like she has to worry about leaving her headlights turned on when they’re supposed to turn off automatically!

Wait, when was the last time she had the battery changed?

“Quiznak,” Pidge grumbles when she realizes she’s never changed the battery. She spends all day - and sometimes night - designing some of the most advanced ships and weaponry in the universe, but her own damn car still has the battery she bought it with.

She’s going to have to call for help.

Right as the thought crosses her mind, her phone vibrates in her jacket pocket. She fumbles for it with stiff, cold fingers, expecting it to be her mother wondering if she’s home yet (never mind that she moved out of her parents’ house and into her own Garrison-issued apartment almost a year ago) only to be greeted with an alert from the weather service.

A flash flood warning for her county of residence.

“This is fine,” Pidge tells herself despite her heart skipping a beat in alarm. She’s never seen it rain this hard and for so long in this corner of Arizona; is a tsunami of muddy water about to wash across the Target parking lot and sweep her and her traitorous car away while she deliberates?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she mumbles, scowling at her rain-streaked reflection in the window. “Tsunamis occur as a result of earthquakes, and I’m nowhere near the coast.”

But what if the dam on the river—

Pidge unlocks her phone and dials the first number on her “recent calls” list without glancing at the contact name. Her leg shakes, but she can’t tell if it’s from agitation or the shivers occasionally gripping her.

“Pidge!” Lance greets her cheerfully at the other end. “How’s it going? Not that I’m not happy to hear from you, but since when do you—”

“Lance,” she cuts himself off, “do you have a jumper cable?” Usually speaking to him on the phone leaves her a tad breathless and her palms so slick with sweat she risks dropping anything she’s holding - why does a simple phone call feel so intimate anyway? It’s weird; she calls her parents and brother on the phone all the time! - but now urgency steadies her voice.

“Right to the point, huh?” Lance muses with a chuckle. “Where are you?”

“Uh…the Target by the state highway two miles off-base,” Pidge tells him.

Lance laughs and wonders, “The peanut butter at the commissary not good enough for you?”

Her face warms - is she really that predictable? - but she muffles an irritated groan with her sleeve. “The commissary’s not open this late.”

“Yeah, I guess you could’ve just walked there too,” he adds.

“In the rain?” Pidge snorts. “I’m not crazy enough to risk pneumonia like you.”

“Hey, sometimes I like the simple things,” Lance says, “and one of those is walking around in the rain.”

As if on cue, the downpour becomes a torrent, the sky dumping buckets of water on her car where she sits huddling in the driver’s seat. “Oh, really?” Pidge retorts, rolling her eyes. “You’d better not walk here unless you want me to use your quintessence as if it’s a thirteen-volt battery.”

“Please, I know you need another car to jumpstart your battery,” Lance says. “And since you asked so nicely, I’ll even bring you my umbrella since I’m guessing you didn’t bother with yours when you left.”

Pidge slumps in her seat, tugging her hood over her face as if he’s there to witness her embarrassment when she admits, “That would be…nice.”

(Too bad an umbrella won’t keep puddles from soaking into her socks.)

“All right, hang tight, Pidge!” Lance says. “I’m already in my car, so I’ll be there in a bit.”

Huh, so some of the rain she hears is on his end. “I’ll be here,” Pidge mumbles, “waiting for you…as usual.”

“Hey, don’t be like that!” he says over the rumbling of his car’s engine. “Your knight-in-shining-armor - your very own Sir Lancelot - is on his way to rescue you!”

“Great!” Pidge says with false cheer. Sure, Lance is coming to get her, but she’s still stranded in the rain after the weather service broadcast a flash flood warning to her phone. “Just don’t die because you’re talking on your phone while driving in the dark during a storm.”

“If the Galra and a bunch of other crazy aliens couldn’t kill me, this won’t.”

Pidge runs her fingers through her rain-soaked ponytail and grumbles, “It better not, so please put your phone away and concentrate on driving.”

“All right, fine,” Lance says, and she can almost hear him rolling his eyes. “I thought you found the sound of my voice soothing or something…”

Ah, right, she told him that a few nights ago when she made the mistake of calling him after a nightmare kept her from falling back to sleep.

"It's not like I'm about to have a panic attack now," Pidge bites.

"You sure you're okay, Pidge?"

The concern in his voice...startles her; is he worried a tsunami will wash her away too?

Well, she already decided that fear is completely irrational, so she forces a smile onto her face and says, "I'm fine now that I know you're on your way, Lance."

"Uh—" He breaks off with a cough before he falls silent, the only sound coming from her phone the low hum of his car's radio.

"Lance?" Pidge prompts. "Are you—"

"Fine!" Lance exclaims brightly. "Great since my car still has a working battery! I'll be there in ten minutes, so see you, Pidge!"

He hangs up without giving her the chance to reply.

Pidge, not a little confused, stares at her phone's screen until it darkens, her brow furrowed. She's known Lance for the better part of a decade, but his behavior can still be such a mystery to her, especially of late. It’s almost as if he l—

Maybe she should just take the direct approach and ask him if anything's eating at him.

Luckily Lance doesn't leave her with enough time to really puzzle over it. His car's headlights flash obnoxiously - the jerk has his high-beams on! - through her windshield as he pulls into the parking spot in front of hers. A heartbeat later the driver's door swings open and Lance steps out, opening a Sailor Moon umbrella.

(She makes a mental note to ask - or tease - him about it later, and she won't take "It's my niece's" for an answer.)

He raises a hand and waves, his face barely discernible through the water splattered on her windshield, but she opens her door when he rounds his car.

The sound of the rain was muffled with her ensconced insider her car, but now it hammers down, pattering against Lance's umbrella and hitting her face as she turns to him.

"Hope you didn't miss me too much," Lance says, voice louder than usual to make himself heard over the rain.

Pidge raises an eyebrow and points out, "I saw you at work on Thursday." Never mind that something in her chest loosens at the sight of the smile - warmer than this quiznaking miserable weather - curling his lips...

"And yet you were desperate enough to drain your battery just for an excuse to call me for help." Lance's smile morphs into a smirk that has the unfortunate side effect of both irritating and endearing her.

Pidge snorts and mutters, "As if I need an excuse." She presses the button to pop her hood open before turning back to Lance. "Where's the jumper cable?"

Lance jerks his thumb over his shoulder. "In my trunk. Just wanted to make sure you were okay first." His gaze drifts over her, making her skin crawl with heat, but then he assesses, "You look a little cold."

Pidge rubs her arms, his comment reminding her of her trembling. "No k-kidding, so can we hurry up and jumpstart my car?"

"Okay, okay." Lance raises the hand not holding onto his umbrella defensively. "I forgot how bossy you are."

"I'm not bossy!" she retorts, but by then he's already retreated to his car, the rain covering up the sound of her voice.

But not the sound of his feet splashing through puddles.

Pidge sighs. What are the odds Lance knows how to jumpstart a car? Will he know on which terminal the black clamp goes? Will she need to show him?

Lance is a pilot; of course he knows how to do something so simple as jumpstarting a car, especially if he owns a jumper cable! But Pidge should step outside and hover near him...just in case.

Pidge winces the instant water soaks into her shoes - she should've worn boots rather than sneakers - but follows Lance to the front of her car. His umbrella handle is tucked awkwardly under his arm while he works on attaching the clamps of the jumper cable to her car's battery, his brow furrowed rather sweetly in concentration, at least until Pidge takes the umbrella.

He glances up in surprise, turning to her with wide eyes before a slow grin stretches over his lips. "For a tick I thought you were going to make me do this alone."

"Maybe if it wasn't raining," Pidge teases. She raises the umbrella over both their heads, huddling under its poor approximation of shelter.

(Lance is a better source of warmth anyway.)

Lance attaches a red clamp to the positive terminal on her car's battery and the black clamp to something metal. She trails after him to his car but can't help wondering, "You shut the ignition off, right?"

Lance frowns at her. "Can't you see the engine isn't on, Pidge?"

She smiles sheepishly and says, "Yes, now that you point it out."

"Then quit micromanaging me."

She shivers as he attaches the remaining two clamps to his car's battery, rain soaking into her clothes despite her efforts to stay under the umbrella. Her cold fingers loosen around the handle, too stiff to hold on properly, and she can't help a relieved shudder when Lance tells her it's time.

Her engine roars into life, a gleeful laugh escaping her when Lance whoops over the sound of two engines and the rain. "Perfect," she mumbles. "Now to let it charge for a few minutes..."

Her engine shudders and dies.

"What?" Pidge exclaims, her heart jumping into her throat. She smacks the steering wheel - as if that'll do any good - and groans, "No..."

A tapping on her window makes her jump, and she opens her door to Lance, sans Sailor Moon umbrella with his hood pulled over his head. "Didn't last, huh?" he observes regretfully.

Pidge shakes her head, slouching. "I'll have to buy a new battery in the morning," she says, "and..." She bites her lip before wondering, "Can you give me a ride home?"

Lance meets her eyes before he smiles and says, "I'll do you one better. You can spend the night at my place, and in the morning I'll take you to buy the battery before bringing you back here."

Pidge's jaw drops, but when she recovers - though her cheeks still feel hot enough to warm the interior of her car if only all the doors were closed - she says, "Lance, you don't have to do that. I can call my dad tomorrow and—"

"So you'll make me drive twice more in the rain?" Lance says, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow - which, frankly, looks absurd with his hair plastered to his head and water dripping down his face. "And one of those times without you to supervise me and make sure I don't commit some atrocity like texting while driving?"

Pidge throws up her hands and asks, "What are you, a teenager who just got his license?"

"Nope." Lance leans down, close enough to her level she can imagine the warmth of his breath touching her forehead. "Just a concerned friend who wants to do you a favor."

"Do you...owe me something?" Pidge wonders suspiciously.

"Come on, Pidge!" Lance rests his hands on her shoulders and shakes her slightly. "Let's have a sleepover like we used to on the Castle! You'll get warm and dry and be able to fall asleep to the sound of my oh-so-soothing voice if you want"—is he...blushing?—"and I'll even feed you. I might even have some hot chocolate mix and bread for you to slap some of that peanut butter onto if you want."

"But...I need pajamas," Pidge protests, though she knows she's already fighting a losing battle. "And a toothbrush—"

"I have an unused one," Lance says with a dismissive wave of his hand, "and I'll lend you something to sleep in. So...what do you say?"

Pidge's jaw flaps uselessly, taking in his hopeful expression and wondering if she can really make an objective decision about this with her heart hammering - does she really want to spend the night with Lance? - and with his obviously faked guilt trip.

"Fine," Pidge grumbles. Lance grins so brightly, his fist pumping, that she can't help a smile of her own.

But that doesn't stop her from warning him, "On one condition: I am not sharing my peanut butter with you."

Lance's car hydroplanes twice on the way to his apartment complex a few blocks from Garrison premises. Pidge holds tight to her seat belt, her heart bouncing in her chest until tires touch wet asphalt again.

Both times, she turns to Lance and socks his shoulder before saying, "Quit trying to kill us!"

Both times, he screeches in indignation and rubs his shoulder before retorting, "Quit trying to kill me!"

Both times, she retorts, "I barely hit you!"

And both times, he snorts before rolling his eyes and smiling with a fondness that makes her heart skip a beat for a reason that has little to do with fear that he'll skid off a cliff or into an overflowing canal.

"Relax!" Lance says after the second time. "I've got this, Pidge. I've driven in the middle of a hurricane before, so this is nothing."

Pidge crosses her arms. "You do know I have your mom's contact information and I can literally call her to fact check that claim?"

Lance laughs but presses a hand to his chest. "Oh, Pidge, you wound me by not trusting your old war comrade's words." When she continues to stare at him with her lips pressed together, utterly unimpressed, he scratches his ear sheepishly and confesses, "Fine, it was just a dying tropical storm, but come on!" He gestures broadly and adds, "We've been in the middle of space dogfights, so this really is nothing."

Pidge, in the end, can't fight her smile at the reminder - for all the misery that all caused her and her family and her planet - but she turns to the rain-streaked passenger window to hide it. "Just keep both hands on the steering wheel," she mumbles.

"As you wish, my dear Pidge," Lance says almost snidely, and she's pleased when he actually listens.

His apartment is familiar - she's visited many times by day or dry evening to play video games or watch a movie while eating takeout from that bizarre "Earth-alien" fusion place on the corner - but the walk from Lance's assigned parking spot to the door on the second floor deck feels long in the downpour.

Before Pidge can open the passenger door, Lance's hand on her arm freezes her. "Wait," he says. "I'll come around with the umbrella so you don't get too wet."

"You don't have to—" But his door shuts behind him, and Pidge barely sets foot outside - right in a puddle that soaks into her sneakers and the hems of her poor leggings - when he's there to greet her.

"By the way," Pidge says as he raises the umbrella over both their heads and she unthinkingly loops her arm through his, "what's with the Sailor Moon?"

Lance flushes, but he hides it well by reaching around her to grab her grocery bag and shove it into her free arm. "It's my, uh, niece's."

Pidge smirks. "I knew you'd say that."

"Let's just go inside," he grumbles.

They hightail it, running awkwardly standing close together under the umbrella before they give up on it and sprint full tilt, splashing through puddles with raindrops hitting her face and soaking into her hair when her hood flies off her head.

