#don’t look at the gun too much idk anything about firearms

[aghostnamedcalamity]

He’s not mad, he’s just disappointed.

[amyispxnk]

Grease and sweat

Summary - Another day, another venture out of the walls of the Boston QZ with Joel Miller. AKA, another day spent fantasizing about the burly man whom you spend most of your time with these days. When the two of you have to hole up for the night, things get a little heated, and you finally snap.

A/N: i started this oneshot like 6 months ago and finally found some random motivation today to finish it. and im not gonna spoil anything but like.. why has noone talked about this in a fic before? im literally salivating when he does this during the game and like.. yeah. idk. you’ll see.

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

Word count: 3.5k

Warnings: SMUT!! (oral f!receiving, unprotected PiV sex - don’t do this, especially during an apocalypse!, mentions of masturbation, lewd thoughts), language, age gap (roughly 15 years), firearms, pet names, fluff, aftercare

DO NOT COPY THIS FIC IN ANY WAY PLS AND TY.

“The fuck’re you lookin’ at, kid?” Joel practically spat, having noticed the way you were eyeing him whilst he worked.

You scoffed, walking up to the workbench he was currently using. Kid. You weren’t a kid. Sure, you were almost 15 years younger than him, but you certainly weren’t a kid.

“I’m 34, Joel. Not a kid.” You argued, leaning on the wall and watching him work.

He just grunted in response before resuming what he was doing before, starting with cleaning his pistol.

His fingers danced along the metal, digging into certain bits with the old rag he used to get any grime out, before he used the screwdriver to make a few adjustments to the handgun.

You never really understood how to do all the fancy things he did with his weapons, and you probably should considering how intently you watched him whenever the pair of you came across one of these old benches - but you couldn’t focus on the guns which were in his hands. His big, strong, rough hands. You’d trade places with those guns just to feel his hands on you like that. He took so much care of the damn things too, like they were the most precious things in his life. Always cleaning and repairing them like this, practically never letting you touch them.. What did those guns have that you didn’t? You thought to yourself as you watched him, gaze drifting to his fingers in particular. The ones you’d dreamt about far too many times, the ones you’d imagined inside of yourself rather than your own when you touched yourself. It was the way they moved, how thick they were, and how the veins in his hands and muscles flexed when he gripped his bow, and the way his arms would shine with his sweat as he worked. You’d lick the sweat off his body if he asked you to. Depraved as it sounds.

Not that you’d ever admit it.

Your absolutely maddening desire for and sickening crush on the man whom you knew close to nothing about. Just his name and a few things he revealed to you when the night was particularly long or the whisky he was having took a toll on his judgement, loosening him up for once. You knew where he was from, what his job was before, and you knew that he was basically just a grumpy old asshole who was only good for beating up guys when you went on supply runs.

He had never been overly kind to you, not that you needed it, had never asked you any questions, didn’t make small talk, and was a ruthless murderer.

You loved every single thing about him.

And you wanted to show him. You wanted him to love you back, no matter how he’d love you. You wouldn’t mind if he was a cold lover, a mean one - hell, he almost definitely was - you’d take him any way you could get him.

You looked back at his hands once more, subconsciously pulling your bottom lip between your teeth when he had to use his ring and middle fingers to clean out part of another gun, your thighs clenching together as you felt the all-too-familiar wetness start to form between them and making you groan when you realised you’d probably have to rub one out when you got back later. It was honestly annoying the amount of times you came by your own hand, his name on your lips, because you knew how much better it would feel if it was his thick fingers pushing into you, his big hands palming your breasts, his strong arms holding you down as he made you come over and over…

“Let’s get goin’.” He says suddenly, breaking you out of your thoughts as he tucks his gun away and slings his backpack on.

You push yourself off of the wall and follow him quickly, trying not to look flustered although you very much felt it.

He came to an abrupt stop when you reached your normal exit from this little pitstop en route to the guys who gave you weapons, and you almost walked face-first into his back.

“Joel? Wha-” you began, but he cut you off.

“This shouldn’t be closed.” He murmurs, like he’s talking to himself, not allowing you any time to respond before he’s going over to pull the chain which should open the garage door.

It doesn’t.

No matter how much he pulls on the metal, grunting and groaning and making your eyes flutter shut whilst you force your needy whimpers down with the noises he’s making, it barely opens, slamming shut every time he gets close to getting it open a quarter of the way.

“Fuck.” He grits, giving up and slamming his hand against the thing. It would be no use trying with that door anymore, the noise it was making was getting too loud anyway.

He stands there, clearly thinking hard about what to do. You can’t turn back because that would just lead you straight back to the QZ, which was useless to you right now, but you don’t have any other secured ways to get to your vendors - how could he have been so stupid to not plan ahead, he ridicules himself silently.

“Joel? What’s the plan?” You ask, getting slightly impatient with his constant silence. He may have been this hot brooding older man, but he could really leave you in the dark sometimes like this.

“Will you let me think, goddamnit?” He responds, clearly annoyed with your current predicament, scratching at his jaw before looking back up at you.

“Could try that window.” You suggest quietly, looking upwards. It was high and small, but you’d be able to get through it if he gave you a boost up.

He gave you a small nod before you both made your way up there and he got into position, hands outstretched and placed together as you got on and pushed yourself up. Normally, whenever he did this, you’d feel all dizzy afterwards from the proximity and his touch - but as soon as you looked out the window you were horrified. There were infected, just past the jammed door - and a whole lot of them. You weren’t getting past that. Forget the deal, you’d come back another day.

“Joel.” You say, not even realising you were whispering. He doesn’t answer.

“Joel! Joel, get me down.” You whisper-shout, and he furrows his brows.

“Why? What’s the matter?” He asks, and you have to fight against the urge to roll your eyes.

“Just get me down.” You say through clenched teeth, taking another look outside the window before he carefully lowers you. Of course, he boosts you up regularly, but he rarely ever tries to get you back down, so you stumble a bit and end up with your face against his chest as he falls back onto the wall slightly.

“Jesus, woman!” He grunts, but you don’t even try to move, you just look up at him with those fucking doe eyes of yours and it takes everything in him to not groan at the sight of you. God knows how many times he’s imagined you looking up at him whilst you sucked his cock, knelt on the floor with tears in your eyes and your hair all messy for him with your big eyes staring into his.

You open your mouth to speak, before realising the position you’re in and quickly standing up.

“I- there were infected outside, Joel.” You explain after a moment.

“So?” He questions you, squinting in confusion slightly. You’ve taken down infected before, no problem. What’s the issue today?

“No, like- I swear it looked like there were a hundred of them. Just this big fucking horde, right outside the garage door.” You gestured back towards the exit.

He clenched his jaw. Yeah, okay, you could take down some infected, not a hundred.

“Y’sure?”

“I’m fucking sure, Joel!” You almost yelled, way too many emotions going on in your body for you to act normal right now.

“Alright, alright, calm down.” He looked back outside. It was almost dark, there was no way you could get back to Boston in time now. It just wasn’t safe to go that far so late, and there was no point since you’d have to sneak by all the guards - who hopefully wouldn’t notice if you were gone for one night - to get back in.

“Go check all the doors, lock ‘em and then barricade ‘em. We’re gonna have to hold up here for tonight, then go back at dawn.” He decides, and you gape at him like a fish.

“We’re staying here?! Joel, what about curfew and the- the fucking infected right outside-” you start, but he silences you once again.

“We’re gonna be fine. When have things ever gone wrong for us since you started comin’ out with me?” He questions sternly, and you ponder it.

Never, really. He always saved you, and you’d save him when he needed it - even though it was only a handful of times he did.

“‘Kay, fine. Whatever.” You mumble stubbornly before turning round to go secure the doors leading to the small mechanic store you’d be staying in.

He looks around himself for any openings and closes them up before you both end up back in the main room.

It’s mostly silent as you look around at different things, poking at the ruined cars and whatnot whilst he sits on a crate and watches you as discreetly as possible.

“I have a question.” You say, turning to face him and making him snap his head away from you before you notice he was looking at you already.

He grunts to tell you to continue speaking, looking back at you when you do.

“Could you like.. show me how to fix up my guns and stuff? ‘Cause you always do it for me and I just thought it was.. Cool.” you murmur, trailing off at the end.

He actually lets out a small laugh at that. Not in a mean way, necessarily, just kind of teasingly.

“Cool?” He repeats with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah, cool. It just- with all the attachments and shit. And I can never clean them properly.” You sigh, walking up closer to him. “Please? We’ve got nothing else to do.”

The sound of you saying please for him in that small voice wins him over. “Fine.” He gets up off the crate, walking back over to the workbench and flicking the light on before taking your gun from you. He talks you through it, shows you a little how to clean it before letting you try it yourself, and then he shows you how to add a scope to it. You can’t quite grasp it though, not being strong and precise enough to attach it properly, so he places his hands on top of yours and helps you screw it on.

The contact makes you shudder so violently that he definitely felt it, and you want to crumple into the ground.

“What was that for?” He murmurs, and you almost jump at how close he is now, voice loud and breath hot on the side of your face as he leans over your shoulder to look at the gun whilst he tries to help you.

“No-nothing.” You squeak, breathing at least ten times faster now.

He feels it. He knows. He has to know, you’d been so stupid and revealed it all now. Joel Miller was not an idiot and he knew how you felt and he’d hate you for it. Your thoughts spiralled.

“Nothin’, huh?” He taunts, a smirk pulling at his lips as he watches you slowly crumble. To make it worse, he turns you in his hold, so you’re pinned with your back to the desk and his hands on either side of you.

“Y’alright, darlin’? You look awfully hot. Don’t got a fever or nothin’?” He mumbles, seeing how far he can push you as he leans in closer.

“I-I’m fine.” You say quietly, mesmerised by the sight of his face so close as you notice little details you’d never noticed before, barely even realising his lips are so close to your own until he’s pressing them to yours.

You make a slight noise of surprise before you get lost in it. The feeling of his lips against yours was something you’d dreamed about for so long, and now it was finally happening.

Your hands come up and around his neck, pulling him closer towards you as he deepens the kiss, forcing his tongue inside your mouth and overpowering you immediately as he pushes you back onto the workbench, sitting you on top of it and already working open the buttons of your jeans.

He kisses you one more time before getting to his knees and pulling your pants completely off, eyeing your panties, a dark patch in the middle of them from your growing arousal.

“Joel, please.” You whimper from above him as his hands run up your legs, coming to your inner thighs before toying with the elastic of your panties.

“Y’need me here, darlin’?” He asks, smirking up at you as his fingers move to rub slow circles into your clit through the fabric.

“Fuck!” You gasp at the contact, needy and desperate for him by this point. “Yes, please- please Joel.” You’re reduced to begging already, something you figure only he had the power to make you do.

He shushes you gently, fingers slowly peeling your panties down and groaning at the sight of your bare cunt, dripping and pulsing with need.

“Fuck, baby. Such a pretty pussy, so fuckin’ wet. This all for me?” He hums, dragging a finger up and down your slit, gathering your wetness on it and sucking it into his mouth as he looks up at you.

You whine at the sight of him between your legs like this, not knowing how you’re going to survive when he actually makes contact with you, and nod furiously.

“Yes, oh my god. Yes, it’s all for you Joel.” You say quickly, and he seems satisfied with that answer, finally moving his face to your core and making you squirm as his hot breath fans over your pussy.

“Stop fuckin’ movin’.” He murmurs, seemingly enraptured by the sight of you, staring for a few seconds and making you want to shift away again under his intense gaze, but he has an arm on you to make sure you don’t move.

And then he finally, finally, licks a long stripe up your pussy, tongue running along your wet folds. And you fucking lose it.

“Oh my god, Joel, please. Fuck- fuck, please, more-” you start begging, moaning loudly as he picks up the pace and continues to devour you, drinking down your wetness, and eventually kissing and sucking at your clit. His fingers, those thick gorgeous fingers you’d dreamed of for so long, tease your entrance before he’s pushing those inside, making you wail at the feeling of something inside of you, getting you closer to that release you were aching for by this point.

“Fuck, yes!” You cry out, thighs shaking slightly as you feel yourself getting close.

“That’s right, baby. You like that?” He asks, voice an octave lower as he pumps his fingers in and out of your tight heat, tongue still working you over relentlessly.

“Please- it feels so good-” you whine in response, fingers grasping for something to hold onto, to tether yourself to earth with as you feel yourself start to float away. Finding his hair and tugging slightly which makes him groan.

“Good girl.” He praises, adding another finger. He curls his fingers, searching for your g-spot and finding it easily.

You moan weakly at the praise, hips bucking as you grind yourself against his mouth, the ridge of his nose stimulating your clit perfectly as your fingers pull at his hair, and before you know it, you’re coming with a hoarse scream of his name.

You see white as your thighs quiver around his head, tensing and squeezing slightly as he continues to work you through it, lapping at your juices until you cry out from the overstimulation.

He removes his fingers from your hole, licking them clean once more before standing up and removing his own clothes, revealing his hard cock and making your eyes widen slightly.

Of course he was big, you’d stared at the bulge of his jeans enough times to realise that, and you’d imagined it before, but it all paled in comparison to finally seeing it.

He was long, slightly curved, girthy with a flushed red tip which had precome leaking out of it as he pumped himself slowly with a smirk on his face.

“Cat got your tongue, pretty girl?” He hums teasingly, and you can’t even think straight anymore, just pulling him forward and kissing him hungrily as he positioned his cock at your slick entrance.

Needy little whines and whimpers flowed freely from your mouth straight into his, where he swallowed them whole before starting to push into you.

You part from the kiss suddenly, gasping as he pushes deeper and deeper, stretching you thoroughly, and you feel grateful that he has the decency to start off slow since you already feel like crying from how big he is, how fucking good it feels.

When he bottoms out, you’re already wrecked. He’s huge inside of you, and you can feel everything. Every single ridge, vein, and twitch of his pulsing cock as your walls hug him tightly.

“Y’okay?” He murmurs softly, making your heart swell at how tender he sounds right now, and you nod in response.

“Joel.. please move.” You whisper, and he complies, grabbing your hips and barely giving you a moment to think before he’s starting to pound into you, making you squeal as your arms came around his neck, nails digging into his back before his head ducks down into the crook of your neck, kissing and sucking at your pulse point and making you clench harder around him, before moving down to your breasts, palming them and taking one of your nipples into his mouth as you scream his name.

“Joel! I’m gonna- gonna come- oh god, please!” You cry out, back arching. He growls, picking up the pace. He could feel his orgasm building, but he needed you to come first, needed to feel your tight walls clenching and gushing around him before he even considered his own pleasure.

“Come on, baby. Give me one more and I’ll fill you up. Fuck this little cunt full of me.. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He says, voice low and husky as his balls slap against your ass, the loud sound of your wetness filling the room as you start to tremble once more.

“Yes! Fuck, Joel. Need it so bad. Want your come inside of me. Please, Joel.” You gasp, making him groan as his fingers move down to rub at your clit.

“Come for me, baby.” He encourages, speeding up even more and hitting that spot inside of you that makes you see stars, making you scream as you come and dissolve into a shaking, whimpering mess whilst he continues to thrust into you.

“That’s it, darlin’. Come all over my cock.” He grunts, his own release approaching quickly. The sounds of your moans and cries are enough to set him off, barely thrusting a few more times before stilling and filling you with his hot seed, slowly fucking it even deeper inside of you before pulling out and looking at you.

Skin flushed, panting heavily, come leaking down your thighs. You looked perfect. He wished that cameras were still around so he could take a picture of how you looked right now, keep it in his pocket wherever he went. But he couldn’t, and he realised you probably needed cleaning up now as your hazy eyes blinked open and looked at him. You were quiet, thinking about what this meant for the two of you now. Would he go back to being the cold man you knew? Would he be even colder? Would he suddenly be attentive and caring towards you?

You supposed you got your answer when he gently cupped your face, thumb stroking your cheek as he looked at you with something scarily close to love in his eyes, the gaze he’d somehow managed to conceal from you all these months which he could now finally show you.

“You okay?” He murmurs, and you nod weakly in response. He hums, giving you another small kiss before walking off to go get a rag to clean you up with.

“Hold on, let me just..” he mumbles to himself as he goes to try clean off any dust from the rag, before returning to between your thighs and cleaning away any evidence of your previous activities, tossing the rag somewhere and handing you your clothes. You get dressed quietly before he takes your hand and leads you over to a space on the floor where you set up your sleeping bags, putting them as close together as possible until he eventually just lets you tuck yourself into his, wrapping his strong arms around you from behind and falling asleep.

You listen to his soft snores, feel his calloused hands on your stomach where they snaked under your shirt before he fell asleep, and smile to yourself softly before falling asleep with him.

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated and my requests are open 💞

[fortheloveofwonderland]

A Memory Locked In The Heart - Spencer Reid x fem! Reader

A/N - Requested by the lovely @overduelibrarybooks I hope this was the kind of thing you were looking for!

Find my masterlist here.

My taglists are open and requests are open.

Requested: Yes l No

Request: "could u ever write a spencer reid x reader where reader def works for the cia but more as a translator who’s kinda forced into doing agenty things in order to gather intel and on a mandated break she finds out the UNSUB before the team does so she uses herself as bait, and shoots the guy all very badass fashion n then gets interrogated bc ms girl just shot him coldblood and halfway thru she recognizes spencer bc her mother and his mom lived in the same care facility??? idk sorry my mom has paranoid too so it just hits different but u don’t have to write this if u don’t want to i love ur writing <3"

CW: disclaimer: I know next to nothing about the CIA and what they investigate so please go easy on me here. This is all made up so hopefully it makes some kind of sense. Mentions of violence and sex work, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, some swears. Mentions of drug use and overdose. Spanish used towards the end is from Google Translate so I apologise if it isn’t completely accurate. Italics indicate flashbacks.

Plot: Eighteen years ago you met a boy named Spencer Reid whilst visiting your mother at Bennington Sanitorium. This time you are meeting under entirely different circumstances; across the table of an interrogation room.

WC: 5.3K

—————————————————————

How did I end up here?

That was a question you kept asking yourself as you rolled into your third hour of sitting in that cold, dimly lit interrogation room at the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.

Well you supposed you’d have to go back to the beginning to truly work that out.

The CIA and FBI joint task force for a country wide sex trafficking ring they believed to be operating out of DC.

When your team at the CIA had started investigating it was estimated that the ring had close to a hundred women who had been abducted and forced into the sex industry.

A lot of women were believed to have been taken trying to cross the border. Your job as a translator had involved spending a lot of time in Mexico, helping interview witnesses and family members who didn’t speak English.

The FBI involvement had come when women believed to have been part of the trafficking ring started turning up dead.

At last count they were up to twenty bodies. The Behavioural Analyst Unit had given their profile of the man they believed to be running the show.

White male in his mid to late forties. Bilingual. Possibly born in Mexico or an area surrounding the border but grew up in DC, they assumed based on his knowledge of the area. He’s attractive, charming and has a good level of education, he’d need to be able to charm the women into trusting him. He doesn’t have a full time job because he wouldn’t have time for one. All his time and focus goes on his girls. He was tech savvy, incredibly so, he’d have to be, to be able to set up the network on the dark web which enabled his customers to pay for his services.

It hadn’t been going well. Bodies kept dropping and the task force was no closer to catching the person responsible.

This went on for six months. Everyone was exhausted. You kept hitting brick wall after brick wall. It was demoralising.

Your boss had called for mandated time off. You’d all argued but she had been absolutely adamant. You’d all been working yourselves to the bone and she didn’t want you burnt out entirely.

You’d argued but your words had fallen on deaf ears.

“Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

The voice startled you out of your thoughts. You looked up to see the lanky, messy haired agent who called himself Doctor Reid, sticking his head through the door.

“Is coffee an option?”

He smiled brightly at you, a smile you swear you’ve seen before.

“Coffee is always an option.” He told you. “How do you take it?”

“Strong and black. Please.”

“I’ll be right back.”

With that the door closed leaving you to your thoughts once more.

There was something so familiar about the Doctor. His dark yet sparkling eyes, his awkward smile and the way he dressed. You couldn’t place it. But there was definitely something about him that stirred some memory buried deep in your brain. You just weren’t sure what it was.

He returned a few minutes later, bringing your coffee into the room and placing it on the table in front of you.

