#homelander fuckers anonymous apparently

[collateraldamage-inc]

PRIV: MotherFUCKER what are you DOING

(( This is re: Aurelia's relationship with th3miIkman on Twitter. She has many thoughts and FEELINGS and the Aurelia/Homelander dynamic is so FASCINATING to me. PRIV posts are just that, private IC entries, so nobody's character can actually SEE them. Replies are considered OOC. ))

Month in month out I'm just not fucking sure what I'm even doing, is this fight worth it? At all? What am I trying to accomplish? I swear to fuck I don't know anymore, I'm one person, I'm NOTHING. And then it happens. Of all the people, of all the FUCKING people, I start dealing with HIM.

Fucking HOMELANDER.

It's like

It's like an ornery rat facing off against this big fuckin' cat and the cat just can't believe the audacity so he keeps playing with this rodent like wow

Nah, fucking wordplay isn't going to work here.

I am not afraid of this man. I do not give a shit what he does to me. He could choose to play basketball with my head and I just do not give a flying fuck. It's fine.

So months go by. We dance. Verbal sparring matches where I can get as pissy as I want and he does not give a shit. I'm not reprimanded. Maybe like, once, once he hints I've gone a little too far but that's it. That's it. He's into the snarling and I'm into the fact that somebody isn't telling me to calm down ma'am

It is fucking INVIGORATING.

There is finally somebody that lets me be pissed off. I don't have to censor my feelings. This motherfucker is going so far as to kill people he doesn't know because they're making me feel unsafe.

I want more.

John is the fucking enemy, but he's not, but he's been handed so much shit and his childhood makes my sister's look like a goddamn amusement park. He turns to putty in my hands. He needs me I keep reminding him that he's better, he doesn't have to listen to Vought, he doesn't owe them anything. I can pull the trigger. I should pull the trigger. I encourage him.

But that little voice in the back of my head says be careful because surely they've got something, anything, just in case John goes rogue.

And it's not the possibility of failure to bring down the giant that scares me.

It's the possibility of losing him.

Do I just accept what I've got now and let it go?

I can't. 'Cause they fucked him, too. Vought fucked me, Vought fucked my family, Vought fucked my boyfriend

And in the end, no matter the cost, they need to pay. Somehow.

But it can wait. Just a little longer, so I can get just a little more time of feeling happier than I've felt in three fucking years

I don't deserve much, but we both deserve that

[ralfmaximus]

Living with a Smart Gun

Marta decided she needed a gun after the boost had gone wrong.

Oh, technically, it’d gone flawlessly – 1.2B New Yen siphoned away from Bank Shanghai and into six different offshore accounts, undetected – but when she’d gone to get paid… that’s when things went sour.

She wasn’t a people person. Normally the human relations aspect of her work were handled by Konroy, but he’d fled the country temporarily and hadn’t returned her calls in weeks. She needed to eat. So she’d dug through his list of contacts, found a likely client, and reached out. The job specs they’d sent her seemed easy enough, and it was.

But upon meeting with the lovely folks behind the mail address she realized her mistake: upon delivery she had no leverage over them. The money was boosted, and they had the account numbers and passwords. To her dismay they even had the keys to her secret, 7th account, the one she’d nabbed for herself. Apparently they’d had a tech of their own shadowing her the whole time and she’d been careless.

Hunger will do that to you, she mused, as they broke her left arm, laughing. They beat her ass out into the alley behind the gaming parlor and walked away without looking back. She’d wanted to kill them all at that moment, and if only she’d had a gun…

Broken arm, at least one broken rib, and both eyes swollen shut. Missing tooth.

Konroy wouldn’t have let this happen. But he was gone. She needed to protect herself now. Laying on damp concrete among cardboard boxes and dumpsters, her left arm a shrieking, grinding agony, Marta pulled up a list of clinics from Konroy’s little black book. She selected one certified to install Personal Protection systems and left a message before passing out.

--

The black clinic was clean and bright, the black part referring only to its off-the-grid status. They never asked questions.

Marta lay in an antique dentist chair, her left arm gripped in padded waldos. It had already been peeled open, radius and ulna exposed, a soft green laser rotating as it mapped the break. She was numb from the shoulder down; a spinal block.

The nameless tech hummed as she worked, watching her arm rotate in 3D on a monitor.

