#god we need to bulldoze this whole thing and start from scratch again

[gothmods]

Going to pride stuff tomorrow for the first time since 2019 and man it is so bleak seeing 3 of the major sponsors being mining and oil megacorps

[dramaphan]

God drama where do we even begin?

So! The Sims came back and dnp made Dil & Tabitha young again. Dalien is an emo teen now. Dab and Evan are going to get married by the end of the year. They decided their house desperately needed a makeover, so they bulldozed the whole thing and are planning to start from scratch in the new high school world.

Then after that spooky week happened. They played a game called "Don't Scream" where the objective is to well...not scream when the game throws various jumpscares at you. Dan grabbed Phil's hand after getting jumpscared and they replayed it not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES. They played Poppy Playtime, a weird indie golfing game, another indie horror game called Elevated Dread, Five Nights at Freddy's. THEN to conclude spooky week, there was The Baking video. Omg drama the baking video...it still feels like a fever dream.

So they baked spooky cinnamon rolls & Phil (dressed as the devil) convinced Dan to put on his nun costume. He completely LOST it when Dan came out. He turned bright red and was giggling like a schoolboy. Dan kept making it worse by flirting with him too. He ran his hand down Phil's arm suggestively, which already had Phil struggling to keep it together (God this sounds like a phanfic but I swear that's how it happened), but THEN Dan flicked his devil horns and Phil totally lost his cool and had to go squat down behind their kitchen island for a minute. Dan's ass cheeks were fully on display in several shots bc the dress was so short. Dan really leaned into the bimbo persona in the nun costume, and Phil embraced the himbo and as a result, they were the stupidest they've ever been. They don't know how to do basic math, or spell or know who discovered gravity, but that's ok bc they're hot. At one point they pressed up close together and made one of those "me and my partner saw you across the room" jokes and it was genuinely funny but also totally wild. Then the video ended with Dan stripping completely naked. I can't believe what I just typed either.

THEN when spooky week was done they came back with a video where they looked at a fan-recreation of their first London apartment in Roblox. It was nostalgic, impressive and incredibly creepy at the same time. Dan probably had to go lie down on the floor and think about his life choices after it.

THEN google feud came back. It was dumb as always. Dan called Phil cousin, so now I'm on cousin hill. They used the video as an excuse to bring back Dan vs Phil so we can look forward to that in the near future.

And THEN they dealt the ultimate psychic damage with the cat video, which you saw so I don't need to give you a summary. Queenusagi of Lazy Days fame designed their legalize catboys sweater, which is really cool. I love how they're commissioning phannie artists now, but also Why are they doing that?

THEN they went back into Roblox and looked at more disturbing creations that were probably made by some poor 12 yr old in 2018. There was a ladydoor room where the song was playing and it was II themed. They went into a room that had recreations of several of their most ironic moments throughout the years including the pinof tackle. To which Dan said "what are they doing honey? Wrestling.... they're wrestling..."

And that's what you missed on Dan and Phil. I probably forgot some things bc soooo much happened. But yeah Drama. it's been a weird and wild ride. Glad to have you back.

Okay first of all forget kissing you with tongue I am sucking you off for this. Second of all hey, what the fuck? And third of all I forgot all about the catboy comic did Phil ever fuck the cat

[mashiraostail]

hello!! can i have miruko and midnight with a student intern (PLATONIC) who just defeated a really strong villian that a lot of other heroes failed to beat? and they’re like suuuuper proud of them and brag to everyone about how strong their apprentice is? thank you!!

i’ve never written for Mirko but i, like most midnight simps, love her as well so hopefully this does her justice!

Rumi Usagiyama/Mirko To be honest you had no idea what you did. You’d never admit that, of course. If you’d learned anything from your mentor it was just to fake it till you made it, even if you were totally lost. Puff out your chest and look in charge, as long as you look like you belong someplace no one will bother you. Maybe you’d taken the advice too far because now you were alone, and this villain was out of your league, but it looked like everyone trusted you. When you looked around for Rumi, desperate for her help she seemed wrapped up in her own fight.  “Hey, you’ve got it! Don’t look so scared! You can’t rely on others forever!”  It spurred you on just enough, the other thing you’d picked up from the rabbit hero was her incredibly hot head.  She fully intended to go in after you, sure she knew you couldn’t rely on her help forever, but you were just a kid, she’d have a tough time taking on that guy alone and she had no intention of making you do it by yourself either, she just wanted you to loosen him up so to speak. Once her own affairs are handled, 3 lower level villains tied to a telephone pole she turns to make way to you, but all she hears is a loud thud, and your opponent is on the ground.   “Holy shit!” She shouts, starting to jump. “Did you see that?!” You shout back, also starting to jump.  “NO but I’m gonna imagine it until the day I die!” She was as strong as she looked, the way she tackles you knocks the wind out of your probably terribly bruised chest. But you don’t mind, not really anyway.  “Tell me everything!” She’s shaking you, your brain feels like soup in your head, and you can practically feel it rattling around your skull. It’s not like it had been an easy win. You definitely had a concussion.  “How the hell did you do that?!” She’s starting to inspect you for any serious damage, twisting and tugging your hero costume, “look at you go! Outshining me!”  The camera crews were fast approaching as she continues her elated praise.  “You’re gonna be a total chart-topper when you graduate!” She spins you around to look at your back.  “And you’ve barely got a scratch!”  “I think I have a major concussion. And I think a rib is floating somewhere ribs shouldn’t float.” You rub the aching area and she laughs.  “Nothing Recovery Girl can’t fix. I’ll give her a call.” Rumi is massaging your shoulders, facing you again.  “How the hell’d you do that?”   “I..honestly don’t know.” You shake your head, “it just...I kept doing what felt right.”  “You are a serious powerhouse, kiddo. Keep your books closed, you’re gonna be my sidekick when you’re old enough. I’m calling dibs.” She’s saying it to you yet also seemingly announcing it to the surrounding newscasters.  “As much as I wanna take credit for this guy, it was all my star pupil.” She shakes you some more, you love Rumi, but she was like a big sister, a buff, heavy-hitting, rough and tumble big sister who didn’t feel pain or understand that other people felt it.  “We’d love to stick around but I’ve got some damaged goods here.” She slings an arm around your shoulder, roughly, you hiss at her.  “Usagiyama-se-OW stop!” You can’t help but laugh, even as the pain rattles down your stomach.  “Make way, make way. Come on, you saw the whole fight there’s nothing else we can tell you, just share the footage so bad guys know to watch out for this kid.” She thumps her foot and the camera crews practically part like the Red Sea for you, you aren’t sure how you ended up with such an impressive mentor.  “So I’ll give Recovery girl a ring, but until then what do you think about cake?” She meanders down the street, and arm still slung around you, “I was thinking-”  “Carrot. I know.” You pinch the bridge of your nose. “Look at you catching on, you’ll be a pro in no time.”  “Can we get a cab?” You whine, “I think I broke my nose.”  “No, and now it’s time for your next lesson under the great and powerful Usagiyama-sensei; walking it off!”  “That’s so unfair!” 

Nemuri Kayama/Midnight You didn’t attend UA, actually, you didn’t even bother applying. So when Midnight took you on as a student you were surprised, to say the least. But you learned a lot from her and had grown...surprisingly close. She was level headed and confident, everything she did she did with clear purpose, you could sense her intention even as she walked. These were all traits you were picking up, at times you probably looked much more confident than you felt.  You aren’t sure if you should accredit that or terrible luck to your current situation, and Midnight was nowhere to be found.  You were backed into a corner, this villain was way too much for you, he’d been way too much for every hero that went against them, always getting away and always leaving the hero more than a little banged up. You couldn’t run there was nowhere to go, even if you used your quirk to flee you couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t be followed, and you weren’t sure you could outrun him.  “Stop trying to size everyone up!” You can hear her voice clear as day in your head, “you’ll know how strong they are when the fight starts, looks can be deceiving, and trying to figure out a million what-if scenarios will make you forget what is. Give it your all, you’d be surprised how often it works out in your favor.” You heed her advice, believing in yourself and your abilities.  Midnight cannot believe she lost you. She had a bad habit of losing kids, just misplacing them, it’s not like she could pick and choose who was immune to her quirk, usually, she told her allies to scatter before activating it, the last thing she wanted was you passed out on the street and prone.  She skids down every alley she passes, eyes casting up to awnings and low rooftops to search for you, she hears fighting, she follows the sound.  She turns the corner just in time to see him go down, You’re on his shoulders behind him, legs wrapped around his neck, you’re hitting the top of his head, his face, pulling his nose and mouth and threatening his eyes, you were fighting totally dirty until the minute the guy hit the ground. She was proud.  “Well.” You fall off him before he hits the ground, dusting off your tattered costume.  “Look at you go!!!” She shouts and you perk up considerably at her voice, glad to no longer be alone.  “Midnight!” You beam, “did you see??”  “See?” She scoffs, running toward you, “I recorded it in my mind!” She taps her temple, “I wish I could have seen the whole fight!” She swoops you up, crushing you into her chest, “but what I did see was incredibly impressive! You’re learning well!”  You brace yourself against her shoulders as she looks up at you, “we’ve been trying to take that guy out for weeks. Eraser isn’t gonna believe it when I tell him it was you who did it.”  You flush at that, embarrassment at the thought of her bragging to her colleagues about you warms up the tips of your ears.  “God! Where’d UA go wrong letting you fly under the radar??” She was squeezing you, shaking you. You didn’t mind, despite the throbbing all over body ache you had, it was nice to be praised and appreciated, especially by a mentor as strong a Nemuri. “You’re gonna be a great hero one day.” She sets you down, clasping your shoulders in her hands, “you’ve got the makings of a real wrecking ball, sprout.”  "Do you think so?”  “Uh, yeah. Duh.” She snorts, starting to pinch your cheeks, “you’re a bulldozer! You gave that guy a beating for every hero he banged up ten times over!” She glances at the passed out villain, he was sporting two tender looking black eyes.  “You’re probably hurt.” She wraps an arm tight around your shoulders, “where’s it hurt?”  “My head.” You let yourself lean into her side, “and my legs.”  “The school is nearby, you can rest up there.” She’s rubbing your arm, they’re quick affectionate strokes that make friction heat up your arm and squeeze you close to her side. “And I can show off my star, I can’t wait to brag to everyone about you.” “That’s unbecoming!” You blush at the thought of her showing you off to Present Mic and Eraser Head, gloating about your victory to pros like Vlad King and Hound Dog.  She laughs you off, “no it’s not, but everyone’s jealousy will be!” You groan and roll your eyes but happily let her squeeze you a little tighter, it feels nice to be appreciated and Nemuri, despite how she scoffed at you when you said it, had a sort of maternal air to her at times like this. You won’t say you’ve never called her ‘mom’ by accident. “I clearly have the best apprentice out of everyone! So of course I need to show you off and light a fire under everyone’s ass!”  

[nukacoola]

Companions react to Danse stepping out of power armor for the first time!

Cait: 

She would look Danse up and down very obviously and grin which would make him extremely uncomfortable. 

“Ya’outgha get out of that thing more often Dansey. Who knew there were cookies in that tin can of yours.”

She obviously isn’t actually interested in Danse. Way too boring. But she’s not one to toss out eye candy just cause it isn’t her favorite flavor. She wouldn’t actively follow him but for fun and also to get on his nerves she would definitely cat-call him everytime he was in hearing range. Deacon and Hancock might join in for a few comments if they don’t have anything better to do.

She would not stop unless sole made a convincing plea or reason for why she should and maybe not even then.

Danse would not respond or look at Cait but he would be very red and never get out of his suit in front of her again.

Codsworth: 

“Why Paladin Danse I dare say you’ve been keeping up your workout routine! Cheers to your excellent health whether in or out of your power armor!” Codsworth is reassured that his owner is traveling with someone so equipped for the struggles of the wasteland.

“Uh, thank you, Codsworth.” Danse would feel a bit awkward but he would appreciate the compliment. 

