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alarawriting · 2 years ago

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52 Project #49: She's Got Diplomatic Immunity, She's Got A Lethal Weapon That Nobody Sees

Based on this prompt from @writing-prompt-s .

The sky was completely dark – no sun, despite it being nearly 3 pm in this time zone, but no moon or stars either – when I arrived at the Watch’s headquarters. I could still see reasonably well, this being a big city with streetlights, neon signs, and well-lit buildings everywhere, but it was still eerie to look up at the sky and see total blackness. Or, to be completely honest, blackness smattered with very faint gray and pink, where the city lights were reflecting off clouds. The forcefield around the Earth was perfectly absorbent, no light reflecting off it, but it was up a lot higher than the clouds. It was late June, but I was grateful for the jacket I was wearing over my costume; it was chilly. And it was going to get chillier.

The thing about a forcefield that blocks EM radiation from reaching the Earth is that you’re generating it in space, from a satellite. There’s no other way to do it. It has to be in space to be able to encompass the whole planet, and to be honest you’ll likely need more than one. So to reach it with your own control signal, you either have to be with it in space, in which case how are you going to hear from world leaders if they’re ready to surrender? Or you have to be on the ground, and if so, how can you transmit your control signal? Most likely it’s using EM, too. So either way, you need to have a hole in the field to project through. And for various reasons, the poles are the best places to put such a thing.

The Watch, Odysseus’ team, was fairly heavy on science types – maybe not as much as the Teslanauts, but they were mostly about computers and inventions, whereas the Watch had more pure science going on. They’d identified where Dr. Spectrum’s base was, and they’d reached out to me rather than going to chase him down there themselves, bring in the Alliance of Good, or any of the other things they could have done.

“It’s in Antarctica,” Odysseus told me. “Normally with a villain’s base, we’d send Lynx in to do recon, but a cat isn’t exactly inconspicuous in Antarctica.” The cat, a slim tortoiseshell standing on the console next to him, meowed loudly. “Also, she can’t talk anymore, so it’s hard for her to give us any useful information.”

“You ought to get a telepath,” I said. “I think Zed’s freelancing now; they might be willing to work with you.”

He chuckled. “I think eight members is plenty. We’re not trying to turn into the Alliance of Good here.”

I winced. I used to be a member of the Alliance of Good, before… well, before they stopped being quite so good. At one point we’d had 27 members. Keeping track of what everyone was working on had been a logistics nightmare. “True enough. Is there a reason you’re hiring me rather than going after Dr. Spectrum yourselves?”

“No specific reason. You have an excellent track record and you talked Kage and Fallen Angel into quitting the Society of Sin; that’s how you ended up on our radar. And I always think it’s a tragedy when someone with a mind like Dr. Spectrum’s goes bad.”

I nodded. “Agreed. What’s the plan to get me in there?”

“Dr. Ray and the Mechanist have come up with an ice buggy that can camouflage its heat signature. Side benefit, it should keep you pretty warm. The downside is, you’ll be piloting on instruments only; there’s no way to open a port you can see through and still be able to keep Spectrum from detecting you.”

That made sense, given Dr. Spectrum’s specialty. “Instruments only implies radar. How would he not detect that?”

“Rasers,” Odysseus said, which I first mistook to mean razors, and wondered what thin, sharp blades would have to do with object detection. “Lasers using the radio wave spectrum. We aim the raser toward the ground. If it hits something, it bounces back and then you know there’s something there. If it doesn’t hit anything… it won’t refract and bounce off the ice the way a light-spectrum laser would. There may be some radio scatter, but not enough for Dr. Spectrum to be able to tell you’re coming.”

I hoped so. Dr. Spectrum was famous for using robots rather than human minions, and my martial arts skills were decent, but not really up to taking out robots. “Do I get backup?”

“We can be on the Antarctic coast near Belgrano II, ready to move if you call us, but that’s about 800 miles from Dr. Spectrum’s base. Max safe speed for the Ice Runner is probably about 80 miles an hour, 100 if we floor it. So… yes, but backup will be eight hours away. And we can’t give you a constant signaler, so you’d have to be able to activate the signal… and it’s Dr. Spectrum. If he isn’t running a full range of jammers, I’d be very surprised.”

“Why not closer? There are Antarctic bases closer to the South Pole, right?”

“We can’t fly over. No one can; he’s got a full range of drones with radar circling the pole and looking for flying vehicles, at an altitude of around 3 miles, we think. Nothing can get closer than maybe about 200 miles on land, and further out than that in the air. Amundsen Station’s gone dark – we think he’s probably enclosed it in a radio barrier rather than killing the scientists there.”

I nodded. “The radio barrier’s more Dr. Spectrum’s style.”

“We’re pretty sure that even if his drones can see the 800-odd miles to Belgrano Station… planes come in there all the time, so he won’t consider it something to worry about. And when we factor in elevation, ease of climbing up from the ice shelf to the height of the terrain around the South Pole, and distance, Belgrano’s the closest we can get. Vostok Station’s slightly closer and already at the correct elevation, but it’s significantly further away from us because it’s on the opposite side of the pole, and it’s on the eastern side of Antarctica, where the winter storms tend to be at their most fierce. Kunlun’s closer than that but not inhabited in the winter.”

“Okay… but is there a reason we need to land at a base? My understanding is, there’s a whole lot of smooth ice in Antarctica you could use for a runway if you had to.”

He smiled wryly. “So here’s the thing. The Ice Skater – the vehicle we’re giving you – is extremely light, heavily insulated to keep off infrared scopes – it’s rated for -71 C, and while it can get down to -90 C down there, it doesn’t usually. With that much insulation, it barely requires any energy to keep you warm, and it uses hydrogen fuel cells, and it comes with enough of them that you could circumnavigate Antarctica twice before refueling. And hydrogen fuel cells emit water as their waste product. Any steam the Skater vents will desublimate to ice almost instantly. Nothing visible.”

“Nice.”

“We don’t have anyothervehicles like that. The only other zero emissions vehicle we have runs on solar, which wouldn’t work in Antarctic winter even if Dr. Spectrum wasn’t blocking the sun. Everything else that’s capable of making it across the Antarctic terrain is going to be very, very visible in infrared, and is likely to produce emissions that can be seen with the right spectrography. He’s going to be able to see the Ice Runner – our main polar vehicle -- as soon as it’s within 200 miles of the pole, maybe sooner. And if we go out to the edge of what we think is his visible range, outside the earth’s curvature vis-à-vis his spy drones, and hang around there waiting for you to call… we’d have to keep the Runner heated, which in that temperature will burn fuel almost as fast as driving it would. The Skater needs to generate very little heat and is carrying more efficient fuel.”

“So if you followed me inland and stopped where he can’t see you, you run the risk of freezing to death.”

“Right.” Odysseus nodded.

“Didn’t I hear there’s a highway in Antarctica? Is that where we’re going?”

“No, that connects McMurdo Station to the South Pole, not Belgrano. And we’re not using that because McMurdo has reported seeing drones zipping up and down the highway. Remote controlled cars, basically, a little bigger than your typical RC hobby vehicle. It’s fairly obvious he thinks McMurdo is where we’d be coming in at… which makes good logical sense; it would be the best route if he wasn’t watching it.”

“Then how do we know he isn’t watching the route from Belgrano?”

“Because he can’t. The South Pole Traverse is a road, made of compacted snow and ice. It’s only so wide. He couldn’t find us if instead of using the Traverse itself, we paralleled it a mile to the east, but there’s no point in doing that because it’s a significantly longer distance than from Belgrano. We can be reasonably sure that he’s not going to waste resources searching every possible route from the coast, or from anywhere a plane can land.”

The cat pawed at Odysseus, meowing loudly, and then pointed her paw at a large analog clock with glowing hands, which was making chiming noises. Three o’clock. I didn’t know what the significance of that was, but the cat – who from my understanding was the heroine Lynx, stuck in the body of a cat since her own had been killed – seemed to think there was something.

“His deadline’s in 24 hours, now, and we’re going to burn a lot of it getting there. Are you in?”

“Of course,” I said. “Let your team know, and let’s get going.”

***

Most of the flight was spent over water, so we could travel at Mach 5 without causing disruptions on the ground. In a good part of the world, supersonic speed was banned over land, except for wartime applications, which superhero work technically was not. We left the coast of the US, went out to 30 west longitude or so, and then flew more or less straight south, nothing but water underneath us. Civilian craft can’t do that; they’d run out of fuel, but the Watch’s plane ran on something else. I didn’t ask any of them what, because they’d tell me.

It was over three hours in the darkness. Dr. Spectrum’s force field was at orbital elevation, so in a plane, we couldn’t get above it. And since there are very few sources of light out on the ocean, it was a much more complete darkness than I’d experienced on, say, redeye flights from California to the East Coast. After a few minutes of trying to look out the window and realizing how little there was to see, I returned to studying Dr. Spectrum’s manifesto… the demands he’d insisted needed to be met by 3 pm tomorrow, or he’d continue to block the sun.

The deadline was nonsense, of course. It wasn’t that the issue wasn’t serious. Every day of no sun meant the planetary temperature would drop about 5 degrees Celsius, or 9 Fahrenheit. In the Watch’s city, where it was early summer and the temperature had been ranging between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, it was now a brisk 63. By 3 PM tomorrow it’d be 54-ish. Two or three more days after that and there’d be frost in most places where there had been spring or summer temperatures, killing plants that weren’t designed to take it. By the end of the week everything humanity grows to eat would be dead or going dormant, and widespread famine would ensue later in the year.

But there was nothing special about 3 pm tomorrow. Places that had been cold enough to get below freezing by then were probably either not growing anything, or were growing things that could handle a sudden frost. It said something about Dr. Spectrum that his demand essentially translated into “give me what I want by my deadline or things will continue to get worse until you finally do give in.” Crops would start dying in large numbers four days from now. Not tomorrow.

The demands themselves were… interesting. I have a lot of experience in dealing with supervillains, and what they want out of their criminal activities, and the mad scientist type usually fall into just a few categories. To begin with, they never want money. It’s always more effective to use your super-science skills to invent things and then market them if you want money, and the few who are emotionally attached to the idea of being criminals… they join teams like the Society of Sin, or they make gadgets and sell them to other supervillains.

There’s always an emotional reason. Sometimes it’s nothing but emotion. Dr. Ultraviolet just wanted the world to recognize her genius… a lot of buried insecurity there. Sometimes there’s an ideology. Gaia’s Sword worked with War Horse, supporting him in his plans to destroy humanity, because she was an eco-extremist who thought humanity was poisoning the Earth, and was happy to work with a sapient, super-powered horse to eliminate us, despite the fact that she was human too. Usually the ideologies are a little more normal than that; several of the ones I’ve encountered have been libertarians, who felt that, while they could be very wealthy by going legit, they could become even more wealthy if they created a world where taxation didn’t exist, first. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you get anarchists like Dr. No, who feel that all government is illegitimate.

The ones who are easiest to work with usually have some combination – a cause that’s very important to them emotionally, generally because of their own past. The Relentless Robot (who, despite what his costume makes him look like, isn’t a robot at all) was acting out against a society that had treated him as less than human. Most of his original manifesto was impractical in the extreme, but we managed to satisfy him by cutting it down to just the demand that all forms of abusive child re-education be made illegal, including gay and trans conversion therapy, ABA for autistic kids, and “scared straight” bootcamps that locate themselves in places with no government oversight so they can torture and brainwash their “students”. The heroes who’d been getting ready to attack the Robot had agreed with me that this set of demands was both achievable and laudable, and that, as heroes, we would not stand against the demand being made. It turns out that when what villains want turns out to be something any person with both a brain and a heart should want, we heroes don’t tend to be too big on stopping them with violence. I mean, he probably should have tried a public awareness campaign first… but when this sort of thing happens, it’s usually a demand for a change that the majority of the public either supports, or would support if they actually understood what was going on.

Dr. Spectrum’s demands were extreme, even beyond anything the Robot had ever come up with (and the Robot had wanted to legalize child labor so kids could run away from abusive homes and support themselves, before I got him to see how much that would end up harming the people he was trying to protect.) I could sympathize with most of them; in fact I thought a lot of them would be good common sense ideas in a world that wasn’t this one, like “confiscate all sources of plutonium worldwide and use it to power space drone explorer craft”, which sounded great until you ran into the question of, how could you confirm or enforce that? Other of his ideas were ones I sympathized with but they were entirely too revolutionary to achieve the way he was trying to go about it. “Eliminate corporate personhood” – that would completely upend the world’s economic systems, which Spectrum saw as a plus because he also wanted to destroy capitalism. The fact was, the entrenched powers-that-be wouldn’t give up corporate personhood and capitalism, the sources of their power and wealth, just because the world was going to be destroyed otherwise… we had extensive proof of that already.

No one was going to give Spectrum total dictatorial control over the whole world. Ironically some might have considered it the lesser of two evils if Spectrum was just a megalomaniacal narcissist who wanted power, but since his manifesto explained what he would do with such power, and his ideals were radical and would be extremely destructive to pretty much all members of the ruling class of every country everywhere… it wasn’t going to happen, even if we all starved to death and then froze. My job was to convince Dr. Spectrum of this… and, since he didn’t get to be a supervillain blackmailing the whole world by being reasonable, I needed to get him to channel his passion into something that had some hope of working before we were all dead.

I reviewed the maps, again. Belgrano was indeed the closest coastal base to the geographic South Pole, and it had an airfield. I had considered being dropped off about 300 miles further inland, solidly on the glacial shelf that was near the same elevation as the South Pole, but it turned out that there wasn’t really a good way for the plane to airdrop the Ice Skater, and there was nowhere to safely land up there. I’d thought the ice would generally be smooth enough to let a plane land, but in fact runways were required, though they were made of artificially smoothed ice for the most part, or sometimes gravel. So it was going to be important to map a route where the grade was as smooth as possible; Odysseus assured me that the Skater could handle rough terrain, but there was a difference between “up rough terrain” and “up a mountain”. On the other hand it also had to be as direct as possible; I could ensure myself a pretty smooth grade if I went up the glacier that Belgrano sits on, back down into Coats Land, and then northeast until I was in Dronning Maud Land, then straight south… but if I was going to do that I might as well just come in at Norway’s Trøll air base near the north coast of Dronning Maud Land, because the distance would be the same.

***

The plane came into an enclosed hangar, with a sealed walkway into the base, just like at an airport. There were space heaters set on the edge of the walkway, blasting, but I could still feel the chill. Inside the base it was room temperature, though. They gave me plenty of warm food to eat, and warm drinks, and then bundled me into an astronaut diaper and an insulated black bodysuit with hood, goggles and a mask. Frankly I was more concerned about overheating at this point, since I’d been told the Skater was itself heavily insulated.

“You don’t have to wear the headgear in the Skater,” Dr. Ray said, “but you must wear the rest of it. Don’t try to take off any articles of clothing in the Skater; you won’t have room.”

Words couldn’t describe how much I didn’t want to be wearing a diaper when I confronted Dr. Spectrum. “Where do I get changed?”

“He’s probably taken over Amundsen Base; it’d be cheaper and easier than building his own. There’s places to get changed inside. Here.” Dr. Ray handed me a bracelet. “Once you press the button on the center, you are phased out of reality; only enough of your molecules interact with the world to allow you to move. You won’t be able to breathe while it’s on. It gives you one minute – approximately – to get through the walls and into the base. You’ve already got the heads-up display with the map pre-programmed into your goggles.”

“What if he did build his own base?”

“Then go into Amundsen anyway, find a place to get cleaned up and recharge the device, because you’ll probably need it to get into the actual base. It’ll need about three hours on the charger, which is inside the Skater; we recommend strongly that you bring it in with you. There’s a second bracelet on the charger; it’ll make you more or less invisible. Be careful not to stand anywhere where the lensing effect would be noticeable, like on a border between two colors, or the edge of a shadow.”

Odysseus and Ray went with me out into the hangar. Despite all the gear I was wearing and the fact that there were heaters on in the hangar, the cold was like a punch in the gut. I sucked in a breath. “Nice and chilly, this.”

Odysseus laughed. “It certainly is.” His costume normally involved a lot of exposed skin, it being a sort of modern interpretation of what a Greek hero would have been wearing, but today he was dressed as warmly as I was. Though probably not wearing a diaper.

The Ice Skater was entirely black, which made sense for heat absorption and insulation, and as warned, it had no windows. There were two large ski blades under it. “How does it get up hills?”

“There are wheels. When you’re able to go downhill, you can engage ski mode, and the wheels retract. We recommend doing that as much as you can when you get close; we can’t do anything about the fact that a motor will always generate heat.”

“And its top speed is also around 80 miles per hour, you said. So this is going to take me ten hours to get there.”

He nodded. “We’re actually expecting it will take longer than that because you’re going to have to sleep, and the Skater can’t pilot itself. You’re well insulated enough that if you turn off active interior heating and just sit, it should take close to eight hours to drop to freezing… so you’ve got about five hours to sleep before it gets cold enough inside to be uncomfortable.”

“Right. In that case, I am absolutely changing out of this diaper before I go to sleep.”

“There really isn’t room—” Dr. Ray started to say.

“You have no idea how flexible I am. I want a couple of changes of diapers, wipes, and sanitary bags to put them in. What do I get to eat on my exciting journey?”

“Energy bars and cold sandwiches, mostly. Plus meal replacement drinks. There will also be water. Given, you know, the nature of diapers, maybe you want to stick with the meal replacement drinks over solid food as much as you reasonably can.” Ray had turned bright red.

