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forkanna · 6 months ago

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Veronica Lodge decided that Operation: Take Down Cheryl Blossom had a pretty obvious first step: gathering intel. Over the next several days, Veronica took it upon herself to pump the rumor mill for any and all information she could gather. Even though she had barely heard this Cheryl say two words, she already didn't trust her, and knew that their best course of action was for her and Betty to oust her from their lives ASAP.

Apparently, Betty couldn't bring herself to be quite so underhanded, but she did jot down anything she overheard from students in the halls. Veronica wished she was a little more willing to get her hands dirty, but then again, her scruples were a big part of her admiration for the erudite blonde. Betty also dropped by the administration offices to see if she might learn anything from her permanent file - and given that she was on good terms with Miss Phlips, the principal's secretary, she didn't entirely fail. Though she couldn't look at the file directly, she did at least confirm one fact.

"So she is from Pembrooke," Veronica hissed thoughtfully as she drummed her fingertips on the tabletop of their booth at Pop Tate's. "I knew those skimpy shorts were from Neiman Marcus or somewhere even more pricey - and not some trashy bargain bin store!"

"Yeah, like we needed to be able to see every inch of what we don't have to work with. I mean, at least I don't; you can give her a run for her money."

Ronnie set her water glass down a little more heavily than she meant to. "What? Come on, Betty - you may be no… well, me, but you're the whole package! Don't let that voluptuous vixen get you down!"

"Well, I am down," her best friend lamented, sagging lower in her seat. The compliment from Ron helped, but she was too down from having to fight yet another bombshell for her intended. "You weren't here the past couple of weeks, Ronnie - you didn't see how he lost his carrot top around her! I'm just glad they only bumped into each other a couple of times, or I might have had to commit Harry Caray before you made it back."

"That's 'harakiri', you know."

They both turned around to see a shorter brunette from the booth behind Veronica doing the same, a small, mischievous smile already on her lips. Veronica sneered and said, "Hey, don't you know it's rude to eavesdrop on someone else's conversation?"

"But it's my job. And Harry Caray was a sports announcer, not a form of ritual suicide." She offered her hand over the top of the booth back. "Tomoko Yoshida, journalist for the Blue And Gold."

"We know who you are, Tomoko," Betty offered - which was lucky, because Veronica had been about to say that she had no idea who this girl was. Though she didn't spend a lot of time with the staff of the school paper, other than Betty and Nancy - and she only saw them outside of the journalism room. "I've submitted a few editorials, remember?"

"Of course I remember. I'm just used to the Fab Five forgetting who us peons are."

Well, Veronica had to bite. "Fab Five…?"

"You two, plus Archie, Reggie, and Jughead. The Archies - though I always thought that was a little vain of him to name the entire band after himself. I know he sings lead, but it's kind of-"

"Okay, alright," Veronica sighed impatiently. "So what it is you want, Kokomo, besides to horn in on a private discussion of current events?"

"Cheryl," Tomoko said with a slight grimace as she got up, bringing her beverage and plate of fries with her, and plopped down next to Betty - probably because she had been the less hostile of the two. Veronica caught a whiff of sakura perfume that was definitely of higher caliber than the cheap stuff one could find at the mall; she approved. "Transferring to Riverdale isn't even a lateral move; it's a downgrade."

"Exactly what I've been thinking," Veronica agreed immediately. "Like, if she's from Pembrooke, what is she doing here?"

"If you're from Pembrooke, what are you doing here?" Tomoko asked with a raised eyebrow. Veronica only had time to open her mouth before she laughed and said, "Kidding. You had a brush with juvenile delinquency, your parents decided to humble you. Greased Superintendent Hassle's palm so the districting wouldn't pose a problem."

"The what-ing?!" she demanded.

"How the school board and city zoning decide which students have to go to what school," Betty offered, actually keeping up with this smug chatterbox. Veronica didn't like admitting how lost she was. "Based on where Lodge Manor is, I think… you technically were supposed to have been going to Pembrooke if you could afford it, or… Southside High."

Tomoko nodded as she put her drink back down. "At the very least, it would have been uncertain. No way a rich control freak like Hiram Lodge would let you achieve secondary education in a rough neighborhood like Southside - not even to teach you a lesson. He wanted you to grow up, not get shanked."

"Do you have to insult Daddy like that?" she shot at her.

"Do you have to call him 'Daddy' at your age?" she shot back with a grimace. "Ew."

"I don't have to sit here and take this!"

"I'm just being honest. And I think not enough people are honest with you, Veronica."

"Anyway," Betty cut across both of them, eyes meaningfully wide. "What do you know about Cheryl? Probably more than us."

"Actually… no. And that's intriguing - because the information should be out there, but it isn't. In fact, I can't find out anything about Cheryl Blossom from before this past year, when she was studying abroad in Paris."

The table fell silent for a few seconds. Veronica adjusted a shoulder strap of her inadequate garment before saying, "Alright, that… that is definitely new information. Where the hell has she been if that's all that's out there?"

"Maybe her transcripts were lost overseas," Betty suggested.

"Even if they were, Pembrooke should have something on file. They don't." Tomoko looked between them, her dark eyes sparkling with excitement. "How could she just appear from nowhere like that? And what kind of money would her parents have to have paid to make that happen? I know they're richer than the Lodges, but still-"

"Hey, watch yourself," Veronica fired up, clenching her fists on the table-top. "That is a viciously untrue rumor - in fact, Daddy bought up most of the Blossom stock when it crashed! He practically owns Clifford Blossom and his entire tech empire now!"

Tomoko smirked. "There's that derision toward the nouveau riche. I was wondering when it would come up."

"Do you want to work with us on this, or are you trying to make enemies today?!"

"I can't do both?" When Veronica literally stood up, she laughed and held up both hands, palms outward. "Kidding! Well, kind of. It's a reporter's job to push buttons, throw people off their game so they slip up and divulge more than they intended. Don't hate the player, hate the game."

"And we do want your help," Betty attempted to soothe them both as Ronnie finally sat back down, even if she was technically talking to Tomoko. "More than anything, we want to make sure Archie isn't being taken for a ride by some criminal."

"Or horning in on your territory, right?" Betty only blushed, but the reporter nodded. "I can sympathize. A love triangle is hard enough without turning it into a… love rhombus. Besides, even though the answer is probably going to be a lot more boring and mundane than we hope, I still plan on doing my due diligence and finding out if Cheryl's up to something shady."

The three of them nodded in agreement, as if this were the beginning of a war council. Which, in the relative terms of high school drama, it sort of was.

~ o ~

Before their new associate took off, they all exchanged numbers to make it easier to stay in contact. Veronica and her best friend finished up their food and parted ways, since Betty was going to do her usual hanging around by the football field to see if Archie would talk to her. It reeked of desperation - or so Veronica had decided after doing so herself a few times, and noticing she wasn't the only one trying to catch his eye.

However, as she slammed the door of her expensive sports car and flipped the switch to put the top back, a voice from the passenger seat said, "She doesn't know, does she?"

"AHHH!"

Tomoko blinked a few times before laughing, a little strained from the way Veronica had her shirt bunched around her throat now. "Wow, are we going straight to second base? Pretty bold, Lodge."

"Are we g-" She instantly released Tomoko, now that such an insinuation was out there. "How did you even get in here?!"

"You don't lock your doors. By the way, I'm homoromantic but asexual, so even if you were trying to feel me up you wouldn't get anywhere. Not that I was seriously accusing you of that; just a little humor to diffuse a potentially violent situation."

Distinctly flustered by this entire encounter, Veronica started up her car just to give herself something to focus her attention on. "Well, can you get your asexual ass out of my car?"

"You didn't answer my question."

"I don't even know what you're talking about, so how am I supposed to answer it?"

"You do." Neither of them spoke for a moment as the classic sounds of Paul Revere & The Raiders drifted out of the stereo system. "All I have to do is say the word 'Blaine' and you won't be able to deny-"

"Don't." She swallowed hard, white-knuckling on the steering wheel. "What do you want from me? Money? Favors for favors? What is this?"

Tomoko frowned at her. "Wow, I certainly must make a terrible impression. All I wanted to know was why you haven't told a friend as close as Betty why you're really going to Riverdale High instead of Pembrooke Academy."

"It's none of her business. And none of yours, either, you know; I can't help it if you're a Nosey Parker."

"Okay, I have to ask - who talks like that? Why do all of you guys talk like that? It's pretty weird." But instead of waiting for an answer, she continued, "If we keep digging into the Blossoms, it might become difficult to keep your own skeletons in your closet. That's not a threat; I'm just making a point. Don't you think it would be a lot less embarrassing coming from you instead of the school newspaper?"

This time, Veronica turned and looked at the diminutive journalist as if seeing her for the first time. "Wait… you're not about to air all my dirty laundry in front of the whole school? Isn't that kind of your thing?"

"It is when it can do some good. I'm not a gossip columnist, Veronica; I have some journalistic integrity."

"Oh." She mentally chewed on that for a moment before looking over at her again. "But you won't hide those details for my sake if it turns out to be part of your juicy story about Cheryl."

"Look at you, catching on," she responded with a slight smirk. "But as a friend, even if we barely know each other, I wanted to offer you fair warning instead of letting you get blindsided. Clearly, I already know enough of the story that I'm not trying to pump you for the rest. Just… something for you to think about in terms of your friendships."

"Right… well, I don't know why you think you owe me anything, since like you just said, you don't know me that well."

"Oh, I know you pretty well. You just don't know me . But that's no big deal."

"Maybe we can get to know each other a little better while working on cracking this case. I have a feeling having an acquaintance who works on the school paper could come in handy."

"And maybe having a wealthy benefactor could come in handy in the future. Not that I need one now," she quickly reassured her.

"Maybe, maybe. I guess we'll find out." The two of them shook hands firmly - and she noticed Tomoko's definitely had some slight calluses on the fingertips, probably from excessive typing, but they were otherwise pretty soft.

"Excellent. Take care, Veronica; we'll speak again soon."

Once Tomoko had exited the car and was heading off toward her own - a beat up old Corolla that looked like it was going to fall apart at a moment's notice - Veronica backed her own out of Pop Tate's parking lot. She might as well head home, take some time to herself to relax and put all this craziness out of her mind. She was fired up, but they had done just about all they could do today; might as well wait for their new ally to come through.

"I can't believe this is coming back to haunt me," she muttered to herself as she steered through the streets of the quaint little burg. "I've worked so hard to establish my reputation all on my own, to quash all those rumors… how dare a Blossom show up at Riverdale High! After all this time! What have I done to deserve this?"

The answer was, quite a lot. In her heart of hearts, she knew that she hadn't been the best friend she could be - even if she was a work in progress. Of course she had been furious at having to slum it at the local public high school instead of finishing out her secondary education at the prestigious academy, continuing the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. But in hindsight, it had done her a world of good to have to interact with normal people. "Townies". Even though she had been blissfully unaware of how spoiled she was, and in some ways probably continued to be, now she had slowly begun to gain perspective. Even if she still tended to treat her new friends as lesser, she was getting better and better about that as the months turned into years.

And now, that was all going away. The gang finding out about the kinds of things she used to get up to at Pembrooke probably wouldn't make them automatically dump her as a friend, but perhaps that combined with the knowledge that she had kept it from them…

"Tomoko's right," she whispered, feeling her heart sinking even further. "At the very least, I should probably tell Betty."

That was another painful memory for her now. Yes, Betty was dirt poor and seemed to wear nothing but secondhand clothing and bargain bin rejects, but even though she tried not to think about it or admit it to anyone else, she was even more deeply ashamed of how she had treated the blonde when she first arrived at her new school. Like she was less than human. Especially…

Especially when time had shown her just how incredible Betty Cooper really was. She would never admit it to another living soul, but she would have given anything to be more like her. And Betty could never find that out.

Veronica blinked in surprise when she realized she was pulling into a space at the local shopping mall. Hadn't she been going home? Of course, now that she was here…

"Maybe a little retail therapy will help," she purred as she grabbed her purse. "After all, Daddy's platinum card could probably use some exercise…"

#unattainable #betty & veronica #forkanna writes #archie fanfiction #jess the writer

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radiosandrecordings · 4 years ago

Audio

'Cause here’s the thing To know how it ends And still begin to sing it again As if it might turn out this time

Transcript under the cut

(Lyrics from Road to Hell (Reprise) Hadestown are layered over audio from TMA 200. The first segment is:)

[HERMES]

A'ight It’s an old song It's an old tale from way back when It's an old song (spoken) And that is how it ends (sung)That’s how it goes

Don't ask why, brother, don't ask how He could have come so close The song was written long ago (spoken) And that is how it goes

(sung) It's a sad song It's a sad tale (spoken) It's a tragedy (sung) It's a sad song (spoken) But we sing it anyway

'Cause here’s the thing To know how it ends And still begin to sing it again As if it might turn out this time I learned that from a friend of mine

Overlaid over this is the TMA dialogue:

ARCHIVIST: [Gasping] I… I can’t. Martin, I’m part of this place.

[STATIC SCREECH AND HE WINCES AUDIBLY]

MARTIN: Goddamn it, John!

ARCHIVIST: [Enduring] Aaaaaaargh! I can… withstand it. I just need to hold... on...

[EXPLOSION RESOUNDS]

MARTIN: [Gritted teeth] Come on, John! Come on!

[THE ARCHIVIST’S VOICE DISTORTS AS BUILDING AND REALITY START CRACKING, WITH STATIC SCREECHING AND SQUEALING THROUGHOUT]

ARCHIVIST: [Struggling] No! I can feel the pull… The web, the tapes, it wants— No! I won’t let it!

MARTIN: For god’s sake, John, move!

ARCHIVIST: I can’t! Martin get out of here! What’s going to be left of me after this, you can’t see that.

MARTIN: No!

ARCHIVIST: I can’t protect you from this. Go!

MARTIN: I’m not leaving you trapped here killing the world while I watch!

ARCHIVIST: If you stay, you’ll die!

MARTIN: Then I’ll die!

ARCHIVIST: No!

[CRUMBLING STONE AND MARTIN CRIES OUT AS IF STRUCK BY SOMETHING, STARTS SOBBING]

ARCHIVIST: Martin please! I can’t lose you. Not like this…

MARTIN: Tough! Okay? Where you go, I go!

ARCHIVIST: That’s the deal...

[PANOPTICON CONTINUES TO COLLAPSE AS A SHARP STATIC WHINE RINGS OUT]

Okay.

MARTIN: What?

ARCHIVIST: Do it! The knife’s just there. Let them go.

MARTIN: [Tearful] I’m not going to kill you!

ARCHIVIST: Cut the tether. Send them away. Maybe we both die. Probably. But maybe not. Maybe, maybe everything works out, and we end up somewhere else.

MARTIN: Together?

ARCHIVIST: One way or another. Together.

[METALLIC CLINK]

MARTIN: I don’t think I can...

ARCHIVIST: It has to be you. The Eye won’t let me do it.

MARTIN: [Sobbing] Are you sure about this?

ARCHIVIST: No. But I love you.

MARTIN: I love you too.

[KISS]

[MARTIN STABS DEEPLY; THERE IS A SINGLE GASP]

[PAINED SOB]

[DISTORTED SCREECH, WITH SOUND LIKE TAPE RAPIDLY UNSPOOLING AMIDST A RISING CRESCENDO OF STATIC]

(After this, there is a cut to an instrumental version of Road to Hell Reprise, in which audio from episode 1 of TMA comes in.)

[CLICK]

ARCHIVIST Test… Test… Test… 1, 2, 3… Right.

[COUGH]

My name is Jonathan Sims. I work for the Magnus Institute, London, an organisation dedicated to academic research into the esoteric and the paranormal. The head of the Institute, Mr. Elias Bouchard, has employed me to replace the previous Head Archivist, one Gertrude Robinson, who has recently passed away.

I have been working as a researcher at the Institute for four years now and am familiar with most of our more significant contracts and projects. Most reach dead ends, predictably enough, as incidents of the supernatural, such as they are – and I always emphasise there are very few genuine cases – tend to resist easy conclusions. When an investigation has gone as far as it can, it is transferred to the Archives.

(Here the Hadestown audio once again comes in, and continues over Jon’s dialogue, which fades out as he continues talking as the song ends)

ARCHIVIST: Now, the Institute was founded in 1818, which means that the Archive contains almost 200 years of case files at this point. Combine that with the fact that most of the Institute prefers the ivory tower of pure academia to the complicated work of dealing with statements or recent experiences and you have the recipe for an impeccably organised library and an absolute mess of an archive. This isn’t necessarily a problem – modern filing and indexing systems are a real wonder, and all it would need is a half-decent archivist to keep it in order. Gertrude Robinson was apparently not that archivist.

From where I am sitting, I can see thousands of files. Many spread loosely around the place, others crushed into unmarked boxes. A few have dates on them or helpful labels such as 86-91 G/H. Not only that, but most of these appear to be handwritten or produced on a typewriter with no accompanying digital or audio versions of any sort. In fact, I believe the first computer to ever enter this room is the laptop that I brought in today. More importantly, it seems as though little of the actual investigations have been stored in the Archives, so the only thing in most of the files are the statements themselves.

It is going to take me a long, long time to organise this mess.

[HERMES] Everybody looked and everybody saw That spring had come again With a love song

[PERSEPHONE] With a love song [COMPANY] With a love song [HERMES] With a tale of a love from long ago [HERMES] It's a sad song [COMPANY] It’s a sad song [PERSEPHONE] It's a sad song

[HERMES] But we keep singin' even so It's an old song [EURYDICE] It’s an old song [ORPHEUS] It's an old song [COMPANY] It's an old song [HERMES] It's an old tale from way back when And we're gonna sing it again and again We're gonna sing, we're gonna sing [ALL] It's a love song It's a tale of a love from long again It's a sad song We keep singing even so It's an old song It's an old tale from way back when And we're gonna sing it again and again [HERMES] We're gonna sing it again

#My Post #My Audio #So that transcript is a bit of a mess but it's hard to describe layering I hope it's comprehensible #and sorry the Hadestown audio is weird #needed to get around the copyright detector thing #which. i know im big on copyright but it's broadway and i ain't earning money here so #The Magnus Archives #Jonmartin #Jonathan Sims #Martin Blackwood #The Magnus Archives Spoilers

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elitegymnastics · 4 years ago

Photo

Q: What is this?

A: It’s a flyer for a virtual fundraiser on June 4th that Elite Gymnastics is playing. You can access the show at quietyear.com

Q: Hasn’t Elite Gymnastics been inactive for like, ten years?

A: Yes. This is the first Elite Gymnastics performance of any kind since November 30th 2012, at the Horn Gallery at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Q: Why did Elite Gymnastics stop playing shows?

A: Elite Gymnastics started out as me (Jaime) and a bunch of my friends agreeing to help me play my songs live back in 2009. I made a lot of weird demos in GarageBand and my friend Dominique Davis from the band Dearling Physique got tired of watching me sit on them. So, he booked me to play at a show he was curating as part of a small local music and arts festival called Clapperclaw. For several months that’s mainly what EG was. At some point the focus shifted to making recordings rather than playing shows, to participate in the emergent culture of new music distributed via MP3 file-sharing. The lineup winnowed to just me and Josh Clancy, who began creating digital EPs that we posted on this Tumblr page as ZIP files full of MP3s accompanied by a PDF of artwork. This is the incarnation of the group that most people are familiar with.

This was before Patreon existed. If Bandcamp was around, we’d never heard of it. Though MP3 file-sharing culture and file transfer sites like MediaFire and MegaUpload allowed anyone to distribute music freely across the world via the internet, it was still pretty difficult to get people to pay you for it. I think it was for this reason that a lot of internet music back then featured a lot of sampling. A lot of artists’ first forays into the world of DAWs and production took the form of mash-ups, bootleg remixes, and DJ mixes. Artists like Animal Collective, MIA, Kanye West, and Daft Punk for whom sampling was a pillar of their creative process were extremely influential. Elite Gymnastics was no exception - the first song of ours to gain traction online was “Is This On Me?” which made no attempt to hide the fact that it heavily sampled Faye Wong’s “Eyes On Me.” The fact that it was so difficult to make money off MP3s pushed people to make different creative decisions than they would have otherwise. It was sort of a free-for-all.

Eventually, all of this started to change. The major labels started getting a lot more aggressive about trying to destroy MP3 file-sharing culture. Platforms like MegaUpload were raided and taken offline. The replacements that sprung up to replace them were increasingly infested with ads and malware. Corporate platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud adopted Content ID filters to prevent the proliferation of copyrighted music there. Blogs and private torrent trackers being taken down meant thousands of hours of labor were wiped out in an instant. Some of the best archives of the history of recorded music ever created were destroyed without hesitation. Even the most devoted participants lost the will to keep repairing and re-making the stuff that cops and record companies kept obliterating.

Josh and I both dreamed of being able to make a living as musicians. We still do. Back then, we were willing to accept a lot of changes in order to make that possible, which seemed necessary. A lot of the stuff that we were great at just didn’t make any money. Once, we were asked to do a remix of a song called “Sa Sa Samoa” by the band Korallreven. I did the remix by myself, which was normal for us, and Josh was so inspired by it that he spent a week working non-stop to create a video for it. People loved it - the day the video dropped, Pitchfork designated the song as a “Best New Track” and New York Magazine wrote about it in their “Approval Matrix.” The video led to a ton of exposure, but from a financial perspective, it just did not make sense to put that much effort into promoting a remix of someone else’s song. The stuff we were personally excited by just seemed to have less and less to do with what actually makes money.

A lot of internet bands during this era began to palpably shapeshift in an effort to succeed in music as a career. Artists who’d first attracted notice for sample-based bangers they made on a laptop started posing with vintage hardware in their press photos and trading in their laptops for live bands and recording studios. It became harder to distribute DJ mixes or mash-ups that contained copyrighted music in them. Influential bloggers either closed up shop or were absorbed into the traditional music industry in some way. Feeds that once touted bizarre songs by laptop-toting weirdos with no industry connections started to become populated mostly by artists with labels and publicists. The bottom rungs of festival lineups started to consist mostly of new major label signings who have lots of money to spend on stage production but not much in the way of grassroots fan enthusiasm or media buzz.

Internet music and what people tend to refer to as “indie music” split off into two separate streams. Today, there’s a pretty intense firewall between internet culture and whatever you want to call the culture of vinyl records, mid-sized indie labels with publicists, and positive reviews from the few remaining websites that still pay people to write about music. I call it “publicist indie,” “lifestyle techno,” or “prestige electronica” depending on whether or not the music features guitars and/or vocals. The recent online kerfuffle about NFTs really emphasized this split. The worlds of digital illustration and game development campaigned aggressively against mass adoption of cryptocurrency - if you saw any Medium posts explaining crypto’s environmental issues, chances are they were written by someone from those fields. Every new announcement by an artist that they had minted an NFT was met with a swift and vocal backlash from fans. Though I’ve never really been much of an Aphex Twin fan, it was still pretty startling to look at the replies under his NFT announcement tweet and see hundreds of furious people announcing that he was now dead to them. That’s an artist who has seemed more or less unimpeachable for most of my life up until this point! All of that seemed to change in an instant.

There is a massive disconnect between the insular world of the industry establishment and the cutting edge of online counterculture. We saw this again a couple of weeks ago with the online response to the crisis in Gaza. We saw passionate advocacy for Palestinians from games journalists and developers much more often than we saw it from musicians. This is a very serious problem for music! I do not believe it is possible to please both sides - that is to say, I do not believe it is possible to be part of internet counterculture and the industry establishment simultaneously. The music industry is too conservative, too compromised, too corrupt. If it weren’t for the ocean of valuable copyrights that labels are sitting on, most of them would be bankrupt within a year. If the industry was forced to live or die based on how they handle what’s happening right now in the present, it would most assuredly die. The only people who don’t realize this are those who are being paid to stay ignorant.

