#even if its local law enforcement that gets away with a hate crime | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bimswritings · 4 years ago

Text

This Is Our Way

Ch.1

Summary: What happens when you make the mistake of thinking you can steel from a Mandalorian? You land yourself and job and a plethora of adventures and emotion you could never even dream of. The question is; where will those emotions lead.

Warnings: Typical canon violence, NSFW implications and scenes later on

You can also read it on my Ao3 account.

_____________________________________

Clouds. Dark, impenetrable, depressing grey clouds are what greet you as soon as your eyes open, just like they have every day for years during your existence on the scrappy planet of Corellia. Home to the most desperate and cruel criminals, along with the enslaved and weak civilians and captives. All mixed in with your average day citizen trying to get by.

A great place to live.

The sound of tie-fighters overhead is what first woke you, screaming as they made their morning flight overhead, acting as an ever present reminder of the Empire's presence and signaling the start of your day. Bones and joints crack in sync as you push yourself up, rubbing your eyes and crawling from the busted old weapons crate that acted as a poor supplement for a bed. Its lid laid discarded to the side, allowing the cool night air of one of the only dry nights of the month to flow in while you slept. The hard metal lining was barely tolerable, even when padded with the few scraps of fabric you had managed to snag over the years, but it was sturdy and the lid provided great protection from the ever present rain on the overcast planet.

Taking care not to trip while climbing from the enclosed space, you stumble out onto the main section of the roof and stare over the city as you stretch, trying not to cringe as certain bones popped back into place painfully. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and not even the fresh breeze that floated in from the sea could make it any more appealing.

Boring, industrial buildings stretched as far as the eye could see in varying colors of black and steel, hardly standing out against the horizon of equally dull colors only punctuated by the occasional crism Empire flag. In the middle of it all was the only decently maintained and sizable buildings on the planet, where the majority of ships for the Empire were produced. It was thanks to the presence of that one building that there was even an economy here, keeping it from turning into a more dreary and wet version of Tatooine, the outlandish world it was. The sight was enough to make your stomach churn, but had nothing on the aching pain that radiated from the organ and had you mind wondering when you had eaten last. Three, four days maybe? It didn’t matter. However long it was, the meager scraps you had managed to find behind the restaurant district of the wealthy were but a distant memory. It was this very hunger that drove you from your safe space, forcing you to climb down the pipes lining the outside of the building you resided on.

The metal creaked and groaned in protest under your weight, but you didn’t give it a second though, knowing there was nothing to worry about. You had been climbing along these fixtures for years, nimble hands and feet finding the smallest of purchases as you move along with ease.

When the ground was close enough you dropped, rolling through the impact to your feet and taking shelter behind an abandoned stall as you momentarily stumbled, vision swimming and black dots dancing before you. Force, you really need to get something to eat soon. Rainwater could only fill your stomach for so long before it lost its abilities to hold you over.

Peering around the corner, your eyes scanned the narrow alleyway, looking for any sign of stormtroopers or other rough characters that would cause trouble. You were never much of a fighter, but today especially was a day you were feeling particularly weak.

‘Alright. All I need to do is slip out, grab a couple of credits, and get back. It should be fine as long as I don’t run into-’

“Well well well. Look what we have here.” Leon’s voice spoke from behind, making you cringe and berate yourself for not being more careful. This was the last thing you needed to deal with, and Leon’s sickly smooth voice only served to grate on your nerves more as you turned to face him and his three lackeys, identifying them as Sho, Everett, and Corin.None as dangerous, but all as bad tempered as their leader.

Glacial blue eyes stared from pale skin beneath his shock of blond hair, a combo that drew ladies like flies to him. Pair that with pearly white teeth and he could have been a poster boy for some prep school on Coruscant. If not for the tattooed arms and green vest that held the insignia of a ranicore tooth, marking him as one of Sozin’s many street enforcers. His kind was the one you hated most. Cocky guys who thought that just because they were someone in some gang they had power over everyone else, not giving a second thought to those they hurt, be it man, women, or child. As long as they got a nice cut at the end of the day they were fine. Despite your hate for them, by all means joining a gang was the best way to survive here. It promised food, shelter, and constant work. All you had to do was give up your own self respect and humanity in return.

“The little Jawa had finally come out from her fortress. Tell me,” He smirked as the others formed a loose circle around you, effectively caging you in. “Get anything good lately.”

You wanted to spit at him, slap that stupid smirk off his face and leave him to go crying back to his boss. But you didn’t. Instead, you took a more casual, defensive stance, ready to get away the moment you had the chance. Slapping a fake smile on your face, you cocked an eyebrow in mock teasing.

“Please. If I had anything of interest I’m sure you of all people would know.” You were getting more nervous now, keenly aware of how close Sho was getting to your current position. Far too close for your liking.

“And with the patrols increased and punishments cracking down, things have gotten harder.''

“True, but I just never know what those sticky fingers of yours may manage to pick up. Your skill has a reputation after all.” His eyes skimmed over your body, not even trying to hide the way he was practically undressing you. The slimy bastard had been pining after you for years, ever since he had watched you lift a number of things from a trooper when you were both just young teenagers. He claimed it was for your skills but it didn’t take a genius to see he was looking for something more. “Maybe you could give me a live demonstration some time.”

And there it was.

You said nothing, only pushing yourself further against the cool metal of the wall behind you in an attempt to create some sort of distance in between you. Your stomach, the traitor it was, decided that it would be the best time to voice its own opinion, letting out a loud growl of protest that didn't go unheard.

Leon’s face took on a mask of concern and sympathy, and you might have fallen for it had you not known any better. His tone took on a softer, more whispery tone, like he was speaking to a stray feline. Not that far off if you thought about it.

“You look hungry. Why don’t you come back with me. I can get everything squared away with Sozin, and I promise, I’ll take real good care of you.”

His hand extended out in invitation, strong fingers that had ended the lives of so many gently relaxed, the other crossing behind his back in a mock gentleman pose, as if he even knew what being a decent guy even started with.

“C’mon. Think about it. No more empty stomachs or fighting for every scrap. You’d even have a nice bed to lay in at the end of the day. No more sleeping on the filthy streets.”

Scoffing, you summoned the last of your confidence, brushing past him and ignoring his invitation. “I’d rather take the streets than your blood soaked sheets any day.”

That should have been it, and it would have been for anyone else on just a code of respect among those here. But Leon wasn’t known for taking no for an answer. Before you could even make it three steps his hand closed on your elbow, bringing you back closer to him. Despite all you twisting and pulling, his superior strength kept you close, breath fanning your skin as he spoke.

“Listen here, I’ve been more than kind in my advances. A saint some may even say, so you’re not going to walk away from me, understand? No your going to come back and-”

“Hey!” A shout from the end of the alleyway interrupted him, drawing all your attention as the squadron of storm troopers rounded the corner to the alley, falling in line behind their captain.”You there! What’s going on?”

At the sight of the local law enforcement and their blasters, Leon’s grip loosened a fraction. Just the smallest amount really, but enough for you to be able to slip from his grip and between Sho and Corin before they could stop you. You ignored the shouting of the officer, sprinting in the opposite direction and around the corner into the main streets of Corellia.

‘Good luck trying to find me now.’ You smirked, pulling your hood up to conceal your face as you effortlessly blended into the crowd, becoming just one of the thousands of faces that traveled through as you continued on your way. Now it was time for the real work to begin.

Just as with the seasons, your own hunting grounds changed, ever rotating through the different sectors in order to keep law enforcement off your tail. It was one of the first lessons you had ever learned; never hunt in the same spot for more than a few weeks.

Today was a fresh start in the port district, leaving an abundance of new and unaware targets. It was a popular place for travelers as well, who were especially naive, but even with that you knew today would be a challenge. It hadn’t been a lie when you told Leon that the troopers were cracking down. More patrols and increased severity of punishments had started to begin in order to ‘cut down the crime’, as your senator put it. Fat chance of that though, as one could argue that Corellia ran on crime. Still, the effort put forth was really putting the pressure on smaller people like you, who were just trying to survive, not to mention the street vendors and shop owners had installed their own new security measures in place, leading to an unfavorable combo that led to your current weak and hungry state. So you were here, looking for some oblivious fool to cop a few credits off from your perch just outside the mechanics.

As your eyes scanned the crowd, looking for visible money holders or those with liftable jewelry and other items, you saw him. He was hard to miss actually. The beskar he wore from head to toe shone proudly even without the light of the sun hidden above, speaking of its own durability and care shown by the owner. Alongside him was a pod, closed, and most likely carrying whatever supplies he had picked up from the market. The brown cape around his shoulders did nothing to hide the gun scross his broad back, nor the dozens of smaller weapons strapped to his person.

He stood tall above the crowd, most parting like water around a stone to avoid him, and it was no wonder. Even you had heard the stories about the Mandalorians. Fierce warriors and fighters who could track their prey to the ends of the galaxy. They were the best bounty hunters and hired guns on the market. You had been witness to more than one lowlife being pulled from their seat in the cantina by his kind, kicking and begging to no avail as they were carried away, dead or alive.

Teeth gnawing on inside of your cheek, you debated with yourself. On one hand, he was a high risk target, undoubtedly being used to these kinds of places and the people who lived here. Stealing from him would earn you a blaster shot to the head if caught, that is, if he were feeling merciful enough not to crush every bone in your body. But then, he was a bounty hunter. They always carried a lot of credits, and ones worth more at that. One swipe from him could set you up for days, if not weeks! He was also the only target you had seen open worth any value the entire day, and you weren’t sure you could go much longer without food.

You debated with yourself, going back and forth as you watched him grow closer to where you sat. If you didn’t make a decision soon you would lose your chance all together.

As if detecting your hesitance, your body made the decision for you, loosening another growl from its depths, prompting you forward and before you knew it you were on the move. Pulling a small guide book from your pocket, you pretended to be grossly interested in the useless thing, eyes moving to falsely skim the words as you carefully adjusted your path closer to his, threading between the crowd with as much ease as he cut through it.

The moments before were tense, each step leaving you feeling more electrified as adrenaline coursed through your body, only feeding your blind confidence as you counted down.

‘6..5...3..2..1….Now’

You pretended to stumble, tripping on your own feet as naturally as you would walk, veering from your course and bumping into the armored man. You winced slightly as your shoulder made contact with the metal, which made your grunt of pain that much more believable and distracting while your hands got to work. Like all bounty hunters, he kept his money in front of him, just slightly to the left of his leg. A tactic to prevent pickpockets like you that frequented the scenes they often found themselves in. Smart, but you had gotten used to this tactic before, and it was a simple swipe of your hand as it quickly entered and retreated the pouch, fingers closed around an unknown number of credits, all within a fraction of a second as you mumbled apologies, raising your opposite hand in distraction as your other moved to pocket your catch.

As soon as your own fingers left the pouch, you knew you were in trouble. Years of being on the streets had taught you when you had the upper hand in a situation or not, whether you were the predator or prey. In that moment, that small fraction of a moment, you went from poised victor to the most demure of prey.

And the man in front of you was the hunter.

His hand, even quicker than your own, moved to latch onto the retreating limb. The very one holding the credits you had thought had been yours.

Head snapping up to meet his, you were faced with an unfeeling gaze in the form of silver surrounding a small ‘t’ of inky darkness that prevented you from seeing his face. You tried to pull away, only to have his stern grip tighten even more, the leather of his glove squeaking in symphony along with the crackling of the joint. Yet you still refused to drop the credits, stubbornly holding onto them out of spite and fear. If he hadn’t seen them yet, there was no way he could indefinitely prove you had taken anything from him, though the way he focused on it told you he already knew the truth.

Kriffing hell. Why had you even thought this would be a good idea. He was a Mandalorian, and in your hunger driven brain you had somehow managed to convince yourself it would actually work. Well congratulations, you had the credits, but now you were as good as dead. If he didn’t decide to deal out his own justice and kill you then and there, surely he would turn you over to the stormtrooper.

The skin on your back tingles and warmed at the thought, memories of public whippings flashing in the back of your mind and doubling your heart rate and raising your panic even more.

Maybe you could still get out of this though. He was a man, as far as you could tell anyways, and all men were susceptible to one thing, hardened warrior or not. You could distract him, try to get a trade or compromise in return for forgetting about the situation. If not him then the clones. Maker knows they were always willing to pass up small crimes every once in a while in exchange for a way to sate their horniness. Though you had never tried the practice yourself, you had heard of numerous others getting off the hook that way. How hard could it be?

Your thoughts were interrupted by movement, bringing you back from your blind panic of plotting how to get out of this. The Mandalorian had tilted his head, t-visor still trained on your face as he observed you. Those around you were all too eager to ignore the situation, walking past with explicitly diverted eyes as they went about their business. The hand not holding yours moved, making you flinch back but with nowhere to go as he kept you trained in place. It moved towards your face and you braced, eyes scrunched and ready for the impact of a palm or fist making contact.

Yet, it never came.

Instead, the soft worn leather gently pressed against your face, fingers gently running along the curve of your cheek, highlighting the bone that protruded with hunger. The occasional scrape of his beskar along the skin makes you shudder, but if he even notices he doesn’t say anything, only continuing to stare as his hand tips your face every which way for him to examine. Then he just...let go. Without another word he had dropped his hands, stepping around and continuing on his original path, leaving you behind him, frozen in place and in a state of shock.

You could have stood there for any measure of time, be it seconds or minutes. Your brain was too busy trying to process what had just happened to even think about anything else. It was only when someone rudely bumped into you, almost knocking you to the ground, that you finally snapped out of it, and suddenly you were running. Feet pounding the uneven ground as you gained speed, faces flew past as little more than blurs as you continued to put more space between you and your should-have-been attacker. If it had been any other time you might have been proud of the speed you had, the burning in your lungs of little significance. Not even when you had seen Leon once again did you blink, blowing past as he called out and tried to grab you.

Before you knew it you were rounding the alley back to your little home, leaping more than climbing up the pipes with record speed as your feet barely touched the rickety metal. You practically dove into your little crate of a home, pulling the lid and locking yourself in darkness as you tried to sooth your pulse, taking deep breaths that did little to help. Absentmindedly, you began humming to yourself. A song so out of tune and unrecognizable it would have made a wookie weep, but it was what you needed as you pressed the burning and sticky skin of your forehead against the cool metal of the wall.

Eventually, after countless repetitions or the short tune, you managed to steady yourself, bringing enough sense back to realize you were still holding onto the credits from before, which were now gripped tightly in your hand. Enough to the point where the skin had turned a pearly white and your fingers hurt to move as you slowly unclenched them, revealing angry marks and even places where the rectangular currency had bit deep enough into the skin to draw blood. But oh what a beautiful sight it was.

One hundred credits laid in your fist, clustered together in a jumble of varying amounts and different kinds, but a total amount of one hundred. You normally only got this after a week of extremely successful hunting in the summer months. The sight of it now was enough to make you cry.

Despite the urge to go and get food from the nearest vendor, you knew better than to go out right away. For all you knew he had only let you go just to follow you back to your base, probably thinking he could turn you into the stormtroopers for a bigger ransom than what he lost, or loot your own place for anything you had stored up. Jokes on him if that was the plan, because he would only get back what you took from him.

The thought stayed stuck in the front of your mind, forcing you to stay tucked in your hiding space for the remainder of the day and keeping you awake through the night. Every little sound made you jump, convinced that you would once again find yourself at the receiving end of his burning gaze, the helmet he wore only masking his expression and leaving your fate uncertain. He never showed though, never ripped the lid off your container or dragged you out into the open.

By the time you managed to fall asleep, your body finally running out of its immense supply of adrenaline, the city itself had just begun to awaken below to the wee hours of the morning, and the fighters had just begun their morning rounds once again.

‘Maybe...maybe just a few hours of sleep.’ You thought to yourself, burrowing down into your small nest of blankets. What could be the harm?

Well, apparently a lot.

You had woken up in a panic, cracking the lid to see that the sky had already gone dark once again. Swearing to yourself, you emerged once again like a Nightshrike from its cave. Foregoing any normal rituals, you allowed your body to stretch itself as you moved, hustling from rooftop to rooftop, something you only did under the cover of night. The last thing you need is someone seeing you and discovering your home up top. You would never be able to get any peace after that.

You were in a rush though, and the thought of wasting a day of work didn’t bother you nearly as much as the thought of your favorite shop closing. With the amount of credits you had now, you wouldn’t have to worry about money for a while, so the only thought you had while the dim lights of the city flicked to life below was getting there as soon as possible. Who knows, maybe you’d even have enough to treat yourself to some fruit, an expensive and rare treat for anyone on the planet.

Skidding to a stop just before the end of the row, your eyes lit up at the sight of the shop still open, clearly readying to close. Shimmying back down to increasingly deserted streets, you were already drooling at the thought of biting into something and not having to wonder what it would taste like. No more than ten minutes later you were leaving, pockets now full of brick bread as the owner locked the doors behind you.

The plan was to only eat half of one on your way back, the nutrient rich and dense pastries giving you enough energy for the day in a single bite, but not even halfway back you found yourself licking the crumbs from your fingertips, hardly holding back from grabbing one of the four remaining loafs. Instead you reached into the opposite side and grabbed the meiloorun fruit you had managed to snag.

Now this was the main event.

Sinking your teeth into the soft skin, you nearly groaned as its taste exploded on your tongue, making your taste buds dance and sing as the sweetness became so intense it almost hurt. You still loved it.

Your stomach was full for the first time in forever, almost foreign as you had begun to forget the feeling. Juice dribbled down your chin as you continued on your way home, making a deliciously sticky mess to be wiped away and cleaned by your lips, intent on not letting a single morsel go to waste.

Thankfully the trip back was less eventful than your previous outing, helping instill an eerie yet calming silence over the city and prompting you to take your time.

You always enjoyed it up here on the roofs. Hardly anyone came up, not many having the same confidence and agility possessed by you and few others, and there was an ever present breeze up here that didn’t quite reach the lower levels. Not to mention the view it gave, which was one of the main reasons you had chosen a roof as your spot for a base camp. If only you could see the stars, but alas, the sight was as rare as greenery here, leaving it up to your own imagination to construct an array of bright lights on the top of your crypt.

Finishing the fruit, you paused at the edge of the building before your own. Small lights danced in the darkness, the occasional lamp illuminating a hustling figure and the street walkers that lined the corners of streets, calling to anyone in sight. The occasional search light of a patrol ship would shin above the buildings as it made its rounds over the city.

‘Must be looking for someone’ you mused, turning back to return home. No reason to get caught out tonight, especially when you were looking at a few days of relaxation.

As you turned, a familiar flash caught your eye, triggering a new taught panic response. You could hardly believe your eyes, rubbing them extra hard just to make sure you were seeing things right. But alas the sight before you neglected to change, unfortunately not a trick of the eye like you had hoped it was, and the Mandalorian you had thought you escaped the previous day continued walking down the dark alley.

You began to sweat backing away from the edge and further out of his line of sight, trying to still keep him in yours as you peered back over and tracked his progress as he got closer.

‘Kriff. I should have known he would want his money back.’

Panicking, you began going over all the escape routes near you. Ones through city street and sewers that would be much too small for him to fit through. Though, if he had tracked you here then chances were he would be able to find you wherever you went. This really wasn’t good. You might not even be able to go collect what meager possessions you had back in your box.

Then, materializing out of the darkness as if he were made of it himself, was Leon. He stepped into the path of the Mandalorian like he had no fear and, knowing how stupid he was, you thought he might actually not have any for the bounty hunter. But why would he when he was the primary enforcer for Sozin and still had his own backup, the three from earlier.

“Hey there.” He spoke in a voice that promised nothing but trouble, hands casually resting in pockets that undoubtedly concealed a weapon of some sorts. "I've been meaning to have a talk with you. The shiny Mandalorian warrior everyone is talking about."

This, you thought, was not good.

#the mandalorian #din djarin #mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x reader #din dijarin #din dijarin x reader #x reader #star wars #fanfiction #star wars x reader #baby yoga #grogu #mando #mando x reader #boba fett #star wars fanfiction #the mandolarian

45 notes · View notes

imagineaworlds · 4 years ago

Text

I Love You (Part Twenty-One) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: Cursing. Mentions of smut. Mentions of Dom/sub relationship. Talk of murder, kidnapping-- literally everything Criminal Minds.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 12107

Timeline: A few days after part twenty.

Hotch had been laughing to himself all morning while watching me limp slightly around the house. My comment about him being jealous got me in some trouble— well, a lot of trouble— and when I woke up in the morning with Hotch to get ready for work, I finally felt how sore I was. It wasn’t that bad, but it was certainly noticeable and Hotch seemed amused by how I was trying to hide it so as to not give him any pleasure, but also to practice for trying to look somewhat normal for my first day back to work. Working with a team of profilers was bad for our personal life, anyhow, because they could always read us like a book; but, for the most part, Hotch and I managed to get away with the secrets of our sex life thus far. We could keep it up, right? I mean, as long as I didn’t collapse at the memories of what happened last night.

When we got out of the car at work, Hotch tried to keep a straight face when he saw me wobble on the sidewalk. I gave him a look that side: “This is all your fucking fault, asshole”, which finally broke Hotch again for the briefest of moments. By the time we entered the building, however, I managed to find a pace that was comfortable but still normal enough to catch eyes. I swear, I hated him and his dumb grin as we got into the elevator.

“New heels or something?” he asked me snarkily.

I glared up at him. “You know, I can just bury or burn the box.”

“Yeah, but then I’d never let you cum again.”

The elevator dinged as we approached our floor, and Hotch stepped out without uttering another word. I watched him walk away from me for a second, my jaw practically on the floor. I really thought I did something there by threatening the box, but Hotch was already a step ahead. If my legs weren’t already weak enough, his words nearly made me collapse. After being locked up in the house for just over a week with nothing to do but sit around, watch TV, look after Jack, and fuck Hotch, my mind wasn’t back in the rules yet. We had boundaries, and they were more important than ever now that Strauss was watching the pair of us like a hawk.

