#final word count 8212 words

[tmnt-obsessed-ace]

Lost But Never Found: Chapter 1, A Clashing Of Titans

How will the world end?

A grim question to be sure. Will it end in flames? A giant inferno consuming everything in its path.

Perhaps a flood will be the cause. Drowning all life before the titans of the sea consume the remains.

Maybe the world will freeze, a giant lifeless ball of ice floating through space.

Of course there's a more terrifying option. When the world crumbles due to something else. Something not natural.

Something that's indestructible.

Even the strongest weapons known to man cannot even graze it.

It's too powerful, stronger than the wildest hurricane, the biggest volcano, the deadliest earthquake.

How would you even fight something like that? Answer: you can't.

You can't fight it.

Can't hide from it.

Can't escape.

Its raw unrestrained power, strangled into a body made of metal. Metal that has been infused with nothing but pure evil.

Begging for mercy is out of the question. It wont grant it.

It doesn't even seem to understand the concept of "mercy." Destruction is all it knows.

It is a wild feral animal, attacking anything and everything that moves.

But what exactly is this terrifying creature that could bring about the end of the world as people know it?

It is known by one name.

The Shredder.

Once a kind man turned a monster by the armor his soul now haunts. The armor had been destroyed, the pieces scattered across the globe. It was the only way to ensure that the Shredder would never return to the earth.

The key word being had. The horrible dark armor had been destroyed.

It had been reconstructed, piece by piece by the Foot clan. The Foot Clan was a cult devoted to the Shredder, their ultimate goal was to unleash their lord and together they would take over the world.

Of course that scenario did not exactly play out as they had hoped. The Shredder attacked them instantly, because it was not the Shredder they expected. Instead of a conquering evil warlord they got a feral wild animal.

Serves them right honestly.

However those cowards had fled as soon as things went south. Leaving their enemies, the remains of the Hamato clan to deal with the fallout.

The aforementioned fallout being the Shredder attacking everything in sight before zapping to a new location to trash, rinse and repeat every fifteen minutes.

It was exhausting.

Fighting this unstoppable bundle of rage, barely staying alive until it zaps to another location.

So a plan had been made, to go get help from one of the top crime bosses of the yokai-populated Hidden City beneath New York.

Her name is Big Mama, she is as deceptive as she is entrancing.

Now outside of her beloved Nexus Hotel a blue glow appeared in the air, swirling brightly as it formed a massive circle. A portal.

Two figures landed crouched down in front of the massive hotel. The taller of the two slung an ōdachi over his shoulder, looking down at the shorter with a slightly anxious gaze.

"So you knew Big Mama back in the day?" The taller figure, a mutant red eared slider asked curiously. The shorter, a portly mutant rat flushed nervously.

"We were just friends!" He replied all too quickly to be convincing. "I mean, it will all be fine!" The rat finished with a horribly nervous laugh. The slider rolled his eyes gazing up at the massive hotel.

It will be fine! He'll go right in there, crank up the charm, and face-man Big Mama so hard she'll be on her hands and knees begging to help them! Easy! He's got this!

The dozens of cuts and scrapes that littered his body stung as a painful reminder that he had to do this. Everyone was counting on him. If he didn't get Big Mama's help, his family and the entire world were fucking screwed.

But he's got this!

He turned to the rat, time to face the music, or in this case the manipulative spider yokai that would most definitely try to kill them given the chance.

The rat had turned around and was muttering under his breath while clutching his head in his hands. "Just rat up and see her. How bad could it be? Okay, super awful, but come on! Tuck in your tail and let's go!"

Okay…

They entered the hotel. The slider spotted one of the bellhops, a fox yokai, standing in front of the elevator. First get past this guy and then deal with Big Mama.

The slider, Leo, cleared his throat as they approached the bellhop.

"Two to see Big Mama. We're totally on her schedule." He said, piling on the charm. The fox's expression didn't change, better throw in a compliment to sweeten the deal. "Sweet whisker mustache, BTW. Makes you look young. Or old, whichever you're going for."

The bellhop rolled his eyes in annoyance before pulling a walkie talkie out of his pocket, score.

Leo glanced down at the rat, who is his beloved father Splinter. Splinter grimaced, nervously fidgeting with his tattered Lou Jitsu costume.

"Two chatted-up mutants here for ya, mum. A rat and one of them bleedin' turtles." Leo resisted the urge to scoff. Now that was just plain rude. He held his tongue, can't screw up now.

Big Mama's voice crackled through the walkie talkie "Tell them to shove off" The bellhop repeated it, much to Leo's annoyance. But that's fine! Plan B he portals them straight to that stupid spider lady's office!

Before the witty response could leave his mouth Splinter spoke up.

"Fine. Tell her her snuggle muffin beefcake is here." An embarrassed blush coated Splinter's face while Leo felt his stomach churn.

"Uh," He started, cringing down to his soul. "How do you know Big Mama again?" The slider yelped when his shorter father pulled him down to eye level. After a short glance at the bellhop to be sure he wasn't listening, Splinter sighed before turning back to his son.

The rat began to whisper "In addition to being a crime boss, Big Mama is also kind of…my ex."

Leo sat there, frozen as the words rooted himself deep into his skull.

Then he screamed in horror, his body cringing so hard it felt like he was being out through a meat grinder. Dear god why? Why?

Splinter began talking about how they met, a story of love, an inseparable pair. Those two were practically soulmates! Then the story grew dark when Big Mama rejected his proposal, revealing her true form and kidnapping him to the Battle Nexus to become her champion.

The boy was struggling not to throw up, the thought of his dad dating Big Mama! Yeah no he would rather stick his head into raw sewage. His father sighed as he finished his tale

"I do miss her pre-kidnapping times. I mean, how could anyone stay mad at those eyes? That smile. And those-" Leo covered his ears, if he heard more of his father's dating life he would scream.

"No, no, no, no more lovey and or dovey talk!" The bellhop made a noise of annoyance, gaining the duo's attention. A sinister smirk was one his muzzle.

"Hey, rat! Big Mama's got a message for you two." Splinter muttered something about a long overdue apology while Leo huffed. Showtime. Before they could blink, two dark blue coins were thrown at their heads.

The coins swirled into a pink and orange portal, sucking both rat and turtle into the vortex. Screams tore through their lungs as they zipped around through the blue vortex before crashing face first into unforgiving concrete.

When they sat up they were behind a glass railing, looming over the arena below.

Far below was a massive kraken, tentacles waving around the arena while some poor sap with a flimsy battle ax cowered nervously before the beast. Even from high above it was obvious the poor guy was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

In the blink of an eye the poor fool was flung into the stone wall hard enough to leave a massive crater. That had to hurt.

The crowd erupted like a volcano, blood red petals falling from the ceiling into the arena.

Splinter visibly shuddered next to Leo, but the slider pretended not to be phased. Fake it till you make it as the saying goes.

"The Battle Nexus? Okay, no biggie. We've got this. Trust me." His father scoffed, grabbing the poor boy's face.

"I do not!" Splinter scolded. "You don't know Big Mama like I do. She's ruthless!" The elevator dinged, speak of the mother fucking devil. Out came the jorōgumo herself.

Perfect timing, the slider was beginning to let the mask slip. It was slapped back on, glued down and hopefully the cracks couldnt be seen.

"Snuggle muffin beefcake?" She began, not even sparing Leo a glance, which he was grateful for because he once again felt like he was going to puke."Where did you hear that naughty little nickname, rat man?"

The rat's cheeks darkened once more, before he steeled himself. Before Leo could gag his father spun Big Mama around, gazing up at her six glowing red eyes.

"From you, as we tangoed the night away, my sassy sugar badger" Ok that's it Leo couldn't take it anymore. He noped right out of that conversation and gazed down at the arena below.

The kraken was gone, the poor idiot's bloody remains being cleaned off the arena floor. Poor guy didn't stand a chance. The turtle grimaced, even from here it didn't look pretty.

He looked up at one of the mystic monitors, which was displaying the next upcoming fight.

"The Sunset Serpent vs the Akuma Kappa"

On the left was a huge red and orange constrictor snake yokai with way too many eyes for a danger noodle to have.

But the fighter on the right truly got Leo's attention.

The fighter on the right was much smaller than the snake. Despite the short stature this guy was nonetheless menacing.

Most of the guy's body was covered by a black cloak obscuring it from view. He was holding twin katanas, blood from a previous battle dripping from the blades. The guy's hands appeared to be massive spider claws just Big Mamas.

The only part visible was the face under the shadow of the hood.

Glowing blood red streaks under the eyes, mouth covered by a black mask with a truly vicious glowing demon fang decal. It was…sinister to say the least. Like a monster underneath the bed.

Eesh, wouldn't want to piss that guy off.

Big Mama's voice cut through Leo's thoughts.

"I do have a splendiferous mystic bauble that you can have. For a price." Her masked assistant held up a projection of a mystic looking collar. Leo smirked.

Bingo.

"And there it is. Always has to be something in it for her." Splinter retorted, time to crank up the Leo.

"Prickly Petey losing his charm?"

He got between the two old lovebirds, slinging an arm around Big Mama's shoulders.

"Hey, hey, hey, water under the bridge. Big Mama, Bubby, let's talk Shredder. He's bad for us, bad for New York, bad for your Yokai business in New York. So, if you got a solution, let's make a deal." He cooed sweetly, watching her like a hawk.

He caught her expression shift subtly from annoyed to confused to understanding. He could vaguely hear his father's protests, how "no one outsmarts Big Mama."

Well that may be true but Big Mama never met the only and only Neon Leon Hamato! He's got this!

"You know, I don't hear a lot of cheering." He began, and it was true there was a lot less cheering than the last time the turtles were here.

"Business is not booming. What you need is a headliner. Someone to put butts in seats. Someone to take on your new champ. Someone like your old champ in new form: Ratjitzu!" Splinter squawked in protest, which Leo swiftly ignored.

Before Big Mama could even open her mouth Leo kept going "Okay fine, let me sweeten the deal!"

"But she didn't even say no to your first deal yet!"

"And Ratjitzu is going to be fighting with no weapons." Big Mama looked excited, seriously considering such a proposition.

"But that beast has rat-crushing tentacles!" Once again Splinter's protests went ignored.

"We have a deal!" Big Mama said, whether from genuine excitement over the supposed battle of the ages or perhaps sadistic pleasure at watching her old ex most likely get pummeled. Who really cares about the specifics.

Splinter all but screamed in the background. Leo however smiled brightly at Big Mama.

"Yes! Ah, I'm not sure how this works. Which hand do I shake?" After a brief handshake he pulled the rat close to his side. "Trust me pops. You got this."

"I knew I should’ve bought purple." Leo rolled his eyes as they were escorted to a dressing room. Big Mama was watching them with a sinister smirk. She thinks she was playing them, gaining their trust to betray them soon after.

But what big spooky spider lady didn't know is that Leo was playing her right back.

And he plays to win.

The plan was in place, and Leo couldn't be more giddy.

Everything worked out perfectly, he already knows exactly how they will take down Kraken Tom. And Big Mama still thinks she's the one in control!

Ha!

Yeah right!

He can already picture her shocked face when she gets outplayed by a teenager!

There's just one last detail needed to make this plan a success.

A portal coin.

He'll stuff it into his brand new totally awesome Lou Jitsu costume and when Big Mama betrays them, because she will betray them, Wham! He'll steal his Ōdachi and they'll be home free!

The hard part is getting the portal coin without anyone noticing.

Big Mama and her creepy ass assistant were in her office, organizing the event while Splinter was still being fitted for his new costume. Only three more battles until its showtime.

So Leo was wandering around the halls of the Nexus, sneakily avoiding the gaze of the bellhops and guards. He should be able to snatch a portal coin from one of them.

But which one? Which one has the lowest attention span so they won't notice turtle fingers in their pockets?

Then he heard a noise.

The slider stopped dead in his tracks, not even daring to breathe. If he's caught now the world's done for!

A few seconds pass before he hears it again.

The noise was a faint whimper. You had to strain to hear it.

Leo glanced down the hall, following the sound. As he got closer to the sound it sounded like someone was in pain. Soon he stood in front of a wall, the noises could be heard on the other side.

A wall making noises?

There was a small indent on the floor, a button from the looks of it. Hidden just out of sight to anyone not paying attention.

Leo gently kicked the button with his foot, a soft click could be heard as the wall opened a bit. He smirked, pushing his way into the wall. There was a small back room hidden behind the wall.

The wall clicked shut behind him, leaving the only light source being some dim glowing crystals here and there.

There were boxes, some old weapons, bones… yeesh this place was creepy.

A pained grunt caught Leo's attention.

Sitting on one of the boxes was another turtle.

A turtle with a badly dislocated left shoulder.

The left hand was planted firmly to the wall while he was trying to move the joint back in place with his right hand. His arms and legs were wrapped in thick layers of dirty fabric similar to boxing tape up to his biceps and upper thighs.

"Uh boy that looks bad." Leo couldn't help but blurt out. The turtle yelped, and in a split second the blade of a katana was pointed at his throat.

"Who are you?" The turtle gasped, the sword shaking like a leaf. Leo gulped, taking several steps back. There were incredibly dark bags under the turtle's eyes. He looked exhausted.

"Woah woah woah there pal!" Leo hastily backtracked, waving his hands in surrender.

"Shut up! Who sent you? W-was it Big Mama?" The turtle stuttered out, nearly dropping the katana from how hard he was shaking.

"No! No, I just heard you whimpering and wanted to check it out! Honest!"

"Well everything is fine! So leave! Before anyone finds us!" Leo frowned, gazing at the dislocated shoulder. That straight up looked painful. The medic in him was screaming to fix it, set the joint or else it would heal badly.

There were several dozen cuts all over the turtle's body all in various stages of healing. From deep gashes to thin scrapes. Some even looked infected.

Leo reached for his fanny packs under the thick jumpsuit, causing the turtle to straight up flinch.

"Easy! Look let me patch up your wounds and fix your shoulder then I'll get out of your hair! Ok?"

"It's not your job to fix me up. It was my fault I got hurt so I got it!"

"Uh clearly you don't got it pal."

"Save your energy for your own battle."

"What?"

The katana blade was pointed at Leo's sick ass outfit.

"You're dressed like a fighter, albeit a really dumb looking one, so your turn in the arena is coming up soon."

Leo rolled his eyes, crouching down to be eye level with the turtle. "First of all dude this outfit is the iconic jumpsuit of the famed Lou Jitsu! And second, I'm not an official fighter."

"Who's Lou Jitsu?"

The slider gasped, a hand over his heart.

"You don't know who Lou Jitsu is?" The other turtle shook his head, a curious glint in his eyes.

Leo sighed, clapping his hands. "Let me patch you up and I'll tell you all about him! Deal?" The turtle looked at him questioningly.

The blade was lowered, set down on one of the boxes. "Fine, do your worst." Leo smirked, gently grabbing the dislocated shoulder. The turtle winced, already gritting his teeth.

"Ok so Lou Jitsu is one of the best action fighters of all time!" Leo began, keeping his voice to a quiet whisper as he worked on easing the joint back into the socket.

In two minutes there was a loud pop, the turtle biting his lip to keep from screaming. He slumped against the wall, breathing like he ran a marathon.

"Feels better?" The turtle nodded, moving his arm around. "Hey buddy you gotta rest that arm or it won't heal!"

The turtle huffed out a tired laugh.

"Tell that to Big Mama!"

"I'm sure the look on her face will be worth it!" Leo boasted, pulling out some disinfectant spray and bandages. Time to deal with the smaller injuries.

"What do you mean?" The turtle asked, suddenly afraid. Leo smirked, leaning close to him.

"I'm gonna outplay Big Mama!" He whispered with an excited giggle.

The turtle gave him a horrified and or baffled look.

"Are you insane?" Leo smirked harder, ignoring the soft hiss from the turtle as he sprayed a cut on his thigh. "That's full on suicide!"

"Is it?" The turtle smacked Leo on the head, hard enough to make him yelp.

"Of course it is! Big Mama is crazy manipulative! She sees through any plan you could make and stops you from making a move. Then she will kill you!"

"We got a deal!" The turtle scoffed, flicking Leo in the forehead. He got his payback by tightly tying a bandage over the cut, far tighter than necessary. The turtle squeaked before the bandages were loosened a tad.