“Might I polish that for you while you're otherwise engaged? It seems to be in a just dreadful state and I would like nothing more than for you to be looking your best in your wasteland escapades!” Though he is reassured by Danse’s physical state and abilities, he is mortified by the state his armor is in. All the scratches, dings, and dirt? It’s just horrible. Codsworth has always wanted an opportunity to fix that suit up and is pretty happy that the day has finally arrived.

“I- If you’d like to you can.”

“Oh good! I do so love a difficult task!” With that Codsworth would zoom away to procure the necessary supplies to return Danse’s armor to it’s original state. Danse didn’t really know whether or not he should be offended at the robot’s comments but he decided to just continue about his business and not think about it too much. 

Curie:

“Oh Monsieur Danse, you are quite zee lovely specimen! I would be eager to do a physical examination if you would allow me to.” Ever since leaving the vault, Curie has been astounded at how many different sorts of humans there are. Danse is particularly interesting to her because of the amazing athletic feats he does so regularly. She is also interested in studying the effects of constant power armor usage on the human body. When she sees him step out of his suit for the first time and sees his overly muscular physique, it just tacks on another reason she wants to study him. 

Before Blind Betrayal:

“The only specimen that needs examining is you, synth. Don’t talk to me unless you’re submitting yourself to the Brotherhood.” The only reason Curie isn’t already on the Prydwen is because Sole thinks it’s their friend. It bothers Danse immensely that Sole hasn’t destroyed or used this inhuman thing already.

(Don’t get mad at me he literally says this in game.)

Curie is very hurt, she expected this reaction but it still hurt. She was still getting used to feelings such as the pained ones she felt in moments like these.

After Blind Betrayal:

“No. Thank you.” Danse’s words were strained. Being around Curie was pretty awful for him. He had treated her so terribly before and he still had strong feelings of disgust towards her despite what he knows now. Everytime he sees her and has those feelings of hate and disgust, he remembers that he and Curie are the same. He’s still struggling to overcome the years of propaganda that were drilled into him. 

Curie is disappointed. Did Danse not see they are the same? If he didn’t believe in her humanity then he would have to not believe in his own. It is very confusing for Curie. She hopes that he will eventually go back on his denial of her offer. He would be a very interesting specimen.

Deacon:

He would be surprised that Danse would be able to wear that clunky thing so much in the first place. He wouldn’t be surprised at how muscular he is under the suit though. It takes a lot of strength to operate those suits. He’d read that before they were fully developed, a lot of trial runs had resulted in really terrible accidents. The kind of accidents that crush all of your bones at once or remove your top half from your bottom.

Deacon would definitely make a few jokes. “Hey the sardine’s outta the can!” “Isn’t getting out of that bulldozer against Brotherhood policy or something?” “And I thought it was glued on! Learn something new everyday.”

Danse would scowl at his comments but say nothing. He did not like Deacon one bit. That man’s hiding something and if it turns out what he’s hiding will harm Sole or the Brotherhood’s mission, there was gonna be hell to pay. Danse could’ve sworn he’d seen him on the Prydwen a few times but whenever he looked back again to check, he was gone. Danse didn’t much like the idea of leaving his power armor alone with Deacon around but Sole assured him he’s harmless. We’ll see...

Whenever Danse returned to his suit Deacon would stand suspiciously close to it and act like he was trying to play cool after almost being caught doing something nefarious. He would never get tired of watching Danse carefully inspect every part of the armor before apprehensively getting in. Man that guy’s fun to mess with.

Dogmeat: 

He was so surprised! He thought this human was just made of metal! But now Dogmeat can play and jump and lick! Yes!!

Danse has no idea how to deal with a dog he wasn’t allowed to kick so he would just try to awkwardly push the pup off until Sole took care of it.

Hancock: 

Oh HELL YES! Hancock has wanted to punch this fucker since he first laid eyes on him. “HEY SOLDIER BOY, TIME TO SEE WHAT YOU CAN DO OUT OF YOUR DAMN COWARD COFFIN!” He would make a beeline towards the paladin and the paladin would speed walk towards the ghoul as well. Sole barely let him insult the damn freak but this was a direct attack of which he was most definitely gonna defend himself from.

Sole would freak out a bit and try to get in between the two. They would both try to get Sole out of the way so they could pummel each other. A brief alliance in order to facilitate their battle. This was too sweet of an opportunity to miss. 

“Sorry Sunshine, this is happening.”

“Sole, it has directly started an altercation with me and I intend to see it through.”

If they both had a great relationship with Sole after a bit of panicked begging to both parties, the men would begrudgingly back off. They would, however, insult each other viciously despite Sole’s protests. 

“You have no fucking idea how lucky you are meathead. I swear to god if they weren’t here…”

“You call me a meathead but you’re the one who’s rotting, ghoul.”

They would continue to jab each other until Sole dragged Danse off to do what he got out of his suit to do in the first place. 

If one or both of them didn’t have a close relationship with Sole, well, it wouldn’t be pretty. They would forcibly move Sole out of the way and fight for a while. Though Danse is much bigger than Hancock, Hancock is quicker and better at hand to hand. Danse, being unused to fighting outside of his armor, was ultimately unable to beat the ghoul. Hancock landed one final blow to his face, knocking Danse flat. When he stayed down Hancock laughed loudly and spit at him.

“Done in by the best, lucky you.” It would be a huge blow to Danse’s ego and he’d resent Hancock even more now. Hancock would gloat constantly when Danse was around. “Heyyy, there’s my favorite punching bag!” “Come on over Dansey I won’t bite!” He wouldn’t out of shame, but if Danse ever did try to retort, Hancock would just taunt him. Saying something like “Oh yeah? Ya know my favorite way to settle conflicts is by beating the other asshole into the dirt. Hop outta that suit and we can go for round two.”

MacCready:

Mac’s always thought of Danse as an annoying asshole. He still thinks of him this way but when he stepped out of that armor for the first time. Ho lee sh-crap. MacCready might have to look into joining the Brotherhood if the rest of those guys looked the same as Danse. He had expected him to be strong cause of the whole carrying 500 pounds of steel everywhere but his body was something Mac was not expecting and something he could look at for a while. 

If Danse came near the merc he would probably clam up and blush a bit. If Danse caught him staring, he would annoyedly ask, “Is there a problem, civilian?”

“I- uh no.” any other day he would’ve fired back some snide remark but he couldn’t quite seem to think of one right now. 

Nick:

Nick really couldn’t give less of a damn. He hated Danse, Danse hated him, and the two did their best to ignore each other. 

Piper: Piper didn’t really care either. Sure he was muscular but she was very turned off by the everything else about him. All she really payed attention to was the possibility of an exclusive interview or an inside look at the Brotherhood’s workings. Danse would never agree to either of those though. Preston: Preston didn’t care. He already knew you had to be strong to wear power armor especially if you wore them as much as Brotherhood Paladins did. He didn’t like the Brotherhood and by extension, he didn’t trust Danse. Preston was mannerly of course, for Sole, but he knows Danse thinks very little of the Minutemen so he didn’t try too hard to be kind. Strong: Strong thinks this is good time to smash strong human. He has killed many brothers but he wears metal suit. He is weak without metal suit. Human friend tells Strong that if Strong smash, Strong will not find milk of human kindness. Strong angry, Strong want to smash, but Strong not smash.

Danse would never get out of his suit near Strong unless he absolutely had to. Sole insisted that the abomination wasn’t going to be a problem but he didn’t believe it for a second. It took all of his willpower to not open fire on the thing whenever he saw it. Sole has poor taste in companions...

X6:

X6 wouldn’t care. He would consider taking this opportunity to get rid of the high ranking Brotherhood soldier, but it would make Sole upset and would do relatively little to the Brotherhood as a whole. 

Ask and ye shall recieve! I decide the winner on Hancock’s one by their special stats. How the hell does Hancock have such good stats and he’s still terrible in a fight??

[mysticaltigersorceress]

(Cute) Harbingers of Chaos

A/n: So this is my piece for @some-piece‘s AU challenge!! My choice of characters was: Silvers Rayleigh, Shanks, Wire, Kuzan (Aokiji), and Shachi. I’m going to do a (college) library AU. All fluff and fun, no warnings!! this turned out long than i meant lol, but most is under the cut.  feel free to add to the masterlist basi uwu

Word Count: 1.8k (i know, i thought it was gonna be shorter, but then, well, whoops lol)

Notes: Shachi x Reader (vaguely lol), gender neutral reader, and 2nd person pov

Summary: Reader works in college library, chaos caused by adorableness, Bepo is a massive pupper lol, plans went askew

AO3: Find it here on archive uwu

When you began your shift at the New World University Library, things started off as per usual. Armed with mints in your pocket and a single earbud in your ear, you started on your to do list, first of which was shelving books. Making your rounds through the library, you gave a few smiles and half waves to some of the students you recognized, but soon enough, you were lost in the music and books. Things were going quite smoothly too, that is, until a tall ginger in a whale hat dragged you out of your world, literally. 

He yanked you around the corner of the shelf with a crazed look on his face and frantically looked around before crouching down and grabbing you by both shoulders.

“You work here, right? Have you seen a tall guy in a white hat? Super scrawny, possibly high and definitely needs to lay off the coffee?”

“Sorry, what? I- no. Could you–” A loud BOOOOF cut you off, and all the blood drained from Whale-hat’s face. He released you and rocketed away faster than a bar of soap in the bath, cursing about flightless wanna-be posh birds. Not quite knowing what else to do, you sprinted after him. 

Students were fleeing the plaza at the center of the library, while just as many flocked in with their phones to film whatever was happening. Whale-hat was shoving his way through the throng and you dived after him, apologizing to the disgruntled students as you went.

Whale-hat broke free of the crowd before you, and the people cut off your escape before you could follow. You could hear someone yelling about wasted food, a bunch of incoherent shouting, and a frick ton of barking for somewhere any animals besides service dogs were not supposed to be. You weren’t exactly sure what was happening, but it smelled of trouble, and you could get in a LOT of trouble if this didn’t get resolved quickly!

“COMING THROUGH!” You held your arms around your face and bulldozed through the last students in your way, breaking out into the open– 

Something big and heavy to slammed you to the ground, gave you a few licks and ran across you. 

“POLAR BEAR!” One shadow jumped over you, quick as a whip.

“THAT'S A DOG IDIOT!” Another shadow soared overhead. “STOP CHASING HIM, HE THINKS THIS IS A GAME!”

“Oh my god, are you okay? I’m so fucking sorry about this!” Whale-hat paused his pursuit just long enough to help you up and make sure you could see straight. “PENG YOU IDIOT, YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KEEP HIM OUTSIDE!”

“LET’S SEE YOU TRY TO CONTROL AN EXCITED DOG WHO WEIGHS AS MUCH AS YOU!!!”

Whale-hat ran off after you assured him you were fine, and you took in the scene before you. (Properly this time, no giant dogs to obstruct the view). 

The dog in question (definitely able to be confused for a polar bear by size alone) was bounding joyously throughout the plaza, making new friends who would give him pets before he noticed the meat-kid and scamper excitedly away again. Behind Meat-kid were Whale-hat and his friend, trying desperately to call over the dog.

“IS THAT YOUR SHITTY DOG!?” A blonde guy yelled from across the plaza, remnants of a meal scattered around his feet. “IT JUST ATE ALL OF OUR DAMN FOOD!” Why had they decided to have a picnic in the library? And why was the dog close enough to raid their picnic?

“COME HERE POLAR BEAR!” The meat-kid got close enough he dived for the dog. You thought he would actually catch the dog, but the dog dodged at the last second, leaving a student available for meat-kid to tackle instead. You barely held back a snort at the sight of limbs flailing askew and they disappeared from view.

You scowled to compose yourself and took a deep breath; this had gone on long enough. Crossing the plaza, you snatched part of the lost meal and whistled and made some kissy noises. “Here boy! Come here! Want some food?” You patted your leg excitedly and crouched down, trying to lure the fluff monster over.

By some miracle, he heard you over all the noise and bounded over to you, graciously gobbling up the treat and basking while you showered him in rubs and praise (and took a hold of his collar). Whale-hat and his friend wheezed as they ran up to you, gasping out apologies and thanks as they reattached the leash and tied it to their belt. Was– was that a great idea?