“A simple break, easily repaired,” the tech nodded in satisfaction. “We’ll have you out of here in thirty minutes.”

“Question,” Marta held up her right hand. The tech swiveled to peer at her with calm eyes.

“You install PP systems here, right?”

Without reacting, the tech nodded. “Certified in all forms of PPS. Do you wish to review a catalog?”

“No. I know what I want.” Marta reeled off a make and model number from memory. She’d been researching.

The tech paused, not exhibiting surprise so much as a delay while she accessed databases. Eventually she shook her head slowly. “That model is—“

“Yes, I know. Proscribed.” Marta used her good right hand to indicate the duffel she’d brought with her into the exam room. It was stuffed with New Yen scrip, but they both knew that.

The tech accessed databases again and nodded after a moment. “Yes, that unit is in stock.”

“Well, I want one. Make it happen.”

“Your left arm?”

“Since it’s already open, sure.”

Another pause, the tech’s expression gone blank. “There is a difficulty. Your augmentations are rated at level 5. The smart gun you have requested requires level 6 or higher.” She stopped there, watching silently.

Marta nodded, closed her eyes, entered the crystal wind. Found the public certification boards where her profile lived and… adjusted them. So far as the government now knew she was level 6, certified to work on ESA/ROSCOSMOS space probes and (she noted ironically) smart surgical systems.

Her black rating, if that were something that could be calculated, she imagined as double digits. She opened her eyes and told the tech to check again.

Without discernible surprise the clinician nodded after reviewing the files. “We will need to replace your left ulna, something custom-milled.”

“I know. I’ve read the installation guide.”

The tech switched gears. “Left-handed use is not unheard of, but recommended installation is in the right arm.”

“Don’t wanna mess these up,” Marta waved her tattoos at the tech. Another nod.

“Finally, there will be a bulge. Your skeletal structure is small; the weapon, while compact is—“

“I’m fine with that. Just do it.”

--

Marta waited three days before peeling the bandages off. Her left arm was discolored from bruising but otherwise pain-free. The extra weight took her by surprise, but she quickly adjusted.

The gun’s embedded manual suggested a week of convalescence before test-firing, since the thing was still knitting itself into her arm, nano-filaments working themselves up to her shoulder for bracing. Using the weapon too soon, despite its recoilless nature, would tear things apart.

That suited her fine. She also had to figure out how to work the damned thing. And so far, its interface was… confusing.

The Crimson Storm Flower 2 (firmware revision 14c) was a typically Chinese name for something so deadly. Its gatling array could fire 1200 rounds per minute of tiny hyper-velocity pellets, or select from a wide array of flechette-slivers: everything from explosives to non-lethals. Marta wondered what use the EMP rounds would be; if her own systems were shielded well enough to even try those. She decided she didn’t know enough to risk it.

Consumables were surgically replaced whenever they ran low. Hopefully, never. She didn’t intend to switch careers or even use the thing except in emergencies.

But the gun’s UI pissed her off. In fact, she couldn’t find one. The armory stores and configuration stuff presented themselves immediately, but she couldn’t find how to actually, you know, pull the trigger.

Also, her dreams had been weird.

She’d grown used to strange dreams over the years as her meat-net whispered to the metal-net in her brain. That was something all IT workers dealt with nowadays. There were OTC medications to help with that.

But lately she’d felt like something – an animal, a presence – had been stalking her. Circling her defenses looking for a way in. There’d even been a few violent nightmares, replays of that night in the alley, where she’d aimed her left arm at the bastards who’d hurt her and instead of doing anything her left arm had fallen off. A cheap plastic doll arm, laying in a puddle. The beating had continued longer than it had in reality, until she awoke screaming on twisted sheets.

None of the Storm Flower manuals suggested how to fire it. She’d reviewed every file, even snuck out into the Chinese mil.net to search for more. The weapon simply didn’t exist except as catalog entries in various black clinics.

One anonymous forum post suggested that Flower was a military experiment. Something tried and discarded, its specs plundered by pirates and sold now on the streets. Or maybe it was a controlled experiment: let the criminals work out the kinks while the military observed from a distance.

Marta’s wounds healed, and the day came when she wanted to test-fire her new toy. She rented time at a gun range and stood, alone, in the tiny, dank bunker, left arm pointed helplessly at a paper target.