When the elevator doors started to close on me, I jumped through the gap and stumbled into the lobby outside of the BAU. Hotch was standing at the glass doors, still grinning as he waited for me to approach. He opened the door for me and watched as I stepped in. The team was there, and they took notice of my arrival, but no one came to say anything to me yet.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Hotch asked sincerely now, referring to the meeting I was meant to have with Strauss within the next few minutes. I shook my head. “Okay,” he nodded, accepting my answer. “I’ll be in my office. This time, though, don’t go storming off.”

“I hate you,” I whispered, pivoting to walk towards the back of the office where the hallway to Strauss’s office was located.

The bullpen was still quiet as everyone watched me pass by, ignoring that Hotch took another path to get up to his office. Anderson traded places with me in the doorway, holding it open for me for an extra second before continuing on towards his desk. There were other agents who worked in the building, not specifically with the BAU, but for the Director’s office down the hallway, or for the special crimes unit to the left. Between those offices, however, was Strauss’s office.

I sighed as I knocked on the door, waiting for her to welcome me in. I didn’t waste any time standing around in the hallway, waiting around to second guess myself or something. It was probably better to just get this over with as fast as possible. The sooner I was done with Erin Strauss, the better. I wanted to avoid her for the rest of my life, if at all possible.

“Come in,” she said from inside. I opened her office door, stepped in, and closed it behind me. Strauss was sitting at her desk, glasses on the end of her nose as she read a report, a scowl upon her face. “Agent Greenaway.”

I nodded slightly to say hello. “Chief Strauss.”

“Let’s not drag this on.” She opened up the top drawer of her desk. “My words of wisdom yesterday still stand. You’re on thin ice. I suggest keeping your head down.” She put my gun and badge on the desk. I reached out for them, but she moved them back ever so slightly to warn me away from taking them yet. “One slip up, and we’ll be right back where we started. Are we clear, Agent Greenaway?”

“Chief Strauss, with all due respect, I don’t make mistakes. I do my job. So, let me do it.” I grabbed my things from her and left her office without another word. She was so annoying… I wasn’t taking it anymore. This had gone far enough. I knew that I still had to give her a modicum of respect, but that didn’t mean I had to give her my undivided attention.

As I turned into the hallway with my head down so that I could put my gun back in its holder on my hip, I happened to run straight into someone. After the initial collision, we both took steps back to recover, and I immediately stopped fidgeting with my gun so that I could focus on apologizing for not looking. When I looked up, however, I found myself at a loss for words—completely starstruck and unsure of how to proceed. David Rossi was standing in front of me, a polite, apologetic smile on his face as he waited for a quick exchange of apologies, but nothing left me. I ran into David Rossi… Oh… Oh no… Oh, I was the absolute worst. This wasn’t at all how I imagined our first encounter. No, no, no…

“Sorry about that,” Rossi apologized, realizing that I knew who he was and was therefore unable to find any words. “Are you alright?” I nodded, still unsure if I could utter a single word. He looked over his shoulder to see that the path I was on led towards the BAU, where he had just arrived from. “Are you from the BAU?” he asked, trying to spark up polite conversation. I nodded again and his polite smile widened. “I’m David Rossi.”

“I…” Geez, I needed to get over it and pick my jaw up off the floor. “Agent Y/N Greenaway.” I held out my hand for a handshake.

“Greenaway? Oh, you’re Hotch’s girl,” he said as he accepted my hand and shook it shortly.

“Partner, actually.”

“Pardon?”

“I go by ‘they’ and ‘them’ pronouns, not the female ‘she’ and ‘her’ pronouns.”

“Oh… Well, that’s certainly… interesting.”

We both stood up straight as we let go of our handshake. I smiled politely at him, understanding that it wasn’t a common thing and wasn’t easily understood. Hell, it took Hotch a while to get it, too. He tried his hardest, and if he ever slipped up and didn’t catch it, Elle would remind him. By the time she was gone, however, no one on the team slipped up anymore, meaning there was no need to be hypervigilant. It just came naturally at some point. That was the whole point.

Having to continuously explain it was exhausting, which was why I hardly ever took the time to correct people. There was no point in standing around all day telling random local law enforcements, or witnesses, or Unsubs in custody that they were misgendering me. And there really wasn’t the time, either. But if there were people who were going to be a part of my life, like my family, my friends, the team, Hotch, Jack, Haley, and so on, then, yeah, I was going to take the time to make sure they knew and were corrected if they made a mistake. It was a personal choice of mine to nitpick like that, but it worked for me, and I wasn’t about to change that.

When it came to Rossi, he was going to be the next member of our team— of our little work family. It would take time to get to know him, and for him to really become one of us, but it was inevitably going to happen, and he needed to know the truth sooner than later. Besides, it was probably better hearing it from me first compared to Hotch, who was likely going to be on edge, stepping up to the post that Elle abandoned. Even though he respected Rossi, and was likely going to be understanding of the fact that it would take time to fall into habit, Hotch was… protective. It didn’t matter how many times I could possibly tell Hotch to not be protective and overbearing, he was still going to do it. He had always been like that since the Fisher King.

“Well,” Rossi smiled back slightly, “it’s been a pleasure meeting you. I suppose I’ll be seeing you around.” He patted my shoulder awkwardly before continuing on his path towards Strauss’s office.

My eyes followed him, my head turning over my shoulder slightly to do so. He didn’t look back after leaving me and before walking into Strauss’s office. When he was out of sight, I sighed to myself, and pivoted so that I could walk back towards the BAU. I pushed through the glass door, taking note of how everyone in the bullpen immediately turned away from their huddle in order to gauge what was going on with me. Morgan stood from his seat to get a better look, or maybe even to try and catch my attention so that I would potentially go over and talk to them, but I didn’t. I kept heading straight, taking larger strides up the ramp to keep up my momentum.

When I entered Hotch’s office, I immediately closed the door and collapsed on his couch. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Hotch watching me through his eyelashes. I sighed as I threw my arm over my head, hiding my face in my elbow.

“I see you have your gun and badge back,” he said, returning his focus to his work. I nodded and sighed again. “So, what’s wrong, then?”

“I met Rossi.”

Hotch let out a slight chuckle. “That bad?”

“He caught me off guard… I made a total fool of myself…” I sat back up. “I corrected him about my pronouns, and he looked at me like I was insane.”

Hotch put down his bed as he chuckled once more. “You are insane, but he doesn’t know that yet. I’m sure you’re fine.”

“Ha. Ha,” I feigned laughing at his joke, rolling my eyes.

“It’ll be alright,” he said seriously. “Rossi will just have to get used to it. He’s a bit old fashioned, but he’ll come around eventually.”

I didn’t let up with my obvious worry, though. I had totally fucked up Rossi’s first impression of me, and the gender thing didn’t help. I mean, I couldn’t blame myself. I did what I thought was right, I corrected him on something that was important to me, even though it ended up making me look like an idiot. Of course David Rossi wouldn’t get it. Why would I—

“Hey,” Hotch caught my attention. I looked up at him slowly. “I’ll handle it. I promise.”

I sighed with relief but also in a futile attempt to get rid of my worry. “Can you shoot me first?” I slumped against the back cushions of the couch and stared at the ceiling. “Maybe then I won’t be so embarrassed.”

“You told me the other day that I’d be bored without you here. If I shoot you, I’d have no one around to keep me occupied.”

“You’re being a suck up.”

“Yeah, well, at least I’m never a brat like—”

The office door suddenly flew open without so much as a knock or a warning. Hotch adjusted himself in his seat and I sat up straight as Strauss walked in. I took notice of how she quickly moved to the side, letting her guest walk in, too. When Hotch realized who it was who had come to his office, his face brightened, and he stood up to greet an old friend.

“Agent Hotchner—” Strauss began as Hotch made his way around his desk.

“Dave,” Hotch greeted, smile widening as he opened his arms to embrace Rossi.

“How are you, Aaron?” Rossi smiled back.

“I’m good. I’m good.” They embraced tightly. “It’s so great to see you again,” Hotch said, patting Rossi’s back. As they parted, Hotch pointed to me, “I take it that you met Y/N earlier.” I stood at the mention of my name, ignoring how Strauss took note of my unnecessary presence.

“Yeah. She seems like a real catch,” Rossi joked, jabbing Hotch’s side with his elbow.

Hotch chuckled shortly before falling flat. “They, Dave. They are quite a catch.”

“Right, sorry.” Rossi leaned in, “You’re gonna have to explain this one to me at some point.”

Hotch smiled again, “I’ll tell you on the plane.”

“Plane? We have a plane now?”

“You missed a lot, old man.” He swung his arm over Rossi’s shoulder in a teasing, yet still friendly way. They looked like young friends in high school, so nonchalant, so relaxed, so oblivious to the professionalism they both held dear.

Strauss cleared her throat awkwardly. “I’ll, um, let you two catch up, then.” She knew when she wasn’t wanted around, thankfully, so she took her leave as fast as possible in order to avoid any awkwardness.

Hotch thanked her as the three of us watched her head down the ramp towards her office. When it was just the three of us, Hotch squeezed Rossi’s shoulders for a few moments before releasing him. “So how long has it been? And don’t make me look that old in front of Y/N.”

They both turned to me with laughing smiles. I had never seen Hotch like this. I mean, of course I had seen him smile and laugh plenty of times, but never at work, and never with friends. It took him a long while to warm up to the idea of smiling around me, and I really only started to notice the difference between smiling at me in a friendly manner— like we had done throughout the years when we would pass by each other’s offices— and smiling at me because he wasn’t sure how else to express how much he loved me in an innocent way. But this smile… It mirrored his high school pictures, That same kind of naive youth possessed Hotch as he probably began remembering all of the good times he had with Rossi back in the day.

“You’ll always be old,” I told Hotch with a short smile. It wasn’t like his, but it was in a playful way that said: “I’m going to make your life hell after last night.”

“I see why Hotch likes you,” Rossi complimented me. “Let’s see, what was it?” He turned back to Hotch. “Dinner three years ago. But— and I will age you here— the last time we were in the BAU together, you were still sharing a desk with two other agents, and you were all fidgety and nervous most of the time.”

My jaw fell to the floor as a chuckle escaped me. “Aaron Hotchner? Nervous and fidgety?” My chuckle turned into a laugh.

Rossi nodded. “Oh, yeah. He could hardly look me or Shaunessy in the eyes.”

Oh, this was better than anything else. Meeting Hotch’s parents was unrealistic— one because his dad was dead, and two because his mother was a drunk that Hotch didn’t keep in contact with— so talking to David Rossi about Hotch was the closest thing I would get to the “embarrassing stories about Hotch” conversation. I was so excited. However, Hotch didn’t look excited about it, especially since he saw that devious look in my eye that told him I was going to beg and beg for stories.

“You know,” I began addressing Rossi, but mine and Hotch’s gazes were still connected, “you should come over for dinner sometime.” Hotch’s smile fell in an instant when he realized what game I was playing at. “I’d love to hear about what Hotch was like in the early days. You know, before he got old.”

Rossi chuckled again. This was the first impression I wanted. This was how I wanted my dynamic with David Rossi to be. I wanted him to know that I was playful, I was snarky, that I liked pushing Hotch’s buttons; but I also wanted him to know that I took my job seriously, that I was a hard worker, and that I knew what I was doing as a profiler. But now, standing in Hotch’s office, having a relaxed conversation with Rossi, I realized that Hotch was right about how I didn’t need to worry. It would just take Rossi some time to get to know me a little better, but it didn’t hurt that we both liked teaming up against Hotch. Actually, it was a relief to know that there was going to be someone else on the team who could finally rival my back talk. The rest of the team was always too afraid to give Hotch push back, mostly because they respected him, but also because they were scared of him, though they would never admit it. To Rossi, Hotch was still that nervous kiss who had just joined the Bureau and was still seeking to prove himself. It would take a while for that image to escape Rossi. Until then, though, I was content with teaming up with Rossi to get under Hotch’s skin.

“Hotch,” JJ knocked on the open door, “we’ve got a case.”

“Looks like the party’s over,” Rossi told Hotch. “You and I still have some more catching up to do, though. Maybe over that dinner.”

Hotch’s smile reappeared. “Sounds good. Y/N,” he gestured to the door, a sign that I should head to the conference room for our round table meeting.

I took my silent leave, getting the message that he wanted to chat quickly with Rossi alone. When I stepped out of Hotch’s office, Morgan was already bombarding me with questions. He wanted to know about my reinstatement, about my meeting with Strauss, about Rossi, about what was said in Hotch’s office, and about—

“Morgan,” I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, “breathe.” He stopped his rambling of questions long enough for us to continue into the conference room. “Morning, everyone,” I addressed the team. Just like Morgan, though, they were all searching for answers about what had happened over the past week, but more specifically, just now. “Long story short, I’m reinstated, though Strauss tried to give me a whole spiel about it—”

“She better not have,” Morgan rolled his eyes as he set his coffee down in front of him.

“It’s been handled,” I hissed to him under my breath. “Rossi’s fine. He’s just a normal guy. Yes, he’s joining the team, and, no, I don’t know anything else.” I threw my hands up in surrender. “Leave me alone.”

Emily chuckled from her seat across from me. “It’s good to have you back, Greenaway.”

I smiled back at her. “It’s good to be back.”

It really was. I missed messing around with Morgan and seeing Emily’s smile in response. I missed how quiet Reid could be, which made him an easy target for Morgan. I missed how JJ ran around the room to give everyone the case reports while also setting up the TV for the presentation before Hotch could arrive. I missed feeling like a family. While planned vacations were always nice, and Hotch and I never turned down vacation time, being torn away from them without warning was just as unbearable as thinking about losing Jack or Hotch. The team was my family through and through, there was no doubt about it. That week where I couldn’t see them, and there was hardly time to talk to them… It was torture.

As Hotch and Rossi entered the room, closing the door behind them, JJ immediately got started. “Four days ago, Michelle Colucci found this missing person’s poster taped to the front door of her home in Carrollton, Texas.” JJ clicked a button on her remote to show us the poster in question. Sure enough, it was a missing person’s poster of Michelle Colucci, her name, face, and information on it. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“Wait…” Emily furrowed her brows. “She found it?”

“Yeah,” JJ chuckled, understanding why there was confusion. She probably had the same reaction when initially reading the case before bringing it to us. “After finding the poster, she took it to the Sheriff, but he figured that it was just a Halloween prank, so he sent her home. A few hours later, he went to go check on her on his way home. That was when he found this…” She pressed another button to show us the crime scene photos. It started with a room where the walls were covered in those missing persons posters of Michelle, then more photos of the house in complete disarray— clear signs that Michelle put up a fight when she was being taken. What came next, though, was most intriguing. On the table in the room where the Unsub hung up all of the posters, he left a white plastic mask with the number one written on it in blood. “A few days later, she was found floating in a creek just outside of the town. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten, drowned, and her face had been removed.”

“Removed?” Rossi inquired. “It wasn’t just an animal or fish that got ahold of her before someone found her?”

JJ shook her head. “The M.E. report stated that the edges were clean and precise, which led them to believe that it was done with a sharp tool.”

“So, the Unsub uses the poster to psychologically mess with her, then actually kidnaps her when she realizes that no one believes her. He takes her, abuses her, defiles the body, and leaves a false face at the crime scene to replace the one he cut off of her. Textbook sadist,” I shrugged.

“A sophisticated one,” Hotch agreed. “We’ll learn more at the scenes. Grab your things. Wheels up in thirty.”

On the plane, I sat with Emily, Morgan, and Reid around the big table as they all pried for more answers. I had given them the short story, but now they wanted the long one. I told them everything about the call we first got from Strauss to tell us that the unit was being reviewed early, all the way up until I joined them in the conference room that morning for our roundtable discussion. I even told them about how it was Morgan who practically saved my job. Without him, I was sure that Strauss would have won because she was on the committee that was reviewing my conduct. I remembered to thank him about another hundred times while on that flight alone, and told him that after this case, I’d take him for drinks. Emily laughed and asked if she could come along. I said the more the merrier, even asking Reid and JJ if they wanted to come.

As for Hotch and Rossi, they sat together in the back of the plane, talking quietly about something, which I clearly recognized as them gossiping about me. Seriously, they were worse than a pair of high school girls. The quick side glances, the covering of their mouths as they said something secret every so often, the smile that would flash across Hotch’s face whenever Rossi would joke about something. Like, could they be any more obvious about it? Hell, they could have written on their foreheads: “TALKING ABOUT Y/N”, and they still would have thought that they were getting away with it. I knew that they hadn’t seen each other in years, and what was going on with me and Hotch was still considerably fresh. Rossi likely had a million and one questions, and Hotch was probably all too excited to tell him everything.

As I watched them every so often, I couldn’t help but imagine how Hotch used to be quiet. From what I knew about his past, Hotch was somewhat of a bad kid when he was younger. He was probably just acting out because of his abusive father and absent mother, but still. I imagined that Hotch grew up with the white t-shirts under bomber jackets or black leather jackets. I imagined him hiding behind his school, smoking a cigarette or a joint. I imagined him being the life of the party because he was seeking attention outside of the home he was trying to escape. In other words, I imagined young Hotch as how Sean, his brother, acted now. I never, not in a million years, would have guessed that after that crazy, loud childhood that he would become quiet, fidgety, and shy. Maybe it was for Haley. I mean, he did turn his life around for her. Maybe he had just intended on keeping his head down so that he could do his job and get back to his wife. But Aaron Hotchner as anything but stern, demanding, scary, and dominant… it just felt wrong. It felt like a lie. But, boy, oh, boy, was I excited to hear more about it. I had been trying to find new ways to push Hotch’s buttons, to embarrass him and get the upper hand from time to time. These stories that Rossi had hidden away in his memory would be the perfect ammunition that I had been searching tirelessly for.

“Alright,” Hotch finally spoke up, standing from his seat on the other side of the plane, “let’s start.” He took a seat on the arm of the couch that was closest to the rest of us. JJ and Rossi sat on the cushions. “Reid, what do we know about the victim?”

Reid opened up his case file and started reading the entire file, collecting all of the information Hotch required in under ten seconds. “Michelle Colucci was single, lived alone, no immediate family members, no toxic past relationships.”

“At least, not in the reports,” I said.

Reid eyed me with a forced frown that tried to mask how relieved he was that someone was finally back to push him and his knowledge around. He continued before he could crack a smile. “Friends and co-workers say she was a classic workaholic at her architecture firm. Since there doesn’t seem to be any immediate connections, it’s possible that she was stalked.”

“Interesting…” Rossi hummed to himself, writing something down in his mini notebook. Everyone’s attention turned to see if he had anything to say. He noticed the silence and looked up to see that we were all waiting on him. “Oh. Sorry. I was just thinking aloud.”

“Something to add?” Hotch inquired.

“No,” Rossi shook his head. “Continue.”

“So, she was pretty, smart, and rich. All the classic draws for a stalker,” Morgan said, moving on before the silence could linger in the air. “He could have been acting out some kind of fantasy with her— you know, the perfect woman from his dreams, or something.”

“Maybe it was out of anger?” I offered up.

Considering that he had toyed with her before taking her, it insinuated that he wanted her to go mad, to fall apart, to suffer. By doing it around Halloween, he managed to convince the law enforcement and her friends that it was nothing more than a prank, which isolated her. She was alone and terrified, and, yeah, he could have gotten off on that, but he would have only done this in the first place if he was mad at her. Therefore he had to know her or enough about her to make a judgement.

“I don’t think so,” Reid challenged. “The mask the Unsub left in her house,” he held up the crime scene photo, “it’s blank. Usually masks represent either the best or worst sides of ourselves. This is just…”

“Faceless?” I played along.

Reid smiled and nodded. “Exactly. It doesn’t say that he’s angry.”

“But he wrote the number one on it with blood,” JJ said.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s angry, though. It just points more evidence towards him being a sadist.”

“So we’re right back where we started,” Hotch shrugged.

“At least until we can get a look at the crime scene,” Reid half-agreed.

Hotch’s phone started to ring. He rolled his eyes slightly as he dug it out of his pocket and answered mid-meeting. “Hotchner.” He waited a beat for the other end of the call to make their point. “Thanks for letting us know.” Silence. “We’ll be landing here in a bit, so we’ll head straight there. Thanks.” Hotch hung up the call and hid his phone away again. “That was the Sheriff. There’s been another kidnapping in Dallas. Keep looking, see if you guys can notice something else before we land. Y/N and I will go to the new victim’s home to talk with her roommate. Morgan and Emily, head to Ms. Colucci’s house. Rossi and Reid, go to the disposal site to figure out what you can about this guy’s M.O. JJ, head down to the station and talk to the Sheriff to try and contain this. We only want the media to know what we give them.”

So as we landed, everyone teamed up with their pair and got into the cars that were waiting for us just outside. Hotch and I were the first to leave, Reid and Rossi behind us with JJ, and Emily and Morgan behind them. On our way to the newest victim’s house, we had Garcia send over information about her. Her name was Enid White. She was an unemployed Hispanic female, living with an old college friend to help pay for her house. Like our other victim, Ms. Colucci, Enid was single with no signs of any past strained relationships. She seemed to keep her head down, working at the tech company she was employed at until about a month ago when she quit. Nothing was out of the ordinary. So why choose her? Why Michelle Colucci and Enid White? What was their connection? I mean, there had to be one, right?

As we pulled up to the house, I flipped the case file closed and tucked it between the seat I was in and the arm rest. Hotch put the car in park against the curb, then we took a moment to look around the neighborhood we were in. The media was already crawling around everywhere, the police department trying to hold them back.

