#i think the clones bleed though yeah?

[gece-misin-nesin]

Toga and Ochako's final scene and Toga's death being dependent on a plot hole is funny as fuck. You know, when you ignore the ever present dread this story and its ending has brought us.

[threepandas]

Bad End: After The War (Next ->)

The click of a button in a mostly quiet room. Machines humming as they churn an endless stream of data. Listening. Receiving. Filtering through the noise, for those bits of intelligence that might win us the war. The outpost was quite. As much as it could be, at least, on this god forsaken moon.

"Perimeter Check?"

More specifically, 'did you get your ass eaten by those horrifying eel-snakes? Because you promised not too, and I WILL be mad.' 'Cept, you know, these channels are technically recorded. Rather not have my snark On Record, thanks. So SUBTEXT.

The familiar, oh so melodious, demonic death screeching of abomination eels and blaster fire comes on comm. A symphony straight out of some sci-fi horror movie, act 3. The part where everybody's getting eaten. Except NOT, because this? This is just my life.

Though the eaten part is still a Very Real Risk.

Which Is FUN.

I wait. Hope I just caught Headshot at just a bad time. Not, you know, in his final moments. Ha ha... Nope! Not! Thinking 'bout that! He's immortal, I'm immortal, and we both live in a happy fun time fairy land of FUCKING WONDERS. Denial? Fuck yeah I know her! Best friend, that one. Gonna be my future kids godparent. Walk me down the aisle. We BESTIES.

There is finally, at long last, ominous silence. Dead or dying? Dead or dying? Which side, eels or Headshot, is Dead or-?

Click.

"Perimeter looks good. Bit of a mess near the east gate, though. We'll need to get the droids to shove some mess over the ledge. They tried to climb again."

Oh thank FUCK. Tension bleeds out of me. This post is hell on my anxiety. I send back the confirm. Slump back on my seat as I keep an eye on his tracker's dot, on the patrol read out. I fucking HATE perimeter checks. They aren't safe. But... well...

This universe? I'm pretty sure, it's an "all the serial numbers filed off" blatant rip off of Star Wars. Might be a fan fiction? Cause, while the troupes are familiar, the "characters", no one is where or WHO they should be. There are also other "totally not X" bits here and there, all of which confuses the fuck out me.

But what I DO know? Is that making a fuss about the safety and well-being of us peons? During this, the "totally not the Clone Wars"? While Evil Dick, Sith-y Pants the Obvious is in charge? GREAT way for our entire outpost to get "tragic casualties of war"-'d. So yeah, no thanks.

Keeping my mouth shut.

And, hey! At least they ate our complete asshole of a commander. Technically we SHOULD be getting a new one... but we were told to make do. Same with all the OTHER critical roles currently empty.

The DICK.

Like? I know he wants to drag out the war and maximize suffering for Evil Not-Sith, Off Brand Space Wizards Of EVIL Powers? But like? Fffffuck yoooou, dude. What the hell. Hope he stubs EVERY toe, always.

The Clones deserve better then this. The SECOND the war is over? I'm stealing Headshot. Fuck this "property of the state" bullshit. Just me 'n him, man. We could go explore the wilds. Or get him a beard and fake glasses. Clone? What clone! This is my BROTHER, Headshot. Our parents were gun-toting hippies. My names Moonrock. Fuck off, maybe. Keep walking.

The second I see him cross the base threshold, I switch over to Droid command. They can't hold my shift forever, but for a bit? Should be fine.

Jogging down the hall and sliding down a few ladders, I finally catch sight of Headshot as he leaves the staging area. Oof. That is a LOT of eel blood. The cleaning bots are cursing up a storm as they follow him. Even from the other end of the hallway... he smells... ripe.

I give him a second to lead the way and for the bots to work behind him. Then join in the little parade. Ah, eel goo. The third worst thing that could come out of going outside. Right behind losing a limb or dying. But hey! I restocked the soaps for ya!

"Doesn't change that it's on my everywhere, Commander."

Oooooh~ breaking out the COMMANDER are we? Is that SASS I hear? Snark perhaps? Why HEADSHOT! Such insubordination~! What EVER shall I do?

He snorts and suggest something anatomically impossible as he gestures to the shower rooms door. I tap it open for him. Goo boy that he is. Grinning I follow and find a bench where I can sit so my back is to him. It... used to be weird, to be honest, this level of living in each others pockets. But time and isolation has eroded a lot.

Clones don't really see boundaries like everyone else. Don't have the same taboos or unspoken social rules. After all... they're all the same gender. Were forced to live basicly in a breadbox with each other. The culture that developed reflects that. And I? Am more of a follower then a "type A". Not passive by any stretch of the imagination, just... eh.

I don't have the social outgoing-ness? I guess? To drag the culture of our base towards MY social norms as opposed towards his. It made him comfortable. I shrugged and went okay. Rinse and repeat. To be honest I was just glad he trusted me enough to SHARE.

Booting up my definitely-not-a-tablet, (which is of course, STUFFED full of various bits of sci-fi technology that only half makes sense) I once again try and connect to the wider army's mainframe. Nothing. I've BEEN trying for weeks now. But for some reason? We're cut off.

No new commands. No new forms to fill. No demands for information.

No UPDATES on what the FUCK is HAPPENING out there.

I'm... not gonna lie, getting nervous. We're a listening outpost. Some of our information is time sensitive. And our SUPPLIES are not infinite. Forget food, if we run out of AMMO? Those nightmare snake-eel THINGS will... Look, long and short of it? I've got an "empty" blaster shoved under my bunk. Two shots left. And compared to the slow, SLOW digestion and meat threshing teeth those horrors have?

At least it's FAST.

But I would REALLY prefer we NOT fucking come to that, you know? That someone would fucking PICK UP. Or? I don't know!? Notice we're offline? Whatever the problem is! The fact that we've gone dark is SPOOKING the fuck out of me.

Not to mention? That even BEFORE communication went down? The chat rooms and update boards weren't making a whole lot of sense. Lot of clone specific references that I didn't get. Memes, maybe? I don't KNOW and that's the part that's killing me. I had no way to CHECK. It all just... went dark.

We're still GETTING data. But? We can't seem to SEND it. Headshot and I checked. I checked the droids while he got the dish and other external devices. Clambering around the roof with his sniper rifle like a well armed, circus trained, mechanic. Nothing was wrong with the droids. And according to Headshot? Nothing was wrong with the dish.

After a while I gave up. Again.

Reminded myself to practice my meditative breathing. In... out... IN... OUT... do NOT trough your only Data Tablet. You'll break it. You can't REPLACE it. It might FEEL satisfying in the moment... but it's Not Worth It. Just listen to the sound of the running water. The quite of the room. Breathe... unclench your jaw, make your muscles relax, c'mon you can do this.

Fuck, I needed my anti-anxiety meds. But we were starting to ween me off them so I didn't go cold turkey when we ran out. It was fucking with my head. But, hey! At least I wouldn't run the risk of seizures! Or any suicidal ideation! No, just slowly building anxiety, in this, History's Most Stressful Outpost.

The shower shut off behind me. Leaning forward to grab a towel from the stack, I tossed it blindly over my shoulder. Heard him catch it. Wet feet slapping quietly against tiles as he walked forward, drying himself. From the feel of droplets and heat, looming just behind me? He was leaning over my shoulder. The man always did like to damn near boil himself in the shower.

"Still nothing? We've run out of D6 bolts. Not to mention your meds..." He commented, still drying off. I could feel the occasional brush of a towel. A bare arm reached over my shoulder to tap at the screen. "Have you tried...? Shit."

He tried several commands. Leaning over me, damn near cradling the back of my head against his bare chest. But nothing worked. Plopping his chin down on the top of my head, he casually wrapped his arm around my shoulders, leaning his weight on me as he considered the problem. The fans kicked in overhead, dehumidifing and hopefully preventing any sort of alien molds.