Fire. Launch. Activate. 

She thought every command she could think of into the weapon’s control matrix but… nothing. She’d even looked up the Chinese equivalents and tried those. Then Spanish, Russian, and even Norwegian. Maybe the weapon’s makers had intended Flower for a specific foreign market.

But no. Nothing happened. Everything felt right – her internal net insisted everything was linked, fiber running a complete path from ulna to spine to brain.

Maybe it was defective.

With a sigh she lowered her arm and dialed the clinic’s number, leaving a message requesting a follow-up visit. These things happened, but dammit she’d paid so much and the disappointment was quickly morphing into rage. Those fuckers. They’d taken her money, smiling as they sawed her arm to pieces. She envisioned the smug clinician’s reaction when she—

Snick.

Her left arm thrummed gently like a motor applying torque to her body. The odd feeling spread up into her shoulder where—

She looked down. A tiny black multi-port muzzle protruded from her arm, completely surrounded by flesh. As if somebody had jammed a gun part directly into her skin and left it there. Marta lifted her arm carefully. It felt pinned by gyros, locked on rails, moving precisely if randomly, wherever she pointed it.

In quiet astonishment, rage gone, she watched as the sliver of black metal slid back under the surface of her arm and vanished.

Snick.

Something locked home inside the bone. The thrumming stopped.

Huh. Flower liked strong emotion, it seemed. Maybe it detected adrenaline and other stress hormones. But that seemed stupid, imprecise. There had to be a way to actually, you know, control it.

--

The Midtown clinic didn’t return her messages. She walked by the place and it was empty, a realtor’s barcode in the window. Marta quelled the impulse to stop and peer into the dim storefront but the white van parked across the street dissuaded her. The vehicle looked entirely too clean, too government for her tastes. They might as well have painted Homeland Security on its side, so she walked on by.

To keep up the appearance of normalcy she stopped at a sidewalk café two doors down and sat at a table with an umbrella, van within her field of view. She ordered unsweet tea from a waiter wearing a black apron.

When her tea came she took a sip and involuntarily grimaced. Atlanta iced tea came in two varieties: sweet and unsweet. Proper ‘sweet’ tea was made with equal parts sugar and tea; it was undrinkable, something to supercharge kids with before turning them loose in a bouncy castle.

“Excuse me,” she stood, holding the disgustingly sweet beverage out to the server. “I ordered—“

Snick.

Her arm thrummed. Without looking she knew what the server saw, why he dropped his tray and ran.  It didn’t matter: she saw his leg explode in a haze of bloody shreds the microsecond Flower coughed.

One target tracked, targeted, explosive flechette selected, fired, target disabled the after-report appeared in her mind. Wow. The manuals were right: virtually no recoil. The glass of tea in her left hand hadn’t even wobbled.

Behind her she heard van doors slamming, and she turned.

Two armored Homeland troopers thundered toward her, SMGs held low. Before she processed this completely they were both down.

Two targets tracked, targeted, armor piercing selected, fired, targets disabled.

Next, the van exploded, one white door sailing over her head to clang against the restaurant’s brick facade.

Vehicle disabled, the after-log finished. She barely had time to scan the whole thing before her arm went snick and Flower shut down.  She hadn’t spilled a drop of tea; she drank it all down in one long gulp.

--

Konroy’s face was a ghost swirling in pixels. His connection was so dreadful it must’ve been bounced through a dozen proxies. From the lag Marta suspected there was at least one satellite involved.

“You did what?”

His voice was razorblades slicing chipmunks. She repeated herself.

“Read me the model number again?”

He’d reacted with amusement about her buying a gun. Her, the tree-hugging hippie cybercriminal who’d once made him take a spider outside rather than kill it. After she transmitted him Flower’s specs he’d sobered up quickly.

“Honey, that’s the blackest of black tech.”

“Do we deal in any other kind?”

“What?”

“Nevermind. Look, I can’t find a clinic that’ll talk to me about it. Can you—“

“Sorry, you’re breaking up.”

“I need a clinic that does PPS. Like, immediately.”

“Honey—“

The connection washed away in a burst of static then miraculously cleared.

“Konroy? I need—“

“I’ll send you a list of the ones I know. But you already have that, I reckon.”

She nodded, wondering if he could see her. “Surely there’s more?”