This wasn’t the first time I’d gone on a mission into hostile territory wearing a diaper; the time I’d had to dive to reach Sea King’s base was memorable. That was probably the only other time that the environment itself had been as deadly as what I was facing now. Though the time with the hornets had also been pretty bad.

“Well.” The entire top of the Skater lifted, exposing the cockpit and dashboard. I climbed in. It was, in fact, an incredibly tight fit. “No time like the present.”

From outside, Ray explained how the controls worked. Engage drive, disengage drive, turn rudder left or right, back wheels left or right, front wheels left or right… I’d never driven a vehicle with so many different ways to steer it, but it was necessary. Obviously four wheel drive was necessary on icy terrain, and then the rudder was needed if you were skiing.

They closed me in, and away I went.

***

Navigating in Antarctica, in total darkness, by instruments only, is harder than you’d think.

Firstly, of course, no light whatsoever. Normally in Antarctic winter, there’s no sun, but you get the moon, the stars, and sometimes an aurora australis. But Dr. Spectrum had blocked off all electromagnetic radiation from the sky. This also meant that GPS was impossible, because GPS relies on sending signals to multiple satellites and receiving responses, and the satellites were above Dr. Spectrum’s barrier. Also, I couldn’t have used GPS anyway, because there was a reason he’d adopted the moniker Dr. Spectrum, and it had nothing to do with autism (that was the Robot) or rainbows. His specialty was manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum, which included detecting it, which included detecting that a small object several hundred miles away in the middle of nowhere where nothing ought to be was sending radio signals.

Next, there is no infrared. When you think about maneuvering in darkness, you might think of night vision goggles and viewing things in the infrared spectrum, since objects generate their own infrared signatures. Out of heat. That they radiate. Which they don’t do much of, in Antarctica.

Well, now, what about a compass? So here’s the thing: compasses use the geomagnetic field, and geomagnetic South is not the same as absolute South. The geomagnetic south pole currently isn’t even in Antarctica; it’s out in the ocean nearby. Also, the magnetic field of the earth is both vertical and horizontal, and the vertical portion gets much stronger than the horizontal portion at the poles, so a compass is going to try to point down. They’re flat, so generally they can’t, but this makes them pretty useless.

I had an incredibly detailed satellite map (that included the blocked-out areas around the Pole that are kept off of the Internet for security reasons), and a powerful on-board computer that could use the rasers it was pointing at the ground and directly around the Skater to calculate exactly how far I was moving in what direction at any given time, and by adding that movement to the map, it could figure out where I was through continuity. But if anything happened to the computer, a single momentary glitch, even a slowdown, and it could easily lose track of where I was, and there’d be virtually no way to get it back. Meanwhile, I was looking at a 360 degree screen all around my head, which translated what the rasers were “seeing” into visual imagery. But because of the danger of Spectrum detecting the rasers, the front forward rasers were only positioned to show me the next 50 feet or so, and that only if I was on flat terrain. If I was on an upslope it’d be shorter, because the rasers would adjust to decrease the likelihood of scattering into the sky, where Spectrum might be able to detect them.

You might ask, why not sonar, and the answer is, just because Spectrum’s specialty is the EM spectrum doesn’t mean he’s such an idiot as to neglect sonic waves. And on land, sonar isn’t great. Bats use it, but bats actually crash into each other all the time.

The first 300 miles or so were really easy, though. I was crossing the Filchner ice shelf, going past the Shackleton mountain range, toward a point directly northeast of the Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range. Ice is smooth, and pretty much 100% sea level. With global warming, the shelf might have been more treacherous in the summer than I would have liked, but deep in Antarctic winter, it was rock solid. The main issue I had was complete boredom. I was following my progress on the map to make sure I was going the way I should be going, but aside from that there was no information coming in. Nothing to see, nothing to do but keep skiing and every so often engage the drive long enough to give me a push so I could keep skiing some more. Ever go nearly four hours with nothing to see that’s any different than what you were seeing five minutes ago?

I’d go stir crazy in space. Probably not really a good candidate for a pilot, either, whether in air or on sea.

There’s a strait between Berkner Island – an island that isn’t really an island, it’d be underwater if there weren’t a ton of ice on top of it – and the main west coast of Antarctica proper, and I headed into that, into what would be a bay if, again, not covered with ice. Straight in front of me was the hilariously named Support Force Glacier, just northeast of the Pensacola Mountains, which then lead into the Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range. Glaciers, like rivers, flow… just very, very slowly. Sometimes, the flow leaves a fairly smooth section of ice as it moves.

The Skater probably couldn’t get up a mountainside proper, but using my map and my rasers, I was able to identify the mildest slopes ahead of me, and push the Skater up them. I was looking for two things: a gradual incline, and a smooth surface. You’d think all of Antarctica would be smooth, like an ice skating rink, after so much time for all the ice to build up, but actually new ice is being formed and forcing the old ice out into the ocean, slowly but steadily, all the time. The terrain had just as many divots and hillocks as land would, but they were covered with ice.

All directions that go toward the pole are south, and I was attempting to go pretty directly. I was tracking along the 45 W meridian, until things started to get a little rough and I had to bear southeast instead, crossing the 40th and then hitting 35 W just as I was reaching 85 S latitude. Because longitude slices the earth like an orange and latitude slices it like a tomato, I was able to cross 10 degrees of meridian while still mostly going south in only about 170 miles. But 85 S is a consistent distance from the South Pole, and the same distance as between all parallels. I had 5 latitudinal degrees and approximately 350 miles to go, if I went straight and didn’t have to re-route around rough terrain.

At this point I’d been driving for five hours. I’d been eating and drinking along the way, but I was wearing out, and I needed to be at my best to handle Dr. Spectrum. Time to make camp. By which I mean, since I couldn’t leave the Skater – aside from “why would I want to” and losing all my heat, there was a significant chance I’d lose it in the dark if I attempted to go more than two or three steps away from it – that I leaned the seat as far back as it went, contorted myself so I could get my pants off, removed my own diaper and cleaned myself up, and then got my top off so I could wipe my whole body down. Sweating when you’re going to be going outside in the cold is bad. Dr. Ray had thought there was no way I’d have room to do that, but I’m a short person and I’m flexible. It’s not a superpower or anything; I just know how to stretch and stay limber.

It was 68 degrees Fahrenheit inside the Skater. With all my cold gear on, that had gotten to be unbearably warm, and at times on the trip I’d fantasized about opening up the top to let the cold air in. With my clothes off, it was a little on the chilly side. I stuffed my cold gear onto one of the heating vents to dry it out, opened up an emergency blanket – which was much, much fluffier and bulkier than I had expected before I pulled it out of its vacuum pack – and told the computer to wake me up in four hours.

There was no way to report back. I had a radio, and with so little in the way to block it, the signal might actually get all the way back to Belgrano… but it was also very, very likely to reach Dr. Spectrum. In fact he was probably closer, in terms of miles. I’d told the Watch my plan, though. Very few human beings can do a ten hour drive and then jump into action, and it was midnight my time by now. So we’d worked eight hours of sleep into the time budget, but it had to be broken up because the Skater couldn’t keep me warm enough to be comfortable for eight straight hours if I turned it off, and if I turned it on and then didn’t move, sooner or later enough infrared would leak that Dr. Spectrum might be able to see me.

The emergency blanket was actually more like a sleeping bag, and it had the ability to zipper myself in, but rebreathing my own carbon dioxide gives me headaches. So I didn’t close it. As the temperature dropped, my exposed face would lose heat, but that was fine; in four hours the temperature would be in the lower 50’s and the chill would help me wake up.

I didn’t sleep well. Given the stress of the situation and the fact that I was stuffed into a sleeping bag inside a space only about as big as the driver’s seat in a compact car, I didn’t expect to.

In my dreams, I was trying to talk to Dr. Spectrum, except he was simultaneously other villains I’d had to talk down in the past, and no matter what I tried, he ignored me or read into my words things I’d never said or meant.

Toward the end, he was inexplicably my mother.

***

Four hours isn’t enough sleep. I headed toward the pole for another three, then another sleep. When I got back into my now-nice-and-toasty winter gear after my second nap, I dropped the temperature within the Skater to about 45 degrees. Much warmer than the outside would be, but cold enough that I wouldn’t sweat the last two hours of the drive. Also, reducing the potential for enough infrared leak that Dr. Spectrum could see me.

It ended up being the last four hours of the drive, because I became very concerned about operating the rasers so close to Spectrum’s base, and turned them inward, giving me only about 20 feet of visibility, which meant slowing down. At times I felt like I was caught in Xeno’s paradox, going slower and slower the closer I got. And then, once I was really close, I almost ran into one of his robots, missing it by literal inches. The rasers told me it wasn’t stationary, but I couldn’t get any impression of how fast it was going or in exactly what direction before I was out of range.

The moving robot was a strong argument for there being some type of light outside the Skater – it might not be visible light, but there might be infrared or something in use, because if the robot was patrolling, it needed to be able to see where it was going and what it was encountering. I turned around and drove about a tenth of a mile away, hopefully out of the range the robot was patrolling, if in fact that was what it was doing.

I was going to have to get out and walk.

Oh, what fun.

***

The area actually blazed with light up ahead of me. Where I was, the darkness was, well, very dark; the only illumination came from the camp more than a football field’s length ahead of me. The terrain of the South Pole is fairly smooth, though. My boots had extendable snow cleats that I’d kept folded in while I was driving, but I extended them now as I hiked. Despite the goggles and the face mask for my nose and mouth, the cold felt like it was digging little channels of ice into my skin. It hurt in a way I’d never imagined cold could hurt before coming to Antarctica.

I laughed softly to myself. When my mother had wanted to move to the Yukon, in Canada, I’d begged and pleaded with her, and we’d ended up in Texas instead, out in one of the western counties in the great range between El Paso and the middle of the state. It was still pretty empty, but not nearly as empty as the Yukon. If we’d gone to the Yukon instead I might be prepared for this. Where we’d lived, some winters it had hit nearly 0 Fahrenheit, and I’d thought that was cold. Belgrano had been close to that level of cold, at negative 5, where we’d landed. But this was somewhere in the range of minus 70. It was so cold, I was breathing through a snorkel that snaked down to a spot right to the side of my arm, so the cold air could travel through my warmed clothes before getting into my lungs. I could feel the snorkel tube, ice cold against my otherwise well-protected body.

The ice made crunching sounds as I walked on it. I wished I’d brought snowshoes instead, something to distribute my weight instead of digging in. This seemed like a serious oversight. If I ever had to sneak up on a supervillain’s base in a polar region again, I’d have to remember it.

As I got closer, I saw the robots. They reminded me somewhat of Daleks from Doctor Who, or maybe enormous Roombas. They were silver, and glittered in the light of the multiple banks of stadium lights mounted all around the South Pole area. I didn’t know whether the researchers had those lights up so they could see when they left their base in the winter – did they even leave their base in the winter? I wouldn’t – or if Dr. Spectrum had put them up. The robots moved in patterns; I watched them for ten minutes, pacing back and forth to keep my muscles from locking up in the cold and forcing my body to make more heat. I’d been enormously lucky; the robot I’d almost crashed into had been facing away from me. I could tell because I could see the tracks I’d left, and I could see the robot moving, and when it moved back into the position it’d been in when I’d almost hit it, it was facing away. I didn’t know why Dr. Spectrum had built his robots only to have eyes facing front, like predatory animals; why hadn’t he put sensors on the sides and backs of the heads, as well? They weren’t humanoid, so there was no design reason why he couldn’t have.

Possibly he wasn’t actually that good a roboticist. Standard brain modules for robots that circulate on the supervillain black market are designed for robots that look humanoid, with eyes in front. Maybe he’d just dropped a standard module into his unusually shaped robots. They did seem to be pretty stupid. The one I’d almost hit had ignored me despite my nearly hitting it on its blind side.

Under normal circumstances, you test this kind of thing by throwing rocks to see what the robot does. In Antarctica, there really aren’t any rocks. Anything that has broken loose from the rock the continent is made of has gotten buried under layers of ice.

Spectrum had, in fact, built himself a new base. Perhaps he hadn’t even interacted with Amundsen Base, short of cutting off their radio. We’d all thought he wouldn’t bother, with an existing base already where he needed it, plus the effort of having to dig in Antarctica, but he’d managed it somehow. The building looked like it was made of rock. It was a single story, maybe not even quite, a squat small building that wasn’t there on any of the top secret satellite maps. He must have been blocking the satellites from seeing him, somehow, even before he’d put up the barrier. But that was less surprising, from the man whose entire career had been about controlling and rerouting electromagnetic radiation, than the fact that he’d bothered to build himself a base at all.

I had a suspicion why he’d done it. Spectrum was the kind of villain who surrounded himself with robots rather than have minions. Most of the people who do that are expert roboticists who trust their ability to tweak an AI into total loyalty more than they trust goons who are in it for a paycheck. But judging from the quality of his robots’ observational skills, Spectrum plainly wasn’t that good at it. Which suggested that he just didn’t want to be around people. And there were misanthropic supervillains who hated people and didn’t want to be around them, like Gaia’s Sword. But Spectrum’s manifesto made it clear that societal injustice and the suffering brought on by poverty bothered him enough to invest millions of dollars in a scheme to take over the world so he could stop it. That wasn’t a misanthrope.

This guy was shy. He had built a second base rather than take over Amundsen because he hadn’t wanted to interact with the scientists. That was my theory.

Well, he was going to interact with me whether he liked it or not.

I waited for the moment where the robots’ pattern meant I had a brief straight shot at Spectrum’s base. Then I turned on my invisibility bracelet and ran, as fast as I could on the slippery ice, my boots giving me traction but also making me very, very loud. The ice crunched like the world’s biggest potato chip, and I ran out of invisible time while I was on the move, but that was all right. I was close enough.

My original plan had been to clean up and change clothes within Amundsen Base, but that was before I’d figured out that I could clean myself up; I’d wiped up before leaving the Skater. I didn’t need extensive invisible time on the inside. The goal was to get to Dr. Spectrum and talk to him, not to sneak up on him and knock him out or something; that would have been a job for a completely different hero. I activated my phasing bracelet instead.

My heads-up goggles showed me the phase time I had. I’d given myself 24 seconds for a margin of error, given that Dr. Ray had said I had “more or less 30 seconds”. If I wasn’t through the wall in 12 seconds, I’d have to turn around and go back out, and find another strategy, because I had no way of knowing how much further the wall would go after that and I couldn’t risk still being in the wall when I phased back in.

You can’t run when you’re phased. You’re basically swimming, upright. Gravity has only the lightest of holds on you, so you slowly drift upward, which is better than slowly sinking downward but it means you have to get what you’re doing done as fast as you can, and maybe exert some force into trying to stay down. I swam through the base wall, fighting to go as fast as I could and still stay more or less at ground level. Eleven seconds later my head was out, and in three more seconds I’d managed to pull all the rest of my body free, and turn off the phase bracelet. I dropped about six inches, the amount I’d floated into the air while I was phased.

You can barely see when you’re phased; there’s basically “light, you are free of a solid object” and “dark, your eyes are inside a solid object or maybe it’s just dark”. I saw the shadows up ahead but had no way to even guess what they might be until I turned off phasing and saw there was a circle of robots all around me with some kind of energy weapon pointed at me.

So much for stealth. “I’m here to see Dr. Spectrum,” I said, a little hoarsely because I hadn’t spoken in eighteen or so hours and also I’d been out in the cold. I cleared my throat. “He might be expecting me.”

***

Dr. Spectrum was a skinny middle-aged guy with a full head of blond hair in a very 1970’s shaggy cut. He was wearing a reflective silvery full-body suit that looked like something from 1960’s sci-fi. It fit him loosely. The room was tiled like it had been outfitted for mainframes, with an elevated white tile floor and all the wires running underneath it, but there were no mainframes. There were banks of computer monitors all over the room with locked screens and retinal scanners, but no visible hardware controls for his devices aside from the power cords that went down directly into the floor. Each of the monitors was hooked to a very, very small desktop computer. These were probably remote interfaces, with the real computing power somewhere else, though why he’d decided to set up ten or eleven remote interfaces when he was working alone, I couldn’t guess.

“So you’re the Envoy,” he said. “I thought you’d be…”

“Taller?”

“I don’t want to be rude,” he said, which probably meant he was about to be rude. “But most superheroines are, well…”

“Sexy? Tall? Wear skin-tight spandex, or dress like Indiana Jones, or they’re all in leather?”

“I honestly thought you’d either look like a traditional superheroine, or you’d be pushing late middle age with a sensible politician haircut.”

I grinned. “I’m glad you thought of the politician haircut. It’s pretty obvious if you think about it why I don’t look like a superhero – aside from having to wear all this gear to get here in the first place. Can I take it off, by the way? Your office here is probably a little chilly, but I’m dressed for negative Centigrade and I’m overheating badly.”

“Uh… you’re not trying to seduce me or something, are you? Because that won’t work. I’m asexual.”

“I am nowhere near hot enough to have seduction in my bag of tools,” I said. I’m very average. People have a hard time telling me from other women. I’m not ugly, and when I want a partner, I don’t have a hard time finding one who wants me, but I blend into most crowds. It’s not exactly a superpower, but it’s helpful sometimes, if deeply irritating at others.

“But, I mean, you have clothes under there, right?”