Pidge storms up the stairs ahead of Lance, and when her foot nearly slips out from under her, her breath escaping her in shock, he catches her around the waist. But she doesn't pause to consider the imprint of his touch on her, and by the time he unlocks his door and they pile into the warmth of his apartment, Pidge is shivering too violently to do much more than stand in her soaked clothes and tremble.

Lance shucking off his own wet jacket is enough to get her to move. She tugs hers off, handing it to him to hang on a hook from the shower rod in the bathroom, before kicking off her sneakers and peeling off her disgustingly wet socks and sinking her toes into the warm carpet in front of a vent blasting hot air.

Pidge shudders in relief, squatting in front of it as she combs her fingers through her sodden ponytail. She'll have to do something about all the tangles now too...

Lance clears his throat behind her, and she stands to see him handing her a towel and a set of old clothes. "You can, uh, change in the bathroom. I'll be in...the bedroom...changing my own clothes."

"Right." Pidge watches him retreat, his back to her while she admires the way his soaked shirt clings to his shoulders and shows off how the muscles in his back move.

And then he pauses in his bedroom doorway to glance over his shoulder, his eyes widening when they catch hers.

Heat rushes to her face when he turns back around and stretches his arms over his head with a groan before tugging off his shirt.

Pidge spins on her heel and buries her face in the towel he gave her. Did he do that because she was watching?

"Quiznak," she curses, her voice muffled in fabric.

Despite the chill she just escaped, Pidge splashes cold water onto her face once she's safely ensconced in the privacy of the bathroom. She's just here to spend the night, to accept the favor Lance offered her with no strings attached (for now), to maybe chat and play games with him before she catches a few hours of sleep on his surprisingly comfortable sofa.

No, she won't think about running her fingers through his damp hair or tracing the Blue Lion tattoo that peeks out of his shirt collar or feeling his breath warming her face or press her lips against his like she's wanted to do for years.

No, she won't think about damaging almost a decade of friendship for a kiss he might not want.

(But what if he...does?)

Pidge changes into the clothes Lance provided - an old, baggy t-shirt and a pair of soccer shorts with drawstrings she has to tie very securely - and brushes her teeth with a toothbrush she finds under the sink buried in a stockpile of beauty and hygiene products. She leaves her hair in its ponytail and figures it’ll be one problem to tackle in the morning.

She emerges from the bathroom and heads straight for the kitchen, intent on the snack she craved enough to leave her own apartment to drive to Target in the middle of a dreary winter storm. She locates a bag of bread in the fridge and pops two slices in the toaster before shrugging and helping herself to a Granny Smith apple. She cuts it up and dips the slices directly into the jar of peanut butter.

That’s how Lance finds her, sitting on the kitchen counter munching on apple slices and crunchy peanut butter right as the toaster disgorges her burnt toast.

Pidge offers him the jar. “Want some?”

Lance - looking comfortable in a bathrobe over his pajamas - stands across from her and raises an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t sharing with me.”

“I changed my mind out of the kindness of my heart,” she deadpans before her sarcasm fails and she flashes him a smile. She shakes the jar and nods at the toast. “Hope you don’t mind that it’s a little burnt?”

Lance laughs. “Lucky for you, I don’t.” He takes the slices - wincing and gasping “ah!” when they prove too hot - and drops them into a plate before grabbing a knife.

They share their snack quietly, with Lance leaning against the counter beside her. And when it’s a little too much - when his arm brushing against hers makes goosebumps rise across her skin - Pidge blurts, “Thank you.”

Lance turns to her, his eyes wide. “For…what?”

She bites her lip and stares at a fleck of peanut butter stuck to her middle finger. “For coming to get me in the middle of a storm and letting me spend the night even though I live literally ten minutes away.”

Lance smiles when she dares to glance at him. “What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t invite you over?”

“A…sane one, maybe.”

He snorts and walks off to wash his hands at the sink. “Good thing I’m crazy about you then.”

“Yes, good—” Pidge stares disbelievingly at the back of his head, her breath catching and heat flooding her and…yes, Lance’s ears are definitely turning red. Maybe she misheard her or just misinterpreted him. He can’t possibly have said what she thinks he did. “What?”

She holds her breath as Lance turns to face her, something intense but…familiar in his gaze, almost trapping her in place. Her heart pounds too quickly as he approaches her, one step at a time, every second dragging yet passing so fast when he stands right in front of her too soon.

“Lance,” she says, and she might’ve hated how breathy it sounds if he didn’t capture her lips in his the instant his name escaped them.

He pulls away too soon, barely giving her the chance to reciprocate, but the heat in his eyes and his body so close to hers and her own swirling thoughts and rising emotion make her slow to react, her tongue tied into knots.

Until Lance wonders in a low voice that sends a shiver up her spine, “What’re you thinking, Pidge?”

“How fitting it is that our first kiss tasted like peanut butter,” Pidge says, because for some reason that’s the first thing that popped into her head.

Lance’s jaw drops - obviously he wasn’t expecting that - but then he chuckles and asks, “Why?”

“Because I love peanut butter.” She rests her hands on his shoulders and tugs him closer until he stands between her knees within easy kissing distance.

She takes advantage of it immediately.

Pidge kisses Lance in the way she almost convinced herself she never would, hungrily, with her lips parted over his and her fingers gripping his robe. One of his hands cradles the back of her head, and the other sits on her knee, his finger only just brushing against the bare skin of her thigh under her borrowed shorts.

Her heart races as she tears away to gasp for breath before finally telling Lance, “But I love you more than peanut butter.”

“Oh, good!” exclaims Lance with a dazzling smile that she matches. But he clears his throat and flashes her a smirk. “I mean…my work here is done. I was starting to worry I’d have to break you two up.”

Pidge rolls her eyes but wraps her arms around his neck and laughs while he embraces her around the waist. She threads her fingers through his hair and listens to the sound of his steady breathing, shoving away the memory of a time she feared she’d never hear it again.

Lance shifts just enough to rest his forehead against hers. “Is there any way I can convince you to spend the night more often without sabotaging your car?” When Pidge’s eyes widen, he hurriedly adds, “Not that I did this time!”

Pidge giggles and says, “Maybe.”

His lips brush against hers as he murmurs, “Is ‘I love you too’ a good enough reason?”

Pidge’s chest is so warm she wonders how she almost froze in the rain barely an hour ago. She touches Lance’s cheek and says, “Help me replace my car’s battery. Then we’ll talk.”

[call-me-mister-midnight]

Aiden’s Highway to Hell: Watch Dogs/Hazbin Hotel Crossover

Hey everyone, I’ve started writing my first ever fanfiction and I’ve gotten great reviews over at AO3, so I figured I’d share it with all of you, as well! Not sure if I should post the whole story over time or not, but for now, I’ll leave you the first chapter and link you to the full story on AO3. Be sure to like and review! I’m also open to suggestions if you have any.

Summary: After the events of the first Watch Dogs, Aiden Pearce finds himself on the wrong end of a rescue gone wrong and ends up in Hell. His only ticket out? Through the Happy Hotel, where he must repent for his crimes and give up his vigilante ways for good. Only true remorse and a change of heart will be his saving grace. Sounds simple enough, but when he finds an old enemy and some not so friendly demons along the way, Aiden will learn that the road to redemption is long and difficult. Will Aiden be able to turn himself around and live an honest life? Will he be able to escape hell? Or will he be exterminated? What else is in store for The Fox? Tune in and find out!

Chapter 1: Hellbound

It was a cold February morning in the city of St. Louis; a perfect day to start cleaning up the streets and getting back into the swing of things. 

At least, that’s what Aiden thought as he got in his car and began to head towards Indigo Drive, where his Profiler was informing him of a crime in progress.

‘Another day, another assault…’, thought Aiden as he floored the gas, tearing down the highway. ‘I’ll get this over with and then try out that new diner. Nothing beats a good omelet.’ As he got closer and closer to his destination, a sense of uneasiness began to creep up on the battle-hardened vigilante. Why did he suddenly feel this way? He took down many an armored soldier before this with relative ease. This was going to be no different.

3 miles to the crime scene.

The unsettling feeling only grew worse. Shaking his head in disbelief, Aiden did his best to ignore the fear. Fear is what gets people killed in this line of work. Although he realized the importance of trusting his gut, Aiden knew damn well that he was merely overreacting. Perhaps he could use a vacation, he had endured quite a bit over the past few months. That’s it, the work was just getting to his head. Nothing to be worried about.

1 mile to the crime scene.

Aiden started to have second thoughts about interfering with this one. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but something felt seriously off. ‘No, I must. I can’t stop now, not after everything I’ve sacrificed’ he almost pleaded to himself. ‘I’ll do it, even if it kills me’. The anxiety was starting to peak at this moment; Aiden could swear his hands were starting to sweat. Embarrassing. How could someone who was so used to dropping the hammer on every person who came in between him and his niece’s killers suddenly be so timid? He NEVER had second thoughts before in his entire life. He couldn’t imagine what Jordi would ever say to him if he could read his mind. Thankfully, he never had to find out. All he needed to worry about was incapacitating his target and getting the hell outta Dodge.

“You have arrived.”

The robotic sound of his GPS snapped him out of his thoughts, prompting him to hit the brakes in order to study his surroundings. Under the bridge, perfect. His target wouldn’t even see him coming. As Aiden exited the car and screwed the silencer onto his pistol, he felt a cold chill blow over him. Gotta love that brisk St. Louis weather.

He powered up his Profiler and started searching the docks where the giant blue circle he had come to know and (not) love glowed back at him on the screen. After around 5 minutes of searching, he finally found his target: a tall, slender man in a black hoodie with the hood raised. It didn’t get any easier than this. Aiden hid behind a bridge support, keeping a close but safe distance between him and his potential prey. The man was clearly not in a hurry; he had no idea what was waiting for him just 10 feet away. As Aiden continued to tail the man, he saw it: a woman and child were tied up and were squirming around on the deck of a red and white boat that was sloppily docked about 25 yards away by Aiden’s prediction.

Easy pickings.

Aiden holstered his pistol and prepped his baton. He was gonna make this one hurt. He pulled his mask up and quickly approached the man. With a few well-placed swings and a liver shot for the cherry on top, the man went down onto the muddy grass with a satisfying thud.

‘See? Not even remotely a problem.’, thought Aiden as he ran over to the boat to free the hostages. He couldn’t help but feel proud of himself; not only did he get to save a couple of lives, he also didn’t have to break his back to get the few joys of being The Fox. That was all fine and dandy, up until the part where Aiden realized he made a gigantic tactical error.

“See you in HELL, scumbag!” came the sharp, high pitched voice of a second person that Aiden didn’t even account for. Before he could even turn around to confront the ambusher, it was too late. There was a bang, a flash of blinding white light, so bright that even the blind would have to shield their eyes from it. It was strangely beautiful, not even the slightest bit annoying. No pain, no blood… nothing. After what seemed like hours of this, he could hear the faint sounds of sirens and yelling, before suddenly feeling like he was falling. Not just falling, but freefalling. As in, going down a rollercoaster with nothing but your own body, hurtling towards a seemingly endless void. His speed and velocity only seemed to be increasing. Holy shit, this was REALLY fast. How was he not on fire from this much speed?

Aiden, too terrified to scream or flail, simply closed his eyes and braced himself for what was inevitably coming. This was the end, he knew it. He should’ve trusted his gut and just went to that stupid diner. For a brief moment, he regretted everything he ever did. The Fixer contracts he carried out, the convoys he destroyed, the cars he had stolen, but most of all, the people he put in danger… Nicky, Jacks… no, don’t think about her again…. dammit… even Lena. For the first time in what felt like forever, The Fox felt tears coming on. The intense speed at which he was falling didn’t even bother him anymore. The regret was heavy, burdensome. All of his past sins came to haunt him one last time before he met his fate. He supposed he deserved it. What a bitter pill regret is.

WHAM!

Aiden felt an impact so hard, he thought all of his body parts disconnected at once. All of the wind was instantly knocked out of him, the beautiful white light now gone. He was dead. But wait… he could still feel his arms and legs. He could still feel pain. So much pain…

All of the energy once within his shaken bones instantly disappeared. He felt like he could sleep forever. Isn’t that what he was doing? He honestly didn’t know anymore. All he knew was, he was splayed all across some hard surface… asphalt? It felt rocky, like asphalt. He tried moving his left arm slightly. It hurt a bit, but he managed to get the appendage out from under his body.

So far, so good.

He tried moving his right leg and was greeted by a tremendous amount of pain that rippled throughout his entire body.

Not good. Horrible idea.

Clearly, he wasn’t dead. At least, he didn’t think so. Also, what a nice warm atmosphere he was feeling. Wait… atmosphere? He was dead! He started hearing other ambiance sounds. Cars passing by, the distant chatter of human sounding voices… what the hell was going on? Only one way to find out. He tried to pick his head up to moderate success, managing to catch a glimpse of a very dark sky and what seemed like a wall of neon before letting his head smack against the pavement-like surface again.

‘Ow.’

It was bad enough he got shot in the damn head, now he had to be reckless and let his skull drop like that. He lifted his head again, this time getting a clear view of what was right in front of him. Aiden couldn’t believe it: he somehow ended up in a city! But not just any city; it was a city bathed in an eerie red fog, with a brightly lit sign around every corner. The buildings were tall and strangely shaped, some tipping to the side, others having jagged edges that jutted out at very peculiar angles.

