#i have to go back to the electron transport chain now but i had this in my head

[turtlethon]

“Convicts from Dimension X”

Season 7, Episode 17 First US Airdate: November 13, 1993

A pair of prisoners held in Dimension X escape to Earth and cause problems for the Turtles.

The seventh season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rolls on with “Convicts from Dimension X”. Jack Mendelsohn is credited as writer for this outing.

Today’s show opens with an incredibly short scene in which Donatello reveals to Leonardo that he’s tweaking his intergalactic early warning system. We then cut to the docks, where Irma joins Vernon on an assignment, having been tasked with finding “some interesting people”. This sequence is also a brief one and largely only serves to remind us that yes, Vernon is a coward.

We hop back to the Lair, where Donatello’s modifications are complete. He activates the early warning system as a test, which is loud enough to wake both Raphael and Michaelangelo. The team then leave the workshop, unaware that the wheeled portable portal generator is about to crash into the early warning system, causing the new machine to malfunction.

In Dimension X we’re introduced to Skaarg and Dementor, a pair of criminals who have been handcuffed and are marched through an alien prison. Breaking free of their chains, the duo attacks the guards and tear through a set of strontium bars, but are caught again after being sprayed with paralysing gas. Restrained once more, Skaarg and Dementor are placed in solitary confinement.

Each of the Turtles are going about their individual pursuits when the early warning system sounds again. Leo, Mikey and Raph rush into the workshop to find Donatello tweaking the machine, explaining that the portal generator bumped into it and briefly caused a rift in the dimensional fabric. Fearing that someone or something from Dimension X may have been able to pass through, the Turtles head off to investigate.

Skaarg and Dementor are sulking in their cell when a green portal appears, granting them a means of escape. At the same time, Vernon and Irma are wandering the streets of the city, still in search of a story. In what I assume is an event that occurs to maintain the cosmic balance, both are transported in a ball of glowing green light, the escaping criminals taking their place. After determining they’ve landed on Earth - “a minor asteroid in an inferior galaxy” - the convicts examine the contents of an electronics store, considering the VCRs and CRT televisions to be primitive technology. They go on to raid an ammunition store, stealing some blaster weapons; it’s revealing that in the world of TMNT ‘87 you can buy a “thermal liquifier” from a store, a gun that Skaarg uses to melt a street light. The crooks consider that with backup it’d be easier for them to take over this world, and begin plotting to bring over their fellow prisoners the Dregma Brothers to bolster their forces.

While the Turtles continue wandering the city, Vernon and Irma find themselves trapped in what had been Skaarg and Dementor’s old cell. Vernon tries to march through the electrified bars, and is thrown off his feet for his efforts.

Act one ends with April checking out news of the disturbance in her van. She finds herself face to face with Skaarg and Dementor, who approach her with their newly acquired weapons, as act one ends.

Putting a brave face on things, April emerges from the van and begins filming with her handheld camera. The aliens assume this is a weapon and open fire, forcing her to flee. She soon encounters the Turtles, who emerge from their van to take on the convicts. Skaarg and Dementor overhear Donatello declaring that as they came through his dimensional portal, it’s his responsibility to send them back. Now aware that such a portal exists, the pair leave to make their next move, passing through a nearby wall and appearing to vanish.

As April rushes back to Channel 6 to file her story, the Turtles return to the Lair, where they struggle to devise a strategy to deal with their new foes. Back in Dimension X, Vernon and Irma are released from their cell by a guard who has little interest in their plight, and marches them to the mess hall. Neither of them is impressed by the food on offer, and find their meals nabbed by a looming, spiky-toothed fellow prisoner anyway.

April continues her journey but finds the path of her van blocked by a returning Skaarg and Dementor again, her camera melted into a puddle of goo as the evil duo escapes once more. Rushing through the sewers, the convicts charge into the Lair, opening fire upon the Turtles. The green teens lose this battle decisively, and are placed within a forcefield trap. Barging into Donatello’s workshop, Skaarg and Dementor use the portable portal (and confusingly, also the early warning system) to summon the lumbering Dregma Brothers from Dimension X. As the Dregmas arrive in Times Square, Skaarg and Dementor set up an explosive device that will blow up the Lair in five minutes, taunting the captive Turtles before making their exit.

Act three opens with Donatello using the wiring in a flashlight to short-circuit the forcefield. When asked how he came up with this solution, Donnie explains that he “saw a guy do it on TV once”. (The inference here seems to be that he was watching MacGyver, but as that show was on a rival network we can’t be too explicit about it.) This still leaves the problem of the explosive device: with the timer approaching zero, Donatello is forced to determine what wire to cut to disable the bomb. Raphael angrily insists that “It’s the red one! It’s always the red one!” Donatello cuts the blue wire, his instinct informing him that Skaarg and Dementor would be aware of this conventional wisdom too and flip things around to fool their enemies. His hunch turns out to be correct, and the bomb is prevented from going off with one second remaining. He stays behind in the Lair to devise a means of sending the alien convicts back to Dimension X while the other Turtles leave to confront them.

Back in Dimension X, Vernon and Irma are tasked with laundry duty; I have to say that Irma is taking being teleported to another world and forced to do time remarkably well, Vernon much less so. April’s old rival puts too much soap powder in the wash, and is offended after Irma points this out to him; he calls her “young lady” and declares that he was washing clothes before she was born, the first time I believe it’s ever been suggested that there’s a significant age difference between the two of them. At least, I think we was about to say “before you were born”-- before he can finish his sentence, he winds up falling into the tank and is fished out by Irma.

April receives a transmission from Burne in the news van, revealing to her that Vernon and Irma have vanished. Being the stand-up guy that he is, he’s not concerned for their well-being but that he may have to pay them overtime as a result. Moments later, April encounters Leo, Mikey and Raph wandering the streets, and agrees to drive them to the National Guard Armory.

Skaarg and Dementor have met up with the Dregma Brothers and arrive at the National Guard Armory as predicted by the Turtles. The four invaders use a levitation ray to transport equipment around the building, assembling hybrid weaponry and vehicles. Back in the Dimension X prison, Vernon and Irma are forced to run laps in the yard; when Vernon becomes exhausted and refuses to go on, he’s intimidated into resuming his run by a shape-changing guard who becomes a ghoulish, green-faced monster.

April and the Turtles are still travelling in the news van when they run into the four alien convicts, who ride in a combination tank-helicopter vehicle that opens fire upon the green teens. Undeterred, the Turtles emerge from the van and do battle with the villains.

Donatello contacts the team via Turtlecom and informs them he’s found a method of sending the prisoners back to Dimension X, but the conditions of their arrival need to be recreated exactly; if the Turtles fail to do so, there’s a risk the whole world will be pulled through a dimensional wormhole instead. The Turtles lure the bad guys back to Times Square, where (hard as it may be to believe) no-one else is present; a complication arises when a little old lady walking a dog appears. Raphael acts quickly, dis-arming Skaarg with his sai and using the levitation ray gun to move the woman and dog out of the area. Seconds later, the portal opens again, pulling the tank containing the convicts back into it. Vernon and Irma are coughed up from the dimensional rift before it closes once more.

We conclude the show in the Lair, where the Turtles watch as April reports on today’s events for Channel 6. Michaelangelo rushes into the room, declaring that there’s been another tear in the fabric; our heroes are concerned, but he’s referring to a hole in his underwear. (Since when did Mikey even have underwear?)

“Convicts from Dimension X” continues the momentum that has been building through season seven, Jack Mendelsohn picking up the baton from David Wise and carrying on with the new emphasis on action and adventure that’s been established. There’s a genuine thrill in seeing the Turtles deal with a home invasion and take on foes who provide them with a significant challenge to overcome. The B-plot of Vernon and Irma becoming prisoners is comparatively silly, but I appreciate that we get to see them operating here outside of April’s orbit, as fully-realised characters in their own right. As is so often the case with Vernon, the resulting skits are mostly just an excuse to humiliate him over and over. What’s more interesting is Irma maintaining her composure throughout: it’s a demonstration of her character growth that her earliest appearances in the series painted her as a fearful person too, likely to faint or run away when caught up in unusual situations, and now she can hold it together even in the most troubling circumstances.

On the animation side, this episode is largely up to the standard we’ve come to expect for the show in this era. There are, however, multiple Turtle mix-ups here with the characters speaking in each other’s voices. This was a notorious problem in the early days of TMNT, particularly in seasons two and three, and while it’s never fully gone away, I really thought we were past the days of it happening often. Here, we see it again in a few particularly glaring scenes, marring what is otherwise an enjoyable episode. Hopefully we won’t be seeing an uptick in the number of these errors in the remaining shows for this year.

There’s one Jack Mendelsohn-penned episode of the series remaining, after which David Wise will handle the rest of seasons seven and eight on his own; this will be a collaboration with his wife Carole and the subject of our next Turtlethon entry, “White Belt, Black Heart”.

[iishmael]

Hamilton: I’m young scrappy and hungry

Jefferson: *appears with a bowl of mac n cheese*

[tyler-lawson]

The Eagles Fly at Dawn

I had a report of a thug shoplifter wandering around the mall. Checking surveillance, I had the genius clearly on camera stuffing watches and some other nice electronics into his puffy red jacket, and shuffling out of the store with his pants at half-mast, if that. I fast forwarded through the footage, and walked him penguin-shuffling around the mall, his pants sagging so low they were on his thighs, not his ass. "Well, at least I won't have to run for this one." I think idly to myself as I finally catch up to real time, the boy sitting and eating a burger at one of the tables in the mall's food court.

The mall has been having som issues with these thugs recently, and had asked the police department to set up a permanent post in the mall. Normally, it was staffed with 3 officers full time, but today two had called in sick so I was on my own.

I grab my gear, and head out. With me being the only officer on-duty, I grab some extra gear to prevent trouble. I have a gun that is always strapped in a thigh-holster on my right thigh. I add to my belt a set of transport shackles, wrapping the chain that connects the handcuffs and leg irons so it does not rattle as I walk. I also tack on a taser and replacement cartridge.

"Dispatch, 17-0. I am going mobile, have one suspect at large." I call into my radio as I leave the office, locking the door behind me.

"17-0, dispatch. Copy that. Good hunting."

The mall is large, but the food court and department office are conveniently near the center. I am able to spot my target from a good distance off, confirming he is still at the table, scrolling through his phone. I approach from behind before getting right next to him, blocking him into the bench seat he is seated on. He looks up at me as I crowd him.

"You got a problem, buddy?" I asks, his tone noticeably shifting to be softer as I notices I am in uniform.

"Why don't you go ahead and give me your name and ID." I suggest, brushing off his brusque opener.

"Uhh. Who's asking?" He responds, his voice quavering a bit as he tries to cover his nervousness with bravado. A few people at neighboring tables have started to take interest in our conversation. One pulls out a phone.

"ID, now!" I say, not interested in playing these games.

"Why the fuck you harassing me?" He spits back, gaining a bit more confidence, as he sees the other people start to take notice and pull out their phones or whisper to each other. He is starting to play to his audience.

Time to tamp that down. I grab his right arm at the elbow, and pull him off the bench, his phone getting left behind on the table in his surprise. I pull him across in front of me so he is now facing down the table. I push him face-first onto the table, and pull his right arm behind his back. His puffy jacket rides up on his torso, and his pants drop a bit, his belt worthless at his current level of sag. His black and pink AE boxers flying freely over his protruding ass and down this otherwise uncovered thighs.

"Ow, fuck. Get off me." He snaps. He tamps his feet a bit, slightly spreading them, trying to keep his pants from falling all the way to the ground. I put my leg between his, my knee against the back of his to prevent him from standing. I casually grab my cuffs from their holster with my free hand and unfold them. The folding rigid ASPs unfold and snap in place. I quickly zip one around his right wrist, then transition my hand that was holding his wrist to holding the grip of the cuffs.

I grab his left arm at the elbow, yank it back. "Ow, shit. Let me go." I grab the wrist, and rotate it behind his back, slamming it into the waiting cuff. His wrists are cuffed opposite directions through the rigid cuffs, his arms stacked behind his back and held horizontal by the rigid grip of the cuffs.

"Son, you are under arrest for shoplifting and failure to obey a lawful order, and failure to produce ID. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can be used against you. You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you." I say, casually, pinning him with my knee and one arm on his back, pulling my head up to scan the gathering throng of onlookers for any threats.

"Do you understand the rights I just read you?"

"Fuck you." I pull him up from the table, and to standing, moving my knee from behind his. I use his left elbow to guide him, pushing him ahead of me to clear a path through the group of gawkers now surrounding us. He walks with his legs spread wide, his knees almost constantly bent trying desperately to hold the last bit of his pants up as gravity tugs them down.

We make the short walk through the mall to the secured door to my makeshift station. I push him up against the wall next to the door so I can pull out my key and unlock the door. I push it open, pull him off the wall and continue shoving him in front of me past the door.

In the hallway, we turn almost immediately left into an open interrogation room, with just a metal table and two metal chairs inside. A camera in the far upper corner watches everything with a glass eye and glowing red "Recording" indicator.

I close the door behind us, and it closes and automatically locks. I push my prisoner up against the table, his junk just resting on the tabletop. I kick his feet wide, mercifully helping him retain his pants at their current position just above his knees.

"You got anything on you? Anything that is going to poke me, stick me, stab me?" I ask, starting to unzip his puffy jacket and reach inside.

"N-no, officer." He chokes out, his voice catching. HIs bravado stripped away by the realizations of his current predicament.

"Don't move." I order, as I start fishing in his jacket, pulling out his various pilfered items and laying them out in front of him on the table. He starts to shake, and I continue my search. I lift his shirt revealing a smooth torso and slight treasure trail, leading down to his boxers. Higher still, his chest has just a bit of hair starting to grow.

I drop his shirt and move down to his lower body, starting with his boxers, giving him a thorough frisking around his dick, into his taint, and onto his ass cheeks. I move down to his pants, tugging them slightly lower until the fall completely below his boxers, skin peeking out in the daylight between them. I extract his phone and wallet and drop them on the table.

I feel down his lower legs, to his feet, which each get lifted up, his shoes and socks removed and set beside the table.

I pull him back from his braced standing position, and shove him into one of the chairs, facing the unblinking eye of the camera.

"There might be enough here for felony larceny." I say flatly, sitting on top of table next to my captive.

"Dude, that stuff is all mine. I bought it."

"Yeah, and you lost the receipt, right? Look lying to me is not going to make this any easier on you. I am not out here harassing you cause you are dressed like a thug, I am here because I have solid evidence you illegally obtained all of this." I say, sweeping my hand over the collected items on the table.

He sits quietly, head bowed for a few minutes. "Alright, so, here is how this can go. You tell me everything you did, I turn over your confession to the DA with a recommendation of plea deal." I offer, trying to sound conciliatory. "If this is your first stupid thing, you can probably get out of here with probation, maybe even a diversion program that will avoid a record."

He continues to sulk in his cuffs, slouching further in his chain, his sagged pants fully off the chair and threatening to fall off his bent knees.

"Alright, why don't you think about if for a bit, I am going to go log all of this evidence." I say, emphasizing the last word. I scoop up everything off the table, unlock the door and walk through. The door swings shut behind me, a heavy click as it again locks automatically. He is left in silence and solitude, contemplating how his life has changed.

(Thanks to @saggysammy for the picture and the inspiration for this story.)

[whump-a-la-mode]

Villian-Sicle | Part 5

I feel like now would be a pertinent time to mention that this is my first attempt at writing a sort of drabble series. The majority of my work is 50k-100k word nerd ass novels, and I think that this part will make that unfortunately abundantly apparent. I’m sorry for just how long it is, but I’ve absolutely loved writing these characters, and I got a little bit carried away with fleshing out the world a bit more ^^

Also, I feel I should probably mention that, though characters in this story speak Latin, I do not know any Latin. I wrote this using dictionaries and very basic grammar guides, and I sincerely hope I did not mess up too bad.

Thank you for reading! It’s a long one, but I hope you’ll enjoy.

CW//Superhero whump, villain whumpee, hypothermia, military setting (kinda), pet whump, dehumanization, past trauma, muzzles, restraints, conditioned whumpee, depiction of an implied panic attack, denial of water

Taglist:

@whatwhumpcomments

@sola-whumping

@professional-idiocy

Villain couldn’t help but shake and buck their head as a corrugation of metal and leather was slipped over their face, securing their jaw in its current position and forcing them to bite down against the pressure. It had been fitted since last time, they noted rather hollowly-- with a piece of padding now standing between the bridge of their noise and the harsh metal wires. Regardless of how many adjustments were made to the piece, however, making it comfortable seemed beyond their ability.

They, in this specific circumstance, referred mainly to the two soldiers before Villain. Trainer was the only one of the two that they knew the name of-- though they were nearly unrecognizable beneath the layers of gear shrouding their appearance.

The helmet they wore resembled more so that of a motorcyclist rather than that of an armed combatant, but the rest of their kit was far more military. Beneath their uniform bulged the clear outlines of a tac-vest, with their hands shielded by Kevlar gloves, constructed of an intricate mesh of triangular pieces, in a similar manner to chain-mail.

The other soldier was dressed in nearly identical kit, just without the gloves-- those were for handlers, which this other soldier must’ve surely not been. They turned to Trainer, noises in an odd language curling off their tongue. Trainer replied with a laugh.

With practiced hands, Trainer took the muzzle’s straps and secured them behind Villain’s head, tightening the metal until it dug into their skin, tearing at old sores created by the same device. Their leash was quickly hooked to a ring protruding from the muzzle’s wires.

“Manibus.” Trainer’s voice spoke. They nearly flinched at the sheer speed at which Villain offered their hands. Momentarily, Trainer ghosted their fingers over the leather mitten restraints that kept Villain’s fine motor abilities under control. They checked the wrist straps, ensuring their tautness, nodding their approval.

“Abeamus?” The other soldier suggested, to which Trainer gave another nod. They wrapped Villain’s leash around their wrist, halving its length, until there was negligible slack in the line.

Another group of soldiers, all dressed in military-style garments of their own, loitered together by the door to the staging room. They looked to Trainer, marginally straightening their postures, and, presumably, minimizing the amount of swearing in their speech.

With a few words and a flick of the wrist, the squadron was off.

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Leader couldn’t stop looking at Villain’s eyes.

They weren’t quite certain what had pulled them into such an odd trance. It was nothing about color, certainly, nor anything else physical or inherent-- they were unremarkable, in such respects. No, it was certainly something about the expression they portrayed.

A moment ago, they’d seen shattering fear turn to fury in these eyes. Now, they seemed blank, as though constructed of glass and merely painted upon. There was no expression beyond them, no recognition, no indication that Villain’s mind was occupied by anything at all. Their gaze stared straight through Leader, through the ceiling above as well.

Leader was torn from their daze by a commotion from behind them as the door was thrown open. Medic was nearly knocked over as Hero burst in, followed more ploddingly by Counselor.

“Be careful.” Leader warned, looking up and turning to the group. “There’s broken shit everywhere.”

Hero’s eyes darted around the room, seemingly taking in the mess. Broken glass coated the tile floor in a thin dusting of shards, while various mechanical parts still smoked in whatever place they had happened to end up. The lights had been blown out completely, leaving the lighting in the room to be provided by a flashlight laid on a countertop, as well as, now, the light soaking in from the hallway.

After their panicked scan, Hero settled their gaze on Villain.

“Are they...”

“They’re fine.” Medic interrupted.

“They’re not moving.”

“Well... I’m going to hazard to say that that’s a good thing. If I had to guess, it seems like a shock response. It’s not exactly my biggest concern, right about now.”

“What about the, uh, bleeding hole in their chest?”

“That would be my biggest concern.”

Medic grabbed a variety of, miraculously undamaged, medical supplies from a cupboard, setting to work at Villain’s wound. It was small, deliberate, having been incised to be used as an access point for the dialysis machine, but Leader had a feeling that even minor blood loss could be a death sentence, at this point.

Hero and Counselor hovered, for a moment, at Villain’s bedside, while Medic did their work. Leader stood back, nearly having to forcibly tear their gaze from that of Villain.

That odd sort of silence remained for several moments, if not minutes, as Medic’s deft hands worked to close the wound. It was only when the last suture was tied that Counselor spoke up-- one of the only times they had done so for the whole mission.

“Leader?”

“Hm?”

“What’s our plan, exactly? What are our orders?”

They raised a brow. Counselor was never that direct-- nor that military.

“Um...” It felt quite stupid, being caught unprepared like this, but in their defense, they had nearly just been killed by an exploding air conditioner. “I... I don’t want to hazard doing anything until Villain is stable.”

“That was your plan before.” Medic muttered as they pried latex gloves from their hands. “It almost got us killed.”

“Right. Yeah, um, are they stable enough? For transport?”

“They’re not going to bleed out, if that’s your concern. Physically, I’d say they’re stable. Mentally? I think we need to get them to a secure location before they snap out of this fugue state.”

“Alright.” Leader chewed their tongue. “Let’s get the van ready, then.”

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The ship’s deck was notably busy, despite the fact that it was relatively late at night. The vessel’s skeleton crew hurried about, keeping it afloat and on track, while outdated Humvees drove in chaotic paths. What the commotion was about was beyond Villain’s knowledge, or their capacity to care. All that mattered was fighting their instinct to cover their ears, and ensuring that they were keeping up with Trainer.

They could feel it-- the boat-- beneath them. The millions of systems and circuits and electrons, thrumming and being jolted about by a swaying sea.

The small company that Trainer had gathered made their way to the far end of the deck, where a VTOL plane was already humming, waiting for its crew to board. They did so, clustering themselves into the compact cabin. There was, notably, no room the vessel for a pilot-- all steering operations would be handled by an artificial intelligence of sorts. Villain greeted the computer program, but it did not respond.

Trainer settled themself into a middle seat at the front of the cabin. Villain sat obediently at their side, at which point their leash was secured to a handrail sticking out of the wall. They rested their head against the window. Though the cabin was crowded, at the very least, Villain was no longer forced to make the trip in the K9 compartment.

Once every member of the company was settled and seated, the VTOL’s doors slid shut, and the engine thwapp-thwapp-thwapped until the aircraft was off the ground. It shot upwards for a second, traveling several hundred feet in the time, before entering a linear dive and settling for a position around fifty feet above the choppy waters.

Villain closed their eyes, allowing their mind to wander to the creature around them. The VTOL contained what was likely the most complex computer program that the Organization had. Despite all its bells and whistles, however, it paid no mind to Villain’s prodding and wandering.

The plane’s route was not awfully complex. The vehicle was designed, surtout, for water-based travel. Though it could move over land, it struggled to rise above three hundred or so feet, making it useless for far-inland routes. Wherever it was going today was, luckily, on the coast-- somewhere in the forests of Washington state.

If they so wished, Villain could alter the route in any way they so pleased. They could send the aircraft into the ocean below, or back into the ship, or into the first land they saw. It would be simple-- all their problems gone in a moment.

Once the plane’s angle had leveled out, Trainer stood, moving to the front of the plane. Villain gnashed their teeth, attempting to rise from their seat, but finding themself limited by the taut leather line on their muzzle. They were too far, they were on mission, they shouldn’t have been so far, come on, come on. The leash refused to give way, however, leaving them firmly affixed in position.

Trainer cleared their throat, drawing the attention of the gathered company. They began to speak, words taking on quite a commanding air, though Villain only understand a few choice phrases.

“Incursus” was the one that made them prick their ears. They had heard it only a few times before. In conversation, once or twice, but more notably during mission briefings. The last time they had heard it... several missions ago, before they had been briefly confined to the medical wing.

The word itself was meaningless-- its implications less so.

Villain gulped, their jaw straining against the wires of their muzzle.

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Leader walked at the side of the gurney, ghosting a hand over one of the siderails all the while. A pair of doctors pushed the gurney itself, with Medic trailing close behind, and Hero and Counselor at their sides.

In contrast with the upper floors, the hospital’s lobby floor was brightly lit, almost overwhelmingly so, with expanses of floor-to-ceiling windows. The beige carpeting was bathed with the last remnants of sunrise orange-- it had been a long night.

The few patients in the hospital at such as hour were hurried out of the way as the gurney moved through. A scattering of nurses and varied hospital personnel were littered about, watching the Heroes’ procession, but staying several yards away, unwilling to even be in Villain’s vicinity.

Leader looked down at the gurney. A blanket had been draped over Villain, working to keep them at a stable temperature. Their fabric and webbing restraints had been replaced by those made of metal.

Their eyes were open. They had been the whole time. Despite, they had yet to struggle in any form.

The automatic doors at the front of the lobby rumbled open, allowing the gurney to be pushed through. A team of doctors and Leader’s own personnel stood outside, gathered around an ambulance with its back doors hanging open. The doctors pushing the gurney passed it off to some of the stronger personnel, who lifted the contraption into the vehicle’s back, securing it.

Leader nodded their thanks, and moved to get behind the vehicle’s wheel.

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The ship hadn’t been too far off of the East coast to begin with, making the trip to Washington a relatively short one. It took one hour, thirty-six minutes, and eighty-two seconds, to be exact-- far more amicable than the 16-hour trips they had endured in the past.

The VTOL had made a measured descent into a forest clearing, shredding the grass below with its landing gear. With the doors open, the company had scrambled out; Trainer taking Villain’s leash in hand once more.

