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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months ago

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The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

In 2017, Equifax suffered the worst data-breach in world history, leaking the deep, nonconsensual dossiers it had compiled on 148m Americans and 15m Britons, (and 19k Canadians) into the world, to form an immortal, undeletable reservoir of kompromat and premade identity-theft kits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

Equifax knew the breach was coming. It wasn't just that their top execs liquidated their stock in Equifax before the announcement of the breach – it was also that they ignored years of increasingly urgent warnings from IT staff about the problems with their server security.

Things didn't improve after the breach. Indeed, the 2017 Equifax breach was the starting gun for a string of more breaches, because Equifax's servers didn't just have one fubared system – it was composed of pure, refined fubar. After one group of hackers breached the main Equifax system, other groups breached other Equifax systems, over and over, and over:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-password-username-admin-lawsuit-201118316.html

Doesn't this remind you of Boeing? It reminds me of Boeing. The spectacular 737 Max failures in 2018 weren't the end of the scandal. They weren't even the scandal's start – they were the tipping point, the moment in which a long history of lethally defective planes "breached" from the world of aviation wonks and into the wider public consciousness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737

Just like with Equifax, the 737 Max disasters tipped Boeing into a string of increasingly grim catastrophes. Each fresh disaster landed with the grim inevitability of your general contractor texting you that he's just opened up your ceiling and discovered that all your joists had rotted out – and that he won't be able to deal with that until he deals with the termites he found last week, and that they'll have to wait until he gets to the cracks in the foundation slab from the week before, and that those will have to wait until he gets to the asbestos he just discovered in the walls.

Drip, drip, drip, as you realize that the most expensive thing you own – which is also the thing you had hoped to shelter for the rest of your life – isn't even a teardown, it's just a pure liability. Even if you razed the structure, you couldn't start over, because the soil is full of PCBs. It's not a toxic asset, because it's not an asset. It's just toxic.

Equifax isn't just a company: it's infrastructure. It started out as an engine for racial, political and sexual discrimination, paying snoops to collect gossip from nosy neighbors, which was assembled into vast warehouses full of binders that told bank officers which loan applicants should be denied for being queer, or leftists, or, you know, Black:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

This witch-hunts-as-a-service morphed into an official part of the economy, the backbone of the credit industry, with a license to secretly destroy your life with haphazardly assembled "facts" about your life that you had the most minimal, grudging right to appeal (or even see). Turns out there are a lot of customers for this kind of service, and the capital markets showered Equifax with the cash needed to buy almost all of its rivals, in mergers that were waved through by a generation of Reaganomics-sedated antitrust regulators.

There's a direct line from that acquisition spree to the Equifax breach(es). First of all, companies like Equifax were early adopters of technology. They're a database company, so they were the crash-test dummies for ever generation of database. These bug-riddled, heavily patched systems were overlaid with subsequent layers of new tech, with new defects to be patched and then overlaid with the next generation.

These systems are intrinsically fragile, because things fall apart at the seams, and these systems are all seams. They are tech-debt personified. Now, every kind of enterprise will eventually reach this state if it keeps going long enough, but the early digitizers are the bow-wave of that coming infopocalypse, both because they got there first and because the bottom tiers of their systems are composed of layers of punchcards and COBOL, crumbling under the geological stresses of seventy years of subsequent technology.

The single best account of this phenomenon is the British Library's postmortem of their ransomware attack, which is also in the running for "best hard-eyed assessment of how fucked things are":

https://www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf

There's a reason libraries, cities, insurance companies, and other giant institutions keep getting breached: they started accumulating tech debt before anyone else, so they've got more asbestos in the walls, more sagging joists, more foundation cracks and more termites.

That was the starting point for Equifax – a company with a massive tech debt that it would struggle to pay down under the most ideal circumstances.

Then, Equifax deliberately made this situation infinitely worse through a series of mergers in which it bought dozens of other companies that all had their own version of this problem, and duct-taped their failing, fucked up IT systems to its own. The more seams an IT system has, the more brittle and insecure it is. Equifax deliberately added so many seams that you need to be able to visualized additional spatial dimensions to grasp them – they had fractal seams.

But wait, there's more! The reason to merge with your competitors is to create a monopoly position, and the value of a monopoly position is that it makes a company too big to fail, which makes it too big to jail, which makes it too big to care. Each Equifax acquisition took a piece off the game board, making it that much harder to replace Equifax if it fucked up. That, in turn, made it harder to punish Equifax if it fucked up. And that meant that Equifax didn't have to care if it fucked up.

Which is why the increasingly desperate pleas for more resources to shore up Equifax's crumbling IT and security infrastructure went unheeded. Top management could see that they were steaming directly into an iceberg, but they also knew that they had a guaranteed spot on the lifeboats, and that someone else would be responsible for fishing the dead passengers out of the sea. Why turn the wheel?

That's what happened to Boeing, too: the company acquired new layers of technical complexity by merging with rivals (principally McDonnell-Douglas), and then starved the departments that would have to deal with that complexity because it was being managed by execs whose driving passion was to run a company that was too big to care. Those execs then added more complexity by chasing lower costs by firing unionized, competent, senior staff and replacing them with untrained scabs in jurisdictions chosen for their lax labor and environmental enforcement regimes.

(The biggest difference was that Boeing once had a useful, high-quality product, whereas Equifax started off as an irredeemably terrible, if efficient, discrimination machine, and grew to become an equally terrible, but also ferociously incompetent, enterprise.)

This is the American story of the past four decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between "too rotten to stand" and "too big to care."

Remember last February, when we all discovered that there was a company called Change Healthcare, and that they were key to processing virtually every prescription filled in America? Remember how we discovered this? Change was hacked, went down, ransomed, and no one could fill a scrip in America for more than a week, until they paid the hackers $22m in Bitcoin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Change_Healthcare_ransomware_attack

How did we end up with Change Healthcare as the linchpin of the entire American prescription system? Well, first Unitedhealthcare became the largest health insurer in America by buying all its competitors in a series of mergers that comatose antitrust regulators failed to block. Then it combined all those other companies' IT systems into a cosmic-scale dog's breakfast that barely ran. Then it bought Change and used its monopoly power to ensure that every Rx ran through Change's servers, which were part of that asbestos-filled, termite-infested, crack-foundationed, sag-joisted teardown. Then, it got hacked.

United's execs are the kind of execs on a relentless quest to be too big to care, and so they don't care. Which is why their they had to subsequently announce that they had suffered a breach that turned the complete medical histories of one third of Americans into immortal Darknet kompromat that is – even now – being combined with breach data from Equifax and force-fed to the slaves in Cambodia and Laos's pig-butchering factories:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/data-stolen-healthcare-hack/index.html

Those slaves are beaten, tortured, and punitively raped in compounds to force them to drain the life's savings of everyone in Canada, Australia, Singapore, the UK and Europe. Remember that they are downstream of the forseeable, inevitable IT failures of companies that set out to be too big to care that this was going to happen.

Failures like Ticketmaster's, which flushed 500 million users' personal information into the identity-theft mills just last month. Ticketmaster, you'll recall, grew to its current scale through (you guessed it), a series of mergers en route to "too big to care" status, that resulted in its IT systems being combined with those of Ticketron, Live Nation, and dozens of others:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/ticketmaster-hack-data-breach.html

But enough about that. Let's go car-shopping!

Good luck with that. There's a company you've never heard. It's called CDK Global. They provide "dealer management software." They are a monopolist. They got that way after being bought by a private equity fund called Brookfield. You can't complete a car purchase without their systems, and their systems have been hacked. No one can buy a car:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/business/cdk-global-cyber-attack-update/index.html

Writing for his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tells the all-too-familiar story of how CDK Global filled the walls of the nation's auto-dealers with the IT equivalent of termites and asbestos, and lays the blame where it belongs: with a legal and economics establishment that wanted it this way:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-supreme-court-justice-is-why-you

The CDK story follows the Equifax/Boeing/Change Healthcare/Ticketmaster pattern, but with an important difference. As CDK was amassing its monopoly power, one of its execs, Dan McCray, told a competitor, Authenticom founder Steve Cottrell that if he didn't sell to CDK that he would "fucking destroy" Authenticom by illegally colluding with the number two dealer management company Reynolds.

Rather than selling out, Cottrell blew the whistle, using Cottrell's own words to convince a district court that CDK had violated antitrust law. The court agreed, and ordered CDK and Reynolds – who controlled 90% of the market – to continue to allow Authenticom to participate in the DMS market.

Dealers cheered this on: CDK/Reynolds had been steadily hiking prices, while ingesting dealer data and using it to gouge the dealers on additional services, while denying dealers access to their own data. The services that Authenticom provided for $35/month cost $735/month from CDK/Reynolds (they justified this price hike by saying they needed the additional funds to cover the costs of increased information security!).

CDK/Reynolds appealed the judgment to the 7th Circuit, where a panel of economists weighed in. As Stoller writes, this panel included monopoly's most notorious (and well-compensated) cheerleader, Frank Easterbrook, and the "legendary" Democrat Diane Wood. They argued for CDK/Reynolds, demanding that the court release them from their obligations to share the market with Authenticom:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-7th-circuit/1879150.html

The 7th Circuit bought the argument, overturning the lower court and paving the way for the CDK/Reynolds monopoly, which is how we ended up with one company's objectively shitty IT systems interwoven into the sale of every car, which meant that when Russian hackers looked at that crosseyed, it split wide open, allowing them to halt auto sales nationwide. What happens next is a near-certainty: CDK will pay a multimillion dollar ransom, and the hackers will reward them by breaching the personal details of everyone who's ever bought a car, and the slaves in Cambodian pig-butchering compounds will get a fresh supply of kompromat.

But on the plus side, the need to pay these huge ransoms is key to ensuring liquidity in the cryptocurrency markets, because ransoms are now the only nondiscretionary liability that can only be settled in crypto:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

When the 7th Circuit set up every American car owner to be pig-butchered, they cited one of the most important cases in antitrust history: the 2004 unanimous Supreme Court decision in Verizon v Trinko:

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-682

Trinko was a case about whether antitrust law could force Verizon, a telcoms monopolist, to share its lines with competitors, something it had been ordered to do and then cheated on. The decision was written by Antonin Scalia, and without it, Big Tech would never have been able to form. Scalia and Trinko gave us the modern, too-big-to-care versions of Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other tech baronies.