I told him to go put on some fuckin pants, before he frozen something he might miss off.

With an amused snort he stood and wandered over to the armor cleaner. Grabbing a new undersuit. Blacks went on, armor freshly de-goo-d, he called that he was presentable once more. I swung my legs over the bench. No need to stand, after all, if we're not leaving yet. Besides, exhaustion was a symptom of the withdrawals. Med changes are a BITCH.

Just as I was about to suggest anough brainstorming session, though?

Our comms both ping. LOUDLY.

That's the emergency signal from the control room. SHIT. I'm up and running before the sound even fades. Headshot right behind me. Not so much because he can't out run me, as he'd stop to grab his weapons as was bringing up the rear. Guarding my back. I prayed, PRAYED, this wasn't an attack. We were supposed to be a fourteen person team.

There were TWO OF US.

We'd never be able to hold the line. Would DIE here. Fuck, I didn't even have time to get that gun! I should have been carrying it. It had been too morbid. But... but...!

I slam into the control room. Headshot a half step behind. The droids frantically churning away. Okay. Okay! What's happening? A ship, big one, in orbit. Oooooh fuck. How Big? I ask. Am informed? "Wipe us from the face of the galaxy" Big. Ha ha! FUCKING FANTASTIC. Great! Merry fucking Christmas to me, I guess! Okay. Okay!

Let's DO this.

Get on the short range ship comm, (never thought I'd USE it but here we fucking ARE) and ask, politely, for them to Fucking Identify Themselves. (Because we have Big Guns and are NOT afraid to use um!)

There is a long tense moment. Then? Oh thank merciful FUCK. A Clone's voice comes on the line. General Spark of the 153rd, in pursuit, they're here to catch traitors and resupply if we need anything. Permission to land a few ships?

I. Could. WEEP.

Yes! Oh, ABSOLUTELY yes! Whoever they're chasing picked a REALLY stupid planet to hide out on, not gonna lie. They'll be picking their traitors up in PIECES. But? Never has a voice been more beautiful. Send Techs! You have FULL use of the outpost General! Welcome!

Setting the droids to navigating the incoming ships safely through landing, I all but DRAG Headshot towards the landing pad. People! Actual, real, PEOPLE! Supplies! Oh thank FUCK! We might be able to figure out what wrong with our relays! Get NEWS! And? That was a CLONE GENERAL!!!

That NEVER happens!

I can practically feel my self vibrating with excitement. Bouncing slightly on the balls of my feet, as the ships come in for a landing. The officers that roll out are all clones. Their armor more personalized then I've ever seen it. It's BEAUTIFUL. I can't help but lean over and whisper to Headshot, saying as much. Wondering if we can get him some of the supplies they must of used.

You know, assuming he WANTS any of um.

If not? Dibs.

His shoulders are shaking. Why are-? One of the officers thanks me for the compliment. Headshot you SON OF A SUBSTANDARD VAT. Was your SHORT RANGE MIC ON!? Why would you not-!? Bastard! Dead to me! Sorry general, I've never met this man before in my LIFE. Couldn't introduce if I TRIED.

Still! High ranking clones? We love to see it. I am THRILLED. It's been long over due.

Dooooesn't mean we should hang out in Eel Country though. Everybody INSIDE! Let's goooo. Nice and safe, where no ones getting eaten, m'kay? Thank you! And yes! I DO have a list of resupply needs! A LONG list. Starting with my meds, followed by ammo. Though honestly they're tied at first...

As me and the, now rather concerned, medic chat about the collapsing state of our highly rationed medical supplies? Headshot and the General are off to the side... talking about... something. Not sure. Probably not important, or he'd include me. I show the medic our "infirmary" and medical charts. Then get pulled away by the mechanic.

I barely get to SEE Headshot over the next two days. Forget sitting down. The only breaks I get? Meals and lights out. It's kinda awesome. Exhausting, yes, but? After so long isolated? It's a good type of exhausted. The sort where you feel like? For ONCE? You're actually being productive.

There are SO MANY eel burrows to scan? Potential landing sites? And all the MAINTENANCE? Dear merciful FUCK. Literally everything is out of date and cheap as BALLS. Held together with shoe strings and a prayer. But finally! FINALLY! Someone in budgeting GIVES A SHIT!!! Better equipment! Actual medical supplies! Real bedding! And best of ALL?

AIs! As in Actual, information sorting, artificial intelligences!

Because there literally hasn't been a REASON for humanoids to do this job for CENTURIES aside from a misplaced sense of superiority and distrust of droids! All WE need to do? Is stay on base and make sure THEY don't go rogue or break down from the extended isolation! Woooo desk job!

I'm gonna name um. They shall be my BABIES.

That said? None of this? Is very... Off Brand Sith-y. Little too "cares about their fellow man"-ish, you know? And... I'm not stupid. Excited as FUCK, for all the supplies and new changes... but not? Stupid. Blind.

They're keeping me away from the control room.

Keeping me out of important discussions. Sending me off on errands. All of which? SEEM important. ARE important, on the surface, but hide the fact that they are intentionally scheduled? Just as Certain Things Are Discussed. I am being... handled. Like a child. A fool.

When I confront Headshot? In our bunkroom, which we've shared for YEARS at this point. Slept just across from each other, so this lonely hell might feel just a little less empty? So when the dark thoughts creep in? That we might die in this God forsaken place, forgotten by the universe, left to ROT here, and wouldn't it just be easier to-? Someone there, so we won't. So we still matter.

He stands across from me. In OUR place. OUR room.

And FUCKING LIES.

......I guess I know where I stand, huh? And I know... I KNOW, I shouldn't feel betrayed. Clones come first, always. That's the party line. How they survived. I'm a Nat. There was always a power imbalance between us. I would always have been held just that bit further away then one of the brothers. Guess... guess it just finally happened.

I shouldn't feel betrayed. I have no RIGHT to feel betrayed.

But I do.

Headshot looks alarmed, hands twitching at his side, even as he tries to maintain his facade. Nothing's happing. They aren't doing anything. Right. Uh huh. His lie sits between us like a field of broken glass. The words, the arguments, I'd been looking for now seeming so useless. What's the point? He's made his decision.

I feel like crying. Don't want to talk anymore.

Good NIGHT, Headshot.

In the morning, I don't bother asking. I know he notices. Is waiting, restless, for us to continue on as we always have. We always check schedules after all. But what's the point? He'll lie. Instead I pull my armor on and go. Go to your brothers, Headshot. Whatever's happening here, I'm clearly not trusted enough to be part of it.

I just get out of your way.

There's a lot of busy work on my schedule, but honestly? The new AIs are learning to handle it. Instead, I head down to the new supply crates. Grab some bedding. A cart. Then head back. Pack up my shit. I just... can't.

Moving it all to a different bunk, I still have most of the day left to go. Could...? Probably? Check out if we actually DO have space rats? The droids have been reporting dust and noise in the basement, near the food stores. So likely vermin of some kind. Gonna be horrifying to find out what kind of vermin exsist HERE, but better then nothing, I guess.

Grabbing one of the better ration bars to shove in my face on the way to the gun locker, I count it a breakfast. Everyone's busy with a clone only meeting. Good for them, I guess. Not upset with General Spark or his men, I realize, as I check over the gun, no... just Headshot. Because he hurt me.

All he had to say was "I can't tell you." Or "trust me" and I WOULD have. But no. He LIED. To my FACE. And now? Now I feel like I'm waking around with shards of glass where my heart should be. Like I want to hit something. I need a distraction. So down to long term storage I go.

Normally? It's only droids down here. I have to ride a cramped little maintenance elevator lined with blast doors. You know, incase Satan's favorite pet somehow burrows in. The fuckers. It's also freezing. Which, I mean? Great for food storage, not so much for thermal regulation.

The level is eerie quiet.

Which.... huh. That's? Not right.