"It doesn't matter what 'deal' you have! She will betray you!"

"Exactly!" Leo countered before moving on to a gash on the turtle's stomach. "In fact I'm counting on it!" The turtle shook his head, muttering under his breath.

"We both know your little plan is going to flop!"

"Do we?"

"Uh yes! It's Big Mama, you can't win against her. Believe me I tried." The turtle took off the boxer tape on his right arm, revealing three massive dark scars extending from the wrist to the elbow.

Marks from Big Mama's claws.

Dread pooled in Leo's stomach.

"I almost bled out because of these. She said this was the first and last warning. Defy her again and…" The turtle made a cut throat motion with his finger. "Only reason she kept me is because I'm a good fighter."

Leo gently ran his fingers down the dark scars, heart drumming in his chest. The boxer tape was back on the turtle's arm a few seconds later, wrapped in a practiced mechanical motion. Leo continued patching the rest of the turtle's injuries before finally sighing.

"Everyone's depending on me to win this. Win against Big Mama. I got this!" The turtle rolled his eyes.

"And how exactly are you going to pull this grand scheme off huh?" Leo glanced back at the wall he came in from. No one can hear about this.

"You promise not to tell anyone?"

The turtle nodded, scooting closer to Leo. The slider pulled out a small notebook and pen from his shell, sketching out the plan and how he and his dad were going to whoop ass.

"You're going up against Kraken Tom and the Evil Six? Well if Big Mama doesn't kill you they certainly will."

Leo sketched out the pointy helmets, scribbling some portals onto the paper.

"All I gotta do is snatch a portal coin and we're good to go!"

"And how are you going to do that genius?"

Leo deflated, shrugging nervously.

"I was figuring that out when I heard you."

The turtle frowned, gesturing at Leo to fork over the pen and paper. He started scribbling something before handing the notepad back.

There was a poorly drawn picture of…something. A goat…no maybe a bear…or a narwhal?

"Uh what am I looking at here pal?" The turtle groaned, standing up on unsteady legs.

"I'll show you, follow me!" He limped over to the wall, immediately getting Leo concerned.

"Dude why didn't you mention your leg! Sit back down!"

The turtle just stared at Leo, a weary gaze that made him shudder.

"It's been like that for as long as I can remember. There's nothing you can do. Now hurry up!" Leo frowned but obliged, following the turtle to the wall.

It was then that he realized that the turtle is much shorter than him, maybe three or four inches.

There was a click and the wall opened, the duo peering out into the hallway. There was an elephant seal bellhop passing by in the far distance.

"See that guy?"

"Dude you gotta learn how to draw better holy shit." The turtle ignored that comment and continued.

"His nap break is coming up in about two minutes. Once his head hits the table he's dead to the world."

"And you know this, how exactly?"

"Because I steal knives from him all the time and he never notices."

Leo snickered at that, watching the bellhop go down the stairs.

"Ok cool but how will I find him?"

"He snores like a freight train, it's pretty hard to miss." Leo smirked menacingly, all those years of stealing money from dad's pockets is about to pay off.

"Thanks bud! Wait…" Leo trailed off as the turtle went to grab his katanas. "Why are you helping me? You literally said that my plan is suicide!"

The turtle shrugged at him, in the light from the open wall Leo could see his eyes more clearly.

They were a dark bluish-purple color. An Indigo color framed by a thin rim of electric yellow on the outer part of the iris.

Those eyes were so tired. So utterly drained.

"You helped me so I helped you, now we're even." There was more to it though.

"Is that all buddy boy?"

With a sigh the katanas were picked up, slung over both shoulders like an x.

"I really hope your plan works out, someone's gotta take Big Mama down a peg or two." The two left the backroom, time to go separate ways.

"Hey wait!" Leo grabbed the turtle's right shoulder, stopping him from leaving. "What's your name?"

The turtle's face shifted from stunned back to neutral.

"I don't have one." He said calmly, like he was talking about the weather.

"You don't have a name?" Leo echoed, eyes wide.

The turtle nodded, albeit a bit solemnly.

"I've been in the Battle Nexus for as long as I can remember. I don't know anything else."

"What about Indigo?" At the turtle's confused look Leo pointed to his eyes. "Like your eyes! They're a weird bluish purple color so it fits!"

The turtle chuckled a bit half-heartedly. "I don't really look in the mirror that much but I'll take your word for it…"

"You, my friend, can call me Leo! Or Leon! Whichever makes me sound cooler!"

Indigo smiled a bit. "Sure thing Leon. Hope you don't end up here, your scrawny ass won't last a week!" Indigo said as he left, leaving Leo alone.

Maybe once this whole Shredder nightmare is over they can stage a rescue mission for his new friend Indigo…

Showtime.

The Battle Nexus was absolutely packed with yokai. Some were even fighting over seats just to watch the incoming battle.

You could almost smell the excitement in the air as the entire crowd was screaming. From high above the fuss and the fray sat Big Mama, clapping her hands excitedly.

"The arena has never been this woozy fuddled!" Big Mama cheered, absolutely delighted. Leo smirked, sipping on a cup of fancy tea. In a matter of minutes Big Mama will be as good as got.

What the announcer said shocked Leo to his very core.

"Yokai of all ages, tonight marks a once in a lifetime event! For the first time in Battle Nexus history it's a three way championship knockout to the death! The three biggest titans of the Battle Nexus will go head to head, only one will survive!"

You know what? That's fine no biggie the announcer means that those six big guys are the third person. It's fine! Totally fine! Right?

"In the first corner of the arena are six horrifyingly familiar faces we love to hate and love to root for. You know them! You fear them! The Evil Six!" Those six pinkish looking yokai stepped into the arena. All of them were wearing the pointy helmets.

Leo's heart slowed down, so far so good.

"Joining them in the most unlikely team up of the millenia, with his powerful tentacles he can crush any opponent in seconds! The very beloved current Battle Nexus Champion, Kraken Tom!"

The Kraken slithered out into the arena, bellowing a horrible screech that made everyone go absolutely bonkers! Wait a team-up? But it's a three way battle! Who's…

"And now entering the arena after thirteen years of absence, the biggest former Battle Nexus champion is ready to reclaim his glory, back and even hairier Rat Jitsu!"

Splinter stood trembling in the arena as the crowd roared. Leo smiled, standing behind the glass rail. He looked awesome as hell in his custom Lou Jitsu uniform.

"Dad! Daddy Up here!" He yelled, waving his arms excitedly. Splinter glanced up at him, eyes filled with barely contained anger.

"Can someone tell my son I am not talking to him!" Splinter shouted, Leo ignored the comment. Everything is going to plan, they'll be fine.

"You got this pops! I love you!" The slider blew his father a kiss, which he swatted away like a fly. The boy slumped back onto the couch, glancing at Big Mama. Time to put the plan in motion.

"Remember a deal’s a deal." Big Mama chuckled deviously. Bingo.

"Of course Big Mama never goes back on a deal. She does, however, alter the terms at the very last second." Yeah he saw that one coming, exactly as he wanted. But this has to be believable.

"I’m sorry?" He asked in faux surprise before he was tackled to the ground by guards, his tea cup slapped out of his hands. One of the guards took his ōdachi. "Not my ōdachi!" He whined as Big Mama turned into her spider form.

"One last wrinkly doo. You’ll be fighting alongside your papa. But you still get my bauble if you win." The spider lady said in a singsong voice even having the fucking audacity to boop Leo on the nose.

"An out of nowhere betrayal! NOO!" He screamed as a green trapdoor opened underneath him, sending him into the arena. It wasn't an out of nowhere betrayal, all according to plan.

Splinter looked at his son, who was brushing dust off his own jumpsuit.

"Oh, the old last second trap door betrayal?" He wasn't even trying to hide the sarcasm.

"Please this was my plan all along-" Leo was cut off by the announcer.

"And to complete this unholy trifecta with the third challenger!" The father son duo turned to another set of massive doors, where a fearsome silhouette stood. The figure stepped forward, body covered by a thick black cloak. He lifted his head, Leo's blood turning to ice.

The glowing red streaks under the eyes, the mask with the glowing demon maw.

Indigo eyes framed with a band of electric yellow.

No fucking way-

"What started as a plain old nobody now becomes one of the deadliest fighters in over a century, with his blades he can slice even the biggest of giants down to ribbons. He may be small but he grants no mercy. Everyone give it up for the Oni of the Battle Nexus, the Akuma Kappa!"

What? Oh god this wasn't part of the plan.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

"Just admit it already son. You were played!" Splinter's voice cut through Leo's thoughts like a knife. Leo shook his head, this was unexpected but that's fine he can still salvage this plan and save everyone!

But his father's words still hurt.

"How come nobody trusts me? None of you guys have any faith in me. Why?" The black cloak shrouding the last fighter was ripped off, causing Leo to flinch.

The spider claws were actually custom made gauntlets, with matching black metal boots on his feet. The boxer tape from before was still there and at the same length, though now it was a blood red color.

There was a thick chest plate covering Indigo's plastron. It was diamond shaped with a massive demonic skull design. The fabric from the mask over his mouth extended down to the chest plate, completely covering his neck.

Two blood red shoulder pauldrons were connected to the chest plate. They looked nearly identical to Big Mama's shoulder pauldrons except smaller.

Then there was something on his neck, sitting on top of the fabric from the mask.

It looked silver, with a red spider shaped gemstone in the center. It kinda looked a bit like a dog collar.

Leo couldn't see it in their earlier encounter as the backroom was very dark but Indigo's body was absolutely covered in scars. Some dark and recent others pale from long ago.

Jesus Christ.

Splinter snapped his fingers, regaining Leo's attention.

"Do you want to know why I don't trust you? How about this whole situation!" Leo looked around at all the fighters. The Evil Six, the fucking Kraken! Indigo…

"This whole situation was my plan all along. If it wasn’t, then why'd I ask your tailor to make me this outfit?" Leo kept looking at Indigo, who had unsheathed both katanas and was giving Leo a pitying stare.

The fighters were starting to close in.

"So we could both perish looking super fly?" Leo reached into his costume, pulling out the dark blue portal coin.

"Or so I could sneak this baby in." The portal was activated, right next to the guard holding Leo's ōdachi. He grabbed the sword but not before flicking the guard's cup of tea to the ground "...To sneak this baby in. My deal was no weapons for you, not me."

And then it was on.

Three of the evil six charged first, weapons raised and ready to attack but Leo was faster. He dodged every attack, portaling in and out of sight. This was too easy!

A mace swung towards his skull, which got instantly sucked up into a portal and spat out in the far end of the arena. The yokai screamed, attempting to punch the slider into the ground. Leo was faster, weaving between every single punch and kick.

He swung the ōdachi, creating a blue portal and knocking the ape into the vortex. The portal opened over the top of the furious kraken, who merely swatted the yokai away like an annoying nat. He slammed into one of the distant Battle Nexus walls while the crowd cheered.

"If you would do the honors papa-" Leo stopped when he saw who his dad was fighting.

Dad was running circles around Indigo, dodging the majority of the lethal strikes from the katanas. Katanas that were already streaked with blood.

There was a broad slash that Splinter jumped to avoid, slamming his tail down into Indigo's head. In a burst of speed Splinter's tail was cracking like a whip, attacking Indigo who could barely keep up with the unexpected speed.

A kick to the left shoulder knocked Indigo to the ground, Leo winced. That was the same shoulder that had been dislocated when they met. Dear god that had to have hurt!

"Dad stop-"

The now evil five charged at Splinter, one swinging the mace, knocking him into the wall. Leo growled furiously, portaling on top of the brutes. With ferocious swings of his ōdahi he summoned dozens of portals, one of the brutes falling through. He zapped this way and that like a ball in a pinball machine.

Leo slashed at the other three brutes, landing some very bad ass cuts here and there. Mostly just thin scrapes, their skin was very tough.

"Leonardo!" Dad squawked as he tried to dodge Kraken Tom's massive tentacles. Leo tried to run over and help his dad but he should know better.

You never turn your back on enemies.

A mace slammed into Leo's carapace, knocking him face first to the ground. He rolled over, the mace about to be brought down on his skull. He screamed.

Shhink.

There was a gargled scream causing Leo to gaze up in horror.

A katana was impaled through the yokai's right eye.

A flash of black and red zipped by, yanking the katana out with a swift motion. The spiked helmet was kicked off the brute's head, spinning up in the air.

The yokai's screams were cut short when the twin katanas were slashed through his neck. His body fell to the ground, head rolling not far away. Indigo caught the helmet when it fell back to earth before tossing it to Leo. He started hyperventilating while the volume of the crowd nearly made the building shake.

"D-Dude?" Leo stuttered out, staring in horror at the lifeless severed head, bright green blood pooling around it from both the neck and the right eye socket.

"He was going to do far worse to you." Indigo replied, though his voice didn't sound normal. Almost hazy if that makes sense. Like he wasn't fully present.

Leo gulped, shaking like a leaf. The stench of blood made him nauseous. He could vaguely hear his father screaming while he fought off the other yokai. Though it was difficult to hear of the roar of Kraken Tom and the crowd.

"Leon, now is not the time to freak out! You said everyone's counting on you right?" Indigo yelled, shaking the slider. "We're getting the helmets right?" Leo stood up, swinging the helmet around. He pushed the panic, the horrible bile in his throat down. He can have nightmares about it later.

"Right! Let's take em down! Come on dad!" He shouted, summoning a portal for his father. Splinter begrudgingly hopped in, furiously tail whipping two of the brutes while yelling "Hot Soup!" knocking them both unconscious.

Indigo charged after the other one, katanas swinging mercilessly in a spray of green. Leo shuddered but followed close behind. "I'll go for the head, you take out the legs!" Indigo nodded, slashing violently at the yokai's legs. Leo jumped into the air slamming his legs into the brute's face, knocking him unconscious.

Leo snatched the helmet, twirling it around on his finger like a basketball.

"Now grab the helmets daddy-o!" He yelled at Splinter as Indigo grabbed the helmet at the far end of the arena.

Splinter confusingly popped off the helmets of the two yokai, looking at Leo with concern.

"Oh is this one of those moments I’m supposed to trust you?" A portal appeared and Leo gingerly took both helmets. Indigo threw the other helmet, which Leo caught.

The helmets were chucked like trash into a small blue portal, another forming directly above it. The helmets zipped through over and over, gaining more and more speed.

"Bingo!" Leo said confidently before it happened.

One of the tentacles grabbed Splinter.

"Papa!" Leo screamed, watching helplessly as his father was shook around like a damn rag doll.

"Give me a boost!" Indigo suddenly shouted, charging towards the slider. Leo interlocked his fingers crouching down. When Indigo stepped into his hands Keo flung him upwards with as much strength as he could.

Once in the air Indigo began spinning like a top, both katanas slicing through The tentacle effortlessly. Splinter was released, staring up in awe at Indigo while he looked like a freaky beyblade.

"Time to get Kraken!" Leo swung his ōdachi, creating a portal above one of the tentacles. One of the helmets was sent flying spike first. It slammed into the tentacle, pinning it to the ground.

Kraken Tim screeched in agony as two more of his tentacles got pinned.

"I'm just too good at this!" That statement proved to be his downfall. At that moment one of free tentacles swatted at his head, knocking two of the helmets he was about to portal down far off into the crowd, impaling two spectators.

Although the crowd didn't seem to give a damn.

"Shit!" Leo cursed, now they wouldn't have enough helmets!

Indigo landed in front of Leo, splattered with kraken blood. He pressed a button on the side of his spider claw gauntlet, releasing the construct with a grunt. He pulled his hand out before doing the same with the other gauntlet. "Use these!" The gauntlets were shoved into Leo's hands.

"But these are yours-"

"Are you kidding? I hate those stupid things, they're too tight and heavy!" He picked up the katanas and dashed off to fight the Kraken.

"Seriously Blue, how do you know that guy?" Splinter asked as the gauntlets were portal chucked at the tentacles.

"His name's Indigo, he's alright!" Leo boasted. He grabbed the last helmet, shoving it onto Splinter's head. "One more helmet." Splinter went tense, suddenly realizing he was a part of the insane plan.

There was a purely demonic screech, an earth shaking slam knocking them both off their feet followed by a pained scream. Two of Kraken Tom's tentacles had been pulled free and were viciously slamming into something over and over again with the speed of a cheetah.