Josh and I did not know this back then. From where we were standing, it looked like internet culture and established media industries were on track to converge. A career in the arts seemed genuinely, tantalizingly possible, right up until the moment that it no longer did.

In my case, I had really been struggling up until that point. My life had been this ongoing sequence of evictions and hospitalizations, and it seemed to be getting worse, not better. I donated plasma twice a week to pay for groceries and while I was sitting there with a giant needle stuck in my left arm for an hour I would see my picture in The Fader or my songs being recommended by one of the Kings of Leon on Twitter or whatever. Music seemed like the only thing the world thought I was any good at. It felt like my only chance at a peaceful, happy life was somewhere out there in a world I could only perceive through a laptop screen.

Gender, for me, was a big factor in all of this. The more invested in the craft of songwriting I became, the harder it was to repress or ignore my gender stuff. At that time I’m not sure I even knew what the word “transgender” meant - I just knew that when I showed up at a venue wearing a skirt, no one would talk to me or look me in the eye, and that reading about people like Anohni or Terre Thaemlitz or on the internet made me feel like if I could get out of Minneapolis maybe I could find a place where people would accept me. The internet was like, a pretty toxic place for someone in my position. When I tried to find people to talk to about what I was feeling, nobody tried to tell me to read Judith Butler or ask me what pronouns I preferred. The internet was just like, overrun with predators who just wanted to fetishize me and exploit me. Music seemed like the only way I’d ever have an actual life as myself. I was desperate for that. I was well and truly desperate.

Between all the big changes that were happening to us individually and the music industry moving farther and farther away of the anarchic free-for-all of MP3 file-sharing culture, the strain on us just got to be too much. We stopped trusting each other. We became the unstoppable force and the immovable object, crashing haphazardly against one another’s resolve in a dazzling display of youthful futility. Our partnership ended, and after finishing out the remaining live shows on the calendar by myself, I retired the name “Elite Gymnastics” and started making music on my own under other names. That was that.

Q: Why is Elite Gymnastics coming back now, then?

A: Over the years, Josh and I eventually started talking again. Though there was a lot we did agree on, and potential future projects were discussed, nothing truly felt right. We haven’t been in the same room since Summer 2012, and we’ve both changed a lot since then. We both have other projects and we’ve both developed other ways of working since we stopped working together. It’s a pretty big commitment to put all of that aside in order to join your fortunes together with someone you haven’t seen in a decade.

Recently, Josh decided to leave Elite Gymnastics. His reasons are his own, and I was very surprised by his decision, but after having had time to adjust, I’m really grateful to him. I had kept these songs at a distance for many years, because it seemed foolish to allow myself to get too attached to songs I didn’t feel like I was allowed to think of as mine, if that makes any sense. The songs felt like casualties of a conflict that I had to bury in the ground and try to forget about. Being able to embrace them again felt like re-growing a severed limb or having a loved one come back to life, almost. Feeling like it was safe to love these songs again made me feel whole in a way I didn’t expect to. I became really excited by the prospect of revisiting them, so that’s what I decided to do.

Q: Does this mean you’re going to put RUIN back on Spotify?

A: No. Taking the record off Spotify was the right thing to do. That record was only ever intended to exist during the era of MP3 piracy. I never envisioned a world where the music industry would be so aggressive about policing the way that copyrighted music is allowed to exist online. If we hadn’t opted to take the record down when we did, someone would inevitably have forced us to. If you want to hear those specific recordings again, you’re going to have to do it the way we originally intended: by downloading MP3 files from the internet. Try SoulSeek.

Q: What’s next for Elite Gymnastics, then?

A: Here’s the situation currently. There is no Elite Gymnastics music available to stream or purchase in an official capacity anywhere on the internet. It wouldn’t really be possible for me to put the old stuff on Spotify or Bandcamp now because of all the samples. Like I said before, it was a different time. Those records were created to thrive on a past version of the internet that no longer exists. They weren’t designed to be compatible with the 2021 internet.

Technically, Elite Gymnastics didn’t ever release a debut album. We had EPs, a compilation, and a remix collection. We didn’t make an album, a record that existed as the distillation of all that experimentation that contained all of the songs that fans of the EPs would want to hear, all in one place. It’s like we did Good Fridays but stopped before we made My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

So, I am currently working on the first Elite Gymnastics album. If you were following my stuff as Default Genders, you may have noticed me posting demos on my SoundCloud page from 2015-2018 that were all eventually reworked into the album Main Pop Girl 2019. The album I am making is taking that approach to all the old EG songs, including some unreleased stuff. I’m collaborating with others on some songs and I honestly feel like it has resulted in some of the best and most exciting music I have ever been involved with. It is a drastic reinvention, but iteration and reinvention have always been a big part of what I do. I want to make something that feels like the culmination of everything that came before, and so far, I think I’m succeeding.

Q: When will I be able to hear this new music?

At a virtual fundraiser on June 4th, 2021, where there is a suggested donation of $10. You can access it at quietyear.com

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translations-by-aiimee · 3 years ago

Text

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 35

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 35

The bungalow was surrounded by aged trees, blocking the sunlight year-round. A chill ran through his body as he walked into the building. The faint musty smell and moisture in the air reminded him of a basement filled with children's toys. Lin Yan followed the Zhongshan man into an office with an old-fashioned wooden table. On the table, there was a large stainless steel thermos. The desktop computer occasionally made some buzzing noises. The office was close to the toilet. It didn't take long for the smell of amonia to rush into his nose.

"Sit down, Lin. I'll grab the contact information of the recent archaeologists that were there. It's still locked in the cabinet." The Zhongshan suit man said as he poured Lin Yan a glass of water in a disposable paper cup. "The files on the table are more than 20 years old. They were just transferred out of the archive room. Feel free to look through them."

"Thank you for your help." Lin Yan said politely.

"No, it's no trouble at all. It's great to see young people so active nowadays. We all heard about what happened with the porcelain appraisal. That was really something. Professor Chen wouldn't stop bragging about it when he got back." The Zhongshan suit man chuckled. He placed a bowl of melon in front of Lin Yan then grabbed his key and left.

Lin Yan sat at the table and waited. The office decoration was old but good quality. The real leather swivel chair was comfortable to sit on. The shade of leaves outside the window blocked the sunlight. A sparrow leaped lightly among the branches. It flapped its wings and flew away.

There were a lot of files about the Ming tomb on the table, sorted into vellum envelopes. Lin Yan flipped through them. They included a large amount of background information on the time period, project approval forms, equipment rental statements, reimbursement vouchers, and so on. An envelope labelled 'Staff Information' caught his attention. Lin Yan brushed off the dust and opened the envelope. There were several smaller envelopes inside with labels written in faded ink. The top one was labelled "1987 Shanxi Archaeological Team Payroll", followed by several others, such as rosters, contact information, etc. The bottom one was marked with the word 'important,' written in red, and the label read: List of work-related casualties and compensation details.

Casualties? Lin Yan picked up the envelope. It was very thin. It was almost like there was nothing inside. The glue on the seal had expired and could be opened just by a light tear. The brownish-yellow paper had become hard and brittle after not being handled for a long time. Lin Yan carefully slipped his hand in. The envelope was empty. Only after fumbling inside the envelope for a while did he find a small thin piece of paper. The hand-drawn table lines were smudged at the top. At first glance, he knew that whoever wrote it had drawn it in a rush. The ink hadn't dried before they dragged the ruler across the page.

A series of footsteps echoing in the hallway approached. Lin Yan jumped, instinctively shoving the paper back into the envelope. it took him a second to remember that he had been given permission to go through the documents. The old information always gave him an anxious feeling, like he was intruding. He felt like a thief, fleetingly travelling back in time from modern times.

The footsteps moved further away. Lin Yan carefully examined the paper in his hand. Everything had also been written in pen. The names, reasons for compensation, amount of money compensated and other items were divided into columns. Lin Yan skimmed over the columns, heart bursting with fear

"Li Erzhuang, hand fracture, compensation of 30 yuan for medical expenses, collected and signed for."

"Sun Dapeng, psychosis, compensation for medical expenses of 150 yuan, collected and signed for."

"Wang Aiguo, psychosis, compensation for medical expenses of 150 yuan, collected and signed for."

". . ."

All the remaining reasons for compensation written in after the names were for psychosis, but the diagnosis details are all blank. The signature on the back was pretty crooked, too. Some of the ink was written so lightly that it was barely visible. Back then, villagers weren't very educated and many could only write their names. He glanced at the page filled with awkward handwriting. When he reached the last two lines, the signature column was blank. After a double-take, the column for the reason for compensation was listed as 'dead'.

"Jun Xiangdong, Jiang Ying . . . did these two die?" Lin Yan gulped. He carefully flattened the paper and muttered: "Compensation of one thousand yuan . . . Hey, that's weird, for these two people. How come it's written that their compensation hasn't been claimed? A thousand yuan was considered a huge sum of money in a village at that time . . ."

Lin Yan confusedly opened the envelope containing the staff list. He pulled out a stack of yellowed paper, flipping through each of them. Besides the detailed information of the students sent by the university who participated in the excavation of the Ming Tomb, the rest were locals. Most of the villagers were uneducated. They only filled in their name, age, gender and village name. Lin Yan counted them. There were 13 people in total. The oldest was only 24 years old, and the youngest was only 16 and 17. Eighteen-year-old children make up the majority. Lin Yan recalled what the professor said and let out a sigh. He couldn't imagine what it must have been like for those children to be haunted by illusions and see their friends die in front of them in such a strange way.

It was too much to think about. Lin Yan glanced back at Xiao Yu. The ghost was standing leisurely by the window with his arms crossed, looking at the scenery, as if this had nothing to do with him.

When turning back to Jun Xiangdong and Jiang Ying's forms, Lin Yan was surprised to find that the information left by these two people was almost blank. Compared to the information awkwardly filled in by the other villagers, only their villages and names were listed. Written next to them in black pen were the words "wage uncollected".

Lin Yan stared at the list of villages and frowned. He mumbled: "They're all foreigners? No wonder no one got any money after they died . . ." As he turned over the page of information on the two, there was only one last name at the bottom. The name on this page was Wang Zhong. Similar to Jun Xiangdong and Jiang Ying, there was almost no information is almost blank. He also wasn't a local. Written in big black letters in the upper right-hand corner was: "Wage uncollected".

"Wang Zhong, Wang Zhong . . . This person isn't on the compensation list." Lin Yan glanced through several forms and muttered: "Was he so afraid that he ran away without even getting paid?"

Lin Yan was immersed in a few old documents when, suddenly, the office door squeaked open. Zhongshan suit guy rummaged through the file in his hand as he walked in, muttering to himself: "What's going on . . . "

Hearing his voice, Lin Yan hurriedly put down the files and stood up. Zhongshan suit guy stepped in and waved his hands: "Sit down and sit down. My memory's not what it used to be. Obviously, I put it all away before I went on a business trip. Why can't I find it? "

"What can't you find?"

"Professor Chen said you are looking for the staff roster from the Ming Tomb archaeological expedition in Shanxi. I purposely found it and put it together. The cabinet was opened just now and everything else was there. The fortune-teller's information is the only one that's gone." Zhongshan suit guy shoved everything back into the folder and said to Lin Yan: "Look, everything is numbered. Everyone has one. I filled it out when I joined the team. I kept a copy of it for payroll statistics."

Lin Yan flipped through several forms, each of which was detailed with the staff’s name, ID number, telephone number, address, working hours and position, etc. Indeed, like Zhongshan suit guy said, the number between No. 34 and No. 36 was missing. But the information from the 30th onwards was very brief, some even only listing names and phone numbers. Those people are temporary workers. No. 34 was hired to drive a tractor. No. 36 and 37 were temporary cooks. The form ended on No. 37.

No. 35 should be the mysterious fortune teller.

"This man wasn't part of the team. He came to watch over things with a feng shui compass. He stayed to explain his plan for the excavation then left. He negotiated the price with me and said that he would wait to get paid until his method was proven useful. We had the money ready to go but he never came to get it, otherwise, the financial account would have been recorded."

Everything was done so neatly. Lin Yan stared at the extra space between No. 34 and No. 36 and furrowed his eyebrows. He didn't even want the money? What was he after?

"Please think it over again. Did you take it out before and put it somewhere else?" Lin Yan was a little impatient. "Or did another colleague take it away?"

Zhongshan suit guy rubbed his hands and stroked the key in his hand in confusion: "Impossible. I'm the only one with a key to the cabinet. I had organized everything and locked it in the cabinet before I left on the trip. It was gone as soon as I got back."

Lin Yan's heart skipped a beat. This seemed too coincidental. He glanced back at Xiao Yu. The ghost was staring at the door with furrowed brows and didn't respond to him.

Seeing that Lin Yan's screwed-up expression, Zhongshan suit guy picked up the paper cup on the table and filled it at the water dispenser. He put it back in front of him and comforted him: "It's okay. You sit and drink some water and eat some melon. I'll keep looking for it. I remember when that man first came and spoke in a mysterious way, no one believed him. He left a phone number and address, saying we would definitely have to call him again. And he was right."

"Where did I put it . . ." Zhongshan suit guy talked to himself while fiddling around in the office. Lin Yan wanted to help but was pushed back into the chair. He was forced to stare at the desktop screen saver. A bright, shimmering mass of lines shifted on a black background. Green, red, and blue lines slowly changing, becoming larger and smaller, rolling into a big mess. He couldn't make sense of it.

"Today isn't a good time. If you come at another time, you could ask someone else. Actually, today is our day off so the whole building is empty. I'm the only one who came here for a reason."

Lin Yan smiled embarrassedly: "That's too much trouble for you." Then a thought struck him and he casually mentioned: "There are still people here. I just heard footsteps in the hallway. They just passed by but didn't come in."

Zhongshan suit guy was washing his hands in the washbasin by the door but abruptly stopped when he heard this and looked up: "Impossible. There's no one in the building but flies. There are only three offices, I just checked them and no one's there."

Lin Yan took a sharp breath. He looked towards the dark corridor in the doorway and suddenly felt an ominous feeling.

Maybe it was just him passing by to check the information, Lin Yan reassured himself. When the sun changed its angle, a few loose beams of light penetrated into the room through the gaps in the leaves. The soft yellow light peaked in. The dust dancing in the light fell onto the dark brown tabletop. Beams jutting to the side illuminated a cactus that had been watered too much, its petals hanging down limply.

"Hey, I remember, wait a second." A hint of excitement flashed through Zhongshan suit guy's voice. In the lower part of the glass cabinet, he pulled out an old jacket and searched through the pockets. He fished out a crumpled note from a small pocket in the lining. He fumbled with the crumbled note, studied it over, muttering: "Right, right, this is it."

Zhongshan suit guy slapped the note down in front of Lin Yan's eyes: "The address and phone number."

Lin Yan's expression relaxed.

By noon, the weather was getting hot. Zhongshan suit guy turned on the fan. The buzzing of the fan blades and the rustling of the papers being blown rang out incessantly. Lin Yan put the phone up to his ear and held a pen in his other hand, scribbling on a notepad, the tip of the pen trembling slightly because of the anticipation.

"Beep . . . beep . . ."

". . . The number you have called is temporarily unavailable."

The voice of the phone message came four times in a row. Lin Yan and Zhongshan suit guy exchanged a glance. He dropped the receiver and languidly stretched. Looking at the lower part of the note, the address handwritten in pencil looks familiar. Where had he seen it? Lin Yan tugged at his collar. He wanted to unbutton it to get some air, but he suddenly remembered the string of hickeys on his neck and he hurriedly buttoned it back to the top.

There was a splash of water from the water dispenser, followed by a series of gurgling noises. A thought flashed through his mind. Lin Yan froze in place with his cup in his hand, like the solution had smacked into his brain like a hammer strike.

"Mr. Chen, what does the fortune teller you mentioned look like?"

Zhongshan suit guy thought for a moment and recalled: "It's been a long time so I don't remember clearly. He looked like he was in his 40s or 50s. He's about the same height as me, and his hair is very short."

Lin Yan gulped and entered the address into his phone's GPS. The green route map was displayed, extending all the way to the northwest.

That's it. Lin Yan stared at the red dot indicating the destination in the upper left corner and quietly thought to himself: I found you, temple master.

#dig a grave to dig out a ghost translation #dig a grave to dig out a ghost #danmei novel #danmei #chinese bl #bl novel #english translation #yaoi novel #yaoi

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singedsun · 5 years ago

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8tracks closing

So if you’re a person that loved 8tracks (or playlists; like me) they’ve got a way to save playlists through .txt files and/or saving them automatically to Spotify. Saving to Spotify is both good and bad.

If they’re your playlists and you haven’t saved them anywhere else, it’s great! (When it works, which is not all the time and not for all the songs. Saving the .txt is much safer if you want to save all the songs in the right order and nothing else.) If it’s someone else’s playlist, it uploads under your public playlists like this:

Playlist name by 8tracks user name (which isn’t bad; credit where credit is due)

It also saves whatever cover and text they put along with the playlist on 8tracks to Spotify. All of which is editable and with the username of whomever is saving it, in a public playlist.

I don’t want to be a negative nancy about archiving, what is likely for most people in this case, fandom data. BUT as someone that’s made a shit ton of playlists over the years for a variety of reasons and has about 30 of them on 8tracks, oh that hurts a little bit.

I get that 8tracks been around for like six years and in that time people have moved on to other platforms, might have different user names, are in different fandoms...what have you. Saving data where you can for your own use, or archival functions is great (hence the .txt file option). Saving other people’s work on a public platform with artwork and the potential for editing is... less great. [Save me please from the discourse about playlists as fanart. That’s not what this post is for.]

If it’s my playlists, save all the .txt files you like if you don’t already have them where I’ve saved them for downloading (most of which I have done somewhere). But I’m active all over the place still (albeit not under the same name) so if there’s a playlist of mine that you want that isn’t on the platform where you listen, let me know and I’ll make it happen. Message me here, twitter, dreamwidth where I’m singedsun (not cherith/e).

I would far rather people follow fandom artists to wherever they are, then reupload stuff that’s already present elsewhere. I’m not going to close my 8tracks early but I do want other people to be aware of how this data is being transferred to Spotify. Time and effort goes not just into making these mixes, but into the artwork people put together to go with them.

Most of my playlists are on tumblr here with downloadable .zip files and links to other locations to find them (where existing).

#8tracks #fanmixes #playlists

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ariadnelives · 5 years ago

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Chapter 21 -- The Dossier

[Missed earlier chapters? Go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3”]

“So, before we start, what did we end up doing with the, uh,” Ariadne asked as the crew filed into the briefing room, “gift from our new friend?”

“The what?” Sweettalk asked.

“The head,” Sasha replied.

“Ah,” Sweettalk said, “don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, boss.”

“Noted,” Ariadne conceded, “Spacebreather, would you care to catch the crew up on what we learned from Prescott’s dossier?”

Spacebreather nodded. “Our target is The Zealot, and we now know his true name to be Dr. C. Alexander Simon. Archival photos of him match up with the photo we received from La Pesadilla, and our friend ViLaz.” Spacebreather jerked her head in the general direction of a visibly distraught ViLaz. “Much of this information concerns ViLaz directly, so for the sake of her privacy, we will only be sharing details which she has agreed to disclose publicly. Everything else will be kept absolutely need-to-know.”

ViLaz seemed barely able to hold herself together. Tears were welling up in her eyes, which would have come as a surprise to anyone who was paying close attention to her eyes, since one of them was synthetic and no longer should have had the ability to produce tears.

Spacebreather continued, “ViLaz has been raised to believe that Dr. Simon is her biological father. Technically this is true, but not in the sense you’d expect. He is, in fact, her sole biological donor. According to Prescott’s dossier, ViLaz is one of three genetic identicals produced from Dr. Simon’s DNA.”

“So, she’s a clone?” Taryn called out.

Spacebreather wiggled her hand noncommittally. “See, that’s what I said too, I don’t really understand it, but… Ariadne?”

“Well, yes and no,” Ariadne explained. “For lack of a better term, the process used to create them could be described as ‘cloning,’ but it’s important to note that she while her DNA was taken from Dr. Simon, she does not seem to be genetically identical to Dr. Simon himself.”

ViLaz flinched at this.

Ariadne continued, “Prescott’s intel tells us that Dr. Simon’s area of expertise before his theories were discredited and the controversy surrounding his experiment forced him to retire in disgrace was the search for a way to induce biological immortality in humans or, failing that, maintain continuity of consciousness.”

Spacebreather restrained herself from smiling. “And when you finally get her to translate that from nerd, what you basically get is that he wanted to either find a way to make you live forever, or to put your brain in a new body.”

Sweettalk’s hand shot up.

Spacebreather pointed at her. “Not a classroom, ask your question.”

“That doesn’t sound all that controversial, I mean,” she said, “That just sounds like basic medical stuff. Sasha’s whole shtick is cheating death, right?”

“The concept is not what was controversial. The methods, on the other hand…” Ariadne began, glancing over to ViLaz, who was silently crying and hoped no one would notice. Everyone collectively decided to pretend they didn’t, and Ariadne continued, “he was spearheading a project that would allow a dying person to save their consciousness and memories to computer, and then, using the indoctrination tech we learned about from La Pesadilla, eventually download that mind into a new body. In order for the transplant to take, the body would have to be a close blood relative, and it wouldn’t do any good to have the new body die from the same thing as the old one, so the goal of the experiment was to create a genetically engineered clone designed to withstand whatever killed them the last time.”

“Rumor has it, Dr. Simon is not well,” Spacebreather said flatly, “some kind of terminal genetic condition that killed his father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather, and all of his relatives born with a Y-chromosome, in their 40s. Based on ViLaz’s recollection, that’s about how old our Zealot would be right around now. Our belief is that he continued his experiments after he was forced to retire, hoping to create a new host body that wouldn’t fall ill like his original body.”

“Hoping to create, as our Dossier calls it,” Ariadne paused, “a Viable Lazarus.”

The crowd murmured in shock and, again, collectively pretended to not notice ViLaz crying.

“Dear lord,” Sasha whispered, “ViLaz, I’m so—”

“Don’t call me that!” She spat back.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said quietly, and backed off.

“My visions of the Red God always told me that I was to be his vessel in the material world,” ViLaz explained, wiping her tears off on her sleeve, “he said that my father’s body was too weak and infirm, and that he needed a strong healthy vessel to carry his word to the people.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ariadne said, “the whole time you knew you were being used as an… an organ farm?!”

“The Red God told me I was to be his prophet,” ViLaz replied. “It just all seems a little too coincidental, if the Red God spent all those years telling me to give up control of my body, and now I find out my father created me as a host for himself. It’s… blasphemous that he would use an ancient and beautiful religion just to manipulate people like this.”

There was a fairly stunned silence through the entire hall, which is more or less to be expected whenever someone’s religious beliefs, or lack thereof, suddenly become a central fixture in a conversation where they were not expected. Of course, in most situations, it would simply be a matter of opinion, and most people would simply let it slide rather than get into a theological debate that no one could ever possibly definitively win.

Ariadne had two reasons for not letting this particular statement slide. The first was that she was a very passionate Atheist, and unfortunately had a rather nasty habit of being somewhat condescending when discussing it, especially towards those who still subscribed to the religion she practiced as a young girl. The second, and the much more important reason was that ViLaz’ statement about her religious beliefs was objectively, factually incorrect.

“V— Sugar …” Ariadne caught herself before using the name that would remind ViLaz of her father’s machinations, and knelt down to meet her gaze, “first of all, people have been using religion to manipulate people since the first caveman found a rock to worship. Second, I hate to break this to you, but the Red God cul— church— is not an ancient religion.”

ViLaz looked confused and upset. “What?”

