#i literally put my blood into this project from the number of times i injured myself with a sewing needle and awl

[kah-way-loh]

The process of plushifying a 2005 Furby- under a read more so it doesn't clog the tag!

Firstly, I'd recommend starting with either FurbyTech or WalrusFurb's posts... or ideally both! These both give a better understanding of what a 2005 Furby looks like internally and how it's pieced together. My Furby, Pitaya, came to me broken to a severe degree and I didn't realize until I skinned her and plastic shards started falling out of her like confetti! Her fur was also stubborn, not wanting to come loose from the tabs all over... but I managed!

After the fur and feet are free, you can give them a wash. I opted to use a fursuit disinfectant spray instead since I already cleaned her in the past. I then sewed the feet to the main body with a ladder stitch after screwing the plastic of them together

Once you've removed the shells, you can work on taking out the eye mechanism. Since Pitaya was already so busted up, it took a short time to separate everything. Just a lot of screws to remove! And a lot of sharp plastic edges

[Image description: the blinking mechanism of a 2005 Furby, separate from the rest of the internal hardware. The eyes are open. End ID.]

Now, I don't like using hot glue or super glue. But for this, it was necessary to glue the lower eyelids in place to keep that structure from falling off. Aside from the now immobile lower lids, the rest of the eyes can still move freely!

Next was... the beak. Always my least favorite part of plushifying a Furby. I wanted to keep the mobility, so I created an armature with copper wire and set some cut toothpicks in place. Those didn't want to stay in place, so I, again, had no choice but to bust out the super glue and some beads

[Image descriptions: different angles of a 2005 Furby's beak with a handmade hinge mechanism made from copper wire, toothpicks, and wood beads. End ID.]

To attach that to the fur, I had to weave the same wire through the faceplate and the makeshift hinge. The smart way would be to use a heated tool to melt the holes in the plastic... I instead just jabbed an awl through and prayed it didn't break (PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO IT THE SMART WAY). While I was at it, I also did the same thing for the eyes and sewed some spare fabric over the back of the beak to keep stuffing from leaking through

[Image description: the inside-out fur of a 2005 Furby, with the handmade back mechanism attached and white fleece sewn over it. An extra wire on each side of the eye sockets has been pierced through the plastic faceplate. End ID.]

Now, I'm not sure if every 2005 has this, but Pitaya had a tab that held the fur to her face right above the beak, so I went ahead and used that as well as reinforced it with the wires. Without those wires the eyes would be very wobbly and not stay put

Finally I could flip her right side out, stuff her, and stitch her closed! Except I ran out of polyfill... so I'll leave her Velcro section open for now. But for the most part she's done!

[Image descriptions: a stuffed white and pink 2005 Passionfruit Furby. The first image has her eyes and beak closed, the second has her eyes open, the third has both her eyes and beak open, and the fourth is a profile view with her eyes and beak open. End ID.]

Okay so. Overall I absolutely love the end result, but the process was a 0/10 for me. I wouldn't do it again because 2005s are not easy to disassemble in the slightest and it was just a nightmare on my aching hands. I also probably did it in the most roundabout way to limit the amount of super glue I used (I'm sensitive to the smell of it) which added to the complication. Part of me wishes I actually sculpted or at least covered the beak, but I knew I was going to have a hard enough time with it so I didn't bother. For what it's worth, she still looks like a normal 2005 aside from the lumpy stuffing! I need to get more soon for other projects anyway

Feel free to try this if you're ambitious and committed enough, and try finding your own ways to make it easier!

[marshmallow-phd]

Catching Rain

Part of The Untamed - EXO Wolf Universe

Genre: Wolf!AU

Pairing: Minseok x Reader

Summary: You were more than satisfied with your life. You attended a nice college, had nice friends, a nice boyfriend. That’s what your life was: nice. You weren’t looking for anything more, so what were you to do when this seemingly harmless boy walked into your life and turned your nice little world into one much more dangerous?

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I Epilogue

**

The sound of your pencil tapping lightly against your notebook must have been annoying those around you, but you were too focused on the digital clock hanging above the professor’s head to care. Bright red numbers stole your attention; each time it changed you sat up a still straighter, scooted closer to the edge of your seat. The darkness of the room didn’t help. Even with the projector shining the notes you were supposed to be absorbing did nothing to block out the beacon. You were starving.

Okay, maybe not literally, but you were definitely ravenous. Breakfast had been the last thing on your mind this morning and now you were paying for it severely. A headache brewed right under the surface and your stomach gurgled and bubbled from the emptiness. The thought of leaving early did cross your mind, but that would have been rude, not to mention highly inconvenient since you were seated near the middle of the small lecture hall. It was best to avoid the dirty looks and low curses from those that you have to crawl over to get the stairs on the edge.

“And that ends the lesson for today.” The professor walked over to the side and flipped on the light. The sudden brightness made you squint, but it was worth the relief you felt. He’d ended the lesson a whole ten minutes early. You packed your belongs as quietly as possible while still keeping a listening ear. “Please look over chapter six, sections one and two before next class, there will be a two question quiz over the passages.” You scribbled a reminder down in the corner of your notebook and hopped up out of your seat. You weren’t the only one who had called it quits for the day even though the professor was still talking. “Don’t forget the first outline of your project is due next class as well, if it’s not turned in then it’s an automatic twenty percent deduction.”

Standing in line to shuffle out from the row of desks, you made a mental note to go over your outline one more time. You were already on the third stage of the project – gathering the necessary sources for the paper – but it was still a good idea to count your ducks and make sure they were lined up nicely.

You hurried to the cafeteria. The moment you were inside you hopped in the first line you saw, not bothering to take the time to consider your options. The line you were in was for the salads and sandwiches; boring food it was. Your stomach didn’t care if your taste buds weren’t going to be blown away today, it only needed sustenance. With your tray full, you moved over to the cash register and paid for your meal before finding a free table.

“Hungry much?”

Willa slid into the chair across from you, her own tray holding the spaghetti special. The buttery garlic smell drifted over to you and made your mouth water. You chewed slowly on your bland sandwich. Maybe later you could stop by for an afternoon snack….

“Already started without me, I see.” Eric dropped his bag in the half booth beside you and kissed the top of your head.

You smiled up at him. “Early bird gets the worm.”

“But the second mouse gets the cheese,” he countered as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

You leaned around him and stared at the long lines forming across the way. “I don’t think that second half applies here. You better get going before all the good stuff is gone.”

Erik followed your gaze. “Oh, crap. You’re right. Be right back!”

After swallowing a mouthful of noodles, Willa sighed. “You two are so cute.”

You snickered under your breath, but didn’t reply. Erik and you had met in World Music Appreciation your freshman year. In class, he was the slightly loud, slightly obnoxious kid who sat behind you with his friends. Somehow – and to this day you still weren’t sure the steps that led to it – you ended up in their study group for the final exam. You found that the boy who sat behind you was indeed funny, but also intelligent, generally entertaining to be around. After passing the exam that was much harder than any introductory music class should have been, you found yourself going out for celebratory pizza with him that morphed into your first date. The two of you had settled into a comfortableness with each other and you were happy.

As if trying to contradict you, Minseok’s face made an appearance in your mind. You shook the image of his smile away. That… that wasn’t good.

“Not hungry anymore?” Finally through the line, Erik sat down beside you and cracked open the can of pop he’d purchased. You looked down at the half-eaten sandwich in your hand. You hadn’t realized you’d stopped eating. The grumbling of your stomach hadn’t completely subsided, however, the bread and meat combination was no longer remotely appealing. Was this your “grass is always greener” moment?

To wave away the thoughts, you became playful again, reaching over and plucking a lob of cheese off the fresh slice of pizza on Erik’s plate and tossed in your mouth. “No, I just decided that your food looks better.”

“Well, then here.” Erik picked up your plate, took the sandwich out of your hand and slid his tray over to your side. “I’ll eat this.”

“No, Erik, give it back.”

“Seriously, (y/n), it’s fine.”

“Holy crap.”

Willa’s soft outburst stopped the playful argument in its tracks. “What is it?” Erik asked after taking a bite of your sandwich. Giving in, you nibbled on the pizza as you waited for the answer. Your taste buds cheered in victory. This was much better.

“A couple campers were attacked last night in the woods.” Willa’s eyes were trained on her phone, scanning the article that fed her the information. Whatever words she was reading, they must have been bad. Normally, Willa was the more upbeat, nothing-gets-her-down type. It must have been bad.

You leaned forward on the table. Your happy mood at the better-tasting meal as disappeared, replaced by worry. “What was it? Does it say?”

Willa swallowed thickly. “The one that was still awake said it was a wolf. A really big wolf.”

“The one that was still awake?”

“Yeah. I guess there were three of them. One died and one’s in the ICU. The third was only sort of injured when the park rangers found them.”

“Maybe he did it,” Erik said skeptically.

“I thought the same thing, but the police say the scene was consistent with an animal attack.” She clicked the lock button on the side of her phone and put it down. Her eyes flickered to you then back down at her food. It didn’t take a telepath to figure out where her mind had gone.

Erik threw an arm around your shoulders. “See why I don’t like the idea of you going out there by yourself?”

Guilt sunk your stomach. Now you really didn’t feel like eating. To try and hide it, you smiled up at him. “I’ve always understood, but you’re right, that’s a scary thing happen and it could happen to anyone.”

Satisfied, Erik removed his arm and turned his focus back to eating. You continued to pick at the cheese in order to throw off any suspicion. While the guilt of lying was still there, that wasn’t at the most forefront of your thoughts. As plausible as it was, you hoped that it wasn’t your wolf that attacked those people. Well, the wolf didn’t belong to you, but you couldn’t image such a creature killing a human being. He’d seemed to gentle and sweet to be able to do such a thing.

It was an animal, you reminded yourself. They ran on pure instinct. Besides, you didn’t know the whole story. Perhaps, if it was the same one you met in the clearing, he was provoked. Idiots were always teasing animals, whether at the zoo or the park. It was quite possible that the campers brought it upon themselves.

No. You shouldn’t think like that. A person died. Sighing, you pushed the tray away from you.

“Full?” Erik asked. You nodded and he picked up the remains of the pizza, devouring it in only a few short bites. You giggled at the grease stain left in the corner of his mouth. With the napkin, you wiped it away and started to feel somewhat at ease again.

**

Minseok was devastated. There was no other word for it. This- this was not a possibility he had imagined. How could fate be so cruel?

As he stood near the entrance of the cafeteria, he’d been overjoyed at spotting you, sitting alone at one of the hybrid tables near the middle of the large crowded room, devouring the food in front of you like Chanyeol at his favorite burger place. For a moment, he’d considered walking over and saying hi, but thought better of it since he wasn’t alone. Jongdae was chatting about his classes, laughing merrily with Jongin and Yixing beside him. All the noise was a simple hum in Minseok’s ears. His fellow students were nothing but blurs his peripheral; only you were in focus. One foot started your way despite his previous hesitation, but then another girl sat down across from you. He took that as a sign to slow down. Then a guy joined you, placing his bag down as if he owned that space beside you, and kissed your head. You beamed up at him.

The ground shook beneath his feet, vibrating his whole body. An elbow connected with his stomach and made him flinch. “Hey, you okay?” Jongdae asked.

“Yeah,” Minseok lied as he turned away from the sight that caused his blood to boil. The wolf had never been so hard to fight before. Human. He had to be completely human here. “But I think I’m going to take my food back to the lounge.”

“What? Why?”

“Is everything alright?” Yixing tilted his head in that way he always did when he was trying to read through the expressions on their faces. It was irritating at times, especially when they didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering them. He meant well, but he wasn’t learning to become that kind of doctor.

“Yeah, yeah.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, Minseok forced himself to turn away before he stormed across the cafeteria. The sure fire way of having you reject him would be to slam your boyfriend against the wall. Jongdae opened his mouth to counter, but Minseok was already moving into the line, grabbing a faded red tray still wet from the washer and sliding it across the three metal bars that kept the herd of college students at bay. He swiped up a plate with a lukewarm slice of pizza and kept going. Bypassing everything else, the last thing he grabbed was a can of flavored coffee from the open fridge before going to the register.

Jongdae pouted as Minseok waved goodbye and walked out of the building. His grip on the tray was strained, knuckles pale and tendons popping out from under the skin on the back of his hands. This complicated things well beyond the obstacles he already had in his way. And here he had the fairytale in his head, thinking he would simply meet you, continue to “coincidentally” run into you and get to know you until the two of you naturally fell in love and then… well, he didn’t exactly have a plan after that, but now that would really have to be put off while he figured out how to get past step one.

Arriving at the mathematics college where he spent most of his time, he made his way through the halls until he found the lounge reserved for the GTAs. There were tables where they studied and put together lesson plans as well as couches where more naps occurred than other types of casual reclining. Against one wall was a stereo equipped with Bluetooth while a TV and game console sat across the way. It was a room where they could relax and bounce ideas off each other. The place was empty at the moment, most of the usual occupants either in class or eating lunch with their friends.

Minseok sat down at one of the tables. He aggressively chewed on the pizza as he tried not to think about what he saw a few minutes ago. And here he thought eventually telling you that he was a wolf was going to be the hard part. A large group came in then, happily talking amongst themselves. Spotting Minseok, they joined him. Sungkyu took the seat to Minseok’s right and dropped a heavy binder on the table.

“Sometimes I wonder why I took this job,” Sungkyu grumbled.

So much for peace and quiet. Oh, well, hopefully this would serve as a nice distraction. Minseok could go back to planning his next step later, once he’d calmed down a bit.

“Having fun with the freshman?” Minseok teased. As GTAs, that was the main group they taught. Not all classes were bad, but it usually took a while for some of them to realize that college was much more serious than high school.

“Actually, it’s not a freshman.” Opening the binder, Sungkyu pulled out a few papers stapled together. A sticky note covered the name written at the top, but the red ink that dictated the score was out for the world to see. “She’s close to our age, a senior, but she put this class off until the last minute. And I’m starting to see why. I don’t want to fail her, but….”

“Just give her an extra credit project,” Varya suggested between sips of her peach tea.

“Like what?”

Changmin was the first to have an idea. “Have her put together a project that applies the math to whatever her major is.”

Sungkyu wrinkled his nose at the idea. “That sounds complicated. She’s an arts major.”

“Get someone to help her with it.”

“Are you volunteering?” Varya snorted. Changmin was… charming and used it quite well, to put it mildly. “Who is it? Maybe I’ll help.”

Sungkyu peeled back the sticky note. “(y/n) (l/n).”

Minseok nearly choked on his food. Was this fate giving him a Get Out of Jail free card?