That something was Indigo.

There was a spray of crimson before one of the tentacles grabbed Indigo and chucked him into the far wall of the arena.

Time seemed to stand still, the cheering of the crowd drowned out by the ringing of Leo's ears.

Indigo slumped down from the wall, landing on his knees before falling forward. There was a horrifying red streak on the wall.

Oh hell no.

"Ok Daddy-o lets kick some fucking ass!" Leo growled furiously, shoving his dad into a portal.

"Wait what? Can we try a new plan?" Splinter screamed as he descended from the very top of the arena, the spike aimed straight for Kraken Tom's skull. Leo fully ignored his father, portaling over to the unconscious Indigo.

The first thing he saw was a massive crack on Indigo's shell. It covered over two thirds of his carapace! That was bad, that was really fucking bad.

Blood was gushing from the crack, making Leo truly feel sick. He pushed past it, forcing all the lessons from Splinter to the forefront of his mind.

First check for a pulse.

He pressed his fingers to the shorter turtle's neck, sighing in relief when he felt the weak but frantic beating of his heart. Leo pulled out his fanny packs, grabbing as much gauze as possible to stuff into the crack to try and slow the bleeding. He covered it with medical tape, flipping the turtle over to look at his front.

It wasn't much better.

His right arm was bent at an awkward angle. The chest plate looked like it got run over by a tractor. At least it saved his plastron from some of the damage. His breathing was short, clearly strained. Most likely injured ribs.

A bruising bloody gash was on his head, probably what knocked him out cold. So definitely add a concussion to the list.

And that's just the wounds he can see. There is probably so much internal damage.

Leo gulped, summoning a portal before gently pushing Indigo inside. This portal led to the medbay of the lair.

This was surely breaking the terms of the deal he made with Big Mama, if she found out.

She wasn't watching him, her attention was stuck solely on dad, her expression furious.

She doesn't need to know.

The crowd was cheering like crazy at their victory. They had won, they took down the fucking Kraken!

"It's a knockout folks!" The announcer yelled excitedly as the blood colored petals fell from the ceiling. Leo gulped nervously, flicking the petals off.

Play it cool, don't let anyone know.

"They love you pops!" Leo said with fake enthusiasm.

"It was all you, my son!" Splinter replied, making Leo cringe. Not it wasn't 'all him' it was him and Indigo.

"Silence!" Big Mama shrieked as she landed in front of them. Leo plastered the fakest smug look onto his face.

"Just the spider I was coming to gloat to." All six of those Scarlet eyes were rolled.

"I am not one to be outmaneuvered my turtley boo. Well done. And now a deal is a deal. And as a sign of respect, I shall return this Shredder beast to his prison dimension if you catch him." She handed him the Bauble, making Leo's shoulders sag in relief.

Time to get the fuck out of here, stop the Shredder and head back home to patch up Indigo.

When the father son duo landed in front of the others, Leo instantly felt his stomach clench.

The dread was so heavy in the air you could smell it.

Leo hopped off of a squished Splinter, ignoring the freezing cold rain splattering over his skin, washing the bits of dried blood away.

"You love us, you missed us, we’re back, baby! Lou jitsu and Blue saving the day!" Leo barked with fake optimism, can't let the mask slip now. That lasted all of two seconds Raph shot him the deadliest of glares.

"It’s about time! We’re getting our butts kicked after you left us high and dry." Leo gulped, trying not to shake. They weren't the only ones left high and dry.

"High and dry? Come on dudes. Well, when I said ‘You got this’ I mean that. Look I bet the only reason we’re here right now is ‘cause Donnie inputted coordinates of blah blibbity blah blah blah! Donnie looked so utterly drained.

"Mikey razzed his tazz." Mikey was shaking like a leaf, whimpering softly.

"April finally used her crane license." April winked at Leo, at least she didn't seem too miserable.

"And Raph’s gonna put it all together in a plan to defeat that lead head with this mystic collar." He held up the collar, it shined brightly against the rain.

"Wow Leo, that’s remarkably accurate." Raph said, avoiding the slider's gaze. Suddenly there was a flash of magenta light, causing everyone to tense up nervously.

"He's back!" Raph gasped as the Shredder began to take form. "Prepare for Operation Fire Hanky Tickle collar! Leo, you sure you can get that on him?" Raph asked, grabbing Leo's arm.

Leo nodded, no shred of doubt in his eyes.

"Trust me!"

"I do." Raph let go of his arm.

Together with a fire distraction from Mikey, a blindfold hanky from Donnie and tickling from Raph Leo managed to get the collar around the Shredder's neck. The shredder crumpled to the ground, completely immobile.

Everyone began to cheer.

"Perfectly flasmogoric. You turtles are not to be trifled with." Big Mama stated calmly as she walked towards the turtles in human form. Lines of guards surrounded the turtles. No way to escape.

Leo stepped forward, trying to keep a neutral expression.

"One tamed, no longer phasing. Scrap metal psycho ready for your disposal!" Big Mama chuckled, gesturing to her masked assistant to step forward.

"You did your part So I will do mine." The assistant threw a device into the air, sucking up the Shredder. Once he was gone everyone cheered before scrambling into the sewers completely exhausted.

Leo sprinted through the sewers, ignoring his family's alarmed protests.

"We gotta help Indigo come on!" He shouted, charging through the sewer tunnels.

"Who's Indigo?" Mikey shouted at the top of his lungs.

"You brought him home?" Splinter yelled, Leo ignored him, getting closer and closer to the lair.

"Leo!"

"Leo what are you doing slow down!"

A metal pincer grabbed onto Leo's shell, dragging him backwards. Leo looked up at Donnie's annoyed eyes, suddenly feeling the whole weight of his family on him.

"Alright, who is Indigo?" Raph asked, that classic big brother concern coming through.

Leo was currently trying to squirm away from the metal pincers, there wasn't any time for this!

"One of the fighters from the Battle Nexus!" Splinter's tail smacked Leo's head, earning a whine from the boy. "You didn't seriously bring that maniac home? Did you?"

He did not just say that.

"Are you fucking serious? Indigo helped us! He saved you from Kraken Tom!"

Splinter crossed his arms, grumbling under his breath.

"Besides, he got hurt really bad and we gotta help him!"

"Like we didn't get injured!" Donnie scoffed, trembling a bit.

"His shell was cracked so hard it was bleeding so bad I had to stuff the crack with gauze so don't fucking act like shell injuries are not a big deal you fucking hypocrite." Everyone's eyes went wide.

"Wait he's hurt!" April chimed in.

"Yes! That's why we have to get back home so I can patch him up so he doesn't die!"

"Then portal us home! Quick!" Mikey handed Leo the ōdachi, when did he lose it? It doesn't matter.

The sword was swung around, the blue light illuminating the dark sewer tunnels.

When everyone stepped through, Leo sprinted to the medbay. When he got there, there was a streak of blood on the cot, leading to the floor. But no Indigo to be found.

"Where is he! He was supposed to be right here!" Leo screamed, looking around the cot. No Indigo.

"He's not here?" Donnie asked, nearly gagging at the blood stains. A drop of something landed on Donnie's head. He wiped his fingers, revealing a small red streak. More drips landed on Donnie, making him squeal before backing up.

"What the?" Before they could blink a blur of black and red lunged from the ceiling, tackling Donnie to the floor. Left hand pinned to the softshell turtle's throat, the right holding a dagger, ready to strike.

"Indigo no! Get off of him, he's my brother!" Leo pleaded to the turtle. Indigo looked up, bizarre eyes unfocussed as he swayed on top of Donnie.

"Shelldon activate the defense protocol!" Donnie hissed into his cracked wrist band.

"Dude its ok, this is Donnie." Leo began, trying to try the scissors out of Indigo's iron grip. "Sure he can be the most annoying person on the planet-"

"I heard that!"

"But he won't hurt you! Promise!"

Indigo didn't move, staring up at Leo.

For just a moment, his eyes seemed to change color.

Not the bluish-purple hue rimmed with yellow Leo had grown familiar with today but pure dark blue, like the ocean's depths. His eyes rolled into the back of his head before he flopped onto Donnie.

The softshell screamed, thrashing about while complaining that Indigo was all "icky and disgusting, covered in blood and sweat." Leo pulled the shorter turtle off, looking at the rest of his family who was standing in the doorway.

Yeah that was not the best introduction in the world.

[marsbutterfly]

amab rockstar hanji🫣

In The Eyes Of The Public

a/n: i've been meaning to write a male/amab! hanji fic the longest time and he has been stuck on my mind lately so lmao here you go.

warnings: nsfw, amab! hanji, he/him pronouns for hanji, rockstar! au, fem! reader, kissing, they swear a lot, fingering, licking, nipple play, semi-public sex, not beta read (we die like men <3) word count: 3k | ao3 version! | wattpad version!

"Rockstar Hanji Zoe, from the popular band No Name!, has been spotted around town with purple marks on his neck! At this time, he refuses to give a statement."

"No Name star has been spotted walking around with a Promise Ring on his finger. Fans and reports have been speculating who the lucky person might be that has been wearing the other half of said ring, but no leads were found at the time."

"After last night's concert, fans are claiming that Hanji Zoe, the guitarist of the hit "No Name" Rock Band, lifted his eye covers to wink at a random person in the audience. It is a known fact that the band members are not allowed to do such a thing, so rumors have it that he did it towards a... special someone."

"Alright! You guys have been an amazing crowd, but this is our last song of the night!" Levi says, his voice is hoarse from singing for the past three nights in a row, his face covered in sweat as he takes off his blazer. The fangirls in the crowd cry out his name desperately, their voices even more strained than his as they reach their hands up, desperately begging and hoping for a chance to touch him.

As Miche begins hitting the drums, another horde of fangirls' scream fills your ears. They hold posters with pictures of him surrounded by hearts, messages that range from "you're amazing" to "WE LOVE YOU!" to "(678) 999 - 8212" and you can't help but be a little concerned about this specific girl giving away her own personal phone number like this at a concert.

Finally, your eyes land on Hanji and your heart skip a beat. For the past three nights, you have been going to the concerts, enough for the security guards to nod at you once they notice your presence in the crowd. Unlike Levi and Miche's, Hanji's fangirls would usually be naked from the waist up, his name written across their chest as they cry out for his. You take a look around for a second and notice that more than a few girls were now wearing a version of Hanji's promise ring, fantasizing about being the lucky girl who gets to wear the real other half.

You analyze Hanji's every move, the way his fingers go through the guitar strings, the way his hair flows as he jerks his body forward, his energy never fading no matter how exhausted he is after such a long day. The way he bites his lip as he does the final jump of the night and the way he walks out of the stage carrying his guitar.

Tightly, you cling onto the lanyard of your VIP pass, a nervous sensation in your stomach as you try your best to make sure none of the fangirls catch you sneaking in. By the time you reach the big, metal doors, the security guard smiles playfully, the whole crew already aware of who you are and what exactly you are doing backstage. His reaction is enough to cause your face to heat up and you look down, avoiding his and everyone else's gaze.

It feels like all eyes are on you, like you are in the center of the stage, a massive spotlight lit directed on top of you and you are naked. Your hands tremble slightly and you can barely swallow the thick coating that rest on your throat. But all of your fear and nervousness slowly melts away as you spot him in the middle of the dressing room.

The eye bandages coming right off once the three are out of the view of the public. A water bottle in one of his hands while the other holds a towel that he uses to wipe the sweat of his forehead, the earpiece hanging around his neck as he laughs at something stupid Miche said.

"Did you see the girl with the phone number?" Miche says, pouring his own water bottle on the back of his neck, the drumsticks hanging from his back pocket, "I definitely saved that poster, she was cute as fuck."

"Dude, that is so weird," Levi comments, his voice strained as he uses a nebulizer, his voice strained and he knows he isn't supposed to talk but the idea of making fun of Miche is just too tempting to resist. "Did you see my girls? They were reaching for me, like I was some sort of God or something."

"Shut the fuck up, please," your lover says. The light from the dressing room shining on your promise ring as you walk towards the three men. A bright smile immediately forms on Hanji's face the moment he sees you, his arms rapidly wrapping around your waist as he lifts you off the ground, spinning you in his arms, "my princess is here!"

You can't help but giggle, your eyes traveling towards the other two people who stand in the vicinity of your hug. Levi playfully shoves his finger down his throat while Miche laughs, they always have the exact same reaction, to the point where you can't even be mad or embarrassed anymore. Maybe a tiny bit annoyed.

Hanji hooks his fingers on the edge of his shirt, immediately pulling the cloth over his head and throwing it on the ground. The piece of clothing is so wet that it makes a splash sound as soon as it hits the ground, a few drops splattering around and you can hear Levi grunting.

"Could you be any more fucking disgusting?" He rolls his eyes, pointing directly at the shirt. Hanji looks at him for exactly three seconds before clearing his throat and pretending to get ready to spit on it, "NO! DON'T FUCKING DARE!"

You and Miche find yourselves laughing at the scene, the blonde man handing you a bottle of blue gatorade and you thank him silently. The two of you never really talked all that much, but have always looked out for each other. So as you silently enjoy each other's presence in what is supposed to be a calm environment, Hanji and Levi continue to bicker in the background.

"It's just a shirt, why are you so pissy about it?" Your boyfriend asks as he searches the dressing room for a new shirt, your eyes fixated on his abs and the tattoos on his arms and chest, to the point where Miche has to snap his fingers before your eyes to get you out of your trance. Your face heats up for a second as he winks in response, gently nudging your ribs.

"Because you're fucking gross, dude," Levi's strained voice cracks as he continues to complain, his fingers gently rubbing the sides of his throat. Hanji can't help but roll his eyes as he finishes putting a clean shirt on and grabbing a water bottle from the mini-fridge before making his way back to you. By the way he is being followed, both you and Miche can tell that Levi wants to keep arguing, so the two of you rush to action.

"C'mon, bro, let's go see what today's girls had in stock for us," the taller man says, wrapping his arm around the shorter one's shoulders and quickly nudging him away from Hanji before things escalate even more.

On your end, your voice is soft and your hand rests on his chest, "Sunshine, how about we go back to the hotel?" You suggest, desperately trying to get him out of this situation before him and Levi ended up getting physical. You know all too well how the two of them can be. He sighs.

"We're gonna start heading back to the hotel, we'll meet you guys there?" Hanji says, using another towel to dry off the sweat off of his hair. At this point, his band members aren't exactly paying attention to him anymore, so the two of them just nod, going through the hundreds, if not thousands of gifts that were thrown onto the stage during tonight's show.

With an arm wrapped around your waist, the two of you begin making your way towards the subterranean parking garage where a black, bulletproof car would be waiting. There are three bodyguards in front of you in the elevator, two that you have met before and a new one in training. You want to focus on getting into the vehicle as quickly as possible but your thoughts are interrupted when you feel Hanji's hand sliding up your skirt and squeezing your ass.

A silent yelp escapes your lips and you glare at him, only to find an amused expression on his face. With his free hand, he places his index finger in front of his lips, shushing you and making sure you wouldn't even think about making any sort of noise.

As you reach the ground level, your heart is racing in your chest like a cheetah after its prey. When Hanji pulls his hand away from your ass, you nearly whine in disappointment and hope he didn't notice, but by the look in his eyes, you can clearly tell he knows exactly the effect he has on you.

Once the three bodyguards make sure you are all settled in the car and nothing is wrong, they gently pat the hood of the vehicle, letting the driver know you are all settled and ready to begin your ride back to the hotel. There is a tinted window divider separating the two of you and the driver, and a few bottles of liquor sitting on the small compartments next to you. You look around mesmerized, almost as if it is the first time you have ever been in a car like this.

You are pulled away from your thoughts when you feel your boyfriend's arm wrapping around your shoulder, "an innocent and caring action," you think to yourself, but it doesn't last long. Before you notice, Hanji's hand is already taking hold of your left breast over the shirt, the action alone earns a small moan out of you.

"H-Hanji..." His name falls from your lips with ease, leaving behind a sweet taste that could only be compared to your favorite candy. He smirks.

"Can't wait, princess," he whimpers softly, his fingers slowly but firmly traveling down your body and finding their way inside your panties, that devilish smile stamped on his face like he just struck gold, "you're already so wet for me."