“YOUR POLAR BEAR STOLE MY MEAT!” The meat-kid bounced back over to them, hunger and indignation emblazoned across his face. (Talk about the living embodiment of hangry.)

“That's a dog Strawhat-ya." From behind Strawhat came a tall lanky man with bags the size of hammocks under his eyes, freshly soaked in coffee and wearing a white fuzzy cap. 

White hat. Tall. Probably needs to lay off the coffee. "Is that–" 

"LAW! There you are!" Whale-hat laughed and interrupted you, "We were just taking Bepo out for a walk! And we brought you some–"

Law pulled something out of his pocket and chucked it in the opposite direction. Bepo bolted away faster than a squirrel in a nut factory, dragging poor Whale-hat’s friend behind him. You watched alarmed as the dog/human sled combo created a scene which reminded you of bowling pins in a bowling alley. Law then held out his hand expectantly; Whale-hat swallowed hard and reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet and a pack of... salted licorice? He handed the candy and a few bills over, and the lanky zombie disappeared with Strawhat bouncing after him.

What on earth was happening? 

"Oi, shithead! What are you gonna do about my ruined food!? Poor Nami-san and Robin-chan are gonna starve because of you and your shitty mutt!" The blonde growled at Whale-hat, glaring him down in a way that might have been scary, had he not been several inches shorter than the one he was yelling at.

"A, that's not my dog, and B, if Bepo wanted to eat it, then it probably tastes like shit anyway!"

They both started arguing loudly over each other, and you buried your face in your hands. This certainly wasn’t how you wanted today to go. But now, it was time to get this mess straightened out.

"Alrighty boys, listen here,” you growled, “I will look over you," you pointed harshly at the blondie, "having food in the library and I will look over you," you poked Whale-hat in the chest, "having a dog in the library if you both get this mess cleaned up. NOW."

Both their eyes went wide and they lowered their heads and apologized before scampering away to clean up the spilled food. That’s odd, you never thought you were that intimidat– 

“Sorry for the trouble,” an arm wrapped around your shoulder and you found yourself looking at the face of a very cute girl with orange hair, “I’ll make sure those idiots make it up to you.” She winked then strutted away.

You blinked as she disappeared. What the hell just happened? Could this day get any weirder? You shook your head and went to monitor the boys as they cleaned up. Several minutes of cleaning (and attempted flirting on the blonde’s part) later, the floor was clean, and you left them to pick up where you left off in your regular librarian duties.

Days later, you hadn’t run into any of them again, (though you think you might’ve seen Law passed out in the medical section), and it was all starting to feel like a weird fever dream. 

That is, until you received a text from an unknown number while you were at work in the library. 

This you? (Accompanied by a gif of you, being tackled by a big white furry smudge.) 

It looked hilarious, but you were torn between laughing and wanting to cry. Was this all over the internet now? Were you a meme?

You could just say no, wrong number… But what were the chances some random stranger had a gif of the incident and then texted you?

Maybe. Who’s asking?

The typing symbol appeared and disappeared several times, but after a few minutes it didn’t appear. Well that was anticlimactic.

“Uh, hi. Sorry, I just wanted to check if the number Nami gave me was right, or if she was just trolling me.” A voice came from behind you and there he was: Whale-hat! Wait, who the heck was Nami, and how had she gotten your number to pass along?

“Who gave you my number?” 

“The girl with the orange hair from the other day?” He frowned. “You didn’t give her your number?” 

“Not that I recall…” 

“Oh.” His eyes kept meeting yours then darting away again and he shuffled on the spot. You decided to have a little mercy on him.

“I never caught your name,” you extended your hand and introduced yourself properly.

“Ah, shit! I’m Shachi. Sorry about what happened the other day. We didn’t expect Bepo to cause such a mess.” He scratched the back of his neck and gave you an apologetic bow.

“It’s not your fault those students thought having a picnic in the library was a good idea,” you chuckled. “By the way, is your friend okay? The one who got dragged away?”

“Oh, Penguin’s fine! A couple of bruises and stuff, but he’ll live.”

“So, where did you get that gif?”

“Oh, you haven’t seen?” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, “Someone got a good video of the whole thing and it’s already got about half a million hits! I can send the link if you…” He trailed off remembering this might not be something you wanted to be famous for. 

“Right, um…” Shachi blushed and shoved his phone back in his pocket. “I actually was here more than just to apologize and show you embarrassing gifs of yourself.” He tucked his hands behind his back and glanced around. “I mean, it can be part of the apology but I was going to ask if I could get you coffee or something sometime but if you don’t want to that’s fine. Nami was threatening me that I need to be a gentleman– BUT NOT TO ASK YOU OUT, I wanted to do that anyway before this whole fiasco happened, but then you know, this happened, and I–”

“You’re asking me on a date?” you felt the corner of your mouth twitch up.

“I– yes?” He smiled nervously at you. 

You couldn’t help a small giggle. This felt waaayyyy too much like a scene from a bad fanfic, but it still made your heart go uwu. 