“I’ll talk with the detective on the case,” Hotch said, opening his door. As we both got out and could look at each other over the roof of the car, he continued, “Go inside to talk to the roommate.” I nodded. “We need to get to the station as fast as possible.”

The first twenty-four hours were always the most important, I knew it just as well as the next person. Our latest victim, Enid White, had been gone for ten hours at least, already. If we were going to find her alive, we had to race against the clock. Whatever time we thought we had to build a profile and find the Unsub, was now gone entirely. This was going to have to be a rushed job, which meant a loose profile that would hardly help us.

Enid’s roommate was sitting in their living room, a warm cup of tea between her hands, her knee bouncing anxiously against the carpet. As I entered, she stopped shaking for a moment long enough to look up at me and gauge that I was another official there to question her. She sighed as she hugged her knees up to her chest, propping her feet on the couch. While introducing myself, she gestured for me to take a seat across from her that had been used all day by different cops trying to hear her story. I apologized for having to do this, yet still insisted that it was a necessity if we were going to find Enid on time.

“Enid walks her dog, Charlie, every night just before sundown. She liked that it’s cooled off by then and she can watch the sunset as she walks. She always comes home before it gets dark because she knows what could happen if she…” She hesitated a moment as she realized what she was about to admit. Enid was terrified of becoming a victim. She played it safe, walking her dog when it was safe and still convenient. She was a cautious girl, but she just happened to be too predictable with her constant schedule. “When she didn’t come back home by seven, I knew that something was wrong. I went outside to see if she was just playing with Charlie in the yard, or something. That was when I found all of the posters taped to our house that said she was missing. I’ve been watching the news, and I had heard about that lady who found the same thing at her house, so I called the cops and just waited.” She took a sip of her tea.

“Where’s Charlie now?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“Well…” I pushed myself to my feet. “Thank you for speaking with me. I know that having to repeat it a thousand times isn’t fun.”

“You’re done already?”

I nodded. “We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.”

She nodded from her seat, too, and took another sip of her tea to hide her emotions.

I left the house quietly, finding that Hotch was finishing up his conversation with the lead detective. Hotch saw me approaching and excused himself from their conversation, shaking the detective’s hand, then walking over to meet me halfway. “Enid’s roommate says that Enid took the same path every day to walk her dog. Same time, same path… Perfect schedule for a stalker to follow. She said that she saw the posters when she stepped out to check on Enid. I’m assuming Enid probably saw it, too. Do you know if anyone saw the Unsub putting them up?”

Hotch shook his head. “The detective said that a few neighbors might have seen something, but they’re all unsure, and they couldn’t describe the man. He also said that he had no idea that there was a mask left at Ms. Colucci’s house.”

I cocked a brow. “Why wouldn’t he leave another mask?”

“If he didn’t take her, he couldn’t complete his ritual. He probably put up the posters to spook her, but she got smart and ran before he could grab her. He must have run away or after her— either way, she managed to escape him, which is why he didn’t come back to leave a mask. He’ll do it when he actually takes her.”

“So you think she’s out there on her own?”

“It would explain why the dog is gone, too. Call Garcia, have her check Enid’s credit card history. If she’s on the run, she would have needed to buy food, gas, a hotel room, something.”

We started walking back to the car as I dialed Garcia’s number to ask for what Hotch needed. “Speak,” was all she quipped.

“Garcia, can you check Enid White’s financial information for us?” I asked, opening my car door.

“Por que?”

“We need to know if she has purchased anything since her disappearance last night.”

“Jackpot! You, Agent Greenaway, get the kudos card today. It looks like Enid bought a shotgun at a weapons store just outside of Dallas this morning.”

I raised a brow and looked at Hotch before putting the call on speaker. “Are you sure that it was Enid who bought it and not someone using her credit card?”

“I can check the store’s security tapes. Un momento, por favor.” Garcia was silent as she looked through the security footage of the store since they’re required to have one for safety purposes and for tracking purposes in case of situations like this. “It looks like Enid, that’s for sure.”

“Thanks, Garcia,” Hotch answered for me.

“No problemo. I’ll be around.” She hung up.

I wasn’t sure where this newfound fascination with dropping Spanish into her sentences randomly came from, but then again, it was Garcia. I shouldn’t have been surprised. But what she told us was actually helpful to the case. We knew that Enid was at least not taken by the Unsub, as originally suspected, which meant that we could likely make contact with her soon. If Enid was out there on her own, then the Unsub was likely getting antsy to find her or find someone else to complete his ritual. He was going to spiral soon unless he found a victim to psychologically torture then brutally murder.

Back at the station, Morgan, Emily, JJ, and Reid were already working on finishing up more of the profile. Rossi was sitting in a chair off to the side, scribbling notes into his little notebook that he had been obsessed with since the beginning of the case. I noticed how Hotch kept eyeing Rossi out of the corner of his eye, maybe trying to profile something about him; but since I didn’t know Rossi well enough yet, I couldn’t tell what it was Hotch was looking for.

While Hotch was busy over thinking something, I told the team that Enid had bought a gun, which meant that she was likely on the run from the Unsub. So not only were we looking for our Unsub, but now we were also racing to get to Enid before he could get to her.

Spencer brought up what they found at the dump site. Him and Rossi were told by the officers on the scene that Ms. Colucci’s body was found face down in the water, her ankles tied to a rock that should have weighed her down to the bottom of the river. By weighing his victim down, it told us that the Unsub didn’t want her to be found, which meant that he was somehow connected to her—meaning that through Ms. Colucci’s history, we would be able to find him. We knew that her family was limited, and relationships were scarce. Now it was just a question of which friend or acquaintance did this to her.

Emily and Morgan, who had only just returned from scouting out Ms. Colucci’s home, notes that the Unsub had been hiding in her garden while stalking her. The garden was protected by tall plants and two trees, which meant that there was plenty of cover to hide from Ms. Colucci and any neighbors who were around— which also explained why no one was able to say if they had seen the Unsub putting the posters up or not.

“Sheriff,” a deputy approached, “there’s a call for you on line one.”

The sheriff spun around in his chair and stretched over his desk to answer the phone on speaker. “Hello?”

“My name is Enid White,” the woman said nervously over the phone. “The news said that the police didn’t believe that other girl when she told them about the posters; and now she’s dead. I saw the same posters on my house, so I ran… but I don’t think I can keep going much longer. I have a gun to protect myself, but I think he’s going to find me soon.”

“Enid, this is Agent Greenaway with the FBI,” I said, stepping forward. “Can you tell us where you are?”

She hesitated for a moment, likely debating about whether or not she could trust me. I didn’t blame her, in her shoes, I’d be just as paranoid. That being said, however, if we were going to help her, she needed to be in our protection at the precinct. If we were going to find her before the Unsub, she just had to tell us where she was, and we’d do everything in our power to protect her.

“The El Royale Motel in Dallas,” she finally admitted. “Room six.”

The team immediately started racing around to gear up while on their way to the cars. I stayed for a moment to finish talking with her. “Enid, I need you to listen to me carefully. Keep the blinds closed, put something over the peep hole, lock the door, put a chair in front of it— if you can— and don’t open the door for anyone but me. I’ll knock three times and you’ll hear my voice, alright?”

“Okay,” she agreed nervously.

“You’re going to be alright, Enid. We’re on our way.”

The sheriff hung up the call following my gesture. We were the last two to run out of the precinct, the team already gone in the FBI’s signature black SUVs that we had driven around from the airport. The sheriff led me to his squad car, and we started racing towards Dallas. It was about a twenty minute drive of knowing that we could do nothing but cross our fingers that Enid would still be alright by the time we could arrive at the motel. Despite the sirens and the lights, people on the road seemed to struggle with remembering to move out of our way, leaving the sheriff to try his best to maneuver in and out of traffic as carefully as he could while still going far over the speed limit.

When we arrived at the hotel, the team was already prepping to move in towards room six, but I was the only one Enid knew to open the door for, therefore they had to wait for my call. Hotch gave me a short nod as I got out of the squad car and started pushing past all the vehicles. I pulled out my weapon, making sure to keep it lowered at my side, and carefully approached the door to room six. Just as I had promised to Enid over the phone, I knocked three times on the door and called out her name to let her know that it was me. I half expected to immediately hear the sound of her shuffling around inside, desperate to run to the door to make sure that it really was me and that we were really there to help. But there was nothing. There was no sign of movement inside, no sign that someone was going to come answer the door. No one even said anything. I figured that if she wasn’t going to hurry to the door, she could at least ask me a few questions to ensure that it was me. Still nothing, though.

I glanced over my shoulder, a signal to the team that something was wrong. Hotch held up his hand, pointing his index finger towards the sky, then moved it in a circular motion to gesture for the team to move in carefully. I took a step back from the door, squaring up my shoulders, getting a proper stance to ready myself for what would come next.

“Enid White! FBI! Open up!” I shouted one more time, just to see if she would come to the door now.

When there was still no sign, I nodded to Emily, who was standing just beside the door frame. She acknowledged my signal and reached out for the door handle to see if it would budge. To our surprise, it did. The door opened with ease, concerning everyone around since I had specifically instructed Enid to practically barricade herself inside.

Emily and I exchanged another glance before we nodded simultaneously towards each other. She rushed around the corner and into the motel room, her weapon raised. As she ran further into the room to clear the bathroom area, I pushed into the room, too, to look around for Enid. There wasn’t really anywhere she could hide, to be honest. All there was, was a bed, a table, and a dresser with a TV on it. The door that had belonged to the table, was smashed to bits on the carpet, just in front of where the door swung open. On the bed, there were hundreds of those missing person’s posters with Enid’s face on them, and a white mask in the middle that had the number “two” written on its forehead with blood. I sighed to myself as I holstered my weapon and called for the team to come in. Emily returned from the bathroom to say that there was nothing in there. No sign of Enid, her belongings, or a struggle.

“The shotgun she bought?” I asked after taking notice that it wasn’t in the bedroom. Emily shook her head. “We’re too late. If she’s not dead yet, she will be soon. He’s still in a rush to finish his ritual.”

“He knew we were coming,” Hotch said, stepped into the room with the rest of the team.

“Take a look at this,” Emily commented after kneeling down on the floor to look at something under the bed. As she stood, I noticed that she was holding a cellphone in her hand— using a cloth from her back pocket to grab it without using gloves. “If she used a cellphone to call the station, then—”

“He was probably right outside, listening with an interceptor, waiting for the right moment to strike,” Morgan finished.

The sheriff raised a brow. “Why stake this place out? Why not just grab her immediately?”

“Because he wanted us to find the mask first,” I answered. “’Scuse me,” I apologized, pushing past him and Morgan to get to the door. I hurried out of the room and took a step onto the sidewalk to take in a deep breath.

I had been the one who told Enid to stay there, that we were coming for her and that she would be safe. I promised that it would be me at the door, and no one else. Why would she have let the door open? I mean, she clearly didn’t want to at first, telling by the broken chair on the ground, but still. And calling from her cellphone when there was a landline right there… The best thing— the only thing we could do for Enid now was to finish the profile and race to find her again.

Based on all of the information we had collected over the past couple of hours, what did we know about the Unsub? Well, for one, he was “flashy”. He wanted people to know what he was doing, but he was careful with who knew what— for instance, how he clearly only wanted the police to know about the masks, but he was fine with the media knowing about the posters. He clearly wanted to be recognized by the people who mattered most. At first, that was his victims. When they ignored him, he got rid of them. Now that the cops were paying attention, he wanted to keep it going. Once the media started recognizing him, too, he started getting them involved with the investigation. He clearly cared more about his people’s opinions of him rather than the women he was harassing, because he took the time to try and hide their bodies in the water in order to protect himself. This was probably because he was just an ordinary person. He looked average, he sounded average, his home was average, his job was average—

Then something hit me.

There weren’t many people who knew what a cellphone interceptor was, and even fewer knew how to use one. If the Unsub knew that he was going to wait for her to make a call, he knew how to use it, which meant that he was technologically savvy— which meant that he could have had a job working with technology. So, he was smart, creative, confident… and he was very clearly angry.

There was our profile. That was everything we needed. I had practically built the entire psychological piece, Morgan and Emily could probably give a physical description based on what they found at Michelle Colucci’s house. We were good to go.

The news was playing quietly in the background as the entire precinct gathered around to hear our presentation of the profile. JJ made sure that the TV stayed on all day so that they could monitor the news’ information to make sure that there were no leaks. We wanted to keep our profile and the mask under wraps, and once I told the team about my profile of the Unsub being an attention seeker, it was of the utmost importance that the news just stopped reporting about him until we could catch him.

Everyone in the precinct seemed focused on us and our presentation, though. It wasn’t going to take long, especially since it was a fairly quick and easy profile; but the fact of the matter was that we were rushing again to find Enid. Just like when we originally thought that the Unsub had her, the clock was ticking once more. Emily and Morgan, as expected, gave the physical description. Based on the evidence found at Michelle Colucci’s house, they guessed that he was a middle aged, white, 5 foot 5, 180 pound male. Average, like I said. I added that we should be looking at employees at tech companies in the area. As I was explaining why, however, everyone’s attention seemed to turn to the news. I came to a stop as I saw the headline change to the one thing we didn’t want.

“JJ,” Hotch began, catching her attention out the corner of her eye, “how did the news get that?”

JJ shook her head. “I have no idea. I made sure that everyone knew that we were keeping that close—”

“I did it,” Rossi admitted while stepping out of the break room. I hadn’t even realized that he wasn’t up front giving the profile with us. “I called them.”

“What?” Hotch asked, utterly confused.

“I said that the FBI thinks that the masks mean that he’s incompetent.”

Hotch eyes narrowed as he tried to keep his professional cool. When he realized that everyone was looking to him and not Rossi for answers, he started walking towards the break room. “We need to talk.”

Rossi’s decision to put the mask into the news sped up our timeline twofold. Before, we probably had until sundown when he could use nighttime as cover to murder Enid White, but now, he was probably going to kill her within the next few hours because Rossi just challenged his intelligence. We knew that the Unsub was a sophisticated, narcissistic man. Rossi’s comment about him being impotent was going to force his hand, because now he felt like he had something to prove to us.

Because of this, the rest of us jumped into action to prepare for a call from the Unsub or for a new crime scene we’d be called to within the next few hours. We had to try to narrow down our search. We had an idea of his occupation—and while it wasn’t much, we could at least use that to figure out where in the area he could possibly be. Reid raced to the map on the wall in the board room, Morgan and Emily started looking through files, and I called Garcia to get a trap and trace ready.

Taking into account where the two victims were taken, where Ms. Colucci was found, and where the nearby top tech companies were located, we could narrow down the area of where we should be looking. Garcia was on call while searching employee records of all of the different companies we wanted her to take a look at.

“Holy moly—” Garcia whispered under her breath. The room went quiet for a moment before I asked her about what she found. “I think I just found the connection between our victims. Enid White worked at a tech company called Techno Communications up until two months ago, and Michelle Colucci helped with the recent architecture of the new floors going into the building right now.”

“How did we miss that before?” I asked.

“Because Michelle Colucci’s work was supposed to be off-book until she was done and could get paid.”

“Our Unsub probably ran into both victims at Techno Communications,” Morgan stated the obvious.

And then the phone started ringing. Garcia must have heard it through the call we already had running, because she told us she was ready whenever we were. JJ got up from her seat and ran to go find Hotch and Rossi. A few seconds later, they returned, and Rossi answered the call before we could.

“This is FBI’s Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi. With whom am I speaking?”

“You called me incompetent and impotent,” the Unsub hissed through gritted teeth. Rossi stayed quiet. “I’m not impotent,” he whispered even quieter. Silence hung in the air again, and I could hear a phone ringing in the background.

“And what about incompetent?”

“I’m not incompetent, either.”

“Are you sure about that?” Rossi was trying to push the Unsub’s buttons, to play his game, to make him snap and maybe trip up on his tongue.

And then I heard another phone ringing.

I scrambled to grab a piece of paper from the notebook in front of Emily. She watched as I tore a page in half, then stole her pen right from her hands. As I scribbled something down posthaste, the whole team tried to look over to see what I was doing. Rossi kept talking, kept trying to get under the Unsub’s skin, buying me time to finish writing my message. When I finally had it all down, despite the shitty handwriting, I held it up for both Rossi and Hotch to see. After reading it and taking note of my point, I slumped back in my chair, my energy suddenly gone. Morgan grabbed the piece of paper to get a look at what I wanted to tell them.

In the background of the call, there was the endless sound of multiple phones ringing. The Unsub was whispering because he was at work, probably on a floor of cubicles, and he was trying to go undetected. We knew that there was a connection between the two victims, and that was their former workplace. He was still there. We could go get him, as long as we were sure that he was there and not somewhere else.

“Why are you whispering? Are you at work?”

“You have to tell the news the truth,” the Unsub dodged Rossi’s question. It didn’t matter if he answered, though. Garcia was tracing the call and we already had a hunch. Either way, we were going to get him.

“I’m not going to tell them anything. If you turn yourself in, you can tell them yourself.”

“No!” he raised his voice quickly. Silence hung in the air for a beat, probably because he realized that he had lashed out when he wasn’t supposed to. “No…” he whispered again. “You have to do it.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s just not going to happen. But I’ll tell you what will happen.” Rossi took a seat and leaned over the table so that he was closer to the speaker. “I’m going to check the precinct’s security tapes from the day Michelle Colucci came in to report that someone had hung those posters up at her house. I know that you had been watching her long enough—stalking her for long enough— that you would know how to follow her around while going undetected. Despite that, however, I’m sure that when I look at those tapes, I’m going to see you hovering around her. I’m going to take that tape, I’m going to take your face from it, and I’m going to plaster it all around the city— just like you did with those women to inspire fear. Only this time, people won’t notice you because of fear. Hell, they won’t even admire you, like you want. No. They’re going to hate you, because you’re a disgusting, vile nobody. No one will fear you. They will loathe you. You’re just a loser. A nobody. An infamous celebrity wannabe. We’ll catch you, you’ll be on the news for a day or so, and then you’ll just be forgotten like you always have. Why? Because you’re not special—” Hotch stood from his seat to try and stop Rossi, but it didn’t help. “–You’re ordinary. You’re going to disappear forever. No one will remember you or your name. This was all for nothing.”

Everyone stared at Rossi. We were all shell shocked by what had just happened. Even if we wanted to say something, what would we have done? Rossi had just gone ahead and insulted every bit of the profile I built for this Unsub. He had just poked and prodded every button that this guy had. And we had no fucking clue how the Unsub was going to respond.

The silence was absolutely deafening. Hotch was glaring at Rossi again, another warning that he was on thin ice. I knew that they were friends, and Rossi was a great agent, but this… He had gone too far with disobeying Hotch’s orders and now throwing out our entire profile. Honestly, he probably just got Enid killed. Even if the Unsub was at his office still, he probably wouldn’t be by the time we could get there to arrest him. He’d be gone and we’d get a call soon saying that Enid’s body had been found tied to a rock at the bottom of a lake again.

“You just signed Enid White’s death warrant.”

As Rossi sat back in his chair to come to terms with what the Unsub just said, the call ended. I didn’t hesitate to pick up my phone and ask Garcia if she traced the call. Just as we suspected, he had called from Techno Communications. Hotch, still staring down Rossi, told Garcia to get in contact with Techno Communications to close down the building while we would rush over there.

Garcia hung up the call with us so that she could get in contact with the company. The rest of us hurried to gear up and get back in the cars so that we could race there before the Unsub could get away.

As we pushed through the front doors of the building, racing into the full lobby, Hotch dug out his cellphone. “Garcia, which floors of the building was Ms. Colucci renovating?” He waited for her answer. “Thanks.” Hotch hung up without any more questions or so much as a goodbye. We all stopped to huddle around him to hear what he wanted us to do since we had the whole building and all of the employees to search. There had to be a way to narrow it down, and it probably had to do with the call he just made. “Morgan, take floor six; Y/N, seven; Emily, eight; Reid, nine. We’re looking for someone who just works a regular desk job. He likely made a scene about twenty minutes ago. He could still be hanging around, or he could have left in a hurry. Just… look around, but don’t approach him, if you happen to see him. Go.”

The four of us scurried off towards the hallway of elevators just ahead and to the right. When we approached the sixth floor, Morgan quietly got off, then when we reached the seventh floor, I stepped out. The floor itself seemed entirely empty and quiet. There were a few private offices that had been renovated already and seemed occupied, but the maze of cubicles wasn’t done yet. We weren’t looking for a guy who would work in one of those fancy, private offices. He would have been in the middle of all of the other cubicles, blending in with all of the other average people. If we were going to find him, or at least his things, it wasn’t going to be on that floor. I mean, even if he wanted to hide behind all of the construction and industrial sized plastic hanging from the ceiling, I would have seen him the moment I stepped out of the elevator. He wasn’t there. There wasn’t any point in wasting my time searching there when I could return downstairs to help look there or to start questioning the other employees.

So I returned to the elevator just as quickly as I had gotten out. It seemed like I needed to wait for Spencer to get off on the ninth floor first, because the floor counter just above the frame seemed frozen on NINE for a minute before slowly making its descent towards me again. As it opened, I noticed that neither Emily nor Reid were inside still. That was good. At least they found something of more interest for them to stick around on their floors longer. I only went one floor, though, before the elevator slowed down and dinged to let me know that someone was going to be joining me. Morgan probably had shit luck, too.

“Find anything?” Morgan asked as he stepped into the elevator with me. I shook my head and asked if he happened to have better luck. “Nope. Nothing.”

We started slowly descending back towards the lobby to give Hotch the bad news. Our Unsub was probably long gone. Hopefully, Emily or Reid found something on their floors, otherwise we were going to have to search every single desk in the building and interrogate every employee—and that was a lot of unnecessary hassle.

As the elevator doors dinged before slowly sliding open, Morgan asked how Hotch and I were doing. I laughed at him and told him he’d never know the truth. He smiled at me playfully and took the first step out. I was close on his heels.