In the clearing, there had been no sign of life besides a scurrying songbird or two. Villain had only then realized a far more unpleasant aspect of the mission.

They were going to be marching.

Not marching, exactly, they supposed. There was no regimented order to it, it was more like hiking. Just... hiking for hours. The VTOL couldn’t go too far inland, and landing it close to a target was often impossible.

So, they marched.

Sometimes, heaven would be merciful, and the trek would be short, of only a mile or so. On crueler days, though, they would move for hours-- breaking only for water, which Villain would watch the soldiers drink with a parched throat.

Even just from the look of the clearing, and its location, however, Villain had been able to tell that today was not one of those more merciful occasions.

When the plane had landed, the moon at been at its highest point--signifying that midnight had struck. For the first few hours, they walked in darkness, until dawn slowly began to creep up.

All in all, the trek had taken four hours, most of which were spent walking. By the time the group stopped and crouched down, Villain felt their legs were about to snap. It had been far too many hours and far too many miles since they had cared to look at their surroundings. All that mattered was Trainer, and staying awake.

The company made themselves small among an area of heavy undergrowth. Trainer let Villain’s leash loosely hang around their wrist. Even if the technopath had any desire to flee, they doubted they could even get their legs back under them.

One of the soldiers spoke up, somehow sounding hardly winded. Though most of their words served as nonsense to Villain’s ears, one did stick out: Scopum. It was one of the words Trainer had used, back when they were teaching Villain how to search and retrieve objects.

Trainer nodded, took a drink of water from a canteen, and got to their knees. They pointed to something behind the bushes-- Villain got on their knees to look at well.

Over the wall of undergrowth, a building could be seen. It wasn’t particularly notable-- it would be best described as a cabin, with rustic architecture and an array of out-of-season Christmas lights. It seemed to be a vacation home of sorts; large enough to fit a family, certainly, but not a place anyone would live permanently.

Was this their Scopum? Their goal?

Trainer took hold again of Villain’s leash and stood. The real mission was just about to begin, and Villain could hardly stand.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The drive from the hospital to their base was longer than Leader would have preferred, enough to make them nervously request updates every few minutes, much to Medic’s distaste.

The base stood at the edge of one of Washington’s denser forests, about half an hour out from the city proper. The location provided security, and in their group’s early days, secrecy, but it made transport difficult.

“Hey, Medic?” Leader started.

“Villain is fine. They’re still out of it. Cabin temperature is staying steady at 70, their body temperature is just about where it should be. Keep your damn eyes on the road.”

Leader nodded, biting the inside of their cheek. City traffic had been left behind a few miles ago, leaving only empty back roads. Seven minutes to go, the GPS diligently reported.

“We’re close now, then.” Medic spoke, starting the conversation for once. They weren’t usually the one to do such a thing, but Hero and Counselor were in the ambulance’s back. “What are you thinking?”

“Thinking?”

“Your plans. Please don’t forget that you’re the leader around here, you give the orders. What do we do, when we get back to base?”

Leader bit their tongue to prevent themself from snapping at that passive insult. They were glad for the change in topic, at least.

“Our first priority is keeping ourselves safe. Villain’s safety is second priority-- I’m not sacrificing anything to keep their wellbeing. But I wouldn’t consider them a threat, right now. I assume you would like to keep them in the med bay?”

“For now, at least. They’re stable, but the fact that they’re still breathing is a miracle. I want to have my equipment nearby if they crash.”

“As long as it’s safe, then.”

“And then what?”

“Then... they’re still a prisoner, injured or not. Then we put them in the cells.”

“We don’t have any cells?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The company moved swiftly, forcing Villain’s legs to wake up to the horrible feeling of pins and needles. Trainer remained at the group’s head, leading them forth to the cabin.

It must have looked quite ridiculous, to an outsider. Villain would have laughed if they were able.

The group stopped before the quaint structure.

“Aperire.” Trainer ordered. Villain gnashed their teeth.

The command was a simple one, generally. It meant that they were to open something-- usually a door, or a box, or an encrypted device. The wooden door before them, however, had no electric component; it didn’t even seem to have a lock at all.

Still, they dove into the few electronics that the building did host. The Christmas lights seemed to be meaningless noise-- they tore through those, searching instead through the inner electronics. They were uncomplicated, so much so that their purpose couldn’t be so much as guessed.

Villain panicked, gnashing their teeth, shaking their head against the muzzle. They didn’t know what to do. They could feel their heartbeat, pounding in their head, throbbing.

“Aperire.” Trainer repeated. It only increased Villain’s heartrate-- what were hey doing wrong? Please, what were they doing wrong? They dove back into the systems. There was no door to be seen, just the lights, just some random system. They decided on the latter, tripping the system, just as they drew blood from biting down on their own tongue.

The house rumbled.

Instead of opening as a door should, the rustic home’s door slid into the wall, revealing a brightly-lit interior-- devoid of both furniture and interest.

The only point of interest was at the very center of the floor: A ramp, leading downwards.

Villain gulped. With rougher hands than before, Trainer yanked at their leash, forcing them forth. Together, the two descended, the company right on their heels.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

The base-- it had no real name, it was simply “the base”-- was an uncomplicated corrugation of concrete walls and sparse entranceways. It had been constructed as the shell of a factory, years ago, a factory which eventually fell through. Since then, Leader had organized quite a renovation of the property.

They drove the ambulance to the base’s parking lot, backing up to the curb as near to the entrance as they could.

“You worried?” Medic asked.

“Mhm.” Leader nodded, hopping out of the cockpit and to the asphalt below. The ambulance’s rear doors had already been swung open, with Hero and Counselor working to guide the gurney from it.

Villain still laid on the bed, shrouded with blankets, nearly comatose.

Their eyes moved.

Leader did a double-take, looking back to the figure on the gurney. Villain’s gaze had moved, now directing itself straight at Leader. Whatever expression they were portraying... it looked like fear.

Leader frowned. They moved to the transport bed’s side, placing their hands on the rails.

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The ramp descended at least a story into the earth.

With every step they took, Villain could feel their mind become more and more cluttered. At first, they could only hear the simple lighting and ventilation systems, but as they grew deeper, more noises joined the cacophony. Computers and servers, medical equipment and weaponry, it all blended together, all humming, all whirring, all chanting until it made Villain’s head hurt.

At the base of the ramp, which they only reached after what felt like an eternity, stood a simple door. Nothing more than a steel barrier.

“Perdere.”

That command was about as simple as they came. Within a split second, the door, and half of the wall, before Villain had been decimated to rubble.

On the other side of the newly-torn door, a figure moved. Villain flinched, gnawing again on their bloodied tongue. Trainer forced them forward.

The room was empty, devoid, as the past one had been. There was no furniture, no weaponry, no defense. Only a person, standing squarely before the door at the far end.

Their wings brushed the room’s walls.

Leader glared.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 

As they leaned over Villain’s bedside, Leader smiled-- an expression as gentle as they could make it. They weren’t sure what had suddenly turned them so soft. Pity, maybe? Somehow, though, it tugged at them in the same way as nostalgia.

They brushed a hand over Villain’s shoulder.

“Hey. You’re gonna be okay.”

The next part was the stupid one. The soft one, the one that would have made anyone in any faction laugh. One that, if anyone had heard it, Leader surely never would have lived down. Even they were not sure why they spoke it.

Five simple words. Five words without meaning.

“Welcome to your new home.”

[libermachinae]

Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part II: Breathe - Chapter 7: Filter Out

Also available on AO3 Summary: The pair continues to search for common ground. Word Count: 4818

---

Working silently from there on, Ratchet and Rodimus cleaned, drained, and stacked every cube from the damaged crate. Rodimus pulled up his old music files, and though Ratchet mentally complained about the first few tracks, it gave them something to focus on other than each other.

Eventually, though, Rodimus’ mind did start to wander further than the music could reel him back in. What was behind the locked door? Ratchet said it was just recharge stations, but what if he was wrong? They still didn’t know where Arcee had gotten this ship and its cargo; how could they truly feel secure that they had found its worst secret? Especially given their own ship’s track record for transporting dangerous secret—

“The cargo bay’s got to be a disaster,” Ratchet said, just to break that line of thought before it could ensnare them both.

“Knowing what kind of firepower Cons take with them on an afternoon walk, we’re probably lucky the whole ship didn’t get blow up,” Rodimus said.

Ratchet did a commendable job trying not to laugh, save for the fact that he thought about it. Despite everything, Rodimus grinned.

“We should go check it out,” he said, dumping the cube in his hands into the drum before standing up. “Whatever’s down there has got to be more exciting than this.”

“Not so fast,” Ratchet said, mind and optics still on the task. “We need to finish this. Every moment we waste is more fuel lost.” The puddle that had formed from the yet-undiscovered broken cubes was sizable, but the pile that yet remained was not.

“We can mop it up,” Rodimus said. Feeling the way Ratchet balked at the idea (unsanitary, he called it, even though that fuel was going straight to the engines anyway), he shrugged and took a step back. “Or not. You can keep working on this while I scope it out.”

And risk Rodimus finding another artifact that—that blew them up? No, absolutely not.

“We’ll go down together,” Ratchet said, and he would hear no argument.

But Rodimus had built his reputation on insubordination, and he said as much, out loud, unaware he had done so. He spun around and marched to the stairs, Ratchet’s bolt of panic only adding to his frustration. He wasn’t some freshly forged protoform, so accident prone as to be literally dripping with corrosive material.

No, Ratchet agreed, he was an adult bot with a lifetime of experience and not a lick of wisdom to show for it: infinitely more dangerous.

“I try,” Rodimus snapped. He didn’t want to, but it felt good. “Not all the time, because I’m an idiot, but I do try to do the right thing and learn from my mistakes. I don’t hang on to people who have betrayed me and I try to keep myself out of situations that have screwed me in the past. And then I still get knocked down sometimes because life sucks life that, but it’s not—I’m not—” Lazy. Selfish. Stupid.

He hated that not only could Ratchet hear the words, but could feel how they burned Rodimus and made the hate he felt towards himself just that much sharper. So, it took him a moment to realize that Ratchet’s head had not gone silent, but was instead repeating Rodimus’ words back at him as he analyzed them. Great, he wanted to form an opinion.

“I’m trying to understand,” Ratchet shot back. Still annoyed, but in the chronic sense Ratchet was known for. “You’re so—” Impossible. “—defensive. I don’t know one moment to the next whether you’ll be apologizing for something or making excuses.”

“I’m not trying to make excuses,” Rodimus said. He shouldn’t be looking at the ground, but Ratchet’s gaze was painful. “I don’t like other people telling me how I think.” Even though you can see it now. You don’t get it.

Ratchet didn’t get it. He didn’t understand how anyone could function with that much going on at once, so much of it conflicting and bouncing off each other. Of course Rodimus would be prone to make mistakes, when getting a coherent thought in was next to—

“Stop saying that!” Rodimus snapped.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You know what I mean!”

“So, I’m the one who has to control what I think?”

“If it’s so easy for you.”

It wasn’t easy. It took effort to not think about something (like Drift, like Delphi, like how impossible Rodimus was), and Ratchet was already expending enough of that trying to keep himself calm.

“Sorry to have made you waste the energy,” Rodimus huffed, not sorry at all.

“It’s—” And Ratchet stopped himself before he could make this worse, because Rodimus was right about one thing: it was a waste of energy to keep fighting, especially when he could barely keep track of what they were fighting about.

You hate me, Rodimus automatically supplied.

“No, stop it,” Ratchet said. “That’s not useful.”

“Truth’s not always useful,” Rodimus shot back, like a discount Primeism.

Ratchet felt bad about thinking that the moment Rodimus caught it.

“Look, kid,” he said, careful not to meet Rodimus’ optics. There was only so much Rodimus he could handle at once. “I don’t hate you. I don’t,” he insisted when he felt Rodimus’ disbelief. “You don’t need me to tell you again that you’ve made mistakes, but if that alone was worthy of being hated for, I’d be a slagging lonely bot.” He touched his chevron and let the weight of his helm rest on his hand. “You’re as angry at yourself as I was, which tells me you want to change. It’s more practical for me to believe that and help you where I can than to keep holding on to this.”

It would be hard. There were some who would find Rodimus’ mistakes unforgivable, and rightly so; not everyone was lucky enough to crawl back from the pits. But Ratchet’s resentment was not planted so deep, and with effort on both their parts, he knew it could be uprooted.

“However I make it seem on a bad day, I don’t actually want us to be miserable the whole way there,” he finished. He was a healer. It would be unfaithful to his vows to keep inflicting this emotional harm on them both.

He glanced down at the task they had abandoned in favor of arguing. At least one or two cubes were still leaking, but Rodimus had a point that the fuel loss would be negligible. They could take a break to explore the rest of their ship.

“I don’t need an escort,” Rodimus said. Despite seeing the rationale behind Ratchet’s decision, his thoughts still felt prickly and uncomfortable. He didn’t trust Ratchet to keep his word.

“I know,” Ratchet said. “I’m not supervising you. You’re right that we don’t know what’s down there. I’ll be there to watch your back.” And you’ll watch mine.

And I’ll watch yours. Their thoughts overlapped and rather than clash, they blended.

They ventured down together, Rodimus in the lead while Ratchet followed at a more sedate pace, taking in the details as he could. Not that there was much order to be found in the mess. The contents of the hold, already thrown into disarray by Rodimus’ frantic search, now seemed beyond any hope of order: weapons and their parts lay among repair tools, containers of unknown fluids smashed open and dripping into delicate electronics.

Half of this stuff was probably unsalvageable, Ratchet thought, and the rest were weapons: handguns, shotguns, cannons, and grenades of every variety. Rodimus even noticed a few swords among the mix, though none so nice as Drift’s. Ratchet pressed at how he could judge the quality of a sword, and Rodimus idly admitted that he couldn’t. They just didn’t look as cool.

“Sorry,” he said. He didn’t mean to keep coming back to Drift.

“I get it,” Ratchet said as he stepped further in, going for a cabinet that might hold something other than weapons. “He’s very present.”

“He’s spooky like that.” Rodimus took Ratchet’s interest as permission to begin exploring. He tiptoed as he went, careful not to disturb anything lest he start a chain reaction, but the piles and mess were already settled. Nothing moved as he waded in.

Rodimus wondered how it would feel to Drift, to be approached by a Decepticon ship chock full of weapons.

“Not like we can do anything about it,” Ratchet said. The first couple drawers he had opened were full of disorganized ammo and magazines, but the third was a packed collection of promising metal boxes. He pulled one out.

“I wasn’t actually asking,” Rodimus clarified as he finally reached down to extract a handgun.

“I know,” Ratchet said. The lid was stuck tight; if there were medical supplies inside, he would need some way to test they were still usable.

“So, you didn’t need to answer.” It wasn’t a gun at all, it turned out: it was a grappling hook.

“You’re going to get one whether I intend to or not.”

“Fair point.” Rodimus aimed the grappling hook across the room, wondering what its range was.

“Don’t you dare,” Ratchet warned, right as he popped off the lid. He discovered inside a few vials of unlabeled powders and fluids. They looked like the ingredients to produce some of the more common data dampeners, but without a test kit Ratchet had no way to be sure.

Rodimus lowered the grappling hook, mildly annoyed, but Ratchet’s thoughts caught his curiosity and he came circling back.

“Can I see?” he asked, holding out his hand. Ratchet obliged and Rodimus took the box, peering closely at the contents.

“Yeah, it’s a syk kit,” he said, tucking the grappling hook under one arm so he could pull out a vial and hold it to the light. “Nice one, too. I thought Kimia was the only place you could get materials that fine.”

“Decepticons had their own labs,” Ratchet said, though he also would not have been surprised to learn that the cross-faction drug trade had gone beyond the cheaper to produce circuit boosters.

“That’s true,” Rodimus said. He was getting an idea, and Ratchet immediately shook his head.

“No,” he said.

Rodimus’ expression was steady, but his emotions were expanding again. Some hurt, some curiosity, some frustration.

“It’s just an idea,” he said. “If I can calm down for little bits at a time, maybe we’ll be able to get through this without blowing up at each other anymore.”

“Do you have any idea how much sediment I’ve had to scrape off idiots’ brain cases?” Ratchet demanded. “A single impurity could cause your whole processor to melt down.” Even those he managed to recover never came back exactly as they had been. In best case scenarios, the changes weren’t apparent until after they had left his office: subtle shifts in mannerism, a change in fuel preference. The worst… Ratchet had seen a bot’s entire language core corroded as a result of bad materials. He didn’t care the depth of experience and knowledge Rodimus was broadcasting to him, it was a risk he wouldn’t allow any friend to take while they still had a choice.

Rodimus had faced worse in Nyon than a few bad trips, worse on the frontlines than suddenly coming back to consciousness with a gun in his hands. It wasn’t a solution, no, but at certain times it was the best a bot could hope for. Maybe right now happened to be one of them.

Ratchet tried to grab the box back, but his thoughts projected his intentions and Rodimus easily dodged him.

“People need you, Ratchet,” Rodimus said. “Not just Drift; everyone on the Lost Light relies on you.” Exaggeration, plain and simple. Rodimus ignored him. “If something were to happen to me, Ultra Magnus and Megatron can keep things running, but you need to get back in one piece.”

That wasn’t true, not in the slightest. And, Ratchet found, it didn’t matter.

“Not everything is about what’s best for other people,” he said. They were out here to look for a solution, and none were viable that did not result in both of them continuing their lives afterward as best they could.

He felt something quake in Rodimus, a distraction just powerful enough to give him a chance to grab the box back. He barely had a moment’s satisfaction, though, before a pounding emotion hit him with blunt force. It was deep, but not in the sense of a hole, where one might find safety or comfort; it was deep like the emptiness of space, yawning wider and more oppressive the deeper one sunk into it. Ratchet squeezed the box between his fingers, disengaging from Rodimus’ thoughts and retreating back into his own.

Ratchet stared at Rodimus, who from the outside looked normal. A bit tense, but no more so than he usually looked when they got into one of their spats. Had he not had this perfect window, he would have missed the storm entirely.

“Rodimus…” This was beyond his scope.

Rodimus opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything. He was horrified.

He shouldn’t have seen that, Ratchet realized. Whatever injustice they might fight about next, whatever disagreement they came to over whether something was right or okay, nothing could excuse such a breach of privacy.

No one had ever seen that before. Certainly not Drift.

“Okay,” Ratchet said. Without turning around, he put the box back in the drawer and shut it. “Do you want to be alone?”

“God, yes,” Rodimus said. He had been doing so well not going to that place. Of course he had been a fool to hope he could keep it up a whole week, but he’d hoped to go a few days, at least, maybe wait until Ratchet was in recharge before he let himself fall back into—

“Come on,” Ratchet said. “Let’s go upstairs.” Out of the mess, the forgotten scraps of violence that had chased them throughout their lives.

Ratchet led them back up to the bridge and seated Rodimus in the captain’s chair. He wanted—he didn’t want—Primus, it was so hard to think when everything kept circling, he wished Ratchet hadn’t seen that—

“Can you teach me how to meditate?” Ratchet asked, using the tone of voice he was finding worked well to break them from a loop.

“Huh?” Despite that, it still took Rodimus a moment to understand. “I was terrible at it, remember? Couldn’t sit still.”

“And sometimes the worst students make the best teachers.”

Yeah, like he would know. Ratchet had probably aced every class he had ever been in.

That actually got a laugh out of him.

“Me?” Ratchet said. “Frag no, my early years were a disaster. Almost flunked out one semester, considered dropping out the next. If it hadn’t been for one of my instructors stepping in and deciding I was worth something, I probably wouldn’t have made it to my residency.”

Ratchet had been lucky in many ways. It was, of course, the Functionist Council that had decided he should go into medicine, and he had gone along with it out of the assurance that it was what he was built for. The early rhetoric had him thinking that he would be able to breeze through and grab his high-paying job on the way out; only once he was in the thick of it had he realized that not only was it a great deal of work to become a doctor, but there was also a real chance he could fail on the way. It had only been Glass and his kind yet brutal way of teaching that had helped Ratchet onto the right path.

Rodimus wasn’t sure what to do with all that information. Ratchet shrugged.

“It’s all ancient history,” he said. “Just hope I didn’t scare you off of trying to teach me.”

“I never agreed,” Rodimus said, but he was thinking about it. Even if they only managed a few minutes, a distraction would be good for them, anything to push them farther away from that.

“Come on,” Ratchet said, helping him up again.

It only took a few minutes to hack their way into the recharge closets at the back of the ship. On an Autobot vessel, the crew’s recharge docks would have shared a common room, but the Decepticons had divided them into four cramped compartments. Something about reducing the risk of getting stabbed in recharge, Ratchet suspected, not that he would have thought reduced visibility would help much. Half the rooms contained four berths each, stacked in two bunks, and the others each contained a single large slab likely meant for a heavy.

The bunks were just tall enough for a bot to crawl on for recharge, inadequate for sitting up straight, so they took over one of the larger berths. Perched at the foot, Rodimus watched in silence as Ratchet climbed on the other end and got himself situated.

“Am I doing this right?” he asked. For all the mindfulness seminars he had dozed through, Ratchet had very little idea of what actually went into meditating. He had stumbled into Drift practicing a couple times in out of the way yet distinctly visible spots, but he had not bothered to inspect the minutia of his activity. The one exception had been the time he had stumbled upon Drift with his foot twisted up behind his head, but he had never figured out whether that was supposed to be meditation or just showing off.

“Um.” Rodimus thought back. “Sit however’s comfortable for you. But, like, actively.” A straight back was the most important thing. When Rodimus had started fidgeting, Drift had let him try it standing up, and then gently pacing. He doubted Ratchet would have that problem, though, so they stuck with sitting side by side, their legs dangling off the berth.

“And now?” Ratchet asked.

“Power down your optics,” Rodimus said. Drift had offered a soft reassurance here, that they were alone and safe, but Rodimus doubted he could capture the same sense of security Drift imparted, so he skipped it. “Don’t do anything yet. Just sit with it. Pay attention to your body. Think—I mean. Feel it. How it feels.”

As though Ratchet could ever get away from feeling his body, the persistent aches and tugs that accompanied years of poor maintenance. Their exchange did not include physical sensations, but Rodimus could feel Ratchet’s reaction to them and winced in sympathy.

“Is yours really much better?” Ratchet countered. “Can’t remember the last time I got you in for a tune-up.”

Was Rodimus comfortable in his own body? He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t paid attention to it in—

Right, meditating. They were meditating. He quickly reeled himself back in, trying to pay attention to the way the cables in his right shoulder twitched without actively thinking about them.

“Don’t crank your fans, but if your systems are running hot, try to cool yourself down,” he said. “Filter out the warm air until you’re comfortable.”

This had been one of their stumbling points, because Rodimus always ran hot due to the combination of an inefficient alt-mode and his poorly optimized flameout mod. They had eventually agreed it was best to just have Rodimus running his fans throughout, but he knew that wasn’t the right way to do it.

Ratchet nudged the thought—he might be able to do something about that, once they had a proper medbay again—but he didn’t comment out loud.

“And now… don’t try to stop your thoughts. Let them come to you, but don’t dwell on them. Acknowledge them and then move on.” Drift had suggested anchoring himself to the beat of his fuel pump, but not-thinking about it had caused it to speed up until he couldn’t sit still anymore and had to move. Then had come the trinkets: a ball he could roll between his palms, or a long shard of crystal to tumble through his fingers over and over again. Practicing with them had brought Rodimus the closest he had come to understanding what Drift was on with all his talk about inner peace.

Rodimus had no idea what had become of those things when Drift left. Maybe Drift would have wanted to take the crystals with him, but Ultra Magnus probably confiscated the rest when he did the final room sweep. He didn’t even know where that stuff had ended up, whether Drift’s possessions had been thrown away or—

Broadcasting his intentions with his thoughts but otherwise staying quiet, Ratchet pulled from his subspace a laser pointer and pushed it into Rodimus’ empty hands. The button at the end would depress a decent distance before it settled with a click, and Rodimus’ thumb immediately sought it out, testing it a few times before it settled into a rhythm.

Thanks, he thought.

Don’t mention it, Ratchet sent back. Just letting the thoughts go, right?

Right, Rodimus thought, and then he did just that, letting Drift slip to the back of his processor. Always there, especially as of late, but not dominating. Just waiting.

Click. Click. Click. Ratchet was good at this. Ratchet was really good at this.

His job wasn’t always snap decisions and pinpoint accuracy. In the smoldering years, a lot of Ratchet’s time was spent performing basic maintenance work, the same procedure a hundred or thousand times over. Thoughts had a tendency to turn dark in situations like that, so he had become adept at keeping his processor empty.

Click. Click. Click. Rodimus was reminded of drill routines and perimeter sweeps, but that was as far as he let the thought go. He settled again.

Click. Click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click.

No commanding officer would sponsor a mod that introduced so much randomization to a battle, so Rodimus had had to go through back channels to get it, chatting up anonymous specialists on the intranet until he found someone he could both afford and reach between assignments. He had never gotten his name—Accupunch was not a name any MTO could have snagged—and the only note made on his patient file was for a blown tire (which had been real; the first time he tested the mod, he hadn’t known to adjust his tire pressure ahead of time).