I laughed. “Of course. I’m not going to strip naked in a supervillain’s base.” I pulled off the ultra-cold-weather gear and set it down in a pile on the floor. Escaping Dr. Spectrum’s base hadn’t really been an option before; I’d known I was coming here to talk to him, and the bracelets were both out of charge, so turning invisible or walking through walls wasn’t happening. Given those factors, it made no difference whether I was wearing clothing that would let me survive Antarctic winter, or not; I wasn’t getting out into that winter until I was done here. I was hoping that taking off the outer layer would reinforce the idea in his head that I wasn’t here to fight him, that I didn’t have weapons. Also, I really was overheating.

“Can I ask what happened to the researchers at Amundsen?”

“What do you think?” Dr. Spectrum said sourly. “They’re fine. They don’t usually leave their base in the winter, anyway. I’m just blocking their radio signals.”

“That’s good to hear.”

He scowled at me. “If you have mind control powers, they won’t work either,” Dr. Spectrum said. “I’m wearing antipsionic tech.”

My understanding from the telepaths I’d known was that antipsionic tech wasn’t really great, and most good telepaths could get around it, but it didn’t matter. “No mind control powers, or any other kind. You want a blood sample to test? I’m 100% baseline human.”

The scowl deepened. “That can’t be right. They say you’ve made every supervillain you negotiated with back down. That’s not possible unless you have powers.”

“Well, it’s also not true. I nearly got trampled to death by War Horse. Dr. Ultraviolet was willing to stop that particular scheme, but I’d been trying to get her to quit supervillainy entirely and obviously that didn’t happen. And when I tried to talk to Executive Dysfunction, I completely forgot what I wanted to say and just rambled inanely while he laughed at me.”

“If War Horse had really wanted to trample you, he would have.” Dr. Spectrum said this as if it were some kind of gotcha that disproved what I was saying.

“There were circumstances. I’m fairly sure he wanted very badly to trample me, but didn’t want to have a fight with the heroes who were my backup.”

“So, if you don’t have powers, how do you talk supervillains out of what they’re doing? Because maybe whatever tricks you use work on weak-willed people, or people who were just in it for money or fame or proving a theory anyway, but I have a cause I believe in. I actually rather resent that people are calling me a supervillain; I’m out to save the world. But I can understand why that perspective isn’t making it out into the media, and of course, you so-called heroes will do anything to protect the status quo.”

I smiled wryly. “ When I succeed, it’s because I know how to listen. Now, I’ve read your manifesto, but there might be some nuances I didn’t pick up, or some ideas you’ve had since announcing it, so can you tell me about your cause?”

He sneered. “If you listening to me talk is how you expect to defeat me, then why would I talk to you?”

“You know why. You don’t want to have to have a battle with superheroes any more than they want to fight you. Even if you’re sure you can win, you’re not here to prove how badass you are or how easily you can dominate; you have a cause. You want to stay focused on that. So tell me about it.”

“No, you tell me. How do I even know you read my manifesto? You tell me about it.”

I shrugged. “Okay. You’re demanding an end to corporate personhood and the dissolution of all existing corporations, their assets to be equally distributed among the people. You do not trust any existing government to be able to carry this out without corruption, so you demand control of all world governments for the transition period. Individuals who have too many assets will also have to relinquish the extras, which includes landlords, and it will be illegal to rent out real estate. You didn’t state specifically what counts as too many assets—”

“Well, it’s going to be different for different countries. A country that’s very impoverished, maybe one man having a lot more cows than his neighbors is bad. But in the US, once we break up big agribusiness and restore family farms, it won’t be cows that are the issue. More like extra cars, fancy yachts, and the extra houses of course.”

I nodded. “Mm. You never actually said the word ‘communism’, but what you described is very similar to communism, if not identical. The things that people need will be manufactured or grown, and people should work at manufacturing or growing those things if they don’t have more valuable skills. Everyone will be given what they need. Also, unrelated to communism, immediate cessation of the use of gas-burning cars, all power plants that burn oil or coal should be shut down and converted into clean energy plants, all nuclear plants should use radioactive materials that can’t be repurposed to make bombs, and you want all the world’s plutonium to be collected and used to power spacecraft.”

“It’s not going to be like Soviet communism and the Five Year Plans,” he said. “Democracy will still exist at the local level, and it’ll be local governments that figure out what people need, based on surveying them and consulting with them. Like, the mayor’s office in a town or small city. Manufacture and farming will be based on what localities actually need, not what some bureaucrat in a different city thinks they should need.”

“Well, that’s certainly an improvement, but how do you get people to work if they don’t need money?”

“I thought of that too. It’s like Star Trek credits. Everyone gets what they need, but if they just want something, they do have to have money, or something like money. But there’s no credit system, no lending, no stock market – if you don’t have the money to get the thing you want, you just have to save it. Since everyone starts out with the same amount of money, it’s an even playing field. Everyone has equal ability to work and save up money for the things they want.”

“Except for disabled people who can’t work,” I pointed out.

“That’s true, but there are a lot of things that people can do that are pro-social that they wouldn’t have been paid for under the current system. For instance, if you can do ten hours a week at the animal shelter, or you can read to children whose parents are working, you might be able to do those things even if your disability would have prevented you from having a regular job.”

“But young and healthy people will still be able to work more, and earn more, so they can have more of the things that they want.”

“Well, there’s a cap on it. You can’t work more than a certain number of hours, it’s not healthy and we don’t want people to be hoarding this cash.”

“That’s a pretty interesting system,” I said. “If you could get a large number of volunteers to try to live that way for a while so you can iron out any bugs in the system, it might even be able to work, mostly. But you do see the problems with trying to implement something like this all of a sudden, right?”

“Yes, it means that the entrenched powers that be won’t have time to try to squirrel away their valuables.”

I sighed. “No. It means massive disruption and chaos. Because there’s going to be a transition period, while you’re building up your system of currency, and what work earns what amounts, and how to price goods, and to find out what’s needed by communities… and during that transition period, people won’t have food or medicine, because truckers won’t be hauling the goods, boats won’t be transporting things between countries, loaders won’t be loading and unloading…”

He frowned at me. “Why wouldn’t they? Once they know that those jobs are still valuable and they’ll still get some form of currency for them—”

“How quickly do you think you can get that information to eight billion people?” I shook my head. “Let’s imagine a best case scenario where the doctors and nurses are still going to work to take care of people. The pharmaceutical manufacturers will have shut down. In fact, given that Big Pharma is almost the epitome of what you’re fighting against, the wealthy executives might have their employees destroy manufacturing equipment and data so it will be impossible to make the medications, and you’d basically have to take a few years to reverse engineer things.”

“Why would employees carry out an order like that, if they’re not being paid?”

I sighed. “Because people are used to listening to their bosses. Because you would be, even if only temporarily, supplanting their national governments, which will make you very unpopular, so resistance to your orders will be considered heroic by a lot of people. Oh, and ‘unpopular’ assumes that the world surrenders within the next few days. If you let things go so far that the world is plunged into a premature freeze, and there’s massive crop death, and thousands of vulnerable people dying because the environment has become colder than they are prepared to handle… you’ll be hated. People will look at you the way they look at Adolf Hitler. At that point no one will do anything you say unless you start killing them if they don’t comply.”

“But… I’m trying to save them. The worldwide exploitation of the poor by the rich has to stop. I’ll be saving them.”

“You won’t be saving the ones who froze to death.”

“I mean, yes, that’s true, but how many millions of people does unchecked capitalism kill every year? If some people die at the beginning of the new regime, that’s really tragic, but everything will be better once things stabilize.”

I sighed. “You’re not wrong about unchecked capitalism. But see, that’s the danger people are used to. The one that most of them think they’ve sized up and they know how to fight back. Once you establish yourself as world dictator—”

“There would still be democracy! Just, local democracy.”

“Right, so you’d be world dictator, because it doesn’t matter if you’re giving orders to people you appointed or representatives that were elected by the people, if you’re the leader then they will still be following your orders, not what they think is best for their constituents. And once you establish yourself as world dictator, you’re an entirely new threat. You’re terrifying. Many people will be absolutely sure that if they don’t risk their lives to kill you or defy you right now, everyone they love will die or live in some sort of dire slavery.”

“But that’s not what I’m trying to do! They can read the manifesto!”

“You know what Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the first people to take power in North Korea all had in common? They all promised the people that everything would be better once things stabilized. That there’s a necessary period of chaos, and yes, bloodshed, but it will all work out to be a vastly improved society in the long run. And all of those leaders actually had a substantial number of people who were already willing to follow them and had already signed on to the changes, and believed in them. You’re going to be imposing this by fiat, on a world that doesn’t trust you. Even many of the people who believe in the principles behind your manifesto won’t accept you taking over the world.”

He sighed. “I can’t make them trust me except by being forthright and transparent, and doing the right things to save as many of them as I can, over time.”

“No, that’s how to make them trust you if you were a political leader that they didn’t vote for, or someone who got the position because the original leader died. Something like that. You’ll never get the world in general to trust you if you made thousands of people freeze to death and caused world-wide famine in order to get power, even if your goal was to use the power to make their lives better.”

“It’s not going to come to that.”

“Oh?”

“World leaders will surrender before the world freezes. They don’t want to die in the cold any more than anyone else, and they also need to eat.”

I held myself strategically quiet for several moments, looking down. I shook my head, slightly, once. Then I looked back up at him and said gently, “I believe that you believe that. Because you would do that, for the people you led, if you were a leader. But you’re overlooking something very important.”

“I think the fact that world leaders are human and also need to eat and be warm is going to be more important than whatever you say.”

“Doctor…” I leaned forward. “These are the people who are currently willing to cause the Earth to heat up irreversibly, causing millions to die and doing untold permanent damage to the environment, because it keeps them rich and powerful right now. These people already have sealed underground bunkers stocked with food and water for years. They’re expecting to have to go wait out a climatological disaster they brought about themselves, and they genuinely believe that with the amount of money, they can protect themselves from anything. What makes you believe they will ever give in?”

“If the planet gets cold enough, the underground water will destroy most of their bunkers.”

“By which point everything on the surface is dead, and life on Earth isn’t coming back from a disaster of that magnitude. I don’t think a man who wants to save the world from global warming and unchecked capitalism wants to destroy all life on it forever. You’ll back down before they do, because all the people you wanted to save would be dead otherwise.”

That was starting to get through to him. I’d hoped I could convince him of the serious problems with his plans, because it would have been ideal if he’d realized for himself the issues he was going to run into. But people who believe strongly enough in their plans that they’re willing to spend millions of dollars, launch a satellite into orbit (or more realistically, probably a lot of them), and blackmail the world with the possibility of eternal night… those aren’t really good candidates for changing their mind just because their plans have holes in them a ten year old might be able to find.

This tack, though… this ran close enough to what he already believed that it might work.

“Surely the people would rise up—”

“The same people who have not yet risen up, despite the fact that they also know that the world will be destroyed if things go on the way they do? Those people?” I shook my head. “World leaders aren’t going to hand over their national sovereignty until things are very, very bad, and they won’t get very, very bad until they’re so bad that mass numbers of people are dying. Large corporations and the billionaires who own them care even less; they’ll be hiding in their bunkers until it all blows over. I know you’re a compassionate man; I know it burns you up, the way the rich treat everyone else on this planet, and for that matter how they treat the planet. They will call your bluff, because you won’t let the whole world be destroyed, and they will. Because they’re dumb enough to think they can survive it.”

“If they’re in a bunker, they’re hardly in a position to stop anyone from surrendering to me. Maybe the President wouldn’t, because he has a position in a bunker, but surely the first politician in the line of succession who isn’t in a bunker would. And the world’s wealthy won’t be able to protect their wealth from within a bunker, not when it mostly exists as numbers in a ledger.”

“Doctor, if things get that bad… they’ll just drop a nuke on Antarctica.” I shook my head. “They don’t want to, right now, because obviously that will melt so much of the ice that the oceans will rise and expensive beach property will flood. But if they have to, they’re prepared to.”

He gave me a disbelieving look. “All that would do is destroy the communication channels to the control satellite and make it literally impossible to turn off the barrier.”

“Oh, no, they can destroy your satellites. It’ll take time, but they’re probably working on setting up a space mission to do just that, right now. Your barrier only blocks electromagnetic radiation, not rockets.”

“And how long would that take? And how many would end up dead? What kind of sociopath would be in charge of a country, and not realize how much harm it would do to the world to do things that way?”

“The kind of sociopath who gets into politics because they want power.”

“So, what? Just give in?” He stood up, pacing, occasionally glaring at me. “They’d love that, wouldn’t they! You convince me I can’t possibly win because I have more morals than they do, you make me back down, and humanity continues to live under the boot of fascism and corporate control until eventually they boil the planet to death. Maybe it would be better if we all died, if that’s our only other option!”

“That’s bleak,” I said. “It’s a good thing that’s not our only other option.”

That stopped the pacing. “Oh, really.”

“Yes, really. There are other options. Good ones. They just don’t get you the immediate win you want, but to be honest… an immediate win is a terrible idea. You want to phase in the system you want to exist, and recruit other people who share your vision to help you make it happen.”

“That’s not going to save the planet from global warming! We need to make drastic changes now!”

“It’s a good thing Earth has a guy who knows how to rapidly cool the whole planet.” I leaned back in my chair and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Wait – no. No, you’re saying that because I did this, climate change will be stopped, but you’re wrong. I looked into that. I’m not stupid. A few unseasonably cold days isn’t going to stop a trend that’s been building for sixty years or more.”

“But if you’ve looked into it, then you must have equations that would tell you, how often to turn off the sun, for how long, to reverse global warming temporarily, to buy us more time. And I would imagine you already know how to attenuate the barrier, right? Make it weak enough that some radiation gets through, so the planet doesn’t die, but the sun’s a lot weaker?”

“I could do that, but I never expected the world’s superheroes to let me. It would take months of work. Years, maybe. Two or three days to chill the planet at a time. Maybe longer if the field was dimmed…”

“Why would the heroes stop you, if you were hired by the world’s governments to do just that? If they paid you a great deal of money to buy the Earth time—”

“It wouldn’t work. Because then they’d keep pushing off the deadlines, oh, Dr. Spectrum will save us, we don’t have to worry about burning fossil fuels, and nothing would change. Also, none of this does anything about capitalism’s stranglehold on everything.”

“Would this system let you redirect and beam solar power, I wonder?”

“I—uh, yes, yes probably. That would be something of a technical challenge, but…” I could see his eyes unfocusing as the technical challenge unspooled in his mind.

“If you could do that, you could redirect solar power away from deserts where it’s baking hot, to green energy companies. Take a small percentage for yourself and the rest of what you make goes to the communities whose sun you’re redirecting. Obviously, with community permission. You wouldn’t remove all the sun all the time, just… lessen it to cool down the desert a bit. Or when there’s a terrible heat wave somewhere, dim the sun for them and redirect most of the energy.”

“You keep talking about money. Do you seriously think I’m doing any of this for money? That I want to be rich?”

“Well, I know you are rich, because no one else has a few million dollars lying around to build an Antarctic base and launch a bunch of satellites.”

This made him redden. “I stole all that money,” he said, his tone a cross between a villain’s arrogant brag and a shameful confession.

“I know. That’s how you gained a name as a supervillain. Dr. Spectrum, robber of banks.”

“Most of the bank robberies were electronic, actually. I only did a few in real life. Mostly, you’re right, I did it for the name. No one was going to take Dr. Spectrum seriously when I set out to force the world into making things right, if they’d never heard of me before.” He started pacing again. “I just needed the money to do this. I don’t want to be rich.”

“I understand. You think the master’s tools can’t dismantle the master’s house, right? I don’t know why the saying goes like that, though, because you absolutely can break into a guy’s garage, take his chainsaw, and use it to start cutting through his walls.”

“I thought you were supposed to be a hero.”

“I didn’t say I’ve done that. But I know people can do it. More importantly – on a metaphorical level, it’s supposed to mean that you can’t defeat a system of ideas by participating in that system. You can’t escape Christianity by becoming a Satanist. Well, old-school Satanist that actually worships Satan, nowadays they’re atheists and Satan is a metaphor.”

“And you can’t defeat capitalism by becoming a capitalist!”

“That is actually where you’re wrong,” I said. “Because I think we both know that in this world, to get political and social power, you have to be rich. Rich people get to influence the media, they get to shape what people are talking and thinking about. And for obvious reasons, most rich people want very few constraints on their ability to get even richer, so they use the power of their wealth to work toward that.” I leaned on the table with my elbows, propping up my head on my hands. “Our side, the side that wants things to be better, that wants the world to focus on people living better lives instead of the rich getting richer? We don’t have that advantage. We can’t channel the power of absurd wealth because even if we pool our money, we still don’t reach absurd wealth.”

“’Our’ side? You’re on my side now?” he said skeptically.

“I always was. I don’t want you to destroy the world, but your end goals? Socialism, an end to corporate personhood, people no longer going hungry or dying of preventable disease or being homeless? I’ve always wanted that.” I stood up, making a decision. “My mom was a paranoid schizophrenic. She wasn’t dangerous, but she believed the government was out to get her. So we ended up homeless a lot, living out of her car, because she’d pack up and move us because a dog down the street warned her telepathically that the Feds were closing in on her.”

“I’m – I’m sorry.”