“The earliest written references to it are in the last few years,” Ariadne said, “most of the scripture we’ve gathered just seems like watered down Christian Dogma, we think that’s why he had all those Church documents and artifacts. He was studying the growth of an effective religion so that he could pervert it to his own ends. His servants just told you it was an ancient religion to put the pressure on to do what he wants.”

Something dropped within ViLaz, as though she’d just looked at her entire world from a distance only to realize it was nothing more than a rubber balloon floating five feet in front of her face.

“The Red God really was just him all along, wasn’t he?”

Ariadne sensed that she had perhaps been too blunt, and quickly tried to turn the conversation around. “Come on, let’s get you to the library. Fastwing?”

“Yeah boss?” Alicia asked from somewhere near the end of the crowd.

“Take… our young friend to the library, find her a really good book, read it with her, and help her pick out a new name. I think there’s a lot more to her than just a Viable Lazarus, and I think she deserves a name that captures that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alicia said, and walked up to ViLaz. “Come on, babe, let’s get you a nice cocoa too.”

“Cocoa?” She asked as she was ushered out the door.

“Oh man,” Alicia said, “your day is about to get so much better.”

Once they were out of the room, Spacebreather continued the briefing. “The cult, the whole religious aspect, was just a front to get more test subjects. From what ViLaz has been telling us, right now he can only permanently take over one of the clones’ bodies if they consent to the transfer. But, there’s a reason why everybody who goes into the Life Centers seems to come out a suddenly devout missionary.”

Ariadne picked up here, sensing that Pilar didn’t like describing the more technical aspects of the dossier. “With the data Prescott gave us, our best guess is that the Suffering Test they administer at their life center uses the same tech from the Immersion Pods. It overwrites people’s personalities entirely and turns them into mindless zombies who live only to serve the cult. He shows them some horrible vision of the hell they’re going to, and they’re so scared they sign up for the conditioning. I’m assuming that’s how he got the Acolytes to raise ViLaz the way they did, so during our assault on their compound, let’s try to remember that it’s generally unethical to kill the mind-controlled.”

“We think he probably appropriated the name Ariadne for his prophet character in order to capitalize on our legend,” Spacebreather explained, “he probably figured there was no real Ariadne and that it was just some name punk kids gave when they were arrested, and decided that claiming to have the Real Ariadne would bring in lots of new curious people that he could subject to his brainwashing.”

Sweettalk, having taken her earlier admonishment to heart for the first time ever, spoke without raising her hand. “This is all really nice to know, but Prescott promised a Silver Bullet. How does any of this help us take him down?”

“The implants in the clones’ heads are linked to a master unit directly controlled by Dr. Simon. It’s how he was able to make ViLaz see the Red God and—” Ariadne paused for a moment and considered the ramifications of telling a partial truth, then decided to give only the information her crew absolutely needed to know, “It’s how we’re going to find him. All we have to do is reactivate the implant and with a little clever hacking thanks to yours truly, we should be able to pinpoint the other implants it’s linked to and reveal the true location of their compound. We’re going to need time to prepare, and a much larger strike force than we had at the casino. Deathsbane, I’d feel safer if you picked out an apprentice and started showing her the ropes, we’re going to need a medic on the ground and another on call in the ship with Fastwing.”

“Sasha will remain in the ship, her apprentice can join us in the assault.” Pilar said flatly.

“I thought we were past this,” Ariadne sighed, “we got kidnapped and she got arrested last time you—”

“And last time we let her go planetside with us, someone died.”

Sasha turned bright red, which Sweettalk noticed and felt a near-compulsive urge to defend her. “Nobody that mattered! And besides, you can’t possibly blame her for—”

“Do me a favor and shut your goddamn mouth, Sweettalk,” Spacebreather said.

Sweettalk was taken aback, but stood up and tried to stretch to Pilar’s height. “What did you just say to me?”

Sasha was somewhat stressed. Her sister was wrong, but she still didn’t want to see her get punched, especially not when she already held such a grudge against Sweettalk as it was.

Ariadne desperately wanted to keep the peace, so she attempted reason again. “Remember what Beam said—”

Pilar swung around to face Ariadne and held up her index finger to cut her off. “I… Said… No… End of discussion.”

Spacebreather then stormed out of the room, leaving everyone too stunned to respond.

Sasha stood up. “Thank you for standing up for me,” she said to Sweettalk and started walking toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Sweettalk asked.

“I’m finally standing up for myself.”

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soveryanon · 6 years ago

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Reviewing time for MAG130 /o/

- Fun game!

(MAG106) BASIRA: Hm. I dunno, I mean, you should have seen him when I turned up last year. I think he thought I was trying to steal his precious Archivist. […] Huff. That [INSERT TITLE HERE] needs to relax. MELANIE: Or at least find someone else to fuss over. BASIRA: Yeah, [x]’s got it bad. … Do you know if [x] and Jon ever…? MELANIE: No clue – and not interested.

Is this conversation between Melanie and Basira about: a) The Distortion about Jon? b) Elias about Jon? c) Martin about Jon? d) The Web about Jon? (Jon, you serial heartbreaker.)

In all seriousness (kind of.): the Web has it BAD about Jon, indeed. Which is necessarily not a good sign given that if someone from the Web were to tell you it wants you to carry its babies, you would have to understand that it means hollowing you out and turning you into a spider egg sack.

The Web sent him a lovely lighter in MAG035, that Jon still had on him as of MAG111, because Jon ~chose~ to go back to smoking after five years of quitting! Jon discovered the worms infestation back in MAG038 thanks to a lil’spider on a wall (BECAUSE OF COURSE: JONATHAN “I PERSONALLY READ MAG016’S STATEMENT ABOUT A GUY MINDCONTROLLED TO REPEATEDLY SMASH A SPIDER ON A WALL” SIMS ASSUMED THAT HIS OWN ACTIONS WERE HIS OWN AND TOTALLY NOT CONTROLLED UH.) Lovely helpful spiders eat the worms carcasses in the tunnels! Cobwebs were welcoming him into the wax museum when they were planting bombs in MAG118! “She” sent Handsome Black MLM Oliver to encourage him to wake up in MAG121! And now the spiders are leaving tapes for him in his desk when Jon is having trouble thinking about his next moves! uwu

… Meanwhile, what have you done for Jon, Beholding. You fucked up a perfectly functioning researcher, gave him anxiety, nightmares and the constant feeling of being watched, is what you did. (… Well, the Web also gave Jon trauma, misguided hatred, and a visceral phobia of spiders but HEY, at least, it’s giving Jon useful presents in his Quest!)

Oliver had confirmed that the Web had never really left Jon alone after all these years (MAG121: “But… you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what She asked!” and the mere fact that Oliver came… because “She” had sent him to talk to Jon), we still don’t know its/Her intentions and neither does Jon:

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: I found this tape tucked in the corner of my desk drawer. [AGGRAVATED SIGH] Covered in cobwebs. I suppose subtlety is gone out the window a bit. And the question is now simply … how much I trust the Spider to have my… best interests at heart. … Hm. I suspect my assuming it has a heart might be a clue I’m looking at this the wrong way.

(Obviously, the answer is that it wants to win YOUR HEART, Jon!!)

The Web has Plans Involving Jon, nothing new. And I have no serious ideas about why – seriously trying to woo him because Back Off Big Eyeball, We Saw Him First? Needing him to be ready for the Watcher’s Crown in some way either because it’s allied with Beholding, either because it needs the ritual to come close to completion in order to crash or hijack it? What was Jon supposed to make out of MAG130’s statement, and he did he completely miss the point or did he draw his own conclusions All According To Keikaku? … are they Jon’s own conclusions or The Web making him think about the conclusions It wanted.

I’m also wondering if, after all, Jon getting drawn to this and that statement since the beginning of season 4 wasn’t… Web-induced more that Beholding-induced. Actually, Jon has never explicitly said that knowing which statements to read, specifically, was coming from his Insights (the knowledge seeping through the cracks of the door):

(MAG126) ARCHIVIST: … I remembered Gertrude’s notebook […]. I’ve been staring at it for hours, in the hope something from it would just… come to me. And it worked well enough to point me towards this statement […].

(MAG127) BASIRA: And what was that you were doing yesterday? ARCHIVIST: … When…? BASIRA: You were sat on the floor for like four hours. ARCHIVIST: … Oh! Er, n–n–no, I was, er, I was… listening. Y’know, it’s, trying to see if any of the statements… called to me. BASIRA: And? ARCHIVIST: [FLIPS PAPER] BASIRA: Brilliant.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I don’t like this. I don’t like… not being sure what’s going to be in my mind. What thoughts are mine and what are from… elsewhere. Why I just know some statements are what I should be reading. I assume this one is related to the coffin. To Daisy.

Is it knowledge seeping into his mind, or is it, let’s say, a web string pulling him in towards specific statements? Jon’s comment that “subtlety is gone out of the window” couuuuld possibly (it’s a possibility!) imply that he knows that the Web had been directing him towards them before (just… without wrapping them in cobwebs). Case in point, though: Jon got to Know about how Gertrude stopped The Buried through his Insights, and that one was pretty clearly Beholding-stamped. So, at the very least, it’s not only the Web teaching Jon about how Gertrude stopped the previous rituals. Somehow, both The Eye and The Web are glad to feed him the knowledge.

In the particular case of MAG130: this means that the Web has quite a strong hold on the Archives themselves – or did it send the tape randomly, à la Elias in season 3? (Your casual reminder that the conclusion of Jon’s thrilling saga of wondering for 20 episodes why Elias was sending him this or that file was: because Elias had no idea what the fuck he was doing.) And: where does this tape come from? We know there are more tapes than the ones Jon had listened to: Basira had been given three boxes of them when they discovered Gertrude’s body, and she gave him a few tapes and at least one of these boxes when she quit the police in MAG075. Leitner had told Jon, and then confirmed with Elias (MAG080), that Elias had gotten his hands of Gertrude’s files regarding The Stranger (and posssssibly about Beholding?) and Elias had indeed begun to send some of those documents in season 3 but explicitly refused to give them to Jon in one-go (MAG092), so drip-dropped them instead. Elias mentioned in MAG116 that he had taken Gertrude’s tapes into his “safekeeping” during Jon’s absence at the beginning of season 3, so he was still in possession of all of them at the end of the season.

Is MAG130 from Elias’s secret stash? Or from somewhere else, another hiding spot? In any case, it means that, in true spiders fashion, the Web can crawl its way into anywhere, unnoticed. It is there and it’s able to operate in the Institute. It knows the place as its own. (Is it also its own already…)

- Jon had wondered, a few times, why Gertrude was recording some statements and not others and… we still don’t have the answer to that?

(MAG044) ARCHIVIST: I will admit to some disappointment it doesn’t address any of my more… pressing questions about Gertrude’s tapes. Why did she begin recording them, and why stop? If she’d been doing so right up until her death, she would have likely gotten through much of the Archive […].

(MAG087) ARCHIVIST: I had assumed Gertrude had recorded to tape for a while and then stopped, but it sees she was recording them right up until the end. But if they did span decades of working at the Institute, why aren’t there more? And what decided which statements she transferred?

It’s a bit hard to guess a logic behind Gertrude’s recordings, but so far, we’ve listened to these ones, listed by order or recording (SINCE UNLIKE A CERTAIN SOMEONE, GERTRUDE ROBINSON HAD ENOUGH WORK ETHICS TO GIVE THE DATE OF HERS :wwww I’m not calling anyone out) (Jon, u suck.):

*04/11/1996: reading Lucy Cooper’s statement about the “Changeling / Imposter”, Not!Them (MAG077) *15/04/1997: reading Yuri Utkin’s statement about the Russian circus (MAG044) *05/09/1997: live statement of Walter Heller about the old Archives in Alexandria (MAG053) *02/09/2007: reading Robert E. Geiger’s statement about The Buried’s ritual coming close in America (MAG099) *03/07/2008: live statement of Mary Keay about getting her hands on the book of The End (MAG062) *19/12/2008: live statement of Lucia Wright about the Flesh’s ritual attempt in Istanbul (MAG130) *04/10/2013: reading Abraham Janssen’s statement about the last Stranger ceremony, in the Court Theatre Buda in October 1787 (MAG116) *04/04/2015: reading Sebastian Skinner’s statement about The Stranger’s people in the Gwydir Forest (MAG087)

Noteworthy: the oldest one that Jon accessed was about the Not!Them, and Gertrude had specifically highlighted (thanks to the statement-giver providing a recording of her true mother) that tapes were able to resist the Not!Them’s rewriting of reality:

(MAG077) GERTRUDE: It is at least reassuring to know that magnetic tape seems to escape being overwritten [by the Not!Them], so if I get changed, you can be sure this is my real voice. Based on Dekker’s statement, it would seem Polaroids are also relatively stable.

I could imagine that Gertrude might have recorded a few tapes with this in mind – in case the Not!Them would attack her, to leave some proofs of her existence and of her ongoing researches, since, following this one, almost all the statements that Jon listened to were tied to some aspects of rituals she was working on stopping. MAG044 dealt with a very active period of the Stranger’s Circus; MAG099 helped her narrow down the location of the Buried’s “Sunken Sky” (in America); MAG116 was a survivor describing the last Stranger’s ritual attempt; MAG087 was about the current activities of Stranger’s minions, now that the ritual was coming closer. The three other statements were lives: Mary Keay is an oddity, but Gertrude had sarcastically commented that it happened because Mary insisted on talking:

(MAG062) MARY: You… don’t really go out and look for yourself, do you~? Just wait here for the researchers’ leftovers. GERTRUDE: Mm! It’s not that bad. Sometimes, someone will insist on giving me a statement directly, though… I rarely see the point.

(YOUR CASUAL REMINDER THAT GERTRUDE WAS SAVAGE LIKE THAT.)

The other two dealt with what Gertrude suspected to be an old Archive (MAG053), and a witness testimony of the explosion that put a stop to The Flesh’s ritual (MAG130), so… still related to Gertrude’s activities: she had been searching for Walter specifically (MAG053: “It’s taken a long time to track down someone still living who found the Serapeum of Alexandria.”; the site was ~curiously~ bombed six months after she discussed its location, in March 1998) and she was in Istanbul ~in the flesh~ during “The Last Feast” (the old woman that Lucia spotted but didn’t recognize). Moreover, there are a few mentions alluding to the fact that she already had talked a bit with the statement-givers (and narrowed down what they experienced) before deciding to record their statement:

(MAG053) WALTER: Yeah, er, right. Er, wh–where do you want me to start? GERTRUDE: Well, you say you were serving in North Africa when it happened.

(MAG130) [CLICK–] GERTRUDE: Do you mind? LUCIA: What? Oh, hum. No. GERTRUDE: Excellent.

Whether live or written, was Gertrude almost only recording statements dealing with the rituals attempts? But then, it seems like there were three big periods of recording: 1996-1997, 2007-2008 and the last years of her carreer. We’re still back to Jon’s initial questions: why the gaps? Is it because tapes exist from the years in-between, but we only got a few samples that aren’t enough to discern anything conclusive…?

- But then, back to the usual question: what was the thing that made her decide to record Walter and Lucia live, when they could have… written it down or dictated it to another member of staff? (We know it was a thing that could be done in the 70s, with Nathaniel Thorp’s statement from MAG029.) (I doubt it’s Relevant but: fun thing! “Lucia Wright” shares her surname with the previous head of the Institute, “James Wright”, who ran the place from 1973 to 1996. Elias took over when he passed away.)

- Well, in Lucia’s case, it sounds like Gertrude’s initial intentions might have been a bit grim?!

(MAG130) LUCIA: Telling my story. To you. Will, will it help with the nightmares? GERTRUDE: […] whatever nightmares your experience has left you with, I’m sure they won’t be bothering you much longer. […] GERTRUDE: Well…! That – is – a relief. When I heard there’d been survivors of “The Last Feast”, I was rather concerned that one of them might be able to positively identify me, [CHUCKLE] which could land me in all sorts of trouble! But she doesn’t seem to remember me at all.

What were you initially planning to do if she had remembered you, Gertrude.

Because, uuuuh… we know from Basira&Daisy’s exchange in MAG112 that they kept having “dreams” long after giving their statements to Jon; telling their stories didn’t allow them to get rid of the nightmares (it’s just that apparently, becoming an archival assistant cuts you off from them, and from Jon seeing them?). So, hum. Could Gertrude have been planning anything else than… straight-out murdering Lucia then and there, and only changed her mind when Lucia mentioned an old woman without linking her to Gertrude?

That aside… we got confirmation from Gertrude herself that she was aware that live statement-givers also give their dreams to the Archivist – the “slim collection of gifted nightmares” described by Elias in MAG120:

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: […] I’m honestly impressed she had the strength to get through it, even if she does seem to have been… deeply affected by it. Shame about the dreams; I would avoid them if I could.

… Why couldn’t she in this case, though? Why did she have to take this one live, when we know that she tended to prioritize written ones (going as far as to ask François Deschamps to write down what he had witnessed alongside her in MAG102)?

There has been quite a huge amount of statement-givers mentioning their recurring nightmares when writing their statements; the specific of the Archivist receiving a live statement seems to be that it synchronizes their dreams a bit? Makes Jon able to see them? Or traps the people in his own nightmares of their experiences? (In Jon’s dreams, at least, the statement-givers blame him and feel like they’re here because of him.) Regarding Gertrude, there had been Adelard’s and Mikaele Salesa’s expectation that just writing their statements could have an effect too:

(MAG113, Adelard Dekker) I’ll even make it a statement. Give your patron something to keep it satisfied. It’s not like I sleep enough to worry about dreams.

(MAG115, Mikaele Salesa) So it’s another statement is it? Like I owe you something? […] So I suppose if it’s a statement you’re wanting… it’s no inconvenience to me. I don’t sleep well anyway.

Does this mean they might have given live statements to Gertrude in the past, and assumed that writing it down would have the same effect? Does writing a statement end up having an effect on you, even though the Archivist doesn’t access those dreams? I wonder, now, if the dreams are not actually supposed to happen to… everyone touched or coming close to the Fears, and it's just that some people don’t think to mention their dreams in their statements? Adelard got interested in the case he described in MAG113 and was reminded of his hypothetical new emergence partially because people had been hurt when asleep – could it be that new emerging fears tend to first manifest through dreams…?

- Gertrude, are u lying through your teeth again.

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: Are you quite ready? LUCIA: H… uh. Will it help? GERTRUDE: I’m sorry? LUCIA: Telling my story. To you. Will, will it help with the nightmares? GERTRUDE: If that’s your primary goal, my dear, I would suggest you speak to a qualified counsellor. We can suggest one, if you like; that said, I do believe most people find the process of giving a statement to be rather… mm, cathartic.

I’m squinting at that “cathartic” (if it’s about the actual concept: WOOPSIE, catharsis in Greek drama does rely on you EXPERIENCING the terror and pity. It is not a nice process on the moment.)

Meanwhile, in Jon’s case, giving him a live statement has rarely been described as a nice experience for visitors, mostly because of Jon himself:

(MAG084) MELANIE: […] There’s nowhere left for me to go. I don’t know why, but… I just, I just felt that perhaps coming here might help. And talking things out with Jon. I mean. I mean he’s awful, but at least he listens, you know?

The only “positive” ones about it that I can think of are Helen, Tessa and Mike, and Oliver a bit (he was surprised to have managed it); and Julia, back with Gertrude, had felt that it helped:

(MAG047) ARCHIVIST: Perhaps. … Leave it with us, we’ll… do some digging and… see what we can find. HELEN: You believe me then! ARCHIVIST: I, er… yes. Yes, I think I do. (MAG101) ARCHIVIST: A– are you still going to kill me? HELEN: No. That was Michael’s desire, not mine. ARCHIVIST: So… S-So what do you want? HELEN: I don’t know. Helen liked you so… there’s a lot to consider. But I will help you leave. (MAG115) HELEN: Before, talking to you made Helen feel better. ARCHIVIST: You’re not. that. Helen! HELEN: I just want…! I just want to feel better.

(MAG065) TESSA: […] And it does feel good to talk about it. Y’know? ARCHIVIST: [LIGHT CHUCKLE] Yes, I… very much understand.

(MAG091) MIKE: Hm. You know? That was… that was nice. I’m not… not usually the sort for speeches, that was… pleasant change. So.

(MAG107) ARCHIVIST: Ah, yes. You–you know the Institute? JULIA: Oh yeah. Checked myself in there a while back. Ended up spilling my guts to this old woman about my dad, just letting it all out. ARCHIVIST: O–oh, that, that would be, er, Gertrude. My, my predecessor. JULIA: I didn’t catch her name. Weirdest thing, really. Didn’t mean to spill half of it, but. Really helped me put the pieces together, you know? ARCHIVIST: I’m… starting to.

(MAG121) OLIVER: Right. That’s a… hit, I suppose.

(But Oliver is cheating since Jon was still unresponsive when Oliver gave his statement – Oliver got Jon at His Best, uh.)

Then, I don’t have any doubt that Gertrude was probably better at sweetly coaxing people into telling their stories, rather than showing off in Jon’s apparent blunt manner (he does care!! But he’s also very off-putting, which… didn’t help when he was receiving statements.)

In the meantime: still nothing from Jon about his own dreams :www

- So Adelard also helped Gertrude in destroying the Gnostic temple!

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: Well…! That – is – a relief. When I heard there’d been survivors of “The Last Feast”, I was rather concerned that one of them might be able to positively identify me, [CHUCKLE] which could land me in all sorts of trouble! But she doesn’t seem to remember me at all. […] Dekker really came through with the explosives! It almost felt like cheating. Sad about the loss of history but Miss Wright didn’t seem to think the old Gnostic church got many visitors anyway.

Gertrude sounded so giddy to have blown the place up, efdusijrezkds. Did she provide the explosives and he handled them? He was super interested in the stock she had managed to get for The Unknowing, in his letter from MAG113. They’re adorable. Old people saving the world and bonding over their creative use of explosives.

Interestingly, it seems that Gertrude kept her allies separate? Gerry and Leitner didn’t seem to know that Gertrude was working with the other (which… makes sense considering Gerry’s distaste of Leitner because of the books); but neither did they ever mention Adelard.

Which puts me to mind again: what happened to Adelard? We know that he came in contact with the Institute at least in 1991 (MAG077, Gertrude: “I suspect this to be the creature that Adelard Dekker refers to as the ‘NotThem’ in statement 9910607”), whether he was personally acquainted with Gertrude or not at the time. Since then, they’ve apparently been allies on multiple cases: they collaborated to blow up the Gnostic temple housing the Flesh’s ritual (MAG130), and Adelard moved out the plastic explosives for Gertrude because she felt that she was under surveillance (MAG113). That was chronologically the last time we’ve heard of him at this point – from a statement that, according to Jon, was “undated, likely circa 2012”. Did he die, since then…? Became something worse than dead…? Is he hiding somewhere…? Peter Lukas has been looking for his statements to get information but didn’t mention the possibility of tracking him down: it could be either for manipulation purposes (better to not let the Archives team meet Adelard, who specialises in dealing with spooky creatures, when you’re yourself a spooky creature), either because he knows that Adelard is not around anymore…? (Then, my bets for the culprit are the New Emergence he was investigating, or someone amongst the Lukases, or Peter PERSONALLY.) (Could be Elias, I guess, since Adelard must have been a bit old at this point, but we would need to know what his voice was, since Elias’s criteria for murdering people so far have been 1°) you must be old, 2°) you must be voiced by someone from Jonny’s family.)

- Something that I found quite interesting in the statement itself is that Lucia had, from an overall point of view, no relationship whatsoever with meat – no attraction to it, nothing from her personal history that would imply that she could get drawn or involved with the Flesh. But, at the same time, the evolution from her being fascinated by religion to the Flesh felt only natural because of the Eucharistic dimension, and by the fact that her own appreciation of churches was both spiritual and sensual?