Varya shrugged. “Never heard of her.”

“I’ll do it!” The word were out before Minseok could figure out how to say them without sounding overeager. Everyone at the table was staring at him, confused. He wasn’t the kind to volunteer for these sort of things. He wasn’t the kind to add additional interactions to his schedule; he was too much of an introvert for it.

“You hate any sort of tutoring,” Sungkyu pointed out.

“I need it… for my resume.” He didn’t even have a resume. At least not a serious one. The last time he’d put together the paper bragging about himself was for a class three years ago. The file was probably somewhere on his laptop, but he doubted he would ever actually add something like this to it.

While Changmin and Varya still eyed him curiously, Sungkyu simply shrugged. “Whatever. This is only if she agrees to do it, anyway.”

“If she wants to graduate, she’ll do it.” Standing up, Varya threw out the remaining ice in her reusable cup and slipped her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you guys later. I’ve got a research paper that’s not going to write itself.”

In an overdramatic fashion, Changmin placed his hand over his heart and looked to the ceiling. “If only they did. My school career would be so much easier.”

Sungkyu rolled his eyes. “And yet completely negate the purpose of it all.” Changmin wasn’t bothered by the comment at all, pulling out his phone and scrolling through his social media as he leaned back in his chair. Sungkyu replaced the sadly scored paper and closed his binder. “Are you free tomorrow a little after four?” he asked Minseok. “I want to try and catch her after class. I’m sure she’ll agree to do the extra credit, but maybe having you right there to say you’ll help will nudge her if she’s on the fence about it.”

“Absolutely.” There was no way Minseok was going let this opportunity go. Maybe this was the better way to go about it. The two of you would be spending time together while he helped you with this project; endless time just you and him. He could get to know you, learn about what you liked and disliked, where you saw yourself going and where you’d already been. Then he could properly fight for your heart, win his mate over the right way. The excitement of what awaited him was almost too much. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

**

You wanted to disintegrate there in your seat.

Right on the front of the homework you just received back was a sticky note asking you to stay back after class. Never had you want a period to not end, to go on and on in a cycle of torture. You knew it was about it your recent grades. It wasn’t as if you weren’t trying. But this subject had never been your strong suit and recently it had been harder to grasp the concepts. You were an arts student, a photographer. When were you ever really going to need to know how to find the function of x after this?

Unfortunately, the end came and you stayed seated while the younger students happily skipped out of the classroom. When it was only the two of you left, you got up and walked over to the desk.

“That bad, uh?” you said in an attempt to lighten your own mood.

Sungkyu, at least, seemed a little sympathetic. “I’ve seen worse.”

“Well, not everyone can be a math genius.”

“No. That’s why I’m going to give you a chance to make up the points.”

You perked up. This was… somewhat good, given your mind had wondered if he was going to suggest you drop the class for now and try again later, under a different teacher. “Really?” You couldn’t help but feel like a rabbit jumping for a carrot hanging in the air. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”

“Good.” Sungkyu reached behind him and plucked up a sheet of paper before leaning back against the desk. “I’ve got an outline here that’ll explain the project in detail.” He handed it over to you before continuing. “The basics, though, are pretty much just write a paper of how the subject relates to your major.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. Clearing your throat, you said, “O-okay. I think I can do that. Except….”

“You don’t know where to start?” Sungkyu guessed. You nodded. “That’s alright. I’m not going to make you do it alone. I’ve enlisted some help for you. Minseok?”

In from the hallway strolled in the very same Minseok you’d run into the day before. There was no way…. You nearly laughed out loud. This couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, could it? But the manner in which he shyly waved at you and fidgeted from foot to foot told you that it might be.

“Minseok will help you with the research and come with ideas. He’ll also help you with the examples that way you get all the points. Is that alright?”

Your stomach did a backflip. This meant the two of you would be spending time together – alone. Which wasn’t anything unusual; you’d had project partners of the opposite sex before, but none of them sent your heart leaping either. Perhaps it would be best to keep this on a need-to-know basis for the time being. Smiling, you looked at the expectant GTA.

“Peachy.”

[satansbootycheeks]

please don’t take my sunshine away

Wes Johnson/Joshua Ovenshire Tags: Gang Violence, Blood, Angst, Fluff, Gun Mentioned, Injury, Hurt and comfort, Weshire - Freeform

The soft shut of a door.

A feeble attempt at calling for help.

A body collapsing to the ground.

•••

It had been a few too many hours since Joven’s roommate should have returned from work, and he couldn’t help but worry. What if’s flew through his head, imagining the worst. He pictured his love’s body stuffed out of sight in a dark alley. He pictured a car in flames on the side of a road, Wes’s beautiful figure trapped inside. Joven pushed these thoughts away, assuring himself that the other man had just been held back finishing an editing job. Yet, wouldn’t Wes have texted him? No, he had just forgotten, or maybe lost track of time. But…

Joven was pulled from his thoughts as he heard the door to his shared apartment open. He let out a relieved breath. “Thank god Wes, I was starting to…” Joven was cut off by the sound of a shaky “Joven, help…” and a thump. Joven’s heart stopped. He raced toward the sound. ‘Oh dear God, please no. Please…’

•••

Wes felt terribly for not texting Joven that he had been held back at work, finishing up a project. His poor friend would be worried half to death. He pulled out his phone to send an explanation as he packed his equipment into the trunk of his car. Before he could begin typing, however, he became aware of a car slowly pulling up to park mere inches from his own.

As his workplace wasn’t in the safest part of town, this was especially unnerving, so Wes reached for the gun he had packed in his trunk for his planned trip to the shooting range the next day. He cursed under his breath as he recalled his empty magazine, as per the rules of the shooting range. Hopefully the sight of his being armed would deter the creeps.

He peered at the four men now exiting the threatening car and caught sight of two of them visibly wielding knives. His blood chilled as he realized they were creeping toward him. He tore the gun from his trunk and held it pointed at them, trying to steady his trembling hands. The men stepped back, caught off guard, but they seemed to remember their clear number advantage, and spread so that they were approaching Wes, now more quickly, from several angles.

Wes, becoming more and more panicked, frantically aimed his gun from man to man. However, he was painfully aware of his disadvantage, not only in number, but also ammunition. Wes heard the men chuckle as he backed away. He felt his back collide with a wall and his body went cold. He had quite literally backed himself into a corner.

One of the men without a knife approached him, a revolting grin on his face. Wes aimed his gun at the man, but he knew it was no use. This must have shown on his face, because the man just smirked cockily and swatted Wes’s gun to the ground. The man then proceeded to strike Wes directly on the cheekbone, and Wes felt his head jut out awkwardly to the side. He painfully turned his head forwards and landed a blow directly to the attacker’s stomach. The man doubled over, but one of his cohorts rushed over, this time one with a knife, and pinned Wes to the wall, knife to his throat.

This new threat let out a low growl as he gestured to his accomplices to join him. They eagerly complied, and Wes shrunk into the wall. The other man with a knife jabbed it into Wes’s stomach, almost jovially. Wes couldn’t help but cry out, but his shout was met by a hand roughly shoved over his mouth, smashing his head against the wall. Wes was rendered helpless as the men beat him and slashed at his body.

Seemingly having gotten their point across, or possibly having gotten bored, the men released him and quickly got into their car and drove away. Wes slumped to the ground, every inch of his body searing with pain. He half crawled across the ground to retrieve his useless weapon, then drug himself into his vehicle. Somehow, he managed to drive himself home.

Wes stumbled into the apartment with one thought in his mind. Joven. Joven could help him. Wes feebly called for his love before the world went black.

•••

The sight before Joven was straight from his nightmares. Wes was crumpled on the floor, blood pouring from several gashes all over his body. Bruises were already forming where he had been struck by the gang members. Joven rushed to the unconscious man’s side, screams escaping his lips. His hands trembled as he dialed 911, and he begged for an ambulance between sobs. Once help was promised, Joven pulled Wes’s broken body onto his lap. He held Wes’s darling face to his, and rocked back and forth, weeping.

•••

In the hospital room, Joven sat by Wes’s side, eyes never leaving the man’s beautiful, bloody face. A tear fell from Joven’s eye onto Wes’s cheek, and he delicately wiped it away.

The steady beep of the heart monitor should have comforted him, reassuring him that his best more-than-friend was still alive, but it only served as a constant reminder of this living nightmare. It had been hours since Joven had been so relieved by the sound of Wes returning home, only to be met with a cruel reality.

Now, gently holding his love’s hand, normally so strong but now so weak, he pleaded with fate to give him back the one he loved so dearly. He whimpered as he confessed his love to Wes’s unhearing ears. Joven’s heart ached for moments gone by when he hadn’t expressed his love for the other man out of fear, but now all he wanted was for Wes to know how much Joven loved him, no matter what.

Joven lowered his face to the sheets by the other man and hopelessly weeped into them. Just then, he felt the hand held in his own twitch. His head shot up, and he called for the nurse as Wes’s eyes fluttered open.

•••

Wes slowly regained consciousness, blinking against the bright lights above him. The world appeared faded and blurred, but Wes could see an almost fully white room surrounding him, and his Joven above him, shouting something that Wes didn’t understand to someone Wes couldn’t see. He felt Joven’s hand in his, and tried to squeeze it, but only then did the excruciating pain rush back to him.

Wes screamed as he became acutely aware of everywhere he had been stabbed and beaten. He felt his Joven carefully caress his face, comforting him, murmuring words that Wes couldn’t make out but he knew to be of consolation. He stared into Joven’s warm eyes as he hyperventilated and shook, both out of fear and out of pain, and hot tears ran down his cheeks. In his peripheral vision, he saw a woman dressed in white hurry to his side, but he only cared about his precious, beautiful, perfect Joven.

•••

Joven’s heart felt as though it was as injured as Wes as the man’s eyes gazed into his own and his body convulsed. Thinking that Wes was having a seizure, he shrieked to the nurse, but she assured Joven that Wes was only hyperventilating. Only barely reassured, Joven turned his attention back to his beautiful Wesley. His beautiful, broken Wesley. His eyes blurred and burned with tears, and he brought Wes’s hand to his lips. He observed the softness in the other man’s eyes as he did so, and he felt his heart warm.

This feeling was only momentary, however, as the doctor entered and explained that she would be putting Wes to sleep for emergency surgery. Joven felt worry course through his veins, but he had no hope but to trust the doctor to save his love’s life.

•••

Wes came to hours later, the operation having succeeded and his wounds having been stitched up. He weakly turned his head to observe Joven, asleep on a couch near his own bed. Wes then realized how his pain had subsided, though he attributed in part to the various painkillers he had probably been given. But still, his body didn’t ache nearly as much. He gazed at the beautiful man peacefully asleep near to him, and ached to reach out and kiss him, but he still felt contented to see Joven, at least momentarily, calm. He turned his head again to the ceiling and felt himself fall out of consciousness once more.

•••

Months after the terrifying attack, Wes had been almost fully healed, going to physical therapy for the bones that had been found to be broken, but the nightmare was almost completely over for him and Joven. After Wes had been released from the hospital, Joven had slaved over him, caring for him day and night. Wes couldn’t help but enjoy the attention just a little bit.

Along with caring for Wes, Joven had also been almost obsessively telling him how much he loved him, and Wes had been doing the same. The two men had shared many kisses and (delicate) cuddles, never wanting to not be touching the other. Despite the tragic situation they were in, they were so disgustingly happy to be alive and in love.

And that was all that mattered to them.

[bitchryver]

controversial opinion you should give us your bi aelin headcanons

sorry this took so long to answer I’ve been on a hunt for receipts x

aelin ashryver is bisexual: a summary

-I’m indebted forever to @blackbeaktrash for pointing this out to me but uhhh remember that post about how Mulan Korra and the short one from the time traveling lesbian game all had one thing in common- the bisexual hair cut ? hello aelins fresh chop in HoF

- the assassin and the desert. every single line. is a wlw tragedy romance ripped straight from a mythology.

- let’s get some direct quotes from the gay awakening that was the assassin and the desert:

~

“Celaena tried not to look too interested, though the girl was one of the most stunning people she’d ever beheld.”

~

“And somehow, the thought of returning to Rifthold without Ansel was a tad unbearable.”

~

“Celaena couldn’t stop her lips from trembling as she asked, “Was it ever real?”

“Ansel opened one eye, staring at the far wall. “There were some moments when it was. The moment I sent you away, it was real.”

~

“ And I think she sent you away because she truly cared for you.

She hated her mouth for wobbling. “That doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

-like Sam is nice rip but I refuse to believe he was aelins first love interest when ansel exists

- i understand where people are coming from when they talk about malide being canon if manon was a man but….i present example a- ansel and celaena the original gay love story to never happen and yet be laced with romantic chemistry

-anyway read the gayssassin and the desert

-aelin describing every woman she meets as beautiful and ethereal and then men are like…’he was tall. he had sword’

- yrene in tab: ‘wow I’d love to travel and be a healer so I could help people’

-aelin, emptying her pockets: you’re so pretty I love you here’s a sack full of cash is that enough? You’re so talented ily

-she loves swords & swords belong to the gays

-aelin calling cha0l ugly the first time she meets him…compared with yrene, a straight woman who’s immediately attracted to him…..Noah fence but….that was her gaydar trying to warn her :/

-aelins the only one who calls out these dumb ass white frat boys on their privilege and their upper class straight man bullshit!!shes having none of it !!!

-doriman in tog: “hey aelin? would you ever consider putting your life at risk and jeopardizing your safety to be with me?”

-aelin, right before she goes to have breakfast in bed with her beloved idol nehemia:

-while we’re on the subject, aelin taking literal WEEKS to notice if a mans attractive or not but describing every woman she meets as good looking within SECONDS even if she hates them

-Like LOOK

-I mean I cannot relate to the straight experience but I cannot imagine this is how a straight woman talks about women

-SHE DOESNT EVEN LIKE LYSANDRA AND SHES ALL IN THERE TALKING ABOUT HER ‘SENSOUS MOUTH’ IN QOS i mean

-aelin: the woman was built like a mythical goddess…she radiated beauty and sensuality from every pore

-aelin : this is rowan he’s my husband and he’s built like a TANK

-It took aelin six months to realize he was hot compared to literally everybody else who wanted to jump him mere seconds after meeting him(with the exception of manon, a proud lesbian but anyway)

-girl cannot sit in a fucking chair properly!! always throwing herself sideways or dangling off of it or slouching in it or something

-spitting jewels out of her mouth? Performing foreplay in a room full of powerful men and borian? gay

-i don’t know about you gals but I always get a ring engraved to give to my personal (straight)friends when I ask them to spend the rest of their life with me…

-when Rowan’s like ‘aw man can’t wait to get back and go to bed with my wife’ and the next line is like ‘aelin and lysandra were lying together, asleep’

-aelin saw the absolute straight man manic pixie nonsense quail and dorito were throwing at her and was like ‘bummer uhhh fuck both of you?’ instead of wasting her life and energy on men who didn’t appreciate her that’s all bi energy babes!