‘Where the fuck am I?’, thought Aiden as he very slowly managed to get to a sitting up position, every muscle he moved screaming out in pain. After a couple minutes of scanning his surroundings in more detail, Aiden noticed something else: nobody else looked human. Well, they did, but they somewhat resembled some kind of animal or something. He quickly looked at his own hands, his eyes trailing down his chest and eventually stopping at his legs and feet. Somehow, Aiden looked completely unchanged. Everything about him was completely normal from before.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he started to try and get to a standing position. This time around, he managed to get it right the first time. He felt some cracking here and there, which, compared to the previous attempt at moving, was a welcome sensation. Anything was better than pain at this point. Spotting a vending machine nearby, Aiden decided, against his better judgment, to throw himself towards it to at least have something to hold on to.

That didn’t happen at all.

Aiden ended up almost rag dolling right past the machine as he awkwardly plummeted to another painful and embarrassing defeat.

“Well… that went well”, scoffed the vigilante bitterly. After spending another seemingly long time to get back on his feet, it finally hit him: this was no ordinary vending machine. “Heroin… acid… cocaine… molly… what the hell?”

He was beyond confused at this point. A vending machine that dispensed drugs?

Before he could ponder the situation any further, Aiden’s thought process was interrupted by a long scream followed by a what sounded like a laser blast. Adrenaline now kicking in, Aiden headed towards the general direction of the noise. It didn’t take him very long to pinpoint the source: a pair of creatures, jet black in color with icy halos over their head, open firing on some person vaguely resembling a frog. Their laughter was very chilling, half robotic and half distorted with a moderate amount of static. The sound cut through the air like a hot knife through butter.

Suddenly feeling mortal again and terrified beyond rational thought for the first time in his life, Aiden bolted for the closest street as one of the creatures turned to face him with a menacing smile. Heart pounding, Aiden managed to quickly limp a couple blocks before the adrenaline left his body, forcing him to come to a screeching halt under a small overhanging roof, slumping against the wall to catch his breath.

Aiden quickly scanned the building. “Looks like a hotel. Perfect.”

Without further delay, he opened the door, which was strangely unlocked, and quickly hid inside and slammed the door shut. Finally feeling safe, he let all of his weight rest against the hefty metal frame. The air was very still. The seconds seemed like hours as Aiden tried his best to keep his breath under control. He thanked his lucky stars that the place was abandoned. At least, until he suddenly felt something extremely sharp and extremely metal stick him right above his spine, followed by an intense and hostile female voice coming from behind him.

“Don’t move a muscle, asshole, or I’ll end you.”  

Like this story? Get up to date with the full story at:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18106346

[ninja-muse]

Science Fiction Recommendation Masterpost

$ for LGBT characters £ for characters of colour € for characters with disabilities * for problematic content ! for #ownvoices

(all based on my slightly spotty memory, so feel free to correct if I’ve missed something)

Does not include time travel, superheroes, or alternate history.

Classics

1984 - George Orwell

Winston is a patriot, until a chance encounter and his job altering history start him thinking. Big Brother, it turns out, isn’t acting in his best interests.

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller

In the centuries after a nuclear war, a group of desert monks have devoted themselves to preserving scientific knowledge with the hope of someday rebuilding civilization.

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham *

In a Newfoundland rife with religious fundamentalism and genetic mutation, a boy, his cousin, and his sister must hide their telepathy or risk everything to live freely.

Dune - Frank Herbert $*£*

Even before fleeing to the open desert of Arakkis and its taciturn worm-riding nomads, Paul Atreides’ life was fraught with danger. Now he must use his understanding of people and politics to weather everything his world can throw at him, including sandstorms, a baron with a grudge, and those who want him to be a prophesied hero.

Foundation - Isaac Asimov

Hari Seldon has designed a program that predicts the paths of civilization. What better way to test it than to start a utopian colony at the furthest edge of known space?

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Victor Frankenstein is fascinated by anatomy and determined to prove resurrection possible. Once he succeeds, he’s equally determined to get as far from the sentient corpse as he can, when all the Creature wants is a hug and someone to talk to.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

When Arthur Dent woke up, he thought the bulldozer levelling his house was the worst his day could get. By teatime, he’s halfway across the galaxy on a ship that runs on probability, with his alien best friend, the two-headed President of the Galaxy, and a depressed robot—and things are just getting started.

I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

A series of short stories that outlines the evolution of robotic technology and society around it.

The Planet of the Apes - Pierre Bowles

An astronaut crashes on an alien planet populated by sentient, speaking great apes. They put him in a zoo until he proves he’s not an animal. A brilliant examination of race and what it means to be human.

Space Opera

the Expanse series - James S.A. Corey $£€

Humanity has colonized the solar system, but hasn’t fixed its other problems. The Belters are disenfranchised and preparing a rebellion. Earth and Mars are in a paranoid arms race. Corporations can do just about anything they want. Throw in a terrifying virus, an alien threat, and a space crew who do the right thing and damn the consequences, and things are about to get very interesting.

Fortuna - Kristyn Merbeth - $ - *

Scorpia Kaiser is a screw-up, the family pilot, and out to prove she has what it takes to take over smuggling operations from Mama. Corvus Kaiser, exiled from his family to fight a war he doesn’t believe in, is finally coming home. Then a smuggling deal goes massively south and suddenly, what was going to be a difficult time becomes much, much worse.

the Saga series - Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples $£€

An inter-species family flees the military powers tearing the galaxy apart. Their luck goes up. Their luck goes down. They meet the best and worst the galaxy can offer—and through it all, a little girl grows up. A nuanced look at prejudice, hope, and love.

the Shieldrunner Pirates series - R.E. Stearns $£€

A lesbian couple arrives at the pirate base on Barbary Station expecting a welcome to the crew, but are assigned to take out the murderous station A.I. instead. As much about social skills and interpersonal dynamics as it is about guns and hacking.

the Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold $*£€

How do you solve a problem like Miles Vorkosigan? He’s too smart for his own good, too impulsive and progressive for his military culture, surely too disabled to amount to anything. And he (and his accidental mercenary fleet) are going to prove everyone wrong. Dryly witty and generally feminist.

Horror, Apocalypses, and Dystopias

The Rampart Trilogy - M.R. Carey $£€

Koli wants more than his future offers, starting with becoming a Rampart, with control of ancient technology. His attempts to change his cards send him on an unforgettable journey of discovery.

Devolution - Max Brooks $£€

An elite sustainable community outside Seattle finds itself stranded after Mount Rainier erupts—and there are creatures in the forest. Hairy ones, with big feet.

The Girl with All the Gifts - M.R. Carey £

Melanie gets up, goes to school, eats her food, and idolises her teacher just like any pre-teen. However, when her school’s attacked by Hungries and she, her teacher, a doctor, and the surviving soldiers have to flee, Melanie begins to realise she’s … not exactly normal after all.

The Giver - Lois Lowry

When Jonah turns twelve, his regimented community assigns him to apprentice to the Keeper of Memories. The memories Jonah receives throw everything he knows into question, and he must choose between the quiet life laid out for him and the emotion and independence he’s discovering.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

In a world where most women are sterile, Handmaids are stripped of their identity and given out as surrogate wombs. This is Offred’s story of oppression, resistance, and escape.

the Hunger Games trilogy - Susanne Collins £€

In an America where teens fight to the death for entertainment and the survival of their District, Katniss Everdeen volunteers—and finds herself the unwilling face of the rebellion.

Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant $£€ !

Was the terror on the Atargatis a hoax? Are there mermaids deep in the Pacific? A ship full of scientists has been sent to find out. They are not prepared.

the Newsflesh trilogy - Mira Grant $£€ *

A generation after the zombie apocalypse, humanity’s secure behind blood tests and heightened security and Georgia and Shaun Mason, and their Newflesh team, have been hired to blog the Presidential campaign, which is perfect until the first outbreak. Conspiracies, mad and sane science, and social critique ensue.

the Parasitology trilogy - Mira Grant $£€

Sal awoke from her coma to a family she didn’t remember, a body that wouldn’t respond, and restrictions on her autonomy that seriously chafe. Now she’s on her feet and resisting, but at the worst time. People are starting to die from their miracle-cure tapeworm implants and it’s looking like Sal’s implant might be … different.

the Passage trilogy - Justin Cronin £

A century ago, a virus turned most of humanity into bloodsucking monsters or food. Now the descendants of a group of survivors must strike out across a wasteland, looking for a safe new home. Better and darker than it sounds. Christian overtones.

The Space Between Worlds - Mikaiah Johnson $£ !

Cara’s climbed out of the toxic slums and into a job as a traverser, visiting parallel worlds and capturing data. She’s this close to having all her dreams—and then she uncovers a murder.

Other

Blindsight - Peter Watts

An independent observer is sent on a first contact mission, but the aliens and the secrets on board push him into a completely different role. About perception and ethics more than anything else, and I nearly “shelved” it in the horror section.

Congo - Michael Crichton £*

A team of scientists push deep into the African jungle in search of a society of mythical sentient gorillas, but the jungle pushes back.

The Diamond Age, or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer - Neal Stephenson £€

An inventor misplaces a one-of-a-kind book. A girl from the slums finds it and it changes her life. A nearly Dickensian future full of hope, tenacity, vim, and nanotech.

Eifelheim - Michael Flynn

An alien ship crashes in the medieval Black Forest and the village priest, steeped in heretical philosophy and medieval science, must intercede between the survivors and the peasants who see only demons.

The Martian - Andy Weir £

Mark Watney wakes up to find he’s been left behind on Mars. Fortunately he’s a botanist, he’s smart, and he has potatoes. A thrilling survival story paired with hilariously explained science that will leave you believing it already happened.

Passage - Connie Willis €

Joanna Lander is a psychologist studying near-death experiences, which is hard when you never know who in the hospital will have one. When a new (and cute) neurologist finds a way to induce them, she turns to the closest subject she can find—herself. The most heart-wrenching of Willis’s novels.

Shine - Jetse de Vries, ed. £

An anthology of optimistic, uplifting science fiction, with stories ranging from space opera to solarpunk and everything in between.

Snowcrash - Neal Stephenson £

Hiro Protagonist is the hacker’s hacker. There’s a virus in the Metaverse that’s killing people and he’s on the case. At least when he’s not delivering pizza. Both glorious cyberpunk and a send-up of the same.

[saintsnsinnersbdb]

Deal with the Devil: The End of the Beginning (Part 6)

Written by @Lassiter_SASBDB.

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srinhn

It was a normal, blue-collar suburban neighborhood, filled with 1950’s ranch homes and split-levels. Mature trees lined streets that were probably filled with kids on bikes and dog-walkers during warm weather months, although now they were barren except for a couple of people shoveling snow off the sidewalks and a few toddlers playing in the white stuff with a stay-at-home parent in their respective yards. Shortly the Catholic K-12 down the street would let out and younger kids would trudge their way home while teens tentatively navigated the slick streets in 200,000+ mile Subaru’s and Nissans that had been purchased not by their parents but by working summer and after-school jobs and saving their money to do it themselves. Yeah, this was that kind of human neighborhood. So why was Devina here?

Short answer is hiding out. After I’d rousted her from that obnoxious ode to regentrification in yuppieville she’d gone deep. So deep I’d thought for a while she’d left Caldwell. But I knew I couldn’t be that lucky, so I’d kept looking. The easiest way to find her was to focus on missing persons. Not the bodies, although there would be plenty of those, but she was smart and careful. She wasn’t going to leave any of those where I might put together a pattern. But I’d been looking for the wrong /kind/ of missing persons.

Devina’s preferred prey was male and not too sober. A horny, drunk man was a sitting duck. She’d take females, too. Had all too often, but her bait for them tended to be emotional support or some such shit. She “bonded” with them when they were at low points. So I’d been looking for singles. People who had gone missing from bars or been depressed and just ghosted. I’d been over hundreds of missing persons reports…yeah, computer hacking isn’t my bag, but when you can go invisible and look over a cop’s shoulder for an afternoon it’s a piece of cake to get the right passwords. Then it’s just a little late night B&E into the police station and an empty office. But I’d looked for months and hadn’t found anything I couldn’t track down. And yes, some of them had been dead, but a few inquiries “up top” had let me know the souls had made it where they were supposed to. Obviously not Devina’s victims, as taking the souls was the whole point for the bitch. So I’d finally backed off that angle, taking a wait-until it-smacks-me-in-the-face approach.

For a while I’d turned my attention to the problems of the Brotherhood and the race. That whole deity-in-training thing was turning out to be a full time job. I kind of liked it. Who knew I had it in me? But while “tending my flock” I’d stumbled across something that sent me in a new direction.

Now,I’m not big into the whole “organized religion” thing, even for the race, but I tried to keep tapped into this one particular Catholic church. Most of the brothers aren’t big on prayers to the Virgin Scribe unless shit is going down hard, but Butch was a regular, so long as he could do it in a Catholic church like his human mother had taught him and this was his one of choice. I wasn’t 100% sure prayers not directed to the VS would get to me through the whole ethereal call-forwarding system the Creator had put in effect, so sometimes I went to hear Butch’s in person. I know, I know, I could have just tapped into his head when he was in the manse or the pit, but it seemed like an invasion of privacy to do it in his personal space. A church was basically public, so it felt more acceptable to go invisible and sit in the pew behind him while I listened in. I didn’t wanna neglect him. And it was a beautiful place. The serenity there was on par with my place in the forest so sometimes during the day, after my morning deity duty, I’d go back to the church and hang around and kinda veg in it while the Brotherhood slept. Or whatever. With all the shellans these days you never knew. Or, given the volume level, sometimes you did, but you didn’t /wanna/ know, feel me? So some days I decided to be missing during the fireworks and this place was calming. Ellen and Maury only relieve the stress of being a deity so much, you know? And if I followed the priests back to the rectory, well, hey, the nun who cooked for them made killer snickerdoodles. I kept trying to snitch the recipe for #Fritz but she did it all from her head and man, I am SO not going to pick a nun’s brain.*shudders at the implications* It was while I was looking over her shoulder as she baked that I overheard the three priests that lived there talking.