He felt Ratchet’s frown like a wave. He would definitely be taking a look at it. Later.

Right. Meditating. They were meditating.

Click click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click. Click click. Click.

The noise was starting to grate on Ratchet’s nerves.

Rodimus onlined his optics to find himself staring down at the laser pointer in his hands.

“This isn’t gonna work,” he whispered.

It just takes practice, Ratchet thought.

“I’m talking about everything,” Ratchet said. He squeezed the laser pointer; he wanted to throw it at the wall. “Cleaning the ship and finding Drift and surviving long enough to do it. It’s not going to work! We’re too different; the things we do just to function are too incompatible.” No matter how much effort they put in, there had never been a chance this would work. “You’re all—all patience and find details and compassion.” In the most jagged possible way. “And I’ve gotten through on charm and the occasional—” very occasional, always fleeting, but essential nonetheless “—handout of good luck. I’ve tried, but not the way you try, and I don’t care the way you care.” Ratchet didn’t take on vanity rescue missions; everything he did was for the good of someone else. “You’re going out there to find Drift—” because Ratchet was in love with him “—and I’m—”

Ratchet, who had been gripping Rodimus’ thoughts like he was trying to pull a tumbling speeder out of a nosedive, felt his hands slip.

“Now hold on,” he demanded, twisting so he was facing Rodimus. “I’m what?”

“You’re what?” Rodimus had already lost track of the thought. Luckily, it came bouncing back to him, echoed over and over as Ratchet’s precision processor analyzed and examined and tried to make sense of what Rodimus’ own had considered an inconsequential observation.

“I’m not—” But he was, and he had known. Of course he had known. How could anyone miss something so monumental, as discovering they would do whatever it took to keep one singular person (Just one! Not a planet, not a platoon, just one person!) safe and happy in a universe that seemed to conspire against it. Ratchet had known, but he hadn’t thought about it, not when Drift was alone and needed help, not—not another mess. Not this.

But Drift deserved to be loved, Rodimus pushed back.

“It’s not a bad thing,” he said out loud. Love was what had gotten Ratchet through the war, love of life and other people. It had the potential for destruction, but that was true of the Cybertronian as a whole. “Just… you know. Be reasonable about it.”

“Reasonable,” Ratchet repeated, with a huff that was as amused as it was self-deprecating.

“Make sure we get the pleasantries done before you sweep him off his feet,” Rodimus said. Though a joke, the suggestion did bring a snapshot to mind, just briefly: an orange sunset backdrop, Ratchet and Drift wrapped around each other and gazing into each others optics so fiercely it was as though the whole universe had ceased to exist. Like Rodimus, despite imagining it, had disappeared entirely.

Tagged onto the end of the thought, smothered with the rest as Rodimus desperately tried to turn his processor to the problem of how they would convince Drift they had come in peace, was a note of jealousy.

Ratchet noticed it. His optics snapped to Rodimus, and the latter refused to meet them.

Drift deserved to be loved without reservation, by someone ready to put their whole being into it. Rodimus wasn’t even sure he was built for such a task.

“Hey now, where’s that coming from?” Ratchet asked. Functionist nonsense.

The quivering mass that represented Rodimus’ many, many failures shook loose of his careful hold. Ratchet felt the weight of it, similar to that—

“Everybody makes mistakes, Rodimus,” Ratchet said. He was trying to be gentle without patronizing, and while he didn’t quite manage it, Rodimus caught his intent and was grateful. “Me, Prime, Drift. Your mistakes are serious, and they’ve had consequences, but that’s the reality if you want to be someone important. You’re going to fail at important things. That doesn’t mean you’re built wrong.” With some uncertainty, not immediately soothed by Rodimus’ responding confusion, he breached the gap between them and laid his hand over Rodimus’.

You can love, he thought, the kind of words he could never say out loud.

Rodimus caught them anyway. Still a little confused and equally uncertain but with the boldness that had already gotten him this far in life, he flipped his hand over so that he and Ratchet held the laser pointer between them.

“I admit, I haven’t been the best so far at this… partnership,” Ratchet said. When Rodimus balked and made to interrupt, he shook his head. “No, really. I gripe and complain because that’s what I do, but the truth is, you’re trying. I’m not saying this is going to make it any easier, but I need to start trying, too.” He squeezed Rodimus’ hand.

Rodimus, for once, was empty. He didn’t know what to think about that, so for a moment he just floated, until eventually Ratchet’s steady march of thoughts reeled him back in again. He grinned and released Ratchet’s hand, pushing himself off the massive berth.

“Fuel?” he asked. They had gone to the trouble of sorting all those cubes; might as well make some use of them.

“Sure,” Ratchet said, following at a more sedate pace. Maybe afterward, they could work out how recharging was going to work in their current state. Any peace they found would be short lived if they couldn’t work that out.

“You think the berths will work for us if we’re not Decepticons?” Rodimus asked as he walked backwards to the bridge.

Ratchet had no idea. But if not, it was something to work on, another puzzle to solve. And it turned out the two of them together were better at that than he would have expected. Maybe it would still be a challenge. Maybe they would get angry and think hurtful things of each other and be overly offended by that which neither could control. But that too was just a problem to solve. They could figure it out.

Rodimus grinned at him. A little nervous, but hopeful. He trusted Ratchet, and the feeling he got in return was so similar he almost missed the fact that it hadn’t come from himself.

[jungleuniversity]

How I Improved My MCAT Score (509 -> 518)

Hi Everyone! I got back my new MCAT scores awhile ago, but I thought I’d write a post about how I achieved my score, with hope that it could potentially help another student. I know that while I was studying, a lot of the advice I saw on the internet was overwhelming and made me feel that my level of studying would always be inferior to what others were doing. The vast array of available courses, practice tests, and other services available certainly did not help either, as there is no reasonable way to complete every single resource that exists. In this post, I’ll go through a timeline of my basic study plan and explain which resources I used and why I think they are worth using. 

Stage 1 - Kaplan 7 book set and other content resources

I had trouble coming up with a time frame for how long it should take to go through the Kaplan set, which is why I simply called this part the “first stage.” Many guides I have read online mention strictly separated “content review” and “practice exam” phases of studying. Personally, that would never have worked out for me because I would have gotten anxious every time I got a question wrong during the exam phase. Instead, I spent about 3-4 months simply reading and taking notes out of the books, and then doing a mixed exam and content review stage. I used each book in the following ways, especially the second time I studied: 

Biochemistry - For the first half of the book I took detailed notes as if I were learning from an ordinary biochemistry textbook for a class. For the second half, I eased on the notes and started drawing out the different pathways. I think I wrote down the Electron Transport Chain pathway 10-15 times and the Citric acid cycle path about 50 times. I did not draw the shapes of compounds, but I won’t tell you not to do that either. 

Biology -  Same as the Biochem book. I did spend extra time on “high yield content” that's more difficult to memorize, such as actin/tropomyosin activity in muscle. 

Physics - I cannot stress what I am about to say enough. The absolute most important things to know from this book are the units. If you are truly stuck on a physics (or often chemistry) question, there is a very good chance you can use dimensional analysis to force your way to the right answer in a relatively brief amount of time. If nothing else, PLEASE learn the units behind every concept. 

Chemistry - Use the advice from physics, but I also took pretty heavy notes, especially in the first half, since there’s a lot of content that, despite being easier than biochemistry in my opinion, are foundational and will cause problems if you skip it. 

Behavioral Sciences - This was the section that brought down my first attempt score. I found that the premed95 anki deck that’s in circulation was helpful, but it made me incredibly lazy in studying to the point where I would pretend to be productive, while just looking at slides. I was desperate not to repeat my mistakes, so I brute forced my way through the Kaplan book this time instead. I didn’t take notes the way I did for other subjects - instead I hand wrote every single bolded word and definition in a notebook, organized by chapters. This took about a week and I did not study any other subject during this time. I don’t know if I would recommend this method for Behavioral Sciences for everyone, but the truth is that after I did this, my practice section scores went from 124 to 128-130. One thing to keep in mind though, the last few sections of the Physics/Math book are absolutely critical to the Behavioral Sciences section as they are the only resource within the Kaplan set which explain the research methodologies for both Psychology and Sociology. 

Organic Chemistry - I took sparse notes on this book. I think it's the least useful out of the 7 book set, and I often had to look to the internet and old organic chemistry class notes to clarify mechanisms and pathways. Nevertheless, make flashcards or write down reactions such as the Aldol condensation, which more likely than not will show up at some point. 

CARS - Skip this book. In my opinion, there are better ways to study this section. Most importantly, use the CARS question packs from AAMC. 

Stage 2 - CARS, Mixed Content Review and Practice Exams (2-3 weeks)

This is around when I started taking CARS much more seriously, so I would recommend starting earlier. I mainly focused on using the two AAMC question packs, although the KhanAcademy passages were also useful. The first question pack was definitely a bit more difficult and you might feel discouraged after going through half of it. However, I promise it does get better. Part of the change is that as you read explanations for why you get questions wrong, your skill will begin to improve. The other part is that the second half of the question pack, as well as most of the second question pack are more closely aligned with the difficulty level of the actual test. 

This was also when I began taking NextStep full length exams. (Insert surprised Pikachu face) My first score was a 501. Definitely not expected at the time, but it was a necessary wakeup call to understand where my content gaps were. 

After each exam I took from this point on, I would take the rest of the day off after taking the exam. Just relax, after taking a 7 hour exam, you deserve it tbh. The next day, go over the entire exam, question by question and take notes where you need to. I wrote very brief 1-line notes for questions I got right and understood, and more detailed notes for all incorrect questions as well as correct questions that I did not fully understand. This is important for two reasons: First, this allows you to know exactly where your content gaps are and understand how you can improve applying the concepts that you already know. Second, there’s only so many different things they can ask you on the MCAT. It might sound endless, but there are a finite number of concepts and you are bound to see very similar questions on future practice tests and also on the real MCAT. In my experience, writing down the explanation for the correct answers on missed questions ensured that I never get a similar question incorrectly in the future. Overall, next-step exams were alright, but their content felt incredibly low-yield. Now, studying low yield concepts is extremely important, but it's obviously detrimental if that's all you study. 

For the next month, I would alternate between taking next-step and AAMC full lengths, with breaks in between to review my content gaps. My highest Nextstep exam was a 512, but I tended to score around 507-508. My aamc exams, in order, were 519, 517, and 515. The downward trend was concerning, but I was honestly happy since all of those scores were higher than my target at the time, 513. Also, I falsely began to think that NextStep exams were extremely deflated. (They are, but not nearly to the extent that you might think.)

Finally, the day before my first exam: I couldn’t sleep at all, and I went against common advice of not studying on this day. As for exam day, just trust yourself and the studying you have done. My main advice beyond what anyone else will tell you is to keep a close eye on the clock. Several people who tested with me lost up to 5 minutes on CARS because they forgot to take into account the time during their lunch break. Not every test center will have digital clocks, and the one I went to only had a tiny analog clock near the area they check you in. When I asked a proctor for the time, he just laughed. So make sure you look at the clock and remember the time when your break starts. 

My score on the first exam turned out to be a 509. Not necessarily a bad score at all, but this score was much lower than what I was aiming for. It was disappointing, mainly due to the time I put into studying, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. My behavioral sciences section severely pulled my score down, and there were a few content areas that I truly was not prepared for. I felt bad about it for about a week, and afterwards started studying again. 

Stage 3: Final Preparations 

Initially, I found it relatively difficult to study during the semester. One of my friends recommended I use UWorld questions to effectively use my time. This resource definitely helped me out when I felt like I simply did not have enough time to finish studying. They provide you with 1500 or so questions, categorized by section and sub categorized by topic. You can choose how many questions or passages you want to do in one sitting, and if you want it timed or not. After you finish, they provide you with personalized statistics for the session, as well as explanations for each question, which are saved and can be viewed at any time. Alongside simply rereading the Kaplan books, this is the best way to reinforce content knowledge. 

The final resource I used were the Altius exams. I purchased a pack of 5 on a whim because 1) I ran out of practice tests and 2) someone on reddit said these were severely under-appreciated. Well, that gamble paid off because I believe these exams are about as close as you can get to the AAMC full lengths, BUT they give you much more detailed explanations, and are just a little bit more difficult, so you actually end up feeling like the AAMC practice exams are a bit smoother and easier to pace yourself on. After purchasing, I had one month to take all five, as well as the then-recently-released AAMC FL #4. Altius exams were great, and honestly, my only “complaint” was that CARS felt a little bit too difficult to be as useful as it could be. I also studied Behavioral Sciences and Biochemistry the way I described in Part 1, since I felt like I underperformed on those sections. 

When second exam day approached, I forced myself to get a full night of sleep this, and it absolutely paid off. I was noticeably more aware during this test than my previous attempt, and corrected myself before making a bunch of silly errors. 

A month later, I found out I got a 518, which was higher than my original goal. 

Tl;dr: 

Studying for the mcat is expensive, and it can be hard to find advice on which resources are useful. 

In my opinion, only: Altius exams are amazing. UWorld is a great resource for content gaps and reinforcement, especially when you have sharp time constraints. Kaplan books are awesome for content review, but it should be fine if you buy an older edition (I used 2015).

[oikawas-bae]

Hi! Can i request Kuroo with a Fem African American friends to lovers in college? this is my second ask so sorry if it’s cringe 😔 but spin it in your own way! i’m happy with anything 🥺

SO LATE ONhgghgFFH SRRY also Ehm im not so sure what implications such a specific ethnicity might have on the story so imma just do a reg friends to lovers thing and no its not cringe!! I love friends to lovers!

As a freshman in college, you’d met Kuroo at orientation when he saw you frantically looking for your ID which had somehow slid out of your bag and under your shoe. He picked it up and handed it to you and you were extremely grateful because you didn’t want to have to explain to your counselor that you had lost your ID on the first day.

He sort of just followed you because you were just as lost as he was and you seemed friendly enough. In the beginning, most of the conversations were about his high school volleyball career and you’d immediately hit it off because you were a good listener and he was easy to converse with in general.

You two got closer because you took most of the same GEs the first and second year of university. For the most part, they were a breeze so you had lots of time to hang out with him in his dorm just talking or redecorating your dorm when you needed a change of scenery or going to awkward parties and volunteer events.

Your classes came to differ from each other once he got into his biology major courses and you took classes for your own major.

Even if you had separate areas to study, you would go to study hall together and well...study but being there for hours was painfully boring and you’d start to scroll through your phone and poke at Kuroo to show him a funny post you found and he’d get cross.

“You’ve gotta be more tentative to your grades, (y/n). Now let me explain the electron transport chain to you...” and he’d do it, starting over every time you tried to interrupt him. The deeper he got into his field of study, the worse the science jokes got and you swore you’d punch him outright if it were anybody else but Kuroo had become your best friend when you were so far from home and without him you’d probably spend most of your days in your dorm staring at a wall and napping. He’d grown to treasure you just the same and he really couldn’t wrap his head around how he found someone who clicked with him so well.

One day, you wouldn’t answer your phone when you had planned to go out to town with Kuroo. He was getting really worried so he went to your dorm to check up on you and he found you wrapping a disheveled kitten into a baby blanket. It looked like it had been born only a few days ago, “(y/n), what are you doing with a kitten?”

“I found it on the side of the street, I didn't want to leave it there and risk it getting run over by a car or to die from the cold...”

He felt something warm his chest, like you’d finally done the one thing that confirmed it. Yep, he liked you as more than just a best friend. The way you were holding the kitten close to your chest and stroking its head so tenderly, he wanted you to do the same to his future children with you. The sentiment was so comforting but he’d hardly ever considered it before which is why it frazzled him so intensely. He hadn’t had the time to think about it and now that he did it petrified him that there was a possibility that you’d never talk to him after university. And it wouldn’t be entirely your fault either. After all, biology majors usually ended up working long hours and it was difficult to maintain a relationship. He brushed the idea off...for now…

“Well don’t just stand there! This kitten needs goat milk! Go get goat milk! Hurry!” And he’d done just that and biked as quickly as he could to the nearest grocery store (he had to visit several because not just every grocery store sells goat milk). By the time he’d gotten back it was late and you were tired from cleaning up the kitten and he was exhausted from grocery hopping for goat milk.

You laid beside him on your bed that was just big enough for the both of you to fit if you were scooted close. You’d nestled so close to him and both of you had a supporting hand on the snoozing kitten. It felt almost natural to be like this with you. He wasn’t sure whether he heard you correctly or if you were thinking clearly since it was late and you’d been tired from tending so carefully to the kitten but you’d shyly suggested, “hey, kuroo...we should live together like this one day...i wouldn’t mind that at all...”

[lafiametta]

If Only in My Dreams

Jopson/Little Modern AU, 1.6K, Rated T

So for this ficlet I definitely took some inspiration from one of my favorite classic Christmas songs — and from my recent Jopson/Little Christmas moodboard. I apologize in advance for having Americanized the whole thing, but I needed a place where I had a decent handle on the geography!

For @theterrorbingo: “home”

“What do you mean, there are no available seats?”

Edward hadn’t meant to sound quite so desperate, but the beleaguered gate agent seemed to take it in stride, offering him an expression of measured sympathy.

“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s Christmas Eve.” As if in partial explanation, her eyes darted around the crowded gate area, which was filled to the brim with passengers toting winter coats and carry-ons and an occasional bag of wrapped presents. The squeal of a child’s tantrum rang out over the hubbub of voices. “There aren’t any seats on any flight that can get you to Chicago, at least not today. The first thing I can see would be for the morning of the 26th.”

“What about standby?”

She glanced down at the monitor behind the desk and then shook her head. “The standby lists are full. Everyone wants to get home today.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I know.”

She nodded, smiling in that compassionate, yet impersonal way that only well-trained customer service agents seemed to be able to manage. “You’re always free to keep checking in. You never know, something might open up.” She shrugged, a small twinkle catching in her eye. “It is Christmas. Miracles have been known to happen.”

Edward thanked her and then slunk away from the gate, entirely despondent. Maneuvering around the clumps of families eating food court meals from off their laps and the business-types clustered around the charging station, he managed to find a quiet space further down the concourse. 

With a heavy heart, he pulled out his phone and pressed the first name that appeared on his recent call list. 

The voice that answered was cheerful, as always. In the background, Edward thought he could hear the faint sound of Christmas music. 

“Hey, gorgeous. What’s going on? I thought your flight already left.”

Edward squeezed his eyes shut, roughly rubbing his fingers across them. This was not the conversation he wanted to be having right now.  

Tom absolutely adored the holidays: he loved the food and the celebrations and the gift-giving and the time with his friends and family. And Edward loved how excited Tom got about it all, how much he enjoyed planning everything down to the last red-and-green themed detail. What he was about to say was undoubtedly going to ruin nearly all of it. 

“Yeah, about that. I’ve got some bad news...” 

As quickly as he could, he explained the entire situation to Tom: the flight from Providence to New York had been painless, even getting in a little early, but as soon as he arrived at the gate for his flight to Chicago, they were told there was a mechanical issue with the plane. At first it was just a twenty minute delay, then another hour, until finally an airline representative got on the intercom and informed them that the flight had officially been cancelled. He had apologized, offering hotel vouchers, and told everyone that there would agents at the gate to help them rebook. Unfortunately for Edward, it looked like all the remaining seats had already been snatched up by the time he got to the head of the line.

Tom remained quiet while Edward spoke, and there was a long pause before he said anything at all.

“So what you’re saying is that you’re not going to make it back for Christmas?” Even though he wasn’t saying it outright, the disappointment in Tom’s voice couldn’t be more obvious. 

Edward sighed, leaning back against the wall of the concourse. “Probably not. The next flight they could find for me is in two days.”

“Are you going to try to head back to your parents’?” 

Edward’s family — mom, dad, brother, and three sisters — all lived close to Providence, and it wouldn’t be that hard to get a train. He had been staying with his parents for the past three days, celebrating an early Christmas with them before going back home to Chicago, and he knew they would be happy to have him stay another night or two. But he still wasn’t entirely willing to give up the idea of being with his boyfriend on Christmas.

“I don’t know. I think I might stick around the airport for a while. They said I could get lucky and something might open up at the last minute.”

“Okay.” He could still hear the quiet in Tom’s voice. “Well, keep me updated.”

“I will,” Edward promised, wishing more than anything that he had the power to physically transport himself through his phone’s electronic network. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

After he got off the phone, Edward tried his best to distract himself by exploring the rest of the terminal, rolling his small suitcase behind him as he wandered around various stores and kiosks. He went into the news shop and flipped through random magazines and best-seller paperbacks, tried out one of those massage chairs in the fancy gadget place, and half-heartedly contemplated buying a I ♡ NY t-shirt for Tom before coming to his senses and putting it back down. 

The food court, naturally, was a zoo, and he wasn’t really hungry enough to sit down at one of those half-scale chain restaurants that lined the concourse. Eventually, he settled for a coffee and a bagel before parking himself at one of the gates. His plan, at this point, was to try to check in once an hour and hope that a single seat would somehow manage to wrest itself free in the meantime.

He texted Tom a couple of times, not that he had much to report, and did his best to engage in some naughty holiday-themed banter about what they might do once Edward finally got home, at first involving just mistletoe but eventually including outfits comprised of a single strategically-placed Santa hat. 

As the afternoon stretched into the evening, however, Edward seemed to be no closer to finding a way back home and he was beginning to lose faith that he would be getting out the airport at any point in the near future. The airline agents were apologetic, even though they couldn’t do much for him. He was offered a hotel voucher again, which he took, but he still held onto the idea that he might somehow get onto a flight that night and make it back to Tom in time for Christmas.

After a few hours he called Tom, just wanting to hear his voice again, and it went straight to voicemail. He wasn’t sure why — their apartment generally had decent coverage — but he left a message, letting Tom know that he was going to try to camp out at the gate for a little while longer. 

Eventually, though, the airport began to shut down for the night, gates emptying after the last fights boarded, stores and kiosks shuttering closed. At this point, Edward knew that he was going to have to give up — airport security wouldn’t let him spend the night sleeping at the gate across a row of seats — but he couldn’t bring himself to leave just yet. Across the concourse, what had to be the final flight for the night was emptying out into the waiting area, hundreds of passengers clearly happy to have arrived at their destination just in time for Christmas. 

As he began to pack up everything into his carry-on, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. It was Tom, finally calling him back. 

“Hey, I got your message.” The reception sounded strange, muddled by background noise. “Are you still at the airport?”

“Yeah,” Edward replied. “But I think I’m going to head out. I’ll come back and try again in the morning.”

“I think you should wait a little bit longer.”

“Why?” Edward could feel his brows knitting together in confusion. “There’s no point. There aren’t any more flights going out tonight.”

“I just think you might want to wait for, I don’t know, another twenty seconds.”

“Why—” Edward suddenly turned and looked over at the opposite gate, not entirely sure what had compelled him to do so, only to catch sight of an all-too familiar figure emerging out of a group of passengers and beginning to walk towards him. 

“Merry Christmas,” Tom said, his voice coming through the phone against Edward’s ear, but Edward could see his lips as they silently formed the words.

He didn’t know what to say. It was completely impossible to imagine: somehow Tom had managed to find his way from Chicago to New York on Christmas Eve, giving up all of his well-laid holiday plans, just so they could be together. If he didn’t already know how much he loved Tom, the way his heart was presently stretching at its seams would have made that fact entirely clear.  

They found each other in the middle of the concourse, oblivious to just about everyone else around them, arms wrapping tightly around each other in pure, unadulterated joy. It was only after they let go a little that Edward realized Tom didn’t seem to be carrying much in the way of luggage — just a satchel slung over his shoulder. 

“Packing light?” he teased.

“I was in a hurry,” Tom answered, those pale green eyes growing warm around the edges. “I had to be somewhere for Christmas.”

“An airport?”

Tom smiled, a perfect pair of dimples setting off his grin. “With you.”

The urge to kiss him was so overwhelming that Edward couldn’t have resisted it had he even wanted to. He curled a hand around the warm nape of Tom’s neck and pulled him close, and as their lips met, a wordless declaration and a promise of things to come, he could think of nothing else but the man in his arms and how ridiculously lucky he was to have found him. 

“It’s really true,” Edward murmured, smiling against Tom’s mouth as he suddenly remembered what the gate agent had said to him earlier that morning. “Sometimes miracles do happen.”

[sm-entertain-me]

Incentive (M)

Contains: Nakamoto Yuta x (f) reader, adult language, sexual themes, smut, striptease, a tiny bit of marking?, unprotected sex (Be smart, be safe), tutor!reader, student!Yuta

Synopsis: You're easily the best tutor in your whole university; professors love your ability to turn even the worst students into straight A prodigies. They're hoping you can do it again with resident problem child Yuta. You accept the challenge, but never dreamed of how difficult he could be. Time to bring in... alternative measures.

(A/N: This is a little long, but I had this dream and it needed to be a thing. Also, this was written by a biochemistry major, so of course it has biology terms. It’s kind of a vehicle for me to brush up on my terminology. But enjoy, nonetheless!)