You cry out softly, your body instinctively moving closer to his, his hand grabbing hold of your right thigh and placing it on top of his legs before returning to your breast, freely showing your most private parts to anyone who might see. Luckly for the two of you, the windows are completely blacked out, so privacy is not an issue at the moment, but it's not as if the two of you are even paying attention to it.

He starts off slow, only one finger at first and only up to the second knuckle. His gaze is hungry, like he is ready to devour you whole, but he takes it slow, wanting to make sure you are ok with what he is doing. You nod, giving him permission to continue, to do more, oh so much more, but he doesn't change his pace.

"I... I need to hear you say it," he whispers, almost a nervous edge to his voice. You smile softly, nuzzling your face against his neck and whimpering, your hips moving forward slightly as you grind yourself against his finger.

"More... Please, Hanji," you whimper, desperately calling out to him, giving him the permission he has been desperately craving. Those three words are all that it takes for him to pick up his pace, adding a second finger as he continues to move them around inside of you, making sure you can clearly feel how thoroughly he is touching you.

You cry out for him, whimpering his name like it's a prayer. The hand that isn't busy with your pussy has now found its way inside your shirt, pulling it up slightly and revealing your nipples to him. With his index and middle finger, Hanji pinches the small bud, twisting it around ever so gently while his dominant hand continues to focus on making you feel good.

His lips hungrily meet yours, trying to keep your moans contained. You can see his cock twitching inside of his pants, how desperately he needs to be inside of you, but you also know how much he is enjoying this, so you keep your hands to yourself.

You look down for a second and you can clearly see his fingers moving, his promise ring nearly disappearing inside of you now that he has added a third finger as the very tip of his digits makes contact with your cervix. Desperately, you try not to cry out, you try not to get the driver's attention as Hanji continues to fuck you with his hand. Your eyes are closed shut, to the point that it nearly hurts but, even then, you can tell he is pleased with himself, that stupid smirk is still on his lips.

"You sound beautiful, baby," he whispers, his fingers pulling out from inside of you before they come back inside deeper than before, earning a yelp out of you, "shhh, shh baby, be a little quieter for me, ok?" He whispers and you want to curse him, knowing damn well he is doing all of this on purpose.

"F-fuck you," you whimper, your head leaning back onto the seat as you close your eyes shut, "you want be to be quiet or do you want to h-hear me?"

Hanji snorts slightly, his fingers picking up in speed, curling and spreading inside of you in a desperate attempt to hear you crying out his name. He purrs for a second before responding, "call for me, but do it quietly."

You nod, your body already beginning to tighten around his fingers. While his digits work inside of you, he brings his thumb up to your aching clit, adding an additional layer of pleasure. His free hand continues to squeeze and twirl your nipples as his lips continue their attack on your neck. You look like a mess, coming undone beneath his touch while a few flashes from paparazzi's cameras come from outside.

"They can't see us," he whispers, knowing you are worried about it, "I made sure of it. So, let yourself go for me, my princess."

With those simple words, the simple calling you of that pet name, it's like a wave of pleasure washes over you. Your hips buck upwards towards his fingers and your back arches against the seat, you can't help but cry out his name, no matter how quiet you try to be, you are certain the driver and any other cars around you are able to hear the desperation in your voice as you come.

"Hanji!!!!!" His name is like a lifeline, you cling to it as if it is the only thing keeping you afloat. Your voice nearly shatters as the waves of pleasure wash over all of your senses. His grip on you is tight, holding you in place as he is afraid you might actually collapse to the ground, his fingers still working inside of you, fighting a battle against your body as it tightens so desperately that it nearly pushes him out against your will.

But it's the way your hair is now glues to your face, a tear of pleasure streaming down your cheeks that does him in. His grip on you in nearly painfully tight and he is scared it might leave a mark, but he can't control himself. Seeing you in this messy state, for and because of him, is enough to send him over the edge as well, painting the inside of his tight jeans.

"Fuck..." He curses under his breath, his face buried against the side of your neck, "oh, you did so good, princess."

Slowly, he pulls his fingers out, leaving an empty sensation behind. You want him again. You want more. You want to feel his fingers grabbing your breasts, his lips peppering your skin with kisses and his cock throbbing inside of you. You want him, all of him. Desperately, ardently, urgently.

As he is about to wipe your essence away on his shirt, you grab his wrist. He shoots you a confused look, which slowly morphs into desire and finally lands on a look of surprise, a small whimper exiting his throat as his eyes can't seem to focus on anything that isn't you.

You part your lips, taking his digits into your mouth. Your warm tongue swirls around them, your face burns as you taste yourself against his skin but your eyes remain focused on his nevertheless. The way he blushes and cries out softly, or the way he is already hardening in his wet pants once more. You don't stop until there is no amount of your essence left on him, only your saliva.

The two of you cling to each other, panting for what feels like forever but couldn't have been longer than a minute or two. Before either of you are ready, you arrive at the hotel the band has been staying, the entrance surrounded by paparazzies who already attempt to get a small peak inside the car.

Hanji sighs, pulling away from you as the two of you fix your clothing. He looks down at the area between his legs, analyzing just how much of a mess he's made. "Can I borrow your jacket?"

You chuckle and hand him the clothing item, "make sure the knot of the sleeves is covering perfectly what you need to keep hidden." In response, Hanji rolls his eyes, a muffle "yeah, yeah" coming out of his mouth.

Once the two of you are settled, he takes your hand, "I will never ask you to come out in public with me. Not until you are ready."

You immediately shake your head, smiling gently as his free hand touches the knob, "Let's do this."

"No Name Guitarist finally spotted with new girlfriend. How long have they been together? Who is she? Here's everything you need to know!"

"Fans torn in half between being heartbroken and happy as new girlfriend of Hanji Zoe finally shows her face."

"Mystery Girl who stole the heart of rockstar Hanji Zoe finally revealed, and she is just as pretty as you would think!"

[jimalim]

As promised in my final update for The Wild Traitors, here is the prequel oneshot covering the night Leah and Fatin met in this universe!

For those who haven’t read TWT, it’s not needed to understand this fic, it works just as well as a stand alone so please feel free to check it out as well!

something borrowed

Word Count: 8212 Chapters: 1/1 

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry!” She turns around and grabs a roll of paper towels from the kitchen island and starts pulling them off handing them to the girl in a frazzled frenzy. “Here let me-” She stops herself from trying to help blot the wet fabric when she finally gets a good look at the face of the girl. She can’t stop the words from her mouth in the moment of recognition. “It’s you.”

The girl squints at Leah. And despite being drenched in punch, which she should be rightfully angry about, her voice is devoid of any such malice. “Do I know you?”

Leah nervously laughs, what are the chances the person she spilled her drink on is none other than ‘island girl’ herself. “Oh, no sorry I uh, I just ah saw you earlier-” She stutters nervously realizing how creepy that must sound, “-um you were talking to a friend of mine.” A bold face lie, and the girl seems to know it based off the smirk she sends her way.

“Sure…” The girl makes no move to excuse herself from this awkward interaction, and Leah takes that as at least a good sign that she hasn’t made the worst first impression ever.

[darcyfangirlsfrequently]

Oh Baby, Oh Baby - chapter 5: What Makes a Family

Chapter summary: Luke and Penelope make the trip down to New York to visit his family. Things do not go as expected.

Content warning: Luke's parents are kind of assholes in this chapter. There are discussions of homophobia, as well as parents just generally not accepting their children.

Chapter word count: 2786

Total word count: 8212

Can also be read here on Ao3

Thanks to help from Derek and Savannah, as well as the rest of the team, Luke and Penelope were able to get moved into their new house by the end of Penelope's first trimester. Everything was progressing as it was supposed to, so the pair decided it was as good a time as any to go down to New York to visit Luke's family. They knew Penelope and Luke were expecting a baby, they were the first to be told after the team, but since this situation had been… quick and unexpected, they hadn't actually met Penelope yet. So as not to overwhelm the expectant mother on her first visit, it would only be Luke's parents, his sister, her wife, and their daughter. 

A tall woman with pale skin and chin-length brown hair–Luke's sister-in-law–was the one to open the door when they arrived. She stared at Penelope for a moment before blurting out, "You're white!" And then, quickly, "Oh my god! I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to say that! It's just that when he said your name was Penelope Garcia, this was not what I expected!" 

Penelope laughed it off. "Don't worry, he made a similar comment when we met." 

She laughed and then turned to Luke. "Are white girls the Alvez kid type?" 

Luke rolled his eyes, but laughed anyway. "Oh my god, Melanie, shut up."

The two looked at each other for a moment, each with a slight smirk, before wrapping each other in a hug. "It's good to see you again, Luke," she told him, genuine emotion evident in her voice. 

"You too, Mel." 

Melanie turned to Penelope and hugged her as well. "And you! It's so nice to finally meet you! Luke's been telling us about you for years!" 

Penelope cast a look at her boyfriend. "Years?" 

Luke felt his cheeks warm. "Can we continue this conversation inside?"

"Yes, yes, of course, come on in," Melanie said, waving them in. “Elanor, Antonio, Liliana, Isabela, they’re here!”

The first set of footsteps they heard was the pitter-patter of a child running down the stairs. Isabela, Luke’s niece, came into view and catapulted herself into her uncle’s arms. “Tio Luke! You’re here!” 

Luke wrapped his arms tight around the little girl, swinging her around. “Hey, Isabela!” Luke exclaimed, peppering kisses all over her hair. “Dios mio, I’ve missed you, you’ve gotten so big!”

“Of course I did, I’m nine now! I’m a big girl!”

Luke pretended he didn’t know that fact. “Nine? You are a big girl!” He put her down then, and put his arm around Penelope. “Isabela, this is your Tia Penelope. We’re going to have a baby, and they’re going to be your cousin. Your Primo or Prima.”

“I know! Mami and Mama told me!” She looked up at Penelope and waved. “Hello!” 

Penelope waved back. “Hello! Can I give you a hug?”

The little girl didn’t even bother responding, she just wrapped her arms around Penelope’s waist. 

The rest of the adults joined them then, Luke's parents Elanor and Antonio, and his sister Liliana. 

Hugs and introductions were given all around, Luke and Penelope settled their things in the guest bedroom they’d be staying in for the course of their visit, and they sat down for dinner. Not long after dinner was done, Isabela had to go to bed, so she gave her goodnight hugs and was on her way. Once she was asleep, the adults congregated in the living room and Elanor made tea for those who wanted it. 

“So, Luke, Penelope,” she said as she sat down with her own cup. “You never told us; when’s the wedding?”

Penelope looked at Luke, confused, shocked, and maybe a little angry depending on what his answer to her question would be. "Did you say we're getting married?" 

Luke looked equally as confused as Penelope. "Um, no, I didn't." He turned to his mother then. "Mamà, Penelope and I aren't getting married, at least not any time soon." 

Elanor's eyes went wide. "You're not?" 

Penelope shook her head. "No, we decided it's not what we want right now. Maybe a few years down the line we'll change our minds, but not now. We don't want to get married to fit societal expectations just because I'm pregnant. That's not healthy." 

"You have to get married," Elanor exclaimed, sounding a little angry. "This is not how things are done!"

"She's right," Antonio agreed. "If you don't, your child would be illegitimate. Penelope, you'd hardly be a part of the family." 

"I understand where they're coming from," Melanie interjected, trying to diffuse the situation. She could see the pain on Penelope's face and the fury on Luke's, and she didn't want things to end in a shouting match like they had in the past when his parents made comments like this. "It's up to the couple to decide whether or not to get married, and if they've decided that they don't want to get married, that's probably the best decision for them to make." 

Liliana turned to her. "Are you serious?" 

Melanie looked stunned and stared back at her wife. "Are you?" 

"We fought for years for people to be able to get married, for us to be able to get married, and now they're throwing away something that's always been available for them because they 'don't feel like it?'" 

"You're right, we fought for our right to get married because it's what we wanted. We fought for people like us to be able to get married if they wanted. You and I of all people should understand that no one should have their marital status dictated by others or societal norms." 

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to start a fight," Penelope said, standing. "And actually I'm feeling pretty tired right now, so I think I'll turn in. Goodnight." 

Luke got up to follow her. "Penelope–"

"No, Luke, please, stay and catch up with your family, I'm just going to bed." 

To his credit, he listened. 

Penelope went upstairs, and the remaining adults stayed silent, no one knowing what to say. After a few minutes, Luke worked his jaw and stood up, clearly intending on following Penelope up to their room and going to bed as well. 

"Luke, no," Melanie said. 

He looked at her, clearly feeling torn, and the pain was obvious in his voice. "What do you mean, 'no?'" 

"I mean you stay here, sort this out." She pointed at Liliana, Elanor, and Antonio. "I'll go talk to her." 

"But–" 

"Luke," Melanie implored. "I've been where she is. Please. Let me talk to her." 

Luke worked his jaw again, but nodded. "Okay." 

Melanie made her way upstairs to the room Penelope and Luke were sharing and knocked on the door. 

"Luke, I'm fine," came Penelope's voice through the door. "Go talk to your family, really." 

"Oh, he is," Melanie replied. "And that is not a conversation I want to be around for. Actually, it kind of is, it'd be fun to see him rip into them for treating you this way, but that's not the point. The point is: I'm not Luke, I'm Melanie, so can I come in?" 

The surprise was evident in Penelope's voice. "Oh! Um, sure, yeah." 

Melanie opened the door gently and flashed the other woman a tight-lipped grin. "Hey. I am so sorry for everything that went on down there, especially Liliana, I am stunned she reacted the way she did, and I am not here to try to excuse anyone. Luke wanted to follow you up here, but I told him to stay and deal with his family. I've been where you are right now, so I wanted to talk to you. Can I sit?" 

Penelope scooted over on the bed to make room for Melanie. "Yeah, sure." 

Melaine sat beside Penelope and took a deep breath before beginning. Even years later, this story was still hard for her to tell. “The first time Liliana ever brought me home, Elanor and Antonio were not the most accepting of the fact that their daughter was with another girl. Not that we weren’t exactly expecting that, I mean old catholic people are going to old catholic people, right?”

Penelope let out a tear-laced laugh. “You got that right.” 

“Liliana and I got to a point in our relationship where we would have gotten married if we were allowed, we knew we were it for each other, we lived together, I mean we were even wearing rings. We were each other’s family. My parents had accepted her as part of ours, but I did not receive the same treatment from Elanor and Antonio because we weren’t married. When Liliana and I decided to have Isabela, we used IVF. I think it’s obvious whose egg we used and who carried her.”

Penelope nodded. Isabela looked just like Liliana, and therefore just like Luke, but much younger and female. 

“We were hoping that would change their minds, especially since I was the one carrying the baby, but they still wouldn’t. They said that since I wasn’t biologically or legally related to anyone in the family, I wasn’t family.”

“That’s really awful, I’m so sorry,” Penelope told her. 

“It was awful. Thank you. Liliana and I were at a complete loss, we had no idea what to do, and that’s when Luke stepped up. He absolutely tore into his parents, telling them to get off their homophobic high horse, that Liliana chose me and that should be good enough for them, and to accept that I was permanently a part of their lives and family because if they didn’t accept that then Liliana would probably cut contact with them—which he said she was well within her right to do considering the way they had been treating me—and if that happened then they would lose him too because there was no way he’d stand behind parents who treated his sister and her family so horribly. That was the wake-up call Elanor and Antonio needed, because they ended up apologizing to me and Liliana not long after.”

Penelope’s eyes widened. “He said that?”

Melanie nodded. “He did. I was absolutely astounded, and then he came up to me privately later. He said he said he would always stand beside us because he loves his sister, and she loves me so he loves me too, that no matter that we weren’t legally related, I was his sister too, and I mean you’ve seen him with Isabela. He adores her. Has since the day she was born. He’s the best uncle ever, and I know he’s going to be an amazing dad, Penelope.”

Penelope was on the verge of tears. “I know so too. I’ve seen him with our friends’ kids. His godkids and mine. He’s amazing.”

“He really is. Did he ever tell you he was Liliana’s best man at our wedding?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Oh, well he was. There was not a dry eye in the audience as he gave his speech. You’ve got a really great guy on your hands, Penelope.”

“I know I do.”

