#him feeling like he has nothing after the fall of quincy but still leading the survivors to safety

[you-have-startled-the-witch]

btw this is a preston garvey love and appreciation blog. if you hate preston you will die by my blade.

MINUTEMAN BLAST

[pwurrz]

yakumo doesn’t remember what happened last night that got him into this position. all he remembers is having a nightmare, quincy comforting him (which, as yakumo quickly found out, he’s very unexpectedly good at!), and then promptly falling asleep from exhaustion.

he doesn’t remember, at any point, quincy getting into bed next to him, curling up around him protectively, and using him as a pillow.

but.. this is his bed. perhaps he invited quincy to.. share the bed with him, and he was too tired at the time to remember it? that could be what happened. yakumo remembers he can do some pretty embarrassing things when he’s sleepy, especially when it’s his brumation period.

but yakumo just didn’t think he and quincy were that close! he wasn’t even sure if quincy really even liked him or just tolerated his presence! sure, they had spent ample time together since becoming associated, but he found the forest guardian to be incredibly hard to read at times. his quiet nature and stoic, hardly changing expression made it difficult for yakumo to guess what he was thinking, and his anxiety often filled in the gaps.

which is exactly what’s happening now.

yakumo can’t deny he’s incredibly comfortable, wrapped securely in quincy’s embrace with his face pressed snugly against the forest guardian’s bulky chest. but his mind can’t stop reeling, terribly shy about being in such close proximity to the other man.

he tries to wiggle free from out of quincy’s arms, giving into his serpent nature, but quickly finds that impossible as his squirming only causes the other man to wrap his arms even tighter around yakumo’s waist.

quincy lets out a displeased grunt, and yakumo freezes. the last thing he wanted was for quincy to wake up! he thought he was a heavy sleeper! daring to look up at the man currently holding him ‘hostage’, yakumo is met with a sleepy amber gaze staring back at him quizzically. yep, he’s definitely awake.

yakumo whimpers, ducking his head and accidentally burying his face in quincy’s chest as a result. he feels his cheeks burn and he just knows even the tips of his ears are bright red from embarrassment. he can still feel quincy’s gaze on him, so he decides to break the silence before he combusts from the awkwardness of the situation.

“u-um.. m-mr. quincy? i-i’m not.. mr. eiden so.. c-could you let me go? please?”

quincy blinks a few times, seemingly not used to be spoken to so soon after waking up. what he says next does nothing to quell the butterflies in yakumo’s stomach, especially considering how deep and rough his voice is first thing in the morning.

“…i know. you’re enjoying it though, aren’t you?”

he doesn’t let yakumo answer, considering the mortified squeak he lets out as good enough of a reply. quincy moves one arm from around the serpent’s waist and wraps it around his shoulders instead, using his hand to gently encourage yakumo to nuzzle his head back into his chest.

“too early. go back to sleep.”

and with that, quincy’s out like a light, leaving yakumo to deal with a whirlwind of emotions completely on his own.

on one hand, he still has absolutely no idea how he ended up in this predicament, or what happened last night that lead to this.

on the other, he can’t deny that he feels very safe and secure wrapped in quincy’s arms like this. it doesn’t look like he’ll be escaping anytime soon, and he hardly gets to sleep in. he can feel the previous night’s exhaustion coming back to him, the warmth of the forest guardian’s embrace overpowering his anxious mind.

it wouldn’t hurt, just this once, to give into these.. irresponsible and quite frankly embarrassing desires, would it?

[ramuoto]

TOP 10 MANHWAs

if anything good came out of 2020, it’s my discovery of manhwas. 

well, it’s not like i’ve never read a single manhwa in the past 15+ years but tbh, the ratio of manhwa:manga i consume on a weekly basis has jumped exponentially this year. previously it was like 1:99 and now it’s like 90:10 LMAO. 

so, just to remind myself that the world is still full of good things, i had to make this list. which i will probably edit in the future, if i can be bothered to. :) 

anyhow, this list was not made in any particular order, just whichever came into mind. it’s loooong so be prepared! (I’ve read way more titles than mentioned but just included the ones worth checking out)

for whoever stumbles across this list, i hope some of these resonate with you and i hope they make you as happy as they made me. 

pic credits: https://geekculture.co/geeks-guide-to-transmigration-novels-avoid-death-at-all-costs/

1. Ebony

https://mangadex.org/title/41838/ebony

Bahahah omg he looks evil there! But our dearest archduke is hardly that aww. Soz, I just ripped off the covers of the manhwa cos I can’t find a panel I liked more than another. I mean, this manhwa is a GEM. I can’t even begin to describe this because everything about it blew me away. This is not something you read when you are craving for fluff, or just wanna have something brainless after a hard day at work or if you just wanna have some eye candy lol. This is something you pick up on a weekend, when you have time, because you need those hours to digest, appreciate, clutch your chest, tear a little because you find yourself falling in love with these characters. It doesn’t have any of that cliche isekai, romance, revenge themes going on. It has a solid plot, backed by incredible characters, beautifully woven by the authors and artist with incredible pacing that keeps you on your toes and keeps you looking forward to the next chapter. Maybe I would have been happier if I found it after it was completed lol. HAVE I CONVINCED YOU ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU WANNA READ IT?! like, idk, just go. JUST GO READ IT GDI. 

p.s. it says there romance but naaaaaaah, dont go in with that expectation. :) this story is so much more than that. 

2. Bring the love

https://mangadex.org/title/44472/bring-the-love

This...this!!! THIS MANHWA NEEDS MORE LOVE. If you need a lot of fluff, a little, ok maybe quite a bit of sadness and tragedy, sweet sweet romance, cutie pies, please, look no further!!! Again, pacing, character development are so important to me and this manhwa aces it. I love the 2 MCs very much. And the side characters too. :)

3.  A Stepmother's Märchen

https://mangadex.org/title/39474/a-stepmother-s-m-rchen

When I first read this, i fucking cried. like please don’t ask me why. it’s not like its an absolute tragedy but I was just rooting for the MC so much and I really want for everything to go her way. That’s how much I adore this MC!!! I LOVE HER. I LOVE HER MORE THAN YOU DO NORA! HAHAHHA. okay soz. I need to keep this spoiler-free.

Anyhoo, there is nothing typical about this time travel plot. Sure, she goes back to try to undo the stuff that went wrong but phew, she certainly changed things so much everything that comes her way have made it so her previous experiences can hardly help aaaaaaand that’s what makes it fun! I sometimes wish the pacing could be a little more consistent, and there could be more characters I could love a little more wholeheartedly (so i wont have to be in so much despair when i read this sometimes lol) but omg the art, isn’t it pretty?! I’ve re-read this soooooo many times but the art blows me away all the time. And have I already mentioned how much I love her?! I LOVE YOU SHULI! AND I WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY!

4.  Lady Baby

https://mangadex.org/title/34691/lady-baby

I literally LOL-ed when I saw this cover. WHO THE HELL ARE THEY. WHAT LADY BABY?! ehehehe. okay anyway, uhm, this is already incredibly popular. im not sure if i need to elaborate but yes, it’s adorbs!!! i dont think i like the MC as much as i love her family lol. and everyone else who adores her. im looking forward to when they get older. :) actually not really. please stay cute for as long as yall can! but yeah, i do wish the plot can move a lil faster. i want to see more character development in the other kids too COME ON! 

5.  Death Is the Only Ending for the Villainess

https://mangadex.org/title/47754/death-is-the-only-ending-for-the-villainess

am i allowed to reveal how shallow i am rn? like the previous choices were all like ‘wow-deep-plot’, ‘wow-character-development’ and this one i just included cos of AESTHETICS ALONE?! the novel covers are breathtaking!!! the manhwa art is amazing as well. and the harem is great! LOL. as for plot... uhm... it’s alright. it’s pretty engaging and i quite like the MC, she’s smart and independent and i love how she views them all antagonistically at all times HAHAHHA. her past is kinda... weird though and i do wish they’d stop referencing it. cos... girl why do you wanna go back to reality!!! stay here! it’s way more exciting! 

i love the whole isekai/reincarnate/transmigration theme and this is honestly one of the better, not-so-cliche or cheesy ones HA.

6.  Beware of the Villainess!

https://mangadex.org/title/47286/beware-of-the-villainess

do you already see the whole villainess theme?! am i suppose to start feeling embarrassed about my choices?! NO! cos this one is AWESOME!

again, another wildly popular title. for good reasons. it’s hilarious, our MC is as real and candid as it gets and LOOK AT THAT BLUE HAIRED BEAUTY. DO YOU SEE HIM?! IMPLANT HIM INTO YOUR MEMORY NOW!

it’s highly entertaining and breaks all isekai-reincarnation-villainess plot stereotypes. definitely one of the titles i look forward to every week.

7.  Who Made Me a Princess

https://mangadex.org/title/32506/who-made-me-a-princess

what? why did i choose this?

BECAUSE OF CLAUDE OF COURSE. ahahaha. okay aside from the amaaaaaaazing art and the beautiful people, the plot is not too bad. a little extreme at times but it’s interesting enough to keep me going. it’s currently on hiatus though and i was highly annoyed by how the first season ended. (YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT HAPPENED? NOTHING.)

i hope the plot can move faster in the next season! and that our dearest MC athanasia can you know, finally be a little more useful... like omg just tell lucas already!!! and tbh girl, no matter which guy you choose, i approve. :D 

8.  The Flower That Was Bloomed by a Cloud

https://mangadex.org/title/37648/the-flower-that-was-bloomed-by-a-cloud

i featured this before, mostly out of frustration HAHAHA. do you see why i chose this cover?! yeah, i support this (unpopular) pairing okay! the other one is doomed!!! no matter what the author is trying to do now!! I DONT SUPPORT IT!!! lol.

anyway, i had to feature this cos the art is unique! and the story is great. :) and i looooooove listening to the ost while i read it. it starts out kinda slow but as the pace picks up, you won’t be able to stop. and you find yourself conflicted at various points. it did win an award for a reason. 

no matter what, i still think dowun is best for her okay. it’s dowun or nothing. he’s devoted to her, we all know that! he just needs to ditch that annoying female guard!!! ok yknw what, maybe nothing is better. :/ *cries*

9.  Solo Leveling

https://mangadex.org/title/31477/solo-leveling

why do i even bother? this manhwa is popular enough. 

the art is great. the MC is great. i use him and his gang as my wallpaper. 

im just not sure i like how this season’s plot is progressing. :/ but i guess it brings us nearer to solving the mystery in the first leg of the manhwa. i just enjoyed the whole part of him leveling up and now that he isn’t really leveling up anymore... idk. am i hoping for more plot shit like bleach (oh wow now u quincy?)... idk man. anywho, no regrets starting on this series and marathon-ing it to death. 

cross fingers the plot picks up and doesnt get too complicated for its own good.

10.  The Reason Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion

https://mangadex.org/title/31606/the-reason-why-raeliana-ended-up-at-the-duke-s-mansion

okay, tbh, by the time i reached 10, i still have like 15 other series i was considering LMAO. i even considered lengthening this top 10 to top 15. but that would just be more of me and my nonsense. so... why did i choose this?

COS I LOVE THE 2 MCs!!! they’re adorable. the plot is again, kinda far-fetched at times (i literally laugh my head off at some parts) but it’s isekai-reincarnation okay! anything is possible in whatever magical crap country you end up in! lol. and i like how straightforward it is... in the sense there’s no 2nd lead. like okay i mean they are there but we all know they have no chance. oops. sorry!

and cos i can’t give up on the other titles i have, imma just list them down, without pictures... cos im tired. HA. 

11. Doctor Elise 

https://mangadex.org/title/29474/doctor-elise 

Kudos to the huge improvement in art style lmao. The good... lovable MCs, engaging plot. The bad... sometimes lengthy, incredulous medical moments (i work in the medical field so i... idk. sometimes this borders on iryu LMAO and i need to remind myself this is romance) otherwise, this is a highly highly entertaining read.

12.  Seduce the Villain's Father

https://mangadex.org/title/46775/seduce-the-villain-s-father

This is another of my ‘father-love’ whims. MC is adorable and ML is handsome. enough said.

13.  The Villainess Lives Twice

https://mangadex.org/title/49644/the-villainess-lives-twice

This is like a lesser version of Ebony and Bring the Love combined HAHAHA. The plot and premise is great and it’s awesome to marathon! I don’t find myself loving the MC as much as I should but the ML is a darling! I just find her a little toooooooo gloomy. Like come on girl, be more spunky! 

14.  The Stereotypical Life of a Reincarnated Lady

https://mangadex.org/title/46790/the-stereotypical-life-of-a-reincarnated-lady

I dont know why I like this so much HAHAHAHA. It hardly has a plot. I just find the MC and ML amusing i guess lol. 

15.  I'm Stanning the Prince

https://mangadex.org/title/45586/i-m-stanning-the-prince

Sometimes I wonder if I should be ranking this higher but I kinda feel this manhwa is trying to achieve too much with an underpowered MC. I love her... but I just don’t like how she’s just a pawn of everyone else and I dont know how she can change this situation of hers. It’s cute though. the MC and ML.  and the ML reminds me so much of american/jap Mackenyu. 

16.  The Villainess Reverses the Hourglass

I HAD TO. the art is so pretty! but girl, dont use the hour glass so much! you look a little too old! i would appreciate it if MC stops basing too much of her moves on the “past” tho like idk you are gonna sound unoriginal soooooon like develop your own thoughts soon okay? <3

17. Inso's Law

ANOTHER ONE. omg. im a lil on the fence regarding this but i like MC too much. and her harem LOL. i dont see where the plot is going either but i just hope for a happy end... ):

18.  Why Are You Doing This, Duke?

HAHAHA. this is sooooo sooooooo cute, i would have ranked it top 15 if it wasnt licensed by tapas tho cos they are a joke. WHY NOT TAPPY GDI. 

19.  Miss Not-So Sidekick

Uh-oh. Is this a top-20 list now? anyway, the MC for this series is GOLD. im not liking where it’s currently heading tho thus the lower ranking.

20.  IRIS - Lady with a Smartphone

omg IVE NEGLECTED THIS FOR TOO LONG. lemme go buy more chapters hahahaha. it’s a tad too lengthy... otherwise i like the MC and yummy ML!

still not enough?

Special Mentions - Okay, these will be unranked cos I don’t think these are that good but probably still worth a read.

I've Become the Villainous Empress of a Novel - this is new, im looking forward to how it progresses wheeeee.

Lady to Queen - It’s a ruthless manhwa. There was a point i started reading all sorts of sadistic content (i was running out of content i swear) and this was one of the better ones. I appreciate the MC very much. the plot now is a little weird and im a bit wary of the MC’s sister... hopefully the ML can be more useful. he’s pitiful though. but dude come on, dont rely on the wrong gal.

Goodbye, In-law - I’m not sure if i like the current progress buuuuuuut MC and ML are cute so who cares.

The Duchess' 50 Tea Recipes - plot is still engaging. MC and ML are cute. i dont know where the plot is heading towards though. 

A Falling Cohabitation - this is interesting and fun but a lil lengthy.

Light and Shadow - the sequel is out!!! i highly enjoyed this entire series!!! i would have probably ranked it a lil higher if i did this post earlier but too many series have overtaken this in my heart lol.

This Girl Is a Little Wild - is the hiatus ending yet? i would add it back to top 20 if it came back LOL. it’s highly entertaining tho. ML is adorable.

The Duchess With an Empty Soul  - pretty nice. MC and ML are a little boring. i think it can end soon. LMAO.

A Capable Maid - it’s amusing how she gets her powers for all sorts of situations lol. the prince is creepy tbh. and im secretly rooting for the other king hehe.

Beware of the Brothers! - it’s cute and heart-wrenching at the same time! not too sure im digging the latest plot development but okay... i’ll take it. they’re all cuties.

Living as the Tyrant's Older Sister - hehehe. it’s cute. duke is kinda silly but the latest chapter made me squeal!!!

The Evil Lady's Hero  - idk where the plot is going but MC and ML are adorable!!!

The Dragon Next Door - HAHAHA. it’s hilarious.

The Youngest Princess - she’s growing uppppp noooooooooooo

Virtues of the Villainess - ginger is hilarious. i dont see where the plot is going tho... and cant say i like the ML yet. i dont even get to see him much, hello?!

The Justice of Villainous Woman - pretty wholesome... i like the MC! (the ML is fine. no one else to contend with so...) can u end already?! lol.

Amina of the Lamp - hey, what happened to this? it’s pretty inconsistent but i do like the MC and ML... and the art...

The Villain's Savior - this is some sadistic shit. i reserve it for when i feel sadistic. i pretty much wanna see MC happy but idk if she’s making the right choices. :/

I Don't Want to Be Empress! - HAHAHAHA uhm it’s getting interesting. i just want ML to step up more... 

La dolce vita di Adelaide - I FINISHED THIS! and it’s wholesome, feel-good and cute. some parts felt a lil extra but ah whatever.

The Black Haired Princess - plot. move. faster!!! otherwise the MC and ML are pretty cute.

The Abandoned Empress - im a lil on the fence but i know how popular this series is. it started out HORRIBLE. i hated the ML so much. and then i found the green hair boy creepy. like MC, you need better taste in boys. it’s certainly getting more interesting now though. so please, continue to make my money’s worth!!!

Lucia - i. am. not. guilty. of. anything. *smut warning* anyway go read the novel. it’s better. hehehe.

What's Wrong with Secretary Kim - i do not need to elaborate any further. 

Past loves 

I created this section just to remind myself, that what i could like one day, i could hate the next LOL.

The Monster Duchess and Contract Princess - I know this is wildly popular. but i lost interest in it once she grew up. i dont think she’s particularly lovable. soz.

Survive as the Hero's Wife - another popular choice. I find the plot kinda boring now. MC and ML are cute though. 

Sincerely: I Became a Duke's Maid - another popular one. again, boring plot. like cant it end yet? oh you mean we need to wait for the real female lead to show up? dont need luh.

I Am a Child of This House - wow. the plot is shit now. and i do not support the MC and her guard. soz. she’s OVERPOWERED tbh. 

This Is an Obvious Fraudulent Marriage - idk what happened but my enthusiasm for this died.

Charlotte and Her 5 Disciples - i don’t get it. i dont get their obsession for her. 

[windstormwielding]

Drabble: New Orders

The wounded officer assumed the Sternritter who shot him would give chase to stop his attempted escape, but his heart dropped when he felt their attention shift to the reiatsu of nearby shinigami in his stead. It sank further when he then felt his kind’s presences getting wiped out as fast as he could blink while he flash-stepped from the scene, as more innocents have paid the price of their predecessors’ hubris in wiping out the Quincy in centuries past.

Grim thoughts supposed any target in a shihakushō would’ve done if it meant culling more of their number, and though ensured he was no longer being followed, cruel terror continued to overwhelm his being with the harrowing realization that he could’ve just as easily joined the fallen mere moments ago.

Still mid-stride, he felt the frosty reiatsu of the Bankai-less 10th Division Captain and the shinigami spiritual pressure of who he assumed to be his second-in-command cutting off that Quincy’s warpath. There was relief in that the Sternritter of fire definitely would not be pursuing him anymore, but how for long could Captain Hitsugaya and Lieutenant Matsumoto put up an actual fight against these honest-to-god monsters?

If there was any opportunity to seek respite and escape from the pending horror of his own mortality getting snuffed, now was the time to do it. With the last of his shunpō and feeling no Quincy spiritual pressure in the immediate vicinity, his hand still firmly pressed against his gut to quell bleeding over seared open wounds, the soul reaper left luck to fate as he spotted an open window six stories up.

He guided his flash steps up the smaller two-story building next to it, then launched himself from its roof through the open window he spotted. Unfortunately, it was then his strength gave out to the heat of his pierced liver and torso as he staggered mid-step at last. The silver-haired shinigami crashed shoulder-first onto the floor with a pained groan as momentum caused him to slide until his back harshly met the wood of a crate.

Despite the noise his intrusion made, there were no signs of nearby Quincy encroaching on his position to finish the job. Held breath turned strained yet relieved as the 13th Division’s 4th Seat found sanctuary amidst the chaos of the Wandenreich’s second invasion. Kōtarō Ryōhei finally had time to think.

He rolled onto his back with teeth grit as he tried to keep his thoughts off of his injury. The hand against his abdomen began to glow with the relieving light of Kaidō to mend the partially cauterized perforation through his body – though he’s no expert, Kōta was glad that he thought to take up the healing arts in hindsight, but lamented that this will be a slow recovery for him. It would be one thing if he ran into somebody from the 4th Division, with two wells of reiatsu to pull from to facilitate the healing process, but having to use his own energy alone to fix up his body will take him some time.

It would only amount to a patch job, but right now that was better than nothing. Once done, it should be enough to last him until he returns to the barracks... or where the barracks last stood.

His emerald gaze sharpened to scrutinize this unfamiliar room, walls a perfect marble white with hints of ice clinging to their surface. Head turned from one side to the other as he took note of old boxes and sealed barrels. Kōta reasoned he was in a storage room of some kind – supplies gathered from the Wandenreich empire’s thousand years of hiding in the Seireitei’s shadows, perhaps.

Before he could think on his surroundings more, Kōtarō found his thoughts drifting to his superiors. What he would do for their counsel right now...

Captain Ukitake was outside of the Seireitei when the Quincy got the drop on them all yet again. Ryōhei knew his Captain had begun his own ritual to prepare for the conflict, far outside of the Sekkiseki walls and deep into the Rukon districts, but that brought no comfort when it mattered most. There was no Captain at the helm to come to their defence thanks to the Sternritter’s surprise attack. Not even Kotsubaki and Kotetsu were around right now, shadowing Ukitake as they often do to best tend to his good health and safety.

Lieutenant Kuchiki was also indisposed. Suffering mortal wounds from the first invasion that already decimated the Gotei 13, Rukia’s frail form frightened him all the more when there was nothing more the 4th Division could do. She was taken to the Soul King Palace to make a full recovery not long ago, and Ukitake assured him she would be alright, but how long would it take for her to heal up and come back? Would he really die down here before he could reunite with her again? Was back at the 4th Division the last he would ever see his friend?

Without them, there was no one else left who could come to the 13th Division’s rescue. With no Captain, Lieutenant, or 3rd Seats standing by to lead and give out orders, there was no other guidance for him to lean on.

He was alone. Marooned. Without direction... and so were the rest of his men.

“...I’m still here.”

All it took to tether the storm of panic that overtook his composure earlier was those three little words of dawning realization. They may be gone, but the 4th Seat still remained as the highest-in-command officer of their Division within the Seireitei’s walls. Captain Ukitake, Rukia, Sentarō, and Kiyone – he’s still here for his superiors, to act in their stead until they return.

“I’m... still breathing... for fuck’s sake...!”

Pushing one foot after another to crawl against the ground, he fought against the body-wracking bouts of pain streaking up his nerves urging him to lie back down and relax, all while a streak of red followed his path. He’s still here to look after his juniors, who need some direction if they have any shot of surviving this war – that’s what he’s here for, isn’t he?

“I’m... still... ALIVE!”

With spiteful determination flooding his being, and a hand pressed against the floor for support, he shuffled back some more until he managed to sit upright against one of the crates. He’s still here to protect as many from his squadron as possible, to ensure they’re not abandoned and alone.

They needed orders. That much was clear. As he wracked in his mind to strategize, he figured there was one way to reach out to them in immediacy, but he could not think of a method to execute it.

What Kōtarō would do for some powder right about now. He didn’t even have it in him to open and inspect every odd container on the off-chance the Quincy stored something he could use here. Time was of the essence, but if not ink, then...

...the 4th Seat’s eyes trailed down to his crimson-stained hands.

“That’ll work,” he huffed, nodding to no one in particular. He can finish healing himself when he’s done. His colleagues and subordinates—whoever was still standing—need him.

“Black and white net.”

Arms shot up so that his sleeves may fall. Bloody palms then clapped together to share in makeshift red ink, and his arms became his canvas to draw lines and symbols along their length, as well as runes on the floor—careful not to draw where his life force had already been smeared.

“Twenty-two bridges... sixty-six crowns and belts.”

Beads of sweat dripped from his brow as his mind focused with renewed resolve to generate the white rectangle coming aglow before his eyes.

“Footprints, distant thunder... sharp peak, engulfing land, hidden in the night... sea of clouds, blue line.”

Though stilted, his hands moved like a conductor’s guiding baton, channeling his power into roots of spirit energy encroaching from the box of white light. His mind reached out to every one of his squad who he knew survived the first wave as he mentally reached out in the direction of the 13th Division grounds.

“Form a circle... and fly through the heavens."

Before their numbers could dwindle more and more, until there wouldn’t be a division left to save, he can still try and make a difference among those who remain.

“Bakudō #77... Tenteikūra.”

Relief flooded Kōtarō’s soul as he could now clearly sense the familiar auras of the handful of seated officers lingering in the area. Among the unseated, less than half their total number from before this sickening war started still stood.

Time to do his job.

–

Attention, officers of the 13th Division. This is your 4th Seat, Kōtarō Ryōhei, speaking.

Today... is no doubt the darkest time any of us have ever faced as shinigami. War has come to our doorstep with retribution and violence the likes of which we have never seen. The Quincy intend to wipe us all out, for our forefathers attempting to do the same to them a long time ago.

This battle, though we in the present never noticed the shadow of its approach... was a long time coming for all of us.

I... I know things look bleak right now. They have the advantage in information. They have the advantage in number. They have the advantage in military tactics, in home territory, and in sheer power. There... really is no easy way to say this, but we may very well be staring down our last days... not just as individuals, but as a collective. I won’t fault any of you for feeling helpless and outmatched, or having lost the will to fight, because for a minute there... I did too-

—

A harsh grunt cut him off as pain flared in his gut. It was tempting to bring a hand back down to resume self-treatment, but he could not end the transmission now. Not yet!

—

-but... our Captain—our Division—lives by a creed, in that there are two types of fights: fights where we protect honour, and fights where we protect life. We may not fight for the honour of the Gotei 13 or the division right now... hell, I don’t know if either will still exist when this battle is over, yet... we can still—and absolutely must—fight to protect life.

We have lost too many among us already. Close allies. Loved ones. Lifelong friends in the 13th and out. But though there is no bringing htem back from the dead... they still live on through you. Their hopes, their dreams, their memories... their hearts. You die here... then that’s it, they will all die for good, along with you. If the Quincy take that from you, then there really will be no Gotei 13 left to return to-!

—

Breathing turned laboured as he felt his mouth go dry. He needed to lie down and rest. No, he needed to be seen to. But that hardly mattered to him now. He couldn’t count on the 4th Division this minute. He had to stick to what he can do and see it through to the bitter end, if that is what it will come to!

—

So... it comes down to this, in what could be our final hour: the fight to protect life—your own... and that of the soul reaper standing next to you. Until further notice... until Captain Ukitake or Lieutenant Kuchiki return to issue new orders, then follow this one single command... by any means necessary: survive.

Whether you regroup, run fast, watch your surroundings, hide, or even strike them from behind... just survive. If all else fails... then stand your ground, give the Quincy hell, and make sure their job is not an easy one.

I... I will try my hardest to return to you all, but... in the event that... this is the last you hear from me... just know that...

—

“...it’s been a privilege... and an honour... for me to have served and fought alongside you all these many years. Ryōhei out.”

The moment connection terminated, his bloodied arms slackened, but he made sure his palm fell back over his wound to pick up where he left off. In his self-imposed strain, some of the work he already put in towards healing came undone, so it was back to doing it all again from scratch. Fantastic.

As his body slid so he may lie down fully once again, bleary sights looked up to the dimly lit ceiling in worry for the immediate future. Eyelids grew heavy, and the urge to sleep grew ever tempting, but Kōtarō feared that the time he closed his eyes again would be his last if he drifted off right away. He did not want to die yet. This war had only just begun in earnest, and he would be damned if he allowed himself to be done in by a single attack.

Once he finished patching himself up, rested, and got back on his feet, then it would be time to face the Quincy properly. For now, however...

“Captain Ukitake... I... hope I did the right thing.”

[justafanwarrior]

** Prompt : Marinette has a snow dragon soulmark and no idea who it could be. Toshiro Hitsugaya has a ladybug soulmark and knows about Marinette, but she can’t see him until something happens to her.**

As long as she could remember Marinette always had four soulmarks, a blue snake around her left ankle, a red dragon around the right ear, a red bug with  a chinese symbol behind on her left wrist and finally a snow dragon around her waist with its head resting on her heart. She new it wasn’t commune but she loved each of them deeply. She grew up wondering about their identities, creating clothes inspired by them.

However her soulmarks were also different, when she felt happy the wings of the ladybug would start flapping, when she was nervous the snake would feel like if it was trying to be wrapped around her even more to comfort her, when she was upset she could hear the tiny dragon around her ear hissing in anger. Finally, when she was scared, the snow dragon would move, he moved around her in a protective embrace. Her soulmarks were different, but it wasn’t bad, it was all she could ever hope for.

She never had a lot of friends beside Kim who she grew up with because their mothers were close friends. He was her big brother always protecting her even when she didn’t need it. She was ecstatic when he met his soulmate, a very smart boy named Max, it didn't stop her from threatening the boy if hé ever dared hurting her brother. Though she was also sad when he stopped hanging out with her, but she decided to smile because her brother had met his other half.

Time had passed, she became LadyBug and met her first soulmate, her kwami. Tikki explained that sometimes miraculous wielder were soulmates with their kwami, proving that they are a perfect match, and often their others soulmates were other miraculous wielder. She was sad during a moment that neither Adrien nor Chat Noir were her soulmate.

She never been as happy than the day she met Kagami. Her protective red dragon. It was hard at first, Kagami didn’t liked her at all. But they tried, and they grew closer. They even been in a relationship during a moment, a pretty long moment, but they broke up after three wonderful years. They would be best friends instead maybe sister as time would pass.

It’s not long after meeting her fierce dragon that she met her calm snake. He was the brother of a classmate, Luka was a very talented musician. They seemed to link immediatly, they loved each other too, soon he joined her relationship with Kagami. When they broke up he ended with the japonese, Marinette was the only one leaving this relationship. She loved them but was searching for something else, though when they hang out it usually ends on a date.

Marinette loved her soulmates, they always been there for her. They were here when she needed backup and Chat was missing, they were here to comfort her after the loss of her mentor, they were here when Lila turned her whole class against her, they saved her when Lila made Alya ‘accidentally’ triped her in the stairs. The dark-haired girl didn’t know what happened exactly, only that she woke up at Kagami crying on her chest and Luka screaming at the class with tears in his eyes.

Since that day, she was able to see ghosts. She freaked out when she woke up in the morning to see a girl in a spotted armor, black hair and a scar on her mouth behind her. Turned out she was Joan of Arc, a former LadyBug, each day a different former wielder would be there. And boy, wasn’t she trilled to see THE Hua Mulan behind her girlfriend, she was her hero her whole life !

She was 17 when she finally met her fourth and last soulmate. They were in a schooltrip in the town of Karakura in Japon, she was happy to be fluent thanks to Kagami whose mother refused to be in a relationship with someone who won’t at least learn their culture and language. Beside Kagami herself leaded the trip no matter how much Lila would complain because  ‘She was not even part of the school’.

They visited ‘Karakura High School’ with Orihime Inoue, who presented them to her class. Marinette particulary liked her friends Sado ‘Chad’ Yasutora and Ichigo Kurosaki, though Uryu Ishida and Tatsuki Arisawa  were also nice. Even if she had to nearly break the arm of a girl named Chizuru Honsho who tried to touch her, she ran really fast once she saw the anger on the Tsurugi girl whose reputation followed her.

Everything was going well until Lila started talking, like always. She started to insult their culture while just faking not knowing that it was an insult. She was driving the spotted hero crazy and her ghost of the day, an amazon named Hippolytia, wouldn’t stop giving her means to kill the girl.

Sadly, for the italian girl, the class they were meeting weren’t fools and stopped listening to her once they understood the only thing that came from her mouth were lies.

The designer was happy, she was having a great time, and then the door opened pretty violently. She prepared herself for an attack but then forced herself to calm, it was not Paris, she was not a hero here. It was just another girl, black short hair, pretty small, not as small as she was herself but still, there was a few people behind her, a boy with red hair, a woman with orange hair and a really big chest, and finally a short boy with white hair and beautiful turquoise eyes. She hold her breath a moment at the sight, for some reason her heart missed a beat and decided that he would take his time to recover.

Marinette couldn’t help but notice that he was not wearing the uniform as were the people with him except the black-haired girl, no, he was wearing what Kagami called a Haori, he also had a katana on his back, now that she paid attention, so were the others.

She stared at them during a moment until Lila made fun of her.

‘‘What are you looking at Marinette there’s nothing here but if you are searching for intellect you should look after me.’’ The italian girl snorted, making the half chinese girl realizing that they were ghosts.

Some of the others laughed as well, Kim looked utterly uncomfortable but said nothing. The blue-eyed girl sent him a hurt and disppointed look, which he looked away. Coward. The liar thought she was smart to talk in french then the japonese class wouldn’t understand. Too bad for her once again, this class has been chose specifically because they studied french as well. And from the anger in the faces of the friends she made, they DID understood.

Kagami and Ichigo stepped up to defend me, but it was my turn, there wasn’t any Hawkmoth to akumatised her in case of reveal here, Adrien couldn’t make me stop with his ‘kicked-puppy look’. A bloodthirsty grin grew on me, and my dear storm dragon understood my intention since she took out her phone to record the showdown.

‘‘Aww, poor Lila she hadn’t realized yet that without her very dear boss to save her by akumatisation, I will not let her step on me. Now where shall I start ?’’ She said in a voice as sweet as poison. ‘‘How will I destroy this little kingdom of yours ?’’

The sausage girl took a step back in fear, ah, finally understanding comes at her. Marinette was not someone you wanted as an enemy. Said girl’s smirk grew when she felt Tikki trying to hide a laugh in her purse, nice she might be, but she also spent milleniums with Plagg, she knew how to make a great revenge, she knew how to cause Chaos. And for now, the anger she kept in her during years was all concentrated on one Rossi girl who dared hurt HER chosen, HER soulmate, She won’t let this go easily and will enjoy each second of her fall.

Plagg hide a smile from Adrien's bag, the boy could be an idiot but he was a good Chat, the only reason why he kept his miraculous, but at this moment, the god of destruction had to keep ears open, a revenge from his sugarcube and her chosen was always worth it, after all last time it happened, it caused more destruction than when he destroyed Atlantis.

In the corner of her eyes, the wielder of the miraculous of ladybug could see the white-haired boy looking at her with interest.

‘‘So this is my soulmate, she finally let her rage showing her the way to follow.’’ He let a chuckle escape his lips before smirking, he will enjoy this ‘‘A true avenging angel.’’.

The only thing he was not expecting was when she turned her head to look at him in the eyes, like if she could see him, but she couldn’t, only the dead could see each others, shinigami, quincy, hollows or simply ghost, Kurosaki was just an exception. Even a wielder of the miraculous couldn’t, this fact being proved by the confuse look on the other soulmate of LadyBug.

The girl only smiled at her, before turning back to the girl who dared insulting her. He knew what was happening in her life, he just had to wait for her as long as he needed to. He could be patient after all how couldn’t he be with Matsumoto as his second.

Toshiro Hitsugaya, captain of the tenth division of the soul society, watched amused as his soulmate destroyed each lie, each word that ever came form the mouth of her bully. But it wasn’t enough and soon after she turned her hurtful but no less truthful words to her other classmates, leaving them in the verge of tears. Oh, but she hadn’t finish, finally she turned to her childhood friends. The wielder of Hyorinmaru raised an hairbrow, sincerly curious, knowing that the girl was truly fond of the half asian boy.

‘’You know Kim, I always been happy that you found your soulmate in Max, he always been  able to bring you back on earth when you were too far. I was hurt when you refused to hang out with me, but I understood that he was more important, I really did. But I was dumb to think that despite the fact that we stopped being like we used to, you would still think of me like you did. Because you never stopped to be my dear big brother in my eyes but I can see that it was not shared. After all didn’t you promised that you would always protect me from those who want to hurt me.’’ She started talking louder when he tried to interrupt her. ‘‘Didn’t you promised to be there for me when i met my soulmates like I was for you when you met yours ?’’

He opened his mouth to defend himself but was interrupt by a loud snort from the girl wearing glasses.

‘‘You hadn’t met your soulmate Mari you would have told me beside stop using plurial, nobody can have more than one soulmate, and if you did you would have told me as your bestie.’’ Alya if he remembered correctly spit.

The blond girl with the sunglasses started laughing when the other finished talking.

‘‘ Oh you’ve got to be kidding me Cesaire ! Why would Dupain-Cheng tell you ? You’ve been worst to her than I ever been and I tried to steal her design and put it on her what could’ve ruin her whole career and bullied her during years. And you know why I started bullying her ? It was because she had four soulmates everybody at school knew that. How far did you fallen to think that she thinks about you as a friend after all you have done ? The only ones she supports in this class is the tomatoe boy and myself, because we apologized long ago.’’ Mocked the former wielder of the bee.

The day ended well for Marinette, she had a weight off her shoulders now that she said  what she thought to the class and could even enjoy the rest of the time with her new friends. That didn’t stop her either to notice that nobody saw the people in haori except for the orange head and the short girl that she learned was named Rukia Kuchiki. Or to notice that the boy with turquoise eyes looked at her the whole time. The reminder made her blush slightly what Hippolytia saw and then started to tease the newest ladybug about.

The evening came and Kagami brought her to a date for the ‘good old time’ she said. But really Mari was too fond of her to say no, and she also needed a good time with her fierce dragon before they leaved High School.

In the way back to the hotel she felt like she had somewhere else to be and leaved Kagami after a kiss on her cheek. She walked down the alley following her instinct. Finally she fell on a sight that highly reminded her of some of the worse akumas back in Paris. Once again she wanted to transform but this was not her work, beside, there was already a group of people taking care of it and she heard it.

‘‘Daiguren Hyorinmaru !’’ Screamed the boy with white hair from earlier.