In his Trinko opinion, Scalia said that "possessing monopoly power" and "charging monopoly prices" was "not unlawful" – rather, it was "an important element of the free-market system." Scalia – writing on behalf of a unanimous court! – said that fighting monopolists "may lessen the incentive for the monopolist…to invest in those economically beneficial facilities."

In other words, in order to prevent monopolists from being too big to care, we have to let them have monopolies. No wonder Trinko is the Zelig of shitty antitrust rulings, from the decision to dismiss the antitrust case against Facebook and Apple's defense in its own ongoing case:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/073_2021.06.28_mtd_order_memo.pdf

Trinko is the origin node of too big to care. It's the reason that our whole economy is now composed of "infrastructure" that is made of splitting seams, asbestos, termites and dry rot. It's the reason that the entire automotive sector became dependent on companies like Reynolds, whose billionaire owner intentionally and illegally destroyed evidence of his company's crimes, before going on to commit the largest tax fraud in American history:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaire-robert-brockman-accused-of-biggest-tax-fraud-in-u-s-history-dies-at-81-11660226505

Trinko begs companies to become too big to care. It ensures that they will exponentially increase their IT debt while becoming structurally important to whole swathes of the US economy. It guarantees that they will underinvest in IT security. It is the soil in which pig butchering grew.

It's why you can't buy a car.

Now, I am fond of quoting Stein's Law at moments like this: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As Stoller writes, after two decades of unchallenged rule, Trinko is looking awfully shaky. It was substantially narrowed in 2023 by the 10th Circuit, which had been briefed by Biden's antitrust division:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/22-1164/22-1164-2023-08-21.html

And the cases of 2024 have something going for them that Trinko lacked in 2004: evidence of what a fucking disaster Trinko is. The wrongness of Trinko is so increasingly undeniable that there's a chance it will be overturned.

But it won't go down easy. As Stoller writes, Trinko didn't emerge from a vacuum: the economic theories that underpinned it come from some of the heroes of orthodox economics, like Joseph Schumpeter, who is positively worshipped. Schumpeter was antitrust's OG hater, who wrote extensively that antitrust law didn't need to exist because any harmful monopoly would be overturned by an inevitable market process dictated by iron laws of economics.

Schumpeter wrote that monopolies could only be sustained by "alertness and energy" – that there would never be a monopoly so secure that its owner became too big to care. But he went further, insisting that the promise of attaining a monopoly was key to investment in great new things, because monopolists had the economic power that let them plan and execute great feats of innovation.

The idea that monopolies are benevolent dictators has pervaded our economic tale for decades. Even today, critics who deplore Facebook and Google do so on the basis that they do not wield their power wisely (say, to stamp out harassment or disinformation). When confronted with the possibility of breaking up these companies or replacing them with smaller platforms, those critics recoil, insisting that without Big Tech's scale, no one will ever have the power to accomplish their goals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

But they misunderstand the relationship between corporate power and corporate conduct. The reason corporations accumulate power is so that they can be insulated from the consequences of the harms they wreak upon the rest of us. They don't inflict those harms out of sadism: rather, they do so in order to externalize the costs of running a good system, reaping the profits of scale while we pay its costs.

The only reason to accumulate corporate power is to grow too big to care. Any corporation that amasses enough power that it need not care about us will not care about it. You can't fix Facebook by replacing Zuck with a good unelected social media czar with total power over billions of peoples' lives. We need to abolish Zuck, not fix Zuck.

Zuck is not exceptional: there were a million sociopaths whom investors would have funded to monopolistic dominance if he had balked. A monopoly like Facebook has a Zuck-shaped hole at the top of its org chart, and only someone Zuck-shaped will ever fit through that hole.

Our whole economy is now composed of companies with sociopath-shaped holes at the tops of their org chart. The reason these companies can only be run by sociopaths is the same reason that they have become infrastructure that is crumbling due to sociopathic neglect. The reckless disregard for the risk of combining companies is the source of the market power these companies accumulated, and the market power let them neglect their systems to the point of collapse.

This is the system that Schumpeter, and Easterbrook, and Wood, and Scalia – and the entire Supreme Court of 2004 – set out to make. The fact that you can't buy a car is a feature, not a bug. The pig-butcherers, wallowing in an ocean of breach data, are a feature, not a bug. The point of the system was what it did: create unimaginable wealth for a tiny cohort of the worst people on Earth without regard to the collapse this would provoke, or the plight of those of us trapped and suffocating in the rubble.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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blueiscoool · 3 months ago

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Roman Coin Hoard From Reign of Nero Found in U.K.

A hoard of gold and silver Roman coins dating back to the reign of Emperor Nero have been found during building works in Worcestershire.

The treasure, consisting of 1,368 Iron Age and Roman coins, includes the largest collection from the emperor's reign ever found.

Worcestershire Heritage, Art & Museums said the hoard was discovered in the Leigh and Bransford area, west of Worcester, in late 2023.

It is expected to be valued at more than £100,000.

Experts from the charity said the find was "one of the most important archaeological discoveries in Worcestershire in the last 100 years".

Most of the coins are silver denarii, minted in Rome and dating from the time of the Roman Republic in 157 BC up to Nero's reign between AD 54–68.

The sole gold coin is an Iron Age stater, which was minted for the local British tribe, the Dobunni, who were in the area now known as Worcestershire and neighbouring counties to the south and west in AD 20–45.

Dr Murray Andrews, lecturer in British archaeology at University College London, said the discovery was "remarkable".

"It's the most miraculous thing I've seen over the last 100 years," he said. "It's an important piece of archaeology.

"It tells us about what was happening here 2000 years ago, when the Malvern hills were maybe the boundary of the Roman Empire."

One expert theory is that the hoard represents the savings of a wealthy local farmer, who made his money by supplying the Roman army with grain and livestock.

The sheer number of coins meant that the hoard would have represented a "very considerable sum of cash" at the time it was buried, the expert said.

It is likely that the pot containing the coins was made at one of the pottery kilns based at the foot of the Malvern Hills.

After the hoard was declared as treasure by a Worcestershire coroner in June 2024, Worcestershire Heritage, Art & Museums said it was aiming to help raise funds to buy the hoard so that it can go on public display.

It aims to raise £6,000, and hopes the remainder of the cost will be met through grant-funding applications.

If the money cannot be raised, the hoard will be returned to its finders or the landowner and may not ever go on public display.

Chair of Worcestershire County Council's joint museums committee, Karen May, said: “What a fantastic find and so important for anyone wishing to understand more about the county’s heritage.

"This is real Worcestershire treasure, and it needs to be seen and enjoyed by Worcestershire residents for generations to come.”

The hoard is the third to have been found in the area in the past 25 years.

In 1999, 434 silver coins and 38 shards of pottery were found near Chaddesley Corbett.

In a much larger find, two detectorists from Redditch found a clay pot full of 3,784 coins on Bredon Hill in 2011.

By Will Jefford.

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purrpleluv · 2 months ago

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Sending him letters:

**Yes, he can receive international mails too! 💚**

- Mail must have his full name (Luigi Nicholas Mangione) and register number (52503-511).

- Mail will be opened and inspected by staff, so content must be kept appropriate or else it will be rejected. Do not talk about the incident. Talk to him like a friend.

These suggestions are collected from @renegadeforjustice (TikTok):

- Use plain paper.

- Use plain black/blue pen or pencil.

- Greeting cards can be included but they have to be as simple as possible (one piece of folded paper without any layer, embossing, glitter, or other extra material).

- Puzzles like crossword and sudoku can also be sent. Make sure to include the answers in a separate paper.

- Mail can include multiple pages.

- If you are not comfortable using your real name, you can use a pen name instead (just make sure it is a simple one with a first and last name).

Sending him packages:

From bop.gov:

“Inmates are not allowed to receive packages from home without prior written approval from the inmate's unit team or authorized staff member at the institution. The only packages an inmate may receive from home are those containing release clothing and authorized medical devices. However, inmates may receive magazines, hard and paperback books directly from the publisher.”

More information from Policy on Incoming Publications:

"At all Bureau institutions, an inmate may receive hardcover publications and newspapers only from the publisher, from a book club, or from a bookstore.”

“At medium security, high security, and administrative institutions, an inmate may receive softcover publications (for example, paperback books, newspaper clippings, magazines, and other similar items) only from the publisher, from a book club, or from a bookstore."

- Books, magazines, and newspapers can only be sent to him by the publisher/bookstore/book club themselves. You cannot mail it to him yourself. When ordering, put Luigi as the recipient.

- If you are going to use Amazon to send him books, there is a “send as a gift” button below the cart that you can click if you want to include a message to him as well.

Sending money to his commissary account:

To deposit money into his commissary account, you can choose from 3 options:

1.) MoneyGram

You'll need the following information:

Account Number: 52503511MANGIONE

Company Name: Federal Bureau of Prisons

City & State: Washington, DC

Receive Code is always: 7932

Beneficiary: Luigi Nicholas Mangione

a. At a MoneyGram location

Locate the nearest agent by calling 1-800-926-9400 or visiting: www.moneygram.com.

You'll need to complete a MoneyGram ExpressPayment Blue Form (see a sample form).

You can pay with cash.

b. Online

Please visit https://www.moneygram.com/mgo/us/en/paybills and enter the receive code 7932 or Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Enter the Receive Code (7932) and the amount you are sending (up to $300).

First time users will have to set up a profile and account.

A MasterCard or Visa credit card is required.

2.) Western Union

You'll need the following information:

Account Number: 52503511MANGIONE

Attention Line: Luigi Nicholas Mangione

Code City is always: FBOP, DC

a. Online

Please visit www.send2corrections.com

A credit/debit card will be required to complete a payment online.