“Hopefully you won’t be stuck here too much longer. It’s just standard procedure.” he spoke sweetly, his voice stirring the hidden memory.

“Yeah I know. I get it.” you sighed as you spoke, wrapping your hands around the coffee. “Thank you for this.”

“You’re welcome.” he smiled before he started backing out of the room. You wished you could ask him to stay because you felt so much more at ease with him around. But you knew you couldn’t.

He turned to you in the doorway.

“You look cold in that.” He smiled a little sadly at you.

You’d forgotten about your outfit choice. No self respecting CIA agent dressed like you were right now.

“I guess I am a little.” You shrugged.

Spencer instantly shrugged his blazer off of his shoulders and laid it in front of you on the table.

“Thank you Doctor Reid.” you spoke again before he disappeared out the door.

“Goodbye Agent Y/L/N.”

The door closed, his voice reverberating in your ears, dragging you into a long forgotten memory.

As you slipped his jacket on, your eyes fluttered closed, his scent wafting up your nose.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Spencer. Spencer Reid.”

“Y/N. Y/N Y/L/N.”

Your eyes shot back open, a frown on your face.

“Spencer?” you muttered under your breath. “Spencer Reid.”

Where had you pulled that name from? And why did it feel oddly connected to Vegas?

You tried to push the thought away, you already had enough on your mind. There were much more pressing things to deal with than a vague memory from your hometown an undetermined amount of time ago.

***

You’d been instructed to switch off. Your time off should be used to recoup, relax and not to think about the case.

Easier said than done you thought.

Before you’d left the office on your mandated leave you’d taken photocopies of some files and slipped them into your bag. You knew you’d be in trouble if you were caught but you couldn’t help yourself. You wouldn’t be able to relax with this case still open.

As far as you were aware the BAU was still working on it but it provided you little comfort. In your time with the CIA you’d never gotten to be involved so heavily in a case. Your skills were mostly utilised in interview capacities and then you were sidelined.

You’d never had the privilege to work on a joint task force or investigate a crime so brutal.

You felt personally invested in this case. You thought if you could just find that one missing puzzle piece you could crack this case wide open.

And then you’d found it. The golden ticket. The smoking gun. The missing piece.

It had taken five days of your leave and copious amounts of coffee but you’d connected the dots no one else had.

You knew how to draw the unsub out. And you were going to do it tonight.

***

“Let’s start again from the beginning shall we?” Agent Rossi linked his fingers together on top of the table as he looked across at you, still slowly sipping your coffee.

“Oh goody.” You sighed. “Could Agent Jareau not fill you in what I’ve already told her?”

“Humour me.” The old man shrugged.

You didn’t have any ill will against him. Far from it. You were actually a big fan of David Rossi. But you were sick and tired of being treated like a criminal.

“Tell me how you managed to work out how to find him.”

You took another long sip of the coffee.

“All the pieces were there, they just hadn’t been put into place.”

“And how did you piece them together?”

“There was a pattern to where the women had been last seen. It was a guess more than anything. A lucky guess.”

“And the pattern was?”

You sighed in frustration.

“As I told agent Jareau,” you sipped your coffee. “The bars they were last seen in all had ties to Mexico. I’m not a native to DC but I know the area like the back of my hand. They were all either Mexican owned, had a Mexican name or were previously establishments such as Mexican restaurants. I made an educated guess that he frequented places such as these looking for his targets. I just got lucky I picked the right one.”

***

You felt incredibly exposed, but you supposed that was the point.

If you were going to get this guy's attention, you had to do this right.

It was a long shot. Just because Western’s bar was known for its famous tacos did not mean it would be the place he chose to pick up girls.

You just had to hope.

You wore a skimpy skirt that barely covered your ass, knee high boots and a crop top that accentuated your assets.

Your firearm was hidden in your left boot.

Your outfit garnered a lot of looks as you headed through Westerns towards the bar.

You felt men’s eyes on you from every angle, making you feel extremely self conscious. But you needed to keep your cool, exude confidence.

If your guy was here he needed to see you shine.

You ordered a soda to keep your head clear and sat at a table over the far side of the bar. From there you had a good view of the entrance and most of the room. And more importantly, the room had a view of you.

Three hours you sat there nursing your soda. It was a huge stab in the dark, you weren’t really surprised.

You finished your drink and headed out onto the cool DC street.

You made it five steps before you felt a presence behind you.

Just as you were about to turn, something covered your mouth.

You struggled against a pair of strong arms.

A smell wafted up your nose seconds before you lost consciousness.

Chloroform.

***

“Why didn’t you tell your unit chief before you went in?”

“Because I thought it was a long shot.” And because she would have been furious I was working the case.

“So you chose to use yourself as bait?”

“Yes.” You shrugged nonchalantly.

“Do you know how dangerous that could have been?” Rossi raised an eyebrow at you.

You had to refrain from rolling your eyes.

“Yes agent Rossi, I’m well aware. But I had a lead and I wasn’t going to ignore it.” You pulled Doctor Reid’s jacket tighter around your scantily clad body.

You caught his scent again. Coffee. Old books. A hint of peppermint.

Another long shut off memory wormed it’s way to the surface.

“So are you here visiting someone?”

“Yeah.” You smiled sadly. “My mom.”

“Oh.” He returned your sad smile. “Me too.”

“Agent Y/L/N?”

You were brought back by Rossi’s concerned voice.

“Hmm?”

“I said, what happened next? You were chloroformed and then what?”

You shook your head, your mind clouded.

“Can we take a break? I could really use some air.”

Rossi sighed with a small nod.

He stood from his chair and motioned you to follow him.

You got some odd looks from his fellow agents as he led you to the elevators. They all recognised what you were wearing as Spencer’s jacket.

You followed Rossi into the elevator and he pressed the button for the ground floor.

“Agent Rossi, can I ask you a strange question?” You asked as the doors closed.

He gave you a curious look.

“I suppose.”

“Doctor Reid. As in Spencer Reid?”

“The one and only.” Rossi frowned unsure what you were getting at.

“Where is he from?”

Rossi’s frown deepened, not sure he should tell you such things about his team. But you were an agent and you didn’t pose a threat to the team.

“Vegas I believe.”

Vegas. Of course.

“Ok.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.” You chewed your lip. “I think I might have known him.”

“Oh?”

You wished you hadn’t opened your mouth. This was not the time or place.

“I’m probably wrong. Just forget I said anything.”

The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. As you stepped out you pulled Spencer’s collar to your nose and sniffed it.

No you weren’t wrong.

***

Las Vegas, Nevada - 1999

“Hi again.” You smiled at the lanky man, Spencer you’d met a few days ago. “How’s your mom?”

“Still angry at me.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and stubbed the toe of his shoe on the floor.

“She came in recently?”

“Yeah a few months ago. I turned eighteen and I was able to have her put into care.” He blanched, clearly feeling guilty for his decision.

“Do you want to grab a coffee?”

“Uhm sure.” He shrugged.

He followed you through to the day room. It was late and there were only a few patients inside and a few nurses milling around.

You got two cups of coffee from the machine and the two of you sat at a table together.

“Do you mind me asking what’s wrong with your mom?” You dared as you slid him the drink.

He sighed heavily, gnawing on his bottom lip as though his life depended on it.

“She’s a paranoid schizophrenic.” He spoke clinically, words he’d had to say too many times in his life. It was as though he’d distanced himself from it. Like he was giving a patient a diagnosis rather than talking about his own mother.

“Mine too.” You gave him a wry smile. You had something in common, just not something you would like to have in common.

“How long has your mom been here?”

“Three years. She got really bad and my dad couldn’t take care of her anymore. She’s been doing much better since she moved in here.”

“That’s good.” Spencer nodded. “I hope my mom realises I did this for her. For her well being. At the moment she’s just so...angry.”

You reached across the table and placed your hand on top of his. He seemed a little startled by the physical touch but you didn’t move your hand.

“This is the best place for her. I assume from what you said earlier your dad isn’t in the picture?”

He used his free hand to sip his coffee with a sad shake of his head.

“He left when I was ten. He couldn’t handle mom's illness.”

You gave his hand a small squeeze.

“I can’t imagine what it was like for you to have to look after her by yourself. It was hard enough with my dad there. Really makes you grow up fast.”

“It really does.” He agreed. “I’m not sure I ever got to be a kid.”

“I know that feeling.”

After that you spent hours chatting about anything and everything until way into the night. It wasn’t until a nurse came and asked you politely to leave that you realised how late it was.

“I’ll probably see you around?” You spoke as you stepped outside together.

“Maybe. In a few weeks I’m heading out of state. I’m working on a PhD.” He didn’t want to tell you it was actually his second PhD.

“Oh. Ok.” You tried to hide the disappointment from your voice.

Despite the circumstances you’d enjoyed talking to someone like minded, someone who understood. You didn’t have anyone else your own age you could talk to about this kind of thing.

“Maybe we could exchange numbers?” You blushed a little.

“I don’t have a cellphone.” He shrugged.

“Oh.”

“It’s not an excuse.” He sensed you didn’t believe him. “I’m not so into technology. I don’t even have email.”

Normally you would have thought it was just a bad excuse to get out of seeing you again but the look on Spencer’s face told you he was being genuine.

“Ok.” You gave him a shy smile. “Well maybe I’ll see you again before you leave.”

“I hope so.” His eyes sparkled as he looked at you on the dark street.

There was an air between you, some kind of thick tension but you didn’t know what it meant.

“If I don’t see you again,” you spoke trying to ignore whatever it was. “It was really good to meet you and I hope your mom gets used to the facility.”

“You too.” He smiled so genuinely at you, it made your heart skip a beat.

And then you went your separate ways.

***

“Ok, so what happened next?” Rossi wasted no time once you were back in the interrogation room.

“Well I blacked out after I was chloroformed so excuse me if I don’t remember.” You gave him a sarcastic smile.

“What’s the next thing you do remember?” He reworded his question.

“I woke up in a large basement. It was gritty and dingy. And there were other women there too.”

“How many?”

“At least twenty.” You sighed letting your mind travel back to the basement you never wanted to go back to. Not even in your mind.

***

You woke with a start, your head pounding. You gasped for air as though you’d been drowning.

You blinked your eyes trying to adjust to the dark room you found yourself in.

It was cold and damp and you could hear a pipe dripping in the distance.

You tried to roll over but your arm wouldn’t budge. You were met by a loud clanking sound when you tried.

You tugged your arm, hearing the same sound and being met with a sharp pain in your wrist.

“Good luck.” A woman’s voice scoffed. “They don’t come loose.”

You blinked a few more times, looking over to your left arm. There was a heavy metal cuff right around your wrist that was attached to a metal bed frame.

That’s when you realised you were laying on a small cot on top of a ratty, itchy blanket. You were still dressed, thank god.

You suddenly remembered your firearm concealed in your boot. You patted your left calf and sure enough you felt the hard weapon still inside.

That was something at least.

Oversight on their part.

You remembered the voice you’d heard before and turned as much as you could with your arm cuffed to take in the rest of the room.

There were at least forty other cots close together lining the walls, with at least half of them containing the body of other women.

The voice you’d heard belonged to a woman in the cot next to you. She gave you a smile but it didn’t reach her eyes.

Her eyes were broken.

“Hi,” you croaked. “I’m Y/N.”

“Delilah.” Her accent was Spanish. You were sure Delilah wasn’t her real name either.

“How long have you been here?”

She sighed, playing with a strand of curly black hair.

“What month is it?”

“September.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Not that long then. I’ve been here since July.” She looked confused as though that couldn’t be long enough.

“Delilah?” You narrowed your eyes on her. “What year do you think it is?”

“2018…” she saw your face drop and knew instantly it was no longer 2018.

“Oh gosh.” You felt for her, tears welling in your eyes. “It’s 2020.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. “Wow.”

“It’s ok.” You lowered your voice. “I’m CIA. I’m going to get us out of here. I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

***

“Delilah.” Rossi opened the file in front of him. “Was that Roberta Suez?”

He pulled out a photograph and slid it across the table. You averted your gaze.

“Yes and please I don’t need to see it, I was there.”

“How did she end up in hospital fighting for her life?”

“You know how.” You huffed. “Look I’m starting to get fed up with this now.” You folded your arms. “Carlos Ramirez was a sick son of a bitch. If I hadn’t done what I did he would have killed all those women. I don’t regret what I did.”

“How did she end up in hospital?” He repeated.

“Good lord.” You grumbled. “I’ll talk but I don’t want to talk to you.”

Rossi narrowed his eyes on you.

“No? But I’m so compassionate.” He spoke sarcastically.

“I won’t say another word unless it’s to Reid.” You looked up to the two way mirror. You didn’t know why but you had a feeling he was there.

Sure enough it was barely twenty seconds before the door opened and Doctor Reid himself stepped in the room.

“I got this Rossi.” Spencer told the older man who stood up with a shrug.

Rossi left the room while Spencer took the seat he’d been occupying.

Did he remember you? It had been close to twenty years since you’d last seen each other. Had it not been for the olfactory memory that struck you when you put on his jacket you might never have remembered him.

But you knew the rest of his team was behind the two way glass, or at least some of them were so it didn’t seem an appropriate time to ask such things.

“So agent Y/L/N,” he smiled softly at you. “Can you please tell me how Delilah ended up in hospital?”

“You already know the answer to that Doctor but since you asked so nicely,” you leant your elbows on the table, entwined your fingers and rested your chin the little bridge you’d created. “She had a drug overdose. But you and I both know it wasn’t her who administered the drugs.”

“And who did?”

“I did.”

Your words hung in the air between you and Spencer. He knew the answer, the whole team did. You’d already told Agent Jareau everything.

This was a huge waste of time.

“I administered the drugs because he told me if I didn’t he would kill me. I needed to stay alive so I could save those women.”

“Who said he would kill you?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“It wasn’t Ramirez?”

“No.” You shook your head. “If it was Ramirez I would have shot him. But it must have been one of his right hand men.”

“How would you know that? You’d never met Ramirez correct?” Spencer had a soft tone to his voice which made his line of questioning easier than Agent Jareau’s.

“I’m not a profiler but I’ve been to enough seminars over the years. He didn’t fit the bill. He was young, scatty, he didn’t strike as much fear into the other women as I thought the boss would. I made an educated guess and I was right. If I’d shot at him I would have blown my chance at getting Ramirez.”

***

“Shit shit shit!” You pulled yourself as close to Delilah’s cot as possible with your restraint. “Delilah, keep breathing, try to breath. Fuck I am sorry.”

Tears rolled down your cheeks, the empty needle you’d been made to inject in her vein between your cots on the floor.

He’d held a gun to your head and said he would shoot you if you didn’t do it. You didn’t think he was bluffing.

“It happens a lot.” A woman opposite spoke up. “You’ll soon find out. If she wakes up she’ll have the pleasure of returning the favour.” She gave you an almost manic grin.

If she wakes up. It was the if you were having the issue with.

“Who’s in charge around here?”

She shrugged.

“Don’t know his name. Big guy. Tattoos. Mustache. You can’t miss him.”

“Does he come down here often?”

Again she shrugged.

“Being down here you have a way of losing track of time.” She clicked her tongue. “But he’ll be here for you later. He has to test his new girls.”

Your blood ran cold.

“Test?” You swallowed, pretty sure you knew what she meant.

“He can’t very well expect you to make him money if he doesn’t know how good you are.”

Oh god.

Your heartbeat raced. No, it was not going to come to that. You were a CIA agent and you were armed.

It was not going to come to that.

***

Spencer’s face paled a little at your words. You hadn’t told Agent Jareau that part.

“He was going to...he didn’t…”

“No.” You cut him off, pushing the memory back down. “I had a gun, remember.”

You offered him a wry smile.

“So you know what comes next.”

“I’d like you to tell me.”

The way he said it was more like he was a therapist than an FBI agent. As though he wanted you to tell him so you could get it off your chest, unburden yourself, rather than for interrogation purposes.

“Ok.” You nodded. “He came for me later that night. And that’s when it happened.”

***

“Ahh look at you.”

A deep, Spanish voice woke you.

Your eyes fluttered open and landed on a strong, tattooed man with a mustache standing over your cot.

This must be him.

“Tan hermosa.”

So beautiful.

You tried not to shudder.

You sat up wiggling your legs in your boots to make sure you could still feel your firearm. You could.

“Su nombre es Rosa.”

Your name is Rosa.

Guess again.

“Su nombre es Y/N.”

“Tú hablas español?”

You speak Spanish?

“Si.”

“Eres perfecta.” He grinned menacingly. “My clients will love you.”

He reached in his pocket and fished out a key chain. He reached over you and unlocked your cuff.

You rolled your wrist to try and get your blood circulating again.

“On your feet.”

You complied and stood up. Your legs were shaky.

He grasped your wrist, hard enough so you couldn’t wriggle free but not hard enough to leave a mark. He started dragging you across the room.

With his free hand he undid the four locks on the large steel door and pulled your through it. Once on the other side he took care to lock them all again, keeping a firm grasp on you the whole time.

You were dragged down a long, narrow corridor towards another steel door, this one with just one lock on.

He slid the key in and opened it, pulled you inside and locked it behind him.

The room was much smaller than the one you’d been held in and only housed a single cot.

He licked his lip as he looked at you. His large, thick fingers stroked your cheek and you had to try and hide your disgust.

“En la cama. Ahora.”

On the bed. Now.

You had to pick the opportune moment. You had to plan this just right. You had no doubt he had a gun on him so if you faltered even slightly, he would kill you.

“Qué tal esto.”

How about this.

You made a show of licking your lips and then dropping to your knees in front of him.

“Whoa, feisty. I like it.” He grinned, his meaty hands going to his belt buckle.

Yes. Right where you wanted him.

While he was fumbling with his belt, you reached your hand back into your left boot, drawing your gun in one swift move.

You head butted him in the crotch, sending him stumbling backwards, crying out in pain.

“Mierda!” Shit. “Usted puta!”

You whore!

You were on your feet in a second, your gun trained on him.

“You will never hurt another woman again.” You spat, furious tears suddenly streaming from your eyes.

He looked up at you, his mouth opened to speak.

But the words didn’t come out as your bullet hit him between the eyes.

“Who’s the puta now?”

***

“I would say,” Spencer chewed his lip. “You did what you had to do to survive.”

You breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank god.

“Thank you.” You smiled softly. “And I did. If I hadn’t shot him, who knows how many other women would have died.”

Spencer pushed his chair back and stood up.

“Just so you know, we got word from the hospital a little while ago. Roberta Suez, Delilah, is going to be just fine.”

“Oh thank god.” You felt tears brimming your eyes.

He opened the door and turned back to you.

“Are you coming?”

“I can leave?”

“You were never under arrest.” He smirked at you.

You couldn’t help but laugh.

You got up from the chair and Spencer motioned you out of the room.

“I’ll walk you out.” He showed you across the bullpen towards the elevators. There was an awkward air between the two of you.

Did you say anything? It didn’t seem as though he remembered you, was it worth reminding him?

He motioned you into the elevator first and he followed, pressing the button.

The elevator started its descent.

Time was running out.

“So uhm…” Spencer turned to you and turned too. “How’s your mom?”

A smile broke out on your features.

“I didn’t think you remembered me.”

“Are you kidding?” He laughed. “I recognised you the second you walked in.”

“It’s been twenty years.” You laughed.

“Eighteen years, seven months.” He corrected you. “But I could never forget your face.”

You blushed a little, averting your gaze.

“My moms doing ok. Thanks for asking. How’s your mom?” You looked back at him.

“Recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.” He told you sadly.

“Oh gosh I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ok. These things happen.” He shrugged. “Made it to thirty without having a schizophrenic break but now I have to wait until I’m older to find out if I’ll develop Alzheimer’s.”

The doors to the elevator opened and you stepped out, Spencer close behind.

“I really am sorry Spencer.”

“It’s ok.” He shrugged. “Is your mom still at Bennington? I used to see her when I went to visit my mom but I moved her out a little while ago.”

“Yeah she’s still there. She likes being close to my dad.”

You both hovered by the exit, not ready to say goodbye.

“Can I take you for coffee? If you don’t have anywhere else to be.” Spencer blushed as he spoke.

“I’d like that. A lot actually. But I’d really like to shower and change out of this getup.” You laughed. “How about dinner?”

“Dinner sounds perfect.” He grinned at you.