Her eyes widened at the sight of a dragon made of ice, she realized then the reason why her own snow dragon started getting warmer this morning. She had met her last soulmate and didn’t even aknowledged it, though he seemed to know who she was. Finally she took the decision to wait the end of the fight to talk to him, that wouldn’t end well if he was the kind ‘stab first, ask later’.

She watched mesmerized by the way he and the people she recognized as his fellows fought. That was nothing like Kagami fought with her own katana but at the same time, it was oddly familiar.

Finally the fight ended, and she made them aknowledged her presence by a cough. And finally she spoke her first words to her fourth soulmate.

‘‘To be honest I never thought you would be some ghost but I’m still very happy to meet you, Just in case you don’t already know, my name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Merry met dear soulmate.’’

So this was my try for a prompt adressed to @musicfeedsmysoul12  I hope the one who asked will be happy, it was not what wanted to do at start but I like it. English is not my native language so i won’t say no to constructive criticism ! Plus, it’s been a very long time since the last time I saw/read Bleach.

I forgot I did this tbh...

[squidbatts]

to be charming and smart and disarming

“How did you meet Uncle Amethar?” Jet asks as Calroy tucks her into bed, and Ruby perks up ever so slightly from across the room.

The appeal for storytime is a delaying tactic that would’ve worked wonderfully on Amethar, might’ve even stopped Caramelinda if they caught her in an especially sentimental mood, but the girls have miscalculated; Calroy keeps moving forward so he never has to think about days gone by.

or: four lies calroy purposefully told (and one time he told the truth by accident)

((i once again return with an offering of this super niche au. warnings for fratricide, non graphic violence, poisoning, and calroy-typical manipulation. please enjoy!))

{ao3}

one.

Liam Wilhelmina is a slight boy, all of his mother's sweetness and none of his father's strength, and he flinches when Calroy asks him if he’s enjoying Castle Candy.

“It’s nice,” He says, then, quick like he’s afraid he’ll get in trouble, “Not that I don’t miss my family! I love the Mountains, I love my mom, it’s just… my brothers…” He sighs and trails off. Calroy puts a hand on his shoulder and keeps his posture open, warm and supportive and very interested in what Liam might say about his brothers, if it’ll match the rumors of unrest that Calroy’s heard. Regretfully, Liam just turns his over-wide eyes up at Calroy and asks, “Do you have siblings?”

“I did, once. Seven big brothers,” Calroy offers, holding back a satisfied smirk when Liam perks up; few things are immediately bonding as being the youngest, and Calroy’s sure that he’s won Liam over. “But, you know, a lot of things changed during the War.”

(~~~)

Loose ends need to be cut, and there is no looser end for Calroy than his family. Not that there’s much to clean up: his father and second brother died of sickness when Calroy was still young, the War took four more of them, and his mother disappeared shortly before Calroy joined the War effort himself, when stories of Ceresia closing in began to drift to their town. He’s always imagined that she, widowed and miserable, went back to beg shelter with her Ceresian family, but Calroy doesn’t particularly care what happened to her as long as she stays away from him. Which, of course, leads him to his current issue.

“Aren’t you going to even pretend to be happy to see your favorite brother?” Delroy asks, grinning like he didn’t show up unannounced after three years of radio silence. Luckily, Calroy was able to keep him away from Amethar and convince him to go back to his inn rather than speak in the Castle, but it’s still a headache. They sit in a darkened corner of the inn’s tavern and Calroy tries to ignore the stickiness of his seat and the smell of wet fur and stale cola that permeates the room.

“What do you want.” Calroy says, voice flat. It’s not a question, because he knows what his brother wants, what anyone raised with the values of his mother would want from their newly royal sibling. He just wants to make Delroy say it out loud.

Delroy leans back and takes a long pull from his drink, eyes darting around Calroy’s clothes, lavish even when he’s actively dressing down. Delroy, on the other hand, looks much the same as he did when they were younger -- meticulously patched clothes in cheap fabrics, hair long and unruly, thick scar from a harvesting accident slicing the line of his jaw and immobilizing the left corner of his mouth.

“What do you think I want? My baby brother’s the Prince of Candia, aren’t I allowed to come calling for a little royal assistance?”

“And what do you mean by that?” Calroy asks instead of leaving, even though he hates the look in Delroy’s eyes; it’s all entitlement and surety, like he thinks this is acceptable and that Calroy owes him something just because he’s sixteen minutes older than Calroy.

“A title, ideally,” Delroy says. Mead sloshes out of his flagon when he slams it back on the table, looking at Calroy with twinkling eyes. “Or, you know, we are nearly identical. I bet if I cut my hair and got all dolled up like you, your loverboy wouldn’t even know the- urk.”

Calroy’s dagger is out and between Delroy’s ribs before Calroy even realizes he’s moving, and Calroy’s mouth falls open with shock at the same time that Delroy’s does. Delroy’s wide eyes start to go unfocused but he keeps them on Calroy’s as his mouth twitches back into that infuriating smile.

“Yeah, should’ve known that was a shade too far,” He says weakly, lips flecked with blood, “You always were the most like mom.”

Calroy’s face falls into a scowl at the comparison. He lifts a hand to cover Delroy’s mouth before twisting the blade and pulling it out. He feels his brother’s breath slow and eventually stop, and then he wipes his dagger on Delroy’s shirt, leans back, and picks up Delroy’s drink.

He can spare the time for a calming drink because from anywhere else in the room it will just look like Delroy’s passed out drunk. And, even if it didn’t, who’d accuse the Prince of Candia of murdering his kin?

--

two.

“How did you meet Uncle Amethar?” Jet asks as Calroy tucks her into bed. Ruby perks up ever so slightly from across the room.

The appeal for storytime is a delaying tactic that would’ve worked wonderfully on Amethar, might’ve even stopped Caramelinda if they caught her in an especially sentimental mood, but the girls have miscalculated; Calroy keeps moving forward so he never has to think about days gone by.

“Your uncle saved my life during the war,” Calroy says. He pushes Jet’s eager little head down onto her pillow and presses a kiss to her hairline, ignoring her complaints and doing the same to Ruby as he crosses the room. “Maybe, if you're both good little princesses who don’t try to sneak into the armory tonight, I’ll tell you the story tomorrow.”

(~~~)

There are many differences between selling weapons to Ceresia and leading Ceresian troops into Candian territory, but the main one for Calroy is that he signed up for one of those things, and most emphatically did not for the other. And yet, here he is, leading five soldiers towards the Candian camp. The soldiers are the worst kind, tall and broad-shouldered, looking down their noses at Calroy even though they need him, and they keep talking. They’re not particularly loud but in the dead of night and the middle of a war, any unnecessary noise is too much.

“We’re getting close, you should quiet down,” Calroy says, and the leader of the group snorts.

“No offense, sweetheart, but we know how to run an ambush.”

Then why did you make me lead you in here, Calroy doesn’t say. He just grips the dagger in his fist a little tighter, imagines the way it’d feel to remove the man’s tongue from his mouth, and reminds himself what the offered payout for this mission is. They get within twenty feet of the camp when Calroy hears the sound of sure, steady footsteps heading towards them. He tries to gesture for the soldiers to stop but they ignore him and walk directly into the path of Prince Amethar Rocks.

Fuck, Calroy thinks just as Prince Amethar says, “What the hell?”

It’s a lucky break for Prince Amethar, Calroy thinks as he tries to figure out an action plan -- wherever he had been coming from, his sword was already in hand, while Calroy’s companions were cocky enough to not even be on alert. It’s barely accurate to call it a fight with how thoroughly Prince Amethar destroys the Ceresians. When Prince Amethar is done and the bodies lay on the ground, he turns towards Calroy. Calroy stealthily drops his dagger and steps out of the shadows, endeavoring to look as harmless as possible.

“Hey, you’re one of ours, right?” Prince Amethar asks, lowering his sword like being on the same side has ever protected anyone.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Calroy says, hoping that the prince won’t follow foreign soldiers in my camp and Candian I’ve never met before to the correct conclusions.

Prince Amethar’s brow furrows and he looks Calroy up and down. He frowns. “You shouldn’t go out without your sword. You could’ve been in real trouble with those guys if I hadn’t come along!”

Calroy’s face slackens in disbelief, just for a second, before he fixes it into something appropriately appreciative. “You’re absolutely right, Your Highness, you’ve saved my life today.”

“Ha, guess I did,” Prince Amethar grins disarmingly. Calroy is caught off guard for the third time that night. “Anyway, enough of the ‘your highness’ stuff, alright? Just call me Amethar.”

“I- okay, Amethar,” Calroy says, enjoying the way the word rolls off his tongue, how Prince Amethar Rocks’ foolish trust tastes in his mouth. “But only if you’ll call me Calroy.”

--

three.

“My job is to guard the king.” Theobald Gumbar says even as he obediently follows Calroy, tone professional and steady like he spent hours in front of the mirror practicing it. It’s admirable, Calroy thinks, that Sir Theobald is still trying his stoic, stuck-up best to be respectful despite his obvious dislike of Calroy.

“Your job is to be Lord Commander of the Tartguard, which means that the protection of Castle Candy and everyone in Candia rests in your hands,” He pauses, lets that really sink in. Sir Theobald values nothing more than honor and responsibility, even when those duties require him to take orders from Calroy. “I applaud your dedication to the King but I assure you, Sir Theobald, that all that I do is for the preservation of House Rocks.”

(~~~)

Calroy prefers assassinations to ambushes, doesn’t like the mess or the dramatics of brute force attacks, which is why he only brings Sir Theobald along when he needs to seem dangerous; Calroy is more lethal on his own then his husband’s teddy bear of a favorite knight could ever be, but every minor lord in Calorum doesn’t need to know that. He has his own personal Tartguardsman, of course, but Sir Quincy doesn’t cut as imposing a figure as Theobald, and Calroy needs imposing when he visits House Whipperly.

Lady Valencia Whipperly is a fierce figure, with a swirl of white hair and the kind of posture that's bred into old Candian nobility, stubborn and proud and the only thing blocking the ratification of Calroy’s trade proposal with Fructera. To Lady Whipperly’s credit, the trade proposal isn’t great for Candia; the tariffs are too great for it’s few benefits but it will mean that at least three Fructeran nobles will owe Calroy a personal debt, and Calroy cares more about collecting favors than he does about Candian merchants, as does most of the Candian Court. Calroy doesn’t understand why Lady Whipperly won’t get with the program, but that’s why he’s come to visit Lady Whipperly’s less impressive, more easily swayed partner -- Ruthie Nougallo. She welcomes them with grace but Calroy can see her hands tremble as she politely curtseys to him.

“My apologizes, Your Highness, but my wife won’t be back for quite a few days,” Ruthie says as she leads Theobald and Calroy to her parlor. Calroy waves a hand dismissively and grins, just sharp enough to be scary.

“You misunderstand, I’ve come to speak to you,” Calroy says as he sits on one of the room’s couches. Ruthie’s legs begin to shake as well. “You see, I think we could help each other.”

“Help each other?”

“Mhm. Sir Theobald, the door if you’d please?” The look Theobald sends Calroy could freeze lava cake, but he goes nonetheless, far enough away that he won’t be able to truly hear Calroy with the bonus of blocking the room’s only exit with his size. Ruthie settles down next to Calroy when he pats the couch but she's nervously shooting looks at Theobald the whole time. Calroy grins. “Now, I understand that you alone can sway that lovely wife of yours. She’s a bit stubborn, hm?”

“Oh! I wouldn’t-”

“Don’t be silly, dear, I didn’t mean it as a bad thing,” Calroy says, patronizing enough that Ruthie flinches, “Let me tell you a secret: my husband is a bit stubborn too.”

Ruthie’s eyes widen but she smiles, just a bit. Hook. “Is he?”

“Yes. Sometimes, even if he knows that something will be good for us, he's refuses it just because he doesn’t want to change his original opinion. I’m sure you know how that is.”

“Oh, absolutely! Last month, a Fructeran noble sent us some wonderful looking wine but Valencia refused it because she thought it was a bribe,” Ruthie says, leaning in conspiratorially. Line.

“What a shame! You know, good wine is so difficult to get these days. It would be easier if I could get approval on a trade deal with Fructera, but,” Calroy sighs deeply, almost too dramatic for his tastes but Ruthie eats it right up. “Your Valencia isn’t a fan of it. It’s really a tragedy, just imagine all the delicacies we could get shipped in if we had a true trade deal with Fructera. Why, House Rocks could have wine and fruitcake at every session of Court!”

“Every session of court…” Ruthie licks her lips almost absentmindedly and her smile grows. Sinker. “I’ll talk to Valencia. I’m sure I can bring her around on this.”

Calroy claps once, lets his true sense of accomplishment show in his smile. “Wonderful! I just knew you would be reasonable, Ruthie.”

--

four.

“You almost had me that time,” Amethar says as he offers Calroy a hand up. The training yard is deserted except for the two of them, no one else wanting to brave the stifling heat of the midday sun for something as exhausting as sparring. Amethar, of course, flourishes in situations like this, unflustered and delighted even with sweat dripping down his sharp jaw. “Where’d you learn to fight like that anyway?”

Calroy uses wiping his sweat as an excuse to hide the annoyed twist of his brow. Trust his King to not leave well enough alone. “Oh, you know, here and there. Mostly the war.”

(~~~)

Calroy's days in Muffinfield Manor go like this: he wakes up, he runs through sword forms with Lord Cruller before dawn, he helps Lady Cruller plan events or take notes in meetings for the majority of the day, then eats a meager dinner alone in his room and goes to bed. When House Cruller put out a notice looking for a page, Calroy jumped at the opportunity: anything, truly anything, would be better than another season sweating through his clothes as he worked his family’s fields. And here, he has his own room, his own space, and the affection of the Crullers, who desperately needed an outlet for their parental instincts after their daughter and only heir ran away months ago.

It’s all worked out exceptionally well for Calroy, especially when it comes to his swordsmanship training.

“Your stance is too stiff,” Lord Cruller says, rapping his sword against Calroy’s locked knee. Calroy obediently bends, tries to recall and perfectly mimic the flowing movements that Lord Cruller has shown him, but the man’s sigh tells him that he’s failed. “I can hear you thinking, boy. You’re too stuck in your head. Don’t be too worried about the next move to get started on this one.”

“Sorry, Lord Cruller,” Calroy says, rote. Lord Cruller sighs again.

“You're too defensive. Someone with the brawn to back it up can stay still and let their opponent wear themselves out, but for a little thing like you? The best defense is a good offense. You have to move, kid,” Lord Cruller punctuates his words with a firm pat to the center of Calroy’s back, causing Calroy to stumble forward from the force. “Strike faster than they can strike you. In this world, it’s either eat or be eaten.”

“Yes, Lord Cruller, thank you, Lord Cruller,” Calroy dutifully replies, and he holds the advice close to his chest as he tips the poison his mother sent into Lord Cruller’s goblet that evening. Strike first, strike fast, and no one else can hurt you.

--

truth.

Far-flung countryman, I have received news of your upcoming nuptials. I know I have encouraged you to lean into his affection in the past, and even now I think of how easily all of this can be woven into our plans, but I can't help but wonder how quickly affairs of the heart can sour. Have you any worry that things could become messy for you?

Worry is the furthest thing from my mind, as I have apt reason to believe that he is firmly devoted to me. Yesterday morning, he called me the “guiding light of his life” simply because I recalled a name for him. It’s almost too easy at this point.

And what of you, friend? Have you become similarly attached to our dear Stone?

(~~~)

Calroy huffs a quiet laugh as he reads Senator Ciabatta’s most recent note in the halls of Castle Candy, delivered to him moments ago by a particularly harried and nervous-looking messenger. Calroy should technically be in his bedroom right now -- a lovely advisor’s suite near the guests’ wing, almost halfway across the castle -- but he welcomed today’s dawn from inside the King’s chambers and he can only imagine how many places the poor boy checked before deciding to risk insulting the King, the honor of the King’s intended, and possibly the entirety of the Court.

Not, Calroy muses as he returns to Amethar’s bedroom, that Calroy’s honor needs any protection; besides that fact that he’s no blushing maiden, Amethar invited Calroy back to his room for simple cuddling. Even when Calroy tried to initiate more, Amethar had simply turned heated kisses into slow and soft things that made Calroy’s stomach turn with their sweetness, yawned and took Calroy’s hand in his own when Calroy began to slide it down Amethar’s chest, wrapped his heavy arm around Calroy’s waist only to pull him close enough that Calroy could hear the steady beat of Amethar’s heart and feel the rumble of his every snore. Even now, a shiver runs down Calroy’s spine at the memory, mouth twisting with- well, with annoyance, mostly, and confusion. Who invites their intended to their rooms and then refuses to sleep with him? Amethar Rocks was truly, bafflingly ridiculous, even if his fondness for Calroy was extraordinarily useful. It’s with that in mind that he stops at Amethar’s desk to pen a quick response to Ciabatta.

My dear ally, have you not heard? I am the Stone’s dearest friend, and he is the love of my life. It’s all people can talk of these days. I thank you for your concern but I assure you, I will be fine, Calroy writes, underlining with a flourish. He hopes Ciabatta will get a laugh from the glimpse of how the Candian Court sees Calroy, as Calroy does every time he hears someone whispering about the romance of him and Amethar. He folds the letter for later just as Amethar groans from the bed.

“Cal?” He calls, voice sleep-rough and eyes only half-open. Calroy crosses the room in easy steps and settles himself on the edge of the bed, allowing Amethar to lay his head across Calroy’s lap. “Where’d you go?”

Calroy slants a hand over Amethar’s eyes to protect them from the weak sunlight spilling into the room and Amethar hums in appreciation. Something in Calroy’s chest tightens, like a gourdian knot that he can't begin to consider untying. “There was a letter to receive.”

“Court stuff?” Amethar asks, tone not quite whining but close enough that Calroy’s eye almost twitches. He hums noncommittally and pretends to listen as Amethar complains about how early in the morning he is expected to begin working.

A little lie, after all, never hurt anyone.

[sunnytumbies]

I'm somewhat confident that Amy's stress baking enables one or more of the other characters to then Stress Eat the baking, which could lead to Tummy Fic (tell me if I'm right and also you don't have anon asks turned on. c; might get more asks if you hit that switch!)

Whoops! Anons, you are now free to enter–sorry bout that! 

So, funny story: Tiny, you are right–you are so right, in fact, that I decided to write a lil fill for this! I had like 500 words written and then accidentally closed the tab :’), and for whatever reason my response was even more determined writing to finish it. Long story short, it’s now a /4391 word monster/ that I’m not even all that proud of, but I’m posting it anyway! It’s gonna be confusing & maybe a headache for me later because this is happening later in the story than the first “major story event” fic I’ll be posting but...here we are.

Content warning: this fic involves dysphoria, mentions of menstruation, self-loathing, and binge eating as a response to stress. Please be mindful should you choose to read!

___________________________________________________________

Amy hums lightly to herself, dusting the last of the madeleines with powdered sugar, breathing in the comforting aromas, honey and lemon mingling with cinnamon and apple, almond and vanilla, chocolate and bread. She can’t pretend that this was a good decision, can’t act like she would not have possibly benefit more from a day of studying than a day of baking, but the knots in her chest have finally started to loosen, and it’s hard to take that as anything but a win. She plates the madeleines and slides them into the last remaining patch of free space on the L-shaped countertop, clutching the notebook that belonged to her mother close to her chest. 

It’s not that Amy only ever bakes French desserts. She adores the challenge of baklava with its stubborn phyllo dough, loves the thrill and the spectacle of a good Baked Alaska; it’s just that sometimes, she needs to hear her mother’s voice in the only way she knows how–baking the way Maman taught her, dutifully reading the advice scrawled in the margins of her recipe notebook in eccentric cursive, cleaning as she cooks (”Mieux vaut prévenir que guérir, Amelie,” she’ll find herself muttering at times in a poor imitation of her mother. It translates to “It is better to prevent than to heal,” which she thinks is sort of intense as far as wisdom about cleanliness goes, but then, she’s never forgotten it). Professors will likely always butcher her last name, flattening the syllables into something harsh and ugly; classmates will continue to express their envy at the ease with which they assume she sails through her foreign language requirement, oblivious to the unique heartache of struggling to write in a language that flows from her lips with more ease than English sometimes; but no one can take this from her, her mother’s recipes in her mother’s own words, the familiar tastes and smells of home. 

It started with the croissants, shaping the dough she’d prepped earlier this week in preparation to make pains au chocolat--she can’t stop her lips from quirking up in a small, proud smile, now, looking at how perfectly they rose, how flaky the croissants are, how tantalizingly the smell of chocolate and freshly-baked bread is wafting off of them, how they glisten with brushed-on butter. But when her eyes glanced over the mostly-full bottle of fruity olive oil in the pantry, how could she resist whipping up a lemon curd tart, with its buttery almond crust and rich lemon custard filling? And it would have simply been silly to waste the lemon zest she had leftover from the tart--not when she could make the madeleines, tiny delicious cakes sweetened with honey and brown sugar, the tang of the lemon zest cutting through the sweetness in the most delicious way, complimented by the dusting of powdered sugar. Then, she thought, that was an awful lot of citrus--she simply had to offset it with a quick apple mille-feuille, the autumnal scent of roasted apples, maple syrup, and apple brandy making her wistful for October. But wait--no mille-feuille was complete without the bourbon whipped cream on top, and shouldn’t poor lactose intolerant Cal have plenty of options too? Besides, a simple spiced bread wouldn’t take too long, and the mixture of star anise, ginger, and cinnamon, sweetened with honey and rife with dried apricots and plums, would be sure to make a delicious sweet toast for breakfast.

Even still, it wasn’t truly over until she noticed that several cartons of eggs--which she, for obvious reasons, tended to buy in bulk--were set to expire soon, and it would certainly be foolish to waste so much money--really, she hardly had a choice! She made chocolate macarons with orange ganache, a cherry buttermilk clafoutis; she made kouign-amann, with its buttery dough and sugary crust, and, in a desperate bid to eat through the eggs, another batch of macarons, this time with raspberry-rose buttercream. Struck with a flash of inspiration, she used the egg yolks she’d set aside while whipping the whites into stiff peaks fit for a meringue to make toasted-flour sablé, a sort of moist little sugar cookie, and while she was at it threw in a batch of snickerdoodles--cookies were easy to both make and get rid of in bulk, and besides, they were Cal’s favorite. Lastly, she decided to tackle a chocolate pound cake--quatre-quarts au chocolat de juliette, her mother’s handwriting rebuked her, along with an all-caps reminder to bake it in a bain-marie, PAS au four!!!!!. It made Amy laugh a little, but she couldn’t deny that the water-bath made for a much richer, much more moist final product than the oven. 

She feels a brief rush of shame, looking over it all--it’s truly an improbable amount of baking she’s done, here--but her heart is full, her back aching in a satisfying, productive way. If nothing else, she’s made the house smell like home and has ensured that anyone who enters can leave full and satisfied. Finally, she removes her apron and checks her watch--perfect. She has about half an hour to get to work for her 8pm-midnight shift, a fairly non-intensive desk position at one of the campus libraries, and she’ll more likely than not have enough free time to look over her chemistry notes. As for the baked goods, she opts to leave them out, but takes a few moments to write out sticky notes (“dairy free! Come right in, Cal!”; “full of dairy! Cals beware!”), and smiles gently as she thinks of Cal coming home to a warm kitchen and plenty to eat. “That boy is too damn skinny,” she mumbles to herself fondly, and flicks off the kitchen light, leaving the one above the oven on to bathe the kitchen in a warm, welcoming glow. 

Cal is not having a good day. 

He shivers as another gust of wind blows what feels like through him, making his teeth chatter as he attempts to sink even lower into his hoodie. The slumping motion does not agree with his cramping lower belly, and he groans, straightening back up with an arm looped around his stomach. 

Any day at this time of month for him is a difficult one. He knows for a fact that he “passes,” but he still feels uncomfortably seen, feels like he has to hide himself from view as much as possible. It certainly doesn’t help that his skin hurts, that his belly bloats and his bound chest becomes sore, that despite the fact that he no longer bleeds, he gets all the associated symptoms, yeah, thanks for that, genetics. Even so, Cal isn’t new to this, exactly, and he can deal with the cramping, can even handle the accompanying dysphoria like a champ, but today has been extraordinarily awful. He couldn’t sleep last night, feeling in turns too hot and too cold, and barely made it to his bio class this morning; all the coffee machines were down in the dining hall, meaning his eyes were burning with exhaustion by the time he was halfway through bio, let alone his other two classes of the day; perhaps most damning at all, the paper he’s been counting on being due next week is actually due this week, causing him to spend an extra few hours in the library after class, barely awake, forcing himself to get something, anything onto the page; and, the cherry on top of it all, he missed the last bus home, hence tramping home now in the dark and the rain. More than one car has splashed him as it’s passed, and his jeans are practically soaked through. 

He’s cold, he’s exhausted, he barely even made a dent in the paper, and his fucking stomach hurts, the cramps now joined by an anxious knot; as much as he wants to take comfort from the fact that he can see the apartment complex getting steadily closer, he also knows that he’s going to be home alone, and something about that just does not sit well with him at the moment that Cal doesn’t want to analyze, thank you very much. 

He shivers his way up the stairs leading to the apartment, down the exceedingly long corridor, through the front door, and is almost immediately assailed by both a rush of welcome warmth and a rush of smells so delicious and overpowering that he knows immediately that today was a stress-baking day for Amy. Something drains out of Cal then, equal parts tension and restraint, the anxious buzzing of his thoughts thrown off by the sheer number of baked goods spread across the counter top. He lets his backpack fall to the floor with a thud. His stomach rumbles--he ate today, but not well--and he sort of knows he’s doomed when he catches the scent of chocolate, as well as when his eyes land on a plate of snickerdoodles (which very much does not make a lump rise in his throat, okay, it’s whatever, it doesn’t ��matter, Amy made his favorite cookie for him in the middle of her own stress-fueled baking marathon, it’s whatever). Amy will be home soon. Quincy, too, at some point. He’ll be fine. He just needs to do what he can until then, and there’s no shortage of snacks to keep him busy while he waits. 

Shocking no one less than him, Cal has many, many regrets, and at least half of them are baked goods he has put into his body over the last hour. He whimpers a little, oh-so-gently palming his belly, which has distressingly little give even when he ventures to apply a little more pressure with his fingertips. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this bloated, heavy with food and swollen with almond milk, and he’d be lying if he said he’s not fighting tears, beyond ashamed to be in this state: slumped sitting on the floor, back supported by the side of the counter, shirt riding up to expose the pink flesh of his belly. He has to swallow thickly a few times, imagining the sugary sludge that’s surely squelching through his insides right now, trying to force back a dangerous burp that squeezes out anyway and leaves the taste of honey and cinnamon in the back of his mouth. He tried to be good, and that’s maybe what sucks the most. He started with a few snickerdoodles, ostensibly the only dessert on the counter that had been made for him, unable to hold back a little groan of pleasure at the taste, buttery and comforting and complemented perfectly by the crunch of cinnamon and sugar. He had four before pouring himself a tall glass of almond milk, chasing a few more cookies with it before deciding to investigate the irresistible scent of chocolate wafting from the plate of croissants. The chocolate might be a bit much for his lactose intolerance, he decided, and opted for two thick slices of the spiced bread instead, toasted and slathered with ghee. He swore they tasted like fall, like tramping through leaves and Halloween costumes when he was young. Something about filling his stomach after being so hungry and uncomfortable all day, recklessly, indulgently, eased the tightness of his chest, until he could scarcely even feel the chill from his still-damp jeans. 

He had already begun to feel rather full, but his interest was still piqued by the croissants, and he hadn’t even tried the little sugary-looking roll things, or the macaroons, or the cake--Cal squeezes his eyes shut, now, swallowing hard, struggling to even think about how much he’s eaten, but unable to completely erase the contrast from his mind between the overflowing countertop when he first arrived and the countertop now, an alarmingly high number of the cluttered plates more empty than not. All that really matters, he guesses, is that at some point filling his tummy began to hurt more than help, and he kept doing it anyway, and now his cramps have merely been replaced with sickly twinges and upset burbles. 

He tries to take a deep breath, which hitches as an ominous gurgle bubbles from the top to the bottom of his packed belly, and the tears he’s been clamping down on start to roll down his cheeks. He can’t do this, not alone, at least, and Amy’s shift still has 3 hours to go--they must have just barely missed each other. Part of him knows that he will probably feel worlds better if he simply allows himself to throw up, but he can’t handle that, not right now. He cradles his aching stomach for a moment, one trembling hand cupped under his lower belly, bloated and hot, and one resting on the hard little bloat of his tummy, even that feather-light touch ushering up a series of strained burps. After another moment of feeling his stomach contents swirl and slosh uncomfortably inside him, the nausea and misery outweigh his pride, and he hesitantly lets go of his aching stomach, swiping at his tears and pulling out his phone. 

I...fucked up, he texts her, and sends it before he can think twice about it. She replies almost instantly, one of his favorite things about Amy: ?????????????And a moment later, while he’s still figuring out where to begin: everything okay, honey?

The fragile control Cal has over his emotions abruptly slips at that, and he lets out a choked sob, swallowing hard when the motion upsets his tummy further. It hurts so fucking much, but Amy, Amy who bakes his favorites even in the middle of her own mini-crisis, Amy who takes the time to write adorable little sticky notes oriented around Cal’s dietary restrictions, Amy who calls everyone in the world honey because she cares about everyone in the goddamn world, Amy the literal human ball of sunshine--just, fucking Amy, okay? 

Yeah. I mean. I’m safe, but I’m not okay. I… Cal doubles over as a cramp twists deep in his belly, panting a little. Maybe it would be easier to just let himself be sick. You baked...a lot. I had a bad day. 

:((((( did u see my notes???? what’s going on??????

Cal has to blink hard against the tears at that, a new layer of guilt joining the anxiety and the shame of all he’s eaten. Stress-baking or not, this all had to have taken Amy a few hours, and he’d eaten right through a fair amount of almost everything. 

I’m sorry. I did see your notes. It’s not lactose, I just ate a /lot/ and I feel sick and I don’t know what to do 

A moment later, his phone buzzes with a call. It’s Amy, of course. 

“H-hey,” he manages, sniffing, and then hiccups just before a deep burp gurgles up from his churning belly, clamping a hand over his mouth for a moment as his gorge rises with it. 

“Cal, honey,” Amy says, sounding so fucking sad for him. It’s not like she’s never seen the fallout of his stress-binging before. “How much did you eat?” 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Cal says hoarsely, his throat burning from stubbornly swallowing back stomach acid. “I’m just nauseous and sick and--and—” He falters, feeling like a child. “And I just really had a bad day, like a really bad day, Amy, and I know your day wasn’t so good either or you wouldn’t be stress-baking but I just, I’m so fucking tired, and my paper is due and—” He gags, suddenly, and has to take a moment to collect himself, hyper-aware of Amy’s concerned silence on the other end of the line-- “and I can’t do this alone,” he finally manages, voice cracking, and it is only the knowledge that openly weeping would send him over the edge right now that keeps him from dissolving into exhausted tears. 

“I’m so sorry, Cal. I wish I could be there,” Amy murmurs soothingly, and it’s almost, almost like she’s there. “If I could leave work I’d do it in a heartbeat, but I’m going to call Quincy for you, okay?” 

Cal’s heart squeezes at that, half-anxiety, half-hope, and maybe something else, too, a deep sense of being known--Amy knows that Cal knows that she can’t leave work. Amy knows that there’s only one other person that he’d want. Amy knows that he can’t--because of anxiety, because of what he sees as a low stakes problem relative to Quincy’s very high-stakes life, because, because, because--reach out to him himself when he’s like this. “Okay,” he whispers, and hope she hears the gratitude in it. 

“Of course,” she says, so warmly that it makes Cal’s heart ache a little. “Hang in there, okay? Try to stay calm for me. I’ll let you know when he’s coming.” 

“Love you,” he mumbles, and lets his phone clatter to the floor as soon as he hears the beep that means she’s hung up, clutching at his belly, feeling his stomach lurch and rumble. He’s so fucking full. He’s such a fucking idiot. 

Some time later, Quincy comes for him. 

Cal startles when the door creaks open, then whimpers a little at the resulting complaints of his stomach. There’s just so much pressure, his stomach tight and hot as though nothing is moving at all, though with all that he feels burbling against his palm, that can’t possibly be true. Quincy looks a little frantic in the doorway before his eyes come to rest on Cal, still curled up pitifully on the floor, both hands pressed gently against his bloated stomach. 

“Oh—” Quincy breathes, shutting the door behind him, crossing the space between them in an instant and crouching in front of Cal. “God, Cal, Amy scared me half to death. Are you alright?” 

“I’m—” Cal has to stop and breathe, composing himself as a wave of nausea crashes over him, his stomach squelching unpleasantly. All at once, he realizes that he’s no longer alone, that perhaps even if he should keep suppressing everything, he no longer wants to, and he no longer cares if he’s sick, he just wants to feel better, wants to be in his bed, wants to be warm and comfortable and safe--all at once, he’s doubling over his own lap, sobbing his heart out, barely even registering the flicker of amusement he’d ordinarily feel at Quincy’s eyes going comically round behind his glasses. His stomach aches, pain ringing throughout his abdomen at the movement, and before he can process much more than that a warm palm folds itself over his distended stomach, firmly enough to quiet the cramping there, but lightly enough to keep from exacerbating the nausea.

  “Cal,” Quincy says, in that low, soothing voice of his, “I am so sorry that you’re hurting, and I’m going to make that go away, but to get you feeling better, I have to get you off the floor. I can’t imagine that you are ready to move just now?”

  “No,” Cal breathes, his usual shyness dominated by hours of physical discomfort. “Please, just—” Tears dribble down his cheeks, his lack of sleep and general exhaustion beginning to catch up with him. 

Quincy seems to hear him anyway. “Okay, hey, heyheyhey, okay, that is perfectly fine. I’m here, alright? I’m here to help you feel better.” 

Ever so gently, Quincy eases himself behind Cal, so that his back is supported by Quincy’s chest rather than the hard base of the kitchen counter. Equally gently, his arms wind around Cal’s waist, both hands coming to rest on his abused stomach. He applies pressure to the bloated space between Cal’s navel and his ribs, rubbing in broad, gentle strokes, almost immediately ushering up a deep belch that has Cal going slack with the smallest but most welcome measure of relief. Quincy is so damn warm, and his rough palm is heaven where it rests on his lower belly, supporting the bloat from below to take the strain off of his overfull stomach. His other hand moves from that space in the middle of his abdomen to his stomach, the noticeable overfull bulge where the organ ought to be, rubbing in gentle circles. The pressure is almost too much and Cal shifts to tell him so, succeeding only in ushering up several more rumbling belches, one right after the other, left gasping with the relief of it. He is still painfully aware of how full he is, packed utterly to the brim with food, but the release of trapped air is so needed and so lovely. 

Quincy holds him like this for a while, coaxing up the occasional belch, paying extra attention to the twinges that make Cal groan with nausea. Cal finds his eyes watering again, this time with sheer gratitude for his dearest friends, for their kindness, for the quiet lack of judgement Quincy exhibits as he rubs his aching tummy. Eventually, Cal feels like he might be able to move without throwing up, and Quincy supports his weight with an arm around his waist as they make their way to Cal’s bedroom. 

“I’ll be right back,” Quincy says after depositing Cal on the bed gently. “Amy said you’d want a hoodie and some shorts. How did she do?”  

Cal smiles a little sadly, having trouble finding his voice, and Quincy barely misses a beat, busying himself retrieving one of Cal’s biggest hoodies and a soft pair of pajama shorts. “Either way, let’s give it a try. You should probably take your binder off--all that squeezing can’t be helping, and no wonder you’re shivering in those wet jeans!” He ducks into Cal’s bathroom for a moment, filling up the cup next to the sink with cold water from the tap, and offers it to Cal, making sure his shaking hands don’t cause a spill before he lets go. “Try to take some sips of that, okay? Trust me. We need to break up all that sugar.” 

Cal can’t argue with that, nodding, and waits until Quincy lets the door swing mostly-shut behind him, taking the deepest breath he can manage. His stomach twinges as he bends over to put the water on his nightstand and lifts his arms to pull off his shirt. wriggling out of his binder, and he pants for a moment as the sudden release of pressure on his stomach causes the nausea to flare before it thankfully passes again. He puts on the hoodie, immediately comforted by the billowing fabric, and wriggles out of his jeans and into the pajama shorts as quickly as he can manage, forcing himself to take a measured sip of water. His stomach tightens around it, and he swallows hard. 

“Hey,” Quincy says softly, knocking twice on the slightly-ajar door before pushing it completely open with his elbow. His hands are occupied with a tv tray, carrying a heating pad and a steaming mug of tea.  “Don’t force it. You’re still very full.” 

“Y-yeah,” Cal manages, finding his voice. “Tummy really hurts.” 

“I know,” Quincy murmurs apologetically, offering Cal the heating pad. Cal practically melts when the heat makes contact with his sore belly, instantly beginning to soothe his cramping muscles, even working its magic on the fullness, just a little. “I’m sorry you’re hurting, Cal. I know you’re very full, but when you can, you should try to drink some water and this tea. It’s peppermint, so it should help with the nausea.” 

Flicking off the overheard light in lieu of Cal’s carefully-hung string lights, Quincy leaves the mug of tea on the bedside table closest to Cal, spreading the quilt at the foot of the bed over him, and Cal instinctively lets his head drop onto Quincy’s shoulder when he climbs onto the bed beside him. 

Cal nearly weeps again when Quincy reaches  for his bloated tummy without being asked, resuming a soothing pattern, rubbing wide, sweeping circles over his abdomen, applying pressure to the bloated place beneath his ribs, to his tense sides, to the hard knot of his stomach. Each instance of carefully-applied pressure coaxes up a series of rumbling belches that Cal didn’t realize he was holding in, eventually freeing up enough room for him to sip at the tea. 

“Amy will be home soon,” Quincy says after several moments. “How are you feeling?” 

“Like an idiot who stuffed my face with sweets all afternoon,” Cal mumbles, still wrestling with guilt, and Quincy frowns as his belly emits an audible squelch, smoothing a hand over it in slow arcs. Cal drinks a bit more deeply at the tea, unable to withhold a sigh of relief as it begins to fill the burbly places in his tummy, blissfully soothing the ache. 