You can also initiate a payment via mobile app and pay later with cash or payment card, at a Western Union agent location.

b. At a Western Union location

Locate the nearest agent by using our agent locator or by calling 1-800-325-6000.

You can pay with cash. Debit cards are accepted at select locations.

c. Over the phone

Call 1-800-634-3422 and choose option 2.

A credit/debit card will be required.

d. Via Send2Corrections mobile application

Search "Send2Corrections" in the Apple App Store (Apple iOS) or the Google Play Store (Android devices).

3.) Using mail

For detailed information, click on this link.

Information is extracted from bop.gov. Please visit the site if you need any confirmation.

💚F💚R💚E💚E💚💚💚💚L💚U💚I💚G💚I💚

#luigi mangione #luigimangione #luigi #healthcare #healthinsurance

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darkmaga-returns · 2 months ago

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You hear it all the time. The illegals do the work no one else is willing to do for the wages offered. They do the work no one else will do. They are hardworking people. Citizens cannot have both welfare and a job. Illegals can and do. Illegals avoid the payroll tax and collect cash under the table. Then they go to the welfare office and for some unknown reason they are able to collect welfare even though they are not citizens.

They can receive welfare on behalf of a US born baby. Anchor babies get them a visa and welfare. But they can still work jobs for cash. Several million illegal immigrants also have work authorization (e.g. DACA, TPS, and some asylum applicants) allowing receipt of the EITC.

“54 percent of households headed by immigrants — naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal immigrants — used one or more major welfare program. This compares to 39 percent for U.S.-born households.” If the government knows where they are and who they are and that they are illegal, why are they giving them welfare instead of deporting them? Well in most cases they simply lie which is not hard to do and isn’t policed. They can lie to the employer and say they are illegal when they are not so they can get cash under the table but still go collect welfare. Or they can be illegal and still get state welfare and welfare like SNAP and emergency care. They will call an ambulance and go to the ER even though it is not an emergency because that care is covered.

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atcuality3 · 2 months ago

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Redefine Learning with Interactive AR Solutions

Education and training are rapidly evolving with the advent of Augmented Reality. At Atcuality, we offer Augmented Reality Development Services that bring learning to life. Imagine students exploring a virtual solar system or employees undergoing hands-on training in a simulated environment. AR solutions make complex concepts easier to understand and enhance retention rates across industries. From corporate training modules to educational apps, our AR applications are designed to be intuitive, engaging, and impactful. Join the AR revolution and empower your audience with tools that make learning an unforgettable experience.

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atcuality1 · 3 months ago

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Secure and Scalable Cloud Server Management at Atcuality

For businesses seeking to enhance scalability and maintain top-tier security, Atcuality provides unparalleled cloud server management services. Our solutions cover all aspects of cloud server maintenance, including load balancing, patch management, data backups, and disaster recovery planning. Our experienced professionals work with cutting-edge tools to ensure that your servers are secure, efficient, and scalable to meet changing business needs. Whether you operate in e-commerce, finance, or technology, we tailor our services to align with your operational goals. With Atcuality as your trusted partner, you can focus on driving growth while we handle the technical complexities of cloud management.

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atcuality5 · 1 month ago

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Empowering Businesses with AR Technology - Atcuality

Atcuality is at the forefront of innovation, delivering Augmented Reality Development Services that empower businesses to achieve more. By integrating AR into your operations, you can revolutionize product demonstrations, training sessions, and customer engagement strategies. Our solutions are designed to provide real-time interactivity, allowing users to visualize and interact with digital elements in their physical environments. Whether you need AR for retail, gaming, or enterprise applications, we tailor our services to meet your specific goals. With a focus on creativity and functionality, we ensure that your AR solutions not only meet but exceed expectations. Discover how Atcuality can help you unlock new dimensions of growth with AR technology.

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kapittx · 3 months ago

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Best Practices for Efficient Cash Application: Leveraging AI for Superior Results

Efficient cash application management is a critical process for any business, as it directly impacts financial health, operational productivity, and customer relationships. An effective cash application process, also known as payment processing, ensures accurate allocation of incoming payments, quick reconciliation, and minimal errors. However, traditional methods often lead to inefficiencies, disputes, and even severe cash flow problems. With advancements in technology, AI-powered cash application processes and cash application automation software have transformed how businesses manage payment reconciliation, enabling faster, more accurate outcomes.

What is the Cash Application Process?

The cash application process involves applying incoming payments to the corresponding invoices in the accounts receivable system. Payments can take various forms, including checks, electronic transfers, credit cards, or cash. The primary goals are:

To deposit received funds promptly into the company’s bank account.

To accurately match payments to the corresponding invoices or accounts.

This process is vital for maintaining accurate records, reducing receivables clutter, and ensuring seamless customer interactions. However, mismanagement can cause delays, disputes, and inefficiencies.

The Importance of an Efficient Cash Application Process

Cash application is a critical component of accounts receivable management, directly impacting a company’s cash flow, customer relationships, and overall financial health. An efficient cash application process not only minimizes unapplied payments and reduces errors but also streamlines operations, ensuring smooth financial workflows. Conversely, inefficiency in this process can lead to several significant issues.

Benefits of an Efficient Cash Application Process

1. Minimized Unapplied Payments: An efficient cash application process ensures that incoming payments are promptly and accurately matched with the corresponding invoices. This minimizes unapplied payments, where funds are received but not allocated to specific customer accounts, leading to a clearer financial picture.

2. Reduced Errors: Automation and systematic approaches in cash application significantly reduce the likelihood of errors. By minimizing human intervention, businesses can ensure that payments are applied correctly, reducing the risk of misallocations and financial discrepancies.

3. Streamlined Operations: With an efficient process in place, businesses can streamline their financial operations. This includes faster processing times, improved accuracy, and better coordination between departments, all of which contribute to smoother overall workflows.

4. Improved Cash Flow: Timely and accurate application of cash payments directly impacts a company’s cash flow. Efficient cash application ensures that funds are available for use more quickly, enhancing operational liquidity and financial stability.

5. Enhanced Customer Relationships: Accurate and timely cash application fosters trust and reliability in customer relationships. Customers appreciate prompt acknowledgment of their payments, which reflects positively on the business and strengthens customer loyalty.

Improved Accuracy

AI technologies significantly reduce human errors by automatically matching payments to the correct accounts based on remittance data. Traditional, manual processes are prone to mistakes due to human oversight, such as entering wrong amounts, misplacing payments, or failing to match payments to the right invoices. AI-powered systems, on the other hand, use machine learning and pattern recognition to ensure that every payment is accurately allocated. This precision helps in maintaining accurate financial records and avoids the costly mistakes that manual processes often incur.

Faster Processing Times

One of the most substantial benefits of AI-powered cash application is the ability to handle large volumes of payments swiftly. Automated systems process payments faster than human capabilities, significantly reducing the time it takes to reconcile accounts. This speed ensures minimal backlogs and enables the AR team to focus on more strategic tasks. For businesses handling thousands of transactions daily, the improvement in processing time can be a game-changer, leading to enhanced operational efficiency and productivity.

Enhanced Cash Flow Management

By speeding up the payment processing, AI-powered systems contribute to better cash flow management. Quick and accurate reconciliation means that businesses have a clearer and more immediate picture of their financial standing. This timely insight is crucial for maintaining liquidity, which allows companies to meet their short-term obligations, invest in growth opportunities, and reduce the need for short-term borrowing. Enhanced cash flow management also helps in better financial planning and forecasting, providing a solid foundation for strategic decision-making.

Customer Satisfaction

Accurate and timely postings are essential for maintaining good customer relationships. AI-powered cash application systems reduce the likelihood of misapplied payments and discrepancies, which are common sources of customer disputes. When customers see that their payments are processed correctly and their accounts reflect accurate information, it builds trust and confidence in the business. Satisfied customers are more likely to remain loyal and continue their business relationships, which is beneficial for long-term profitability and growth.

Best Practices for Cash Application Process and Payment Processing

1. Implement Auto-Cash Technology

AI Powered Cash Application software or Auto-cash systems like Kapittx use advanced algorithms to automatically match payments to invoices. This technology offers several benefits:

Increased Accuracy: By reducing human error, auto-cash systems ensure that payments are accurately allocated to the correct invoices.

Reduced Manual Effort: Automation minimizes the need for manual data entry and reconciliation, allowing your AR team to focus on more strategic tasks.

Improved Auto-Cash Hit Rates: With higher matching percentages, auto-cash technology ensures that a larger proportion of payments are accurately applied without manual intervention.

To implement auto-cash technology effectively:

Choose a robust auto-cash system that integrates seamlessly with your existing AR software.

Regularly update and maintain your customer payment data to ensure the system has accurate information.

Train your AR team to understand the system’s functionalities and handle exceptions efficiently.

2. Follow Customer Instructions

Compliance with customer remittance advice is crucial for accurate payment application. Remittance advice provides detailed information about which invoices a payment is intended to cover, ensuring correct allocation.

To follow customer instructions effectively:

Automate Remittance Processing: Use software that can automatically capture and process remittance advice from various formats, such as email, paper, or electronic data interchange (EDI).

Double-Check Allocations: Implement checks and balances to verify that payments are applied according to customer instructions before finalizing transactions.

Communicate Clearly: Maintain open communication with customers to clarify any ambiguities in their remittance advice.

3. Handle Discrepancies Promptly

Prompt handling of payment discrepancies is essential to avoid backlogs and ensure smooth cash flow. Here’s how to manage discrepancies effectively:

Write Off Small Discrepancies: Establish thresholds for writing off minor discrepancies to streamline the reconciliation process. This allows your team to focus on resolving significant issues.

Prioritize Significant Issues: Develop a systematic approach for identifying and resolving larger discrepancies. This includes investigating the root cause and taking corrective actions.

Regular Audits: Conduct regular audits to identify recurring discrepancies and implement measures to prevent them in the future.

4. Leverage Imaging Tools

Digital imaging tools can expedite the resolution of payment discrepancies and improve accessibility. By digitizing payment and remittance documents, businesses can enhance their cash application process.

Speed Up Resolution: Digital images of payments and remittances allow for faster identification and resolution of discrepancies, as they can be quickly accessed and reviewed.