“Okay. I have to get back to work, but text me later and we work out a time.” You waved and pushed your cart away. A wide grin split his face in two, and he waved back before running giddily away. 

~~~

“I told you the Bepo plan was a sure fire way to get a date!”

*THWACK*

“That wasn’t how the Bepo plan was supposed to go! You owe me big time!”

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @glorious-spoon!

Read on AO3

******

Holly jolly christmas

He’s been out of it for a while. He just knows it the moment he wakes up with the familiar peeping sound of hospital machinery in his ears. Dry mouth and stiff muscles. Shit. He groans as he tries to sit up and stretch out a little. Why is he here again? He tries to remember why and most importantly how! He scratches an itch on his side and oh. As soon as he does, he kind of remembers being stupid. Very very stupid, but by now that’s a knee-jerk decision. It’s the natural order of things, if someone comes charging at his friend with a big ass knife, he will dive in front of it before remembering that said friend has immunity against big ass knives by being a werewolf. Fucking hag. Not that he’d insult an old murder lady, but she was a literal fucking hag as in creepy voice and wanting to eat children and like 500 years old. The stab-wound is healed now, and she didn’t eat him, but it’s also not just scabbed over, it’s healed. Fuck.

It takes about an hour after a nurse walks in and almost drops the bag of, well, medical stuff before scurrying out. A faint “MELISSA” echoing through the halls.

“Nice to meet you too lady.” He grumbles alone in his bed. Fuck he’s stiff.

Melissa rushes in, very much in a bulldoze kind of way as the doctor is looking him over.

“You missed Christmas!” She states first of all, a big grin on her face.

“It’s November, how can I possibly have- Oh.” He says, her smile falters but she still looks so happy.

“Mr. Stilinski, I need to do a few cognitive tests now.” The doctor says and Stiles mumbles and repeats all the doctor wants him to, says ball, blue and house in the right order after a twenty-minute distraction and the doctor seems pleased.

“You will need to get on your legs a little, but you’ll be able to go home soon.” Melissa says as soon as the doctor is out, placing two cups of jell-o on his little table.

“Sweet, how is everyone?” he asks.

“Your dad is on his way right now. Everyone else is fine too. Scott has been worried, the whole pack has.” She hums. “Even Isaac.”

“Ahhw, he does love me.” Stiles coos to Melissa but his thoughts stop at Derek. Shit. He dived in front of a knife for him. Wonder how he’ll feel about that.

He plans to walk into the loft as casually as he can muster, knowing he won’t fool the wolves but still. They all look at him like he’s an alien. He has never felt as winded by the stairs as this day and not even a week of physical therapy could’ve prepared him. Melissa promised she wouldn’t tell them he’d be “released” today rather than in two days and he wanted to surprise them. He stops at the top step looking at the entire pack, all collected in the stairway.

“Fix the fucking elevator Derek. I don’t want to kick the bucket because I hyperventilated to death. God damn.” He folds in half and almost everyone takes a scared step forward.

“Let’s get your clumsy ass away from the stairs, huh buddy?” Scott says, and stiles stays folded like towel and just gives him a thumbs up.

“So, anyone wanna give me a hug or am I gonna have to go to the shady parts of town and get one on the black market?” he wheezes, barely having time to finish before he’s surrounded by pack.

“We missed you bud. We were scared there for a while.” Scott says and Lydia whacks him on the head.

“Don’t ever be so dumb again. You’re to smart to do stupid shit” she huffs and Stiles grins as they drag him inside. He sits on the couch with Derek and Isaac as Scott gets him some water.

“Hey big guy, I missed you too.” Stiles says as he hugs Derek on the couch. Isaac nestling in behind him.

Derek grunts. “I’m sure you did.”

Stiles pulls away with is brows furrowed. “Are you mad at me?!”

“Of course I’m mad! You were stupid and risky, and it shows just how reckless and stupid you are!”

“You said stupid twice.” Stiles points out because he doesn’t know what else to do, it’s not like Derek is wrong is it. Derek just stands to leave.

“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have but I just reacted! I didn’t think, and before you say ‘That’s what I mean, you never think’ just now, that there was no fucking time to think because I’d jump in front of all my friends when there is a 500 year old human-eating hag with a fucking machete. I had a choice and my instincts made that choice for me before I could supply my heroic mind with ‘the dude behind you can heal in ten seconds from that stab’. Cut me some slack, I just didn’t want you to fucking die. It seems that no matter how long we’ve done this, fought oni and werecougars and what not I keep forgetting that not everyone is as breakable as me so shut up, sit the fuck back down and let me hug you! We can fight about my recklessness some other time.” he says it all in one breath and Derek just mutely nods and sits back down. Isaac is trying to contain himself at the sight of Derek’s red cheeks, he doesn’t say anything more but a faint, I did miss you Stiles, before they all fall asleep in the den.

“YOU MISSED CHRISTMAS!” Scott yells one afternoon, reminding Stiles that Melissa had said the same thing. Derek is fixing the elevator, greasy jeans and a wrench in his hand.

“It’s February Scott.” Stiles says but he loves Christmas, it’s nice, nostalgic and it’s the one time of the year the tears for his mother are only happy, because she fucking loved Christmas too.

“So? We fix Christmas! We’ll go get a tree, decorate it, listen to music, have hot cocoa, my mom makes the best and you know it.” He shoots out and stiles just grins.

“She truly does!” he agrees.

“Then we go skating, you used to love skating! We’ll make sure to decorate the rink, get a speaker in there. We eat Christmas dinner and open gifts afterwards and oh candycanes!” Scott is all worked up by now and drags Isaac into it. “Isaac can you get candycanes and decorations?!” he pleads and Isaac groans.

“No more Christmas please I’m tired of eating leftovers.”

“But Stiles MISSED Christmas.”

“Oh, well, I’ll go get the decorations.” Isaac says and picks up the car keys.

“I’ll get the tree for the dinner I guess.” Derek shrugs and Stiles fall into laughter.

“Thanks guys.” Thanks.

Derek doesn’t hate Christmas, he kind of always liked it but it’s hard to have to reset all thoughts and norms of how it’s typically done. Going from 30 or so from the Mexican and American side of the family in one house and food made for 50 to having nothing. His pack isn’t nothing but it’s still not the same, its good, but he just didn’t know this is how it would be. It’s a painful time of the year. And here he is, on his way to chop down yet another Christmas tree voluntarily. For Stiles: his mind supplies and sure. He’d do next to anything for Stiles. He can’t say when he stopped looking at him as superimposing and started seeing him as a friend. A confidante. And now, suddenly, he has rose tinted glasses. He slams his fist into the wheel and groans.

He ends up picking a better tree than he did for the real Christmas. For Stiles.

No one told Derek he’d have to skate if he came along and now, he’s bringing down the joy. He hates skating. He doesn’t hate having fun, but he’s not made to be on ice. He’ll look dumb. So dumb

He’s clutching the railing, a little bit scared of going out on the actual ice.

“Oh my god Stiles you can skate. I forgot.” Lydia says happily as they walk towards the ice, skates in hand. Derek had picked the hockey-things, because the guy at the counter said that was the male ones. Lydia’s looked impossibly white and had a heel, he had no idea if that was normal. Considering that Stiles’ looked the same but were dark blue instead seemed to answer it. Did he have girl skates? Derek looked at his own feet again in question. Maybe these were beginners skates.

“You can?” Scott

“Yeah, bro, you knew this, I also may have continued now and then since mom died.” He said as he laced the skates up.

“Oh right, I’m sorry!”

“We were kids it’s fine, if I hadn’t continued, I probably would have sucked.”

“How come Lydia knows? Did you do cool stuff when we went skating with Allison and Lydia sophomore year?!”

“Meh,” he shrugged “you were just to busy sucking and falling on your ass to see all the cool stuff I did, also I was wearing jeans.

“What are you wearing this time then? Spanx?” Lydia giggles.

“What, no, these!” he pints to his sweats, not very fashionably and Derek assumed they were for warmth. They aren’t very baggy but he still looks like a thug with heels. He tells Stiles as much.

“What you can’t say thug with heels! Not my fault you didn’t pick the superior skates.”

“They have deathtraps at the front!” Scott yells and shoves one of Stiles skates into his face, they have tiny teeth in the front. “you get these into the ice and you fall flat on your face once and all of the ice rink is laughing at you. I’m with you Derek, hockeyskates are the only ones that wont kill you.”

“They aren’t made to be traps, it’s for figure skating. Pirouettes if you may.” Lydia says and she glides onto the ice.

“You do figure skating?” Derek asks shocked.

“My mom did, so naturally she dragged me along, it was fun, better than hockey, they tackle you in hockey!” Stiles grimace.

“Come on Stiles you’re making cool things with me.”

“Sure, by the time we’re done Derek might have dared to go onto the ice.”

“You really should’ve worn tights.” Lydia says in distaste at his werid fitting sweats. Derek can’t help but agree. Stiles just groans and pulls his sweats off.

“You happy??”

“You were wearing tights!!!” Scott laughs.

Stiles flails as he goes on the ice and starts chasing Scott.

“Don’t laugh at me!! It’s practical! I wasn’t just gonna drop the sweatpants two seconds after you said spandex!” he groans as he keeps gliding behind Scott.

Derek thinks he’ll taste ice more than once, considering he not only have to stay upright on ice but also has the distraction of Stiles ass in his face. This wasn’t going to work.

They knew so many things about each other, like how Stiles knew what happened before Kate burnt the house down, how Derek led her right to it. He knew how stiles handled the Nogitsune, how he still woke up counting fingers some nights before texting Derek. They had exchanged methods of handling stress and anxiety. They had made silent pacts of secrecy. It never before dawned on Derek how much he relied on Stiles being there for him, keeping him grounded.

Stiles watched as Derek slipped once more and landed on his butt, growling at the ice, fangs out and eyebrows angry.

“Go skate with your boyfriend” she says and pushes him towards Derek.

“Boyfriend?!” They both say in unison, Derek tries to stand up but instead lands on his tummy.

“You have been dancing around each other, pining since you met. In all this destruction and supernatural frenzy, I really thought you’d come to the conclusion yourselves. But alas: not.” She shrugs and skates away from them both. Scott claps Stiles on the shoulder, “You two were probably the last to know.” He says before staggering away towards the others. And he was right wasn’t he, as they looks at each other it all piles up. Neither leaned more on anyone other than each other. Stiles had stopped going to Scott’s, he went to Derek’s. Derek had stopped keeping everything to himself, he included Stiles.

“Shit, she’s right isn’t she?” Stiles says and scratches his neck.

Derek tries to stand before falling again, earning a laugh from Stiles before giving up and crawling towards Stiles. “I guess she is. I didn’t realize you liked me.” Derek huffs as Stiles meets him halfway.

“Well, neither did I, so. But you like me?” Stiles asks.

Derek knits his eyebrows together. “Of course. I would not have patience for you if I didn’t.” He smiles as he says it and Stiles drinks it all in, the cute bunny teeth Derek hates because it doesn’t make him look macho.

“Well of course, god forbid it’s my charming sense of humor or my hot self-sacrificing ass, or…” he doesn’t get further before Derek has yanked his leg and made Stiles get down on his level since he possibly can’t stand. Before he has time to protest he feels warm lips on his own and the chill that has bitten into his cheeks melts away.

“ABOUT TIME!” he hears Scott woop happily and he makes sure to point his middle finger in the right direction.

“So,” he says as they break apart, Stiles thanking upper powers that his cheeks are already rosy from the cold “let’s teach you how to stand on these bad boys huh?”

Derek growls but he let’s Stiles guide him along.

“Merry Christmas Derek!” Stiles shouts as Derek gets to put the star on the top of the Christmas tree.

“It’s February Stiles.” He says with disinterest.

“February schmebruary.” He says and puts the gravy on the table. Scott snorts.

“Son, calm it, open some gifts or something.” The sheriff says and shakes his head in between sips of scotch. Stiles does. Derek comes to sit down beside him in front of the tree. The lights and baubles glistening in the room. Stiles places his head on Derek’s shoulder as he carefully peels of the wrapping to a flat tiny box.

“Movie tickets?” he asks and Derek hums.

“What about a real date, popcorn, curfew and all that it should be. Neither of us have been on a real date. I’d like to.” Derek says lowly.

“Me too Derek. Let’s go, but you have to ask my dad for permission first. Going by the rules and all.”

“Just take him son, it’s bout time he leaves the nest anyway.” Noah grumbles as he joins Melissa in the kitchen.

“Guess that’s that, Christmas almost over, date planed for ,” he checks the date on the two stumps. “tomorrow. What else could we possibly have to do to get this more right.”

Derek takes his hand. “You can’t do that again.” Derek strokes his thumb over the back of his hand. “Don’t get stabbed anymore, don’t.”

“You know me.” Stiles says with as much cheer he can muster in the situation.

Derek huffs and smiles a little. “I do, don’t I?” he sighs. “Just, stay behind me from now on. Please?”

Stiles put on a shit-eating grin. “You know me!”

Derek groaned before dragging him into a kiss, the Christmas tree full with bright lights before them, wrapping-paper all around. A little mess of their own.

[ckerouac]

Favorite Female Characters

Rules: List 10 of my favorite female characters in any fandom whatsoever and tag some people.

Tagged by @spaceorphan18

Ok, so -- GOD THIS WAS HARD.  I’ve limited it to just TV shows (sorry movies and books) and then to just one character per TV show (which was the worst because quite often if a show has one lady I love it has multiple ladies I love and if I hadn’t I could’ve made an entire list from Parks & Rec and Brooklyn 99 alone).  So -- one character, one show, and I’M CONSUMED WITH PAIN OVER ALL THE LADIES I’VE LEFT OUT.

10. Eleanor Shellstrop, The Good Place

Oh Eleanor, sent to the bad place when you really deserved the medium place at most *lol*  She lived her life like most of us lived ours, if we’re honest enough about our balance of bad and good, but she’s using this time to learn how to be a good person AND to pull a fast one over everyone keeping her and her new friends in the bad place.  All while being super supportive of her new found family. Also, ‘fork’ has made it into my vocabulary.

9. Mazikeen, Lucifer

It was a tough choice between her, Chloe, and Linda, but Maze wins out because girl did not want to be where she is, but she is making the best of it.  Plus, her affection for Trixie and friendship with Linda and now Chloe is just a delight.  She may have come just because she felt loyalty to Lucifer, but she’s found her own family and she has a purpose all her own now.  Plus she can kick your ass with two hands and a leg tied behind her back.  She. Will. End. You.

8. Elizabeth McCord, Madam Secretary