You gave him a smile and turned to leave but before you made it to the door Spencer spoke again.

“Y/N,” he called your name, his voice cracking a little. “You uh...you forgot something.”

You turned to face him curiously.

He walked closer to you and without a second thought, placed his hands on your face and kissed you.

For a second you stood frozen, in shock of what was going on.

But after a few moments you wrapped your arms around his neck and opened your mouth to deepen the kiss.

When the kiss ended you were both smiling at one another.

“What was that for?” You asked softly.

“Oh you know…” he shrugged with a coy smile. “Just something that needed to be done.”

“I’ll meet you back here in a few hours.” You told him, touching his chest briefly.

“Ok.”

“Bye Spencer Reid.”

“Bye Y/N Y/L/N.” He croaked.

And with that you sauntered out the doors but not out of his life.

***

Las Vegas, Nevada - 1999

“Spencer?” You’d only made it a few paces away from Bennington before you stopped in your tracks, calling his name. “You uh...you forgot something.”

He turned to face you curiously.

You walked closer to him and without a second thought, placed your hands on his face and kissed him.

He stood frozen, in shock of what was going on.

It was just a brief kiss, Spencer was too confused to do anything but stand there dumbly.

“Wh-what was that for?” He swallowed.

“Just something that needed to be done.” You smiled. “Bye Spencer Reid.”

“Bye Y/N Y/L/N.”

And with that you sauntered back down the street, hoping that one day, the universe would lead you back into each other’s lives.

—————————————————————

Taglist (let me know if you would like to be added) -

@muffin-cup

@andiebeaword

@mggsprettygirl @measure-in-pain

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 311: Hand Gun

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi was all “thinkin’ about dropping in some woke analogies of the very real and very presently relevant issue of racial profiling idk what do you guys think” and then shrugged and did it without waiting for an answer, and ngl it was a bit sudden, but I’m here for it. All Might was all “DEKU YOU NEED TO EAT” and Deku was all “OKAY” and took his hero bento and went to go stand dramatically on a tower in the rain whilst having some highly anticipated Vestige flashbacks. OFA II was all, “sup, I guess I’m not Kacchan... OR AM I,” and ngl I think he is?? Alternate universes anybody?? Hello??? But anyway, so OFA the First a.k.a. Yoichi was all “remember that time you guys rescued me from my evil brother and Two took my hand and we Had A Moment?”, and Two and Three were all “ahh yeah good times”, and it was very nice and very, very gay. The chapter ended with it being very unclear if Two and Three have actually lent their power to Deku yet or not lmao. Y’all need to get your shit together dudes.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “what if I gave a random bad guy a fucking tommy gun that shoots nails” and jesus christ calm down son. The Hawksquad, a.k.a. SQUAWK as per @hotchocolatier​, are all “time to drive aimlessly around town acting like Deku has a restraining order on us because that’s literally the best plan to combat the League we could come up with,” and I have no further comment. Hawks is all “idk about you guys but I want to know more about AFO and Tomura’s whole deal” and I can’t remember the last time I identified so strongly with one of these characters. All Might is all, “[EXPLODES???]”, and the chapter ends with that mysterious hot girl from the Tartarus breakout being all “HELLO I CAN TURN INTO A GUN AND I LITERALLY DON’T GIVE A FUCK” and (1) WOW, and (2) IT’S TRUE, SHE CAN, AND SHE REALLY DOESN’T. GODDAMN.

(ETA: so this wholly escaped my notice on the first go, and also has nothing to do with the chapter itself, but I only just realized that this chapter was scanlated by a new group, TCB Scans. they actually did a very good job, and I’m curious if they’ve found a new RAW provider, because the quality this week is actually crazy good in comparison to what we’ve been dealing with for the past few months. I’m gonna have to get caught up on what exactly happened here lol.)

so what will it be this week? more Vestige antics? more of Sad Nomad Deku standing on buildings and pretending like he’s some cool aloof antihero, as if he could fool us when we all know his hero backpack is secretly stuffed full with his nerd diaries and the remnants of all the hero bentos that All Might keeps giving him?? or, just putting it out there, just a crazy thought, but you don’t suppose we might actually cut back to U.A.? mmm. side-eyes emoji

maaaaaan I’m starting to get tired of this trend of beginning chapters by dropping in on random power-tripping civilians and/or Shindou lol. just once can we get a chapter that opens with someone I actually give a fuck about

oh at least Endeavor is here

A WHAT SUPPORT ITEM!??! HOLY SHIT DDLKJSLFKJL

lol somehow that’s more terrifying than bullets for me?? like I’m fully aware that bullets will fuck you up way worse and that in real life nail guns probably don’t work like this AT ALL and only have a range of like... hold up let me just google... up to 100 to 150 m/s and distances of up to 500m wait WHAT

okay wait. hold up. like I was expecting google to tell me nail guns only shoot a few feet at most, and instead the first search result is some CDC blog article that’s “dispelling” the “””myth””” -- please note my repeated sarcastic quotation marks -- that nail guns can fire 1400 feet per second, by explaining that actually they can fire anywhere from 315 ft/sec to 1,295 ft/sec, and that “it is in the pneumatic nail gun user’s best interest to handle these tools as if they were a firearm despite having a lower velocity” dlkjdslkjflkl

SO THAT SCENE IN IRON MAN 3 WHERE TONY RAIDS A HOME DEPOT AND BUYS A BUNCH OF RANDOM TOOLS AND SHIT AND GOES ON TO STAGE A ONE-MAN INVASION OF AN INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST’S FLORIDA MANSION HQ IS ACTUALLY TRUE. YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT THE FILM “HOME ALONE” IS ACTUALLY A DOCUMENTARY. “the Discovery Channel television program “Mythbusters” compared the penetration capacity of an airborne projectile shot from a pneumatic framing nail gun to that of a 9mm hand gun” HELLO YES AND A MERRY “WHAT THE FUCK” TO YOU AS WELL

anyway, so. there’s apparently a reason why the Number One hero, who can burn people with the intensity of a sun going supernova, is hiding here behind this concrete support column making frowny faces. nope. nuh uh. he ain’t about that. I don’t blame you buddy

so now he’s barrel rolling out of his hiding place and setting this dude THE FUCK ON FIRE because HELL NO. BAD ENOUGH I HAD TO WATCH THAT FUCKING MUSHROOM EPISODE LAST WEEK! YOU TAKE THAT SHIT SOMEWHERE ELSE

LOL look at his face

I know the context is actually him being all “I know I’m responsible for basically everything that happened and so that’s why I’m so grim and serious about this mission to set things right piece by piece,” but in my mind this pissed-off face is 100% all because this dude tried to shoot his eye out with a nail gun. look at that. you made him go full flame face again. beard and all. protecting his face so that it can hopefully melt any stray nails that get too close. nope nope nope

good lord. so what’s up next. let me guess the guy fighting Best Jeanist has like an atomic chainsaw or some shit

lol nope we’re just cutting back to Hawks and Jeanist chilling in the Jesla after they’ve wrapped things up

Jeanist has got some serious Groot energy you guys jesus christ he’s like 12 feet tall

oh snap someone threw a pipe at him now

today is just the chapter of Endeavor being assaulted by random DIY tools I guess

I mean, I get why they’re pissed at him obviously; I would be too lol. but tbh I also don’t really understand the “get out of here we don’t want your help” attitude that all of these people suddenly seem to have?? like it if were me, I would be fucking DEMANDING for him and the other heroes to be working round the clock to fix their stupid mess. I mean who else is gonna do it?? it’s their mess, I sure don’t want to be the one to clean it up instead. anyways but whatever lol

oh shit?

so they haven’t dropped the whole “OFA secret potentially gets revealed to the world” thing yet after all. that makes sense I suppose, it did seem like that whole thing wound up playing out a bit too easily

anyway so yeah

the locals are definitely none too happy. well at least Dabi’s got something to be cheerful about I guess

so now we’re cutting to the interior of the Jesla and they’re chitchatting about the current investigation

oh wow this actually makes a bit of sense now. so there was a reason they were keeping their distance from Deku

please note that even in this abstract Endeavor’s-Mental-Image-Of-Him panel, Deku’s eyes still don’t have the light in them anymore :( my poor son

also ftr I still think using Deku as bait in this particular sense is the shittiest idea ever ngl. like sure, let’s let the sixteen-year-old run around battling miscellaneous escaped prison convicts while we stay several kilometers away ON PURPOSE despite the fact that you’re using him as bait to draw out the Big Bad, who just a reminder can destroy anything with a mere touch and who you were all basically helpless against. what exactly are you all planning to do if Tomura or one of the other League VIPs actually shows up to retrieve him?? are you even keeping tabs on him at all in real time?? jesus

(ETA: well that escalated quickly lol.)

Horikoshi is all of a sudden dropping whole pages of exposition here and I can’t be bothered to summarize this lol so just,

a big fat YES to what Jeanist said, though. that’s why imo they would have been better off laying a trap at U.A. rather than just wandering around out in the open. I assume they’re trying to cut their potential losses because U.A. is full of students (and civilians), but those students also happen to be more capable than pretty much anyone else in the manga at this point. and tbh they’re already in life-threatening danger regardless of how things play out from here on, so they might as well at least try to use the few advantages they have right now. U.A. is almost certainly going to come under siege at some point anyway, so they might as well prepare for it

lol I don’t think I’m explaining this very well because I don’t have the patience right now to break it down point by point like it really ought to be, so for now I’ll just say that imo “U.A. siege” stands a good chance of being the eventual endgame even now, and so this whole “Deku runs around being bait” arc is really just killing time until then lol. like and subscribe for more rambling nonsensical takes such as this. maybe next time I’ll even put it all into one single sentence for maximum meandering senior citizen rant value

well it’s nice that they’re finally talking about all of this I guess

we readers have known all of this for months now but this confirms the heroes are finally caught up. ALSO, Hawks is so fucking smart, as always. kinda wonder if things would have played out differently if All Might had let him in on the secret a bit earlier. probably that’s why Horikoshi made damn sure they didn’t find out until after the War arc lol

OH MY GOD YOOOOOO HAWKS OUT HERE ASKING THE REAL QUESTIONS

“anyone else wondering why AFO bothered to raise Tomura as his fake heir for fifteen years when he was secretly planning on taking over his body the whole time” YES, [raises hand] lmao Hawks where the hell were you when I was debating this “AFO is the final villain and Tomura is just his pawn” thing on multiple occasions over the past several years lol

lmao seeing them debate the metaphysics of OFA and all of its mystical bullshit is seriously surreal you guys

JEANIST HAVE YOU CHECKED OUT MY META TAG I HAVE WRITTEN SO MANY ESSAYS. I ACTUALLY WAS PLANNING ON WRITING ANOTHER ESSAY ABOUT THE THING THAT I’M PRETTY SURE HAWKS IS ABOUT TO BRING UP, BUT I NEVER GOT AROUND TO IT WHOOPS, BUT MAYBE I WILL NOW LOL LET’S SEE HOW IT GOES

yes!!

WHICH AFO FUCKING ENSURED HE WOULD BE BY LITERALLY PLANNING OUT EVERY LAST DETAIL OF HIS FAMILY TRAGEDY, FROM SECRETLY GIVING TENKO THE QUIRK TO MAKING SURE NO CIVILIANS OR HEROES WOULD HELP HIM UNTIL AFO FINALLY STEPPED IN. I’M 1000% CONVINCED THIS IS THE CASE YOU GUYS. NOT JUST BECAUSE I’M NOT A FAN OF “THE WORLD IS A FUNDAMENTALLY SHITTY PLACE, ACTUALLY” TAKES BECAUSE MISTER ROGERS TOLD ME TO ALWAYS LOOK FOR THE HELPERS, BUT ALSO BECAUSE IT LITERALLY JUST DOESN’T MAKE A LICK OF SENSE OTHERWISE. THEIR ENTIRE HOUSE CAVED IN FFS, YOU’RE TELLING ME NONE OF THE NEIGHBORS FUCKING OVERHEARD THAT SHIT AND WENT “UMMMMMMMMM” AND WENT TO SEE WHAT WAS GOING ON?? “DIDN’T THERE USED TO BE A HOUSE HERE, AND LIKE A WHOLE FAMILY, AND SHIT?”

LIKE I’M SORRY, BUT IT’S ONE THING TO SAY IT’S REALISTIC THAT NOT A SINGLE PERSON WOULD ATTEMPT TO HELP THE WANDERING TRAUMATIZED CHILD AFTERWARDS (WHICH I DISAGREE WITH AS WELL BUT AT LEAST THAT’S MORE SUBJECTIVE), AND IT’S A WHOLE OTHER THING TO ARGUE THAT IT’S REALISTIC THAT NO ONE WOULD BE FUCKING NOSY. LIKE THAT’S A WHOLE DIFFERENT LEVEL OF “THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS” ENTIRELY LOL. anyway tl;dr AFO is a piece of shit and Tomura’s entire worldview is based on a magnificently intricate and savagely cruel lie more at 11

anyway so after all that ranting it looks like that wasn’t even what Hawks was talking about after all lol. I just went off for absolutely no reason lol oh well. instead it seems that Hawks is suggesting that Tomura’s carefully cultivated hatred might not yet have actually reached “can defeat OFA” levels even after all of that trauma. interesting!

don’t mind me, I’m just sitting here while my brain furiously scrambles to put together all the parallels between Hawks and Tomura that it never noticed before until exactly this second. like I’m not even sure that was the intent here at all (I need to check out another translation or two lol), but regardless my mind decided that now would be the perfect time to make the connection between these two twenty-somethings who both had horrific childhoods and spent years being molded by their respective manipulative guardians, and developed eerily similar “laugh at everything because what else can you do” coping mechanisms to deal with it all hmmmmm

anyway so they were talking more about their strategy, but now all of a sudden Jeanist’s phone is beeping??

AND NOW WE’RE CUTTING AWAY TO ALL MIGHT AND HIS MIGHTMOBILE DAMMIT so that means the call to Jeanist was actually something important then!! WAS IT BAKUGOU OMG. DOES YOUR INTERN WANT A WORD FFFKLFSJK please it’s been so long I just need a little crumb or two to tide me over lmao have mercy

anyway so All Might’s following the GPS tracking device he’s apparently got planted on Deku (which in my conspiracy headcanons he’s actually had for a long time now, like since before DvK2 lol because HOW ELSE WOULD HAVE HAVE KNOWN THAT THEY WERE FIGHTING EACH OTHER IN GROUND BETA, PEOPLE) and thinking angsty thoughts about Deku’s sucky life

AND NOW ALL MIGHT’S PHONE IS RINGING TOO?? BAKUGOU HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE YOU CALLING. “WHERE ARE YOU HIDING THE NERD GODDAMMIT”

OMG

lol is he under attack or is he just finally giving All Might the slip like we all know he SECRETLY PLANNED TO ALL ALONG oh my poor dumb angstmuffin

OMG AHHHHHHH WHAT

DID ALL MIGHT JUST FUCKING DIE LMAO NO OF COURSE NOT, BUT WHAT

WHAT IS HAPPENING OMG

THE FUCK IS THAT. AT LEAST IT’S NOT A NAIL

OH IT’S A SPEAKER!! OMG DID THEY TAKE ALL MIGHT HOSTAGE

“THEY’RE HERE” WELP, TIME TO SEE JUST HOW SHITTY THIS SHITTY PLAN REALLY IS LOL

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

SHE!!!!

omg. AND OVERHAUL JUST CHILLING THERE IN THE BACKGROUND ALL “WHAT DO YOU EVEN WANT ME TO DO I’VE GOT NO FUCKING ARMS” YEAH GOOD RIDDANCE LOL

DOES THIS GIRL HAVE ONE GIANT LEG OR WHAT, LIKE WHAT’S THE DEAL HERE

-- HOLD UP WAIT, THE GUN IS HER ARM, HOLY SHIT SHE CAN TURN INTO A GUN -- OKAY HOLD UP BECAUSE I NEED TO SAY THAT IN BIGGER TEXT BECAUSE !!!!

YOU GUYS, THE COOL TARTARUS GIRL IS BACK AND HER QUIRK IS “CAN TURN INTO A FUCKING GUN.” THIS IS NOT A DRILL!! MY BEST GIRL MT. GUN IS FINALLY BACK ON THE SCENE WITH HER QUIRK “CAN DO ANYTHING A GUN CAN DO.” “I HEARD Y’ALL WENT AND NAMED ONE OF YOUR HEROES ‘GUNHEAD’ EVEN THOUGH HIS HEAD ISN’T EVEN A GUN, LIKE WTF IS UP WITH THAT LET ME SHOW YOU HOW IT’S DONE” DANG OKAY

lmao only fifteen pages this week, and STILL NO KACCHAN (THEN WHO WAS PHONE!!!), but man I don’t even care because finally we’ve got a cliffhanger that’s actually deserving of being a cliffhanger! hot dog. okay then

[parviocula]

Here I go again. Lets talk about the Ebunike & Smasher!

MMK OK so since the first day I found out about this secret little hideout I instantly noticed the guns! And the computer!

I also realize this is just ONE of Adams many hideouts, but since I only know of this one and the unused one (I’ll talk about it later) I wanna speak on this!

So he has an extra Dragoon frame (lmao) and a SHIT load of HMG. So I wanna talk about the HMGs!

There’s 10 HMG in total in this hideout, but why so many? Well in MY opnion and obviously awesome theory is that each one has a specific history! A specific SPECIAL kill that he loves so much that every time he sees it he thinks about the story! Because the normal “he just likes it” is boring BOO TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO!

I also believe he names his guns because you know the whole “Name your weapon and it shall never betray you” when has adams weapons ever betrayed him? hmm? That’s Right! NEVER! SO THEY HAVE NAMES!

I wanna start with the left side of that picture above. I think one might be what he used during the “Love like fire” mission, imma say hmm top right gives me the vibes.  These have to be special right? They look great next to his extra frame.

Another cool thing is his extra! The heavily modified infamous Dragoon. It is an EXACT replica of what he wears now without all the inner tubing and his reactor core. Who gave it to him? Who gifted it to him? Could it have been a gift from Yorinobu himself when he came and asked Smasher to help him? A false gift? a false idol of power? the trojan?  Even the theme matches with the red and black! 

So I wanna expand on this and talk about his Hideout and the maelstrom because there’ SO MUCH going on people really don’t understand how important this area actually is! This took a lot of time to put together so hopefully I worded this as best as possible. Also I think his favorite are Shotguns & HMG

lol @ the fact he doesn’t have a chair for his computer.

Lets start with the general layout of the ship!

Ebunike at Night and Daytime! Pretty cool it keeps with the Red and Black theme yeah? Daytime it just looks like a normal boring ass ship. Pretty clever yeah? Lotta space too.

Cleaning supplies. Sometime was in charge of keeping up with the ships appearance! Probably also used to clean up Adams mess’. Probably Grayson (haha). Also gives off that Adam is not Filthy/Dirty! Like his hideout he is actually very very organized & clean which could be apart of living life in such rubbish environment for most of his life in New York. (Except for the body in the bathroom but we don’t see that rn)

Cool ass hangout spot! You can also find a stressball directly below this area BTW. I’m not sure he really uses this area though unless he uses Gemini to blend it but I doubt it (I believe he’s full on Samson by this time)

Stolen Kang Tao/Militech Firearms that are to be sold to South Africa! He has a lot of this shit laying all over the place. I assume this is his PASSIVE income.

Dead Chick from the whole Blackmail thingy. Lazy grunt never cleaned it up! Or maybe Grayson tried to get back at Adam after he left him? 

Graysons little area! He has a smart pistol on the left, a window on the right that overlooks the Ebunike itself & two doors. There’s also a lot of trash outside the window so Grayson is very lazy! There’s also Documents here, Magazines and a pencil holder (I find this very cute). I can see Grayson just sitting in his swirly chair being a dumbass and reading emails. 

Straight up idc idc idc SMASHER STILL HAS SOME EMOTION! I hate that “Omg he’s is asshole on humanity bla bla bla” well maybe he changed look at him giving a shit about Grayson. “Anything happens, let me know” dude bruh come ONNNNNUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MIKE PONDSMITH GIVE ME!!!1 GIVE GIVE GIVE!

Idk who writes this 1000% but I am gonna say Smasher because I am built like that (a problem) so yeah. Interesting information btw if you like to write about selling illegal shit or whatever the hell you wanna do.