Improve Accessibility: Store digital images in a centralized system that can be accessed by authorized personnel, facilitating better collaboration and transparency.

Automate Data Extraction: Use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to automatically extract data from digital images, reducing manual data entry and errors.

5. Invest in Training and Specialization

Equipping your AR team with the necessary skills and knowledge is crucial for handling unapplied and unidentified cash effectively.

Regular Training: Provide ongoing training programs to keep your team updated on the latest tools, technologies, and best practices in cash application.

Specialized Roles: Assign specialized roles within your AR team to handle specific aspects of the cash application process, such as resolving discrepancies or managing customer communications.

Knowledge Sharing: Foster a culture of knowledge sharing and continuous improvement within your team to leverage collective expertise and experience.

6. Monitor Key Metrics

Tracking key metrics allows businesses to continuously improve their cash application process. Important metrics to monitor include:

Payment Volume: Keep track of the number and value of payments processed to understand workload and performance trends.

Unapplied Cash Value: Measure the value of payments that remain unapplied to identify inefficiencies and areas for improvement.

Auto-Cash Hit Rates: Monitor the percentage of payments automatically matched to invoices to assess the effectiveness of your auto-cash system.

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO): Track DSO to gauge how quickly your business is collecting payments and identify opportunities to accelerate cash flow.

To monitor these metrics effectively:

Implement Dashboards: Use real-time dashboards to visualize key metrics and track performance against predefined targets.

Regular Reviews: Conduct regular reviews of your cash application metrics to identify trends, challenges, and opportunities for improvement.

Benchmarking: Compare your performance with industry benchmarks to understand how your cash application process measures up and identify best practices.

The Role of Cash Application Automation Software

Modern cash application automation software enhances efficiency by incorporating AI and machine learning capabilities. These systems:

Automate repetitive tasks like matching payments to invoices.

Analyze patterns to improve accuracy and hit rates over time.

By integrating with ERP they significantly improve payment reconciliation productivity.

Case Studies examples : How Automation Transformed Cash Application

Case 1: Manufacturing Industry

An equipment manufacturer faced significant challenges with unapplied cash exceeding $2 million. By implementing AI-powered cash application processes, the company achieved:

Increased operational efficiency, saving thousands in labor costs.

Reduction of unapplied cash from $2 million to $400,000 in six months.

An auto-cash hit rate improvement from 65% to 90%.

Case 2: Medical Equipment Company

A medical devices firm struggled with misapplied payments leading to cash flow disruptions. After adopting cash application automation software:

Cash flow improved, enabling reinvestment in revenue growth.

Open credit memos reduced from 1,200 to 300 within a year.

Customer disputes dropped by 75%, enhancing satisfaction.

Benefits of AI Powered Cash Application Software or Payment Reconciliation Software

AI Powered Cash Application Software or Payment reconciliation software plays a crucial role in automating and streamlining cash application management. Key advantages include:

Reduced Errors: Automated matching eliminates human error.

Real-Time Insights: Provides a clear view of receivables for better decision-making.

Scalability: Supports businesses as they grow, handling higher payment volumes effortlessly.

Step-by-Step Guide to an Efficient Cash Application Process

Collect Payments: Deposit incoming funds promptly to optimize cash flow.

Match Payments: Use remittance advice and auto-cash tools for accurate allocation.

Reconcile Accounts: Regularly check for unapplied or misapplied payments and address them.

Resolve Discrepancies: Communicate with customers to clarify unclear remittance advice.

Analyze and Optimize: Continuously improve processes by tracking metrics and refining automation algorithms.

Learn More:

Conclusion

An efficient cash application process is essential for maintaining healthy cash flow, improving customer satisfaction, and optimizing operational efficiency. By leveraging AI-powered cash application processes, businesses can overcome common challenges, reduce errors, and achieve seamless payment reconciliation. Investing in modern cash application automation software and payment reconciliation software is no longer optional—it’s a necessity in today’s competitive landscape.

Start transforming your cash application management today with Kapittx by integrating advanced technology and best practices to unlock unparalleled efficiency and accuracy.

#cash application process #cashflow management #AR collection #ai in accounts receivable #ar management #payment reminder #ar automation solution #ai based accounts receivable

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maybe-moonchild · 7 months ago

Text

CHAPTER 1

summary: In which a spilt drink leads to a very awkward reunion and a drunken piece of pizza. WC: 6.3k ﾟ ⋆ ﾟ ☂︎ ⋆ ﾟ

The surface of the bar is tacky under your forearms from spilled beer and mixed drinks. You lean up against the surface as others bump into your back, half listening to Aaron's non-stop rambling about the job his uncle set him up at. His company was fine- one of Flash's basketball buddies from high school remembered for being obnoxious in your junior english class. You're barely paying attention and more preoccupied with trying to get the bartender's attention. At least then you would be able to escape the sweaty bodies pressed against your back.

Lazy Dog Saloon, a divey place nestled in Hell's Kitchen, had become Midtown high. Most of the class of 2014 had graduated from their prospective 4 year undergrad programs last week. Some returned to New York for a mini vacation before they began the next chapter in their lives while some had never left at all.

You were part of the second group.

NYU seemed like a safe choice at the time your college applications were due. The program you wanted was there and you knew that it was close enough to Queens that you felt like you'd gotten away, but not far enough that you felt like you were on the other side of the country.

Aaron continues to drone on, the sound of his voice fading with the sound of the eighties song playing over the speakers. Your shoulders sag in relief when the bartender sits down your vodka soda in front of you, sticking a dried out lime on the rim. He takes the $8 in cash you hold out to him and mumble out a thanks but he is already moving to the next person. Not that you care. You had your prize in hand and could finally return to your friends drunkenly lounging in their booth.

That was until Aarons animated hand gestures sent your drink out of your hand down the front of the shirt of the guy beside you.

"Fuck! I am so sorry," you rush out, half turning to reach over Aaron and grab a few flimsy paper napkins. You also shoot Aaron the dirtiest look you can muster at which he grimaces. "I feel horrible- god. I am so-"

Had there not been a steady stream of booze fluttering through your veins, you could play it a lot cooler than you do. Thankfully, Peter Parker isn’t able to play it much cooler either. The second your eyes met his big brown ones, they manage to somehow get bigger, his eyebrows rising towards his hairline before his lips thinned in distaste.

“... sorry…” The word comes out as a breath while his presence seems to be the only thing that you can be aware of. It’s like the sight of him is screaming inside your head.

Peter’s heart throws itself for a loop before dropping down into his stomach. He knows that voice all too well and he hates how much he still yearns to hear it again.

We both seemed to collect ourselves at the same time; he clears his throat while you look down at the spot on his shirt where the gray fabric is dark. With a shake of his head, he waives away your apology with his hand. “Don't- it’s fine, it’s fine.” He tries to mutter the words with a smile that barely classifies as anything more than a wince. “I don’t even like this shirt anyway.”

You can’t seem to get yourself to move. Not even when he gently slips the napkins out of your clenched fists so he can try and clean himself up. That, in turn, just makes you feel worse, but then again, maybe he just doesn’t want you to touch him.

Not after our six years of friendship fizzled out like a burning candle that finally reached the end of its wick.

“Nice one,” Aaron chuckles near your ear, his elbow nudging your arm teasingly. This was not the time for jokes. Not when it felt like I was staring at a ghost. The ghost of someone very much alive. Giving the red head a shove and a scowl, you hiss at him under your breath to shut up before turning back to Peter.

“I am so sorry. Seriously. This was all my fault. I… can I help?” You're clearly apologetic. It’s clear from the concern in your voice and the embarrassed look on your face.

Peter’s eyes find the ceiling so quickly that you can’t tell if the pink on his face is real or just a hallucination from the tequila shot Flash had forced on you earlier. You could’ve sworn you’d forgotten what he sounded like over the past four years. After hearing it again, your memories come flooding back all at once. Except this isn’t a memory. This is real. Peter Parker is standing right there as he wipes at his shirt. Gone is the gangly kid with perpetual untamable hair and skinned elbows from nose diving off his skateboard and in his place is someone he gracefully grew into.

“Seriously. It’s fine. It was an accident.” His hand waves awkwardly again as he drops the napkins into the trash. The smile he gives you is strained and brief but he tries anyway so he can drop the conversation. “No, it’s really alright. I think those did the trick. This shirt has gone through worse.”

You are sure you look as pathetic as you feel. Eyes wide and brow furrowed enough that the crease between them could’ve been a damn canyon. Once upon a time, you knew him better than you knew yourself. Once upon a time, the two of you could have stayed quiet for hours and still known exactly what the other was thinking.

Now? At least you knew that him saying it was fine was a load of garbage.

“Are you sure? I can ask the bartender for a towel? Or-”

He knows that look. It was the same damn look you always used to give him when you felt really bad about something. It would settle on your face when you were going to do any stupid thing you could to try and fix it.

“I’m sure,” he interjects in the hopes that you believe him- or at least pretend to. That you will just let it go, return back to Katie and Flash so you can tell them you dumped your drink on him. The three of you could laugh it up like you did in high school.

“It’s fine. I promise. Just…” he takes a deep breath and glances down at his wet shirt before finally glancing up at your face. He tries to think of something to say. At that moment, the bartender decides to drop the beer he had ordered earlier onto the counter. Peter mutters a thanks, grabbing it in one hand while digging for cash that's shoved in his front pocket to exchange it.

Before you can get another word out, he sighs, “Really. It’s fine. I can deal with it.” Peter's words are short and almost sharp. It was nothing different than how things had been between the two of you for the past eight years.

You open your mouth to protest but he is already slipping through the crowd. Drunk patrons fill the empty space within seconds so they can raise their blood alcohol content. Aaron tries to laugh it off, clapping you on the shoulder while you’re too busy staring at the back of Peter’s head disappearing around the corner.

There are two roads or whatever bullshit.

You blame it on the booze. The white claw you had sipped when you and Katie had gotten ready was the reason that you’d shrugged off Aarons hand. The extremely potent and barely drinkable margarita Flash made you at the pregame was the reason you started to slip through the crowd after him. The reason you burst through the doors of the boys bathroom without a second thought was- okay, so maybe it was also just who you were.