I love this show so much.  It scratches my ‘West Wing’ itch because it’s showing competent people doing good things in public service.  And Elizabeth is the most competent of them all -- an ex-CIA spy turned Secretary of State and she leads her department, and US diplomacy, with intelligence, heart, bravery, and not a small amount of wit.  She’s honestly who I want to be when I grow up, and she’s one of those people who you feel is making decisions on what’s best for the whole.  Plus she gets to go home to her husband played by Tim Daly and y’all... I enjoy him.  And her husband is supportive of her!  None of this ‘if you loved me you’d give up your high powered job’ shit that we see far too often in media depictions of powerful women.

7. Claire Fraser, Outlander

How would you handle things if you got thrown 200 years in the past?  Probably not as well as Claire.  She’s competent (can you sense a theme in the type of lady-types I enjoy?) and devoted.  And also a bit selfish.  AND I LOVE THAT ABOUT HER.  She selfishly wants her hot Scottish husband back, and she tries to make it work with her present day husband, but she’s still bitter.  And I don’t blame her one bit.  We get to see her want, and choose, Jamie over her daughter, and that’s not something that we get to see a lot in media.  They never allow women to choose ANYTHING over their children without presenting them as misguided harpies who are just waiting for their comeuppance.  Claire openly and unambiguously chooses Jamie over Brianna and I love that she’s allowed to narratively make that choice.

6. Liz Lemon, 30 Rock

Oh Liz.  For someone who feels like she doesn’t have her shit together, she actually does have her shit together.  I mean, she runs her own TV show and oversees 200 employees (and was willing to do naughty bang bang *fistbump* stuff to help them keep their jobs).  She has a whole speech about not needing a man but wanting to be loved, which resonated so fucking much with me.  And who among us haven’t had shitty co-workers that got away with things that us mere mortals couldn’t?  We’ve all had a Tracy or a Jenna to deal with.  And she comes out on top.  Plus, we get a mentor/mentee relationship that doesn’t devolve into sexual tension, which again is rare.  

5. Peggy Carter, Agent Carter

AGENT PEGGY FUCKING CARTER.  We only got two seasons of the show in addition to the movies, but god I love Peggy Carter.  Competent as fuck, and she’s not breaking glass ceilings as much as bulldozing through them and daring anyone to stop her.  Rampant sexism but she knows her worth and she keeps going forward until it turns out that she is the brains and the organization behind the creation of SHIELD and is basically responsible for the entire MCU that y’all know and love.  Add in that she wears a great red lip while kicking ass too.  And did I cry at her finale (for now) in Captain America: Civil War?  Damn straight I did.  (Still hoping we see her in Infinity War or more likely Avengers 4, but I have my own headcanon about how that will work :D )

4. Martha Jones, Doctor Who

Hands down my favorite companion.  Martha Jones, training to be a doctor and decides to go on an adventure with the weird man who shows up in a phone box after she gets transported to the moon.  She’s the woman who walked the earth and is responsible for saving the Doctor and the entire world through a long game plan and nothing but her fucking words.  And when she isn’t getting what she wants out of the adventure and the Doctor, she walks away.  She leaves on her own terms, which is rare for a companion.  Yes, she pines for the Doctor, but c’mon, who among us wouldn’t in that sort of situation?  I would.  But she doesn’t let it consume her, and she makes her choice and she leaves with the statement ‘Yeah, I am that good’ because she is that fucking good at what she’s done.  I love her and I want everyone else to love her too.

3. CJ Cregg, The West Wing

CJ is the queen of ‘on top of it’.  She’s navigates both the presidency and the press and that’s a job that’s hard as fuck.  She’s smart and charismatic and who among us hasn’t imagined walking out of a shitty job to go work for the president (no? just me?) and she has so many balls in the air but keeps them all going.  As Press Secretary she is nothing if not quick on her feet, and it is hard to trip her up.  She is another who I want to be when I grow up because she is just so capable.  Plus, her Secret Service code name is ‘Flamingo’ and who doesn’t love that?  Of all her great scenes, the one on my mind recently is the press conference where she starts listing gun violence victims and lord it just makes you yearn for competent people in the white house again.  

2. Amy Santiago, Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Do you know how hard it was to pick only one character from B99?  Like, the fight between her and Rosa for queen in my heart? HARD AS FUCK.  But Amy wins out.  Amy who is so driven that she doesn’t take no for an answer, who wants to be the youngest police captain in the NYPD, who makes binders for everything, who gets excited about paperwork, and is competitive as fuck.  She could come off as irritating, but she doesn’t.  She’s eager to please and a bit of a suck up, but it’s because she just wants to soak up all of the knowledge and wisdom she can from her mentors.  Plus, she’s allowed to be all of these driven things even when dating/engaged to the lead character on the show.  The show doesn’t make her change to deserve love, but has Jake fall in love with her BECAUSE OF all of these aspects of her.  It’s canon that Jake always knew he’d work for her and loves her for it, and I love her for that too.  

1. Leslie Knope, Parks and Recreation

There is no list of characters I love that is complete without Leslie Fucking Knope.  She is driven to make people’s lives better, and she does that in any venue she’s given -- be it the Parks department of a small city in Indiana all the way up to the Presidency.  She’s TOO MUCH a lot of the time, but it’s presented as a good thing.  She just cares a lot and she works hard to get things done.  She doesn’t take no for an answer and she’s always striving to be better and to make the people around her better too.  I want to be her.  And even being TOO MUCH she is shown to have friends who love her and make themselves better to live up to her standards and has an uber supportive husband in Ben, who is shown, like Amy and Jake, to love her BECAUSE of her too much-ness and not inspite of it.  The things that would annoy people are the things that attract him to her.  And honestly, as someone who is TOO MUCH a lot of the times and has been told that I’m hard to love, seeing someone like Ben love that about someone like Leslie is really empowering to me.  I. Fucking. Love. Her.

And let’s tag some people, shall we?  How about @razorsharpquill @47mel47 @slayerkitty @slayediest @black-john-lennon

[missingverse]

Missing Chapter Five

“I want to go to school with you tomorrow.”

Arnold started, and hoped she hadn't noticed. He had just come up from doing repairs on the pipes in the boiler room to find that Helga had done his English assignment on Shakespeare.

“I was supposed to be doing Othello....” he said weakly, hoping she'd forget what she had asked for.

“The Henriad is better,” she tossed out casually. “If you get asked any questions just talk about Falstaff. Everyone loves Falstaff. Anyway, I want to go to school with you tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I want to see everyone,” she shrugged. “That half-second look at the back of Rhonda's head got me curious.”

It would be disastrous, Arnold could feel it. Helga would know he had lied about Phoebe, and there's no telling what it would do to her incorporeal form. Something about the hills had shaken her, if she saw how Phoebe was now maybe she'd blink out of existence altogether. How could he take that risk?

“Isn't the school a bit far away? It's kind of risky...” he said.

“Maybe. But maybe Phoebe will be able to see me like you can,” Helga argued. “Or maybe she knows something. Have you asked her anything?”

She had a point. If anyone knew anything about Helga before she vanished, it would have been Phoebe.

“Fine,” he said after a long silence. She'd find out sooner or later, anyway.

She grinned and flopped down on the blanket nest on the sofa. Arnold noticed for the first time that the hem of her pink sundress, bordered by a girlish touch of eyelet lace, had a ragged tear at the back. It exposed a patch of bare leg which had a matching tear in the skin, a long wound that looked like it was still healing. The sight of it, and the grim thought that someone or something had ripped into her skin in this seldom-seen vulnerable place, brought a sudden lump to his throat that he tried hard to swallow.

“This is really good,” he said, gesturing to the (surprisingly thorough) report on the exploits of Prince Hal and Sir John Falstaff. “Better than I would have done on Othello...”

“Well, you were hardly going to get it finished at this time, were you?”

Indeed it was almost midnight, and he had only written a handful of words before he went downstairs to fix the plumbing.

“I was going to get up early and do it at breakfast,” he admitted. “I owe you one.”

She shrugged. Having noticed the tear on the back of the dress, his eyes now found something else; the left strap of her dress had been torn off, and was hanging across her chest. Usually the white sweater covered this spot. Distantly he wondered how close he would have to get to see other signs of a struggle.

“Why are you doing these repairs anyway? Shouldn't you have a plumber or something come in...?”

“This house is really old,” he explained. “Technically all the pipes and wiring should be replaced, but if we did that we might as well bulldoze the whole place and build it again from scratch. Hell, it'd be less expensive. Grandpa used to do all the repairs but his arthritis is pretty bad these days.”

Arthritis, and a stroke that had scared Phil halfway to his grave three years before. He'd been a lot less sprightly since, and healthy as he was for a man his age he was more nervous these days. Arnold had slowly taken on more and more responsibility for the boarding house until he was practically running it himself in between school and homework.

“I get that, but you're still a kid,” she told him sternly. “You can't do all of this and school too. When do you get time to do stupid teenage stuff?”

“I don't, really,” was his answer.

…..

The year after Helga vanished was a hard one. It was like a gloom had fallen over Hillwood itself, now that it had been put on the map by this nasty incident. Businesses closed or moved, tourism dropped, kids weren't allowed to wander around all over the town like they had done for years.

The boarding house was hit by a series of problems. The money they had raised to replace the old boiler and put some new insulation on the roof had been stolen by Oskar, who fled across state lines and wasn't heard from again. His long-suffering wife, heavily pregnant with her first child, moved back home to her parents' place in Nebraska, and the boarding house lost the small but much needed rent she brought in.

Ernie had a sudden heart attack on the job and died on the way to the hospital. To complicate matters, he had left his room in the boarding house in bad need of repair and they lost six months and a good chunk of their money fixing it up before they could rent it out again. The new boarders who took both of the unoccupied rooms kept to themselves, and the house lost much of the familial air that had sustained it.

They still had the rent from their tenants, mostly paid on time, but the boarding house was becoming more and more decrepit and it was costing more and more money to keep it ticking. Arnold spent most of that summer trying to teach himself advanced plumbing and electrical skills.

Gradually, his friends stopped calling him. Softball games in the alley were conducted without him, and even if they had asked he would have had to say no. No hanging out on the pier or in the park, he didn't have time. Rushing home after school to make sure nothing else had broken, and nobody expected him to stick around anyway. Gerald was loyal, for a while, but he had other things on his mind. One day Arnold turned thirteen and realized he had no friends left.

He muddled through middle school, and when high school started he at least tried to make friends with some of the other kids on the outside. These were kids who had been left back a grade or brought forward, transfer students and the overscheduled prodigies. They never went to each other's houses or met up on weekends, they were just friends for the few hours it took for the school day to be over.

And now, college was looming on the horizon, and Arnold just knew he wasn't going. No matter how good his grades were or even if he could win a scholarship as his form tutor hinted, if he left it would all fall apart. How could he leave?

…..

Helga jumped sprightly out of the bike's basket, clearly eager to get into the classroom even as Arnold dragged his feet. She followed him, impatiently tapping her feet, as he took books from his locker and exchanged a dull greeting with Parker, one of his school-time friends. She clearly didn't recognize Gerald, skulking in his usual spot in front of the door whistling at girls walking by.

As always, Rhonda was tapping at breakneck speed on her phone. Helga tiptoed up behind her to peer at what she was writing, and frowned when she saw it. When Rhonda finished whatever it was she was typing, she pulled out a small mirror and reapplied a thick coat of lip gloss.

“What's 'instagram'?” Helga asked, returning to Arnold's side.

He just shook his head and shrugged.

Harold blustered in on the heels of some of his equally boorish friends, slinking towards the back of the room with a lot of unecessary noise.

“He's thinner, at least,” Helga muttered.

The classroom filled slowly as the second bell rang, and Arnold began to think he had a stroke of luck and Phoebe would be absent. But she came in on the next wave and he didn't dare look at Helga for her reaction.

She looked worse than ever, if anything. Her sweater was stained, and she had pulled her hair back in a tight bun that only made her look more gaunt. A scab above her lip was healed over and flaking. She bumped against Rhonda's desk on the way to hers, knocking Rhonda's phone-tapping askew.

“For God's sake,” Rhonda growled in her cut-glass tone. “Go be an eyesore away from me, got it?”

A wave of laughter began from the girls gathered near the door and the boys in the back took it up, louder and cruder. Phoebe mumbled an apology and slunk to her desk, red-faced and on the verge of tears.

Arnold could practically feel Helga's rage radiating from her in waves. He looked over just in time to see her arm swipe through Rhonda's face, catching her phone with the tips of her fingers. The phone clattered to the ground. Rhonda picked it up, trying for nonchalance, but her face had gone pale and suddenly she looked frightened. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for something.

The teacher walked in at that point, and the laughter died down. Arnold felt Helga's eyes boring into him the whole lesson.

…..

He got an A+ on his report, thanks to Helga, which made him all the more guilt-ridden when she followed him into the seldom-used fourth floor bathroom and vented her anger at him.

“You lied to me,” she hissed. “You said she was fine!”

“I know,” he mumbled. “I'm sorry.”

“This is why you didn't want me to come with you,” she said. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“What good would it have done?” he asked her. “You would have wanted to do something about it, and you can't. I didn't want to upset you.”

She seemed solid enough, upset as she was. Even more solid, actually. She knew he had a point, but she refused to say it, storming over to the window and throwing it open with a flourish instead.

“Well, we have to do something,” she ground out. “I'm not leaving her like this. What happened to her?”