“You aren’t an idiot, Cal,” Quincy says sincerely. “Amy says this sometimes happens when you get overwhelmed. You’re overwhelmed.” 

Something about the sincerity in his voice makes something big and terrifying shift in Cal’s chest, and he abruptly puts down the mug of tea in favor of hiding his face in Quincy’s chest, narrow frame wracked with tired sobs. He dimly registers that at least his stomach doesn’t react poorly to the movement. “I am,” he manages eventually, as Quincy gently shushes him, stroking his belly as though to keep it calm. “I am so exhausted, Quince.” 

“So rest,” Quincy says simply, “at least for now. And when Amy gets here, we’ll talk about what we’re going to do next. Okay?” 

Cal sniffs, nodding, still hiding his face, and Quincy lets him, simply bringing his arms around him, smoothing his hands over Cal’s back. Against all odds, particularly the still-overpowering sense of fullness, Cal feels his eyelids drooping. All of a sudden, everything has caught up with him, and he can barely form a coherent thought. It has been a day, his belly is now more warm than upset, and Quincy is a very, very comfortable pillow. 

“I’m gonna take that as a yes,” Quincy says, and Cal feels the rumble of his chest as he gives a low chuckle, too far gone at this point to respond. He’s going to have a lot to explain when he wakes up, but for now…

For now, Cal lays with his head on Quincy’s shoulder, arms looped around his neck, and Quincy pulls the quilt up around them. “I’ve got you,” Quincy murmurs, and the next thing Cal knows is blessed sleep.

[kaibashadow]

Story:

Seto Kaiba overhears a rumor about KaibaShadow possibly getting over him and goes to investigate the source. He finds Kokichi Ouma standing outside somewhere in the middle of the day and confronts him.

Kokichi decides to tease the CEO of the company, mainly stating that he, himself, is more superior in every way and a much more better choice for her than Kaiba will ever be.

Kaiba knows that this guy has track record of lying so much and thinks that he is up to his usual antics right now. He doesn’t believe that he lost KaibaShadow even for just a second. He smacks Kokichi right across the face, which leave a very distinct red, painful mark on his cheek and a very distraught supreme leader turning away from Kaiba in order to conceal the damage he has done to him.

Kaiba leaves Kokichi and goes to find his so-called “friends” just randomly standing in the middle of the road in some remote location. He tells them in great detail what he has done, and when the others start reacting and retaliating, saying that he shouldn’t have punched Kokichi, Kaiba just laughs. He doesn’t take orders or advice from anyone. He is in this all for himself. As long as he has his fan-base to support him, he thinks that everything that he does will be justified in any way.

He walks away from the group, needing time to spend for himself.

- - -

At night, Kaiba enters his secret base and starts turning on his terminal and his computer. He wants to know if Kokichi really does serve as a competition to him. Kaiba decides to see what KaibaShadow was viewing last time in her search history. He discovers Kokichi Ouma’s biography page and schematics and starts reading through them with such disgust.

Suddenly, one of Kaiba’s cameras starts alerting him of an intruder in the area. He checks the main camera to see what might be going on.

Kokichi Ouma appears right on his computer screen, almost scaring Kaiba in the process. Apparently, Kokichi found Kaiba’s secret base and locates one of his hidden cameras and thought that it would be fun if Kaiba knew that his base was now compromised by his beautiful presence.

Kokichi has a proposition for Kaiba. “Heeeeyyy, Kaiba! You want to know why KaibaShadow has been so interested in me lately? Well, I’m gonna tell you now. So, get ready!” Kokichi takes a deep breath as if he is ready to explain in great detail his whole life story, but then, he states, “That was just a lie! If you really want to know, then meet me later tonight at this location.” Kokichi tapes a piece of paper to Kaiba’s camera, completely obscuring the camera’s view in the process. Kokichi later leaves the premises without Kaiba knowing how or when Kokichi was able to enter or leave his base.

Kaiba is shocked that Kokichi was easily able to track down his current secret base and is appalled to even think that Kokichi would have revealed himself and shed some light on the matter right then and there. He contemplates whether he should go find out the truth from the talented trickster. In the back of his mind, he has a feeling that Kokichi won’t really say anything about it and thinks that he is going to trick Kaiba again. But, what choice does Kaiba have? If he wants to find out what really happened, then he has no choice but to go, right?

Kaiba gets up and closes his monitor and his lights. He goes out late at night, thinking that he might have a lead.

- - -

When Kaiba meets up at the given location with Kokichi, he at first didn’t recognize him. He thought it was just some kid outside just trick-or-treating really late at night, which he finds to be odd considering that this kid was alone by himself with no parent or guardian around to watch him. Kaiba has a quick thought about whether or not his little brother, Mokuba, was still outside trick-or-treating by himself or even if his brother was even doing such a thing in the first place when suddenly, the kid in front of him starts speaking, “So, what do you think about my costume?”

Kaiba scrutinizes at the kid more closely and finally notices the short stature and small features of the boy in front of him. He can now see that this person is his newest rival. “What are you supposed to even be?” he questions with a glaring tone.

Kokichi smiles and says, “Isn’t it obvious? I’m just a skeleton! Or a Soul Reaper! Or maybe even the Grim Reaper! Pick or choose whichever. Anyways, where’s your costume?”

Kaiba doesn’t answer his question. Instead, he remarks and laughs maniacally, “Your costume is lame! Hahahahaha!” He gloats with a wide-open smile when he sees Kokichi about to be in tears and ponders that this guy has no chance over winning KaibaShadow’s heart. He thinks that coming here was just a waste of time and he leaves abruptly.

What Kaiba doesn’t know is that this was all an act just to see how desperate he was to getting the information. Kokichi wanted to know if he was bothering Kaiba just by the mere sight of him, and he definitely got his answer right then. He has everything falling into place, especially KaibaShadow’s undivided attention.

Kokichi tries to give a fair warning to Kaiba, but he’s already out of sight. “If you try to break me…”

- - -

Kokichi changes out of his costume and into his own clothing. He snickers and grins, knowing that he has everything now at his fingertips. Now, all he has to do to Kaiba… “I’m gonna burn you down!” Kokichi is a force to be reckoned with, and Kaiba has no idea what he’s in for.

- - -

The next day, Kokichi challenges Kaiba to play a game at the gym.

For some reason, Kaiba just doesn’t seem to know how to say no to this person, and they start the game.

Some time passes, and Kokichi appears to be the one who is winning so far. But, Kaiba doesn’t give in. He knows he is capable of bouncing right back to win the game just as he did countless times before.

However, Kokichi finds this moment as an opportunity to finally reveal to Kaiba the whereabouts of KaibaShadow. KaibaShadow has apparently have two interests in mind, and neither one of them happens to be the beholder of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards. Kokichi states with such veracity, “Baby, KaibaShadow’s done with you. She’s not coming back for you.”

And, with that statement, Kokichi automatically wins the duel. He beats Kaiba in his own game and mischievously teases, “I didn’t know we were playing Duel Links.”

 Devastated with the loss, Kaiba decides to find a way to enter the after life to find the Pharaoh for a duel without trying to harm himself in order to get there.

Instead, he finds himself in another place and in a different school currently wearing school clothes at this time. He didn’t want to cause a scene, so he plans on waiting until school is over to see where exactly did he end up.

However, Uryu Ishida just happens to notice Seto Kaiba, whereas, the rest of the class didn’t. He knows that Kaiba doesn’t belong here and senses that his spiritual pressure is a threat to this world. He also knows that Kaiba was once a favorite of KaibaShadow’s, but now there is no room for him to be on her mind. Uryu makes it his mission to eliminate the being as quickly as he can.

Uryu glares intensely at Kaiba while skillfully sewing during his free time.

Kaiba, trying to read a book that he clearly can’t understand as if it was written in a new language he has never seen before, notices Uryu and thinks that maybe he’s been made. But, Kaiba makes this the least of his worries. He’s been trying to figure out who Kokichi Ouma was talking about when he mentioned that there are two interests that KaibaShadow has in mind. One of them just has to be Kokichi Ouma, which she has made a definitive mistake on, but who is this other one? he contemplates to himself.

- - -

The school bell finally rings for the end of the day. Kaiba gets out of his school clothes and dresses himself in his normal attire. However, he was not expecting to come face-to-face with another person.

Uryu carefully draws his bow and releases the arrow with such grace, surrounding Kaiba in a bright and intense light.

Kaiba isn’t sure how or what exactly set this person off or what was bothering him when suddenly, he gets a sinking feeling that this might be the other “interest” that the little gremlin was talking about. He questions the guy in front of him, “So tell me, who or what are you?”

Uryu stands his ground and wears a serious look on his face. “Uryu Ishida. I’m a Quincy.” He eyes the person in front of him meticulously and points assertively at him. “Seto Kaiba, you are my enemy!”

Kaiba certainly isn’t one who backs down from a fight, but he has never met a person who has powers like Uryu, or so he thinks. Kaiba concludes that it might be best to stay out of Uryu’s way, not that this so called “Quincy” poses any kind of threat to him. He’d rather just not get himself involved with the situation as of yet.

- - -

Kaiba walks alone at night by himself just trying to figure out where he still is and if he’s any closer to getting to the after life to meet the Pharaoh. Being alone with his own thoughts makes him feel susceptible to thinking about anything, especially his encounter with Uryu. “So, he has special powers, wears glasses, and knows how to sew. What exactly makes him so special?” he continues to ponder, “This is just a phase KaibaShadow is going through. She’s going to get over him and come back to me. Same goes for that Kokichi.”

He continues to walk on, but suddenly, he hears something and looks over his shoulder. He certainly wasn’t expecting to see him tonight.

Uryu Ishida was just out walking in the street by himself when he senses Kaiba’s awful spiritual pressure. As if reading his mind, he warns Kaiba, “Know I’m nothing like the others.”

(Note: KaibaShadow has plushies of some of her favorite characters from various franchises. Some were given as gifts, and others she bought for herself. So, guess which plushies she recently added to her collection?)

Uryu takes it upon himself to take Kaiba to the Soul Society for two reasons: 1. To get Kaiba away from his world and his town. 2. The Soul Society is overfilling with reishi, which he can utilize his own powers and defeat Kaiba once and for all.

Once they arrive at the Soul Society, however, Kaiba manages to knock Uryu off of the roof. Kaiba appears to be all high and mighty and is smug about the whole situation. He doesn’t believe he lost KaibaShadow in any way, shape, or form. He warns Uryu, “Stay out of my way! You’re no match compared to me anyways!” Kaiba gets off the roof and walks away.

Uryu takes great offense to that statement as he continues to use his fingers to latch on to the roof to prevent him from falling a great amount of distance towards the ground. He relies on his pride as a Quincy to release his powers and to regain control over this battle. Uryu responds to the CEO, “You shouldn’t have messed with me ‘cuz I heard…” With the use of his powers, he plants himself firmly on his feet and vows to exact revenge, or at least, set them both on the same leverage. He goes to find the wandering Kaiba in the Soul Society.

- - -

Later that night, Uryu finds Kaiba and decides to go beyond his current capabilities in order to set the record straight. Uryu breaks off his glove and immediately feels this new set of powers overflowing almost beyond his control, but Uryu doesn’t quit. He is determined to stop Kaiba at all costs and send him anywhere else but his world and here.

Kaiba finds himself in deep trouble, knowing that a simple card games can’t help him out with this problem. He know that in a fight against this Quincy, he will lose, but his own pride has prevented him from making smart choices. If Kaiba hasn’t felt fear or death before, then he certainly will now. He watches Uryu with careful consideration, knowing that he should probably start running, but he is unable to at that moment. He is frozen in place while he just stands there dumbfounded.

Uryu is fast and gets the high ground before Kaiba could even react. He is ready to take aim at his opponent and send him far away from this place.

Kaiba glances up at Uryu and gases at him like he is an angel. An Angel of Death, that is. He can hear and feel his breath being hitched and his heart painfully pounding in his body. He sees his whole life flash right before his very eyes at the mere sight of seeing Uryu draw his arrow from his bow.

Uryu locks onto his opponent. As his final words to him, ironically, as if to mock Kaiba, he tells him, “You’re afraid of monsters! Monster!” He releases that arrow from his heart, which sends shockwaves throughout the Soul Society.

What do you think happens next? Is Kaiba still alive after an attack like this? Does Kaiba get to meet the Pharaoh in the after life? Will Kaiba find a way to win KaibaShadow’s heart once again? You decide how this goes.

- KᴀɪʙᴀSʜᴀᴅᴏᴡ ♥

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Credit:

Maki Harukawa, Shuichi Saihara, and Kokichi Ouma Plushies: Yoshee G

Beta Kokichi Ouma: @nona-nightingale

Edited: September (Uryu’s part) - October (Kokichi’s part) 2019 Uploaded: October 31, 2019 「EMS」Kokichi Ouma vs Seto Kaiba vs Uryu Ishida - Monster

[akaluan]

When All Is Known (Nothing Is) Pt 5

Prequel | Prequel |  Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

((Uh, this part is really long because Aizen. That’s... that’s basically it. Aizen stole this segment.))

Ichigo stepped from his garganta and glanced around, feeling it close behind him as Uryuu came to stand at his side.

“Feels nice to have reishi around again,” Uryuu said, taking a breath and stretching his arms.

Ichigo made a noise of agreement, then allowed his reiatsu to spike briefly beyond his hold and turned his attention to Seireitei. If Aizen /had/ come with them, that would get his attention easily enough.

It would get everyone /else’s/ attention too, unfortunately. Already he could feel the way the Shinigami were stirring in their city, disturbed by what little he’d revealed.

“Of /course/ you did,” Uryuu said dryly.

Ichigo shrugged and tugged his hood down a bit further. “Got any better idea to get hold of Aizen?”

“Something a little less eye-catching, I had hoped.”

He laughed. “Us? Less eye-catching?”

“Yeah, laugh it up,” Uryuu muttered, though there was no heat in his words. He settled into an easy stance a few feet away, relaxed but still alert.

Shinigami in these peaceful days didn’t understand or practice constant stealth, except for the Onmitsukido. Ichigo was confident that no one able to actually do them harm would be sneaking up on them.

“My, my, I thought we had trained such loss of control out of you by now,” a familiar voice hailed them from one side. Aizen stepped into view, smirk curling at his lips and gaze amused. “Just one night in the past and you’re already slipping into bad habits, Kurosaki-kun?”

“Ah, shut up,” Ichigo grumbled, giving Aizen a /look/. “How else should I have gotten your attention?”

“Why are you asking /me/?” Aizen asked with clearly faked surprise, then flicked a hand as if to brush the question aside. “No matter. Let’s move away from here before any curious ants come to investigate.” With no more warning than that, Aizen vanished.

Ichigo glowered at the spot Aizen had stood, flexing his hands in frustration.

“Come on, before he comes back to mock us again,” Uryuu said. “And before the Shinigami arrive, I guess. If they ever feel like it.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ichigo reached out with his senses, latching onto the near-invisible trail that Aizen had left behind, and bolted. Uryuu followed on his heels, covering their trail the way only a Quincy could.

(Only the best sensors would be able to trace them from this place.)

The trail ended nearly a full district over, with Aizen leaning against a tree and staring up at the fruit ripening on the branches. “Good,” he said when they arrived, straightening up and looking between them. “And without any curious ants tagging along, congratulations.”

“That was /one time/,” Uryuu snapped, crossing his arms over his chest. “And even /you/ missed that damn Quincy too, so—”

Aizen laughed.

“Okay, okay, enough,” Ichigo said, moving the stand between the two. “Pissing contest over. Aizen, find anything of interest that we should know about?”

Aizen gave him an indulgent smile and pulled a wad of folded paper from his sleeve, offering it up. Ichigo snatched the papers from him and carefully unfolded them, skimming the man’s precise writing. The more he read of the first page, the more sickened he felt; there, laid out in tidy script, was line after line of information on the Quincy as a people.

“This is…” Uryuu murmured, leaning in to read the first page with Ichigo. “Did you take all of this from /him/?”

“I thought it might be of use to you,” Aizen said with a shrug. “Kurotsuchi never truly made use of the information before. Though I can see why.” He grimaced and pushed away from the tree, snagging an apple as he walked past. “Reams of information, and barely a single piece of useful knowledge. That took me until just after dawn to collate, and it’s barely four pages.”

Ichigo flipped the page to the next one and continued reading. Aizen had distilled everything to basic facts and figures; strengths, weaknesses, skills and tolerances, all laid out like any other report the man had ever presented them.

(All laid out in black and white, cold facts distilled from rivers of blood and agony.)

“How many,” Uryuu asked, tearing his gaze away from the report and looking up at Aizen. “How many did he kill to find… /this/?”

Aizen narrowed his eyes and watched them, then abruptly tossed the apple he’d picked at Uryuu, ignoring the glare he got in return. “Eat. I doubt you’ve put much in your stomach besides reishi for the past few days.”

“We ate this morning,” Ichigo answered absently, still reading the report. “Hat’n’Clogs got us some food. Wasn’t the best, but we’ll make due.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see the way Uryuu began to bristle, and silently sighed in exasperation.

(One of these days…)

“/Urahara Kisuke/ fed you?” Aizen asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And you two /accepted/?”

“What?” Ichigo asked, looking up from the report and frowning. “Should we not have? I mean, he let us sleep in the shoten and everything, and he seemed insistent that we eat.”

“You—” Aizen cut himself off, took a deep breath, and resumed speaking, his tone even and deceptively kind, “Setting aside that this is not /our/ Urahara Kisuke, and allowing that his intentions were likely what /he/ viewed as the best… have you forgotten what Urahara and I taught you about kishi and reishi?”

“He said Tsukabishi had learned some tricks,” Uryuu said with a shrug, in the process of carving out a piece of the apple with a reishi blade. He lifted the piece and bit into it, giving Aizen a challenging look as he did.

Aizen frowned. “’Tricks’ are not nearly enough, at the stage the two of you have reached.”

“We didn’t eat that much,” Ichigo said. “And I’m not feeling sick. Uryuu?”

“I feel fine,” Uryuu agreed, before carving another piece of the apple free to eat. “Not like that first time you found us.”

“I should hope so!” Aizen sighed and glanced at the sky as if praying for patience. “/Clearly/ I’m going to need to have /words/ with Urahara about the two of you once this is all over.”

“Hey!” Ichigo protested. “We’re not /that/ bad!”

“No, you’re worse,” Aizen said dryly, then gestured to Uryuu. “Especially /him/.”

Uryuu scowled at Aizen. “And yet you’ve never offered an alternative.”

“Would you trust it if I did?” Aizen asked with an arched eyebrow. He waved a hand as if to brush aside the conversation. “No. Never mind. I’m not getting into this with you again. If the two of you don’t feel sick, then we might as well get moving.”

“Do we have /any/ sort of plan, or has even your mighty intellect fallen to the Ichigo method of problem solving?” Uryuu asked archly, finishing off the core of the apple and flicking the stem aside.

“Given the outcome of the last few times I’ve attempted to give you a plan to follow, I’ve decided to skip the headache and simply agree,” Aizen answered, tone wry. “So, yes. The ‘Ichigo Method’ it is.”

“I think I hate both of you,” Ichigo grumbled under his breath. He shot both of them a dark look, then quickly skimmed the last of the report. Much of it was information he already knew — either from Uryuu teaching him or from experience in battle — but the way Aizen had starred a couple of lines about how Quincy reacted to Hollow reiatsu—

(Uryuu writhing in pain beneath Orihime’s shield. A Hollow hole slowly closing.)

(His fault.)

Ichigo shook the memory free and tapped a claw against the page, looking up at Aizen. “You’re thinking that /he’ll/ fall just like any other Quincy. To this.” He held up his hand and wriggled his fingers, sunlight glinting off his claws. “That he has the same weakness.”

“I do,” Aizen agreed. “Between your strong reiatsu and the Hollowfication poison you inherited from White, even the progenitor of the Quincy is likely to fall.”

Ichigo considered Aizen for a moment, then looked to Uryuu questioningly.

Uryuu hesitated, then gave a shallow nod. “It’s… as good a plan as any. He’s still asleep right now, relying on the Wandenreich and his strength to protect him from harm. But the stronger a Quincy is…”

“The more vulnerable they are,” Ichigo finished. He hated the idea of using that poison, of purposely inflicting that agony on /anyone/, but for the chance to remove Yhwach from the board before the man became a threat… for that, he’d swallow his revulsion and strike. “Alright. Fine. We’ll try it.”

Aizen smirked and inclined his head, stepping to one side and gesturing to Uryuu. “Well? I believe our resident Quincy should lead the way this time.”

“Resident Quincy, tch,” Uryuu grumbled, stalking past Aizen and orienting himself with a glance towards Seireitei. “You realize I was part of their cult for barely a month. That’s not really enough time to memorize everything.”

“Ah, but you do know a way in,” Aizen said, following Uryuu. “Unless you were relying on little ol’ me to get you in?”

“Aizen,” Ichigo growled warningly, resting a hand on Uryuu’s shoulder and holding tight. He snorted when Aizen flashed an innocent smile, hands raised in mock surrender. “Right. Uryuu, let’s get this invasion started, before Aizen decides that fighting us is more interesting.”

“It is,” Aizen agreed calmly, then smiled at the dark looks they both sent. “I know the two of you aren’t looking forward to fighting any of those Quincy either. We should spar later, or perhaps take over Hueco Mundo? I could claim Las Noches from my foolish past self, and the two of you could build another place?”

“We’re not playing rival kings with you,” Uryuu shot back. “/We/ are going to find someplace calm, and quiet, and preferably as far away from you as possible.”

Aizen laughed and snagged another apple from a tree they were walking past, then held out a hand towards Uryuu. He snatched the hurled reishi blade from the air before it could hit his chest and began to carve into the apple as they moved. “I give it a week before the two of you go stir crazy and hunt me down to spar.”

Ichigo groaned at the mulish look on Uryuu’s face. “Thanks. Just… thanks.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Uryuu glared at Aizen while reaching out, threads of reishi trailing from his fingers and hooking into something that Ichigo couldn’t quite see. “You wanted a way in, so I suppose—” Uryuu paused, arms flexing as he /yanked/ at the threads, tearing open a hole through which the white, white realm of the hidden Quincy fortress was visible— “I should give you one.”

Several Quincy froze, staring wide-eyed at the three of them through the torn gateway, before one turned to run. Uryuu didn’t hesitate, just dropped the threads and charged through, bow materializing in one hand and reishi blades slicing down on the stunned Quincy.

“And this,” Aizen said despairingly, “is why I’ve given up on trying to get the two of you to follow a plan.”

“From where I’m standing, this is your own damn fault,” Ichigo said with a shrug. He turned to follow Uryuu through the gateway, drawing his blade as he crossed the threshold. “Maybe if you stopped riling him, he’d be more inclined to follow your plans.”

“But it’s so much /fun/!”

“Then stop blaming us on your plans going sideways.”

“But that’s /not/ fun.”

Ichigo sighed, stabbed a fleeing Quincy, and resigned himself to fighting his way through the entire fortress before they reached Yhwach.

(And they had the gall to call this the ‘Ichigo Method’.)

(Tch.)

[brisfanfictions]

A Bleeding Rose - Shadley

I'm the third oldest hedgehog in the Rose family. Ramvelle is 19 years old and he is my oldest brother. Quincy is 18 years old and he is my second brother. I've only got 2 brother.

Next in line is me. I'm 17 years old and is the oldest of triplets. Amelia is second and Amy is last. We have similar interests... Okay, not always. But, me and Amelia are always close. Amy will be close, but not as close as Amelia and I. Amanda is our youngest sister and the last in line of the Rose family. She's 14 years old. She has redish-green eyes.

My name is... Ashley Rose. I wear red, black, & lavender. People say I'm emo, but emo people only wear black & red. I keep guns and things hidden in my heels or my black leather jacket. My quills cascade down my back. I rarely cut it as short as Amy's. Keeping my long hair helps other people, besides my family, can tell us apart.

Our eyes are the easiest to tell us apart. My eyes are like a ruby red. Amelia's is icy-blue. Amy's is a jade green.

I own a mansion off Emerald Coast and the Forest of Life. It has 6 master bedrooms and 6 guest bedrooms. It has a library, bowling ally, indoor/outdoor pool and hot tubs, rec room, music room, art room, a gun vault (only Amelia and I know the passcode to), and a 12 car garage.

My baby is a black-and-lavender Chevy Camaro ZL1. Amy's car is a blue-and-pink Toyota Prius C. Amelia's car is a red Ford Focus ST. Ramvelle's car is a gold Mitsubishi Evo XI (11). Quincy's car is a silver Dodge Dart.

I love this black-and-red hedgehog. He is SO cute and is such a badass... But, I don't think he likes me.

Ever since I was 12, he gave me the cold shoulder and swore in my face. He always got angry at me and I never know what I did WRONG! Anyways, I'm going to take a walk. Not on the beach, but in the forest. I always found it soothing for me...

And, no I'm NOT taking my car!

I'm in my favorite sleepwear, a lavender night-gown, before I left my mansion.

I was hiding in a tree in the Forest of Life. Well... Really, I was taking a nap. But, after the moon rose, I woke up.

Right now, I'm watching the night sky. The full moon is showing the clearing that I'm near. The stars are lite up the night sky. It's very beautiful... But, only a certain hedgehog can really turn this night sky even more beautiful.

My mind wanders to the hedgehog who makes me smile... Her name is Ashley Rose. She means EVERYTHING to me. She's always been the love of my life... Although, I'll NEVER admit that to ANYONE.

The reason why I love her is because she reminds me of Maria Robotnik. Who died on the ark to save me.

Ashley always makes these gifts on holidays. Valentines' Day is my FAVORITE holiday though. She always makes teddy bears with hearts on them for me. They always say something different every year.

I was pulled out of my thoughts, when I heard rustling of the bushes under the tree I'm in.

Ugh! I hate bushes, trees, and other nature-y stuff. But, I'm in my favorite clearing. The exact clearing where I have the inspiration to make the gifts for Shadow.

There's a stump in the middle of the clearing with flowers around it.

I move toward the stump and sit down on it. It's February 13th. Tomorrow is Valentines' Day and I can't wait!

I was too busy unloading stuff to notice a rustle in the bushes behind me.

I was watching the whole scene unfold. Eggman appeared in the bushes behind Ashley, but only I can see him.

Eggman is holding a gun in his hand and is aiming at Ashley's head.

Ashley is just humming a sweet, lovely tune. She doesn't see Eggman at all.

I'm just humming a sweet song to myself and making Shadow's Valentines' Day gift.

My song stops short when I hear the click of a gun. I turn around quickly and see Eggman holding a gun to my head. I quickly whip up my hands in a surrendering motion.

"Good-bye, Amy Rose." Eggman says, pulling the trigger.

I'm fuming in anger and frustration. I jump in time to avoid the bullet in my head, ultimately killing myself.

But, he manages to hit a vital organ. I fall down, holding my ruby red gloves to the wound.

"You... Bastard..." I mumble, my breathing shallow and my eyes turning black in anger at him. I fall on my hands and knees, coughing up blood. "I'm... Not... My sister..."

Eggman's eyes widen as he sees the black, cold, ruthless eyes staring at him. "A-Ashley... I had no idea you were out here..." He says, completely shocked.

"I..." I begin, coughing up some blood. "I always... Come out here... Before Valentines' Day... To make Shadow's gift..."

"Well... Tell Amy that this is a warning. That I'll get her soon-" Eggman begins.

"Go to hell..." I mumble. "You'll never... Get her... As long as... My other family members... Will protect her!" I try to yell, but it comes out as a moan.

I jump down, quietly and sneak up behind Eggman. When he opens his mouth again, I pull out my gun. I shoot him in the head.

After Eggman falls on the ground bleeding, I run over to Ashley and lay her head on my chest. "Ashley... I'm here... No one will harm you again..." I caress her face, ignoring the urge to cry.

Ashley smiles softly, her black eyes turning into the lovely, ruby red eyes. That I've come to know. Those eyes hold love, affection, and happiness in them.

She moves her free hand up to my face and caress my cheek. "I've... Always pictured... This moment before I died..." She whispers to me, knowing my keen hearing can pick it up. "But, I imagined..." Her eyes turn to pain and coughs up blood. "That I'll die in my... Sleep... Instead of... Being murdered... By that dumbass.. Motherfucker named Eggman..." She says, the pain turning to anger and back again.

My eyes are feeling heavy. I want to sleep, but yet I don't want to... Does that make sense... It makes sense to my jumbled up mind.

"I'm gonna get you to the hospital." Shadow whispers in my ear. "I'll make sure you live and continue your life." He says, determined.

I smile, knowing my eyes are shining with love and happiness. Not the pain I feel in my body.

Shadow picks me up, bridal style. Then, he takes out his Chaos Emerald and Chaos Controls to the hospital.

The doctors and nurses notice the blood on his hands, on my glove, and my lavender night-gown.

"Can we get her to the operating room!" Shadow basically yells.

I wince in pain and he notices. "I'm sorry..." He whispers in my ear, meaning every word.

I giggle, but I stopped short. Because I had to cough up blood on the white linoleum floors.

Shadow frowns and sits in a chair, setting me in his lap.

I look up at him, frowning as he's deep in thought. Worried lines wrinkling his perfect forehead. "What's wrong?" I ask, wanting to make him smile.

"I could've prevented this..." He mumbles, almost to himself. "It's all my fault..."

I frown and poke his cheek, making him look at me. When he does turn his head my way. I respond, "It's NOT your fault... It's mine... I let my guard down..."

He's getting to respond when a nurse rips, metaphorically, me out of his warm and the safety of his arms. I almost make a noise of disapproval, then remember my bullet wound. I don't make a noise as I'm put on a gurney.

I smile at Shadow as he's up and yelling to the doctors to have a few more moments with me. He notices my smile and says nothing more.

I wave as the double doors close behind me. I shut my eyes and let the sleep consume me.

It's 1:52AM, meaning today is Valentines' Day. I've been pacing for the past 6 hours in the waiting room. Glancing at the double doors whenever a doctor appeared. Hoping Ashley's okay.

During those 6 hours, besides my pacing, I called her family, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. They're all sitting and waiting.

"Shadow..." Amelia whispers. When I turn my head toward her, she smiles and pats the seat next to her. "She'll be okay. I know Ashley puts up one hell of a fight." She says, hoping to make me smile.

But, it doesn't. The only hedgehog I fell for is STILL in the operating room.

I sit down next to Amelia, putting my face in my hands.

After about 10 minutes of sitting, a light blue fox comes out. He looks around and spots the 9 of us sitting/sleeping. He begins walking over.

I stand up and runs over to him. "Is Ashley okay?!" I ask, anxiously. A hopeful glint in my eyes.

The fox looks at the others and they look up at him, he smiles at us. "My name is Dr. Daniel Garcia." Then, his smile disappears. "I've got some good news and some bad news." He says.

The shred of hope that I had for Ashley is gone. "Can we hear the bad news first?" I respond, sadness seeping into my voice.

"Ashley won't make it... The bullet hit her liver and is wedged too deep in. We can't get it out without damaging her system." He says, going all doctor mode on us.

I sigh and look at him. "What's the good news?" I ask.

Dr. Garcia motions for me to follow.

I obey. We walk until we turn a corner out of Ashley's friends' hearing.

Dr. Garcia turned around and his serious expression on his face makes me stand up straight. I didn't know I was slouching till seeing his hard eyes. "Ashley's awake, but she only requests to see you." He says.

I punch down the urge to smile. Only Ashley gets to see my happy smile.

Dr. Garcia nods and leads me through the hospital. Leading me toward Ashley... For my last memories to make with her...

I'm bored... But, I'm waiting patiently for Shadow to appear in my doorway. It's about 25 minutes until I hear the door make a faint 'click' noise. I turn my head toward the noise and smiles.

"Hey, Sh-Shadikku..." I say, using my favorite nickname for him.

He smiles at me and replies, "Hi, Ash." I blush a faint pink, remembering his nickname for me.

My blush disappears as my facial expression becomes a serious one. "Tell everyone... To protect Amy... Including yourself, Shadow..." I say. "Also, tell them that... I'm sorry... I couldn't be there... To watch you get married..." I pull the blanket up to my mouth and coughs.

He took the chance to say something. "Ashley... Don't say that... I could never love anyone as much as I loved you and Maria..." He says, taking a deep breath. "Your my world, Ashley. Only you can make me smile and melt my cold heart. You taught me to love and be happy again..." I could see his eyes glazing over, fighting back his tears. "Ever since you started to grow up, I wanted to be with you. I wanted to have kids with you..." He whispers, tears falling down his face. "I never wanted this to happen to you... NEVER..." He pulls me into a hug and cries in the crook of my neck.

I smile and play with his quills. My own tears are falling down my face. I try to gain his attention again. "Shadow?" I say.

He looks up, anxiously. "What is it, Ashley?" He asks, holding my hands in his soft, big ones.

I move over a little bit, patting the open space. He takes the hint and climbs in next to me.

I lay my head on his fluffy, white chest. "I love you, Shadow..." I say, shutting my eyes. I fight to open my eyes again when I hear him speak.

"I love you, too, Ashley..." He says, playing with my long quills. "I just wish I could've saved you..."

I smile and giggle quietly. "I knew my time was coming, Shadow... You can't ignore fate..." I say, knowing he'd never believe that.

He looks down at me. "I'm sorry I was such an ass to you... I never want this to happen again... Maria died because I couldn't save her... It's like a repeat of history..." He mumbles.

I laugh quietly, then I have a coughing fit. "Just promise me one thing?" I ask.

He lays his head on mine. "Anything..." He whispers.

"Protect my family... Tell Sonic that I've... Always found him like... A brother..." I say. "Also, move on... I want to see you happy... Not hung up on me... Or my death... It wasn't your fault... It was because of... My carelessness..."

He nods. "I promise..." He says.

I smile and close my eyes again. Allowing the sleep to consume me.

I watch her chest move down and her heart stopping. The heart monitor going ballistic. Her lovely hot pink skin, loses its color. It turns to a pale pink. Her body is turning cold as her soul is leaving her body.

I lost rationality and I start shaking her lifeless body. "ASHLEY! WAKE UP! COME BACK! WAKE UP! PLEASE! DON'T LEAVE ME!" I scream, tears are falling down my face.

I stay like that until nurses, Dr. Garcia, Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, Ramvelle, Quincy, Amelia, Amy, and Amanda all rush in.

The Rose family pulls me away from Ashley's body. They whisper soothing words to me.

"Please calm down, Shadow..." Amy says.

"She put up a fight to say her last dying words to you." Amelia responds.

"Don't regret the promises you made, Mr. Shadow." Amanda says, frowning.

I take a deep breath and rip my arms out of Ramvelle's and Quincy's grip. "I'm fine..." I say, looking down at the floor.

Sonic and Tails fold their ears down. Knuckles avoids eye-contact.

No one has seen me this broken.

I walk up to Sonic. "Ashley said she always found you like a brother... Also, she wants all of us to protect Amy from Eggman's clutches..." I say. “But, I killed Eggman after he shot Ashley…”

"Is it Eggman who murdered Ashley?" He asks. I nod in response.

I look at Ashley's siblings. They lived with her for a long time. I ruffle Amanda's hair and hugs them all. Giving fists bumps to Ramvelle and Quincy.

"I'll be at home..." I mumble and Chaos Control. But, really, I only want to be in Ashley's room.

I lay down on her bed, breathing in her lavender and rose floral scent. And I fell asleep there.

In my dreams, Ashley is still alive and hands me my Valentines' Day teddy.

But, later on... I began hating the holidays. Because Ashley wasn't there. To give me the love and attention that she always did...

~37 years later~

It's August 1st, 3274 C.E. Today would've been Ashley's 54th birthday.

Amy got married to Sonic and had 2 kids. Angel and Dash Rose the Hedgehog, both were 10 on September 15th, 3260 C.E.

Amelia died of suicide. She confessed to me, but I rejected her. She can act like Ashley all she wants, but she could never be my Ashley.

Ramvelle married Acwellen the Hedgehog. It turns out that he was gay. They never had kids, but they died happily.

Quincy married a fox named Quorra. It's Italian for heart. They had a baby boy. His name is Odil the Hedge-fox. It's French for rich... Although they're poor... Quorra spends the money on Odil...

Amanda married Blink the Hedgehog. He's a black hedgehog with crimson red hair. I find it weird, but I don't normally pay attention to those things anymore. Anyways, they had twins. Basil and Abigail Rose the Hedgehog. Basil is a black hedgehog with pinkish-purple hair. Abigail is a pink hedgehog with black hair and purple streaks in it. They are born on December 19th, 3272 C.E. They'll be 2 soon...

Without Eggman here, Mobius became quite a peaceful place.

If your curious on if I got married, I didn't. I stayed single for her. I gave up my criminal ways for her.

I'm at Ashley's grave. I put down the pink roses and lavenders on it.

The gravestone is in the shape of a heart and on it reads-

'Rest in Piece

'Here lies Ashley Marie Rose.

'Best friend, sister, and girlfriend.

'August 1st, 3220 C.E.-February 14th, 3237 C.E.

'Favorite Holiday: Valentines' Day'

The only people I never pushed away since Ashley's death was her family. If anything, we became closer.

I always talked to them.

I gave up everything... Just for her...

~Few years later~

Shadow the Hedgehog died on February 13th, 3277 C.E.

He is resting next to Ashley's grave. He's up in Heaven, enjoying the time with Ashley.

Just for her, he turned over a new leaf. To make her feel special and happy, once again.

The End...