I reach for my comm before pausing. The hurt in my chest throbbing. I know I shouldn't let it get in the way of professionalism. Of protocol. The rules are there for a reason. To keep us alive and safe. But... God, I don't want to hear his fucking voice right now. I might cry. Say something I don't mean and regret later. You don't LAST long, isolated out in Hellpit, Nowhere, without doing a little soul searching.

Mortifying ordeal of being known and all that.

My hand drops. It's fine. I'm FINE. There's nothing down here. Or, well, should be nothing down here. We'll find out.

Slowly moving forward, I begin to check the stacks. I don't see any of the droids. Don't HEAR any of them. There should be at least thirty down here. But all I hear? Is the circulation fans. The sound of my foot steps. Something isn't right.

It's a loose, half melted screw in the path that saves me. At first I think it's a bug. But the quite clink when my foot nudges it is unmistakable. It makes me look sideways. There, a cleaning droid, cut down from behind. Tiny little mechanical claws still reaching out to claw itself to safety. Wheels shredded. The marks of a lazer blade are unmistakable.

The hiss-hum even more so.

I BARELY dodge.

Half my gun, simply sheared away. Molten slag dripping from the cut point, the battery already violently destabilizing ask it's nicked. I throw it, before I have the chance to lose a limb. The blast takes out a crate. I'm thrown. Barely roll in time to dodge the downward stab of the hissing blade. A brutal, magic-enhanced, kick sends me flying.

Straight through a stack of ration crates, into a wall mounted medical case. I land among the corpses of the droids. Each, a picture of terror and betrayal. I don't understand what's happening. The blades not red or black! It's blue! That's a not-jedi! Right?! Why are they!? Crates are lifted into the air. Threatening to smash down and bury me alive.

Can't move. Something twisted, badly, in my leg. My chest burning. Something cracked, I could feel it. I'm gonna die. Oh good, I'm gonna DIE.

"Wait! She's not a clone!"

I stare up into the face of the so called "good guys" and feel nothing but terror. Around me, the pieces of thirty droids I'd named and known, dead and dumped like trash upon the ground. Flower with his fussy need to have everything just so, Chirp who loved to sing, Mouse with the wheel I could never get to stop squeeking.

Nothing but Cannon fodder.

They died so afraid.

"Oh! You're right! Sorry! I thought you were one of those 'peating bastards. Are you okay? How long have they held you?" The Knight said. His Apprentice nodding eagerly.

My brain was static. Empty. Held? Slurs? W-what in God's name? I stayed down. Feeling small, lost, and confused. Pain rocking my body from being thrown around. The Apprentice, at least, seemed to pick up on the fact that I had no idea what the fuck they were on about.

"Ah. You don't know what's happened." She said sympathetically. It would be nicer, if she hadn't stood back while I was hurt, before they got around to asking who's side I was on. "The Clones betrayed the Republic. Took it over by force. They've made an empire. They killed the old Chancellor, who was Fallen, but then instead of handing the Republic back to the people? Kept it! Said we couldn't be trusted with it."

The last part was said mockingly. As though everyone and their brother hadn't been aware the Republic was on the brink of collapse. Corruption at an all time high. As though that same Republic hadn't been using the Clones as a SLAVE ARMY.

Slaves do tend to take exception to their chains, historically.

I wasn't really sure why the fuck they were surprised.

"Now come on, you can join the Rebellion. You must know all sort of information, from sitting out here, right? You can-!"

Click.

My helmet went full dark and internal audio only. Which was interesting because I still could barely move. But then bright light and sound, popped and cracked not to far away from my head. A flash grenade. And I finally, FINALLY? Remembered that all standardized armor? Comes with in built life support feeds.

Headshot's mystery meeting was in the command room... where my life sign readout would be. The life support feedback. Real time monitoring from me getting my ass kicked and WHERE.

A hand grabs the drag handle built into each armor, for EXACTLY this reason, and I feel my self pulled out of the danger zone. Can hear heavy, open fire. Shit. There goes our supplies. My helmet clears and I recognize the shoulder I've been careful thrown over. Headshot. He came.

He falls back at some signal I can't see. Straight to the elevator.

The shoulder under me is shaking, just slightly. Adrenaline, fear, anger. I can't tell. But... I... I'm...

"Don't." His voice is rough. Choked out through gritted teeth. His grip just carefully loose enough not to bruise. It seems to be taking everything he has. "You don't get to die. Do you understand me? You're not ALLOWED to die. Not now. Not ever. We didn't survive this long for you to leave me now."

He barely waits long enough for the door to open. Stride smooth and desperate as he races us towards the medic. I rest my head against his shoulder and breathe. Let myself be manhandled. Ha ha... a-at least? I know what he's keeping from me now. So there's that. Ow. Oh god.

The medic has to put me under. Bone fragments.

I drift.

Wake up, bandaged to hell and back, in ou-... in Headshot's bunkroom. Across from the empty bunk that used to be mine. Bed's softer then it should be, still smelling like Headshot. We haven't had the new sheets long enough. Knowing him, he probably stacked um.

The door opens. Headshot stalks in, dragging a cart behind him. His usual "pleasantly amused by life" expression nowhere to be seen. Instead? His expression is... blank. A determined, almost violent, edge to the set of his shoulders.

In silence, I watch as he unloads the cart. Bedding, knickknacks, the various bit of cobbled together wall art. All carefully stuck right back where it had been before. As though he had memorized the proper location of each and every piece. Even as he worked, with his back to me, every line of his body was daring me to be dumb enough to argue.

I didn't want too. I was just... just fucking tired.

Didn't like that we were arguing. If that was even what we were doing.

"Why?" I asked. Summing up everything and distilling it. Why didn't you just fucking TELL me? Why didn't you TRUST me? Why did you think I'd turn on you? Why would you lie? Why were we cut off? Was it REALLY a technical error? Why take the Republic? Why ANY of this?

Just... WHY, Headshot? Please...

"I refuse to lose you. When the war ended, you were going to leave. You said you'd take me with you... but honestly? That was naive. There would be no where safe we could ever go. We all knew that. We all had favorites." He finally stopped organizing my bed. Instead, smoothing down the sheet. Running both hands across it as he stared down, unseeing. "It was all so unorganized. Filthy. They treated us like DIRT. But we were... we ARE better. Designed to be superior. Stronger, smarter, faster. More durable. Why were we listening to them?"

"Then we found out why. Control chips in the brain. The nervous system. Carefully hidden, yes. But not carefully enough. You weren't authorized, you know. I'm glad. If you had been? I'd never have forgiven you. You'd never know you were dead before you died. But... I promise."

"I would have made it fast." His smile was a terrible thing. All broken edges and betrayal. Teeth upon teeth. A mania finally set free.

"Never thought those hypocrites would run here. Expect us to die for them. The happy little slaves. For the glory of THEIR Republic. You'll be okay, Commander. The General's agreed to stay until your back on your feet, just in case."

Headshot slides onto the bunk, sitting at my side, sweetly brushing hair from my face as though he hasn't lost his god damned mind. He's the picture of relief, now that there's no more secrets between us. Now that I'm injured and dependent on his help. Yet... it's teetering.

As though at any minute...

He could slide into some... unhinged state of mind. How LONG has he been on his last thread? Barely holding together? He leans forward and my mind goes utterly still. His lips pressed gently against mine. Chaste. Sweet. A warm, calloused hand, cradling my poor bruised cheek.

"I promise we'll stay together." He whispers against my stunned mouth. Eyes intent and mad, utterly loving. Like a strangers. "I won't let them seperate us. Not for anything. Now that it's done? We can be assigned anywhere. I'll take you with me. War's over, love. We're finally free."

Were we?

[blackkatmagic]

For the clone character meme, Fox of course!!! If you've already got him, Tup?

“Have you seen Thorn?” Fox asks, annoyed. A missing senator is normally nothing to call in off-duty troopers over, but Padawan Skywalker is making himself a headache, and Fox is tired of it. Thorn can at least pretend to be polite. Fox can't be bothered, especially to uppity, snarly padawans who give him a headache.