They’d lost a family from their parish that week. I mean literally LOST them. Dad, mom, and four kids, ages 4 through 9. Just vanished. The kids all went to the parish school and when none of them showed up four days running and the voicemails to the parents weren’t being returned one of the priests had gone to check on them. All he had found was an empty house. He’d called the police and filed a missing persons report to start a preliminary investigation but essentially both mom and dad had called into work one morning and said they were taking a week off, and since it’s not illegal to take vacation time, the cops had done nothing. But it was odd that the school hadn’t been contacted at all. So I did a little digging of my own and what do you know...a pattern.

Six families from different parishes in Caldwell had disappeared in the last four months. Thirty-seven souls in all. All the families had been Catholic. All the families had young children, one just a few months old. And the mother in all the families had attended a stay-at-home mom support group that met every Thursday night in the gymnasium of St. Phillip Neri’s Church and Catholic School. The same one that was just down the street. And the group was open to people from all parishes in the archdiocese, which explained why the missing families were from all over the city.

It hadn’t been hard from there. I’d stationed myself outside the gym two Thursday nights ago and waited and lo and behold, who should walk out, but Devina, bundled up in a puffy white coat that made her look like the Pillsbury Doughboy and fake giggling with a human female. It was “soooo tough to relax when the kids couldn’t get out much because of the cold” she said and then she said her condo on the beach in Florida was “sooooo relaxing” and such a help. And then she offered her nonexistent condo to the frustrated mom and her family for a stress-free vacay. And bingo, bango, done, I knew how she was luring the families in.

She’d left the woman in the parking lot as others came out, getting into a predictably boring, yet originally expensive, used Volvo, thereby confirming her image as a middle-class mom who could afford a few luxuries and putt-putted to the last house on a street that dead-ended at a dense woods with a “no trespassing” sign on the the fence that separated it from neighborhood. That gave me a good idea what she was doing with the bodies.

I’d done my recon in the past two weeks. While she hadn’t brought any new victims home, she did have a routine she invariably followed. In the mornings she made a public appearance with a pair of toddler-sized gollums she glamoured into looking like rosy-faced children. Playing in the front yard, a walk with a stroller in the park, going to the grocery store… it was always carefully planned to give her maximum exposure to her victim group without allowing them to get too involved in interacting with the “kids”. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon she put the golems in carseats and left the house at 1:58 PM. I’d followed her those days and found Devina had a standing 2:30 appointment with a therapist. Good to know somebody else knew what a neurotic bitch she was. She’d deactivated the gollums and left them in the car in a parking garage while she had her appointment, magicking the rear window tint to opacity so no one noticed them there. Afterwards she indulged her inner compulsive shopper for an hour or two and then headed back home.

And now, on /this/ Thursday I was standing across the street from her modest hideout waiting for her to leave. Like clockwork, at 1:58 the garage door rose and the Volvo backed out of the driveway. I had stayed invisible while I waited for her to leave -- even though I’d taken the precaution of tucking my long black and blonde streaked hair down inside my coat with a black watch cap shoved over my head and added shades and a black scarf to obstruct most of my face, I’d decided discretion was the better part of valor here. While it was obviously a friendly neighborhood, 6’7” of unknown muscle encased in black leather standing on a dead end street would make anyone take notice and I did/not/want to be noticed. And I was glad I had. Devina must have sensed something off. She stopped the car after she’d backed onto the street and looked up and down it. She’d paused as her gaze fell on where I was standing and squinted. I simply stood there watching. If she saw me and we did this the hard way, it was no skin off my nose. I’d just thought it would be simpler if I searched for the souls and released them myself before deciding what to do about her this time. Finally, she’d given up and driven down the street to turn onto the main drag. As the last wisp of frozen exhaust from her car disappeared, I turned my attention to her house.

It was a tidy little brick ranch. No gargoyles or garishly macabre door knockers this time. The front lawn was fenced but otherwise unadorned. The curtains were drawn on the large picture window as well as the jalousies that were probably the bedrooms’ windows to the world. Down lower, hopper windows told me there was a basement. All in all, even if the basement is finished, there’s probably only 1400 square feet absolute max. A huge comedown for her. Devina liked luxury and lots of it. This probably was very nearly Hell for her. *smirking as I fold my arms across my chest.*

Getting inside wasn’t a problem. Although Devina knew how to keep me out she was just arrogant enough to assume this was enough of a change to keep me from finding her and maintaining warding requires power that she doesn’t have an abundance of right now. Thirty-seven souls weren’t going to be enough to keep it powered up and maintain the glamour that kept people from seeing the evil hellbitch she really was. But she could have put in ADT and that was going to take some finesse. I didn’t want her coming back before I was ready for her. As I dematerialized just inside the front door I took a moment and looked around. To the left, just behind where the door would hide it if I’d opened it was a control box with a steady green light. It was either set to trigger when the door opened or had motion sensors connected to it. Either way was no big deal. While it might have caught an unwary human, all I had to do was demat from room to room and stand still while I scoped them out.

As I stood in the doorway looked through the small living room it was apparent that Devina was maintaining her cover well. There was nothing here to indicate she wasn’t what she seemed. A photo of her in a wedding dress with a man in a tux graced the foyer wall surrounded by pictures of the “kids”. On the table beneath it lay a scrapbook, conveniently open to an obituary for National Guard Captain Alan Veckman, KIA in Afghanistan. A wife and two kids were listed as the only survivors. That explained why she hadn’t gollumed up a spouse for her image. She’d just tracked this guy down, photoshopped herself into their wedding picture, and probably taken the wife and kids as her first victims this time around. Instant sympathetic widow.

The house had had some modernization done on the inside. Instead of closed off main rooms the dining room walls had been knocked down to open it up to both living room and kitchen, forming the more-currently-popular “great room''. From here I could see all the public spaces were clean. No macabre art work on the walls, no horrific but trendy sculpture. Just a few framed prints on the walls and the typical kid’s finger paintings on the fridge. I popped into the kids bedroom and the hall bath, doing a quick check, but finding nothing then moved on to the master. It had been remodeled too, probably taking out the third bedroom to enlarge it and add the spa-like ensuite. This space, small by Devina’s norms, still felt more like her. Where the great room had been “Leave It To Beaver” tidy, this place was an overpacked disaster. Her shopping addiction was apparent in the overstuffed closet and bags of clothing laying on the floor. Jewelry strung haphazardly across the dresser and the unmade bed completed the total mess. The bathroom had every known brand of cosmetic, perfume and skin treatment known to man represented, and that was just a waste of money, given she relied on magick to maintain her outwardly pretty face and body. Lots of scented bath crap around the tub, too. Keeping the stench of evil down must require some heavy maintenance. But still nothing that hinted at her new well of souls.

Only one place left to check. The basement. I’d spied the door to it in the kitchen. If any door was going to be wired to alert her, it would be that one, but if it was her gateway to hell, ADT wasn’t going to be her alert system. Dematting to the kitchen, I look at the door and open my senses. There was nothing alive in that basement but there sure was a lot of pain coming from it. I dematerialize to the otherside of the door and flick on the stairwell light. The smell hits me immediately. The odor of death is distinctive. The odor of death by torture even more so. Blood, feces, spilled intestines, vomit….and the residual agony...I had to stop on the steps and take a deep breath to steel myself. I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, been on battlefields. But I never get used to this.

Jaw set grimly, I focus on the details of my surroundings to get me down the stairs. The walls are painted yellow concrete blocks, the ceiling exposed floor joists. The floor at the bottom of the stairs is smooth concrete. My eyes follow the slope of the concrete to the center drain, beginning to take in the blood and viscera still laying on the floor. She must have magicked the whole damned place to keep the smell down here. Nausea rises in my throat, but I force it down as my gaze rises to the table over the center drain. It’s a steel autopsy table, the kind sits on a pedestal and raises and lowers for the user's convenience. It has a sink attached to it and channels that run down the sides to let blood and body fluids drain away . But unlike standard autopsy tables this one also has straps attached. Ones for wrists, ankles and forehead as well as thicker ones that run over the chest and thighs. I guess Devina wanted options. Staked to the wall behind it is the mutilated body of a female. Early 30’s, blonde, fair skinned where the corpse wasn’t ripped open or stained with red. Before moving towards it, I flip another switch that lights the corners of the basement. I take in the empty cell in the corner. Makes sense. If she’s taking families she can’t work on them all at once and holding them immobile takes power she doesn’t have. And on the concrete wall that runs behind the staircase I see it. Instead of a well she’s created a wall this time. Faces frozen in agony are embedded along it. Male, female...children…

”Creator,” it’s a scream in my head “she did this to CHILDREN!” I can feel His pain, but the whisper enters my head “She has a part to play. She must live.”

I choke back an agonized cry and move towards the woman staked to the wall. Gently I close her already clouded eyes, murmuring “I’m sorry. I was too late for you and your family. But I’ll set you free.” I know she’s not in there anymore. She’s on that god damned wall. The body is just the alarm system. Devina will know if it’s moved. Well, I’ll get to that.

Moving to the wall, I let my wings become visible. The basement ceiling is too low for me to spread them fully, but I can feel the souls’ pain and terror. Going full angel will help calm them, I hope. The white light I normally suppress to a dim glow that can be at least partially explained by the light catching all my piercings is fully released to become a white light so brilliant it would burn the retina’s of a mortal.

“𒂼𒅈𒄄.” Release, in ancient Summarian, the language taught to humans by the angels. “Ama-ar-gi. Release,” I repeat it again and again as the souls gradually disengage from the wall and come to stand before me. Fathers, mothers...little ones, all confused and fearful. But even as they shimmer into existence, the rheapers come. I knew they would. As I serve the Creator, they serve Death. I help mortal souls find their way in life. They help souls move on and find their way once their mortal bodies can no longer serve them. And, like me, they’ve seen it all, but also like me, this sickens them. After the initial shock of pity passes, compassion settles on their faces as they begin to take the souls. Somehow they know which souls belong together and they take them as families.

After the last has gone, one rheaper remains. She’s small and dark-haired, her 5’3” frame barely reaching chest high on me, but she comes towards me, pounding her finger into my chest and hissing,

“They weren’t supposed to die yet! Take. Care. Of. This. Or we will.”

“I can’t. The Creator says she has to live. For at least a little longer.”

“Good thing we don’t answer to Him, then isn’t it? My boss doesn’t like waste of the life spark and this is incredible waste,” she shoots back at me. As I look at her, not a little shocked, she shrugs “What, you didn’t know? Everything dies. Even at the Creator’s level, there’s balance. Balance for Life is Death. Two sides of the same coin. So,” putting her hands on her hips and squaring off with me,” handle this before we do.”

“The demon has a part to play. I don’t like it, but I’m forbidden to kill her.” My frustration must be showing in my face, because she softens a little bit.

“Then get creative with it. Because the rheaper way won’t be creative. Just final.”

She disappears in front of me, a fine black mist swirling into nothing. ‘Get creative,’ she’d said. Biting my lip, an idea I really don’t like hits me, but one of the Creator’s early lessons pushes back on my initial rejection. ‘Being a deity often consists of doing things you don’t like.’ Yeah, this qualifies. With a sigh, I go to the body staked on the other wall and gently remove it, laying it on the autopsy table. The sudden drop in power when the souls were freed would have been enough to alert Davina there was trouble. At this point moving the female’s body was just respect for the dead. But I wouldn’t face the bitch over it.

As I go back up the stairs, I open the door to the kitchen and cross to take a seat at the table just as I hear the garage door go up. As she bursts through the door from the garage, she shrieks,

“YOU! What have you DONE?!!!!”

“Hello to you, too. Long time no see.” Everything in me wants to slam a lightning bolt through that glamored body just to see it twitch, but that’s not the plan. “You knew I’d still be looking for you. Did you really think hiding out in this hovel would be enough camouflage? You have a very distinct signature.”

“Those souls were MINE! They came to me freely. You had no RIGHT!” The last comes out as an angry wail and ok, I’m done with diplomacy. Rising from my chair I slam my hand thunderously on the table.

“I have EVERY right. You broke the rules. You took innocents…children. Babes in arms. You’re only allowed ones that have the ability to make their own choices.”

She glares at me, then crosses her arms and simpers, “The parents made their choices for them. Children have such power, You know, the more innocent the soul, the greater the energy. I’m short on that, thanks to you, so kids were a quick way to restore it. And the pain of the parents as they watched their brats die...it was sooo delicious. That kind of pain is almost as powerful as the kids' souls. So I’m stronger now than I was the last time we faced off. Whatcha’ going to do about it?”

Motherfucking bitch….Oh, so not getting away with that. Holding a hand out, I release a bolt of electricity that knocks her back against the refrigerator and spears through her body to pin her to it.