Melanie wrapped her arms around Penelope’s shoulders. “Luke always stood up for me and my family, so I’ll always stand up for you and yours. You’re his family, and he’s mine, so you’re mine too.”

Penelope leaned into the hug and wrapped her arms around Melanie’s waist. “Thank you.” 

***

Meanwhile, downstairs, Luke was livid. “I can’t believe you guys would say those kinds of things. I mean I thought we got over this ten years ago. And you said them to her face?”

“I’m sorry, Luke,” Elanor said. “But one grandchild out of wedlock was bad enough—”

“Mamà!” Liliana reprimanded. “Are you not over this?”

Elanor turned to her daughter. “I’m sorry, I know it wasn’t your fault, I know you would have gotten married if you were able.” She turned back to Luke. “But you two have the option readily available, I can’t see why you wouldn’t take it?”

“Because we don’t want it right now!” 

“You are raising a family with this girl, yes?”

“First of all, she is not ‘this girl,’ she has a name, and it’s Penelope. Use it. And yes, I am raising a family with her. Because I love her and I want to be with her.” 

“And you don’t intend on ever separating from her?”

“No, I don’t.” 

“Then why wouldn’t you two get married?”

“Because having children is expensive enough, you should know, you’ve had two. Why would we spend so much on something unnecessary, especially when it’s—and I cannot stress this enough—we do not want right now? Right now. We haven’t said we’ll never get married.”

His parents’ eyes lit up. “So you might end up married after all?”

“Maybe, but definitely not before the baby comes. If it happens, it won’t be for years yet, and it may never even happen. And if it doesn’t, that’s fine, because it is up to us and none of your business.”

“How are we supposed to show our faces in our church if they found out our son and his girlfriend chose to have a child out of wedlock?” Elanor demanded.

“That doesn’t matter!” Luke exploded. “Because it’s none of their business either! And if you decide that you’re ashamed of your son’s family, of your grandchild, then that is on you. I love Penelope, and the way you treated her and spoke to her was awful and I will not stand for it. If you keep it up I will be cutting off contact. No one treats my family that way.”

“We are your family, Luke,” Antonio said. 

“So are they! Penelope and our baby, they are my family too. I chose them, and I will continue to choose them. That is that.”

Melanie poked her head down the stairs at that moment. “Hey, we’re all good up here, I’m going to bed now. Night, all.”

“Goodnight, Melanie,” Luke called back up. “Thank you.” He turned back to face his family. “I’m going to bed too. Goodnight.” He stood up, but before he left, he said one final thing to his sister. “I have never done anything but stand up for you and your family, would it kill you to do the same for me?”

He went upstairs and got ready for bed, then cuddled in beside Penelope. Instead of her spooning into him like he was used to, she flipped over and kissed him. 

“You’re an angel, did you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Melanie told me about everything that you did for her, how you stood up for her. You’re amazing.”

“I love my parents, don’t get me wrong, but I was not going to stand for them treating Liliana and Mel that way. And I didn’t stand for them treating you like that either. I told them the same thing. I will cut off contact with them if they continue to say those kinds of things.”

“Luke I’d never want you to have to choose between me and your family.”

He silenced her worries with a kiss. “You are my family, Penelope.” He placed his left hand on her stomach. “Both of you are. There’s no choice here. So don’t even worry about it, okay?” He kissed her once more on the mouth and then once on the forehead. “I love you. Let’s get some sleep, okay?”

Penelope nodded. “I love you too.” She cuddled into his chest, and they were both asleep within minutes.

***

Breakfast the next morning would have been incredibly tense had it not been for Isabela and her youthful naivete and joy that kept them all laughing. No one had forgotten the fight from the evening before, but no one was talking about it yet either. Elanor offered to make some baby blankets, which Luke and Penelope graciously accepted, but that was it.

After breakfast, however, Liliana came up to the pair of them privately. “I cannot apologize enough for the way I behaved last night. Luke, what you said really struck a chord with me. You’re right, all you have ever done is stand up for me, and I should have done the same for you. Mel and I had a really good talk about it last night, too. I am really sorry. I will do better. I am so happy and excited for you guys. And welcome to the family, Penelope.”

Penelope smiled and hugged her. “Thank you.”

Liliana hugged her back, then hugged Luke. “I will talk to Mamà and Papì. I promise. We’ll get them on our side soon enough.”

The three adults laughed. Things weren’t perfect, but there was time.

[mark6f]

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

The first thing I noticed when I walked into Michael Bloomberg’s campaign headquarters in downtown Los Angeles was the wall of terrariums. For one brief second I wondered, staring at the multitude of tiny, meticulously groomed succulents clustered on a bookshelf that ran almost half the length of a cavernous, industrial-chic loft, if I had somehow misstepped and stumbled into an Anthropologie. But there was the former New York mayor — or at least, a cutout of him, propped up across from a huge white wall plastered with campaign signs.

It was still early in the morning, but the Bloomberg bus had already pulled up outside to drop off a group of gun safety advocates who had been touring the state and talking to local leaders. Staffers were setting up for a private roundtable with a local prosecutor and a LA city council member who had recently endorsed Bloomberg, placing a “Bloomberg 2020” screen in front of a giant mural of a pink-skinned woman in sunglasses with rainbow hair, spelling out “LA” with her fingers. Still stunned by the opulence of the space, I asked Lys Mendez, a spokesperson for the Bloomberg campaign, where they had found so many terrariums. “Oh, it came this way,” she said, shrugging. “We had to ramp up in California so quickly — we just took the office space we could find.”

Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

It’s hard to avoid thinking of Bloomberg’s bid as a kind of political science experiment — a test of whether an elderly, extraordinarily wealthy ex-Republican can run a competitive campaign almost entirely on the basis of his own advertising and a big, generously paid staff. That experiment will play out across the country this week, when Bloomberg will finally appear on the ballot after a bizarre campaign in which he entered the race late, skipped the four early states and focused instead on winning the trove of delegates that await on Super Tuesday.

And California is, in many ways, the maximal test of Bloomberg’s strategy. He’s invested a lot in other big Super Tuesday states like Texas, but California is the state where his dollars should carry him the furthest, because its media markets are so expensive and the state’s large, diverse population makes it hard to set up an effective ground game.

His spending spree has certainly gotten him somewhere in California. Bloomberg is now polling around 13 percent in California, according to our average, up from 4 percent in January. But Californians also love to tell you about the self-funded candidates who have tried — and failed — to spend their way into public office. Take Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Michael Huffington or Al Checchi. After this Tuesday, we’ll know whether Bloomberg will join that inglorious pantheon or whether California’s unexpected contribution to the Democratic nomination process is the elevation of a self-funded billionaire’s candidacy.

Right now, it seems like Bloomberg will finish in third or fourth place even though he has spent tens of millions of dollars in the state. But after seeing Bloomberg’s swanky office, I wanted to find out how ordinary Californians were feeling about his campaign. After spending several days talking to voters across Los Angeles, one thing became clear: Bloomberg’s spending has bought him notoriety, but hasn’t translated into widespread enthusiasm.

It’s hard to find a Californian who’s not aware of Bloomberg’s run, thanks to his advertising blitz in the state over the past few months. Since the beginning of the year, he’s spent more than $36 million on television advertising alone. “I’d describe it as a bombardment,” said Khalid Maznavi, 39, who is supporting Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “He’s there whenever I turn on the radio or watch TV. And it’s been like that for weeks.”

Bloomberg has dominated the airwaves in California

The estimated amount of money each active Democratic presidential candidate spent on broadcast TV ads from Jan. 1 to Feb. 27, 2020, in California-based media markets, and the number of times their ads aired

Candidate Estimated Spending on TV Ads Number of Airings Michael Bloomberg $36,270,860 49,506 Bernie Sanders 5,540,490 10,246

Source: Kantar/Campaign Media Analysis Group

Fueled by Bloomberg’s bottomless fortune, the campaign has also quickly assembled an enormous outreach machine to reach California voters. According to research by FiveThirtyEight contributor and political scientist Joshua Darr, Bloomberg now has the biggest footprint in the state, with 25 field offices scattered across California — just barely topping Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has 23 field offices.1

His rapidly expanding team is well-compensated for its time. As recently as last week, his campaign was “urgently hiring” for organizers who would be paid $18 per hour, well above the state’s minimum wage. Bloomberg has also amassed a wide network of high-profile local supporters and endorsers — like San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Michael Tubbs, the millennial mayor of Stockton — even though Bloomberg is relatively new to California, having only opened his first office in the state two months ago.

But on the ground in Los Angeles, Bloomberg fans were surprisingly hard to find. Some of the glitzy events sponsored by the campaign were relatively sparsely attended, despite the lure of free food and drinks and even a live band. In many cases, the people at the events seemed to have been drawn more by curiosity than passion for Bloomberg’s message. At an event at a restaurant in Chinatown, Ed Choi, 44, told me that he had “kind of lost track” of the presidential primary after his first choice, Andrew Yang, dropped out. He was impressed that Bloomberg had taken the time to hold an event in Chinatown. “It’s the first time I’ve been to one of those, so that counts for something,” he said. But he said he was there with an open mind. “I just need to know more about where he stands on the issues.”

Paul Chen, a CPA who was schmoozing with one of the hosts of the Chinatown event, said that he hadn’t made up his mind yet either, but if he had to choose a candidate on the spot, it would be Biden. He dismissed Sanders with a sentiment that was widespread among attendees, who were largely local businesspeople. “I don’t like the way he’s all about everything being free,” Chen told me. But he added that he wasn’t yet convinced by Bloomberg either. “He’s got the financial backing, but I’m not sure he’ll be accepted by mainstream Democrats. That could be an issue.”

Each time I set off in search of Bloomberg supporters at events across Los Angeles, his press staff warned me to make sure I wasn’t talking to a campaign employee. Only volunteers were permitted to share their opinions with journalists. It was often a struggle to find someone who wasn’t paid to be there and willing to talk about their perspective on the record. Bloomberg’s campaign has recently hired hundreds of paid influencers to get out the word about his campaign on social media and via text message. And although people at candidate rallies or events are normally happy to chat with journalists, a surprising number of people refused to talk to me or let me use their names. One man nearly ran away when I said I was a reporter, saying he would never hear the end of it from his Sanders-supporting friends if word got out that he was considering Bloomberg.

By the time I did stumble upon a diehard Bloomberg fan, waiting outside a Los Angeles soccer stadium for a get-out-the-vote event, it felt like I had sighted a rare bird in the wild. Fabio Sabzevari, 25, told me with great enthusiasm that he had been volunteering in the Northridge office for two weeks. “It’s simple. I believe that he’s the moderate candidate who can win against Trump,” Sabzevari said. “And he’s got the resources to fight Trump’s multibillion-dollar disinformation machine. Who else in this race can do that?”

But Bloomberg’s ability to pour millions into his presidential bid was not a selling point for everyone. “It is mind-boggling to me that someone purporting to be acting under progressive ideals would be wasting millions and millions of dollars basically trying to force people to vote for him,” said Rhiannon Wilson, 22, a Sanders supporter. Wilson told me that her aversion to Bloomberg went well beyond his political stances. She said she was “disgusted” that he was trying to buy the nomination.

That attitude was far from unusual among the Californians I talked to. Tessie Borden, 53, who is supporting Warren, physically recoiled when I brought up Bloomberg. “I would not vote for that man. I think he’s a Republican plant,” she said. I asked her what she would do if he won the nomination. She shook her head a little and said, “I would write in Warren.”

Even if Bloomberg does overperform in California, that sentiment is one he’s likely to face in other states as the primary contest moves forward. Bloomberg is gambling that Democrats will be drawn to him because of his claim that he’s a candidate who can win. His spending spree is part of that appeal for some voters, who look at President Trump and wonder if he can only be defeated by another billionaire. But Bloomberg’s cash-fueled strategy also seems to be earning him genuine animosity in other corners of the Democratic base. And if his candidacy survives past Super Tuesday, it won’t be easy to convince those voters that he can be trusted.

Nathaniel Rakich contributed research.

[mysweetserpentine]

Avalanche 01.

Words: 2900+

Warnings: mentions of death, guns, cursing

A/N: hello again! I’m back with a new project! This is something I’ve had written for a while and it was actually a draft for a fic I started for another fandom. I don’t think I’ve ever really seen Zabdiel written this way so I hope you all enjoy! Give it a like or reblog if you want!

Untucking my knees from my chest, I pulled the crinkled note from my pocket. The ink had been smudged by the countless tears that had fallen onto it.

Miami - Carlos Santacruz

The relentless rain pelted down onto the windows of the bus, blurring the buildings that zipped past. A highway sign reading "Welcome to Miami!" stared back at me.

Slinging my backpack and duffle bag over my shoulders for what I hoped would be the last time, I hopped up into the aisle of the bus. A feeling of nervousness creeped into my chest as the bus rolled to a stop outside a large bus station. Throwing my hood over my head, I ran into the station and made my way to the front desk.

"Excuse me. Do you think you could help me find someone?" I asked quietly.

The old lady looked at me with a bored expression, popping her gum before she spoke. "There's a telephone book over in the corner, knock yourself out."

Defeatedly, I walked over to the phone book and started flipping through the "S" section. I scanned the pages quickly until one caught my eye.

Carlos Santacruz. 1825 Dade Heights. 678-999-8212.

Ripping the page from the spine, I turned and grabbed a small map from a kiosk against the wall. I pushed open the door of the station and started my journey to find the mystery person.

The puddles on the ground blurred as I trekked my way through the streets of Miami. The ripples in the water masked my undoubtedly horrendous reflection. Jumping from bus to bus didn't allow me the time to keep up with my appearance that I once cared so much about.

Being on the run was never my first choice, nor was it a choice that I ever wanted to act upon. I considered it a last resort as the solution to the many problems that seemed to stem from the life my family chose. The life that I never wanted to be a part of.

The little stability that my family still possessed started deteriorating the day my mother passed away. A vicious car accident took her life and no one even batted an eye.

My father, who was already a workaholic, became more invested in his business. He made sure I was only told the bare minimum when it came down to it but I wasn't oblivious. I knew what my father did behind closed doors.

The final straw was when my brother got involved. I can't say I was surprised because I knew that day would eventually come. Jacob was impressionable, strong, and smart which made him perfect material for my father's business. He knew the risks of running inside operations in the business and made sure that I stayed as far away as possible. Jacob had a good heart and always made sure to look after me.

To keep myself from insanity, I occupied myself with superficial friends, designer clothes, expensive makeup, and more boyfriends than I can count on one hand. And it all worked out, up until four nights ago.

Before I knew it, I had arrived at my destination. A street sign reading “Dade Heights” hung above my head. This side of town looked much different than where I had arrived off the bus. A gloomy feeling hung in the air and everything appeared old and run-down.

Stares were thrown my way as I walked through the neighborhood. Intimidation set into my chest as I examined the people sitting outside their house.

"Looks like you've strayed off your path!" a man yelled across the way. He had shaggy brown hair and a jet black leather jacket across his torso. His persona screamed danger and I immediately wanted to turn and run. "So tell me, who are you looking for?"

I pondered for a moment wondering if I should even answer. The smarter side of me told me to keep walking. But the logic part of my brain gave me the realization that I had no idea where or who I was looking for. "I'm looking for a Carlos Santacruz," I replied back.

The man scoffed and started walking towards me slowly. "A Carlos Santacruz," he mocked in a girly tone. "Try the Carlos Santacruz." I hadn't realized how close he had gotten until we were almost standing toe to toe. "What does someone like you need to do with him?" he asked quizzically.

Realizing that I shouldn't have even stopped in the first place, I now had put myself into a compromising position. I held my ground, trying not to show the intimidation that I felt deep in my chest. "I need to see him. Can you tell me where I can find him?" I questioned in a condescending tone.

"Sure. First why don't you tell me what you're doing here. It's rare that we get to see someone like you around -"

"Leave her alone, Ricky!" a female voice shouted, cutting him off abruptly.

I turned around quickly to see a girl with long brown and pink tresses. A similar leather jacket adorning her shoulders like the others.

The man I now knew to be Ricky groaned loudly. "Aw c'mon Reyes! We were just having a little fun with the newbie."

The girl strode towards us, walking up to stand next to me. "Give her a break asshole," she sneered back. Turning to me, she examined me before speaking. "I'm actually headed to see Carlos right now if you want to tag along."