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 24/10/2020 (Digga D, Justin Bieber, benny blanco)

Internet Money’s “Lemonade” featuring Don Toliver, NAV and Gunna finally hit #1 on the UK Singles Chart, and that’s today’s #1. Anyone else find it funny that NAV has a #1 hit in, well, any country? Anyway, welcome to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

A lot of our new arrivals from yesterday are gone entirely, including “Parlez-Vous Anglais” by Headie One featuring Aitch, mostly because only the three highest-performing songs from an artist can be in the chart at one time, so “Only You Freestyle” with Drake returned at #44. As well as that, other notable drop-outs from the UK Top 75 are “Mr. Right Now” by 21 Savage and Metro Boomin featuring Drake, “5AM” by M Huncho and Nafe Smallz exiting pretty prematurely, “Over Now” by Calvin Harris and the Weeknd, “Wishing Well” by the late Juice WRLD lasting longer than I expected, and “Heaven on My Mind” by Becky Hill and Segala. The biggest fall for the week is “Laugh Now Cry Later” by Drake and Lil Durk getting hit with the streaming cut down from #18 and #42 and the biggest is for last week’s debut “i miss u” by Jax Jones and Au/Ra up from #53 to #39. The only other returning entry we have is that garbage “Papi Chulo” song by Octavian and Skepta back for seemingly no reason. That doesn’t mean we don’t have 11 new arrivals, though, so let’s get started.

NEW ARRIVALS

#69 – “Train Wreck” – James Arthur

Produced by Adam Argyle

X Factor winner and insecure homophone who somehow pissed Frankie Boyle off on Twitter in 2012 James Arthur is back with his latest single since his first comeback album which was surprisingly successful, even stateside, mostly because of soppy, unlistenable ballad “Say You Won’t Let Go”. So, what’s to be expected out of this frog-voiced adult contemporary lad today? Well, apparently this is actually not his latest single choice for that lead off of the fourth album and rather just a deep cut from his 2016 album Back from the Edge. It’s the sixth track on the album, it’s four years old and never had a single push so I can only assume... TikTok? I don’t know, I think everyone’s feeling like this year’s been a bit of a train wreck so is the song good? I don’t know, I think his belting is impressive but pretty aggravating with only the soft piano backing and it does sound like he’s straining himself a bit here. The pouring out of his emotions during the dark place he was in between 2013 and 2016 is pretty effective and admittedly I feel kind of bad for the guy but, man, you can tell this is the first song he wrote for the album as it feels pretty underwritten, with a lot of reliance on that chorus, which is powerful but not nearly enough as he wants it to be. He explores a religious angle in the first verse that goes absolutely nowhere. Looking at the comments on the Genius page and ignoring the ones saying “This is epic” or “Anyone here from Harry Potter TikToks?”, I can tell it’s helping people and if this really is impactful to his audience then all fairness to him, it does its job. I’m just not a fan.

#68 – “Heat Waves” – Glass Animals

Produced by Dave Bayley

I swear “trainwreck” and “heatwave” are usually one word. Huh. Glass Animals are an indie-pop project fronted by Dave Bayley and I’ve never felt the need to look into them, and whilst I always assumed they were big – especially this recent third album which did big numbers to mixed reception – I didn’t think they were “chart in the top 100” big, especially not too months after the album release when another single is clearly being pushed. It has got a couple remixes though, particularly a Diplo one, so I guess this is a good time to first check Bayley and co out. Maybe my definition of “psychedelic pop” is different to Pitchfork’s (who didn’t even like this album) but I didn’t expect pitch-shifted vocals put against trap instrumentals and 808s that drown out all of the musicality that goes into the watery synths and guitar picking under the pretty rough vocals here, saved by some cool melodic ideas and multi-tracking that sounds pretty good in the verses. That chorus is lazy and quickly loses its lustre though, and it is not nearly climactic enough for that point in the bridge where its cuts out and returns to work or have any impact at all. The lyrics are pretty fluffy and non-descript, apart from the refrain of “Road shimmer wigglin’ the vision”... okay, I understand why you pitch-shifted that one. Yeah, this is pretty garbage, as are these remixes, although admittedly I kind of enjoy Diplo’s future bass rendition. You can’t do much to make a badly-written song sound interesting as an EDM remixer. I listened to that “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” song out of curiosity and... just because your “ayys” sound more like “ehs” doesn’t mean your trap-rap is suddenly art pop. Also:

“Space Ghost Coast To Coast” combines bits and pieces of millennial childhood nostalgia with musings on school shootings.

Joy. Next.

#67 – “PMW” – M Huncho and Nafe Smallz

Produced by Quincy Tellem

The drill MF DOOM (in aesthetic, not ability) and some nasal-voiced idiot who is not selling himself well with that stage name make a collaborative album produced by Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em. Here’s their ode to Profit Margins and Wages. Okay, it’s just them trading bars over an actually pretty damn good trap beat, with a killer choral vocal sample and some skittering hi-hats with a high enough pace that it makes Nafe Smallz seem mildly engaged. M Huncho sounds fine here, but the chorus here is pretty rough for both of them, and it just sounds really awkward. I do like Nafe’s second verse here, the flows he uses are pretty catchy and he sounds alive for once. What do you expect me to say about this though? They don’t rap anything interesting, the trap beat is good but not particularly interesting and the performances are mildly entertaining at best. It’s not nearly as amusing as the last single I liked from Huncho, “Pee Pee”. I’m not surprised this didn’t debut very high, and I guess it’ll drop off next week like nothing ever happened.

#65 – “One More Time” – Not3s featuring AJ Tracey

Produced by Eyes Adoasi and Remedee

Well, this duo have worked together a bunch of times before, and are undeniably preferable to M Huncho and Nafe Smallz, even if I’m not necessarily a big fan of either artist. This seems to be a lead-off single for Not3s’ third record as well as an interpolation of Britney Spears’ “...Baby One More Time” with a pretty cute pitch-shifted female vocal acting as the main melody for the track... and, yeah, this is what I expect from AJ Tracey. There’s an obvious UK garage flavour to the track – it does feel like a modernised throwback – and AJ’s spitting pretty competently, even if his flow is pretty basic and at times janky. Not3s is even more janky in the pre-chorus but the harmonising on the chorus and flow on the second verse is pretty damn impressive and dare I say charming. If he wants to go into this smooth R&B-rap direction on this type of UK garage beat I approve fully and I would be excited for that upcoming album. It kind of reminds me of Jeremih, to be completely honest, and I’m not sure exactly where I get that comparison but he sounds great. The beat does feel like it stagnates, especially during AJ’s verse actually – it might be the weak link stopping this from becoming great – but it doesn’t overstay its welcome and the 8-bit sound effects during AJ’s verse do stop this from being boring, though I still prefer a fair few of AJ’s other singles, like “Kiss and Tell” with Skepta which the song immediately reminded me of. It could have actually done with no guest verse but I know Not3s needs that promo so I’m not complaining about this. I hope to see it in the top 40 soon.

#62 – “Perkosex” – D-Block Europe

Produced by Gwiz and Roki

“Perkosex”. Wow, and I thought these guys couldn’t get dumber. We have a third DBE album cut this week and I’m already impressed by the awful pun in the title and the fact that this is literally taken from a YouTube producer’s (FREE) Calboy/Polo G type beat. Classy. This is a more downbeat song for the duo, with two verses, kind of. In fact, there’s no chorus, just one verse from Dirtbike LB who actually starts off the song with some spoken word and pathetic “Ski” ad-libs – leave that to Young Adz, who fragments his verse with a pointless and awkward bridge, as if his verse didn’t fill up that quota anyway. We have an acoustic guitar, pitched-up vocal sample that comes in to waste time every so often, and actually cuts Adz’s verse in two. Both LB and Adz croon and mumble, barely staying on the beat, with Adz mumbling so much on his first part of the verse that I initially thought this was just an outro to a song that lasted one and a half minutes, but, no, there’s an extra minute to go and Adz adz nothing to the track that needed that second half of the verse. Neither of the rappers are any funny here, but at least LB compares his friends to terrorists and says he’s got shots in his mouth like a peppermint... I mean, he sounds more mentally stable than he usually does on these songs, I guess. The second half of that Adz verse starts off with either him barely staying on-topic or just a complete plot twist.

You signed up for a drug dealer, not a drug user

And the next line:

And one of my toxic traits is that I love too much

Again, classy. This is crap even by their standards and just straight boring. It won’t go anywhere, but knowing my luck it might be the Christmas #1. Next.

#60 – “Someone to You” – BANNERS

Produced by KOZ

More “indie pop” debuting on the charts, although this one is directly off of the success of Love, Victor, a Hulu original series based on the film Love, SImon that used it in its soundtrack and hence it’s here on the chart. This song has been on three of this guy’s EPs and is actually all the way back from 2017 so, yeah, we have some old cuts here. I have absolutely nothing to say about the song though. Sure, I appreciate the vocal harmonies in the post-chorus and the organic drumming but the vaguely folkish guitar sounds pretty trite, as do the hand-claps and the incredibly generic mish-mash of love song clichés in all of the lyrics here. I’m reminded of a lighter Biffy Clyro that happens to be from Liverpool instead of Scotland and, you know, have no grit or interesting songwriting to back the enthusiastic vocal delivery and repetitive, exhausting chorus. I’m not into this at all, it just reeks of a lack of effort or unique character to it. And I’m safe to assume that about this next song...

#59 – “You’re Mines Still” – Yung Bleu

Produced by Nate Rhoads

This song got big because of Drake on the remix and thank God for that because this Juice WRLD rip-off could never stand on his two feet anyway. The fake attempt at a half-hearted British accent drenched in Auto-Tune is an immediate turn-off – the dude’s from Alabama and sounds like he’s vaguely imitating an Afroswing singer – but so is this incredibly low-effort trap beat with barely anything other than a Sting sample from the exact song “Lucid Dreams” sampled, and it’s not like this is an uncommon flip, coincidence or even a sample that hasn’t been used in a bunch of rap tracks before. Watch out, Yung Bleu, or else Sting will try and sue your ass on BS counts of “plagiarism” until you tragically die young or get a Drake stimulus package big enough for you to pay off royalties and fines for copyright infringement. In fact, I’m convinced that’s the only reason Drake hopped onto the remix so he and his massive bank account can settle the incoming lawsuit and pay the legal fees for this guy, because he doesn’t contribute anything worthwhile to this trash either. Jesus, this is bad.

#58 – “Happiness” – Little Mix

Produced by TMS

We don’t have that album yet, but we have another low-charting promotional single, I guess, now that the last one dropped off from the chart entirely... last week. Little Mix are now noticing that maybe they really cannot perform that well without Syco so I guess they’re just throwing as many bricks as D-Block Europe claim to be selling and hoping one of them fits into the wall. I don’t mind the song for all it’s worth, to be honest, I mean it’s more of a fast-paced dance-pop song about love I can appreciate with some pretty great vocal performances from the girls here, especially who I think are Leigh-Anne and Jade. The chorus hits pretty hard and the fusion of 808s and trap skitters on the verses with a killer UK garage-inspired drum loop on the chorus... yeah, I can actually endorse this, albeit with some hesitation, especially since the bridge is literally just like 10 seconds of vocal riffing, which makes the song feel somewhat underwritten even if that final chorus, especially the lead-up to it, is pretty amazing and genuinely surprised me on my first listen. This is good, and honestly a lot better than I expected from Little Mix, so check it out if you’re interested, although sadly I doubt this’ll stick.  

#29 – “Hold” – Chunkz and Yung Filly

Produced by Ransom Beatz

I can say the same about this, now that we’re in the top 40 here (first for both artists), mostly because Chunkz is pretty much a YouTube comedian and looking at these lyrics, there are now jokes. There is some ugly Auto-Tuned crooning over a pretty flat Afroswing beat and Chunkz’s delivery is similarly flat and it’s obvious he’s a comedian. You can just tell when rappers are also comedians and this guy definitely makes that obvious in his half-hearted “upbeat” delivery that sounds like a satire, but the problem is again that there are NO JOKES. Is the “airplane mode” line a joke? The use of the word “investments”? The egregious Spanish in the second verse? This weak-sauce instrumental? If any of these are jokes or an attempt at comedy, please let me stand corrected because I don’t know if Chunkz was chuckling to himself writing but none of this is funny or even entertaining. It’s pretty telling that the Genius page gave up on trying to distinguish the two rappers as well. Next.

#19 – “Lonely” – Justin Bieber and benny blanco

Produced by benny blanco and FINNEAS

Why is benny blanco credited as a lead artist while FINNEAS isn’t? Huh. Well, Justin’s back and leaving whatever the hell Changes was earlier this year right behind him, focusing on more introspective and personal tracks like... “Holy”, I guess. Well, for what it’s worth, this is better than “Holy” by quite a bit. It’s a pretty minimal ballad with some nice work on the keys from benny and egregious profanity from Bieber in the chorus. I do like the content though, and how he delves into Bieber’s regrets in his past, especially in the second verse although I feel like he misses the point here or at least doesn’t go in-depth enough for me to fully comprehend his view on the situation. They criticised things you did as an idiot kid because they were insensitive, immoral and at some times illegal, not because you were a child. Sure, the media and the press can be antagonistic, especially to easy targets – hell, it’s worse here than in the US or Canada – but it’s not entirely clear in the short verse here that he’s not just deflecting blame onto the “haters”. I do like how he talks about the downs that come with having so much wealth and fame at a young age and no idea on what to do with it other than reckless leisure activities and raking in the fandom’s love whilst he continues to drink-drive and lose his pet monkey, which he shouldn’t have had in the first place. He also talks about how the paparazzi and Internet comment trolls viewed his pictures of him with Lyme disease and immediately assumed he was doing drugs, which can be similarly said for Chadwick Boseman, who died earlier this year due to complications related to colon cancer at age 43. Yeah, this one digs pretty deep but I still feel like it could have used a third verse, especially since while Bieber claims to cite his wife Hailey Baldwin as his “saviour” this is his third or fourth time painting himself as the “comeback” of Bieber but now a more mature man, and none of those attempts have really succeeded so this seems kind of desperate on his behalf. Sigh, the song’s fine and honestly I appreciate it for what it tries to do but it falls short here and lacks the real dagger in the heart moment personally revealing songs about fame like this should have, although I’d admit it gets close. Now for our final entry, which has considerably less to talk about...

#18 – “Chingy (It’s Whatever)” – Digga D

Produced by ItchyDaProducer

Chingy? As in “Right Thurr”, “Holidae Inn” Chingy? Huh. From one look at the chorus, it just seems to be another threat but hey, Digga D’s back. I’m not sure if anyone wanted him back but here he is. He released an album last year. This wasn’t on it. I can’t actually remember this guy at all; I assumed this was DigDat so I expected some quality – I mean, no drill lyric can beat “white like Peter, brown like Cleveland” – but no, it’s Digga D, who made a song with Russ Splash last year that got in the top 40. I remember reviewing it, I remember not thinking much of it at the time. I don’t think much of this one either although I do have to admit I really like that eerie vocal sample, even if it is completely drowned out by the drill beat and the inconsistently-censored sliding on the beat from Digga D. He uses a pretty standard drill flow here though, and the verses are little more than oddly specific gunplay and flexing. He does actually interpolate “Right Thurr” by Chingy in this pretty good and catchy chorus – which I imagine is the only reason this is in the top 20 – as well as in the second verse, where he interpolates his other biggest song which already interpolated a Vine. Sure, I guess.

Conclusion

Not as good of a week as the last, although there’s still a LOT of British hip hop here, mostly sectioned between some indie-pop clunkers. In fact, I’m going to give Glass Animals the Dishonourable Mention for “Heat Waves” while Worst of the Week goes to “You’re Mines Still” by Yung Bleu and Drake on the remix for just being a horrible song all around. Best of the Week surprises me but it’s going to Little Mix for “Happiness” because, well, at least it has some damn energy to it unlike the rest of these songs. I guess the Honourable Mention can go to “One More Time” by Not3s and AJ Tracey but even that would be stretching it. Let’s hope for some good stuff next time, maybe some of that new Gorillaz album... pretty please? Here’s the top 10 for this week:

Big gains for “What You Know Bout Love” there, which is interesting. Follow me on @cactusinthebank for Tory scum baiting and I’ll see you next week.

[shinigamikarinkurosaki-archive]

Some platonic JinKarinUru headcanons. Trans!Ururu. Hefty sides of HitsuKarin, YuzUru, UraTess, & the Kurosaki family. Double exclamations points (!!) with warnings placed before possibly upsetting headcanons.

These guys are experimental & a lot of the time Kisuke enables their curiosity. They take apart Hollow bombs– duds, thankfully, Kisuke wouldn’t give them anything live– to figure out how they tick. Ururu’s the most mechanically-minded of them so she learns very quickly how to build one herself & teaches Jinta & Karin how to build one in a pinch. Karin’s Quincy abilities flourish with these two. Jinta & Ururu are stronger than Karin, challenging her powers & her creativity. She learns how to use reishi like strings with them, allowing to lift & drag objects. Kisuke is immensely impressed by Karin’s ability. He tells her it’s an ability reminiscent to Ransoutengai, an advanced Quincy technique, & he praises Karin for her talent. 

Jinta calms down immensely with Karin. Since he & Karin frequently roughhouse, a lot of his excess energy & aggression has a channel. He & Karin respect each other as warrior immensely. Karin is one of the most capable & resourceful warriors Jinta has ever encountered, & Jinta has fostered that in Karin.

Jinta & Ururu are happy for Karin when she & Toushirou are finally together. However, they are going to make sure Toushirou treats Karin like a queen. Karin is more sensitive than she lets on. While they’d happily beat the shit out of Toushirou if he hurt Karin, he’s a lot stronger than they. There are other ways they make his life Hell, though. Jinta & Ururu let him know that his food is not beyond their reach. They let him know they know where he lives, if he’s scared there’s only so long he can go without sleep & when his guard is done they will swoop in & he will disappear. They let him know the vents are in their control, that there are travelers drugs that will put him to sleep & melt his guts. Even if they can’t do that, his reputation is in their hands. They promise Toushirou they can make any allegation they please & because it’s so soon after Aizen’s betrayal, it will be investigated. They promise him evidence isn’t hard to plant. Toushirou is successfully scared into never doing anything stupid ever.

Karin has mixed feelings about Kisuke & Tessai. On one hand, they run a really sketchy store she’s not sure of the legality of– which scares her, she doesn’t want to get mixed up in the Soul Society’s legal shit– & they’re also loyal to Ichigo, but they also enable her abilities & sometimes they tell her things about her powers, both of which Ichigo doesn’t do & doesn’t approve of. She has nothing to hold against them so figures she ought to appreciate them while she can.

!!– suicidal ideation, self injury, burns Jinta & Ururu are Karin’s main pillars of support during her depressive episode. She’s had feelings for both of them because of this, though namely Jinta since Ururu & Yuzu are into each other & it’s kinda weird to crush on your sister’s crush. She vents to Jinta & Ururu a lot, they know she wants to become a shinigami. They’re not aware of the extent of Karin’s expression until she burns a literal hole into her arm one sleepover. They understand she doesn’t want to lead a life in the World of the Living, but they didn’t quite understand how much Karin was hurting until that time. While Jinta is still supportive of Karin’s dreams & thinks becoming a shinigami will fix a lot of her depression, Ururu knows that’s not true & insists Karin stays. Ururu holds onto Karin while they’re outside so Karin doesn’t walk into the road, she tells Karin if a Hollow kills her she’ll hollowfy & lose her shinigami powers, Ururu texts Karin every night that she loves Karin & she hurts too when Karin hurts herself. Ururu’s efforts to keep Karin alive & safe are fruitless in the end. It doesn’t anger her, she’s just sad her friend is gone.

!!– dysfunctional family units Ichigo doesn’t like Jinta & Ururu. He knows about Karin’s suicidal ideation & thinks Jinta & Ururu are making het worse. When he catches them in Karin’s room, he chases them out. Jinta’s nose is broken when he tries to struggle out of Ichigo’s grip. Ichigo receives a stern warning from Kisuke when Kisuke finds out about Jinta’s broken nose very similar to Jinta & Ururus’ threat to Toushirou. Ichigo is sufficient scared, but his efforts end up having the exact opposite results as he hopes. Karin is home less & less since she’s hanging out with Jinta & Ururu who don’t want to be near Ichigo.

Karin, Jinta, & Ururu are incredibly coordinated. They discuss & practice their battle formations, they have escape routes with hidden armory in case they’re in a pinch, what to do if one of them is injured, incapacitated, or killed while they’re fighting hollows, where to meet up if they’re separated for some reason. They even have codewords & lingo for things they don’t want other people overhearing.

!!– underage drinking Jinta & Karin drink together. It’s mostly to drink Karin’s sorrows away. It’s not often & only a can of beer between them since they have to be on their toes watching out for hollows.

Karin is pro-YuzUru. She’s constantly leaving them alone together, much to neither of their chagrin. Ururu’s pretty confident around Yuzu after Karin tells her Yuzu most definitely likes her. Jinta’s kind of broken-hearted when he finds out Yuzu & Ururu get together, but he’s too happy for his sister to stay bitter long. He gets over Yuzu pretty soon after this.

!!– guns Karin helps Ururu design ways to carry her munitions discretely. They specially cut a tuba case to carry it. While Ururu worries about being asked to play when there’s not an actual tuba in there, but Karin promises Ururu no one’s going to ask that. Just to prove it, she & Ururu go out with an actual tuba in the case for a couple of weekends. She’s asked about how long she’s been playing & such, but never asked to play. Next come Ururu’s glocks. She keeps them in her school bag, but if they fall out of her bag she’s going to be criminally prosecuted & things will just snowball from there. So she & Karin design a holster & a belt to hold her guns & ammunition. Ururu’s magazines are under her undershirt wrapped around her waist with simple bands to hold them in place. The buttons on Ururu’s undershirt are actually fake & instead it’s held shut with a strip of velcro so she can easily access her magazines. Worry not, Ururu wears a tank top under this layer to keep her fake boobs a secret. Underneath Ururu’s blazer is a holster under her armpit for one of her guns that wraps around her chest & one of her shoulders so nobody sees anything dangling in there. Ururu also starts wearing ankle-length skirts so that she can wear a thigh holster for her other gun. While Ururu’s in gym class, she wears a hoodie so she can keep one of her guns on her at all times.

!!– transphobia One of the reasons Ururu carries guns everywhere is because she’s afraid someone’s going to attack her for her gender identity. While Ururu can “pass” as a cisgender girl, it’s still something she’s afraid of being discovered by the wrong people, especially since she, Jinta, & Karin aren’t on good terms with a lot of school gangs.

Karin knows about Ururu’s gender identity & Ururu eventually feels comfortable telling Jinta about it too. Both are very accepting of Ururu’s gender identity & very protective of her while they’re in the presence of transphobic comments/aggressively transphobic individuals. Ururu comes out to Yuzu next & is immensely relieved when Yuzu still loves her. Ururu is most terrified she’ll let down Kisuke & Tessai because of her gender identity. When Ururu finally gets the courage to come out to them that she’s a transwoman, thanks to Karin & Jinta’s encouragement, they tell her they already know & that Kisuke is more than happy to put her on hormones or a sex change operation.

There is nothing they wouldn’t do for each other. Because they’ve stuck together so long, they are inseparable. They don’t ask for reasons when one of them requests help, they know it’s not wanton mayhem, but they disclose everything nonetheless. The group is so cohesive because of they’ve cultivated similar worldviews thanks to their powers & fighting together so long.

Horror is a huge element in their leisure time. They go see a lot of horror movies together-- Tessai buys the tickets in cases where entrance is 18+, Karin knows Isshin would buy the tickets but Karin doesn’t want Ichigo getting wind of what she’s up to after that first debacle where he kicked Jinta & Ururu out of the house-- & share their horror manga. A favorite among them is Ju-On, another is Mr Arashi’s Freakshow. They’ve even set each other’s ringtones to their respective favorite metal songs. Ururu is deceptively demented. Karin is easily pegged as the creepiest out of them with her fatalistic humor, violent streak, & her ability to manipulate objects using reishi. Yes, Ururu likes cute things like ducklings & lip gloss & virtually anything that’s pink, but she’s by far got the strongest stomach & nerves steelier than Karin’s bordering suicidal recklessness. Ururu says it’s hard to be unnerved when they’ve defeated scarier.

Sports make up most of their training regiment. It’s more natural than sparring & exercises all the same things that need to be. They cycle through soccer, baseball, tennis, volleyball, basketball, & boxing. They do eventually move on to include hand-to-hand and weapons training, but it never quite assists their growth like sports did.

[junker-town]

And just like that, the Jets are already unraveling

Photo by Al Pereira/Getty Images

The Jets tried so hard not to be a mess. Yet, here they are.

Everything started out promisingly for New York.

The Jets led the Bills 16-0 late in the third quarter of their season opener. One prized offseason pickup, C.J. Mosley, had found the end zone after intercepting Josh Allen. The other, Le’Veon Bell, hit paydirt not long after, hauling in a 9-yard pass from rising second-year quarterback Sam Darnold. For three quarters, New York’s rebuild was right on schedule.

Then everything came crumbling down. And, like a poorly stacked Duplo mountain, continues to crumble down. The Jets fell apart over the final 20 minutes of Week 1 to allow Allen to start his season 1-0 despite committing four turnovers in the first half. And, somehow, things have gotten worse from there. Mosley, Bell, and Darnold could all miss extended time thanks to injuries and, uh, mononucleosis.

The Jets’ 2019 already feels distinctly snakebitten

Mosley, who left that opening day loss with a groin injury before the Bills could rack up 17 unanswered points, has yet to fully return to practice. Same with Quinnen Williams, the beefy defensive tackle who New York made the third overall pick of the 2019 NFL Draft. He’s out with an ankle sprain.

Bell underwent an MRI Thursday to investigate the cause of a sore shoulder that played a role in a good, not great, debut and could derail his comeback effort. Quincy Enunwa, the team’s leading receiver three seasons ago, will miss the year with a neck injury.

These are all moderate, run-of-the-mill NFL maladies. And then there’s Darnold, who will miss Week 2 with mono. New York has no timetable for his return, presumably because this is the first time anyone on the training staff has thought about mono since high school. The team is taking drastic steps to ensure he’s the only one to deal with the energy-draining virus this fall.

Darnold will be "quarantined" at his apartment until Jets' medical staff feels it's safe to expose him to rest of team. He's already lost 5 lbs.

— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) September 12, 2019

Even the healthy performers have issues. Robby Anderson, who has led the Jets in receiving the past two seasons, was the object of head coach Adam Gase’s scorn following that Week 1 defeat. Gase specifically called out his lack of effort late in New York’s comeback effort, and he’s not completely wrong:

Sam Darnold had Robby Anderson twice on the Jets' last drive. First, Darnold underthrew off backpedal and Anderson waited instead of coming back to ball. Second, Darnold just missed on an overthrow. pic.twitter.com/MlBXAjsePW

— Dan Pizzuta (@DanPizzuta) September 9, 2019

New York only needed one week to swap out kickers, canning Kaare Vedvik after he missed a field goal and extra point in a one-point loss and signing Sam Ficken — who has six career field goal attempts to his name — in his place. He’s the fourth kicker to cycle through the team’s roster since August.

Oh, and defensive tackle Nathan Shepherd, a 2018 third-round pick, is serving a six-game suspension for performance enhancing drugs.

This puts a ton of pressure on New York’s healthy players in a pivotal stretch

Suddenly, the Jets could head into a Monday Night Football showcase against the Browns — a rematch of last year’s Victory Fridge game — with Trevor Siemian handing the ball to Ty Montgomery and throwing passes to a newly acquired Demaryius Thomas. While Thomas and Siemian have history together in Denver, it’s worth nothing that Thomas’ catch rate with Siemian in the lineup was approximately seven percent lower than his career average and his yards per target mark dropped from 8.6 to 7.1, which doesn’t bode well for New York. The former All-Pro wideout is also 31 years old, coming off a torn Achilles’ suffered in 2018, and dealing with a hamstring injury that limited his preseason performance and kept him out of practice throughout his first week with the team.

The defense will still be led by Jamal Adams, who has proven to be a complete wrecking ball in the secondary. His job will only get tougher with Mosley and Williams limited and a Darnold-less offense struggling to win the time of possession battle. That’s bad news with a downright brutal schedule looming early on the schedule. Over the next six weeks, he’ll stare down Baker Mayfield, Carson Wentz, Dak Prescott, and Tom Brady (twice!) with a much-needed bye week awaiting at the end of September.

This is not what New York had planned for.

The Jets tried so hard to escape football purgatory the past two years

New York is trying. Over the past two seasons, the franchise has made major investments to rewrite the story of a team whose post-1960s glory days were a product of Rex Ryan and Mark Sanchez. The question the Jets are facing now is whether those moves were the right ones.

They paid a massive price to draft Darnold, shipping three second-round picks to Indianapolis to move up from No. 6 to No. 3 in the 2018 draft and select the USC star. That gave the Jets their first first-round QB since Sanchez and showed the team had learned its lesson by trying to force later picks on half-formed passers like Christian Hackenberg and Bryce Petty. It also cleared the Colts to jump-start their own rebuild by gleaning players like Braden Smith, Quenton Nelson, Kemoko Turay, and Jordan Wilkins from the picks they received in that year’s draft, all of whom would have looked good in green and white.

The team offset that lack of draft capital by spending big in free agency last spring, but its two biggest signings, Bell and Mosley, lasted one week before showing up on the injury report. A third major target, Vikings four-time Pro Bowl linebacker Anthony Barr, agreed to terms in New York before ultimately reneging on the deal and staying in Minnesota.

Firing Todd Bowles after a 24-40 tenure appeared to be a smart move, but the club followed that up by hiring Gase, who had just been fired by a directionless Dolphins team. One of Gase’s first headlines as a Jet — at least one of the first not related to his eyes holding the intense gaze of a defeated Soviet diplomat — was to reportedly criticize the Bell signing. General manager Mike Maccagnan wasn’t around to defend it; he was fired in May, long after the draft and the league’s busiest portion of the free agent period had passed.

While Williams has been a hit both on and off the field, the rest of the Jets’ 2019 draft class has underwhelmed. Jachai Polite, who was selected in the third round, didn’t play a single game with Gang Green and racked up more than $100,000 in fines before earning his release. Only one other rookie — fifth-round linebacker Blake Cashman — made it into the box score in Week 1.

The Jets tried so hard to escape the fate they’d written themselves into throughout the 2010s, but the football gods have no interest in letting them escape their orbit of mediocrity. New York brought out its highest-caliber ammunition to shoot its shot the past two seasons, but the outcome on the field hasn’t changed.

Some of that can be traced back to questionable decisions and overspending to find the high-profile players Maccagnan wanted. Others, like a damn mononucleosis diagnosis, are a shakedown from an uncaring universe that’s made New York a prime target for its bullying. Well-constructed teams can break that cycle. That’s what the Jets want to be.

After Week 1’s come-from-ahead loss, they’re not there yet.

[maychorian]

Weekly Voltron Fic Recs #26

Rules: You can find past weekly rec lists here, and non-list recs in my general fic rec tag. This is stuff I like, and I have a huge bias toward Lance, hurt/comfort, and general fluff, in that order. Gen unless otherwise noted. Please comment on the fics if you read and enjoy them!

I’m gonna try to get back to doing these on Friday nights. Warning: Lots of hurt!Lance this time. There was plenty to choose from in the gen category, so of course my biases got heavy play. I had a good time, but this list will be even more unbalanced than usual.

Also, it has now been officially half a year of weekly rec lists, though I’ve actually been doing it longer than that, since it keeps being more than a week between each one. The title is a lie. But I am still pretty proud of myself. I thought I would get bored and quit doing these a long time ago, but I haven’t.

As Color Fades Away by IcyPanther Words:  7,615 (WIP 2/?) Author’s Summary:  "They either surrender the Black Lion to us, or we will kill the Paladin we've captured in the most painful way possible. They will hear his screams and they will come. They would not so easily abandon one of their own. And then the Black Lion will be yours. Should the ploy fail... well, then there will be one less Paladin in existence." No pairings, major whumpage, Langst My Comments: Starting the list right off with my biases. I don’t quite agree with the Keith characterization in this one, and the woobie is pretty strong, but it’s very well-written and there is the promise of LOTS of delicious hurt/comfort down the road, so I’m in it to win it.

Lance Makes a Space Sandwich by ArcaneAdagio Words: 3,999 Author's Summary: Lance goes through an galaxy space quest to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, dragging along an unwilling Hunk and Pidge. Will they be able to make their sandwich? Can they survive? Will Lance stop making terrible guns and finger gunning at the same time? Will they learn about the power of friendship? (Spoilers: the answer to the last two questions are 'no.') My Comments: Garrison Trio! How I love them! Very fun and cute action fic. (Also PB&J is divine, how dare you question it.)

you were never on your own by derheck Words: 1,763 Author's Summary: Lance knew how to throw damn good parties. And that’s what they all needed. A damn good party. And what better reason to throw a damn good party than to celebrate everyone’s favorite green paladin growing one year older? Better yet- it wasn’t just going to be a party. He was going all out. He was going to throw Pidge a fucking space quinceañera. My Comments: So cuuuute. Love Lance being supportive of his teammates, and especially doing something nice for Pidge, daww. She deserves a big ol’ party, for sure.

Pieces of Cake by Cardigan_Quincy Words: 2,990 Author's Summary: It's Pidge's birthday, and the team is determined to make it a great day. Meanwhile on Earth and in a Galra prison camp, two other characters hold their own private birthday celebrations for her.(Just a one-shot. Pre-S2. Feminine pronouns for Pidge. ~Quincy) My Comments: Much sadder than the last fic, but also feels very true to the characters. Pidge’s family is definitely the most splintered of the paladins’ and it’s sad to think about the people who aren’t there for her birthday because they can’t be. But they remember each other, in the sweetest and most poignant way.

A Song of Storm and Ice by BreakTheDawn Words: 20,565 (WIP 3/?) Author's Summary: Quintessence.It's the basis of everything right? Integral to the very nature of Voltron. They all have it, it means something for all of them, regardless of whether or not they realize it. So would it not follow that they should learn how to use it?AkaThe Voltron team goes to undertake an ancient training program to learn more about their Lions and themselves, and of course shit happens. My Comments: Actually a sequel to a previously recced fic, so you might want to read that one first, but this one is super good, too. Much more of an ensemble feel, though still a bit of a focus on Lance. And the worldbuilding in this one slays. So many cool ideas. Can’t wait to see what happens, and it’s updating a LOT, with very long chapters. My idea of a good time.

The Garden of Heaven by Genesister (papirini) Words: 75,271 (WIP 16/?) Author's Summary: From the void of space to the heart of a deeply-buried secret of the Galra Empire, the search for Shiro leads Keith on a voyage that he never expected, wanted - or realized he needed. Its just a question of whether he can escape, when its all over - or whether he will even want to. Tags will be added as the work proceeds. My Comments: I haven’t finished reading what’s available on this one yet, but this fic is AMAZING. Absolutely incredible worldbuilding for the Galra. Mind the tags, but don’t let them intimidate you. Keith gets thrown into a very horrifying and terrifying situation against his will, but as the story goes on you find that it’s about just another group of unique misfits learning to get along and find family in each other. The twist I just read left me utterly breathless, and as soon I finish this list I’m gonna get back to reading the story. AWESOME fic. This kind of stuff is why I just don’t bother with published fiction anymore. I can find far more satisfying and interesting stuff for free on the internet.

Just Remember by BleuSarcelle Words: 1,646 Author's Summary: Lance screams and shouts and curses. He lets it all out. He lets his words and shouts echo around as he falls to his knees in the middle of the training room. He hiccups as sobs shake his body. He doesn't bother to wipe away his tears, he lets them fall to the ground and stain the mat below him.He curses loudly and lividly for every part of him that makes him feel unworthy. He weakly punches the mat as he whimpers and his shoulders lose their strength. My Comments: Short but sweet fic about Lance fighting bad self-talk with the truth. I’ve been there.

Capsaicin by phoenixyfriend Words: 6,235 Author's Summary: Lance was captured by the Galra. He was more useful alive than dead, but was notorious for being difficult to interrogate, so the Galra turned to poison. It was... less than successful. My Comments: This is really funny, and really fun. Very mild Lance whump, but I mean, they tried. They tried very hard.

Lance by RandomShmoe Words: 1,482 Author's Summary: First and Second Day working on Camp NaNoWriMo stuff. It is focused on Lance...hence the title. My Comments: Another nice little fic about Lance coping healthily with his problems. The Shiro and Lance interaction was so cute it gave me a toothache.

the purest expression of grief by ohmygodwhy Words: 15,874 Author's Summary: By the time he walks through the Garrison doors, he is bone from going hungry and muscle from fighting and stone from surviving. He keeps his guard up and his teeth bared and sleeps with his knife under his pillow and tears through their exams and their simulations with the ferocity of the need to know more, to do more, to fly. or: keith fights, because that's what he does, and has always watched the stars My Comments: Can be read as Sheith or gen. Absolutely fantastic character study of Keith and how much Shiro means to him, and I loved how Keith made friends with everyone in the second chapter. Very much how I see it working for him: slow, halting, but utterly sincere.

Shifting Sands by Cardigan_Quincy Words: 11,399 (WIP 4/?) Author's Summary: Lance picked himself up from the floor gingerly, testing his muscles before putting too much weight on them. Nothing seemed injured, aside from a few aches that would likely become a nice collection of bruises by tomorrow morning. But considering how hard Blue had fallen, Lance felt lucky. Blue was less lucky. --- Lance is stranded on a desert planet, injured and captured by someone who will go to any lengths to get their hands on the Black Lion. Fortunately or otherwise, he's not alone. (Updated weekly ~Quincy) My Comments: MMM, boy, this is some GOOD hurt/comfort! Starts with Lance alone, but doesn’t stay that way. I’m really glad he has someone there to support him, less glad that they are going through some awful stuff. Okay, I lied, I like it when Lance (and the others) go through awful stuff. But I am still hoping for rescue soon, please.

It's Getting Darker But I'll Carry On by CamsthiSky Words: 4,285 (WIP 3/?) Author's Summary: "This could not be happening. Of course he’d be with the one idiot who didn't know that once a zombie found you, there weren’t many ways to get it off your trail—and hiding in an abandoned house wasn't one of them. How was this guy even still alive right now?" My Comments: Zombie AU that starts off with sniper!Lance rescuing Keith? Yes, please. Fantastic start, and I love the roles everyone is falling into in this AU. Looking forward to more. They need to find Shiro. (Isn’t THAT just the constant refrain of this fandom, though.)

the stars watch over you by psyraah for rednight16 Words: 1,239 Author's Summary: Shiro is bone weary, worn down, and battered, yet sleep evades him. But a gentle moment amongst new friends eases the constant disquiet in his heart, at least for now. My Comments: This is so soft and lovely and nice. Thace and Ulaz should have stuck around longer in the show, for real.