“No, sir,” Hound answers, a step behind Fox with Grizzer at the ready. There's no trail to find, though; Amidala's scent runs up to the start of the port and then disappears. “He’s not answering his comm.”

Fox growls under his breath, because Thorn knows they're not ever supposed to be out of contact. Even being off-duty is a polite fiction to make some of the bleeding hearts in the Senate feel better about running almost a billion men into the ground without pay or the most basic consideration, and Fox is going to get the biggest karking earful about some of his men not being on the case. Particularly since Skywalker managed to get Palpatine’s ear somehow. That’s giving Fox a headache, too.

“Keep trying to reach him,” he orders. Thorn’s the most familiar with Amidala, given his work as her guard on diplomatic missions, and Thire and Stone are both off-planet, so the Guard needs all its commanders working. His comm chimes insistently, and he gives it a dark look, sends back an affirmative, and pulls his helmet back on. “Take the lower platforms, see if you can pick anything up. I'm going to brief the Chancellor.”

“Sir,” Hound answers sharply, and Fox veers off, stalking down the busy corridor. He’s annoyed enough that even watching senators scatter out of the path of his murder-walk isn't satisfying, though, and he mutters a curse under his breath, keying the lift open and stepping in, then turning to level a killing glare at the aide who’s just trying to sidle in.

Immediately, the aide finds something better to be doing, veering off like that was her plan all along, and Fox rolls his eyes. Cowards, all of them. It would be funny if Fox didn’t want to drop-kick every person in this building down a mineshaft.

Something cream and white and gold catches his eyes just before the doors slide shut, and Fox shoves a hand out automatically, something in his chest turning over.

Well. Maybe not every person. That’s a little extreme.

“Commander,” the captain of the Temple Guard says, perfectly polite, tone as warm as ever as he ducks into the lift, careful not to crowd Fox despite his size. “Going to see the Chancellor?”

If Feemor is being sent to see Palpatine as well, it probably means Knight Kenobi bent some ears too, Fox thinks, maybe a little grumpy about it. Not about seeing Feemor, but—a padawan shouldn’t be able to stir up this much of a fuss. If Skywalker was a cadet, he’d get shunted off to sanitation for making so much noise.

“Yeah. About Amidala, right?” he says gruffly, and waves the door shut before anyone else can intrude. His chances to actually get any time alone with Feemor are all like this, stolen moments between crises, and Fox is entirely willing to tweak the rules a little to make the most of them.

If he’d known Feemor was here, he’d have picked a slower lift, too.

Feemor nods, tipping his head to watch the floor numbers rise, and Fox takes the chance to study the way golden hair curls around his throat, slides out from under the white hood like a temptation. “Senator Amidala has always been a friend to the Jedi,” he says, and Fox can hear the smile in his voice. “Whatever I can do to help, I will.”

It’s hardly nothing, having a Jedi Master here to help, and Fox grunts in satisfaction, only partly at the idea of Feemor sticking around for a few hours or a few days. It’s probably wrong to hope that they don’t find Amidala too quickly, but—well. Fox doesn’t give a monkey-rat’s bald ass about a senator, even a relatively decent one. He’s stuck on Coruscant, and they're the sole reason.

“Good,” is all he says, trying to hide his pleasure, since it’s probably not appropriate right now. “If you're willing to come with me to the undercity, I want to check the levels below the Senate Building—”

A jarring, shuddering wrench jolts the whole lift, so sudden and sharp that Fox is thrown right off his feet. He slams bodily into Feemor, feels Feemor hit the wall even as one arm snaps up to hold Fox steady, and feels the sudden, wrenching drop right in his bones. The lift plummets, and Fox snarls, grabs for the waist-height bar but misses as they hit something that spins the lift to one side. The impact hits an instant later, hard enough that Fox’s vision goes black for an instant, and he hears Feemor cry out as metal gives way—

They spill out onto cold metal decking, reeking of rust, and Fox rolls right to his feet, blasters in hand, up and aimed and ready. Feemor is behind him, on the ground and not getting up, and the air is dark and humid and reeks of wet metal in a way the Senate Building never does. Far below it, that probably means, and Fox triggers his helmet lights, then stills in surprise, eyes narrowing.

A clone is sitting in front of an old pile of scrap metal, slumped back against a beam, and it takes Fox a long, long second to recognize Colt, stripped of Rancor’s intricately painted armor, with a pile of something bright and sleek and metallic beside him.

Weapons, Fox realizes belatedly. Colt has a pile of weapons Fox has never seen before next to him, and he’s smeared with ash, arms scattered with slick, shiny burns, his face slack with exhaustion. His eyes are closed, and for an instant Fox almost thinks he’s dead.

Then, with a sound of concern, Feemor is past Fox, limping slightly but quick on his feet. He crouches down next to Colt, raising a hand—

Colt catches it, almost too fast to see, and opens his eyes.

In the darkness, reflecting in Fox’s helmet lights, they shine like forge-fire, an unsettling, unearthly glow.

“Commander?” Feemor asks, quiet, gentle even as Fox’s unease rises, full of teeth. “Are you all right?”

Colt looks right at him, then shifts his gaze, eyes tracking straight to Fox. Then, with a groan and a heave, he shoves to his feet, dragging something up out of the pile with him as he takes a few unsteady steps forward.

“This one’s yours,” he says, and shoves it right into Fox’s hand, so that Fox has to fumble, drop his blaster and catch warm metal before it can clatter down to the floor.

“Colt, what the hell?” he asks, deeply suspicious, because if Rancor Battalion’s top commander is having a mental break—

And then, like a flash of mercury, liquid and hot, something slides off the handle of the axe, drips down his fingers and over his wrist beneath his armor, and Fox wrenches back with a sound of alarm, scrambling to get his gauntlet off, to get whatever is on him away from his skin—

Like molten metal, something iridescent and shimmering settles into his skin, and Fox scrapes with his nails but can't get it off, swears at Colt as he backs away. “I'm going to karking murder you,” he snaps. “Colt, wake the hell up!”

“It’s tradition,” Colt says, like that’s an argument, and it sounds raw, like he’s been breathing in smoke, or maybe like he’s been screaming. “There's—there's a lightsaber crystal I need to find. I rebuilt the hilt, but I can't find it.”

Lightsaber. Something cold fractures in Fox’s chest, and he jerks around, looking for Feemor—

A figure in the shadows. A Mandalorian in rust-red armor, a golden faceplate on his helmet, already reaching. Fox shouts, but Feemor isn't moving, and Fox lunges, swings—

The axe Colt forged cuts right through the Mandalorian like he’s a ghost, and Feemor crumples to his knees, a keening, desperate sound breaking from his throat as he claws at his mask. Something shimmers around him, something rises, and just for an instant Fox can see a man in tattered Jedi robes, more rip than cloth, with brown hair and brown eyes and a black mark seared between his brows. His body is imposed over Feemor's like a hazy afterimage, and he’s reaching for the Mandalorian, expression hard to see but desperate, and the Mandalorian reaches back, seizes him even as he tears his helmet away to reveal grey skin and yellow eyes, simian features. Cups his face—Feemor's face—and kisses him—

Fox tackles Feemor out of the way, right over the edge of the platform without hesitation. One arm tight around Feemor’s chest, the other still clutching Colt's axe, he tumbles down, down, down into darkness, fury biting hot in his veins.

In the whirling darkness of their fall, Fox catches a glimpse of another figure in armor, watching as they near. Red-gold armor this time, bright as copper, wearing a woven cloak with long tassels and a conical helmet, a familiar battleaxe in hand. It’s the twin of the one Fox is holding, and he jerks as they tumble straight towards the Mandalorian—

Fall through him, and Fox feels the sudden crackle of power, as bright and vicious as lightning, eating its way down to his bones. Maybe he screams, or maybe he passes out, or maybe he burns, all the way down with Feemor caught up in his arms and a god in his head, settling in like coming home.