(MAG130) LUCIA: […] I loved churches. These big… quiet… echoing spaces of peace and beauty, designed to quiet the soul and prepare it for communion with the divine. Even if I didn’t actually believe in the God they were supposed to house… I always found them… meditative. And whenever I went on one of my breaks, I’d always try to find a local church – hopefully… not too full of other tourists like me – and spend an hour or two in quiet contemplation. I’d listen to the shuffling footsteps of the other people, and breathe in the lingering smell of incense, before lighting a candle to my grandmother.

With the Demiurge in mind, it’s almost surprising that The Flesh is (officially) the last Fear to have emerged (Gerry had mentioned that it had begun its ascendance around the time Robert Smirke had established his list of fourteen); but at the same time, you would have to fear the specific aspect of it as related to Flesh bending, twisting, getting reduced to a pulp, etc.? In True Flesh Fashion, Lucia ended up getting very conscious of that aspect during the whole ordeal (THANKS FOR MY WEDNESDAY’S DINNER, JONNY):

(MAG030, David Laylow) “There’s not so much difference between people and animals, you know? […] Weirdest thing is, you start to kind of see people as meat too. Not in a food sort of way, you know. I don’t wanna eat my co-workers. It’s just that, when you spend all day taking these living, breathing creatures – animals that move and cry and tremble in fear – and you turn them into lifeless blocks of dead flesh, it’s hard to believe in any special spark that makes us humans any different.”

(MAG072, Craig Goodall) “There’s nothing inherently special about us. We feel as much pain, see the world with the same eyes as a real pig. Meat is meat. That’s what John Haan said when they arrested him. The only thing he said. Meat is meat. […] It looked like this was what the kid had been doing. He’d been spraying the phrase ‘MEAT IS MEAT’ onto the door of the freezer, but the cops must have gotten him before he’s finished, so what was actually written upon the matt silver surface were the words ‘MEAT IS ME’.”

(MAG130) LUCIA: […] Squirming limbs were dragging, rising, extracting themselves from this mound of flesh, and making their way down to join their companions on the ground, one by one. Most of them could still be mistaken for humans at a distance, a few even wore clothes. […] All through this, the mouth got closer and closer to the edge of the pit, the pile of flesh within it larger and larger, sat there in an awful, half-solid slurry, chewed and crushed together. It was impossible to tell what had once been animal, and what might once have been us. It was all just meat.

-Curiously, Lucia didn’t mention any anchor in her statement? Orrr was it, in her case, an anchoring thought?

(MAG130) LUCIA: My back was screaming, my legs were weak, and my mind was numb from terror. But I was spurred on by one thing: the woman with the backwards arms had fallen, some time in the night, and her companions had shown no hesitation. They had gripped her shoulders, hoisted her up, and hurled her straight into the gaping maul. I swore it wouldn’t happen to me.

Could it be the focus that matters, more than thinking about something/someone from outside of the box? Focusing on something, whatever it is, and preventing the Fears from getting to you and swallowing you whole? It’s also how Basira had managed to exit The Unknowing on her own… So in the same way: would going into the coffin with the clear resolution of finding Daisy and getting back out with her be enough…?

- We’re slowly completing the list of failed rituals from the current batch!!

*The Buried: “Sunken Sky”, 17th June, 2008. (<- Vast-touched Jan Kilbride was thrown in pieces into the pit.)

*The Flesh: “The Last Feast”, October 2008 (since it was (until now.) the new Baby, this was probably only its first or second ritual attempt? Awww ;w; (Don’t worry, you’ll get used to seeing your ritual derailed.) (WE HOPE.) <- also with this one that Gertrude apparently confirmed that she could deal with the rituals with non-spooky means (maybe… Jan Kilbride… would have liked to know that a few months earlier…))

*The Spiral: “The Great Twisting”, somewhere during October 2009 or shortly after. (<- No explosives for this one, Michael Shelley gave an Identity to the Distortion instead.)

*The Stranger: “The Unknowing”: 6th August 2017. (<- TIM WAS THE BOMB…)

*The Eye: “The Watcher’s Crown”, incoming and Jon Has Suspicions about the year 2018. (<- Gertrude had a Plan for this, MAG080 seems to hint at “Fire.”)

Unclear: The Dark (15th May 2015? 10th February 2017? It Was Coming Soon according to Nathalie Ennis), The Desolation (before April 2015).

No indication (yet?): The Lonely (I’m very subjectively suspecting that this one might not have a ritual, since “almost” all of the Fears have one according to Gerry, and that that’s why the Lukases are collaborating with various other Entities’ clusters by throwing money at them), The End (I’m also thinking that this one could turn out to not actually have a ritual?), The Vast (are they planning to yeet Earth into Space), The Hunt (Gertrude was not convinced but mentioned that it could happen in America), The Slaughter (… we got a few statements showing that when a Slaughter event happens, it goes HARD anyway, so I fear (ha) what its ritual attempt would look like – maybe during a recent war or civilian repression?), The Corruption (though might have tried something in the tunnels below the Institute during The Hive’s invasion, given the ring of worms? Though it would sound a bit low-scale, since only Jane Prentiss was there…), The Web (Though There Is The Matter Of What The Heck Is The Deal With The House On Hill Top Road).

- Alriiiiiiiiiiiiiight, so:

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: […] Tom Haan might be a bit more of a problem, as it looks like he also survived, but I’m hopeful he has been weakened enough by this failure to not be an issue in the near future. Hopefully, he’ll fade away or burn out, as they tend to when robbed of their purpose. Still… I should keep a watch on him in case of any erratic behaviour that might lead to complications. Also worth watching out for any additional esoteric fall-out from the ritual attempt, like that Carlisle boy down in Wandsworth.

a) If I remember, Craig Goodall (the statement-giver from MAG072) had never explicitly mentioned that the Chinese-looking man that had attacked him was “John Haan” (the original owner of the takeaway restaurant, who had been arrested years before the events) – the fire was reported on 27th September 2009, almost a year after the Flesh’s ritual attempt, and the avatar talked about the relation between meat and religion… so indeed, it was probably Tom Haan there, too (I had been a bit confused, back then, unsure if it was John or Tom)?

b) Alright, and MAG030’s events happened in July 2013, we don't know of Tom Haan having been spotted since then, and what was described really sounded like… he put an end to Things then. So same as Breekon, maybe: he faded/self-destructed?

c) Toby Carlisle from MAG018 (“The Man Upstairs”) confirmed as Flesh! Though apparently, he didn’t participated to the ritual, dying in October 2007, although he was affected by its imminence.

I’m late to the party, only realizing now that the “Mrs. Carlisle” whose husband’s corpse wanted her to cannibalize him in 1845 (MAG058) shared her surname with “Toby Carlisle” – both about (MEAAAT) Flesh. Which means that Mrs. Carlisle probably gave in and ate her husband after her statement in order to survive, after all? And that one of her descendants was also Flesh-related? And we already knew about the fact that two people from the Haan family had a special relationship with meat?

We have the Carlisles, the Haans, the von Closens/Keays, the Lukases… Maybe Gerry had been a bit wrong in saying that the Fears don’t care at all about blood? Or are they, like the Fairchilds, adoptive families and the Lukases are still an exception?

- ;; Insisting on this: according to Gertrude, (avatars? monsters?) tend to “burn out when robbed of their purpose”, which indeed seems to have happened to Tom Haan four years and a half after his failed ritual. That…………………… is a short life expectancy if you fail indeed…………….. So even assuming that Jon is still alive (well, “not dead”) when a Watcher’s Crown attempt will be made, and even if he doesn’t die during it, and even if it is stopped in time… it means that Jon would be done for anyway.

Counter-points though: *Jared Hopworth began experimenting with The Boneturner’s Tale starting in 1996 and we know that he was still active and very chill About His Life in 2012 (MAG090). Though… did he even participate in that “Last Feast”, or did he just ignore it to keep doing his own thing?

*Jude Perry didn’t look especially erratic when we met her in 2017 in MAG089, although Gertrude had mentioned that The Lightless Flame’s plans had been stopped shortly before she recorded MAG087’s statement in April 2015 (“their own plans have so recently, erm, gone up in flames.”) So… we’ll… “see”…

- Once again, I really have no idea what state Daisy will be in, assuming that Jon does even manage to get her out of the coffin and that she’s still breathing (even if, hum, not human-shaped or human-minded)……………. But listen. Listen. We had an example of Jon managing to ground someone through compulsion: he did that to Tim during The Unknowing, and it worked! Forcing people to admit the truth manages to get their awareness back!

(MAG118) ARCHIVIST: Tim!! [STATIC:] What do you see? TIM: I see my asshole boss! W– wait… wait… […] ARCHIVIST: Tim! [STATIC:] What’s in your hand? TIM: It’s… I don’t… the– the– … the detonator…

My shipper heart really really hopes that Jon might compulse Daisy into remembering Basira, asking her ~who is it who matters to her~, since Basira was, almost literally, presented as Daisy’s anchor (MAG092, Elias: “the only person you care about […].Your last connection to humanity.”)

Problems: as of MAG122, Jon didn’t remember anything of the Unknowing past Gertrude’s entrance, which means… not remembering Tim’s last moments. And: Jon still had trouble pinning down the relationship between Basira and Daisy in MAG117 (“I–I– I don't quite get those two, I suppose. What they’ve done, seeing what they’ve seen… It’s a hell of a bond. The sort of thing I’ve mostly done alone.”), so… I’m not sure he would think of this option. Jon often has troubles with people’s relationships ;;

SO IT MAKES IT EVEN MORE VALUABLE THAT HE’S GOING TO TRY, ANYWAY, TO SAVE DAISY FROM THE COFFIN……………… Daisy who tried to kill him, who threatened him a few times afterwards, but whom he seemed to kinda like in his own awkward way? Jon really doesn’t want to lose anyone anymore, uh. (;; They’ve not been mentioned recently, but you can still feel the ghosts of Sasha and Tim lingering around.)

- YEAAAAH so Jon is getting ready to get injured again, and he does it in the most self-deprecating, heartbreaking way:

(MAG130) ARCHIVIST: […] What was it she said, “the siren call of Flesh”… Hm. It’s possible, I suppose. It would… hurt, but… Well. What’s another scar? … It’s been two weeks since I heard from Basira. I’m not waiting any longer. I’m getting Daisy back. End recording.

JON ;;;;;

a) If it is indeed a Flesh-related scar (will he get his hands on something from Artefact storage? or would it be “Flesh”-compatible by the simple fact of purposely injuring oneself?): Jon… is making progress on completing the set of Entity-related wounds. And we know he’s aware that it’s been a lot of injuries (MAG127: “Just another scar for the collection!”), but did he notice that he’s been covering all the Fears? We still don’t know for sure if the diversity is relevant, but it’s been a noticeable pattern (for listeners), and it sounds really suspicious… especially when keeping in mind how Elias had described the Archivist’s role (MAG092: “It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others. To simply be told, well…”).

Jon was touched by the Web when he was a child (MAG081: “The first of the dark powers to touch me, perhaps, but it did not claim me.”); he’s Beholding’s Archivist. As for the Corruption, he got almost eaten alive by Jane Prentiss’s worms (MAG039); “Michael” from the Spiral stabbed him when he tried to retrieve Helen (MAG047); Jude Perry from the Desolation burned his hand through a handshake (MAG089); Mike Crew made him experience the Vast and probably fucked up his lungs a bit (MAG091); Daisy strangled him and/or cut his neck (MAG091); the Not!Them toyed with his memories of Sasha (starting MAG040), Nikola punched(?) him (MAG097) and held him captive for a month (MAG101), and Jon ultimately experienced the Stranger’s Unknowing himself, getting temporarily lost in the madness (MAG118+MAG119); the End couldn’t totally get his grasp on him while Jon was in his coma but Jon was then “balanced on an edge” (MAG121); Melanie stabbed him in the shoulder with a scalpel while she was infected by the Slaughter (MAG125); since Peter Lukas has been running the Institute, Jon has mentioned multiple times that he was feeling alone/lonely, which… could be a Lonely-induced state of mind (MAG125, MAG129), with everyone drifting away because of its effects.

Jon is still missing the Buried, the Flesh and the Dark. If Jon is getting his scars from the Buried AND the Flesh in one go, he will only be missing the Dark’s (and potentially the unidentified ~New Emergence~), which is already lurking around the Institute.

It’s going FAST.

b) Jon has been holding back, so well and on multiple accounts é_è He stuck with it and didn’t try to come in contact with Melanie! If he didn’t lie by omission, he has been managing to not Know about Basira’s current activities (MAG129: “I haven’t heard from Basira, since she left on whatever secret errand”)!! Well, he went to see Martin when he got the Insight that he was around in MAG129, but Martin hadn’t told him to “stop finding” him yet, so Jon didn’t break any promise. And, well, although he’s resolving to go into the coffin at the end of MAG130… he managed to not try anything since Basira left two weeks ago, and she’s been taking longer than what she had announced (MAG128: “I’ll try and be back in a week or two. Don’t think about me.”); the fact that Basira is still not coming back indeed changes the paradigms a bit. (What is she doing… Where did Elias send her to… Was Elias’s plan precisely to remove her from the Institute, to get Jon more prone to getting involved himself…)

Even statements-wise!

MAG121 (+MAG122?): February 15th 2018 MAG123: February 17th (“Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.”) MAG124: February 24th~ (“It’s been a week and… Melanie’s attitude towards me hasn’t softened.”) MAG125: ? MAG126: ? MAG127: ? MAG128: 3rd March (Basira leaving) MAG129: ? MAG130: 17th~ March (“It’s been two weeks since I heard from Basira”)

There was a very intense period from MAG124 to MAG128, but since Basira’s departure, it seems that Jon has gone back to the casual and safe rhythm of one statement a week. Take that, Elias and your “And I know you’ve had problems with moderation.” :www Jon has been doing good on his own!

c) It’s SAD, once again, that Jon reached the conclusion that he had to do something by himself, and that this something involved getting hurt. I don’t see any of the others taking it kindly: Melanie could be indifferent, but Basira will probably point out that Jon didn’t prove himself trustworthy (going into the coffin when she had told him not to) and Martin… would probably scream at Jon a bit for getting injured.

But at the same time, yes, what is Jon supposed to do? He lost Sasha when he was ignorant; he lost Tim when he was knowledgeable, and thought that Daisy had disappeared too. Jon is still the one who has the best chance of not dying; he’s the one with the most powers; he proved that he could neutralise Breekon when he was on the verge of attacking. Of course that, now that he’s discovered that he could possibly “undo” another death, and if the only downside would be him getting injured… he would take that chance. Especially when Gertrude casually mentioned that:

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: Also… I can’t rely on having this much lead time. I’ve had ten years tracking supplicants drawn by the siren call of Flesh, watching them gradually stockpiling meat. Very useful, in terms of preparation time for derailing the final push, but in future… I think I need to get a little bit more… proactive.

Meaning she let a few members of The Flesh run wild for ten years, for the Greater Good of “derailing” their ritual later. Meaning she probably allowed them to hurt, torture and kill innocent people all this time. Typical Gertrude and she had her priorities (saving the world, and at what cost?). Jon’s priorities are… Well. We don’t officially know them, but the assistants seem to be pretty much at the top of his list right now.

And damnit!! Jon tried to reach out to the others, to explain to them what was happening! He tried to infodump to Martin! He confessed to Martin that he missed him and was worried for him! He told Basira about his new powers and told her they were on the same side! And Martin and Basira both chose to remain solo in their own quests. But Jon tried; it has nothing to do with the way he tried to protect Tim and Martin at the end of season 2, or the way he avoided all the assistants before Nikola kidnapped him in season 3 (MAG098, Martin: “Yeah, we talked. Not long, he– Y’know, I think he thinks that the distance keeps us safe, you know? Like, like, if he just makes sure that we’re not involved, we’re somehow fine.”) He tried and just spent two weeks with the coffin for sole company, knowing that there could be a chance of rescuing Daisy and knowing that she is not having a great time inside (MAG128, Breekon: “You can stare at it, knowing how your feral friend suffers, knowing how powerless you are to help. And when you can’t bear it any longer, knowing that you can climb in and join her…”).

Jon is only finding another way now because communicating didn’t work when all he got was doors getting shut in his face. He would even have reasons to snap if someone were to reproach him for trying something alone… ;;

- Regarding MAG131, since we already have the title, I wiiiiish we could have Melanie stopping Jon dead (…) in his tracks and instead giving him a statement of The Flesh attack on the Institute, but alas :| If Jon is planning to amputate (perhaps temporarily, before sewing it back? He said “another scar”, didn’t mention a missing body part) or hurt himself (blood to attract Daisy once inside?), I don’t knoooow what he would aim for. Something grand and over the top like HIS HEART, SINCE HE MENTIONED THE WEB’S “HEART”? Something symbolically appropriate like his eyes (L I S T E N, ~THE RELATION BETWEEN EYES AND KNOWLEDGE~ HAS BEEN AN OLD ONE SINCE ŒDIPUS………………)? His head? … Honestly, I think I would be more disturbed if it turned out to be something small and… closer to a real-life injury (a finger, a bit of an ear, etc.) Another option would have been to use The Boneturner’s Tale or to ask for Jared’s, uh, “help” (stealing bones/organs directly from Jon), since Gregory Pryor had mentioned how he could still feel his own bones “twisting in someone else’s arm” after they had been stolen from him in MAG049, but we don’t know where the book is, The Flesh already tried to destroy the Archives when Jon was in a coma (they’re not allies), and Jon seemed keen on acting as fast as possible. Still, not totally excluding the possibility of Jon taking the time to go after a Flesh avatar in MAG131 (although it sounds like he’s getting ready to jump in the coffin already). Martin had even highlighted that he couldn’t be sure whether “J”’s gym was still running or not since August 2013 (MAG090: “The, um… the supplemental materials that should go with this statement, providing more details on addresses, names, and stuff, seems to be missing, so we don’t have any way of tracking down the gym, or finding out the name the business might be operating under. Not without a 2013 copy of the Aberdeen Yellow Pages. A bit of relief, in some ways.”) Orrrr I guess that Jon could also be cunning and only pretending to totally miss the point, just to make The Web freak out and come out of its hiding spot to stop him, but Jon hasn’t been hiding from his recording since the whole Sceptical Show from season 1… So I don’t know. (Why are you so intent on getting honest on tape now that you know that Fear entities are listening to you, Jon?)

Re: the coffin, by the way. I wonder how we would be “told�� of what is happening down there, if Jon goes inside? Would we witness it live, through a tape recorder? Would we get the reactions from people outside (Martin, Melanie and/or Basira) while Jon still hasn’t come back, before Jon would give a quick summary? Would Jon (or Daisy) give a full statement of what happened? … Would Elias give a Statement Never Given of the whole thing? (In that case, I’d really hope that Jon’s anchor would turn out to be MARTIN INDEED IN THE END, because then, Elias would have to narrate the whole ordeal, and I’m ALL for Elias’s pain while he would grit his teeth with utter disgust, come on, you know you want it too.)

And still no idea about Jon’s anchor /o/ I said last time that I felt that MAG129 was precisely introducing the idea that it wouldn’t be Martin, since Martin told Jon to stop “finding” him… but it wouldn’t mean that Jon would stop. And it’s one of the few things that Jon actively seeks out himself – the tape recorders are the ones stalking him, for example, and sadly so was The Distortion (;; I want Helen baaaack…). We don’t know whether he tends to go back to the Web’s lighter or if it’s the lighter which stuck to him.

The call of a cigarette? The Archives themselves? The Eye’s presence? The jar containing Jane Prentiss’s ashes? Jon’s fondness for meat? (MAG115: “I suppose in some ways it’s strange I’m not a vegetarian yet, what with everything I know. But… I rather think someone in my position has to take their small pleasures where they can, and if it occasionally delights some grotesque meat-god, well... c’est la vie.”) Regrets about his life choices?

#tl dr i have no idea and i'm scared :|#the magnus archives #mag130 #tma liveblog #tma season 4 #tma spoilers

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dramallamadingdang · 6 years ago

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The post I want to make on the MTS forums but can't...

...because they're touchy about discussing the "p" word. As in "piracy." I understand why they are, but I also think that they're wrong to silence people about "pirating" yet not have a care in the world if people tell others to buy used disks, for reasons that you'll see if you choose to read this thing. But...Their site, their rules and that's cool and all that. I’ve got no problems with that. I just think it’s doing the current (and future) TS2 community a disservice. Hence, this post.

Now that EA has announced that they will no longer give out the TS2 Ultimate Collection, I think it's time to address how to get the game if you don't already have it and want it. Or if you have it but your disks are lost/damaged. Or if you suddenly find yourself with a new machine that doesn't have an optical disk drive and you don't have and/or don't want to buy an external one. Or even if somewhere down the line EA removes the UC from your access, if you have it already and you then can't install it on a new machine. (They'd be entirely within their rights to do that, by the way.) If one is concerned about legality, then one ought to know what actually is legal or not and why and where the shades of gray are, so that you can make informed decisions about what you want to do. So, if you're interested in that, that's what I'm going to talk about in this post.

I'm going to say this up-front, though, as a sort of teaser: Now that EA is no longer giving out the UC like people give out Halloween candy: THERE IS CURRENTLY NO FULLY-LEGAL WAY TO GET OR PLAY THE GAME, if you don't already have it. Yes, the above is true, and behind the cut is why.

Here are my "credentials," if you will: A nice chunk of my income comes from royalties and licensing and stuff. Much such stuff is sold in digital format, music CDs and data CDs of original compositions and stuff like that. I have sued individuals and companies, successfully, who've infringed on my copyrights and/or the licensing agreements that I'm involved in. I'm pretty well-versed in this stuff.

So let's make one thing about this issue clear off the top: You do not these days purchase games or non-game software or movies or music or whatever that comes on a disk or in some digital form like, say, a book you download onto your Kindle. You only purchase a license to use the information on that one, single disk or that you got from that one, single download that you paid for. It's a small but all-important distinction, and it pretty much defines what makes things legal or not when we're talking about getting TS2 now that EA is no longer selling it or giving it away themselves.

Now that EA is out of the picture, at least for now, you have three options for getting the game:

1) Find someone selling disks that you know absolutely for certain have not been used.

Guess what? Still probably not fully-legal. The reason is this: If you're buying from a genuine retailer and not some shady "business" in Taiwan or a guy on eBay or something, EA recalled all new, existing, unopened TS2 discs from all retailers (at least in the US and I believe -- but am not certain -- worldwide) years ago. 2013ish, if memory serves. Those retailers were given full refunds for any unsold discs but were actually not required to physically return those discs. (Because, of course, EA didn't want to pay for return shipping!) They were supposed to destroy the disks, in good faith, in exchange for the refund. Even if they didn't receive a refund, they're still not supposed to be selling disks anymore because they've been recalled. Those disks are not supposed to exist and all end-user (that's you) licenses associated with them are now void. Which means that even if you now manage to find a genuinely unused retail disk, you have no legal license to use the game because EA voided it. They only way it would be legal is if you are buying from an individual (not a retailer of any kind) who bought the game and somehow never installed it...and I'd take such stories with a grain of salt, personally.

Because, remember: You're not buying a game; you're buying a license to use a game, and EA has revoked those licenses on retail disks that were unsold as of 2013ish. Now, is someone going to come pounding on your door to arrest you or to serve you court documents because they’re suing you? Of course not! But bear in mind that if the above applies to you, your game is not fully legal.

2) You can buy used disks from someone. Ebay and Amazon Marketplace and such are teeming with them.

Also not fully legal. Why? Because, as I said, each disk comes with a license to use the game for a single buyer and his/her household. No one else. That's one of the things that the End-User License Agreement says and that you agree to, probably without reading it, when you install the game. So as soon as the original buyer of the disk you subsequently bought installed the game on a machine, that single user license was used up. It cannot be transferred to another person. The disk can be transferred, sure, but not the license to use it, which when it comes to legality is all that matters. So, if you buy used disks, you still do not have a legal license to use the game.