Trust Fall by kyanve Words: 2,330 Author's Summary: Lance decides to try to prove that he's just as capable of getting Blue to come get him as Keith has been at playing Space Fetch with Red. Blue may be less temperamental than Red, but Blue can also be a troll enough to make up for it. My Comments: Lance is an idiot, but Blue loves him anyway. This feels very, very canon.

After Me Comes the Flood by Qpenguin98 Words: 25,111 Author's Summary: The interior of this ship is cold and boring. The Galran soldiers that try to bond with you are cold and boring. Zarkon is cold and boring. You are sick of being cold and bored. A story following the Red Lion. My Comments: Endgame Klance, established Red/Blue. Really interesting and lovely view of Keith and the rest of the team through a personified Red. I love the sense of history with the lions, and the trauma and turmoil that everyone has to work through.

Taking One For The Team by ShiningRegalia Words: 18,284 (WIP 6/?) Author's Summary: A mission gone wrong lands Lance and Pidge in a dangerous situation. When communication with the rest of the team is compromised, they have to take drastic measures to escape. Pidge can only hope that they get out before things get worse and one of them breaks. Especially Lance. My Comments: Holy fudge, this is some great hurt/comfort, too, this time with Lance and Pidge. Protective!Lance turns on all the lights in my house, and Pidge gets protective right back. The situation gets really bad, really fast, but they both do everything they can to take care of each other and get them out. They’ll be okay as long as they have each other.

Do You Wanna Build a Voltron? by phoenixyfriend Words: 10,558 Author's Summary: Lance woke up to a room full of frost, and proceeded to panic. Just a little. Just a smidgen. Just enough to refuse to leave his room until Hunk promised to go get Coran so there was a competent adult helping them figure out this mess.According to Blue, humans were very fragile, and needed all the help they could get. Blue could provide a lot of help, and this was a perfect solution, in her eyes. My Comments: Really cute and fun exploration of Lance getting full-on Elsa powers. An enjoyable read from start to finish.

We'll Just Have to Wing It by peasantlysurprised Words: 2,798 Author's Summary: or alternatively titled "The Space Power Rangers Try to Figure Out If Shiro Has a Natural Winged Eyeliner Look Going On Because He's Fly Like That or Not and End Up Failing" My Comments: I think I missed reccing this fic back when I first read it because I wasn’t making weekly lists at the time, but someone reminded me of it and I’m super glad they did. Very fun team fic with the younger paladins trying to stay up all night to catch Shiro and find out the truth.

what's needed by eugyne (AreteNike) Words: 2,704 Author's Summary: The one time Shiro gives everything to his team... and the five six times they give it back. My Comments: Absolutely FANTASTIC Post-S2 story with Shiro actually getting the support he needs, omg, I love it so much.

Gate Keeper by MoonlitPaladin (MoonlitStardust) for cupcakelevi Words: 30,297 (WIP 7/?) Author's Summary: Lance is an author, known for his fantasies driven by dynamic and imaginative heroes, and yet no matter how much popularity and success he gains, it's not enough. He doesn't feel like he belongs anywhere and he pours himself into his work, pausing only when he gets a strange postcard in the mail with no return address and a portrait of Scotland."Light filters o’er the pass as the Keeper returns."On an adventure the likes of which only he could have written, Lance learns the true meaning of family and that there's a thin line between fantasy and reality. My Comments: Tagged Klance, but so far it’s about the plot and the worldbuilding. Really interesting Fantasy AU, and I’m totally hooked. Everything feels really deep and well thought-out. Again, this is why I don’t need published fiction.

Nails by BlueRoboKitty Words: 3,435 Author's Summary: Barely weeks after the events of S2, Lance decides to break Keith out of a bad habit and ends up creating a confrontation he's not sure he's prepared to deal with. My Comments: I love fics where Lance just can’t HELP being a caregiver and he HAS to save Keith from himself because can you believe him, can you believe his terrible habits. And if it helps them find some understanding and get to know each other better, well, I’m ALL FOR IT.

The Tide by Zurela Words: 4,116 Author's Summary: Lance doesn't know whether or not he can trust Keith to have his back. But now that he's stuck under a tree, with broken bones, and on the verge of drowning, it seems he might not have a choice. My Comments: Yet another flavor of hurt!Lance, this time with Keith along for the ride. This one hit the spot.

Piecing the World Back Together by Zurela Words: 7,929 Author's Summary: The Galra have taken control of the ship again. Only this time, they've brought a druid. And Lance is the only one in the castle. And he's not doing so good. Oh boy, this is bad. My Comments: Mild Klance, but mostly about Lance dealing with things alone until his team can come. I love love love Lance’s breakdown in this one, because it was awful and heartbreaking but it wasn’t over the top, and everyone was able to respond right away and tell him that his bad thoughts about himself weren’t true. And he was heroic too, my dear blue boy. Great fic.

familiar by achieving elysium (Ogygia) Words: 40,874 (13/?) Author's Summary: Altean!Lance AU.The only one who remembers the fall of Altea, Lance struggles to find a place in a band of misfits he will never fully trust. Secrets aren't the only thing on the rise; on the other side of the battlefield is Zarkon, someone Lance once saw as a brother and now his greatest enemy. But Voltron has always protected the universe, and the Blue Paladin won't stop now. My Comments: Finally, an Altean!Lance AU I can rec with no reservations. This is a really interesting and different take on Lance, with him being a veteran, technically much, much older than everyone else on the crew, and dealing with a whole ton of trauma and trust issues. Some secrets came out in the recent chapter that really have me salivating for more.

Home by Zurela Words: 7,385 Author's Summary: The members of Voltron have noticed that Lance has been behaving suspiciously lately, and make some assumptions. Well, all except one. My Comments: Lance is such a DARLING in this one. Gah, I love him.

He is the Heart by aurumdalseni (kyo_chan) Words: 2,479 Author's Summary: Hunk is the paladin that helps hold them all up, but sometimes he needs to be reminded just how much he's cared about in return. [A "Five Times Kissed" ficlet (gen/non romantic)] My Comments: Hunk appreciation! YESSS. I love everyone’s different ways of showing how much they love Hunk.

Blue and Blood by kimuracarter Words: 2,773 Author's Summary: The team rescues Lance from the clutches of the Galra. My Comments: Heartbreaking, but very well-written. This is one of those fics that I read more than once. Maybe more than twice. Very id fic for me.

Previously Recced Fics That Updated:

Blue and Bruised by DizzyBunnies Masks by TiedyedTrickster Handbook of Demonology by squirenonny for Pechat (absolutely BALLER chapter) Truce by kyanve Love and Other Questions by squirenonny Little Lions by MidnightCreator A Dream Away by BossToaster (ChaoticReactions) Out of Phase by LittleWhiteTie Lost in the Stars by WingedChickadee I'm not the Lance You think I am by KairaKara101 Stardust, Silk and Steel by CalicoTomcat

[27atheist]