“Please. Let me do something to fix this,” you urge, ignoring the strange look from the man slipping around you to exit the bathroom. You also ignore the shocked look Peter gives your reflection of the dirty mirror in front of him.

“Nuh uh. No.” He practically gasps, spinning around and yanking out paper towels to hurriedly dry his hands. He has to get you out of here before you get yourself thrown out of the freaking bar.

You shoot him a look. You will stay in this bathroom all night if that was what it took… to fix… his shirt.

“Grow up Parker, it’s a boy’s bathroom. There are stalls. I’m not even crawling under one!” Your hands move as you speak while his hands find your shoulders. His touch is gentle but his face is panicked. You don’t stop him from spinning you around, guiding you out the door even when you turn your head back so you can face him.

“Look. I just want to make sure I didn’t ruin your night because I feel like a total asshole. It was an accident and now I feel your night is ruined because you're all damp and smelling like vodka.” Peter focuses on maneuvering you through the crowd. He doesn’t have the heart (or the guts) to admit that his shirt being soaked with vodka is the least of his concerns. It is *how* it got soaked in the first place. That was the real issue.

No. The real issue was you. Your presence. The fact he had to touch you right now as he manages to avoid letting anyone collide with you since you are too focused on rambling.

“Okay, you didn’t ruin my night.” The words are practically a groan of exasperation in the hopes you will just drop this. That you will just return to your cool friends and you could all go and laugh at how uncool he is.

“No?” You ask flatly, your eyebrow rising in skepticism as you try to twist around to look at him better over your shoulder. He is more concerned with keeping any drunk people from slamming into me or vice versa. “Because I feel like I did. I feel like I definitely ruined your night and you’re just telling me that I didn’t, just so I drop it and I don't let it eat away at my brain for the rest of my life.”

Because it will. I will certainly lose sleep over it.

Peter can feel his heart race as he listens to you. He has to bite his tongue to keep himself from screaming that you’d ruined his life, not his night.

”Just-“ he grumbles, rolling his eyes as he guides you around another group of drunks dancing against the wall. Never has he been more thankful for the fabric of your dress to keep his skin from yours. Even with the buffer, he feels like he is burning alive. He wishes he didn’t care that you were upset at the prospect of him being upset.

Afterall, you probably haven’t spared him a second though since high school graduation.

Not in the way he has thought about you.

Even though it’s mid-May, the nights lack the warmth that the days hold. The cool air feels good on your flushed cheeks. The alley is quiet, tucked between the bar and a closed up nail salon seated next door and the space is filled with the muffled hum of liquor filled banter.

You manage to twist around and plant yourself in front of him. He drops his hold on you but meets your wide and earnest eyes.

“Peter, all I’m saying is that I want to make it better. Yeah, I know,” you throw up your hands, letting their movements animate your words. “Yes, I’m aware that vodka sodas are only moderately pungent. And -yes. It wasn’t even that much- but still! I feel bad. Really bad. There has to be something I can do to make it right.”

Peter can feel his heart picking up again, his brain desperately trying to comprehend that after all these years - after *six years*, you were in front of him, telling him that you feel bad?

He can’t help but shake his head before quickly interjecting. “You don’t-” with a huff, he presses his palms against his face, like it will give him a moment to try and think clearly. They move up to his hair, shoving it off his forehead as he finally forces himself to actually look down at you. His voice is low and tired. “You don’t have to do anything about it. I promise. It was an accident, alright? Besides, I don’t even like that shirt that much.”

That’s a lie. It is his favorite shirt.

No one says anything for a long moment. You’re too busy studying his face for what is actually going on inside his head. He is too busy trying to force himself not to look away. Too many things hang in the foot of space between your bodies. You either can’t find, or can’t find the courage to pluck something out of the air and say something of substance.

Something that matters.

So your face softens and you opt for the cowards approach.

“You okay?”

A muscle in his jaw tenses which makes his expression look more grim. “I’m fine,” he grumbles, looking away to stare at a broken bottle, not wanting to hold your gaze anymore. He’d spent the past eight years pretending that the you-sized hole in his life had been filled with things like Spider-Man, The Bugle and his Bio-Physics degree he’d obtained last week. But now that you’re standing right here, it felt like it was somehow bigger.

Just like that, you realize that, even if he had been the one to guide the two of you out here, away from prying eyes and drunk chatter, it was your doing. You might well have been the one to drag him out the door by his hair. Your face falls when you realize he likely did it because he doesn’t think you’d want to be seen talking to him in public.

You frown at the floor and wrap your arms around yourself like you’re just trying to keep out the cool air.

“Sorry,” you murmur. It’s the best thing you can think to say. Peter looks at you, peeking up and taking notice of the little movements and gestures you make to try and smooth over the awkwardness. It reminds him of high school. Back in the middle of freshman year when you started on the edge of the circle of cheerleaders, working up the courage to belong before you eventually found yourself in the center senior year.

“It’s fine,” he says halfheartedly. In reality, it’s not fine, far from it, but… His hands curl and uncurl into fists at his side, trying to suppress the urge to reach for you.

“No, it's not.”

You’re not talking about the spilled drink anymore. You’re not even talking about the dissipation of your friendship at the start of high school. In some way, it all comes down to high school graduation four years ago.

There's a clarity to the loud sounds inside the bar as someone slips out the back door, too preoccupied with trying to light a cigarette as they head towards the street. When the door shuts again, it feels even quieter out here. Peter and you don’t say anything as they pass by and out of sight.

But neither of you return inside either.

“I shouldn’t have done that. That was…” you trail off, eyes finding the sky under pinched brows as you think. “Invasive? Presumptuous? Meddlesome?” A strained laugh falls from your mouth and cuts through the quiet. “Sorry. Vodka seriously inhibits my memory of vocabulary words.”

You don’t expect him to laugh. So when he lets out a snort and shakes his head, you find the courage to actually look at him from the corner of your eye. He’s not smiling but the little quirk of his lip might as well be a shit eating grin with how relieved it makes you feel.

“You’re drunk.” It is neither a question or statement, or both. You can't really tell.

Your nose scrunches up in thought before you settle on, “I would go with tipsy.” The toe of your shoe scuffs against the pavement and he shoves his hands in his front pockets. “I’m not sure how that’s legally determined or if there even is a way to legally determine that but…yeah. Sure. Let's go with tipsy.”

“You’re wasted,” he snorts again, only this time it sounds even more like a laugh than before.

Your mouth drops in mock offense, eyes pulling back towards his own. Something on his face catches in the light and he looks like he could almost glow in the dark but he’s forcing it down.

“Drunk is a strong word. More like… very tipsy.”

“I think we can go with sloshed instead.” Peter raises an eyebrow, his mouth curling upwards with amusement.

The roll of your eyes is dramatic and playful. Before you get the chance to shoot back, a vibrating and painful sound of an alarm from your purse interrupts you. He almost wonders if it’s a phone call, but when you retrieve it, press the screen and check the time, it’s almost relieving. Not that it didn’t interrupt the moment anyway.

“Shit,” you frown before sticking your phone back. “I really gotta get out of here. I told myself I’d be home by 1:30 since I’m meeting my parent’s for brunch.”

You’re leaving? It’s the first thought that crosses his mind and it has him on edge. For the first time in years, the two of you are alone together. Just the two of you, hidden away in an alley and having an actual conversation.

And it’s already over.

“You’re taking the train back now,” he asks with slight concern. His fingers fall from his hair so he can rub at his forehead. You were a New Yorker. Everyone took the subway. You were just a New Yorker that was determined to take the subway alone at 1 am on a Saturday while drunk in a short dress.

A skeptical smile tugs at your mouth. His concern isn’t shocking. He’d always been like that. Cautious and worried about the safety of others. It was why he always got his ass kicked in high school.

It just wasn’t something you experienced in a long time.

“Umm… Yeah?” Shrugging, you retrieve your phone from your purse to shoot off a text to Katie and Flash that you’re heading home. Peter opens his mouth to say something before thinking better of it. It wasn’t that he didn’t think you could handle yourself. The last thing he needed was to piss you off in this one moment of a truce.

“My apartment’s not that far anyway,” you continue as a little thumbs up appears by your text in the group chat. The phone returns to your bag amongst your wallet and lip gloss. He is already looking at you when you lift your head up to look at him.

For a moment, he kind of looks like he is 11 years old again. Like you half expect him to smile and reveal his canine tooth is still growing in. That he’ll give you the same grin through the glass of your bedroom window when the two of you were long supposed to be asleep. How he would invite you to crawl out and to accompany him to the subway because he liked it when you watched him try and skateboard in an empty train. At first, you would always hiss out ‘no’s’ which would only make him whine your name from his spot on the windowsill. Eventually, you’d relent because you always did. Then you would spend breakfast with your parents exhausted and biting down on a smile from sitting on the secret events from the night before.

“Wait, you’re taking the subway alone?” he asks, his eyebrows furrowing even more than they already were before shooting upwards. He steps closer but doesn’t actually invade your space.

Alone, intoxicated, and all the way home… in a short dress…

Your own eyebrows raise in challenge. Even if you try not to look defensive, you can't help the way your arms fold over your chest and you settle back on your hip. You’ve lived in New York as long as he has, which is your entire life.

You could easily take the subway alone. It was something you’d done a million times and you were sure he had done it as much too.

A little bit of alcohol wasn’t enough to stop you and force you to waste money on a cab.

“Yeah…”

“Okay,” he sighs and you relax, both of your shoulders sagging in relief for different reasons. “I’m making sure you get home.” The words slip out and he doesn’t even think to hold them back.

You open your mouth to argue, but he continues speaking, his hands raising in surrender. “I’m sure you do it all the time but, I mean… I just…you’re drunk.”

“Not drunk. Very tipsy,” you mutter under your breath but there's no hint of actually putting up a fight. Considering your options, you look up towards the night sky like you’ll find some sort of argument hidden up amongst the stars. There are no stars. Just heavy looking clouds that hang above Manhattan with the umpteenth threat of rain this week. You don’t find one. Making a face, you know he has a point.