Papers littered the ground of your dorm room as you pressed your hand tightly to the base of your forehead, sighing silently as you cursed to yourself. Picking your head up, you admired the white ceiling of your room while thinking of how you were possibly going to get your most problemed student to understand basic biology. The head of the Biology department practically begged you to tutor who you think is the most ignorant biology student you had ever seen. He never listened to a word you said, never took any notes, and always rolled his eyes at you whenever you tried to get him to learn about something so simple as the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell, something most people have memorized since their elementary or middle school years, respectively. But no, not Yuta. Yuta didn’t care about anything having to do with biology since it was one of his general education requirements that had nothing to do with his major. However, you wouldn’t let someone like Yuta ruin your reputation of being the best tutor on campus. Not that easily, anyway.

“Yuta!” You yelled loudly, trying to get his attention from him scrolling through social media on his phone when you tasked him with working through problems in his textbook. Yuta looked up from his phone and waved you off dismissively, taking his eyes back to his phone and continuing to ignore your pleas of trying to get him to learn something of value. Another eye roll came from you as you pushed yourself off of the ground and walked to the desk where Yuta was sitting, reaching out and grabbing his phone much to his dismay. “Hey!” Yuta called after you as he tried to reach out and take his phone back, you yanking it out of his reach. 

You held the phone tightly to your chest as you leaned to his level, “Tell me how much ATP is produced in Glycolysis and you can get it back.” Much to your surprise, Yuta answered correctly without having to glance at the opened textbook that was already being neglected, “Two, now give it back, princess.” Ah yes, the pet name. He always called you princess no matter how much you hated it. You were here to be professional, not to be hit on by some hunk of a failing biology student. “I’m impressed,” You admitted as you gave the phone back, holding up your end of the bargain. Yuta chuckled to himself as he held his phone, returning his eyes right back to where they were before you had taken it from him, “Of course you are. I’m not stupid, I just need to have a little incentive to do something I don’t want to do.” Incentive, huh? Maybe that’s something you could try on him. But what can you offer him that will make him want to study?

All day you were thinking about ways to help Yuta study, figuring out what kind of things you could do to act as incentive for him to do well on his upcoming exams. He was on the verge of being dropped by the university as a whole, that’s how badly he was doing on his exams. But you weren’t willing to give up on him just yet. So that’s why you had spent so much time thinking of ways to make Yuta try and do well. He was right, he’s not stupid. He’s just not motivated to do any of his work, especially since he doesn’t really have to use his already lessened knowledge of biology anyway. However, you thought of something that might actually appeal to someone like Yuta, and you couldn’t wait to try it out later.

A short series of knocks sounded from your door, followed by a grumble, “It’s Yuta.” “Come in,” You said with a subtle tone of lust, playing up to the new role you decided to try for Yuta’s sake. After a small moment of hesitation and confusion as to why you made your voice so low and sexy, Yuta pushed open the door to your dorm room and nearly dropped his armful of textbooks once he got an eyeful of you. There you stood, in the middle of the room with a tight button down shirt with a pair of black skinny jeans that accentuated every single curve of your legs and ass, clinging to the dips of your calf muscles and pushing your ass up to look its most appealing. You made the decision to tuck your blouse into your pants to give Yuta a better show of your toned midriff, his eyes traversing your whole body and stopping on the most desirable parts of you, gulping harshly.

“Why are you dressed like that? Is it my birthday already?” Yuta asked with a playful tone lacing his words, his eyes starting to darken the longer he stared at your insatiable body. A small chuckle emanated from your lips as you walked over to him, making sure to sway your hips a little more than you usually would, grabbing the books out of his hands and setting them on the bed, “I’ve figured out a way to get you to study better.” Yuta raised his eyebrows and then crossed his arms over his chest, “Oh really? So you think dressing up all sexily and acting like this hot tutor from a porno is going to get me to study better? I hate to break it to you, Y/N, but I think this outfit serves as more of a distraction than a learning tool... But I’m not complaining at how delicious you look in that blouse.” “Just shut up and sit on the bed with me so I can tell you my plan,” You demanded as you plopped down on the head of your bed, waiting for Yuta to join you as directed.

Once Yuta got settled on the bed and pulled out the proper textbook and the little notes he had, he waited for you to give him your spiel on how you were going to make him into this biology prodigy of yours. “See Yuta, I know you hate studying biology. But I figured if you get my questions right, I can show you a little bit of my biology,” You said with a smirk tugging at the corner of your lips, ultimately proud of yourself for the play on words and how you managed to come up with that in literally ten seconds. You watched as Yuta’s stature straightened, perking his head up at your proposal and leaning forward slightly with curiosity painted on his face, “What do you mean your biology?” 

“It’s simple, really. You get a question right,” You began, taking your hand and letting it hover over the top of the first button of your blouse, sliding your fingers beneath the button to let it fly. “I’ll lose a button... Sound like something you can handle?” It was Yuta’s turn to smirk at you as his gaze darkened, examining the newly exposed flesh, “Oh I can handle it, princess. The question is, can you?”

“First question,” You started as you skimmed through his notes, thinking of what questions might be on the exam since you hadn’t had Yuta’s current professor for your shot at the biology sequence, highlighting a few questions here and there. “What element is responsible for acting as a carrier in the electron transport chain?” Yuta didn’t even hesitate as his eye flicked to the second button on your blouse, knowing the answer already, “Oxygen.” “Very good,” You praised, a little bit of shock carrying with your words as you weren’t expecting him to get it right. Slowly, you set the book down and reached for the next button, unbuttoning it and loosening the tight fabric that hugged your breasts. Yuta bit down on his lip, his pupils growing wide as he saw the black fabric of your lace bra peeking out from behind your blouse. He was finally starting to appreciate biology, thanks to you.

As time went on, you were really starting to kick yourself for making this deal with Yuta. Who knew that whenever you would offer for him to see your body exposed like this that he would actually get every single question right? Sighing to yourself as you were thinking about how unfair the situation was, you were down to your last button. You managed to pull the blouse over your bra to keep it from Yuta’s prying eyes, but if he got this next question right, you would have no choice but to show him due to you being a woman of your word. “Come on Y/N,” Yuta teased as he inched his body forward. “Ask me a question. I can’t wait to see that lacy bra you have on.” Rolling your eyes at his cockiness, you decided to give him an ultimatum, “If you get this question right, I’ll even take off the bra for you. If you get it wrong, I redress completely and we start over again. Got it?” That’s when Yuta got really excited. Offering to take off both your blouse and your bra? He was sure it was his birthday now.

A nervous sigh came out of your lips as you flipped frantically through your notes, hoping to find a question Yuta wouldn’t know the answer to, but was still relevant to his exam in order to be fair. Yuta watched as you skimmed through his notes, peeking over at you to see what question you would choose to determine if he was going to see you topless or if you were going to be able to redress and start all over again. Hopefully it would be the latter. It’s not that Yuta isn’t attractive, because he’s drop dead gorgeous, it’s that you would have to fall victim to someone who you thought was hopeless when in reality he’s exceptionally smart. 

“Having fun? Because I sure am,” Yuta said with a smirk as he couldn’t help but stare at the tiny bit of fabric that was peeking through your shirt, licking his lips at the thought of you taking it off for him. You only glared at his comment when you looked up from his notes, ready to punch him for how goddamn cocky he was. You wanted nothing more than to take him down a notch, and this last question sure had the potential to do that.

“Since you think you’re so smart, answer this. Where do the processes of Glycolysis and the Calvin Cycle occur?” You asked him, setting the notebook down triumphantly as you noticed he hadn’t written down anything relative to where the processes occur, which is actually pretty important because it dictates where the molecules go when they enter a cell. You watched as Yuta’s eyes widened, him not being sure about his answers and the mental image of you being topless in front of him beginning to escape. “That’s not fair!” Yuta complained as his jaw tightened, frustrated at the fact you asked him a question that only people who really studied the organelles of the cell would know. Shrugging dismissively at his cries, you began to button your blouse back up, “I’m just trying to prepare you for your test. But if you can’t answer, that’s on you.” Then Yuta’s expression changed as he grabbed your hands, pulling them away from your buttons as he let the correct answers leave his tongue, “Glycolysis happens in the cytosol, the Calvin Cycle happens in the mitochondria. Now strip for me, babygirl.”

With eyes wide, you felt your hands go limp. How the hell did he know something that specific? And since when did he become a good liar about not knowing anything about the cell? You were convinced that his was all part of his plan to get you naked, but you couldn’t remain in your thoughts too long as Yuta’s fingers fondled the last button that rested just above your beltline. “Don’t worry,” Yuta whispered huskily as he unbuttoned the last button, reaching his hands onto your shoulders to help you out of your blouse, “I’ll help you.” As you are a woman of your word, you let Yuta’s hands roam your arms as he slid the tight fabric off of your body, watching the way it slumped behind you as his hands traced small circles on your back to play with the back of your bra. The way Yuta was looking into your eyes brought out something in you that you weren’t sure you were used to.

“Y/N,” His voice rang out to you, waving his hand in front of your face. Blinking a couple times to bring you back into reality, your eyes met with Yuta’s as he looked at you with a genuine concern. “You can tell me to stop.” Instead of agreeing for him to stop, you simply shook your head and placed his hands underneath your bra, “I don’t want you to.” He tilted his head at you with confusion, wondering how you were so receptive to his sexual advances since they’ve always seemed to repulse you in the past, but he continued nevertheless. His hands were soft against your skin as he plucked the back of your bra, unhooking it with ease and dragging the straps down to peel it off of you. You watched the way his eyes lit up when he saw just how perky your nipples were, him licking his lips as he instinctively pressed his mouth onto them, closing his lips around the sensitive peaks. 

Yuta made sure to continue pleasuring you, licking and sucking all around your breasts and nibbling lightly on your areolas, shuddering at the lewd sounds you made whenever he licked a particular spot. When he seemed satisfied with his work, he pulled his lips off of your nipple after placing a soft kiss in the valley between your breasts, looking up at you with eyes filled to the brim with lust. “Lay down for me,” Yuta demanded, still tending to the needs of your taut nipples with calculated pinches and rolling them in between his fingers. Nodding slowly, you allowed Yuta to place his hands in between your naked breasts and push you down to rest your head on the soft pillows beneath you. 

Instead of ravaging your body then and there, something Yuta has been known to do from the rumors flying around campus, he admired the way your face looked as your pupils were beginning to dilate at his presence, the way your cheeks were slowly heating up as he stared longingly at your half naked body, and the way your chest rose and fell steadily from the nervousness creeping up your spine. Yuta smiled softly, not expecting him to have that kind of look, as he leaned down on top of you, holding himself up to stare down at you before taking his hand and stroking your cheek lightly. You looked up at him with a curiosity of your own but were only met with Yuta’s lips colliding with yours, a sweet moan springing free from the contact. 

It didn’t take long for you to melt into his grasp, snaking your hands up the small peaks and valleys of his back until you reached his dark brown locks, taking a little bit and wrapping them around your fingers to tug lightly at him. Yuta’s lips parted slightly to let a moan fall into your mouth before his tongue slid into you to find your pink muscle, the both of you wrestling for dominance. “Yuta,” You spoke breathlessly, pulling away from him to catch your breath and calm your hormones. Yuta’s eyes were hooded in perfect bliss as he stared down at you, a devilish grin remained on his lips, “Yes?” You wanted to say something, but you were in no state of mind to form words, opting to yank him back to kiss you, this time more hungrier than the last.

As the kiss was beginning to deepen, Yuta’s hands found your hips and pinned them to the mattress below you, pressing himself against your steadily heating core to elicit a symphony of moans. The way he grinded his hips against your clothed core was driving you insane, wanting nothing more than to raise your hips up ever so slightly to meet his for more stimulation, but falling victim to his surprisingly strong grip that would surely leave bruises the next day. “Fuck,” Yuta grumbled against your lips as he stroked himself against you, you gripping harshly at the clothed flesh of his back, determined to leave red streaks down his back. You let your fingernails rake against his skin, Yuta arching his back upward and biting his lip to keep his groans down, looking back at you with a smirk, “If you do that again, I have no choice but to fuck you until you’re shaking.” On instinct, you dug your nails into his honeyed skin and raked them against his back, a look of pure innocence contained on your face as you acted like you had done nothing wrong. That was it.

Just as you were a woman of your word, Yuta was surely a man of his. Yuta’s eyes shot open from the delicious burning marks you had given him not once, but twice. His tongue darted out from his mouth as he gave his lips a swift lick before kissing his way down your stomach to the top of your black slacks, wiggling his eyebrows at you as he undid the button with his tongue, taking the cold zipper into his mouth and dragging it down to reveal the lace panties that happened to match the bra you were wearing. You eyed Yuta questioningly as he began to nip and lick at your inner thighs while slipping you out of both your pants and panties, looking up at you with bedroom eyes before saying, “Just know, I tried to warn you.” After his comment, he dove in between your thighs to press his tongue flat against your clit, sucking harshly on the nub.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” You screeched up at the ceiling as you tried to pull Yuta’s mouth off of your clit, Yuta only grabbing onto your thighs and forcing them to separate as he continued to eat you out like it was his last meal. You swore you could feel Yuta chuckle as his tongue was lapping up all the juices that flooded out of you from the rush of euphoria pulsing through your veins, occasionally pulling his tongue out of your slick walls to tease at your clit. He really knew was he was doing as his grip on your thighs tightened, pressing them firmly against the mattress as he dove nose deep inside of you, never lessening his speed as he could feel your walls clench around his tongue. “Yuta!” You cried out as you felt your orgasm crash over you, white heat spreading to your fingertips as Yuta continued to lick his way into you.

After a few more flicks of his tongue, Yuta pulled his face out from between your legs and smirked at you, the sight of his chin dripping with your arousal causing your walls to clench around nothing just from how delicious he looked. Satisfied with your mind blowing orgasm at the hands, er, tongue of Yuta, you allowed your body to rest into the sheets until you felt Yuta’s hands on your waist, looking up at him to see him completely naked and getting ready to settle in between your thighs. Yuta only chuckled at the way you looked up at him with big doe eyes, “I told you, I’m not stopping until you’re shaking.” 

The way Yuta filled you up was slightly painful, pushing you to your limits as you had to bite down tightly on your lip to distract your mind from the painful yet completely satisfying sensation going on in between your legs. It was nice of Yuta to give you small strokes so you could get used to him, but the pace he set on your battered walls was anything but. The minute you looked the littlest bit relaxed for him, he threw your legs on his shoulders and began to pound unforgivingly inside of you, snapping his hips harshly in order to smack his pelvis against yours. Sounds of skin on skin mixed with the lewd sound of your arousal coating his cock as it squelched inside of you was animalistic, just like the pace at which Yuta began to pound you so far into your mattress that you were convinced he was determined to make an imprint of your body underneath him. 

Yuta’s name was being screamed at all different pitches; low, high, tenor, alto, screeching. All of it was music to Yuta’s ears as he grabbed your ankles harshly, forcing them higher above his shoulders so that your ass was off of the bed so he could pound even deeper into you. As he did this, the head of his cock slid deliciously against the spot that had you rolling your eyes in the back of your head and had your mouth permanently pried open to vocally express your delights of taking Yuta’s cock. “Fuck you look so good,” Yuta admitted as he grit his teeth, snapping his hips the hardest they would go inside of you to pull you into your second orgasm. You were a complete mess underneath him as you were clawing at his back, pushing him further into you, “You feel so good! I’m so close, Yuta!” That forced Yuta to become completely unhinged as he gripped at the headboard above you, lifting himself off of the mattress to plow into you, the headboard slamming against the wall in response to his carnal need to fuck you into oblivion.

Your orgasm washed over you again, causing your walls to pulse violently around Yuta’s impressive cock, pulling him deeper inside of you. “Yuta! Yes, Yuta!” You groaned out as you arched your back against Yuta’s hot body, feeling the thin layer of sweat drip onto your pelvic area as he chased your high with his own. Yuta’s mouth hung open as he moaned out your name, his hands gripping at your hips to keep you still as he filled you to the brim with his cum, some of it dripping out of you and sliding down your core to meet with the sheets. “God... damn,” Yuta breathed out as his grip loosened from your hips, looking down to see the tiny bruises from how harshly he held you down from your intense study session. You smiled shyly up at him as he gave you small strokes to ride out his high, but not too hard that he would pull you into overstimulation. You did, after all, get put through two completely astronomical orgasms, and he figured that was enough to prove his point.

As Yuta pulled out of you, he watched the way his cum was sliding out of you, looking down at you with a slight panic, “Shit, I really filled you up. Do you have a towel or something?” Nodding tiredly from the exhausting fucking Yuta put your through, you simply pointed to your laundry basket at the edge of the room, Yuta springing into action and grabbing the white towel to clean you up properly. Once he had the towel in his hand, he pressed the velvety soft fabric against your legs and ran it up to your core, careful not too put to much pressure in case you were still feeling the ache from his slight manhandling. 

You smiled at Yuta’s carefulness, him looking up to catch you staring as he wiped the remnants of his cum off of your thighs. He seemed genuine as he tended to your needs, returning your soft smile, “What?” Sighing as you pushed yourself up on the bed to rest against the pillows, you crossed your arms playfully, “You better get an A on that exam.” Yuta chuckled as he discarded the towel on the floor, “Of course I’m going to get an A, you just have to promise me to have these study sessions every day. You know, for learning purposes.” Shrugging your shoulders with a sly smile, “I guess I can clear my schedule for my best student.”

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #260

“better think twice; your train of thought will be altered.”

Have you ever taken a shower with anyone before? I believe Nicole and I did as kids sometimes? Do you wear your seatbelt in the car? Always. Wear your goddamn seatbelt, folks. Do you prefer to spend your time indoors or outdoors? Generally indoors, but it does depend on what I can do outside as well as the weather. How many people have you kissed? Three or four. I really can't remember if *I* ever kissed Girt. Do you just feel awkward when you dance? YIKES YUP, even when I was a dancer. Has the person you have feelings for ever told you that you’re attractive? Yes. Can you get over people easily? MOTHER OF FUCK, NO. Do you believe that there are certain circumstances where cheating is okay? No. Do you like to have long hair or short hair? SHORT. Does the sound of rain at night help you sleep? Ugggghhhh, yes. Especially cuddling while falling sleep in the rain is everything. Have you ever worn a pair of scrubs? Many times. Anything in your room that you’re hiding from your parents or someone else? Well, to a degree. I have artwork in here that I'm just self-conscious of others seeing, but I wouldn't DIE if my mom found them. They're not even really "hidden," just covered. What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic? Strawberry. Do you like hot-dogs? I wish I didn't. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry? A fuckin hot leather, spiked choker with chains draped across it. It's just a bit tight on me now. Worst injury you’ve ever had? I skinned the shit out of my knees on the road as a kid, wound up with cuts near the bones. It was not, NOOOOOT pretty and took literally years for the scars to totally vanish. What song do you want played at your funeral? Probably "Life is Beautiful" by Sixx AM. How many keys are on your key chain? What do they go to? Just the one to the house. Have you ever taken a pregnancy test? Not in the traditional sense. Before surgery, they obviously had to be sure via a urine sample, but otherwise, no. Would you rather live in a mansion or a small cozy home? Whew, the latter, easily. If you were offered to smoke some weed right now, would you accept? Nah. Do you get your eyebrows waxed, or do you pluck them? Neither, really. I just don't care; mine aren't awful, and it's too time-consuming and "required" too frequently for me to bother. They're just eyebrows. Do you and your last ex hate each other? Not at all. Do you believe your most recent ex thinks about you? Well yeah, we're best friends. Have you ever made out for more than a half hour straight? I was literally a madly in love teenager, you can guess. How do you handle people who are overly enthusiastic all the time? "I don’t 'handle' them, they’re actually pretty cool to be around. I appreciate having that kind of energy around me because I don’t generate a whole lot of it myself and I want it to rub off." <<<< Exactly this. Do people say you look like a certain celebrity? Nah. Who do you think you look like? No one I know of. Ever loved someone who didn’t love you back? hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGALS;KDJFA;LKJEW Ever done karaoke? Did you like it? Nooooo sir. Ever seen a pregnant woman smoking/drinking? Yep. It was an occasion where I had to practice serious self-discipline to keep my mouth shut. :x What was the last piece of candy you ate? Miss Tobey brought me a Reese's yesterday morning so that. Nice breakfast lmao. Do you curse a lot? A real fucking lot. It's not intentional, it's just so ingrained in me as normal diction after being at Jason's so much when his mother is the definition of an Italian New Yorker and thus her son has a mouth too lmao. Personally, I don't believe in "profanity" in the traditional sense so it doesn't bother me in the way of "oh I'm saying too many bad words," I just know my dictionary is wider than "fuck" and "shit" oof. If you could be a Disney character for a day, who would you be? Probably like Kiara. Be a hot princess lion with a hot lion boyfriend and chill lion parents WOW am I a furry yet. Are you wearing anything of any sentimental value? Describe? Yeah, my friendship ring with Sara, a bracelet from her as well, and an ovarian cancer bracelet for my mom. Then tattoos, if you consider myself as "wearing" them. To you, what is especially distracting? The sound of TV when you're trying to sleep. What are some things that are important in your life right now? My mom's health, my mental health, job searching to at least get ideas for when transportation is easier, keeping the house clean, keeping up with Sara's health. When was the last time you did some major cleaning? A couple weeks back when I detail cleaned out both my shelves. Who challenges you the most? In what way?  My psychiatrist, but not in a bad way. He pushes me to keep improving with things. What was the last opportunity that you passed up, and why? I should know this, but I don't. Have you ever contemplated cheating on anyone? Oh no, I couldn't live with the guilt. Who do you know that gives very sound advice? Sara is great at that. What do you think makes a person weak? The will to drag someone down just because you're feeling that way. What makes a person strong? The determination to not give up. Who do you go to when you need comfort? Mom more than anyone. Where is your favorite place to get fries? BOJANGLE'S. You cannot live to your fullest potential until you've received the seasoned blessing of Bojangle's fries. What is the most recent article of clothing you’ve purchased? I think underwear. Have you ever made your own pie from scratch? No. Are there any waterfalls nearby? Definitely no big ones. Hell, maybe even no natural ones. There are lots of dams, but I don't think they count. What are your earliest memories of going to see a doctor? My first time getting my blood drawn and consciously understanding what was about to happen. Freaked the FUCK out, bolted from the room, and clinged like a monkey to a column while sobbing. It literally took multiple adults to get me off of it, and I was very little. And then when I actually got poked, apparently I just said, "... That's it?" Oh, little me, you'd take needles for hours later on in life in the name of art lol. What is your favorite condiment? Maybe ketchup. Do you know anyone who has been to rehab? Well, all the mental hospitals I've been to included addicts seeking recovery, and I befriended a few. For people more in my personal life, I think so. Would you consider yourself to be a picky eater? I am ridiculously picky. Have you ever slept in a car overnight? I'm quite sure no, not a full night. Has someone close to you died of murder? No, thankfully. Does your school offer driver’s ed? My high school did, which is where I took it. Have you ever done volunteering work abroad? No. Do you have a shower stall or a bath tub? A tub. Why do you do these surveys? I'm bored most of the time with absolutely nothing better to do. Sometimes it helps me contemplate some things about myself. Do you like shopping? Eh, depends on what I'm shopping for. What’s a show you wish that was still on air? MM IS COMIN BACK, FUCKERS. Do you like hip hop? Nooo. Do you like pretzels? I do, especially soft ones. You want your next pet to be what? It's probably going to be a tarantula. I'm not being sarcastic lmao. It just depends on if I can convince my mom. Do you like coconut scents? Sure. Would you spend 20 dollars on a candle? Hell no. What is a dessert that you DON’T like? Pie. And one that you love? mmmmmmmmMMMMMMMM ice cream. Would you rather be a vampire or a mermaid? Vampire, ig. Being a mermaid genuinely sounds boring. Where the fuck's the WiFi. Are you happy with your physical features? Bitch no. When you doodle, what are you usually doodling? Meerkats. Do you eat salads? Not enough, but I like them w/ regular lettuce and I'm open to different dressings. Favorite thing to do on your phone? Play Pokemon if I'm actually in a spot to get fckn balls. What magazines do you like? I don't read any. What is your favorite thing about Christmas? The feeling of really being a family. Do you prefer white or black electronics? Black. Firm pillow or soft pillow? S O F T Who was the last person you rode in a car with? Mom. Do you know anyone, personally, who is in an abusive relationship? Are you? Thank fuck no. Are there any people you don’t like for your significant other/crush to talk to? I’m single and don't have like... an "active" crush ig? What was the last alcoholic beverage you drank? I had a bombin' sangria for my birthday @ Olive Garden. Has one of your boyfriend’s best friends ever tried to get with you? Again, single, but for previous ones, no anyway. Are you 100% over the last person you kissed? No. Have any of your friends ever overdosed? I think so, but none died, thankfully. The last thing you downloaded onto your computer? Ummmm probably something for school. How many friends on Facebook do you have? 118. What age is the oldest you would date at the moment? It'd take me seriously liking someone to go slightly beyond 30. Do you want to be single? I don't know. I don't really know if I'm "fit" to be in a relationship right now, like I know I gotta figure shit out, but I think it's natural to want that companionship some days. Are you good at hiding your feelings? Well, I guess it depends on the emotion, but honestly, I don't think so, in most cases. Who did you last share a bed with? Sara. Have you ever been taken to the emergency room in an ambulance? Not in an ambulance, no. What are you listening to right now? An '80s-ish/synthwave cover of "Disturbia" by Rihanna. I've been on a total binge of this kinda stuff lately. Ever been on a golf cart? Ye. Do you have trust issues? Yep. Do you own something from Hot Topic? I think most of my shirts are from there. Have you ever slapped someone in the face? No. Do you have a little sister? Damn, not so little anymore. Turned 22 a few days ago. Have you ever been to New York? The state, yes. City, no. Do you actually read privacy policies when signing up for new things? Nope. Did you have a lot of birthday parties when you were younger? If so, did you invite everyone in the class? I mean, define "a lot?" I did once every year... and no. I was selective. Have you ever participated in one of those “guess how many jelly beans, mints, etc. are in this jar!” contest? If so, have you ever won? PTSD is fuckin weird. I have, and I get anxious and uncomfortable just seeing them. The very last time I hung out w/ Jason was at his brother's wife's baby shower, and something like that was there. Shitty fuckin day. Can you juggle? No. Do you live on an avenue, road, drive or something else? Road. What are your school colors? N/A Have you ever taken a picture with Santa when you were little? Yeah, I think my sisters and I did that every year? What is the population of the city you live in? Google says around 5.5k. Do you like Nerds candy? Yeah man. What’s your favourite flavour of soda, pop or whatever else you call it? Blue raspberry. What level of brightness do you usually keep your phone at? It's on about 70% during the day, and I lower it to about 20% when I'm about to go to bed. Have you ever attended a religious or private school? My previous school was a private & religious college. Do you have any pets and are they cuddly? My cat is STUPID cuddly. Absolute attention hog. My snake seems to enjoy attention, though I wouldn't define snakes as "cuddly;" their brains don't know what affection really is, which I think is mandatory in that definition. She does love to lie against me on the bed, though, when I take her out to let her wander. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had? All three of my jobs have sucked, but considering I lasted in a deli not even two hours, probs that. How many cars does your household own? One. Are there any cracks or scuffs on your phone? No. This shit is literally a Tracphone yet is incredible man, I've dropped it a good few times and it's a great phone. What’s your favourite meat? Out of most forms, probably pork, which I really wish wasn't true. I adore pigs. Or maybe chicken. Which I still feel bad about. Do you need glasses to read or drive or need them all the time? I always need them. Is the internet fast where you live? It's fine. What is your favourite meal of the day and why? Breakfast has the best options and makes me look forward to the morning lmao. Do you like long surveys or short surveys better? Ha ha, obviously long, seeing as I compile shorts ones into these larger ones. I do it because I feel individually posting with EVERY one I pick out would get annoying. Have you ever been to a cocktail bar? No. What’s the best amusement park you’ve ever visited? Disney World. Do you keep the cabinets in your kitchen and bathroom organized? More so in the kitchen. Have you ever had a romantic fling? No. Are you a very forgetful person? To a frightening point. Are your parents married or divorced? They're divorced. Do you believe in Heaven? Not the Christian one, but I do lean towards there being some peaceful existence after death. Do you eat the stems of broccoli? That's obviously the best part. Do you read blogs? No. Would you ever go out dressed like the opposite sex? I pretty much have before? Worn guy's pants and unisex or men's shirts before, I'm sure. Ever been involved with the police? No. What's your favorite shampoo/conditioner and soap? Idk, I'm just very used to Suave. Their body wash smells amazing. Do you feel that you've had a truly successful life? HELL NO. Do you twirl your spaghetti or cut it? Twirl it. Favorite restaurant? Olive Garden is GOOD SHIT. Have you watched Tiger King yet? Christ, no, and I sure am tired of seeing it everywhere online. Do you try to do something significant and meaningful every day? It's quite clear I don't, even though I really, really want to. What is your favorite pizza topping? Pepperoni. What was the name of the first pet that you loved? Chance. What color hair did your first crush have? Brown. Does anyone know who your first crush was? yeah. Who was your first celebrity crush? Whew, Jesse McCartney, lads. Have you ever had to use an epi pen? No, thankfully. What color was your first phone? Navy, I think. Do you know anyone with Down’s syndrome? Not anyone personally. How much do you weigh (only answer if comfortable)? I'm not comfortable. Have you ever been overweight? I have been since 2016. What color is your Christmas tree? Green. What color Christmas tree do you want to have in your house someday? UGGGGHHHHHHH give me a black one with fake snow on it. Omg. What color house did you grow up in? Uhhhh... I think it was white? I should know this. Have you ever been baptized? If so, how and where? Yes, when I was a baby at the Catholic church I grew up going to. What type of wedding do you want? Give it a gothic vibe ok. Are you taller or shorter or the same height as your mom? We're the same height. What is your heritage? German, Irish, and Polish. Are you excited for the upcoming summer season? Ugh, no. Not at all. At. All. Do you like crackers with your soup? No. Which ex of yours means the most to you? Depending on which way you mean, Jason or Sara. What is something that never fails to make you feel accomplished? Do a decent amount of cleaning. How do you feel about nudity, in person? Uh???? What exactly do you mean by "in person"???? I guess it depends on who, the situation, and location??? Have you taken prescription medications that didn't belong to you? Pain medicine, yes. Do wooded areas freak you out in the evening or night? I mean, to a reasonable degree, I guess. Obviously being in the wild in the dark is dangerous. Have you ever ridden on the back of a motorcycle? No. Do you iron any of your clothes? No. Can you sleep in an unmade bed? Yeah. Did the house you grew up in have a big yard? It was p good. What has been the most difficult class you’ve ever taken? Probably Latin. What was the last website you were on, before this one? I was on Facebook. Is your hometown famous for anything? No. What are some things a house would need to have for you to purchase it? I'm personally very serious about a dishwasher and laundry room. Other than that I'm... kinda blanking? Like I'm not that picky as for what the house HASSSSSS to have, besides those. Well, two bathrooms would be great. What was the last thing you heated up in your microwave? A pancake+sausage on a stick thing for breakfast. When was the last time your internet stopped working? It was having a temper yesterday. Did you ever watch Phil of the Future? Not very much, and never really by choice. Nicole would watch it sometimes though. Were you born somewhere other than a hospital? No. What was the last flavor of ice cream you had? Vanilla. Do you have an online game that you play often? None at the very moment because my personal gaming laptop has been kaput for well over a month now. Maybe close to even two. Is there a trash can near you? No. Have you ever shared sleeping accommodations with someone of the opposite sex without anything steamy happening? No. Is there a fan going in the room you’re in? Yeah, beside me.