-aelin and manon having a metaphorical dick measuring contest but with swords

-aelin polishing nesryns dagger and dreaming of buying her a new one

-aelin telling kale that nesryn can speak for herself !!! Shut up!!!

- nesryn: mind your own business brullo lmao #nosy as fuck

-aelin, who had a dagger at this woman’s back not even 12 hours earlier:

-Aedion: haha…so aelin only invited nesryn out to have drinks with us because she needed an extra pair of hands because I was injured….what a smart strategic move

-aelin: nesryn you look lonely do you want to come with us ? Tell me about yourself. What’s your family like? How do you get your hair so smooth? Do you want my social security number?

-aelin loved nehemia so much she dumped stale whitebread and got written off as a terrible character by the Discourse Police: Cha0l Division. that’s love.

-attempting to murder the man ur fuckin after he’s involved in the murder of your beloved gay friend? hm. not a straight aura but #prove #me #wrong

-aelin keeps all her nails long except her sword hands so she can keep the aesthetic and weapon functionality but also keep a gay functionality

- in tower of dawn whomst does aelin write to? out of every one of the royal family ? lesbian icon and love of my life Hasar. aelin sensed incredible chaotic gay wlw energy from ACROSS the sea and knew immediately where the real power was. gaydar in action

- aelin has impeccable taste in fashion and upholstery, unrivaled by any other person in tog

-listen I live with 2 straight people and I promise you. The only one who cares enough about proper home decor, mood lighting and pretty things that were very expensive- is the gay one: me

-all the men hate her all the women love her lmao that says it all

- chaotic disaster gay aelin ashryver. Hurricane wlw nightmare woman tearing through these streets

-made a post about it here already but aelins like ‘fuck I can’t like manon but her fucking sword is so cool jesus christ’ that’s gay

- when aelin finds out manon graciously allowed snorian to have sex with her: I do NOT approve but go ahead ruin ya life lol

-when aelin finds out manon left elide alone in oakweld: what the FUCK did you do to that precious beautiful angel were it not for the laws of this land-

-MANON ‘LESBIAN’ BLACKBEAK herself says aelin radiates a gay aura she’s disappointed when she meets her in eos because all the batshit chaotic neutral gay has been depleted from her due to over exposure to straight men

-manons entire arc re: aelin in eos was ‘i should rip her throat out but i get where this stupid gay is coming from so’

-aelin giving a woman she’s just met the necklace her abuser gave her on her 16th? power move. gay power move.

- i love her so much but she’s. so goddamn stupid. and that’s such a mood

- Getting My Whole Ass Out To Prove Were Platonic Friends …that’s a level of denial I can’t even cover

-don’t know if I said it earlier but when aelin asks Lys to join her and lys says oh are you proposing, aelin..doesn’t say no lmao she’s just like ‘tragically I find myself with a life partner’

-lysandra sleeping on aelins lap while aelin downs 2 bottles of wine and flirts with ansel, while all the men look on annoyed that aelin did all of their jobs for them- gay imagery

- listen if ansel ‘murdered my boyfriend of 5yrs saving the girl I knew for a month’ briarcliff approves of you then…you’re gay. you just are.

-aelin ’ill murder you if so much as make EYE CONTACT with any of my women’ ashryver

- I said it already but. There is no better way to indicate that you are living life as our lady sappho intended than having a plethora of boring straight men hate you.

-That’s one of the things you need to have before they let you be gay

-aelins the only character who’s like- you know what I’m missing from my life? Women. I should go out and meet more of those

-killing the man who murdered your beloved friend in the exact same way he tortured her killing the man who set it up and basking in his blood am I right ladies

-aelin acknowledging she’s pretty because she works at it ? Maybe the only ya fantasy character who cannonically exfoliates, moisturizes, and uses toner and serum??? And you except me to sit here and assume she’s straight ???? In this economy ?????

-and yeah I’m absolutely 100% projecting because i love her. maybe blonde emotional chaotic bisexual fashion icons should look after each other now and then.

what do I know i clearly missed the gay memo where we all hate her now or something lmaooo anyway

[killian-whump]

10, 19 and 34 for the asks :)

Sorry for the slight delay, Nonny… but I’m remarkably lazy and I had to scroll back, like, two whole pages on my blog to see what the questions were for those numbers and the fact that I literally put it off multiple times because that seemed like soooo much work should probably answer a lot of questions people have about me, like why I don’t post more stories or do more liveblog responses to things or even finish any of the projects I start or some days make it out of bed at all. At any rate…

10. Name one character you would love to see/read whump of but can’t find any.Oh, daaaaaaaaaaaaayum, that’s a good question. Generally speaking, if I really wanna whump somebody and there isn’t any whump of ‘em… I just write some for myself. So I’m gonna take that out of the equation for my answer to this, because otherwise there wouldn’t be anybody XD

That said, I was dismayed at the veritable lack of whump for Sesshoumaru in Inuyasha. He gets super hardcore blasted by Inuyasha at one point (it’s when he meets Rin) and he sort of lays in the grass and recuperates, but… eh. It did nothing for me, really. He also lost an arm early on in the series, but it was really more like a “Yo, your arm’s gone.” “Meh. They’re like kidneys. You only need one.” “That’s… not true at all, but okay?” and that was about it.

But usually, for me… It goes the opposite way around when it comes to me picking favorite characters. Like, if they have a good enough whump scene somewhere… LOOK AT MY NEW FAVORITE, EVERYBODY! And absolutely no one is even polite enough to act surprised. It’s terrible.

I will say that I spent a LOT of my teens and twenties lusting after musicians and rock stars, and that was kinda a weird time for me. Sometimes, I’d be lucky and they’d have done a video or photo shoot that involved some peril or bondage… but usually not. I did write a lot of RPF then, but I never shared it with anybody XD Hey, a girl can have terribly inappropriate dreams, can’t she?! (The correct answer there is YES, of course she can, with the strikeout or without it ;))

The worst for me was my obsession with Oasis. I loved them SOOOO hardcore and there was just… nothing. I mean, the ugly band member who got kicked out before I even got interested in them got buried in one of their early videos, but that was no good. Noel and Liam did ONE photo shoot sometime early on where their wrists were tied with some comically large blue rope and I literally bought a $10 magazine imported from Japan just to get my own copy of the pictures (this was before every picture ever made of every celebrity was just a click away online). That’s probably the most desperate I’ve ever been XD

Oh, another not-quite-the-answer-but-sort-of-the-answer would be Lorenzo Lamas in the 90s TV show Renegade. Check out that HIGH GRADE 90s era schlock right there. Action! Drama! Random Hot Chick! Fighting! Explosions! Hot Man Pouring Water Over Himself in Scorching Desert Heat! Wait, what? I loved this show, because it was basically just eye candy for women and that’s always nice. And it seemed like Reno Raines ended up tied up or injured in almost every show, to the point that young KW was pretty sure someone working on that program knew exactly what they were doing. At any rate, it seems like there’s about 10 copies of this show on DVD in existence and the rest are all figments of our imaginations, so there’s only some clips in the same potato quality as that opening sequence I linked to, so while I know the whump exists and I’ve seen it and it’s great and I wanna relive it… I can’t T_T

But seriously… TELL me you don’t wanna see this get whumped:

19. If you were a character in a whump scene, would you be the caretaker, the whumper, or the whumpee?Well, if I could only be ONE, I’d be the caretaker. *smooshes all the whumpees to her bosom* MY BABIES and the caretaker. I have role-played some scenes as a whumpee, but it’s not really something I’m comfortable with in a general sense. That said, I tend to write a lot of whump scenes from the POV of the whumpee, but that’s mostly because it makes more sense that way, seeing as how the whumpee is usually the main character and the villain is someone I made up five minutes ago and named Bob, because it was the first thing that came to my mind. Also, exploring the scene through the whumpee’s point of view allows me to enjoy all their pain and peril even more voraciously. From the whumpee’s POV, you can share details about how hopeless they feel and how their heart is aching to see their beloved one more time before they die in this hell and how every breath is agony… Whereas the POV of the whumper generally amounts to, “He looks so pretty covered in blood. Wait a minute. What if… there was even more of it?! I’M SUCH A GENIUS. Come here, cutie-pa-tootie…. Why is he running away?!” and you can just as easily have them SAY that TO the whumpee whilst simultaneously detailing the shudders running down the whumpee’s spine at hearing those words and knowing the hell they’re in for… *content sigh*

34. Screaming in pain or crying and whimpering?I answered this one already, actually… but I’ll do it again :) I almost always prefer crying and whimpering! Screams are such short-lived little things, aren’t they? But crying and whimpering… Well, that’s a lifestyle choice ;)

You Guys Can Ask Me Whump Questions If You Want

I won’t have to scroll back as far if you do, because the link is here now :D

[caddy-whump-us]

I got tagged by @the-wandering-whumper!

Name: Cat

How old were you when you first realized you liked guys getting hurt?: I'm not completely sure, but I can definitely remember really liking any kids' cartoon that had the characters getting captured or kidnapped for an episode or two--and I still have an inclination towards captivity whump. I know that by the time I was a teenager and getting into animanga, I got into Gundam Wing and X/1999 and I really did like seeing Quatre and Kamui getting thrown around (those two especially).

What was that very first scene you remember gave you those glorious butterfly feelings?: Probably the scene in Disney's Robin Hood where Robin Hood's disguise at the archery tournament is literally sliced off him and Prince John just says "Seize him" and the next thing you know he's pounced on by guards and he's all wrapped up in chains and ropes and looking helpless.

Or else it was a scene in a Wonderworks cartoon where a werewolf has captured a young human character in a forest, rendered them unconscious, and then the character wakes up tied sitting in wooden chair with tall sides (so the character's hands are tied above their head to each side) and they wake up pulling on the ropes and saying, "Please let me go!" but the werewolf is very precisely telling them that he is going to bite them at midnight so they'll turn into a werewolf too--I literally recreated this scene secretly in my room with my toys I liked it so much.

Bonus for the text-based choose-your-own-adventure RPG computer game I played in 5th grade where one of the paths ended with "you" being captured, tied up, and dumped off the back of a truck in the woods (and I always pictured a boy character for this).

And there's an episode of the original TMNT where April is held captive by Shredder for, like, the whole episode and it was my secret fave, but that centers around a female characters, so does that count?

When and how was it that you realized “Hey, I’m not so messed up in the head!” and that there’s a definition and community for this sort of thing?: I guess I never really thought I was all that "messed up" for liking this (after all, they put these scenes in kids' movies), but it seemed like it was just something that one wasn't supposed to talk about. It was a bit like liking scary movies: some people like it, but it's creepy to most people, so it's not polite to talk about it. (I was always afraid of getting in trouble if someone found some of my writings and drawings, but some of it was more vent art than whump stuff.)

I played out some whumpy scenes in my LJ and DW RP days without knowing the terminology for it at the time ("hurt/comfort" was a more common term then) and wrote whumpy stories with OCs for years and years. But it's only been in the last few months that I've realized there's a separate, identifiable community just for these kinds of scenes, even though I've been either imagining or writing them for ages. And y'all are the nicest bunch of sadists I've ever met, it's really true.

What’s your favorite whump trope?: The Helpless Look. You know the one. It's the face-down/eyes-up, soft mouth look when a whumpee is good and stuck and hurting or about to hurt. It's so good. (Weirdly young Hugh Grant makes this face a lot--albeit in non-whump scenes?)

Along with that or following after it is the Submissive Look Down, which is like, so yummy, with the whumpee both feeling helpless and afraid and accepting of the circumstances. Bonus points for a little heavy breathing here.

Helplessness seems to be a recurring theme for me and whump. It may be why I really like whumpees in bandages too--especially kind of trying to get on with things despite hurting. Patched-up and bandaged is a great look for whumpees.

But I'm also a fan of Tied Up and Tied to a Chair and Tied Down to a Bed. Chained to the Wall with a Collar is good, and so are cages, but I'm really more fond of just Tied Up.

I do like a good beatdown, sure, but I really seem to like a lot of "non-traditional" whump, like non-con body mods (ear piercing or tattoos or traumatic haircuts). Surprise, whumpee: you're now part of a human experimentation project, so hold still while we ink on your identification numbers with a needle. Or, oh, hey, the whumper just carved a magic sigil into the whumpee body, making the whumpee into an unwilling magical familiar and storage space for the whumper's spare magical energy.

What’s a whump trope that you hate?: Mindless or aimless physical beatings. It just gets boring to me? I really need some connection between the characters or something to make the situation more interesting. I'm also not a huge fan of whump by inanimate object--like a car accident, say--unless there's some good focus on the aftermath.

What’s your favorite whumped character?: I'm honestly not into all that many fandoms and I've found I really dig OC whump, strange as that sounds. But if I have to choose, I'll look to my past: Kamui Shiro from X/1999 is so pretty when he bleeds or when he's wearing all kinds of bandages.

Quatre from Gundam Wing takes a stab to the gut with a broken fencing foil late in the series and I loved that (and the dozens of doujinshi where Trowa comes to his rescue after) along with the Zero Wing mind-control stuff (again, rescue).

Now for the last several years, I've been hung up on Cain Hargreaves from Godchild/Cain Saga. He's got a painful childhood (which is another issue), but he takes a few hits now that he's grown. He's quite pretty when he's helpless. Now, his faithful servant Riff gets fully whumped on several occasions, which leads to some wonderful emotional whump for Cain, so that's a win-win.

And Setsuna Monou from Angel Sanctuary is great for blood and bandages and drama--he’s a bit spunkier than some, but he gets whumped quite a bit too, and he’s pretty, so it’s nice.

I really think Kamui and Quatre are the base elements for my favorite OC whumpee Julian.

What’s that whumped scene(s) that you’ve watched over and over again. (We know you do it and we understand): I actually don’t have an answer for this? I’m really not into a lot of fandoms (especially not television or movie fandoms), so I’m going to have to skip this one.

Bullet or stab wounds?: Stab wounds, for sure. They're somehow...slower? More intimate? Don't get me wrong: a good bullet wound is fine too (and I wrote a very long big bang fic about the Clint Eastwood character The Man With No Name that involves both bullet wounds and a no-holds-barred beatdown--it's on my ao3 if you want to see it, wink wink). But I love knives--for stabbing characters, slicing characters, holding to their throat, &c. Mmmm good stuff.