“What am I going to do about it?” I repeat. “I can do a lot of /very/ painful things to you Devina that won’t result in your --immediate-- death. You’ll just wish it did. I’m not that naive angel boy you once knew and betrayed. Deity-level upgrades come with deity-level thinking. And you aren’t strong enough to break free even from that,” nodding at the electric bindings holding her to the fridge, “Now are you? So I have a lot of pain in store for you. Maybe I”ll use your own autopsy table. But,” materializing a silver handled angel’s dagger, the blade flashing blue fire, “I think I’ll bring my own tools.”

The thing is, while I really would like to end Devina, torture isn’t my thing. It makes me wanna throw up. But ‘get creative’ the rheaper had said, so creative I was being. Devina doesn’t know what the kind of changes the Creator made with me when he agreed to bring me up to a deity, might have done to my psyche. In her fallen, psychotic brain the Creator is a cold, distant daddy figure capable of enjoying causing His children pain and she’s getting back at Him by embracing the dark side. So I can see the doubt growing in those dark eyes. She’s asking herself if I’m still the same egocentric, soft, gullible angel-boy toy she used and killed centuries ago or am I growing up in Daddy’s image? Have I turned into a being that is detached enough to use pain for my own ends? Thing is, I hope I am becoming more like the Creator. Because He’s nothing like what she thinks He is and nothing like who I used to be either. He’s just….more. But the doubt is good for my plan.

The energy trapping her against the refrigerator is doing its job. Not only is it keeping her immobilized, it’s sapping her strength enough that her true appearance is flickering through. Time to move to the next step. Calmly, I take the tip of my dagger and clean a nail with it before pointing it at her.

“You’re losing your mojo babe. Your face is showing. I don’t think all those creams and cosmetics are helpful for decayed, oozing skin.”

“OH!....Lassiter, please, don’t do this to me. To us. Remember what we were…”

Oh, I remember all right. In my nightmares. But this tact plays. I heave a sigh and look at her sadly, as though remembering something bittersweet.

“We did have some good times didn’t we. You were something special back then. We had something special.” Oh gag me, this is more likely to make me puke than torturing her. But she seizes on it.

“We did, yes, we did. Let me go, Lassiter and we can again. I never stopped loving you, I just got caught up in it all. It’s so dog-eat-dog on the dark side!”

Christ, how do I not kill her when she spews shit like this? But be creative. Creative. Think of it as an acting job. Ok… Sadly, I shake my head.

“Too much water has passed under that bridge for me to cross it again Devina. But…” pausing for effect, “for old times sake, maybe we could come to an agreement. Something that lets me not have to kill you.” Right now. Not have to kill you right now…. She makes a major effort to hold the glamour and pours a combination of pleading sensuality into her eyes that should have won her an Oscar.

“Oh, baby,” I cringe inwardly as she calls me ‘baby’, “I’m so sorry. But,” And there it is, the self-interest speaking…. “What kind of agreement did you have in mind?”

Bingo. Gotcha hooked. “If I let you go, you have to promise not to go after innocents. You have to leave them alone. And that includes their parents. And,people who are kind of lost, too. You can’t use that emo bonding thing with them to lure them in anymore.”

“But, but…,” she makes a pout, “what does that leave me with? I have to have /some/ leeway or I’ll die.”

And this is the part that irks me most. It goes against everything in me. But she’ll fuck it up, probably sooner that later and I won’t have to keep my end.

“Go back to trolling for your prey in bars. If they choose you, really choose you, you can keep them. You’ll have to work harder for it. A quick fuck in the backseat of the car isn’t going to be enough to get their souls. But if you can get them obsessed with you? You can keep them.”

“It will take me forever to restore myself that way!” It comes out as a wail but she’s almost there.

“It will take time,” I agree. “But meanwhile you won’t be stuck in suburbia living in a 1400 sq ft. dump. You can indulge yourself in the highlife again and I won’t hunt you. Think of it. A luxury loft, being able to wear Prada and Coach without blowing your image…think of the time it takes you to build back up as doing penance in the demonic equivalent of Club Fed. Payment for the innocents you took. All the perks, just a few restrictions. It’s the best I can offer you.”

“Fine,” she spits out, and I have to struggle to keep the uniquely male satisfaction of knowing that whenever a female says ‘fine’ it’s absolutely not fine but that she has no other options, off my face. “But you’re going to have to let me out of this restraint.” And then she coos “We’ll seal it with a kiss.”

Oh, hells no to that. “I’d rather we seal it with this.” Holding up my hand I materialize a contract containing everything we’ve talked about. And some very special wording. “You’ll sign it in your blood.” Laying the document on the counter, I release the energy restraints and grab her arm. Using the dagger I slice her arm as she howls in both pain and outrage, but not fast enough to do anything about it.

“Here. Use this. It’s appropriate.” My wings materialize and I bend one forward towards my hand. Managing to pluck a silvery secondary feather, I dip the tip in the blood running down her arm and hand it to her. “The magick in my feathers will make it doubly binding. Break the agreement and I’ll know. Immediately.”

If looks could kill, she’d be frying an angel right now. And with her, at full power, looks could. But she doesn’t have the juice right now and we both know it. She scrawls her name on the document and thrusts it at me, but drops the hand holding my feather. “Here. Take it.”

“Uh,uh uh...not so fast. I’ll take that feather back too.” Can’t let her keep it. No telling what kind of evil she’d use it to conjure up on me. Taking both feather and contract back, I step back from her and add, “You should have read the contract. In addition to specifying how you can attract souls it also specifies only /human/ souls.”

Dropping all pretense of cordiality now, I narrow my eyes at her. “I know you were imprisoned and I know how you were freed and by whom. Stick with taking the human souls agreed upon in the way we agreed upon and we don’t have a problem.” Until she breaks the contract. Then all bets are off. But one thing at a time.

“I’m going to make you pay for this Lassiter!” She yells as she grabs for the contract.

“Oh, please, bitch,” dematerializing contract and feather back to my room at the manse, “stop with the evil super-villain talk. It’s really cliche and Darkseid did it better.”

Walking to the door, I jerk it open, setting off the alarm system she’d neglected to turn off when she came in. As the earsplitting siren split the neighborhood quiet, I added...

“Oh, and if you want to avoid the police, I’d be vacating this place PDQ. I’ll be phoning in a dead body in the basement as soon as I’m out the door. Laters, babe.”

The resounding crash of what had to be the blender off the countertop hitting the door makes me chuckle as I dial 911.

“911? Yeah, I want to report a dead body….”

[stylesofh2o-a]

Name: Sung-Ho Park (Alias: Ja ki; Moon) Age: 20 Height: 5’10” Zodiac: Aquarius (Feb 2) Sexuality: Homosexual (closeted) Face claim: Tamaki Yotsuba from Idolish7 Occupation: Member of K-pop group REIGN; Aspiring Composer and Producer Likes: Cats, seaweed snacks, piano, sleeping in, aloe drinks, plums/plum-flavored things, lounge clothes, cold weather, documentaries and dramas, classical music Dislikes: Spiders/bugs, fruit scents, tight-fitting clothing, time restraints, being overlooked/ignored, predictable drama tropes in media, math, and hot weather 

Background: From the moment Sung-ho was brought into the world, his path in life was pre-decided. His mother had craved the limelight even after her retirement from the industry as a model and actress and pushed for Sung-ho’s success as a performer and musician. His father was a diplomat, often gone on his trips and with his multitude of pretty, young assistants in far off countries. His life was comfortable, living in a rather intimate neighborhood and never knowing what it was like to be without something. He craved big things because his mother had but worked hard to meet her never ending list of expectations. Often tired of her interventions, he doesn’t have the best relationship with his mother, but will continue to be by her side despite their differences. Sung-ho’s love for music stems from classical artists and soul. It began as a quiet love, something he’d admire on the screen, from the radio, or even from the street performers in the busy streets of the city. His mother tossed him into various lessons, hoping something would stick. Time and time again, he’d lose interest, having dropped dance, flute, guitar, violin, and even voice lessons. It wasn’t until lithe fingers hit ivory keys that something was ignited inside of him. Piano was his calling. While his dream in music seemed fleeting despite being deemed somewhat of a prodigy behind a piano, his mother pushed him into auditions for up and coming idol groups with the big industries in Seoul. He was recruited into an idol group with his best friend, Ha-Joon, the two taking to intensive trainings starting at the age of 13 in hopes of the “big break”. REIGN is what they called it and out of the many boy groups shuffled out into the industry, REIGN climbed to the top rather quickly while others failed time and time again. Sung-ho had polished his skills in dance and voice, but took to composing every moment he got. He worked closely with the producer that overlooked REIGN only to pitch ideas that would ultimately hold false promise. His songs were continuously shot down, often dismissed with the simple excuse that it wasn’t ‘fresh and new’. There’d come a time where Sung-ho had thought of giving up on composition all together, settling into the idea of retiring with his successes as an idol. Time went on and with it, Sung-ho’s love persisted. It itched beneath his skin, yearning for him to continue his real goal.

[this-shit-needs-documenting]

This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic

It’s not R.

ZEYNEP TUFEKCI  SEP 30, 2020

Updated at 1:17 p.m. ET on October 1, 2020

There’s something strange about this coronavirus pandemic. Even after months of extensive research by the global scientific community, many questions remain open.

Why, for instance, was there such an enormous death toll in northern Italy, but not the rest of the country? Just three contiguous regions in northern Italy have 25,000 of the country’s nearly 36,000 total deaths; just one region, Lombardy, has about 17,000 deaths. Almost all of these were concentrated in the first few months of the outbreak. What happened in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in April, when so many died so quickly that bodies were abandoned in the sidewalks and streets?* Why, in the spring of 2020, did so few cities account for a substantial portion of global deaths, while many others with similar density, weather, age distribution, and travel patterns were spared? What can we really learn from Sweden, hailed as a great success by some because of its low case counts and deaths as the rest of Europe experiences a second wave, and as a big failure by others because it did not lock down and suffered excessive death rates earlier in the pandemic? Why did widespread predictions of catastrophe in Japan not bear out? The baffling examples go on.

I’ve heard many explanations for these widely differing trajectories over the past nine months—weather, elderly populations, vitamin D, prior immunity, herd immunity—but none of them explains the timing or the scale of these drastic variations. But there is a potential, overlooked way of understanding this pandemic that would help answer these questions, reshuffle many of the current heated arguments, and, crucially, help us get the spread of COVID-19 under control.

By now many people have heard about R0—the basic reproductive number of a pathogen, a measure of its contagiousness on average. But unless you’ve been reading scientific journals, you’re less likely to have encountered k, the measure of its dispersion. The definition of k is a mouthful, but it’s simply a way of asking whether a virus spreads in a steady manner or in big bursts, whereby one person infects many, all at once. After nine months of collecting epidemiological data, we know that this is an overdispersed pathogen, meaning that it tends to spread in clusters, but this knowledge has not yet fully entered our way of thinking about the pandemic—or our preventive practices.

The now-famed R0 (pronounced as “r-naught”) is an average measure of a pathogen’s contagiousness, or the mean number of susceptible people expected to become infected after being exposed to a person with the disease. If one ill person infects three others on average, the R0 is three. This parameter has been widely touted as a key factor in understanding how the pandemic operates. News media have produced multiple explainers and visualizations for it. Movies praised for their scientific accuracy on pandemics are lauded for having characters explain the “all-important” R0. Dashboards track its real-time evolution, often referred to as R or Rt, in response to our interventions. (If people are masking and isolating or immunity is rising, a disease can’t spread the same way anymore, hence the difference between R0 and R.)

Unfortunately, averages aren’t always useful for understanding the distribution of a phenomenon, especially if it has widely varying behavior. If Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, walks into a bar with 100 regular people in it, the average wealth in that bar suddenly exceeds $1 billion. If I also walk into that bar, not much will change. Clearly, the average is not that useful a number to understand the distribution of wealth in that bar, or how to change it. Sometimes, the mean is not the message. Meanwhile, if the bar has a person infected with COVID-19, and if it is also poorly ventilated and loud, causing people to speak loudly at close range, almost everyone in the room could potentially be infected—a pattern that’s been observed many times since the pandemic begin, and that is similarly not captured by R. That’s where the dispersion comes in.

There are COVID-19 incidents in which a single person likely infected 80 percent or more of the people in the room in just a few hours. But, at other times, COVID-19 can be surprisingly much less contagious. Overdispersion and super-spreading of this virus are found in research across the globe. A growing number of studies estimate that a majority of infected people may not infect a single other person. A recent paper found that in Hong Kong, which had extensive testing and contact tracing, about 19 percent of cases were responsible for 80 percent of transmission, while 69 percent of cases did not infect another person. This finding is not rare: Multiple studies from the beginning have suggested that as few as 10 to 20 percent of infected people may be responsible for as much as 80 to 90 percent of transmission, and that many people barely transmit it.

This highly skewed, imbalanced distribution means that an early run of bad luck with a few super-spreading events, or clusters, can produce dramatically different outcomes even for otherwise similar countries. Scientists looked globally at known early-introduction events, in which an infected person comes into a country, and found that in some places, such imported cases led to no deaths or known infections, while in others, they sparked sizable outbreaks. Using genomic analysis, researchers in New Zealand looked at more than half the confirmed cases in the country and found a staggering 277 separate introductions in the early months, but also that only 19 percent of introductions led to more than one additional case. A recent review shows that this may even be true in congregate living spaces, such as nursing homes, and that multiple introductions may be necessary before an outbreak takes off. Meanwhile, in Daegu, South Korea, just one woman, dubbed Patient 31, generated more than 5,000 known cases in a megachurch cluster.