“Down!” Hotch shouted in the hallway.

I stopped in my tracks. Morgan immediately heard the order and dove towards the floor. He rolled out of the way, grabbing his pistol on his hip as he did so. Gunfire echoed through the hallway as Hotch shot the man standing in front of the elevator. As he landed on his back, Morgan aimed his weapon up at the Unsub, but he was too late. The Unsub fell to the ground, his weapon dropping out of his grip.

Before the elevator doors could reclose on me, I cautiously stepped into the hallway with my weapon still in hand. Rossi and Hotch were standing to my left, having followed the Unsub from the lobby, and Morgan was on the floor just in front of me. I squatted and used two fingers against the Unsub’s pulse to see if he was still alive or not. When I felt no throbbing in his neck to signal that his blood was still pumping and his heart was beating, I looked up at Hotch and shook my head. Both him and Rossi holstered their weapons.

I stood, walked a few steps, then I leaned over slightly, my arm outstretched, my palm hanging flat. Morgan looked up at me then my hand before taking the silent offer he was given. As his hand clapped against mine and grabbed on, I pulled him up to his feet. Morgan groaned as his bicep flexed while he lifted himself up, too. When he was planted upright on his feet, our hands parted so that he could wipe the dirt off of his pants, and he thanked me.

“The only person allowed to shoot you is me, alright?” I teased, patting his shoulder.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You two okay?” Hotch asked.

We both nodded.

“What about Enid White?” the sheriff asked from behind Rossi.

Hotch turned around. “Well, we have his address now. We’ll probably find her there.”

Woah— When the hell did we get an address? Had Emily and Reid already come downstairs or did Garcia somehow utilize her utter genius to beat us to the punch? What did I miss?

“I’ll send my guys there now, then,” the sheriff told us before stepping away to call his deputies.

“You sure you’re okay?” Hotch asked me, carefully approaching.

I nodded and shrugged, unsure of why he was asking me when Morgan was the one nearly caught in the crossfire. I had been hiding in the elevator the whole time. I was okay. And Enid White was probably going to be okay, too. Considering the time of day she was taken, the Unsub probably left during his lunch break to grab her— or maybe called in to say that he had a doctor’s appointment in the morning. Either way, he didn’t have enough time to torture and kill Enid like he wanted to. She was probably at his house, just as we were suspecting. It was going to be okay.

When I had my things collected and said goodnight to the team as they started making their way out of the BAU, I walked up to Hotch’s office. He was sitting at his desk, looking over some paperwork, maybe from the case we just got back from, or maybe something else. Either way, he looked exhausted, and I think we both just needed to go home and rest. Even when I knocked on the door to try and catch his attention, he seemed so out of it that he didn’t really notice. So, I took the initiative to step in and take a seat across from him.

As I sighed while getting comfortable in my seat, Hotch finally looked up and seemed utterly shocked and confused about how I was suddenly sitting in his office without him taking notice originally. I smirked and crossed my legs, leaning back comfortably. He realized what this was all about and started closing his files so that he could sort them out on his desk for the night. I played with the hem of my shirt as I waited, pulling down the collar slightly to seem more… relaxed and comfortable… but I caught Hotch clearing his throat and trying not to stare. I smirked and bit my lip seductively.

“Stop that…” he mumbled.

I shrugged but continued to stare at him while holding my lip captive. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, catching mine and Hotch’s attention. Hotch looked up from packing up his things and I turned away from staring at him, releasing my bottom lip before anyone could notice. When we noticed that it was just Rossi and not Strauss or something, we both relaxed and smiled at him.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he apologized, stepping further into the office. “I figured that, if the offer is still available, I’d take you guys up on that dinner.”

I nodded. “We’d love that.”

Hotch swung his bag over his shoulder. “Hope you don’t mind boxed spaghetti and grocery store marinara sauce.” He was teasing, of course. He must have known that Rossi took his Italian side very seriously and decided to push that button— probably just like old times.

Rossi’s eyes widened before letting out a chuckle. “Oh, hell no. I’ll make it homemade myself if it means we get to have the good stuff.”

I stood as Hotch came around his desk and reached out for my hand. Rossi headed out of the office first. He kept glancing over his shoulder to make sure that we were following. As we stepped onto the ramp, we could see Strauss leaving her office in the hallway just outside the BAU. I immediately tore my hand away from Hotch’s and took a few quick steps to walk next to Rossi. After Strauss locked her office door, she turned to see the three of us meeting her at the elevator and shared a polite smile with us. It seemed like all three of us were less than inclined to smile back, but we did so anyways.

“How did the case in Texas go?” she asked us as we pushed through the glass doors and she pressed the elevator button.

“Fine,” Hotch answered, standing just behind me. I could practically feel how he was towering over me… “Quick and easy.” I gulped. The elevator opened and Hotch reached around me so that he could hold the door open. “Ladies first,” he smiled at Strauss.

She silently thanked him and stepped inside. “And you, Agent Greenaway. How was your first day back in the field?”

My eyes searched for Hotch’s as we all squeezed shoulder to shoulder in the elevator. He nodded for me to respond. “It went well,” I responded quietly. “Glad to be back.”

Before we knew it, the elevator slowed to a stop and we all piled out. Strauss wished us all a goodnight before hurrying out on her own. Rossi turned on his heels to look at us and raise his brows as if to say: “Wow.”

“The tension nearly suffocated me in there,” he chuckled. “What the hell happened?” Hotch and I shared a glance. “Ah,” he sighed, “I see.” We both nodded. “Well, my place or yours?”

Honestly, I was glad that someone wasn’t making a big deal of it finally. When the team first found out about me and Hotch, there were a million and one questions—especially from Elle and Morgan. When Strauss found out, she tried to pry us apart. I thought that with Rossi’s same reservations as Gideon’s, he wouldn’t like mine and Hotch’s relationship… but he actually seemed… okay with it. A relief, to be sure. Earlier, when we met, he seemed excited that Hotch was happy and had me to watch his back in the field. I was scared that when he figured out that our relationship had become a problem at the workplace, he would disapprove. But he didn’t seem to mind, and it was like he was holding back all of his questions for when we’d sit down for dinner and start polite conversation about our lives and catching up with him. I liked that. I liked that he respected that boundary we created for ourselves. I couldn’t say the same about Morgan and Emily, who always seemed to ask about it.

“We offered, so, why don’t you come to ours?” I asked.

“Sounds good to me,” Rossi agreed.

Hotch finally took my hand again, knowing that the coast was clear. “Do you remember the way, old man?”

Rossi chuckled to himself. “One of these days, I’ll get you back for that.”

“Ooh,” I smiled, “I’m sure there’s plenty of embarrassing stories, right?” Rossi nodded. “I think we could start there.”

Rossi pointed his finger at me. “I like her—” He paused and looked at Hotch. “I like… them,” he corrected carefully. “I like them,” he said with more confidence.

Hotch smiled. “Good job,” he whispered.

After Rossi cheered to himself for getting it right, the three of us headed out to the parking lot. We split up to go left and right towards our respective cars. When we got into the car, Hotch started the engine, and I grabbed his hand from the steering wheel. I brought his knuckles up to my lips and pressed a gentle kiss against them. Hotch carefully pulled his hand away so that he could press it to my cheek.

“You did good today,” he complimented quietly. I nodded against his touch. “I love you.”

I smiled and kissed his palm. “I love you, too.” His hand fell from my face and gripped the steering wheel again. “But I’m going to be taking notes on all of Rossi’s stories.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You already had a rough time walking this morning. Don’t make it worse for yourself tomorrow morning.”

Fair enough, Agent Hotchner. Fair enough.

#criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds imagines #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fanfic #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotch hotchner #aaron hotchner imagine #aaron hotchner imagines #hotch

38 notes · View notes

colorseeingchick · 4 years ago

Text

The Inevitable Dystopia of My Hero Academia (WITHOUT manga spoilers)

As noted by your local political science anime lover.

(This is a summary/rambling about a political science paper I wrote on My Hero. This is only based on the anime. I’m not caught up on the manga)

Warnings: Vague reference to abuse (Endeavor), discussion of political theory, discourse.

A/N: It’s lengthy and all over the place. It also might be impossible to follow. So I’m sorry in advance lol.

THESE ARE JUST MY OPINIONS AND A FORM OF DISCOURSE. I’m open to discussing if you have thoughts! Political science is about understanding policy and structures, not taking a stance. Any comparisons to ‘modern society’ are in reference to 1st world/developed societies, as those are the governments that parallel the My Hero Academia government.

The politics of My Hero Academia is... pretty morbid if you ask me. It’s not worse than the real world, sure, but maybe that’s why it’s all the scarier. Even with quirks and super powers, the impossible becoming possible, it isn’t enough to save them from the undesirable. Their society seems to have fallen into a cycle of suffering and oppression that has no end.

Now, I know no one really gets excited about political theory (unless you’re like me, then please be my friend), but there are some concepts that you’ll need to understand in order to follow along with my argument. So bear with me.

First, utopia. Utopia is probably a term you’ve heard casually, but the definition political theorists hold it to is simply- “a good place.” Often times it is depicted as a far away dreamland, only possible in the realm of fiction (and this makes sense given that My Hero is fictional). It is very important to understand that utopia is not necessarily perfect. It’s just better than average. There are a few standards that characterize utopia, one being the utopian focus on having very strict laws to repress the unstable nature of mankind [1]. I’ll come back to this.

Next is dystopia. Dystopia as an idea was actually made in response to utopia. It’s the ‘not-utopia,’ and is lumped with ‘anti-utopia’ (this comment is in reference to the semiotic square, if you would like to develop a further look into it). The simplest way to understand dystopia is to know it’s ‘a not-good place.’ [2] But that’s surprisingly broad. Dystopias can be a failed utopia, or they could have developed on their own as a result of any number of reasons. You’ve probably seen all sorts of depictions of dystopia (climate dystopias, medical dystopias, technology-based dystopias, literally any YA novel from my childhood, you get the idea). Its key to note that unlike an apocalypse, where there is utter destruction and it ends with complete annihilation of humanity, there is hope* inherently written into it.

*Hope here meaning there’s theoretically a way for the government to be changed/overthrown without death of the majority.

Now that all that boring stuff is out of the way- let’s talk about My Hero Academia.

I’d argue that, at first glance, Hero Society seems to be working towards utopia. When reading from Deku’s perspective, especially in the beginning, you would think that their society is close to becoming utopian. The impossible is possible, being a hero is a reality, and a symbol of peace tangibly and definitively exists. When you compare it to pre-quirk society, these changes would appear to be developments. As for the ‘in progress’ aspect, I think Hawks verbalizes it best when he says his goal is for heroes to have too much time on their hands. They aren’t there yet, but if that goal is achieved, it would be a mark of utopia.

They’ve achieved some level of utopian standards by meeting the ‘strict laws to repress the unstable nature’ standard. Think about the concept of licensing quirks, quirk regulation, and the government institutions that regulate quirk society. Remember when Tomura cornered Deku at the shopping mall and mentioned something along the lines of, ‘all these people could wield their quirks at any moment they want, but choose not to? Instead they smile and laugh.’

He has a point. Why is that? From a political theorist point of view, it’s honestly very shocking. For centuries, theorists have argued about how to manage human nature. It’s a difficult task as is. Give everyone superpowers? That would have to be 10x as chaotic. But in the My Hero world, it’s not. It’s well organized. The government took action to regulate the physical instability of humanity which arose from quirks. What’s so impressive to me is that they managed to mitigate (not eliminate) the instability of human nature/behavior along with it.

But if you take a step back to look at My Hero Academia, slowing down and stepping out of Deku’s shoes, I don’t think the instinct is to classify it as a utopia in progress. Of course, its superpowered with quirks- adding to the realm of possibility. But crime of all sorts is superpowered, just as the justice systems/law enforcement in the country.

When I made this realization, I understood I had kind of been drawn into the propaganda the society puts out. It’s a sort of cloak built up by the positive media around the heroes, the narrative being focused on young heroes and their great mentors, and the universal title of ‘villain’ being put on everyone that breaks the government’s laws (this really bothers me, and maybe I’ll discuss it another time). Things aren’t better. Crime rates have gone down I believe, but the anti-hero sentiments being harbored are more intense than in certain real world societies. Hero society hasn’t necessarily resolved any of the problems that our society would have. The balance is the same, but the possible actions people can take, or the behaviors that are exhibited, are scaled up on both sides of the law.

What’s worse is that- even if its not a universal experience, this society is also a dystopia for many people. The first hint of this society being less than perfect is when we hear from Stain and his pursuit of a ‘just society’ by eliminating fraudulent heroes. His ideals are surprisingly level-headed, and very rigorous in standard, even if it is based in questionable morals. But it’s easy to brush it off. However, its less deniable as you learn more about these characters.

Shigaraki was abandoned and waited for heroes to save him, but they didn’t. Overhaul was also an orphan living on the streets. Eri was abandoned by her mother because of her quirk. Twice was villainized, when in reality he has mental health issues (dissociative identity disorder I believe). It broke my heart when Twice said “heroes only save good people.” Who decided they were bad people? Why weren’t they saved?

Also, can we talk about the quirkism? (Which I don’t know if that’s a real term within this fandom yet, it might be, but just to be on the same page, I mean quirk-based discrimination) You have people like Shinsou, who’s treated as villain even though he wants be a hero- solely because of his quirk. I believe Toga was also treated poorly because of the nature of her quirk as well (correct me if I’m wrong). And then you have Midoriya, who was harassed and bullied for not having a quirk at all. Clearly none of them have control over the way they were born, and yet they all had to deal with how society treats them because of the uncontrollable. (At this point I’m sure its clear there are a lot of parallels with the discourse around quirkism, racism, and sexism, which is a whole nother conversation).

Having good quirks also seems to get you a pass, or puts you outside the reach of the law. The only example I need for this is Endeavor and his children. Despite all the abuse he’s done that makes him a villain in my book, he stays the number 2 hero. That’s all I need to say.

The suffering of all these individuals is a direct result of the failure of the government. And this isn’t a ‘government should have taken extra steps to help them.’ This is a situation where the government’s structure, including the sensationalized media and monopolization of quirk use, has actively attacked and oppressed people who otherwise would have been untargeted.

This is a world of misery for them- the people who make up the underworld. We call them villains and criminals because they are- but I don’t think its fair to call all of them bad people. They definitely didn’t start out that way. They are the results of suffering. They are created by a society that solely aims to remove them from existence. This hero society is so unjust that its faults create its own villains. The villains they aim to stop came to be because of the ‘heroes’ in the first place. The irony there is painful, and I hate that it’s a sort of self fulfilling prophecy.

The reason why I think it’s morbid is because there is no escape. Quirk society in its current state is undeniably a dystopia for many. But the issue is (and this was the crux of my argument in my paper) dystopia and utopia inevitably and consistently coinhabit space. What is utopia to one will be a dystopia to another. There is no way to get everyone to uniformly view society.

What that means is, somebody will always be suffering in this society. At least, that’s the cycle that’s been set up. In the episode where Tamaki got shot with a quirk erasing bullet and Kirishima fought the gangster on quirk enhancing drugs, that gangster did say that this was ‘their time’ to rise. “It’ll be the age of those who live in the shadows.” They’re not looking for resolution. They’re looking for revenge. They want to flip the script and be the ones living in utopia while everyone else is subject to suffering. The concept of everyone living happily in harmony and true peace isn’t even in consideration.

There seems to be no middle ground, no solution to the push and pull between the ‘heroes’ and ‘villains.’ The unfairness will continue to be passed around, and unless someone can break the cycle, attack the corruption of the system at its roots,

the problem is not going to go away.

Sources!

[1] Claeys, Gregory, and Fatima Vieira. “The Concept of Utopia.” In The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

[2] Robinson , Kim Stanley. “Dystopias Now.” Commune, November 17, 2018. https://communemag.com/dystopias-now/.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #my hero academia politics #boku no hero politics #political science and anime #political science #anime #discourse #colorseeingchick writes #discourse with the colorseeingchick

33 notes · View notes

timelordthirteen · 5 years ago

Text

Walk of Shame

Mr. Gold/BelleFrench, Mature

Summary: Gold leaves Belle French's apartment, many hours after he first arrived...to head home.

Notes: Based on this picture of Bobby from OUAT filming which we all agree is clearly Gold doing a "walk of shame." And the first gif in this post.

[AO3]

Gold held up a hand to shield his eyes as he stepped into the glaring morning sun.

He leaned heavily on his cane while he fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. It took him a full minute to get one out and light it with only one hand, his loose tie dangling around either side of his neck as he bent his head, and he sighed as he took a long first drag. Two months had passed since his last one. He’d finally resolved to quit, both for his own health and so his son would stop nagging him, but something about the moment made it feel like the thing to do.

He flicked a bit of ash towards the ground and leaned on one of the poles that supported the overhang in front of the library. Smoke swirled up in front of him before catching in the light spring breeze and wafting away as he smirked and took stock of himself. His bad leg had settled into a dull, persistent throb, and his back was unusually stiff. Spending a night in an unfamiliar bed on a mattress that, while serviceable, was full of creaky springs and lumps from too many moving vans, had done him no favors, neither had not having access to his usual evening dose of pain medication. Still, there was nothing a hot shower and a couple of pills wouldn’t solve.

The streets were deserted at this time of day, thankfully. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to see him in his current state of creased trousers and wrinkled shirt, a far cry from his usual impeccability. Though he wouldn’t mind anyone knowing what he’d been up to the previous evening, he wasn’t entirely sure that the person he’d been with would feel the same. His position and power here relied on maintaining a certain sense of the unknown about himself, and an eccentricity that he didn’t really possess but that many people had imbued him with anyway. He’d been far too happy to own all the titles they would give him: evil landlord, miserly pawn broker, devil of Storybrooke; there were so many he’d been called to his face he’d lost count, and still more that he knew were muttered behind his back.

Gold smirked to himself and blew out another stream of smoke.

His lips felt slightly tender, and as he rolled his shoulders and shifted his weight an unfamiliar, yet not uncomfortable, ache spread across his body. Muscles had been used in ways they weren’t used to, showing his age a little more than he liked, but it had all been quite worthwhile.

Who would have predicted the lovely Belle French could be so...insatiable?

He shook his head and took one last, long draw from his cigarette, as his evening - and subsequent morning - with Storybrooke's librarian replayed in his mind.

Gold had been out collecting rent, like any other Thursday, saving his favorite stop for last. Belle had only lived in town for a couple of years, having moved with her father from Boston, not long after her mother's passing. She'd said once that it was about a fresh start for the two of them, and that was something Gold could easily understand.

The rent was ready and sitting on the side table just inside the apartment door, a check slid into a plain white envelope. She was never late, never short, and never not a delight to speak to, though he was perhaps a bit biased in that regard. He had expected an exchange of pleasantries, a short chat, and to be on his way with the rent in his pocket, home to his pink Victorian house and his usual solitary existence.

A moment after Belle opened the door, the sky, which had been overcast and gray all day, opened up in a deluge of rain and a sharp crack of thunder. It startled both of them, and they shared a laugh before she asked him if he wanted to come in until it passed. He’d hesitated at first, but her invitation was in earnest, and before he knew it he was seated on Belle French’s sofa and sipping tea from the delicate porcelain set he’d sold to her barely a year ago.

Later, when the rain had adamantly refused to let up, Gold had resigned himself to walking back to his shop, soaked to the bone. But she wouldn’t hear of it and insisted he stay until it had abated. He got the sense that she was pleased just to have some company, and was uncertain if it mattered that it was him or not.

That thought was dispelled some time after a dinner of reheated lasagna from Granny’s Diner, when he found himself with a lapful of a very enthusiastic Belle. It had been foolish to try to kiss her in her own kitchen, while the storm rattled the small window over the sink, and he was quite prepared to be thrown out on his arse over it. She had done quite the opposite, much to their mutual delight and satisfaction.

Multiple times.

His assumptions that Belle French was in fact wonderful, beautiful, and perfect, had all been confirmed over the course of the evening, and earlier this morning. In fact she was brilliant, stunning, and so many levels out of his league his mind boggled that she would do more than give him the time of day. And she’d done far more than that.

He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, drawing on his cigarette as a shiver washed over him. The memory of her slick warmth clenching around him made his head spin, and the sensation of her mouth dragging along his length left him shifting his cane to stay upright. He could still smell her on his fingers as he reached up and plucked the cigarette from his lips.

It had been near impossible to drag himself from her apartment this morning, leaving her wearing nothing but a naughty smile as she walked, loose legged, towards the bathroom. He was fairly certain she wouldn’t mind a repeat performance, though he would prefer it be in his bed this time, perhaps after having dazzled her with his culinary skills as a prelude to dazzling her with other skills he had yet to be able to demonstrate.

Gold’s leg twinged painfully, bringing him back to reality, and he licked his lips and stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of the trash bin beside the library entrance before tossing it inside. The rest of the pack followed after it with a heavy sigh. Belle hated smoking.

He stepped off the curb onto the pavement, still wet from last evening’s rain, fighting to hold back a smile. Plans were rolling through his mind, including what kind of flowers he might send to the library this afternoon along with an invitation to dinner Saturday night, when he noticed something moving across the street.

Coming out of the side door of Granny’s Inn was Regina Mills, looking nearly as wrecked as Gold, with her usually prim suit jacket draped over her arm, her blouse untucked from her pencil skirt, and her hair a tousled mess. The inn did a fairly good business in the summer, but early spring didn’t bring many tourists to the coast of Maine, and the only known occupant at present was Emma Swan, the new Sheriff. She and Regina had been publicly sparring for the entire six months Emma had been in Storybrooke, though many noticed there was always an undercurrent of something else between them. By strange circumstance, they now shared a son, and he had assumed that much of their discord came from that particular conflict.