Again, no one's going to come pounding on your door, of course. No one's pounding on the door of second-hand game shops, either, because it's not illegal to sell the used disks at all. But it is legally shade to actually use those disks when you buy them. So, just realize that your game is not fully legal if you bought used any or all of the disks you have. Then move on and don't worry about it...but also don't claim that you have a "legal" game so you're somehow more moral or whatever than people who pirate it. Because that's not true at all. In fact, legally you're in exactly the same boat -- pirate ship or otherwise ;) -- as people who've “pirated” the game. Which leads me to...

3) You can "pirate" the game. Meaning, you can get it via torrenting so that you never have a physical disk and you use a no-CD crack to play the game. Or you can make a copy of your friend's disks. Whatever.

There are multiple legal issues here. I'm not going to discuss why it's illegal to pass around copies of a game. I trust that everyone understands why that's so.

But you might be surprised to learn that it's actually not illegal to download the game illegitimately, for the same reason why buying and selling used disks isn't illegal. But there’s a catch. Again, the issue is that you don't buy a game; you buy a license to use it. So the problem arises, again, from using what you downloaded (or using that copy you made of your buddy's disk), because you don't have a license to do so. Sure, obviously no one would download something that they wouldn't then use, but my point is that if you download the game from a torrent, your legal problem is exactly the same as the legal problem that people who buy used disks have. And at least you, as a "pirater" did not pay someone for your legally-shady copy of the game. No one profited at EA's expense, in other words, whereas someone did exactly that if you bought used disks, especially if the seller didn't originally buy the disks themselves, which is usually the case at second-hand shops.

If you download the game via a torrent (as opposed to making copies of someone's disks), it's illegal not because you downloaded the file but because of the way torrenting works. It works by sharing your incomplete download with other downloaders as you download, as you go along, as well as after you do so, if you continue to "seed" the torrent after your own download is completed. The sharing part is illegal for what I hope are obvious reasons; the downloading part is not. It’s a technicality, sure, but then all of this discussion is.

In the end, the most-illegal thing you can do when it comes to this stuff is not downloading via torrenting but making a copy of your buddy's disks for your own use because in that case you're transgressing twice. And here's why.

There's a thing in copyright law called Fair Use. This covers multiple things, but the relevant bit here is that it allows you to make a backup of digital media that you've legitimately bought for archival purposes. This has always been on the books, as long as there've been digital formats, which goes all the way back to tapes. So if you have, say, a copy of The Lion King on DVD and your three-year-old insists on watching it twice a day if she can and in the process breaks a disk a week, you have a right to make a copy of the original in order to preserve the original. (OK, you're not supposed to make multiple backups, just one, but seriously? The kid breaks them constantly and Disney disks are terribly overpriced. And no, I'm not talking from experience at all. :) ) Anyway, Fair Use = 1 backup of your legitimately-purchased disks.

But then in the 90s the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) came along. (In the US, that is. There's similar bullshit worldwide, though.) Mostly it came about because movie and music distributors (not the musicians, one needs to point out) are absolute control freaks and were really, really pissed that CDs/DVDs are so damn easy to make copies of. The relevant bit of this was that it said, "Nope, no more personal backups for you! At all! And hey! No ripping that CD to put the songs on your phone or MP3 player, either! You gotta buy another copy of the songs from iTunes or whatever it is that we want to make more money from today!" It all comes back to "You don't buy a movie. You buy a license to view the content on that one disk, so if your obsessive three-year-old breaks it you have to buy a new disk every week. Sucks to be you, but it's really awesome for us." (Needless to say, you can guess what I think -- as a musician -- of this bit of corporate greed.)

My ranting aside, the issue now is that it is technically illegal to make copies of disks and stuff that you legitimately own, even for your own use and you never share anything with anyone. Again, no one's going to come knocking on your door, but you should know about this. (Mostly, in the wake of DMCA, court cases have involved small companies that make software that can rip DVDs by decoding/bypassing encryption, not individuals who make or use copies of disks. They know they can’t pursue such individuals in any practical way. Instead, they seek to take away the tools that allow you to do it.) So, that's transgression #1 when it comes to making a copy of your buddy's TS2's disks. The other, of course, is the same as the other points: You don't have a legal license to use that copy of your buddy's disk. So, you're transgressing coming and going, so to speak.

So, what's a TS2 fan to do now? Honestly? All three options are problematic, legally. Unless you can somehow manage to find genuinely never-used disks from an individual (not a retailer), you will not be fully legit. So, if you want to be pure and clean and looking down on all the sinners from your fine high horse, you can't get TS2 now if you find you need it, unless EA decides to distribute it again. But for the rest of us? I'm not going to advocate any particular thing because, as I said, all of the options are shady and more or less equally so and for the same reason across the board. But you have the info now -- if you’ve actually managed to read all this -- and you can make an informed decision for yourself, should you need to acquire the game again. Or for the first time. But for the love of God, please don't go around saying that you're all legit because you bought used disks while that person over there *gasp* got their game on the torrents. Because you're not legit, and you’re not legit for pretty much the same reason as a dirty pirate is.

#sims 2 #this has been your psa for the day #and a rant too #woo!

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minnarchy · 6 years ago

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Documentation is Important, or, The case of the negative Cutter number

I had a juicy cataloging mystery while working on the reference desk on Tuesday, something I do two hours a week; our library is free and open to the public, and it helps me in my archivist position to work with patrons to see how they use our tools and collections. I love a good mystery, and will usually drop everything if I can to figure it out, because the satisfaction of finding something that is difficult to find is so high, and the hunt is fun (especially when you have a colleague to help you, as I do). Luckily, there weren’t very many patrons during my shift, so I was able to jump pretty deep into problem solving at that moment. (A general caveat: I’m not a cataloger, and I alternately use call number and locator number when describing archival collections’ box number/physical location-type information. I try to be consistent, but…?)

General background on us: We were established in 1849 and have been collecting since then (all types of past library, archives, and museum practice are well represented in our collections and documentation, lol). Our library and archives collection contains many different types of materials, including books and other printed materials, photographs, audio/visual material, archival collections, maps, posters, newspapers, and microfilm, which are all in our online catalog and used in our reading room. Our institution also has a 3D objects collection which is separate, and has its own online catalog. Each of these types generally has its own classification or organization system. At one time, our institution had several different reading rooms in different buildings, like one just for newspapers, one just for photographs, etc. In 1992, our current building opened, and it was the first time everything was housed together. There are always new classification/organization systems that I am discovering! Some of them are our own special creation and found nowhere else. Institutional knowledge is especially important at a place like this, because even though we have a lot of documentation, sometimes there are important details that aren’t documented, or they’re not documented consistently.

So, while I was on the reference desk, someone had a couple of request slips with call numbers already written down for Civil War-related archival collections they wanted to look at. They were what we call negative Cutter numbers (as in the Cutter Expansive Classification system, pre-Library of Congress), which is a very old way that staff used to catalog archival collections (e.g. A/+H725, or A/-H725, the plus or minus indicating different collections. Very confusing. I don’t know if the +/- thing is just something we did locally, or was used more broadly). A collection with this type of number tells me that it was acquired a very long time ago (100 years or more), and may not have been looked at in awhile.

The patron showed me where they had found one of them, the George T. Campbell papers, which was listed as a source for an article on one of our institution’s many websites (not the catalog) and which listed the collection name and call number (A/-.C174). Since it was listed on one of our sites, I didn’t check that the call number was correct. We submitted the slips to be retrieved, and the patron also wondered about an item also by Campbell that was in our 3D collection. I pulled up the record in our 3D catalog, and it was a manuscript that was being treated like a 3D object. Now, this happens sometimes (there is some overlap among our holding areas, depending on artifactual value versus content value, etc.), but it did seem strange to me that a typewritten reminiscence was in the 3D collection.

The reference assistants were unable to find the negative Cutter collections on the shelf in the stacks. This is when I had to start investigating. Starting with Campbell, first I had to verify that the call number was correct. I searched our library catalog for the collection name as written on the website the patron showed me. This did not yield anything. I also searched by call number and browsed the subjects for Campbell, but neither panned out. I then went to our paper copies of finding aids, which are organized by call number, to see if there was an inventory there, but there was not. I searched our 3D catalog again using the same collection name, and the manuscript-3D object the patron had initially found popped up as it had before. How curious. I looked again at the website where the patron had first found the collection information, and saw that it was originally published in 2013, and last updated in 2015. I knew that it was possible that the Campbell papers had been recatalogued since then and had a new call number, but what was it? It was very unlikely that the papers had been deaccessioned, given the subject matter (Civil War), so I knew they had to be around somewhere. For a minute, I had a wacko theory that the papers had been transferred from archival collections to the 3D collection in the last 5 years, but had no idea why that would be.

At this point, there was nothing else I could do while stationed at the reference desk, so I brought out the big guns. I asked a cataloger and the curator of the collection for their help, to see if they knew anything. It wasn’t an emergency, but they came right away anyway; like me, they like to solve mysteries, maybe more than any other job duty, and they are very good at it. Mystery solving comes up quite frequently here, with all of the potential for 150+ years’ worth of outdated call numbers, different physical locations over the (many) decades, etc.

While I was in the reading room, they were downstairs, looking at old accession registers, the accession file, and a set of what we call dead shelf-list cards, which list old locations for archival collections that have been assigned a new location/call number. The dead shelf-list cards were the key, because that was the only place that linked the old negative Cutter number to a new call number. (Say it with me: documentation is important.) The cataloger had recatalogued this particular collection at some point in the last few years, pulled the original shelf list card and put it with the dead ones, and annotated it with the new locations. Then she made a new shelf list card with the current information, and put it with the active/live shelf list cards, which we still maintain.

It turns out that one of the updated locator numbers was incorrect on the dead shelf list card. More importantly, however, it showed that the collection name, Campbell, was different than how it appeared in our 3D catalog and on the website that had the original citation the patron found. As soon as the cataloger searched our library catalog using the other spelling, Cambell without a P, it popped up right away. I felt so silly, as it never occurred to me to try a different spelling⸺but that’s because the other spelling was used on websites that I trusted.

Once I had the right spelling, I was able to find the George T. Cambell papers in the library catalog and write down the new call number, which staff then found in the stacks.

There are several positive outcomes for all of this time spent. First, I asked for the name misspellings and the outdated call number on the other websites to be corrected. Second, the dead shelf list card will have the correct new call numbers; and I showed the patron that we really wanted them to get to access what they came to the library to see. Access and accuracy are what we’re all about, and it’s always good when we can improve. Third, the curator will compare the item catalogued as a 3D object with what’s in the archival collection to see if they are different and should be (re)united (the curator hadn’t known there was a manuscript-type object in 3D and was extremely interested in it).

Mysteries like these pop up regularly for us, where we try to track down where the dang box is (we have over 90,000), when old finding aids or index cards or catalog records differ, where one series of documentation was updated but others were not, and we turn to several different sources to track what happened. Usually we can figure it out. I’m grateful we have so much documentation, but sometimes that also makes it difficult when the all the different types of documentation don’t agree.

My main takeaways from this experience are:

1. Always check call numbers in the library catalog, even if the patron seems experienced, even if other sites have different information. Where did this citation come from? Is it recent and up to date? Are you sure you spelled the name right? Are you sure it’s spelled right in sources you used? Why are you sure? Humans are creative with names, and anything is possible as far as names go. (There is another Minnesotan who served in the Civil War with a similar uncommon name spelling that has tripped me up before. It is spelled differently in different sources⸺Mathew/Matthew Marvin. Sometimes people spelled their own names differently over time, or were just plain inconsistent, making finding all of the resources on or about them at one time difficult.)

2. Documentation is important!

3. If one website is updated, all websites should be updated, if at all possible. Otherwise staff and the public alike will get confused.

Coda: There was a second negative Cutter collection that staff couldn’t find on the shelf, but that one was easier to find. The patron had written down the collection name, H. Adams, on the request slip, but I found out it was incomplete when I searched. I searched the catalog with what they had written down and added “Civil War.” That led me to the catalog record, with the complete name, H. Adams Hair, and an updated call number. Happy patron, happy staff member.

Catalog record for George T. Cambell papers: https://mnpals-mhs.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma990017350490104294&context=L&vid=01MNPALS_MHS:MHS&search_scope=MyInstitution&tab=LibraryCatalog&lang=en

#archives #classification #historymystery #dangyoucutter

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mrandmrsvex · 7 years ago

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Relationships: Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia Characters: Vex'ahlia (Critical Role), Perci, Vax'ildan (mentioned), Keyleth (mentioned) Additional Tags: Modern AU, hotel au, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Winter Special I guess :D

Summary:

Vex doesn't trust 'free' offers of any kind. But when she's stranded in a foreign city with no hostel bed and not enough money for a hotel, she can't deny the handsome stranger offering her a free stay at the swankiest hotel in town.

Chapter 1 : Checking in

„Are you serious?!“ Vex stared at the grumpy, bearded, short fellow behind the desk right inside the narrow doorway of the tiny hostel she'd booked into – or at least thought she had booked into. He simply shrugged.

„Dunno what to tell ye, missy. I've nae reservation with yer name on it.“

„But I booked it online! Here, look, I have a printout-“ She hastily unfolded a paper, but the guy already waved her off.

„Ah, yeah, the online booking's shot most o' the time. Sorry. Guess yer reservation got lost that way.“

„Fine. Ok. I only pre-paid, like, a third already, but ok.“ Vex tried to calm herself down, but the uncaring reactions of this guy were not helping. „Can I book a bed NOW, then?“

„Sorry, lass. We're all full.“

She'd done all she could not to scream in his face right then and there, and he'd at least given her directions to the local tourist office that might have info on free rooms. She was still furiously typing a very angry review on her cellphone while standing in line when someone tried to carefully push past her.

„Sorry, ma'am. May I? I need to get behind the counter there.“

The smell of strong coffee and woodsmoke and something metallic hit her nose before she looked up confused. The polite smile and piercing blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses did not help her get her focus back. She only managed to stutter out a short 'Sure' before he'd already passed by, behind the desk and further back, greeting someone working in the office and apparently starting a short chat. Her thumb hovered over her cellphone, trying to finish the rage-filled message, while she couldn't stop looking him up and down-

„Miss? Can I help you?“

Vex was startled out of focus once again to stare at the lady behind the information desk, giving her the standard service-smile and making her realise that the line had ended.

„Oh, uhm, yes. I need a hostel bed for tonight – apparently the booking I had got lost, and nothing else was free-“ The lady was already typing into her computer, and Vex resumed peeking at the man far behind her who was still talking to one of the workers. Tall and somewhat lanky, though the large blue coat covered most of his body well enough to hide it, with hair as white as the snow she'd waded through to get here. The polite smile he'd given her was still there, but it didn't reach his tired eyes. Blue eyes. Bright blue eyes. That just now looked up and caught her staring.

Vex quickly turned back to the lady in front of her, who, thankfully, had started to talk. She could feel the heat rise up to her cheeks while she listened.

„I'm afraid, miss, that there's no free bed in any of our hostels tonight. It's quite a popular time, what with the Winter festival. There might be something in the hotels, though. What is your budget?“

Vex felt her worst expectations come true.

It was her first solo trip since- it was her first solo trip ever, she realised. They'd always travelled together, she and her brother, during winter. Mainly to avoid being 'invited' to their father's christmas celebrations, at which they were expected, but never really wanted. This year, Vax was far too busy – with his new job, his 12-hour christmas shifts, and his new girlfriend, who was just as alone on christmas morning as they usually were. Keyleth had invited her, of course, she'd love to have her over in the evening while Vax worked, and in the morning, the three of them together, but it just hadn't felt right. Vex had a hard time imagining herself getting comfy with the overly enthusiastic red-headed girl she barely knew, and an even harder time imagining herself sitting around in PJ's while said girl and her brother gave each other lovey-dovey gifts.

So she'd picked a travel route – a new one, somewhere she and Vax had never been before – and convinced herself it would be exciting and interesting and absolutely not terrifying to go out on her own.

And now she was standing in a tourist office in her last destination, feet covered with melting snow that was soaking her socks, with no bed to sleep in, and barely enough money left in her pocket to cover a hostel bed and dinner. Definitely not enough money to pay for a hotel room of any kind.

„I'm afraid my budget doesn't cover hotels.“ Was the only answer she could give.

„Oh, let's try, dear. You'll be surprised how affordable some of our local hotels are!“

Vex was not surprised. The poor lady tried her best, but even she couldn't find a room small and cheap enough.

She was still typing into her computer looking for a solution, while Vex silently calculated how much it would cost to catch a night bus back home – she could sleep on the bus, definitely warmer than just settling down in some corner of the town or in the woods with her sleeping bag, and Vax and Keyleth would be kind enough to pretend that it had been her plan from the beginning to come back early – when a deep voice pulled her from her thoughts.

„I'm sorry to interrupt, but I might be able to help.“

The man she'd been awkwardly staring at was now right beside her, holding up a small envelope with a beautiful logo – almost a crest – printed on top.

„There's a hotel in town that has a special offer for returning guests. I have a voucher left, if you want it.“

She'd taken the envelope before she could even think of it. 'The Grand Whitestone Hotel' was printed in embossed lettering underneath the logo, and the front was sealed up. Before Vex could even try to open it, he cleared his throat, and her eyes darted back to him. „It's only valid while sealed, I've been told.“ He seemed to blush a tiny bit, but she had neither the time nor the mind to focus on that.

„If it's for returning guests, I probably won't be able to use your card, will I?“

„Oh, I'm sure it's transferable. As long as the envelope is intact, they'll take it.“

„This doesn't sound like a hotel I could afford, even with a discount.“ Her finger traced the letters along the paper.

„It's good for one free stay, I think.“

This entire offer seemed too good to be true.

„And you're just giving it to a random stranger, for free.“

„Well, I have no use for it. I'd rather it helped someone than just gather dust in my files.“

She stared at him, openly now. The lady behind the desk seemed rather interested, as well, but he only looked back at Vex with that already familiar polite smile – which now reached his eyes, as tired as they looked.

„You have my thanks, then. There's nothing much else I can offer in return, to be honest.“ Vex said. „If you're staying in town, maybe we'll bump into each other again, and you can treat me to a drink at the festival as thanks. I hear they have cheap but good mulled wine.“

Before she could reply with a flirty answer, he'd said his good-byes and was out of the door. The lady behind the desk was almost grinning.

„So, would you like directions to the Grand Whitestone Hotel?“

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

Standing in front of the hotel to which she'd gotten directions to, she didn't dare to believe it. The offer had to be too good to be true. This wasn't a hotel. This was a mansion. A castle. There was a separate drive-way off the street, a lush front-garden even covered with snow, and flags on the sides of the walls, and a carpet, also partially covered with snow, leading into the entrance. There was a doorman in a uniform that was beginning to glare at her for standing in the way, and concierges walking around just inside, carrying bags.

There was no way she'd be getting a room here with a measly little envelope she wasn't allowed to open.

There was also no way that random, well-off looking, handsome men would just walk up to girls like her and give them free hotel vouchers.

Then again, what do I have to lose? She thought to herself, giving the friendliest fake smile to the doorman while stepping past him. At least I'll have some time to warm up in the foyer while they dismiss me.

She lifted her shoulders while approaching the large frontdesk, holding her head up, trying to get her usual confidence back. No reason to act like a scared mouse in such a grand place – might as well go for the big pretense, she told herself. It shouldn't matter how out of place she looked, with her giant backpack, her hiking boots and ratty, yet warm coat, inside this lobby that was made from nothing but shiny white stone and dark wood. She'd managed to stay confident in more intimidating places with her father, she'd manage it here – even without Vax by her side.

The man behind the desk smiled at her so earnestly it gave her another confidence boost. Her eyes darted down to his nameplate. 'Kynan', she tried to remember.

„Good evening, and welcome to the Grand Whitestone Hotel. How can I be of service?“

„Good evening.“ She was still a little nervous, she noticed as she fumbled for the envelope. „I- I've been told this voucher offers a free stay.“

His smile wavered a bit, and so did her confidence. It was a joke, it had all been a joke, there was nothing inside the envelope, that pretty man was nothing but a mean-

Kynan seemed to recognise the printed logo, at least, and reached for the envelope she held out. It seemed like eternity as he opened and read it with slightly confused eyes, while the snow yet again started to melt from her shoes and she wondered if she'd be fined for tarnishing this immaculate hotel entrance. Then Kynan's eyes almost lit up.

„Oh, of course! Forgive me, miss, it is a rare voucher, I'd almost forgotten.“ His smile was back just as quickly as he reached down towards his keyboard.

„And how long are you planning to stay, ma'am? The voucher doesn't specify.“

„Oh, only three days.“ For a second, she considered staying just one night – not pushing her luck – but then again, she had an open return ticket for the daily bus service, and what good was a free hotel room if one didn't take full advantage of it.

„Three days, very well. I'm afraid that the executive suites are all booked, so would a regular suite be fine? I'm terribly sorry.“

„That would be absolutely fine, thank you.“ Just what kind of voucher had this man handed to her that it would've granted her an executive suite for an unspecified number of days? Did he even know?

„Then I'll need just some information and a signature here, please, miss.“

Vex filled out the form as fast as she could, ending her signature with the flourish she'd learned back when Vax and she still used their last name regularly. Kynan, still smiling brightly, handed her a keycard – and the envelope.

„You hold on to this, miss. It'll give you special rates in the restaurant and the bar as well.“ Was that a wink, Vex wondered?

„There is also a spa in the lower levels, as well as gym and swimming pool. If you need anything else, just give us a quick call. More information can be found in the folder in your suite. Enjoy your stay!“

She thanked Kynan again and waved off the concierge offering to take her backpack – even saving her hostel money, there was no way she could afford the kind of tip he probably expected.

Alone in the giant elevator, pushing the button for the sixth floor and watching the doors close without a sound, she took a deep breath and pulled the card out of the envelope.

It was not a voucher. It wasn't anything, really, except for a sturdy piece of paper with a handwritten note.

Her eyes darted to the last line first, a far more flourished signature than hers, and at least three times as long, if not even more. As it stood, she could barely make out the first name – Percival – with the rest of it being almost illegible swirls and strokes ending in something that looked like 'de Rolo' at the end, accompanied with three strong stripes.

What was very clear to read was the 'Lord' in front of it all.

What was also very clear was the note itself.

This lady is my personal guest.

Give her everything she wants.

If you think I did a good job writing this, and you have some copper to spare, consider buying me a coffee?

#Perc'ahlia #Percy #Vex'ahlia #Critical Role #Crit Role #Vox Machina #Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III #Modern Au #My writing #my fanfics

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bevioletskies · 7 years ago

Text

20 questions [5/20]

characters: peter/gamora, guardians-centric

fandom: avengers academy/marvel cinematic universe

summary: wasp has a new competition in store for the students of avengers academy, and there’s money involved. so obviously, peter and gamora have to pretend to be a couple in order to win. wait, what?

chapter preview: natasha is suspicious, the students attend a funeral, and mantis gets the wheels in motion on yondu's brilliant (?) plan.

word count: 3554 | total word count: 118k

a/n: did i also mention how much i adore mantis? because i really do.

ao3 | previously | next | masterpost

“Will you please sit down? Your pacing is making me irritated.”

“You’re always irritated, ain’t got nothing to do with Gamora.”

“Might have something to do with you, rat-face!”

“DON’T CALL ME A RAT!”

“BE QUIET!” Gamora bellowed, finally stopping her quest to wear a hole into the carpet so she could reprimand her teammates. Nebula and Rocket were attempting to work on one of the weapons that had been damaged in the Sovereign fight, but honestly, anyone could’ve seen how poorly that was going to turn out.