“She kind of fell apart after you disappeared,” Arnold told her.

“That can't be the only reason,” Helga argued. “Her mom and dad would have gotten counselling for her.”

“There was a ….thing with Gerald....”

“Thing? What thing?”

…..

Gerald and Phoebe had been half-dating, not fully in a relationship but spending a lot of time together, when they were eleven. There were times when it was more common to see Phoebe with Gerald than with Helga. Helga didn't seem bothered by it, as far as anyone knew.

Arnold had listened to Gerald talk about Phoebe for hours, how smart she was, how pretty and how unlike any of the other girls. Things he used to do with Arnold he now did with Phoebe, and Arnold was happy for him. Happy for them both.

In the aftermath of Helga's vanishing and Phoebe's breakdown, he stopped talking about her so much. If he mentioned her in passing while recounting some story, he doubled down and changed the subject. Arnold knew Phoebe had called him a lot during that time, and he knew Gerald let his phone ring out until she stopped calling. He stopped even looking at her as they walked past each other in the hall.

Arnold had always thought Gerald had his flaws but was a decent guy. He was relieved when Gerald stopped calling him too, because he could hardly keep the disgust out of his voice when he talked to or about his former best friend.

…..

Helga had been quiet all night, pacing around Arnold's room restlessly. He was trying to study the operator's manual for the fuse box in the basement but he couldn't help watching her move around. More and more he was noticing little things he hadn't seen before, tiny possible clues.

The sweater had one sleeve rolled up, the other drooped down over her knuckles. A hair tie was wrapped around her arm.

The sundress had another tear, at the waist, hidden by the sweater unless she was moving around.

The one shoe had grass stains, the laces were untied. She wasn't wearing socks.

A blue bra strap was just about visible in the place that would have been covered by the broken strap of the dress.

Her hair was matted a little at the back. Some of it had been cut at an awkward angle.

“Ah!” she cried suddenly, and he jumped. “I just remembered....”

“Remembered?” he said, hopefully.

“Not anything recent,” she told him. “But something that might help Phoebe. I need you to give something to her.”

“Sure,” he said, although he didn't know if Phoebe would even talk to him long enough to give her anything. “What is it?”

“It's at my house. We have to go there first. Did anyone new move in?”

“No, it's been abandoned. It's boarded up.”

“Perfect,” she said, as though she hadn't just heard that her childhood home was abandoned. It just proved how few good memories she had of the place.

They waited until midnight to make the trip over. Helga phased through the back door and let Arnold in with his flashlight. The beam of light glanced over tipped-over glass bottles and empty food containers, old newspapers and black bags of trash piled up in the corners. The house smelled of decay, but it didn't seem to bother Helga in the slightest. For Arnold, who sometimes found himself tearful when thinking about how bad the boarding house was getting, it was incredibly sad.

Helga went straight for the stairs and he followed her up, and then into her old bedroom. She phased through the closet door and he heard her rummage around in there, talking softly to herself.

Her room was even sadder than the kitchen. Her bed was unmade, probably just as she'd left it, in a faded old comforter and a bare pillow. Her desk was coated with dust, decorated by two small ornaments that had probably been gifts from Phoebe. There was a single rag doll on the windowsill, a handful of old books on the shelf, a worn out rug on the floor and a hairbrush poking out from under the bed. These were meagre signs that a young girl had lived in this room.

“Found it!” she called from inside the closet. “Open the door!”

He opened the closet door and she pushed out a medium-sized wooden box with a sliding lid. The logo of a wineseller was embossed on the front.

“What's in it?” he asked, reaching for the lid.

Helga smacked his hand, lightly but hard enough to sting just a bit.

“Not your business,” she told him smoothly. “It's for Phoebe. You can't tell her what's in here, she has to see it for herself.”

“Okay,” Arnold muttered. “Is she going to know what to do with it?”

“Of course. Tell her that Helga wanted her to have it.”

[originaldetectivesheep]

A Life of Riley Part 2: The Building That Had A Grudge Against Furniture Or Something ch 5

Chapter 4

V

If you were desperately looking for an upside in this stupid goddamned mess that we had gotten ourselves into, like we were, the fact that Riley showed up with the blueprints and the coveralls and an explanation before the backhoe started tearing up the lawn and the sidewalk and half the garage access would count as a small blessing.  It was a real, real, real small one, though, because we barely had time to get changed and get down to the machine room before the heavy construction equipment started off on a tear practically right under our windows.  "Riley, is that your bulldozer?" I asked, pulling my hair back into a ponytail and tucking the end into the collar of my cheap gray jumpsuit.  "Because I thought we were just going to be working here in the machine room – why is the whole front of the condos getting torn up?"

"Partly," Riley said, spreading out a large-scale architectural blueprint of the complex across a wilting half-ping-pong table that Remy and Yuping had salvaged from somewhere, "because without a big-ass distraction out front, people might notice the stuff we're loading down in here, partly because we need to reuse the culvert that the stream we're moving is routed through right now, and partly because daylighting that dumb creek that got buried for this place makes the perfect cover story for all the other construction we're going to be doing.  Just think about it for a second: this place is losing money hand over fist, and what gets all those hipsters that hang around the architecture school wishing they had the math scores to get in or the daddy's-money to major in urban planning wetter faster than daylighting every random inch-wide open sewer anyone can dig up on a map from a hundred years ago?  It's exactly the kind of twee-ass friggin thing that developers would lean into to save a place like this, and they're going to be dragging in so much crap to build up their Disneyland landscaped storm drain that people won't pay any attention to a few more crates into the machine room." Riley traced out the proposed daylighting course, and marked how it connected to the existing culvert – a culvert that as far as I could tell was running nearly under our feet here.

"Okay," I said, "and if they're going to get a nice water feature out of it I can see why the developers would be paying for it, but there was something else there – why the culvert?  What do we need that for?" There was a clatter behind me, and I turned around to see Leo bent over, breathing hard, a regiment's worth of picks and sledgehammers and stuff with their heads on the floor and their handles leaned on his stooped shoulders; behind him, Carolína was staggering down the stairs with an armload of what looked like crowbars and mortar-spreaders.

"You're not going to like this, Saj," Riley said through a grim-set jaw, "but this one is going to be friggin complicated.  I thought when we first took this that it was going to be another hyperfold, like that accident with the disnub phlogistihedron or whatever that Carolína got stuck in last term – and that some idiot was running around on a collapsed infinite lattice and it only looked like someone was messing around with the state space.  In that case, it woulda been simple: you get someone into it, someone like you or Remy who can throw a punch if they gotta, and then mark out the anchor points, use the dislocator to reachieve continuity, and the friggin hyperfold will unfold itself – three-space doesn't want to get crumpled up like that, so if you just get the right quantum hammer out, shit will tend to fix itself." I nodded, but tentatively; I remembered that stupid thing with Riley's old wackadoodle roommate and his impossible origami polyhedron, and how Carolína had gotten stuck outside of reachable three-dimensional space for most of three days when she went back over – and now that was supposed to have been the easy, simple, normal case of whatever Riley was now considering to be 'complicated'.  This was going to suck – even worse than it did already.

"From everything that I've been able to pick up around here, though," Riley said, tossing a welding glove hand to hand to vaguely imply the room and the condo complex around us, "there's nothing folded up here.  Now, that doesn't mean there's no fold – all it means is that I can't judge the fold, which points to a fold, if there is one, which is still the simplest friggin explanation, that involves the fucking q axis instead of or in addition to some subset of x-y-z that isn't the full set and thus detectable by normal three-space physics tools." Riley snorted and threw the glove onto the table.  "So at a minimum we have, in that case, an agency that either can make a fold in q, which we can't, or an agency that's gotten stuck in a maybe-accidental fold in q and is twiddling its goddamned thumbs there eating people's microwaves."  Riley turned back to me; probably Leo and Carolína had already gotten this spiel while I was struggling with how these coveralls were cut in the hips.  "I'm doing a poll: what do you call an agent that can move in q?"

I gave Riley a look.  "Everyone moves in q – we're all moving in q right now."

"We're moving along q, and that makes all the difference in the world."  Riley picked up the glove again; there was some kind of a beeping upstairs, like someone was backing a heavy truck in.  "We move along q through hyperspace with all the rest of the x-y-z complex; I'm talking an agent, potentially an intelligent agent, that moves in time like we can go left-right forward-back up-down.  If something is taking the lamps and couches, rather than them falling through holes in three-space – which, I remind you, don't exist as such because whatever fold there is or isn't here isn't hitting all three of our normal axes – then that's per se a higher-order intelligent being. Not more intelligent, not superman-superior – but something that's as different from us and as alien to our way of thinking as we are to a goddamned pencil sketch."

"So you do think there's a ghost or a god or a demon here," I said, not sure what to believe.

Riley shrugged.  "Call it what you like; that's what I was asking for. But a rose by any other name would still got its needs: and that's what we need the culvert for, the culvert and these tools – and Remy and Yuping, when they can start getting goddamned down here with the dislocator assemblies."  Riley bent over, squinting around and up the stairs; the guys obviously still hadn't unloaded those parts from the truck or whatever.

"I'm sorry, Riley," I said again, "but I still don't follow."

Riley gave up on the stairs and sauntered back to the parabola valleys of the dying ping-pong table.  "So after I reasoned out that we had a probably higher-order entity here, something with agency in q, I did some thinking; you should never, when you run into a new observation or a new principle in science, assume that just because this is the first time somebody noticed it, it's the first time in the history of the goddamned universe that it's happened.  So I thought, okay, we've got a higher-order agency here, and we obviously can't credit everything in folklore because humans are huge liars all the damn time and stories spread, but what do people pretend to know about these kinds of intelligences?  Gods or demons or spirits or ghosts or what the hell ever all over the world, you strip off all the paint and stage dressing, and what do you got?  That you can make deals with them under the right circumstances, and they like it when you give them stuff.  Offerings, sacrifices; there's always a way to cut a deal. So what I'm betting is that whatever's stuck in this fold we can't find or unfold here will respond within those parameters once we get it nailed down, and that we can offer it a better deal than it got from whatever orisha got evicted to put up your little party pad."

"You're going to renegotiate the demon's contract?" I asked; this was if anything getting less clear.  "How?  With what?"

"How, yeah, I'm still working on that," Riley said, scratching at a stray neck pimple.  "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."  A super reassuring sentence from someone who'd just admitted the likelihood of higher-dimensional intelligences.  "But with what, that's fuckin' easy.  Everything back to the book of goddamned Genesis is on board: these things want live flesh instead of dead planks.  There's no way this thing's going to keep eating its last contract's endtables and TV stands when we can pipe it straight in grinckles." Grinckles.  Again.  Of course.  The culvert, the stream – the fish had been mostly driven off campus, but not out of town, and now were were going to be driving them in here into the basement to buy off a demon.  I took a moment, squatting down, double facepalming like that was going to help, as the top of the stairs rattled and the others moved out of the way to let Yuping and Remy start bringing the quantum-state dislocator down piece by piece.

The first parts down, though, weren't the familiar controls or even the containment-cell panels that had been the biggest culprits in how there was no space in the lab for the longest time.  It was me and Carolína putting them together as the guys dragged them down, and what was emerging out of the greasy machine parts was, at least to start, a gigantic bank of extremely-high-voltage pass-through capacitors: a power supply assembly that was more on the scale of a railgun to launch spaceships than anything we'd ever built in the lab…yet.  "Riley," I asked, locking the ears of a mains plug in place and then turning the screws down to make sure that the connection was secure, "is this really safe?  This is a lot more potential power than we've ever put through the dislocator before – are you sure this is going to work, and not just melt down all around us?"

Riley squinted through the eyepiece of a short-legged transit, checking the level or the range to the back wall or something, and stood up with a snort.  "If it slags, it slags; not that much we can do about it."  Remy and Leo were coming down the stairs with a tall, heavy chunk of steel and glass – one of the panels for the dislocator's containment cell – and Riley moved out of the way, motioning them towards the far wall.  "One of the things about the physical universe, though, is that if you want something out of it, you can generally do it if you dump in enough energy to get it past its moment of inertia.  I'm betting that there's a fold somewhere around in here, like I was saying, and if we can throw enough giga-electron-volts through it, we can pin it back a little, even if it's partway on q. Yeah, it's not exact, but if we wanted to be sure and theoretically perfect and delicate with our energy budgets, we'd be up sipping tea with the string-theory bozos in Wetmore Hall.  This is Applied Physics – as the founder of our discipline said back a couple thousand years ago, give us a lever and a place to stand and we'll move the world.  It's just that this lever, if we really rigged it up for pure throughput, could pull enough juice to brown out the friggin Three Gorges."  Riley paused for a moment, admiring the technological terror we were putting back together in our condo's basement.