Odds were, you would probably be fine walking the few blocks to the subway and taking it a couple of stops towards your apartment. There was always that chance that you wouldn’t be.

The problem was that your apartment was out of the way. How did you know that? Peter lived with Ned. Ned Leeds, the same Ned Leeds that had been following Katie around from the age of five until now like a love sick puppy that rambled horribly in her presence about every detail of his life. So yes, the fact he and Peter were roommates had come up plenty of times when you and your current roommate bumped into Ned. Just like he had, in excruciating detail, explained exactly where he lived in case Katie ever happened to be in the area.

“You’re just going to tag along all the way to East village… at one in the morning… and then… trek all the way back to your place?” You shake your head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You aren’t asking. I’m offering.”

The prospect of your safety overrides any arguments he could possibly make.

If he stays here and something happens to you, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

A guilty expression flashes in his eyes at the thought, that little *what if.* It had been replaying in his head since he got bit by that spider when he was sixteen. How the thought of where you were and what you were doing flashed through his mind anytime there was a large-scale disaster threatening New York. There were a few times it got so bad, he’d had to swing by your apartment- not in a stalker way! Just so he could know you were fine.

Besides, he only knew because your mom told Aunt May, who then mentioned it to him.

When you don’t say anything, he nods towards the mouth of the alley. “Come on.” He’s already walking towards the street, spinning on his heels and walking backwards. “It’s fine. I’ll take a cab home or something quicker than the subway.”

Something quicker than the subway and isn’t a cab? All you can do is snort as you scramble to catch up beside him. Now you just feel worse as you step onto the sidewalk. Not only does he probably resent you for the end of our friendship eight years ago and the… incident four years ago on the night of graduation, now he has to go out of his way so I don’t get murdered walking home.

“Really Pete,” you urge. The nickname falls from your lips like second nature. “It’s okay. I’m good.”

He shakes his head and turns to raise an eyebrow at your statement. You’re not good. Even if you're not stumbling black out drunk, the pink flush on your cheeks and the wide eyes are dead giveaways of your impairment. As much as he wants to hold your hand, to throw an arm over your shoulders like when the both of you were kids, he doesn’t. But he does let his hand hover behind the small of your back as you manage to find the same pace.

“I’d rather not be worried the rest of the weekend. Think of it as satiating my restless mind,” he jokes, giving you a playful look.

It’s much quieter out here and there is space to take a breath. There’s still people mulling around as they make their way home or to the next stop of their Saturday night. No one pays the two of you much attention as your pace slows to a more leisurely one.

“First of all, not drunk. Very tipsy,” you huff. “And second of all…” Peter stretches his arms behind his head while you try to think of a good point aside from the fact that you feel bad.

For a lot of things.

“You’ll be walking alone too at three in the morning!”

“And I can handle that. I’m a big boy, remember?”

There it is. That stupid lopsided grin he’d always shoot you anytime he knew he was wearing you down. When he knew you had already given in but were hoping he would drop it before you caved. You make a face that screams ‘spare me’ and scoff. The dirty look quickly threatens to be a smile and he knows you’re all in now.

“We’ll take the train, I’ll walk you home. We can even grab a slice of pizza. My treat. For old times sake?” With a shake of your head, the sigh you make is answer enough. Your answer is a yes. Just like it always was.

Okay, and maybe it's more than fine and doesn’t feel like that much of a chore.

He takes the opportunity to grab your hand so he can drag you along. The action is like muscle memory and he doesn’t realize he is doing it until you falter. You note that his hands are rougher but that makes sense considering he’s 23 years old and no longer a 14 year old kid. It’s not like you have to admit out loud that you like it. That you’d missed it. So before he can really realize what he’s doing, you commit to it.

“Only if we can take it on the road,” you say pointedly with a look to match. “I meant what I said earlier. I really need to get home so I don’t oversleep and miss brunch. My parent’s will kill me.”

Giving you a tug forward, he snorts, “Then by all means. Let's go.”

The foot traffic around is nothing like a work week morning. No hustling of business men in suits or bustling women in sharp blazers clicking down the sidewalk. The night holds its own excitement now that the weather is survivable without an actual coat and gloves. Summer is approaching and it seems to stir people out of their homes and out later than usual.

Aside from the copious amounts of rain plaguing the past week.

It was nice. Your hands are clasped together so you can keep up and he can make sure he doesn't lose you. At least that’s what the both of you tell yourselves as you settle into the familiar warmth of each other's palms and the sense of comfort they still bring after eight years.

The last time you two had touched was four years ago.

Back when his hands had found themselves tangled in your hair so he could tilt your head back further and-

“How about my treat,” you offer, leaning your head forward to look at the side of his face since he’s a step ahead of you. “Because I’m the one ruining your night.”

Peter just shakes his head and shrugs in hopes to dissolve some of your concern. “Don’t worry about it. My night isn’t ruined. You’re worth it.”

Those words make you stumble, tripping over your own feet like the world was just thrown out of orbit and he doesn’t seem to notice. It’s the last thing you expect him to say. For a moment, you wonder if maybe you were so drunk that you were hallucinating.

But no. He said it.

Your silence makes him squeeze his eyes shut and hold in a curse. It was a stupid thing to say after eight years of distance. Right after grabbing your freaking hand like things were all fine and dandy between you. If he could take it back, he would. Instead, he manages to remain looking unbothered so you wont realize that even just your silence was enough to feel like a punch to the gut.

“As long as you’re sure,” you chuckle lamely, looking down to smooth your dress as you reel in your emotions and stand a little straighter; make your movements as sure as yourself as you can pretend to be. Because the truth is, walking with him, having him tug you along and being in his presence is enough to make you sure of absolutely nothing.

Not when you thought he would still hate you for making more friends at the start of high school. Back when you joined cheerleading on a whim and your classmates started to actually see you. Your classmates actually waved at you when you walked through the halls. They would sit by you in class and turn in their seats so you were included in the conversation. Friday nights were spent at football games before the whispers of an after party in the quarterbacks basement were no longer whispers and became actual invitations.

When you didn’t eat, sleep, and breathe Peter Parker like you had as a child. It wasn’t like you had woken up one day and gotten sick of him. You just slowly realized that maybe you could have more than just one person at your side.

“I am so sure,” he reassures, dropping your hold and slowing to a stop in front of a late night pizza shop. “I’m pretty sure I owe you money for something I broke when we were in elementary school. So yeah, I’m sure.” This time when he smiles bashfully back at you, you mirror him. Somehow that makes some of the tenseness traveling between your connected arms start to resolve.

Peter has spent the last eight years wondering what he did wrong.

Did you just get bored? Were the stories he was telling you just not enough? Did you grow tired of him dragging you into trouble? Was the feel of being seen by the rest of the world more gratifying than his eyes alone?

So many questions without answers.

For eight years they had plagued his mind, kept him up at night and eating at the back of his brain during the day.

The two of you chat in line which is a solid eight drunk people deep. Drunk conversation and the sound of the workers drowns out how easy it is to fall back into joking around. There are stalls in the conversation where neither of you have an immediate response but the recovery is quick enough that there's no suffocating awkward silence.

And it is then that you realize that being in his presence makes you miss him more than you had during the eight years of radio silence. From the way he rocks back and forth on his feet while making sure you order your slice first, you miss him. When you try to pay, he smoothly snatches your wallet out of your hands, not even missing a beat in his conversation with the teenager at the register as he hands him cash.

Once you both receive pizza slices bigger than your heads, grease seeping through the paper plates as you take the long way to the subway entrance.

You happily take a big bite, speaking around a mouthful of dough, cheese, and tomato. “I mean it. You were always horrible at saving money when we were kids.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes which just makes it harder to chew around the smile straining your lips. There’s really no rush as you walk side by side without paying attention to where you're going. Eventually an entrance to the subway will appear.

“Oh, I’m sorry, what was that? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of you being so, very wrong.” Once he makes sure that there is not a drop of grease on his free hand, he playfully gives your head a shove. You make a sound of protest that quickly turns to one of amusement while trying to smooth your hair.

“I am not and you know it,” you shoot back and he responds with a dramatic waive of his hand. “You would always want ice cream or a comic book. Then you’d try and give me puppy dog eyes and promise you’d pay me back. I always gave in”

And he always paid you back. Eventually. Sometimes all at once or by leaving a crumpled up five in your backpack or taping a ten dollar bill to your window.

“I did not try puppy dog eyes,” he protests with his mouth full, chewing in a hurry so he can swallow. “Plus, I was the one funding all of the trouble we got into. And I was cute. Cut me some slack.”

Never had he been so glad to bail on a night of patrol so Ned could drag him to some dinghy bar just to watch Ned botch attempt number five million and six to woo Katie into falling in love with him.

Once we are finished, you dust the crumbs and grease from your fingertips and toss the plate into the trash. He’s been done for a while and you don't hesitate to grab his own plate and send it following mine into the dumpster.

“That’s because I was always better at saving money. If I hadn’t been, how was I supposed to treat you to snacks?”

Peter snickers, “You were definitely not better at saving your money than me.”

“Was too-”

“Nuh uh,” he cuts you off with a sarcastically smug expression. “Remember when you blew all your lunch money on those gum ball machines. The ones with the little rubber pencil toppers inside? You skipped lunch for over a week in hopes of getting that crab one.”

When he looks over at you and sees how your lips curl in an amused smile as you stare ahead, he bites down on his grin but it still feels white hot on his face.

Wherever you two have meandered to is much quieter. Cars are not passing down the road and most people still out at this hour are sticking to the well lit streets with more foot traffic.

“Oh my god. My mom was so mad at me when she found out.” You throw your head back to laugh at the memory. It feels good. It feels right to be here right now. “She found out because you told May that my mom was too busy that week to make me lunch so she’d put an extra sandwich in your lunch box for you to give me.”

Peter opens his mouth to speak but cuts himself off with a look of concentration.

Something is off.