Unsurprisingly, SARS-CoV, the previous incarnation of SARS-CoV-2 that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, was also overdispersed in this way: The majority of infected people did not transmit it, but a few super-spreading events caused most of the outbreaks. MERS, another coronavirus cousin of SARS, also appears overdispersed, but luckily, it does not—yet—transmit well among humans.

This kind of behavior, alternating between being super infectious and fairly noninfectious, is exactly what k captures, and what focusing solely on R hides. Samuel Scarpino, an assistant professor of epidemiology and complex systems at Northeastern, told me that this has been a huge challenge, especially for health authorities in Western societies, where the pandemic playbook was geared toward the flu—and not without reason, because pandemic flu is a genuine threat. However, influenza does not have the same level of clustering behavior.

We can think of disease patterns as leaning deterministic or stochastic: In the former, an outbreak’s distribution is more linear and predictable; in the latter, randomness plays a much larger role and predictions are hard, if not impossible, to make. In deterministic trajectories, we expect what happened yesterday to give us a good sense of what to expect tomorrow. Stochastic phenomena, however, don’t operate like that—the same inputs don’t always produce the same outputs, and things can tip over quickly from one state to the other. As Scarpino told me, “Diseases like the flu are pretty nearly deterministic and R0 (while flawed) paints about the right picture (nearly impossible to stop until there’s a vaccine).” That’s not necessarily the case with super-spreading diseases.

Nature and society are replete with such imbalanced phenomena, some of which are said to work according to the Pareto principle, named after the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto’s insight is sometimes called the 80/20 principle—80 percent of outcomes of interest are caused by 20 percent of inputs—though the numbers don’t have to be that strict. Rather, the Pareto principle means that a small number of events or people are responsible for the majority of consequences. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has worked in the service sector, for example, where a small group of problem customers can create almost all the extra work. In cases like those, booting just those customers from the business or giving them a hefty discount may solve the problem, but if the complaints are evenly distributed, different strategies will be necessary. Similarly, focusing on the R alone, or using a flu-pandemic playbook, won’t necessarily work well for an overdispersed pandemic.

Hitoshi Oshitani, a member of the National COVID-19 Cluster Taskforce at Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and a professor at Tohoku University who told me that Japan focused on the overdispersion impact from early on, likens his country’s approach to looking at a forest and trying to find the clusters, not the trees. Meanwhile, he believes, the Western world was getting distracted by the trees, and got lost among them. To fight a super-spreading disease effectively, policy makers need to figure out why super-spreading happens, and they need to understand how it affects everything, including our contact-tracing methods and our testing regimes.

There may be many different reasons a pathogen super-spreads. Yellow fever spreads mainly via the mosquito Aedes aegypti, but until the insect’s role was discovered, its transmission pattern bedeviled many scientists. Tuberculosis was thought to be spread by close-range droplets until an ingenious set of experiments proved that it was airborne. Much is still unknown about the super-spreading of SARS-CoV-2. It might be that some people are super-emitters of the virus, in that they spread it a lot more than other people. Like other diseases, contact patterns surely play a part: A politician on the campaign trail or a student in a college dorm is very different in how many people they could potentially expose compared with, say, an elderly person living in a small household. However, looking at nine months of epidemiological data, we have important clues to some of the factors.

In study after study, we see that super-spreading clusters of COVID-19 almost overwhelmingly occur in poorly ventilated, indoor environments where many people congregate over time—weddings, churches, choirs, gyms, funerals, restaurants, and such—especially when there is loud talking or singing without masks. For super-spreading events to occur, multiple things have to be happening at the same time, and the risk is not equal in every setting and activity, Muge Cevik, a clinical lecturer in infectious diseases and medical virology at the University of St. Andrews and a co-author of a recent extensive review of transmission conditions for COVID-19, told me.

Cevik identifies “prolonged contact, poor ventilation, [a] highly infectious person, [and] crowding” as the key elements for a super-spreader event. Super-spreading can also occur indoors beyond the six-feet guideline, because SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing COVID-19, can travel through the air and accumulate, especially if ventilation is poor. Given that some people infect others before they show symptoms, or when they have very mild or even no symptoms, it’s not always possible to know if we are highly infectious ourselves. We don’t even know if there are more factors yet to be discovered that influence super-spreading. But we don’t need to know all the sufficient factors that go into a super-spreading event to avoid what seems to be a necessary condition most of the time: many people, especially in a poorly ventilated indoor setting, and especially not wearing masks. As Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, told me, given the huge numbers associated with these clusters, targeting them would be very effective in getting our transmission numbers down.

Overdispersion should also inform our contact-tracing efforts. In fact, we may need to turn them upside down. Right now, many states and nations engage in what is called forward or prospective contact tracing. Once an infected person is identified, we try to find out with whom they interacted afterward so that we can warn, test, isolate, and quarantine these potential exposures. But that’s not the only way to trace contacts. And, because of overdispersion, it’s not necessarily where the most bang for the buck lies. Instead, in many cases, we should try to work backwards to see who first infected the subject.

Because of overdispersion, most people will have been infected by someone who also infected other people, because only a small percentage of people infect many at a time, whereas most infect zero or maybe one person. As Adam Kucharski, an epidemiologist and the author of the book The Rules of Contagion, explained to me, if we can use retrospective contact tracing to find the person who infected our patient, and then trace the forward contacts of the infecting person, we are generally going to find a lot more cases compared with forward-tracing contacts of the infected patient, which will merely identify potential exposures, many of which will not happen anyway, because most transmission chains die out on their own.

The reason for backward tracing’s importance is similar to what the sociologist Scott L. Feld called the friendship paradox: Your friends are, on average, going to have more friends than you. (Sorry!) It’s straightforward once you take the network-level view. Friendships are not distributed equally; some people have a lot of friends, and your friend circle is more likely to include those social butterflies, because how could it not? They friended you and others. And those social butterflies will drive up the average number of friends that your friends have compared with you, a regular person. (Of course, this will not hold for the social butterflies themselves, but overdispersion means that there are much fewer of them.) Similarly, the infectious person who is transmitting the disease is like the pandemic social butterfly: The average number of people they infect will be much higher than most of the population, who will transmit the disease much less frequently. Indeed, as Kucharski and his co-authors show mathematically, overdispersion means that “forward tracing alone can, on average, identify at most the mean number of secondary infections (i.e. R)”; in contrast, “backward tracing increases this maximum number of traceable individuals by a factor of 2-3, as index cases are more likely to come from clusters than a case is to generate a cluster.”

Even in an overdispersed pandemic, it’s not pointless to do forward tracing to be able to warn and test people, if there are extra resources and testing capacity. But it doesn’t make sense to do forward tracing while not devoting enough resources to backward tracing and finding clusters, which cause so much damage.

Another significant consequence of overdispersion is that it highlights the importance of certain kinds of rapid, cheap tests. Consider the current dominant model of test and trace. In many places, health authorities try to trace and find forward contacts of an infected person: everyone they were in touch with since getting infected. They then try to test all of them with expensive, slow, but highly accurate PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests. But that’s not necessarily the best way when clusters are so important in spreading the disease.

PCR tests identify RNA segments of the coronavirus in samples from nasal swabs—like looking for its signature. Such diagnostic tests are measured on two different dimensions: Are they good at identifying people who are not infected (specificity), and are they good at identifying people who are infected (sensitivity)? PCR tests are highly accurate for both dimensions. However, PCR tests are also slow and expensive, and they require a long, uncomfortable swab up the nose at a medical facility. The slow processing times means that people don’t get timely information when they need it. Worse, PCR tests are so responsive that they can find tiny remnants of coronavirus signatures long after someone has stopped being contagious, which can cause unnecessary quarantines.

Meanwhile, researchers have shown that rapid tests that are very accurate for identifying people who do not have the disease, but not as good at identifying infected individuals, can help us contain this pandemic. As Dylan Morris, a doctoral candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton, told me, cheap, low-sensitivity tests can help mitigate a pandemic even if it is not overdispersed, but they are particularly valuable for cluster identification during an overdispersed one. This is especially helpful because some of these tests can be administered via saliva and other less-invasive methods, and be distributed outside medical facilities.

In an overdispersed regime, identifying transmission events (someone infected someone else) is more important than identifying infected individuals. Consider an infected person and their 20 forward contacts—people they met since they got infected. Let’s say we test 10 of them with a cheap, rapid test and get our results back in an hour or two. This isn’t a great way to determine exactly who is sick out of that 10, because our test will miss some positives, but that’s fine for our purposes. If everyone is negative, we can act as if nobody is infected, because the test is pretty good at finding negatives. However, the moment we find a few transmissions, we know we may have a super-spreader event, and we can tell all 20 people to assume they are positive and to self-isolate—if there are one or two transmissions, there are likely more, exactly because of the clustering behavior. Depending on age and other factors, we can test those people individually using PCR tests, which can pinpoint who is infected, or ask them all to wait it out.

Scarpino told me that overdispersion also enhances the utility of other aggregate methods, such as wastewater testing, especially in congregate settings like dorms or nursing homes, allowing us to detect clusters without testing everyone. Wastewater testing also has low sensitivity; it may miss positives if too few people are infected, but that’s fine for population-screening purposes. If the wastewater testing is signaling that there are likely no infections, we do not need to test everyone to find every last potential case. However, the moment we see signs of a cluster, we can rapidly isolate everyone, again while awaiting further individualized testing via PCR tests, depending on the situation.

Unfortunately, until recently, many such cheap tests had been held up by regulatory agencies in the United States, partly because they were concerned with their relative lack of accuracy in identifying positive cases compared with PCR tests—a worry that missed their population-level usefulness for this particular overdispersed pathogen.

To return to the mysteries of this pandemic, what did happen early on to cause such drastically different trajectories in otherwise similar places? Why haven’t our usual analytic tools—case studies, multi-country comparisons—given us better answers? It’s not intellectually satisfying, but because of the overdispersion and its stochasticity, there may not be an explanation beyond that the worst-hit regions, at least initially, simply had a few unlucky early super-spreading events. It wasn’t just pure luck: Dense populations, older citizens, and congregate living, for example, made cities around the world more susceptible to outbreaks compared with rural, less dense places and those with younger populations, less mass transit, or healthier citizenry. But why Daegu in February and not Seoul, despite the two cities being in the same country, under the same government, people, weather, and more? As frustrating at it may be, sometimes, the answer is merely where Patient 31 and the megachurch she attended happened to be.

Overdispersion makes it harder for us to absorb lessons from the world, because it interferes with how we ordinarily think about cause and effect. For example, it means that events that result in spreading and non-spreading of the virus are asymmetric in their ability to inform us. Take the highly publicized case in Springfield, Missouri, in which two infected hairstylists, both of whom wore masks, continued to work with clients while symptomatic. It turns out that no apparent infections were found among the 139 exposed clients (67 were directly tested; the rest did not report getting sick). While there is a lot of evidence that masks are crucial in dampening transmission, that event alone wouldn’t tell us if masks work. In contrast, studying transmission, the rarer event, can be quite informative. Had those two hairstylists transmitted the virus to large numbers of people despite everyone wearing masks, it would be important evidence that, perhaps, masks aren’t useful in preventing super-spreading.

Comparisons, too, give us less information compared with phenomena for which input and output are more tightly coupled. When that’s the case, we can check for the presence of a factor (say, sunshine or Vitamin D) and see if it correlates with a consequence (infection rate). But that’s much harder when the consequence can vary widely depending on a few strokes of luck, the way that the wrong person was in the wrong place sometime in mid-February in South Korea. That’s one reason multi-country comparisons have struggled to identify dynamics that sufficiently explain the trajectories of different places.

Once we recognize super-spreading as a key lever, countries that look as if they were too relaxed in some aspects appear very different, and our usual polarized debates about the pandemic are scrambled, too. Take Sweden, an alleged example of the great success or the terrible failure of herd immunity without lockdowns, depending on whom you ask. In reality, although Sweden joins many other countries in failing to protect elderly populations in congregate-living facilities, its measures that target super-spreading have been stricter than many other European countries. Although it did not have a complete lockdown, as Kucharski pointed out to me, Sweden imposed a 50-person limit on indoor gatherings in March, and did not remove the cap even as many other European countries eased such restrictions after beating back the first wave. (Many are once again restricting gathering sizes after seeing a resurgence.) Plus, the country has a small household size and fewer multigenerational households compared with most of Europe, which further limits transmission and cluster possibilities. It kept schools fully open without distancing or masks, but only for children under 16, who are unlikely to be super-spreaders of this disease. Both transmission and illness risks go up with age, and Sweden went all online for higher-risk high-school and university students—the opposite of what we did in the United States. It also encouraged social-distancing, and closed down indoor places that failed to observe the rules. From an overdispersion and super-spreading point of view, Sweden would not necessarily be classified as among the most lax countries, but nor is it the most strict. It simply doesn’t deserve this oversize place in our debates assessing different strategies.

Although overdispersion makes some usual methods of studying causal connections harder, we can study failures to understand which conditions turn bad luck into catastrophes. We can also study sustained success, because bad luck will eventually hit everyone, and the response matters.