Unlike Peter, Gamora had been released Sunday afternoon, giving Peter another six or so hours of boredom to go through, completely alone. She had offered to stay to save him from going insane, but he had waved her off, insisting she help the other Guardians get it together.

Although she had been secretly hoping for a continuation of their game, most of the morning was spent giving formal statements and completing frankly mind-numbing paperwork for Maria and Pepper, respectively. She wished she hadn’t felt so small when Maria had stared her down with a steel glint in her eye, asking Gamora if she would be attending the fallen SHIELD agents’ funeral. Did people still think she was so cold-hearted?

Lunch had been idle chat, debating what to do about the Milano’s failing engine and broken wings (again), and then a nurse had come in, checked her over, and promptly deemed her free to go. And now, here she was, babysitting her sister and an especially irritated Rocket.

It was saved by Groot barreling into the room, fresh and bright-eyed after his nap. She sat cross-legged on the floor - her thigh was starting to ache a little from her bones putting themselves back together so quickly - and he climbed into her lap, reaching up for her like a baby who wanted to be held. “Hi, Groot,” she sighed. She could never be too irritated when he was around.

“I am Groot,” he said happily, sprawling across her forearm so his head was resting on her palm. She smiled back, removing her rings so he wouldn’t get caught on them.

“She’s not supposed to know about the plan, you idiot,” Rocket exclaimed. “Stop talking before she starts understandin’ you.”

“What plan?” Gamora’s brow furrowed.

“Just ignore him. It’s what I do,” Nebula drawled, flexing her metal fingers. “Are we done yet?”

“Why? You got somewhere to be?”

“Yes, it’s ‘anywhere but here’.”

“If Quill didn’t go and get himself injured, then maybe he’d be here instead-a you, so - ”

Gamora exhaled slowly. Mantis had taught her about deep breathing to calm the nerves, but she had a feeling that was only going to go so far today.

______

Natasha tapped her pencil impatiently against the leg of one of the many large wooden tables in the Timeless Archives, to the irritation of the rest of the students nearby. Even her tablemates, calm as they may be, were starting to exchange looks, wondering if something was wrong.

“Um, Natasha?” Sam said. “Everything okay?”

“I’m...just...peachy,” she sighed.

“You’re not convincing me,” Steve said, setting down his own pencil and leaning forward on his elbows. “What is it?”

“Can you keep a secret?” Natasha said, smirking. Thankfully, she finally stopped tapping away. “It’s a good one.”

“Aw, come on,” Clint complained from her left. “Now you have to tell us.”

She continued to smirk, drumming her fingers on the table. She couldn’t help the theatrics, it had been ingrained in her a while ago. “I know you boys don’t keep up with Janet’s show, but I do. Not to mention one of her girls’ nights from last week. It’s where I found out that Quill and Gamora are together. And they’ve been holed up in the hospital all weekend after that spectacle with the Sovereign.”

“Didn’t think you were one for gossip about romance,” Steve commented, diplomatic as always.

“It’s not so much about that. It’s the timing. Suspicious, isn’t it?”

“I don’t follow,” Sam admitted. “You know me and Steve. We’re soldiers, not spies.”

“Jan announces a contest that involves money, and suddenly, Quill and Gamora are ‘comfortable’ with telling people about their romantic relationship, which could conveniently bring in ten thousand dollars? Gamora might be my friend, but Jan and I are much closer, and I don’t want her getting emotionally manipulated and duped because the Guardians need cash.”

“You think they’re pretending?” Clint whistled. “Wow. That’s like, couple cliche number three.”

“The weird thing is, I tried to test this theory,” Natasha continued, shooting Clint a dirty look. “I gave Gamora a clear opportunity to obtain ten thousand dollars - legally - and she rejected it. And yet they still keep up the pretense of being together.”

“Doesn’t that prove it’s for real?” Steve asked. “I mean, Natasha, this is a pretty big thing to accuse them of. The Guardians have proven to want to redeem themselves, over and over again. They’re not con artists anymore.”

“But why turn down the money? It wouldn’t be out of character to take it, regardless of whether they’re actually dating or not,” Natasha said, fingers curling into a fist. “And that they’ve been dating for months - you’re telling me that Quill wouldn’t shout it from the rooftops from the beginning? Not to mention the fact he still keeps flirting with other girls, like he’s got no one to be faithful to.”

“You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions, Natasha,” Steve said firmly, his eyebrows knitting together to form his Captain America face. “It’s simple - they didn’t want to take money they didn’t earn, Peter wants to respect Gamora by keeping their relationship a secret until she was ready, and he’s probably just being friendly. You tell me that I seem to be flirting with women all the time when I’m not.”

“I know it’s in your nature to be suspicious of people, but maybe just let this one go,” Sam said, his voice gentle. “If we see anything else that matches your theory, we’ll let you know, but for now, leave ‘em be.”

Natasha’s head bowed, before looking back up. “You’re right. Maybe. I just want to look out for Janet.”

“Word of advice? Don’t tell Tony.” Steve looked certain of that. “He’s going to get too overprotective, and we don’t need any more in-campus fighting.”

“Little hypocritical of you, Cap.” Three heads turned to stare at Clint accusingly. He held his hands up in surrender. “I’m just saying - the whole civil war thing was kind of, y’know what, I’m gonna shut up now.”

______

Classes had been cancelled on Monday so students could pay their respects to the fallen SHIELD agents, causing a bit of chaos as exams, deadlines, and whatnot were shuffled around. Peter in particular had returned to his dorm room the previous night instead of the Milano to double-check his progress on his case study on Inhuman rights, as much as he had wanted to be back with his team. It was stupid, considering how much time he spent with them, but he’d missed them as he fell asleep on his much-nicer bed that night.

And thanks to his unusually comfortable mattress, he was now late for the funeral. Just perfect.

Granted, the service wasn’t about to start yet, but he knew Gamora was waiting for him outside the building so they could walk to the quad together. He nearly flew out the building in haste and almost missed her, standing right at the door, in what appeared to be a black blouse tucked into full-length leather skirt, with a capelet thrown over her shoulders. Her hair was expertly pinned up in a way that suggested it had been Mantis’s doing. “Whoa,” he said. Then he paused. “I said that out loud, didn’t I.”

“Yes you did,” Gamora said, shooting him an amused smile. She approached him slowly, laid a gloved hand on his arm, and leaned forward to gently kiss his cheek. Nearby, Peter could hear the distinctive giggles of Mary Jane, Gwen, and Felicia, likely observing them, even more likely taking pictures.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I really shouldn’t be commenting on how you look for an occasion like this. But you do look really nice.”

“Your tie is crooked,” Gamora said in return. “But thank you.”

The quad was a few minutes’ walk from the dorm, the air feeling more and more somber as they got closer, students flooding in from several directions. Peter could vaguely see Professor Pym wearing a black lab coat, chatting to Odin, who was wearing some of the nicest pitch-black furs he’d ever seen.

As they walked along the fringes of the seating area, looking for the other Guardians, Peter reached for her, lacing their fingers together. Gamora turned to look at him for a moment, confused, before a moment of realization crossed her face and she squeezed back. They eventually filed in on the end of a row of seats, where the others looked relieved that they had made it in the nick of time.

______

After the service and transfer of the coffins to individual quinjets, which would take the families back to their hometowns to bury their loved ones, the entire campus seemed particularly morose. It was a comfort, Gamora thought, to have Peter’s hand in hers.

Students walked about rather aimlessly, stopping to talk quietly with their heads bowed to whoever they ran into. Agent 13 seemed the most distraught - although she had been the one to lead the successful charge, she had also been trained alongside one of the dead.

“You cannot blame yourself,” Peggy was saying to her grand-niece. “You did so well, my darling.”

“You would've done better, Aunt Peggy.” Sharon looked so devastated that Gamora had to force herself to look away.

“Death isn't something I wanna think about much, but man, stuff like this really gets to me,” Peter murmured sadly.

“It is not the dead that I pity,” Gamora said. “It is the living, the ones who go on to remember them. Or forget. You and me, for example.”

Peter’s face softened. “Our parents.”

“No service held for my family, and just one person alive who knew them at all,” she nodded, pulling them aside to stop by a tree. “Are you feeling alright? You've been leaning slightly. I should check your stomach wound.”

“It's just a little sore on one side, I didn't wanna put too much weight on it,” Peter promised, taking her other hand. She looked down at their joined hands, feeling the growing heat of the morning sun radiate through them both.

“Gamora?”

Startled out of her reverie, she turned to see Adam standing there, slightly puzzled. “Oh. Hello,” she said, attempting to feign a polite smile.

“You two doing okay? Sorry I didn't get to check in on you both at the medbay, but Yondu didn't seem so intent on me going in,” he said, an awkwardness in his face that wasn't usually present. Gamora realized he was looking at their joined hands.

“I should talk to Yondu about that, sorry, man,” Peter said, reaching out to pat his shoulder. “How about you? I heard nothing after we got taken out.”

“I headed straight for the ground as soon as you guys got hit. Ships here just aren't built for a thin atmosphere,” Adam shrugged. “So, uh, Gamora, about the amps…”

“Maybe another time, Adam.”

“But - ”

He was interrupted by a loud groan, Peter clutching at his side. “Ah, uh, babe, we might have a problem.”

Alarmed, Gamora instantly ducked under his shoulder to support him, nearly tangling their arms in the process. “Medbay?”

“Dorm’s closer, I just restocked my first aid kit. Ahh, careful!”

“We should go,” Gamora said briskly, nodding at Adam as an afterthought, hauling a surprisingly heavy Peter back to the dorms.

He continued to make agonizing noises all the way back, to the point of scaring Peter Parker in the elevator. It was only after Gamora got them inside and set him down on the bed, that he suddenly fell silent.

“Quill?” she whispered, worried he had lost the ability to breathe. When she looked up from where she'd been ripping at his shirt, she could see his face, perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened.

“You didn't want to be around him,” Peter shrugged, leaning back on his elbows. “I could tell.”

“So you faked it? That is not your decision to make!” She moved as if to run her fingers through her hair, only to remember it was pinned up. He briefly wondered if she was going to strangle him instead.

“You seemed uncomfortable,” he protested. “You're weirdly polite when it comes to Adam. You would've brushed him off if he was anyone else.”

“What are you trying to say?” She straightened up, staring down at him.

“I - nothing! Just that you're generally nice to him than you are to most people!” He sighed. “It just makes me wonder if maybe, I don't know…”

“No,” Gamora said firmly. “I know what you're going to say, and no, I do not. Don't ever do that again, or I will - ”

“Kill me, I got it,” Peter said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Gamora, I know you can handle yourself, it’s just instinct, alright? Especially in social situations, you can be kind of...a loose cannon. If it was just a random guy threatening your life, I know you'd have it under control in five seconds flat, but this was different. I shouldn’t have taken that away from you, and I’ll let you deal with it next time. Promise.”

He held up his hand and stuck out his pinky finger in what looked like some bizarre salute. She frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Oh, right. It's called a pinky swear,” he said with a chuckle. “My mom and I did this sometimes. It’s for when you agree on something, like shaking hands.” He took one of her hands, and gently maneuvered it so their fingers were looped together.

“It looks more like a lazy way to hold hands,” she commented.

“It can be that, too,” Peter smiled, swinging their joined hands between them for a moment. Gamora had to bite her bottom lip to stop herself from smiling back. As irritating as he could be, Peter was always good at making her feel better. It was an annoying talent of his.

“I should go,” she sighed, pulling away rather reluctantly. “Now that I know you're actually not hurt. We have homework to catch up on.”

“You going to the Milano?” he asked. She nodded, and at that movement, she could feel her hair slightly shifting and falling out of its shape. She paused to reach up and undo the (rather excessive amount of) bobby pins, letting her hair cascade back down around her shoulders.

Gamora looked over to see Peter staring at her oddly. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said, though his eyes were oddly fixated on her hair and not her face. “I'm just thinkin’ about how I'm fake-dating the coolest girl in school.”

She ducked abruptly in an attempt to hide the heat rising in her cheeks. She really needed to get out of here before this went somewhere she wasn't prepared for.

______

The rest of the day was a somber affair, especially for the SHIELD-turned-Academy students who had known the fallen. Agent 13, Phil Coulson, and Daisy Johnson in particular had gone back to bed, the weight of the world pulling them back to sleep, while others coped by sneaking off to Club A early, in hopes that Ultron bot would be ready to serve them drinks.

For Peter? He had invited Mantis to his room so they could study together. She hadn’t been at the school very long, but luckily the Academy was very blasé about inviting new students every month, so the curriculum wasn’t nearly as structured as regular schools, allowing her to catch up.

They were both lying on Peter’s bed, surrounded by books, looseleaf paper, and their holo-tabs, working their way through the case study Peter had attempted (with little success) last night. He smiled when he saw Mantis’s wrist, adorned with her neon green friendship bracelet, clicking softly as she wrote. There was a few charms strung on, including a little alien head, a star, and a music note. Herself, the Guardians, and her brother.

He had grown very fond of Mantis very quickly, despite his initial worries about her empathic abilities. As much as he liked Gamora and tolerated Nebula, their personalities could prove too much at times, exhausting, even. Mantis’s gentle, innocent nature was bittersweet - a reminder of how she had grown up in isolation, but allowed her to explore things for the first time with her new family. Although they weren’t related by blood, Peter instantly felt the need to look after her and help her in understanding herself and the world around her. Mantis had admitted she had no idea how many years had passed while living on Ego, so she didn’t know how old she was, but her emotional maturity had made him think of her as his younger sister.

“You are not very good at concentrating,” Mantis informed him, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Do you want to talk instead?”

Peter shrugged nonchalantly. “I mean, if it’s between working and not working, I’m gonna choose not working. My brain’s still a little fuzzy from the funeral.”

“Would you like some help with that?” she said patiently, reaching to touch his arm. He shook his head. “Okay. Well, um, Peter?”

They both shut their books, rolling onto their sides so they could see each other better. “Yeah?”

“I am sorry I did not come to see you in the hospital,” Mantis said, looking so worried that Peter’s heart broke for her a little. “I am not a very good sister.”

“You’re a great sister, Mantis,” he said firmly. “Groot needed someone to look after him, you were the best one for the job. I was okay, Gamora was there with me.”

She perked up at this. “You and Gamora...our classmates seem to like the idea.”

“You mean the whole relationship thing?” Peter smiled. “I don’t know how it’s gonna go. I mean, we’ve got like, two and a half months left into this whole thing. Can we really pretend for that long?”

“You think it will stop being pretend?” Her eyes were huge, practically staring into his soul, daring him to answer.

“No, I mean, it’ll be hard to keep faking it. Someone’s gonna slip eventually, accidentally tell someone. Probably me,” he admitted. “I’m almost hoping we’ll have some month-long expedition somewhere so we can spend most of it away from everyone else.”

“So you are immediately going to break up after the yearbooks are out? That does not seem smart,” Mantis said, tapping him on the nose with her pencil. “You would have to at least pretend for a little while longer, or it will be suspicious.”

“We probably should’ve thought this through.” Peter groaned, flopping his head down onto a pillow. “I thought I could do my usual thing, y’know, make stuff up as I go, but that’s probably not gonna work this time.”

“You need a plan,” Mantis said sagely. “And I have one.”

His head popped up. “What? You do?” He watched in awe as she pulled up a file on her tablet, with what looked like a step-by-step list of things to do in order to keep up the charade. There were links, pictures, and did he see the word ‘contingency’? What the hell? “Uh, what the hell?” he said aloud.

She only grinned at him, and wow, he really needed to teach her how to properly smile. “The others thought it would be a good idea to come up with a plan while you two were gone. I helped!” She scrolled to the top, eager to show him. “We were thinking that this weekend, you and Gamora should go on a trip alone together.”

“The Milano is down,” Peter said, confused.

“Not on another planet, just here,” Mantis said. “You would not have to pretend for the benefit of our classmates, but it would be seen as romantic. A small getaway after a traumatizing event.”

“That is...actually kind of brilliant,” he said, giving her an encouraging smile. “I mean, Gamora and I need to do a supply run anyways. We could come up with more fake dating ideas while we’re away from everyone else, and get some work done without dealing with school drama.”

“Exactly!” she said excitedly. “You would just have to do a couple things - maybe go to a museum or something - and be seen in public. Janet will want to look at social media to see if the famous Guardians have been spotted.”

“You’re a genius, Mantis,” Peter said, slinging an arm across her back. “So what else have you got here - ”

“No peeking,” she squealed, yanking the tablet away. “The rest is not done yet. So you will do it?”

“I’ll talk to Gamora first, but she’ll probably agree,” he replied, rolling back to face the ceiling. His glow-in-the-dark constellation stickers winked at him as the evening darkness swept into the room. “I hope she’ll agree.”

a/n: short chapter, but as you can see, i'm setting up for some interesting times ahead ;) also i promise adam and natasha aren't antagonists, they're just a part of the dynamic. it's why i set this fic in the AVAC!verse, so the Guardians aren't just operating in a vacuum as they currently are in the MCU.

If anyone is wondering what Gamora's funeral outfit looks like, I imagined it like this.

#starmora #peter x gamora #peter quill #gamora #avengers academy #myfic #myfic: 20q #the visual of peter/gamora doing a pinky swear though??#i just really liked that for some reason

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teimywimey · 8 years ago

Link

My first fic posted to AO3 (or anywhere)!

Summary:

Every person is born with their soulmate's name written somewhere on their body. Symmetra’s used to be on her left wrist.

Sombra has no real connections. The person she used to be did, but it’s better this way. Soulmates complicate things.

Chapter under the cut

As hard as Satya tries, she can’t forget the strange golden letters that had once glinted on her left wrist. No one in her family had been able to read the foreign alphabet. She had hoped, when Vishkar had plucked her from her home and enrolled her in their academy, that someone would have been able to read her soulmate’s name for her. But they had told her to put it out of her mind and focus on her studies. Then the gleam was gone, replaced by flat white and a soft, glowing blue.

---

A dingy gay bar somewhere on Route 66 isn’t where Sombra expects to meet a world-famous pop star, especially on Christmas Eve, but here she is. Even more convenient was the overlap between this and another job she had been given. The place is a comfortable kind of quiet. Most of the patrons seem to know each other, even though all but a few sit alone. Some curiously eye Sombra - a couple women with obvious desire in their expressions.

Sombra loves the attention, of course, but there are more important matters at hand. She sends a last flirtatious look to the woman in the corner with full sleeves and turns back to the young man who has just sat down across from her.

“Lúcio Correia dos Santos,” she says, grinning. “A pleasure to finally meet you.”

He smiles back at her. “It’s about time, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is. So, what have you got for me? And why did you want to meet in person?”

Lúcio shrugs. “This place is on the way from Vegas to Phoenix, and I figured I may as well have some fun before the next show.”

“So you snuck out to go to a gay bar,” Sombra teases.

“Hey now, this can’t be the first time either of us have done this.” They laugh, then Lúcio sobers. “To answer your other question, stuff has been up in Rio. We haven’t seen the architechs in months. The security forces are still around, of course.” His expression hardens at the thought of the private police force Vishkar employs to keep the citizens of his city ‘in order.’ “I’ve heard they’re talking to Lumérico about redeveloping Dorado.”

Sombra nods, hiding the concern that sweeps through her. “They are. It’s been in the cards for a while. You gotta give me more than that, man.”

“ I know.” Lúcio sighs. “Listen, about the architechs? I dug into their backgrounds when you gave me the info on Vishkar, and there’s some stuff that just doesn’t make sense.”

“How do you mean?”

He digs into his pocket and pulls out a data cache. “Take a look.”

Sombra takes the cache - one she had given Lúcio over a year ago when they had first started working together - and connects to it, her enhancements glowing slightly brighter for a moment in the dim light of the bar. There is information from the last forty years, mostly from India: birth and death records, news articles, school transcripts, police reports, bank statements, and on and on and on. The data seems almost mundane until Sombra pauses to consider it more carefully. Transcripts that end with a note that the student withdrew or transferred are followed by missing persons reports. Others are followed by bank transfers out of the blue - many to previously empty accounts. The few police reports that any progress had been made on are followed by articles about unidentifiable bodies being pulled out of rivers. Her eyebrows raise as she notes that many of the records have been marked as deleted in the databases they originated from. She looks at the profiles of the architechs. Names, approximate ages, and even academic records all seem to match up. It takes her less than a minute to analyze all of it, and when she finishes, she looks back to Lúcio.

“So Vishkar has been kidnapping kids and/or coercing parents into giving their children up for decades.” She runs her hand through her hair and lets out a long, slow breath. “That’s low, even for them.”

Lúcio nods grimly. “And some of my people have come to me - teachers talking about missing students, kids who haven’t seen their siblings in days, parents who can’t find their children - Vishkar is doing the exact same thing in Rio, I know they are.”

“Most of this data is from India.”

“Which is where Vishkar was founded, forty-three years ago. It’s also where their academy is. But there are similar reports from everywhere they’ve expanded since then.” Lúcio takes a breath. “I was gonna pursue this myself, but I’m not as good at this stuff as you. You get the information, I empower the people. I’m way out of my league here.”

Sombra nods. “Alright, then. I’ll look into it and keep you updated.” She extracts the information from the data cache and replaces it with new files. “Here’s what I’ve got for you.”

He accepts it immediately and looks through the first few documents. “Helix owns Vishkar’s security force?”

“They contracted them through a shell company.”

“I see,” he says, frowning. “It’s good to finally meet you, Sombra. I should get going. I’ll keep you posted if I find out anything else.”

“Likewise. Have a good show in Phoenix, man.”

“Thanks,” he smiles and slips out of the booth, then leaves the bar.

Sombra leans back into the cushions for a moment, then stands and goes to the bar for a drink. The vodka tastes cheap and disgusting. She looks at it dubiously for a moment, trying to figure out if it has been poisoned or is just that bad. The bartender shoots her a dirty look.

She checks her Talon communicator. There was only one message, from Gabe: ‘Status report.’

‘The cowboy is fine,’ Sombra responds, looking down the bar to the strangely dressed man Gabe had asked her to tail over the holidays. ‘Drunk, but fine.’

The little check mark appears at the bottom of the screen. Sombra waits for a few moments, then sends off another message.

‘You know, you can text people back.’ The check mark appears again.

Rustling cloth and a warm body settling on a stool beside her distract Sombra from Gabe’s poor texting etiquette. The tattooed woman looks her up and down before tapping on the counter. As the bartender pulls a bottle down from the shelf behind him, she speaks.

“Haven’t seen you around here before. New in town?”

“Just passing through.” Sombra rests her elbow on the bar and looks over the woman’s arms, watching the muscles flex as she reaches out to take the drink the bartender sets in front of her.

The woman nods and takes a sip of her drink. She notices the way Sombra looks at her muscles, so she grins and flexes. Sombra holds up a hand and looks at the woman, asking for permission through eye contact. The woman nods again. Sombra pointedly retracts her nails, making the woman snicker, and squeezes her bicep. The muscle is thick and hard, but Sombra feels something even more intriguing under her palm - the slightly raised lines of the woman’s soul mark.

“You covered it up?” Sombra asks, curious, and not at all invested in losing or maintaining the woman’s interest in her.

The woman rolls her eyes. “Don’t tell me you actually believe in that shit. You waiting for your ‘one and only’ or something?” She snarks.

Sombra knows what the woman wants to hear. “No way. I make my own choices.”

The woman gives her a wry smile. “To free will,” she says, holding up her drink.

“To free will,” Sombra responds, clinking their glasses together.

---

Hours later, Sombra sits in her hotel room, going over the reports Lúcio had given her. The tattooed woman had been entertaining for a while, but Sombra had left as soon as she had fallen asleep. She had never been particularly concerned with finding her soulmate, though she knew that the woman was out there. Just because we’re soulmates it doesn’t mean everything is going to magically be perfect.