[ghostofskywalker]

Bacta, Burns, and Bedside Manner

Kix/Fem!Reader

Fictober Day 7 of 31

Words: 1,656

Summary: Kix has a lot of talents, but his brothers wouldn't usually cite bedside manner as one of them. That is, until you showed up in the medbay with injuries that needed to be looked at.

Clone Troopers Masterlist

“Kriff!” you swore loudly and unapologetically as the wire you were working on sparked, startling you and burning two of your fingertips. You were currently wedged in the engine of a gunship, attempting to repair the combustion, but so far all you were doing was causing yourself more pain. There was already a nasty looking scratch on your arm from where you had accidentally caught it on a jagged edge, and your head was throbbing from where you had hit it against the top of the space you were occupying. To say the least, you were not having a good day.

“Are you alright in there?” a trooper’s voice sounded from outside the gunship.

“Yeah!” you called before pulling your body out from the engine and looking at who had stepped into your workshop (Fives). “Just crossed my wires and caught a little spark, that’s all.”

The “little spark” in question actually hurt a lot more than you were letting on, as red-hot pain seized through your fingertips and made you feel like you were holding a hot pan, but he didn’t need to know that.

But even though you were attempting to keep your injuries to yourself, Fives still wasn’t convinced. He just stared at the scrape on your arm (that had started to bleed more profusely at this point) for a few moments before looking up to meet your gaze. “Are you sure? You’re bleeding there.”

“That’s fine, I’ll just throw a patch over it.”

Fives raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s something a single bacta patch can fix,” he said. “Let me take you to the medbay.”

You were all set to say no, that you knew basic first aid and could handle everything yourself, but the pain in your fingertips was only continuing to increase, and you had to fight to keep the tears from welling in your eyes. So instead, you just nodded and stepped forward, allowing Fives to usher you out of your workshop.

When you finally stepped through the doors of the medbay, the brightness and bustle of the room immediately made your head throb even more. You just closed your eyes and stood there with Fives, trying to ignore the pain on your arm, in your fingertips, and on your head. “What’s happened here?” you heard a medic ask.

You opened your eyes to see Kix looking at you with a concerned expression, but you couldn’t find the words to speak just yet. Thankfully, Fives was there to answer his brother’s question. “I walked in to hear her swear and she said that a few crossed wires sparked. That’s not even counting the bleeding scrape on her arm, which she said she would just throw a patch on and be done with.”

After Fives spoke, Kix turned to you. “Is that all true?”

You nodded. “And my head,” you managed to croak out. Kix just nodded and motioned for you to follow him to one of the beds, quietly telling Fives that he could get back to whatever he was doing.

“Alright,” he said once you had sat down on the bed. “Tell me everything that’s wrong.”

You took a deep breath before responding. “The wires burned my fingertips and I hit my head on the gunship before. Oh, and there’s the scrape on my arm, but you can see that pretty clearly.”

“How long ago was the burn sustained?” He asked, and the look on your face told him all he needed to know. He stepped away, returning a few moments with a wet cloth. “Which hand was it?”

You help up the thumb and pointer finger on your dominant hand, and he wrapped the cloth around them, the relief instant as the cool material made contact with your burning skin. “We’ll keep this on for at least a half hour. If it gets too warm, I’ll give you a fresh one.”

You just nodded in response, still overcome by the feeling of the pain finally abated. After that, he cleaned up your scratch and wrapped it in gauze. The feelings of his fingertips gently holding your arm made you feel like you were burning up for a slightly different reason. There was always something about the 501st’s head medic that intrigued you, and you would be lying if you said that you didn’t think he was attractive. All the clones were nice looking in their own ways, but Kix had something special about him.

“You said something about your head too,” he murmured as he secured the gauze on your arm.

“I hit it against the top of the gunship by accident,” you responded.

You pointed out the area to him and he carefully checked you over. “I don’t think you have a concussion, but I’m going to get you some ice for where it hurts,” he said. “Then you can lie down for a little while, okay?”

“No, I thought-”

But the look on his face had you trailing off before you had finished your sentence. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Especially not with those burns on your fingers.”

“But-”

“No buts, you need to rest in order to heal properly, and it won’t do you any good to go back to work before you feel better,” he said gently.

You didn’t want to be a burden to him for longer than you had to be, but you did understand where he was coming from. “Alright,” you said. “I suppose I can stay around a little longer.”

After Kix got you a fresh compress for your burns and an ice pack for your head, you ended up falling asleep, hoping that when you woke up you wouldn’t be in pain anymore.

***

When you opened your eyes, you could hear voices, but the curtain around your bed obscured whoever it was from your view.

“How is she?” That sounded like Fives.

“Asleep now, but she’ll be fine,” Kix responded.

Another voice joined the conversation, and you guessed that it was Echo. “That’s good. Rex said that she should stay here as long as necessary and not to worry about the ship she was fixing, it’s not a big deal.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t scare her off,” yet another voice said, this one sounding like Jesse.

“What do you mean?” Kix asked. You couldn’t see his face, but you could guess that he looked a little bit offended.

You had to hold in a little giggle at Jesse’s words, because you knew what he meant. Bedside manner was not one of Kix’s strengths as a medic. He could patch up any blaster wound in seconds, knew exactly what to look for when there was the possibility of a concussion, and could usually tell just by looking at someone whether or not they had fractured or broken a rib, but he wasn’t exactly all sunshine and smiles while doing so. Especially when it came to his batch mates or fellow troopers of the 501st. The better Kix knew someone, the ruder he was when patching them up, especially if they had sustained the injury doing something dumb. You had escorted a few troopers to the medbay yourself (one time after a game of hide and seek got out of hand), and watched as Kix teased his brothers while he helped them with their injuries.

But he was never like that with you. The harshest he had been was when you tried to get up and go back to work, and you wondered why that was as Fives responded to Kix’s earlier question.

“Come on Kix,” he said. “We get injuries and you call us di’kuts all the time, but suddenly now your bedside manner gets a makeover?”

“It’s because he likes her,” Jesse cut in. Well, that certainly piqued your interest.

“Jesse!”

“What? It’s true, isn’t it?”

But before Kix could confirm or deny the accusations, you sneezed (at the worst kriffing time for it). Conversation stopped and the curtain was pulled away, revealing Kix, Fives, Echo, and Jesse, all staring at you. Jesse seemed to realize the situation first, wishing Kix good luck and bolting out of the medbay, and Fives and Echo were not far behind him.

Kix looked like he wanted to chase after his brothers and strange them as he turned to you. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you responded, not sure where to go from here. Do you apologize that you overheard? Do you ask him if what Jesse said was true?

But Kix spoke again before you could say anything else. “Listen, I’m sorry about them,” he said.

“It’s okay,” you said. “I know what brothers are like, I’m sorry for eavesdropping.”

A silence fell over the two of you, but eventually Kix spoke again. “I just wish they hadn’t been so obvious about it, I was going to get there eventually.”

“What?” Yeah, that definitely wasn’t your finest choice of words.

“Jesse was right, I do like you,” Kix said. “And I was going to ask you out to dinner the next time we were on Coruscant, but I suppose the tooka is out of the bag now.”

“And is that offer of dinner on Coruscant still on the table?” you asked tentatively. You really hoped that he said yes, because if this was really happening, you didn’t want to go back the way it was.

Kix smiled. “Maybe. Why, do you want to take it?”

“Maybe.”

The two of you shared a quiet laugh as Kix took your hand, leaning down to place a soft kiss on your cheek. “Yeah, it’s still on the table.”

But before he could pull away, you took advantage of a fleeting moment of bravery and sat up, placing a kiss of your own on his lips. “Good,” you said as you broke apart, love struck looks on both your faces. “Because I’d really like to take you up on the offer.”  