With relief flooding my system, I gave a quick nod and adjusted the hood sitting over my head.

She flashed me a quick smile before speaking. "Alright then. Follow me."

As we started walking away, Ricky yelled behind us. "Will I see you later, Tori?"

"In your dreams, Ricky!" she hissed over her shoulder.

----

The walk to a place called “El Barrio” was short. Tori made small talk to fill the silence, telling me different things about this side of town. She asked me few questions about who I was which I was thankful for.

El Barrio was very similar to a typical bar down in Puerto Rico. People gathered around several pool tables, cheering when someone would hit a pocket. A currently vacant dance floor was situated in the middle of the room. It reminded me of home, something that I now missed.

"C'mon. I'll walk you up to Carlos's office before I get started at work." Tori shouted over the loud music, nodding her head in the direction of a staircase that led to a second floor.

It wasn't until Tori walked ahead of me that I noticed the large logo embroidered onto the back of her jacket. Espadas was written around a large red and black spade logo. Climbing to the top of the stairs, I looked over the balcony at the rest of the patrons in the bar. They too had a similar logo situated on the back of their jackets. What had I gotten myself into? I thought to myself.

Standing in front of a large wooden door, Tori rapped her knuckles against it twice before turning the door knob. With every inch the door opened further, my anxiety seemed to rise.

"Carlos, you have a visitor," Tori announced, peeking through the cracked door.

"Can it wait? I'm in the middle of something important." A deep voice I'm assuming belonged to Carlos asked.

Tori looked over her shoulder at me, as if asking if it could wait. I shook my head quickly before she turned around. "I don't think this can wait," she confirmed loudly.

There was a long pause and a deep sigh before he spoke again. "Alright. Bring them in."

Before I could prepare myself, Tori had pushed the door wide open. I couldn't move even if I wanted to, my feet feeling like they were cemented to the ground.

I got a look at the man I had been searching for, finally being able to put a face to a name. Carlos was tall and radiated power. Scruff littered his face and his hair was combed back into a gentleman's cut.

Realizing that he wasn't alone, I turned to look at the man occupying the chair in front of Carlos's desk. His dark eyes scanned my figure as he looked at me. A similar leather jacket laid over his broad frame. A scowl was set on his face, appearing angry that I had interrupted their meeting.

"Jess?” Carlos asked surprisingly, breaking me out of my thoughts.

Snapping back to reality, I quickly turned towards Carlos "You know who I am?" I questioned.

"Of course I do. Your dad is one of my very good friends," Carlos stated matter of factly. "How did you end up here?" he asked unsure.

I hesitated with my reply. How did I end up here? Where do I even start?

Sensing my hesitation, Carlos spoke again. “Zabdiel why don't you give us some privacy. We can finish this up later," he spoke, turning towards the unnamed male sitting in the room with us.

Zabdiel.

Zabdiel drew in a deep breath before letting it out again, his frustration coming out along with it. He stood to full height and brushed past me, slamming the door as he left.

"Don't worry about him. He can be a bit short-tempered," Carlos excused.

Nodding my head, I took a seat in front of Carlos's desk.

"Well there can't be any good reason that you're here. So why don't you tell me what happened," he started solemnly, rubbing his hands over his face.

"I was sitting downstairs at the safe house in Pasadena when the front window shattered. My brother rushed me upstairs and pulled a backpack and a duffle bag of clothes out from the closet. He said that everything I needed would be in here," I recalled, grabbing my backpack that was over my shoulder. "Once I got far enough away from the house, I got a cab and headed to the bus station. The only thing I had to go off of was this," I said, pulling the note out of my backpack and pushing it towards him on the desk.

Carlos scanned over the note, thinking before he spoke.

“Carajo,” he muttered to himself.

By the look on his face, I could tell that this already difficult situation had just gotten ten times worse. How is one to react when someone shows up looking for you based off of a note with a name?

"Does anyone know you're here?" Carlos questioned.

"No," I answered quickly. "I left through a hidden exit in the safe house undetected. The only person who knows I'm here is you."

Carlos seemed to hesitate before asking his next question. "What about your dad and Jacob?"

I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. Squeezing my eyes shut, I chose my words carefully before speaking. "I don't know. Once I finally got out of the house, I heard lots of yelling and gunshots. Jacob told me not to turn back, no matter what," I said with a quiet voice, opening my eyes that had started to sting with tears.

Carlos took a deep breath before standing. "Okay. Until I can figure out what to do we need to get you to the safe house," he said sternly, walking out from behind the desk to stand next to me. "The others are on a run right now so Zabdiel will have to take you. He's the only other one who knows how to get in."

Carlos led me back down the stairs from his office and onto the main floor of the bar. Stares were thrown my way as I followed behind.

"Zabdiel!" Carlos yelled in the direction of the pool tables.

Zabdiel was leaned over one of the tables, about to make a shot, when Carlos's yell caught him off guard. His cue went right over the ball, causing him to miss his shot. The others snickered around him, causing Zabdiel to throw a glare their way.

"You know, if you're going to ruin my shot, can you give me a heads up first?" Zabdiel sneered, passing his pool cue to a guy next to him. I had this feeling that he was one of the only ones who could speak to Carlos like that.

"I got a job for you," Carlos started, walking towards him to shake his hand.

"I need to you take new blood here over to the safe house. I've got some things I need to figure out," he ordered, nodding his head over his shoulder in my direction.

Zabdiel gave Carlos a confused look "The safe house? Why-"

"I'll explain more later. Meet me back in the office when you get back," Carlos cut him off.

Zabdiel gave a slow nod. "Alright, let's go," he said sharply before heading towards the doors of the bar.

I caught up with Zabdiel, following him out to the parking lot. Not seeing very many cars, I started to wonder how we were getting there. He stopped in front of a shiny black motorcycle, taking one of the helmets off and handing it to me.

"You're joking right?" I asked with a serious tone.

"Do I look like I'm joking?" He replied back with a bored expression.

I looked between the helmet and Zabdiel, debating my options. I had no idea where I was, no place to stay, and no idea what I was doing here. Getting on this bike with him really was my only option.

Snatching the helmet from his outstretched hand, I slid the helmet over my head. "Let's make this quick. I don't want to be on this thing any longer than I have to," I whined.

"Oh don't worry, it'll be quick," he quipped back.

Zabdiel swung his leg over the bike and sat down, kicking the stand up before balancing t the bike out. He slid the other helmet over his head, flicking the mask up to speak.

"You coming?"

Much to my dismay, I anchored my foot on the foot rest and swung my leg over. Situating myself on the seat, I slid right in behind Zabdiel. I tried not to show the fear that I was feeling deep down but with our close proximity, I was sure that he could feel my heart beating out of my chest.

Wrapping my arms around his midsection, Zabdiel cranked the engine to life. Revving the engine a few times, we dashed off towards the safe house.

----

The safe house was small which I expected. I knew my father was smarter than to build a large and elaborate safe house on this side of town. It would draw too much attention.

Zabdiel turned the bike off and walked up the small steps to the front door. He lifted a small panel in the wood exterior and revealed a glowing pad with numbers. After punching in a series of numbers, the door made a loud click. Zabdiel pushed the handle, opening the door and leading the way into the house.

"Make yourself at home. Bedroom is down the hall. Kitchen is through there," he said, pointing towards the living room to our left.

I nodded my head, walking into the living room and looking around. "What is the password to get in? You know, in case I need to get back in," I asked carefully.

Zabdiel hesitated before speaking. "I'll have to make sure with Carlos before I can give you that. It's confidential infor-"

"You mean so confidential that not even Alberto Diaz’s daughter could know?" I cut him off.

A look of surprise crossed his face, letting me know that he hadn't yet figured out who he was talking to.

"And I'm guessing by the look on your face you know who my father is?" I questioned, plopping myself down on one of the couches.

"You're Alberto Diaz’s daughter?" He asked slowly, putting the pieces together as he spoke.

"Unfortunately," I sighed. I pushed myself up from the couch and walked over towards him. "Look. I don't know what business you have with my father, quite frankly I could care less. But if you want to stay alive, I'd get out while you can."

"You don't know anything about me," he said through gritted teeth.

"You're right, I don't. But I do know that I've had to deal with more collateral damage than I would like and I don't need anymore."

Zabdiel stood tall, squinted eyes glaring at me. He turned on his toes, headed towards the front door. "I'll be here to pick you up at eight tomorrow morning. Don't keep me waiting," he ordered before opening the door and slamming it behind him.

I gathered my bags from the floor and trudged to the bedroom. Dropping them down on the bed, I grabbed one of my brother's old t-shirts from the bag and headed to the bathroom.

Turning the shower dial to the hottest it would go, I stripped off my clothes and stepped under the steaming water. The exhaustion that my body had been fighting finally set in. Sliding my back down the wall, I sunk to the bottom of the shower. I felt tears start to prick the backs of my eyes, sliding down my face before I could stop them. Drawing my knees to my chest, I let the sobs rack my body and I realized how fucked up this situation actually was.

What was I going to do?

[sounmashnews]

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25 Years Of Super Bowl Halftime Show Lineups, Ranked

On Sunday, tens of thousands of rabid football fans will descend upon Atlanta for Super Bowl LIII. They will consume lots of alcohol. They will paint their faces. They will scream and howl as the Patriots and Rams engage in brutal 22-man warfare with the highest possible stakes. Oh, and about two hours into this, they will all pause everything to watch a 12-minute Maroon 5 concert.

The Super Bowl halftime show has become the spectacle within the spectacle. It used to be filler entertainment while the players hydrated and tended to their wounds. Now it serves a higher purpose. It is about world peace, joy, introspection and even grief. It’s also sometimes about giant metallic lion puppets and dancing sharks.

How are we to interpret these hopelessly silly, desperately hopeful rituals? By ranking them, of course. At FiveThirtyEight, we don’t have the technology to make slideshows, but we do have math and a history of applying convoluted methodologies to questions that don’t really need answers. So let’s get started.

Methodology

First, we need to manage expectations: We are not ranking halftime performances, rather the sheer star power that the NFL assembled on stage each year. We’ll talk about how the shows went, but only in relation to their artists’ success on the Billboard Hot 100 chart before the Super Bowl. Our methodology favors shows with many artists because they’re more likely to excite an audience diverse in age and musical interests. Purists may have enjoyed the simplicity of seeing The Who perform without any interlopers in 2010, but anyone who wasn’t excited by a few 60-something British rockers playing their decades-old hits was left with bupkis.

We chose Michael Jackson’s 1993 halftime appearance as the starting point for our analysis. His performance — widely considered one of the best — is the beginning of the modern halftime show. Viewer ratings for the 1993 show exceeded ratings for the actual game, and a blueprint was formed for years ahead. To get a sense of how MJ changed the game, note that the previous year’s show included a salute to the 1992 Winter Olympics and a bunch of kids performing a rap arrangement of “Frosty the Snowman.”

To measure the success of the featured artists — excluding cameos from the likes of Jessica Simpson, who kicked off the 2004 show by asking the audience to “choose to party” — we created a metric called Performer Points. Our methodology for calculating these points is simple:

Artists are assigned points for each of their songs to make the Billboard Hot 100 list since the list began in August 1958.

A song appearing at No. 1 is worth 100 points.

A song at No. 100 is worth 1 point.

We count each week separately, so songs rack up points for staying on the chart.

Performers listed as the main artist on a track get full credit.

Featured artists or guest vocalists get only one-third of the song’s points.1

Performers get one-third of the points from their former band’s hits. That means Paul McCartney gets only a small boost from hits by the Beatles. The weights compound, so if an artist’s former band was merely featured on a song, the artist gets one-ninth of the song’s points.2

If any of that seems confusing, let’s look at an example featuring one of this year’s performers, Atlanta rapper Big Boi.

When we add up all the points, we can see how successful the artists were for every Super Bowl. Here’s what that looks like for the 2019 halftime performers.

Super Bowl LIII nets a respectable 65,065 total Performer Points. That’s seventh on our list of best Super Bowl lineups since 1993. We’ll see whether that translates to a memorable show on Sunday, but the past five years could give us a sense of whether our methodology has any predictive power.

  Rankings

It’s easy to dunk on the Black Eyed Peas, and their uninspiring halftime show in 2011 didn’t make it any harder. Fergie, will.i.am, Taboo (!) and apl.de.ap (!!) closed out their headlining set with “Where Is the Love?” on a giant stage shaped like, you guessed it, the word “Love.” The only problem was that part of the letter “v” was literally missing. Now at least we have some data to back up what everyone was thinking the next day: Usher should have headlined. By 2011, he had already reached Billboard’s top 103 with 14 tracks, including classics such as “My Boo” and “U Remind Me.” Usher went into the halftime show with almost twice as many Performer Points as the Peas, and though he performed one of his weaker hits, “OMG,” he still managed to hit every cue, leaping over will.i.am’s head and into our hearts.

I have a confession: I’ve always thought of the 2012 halftime show as “the one with Nicki Minaj.” Looking at the chart, it’s clear there’s recency bias at work — Minaj has become unavoidable since 2012. But at the time of the Super Bowl, her only top 10 hit4 was “Super Bass.” Madonna, on the other hand, stands on top of our individual power rankings with more than 59,000 Performer Points, thanks to her trove of hits dating back to the 1980s. Credit to Madge for almost single-handedly dragging this riot of grecian beefcakes and vogueing into the top five — Katy Perry and Lady Gaga could never.

I’m glad to see our formula isn’t totally set on picking shows from the past 10 years. The “Salute to Motown’s 40th Anniversary” in 1998 had all the intergenerational appeal that Madonna’s show was supposed to capture. The choreography seems a little hokey by today’s standards, but I could listen to this medley all day. Queen Latifah brings it, The Temptations sound fantastic, Boyz II Men gets a solid ballad in, Smokey covers all the old bases and Martha Reeves is so harmlessly, indescribably awful that you can’t help but smile knowing that social media didn’t exist back then.5

Super Bowl L — er, 50 — was billed as Coldplay’s performance, but the NFL let halftime show veterans Beyoncé and Bruno Mars “crash” it. This was a blessing for anyone not named Chris Martin. Both guest stars had more Performer Points than Coldplay, and they stomped away with the show. Beyoncé, dressed in a black leather homage to the Black Panthers, debuted6 “Formation” right there on the field and reminded us of just how powerful this 12-minute musical interlude can be.

We didn’t tweak the weights to get Nipplegate this high up, I promise. You can see on the chart why it’s such a good show. Janet Jackson was an appropriate headline pick, both in length of career and volume of hits. Nelly and P. Diddy were established emissaries from the rap genre, which the Super Bowl has rarely invited on stage. Justin Timberlake had teenybopper loyalty from his *NSYNC days and a new, prurient edge as a solo artist. And Kid Rock was … also there. Of course, nobody remembers anything about this show other than the words “wardrobe malfunction,” and I don’t think any chart could change that, so let’s leave things there.

You may be wondering where your favorite halftime show falls on the list. As we mentioned above, it’s a rough measure of the excitement people might have felt before the show began — Prince may be the best performer ever to take the halftime stage, but if you weren’t a fan, then there wasn’t much to anticipate. On the chart below, you can see how all the artists compare.

All the data we scraped also allows us to answer one final question: Which artists should the Super Bowl reach out to for the 2020 show? Assuming the league is aiming to please a range of viewers, we can grab the top 10 artists by Performer Points for each decade since 1990, as well as from the past two years for the Gen Z audience.

Drafting a Super Bowl halftime show fantasy lineup

Artists with the most Performer Points, by decade

1990-1999 2000-2009 2010-present 2017-present 1 Mariah Carey Nelly Drake Drake 2 Madonna Beyonce Rihanna Post Malone 3 Boyz II Men Ludacris Nicki Minaj Cardi B 4 Whitney Houston Kanye West Taylor Swift Kendrick Lamar 5 Janet Jackson P!nk Bruno Mars Khalid 6 Celine Dion Usher Maroon 5 Ed Sheeran 7 R. Kelly Rihanna Katy Perry Migos 8 TLC 50 Cent Chris Brown Imagine Dragons 9 Elton John Nickelback Lil Wayne Bruno Mars 10 Toni Braxton Alicia Keys Justin Bieber Halsey

Gray text indicates that the artist has already performed at a halftime show, that the artist has died or that a member of the group has died.