sleep living                                                                            The question of where we all go when we fall asleep will be answered here. I will have to lay a rather lengthy background of work here for you to get a better understanding of what is happening to you. I will start with what has been going on around me in my awake life since 1960 c.e. You'd best be able to understand this if you are around a wishing machine, a.k.a. an audio amplifier of any kind. You should also know that even though I've erased a lot of the next things you will read here in my awake life a good portion of this still goes on in my sleep, sharing this is a big way to erase it further.      In November of 1963 I was taken inside of a black man’s mind the night before John F. Kennedy was to drive through downtown Dallas in his motorcade. The best description of inside of his mind I can give you is that seeing everything he does, feels, and goes in a future time at a higher rate of speed than the time you are in  but not what he’s thinking is what it’s like. My parents helped take me outside of his mind, but we lost memory of it. I saw the grassy knoll shooter the next day. It was the black man who took me inside of his mind the night before. He hadn’t counted on me being taken outside of his mind. I told the people around me what I saw but wasn’t believed. He wasn’t caught. When I went home, I was taken inside the mind of a doppelganger(this guy doesn't actually look like me which is nobody remembers it when it's me going through what he went through in front of them when I was taken inside of his mind)this time. The man told he if I kept living, he would make me think I was always in trouble, so I’d never be happy. My parents helped take me outside of the mind again. I told them Dede was somehow in the life I saw inside of the mind.   She came over the next day. I told her what I saw. She was then taken inside of the mind of the same doppelganger. She said this is just not to be done and asked me what lead me to be taken inside the mind(she wondered if I asked to go inside in order to change my vision because of me trying to as a janitor in the future after I’d gone through it ). I told her I didn't do it on purpose but was taken inside of his mind involuntarily. She went outside of its mind. We identified the grassy knoll shooter, currently known as badge man, as Ralph Lee Grant. She had me put in the VA hospital to deal with it even though I was at such a young age. After a few days there the doppelganger who took me inside of his mind went to my Aunt Dee and a traffic signal supervisor named Harry Gibson. He told them a pack of lies yet they both believed him. Aunt Dee and Harry came to the VA. She told me there was a guy who said it was his vision and I wasn’t supposed to have it. I knew already that I wasn't supposed to have it and I was taken inside the mind deliberately on that guys part, it was his mind Ralph put me inside because I had been taken outside of Ralph's mind the night before he shot JFK when I complained to my parents about being inside of his mind. She said I couldn’t be at the VA anymore because it was his vision, that I interrupted him when he was having it and he had it all erased so I wouldn’t go through any of it and that Harry was giving me a ride home. I had enough memory to know that they were being lied to, I wanted to ask her since she was so new to the family what gave her the right to mess with my life by her and a stranger named Harry pulling me from where I rightfully belonged as this is my life not theirs but could do nothing about it since I was only around three years old. On the way home I began crying and complaining about it but was afraid Harry would spank me. He never laid a hand on me but was briefly impatient with me (not in a harsh way) crying before he settled down. He soon began to realize he and my aunt had been duped as they were both asleep when they had pulled me out of there. He then said I’ll tell you what, to avoid going through it you just don't come to work for the traffic signal department when you get older and grabbed my hand and said let's shake on it. I took my hand away and said by taking me out of there you did nothing but damn well guarantee I'd be coming to work there in the future and go through it. He said that’s a lot of big talk coming from such a little boy but we’re going to lose our memories of this before we could go back and said he’d do his damndest to help me in the future. I did share it with him later that’s how he knew this and he went everywhere he could to help me as my Aunt dee did as well. Dede (Clare Wilson who owned a 62-acre farm in the Forestgrove area of McKinney) was also my step grandmother Alice who lived in the Pleasantgrove area of Dallas on Hillburn in a sleep life, was pissed that they went behind her back and took me out of the VA since she was the one who put me there. She knew that badge man a.k.a. Ralph Lee Grant sent that guy to pull me out of there. Her roommate Eula Jean Miller is also a nurse named Francis Wasserman, Hannah Harper an adult film actress, and Regina Kram a girl in my Range Group squadron at Nellis Air Force Base 1979-1981 in her sleep lives.(That same doppelganger showed up again when I was nine years old had mom sit in the front passenger seat of her 57 Chevy and I sit in the backseat while he drove. I asked him who he was and where he was taking us. He said he was me from the future and that he was taking me to the police station because I went outside of his mind and was still living. We didn't make it there. We got into a wreck where the car rolled over as we weren't wearing seatbelts. From that point I blacked out and woke up at home with no memory of it until around 2001). We lost memory of it. Not long after this I woke up one morning to go to breakfast. My mother, Leigh Dell, said after I had gone to bed the night before a Fort Worth police officer named Phil T. Coker came to visit to ask me questions about what I saw at the Kennedy assassination. They had gone to wake me up and found I wasn't in bed. They determined I was that police officer in a sleep life. They thought they had been able to keep me as that police officer instead of  a little boy but were disappointed when I came to breakfast. I didn’t know what in the Hell she was talking about. She said she would try again by contacting Phil by phone when I went to bed that night but said she could not guarantee keeping me as Phil would be impossible because they themselves were asleep   In February 1964 my grandmother on my mother’s side who I called Beebe (Obera Alice Morton Langford/Naomi, creator of all living and the universe) died. In December of that year she was born as my cousin Michele to my Uncle Bill and Aunt Dee in another sleep life. Across the street from where I lived on Tolosa, I had a friend named Greg who's left arm was deformed with only two fingers. His very pretty mom was Dede also in another sleep life, she looked just like her future self as Judy Bergman. My brother Ronny (John Lennon) and I were babysat by a lady named Mrs. Crosby. She had a son who was the eldest named Mike, a middle daughter named Bonnie (she always called me freckleface strawberry) and the youngest daughter my age named Sarah, Sarah was also Dede in another sleep life. When I enrolled in the first grade at Casaview Elementary in 1967 we then had a live-in babysitter named Claudia. She was around 15 years old and had a 4-year-old sister named Tammy and a 1 or 2-year-old brother named Goober. In January 1968 we moved to Piedmont Apartments on Prichard near my grandmother Alice. We were walking distance from her. Across the street was San Jacinto Elementary school where I finished the first grade and made a new best friend named Wayne. He was my age and he was also my uncle Bill in a sleep life. He lived in the apartment above us with his parents. In the second grade Wayne was in my class also. so was a bastard named Peanuts and his thug friend Rocky (Not Rocky from Range Group). There was a pretty girl in my class named Debby who could sing well. A lady named Snaggletooth moved across from Wayne. She had a son about 1 or 2 years old named Gary. we called him Gary Peanuts, not because he was bad but because we all thought Snaggletooth was Peanuts mom. We sprayed Gary’s diaper with a water bottle when we were outside playing. His bitch mother Snaggletooth spanked him because she thought he wet himself. We tried to tell her what really happened, but she threatened to hit us.In March 1969 my sister Susan (Lisa Marie Presley) was born. In the summer of that year we had to move to a house to accommodate her. We moved to a corner house on Comer in Pleasantgrove. Our neighbors next door, the Fields had two daughters. One named Sondra who was 15, was Dede in another sleep life. The other was Linda who was a year older than me. Her parents were Joe and Liz. Joe was Uncle Rudd in a sleep life. We lived on the corner house. At the corner house down on the other end I made a best friend named Jerry Coffman. He was my cousin Tommy in a sleep life. I entered the third grade at John Quincy Adams. My homeroom teacher was Mrs. Monroe. There was a girl named Sheila in my drama class who could sing well. She looked exactly like Debby from second grade. I suspected she was both but never said anything about it probably out of fear of being ridiculed. When I entered the fourth grade there, I made a new best school friend named Robert Giles. I followed what he would do. He took a girl in our class named Regina Beck to his house one day to visit (we were too young to know about sex so that’s not what it was about). I decided to do the same. When we got inside, I asked her if she felt weird being inside another house. She said yes then she said she was inside of her own house. She meant she was my mother. She was Leigh Dell in a sleep life. I made another friend named Bruce. He got a pair of dress shoes that had pointed toes on it like cowboy boots. He said they were the same kind of shoes movie stars wore. I accidentally gave him a bloody nose one day. He wanted to fight me after school, but I didn't show up. When I came to school the next day the fight that wasn't was reported to the principal. Bruce took me to the principal's office, hugged me and told the principal we made up so we wouldn't get in trouble.In the late part of my fourth-grade year in April of 1971, we moved to a new 3-bedroom house in Mesquite on 3323 Townpark. Ronny and I were enrolled in a school called I.N. Range Elementary. The students already started treating me in a rude manner holding their nose when I came around them. After the summer was over, I entered the fifth grade in the same school. My teacher there was an old man named George Turpin. I completed the fifth grade. I had joined the boy scouts, and, in the summer, I spent a week at boy scout camp at Lake Texoma. Mike Crosby was in my troop, but I denied being the same Ricky saying it was my cousin because I was embarrassed about it. I enrolled in the sixth grade. There was a girl in my class named Debbie who was an avid fan of motorcycles. This was Dede in a sleep life. I had to attend a fourth grade English class because my grades weren't so good in English the previous year. The teacher there was out so a substitute took her place. Her name was Mrs. Willoughby, she was young and pretty, she came in memory and said I was looking at my cousin Dede as she looked when she was a young girl. She told me I would need to share my memories in the future but wouldn't hear the instructions do to programmed voices and other verbal distractions. She said she could tell that I would be seeing her in the future. I asked her since I couldn't hear the instructions could she write them on a piece of paper and hold it up so I could see them she did this but when I got to the future I could not only not see what was on the paper but had been thought controlled to think that she was taunting me with a picture that a fellow student, an avid artist named Amy, had drawn. We lost memories of this incident. She helped me do better in English and sent me back to sixth grade English at the 4th (lowest level). I completed the sixth grade. We had a family friend who was a Shriner named Bill Lewis who took Dad and I fishing out on his boat one Saturday at Lake Ray Hubbard.My parents split up. We moved four different times the next school year, so Ronny and I went to four different schools. After this we moved with Mom and her new boyfriend Ray to Phoenix. I made a new best friend named Elton Eveningred. This was my cousin Tommy in his sleep. Ronny made a female friend from his 7th grade class, a tomboy named Leslie. She came in memory and looked at me and said you’re mine. I didn't know what she meant then, but she was Dede in a sleep life and knew things Dede would know. We lost memory. She was my first and only slow dance. I moved back to Texas after a run-in with Ray that was instigated by my sister. I had to live with my grandmother Alice because my stepmother Judy (Priscilla Presley) didn't like me after I told her I didn't love her when dad had her as a live in. Her youngest son, Matthew, was Uncle Rudd in a sleep life. I enrolled for the rest of the eighth grade at John. B. Hood junior high. The blacks were being bussed to that school from oak cliff. They were one hundred octillion times worse than any of the kids at I.N. Range Elementary. For the summer I went back to Phoenix to spend it with mom and Ray. They then moved back to Texas and rented a house on 810 Wandering Way. I enrolled at Allen high school. I was in the ninth grade with my cousin Tommy since he and his three sisters lived with Dede after their mother died in 1971. I joined the high school band. Tommy was in it as a trombone player, his sister Kim was a cornet player and my brother Ronny in it as a baritone player. I myself was a trumpet player. Kim and Ronny were in the eighth grade but because Allen was such a small town, a population of 5000 at that time we were all in the same band class. The female drum major, a saxophone player, was a sexy blonde named Peggy Herbold. This was Dede in a sleep life. There was a baritone saxophone player named Donna Rodenbaugh. She was in her junior year. she was my mother Leigh dell in a sleep life. There was a guy named Timothy Walker in my math class. I enrolled in Spanish class. The pretty teacher, a girl in her early twenties was named Celia Claycomb. She was Dede in a sleep life.Ronny and I made friends with two brothers several blocks from where we lived named Rusty and Tommy Duncan. Rusty was a year older than his brother. In October of 1975 all of Allen High School and my family came in memory of all of this. The Allen Eagle band went to the State Fair of Texas. I had evidently sent copies of what I wrote in 2001 to members of the band I remembered in my sleep and had no memory of it. When Tommy introduced me to the members of the band as his cousin at the Parade of Champions (High school band competition) they then began deriding me saying I was a religious nut who went around praying for things like TV shows and movies and losing memory. They then said I was in a lot of trouble for pulling pranks on them. I had no idea what they were talking about and thought they were hazing me because I was new in town and a freshman. They said I lost memory. They showed what I had sent them to Tommy. It mentioned that incident and what they were doing to me. He asked them how I would already know any of that in that document before then if it weren't true. After a few minutes of talking to them they came in memory and were happy I had shared it with them. I was relieved and happy that I did something that spectacular although I didn't know exactly what it was yet. Eric Vita the lead trumpet player and town doctor’s son said he was going to take me somewhere to inspire me. I didn't know whether he meant because I had an inherited talent of drawing from my grandmother on my mother’s side or something else. I then began to believe they were going to haze me and if they did, I had every intention of leaving the fair to hitchhike back home but it wasn’t that. He paid my way into the butterfly garden. There I came in memory of all the way from that time to my life in 2013 where I went to the state fair with the VA and came in memory of that in 1975. My memory of this was gone by the time I got home. One day everyone came in memory again. A family friend named Dan Kelly told me to always call myself Ricky and to call my cousin Kim, Tommy's oldest sister Patricia. As she was Patricia Hamilton in a sleep life whom I would meet at the VA when I got older. She was put through what I was but differently since she is a woman. Sometime later Tommy had me sit at the table with him when he was asking me to ruin things in my life because I was still alive and in memory in the future, leading me to believe I was in trouble for the wrong things going on around me because I went inside the mind and I was a vision and that I would be going to hell for all of this. Before long we were stopped by our band teacher Charles Barton saying hey you two, you need to stop what you’re doing right this instant, Ricky doesn’t realize this is being done to his life in the present and the future and it’s not good. I got mad at Tommy and asked him would do something like that to me, you’re my favorite male cousin and I trusted you. He said he had no idea he was doing it because he was asleep and Ralph Lee Grant, Robert Earl Truckenmiller, and Tonya Ann Clifton had tricked him into it as well. When I came in memory of this in the future I was mad at Tommy for tricking me to the table like that but it would take many years for me to realize Robert Truckenmiller and Tonya Clifton were doing this to me while Tommy was in sleep and he didn’t know it. I spent the night there hoping we could change it in our sleep since they said I was sharing this in my sleep at that time. Tommy woke up in the morning and said that guy wouldn't let us change it. He was referring to Ralph Grant who as I’m now writing this, he keeps saying mess it up very few minutes. He has been doing this to me for several years. We had another meeting at the table that morning but with Dede present and made sure she and Tommy were awake and aware of where they were as I already was awake. I learned a peace sign had been placed in the back of my neck near the base of my skull. It resembles part of a jack (like the ones little girls play with) but with only three prongs. It was placed there by Robert Truckenmiller and Tonya Clifton and was invisible to medical equipment. They were using that to control me. I said to Dede and Tommy how would that go over if I tried telling that to the doctors at the VA hospital or the fact that they placed their electronics inside of me (I’ll get to that later). Tommy’s response that I wasn’t afraid of telling police officers in Biloxi that I was a recovering amnesia victim lobotomized by the KGB (I’ll be at that one later also). I asked if it could be removed. They said my mother Leigh Dell (I recently remembered she was Eve, Ashley’s[Lilith in the Bible] replacement, she is also Debbie Harry of Blondie) replacement for Adam(Uncle Rudd) would be able to remove it. We did our best to correct the wrongs but were hindered on a lot of other things beyond our control. There I came in memory of being my own grandfather, Charles on my mother’s side of the family and I was impressed with my grandchildren. I said I told those three assholes (Robert Truckenmiller, Tonya Clifton, and Ralph Grant [especially Ralph Grant]) I’d come back, now it’s time to haunt their treasonous asses. I had died several years before I was born. Dede was from my mother's side of the family, she then said she now remembered it because when her Uncle Charles said he was Ricky the whole family thought he was nuts. We lost memory of it as did everyone else. I had told my daughter, Leigh Dell (Now my mother) all about this, when I would die that I wouldn't be around her as her son. She was upset because she thought I would always be around. She wanted to know who Susan was (my sister/her daughter who had instigated the run ins I had with Ray and caused a miscommunication that caused me to move out on her when I was an adult). I also told her back then I would be making a big change to music as Elvis Presley, but she wouldn't know it was me. Leigh Dell came by that evening after school and put both of her index fingers horizontally and tips touching each other on the back of the neck and made me recite some sort of oath of which the words I now remember “I will always be in pornography, I will always write it down and share it anyway I can and I will not commit suicide”. After I said these words, I felt something leave the back of my neck. Unfortunately, while I was asleep, Robert Truckenmiller and Tonya Clifton through Ralph Grants direction put it back in there.After the bicentennial we moved back to Arizona to the town of Glendale. Our neighbors across the street, John and Betty Smelcer had three kids. Bobby, a year older than me, a sexy girl my age named Gloria (This was Dede in another sleep life), and a boy Ronny's age named Rusty (This was Uncle Rudd in a sleep life). I enrolled in the tenth grade at Tolleson Union High School. Ronny, Rusty and I joined Marine JROTC. Ronny and Rusty were in a different school for freshmen and had two senior ncos for instructors. I had the senior marine jrotc instructor for last period in what was the state's first coed class. My instructor, Lt. Colonel Friedrich was Tommy in a sleep life. The class squad leader was a senior named Maurice O’Brien Marx. He was very influential over me as I followed a lot of things he said and did. We also had a cadet lieutenant for an assistant instructor. I only knew him as Lieutenant. I think he was a junior. He married a cadet gunnery sergeant who was in her senior year. For the summer he went in the air force. There was a beautiful blonde girl who would frequently sit beside me on the bus to go home after school. Her name was Debby. A guy down the block named Bob was given an old Corvair for his birthday by his mother. There was a guy in my class who looked exactly like Mark Sandy from Allen High School but under a different name. He lived a few blocks away from me, so I paid him a visit after school one day. I told him he looked like a guy named Mark Sandy from my last school. He came in memory of being Mark Sandy and told me when I would leave from there to go home, he wouldn't be there. I left not remembering this or why. After the school year ended in 1977, I went to spend the summer with my father Richard. He put me in my own apartment across the street from his. After Elvis Presley died while I was asleep (I didn't know he was me) I stopped calling myself Ricky, instead Rick, made a poor decision not to go back to Arizona with my mother and became less disciplined than I had been in marine jrotc. I enrolled for my junior year at Skyline High School in Dallas. The teachers began calling me Richard because I couldn't write nick names on the enrollment form. I joined Army jrotc for my second period after study hall. There was a girl in my class who was a cadet officer who was Dede in a sleep life. For my third period I took world history. The teacher was Coach Wickman. For my fourth period I took English. My teacher was a pretty blonde named Cynthia Miller. She was Dede in a sleep life. There was a guy in my class there who looked exactly like Timothy Walker from my freshman class at Allen. This was him under a different name and in a different sleep life. I didn't say anything to him about it and thought it was a coincidence. For my last class of the day I enrolled in a carpentry cluster. The teacher there was a man named Dale Henry who lived in the upscale neighborhood of Lake Highlands. He looked like and was my stepfather Raymond Shorb in a sleep life. There was a guy in the class who became my best friend. His name was Mark Sandmann. This was my father Richard, who was also Adam West in a sleep life. I briefly worked for a Burger King on John West and Buckner Blvd. One of the employees there was Maurice Marx under a different name in a sleep life. He also worked for Southwestern Bell telephone company. I dropped school in February of 1978, got a G.E.D. and went on active duty in the Airforce. I completed basic training in late April. I was sent to Keesler AFB in Biloxi for ground radio school. For the first six weeks I went to basic electronic training at Allee Hall. The senior student in the class was a staffsergegent who cross trained into computer training from being a security policeman. He was Goober in a sleep life. After finishing I was transferred to Jones Hall for my radio training. During the seventh course, which was right after basic electronics training, Bob Crane was murdered while I was asleep. I didn't know I was me. It caused me to not care and fail the eighth course because I thought a girl named Judy Bergman who was Dede in a sleep life had been transferred to Washington and I’d never get to know her. There was a girl who was a green rope in the squadron named Connie Geistfield. She was Leigh Dell in a sleep life. The green rope assigned to the bay I lived in named John Redman had a beautiful blonde girlfriend from the same squadron. This was Debby from Tolleson in a sleep life. I made friends with a guy who had been transferred from our squadron to a permanent party squadron after he finished radio school. His name was Kenneth Bell from North Carolina. He was Coach Wickline in a sleep life. I also Made friends with his friend Mark Cavanaugh. He was a radio technician also and had been assigned to the same squadron as Kenneth after finishing school in my squadron. After completing school, I arrived at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas in a squadron called Range Group for my first assignment. My new roommate was a guy named Scot Ciminilo. The guy in the room next to mine, Bret Thomas was dad in a sleep life, hanging around him caused my attitude to sink since he was down on everyone in the squadron as I was a naive seventeen year old, therefore I stopped caring about my military career and appearance when wearing my uniform(I wasn't on drugs or alcohol although I would occasionally drink a beer and I smoked cigarettes and drank a soda whenever I could afford one, I wasn’t managing my money very well even though I was paid considerably well since I went TDY every other week, I didn’t eat regularly either because we were on separate rations due to so much TDY). I met my new work center supervisor, Tech Sgt Jack F. Martin III. He was Uncle Rudd in a sleep life. His supervisor, Lt. Colonel Conley was Tommy in a sleep life. My new coworker fresh out of school also, Michael J. Finn was my brother Ronny in a sleep life. My new supervisor, Staff Sgt. Clarence Bay was Tommy in a sleep life. My roommate Scot moved off base around March of 1979. Around this time while looking at a Playboy and began pleasuring myself. I felt guilty because of religious teachings  so I put the magazine down before I finished and prayed for a girlfriend, that I would go to the base recreation center the next day, Sunday and that the girl who came and asked me for a cigarette would become my girlfriend. I laid back down intending to go to sleep but for some reason I got a wet wash rag and used my forefinger and sodomized myself it was painful to me. I felt very guilty about it and believed I did something that was homosexual, a sin before God (I wasn't a Christian then) and against the military standards of personal behavior. Before the night was over, I picked the playboy up again and pleasured myself into completion (I never lost memory of this prayer in my lifetime). I didn’t go to the rec center the next day and had a lot of guilt plaguing me although something told me to go anyway. But I figured she wouldnt be there because of what I thought was a horrible sin that I did the night before plus I began finding the self sodomy pleasurable and started using different methods of doing so and pleasuring myself afterwards. I have now realized in 2019 there is nothing wrong with this and Tommy got me to do this from 1975 because if I hadn't I would have been taken inside the mind there. In 1997 while having retained my memory since January of 1990, every other Saturday I would walk down the street to do my laundry. While smoking a cigarette a pretty Hispanic girl who looked to be in her twenties came up and asked me for a cigarette. I gave her one. She commented on the diet coke I was drinking saying they tasted like medicine. I told her the worst tasting diet soda to drink would be a Tab. We talked a little bit she then left thanking me for the cigarette. I thought to myself this was God(whom I stopped believing in in 1991) trying to put me through that all over again as I didn’t want go through meeting someone like Janet(who I still have feelings for today even though I learned a number of years ago she got married to someone else, I couldn’t ever expect her to be alone as that's not any fun)and losing them. It’s only now in 2019 I realize she could have come on her own or was maybe sent by someone who saw this writing and was trying to make friends with me. In April I got a rash on my arms and scalp which initially looked like chigger bites. I didn’t do anything about it until my coworkers noticed it and told the medic. He sent me down range to the base hospital who sent me to a civilian dermatologist who said it was psoriasis and incurable.In May I financed a used car from a used car dealer off base. The dealer was clearly Bill Lewis in a sleep life. Around June of that year I got a new roommate named Edmund Swieczkowski. He was in his late twenties and was from New Jersey. He was an airman(E-2) and was also Tommy in a sleep life. Ed began jokingly calling me Oscar because of my appearance, it didn't offend me. This means Tommy was three different people at three different ranks in the same squadron. There was a man in the squadron who was clearly the cadet lieutenant from marine jrotc in a sleep life. The work center supervisor from the Tolicha Peak radio shop, Techsergeant Smith (nicknamed Smitty) Began working downrange (I was assigned to the Tonopah radio shop) in the area three radio shop where we worked when we weren’t on the ranges. He had more time in grade than Jack, so he became his immediate supervisor. I went on leave in July, having to take my car back to the dealer since I wouldn't be there to make payments on it.I came back in August. Smitty had been transferred. I moved off base into a four-bedroom condo with Bill Beachy and Bret Thomas and a guy named Richard Bowen who was nicknamed Radar. The neighborhood had a lot of blacks living there.  Around October Radar moved out after a scuffle with Bill. Bill and I each got a puppy that was half german shepherd and half Doberman. One-night Bill and Bret decided for whatever reason I don't know to take the dogs out to the desert and shoot them both. They did my dog first with Bret doing the shooting. I couldn't look again when Bret shot Bill’s dog. When the shooting was over both Bill and Bret came in memory of this information. Bret then became upset and said Ralph had made him dirty. He said he never meant to cause me to not care about my appearance in uniform or my job in the Air Force. When we got back home Bret began filling me in on what they were seeing. He told me he was a Tommy and he was a sleeper, that Tommy and I had put him here. He said he never meant for me to go downhill in my military career nor be a slob when it came to be wearing my uniform and that it was the grassy knoll shooter doing all of this to me. He also said he was my father in another sleep life. He took me around town to help me come in memory and avoid this if possible but not without me first promising him I’d share it when I got my memory back. We found ourselves back at the townhouse as though we had just got home without having gone anywhere else. Bret was happy though, he said I had shared it because we were there without having been knocked back to the past which happened to every year I had not lived through awake but that I would be living this future in my sleep back then. Before the night was over our memories of this except for shooting the dogs were gone. I had just a memory of being so upset I just drank whiskey and coke all night long and couldn't sleep. I went to work in the morning and told Mike Finn about what was done to the dogs. He said I should have called the SPCA. All my coworkers came in memory like Bret and Bill had. I wasn't in memory of any of this then. They began acting very strangely. Jack came in memory and after the end of the day he told me to stay behind. He was trying to tell me what was going on, but he then began experiencing head swelling (cerebral edema) and angrily told me to get out. I went outside for a moment but decided to go back in because I was worried about him. When I got back inside, he told me not to leave him. I called the operator to get an ambulance. The operator asked me why he was in pain. I told him I didn't know and that he and all of my coworkers had been acting strange as though they had been drugged, I didn't know that they were in memory and being puppeted(I’ll get to what I mean by puppeting later). An ambulance came and took him to the hospital. His wife later called to thank me saying I saved his life. She told me that what was wanted from me in the Air Force was to behave the same way I had behaved in Marine JROTC, she said this to me because I wondered what was I doing that I was being looked down on for at work. We all lost memory of this event and unfortunately, I lost memory of her advice.In December I moved back to the barracks after we had been robbed and because Bret was too much for me since he blamed the robbery on me because I had to go to work like I was supposed to. A group of 1979 a group of radar techs from Keesler my age were assigned to my squadron, I met four of them. Two of them became close friends. Those two were Andrew (Andy) D. Johnson who was Uncle Bill Egan in a sleep life and James (Jim) V. Price who was Uncle Rudd in a sleep life. These two were openly Christians. There were two girls assigned with them named Faith Welch and Patricia Miller. Faith Welch (I was her father, a Methodist minister in Florida in a sleep life) was Dede in a sleep life and Patricia Miller was Aunt Dee in a sleep life. Around February of 1980 a master sgt. who worked at Area 51 and had his own room in the barracks died of a heart attack in his sleep (this had been me in a sleep life and led to me becoming a born-again Christian). He was discovered by First Sgt. Robert Parks and it was investigated by a master sgt. from the security police squadron named Smith. He was Uncle Bill Egan/Andy Johnson in a sleep life and became our new First Sergeant after First Sgt Parks retired. After answering several girls around my age in a Cartoon magazine who wanted pen pals only one answered. She was a gorgeous sixteen-year-old girl named Peggy Brown in Hollywood, Florida. She turned out to be Dede in another sleep life. One night before bed I prayed to see who my wife was. In the morning I dreamed of a brunette girl going onto a yacht with a man dressed in a civilian sea captain's uniform. When I awoke, I was disappointed and said I wanted a blonde like Nancy, a gorgeous girl who had recently divorced and I was hoping it would be her. I then said no, if the brunettes my wife I want her. I then wondered why I would be dressed as a sea captain saying do, I have to be a millionaire first or be in the Navy, I really don't know why I thought something like that. I didn't realize at the time that I was there seeing her with someone else while I was in a sleep life. I then said I pray this out of my memory. I then said no, I want to remember this and went back to sleep asking for the same dream again if the brunette was really my wife. I woke up later not remembering the dream or having prayed to see who my wife was. We had a new technician assigned to the radio shop named Gary. He came in memory of this information and said he Was Gary peanuts. I didn't know what he meant until he told me he was Snaggletooth’s son. I didn't know at that time how he could be older than me if that were so and it was.In June I was listening to a collection of cassettes tapes I had to pass the time and avoid smoking a cigarette. One of the tapes I had when I was practicing a guitar, I had at Keesler two years earlier. What I hadn't remembered was that guy who lived across the hall from me at Keesler named Clifton Hookey had come in memory of this information and shared it with me while my stereo was still recording. We lost memory of it and it being on tape. I didn't listen to it again until then. I came in memory of this information and determined that the person(s) putting me through all of this thought I wouldn't tell on them. Clarence had been reassigned to Florida, so Jack became my immediate supervisor. So, I had to call him several times to get him to come with me to our new first sergeant to tell them all of this. He finally called me back to say he had made an appointment with the first sergeant and had me come with him. I had forgotten about this information and thought I was in trouble for something. When I got there, Jack asked me what I wanted. I became relieved and back in memory and told all of it to the first sergeant, including sodomizing myself because he would see all of this anyway and I believed I wouldnt be in any trouble asking for help in avoiding that habit. The first words out of his mouth were “Do you think I’m a pushover?!!”. I told him no. Jack came in memory and then spoke up and said he and everyone else thought I was dead(I didn’t remember until now but the reason they thought this was because I always stayed in my barracks room and didn't go anywhere except to work, or eat so no one knew where I was). A little while longer the first sergeant came in memory. He then asked me if I had a girlfriend and I told him about Peggy Brown and showed him the picture of herself she sent me. He asked me what my goals were. I told him I wanted to stay in the Air Force twenty years, buy a 20 to 40 acre ranch, wanted to marry Peggy and let her run that ranch the way she wanted to because my cousin Dede was a girl and was quite good and confident in running her farm. He said they didn’t give a damn about my personal habits of sexual gratification, that they told me to do that to keep those electronic beings from taking me inside the mind and getting my memory, if I hadnt done that(self sodomy) I would never have remembered that I had prayed for a girlfriend and to finish what I had started with the adult magazine, not doing that is what caused me to lose memory of both times I prayed to see who my wife was. They already knew I wasn't sleeping with anybody. He told me I would need to change my professional behavior towards being in the Air Force and take pride in it to remain in and if I didn't marry Peggy I wouldn't stay in the service. They called my family to inform them I was alive. They were surprised that I was in the Air Force and asked who it was living in Dallas. What I hadn't known was the doppelganger who took me inside of his mind was living my life in Dallas at what would be termed the future from where I was at(2003c.e.) but, it was a sleep life. They then asked for them to transfer me to Fort Hood, so I’d be close to them. All of this was sabotaged and we lost memory of it and were back to where I started sitting in the first sergeants office with Jack, the first sergeant got pissed off because we were knocked back to his office and said angrily that it was “Tonya ugly stinky pussy” who did that to us. From there I found myself knocked back to my room with no memory of being in the first sergeant's office. We were on a four day on/off schedule. While I was losing memory of this I almost lost memory of when my next work schedule was. I called Jack to make sure I wasn't AWOL. I made it to my shift up range. Around October while I was at work at Area Three a tall black man brought there by a black coworker named Fred Bouie asked my other coworkers which one of us had a rash. The other coworkers pointed at me because I had broken out with psoriasis in March of 1979. He told my coworkers to go in the office and shut the door because he was an OSI agent and needed to question me privately. As Fred Bouie was going in, he looked at me with a disturbing look on his face and said they kept killing me, but I wouldn’t stay dead. It was the guy who fired the shot from the grassy knoll, but I didn’t remember him. His name was Ralph Lee Grant. He began yelling at me telling me I should be ashamed of myself because I wasn't supposed to live that long and I shouldn’t be in the Air Force since I got him kicked out the previous year, that he was doing all of this to me to get me to commit suicide. I yelled back at him that I never met him before, that I’m going to live as long as I can and asked him how he could possibly be an OSI agent if he had been kicked out of the Air Force. I went to the office to get away from him, but the door had been locked. I pounded on the door to be let in and it was finally opened. Fred Bouie had been keeping it locked to keep me from going in and my coworkers from going out. I went in and sat down. I had lost a little bit of memory of it but remembered him saying he was OSI. Jack asked me what it was all about. I told him what I remembered. He said the OSI wasn’t investigating me and asked where the guy was. He called two other Techsergeants, Blacker and Keffer in the building to come see him. When we got there Ralph was cowering behind a partition. They began yelling at him and told me not to keep such things to myself, meaning this information. They called the security police on him. When the arresting officer got there, he looked at me and said, “You know better than to keep this to yourself and cover for this guy. I said I’d never met him before. He said “You've already lost memory of what you shared with your first sergeant this summer, that there was a restraining order on Ralph to keep him away from me and to open up about such things when I know of them. Jack took me in the office and explained to me who Ralph was, said they all thought I had left to go to Fort Hood and about my lost memories. We lost memory of it.One night while expecting a call from my Dad, Ronny, and Tommy from Texas, my roommate Ed went for a walk. After he left, I received a call and talked to Tommy not knowing he was Ed. Ed returned sometime later after the call was over. In March of 1981 I became further brainwashed into Christianity and began praying to get spirit filled not remembering the consequences of it. I gave up Peggy because I was told you only go with other believers. In June of 1981 I was transferred to an Air Force detachment at Fort Hood, Texas. I was assigned to the First Cavalry Air Liaison Office detachment. My new supervisor, Staff sergeant soon to be Techsergeant Wayne Bennet was also Uncle Bill Egan/Andy Johnson/Range group Firstsgt. Smith in a sleep life, his wife was a topless dancer. The commander of the Airforce detachment whose office was at the Third Corp Air Liaison Office was a full bird colonel with the last name of Tappman. He was Tommy in a sleep life. We got a new staff sergeant in the radio shop. This was Maurice Marx in another sleep life. Another guy in the radio shop who had just been promoted to staff sergeant named Richard Hyatt, was Uncle Rudd/Matthew/Rusty Smelcer/Jack F. Martin III/ James V. Price in a sleep life. In March of 1982 my enlistment was up so I moved back home. In June I was hired on by the city as a traffic signal technician. My supervisor, Perry N. Pearson was Uncle Rudd in a sleep life. I was assigned to work with an elderly technician named Joe Zihlman. He was my fifth-grade teacher George Turpin in a sleep life. In August, I moved in with a roommate in a two-bedroom apartment in North Dallas. His former roommate was a female who was clearly Wayne Bennet’s wife in a sleep life. There was a guy a few apartments down who had just gotten out of the Navy and hired on with Texas Instruments as an electronic technician. His name was Everet and he was clearly Scot Ciminilo in a sleep life. In September I was assigned to the weekend deep night shift with a black supervisor named Ralph Lee Grant. I had no memory whatsoever of seeing him fire the shot from the grassy knoll when I was a little boy in 1963. In January 1983 I moved into my own apartment at King George Apartments on Buckner Blvd. There were two girls who lived next door to me. One of them was Debby from Tolleson in another sleep life. In the summer I left my job to work on a religious farm in La Junta, Colorado along with Andy Johnson. The daughter of the owners, Lavern and Sally Johnson (no relation to Andy) Georgia Johnson who I had a crush on was Dede in a sleep life. I left in August after Georgia and a guy named Dave eloped and Andy had tried unsuccessfully to get me spirit filled and was rehired as a signal technician with Perry Pearson’s help. I began attending a church in Farmers Branch called Word of Faith. The pastor, Robert Tilton was Andy Johnson in a sleep life. In November I moved in with Mom and Ray in their mobile home in Balch springs. The managers 19-year-old son had committed suicide one day while I was asleep. She came to visit with mom and Ray then asked me some questions. She said I was her deceased son in a sleep life. I had no idea what she was talking about and lost memory of it. A new technician from another area transferred to the signal shop. His name was Phillip R. Coker. He was my brother Ronny in his sleep yet while Ronny was at sea in the Navy. I was his father in my sleep, the Fort Worth police officer, I learned from him I had become a police sergeant and had been wronged somehow, and I was married to a woman named Mildred, Phil’s stepmother. She was Dede in a sleep life. Neither one of us had any memory of this information. In February of 1984 Uncle Rudd died. This tore me apart. My cousin Laurie gave me his expensive sheepskin jacket. I wouldn't wear it. Mom and Ray decided to move their mobile home to land they bought in a tiny suburban town of Princeton called Culleoka. I moved with them. Their next-door neighbor was Uncle Rudd in a sleep life. Mom commented on the likeness, but we didn't remember about sleep living and didn’t know it was him. Around April my traffic signal shop moved from Cedar Springs to a new compound on Canton Street next to a police station.  In July I moved out from Mom and Ray’s after a misunderstanding caused by my sister(I had no memory of seeing this in the past).After a few days of living in my car and a week and a half in a room I rented that I had to give up since I spent my rent money for the week at a videogame arcade I found an apartment on Gaston. There was a group of singers at Word of Faith for the morning service every Sunday. One of them was clearly Bob from Arizona who had the Corvair. I didn't ask him his name or if he was from Arizona. This guy may or may not have been there in a different sleep life. In December of 1984 I transferred to the afternoon rush hour shift away from weekends and Ralph. I left Word of Faith in October of 1985 after refusing to get spirit filled. my shift ended at ten thirty at night. The deep night crew had a black man using the name John Reese who had a lot of unpaid tickets. Two City of Dallas marshals came to serve a warrant on him. Around February of 1986 I became attracted to a blonde secretary that worked in the front office. Her name was Sharon Boleyn. She was Dede in another sleep life. I found out where she lived in the phonebook and tried to move in the same complex. I was denied because of my credit. I didn't like being told no, so I rented a condominium from a supervisor in the traffic signal construction department. His name was Gene Morgan. He was Bob Tilton in a sleep life. His wife, Deanna “Dede” Patterson Morgan was actually Dede in a sleep life. I discovered Sharon had moved across the parking lot from my unit around the same time I did.We had three new technicians hired on. One was Oscar Diaz( Oscar was in a sleep life but under another name when I was in a homeless shelter in McKinney, He gave me a ride from Church on the Rock North in carrollton in 1990) the other Robert Espinosa and the other one was Bertie Fernando who was on a two-year work visa from Sri Lanka. Robert Espinosa was Tommy in a sleep life. Bertie was my coworker Phil in a sleep life. Phil kept wanting to meet Bertie but could never catch him and briefly remembered he was Bertie. There was a new technician who was rehired there named Jerry. He was Bruce from the fourth grade in another sleep life. In October I bought a car, a 1978 Grand Prix at Toyota of Dallas. The salesperson was a girl named Debra Kowalski. This was Dede in a sleep life. She tried to get a date with me for the following Saturday, but I had to work. In November I went back to Word of Faith. I went back to the singles class. There was a guy named Robert Earl Truckenmiller and a British girl named Tonya Ann Clifton in this class. They were both Caucasian. I had no memory of who they were or what they had been doing to me. I had become interested in Tonya (No, I didn’t remember who she was at that time) The Sunday after the singles Thanksgiving potluck I got spirit filled. There was a new associate pastor at Word of faith named Al Brice. This was Jim Price in another sleep life. There was a children's pastor there named Steve Alde. He was Tommy in a sleep life. There was a paraclete coordinator there named Randall Graeber. He was one of the two City of Dallas marshals from earlier in a sleep life.In March of 1987 I quit smoking cold turkey on my sister’s birthday and became obese as a result. In August I decided to go to Richland Community College to study computer information as a major since I had been beaten out of a promotion to supervisor by a coworker who had been on the job in less time than me. One day after an argument over an intersection I couldn't get fixed the previous night I told a black coworker named John Carraway I didn't want to hear it. He then pulled a knife on me in front of the assistant supervisor named Jackie Watson who was black also and said he would cut my ear off and stick it in my mouth if I didn't stop talking. I just sat there, and Jackie did nothing about it. I didn't say anything because of the religious teachings of turn the other cheek, but it ate me up inside because I was angry that something like that was done to me. In September Dede died of cancer. At some point around this time while I was asleep a homeless man named Greg Biggs was hit and lodged in the windshield by a black girl named Chante Mallard. She then drove home with him still in the windshield. She then went inside. While still in the windshield Greg heard a voice say, “Has he committed suicide yet?” When the man who said it walked out to look, it was Ralph Grant from the signal shop. The man later died. I didn't know it at the time, but it was me in the windshield in my sleep and this is how I lost memory of not wanting to go inside the mind in my awake life. Chante later held Phil and myself hostage at the signal shop at 3204 Canton St. running me through a different inside the mind vision since we had escaped being inside the mind and made it back from Las Vegas. She was without a cranium at that time, I don't know how she was able to live without one and there were several corpses on the floor that died with their eyes open. They were Caucasian and I don't know who they were as they didn’t work at the signal shop. This incident was repeated in October of 2001 as far as being hit and dying while lodged in Chante’s windshield but the ability to be taken inside the mind had been erased and I was still retaining memories I had recovered since January of 1990 and Chante was caught this time after I shared it with then Mayor Laura Miller. On Friday October 30 after work I felt like smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. I felt I would go back to smoking and become an alcoholic instead I went to an adult bookstore after work and bought a pornofilm then went home and watched it. About four o’clock Saturday morning I felt guilty about it and threw it in the trash and went to bed. I got up at eleven and decided to go to Austin to clear my head. On the way there I prayed for a calling saying I liked math. I heard civil engineering because I would be developing water supplies on the mission field, hence this shot down my major of computer information. I took a detour to Fort Hood to see it again. When I got there, I felt a heaviness fall on me because of the problems I had when I had been stationed there. I continued back to Austin. I made it back home around eleven that night.On Sunday November1, I sat next to a pretty girl in a Sunday school class. I didn't know who she was at the time, but I liked having her sit next to me. Robert Truckenmiller sat in front of us. That night I asked who my wife was. On Monday morning I had a dream where I passed a pretty girl who knew my name at church. When I awoke, I realized she was to be my wife and thought it was a vision. I hadn't realized I was asleep as Rick a year from then and I had offended her the week before which only drove her from me, that I had sat next to her in Sunday School class the day before(her hairstyle and dress were considerably different a year from that time) and that the girl was again Dede in a sleep life. I had started to pleasure myself to this girl but was stopped saying hat was a holy vision from God. I then sensed I was going to have a big vision and without knowing the past prayed a bunch of things I was then taken inside the mind without remembering it in my earlier years in attempts to have my wife so I wouldn’t read pornography. Instead whomever was running me through this kept us from being together at all as well as me from remaining a traffic signal technician but instead a church janitor and changed Bob Tilton’s church sanctuary to New Jerusalem going into Old Jerusalem around as well as torment his members. I then heard a voice say this is how I put Hitler in power, I can do the same for you. I obviously didn't take that offer. While inside the mind of the doppelganger at this point, I could only feel what he felt and heard what he heard. He was in the breakroom of the Word of Faith executive office building where the prayer ministers worked and he as a janitor using my name and credentials. A prayer minister named Naomi came in and said something nice to him and had a beautiful voice. I then said let me see Naomi several times but couldn't get him to let me see her. I then prayed to marry her then divorce her before I married the girl in my vision so I would get to see her when I went inside the mind( I knew I would start seeing what was going on then while still inside the mind, I thought I went inside the mind when I came in memory when I went through it and see her afterwards, but it didn't happen there but as Charles Langford I married Obera Morton who is Naomi in a sleep life, we divorced and I saw Obera[Beebe] when I was around three years old but had no memory of this then). I came in memory of all this information and tried to go outside the mind, but it kept going for years and years and I would still be without my wife. It went forever. I was taken outside of the mind by Janet(Dede) help several times( she was able to find me while I was inside the mind because the told her in 1990 while in memory I had a vison with pornography, was hearing voices[being instructed] and some of what they were saying). While being taken through that I felt someone bludgeon me and said to myself that someone tried to kill me all the way through that. I tried to get up and share it with everyone but was interrupted every time, the last one being by a head swelling (cerebral edema) which at the time I thought was because I had too much knowledge. I don’t remember where and when the vision stopped in the future. I had remembered something about sleep living, I said I would go to sleep and be awake asleep. So, I somehow got myself to go back to sleep and do everything I could to erase it thinking it would be all over when I awoke. I had lived from then until now in my sleep with some awareness of what was going on at that time. I had it erased for that time being. Yet back then I woke up on November 2,1987 not remembering any of this or that I had lived from there to here in my sleep before we were knocked back to there, November 2, 1987 which always happened. When I went to work that day, I remembered some of the religious part of it, but not sleep living and shared it with a coworker named Fred Musgrove because he was a Christian also. I began coming into more memory as I shared it there and realized that Robert Espinosa was Tommy in a sleep life and told him everything, he said he had no memory of being someone else, he didn’t believe me right then. I was met with doubt by all my coworkers. They spread it around and it got to Ralph Grant. He told the other black employees that they were all in trouble because I had grown up. My supervisor Buck got wind of what I was sharing and asked me if I was okay. I told him I believed religion had screwed with my mind and asked him if I could work the weekend construction shift to avoid going to church because my memory of not wanting to go would soon be lost. He said someone was already scheduled for the upcoming weekend but gave me that shift the following weekend.The following Sunday, on November 8, 1987 not remembering that I didn't want to go to church anymore I went to the morning service. After which I went to lunch at a restaurant in Carrollton, I believe was called Cocoas somewhere near Josey Lane with three singles from my Sunday School class, Sue Newberry (Aunt Dee in a sleep life), Robert Truckenmiller, and Tonya Clifton. While there I came in memory of some of this information and said something to Sue about some of it then I said something to Robert Truckenmiller about he and Tonya getting married. We both went outside at his challenge and got into a scuffle. I was worried about the police arresting us for fighting because I was about to clobber him, losing my job and being kicked out of church so I said we should stop. He told me to stop sharing it and leave town. He went back inside. He would have me believe he had the upper hand before I recovered memory of it years later. I started to leave but decided not to let somebody as small as him to tell me what to do and where to go plus I knew He and Tonya had something bad in store for Sue because she was Tommy's wife and they were both created by Terra(my cousin Lori) to stop them, so I went back inside. I told Sue we stopped because I didn't want the police called and wind up in jail because he was a runt and I could take him. She said what I shared would offend anyone especially what you do with cucumbers and that she was going to report us to the church pastors if we kept at it. I was surprised I said any of it when she repeated it to me.  I said I actually told you that. She said I had lost memory again. She repeated all of what I had told her. I then came in full memory of all of this and shared this with Sue in front of Robert Truckenmiller and Tonya Clifton and others. Sue said I was embarrassing myself in front of all of these people in the restaurant as they could hear what I was saying to her. I told her as I shared all of this with her I became quite comfortable with them hearing it and said I didn’t care if the whole damn restaurant heard me because this has to be shared( I learned later that they all heard what I had shared, had I not shared it that loud those people would not have known that they were there and Robert and Tonya were there because Ralph Grant overheard my sharing at work and they were going to do to me then what they did to me next week. If I had not gone back inside the restaurant after the scuffle with Robert, they were going to do the same to her because I had put her in memory, she was my help and they were going to turn her back in to an infant). I told her that while all of these people are in this restaurant the blacks are changing it to where the blacks have their names, jobs, cars and homes as well as what they all created with their mindwaving powers. I told her that everyone in this restaurant has been homeless and staying in the same homeless shelters I had in their sleep. To give her an example I informed her that I’m a Dallas police officer. She said then how can you be a signal technician and you're also overweight. I saidI only got this big a couple of months ago. That the blacks threw me out of my own apartment and job while I was awake and took them over. I told her of an incident where a coworker of mine named Amber Guyger, a female Dallas police officer who lives(d) directly below my apartment. She saw my apartment door open and went to investigate, Botham Jean, a black man had killed me in my sleep so she shot him dead. I then told Sue that she was Amber Guyger in another sleep life. I pointed at Robert and Tonya and said that they and Ralph changed it around to make it look like it was his apartment and made it look like she killed him by mistake thinking it was her own apartment to get her in unwarranted trouble when she was in fact just doing her job as a police officer, that every time a police officer kills a black person it is the same situation, Amber and those police officers are only doing their jobs. I also told her of an incident in 1984 at our new building on Canton street we are next door to a police station. While working the weekend shift before I went to weekday afternoons Ralph received a phone call. He hung up and said that was one of his agents and said I wasn't where I was supposed to be. He called the police and said he was having me arrested. I laughed. He said he was serious. He then told me to leave town before they got there. I said I've done nothing wrong and you know me well enough that I’m not anything like these other assholes (black coworkers who did drugs and other illegal actions and hardly ever showed up to work). A Dallas police officer showed up and said what's the trouble. I told him what Ralph had said. He asked my name. I told him. He looked at Ralph and said so this is where you’re hiding him. He pointed at me and said to Ralph that is an officer of the law(it took me a long time to figure out what he meant in the future as I thought he was talking about me meant to be in the Marines as well as an nco) stop what you're doing right now. I didn't know it but Ralph had me inside of his mind in a way I couldn't see and did it every time I was near him. The officer shot Ralph dead and said you should see what he's doing. He then asked me how I was doing and said some other things but my memory of it went and Ralph returned with no memory of it, in fact the officer said they just can't keep me in memory long enough to see who I actually am and where I actually belong because I was never supposed to be there as a signal technician. I told her I looked just like I do there as a police officer but now could only do it in my sleep and wouldn't realize it until I looked in the mirror at myself when I was a 58-year-old man. I told her I became one to stop Ralph and help our own, and that I take pride in my uniform, appearance, job and demeanor. She asked me how I could still be a police officer if I were dead. I told her when we die, we are still around as that person in sleep, we look the same as we did before we were killed but may be amnesiaed into a different name.I had remembered something Robert and Tonya said to me when I was Charles Langford in my previous life, I looked at Robert and Tonya and said “You see me here? I’m Charles Langford and I’m very much alive and no matter how many times you kill me I will always live one way or the other and I’ll haunt you every way I can. I know even though you two are white your black, in fact you are what comes out of a black’s asshole. If I want to be in pornography I’ll be in pornography, (They are afraid of me going anywhere near it because it renders their powers to almost nothing, particularly movies because it takes us outside of the mind and for the most part silences the programmed voices I deal with and it erases them and the filth in the atmosphere around us). As for committing suicide you two should do so because you’ve got absolutely no future and nothing worth living for. (I said this to them because they made me think pornography was wrong and that it took me inside the mind and that they kept trying to get me to commit suicide particularly at Nellis Air Force Base in 1980 when I went to get a new ID card. I went in civilian clothes, when I got to the door there were three or four ladies there who asked me what my name was. I had no idea who they were there or what they wanted but I was reluctant to give them my name, so I asked them why they wanted to know my name. [ this is the version I heard in 1990 because all of the conversations were muffled by the voices in my head, although the suicidal thought was there] They wouldn't tell me. One of them whom I began calling the poisonous priestess as a janitor in 1990 because her voice was tormenting me as I was made to think she had spoken to me in an angry manner but now I remember it to be mostly pleasant and that cloud king vision kept being sent to torment her and her friends while I stood in front of them, it wasn't me sending it to them then and I couldn't see what they were seeing and didn't know why they were squirming around. I went into the photographer, a male staff sergeant to get my new ID. He said I need to be in uniform as it’s a military function. I went back outside, and those women kept asking me questions. The poisonous priestess [I don’t know her name] said she never sees me with any girls. I asked her how she would know that and told her I could only romance my girlfriend Peggy through the mail because she lived in Florida. She said no she meant where I’m a janitor for her and her husband's church. I said I’m not in any church and I’m a radio repairman in the Air Force. She still kept squirming, said oh so you know her, I think she meant Janet Thigpen. I had no memory of the dream I had of Janet a few months earlier. She then asked why I would erase my own memory.  I said what are you on. She did some more squirming and said quit sending that thing after me and my husbands and our congregation. I thought she meant mailing something. I said I haven't mailed anything to any church, and I don't know you or your husband, she meant the cloud king vision which is explained in this document. She asked me if I were a homosexual because she still didn’t see me with any girls. I said no but I’m training myself to be a bisexual. She gasped and said why would you tell anybody that. She asked me why I couldn’t see or feel what they were feeling. I really thought she meant emotionally but wouldn't see it until 1990, when I was actually a janitor for her church. I yelled at them for bothering me and went back to my barracks room. Before I left, she said they got my name and know I’m coming back there. She told me she had been watching me since I was a little boy, she meant something else, but I told her I don't remember having her for a babysitter. She said she didn't come there to aggravate me, but my family sent her to keep me out of her church. I didn't remember this when I left. I then thought they were hookers who wanted to have sex with me [yes, I really thought this, and I’ve remembered this incident entirely since 1990] so I put on my uniform and went back to have my new ID card made. They were gone. The staff sergeant took my photo, gave me a new Id card and said I was in trouble for stating the sexual preference, [which wasn’t homosexual] I said to those ladies indicating I’d be court-martialed for it and get a bad conduct discharge. I went walking out of there very depressed and afraid with every intention of going off base to Kmart to buy a shotgun and blow my brains out. Before I got to the door he said come back here, they said you’re going to commit suicide. We then had a lengthy discussion about what he saw about my future as a janitor. He then began talking to me in Al Brice’s voice (Actually Ralph Grant doing it) and said he had prayed for the girl’s son to die so I wouldn't have to deal with kids. I said I have a girlfriend and I have no problem with having kids. I still don't remember the dream I had of Janet going onto a yacht last summer and couldn't remember it until 1990. I began calling the sergeant Airwolf in 1990 because I couldn't remember his name even though he showed me his name tag before I left. He showed me the cash flow management system that I was using in the future that had been taught by Don Spear in a Word of Faith Sunday school, by the way you should note that the poisonous priestess, [she also got a bad rap as my cousin Kimberly Lois Langford Williams, who died on December 25, 2018 of heart failure]  as I had been calling her is Marty Tilton but she was younger then and I believe her church was in a different building in 1980 and  the way things  work I was there in my sleep. He told me the security police were called on those ladies for agitating me and didn't know how they got on base. He decided I wasn't in trouble and sent me back out to keep Ralph from instructing me through him like he did my cousin Tommy in 1975 as long as I agreed to not harm myself and deny any abnormal sexual behavior. While homeless and staying at the Samaritan Inn in McKinney in 1991 we had to leave during the day. I sat inside the mini cafe at the JRs Texaco next door to stay out of the cold. I looked outside and saw who I didn't remember to be Marty Tilton because she looked like she did in 1980, 10 years younger than the last time I had seen her in 1990 and was dressed exactly the same and with a scarf over her hair when I first saw her in 1980. She was walking up to the store and I heard people say, in my head she was coming to tell me who I was. She then turned around and walked back without ever coming into the store. The voices that said that to me weren't tormenting me as Bob, Als, and everyone else's voice had gone but I was watching cartoon like holograms. I still remembered that she was actually the poisonous priestess. I had wished she came inside and told me who I was because that piqued my curiosity. This was in between the vision I had initially and the one I woke up and went to church while I was inside the mind in 1987). [That the was the version I began remembering in 1990 when recovering memories. Here’s the version that was actually so and I didn't remember it until now, September 15, 2019, I gave her my name. She asked me if those two, Robert and Tonya at Ralph Grants direction had turned me into a homosexual because she never saw me with any girls. I told her no, but I was training myself to be a bisexual. She gasped and said why don't you tell anybody what they're doing to you. Not the bisexual part because they wanted me doing that and I wouldn’t remember so until 2019. She thought I had been in memory, more than likely because I came in memory in June and went to my first sergeant. I came in memory in front of her and told her I'm not the one doing that(tormenting them) that I care about these people and they won’t stop doing this to me and that I’m inside the mind now seeing the church janitor because there's an electronic being around us here doing this to me in front of you because they put all of this crap inside of me , please help me get it out, your husband sent something called his mind to me as a janitor, it was erasing those voices but the blacks flipped it off after they said Benedict Arnold when I was working as a janitor for her church in the Garden Learning Center, GLC, sunday school building. In the future it was being pulled out of me one piece at a time when ever I slept somewhere, and I wouldn't realize it was supposed to come out until years later. We left with her telling me to go to the adult bookstore right outside of the base front gate and buy a penile sex toy and some adult magazines to stop them from keeping me and putting me inside the mind anymore. I told her I would lose memory of it that day. I just remember going back to my room as far as that goes and that led to the first version of this before memory of this version.As for you Tonya, I can't believe I actually  cared about you and ever wanted to marry you, I don’t ever want to see you again (the last time I saw her was in 1989 after she and Robert had got married, [Janet and I were both at their wedding sitting in seats very far apart not realizing it was us that was supposed to be at the altar getting married]  but here in 2019 while I was in a sleep life just before I awoke  I was in a street shelter with both of them and they looked like they did in 1987 and they were talking to me, I had a backpack with medicine in it and I believe a document like you’re reading here, I left to go to the bathroom but when I got back they and my backpack were gone, my concern was them getting this document. I don’t know if I knew who they were in my sleep but when I went to the doctor to replace my medicine, I had said something and then heard the words we’re going to put you in a nice comfortable prison. I turned around to look at the doctor and he was a young black man. I then awoke back to my sleep life here), and when you’re both dead and permanently gone forever I’m going to piss, shit and puke on both of your graves and I’m going to party with my wife, family, friends, pets that you’ve taken from me and I’ll have every damn thing you ever took from me back for all of eternity. I know Ralph Grant is inside of your mind or he will be and if he hasn’t heard this you can tell him the same goes for him, and as for my vision( if you can call it that) I’m going to blab, blab and blab, and as for you Robert you little runt, you didn’t get the upper hand on me outside(He had me believing for years  that it was him who had me pinned but I'm 2000 after I was admitted to the VA Domiciliary after injuring both ankles  wound up being roommates with his adopted brother Dennis Truckremiller,who is one of us, Robert came to visit him and didn't recognize me, In  fact he was very afraid of me,no I didn't tell him who I was, but I looked at how much smaller he was than l me and wondered how in the hell could be gave gotten the upper hand on me because I could clearly outdo him. )I only stopped it because I don’t want legal troubles, so we can go back outside and I’ll smash your head into the sidewalk !!!”