The most informative case studies may well be those who had terrible luck initially, like South Korea, and yet managed to bring about significant suppression. In contrast, Europe was widely praised for its opening early on, but that was premature; many countries there are now experiencing widespread rises in cases and look similar to the United States in some measures. In fact, Europe’s achieving a measure of success this summer and relaxing, including opening up indoor events with larger numbers, is instructive in another important aspect of managing an overdispersed pathogen: Compared with a steadier regime, success in a stochastic scenario can be more fragile than it looks.

Once a country has too many outbreaks, it’s almost as if the pandemic switches into “flu mode,” as Scarpino put it, meaning high, sustained levels of community spread even though a majority of infected people may not be transmitting onward. Scarpino explained that barring truly drastic measures, once in that widespread and elevated mode, COVID-19 can keep spreading because of the sheer number of chains already out there. Plus, the overwhelming numbers may eventually spark more clusters, further worsening the situation.

As Kucharski put it, a relatively quiet period can hide how quickly things can tip over into large outbreaks and how a few chained amplification events can rapidly turn a seemingly under-control situation into a disaster. We’re often told that if Rt, the real-time measure of the average spread, is above one, the pandemic is growing, and that below one, it’s dying out. That may be true for an epidemic that is not overdispersed, and while an Rt below one is certainly good, it’s misleading to take too much comfort from a low Rt when just a few events can reignite massive numbers. No country should forget South Korea’s Patient 31.

That said, overdispersion is also a cause for hope, as South Korea’s aggressive and successful response to that outbreak—with a massive testing, tracing, and isolating regime—shows. Since then, South Korea has also been practicing sustained vigilance, and has demonstrated the importance of backward tracing. When a series of clusters linked to nightclubs broke out in Seoul recently, health authorities aggressively traced and tested tens of thousands of people linked to the venues, regardless of their interactions with the index case, six feet apart or not—a sensible response, given that we know the pathogen is airborne.

Perhaps one of the most interesting cases has been Japan, a country with middling luck that got hit early on and followed what appeared to be an unconventional model, not deploying mass testing and never fully shutting down. By the end of March, influential economists were publishing reports with dire warnings, predicting overloads in the hospital system and huge spikes in deaths. The predicted catastrophe never came to be, however, and although the country faced some future waves, there was never a large spike in deaths despite its aging population, uninterrupted use of mass transportation, dense cities, and lack of a formal lockdown.

It’s not that Japan was better situated than the United States in the beginning. Similar to the U.S. and Europe, Oshitani told me, Japan did not initially have the PCR capacity to do widespread testing. Nor could it impose a full lockdown or strict stay-at-home orders; even if that had been desirable, it would not have been legally possible in Japan.

Oshitani told me that in Japan, they had noticed the overdispersion characteristics of COVID-19 as early as February, and thus created a strategy focusing mostly on cluster-busting, which tries to prevent one cluster from igniting another. Oshitani said he believes that “the chain of transmission cannot be sustained without a chain of clusters or a megacluster.” Japan thus carried out a cluster-busting approach, including undertaking aggressive backward tracing to uncover clusters. Japan also focused on ventilation, counseling its population to avoid places where the three C’s come together—crowds in closed spaces in close contact, especially if there’s talking or singing—bringing together the science of overdispersion with the recognition of airborne aerosol transmission, as well as presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission.

Oshitani contrasts the Japanese strategy, nailing almost every important feature of the pandemic early on, with the Western response, trying to eliminate the disease “one by one” when that’s not necessarily the main way it spreads. Indeed, Japan got its cases down, but kept up its vigilance: When the government started noticing an uptick in community cases, it initiated a state of emergency in April and tried hard to incentivize the kinds of businesses that could lead to super-spreading events, such as theaters, music venues, and sports stadiums, to close down temporarily. Now schools are back in session in person, and even stadiums are open—but without chanting.

It’s not always the restrictiveness of the rules, but whether they target the right dangers. As Morris put it, “Japan’s commitment to ‘cluster-busting’ allowed it to achieve impressive mitigation with judiciously chosen restrictions. Countries that have ignored super-spreading have risked getting the worst of both worlds: burdensome restrictions that fail to achieve substantial mitigation. The U.K.’s recent decision to limit outdoor gatherings to six people while allowing pubs and bars to remain open is just one of many such examples.”

Could we get back to a much more normal life by focusing on limiting the conditions for super-spreading events, aggressively engaging in cluster-busting, and deploying cheap, rapid mass tests—that is, once we get our case numbers down to low enough numbers to carry out such a strategy? (Many places with low community transmission could start immediately.) Once we look for and see the forest, it becomes easier to find our way out.

* This article originally stated that, in April, coronavirus deaths spiked in Quito, Ecuador. In fact, they spiked in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

ZEYNEP TUFEKCI is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and an associate professor at the University of North Carolina. She studies the interaction between digital technology, artificial intelligence, and society.

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Here’s what you need to know:

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Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York at an elementary school in Brooklyn on Wednesday. The teachers’ union is trying to ramp up pressure on the mayor to delay or call off his plan to reopen schools.Credit…John Minchillo/Associated Press

Some teachers’ unions push to delay in-person learning, and more colleges go online only.

Educators and families around the United States continued to grapple this week with the complicated realities of opening schools in the middle of a pandemic, as teachers’ unions threatened strikes, colleges rethought reopening plans on the fly, and school districts, discovering new cases, improvised quarantines and classroom cleanings.

The voice of teachers in the reopening debate took center stage Wednesday in Michigan, where the Detroit Federation of Teachers voted to authorize their executive committee to call for a strike over plans to open public schools for in-person learning.

“It’s just simply not safe for us to return into our buildings and classrooms right now,” the union said in a video statement before the vote, noting more than 1,400 virus-related deaths in the community.

New York City’s powerful teachers’ union sought to ramp up pressure on the mayor on Wednesday to delay or call off his plan to reopen the city’s 1,800 schools on Sept. 10. The president of the United Federation of Teachers threatened to sue the city or to support a strike if the city could not satisfy a list of safety demands, and called for all students and staff members to be tested before school starts.

Public sector employees are legally barred from striking in New York, but teachers have threatened to hold sick-outs if they believe school buildings are not safe.

College-bound students were thrown a curve ball Wednesday when the College Board said that more than 178,000 students who signed up to take the SAT college admission test on Aug. 29 would probably not be able to do so because nearly half the testing sites in the nation are closed or operating at limited capacity. All told, some 402,000 students were scheduled to take the test that day.

The board said it was working with local officials to accommodate as many students as possible, and asking colleges to extend their deadlines for receiving test results so students could take the test at a later date.

Some colleges and universities were backtracking as outbreaks flared on just-reopened campuses.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill moved undergraduate classes entirely online because of four clusters of infections, and the University of Notre Dame said it would move to online instruction for at least the next two weeks to control a growing outbreak. And Michigan State University, which had planned to open Sept. 2 for in-person classes, announced that all undergraduates would be learning remotely.

Sorority and fraternity houses have had outbreaks. Photos and videos circulated widely on the internet show young people gathering maskless outside bars in college towns, or partying in large numbers.

In Georgia, where some K-12 school districts opened without a mask mandate, a number of high schools closed temporarily after outbreaks were discovered.

In Florida this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis compared the commitment of teachers and administrators to the resolve of Navy SEALs going after Osama bin Laden. The state has ordered all schools to offer in-person instruction by Aug. 31, except in hard-hit Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties.

Many students across the country will be starting school from home — and their parents will be getting little help. In a recent survey for The New York Times, just one in seven parents said their children would be returning to school full-time this fall, but four in five said they would have no in-person help educating and caring for the children at home.

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Local officials hid information about the outbreak from China’s leadership, a U.S. report finds.

A patient arriving at the Red Cross hospital in Wuhan, China, in January.Credit…Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Trump administration officials have tried taking a political sledgehammer to China over the pandemic, asserting that the Chinese Communist Party covered up the initial outbreak and allowed the virus to spread around the globe.

But within the United States government, intelligence officials have arrived at a more nuanced and complex finding of what Chinese officials did wrong in January, report Edward Wong, Julian E. Barnes and Zolan Kanno-Youngs.

Officials in Beijing were kept in the dark for weeks about the potential devastation of the virus by local officials in central China, according to American officials familiar with a new internal assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The assessment concluded that officials in the city of Wuhan and in Hubei Province, where the outbreak began late last year, tried to hide information from China’s central leadership. The finding is consistent with reporting by news organizations and with assessments by China experts of the country’s opaque governance system.

Local officials often withhold information from Beijing for fear of reprisal, current and former American officials say.

The new assessment does not contradict the Trump administration’s criticism of China, but adds perspective and context to actions — and inaction — that created the global crisis.

President Trump said in a July 4 speech at the White House that “China’s secrecy, deceptions and cover-up” enabled the pandemic, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted the administration was “telling the truth every day” about “the Communist cover-up of that virus.” The accusations dovetail with advice from Trump campaign strategists to look tough on China.

But the broad political messaging leaves an impression that Mr. Xi and other top officials knew of the dangers of the new coronavirus in the early days and went to great lengths to hide them.

The assessment, originally circulated in June, has classified and unclassified sections, and it represents the consensus of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. It still supports the overall notion that Communist Party officials hid important information from the world, U.S. officials said. And senior officials in Beijing, even as they were scrambling to pry data from officials in central China, played a role in obscuring the outbreak by withholding information from the World Health Organization.

But the finding adds to a body of evidence that shows how the malfeasance of local Chinese officials appeared to be a decisive factor in the spread of the virus within Wuhan and beyond.

An additional 135 million people globally will face acute hunger by the end of the year because of the pandemic.

A food distribution station in Coronationville, South Africa.Credit…Joao Silva/The New York Times

More than five months into the pandemic, dire predictions about how the virus will exacerbate world hunger are playing out across the globe.

In Latin America, the spread of the virus has caused nearly three times as many people to need food assistance. In West and Central Africa, the number of people faced with starvation has more than doubled. In Southern Africa, the number of people affected by food shortages has increased by 90 percent. A quarter of the adults in Britain are in search of affordable food. And in just the first three months of the pandemic, some six million people in the United States requested food stamps. These figures were presented in a report released this month from CARE, a nonprofit focused on poverty that estimates some 270 million people will face food crises by the end of the year.

In April, experts predicted that the number of people faced with the prospect of starving by the end of 2020 would nearly double globally from the previous year because of the pandemic. At the beginning of 2020, some 135 million people globally faced serious food shortages.

The world has experienced severe hunger crises before, but those were largely regional and caused by one factor or another — extreme weather, economic downturns, wars or political instability.

This hunger crisis, experts say, is global and is caused by a series of factors linked to the pandemic and the ensuing economic damages. National lockdowns and social-distancing measures have cost many people their jobs, leading to abrupt income loss for millions of people who were already living hand-to-mouth. And the battered economy has caused drops in oil prices, depleted funding revenues from tourism and halted foreign workers from sending earnings home.

U.S. ROUNDUP

‘I should have done masks earlier,’ New York’s Governor Cuomo says.

Only some New Yorkers wore masks at a bustling intersection in Crown Heights in Brooklyn in March.Credit…Jonah Markowitz for The New York Times

In a rare moment of admission, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York acknowledged at least one shortcoming in his handling of the coronavirus response: His administration should have mandated mask wearing sooner, he said on Wednesday.

“I should have done it earlier,” said Mr. Cuomo, who mandated face coverings in mid-April at the peak of the outbreak in New York, where more than 30,000 people have died from the virus. “I should have done masks earlier. That would have made a dramatic difference.”

Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, has mostly blamed the federal government for allowing the virus to spread unknowingly early on, even as he has been criticized for mishandling the outbreak in the state’s nursing homes and for failing to shut down businesses and schools earlier in March. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began urging all Americans to wear a mask in early April.

The governor also said that, early on, the government had failed to recognize that asymptomatic individuals could spread the disease. That mode of transmission has since been widely recognized.

“We were wrong that people who didn’t have symptoms could infect other people,” he said on WAMC, an Albany radio station. “That was just wrong. We spent months saying ‘You have to be sneezed on or coughed on.’ That was just wrong.”

Mr. Cuomo also suggested that he might allow movie theaters to reopen soon with limits on capacity. He recently announced that gyms and bowling alleys across the state, and museums in New York City, could start reopening this month.

On Tuesday, New York City released more than 1.46 million coronavirus antibody test results, the largest number to date, providing more evidence of how the virus penetrated deeply into some lower-income communities while passing more lightly across affluent parts of the city.

Elsewhere in the United States:

In Puerto Rico, where cases have been trending upward, Gov. Wanda Vázquez said she was imposing a lockdown that will apply on Sundays through Sept. 11. Violators of the island’s mask order will be subject to a $100 fine. A nightly curfew remains in effect. Under the new Sunday order, Puerto Ricans will be allowed to leave their homes that day for only a handful of reasons, like going to grocery stores, pharmacies or hospitals, or working in essential services. Alcohol sales will be banned and beaches closed. Though houses of worship will be allowed to remain open at 25 percent capacity, Ms. Vázquez urged that religious services be held online.

In California, the virus has only complicated officials’ efforts to deal with power outages, an oppressive heat wave and raging fires. Across the state, there were 23 major fires reported on Wednesday and more than 300 smaller ones. “We have to deal with a worldwide pandemic,” said Mark Ghilarducci, the director of the state’s office of emergency services. “In a fire season. With the power off. What else do you want from us?”

Apple reached $2 trillion in value, with half added in the past 21 weeks, while the global economy shrank faster than ever amid the pandemic.