Fevers or Hypothermia?: Fevers! Hypothermia doesn't really do it for me, but I bet there's some good whumpy hypothermia that would. But, of the two, fevers: whumpees confined to bed, with caretakers (grumpy ones, kind ones, unwilling ones, resigned ones), labored and shuddering breathing, chills and sweats, delirium, bad dreams, glittery feverish eyes--I love it.

Emotional or physical?: Psychological, actually. That is, what the whumper is doing might or might not be all that painful physically, but the psychological toll might be higher than the physical. I think it’s somewhere between emotional whump and physical whump--or it unites the two.

If I have to choose between the two, though? Physical, but I really need some emotional involvement in it. It's not just about the physical, it's also the emotional (whether I know what the emotional whump is because I know the story or I'm picking up/projecting the story).

Injured and asks for help or tries to cover it up?: Both of these are so good! I think it depends on the character and what's going to make for more delicious whump, really. Because I've got some OCs who are delicious when they're hurt and asking for help and others who are amazing when they try to tough it out.

My fondness for helplessness really does mean I like both.

Lastly, does anyone know about this addiction of yours?: Not...that I know of? Now, someone might and they just haven't told me that they know. I was always down for a whumpy scene in my LJ/DW RP days, but that wasn't so unusual there--it was all for the sake of character angst (as we called it then). I've not confessed to my addition to anyone, though. So there you have it.

Pass this on!

[on-the-wings-of-hope-prose-en]

Immunity

Hope dies last.

But how could have Gale hoped for anything right now, when the last hopes of the dying alive humanity were rapidly crumbling into thousands of tiny shards, precisely like the fragments of a broken mirror, in which it, humanity, in a moment of brief spiritual insight, was able to behold itself for a brief moment of its history?

Hope for salvation. Hope for earthly life. For the life after death. Is there one?

Today, by some kind of a miracle, Gale finally managed to get inside into one of the overcrowded churches, where divine services had been held without stopping for several months already. All over the planet, the temples of the three world religions have been crowded for a long time, during both day and night. Now, when the so glorified by earthly materialists science could not answer the challenge thrown by natural forces, people tried to find it in their appeals to the Gods.

Now, standing at a distance from the altar of the temple in the sea of other people pressing down on him from all sides and towering over them like a two-meter giant, Gale observed. He needed to understand what was driving these people now when they had almost no hope left to bear. What made them appeal to those of whose very existence this earthly life had made them doubt time and again?

Faith in the possibility of salvation? Fear of devouring nothingness that is opening its greedy mouth? Love for everything they have created – including the very nature that has become so deadly?

As for Gale, until the events of recent years, he believed only in science. It has been his holy grail for many years of life. It, with due diligence, observation, and long experimentation, was able to grant humanity an answer to any question and challenge... if you do not take into account the existence of a Higher Mind.

A sea of human faces. An ocean of emotions. A kaleidoscope of feelings. Raised either in prayers or silent threats, lowered in despair hands. Would anyone see them, would anybody hear this voiceless speech? Gale possessed no answer to this question that had been tormenting him for so long. The day of the answer has not come yet.

* * *

“Mining of antibodies. Participate in a volunteer program to test new vaccines. Earn pharmacoins. Give your answer to novovirus!”

A huge holographic billboard floated around the corner of the skyscraper right in front of Gale’s eyes as soon as he stepped out into the central square. Gale grimaced in disgust. The endless attempts to create vaccines will all die in vain. It’s never possible to accurately predict the shape of something that changes every moment of its existence.

“Virt-club “Pleasure”. There is no fear of death. There is life’s pleasure!”

A three-dimensional rainbow-colored hologram of a girl with her legs spread wide enlightened with neon-laser beams a couple of dozen meters away from Gale, sensitively and quickly reacting to the approach of a lone wanderer. No, he definitely doesn’t need to go that way. When the whole world is going straight to hell in front of your very eyes, there is no more time for pleasure.

“Life after death. Cryostasis. The latest military development. Call us right away!”

As if a living hologram of a man in a blue and seemingly frozen space suit waves his hand in greeting, inviting Gale to come to the next “saviors”. No. There is no escape from novovirus, there is no salvation. All the scientific researches of the best bio-geneticists on the entire planet were unshakable proof of this.

Novovirus. This pestilence had many other names, too. A new plague. Black Death. Reaper. Punisher. Wrath of God. Doom.

Being fueled by fear, the human fantasy gave birth to more and more associations. And more and more cases of infection and either mass death or mutation of people only fueled this hysteria of universal fear. What can the smallest virus do against a man who thinks of himself as the master of nature? Anything. Especially if there cannot be an antidote for this kind of poison.

The government records to which Gale had been granted access after he started working on the “Salvation” project contained a wealth of data on the primary localized cases of infection and their associated symptoms. South America. North Africa. Southeast Asia. First, second, third wave. Initially, the disease was considered to be a new type of malaria and didn’t gain significant attention – until the moment of a rapid surge in the number of infections across the entire planet. And all of a sudden the concept of a “mosquito bite” started looking not so harmless at all.

Along with the development and evolution of the virus, the symptoms also changed. Fever, chills, nausea, and vomiting were only the initial stages of the virus-induced disease. Then the infected ones started to cough up their bodily innards along with the blood. Then came the nerve paralysis and cardiac arrest. Genetic mutations followed their steps. And after them, human madness knocked on the door of omnipotent science.

The virus mutated rapidly, changing its protein-molecular structure within a matter of days. More and more cases, together with the accompanying symptoms, began to be recorded by the governments of many countries every few days. The entire civilized world was swept by a wave of panic. People stopped leaving their homes. Looting, arson, and street looting came into action. Many new “apocalypse witness” sects have raised their heads, each with her mad prophet and course. The quickly approaching collapse of social spheres threatened to plunge the entire world into chaos, hunger, and poverty.

Governments in numerous countries have made huge financial investments while trying to produce a life-saving vaccine. But what seemed so simple and routine at first to many scientific minds, stuck like an irresistible curse of a mad old woman-death on many groups of virologist scientists. The vaccines did not keep up with the virus mutations in the infected cells. And cell mutations inevitably led to the mutation of humankind. And this was so much more terrible than the casual and familiar conventional war – because in the flames and fumes of this new war for survival, the very concept of “man” was about to become the ashes of history.

Vaccines didn’t work. It was paramount to find different ways of salvation, locate it at any cost. Thus the “Salvation” project was born, uniting many of the best scientists around the globe. All they had to do was find another way to save humankind – even at the cost of the lives of thousands of infected people who had become new experimental material in underground laboratories, even at the cost of the lives of the scientists themselves. Everything for the scientific battlefront, everything for victory. And Gale desired to be on the edge of it.

* * *

Gale’s flycar roamed through the depopulated streets of the once-overcrowded metropolis, increasing and decreasing its altitude in violation of all the rules of multi-level traffic, rapidly obeying the commands of the machine’s artificial intelligence, soaring over the arches and billboards of skyscrapers, and diving into high-speed underground tunnels. But no people were willing to issue him fines.

Simon’s words were still ringing in his head. Uninfected one! One among hundreds of millions, one who somehow miraculously passed through the gates of this earthly hell and remained unharmed. A soldier with no signs of novovirus mutation delivered to the “Salvation” scientific laboratories.

A miracle? But science does not believe in miracles, science believes in experiments. And the relentless logic of science demanded that this experiment was to be carried out immediately for the sake of all the living. And if the life a new-found test subject it to be put at stake – it had to be done without the slightest portion of hesitation and remorse of unnecessary conscience. Agitated by the morning’s message that came to his audiovisor, Gale raced through the streets of deserted Chicago with his lips silently whispering prayers to the scientific gods only he knew.

* * *

“Good afternoon, Professor Gale. Simon is in his labs, waiting for you early this morning.”

“Thanks, Miranda. I’m just in a hurry catching up with him.”

“Looks like you have something really interesting planned for today,” their young assistant winked on her way, and after a couple of seconds disappeared around the corner of the sterile white corridor inside the underground laboratory complex.

Gale literally flew through the massive glass doors of the laboratory, almost breaking his forehead – all their outdated automatic opening system based on solar cells seemed to be too slow for him at that instant.

“Where’s the uninfected test subject? I want to examine him!” he shouted from the doorway.

“My, oh my, it must be no less than Professor Gale Newman himself, safe and sound! Did you pour a whole pack of nitro-coffee pills into yourself before the trip, so as not to fall asleep at the wheel at such an early hour?” Dr. Simon grinned through his mustache as he caught a glimpse of a colleague who had flown into the lab, while deftly adjusting his glasses with a free hand. “And Miranda and I were just arguing about whether you’d make it to us before sunrise, or whether you’d be completely put asleep by thoughts of a Higher Intelligence. Did mysticism get the better of you due to old age?” Simon said in a friendly tone, his fingers still working silently on the holo-terminal.

“Have you got a file on him?”

“The NSA transferred a piece of data this morning. Corporal James Cassle, Marine Corps. Participated in the rescue of civilians in Brazil and Venezuela after the outbreak of the pandemic wars. He was seriously injured by marauding gangs of mutated infected ones during the last operation. Received the Purple Heart Medal for battle wounds. He was taken out of the operation area and hospitalized in Seattle. This is all we know so far.”

“And the screening, how did he manage to pass the infection screening?!”

“After being extradited by helicopter from the infection zone, he was examined at a Seattle clinic. They confirmed this fact. The NSA reported that the local medics there literally dropped their jaws opened when no sign of novovirus was located inside his bodily cells, even in a latent state. You know – by today’s standards, this is something akin to a miracle.

“Have you confirmed the diagnosis with our equipment?”

“Not yet, only the general survey was conducted. He was delivered here just a couple of hours ago.”

“Simon, do you even realize that this may be our only chance to…”

“I clearly understand everything, Gale. Go ahead, he’s in the Alpha Bay right now,” Simon said softly, patting Gale on the shoulder, “Authorization code for today: Miracle”.

* * *

“Disinfection of the compartment is complete. Welcome back, Professor Gale Newman."

The voice of artificial intelligence, “Ada”, filled the sterile-white space of the Alpha Bay. As he walked in, Gale checked the protective functions of his tessa-suit once again and nodded in satisfaction. At the very least, this suit will protect him from potential physical aggression or infection for at least half an hour, if somewhere in the higher ranks a mistake was made with regards to the diagnosis of this notorious corporal.

“Do you have a habit of putting your guests in handcuffs these days, or is it just that I was so incredibly lucky today?" demandingly questioned James, shaking his huge cryo-cuffed fists in a show of force as soon as Gale entered the Alpha Bay, which served traditionally as the pre-interrogation cell.

A huge and strong one. Ones such as he usually tend to get away of troubles unscathed. Except for novovirus, perhaps.

“It’s for both your and ours safety, Corporal James. You are a very special case for us. But your true intentions and capabilities remain to be seen.”

“I hope it won’t take too long. My military command did not give me the order to go “awol” after the completion of my treatment.”

“You are within the borders of our responsibility here, with the NSA’s permission. Take my word for it, your commanders won’t have any questions concerning your temporary absence.”

“Is that so?” James leaned his beefy arms on the table and squinted at Gale’s face, his jaw working, “And to whom do I owe the favor of being invited to your party?”

“It’s thanks to your fighting skills, James. And your potential immunity to novovirus," Gale decided not to delay revealing his cards.

“Considering the so-called immunity – is it what your grandmother-midwife sang to you, or did a bullet suddenly fly into your forehead?” James chuckled bitterly and shook his head. “I have no immunities. None of us have. We are not the ones to decide the length of our own lives. Only the width.”

“Whether it exists or not remains to be seen. If the diagnosis made in Seattle is not confirmed – tomorrow you will be a free man.”

“Sure, great! That’s what I am going to do anyway!” James agreed abruptly, fixing Gale with his gloomy gaze. “Come on, don’t delay, your scientific majesty, I still have ordinary mortals to save from hordes of infected!”

“We were not the ones to develop this virus, James," Gale retorted, suddenly serious and edifying, “The virus is currently spontaneously mutating every day under the influence of natural forces that we don’t fully comprehend and…”

“Yeah, sure! Tell those who have been turned into animals alive about where the experiments on genetic material have led to in an attempt to create the desired vaccines! I saw with my own two eyes how the hordes of these madmen were tearing my fighters apart on the battlefield!”

“I understand your pain, Corporal, but our department has nothing to do with…”

“Be off with your lies, doc, or find a more attentive audience! What exactly do you need from me – blood plasma tests, cortical screening, a smear from the fifth point? Spit it out!”

“Nano-molecular cell screening. Observation of the reaction of cell membranes to the injection of viral molecular structures.”

“Simply put, you want to re-infect me with a new strain of novovirus and then observe with genuine scientific interest how long I will suffer in mortal agony? Am I missing anything from your plans, doc?!”

“If our tests are correct, this will be an attempt to develop a primary immunity to a new form of the virus.”

“Do I have any choice?”

“I am afraid you don’t,” Gale spread his hands, “until the test procedures are completed, you are placed at our direct disposal by your superiors.”

“More like being sold out.”

"However you desire to think of it. If you are ready, security will extradite you to the testing bay right now”.

“Then don't delay. I still have other unfortunate people to save from you and similar experimenters.”

* * *

Gale could not believe his own eyes. Over and over again, he rechecked the data coming from molecular nanoscopes, adjusted the scanning frequencies, and even rubbed his own eyes with bare hands. But the tools weren’t lying. The miracle lived on and did not intend to die out like misguided humanity.

The virus mutated, continuously rearranging its molecular structures, repeatedly trying to break down the protective cell barrier, to overcome the membranes separating it and the cells – and time and over again, as if an invisible and insurmountable wall stood in its way. These unsuccessful attempts of a newly created by nature bio-weapon to enslave and turn its next victim into a mad monster lasted about a dozen minutes. And then... then it finally came, a Miracle.

“Finish your experiments. You can see that, can’t you? I feel no fear!” James’ powerful voice ringed in the room.

He yanked at the inner levers of the terra-capsule he was trapped in with all his might, trying to free himself, but even his enormous strength wasn’t enough. And during that exact moment, the virus that had been trying to inject itself into the cells over and over again seemed to explode from the inside, rapidly disintegrating into hundreds of individual tiny molecules. It was as if a wave, invisible to both the eye or the instruments, had hit it, crushing, knocking over, and smashing to dust. The defeated micro-Goliath fell, and so did Gale’s glasses, hitting the lab floor.

“You... what… but how…”

“I am not afraid of you! Freedom!” James pounded on the inside of the terra-capsule with his powerful fists.