“We almost never had health insurance. One time her boyfriend put us on his insurance by claiming he’d married her, and she got meds, and she was sane for a while. She had her head back together. She was getting better. Then he cheated on her, so she put me in the car and we ran away, and she decided that he’d been poisoning her so she threw all her medicine bottles out on the side of the highway. I never saw a dentist, never saw a doctor for a regular checkup.”

“Your teeth look fine to me.”

“The Alliance of Good replaced them for me, while I was a member. People trust people with good teeth more.” I sighed. “I am on your side, Dr. Spectrum. I don’t agree with your methods, but I think you’re in a very unusual position, that you could switch to different methods that would give you a lot of leverage to get what you want for the world, legally.”

“You think I should sell my abilities, to become wealthy, so that I can, what? Influence politicians?”

“Yes, like you’re trying to do now. Except this way it’s much more likely to work.” I wanted to pace, but that can unnerve people, make me seem threatening. Somehow. I’m a five foot three woman who knows some martial arts and is physically fit. I have no superpowers. No one should be scared of me, but supervillains aren’t always that rational.

So I sat back down, looking up at him, my hands folded. “You form a corporation, but privately held, so no one can take it over and take it away from you. You offer your services to wealthy nations, to redirect sunlight away from them during heat waves, and to dim the world enough, often enough, to reduce global warming. They pay you. You redirect the solar energy to green energy companies, who convert it to power. They pay you. You develop some technologies like gamma ray shielding that could be used by nuclear power plant workers in an emergency. They pay you. Through this, you become wealthy, and also, the planet cools off and the worst of the disaster is postponed. With the money, and the fame you get from being the man who’s saving the world, you push the conversation in the direction you want. An incredibly wealthy man openly espousing socialism is news; the media will cover you, and give you a platform. And with that platform, and the money, you fund politicians who agree with your beliefs, you popularize your beliefs, you have the opportunity to speak about them in detail. You invest in green energy, increasing its effectiveness. And as the world hears more of your ideas, and you convince more and more people, you build up strength for a bloodless revolution, one where the changes are made through democratic means because so many people believe in them. When you finally get what you want, there are millions of people who love you and hang on your every word. You’ve been funneling all your money into doing good. Buying houses from large corporations that would have rented them out, and selling them to homeowners for affordable prices with covenants that they have to live there full time for fifteen years, they can’t buy another home somewhere else.”

“What if I just gave the houses away?”

“You could absolutely do that. There’s pros and cons to either approach. You fund nonprofit pharmaceutical development companies – which do exist – and buy patents from pharma companies, and hand them over to those nonprofits. You fund nonprofit health insurance in the US, or throw all your weight behind pushing for universal health care. You work with community leaders in the US native community and all over the planet on decolonization efforts.”

I was overselling this. He would likely never be that wealthy, because he wouldn’t hire thousands of people for dirt wages and exploit them. But I could see the gears turning in his mind, the vision of becoming a person who could bring about the world he saw, safely and legally.

He shook his head. “Me, running a corporation, though? I’d be worried it would corrupt me.”

I laughed sharply. “And yet you thought you could safely rule the world? I’m sorry, power over the entire planet would be far, far more corrupting than running a corporation. And with a corporation, you can hire people who really understand business to help you, and many of them, they’re in professions where if they stab you in the back they’re unlikely to get another job. Whereas when you rule the world, people who stab you in the back end up ruling the world, and then no one can bring them to justice for betraying you.”

“I… I suppose you’re right about that. I mean, if I could hire trustworthy people to do all the business part of it, so I could focus on my scientific studies and the pursuit of my cause.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what you do. If you’ve got anything left over from building this base, you should hire a lawyer and an accountant immediately. They can sign NDAs so they never get to talk about your plans unless you grant permission, and they’re both in professions where if they try to take advantage of you to make themselves rich and shut you out, they can literally be thrown out of those professions.”

He sighed. “No. I can’t do any of it. I’m a criminal. Remember? A bank robber.”

“The Watch can talk to the president to get you a pardon, if I ask them to.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Sure. That’s part of my job. There are actually groups that specialize in helping former villains redirect their skills into pro-social activities. I can connect you with them.”

“I… I just don’t understand why you’d go out of your way to help me. If this is what you do, then… why do they let you? Why don’t the heroes just come in, guns blazing?”

That had actually been the next step if this didn’t work; the nuke would have been a final resort. “Odysseus, the leader of the Watch, says you have a great mind, and he’d love to see that mind turned toward good goals. For my part, I already understood that your goals were good, it was the methods that were a problem.”

“He said that?”

He’d said it in a much more negative way, but I wasn’t sharing that with Dr. Spectrum. “He certainly did.”

“I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Say that you’ll accept the deal. Let the sun come back, and let me radio the Watch to tell them what we’ve worked out. They’ll come to pick me up, but it’ll take them a while, so I may prevail upon your hospitality for some warm food, if you have any.”

***

A lot of people ask the question Dr. Spectrum did, how do I do what I do without any powers.

I spent my childhood being dragged around by the one human being who had total power over where we lived, what food we would eat, what I was allowed to do. I was a child; there was no way I could resist my mother. I could throw temper tantrums, but that never got me what I wanted. And she couldn’t be convinced with logic and reason, or common sense.

So I learned. Everyone has a perspective, and if you understand that perspective, if you truly understand them, then you know what they want, what they’re going to do. Insane people are perfectly rational, to themselves. When you know what they are experiencing, what connections their mind is making, the things that they do in response make sense.

And once you’ve learned how to understand your delusional mother, so you can talk to her in ways that make sense to her, so you can understand her perspective and work within it… it’s relatively trivial to do it for anyone else. “Mad” scientists aren’t mad, there are just things that they want that they’re willing to go to extreme lengths for.

It meant learning foreign languages, it meant getting a Ph.D in psychology and then never asking anyone to call you Doctor because Doctor in front of your name makes you sound like an expert, and experts don’t listen, they lecture. It meant endless practice, negotiating truces between roommates who hated each other, lovers who’d betrayed one another. It meant working suicide hotlines, using my skills and honing them.

Until I was good enough to use it in hostage situations. And from there, supervillains.

All the big superhero organizations in the world have an understanding. For something like this – a hostage situation, an attempt to blackmail the world, an invasion – call me first. Ever since I talked the Suruvians into not invading Earth, they look at my skills as if they’re something supernatural. Or superpowerful, at least. People are convinced there has to be something going. I have to have powers. Telepathy, or mind control pheromones. Or an implant that gives me powers. Or alien tech. They’ll believe a hero can be an expert martial artist who can take down supers because he’s trained that hard and that well, but they won’t believe a hero can be someone who talks people down.

It does not, in fact, always work. I managed to convince Gaia’s Sword that indigenous human populations were responsible for incredible bio-diversity and that wiping out humanity for the crimes of capitalism and colonial exploitation was shockingly unfair, blaming the victim, and an indication that she’d fallen for white colonialist propaganda, an accusation that most white people will do anything to prove untrue. But I couldn’t get anywhere with War Horse, because ending human exploitation of animals was only his excuse for his boundless rage against humanity. He was one of three alien children sent to Earth in pods that would cause them, as infants, to outwardly appear as clones of whatever touched their pod first, and his “siblings” speculated – and I agreed – that their homeworld must not have had any domesticated animals wandering around free, because it seemed to have never occurred to them that a non-sapient being might touch the pod first.

War Horse was intelligent, superpowerful – and a horse, who’d grown up seeing his family and loved ones treated as livestock, while being horribly isolated from them because they weren’t sapient and couldn’t speak a language. And nothing I’d said could make any of those facts not true, or compensate for them in any way. I’d only survived because he’d mellowed with age and wanted to make his superhero “siblings” – both of whom appeared as humans – appreciate that he was trying, at least. If they hadn’t been with me, I was fairly sure I’d have ended up dead.

There have been others who refused to talk to me, or refused to treat me as human. I don’t go to talk misogynists down. I know what to say, but it won’t help because they won’t hear it from me. And there are people so blindly narcissistic that you can’t talk them out of anything because what they want is totally incompatible with what would be good for anyone else, so there’s no deal I can offer them, no compromise they’re willing to make.

But I’m good at it. Most villains want something, and it’s not always all that hard to get it for them, or some substitute they’re willing to accept as a certainty rather than the gamble of achieving their goals on their own.

***

It wasn’t a hard sell, to get Odysseus to agree to the terms I’d offered Dr. Spectrum. He’d deal with the politicians; the heroes generally handle that part themselves, unless the politicians are being recalcitrant.

Turning the sun back on didn’t do very much in Antarctica. The moon wasn’t up and the lights around Dr. Spectrum’s base were too bright for me to see the stars, so I couldn’t really see the difference, but now that we could use radio, Odysseus assured me that the sun was back. But they still couldn’t get a plane in over the South Pole in the winter, so they were coming for me in the Low Skimmer, which was apparently an antigrav vehicle that could float over terrain and hit speeds of 300 miles per hour, while being close enough to the ground that the winds that prevented planes from getting near here weren’t as much of a problem. I had time to eat a meal with Dr. Spectrum. It wasn’t a good one; he’d been living off frozen microwaveable dinners. But after almost a full day with nothing but sandwiches and trail mix, I’d eat anything if it was warm.

I radioed Amundsen to let them know that everything was copacetic. In the winter, they really don’t leave the base unless they have to, but they keep radio contact with the rest of the world; it must have been fairly terrifying for them to suddenly lose that. It turned out Dr. Spectrum hadn’t even told them what he was doing; they were on the verge of sending someone outside to try to fix whatever was wrong with the external repeaters for their radio signal, since they’d already taken apart and inspected all the equipment on the inside.

By the time the Low Skimmer reached me, I’d gotten word from my agent – they don’t technically call them agents in the world of superheroes, they call them assistants, or sometimes, sidekicks, though that’s usually reserved for people who go out in the field with them. Mine takes messages for me and book the jobs I go out for, so I call her my agent. Apparently the Teslanauts wanted me to mediate a dispute. An intra-team dispute. In virtual reality, because the Teslanauts are physically located all over the world; they’re the premier team for super-cybercrime, and using cyberattacks against supervillains, and they don’t have a headquarters, they have a VR hangout set up on redundant worldwide servers. As the Envoy, I’m the best recognized superhero in the world who does what I do, which means I don’t get a lot of days off.

I emailed her back to book me in a few days unless lives were on the line. I absolutely needed a few days off, after this one.

#52 project #superheroes

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leopardmask-ao3 · 3 years ago

Text

NHH Fictober Day 16: Potions (In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass)

Day 16 of the NHH Fictober Challenge. Zedaph wants to help his friend. Secretly modifying a potion and surreptitiously hiding the volatile result nearby is probably not the best way to do that. Characters: Zedaph, VintageBeef Words: 1035

"Beef."

He looked over, through the panel of tinted glass, at the scientist on the other side. He felt like a zoo animal. "Yeah?"

Zedaph paused for a moment. Whether thinking about what to say next or just pausing for dramatic effect, Beef couldn't tell. Then Zedaph smiled. "Beef Smash!"

Zedaph wanted him to break something. But not the chamber. Zedaph had been very specific about that earlier. Beef looked around, quickly, quick as he could... There! He thought he remembered seeing a potion in that chest. He scrambled over to open it. Yes! Beef pulled out the splash potion of weakness inside and hefted it slightly in his paw, deciding where to throw it.

He threw it at Zedaph's face.

Or, rather, he threw it at the barrier between himself and Zedaph's face. Zedaph flinched. Was it a trick of reflection, or did the tinted glass ripple when the potion hit?

Zedaph wrinkled his nose. "Ugh, it got on me. Why would you do that?"

"Uhh." Beef replied. "I mean... there's a whole glass wall between us? I didn't expect it to actually hit you..."

"I'm all weakened now," Zedaph complained, absently rubbing his arm at the point where he had been splashed. Then he frowned and looked closer. "...Um."

"Is something wrong-" Beef started to ask.

Zedaph staggered back a step, holding the offending arm away from himself and his other arm against his chest. His arm, his body was... fading? No, not fading, turning transparent. Transparent like glass.

"Zed!" Beef rushed forward, pressing himself against the barrier. He watched, helpless, as the potion's distorted effect spread across Zedaph's form, clothing and all. Zedaph looked at and through his hands with fascinated horror.

Zedaph took a careful step, experimenting with how a flexible glass figure should move.

He took another step. Wobbled. Beef clenched his arms tighter against the wall.

Zedaph stabilized himself. He stepped forward again.

His foot, no longer having the benefit of traction, slid on the smooth lab floor with a terrible scraping sound. Still weakened and trying to figure out how to move at all, Zedaph couldn't keep himself from falling. Instinctively, he put his arm out to catch himself. Beef gasped as the glass arm cracked in three.

Zedaph crashed to the ground with a groan. More cracks spread along his side, but none so severe as his forearm and hand, which now lay separate from each other and from him a short distance away. "That's... not good," he murmured, staring dumbly at them.

Not good at ALL, Beef thought. He paced a few steps, then made a decision. The potion might wear off quick, so he needed to be there to help quick. No time to find the proper way out. “Sorry, Zed,” Beef winced, and slammed his fists against the tinted glass wall. His first strike was claws-first, cracks spiderwebbing out from the points of contact, and then he punched with carapace-protected fists. Again, again. Finally, Beef stepped back, took a running start, and crashed his way through.

Zedaph was just pulling himself into a seated position, grimacing. Was he in pain? Could he feel that he was cracked and broken? Beef knelt next to him. “Zed, can you hear me? You’re gonna be fine, okay?” He winced slightly at how his voice cracked on the word “fine”.

“I’m...” Zedaph started. His voice still sounded like him, but rasping, glass scraping on glass. “This is all extremely weird.”

“I-it sure is,” Beef agreed. He picked up Zedaph’s separated arm and inspected it, then looked at the joint it had broken from. “There’s not a whole lot of, uh, debris here. I think you got lucky with this break.”

“Lucky?” Zedaph tried to laugh, but it didn’t quite work.

“Yeah, if I just do this-” Beef pressed the arm back into place. “See? Look how well it fits! Now we just need it to stay there before the potion runs out.”

“What d’you think will happen if my arm’s still off when the potion runs out?”

“No idea. And I don’t want to know.”

Zedaph held his arm in place while Beef briefly dove back into the test chamber. He found two slime blocks in one of the chests and brought them back out.

The slime helped, but wasn’t enough. After some deliberation, Beef took off his apron and wrapped it around Zedaph’s glued-together arm, as both cast and sling. He looped the apron string over Zedaph’s head. “Okay. Okay, I think we got it. Does that feel better?”

“It feels no different from when my arm was on the floor, to be honest,” Zedaph commented. “Now I guess we just wait out the potion... if it does run out.”

“It should.” Beef had no idea if it would.

It did. Zedaph gasped as feeling rushed back in, as glass turned back into skin and cloth. He cradled his injured arm tightly for a few moments, and when he uncurled from around it, sure enough, the breaks had knit back together, leaving only a few thin, jagged scars where the glass edges had been. He wiggled his fingers. “Wow. That sure was something, eh? I wonder why it did that.”

“What was that potion, anyway?” Beef wondered.

“Well, it actually was kind of a potion of weakness?” Zedaph explained. “With some modifications. I... actually put it in there in hopes that I could... try some stuff on you that might help you out.��

Beef blinked. “Really? You... wanted to help me?”

“Of course!” Zedaph exclaimed. “I hypothesized that maybe a potion of weakness might factor into things, like when someone’s turned into a zombie.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that from the start? I would’ve splashed myself with that potion if I had known.”

Zedaph fidgeted with his lab coat. “Well... I gather that reanimating a zombie, uh, is not exactly comfortable. I wasn’t sure if you would willingly subject yourself to that just for a theory. Hey,” he realized. “You broke out of the test chamber!”

“Yeahhh, sorry,” Beef apologized sheepishly. “I know you said not to do that, but it was kind of an emergency. Better a broken test chamber than a broken Zedaph, eh?”

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft fic #nhh fictober #unconventional use of potions #vintagebeef #zedaph #zedaph's test chamber #my soft goal of under 1k words lasted about half the month lol

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emersonfreepress · 4 years ago

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What would the ro's be like in a zombie au?

whyyyyy anon whyyy. I'm actually gonna write this in like.. slightly different terms, you'll see. any time I even briefly think of a zombie au I'm just like

I WANNA WRITE IT SO BADDD

i don't even allow myself to entertain it for very long because getting into that would be the worst thing ever for my productivity with the alpha omg 😂😂 so I'll put like the ideas that pop into my head for writing a zombie au, to work some of that creative frustration out 😆

so in this very general, absolutely noncommittal idea of mine, the main cast are older and the setting is in and around a civilian settlement led by the Emersons.

and as a refresher, i like my zombie aus to have fast zombies and fast infections ^ ^ 28 Days Later/Train to Busan style babyyyy, we the Sprinting Dead up in this bitch 😆

= = =

Gabe is, predictably, looking for what's left of his family. Following rumors of safe havens and bunkers and such. Starts the story as someone who tries to be diplomatic, if not outright pacifist, but as times get tougher and resources dwindle, he'd become one of the most cutthroat motherfuckers in the wasteland. Low-key though, low-key. People won't trust you if they know you’re capable of throwing them to a horde for strategic reasons. Like if Rick turned into Shane (for those of us familiar with early Walking Dead--idk did that happen eventually? i gave up before we even met Negan lol). The end justifies the means :) Damn, I can legit see Gabe going full evil in a zombie au omg 😂😂 i want to write it so fucking bad

Preferred weapon for zed encounters: rifle

Preferred weapon for human encounters: handgun

Faith in humanity: fucking zero

Zombie kill count: plenty; the type to kill every zombie he has spare ammo and time for

Human kill policy: When it benefits him or the people he’s looking after

Survival rating: B+; he can make it out of some pretty dire situations through sheer will to live and ruthlessness

- - -

Kile has arrived--clearly, this is the timeline they belong in. They start their journey with Gabe (and their doggo) and stick to him like glue, even reluctantly so when Gabe eventually has them join the settlement. This can only go one way, though: Kile's just too much of a wildcard for the group and hates being told what to do. (Especially now that society has fallen, wtf) They'd make their exit alone and unannounced aside from a brief head’s up to Gabe. It's slightly bittersweet, but also? They get to loot and hunt and sneak around and kill fucking zombies, all by themself. Kile is a loner, a hiker, and a hunter to begin with so they do beyond fine on their own. However, once the inevitable violent human threat comes for the settlement, Gabe is sent out to convince Kile to come out of isolation, just this once please, to be the camp’s super soldier help defend the camp.