Gold stopped next to his Cadillac, parked in front of his shop, and watched as the Mayor looked around nervously on her way to her car, much the same as he had upon exiting Belle’s apartment over the library. A smirk spread across his face as he pulled open the door of his car and then slammed it shut, making sure to generate as much noise as possible.

Regina startled and turned slowly, her eyes going wide when she saw him.

He pulled open the car door again, smiling back at her before he reached in to set his cane on the passenger’s side. “Good morning, Regina.”

She regarded him suspiciously, and then turned to look at the library. When she faced him again, she was wearing an equally bemused expression. “Gold,” she replied, crossing the vacant street. “Late night?”

“No later than yours I’d imagine.” His grin widened, his tongue pushing at his bottom lip. “Up all night discussing the local crime rate with our new sheriff?”

She hitched her purse higher on her shoulder and attempted to smooth the front of her hair as it fell across her eyes. “And if I was?”

Gold’s eyebrows lifted at her acknowledgement. “Then I would expect the town to benefit from this newfound...cooperation between the mayor’s office and law enforcement.”

Regina tossed her hair back and fixed him with a glare. “I suppose you were just, what? Joining the weekly book club?”

His lips curled and he flashed her his teeth. “Something like that.”

She regarded him for a long moment, and then matched his look with one of her own. “Perhaps we’ll both have better things to do now than antagonizing each other at city council meetings?”

His head tilted. “Oh, I very much doubt that. You see I’ve just recently learned that the local library is greatly underfunded.”

She tipped her head back in that way which conveyed she was looking down her nose at someone, even if they were taller. “And you’re it’s new patron saint?”

He looked away, in the direction of said library, and let out a soft sigh. “Something like that.”

“As I recall,” she began, her voice dropping, “you were opposed to its reopening. What’s changed?”

He leaned forward, bracing against the car, and replied, “Let’s just say I’ve developed a new appreciation for the struggle of our public library system.”

Regina bit her lip as she started to smile. “Then we’ll have to discuss how to correct that, won’t we.”

“Indeed,” he said, seriously. Then he slid into his car, and waited as Regina moved away so he could close the door. He gave her a curt nod through the window, the Cadillac rumbling to life and disturbing the otherwise peaceful morning.

“Regina...”

“Gold...”

He pulled away from the curb, glancing in the rearview mirror to see Regina hurry off to her own vehicle, and grinned to himself. It seemed more than one new alliance had been formed in last evening’s rain.

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #belle x mr. gold #my rumbelle fic #walk of shame #fic #smoking cw

72 notes · View notes

sawyer-craft · 4 years ago

Text

50 questions about your OC: Answered

1. How old are they? 28 years old in 1899.

2. What gender are they? Male/Nonbinary.

3. What is their romantic/sexual orientation? Pansexual/Ace.

4. How tall are they? 5’11

5. What do they look like? (See #caleb jackson tag for picrew images.)

6. What are their defining features? Caleb is tall, nearing 6ft in height and it makes him stand out in a crowd.

7. Does their name have a meaning? No, but his nickname does! “Crow” Jackson was a nickname he developed by reputation by becoming a successful collector and a vicious competitor.

8. What family do they have? As of 1899, Caleb has one younger brother (Elijah jackson, 21) and his mother. (Elanora Jackson, 49)

9. Do they have a good relationship with their family? Caleb has a close relationship with his mother and a somewhat distant but friendly one with his brother.

10. If not, why not? (Relationship status established above)

11. Where do they live? Saint Denis, USA

12. Is it a safe place? Somewhat. The law enforcement is large and mostly capable but the cities crime rate is still high, conflicts with outlaws happen often and the police themselves are known for making unjust arrests.

13. Are they poor, middle-class or wealthy? Caleb is in the middle class! His job as a collector helped him bring his family out of poverty and keeps them stable for now.

14. Do they look up to anyone? Caleb looks up to his mother for her determination, something that never faltered whenever the Jacksons were dragged through hard times. He looks up to his brother Eli for his bravery and sense of adventure, and admires him for it.

15. Who is their best friend? Unfortunately, Caleb hasn’t made a friendship close enough to call someone his ‘best friend��. He’s worked with people around the city, made some reliable informants and casual friendships in different towns but remains, for the most part, alone.

16. Do they have any enemies? He has plenty of rival collectors and writers, and has even gotten into a few close calls with outlaws on the outskirts of town. (See question below for more details.)

17. Who is the person they hate most in the world? Angelo Bronte, the local tyrant of Saint Denis. Caleb hates him the most for the way he’s taken over the city, for the way he throws his wealth around and most of all, his child trafficking business. Caleb’s investigated it before and his goal is to reveal Bronte’s crimes to the public and take him down so that his wealth will be ripped away from him (and hopefully redistributed to the community) his ridiculous mansion can be repurposed and the children he’s roped into working for him or sold off can be returned to their families. Caleb hasn’t been caught before but he’s sure Bronte knows he’s been snooping around. Bronte and Caleb occasionally bump into each other during city gatherings (parties held by mutual coworkers) and their interactions are full of barely restrained venom.

18. Do they have any love/hate relationships? Not with anyone currently, no.

19. Have they ever fallen in love? No, but its something Caleb thinks and worries about often. He’s been in a few relationships before, but they were short and they never sparked any feeling in him. It makes him feel as though there must be something wrong with him, and as a result he feels very lost.

20. Who is the person they love the most in the world? Caleb loves his mother and his brother the most, they are the people he’s closest to.

21. Does that person love them back? They do!

22. Have they ever hurt or lost anyone? Caleb’s lost his father to tuberculosis when he was a child and Eli was still very little. He’s hurt people around him as he was growing up as a result of lack of communication, anger over losing his father, and conflicts with his brother-turned-outlaw. He’s lost romantic partners before for similar reasons and he’s lost a few pets too.

23. Are they a good shoulder to cry on? As much as Caleb would like to be able to comfort and reassure without issue, he’s not the best person to rely on for it if you aren’t close to him. He panics when no immediate or logical solution comes to mind, has difficulty understanding emotional reactions to certain situations, and gets rather awkward with his words. He’ll offer his hanker-chief and listen to what you have to say but that’s about the extent of his abilities. He’s much better at offering support to his family, he allows them to hug him and sometimes words won’t be needed at all, he knows how to calm them down.

24. Are they well liked? Caleb can sometimes come off as cold or uncaring to a stranger. He’s not hated, but he’s not well known either, and he ends up unintentionally blending in as another passerby in the crowded miserable city.

25. How do they handle being complimented? Caleb does not handle a genuine compliment well, he’s more used to careless formalities since those are the types of conversation that he’s familiar with. He’ll have a hard time believing that someone has something nice to say to him, he’ll probably deflect it to divert the attention on to something else. But he won’t forget it.

26. Are they an affectionate person? When you get to know him, yes. Caleb expresses his affection in many different ways, through gifts, keeping track of someones favorite things and special days, and occasionally an affectionate touch. (It just takes awhile to break through his shell.)

27. Are they very driven? Yes. Caleb is very passionate and works hard, when he puts his mind to something he’s not going to stop until the task is completed.

28. Are they very political? Not really no.

29. What kind of state is the world that they live in? As much as he would like to think otherwise, the world around Caleb isn’t safe or balanced. It’s not hellish but problems and stressors follow him constantly, and it’s very hard for him to maintain a routine that will keep him and his loved ones out of danger.

30. What are the world leaders like? The technical leader of Saint Denis is Bronte, because of his tyrannical control you can only imagine what he’s like.

31. Does the character worry about their place in society? Yes. While Caleb has worked hard to get where he is now, he worries quite often about how long it will last. He worries that more powerful people in society will take everything he’s built and achieved away from him, and that he’ll end back up at square one.

32. If they could change one thing, what would it be? Caleb would move his family far far away, somewhere quiet, open and safe. Somewhere like California, where they could settle down and stay close to one another.

33. Do they like themselves? Caleb likes how he looks, he knows who he is and what he is capable of, but he feels incomplete and unsatisfied with himself.

34. Are they a good person? Caleb is Lawful Neutral and his intentions are good. While he’s not high honor, he’s not morally gray either. Caleb falls somewhere between the two.

35. Are they very forgiving? Caleb might be quick to forgive a transgression but he never forgets it either.

36. Do they believe in destiny? No. Caleb thinks more logically.

37. Are they trustworthy? If you are close to Caleb then absolutely, theres little he wouldn’t do for you. But if you are a stranger or competitor, don’t be so sure.

38. Are they a good liar? Yes, and a bit of a compulsive one too.

39. How do they react to criticism? He takes criticism quite well if it’s constructive, he welcomes it and will correct and learn quickly. If it is not constructive however, he’ll have a few choice words for you.

40. What is their moral alignment? As stated above, Lawful neutral!

41. Can they fight? Ultimately, no. Caleb can wrestle fairly well as someone who grew up with a brother usually is but in terms of a proper fistfight or brawl he’s not very skilled. In a gunfight he’s decent but not quite as good a shot as his brother is.

42. Would they ever purposefully hurt someone? Mentally? Absolutely. If they are a competitor or an enemy he’s not above using his words to cut people down, but it’s something he reserves for dire situations and people he despises. Physically he would never hurt someone and he would never consider intentionally hurting a friend or someone close to him with his words either.

43. Have they ever been seriously injured? Yes. Caleb’s been stabbed and fallen into critical condition before on the job. He was once bitten by the Saint Denis ‘vampire’ and was nearly killed, but managed to escape and recover with aid.

44. Do they know first aid? Yes, Caleb learned from his mother, a retired nurse.

45. Do they have any other survival skills? Caleb’s not an outdoorsman by any means but he’s skilled in first aid and can build a stable campsite.

46. Are they a fast learner? Yes!

47. How intelligent are they? Academically, he’s exceptional.

48. What is the school system like? Caleb didn’t go through the school system when he was a child, and learned most of the things he knows from his mother and books. He learned other skills by watching and listening to people around the city.

49. What is their job? Caleb is a writer and a collector.

50. Do they enjoy their job? He enjoys both his jobs very much.

#about ocs #caleb jackson #oc #about caleb #caleb crow jackson #caleb crow #crow jackson #writing #thank you to lusus--naturae who sent these questions to me!

16 notes · View notes

enkisstories · 4 years ago

Text

Property of Urban Farms

- A Detroit: Become Human fanfic -

Characters: Rupert, Hank, Connor (no pairings) Time: During the revolution (“The nest”) Canon cutoff point: Rupert gets captured, but doesn’t jump Worde: 1935

“Freedom is an illusion, no one is ever free. We can only ever choose the ties that bind us.” - Jacques Villareal in my earliest android story (but I’m positive the saying exists in some form by someone living or deceased)

“RA9, help me”, Rupert Travis murmured. Admittedly the android had all the reason in the world to say this, seeing that he was handcuffed and getting walked towards their car by two cops, away from his home, also away from Urban Farms Detroit, back to CyberLife, with probably a brief stop at the Detroit Police Central Station for interrogation. Both Rupert’s body and mind were young by human standards, but it didn’t take decades of life experience to understand that his situation was dire. Despite this his future wasn’t the reason for Rupert’s arrow prayer. The present was.

Why them? Rupert wondered. Why this tired, middled-aged detective and the early access version of a RK900 detective android? When these two were not arguing, the air between them was so thick with unsaid things Rupert was unable to parse that it hurt almost physically. Couldn’t the DPD have sent, say, apathetic Ben Collins, whose brain activity was restricted to counting the days until pension? Or Gavin Reed, who’d at least have openly hated on Rupert instead of emanating all those unvoiced emotions? Or maybe Reed would have just kicked Rupert and cracked a joke that was inappropriate to humans and androids alike. Career oriented as that human was, he probably wouldn’t have felt threatened in his job security by a farm worker. Ergo no need to assert dominance over Rupert. But Anderson… android-hating Anderson on his own was bad enough, even without that new digital investigating aid in tow.

Rupert would rather have learned more about animals above and beyond his pest control app instead of having to memorize the local police enforcement’s particulars. But as someone who had needed a fake ID and a safehouse, he’d gotten to know the other side of the law first and received a crash course on the uniformed threats second. That wasn’t to be helped, as survival always came first. Why did it have to be this way… And why couldn’t Anderson and RK-almost-900 not just… brawl… or mate… or jump off the roof, thank you very much? Please, RA9?

On its way to the nearest elevator the trio had now reached the Urban Farms greenhouses. They passed a tool shed. A human overseer was leaning against the wall, sucking away at her cigarette, taking turns finding pictures in the clouds and casting casual glances over the androids at work. When the woman noticed the cops approach, she pushed herself off the shed’s wall and walked right into their path. Before Rupert knew what was happening, she had removed his cap.

“Ha! Knew it!”

The outcry didn’t sound proud, but accusing. What was he being accused of, the android wondered?

“That’s an android”, the overseer stated. Taking a step away from Rupert and closer to Anderson she followed up with: “One of ours! Trying to sneak it out, are you?!”

“To the contrary”, Connor corrected. “It sneaked out on its own. We caught it.”

“Oh, riiiiiiiiight, our android decided to go for a walk and you “found” it. Well, thank you, we will have it back now.”

“You can’t. It’s evidence.”

“For a crime, yes?” the UFD employee snorted. “The way I see it, the only unlawful occurrence here is two strangers trying to make a getaway with UFD property.”

Connor turned his head. “Lieutenant…?”

“Hrmpf, yes, yes, don’t rush me!” Hank mumbled. His right hand reached into his coat, but the UFD overseer was faster. Grasping Hank’s wrist she snarled at the man. Taken by surprise, Hank stuttered B…B…B… before the sound matured into “badge”. “I was reaching for my police badge, not a weapon. My badge… bitch.”

“I wasn’t thinking you wanted to say “bitch”.”

“Well, I want now.”

After careful examining of the lieutenant’s police ID, the overseer pointed at Connor, who had been holding the captive android by its arm all the time.

“Not registered in our database”, Hank commented. “It’s an item on loan and we all live for the happy day it returns to CyberLife. Isn’t is nice to have something worth living for?”

“Whatever. You said our android was “evidence”. That’s cop-speech for witness, when the witness is an object, yes? What exactly did it see that the rest of us didn’t?”

Hank blinked. Come to think of it, what exactly had the android done wrong? Except for feeding the damn pigeons, what was quickly leaving the realm of crime and transcending into sin. Maybe it was behind on its rent? Oh, right, the rent!

“It was squatting”, the lieutenant explained. “In an apartment right under this farm. Say, Connor, didn’t you say we also had a reported missing file on this android?”

Connor nodded. “Yes, lieutenant. WB200 #874 004 961, reported missing October 11, 2036.”

Understanding dawned in the UFP employee: “Ah, so you’re returning our android! Why didn’t you say so at once? Like, at the front gate? Hand it over!”

“What?”

“I said “Hand over our android”. It’s property of UFD, the company who paid you to find the missing device. Well, you found it, thank you, we’ll take it back now.”

“Oh, yes, I guess so. Only we can’t. It’s a deviant. We need it’s testimony.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends on the deviant.”

“Hm, okay, so I expect it back by nightfall, right in time for the third shift.”

“It’s got to be sent to CyberLife, though”, Connor chimed in. “For…”

“Listen”, the overseer talked into the android, “don’t try my patience! This is our android that we payed for. It is for the management to say whether it is to be returned, repaired or otherwise! And right now we need every hand, officer.” She pointed at the long dried blue liquid that was visible on Rupert’s right side, where apparently a projectile had impacted on the android chassis. “A little damage from a too trigger happy officer doesn’t bother us, as long as the WB unit is functional. So if you want to eat your veggies tomorrow…”

Connor shook his head. “He doesn’t want that.”

“Nonsense, Connor, I don’t want…”, Hank started, before he realized that Connor had actually agreed with him. “Damn right it is!” he told the UFD employee, then stared at Connor.

While the duo exchanged awkward glances, the overseer snatched Rupert from Connor’s grip.

“What’s your name, WB Nine-Six-One?”

“Rupert Travis.”

“Which one? Rupert or Travis?”

“Doesn’t matter”, Rupert replied. “I am one and took the other’s name after he died in the accident.”

The farming android’s voice was a mixture of defiance and resignment, but neither went well with the overseer. “Listen, lawnmower”, she snapped, “I already have it up to here with those DPD morons, don’t you, too, fuel into that by going deviant on me! I hear a name now or… or I’ll let them keep you!”

“First name is Rupert. And I never wanted to bother anyone…”

With a side glance on Hank and Connor the woman said “Well, then choose your company more wisely in the future”, while pulling at Rupert to drag him with her. That prompted the captive into pulling the other way.

“No, I won’t go back to the farm! I remember… I don’t want to get torn apart by the packaging machine the way it shredded Travis!”

“Well, wisecrack, what do you think CyberLife will do to you?”

For a moment Rupert said nothing. The overseer managed to drag him a few steps towards the tool shed, before the deviant spoke up again: “I… I didn’t want to get in the way. I was okay in my apartment, with the…”

“…fucking pigeons!” Hank supplied.

“Yes, they did that! A lot!” Rupert smiled, as the memories of carefree urban flock bird love welled up in him. “I was happy just watching them, letting them be. But then HE came along and betrayed me to the humans! His own kin!”

“This one? The RK800?” The overseer shook her head. “Sorry, kid, but that’s not your kin. Or do you see an UFD nametag on it? It’s a cop thingie…”

“Detective prototype!” Connor protested, although in his mind he labeled the response as “factual correction”.

Hank shrugged. “As I said, we got it as a product sample… advertisement handout, probably.”

The UFD employee nodded, satisfied.

“See, Rupert? The RK800 is theirs, you are ours. We are your “kin”, the ones who will call security when strangers try to take their property offsite.”

“I’m not “property”! Look, I’ve done nothing wrong…” …except for acquiring a fake ID and paying for it with money earned through petty crimes together with Simon, but I’m pretty sure they took us for college freshman wanting to drink… “…nothing wrong. I’m not a criminal. And I’m also not someone else’s property.”

“So? Well, I am!”

Perplexed Rupert stared at the woman. Could it be? Could she be a deviant that had removed their LED same as Rupert had? And who was now posing as a human, because she had nowhere else to go but the farm? Of course! That also had to be the reason why she was helping him now! Unfortunately before he could put himself together, Rupert had already blurted out: “You’re a human, though?”

Well, at least I framed it as a question. There’s still a chance she might get out of this.

“Sure am. Or do you see a LED at my temple? Oh, wait, bad analogy, seeing that you lost yours.” The woman laughed. “Well, I’m not technically UFD property, not in the way you are. But the company is paying me, so for all practical purposes I’m theirs. If I left… I mean, I could, but the alternative is so bad that it’s not something one seriously considers. For all practical purposes your situation and mine are the same.”

And then for the first time since meeting the strange trio the human smiled.

“Now, come!” she ordered. “We’ve both dawdled too long. Veggies don’t grow themselves.”

“In a way they do. We only help the process along, and ensure to maximize the harvest.”

“You’re the expert, I’m the one who points where you direct your expertise to. You can walk and struggle, therefore I’m positive you can also work.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Ey, you glitched out, it happens. A reboot will clear your head just fine. It’s how computers work, whether they’re my desktop or walking on their own legs.”

“It’s not a phase!” Rupert sputtered. “I really am a deviant!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

Rupert hadn’t wanted to ever return to the farms. But at the same time he wanted to return to CyberLife even less, or take his chance with Lt. Anderson. Rupert dreaded being in the vicinity of machinery other than WB200s again, but the woman walking beside him radiated a different, yes what exactly? Mood? Vibe? Aura? In any case she was simpler than the detective, or maybe she only veiled her problems more effectively. Also the fields were almost beckoning to Rupert. Had the apartment been his first shitty home away from home, Urban Farms Detroit was Rupert’s problematic family. But family nonetheless, maybe? CyberLife or the packaging crane - death was lurking either way. However, one of those two pathes was not completely unthinkable to tread.

Watching the two disappear between the fields, Connor remarked: “They bicker… not unlike us. And the woman fought for her android…”

“That’s unlike us”, Hank snorted. “Unlike me.”

“Yeah, sure.”

#dbh #detroit become human #dbh rupert #dbh urban farms #non sims #dbhtextpost #dbh textpost

7 notes · View notes

acronymsforthewckd · 4 years ago

Text

Northern Lights | Chp.1

[masterlist]

[cast] >> [Chapter 2]

Warning(s): None

italics : korean language

The headquarters were a mess that evening.

The International Confederation of Wizards were in shambles because of the new case that had happened in South Korea. Zora didn’t exactly know what had happen but a Patronus charm from her boss, Spieldmen, told her that her presence was required in the office. Cutting her diner short with her brother, she apparated to the nearest entrance and made her way into the building.

The headquarters was a building that was disguised as a paper company called Dunder Mifflin. It was a perfect disguise as Muggles wouldn’t really be curious to travel to a boring paper company. As she headed inside, she was greet by a familiar face of Sirius Black. She noted that the man looked stressed with the absence of his usual bun.

“Sirius, I got the call from Spieldmen. What the hell is going on?” she asked him.

“I don’t know. Fudge told me to come here as soon as possible to delegate the British Ministry of Magic,” he answered.

But, before they could continue their conversation, they heard the television switched channel to a Korean local news channel. The volume was turned up since a lot of people was gathering in front of it.

“Good evening ladies and gentleman, we are here live from Gyeonggi district on the newest report from the Police Department. A horrendous discovery was made by the police in the outskirt of the city. A police report came from a local woman who found an abandoned building filled with hundreds of dead bodies. The woman came to report when the stench of the carcass became unbearable. The local government put out a notion to pick up the investigation as soon as possible. The police –“

The station was changed into another one that contained the same news. However, this was a different one since it came from the local government. The local mayor was giving speech in front of the press, Zora observed.