“Calm down... I just need to... readings…” continuing to fastly whisper something under his breath, Gale was rapidly pushing the keys of the terminal. “The reason for the disintegration of the viral structures… the impact of an unknown type of energy... the wave generated by the cell... I don’t understand!”

There is always room for wonder in genuine scientific discoveries.

“Cellular mitochondrial synthesis of unknown origin... Bipolar intracellular currents... But from where?”

“I am afraid of neither of your viruses, nor you nor anyone like you!” the violent impact from within caused a small dent in the outer surface of the terra-capsule.

“What... what did you just say?” Gale cast a confused glance at the prisoner who was struggling to get out of the capsule. “But this cannot be! If... only… A feeling! What kind of feeling did you experience a few seconds ago?!” Gale screamed in a frenzy of excitement that filled his entire being. “Please, James, repeat it!”

“Freedom! Life!” – another dent in the surface of the terra-capsule.

And the remaining viruses are scattered into molecular dust. Eternal – to eternal. Dust – to dust.

A feeling!

It was as if a new great revelation was descending on Gale at that very moment, breaking and overturning all the materialistic theories of the world, all the endless scientific skepticism and incalculable human stupidity in a single, unrestrained rush.

Spirit was prevailing over matter. The feeling was overcoming the disease. Fearlessness has become an immunity.

And this was echoed in unison by the laboratory devices that were going off scale from the waves of new-found energy.

“You are… free… to go," Gale Newman whispered helplessly, opening the capsule’s locking mechanism, “We are all free now…”

* * *

On this great starry night, Gale was once again flying in his now-adult dreams.

His spirit, freed in one fell swoop from the yoke of all materialistic prisons, was floating in this wonderful dream between seemingly absolutely real planets, moving like a great trailblazer starship on a hitherto unknown thrust. It was unspeakably calmly and joyful – as if wings had suddenly grown on his back.

And then an invisible warm wave lifted him and carried him somewhere high up. Two great figures, radiating with an otherworldly light, whose love for him surpassed any human love, tenderly took him into their enormous warm hands. They gently lifted his tiny spirit to their faces – and in that infinite moment, a wave of rapture and bliss, together with tears of joy, swallowed up his whole being…

“Blessed are those who weep, for they will be comforted…”

12.05.2021

[goldenchildkatsuki]

“cherry”

Writers note: I’ve started a new project everyone! I’ve decided to write fics based on my current favortite songs. Music has always inspired me a lot when writing and has cured so many writer blocks. I feel like my writing is just a little bit better when I have a specific song or lyric in mind. Well, now let’s see how this goes.

See another writers note at the end

Cherry by Lana del Rey

Love, I said real love is like feelin' no fear

When you're standin' in the face of danger

'Cause you just want it so much

A touch from your real love

Is like heaven takin' the place of somethin' evil

And lettin' it burn off from the rush, yeah, yeah

(Fuck!)

Meaning

Alluding to the relationship with a man that takes risks and turns them into the relation where Lana feels like breaking apart; she knows that “real love” has difficult moments and that’s why she still loves him.

Word count: 3.026

“What am I supposed to do then? Tell me!” Bakugou yells at Uraraka whilst rolling up his sleeves of his black jean jacket. Uraraka pulls him down to the cold concrete. “Don’t be stupid for once! I am literally begging you.” She hisses. The screams on the street become louder, panicked faces ran by, people falling all over eachother trying to get away from danger. Bakugou grits his teeth and looks at all the people scared for their lives, calling out for heroes. ‘I’m being stupid? You want to call for heroes instead of doing something yourself? Have you lost your fucking mind? You are not that pathetic right?’ He takes big steps towards Uraraka and stares at her with his red eyes that had the red of smoldering coals. Uraraka tried to avoid his gaze. She really didn’t want to argue right now. She knows they have to do something. A group of villanous thugs blew up a building of an important company and are rummaging the street, trying to catch every poor soul they can to throw on their pile of hostages. It’s clear they mean serious business. Only a few patrol heroes have arrived and it’s clear that they don’t know what to do. ‘Bakugou, please. The last thing I want to argue is right now. But do you really want to go out there in that mess without your hero licence?’ Maybe Uraraka shouldn’t have said that part. She knows how much damage failing the hero license exam did to him. It was the first time he let her see him cry. Bakugou kneels down before Uraraka with the coldest expression she has seen in a while. ‘People are going to die, I’m not going to let those punks do what they want.’ Before Uraraka could say anything he pushes his hand on her mouth and kisses her forehead. ‘It’s going to be fine.’ Uraraka can feel his hand twitching on her mouth. Of course this boy is scared. He’s been a victim like those people out there too many times. It did something with his mind, but it also did something with his morals as a hero. Uraraka could feel her eyes burning. Should she really just let him run off? Bakugou presses a few more kisses on her forehead and sprints onto the road. ‘You’re gonna regret this you bastards!’ he yells before runnning into a wave of people. She hears his voice waver. ‘Stop acting like you’re not scared.’ She says to herself. She stands up and brushes the dirt of her knees. Slowly she steps out the darkness of the allyway across the blown up building they had taken cover in. She tries to see as much as possible of the situation. She can see bright explosions go off and people yelling at Bakugou. Telling him to get the hell out of there. That he’s just a kid. That he should run. Uraraka is in awe of the scene Bakugou is creating. He’s carefully, but with incredible speed, avoiding the thugs that are trying to scratch him with knives and bullets. After some decent punches he picks up a young boy that was up against rubble of the building, throws him over his shoulder and yells: ‘Take him and get the hell out of here!’ at the people trying to hide and the people yelling at him for trying to save them. Uraraka face lights up. He’s the greatest heros she ever had the pleasure of loving. She steps out on the street as well, ready to activate her quirk to protect the people from shattering glass falling down from above and heavy debris coming loose from the already deterioating building. “We need more heroes!’ A womans screams when she bumps into her, trying to get away. That takes her back to reality. She needs to call back to the dorm and tell her classmates to tell the teachers at UA that they need help. Being in a relatively quiet area with a low crime rate might be the reason why there are no big heroes at the scene right now. She tries to grab her phone from her jacket and tries to dial the dorms number with wavering fingers. Her head snaps back up when she sees an old man moaning from pain. He’s got scratches from glass and his leg is stuck under debris. She turns to her phone and back to the man. Uraraka can feel her heartbeat in her ears. Even though the explosions are cancelling out almost all the sound she can still hear her heart panic. She’s got her hero licence damn it. She’s allowed to act. Why can’t she? ‘Uraraka!’ she looks at the direction where the familiar voice came from. ‘You can do it!’ Bakugou yells before pounding his fist into the ground and firing off a huge explosion. It creates a smoke screen which luckily the captured citizins saw their chance to escape in. When most of the most smoke screen dissappears, the thugs are running around completely dissorrientated and trying to figure out if they should go after the citizens or get rid of Bakugou. Bakugou was on his knees, clutching his arms. His forehead was drenched in sweat and he closed his eyes for a moment. ‘You can do it!’ he yells again. Now she has to give it her all too. She tries to clear up her mind. Take care of the people first, than call for back-up. She activates her quirk and takes care of the dangerous falling debris that Bakugou’s mega explosion caused to fall down to earth. She can feel the first wave of nausea but she keeps her stand firm. She can’t waver. Bakugou gave his all and now she should too. Almost all the people that were in the dangerzone have either run away or have found safety behind her and the patrol heroes that have come into action again. When the last person runs past her she deactivates her quirk just right before she can feel her lunch coming back up her throat. Bakugou has been blasting nasty explosions in the faces of thugs which keeps most of them down. When it became clear there was only one thug standing he smirks The compliments and praise that were being thrown at her from the audience behind her became background noise. All she had eye for was his smirk, the smirk that indicated he had won, the smirk that was his sign of relief. ‘Die, scum.’ He said and he aims his palm at the head of his apponent. Then his smirk fades. As if the world started spinning slower this whole moment felt like a dream where everything was slowed down by just a few seconds. The thug penetrates a small knife he had hidden in his boot in Bakugou’s palm. And his scream was the most tragic scream the city heard that day.

They sit across form each other on the hospital bed in Recovery Girls office. Uraraka glances at his left hand, carefully wrapped in bandages. Bakugou takes her chin and raises her face to meet his. ‘God, are you even listening to me at all?’ Though what he said came across as rude, she knows he means it in a loving way. It’s his way of checking she’s alright. It was really obvious she wasn’t . She hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon and barely got a decent amount of hours. She stayed by her partner’s side, trying to sleep in the small bed with her head on his chest. Happy to still hear his heart beating and to feel his chest rising and falling. ‘I was, I swear.’ Bakugou pulls her face closer to his. ‘Liar.’ Uraraka eyes jolt from one corner to the injured boys face to other. Her stomach twists. When only inches away from his face she remembers every cut and every trail of blood that was left behind on his face. She has felt a lot of things. Anger, because of him being so reckless, running straight into danger when she literally begged him not to. And of course sadness, because of seeing someone she loves so dearly in that much pain. When the knife when through his palm it felt like it when through her at the same time. Bakugou forces a smile on his face. ‘Come on roundface, smile would ya’?’ Bakugou lets go of her face and tries to pry up the corners of her mouth upwards. ‘Come on, you got me wearing a stupid smile, it’s not fair if you don’t do it too.’ Annoyed Uraraka swipes both of his fingers away. She can feel the balloon inside her, that contains every bit of tollerance she has for Bakugou after this incident, being on the verge of popping. Bakugou retracts his fingers and his forced smile disappears. ‘My bad.’ He mutters. Bakugou is looking at her, trying to make her look up again. More pressure is adding to the balloon. Does he seriously expect for her to act al giddy and happy after what happend yesterday? He knows damn well she can’t stand his impulsive behaviour. Before the balloon can pop she shuffles of the bed and puts her shoes back on. Bakugou grabs the back end of her skirt and tugs on it. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Back to my dorm’ she says without looking at him. ‘I’m tired and I’ve been here all night you know?’ Bakugou lets go of her skirt and rubs his hand through his hair that was messier than usual. ‘I know, fuck, I know.’ Uraraka picks up her bag and when walking to the door she’s trying her hardest not to look back at him. At the doorpost she opens her mouth to say goodbye but Bakugou spoke before she could. ‘You have to admit I was pretty fucking cool out there though.’ The balloon pops. All the tollerance she had for her boyfriend escaped her body. ‘Cool? Cool?!’ she said so loud it even scared herself a bit. ‘Is it cool that you got two weeks of dettention for acting in danger without an hero licence? Is it cool that you could’ve paralyized the muscles in your arms? Is it cool that you had a hole in your palm? Is it cool that I could’ve seen you die in that moment?’ She can’t even look at his stupid face and continues raving at the door. ‘You weren’t cool, you continue to scare me to death, that makes you the worlds biggest asshole.’Her face becomes hottr and hotter from anger. Bakugou stays silent. He doesn’t even move. Uraraka rarely ever get this angry at him and she knows he realizes that it’s serious this time. The silence began to bother her. She didn’t expect him to say anything. The boy has a lot of issues and hasn’t yet reached the state of openly talking about them without anyone forcing him to. When she hears the hospital bed creaksshe stomps out the room. After closing the door she leans against it with her back, trying to controle her erratic breathing. Uraraka puts her hand on her chest. She can hear Bakugou curse at himself. Everything Uraraka said he’s saying in a much more violent way to himself. When her breathing is steady she walks back to her dorm. She tried to avoid every bit of contact with anyone on the way and did so for a few days. When going to class she would only respond to Iida and Midoriya, she rarely ever started or continued a conversation with them. Tsuyu and Mina kept close to her, asking her to vent and to rant. She tried to, more to satisfy them than for her own sake but she couldn’t say anything more than: ‘I was just very scared of him getting hurt.’ Walking to every class and hanging out in the dorm she avoided Bakugou completely. He tried his best to reach out to her, he tried to get her alone and make her face  him. But everytime he tried she just pushed past him and joined the others again. One night all the girls decided to come together in Hagakure’s room to watch a whole bunch of romance movies. Uraraka has never been the biggest fan of those kind of movies. That actually worked really well in her relationship with Bakugou. He was really into thrillers and mystery movies and she could appreciate those genres as well. Reviewing the movies always turned into a heated discussion. Bakugou claimed she didn’t pay attention to detail at all and that’s why she thinks that all the movies they watched were better than they actually were. Uraraka would roll his eyes at him and tell him he’s too critical over and over again. Thinking of that Uraraka smiles and looks on her phone. Bakugou has tried to call her and text her but she hasn’t responded once. If she’s honest, she doesn’t know what she would even say to him. She had thought about reaching out to him and telling him she might’ve been to harsh on him but everytime she considered that anger followed that thought immediately. Yaoyoruzo put a hand on her hand and gives her an endearing look. ‘Are you feeling okay Uraraka, do you want to watch something else?’ All the girls turn to them and all have the same sympathetic look on their face. Uraraka tries to avoid everyones gaze and chooses to look Yaoyoruzo in the eyes instead. ‘I’m fine, this movie is  great, I like hanging out with you guys, I feel like we haven’t spent a evening with just us girls for a long time.’ All the girls smile and agree with her. They all start chatting about why they haven’t been able to spend that much time together recently. The movie quickly became forgotton and the girls crawl around the table. They happily eat all the snacks that Hagakure laid out for them. ‘Can I ask you something Uraraka?’ Mina says whilst whiping the crumb of a cookie off her lips. Uraraka awkwardly fumbles with a bit of popcorn between her fingers. She was just beginning to be genuinely disctracted and having actual fun for the first in what feels like too long. Uraraka nods slowly. Mina looks at the girls and then back to her. ‘Are you…Are you and Bakugou still…Uh? You know…Dating?’ Uraraka’s eyes fall the the ground and Mina rushes over to her. ‘It’s okay if you don’t want to say. I just wanted to know so maybe we knew better how to help you and uh…’ Mina looks at the rest of the girls to back her up. Jirou says: ‘I think she knows you mean well, right Uraraka?’ She did know that and she’s glad that everyone wanted her to be happy again so badly. But she didn’t know what to tell them. She knew she loved Bakugou dearly and that he knew what he did wrong but she just doesn’t know how to go from here. Maybe she will never find out and they will go back to being nothing more than just classmates. That’s the last thing she wants to happen. The more she thinks about the more panic she feels ands she felt everyone reading her. ‘Ochako?’ Tsuyu croaks with a worried look on her face. Uraraka slippd her feet in her slippers and stands up. ‘Sorry everyone, thank you so much for trying to help me, but it’s time for me do something.’ She’s  getting choked up but nobody says anything. No one tries to stop her and so she rushes out onto the hallway. She doesn’t know what she’s gonna say to him yet. Maybe if she sees him this time, instead of anger an “I love you” will come out her. When reaching her own room she sees him. He’s sitting on the floor, arms folded, trying not to fall asleep. She approaches him quietly and kneels before him. His eyes can barely stay open but when he sees someone appear infront him he stiffens. Uraraka can’t help but stare at him. She doesn’t feel anger anymore but she can’t feel an “I love you” either. Suddenly a tears falls down her face. She whipes it away with the back of her hand. More tears start streaming down her face. Why is she crying? Why can’t she stop either? Uraraka looks at him in confusion. ‘I don’t…I can’t stop.’ She chockes on her words. Bakugou leaps at her and throws her arms around her. His arms squeeze hers together and his warmth falls over her body like a blanket. She starts crying louder, which gradually turns into sobbing. She’s thinking of every possible way to stop crying so she can just talk to him. She can’t imagine how ridiculous this might seem to him. Bakugou lays his chin on his arm and whispers words of comfort into her ear. With a hand he strokes her hair that has gone curly from hurry and sweat. When she finally calms down tot he point that she can actually say his name, Bakugou lets her go. Bakugou’s eyes look red and look puffy. Was he really crying too? Uraraka picks up his hand and let their fingers intertwine. ‘I love you.’ She says first to their hands. ‘I love you.’ She says again but this time to his face. ‘But you scare me. The last thing I want is to lose you. Just try to take care of yourself okay?’ She can tell that he’s desperately trying to hold back his tears by the way he’s squeezing her hand. ‘I love you too.’ he mutters to the ground. Her heart flutters. It’s the first time he said it back. He always waved her declarations of love away with a “yeah yeah” or an “I know”. Even though she didn’t mind, she always wondered what it would sound like when he said it back. And it turned out to be the most beautiful she has ever heard.