“Not exactly a growth industry, especially since the crackdown. If I knew you were gonna—“

The connection broke then, went totally blue. Returned full-screen with Homeland Security’s eagle-clutching-wires logo, which she glimpsed only for a second before slapping the call closed.

Seconds later the phone was in pieces, its battery tossed down a sewer grate, the rest of it in various bushes and dumpsters as she walked.  In annoyance she realized Flower had popped open and closed without her noticing… that told her how upset she was more than anything else.

--

Her dreams became violent. She was a gun, and the world was a rich tapestry of target reticules. Most were green (friendly) but some were not (red) and every time a red one was targeted and destroyed she orgasmed.

After these dreams she woke up exhausted, panties askew, the mattress damp.

While she and Konroy had had plenty of sex, they’d never had orgasms together.

--

One sleepless night Marta got drunk on tequila and walked up to the first white van she saw, stood outside it with arms outstretched.  After a few moments the doors slid open and she was surrounded by Homeland troopers. She tried to warn them about Flower but they were all dead before she opened her mouth.

Then of course, the van exploded.

--

Marta boosted enough capital to hire an ex-military surgeon from mainland China. She met with him in a hotel room near the airport, where he examined her arm, scanning Flower with instruments he assembled from a pair of aluminum briefcases.

“I do not recognize this weapon,” he announced finally. “But that does not mean we did not make it. Much goes on, in the, you know…”

“I know,” she sighed. “Can you get it out of me?”

He sat back, pondering. “Eventually it will run out of consumables.”

“So I gathered. But I don’t want to wait that long, it’ll take months. Until then I’m afraid to go outside.”

“You do not understand,” he blew out his cheeks. “The weapon, it has bonded with your endocrine system. You and it are one. When it runs out of ammunition it will want more. A gun without bullets is useless, and it wants to be useful.”

“Yeah, so? I’ll just ignore it. If it pops out no big deal. I’ll wear long sleeves forever.”

“I have not explained well. The gun, it will… need more ammunition. Consider it a form of addiction.”

Her stomach dropped. “Addiction? Like heroin?”

The Chinese doctor beamed at her. “Yes! Precisely so. In fact glutamate and dopamine are the—“

She found herself standing, head pounding, shouting. “Get this thing out of me, now! I don’t want—“

Snick

--

Marta eventually found a clinic in Taiwan that could service the gun. She didn’t miss Atlanta, and everyone around her spoke English anyway. Homeland Security never bother her anymore, not over here.

A network of Flower owners had sprung up around the planet about the time she’d gotten her implant. She discovered her experience was not uncommon, and within this new, strange family she found a place: boosting cash for the collective, so ammunition was never a problem.

Meditation and medication helped control incidents. The collective cheerfully displayed an old-style “44 Days Since Last Accident” cardboard sign in the main dining room with detachable numbers that incremented – or zeroed – over time.

Soon she and the others like her boosted enough capital to purchase a small island off the coast of Taiwan, and moved the clinic there. They began manufacturing Flowers and even improving the design. Children were born and fitted with their own guns as soon as their bones stopped growing, usually in their late teens.

The Chinese project responsible for the creation of the weapon had contacted them a few times, threatened a few times, finally backed off when they were invited to come get their guns back if they could. They tried once, and the score was 27 dead Chinese commandos to zero collective members.

It was just prior to that engagement that Marta had her second, right-arm Flower installed, damn the tattoos.

Fifteen years after that, Marta returned to Atlanta.

--

Amazingly, the gaming bar where she’d received her beat-down still existed. She entered the place through the alley door they’d dragged her through, walked past uncaring workers in the kitchen and into the smoke-filled main room.

She recognized none of the faces, did not expect to. Wasn’t even sure if this place still hosted the gang who’d hired her forty years ago, or if they even existed. She hadn’t bothered to check.

Marta stood in the center of swirling chaos, of pinging slot machines, of laughing gamers, of pounding late 20th century dubstep, commandeered the PA system via the crystal wind and pitched her voice to be heard over all. Everything crashed to a halt.

“Somebody piss me off. I dare you.”

Many eyes were on her when Marta raised her arms, letting loose black sleeves fall. She stood like that, arms upheld as goal posts, eyes closed.

It took a few moments, but eventually she got her wish.