The 4,600 midshipmen, or students, at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., began a mix of online and in-person classes on Wednesday, but not all of them will be on campus right away. About 500 students will be housed off campus because dormitory space has been set aside for those who may need to quarantine. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., which has more space, allowed all its cadets to be on campus when classes began Monday.

The University of Notre Dame in Indiana, which moved to online instruction after a surge of cases, said Wednesday that it was pausing football practice for at least a day “in an abundance of caution.” The announcement came less than a day after Notre Dame said that athletic activities would continue during the university’s two-week run of remote learning. The football team is scheduled to begin its season on Sept. 12.

Nevada reported on Wednesday that were 32 new deaths, a single-day record for the state.

A data reporting error in Iowa obscured the true rate of infection there.

Officials in Iowa are correcting a major reporting error in the state’s Covid-19 test results database after the state mislabeled test result dates for thousands of people, obscuring the true rate of infection.

Pat Garrett, a spokesman for Gov. Kim Reynolds, acknowledged the error in a statement on Wednesday, saying that the state had not recorded accurate data for people who had received multiple Covid-19 tests.

Rather than recording the date of a person’s most recent test, the state automatically recorded the result — whether positive or negative — as occurring on the date when the person was first tested.

Mr. Garrett said the state would update its public Covid-19 dashboard today with the corrected data. As a result, he said, nearly 80 percent of counties will see a net decrease in their current 14-day positivity rate, and the remaining counties will see their current 14-day positivity rates increase by less than 1 percent, on average.

The error came to public light this week after Dana Jones, a nurse practitioner in Iowa City, noticed irregularities in the state’s Covid-19 data and alerted the state and media outlets.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

South Africa’s virus response is floundering amid allegations of corruption and fraud.

South Africa’s relief effort has become a source of embarrassment for President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was elected on a platform of stamping out corruption.Credit…Pool photo by Jerome Delay

South Africa, Africa’s economic powerhouse, responded to the pandemic by announcing the largest relief effort in the country’s history.

But the undertaking has been dogged by allegations of widespread corruption and mismanagement, undermining confidence in a government that had initially received international acclaim for its response to the pandemic. The governing African National Congress party imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns and introduced a raft of social measures and an economic stimulus package to mitigate the devastating economic fallout.

That relief effort has now become a source of embarrassment for President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was elected on a platform of stamping out corruption. He has been forced to reassure the public that aid will be delivered, and that those aiming to profit from it — including members of his own party — would be punished.

The scandal, which has dominated airwaves and talk shows in recent weeks, includes allegations that government leaders and politically connected cronies have siphoned off money meant for the Unemployment Insurance Fund, and that local councilors have stymied food distribution efforts by policing deliveries.

“Never in our history have we seen such a huge request for food,” said Imtiaz Sooliman, the founder of Gift of Givers, a nongovernmental organization that has distributed relief for nearly three decades. “It’s not only a request, it’s a pleading, it’s a sobbing, it’s a crying.”

In other developments around the world:

The number of cases worldwide has passed 22 million, according to a New York Times database. More than 780,000 people have died.

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has tackled the virus by deploying his repressive security apparatus against it. Government officials are denouncing people who may have come into contact with the coronavirus as “bioterrorists,” intimidating doctors who question Mr. Maduro’s policies, and corralling thousands of Venezuelans who are streaming home after losing jobs abroad, holding them in makeshift containment centers.

The head of the organization responsible for approving vaccines in Germany expects the first doses of a coronavirus vaccine to be available in the country by the beginning of next year. On Tuesday, Germany recorded 1,510 new cases, according to a Times database, the country’s highest daily total since the beginning of May.

Pope Francis said on Wednesday that a vaccine should be made universally available, especially to the poor. The pandemic, he said, was a crisis that could help improve the world by leading it address the “social injustice, lack of equal opportunity and marginalization of the poor.” He said, “We must come out better.”

Finland announced that it would tighten restrictions on incoming travelers starting Monday. Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo said that travel from Iceland, Greece, Malta, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Cyprus, San Marino and Japan would be limited to essential trips, according to Reuters. Finland has some of the most severe travel restrictions in Europe and has recorded 7,805 cases, a relatively low number.

Britain announced a rapid expansion of one of its testing programs, which selects a random sample of the population regardless of symptoms. The survey, which currently tests 28,000 people every two weeks in England, will be expanded to all parts of the United Kingdom, and a new target has been set of testing 150,000 people every two weeks by October. At least 41,000 people have died in Britain, which has struggled in its efforts to track down those who have been exposed.

Nepal plans to reimpose a strict lockdown and curfew in the Kathmandu Valley for a week, the country’s news media reported. All movement except essential services will be restricted. Nepal has reported at least 4,300 cases in the past week, for a total of at least 28,000.

The Australian government has signed a deal with the drugmaker AstraZeneca to secure a potential vaccine, and promised to offer it free to its 25 million citizens if clinical trials were successful.

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Australia’s Prime Minister Announces Coronavirus Vaccine Deal

Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia signed a deal with the drugmaker AstraZeneca to manufacture a coronavirus vaccine and provide it free to 25 million Australians.

We’re here today to announce that we’ve signed a letter of intent with AstraZeneca which will enable Australia to access, should it be successful, the vaccine for Covid-19 here in Australia, manufactured here in Australia, distributed free to 25 million Australians, in the event that those trials prove successful. The next step in these arrangements is to see how those trials go, to complete the manufacturing agreements, and they are well advanced, and I feel very positive about those, and then to identify, as I said, other potential vaccine prospects that Australia can partner with. This particular vaccine, it’s an unproven technology so far, but the initial results are very positive in terms of both efficacy so the effectiveness of the vaccine will be trialled in larger groups of human trials over the coming months, but the efficacy in terms of developing antibodies against coronavirus has been shown to be true, as well as the safety in the Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia signed a deal with the drugmaker AstraZeneca to manufacture a coronavirus vaccine and provide it free to 25 million Australians.CreditCredit…Pool photo by Nick Moir

Los Angeles cuts power at influencers’ house after they threw large parties.

Bryce Hall, a resident of a Los Angeles mansion where the power was cut on Wednesday. Credit…Gotpap/Bauer-Griffin, via GC Images

The City of Los Angeles cut the power at a Hollywood Hills mansion rented by the TikTok stars Bryce Hall, Noah Beck and Blake Gray on Wednesday in response to parties held at the residence amid the coronavirus crisis.

Mr. Hall hosted a party for his 21st birthday on Aug. 14; footage from the event posted to Instagram shows dozens of people crowded together in one room. After neighbors called in noise complaints, the event was shut down by the Los Angeles Police Department.

That party took place at a rental home in Encino, not the Hollywood Hills home where the power was turned off on Wednesday, though Mr. Hall has hosted parties there, too. (Mr. Hall declined to comment for this article.)

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles mayor’s office confirmed that the city had cut the power at Mr. Hall’s residence. Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement that the city had been authorized to disconnect utilities, which include water and gas.

“Despite several warnings, this house has turned into a nightclub in the hills, hosting large gatherings in flagrant violation of our public health orders,” Mr. Garcetti said in the statement. “The city has now disconnected utilities at this home to stop these parties that endanger our community.”

A relief proposal by Republicans would provide less money than their previous offers.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, last week. Republicans are proposing a relief bill that would provide unemployed workers with an extra $300 per week.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Senate Republicans are circulating text of a narrow virus relief package that would spend less money, in fewer areas, than earlier offers, including reviving extra unemployment benefits at half the original rate.

The draft measure appears to be an effort to break through the political stalemate over providing another round of economic stimulus to Americans during the pandemic. And it comes at a time when rank-and-file lawmakers from both parties who are facing re-election have grown increasingly uneasy with the lack of congressional action.

The latest offer, however, is unlikely to alter the debate in Washington, where Democrats have repeatedly rejected previous Republican offers as insufficient.

Among the considerations in the new legislation is providing $105 billion for schools as students have begun returning to classes, and establishing liability protections — a longtime priority for the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — that Mr. Trump has dismissed as not essential.

But the proposal drops one of the few areas of bipartisan consensus from the original Republican plan and something Mr. Trump has said he wants to see: a second round of direct payments to low- and middle-income Americans.

It was not clear whether senators, currently scattered across the country until early September for the annual summer recess, will vote on the measure anytime soon.

Federal Reserve officials have emphasized the need for continuing economic assistance. Minutes from a meeting last month show that a major point of discussion was the importance of additional fiscal policy support — in other words, money from Congress — which Fed officials noted was “uncertain” in the short term.

The July 28-29 meeting took place just before government support programs lapsed, including enhanced unemployment benefits. More than two weeks later, it remains unclear whether and when additional government support for newly unemployed Americans and struggling businesses will materialize.

Ms. Pelosi called House members back early from their summer recess to vote Saturday on legislation addressing changes to the Postal Service and providing $25 billion to the beleaguered agency, and dozens of House lawmakers have signed on to a letter asking for a second vote on Saturday, on legislation that would revive the $600 weekly federal benefit.

A fishing boat carries direct evidence of immunity.

A fishing vessel that left Seattle in May returned with an unexpected catch: the first direct evidence in humans that antibodies to the coronavirus can thwart infection.

More than 100 crew members aboard the American Dynasty were stricken by the infection over 18 days at sea. But only three sailors, all of whom initially carried antibodies, remained virus-free, according to a new report.

Although the study is small, it addresses one of the most important questions in the pandemic: whether the immune response to one bout with the virus protects against reinfection.

“Knowing the answer to this question is critical for vaccine design and epidemiology,” tweeted Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and one of the study’s authors.

The American Dynasty carried 113 men and nine women. All crew members had been tested for both virus and antibodies as part of a routine screening before setting sail. (The researchers did not have access to the results from two members.)

The trawler returned to shore after 18 days at sea when a crew member became ill enough to need hospitalization. The sailors were tested for the presence of virus and antibodies again and for up to 50 days after their return.

The three sailors who were confirmed to carry neutralizing antibodies did not test positive for the virus during the course of the study; 103 of the remaining 117 became infected.

“Just looking at the numbers, it becomes clear that it’s unlikely that all of these three people were protected by chance,” said Florian Krammer, an immunologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

U.S. health officials announce nationwide sewage testing for the virus.

Federal health officials announced a nationwide plan on Monday to begin testing sewage for the virus, as a potential measure of where the virus is spreading and at what rate. Infected people can pass the virus in their feces, and scientists are able to detect its levels in samples of wastewater from local sewage treatment centers.

In a statement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that it “is currently developing a portal for state, tribal, local, and territorial health departments to submit wastewater testing data into a national database for use in summarizing and interpreting data for public health action.” The program is intended to complement other measures, like clinical testing, not to replace them, the statement read.

Public health workers have analyzed sewage to track other viral outbreaks, like polio, for decades. The technology has advanced to a stage where it can estimate levels of the virus, providing a rough read on the prevalence of infections in an entire community.

The new initiative came days after New York’s governor announced a $500,000 wastewater testing pilot that would begin with samples from Albany, Newburgh and Buffalo, as well as from Onondaga County. On Tuesday, New York City’s mayor said that the city was eager to participate as the program expanded.

“The city is especially well positioned to use this technology because of our infrastructure,” he said.

Fauci and others urged the F.D.A. to hold off emergency approval for plasma treatments.

Javier Alvarez donating his plasma at Houston Methodist Hospital in July, after his grandmother died from the virus.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Last week, just as the Food and Drug Administration was preparing to issue an emergency authorization for blood plasma as a Covid-19 treatment, a group of top federal health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, intervened, arguing that emerging data on the treatment was too weak, according to two senior administration officials.

The authorization is on hold for now as more data is reviewed, according to H. Clifford Lane, the clinical director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. An emergency approval could still be issued in the near future, he said.

Donated by people who have survived the disease, antibody-rich plasma is considered safe. President Trump has hailed it as a “beautiful ingredient” in the veins of people who have survived Covid-19.

But clinical trials have not proved whether plasma can help people fighting the coronavirus.

Several top health officials — led by Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, and including Dr. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Lane — urged their colleagues last week to hold off, citing recent data from the country’s largest plasma study, run by the Mayo Clinic. They thought the study’s data was not strong enough to warrant an emergency approval.

Plasma, the pale yellow liquid left over after blood is stripped of its red and white cells, has been the subject of months of intense enthusiasm from scientists, celebrities and Mr. Trump, part of the administration’s push for coronavirus treatments as a stopgap while pharmaceutical companies race to complete dozens of clinical trials for vaccines.

Reporting was contributed by Sarah Almukhtar, Peter Baker, Alan Blinder, Alexander Burns, Benedict Carey, Choe Sang-Hun, Lynsey Chutel, Emily Cochrane, Nick Corasaniti, Thomas Erdbrink, Richard Fausset, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Sheri Fink, Jacey Fortin, Katie Glueck, Joseph Goldstein, Jason Gutierrez, Anemona Hartocollis, Isayen Herrera, John Ismay, Mike Ives, Jennifer Jett, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Sharon LaFraniere, Taylor Lorenz, Apoorva Mandavilli, Alex Marshall, Jonathan Martin, Patricia Mazzei, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Nagourney, Jack Nicas, Elisabetta Povoledo, Frances Robles, Anna Schaverien, Christopher F. Schuetze, Eliza Shapiro, Jeanna Smialek, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Eileen Sullivan, Jim Tankersley, Sheyla Urdaneta, Noah Weiland and Elaine Yu.

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