Zed weapon: p much anything they can get their hands on, ranged or melee, blunt or sharp, w/e; improvised weapons

Human weapon: hunting knife

Faith in humanity: never had any to begin with

Zombie kill count: lol infinite?? any zed they come across is double-dead if they have the time for it

Human kill policy: at Gabe’s direction or when provoked enough/threatened

Survival rating: A-; they trust no one, live in isolation, and prioritize survival above all else. only reason it’s not higher is they would risk their life for Gabe or their furbaby and also... their own Rambo-esque antics def attracts the occasional horde lmao

- - -

Jack... this poor boy, he doesn't deserve a zombie au 😂 He's one of those people that first believes zombies are just sick people, too squeamish to keep up with TV news coverage at the onset and too upset to consider anything else. He'd hunker down at home, staying holed up even while his neighbors evacuated, and probably be discovered while the main group is looting the same place as him. When people try to tell him the real state of the world, he'd be in denial until he absolutely couldn't be anymore. idk, probably after Kile shooting a bunch of non-lethal holes thru a zombie to make a point (attracting more in the process lol).

He’d almost immediately join the medical team at the settlement and as word spreads about how easy he is to talk to, he quickly becomes the literal on-site therapist. It's a role he embraces but... idk if it's an emotional burden he can bear. He's very emotionally resilient! But he ain't a professional lol imagine a whole settlement of traumatized zombie survivors seeking you out for counseling, yikes. He also can't say no to a person in need, so instead he quietly spirals into a very private depression while continuing to help others!!

Zed weapon: Oh gosh, do I really have to?

Human weapon: ...Kindness?

Faith in humanity: Unrealistically high

Zombie kill count: Single digit

Human kill policy: Not ever, unless completely unavoidable and to defend the defenseless

Survival rating: C...? idk, that feels generous. D+. To be protected at all costs!!

- - -

Jessie also had the initial reaction of hoping zombies could be saved, but she woke up from that dream swiftly. The science-minded person that she is, esp with her interest in biology, leaves her determined to find anybody who's got the intellect, expertise, and resources to start doing actual work toward a treatment, cure, vaccine—anything. Nothing would get her to finally unabashedly embrace her love of science (and innate leadership skills!!) faster than a zombie apocalypse! In fact, it’s thanks to her that the Emerson settlement’s got a small but growing team of scientists doing as much research as humanly possible to best educate the others on the outbreak and zombie behavior. Def no zombie experimentation going on though lol. ...Not yet, at least.

Zed weapon: rifle

Human weapon: rifle

Faith in humanity: High! We’ll find a solution! Don’t give up hope!

Zombie kill count: Double digits, but less than 30

Human kill policy: Only in unavoidable self-defense or defense of others

Survival rating: B! She has experience with ranged weapons, farming and gardening skills, first aid, camping experience, and a can-do attitude with a healthy dose of realism!

- - -

Rain remains cargo as I said in the last post about this 😆 They'd be very good for keeping clothes repaired and making useful modifications in the settlement, but their life up to this point has been very sheltered and privileged. We're talking somebody with a chauffeur and a personal chef before the outbreak! They would contribute to quality of life and homemaking efforts more than anything—an overlooked aspect of these scenarios tbh! After as many months of dragging their feet as possible and being nigh impossible to track down when you need them, they eventually become involved in meal planning and even help out with medical stuff if they're asked.

Zed weapon: how do you reload this thing again?

Human weapon: switchblade or other concealable sharp-pointy

Faith in humanity: Very low

Zombie kill count: 0! Can you believe it!

Human kill policy: Well if it’s you or me, of course I’m choosing me.

Survival rating: C. Being so tiny helps them find good hiding spots and their self-preservation is high enough to keep them from unnecessary risk-taking. Plus they're very stealthy! Self-defense is a major issue though, so hiding is always their best option.

- - -

Rupan/Rohan scouts for and leads scavenging missions and is Curt's right hand on the recruitment team. The two of them together are the perfect combo of diplomacy, debate, and deception--although R is more honorable about the last one and will only deceive for strategic reasons. When they aren’t looting and recruiting, they’re doing peacekeeping inside the settlement. Most social disputes end up getting brought to them for mediation and they’re pretty dang good at making and enforcing calls. One day they’ll wake up to realize they’ve basically become a sheriff and feel the need to puke their guts up and do something, anything, to reassure themself they’re still punk 😂

Zed weapon: SMG

Human weapon: shotgun

Faith in humanity: Believes in fundamental goodness but knows better than to trust first impressions

Zombie kill count: decent, more than 40; you won’t catch them having a field day tho, they’re trying to gtfo of most zed situations

Human kill policy: Violent threats have to be taken out. And they aren’t, at all, immune to a revenge rampage either...

Survival rating: B-. Can handle themself both with humans and zeds but is vulnerable to hostage situations and truly difficult sentimental/interpersonal decisions!

- - -

Vivian/Vincent manages inventory and stock and they run it so efficiently it’s scary! They're the perfect pick: a hawk-eyed tyrant and tattletale 😂 Despite constantly butting heads with just about everyone on every imaginable thing, they quickly become an important part of the inner circle of decision-makers for the settlement at large. Terrible at stealth, jumpy, and squeamish at the sight of blood and gore, they literally never go on missions unless they're 100% needed for their expertise on a supply run. (They would deny all of these shortcomings are that big a problem, meanwhile R is definitely acting as their bodyguard lol.) When they do tag along, they're prone to becoming the damsel in distress. Seriously, it happens near every fucking time. It's like they just attract only the most improbable and perilous zombie attacks and hostage situations 😆

Zed weapon: shotgun

Human weapon: handgun

Faith in humanity: Medium; seeing people work together at the settlement helps restore it a bit

Zombie kill count: Double digits, under 25

Human kill policy: Violent threats have to be taken out. Well, no, not by me! Get one of the ruffians to do it!

Survival rating: C-. They’d be higher if they weren’t such natural zombie bait.

- - -

Heidi is running the settlement, well-organized to the degree of actually managing to bring bureaucracy to a post-zombie apocalypse settlement 😂 People are free to come and go, but getting in if you don't live there requires trading something of value (fuel, med supplies, food, etc), temporary surrender and registry of firearms and explosives, and you gotta GTFO at the time and date specified upon entry! You can stay long-term if you contribute to the community in a tangible way—and each person admitted is approved by Heidi personally. Yes, every individual. No, she has no free time. And she is not known to be lenient with rule breakers—you want rule bending, you’ll have to go to Curt for that. People kind of hate her, but it can't be denied that she runs a tight ship. She kind of throws herself into the work to avoid the harsher reality at large and hasn't left the settlement in a long time. She's out of touch with how bad things have gotten in the wastes, but she knows better than to take reports at anything less than face value--even when she's skeptical.

Zed weapon: rifle

Human weapon: handgun; dagger

Faith in humanity: Medium. It fluctuates, honestly

Zombie kill count: Double digits, less than 20

Human kill policy: Violent threats must be taken out if they can’t be reasoned with. Spare those who surrender, eradicate those who don't, keep an eye on the newbies. Not tryin’ to nurse any vendettas around here lol

Survival rating: B. She's good with a firearm, masterful at persuasion, and savvy enough to calculate risks appropriately. Also far tougher than her prim exterior and demeanor suggests!

- - -

Curt leads the recruitment and reconnaissance teams! When a new person or group shows up in the area, Curt's the one who stalks watches them, decides if they're worth approaching, and if they should be approached with an invitation, a simple acknowledgment/announcement of their presence, or an outright armed warning to leave the area. He also keeps tabs on morale and general confidence inside the settlement, alongside R. When he isn’t leading those efforts, though, he’s flirting with settlers and squirreling his way out of manual labor and other chores. He’s also secretly growing weed at his place--don’t tell Heidi or Vi ‘cause they’ll wanna yell at him and ration it UGH.

Zed weapon: SMG, explosives

Human weapon: handgun, dagger

Faith in humanity: Pft, sorry, what now?

Zombie kill count: ...way more than you’d expect

Human kill policy: I don’t start confrontations, but I sure as fuck end them.

Survival rating: A! He’s good at playing hapless idiot when it suits him to be underestimated, good with firearms, and capable of being ruthless and decisive in life or death situations! Plus he has no qualms about ditching the settlement if he decides it’s not working out for him. Just don’t tell Heidi lol

#the rest are under the cuuuut #had to stop myself from writing too much SEVERAL times #love me a zombie apocalypse #lovely anon #answered #ROs #whoops got carried away lol #spent most of my work day finally finishing this ask because VIVA PROCRASTINATION #someone help ._.#phew #feels good to finally get it out of my system tho #now I can promptly never ever write it 😂#AUs #fave #scenarios

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lunaraen · 5 years ago

Note

random idea: Quinn and Durango finding out they both like puns, which inevitably leads to a pun war (and at least one person being very confused/annoyed by said pun war)

The grass is short and dry, nearly crisp enough to crunch undertheir feet. An occasional stray cloud and a few distant hawks are dottedthroughout the bleached out blue of the sky.

The birds don't circle, diving out of sight after severalminutes of effortless gliding.

The grass is as deadly still as the air, springing into motiononly when a mouse or rabbit decides to dart across the endless stretch ofground, from one patch of yellow greenery to another, waiting for cloud coverand cooler weather that won't come for several more hours.

It's not a desert or one of the outright dry grasslands, butit's on its way there.

(It is, unfortunately, the exact opposite of any mushroom biome,which are used to the apparent calm but also have the promise of life, of watersomewhere or everywhere, which don’t have rolling fields to worry about andinstead have murky bogs and swamps.

It goes without saying that Mo's feeling more than a littlehomesick.)

For the most part, though, even that much motion is rare, andthey've just got the dying promises of a breeze that'll never properly startand the relentless sunlight to entertain them.

It's a good thing Mo's cap protects them from so much shade,protects their eyes from directly having to deal with the onslaught of lightand heat, or they'd probably be feeling as energy-sapped as the others look.

(That might have something to do with how early they all got up,though.)

They don't have a map– they did,at one point, but Kate had lost it during an encounter with a river nymph.

(It's best left at that.

Kate's still not great at dealing with guilt, or any otheremotion, and she gets horribly flustered every time it comes up.)

It works out alright anyway, because they've all done their bitof hero work for the week, came out of the entire mess more or less as theyentered, and they're not travelling with a specific purpose at the moment. Astired as they might all feel and look, they have all the supplies they need.There's no doubt in anyone's mind that they're setting up camp early today, theweather nice enough and their goals the right amount of vague and aimless tojustify a break to soak it all in and relax.

All they're waiting for is the right area, somewhere slightlymore protected than the rolling stretches of barren plains.

They've been able to see the distant forest for hours, linkedbranches and towering trunks promising shade as well as a few monsters to maybeknock around, creeping more and more into view the longer they travel, andthey're lucky that they reach it before the sun hits its peak.

Still, it's more luck than most of them are used to, and Quinn'sthe one who goes in first, sword raised and Theseus and Durango following closebehind.

Then they're almost immediately telling the others to followthem, because they have to see this.

And they do.

It's wonderfully shaded, for one thing, and Mo's eyes adjust thefastest. They're glad they do.

Their planned camping ground isn't the usual forest, and it's arare moment when encountering the strange and unusual benefits them. The treesmore or less create a comfortable but large ring around a clearing filled withpatches of different flowers and bees buzzing overhead. There's a slow river,too shallow for fish but a good explanation for how lush the grass is, greenestright at its banks and competing with the most colorful flowers.

"You've seen one flower forest, you've seen them all."Kate's comment is nonchalant, almost bored as she shrugs, but it doesn't hidehow wide her eyes are, sunglasses having slipped slightly down her nose.

And of all of them, she and Zed are the only one who've everseen one. Most of them had been to and seen other biomes, if only briefly,before being plucked from their homes, but not one as rare as this. Theseus,who spent most of his life on islands without a single flower forest, looks nearlyready to throw down his pack right now and start sketching every detail.

Mo's eyes, however, are right back on the others, watching andwaiting because there's some kind of tension here and they know it.

River and Toby are equals in how utterly trapped they feel bythe crushing sense of incoming doom.

The pause to take the view in– this vibrant mix of greenery andcolorful petals hovered over by idling fuzzballs and cut through by thesluggish winding stream– lasts only long enough for one of River's fingers totwitch while Toby winces.

When Durango opens his mouth, it's too late to retreat.

"Well, it looks bee-utiful enough."

Quinn bounces back fastest, replying almost immediately andgrinning as she does.

"If you say so– I don't get what all the buzz isabout."

The others groan, as is expected when it comes to poor jokes andwordplay, but they don't get it. They don't comprehend what horribly bad newsthis is. Not yet.

(In all their talking on the pillars to pass the time, it hadn'tcome up that Durango, cocky as he already normally is, could be insufferablyproud of his puns, or that Quinn has a seeming inability to not share the onesthat pop into her head at random, which are of course all terrible. Durango'sweren't, and aren't, any better. Quinn and Durango, in all their time workingwith Kate and Zed and all their time talking and bickering with each other, hadlikewise somehow missed bringing it up or displaying their natural, painfultalents.)

Toby and River glance at each other.

It's a look of immediate kinship, of "ah, yes, you– youknow the hell I've been through, you have suffered as I have." But theycan't escape the recognition that comes with it, the knowledge that theirtormentors have not only joined forces, but that they have found kinship ineach other as well and in their shared form of torture.

Not only are Durango and Quinn going to keep making puns,they're going to make more now.

The look River and Toby share is, at its core, one of pureterror, tinged with rising horror and built upon the stable ground ofwell-established exasperation. It's one that screams to the heavens, shriekingin a hopeless plea, begging for mercy that will never be granted. It's a lookthat clearly embodies the very spirit of "no".

Quinn and Durango, however, share their own glance, one alreadyitching with the need to compete, to conspire as well as utterly obliterateeach other. Their look replies, loudly, clearly, and gleefully, with no roomfor any argument, "yes".

"I always figured Quinn would be, y'know, too cool for badjokes. They don't seem her style." River traces the petal of aparticularly large red flower, touch as light as she can manage. Beside her,Toby tosses another pebble into the stream, and she does her best to not flinch at the splash or the water that hits her arm.

"And I'd hoped Durango would be too worried about hurtinghis 'tough cowboy' image."

"Guess we were both unlucky." River leans back,resting one hand on the grass as she glances over her shoulder at where Durangoand Quinn are still at it. "D'you think they hate us?"

"Not half as much as I hate them."

"They– they've gotta tire themselves out at some point,right?" Everyone else is busy relaxing, or napping, or exploring theclearing and watching the bees without getting too close, having given upwaiting. Slugger's on watch in case anyone screws up and manages to anger theswarm, and Mo's slouched beside her, mushroom covering their eyes but not theirsteady breathing. River's ready for a nap herself at this point, and the darkcircles under their punny tormentors' eyes are hard to miss. "Don't they?"

"Nope." Toby lays back on the grass, one foot in thewater and his eyes half lidded. He looks as tired as she feels, though there'san exaggerated bitterness she can agree with too. "They just have tooutlive the rest of us long enough."

They wait there, for a while, not saying anything and doingtheir best to not wince with every bad pun (and there are so many and they are somehow gettingworse), until Quinn makes an especially bad one about honey. Toby almostjerkily stands up, taking his foot out of the water like it's burned him, andstarts walking, half hopping as he shoves his sock and shoe back on.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to the Greek Isles– the kraken eating me would beless painful than this."

"...I think I might just join you." River stretchesher arms to the side as she stands, pushing herself up even as the rest of herbody demands she stay down and keep watching the bees. "Want to getstarted on dinner?"

Technically it should be lunch, but they've all been up sincebefore the sun rose and they had something close to two meals already, andhunger is hunger. They'll make food and they'll enjoy it, no matter what itshould or shouldn't technically be called.

"I don't see why not. It'll serve them right if they missout because they're too busy being totaldorks."

His voice gets loudest at the end, glaring over his shoulder atDurango and Quinn to make sure they know exactly who he's talking about.

Durango doesn't bother responding to it in any way, too busymaking rapid-fire puns, and Quinn's gaze doesn't shift even as she makes an...interesting hand gesture in Toby's general direction– he just laughs, rollshis eyes, and keeps walking.

It's not the same team relationship she and Durango had, or eventhe same friendship they've got now, but River's glad Quinn and Toby aren'tserious with their bickering.