Unlike in the rest of the analysis, points earned as a member of a musical group do not count toward an artist’s individual points.

Source: Billboard

Drake would be the biggest get here for the NFL. Starting in May 2009, Drizzy held a spot somewhere on the Hot 100 for 430 weeks straight. Since 2010, he’s amassed 83,898 Performer Points. The closest runner-up in that table is Rihanna, who collected 48,153 points during the same period. If halftime producers haven’t already approached Drake, they’re sleeping on him.

It’s impossible to know who on our list has talked with the NFL. Stars are rarely as open about Super Bowl negotiations as Cardi B was this year, when one of her representatives told Page 6 that “she was not particularly interested in participating because of how she feels about Colin Kaepernick and the whole movement.” (Rihanna also reportedly declined to perform because of her support of Kaepernick.) Taylor Swift, for instance, seems like an obvious candidate. But she has shilled for Coca-Cola — a relationship that could be at risk if she were to perform in the halftime show that Pepsi has sponsored for seven years running.

Whomever the NFL picks next year, the pressure is on. Asking Maroon 5 to headline a show in Atlanta, a city abounding in talented rappers (Big Boi is the only homegrown artist on the bill), resulted in a social media backlash, and a petition with more than 100,000 signatures has urged the band to drop out to demonstrate solidarity with Kaepernick. USA Today even went so far as to publish an obituary for the halftime show as a cultural institution.

That seems a little premature to me. The Super Bowl has evolved before and could do it again. What used to be a variety show writ large, with inscrutable themes,7 Elvis impersonators and card tricks eventually embraced the market-certified success of singers like Michael Jackson and *NSYNC. The collective shrugs following picks like Coldplay, Justin Timberlake and Maroon 5, which has the second most Performer Points of any artist on our list, may herald the end of that era.8 The league has clearly taken note of this year’s controversy, announcing that the pregame press conference with Maroon 5 would not take place so that the artists could focus on their performance. What might come next for the halftime show is anybody’s guess, but one thing’s for certain: Everyone will be watching.

All images courtesy of Getty.

from News About Sports https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/25-years-of-super-bowl-halftime-show-lineups-ranked/

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Earlier this year, we published a three-part series on how well primary polls conducted in the calendar year before a presidential election predict the outcome. Our analysis, which covered more than 40 years of primaries, found that early polls are somewhat predictive of who eventually wins the nomination, especially when they’re adjusted for how well known a candidate was at the time.

So now that we’re halfway through the calendar year before the 2020 election, we decided to replicate that analysis for the current electoral cycle — we used polls conducted between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2019, to calculate a candidate’s (or potential candidate’s) polling average and then adjusted it based on how well known they are (measured on a slightly subjective five-tier scale, which is represented by the black boxes in the table below, where more boxes means higher name recognition).1 This helps us better understand how the 2020 Democratic candidates stack up so far, and how this primary compares to past nomination contests. Here’s where things stand after the first six months of 2019:

How the 2020 Democratic primary field looks six months in

Candidates’ polling averages in the first half of 2019, plus an adjustment for name recognition

Candidate Name recognition Poll.Avg Adj. Poll Avg Joe Biden 31.6% 31.6% Bernie Sanders 18.6 18.6 Kamala Harris 8.7 14.6 Elizabeth Warren 9.5 11.9 Pete Buttigieg 4.5 11.4 Beto O’Rourke 5.2 8.7 Cory Booker 3.0 4.9 Andrew Yang 0.8 4.0 Amy Klobuchar 1.5 2.5 Julián Castro 1.0 1.7 Tulsi Gabbard 0.7 1.6 John Hickenlooper 0.6 1.5 Steve Bullock 0.3 1.4 Kirsten Gillibrand 0.8 1.3 John Delaney 0.4 1.1 Michael Bloomberg 0.6 1.1 Jay Inslee 0.4 0.9 Tim Ryan 0.3 0.9 Sherrod Brown 0.3 0.7 Hillary Clinton 0.7 0.7 Marianne Williamson 0.1 0.6 Michael Bennet 0.2 0.6 Seth Moulton 0.1 0.4 Mike Gravel 0.1 0.4 Bill de Blasio 0.2 0.4 Eric Swalwell 0.1 0.4 Wayne Messam 0.0 0.2 Terry McAuliffe 0.1 0.2 Eric Holder 0.1 0.2 Joe Sestak 0.0 0.0

Because the Democratic field is historically large, pollsters have asked about many candidates and potential candidates in the first half of 2019. To keep the list of candidates manageable, we limited our analysis to individuals named in at least eight national surveys during the first half of 2019.

Source: Polls

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two candidates who are actually running and have near-universal name recognition sit at the top of the pack. Former Vice President Joe Biden led the way — he regularly topped most nationwide surveys, even before he officially entered the race on April 25 — and Sen. Bernie Sanders finished a distant second, which may speak to holdover support from his 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination. But this isn’t necessarily good news for Biden or Sanders; in the past, some candidates who were well known early in the primary process wound up having trouble growing their support, including then-Sen. Hubert Humphrey in the 1972 Democratic primary and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 GOP contest, both of whom fell short of the nomination after fairly strong starts. Not every well-known candidate flops, of course — former Vice President Walter Mondale, for example, improved his poll position and went on to win the Democratic nomination in 1984. But the struggles of people like Giuliani and Humphrey serve as an important reminder that when voters are already very familiar with a candidate, it can be harder to earn more support in the polls, since many voters’ attitudes about the candidate may already be fixed.

That’s why the next couple of candidates in the table might prove to be the most interesting to watch as the Democratic primary heats up. Even though these candidates have smaller national profiles than Biden and Sanders, they still did relatively well among the voters who knew about them. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, for example, are fairly well-known senators who still don’t enjoy the same level of fame as Biden or Sanders. So the fact that they polled close to 10 percent despite not being as well known suggests they might have higher ceilings of potential support, which is reflected in their adjusted polling average. And the most striking example of a lesser-known candidate polling well in the first half of the year was Pete Buttigieg, the mayor from South Bend, Indiana, who was virtually unknown at the start of his campaign but still managed to attract an outsized share of support. Buttigieg wasn’t one of the five candidates who cracked 5 percent in their unadjusted polling average, but he might still be in a better position than former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who edged him out in the polls. Like Buttigieg, O’Rourke isn’t that well known, but he didn’t outperform his adjusted polling average by nearly as much.

But how do the candidates running in 2020 stack up historically? Well, to get a sense of their chances, we can see where they fall on a chart from our primary polls series where we estimated a candidate’s chance of winning the nomination based on their unadjusted polling average and whether they had high or low name recognition.2 And as you can see below, we found that a well-known candidate polling at 30 percent in the first half of the year had about a 40 percent chance of winning the nomination, while a lesser-known candidate polling around 10 percent had about a 25 percent chance of winning.

In 2020, that likely means that while Biden has rightly been viewed as the Democratic front-runner, he’s not unbeatable. Biden is a long way, for instance, from Hillary Clinton’s position in the last presidential election, when she polled north of 60 percent in the first half of 2015, giving her better than 9 in 10 odds of winning the nomination compared to Biden’s 2 in 5 shot. Candidates such as Warren and Harris also fell into the well-known category, which means historically speaking, their chances aren’t as strong as Biden’s, but if he were to falter, they could benefit from the absence of a clear front-runner. Buttigieg’s low polling average doesn’t bode well historically, but of the candidates who aren’t as well known, he has the best chance of winning the nomination.

In other words, it’s still (almost) anyone’s game. And after the first debate, there are signs that Biden’s lead may be slipping, as multiple surveys have found his support dropping into the low 20s nationally. Meanwhile, Harris and Warren’s percentages have shifted into the mid-teens, putting them and Sanders neck-and-neck behind Biden. This tightening in the race could be quite meaningful, as candidates polling at around 20 percent in the second half of the year before the primaries historically had about a 15 percent chance of winning the nomination. So if the polls continue to trend in the wrong direction for Biden, there might be a new front-runner by the end of the year.

Of course, there will be further twists in the 2020 tale, what with more debates, campaign events and more candidates still entering the race. But if the post-debate polls approximate the new normal for the second half of 2019, watch out — the Democratic nomination race might truly be wide open.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

The past few months have seen a parade of newly launched presidential campaigns, each hoping to march through the primaries and on to the White House. The streets have gotten rather crowded — the Democratic field has ballooned to more than a dozen candidates. But voters haven’t heard the same amount of noise from each campaign, because cable news has amplified their launches differently.

To measure the media response to these campaign announcements,1 we again turned to the Internet Archive’s Television News Archive, with the help of the GDELT project’s television explorer. We used this data to figure out what share of the overall news coverage on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC mentioned a candidate in the days leading up to and after the campaign announcement. (For candidates whose campaigns have launched since Dec. 31, 2018.)2 We found that Bernie Sanders and Beto O’Rourke saw dramatic, mountainous peaks in mentions immediately following their announcements, and in some cases still days after. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren saw more modest bumps. And others — such as Pete Buttigieg, John Hickenlooper and Jay Inslee — saw molehills.

The three networks appeared to respond to each campaign’s announcement more or less in kind, although there were some differences. Fox News mentioned Sanders more, for example, while MSNBC was more outspoken than the other networks in mentioning O’Rourke.

Of course not all coverage is the same, even if it comes out of the television at the same volume and in the same quantity. So we also tallied how the cable networks talked about these newly minted Democratic candidates by looking at the words that were uttered near their names in the networks’ coverage. The words that were most likely to indicate that coverage was about a particular candidate3 provide small snapshots of the coverage: “socialism,” “socialist” and “2016” were most specifically associated with Sanders; “mayor” and “chance” with Booker; “exploratory” and “committee” with Warren; “congressman” and “fair” with O’Rourke; “insurance” and “health” with Harris; “women” and “exploratory” with Kirsten Gillibrand; and “mayor” and “guy” with Pete Buttigieg.

After all of these announcements, the Democratic field is nearly set, and there is only one candidate — Joe Biden — who is both likely to enter and who is thought to have a real chance at the nomination. If and when he does officially enter the race, we’ll gauge the noise his campaign makes on TV and add it to the chart above. The whole parade is nearly on the march, and the noise is unlikely to die down any time soon.

[just6f]

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

On Nov. 5, the night before last month’s midterms, I got dinner with Sean Trende from RealClearPolitics. Over the years, Sean and I have learned to stare into the abyss and play out various “unthinkable” scenarios in our head. Sure, it was unlikely, but what if Republicans won the popular vote for the House, as a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted just before the election suggested? Or what if Democrats won it by about 15 percentage points, as a Los Angeles Times poll had it? What if polls were just so screwed up that there were a ton of upsets in both directions?

Instead, the election we wound up with was one where everything was quite … dare I say it? … predictable. Polls and forecasts, including FiveThirtyEight’s forecast, were highly accurate and did about as well as you could expect. So let’s go through how our forecast, in particular, performed: I’ll brag about what it got right, along with suggesting some areas where — despite our good top-line numbers — there’s potentially room to improve in 2020.

But before I do that, I want to remind you that our forecasts are probabilistic. Not only are our forecasts for individual races probabilistic, but our model assumes that the errors in the forecasts are correlated across races — that is, if one party’s chances were overrated in one race, they’d likely be overrated in many or all races. Because errors are correlated, we’re going to have better years and worse ones in terms of “calling” races correctly. This year was one of the better years — maybe the best we’ve ever had — but it’s still just one year. In the long run, we want our forecasts to be accurate, but we also want our probabilities to be well-calibrated, meaning that, for instance, 80 percent favorites win about 80 percent of the time.

I say that because we’ve frequently argued that our 2016 forecasts did a good job because they gave President Trump a considerably higher chance than the conventional wisdom did and because our probabilities were well-calibrated. But Trump did win several key states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) in which he was an underdog, and he was an underdog in the Electoral College overall. So 2016 was good from a calibration perspective but middling from an accuracy (calling races correctly) perspective. This year was sort of the opposite: terrific from an accuracy perspective, but actually somewhat problematic from a calibration perspective because not enough underdogs won. We’ll get back to that theme in a moment.

First, though, I just want to look at our topline numbers for the House, the Senate and governorships. Keep in mind that there are three different versions of our forecast: Lite (which uses local and national polls only, making extrapolations in districts that don’t have polling based on districts that do have polling), Classic (which blends the polls with other data such as fundraising numbers) and Deluxe (which adds expert ratings to the Classic forecasts). Classic is the “default” forecast, but we made pretty extensive use of all three versions over the course of our election coverage, so it’s fair to evaluate and critique them all.

Here’s more detail on the numbers in that chart:

The House. Two House races remain uncalled as of this writing: California 21, where Democrat TJ Cox has pulled ahead, overcoming a big deficit on election night, and North Carolina 9, where Republican Mark Harris leads but the vote hasn’t been certified because of possible fraud in absentee ballots. I’m going to assume for the rest of this article that Cox and Harris will indeed prevail in their respective races.1

If that’s the case, Democrats will wind up with a net gain of 40 House seats. That’s a big number, but it’s actually not that much of a surprise. In fact, it’s quite close to the mean number of seats that our various forecasts projected: Classic had Democrats picking up an average of 39 seats, Lite had 38 seats and Deluxe had 36 seats.

It’s also important to point out that the range of possible seat gains in our forecasts was wide. In the Classic forecast, for instance, our 80 percent confidence interval — that is, everything between the 10th and 90th percentiles of possible outcomes — ran from a Democratic gain of 21 seats all the way to a Democratic gain of 59 seats. We were pretty lucky to wind up only one or two seats off, in other words. With that said, it isn’t as though our model just threw up its hands and didn’t have an opinion about the election. Although they provided for a realistic chance (between a 12 percent and 20 percent chance in the different versions of the model) of Republicans holding the House, our forecasts were more confident about Democrats than the conventional wisdom was; GOP chances of keeping the House were closer to 35 percent in betting markets, for instance. So we think our House model was on the right side of the argument, in terms of being bullish on Democrats.

Our forecasts also did a good job of projecting the popular vote for the House. As of Monday afternoon, Democrats led the national popular vote for the House by 8.5 percentage points, but this margin has been rising as additional ballots from California, New York and other states are counted, and Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman estimates that it will eventually reach 8.7 points. That’s very close to where the Classic and Deluxe models had the popular vote, showing Democrats winning by 9.2 points and 8.8 points, respectively. (It also exactly matches our final generic congressional ballot average of the Democrats ahead by 8.7 points, but note that the estimate of the popular vote in our forecast incorporates factors other than just the generic ballot.) The Lite forecast was a bit too high on Democrats’ popular vote margin, by contrast, showing them winning it by 10.2 points, largely because it overestimated how well Democrats would do in extremely Democratic districts where there wasn’t a lot of polling.

The Senate. Republicans won a net of two Senate seats from Democrats, well within the middle of the 80 percent confidence intervals of all versions of our model, which showed a range between a two-seat Democratic gain and (depending on what version of the model you look at) a three- to four- seat Republican gain. The mean of our forecasts showed Republicans gaining between 0.5 (in Classic and Deluxe) and 0.7 (in Lite) Senate seats, so they did about one-and-a-half seats better than expected, although that’s a fairly minor difference. That difference is essentially accounted for by Florida and Indiana, where Republicans won despite being modest underdogs in our forecast. (I’ll have a table showing the biggest upsets later on in this column.) Meanwhile, each party won its fair share of toss-ups (e.g., Republicans in Missouri, Democrats in Nevada).

Governorships. Our gubernatorial forecast predicted that Republicans were more likely than not to control a majority of governorships after the election2 which is within the 80 percent confidence interval for our population forecast but is less than the mean of our projections, which had Democrats predicted to govern about 60 percent of the population. The main culprit for the difference was Florida, which accounts for about 6 percent of the U.S. population. Republican Ron DeSantis won there despite having only about a 20 percent chance of prevailing in our forecast.

But while our top-line numbers were quite accurate, what about in individual races? Those were very good also. Between the House (435 races), Senate (35) and gubernatorial races (36), we issued forecasts in a total of 506 elections. Of those:

The Lite forecast called the winner correctly in 482 of 506 races (95 percent).

The Classic forecast called the winner correctly in 487 of 506 races (96 percent).

And the Deluxe forecast called the winner correctly in 490 of 506 races (97 percent).