OKAY before I actually start to explain stuff. I think it is funny that Smasher is working with Maelstrom because Gray/Mike states that Adam Smasher believe them to be Stupid! He totally hates their guts! So the fact he literally entrusts them with the cargo and shit is super funny to me (they’re probably cheap)

Anyways back on track.

Proof it IS Smasher who is in control. It’s also never states wtf Grayson ever said and who Briger is exactly (we never see Kurt or Xay either so w/e)

Their Meth lab! How do I know this?

BAM

Codeine 

Iodine 

Red Phosphorus 

Rentable Cargo!

If you take the time to explore the area you’ll notice the entire left (from Ebunike) are actually living spaces. Now, rather if this is rentable just for the Maelstrom or other outside forces I cannot be 1000% sure. It is PROBABLY for fellow Maelstrom goons that are hired to live. Although I do think depending on the offer others may be allowed to live there under specific agreements (taking advantage of homelessness in exchange for dangerous exports).

NOW REMEMBER! Adam Smasher was once a gang leader. HE KNOWS what he is doing. This is just part of his entire life in one image. He knows exactly how to talk, who to talk to and how to act & read your intentions. He knows the pulse of his surroundings (Street Samurai), he knows when you are lying and when you speak the truth (knows who to trust). Everything thats put together in the Ebunike lot and the boat itself is a render of himself as not only a professional Solo but as a MERC & LEADER. He is by no means an idiot. 

I wanted to expand on this little area to show you just how Smasher acts and what he can put together! He has routes & people! He reads and writes and thinks and keeps tracks of a lot of things that would otherwise stress most of us the fuck out. He has loyal goon (Grayson) and clearly most of Maelstrom really do respect him.

You can also see that there’s Games, Food, Beds & TVs all over the place! Everyone is technically properly cared for! Not that it means he’s merciful, he just knows if his people are happy than they will do good work. Its never brought up that he rules with an iron fist in the surrounding area. It also seems the cleanest in that entire area.

Not to put Grayson down the man did a lot of work too! He’s the right hand man of Smasher (fucker AHHH!!!!) so who knows what else he has done.

Last part is his unused unfinished hideout.

Notice a big difference? The fact they went with his outer shell instead of the main core of his chest.... This originally lead me to believe that Adam Smasher was suppose to have his more “Human” form like the Samson before they swapped it out with the Dragoon. Because the unused appearance he has him in human clothes (BTW the face is Jackies from what I’ve learned. So don’t take it that this is an accurate version of him). THIS DRIVES ME INSANE BECAUSE AHHHHH MERC/SOLO Smasher! THE REAL DEAL! Not that robotic version THAT IS SO UPSETTING! FREE HIM!!!

2077 DRAGOON FRAME

2020 “Young” Smasher Frame with an unused Jacket (ignore his big ass shoulders). 

THE Adam Smasher

mmk I am done 

[inkslingersworld]

Crowbar (Alternate First Meeting)

Hi guys! This here short story is my first participation in Adrigami Week! I was planning on posting it yesterday, seeing as it’s following the “Alternate First Meeting” prompt, but the time got away from me. Idk if it’s still eligible for the official reblog or not, but I still had a blast writing it all the same. Enjoy! (Contains very mild profanity)

\\\\\

Her lip was bleeding. For whatever reason, Kagami chose to focus on this minute aspect out of all the other injuries she’d sustained. She dabbed it with a paper towel.

Kagami couldn’t recall how she’d gotten like this. There was so much she couldn’t recall, and the staggering immensity of all her forgotten experiences had weighed down on her for so long that when she found herself in a bathroom without a clue as to how she’d gotten there, she was able to handle the newfound situation better than someone who hadn’t been through what she had.

The only thing that confused Kagami was that her clothes were in perfect condition, despite her face being bloody and streaked with dirt. In fact, they looked as though they’d just been sewn by a master tailor. 

She brushed the puzzlement aside - she couldn’t linger here in this mysterious bathroom. Lingering got you killed.

The door opened easily at her touch, and Kagami examined the bedroom that it led into. The walls were painted in an eye-catching shade of purple, but the bed itself was small and plain. Kagami also noticed that there was no furniture other than a small nightstand and that the window was broken. It framed the outside world in jagged glass.

This aforementioned outside world was cloudy and bleak. Based on how damp the street appeared, Kagami concluded it must’ve rained recently. The buildings matched the clouds in their shade of gray, with windows just as broken as the one Kagami was using as an observation point. No street signs were visible. No vehicles, no animals, no people. Not even wind.

Kagami couldn’t care less about the lack of other individuals; her attention was pinpointed on the crowbar leaning casually against the building opposite. Without a second’s hesitation, she kicked away the rest of the glass and crawled expertly out of the window.

She didn’t know how she knew there’d be a fire escape, but resolved not to ponder on it, because every second she didn’t have the crowbar was a second where it could fall into the possession of someone else. Crowbars were tools; tools were extremely helpful.

By the time Kagami had raced down the stairs leading to the ground, she could notice how old and rusty the crowbar was. In retrospect, it probably wouldn’t be much use against some of the more contemporary weapons others owned, but in times like these, Kagami would take anything she could get.

In no time, she had dashed across the street and grasped the crowbar in her right hand. Flakes of deceased metal fell to the ground like rotten snow as she twirled it experimentally. Even if it fell apart in combat, it was nevertheless pretty maneuverable. 

“Drop it.”

Kagami turned around instead, searching for the voice’s master. She found the man in question stepping out the adjacent alleyway. His face was hidden under an old halloween mask, but Kagami could see he was wearing a green rain jacket and pointing a pistol in her direction.

Was it a pistol? Further examination led Kagami to realize it was no such thing; it was a water gun, and she almost pitied the hopeless idiot who brandished it at her.

“I said drop it!” the man shouted, though not very loudly.

“You know that’s not a real gun, right?” Kagami asked nonchalantly, deciding to break the truth to him.

The man lowered the toy firearm and hung his head. “Damn it.”

“Wait, you already knew?” said Kagami in disbelief. “Why on Earth would you use a water gun instead of, I don’t know, an actual one?”

“I’m a pacifist,” admitted the man, sounding guilty. “I’m a believer of nonviolence.”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but nonviolence fell out of fashion a while back,” said Kagami, not knowing where she’d heard it from.

“Well, I always favored the old styles over the new,” the man said. “You hungry? I’ve got some food.”

Kagami’s mouth fell open in spite of herself. Who did this airhead think he was? You didn’t just go around offering people food. But before she’d even responded, he started walking over to her, removing his mask in the process.

Based off his recent actions, Kagami was expecting him to look innocent and tame, and she was not disappointed. However, she hadn’t foreseen blond hair and green eyes. She hadn’t expected him to look this... well, attractive.

“I’m Adrien, by the way,” he said, plopping his butt on the pavement and taking off his previously concealed backpack. “What’s your name?”

“I’m not about to tell you my name!” Kagami cried exasperatedly. “I know nothing about you!”

Adrien, who’d previously been busy unpacking, looked up at Kagami closely for the first time. His eyes widened after locking with hers and he dropped the box of Ritz crackers he’d been taking out.

After a few uncomfortable seconds, Kagami demanded, “What?”

Adrien flinched violently and faced the ground, blushing. “Nothing.”

“Why were you staring at me for so long?” persisted Kagami.

“N-No reason!” Adrien stammered embarrassedly. 

“Then why were you doing it?”

“I don’t know!”

Kagami decided not to push the topic and begrudgingly sat down; she hadn’t realized how hungry she was until now.

“So...” began Adrien slowly, seeming to regain some of his previous placidity. “I never did learn your name.”

“We’re not there yet,” Kagami grumbled, snatching a plastic-wrapped sandwich out of his hands.

“Well, what are you doing ‘round these parts?” Adrien asked curiously, putting his chin in his hands.

“None of your business,” snapped Kagami, losing some of her intimidation skills to a mouthful of grilled cheese.

“How’s the food?”

“Awful,” Kagami replied, even though it was delicious.

Adrien laughed hard. “You’re funny!”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, but you are!” 

“What’s your problem?” asked Kagami sternly. “You know nothing about me, I could’ve killed you without hesitation as soon as you came over here!”

“And yet you didn’t!” Adrien pointed out cheerfully.

Kagami took a deep breath, trying to keep her temper in check. “Adrien, wasn’t it?”

Adrien nodded and smiled, seeming delighted that she’d remembered his name.

“Adrien, I don’t know what miracle allowed you to survive for this long, but in our society’s current state, you might not be around much longer. I suggest you drop this puppy dog attitude and learn to fend for yourself.”

“Why learn to fend for myself when we can fend for each other?” asked Adrien earnestly.

The sincereness of this question, contrasting with the playfulness Adrien had exhibited, caught Kagami off guard for a moment, though she soon regained her bearings.

“Adrien, no offense, but you’d be dead weight,” she stated. “Even if I wanted to stick around with you, my memory kinda wipes itself clean every six hours or so, only holding on to the most treasured information - my name, my personality, how to speak, how to read and write, knowing what stuff is, and the like.”

“No way!” exclaimed Adrien, before Kagami could continue. “I have the same thing! That’s why I started a diary!”

He zipped open his backpack again and retrieved a worn leather-bound book. Adrien opened it and showed Kagami its messily written contents.

“I originally didn’t remember how to write,” he explained, flipping through some pages to get to the beginning, “but I was able to relearn! It took like a year, though.”

Kagami peered at the even messier scrawl of a younger Adrien. She was shocked to see his name spelled incorrectly with crayon.

“How long’ve you been on your own?” she asked uncertainly.

“About twenty years, I think,” Adrien answered dismissively. “I can’t know for certain, I didn’t relearn how to understand a calendar until someone took me in when I was... fourteen, maybe?”

“Someone took you in?” inquired Kagami.

Suddenly, Adrien’s face began filled with sorrow and loneliness. “Yeah... yeah, I don’t like thinking about that.”

Noticing how sympathetically Kagami was gazing at him, Adrien quickly plastered his old smile back on. “That doesn’t really matter. Now I’ve got you!”

Kagami hesitated. One of the instincts her memory’d held onto was avoiding people, but Adrien seemed different. He in the same situation she was in, and he’d shown her kindness. Besides, it’d be nice to have a companion, and Adrien’s diary probably contained scores of valuable information to help the duo survive. 

Even if not for all those reasons, there was something else, though Kagami wasn’t sure what it was yet. For whatever reason, Adrien made her feel relaxed, happy even. She didn’t know why, but he did.

“Okay, Adrien,” she said resignedly. “You can stick with me.”

Adrien’s face lit up with gratitude, and before she knew it, Kagami found herself buried in a hug. It was warm and comforting.

“Thank you so much!” Adrien said happily. 

“No problem, Adrien,” sighed Kagami, already having her doubts.

Adrien released her and scooped up his backpack. They both stood up.

“Where are we headed?” he asked.

“West,” responded Kagami mechanically. “It won’t make too much of a difference, but we need all the sunlight we can get.”

The two started to walk. After trekking for about a minute, Adrien spoke again.

“You never did tell me what your name is.”

Kagami smiled softly and rolled her eyes. “It’s Kagami.”

“Kagami,” repeated Adrien thoughtfully. “I like that name.”

\\\\\

@adrigamiweek

[petite-ely]

Afraid // JJ Maybank

three - family heirloom

Pairing: JJ Maybank x fem routledge! reader

Warnings: cursing and other sorts of bad language, mention of a dead body, underage drinking, idk if there’s something else besides some typos

Description: a fun trip to a thrashy motel leads to many discoveries for the pogues (buckle up buckaroos this one’s a bit long) (also I’m very sorry for not putting a read more thingy but I really don’t know how, sorry :(

Previously next

Afraid Masterlist

Song recommendation:

gif found on pinterest all credits to owner

When John B fell into the the water, the anchor held against his chest, y/n didn’t expect him to come back with anything valuable. Maybe something that would have revealed the identity of whoever owned this boat, but nothing really big. So she was very surprised when he came back with a motel key in his hand. It was not much, as expected but the pogues knew what to do.

The little group had tried to report their findings to the authorities, in hope of receiving some kind of reward. Unfortunately, the plan had failed. Because of the hurricane, the coasts guards were so busy they couldn’t even spare one minute for them.

Instead, they all agreed to go investigate the hotel room. Y/n had been reluctant at first, but her curiosity took the lead, so she agreed. How could she not?

“I thought the château looked bad.”

“This place is a shitshow.”

“Motel or meth lab?”

Y/n’s face scrunched up in a grossed out expression at the sight in front of her eyes, plugging her nose as she caught the horrible smell that went with it. The motel itself wasn’t that bad. Except maybe for the roof, and the window and probably also some kind of hygiene issue. The yard was the worst part. It was filled with debris brought by the storm and it was covered with a bunch of old mattresses. It was not a pretty sight to see.

“Y/n are you staying with me and Pope or..” kie wondered as they landed.

The Routledges exchanged a look. John B didn’t show it a lot, but he was very protective of his sister. He preferred to have her by his side at all times, where he could protect her and assure that she was always safe. It was his way of showing he cared.

“Nah,” she jumped off the boat, her feet joined together, “someone has to look after these two knuckleheads.”

JJ laughed at her words. “Knuckleheads, who even says that.” “Dude I was talking about you.”

“What.” She rolled her eyes.

“Hey,” Pope addressed the girl “don’t let him do anything stupid.” He pointed to JJ.

“Oh, we will.”

“I can’t make any promises.”

Kie handed the key to John B. “Be careful, okay. I mean it.” Y/n grinned at her friend’s words.

The trio then headed towards the direction of the room. Somehow y/n ended up taking the lead, with the two boys walking behind her. She felt a pair of eyes looking at her.

“JJ I know you’re looking at my ass, stop that right now,” she warned. “Dude!” John B slapped him on the chest.

“Um for your information I was looking at the bruise on your thigh.” “Yeah right.”

(He was actually really looking at the bruise. He hated to know she was hurt in any kind of way, it pained him)

“And even if I was, whatcha gonna do about it? Beat me up?” “Don’t underestimate me Maybank, I could easily take you down.” JJ scoffed. “Pfft as if.”

He left her side to go join John B, who had voluntarily distanced himself from their bickering. The blonde grasped his friend’s shoulder. “Just be so careful, John,” he said, imitating Kiara.

John B pushed him off. “God, you’re so weird.” “Dude, what the heck was that all about.” “I don’t know, I guess she wants us to be careful.”

Y/n now walked alone behind, kicking a small pebble whilst silently listening to the conversation.

“Since she heard you’re being threatened with exile, she’s just been like ‘oh! Be so careful John B’” “Get off” “just give me that John D already.”

“Like, when are you gonna swoop on that, man?”

y/n cringed at his words. “Ew, don’t sexualize her like that, it’s gross, j”

“Bro, you know the rule. No pogue on pogue macking.”

Stupid rule. It was the only reason why y/n had never admitted her feelings to JJ. That and her fear of being humiliated ( and the fact he would never feel the same way).

“Besides you’re the one always hitting on her.” Y/n scoffed.

“That doesn’t mean anything, JJ hits on every girl he ever sees.” JJ frowned at her words. “He would hit on a plant if it even slightly ressembled the body of a girl.”

“Hey, that’s not true,” he defended himself. “I don’t hit on you all the time.”

“Says the guys who was just looking at my ass five minutes ago.” “No, I wasn’t.” “You so were!”

“Hey guys, I hate to break up your little fight but uh,” he pointed the door in front of him “this is us. 29.”

JJ knocked on the door. “Housekeeping,” he said, his voice pitched way higher than normal, making both his friends laugh at his actions.

“Should we try it?” Questioned John B. “No power- no security camera. No one’s gonna know.”

The door opened with a small creaking noise. It was a small dark room with two beds. The trio looked around for clues. They still didn’t know who owned the boat nor what they were doing out in the middle of a hurricane. They were hoping for some answers.

“Check the bag, see if there’s a name on there.” “Gotta a jacket-“ “Denim slides-“ “No name on the jacket. It’s a nice jacket though.” “Definitely over 50 he’s got new balances.”

“Yo, dude come here.” JJ found some papers and books stacked on the night table between the two beds. He pointed to a map. “Maybe this is where they were fishing.” “ let me see.” “Right there.”

Y/n peeked over their shoulder, standing on the tip of her toes, to try to see what they were talking about. “Nah, that’s off the continental shelf. Big swell, no one fishes there.”

Abandoning her previous idea, she crouched down and flashed her light under the first bed. “Nothing over here.” She turned to the other bed. Her eyes caught a strange shape, on the opposite corner. “Wait.” She slipped underneath and crawled to the object. “Ah ha!”

“What? You found anything?”

Disappointment filled the girl’s mind as she noticed it was only a shirt, grey and smelly. “Uh, not really. I thought I did but it’s only a dirty shirt.”

“Ew there was a spider on it.” She brushed the bug away as she got up. She turned towards John B, noticing he had successfully opened the safe. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

The words left her mouth without her noticing. She was just too astonished. The safe was filled with multiple stacks of money and well, a gun. There was so much of it, it’s like she didn’t know where to look.

“Uh, JJ, you’re gonna wanna see this.”

JJ’s eyes doubled in size as he noticed the firearm in the safe. He immediately picked it up. “You grabbed the gun,” John B sighed.

“This is a SIG Sauer.” He was swinging it in the air, playing with it as though it was just a toy. “JJ put the fucking gun down, you’re gonna hurt someone,” y/n hissed at him.

“Put the gun back, JJ.” “This is a fucking spendy gatt, man, just.” He pretended to shoot someone in the distance. “Bam! Bam!”

“JJ, this is not a toy you can just play with, put it back!” Y/n’a voice was louder now, angrier and harsher too. “Just take a pic of me.”

“You want me to take a picture of you?” “Yeah dude, like-” JJ struck a pose, the gun in one hand, his flashlight in the other. “Make our own incriminating evidence is that what your talking about?”

Y/n’s attention drifted away as she heard the sound of something hitting the window. She spun around and drew the blinds open, only to find Kie and Pope jumping up down. “What?”

There were clearly trying to warn her about something but she couldn’t hear what they were saying through the thick glass that separated them. She lifted the window slightly. A single word left their mouth in a loud whisper. “Cops!”

“Fuck.”

“What is it?” Y/n turned her body to the two boys. She opened her mouth, about to reveal what danger would soon fall upon them when a knock came from the door.

“Kildare county, sheriff department,” a stern voice announced.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

The girl yanked the rest of the window open. By chance, there was a small step, a ledge, where they could stand and hide from the police officers.

Y/n’a hand flew to her neck, as she noticed the necklace she always wore wasn’t on her neck anymore. “Fuck!” It was very precious to her, leaving it there was not an option.

Her father had actually given it to her on her 14th birthday. It belonged to his mother and her mother before her. It was a family heirloom and the only thing she had left of her father. She always wore it, even to bed.

“Y/n, what the fuck are you doing?”

She scanned the room quickly, her stress level growing as she heard the door rattling. Her eyes finally landed on the shining necklace, tangled under the first bed.

“My necklace fell off!” she whispered-shout. “There’s no time!”

Luckily for her living on the cut had taught her to move quickly, without being seen. She swiftly slid under the bed, grabbed the golden chain and slipped out of the window, all before the door opened.

“That was close,” JJ whispered softly.

Y/n removed one of her hand from the wall to place her index finger against her lip motioning for JJ to stay silent. They both turned their attention back to the room, observing the cops as they entered.

There was two of them. Shoupe and a woman y/n didn’t know the name of. They were looking around for clues just as the three kids had done minutes earlier. Shoupe opened the door of the safe. Y/n’s eyes followed as he handed the other officer some evidences. He then handed her a stack of money, which she put in her pocket.

“The fuck?” the girl whispered, glancing at her brother on the other side. JB looked at her with wide eyes, he was just as shocked as she was.

She lost her balance for a quick second, her foot sliding down, making the loudest noise ever made. JJ’s hand caught her before she fell, bringing her body closer to his. She heard footsteps getting closer. She could feel and hear JJ’s breath getting heavier by the second, her heart pounding in her chest. She scooted even closer to him, her hand gripping at the back of his shirt so she wouldn’t fall once more.

“All right, let’s go. No one’s here.” Shoupe said from inside.