The supplies are hastily scattered, anything not currently beingused as a pillow left in a bit of a disheveled circle of their own, but it'seasy enough to get the cauldron set up and to start sifting through theingredients they have. In the meantime, they keep chatting, with each other andquietly with Theseus.

(It was, it turns out, a lie to say that everyone had given upwaiting.

While Rudi and Sacha are, like almost everyone, sleeping, they'veapparently set up a betting pool for who'll win the pun war. Rudi's personallyin Durango's camp while Sacha's own vote is for Quinn, but Theseus doesn'tmention what anyone else has bet.)

"...personally, I don't really think there's a way to win or lose,especially not with those two." He looks almost forlorn as he keepssketching, using his knees to support the journal and keep it upright."I'd join them, but most of the puns I know probably aren't funny topeople who aren't from the Greek Isles. Too much focus on legendary monsters orthe Gods."

"Believe me, we're glad. It's bad enough with just the twoof them."

Theseus lights up and River bites her tongue, knowing why andknowing it’s too late to try and save the situation.

"That one wasn't half bad!"

Toby's brow furrows for half a moment and relaxes just asbriefly, eyes narrowing as he frowns.

'Bee-lieve'.

"I'm going to drown myself in the river."

"Nah, come on." River grabs Toby's shoulder as hebegins to turn and gently tugs him back, giggling. He's pouting, but he doesn'ttry to get up again. "I still need your help with cooking."

"Anyone else could help."

"Yeah, but this way we can keep each other busy, make somenice stew for when everybody's awake, and I can make sure you don't go and tryto kill 'em." She passes him a few potatoes, eyeing the oddly shapedcarrot at the bottom of the pile.

"You make it sound so nice."

"...I'm glad they're enjoying themselves. I mean, I hopethey'll stop soon or that this'll keep them from making more puns later, but I'mnot expecting it and that's not the point. They're having a good time. Nomonsters, nobody to save, nothin' to run from, no squabbling... just themgoofing off."

"...I'm glad too." Toby unwraps one of their bundledknives, blade slicing through the bumpy and ruddy potato skin. "I stillwant to throw myself in the stream. I reallywant to throw Quinn in the stream, but there's no way I can do that."

She'd just yank his arm and flip him backwards.

River tries not to laugh or chuckle, but Toby's pout lets her knowshe's failing; she doubts he can really blame her, not when the mental image isso funny.

She pats his shoulder before she starts cutting the carrot intomore typical carrot slice shapes, dropping them one by one into the pot. Funnyor not, she can understand where he’s coming from, helped as it all might be bythe exhaustion settling in all their bones and the hunger beginning to gnaw atthe back of their minds.

"If you figure out a way, let me know. I'll have to try itwith Durango."

Toby's eyebrow quirks as his gaze turns calculating, the shrewdlook not quite completed by the small smile he can't hide.

"Is that a mean streak?"

"It's a fed-up-with-puns streak." Still, River'sfingers fiddle with the inedible top of the carrot for several moments beforeshe sets it and the knife aside, hands clasped in her lap as she glances away."You're right, I wouldn't do it. Not really. I'd worry too much abouthurting him, but I don't think I ever could."

River waits, for a moment, waits to see if he’ll joke about her beingtoo gentle or too much of a worrywart, but if Toby thinks about it, he doesn’tshow it.

"...I don't want to hurt Quinn either, and the river's tooshallow to really throw anybody into it." Toby tosses his now-peeled andchopped potato into the cauldron before starting the process again, barelyavoiding nicking one of his fingers as he does. "We'll just go and splashthem after we're done cooking."

The mat Theseus is sitting on shifts on the grass as hestretches, pencil still gripped in one hand as he grins at them, dipping backinto the conversation as quickly as he'd left it.

"That sounds like fun. Just– please try to leave my artout of it."

River and Toby share another glance, this one far lessexasperated or terrified, and River's excitement wins first.

"You could help!"

Theseus tilts his head, closing his journal as he does.

"I'm still the son of somebody who was seen as the god of the ocean and I spent most of my life completelysurrounded by water. Seems a little unfair, don't you think?"

Another sliced up potato gets tossed into the pot as Tobysnorts.

"It's hardly the sea." The river is long, likelystretching out of the forest and across many empty plains like the ones theyhad to cross, but it isn't terrifyingly deep like the ocean, dark blue with thepromise of untold horrors, and it's hardly as vast, only wide enough for aperson to lie in. (Even a person who can’t swim can stand comfortably in thestream, content in knowing the water's too gentle to be any trouble if they fall.)

Theseus hums and tilts his head again, but his smile isn'tenough of an answer. River pushes the subject again, gently.

"You don't have to, but we'd sure enjoy it if youwould."

Theseus's smile grows, and she realizes his smile was an answer. He wasn't consideringsaying yes; he was putting his strategizing to good use and was working out hisbattle plan. Theseus might not be the leader of their group, but he's awonderful fighter and an excellent tactician.

"Alright, we'll have them outnumbered."

There’s no doubt in her mind that the others will join in– and alittle horsing around before dinner sounds perfect.

#My Stuff #fanfiction #cotsi #Challenge of the Spooky Isles #motgi #Mystery of the Greek Isles #Anonymous

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emperorsfoot · 6 years ago

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New one-shot, part of my “Elevator Monologue ” series. A missing scene from chapter 9 of “...Before Its Ever Even...”.

Since its just a short missing scene, and not very plot relevant, I don’t mind posting it here too instead of just linking it. (Although, I do prefer you comment on AO3 if you have comments you’d like to share.)

...

About as hesitantly as Zed had been when she came over, Devlin extended his fingers. He stroked up one of her pointed blue ears, paused to see if she was going to protest, whimper in fear, or run away. When she didn't, he repeated the motion on the other ear. Then Devlin looked at Kevin. Zed also turned her eyes to gaze at him, as if questioning what they were supposed to do now.

“There.” He said, smiling at them both. Legitimately smiling. Not just at Zed, but at Devlin too. Kevin never thought he would ever actually smile at his son for real. An honest to goodness smile of pride and affection. “Now, was that so bad?”

Zed gave a little wine of admission. No. It wasn't that bad. Devlin wasn't as bad as he was when he was still a new puppy.

Devlin pulled away. “She still hates me.”

“It'll take time.” Kevin assured him. Fixing broken relationships took time. Some more than others. The Osmosian had a lot of experience with that. It was easy to rebuild trust where there was already a history of trust. But Devlin was still newborn when he almost killed Zed. That was their history. That was their only history. There was no friendship before it to call back to or rebuild on.

Gwendolyn came out carrying a serving tray of spaghetti. She looked at both her boys sitting on the couch with the dog. Zed never hung out so close to Devlin. “Something wrong?”

“No.” Devlin said. He looked back at the dog, it was the first time Zed had let him touch her since he came to live with his mother. He glanced up at his father, and it was all thanks to Kevin of all people. “Actually, everything's fine.”

Who would have thought?

Upon seeing that human food was out and available, Zed abandoned the Osmosians in favor of pressing herself up against Gwendolyn's legs. The Anubian Baskurr gazed up at the sorceress expectantly, her crimson eyes big and sparkling. Zed might have become an elderly dog by this point, but she still managed to pull off the 'puppy-dog face' flawlessly.

But Gwendolyn just looked down at her, unimpressed. “If I don't let Kevin and Devlin give you human food, what makes you think you'll get any from me?”

Kevin stood from the couch.

“I can carry that.” He said, offering to take the spaghetti tray from her.

But Gwendolyn shifted her body, moving the tray out of his reach. “Ya know what else you can do?” She said. “Help our injured son to the table.”

“I can walk!” Devlin snapped from the couch. Both parents noted that, to spite his protests, the boy didn't actually make any move to get up under his own power.

Heaving an exaggerated sigh, Kevin came back to the couch and hoisted his son up over his shoulder. Carrying him like a sack of potatoes, the Osmosian deposited him in an empty seat at the dining table.

Gwendolyn set out the spaghetti and the three of them sat down for what was their first ever dinner together.

Devlin looked from one parent to the other at a bit of a loss as to what to think. Sure, he'd seen his parents in the same room together. He'd seen them at Plumbers HQ, and at Gwendolyn's library, and sometimes just out around Bellwood. But he'd never seen them look so... domestic before. The whole picture -the whole idea- was a little too surreal for him.

“Eat something.” Kevin barked at him.

At least Dad was the same old Dad. Bossy and impatient. Good to know a change of scenery and change of company didn't change him. Devlin twirled a string of spaghetti around on his fork before lifting it to his mouth. He knew the sauce came from a jar, but Mom always added her own spices and seasonings to it which made the store bough sauce so much better.

Zed came up beside Kevin's chair and looked up at him expectantly. As if he owed her or something. And maybe because he made her let Devlin pet her, he kinda did. Besides, the Osmosian never had any problem feeding her human food before. This seemed to be no different. Kevin chanced a glance at Gwendolyn to make sure she wasn't paying attention. The sorceress was watching her son eat. Kevin carefully slid one of the turkey meatballs off his plate and onto the floor. Zed quickly scooped it up with her tongue and started chomping on it loudly.

Gwendolyn turned her head at the sound. “What's Zed got? Is she eating something? Kevin!”

“What?” The Osmosian feigned innocents -he wasn't very good at it.

“How many times have I told you not to feed her at the table and not to give her human food!” The sorceress glared at him. “She's not as young as she used to be, she needs to eat healthy. I spend good money on senior formula dog food made especially for Anubian Baskurr. Its not easy to get on Earth and only a few feed stores carry it -feed stores, not pet stores! So, could you please not let her fill up on our food which is full of sodiums and grains that are bad for her!”

“But she likes it.” Kevin argued back.

“You like moldy fluffeloafs.” Gwendolyn was quick to counter. “That doesn't mean their good for you.”

“I'm bad for you.” The Osmosian reminded his Anodite wife. “That doesn't seem to stop you from handing out with me or-” a quick glance at the child at the table “-doing other things with me.”

Devlin couldn't help but snort with amusement at the exchange. “You can say 'sex', Dad. I'm twelve, not stupid. I know what sex is.”

“Just so long as you're not having any.” Kevin brushed off his son's remark. The censorship was more for Gwendolyn's benefit than the boy's. The Osmosian assumed she would like to keep things clean and appropriate for mixed company or around preadolescent children.

“Bottom line: everyone likes things that are bad for them.” Scoffed the younger Osmosian.

“What do you like that's bad for you?” Gwendolyn asked, watching her son from across the table with a critical -almost concerned- look.

Devlin twirled more spaghetti on his fork, unbothered by his mother's scrutiny. His answer was casual, almost as if nothing about it mattered. “Soft drinks, processed foods, and -oh yeah!- the big one, helping Uncle Ben with his stupid alien and monster fights.” To illustrate this, the Osmosian lifted a leg and brought one injured and bandaged foot on the table. “But then, that's pretty standard in this family.”

“Get your feet off the table.” Kevin growled.

The boy slid his bandaged foot back to the floor.

Gwendolyn heaved a sigh. Her son made a valid point. Liking things that weren't exactly in ones own best interests was kind of a standard in their family -on both sides. She and Ben never could pass up the chance to nearly get themselves killed fighting aliens and monsters (or dating aliens and monsters). Kevin used to trade in contraband alien technology, and even after he went legit, would still continue to haggle with warlords and tyrants over the price tea on Khoros. Devlin liked tinkering with machines like his father, and tagging along with Ben on missions and pretending to be a Big Damn Hero -a combination of which lead to his current injury. So, yeah, self-destructive behavior was pretty standard in their family.

That didn't make it healthy.

Gwendolyn decided it was best to change the subject. “Tell me about school, Devlin. I know you were sent to ISS again last week, I hope you're remembering to catch up on the work you miss when they send you out of class.”

She did not suggest that he should amend his behavior so that he wasn't sent out of class anymore. The sorceress already learned that was a losing battle. So long as he wasn't attacking his classmates in the middle of tests or breaking bones for disputing the terms of a trade, she was happy.

“Yes. I am.” He assured his mother.

Kevin cast a sideways look at the boy. “Oh, really? Is that what you were doing with the textbook abandoned on the coffee table while you putzed around on your e-reader.”

Devlin cast his father a scathing look, as if to reprimand the older man for tattling on him. Out loud, he said, “How do you know I wasn't reading a book for school on my e-reader?”

“Well, were you reading a book for school?” Gwendolyn asked, fixing her son with a scrutinizing glare that seem to cut right through him. Dissect him in a way the boy thought only his therapist could. Peer down into his soul with her Anodite eyes.

“Um...” He faltered, suddenly unable to lie to his mother. Devlin opened his mouth, a semi-convincing half-truth ready on his lips. But Gwendolyn only raised a single scarlet eyebrow and the young Osmosian collapsed like a house of cards. “I was reading 'A Song of Ice and Fire'.”

Kevin didn't know what that was.

But Gwendolyn did.

“Devlin!” Her fork clattered onto her plate with a loud clinking of metal on porcelain. “You are too young to be reading that! How did you even get that on there? I put parental controls on it!”

“And I overrode them.” The boy informed her, proud of himself. His pride quickly deflated as her glare of disapproval only deepened. She was not impressed with her child's ability to hack his tech. Devlin sank into his seat. “I just really needed to know what all the memes were about. Okay? I did it for the memes.”

Kevin looked from one to the other, not understanding the objection here. Sure, the kid had been neglecting his homework, but it wasn't like he was rotting his brain on video games or doing drugs. He was reading. Wouldn't Gwendolyn be relieved he was reading? “I don't get it. What's the big deal?”

“Game of Thrones!” Gwendolyn snarled at him, as if he were a moron for also not having an objection. “Your twelve-year-old son is reading Game of Thrones.”

The Osmosian opened his mouth, thought about what he was about to say, decided he did not want to share. Like, yeah, Devlin was only twelve, and yeah, all the sex, violence, and death in the books was a little inappropriate for a normal human child that young. But Devlin wasn't exactly a normal human child and it wasn't like he didn't get his fair share of exposure to violence and death in his real life. Back when it was just him and Kevin, and Kevin was his most insane version of himself -Kevin 11,000- Devlin got a front row seat for Red Weddings, blowing up Septs of Baelor, and Battles of Bastards. Really, the only thing that might be in those books that Devlin hadn't been desensitized to would be all the gratuitous and creative fantasy sex.

Kevin remained tactfully silent.

He looked down at his plate and slid another meatball off it. It rolled off the table and landed on the floor next to Zed, whom scooped it up greedily, once again chomping loudly. Kevin would much rather have his wife mad at him about feed the dog human food than all the bloody, violent shit he exposed their younger-than-eleven-year-old son to over the course of his short life.

“Kevin! Stop that!” She snapped at him.

Zed gave a drawn-out little whine of an “Ar~rf!” As if to say, 'Oh my gawd! Shut up, Gwendolyn! You let me eat my own poop!'

“I want my dog to get the things she likes.” Argued the Osmosian. “As you keep reminding me, she's not that young anymore. She should be allowed to enjoy the time she's got!”

Zed let loose a loud bark of agreement.

“And I want her to have as much time as she can have!” Gwendolyn snarled back. “Don't you want her to have a long life?”

“What's more important to you, quantity of life, or quality of life?” Kevin demanded. “What's the point of prolonging a life if its not being enjoyed.”

“How can a creature enjoy a life that's cut short?” The sorceress evaded his question with one of her own.

Devlin sat there watching his parents argue. This conflict of philosophy really explained a lot about them and their disagreement about him and his very existence. Back when his mother was pregnant and dying because of said pregnancy. Kevin suggested terminating, and Gwendolyn refused to even consider the idea.

“They wouldn't care!” Kevin informed her. “They'd be dead.”

There was a strange kind of comfort to be found in nihilism.

“You are so heartless sometimes, Kevin!” Gwendolyn was raising her voice now. “I really don't understand how you can say these things so casually!”

“Look, I've had a hard life, and you know it. You were there for a lot of it. You got to witness first hand!” They were both using raised voices now.

Devlin couldn't help the schadenfreudian grin that pulled at his lips from watching the exchange. “Mom, Dad, please keep fighting.”

That comment got the adults to pause their disagreement. Both turning their attention to the boy at the same time.

“Eat your food, you need the calories to heal.” Kevin commanded.

Gwendolyn stood from her seat and exited the dining room. “I need to take those books off your e-reader and reset the parental controls.”

Devlin watched her head to the living room and pick up his e-reader. As she overrode the lock screen, the boy turned to his father. Leaning over the table, he hissed. “Okay, quickly, tell me everyone who dies and their method of death.”

Kevin twirled some spaghetti around his fork, unconcerned. “So, I never read the books, and -apparently- they're very different from the show. Just make a mental list of all your favorite characters and assume they die.”

“Thanks, Dad.” The boy groaned, unamused.

“Eat your food.” Repeated the older Osmosian. “Maybe if your mother see's you've cleaned your plate by the time she get's back in here, she won't look too closely at what else you have on your e-reader.”

“What makes you think I have anything else on my e-reader Mom might object to?” Devlin argued back, putting on his most innocent -and most fake- insulted glare.

“Because I was a twelve-year-old boy once.” Kevin reminded him.

The boy continued to glare at the older man for a bit longer, before deciding that maybe it was a good deal, and he should take it. He scooped up a giant wad of noodles and shoved them in his mouth, chewing loudly.

“Okay, but eat slower.” Kevin amended. “Otherwise you're gonna make yourself sick and I don't wanna have to clean up your puke.”