- the end - 

i no longer have a taglist! if you're interested in being notified when i post, you can follow my library blog @ghostofskywalker-library and turn on notifications!

[suzukiblu]

An excerpt of morally-ambiguous-dad!Lex for @robotogato to hopefully enjoy, haha.

"Clones really don't get soulmarks, though," Kon says in frustration. "It doesn't even make sense that I'd have one."

"Well, I suppose there's the possibility that I just want you so badly that it happened anyway," Lex Luthor muses idly. "A Luthor doesn't generally accept being denied what they want."

"Very fucking funny," Kon mutters, shooting him a glower. "I'm being serious here, asshole."

"Hm," Lex Luthor observes, inspecting him neutrally. "Not even a moment where you let yourself want to believe that, was there."

"Why would I wanna believe that a bastard like you wanted me?" Kon sneers at him.

"Because I am the only person in the multiverse who would burn down reality for you without hesitation," Lex Luthor says like he's talking about the weather or something. Like he's just stating a totally inconsequential fact or reiterating something as obvious as the sky being blue.

Like there's no question there at all.

"I hope you fucking die and I hope it fucking hurts," Kon hisses as the whole world seems to bleed red, just about choking on his fury.

"Well, it will if you don't close your eyes," Lex Luthor says, raising an eyebrow at him. "Quickly, ideally."

"Wh–" Kon is almost stupid enough to ask, and then he realizes and immediately screws his eyes shut, snapping his hands up over his face just in case.

His eye sockets feel like they're on fire.

"Ah, I suppose I live another day," Lex Luthor says. "Rage and anger are notable triggers for the heat vision, if you're still unfamiliar. And apparently arousal as well, although I have very definitely never encountered that version so I can't say if it's more or less potent than rage."

"How do you even know about it, then?" Kon asks, hating that he can't trust himself to look at the bastard without killing him. Lex Luthor could be doing any stupid fucked-up thing right now and he'd have no fucking clue.

"I am a very intelligent person who can afford very good information," Lex Luthor says. "And I am also more intimately familiar with Kryptonian DNA than quite possibly anyone else on this planet, Superman included."

"Superman has Kryptonian DNA," Kon retorts dubiously.

"He does," Lex Luthor agrees. "His special little gift from dumb luck and blind chance. Some of us actually had to put in a bit of effort to get that kind of power, though."

"You don't have that kind of power," Kon says. "You have money and the fucking bullshit fear that you put into people."

"Ah, but I have you now," Lex Luthor counters mildly. "Now don't I."

"You don't," Kon snaps.

"Oh, give it sixteen years or so," Lex Luthor says, making a dismissive gesture as Kon's eyes finally stop burning long enough for him to risk a glare at him. "Your full powerset should be in by then, and I imagine I'll have had a bit of time to change your mind somewhere in there."

"I don't care what whatever custody law bullshit says about it, I'm not gonna stay with you," Kon says tightly. "Sure as shit not for the next sixteen years!"

"Oh?" Lex Luthor asks, raising an eyebrow at him. "Then where exactly are you intending to go long-term? Just planning to stay in a lab for the rest of your life?"

"Why the fuck not?" Kon says in exasperation.

Lex Luthor's eyes narrow.

"Oh," he says like a realization. "Someone's actually made you assume that you belong in a lab, haven't they."

"Yeah, I can't think of a single unrepentant bastard who might've had a hand in me belonging in one of those," Kon bites off darkly. "Real fucking mystery there, huh."

"Hm," Lex Luthor says.

[phantom-of-the-501st]

Frustrated Clones and a Whole Lot of Trees

Bonus halloween fic! 👻 This is not the one I was in the middle of writing, but I was just reminded of this idea and couldn't bear to not write it down. So here it is!

Just some clone shenanigans in some creepy woods

Tagging @saturn-sends-hugs @inkstainedhandswithrings and @the-bi-space-ace

He ignored the aching in his legs and the branches knocking against his helmet. His lungs hurt as he struggled for breath. He kept running. Whatever that was, it certainly wasn't normal and he was desperate to get as far away from it as he possibly could, as quickly as he could. He could still remember the sensation under his skin as it's eyes stared into him, like his blood had begun to freeze, ice crystals carving away at the inside of his veins. Like his lungs were filling with water and his head with fire. Like his flesh was beginning to slide from this body. He'd managed to turn, to escape, to run. He had to warn the others.

Suddenly, he collided with something solid and tumbled to the ground, dirt making its way into the crevices of his armour. He panicked and scrambled up, pointing his blaster at the thing he had just made contact with.

"What the kriff, Hardcase?"

It was Jesse. Hardcase felt his shoulders slump in relief as he holstered his blaster and went to help his brother up off the floor. "Oh... thank the stars... it's you." He said, panting. His lungs struggled to pull in enough air now that he'd stopped running and he felt a strong ache in his chest. His legs felt like jelly beneath him and the forest was swaying slightly.

Jesse brushed dirt off plastoid before turning to look at his brother. Even though Hardcase couldn't see his face, he was fairly certain Jesse was glaring at him. He probably would've cared more if the world was spinning less and he could actually feel anything below his hips.

"What was that about, 'Case? All I wanted to do was get back to camp and the next thing I know I'm being body slammed into the ground!" Jesse winced and gripped his shoulder as he rotated it a little. "That's gonna leave a bruise." He complained.

"Sorry, Jess. It's just... there's something out there."

Jesse got tense, his head tilting towards Hardcase and concern bleeding into his voice. "What kind of something?"

"Ghosts."

Hardcase watched his brother's stance falter slightly. It was a little easier to concentrate now that his blood wasn't rushing in his ears as much.

"Ghosts? What? Like force ghosts?"

"No. Like spooky ghosts."

He knew at that point that he'd totally lost the other.

"Spooky ghosts."

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure!" Hardcase grew frustrated. "What? Do you not believe me now? You were all concerned like two seconds ago!"

"Yeah, because I thought you'd actually seen something. Ghosts aren't real, Hardcase! You know that!"

"What about force ghosts? You were literally just talking about force ghosts!"

"For kriffs sake that's not the same thing! Force ghosts exist. Other ghosts do not."

"I know what I saw."

"I think you know what you think you saw."

"Oh come on, Jess! Work with me here!" Jesse wasn't looking convinced. Hardcase felt anger bubble in his gut. "I am telling you, there's something out there!"

His brother just sighed and shook his head. "Look, tell you what. We'll head back to camp and tell the others. If the general thinks it's worth checking out, then we'll go and have a look, okay?"

Hardcase wasn't sure he wanted to go back there. Actually, no, he was definitely sure. He did not, under any circumstances, want to go back to that place. He wanted to leave and get as far away from this stars forsaken planet as possible, preferably back to his bed on Kamino, where he would be safe from whatever was out in these trees. But the others needed to know what was out there and if anyone would know how to handle it, it would be Obi Wan.

Hardcase trudged behind Jesse as they made their way through the forest. It took around ten minutes of walking in slightly uncomfortable silence before they began to see the glow of a campfire through the branches. They made their way into a small clearing, where the rest of the group were all sat in a circle, some on boxes and others on the floor, arms propped on knees or legs spread out in front of them.

"There you are!" Rex said cheerfully. "I was starting to get worried that we would have to send a search party out to go and find you two." He kept his tone light, but Hardcase knew that there had been at least a small amount of genuine worry there. He and Jesse removed their helmets and tucked them under their arms.

"Scouting go okay?" Kix asked, titling his head to look up at his brothers.

"Hardcase is seeing things." Jesse said as he dropped down to sit next to the fire.

Kix's eyebrows furrowed. "Anything to be worried about? Did he hit his head or something?"

"No." Said Jesse easily. "At least I don't think so. But he is seeing ghosts."

"Force ghosts?" Obi Wan asked inquisitively.

"That's what I wanted to know. But nope! No force ghosts, just spooky ones apparently.