[sidlyrics]

Organizing the trip

If the events you'll be going to are in the same city as the one you're travelling to, it'll probably be very easy to organize everything, but if you have to move around or go to more than one live, you'll have to look for transport, acommodation, food, etc., so I've made this guide sharing a bit of my experience in case it is useful for someone when they are organizing their own trip.

Transport

Even though it's possible to buy a JR pass, which enables us to take any JR trains, some metro lines and some buses for the period we get it for, we thought it was a bit too expensive. Also, once activated, you have to use it in a certain period of time (that is to say, if you have a 7-day pass, you can't use it on 7 random different days, it will last exactly for a week since you first used it). However, it's true that travelling on train is really comfortable and fast, so if you don't mind spending a little bit more, maybe this option is worth it for you. Thinking that the tickets had been already quite expensive, we tried to look for other alternatives and we found a bus company, Willer, that offers passes for more affordable prices. There is a 3-day pass, a 5-day pass and a 7-day pass, but they don't have to be consecutive days, you have a few months when you can use them any time. Depending on the dates you'll be travelling, you can also get a discount: if you travel only from Monday to Thursday, passes are cheaper. Each day you use the pass, you can take up to 3 day buses and one night bus. After checking our live plan, we chose the 5-day pass including weekends. Also, we always took night buses, so we could sleep on the bus and save some money from the hotel. Night buses usually leave between 10 pm and 12 pm from Tokyo's city center and arrive at the destination around 7 am, so it's possible to use the rest of the day to go sightseeing. Plus, busses are adapted, so seats are more comfortable, they have a thing to cover your head in case you want more privacy, they have lockets to charge your electronic devices, etc. They'll also make a few stops and you can get off the bus to buy something or use the bathroom at the service area.

However, we didn't go to every live by bus, so I'll briefly explain our travel plan:

Bus to Sendai (July 5th) - Day 1 of the bus pass // Live at Sendai // Night at Sendai (July 6th) and train to Utsunomiya (July 7th) // Live at Utsunomiya // Train to Tokyo (July 7th)

Train to Saitama (July 9th) // Live at Saitama // Train to Tokyo (July 9th)

Bus to Kanazawa (July 11th) - Day 2 of the bus pass // Live at Kanazawa // Bus to Tokyo (July 12th) - Day 3 of the bus pass

Bus to Nagoya (July 14th) - Day 4 of the bus pass // Live at Nagoya // Bus to Tokyo (July 15th) - Day 5 of the bus pass

Bus to Osaka (July 17th) // Live at Osaka // Bus to Tokyo (July 18th)

As you can see, the last two trips Tokyo-Osaka-Tokyo weren’t included in the bus pass and I had to buy them separately, but doing that by train can be around 15000 yen, while it was only 5000 yen by bus. For Saitama, since it's only half an hour from Tokyo, you can easily get there by train for around 500 yen. On the other side, since the lives at Sendai and Utsunomiya took place one after the other, we decided to spend the night at Sendai and go directly from there to Utsunomiya (it's half-way between Sendai and Tokyo). In any case, Willer doesn't have buses from Sendai to Utsunomiya, so going by bus wasn't even an option. At first, we thought that it was possible to take local trains, which are slower and, therefore, cheaper, but when we arrived to the train station we were told that there were only shinkansen (bullet train). When you buy your tickets, it's possible to choose a carriage with reserved or unreserved seats. We chose the latter because it was a bit cheaper and, since the train had such a high frequency (maybe it's just that it wasn't rush hour, I don't know), there were a lot of empty seats, so we could sit down. If you look for information about the tickets and timetables online on Hyperdia (you can only check, you can't buy tickets), it might be understood that the price of the tickets will be the one that pops up when you select your seat type.

However, it isn't like that, to that amount on that menu, you have to add the base price that is written in the "fare" column (then, if we choose an unreserved seat, it won't be 3530 yen, but 8040). You can probably picture our faces when the lady selling the tickets told us the actual price. In order to go back to Tokyo from Utsunomiya, there are local trains, so you can choose between going on a bullet train (40 minutes more or less) or take one of those local trains (an hour and a half), which are also a lot cheaper (1500 yen one-way).

Acommodation

As I mentioned before, we were travelling on night buses so we didn't have to pay for a night at a hotel. However, we did have to stay for one night at Sendai. The original plan was to not spend a cent on acommodation and just find any way to spend the night there, but when we arrived to Sendai we saw that it wasn't that simple. At first, we thought that, being summer, since it's hot in Japan, we could just stay at a park or something. But rainy season was a bit longer that year and, once there, it was raining and cold. Since we couldn't stay in the open, we tried to find a place to stay. We thought that, since konbini are open 24 hours and some have an area with sofas or seats to eat, we could just stay there. This might sound like a good idea, but in fact that area will be closed by 11 pm, probably to avoid people doing what we were planning to do. Therefore, now out of options, we finally faced the fact that we would have to look for a real acommodation. Being only one night, we didn't mind sharing the bathroom or bedroom, so we ended up choosing a hostel that was 2000 yen per person. In case someone goes to Sendai and wants to stay there, it was the Sendai Guesthouse Umebachi. It is a traditional house, rooms are for four people and the bathroom was shared (there were two showers, but they are closed so no one will see you). In the mornings they offer coffee, milk and toasts, so we could grab some food before leaving. Plus the staff speaks English. The only problem we encountered was the bed, since it was a futon. It was okay at first, but not being used to sleeping on a hard surface and given that the sun rises early and there are no window blinds, we were already awake at 5:30 am.

Food

Depending on your budget, you can either go to restaurants or find cheaper options. Among those, konbini food is okay. For 300-400 yen there are premade dishes (and they are surprisingly yummy), but for 100-200 yen there are sandwiches, small bento boxes (with omelette, chicken, sushi, etc.) and onigiri (the tuna and mayo one is a hard drug). If you buy cup ramen, you can ask them to prepare it for you, and you can also ask them to heat the premade dish you've picked. If you go to restaurants, there are some Japanese fast food chains, like Yoshinoya, CoCoIchi or Tenya, but I admit we just went in whatever place we found, be it a konbini, restaurant or fast food chain. If it helps, we found out about some traditional food from different cities and I can link to some restaurants we went to, in case someone wants to go to the same place.

Tokyo: Our criteria to pick restaurants was completely random, but we went to some that we liked. In Asakusa, at Kaminarimon Maruka we had some cold noodles. In Shibuya, we ate at a sushi restaurant, Uobei. It is not the best sushi ever, but it's okay and cheap (it will arrive to your seat on a conveyor belt), and in Shinjuku we went to a yakiniku restaurant, Rokkasen. In Ikebukuro, even though it's a chain, we went to Tonkatsu Wako. I love tonkatsu, and the rice, cabbage and miso soup are "refillable", so you could ask for more, it was awesome.

Sendai: There was a restaurant near the hostel that they recommended to us. It is quite small, but the owners were nice and they were fascinated about us being there. The staff doesn't speak English, but they asked if yakitori and sashimi were okay (I loved the sashimi), and we ate that. Some salarymen found us entertaining and ordered typical dishes from Sendai for us to try. I don't remember what the first two were, although one was some kind of oyster and the other one was fish, but the third one was fried tofu (I remember because it was super dry and I didn't like it, but the other two were good).

Utsunomiya: The typical food from this city are gyoza. There are a lot of restaurants in the area near Heaven's Rock, so it'll be easy to find one. There was also a mall (and even though we couldn't find the source, it smelled like there was a pastry shop) and there is also a cafeteria called Barisai Cafe where they sell pancakes, cakes, etc.

Nagoya: Eel is typical from this city, but we were a bit disgusted by the thought of it, so we ended up having lunch at a Okinawan-style meat restaurant.

Travel insurance

Even though it might seem useless, we hired a travel insurance with IATI because we had read that health service in Japan is expensive. After all, it was worth it, because my friend got sick and they wouldn't even sell paracetamol at the pharmacy without a prescription, so we had to go to the doctor just for that and we weren't charged anything, even the insurance company helped us get an appointment for that same evening. Also, the doctor who helped us spoke perfect English and she was really caring.

Internet access

Being two people, we decided to rent a pocket wifi. It is a portable router that works anywhere you go. The battery lasts around 10 hours, but it had an extra battery to recharge it, so it could last a whole day. The good thing about pocket wifi is that there is no data limit and you can connect more than one device. We rented it here. It is also possible to buy a data SIM card. You have different options and prices, depending on the period you want it for, the number of GB, etc. You can order them online, before starting your trip, or just get them already in Japan, since there are shops at the airport where they'll install it for you.

Places to visit

Since we arrived early at each city, we could seize the morning to go sightseeing. I'm writing below the names of the places we visited in case you'll be going to any of these cities and want to check this out.

Sendai: Aoba castle, Zuihoden

Utsunomiya: Oya-ji (you can take a bus directly from the train station), Utsunomiya castle

Kanazawa: Kanazawa castle, Kenroku-en, geisha district (there is also a temple district here, it's signaled)

Nagoya: Nagoya castle, Atsuta-jingu

Osaka: Osaka castle, Dotonbori, Amerikamura

[mutantsrisingrpg]

Congratulations JENN! You’ve been accepted as HYPERION.

Jenn, I’m so glad that we’re going to have Hyperion on the dash! I really enjoyed your writing style and the depth it brought to him. I was transported to the place where he grew up, and felt taken on such a journey that showed me where he is now. I can’t wait to see where you take him next, and I’m glad we’re all along for the ride!

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Jenn

PRONOUNS: she/her, they/them.

AGE: 27

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: CST.  I am available to post on the weekends, and depending on energy levels, week days.

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Hyperion/Gerrard Bermudez

GENDER/PRONOUNS: he/him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

There’s something unrivaled in the brutality of hunger and thirst.  It’s constant, a revolving door that doesn’t know where to find its close.  It’s the original sin and the death sentence, competing for last place. It’s the wet, stone precipice before a bottomless fall and Gerrard walks it with a hand in his pocket and cigarette between his lips, a study on conceding just enough of oneself to hunger, and holding the rest at bay.  

It always waits, preparing a cackle for when he falters.

The mediation isn’t out of any inherent moral uprightness.  His neutrality isn’t peaceful, disengaged, and aloof; no, it’s far more the lack of motion on the chained dog’s leash.  It’s control that exists because it has to, not because it wants to by nature.

Funny, isn’t it, that Hyperion is ‘the watcher above’— a titan who’s battle isn’t spoken of in the Titanomachy;  perhaps it was something small in its scale. Perhaps hunger didn’t win that day, and history was allowed to take its course.  Or perhaps his battle into Tartarus was regarded with a hush after he dared usurpers to hollow his bones and drag the power from his skin.

BIO: Mexico City was color.  Unbridled, unrestricted, his first memories were of blazing colors and skulls that might as well have been neon lights.  Their silence was rattling, eye sockets making dark pits to cute their contrast to the pinks, the oranges, the yellows—- to every tone that crept in to smile in the moonlight as the sun set on the dead’s day.  He could remember marveling, he could remember crowds and makeup and the kind of sensory overload that was thrown into orbit by constantly changing music as he walked, weaving his way through bodies far larger than his.  Something at the back of his find repelled it all, like a wild animal crossing something toxic, sidestepping the skull-in-crossbones the violent colors represented. All the more appropriate for the day. He could remember his sister, taking his hand and pulling him the moment panic started to seep in and scream that he was lost.  Her timing was impeccable. It always was, accompanied by perfect words, the exact necessary moments to diffuse seconds before ignition. She’d pointed to a pair of twins, grinning as they moved in mirror to each other, their skin taking on the colors that dappled butterflies, arms echoing the beat of wings. His eyes grew wide, trying to drink in more than his eyes would allow, begging for comprehension he didn’t have.  Their skin turned like a series of mosaics, one flipping and then the next as the patterns changed. Pesos were thrown around them in appreciation of their act, one that was other worldly and mutant to a boy who didn’t quite understand what that meant yet. He would see the pair the next year.  And the year to follow. They became the main attraction amid the celebration, living works of art that surmounted a crowd.  And then one year he could remember his head hitting the ground as he was pushed. He could remember the panic on his sister’s face as men approached.  He could remember her standing between the cowering pair and the cartoon-like threats his blurry mind stylized. They bared down on the teenage girl, casting what seemed like impossibly long shadows like zebra stripes across her frame.  Her hands were outstretched. He couldn’t make out her words, the ringing in his head too loud and all-encompassing, refusing to grant him moments of clarity among the clouds. He was old enough this time, old enough to see the confusion across their faces as their adrenaline stocked muscles found relaxation.  They were taken by a haze of their own, stepping backwards, coaxed into submission by the way her words had reverberated in their minds, lulling them to stillness. He could remember not screaming her name fast enough when another group of men approached from behind.  Her body hit the ground as fast as a trigger was pulled, and in discord, he was brought to his feet. A shattering, broken scream left him as his mind went blank. A year later he sat in a sanitary room, one that made his skin feel shallow from bleach, constructed of thick stone and rubber.  The haze never seemed to leave, creating the same sort of cartoon, this time a storm cloud that existed between his ears. His eyes lulled shut for a few moments, head hanging forward until the sound of a thick barricade woke his senses from where they’d made their bed. A small, battery powered screen was slid in through slating, rubber casing of the door closing as soon as it was passed through.  Slowly, he moved from his chair, feet giving their place to knees as he found himself crawling towards a playing video that made itself into a tune he knew. It was familiar. He didn’t touch it. He just peered down, watching a playback of those moments. The men. The twins. His sister. He wiped at his eyes as the tears welled. He watched her gentleness, watched the assisted diffusion, the kind that only pleased against violence, the kind that made no attempt to strike. He knew what was next in the sequence, and the gunshot still made him jump and wrenched a sob out of the boys frame, body shaking as the tremors of tears took hold.  His own scream came next, and suddenly, his shaky breath caught; eyes widening as he watched the bolt of lightning contest the natural, arching upward into the sky. It expanded, like a deep breath was taken before it struck back down towards him. It collided with his body and splintered, shooting off in a shockwave that centered on his form. For a split second, he saw the men surrounding his sister drop to the ground. He couldn’t make it out, but the devices in their ears and across their bodies had overloaded, and they died in twitching heaps. Power collapsed as the wave pressed out around him, a stampede of energy that demanded its due.  Darkness fell across the area, only candle flames remaining among the short circuiting flashes of cellphones before the camera recording lost its source like the rest, cutting off and leaving black and white fuzz behind. There was a void in his mind, the moments colored in with the worst crayons in the box, all shades of violent red and dangerous yellows. He curled into himself, letting tears take him, making a companion of the continual sound of that static. He could remember the first mistake they made.  Rubber and stone didn’t conduct. Electricity found on travel through and across them, sent off like the free radicals that tore cells apart when left unattended.  Their own curiosity sent them to the morgue. They like to shove nails under the skin and pry it away to see what was underneath. They found their victory in the crying boy on the stone floor, the one whose body sparked with frustration, draining itself without enough sympathetic energy around him.  They’d come to bring the video again, anxious to watch him fold in on himself, to crumple into nothing. In the moments the rubber was peeled back, a veil was pulled back from his eyes, revealing the webbing that was electricity that ran rampant in the world outside his cube. Among them he found a string that dangled, a thread from the three Fates themselves that was dull and nearly lifeless.  He reached for it and pulled. The pacemaker in the chest of the guard malfunctioned, spitting bursts of energy like an angry cat, sending the man into cardiac arrest. He clutched at his chest, words unfound, radio only silence. Gerrard’s arms passed through the slot they used to pass his food and likewise, their torture. He reached and felt for the crossbar he’d heard come down so many times, a heaving effort pushing it from its place.  He remembered the sound of the door opening, a first in what could have been years. His escape was made in a fugue state, electronic locks overloaded, others like him released to pour from their cages, opportunities taken to strike out against hands that had taken such joy out of wrapping their hands around their throats. He disappeared that night. Chicago was the haven; it was an oasis, the closest thing to asylum for people like him.  He met her when he was eighteen, and she didn’t turn him away. Instead, he’d been welcomed with arms he’d never felt before while she whispered in his ear:  this was his home now.  He could remember the first day in the city, hours upon hours of bus rides managing to bring him to the doorstep.  He found shelter. He found food. He found others like him. Hyperion was born in Chicago; a thief to begin with that caught the eye of new family, one that found power in practice, and reminded him who had cast those long shadows and dropped his sister to the ground without a second thought.  He learned, with those whispers in his ears, where to abandon petty theft for greater work. It spun the thunderstorms back to life in his skull, providing the static shock that started hurricanes and the kind of thinking that required payment for things that had been taken. Static was a constant itch that crawled under his skin, remnant energy from witches burned at the stake.  There was a hefty debt, and Hyperion would, eventually, collect.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS: TIERNEY SINCLAIR, Thorn: Oh, Tierney.  It’s a murmur, one that sounds coy and teasing in the way it floats and twists through the air, but it’s armed to the teeth, like knives in the dark that are only seen when they swing.  Gerrard sees a mirror. And Gerrard does not like to share. EOIN DOUGHERTY, Customer:  A dollar sign turned interest, one that, if coaxed in the right direction, could prove to be not just an asset but an investment.  Hyperion is the one that watches over, and oh, does he watch this one closely for the opportunity he needs. KIARA MANDAL, Goal:  Kiara is the twinkle at the back of his eye, the one that says that he’s up to nothing good; that he drags trouble with him.  He finds Kiara to be…. Underutilized at best, and given the opportunity, he’d grab her wrist and pull her off the cliff with him to find what her potential really looks like.  