. Sue said to me they don’t want me in jail, and we can deal with it another way. I told her that Robert had thought controlled a guy named Bill Beachy into saying he’d smash my head in to the sidewalk if I got out of my car when I was in the Air Force over a dispute over a large phone bill they stuck me with. Bill had said to me the night they shot our dogs afterwards when they came in memory, that I shouldn't let him talk to me like that.I told Sue there should be a man named Larry here because when I was in the shelter in McKinney I saw him in sleep wearing a Batman uniform saying, Man oh man you didn't want to meet me I was in the cafeteria when you were busy sharing. Robert Truckenmiller had me believing in the future that Larry had sent them to take me to the IHOP because I shared it. Sue looked around and said there is no one here dressed as Batman. A man sitting at the table next to us and heard every word I shared. He was one of the directors at a homeless shelter in McKinney I had stayed at while I was homeless during my sleep after I was taken inside of the mind on November 2,1987. He had also been held hostage by Chante Mallard at the Canton Street signal shop but not at the same time as I was. He said, “I’m Larry, do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to do (share it) that?” He was Uncle Rudd in a sleep life. He said he didn’t know he was there at the restaurant because he was in his sleep until I said I was Charles Langford and that was the name of his father. He also wondered where his memory of this had gone and learned it was when he was held hostage by Chante. He verified what I had said to Sue when I mentioned his first name. I became upset that I couldn’t get people in memory in the future. Sue then encouraged me and said I had put Larry in memory. She said I should go check into the VA hospital since I had said that's how I was able to get help from this in the vision. I said every time I went in the vision I was kidnapped and or distracted from doing so. Larry said he would follow me there to make sure that didn't happen. We both left. I tried to check in, but they said I wasn't enrolled there and would have to do so on a business day even if it was an emergency. Larry had tried to get me in himself but the blacks working there kept me from getting in right then. I told him I had private insurance from the city as a signal technician and the Presbyterian Hospital on Walnut Hill was only a mile from where I lived on Fair oaks. I said I could go there until Monday. He asked if I could remember to go there because he had other things to do. I told him I’d take a route home that took me past it on the way home. I managed to get there but when they called to verify my employment Ralph Grant was there and said I no longer worked there. I showed them my city ID card but that wasn’t good enough. I was embarrassed and mad and said I still worked there. I intended to report him Monday, but I found myself back at the restaurant talking to Sue. I told her while sitting there Larry and I had tried to get me in the VA and Presbyterian Hospital but were thwarted because these two (Robert and Tonya) gave Bob Tilton and I a special treat courtesy of Ralph Grant. I pointed out to her that Larry was no longer in the restaurant and probably went to another sleep life. She then said I should try and go in on Monday. I told her I wouldn't have memory to do so because those two will cause me to lose it. She then became aware of what they were doing and said I should then try to avoid going to church anymore and angrily said that she had a special treat for both of them. I left with only memories of saying some embarrassing things, particularly about cucumbers which was a thing of the past. When I got home, I decided not to go to church anymore because I was embarrassed, didn’t want to go to that or any other church anymore, wished I’d never became a Christian and lost memory of the vision. I went to bed early, so I had missed the evening service and by the next morning had forgotten all about the events at the restaurant.Sue took Robert and Tonya to Bob and Al that Sunday evening and shared with them everything I had told her. This was her special treat for Robert and Tonya as well as Ralph Grant even though he wasn't there. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was one of Bob’s attorneys in my sleep. After hearing Sue share every word of what I had told her I came in memory of being the signal technician that was taken inside of the mind. I then looked at Robert and Tonya and angrily said, “You put me through it!!!!”  I wasn't aware of this taking place in my sleep nor that I was one of Bob’s attorneys. During the following week Buck came and told me that Bob Tilton had called and mentioned my vision. He told them to tell Ralph not to mess with his church or its members and not to have me brought back to his church in anyway nor in anyway is he to stop me from leaving it.The following Sunday, on November 15, 1987 I worked the construction shift not remembering any of this information nor why I was scheduled to work that weekend. After he learned of my being taken outside of his mind, when I first came into work at ten thirty in the morning Ralph Grant was there with no business being there because his shift ended four hours earlier. He said in an angry voice “Don’t miss church tonight because I’ve got a special treat just for you and your pastor!!”. I left to work in the field meaning to report him to the head supervisor for speaking to me that way. When I got back at the end of my shift I had forgotten about this encounter. He was there again with no business being there because he was off until next Wednesday. This time he tricked me into going to church that night instead of home by saying in a nice voice not to miss church that night because there was a special blessing there waiting for me. I went not remembering any of this information.Robert and Tonya were there waiting for me per Ralph’s instructions as I was sitting in the foyer trying to figure out what I was doing there. They then began asking me all kinds of questions about my vision. I had no memory of what they were talking about and denied knowing any of it. They thought I was the doppelganger covering to keep anyone from knowing this information and that I was inside of his mind. They began taunting me saying, “Ha ha ha Charles Langford we killed you and you didn't live this long! “I became enraged because they said that about my grandfather without asking them how they knew him (I hadn't remembered then that I was Charles Langford. They said this to me when I was, he in the past when I was inside the mind. I told them back then I would reach out of the grave with my cold dead hands and ring their scrawny little necks). I came in memory of the inside the mind vision I had but only the part of being a janitor and Bob’s church being changed and went to tell on them to the pastors who were present. When they learned it was me, they became very worried and Robert said not to because they weren't supposed to know that they or I was there.  I said why would they not need to know I was there. He said Bob Tilton had told them when Sue Newberry took them to meet with him and his attorney the previous Sunday after I shared this in that restaurant where everyone there had heard what I told Sue, he made them sign a legal document  that they would not in any way bring me back to his church nor stop me from leaving it. I said then I really need to tell him about all of this. I went inside the sanctuary and sat down waiting for one of the pastors when he stopped praying for someone. They then tricked me away from telling one of the pastors’ present saying they’d share it for me because I had such a hard time sharing it. I was going to wait there and watch them share it but they said I’d probably be embarrassed then tricked me into  going to a local IHOP at Forest Lane and Webb Chapel in Dallas while they shared it, saying the other singles were going there after the evening service. (Note: I had very little memory of what I had shared at the restaurant the previous Sunday, I only came in memory of having the vision when they taunted me at the foyer, so I honestly had no idea of what they were about to do to me). I arrived there to find I was the only single there. I waited awhile then decided to leave but Robert and Tonya showed up. Robert asked me who I was. I told him. He said Ricky was supposed to be here. I said, “I’m Ricky”. He said I was never supposed to grow up. He asked me how old I was. I said 26. He said I wasn't supposed to live through it because he had done all kinds of things to me in the past. He claimed Bob and Al gave them a special anointing to pray over me and had told them to confiscate my car keys, house keys and wallet because I wasn't to live in this vision anymore (he was calling me a vision). I said I’m not a vision and I’m not about to do that. He then conned me and asked for my wallet to pray over my finances (He took my money out of it while he had it and had no intention of giving either back to me). Saying demons of pornography might come out of me as they prayed that they didn’t want to disturb the other restaurant patrons. They took me to a vacant dark part of the parking lot where they took me inside the mind again erasing almost all of my/our corrections  without me knowing that’s what they did as well as cause me to hear loud voices instructing me when I first came in memory in the future so I wouldn't know to share this information. I was told I could never eat cucumbers because what I had used them for in the past as if I would eat one afterwards which I wouldn’t dare, that I couldn’t eat Chinese food them accusing me of stopping the movement at Tiananmen square, I could never call a cat again, never to visit or talk with my mother Leigh Dell again because she was too far gone religiously and would be a bad influence on me, of course in the future I visited her anyway and she served me salad with sliced cucumbers in it.  I heard BobTilton’s voice in my mind and Al Brice’s voice in my mind, mainly Al Brice’s voice as Robert spoke but my ears heard only Robert’s voice. I didn't think to ask why Bob and Al wouldn't speak to me about this in person and didn't remember at the time that Ralph Grant was inside Robert’s mind at the time imitating Bob and Al’s voices. Robert had stood several feet away from me while Tonya held my arm making sure I stayed there. Every time I tried to leave Tonya would grab my arm and hold me there to listen to Robert. I kept hoping that one or more of the singles from Word of Faith would show up and see what they were doing so I’d have a witness to it but it was a dark isolated spot of the parking lot and none of the singles had any idea that they were to come there like they told me. It stopped because they saw I was finally determined to leave after I shoved Tonya’s arm away from me  because I became aware that they were doing something bad to my future after Al (Ralph Grant) they said I never got my engineering degree, never got married and my stepfather had committed suicide in the distant future. They tricked me into going into the restaurant with them. I got inside and lost memory of what they did outside. Those two did it again. But now they made it look like my friends and family did it from the past because I had shared it in my sleep back then(This has been going on in my sleep for I don't know how long now meaning I have lived this life over and over again because Ralph Grant kept knocking me back to the past except for where I have lived awake, meaning when I got to this life awake he couldn't make me repeat the years I had lived through awake) but when they got the copies I had sent them in my sleep in the past I had already been taken through it and had been tormented by hearing Als voice for so long and became tormented in the future by their voices  which was unintentional on their part. Tonya told me in order to avoid this was to never share my vision. When I said okay, she then said out loud looking around in the air we have Rick here and he has agreed to never share his vision. I didn't know it at the time, but she was actually taunting my friends and relatives when she said that and me as a youngster trying to goad them into thinking I would never ever share this with them again. Robert and Tonya saw me writing this and sharing it in 2001 and got worried. Robert began hyperventilating saying, “He’s got a memory in him and he knows everything I’ve done. Hey, I know I’ll erase everyone's memory and all of this technology and no one will ever know that this happened”. I was getting encouraged because I didn't like what they were saying to me making me think I would be around in the future. Tonya then said that was the girl to be my wife sharing it, so I’d go through it and said, “We’ll fix you”.  I said I still want her. She then said, “Oh that's not her, we'll take care of whoever that person is”. It was me doing the sharing and I didn’t know it, but I suspected it was me. Tonya then complained about my wife (Janet) taking me outside of their mind saying I didn't get to finish what I was doing. I didn’t realize she was there and wouldn't remember it for years. At first, I was happy because I wanted this shared. They then said they had stopped the sharing. I was stopped in 2005 because I had been mistakenly led to believe everyone wanted me to paint a picture instead of writing it since they still had not came in memory, I still don’t know of any picture to paint them. In 2001 while in an art class at the day treatment center at the Dallas VA, after I learned my instructions were to share my memories with everyone, I had painted a picture of a king shaped cloud. In my sleep in 1990 while I was in memory it came and hovered over me with some sort of electric vibrating force while my head was in Dede’s lap as she and Jean were sitting in lawn chairs on the east side of the farmhouse. I then woke up to hear Al’s voice say this was God who came to see that I was liking girls. I would imagine this thing would send everyone through the same torment my imagination sent Bob and Al through when I mistakenly thought it was them doing this to me was to send Bob Tilton and Al Brice while the voices were tormenting me would send it to my friends and family until they stopped talking because it was tormenting me. It also went after the Word of Faith congregation in 1984, 1987, 1988 and 1989. I had learned by 2001 that I was sitting next to my friend Andy Johnson in 1980 in his car when he came in memory. The thing would keep coming and send him through all of that, as he is Bob Tilton in sleep. What I couldn’t see back then is while I sat next to him it was taking me through it too. Andy asked me while I was sitting next to him was it bothering me when he spoke to me. I said not at all. He then asked me was I seeing that thing. I said no. He then said here it comes again and told me to take his hand because we were in for either another session of pain and torment or he was hoping he wouldn’t feel it again either. I didn’t know that thing was doing that to me in my sleep all those years. My friend asked me about the painting what that thing was, and I told him what it did. He didn’t come in memory at all. When I sat down at my computer in 2007 to write all of this again to search my memory of what else to share, I was led to believe my cousin Michele told me to paint them a picture then I could have a job. I stopped but for years I couldn’t figure out what to paint them and did numerous drawings and it frustrated me and made me mad that she would stop me. I hadn’t taken into consideration that they imitated Bob and Als voices, so they did Michele’s also. After I had come in memory of the butterfly garden in 2013 at the state fair about 1975, I later sat down at my computer again in early 2014 and used my voiceprint program to put everything I wrote in 2001 in an effort to see what I was missing about sharing it but then whom I thought was the Allen Eagle band members from 1975 say Yeah Yeah you’ll share it you need to get out more. So, I stopped. Later this made me mad because why would they stop me. Although I did need to get out more, I still hadn’t resumed sharing it again yet. I learned later it wasn’t them as far as stopping me from voice printing what I knew on my computer. I didn’t imagine them into pain and torment like In did as a janitor although those thoughts were already there by one of Ralph Grants people not me I wouldn’t do that to them and it was to keep me from hearing what they had told me in the past about what to do about it. When I began again sharing this in 2016-2018 to present and writing about sleep living and he and Tonya being electronic beings he said I wasn't supposed to know about that. Robert then complained saying he had stopped me from sharing it, meaning he had stopped me from doing so in 2005. He said I wasn't even supposed to know I was there that night because they had kept doing this to me over and repeatedly in my sleep. The joke was on his ass because I was finally awake when they did this to me and that was the last time, they could do that to me ever. This time Robert pointed at his head and said in an angry voice “I’m (Ralph Lee Grant) inside the mind doing this to you now!!! Tonya then said to me they were going to thought control me as a child, so I’d never grow up. I said just exactly how old do you think I am right now (I was a 26-year-old grown man then)? She then said that they were going to turn my wife into a lesbian, so she’d have no interest in men and I’d never get to marry her. Janet was never a lesbian she likes men but the not marrying her part they did do that to me. That they were going to take me out of everyone’s memory who cared about me so I wouldn’t have any one to help me and they were going to turn me into a homosexual. They never could turn me into a homosexual as I still like girls a lot. My family still remembers me, but I was moved around so much in my lifetime I wonder if any of my friends ever remember me. It was Ralph Grant inside of his mind running me through all of this pretending to be Bob Tilton and Al Brice but mainly Al Brice when he did this to me outside but inside he had me think it was my Uncle Bill the police captain because when I was taken inside the mind I had seen who the modern day jack the ripper, someone killing women in Arlington in the 1980’s, saying it was my adopted uncle, Rusty. The person doing it was later caught and it was a black man, who looked nothing like any of my relatives, blood kin or adopted. I didn't have any memory of what was being done then. I had tried to leave this meeting also several times but Tonya kept grabbing my arm saying they wanted to know how far I went so they could help me through it, but as long as I stayed there it would never stop because they had no intention of ever to stop doing this to me by keeping me inside the mind as well as everyone else. A customer named Kay, who was also a nurse from the Dallas VA hospital sat at the table beside me came in memory of what they were doing after my Uncle Bill (Bob Tilton) located and caught Ralph doing this to me where he was at and messaged through Robert that I was to never cover(cover meaning not to share this information)got me to leave. Before I left, she made Robert give me my wallet and money back and made him pay my tab. I lost memory of all of this. I went home and had some memory of it when I went to bed and realized I’d go through it because I wouldn't remember any of it. I was off Monday and Tuesday since I worked that weekend. When I woke up the next morning I was inside the mind of a doppelganger (one of Ralph Grant’s minions designed to look like me) I got out of bed and went to Phil’s to see if he knew anything about it. He and everyone I went to was in memory of all of this information. I was now experiencing what I did in my sleep because I shared it. Phil told me I would need to check in to the VA hospital to deal with it. He said he would call Buck to let him know what was going on and told me to go straight to the VA. I got in my car and started driving but became worried that that would be okay for a coworker to call in sick for another coworker plus I didn’t think Buck would understand or believe me when he was told I was inside the mind. I was also afraid of getting into a wreck while inside the mind driving somewhere, I didn't drive regularly. I went to my workplace on my day off to tell Buck I was going to check in to the VA hospital. He became upset because I stopped there first. He said Phil had already called him and told him what was going on with me. I told him why I came here instead. He said it was okay for someone else to call in my place, that everyone believed me and that I was off both Monday and Tuesday from working the construction shift the past weekend. He said I made it all the way there without getting into a wreck and Phil wouldn't have let me go like that if he thought I couldn’t make it. He also said I could have asked Phil to drive me and that I didn't know what the VA was going to do they might have just wanted to give me medication and send me home to get bed rest for a few days. He said my job would still be there after I got out of the VA because all of the upper echelon agreed to keep me on even if I had to spend time at the VA beyond the amount of sick leave I had on the books. He said now I wouldn’t be able to work there anymore. I said are you firing me? He said no you haven’t done anything to get yourself fired but you’re going to quit on us soon and go through it. I said I wouldn’t do that after my experience in La Junta. He said that’s because we kept you from getting spirit filled there but now you went and got spirit filled in that church. He said they wouldn't hire me back because they already said that would happen if I went through it. He knew I would be going through it now because they had it erased before I went there. He told me they had removed all of those people who did all of this to me but now they would come back to do this to me all over again. He said I should have gone straight to the hospital and used the phone there because they would help me get on medicine and a program that would allow me to keep my job after only a short stay as an inpatient. Buck told me to go straight to the VA hospital with this and to not let anything stop me, but he didn’t think I would make it there now. I said we’re next door to a police station wouldn’t they stop them. He said the problem is we don’t know where they’re coming from. When I got to my car two black coworkers, Robert Davis and John Caraway (Actually ex-coworkers at that time) said they wanted to go with me because they heard Phil was going. Buck told me those two had been fired along with Ralph Grant. They somehow got me to go to Word of Faith, not remembering to go straight to the VA again, telling me I’d learn how to avoid going through it with the word of god I had been learning there every Sunday and avoid all of that financial trouble in the future. They were talking about religion not the real instructions.  I asked them how they would know any of that since they both were not Christians at all. They said I had converted them when I had my vision. Robert Davis then began saying something to someone. I asked him what he was doing. He said he was reinserting the instructions that had been taken out of me when I left the IHOP. I also said that today is Monday, there is no service there today. John Caraway said that Ralph Grant had a special service scheduled just in my honor since I had such a big vision. I said Ralph Grant has nothing to do with this church, he preaches against it and is a Baptist pastor. They said he became spirit filled in my vision and was hired on as an associate pastor by Bob Tilton. I was now watching people act out (I call it unwillingly being puppeted) what the other people were doing in the inside the mind vision. Example, I had gone into a topless bar in Dallas and one of the dancers stripped but not all the way. Bob’s daughter Amy(Leigh Dell) began doing the same thing but took everything off without knowing she was asleep. I met one of the topless dancers who was a blonde girl. Ralph turned her back into a little girl and she turned out to be Tammy, Claudia’s little sister. I was up in the back balcony of the sanctuary then I saw Janet (my wife) get up and start walking on the ledge and then get down. This was from when I went into the Circus Circus in Las Vegas when I was homeless. When I saw the tightrope walker and remembered Janet walking the ledge, so I went back outside because I didn't want her falling and getting hurt). It finally ended because in 2001 I started writing all of this and remembered my instructions. Marty Tilton(Patricia Hamilton/my cousin Kim) then said  I just saw my teenage daughter do a striptease hear in front of the whole congregation, how can you keep this to yourself, you're a police officer, if you know who jack the ripper of Arlington is you know you don't keep that to yourself. She said your uncle Bill is currently my husband in sleep and he wouldn't cover that and Rusty is not jack the ripper. She said don't play hero and go to that farmhouse in McKinney (Dede’s farm). I went later not remembering she said this and went inside thinking it would stop if I went inside since the puppeting stopped when I wrote them in at Word of Faith and hopefully stop all of the nonsense that came from the 1975 meeting with Tommy and I. Instead I found myself being held hostage along with Marty Tilton (I don't know why she was there) by a black man from the Dallas VA Day Treatment Center using the name Michael Carroll. He kept saying Rick we’re going to get you to commit suicide we were rescued at some point, but I didn’t remember it until 2001. After Bob made me come down and introduce myself so everyone would know exactly who I was and told me of the memories I lost and since he was Andy Johnson in a sleep life he began asking me questions only Andy would know about me to let me know he was very familiar with me. In 2001I remembered going down there but hadn’t remembered everything Marty said until 2019 while I’m writing this. He told me after I left IHOP they had taken all of those instructions out of me while I was asleep. Bob then laughed and said he was married to the poisonous priestess. I thought he meant Tonya, but he was talking about Marty. My memory was so bad then I really wondered if Marty practiced voodoo. They informed me of what they meant before they sent me away. He had me repeat the oath I took when mom removed the peace sign out of my neck in 1975, hoping it would leave again and for me to follow that oath. My memory up until now that it was an oath of witchcraft but its pornography. I had forgotten about the two coworkers as they had been kicked out of the building along with Robert Truckenmiller and all of the other blacks by security after it was learned what they were doing to me. After some more time Bob let me go to check Into the VA because it was the only way to deal with it. He told me to get in my car and not let those two nor anyone else go with me. I left and went outside to get in my car and leave by myself, but Ralph had Robert Truckenmiller, Robert Davis and John Carraway carjack me before I could get out of the parking lot. Robert Davis said when you leave a town, you’re not supposed to go back to it, and we caught you leaving town. I said I haven't left yet and who the hell are you to say what town I could and couldn't leave or go back to. He said those are the controller’s rules (Ralph Lee Grant). He said they were my instructors and that he meant I left Dallas. I said I’m going to the VA hospital. He said and where is the VA. I said Dallas. He said you can't go back there because it’s in Dallas. I said I’ll just go to a VA in another town then. He said you can’t now because you just shared it with me(their reasoning was that if you tell somebody you have something or are going somewhere it now belongs to them and it's not yours anymore).I told Robert Truckenmiller this is all you ever do to me is rain on my parade. He said “Hey you couldn't cover, this all happened because you shared it. He said I was supposed to go down to the altar and get born again and I was supposed to get myself to go to church in the vision instead of topless bars. He said then they could start the millennium  mentioned in the book of Revelations in the Bible but now we have to go through the tribulation. I said first of all that is not me but one of your own people who took me inside of his mind and that this is FarmersBranch, Texas not Jerusleum, Israel.  (That is why the Word of Faith sanctuary was turned in to New Jerusalem going in to Old Jerusalem because they thought they could bring it to Farmers Branch, Texas)He said they couldn't trust Israel any more because  a lot of the jews are now atheist and Israel is now a democracy, not a kingdom anymore.I told him I'm going to be an atheist as well.I said you’ll never get away with this. He said in an arrogant manner he’d already got away with it. I then asked him what he was going to do when I became a janitor and came in memory of what he did, he said that wouldn't happen because he would get to be the janitor(with all of this memory) because I shared it. They then forced me to drive to West Texas then left me for dead while they went to Las Vegas and left my car there in a tow away zone. They did everything they could to sabotage any efforts of me having a decent life out there. I called Phil to tell him what happened. He was upset and said you were supposed to go straight to the VA. He came to get me and went to Las Vegas against Phil’s objections not remembering I was told it would be better for me to avoid going there however it was beyond my control at that time. I lost memory of two different trips I made there. Later, I had met with Janet, she was brought to the Waffle House by Phil to let me meet her after he went to her college dorm to let me see her and talk to her. I told her I didn't understand that if I already shared it like I was supposed to why were they still able to do this to me. She said she had taken me outside of the mind when I was in my condo but they had tricked me into going to the IHOP out of everyone's reach so they could isolate me in the parking lot where no one could see them or me and took me inside the mind again and tricked me out of sharing it in 2005 with a deceptive instruction about painting a picture only. I went outside the mind when I left the parking lot. They took me inside the mind again when they tricked me into going into the restaurant with them and went outside again when the nurse from the VA got me to leave. She said they had no way of knowing I was there because what I had shared at the restaurant with so much memory, they thought I had either checked in to the VA or was somewhere enjoying pornography. I was such a loner and always isolated myself from people even when I was in public, and for all they knew I was at home avoiding all of this. She told me that would keep me from marrying her in the future and that Phil had to come and get her because I was afraid to go knock on her dormitory door(she was a student at UT Southwestern Medical school) and talk to her myself. She said I would have to remember about sleep living and begin sharing that to help people more easily recover their memory of all of this. Of course, I lost memory of this meeting until 1991 but didn't remember what she had said to me until 2019.I made it back twice and then wound up in Biloxi with the girl who was to be my wife and back. I lost memory of this trip as well. Then Ralph had Phil and I held hostage by Chante. She was wearing a jacket exactly like the one I inherited from my Uncle Rudd. I don't know how I wound up being held hostage by her to this day. While there she wrote and sabotaged my life again. Phil managed to escape. While I was sitting there, they took me inside the mind again where I was seeing myself homeless and in Las Vegas again in the future. I saw the 911 attacks as well. (I was told in my younger years that this is where the emergency telephone number 911 came from, so that when I came in memory they wanted me to know that they believe me when I share this  because I’m having a hard time getting people in memory which has led to me not being so open to sharing this although I now know to do so anyway)After the jets flew into both of the World Trade Center buildings in New York she looked at me and said, “Aren't you glad that I did that?” This was a reference to what I had said when I was eleven years old and broke a spigot at a house under construction before my grandmother took me to church on a Sunday morning to create a small wading pool. I asked my friend Eric that and he said no. I said no to that bitch Chante. She was finally taken away from there because I managed to share it somehow in my sleep there with my childhood friend Jerry Coffman. I don't know when or where she left off before I was taken outside of the mind nor do I remember how long she held me hostage there. The other blacks were distracting the employees in the front office to keep them from knowing she was holding me there. We were next door to a police station, but the police were being held at bay by black snipers. I was so broken up over all of this they had a hard time getting me to leave as I was afraid of being kidnapped again. They had fired Ralph when they learned he was behind it all. I wound up in the hospital. I don't remember how I got there or how I got out. I then wound up in a program at the Dallas VA hospital. I was very deeply sleepy at the time. One of the doctors resembled the girl from Army JROTC but was blind at that time. I was then put in a day treatment program with a man named John Perry and a girl named Diane Wilcoxin. I don't know how I was taken out of it and was knocked back to about the week before Thanksgiving with no memory of any of this as was everyone else. In December I took three weeks of vacation. Using my five year Christmas bonus I enrolled full time for the winter semester at Richland taking courses that would lead to an engineering degree instead of computer information, not remembering the dream I had about a wife nor the inside the mind vision or what Ralph, Robert and Tonya had done to me. I only remembered the trip to Austin and the new calling. One day I dreamed I was with a group of veterans at the American Legion in Duncanville. Out of curiosity I went to see if they would be there. I went inside and they were there. I introduced myself to the day treatment chief who was there from the VA hospital. He knew who I was and asked me how I found them. He said they had me in the program not too long ago and didn’t know what became of me.  He got some medicine from the pharmacy via a doctor saying it had been prescribed for me before I somehow got taken away from the program. They were actually in a future year. His name was John Perry. He was Bob Tilton in a sleep life. He let me participate in the program saying I had already been enrolled in it. I only remember doing a few things outside of this on my vacation. He even got medicine I needed from the doctor. Diana Wilcoxin was his assistant. She was Aunt Dee in a sleep life. One day I had forgotten all about the program. John called me at home to ask why I didn’t show up. I had no memory of who he was or what he was talking about. Later, in the day I remembered him and the program. I decided to drive to building six at the Dallas VA and see if he was still there. When I got there around three thirty in the afternoon John and Dianna were about to leave for the day. Dianne saw me pulling up and said they both recognized my car because it was special to me, it was my 78 Grand Prix. John said they were done for the day but let me stay the night at his house so I would remember to go to the VA the next day. I met his wife. My vacation ended and afterwards I had lost memory of all of this.I went to a porno theater and bought porno magazines. I felt guilty about it. I was conned out of my nice car and into one that was really a piece of crap by another singles Sunday school member. One weekend in early February before I was going to church, I got a phone call from John Perry. I hadn't remembered him. He told me not to go to church that day because they were unable to stop me from going to the altar call which would lead to me leaving my signal technician job. I didn't know what he meant and lost memory of the phone call. When I was sitting in the morning service an altar call came. Bob then said it’s someone’s last call. He then said you’ve blown it, meaning being in pornography again, Bob didn’t know me personally at that time, nor did he remember meeting me back in November when they were all in memory. I got angry and just sat there because I didn't want to be embarrassed if Robert Truckenmiller (I hadn't remembered what he and Tonya did to me) saw me go down there. He then told the congregation to open their eyes. This was done to embarrass me. He then began counting to ten and said if I didn't get down there, God was going to turn his back on me because he was tired of playing footsies with me. I was sitting in the balcony and decided to leave the church but when I got downstairs, I was unable to go out the door, so I went to the altar and prayed. After another run in with John Carraway I resigned from my job the following Thursday, February 11, 1988 with two weeks’ notice believing the financial teachings of that church would help me get through college full time and I didn’t want to go to hell, still not remembering the events of the previous November. After work on Friday night I went to JoJo’s restaurant near church to see if the singles were still there. While there I had bought a ticket to the singles valentine’s masquerade party for that Saturday not really wanting to go so I worked up the courage to ask a former topless dancer named Ina(this was Obera, Naomi and my cousin Michele in a sleep life) who was also a German immigrant to be my date there. We went shopping the next day for our costumes. Ina picked a wildly inappropriate costume for a church, a punk rock costume, but we went anyway. I went as Max Headroom. That night we went to the party. I saw the girl I had sat next to the Sunday before I was taken inside the mind in November. She was dressed as a surgeon. I for some reason thought she might be a little unwelcoming. I still hadn't remembered her being in the wife vision nor in the one in 1980. We had to get up before everyone and introduce ourselves. I introduced myself. Later she introduced herself as a local university student full time. I didn't catch her name. Later I sat down while my date was dancing with someone else. I noticed the girl surgeon at the snack table. Something told me I’d never learn how to talk to girls if I didn't go up and speak to her. I went and asked what her major was. She said clinical dietetics. I told her I left my job to study civil engineering and be a missionary. She then said something to me, but I didn't hear it clearly. So, I looked up and she had a big smile on her face. I asked her again and she said she was going to school to be a missionary. My mind said she was the one. She became very attracted to me and made herself very approachable that night. Meeting her made me not have any more interest in Tonya(I didn’t remember what I said to her in the restaurant nor what she had said and done to me) Ina decided to leave, I had to go with her because we came in her car. When we got to her apartment, I went in with her. We talked a few minutes. I began getting the urge to have sex with her and was afraid if I stayed any longer I would, but because of religion, I decided to ask her to lunch the next day and left.She showed up after the morning service still in costume. I took her to lunch anyway and watched the stares she was getting. We left in our own cars and I didn't think I’d be around her anymore. I went to the evening service. Ina showed up again still in costume and wanted to sit beside me. We found a seat on the back row but the two seats between us were broken. Another pastor who knew of Ina’s past as a topless dancer came up and began rubbing my shoulders. He said, “Are you staying holy brother?” I said yes. Ina asked me what he said, and I told her. She then told somebody in an angry voice that a pastor asked if her boyfriend was staying holy. After the service, I went out to talk to her about wearing that costume as it was embarrassing. While I was about to speak to her the girl from last night bumped into me on purpose and walked away in a very sexy walk letting me see her wiggle her butt. I wanted to go ask her out for coffee but didn't want to offend Ina. She asked me if I still wanted to be around her. I asked if she would take the costume off and she said no. I told her I didn't want to be around her then. The girl who bumped into me had already left when I tried to find her. That was my only chance of actually having her because it became too difficult to even get a date with her after that, hence we never dated.In October of  that year I came in memory of seeing Janet in the wife vision after I passed by the children's Sunday School she was teaching(She was upset with me at the time)but not the rest of it nor of seeing her in a dream in 1980. There was a new girl to the church singles named Shawna Wheeler, she was Leigh Dell in a sleep life. For the rest of 1988 I found myself working as a pizza delivery driver part time. We got a new assistant manager. His name was Fred Aghai, he was an Iraqi immigrant, he was also Bob Tilton in a sleep life. There was a very pretty red headed fifteen-year-old waitress there named Krista who was from a Jewish Christian family. I began sharing with her my reasons for college. She came in memory and said she was my mother. She meant Leigh Dell. We lost memory of it. I was unable to afford college and unable to show up to school in the summer for finals because of cars breaking down on me causing me to fail. I was also sleeping on friends’ couches because I didn't have much money left, mainly because I would give tithes and offerings and go to the video arcade to pass the time away.  I enrolled in the VA to get treatment for psoriasis since it occurred while I was in the Air Force. In May of 1989 I found myself working as a janitor for Word of Faith not remembering anything but the dream of a wife in 1987.  I met a very beautiful and voluptuous prayer minister named Naomi whose hair went down passed her hips; she was a student at Christ For the Nations Institute in Oak Cliff. She was my cousin Michele/Ina/grandmother (Beebe) in a sleep life. This was the girl I had so desperately wanted to see when I was inside the mind in 1987. She came in memory and said she was my cousin Michelle, we lost memory of that incident. In late January of 1990 I came in memory of my vision after wishing for my job with the city back (Naomi had left then so I didn’t see her them but had met her, so I knew then what she looked like). I thought I was inside the mind again not realizing I was going through what the doppelganger did when he took me inside of his mind. I only remembered having the vision and seeing from then to when I came in memory. I remembered Robert and Tonya taking me to the IHOP parking lot but not the details of what was wrong with what they did as I was led to believe I was being instructed(hearing Bob and Al’s voices) to get through it and because I was not supposed to share visions. I was also disappointed because I never got married. After hearing those voices for so long it became torment. I was led to believe Bob stole my vision after I shared it for his own purposes. My father died. While sitting at the funeral home with my grandmother, Aunt Nancy, and Aunt Barbara, Aunt Nancy came in memory. She asked me if I was being instructed. Thinking I would get in more trouble for sharing it and being blamed for dad dying because I went inside the mind, I said no. We lost memory of that, but I recovered it around six months later. I was coming in memory of the events of the vision as they happened rather than before. In July I was laid off from being a janitor with no explanation given and was unable to regain my city job. There at some point around this time appeared a place called children’s hell. It was hot but not the kind of hot described in the bible and I was the only one seeing it and hearing it but there was Robert Truckenmiller and an impersonator of Tommy in it waiting for me to go there. For the next three weeks I began seeing holograms of Clyde Rill, Randall Graeber, my mother Leigh Dell, and a 12-year-old Tommy giving me a hard time. They were being called time paths. I didn't know it was impersonators of them. One Saturday, as I was walking home what at the time, I believed was Tommy pulled out what I thought was my own kidney, took a bite out of it and put it back. I became upset and got my friends Paul and Jogi to drive me to the VA to have it checked. When I got there, I felt a bunch of blacks try to pull my leg down and eat it from children’s hell. The VA x-rayed me and gave me medicine. Paul and Jogi took me home, but I had left my medicine in his car and forgot about it. While sitting in my apartment a hologram of Clyde Rill and a hologram of Clyde Rill suddenly came out of my living room wall. Something had pulled my guts down below my apartment floor and put fire inside of me. It wouldn't stop burning so by Sunday morning I jumped in the apartment swimming pool to put it out, but it kept burning. I called 911 to complain of the pain and waited with my apartment door open so the ambulance could easily find me. A fire truck, police car and ambulance showed up. They asked me questions like why my clothes were wet. I didn't tell them any of what I was experiencing. They then said they were sending me to Brookhaven which was a hospital in Farmers Branch and asked if that were okay. I said yes thinking it was a regular hospital, but when I got there, I learned I was sent to the psychiatric ward. After my mother arrived, they took me from my room back to the emergency room where the nurse coerced me into committing myself voluntarily, threatening to go to court to force it if I didn’t. They put me on a medication I found to be helpful.After a couple of days transferred me to the VA mental ward saying I qualified for treatment at the VA since I was already enrolled for treatment there. The VA took me off that medication saying they didn't do that there. The doctors there tried to get me to sign something to go into research. I didn't sign it because I was afraid of them doing some gruesome experiment and getting a frontal lobotomy. I didn't tell them of being instructed nor that I saw this in my vision in 1987.  After being there for several days without medication or any treatment from them I learned I could leave against medical advice since I was a voluntary patient. So, I left. I was in somewhat of a state of shock at becoming a mental patient and still disappointed because Janet and I never married. I got my neighbor Wanda Prestridge to drive me over to Janet’s house because I wanted to tell her what was going on with me. I told her I had a vison and had put pornography in it, I was trying to tell her she was in it in an intimate way and that I was hearing voices and saying things like hide, cover and expose, but I failed to mention what Robert and Tonya had done. I was hoping she would go inside the mind and change it to a better life for me because I completely trusted her judgement. I couldn't go inside the mind anymore and thought that was a punishment. It wasn't because I had erased being able to go inside the mind by me or anyone else, but I hadn't remembered how frustrated I was in 1987 that I went inside the mind and was having a hard time going outside of it. Janet simply gave me some religious counseling (she had been put heavily in religion while I was inside the mind by Ralph so we couldn’t get married). I still wonder what Wanda and Janet's two roommates thought of me as they were watching me share it with Janet in front of them. While I think sharing it with her did nothing I hadn't realized until now that it did because this happened multiple times in my sleep and she was able to catch it before then because she learned my address when I was going inside the mind from a check I wrote her in 1988 to help her go on a missionary trip to Mexico and she was Sharon Boleyn in a sleep life who lived in the same condominium complex as I did and was across the parking lot from my unit. I was there at the VA couple of more times and left again. I eventually became homeless after I lost my apartment. My mother gave me a list of places for help in McKinney. One of them was a homeless shelter called the Samaritan Inn. My first night to stay there I met Larry. Neither of us had any memory of meeting in 1987. My cousin Tommy was staying there also. I didn't speak to him or trust him because I was falsely led to believe he did all of this to me at an October of 1975 meeting for sharing my vision. I clearly know he had nothing to do with it and that what he did in 1975 was Ralph, Robert and Tonya using him in his sleep. I took the jacket I inherited and took it to a dry cleaner in Plano but didn't pick it up because I had no money. I never saw it again. I wound up in Las Vegas in 1991 not remembering ahead of time not to go there. I had a computer disk with information like the 911 attacks but not remembering it was on there but was stolen while in my backpack I left outside of a casino. ( Before I went to Las Vegas in 1991 I was arrested and spent 2 days in jail in Plano for drinking a beer next to Central Expressway. I tried going back to work and got a job at L&M convenience store #9 in Irving, Texas across the street from Nimitz High school. The manager who hired me was named Teresa Wheatley, she was snaggletooth and I hadn't remembered she had sabotaged my memory in 1987. She fired me after 2 or 3 weeks saying I didn't talk enough which wasn't true since I could do nothing but talk with the customers as I was the only one in the store to help them I couldn't get another job after that so I left for Vegas).In March 1992 after a man I began calling Ken Libyan because he conned me out of my food stamps, I began having memory recoveries of locating property that Ralph Grants minions had stolen. I went back to Texas and stayed again in the Samaritan Inn but a black man calling himself the colonel was running it. It was more religious this time and there were diapers full of shit there this time. Ralph Grants middle name became diapershit. The so-called colonel threw me out saying I had been staying there three years. I went to Biloxi thinking my instructions were to return to the Air Force when I recovered memory. I went to the Keesler visitor’s office. The person running it that day was a female security police officer who was a staff sergeant. This was Georgia Johnson in a sleep life. The OSI agent said there was nothing in the computer on me and told me to leave. I began telling people I was a recovering amnesia victim. I had mistakenly thought the KGB had given me lobotomies. I left there and went back to Dallas. Something told me it was only one person doing this to me and that they had turned themselves into multiple people. I then was falsely led to believe it was my cousin Kim, Tommy’s oldest sister and that everyone around me was her which lead me to trust no one and in some cases speak very disrespectfully to them(nobody who knew me real well would expect some of the things that came out of my mouth towards a couple of people when I was in Las Vegas). What I didn't know until later it was she who knew what my instructions were because she was put through this in her awake life as a beautiful girl named Patricia and that Ralph, Robert and Tonya were to demonizing her to me to keep me from remembering the instructions and to place blame on her for what they were doing to me and everyone else. I wound up back in Las Vegas again. In 1993 I was staying in a shelter called St. Vincent’s. One of the people running it was Smitty from the Air Force. I didn't tell him who I was and didn't ask if he was in fact Smitty or in a sleep life. After getting nowhere I left Las Vegas in February and went back to Dallas. I now became I also had sleep lives as I had only thought the people around me did. I went into a now out of business art supply store I used to shop at to buy something. While there four pretty blonde girls came in the door, I determined they were all different people and began feeling relieved. By April I decided I would go into the VA and stay because nothing else was working. I began telling the doctors of the voices and memory recoveries but not of my vision or Robert and Tonya. The voices had stopped as they were around late September to early October of 1990, meaning I wasn't hearing them from the parking lot and weren’t  tormenting me as far as hearing voices goes, and hadn't remembered seeing any of this from 1987 but I wasn't in memory that they were still holding me at IHOP in 1987 running me through this before I went outside of the mind and went through it. They did a spinal tap on me as part of the schizophrenia research program I had volunteered for. before the procedure I asked for Novocain. They said they only had lidocaine and injected my spine. After a minute or so I saw images of Chante without a cranium leaving my spinal cord and realized she had very seriously infected my body. I then became aware that my cousin Kim went through this as a little girl and knew what the instructions were. I didn’t know yet my instructions were to specifically share it all. They said my recoveries were delusions and put me on an antipsychotic medication which did help me with what voices were there as well as what they were calling my hallucinations but were Ralph Grants taunting me. It got rid of them; I wasn't hearing any of what was done to me. They got me an income and sent me to a boarding house I had briefly stayed at just before the city rehired me in August of 1983. I was enrolled in the day treatment program in October 1993. (I hadn't remembered being in it in 1987) There was a gorgeous recreation therapist there named Kim working there. I found her very comfortable to be around and wondered who else she was. In sleep one night I saw her and told her she was pretty from the top of her head down to the tip of her toes. It took me until around 2002 to 2004 to realize that she was Dede in a sleep life which explained why I was so comfortable around her.In January 1995 several day treatment staff had retired. A new director named John Perry came on board, neither of us remembered each other and Diane Wilcoxin was transferred from the day hospital there as John's assistant. In that time, I was given a new doctor by the first name of Jenny because they changed every year and I had to be seen weekly to renew the antipsychotic I was on. She determined that I also needed to be on an antidepressant. By 1996 I was determined to buy a typewriter to try and share this because the one thing I remembered from 1975 where Tommy and I met, I was told not to share visions, but he then said that they wanted that one shared. So I wrote a 10 page document “Broken Silence” in an attempt to put people in memory but only recovered  some memories of the past instances when people received a copy of it, I had sent one to a Word of Faith prayer minister and home fellowship host named Lynette Malkey. I was at her home one night for a fellowship meeting in 1989 when she began questioning who had left an electronics job recently( I sent them out anonymously with the exception of giving a copy to the psychiatrist who was treating me in 1996 as well as two fellow veterans in the day treatment program)still not remembering what my instructions were to do when I recovered memory. Lynette then stood before me when I said it was I but I wasn't aware of sending it to her in my sleep. She began telling me everything she knew about this as well as seeing this writing. She began telling me my instructions were to simply share everything I know and said that she was Dede/Janet/Kim (VA Recreation Therapist) and all her other sleep lives and what all she knew about me. She told me the reason I didn’t marry her was I never dated her as Janet. I then told her about not wanting to ask her out before I told Ina what I told her. She said you were on a date with Naomi, she’s ours and everybody's mother. She came back that night because she wanted to be around you, she liked you. You did hurt her when you told her you didn't want to be around her anymore. I told her I was shy about asking her out but the other girls were dropping hints at being interested in me and I had the courage to ask them out but thought I couldn't because I was only to date her since she was my intended mate. I also told her that I once worked up the courage and asked her on a date and she said no. I assumed she was still mad at me since I had not wanting to but hurt her feelings deeply awhile back. She said there's nothing wrong with me dating those other girls since we were not engaged or going steady and that I was supposed to keep asking her since not all girls will go on a date with a guy the first time he asks, you don’t know what’s going on in her life at that time and how would I know if she wasn’t dating other guys at that time. She said she wanted me to date other girls and to experience them. She then said be a man honey. She told me I was wasting my time in college because I’d never get what I want under those circumstances. We lost memory of this and when I remembered the instructions, I learned she had passed away and it took me until 2019 to remember the rest of what she told me and that she was/is Dede. In 1997 I finally got the nerve to go back to college. Dr. Jenny was there and was told this information (That I had gone back to college and got A’s in both courses the first semester). She gave me a nice hug because of it. I then learned Tommy had created her with his mind waving power in the past to help me. I later learned she was my cousin Lisa (Tommy’s youngest sister in a sleep life). I began sharing again in July 2001 after writing this stuff. I came in memory of what Kim (Patricia) had told me in 1975, she said I had stopped talking in 1993 when I finally got help at the VA but should have kept talking. I stopped telling the doctors the rest of what I remembered after they called my memory recoveries delusions but quietly still believed that were real and not delusions, although a few were delusions such as thinking KGB agents lobotomized me to get my memory, I wasn't aware then exactly how I lost my memory back then because I didn't and still don't believe they can go simply because you say pray this out of your memory, someone has to do this to you in some form or fashion. She said the way to change my vision was definitely not to go inside the mind but to change me, meaning my actions and attitude. I began recovering more memories especially of Bob and Al not having anything to do with the IHOP meeting and the instructions were to simply tell people what I know/share this. I did have some memory of sleep living but only a little of myself. I was at a Target in 2005. When I went outside to put the shopping cart away, I heard someone yell Uncle Harry. I didn’t reply because that’s not my name, at least here while awake. I then heard them say its Uncle Harry. I didn't look to see who said it. A month later I was reading the obituaries, and I saw a picture of myself but with a mustache. I looked at the obituary, it said the guy’s name was Harry Jeff Martin and was only about two years younger than me here. I’ve only become more aware of what sleep living is doing to us as of writing this here in 2019.To conclude all of this, she/he/they is/are doing all of this to you as well. She has infected our central nervous systems via the spinal fluid (this is why I saw Chante going out of my system when the doctors injected lidocaine into my spinal cord before they did a spinal tap). The electronics she has inside of you send electronic signals to your brain causing you to make involuntary movements (This would be the cause of puppeting I saw Amy and Janet do) and irrational decisions particularly in your sleep. She also uses some sort of chemicals to cause us to live sleep lives(I saw the son of a bitch who impersonated me  not too long ago, this year in fact stand outside my window in broad daylight with a small brown colored  bottle and pour a liquid all over his head, In didn’t know who he was at that time but wondered why he was doing that. He thought he could get me away from here because of this writing exposing him). Robert Truckenmiller saw this writing when I was at the table at the IHOP in 1987 and said I was neither supposed to know any of this nor remember it. I saw all of the electronics that they put in my body when I was homeless and recovering memories. They had me believing they were part of my own body and they were taking them from me each time I slept at any business or couch because I had shared my vision (again if you can call it that). He then said I wasn’t supposed to know about the tower of Babel. I said everybody knows that story. he said I wasn't supposed to know he did that to us. She infected you when she killed you and turned you into a fetus. The medications that are out can stop most if not all of these signals she sends to your brain and body as well as some sort of therapy such as the arts, physical exercise and other available hobbies. You do go to bed in your sleep lives and at some point, you are asleep as your awake self and in your own bed, what your dreams are then I couldn’t say because this has been going on since almost the beginning of time and at this point I don't remember what my sleep was like before Ashley did this to me. The people around me are all asleep and only show up when I contact them or vice versa. I live other lives in my sleep and only know of a few of them but have no control over them asleep or awake, no one can keep me on them the way I can others when I’m awake. You are probably asleep not knowing you are shifted from one life to another with no control over it. One life you could be very wealthy, the other very poor. You are conscious of the particular life you are in but not the other and you don't know what has been going on when you awaken to your awake life. You and your friends and relatives have died at some point but are all still around with no memory of who’s who. The point of Dede being around me so much and my being attracted to her is that I was made just for her at the beginning of time. The point of Andy being around me so much is he is among the group of men I was created with, yet he was created for Naomi by Naomi. The point of Tommy being around me so much is that he was made by one of my sisters to help me out of this and erase all of this nonsense. Now to enlighten you further into how this is happening. First, you were taken inside of an evil person's mind. This person took your name, your job, your education and everything you have or have had. Only you were never supposed to go outside of this person's mind. While you may have had some control over what this person did while you were inside of their mind you have and may still make the wrong decisions through no fault of your own as you are now living that life awake and in sleep not remembering what will occur. It is like a pre recording that has been repeated over and over again and is now on its final run and is in the process of being erased. This person has been doing this with everyone because she,  in the beginning turned herself into a race of male and female electronic beings. She/they don’t look like robots but have electronics inside of them. This part of them is invisible and they are inside of you which is how they did this to you and me. You can’t see them with normal x ray machines. Whatever you can call a soul in them is no longer eternal. All blacks are they (They/She/he started racism, we were never races, we were simply people who looked different from each other. The bitch confused our languages at Babel and separated us by skin color.) I only know of six of them who are Caucasian. You'll need to read further to get a better memory of when this originated. The thing about this is, she/they is/are subject to her own unnatural laws meaning they die, are shrinkabeed (turned into infants and little kids) and live sleep lives. The two versions of what I wrote about how I remembered the poisonous priestess and years later that she was Marty Tilton is how the bible was written. The parts that were true were edited out of veryones memory to make things look bad and untruthful.          In the beginning there was nothing, and then came a beautiful, voluptuous woman. She called herself Naomi. Using her mind, she willed into being creation, which included the universe as well as buildings, cars and other technology more advanced than what we have now, then a group of women. She made them different tones of skin shade, nonblack. She had the females in the animal world be the pregnant ones because it is the female,Naomi who gave life to creation. She told the women, “I will now make us men in our image”. She did this with her mind also. All humans have this power, even now. Even though they can't see it when they use it, it still works. When Naomi made me my first thoughts were look at me, I’m alive. She made me for a girl named Christine. The men and women she created had and still have the same powers as her. If you're wondering about genital originations women and men originated as hermaphrodites. Terra, Tommy’s middle sister Laurie, a daughter of Naomi and one of my sisters created a girl and a man for this girl. The girls name was Ashley and the man’s name was Adam. For no good reason Ashley became evil and turned herself into hatred and filth (we must constantly clean things with soap and water and other chemicals as she has also made the earths and surrounding atmosphere filth which is why we deteriorate and die and this is what makes cigarettes poisonous to us,they would not harm is in our original atmosphere as well as have regular sex and view pornography), a race of evil electronic men and women, all black and a few among us who look like our own. She destroyed this planet, all the technology we had back then as well as other planets then turned us into kids, took our memories and caused death, disease, and destruction. She then altered our genitals with the men only having a penis and the women only a vagina. She altered women’s insides with reproductive organs like that of a female gorilla. She then caused us to shrink and be birthed out of them in the same form as the animal world, this is considered the worst thing she has ever done to us. Reproduction by sex was and still is only for the animal world. We humans reproduce other humans by thinking them into existence and they don’t start as babies but rather as young adults who look around the age of 21 years old. They're not supposed to age, dye or get diseases and neither are our pets. Death is only for the animals in the food chain that are killed for food. For those of us who prefer, Naomi created vegetation that can be made to look and taste like meat in case someone is too much in love with these food animals. I myself like regular meat but have tried the vegan meat and it tastes just as well. We also can will technology and material wealth into being simply by thinking so. I’ve been calling it mind waving, it can also be called psychokinesis. You can do it even now, but it does get stolen in your sleep and we're unable to see it when we do it. I recovered memory of this by 1992. I began creating other people with my mental powers. At one point I saw them for only a second. In 1993 I was told mentally to start making them on other planets I had created because this one only has so much room. Terra made another wife for Adam and named her Eve. Ashley is Lilith, and both God and the devil of the bible.  Currently she is Badge man a.k.a. Ralph Lee Grant a.k.a. Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson had all those plastic surgeries because he looked like Ralph and was in that particular sleep life and didn't want the public to know he(she)is badge man.        We have lived through all the ages recovering technology and ways to fight the diseases she caused. We made jails, prisons, and death row for her(them), created locks so she couldn't steal from us and mental hospitals and regular hospitals for ourselves, but they have no intention of reforming so they must be executed into nonexistence as what Ashley (Ralph Grant)did is both intolerable and completely unforgivable. That is not genocide, they are not humans, they are evil unrepentant mutant murderers of what used to be a normal girl before she turned herself into hatred and total evil. She'll do everything she can to make your life miserable.    Unfortunately, she has taken most of our memories of this and causes us to make poor decisions because she has actually possessed our bodies(this would be what caused the puppeting I mentioned in 1987 and happens because we are not aware of our sleep lives), so we must be restrained. However, prisons, jails, and death row are not for us but rather rehab centers and mental hospitals (they were never meant to be crude or cause stigma but rather help us get our minds straight through therapy and medication). Her/he/it (whatever you want to call her) power is being erased. When she turned herself into evil, she used her voodoo powers to take me inside of her mind where she lived a life of torment expecting me to die in order to avoid it. Her ability to take us inside of her mind is gone but the rest of her is still tormenting us but she is almost gone. I can't say for certain when she will never be able to do any of this to us again but when it is stopped it will be stopped forever. For your own benefit in grasping the reality and understanding of this information here if you still don’t believe/remember it you should start by writing, typing or using voiceprint on your computer or a handwritten notebook everything you remember from the beginning of your life to the present. You should also keep a log of the dreams you remember. I remember dreaming (a sleep life) that I had just gotten out of the military and drove to Colorado and found a place that would help me with that was called Shiloh House. The next morning, I googled it on my phone and found this place existed. Later I dreamed myself or someone else had to go to a doctor in the same area for treatment. I googled that doctor and found out that he exists. You should try this yourself and not give up if you're unable to find them because things are being hidden from you to keep you from knowing this information and your own lives. Also, wear a butt plug(if you are new to this item. a smaller one is available for your comfort, as time goes on you will adjust to it and enjoy it and an adult diaper or whatever size you are and you can have better control over your sleep lives and awake life. The three Matrix movies symbolize sleep living and the butt plug and diaper are how you can get control over it. Keep yourself and the people and things around you clean because these people operate from filth also, the doppelganger I caught outside pouring a muddy liquid on himself was covering himself in a special filth to get at me, I did get to another place he took from me after I cleaned the top of the refrigerator off a number of years ago. A reduction of toxins in the air such as greenhouse gases and things such as flourocarbons, toxins released when you use styrofoam containers in your microwave will help you get out of this filth but especially pornography and sex, both same gender sex and opossite gender sex, they are both completely natural and are what Naomi intended when she created other humans, also clean the atmosphere of this filth. You are able to will people and things into existence using your thoughts, people will have to be willed into being on other planets you create to avoid overpopulation on this one. The filth is keeping you from seeing what you create, I assure you it or they are there.                                                