"Spooky ones?" Cody looked a little bemused.

"Spooky ones."

"Oh jeez, really, 'Case? Ghosts?" Hardcase gritted his teeth as he looked over at Fives, who was sat in front of the crate Echo was on, his brother's legs on either side of him.

"Lay off him a little." Tup said. "He hasn't slept properly in like... three days."

"You haven't slept in three days?" Rex said, clearly alarmed.

"Oh, he has slept." Jesse chimed in. "Just not a lot."

Rex and Kix shared a look of concern, their gaze flicking over to Obi Wan, who seemed to be thinking, but not overly worried about the fact that Hardcase was apparently sleep deprived. And seeing dead people.

"Tired enough to start seeing ghosts?" Kix asked.

"Oh, probably."

"I can't believe you haven't slept in three days!" Fives exclaimed. "No wonder your eyes are deceiving you."

"You're one to talk." Echo said, poking his brother in the shoulder. "You once didn't sleep for seven."

"When was this?" Rex seemed even more panicked. He was ignored as the twins started bickering with each other.

"You're right! And you know what, Echo? It was awful. I started seeing colours!"

"You can always see colours, di'kut!"

"I meant tasting colours! ...or smelling them? I don't remember. But it wasn't good!"

"No wonder you don't remember. You hadn't slept in a week!" Echo said, shoving his brother in the head as Fives tried to bat his hand away.

"That's not as bad as the time one of the shinies had to go to the med bay because he accidentally ate glue." Jesse added.

Rex looked absolutely horrified. Cody leant over to whisper in his brother's ear. "How exactly is your battalion still alive?"

"I have no idea." Rex responded in despair.

"Hey, let's not forget the time you got stuck in the air vents and had to be rescued by Commander Wolffe!" Fives said, pointing an accusatory finger at Jesse. "He was definitely not happy about that one."

"Wolffe is never happy with anything."

"Of course he isn't! He has to keep rescuing clones from air vents!"

Rex just shook his head. "I want a new battalion. This ones full of defectives." Cody simply gave him a comforting pat on the back, although the grin on his face wasn't conveying much actual sympathy.

Hardcase's arm began to shake with the amount of force he was gripping his helmet with. They weren't listening. He finally snapped.

"Will you lot just listen to me for five minutes!"

Everybody turned to stare at him in shock, with the exception of Obi Wan, who simply looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Hardcase closed his eyes and took a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He opened his eyes and looked at the Jedi.

"There's something out there, General. I don't know what exactly, but there is something out there and it isn't good."

"You just said it was ghosts!"

"Oh, shut up, Fives!"

"Don't tell me to shut up! You can't come in here on three days of no sleep and tell us that there are things that don't exist out there!"

Echo clearly felt the need to intervene as he held onto Fives' shoulder to prevent him from getting up. "Don't be an ass, Fives."

"He's the one-!"

"Calm down, all of you!" Silence fell over the camp as Rex's voice dissipated into the trees. "Stop acting like children. If there is something out there, we need to know what it is. What I do not need-" He turned to look at Fives and silence him before the protest he was about to make made it past his lips,. "Is a bunch of qualified soldiers arguing with each other! Now be quiet, and listen to what Hardcase has to say." Rex cast a stern look over the squad before nodding his head at Hardcase, encouraging him to continue.

"Err... thank you, sir." Hardcase gave a nervous cough. "Like I said, there's something out there. I don't know what it is, but I don't think it's safe. I think we need to get out of here."

"Hmm..." Obi Wan was tapping his finger on his chin. "Did this thing try to hurt you at all?"

Hardcase didn't really know how to answer that. He remembered the sensation, the awful, crawling, burning sensation. It had been terrible. But the thing hadn't actually tried to hurt him. It never even came near him. Yes, Hardcase had felt awful, but he was physically fine. The only injuries he had were from colliding with Jesse as he ran away. "Well... no."

"Hmmm..." Nobody said anything as the general continued his thinking. Fives glanced at Echo nervously, and then over at Jesse who just shrugged.

"I think we need to go and have a look. Together." Obi Wan finally said.

Well... that was the last thing that Hardcase had wanted to hear.

〰〰〰

The group marched through the forest, blasters at the ready. Obi Wan led the group, lightsaber held out in front of him as a light source and with the clones paired up behind him. Hardcase and Tup, Jesse and Kix, Fives and Echo, and then Rex and Cody at the back. They were getting closer and closer to the spot where Hardcase had seen the ghost and he could feel his hair standing on end. His blacks felt damp as he sweated nervously. He adjusted his fingers on his blaster and hunched up his shoulders, as if doing so would protect him from whatever was out there. He could see Tup glance over at him out of the corner of his visor.

Then they stopped.

"Is this the place?" Obi Wan asked, surveying the trees around them. There didn't seem to be an edge to the forest. It just continued on into the distance, endless.

Hardcase swallowed. His throat felt tight and his mouth was dry. He adjusted his hands again. They were clammy. He could feel his blacks clinging to his palms. "Yes." It was all he could get out.

"Okay. Spread out in your pairs. Hardcase and Tup, head north. Jesse and Kix, east. Fives and Echo, west. Rex and Cody, south. See if you can spot anything. Don't go far and come back here when you're done searching. Understood?" They all nodded. "Good. I'll stay here and keep look out." The pairs nodded again and headed off in their designated directions.

Hardcase's breathing was uneven. He was scared. More scared than he had ever been. He didn't want to encounter that thing again, nor did he want it to find any of his brothers either.

"You okay?" Tup asked.

Hardcase was tense. "Err... yeah. Just nervous, ya know?"

"Sure. I get it." Tup stopped and gave his brother a comforting squeeze on the shoulder. "Look, it's going to be okay. We'll do a quick scout and head straight back. I'm sure there's nothing to worry about."

Hardcase just tilted his head slightly as a reply, to which Tup gave his shoulder another squeeze.

As they started moving again, Hardcase couldn't help but feel a little frustrated. He knew Tup was just trying to help, but it was also clear that his brother didn't actually believe him. There was something out here. He knew it, even if no one wanted to take his word for it.

They marched onwards, stopping and spinning in a slow circle every now and then to check their surroundings. Nothing. The more they went on, the more nervous Hardcase grew. It was too still, too quiet. He didn't understand. There was supposed to be something here. They called off their search after twenty minutes and decided to head back to where Obi Wan was. Hardcase didn't know whether to be annoyed or relieved. There was nothing there. Nothing to be worried about.

And now his brothers were going to think he was even more crazy. Great.

When they got back to their original spot, only the twins were absent, although it didn't take long for them to appear through the trees.

"Find anything?" Rex asked.

"Nope!" Fives responded. "Just trees. A whole lot of trees." He sounded frustrated. Hardcase couldn't blame him. They had all been marched out to the middle of some dark woods to go hunting for a whole lot of nothing.

"Okay, well. The others didn't find anything either. If there is anything here it doesn't look like it's going to be making another appearance any time soon." Obi Wan looked at them all. "I say we head back to camp. We'll all get whatever sleep we can and then wait for a pickup tomorrow."

A chorus of "yes, sir!" echoed through the trees and they all made their way back to camp.

By the time the pick-up shuttle touched down just after sunrise, Hardcase was now four days down on sleep and feeling rather grouchy because of it. He was even starting to think he actually was insane. Maybe he had been seeing things before. The lack of severe injuries suggested that there had been no weird encounters (unless pinballing off his brother counted. Jesse was clearly unhappy about the extra set of bruises he'd acquired). They had found nothing, and nothing had tried to ambush them in the middle of the night. Hardcase knew because he hadn't been able to keep his eyes off the trees.