EXTRA: “I’ll be there in a minute.”  The presence behind him didn’t contest; he was left to his quiet, a dark silhouette against a bright interior.  It was clinical, full of right angles and crisp edges even despite what was left upturned and in chaotic asymmetry as the lights above flashed once, then twice.  They were electronic gasps, attempts to continue despite the way the damaged pathways frayed. He took a deep drag on a cigarette, the end taking a sympathetic coal breath along with the lights above, and suddenly they found their equilibrium.  The lights held their connection, letting him look across the occasional smears of blood. Scattered ash. Rubble and the light, gentle dust it carried with it. Outside, there were sirens.  They were like tiny pings to his radar, dots on the network his feeling stretched across, electric impulses firing back and forth among the vein like spindling that was a city like Chicago.  He closed his eyes as he took another deep inhale, smoke filling lungs that screamed for the nicotine to keep the yapping of nerves away from his mind. He stretched out into it, a different plane of existence than most would tread.  It was coursing energy, static made massive, interlinking at every step of a human existence. He followed the pathing, the comfort of surge sounds pulling a smile across his lips as he reached out, his finger wrapping in an electric thread the way someone would with the hair of a lover.  He grasped and he pulled. The hospital dropped from the grid, leaving a hungry man satiated as he started his steps down the stairs; his feet never quite touched the ground, held aloft by the static of the storm surge that rippled across him, a downed powerline that learned to walk. – “Hype!”  No response.  “Hyperion!”  He paused, steps stopping as he shrugged a jacket onto his shoulders.  “Where are you going?” His eyebrows raised, amusement crossing his lips as he tilted his head to the side.  “Incredible how that isn’t your business.”  The response was met with a pout.  “But what about your curfew?  You’re going to get in trouble.”  The side of his mouth twitched up further, pulling into something like a smirk that tried to pass as a smile as he reached out and tapped his questioner’s nose.  “I hope so.”   – Blood landed on the back of his hand, ejected by a cough.  Energy zipped across him, skittering crackles, a lighting storm on the microcosm of his skin. The blood evaporated, hit with what might as well have been a laser, removed from its momentary existence with him.  His knuckles weren’t beaten. No weapon in sight. Just him and his body, looking at the shape hunched against the wall. They weren’t battered. Purpling bruises didn’t cover their body. They sunk to the ground, eyes shut tight as they panted.  A loan drip of blood found its way from the corner of their mouth, joining tracks with what tears had already left behind. “You’ll live.”  His words were soft, almost reassuring in the way they landed.  Perhaps they would have been were it not for the bouts of pain that had wracked them, leaving muscles sore and screaming from the way they’d been overloaded time and time again. They didn’t seem convinced, a shame.  Hyperion crouched, looking at the other with eyes that liked to nit-pick. They clung to details, refusing to scoop in what they saw indiscriminately. He reached out a hand, making them flinch away instinctively. He followed nonetheless, fingers curving along their cheek as his thumb brushed to interrupt the teary path.  “You’ll live.  You will. And I want you to remember this.  Can you do that?” The nod was almost immediate, a slight tremble through their skin.   “If you remember, I don’t have to see you again.”  They shook their head;  no, god, please not again.  His thumb brushed again and he leaned closer, holding their chin to make their eyes lock, no other choice found. His voice dropped low, a whisper with the edge of a growl.  “I want you to remember whose fault this was.  Because it wasn’t yours, and it wasn’t mine.”   — A scream sent a number of pigeons dashing, response enough even if flight wasn’t taken.  There was food to be found on the patio, under the cafe’s umbrella shielded tables, so the birds didn’t dare scatter too far despite the commotion.  A woman clutched to her chest as her companion knelt on the ground beside her, crying out with panic in its purest form. “Help!  She’s having a heart attack!”  Phones were picked up along with audible gasps, 911 dialed as people gathered, useless as they stood and watched the scythe brought low, starting the process of cleaving the soul away. Gerrard turned in his chair, holding a small basket of fries.  He snacked on one, a look of curiosity crossing him as he scanned the woman.  His hand lifted slightly, fingers rubbing together as if disposing of the salt that clung to them.  A slight spark occurred, like a generator spinning to life. Static hung in the air for a moment, and then another, as his eyes fell on the pin at the dying woman’s lapel.  It was acrid in his mind, one that spoke to an agenda, one that saw mutants as beasts to cage. As the silence faded out, he picked up another fry, putting it to his lips, biting, chewing.  All perfectly normal. And he watched the frantic electrical impulses, firing with no sense of syncope, and instead of letting it fade– letting the scythe swing— he rubbed his fingers together again, feeling his own heart skip to make hers struggle longer; just enough correction to let the pain ratchet through her.  He watched, he ate his fries, and eventually he let her die.

[mermain123]

Chat Noir has been useful

WARNING LONG post

I’ve been seeing people saying recently that Chat noir has been useless, a sidekick, or that any hero could do his job.

keep in mind this does in no way reflect my actual thoughts on said episodes covered.

Also i am only counting Chat’s attacks if they seemed effective. If the Akuma just bounces off his attack then i won’t count it.

Season 1

Stormy weather: his night vision was important to getting through the building and his cataclysm brought the board down

bubbler: chat was integral to getting outta the bubble. it clearly wasn’t going to break without magic so cataclysm was needed

Lady Wi-fi: cataclysm needed to jam the signal

Timebreaker: saved LB and kept the 2 timebreakers from transporting back in time by destroying the pillar

Evilistrator: even though it was marinette’s idea on how to get out. chat was the only one who was able to the the 2 out of the box

Rogercop: took out an army of police men on his own and trapped rogercop allowing LB to get the akuma

Copycat: sent copycat flying after being freed from the chains. got the akumatized item out of Copycat’s pocket.

Dark Cupid: protected LB from Dark cupid. Grabbed the akumatized item for LB.

Horrificator: trapped horrificator

Darkblade: managed to hold his own against Darkblade and his night army several times for several minutes

Kung Food: desroyed the bag all the weapons came from while LB kept him tied up

Gamer: saved Marinette from the gamer last second. knew exactly how to control the catbug bot with LB and would have destroyed the bot too if max hadn’t used a save scum

Animan: realized when Animan was coming back, made the bus short out and had him trapped till he transformed into something they didn’t even know he could do and was about ready to kill that dino when it seemed he ate LB

Antibug: figured out where Vanisher was and stopped her before she grabbed LB’s earring. held on his own twice for a bit against Antibug and figured out where the akuma was. spread the marbles everywhere and got rid of the giant sword at the same time. trapped Antibug so LB could get to her earrings.

Puppeteer: destroyed the satelite on Marinette’s roof disabling Lady-Wifi’s powers and freeing LB

Reflekta: used the fact that he was transformed to his advantage and kept LB from transforming

Pixelator: would have gotten Pixelator’s akuma if it weren’t for an overeager theo. still saved everyone still trapped with cataclysm.

Princess Fragrence: got prince Ali, his assitant, and chloe all to safety away from Princess Fragrence. even when mind controlled he was able to glitch out the fireworks machine and destroyes the giant perfume cloud with his cataclysm

Simon Says: shorted out the elevator getting rid of the gorrilla. used cataclysm on the card deck freeing the akuma

Volpina: Helped destroy the illusion of adrien keeping LB from removing her miraculous and used cataclysm to trap volpina

Origins part 1: saved Kim from Stoneheart, saved Alya from being crushed by a soccer (or football since it’s french) net

Origins part 2: saved Alya from being crushed by a car. saved Ivan from falling off the Eiffel tower

ALL OF THAT was from Season 1. now for season 2.

Season 2

Collector: used cataclysm on the shelf and got all those CDs needed for LB to shoot at Collector

Despair Bear: tripped up kim getting despair bear off him and preventing him from attacking (then latching on) to LB. destroyed the table before despair bear could make ivan throw it.

Prime Queen: convinced LB that the only way to save Chloe is to got through the screen even though the chances of it being a trap are high. broke the akumatized object and used cataclysm the door letting them get out of the cold storage.

Befana: distracted befana from shooting at marinette saved Marinette and got her away from befana and hid her away giving her a chance to transform. (even comforted her making sure to let her know he’ll save her grandma too. thats a genuinely sweet moment). tripped up befana and her faeries. destroyed the fire hydrant letting the water gush for LBs plan.

Riposte: while INJURED he rushed to LB’s side and stopped Riposte from cutting her in half. blocked Riposte’s sword with the radiator while letting his belt tail be used to take away her sword. all the while doing flips and leaps WITH AN INJURED ANKLE (I can testify an injured ankle HURTS)

Robustus: destroyed several machines with one hit each and could probably do more. translated morse code to let LB know just what the electronics goal was. DESTROYED ROBUSTUS’S SUPER MECHA BODY. also allowing access to the Lucky charm. saved Max from falling. destroyed the harp letting the strings fall on Robustus and tangling his propeller’s up.

Gigantitan: distracted Gigantitan from chasing the girls by ringing his bell. distracted Gigantitan and led him away from everyone else. got LB outta reach from Gigantitan. when the akuma was distracted and about to cry he brought it’s attention back by honking a car horn. got back Gigantitan’s attention with his bell when it was crying due to a lack of lollipop

Dark Owl: rescued falling kitten. distracted the dark owl while LB scoped out the situation and tried to locate the akuma. freed himself and LB from the grappling hook. broke them out of the prison dark owl put them in. fought and pinned down Dark Owl.

Glaciator: his baton helped stop the bus. he saved marinette from turning into ice cream. cut glaciator’s legs in half making him trip. used his baton as a propeller.

Sapotis: got rid of several sapotis. held his own against a never ending supply of sapotis for a long time. (enough for LB’s timer to run out, get the fox miraculous, retransform, find alya and give her the miraculous, and for them to find him) destroyed all the sapotis hats at once. took ella and etta home.

Gorizilla: used cataclysm in the ground to trap gorizilla. (he wasn’t exactly CN very long this episode but he was helpful)

Captain Hardrock: Chat helped chain up Captain hardrock. He used cataclysm to destroy the boat and freed the akuma.

Zomibiezou: created the zipline for the class. distracted a  bunch of the zombies away from chloe and rose. drives the bus away. carried chloe while she was injured. sacrafices and blocks himself from all the zombies.

Syren: lured the panthers to a spot where Rena could use her mirage to get them into the van. caught LB after being tossed by syren. fought off syren while LB talked to kim. activated the airbags stopping syren and allowing him and LB to trap her. pulled syren outta the water onto land rendering her powerless

Frightingale: tripped Frightingale up. used cataclysm on her whip.

Troublemaker: heard troublemaker coming and pulled the matress up blocking her attack. tripped up LB, making sure Troublemaker can’t get her earrings, and knocked the pen away. charged at Trouble maker getting her off LB. used Cataclysm on the pen

Reverser: charged and attacked Reverser when he was about to reach for Lb’s earrings. pulled LB through the water when she couldn’t swim and helped her up. used Cataclysm to destroy reverser’s ship. Saved Marc.

Anansi: stopped the ferris wheel. Got LB away from the car flying at them. activated Catclysm to protect his ring. used Cataclysm on the helmet.

Sandboy: saved Lb from falling without her powers. forced Sandboy and fake LB to crash into each other. protected Lb the whole time her powers were useless. helped destroy the akumatized item.

skipping Style Queen for obvious reasons.

Queen Wasp: helped stop the train. grabbed hold of queen wasp while LB pulled her into the Seine. used Cataclysm on the bee miraculous getting rid of the akuma. Comforted Chloe after her mother insulted her on live TV.

Malediktator: got rid of a bunch guards while thinking he was just a cat, allowing LB and Queen B to get to Malediktator.

Frozer: saved LB from being attacked by Frozer. Used Cataclysm on Frozer’s skates thus releasing the akuma.

skipping Catalyst since it’s an unfinished 2 parter that’s not aired in english yet.

As you can see Chat has helped IMMENSELY throughout the series. He’s been very useful. Is this enough for you all to see how helpful he is?

[lafuerte01-blog]

It Is Only Impossible if you Don’t Try

IM Cozumel 2019 Race Recap

The hardest part of any story is trying to figure out where to begin. And in this case, do I start where my training began in April 2019 or do we start with race week? Or do you call this story, “A Tale of Two Kilgore’s” because (spoiler alert here) – one Kilgore trained her ass off and woke up at zero dark thirty multiple times throughout her 6 month training and had upwards of 6 hour long brick workouts while the other Kilgore just winged it and finished only an hour and a few minutes after the other.  Thinking back, who was the crazier person?  The one that invested time, lost sleep and spent a lot of money training, or the one that did next to nothing and still earned the coveted Ironman title? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start with race week. Met up with my coach a few days before heading out of town for the race.  The good news was there was nothing magical that I needed to know.  I already knew it.  I had practiced it weeks and months on end.  I just needed to execute it.  The downside was I was so amped up and just wanted to RACE.  My mind was ready.  My body was ready.  Unfortunately, it was Monday and I still have 6 days to wait.  So I rested.  Or not really “rested” but went from 1.5 hour swims to 45 minute swim workouts.  And reduced my wattage on bike workouts and didn’t run full sprints at the track.  So I had 3 workouts to keep me busy, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday leading up to my departure to Mexico on Thursday afternoon.

I was never nervous about the race.  I was more nervous about whether or not all my shit would get to Cozumel.  If my bikes would make it unscathed.  If I would forget anything.  Never doing a race of this magnitude, wasn’t sure what I’d need for special needs bike and special needs run.  I prepped a collective 10 hours just packing for the race. And still had to pack for the vacation that followed!  In thinking back, if I could just have someone pack for me, that would have reduced my stress levels 1,000%.  

(Above: all of my OCD packing in action)

I realized during this time there was also no way that 2 bikes and 4 pieces of luggage along with 4 humans would be able to be transported in our Camaro or Altima. People talk about “marathon brain” in terms of forgetfulness during the peak of workouts.  Imagine if I woke up the day we flew out and realized we didn’t have the right cars.  Thankful that my brain was always in overdrive that last week so that I was able to connect with two amazing friends, Kevin and Jonny, to transport us and our luggage in their Texas sized trucks to and from the airport.

(Above: Thank goodness for friends with trucks!)

I learned the night before that my tri-sister Julianne made a sign to send Joe and I off on our trip.  I appreciated her time in making something so badass!

The Flight Out (3 days before the race)

I don’t know how I stumbled upon it but in researching the prior host hotels/resorts and trying to figure out the math for the best flights into either Cozumel or Cancun, I found an American Airlines Vacation package that got us the best flights, direct from DFW to Cozumel with our host resort included. SCORE!  Other options included flying to Cancun and schlepping our things on a ferry to Cozumel. More logistics made for a more stressed out Bethany so obviously the direct option was so worthwhile.  While waiting for the plane, our gate was taken over by families and participants of the race.  Joe joked this would be the fittest flight out that day.  We met up with a couple who were being Sherpas for their friend. We also met up with a lady from California (Lilian) who was hoping to PR this race and get a sub 12:00 (she did! 11:50 was her finish time).  She was with her two young ones and we were happy all our kids were appeased by electronics as it had already been a long day.  

On the plane, Joe ended up switching seats with a family that was separated so the son could sit with his mom.  Let’s face it, he needed all the good karma he could get!  In doing so, he sat next to an IronFamily – Keith and his wife. Apparently Keith got his canisters confiscated at the airport and wasn’t sure where to buy them.  Being the super anal-retentive person I am, I researched and followed every blog and Facebook group related to IM Cozumel and told Joe off-hand during a conversation that if they run out of air canisters at IM Village, we can go to the local tri store called Cabrillas.  Joe relayed that info and Keith was super appreciative.  It’s like they became best buddies that day. And they were buddies the entire weekend to follow- as not only did Joe sit next to him by sheer luck, but Keith and his family happened to be at the same resort.  In the same villa.  Exactly two floors directly below us.  It’s truly a small world.  After arriving in Mexico, we were in a bit of a panic as I found one bike but not the other.  We literally were the last family out of customs because of this one bike bag being separated from the pack.  And it’s not like customs is fast in any way and on top of that we’re on island time so we waited patiently.  

(This is what Cozumel airport looks like when you’re the last one in customs)

On top of it we randomly had to have our bags gone through because that’s what must happen when you’re tired.  So when we exited to get to our shuttle that had been waiting now for an hour and ten minutes, we got accosted by a tour group that posed as a front for our van service.  After realizing they were selling us a tour package, I kindly said no and headed out to our van, curious if it would even be there.  It was.  And after hauling everything into the back we loaded in the van and took in the 25 minute drive through downtown to the resort.  The downtown area was decked out for the race with welcome signs. The island was crazy busy with taxis and scooters everywhere.  I was thankful when we finally arrived at the resort which was away from the hustle and bustle for some authentic, local food and rest.  The family got to experience my favorite cochinta pibil and salbutes yucatecos for dinner.  We had seconds of each.  Dolores was the best waitress by far the entire time at the resort.  We filled our bellies and went to bed.

Friday morning, two days before the race

After waking up, Joe and I assembled our bikes.  It was then that I realized I left a second flat kit back at the house.  If not already familiar, the Kilgore’s have notoriously bad luck at races with flats and spokes but I figured the extra flats I packed would just have to go into my special needs bag and hope I didn’t need a second or third tube before picking up the special needs bag at mile 60 on the route.  

We went to IM village that afternoon to pick up our race packets, find our name on the IM wall, take obligatory photos with the Ironman sign, and look about the IM store to buy all the things.  But since this was an IM branded race co-sponsored with Adeportes, the items weren’t as plentiful as many IM 70.3 races.  And most of it was already picked over.  But maybe that was a good thing because we got out cheaper than if all the things were there.  We obtained our IM wristband, our timing chip, our race bags, all inside a nice IM Cozumel branded backpack along with a nice race belt.  Because Joe is notoriously known for meeting up with random people he doesn’t know, we ran into my FTC teammate Julie Adams and her IronFamily and spoke with them for a while.  He had worn his FTC shirt to go to IM Village in hopes to run into someone; it worked.  

(Above: Awesome name placement)

While at IM village, my brother Brian arrived so the kids and I walked to meet him.  After a brief hello it was about that time that Joe and I had to go to the mandatory athlete briefing.  As we waited in the hot sun, we passed it off as “acclimating to the heat” and saw our IronFamily man Keith there.  Because it was so hot and Brian just landed, we had him take the kids so they didn’t have to be bored out of their minds.  After waiting a half hour or so after the scheduled start for briefing (again, island time) we got into the cool AC building, sat up front, and had a truly enjoyable time meeting our two emcees and announcers for the race. They made a lot of jokes which made for a lighter mood and helped us all feel special for what we were about to embark upon.

SATURDAY (the day before the race!)

I was thankful I spent the 10 hours packing my essentials in advance and took meticulous notes of the contents within (see picture below) because when we picked up our race packets, I essentially just had to place my Ziplock bags into their respective bike, run and special needs bags.   Joe and I got up early to ride our bikes to and from the official swim practice site.   Our bikes were tuned up before the race by Velofix but of course the derailleur was jostled during the flight so my bike had difficulty getting into my middle gears of my big chain.  So I knew after our swim practice I’d need to get in touch with bike tech at the resort. I was excited for the swim and wanted to be able to feel the current that would carry us toward the finish. Unfortunately, my new goggles that I had only swam in 5 times decided to leak during my practice swim.  And there wasn’t a kayak or lily pad for me to rest on to fix them.  These are the moments you need to know how to handle during the choppy start of a swim start anyway.  I pulled off to the side, flutter kicked vertically and tried to adjust my goggles. Still no dice.  After doing a lap with my left goggle trickling in sea water, I decided to get out and reset.  I did a second quick circle swim and things seemed to be ok.  I never got to catch the current and was a bit unnerved that my swim practice wasn’t as great as I expected.  But I got the experience of dealing with unfortunate circumstances and kept my cool.  And it’s an understated important skill not to over exert yourself during a stressful start of a swim before a long race day.

After getting back to the resort, I was thankful to have an onsite mechanic help with my bike and I was relieved to not have to worry about it as again, team Kilgore usually has issues on race day with their bikes.  We still had to transport our bikes and based on our bib number, we were the final group of the day (3:30-5p).  So in the meantime we headed into town to shop at some local stores and shop for souvenirs.  When we got back to the resort, the family headed to the beach while Joe and I lugged our bikes to drop off at bike check-in.   We were the only ones on the bus that picked us up at the resort.  We had time to rack the bikes, get a lay of the swim out portion of the race, our changing tents, and familiarize ourselves with our rack location and bike out.  Joe and I both lucked out that our bikes were racked in the same group; mine was at the front of the rack coming out of the changing tent – Joe’s was at the very end of the rack.  We had a long way to bike out but it didn’t matter – we would just walk our bikes and calm our heart rates to prepare for the long ride ahead of us tomorrow.  

There was a bit of an issue getting the free bus ride back from mandatory bike check in. We waited 30 minutes before even being told there were no more shuttles running to the resorts.   Apparently the bus we rode in on was the last one running but none of the other 10 people waiting with us was told that information.  We met a guy from Cincinnati who graduated from Indian Hill High School- he was there with his wife and they were also doing their first IM race. Also saw Lilian there whom we met at DFW from California doing her 3rd IM.  So after a few of us argued a bit with the IM volunteers about the free shuttle service fiasco, the group won out and we were able to get a bus to take us back to the resort.  It was a minor blip I thought but to be stranded several miles away with no money to go back was a bit unnerving.  Definitely not something I wanted a day before the race.

When we finally returned, we headed out to the beach so I could test out my backup pair of goggles in the ocean.  After doing a few laps in front of the resort and snorkeling with the family, we got showered and met up with my friend Gloria for dinner.  

Side note: you never know what random acquaintance you have from your past may mean to you many years later.  In 1998 I went on a study abroad trip to Merida, Mexico and met up with Gloria Martinez. She was a dance instructor and as part of my cultural studies for 3 months, I learned traditional dances (baile folklorico) and became close friends with her.  We stayed in contact, sent each other many letters and mixed tapes, and here we were face to face again after 21 years.  It was just amazing.  And she would be a MAJOR help and inspiration halfway through the run. I needed her more than I knew. But I’m getting ahead of myself again…..

During dinner Gloria met my family and I got to practice my Spanish while she practiced her English. She gave me a present, a local liquor Xtabentun from the Mayans.  I had remembered having this while in Mexico before and it has a unique taste – liquorish and honey.  In looking at the bottle we have now at home, apparently Joe really likes it – it’s almost gone!  I had my traditional meal before any race, pizza, but wasn’t super hungry.  I realized around 9p I needed to get ready to bed and try to sleep.  It’s common not to sleep too well before a race.  I think I got a solid 5 hours in.  

Race morning

I woke up at 4:20a, 5 minutes before my alarm.  I was ready. Graduation day was here! We asked the front desk the night before when the shuttles would start running; he said 5:30a.  I thought that was late knowing our first transition (T1) opened at 5:15a. Not only that, we had to get to T1 to drop off our special needs bags, set up our shoes and attach our helmets to the bike and check tires for air. And after that had to catch a bus 2.4 miles upward to the swim start.   But again, I trusted the information given.  So after waking and getting dressed and having breakfast, we get to the bus line early only to find out that there’s a big group there already and the race organizers reduced the busses at our resort from 3 to 2.  And the last bus that was coming was the one headed our way – and we were all hoping we’d get on.  Some people were angry and hailed cabs. Others just waited (like us) and hoped to get on.  It was a full bus but we were able to get on and upon arrival we frantically tossed our special needs bags to volunteers, got our bikes set up with nutrition and water bottles situated.  We didn’t top off our tires; we didn’t have time.  We just hoped and prayed they’d be ok.  We walked hurriedly back to the entrance and waited in a ginormous line to catch the busses to take us to swim start.  Met up with Julie from FTC somehow in all the chaos. Again, another issue as we got toward the front, the busses behind us were opening their doors to people waiting behind us so that by the time the busses rolled up, they were full.  Participants were angry and the race volunteers were quick to act.  We squeezed into a bus already full and took a seat at the very back.  I just took deep breaths.  Again, logistics are not fun for me and is super stressful when things get out of whack. Minor inconveniences really but seriously nerve-racking before a long day’s event. I ate another sandwich while taking the bus to the swim start.  Things were going to be ok.  It was then that I realized I had left my UCan back at the hotel.  So I was a few hundred calories under what I had hoped but I also packed a backup sandwich and gel in T1.  And I had been drinking extra water with electrolytes that morning.  I told myself it was going to be ok.

Swim start

Once through the porta pottie line (after realizing they had one for males and females!), Julie and I got on our swim skins, put on Glide and eco-friendly sunscreen (to protect the coral) and tossed our final bag of the day, our morning clothes bag, to the volunteers and headed to our swim start corral.  This being a self-seeded start, Joe and I had strategically decided to put ourselves in the 1:20-1:30 grouping. Julie went ahead as she’s a faster swimmer; we wished her luck! Next time I saw her was on the run – more on that later.

I knew I could swim the 2.4 mile distance in one hour and 30 minutes but also knew the current would be helpful.  We heard the gun go off for the pros and started snaking around our corral toward the front of the pier.  There were drones flying overhead.  We waved. We caught up with the guy from Cincinnati and his wife.  We congratulated them.  Loud music pumping and blaring songs like, “We Will Rock You” by Queen and “Eye of the Tiger.” The pier started to become visible.  I saw people tossing small bean bag sized pouches filled with water.  People were drinking water and putting water on their heads to cool down.  It was 7:40a ish and already warm.  Temps were expected to be a real feel of 90 degrees with little cloud cover.

We were a huddled group of people and the sun was blazing.  I caught sight of the ocean.  It was wavy. Choppy.  NOT like anything we had seen the previous days while on the island. This was going to be fun.  I kept calm.  We were in line with a lady who knew this was our first and saw our watches and told us they only last 14ish hours.  Lovely.  Again, nothing I can do.  I kept fidgeting with my goggles- putting them on and off.  Joe told me to keep them off because they would fog up otherwise. And that’s when I realized I forgot to wipe my goggles with the anti-fog cloth.  Before I knew it, our group was “walking the plank” to the end of the dock.  I placed my goggles on and just like that, I was in the water.  I hit the bottom upon jumping in, not realizing it was shallow, so I bounced up and after 8 seconds, realized I had already pressed start on my watch.  “It’s go time,” I thought.