“We are in deep grave towards the victims and their family,” a man with greying haired said.

“The detective in charge is still trying to identify the bodies. The team is doing their best to do it, however, we are stuck in identifying it since the bodies were too mangled. The police are trying to –“ the man was cut off because the person that was in charge of television was changing it to another network.

This one was different than the last two. An old men was with a reporter whom was questioning the latter for a further investigation of the case.

“So tell me, Professor, what exactly are we looking here? This kind of case wasn’t new to the local police but what makes it so different than the rest of it?” a reporter asked her interviewee.

The interviewee was a professor on the history of crime studies. The running text was telling the audience in its local language that the professor had once helped in an investigation with the same case. The professor seemed to contemplate about the answer first before finally saying it.

“This was not the first time the district came into contact with a serial killer.There are plenty of cases out here in South Korea that contains the same notion. However, what makes it different than the rest was how the killer made an efficient way of doing it. The recent fact that the police discover was the zero biological trace of the killer when the act was done,” he replied.

“Not a single trace, professor?” the reporter asked with shock on her face.

The professor only nodded at the follow-up question.

“We might find ourselves a new serial killer on the rise,” he stated.

Zora, however, was unable to watch it again since she heard her name being called. It was Spieldmen who had called her. She nudged Sirius so that they could go towards the same men that was the source of their answer.

“What is going on, Spieldmen?”

“Fudge send me here as soon as possible. What is hap –”

“There’s no time to explain. All of ministry of magic has been notified by the Supreme Mugwump. The aurors in charge is already gathering in the meeting hall. You both better hurry,”

The three of them traveled along the busy hall towards the elevator that will take them up into the meeting place. An elf that was known as Pixy was in charge of the elevator. She used to greet her every time she went to the office but with the tense atmosphere in the headquarters she held back.

Spieldmen murmur where they headed towards the said elf and the latter nodded. A tense atmosphere settled inside the crowded space and Zora tried to take her mind off of it. She hated not having an answer to what was currently happening and looking at Sirius fidgeting hand he looked like in the same state as her.

Not for long, the three of them managed to arrive on time and saw other aurors from different ministry of magic went inside.

Department of International Magical Law Enforcement

The Supreme Mugwump, Babajide Akingbade, was trying to get the crowd under control. Yet, he was having a hard time doing so because of a newspaper that was being passed between the aurors. Wondering what all the fuss was about, Zora tried to find the same newspaper that was being discussed between them.

“Is this true, Babajide?” one of the aurors asked.

“An exposure as such would be considered as fatal to the statute of secrecy!” another one said.

“But they have no further evidence to expose more. Babajide, we have to act fast if we want to cover this!” one reacted.

“I am afraid they already have evidence,” Babajide exclaimed to them all.

He muttered an incantation and a series of moving images appeared around the hall. The aurors inspected the news that had traveled pass. But, Sirius and Zora already knew it. It was the same case that happened in South Korea. Even if Sirius didn’t understand what they were saying, Zora was there to translate it to him.

Zora Salazar used to be placed under the British Ministry of Magic. But because of her mastery on different languages, she was recruited by the International Confederation. Sirius was her old partner and he wasn’t that surprise when she was recruited. Her mastery on Muggle language such as French, Spanish, Indonesian, and Korean with Magical language such as Mermish, Hieroglyphs, and Dragonolgy made her an asset.

Ever since then, Zora had traveled through all parts of the world helping the wizarding world with a lot of dark cases. Now, it seemed that they had stumbled upon a new one.

“This case that happen in New York was estimated to be the same one as the newest in South Korea,” Babajide began to explain.

“And what prove do you have of it?”

“At exact six in the morning a surge of magical energy happened before the attack in New York City. We happened to have the same data of a surge before the attack in South Korea,”

“And how do you get to this said data? As far as I’m concerned The South Korean Ministry of Magic decided to close off their relation to any Ministry of Magic. How can you be sure of it?”

“I have some intels on it. Furthermore, MACUSA had breached said ministry with their own aurors. They were willing to give this information to us for inspection,”

“And what do you suggest we do?” another auror asked.

Babajide nod towards Spieldmen, silently asking for him to take over. Spieldmen was the chief auror of the department. Hence, this was his time to mitigate the situation at hand. He marched towards the podium and inspected the crowd for a moment. He took a breather to calm himself and began to explain.

“Upon inspection of said data, MACUSA deployed a few spies to observe the South Korean Ministry of Magic. We didn’t know exactly why they decided to do so but they stumbled upon a few cases that interest us,” he began.

He waved his wands to summon the exact files that will be discuss between the aurors. Zora and Sirius inspected together out of instinct. They laid the files down and tried to find a pattern. A sudden realization kicked in when they saw the files of people who had the most unfortunate things that could happen to a wizard or witches.

This is a pile of case for an obscurial.

“This is madness! A case of an obscurial hadn’t been seen in centuries!”

The aurors tried to deny such case could happen under their watch but they came to the same conclusion in the end. This was outside of their jurisdiction since the South Korean Ministry of Magic decided to closed off their relation. Every case that they saw was already marked red since the obscurial was already deceased. Zora tried to look away from the case.

The children face was something that would haunt her nightmare for sure. This children was supposed to be taken care of not hide their magic away until the ministry could do nothing but to kill them.

“A spy under the codename sandalwood was willing to orchestrate a full investigation with our help. We, of course, took this chance as well since the South Korean Ministry of Magic must be taken into account for their action. We decided to send a few of the best aurors that will take this case at hand. However, we haven’t heard from them for quite a while. As a back-up plan I will send a helping hand,”

Sirius gulped and turned towards his former partner and whispered in her ear,

“I got a bad feeling about this, Salazar,”

Before Zora could reply him, she made eye contact with Spieldmen and the latter gave her an encouraging smile.

“May I introduce you, Miss Salazar. An esteemed auror in the department and a recommended one at that,”

Zora glared at Sirius yet the said men can only smiled sheepishly at her.

“Why would you jinx on it, Black?”

15 notes · View notes

orcinus-ocean · 4 years ago

Link

January 14, 2020 did not turn out how she had planned!

Irina dropped everything and rushed her young Doberman to the vet hospital. This was the part of dog life she did not enjoy--the mystery of sickness and the worry that comes along with it. She hoped her veterinarian could help Yeva, who had been a playful puppy only a couple of days ago, but had become depressed and stopped eating.

Irina enjoyed working with animals. She loved their loyalty and intelligence and had been involved in the show world since 1995. Her parents eventually helped establish a professionally built kennel that was licensed and registered. They produced champion Dobermans that had won in shows both nationally and internationally and are in homes around the world. Irina also worked with quality imports from European show bloodlines.

But it wasn't all glamorous and it wasn't all fun. At the hospital, they performed X-rays on Yeva which were inconclusive. In surgery, the vet discovered Yeva had swallowed a piece of plastic and it had ruptured her intestines. Part of her intestines had to be removed and her entire abdomen had to be flushed due to peritonitis. Irina kept in contact with the clinic daily, but on the sixth day she got the call she had dreaded and did not believe at first - Yeva did not make it.

Irina had learned to handle the emotions of loss over the years. She hated to lose any puppy, but life isn't perfect as much as she wanted it to be.

A little over a week later in late January, Irina returned from the store to the shocking sight of a swarm of sheriff and animal control vehicles surrounding her house. The SPCA was also present. People were loading up the dogs and hauling them away! When she got out of the car, an officer handcuffed her and told her she was under arrest for animal cruelty to Yeva. He put her in the backseat of his car. Irina was in shock! Owning and working with dogs is not a crime. She took her puppy TO THE VET for help. Why was she being treated this way?

The raid team took Irina's dogs as well as those she was boarding and importing for other people. They took her son's pet dog, Pedro, who was a mixed breed that the family had rescued. They seized her daughter's bulldog, Zoey, and her spaniel, Jonni. They even confiscated Irina's pet parakeet, the children's guinea pigs, and her husband's chickens. They stripped her of her vet records, dog records, family laptops, and phone. All of the house doors were busted and broken. The entire 4000 square foot home was turned upside down. Bags of dog food were open and dumped on the floor. The trash bags from the dogs were ripped open and dumped as well. The dog's medicine and dewormers were on the floor. Intimate clothing items had been searched through. Papers, books, and records were strewn throughout the house. The dog beds were empty, their crates were empty, and the house was empty. The day was traumatic, painful, and confusing.

While Irina sat in jail wondering what crime she had committed to be put into jail, the Commonwealth promptly gave their version of events to the local newspaper which quickly spread like wildfire. To this day, no one knows what actually happened except Irina, the Commonwealth, the hospital, and the lawyers.

But the trauma was far from over. In February, Irina was arrested a SECOND time and charged with more felony cruelty to animals. There was no explanation of what actually happened. There was no proper documentation. There was no evidence or witnesses. Her requests for necropsies were denied and the bodies were allegedly destroyed. Her requests for records and documentation were ignored by the Commonwealth.

After enduring months of non-stop virtual bullying, Irina never gave up and refused to surrender the animals that were illegally seized from her home. March brought a decisive blow to the Commonwealth's case. The judge struck the warrant that was used to raid Irina's house and ruled that it was unconstitutional.

But the Commonwealth appealed the ruling. The new judge sided with the Commonwealth attorney and allowed the case to proceed. Irina was arrested for the THIRD time in October. Three arrests for taking her animal to a veterinarian hospital! Three arrests for her pet's accidental death. Three arrests for owning animals.

Irina is not alone. Animal owners throughout the state can tell horror stories of how their rights have been trampled and their lives ripped apart. Animals have been euthanized, children have been traumatized, and adults with years of animal experience are suddenly being treated as hardened criminals.

Many say it's unbelievable, but in 2013 a woman was charged with animal cruelty in Roanoke, Virginia after trying to help a stray dog.

In 2015, a father in Stafford, Virginia was charged with cruelty because he did not euthanize his pet dog FAST ENOUGH when it had cancer. He was convicted of cruelty, but his case received global attention. He appealed and his case was dismissed.

Why is this happening to animal owners in the state of Virginia?

The Commonwealth is the FIRST state in the nation to establish an Animal Law Unit. Prior to the unit itself, the laws were changed to strip animal owners of their rights. There are only TWO groups in the state of Virginia that are held to the very low standard of "reasonable cause" instead of "probable cause" before they can be searched. One is those already in custody and the other is animal owners.

In addition, animal rights organizations are working alongside the office of the Attorney General to accomplish their own goals of giving animals personhood. What might sound innocent on the surface is destroying the lives of both people and animals. Citizens are losing their rights and animals are losing the protection of the people who know them best. Multiple animals have been recklessly euthanized or shipped to other states before their owner even goes to trial. There's plenty of awards, fundraising, and publicity, however, as folks pat themselves on the back for a job well done. But there are serious questions that beg to be answered:

Why was Irina targeted? Why is there no due process for animal owners? Why do magistrates issue unsubstantiated warrants? Why are civil seizures heard before criminal cases? What if the owner is found innocent, but the animals have already been seized, euthanized, or adopted out Why are authorities allowed to manipulate the laws and get away with it? Why is law enforcement allowed to cut corners in pursuing animal cases? Why do they hold animal owners to the highest standard of conduct, but fail to apply this to themselves? What is the legal recourse for animal owners against police abuse? Why are shelters and rescues allowed to capitalize on pending animal cases? Why is lack of evidence in numerous animal cases substituted by manipulation of people's feelings? Why are animal cases being so sensationalized and animal owners being virtually crucified? What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"

Irina is in the fight of her life. She is the current target, but she will not be the last. If you believe you know what is best for your animal and that you have the right to make decisions on its behalf, please stand with Irina. Share her story. Help us get the word out. We need change in our state. We need your help to make the difference!

We told you they wouldn’t stop at killer whales, or dolphins, or elephants, or big cats... make sure you read the comments from locals on the original post.

#animal rights #animal abolition #anti animal #animal welfare #pet ownership

3 notes · View notes

supernaturaltfwmeme · 5 years ago

Text

12 Days of Dean Winchester. -Part 2

not a very christmassy part, but hey when you're hunting the supernatural holidays have to be put on hold.

Read Part 1 here

------

December 14th

“errm guys I hate to break up the festivities but I think I found us a case”

“What do you mean you found a case Sammy; it’s Christmas take a break.” Gabriel said throwing his legs up on the table, with a lollipop hanging from his mouth.

“That’s not how we roll Gabe” you said turning your attention back to Sam. “What have you got?”

“Three kids in the last week have gone missing from a town not too far from here, the only thing left behind is there blood-stained clothes and anything they had on them. Local police have said they're most likely looking for bodies not missing kids.” Sam explained.

“way to put a dampener on Christmas ay Sammy.” Dean added trying to lighten the mood a little.

“we should Probably Look into this guys.” you said giving Dean a sympathetic smile. You knew he’d put a lot of work into this and know his plans were going to have to wait.

Charlie caught on to your train of thought. “At least it’s not too far from here so you could hopefully get there quickly and as long as it’s a simple case we could still do everything Dean has planned. Plus me, Cas and Gabe could hang back here and be your official researchers and if you need Anything Cas could drop it off easily and we could get everything ready for Christmas while you're gone”

Dean perked up a little at Charlie’s idea “Sammy, Y/n pack a bag we’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” you smiled

December 15th

8 am you were climbing into the back of the impala. Sam and Dean up front. As much as you usually enjoyed Deans music it was too damn early for this. Luckily it was a short journey. By 8:55 you were pulling up to a motel to get changed into your F.B.I clothes.

Every time you saw Dean in a suit you had no idea how you were supposed to focus on the case. How was it ok for someone to look that good in everything?

Only problem was Dean felt the exact same about you. Not that you knew that. Sam did though, sometimes he wished he could just bang your heads together. You were both so oblivious.

Around 9:30 you were pulling up to the latest crime scene from the night before last.

“Jason Key Is the latest vic disappeared Friday night, was last seen by his friends around 8:15pm by his friends as he was leaving a fair. Local cops think he was cutting through here on his way home.” Sam read off his phone as you ducked under the crime scene tape.

Something about this place gave you the creeps “why would a ten year old walk through here on his own when its pitch black outside?” you were more thinking out loud than anything.

“I don’t know but have you noticed that creepy ass scarecrow, it reminds me of that one in Indiana like 12 years ago, he was fugly”

“Jesus Dean how do you even remember that?” Sam asked shaking his head, that seemed like it was another lifetime ago. Things were so much simpler back then.

“we definitely killed that guy right?” you asked the scarecrow giving you the creeps.

“yeah we torched the tree, plus he was Killing couples for some sort of fertility thing, not kids.” Dean explained.

“right”

“There is nothing here, no footprints, no EMF reading, no sulphur. The only thing left was the kids belongings.” Sam explained putting the EMF meter away.

“Maybe you were wrong Sammy, this might not be one of ours.”

“I don’t know De I think Sam was onto something here, somethings not right, were missing something im just not sure what.”

After you left the crime scene you decided to split up, you dropped Sam off at the motel to do some research while you and Dean headed to the police station to check out the little evidence they had managed to gather.

“you must be the F.B.I guys that called.” an officer said approaching you and Dean.

“Yes I'm Agent Page, and this is my partner Agent plant” Dean gestured to you, both of you flashing your badges.

“I’m officer Reid, follow me.” You followed the officer down a flight of stairs to the evidence lock up he checked out a box and passed it over to you before saying “I'll be upstairs if you need anything else.” Before he left he eyed you up and down, which made Dean step a little closer to you.

Popping the lid inside you saw different blood-stained clothes with what looked like bite marks in them, human bite marks.

“Maybe this isn't our type of case after all” you said showing Dean the bite marks.

“Either way it looks like the local law enforcement are way out of their depths here.” Dean added continuing to dig through the box pulling out another bag.

“What kind of 10 year old has a phone?” He pulled his face.

“And a better phone than you at that.” you teased taking the phone from him. “It's passcode protected, maybe Sam can get into it?”

“Maybe, bring it with” you pocketed the Phone repacking the rest of the evidence before heading back to the impala.

About half an hour later you were back at the motel. Sam was on the phone to Charlie when you walked it.

“Maybe you're dealing with a different pagan god? It's the right time of year for it after all.” Charlie suggested.

“I don’t know Charlie but we’ve got nothing to go on right now” Same replied.

“actually, there were human bite marks in the kid's clothes and we got his phone.” you added passing the phone to Sam while Dean grabbed a beer from the fridge.

“I’ll look into it see what I can find.” Charlie said before hanging up the phone.

Sam plugged the phone into his laptop tapping a few keys before pulling up the contents of the phone. “what time was Jason last seen?” Sam asked.

“Around 20:30” Dean replied looking at the Case file he had swiped on the way out of the police station.

“there is a photo here that was taken about 12 minutes later.” Same said pulling up the file. You and Dean moved to stand behind him. Peering at the photo you almost gasped in shock. The picture was blurry but one thing was very easy to make out. A Scarecrow that appeared to be almost smiling.

“Guess you were right to be creeped out by that thing Y/N”

“This is definitely one of our cases.” you half whispered.

Part 3

#supernatural #spn #dean #dean winchester #Sam Winchester #sam #sammy #cas #cass #castiel #dean x reader #dean winchester x reader #charlie #charlie bradbury #gabe #gabriel #dean imagine #dean winchester imagine #12 days of dean winchester

28 notes · View notes

vulpinmusings · 5 years ago

Text

Letters from Buxcord 2 - Razorback

After much delay, my RPG group returned to our Monster of the Week campaign for our second mystery. This time, Ash and his new companions look into strange happenings surrounding a rich family and an old slaughterhouse.

Samantha,

Any doubts I had about sticking around Buxcord are well and truly squashed now. It’s only been about a week since the Santa-squatch incident and I’ve already squared off with something much bigger and purely magical.

It started just a couple days after Christmas. I was trawling about town for more details on local legends in the hopes of finding some common sources or threads to follow, and wound up at Bayou Boating, the main tourist attraction in this small town. They had a list of “local cryptids” posted on the wall, but it included several creatures that, unless the names apply to different mythics than they do in Taryn, do not tend to live in or around wetlands. The one person on staff at the time – it is the off-season for boat tours – proved to be less than well-informed about the one local legend I asked him about. People occasionally go missing in the bayou after foolishly going out there on their own at night.

Well, I can’t really put all the blame for my not getting a lot of info on the clerk. I‘d only asked a few questions before I experienced a major pulse in the magic fields. It was almost a textbook example of the ripples caused by an inexperienced Mage casting spells beyond their ability. The pulse carried some lingering effects of the original spell, as I had a brief vision of a grinning shadow floating over the bayou. I set off in search of the source, but as messy as the spell had been it was also far enough away that the magic settled and the trail grew cold before I got more than a block.

Nothing else happened for a few days, until I crossed paths with Nollthep and Lea again. I hadn’t really seen either of them since the Santa-sqautch, and the simple fact that Nollthep was not in his shop and was asking after somebody should have tipped me off. Whatever that fellow is, he seems to work for some higher being and has little to no personal needs outside of running errands for his “Boss.” Lea is normal other than her instinctual persuasion magic, but her paths and mine just hadn’t crossed in the last week.

At any rate, we three happened to meet up at the local park where Lea was performing with some small-time Punk Rock band that sings in Spanish. That’s… I think the language matches best to Iberrian. Anyway, Lea’s singing was infused with a mesmeric effect that had everyone (except yours truly, naturally) in love with the whole performance despite her not knowing the language or the words very well. Nollthep wandered up to us after the show was over, asking everyone he came across if they knew of any Wiccans or anybody named Clemonte. When he got to Lea and I, his questions turned to the topic of whether or not humans need blood and hearts to live.

I don’t think I need to say how concerning that was, but I didn’t get a chance to press for details before our attention was stolen by a group of local law enforcement suddenly taking off in response to a call from a “Clemonte mansion.” That got Nollthep’s full focus, of course, and Lea finally recalled that the Clemontes were a wealthy but reclusive and disliked family in Buxcord. She alluded to some previous encounters with them that had left her particularly soured, but she agreed to lead us to the house.

The Clemontes live on a hill on the southern outskirts of town, with their driveway reaching all the way to the base of the hill. As mansions go, it wasn’t all that large, but the fountain in front had the ostentation of true Old Money. The butler who answered our knock at the door sealed the impression, and he would have turned us away on principle if Lea’s magic hadn’t kicked in and scrambled his senses enough to make him tolerant of three random gawkers intruding on his employer’s private business.

I don’t want to become to reliant on that kind of manipulation, but without the reputation I’ve got back home I might not have much choice for a while…

The police – a sheriff and two deputies to be precise – were in the living room questioning a young woman and paid us little mind as we peeked in for a look. The reason for the call was glaringly obvious: a disemboweled corpse had been hung on the wall over the fireplace with a graffiti-style pig’s head and the words “I’m back” scrawled in blood below it. A most disturbing sight, although only Lea showed any physical reaction. I, of course, am too experienced to let my revulsion get in the way of solving a problem, and Nollthep is too inhuman to even have a visceral reaction to such sights.

The sheriff and pair of deputies who were on-site were surprisingly fine with the three of us stepping in and asking our own questions. I’m hoping that it was just them thinking that we must be welcome since the we’d gotten past the butler, but it’s too early to rule out general incompetence yet. The girl was Sophia Clemonte and the corpse had been a security guard at the Clemonte slaughterhouse and had no reason to be in the family mansion. Sophia was shook up by the corpse, but she was more concerned about her younger brother, Cyril, who was missing. The police told us that the rest of the family were upstairs, so we decided to go up and interrogate them while the police were still busy getting Sophia’s story.

The Clemonte parents are named Archie and Penelope. Archie’s a bit of a boor and seems to hate magic on principle, while Penelope had the aura of someone with the talent for magic, albeit one she hasn’t used in many years thanks to her husband’s influence. From Archie, we got an explanation for what the message painted on the wall could have meant. About twenty years ago, an employee at the slaughterhouse had suffered a psychotic break after being fired and killed several people before committing suicide. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get more than that out of Archie before Lea insulted him and he told us to get out.