Writers note: the next song I’m going to use is: Like a Star by Lil Yachty. My ask box is also open for if you want me to use a song as inspiration for a story.

[uldren-sov]

Pedigree

bonus points if you guys know the Sith before the end. Hint: he’s one of many.

The lovely and creative @parttimedragon made the HOUND inspiration for this. Their original post can be found here, as well as much more great material for this and their Agent which started it all!

A bit of a writeup to also explain the feel of just what kind of people these squads seem to be made up of.

WARNING: Violence

It wasn’t an alternative so much as it was a sentencing.

A month ago, Evacios Vex sat at the opposite end of a metal table from an abomination of a Sith. Human. Male. Pale skin. Any other defining features were covered up and replaced with cybernetic implants. Between them was a datapad with his full military history on it which detailed a career of high-risk, high-reward, high-casualty missions - all of which he managed to walk away from. The military needed soldiers that didn’t care about their enemy, that could be discreet, and he was one of them.  It’s why he was promoted from Spec Ops to Black Ops so quickly,

Too quickly, if him being cuffed to the table was any indicator.

The Sith, who didn’t give a name but just spoke in a digitized monotone, detailed the nature of their meeting: his record and more importantly, the issues with it.

“Your last standardized evaluation,” started the cybertized Sith, “shown no new stressors. An unprecedented result due to a dangerous work environment-” which was what Evacios expected “-but you have been under our watch for months,” which Evacios did not and which caught his attention up from studying his fingernails “- and we have concluded our analysis to add the subject has been documented with a series of psychological and sociological tendencies: superficial charm, egocentricity, pathological lying and deception, lack of affect and emotional depth including empathy, sincerity, and guilt, antisocial behavior not at the direct cause of spice or alcohol use. These factors combined with early behavior problems, we suggest the immediate discharge of Specialist Vex from-”

“Wait-!” he had finally sat up in his seat, the cuffs clanging with the effort of him trying to dislodge them, “that’s not following protocol, you can’t discharge me if-!” He talked over the Sith’s next statement because, well, who cared what the Sith had to say when it came to his life? To his career?

“-within Imperial prison, or you may serve us,” Evacios heard and quieted immediately. There was no change of expression, no tell for Evacios to get a read on, just cold, hollow gray-black cybernetics. “Serve us. Prove you are worthy by accepting our mission and serve our Master. He will grant you clemency. He will wipe this from your records. You will continue to fight for the Empire. But your servitude will be absolute, until his sole choosing to release you. If he chooses to release you from your service.”

All bets are off then. They knew about him. He sank back into his seat, his jaw squaring as he tried, if only once, to subtly free his hand from the cuff. It didn’t work.

“Serve or I get thrown in some prison for years and dishonorably discharged?” he summarized.

“Yes.”

Given his military lineage and the chance of clearing out that analysis the choice was obvious and made for him.

“What’s this mission?”

Turns out it was to break out of the very prison they were going to throw him in the first place.

A month he has been around the most dangerous the Empire had to offer in some backwaters neighborhood on the dark side of Nar Shadda. But today? Today he was leaving.

For all their talk of antisocial behavior he thinks he’s actually fairly personable. It was his winning personality and stunning good looks that won him the secret alliances that got him a small blade after all. Well. It wasn’t a blade at first.

At first it was just some small industrial plastic pipe from a heap of garbage that they leave in the more “too intelligent to kill off” sector of the prison. They get all the good stuff. He had just hollowed out a small section of the sole of his shoe - small enough to be missed- wedged it between the insole and and sharpened it against the rough ground whenever he was allowed in the common yard by walking and shuffling on the hard ground. He dedicated a whole three nails to his construction of his shoe, he was rather proud of his ingenuity, really. In his section, the “very scary dangerous people” section - he’d like to call it, everything was very smooth, very curved, very not-makeshift weapon-friendly.

So he made a blade - a small spear, if you will - out of a smuggled pipe.

He hoped his record also said “creative” somewhere on it. Or if not, now it certainly should after this.

The forcefield dropped from his cell and he stood, his foot - which he had injured by stepping wrong atop his little art project - had healed, the weariness in his muscles from working out in the yard every day for about a month was gone, he was well rested, if he could just get some decent food he’d be feeling pretty spectacular.

He settled for good. Today, after all, was going to be a good day.

What was also good was how, because the cells were so safe, they also weren’t monitored within the cells themselves. He had tested it. The halls, though, were. Speaking of halls, his neighbor just passed his cell. Big guy, fair skin, bald head, older, probably killed a lot of civilians or something in his prime. Evacios was sure he told why the man was locked up, he just didn’t care to remember.

“Hey, big guy!” he trotted out to meet him, leaning against the edge of his cell. He made a casual look up and down the hall, the two guards at the exit to their wing stood posted, their blaster rifles at rest, the smoke canisters full of various types of gasses still hung at their waist. Their wing-mates filed past the two of them as … damn, he could never remember his name, hung out next to him.

“Pretty boy,” the man groused, their normal exchange. Evacios chuckled in good nature and shook his head, clapping him on the shoulder with his free hand. His other hand, of course, was hiding his weapon.

“Any news yet? They said they’re letting you out, right?” Evacios questioned, acting attentive. As … the guy, the big guy, nodded slowly. He glanced away to count the number of people filing by. The woman from the end cell finally made their way past as Big Man started explaining that the appeal had a good chance of going through, and he was going to maybe be a part of the police back home on Dromund Kaas. He nodded and hummed when he was supposed to, he was listening to the bodies that disrupted the forcefield that blocked the entrance. Two more … one more … Finally the woman left and with a renewed energy he tucked his lower lip into his mouth, whistled shrilly, and looked down the hall. It got the guards attention. Good. They brought their rifles to the ready. Better. He tucked himself a little bit into his cell to present less of a target, turned back to Big Person, grabbed him by the face, and jammed the refashioned pipe into his neck. He sliced in an arc and tore through. Blood splashed against his light gray uniform as he pulled the man in and braced himself behind the body just as shots started to ring out, peppering his meat shield. He tucked back into his cell and let the body fall. He immediately put his hands atop his head and started breathing deeply.

He staged another fight before - it’s why he was transferred here - the guards always started with that gas, which he heard the cans open with a his and then clatter and roll towards his cell on the floor. With all he had been training he was able to hold his breath for about three to four minutes. If he was fighting he’d have to shave down that expected time to at most two minutes of air. He saw the smoke start to filter in. He took one deep breath and then crouched by the cell entrance just as the smoke was coming in to obscure him, he even propped Big Human up beside him as a distraction. All he needed was a second, a second glance, a second thought.

The first guard turned the corner, he looked to the dead body instead of him. He sprung up and jabbed the pipe this time straight up into the soft neck gap of the armor and hopefully up through the underside of the guard’s jaw. Seemed to have worked, any scream was just a gurgle from the guard. Dumb architects made the cell forcefield entry single-file. He pulled the first guard’s body down, snatching the helmet off now that the difference of body weight simply tore the chinstrap off as the body fell with dead weight.

Literally. Ha.

In the enclosed space blaster fire caught his side but he stepped over the bodies, drew the second guard in just as the forcefield closed behind him. Evacios had to wrestle the rifle away but seeing as the dumb administrators gave guards rifles in closed quarters it was fairly easy to manage as he held the sharpened spike just at the same place he just stabbed the man’s colleague. He narrowed his eyes as smoke continued to fill around them - things could get in but not out of the forcefield. He pressed it harder on the soft underside of his jaw as a warning as Evacios leaned down, snatched up the discarded helmet and pulled it on. The helmet itself was no longer air tight but there was a mouthpiece for just these occasions.

He took a deep breath of filtered air as he sealed the mouthpiece around him. He glanced down to the comm device on their chest and was glad for all those smart slicers in prison here that kept this place relatively low-tech to keep them at bay.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he started pleasantly, “I’m now your partner. We are going to see that the prisoner here accidentally started a fire, you deactivate my cell and we leave when emergency protocol takes effect.” He pressed the tip of the pipe hard enough now to pierce through the synthetic fabric of the neck cover. “You make one peep out of line, you do anything that makes me think you’re suspicious and I fucking kill you and every friend of yours I meet on my way out of here,” his tone wasn’t pleasant anymore. “You, and you alone, hold the fate of your colleagues in your hands. Just think-” he paused for effect “I could kill you both with a bloody pipe - I did kill with a bloody pipe. Imagine what I can do with this rifle … Nod if you understand,” he warned, this time drawing blood as the guard nodded.

Evacios quickly got the rest of the dead guard’s armor on. He still held the pipe but he had the other guard wait in the corner, away from the rifles, as he dressed. Can never be too careful. He popped the heat sink - full of tibaana gas - out of one of the rifles and put it on the small pile of bodies he made. He passed that rifle to the guard. Standing back he shot the heat sink and it made a small explosion. It singed the front of his armor as the clothes and bodies faithfully ignited. His fellow guard lowered the shield to his cell, they both ran off to initiate emergency protocols, they both stuck close together as his new friend gave quick orders to the cleanup and emergency crew, and they both walked out of there - tomorrow they’d be questioned extensively as to what happened, no doubt, as new guards took their place for the rest of their shift.

Only that tomorrow wasn’t happening. For either of them.

When they cleared the compound before his “partner” could even turn to question him, Evacios shouldered the rifle and let loose a couple of rounds into that small hole he made which, admittedly, he was fixated on and worried it would be the inconsistency that ruined this escape.

Nope. Instead? He was going to escape and even avoid that Sith’s service at this rate.

He nearly got to the taxi speeder before he was stopped with an icy hand on his shoulder. He looked over to it’s owner.

An abomination of a Sith. Human. Male. Pale skin. Cybernetic exoskeleton on his hand. A sinking feeling seeped into him: dread, it felt like.

He was caught.

“You are worthy,” came the same digitized, deep, monotone.

He kneeled next to a man on his left, a woman on his right, one of six bent figures, adorned in black almost robe-like armor. He stared at the ground, the six of them still as the grave - if they knew what was good for them.

From underneath his hood, he could see the deep purple robes of his new “Master.” No one told him they kept to the theme of their unit HOUND: Hierarchy Ordained, Unilateral Neutralization Division so Emperor-damned closely.

He was surprised none of them wore ears.

“My Hounds,” came the curling, sinister, mechanized voice of Darth Jadus, “I sense a willfulness unbecoming of this squad. Unacceptable, before I send you to hunt. Lose yourself of this and remember that your lives are forfeit to me and I may do with them as I wish. If you do not strip of those emotions, I will do it for you.”

He clenched his eyes, emptied his thoughts, and felt the desolation of the Darth seep into his skin.

No, this wasn’t even a sentencing after all.

It was an execution.

[cuadra-stuff-blog]

Perhaps one of the reasons President Trump hesitated to state that he supported our intelligence, was becausehe knew the many times in history when American intelligence was either manipulated or flat-out wrong!

Let us review some of these past historical disasters.

NEWS BRIEF: "If You Think U.S. Intelligence Is Never Wrong, I Have Some Yellowcake for You", by Rebecca Mansour, Breitbart News, 18 July 2018

"... before these new Cold Warriors and their neocon fellow travelers lead us into a crusade based on an FBI report about a computer server the bureau never got to inspect, perhaps we should consider the track record of U.S. intelligence in times of war. It's worth asking: Do the experts the establishment relies onpeople like communist-turned-CIA-director John Brennanactually know what they're doing? How much can we trust the War Party's judgment?"

Consider some of the greatest "intelligence failures" in our nation's history:

* "1861 Johnny Will Come Marching Home Again in Just 90 Days!"

* "November 1861 -- Union General McClellan was falsely informed by hisintelligence that Confederate General Robert E. Lee commanded 100,000 men facing Union forces. In reality, Lee had only 54,000. That 50% difference caused McClellan to be far more cautious than he otherwise might have been, and handed the battle victory to Lee.

* "1898 'Remember the Maine'& Which Wasn't Blown Up by Spain"

* "On February 15, 1898, the American warship the USS Maine blew up inHavana Harbor, leaving 260 Navy men dead and sparking outrage back home ... 'Remember the Maine!' was Uncle Sam's rallying cry, as President McKinley launched the Spanish-American War."

"Much later, in 1974, a definitive investigation found that the cause of the USS Maine explosion was coal dust inside the ship.. Spain had nothing to do with it. Oops."

* "1941 The Infamy of a Sneak Attack We Should Have Seen Coming"

"Knowing that the Imperial Japanese were up to no good, the Australians, our close allies, broke the Japanese military code in 1939two years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941, the date that will live in infamy, we had plenty of access to Japanese thinking. In fact, three days before the sneak attack, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence issued a 26-page memo, focusing in on Japanese surveillance of Hawaii."