The swim with all the people and all the waves could have been worse.  I was thankful the swim out to the first of two turns was short.  I saw a ton of marine life.  There was a sign underwater – I couldn’t stop to read it but later learned it said “If you can think it, you can achieve it.”  There were tons of scuba divers watching from the ocean floor. I would have loved to see what that swim looked like from above.  I never got kicked or punched like others on the swim.  I had people swim up on me but they swam around.  I did the same when I came up on others.  I kept with a pack.  I rarely sighted- when I did, there was a huge wave in my face.  I think I only took in one gulp of sea water. At one point I started smiling because I thought my husband was next to me.  It took me a while before I noticed it wasn’t him.   I swam with a pack of people and kept my pace consistent.  I noticed a buoy on my right and thought they were to be on the left so I cut across and in doing so, I caught a nice current.  But after a while I lost people. I saw a kayak.  I was off on my own and in looking the rest of the group was on the left.  So I swam fast to get back with the group.  I couldn’t see ahead with the waves but didn’t want to be so far out on the right, despite the awesome current, to not know where I was.  I kept up with the pack and found some people to draft off of.  I caught sight of a yellow buoy.  It didn’t make sense as most of them were orange other than to distinguish that being the half-way point maybe? I never checked my time or distance on the watch while swimming – I just kept swimming.  My goggles were pretty fogged up by this point.  I got off track again toward the back half of the swim and instead of making a tight turn at the red and final buoy, I instead made a long wide turn to the finish. It’s ok.  I was finishing up and was able to climb the steps up and stop the watch.  HOLY SHIT! I just had a PR swim: 1:23:51.

I took my coach’s advice coming out of the swim, no running – just walk to the changing tent to calm the heart rate down.  I stood for about 15 seconds under a shower to rinse off before going into the women’s changing tent.  My goal was to be in and out of the transition tent in 10 minutes.  I had played and replayed in my head the things to do while in T1.  I ended up doing a full change out from my tri suit and swim skin to bra, bike shorts and a bike top. I had a shower pill towel and a sturdy hand towel to help wipe away any remaining salt.  Salt = chafe and I took a squirt bottle (tip courtesy of Jessica Marchi) full of water and sprayed between cracks and bits.  Once done, I lightly toweled off an put on my bike shorts with Hoo Ha Ride Glide.  I got volunteers to put sunscreen on my body.  Slipped on my HR monitor.  Ate my backup sandwich and drank my water. I just burned about 600 calories on the swim and needed to top off before setting off to ride.  I put on my socks and headed out to my bike.  Got my helmet, clipped it on, got my shoes on and walked the long walk to bike out.  I checked Joe’s bike rack; his bike was still there.  I got nervous.  He’s a better swimmer; assumed he got caught up in the changing tent.  I figured he’d be right behind me in no time on the bike.  Total transition time: 17:02

At the mount line, I was keeping heart rate calm and take it easy.  Even a veteran said everyone goes out fast on the first loop. I had written in permanent market on my leg my metrics for the race: 130-140 power, 78-82 cadence, 135 heart rate. I rode out and set off for a comfortable ride.

The Bike

What I was told to do by my coach was to stop every 20 miles and to pee at mile 40 and 80.  There were approximately 5 rest stops around the island for the 38ish mile loop.  For some strange reason, on my first loop, I decided to hit every single stop and pee at mile 20.  I don’t know why I did this but I realized my error after the first lap when I saw Joe. It didn’t make sense that I was coming up on him around mile 46 when his bike was on the rack when I biked out.  It took a nanosecond for me to realize my error. In hindsight, that extra 2 minutes per stop was ok; I wanted to take it easy.  My HR was averaging 154 and wasn’t budging despite the easy effort.  I attributed it to the heat. I also noticed on the first loop my power didn’t seem to be accurate.  The day before I noticed this as well and texted the coach; asked if that happened what metric to follow – cadence or HR.  Because the course is flat, he suggested both.  I kept true to my cadence and only pushed it when I had to make a legal pass or had to back off when someone overtook me.  Second loop was faster, I know I pushed it but I felt ok.  I ended up grabbing water every 20 miles to top off my bottles and spray myself down (my cooling sleeves, my core, my head).  I saw my brother and kids on the second loop of the bike course; got a shout out from someone there who saw my Hotter than Hell jersey and said, “GO TEXAS!”  The back half of the island was beautiful.  The extra elevation gain was there along with the wind.  Thankful I didn’t have to deal with a lot of wind that day and I knew how to climb hills now so I didn’t let the back half deter me. I got to my special needs bag around mile 60 and reset my fuel. Checked my tires, they were ok so I rode on without the extra canisters or tubes placed within.

The final lap is soul sucking.  You know what to expect which is a blessing and a curse.  The ride through the city was uplifting; you just have to mentally will yourself to the next aide station and hope for some crazy fans out there to support you.  Saw my brother and kids again; got the boost I needed but then had the east side of the island with the hill and unrelenting sun.  I wanted to take in the scenery, the ocean was beautiful and the blue sea mixed with the blue sky only interrupted by the white ocean spray that crested and crashed into the rocky coast.  I noticed the pack was thinning; there was a collective miserable feeling around everyone.  I passed someone and he said, “you’re looking strong.” I muttered something back – I don’t know if it was comprehensible.  I knew I was coming up on mile 90 and after mile 100 every mile after that would be a distance PR.  It was also about this time that I noticed I was getting tired of eating my gels.  No worries I told myself- I had packed a glorious PB&J sandwich in my T2 bag.  I’d have real food soon. And there’d be more on the run course.  I stopped at a final aide station around mile 100 to get more ice and water and sprayed myself down.  The first table there had ran out of water bottles so I had to get off the bike and wait for them to get more water to pour into my bottles.  The bike course was pretty sparse by then and things picked over. By the time I hit the bike in, I honestly don’t remember anything.  I know I was able to get off the bike OK (surprising in and of itself), grab a bottle off my bike and my coach’s bike computer before handing over my bike to a volunteer. Total bike time: 6:49:04.

In the T2 changing tent, I looked around.  It looked desolate.  I checked the time – I seemed to be doing ok.  I asked a volunteer what the local time was.  It was early evening – about 4p.  I had plenty of time.  Did another full change out from bike clothes to run clothes.  Chuckled to myself that I was feeling like Beyonce with all of her change of clothes. I was salt crusted and legs were dirty.  Took 2 shower pills to clean off.  I wanted to clean off to feel better.  I wiped my face.  I put on my hat, my running shoes, my running belt and grabbed my sandwich and headed out to start the final 26.2 miles of this race.  Total time in T2: 19:34.

The Run

I got up and my feet HURT. My arches were super sore.  I walked out of the tent and tried to calm my HR down.  I felt dizzy. I grabbed water from a volunteer but didn’t feel any better.  My watch chimed 30 seconds into the run.  What the hell? I had thought I programmed it for a 90 second run and 30 second walk. NOPE. Forgot the last run I had was programmed from my 30 second sprint track workout and 3 minute walk.  I attempted to change the intervals but my watch said I couldn’t change while an event was in progress. GRRR.  I know what I had to do – this happened at my Houston Marathon where I didn’t have my watch intervals set correctly and had to do it manually – watching the time. It was going to be a long fucking run. While I had PRd my run in Houston that day, this was not going to happen today.  It would however keep my mind “busy” and distracted from the feeling I was having while running.  Funny because all day I was looking forward to the run and now I was trying to figure out how I was going to continue.  Anyone that knows me knows that math isn’t my sweet spot. So my 90:30 run walk intervals weren’t always accurate.  I gave myself grace. Didn’t matter.  Go by feel. Get some food in you.  I tried but my stomach started to heave.  I made it 2 miles by this point and needed food ASAP. I recalled that if I couldn’t eat, to at least chew food and spit it out.  Even taking food into my mouth made me gag.  And my water bottle filled with electrolytes were equally painful to digest. I got dizzy again and tripped and almost fell but by the grace of God caught myself from falling flat on my face. Negative thoughts started creeping in. It was only 2 miles into a 26.2 mile run and I couldn’t eat or drink and was dizzy.  I started looking for a medical tent.  I never saw one.  Honestly – the one time I did see a medic was the last 2-3 miles of my run and by that point, I wasn’t stopping!  In looking around, I saw FTC teammate Julie on her run.  She was running fast; I was walking.  I said hi and she gave me a look that said, “this is miserable.”  She was ahead of me and looked strong. Little did I know she crashed on the bike and was bleeding from her knee. She’s a total badass.  Was that her first loop? Second? Third? Everyone looked fresh and running fast.  I just kept looking at my watch, doing fuzzy math, putting one foot in front of the other.

Along the way, someone asked me if this was a 3 looped course.  I said yes. Knowing that, I was near the turnaround by then and felt better for a bit.  Around mile 6 or so, a supporter saw me and I guess I looked like death warmed over. He approached me as I walked and said, “Drink the flat Pepsi.  Trust me runner. Drink it.  And chase it with a lot of water.  It will do miracles for you!  I know this to be true!”  I looked at him and said I can’t keep anything down.  I was nervous if I drank it I would get sick.  I didn’t want to get sick and get stuck in a medical tent. I just wanted to be done.  But I ran off, got to the next table and took the Dixie cup of flat Pepsi and a small water pouch to chase it.  It worked. I felt better.  The sugar helped.  I tried to eat- still nothing.  Small bits of food here and there that I chewed and spat out.  After the first loop, I felt a bit better.  

I saw Gloria on the run while downtown.  The crowd was festive.  There were still plenty of people on the run.  I would be ok.  After the cheers of the crowd and the noise subsided, I started working on a game plan. That’s when my Garmin gave me a low battery warning.  Shit. Shit shit shit. OK.  New plan – focus on food.  I saw a table with oranges and bananas and pretzels.  I had an orange and it was glorious.  Yes. FOOD! Then I got to the banana. Nope. Couldn’t stomach it.  I nibbled, chewed and spat a half a banana out.  More flat Pepsi and water.  Would grab the pretzels on the way back.  Realized I had to focus on my run/walk intervals if my watch died before I finished the race.  I counted my steps for the run.  336 steps for 90 seconds of running; 26 steps for 30 seconds of rest.  I did this several times before I realized running for 90 seconds was too much.  My body was too weak.  It was getting late and the sun setting. I approached the turn around and looked feverishly for the special needs tent for my bag at mile 13.  I had more food in there but didn’t take it. I grabbed my head lamp but in hindsight I didn’t need it.  I grabbed my light jacket thinking I would get cold as the night settled in, especially with the wind near the sea wall going back into town.  I wrapped the jacket around me and kept running.  Then my watch died around mile 14.  Not that I was disappointed that I didn’t save my watch during the bike, but that I was running blind.  No way to tell if my pace was going super slow or not.  

I saw Joe twice on the run; both times it was when I was going the opposite direction back into town to complete my loops.  He yelled to me, “You’ll finish – you have plenty of time. You’ll get yours.” I wanted to yell back- maybe I did? I can’t recall.  I was in a dark place.  You’d think going into town you’d pick up the excitement.  Mine was the reverse.  I hit my lowest point around miles 17-19.  It was at this time that Gloria saw me coming into town and ran with me. She told me I was doing good. That she was proud of me.  That I have 2.5 hours to finish one more lap. She was willing to get me anything I needed, do anything for me. I knew it was against IM rules to have someone run and walk beside you but I could not tell her no.  Selfishly I needed her.  She was my angel and my saving grace those miles.  As we approached downtown, I told Gloria that she would not be allowed to run with me or be next to me.  Shortly thereafter an IM official came up and told Gloria she needed to let me be.  Gloria asked why and she was told the rule and after giving a very mad face to the volunteer, Gloria wished me well.  

Being as tired and as dizzy as I was, I just wanted to quit.  I felt horrible.  I was right in town so if I wanted to quit, I could just walk up to my family and say, “I tried.”  At one point I humored myself that I couldn’t quit because I had already bought things that said I was an Ironman at IM Village a few days before.  That got me ahead mentally for a half mile or so. But I also just needed to be done. The run was more mental than anything. I had to give myself something to look forward to.  Mile 20. That was the new goal.  I could get to mile 20 and feel fine, I told myself. More oranges and bananas.  I forced a banana down around that time, thinking I could vomit 6 miles and still finish. Still hard to drink my electrolytes so water, water, more water and flat Pepsi when I could stomach it. Spoke briefly to a guy who asked what lap I was on. I said my third.  He was on his as well.  I told him I was just looking for the damned turn around.  He said he was as well.  He looked strong and I told him so and wished him well.  

There was a group of us that kinda stayed together.  We were running and walking around the same pace.  We didn’t talk to each other but it was good to know I wasn’t alone out there hurting.  I could tell my pace slowed.  I didn’t have a damn watch to tell but I knew I couldn’t keep up my pace from before so I ran from cone to cone.  Walked the next set of cones.  Repeat. When the turnaround came, I knew if I got to a 5k I’d be fine.  And I sort of was ok until mile 24.  

Seriously those last two miles were insanely hard.  I strained to hear the roar of the crowd downtown which sounded a lot quieter. Even the loud band that played continuously for hours seemed to have relocated and moved closer to the finish. I needed something to get me by. I saw kind people on the street giving encouragement, “You’re so close!” “Don’t walk, run!” “You’re going to be an Ironman!” “Go, go, go!” That’s when I looked over and saw a medic on her phone. She wasn’t with anyone – just keeping herself busy.  Where the F was she all day? Too late now to stop.  Mile 25.  Was I now going uphill? How long was this corridor?  The band sounded like it was closer now and I could hear a guy on a loudspeaker now.  “…..(inaudible name) ... You Are An IRONMAN!”

My thought process went something like this that last 1.2 miles: drink water. Dump all the food you have stuffed in your tri top bra. Fix your hair.  Make it look like you didn’t just suffer for god knows however long you’ve been out here. And run like hell when you near the finish chute. I walked a good portion of that last mile just willing my brain to adjust to the new game plan.  I inadvertently dropped my water, my lifeline. Damnit! I didn’t want to run with trash in my hand so I jumped a curb and threw it into a trash can and hopped down back onto the course.  Ok.  Jacket is around my waist and I don’t want it.  I’m hot. I can’t toss it.  Damnit – just hold it.  I see a lady on my right who says, “You’ve got this! It’s just around the corner!” and that’s when I started to run.  I mean, run like I meant it.  I saw the red carpet and the lights.  It was a party scene and I was ready to …… sit the fuck down.  But first, that finish line.  That glorious finish line.  I looked up – did that time say 15 hours and something? I thought I was closer to 16 by my walking pace those last few miles.  That gave me a bit of a pep in my step.  I put my hand over my mouth – I started to tear up and then I heard, “That’s my sister!” and saw my brother Brian, Gloria, Kaia and my son Kyler with his hand stretched out to high five me.  It was a brief second but that moment of seeing their faces and getting that final power boost from my son got me across that finish line.  

I heard before I even crossed the finish, “Bethany Kilgore from McKinney, Texas – You are an Ironman!” and then I saw the ramp.  A ramp! I had to go up and down that thing and not fall flat on my ass.  I was depleted of food, water, electrolytes, and was high on adrenaline so by the time I crossed I walked gingerly across the threshold where some kind man grabbed my arm and guided me through the finisher chute.  Total run time: 6:13:01.  Total time at finish: 15:02:31.

Through the chute, my kind guide asked me, “Do you want water? Gatorade?” I said no.  He said, “I bet you’ll never want another Gatorade for a few months.” I smiled.  Then he told me I was going to receive my medal.  Medal placed around my head; a few congrats.  Ok.  More walking. Then he said someone had to get my timing chip.  Great. Next he asked if I wanted food. NOOOOO.  No food.  Ok, so he walked me to get my finisher shirt.  I stood in a daze as someone handed me my finisher shirt.  I looked around and noticed the line to get my finisher photo. Ugh.  I didn’t have the energy to wait.  Everyone looked so full of life.  I wanted to sit.  A nice lady helped me with my things, she fixed my visor which I always wear so low and held all of my sweaty things as I gave a few pained smiles.  I saw the rendezvous spot to meet my family.  I heard my name and got some hugs.  I was super thankful to be done but fell like crap.  I thought fresh clothes and sitting would make me feel better. After getting my clothes and changing (which took eternity with tons of foot cramps), I stood up and met my family on a bench.  I couldn’t talk without fear of getting sick.  I was still dizzy so I wanted to lay down.  As soon as I tried to lay down I started dry heaving. Nothing would come but saliva. I knew I was in a bad way so my friend Gloria sought a medic while my brother and kids waited for Joe to finish.  I got into a wheel chair and was admitted.  It looked like a war zone.  People messed up far worse than me.  People with EKGs on their chest.  Others getting massages from their cramped legs.  The guy next to me screaming from his leg cramp getting worked out.  I had a nurse come around asking if I was allergic to anything – “just penicillin” I said.  She thought it was odd that the three people in bed next to each other were all allergic to penicillin.  A nice doctor came over and said I was going to get an IV.  A nurse came over and stuck my left arm. Nothing.  Stuck my right arm and moved the needle around.  Nothing.  Had to call over someone else to get to my vein and finally got it in on top of my right hand.  I was hot and didn’t want a blanket.  I was in my sports bra and shorts that I had changed into along with my Oofos.  It took a while to get the fluids in even halfway through and by then I started to get cold.  I got an awesome space blanket and neck massage.  I strained to hear my husband’s name called but it was busy and loud in the tent.  I asked if the medic tent was busy now and the nurse said no, but that it was busy earlier – not enough beds to triage people to get in and get assistance. I got word that Joe crossed and was ok.  I was upset that I couldn’t see him cross the finish line but was thankful I felt better at that point.  I lulled off to sleep.

The kind doctor that attended to me let me know the medical tent was closing.  My fluids weren’t all the way done but I was feeling better.  I was thankful to see my family and Gloria waiting outside of the tent.  I felt a LOT better.  I was eager to shower and go home and sleep.  I said my thanks and goodbyes to Gloria and we got a cab.  Back at the resort, I told my brother to see if he could get something salty like fries and chips from the late night snack bar.  He came back with fries and nachos.  I couldn’t eat much but what I did tasted like food for the gods.  Brian let Joe and I go to rest; I miraculously had enough energy to take a shower and rinse out all of our bike bottles before laying my head on the pillow. I looked over at the time.  3:25a. Exactly 23 hours of activity that day.  

Was it worth it? Yes. It tested everything I had.  I learned that Joe crossed about an hour after me with little to no training.  And he didn’t need a medical tent.  But he ran his race; I ran mine.  We did what we each had to do and both became Ironmen that day.  It’s been 5 days; I’m hard pressed to want to do this again whereas Joe is eager to go back next year.  I’ll happily be his Sherpa!

What I’ve learned throughout this experience is that while this is a challenge of three sports for one person to complete, it’s a necessity to have a village of people that help you get to that finish line.  

For everyone that has helped me with any of my training swim, bikes or runs

For the friends that have put up with my insane training schedule and understood that my absence from any social life was temporary (and forgave me when I unintentionally fell asleep at social gatherings when I did go out)

For my daughter who gave me grace when I missed more than half of her soccer games this fall and passed out around 7:30p on the couch during cuddle time

For my son who was patient in getting the adequate drive time in to help him earn his drivers license

Collectively for my kids who allowed their parents to do a race smack dab in the middle of our family vacation

For my coaches who put up with my incessant questions

For my brother’s family for their understanding while they were in the midst of moving into a new home and for my nephew for allowing me to take his dad away on his birthday.  I needed my brother’s help post-race and to have fun with the kids while their parents were out doing a silly race

For my dear friend of 20 years Gloria who trekked across the Yucatan Peninsula and took a ferry to Cozumel to cheer me on for 15+ hours

And for my husband who made all the dinners, made all of the post-long weekend workout meals, and kept my insanity in check….

I thank you all. 

(Above: my new favorite Christmas ornament next to some of my favorite ornaments: my kids, an old Santa - my grandfather’s who died of cancer, my best friend Lisa and I, and a Mexican sombrero ornament from 1997)

Above: The Kilgore’s enjoying a relaxing day visiting San Gervasio ruins on Cozumel island.... post-race

[autismgavemychildvaccines]

Economic downturn, racism and war.

So, normally I’d be in some sort of non-sober state while writing this, and be full of my typical rash wit. But not today. Today I want to talk about what I (and many others) are seeing down the tube.  First, let’s go over the quick run of what’s going on. 1, we’re having concentration camps of both migrants as well as asylum seekers. This is inherently inhumane and a violation of various multiparty agreements that were made post world war 2 to not cock things up like Germany did with the Jews, or more locally relevant, what we did to fuck over the Japanese in the same period.  2, We’re in a trade war with China, who is itself trying to do a hostile takeover of Hong Kong (and don’t kid yourself for a moment, that’s exactly what the fuck that is), which happens to be the 3rd most important economic center in the world by most accounts.  3, Russia is fucking around with our politicians and buying them off to make for easier voter suppression and just bloody hacking the electronic voting machines, which oh by the way, an adequately caffeinated high-school nerd could probably do.  4, And finally, despite not technically being “in a war”, we’re not at peace, either. Hell, we haven’t been for as long as I can remember. Like many people on this website, one of my first memories was 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I vividly remember the latter, as we sat in our living room watching the bombs drop and my mother in hushed tones said “Well.. This is it.” and my stepfather, an Army Ranger at the time, looked tired and said matter of factly “we’ll not be rid of this until you’re a grown man, and even then..”. And he was right.  Now, all of these things seem somewhat not related. Well, I guess I should say the 1st doesn’t exactly line up with the 2nd and 3rd, which have some geopolitical relevance to each other. But let’s take a history trip together, shall we? First, be sure to bring the hairspray, because we’re going into the Reagan-era and just before for a bit.  Imagine if you will the supposed dying throes of the Cold War. Bioweapons program supposedly being shut down, the Soviet Union splitting away, and the Americas? Well they’ve gone through hell, and by no small measure it was due to proxy wars, puppet governments and a complete disregard for “other” people for the sake of borders and protection. Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and other countries are having civil wars funded by both sides of that iron curtain, causing institutionalized violence, setting the development of these countries back fucking decades, and setting them up to fail.  [Note that when I say “setting the development back”, I do not mean they are in any way lesser to us due to this. In fact, in my wheelhouse of Public Health, they arguably do a better job of handling shit than we could dream of in the US. They’re damn fine people, and in some ways thriving, but to say we didn’t fuck with them would be a disservice. ] Part of this “setting up to fail” strategy was the use of drugs as a means of easy funding, which the U.S. government did wholly support to the point of screwing African Americans (and to a much lesser extent, poor people in general) in particular over by introducing things like Cocaine and Crack to poor neighborhoods (though it should be noted such drugs had been in the realm of public notice for the better part of a century before, just not as accessible).  Funny thing about using drugs to fuel wars. Wars can end. But the demand for drugs by a population that doesn’t have the ability to be treated due to some “moral outrage” against helping addicts? Well, that still remains a very profitable venue. So even after we stopped giving a fuck about any of these countries and their governments gave up the sale of illegal drugs, at least in the open, criminal elements showed up to do what they did best: manufacture and transport drugs to where the best demand was, the United States typically. And to protect this profitable enterprise, these groups would claim territory, claim children as recruits, commit other crimes to support the chain, etc. And these activities still go on today, wherein some cartels and gangs have gotten rich enough to effectively buy off governments and have their own fiefdoms, where those with any ability risk their lives to run. And yet, so many do. Also, it’s important to note that while countries like Mexico are arguably more stable than say, Honduras or El Salvador, they’re still pretty fucked from the radiation of these activities. So these families try to make it to the closest, arguably “most stable” country they can, ironically the one that set the stones for the foundation of where they found themselves. And they are treated as trash, as less than human, as animals. Because we refuse to see our own guilt. We refuse to see what we have done, not centuries ago, but less than 50 years ago. And who is egged on the most to hate these people? Well, if you look at it, it’s the least “most powerful” group that can easily be manipulated: Lower class white groups by a vast majority. Groups who themselves see hardships, certainly, but more than anything know two words: Fear and Authority. They are afraid of the “other”, the “jawb steelin’ immigunts”, the “criminals and rapists” as the person who inhabits the White House calls them. And they respect and adore those who can wield an iron first. Someone they can imagine being, whether it’s a business tycoon of a dictator they see as a near-messiah, who says it’s not their fault they are struggling, and then makes an easy, low effort “solution” for them to point to as to what could cure all those ills which are, at their root, legitimate.  [Note: This by no means excuses any White Supremacist or other racist ideologies. That shit needs to be fixed, and there is no excuse for that.] Let’s take a pause for a moment on that, as it’s significant. Is this the first time this has happened? Heavens no, in fact, many examples exist in history. But one stands out to me above all.  Go back with me again, if you’d be so kind. You feel the warmth of the sun on your face, you can hear the distant waves, and the not so distant hustle and bustle of a city. You smell a mix of salt water infused air with just a hint of smelted metal or gunpowder.  Perhaps you hear some music from The Andrew Sisters crackling out of a radio near an open window. You’re in San Francisco, not too long after the World’s Fair, where the hopes of Utopia were promptly shut off to be dismantled and loaded for the war effort of World War 2. In fact, as you look around, you see the strangest thing. There are clearly Japanese inspired markets and homes all around, but inhabiting them? No Japanese, surely, but the Shoe Shines and markets filled with a vibrant African American community. Some would one day call this the West Coast Harlem. And by their account, it was a wonderful community, of which I have no doubt. However.  Those who lived and worked and loved in these buildings just months prior were put into camps. In Utah, in Nevada, California, Washington. In fact, it pains me a bit to know one such place is but a very hearty stones throw from where I sit writing this. They were put there and made to stay due to risk of espionage, national security, or “for their own safety”. They were told to join the war effort as translators or soldiers, or remain there. The doctors of that community and the nurses too would end up working without pay, saving their own communities with limited supplies and truly working goddamned miracles in these camps to keep people alive, as politicians would brag “For every cent we spend on the Japanese, we spend a whole dollar on our boys out on the front!” That kind of shit sound familiar?  And that African American community? Well, while it was a positive thing for that demographic, certainly, and they had a valid right to be a community, that was by no means organic. The military spread out to places like Arkansas, Texas, Georgia, wherever there were large populations of blacks, whom the whites saw still as highly undesirables, and the military saw as cheap labour.  Well, the military found their people. And those people found cheap, effectively abandoned communities, and were able to live somewhat better than where they came from, all while building warships. However, just like with the previous example, this war wouldn’t last forever. But not just like that previous example, the demand for warships is rather... Specific, in both timing and transferable skills, shall we say? So, this cheap labour was made of a demographic that could be relatively easily discarded without them having enough of a voice to cause waves. And soon enough, the Japanese would return from their internment camps, and let’s just say things were... Tense, between these two groups. Two groups who were, by most accounts, politically undesirable, and if they were fucked, well who would care, right? If it caused generational issues, and exacerbated an economy that would make a good deal of trouble, as long as it’s not the demographic that matters... No worries. It’s not like they even really have good proof of who was really at fault, nor who profited from later real-estate scoop ups and other such economic trends. After all, they moved for the jobs, and the Japanese? Well that was a national security issue.... Don’t you love your country?  While this isn’t analogous to what we are seeing today, I hope you can notice the similar theme. Except this time, the demographic in question has to feel “empowered” in some way, and having who they want voted in anyways due to international meddling is more an afterthought to the “yay, we won!” mentality. And the expendables will have a bit more of a veiled attempt to undercut their work via a trade war with a nation who is admittedly, a scumbag (which we have collectively supported with corporate dollars for decades). This trade war will cause a lot of businesses, farms, and the like to close, making it easier for corporate groups to buy out the competition and profit all the more for it (despite some initial risk due to economic trends). All the while, a different, remarkably innocent group is being blamed and tortured for their “crimes”.   It would not surprise me if in the next 2 years, we will see a recession that will make 2008 look pretty alright. And make no mistake, it will not be due to the president at that time. The gears of the machine have been turned now and in the last year and a half. Likewise, we may well see a war. With who? I do not know. But I most certainly know who will profit from it. And who will die from it, and who will be dehumanized further to be the scapegoat.  We’re in incredibly dangerous times, and we need to be aware of why, if we have any hope of surviving. 