When she has compiled the data in a way she likes, she turns her attention to Vishkar itself. Their firewalls are easy enough to surpass, the advanced security simple to override. It would almost be fun if it wasn’t so easy. She picks out files pertaining to the architech academy. The intense academic rigor and draconian rules make her roll her eyes. Control freaks. Curious, she looks through the top students in each year from the past few decades, and finds one name consistently at the top.

Satya Vaswani.

Sombra pauses for a moment, then shakes her head. Satya is a common name, isn’t it? But she can’t help herself. She goes to the woman’s file and starts meticulously digging.

She isn’t quite sure what she’s looking for, why she feels a strange need to understand the person represented by the data on her holoscreens. She discovers Satya’s codename is Symmetra, that she had been ‘discovered’ in Hyderabad twenty-two years ago, and that she is probably the best architech on Vishkar’s payroll. Recent notes indicate that someone called ‘SK’ - presumably Satya’s boss or handler - is concerned about the architech’s dedication to Vishkar. ‘Response to events in while on assignment in Rio’ are cited as SK’s reason for doubt. Sombra narrows her eyes and remembers to look over the events surrounding Vishkar’s contract with the Brazilian government again soon. Satya’s academic records testify to her incredible skill with hard-light. Intrigued, she watches recordings of practical exams. Unlike her fellow students, Satya manipulates her tech with a fluid grace, reminding Sombra of a dancer. Her non-traditional method had been the subject of debate among the higher-ups of Vishkar, but they had ultimately agreed that the minor rule-breaking could be tolerated due to its effectiveness. Sombra scoffs. Of course.

As she looks through the architech’s medical files, she finds another video that piques her interest. She selects it. Based on the date displayed in the top right corner, it would have been filmed about a year and a half after Vishkar had ‘found’ Satya.

It is a psychological evaluation.

Sombra watches curiously as the doctors put ten-year-old Satya through a series of tests. She does quite well on the intellectual challenges, but is frequently stumped by emotional tasks. At one point, something overwhelms her, and she claps her hands over her ears to deafen herself. It is then that Sombra sees the flash of gold on Satya’s left wrist.

She pauses and rewinds the video, trying to get a closer look. The letters seem eerily familiar in their pattern of lines and angles, but the camera is too far away to make them out clearly. Sombra exits out of the video and flicks through all the other images of Satya like a woman possessed. Eventually she finds one where the mark is clear, and she has to compare it to a current photo, because this cannot be happening, there is no way, no, it can’t be. But the girl in the photo and the video had unmistakably grown up into the woman that was Vishkar’s top architech. It can’t be her. It’s not true.

But it is.

Sombra sits back, letting out a shaky breath. She looks down at the mark on her wrist, which she had been subconsciously rubbing with her thumb - the flowing golden script in a strange alphabet, which her processors now automatically translate for her.

Satya.

#overwatch #overwatch fanfic #overwatch femslash #femslash #ao3 link #sombra #symmetra #satya vaswani #symbra #sommetra

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hibisha · 8 years ago

Text

The Ace

Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: K (Anime)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: Akiyama Himori/Hidaka Akira

Characters: Akiyama Himori, Hidaka Akira, Benzai Yuujirou, Awashima Seri, Gotou Ren

Additional Tags: Crime, AU, Murder Mystery, Romance

Series: Part 2 of

Dire Needs

The Ace

External mirrors:

1.) Fanfiction

2.) AO3

BAU, PSIA headquarters, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.

04th July, Monday.

[8:30 AM]

Mondays were just one of those things that made for a very tedious existence.

The observation was made by a young man staggering through the main entrance of the bureau and collapsing in his work space, glaring at the pile of case files in front of him that needed reviewing and debriefing. Benzai Yujiro had sworn to himself that he would never look at another piece of report for a month but then again, that’s what he swore to himself each weekend as he stuffed some paperwork in his bag to take home with him. Next to him, Kamo Ryuho was sipping coffee and was already flipping through a case, not batting an eye at the gruesome display of bodies before him.

"I can't believe it's Monday already." Both of them turned to look at their newest recruit, a young red head, drag himself into the room and throw himself into his own chair. "I can't keep doing this every week, my body can't handle the stress." Doumyoji Andy was so far the youngest person in their department and Benzai knew for a fact that Kamo had taken quite the shine to him – the only reason why he offered him a smile instead of a scathing remark with a complimentary eye roll as Benzai was about to do.

Speaking of new recruits...

"Weren't we going to get two new members transferring in today?" He mused out loud, thinking back on what the Captain had told them before the weekend. Both his colleagues were about to respond when a sharp click of heels against the marble floor of the place made them all turn around.

Awashima Seri, the young blonde woman who had replaced Gen Shiotsu as the communication liaison around a week ago, marched straight out of her office and made her way over to them.

"Gentlemen." Her tone was brusque, eyes going over their desks, disapprovingly taking in all the unfinished files and paperwork. "Has anyone seen Akiyama kun arrive since this morning?" Benzai and Andy, both who had clocked in only moments ago, turned to look at Kamo, who presumably had been there since six am, only because he didn't have any other obligations. The dark haired man shrugged.

"I haven't seen him, sorry." Awashima nodded, her blue eyes glancing at the large clock hanging on the wall before she turned to Benzai and gave him an almost pleading look.

"Could you call him and ask him where he is? He was supposed to bring the two new comers from the airport -" Andy let out a small noise and they all turned to look at him as he ducked his head low, face turning a bit pink, "- and he hasn't been picking up any of my calls." Awashima finished, still eyeing Andy suspiciously, the later having dropped a pen and having to dive under his desk to retrieve it. Benzai on his part, kept a straight face until she had left only to have Andy break out into a fit of giggles and even Kamo was trying to hide his amusement behind his hand.

"Okay you two, knock it off."

"Akiyama-san. She sent Akiyama san to get the two newbies. From the airport. She sent Akiyama-san to drive them back here from the airport." Andy couldn't even seem to breathe and Benzai almost wished he'd choke on behalf of his best friend. He was about to snap back at them when another soft laugh joined Andy's explosive ones and Benzai looked up to see Fuse approaching them with Enomoto tagging along behind, both holding steaming mugs of coffee and wearing matching grins.

"Akiyama-san's driving? Alone?" Benzai sighed.

"I'm sure it's not that bad..." He mumbled, pulling out his phone. Dialing his oldest friend's number, he waited for the line to connect as all the others listened in, showing various levels of interest and amusement.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Click.

"I'm not lost."

That's when Andy truly couldn't control himself. The red head bent over, laughing soundly as Fuse joined him and even Enomoto and Kamo let out a small chuckle. "Why are you all laughing, I said I'm not lost!" Akiyama's tone sounded too peeved for Benzai to take those words in account though. "…I just took a wrong turn."

"Enomoto kun..." The bespectacled man nodded at Benzai, and pulled out his laptop, setting to work on tracing Akiyama's cellphone coordinates. "Akiyama, take a left."

"...okay but I just want to confirm everyone knows that I'm not lost."

"Of course you're not lost. How are the two with you?" Benzai added hastily, coughing to drown out the noise of everyone snickering in the background. There was a derisive snort heard from the other end that was so unlike Akiyama that Benzai had to pause and blink for a while before confirming that yes, this was still his best friend's voice. "Akiyama?"

"One of them had the bright idea for me to let him drive."

"Alright?" Keeping an eye on the red dot on Enomoto's screen, he quickly added before Akiyama could respond, "Take a right and then just drive straight – you'll get on familiar roads soon."

"Why is the headquarters so far away?" The other man complained, "Anyways, like I was saying, the car broke down. Twice." Benzai raised his eyebrow, even though the other couldn't see it.

"Oh?"

"Yes. It was weird. It just stopped and wouldn't move forward and … it was odd."

"Okay, just be careful and make it back in one piece alright?"

"Yes but for the record-"

"Yes Akiyama, we get it - you weren't lost."

BAU, PSIA headquarters, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.

04th July, Monday.

[9:42 AM]

"Hidaka Akira and Gotou Ren." The young brunette looked up with bleary eyes as a tall man approached them, "Sorry for the inconvenience. We were unaware of the troubles that could have happened." The fact that the man did not look even the slightest bit sorry – if not anything, he looked a bit amused – made Hidaka almost snipe back. The other man had dark hair, deep violet eyes framed by the delicate frames of his glasses. He wasn't taller than Hidaka yet his presence alone made Hidaka feel smaller. "I'm the section chief and SSA, Munakata Reisi, you must be the two new recruits from Kyoto?"

Both of them nodded. Munakata san smiled, eyes twinkling behind the lenses.

"Well the, I'm glad to welcome you to the team. Rest assured, Awashima kun will show you around but for now, why don’t you two just rest. After all, I heard it was quite a taxing ride."

"It was alright – wasn't it Hidaka san." Gotou smiled at him in his usual demure manner and all the frustration and annoyance that had been building up inside him was calmed down – a bit.

Gotou was no miracle worker after all.

"Yeah." He mumbled, "We'll get over it." Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a certain green haired man walking towards the coffee pot and he almost marched straight up to him to tell him exactly why he shouldn't be allowed on roads if he couldn't even follow a GPS map on his phone.

"Excellent!" Munakata said, clapping his hands together. "Why don't you take some time to familiarize yourself with the place – we haven't had a case today so it’s a slow day."

"Alright sir." Both of them nodded and in a blink of an eye, Hidaka was in hot pursuit of the short directionally challenged man who had escorted him to the HQ - if you called it an escort.

What was his name again? Akiyama Himori right? The man had been so focused on getting them back to the bureau that introductions had gone sailing out of the window.

"Akiya-!" The rest of the words got drowned in his mouth as he saw the look of utter despair and resignation on the other man's face. There was a phone lodged between his ear and shoulder and he was talking very vehemently, the hand that was not holding the coffee mug, was making all sorts of gestures, clearly indicating the other man was highly agitated.

"-on't do something you'll regret... You know what, fine. Have it your way! We're done!" Grabbing his phone, he angrily cut the call and whirled around only to come face to face with Hidaka who had enough sense of mind to realize he might have witnessed a breakup.

A rather abrupt and depressing one.

"It's not polite to eavesdrop on someone else's conversation." Akiyama sniffled out, his hair swept across his face, covering his right eye, making him look rather...adorable for lack of other words. "I don't know where you've transferred in fro-"

"Oh no, I wasn't eavesdropping! I was here to -" Yes, telling him off about his atrocious navigation skills was really not going to help the other right now so he began searching his mind for an excuse. "-ask you where I could get some coffee!" Akiyama looked at him and then pointedly at the coffee machine that sat right next to Hidaka, innocently doing what it was meant to do – brewing coffee.

The sudden low chuckle that escaped the other's mouth made him almost cry with relief because really, what the actual fuck. Coffee? Really?

Thank you brain.

"It's alright, I wasn't exactly somewhere private or secluded enough to have this conversation." Jamming his hands in his pocket, Hidaka shot him a sympathetic look.

"Tough day?"

"You have no idea."

"Want to talk about it?" A single green eye blinked at him as if he hadn't expected this before a small smile crossed his features, turning them softer and making them look much more meek and mellower than before.

"It's alright...Hidaka san?" Hidaka grinned.

"Yup! That's me! Hidaka Akira! I suppose I'm your junior right now!" The small smile on the other's face grew wider and even thought he could still blatantly see the other's misery reflected on his face, he didn't push his luck in trying to make him laugh even more.

"Well Hidaka san, I hope we get along." Hidaka watched as the shorter of the two made his way to a work bench where he got comfortable and was immediately joined by a group of people, all who were slapping him on his back.

He also noted how there was now a smile plastered on the man's face.

BAU, PSIA headquarters, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.

11th August, Monday.

[8:45 AM]

"Right guys, since we're all here I'll get started right away." Awashima announced as soon as she waltzed into the conference room. Over the past month, Hidaka had gotten used to the fact that while the curvaceous body looked like it had been in every man's dreams at least once, the woman also possessed quite the sharp tongue that could quite possibly rip you into two if you stared at her chest for longer than absolute necessary - 0.01 seconds to be precise.

That and she had a boyfriend, who was equally just as terrifying as her.

Next to him, Gotou merely smiled into his cup of tea.

Gotou Ren had turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Hidaka. When the young man was looking for an apartment to live in after being randomly evicted from the one he was staying in on his second day because of a very bizarre reason - "You're too tall, you scare our children. We're sorry but could you please find somewhere else to go?" - Gotou had offered him to come live with him in an apartment that his family had owned in the area.

He also found out that no, Gotou did not smoke pot every morning, he was relatively this calm by nature.

A tap on his head made him turn to the right just to stare into the disapproving face of Akiyama san, who was staring at him steadily with the one eye that wasn't covered by the mess of his hair.

"Pay attention." he chided, "Hidaka san, you're going to get yourself into trouble if you keep zoning out like that."

"Sorry Akiyama san..."

"It’s alright, just don't make a habit of it. Also, you've been tapping that pen against the desk for a while now, it's getting a bit distracting - could you please stop?"

Akiyama Himori, Hidaka had discovered, liked everything to be in perfect order. He was always smiling and was the person you went to for advice.

"Alright Akiyama san, I'll stop distracting you."

"You'll need to stop existing for that to happen Hidaka san."

He was also the person who, and here's the part Hidaka didn't understand quite how it had happened, seemed to have started a sort of fake relationship with him where both of them pretended that they were dating.

As if his life wasn't odd as it was.

He supposed his constant flirting had been to blame too.

But he really hadn't expected quiet and shy Akiyama Himori to respond to his subtle remarks with even more highly inappropriate things – all in subtext of course because Akiyama san was going to be inappropriate, that would be improper - that made him think that maybe he was dreaming up the whole thing.

"Guys!" Benzai admonished them from where he sat, giving them an exasperated look. Akiyama immediately gave him a sweet smile and returned his focus back to the case.

"Right, we have a series of women abduction cases in Itabashi - so far seven women have gone missing over the past month and two of them just turned up dead - Maki Mamoru and Reiko Masashi. Both strangled, with their hands and feet showing signs of being bound to something."

"Any signs of sexual assault?" Benzai asked, looking at the file in front of him. Awashima shook her head.

"None but if you see here around their necks, you'll realize-"

"The marks come from collars."

Everyone turned to look at Akiyama, who in turn had gone very pink in the face and mumbled something along the lines of "know from a friend..." Hidaka wondered what kind of company Akiyama liked to keep.

"Are we sure it's the same guy who kidnapped all seven?" Benzai interrupted, raising his eyebrow, "I mean, it could be possible that some of them aren't related to the case."

"That's what I thought too except this guy likes to throw a calling card." The screen behind Awashima lit up, revealing an image of a playing card.

"The Ace of spades?" Hidaka asked, giving a small smile. "How..."

"Original." Benzai deadpanned from across him. "I'm guessing that's what the media has started calling him."

"You know, in legend and folklore, it is also known as the death card." Gotou added a bit dreamily. Awashima nodded and sighed.

"With the captain and half the squad away on a business trip in LA, we're kind of short staffed as well."

"Don't worry Awashima san." Akiyama said, smiling politely, "I'm sure we can handle it." The blonde woman nodded, her eyes flashing with determination.

"Indeed we have to, seeing as we don't have a choice. Alright squad let's move out!"

"Yes!"

Middle of nowhere, Tokyo, Japan.

11th August, Monday.

[ 09:18 AM]

"Akiyama san, why did you not listen to me when I asked you to let me drive?"

"I'm. Not. Lost."

"You're right. We're lost. Both of us." Hidaka couldn't believe his luck. Of all the people who could have driven on the one day he fell asleep in the van, it just had to be Akiyama. The rest had gone ahead in another vehicle and Benzai had explicitly warned him not to let Akiyama take charge.

And he'd fallen asleep.

"I didn't want to wake you up! You looked so cute just sleeping there." Flirting aside, the man did look very apologetic and remorseful, so Hidaka supposed he could overlook it.

"Okay okay, but where are we?"

"I don't know but-"

"Okay yes you're not lost I get it. We get it. The world gets it. But that's not going to help us right now." Akiyama pouted and Hidaka felt his heart skip a beat. Or several. "Oth-other than that – we're not getting any cellphone reception here either." Akiyama looked away, looking the absolute picture of misery.

"I know what you’re thinking and yes, this is why I'm not allowed to drive by myself."

"...Okay, let's just keep driving till we find some cell phone signals?"

"You think I'm incapable of driving without a guide."

"Akiyama san – we are currently in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone reception, no cars within sight – yes I think you are an extremely incapable driver." Seeing the other man opening his mouth looking affronted, he held up a hand, stopping him before he could say anything. "Still, I don't mind being stuck here with you. But we need to find a way back to the others okay?" Akiyama didn't respond or even meet his eyes, opting to tap his fingers against the steering wheel.

"What?" Hidaka was suddenly filled with realization that just maybe his words could have been taken as a tad bit offensive and he suddenly began to splutter out an explanation. "No, that's not what I meant – I think you're a great driver -"

"I don’t' mind being stuck with Hidaka san either." The words were mumbled out as if Akiyama wished Hidaka wouldn't hear them. The tall brunette started, a slow and easy grin creeping along his face. Slinging an arm around the other, he poked him in the cheek.

"Aww Akiyama san is so cute."

"Remove your arm lest I remove it off for you - permanently." But even as he said it, Hidaka noticed the small smile on the man's face. "Alright, let's start driving, you keep focused on looking for a signal okay?" Hidaka nodded and offered the man a mock salute before the car was revved up began to move down the road.

Police Department, Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.

11th August, Monday.

[10:45 AM]

"So how does he get to the girls?" Benzai stared at the whiteboard in front of him, frowning. All of them had arrived about half an hour ago and had just received a message that Akiyama and Hidaka were on their way, after taking a small detour. By detour obviously they meant Akiyama had gotten "not lost" again. Seriously...

And he had warned the other man to not let Akiyama take charge.

Benzai loved his best friend but even with him closing his eyes to all his faults, there was just this one thing that he couldn't let go off mostly because he was sure it would end up putting Akiyama in danger one day.

"Well we figured out that all seven of them had no places they'd ever come across each other except for this one bar." The local head of the PD, Chitose Yo said, reaching out to tap the map pinned on the board. "This place is the only bar around here for miles that offers a single ladies night once a week. Now according to the locals and regulars of the bar, they had seen each of the missing ladies at least once there."

"So the unsub scopes out single women at the bar and then what?" Gotou asked, cocking his head to the side thoughtfully. "It's not like he can just grab a woman in front of everyone and drag her away."

"He?" Chitose asked, looking startled, "I assumed it would be a female seeing as the killer manages to watch his victims at a ladies' night." Awashima shook her head, her blonder hair pulled back in a bun.

"That's what we would have thought too except the woman he abducted last - Haruka Maki was an all-star athlete. It would take a very large person to subdue her."

"Unless the killer had a gun." Benzai pointed out, "Guns usually make the strongest fall and become compliant. So we’re not ruling it out entirely."

"It could also be a really tall woman." Relief flooded Benzai's system as he whirled in his seat to stare Akiyama who came striding in with Hidaka on his heels. "Haruka san is strong but what's saying it couldn't be a stronger woman?" Awashima looked thoughtful.

"Well yes, I suppose that could be it."

"So we're back to square one.”

"Let's look at the victimology." Gotou pipped up, "All young women, dark haired, around their late twenties. All of them single and just out to have a good time."

"Something happens in that party that triggers off our unsub." Awashima added, "And next thing you know, we've got ourselves a new victim." Her blue eyes darkened, forehead wrinkling with worry. "That's all fine and good but why keep them for so long and then kill them? The bodies showed no signs of torture - no defensive wounds or anything. Just the marks on their hands and feet. They were well fed and no signs of being starved or being unkempt. They even had their toenails all trimmed and proper."

"So the unsub keeps them prisoner, takes care of them and then what? He just kills them?" Hidaka asked, raising his eyebrow. Benzai drummed his fingers against the table absent mindedly.

"No, something isn't quite right here. We're missing something. We need to go talk to the families and see what they say before we make any deductions." Akiyama suggested from where he was perched on a counter, "There has got to be something that links these women more than just their build and appearances." Awashima nodded.

"Okay, everyone pick a family and go talk to them. We'll meet back here and discuss what we've found out alright?" Nodding, all of them got to their feet. Benzai made his way to Akiyama.

"So - what happened?"

"Well, I took a wrong turn or two. Not my fault, you see, the signs were all very faded and it was hard to decipher one arrow from the other."

"And Hidaka san?"

"Oh he fell asleep. But he does look cute when he's snoring so I let him stay pressed up against the window, drooling." Benzai snorted. Akiyama smiled brightly. "I even took pictures!" Benzai just shook his head and reached out to ruffle the already messy hair before him.

"Don't make me worry like that again."

"I'm a grown adult-"

"-with no sense of direction."

"Still. I can take care of myself and you know it." Benzai snorted again, remembering their training days together in the academy. Akiyama had been known as some sort of silent holy terror. 'His bite is definitely worse than his bark' - the rumor that had drawn him towards the otherwise very silent and sweet looking individual.

"Well yes, I have no doubt that you can take care of yourself."

"See? You have nothing to worry about." The smile Akiyama gave him made him not even a little less worried about him.

"I'm still going to be the one to drop you off where you want to go right now."

"That is such -"

"Hidaka san can pick you up."

"- such a nice idea." Akiyama grinned. His eyes were twinkling mischievously - or eye. The only one he could see anyways. Benzai groaned.

"You know, you could stop pretending you don't have a crush on him and outright instead."

"Now where would be the fun in that? Besides, it's not like he ever takes any of my comments seriously..."

"Well maybe you should openly tell him instead of making a game out of it."

"He started it! We're just joking around Benzai." The two of them were making their way to where one of the cars they were supposed to be using was parked and Benzai slid into the driver's seat, Akiyama climbing in next to him.

"Well actually, I think he flirted with you genuinely and now he's confused..."

"He flirts with everyone!" Akiyama did have a fair point. Hidaka did flirt with everyone - or used to. Except everyone else had just given up while Akiyama had responded and Benzai knew when his best friend had a crush from a mile away. Akiyama on the other hand, was still in denial about the whole thing. Factoring in the last relationship that he had, which had ended rather sourly, it was understandable why Akiyama wouldn’t want to get into another one – his boyfriend had just up and realized one day that he wasn’t gay, something that Benzai couldn’t understand because how on earth do you just, after being in relationship with a man for almost a year, just suddenly realize you weren’t gay? But apparently that was a thing that happened. Which made this all such a huge pointless drama that Benzai wouldn't be surprised it was written by some young college student who liked creating nonexistent complicated messes.

"Okay look, if by the end of this case you don't tell him, I'm going to do it for you. He may turn you down but then at least you'll know?" Akiyama pouted.

"Well true enough I suppose. Alright, when we're done with this case, I'll tell him." Benzai smiled as he pulled out of the driveway.

"That's the Akiyama Himori I know."

Mamoru household, Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.

11th August, Monday.

[11:30 AM]

"Good afternoon Yuki Mamoru san, may I come in?" The short brown haired woman nodded and stepped aside to let in Awashima as she flashed her credentials. The blonde woman entered the house and looked around, seeing what you'd find in a normal everyday household. Framed pictures on the walls, a small living room with an attached kitchen and some doors which she assumed were the bedrooms.

"Ah thank you for speaking with me Yuki-san." she said, bowing her head a bit, "I wanted to ask you a few questions regarding your daughter?" The woman let out a small sniffle but apart from that managed to hold herself together and give her a tiny nod.

"Okay, did Maki have any enemies? Anyone who'd want to do this to her?" Yuki shook her head aggressively, eyes shining with unshed tears.

"No, not that I can think of. Maki was an outgoing child - a bit rambunctious but over all a nice kid. She wouldn't hurt a fly and wasn’t bad at heart. I know – I know what everyone says, that Maki – my Maki, probably did something stupid and reckless – and that she d-d-deserv-" Awashima reached out and put a gentle hand on her arm and gave a firm look.