His footsteps slow, yours following when a big burly man in a black fitted shirt steps into your path from the entrance of a long closed restaurant. It wasn’t just a passerby. You can tell from the way his attention is fixated on Peter. The guy's narrowed eyes move to size you up.

Not that you were a threat.

Another man steps out behind you, a third crossing the street and approaching. Muggers. That’s your first thought. It wasn’t terribly uncommon in a city like this, especially given the time and day. You quickly figure out this isn’t a chance of opportunity when the man standing a few feet in front of you speaks.

“Peter Parker?” He tilts his head, features dark from the lack of street lamps but there was no mistaking the glint in his eye. That was enough for Peter to step closer to you. He keeps you half behind him, an arm going out to keep his body between yours and theirs. There was more than one threat to worry about. The other two approach and settle in their own spots so they can circle you against the wall. Peter tries to have his head turned enough to keep the other two men in his peripheral vision.

You tell yourself to stay calm, that everything is going to be fine.

That voice in your head has to scream that at you when you see the flash of the gun dangling in the guy's hand.

#peter parker tasm #peter parker tasm x reader #peter parker x reader #peter parker x you #marvel #the amazing spider man #spiderman

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shruiee · 2 years ago

Note

Hello! If applications for the Bloody Baby series are open, can I ask for an evening of stories? They are all together by the fireplace and the baby asks about their past as she is fond of history. And at your discretion, sex during the conversation.

absolutely yes!! I’m gonna do smut on the next one :) on this one and focus on the fluff, mainly because your prompt will be great for answering some questions about our lovely vamp daemyra! What, How, When? Thank you for the request. Also Chanel exists in Modern! Westeros. Do what you will with that info hehe

Vampire!Daemon x fem!reader x Vampire!Rhaenyra

masterlist | bloody baby series | vampire au

Warnings: mentions of murder, anti!green, mentions of genocide and blood (obviously)

You groaned awake, hearing the birds chirp outside and rays of sunshine bleeding in your bedroom. You stretched out your legs, whimpering at the gentle sting that made itsself very apparent. Patches of bandages stuck to your right inner thigh and left jugular. One on your wrist that only stopped bleeding as of yesterday. You shuffled off the bed, the floor under your feet was warm (heated) as you padded your feet over to the bathroom.

Daemon had ordered the attendants clearly, while he does enjoy your figure prancing around in just a shirt, visually your little human body looked much stirring in the pretty dresses Daemon and Rhaenyra had filled in your closet to the brim. At first you would gawk, terrified at all clothes. You doubted even blood donation for money could afford you such labels. Your newest excitement however was realizing the entire collection of Chanel ballet flats just casually laying at the bottom of the shoe shelf. You had with much joy, slipped on the baby pink pair over your white socks and headed out to breakfast.

Their head housekeeper had informed you that they had not returned yet. Rhaenyra and Daemon had headed out to hunt, while they relished the taste of your blood on their tongue. They could only drain you (safely) so many times, leaving a few days to let you recover and replenish your blood before sinking their teeth in once more. Rhaenyra found it mildly discomforting to be around you while she was hungry, a craving is one thing— hunger is death.

You felt like a kidnapped princess stuck in a castle, very much like Beauty and the Beast but Rhaenyra and Daemon were anything but beasts. While there had been no formal rules around the palace, you never ventured around it much. The first few weeks your anxiety tore at your so hard, if you weren’t awake and servicing the two of them or being fed on. You were sleeping, heart heavy and away in a dream world. You wondered often, what they did about the life you came from?

Your halted progression to a university degree, your part time job at the cafè, your mother—you wondered if she tried to cash out your life insurance yet. Your friends, they might have been the only ones a little worried, it felt like a child being grounded, having all your technology away. There was a theatre, they told you about it and yet you were too afraid to touch it. This wasn’t your home.

Once you had very throughly enjoyed your breakfast of eggs on toast, you would have taken a right from the main corridor back to your wing, instead you walked forward toward the east wing. It felt intrusive to do so but your curiousity began eating at you, living in a palace built nearly a thousand years ago. Every trim on the ceiling had a story to tell.

What you stumbled across was a gallery, of small paintings to giant seven foot paintings, over time you had hunch of who Daemon and Rhaenyra were. Their names so prevalent in history, in a world ages ago when this continent was known as Westeros, if the books were true. You pitied them. There was painting right at the end of the corridor, perhaps the biggest one hung. The fine oil painting, aged and masterful.

You could recognize Rhaenyra in it, sat with a swaddled baby in her arms with Daemon stood next to her. Three boys of brown hair, two boys of white. Two dark skinned little girls and a boy stood next to Daemon and a little toddler girl on the floor. Dressed to nines in gold and fine gowns. Their family.

“Curious?” Daemon’s voice boomed from behind you, making you flinch.

You turned to him sheepishly, shrugging your shoulders as he approached you. “That- that’s you, isn’t it?” You asked. Daemon nodded, turning you back to the painting as he held onto your waist before turning your head to kiss your lips.

“That’s a lot of children,” you said as a matter of fact as Daemon resumed his daily need to suckle a bruise onto the crook of neck.

Daemon chuckled, hiding his face in the crook of your neck as his nose took a long waft of your scent.

“Are they all yours?” your nosiness had you blurting your thought out. You bit your tongue the second you asked it. He nodded, “Rhaenyra birthed them all?” You eyes widened. “Bloody hell.”

Your horrified face was one of much amusement to Daemon, he knew of how little bloodline sentiments meant in this era. He wasn’t super keen into forcing one to have a child back in 120 AC, neither would he now if he could ever have them again. Your eyes squinted to read the little description etched onto the golden frame.

“Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, Royal Consort Daemon Targaryen and their dragon seeds,”

From what you had read about the ancient great houses, they would rather jump off of cliffs than not come up with macabre titles to do with their house sigils. You giggled, dragonseed. A tad dramatic but that was the beauty and irrationality of history, everything was of honour and blood then it seemed.

“You called your children dragonseed?” There was knowing glint in Daemon’s eyes as he quirked up a brow.

“No—no?” disbelief, pure disbelief.

You shriek as Daemon bent down to throw your body over his shoulder. You knocked at your legs “Daemon I wanna know!”

He carried you all the way upstairs, instead of turning left to your rooms, he carried you to his. He dropped you down by the fire place when Rhaenyra was already sat with a book in her lap. You pouted and Daemon, cheeks full as Daemon dropped a thick blanket down where you sat you sat in already a pile of thick furry blankets.

“What’s going on?” Rhaenyra asked, petting your hair and looking at Daemon in a questioning manner.

“I wanna know if dragons were real,” you looked up at Rhaenyra, hope glimmering all over your eyes, a childish dream come true. She looked to Daemon with an odd expression before pointing at a cabinet by the window.

A temperature controlled cabinet with four eggs each on its five shelves, they were the biggest eggs you had seen. You crawled up to go look at them through the glass, eggs of red, purple, white and green. Mouth gaped upon in shock, immortal royalty was cool but this— you could scream from the excitement bubbling in you chest. A wide grin spread across your face as you turned to look at them.

“Silverwing was real!” You chuckled in shock, leg bouncing as the happiness radiated off of you “you rode dragons!” You pointed at them as you waddled over to settle yourself on Rhaenyra’s lap.

“Do you know which ones?” Daemon asked, the ends of his mouth slightly curled upwards. This is the liveliest they had seen you since the party.

You nodded like a teacher’s pet, answering correctly for a piece of candy. “You rode Syrax,” you curled further into Rhaenyra as she kissed your temple. “And you rode the red wormy thing,” you snapped your fingers in the air to try and remember it’s name.

“Red wormy thing,” Daemon repeated, highly amused that Caraxes’s memory would be watered down to a red wormy dragon from the furious behemoth he was.

“Yeah,” you mellowed, still unable to remember his name “he had a wormy neck and a deviated septum, like me.” you told them as if they wouldn’t know.

You looked to Daemon apologetically “but you already knew that…since you know. You rode him.”

“Caraxes,” he helped you “and I do agree, he was a Wyrm.”

“Damn,” you whispered under your breath “so you just had flying nukes for pets. That’s crazy.”

You settled in with them, still blurting out questions as they came to mind. No history textbook or books you found at libraries had this much details about the subject, the world still counted it’s years from Aegon’s Conquest but they were gods, myths and statues rooted at temples. They were real, tangible blood, you were sitting on one right now.

“If they hatch, what would you do? Over throw the government?” you mused “we could use a Queen, maybe get better healthcare, climate change sanctions, and an extra government holiday.”

This time Rhaenyra chuckled, shaking her head. They had thought of it, though Rhaenyra had given up on any hope of those eggs ever hatching. The last of blood magic destroyed taking down the Night King other than what created their immortality.

“We could go back to Dragonstone, preserve their kind this time around.” Rhaenyra said, pulling the blanket up your shoulders. You hummed as a reply, resting your head on her shoulder.

“Nyra.” You whispered. Rhaenyra hummed in reply. “Has my mother checked in?”

Rhaenyra’s eyes scrunched as she looked to Daemon and then down at you. She shook her head, after leaving a very colourful message on your phone after Rhaenyra had texted as you; about going away on a vacation. There was nothing. As a mother she once was, she never understood the callousness of mothers these days, having children move out of their homes and pay rent.

You closed you eyes, body already heavy from the story filled daze you were in. That and the hearth lulling you, you held no expectation that your mother would mildly care, if Daemon and Rhaenyra were to have killed you. You doubted she would have even noticed.

Just as Rhaenyra and Daemon had just each other, the possibility of you having just them grew each day.

Thank you for reading!! I’m having so much fun with this AU.

comments and reblogs are appreciated!

Also lemme know if you wanna be added to a Taglist

#daemon targaryen x reader #daemon targaryen x reader x rhaenyra targaryen #daemon targaryen x rhaenyra targaryen #vampire au #daemyra smut #daemyra vampire au #daemyra x reader #daemyra #rhaenyra targaryen x reader #vampire!daemon #vampire!rhaenyra

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emberdew · 5 months ago

Text

Be More Ghost Chapter 4: Three Player Game

Summary:

A Be More Chill AU where Danny gets a Super Quantum Intel Unit Processor (or Squip) to help him become cool and win over Valerie, but things don't really go as planned.