"Yet as we all know, American forces were completely unprepared at PearlHarbor, and 2,355 Americans died. "

Remember, the American White House desperately wanted the Japanese to attack us so that we could enter World War II in time to save England from Germany.

At this point, Christian author, Ralph Epperson succinctly notes: "Americanplanning on how to force Japan to attack Pearl Harbor began in 1915 -- 27 full years before Japan did strike in December, 1942! (Epperson, "The Unseen Hand",page 271).

* "1957 Mind the Missile Gap"

"In 1957, a blue-chip Pentagon advisory panel, the Gaither Committee, concludedthat the Soviet Union had ten intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), whereas the U.S. had none."

Then, in 1960, Senator John Fl Kennedy fired up an aggressive campaign to replace President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He turned his attention to the supposed "missile gap" reported above.

"Senator John F.. Kennedy, gearing up to run for president as a hawkish Cold Warrior, coined the term 'missile gap' to describe the supposed U.S. deficit. In the meantime, the number of alleged Russian missiles grew, from 10, to 100, to500. But we would later learn that the actual number of Soviet ICBMs was four, and that included prototypes of unknown effectiveness."

* "1961 The Bay of Pigs"

"On April 17, 1961, some 1,500 anti-communist Cubans, backed by U.S. logisticsand airpower, landed at the Bay of Pigs in Fidel Castro's Cuba, hoping to liberate the island. The mission was a catastrophic failure."

The CIA so infuriated young President Kennedy that he vowed to disband theentire agency and spread its functions to a variety of Federal departments.

* Operation Northwoods, 13 March 1962 (NOTE: this portion is not part of this featured news story)

"This document, titled 'Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba' was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods. Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake 'Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington', including 'sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated)', faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a 'Remember the Maine' incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage. Bamford himself writes thatOperation Northwoods 'may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government'." ("The National Security Archive", Emphasis added)

Cutting Edge posted an article on this "Operation Northwoods" which adds great detail.

* Aug just 1964 - Gulf of Tonkin "false flag" operation (NOTE: this portion is not part of this featured news story)

One can only think back to the Gulf of Tonkin fiasco (August, 1964), where American naval officials falsely claimed that their ships were attacked by North Vietnamese speed boats in the Gulf on Tonkin.

Historians know realize that this "attack" never happened, but was totally fabricated by American authorities. Do you remember the disastrous results of that government lie? Congress passed the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution", whichPresident Lyndon Johnson immediately used to build up American forces in the South Vietnamese theater to about 550,000 men.

From that moment to the final conflict in 1975 which lead to the complete victoryfor North Vietnam, over 58,000 American servicemen died needlessly, many more tens of thousands were permanently disabled, and over 2 million South Vietnamese civilians died.

* "1968 The Holiday from Hell" -- TET Offensive, the battle which changed American public opinion about the war. The Mass Media so reported this battle that Americans believed we had lost the battle, when we had won a smashing victory militarily.

"The Americans and their South Vietnamese allies ultimately prevailed, but the fact remained that the U.S. was taken by surprise. We had badly underestimated the communists' ability to launch such a wide-ranging offensive." (Ibid)

* "Sept 11, 2001 The 'Shock' That 'Should Not Have Come as a Surprise' "

"Hundreds of books, reports, and monographs have been published about thefailure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. In the words of the 9/11 Commission, 'The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise'."

Indeed, anyone who was aware of the "Illuminati Card Game" (March, 1995) was shocked by the attacks of 9/11. Here are the pertinent cards depicting an action the Illuminati was planning to take in order to overthrow this current world order so the New World Order could occur.

"Terrorist Nuke" -- This card is one of the most shocking of all, especially in light of the fact that this game first hit the specialty stores in 1995! How in the world did Steve Jackson know that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were going to be attacked? In fact, this card accurately depicted the World Trade Center attack in great detail. This card accurately depicts several facts of 9/11 -- on cards created all the way back in 1995! The pictureaccurately depicts:

* That one tower was going to be struck first; this picture accurately depicts the moments between the first tower strike and the second.

* The card accurately depicts that the place of impact is some distance from the top of the twin towers. The plane hit in this approximate area of the first tower. How in the world could Steve Jackson know this fact?

* The card accurately depicts the Illuminati leadership by showing on the building to the extreme left of the card the Illuminist pyramid with an all-seeing eye in the middle.

* The caption at the top properly identifies the perpetrators of the attack as"terrorists"

When I saw this card, immediately after seeing the Twin Tower picture, my blood froze! Unless one had advanced knowledge of the Illuminati Plan, there is no way on earth that they would have been able to create pictures in 1995 that accurately depict the unfolding events of 9/11! The Pentagon is shown on fire; we know that a plane allegedly flew into a section of the Pentagon and nearly burned that section completely. However, the rest of the Pentagon was undamaged to the point where its functions continued unimpeded.

Isn't this the situation depicted here? This card shows a fire burning mightily in the center courtyard of the Pentagon, but the rest of the building looks undamaged enough so that normal activities could continue unimpeded!

Thus, these two cards literally depict both of the strikes of 9/11: against the Twin Towers first and then against the Pentagon.

This kind of accuracy 6 years before the attacks is possible only if one knows the Illuminati Plan very thoroughly.

* "2003 The Difference Between Yellowcake and a Cakewalk"

"We're all familiar with the multiple intelligence failures of Iraq, but we can pause over three.

First, we were told that Saddam Hussein had WMD, and that he would give themto Osama bin Laden.

Second, we were told by the Bush-Cheney administration that U.S. forces wouldbe "greeted as liberators." The invasion would be, as one giddy neocon put it, a "cakewalk.." Yeah, not quite. In fact, U.S. fatalities in that conflict have totaled nearly 4,500, with another 32,000 injured.

"Third, we were told by President Bush, backed up by his neocon brainiacs, that Operation Iraqi Freedom would touch off a wave of democratization across the Middle East. Instead, it touched off a wave of civil wars and genocidal ethniccleansing of ancient Christian communities, such that there are barely any Christians left in the region that gave birth to Christianity."

* "I could write ten volumes on the intelligence mistakes of Hillary Clinton aloneshe who voted for the Iraq War, was eager to "liberate" Libya, and left our ambassador defenseless in Benghazi."

* "Senator John McCainwho also voted for the Iraq War, cheer-led every dumb move in Libya, and has supported every other vainglorious exercise, from the former Soviet republic of Georgia to Syria. He never met a foreign conflict he didn't want to send Americans to die in."

The point here is simple: President Trump stood at the podium with President Putin and had to make a split-second decision as to whether he supported the conclusions of the U.S. Intelligence Apparatus on the issue of Russian meddling in our 2016 election.

Can you see why he hesitated? He knew that the American intelligence officials with the CIA and the FBI were occupied by his defiant enemies who wanted his impeachment and then he knew of all these historical instances when our intelligence agencies had either outright lied, or had failed altogether.

DVD

Too many Americans find it very difficult to believe that their own government could lie to them on nearly ever occasion, even sometimes when the truth would be better received by the public.

Once you come to this realization, you can more readily accept the fact that our leaders have been committed to a Global Dictatorship, a Global Economy, a Global Religion, and a Global Dictator since 1792, when a committee of the Congress voted just such a symbol with the title, "NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM"(New World Order). The Bible calls his Global Dictator, "Antichrist".

Only two Presidents resisted their part in the implementation of this Global Plan:Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. They were both assassinated, as this DVD pictured above, "The Elite Serial Killers of Lincoln, JFK, RFK and MLK" so accurately describes.

How can you tell if an assassination was carried out by the Illuminati in order that their Global New World Order can be advanced? The Elite creates an "Eternal Flame" at the gravesite of each person so murdered.

[2gameprince]

Killer

"His first victim, he cut out all of the man's intestines, diced them into four pieces and tied one to each one, which he used to hang the man from his apartment ceiling lamp, resembling a puppet. All of the man's teeth were removed, and placed in the formation of a smiley face beneath his dangling body. His second victim, he placed the man's severed genitals into his mouth, sewed it shut, then stuffed his severed head up into the man's torso, which was then, also, sewed shut. His thumbs had been severed and shoved into his eye sockets. His third victim, the man's brain and stomach were removed, swapped and stabbed repeatedly. Thirteen knives were sticking out of his chest when he was found, and his limbs had been severed and swapped as well. Legs where his arms should be, arms where his legs should be. His ears were swapped and sewn as well. And with this trilogy of terror, the maniacal killing spree of America's most elusive murderer has only spiraled further and further out of control." The papers were writing about me again. It isn't like I don't enjoy the exposure, but when I start to get noticed, that's usually around the time I have to pick up everything and relocate. To avoid capture, of course. So many years. So many faces, come and gone. Jane, Dan, Ronnie, Sam, Henry, Dick, Matty, Frank, Sandra, Joe, Eric, Bart, Leo... and those are just the few I have rotting at the bottom of the Hudson River. God knows how many more I've killed. I try to keep a grip on things. And out of respect for the deceased I do try to remember each and every one of them. What I do is not a service. I do not do it to help anyone or to push ulterior motives. I kill simply because it is fun and, given the right circumstances, can be pushed to unfathomable lengths. The key to existing as a killer of my magnitude lies in the ability to be unseen by all. To go unnoticed, under the radar of people you interact with every day. That's what I had told old Detective Connor a few months back. Right before that poison I slipped him took effect. Believe me, I had no ill will toward the detective. But alas, he attempted to apprehend me. Which, of course, is something I can't tolerate. Things like that you don't duck around with. Playing on the fantasy of being apprehended is exactly what gets you apprehended. Throughout this "career" of mine I have met others like me. Each with their own motives. A few that have even tried to take my head. Apart from the psychopaths, I find most of them to be pleasant-enough people. More men than women, though. Once I had walked into the middle of a wide-open cemetery. I had brought my nineteen-eleven with my silencer. I was at a low point after this break up. This was many years back. I walked up and down the isles and when I came across a single person looming over a grave, well, I shot them. Took out six people that day. And no one had noticed. Not a gunshot was heard, and anyone nearby just assumed the lifeless bodies were over-dramatic folk groveling in the grass. I would say It was almost poetic, but I'm not very good at making metaphors for stuff like that. Best not to assume a position on something I know nothing about and be proven wrong. Now if there’s one thing that gets my stomach turning, it’s when someone kills a poor homeless guy. like they don’t already have it bad enough. To me that’s just rude. I used to know this guy, Derek Starch. He loved killing hobos and vegetables. Sick fuck. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Even had a few drinks with him. It didn’t take long before I paralyzed and hung the fucker from his trailer. Sure he looked up to me, but how was I supposed to associate myself with someone of that… caliber? He had already killed twelve people by the time I had met him. He worked at an old folks home. Clever bastard. I doubt the law would’ve caught up to him until he had about ten more bodies under his belt. So, I cut his career short. We’re all better off for it too. Now, on the subject of my childhood. If I had to guess, I’d say I started killing at age eleven. grown ups, surprisingly. Never fellow children or animals. At least to me, that’s sick. The elderly or crippled I will also spare. It’s this sort of mutual feeling of hardship which allows me to differentiate between those deserving of death and those that have just fallen on hard times. In a perfect world what I am doing is a grand service. That’s how it would appear. But, I do not care. maybe once or twice I’ll slip and help the greater good. Kill a mugger, shoot a rapist, gut a pedophile. But at no point do these acts take away from the fact that I kill who I want, when I want. And in which ever way I want, as well. I stay off of social media. That shit rots your mind. I can’t imagine spending my precious hours typing away on a phone or keyboard, bitching and moaning to a world that doesn’t care. What we do out here, pinned up against flesh and blood. This killing. This is real. More real than any point of view held on some bullshit social media account. Or maybe I just don’t understand what makes it all so fascinating. I do like to believe I am living out of the shroud of corruption and corporate mind-numbing tactics. but, what if my “condition” is a negative effect of me rejecting that brainwashing? Now that’s heavy. never the less, I go about my daily activities with glee. In these parts I am a sales man. these parts being Colorado. Before here I was a mechanic in Iowa and an underground medical doctor in Arizona. I’d say that in Iowa I killed roughly twenty-four people. Give or take. A gang member here or there. An ex-coworker. The usual batch. But when I hit Arizona, oh boy. It was a Neo-Nazi open season. That was the best two years of my life. I must of cut up twenty of those poor bastards. I left them all in pieces across the desert. Even left some of them in Nevada. Sometimes I’d mail their heads to their little ‘daytime meeting groups’. It was funny watching them scatter, going to war with biker gangs that they thought had committed the killings. It escalated quickly. After a while there weren’t many of em’ to kill anymore. All that massacring got me tuckered out. So I left a good while after the nazis’ and the bikers’ numbers began to dwindle. I’ll say it again. I didn’t do it for the greater good. I did it cause I felt like it. I did kill an innocent mailman. No. Two actually. Yeah. But they were on an off-day. Just to get my jollies up. Okay, so one of them was sleeping which this guys wife. So what? I did them all a favor. I guess sometimes I’m just drawn to the pitiable. I can’t help it. I run on fun. Fun and instinct. I am pleased to say that my age has brought with it a solemn lessening to my violence toward those I do kill. As the papers say, I was quite the Jackson Pollock in my youth. Every few years I change up my tactics and my style of slay. This has put me in the running of a position with not many “in-the-loop” killers get. See, there are those killers who go about their deeds completely ignorant to the fact that if you look hard enough, there is a whole anti-nation of folks just like me. An unspoken society of a murderous population that keeps the world in balance, when we can help it. Now, among this ‘under-nation’ there is a singular goal that most murderers in my shoes wish to achieve some day. This is gaining the statues of a mass murderer. To reach the point where you have literally wiped out a whole state’s populous in your lifetime. There’s online communities dedicated to it, forums, sites, the whole nine yards. Not only that, but with the birth of the new age murderers are recording their kills and uploading it to the web for all to be astonished by. It’s quite amazing. With so many sick people in the world, it’s a wonder this society of the secretly psychotic ever started up in the first place. So this one night I was walking home from the corner-shop back in Idaho. I notice this guy in a hood starts coming up behind me. Now, I’d say I had a pretty good idea of what he was planning to do. Mainly since whenever I would try and shank a nightcrawler, I’d watch my footing and use my location to help trap and kill a target. If I never killed someone in the matter that he was planning on doing me in, I could have been dissolving in a barrel after that. Luckily, as he came up behind me, I maneuvered his hand away and shoved my head into his throat, crushing it in. Well he choked out and made a fuss before finally killing over. Looking down I noticed his knife and a camera, recording his kill. And that was the first time I had ever seen something like that. Traveling for some time, I usually got thrown out of the loop on things like the advancements of computers and phones. Which I frequently pondered about using in my murders. I didn’t really bother to hid his body. Obviously, it was in self-defense. So when the cops came snooping around my trailer early that morning, I was happy to comply. Good thing my kill was caught on a store-front’s camera too. There was no denying I merely protected myself. That was one of the many things I’ve always loved about the south. The laid back nature, above all else. I never expected for my little venture with that night-stalker to go anywhere, but when I was tracked down by some of his “buddies” you could imagine I was quite taken with what I’m gonna tell you next. The kid I killed, Alex, I believe his name was, was the leader of a band of hooded serial killers. They operated as one unit. They would provide alibis for one another when one of them was suspected of their kills. And when one of them fell or was injured, the next in line would take his/her place. It had appeared that Alex remained uncaught for four years since the teens had started up their little project. And I was the one who killed their founder. At first I believed they wanted to kill me. For obvious reasons. But that’s not how things panned out. No, they adored the little bloody number I did on Alex and offered me the chance to guide them. To take up the mantle of their group, “The Duskers” and serve as their functioning sociopathic grandmaster!! Oh, we all had some great times. There were six of them in total. We were unstoppable. We must have killed ten poor souls a month. Mostly bus-people heading in and out of the city. Commuters. Believe me, we were doing them a favor. Nine months I stayed with them. Training them in my personalized art of the kill. And when it came time for me to move on, they were hesitant. Even threatening to kill me if I left. They really didn’t want me to go. So I compromised. I killed each of them in their homes while they slept. Not one o my best moments, but how else was I supposed to get out of that jam? They trusted me enough, and I needed to take to the road again. I won’t ever forget them though. No matter how hard I try. Some time after that I had found myself being tracked by individuals whom I believed to be private investigators. It soon turned out that this group of mercenaries were tailing me. Admiring me. Out of the pan and into the fire, I suppose. Turns out this group had been recording my every kill and identity change for the past six years. Collecting more than enough evidence to put me away for good. They asked me to join their little brigade for a few years or so. I would be paid to do what I was doing now. Killing, only this time, without the fear of capture. This group knew ‘officials’ which kept them out of the public-eye. They weren’t part of that sociopathic-society I had mentioned earlier. These men were old soldiers that blurred the line between vigilante and cold-blooded murderer. I went along for the ride. And in two years I killed myself an estimated one-hundred and fifty four city folk. Most of them with guns and bombs. The group liked to make it seem like we were terrorists. They said it fueled the citizen’s hatred and gave rise to their loyalty to their country. We could kill off all the people we wanted, blame it on foreigners, collect the earnings and at the same time have everyone believing that each mass killing made them stronger as a civilization. Yeah right. As if they could ever pass the racism, greed and class indifference they’d always felt since birth. Change was a miracle. And my time with the ex-dogs of the military showed me that no such thing exists in this world. Not that I cared. It’s 8:17 by the time I hop onto the elevator with Eric. He doesn’t know me at all, but I’ve been observing him for quite some time. Eric is a meek man with a large belly, not much hair and a habit of biting his nails until they bleed. He’s a heavy-set paranoid blob with good reason to be weary cause’ tonight is night I take his life. It didn’t take much effort to decide whether or not I was going to kill him. He works a couple blocks from me, doesn’t have any family and contributes nothing to society, so the way I see it he’s as good as dead anyways. Still, a part of me is going to miss watching him walk down the street in that monkey suit of his, tightening his bowler on that bald head of his. Stalking victims almost fills me with a sort of unspoken connection by the time it comes to finishing them off. Almost like we could have been friends if we’d both been dealt different hands in life. But this is the trail I skip along. With knives hidden on almost every inch of my body, it is my duty to rid the world of undesirables. The world calls my actions “senseless murder” yet if I worked for the CIA I’d be paid heavily to shove knives through men’s throats, or other fun acts. Such a twisted structure of morals we’ve set up here. And such a twisted face Eric now has. I waited until the doors closed to pull out my beautiful stiletto and cut his throat in a mere instant. He was so surprised and spent a few seconds fumbling around the elevator, realizing it was a long way to the top and by then he’d surely bleed out. Now I’m not the sadistic type so I waited until he finally bled out completely before carving his face. Even I admit it’s a rather ghastly sight. looking back at the act it seems almost childish. Makes me feel a little ashamed, realizing my excitement overtook my actions and threw me overboard. No doubt one day I will pass over to a point of complete lunacy. That is how I will fall. By my own hand I will put myself up against unbeatable odds and all my “services” to this world will have been for nothing. If I plan to make the world a better place I have to live to be around for a long long time. And that means killing a whole lot of people which is completely within my grasp. What with the tens of bunches of detectives, fire fighters, businessmen, clerks, homeless people, even a bitchy soccer mom every now and again. The world is better without all the people that don’t play their roles correctly. I’ll find them all one day. Every single last one, and on the day I die the world will look to the skies, declare my name and remember me as the one who moved society forward, the one who controlled the population and the one who allowed the children of tomorrow to live in a world free of ‘clogs’. Until that day I’m a humble janitor at the Cresto Vallu’ French Restaurant and an associate of the SONN Co. Computer Repair, both located in the heart of Manhattan. My jobs aren’t too fulfilling, unlike my off time. I hope you don’t mind if I don’t dwell on them too much. The focus of all my attention is on the people who's lives I take. A new job, a new face. I still go on, as usual.