Granted, a fair number of those races were layups (only 150 or so of the 506 races might be considered highly competitive). Still, that’s better than we expected to do. Based on the probabilities listed by our models, we’d have expected Lite to get 466 races right (92 percent), Classic to get 472 races right (93 percent) and Deluxe to get 476 races right (94 percent) in an average year. It’s also nice that Deluxe called a few more races correctly than Classic and that Classic called a few more correctly than Lite, since that’s how our models are supposed to work: Lite accounts for less information, which makes it simpler and less assumption-driven, but at the cost of being (slightly) less accurate.

Again, though, it isn’t entirely good news that there were fewer upsets than expected. That’s because it means our forecasts weren’t super well-calibrated. The chart below shows that in some detail; it breaks races down into the various category labels we use such as “likely Republican” and “lean Democrat.” (I’ve subdivided our “toss-up” category into races where the Democrat and Republican were slightly favored.) In most of these categories, the favorites won more often than expected — sometimes significantly more often.3

How well our Lite forecast was calibrated

Where Democrats were favored Category Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up (tilt D) 19 10 12 54% 63% Lean D 16 11 13 67 81 Likely D 33 29 32 88 97 Solid D 205 204 205 100 100 All races 273 254 262 93 96 Where Republicans were favored Category Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up (tilt R) 11 6 4 55% 36% Lean R 22 15 19 70 86 Likely R 64 56 61 87 95 Solid R 136 134 136 99 100 All races 233 211 220 91 94 All races combined Category Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up 30 16 16 55% 53% Lean 38 26 32 69 84 Likely 97 84 93 87 96 Solid 341 339 341 99 100 All races 506 466 482 92 95

How well our Classic forecast was calibrated

Where Democrats were favored Category Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up (tilt D) 13 7 9 56% 69% Lean D 13 9 10 66 77 Likely D 30 26 29 87 97 Solid D 216 215 216 100 100 All races 272 257 264 95 97 Where Republicans were favored Category Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up (tilt R) 12 7 7 55% 58% Lean R 17 12 15 69 88 Likely R 55 47 51 85 93 Solid R 150 149 150 99 100 All races 234 214 223 92 95 All races combined Category Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up 25 14 16 56% 64% Lean 30 20 25 68 83 Likely 85 73 80 86 94 Solid 366 364 366 100 100 All races 506 472 487 93 96

How well our Deluxe forecast was calibrated

Where Democrats were favored Category No. Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up (tilt D) 8 4 6 53% 75% Lean D 22 14 17 66 77 Likely D 29 25 28 88 97 Solid D 216 215 216 100 100 All races 275 260 267 94 97 Where Republicans were favored Category No. Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up (tilt R) 7 4 3 57% 43% Lean R 10 7 10 68 100 Likely R 52 45 48 86 92 Solid R 162 161 162 99 100 All races 231 217 223 94 97 All races combined Category No. Races Expected Wins for Favorite Actual Wins for Favorite Expected % Correct Actual % Correct Toss-up 15 8 9 55% 60% Lean 32 21 27 66 84 Likely 81 70 76 87 94 Solid 378 377 378 100 100 All races 506 476 490 94 97

For instance, in races that were identified as “leaning” in the Classic forecast (that is, “lean Democrat” or “lean Republican”), the favorite won 83 percent of the time (25 of 30 races) when they were supposed to win only two-thirds of the time (20 of 30). And in “likely” races, favorites had a 94 percent success rate when they were supposed to win 86 percent of the time. Based on measures like a binomial test, it’s fairly unlikely that these differences arose because of chance alone and that favorites just “got lucky”; rather, they systematically won more often than expected.

Here’s the catch, though: As we’ve emphasized repeatedly, polling errors often are systematic and correlated. In many elections, polls are off by 2 or 3 points in one direction or another across the board — and occasionally they’re off by more than that. (The polling error in 2016 was actually pretty average by historical standards; it was far from the worst-case scenario.) In years like those, you’re going to miss a whole bunch of races. This year, however, polls were both quite accurate and largely unbiased, with a roughly equal number of misses in both directions. The probabilities in our forecasts reflect how accurate we expect our forecasts to be, on average, across multiple election cycles, including those with good, bad and average polling. Another way to look at this is that you should “bank” our highly accurate forecasts from this year and save them for a year in which there’s a large, systematic polling error — in which case more underdogs will win than are supposed to win according to our model.

With that said, there are a couple of things we’ll want to look at in terms of keeping those probabilities well-calibrated. One huge benefit to people making forecasts in the House this year was the series of polls conducted by The New York Times’s The Upshot in conjunction with Siena College. These polls covered dozens of competitive House races, and they were extremely accurate. Especially combined with polls conducted by Monmouth University, which also surveyed a lot of House districts, election forecasters benefited from much richer and higher-quality polling than we’re used to seeing in House races. In theory, our forecasts are supposed to be responsive to this — they become more confident when there’s more high-quality polling. But we’ll want to double-check this part of the calculation; it’s possible that the forecast’s probabilities need to be more responsive to the volume of polling in a race.

OK, now for the part that critics of FiveThirtyEight will love, as will people who just like underdog stories. Here’s a list of every upset as compared to our forecasts — every race where any candidate with less than a 50 percent chance of winning (in any one of the three versions of our model) actually won:

The biggest upsets of 2018

Races in which at least one version of the FiveThirtyEight model rated the eventual winner as an underdog

Winning Party’s Chances Race Winner Lite Classic Deluxe OK-5 D 7.6% 14.3% 6.6% SC-1 D 20.0 9.4 8.6 FL-Gov R 18.7 22.8 22.2 CA-21 D* 27.6 21.0 16.1 NY-11 D 25.0 23.7 20.3 FL-Sen R 27.8 29.6 26.8 IN-Sen R 29.0 28.2 38.3 VA-2 D 29.4 32.7 40.6 OH-Gov R 33.5 40.5 38.1 IA-Gov R 42.2 42.7 36.4 KS-2 R 49.7 38.2 35.9 MN-1 R 51.7 44.2 40.1 TX-7 D 41.0 52.2 44.7 VA-7 D 44.3 43.7 52.0 NM-2 D 44.8 44.4 52.2 MO-Sen R 46.5 43.1 52.8 KS-Gov D 53.6 42.8 50.0 GA-6 D 56.8 49.1 40.6 TX-32 D 64.2 37.2 46.3 NC-9 R* 51.8 52.4 45.0 CA-25 D 31.9 63.7 55.9 CA-39 D 44.0 58.2 51.8 FL-26 D 48.8 55.8 50.2 NY-22 D 43.8 52.2 60.4 KY-6 R 47.9 54.3 57.3 CA-48 D 41.7 56.6 62.8 PA-1 R 47.2 57.2 59.4 IL-6 D 54.7 48.6 62.0 VA-5 R 48.6 53.8 70.0 SD-Gov R 44.6 63.1 65.4

* Winner has not been called, but these candidates lead in the vote count.

Although DeSantis’s win in the Florida gubernatorial race was the highest-profile (and arguably most important) upset, it wasn’t the most unlikely one. Instead, depending on which version of our model you prefer, that distinction belongs either to Democrat Kendra Horn in winning in Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District or to another Democrat, Joe Cunningham, winning in South Carolina’s 1st District. Two other Democratic House upsets deserve an honorable mention: Cox (probably) winning in California 21 and Max Rose winning in New York 11, which encompases Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. None of these upsets were truly epic, however. Horn had only a 1 in 15 chance of winning according to our Deluxe model, for instance — making her the biggest underdog to win any race in any version of our model this year — but over a sample of 506 races, you’d actually expect some bigger upsets than that — e.g., a candidate with a 1 in 50 shot winning. Bernie Sanders’s win in the Michigan Democratic primary in 2016 — he had less than a 1 in 100 chance according to our model — retains the distinction of being the biggest upset in FiveThirtyEight history out of the hundreds of election forecasts we’ve issued.

As an election progresses, I always keep a mental list of things to look at the next time I’m building a set of election models. (This is as opposed to making changes to the model during the election year, which we strongly try to avoid, at least beyond the first week or two when there’s inevitably some debugging to do.) Sometimes, accurate results can cure my concerns. For instance, fundraising numbers were a worry heading into election night because they were so unprecedentedly in favor of Democrats, but with results now in hand, they look to have been a highly useful leading indicator in tipping our models off to the size of the Democratic wave.

Here are a few concerns that I wasn’t able to cross off my list, however — things that we’ll want to look at more carefully before 2020.

Underweighting the importance of partisanship, especially in races with incumbents. A series of deeply red states with Democratic incumbent senators — Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, West Virginia — presented a challenge for our model this year. On the one hand, these states had voted strongly for Trump in an era of high party-line voting. On the other hand, they featured Democratic incumbents who had won (in some cases fairly easily) six years earlier — and 2018 was shaping up to be a better year for Democrats than 2012. The “fundamentals” part of our model thought that Democratic incumbents should win these races because that’s what had happened historically — when a party was having a wave election, the combination of incumbency and having the wind at its back from the national environment was enough to mean that almost all of a party’s incumbents were re-elected.

That’s not what happened this year, however. Democratic incumbents held on in Montana and West Virginia (and in Minnesota’s 7th district, the reddest congressional district held by a Democratic incumbent in the House) — but those wins were close calls, and the incumbents in the Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota Senate races lost. Those outcomes weren’t huge surprises based on the polls, but the fundamentals part of the model was probably giving more credit to those incumbents than it should have been. Our model accounts for the fact that the incumbency advantage is weaker than it once was, but it probably also needs to provide for partisanship that is stronger than it was even six or eight years ago — and much stronger than it was a decade or two ago.

The house effects adjustment in races with imbalanced polling. Our house effects calculation adjusts polls that have a partisan lean — for instance, if a certain pollster is consistently 2 points more favorable to the Republican candidate than the consensus of other surveys, our adjustment will shift those polls back toward Democrats. This is a longstanding feature of FiveThirtyEight’s models and helps us to make better use of polls that have a consistent partisan bias. This year, however, the house effects adjustment had a stronger effect than we’re used to seeing in certain races — in particular, in the Senate races in Missouri, Indiana and Montana, where there was little traditional, high-quality polling and where many polls were put out by groups that the model deemed to be Republican-leaning, so the polls were adjusted toward the Democrats. In fact, Missouri and Indiana were two of the races where Republicans beat our polling average by the largest amount, so it’s worth taking a look at whether the house effects adjustment was counterproductive. When we next update our pollster ratings, we’ll also want to re-examine how well traditional live-caller polls are performing as compared with other technologies.

CANTOR forecasts in races with little polling. As I mentioned, the Lite version of our model tended to overestimate Democrats’ vote share in deeply blue districts. This overestimation was based on our CANTOR algorithm, which uses polls in races that do have polling to extrapolate what polls would say in races that have little or no polling. This wasn’t a very consequential problem for projecting the number of seats each party would win, since it only affected noncompetitive races. But it did lead the Lite model to slightly overestimate the Democrats’ performance in the popular vote. To be honest, we don’t spend a ton of energy on trying to optimize our forecasts in noncompetitive races — our algorithms are explicitly designed to maximize performance in competitive races instead. But since this was the first year we used CANTOR, it’s worth looking at how we can improve on it, perhaps by using techniques such as MRP, which is another (more sophisticated) method of extrapolating out forecasts in states and districts with little polling.

Implementing a “beta test” period. We did quite a bit of debugging in the first week or two after our House model launched. The most consequential fix was making the generic ballot polling average less sensitive after it was bouncing around too much. None of these involved major conceptual or philosophical reimaginations of the model, and they didn’t change the top-line forecast very much. Still, I think we can do a better job of advertising to you that the initial period after forecast launch will typically involve making some fixes, perhaps by labelling it as a beta period or “soft launch” — and that we should be exceptionally conservative about making changes to the model once that period is over. As much as you might test a model with data from past elections to see how it’s handling edge cases, there’s a certain amount you only learn once you’re working with live data and seeing how the model is reacting to it in real time, and getting feedback from readers (that means you, folks!), who often catch errors and idiosyncrasies.

The election night model. Last but not least, there was our election night forecast, which started with our final, pre-election Deluxe forecast but revised and updated the forecast as results started to come in. Indeed, these revisions were pretty substantial; at one point early on election night, after disappointing results for Democrats in states such as Kentucky, Indiana and Florida, the Democrats’ probability of winning the House deteriorated to only about 50-50 before snapping back to about what it had been originally.

I have some pretty detailed thoughts on all of this, which you can hear on a “model talk” podcast that we recorded last month. But the gist of it is basically four things:

First, to some extent, this was just a consequence of which states happened to report their results first. Amy McGrath’s loss in Kentucky 6 was one of the most disappointing results of the evening for Democrats, and in Senate races, Democrat Joe Donnelly underperformed his polls in Indiana, as did Bill Nelson in Florida. Those were the competitive races where we started to get a meaningful number of votes reported early in the evening. Conversely, it took quite a while before any toss-up House or Senate races were called for Democrats. Maybe our model was too aggressive in reacting to them, but the early results really were a bit scary for Democrats.

Second, election night models are tough because there are risks in accounting for both too little information and too much. Our model mostly waited for states where races had been “called” (projected by the ABC News Decision Desk) or where a large portion of the vote was in, so it was still hung up on Kentucky, Florida and Indiana even after initial returns in other states were more in line with the polls. If we had designed the model to look at county- or precinct-level data in partially-reported states instead of just the top-line results and calls, it might not have shifted to the GOP to the same degree. But the risk in that is that data feeds can break, and the more complicated the set of assumptions in a model, the harder it is to debug if something seems to be going wrong.

Third — and this is not just a challenge for election night models but for all journalists covering the election in real time — early voting and mail balloting can can cause the initial results to differ quite a bit from the final tallies. In California and Arizona, for instance, late-reported mail-in ballots tend to be significantly more Democratic than the vote reported on election evening. This didn’t matter much to our model’s swings early in the evening, but it contributed to the model being too somewhat too conservative about Democratic seat gains later on in the night.

And fourth, election night models are inherently challenging just because there isn’t any opportunity for debugging — everything is happening very fast, and there’s not really time to step back and evaluate whether the model is interpreting the evidence correctly or instead is misbehaving in some way. Our solution to the model’s oversensitive initial forecasts was to implement a “slowdown” parameter that wasn’t quite a kill switch but that allowed us to tell the model to be more cautious. While this may have been a necessary evil, it wasn’t a great solution; our general philosophy is to leave models alone once they’re launched unless you know something is wrong with them.

The thing you might notice is that none of these challenges are easy to resolve. That doesn’t mean there can’t be improvements at the margin, or even substantial improvements. But election night forecasts are inherently hard because of the speed at which election nights unfold and the sometimes-uneven quality of returns being reported in real time. The chance that a model will “break” is fairly high — much higher than for pre-election forecasts. As long as news organizations that sponsor these models are willing to accept those risks, they can have a lot of news value, and even with those risks, they’re probably superior to more subjective ways of evaluating results as they come in on election night. But the risks are real. As in any type of breaking news environment, consumers and journalists need think of election night reporting as being more provisional and intrinsically and unavoidably error-prone than stories that unfold over the course days or weeks.

Finally, a closing thought for those of you who have made it this far. The 2018 midterms were FiveThirtyEight’s sixth election cycle (three midterms, three presidential years) — or our ninth if you want to consider presidential primaries as their own election cycles, which you probably should. We actually do think there’s enough of a track record now to show that our method basically “works.” It works in two senses: first, in the sense that it gets elections right most of the time, and second, in the sense that the probabilistic estimates are fairly honest. Underdogs win some of the time, but not any more often than they’re supposed to win according to our models — arguably less often, in fact.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t things to work on; I hope you’ll see how meticulous we are about all of this. We’re interested in hearing critiques from other folks who are rigorous in how they cover elections, whether that coverage is done with traditional reporting, with their own statistical models, or with a technique somewhere in between reporting and modelling like the excellent and very accurate forecasts published by the Cook Political Report.

But we’re pretty tired of the philosophical debates about the utility of “data journalism” and the overwrought, faux-“Moneyball” conflict between our election forecasts and other types of reporting. We probably won’t be as accurate-slash-lucky in 2020 as we were in 2018, especially in the primaries, which are always kind of a mess. But our way of covering elections is a good way to cover them, and it’s here to stay.

[mark6f]

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