Masterpost | AO3 Link | Word Count: 1,906

It’s a three player game so when they make an attack you know ya gotta friend who's gonna have your back!

Danny, Tucker, and Sam sat in front of the computer in Danny’s room, all three intently focused on the screen and rapidly tapping buttons on their game controllers. Ever since the new Doomed expansion came out a few weeks ago, the teens had gotten into the habit of meeting up to play together after school as long as there wasn’t a ghost attack happening.

As Sam’s powerful character, Chaos, landed a finishing blow on the boss they were fighting, Danny leaned back and looked over to his best friends.

“So, what do you guys think about what Kwan said?”

Sam looked at him, incredulous. “It’s obviously a scam.”

“A really weird scam,” Tucker agreed.

“But what if it is real? I just give the jock who bullies me six… hundred… dollars…” Danny really wanted it to be true, but he had to admit it was far-fetched. “No, you’re right. I’m doomed to be a freak for the rest of my life. Afterlife?” Danny leaned back farther in his chair and dramatically covered his face with an arm.

“Halfterlife?” Tucker suggested. Danny just groaned in response.

“Danny, you don’t need some weird technology to teach you how to be cool. Being cool is overrated anyway.” Sam leaned over and flicked Danny’s arm.

“Plus guys like us are cool in college!” Tucker said. “High school may be hell now, but at least we have that to look forward to.”

Danny didn’t feel reassured. “If I can even get into a college with my awful grades. I can’t exactly put ghost hunting as an extracurricular on my college application.”

“You are in a ghost hunting club now though,” Tucker teased.

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Danny rubbed where his shoulder was still sore from where Valerie had shot him earlier that day. “How would I even get six hundred dollars anyway?”

Danny shot up in his seat as an idea sprung to mind. “What if I stole my aunt Alicia’s beanie baby collection and sold them on eBay?”

Tucker looked at him for a long moment. “Okay, there’s several things wrong with that plan.” He held out his hand and started counting. “One, your aunt lives in Arkansas and it would take way too long to fly there on a school night. Two, beanie babies are worth like nothing on eBay. Three, didn’t you learn from the yard sale debacle with Technus last year not to sell other people’s stuff?”

Danny sunk down in his seat, defeated. “Oh yeah.”

“I have a better plan.” Tucker turned and raised his eyebrows at Sam. “What if we converted to Judaism?”

“You know what?” Sam stood up and slammed a wad of cash in Danny’s palm. “Here’s some bar mitzvah money. Congrats on becoming a man.”

“Wouldn’t it be a boo-mitzvah?” Tucker joked.

Danny ignored him and shoved the cash in his pocket gratefully, knowing better than to refuse Sam when she gave away money. They’d had that argument a thousand times and Sam always won, so he didn’t even bother anymore. “Thanks, Sam. That’s really gender-affirming.”

“You’re welcome.” Sam gestured her game controller towards the computer screen where the ‘Proceed to next level’ prompt was flashing. “Do you guys wanna keep playing?”

“Sure, let’s do another round.” Danny leaned forward in his seat. Tucker nodded in agreement and Sam pushed the confirm button.

They had made it about halfway through the level when a knock came from Danny’s door. Danny was too engrossed in the game to notice at first.

“Danny?” Jack called.

Danny sighed and paused the game, then got up and opened the door. Unsurprisingly, his dad was dressed in his usual bright orange jumpsuit.

“What is it?” Danny took a step back as Jack entered his room.

“The Mansons called. They want Sam to come home right away for dinner.” From out of nowhere, Jack pulled out a gun prototype that was sparking with electricity. “Before you go, want a demonstration of my newest invention? The Fenton Ghost Freezer 2.0 is ready for action!”

“No thanks, Dad!” Danny shoved his dad out the door and closed it.

Sam groaned. “Ugh, I forgot my parents are meeting with some business partner about a trip we’re going on this week. Dinner with them is going to be dreadful.”

“That sucks, sorry Sam.” Danny knew how much Sam hated having to go to fancy dinners with her parents.

“Yeah, well, at least I’ll get out of school for the next few days.” Sam stood up and grabbed her spider backpack off the back of her chair.

“Lucky!” Tucker said.

“Yup. Anyways, cya dorks later!” Sam waved and walked out the door.

“Cya!” Danny closed the door behind her.

As soon as the door shut, Danny turned to Tucker. “Okay so I know it’s probably stupid but what if we went to Payless just to see if Kwan’s story checks out?”

“If it does, would you be too cool for…” Tucker hesitated and looked down at the controller in his hands, “video games?”

“Of course not!” Danny sat back down next to Tucker and put a hand on his shoulder. “You know, you are my favorite person.”

Tucker looked up, brown eyes shining in delight.

“I’m your favowite person?” Tucker asked jokingly.

Danny laughed and nodded. He hoped Tucker didn’t notice him blushing. “Yeah, dude. We’re a team, and we’re gonna get through this high school shit together.”

“Yeah! Team Phantom can conquer anything.”

“That’s right.” Danny picked up his controller. “Before we go, wanna play one more level?”

“Heck yes!”

___

Several minutes later, the two boys high-fived after completing the level.

“Okay, time to go to the mall.” Danny got up out of his chair.

“Yup!” Tucker stood up and Danny held the door open for him.

The two boys walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. Danny’s dad was too busy working on an invention at the kitchen table to notice their arrival. Danny cleared his throat and Jack looked up.

“Hey, kids!”

“Hi. Um. We’re gonna go get dinner at the mall.” Danny tugged at Tucker’s sleeve and started walking towards the door.

“Alright, be back by curfew!” Jack called.

Danny nodded and walked with Tucker out the door.

“Should we fly?” Danny asked.

“Sure!”

Danny and Tucker turned into a nearby alley and Danny went ghost, his white transformation rings lighting up late afternoon dimness.

“Grab on, Phantom Airlines is departing now.”

Tucker laughed and hugged Phantom from the back. He felt a slight coolness on his cheeks as he blushed- he cursed the cold ectoplasm coursing through his ghostly body that made him blush green- when he felt Tucker’s warm arms wrap around his chest. Phantom’s legs switched to a spectral tail as they took off towards the mall.

They flew in comfortable silence for the short trip to the Amity Park Mall. The city below them was also quiet and peaceful as the sun started to set on the horizon. Phantom was glad it seemed like there wasn’t going to be any ghost fights this evening.

He touched down gently at an empty edge of the mall’s parking lot and Tucker covered for him as he detransformed in a flash of light partially behind a tree.

Inside, the mall wasn’t very crowded at this time of day on a school night. Danny saw some A-Listers hanging around as they passed the food court, but none of them noticed as Danny and Tucker walked by on their way to Payless.

As they passed Sam’s favorite goth store, Danny regretted not waiting for her to be free to come with them.

“Sam would probably think this is a bad idea, right?” Danny asked. Tucker was looking in the window of the games store they were walking by.

“Oh for sure. I’m not even one hundred percent sure about this but I’m here for you, man.” Tucker elbowed Danny affectionately.

“Thanks.”

Danny felt the buzz of a ghost shield as he crossed the entrance of the Payless Shoes store. He remembered his parents had installed one there after the Box Ghost had terrorized the shoeboxes there a few too many times. The store was pretty much empty when they walked in- with the only sign of life being the bored-looking cashier behind the counter.

Danny stepped past the racks of shoes and tapped the countertop to get the cashier’s attention. The cashier’s haircut and sullen face reminded him a bit of Johnny 13. He looked up at Danny with a flicker of recognition.

“Let’s see the money.”

“What?” Danny was pretty sure that’s not how a normal store interaction was supposed to work.

“It’s from Japan. It’s a gray oblong pill- quantum nanotechnology CPU,” the cashier recited. “The quantum computer in the pull will travel through your blood until it implants in your brain and it tells you what to do.”

“How did you know that’s why I’m here?” Danny was starting to get creeped out by this guy.

“Just look at you.” He motioned towards Danny. That was fair, Danny thought. “Do you have the four hundred?”

“Four?”

“Is that a problem?”

Danny thought about Kwan’s sales pitch. “There’s a guy at my school charging-” Tucker grabbed Danny’s shoulder to stop him. Danny looked at Tucker for a second, confused, and then realized why. “Oh, right. Yes, I have four hundred.”

After taking the cash, the cashier led Danny through a curtain to the back of the store. The guy traced a finger past the shoeboxes that lined the walls of the narrow room until he stopped, pulled out a box, and presented it to Danny.

It looked… like a normal shoebox. With a confused glance up at the cashier, Danny opened the lid and saw it was filled with small gray pills. The cashier plucked a pill from the box and held it up with two fingers.

“For your information, this is untested, illegal technology. I take no responsibility for what you might do with it. Or what it might do to you.”

Danny considered the tiny pill in the cashier’s hand. “What it might do to me?”

The cashier ignored him and continued. “You have to take it with Mountain Dew to activate it. Don’t know why. There’s just something about Mountain Dew.”

“Okay…” Danny grabbed the pill and shoved it into his pocket.

“And this is important-”

“Excuse me?” A girl’s voice said. The curtain to the room opened and Ashley appeared.

“We’re sold out!” The cashier shouted. Danny winced.

“Of… shoes?” Ashley pointedly looked at the shelves lining the walls.

“Oh, right. Shoes. Yes, we do have those.” The cashier turned to Danny and ushered him through the curtain and out of the room. “Get out of here.”

“Wait, didn’t you say there was something important I needed to know?”

The cashier, who had already been hovering near Ashley, turned back to Danny. “Oh yeah. All sales are final.”

Danny heard the cashier and Ashley discussing some new shoes as he and Tucker walked out of the store.

“Should we grab some food?” Danny asked.

Tucker looked up from his PDA. “Sure, I could go for some chili fries.”

As they started heading toward the mall food court, Danny kept checking his pocket to make sure the mysterious pill was still there.

#danny phantom #be more ghost #danny phantom fanfiction #my fic #my art

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