[monabela]

@eternal-night-owl! hello! this is your gift in the @aphgenficexchange, ft the Baltic trio as childhood friends, and, vaguely, a high school AU... and I guess this counts as historical but proBABLY not in the way you’d expect. for some reason, I decided this had to be set in the nineties. in 1997, to be exact. the setting in terms of location is a nonexistent Generically European location. but uhh expect a lot of denim, and the macarena. and a title referencing friends, because of course :) I hope you like it!

No One Told You

characters: Lithuania (Tolys), Latvia (Raivis), Estonia (Eduard), mentioned Poland (Feliks) and Finland (Tuomi)

word count: 4436 summary: Before Eduard and Tolys graduate from high school and leave their hometown for brighter places, they and their best friend Raivis decide to take a road trip together. It’s not like they’ll never see each other again, but it feels like the end of an age all the same.

“This is a bad idea.”

Tolys receives an unconcerned grin from Eduard over the roof of his mother’s old Škoda. He pulls a pained face back.

“Don’t worry, Tolys, it’ll be fine. Besides, look at it like this; it can’t be worse than when you and Feliks went hitchhiking.”

He promised not to mention that. Tolys groans. Feliks has refused to come with them this time, and he suspects it’s in part because of the hitchhiking disaster, which he’s been trying to forget happened since the minute they were picked up by a truck transporting geese.

“Geese,” he groans out loud. Eduard just grins more, pushing his glasses up. “And anyway, that’s honestly not much of a reassurance. I don’t think it can get worse.”

“Don’t jinx it,” says Raivis, walking out of the garage of Tolys house holding a duffel bag. “Where can I put this?”

Tolys gestures him over to the car so he can put it in the trunk while Eduard ducks into the passenger seat to start fiddling with his eternal cassette tapes. As outraged as he was to find out that the Škoda doesn’t have a cassette deck, he seems to have circumvented it with his own equipment easily. Raivis, meanwhile, has been wearing his Discman headphones around his neck everywhere, generally without the Discman actually attached, because it doesn’t fit in any of his pockets.

They may be Tolys’s first and best friends, but that doesn’t mean he understands them.

His mother comes out of the house after a minute and fusses over them for a while—especially Eduard, who hits his head on the roof of the car for the umpteenth time when he gets out—until Tolys can convince her that they’ll be fine and they’ll call if anything does happen. Here, Eduard proudly shows off his mobile phone, also for the umpteenth time.

He hits his head again when he gets back into the passenger seat and starts to curse before he realizes Tolys’s mother is still watching from the front doorway. Raivis snorts as he climbs into the backseat.

Well, here they go.

He’s certain they prepared their little road trip as well as they could have, but Tolys still feels a little nervous as he takes his place behind the wheel, buckles his seatbelt, and starts the car. For one, he’s never actually driven so far before—and he will have to do all the driving, because neither of his friends have their license yet—and for another, they’ll have to be back in time for his and Eduard’s official graduation from high school, and he knows the three of them. They’re bound to get distracted on the way.

“Relax, Tolys,” Eduard says. “No need the break the wheel.”

Taking a deep breath, he tries to ease his death grip. He’s looking forward to it, so he’s going to have fun.

They drive past Eduard’s house, where his brother and half-sister are waving a little too enthusiastically in the garden, with Tuomi clutching his chest dramatically like Eduard might never return. Eduard ducks his head and starts fiddling with his cassettes.

As they pass Raivis’s house on the corner of the street, where it’s silent, he presses play, and the Rembrandts start blaring through the car.

“I made a mixtape,” Eduard announces. Tolys grins. Raivis claps along from the backseat. Ironically.

There isn’t a set itinerary, but it’s May and all the campsites along the river are open for business, so as long as the weather stays mild, the three of them have nothing to worry about.

Tolys relaxes quickly after they leave town, sings along to Eduard’s mixtape while Raivis pretends to hate the pop songs but can clearly be heard humming along. He pulls his pointy knees up to his chest, where they poke through the holes in his jeans. Eduard, who is presently wearing a multicolored Nirvana shirt underneath a denim jacket, rolls his eyes fondly and reaches over to poke him.

“No sulking over the Backstreet Boys, Raivis.”

“Maybe I’m sulking because you’re here, Eduard. You ever think about that?”

Tolys can’t help but snort.

They’ve been friends practically their entire lives, the three of them, having grown up on the same street, and although they’re steadily growing more and more into vastly different people, they’ve remained close through all of high school. Tolys would trust Raivis and Eduard with his life, if not necessarily with his possessions. They’re like brothers to him in many ways, and as someone who grew up alone with his mother, that’s more than he could have asked for.

The first stop they have to make is a department store off the highway, because Raivis realizes he forgot to pack his hay fever medicine.

They tour through the store as if that’s their entire road trip. Eduard pokes an electronic thing in the toy section that starts singing at him, and he nearly falls over. Tolys wishes he had a camera with him. Well, he did pack the video camera, promising his mother to be very careful with it, but it’s in the car right now.

Somewhere between the medicine aisle and the clothing department, they lose sight of Eduard. When they find him, he’s holding up two graphic T-shirts and looking contemplative, the TL lights reflecting in his glasses.

“Hey guys, what do—”

“No,” says Raivis. “You don’t even watch MTV, Ed.”

Sticking his tongue out, Eduard obediently puts one of the shirts back on the rack. Tolys liked it, really, even if it said ‘Yo! Raps!’ in bright pink letters. The rest of it was a nice blue color. Nevertheless, he’s pretty sure Raivis is right and Eduard doesn’t like hip-hop. At least, not as much as he likes other kinds of music.

The second shirt has the Jurassic Park logo on it, and Tolys has the feeling he’s seen Eduard wearing one exactly like it before, but alright. He puts his hands deep into the pockets of his own overalls.

“We’re not here for you to be a nerd,” Raivis teases.

“We’re not here for you to be an unsupportive friend either,” Eduard shoots back. Raivis smiles.

They go to pay. In the queue for the cash register, after pulling his wallet out of his jeans pocket by the chain attached to it, Eduard picks up a candy bar.

“Hey,” he says, “we should do something reckless like they always do in movies.”

“Dude, you’re not thinking of stealing a candy bar. That’s a terrible idea,” Raivis says, and Tolys is on the verge of protesting the idea as well when he realizes that he doesn’t always have to be the voice of reason.

“I agree, it’s a bad idea. Raivis should do it.” He relishes the incredulous looks he receives. “Ed and I are adults, but if you get caught, you’ll be tried as a minor.”

“I turn eighteen this year,” Raivis grumbles, while Eduard snorts and puts the candy bar on the conveyor belt.

“Maybe we should stick with something reckless that’s less illegal,” he says, and the cashier gives him a withering look that has him pulling a guilty grimace at Tolys and Raivis.

When they finally make it back to the car, Raivis gives it a considering look and starts to say something, but Tolys forestalls him.

“No, neither of you is driving my mother’s car. That’s definitely illegal.”

“Spoilsport. Can I at least have shotgun?”

They both look at Eduard, who is putting the new supplies in the trunk, ducking a little to avoid hitting his head. It’s so strange. He used to be the shortest of the three of them until they were about thirteen, when he suddenly shot up like a weed and started hitting his head on everything. He hasn’t stopped in the five years since.

“Well,” Tolys says, “if you want to talk reckless, that’s definitely it.”

Raivis grins and shoots into the car at top speed.

“Booyah!” he shouts, and Eduard knocks against the roof when he jumps.

“Oh, no, Raivis,” he whines, but Raivis just grins smugly and stretches his legs out, so Eduard is forced to fold his gangly legs into the Škoda’s backseat, from where he digs out a bag of Bugles and starts throwing them at Raivis. Raivis eats them.

“At least put some music on,” Tolys says, so Raivis hands Eduard his cassette deck, and he carefully selects a new tape.

They arrive at a campsite to the Macarena, which even Raivis has given up on pretending he doesn’t know the dance to.

When Tolys has confirmed that they can stay there that night, Eduard leafs through flyers for local attractions in the reception area, happy to stretch his legs, while Raivis searches through the car for the tent.

“Hey,” he says when Tolys walks over to him. “Look, they’ve got geese here.”

“I hate you.”

Chuckling, Raivis turns back to the car and continues dragging the tent out, the poles rattling in the bag. Tolys hopes the thing is complete; last he heard, Eduard’s sister had taken it to some festival, and the music taste in that family sure is… Something. It’s just another way the three of them are completely different. He pulls a hair elastic out of his pocket, pulls his hair away from his face, and sets to work helping the tent get set up.

By the time Eduard saunters over, holding several flyers that he’s probably going to put in one of his scrapbooks, they’re nearly done with the tent, which thankfully isn’t missing anything and looks clean. The last time all three of them slept in it was several years ago, but it was after Eduard’s growth spurt, so Tolys feels pretty confident that they’ll still fit.

“Looks good,” Eduard says.

“You’re going to be the one to break it up tomorrow,” Tolys tells him. He’s not going to get away with hiding at the reception so easily.

“Alright, fine. Look, there’s a pizza place by the river!” He holds one of the flyers up.

They go to the pizza place.

As always, Tolys finds himself in a heated debate with Eduard about whether pineapple is a good topping for pizzas or not—Eduard claims it’s ‘so eighties’, which apparently makes it a bad thing, like he didn’t grow up during the eighties. Raivis gleefully steals slices of their pizzas during this argument, as always.

It’s going to be weird, not being around them so much anymore from next year on. They’ll be on opposite ends of the country, just about, with Eduard going to his fancy university to learn all kinds of nerdy things about computers and whatnot, Tolys hopefully studying to be a nurse, and Raivis finishing high school. Even after that, he probably won’t come either of their ways again, because Raivis has a curious mind and boundless creativity and will be… Who knows, writing a book?

Maybe Tolys should get a mobile phone as well, to stay in touch.

“What are you thinking about?” Eduard asks as they walk back to the campsite. The sun is setting, glinting off the plastic frame of his glasses and the pale hair that covers his forehead.

“Mobile phones,” he replies distractedly, and so he spends the next twenty minutes listening to Eduard raving about technology, not understanding about half the words he says but happy that he’s so passionate about something.

The tent is a nice temperature to sleep in, but it takes some time before they get to it, because Raivis has commandeered Eduard’s cassettes and insists on playing and replaying Wonderwall when he finds it on a tape, while Eduard protests halfheartedly. Tolys, caught in the middle of it, tries to ignore them and read a book. It’s a good thing there are no other campers nearby—it’s too early in the season for that—or he’s sure someone would have come to complain by the seventh rewind. It’s the first time Raivis has managed to stop the cassette exactly at the beginning of the song, preventing them from having to listen to the ending of a No Doubt song again.

“You have to admit Gwen Stefani is hot,” Eduard says.

“I don’t have to admit anything,” Raivis returns. “Tolys, what do you think?”

“I think you two should shut up, is what I think. Didn’t you want to go to that aquarium a few towns over tomorrow? I’m not driving you there if you wake up after noon.”

“Alright, mom,” he says. There’s a lot of shuffling, Oasis clicks off—“rewind the tape!” Eduard hisses—and then, eventually, they settle down.

“Goodnight, guys,” Eduard says.

Raivis pretends to snore demonstratively, and Tolys smiles at the canvas ceiling.

In the morning—barely still in the morning—Eduard manfully drinks coffee, which Tolys knows he hates, Raivis finds out that he also forgot his hair gel after he takes a shower so he makes a detour to the camp site’s little shop, and Tolys finds a sad, flattened candy bar underneath the air mattresses in the tent.

“Eduard can put that in his scrapbook,” Raivis comments, walking by with his hair parted neatly down the middle again.

That doesn’t sound like a very smart idea. Tolys puts it in his pocket and helps Eduard break down the tent despite his threat from yesterday.

They make it to the aquarium by noon. Raivis, again in his ripped jeans and wearing combat boots that seem too warm for the May weather, is suddenly not so concerned about appearing aloof anymore and takes pictures of fish so enthusiastically that his camera roll is full halfway through, but that’s alright, because Eduard apparently carries new ones around in his deep pockets.

“Come on, Raivis, I’ve known you longer than today.”

To be fair, Tolys also spends a long time staring up at the animals in the underwater tunnel, especially the squid sort of hovering by a rock, staring back at him.

Silently, Raivis sits beside him and draws the thing in a sketchbook Eduard was apparently also carrying around. Tolys bets he also has bandages and painkillers and pens rattling around in those pockets. Eduard is like that.

“Man,” says the boy in question, over their heads, “that thing is giving me the wiggins. Oh, hey, that’s a good drawing, it’s just as creepy.”

“Thanks,” Raivis says. He catches Tolys’s eye and shrugs, obviously amused.

“Are you guys hungry? I’m really hungry.”

“Yeah.” Raivis closes the sketchbook and looks up at Eduard. “Fish, I think?”

Fish, of course. But first, Tolys buys a mood ring shaped like a dolphin from the aquarium’s gift shop and watches it indicate that he’s… Somewhere between angry and sad, he thinks. Oh well.

“They don’t even have dolphins,” Eduard says, inspecting the ring. “Oh, this is like those shirts we all wore when we were like twelve. You know, the ones that changed color?”

“You were the only one who wore those, Ed,” Raivis replies. He’s rolled the sleeves of his plaid shirt up to his elbows, but looks quite warm all the same. From experience, Tolys knows he won’t take the shirt off, so he leaves it alone.

After they eat fish, they realize they don’t have a place to spend the night yet, and Tolys had enough of camping out in the wild with Feliks last year, so they pile back into the Škoda and drive around for a while looking for a campsite. He refuses to drive back to where they came from—because then what’s the point of a road trip?—and eventually, they end up quite a lot further up the river, where the landscape already starts to get more hilly as it leads up to the mountains in the north.

“We should go skiing sometime,” Eduard says, looking out over the campsite they choose as if he can see the mountains. It’s a beautiful spot, on the banks of a brook leading to the river, the grass blindingly green in the evening sun. Raivis huffs.

“You know we can’t afford that, Ed.”

He smiles softly. “Maybe not now.”

“Can you guys help me with this tent?” Tolys shouts.

The next day, with Eduard somehow having woken up at the crack of dawn and freaking Tolys and Raivis out by being unfindable for a good two hours, Raivis really gets stuck on the idea of doing something reckless.

“I should get a piercing,” he says, and Tolys says, “No, you shouldn’t,” and Eduard says, “Oh, I kinda want a tongue piercing.”

“You what?” Tolys swivels his head around to stare at him from where he’s eating the bread rolls his friend was buying at the local bakery while he was still asleep.

“Yeah.” He grins, showing teeth. “Tuomi got a tattoo, you know, when he turned eighteen.”

“Yes, but Tuomi is…” He waves his hand around, throwing crumbs everywhere on the grass. Something catches his eye, and he thrusts his hand in his friends’ direction. “Look, the ring says it’s a bad idea. I’m upset.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess we have to listen to what your ring says. Not!”

“Well, I’m not driving you there.”

After a fight for the car keys when both Raivis and Eduard insist they’ll drive themselves, thank you very much—which ends with Tolys shoving the keys into his overalls—the two of them grumpily decide to walk into town, leaving Tolys to clean up the tent. He hopes they don’t actually get holes poked into themselves, but you never know with them. They’re somehow always bringing out the most recalcitrant side of each other, egging each other on. No one ever believes Tolys when he tells them this, because everyone knows Raivis and Eduard as quiet, polite guys.

They are, but they’re also teenage boys and trying to be cool in their own ways.

This is nice, too. Quiet. No Spice Girls or No Doubt blaring. Just the water and the birds.

Tolys’s mood ring tells him he’s still upset.

What a great buy.

Raivis comes back a few hours later without a piercing but with his hair dyed black. It’s still styled the same way, but now paints a stark contrast with his light eyebrows, and there are smudges of dye all along his hairline and on his ears.

“Oh, this is way worse.” Tolys pushes his hands through his own shoulder-length hair.

“No, it’s not; your ring says you’re happy.”

“My ring says you’re an idiot, is what is says.”

Raivis just grins. “Wait till you see Ed.”

Tolys groans. They should have done this last year, before he and Eduard turned eighteen, because he swears being a legal adult has made his friend more childish somehow.

“Come on, Tolys,” Raivis says, softer. “You don’t always have to be the responsible one. Everybody already knows you’re a great guy, including us. We’re not going to stop thinking that if you do something dumb every once in a while.”

Smiling slightly, Tolys leans against the hood of the car. He’s going to miss Raivis. Underneath all the plaid and combat boots and black hair, he’s the most sensitive one out of the three of them, and also the one who’s been through the most trouble in his life. He’s the silent little boy that brought them together in the first place, alone on his front stoop and looking decidedly lost there.

“Was the mood ring not dumb enough?”

Raivis laughs, sits on the hood next to him. The smell of hair dye wafts over.

“Behold!” comes Eduard’s voice from up the slope. Tolys closes his eyes for a second, bracing himself. “Does anyone have some ice water?”

Oh, god.

“Stop sticking your tongue out, Ed,” Tolys says when they finally get on the road again, having recovered a little from the fact that he actually went and got his tongue pierced. “People are going to think you’re being rude to them.”

From the passenger seat, Eduard sticks his tongue out at him.

“It feels weird.”

“I could’ve predicted that.”

“Are we there yet?” Raivis asks from behind him, mock-whiny.

“The ring says no,” Eduard replies. They don’t even know where they’re going other than further north.

Tolys snorts. “The ring says you’re both idiots and I don’t know why you’re my friends.”

That earns him a chorus of booing and some Bugles thrown at his head from where they were lying on the floor under the passenger seat.

They stop at a gas station, because Eduard is hungry again and because the car needs gas, and find a flyer advertising a nearby hiking trail, which they decide to take a look at. It’s good weather for hiking, and at least Raivis’s boots are suitable for it.

The area is beautiful, too, and Raivis takes lots of pictures again. Tolys hauls the video camera up into the hills, checks that there’s tape in it at Eduard’s insistence—“we don’t have any footage of my sister’s band because we forgot once”—and captures some of the hike, including the view over a brook they find as Eduard splashes through it with his Converses in hand, getting even his Crystal Pepsi shirt wet but grinning, and himself and Raivis belting out Barbie Girl at top volume.

Tolys is Barbie, because he has long hair, apparently.

“And a mood ring,” Eduard adds sagely.

And a mood ring. Tolys suspects that’s going to be what he’ll always remember of this trip. Eduard’s piercing, Raivis’s dye job, and his mood ring.

He loves it.

That night, Tolys wakes up when it’s still dark outside, and blinks blearily at his nearly invisible surroundings.

Raivis is gone.

There is shuffling outside, the stones on the path leading up to their new campsite scrunching. Eduard breathes deeply and steadily on the other side of Raivis’s mattress.

After a minute, Tolys goes outside, wrapping his sleeping bag around his shoulder to ward off the chill of the night. It’s not really summer yet.

“Hey,” Raivis says from where he’s sitting on the hood of the Škoda, knees pulled up to his chest and bare feet against the yellow paint. His hair looks like an ink stain in the darkness.

“Hey. Be careful with that car, hm?” Tolys sits next to him. “It’s almost an antique.”

Raivis lets out a puff of air. “So are you.”

“Don’t be rude to senior citizens, young man.” He nudges his shoulder against Raivis’s. “What’s up?”

For a while, it’s silent, and the two of them just look out over the hills, at the shadows of the mountains in the distance and the vast garden of stars overhead, brighter here than even in their small town. Eduard snorts in the tent.

“Just a dream,” Raivis eventually says. “Could’ve been worse.”

Tolys hums. “It’s gotten better, hasn’t it? The past years?”

“Yeah, definitely.”  A pause. “I’m going to miss you. You and Eduard.”

He glances at Raivis, who’s now tilting his head back and looking at the sky, his skin very pale in contrast with his newly dark hair. He’s wearing an overlarge sweater Eduard got him for his birthday ages ago—his fourteenth, maybe?—that has Mariah Carey’s face on it. For some reason. Tolys can’t even see it; he knows it’s there.

“I’m going to miss you two as well. It’ll be weird.” He sighs, drags his fingers through the dust on the car. “You guys are like brothers to me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me too. I mean, I’ve got other friends, but it’s…”

“It’s different.”

The zipper of the tent.

“What’s going on here?” Eduard asks, sounding extra bleary because of his thick tongue. Out of the corner of his eye, Tolys sees Raivis smile as his friend lies back, resting his head against the windshield, which is probably a bad idea, but it doesn’t matter all of a sudden.

“A party,” he tells Eduard, “for cool people.”

“Guess you should come back inside, then.”

Raivis laughs, sounding carefree.

On his way back into the tent, grumbling about the cold, Eduard trips over a guy-line, and Tolys starts laughing as well. He lies down on the hood of the Škoda and looks at the stars.

They try to prank call Eduard’s brother from a payphone the next day, but they run out of money to throw into the thing halfway through, and anyway Eduard keeps giggling in the background, so he probably didn’t fall for it.

A while later, when his mobile phone rings, Eduard pulls a face at it and doesn’t pick up.

“Tolys’s ring says you’re a coward,” Raivis says, sounding dead serious.

“Tolys’s ring should know that Tuomi is kind of scary when he wants to be.”

That’s true.

Somehow, Eduard still hasn’t run out of mixtapes. Tolys’s favorite is the one he’s titled ‘That’s So Pizza Hawaii’, which apparently refers to songs from their childhood, and also the Rembrandts, who are on every single cassette. When asked why, Eduard just grins.

“Is it ‘cause we’re friends?” Raivis asks from the backseat, grabbing Eduard’s baseball cap off his head.

“I don’t know, what does the ring say? Give that back.”

“The ring is withholding comment,” Tolys tells them. And, “Ed, don’t— Keep your seatbelt on. Come on, I’m not your mother.”

Eduard sticks his tongue out again. It’s probably good Tolys isn’t his mother, because the poor woman is going to freak when she sees that piercing.

They barely make it back in time for the official graduation, in the end, going to their high school without stopping by any of their houses first, so Eduard is wearing an Aerosmith shirt and baggy jeans with one leg rolled up and Tolys had to borrow Raivis’s Mariah Carey sweater because someone spilled their energy drink on his own clothes—thanks, Raivis.

As Tolys drives through the town, Eduard fumbles with his cassettes until he finds the last one, forwards through another round of I’ll Be There For You, and grins when the second song starts playing, obviously proud that he captured no talking from the radio show host.

“So deep,” Raivis says, smiling, and he doesn’t even pretend he doesn’t know how it goes as they pull up to their high school.

“Mmmbop!” Eduard shouts.

“Du ba dop, ba du bop,” Tolys and Raivis chorus, and then all three of them are singing through laughter, startling several passersby.

“Du ba dop, ba du bop, du ba dop, ba du, yeah!”

They’ll never forget them in this town.