[birdseyetea]

March Newsletter

AWAKENING!

By the looks of the day outside my window, it is hard for me to believe it is almost mid March. Last week it was snowing, and no significant breaks in the rain expected this week. I heard lots of frustrated rumblings from other farmers at the farmers markets recently. The growing season is definitely off to a slow start. I have hundreds of flats in my greenhouse and almost nothing has germinated...YET. Chamomile is a champ and is the first to germinate in my cold greenhouse. My greenhouse is unheated, so the grey skies and cold weather is holding a lot of seeds dormant. I bought some heat pads that I will utilize to force germinate seeds this week. Each growing season has a full spectrum of unpredictabilities that have to be tended to with grace and patience. Discipline is my number one ally...oh, and my ability to try to see the silver lining in almost any situation.

Spring Equinox is March 20th. At which point we are officially half way from the shortest to the longest day of the year. Huge changes take place between spring equinox and summer solstice. The entire natural world seems to beautifully renew right before our eyes. Each day new birds, insects, plants enter our field of awareness as they reemerge to converse with the world around them. Our bodies change as well. We have more access to fresh nutritious foods which renew the body, our energy increases as daylight and the sun return, and we naturally become more extroverted.

Above: rhubarb reemerging (left) and the naturalized Rosa rugosa leafing out (right)

Spring is a profoundly sensual season. Our minds awaken to the drama that unfolds outside. New sensations catalyze into fresh perspectives, creative inspiration, and put us on the path toward shedding anxieties and fears along with our wool sweaters and thermal under ware.

Just be aware that March and April can also be a highly volatile time for humans and their emotions. The weather is so unpredictable. Wind thrusts clouds across the sky at dizzying shapes and speeds, and moments of hot piercing sun are sandwiched between squalling sheets of rain drained from nearly charcoal colored cumulonimbus monstrosities. The constant flux between hot and cold, light and dark, gusty and still overwhelm our slowly awakening senses and we can become spectacularly emotional.

Notice if you feel as though the spring winds have invaded your body and stirred up your internal wind. Some symptoms of internal wind are tension, stiffness, spasms, pics, clumsiness, headaches, allergies, and shifting pain. When we start to feel the aforementioned symptoms the liver becomes congested (more about this next month) resulting in anger, frustration, irritability, stiff upper body, hypertension, depression, mood swings, and menstrual irregularity.

It is easy to simply become an expression of the weather because it literally feels like it is invading our internal body space. 

I love and embrace the spring, despite it’s inevitable moments of wild turgidity. Spring helps flush out the cobwebs of our inner life, reminding us what is real and what is not. It beckons us to pay attention and hones our senses so we can attune to the world around us. Early Spring can be a treacherous time for relationships. It is easy to place blame when we find ourselves in volatile emotional states. Frustration, tension, and anger can easily arise and if reacted to can cause major communication mishaps.

If you find yourself more tense than normal this spring, just pay attention to it and notice if it just a natural reaction to the changing season. I experience really confusing emotions this time of year as my body is acclimating to the dramatic changes each day during spring. I am excited for the growing season, take on a larger workload, and have to constantly negotiate my farm schedule and plan based on weather. I have the urge to strongly react to minor inconveniences and get all frustrated by silly miscommunications this time of year. I have been monitoring my spring moods for a long time so I have a pretty clear understanding of my pattern, but that does not keep me above the fray all the time. Just yesterday I was about ready to throw in the towel half a dozen times, my pendulating emotions also bring forth pride and joy, because the frustrations inspire creativity and the impulse to overcome obstacles. Conflict resolution is very important to me, this time of year I have to practice it diligently.

Our bodies are highly attuned to seasonal shifts. We spend a lot of our lives clinging to the idea of consistency and ignoring some of the most basic sensations that are affecting our thoughts and emotions. Our lives are shaped around narratives regarding consistency. We build structures and social systems that force us into an idea or pattern of consistency, which does not honor the daily changes that take place in our bodies or in the natural world around us. Winter is a season where consistency is easier to manage, but after the relatively consistent patterns of winter, spring shows up and gives us an energetic jolt. Our nervous systems are jarred by the overwhelming experience of waking up and experiencing so many forms of change in one single day. Nature is being transformed rapidly starting in March and so are we, we are not above the laws of nature, we are right there deeply imbedded in the lush atmosphere of growth and renewal in spring. 

The sensations that are arising from within you mimic the rollercoaster of this particular part of the season. It is a tough beat when, instead of finding curiosity and joy in unpredictability, we get caught in the blame game and project our fluctuating emotions onto people or things that we know we can get a reaction from. Just remember that within you is the clarity and emotional awareness to be fully present and accepting of yourself and carry within you total kindness toward what you are going through. Use the excitement and stress of spring to build good natured humor, physical strength, tolerance, and acceptance.  

Do not let early spring overwhelm you, just let it be what it is and enjoy the marvel of being alive to witness it. 

Spring is a time to cleanse the body and shake off excesses and sluggishness. Physical activity, healthy diet, and herbal teas are your best allies for this. Your body might not be as agile as you think when you start increasing your physical activity. I have been injured twice already this growing season because I overestimated my body’s fitness. During early spring make sure you warm up your muscles and stretch before heading out to do yard work or exercise. Eating lots of leafy greens such as nettles, kale, chard, and mustards cleanse the blood and liver. *Adding lemon juice to your spring greens helps increase absorption of iron. If you have sluggish digestion cook your greens before you eat them and try adding some garlic and slightly bitter greens to the mix. Eating lots of cooked vegetables and non-red meats also encourages liver health. Over the next few months I will be creating teas that support spring imbalances. The three teas this month are designed for early spring clearing and renewal.

Let the Light In

Ingredients: nettle, coriander, hawthorn, cinnamon, fennel, orange zest, bay leaf

Let the Light In tea is a nutrient rich blend for circulation, cellular renewal, and digestion. This comforting blend is perfect for March. It is a little warming, digestive, and gives your body extra nourishment to rebuild tissues as we become metabolically more active in spring. As winter opens to spring we find ourselves desperate to get outside and enjoy the outdoors. During the active parts of the year we simply need more nutrient dense foods and teas. Nettles are the first dark leafy green to come up in spring where I live so I immediately gravitate toward it as a food and herbal supplement. Nettles are a powerhouse of minerals to help renew tissues. Nettles pretty much supports the whole body. Nettles also help clear liver and kidney congestion which is often a symptom poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. Hawthorn is a great cardiovascular support herb. Hawthorn is a heart tonic. It’s main ability is to improve coronary circulation. Coriander, cinnamon, fennel, orange zest, and bay leaf are culinary herbs that support digestion, immunity, and circulation. Cinnamon specifically can lower cholesterol and blood sugar so for folks who routinely get very “hangry” should be aware that drinking tea with lots of cinnamon on an empty stomach might make the hangry human hangrier. 

Traveler Tea

Ingredients: assam tea, sage, winter savory, rosemary, thyme, cinnamon, & licorice 

Traveler Tea is a bit of a savory blend. It combines digestive and antimicrobial herbs and black tea. I have been making a version of this tea for a few years now and each time I make it I find it more interesting and comforting. It was inspired by research on nomadic groups and lifestyles. My friends and I contemplate how to live a nomadic lifestyle in Oregon and Washington and we have spent a lot of time researching modern nomads. During my studies I learned about the Bedouins in North Africa and parts of the Middle East. The social tea they drink is usually just a combination of locally foraged desert plants. Wild thyme and relatives of sage are common ingredients in Bedouin tea. This tea is very loosely inspired by Bedouin tribes. Most of the herbs in this blend are common culinary herbs that grow easily in the pacific Northwest. 

Traveler tea is a wonderful blend for people in flux. Whether you are traveling to work or long distance via plane, car, or animal, or foot this blends provides energy and protects the immune system. The blend is a little drying and great for people who are cold and damp. Spring often brings on colds that are wet in nature with lots of mucus and damp congestion. Traveler tea helps dry up excessive mucus in the mouth, throat, and lungs. Thyme, savory, and sage in the tea also helps relieve digestive upset that is associated with stress and poor diet.

Rebuild Tea

Ingredients: nettle, skullcap, eleuthro, ashwagandha, mint, dandelion root, gotu kola, and licorice root. 

Rebuild is a fabulous tea for an engaged and active lifestyle. It has been indispensable for me during spring and summer for the last six years. This blend rejuvenates the body in times of increased physical activity or physical stress. 

Eleuthro and ashwagandha are adaptogen herbs helping the body adapt to stress. Eleuthro specifically is great for athletes. It helps muscles and nerve tissue recover quickly from physical stress. Ashwagandha is to Ayurveda what ginseng is to Traditional Chinese Medicine. It has a strong rejuvenative quality that aids bodies that have become debilitated by stress, nervous exhaustion, or inactivity. But where ginseng is stimulating, ashwagandha is calming. Studies have shown that ashwagandha benefits individuals with chronic anxiety and insomnia. Dandelion root supports the liver and gallbladder, specifically inflammation and congestion of the liver and gallbladder. Gotu kola is used in the Ayurvedic tradition for a mental boost and has been extensively researched for it’s aid in mental acuity and memory. Mints are included in this blend for their nutritive properties and to balance the flavor of this blend. Nettles are practically a superfood, they provide a storehouse of micronutrients essential to healthy tissue maintenance. Licorice is also adaptogen and adds a touch of sweetness to the blend.