A heavy sigh left her lips as she heard the door close behind them. “That was so fucking close.”

“Jesus Christ, y/n what was that all about, you almost got us caught!” John B snapped.

“My necklace fell off, I couldn’t just leave it there. It’s the only thing I have left of dad! Plus they would’ve known I was there, it would’ve got us caught!”

John’s face fell slightly, she was right. Still he couldn’t help but worry at the thought of her getting caught. He was her brother, it was normal for him to want to protect her form getting hurt. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t mean to yell at you, I was just, I was just worried okay? I don’t want to lose you too, y/n/n.”

“I’m not going anywhere, bird.”

>>

After the little trip to the motel, and almost getting caught by the cops, the group had decided to head back to the château. Y/n let out a sigh of exasperation. She was, once again, seated on the dirty sofa on the porch. This time her head was hanging upside down, her shoeless feet rested against the window. She was exhausted. This day had been filled with nothing but surprises, following one another without getting a chance to take a breath. And the day wasn’t over yet.

First there was their discovery of the boat in the marsh, then John risking his life for a motel key (okay maybe risking his life was a bit of a stretch but yeah, y/n still thought it was dangerous). And then they tried to report the boat but failed, so they went to the motel and we’re almost caught by Shoupe (and saw him stealing money) and stupid JJ who stole the goddamn gun.

And that wasn’t even the most shocking surprise of the day. The body of Scooter Grubbs was also found (and y/n really wish she could erase that image out of her memory) and shocker, he was the owner of the Grady-White. So the marsh was closed until the authorities would find the boat.

“Ugh,” y/n rubbed her tired eyes, feeling a headache coming as the blood rushed to her head.

“You’re gonna get brain damage if you stay like that for too long,” John B said motioning to his sister’s position. “Can’t be worse than it already is,” she shrugged, moving herself so her head now rested on Kiara’s lap.

Pope came rushing, the screen door slamming behind him. “So, um we didn’t see anything, we don’t know anything.” He was still slightly panting, and he seemed very stressed, anxious even. “We need to have complete and total amnesia.”

“Actually, Pope’s right. For once.” y/n scooted closer to Kie to make room for Pope to sit and turned her head back to JJ who was getting up from his seat. “See I agree with you sometimes,” he pointed his index finger on each of his friends. “Deny, deny, deny.”

“Guys we can’t keep that money.” “Not all of us have unlimited data plans, Kiara.”

Y/n frowned at JJ’s words. That was low of him. The Carreras might hav been a lot richer than the average pogue, but they weren’t kook rich either. Business was hard for everyone and The Wreck wasn’t spared of the occasional struggle that went with it.

“Well I hate to be a party pooper but she’s right. It’s not our money, it wouldn’t be right for us to keep it.” declared the Routledge girl. “Yup, we have to pass that money off to Lana Grubbs. Otherwise it’s bad karma.”

“It bad karma to be implicated in a felony too,” added Pope. “We gotta go dark.” “If that means we get to keep the money then I agree.”

John B gave a small pat on JJ’s shoulder. “I don’t agree.” “What, why?”

“Just think about it, this is Scooter Grubbs we’re talking about,” he started. “Same dude that’s buying individual cigarettes at the porthole. Shit, one time I saw him begging for change in the save-a-lot parking lot because he needed gas. We’re talking about a dirtbag marina rat who’s never had more than 40 bucks in his pockets and all of the sudden he’s got a Grady-White? Just saying..”

John B was right. It was indeed kind of shady. Square groupers? Smuggling? Contraband? Y/n had no idea what she was getting herself into. It was a strange situation and she had no idea what to do about it, so she followed her friends ideas. They all agreed to lay low and act normal, which could only mean one thing. There was going to be a kick ass kegger on the boneyard. And y/n couldn’t be more glad.

Taglist:

@drewswannabegirl @kaelyn-lobrutto24 @im-a-stranger-thing @lasnaro @poguestyle17 @thoughtsofthestars @briandaflores19 @lunaposey @allycat449-blog @ifliwtd @kitty084

this means tumblr wouldn’t let me tag you :(

If you wanna be added or removed just tell me!!

[hazydaaze]

jed vs. women anon back again to yet again agree with everything you said. i also wouldve liked to see more farida, especially bc what we were left with was a quite damaging portrayal of a queer woc who seemed to be pretty toxic relationship-wise, which is not the positive representation that they thought it would be. i agree, steve is bland, and kate and ted have always been the more interesting of the trio. ive seen some people online arguing that the kate and jo storyline wasnt finished bc ultimately its steves story, not kates, but then why even bother to show kate at MIT in the first place?? if its steves story then surely we should have stayed at AC12 for the whole season, with kate only being relevant when steve visited the Hill? If its steves story why are we being shown kate and jo scenes directly intercut with scenes of this seasons ‘romance’ between him and steph? the fact that, because it was left so open, it almost feels like we should assume kate was just playing jo rly doesnt sit right with me (nor does it make sense bc we're led to believe they had some kind of relationship before jo is under investigation) and kinda feels like they deliberately never concluded it to escape backlash from both sides (avoiding the str8s being angry that kate was queer or vice versa). felt at times very much like pre-covid he was happy to go forward with some kind of relationship between them, but post-covid (possibly due to restrictions on intimacy idk) he floundered and decided that the best thing he could do if they couldnt kiss or hug was to just forget it ever happened.

I wish we were at the pub having these conversations, they’re too good and we could talk for hours about them. :( Thanks for your thoughtful words again. X 

I fully agree with your point about Farida. Jed portrayed her as a needy, possessive, jealous lesbian, who stalks her ex and cuts up her leather jacket that probably cost Jo at least £50. That is never a good look and it is quite a bitter portrayal of a queer character. It’s a horrible shame given Farida is one of the few ethnic minorities on the show and an open lesbian - she was clearly a good person with good intentions, who didn’t know how to love someone in a healthy way yet (given that Jo was dealing with her own trauma, this surely would've impacted their communication). It’s shite that Jed didn’t feel this aspect was important enough to explore further. However, I do also understand sometimes there are characters that are introduced only to drive plot. Ultimately, the storyline wasn’t about Farida, but she certainly fed into it and there was much more that could be said here. Maybe Farida will return in series 7 (if there is one)? 

The argument that Jo and Kate’s interactions were part of Steve’s wider story, and that is why they weren’t addressed in the finale, is kinda ridiculous. It’s an accusation that annoys me. What significance is Steve meant to have, right now? Steve had so much gusto and passion in series 1. He was angry about the Police corruption and innocent people getting killed. He wanted to make things right. Now he is tired and a slither of that man (he has gone through a lot of trauma, so this is unsurprising.) I would love for Steve to have a more significant story line in series 6, but unfortunately he didn’t. All we took from Steve this series is he had a bad back and erectile dysfunction - which is shite for him but it led to nothing, no break-throughs, no big announcements, no shock twists. All that build up about Steve ignoring his emails led to him having his firearm taken away, and even that didn’t play into anything. I thought perhaps Jed had included this scene to foreshadow that Steve would fear for his life at some point later in the episode, and he’d need his gun to protect himself (or else he’d die). But that never happened either, so why do we care if he has a bad back? Why do we care that his gun was taken away? Why introduce a theme if it doesn’t impact the overarching story? There’s red herrings and then there is plain baaad writing. 

I don’t know why Jed left Jo and Kate’s dynamic open, like he did. I don’t know. Personally, I wouldn’t even say he left it open - he completely disregarded it, as if the previous six episodes of interaction with Jo and Kate never happened. Saying it was left ‘open’ suggests it can still be explored, but with Jo in witness protection (with a new identity and an undisclosed address) and Kate firing into Steve, I don’t trust Jed considers any aspect of Kate’s relationship with Jo as open. He won’t even allow Kate to explore her feelings there, which were so clearly confused and hopeful and genuine towards Jo. This is awful, by the way. I’m not enjoying typing that, and I sincerely hope I’m wrong. As I mentioned before, I'm only watching series 7 if Kelly MacDonald returns.

I also feel like COVID and social distancing rules isn’t a good enough excuse to warrant dropping Jo and Kate’s storyline. I didn’t think Jo and Kate would’ve kissed, at least not on screen, and I don’t believe for one second Jed was ever planning to write this in. The physical limitations of COVID shouldn’t play into it. All it needed was one single sentence in the script. A single fleeting look when Kate rescued Jo from the van. It needed words or something. COVID doesn’t hold any relevance in concluding (or giving answers to) Jo and Kate’s relationship that they took great pains to include. So if he tries to say this, I’ll come for him. 

I thought I’d be a wee bit calmer today about what happened to Jo and Kate who would've been honestly perfect together but I’ve just realised that I’m not! Haha. 

[justoneday-namjoonii]

jk!mafia drabble #2 | it burns, doesn’t it?

⇁ [anon request]: Im a sucker for the petty angsttt, can you write more about JK & Jiyoon 👀 like, Y/N finds out more stuff about them. 👀👀 its all up to you, anything you write is a masterpiece💜

series: 18/? - It burns, doesn’t it? pairing: Jungkook x reader author’s note: this is a mess but enjoy! thank u for requesting, I got a little creative, I think my recent Taehyung obsession is showing 👀 lol warnings: idk what this is tbh lol, major manipulator themes, slut-shaming (idk kind of not sure if it qualifies but I thought I’d warn you anyway), speculated infidelity, might be triggering to some proceed with caution

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*

You sit across from him at the diner booth, eyes are narrowed at the scrambled eggs greasy bacon. You don't want it.

"Eat a little," Jungkook takes a bite of his bacon, "it's not bad."

"I'm good," You shake your head, insistent on satisfying yourself with the small bowl of grapes. He glances out of the window, not wanting to upset you today, he wants to start the day off right. He offered to take you out of the house for breakfast and you were fine with it. Maybe you two can finally go back to hw things used to be, when the love was young and sweet on the tongue. It’s still sweet, but it’s grown far more complex than what was initially expected. These days, trust is something you have to remind yourself that you need in order to make this work. It’s tough, but you’re trying.

What Taehyung said keeps coming to your mind. 

He is a lot of things, but he's not a liar.

***

You were in the garage trying to take the guns apart and put them back together. Jungkook showed you about five times before he left and made sure to take the bullets out so you could practice. You were laser-focused so you paid little attention to the person entering the garage.

"The slide is loose," The gun is lifted from your grasp swiftly, "and the barrel should be placed like this," 

Taehyung promptly puts your attempt to assemble the weapon to shame. When he places the gun on the table in front of you, it's apparent how much practice he's had doing this.

"If you tried to shoot that thing, it would blow your fucking face off." 

You lower your head, shy hands picking up the firearm to dismantle it again.

"So, you convinced your daddy to let you play with his toys," He mocks, plundering through the drawers on the walls, "you're moving up, Y/n."

"Piss off," You grimace, resisting the urge to throw something at him, "it's not like that."

"It's just you and me here, everyone else went out for the night, but they should be back soon," He pulls up a chair to your little table and your stomach turns at the proximity.

"Then why are you here? Where's Hoseok?" You remain focused, taking the gun apart with calculated movements. "Why aren’t you with him..."

"I had to come back to get this," He shows you a box but not the contents inside, "didn't think you were still here, Jungkook said you were gonna go with him."

You stare down at the dismantled gun and then up at him. He recently changed his hair, it's out of his face and lighter, making his appearance less ominous than before. But you know better, his looks can't change who he is or what he's done to you. Yet, you sit across from him, choosing not to judge him for his sins. You've killed before, out of defense but you still did it. You don't deserve to be here but grace precedes you somehow—you're grateful.

"Somehow we keep getting the house to ourselves," He sighs, taking out his phone to tap on it mindlessly, "gives me time to get to know you."

"You already know enough about me," You turn the gun on the table, trying to put it back together with the last few steps, "I don't know much about you though."

"You want to?" He crooks a brow.

"Why not? Might as well," You shrug, it couldn't hurt to hear more about who he is. Maybe you'll better understand why he is the way he is, "for one, how did you get into torture?"

He sighs, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I like to think of it as hands-on interrogation. I'm fascinated by the mind, how it can be manipulated to work against itself. I think it’s interesting to break someone down, to hear what I want to hear. If I do it right, they end up forming an attachment to me- Well, not me but to the persona that I choose to subdue them with, like you."

"I'm not attached to you," You frown, "you're mistaking be me being traumatized for submission..."

"It's the same to me, I get the result I want either way."

You are about halfway through assembling the gun but Taehyung suddenly takes it again, stirring frustration in your chest. You try to grab it back but he holds it out of your reach, "Give it back!-" 

"Ah, ah," He waits for you to sit back, "I know something that you don't know about Jungkook," He says that like a child, "do you want to know what it is?"

"What're you talking about?" 

"He and Jiyoon had a little run-in when you were gone, that night he was going through it. You've probably never seen him like that but it is a sight, I'll tell you that."

* * *

He moves his foot against yours, a grin on his lips that speak pages of what he’s thinking. 

"So, I wanted to talk to you, about something," You swallow, dropping the grape back in the bowl.

"About something," He repeats in a cute little mocking tone, "about what beautiful?"

"Did you ever, I don't know...Blackout when we were separated?" You know that sounded pretty vague but he knows what you mean.

"Blackout?" He tilts his head, mentally he rakes through the countless lonely nights. "I might have had too much to drink on some nights, maybe...Why?"

"Because that's the only reason you would touch Jiyoon again...You wouldn't actually do that if you were conscious. I heard you were seen with her..."

"Why are you talking about her?" He frowns, sitting back in the booth.

"Taehyung told me you were on a downward spiral one night and you didn't come back until the next morning, were you with her?..."

* * *

"You have to admit, you're not what anyone would have thought he'd end up with. Jiyoon literally sleeps around as apart-time job, she's good at it so I don't know how you could compete with that and win."

You feel like you're decreasing the more he talks. 

"He may not act like it now, but he was crazy about her years ago. I mean, she's beautiful, she worked for his lifestyle and they had a mutual understanding. When you came around, they had broken up with each other about a year prior, he got over her fast though."

“I know that..." You knew Jiyoon and Jungkook had a lot of history, but you made peace with it and you know he loves you. 

"I ran into her after that night, she said he acted like you two weren't together anymore. He let her have it like he used to," He looks up at you, waiting for you to look him in the eye but you seem to diminish in size while avoiding eye contact, "that's what she claims."

"What do you mean?" You press your lips in a flat line.

"You know what I mean," He jeers, swiping a tongue over his bottom lip. "unless you really are that innocent, which I don’t think you are."

"He wouldn’t do that..."  

"Well, it would make sense," He stands to his feet suddenly, gun still in hand as he paces around the table, "what did you expect? You were fucking with Jimin, it’s what you get."

"It wasn't like that!” You surprise yourself when your hear your raised tone of voice, “Jimin is a friend, that’s it, I wo"

"Maybe you were mad at Jungkook, and you might have just subconsciously tried to replace him. If you would lay down with Jimin, well I wouldn't be surprised if you wanted a piece of the others, that would be interesting," He is just being mean now, he knows that would never happen, not even if you wanted it, "or even me. You seem to drop everything for men who can protect you,"

"Shut up, you’re disgusting...I don’t want any of you like that. And even if I did, that part of my life is none of your fucking business.” You hiss, fists clenched tightly. “I wouldn’t do something like that/”

“Of course you haven’t done anything too crazy, what would Jungkook think about? If he still wanted you, he would probably take you in front of anyone he wanted just to prove a point-” 

You sling your hand across his face with enough force to leave it burning. His cheek is bright red and you’re fuming. You look him dead in the eyes, "Fuck you."

“Shit, Y/n,” He genuinely laughs, setting the gun on the table so he can hold his burning cheek. "Jungkook can go off and do whatever the hell he wants but you? You don't have that luxury, he leaves you here for me to play with, and this is how you treat me? isn’t that just sad?"

"Shut up!" You pick up the gun and before you know it you're throwing it and it misses his face by a centimetre. "I'm in a twisted situation and you make it a hundred times worse. You torment me knowing Jungkook cares about me, you want me to hate him. You want him to hate me. The same crap you tell me, you probably tell to him too." 

He takes a moment to think over his response before walking up to you slowly. Instinctively, you take a step back and stand firm.

"Ask him." He dares. "Ask Jungkook if he remembers what happened that night."

"I don't have to, I trust him." You want to disappear. You don’t believe what’s coming out of his mouth or yours.

"Okay, just know that I don’t blame you for wanting any other man...You were both lonely, Jungkook had his fair share fun while you were away too." 

He’s messing with your head, that’s all he’s ever done to you. 

Right?

[second-chance-stray]

RP Log: Bertram helps Cravs with a bug problem. They meet each other, but fail to connect the dots... 

Cravendy Hound pants heavily as she BOOKS it, sprinting away from a swarm of bugs and microchus that nip at her heels. She hadn’t even been doing anything prior - just going on a walk by the stream. Just enjoying the crisp, cool air. But it would seem that the elementals had had enough of her target practice, and now the woods don’t seem as peaceful as they were in the past.

Bertram Windshadow had been attempting to do the very same with his own time on this particular day. There were always a myriad of things upon his mind these days. It did him good to simply step out and move without particular direction and unrestrained pace. Wherever to the wind lead him. That is, of course, until he spied a roegadyn woman being harried by the denizens of the Black Shroud. 1/2

Bertram Windshadow came to a stop within the canopy of a moderately sized tree before dropping down to the forest floor so that he could get a better assessment of the situation. He wasn't about to leave someone in trouble . .. in trouble. 2/2

Cravendy Hound stretches her arm back, aims her gun at her pursuers, and fires a couple of rounds. Some of the shots hit microchus, splitting them from the mob momentarily...though, with every one that was dispatched, two would spring from the bushes and take its place. Meanwhile, for the bugs, I simply present to you this question...have you ever fired a gun at a housefly? Would that work? The answer is no. No, it would not work.

Cravendy Hound: “Godsdamned, bleedin’ flyin’ pieces of shite! Overgrown spinach!” Cravs swats at the air as bugs relentlessly buzz around her. In an attempt to get them off her back, she jumps off the side of the cliff and into the river...however, she misjudges the depth of her target. It’s much too shallow to keep the bugs away from her. And now, she’s drenched AND annoyed.

Bertram Windshadow watches quietly for a moment as the stranger attempts to ward off the pests with her firearm. An attempt that causes the highlander to wince slightly just before she plunges herself into the drink . .. well, at least as much as she could manage in the relative shallowness. 1/3

Bertram Windshadow could only assume that the single-minded focus of these creatures could only come from one place. She'd done something to annoy the Elementals. Not enough to rouse them to outright *anger*, but . .. enough to peeve them. It was an easy mistake to make and Bertram figured they'd more than learned the lesson no need for further assault. 2/3

Bertram Windshadow reached into one of his pouches and pulled out a small orb. With a firm press, and a quiet click, it began belching out a stream of smoke or fog. The man then quickly rolled it in the direction of Cravendy in the hopes of helping disperse the swarm of bugs! 3/3

(Cravendy Hound) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnHmskwqCCQ )) (Bertram Windshadow) (( *dies* This was what was *exactly* what was playing in my heat. ))

Cravendy Hound is too busy swatting away the bugs and plant monsters to notice the source of the sudden smoke, so she thinks it’s the Elementals toying with her further. Her confusion serves to make her even angrier. “If yer gonna kill me, just do it an’ be done with it!” What follows is a long-winded, story of a swear that ends with a coughing fit.

Cravendy Hound - The smoke, meanwhile, does disperse the bugs. They now hover at the edges of where the cloud stops. You can’t see through it, though you can certainly hear all sorts of things happening beneath its foggy exterior.

Bertram Windshadow bobs his head to the side slightly and makes his way forward at a slightly accelerated pace, breaking his way into the opaque cloud and speaking so that he can make his presence known. "I don't think you're going to get killed today, stranger, but we should probably get you closer to Gridania ..." He calls out before attempting to reach out and touch Cravendy's arm to let her know where he is.

Cravendy Hound: “Who, in the name of Llymlaen’s left teat, are you?!” Upon being touched, she instinctively aims her gun right at Bertram, and then glances to the side. “Behind ye!”

Cravendy Hound - Her aim shifts ever so slightly, from being pointed at Bertram’s forehead to something else entirely. The shot rings out, wind brushing dangerously close to his ear, and then sinks directly into a microchu that had been sneaking up behind them. “Gods, ye...let’s get out of ‘ere.”