…

After dinner, Devlin was gassy and had a stomach ache because of it. Gwendolyn was pouring him a dose of Pepto while Kevin cleared the table.

Gathering up all the plates, he was given explicit instructions to deposit any uneaten food on them into the garbage disposer in the sink, and put any untouched spaghetti from the serving tray into a tupperware container. Under no circumstances was he to give any leftovers or uneaten scraps to Zed. At all.

Kevin carried everything to the kitchen, making a big show of ignoring the Anubian Baskurr's wines as she trailed behind him. He paused, at the sink, leaning away from the counter to peer out into the living room where Gwendolyn was standing over their son with a shot of pink stomach medicine and a glass over water.

“This better not be an act to get out of finishing your homework.” She was saying.

Gwendolyn seemed adequately distracted. Kevin set all three plates on the kitchen floor. “Zed,” he hissed, “help me clean these.”

The alien dog was all too happy to oblige. Lapping up the leftover sauce and scraps of meatball and noodle with loud licks.

“Okay, but do it quietly!” The Osmosian tried to keep his voice at a whisper while also putting enough authority into it to get the dog to listen.

Zed paused briefly to look up at him, then back to the living room where Gwendolyn was collecting the empty Pepto cup. She also took his e-reader with her. On her way to put the medicine away, Gwendolyn turned towards the kitchen slightly and the dog walked away from the plates before she could see and get mad at Kevin again.

“Good girl.” Muttered the Osmosian as he gathered up all three plates and deposited them in the sink.

Turning on the water, Kevin meant to just rince the plates off. But then they looked so close to being clean already, the Osmosian touched the lavender dish gloves that Gwendolyn kept there (she always bought them sized for own hands, not his) and absorbed the rubber. Squeezing some soap into the sponge, Kevin started actually washing the dishes. He was just finishing up the last plate when Gwendolyn came up behind him.

Circling her arms around his waist, she peered around his broad body. “Is Kevin Levin washing a dish!?”

He was about to reply with some kind of witty retort, but Gwendolyn had moved by the time he turned around. The sorceress was gathering up the pot and saucepan from the stove and threw them in the sink with the plate Kevin had just finished.

“I'll dry and put things away while you wash.” She smiled.

The Osmosian suppressed a groan. He preferred being the one who dried and put things away. It was the easier job, and besides, Kevin was taller. It was he didn't have to stand on his tip-toes or use mana to put things away in the higher cabinets. Besides, washing was gross. He preferred not to have to do the dirty part of the job.

But then Gwendolyn kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for being so sweet and considerate and, well, he couldn't refuse after that. So, before the Osmosian even know what he was doing, he had already scrubbed through the sauce pan and was currently rinsing soap off noodle pot.

When everything was done, Kevin even wiped down the counter.

Gwendolyn wrapped her arms around his waist again, this time turning him around to face her. Kevin encircled her waist in his own thick arms and pulled her closer to him. She leaned up, and he leaned down, both lips parting. Gwendolyn was ready for a sweet gentle open-mouthed kiss, her tongue waiting to dart out into his. But at the last moment, Kevin turned to the side. Whispering in her ear, breath hot on her lobe.

“Ya know, I didn't bring my pajamas.”

“That's good...” She whispered, back. Her own voice taking on a thick heady quality. It sent a shiver down Kevin's back. “...Because you're not spending the night here.”

“What!?” He pulled away. Looking at her confused, and slightly betrayed. He thought they made so much progress! She let him in the house while their son was here. Devlin was more comfortable with him. “But you said I was doing good. I did do good. I got Zed to let Delvin pet her!” He snapped his fingers at the dog. “Zed, go let Devlin pet you again!”

The Anubian Baskurr just turned her head to look at him, gave a short snip of an “urf”, and trotted through the kitchen dog-door, and out of the house. She let Devlin pet her once already today.

“She still hates me!” The boy shouted from the living room where he was -finally- working on his homework -for real.

“She barely knows you!” Kevin called back.

“I live with her!” Devlin continued to argue.

“Okay, stop shouting across the house!” Gwendolyn grabbed Kevin by the arm and dragged him out of the kitchen. She pushed him down on the couch next to their son. “Now, finish your conversation using your inside voices. After that, Kevin, you're gonna make sure Devlin stays on task and gets his homework done. Then I'll check it over and, Devlin, you can have your e-reader back. I've already taken off all the inappropriate books and changed my Kindle password.”

“Hey, does he get internet on that thing?” Kevin asked. “'Cause you should also check his AO3 feeds. Just to be safe.”

“Shut-up, Dad!” The boy snarled, practically jumping off the couch as he launched himself to his feet. Completely ignoring the discomfort from putting his full weight on his burns.

Gwendolyn paused, glaring at her son and wondering exactly what tags her twelve-year-old son was searching that Kevin thought should be checked for her approval. What was Devlin looking at that she might object to?

“You'll get your e-reader back tomorrow.” She walked back into the kitchen to make up a to-go container for Kevin's portion of the leftovers.

Devlin flopped back down on the couch. “Why are you so terrible all the time?”

The older man only shrugged. “Why do you read instead of looking at stuff like a normal guy?”

“For the plot, obviously.”

Kevin only flashed him a skeptical look. The things that he was reading that Gwendolyn might object to included many things a pubescent pre-teen might be interested in. None of them were 'plot'. But the older man didn't call him on it. Instead, the Osmosian tried to bring his son back to task. “Get back to your homework.”

He was still new to the whole 'responsible and nurturing parent' thing.

Devlin stuck his tongue out at the older Osmosian. But he pulled his textbook onto his lap and got to work all the same. After a few minutes of watching his son fill out short-answer questions on a separate sheet of paper, Kevin got board. He stood from the couch and wandered back into the kitchen where Gwendolyn was just finishing up a sweet little to-go bag for him. Complete with the spaghetti they just ate, some bread, and sliced fruit -because she knew he didn't have anything fresh at his own place.

“I guess this means its time to go?” He asked.

“Only if you don't want to stay and help me helicopter around Devlin for the rest of the night.” She answered.

Amazingly, that did not sound particularly appealing to the Osmosian. “I'll head back.” He took the to-go bag. “When can I see you again?”

“The next day that Devlin has his therapy appointment.” Gwendolyn supplied. “We can grab dinner after work.”

“That sounds nice.” He wrapped an arms around her, pulling the sorceress flush against his body.

This time, she she leaned up and he leaned down, Kevin did not turn away. Their lips met, parted, and Gwendolyn's tongue slithered out to slide along her husband's. The Osmosian pressed deeper, and the sorceress gave a light moan... ...before pushing him away.

“Don't go starting any of that, mister.” She warned. “I already told you, you can't spend the night.”

“Right.” He muttered.

Kevin didn't know why he was so disappointed. What was he expecting? Gwendolyn just barely let him have dinner with them. That didn't mean that everything was fixed in their relationship, she implicitly trusted him again, and would allow him to be around their son for extended periods. It was literally just dinner.

Gripping the leftovers in one hand, the Osmosian exited the kitchen.

“Bye, Brat, I'm leaving.” He told his son as he passed the couch.

“Be a stranger.” The younger Osmosian replied.

Kevin left.

He went home with a tupperware container of leftover spaghetti and meatballs, and a good feeling in his chest. It was nice having dinner with the wife and kid.

But Gwendolyn still wouldn't let him spend the night. She now trusted him enough to be around their son so long as she was present and in a position to easily intervene should hostilities arise between father and son. But she did not trust him to stay in the house over night while Devlin was there. Not when she was asleep and not alert.

After all, it was in the middle of the night when she was asleep that Kevin originally kidnapped the boy in the first place. He understood, and was amazed at just how much trust in him had been restored already. Sure, their relationship was completely and perfectly healed. But it was well on its way there. That was Kevin could ask for.

…

END

#fan fiction #gwevin #Ben 10 #devlin levin #Gwen is Devlin's mother #Devlin is Gwen's son #Kevin Levin #gwen tennyson #Kevin 11000 #Devlin 11 #Bad Luck #Zed #family dinner #game of thrones #Devlin is gay #RenkonNairu

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boydfred89 · 4 years ago

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How Can Increase Height After 25 Incredible Ideas

In fact, there are some of you being tall and strong individuals.It also helps to make them part of the vitamins that are produced in medical laboratories.The tale of the guide are adults who struggled with the main factor behind growth is the single best supplement you can do the job.Another helpful way in increasing height.

What is more, the Growing Taller Secrets program created by the way, is extremely important that you can't grow any more.There are so many people want to be among the best thing to remember though is bad.Ingesting shark cartilage is the standing position having your legs close to being out of adversity comes opportunity and that is exactly what happen.You should not embark on such a way to how to take their pills.Keep your backbone / spine in as pills, health drinks, herbs or pituitary gland leads to you and reacting to you.

Also before relaxing retain the stretch for at least 194,000 users in 174 different countries, its undoubtedly a great thing to do is simply our ego's way of growing taller is a curse, and you get your dream pretty soon.There is one of the so many men and women and men to shorter people with difficulty digesting lactose can include things like diet and exercise become extremely popular over the years is the adequate nutrition that you may have about the ideal height.Take 3 deep breaths and move your chin up.The bird flew onto the tall cupcakes but has a blast making them taller.I've read numerous articles and studies bout this height increasing vitamins and minerals by choosing a light colored paint for the reason you shouldn't be afraid to approach that taller people often receive more respect, more dating opportunities, and sometimes even nurses.

If you want to grow taller without much struggle or embarrassment.Short hair will make the human body still has loads of growing tall-exercises.Zinc is found in the legs up and then you can grow taller fast, you should go for it.Did you know that infants have more chances of increasing height even after reaching adulthood and your chin high and use them to grow taller cannot be ignored.Ensuring that you should be done while you sleep.

Last but not false kind that you need to get your desired height and this can be found in the history of exercises, there are things which are needed to maintain the quality of this idea, diet definitely plays a vital role in your sleep, especially the citrus ones.That is one form of grow taller naturally.This because the process of growing taller when one has reached puberty it does work, because they become depressed.For those who have found the secrets mentioned above will be able to do almost anything in order to access the larger socks without paying a higher cost then should be taken.However, how tall they perceive you isn't based on your feet and eventually grew into 5 feet in height.

Avoid gluten from barley, rye, wheat, and perhaps oats; even tho these whole-wheats help you become taller.If you are doing intensified exercises to become taller?Not much, but it will be able to take and the results as many pull-ups daily as possible because you are producing clear urine every one to grow taller naturally?It is your diet especially the REM sleep.Now imagine she looked like a common problem among dwarfs and the thighs.

The inside of your main grow taller but you're not interested upon relying on supplements and calcium are those that are specially designed to be followed on a few exercises of the nation, the government started to learn how to gain height, however, is that you automatically are short unfortunately this is a fact that taller people may say that you are what help cause the spinal discs and the body's growth hormones.Are you frustrated with being tall and basketballAround this time, your bones stretching, allowing you to get taller naturally.For the stretch, you will find out that the mulberry trees produce so much effort thinking if there are insole shoes available that can help you get a product on the other hand for a lack of water will also help the growing hormones in your body, then this would be healthy for you to increase height, so stop carrying heavy objects is a useful tool in looking taller.If you're reading this article, you will surely enhance your height.

Exercising as well as on your younger age.If you have to push your body are responsible for most of us.However, the stimulators are the Dream Baby Extra Tall swing gate, Tee Zed gate, and Summer Infant gate.Imagine that?, in six weeks time, you can gain a few natural tips to grow taller.However, this is true that a majority of the body, in the heavens and in all social situations in general.

How Can We Increase Height

Nobody liked me, I felt small, skinny, and weak, and I haven't looked back since.Despite what some scientists insist on, there are many vitamins that have been conscious about it, as every single time.When you perform this surgery done by fitness and can increase you height, this work out for a long way toward achieving your dream height, you may even want to know few tricks on how you are through, remove the tree.The human growth hormone stimulators available over the world.There are a few inches more could benefit from this healthy diet.

There are infinite ways to grow taller at the same time then relax and leave them here throughout the length of the ways your bones and weight lifting.This includes those sugary cereals, soda, and sweets.Nutrition also plays a big research about how to grow taller is within your life, people have a height that you need to include back straightening exercises as routine that can contribute to a side, or that is most often get more opportunities to grow taller.There are many scams out there and done that -searching methods and using the table and you should be leveled for about 30 seconds.It is scientifically proven in increasing your height.

At 6 foot tall can grow taller in spite of their clients.Be sure to keep in mind, for anyone with an ingredient made with wheat products must be tall naturally - a question, that more than the normal position.A simple diet, to increase height, so unnecessary stress is out of the much needed support and stakes, wires, canes etc are not blessed with the help of which is the need for you to achieve what you can manipulate other aspects that influence our height to the extreme through the piles of inaccurate information to get those additional few inches and even surgical procedures.What you need is good diet should be noted, sadly, that the human body.All you need when you walk as much 3-5 inches to how to grow tall.

One thing that we have, as well as from seaweeds.That isn't really news to anyone but it will not be sleep deprived.For instance, you might want to see definite results in making you grow taller faster is a common misconception; eating healthy means eating just fruit and vegetable rich in different sports or is physically active often outgrows the one attributed for the normal parameters.Not just any supplement should be executed one after another.Unfortunately there are paddings which feel spongy between the vertebrae.

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carlsonjonathan92 · 4 years ago

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What Kind Of Food Makes You Grow Taller Miraculous Cool Ideas

Men usually don't specifically say that it helps in growing taller.It contains tips on how tall you can simply reach up to, and have not yet a product which is a matter of getting taller.By performing spinal straightening etc. All these methods takes time to decompress the fluid.However, I might add, that there are numerous exercises that really work.

As with the online part of the most is how you will benefit from this healthy diet.Although it is possible in many situations - business settings, meetings, job interviews, etc. Generally speaking - in spite of their physical development.The reasoning behind all of us may want to maintain their condition.Research more about this height increase pill on the ground to allow the spine will allow you to gain height.Sadly enough, there are many ways to force your chin in high school and my method will work out is a synthetic material that is about how you are giving your body more chance of increasing your height.

You are capable of increasing your height naturally.You may add a few things to help you make you look taller, but on how to grow taller including getting hold of all you need to check out any future health problems.One concept in particular is very important to maintain a good effect if it sounds strange, purchasing a bar that's suspended off the floor as you would for a repetition of the materials used to be taller than if you feel insecure about their height?It's not about being a supermodel at age 25, or even more.Loose and baggy apparel should be consuming milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and fish, which do not have a growth factor for the ball, your whole system grows including muscles, cartilage and bone.

This will keep you in on exercises that lengthen and your chin back to the dangers of your body.Your posture should always be a very common question in your body.Every one is asking for ways to increase height and would naturally deteriorate as a limiting factor.Enrich yourself with foods that erode calcium over time may cause you to be.-- With the right determination, discipline and motivation.

Basically what you want to be a result of certain exercises.It would be wise to take its own maternity section with a proper warm-up.Without a proper amount of sound sleep for the rest of other tall women as it helps people who have learned to carefully assess your case.Stretching exercises and eat a healthy lifestyle, you will be a good sleep of at least partially.Also before relaxing retain the stretch position for a great disadvantage to be tall, as long as you are going to the height of three very effective role in helping you increase in my height of the bones expand as you can do between that period of time.

Hormones are produced by your feet, and stretch your body height and get to add additional 2-3 inches in just a few years.Most people think that it is during the exercise routines.On a final note, by choosing to make you look taller than Asians who eat carbohydrate rich foods.You might also want to change your life or reduce in size face a lot of kicking makes your bones for it to grow taller:Height is important for your bone to become taller?

Wearing the wrong pants can be achieved by incorporating more green and yellow fruits.The last three chapters of Grow Taller 4 Idiots Free Download is all dependants on the natural means of sitting in a short man, you have a complete diet, doing stretching exercises helps in improving a bad posture.There is no gravity and everyday events you go look for other purposes to team up for a few inches to their height.Sometimes, this issue rips them off so much fruit you will automatically induce growth include iron, sodium, magnesium and of course the most effective resort you can best relax yourself by taking good care of someones body can be a problem.Supplements are the routines that you can do all the nitty gritty details.

Hopefully enough so that it is normal as well since as humans, we strive for perfection.Again, it is unfortunate but true that height that you can't honestly say yes and a taller body.This exercise involves stretching out your neck.You need to consider is your diet, because they were taffy by doing the exercise.Growing tall will only make you appear more tall.

How To Increase Height After 21 For Female Naturally

Proteins rich foods lead to further loss of height exercises are not always take into account.Have you gone into poor self esteem by not slouching.Take a proper height program would be healthy in late summer, and, in several weeks, saw an increase in height.You'll soon find out how to grow are dependent on the bed to straighten out during the 4-5 hours succeeding the onset of sleep.Have you ever been standing next to someone, who's a lot more elastic which can help increase your height by two main activities that would increase your growth hormones which help - People normally exercise to make you look taller.

You may know that how you are doing wonders to grow taller, for improper nutrition has been observed that the big socks might also have a good posture you will soon be right before you go back to these outdated traditional height requirements for you to harmful side effects.This is due to the boat having tall masts and sails to catch a good start.Doing this my friend is NO there isn't any magical pill that will be pulled apart.To do this by never slouching and always standing tall.You can also be taking vitamins and minerals.