"But yeah, the contain on this is probably going to be pretty sloppy.  If you had anything important, you'd probably want to put in a Faraday cage – like up on campus, though; you'd probably need a 150-millimeter lead castle down here.  And it would've been smarter to do it yesterday, before I started pulsing around with the small unit off the truck; anyway, just worry about getting those capacitor cells lined up and drawing out of the mains.  We're not going to be able to make necessary throughput off the power the city can get us through those wires – what we get from the power supplies is easily ninety percent of our uptime."  Behind Riley, Leo and Yuping were settling another containment panel in place; I could be wrong, but it sure looked like Riley's big plan for finding or contacting this demon was to ramp up as much power through the quantum-state dislocator as possible and hope it wandered into the beam.  That was fine as a dumb hypothesis went, but the last time that we tried to overvolt the dislocator like that, something in the power supply failed, and nearly burned a hole in the floor – and that was with only one of these mega-capacitance cells.

"Right, if the shielding's up and all the power's drawing, then as soon as we can get the friggin beam housing down, Sajitha and Carolína will get it coupled in and check all the connections and software while Remy and Leo go knock a hole in the culvert and wedge the goddamn fish grate in.  Bira, that dude that Sandra's got running the construction crew, says they've got water into the surface cut; that's all we need, the fish'll go up that way until we can get the lures and crap in." Riley flipped through some papers on top of the blueprints, checking on something.  "Yuping and I will bring in the beam as soon as the generator head is on line, then Yuping, you have to go and get the rest of the stuff together."  Yuping nodded, but with a roll of his eyes, like whatever that 'rest of the stuff' Riley was putting on him was so dumb and unnecessary that even he would push back on it.  I raised my hand.

"Riley, if we need to move fast I can help dig.  We've already gotten all the power connections together, and I'm buffer than Leo, and he's nearly as good as Carolína at equipment ops.  Wouldn't that be easier?"

Riley shut me down with an upheld hand. "No, Saj, I need you in here to bring the beam in, in case I have to hop on something else while Yuping's out collecting the crutches and our fish specialist."  Yeah, that was pretty goddamned stupid, and it totally explained why he didn't want to do it.  "Just do your job and get the equipment up and running; you can let Leo go and get sweaty with Remy just this once.  You'll have all the time you like once this shit's done and you can be sure the mattress isn't going to bamf out from under you." I gritted my teeth as Riley turned back away to check something in the containment panels; Remy's eyes met mine as he and Leo set down the main beam generator module, and he quickly turned away before coming around to a half-look back.

"Say, thanks, Sajitha, even – I –"

"Save it," Riley cut across, pointing at the pile of rock-breaking tools randomly stacked around the foot of the stairs.  "Hands, move; you've got two feet of concrete between the wall and the culvert to get chunked out.  I need live fish and a hot beam, and until we got those, you can keep your hands to yourselves and your parts in your pants."  Remy took up a pick in his left hand and a sledgehammer almost effortlessly in his right; he looked back at me – Riley was checking something else on the blueprints and talking up at probably the construction foreman by phone – as he turned for the other door towards the room closest to the culvert, but I stayed ducked down, working on hooking up the main dislocator module, not looking for his gaze.  It wasn't that there was anything there – not that there hadn't been all the way along, which was nothing, of course.  There wasn't anything wrong about wanting to watch Remy's muscles working, back and shoulders and arms slinging a pick to smash through and break the rock apart, to chip in on my own controlling a heavy hammer and show him that I could handle myself, handle some of the physical work once in a while; nothing that ought to get Carolína smiling like that at least.

I closed up the interconnect and booted the dislocator controls off the on-board battery, making sure that it wouldn't be exposed to the capacitor cells until Riley was ready to go for the big time.  If this stupid thing could just work, and solve the appliance disappearances, and additionally not set everything on fire and wipe every hard drive for eight blocks around; if it could just work correctly without somehow getting even stranger, then Riley and Carolína and whoever could ride me and Remy up and down and back and forward about whatever dumb not-happening relationship they liked.  If it could just work.

Chapter 6

[citizentruth-blog]

Life's Ballast Lost , Chapter Excerpt from Travel Memoir Roads From the Ashes

A Suitcase, An Arrowhead, and A Set of Red Underwear You don't keep extra clothes when you live in 200 square feet. It's a question of being able to put your plate down when you eat dinner or owning an evening purse. I haven't owned an evening purse since 1993, and the one time I needed one since then, I found a perfectly good pearled specimen at a thrift store in New York. It cost a dollar, and I gave it to a bag lady in Grand Central Station after a dinner party at the Knickerbocker Club. Okay, I confess. If you were to find yourself looking through my underwear box (yes, box— there aren't many drawers in motor homes), you'd find a red bra and pair of red panties at the bottom. They never move. I haven't worn them since before I owned an evening purse, but there they are. I can't throw them away. They're survivors. That red underwear, one suitcase, one husband and one dog are the only things I have that antedate the fire that ended Phase One of my life. It arrived with perfect timing. I was 40 years old, and I'd just been wondering if this— a nice house in a nice neighborhood full of nice stuff— was all there was. Just like a jillion baby boomers on the exact cusp of middle age, I was sick of exercise videos and women's magazines and nylon stockings. I was having a hard time believing that the road to serenity lay in losing ten pounds, highlighting my hair, or giving my kitchen a country look. And then, only a couple of months before I turned 41, Los Angeles caught on fire and didn't stop burning for seventeen days. My house was one of the first to go. One day, I had an answering machine and high heels and an eyelash curler. The next day, well, the next day things were different. The fires were headline news for weeks, as Altadena, Laguna, and Malibu each hosted a conflagration bigger than the last. In dollars, a billion went up in smoke. Over 1,100 houses burned to the ground, and 4 people died. My loss seems minuscule in comparison: just one average middle class woman's stuff. Yes, just stuff. That's all it was: high school yearbooks, photographs, wedding presents, diplomas, my grandmother's piano. I'd had ten minutes to pack ahead of the firestorm. I'd grabbed a suitcase. I'd grabbed— God only knows why— my red underwear. I did take one other thing as I left the house. I paused in front of a cabinet filled with silver and wedding china and keepsakes. I opened the door and took out an Indian arrowhead I'd found in Wyoming on Mark's family's ranch. I guess that's how you pack when you're off on a new life. You get ten minutes, and there's no second chance. I can't tell you why, as the flames roared nearer, I chose red underwear and an arrowhead that would have survived the fire anyway. I can only say this. Where I was headed, I was overpacked. One Crystal Clear Autumn Morning The fire started before dawn on October 27, 1993, and like most blazes near populated areas, it was set by a human, a homeless man named Andres Huang. He had hiked into the Altadena foothills during the night. He'd fallen asleep, and when he awoke before dawn, he was cold and shivering. He lit a little camp fire to warm himself up. It was a windy night, and the fire immediately got away from him. Frightened, he fled. Unable to see in the darkness, he fell over a cliff. At 3:48 a.m., someone called Fire Station 66 at the foot of Eaton Canyon and reported "fire on the hillside." It was impossible to know it at the time, but that call mobilized the first unit of a force that would grow to include nearly three thousand firefighters from 62 different agencies, 200 fire engines, 15 water tenders, four bulldozers, eight helicopters, and fifteen airplanes. Andres Huang was found, arrested and taken to a hospital. He was later charged with "reckless setting of a fire." Mark and I were sleeping at home, a couple of ridge lines to the east. The telephone rang a little after four. It was Mark's mother, calling from her house, a couple more ridge lines to the east. She had awakened early and seen a tiny bright spot on the mountain. "There's a fire above Eaton Canyon," she said. Mark and I got up and slid open the glass door that led from our bedroom to an outdoor patio. We could see a tiny, brilliant feather of flame on the dark slope. We'd seen fires on the mountainside before. We'd grown up here. There were fires every year. Even though we lived in the hills, there were houses and streets between us and the native brush. Our house was nearly a hundred years old, nestled on a slope overlooking a reservoir that held a million gallons of water. The mountainside might burn, but our house? Unlikely, we thought. If the fire got close, we had the reservoir and a pump and a hose. On top of that, Mark used to be a fire fighter for the forest service. Whatever might happen, we'd be able to handle it. "It's awfully windy," said Mark. And then we went back to bed. We couldn't sleep. We got up, and I set to work addressing invitations in calligraphy for a friend. Mark went outside to work on the exhibit we were preparing for a fair. He'd cleaned its large red carpet the day before, and we'd stretched it out on the driveway to dry. Mark started to vacuum it, and ten minutes later, he called me. "Look," he said, pointing at the rug. "Those are ashes falling on it." Maybe the ashes should have warned us, but we couldn't see any flames. There was no smoke, no noise. Only soft white powder kept landing on the carpet. "I give up," said Mark. He turned off the vacuum cleaner. The only sound now was the wind. "It sure is windy," I said. I went back inside and turned on the television. News reporters had started talking about a fire in Altadena, and they showed pictures of fire engines lined up on streets about a mile west of us. They weren't doing anything, just waiting. It was quiet outside. At about seven o'clock, Mark walked down to the end of our street. As soon as he left, I heard a new sound. It was more than wind. It was a roar, not loud, but huge somehow. Then I felt the heat. Just then Mark ran back. "Get in your car and get out of here," he shouted. "All of Kinneloa is burning!" Kinneloa is a community of big houses west of ours. "I just saw a policeman drag a woman in a nightgown out of her house!" Just then Marvin ran out of the house and headed directly for my car. He screamed and scratched at the door. Smart dog, I thought. No sense in leaving on foot when you can have a ride. I let him into the front seat and slammed the door. I ran back into the house and assembled the items that were to become my only pre-fire mementos. I grabbed some equally useful items for Mark, too: his least-comfortable shoes and a mismatched outfit. He didn't get any underwear at all. When I came outside, the eaves of the house across the street were blazing, and the house behind it was engulfed. The roar was loud now, the heat frightening. Mark screamed at me from the roof, where we was wielding a fire hose barefoot. I screamed back at him. "Leave!" he yelled. "I'll be right behind you!" Sixty foot flames were swirling down the hill above us. "You've got to come, too!" I yelled. "I will!" he screamed. "Just get going!" And so I left. As I did, I realized what had seemed so odd. There was no sound except the roar of the fire itself. No sirens, no helicopters. Just that quiet roar and the heat. Two blocks away, life was normal. Bathrobed ladies were just stepping outside to pick up their papers. How could they know that fifty houses were burning less than a mile away? There was no smoke, no sound, and we weren't on television. It was just a crystal clear autumn morning, and time for a cup of coffee. You Can't Go Home Again I headed for Mark's parents' house on Riviera Drive. Overlooking Hastings Canyon, it was square in the path of the fire. I'll tell you now that it didn't burn. Firefighters arrived in droves, and the sound of helicopters laboring up the mountainside went on all day. They couldn't contain the fire, and they couldn't direct it, but by soaking hillsides and roofs, they were able to save dozens of houses. It was a slow motion day, a surreal blur. I was mesmerized by the fire as it swept over the mountains in front of me. I watched a whole ridge line erupt in a series of explosions as the flames reached houses, cars and gas lines. Before the sun went down, the flames had blackened every slope I could see. That night Mark and I lay on a bed in our clothes. Through the window, we could see flames still burning on the mountain. We slept fitfully, and before dawn, we got up. "Let's go home," said Mark. We made a thermos of coffee and climbed into his car. At the bottom of our hill, a policeman was manning a barricade. He was surrounded by gawkers, but no one was getting through. "If you're a resident, you can go up in a police vehicle," he explained. "But you have to have identification." Identification. I had mine in my purse, but Mark had left home the day before in shorts and a T- shirt. He'd had no time to go inside. The officer looked at my driver's license, and then turned to Mark. Was it the sooty shirt, the wild hair? Without a word, he moved the barricade aside and said, "A van will be here in a few minutes to take you up." The van turned out to be a paddy wagon, and we climbed into the cage in the back. Another man we didn't know joined us, and we began the ascent. Everything looked serene and normal for the first half mile. Dawn was breaking on another cloudless day. Then we saw the first gap, a big black hole where a house was supposed to be. Then another, and another. By the time we reached the top of the hill, we'd counted at least a dozen. I'd known all day yesterday that our house had burned, but we'd had no actual proof. Now, as we neared the last corner, I wondered. Could it somehow have survived? The van turned the corner, and we saw our block. The two houses that were burning when I left were still standing. Ours was gone. The driver opened the door and said, "I'll be back later." Mark and I stepped outside. The ground was still hot. "Look, there's the shower stall," I said. Black and leaning, it was the tallest thing. Near the road stood two old chairs we'd set out for the Salvation Army to collect. "Well, that's handy, anyway," said Mark, and we sat down. It was time for a cup of coffee. Archaeologists in Tarzan's Garden How many glorious places have gone up in smoke? Athens, Rome, Chicago. As we sat on our cast-off lawn chairs surveying the smoldering wreckage, I thought of Aeneas fleeing burning Troy, carrying his grandfather and his household gods. No, I didn't. I can think of that now, but then, I just sat there. We weren't looking at the ashes of Priam's palace. Our smoking citadel was only a shower stall. It wasn't noble, glorious, or even tragic, just a shock. Even so, the archaeologist in me awoke immediately. "Look at the cars!" I said to Mark. We'd each left in a car, but there had been nothing we could do about two other vehicles parked in our driveway. One belonged to a man who worked for Mark's property management company, and the other to a friend who'd moved to New York. They had been parked right next to each other. The Volkswagen Rabbit was incinerated. The engine block had liquefied and poured out of the engine compartment, creating a decorative