Bertram Windshadow winces visibly -- or invisibly given the current circumstances -- at the sound of the gunshot so close to his ear. The ear on that side of his head was nothing but ringing in the moment and he could barely make out the latter half of her speaking. My this woman was an aggressive one. Some dots were starting to connect regarding the Shrouds current state of upset. 1/2

Bertram Windshadow called out in a voice slightly louder than necessary, "Let's get out of here," he echoes her sentiment without realizing it. "They're just going to keep coming if you fight them like that." 2/2

Cravendy Hound nods. She had no desire to let the ‘friendly, forest friends’ have their way for any longer. “Gridania’s a tad far...But Hyrstmill’s just a rock skip away. Let’s find a ‘ovel to ‘ole in and be done with this.”

Bertram Windshadow has to strain to hear the suggestion, but he calls out with an affirmative sound before reaching in to the same pouch again to remove another sphere. With a 'click' the smoke begins to spew and he pivots on a heel to face the direction of the small outpost. As he does he throws his arm back and then swings it forward; throwing the smoke-spewing orb like a bowling ball. In its path it leaves a trail of smoke. "That'll hopefully then thin the herd and give us an opening!"

Cravendy Hound stares curiously at the orb, and then back to Bertram. It clicks in her mind. The smoke? Not the Elementals. This guy. This...stranger, who happens to have smoke-spewing orbs in his possession. Questions would have to wait until after they weren’t being hounded by angry flies and grass. She makes a break for Hrystmill, coughing all the while.

Bertram Windshadow set his pace to match Cravendy's as he kept himself in her wake. He felt compelled to keep an eye out for anything that might lunge at the woman while she was making a break for it. This wasn't exactly what he was expecting to do with his day but it certainly beat being stuck in his own head. "Just keep running they'll break off eventually!"

(Cravendy Hound) LOL I'm seeing an unintentional, but reoccuring theme...in an earlier rp, cravs sucked in a feather and had a coughing fit. After this, she's gonna be super hoarse xD )) (Bertram Windshadow) (( Hahaha! It helps in sounding grumpy!! )) (Cravendy Hound) let's move to hrystmill! :3 )) (Cravendy Hound) LOL 6-pack a day scratchy voice. "WATER..." ))

Cravendy Hound - As they run, they can hear, but not see, the monsters pursuing close behind. But eventually, as Hrystmill comes into view, the noise grows fainter and fainter. In reclaimed silence, the sound of hearts pounding and panting breaths come back to the forefront. Cravs lets out a long groan and falls to the ground in a kneel. She beats the dirt twice with her fist, gets back up, and faces Bertram. She has no idea what to say.

Cravendy Hound: “.................So. That ‘appened.”

Bertram Windshadow eases as the sound of pursuit fades a quiet breath draining from his lungs as he finally gives himself a moment to glance over his shoulder. It hadn't seemed like they were in *mortal* danger, but it was hard to say when an elemental would decide to be a little extra cranky at any given moment. He dusted his hands off on his legs as he shifted his attention back to Cravendy. "Sure did ..." he answered, allowing himself a quiet laugh before bobbing his head to the side.

Bertram Windshadow: "I hope they didn't get any nasty bites in ..."

Cravendy Hound: “Couple of bruises and scratches, but nothin’ major. Gods, first dodos, now bugs and bloodthirsty flowers.” She lets out a long sigh. The world was conspiring against her, which...well, was fair, as she had a lot to answer for. But she wondered, why now? Why not before, or later? One thing is for sure, though. She’s thankful that this stranger was here to help out.

Cravendy Hound sizes up Bertram. He looks kind of familiar, but she shelves that feeling off to the side. “Thanks for ‘elping out. I’m Cravs. And ye are?”

(Bertram Windshadow) (( Would Bertram know that nickname? I don't *think* he would, but I figured I'd check before having him be oblivious, hahaha (Cravendy Hound) hmm I mean, she refers to herself as such, but idk if others would to her?? haha )) (Cravendy Hound) up to you really :P )) (Bertram Windshadow) (( I think Lin has only said Cravendy to him! So I don't think he'd make the immediate connection! Not yet anyway! ))

Bertram Windshadow bobs his head to the side slightly, "I can't pretend to know *why* but I think you did something to upset the elementals," he offered quietly as he finished dusting himself off and glancing around Hyrstmill, ". .. they can be a bit sensitive about how you treat the forest." He pauses for a moment before dipping his head toward the woman. "It's nice to meet you Cravs. Most folk these days call me Windshadow."

Cravendy Hound brings a hand up to her face and covers it in thought. Upset the elementals...no. Her target practice? She had thought since it was an accident, it’d be fine, but perhaps not. Blast it all, now she’d have to get a conjurer to help her apologize to those, frankly, eldritch spirits.

Cravendy Hound: “Windshadow. Now that’s a title -and- a mouthful...any reason why people call ye that?” Her brows knit together and her eyes narrow. He clearly wasn’t your average adventurer, judging from his gear. “That yer secret, crime fightin’ identity or somethin’?”

Bertram Windshadow blinks in surprise, though not that one could tell from behind the visor, at her comment. He'd never really thought about it like *that* before. There's an awkward pause before Bertram's hand rises up to the back of his neck and he shook his head. "Oh, no. It's nothing like that," he responds with a laughing tone, "It's ... an epithet. A Gyr Abanian thing."

Bertram Windshadow: "I can be ... pretty fast when I need to be. Quiet too."

Cravendy Hound just realizes that she’s smiling. Everything that had happened in the past hour. The smoke, the running...and now, Windshadow standing here, as polite as could be. He was an amusing enigma to her. “No need to be bashful. If people call ye something like that, then I doubt ye only go ‘pretty’ fast. But can ye outrun a chocobo? I’d be willin’ to bet against ye.”

Cravendy Hound laughs - the challenge only half serious. “But seriously. Ye saved my ‘ide back there. What can I do for ye...’ow about round of drinks on me?”

Bertram Windshadow can only laugh a bit more fully at the prospective challenge, his head shaking slightly as a smile finds solid purchase upon his lips. "Depends on the terrain and distance, honestly. A 'bo's going to out last me in the long run on flat ground." He shakes his head gently, as though he was dismissing the thought as overly self-indulgent. He cleared his throat at the new offer. "I ... " he pauses, tilting his head to the side, "... I wouldn't turn down a drink or two, no."

Bertram Windshadow: "But I'm just glad to have been at the right place at the right time."

Cravendy Hound scratches the back of her head, amused by how seriously Windshadow is taking the chocobo challenge. She can hardly imagine what it’d look like for a hyur to move that quickly. Would he send himself sailing forward like a rocket, or would he just move his limbs -that fast-?! Either way, she steps over and playfully bumps his shoulder with her fist. “I know a spot nearby that serves a solid Mun-Tuy Brew. Over ‘ere.”

Cravendy Hound would bring the two of them to an unassuming establishment. When she enters, she dips her head towards the Elezen barkeep, who returns the gesture. By the time Cravs takes a seat, the barkeep has already set out two cups and a bottle of brew on the table. The usual.

Bertram Windshadow laughed -- albeit a bit nervously -- as Cravendy bumped his shoulder gently while passing by while making her way further into the town. He certainly couldn't complain about a good drink of mun tuy so he followed behind her whilst glancing around the village with a thoughtful expression. He didn't say too much on the way but, as he settled in before the second cup of drink, he couldn't help but ask. "What had you out in this neck of the woods anyway?"

Cravendy Hound has already finished a cup and is halfway through pouring herself another glass. She places the bottle back to the center of the table with a satisfying, though loud, thump. “......Ye’d be surprised ‘ow far those critters chased me. That said, I come out ‘ere now and again. Nice trees, nice folk.” She clears her throat, and then says in a slightly lower voice: “The drinks not bad too.”

Bertram Windshadow might have -- perhaps -- been attempting to discern what the woman might have down to agitate the elementals, but ... he didn't seem like he was about to start prying where he wasn't invited. It didn't seem like he was Like That. Instead he bobbed his head forward and began a much more *measured* approach to his drinking. "I find it similarly calming. Spend time up in the boughs can really help clear the head when you're feeling a bit overwhelmed."

Cravendy Hound raises a brow. “So, ye run really fast, and ye have orbs that shoot out smoke. What are ye, some kind of courier? If ye feelin’ overwhelmed, then just tell the big man to stuff it. Don’t work so much.” She lifts her cup up with a grin. “Lifes too short not to indulge in the good stuff.”

(Cravendy Hound) lmao I can't get over how these two haven't connected the dots )) (Bertram Windshadow) (( It's *pretty* great! Hahaha. ))

Bertram Windshadow tilts his head to the side slightly as he listens to Cravendy's Words of Wisdom. He sips upon his drink thoughtfully for a moment before giving a concessionary bob of his head. He certainly found himself dwelling on the bad recently. Though it wasn't quite related to work as she might be assuming. Given his effective unemployment at the moment. "... I suppose that's true." He murmurs quietly, maybe more to himself than to Cravendy proper, "Is that what you were doing out there?"

Cravendy Hound leans back on her chair, feet propped up on the table. “Chin up. Ye seem the earnest type. Try at somethin’ long enough and it’ll change, eventually.” She takes another sip and listens to the sound of the waterwheel turning on the river. Windshadow’s second question gives her pause. “What? Was I...out ‘ere to indulge, ye mean?”

Bertram Windshadow quietly nods his head in response to her further words of assurance -- though it seemed difficult to determine how they were received behind the vidor -- before she asked her clarifying question. "Oh," he cleared his throat and shook his head, "Well, that or just ... enjoying the 'good stuff' as it were."

Cravendy Hound smirks, and gestures to the alcohol on the table, as if that was answer enough to his question. The two made an interesting drinking duo, and Cravs found herself drawn to her withdrawn, fast-running companion. When they eventually parted ways, she let him know that he was welcome to swing by for another round of drinks...or perhaps, she would find him, and make good on her bet that he could outrun a chocobo.

[kya-chan14]

Garrus x Reader Pt. 1

 Note: In this story you are Fem!shepard’s little sister. In the first ME I imagine Shepard being around her early thirties, so i put the reader in her early twenties - so you’re fairly new in the alliance. Plus, your have like a goth/emo look. Idk what’s it called. (You watch NCIS? You know Abby? The forensics scientist. Yeah, you’re like her and Mordin combined. I wanted to make it fun.) 

  Summary:  Unlike your sister, you prefer to stay out of the line of fire. You were training to be an engineer/scientist. You know, calibrating heavy weaponry or repairing vehicles, stuff like that. But when your sister requests to have you on the Normandy with her when she goes to fight Saren, your in for the roller coaster of your life. 

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   Both of your parents were in the alliance military. You and your sister’s childhood was spent on ships and stations as they transferred from posting to posting, never staying in the same location for more than a few years. Following in your parents’ footsteps, your sister enlisted at the age of eighteen. Ten years later, now your able to enlist as well. You wanted to be in a totally different department though. You wanted to be a scientist and engineer. 

   Your sister proved herself at Akuze, showing that she is a sole survivor. Jane Shepard, the best hope humanity has for finding their place in the council. You’re proud of her, you’re happy to say, ‘That’s my big sis!’ All the stories she has to share and her captain is amazing. Part of you wishes you could go with her on all of these adventures, but on the other hand you’re not a soldier. You’re just someone you studies forensics and mechanics.

     You don’t plan on staying in the shadows for long though. One day you’re going to prove to your sister that you are just as great in the lab as she is on the battlefield. You do have a goal to accomplish after all, to cure the genophage. You’ve wanted to ever since you learned about the history of the Krogan. 

     Anyways, right now you’re still in alliance training back on Earth. The last time you heard from Jane, she said she was on a shake down run on a prototype war ship on her way to Eden Prime. She didn’t tell you anything else, she couldn’t. On a need-to-know basis. And I didn’t need to know. This happened about two days ago. Now you didn’t even know if she was alive.

    While you were finishing your report on a deceased rabbit, which died from a new species of a poisonous snake, one of your team mates sent you a message on your omni-tool and requested you to meet in the mess hall.

        “Shepard, this is Wilson. We’re all in the mess listening to the news, there’s something that I believe you’d be interested in. Put down the scalpel for once and come see this.” 

   You were hesitant about leaving your work, but you left the lab and headed for the mess regardless. 

  When you arrived you found that a crowd was already there. You made your way through and found Wilson. 

        “I’m here, now what is it you wanted me to hear?”

   He then walked away and helped Adams turned on the radio. When it comes on, you couldn’t believe what you were hearing.

       “In the light of the recent attack on Eden Prime, many colonial investors are pulling there support for future projects. Proponents of expanded human colonization insist that Eden Prime was a isolated case. Nevertheless, colonist enrollment has dropped sharply. Many colonial proposals are on hold until backers have some reassurance that human colonies will be adequately protected.”

     You turned to Wilson confused. 

     “What hit them?” 

      “Geth. Word is that there was an army of the swarming Eden Prime.” 

      “Bullcrap. The Geth haven’t left the veil in about 200 years.” 

      “You’re not the only one to say that, but it’s true.” Wilson set a hand on your shoulder. “I know your sister was there when the attack hit and I already talked to the Instructor. A ship is waiting at the docks to take you to the Citadel.” 

     You looked at him dumbfounded. So many questions going through your head, but right now you didn’t care. You were just thankful to have such a good friend. 

      “Thank you Wilson. You’re a damn good friend.” After you said your piece, you were gone. You had to see Jane. Make sure she was alive. 

--- 

After the long flight you had finally arrived at the Citadel.You raced for C-sec knowing that they should hold some record for your sisters whereabouts. You did your best to not bump into anyone on your way there. 

     Once you’ve finally made it, you raced in and asked the first officer you saw. A human. 

       “Excuse me sir, I’m looking for my sister! She’s known as Commander Shepa-” 

        “I’m going to stop you right there girl.” 

      The officer held up his hand in a moment of silence. He looked annoyed. 

    “Number one, you don’t just run in here like a maniac. Two, there’s no need to yell. And three, you expect me to believe you are related to Commander Shepard?” 

     “Why not?” 

     “Look at you!” 

   He gestured to your being as a whole. 

    “You look as far from a military family than a whale compared to a fish.” 

    “So just because I dress differently, you’re not going to help me?” 

    “Get out of her kid.” 

   You shake your head in annoyance and walk away. If someone was going to judge your relations through your attire, than you were going to have a harder time finding information than originally planned. 

   You started thinking of all the ways you could find her. Hell, you even thought of going to the shadow broker just to find out if Jane was alive or not. You didn’t know what else to do. You were scared, you weren’t sure if you wanted to know what happened to her. But you had to find her regardless. 

   You started wonder the back alleys for anything or anyone to help you get in touch with your sister. Instead you came across a group of people who you got a bad vibe from. A quarian standing in the middle of it all, you had a feeling she was in trouble. 

   “Where’s the shadow broker? Where’s Fist?” She seemed suspicious, looks like she got the same vibes. 

   “They’ll be here. Where’s the evidence?” A turian ran his hand on her sensually. The quarian pushed it away. 

   “No way. The deal’s off.” 

   She started walking away until the turian pulled out a gun and aimed it right for her. On instinct you pulled out your own firearm and shot the turian. The Quarian whipped around in surprise to hear a gunshot. Then it turned into an all out fire fight. The quarian on one end, and you at the other. 

  You were only trained with a pistol, so you couldn’t do much damage. On the other hand, the quarian had a damn shotgun! In the end, together you neutralized the threat. She approached you in a calm manner. 

    “Thank you for your help. If you hadn’t shown up, I’d be dead. But, how do you know they were the bad guys?” 

   “ At the mention of evidence and a deal, that was proof enough they weren’t C-sec. And it’s not cool to shoot someone in the back.”  

  “Well thanks. Not many people would stick up for a quarian, let alone save their life.” 

   “Meh. Let those people burn in hell. They’re assholes.” 

   She laughed at the remark.

   “What is your name?” 

    “(Y/N) Shepard. I’m a trainee of the alliance.” 

   “A soldier?” 

   “No no, just an engineer and Forensics scientist. Nothing to flashy.” 

   “Ah.”

   “She’s a lot more than what she let’s on.” 

  A new voice has joined the conversation. One you recognized well. 

   You turned around to find your sister accompanied by a krogan and a turian. 

   “Jane!” 

  You didn’t care how childish it looked to charged at her with your biggest hug. 

   “I was so scared! I thought...... I actually thought you were..” 

   “Hey, calm down. I’m alright.” 

  She gave a hug in return. You stayed there while she started talking to the quarian. 

   “You must be the quarian, Fist was after.” 

   “That’s right. He set me up! I knew I couldn’t trust him.” 

   “Were you hurt?”

   “I know how to look out for myself. Not that I don’t appreciate the help. Who are you?” 

   “I’m Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy. I’m looking for evidence to prove Saren’s a traitor.” 

   “Then I have a chance to repay (Y/N) for saving my life. But not here. We need to go somewhere safe.” 

   “We could take her to the human embassy. Your ambassador will want to see this anyway.” 

  That was a different voice, a deep one, belonged to a man. Right now though, you didn’t care. You were too busy crying silently into your sister’s chest. She even picked you up and started walking. Man do you have an awesome sister. 

------ 

   “You’re not making my life easy, Shepard. Firefights in the wards? An all-out assault on Chora’s Den? Do you know how many- Who’s this? A quarian? A little girl? What are you up to Shepard?” 

  THIS, is the human ambassador? What an impression he puts off. You already hated him. 

    “This quarian and ‘little girl’ can help us bring down Saren. I would’ve told you that if you hadn’t jumped down my throat.”

  You smirked when Jane put out that last comment. You were happy to have a sister that didn’t take shit from anyone. But, what was that part about taking down Saren. Who even was Saren!?

   “I apologize, Commander. This whole thing with Saren has me a bit on edge.” 

  Bullshit. 

  “Maybe we should start at the beginning, Miss...?” 

  “My name is Tali. Tali’ Zorah nar Rayya.” 

  “We don’t see many quarians here. Why did you leave the flotilla?” 

  “I was on my pilgrimage. My rite of passage to adulthood.” 

  Jane jumped in. 

  “Tell us what you found.” 

  Tali nodded. 

   “During my travels I began hearing reports of geth. Since they drove my people into exile the geth never ventured beyond the veil. I was curious. I tracked a patrol of geth to an uncharted world. I waited for one to become seperated from it’s unit. Then I disabled and removed it’s memory core.” 

   “I thought the geth fried their memory cores when they died. Some kind of defense mechanism.” 

   You didn’t know this one, but his presence alone told you he was to be respected. Though he didn’t seem like the others who always demanded it. Maybe it was Captain Anderson? Jane told you a little about him in her messages. 

   This time, You butted into the conversation.

  “Is that true. How did you get anything?” As a fellow engineer, you were curious how she managed something like that. 

  “My people created the geth, if your quick, careful, and lucky small caches of data can sometimes be saved. Most of the core was wiped clean, but I salvaged something from it’s audio banks.”  

   Tali then went onto her omi-tool and started playing us something. It was a man’s voice. Deep but hollow. 

  “Eden Prime was a major victory. The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the conduit” 

  “That’s Saren’s voice! This proves he was involved in the attack.”  Anderson exclaims. The way he reacted to that recording though, kinda made you think there was more to this than just a normal geth attack. You knew people were throwing a fit because it was a human colony but, humans have killed humans for years. What’s so different about a turian doing the work instead?

  “He said Eden Prime has brought him one step closer to finding the conduit. Any idea on what that means?” Jane seemed to be more into this than you were. Then again, you had no idea what was going on. You only came here to make sure she was alive, not to join some man hunt. 

  “The conduit must have something to do with the beacon. Maybe it’s some kind of Prothean technology. Like a weapon.” Anderson and Jane were thinking of all sorts of possibilities of what could happen.

  “Wait, there’s more. Saren wasn’t working alone.” 

  Tali wasn’t done with her presentation yet and played the recording again.

    “Eden Prime was a major victory. The Beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the conduit” 

    “And one step closer to the return of the reapers.” 

    That was a woman’s voice, it was deep, sinister almost. But somehow wise.

    “I don’t recognize that other voice, the one talking about reapers.” 

 The ambassador stated as if he was trying to end it there. Though, Jane was pondering over the name. 