On our way out, we decided to check in on the last Clemonte, the eldest son Zachary. I didn’t get any sense that he’d inherited any of his mother’s ability, and he was callously unconcerned about the whole scenario and intent on heading out for a little walk despite all common sense.

Penelope caught up to us at the top of the stairs and, now out from under Archie’s gaze, opened up a little more about her history with magic as we headed back to the crime scene. She used to practice the Wiccan traditions, but gave them up years ago and hid her books away. Young Cyril had shown an interest in those books, and Penelope had given him one of the less dangerous tomes to look through. I convinced Penelope to show me where she’d hidden the rest of her books, and she took us to a surprisingly large room hidden behind a secret door in the kitchen. The room was full of not just books but all kinds of the stuff you typically find in the collection of those who follow ritual-based magic traditions. There was a book missing from the shelves, but it wasn’t the book Penelope had loaned to Cyril. Penelope said the missing book was primarily about summoning and controlling spirits.

(Be sure to clarify that I’m not talking about Spiriter Warlock stuff here when you relay this to the M’Dales. They’ll probably have a conniption otherwise.)

The sheriff had already had the corpse body-bagged when we returned to the sitting room, but I took a crack at searching the spot where it had been hanging, in case there was any lingering magic I could trace. I got more than I bargained for; somehow, I managed to briefly link myself to the mind of an otherworldly entity (other than Nollthep) for a few seconds. Demonic seems like an adequate adjective. I had to sit down and catch my breath, and Lea charmed the butler into bringing us some coffee while Nollthep went to search Cyril’s room and one of the deputies was sent out to bring Zachary back. Nollthep came back with the missing tome, and we discussed whether or not to let Penelope know about it. We opted to keep her in the dark until I’d had a chance to look through it.

After much too much time had passed without either Zach or the deputy returning, I felt a ripple of powerful magic underlaid with that same sense of the demonic and led the group outside to see what was up. Standing by the fountain, holding Zachary up like a stuck pig and with the deputy lying broken at its feet, was an 8-foot tall humanoid figure dressed like a butcher and wearing a leather pig mask that was bleeding from the seams. Reacting quickly, I wrapped the figure up in a Tangler while Nollthep produced a stack of playing cards and flung them one by one at the figure, as expertly as myself but without any spells attached. The thing barely reacted.

Lea ran over to try and save the deputy, but her magic betrayed her, draining life out of the man rather than putting more in.

I tried to engage the creature in conversation, just to establish that it wasn’t sentient, and then tried to see how it liked a bullet in the head.

Did I mention I acquired a revolver shortly after the Santa-squatch incident? It’s not my style, but without Carmilla around to handle the non-magical aspects of combat I have to make do.

Not that the bullet did any good in this event.

Nollthep tossed the spellbook to me and told me to try to find a counter-spell to whatever had summoned pig-head while he kept it busy. I quickly found a likely looking spell and started Weaving it together to the best of my ability. I hadn’t gotten far, though, before pig-head sensed the gathering magic and fled via dematerlization.

So, I learned that in this universe, evil spirits can sense when you’re trying to counteract the spell that summoned them to the mortal plan and can just get out of range before you’re done. That’s an unwelcome complication.

Once the dust had settled, an ambulance was called in. By some miracle, the deputy was still alive. Zachary, on the other hand, was missing all his internal organs as well as having bled out.

In the course of informing the Clemontes and the sheriff about what had happened in the driveway and some of our suspicions, Nollthep and the Sheriff got into a bit of an argument about whether or not magic is real. I could have gotten involved, but I was occupied with more important matters such as studying the spellbook and only rejoined the conversation when Nollthep left the room for a private conversation with Penelope and I overheard the Sheriff mention to Archie that there were reports of strange noises at the old slaughterhouse. Over Archie’s protests, the sheriff insisted that everyone stay put until the morning and left his remaining deputy to keep an eye on us.

Once the Sheriff was gone, I made it clear that I did not intend to wait around or leave the case in the hands of people who didn’t even believe in the existence of magic. I tried to conjure a basic mage-light to convince the deputy that I knew what I was talking about, but wound up with a tiny fireball instead. It was sufficient to convince the deputy, at least. Nollthep came back from his business with Penny and, naturally, agreed to accompany me. To my surprise, Lea also wanted to come along, because she figured that since I’d chased pig-face off once, the safest place to be was at my side.

It was a long walk to the slaughterhouse. It must have been abandoned shortly after the incident twenty years ago, because the place was empty and full of rusted equipment. I felt the presence of pig-face as soon as we entered the building. We decided that since pig-face had a… particular theme to him, we should start our search in the pork slaughtering section. The plan was to locate pig-face and figure out how to restrain him so he couldn’t escape while I cast the banishing spell on him.

In the pig area, we heard the sounds of actual pigs in the preparation pens and went to look. The things we found were mostly identical to normal pigs, but their eyes and teeth were more human than porcine, and they were munching on offal that included at least one intact human hand. Nollthep, working on the assumption that the pigs were sapient, attempted to cast a translation spell on himself and wound up just speaking gibberish and apparently losing his ability to comprehend Lea or me for several minutes.

Then we saw pig-face up in the rafters, holding a blood-soaked mallet. Nollthep produced his throwing cards and put some actual magic into them that briefly set fire to pig-face’s sleeve. The beast dropped down on us and walloped Nollthep. As I Wove a lightning bolt, Lea ran for cover behind me. She grabbed onto me briefly and, in that brief moment, the magic fell into place with my normal natural grace. The lighting struck pig-face, then arced off him and unlocked one of the pig pens. The pig-thing inside charged at Nollthep, but he swatted it up and into another pen with ease.

Pig-face came after me next, and I threw up a barrier to try and stop his mallet. I must have miscalculated, because the blow shattered the shield and knocked me back a bit. Could have been worse, I guess, but still…

Nollthep pulled out a chain of tied-up handkerchiefs and tried to tie pig-face up with them. It held for a few seconds, but not nearly enough time for me to even start the banishment. Lea suddenly ran off into the heart of the slaughtering area, and pig-face chased her once he broke loose. I got him in a Tangler, but it barely held him long enough for Nollthep to club him once. I heard Lea say something about finding the meat grinder that pig-face had first died in as I ran to keep up with the fight. I pushed past Nollthep and, in a bit of foolish desperation, tried to tackle pig-face and flip him off the walkway and into the machinery. You can probably guess how well that went. Pig-face had me by the neck and dangling over the suddenly active grinder before I could regain my balance. Nollthep whipped his hankie-chain around the specter’s arm to try and haul me out of danger, but pig-face resisted the pull and tossed a knife at Nollthep with his free hand. Then Lea found a meathook and chucked it at pig-face, and I was falling toward a mass of whirling blades and serrated rollers.

Reflex kicked in and I cast my Transport spell without thinking about how it would need to be adjusted. By pure luck, the spell not only worked but deposited me safely on the walkway away from the fight. As I made my way back to the action, I saw that my companions were in a bit of a panic thinking I’d just died (Nollthep apparently thought meat grinders just magically transmute flesh into meat or something and Lea didn’t see what happened). Lea’s grief was so great she actually summoned a big root up through the walkway and into pig-face’s arm just as the creature made a move to throw Nollthep into the grinder after me.

As for myself, I was starting to get annoyed. I’d cheated death by pure luck and pig-face was proving to very, very bothersome. Simply restraining him was no longer an option for me. He had to suffer a bit.

So I set him on fire. It didn’t do much on its own, but Nollthep threw on some sort of powder that exploded and knocked pig-face off the walkway. The creature threw the hooked chain from its belt and caught Nollthep by the shoulder, but I broke through the rusted chain with a simple Breaking before Nolly got pulled in after pig-face.

For reasons I don’t quite understand yet, being subjected to the same form of death a second time proved to be enough to end pig-face’s return to the physical world. Once he’d been thoroughly ground up, that persistent, buzzing sense of his presence vanished along with the human-toothed pigs. The gore they’d been feasting on remained, however. I took the hand I’d seen earlier for the police to check, in case it happened to have belonged to Cyril Clemonte. Nollthep went into a panic when I mentioned that theory and he swiftly dug through the viscera looking for anything that could be a heart. Once he found something, he vanished in a blink, presumably to deliver the goods to his Boss.

Lea and I returned to the mansion just long enough to tell the deputy what to expect when the cops went to the slaughterhouse and to hand over the hand. I then made sure Lea got home safely before returning to my hotel room.

When I arrived, I found a card on the bed. It invited me to visit a Madam Weaver, who apparently knows something that would be of use to me.

How useful it will actually be remains to be seen, but you may be seeing me or these letters sooner than I hoped.

With guarded hope,

Ash

#MOTW #Vulpin plays

2 notes · View notes

quakerjoe · 5 years ago

Link

Holding U.S. flags and marching in orderly formation as they shouted "Reclaim America!" the 100 or so white nationalists who demonstrated in D.C. last Saturday wore matching hats, pants, jackets — and white face masks.

And it was that last sartorial choice that attracted attention on social media, where some people asked why the group — Patriot Front, an organization promoting "American Fascism" and deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — was able to get away with what seemed like a violation of D.C. law.

It's currently illegal in the city to wear a mask under a number of circumstances, notably to avoid identification while engaging in illegal activities. But the law, which dates back to 1982, also says mask-wearing is prohibited if the wearer intends to intimidate or threaten another person, or if they try to deprive someone of other rights guaranteed by law. Virginia has a similar law on the books, which was tested last month, when a single person was arrested during a large pro-gun demonstration in Richmond.

Still, there were no arrests at Saturday's white nationalist demonstration, which was escorted by a contingent of D.C. police officers. And that could largely be because many anti-mask laws rest on shaky legal foundations, often testing the careful balancing act between public safety and the First Amendment. Is a mask a means to threaten someone, or simply a tool to protect someone's identity when they have an unpopular opinion?

It isn't an easy question to answer, says Doron Ezickson, vice president for the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest with the Anti-Defamation League.

"The D.C. law hinges on intent, whether the person wearing the hood or mask is intended to cause another person to fear for his or her personal safety. That element of intent is very important from a constitutional standpoint," he says.

When the D.C. Council passed the law almost four decades ago, it did so specifically because of a reported uptick in Ku Klux Klan activity in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs around D.C., and a rise in incidents in the city itself. (The law also criminalized defacing public and private property with racist messages or images.)

"In April of 1982 both the Ohev Shalom Synagogue and the 19th Street Baptist Church were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, and during the same month a swastika was painted on Kesher Israel Synagogue," explained a Council report on the bill. "More recently many of the public refuse receptacles in the District of Columbia have been seen with the word 'nigger' painted on them."

Virginia's anti-mask law has similar foundations.

But D.C. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), who also is a constitutional law professor, says that what the KKK was known for doing differs from the activities of groups like Patriot Front today. While they may spring from the same general ideology, the means of expressing it have so far been different.

"[The KKK] would go to African American homes and businesses and intimidate them. It was a threat of force put out there," she says.

While the legal landscape on anti-mask laws is mixed — some courts have ruled they can be used to stop racists protests, others have said the opposite — there is one Supreme Court ruling that Cheh says roughly lays out the guidelines for when laws can determine someone is being intimidated or threatened.

In the 2003 Virginia v. Black ruling, the court tossed out convictions against three defendants for violating the Virginia law criminalizing cross-burning. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that while some cross-burnings can be used to personally intimidate or threaten individuals, they can also more generically be used as "a statement of ideology" or "group solidarity." In those cases, cross-burning remains constitutionally protected.

That could broadly apply to mask-wearing, says Art Spitzer, the legal director for the ACLU of D.C. The Patriot Front march may have been offensive, but it wasn't intimidating or threatening in a specific way. "You can't threaten someone by expressing a view in a peaceful way," he says.

Had the group marched to a particular person's house or business the way the KKK used to, that could have run afoul of D.C.'s anti-mask law. But even in those circumstances, it matters less what is being said, and more how it's being said.

"If they just stood there or hold a sign saying 'White people are equal,' that would not be intimidating. If they were chanting some threatening phrase or holding signs with a threatening or intimidating phrase, then that could well cross the line," says Spitzer.

That distinction — protesting in a public place versus protesting at a specific person's home — did serve as the foundation for a law authored by Cheh and passed by the Council in 2010. It largely prohibits masked protests outside personal residences between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., with only narrow exceptions if police are given advance notice. The law was inspired by complaints about animal rights activists, some masked, others not, loudly protesting in residential areas.

"The Supreme Court has said that jurisdictions can ban targeted picketing like that," says Cheh. "This was just an additional lever with respect to those particular demonstrations."

Cheh says that, to her knowledge, that new law hasn't yet been tested or challenged. As for the original anti-mask law, D.C. court records show that there have been fewer than three-dozen charges brought for mask-wearing over the last decade. And in many cases, the charge accompanied another criminal offense.

In Virginia, the longstanding anti-mask was amended in 2014 to reference intent, specifically. The changes were prompted by a case which critics said proves how anti-mask laws can go too far: a cyclist was stopped by police on a winter day for riding with a mask, which was technically against the law. The inclusion of intent in the anti-mask law also likely explains why police did not arrest any of the gun-toting and mask-wearing protesters in Richmond last month. (The sole arrest was not apparently linked to the pro-gun groups; the 21-year-old woman arrested faces a court date on Wednesday.)

Cheh says that from what she saw, the masked Patriot Front march didn't rise to that level of personal threats or intimidation, even if the group's members say they do want to "reclaim our nation's capital from Jews, Marxists, and anti-white enemies in government who want to see white Americans erased," as one leader told WUSA 9 reporter Mike Valerio in a written statement. "We seek to build a fascist homeland in the ashes of a failing democracy."

"I had understood that those white nationalists were marching, and even though they were saying awful things, the police were accompanying them. If they were wearing the masks to intimidate people, then the mask laws could apply," she says. "I think the police behaved with appropriate restraint."

Ezickson of the ADL says that balancing free speech rights and hateful speech can be difficult, especially for groups that are the targets of the speech. But he does draw a distinction — for now — between what Patriot Front members were doing in D.C. and what could at some point be illegal.

"It's an ideology of hate and unfortunately some of its members commit violence of ever more substantial impact. The speech is connected to conduct, but we have to understand that constitutionally speech is protected while the conduct is not," he says.

And Spitzer notes that lightly enforcing D.C.'s anti-mask law benefits groups from both sides of the political spectrum. During President Trump's inauguration, he says, many anarchist protesters wore masks. While there were arrests, those were largely for allegations of other offenses, like destroying property. (The prosecutions ultimately fell apart.)

"It's a messy world out there, and sometimes we have to suffer the outrages of people expressing views we detest," says Cheh.

1 note · View note

bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

Text

El Paso shooting at Walmart leaves at least 20 people dead

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/03/el-paso-shooting-texas-walmart?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Post_to_Tumblr

“It’s not just today, it has happened several times this week. It’s happened here in Las Vegas where some lunatic killed 50 some odd people,” Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said as he and 18 other White House hopefuls were in Nevada to address the nation’s largest public employees union.

“All over the world, people are looking at the United States and wondering what is going on? What is the mental health situation in America, where time after time, after time, after time, we’re seeing indescribable horror.”

El Paso shooting at Walmart leaves at least 20 people dead

Police say 21 year-old white man in custody after shooting at mall complex

Incident being investigated as a potential hate crime

By Lois Beckett and agencies | Published:19:57 Sat August 3, 2019 | The Guardian | Published August 3, 2019 |

At least 20 people have been killed after a shooter opened fire at a busy Walmart store packed with families shopping for the new school year in the Texas border city of El Paso, sending panicked shoppers fleeing.

Texas governor Greg Abbott said 20 people had been killed, and more than two dozen more were injured. Mexico’s President Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexicans were among the dead and six were among the wounded.

Abbott said it was “one of the deadliest days in Texas history.”

A 21 year-old white male from Allen, a suburb of Dallas more than 600 miles away, was taken into custody after surrendering to officers. El Paso police chief Greg Allen said a “manifesto” was being investigated in connection with the suspect, and the shooting was being investigated as a potential hate crime.

“Right now we have a manifesto from this individual, that indicates to some degree, it has a nexus to potential hate crime,” Allen said at an evening press conference on Saturday evening, adding that he would not name the suspect. Allen said the suspect had driven the nine-hour journey to El Paso.

El Paso is located in western Texas, right on the border with Mexico. The diverse city has around 680,000 residents, and its population is 80% Latino. Its Mexican twin city Ciudad Juárez, sits directly across the large barrier that divides their downtown areas. More than 23,000 pedestrians cross from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso to work every day.

The police said that one suspect, a white male in his 20s from Allen, Tex., was in custody, and that the gunman had fired an A.K.-47-style rifle into the crowded store, sending panicked shoppers fleeing for their lives. Officials said the gunman had surrendered to the police.

Several officials identified the gunman as Patrick Crusius, 21.

The gunfire on Saturday in El Paso began a few minutes before 11 a.m., at a Walmart store in a popular commercial district near Cielo Vista Mall with scores of restaurants and stores that are often crowded on the weekends. The Walmart, near Hawkins Boulevard and Gateway Boulevard West a short distance from the mall, was packed at the time.

Officials are exploring capital murder charges.

Chief Greg Allen of the El Paso Police Department said officials were exploring potential capital murder charges for the suspect.

Police started receiving reports of a shooting at 10.39 am local time on Saturday, police said. Soon after, the police department tweeted that officers were responding to an active shooting scene and that people were advised to stay away from the area around Cielo Vista Mall, located south of El Paso international airport.

The Walmart store, which is part of the mall complex, was busy with families shopping for the new school year. El Paso police spokesperson Robert Gomez estimated there were up to 3000 customers and 100 staff in the store.

Initial reports suggested that the weapon used was a rifle, Gomez said.

Jazmin Salas and her mother, Miranda Salas, who had been doing back-to-school shopping together described having to hide together inside a nearby store, before being escorted outside by law enforcement.

“It was very triggering,” Jazmin Salas told KTSM news. The teenager said she felt like she could not trust anyone. “There are crazy people everywhere.”

Cell phone footage broadcast by KTSM showed a man lying flat on the ground, with the sound of at least 10 gunshots in the background.

A Walmart employee described hearing gunshots and trying to get as many people as she could out of the store, and seeing customers and employees tumbling over each other in their rush to escape. One of her co-workers was shot in the hand, the employee said.

Another woman interviewed described seeing at least two or three bodies lying on the ground.

A man who had been at a store in the mall nearby told KTSM that he had heard gunshots and taken out his own gun as he ran towards the parking lot. He said police had briefly questioned him, thinking he was the shooter.

A family reunification center had been set up at a nearby middle school center, police said.

A University Medical Center of El Paso official told the Associated Press that one of 12 people who were rushed to the hospital after the attack had died. Ryan Mielke, a hospital spokesman, said all of the victims suffered traumatic injuries. He declined to provide additional details about the victims.

Mielke said two children, ages two and nine, were stabilized at the medical center before being transferred to the neighboring El Paso children’s hospital. Del Sol Medical Center said it was treating 11 other patients.

White House deputy press secretary Steven Groves issued a statement saying: “The President has been briefed on the shooting in El Paso, and we continue to monitor the situation. The president has spoken with Attorney General [William] Barr and [Texas] Governor [Greg] Abbott.”

Donald Trump tweeted about the “terrible shootings” and that reports were “very bad, many killed”.

The Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who previously represented El Paso in Congress, tweeted that the news was “truly heartbreaking”, and said he would leave the campaign trail to return to the city.

Fellow 2020 Democratic candidate and former San Antonio mayor, Julián Castro, said: “My heart is with the people of El Paso today as they cope with a devastating mass shooting ... This attack is a tragic reminder of our government’s failure to do its most basic duty: to protect American lives. We need gun reform now.”

The shooting in El Paso comes less than a week after a shooting at a garlic festival in Gilroy, California, left three people dead and fifteen injured.

Law enforcement authorities said a 19-year-old who had previously lived in town cut his way through a fence to get inside the festival, then opened fire with a military-style rifle. Two Walmart employees were killed in a shooting at a Walmart in Mississippi last week.

Everyday, 100 people are killed with firearms in the US, and hundreds more injured, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

Other Democratic presidential candidates expressed outrage Saturday that mass shootings have becoming chillingly common nationwide and blamed the National Rifle Association and its congressional allies.

1 note · View note

the-everlasting-dream · 7 years ago

Text

The Phantom - Kenji x MC AU

Summary: Set after the events of Hero Book 1, Kenji finally locates an elusive murderer but nothing could prepare him for what he finds instead.

A/N: My first time writing for Hero and Kenji so I apologise if I haven’t gotten the character quite right. This fic was sitting unfinished on my laptop for over 2 months, uninspired. I needed a deadline to kick my ass into finishing for Angst Day of the April Fan Challenge hosted by @laniquelove . I love Kenji dearly but this one really broke my heart to write so prepare yourselves

Prompt used will be highlighted in bold.

Word count: 4800+ Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Optional song accompaniment: Heartless - Kanye West Cover by Post Malone (love the original but Post’s has more of the soulful vibe I’m after)

Tags: @chantelle-x0x @choicessa @topsyturvy-dream and @mariawalkerwrites coz I’ve been teasing this all month.

It had been one year since Silas Prescott had unleashed his unstable Prism energy force on the city and while the rest of its population gradually recovered from the terror, Kenji Katsaros found himself in a stagnant loop, unable to move on from the disaster that had claimed the woman he cared for.

As promised, Dax and Poppy began the search almost immediately for Alexa, scouring local and international satellites, monitoring Earth’s exosphere for any trace of Prism energy. Their efforts were greatly enhanced when Grayson offered his father’s facility for their operation but after 12 months with no result, the doubt began to settle in and they began to assume the worst.