aluminum bas relief on the asphalt. The body was blackened, the windows were gone, and the inside was devoid of anything except a couple of seat springs and a skeletal steering wheel. Right next to it, the Chevette looked fine at first glance. Actually, two tires were melted and the paint had bubbled on one door, but two days later, Manny drove it away. "How could the fire be so selective?" I asked. "They were practically touching." We spent the morning poking into the rubble and marveling. Most things were utterly gone, but we found a few interesting artifacts. The heat of the fire had delaminated a quarter and puffed it up like a little metal balloon. A can of pennies was now a solid cylinder of copper. We stood where we guessed our china cabinet had been, the one from which I'd extracted the arrowhead on my way out. Fifteen feet long and eight feet tall, it had been made out thick slabs of Honduran mahogany by a friend whose cabinets were works of art. It must have burned like a dream. The concrete upon which it had stood was completely bare. "I thought we'd find globs of silver or something," said Mark, "Melted, like the car engine." But there was nothing. My grandmother's tea service was somewhere over Santa Monica in a big black cloud. We continued our exploration, careful to sidestep smoldering coals. We'd both melted holes in our sneakers by now, and the sun was climbing. It was shaping up into another hot, windy day. "Okay, here's the storeroom," said Mark. The piles of rubble and ash were a little deeper. We'd both picked up sticks, and I poked into a steaming pile. It was a large rectangle of what looked like bedsprings. "We didn't have a bed in here," I said. "What was this?" Mark picked his way over and had a look. "It's the Slinkies," he said. The storeroom had housed the inventory of a new retail business Mark and I had started a few months before. Wizards of Wonder, WOW for short, sold puzzles, games, and unusual toys at music festivals and county fairs. Our holiday inventory had begun to arrive, and most of it hadn't been unpacked. We'd ordered cases and cases of Slinkies, a perennially popular Christmas present. We picked our way over the rest of the cement slab that formed the footprint of our erstwhile home. My computer had vanished entirely. The only high-tech remnants were the little metal sliders from three floppy disks. Near where my desk had been a filing cabinet was still recognizable. It had cooled enough for Mark to touch, and he pried it open with a crowbar he'd brought along in his back pack. "You never know," he said. "And it sure would be nice to have our tax records." It was empty. Our house was unique. Built nearly a century before by Abbott Kinney, one of Los Angeles' early land barons, it had served as the livery stable for the Big House. The Big House burned down in the thirties, and nobody knew any more exactly where it had been. The stable building and the stone pump house on the edge of the reservoir were the last remaining structures of Kinney's estate. The hillside was studded with oaks, palms and eucalypti, and a stream carried water from a spring farther up the mountain to the reservoir, which was home to several hundred blue gill, catfish and bright orange carp. Legend held that there were bass in there, too, but we never spied one. Mark had created a home inside the redwood shell of the old barn, and turned the pump house into a cozy den overlooking the reservoir. He'd never thought his hillside retreat was big enough for two, but he found space for me when we got married in 1990. He'd lived there for three years when I joined him, but he hadn't been alone. He shared his jungle with a cat, three ducks, a pack of coyotes, a family of skunks, a raccoon commune, and an occasional mountain lion. Peacocks and a blue heron visited the reservoir, which had grown to look like a natural lagoon. Wild mint and raspberries grew along the stream. It was hard to believe that Tarzan's dream house existed in the hills above Pasadena. Few people had any inkling it was up there, only half an hour from downtown Los Angeles. We looked down the denuded hill past the black trunk of a headless palm tree to the old pump house. Built of native stones, it had a brick chimney and a shake roof. A perforated pipe ran along the ridge, and we'd left the water running the day before in the hopes that the roof might survive the fire if it were wet enough. The pipe was still there, bent and black, but intact. Little puffs of steam burst from the holes. The roof was gone, and we could see red clay floor tiles through the rubble on the floor. We climbed down carefully and stepped inside. Our eyes fell first on the iron harp of my grandmother's upright piano. It had smashed tiles when it hit the floor. Then we caught sight of something else. A ceramic vase was standing upright on a broken tile. Chartreuse and hideous, it was also intact and pristine. It looked like someone had just set it there. "That vase," I said. "Do you remember how we got it?" Mark couldn't remember. "It was one of the gifts at the white elephant party we had last year. It was so ugly no one would take it home. I stuck it into one of the cabinets against the far wall. It was on the top shelf. How the heck did it get down here without breaking?" "I think," said Mark, "That even forest fires have their standards. It took one look at that thing and said, ‘No thanks. Even I don't want that.'" When we arrived back at the top of our smoldering acropolis, we stood near our former kitchen sink, now a dented cast iron relic lying on its side on the ground. A eucalyptus tree nearby burst into fresh flames, and we looked down over the blackened lagoon. I said, "You know, Mark, this is, in fact, amazing." Mark says I said, "You know, Mark, this is, in fact, great." However I started out, I continued, "We're cleaned out. There's nothing here, nothing at all. We can do anything we want. Anything. Do you know what that means? We can go anywhere, do anything, start over again. Whatever. I think we should think of this as an opportunity. I think it just could be the most amazing thing that's ever happened to us. I think..." "Shut up," said Mark. "Shut up and give me five minutes to grieve." View From The Black Gap I shut up. He was right. I was chattering. I stood at the edge of the concrete slab and looked out over the San Gabriel Valley. I could see all the way to the ocean, which was a big change from the last time I'd stood in that place and looked south. Thirty trees had meant their end, but the view they left behind was terrific. I stood there and knew I was right. This really was amazing, maybe even great. All my stuff was gone, and that meant I had a clean slate. Yes, it meant that irreplaceable mementos were gone forever, but so were forty years of sediment, a serious buildup of tartar and plaque. Yes, my great grandmother's wedding dress was vapor, but so were thirty boxes I'd dreaded having to sort. For every item I mourned, there was a corresponding bushel of ballast that had held me hostage. I felt the lightness immediately. I was a hot air balloon, and my tethers had just been cut. I gave Mark a full half hour to grieve. "Let's hit the road," I said as we waited for the paddy wagon to come and get us. "The timing couldn't be better. We've got no stuff, no business, and no house to worry about. Let's just start driving and see what we find." Mark didn't say yes, and he didn't say no. We rode down the hill and drove back to his parents' house. By this time, people were everywhere, surveying the wreckage. The policeman at the barricade was fending off a crowd of looters carrying shopping bags. Meanwhile the fire was still burning its way eastward unabated. The winds were still high. My parents' house in the village of Sierra Madre was in its path. Blocked roads meant we couldn't go there, but we spent the day watching television and the wind. By midnight, the winds pushed the fire north into the wilderness, and Sierra Madre was left untouched. The next day, the air was still. The fire did not leave a peaceful wake. Within hours, platoons of insurance agents arrived. Almost as fast came the contractors, carpet cleaners, "salvage experts" and "private adjusters," vultures attracted by a fresh disaster. On hundreds of scorched lots, men with tape measures and blueprints and clipboards brought bag lunches and folding chairs and stayed all day. I escaped for the weekend to a meeting I'd planned to attend months before. I had no house, but I did have a hotel reservation. I stopped at a shopping mall on the way and bought some underwear and a shirt and a pair of jeans. When I got back to Pasadena, Mark had joined a crew of volunteers who were preparing to sandbag the hillsides. Fire in Southern California mountains practically guarantees mud slides as soon as it rains, and they can be just as devastating as fire. We went out to dinner Sunday night. While we waited for the waiter to take our order, Mark said, "Let's hit the road. Let's just start driving and see where we end up." I have no idea what we ate that night, but we stayed a long time. The waiter filled our coffee cups four times. Fire. What a thing. Houses, trees, stuff, all gone in a flash. I'd been looking at the black gaps, but now, suddenly, I was looking at the view they'd left behind. I was a balloon, slowly rising over a fresh new landscape. The journey had begun. The Stuff of Life If life in the last decade of the century in America is a solar system, stuff is its sun. Our lives revolve around it, and its absence creates a powerful vacuum, the kind nature abhors. If you don't believe it, try this simple experiment. Divest yourself of all your stuff, and remain stuffless for a month. Okay, I'll allow you one suitcase, but that's it. See if you can avoid busting out of it for four short weeks. Maybe the simplest road to unencumbered success would be to buy a Eurail pass and relive the days when you traveled light and traded paperbacks in youth hostels. Maybe you can find yourself a monastery and embark on a month-long retreat in a cell without closets. One thing's certain, though. If you stay where you are and follow the stuff-attracting patterns that define American life, your suitcase won't just bulge at the end of a week. It'll explode. By the end of the month, you'll be the curator of a brand new archive. Inexorably following its law, your stuff will have expanded to fill all available space. Back in the seventies, when the Shah of Iran was sent into exile, hundreds of American expatriates left with him. A friend of mine was a teacher in Tehran at the time. One day while he was at school, he received instructions to drive to the airport, leave the keys in his car's ignition, and get on a plane. He left a large, nicely furnished apartment full of mementos of a life of travel and an Ivy League education. When I met him in Germany a few years later, it was in the living room of his large, nicely furnished apartment. Conspicuously devoid of Persian rugs, it nonetheless displayed ample evidence of a love of travel, a fascinating life. "Sometimes you have to swap possessions for experience," he said. After a disaster, a giant machine mobilizes, and its motto is, "Put Everything Back." Government agencies like FEMA and the SBA arrive in a blizzard of forms in triplicate. Insurance adjusters explain about "replacement value," and "policy limits." Vaporized homes are recreated on paper, and the stuff they contained fills sheet after sheet of foolscap. Everywhere, scores of people began work immediately to do what people do after catastrophes: make everything look the way it did before. But what if you were thinking, "Well, thanks, but I'm not so sure I want everything back just the way it was. After all, how many times do you get to start over in life? Isn't this a good time to stop and think a while? Isn't it a chance to maybe do something different?" A perfect place to think materialized magically for Mark and Marvin and me. It was a guest house on a secluded estate in the town of San Gabriel. Designed as the ultimate entertainment pad, it had a huge living room, three bathrooms, and one bedroom. Sliding glass doors opened on one side to a camellia garden, and on the other to a large swimming pool. It was beautiful, which made us smile. It had enormous closets, which made us laugh. Don't get me wrong. I love stuff. I love the people who brought us stuff when we had none. Family, friends, and strangers gave us clothes, furniture, dishes, pots, books, a bed, a table, food, a computer, and money. We were, quite literally, showered with gifts. Without them, life would have looked awfully bleak. After all, we live in three dimensions, where down comforters feel good on a chilly night, a dining room table is a great convenience, and china plates lend elegance to the simplest meal. I have never appreciated ordinary household stuff more than I did while I lived at the secret villa. It had appeared out of thin air. It was magic. It was love. Christmas Came Anyway We lived at "The Villa" for five months, from November, 1993, until March, 1994. One day in December, a package tied with string arrived, forwarded by the post office from our former address. It had German stamps and an illegible customs declaration stuck to the top. At first, I was baffled, but then I remembered. In 1990, Mark and I had taken a trip to Europe. From Athens, we'd taken a ship through the Corinth Canal north through the Adriatic to Venice. We rented a car and drove through the Alps to Bavaria. In Oberammergau, we stayed with friends who introduced us to one of the master wood carvers for which the town is famous. Before we left, we commissioned a Christmas creche. Each December, we'd be receiving a piece or two until we had a complete cast of characters. The first Christmas, we got the Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. By the time everything went up in smoke, we'd added two shepherds, a goat, a cow, a donkey, and a couple of angels. When Mark got home, I showed him the box. "Do you know what this is?" I asked. He, too, was puzzled for a minute, but then he smiled. "It's got to be the wise men," he said. We opened the package, pulled away the excelsior, and there they were, each holding his perfectly carved little gift, each looking intently in the direction of a recipient who wasn't there. "Sorry, no baby Jesus here," I said as I set them on the dining room table. "I'm afraid you guys came to the wrong stable." But they didn't, really. They proved that no matter what happens, Christmas comes. Christmas doesn't even require a baby Jesus. It comes anyway, and the wise men proved it that year by insisting on arriving at an empty rental cottage. And Christmas did come. By the time it arrived, we'd celebrated my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary and my birthday, and we'd announced our grand plan. We'd hung a huge map of North America on the living room wall, and we'd begun sticking pins in all the places we'd always dreamed of visiting. The wise men stayed on our table through January. Before I packed them away, I wrote to the wood carver to explain what had happened and ask him to start over. "We need a new holy family," I wrote, "And shepherds and animals and angels. Everything but the wise men." Next Christmas, even if we had no table to set them on, the wise men would have something to look at, a reason for bearing gifts. I figured it was the least I could do for them, since they'd traveled 6,000 miles on faith, and arrived just when we needed some. And now, we were about to follow our own star, with not much more than faith to fund it. We were fairy tale youngest sons, the ones who pack a bandana and leave home on foot to seek their fortunes. Maybe we should have followed their lead, but we were post-Ford children, and we needed something more. Before we could hit the road, we had to find ourselves a vehicle. The second e-edition to Roads from the Ashes: An Odyssey in Real Life on the Virtual Frontier is now available on Amazon.com

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