   “I feel like I’ve heard that name before.” 

 Tali saw the confusion in everyone and shared what she knew about the reapers. 

  “According to the memory core, reapers were a advanced machine race that existed 50,000 years ago. The rapers hunted to protheans to total extinction and than they vanished! At least, that’s what the geth believe.” 

  “Sounds a little far fetched.” 

    What a shocker, a politician shoving away a possible threat just because it’s ‘far fetched’. 

  “The vision on Eden Prime, I understand it now.” 

  You looked at your sister like she was crazy. 

  “Vision?” 

  “I saw the protheans being wiped out by the reapers.” 

  “The geth revere the reapers as gods, the pinnacle of non organic life. And they believe Saren knows how to bring the reapers back.”  Tali explained. 

  “The council is just going to love this.” The ambassador grumbled at this so called fairy tale. 

   Jane seemed to truly be expecting the reapers, so you believed what she said before about her vision. You would stand by her in any situation if you could. She’s always been there for you, it was time to repay her. 

  “This is a lot to handle. They might just ignore everything we tell them.” 

  “No matter what they think of the rest of this, those audio files proves Saren’s a traitor.” Anderson sounded excited over the whole idea of bringing this Saren down. 

  “The captain’s right. We need to present this to the council right away.” 

 “What about the Quarian?” The krogan that was following Jane finally speaks! 

   “Umm, her name is Tali.” You said politely but quietly. 

    “Thank you, (Y/N).” She slightly bowed her head at you in appreciation, then faced your sister. “You saw me in the alley way commander, you know what I can do. Let me come with you.” 

   You could tell that Tali was hoping to tag along instead of being stuck somewhere she isn’t treated with respect. You didn’t blame her, you would do anything just to get away from such a life. 

   “I thought you were on your pilgrimage?” 

   “The pilgrimage proves we are willing to give up ourselves for the greater good. What does it say about me if I turn my back on something like this. Saren is a danger to the entire galaxy. My pilgrimage can wait.” 

   “In that case, I’ll take all the help I can get.” 

  “Thanks. You won’t regret this.” 

  “What do you plan on doing with the girl commander? She seems confused over everything we have talked about.” After the ambassador’s question, everyone’s eyes were now on you. You shifted uncomfortably. 

  “This girl, is my little sister. She’s ten years younger than me.” Jane set a hand on your shoulder while she faced the captain and the ambassador. 

 “You’re right, she has no idea what’s going on. Knowing her, she more than likely only came here to see if I was alright after hearing about the attack on Eden Prime.” She then looked at her smugly. “Am I right?” 

    You just glared at her. “Fine next time I won’t care if you’re dead or alive.” 

 “Well then it’s probably best she stays out of it. Meet us at the Presidium commander. I’ll give you time to send your sister on the first flight home.”

 The ambassador didn’t like the idea of some child joining a fight. Even if she was a Shepard.

  He left the room and Anderson left behind him. It was then just you, your sister, and her new friends. You spoke up first.

   “You’re not really going to send me home are you?”

  “Depends. There’ll probably be danger on every corner here, (Y/N).”

 You looked at her with a smile. “I eat danger for breakfast.”

 “Well then. Are you hungry?”

 “Starving.”

[spnreactionblogging]

DESPAIR

SPOILERS BELOW / tw suicide sort of

ah the title really does sum this up. I am filled with such dread going in. I know cas gets sent to super hell, I know the destiel shippers are declaring it canon (but then, when haven't they), and I've heard from a reliable source that the show officially as of just now is queerbaiting for real by making it vague and easy to ignore it instead of actually confirming anything. plus nobody seems to give a fuck about jack, as usual, and sam didn't get to say goodbye? god how can this get better???? I hope buckleming got to fucking murder castiel! that would really improve this for me!!! the cherry on the shit sundae for real so okay here goes. ugh. I have this angel's envy bourbon at 1PM, oops. I feel like I will need it for this one more than the others I also am ensconced in my castiel trenchcoat + "be super good" shirt, and cas, crowley, and sam the q-pals are joining me. dean is banished to remain in the tote bag they live in. god I want to scream. this fucking synopsis "With the plan in full motion, Sam, Dean, Castiel and Jack fight for the good for the common goal." oh the plan to use Jack as a suicide bomb???? great idea. lol I hate this. whose "common good"????????? ah but yes dean runs a dictatorship right. no wonder chuck butts heads with him dean looks so fucking smug in the amazon prime video app, hovering over the episode where cas will die horribly. fuck. there is nothing that can emotionally prepare me for this episode the show is going to end with sam and dean because it started with sam and dean and chuck/the IRL writers are bitter about it I guess??? delete fucking everything god, very fucking cute of dean to be like WE GOTTA DO SOMETHING!!! you fucking piece of shit you forcememed this to go as quickly as possible because you want Jack fucking dead, don't pretend you care god. fuck. jack apologizing for dying, to the empty. I hate everything so much ah, so that's why the opening title screen has been that. gross. horrible. a jack singularity is that it? really? jack's dead? just like that. okay. awful. oh he's MAYBE dead. reassuring. I see that briana buckmaster and jim beaver will be joining us my cat is sitting in front of the TV trying to prevent me from watching this, trying to save me from myself oh and felicia day oh this one's written by robert berens, I mostly trust him I think sam should've photocopied the book first oh hey RSJ directed this one I'm glad to have rachel miner back in any capacity that's... alpha/omega on the side there? makes sense I hope it's a fake book god I love sam sitting on the like. what is that, weird equipment panels? more confirmation sam is queer, you heard it here what leverage does dean even think he has cool jack's just getting tortured now "the boy is still useful" at least billie isn't pretending to care about him. oh she left the book thank fuck cas goes to him right away, please hug this child alcohol is not gonna help you guys sleep oh here's dean's half-assed apology. "sorry not sorry that I just couldn't stop, I couldn't help it, I just wanted to get what I wanted, and now that I didn't get what I wanted, sowwy uwu I guess" "you've snapped me out of worse" yeah don't minimize this, sam oh yeah michael exists. I notice dean refers to him as michael and not including adam. way to go I notice that sam does not drink right away "to somehow" those eggs look great "no guns at the table" is a solid rule not only for how miserable that is, but because everything surrounding firearms is a carcinogen and doesn't need to be near food please love yourself charlie please eat good eggs am I supposed to know stevie, was she part of the alternate universe, I still like never watched most of 10-13 oh we're gonna kill MULTIPLE queer characters in this episode, awesome. we gonna kill charlie AGAIN??????? we brought her back just to kill her off, AGAIN? LIKE KEVIN? and bobby I guess?? can I just say how much I hate the concept of a "final boss fight" like why is it always ending in a fight, why is violence always the answer, and why do we feel like one final violent action will solve all the problems huh charlie's shirt looks like a tycho album cover okay so I didn't forget stevie, she was brand new? maybe? I love cas and jack :( feels strange because this all sucks there's no such thing as destiny, jack don't fucking die for sam and dean and 'the world' damn right, cas, he doesn't need "absolution" well that's true for you, cas, you care because he's him. dean just wants to use him cas and jack are good. charlie this was so not your fault. as usual this is the winchesters' fault. tell 'em charlie!!! get 'em!!! you're not sorry, dean. "What now?" is a huge fucking mood, dean oh, greg! our old friend! greg was a real one (but not anymore) yeah eileen's screwed. this includes sam too. and dean i guess. sam is a good person who cares about people despite dean's best efforts to stop him I can't see who he's texting. are cas and jack in the back? poor eileen :( god poor sam having to basically get eileen in front of eyewitnesses who can attest that she disappeared cas and jack are in the backseat yeah I wish he'd tell her she's never gonna reply now yeah she's gone. interesting use of technology that they couldn't've done earlier in the series, to show she was typing but then stopped god that's awful. fuck. "If I let myself go then I'll lose my mind. I can't, right now." that's a huge fucking mood sam let's just postpone all that grief for later. gotta shove it down. huge fucking mood. god I'm so sorry somewhere central... the... bunker? don't split everyone up dean, fuck yes revenge is definitely the answer. killing things is the answer. "not having a choice" is obviously the answer. you fucker we get a sam and dean hug but where's the one for cas. you can like... see it in sam and jack's eyes that they are worried they're never gonna see them again. I'm horrified that cas isn't getting to say goodbye to jack nor sam. I can't handle this. I guess this scene is where they took that last group photo that misha posted back in march? RIP :( oh hey donna jack, that feeling is TheDepression oh gas-n-sip sam's sweet to try to give jack some autonomy here instead of having him just... being shuffled around like baggage. is that eileen's car then this music is intense don't burn the fucking library also wow dean with the reaper blade again is oof. wow. yikes. dean is become death, destroyer of worlds for real. jesus that is fucking horrifying to see. aren't you, dean? aren't you a bringer of death. remember when you hated doing that back in season... 4? 5? later? dean has learned nothing. sam's been trapped in a silo before hasn't he. or that panic room or something. donna is sweet. jack is good. jack deserves better. sam :( donna is very kind I like hearing jody and garth mentioned even if they're not in this episode (?) oh hey charlie sam at least knows how you feel, charlie I like this set god I've missed jim beaver is jack going around with spraypaint? I'm like oh god there's no ventilation. I guess it's a paint bucket but still the fumes are bad. better than being evaporated though I guess big man on campus. RIP stanford sam at least there's a bucket. praeses magna. "president large"? thinking about how it would be impossible to have extras for episodes 19 and 20 I like watching jack paint RIP that plant. apparently he has his powers dean walks around way too comfortably with the reaper scythe. oh but the plan has changed. did billie leave that book and nobody read it?????? dean you don't have friends, bud. yeah how did you tink you would even stand a chance, dean. this is the worst plan ever I'm so tired of seeing cas get tortured. I don't want to see billie get hurt either. is "billie" actually the empty or something "Has virtutes conliga. Eas integra. Eas firma. Nos omnes serva." = "These virtues bind. Those infected. These are strong. We keep them all." idk google translate, I feel like that may not be "infected" but more like integrity I like the effects they did on the wardings there yeah pretty much you can't stop god oh I'm real sad about that couple who vanished together :( bye charlie bye bobby. :( bye donna??? oh that like gold paint gossamer looking shit going on with billie's arm is cool god I'm glad billie smacked him in the face, dean deserves it. I just rewound it to see dean get clocked again, it's so worth it so they went back to the bunker... for what? billie can just go there. sam and jack are gonna have such a rough fucking day. all those double cheeseburgers are back for revenge on dean billie's right actually. dean always thinks the rules don't apply to him because he thinks he should be making the rules. castiel should be with jack, not with dean. fuck. can't cas still heal people the scythe on the wall is a good visual. I really like lisa berry, she does an amazing job is this the same room with the ma'lak box always happy to bleed for the winchesters. christ. fuck. even with dean's pocketknife. cas I'm so sorry. sweetheart you don't deserve this. 7B? so Jack was trapped in 5B, this is a different room but probably the same actual setpiece just rearranged do you just... have to wait her out yeah yeah dean you suck. correct, you never should've left sam and jack. wow I feel zero sympathy for dean at all. you do it to yourselllllf you do, that's what really hurts. oh baby don't summon the empty please :( I'm so glad to know that cas never told them about how he saved jack, it's none of their business yeah it would be with jack, cas. you should be with him man this is shitty. this is like a bad fanfic for real. wow these shots are like, when it cuts between them it's so obvious these were not the same camera lmao fuck. how many takes was this god i hate dean. he has not done this for love. dean is a spiteful person. "you're the most caring man on earth" literally kill me. I want to die. jesus fuck. i want to be dead this is awful this sucks this actually really hurts. this sucks so much. dean you squandered this angel's life. now jack has no father. i hate you dean winchester. i hate you. you don't deserve cas loving you jack knows, jack can feel it. I hate hate hate hate hate hate that jack is left alone with the winchesters. i hate this. jesus fuck i hate this so much i hate this jack sweetheart I'm so sorry dean you fucking ass please pick up the fucking phone. please answer sam. i hate you god dean i hate you fuck dean you are the worst. fuck my life. fuck all this. fuck this show. i'm so angry castiel deserves so much better than this. fuck i'm so mad. why wasn't his moment of happiness knowing that JACK WASN'T GOING TO DIE. i hate this. I'm so upset. fucking shit-ass writing. and it's still not fucking canon you morons at least uh they don't have to have extras for the last two episodes? did they add that footage after? is that what got changed up? everyone's gone huh. god just. dump the show right into the trash. bye. also for fuck's sake nobody gives a fuck about jack like I didn't even know he survived. nobody cares. "sam didn't get to say goodbye" FUCKING JACK DIDN'T GET TO SAY GOODBYE fuck this so much. fuck, is dean just chuck's OC? made in his image and furious that his mini-me isn't acting the way he wants? is that why he gets exonerated at every turn? "all the evil shit you did is fine dean you're the MOST LOVING AND THE BESTEST EVER!!!" fuuuuuck

[ofbatwcman]

☾ — KATE KANE / BATWOMAN is here! SHE has found themselves wandering about new gotham attempting to find their place in this challenging world. they were once a HERO who used to be associated with THE BATFAMILY/BRUCE WAYNE. hope they make it in this world.

the basics;

NAME: Katherine “Kate” Rebecca Kane

ALIAS(ES): Batwoman

AGE: Thirty-five

BIRTHDAY & ZODIAC: March 21, Aries

MBTI: ENTJ (The Commander)

PREFERRED PRONOUNS: She/her

FACECLAIM: Evan Rachel Wood

a deeper look;

FAMILY: Jacob Kane (father), Gabi Kane (mother, deceased), Elizabeth Kane (twin sister), Catherine Hamilton-Kane (step-mother), Philip Kane (uncle, deceased), Martha Kane-Wayne (aunt, deceased), Thomas Wayne (uncle, deceased), Bruce Wayne (cousin), Damian Wayne (first cousin, once removed), Mary Elizabeth “Bette” Kane (cousin), Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and Tim Drake (Bruce Wayne’s adopted kids)

AFFILIATION: Batfamily

THREE FAVORITE THINGS:

THREE HATED THINGS: 

EDUCATION:  College Graduate; expelled from West Point

SKILLS: Acrobatics, aviation, archery, demolition, espionage, gadgetry, investigation, multilinguilism, martial arts, lockpicking, military protocal, stealth, weaponry, firearms, I’m gonna be here all day listing them.

WEAPONS: batarangs, her fists, sometimes guns, improvised weaponry

ABILITIES: No metahuman powers, but she does have a genius level intellect and an indominable will. She also has enhanced senses due to a crack in her skull being mended with gold while she was on Coryana.

the questionnaire;

WHAT IS SOMETHING YOUR CHARACTER LIKES ABOUT NEW GOTHAM? SOMETHING THEY DISLIKE? DO THEY MISS THE WAY THINGS WERE - OR DO THE LIKE HOW THE WORLD IS NOW? IS IT WEIRD TO THEM TO SEE MULTIPLE TYPES OF PEOPLE AND CREATURES AROUND? OR ARE THEY USED TO IT? WERE THEY ORIGINALLY FROM ONE OF THE TWO MAIN CITIES - OR SOMEWHERE ELSE?

Kate highkey hates everything. She’s honestly lucky Julia and her small underground HQ are okay as of right now, but she really hates that she no longer knows the city. She travels a lot, but she’s been living in Gotham forever now. She definitely misses how things were. Her favorite restraunt to take dates to is gone, so she’s not really happy about that at all. It’s not too weird to her to see all these new people and things, she herself has had to deal with some pretty crazy shit that’s been magical with zero explanation, so its... just another Tuesday in Gotham. She does want things to go back to normal, especially since she was in the middle of a case that forced her to travel a lot and right now, she can’t do anything outside this weird mishmashed city.

WHERE WAS YOUR CHARACTER WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED? ARE THEY SUSPICIOUS OF EVERYONE OR ARE THEY TRYING TO REMAIN UNDER THE RADAR? HAVE THEY REUNITED WITH THEIR FRIENDS OR ARE THEY LOST? WERE THEY AT HOME IN BED? OUT PATROLLING THE STREETS? IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR? WHAT’S HAPPENED TO THEM NOW?

Kate’s a bat. She was on patrol when the city seemed to change right underneath her and she couldn’t find her motorcycle. And being a bat, she’s suspicious of everything. While not as supicious as others might be, she’s still hella wary. Batwoman’s been staying under the radar, as always, but Kate Kane has found her cousin, and Julia at least. She feels better knowing Bruce is here, but she hasn’t found her sister or her father yet. Which might be good. She’s not sure yet.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: ANYTHING YOU WANT US TO KNOW? ANY HEADCANONS?

Okay. So, Kate is 100% taking from the comics. I binged her entire Rebirth series in one day, read Batwoman: Elegy in Detective Comics, and then started her New 52 series. I’m still new, and still hacking my way through her series (and I do need to get to Detective Comics as well, where she was on a team in that), but I decided to try and take a stab at playing her, so please be patient with me. I’m not taking any canon from Arrowverse at all. I have not seen a single episode of the show, so, pls don’t expect me to know anything about those plots. But like, if we get a Beth or something who’s show based, I’m down for plotting, Kate’s just not show!Kate at all.

Kate’s a lesbian. She’s out and proud, and its the reason she was expelled from West Point.

She doesn’t drink alchohol. She used to be an alchoholic, and she’s been sober ever since the day Batman showed up when she was fighting a guy who was trying to mug her in an alley. Seeing him in person inspired her to become Batwoman. I’m not quite sure how she found out Batman was also her cousin, Bruce, but she eventually did. These two definitely have their differences, but she does love him.

She’s got that cute little bob she had in her 2011 series under the wig and not.... whatever they did to her hair in Rebirth. I’m pretty sure either they did it so she looked like Ruby Rose, or the show did it because of Rebirth, idk which came first, and no hate to Ruby, but I just don’t like it.

I’m not going to assume any of Kate’s past girlfriends!

Uh.... I’ll add more as I get more into her character! I’m pretty much just plucking what canon I like out of the comics at the moment!

[365daysofmchart]

Reflecting on McHart: 3x01

Long time no see! But just thought I’d make some little (as it turns out) incredibly lengthy remarks about McHart-related things that stood out to me in the season 3 premiere of The Good Fight! May or may not do more of these throughout the season--let me know if you’re feelin’ it. Obviously 3x01 spoilers below!

1. Them holding hands, (and her leg slung over him which we couldn’t really see in the scene but did in the promo) and THAT CHIN GRAB, and him indulging her, oh my! (BUT WHY WOULD HE TEMPT FATE LIKE THAT SAYING “WHAT COULD GO WRONG?” DAMN IT, KURT!)

2. I had been planning to make a clever remark about how I had so been looking forward to seeing what a home/bedroom that was truly both of theirs would look like... and then (once seeing it in the promo/promo pics) that apparently it looks exactly like a Diane bedroom, lol (which is sweet in it’s own right too, I suppose, him just letting her run with it... or perhaps her insisting they do it together but then she vetos like 95% of his ideas so then he just gives up). But then I saw the gun case with more than a dozen firearms in it so actually a Diane/Kurt bedroom seems to be a Diane bedroom with an abundance of guns. ...Which honestly kind of surprises me, especially given that they’re not really locked away. Wondering how those negotiations went between the two of them. ...Are the guns in the bedroom going to become relevant in a later episode??? So many questions. 

But anyway, further on their bedroom, THAT THING IS FREAKING MASSIVE. I know that they want it to function as sort of a catch-all space for the season so that they can get away with shooting every single McHart home scene in that one space and so it has to serve a lot of functions, but good lord, I think an entire apartment could fit in there? And HOW MUCH SEATING DO THEY NEED? They’ve got enough for--no exaggeration--more than ten in there. That’s insane. Are they planning to have a freaking soiree in there??? HA! ...It is gorgeous though, props to Beth!

3. The domesticity of their morning! He’s shaving (with a shaving brush OF COURSE and probably a straight razor) in a towel in the bathroom and her unpacking his stuff as they talk (or holler, rather) back and forth, just kind of hanging out while doing their own things to get ready for the day. THEY’RE MARRIED. My heart! 4. Diane’s increased knowledge of his guns and his preferences despite the fact that he has probably like 50 of them. How much time does he spend talking about guns and she sits there and lets him and listens, probably mostly because she just loves watching him in his element... and also because THEY’RE MARRIED and idk, I guess you do stuff like listening to your spouse talk about things you’re maybe not totally into when you’re married?