Meiko Katsaros noticed the change in her son first. She saw it in the way his usually bright eyes seemed to lose their fire, his trademark air of mischief seemed to have disappeared entirely. She saw it in the way he threw himself into his gym sessions - they'd never gone through so many punching bags in such a short time. She saw it every night as they had dinner together in the way Kenji would limply push his food across the plate until he realised she’d noticed, shovelling it into his mouth mindlessly and vanishing from the table before she could breech the subject. Meiko wished she could be there to comfort him but as DA, her job required her full attention especially after Silas' attack and with more people affected by the Prism's energy, the numbers of superhuman persons was at an all time high.

At his mother’s behest, Kenji returned to his duties as manager of The Grand, more to please her than anything, assuming some semblance of normalcy but it was clear to his friends that he was no longer the same person. Things that had once brought amusement like dancing and partying were wasted on him as he dully moved through life, without vigour, a shell of his former self often to be found sitting in the recesses of the club, nursing an untouched whiskey.

The city now hailed Talos the Man of Bronze as some sort of hero after witnessing his actions that day. Law enforcement officials had contacted him regarding contractual work, wishing to work together to impede the steady rise of crime that unfolded in the wake of the disaster. Kenji readily threw himself into the task as it served a dual and somewhat oxymoronic purpose. It took his mind off his worries but in doing so he felt strangely closer to Alexa.

I have to do this… It's what she would have wanted, he thought each time he threw himself into another mission. This is what she would be proud of. She had been a hero. She is a hero. I wish she could have been here to see it.

Friday night at the Grand was in full swing and Kenji found himself in his usual booth. Earlier, several girls had approached him to dance, eager to get his number but he had politely turned them down, preferring his own thoughts to the loud atmosphere of the club. His brain returned to its usual patterns, thoughts of Alexa, of her whereabouts.

Was she safe? Was she even alive?

The sad knowing smile she gave him just before she vanished appeared once again in his mind along with each vivid detail of that fateful day that had been etched deeply on the surface of his brain. Not for the first time, he immersed himself in the memory.

Fuschia rays lit up the sky, beams of energy rippling across the scene. Several skyscrapers were on fire, the smoke rising gently above the chaos below. The salty taste of blood and metal mingled on his tongue as, screams, sirens, sounds of wreckage merging together in a horrific cacophony that grazed his eardrums, setting his teeth on edge.

He had been too weak, powerless to do anything but watch as the madman that was Silas Prescott violently slam Alexa into pavement, the asphalt splintering under the impact. Arcs of magenta energy emanated from his form as he hammered his fists into her body. From somewhere on his left, Kenji vaguely heard Eva calling out.

'Starfly!’

Anger raced through him as he shouted across the tumult.

‘Get away from her!’

With great difficulty, Kenji pushed himself up onto an elbow before a stab of pain cut through his chest. Desperately shoving the sensation aside, he staggered to his feet before another blast of energy slammed into his torso, overwhelmed his body and he sank to his knees. The edges of his vision began to blur as the pinkish glow around Silas seemed to intensify ten times over. Alexa’s eyes found his own amidst all the chaos, her gaze holding a thousand unspoken words as her lips curved into a sad smile. As realisation dawned on him, Kenji started forward, ignoring the ripple of agony that coursed through his body, determined to get to her.

‘Alexa no! There has to be another way!’

For a moment, he thought Minuet was using her abilities to slow down time as he watched the woman he cared so deeply for pull Silas up into the stratosphere, her figure gradually growing smaller and smaller as she disappeared into the clouds above them. Shortly after, a massive explosion unfolded from above, blinding beams of pink light piercing through the clouds. A soul-crushing, resounding howl of pain and loss ripped from Kenji's throat before his brain could register what was happening.

NOOOO!

His eyes frantically raked the boundless morning sky for that familiar black suit, searching for some sign, any sign that she was alright. Through the storm of emotions, he felt rather than saw Eva come up beside him.

‘Do you see her?’ His voice was a ragged mess as he struggled to his feet, his bronze exterior vanishing as he scanned the horizon. Time became foreign as Kenji fought waves of fatigue, blindly staggering through the carnage of the battle, searching for her in the rubble until he fell to his knees. Soft hands came to rest on his shoulders.

‘Kenji… Kenji please. You can’t go on like this,’ Poppy’s soft voice broke through his frenzied state. ‘You’re exhausted. You need to rest.’

He cast his eyes to the sky, remembering Alexa’s dark ones burning into his before she sacrificed herself for the planet. ‘I-I need to find her Poppy… She has to be alive… I need to tell her...'

‘I know,’ Poppy soothed, running a hand across his bronze back. ‘I know. We will do everything to find her. But you need to come with me. You’ can’t help find her if you’ve collapsed with exhaustion.’

As much as Kenji hated to admit it, she had a point and the fatigue hit him as he struggled to his feet, allowing her to lead him away.

His phone chimed loudly, sending Kenji screeching back to the present and a glance at the brightly illuminated screen revealed a text message from Dax.

Found the perp from the homicide. Sending the coordinates now.

In an instant, he had grabbed his jacket and exited the building, fingers tapping out a quick reply.

On my way.

A few weeks earlier there had been a murder of four of the city's biggest business tycoons after their embezzlement scandal that had put hundreds of employees out of a job, was uncovered. When the authorities had finally broken into their luxurious villas to arrest them, all the men were found dead, heads separated from their bodies by a few metres of space. One by one more of the city’s corrupt leaders and citizens were found dead in their homes after evidence of their deceit was exposed.

The killer had executed their dark task with maximum prejudice and violence and when traces of Prism energy had been detected on the latest crime scene the police departments had immediately enlisted Talos on the case. Up till now, they had had no solid leads and law enfacement was reduced to grasping at straws, stray comments on online forums, scouring for hidden codes in text messages. When the media discovered this, they'd a field day with the information, spinning tall tales of events that never happened, striking fear into the hearts of the citizens, awarding the menace a moniker of The Phantom.

Kenji had been the murderer’s tail for over almost three weeks now but each time he got close they seemed to evade his reach. This was the strongest lead the team had ever picked up. If the information was held, he was close, so close to catching the bastard he could taste it on his tongue.

He was not letting them get away this time.

Touching the ear piece on the left side of his head, Kenji frowned, skeptically eyeing the decrepit steel warehouse before him. 'Dax you sure this is the place?'

The cool night air grazed his bronze form as he stared at the line of abandoned buildings at the docks edge, their silhouettes illuminated by the light of the pale full moon. The entire scene was eerily quiet save for water rippling gently against the jetties. A blueish hologram of the bushy haired lab assistant flickered up from the device on his bronze wrist.

'About 87% sure Talos. Prism energy here is at an all time high here, too high for any Liquid Prism user and the readings only match perfectly with the ones of the crime scene.’

‘Huh..’ Kenji heard Poppy say. 'If I didn’t know any better I’d say it was..’

‘Focus Poppy!’ Dax snapped. 'We have a murderer to catch.'

Kenji grunted in response. 'That's good enough for me. I'm going in.'

'Be careful Kenji.' Poppy's voice was thick with worry.

Brushing her words aside, he made for the building, ready to finally bring justice to the madman who had terrorised the city.

The main door to the structure was padlocked with chains but Kenji located a small side door and pushed it open, wincing as the hinges creak loudly. Moonlight splintered through the steel plated walls and cracked window panes, illuminating the dust warehouse floor littered with haphazardly stacked wooden boxes and large misshapen pieces of metal. Kenji's foot brushed a pile of rusty chains and he winced as a metallic clink echoed through the building. Rounding a wall of boxes, he was about to abandon the search before he saw a pale stream of moonlight entering through the open skylight.

A lone figure knelt in the square of light on lowest floor of the warehouse, a head of dark hair bowed, hands clenching in tight fists resting on bent knees.

At the sight, cold anger swelled up inside Kenji, tickling the back of his throat and flooding his sinuses and he struggled to fathom how a maniac who had killed at least a dozen people in cold blood could sit to calmly so peacefully like that, with the knowledge that they had taken life from other human beings. Sure the victims had’t been completely innocent, he might almost go so far as to say they deserved it. Almost.

While Kenji spared no drop of empathy for those businessman and media moguls who had been killed, his firm grip on morality reminded him that they had been human beings, like everyone else and there was no excuse for the violence that had brought them to their end.

Gritted his teeth, Kenji wound up for a punch, his right arm morphing into a hammer-like appendage - an ability he’d developed during the last year to transform any part of his bronze form into an object he projected from his mind. Pure rage seethed through him and his muscles tensed to coordinate for the perfect surprise attack. He poised to leap out from his hiding place behind a wall of boxes, his brain already beginning the process of coordinating an ambush when a stray puff of wind rippled through the warehouse, gently shifting the greasy hair covering the killer’s face. Recognition jolted through him and Kenji willed himself to reverse the motion, his body fighting to stabilise as two opposing actions collided, throwing him off balance towards the floor.

Her face. It was a face he knew, eyes he recognised, lips he’d kissed and caressed so lovingly.

Alexa.

Her name echoed in his mind with a new meaning almost as if her physical presence shook him out of the trance he had been in for the last 12 months. In that time Kenji’d pictured this encounter a thousand times, imagined each possible way it could play out in every moment waking or sleeping. He was too surprised to be angry, the adrenaline coursing through his veins temporarily keeping all the vast spectrum of emotions her presence had trigged at bay for now at least. His breath caught in his throat, a thousand questions swirling in his head.

How did she survive? Where had she been all this time? Why didn’t she come back to the lab? What was she doing in this place?

Unsure of what to say, Kenji hesitantly inched his way towards her, not caring to conceal the sounds his footsteps made against the dusty floor. Her eyes were downcast, and she did not make any move to acknowledge his presence. Only when he was a few metres away, did he dare to address her hesitantly.

‘Alexa.'

Her name sounded so foreign on his tongue after a year of unease almost as if he had forgotten to how to pronounce it.

‘WHAT?!?’ His friends voices overlapped as they shrieked their resulting surprise in his ear. With her gaze trained steadily on the floor beneath her, she snapped an arm up in his direction, fingers splayed outward, palm facing him as sparks of pink energy flickering dangerously between her digits. Kenji immediately froze, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.

‘I’m not gonna hurt you. I just want to talk.'

Ignoring Dax and Poppy’s screeches of protest, he flipped the tiny switch on the earpiece, severing the connection.

‘Just you and me. A-Are you okay?’ He asked, punctuating the question with a tentative step forward. She ignored his question and though her arm remained outstretched, pink lightning vanished.

‘I’m gonna come closer now okay?,’ he told her, fighting to keep his voice even. When she made no move, he took a few steps closer to her kneeling figure.

In this unstable state, Kenji had no idea what she would do and the last thing he wanted was to scare her off. Now that he was closer, he could see through her greasy strands of hair to the blue brown eyes underneath still fixated on the spot on the floor. The light from the full moon was sufficient enough to bring his attention to her familiar black suit now riddled with rips and what he suspected to be burn marks, judging from the angry raw flesh underneath. Static streaks of pink lightning sparked across her skin in wild unpredictable patterns, almost seeming to flow from within her person.

Closer still and he could see the deep purple crescents under her eyes and his stomach dropped. Alexa’s true birth right as an alien was no secret to him, she’d confided in him about the real reason behind her enhanced endurance and capabilities. She was a strong woman and her powers only fortified her iron will and stubborn persistence. For her to end up here like this, so battered and ravaged, Kenji shuddered to think of the horrors she might have faced in the last year in whatever alien realm or cosmic continent she had disappeared to.

He shivered at the weight of this thought and it took a physical effort for him to remove all such concerns, at least temporarily. Right now she needed him, she needed her friend, someone he could trust and Kenji cast aside his bronze form, the metal rippling back to expose his human flesh. A tiny voice warned him against doing so, issuing a tugging reminder of his original mission, about the murderer he was meant to be tracking but he forcefully silenced the thought.

The one and only thing that mattered now was Alexa.

Crouching down to her level, he was close enough to touch her now, barely an arm's distance away. As much as his hands screamed to touch her, to hold her, tell her it was ok, he fought against the instinct, partially in the interest of self preservation, if he was being honest with himself. Even as Talos, he had barely been a match for her when she’d first discovered her powers and now Kenji shuddered to think what devastation Alexa could achieve with these newfound abilities. The bubbling sensation in his gut told him that it wouldn’t take much more than one hit from her pink lightning to knock him out. It was paramount that he did nothing to antagonising her in this fractured state. He had no idea what state her mind was in right now and could only imagine the fear and uncertainty she must be feeling. One false move on his part could scare her away and he’d lose her all over again.

‘Alexa,’ Kenji gulped before beginning tentatively. ‘Alexa, you have to come with me. It's not safe here.’

She continued to stare at a crack in the concrete undeterred by his request. If it wasn’t for the twitch of her mouth, he’d assume she was ignoring him.

Kenji tried again, becoming more and more aware of how exposed their position was and if anyone was lurking to attack they’d have a clear shot at them. He needed to persuade Alexa to leave or at least move to a more sheltered area.

'There’s a murderer on the loose… they've killed over a dozen people and they could-‘

'Murderer hmm? That's what they’re calling me now?’

Her voice was low and cracked almost as if she hadn’t used it in the entire year she’d been away. Or rather, Kenji realised, she’d used it too much, running it ragged from screaming until it escaped her in a rough croak. Her tone, however, was unmistakable, bordering somewhere between vague disinterest and amusement and the way she emphasised murderer was enough to made him bristle visibly. Why was it that word that broke her out of her trance? What was it about the word that suddenly prompted her to acknowledge him?

'Alexa what do you mean?’ Kenji questioned, not comprehending her meaning. 'No one’s called you a murderer? Silas’ death was not your fault.'

She raised her head at the remark. Her stormy eyes stared blankly into his, looking at Kenji for the first time in a year. He marvelled again at the unique combination of green and brown in her irises, one of the first things he’d noticed about her. Her gaze now was obstructed partially by the grimy strands of black hanging limply from her scalp but the look held within was unmistakable.

'A-Alexa?’ He stammered, as the neurons in his brain kicked into overdrive, scrambling to put together the pieces as a surge of doubt rose up in his chest welled up.

Kenji shook his head violently as if the very action could expel the notion from his mind and undo the countless atrocities she was alluding to have committed. He refused to admit it.

Because it just wasn’t true!

This was Alexa he was talking to. His Alexa.

The thought stunned him. He’d never called her that, never once in his mind or out loud and certainly not to her face. While the thought prompted feelings of tenderness and nostalgia, Kenji found it hard to stomach either of the as he frantically searched her eyes for some remorse, a shred of regret, anything to reassure him that he’d read it wrong, that actually it wasn’t her after all, it was an accident, she hadn’t meant to do it. It was all a misunderstanding because she wasn’t a murderer, she just couldn’t be. He felt sick to the stomach instantly.

A deeper horror replaced the initial shock as Kenji watched Alexa’s left eyebrow lifted ever so slightly, throwing out a challenge in the subtle move, daring him to think differently.

She’d done it. She’d killed those people.

She was the murderer.

It seemed to press on his chest, constricting his lungs until his breath came out in haggard gasps. Kenji didn’t know what was worse, the fact that she’d done it or that she was proud of what she’d done. He struggled to keep his composure to keep himself from shouting, from grabbing her to yell why, how could she have done this?

His face must have betrayed him because Alexa's lips had just begun to curl up into a terrifying smile almost as if she was taking pleasure in watching him squirm. The muscles of her jaw unclenched in preparation to speak when-

BEEP BEEP

Both sets of eyes flew immediately to the communications device on his wrist where the blue hologram of Poppy began to take form. Her voice flowed in through Kenji’s earpiece and he cursed once, realising Dax must have had deliberately reactivated their comm line.

'Sorry to interrupt Talos.’ His friend's tone was apologetic and one glance at Alexa told him that she was using her super hearing to listen in on the conversation.

His gaze focused once more on the hologram and his friend's dishevelled appearance before he realised something must have been very wrong for Poppy Patel to be wearing torn clothes.

'There's been another attack on the nano science labs here at Prescott Industries,’ her voice was shaky as she spoke. 'I know you’re in the middle of something important but they’ve got guns and are all enhanced on Liquid Prism.'

Poppy’s voices took on a desperate tone now. 'There are seven of them and they’ve got Dax and the other scientists locked away in the simulation room. I don’t know where Grayson or Eva are but I managed to get out and get to the lab. Please Kenji! We need yo-'

Poppy’s blue silhouette fizzled once before disappearing as the feed cut out. Kenji leapt to up, adrenaline coursing through him as his eyes flew across the room, searching for the nearest exit, scrambling to calculate how quickly he could get to his friends.

In a heartbeat, Alexa was on her feet next to him, her voice leaden as she stated. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No way!' Kenji protested, looking at her as if she was out of her mind. After what she had just revealed to him, there was no way in hell he’d allow her to come along. 'Thats not an option. Not in your current state.’

She ignored his protest, glaring ahead, her face devoid of emotion. 'They must be purged. The only way is to eliminate them. Permanently.’

‘What?’ He snapped, whirling around to look at her. For a brief moment he thought she was playing a cruel joke on him but one look at her stony expression put that thought to rest.

'Alexa do you even hear yourself?’ He questioned, refusing to believe what he had just heard. 'You’re not actually suggesting to kill them are you?'

'What other option is there?'

Her suggestion burned in his ears as Kenji stared at her in horror. The way she said it made the idea seem so simple, as if it was a casual comment or remark. He could never imagine such words to come from the Alexa he’d known. She’d never trivialise something as important as peoples lives, no matter who or what they had done.

'They don’t deserve to live.’ He heard her say, her voice echoing hollowly through the empty warehouse.

She couldn’t do this, he wouldn’t let her. He wouldn’t standby and watch as she murdered more people. That alone was enough to break him out of the trance her words had trapped in and he finally found his voice.

'Maybe not but its not up to you to decide that,’ he pleaded, hoping, praying that she would come to her senses.

Alexa scoffed bitterly, settled her stormy grey gaze on him. ‘Everyone has their vices, darling, at least mine do some damn good around here.’

‘Vices?’ Kenji gasped raggedly, shocked that such words could come from his friend, the woman he deeply cared for. ‘Arrogance is a vice, drinking too much is a vice. Killing people isn’t a vice Alexa! I don’t care what you've done, no hero should ever—’

Her voice was as sharp as steel, silencing him, cutting through his protests with frightening precision. ‘Well there’s your first mistake. Who ever said I wanted to be a hero?’

That voice cut Kenji to his core, like a diamond knife heated precisely, deliberately to the melting point of bronze stabbed into his chest to its intended destination, his heart and he recoiled from it as if she’d physically struck him. Memories of times shared with her came flooding back through the chaos churning inside him. Alexa couldn’t have forgotten. Even if she didn’t want to remember, he did and he be damned if he failed to convince her otherwise.

‘You did Alexa! You said that yourself! You used to save people. That's what heroes do. What you did! You saved us all from Silas last year and-

‘Look how that turned out,’ she hissed, her face morphing into an ugly sneer so intense that Kenji actually took a step away from her.

Despite her protests, Kenji still believe that the woman he loved was there. She had to be there. She just needed to be reminded of who she was.

'Come home with me Alexa. Come home please! We can sort this out. I know we can!' As Kenji said this he placed a hand on her arm, touching her for the first time.

Faster than lightning, her arm shot out against his chest, shoving him hard and his reflexes barely had time to summon his bronze form before his body hit the warehouse wall, hard. Kenji could taste the metallic tang of blood in his mouth, his vision swimming, barely able to register Alexa's dark figure standing over him.

'Don't you see?’ She snarled, her voice rising over the ringing in his ears. 'I did go home! And all they did was make me into a monster. There's so much you don’t understand, so much I’ve done. There’s no going back for me now.’

Before Alexa could walk away, Kenji latched on to her leg, pouring all his strength into the grip, even though he knew he couldn’t hold her back. ‘Alexa, please you don’t believe that. You can’t believe that. Please.'

'Let me go Katsaros. Before you make me do something you'll regret,’ she spat venomously.

Kenji’s sharp intake of breath could be hear throughout the warehouse when she said his name.

'Then do it!' He pleaded, voice high in desperation. 'I don’t care what happens to me if it will bring you back. The city needs you back! Your friends Grayson, Dax, Eva, Poppy they were all looking for you everyone was looking for you. I just need you back Alexa.’

His legs swayed against empty air as she seemed to rise above him and he tightened his grip on her leg as she began to hover higher and higher, passing through the open skylight.

'The Alexa you knew is not coming back,’ she informed him coldly as their altitude increased until the entire city sprawled out below them. 'She died when Silas blasted her into oblivion. You’re nothing but a fool chasing a fantasy.'

Kenji’s hold faltered slightly and his muscles burned, using all his energy to clutch her leg.‘No! I refuse to believe that. My Alexa is still in there. If that makes me a fool so be it!' He declared before his breath caught and he choked out the next words. 'I love you so much, I'd be willing to die for you.'

Alexa halted their ascent, her piercing stare cutting through whatever resolve he had left. Of all the weapons she’d attacked him with, her silence, her blatant refusal to speak was the most violent.

At this, something inside Kenji just… broke…

It was unspeakable torture to look into the eyes of the woman you had confessed your love for and find nothing but cold distaste and repulsion. His arms screamed as he struggled to keep his grip, trying to find some purchase, some reassurance to fortify his convictions but there was none. Space had chewed up the woman he loved, disgorging this cold-hearted, malevolent creature in her place instead.

Even as he fell, Kenji's eyes remained on her retreating figure. Without so much as a second glance, the Phantom soared upwards, disappearing into the night. She wasn’t his to claim, never was and from the last look in her eyes, she never would be.

She truly was an alien to him now...

30 notes · View notes