“Yuki-san, I know this is hard but know that no one blames Maki or thinks she deserved any of this. We will find whoever did this and we will bring him to justice. But I need you to be strong and answer my questions. Can you do that for me?” Yuki nodded, wiping her eyes on her apron. Awashima gave her an encouraging nod. "Alright, you told the police that when Maki didn't return home for a day, you didn't think too much about it until it crossed was about three days later?" Yuki let out a sob and shook her head.

"You - you probably think I'm a bad mother but I didn't - she would usually spend nights at her boyfriend's house so I didn't - she never listened to me anyways." At this the woman dissolved into tears and Awashima awkwardly reached out to pat her back. The woman finally took a deep breath and managed to calm herself down.

"She recently just broke up with him too - I should have known. But I thought they made up - they always do. Always." At this she just broke down once more, not even attempting to pull herself together. Awashima, sensing that she was not going to get any more answers out of the woman, got up and bid her farewell. The woman just looked up and gave her a hard stare.

"Find this person. Find them - save those other girls." Awashima nodded and exited the house. Pulling out her cellphone, she put all of the squad on a conference call.

"All right Maki Mamoru was a bit of a rough edged girl but she didn't have any enemies. She was recently going through a breakup -"

"With an on again off again boyfriend?" Benzai interrupted. Awashima blinked.

"Yes that's exactly-"

"I think I know what this is all about." came a clipped reply. “Everyone gather at the PD's conference room." Hearing all the others agree and drop the call, the bewildered blonde woman was left wondering what on earth was going on.

Police Department, Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.

11th August, Monday.

[01:14 PM]

"He's targeting women who're single - but not just single. Recent breakups." Benzai pointed out. "Women who are all together with some on again off again romance and by the looks of it, he's telling them that he wants to tie them down - in other words, they should settle down once and for all."

"Why the girls though?" Hidaka asked, "They aren't the ones who initiated most of these breakups." Awashima frowned.

“He’s also taking care of them.” She argued, “Doesn’t seem like something a man would do if they were just discipline his victims.”

“Unless he thinks he’s saving them from that way of life.” Akiyama supplied. “Tie them down and enforce them to not go back – stay with him who treats them so kindly?”

"Maybe something to do with his own past?" Gotou pipped up from where he was sitting, "Either way, I think I have a plan on how to catch this guy."

"How?" Chitose asked, looking confused. Gotou smiled mysteriously.

"All we need, is some insider's information."

Raven’s Heart, Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.

12th August, Tuesday.

[9:45 PM]

“I still say this is a highly bad idea.” Hidaka muttered under his breath as the two slipped into the bar, wearing tuxedos. Akiyama shrugged, looking around cautiously. Zeroing in on Dewa Masaomi from a distance, he nodded to Hidaka.

“There.” Hidaka turned to look at the quiet dark haired man, just sitting there quietly, sipping vodka and scoffed.

“You have got to be kidding me – that’s our informant?” Akiyama shrugged. It appeared he was a close friend of the local PD head so what was the point on commenting. Not that Akiyama was going to deny that the man looked way too different to be a friend of what Akiyama had established on first sight, a very flashy police officer.

“Well, he’s our best lead. He’s going to be the one who helps us identify who’s a regular here and who’s not.”

“And we’re looking for a regular?”

“Yes, because the unsub needs to visit a lot to know everything about the victims as he did.” Akiyama signaled the informant with his head and the man gave them a long hard look before very subtly pointing in the direction of the bar, where a small group of women were hanging off the arm of a dark suited man, giggling and batting their eyelashes. Next to him, Hidaka whistled softly.

“Check out that girl’s ra-oof!” a sharp elbow in his side made the rest of his words die in his throat as he found at the end of a highly disapproving glare. As the other was apologizing profusely, Akiyama began to recall the plan in his head.

Grab a drink and go make small talk.

How hard could it be? Smiling, he picked up two glasses of cheap wine off a passing waiter and handed it to Hidaka. It was going to be as simple as baking a cake.

Swank Motel, Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.

13th August, Wednesday.

[3:55 AM]

"You have got to be kidding me." Hidaka stared at the dress in absolute horror and then at the man holding it up, smiling rather smugly.

"No Akiyama san, I can't-"

"But you promised." Hidaka swore internally - Akiyama seemed to have discovered some internal weakness of his which was basically making the worst sad puppy dog face you could manage to pull off. And he was getting too good at them. Or he was always good at them - fuck.

"I was drunk!"

"Promised." The man in front of him wasn’t giving up though. The plan, the night before, had gone horribly wrong. The two of them had been doing a stake out in a bar, like they had been originally assigned to do, all the while keeping close to one of the only suspects they had. While he had ordered more drinks with the suspect so they could all drink, Akiyama had severely overestimated Hidaka’s ability to hold liquor. Two drinks in and he was blabbering nonsense and Akiyama had to hurry him away in case he accidentally blew their cover. Amidst all that, at one point there had been a conversation that Hidaka could only vaguely recall.

"Akiyama san is really pretty."

"What?"

"Like lots an' lots of pretty. Bet you'd look even more pretty in a dress."

"Hidaka san you're starting to go incoherent and you clearly cannot think straight."

"Can't ever think straight around you."

After that was a huge gap in his memory and he remembered nothing except when he woke up, Akiyama was grinning at him and telling him he had promised to wear a dress - for him. Hidaka was willing to bet his life on the fact he hadn't promised any such thing but Akiyama was persistent and so here they were.

"Look, if I promise to wear the dress, can we just leave?"

“You already promised to wear a dress. And yes, you can leave wearing the dress."

Really, why was it always Hidaka's job to deal with this?

"Okay, but I'm not entering the hotel in those clothes - just till we reach the police station then I'm changing in the back of the van. Got it?" The green eyes in front of him blinked.

"Alright, whatever Hidaka-san feels comfortable with."

"I feel comfortable in my own clothes." Hidaka couldn't help but put in a tad bit desperately.

"Not that comfortable." Really, Akiyama Himori was a demon.

Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.

13th August, Wednesday.

[5:30 AM]

"I see, thank you Awashima san." Disconnecting the call, Hidaka turned to look at Akiyama, who was keeping his one eye focused on the road. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Hidaka wondered if that was the reason why he was always getting lost but discarded it. Sitting there in a sparkly pink dress, with his hair done up in a clump of pony tail, he hardly was in any position to say anything.

"You make a lovely woman Hidaka san." The corner of Akiyama’s lips was twitching and Hidaka had the painful urge to punch him straight in the mouth.

“Why thank you, I really work hard on this body.”

“Lets put it up on display next time in the conference room alright?”

"Shut up, Awashima-san said we should meet her at the bar so you’re going to have to turn around. I'll go change in the back." He looked around him to see if his original clothes were there but he was unable to spot them and figured they were probably in the back.

"Isn't in convenient we took the van?"

"...I don't know how but you planned this somehow."

“I did not.”

“Where did you even find the dress?”

“I bought it while you were knocked out. Two drinks might I add – just how weak are you? Can’t keep going for more than two rounds.”

“I am not in the mood for this right now.”

"I don't know what you’re talking about.” Really, it would be so much easier to believe him if only he hadn’t been smirking when he said that. As Akiyama turned the van around, Hidaka clambered behind to the back and began to look for his clothes.

“Akiyama san, where did you keep my clothes?”

“Oh, they’re in the black bag.” The other man said, trying to keep his mind on where they were going.

“What black bag?” That got him a response. Akiyama turned to give him an incredulous look, before immediately facing the front again.

“The one I told you to pick up on from the bed!” The small note of panic in Akiyama’s voice filled Hidaka with dread. The man was serious…

They had left his fucking clothes at the fucking motel!

“Let’s not panic.” Akiyama finally managed to voice out and Hidaka wanted so badly to snap at him that no, he was going to panic because Akiyama wasn’t the one in the dress. He wasn’t the one everyone would see in the dress and the ridiculous makeup and hairdo. Akiyama san wouldn’t be the one going to get off the van looking like some trashy version of a one night stand from a nightmare in hell. Angrily, he was about to turn and tell off the man when he saw the dazed look on his face.

No. He had only taken his eyes off for 15 minutes. Surely…

“Hidaka san..." His tone was fearful.

"Yes?" So was Hidaka's if he was completely honest.

"Don't get angry - we’re not lost but-“ Hidaka just closed his eyes and moaned.

"Fucking hell Akiyama san, just keep driving, we'll find some place -"

"And we're also out of gas," The car stopped.

"Okay look, I'll go and look for help, why don't you stay in this van and I'll return with some clothes too?" His soothing tone of voice did nothing to placate Hidaka's anger but the idea was appealing so he nodded. Akiyama smiled, looking a bit relieved that Hidaka was at last talking to him now. Well, nodding at him – he still wasn't talking

"Okay, I'll just walk straight and hopefully someone will pick me up and then we can go back okay?" Hidaka nodded again, still too busy sulking to care about what was going on. Watching Akiyama's disappearing back, he was suddenly struck with a horrible thought.

"Oh fuck, did I really just send Akiyama san out alone?"

Yeah he was most definitely screwed.

An hour.

It had been an hour since Akiyama left and now Hidaka was sure he was hopelessly lost –Hidaka could just see him muttering "I'm not lost" over and over again and the thought would have been funny had the situation not been so dire. Not only was he stranded, Akiyama had taken the keys with him so he didn't have much of a choice but to stay put. Looking out of the van miserably, he was just about to fuck it all and go to sleep, when he saw a sleek black jeep pull in next to him.

A raven haired head poked out and Hidaka felt his breath get knocked out at the sight of the beautiful woman.

"Hey girl, you lost?"

Girl. She thought Hidaka was a girl. Hidaka wondered if this was a good or a bad thing – he certainly wouldn't mind anyone's help right now but-

"I'm waiting for my uuhh boyfriend to come back – he kind of went to get help."

And now I need to find a way to get us both help.

"Oh – do you need a ride?" The woman smiled gently, tilting her head. "We can leave a note here, get you somewhere safe and have your boyfriend comeback and pick you up later." That was actually a very good idea. Hidaka smiled.

"Thank you uuuh..."

"Maria. Mari Yubikiri."

Police Department, Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.

14th August, Thursday.

[1:32 PM]

"I shouldn't have left him there."

“Akiyama san, it isn’t your fault.” Gotou said, casting a worried look towards Awashima who shook her head a bit, indicating she did not know how to calm the man down. Hidaka had been missing for well over twenty-four hours and counting. Akiyama had returned to find the van empty with just a note saying Hidaka had found a ride and was getting help and that Akiyama should stay next to the car. Except Akiyama had already found help and had returned with Benzai but Hidaka never came back.

And there, in the seat, was the card.

The Ace of spades.

“Akiyama, I know you think you didn’t see anything. But you have got to think hard. You probably do remember things but we both know how panic makes someone over look things that are usually very important.” Akiyama frowned.

“Girl.”

“What?”

“Hidaka was dressed up like a girl.” Ignoring the shocked looks of various faces, he jumped to his feet, pacing back and forth. “While me and Benzai were on our way back, I saw a black jeep drive past. I didn’t think much about it but – that road is kind of not used at all isn’t it? On top of that, Hidaka wouldn’t be so stupid that he’d just climb into the car with some random man. A woman on the other hand...” He turned to face Benzai. “It has to be woman who took him.”

“That fits our earlier profile too.” Awashima added, looking thoughtful. “And it also makes sense why she would target women who were in and out of relationships. Taking care of them until something happens to trigger her off.”

“She’s asking them to stop returning to their boyfriends.” This came from Gotou, who was frowning slightly, “That’s what the chain and binding are for – keep them from going back."

"Ace of spades." Akiyama said, his eyes getting brighter and brighter, body shaking a bit. "Not King. Not Queen. Ace. A King represents a male role that she doesn’t want to assume and the Queen is usually signified in the game as of less value than the King. She doesn’t want that title either. An Ace on the other hand – it beats them both. The Ace of spades is traditionally the highest card in the deck of playing cards.”

“That would also explain the lack of sexual assault and the way she kept them healthy and well taken care of. She probably had some bad relationship in the past and never got over it. So she’s helping women who she feels are in similar situations as her. Forces them into accepting that they don't need the men in their lives.” Benzai added softly. A sudden thought made them all freeze and Chitose was the one to voice it out.

“So what happens when she finds out Hidaka’s a guy?”

Itabashi, Tokyo, Japan.

14th August, Thursday.

[07:55 PM]

This was a bad situation.

A very very bad situation.

In retrospect, Hidaka knew he couldn’t really blame Akiyama san but it was really much easier blaming him than having to think about anything else in this situation. After he had gotten into the vehicle with Maria – if that was truly her real name – she had blitz attacked him and injected him with something that had made him unconscious till he had come round to see himself bound to a bed. Next to him was a row of beds, each containing a quiet terrified looking woman. Five to be exact.

The missing women. Something inside him swelled in relief at seeing all of them unharmed if not looking terrified and teary. But they were alright. All of them were fine.

Him on the other hand…

He looked down at his feet which were bound to the bed by a single long rope. Looking up, he could detect collars around the necks of the other prisoners, which were chained to their respective bedding.

Hence, the bad situation. Maria had come in minutes ago to tell them all it was time for all of them to get ready for bed. Hidaka didn’t know how long he had been knocked out for but it was already the whole of the next day had passed and it was night time again and he had a sinking suspicion that no one really knew what had happened to him.

Shit this was a really really bad situation.

He should really consider himself lucky that she hadn’t decided to change his clothes while he slept or else she might have murdered him in his sleep.

“You, come with me.” He looked up to see Maria smiling at him. Gulping, he got to his feet and wondered how hard it would be to overpower a woman. But then he remembered the athlete and the fact that this woman had single handedly carried him up here and groaned. Of course, the one time he got caught, it had to be some woman with near inhuman strength. Maria knelt down and undid the rope and even then Hidaka knew making a run for it would be bad. For one, he didn’t even know if she had a gun or not.

Following her out of the room, he found himself facing an empty changing room.

“Here.” Looking down, he was startled to have some clothes suddenly pushed onto him. “Wear these.” Looking at the clothes then at the smiling woman, he could feel realization dawning upon him. Slowly, bits and pieces of the story were coming together and he finally could make out the bigger picture.

So that’s what’s going on…

“Why thank you,” he managed to keep his voice high enough to pass off as a gruff woman, “I didn’t know what I’d be sleeping in.” If he could just keep her believing he was a woman till –

Till what?

It wasn’t as if anyone knew where he was.

Thus no one was coming to save him – he was on his own.

Maria must have read the depression on his face a bit differently because she rested her hand on his cheek and lowered it a bit to stare into his eyes.

“It’s alright – you don’t have to go back to him. He’s only going to hurt you. Just stay here until you know how to be your own person again.” Hidaka’s mind was whirling with a thousand questions but he chose to stay quiet. Mostly because he knew this wasn’t going to help him. The woman’s razor sharp nails cut him a bit on his cheek and he watched as she smiled at the sight.

Fucking psycho.

“Go wash your face – then I’ll take you to your bed. You’ll stay here where it’s safe.” She urged and Hidaka shook his head. Take off the hideous make up? The only thing that was keeping him from being exposed? For one thing, he couldn’t believe Maria still thought he was a woman. Mostly because no matter how you’d look at it, Hidaka wasn’t in any form or shape feminine. Now Akiyama on the other hand-

Okay that’s too much think about Akiyama and less thinking about how to get out of there. Looking around, he spotted a small window in the corner of the room. Analyzing it in his head, he mentally made a few calculations. It would be a tight squeeze but maybe he could just-

No, it wasn’t possible.

Miserably, he turned to look back at her. Maria smiles sweetly and he felt a trill of danger run through him.

“I don’t like taking my makeup off, it completes me.” He had seen some girl use this line in a TV drama once, whatever it meant. He must have said the right thing because Maria smiled at him, shaking her head softly but not exactly forcing him either. Leaving him alone, she shut the door behind her to give him – her? – privacy to change. In a flash, he was next to the window, trying to open it. If not anything he could always yell out for help.

It wasn’t like he had any other options.

“What are you doing.” It wasn’t a question. She knew exactly what he was doing. Turning around, he all but shook with fear as she stood there in the doorway, holding long rope. “This is truly disheartening – and here I thought we could have been friends… You men only lie. Lying, deceitful little creatures you are.” The blood in his veins froze. She knew. Maria let out a small laugh. "Oh what? You thought I would see past your pathetic disguise?" Hidaka shook his head. Well, if he was going to die, might as well not give her the satisfaction of knowing she frightened him – even if she did just a bit.

“We’re not friends. You’re just a psychopath who likes to abduct people and kill them under the pretense of looking out for them.” Something in him made him keep speaking even though it was very ill advised in his current situation. “You cover your own guilt by saying you’re keeping them safe but you’re not – you’re just like every other guy who kept them prisoner – no you’re worse. They just did it emotionally; you’re doing it physically. You’re nothing but hypocrite Maria Yubikiri!”

The woman let out a snarl and pounced on him. Hidaka struggled against her, but discovered soon, that her petite frame was only a misleading cover to a ferociously strong body. As she pinned him to the ground, he stared at the ceiling.

Huh. So this is how it ends then.

Really, he had so much left to do. He hadn’t even called him mum in a long while now. What had it been – a month? Two?

The hands round his neck tightened and dark spots began dancing in his field of vision. His chest heaved trying to get some oxygen in as he scratched at her hands hoping to get her to let go.

If only-

“Let go of my boyfriend, you crazy bitch!” The last thing he saw before he blacked out was tiny blur of green yank the body off of him and with a smile, Hidaka’s consciousness faded to black.

BAU, PSIA headquarters, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.

16th August, Saturday.

[8:30 PM]

“So how did you guys even find me?” Hidaka asked, rubbing his throat a bit. The marks were still there, scars where her nails had bit into his skin and made him bleed. The darkening bruise across his tanned skin would take days to heal but Hidaka knew it would disappear sooner than later and this whole business would be behind them. Benzai coughed.

“Well once we realized it was a woman with a black jeep, the rest was easy. We just looked up every woman in the area who owned one and fit the description of the victims. Maria Yubikiri lit up like a beacon. Her own relationship had gone south and she had killed her ex-boyfriend but the charges against her were dropped since the boyfriend was such a douche. She had been in and out of therapy. She was such a cluster fuck of problems that you could just tell from a mile away were trouble.” Hidaka nodded. They had all just returned to the headquarters, him being finally released from the hospital after many threats and angry outbursts.

Really, he hadn’t even been in that bad a shape.

To top it all off –

His eyes found themselves fixed on a certain figure that was discreetly trying to leave in the background. A small push made him stumble forward and he barely manage to catch himself, turning to look at Benzai, confused.

“Just go ask him out properly, you both are giving the entire team a head ache with your constant tip toeing around each other." Behind him Gotou nodded savagely while even Awashima made a shrugging motion with her shoulders. Hidaka turned to look back at the figure only to realize it was gone. He quickly bid the other goodbye before sprinting out after the other man.

Really, they were going to see each other the next day – he shouldn't really make such an effort right now. But something inside him told him it was either now or never.

Spotting his desired company walking ahead, he smirked and grabbed him by the shoulder-

And found himself lying on his back, his body screaming in agony and stars floating in front of his eyes.

"Oh my God, Hidaka san!" Akiyama's horrified voice pulled him back into the world of the coherent and Akiyama helped him sit up. "I thought someone was attacking me so I just -"

"I always knew you were the ones who could make me see stars in their eyes."

"You really do have a concussion don't you, wait, I'll go get help. I should probably call the ambulance – you need to go back to the hospital."

"NO!" Hidaka's body jerked in an upright position. Akiyama blinked.

"Alright then, I'll just leave you here to die then See if I care." He huffed, getting to his feet. Hidaka followed suit even thought he was sure he had dislocated some of his vertebrae. Groaning, he held up a hand, silently asking the other man to stop which he thankfully did. Hidaka inwardly rejoiced because he really didn't think he could run after someone right now.

Fucking hurts like bloody murder.

"Okay no, I needed to ask you something." Akiyama paused, a bit of pink dusting his cheeks. Before Hidaka could get even two words in, the man was rambling on, not paying attention to what the brunette wanted to say.

"If this is about that boyfriend comment, I acted without thinking – I was in a panic -"

"Akiyama san..."

"So you can't actually blame me -"

"Akiyama san."

"Besides, do you realize how worried you had made all of us -"

"Akiyama san."

"Always doing careless things. I mean, who just -"

Hidaka just kissed him to get him to shut up. Which did work – until he pulled away because then Akiyama was all up in his face.

"What was that?"

"Well I'm not sure what they call this in your home planet – but here it's called a kiss Akiyama san."

"Why?"

"Well you kept talking and not listening -"

"Oh so you did kiss me only to make me quiet."

"What? No, That's not -"

"I'm sorry." Hidaka blinked. His mind couldn't keep up with the conversation and he vaguely wondered if there had been a bit of a time skip here.

"Excuse you?"

"I'm sorry." Akiyama repeated, looking away. "That day – it was my fault." Hidaka's eyes widened comically and he raised his hands, waving them frantically in front of him.

"No no, it wasn't your fault. Really."

"No it's – Hidaka san made no such promise." The low mumble made Hidaka stop and stare, a bit bewildered by the small confession. Confession to what exactly, he did not know.

"What?" Again, there was probably something he skipped - he was missing something majorly important, he was sure of it -

"Hidaka san never promised to wear a dress - I made that up." Hidaka stared. And stared, He opened his mouth to say something but really, nothing came out.

"Ah."

What else could he say? Anything he wanted to say was highly wrong in the current atmosphere.

You're here to tell him you love him. You're here to tell him you love him. You're here to tell him you love him.

"Please don't be mad, I thought you'd look really cute." Hidaka stared at the other man, incredulity spreading across his face.

"Akiyama san?"

"Yes?" The words were a tiny squeak as if he expected Hidaka to yell at him. He didn't though.

"It's a good thing I love you otherwise I might have just murdered you right now." Akiyama's eyes widened only for a fraction before Hidaka found himself being on the receiving end of a very long – and possibly bone crushing – hug.

Yup definitely slipped a backbone or two. he thought wincing slightly. But it was worth it though. Akiyama pulled away and began to dig around in his bag.

"I planned on giving you this tomorrow, as an apology, but here." Hidaka stared at the wooden box in surprise and blinked, looking at Akiyama then at the box and then back again. Akiyama nudged him. "Well, don't leave me standing here like an idiot. Just take it." Hidaka nodded. Opening the box he stared at the contents in surprise.

"Ah." Once again rendered speechless, he held up the wooden pen in the light, admiring the way the light reflected off the polished surface and the intricate pattern carved in. Akiyama shrugged.

"I really didn't know what else to get, I'm not good with-"

"Thank you Akiyama san." Hidaka cut in, placing his gift back in the box, "It looks really nice." Akiyama blushed again. Hidaka came to the conclusion he liked seeing Akiyama blush.

"Yes well, you did get kidnapped and all so I suppose it's the least I could do." He ducked his head and Hidaka grinned.

"You can also go out for dinner with me." Akiyama looked at him blankly then at his wrist watch.

"Well, I guess it's not that late." He finally receded. Hidaka grinned.

"Great, I just recently found this amazing diner-"

"A diner? On our first date? I would have at least expected a gourmet meal."

"It was a very last minute thing Akiyama san, I'm sorry I couldn't arrange for the flowers."

"That's no excuse, I want my flowers."

“Well if you want those flowers so badly, maybe you should ask me out on a date.”

“Why would I do that? Then I’d have to buy you flowers.”

“Akiyama san…”

#...I'm done #this got very out of hand I did not plan on making it this long #AkiHida #k project au #k project #fic

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