5. He called her (at work vs. her cell) while she was on her way to work, after she had just left him, but we never find out why. WHY???

6.HER HELPING HIM PACK. Ans it’s because she “saw airplane tickets on our account.” On “OUR ACCOUNT.” Something tells me they hadn’t merged much of anything before (including their lives), but they have now and it warms my heart!

7. I actually love the way they handled the hairs/her suspicions.To start with, I think it’s natural that after everything, even if they have moved forward and are starting over, even if she has worked though everything and trusts him, I think it’s perfectly realistic that certain feelings might creep up given certain circumstances. Of course exploring this in the show could’ve easily gotten into “drama for the sake of drama” territory and been incredibly messy and destructive, but it wasn’t. 

She wasn’t looking for reasons to be jealous, wasn’t looking to catch him in a trap--they honestly were “just there.” She then handled it so well, asking him reasonable questions, went on with her day, then maturely confronted him about it at home that night. (And honestly, I don’t think she actually thought he cheated, just that he was hiding something perhaps a little less than seemly that had to do with one of his “Fox blonds.”)  And then when she does approach him about it, she starts by telling him she loves him! She’s diving into this situation knowing it could be messy/hurtful but wants to preface with an “I love you” cause they are so IN THIS. Oh, also, ya know, he was being dishonest with her/lying to her, so her suspicions were totally valid. ...And on that note, DID KURT REALLY NOT LEARN HIS LESSON ON BEING HONEST WITH HER?!?!? Like he’s the most honest guy with literally e-ver-y-one else... but his wife. I think it just comes from loving her and not wanting to upset/hurt/lose her, but COME ON, MAN.

8. “I’m being paid. I don’t have a job, I’m hiring myself out...” “They pay me, Diane; it’s money. I’m not doing it because I like them!” “I’m being paid! I’m working!” That. Job. Though. His excuses are such a cop out because they obviously don’t need the money by any means. But I think it really speaks to Kurt and his pride--he loves his wife dearly, loves her strength, will always support her and is genuinely okay with her being the primary breadwinner. ...But he also still feels the need to pull his weight--to have a purpose and to contribute something financially. To “be a man.” (But again, as much as he may feel the need to play a traditional male gender role, he also has zero expectations that Diane do the same!) Because he could always volunteer in some way, take on smaller jobs, wait for the right long-term, paying position... but he’s taken that one. Because pride (which apparently trumps integrity? LOL!). (Throwback to season 2 of TGW!) Oh, Kurt... BUT ALSO SHE SEEMS TO GET THAT, because yes, she’s definitely upset about it and judges him for it, but she doesn’t even begin to try to talk him out of it, just, “Nope, you’re right. You have to do what you have to do.” She knows it’s important to him and respects that it’s something he feels he has to do! (They’ve come so far from 5x06!) As he respects that she has to do what she has to do. Like she just walks out on some kind of vague mission and he just stands there, a little confused, but like, “...Okay? Well, you do you, I guess. I’ll be here.”

9. THEIR TEASING, I LOVE IT SO MUUUUUCH. Honestly it’s been so long since we’ve seen them relaxed and playful together that it almost felt out of character for Diane for a hot minute and then I thought back and was like, “oh yeah, never mind, this is just what they’re like together when they’re not being put through the wringer by the writers!” Gasp! ...But like oh my God, they’re so freaking cute and yes please I’ll take more wise-cracking-sarcastic-sasshole Diane EVERY EPISODE, PLEASE!!! And let’s be honest, Kurt loves it. He looks at her with heart eyes and that little smirk that he can’t quite master because he’s just so in love with her even especially when she teases him. But then “Come on, come on. A little hug, please.” Like it’s not even a kiss or sexual in any way, she’s just missed him and just wants to embrace him for a moment. And given their history in regards to physical intimacy and that we can be quite certain that their sex life is still plenty vibrant, I think that a hug actually means more than tearing into each other, you know? They’ve always had that physical draw, the hug is more a product of an emotional one. (THOUGH I WOULD HAVE ZERO COMPLAINTS ABOUT THEM TEARING INTO EACH OTHER) And then, from the slightest wince she knows something is wrong and presses him on it!

10. The entirety of the “They shot you!” scene was pure GOLD. Every line, every delivery. And then her concern followed by her frantic ire and demand to know who did it, and his trying to calm her but then getting riled himself... UGH. I love it. All of it. Every bit of it. But especially... (And some lines I’ve highlighted at the bottom!)

11. Idk, but I just really love when he shows her the ointment? It just feels SO [OLD?] MARRIED COUPLE. Like, “Yeah, I did go to the hospital and they gave me this stuff to put on it, see? Here it is. Do you want to look at it?”  (And her just automatically taking it from his hand!) Honestly I clearly can’t adequately put words to why this in particular stands out to me, but it just gets me every freaking time.

12. Moment of appreciation for their bathroom (the one room that’s actually lit properly, lol) and alllll of her products and their matching toothbrushes in the middle, then that lil red car on his side (’cause they have sides, guys!). Dying to see their bedroom reasonably well lit at some point during the season (we hope) to see more of these little details! (...Also why are their towels hanging in their washroom area where it would appear that there is only a toilet???)

13. “You’re not fit to kiss my husband’s feet--a truthful man, uncomplaining, never passing the buck, never punching unless he’s punched. When did he become the exception?” After everything, after it all, after the lies and the hurt, she still believes that this man is the greatest man to walk this earth. Perhaps she now knows that he’s not perfect... but I think she believes he’s the closest any man will get. She just loves him SO. DAMN. MUCH. And then just gently resting her arm over his waist while careful to keep her distance from his wound cause she just wants needs that connection... I CAN’T WITH THEMMMMM.

14. Also, ummm... can we please get shirtless Kurt in 3 scenes in every episode??? 15. Diane uttered like 2 “husband”s, 2 “wife”s, and one “married” in this single episode... clearly the writers are as committed to defining them as MARRIED AF as we are.

And just a few other lines that stood out to me:

“I’m happy. ...Am I ridiculous?” “You like narrating your life.”

“But mean it.”

“...And it reeked of cologne, or mousse, or something, and I know that you’d rather die than use girly products...”

“...Then which of you Fox blonds is it?” (”Fox” did not sound like “Fox” upon my first watch/listen, haha!)

“You call him Eric?” “Oh, God...”

“DIANE, you’re scaring me!”

“My God, my poor husband. What have they done to you?”

“That’s why they delayed the trip, they SHOT you!”

“I can do the ointment.” “No you can’t!”

“The most important person in my life...”

Alright, as per usual I got ENTIRELY carried away, but anyway there ya go. Hope at least one of you gets amusement out of it, lol! And feel free to comment/"Ask” your own thoughts!

Happy “More McHart is only 25 hours away!” -E

[obiternihili]

Something about property rights

I felt like I needed to rant yesterday and decided to adapt the discord messages into a tumblr post.

I spent most of a class this morning thinking about the Anglo interpretations and notions of property rights, trying to actually contrast it with workable alternative notions of property rights and feeling kind of hopeless about it and finding it hard to actually come up with anything that isn't literally communism.

And in retrospect it made the whole “philosophically questioning the whole notion of property rights” feel more, idk, respectable than it had before, when it just sounded like the USSR and China opposed its inclusion in the UDHR for technical reasons or pure self interest in covering their own atrocities.

The whole thing started with thinking about the Zapatist slogan “la tierra es de quién la trabaja”. “The land belongs to those who work it.” To me, the Zapatistas were pretty cool guys, who sided with the little guy and the indigenous peoples of México. But I thought immediately about how a colonial American might react to it, and I couldn’t escape the idea that they’d hear the slogan and go, “ah, yes, we should kill the savages and steward the land correctly”.

As much as the magna carta is held up as this great precursor to democratic rights in this country, its origins are far more dismal and petty. It wasn’t really a democratic impulse, it was more like a bunch of petty-kings coordinated to overwhelm a high king. But it doubtlessly had a strong effect on feudalism and came to be a part of English identity before that even really made sense from a modern perspective. In short it came off almost as a promise that “every man is a king of his own home” and that helped to make property itself sacrosanct.

So when capitalism changed the people’s relationship with the land, the serfs were “liberated” as the commons were siezed by their de jure owners. The collapse of the commons fundamentally changed people’s relationships with property, exacerbating the whole “every man is a king of his own house” issue, and making property the be-all-end-all of basic needs like shelter. To the degree that the Magna Carta made property sacrosanct, in a literal “this is a divinely appointed right” sort of sense, the collapse of the commons codified exactly what that meant, making that sacrosanctity intrinsic to thriving.

So because of tying these issues together so deeply, it made sense to steal the lands of people “not working it” according to how you might work it. So that it made sense to go to war because the yankees were stealing your chattel, and horror of horrors not even repurposing them! So that telling South Africa “hey, no, black people are people too” was unholy, violating their sacred authority to clean their own house. So it makes sense that Australia continues to break promises to its Aboriginal communities, if, say, their homes have a potentially profitable mine to work. So it makes sense that Canada breaks promises to its indigenous population, if there’s an oil pipeline they can lay. So that it made sense, paradoxically, for the US to strong arm México into changing articles of its constitution about indigenous land rights in order to pass NAFTA and be able to threaten to go United Fruit Company on the people for not being profitable to the corporations. And the EZLN, which formed directly because of the anxieties of these moves as the Maya genocide was still very fresh on everyone’s minds, are neo-Zapatistas; the land belongs to the one who works it! The Maya who always has, or the companies that want to (exploit it)? 

I remember once as a teen confronting the attitudes this bears on a small chan.

Before the BLM stuff, actually regarding OWS and those "rich punks arguing for socialism with their iphones" and shit;  I'd made an off hand comment about things not being worth more than lives at some point and someone replied "I'd totally kill someone if they stole my phone".

I made a comment in utter exasperation (this was on a board that was like /pol/ before that was really what it is now and there was no reason to believe they weren't serious), saying something like "Is, what, a month's pay really worth a human life to you?" ($800 really was more money than my mom was making at the time, let alone taking out rent and shit first, and I gave them benefit of the doubt that they weren't rich first world fucks who could afford to take a hit. At that point I’d learned that most people in India, even dirt poor people who couldn’t afford water, generally had smart phones in order to help with work and things; conscientious of this, the fact that I know and knew dirt poor almost homeless people in the US who needed phones for work, I was trying to allow for “if I lose this phone, I lose my job, my home, my health, and my life” which is a reality a lot of people live with, and at least somewhere to come at this issue with).

(But) the commentators, both the user I was arguing against and several people using trips, proceeded to mock me for apparently living in a 3rd world country for thinking a phone cost more than one paycheck.

To these people a phone wasn’t even worth a week’s pay, let alone two. And yet, to them, another person’s life, no matter how desperate they were, no matter how hungry or sick or anything they were, they were worth less than that.

This exchange was about the time I started nurturing (or giving in, depending on your perspective) the idea that "maybe some people aren't just, mistaken, or seeing something I don't, or have some complex network of beliefs making them bite a bullet, but like, actually goddamn legitimately evil in terms of their fundamental values". I gather absolutely that there’s a lot going on with this; that you could understand the guy to mean “I think thieves should be killed” as opposed to ““humans”“ or whatever. But, like, still.

Traumatizing is an overly dramatic word for what that conversation all those years did to me, but maybe it was. And it’s not like a phone’s *nothing*. But the way the users undercut me, and revealed not only how worthless the phone was to them, but how little human lives were worth to them in relation to the phone just kind of knocked the wind out of me

This made the rounds recently. This is the legacy of that property is sacrosanct bullshit.

And, like, fuck, this is the whole cultural underpinning of what’s been going on with the gun shit here. It’s why guns are so important to us. Why we feel it’s absolutely justified to shoot a kid in the back for lifting a $2 bottle of beer from a convenience store and leaving him to bleed to death without so much as calling the police. The entire fucked up thing we got going on w/r/t race here in the land of the free? It’s because of our relationship to property rights.

At the same time, you get climate change from people who feel it’s their right to do whatever to their property. Oil’s money. Dairy farms, meat, cash crops like almonds. You don’t like your water dirtied? But I’m only fracking over ma plotte!

What’s going on in Brazil? Some natives won the right to their lands against farmers who wanted to clear the forest, and mysteriously within a few weeks everything’s lit on fire. 𝅘𝅥 Dark torrents shake the airs, as black clouds blind [São Paulo] ♫

You even get the nimby zoning shit out of this. How dare you let colored people into my neighborhood! That’s stealing from my property values! A tall building? That’s stealing my sunlight!

In a more mixed sort of way, you got homeless shelters, oil wells, chemical plants, industrial parks, military bases, fracking, wind turbines, desalination plants, landfill sites, incinerators, power plants, quarries, prisons, pubs, adult entertainment clubs, concert venues, firearms dealers, mobile phone masts, electricity pylons, abortion clinics, children's homes, nursing homes, youth hostels, sports stadiums, shopping malls, retail parks, railways, roads, airports, seaports, nuclear waste repositories, storage for weapons of mass destruction, cannabis dispensaries, recreational cannabis shops and the accommodation of persons applying for asylum, refugees, and displaced persons - a list i just lifted from wikipedia’s articles on nimbies. Looking at that, there’s some clearly sympathetic issues too. I mean do you really want a train cutting through your farm, no matter how well you’re recompensated, no matter how much it will objectively improve the lives of the people in the cities, no matter much better it is for the environment to commute together?

But, like, what exactly are the alternatives?

We could look at other cultures. What did Belgian property notions look like? Leopold of the Congo? What do French notions look like? Forcing Algieria to pay back the “investment” France made by colonizing them? Well, the English and the French go back a long, long ways, maybe we could look at Germany?

The first genocide of the 20th century is often recognized to be that of the Herero, in Namibia’s, Germany’s biggest steal  in the struggle to carve up Africa like the Black Dahlia.

I already mentioned Brasil.

What about China? Surely they aren’t western!

By some notions they were the first feudal nation in the world, and yet only left the system really in the 20th century. That’s a lot of cultural baggage that underlays the reality the Chinese live under today.

The early republican period saw the rise of warlords and other petty bastards effectively continuing the feudal reality in much the way sharecropping and jim crow continued chattel slavery in the US. The successor states aren’t pretty either; Taiwan, continuing republican ideals, cleared out much of its indigenous population for the Han in ways analogous to what European powers did to the natives of their countries; the PRC, which was born to challenge the ideals of the old republic for its own, took back “what was theirs” with Tibet.

The PRC, explicitly rejecting property rights as the west understands it, doesn’t even have a legal analog to eminent domain, and in effect can seize property on a whim without compensation, forcibly engaging in actions like people moving, which I feel it should be known when done to a community often results in genocide.

Something else illustrative of the conflicts of interest in the problem lies with the 3 Gorges Dam project. Ostensibly to control flooding to villages downstream, over a million residents of the Chongqing area were forcibly relocated, with rumors of people who resisted the project being explicitly drowned and because everything’s just hopelessly corrupt the money actually provided for recompensation never made it to the hands of farmers now stuck in a big city without the education for work.

Similar stories to Taiwan’s play out in other capitalist countries; similar stories to the PRC’s play out in countries that reject those notions.

Generally you just reinvent the same concepts drawing from the lord and serf mentalities of old. There’s shit like this going down in the Muslim world, in East Africa, South America, South Asia, whereever. It’s not just an Anglo thing, even though I’ve let myself believe it were, because of how I was taught about history, from my culture’s perspective.

Then you have to ask yourself, when there’s no net, when you have to provide for yourself first, do the commons necessarily make sense?

Is it even viable, economically or politically, to abolish private property and return to the commons like people have advanced? Would, to enjoy the benefits of something evidentally only stable under feudalism, we have to return to some kind of practice of feudalism? Is that even worth considering?

There are more people alive today than ever before. And that didn’t happen just by accident. We really, actually, seriously have made incredible improvements to agricultural yield and safety, ensuring that the only places on the planet that starve are those that are being starved, by monsters like the Saudis. But the scale we need, the scale we want, the scale we have - is much more than just what one farmer can provide for himself. And the fact that we do have other farmers do the mass farming with their bulk fertilizers, machinery, pesticides, and such, means that most of us don’t have to spend time every week tending to our gardens making sure we have enough staple foods to survive, so we can pursue our own hopes and hobbies and dreams and undertakings and services and so on.

All of it sort of leads to the question, Who deserves the land?

The worker whose blood sweat and tears are wrought into the soil? That could lead to the issue of killing my Yokuts friends' gatherer ancestors for stewarding their lands, husbanding their ecosystem and managing burns and wild populations, instead of raping the lands, burning everything to ash to farm foreign crops that aren’t even adapted to the water issues here. And it doesn't proclude the workers from choking us with smoke, if they feel they need to. The guy on the oil rig isn’t doing it because he endorses what the oil companies do or because he thinks it’s necessarily a good thing, he does it because it makes him bread. Why would worker’s self management solve that? Shareholders and workers alike would only care about taking home what they can.

The "owners” in the English sense? Taking subsidy after subsidy, fighting actively to drain our rivers, collapse the formerly self-renewing resources entirely, bringing us droughts, feeding even the lactose intolerant among us the lie that we need fatty heart clogging cheeses to be healthy? Illegally hiring, exploiting, and deporting the vulnerable? Big farms are just any other business, their owners are the same venture capitalist vultures preying on anything else in that world. South of me used to one of the biggest lakes in North America, virtually the entire south valley was lake Tulare. It’s a bunch of cities now.

So, the people who need it?

Maybe but who decides that? War for territory is a fundamental struggle built deep into us; war is even practiced by chimps. Military ration planning like we saw in the USSR and PRC cause Holodomors. United Fruit and their entire coalition caused the Silent Genocide. Abolishing private property entirely would, what, return us to the times when the lands were unclaimed? That would just lead to petty struggle after petty struggle, like a chimp disemboweling another.

And now, having written this a second time, I’ll end with what I wrote earlier

[avengerdragoness]

Pride and Preemptive Onslaught [Jason Todd x Reader]

Title Drabble: “Remember me? Probably not, but awhile ago(like a week? A month? Idk time is just a concept anyway) when you were still doing the send me a title and I'll say what fic it would be, I sent you an ask and you answered it(yay!) about a fic called Pride and preemptive onslaught? And I was wondering if you would be willing to write that now in honor of 2800?(good job btw that's so much! I've been here since you reached 2000 (not long ik) and I'm super proud of you! I honestly don't know how you do it)“ -@iamatramathers

[v/n] - villain name

You were known for your quick wit and ability to avoid bats at all costs. All of them except for Batman himself barely ever laid eyes on you. When they did, it was because you wanted them too. However the only other one you’d really encountered was Nightwing. 

Red Hood, Robin, and Red Robin weren’t really around when you were.

You were trained by Selina aka Cattwoman. Just like Batman scoped up orphans, when she saw the potential in you after running into you on the street. She took you in and taught you the art that is being a cat burglar.

---

After climbing out of a jewelry store you made sure your pouch was secure that held your haul. “Ya know” A voice caught your attention. “I don’t think you took anything that belonged to you.”

Looking in the direction of the voice you spotted the one and only Red Hood leaning against the roof ledge. You smirked and eyed him up and down. “So you’re the infamous Red Hood.”

“In the flesh” He walked up toward you. “Now how about you give me that stuff you took and I’ll let you scurry along?”

You laughed, “Mm, they never said you were funny.” You slid a hand up your chest. Caught off guard when he grabbed your wrist, stopping you. That move always worked on Nightwing.

“Give up the jewels [v/n]” He growled.

Taken aback you took a step away from him. Raising an eyebrow. You grabbed your whip and cracked it against the ground. “I don’t think so hoodie.”

“Hard way it is” He pulled out his gun and pointed it at you. Quickly you whipped his hand, knocking the firearm from his grip. However his gloved hand grabbed the end of your whip and yanked you toward him.

He pulled you so you both were chest to chest. Looking up at him you couldn’t help but blush a little. Suppressing it, you growled and swung, punching him in the jaw when he hesitated. After he let you go due to his mind reeling, you turned and fled.

After losing him, you panted and pressed your back to a wall. ‘What was that about? Nobody’s ever caught me off guard. What was different? Fighting style? His comebacks? ...Or maybe the fact that I want to know nothing but what he looks like under that mask,’