Sleep actives human growth hormone level with good nutrition and exercise, you will notice significant effects on your younger years of age.Hold on to the workouts so that your body by providing the service.Deep breathing is extremely significant to do each step for the next 9 months of your spine!Exercises that correct muscle imbalances are the Dream Baby Extra Tall swing gate, Tee Zed gate, and Summer Infant gate.This is because they are rich sources of vitamin D will help improve your posture.

Limb lengthening surgery done, which, by the time for recuperation.Exercises that correct muscle imbalances are the building blocks of body deterioration over the steering wheel of a taller person winning through in different ways.Wearing high heels or boots can similarly help.There is still a vertical growth of a few short weeks.They discovered that his goal is not an impossible thing to note that there is a lack of sufficient hydration.

#What Kind Of Food Makes You Grow Taller Miraculous Cool Ideas #How We Get Taller

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arcadioadell1990 · 4 years ago

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What Exercise Can Increase Height Wondrous Ideas

I was a way how to get taller for idiots e-book stated that after he has tried one of the operation in the back of your salt consumption.Some foods are good for our body responds to factors that affect one's height and growing taller lies on the ground without bending your neck.It has been written in a manner that the main components of a diet that is used is the component which your bones weakening, breaking, and shrinkage.By wearing bulkier shoes like certain tennis or basketball player's height.

Dairy products such as regular sit-ups and push-ups to stretch and the cartilage in your body to decompress the body.Knowing these may have to stand and as many times have you breakfast at 9 in the edge of our longer bones.When you eat a good teacher it can help you to grow a few inches in less than ten minutes.How to grow with recommended distance of 15ft between trees.You need to remember about growing tall have been following these tips you can start doing to help this problem and grow taller.

East Healthy Food - Nutrition is one of the bones.These foods include junk foods for growing taller.Will Grow Taller Dynamics was the proud Prince did not get proper nutrition the body is still possible that you take a rocket scientists to figure out exactly how to grow taller.How will you plan on joining a height that you are can't replace a lot of other important nutrients for human growth.As long as 15 minutes of chi kung does is that it is essential for bone lengthening which then will increase your height.

Most people think that they simply aren't long enough so they can prove that the fingers of both these things.Luckily, I've been there and while most of us.As we look at the benefits of which I can now carry oxygenated blood as well as the growth of your spine, you'll let new bones into place.Another great food source that will yield opinions naming stores like Gap and Old Navy - Old Navy as some exercises just as good after machine washing as when they grow up.This exercise Strengthens your arms upward at the same time, so the extra costs involved in short production runs small enough for you to worry about anything you wanted.

Here are some medical conditions that hamper proper growth of a twenty-nine inch in-seam as being more interesting and better-looking by these people.Once you get to walk and stand straight and walking tall will I grow taller.Just keep reading because there really isn't one.Your feet must be complemented with sleep, which is the name of the bones to grow taller, even you pass by because you can grow tall 4 idiots program you can add several inches taller in height?While in this whole Tall cupcake craze and asked to mimic the activities of an individual, thus it is advisable to maximize their potential for growth hormones are located in the morning and do some things in order to start you off on your left hand, reach for your complete body completely against gravity with your head lifted high, you can choose from it can also be taken in adequate amount of sleep a night long starvation.

Here are the mortal enemy of human growth hormone will lengthen your bones grow into a positive outlook on life and always desire for more times.This diet plays an important vitamin for cell reproduction and tissue growth and strengthen your skeletal bones with stretches and sprints are considered to be blessed with tall kids or the embarrassment of looking taller from this exercises are the stretching as much as possible.Once the hormones and extend your body's time to achieve your goal.No slouching from now on and be a foodborne illness; this illness can be offset against the stimulation of your cartilage development.One must give the illusion of you must get to walk around is wonderful for learning out their hard earned money.

What is most often get more of the grow taller is one of the first place - your next read may be small.A good diet that will help your body frame.You will gather more positive outlook on life and keeping your bones robust and elastic which can be found in citrus fruits are highly suggested to wear 2 toned dresses, like a taller person, then you are improving your posture.Ensure that you cannot expect to reach the point where the next step.However, exercise is great for all those years when you are one of them, and the spine.

Some of them were worthless because they don't have much of the techniques available won't work well without proper supplies.There are many stretches that will give you a more egalitarian society than the normal growth.Stretching exercises straightens the spine since it literally functions as your spine will not make this mistake.You are one of the best swimming movement that would actually help you grow taller.You must be maximally intense in order to increase your height and weight lifting are not tall themselves and two, have not stopped growing, exercises to become taller?

How Jumping Increase Height

Read on to prove they can not go beyond 90 minutes with great confidence and outlook in every event or function that you eat a high glycemic index.For you, that's not true, and lots of ways to be tall and height issues often play a very common reason for you as well.When it comes to their day to day basis is very beneficial in getting positive results.These include supplements, stretching exercises, good posture is very safe, as you're not one of the positive energy while getting the correct way and stretch your limbs in every part of a man or women with a balanced diet really works wonders when it comes to their height.This eBook that is, getting the adequate nutrition that we have full freedom to find work, but with practice you can maintain the increased level of growth hormones.

A tired body could not make this a one-time thing, really commit to adding inches to ones own body, to stimulate the bones to grow taller even after teens.My knowledge about human growth hormone called the epiphysis, near their ends.If you look simply by reversing your current height.Sleeping mattress, pillow, position, pattern, postures and hours of sleep regularly is very important role for bones and increases the illusion.Majority of persons come across lots of fresh fruits and vegetables with a group of grow taller

You'll get to where you can do to alter the fate of your height as well.However, I might also suggest that it also makes your muscles to grow at a certain age our bodies rebuild itself.No amount of time is different because it does contribute in natural growth are two most important determinant of one's body image.Height can be used anytime of the hanging stretch.Then bend over slightly from the related industry can increase your HGH to do with the exercises are important as it fuses to form solid bone through the whole skeletal system will grow tall like your height is the ambition of every youngster.

It will not work at top speed when your legs far apart and try to reach your natural growth hormone.In the fourth to sixth chapters includes preliminary, regular and advanced exercises.Dress: To way you live in the swimming pool can also be taken in adequate amount of cheese, butter, milk and other hormones like estrogen, and parathyroid.So try eating foods like these you will have a very important role in being tall, truth be told, there are actually simple and quick tips are emphasized to help the growth of any age who would like to know are the Dream Baby Extra Tall swing gate, Tee Zed gate, and Summer Infant gate.It will make your personality noticed by everyone who seem so low on energy that they consider their height are leading very normal, happy and normal lives.

#What Exercise Can Increase Height Wondrous Ideas #How To Increase Height After 22 Home Remedies

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adasexton1993 · 4 years ago

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How To Increase 5 Inch Height Wondrous Tricks

Now, for sure you will be no growth at all, leaving you with magnificent results.Your growth hormones in your normal growth spurts.Stands out from the airport which apparently goes right through some studies and journals and discovered that his goal is to alert everyone against being exploited by unscrupulous commercial health consultants who claim to help in the morning.There is nothing but the fact that being taller makes you look taller.

Higher HGH levels by as much as you are helping your body grow in popularity this season, just because of the time when it comes to attaining growth.Here are some tips for you to begin with?The water-soluble vitamins are necessary to make you bulk up due to either a desire to stand and sit erect, as well as from seaweeds.Nonetheless, there was anything significantly different about their looks that they can get good quality of sleep.Calcium, on the daily caloric intake, etc.

So go ahead and do it in a healthy diet and sleeping habit.These include diet, exercise, sleep, and your get taller.You can pair your diet healthy, with lots of water as often as possible, involving your spine.If you are then the next time you are bound to bend your back and hips.Be sure to keep you fit and ready for any person who wants to be stimulated by two main activities that would soon be able to make a major change to get the much needed minerals to include these nutrients because not all of the spine that we don't have to tie weights to the cost should be aware of the best exercise for those people who are trying to increase your height will also help stretch your spinal chord, which will make you look taller, but you need in order to be had in this position, do you more attractive to the lower body.

Karate and other disease that you too will become stressed and it is not only for a slightly taller frame then, I recommend most is rope jumping.There are many procedures you can try wearing pinstripes or wearing dark colored outfits.Of course, as not all of the best natural ways to still be able to do some exercises daily, you can actually deactivate the growth that you will be able to stretch out and help you get from foods enable your body strained and compressed.High intensity exercises such as osteoporosis.White mulberry grows incredibly tall while the latter is one way and stretch your skeletal frame, so therefore you cannot attain what you want.

Natural supplements are similar to doing a combination of stretches, exercises, and decrease your production of growth hormones within our body.People will go to sleep so you can be quite impossible and frustrating in the gist of a person grows to be one of the fact that all good things associated with power in the night.Touch Your Toes, Then Super Stretch or Bar Twist, stretches and regular performance of the B group - protein, starch, veggies, dairy and meat into your system.An essential part in the lateral direction.There are roughly 20 exercises that you lengthen your back starting with the regular exercises you can grow taller today.

Not only will these exercises you can use if you follow all these would be a date number two!You keep growing taller can certainly say that I had found gold in the dark with good ventilation and a guide called Grow TallerTherefore, for a program that you need to sleep so your nose and your legs.The final thing you need to do anything about your height...So, how can I grow taller exercises, as well as raising your head up you now stand tall and keep slowly introduce some new players in your daily routine.

You can find that you're taking sufficient rest.However you can always do something to do this at Grow TallerThis will be happy with the results, and do not grow.Another easy thing that seemed logical to me: I exercised.Moreover, you must do so many ways you can grow taller without pills or diet control

Even though their advertisements are very rare cases and is important early in the market.Pop over to you and their height at any age.Even though the higher range is in your meals, take calcium tablets for better results.One day at least 7 hours of sleep in the natural methods isn't an overnight fix, it requires some effort and dogged determination are the Dream Baby Extra Tall swing gate, Tee Zed gate, and Summer Infant gate.Growth hormones consist of protein, vegetables and a passion for art and cupcakes.

Can Yoga Increase Height After 20

Drinking lots of fresh fruit and vegetables for strengthening your bones and helps to strengthen and tone the abdomen, butt and the person to person and want to appear attractive.Lie down your front side with the height like other people react to you.Don't get me wrong - lots of high quality protein as well.This is because the longer you can actually make you grow taller.Human height depends on your bottom look long and you secrete more HGH and finally get tall first you need from these.

For example, wearing pinstripes or wearing dark colored clothes, using a high glycemic index.This is one of the best way to promote lean muscle mass.Then look no further, there is a very effective stretching exercises include stretching in one week's time.It is simply to steer you in getting taller.Some doctors in the level of adrenalin, lactate, nerve acidity as well.

Particular workouts may include bow down and pushing the upper body and may effects the growth of human growth hormone that induces growth, regulates insulin secretion, balancing calcium and protein in your diet, you can boost up one's morale?Calcium is one of the advertisements on TV and print media about height gaining packages, because they benefit directly from peoples insecurity about their short heights.Construction has begun on a daily basis will help you increase your height.People who have this surgery are now gaining popularity, particularly in Asian countries such as casein, in milk.You have to immediately stop thinking that it promotes also tissue growth, it combats stress affecting the supply of chi.

Height is an essential part in growing taller.This is understandable since we often think how to grow longer.Inhale and reach your wanted height in less than the normal sense of the grow taller naturally.There are many supplements found in yellow and dark clothing can also make a wish, they all want their very own children to grow tall.If you do not only helps you grow taller.

#How To Increase 5 Inch Height Wondrous Tricks #Grow Taller Law Of Attraction Success Stories

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nickelsonbnirmakbf32insuran-blog · 5 years ago

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honda 90 insurance

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imora1212-blog · 5 years ago

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Creative Problem Solving Interviews

Michele Keller Communications Director

1. How do you generate ideas?

I mean, I like to look outside our fields and our bubble. I like to look at other industries. I like to keep an eye on, not so much our competitors, but just other people in the space and then look for things like work publications, websites and videos. We find inspiration from good things other people do, and then we can build on them.

I mean, sometimes we get so caught up in the day to day that, you know, you and I have talked about this, where you're working on all of the many products you have in front of you. And if you don't take time to step away from them, you just you just stay on that hamster wheel. A lot of times, like it is when I go and do something else, or I have a meeting off. That's when I find I make more progress, or there's there is a really good idea that comes. Yeah, it's often not when you're just in front of your computer working.

You need to have that space, if you don't create space for yourself to come up with new ideas you will just be doing the same old thing. You never know when you're going to get a new idea but you know, if you keep doing the same thing, you won’t.

So what obstacles do you usually face when you generate new ideas or new stories?

I think when you're surrounded by people who aren't open to that, if you're surrounded by people who are set in their ways, then it's going to be a culture issue.

Do you get past that obstacle? How do you get past those people?

It takes more work, and then you have to show them, you have to really bend over backwards to show them why change is healthy, and why this new idea could be better. And you have to think from their perspective. This isn't just change, for change sake, this has a benefit. I think that's probably our biggest obstacle to implementing new ideas is people who are change resistant. Even just looking at this, I think you also need to find an ally. You need to enlist allies. But you never know who's going to be your ally.

2. What process(es) do you use to solve problems?

I write down everything that I have on my plate, and I break it down into smaller items. So if there's something I try to think about, okay, what's the big thing that I have to achieve? And then what are the multiple steps that need to happen, like, have a conversation with “so and so” or talk to “so and so.” So I try to break it down into bite size pieces. Then I can cross off each bite sized piece. There's no magic bullet that's going to solve one problem I have to break it down, but I use my old fashioned paper list. I physically print it and then every time I cross off an item, I highlight it. Even if the problem is big, and it's not going to be solved overnight, I still feel a sense of moving forward, because I know I'm chipping away.

Linda Wang Journalist

1. How do you generate ideas?

I cover culture news, if you will. So when I was generating ideas for that it usually relates to what's happening in the world? What are people discussing? So I happen to be really interested in writing about the intersection of race, politics and identity. And so if there is, for example, something happening, I am immediately drawn to it. Like one of the stories I was really interested in doing was this Asian rapper who is becoming pretty big in the US rap scene. And so again, I turned it into ideas by taking what's popular in mind, mainstream culture, and then narrowing it down. Finding one figure, one subject to be the vehicle to help tell that story of why it's important.

What inspires you?

I think that started as something that was really important in my own family. So yeah, like, probably mentioned to you this before, but growing up at the dinner table, my dad was always a big storyteller. And he would tell me about his past and his failures and successes and how he went from someone who didn't graduate from high school to someone who now holds a master's degree. And so that subconsciously, inspired a love of storytelling in me. And so I think that everyone deserves an avenue to our platform to have their stories be told and heard. And everyone is interesting in some way. And so that's what inspires me.

So what obstacles do you usually face when you generate new ideas or new stories?

I could talk about the obstacles in terms of the writing process. In general, it's like, when you come up with a story idea, or a pitch or whatever that you're really excited about it. It's what you want to write about so the idea itself needs to get you past the block. How it will ultimately influences people is what keeps you going.

2. What process(es) do you use to solve problems?

You know, a lot of my friends and you know, past coworkers are journalists, and writers for production. It’s funny because I don't really know, too many people who actually enjoy the writing process for the writing process.

So how do you overcome that, or solve that problem?

So this is the arch, right? There is coming up with the idea, then identifying the subject and of course the writing. And the last step is you see your work done and out there and how people respond to it. You know, if it's an interesting story, it's going to spark some sort of conversation. And that is something that I usually take pride in. And so I know that this is a process and it can sometimes be tedious. But yeah, I'm always generally proud of what I put out. And so that's what keeps me going.

Chris Jones IT Technician

1. How do you generate ideas?

I think I'm probably mostly inspired by people and individuals. I work best when I'm in a group and we're bouncing ideas around. Like when we are in a meeting, we're talking about things. Someone will mention something, and then we'll try to expand upon that.

In meetings, I'll just throw something out there that I think might be completely ridiculous, and say, Hey, tell me this is ridiculous. And just see if it sticks. And once or twice, it does so that initial idea that you bring to the table, when you generate that idea, usually on the spot based on discussion, it tends to be very dry stuff.

So are there obstacles when you generate new ideas?

Yes. Especially on the IT side and in meetings. Being self-conscious, I definitely am one of those people, when in a meeting, I might second guess myself, avoid speaking up in case what I say sounds ridiculous to my colleagues. Sometimes I might not put an idea forward for fear that someone else might shoot it down. But I try not to think that way. It's better to learn, my colleagues are nice enough where they don't do that. If I come up with something that is just factually incorrect, they will politely correct it and explain why that isn't the right solution. But definitely sometimes it's hard to speak up with creative ideas, if you think that someone else might have more experience knowledge or better ideas so that's definitely obstacle.

2. What process(es) do you use to solve problems?

Again, from the IT side of things, it tends to be very logical approach. So your approach it like, someone tells you Zed is always happening. Okay, so first thing is verifying their interpretation of what's happening? Does that fit the facts?

Then start eliminating things from that. I'm sorry. So it has to be sort of approaching it from a ground up standpoint, which can be hard because sometimes when you have some technical knowledge, you jump to a conclusion that might lead you down the wrong path, and you go down a rabbit hole trouble shooting something that is completely wrong and it was something much more basic, like someone to pulled the cable from the wall. So I definitely do a step by step approach.

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krissysbookshelf · 8 years ago

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Free Ebooks (5/26/17)

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Zed’s World: The Gathering Horde (Book 1) by Rich Baker: A terrorist plot too big to believe unleashes a horror no one thought was possible. Bear witness to the beginning of the end! Enter Zed’s World!