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The Strange, Isolated Life Of A Tuberculosis Patient In The 21st Century

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The Strange, Isolated Life Of A Tuberculosis Patient In The 21st Century

While volunteering for the Peace Corps in Ukraine in 2010, I contracted a severe version of drug-resistant tuberculosis. Two years of painful, isolating treatment taught me the vital role social media may play in finally eradicating this disease.

One of the loneliest nights of my life was when I masturbated for an Australian stranger on the only webcam chat site that would load on the shitty hospital Wi-Fi. He didn’t want to show his face on camera, and I didn’t care whether it was because he was famous, married, or ugly. The internet was so slow that the sound stalled, so the dirty talk had to be typed.

It was a terse, space-economizing raunch, pounded out letter by letter with his left index finger, since his dominant hand was busy. I WANT TO VERB YOUR NOUN. But the artlessness was a relief. The more work it took to type, the less likely he’d waste time asking about my hospital bed and IV rack. If I didn’t mind him being headless and talking like a filthy grown-up “see spot run,” couldn’t he handle a naked stranger in a tuberculosis sanatorium?

Nor did he mention the armband, which hid the nozzle nurses screwed to dripping sacks of drugs during infusions. Three times a week, amikacin seeped down the skinny 2-foot-long tube inside and up my arm, leading behind my collarbone to splash into a big fat artery over my heart.

Just please don’t fucking ask, I thought. It was exhausting to explain. Screw this guy. Wouldn’t it be weirder if he had inferred a medical emergency, but resolved not to let it ruin his hard-on? Do virtual strangers without heads even have cognition? What the hell was wrong with this guy’s face, anyway?

Who cares? I had been in that room in Denver for almost a month. I was days away from lung surgery to remove my upper right lobe, where the bulk of the disease was headquartered. This was the last goddamned time I’d ever get to show my tits to a stranger without any scars. And it was the skinniest I’d ever been.

I had contracted extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB (a severe version of multidrug-resistant, or MDR tuberculosis), while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. The National Jewish Health Center is no longer a sanatorium, but it is still one of the country’s top TB research facilities, staffed by worldwide mycobacteria experts and equipped with properly ventilated rooms for the infrequent consumptives who turn up there.

When I was admitted to the hospital, the state of Colorado dispatched a guy to my hospital room to read me my legal quarantine order. I’d be in isolation for however long I was contagious.

During my stay, I started a two-year course of harsh antibiotics, including an IV drip. I had two surgeries, which flanked a blood transfusion and peskily recollapsing lung. I lost 12 pounds and half my blood, which have been replaced, and the upper lobe of my right lung, which hasn’t. I wish I could be more inspiring. But I didn’t use that time to write a novel, learn yoga, or even plow through a beach read. Falling into a trance and getting off strangers was all I felt capable of.

Objectifying? Sure. So is being sick.

Such isolation — both physical and emotional — takes a serious toll on TB patients. From the 18th century glory days up to the modern rise of MDR, tuberculosis went from being a relatively universal human experience to being a profoundly lonely one. Isolation and stigma make long treatments even harder to endure and inhibit public consciousness that could lead to more meaningful progress. But we may be approaching a new historical moment: Social media makes it easier than ever for patients to find and support one another. These connections can improve patient morale and treatment outcomes and ultimately raise the profile of MDR-TB in global health policy.

Because I was never as alone as I thought: Five thousand miles away in Siberia, a woman my age named Ksenia Shchenina was also suffering. So are patients in dozens of other countries, and more and more of them are beginning to use the internet to combat the solitude that has long not only defined the disease and its treatment, but kept it from being eradicated for good.

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Most people don’t spend much time thinking about tuberculosis. If pressed, they might make a few basic generalizations. It was a very serious disease in the olden days. It killed your great-great-grandfather, all of the Brontës, and Nicole Kidman’s character in Moulin Rouge. But then it was cured. It doesn’t exist anymore. So we’ll all just have to get Ewan McGregor’s attention some other way and die of something else.

Tuberculosis has been on the scene since ancient times, but it only reached menace status in filthy, urbanizing mid-17th century Europe. It went on to dominate the continent’s “cause of death” list for over two centuries. This makes sense, if you know how germs work. Poverty and bad sanitation — e.g., the Industrial Revolution’s toxic work conditions and shantytowns — made toppling immune systems a cinch. Before germ theory caught on, some people even saw TB as a sort of moral retribution for the sins of modernity.

Even the disease’s classic name — consumption — implied a physical and spiritual connection. It consumed you; it devoured you from within. Before the scientific consensus on how an infectious disease was transmitted, many people assumed a person could be predisposed to consumption. (They caught on to genetics before they unraveled epidemiology.) An entire family of consumptives probably meant they were ill because they had all inherited the proper preconditions for the illness — not because they lived together and coughed fatal microbes into one another’s food. Similarly, researchers couldn’t help but notice that consumption disproportionately seized writers and artists, whose lifestyle was practically synonymous with urban poverty. But when it was still assumed that the disease grew from within, many scientists searched for a link between consumption and genius. This is the kind of factoid that makes you feel smug when modern doctors are really, really surprised that you got this.

The jig was up in 1882. A German bacteriologist named Robert Koch zeroed in on the Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterial cause of consumption. It spread from person to person by air.

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Robert Koch Ann Ronan Pictures / Getty Images

Koch’s early attempts to develop a vaccine failed, but his efforts did yield a valuable diagnostic tool: the tuberculin skin test. It’s a shot that scans for TB antibodies. If you’ve been exposed to the disease, the injection site on your forearm will flare up into a BRIGHT RED SKIN MOUNTAIN. The test is still part of routine checkups today among grade-schoolers, teachers, cops, and — as I would learn — Peace Corps volunteers.

There is a photo of me on Facebook from early 2010, lodged between a handful of party shots with fellow volunteers. We had traveled to Kiev from across Ukraine to make a weekend out of our mid-service medical checkups. I’m 23, hamming it up in melodramatic distress, and twisting my left elbow up over my head to show off the swollen red splotch on my forearm.

A positive skin test usually doesn’t mean you have TB — less than than 10% of people with positive skin tests ever develop an active case, because healthy immune systems can usually defeat the bacterial intruder. Several volunteers each year end up with the telltale red blotch; it was really nothing to worry about. We’d need a follow-up X-ray, but an active case was highly unlikely. So I cracked a few jokes and went back to pounding flat Chernigivske beers with my friends.

I had been in Ukraine since September 2008, after studying Russian in college. I volunteered at a school in an eastern mining town called Antratsyt. The town borrows its name from anthracite coal. The region is flat, but you can see hills in the distance — they’re “slag heaps,” or piles of debris extracted from mines. The town only runs water for a few hours a day to protect the mines from mudslides or collapse. But life wasn’t as bleak as it sounds. I had students who were so excited to practice their English that they would chat with me after school, perched in a row on the edge of a Soviet-era fountain long-since bone-dry. I struck up friendships with their parents and my fellow teachers. I toasted my colleagues over champagne and chocolate on Ukrainian holidays. One time, I even gave a thickly accented speech on international education at a school assembly that ended up on the TV news. I was happy.

My follow-up X-ray was two weeks later, in Kiev. Taking yet another 17-hour train trip felt like an epic hassle. Is there a word that means the opposite of hypochondriac? There should be, because that’s what I am. In hindsight, of course I had symptoms – I just wrote them off to other things. I had a bad cough, because I was a smoker at the time. I’d lost weight, because there was no American junk food to lose my will power around. I was run-down and sluggish, because it was the Ukrainian winter!

I got a ride with Dr. Sasha, one of the Peace Corps’ Ukrainian staffers, to my screening at a tuberculosis dispensary — tubdispensar — on the edge of the city. He spoke the sort of English that made me self-conscious about my Russian. He carried my Peace Corps medical history file on his lap. The most dramatic thing in it was an allergy to mangoes. (Not exactly a significant handicap in Ukraine.)

I was X-rayed in a machine that looked like an iron colossus. In the waiting room, I tried to distract myself with a biography of John Adams. (His son, John Quincy, spent years in the Russian Empire as Ambassador and managed to stay consumption-free.) Soviet-era medical facilities are much more dimly lit than their Walmart-bright American counterparts. To see the page, I had to squint.

The head TB doctor finally called me into the office. He explained the X-ray results and prognosis to Dr. Sasha, who relayed them in English to me. But when Dr. Sasha asked a follow-up question, they flipped back to Russian and cut me out of the triangle. My Russian was good – but not “unfamiliar medical jargon” good. But this wasn’t a conversation I could stand to be excluded from. I was on the brink of a tantrum.

“Goddamn it!” I wanted to shriek at the TB doc. “Don’t say it in his Russian. Say it in mine.”

My face must have looked like a cartoon teakettle. So he slowed down and turned toward the image pinned to the light board.

“Classic pulmonary TB,” he said to me. (Words like pulmonary and tuberculosis are cognates.) “It’s strange that it advanced so quickly. Especially for a healthy young girl.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I heard you guys muttering about bronchitis or pneumonia before. Could it be one of those?”

“No. We assumed it could have been at first, but this is a clear case. See, on an X-ray, healthy lungs should look solid black. See the contrast down by the lower ribs? But now look up on the right. See the [blahblahblah]? The [blahblahblah] is the tuberculosis.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that word. What part is the tuberculosis?”

He sighed. It would have been easier to let Dr. Sasha translate. Now he had to dumb down his lexicon for a rattled American.

“Up there. Upper right. Well, left on here. That white spot? The part that looks like a ghost.”

That night, I started treatment in a studio apartment the Peace Corps rented for me in Kiev. My prognosis was good. For two weeks, I took pills, got X-rayed, and hocked up sputum — a polite word for loogies — into sterile plastic cups for lab work. One set stayed in Ukraine; the other was shipped according to special biohazard protocol to an American facility to better coordinate my care at home.

Eight weeks later, just as life was settling down back in Chicago, I was surprised to find an ominous number of missed calls on my phone: from the diagnostic lab, my mom, my American pulmonologist, my mom, the Cook County Department of Public Health, my mom, my mom, the Cook County Department of Public Health Epidemiology Unit, my mom, my mom, my mom, my mom, my mom.

Those loogies had yielded bad news. I had XDR-TB. The bad kind.

Effective immediately, I was placed under an isolation order. I was told to stay home whenever possible — I could go outside sparingly, but any other indoor space was off-limits until I was noninfectious. A few months, at least. The police could get involved if I didn’t comply.

A month into my quarantine, my Chicago doctors were stumped. They’d rarely seen anything like this.

So I set off on a journey not unlike those taken by consumptives a century before. I left my bustling, industrial Midwestern city and headed west, to the National Jewish Health Center in Denver.

It was the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives back then. In 1899, the brand-new philanthropic institution was brimming with needy patients. In 2010, I was the only one.

I told almost no one where I was going. I had already been avoiding friends who tried to contact me. It is exhausting to have your life flipped around by something people know nothing about. You get so damn sick of telling the story. Weird caveats demand exposition. Here is what I have. Here is why it’s bad. Here is why I had to evacuate Ukraine and leave the Peace Corps early. Here is why I can’t be in public or see anyone for the foreseeable future. Here is why I am going to some hospital in Denver for a long time. Here is why they chopped off a big chunk of my lung. Here is why I have this IV armband thing for nine months. Here is why I puke a lot. Here is why food tastes all wrong. Here is why my hearing got warped. Here is why I can’t feel my toes. Here is why I am not supposed to drink any alcohol. Here is why I’m still going to anyway.

Since I was on the no-fly list, we drove the 15 hours by car. I wore a mask the whole time so I wouldn’t infect my parents.

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National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives c. 1920

Basic infection control, like isolating the sick and using protective gear to lower transmission risk, may seem primitive compared with modern medicine. But the truth is, public health measures like quarantine and mouth covering did more to eradicate tuberculosis than drugs did. We never did figure out a great way to cure TB; we just got better at preventing it. That is, until it caught up with us.

After Dr. Koch’s splashy 1882 debut of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the medical community was certain a surefire solution was close behind. But they were disappointed. No cure came.

Forty years later, a new vaccine — Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG — entered human testing. But BCG was never that good. Most researchers believe that adults are just as likely to wind up with TB whether they get BCG or not. It also suffered a major PR setback as the center of one of the worst vaccination disasters in history. In 1930, 73 babies died of tuberculosis meningitis after being injected with BCG in Lubeck, Germany. The vaccines had been contaminated after getting mixed up with a virulent live TB strain back at the lab. (Life hack: Always be sure your doctor has a label maker.)

It wasn’t until 1943 that a team at Rutgers University pinpointed streptomycin, the world’s first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis. TB’s staggering cultural legacy made the discovery a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize, but streptomycin was nonetheless terribly flawed. It was toxic, and patients quickly developed antibodies that resisted the drug. The only solution was to scrape around for more options and blitzkrieg every case of TB with several so-so drugs at once. The first-line regimen has hardly been tweaked in nearly 50 years. It was never a secret that such a long and tedious course of antibiotics would, like a Shakespearean hero, engineer its own demise.

But that hardly seemed to matter. By the time streptomycin ‘n’ friends showed up, barely anyone even needed them. Throughout the 20th century, people gradually stopped getting TB in the first place. We got healthier, cleaner, and smarter. We could contain disease and catch it early. It nearly disappeared.

Then, in the early 1990s, it bounced back. Two global crises — the rise of HIV/AIDS and the fall of the Soviet Union — helped resurrect the scourge of the 19th century. The World Health Organization declared a worldwide TB emergency in 1993. (It just goes to show: Don’t count your eradicated diseases before they hatch.)

AIDS was even harder on human bodies than the Industrial Revolution had been, and millions of centuries-won immune systems were suddenly wide open to infection anew. TB remains the leading cause of death among AIDS patients.

The collapse of the USSR spread TB in even more complicated ways. The year 1991 saw the traumatic birth of 15 brand-new post-Soviet republics. Each of these new countries was in economic and social turmoil. They were broke. They had no central government or public health system. Before their independence, everything had more or less filtered through Moscow. In some places, there were few to no supplies or institutional infrastructure, let alone money for health care workers. Alcoholism and malnourishment soared. People lost their savings. Rampant crime stuffed the prisons — notorious hotbeds of TB — to well over capacity. Released inmates carted these germs back to their communities. By the time the 15 new countries had smoothed things out, they already had a new old epidemic to battle.

Even as the immediate post-Soviet crisis improved, other factors played into treatment interruption and new infections. These have been beautifully documented by experts like Dr. Lee Reichman in his 2001 book Timebomb and are easily rattled off by every post-Soviet MDR expert I’ve come across. Treatment in prisons has been badly underfunded, so for years people didn’t get the meds they needed. There is often subpar follow-up for ill prisoners after they’re released. Infected migratory workers are tough to treat and track. The Soviet-era mentality of medical specialization has made the region slow to coordinate HIV and TB care. Both illnesses are also correlated with substance abuse, and addicts often turn out to be less-than-diligent patients. In sum, the long, hard treatment places economic, social, and physical strain on patients.

Antibiotic treatment is an all-or-nothing game. Patients need to take every dose by the book, or germs acquire resistance. Getting it done right depends on stupendous public health programs, not to mention stupendous patients. Once a strain does acquire resistance, it can’t be undone — and the stronger, harder-to-treat germ is passed on to others, like me. If the best drugs don’t work, doctors are forced to use drugs that are even harder on the body. All of these factors collude to paint a grim reality. In former Soviet countries, only around 60% of patients who begin tuberculosis treatment ever successfully finish it. The rest of them flee, slip through the cracks, fail to respond to treatment, or die before they are cured.

So it is no surprise that the region has the highest rates of MDR-TB in the world — as many as 30% of all newly detected cases are impervious to first-line drugs. (The global average is reportedly less than 5%, but statistics are widely believed to be low, especially in resource-poor countries. In the U.S., there were fewer than 100 cases of MDR in 2013.) Even in optimal conditions, the difference between a case of run-of-the-mill TB and MDR can be the difference between a moderate inconvenience and a life-threatening catastrophe. A standard case can be cured for less than $100 with a daily dose of four different drugs for six to nine months. My treatment cost taxpayers seven figures and lasted well over two years.

On paper, many of these problems have already been fixed. A decade ago, Tracy Kidder’s best-seller Mountains Beyond Mountains lauded the achievements of Dr. Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health and other global health organizations in revolutionizing worldwide MDR-TB care. The region’s TB programs are now relatively well-organized and padded with funding from global health mammoths like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There are detailed and standardized treatment guidelines. TB drugs are fully subsidized. So why are so many patients still failing their treatments?

Without an effective vaccine or better drugs, efforts to curb MDR-TB face a serious paradox. As a strain becomes more resistant, it becomes simultaneously more painful and more urgent to treat it. Many countries have responded by adopting stringent patient monitoring policies, which improve cure rates but are nonetheless no small imposition in patients’ lives. Public safety overrides patient agency, which is a tough pill for victims to swallow (and they’ve already got plenty of those to worry about).

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A patient receives the TB vaccine in 1949 Cornell Capa / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images

During my treatment, I felt sick for two years. Nausea became my baseline. Sometimes the drugs make you puke, or give you the kind of diarrhea that makes you need a nap. One screws with your nervous system, and I permanently lost most of the feeling in my feet. I’ve tracked blood across kitchen floors because I can’t tell if I’ve stepped on shattered glass.

And I had it lucky. I had no comorbidities like HIV or diabetes, which make everything even worse. Being on amikacin cost me some low-frequency hearing, but it has caused deafness in others. And I got to take it by IV drip, instead of the painful upper-thigh injections that leave some patients too sore to sit up. And while cycloserine — a drug nicknamed “psychoserine” for its notorious mental and behavioral effects — makes some patients hallucinate and scream, I got away with confusion. I had trouble with reading, organization, and paperwork. It’s an especially tough break if you’re dealing with a workers’ comp claim for a medical disaster. I couldn’t keep it all straight, and walloped my credit.

Even worse, most patients in former Soviet countries and across the world get practically no social support during the crisis. They get little help with side effects, and suffer serious social and economic strain. Many of them have no way to make up for lost wages over the course of their treatments. Some even face lasting discrimination. In 2011, an undercover Ukrainian journalist wrote an exposé about being iced out by hiring managers after casually mentioning a past bout of TB.

The reason why boils down to one key factor: Tuberculosis remains highly stigmatized throughout the world. In the former Soviet Union, people associate it with painful memories of the lawless, chaotic ‘90s. Having it means you’re a crook, a junkie, a drunk, a bum, or a sewer rat.

Stigma makes epidemics worse — it gives people a reason not to be seen walking into a clearly labeled TB clinic to see a doctor when they should. Loneliness and despair can convince someone that health doesn’t matter, so why take these pills? And stigma shuts people up, so they’ll never organize, influence funding, or change minds about TB. Stigma means more stigma.

When patients are silenced and isolated from one another and their communities, it stymies progress against the disease. The WHO estimates more than a $1.3 billion worldwide funding gap in TB research and development, and the number threatens to grow. Even though investment in new drug research is one obvious way to improve treatment, AstraZeneca, Novartis, and Pfizer recently pulled a combined $50 million out of the fight. According to an email from the Treatment Action Group, a TB and HIV advocacy nonprofit, this steep loss amounts to a full third of private-sector TB investment since 2011.

Erasing stigma, combating TB’s chronic underfunding, and promoting new research and drug development are incredibly lofty goals. But similar barriers have been conquered before in diseases like breast cancer and HIV/AIDS, where passionate activism made incredible inroads in raising awareness and influencing policy. If former and current TB patients joined together, could they build the first real advocacy movement centered on patients?

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llustration by Ashley Mackenzie for BuzzFeed

Tuberculosis patients haven’t always felt so alone.

After leaving Denver, I read The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann’s sprawling 1924 classic novel about a Swiss sanatorium. I forced myself to finish it, but it’s the most boring book I’ve ever read. It’s the story of a total wiener named Hans Castorp who goes on a trip to hang out in the Alps and visit his TB-stricken cousin. Then Hans ends up sticking around and living there for seven years even though he doesn’t really have tuberculosis, just so he can do stupid crap like spend 70 pages talking about the nature of consciousness.

Ugh, I’m still so mad at him. But maybe it’s because I’m a tiny bit jealous. So what if he’s a fake person with fake tuberculosis? It would have been so nice to have someone to be sick with.

Sanatoriums, like National Jewish and the one atop The Magic Mountain, bridged the gap between the mid-19th century and the 1940s discovery of streptomycin. With no cure in sight, the ill had long made do with an iffy array of treatment options. Some doctors stuffed people’s windpipes with vacuum contraptions to simulate lazy lung capillaries. Cottage industries of miracle cures gorged on ad space in periodicals, sandwiched among serial installments of now beloved classics. (If you liked Great Expectations, you’ll love Daffy & Son’s Natural Miracle Multi-Purpose Health Elixir! Available wherever fancy wool top hats and snuff boxes are sold!!!) But the White Plague seemed to beat them all.

Tuberculosis did have one semi-formidable opponent, though — one hope that physicians agreed on. It wasn’t a cure; it wasn’t a given. The idea came from an 1840 pamphlet written by Dr. George Bodington, a British family doctor who covered a large area by making his house calls on horseback. His essay was based on a simple observation: that consumptives in wide-open spaces fared better than those packed tightly in cities.

But Dr. Bodington drew a further conclusion: It must have been the country air that healed them. Their bodies need pure, unsoiled air, shared with as few people as possible. Depending on the severity of their case, they might need months or years of it. In the disease’s final stages, Mycobacterium tuberculosis finally chews through the lung tissue, resulting in the bloody cough that famously beckoned death (but, curiously, couldn’t stop the heroines of Les Misérables, La Bohème, and La Traviata from singing). If combated early with the right dose of air, the process could drag to a halt.

And where could patients find such magic air? The best stuff was nippy, clean, and thin. Way up high, where no one can spoil it with industrial factory smog. And so, for the next 100 years, sick city-dwellers left their crowded hubs by the thousands and set off for specialized tuberculosis hospitals in the mountains. These sanatoriums treated patients with Dr. Bodington’s “rest cure” — medical observation, a generous binge diet, and hours a day in rows of canopied outdoor beds. In The Magic Mountain, characters traveled to Switzerland from places like England, Italy, and Poland. For months or years at a time, consumptives at sanatoriums lived and breathed together far away from real life, in their own little communities up in the sky.

Denver — the Mile High City, full of its own magic mountains — thus became America’s magnet for the dying who wanted to live. In the late 19th century, nearly a third of Colorado’s population suffered from tuberculosis, after journeying west for the air that might save them. At the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives, they slept two by two, tucked into each of its dozens of bunk beds.

By the time I showed up, the bunk beds were long gone. There were no pretty canopies or breezy napping patios. And all that oh-so-edifying “virgin air” stuff? Turned out to be bunk. The bump in survival rates among patients who spent all that time outdoors wasn’t because of the air; it was the sun. Vitamin D is good for the immune system. They could have gotten the same effect on the roof of a tenement house. Or by taking sunshine stuffed into Vitamin D pills, like I did, supplemented by the UV light in my hospital room. (In a 21st century American city, you don’t just let a case of active tuberculosis run around outside.) Other times, patients’ health improved simply because sanatoriums gave them a badly needed break from lives of poverty and labor.

Still, the sanatorium era continues to be considered a public health success. Not because sanatoriums ever did much to help “lungers.” But because they kept them away from healthy people. By shooing contagious patients off to remote treatment complexes, Dr. Bodington had inadvertently pioneered the concept of infection control. Keeping sick people away from vulnerable populations seems so obvious now. But back then, would the idea of germs — invisible, flying disease pods — have sounded any less silly than magic air?

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Tuberculosis treatment in 1942 D. Hess / Fox Photos / Getty Images

I tried seeing a therapist after my quarantine order was finally lifted. My mom made the appointment. I didn’t really want to go; I’ve never liked therapy.

But I hated doing this to my mom. This wasn’t just my crisis; it was my family’s too. And it was harder on my mom than anyone. She’d just spent 10 days next to me on a cot in the Denver ICU after my first lung surgery went wrong. She’d held my hand when the stiff chest tube draining blood from my lungs made breathing hurt so badly I got tunnel vision. She’d lost so much weight and was thinner than I’d ever seen her. So when she kept insisting that I talk to someone, I figured I could force myself to muster an hour of sincerity. And if I didn’t like it, I could lie, quit, and just find my own answers in some book.

I got to the office and we made our introductions. Then I broke the ice.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Laura Linney?” I asked.

She paused. For too long.“No. I’ve actually never gotten that.”

“No. I’ve actually never gotten that.”

BULLSHIT. She looks exactly like Laura Linney.

“I spoke to your mother on the phone. She said you contracted tuberculosis while you were in the Peace Corps in Russia?”

“No, I was in Ukraine. But yes. I mean, it was the Far East. The Russian-speaking part.”

“And so you’re going through chemo now? How long is that?”

“Well, I was hospitalized in Denver and got the part of my lung removed with the TB on it last month. So now I’m on chemo. It’s the IV drip. None of the radiation stuff. And I never lost my hair. So I don’t know if it even counts. I have nine months of that, and a total of two years or so on everything else.”

OK, it’s not like I’m uniquely hyperaware of Laura Linney or something. There’s no way I could be the first person to notice.

“And then…it goes away?” she asked.

Wait, is she pissed? Why? It’s a compliment, right? Hold on. Does she just, like, hate Laura Linney?

“Knock on wood. It can come back, hypothetically,” I recited. “That’s why they treat it so aggressively. They just want to make sure that it’s really, really dead. But they can’t, like, promise you anything.”

I went back once or twice for additional sessions. I tried to explain that I wasn’t scared about dying or anything. By then, doctors seemed confident that I wouldn’t. But I had this anxiety I couldn’t shake. I wanted closure in Ukraine, and the people in my town. I wanted to be moving toward something. I tried to convert the emotional fallout into a momentum that more closely resembled psychosis. I took 36 practice LSATs but was hospitalized the day of the test. But panic was a problem I couldn’t obsess my way out of. I’d pick up a book but just hold it in my lap and forget what the hell it was for. I had no job and no idea what to do with myself. I lived with my parents, who at that moment seemed to be trying to keep me alive by never letting me out of their sight. I felt timid and stuck. I felt cheated out of that rosy immortality my friends had. All those toxic meds made me feel like someone else. I was very, very tired. And I felt like I was failing. I wanted my sense of control back. I was so damn sad.

My mom picked that therapist because she specializes in treating patients with life-interrupting illnesses, like MS or cancer.

“It can be hard for people to lose their control,” the therapist told me. “Here’s something I suggest that people can do to feel like they have some power over everything. Next time you go for an infusion, try to close your eyes and think of the chemicals in the drugs coursing through you, attacking all of the bad cells. And concentrate on them, and really see them. Then, envision the chemo forcing them out of your body. Picture them floating away.”

I skipped my next appointment and never rescheduled. It wasn’t a therapist that I wanted. I wanted to connect with other patients like me.

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llustration by Ashley Mackenzie for BuzzFeed

I’m not the only person to conclude that TB patients may be uniquely equipped to help each other. In 1907, a Boston-area internist named Dr. Joseph Pratt had the same idea while searching for innovative treatment alternatives for TB patients who couldn’t afford faraway sanatoriums. He had the hippy-dippy idea that bringing patients together could replicate the revitalizing effects of places like the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives, and help patients heal. Couldn’t they guide each other through the experience better than any doctor could?

Pratt tested his hunch with a trial of a dozen patients. Modern medicine’s first recorded support group was deemed a success. Moral support really did help combat tuberculosis. His destitute patients had made do without the magic air that wasn’t really magic and replaced it with something that was.

That’s one thing the sanatorium era got right that today’s TB control programs get wrong: the need for community. Today, the sanatorium era is thought of as a relic of medical quackery rendered moot by modern science. But to mock it in favor of enlightened antibiotic cures is to dismiss the lived experience of patients. For all their problems, sanatoriums were designed to heal patients. Today, treatment is primarily concerned with limiting threats posed to others. Patients’ lives are collateral damage.

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I showed up at the radiology department of George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., for my final chest X-ray in late spring of 2012. I stood in the yellow foot outlines and assumed the TSA body scan position without even waiting for the technician’s spiel.

“Oh, you’re an old pro, then!” he said from the processing room. “OK, deep breath and hold it… Good… Now let’s just make sure that… Whoa, you’re missing a big part of your lung! Sorry, wasn’t expecting that!” That makes two of us.

But the Mycobacterium tuberculosis had indeed been destroyed. What was left of my lungs showed up as solid black — just as a healthy X-ray is supposed to be.

But somehow, it wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped. Once again, I wanted to share the moment with someone who understood what it meant. Moral support is nice for the good stuff too.

I began to find out how many patients felt the same way in June 2013, when I finally went back to Ukraine. I made a ring around the country to gather data for my master’s thesis: I traveled to Kiev, Lviv, Crimea, Mariupol, Kharkhiv, Lugansk, Donetsk, and my beloved Antratsyt. I visited hospitals, clinics, and met doctors, health care and nonprofit workers, and, of course, patients. No matter who they were, tuberculosis had a profound impact on their lives. Many had lost friends or even family members over their illness, or felt forced to keep the experience secret. Loneliness and shame were practically the default.

For as long as I’d spent surviving and learning about tuberculosis, one big question stuck in the back of my mind. I posed it to Oksana Viktorovna, a training coordinator for the Stop TB in Ukraine initiative in Donetsk. Why, I asked her, is there so little communication and coordination within the TB patient community, and so much of it — working successfully, by the way — in other diseases?

“You’re right,” she told me. “People are ashamed to be associated with the fringe. And even though TB is curable, the stigma makes them think it would be better to have cancer.” And perhaps, she continued, people who survive TB are ready to forget it and move on.

But, this might be changing, Oksana said. Lately, she’d noticed a few groups pop up online, on Russian networking sites like LiveJournal and VKontakte. Some people even created entirely new accounts to be able to discuss their lives with tuberculosis anonymously. “They write about their experience, their worries, their questions,” Oksana told me. “It seems to increase their optimism. I think it helps them get better.”

The clandestine online TB clubs were easy to find. As soon as I started poking through them, I found someone my age from Khabarovsk, Russia, whom I felt like I already knew.

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The Kyiv Tubdispensar or Tuberculosis Dispensary Photograph by Natalie Shure

I finally met Ksenia Shchenina face-to-face in Moscow this past spring. Even in the tourist-thick crowd by the famous Tretyakov Gallery, she wasn’t hard to spot. By now we’d already spent hours of our lives talking on Skype.

Ksenia maintains a patient-centered website about TB, as well as pages in English and Russian across several social media platforms. Her project’s slogan, “Being ill isn’t shameful,” challenges the negative cultural narratives about TB and the people who have it. Visitors can read the blog she kept during her treatment and her interviews with doctors and survivors. She regularly interacts with new patients from all over the world.

Social media has the potential to finally address the long-standing need for support among TB patients. Last month, Doctors Without Borders published a study that identified serious benefits for users of these online platforms, including TB & Me, the organization’s own blogging portal. Social media, they conclude, helps MDR patients adhere to treatment, gain back a sense of control, fight feelings of despair and solitude, and educate health care providers and the public. After treatment, survivors like Ksenia can continue to serve as mentors and advocates for the global patient community.

I strolled with Ksenia across the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, along the edge of Red Square, and up the fabled Arbat Street. We drifted between languages and talked about being sick. I told her how badly I wished I knew people like her back when I was diagnosed.

“I can’t find the words in English to explain how much I agree with you,” she said.

I’m not sure I could have, either. But then, it hit me: “I’ve spent years researching tuberculosis. I’ve toured hospitals, read books and articles, conducted dozens of interviews. But this is the first time I’ve ever told my story to another patient.”

How magical to find her in a world with 5,000 miles, two screens, and three healthy lungs between us.

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llustration by Ashley Mackenzie for BuzzFeed

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