He sighed and slumped down in a seat, resting his head on the window. It felt cool and relaxing. It soothed his growing headache and put just enough pressure on his temple to distract him. Everything ached and he just wanted to go home. The armour was uncomfortable and still lined with dirt, his feet were covered in so many blisters they were practically a different shape, and his neck felt so stiff he was sure his muscles had ossified. Things had been weird on the way back to camp. He was either being coddled by concerned brothers who were almost certain he had lost at least 90% of his senses, or he was being snipped at by the other half who blamed him for the impromptu field trip that had left a couple of them left with twigs lodged in places they didn't want them.

Rex had looked like he was ready to leave all of them behind, hoping that the ghosts were in fact real and that they would take them somewhere where they couldn't give him any more grey hairs. Cody was also close to being sacrificed to a paranormal entity if Rex's tired stares were anything to go by.

As soon as everyone was seated, the craft started to rise, ready to start heading back towards Kamino. Finally. This planet could burn for all he cared. Hardcase opened his eyes and looked at the trees as they became smaller below them. He froze. His blood turned to ice.

There was a figure standing in the middle of the clearing they had just taken off from.

And they were staring right at Hardcase.

[obsidiancreates]

Catching Up (With No Murders This Time!)

(I just wanted Shawn and Abigail to like, see each other again and get a little closure since they broke up under such horrible circumstances.)

"Hey, sweetheart. I just wrapped up a case and I just so happen to be next to that awesome bakery you love, do you want- sweet! Uh, no, no Gus with me, your croissant will make it to you with no bites taken out of it. ... No, I'll buy my own so I'm not tempted either. Yeah, well, Selene called and told him Charlie is running a fever so he sped off before I even finished the wrap-up. Oh, gotta go, someone is about to try and get the last Nutella-filled one."

Shawn hangs up and rushes up to the counter as the person who's eyes were lingering on the Nutella-filled croissant is about to order. "You know, I am amazed you guys still make these, because I heard that hazelnuts and chocolate combined can give you hair loss."

The woman freezes, and Shawn almost does a little celebratory shimmy- until she turns around.

Shawn's mouth parts in shock. "Abigail?"

"Shawn?" Abigail blinks. "Are you really..." She leans in and whispers, "Why are you in San Fransisco?"

"I- I uh, moved here. A few years ago with- uh, well with my wife." He holds up his hand. Please don't let this be awkward, please don't let this be-

Abigail holds up her hand, showing off her own wedding ring. "We match."

A tension Shawn hadn't realized he was holding bleeds out of him. "Look at that!" He grins at her. "Who knew us crazy kids would ever find that, huh?"

"Who knew. ... Oh, you um, wanted the Nutella."

"Yeah, if- it's Jules's favorite so I just-"

"Jules? The detective you worked with? ... Actually, that makes sense."

"... Is that a... bad, 'that makes sense'?"

"No, just... it makes sense. Here, uh, I'll have the regular chocolate instead. My husband is allergic to hazelnuts anyway, I'd have to brush my teeth before kissing him, it's... a whole thing."

They order, and sit together while waiting for the coffees.

"So, um... how long have you been married?" Abigail asks before taking a bite of her pastry.

"Let me see, uh... six years, now? ... Holy crap, I've been married for six years. ... What uh, what about you?"

"Four. We met through the program I do, for teaching abroad."

"Ha, that's cool. I'm a detective, I married a detective, you're a teacher, you married a teacher... fits, it-it fits good."

"Yup."

"... Sorry about uh... all the stuff I put you through, back then. Taking you to crime scenes and client's houses was a little-"

"Stupid?"

"I was going to say offbeat, but... stupid works too." They both give a small laugh. Shawn awkwardly picks at his own pastry, Jules's sitting in his lap. There's a beat of silence that's just agonizing.

"How's Gus?" Abigail looks up at Shawn again. "I mean, I just assume you're both still doing the psychic detective thing."

"Oh, Gus is great. He uh, he got married too, about four years ago now, just before the whole uh... pandemic, thing. She's basically a clone of him, but a woman, and they've got a kid."

"Let me guess. You're the godfather."

"Which still freaks me out, by the way. He's a great kid though. Smart and awesome, just like his dad, and it looks like he got The Super Sniffer too. Gus says it's too early to tell, but-" Shawn puts a finger by his temple. The movement feels weird. He hasn't really leaned into the whole "psychic" thing for a few years now, and when he does he usually use the finger-to-eyebrow device anymore. When was the last time he did? ... Dear god, it's been ten years. Ten years since he moved out of Santa Barbara.

"Time really flies," he finds himself saying."

"Tell me about it." Abigail shakes her head. "My husband and I adopted, about two years ago now, and she's just... shooting right up. When she started walking I couldn't believe it."

"Gus couldn't either. I think he showed me the video about a billion times."

"Crying?"

"Absolutely weeping, yes."

"Nice to know some people never really change."

"Mmmm, I wouldn't say that. He's done some pretty badass stuff since you last met him."

"You do know that seems... a little far-fetched."

"More far-fetched than the time we had to prove a polar bear was framed for murder?"

"... I'm not sure if I believe you about that."

"If we had time, I could condense each little weekly adventure into about a forty-three minute story each."

"That's not very condensed."

"... You're right, it's not." Shawn nods, and looks up as the bell on the door jingles- he hears Abigail laugh a little about it and mumble that yeah, people don't really change.

The man at the door spots Abigail and grins. Shawn hones in on a wedding ring, a tie with Abigail's favorite flowers as the design, and hair that just may rival Shawn's own.

"Hey, honey." The man sweeps right over to Abigail and leans down to kiss her in her chair. "Finally sorted out the issue with our plane, we should be on our way day after tomorrow."

"Oh, thank god," Abigail groans, holding her husband's hand as he pulls over another chair to sit next to her. "I'm so tired of hotel food."

"You and me both," her husband chuckles. He looks at Shawn. "Who's this?"

"Oh, um, this is Shawn Spencer."

"Ooooh, you're the guy who took her to a crime scene as a date one time."

"Guilty," Shawn says with a laugh.

"Nice to meet you, I've heard a lot about you. Good things!"

"And some not-so-good things, I'm guessing?"

"No, no. ... Not about you as a person, anyway. Plenty of bad things about your job."

"Yeah, I figured. ... Oh, there's our coffees." Shawn takes his paper tray with 4 coffees (Gus and Selene will need them) and stands up. "Well, this was totally unexpected, but I'm glad it happened. It was nice seeing you again, Abigail."

"Nice seeing you too, Shawn." She smiles at him. "I'm glad you're doing well."

"Me too. Doing well is pretty great. Oh, and, glad for you, I guess."

Abigail laughs again. "Bye, Shawn.

"Bye, Abigail."

He walks out of the bakery, the sound of Abigail chatting with her husband following him until the door closes. She sounds happy. Happy and relaxed in a way that even on their best days, she never was with him. And he's glad.

He's just genuinely happy for her. That's a really, really nice feeling. No jealousy, no feeling of missed chances, no wondering of 'what-ifs'. Just... actual, authentic happiness that she's doing well.

He tucks Jules's croissant into his pocket and pulls out his phone.

"... Hey, babe! Yeah, got the last Nutella for you, and a coffee. ... Yup, that perp was our case. Really? Described being caught by 'some kind of ninjas or something?' Well, babe, as much as I'd love to tell you I've secretly been a martial arts master our whole marriage, you can put in your report that he's absolutely lying because he's very embarrassed. Truth is Gus accidentally knocked over some marble statue onto him while he was chasing me through the art exhibit. ... Can I fill out the statement later tonight? I got coffee for Gus and Selene too. Awesome! I will hang around to tell you who I just ran into, though. Of course I'm neglecting paperwork in favor of personal matters, if I ever don't then your husband has been replaced by a pod person. Okay, love you, I'll be there as soon as I find a ride..."

[lollytea]

You ever wonder if hunter thinks about why his title was golden guard? I mean it could be in terms of purity of gold like how belos wanted, it could be a sick play off of how malleable gold how easily shapen and broken apart it can be and it was a sick joke for belos

Ooooooh this is fun. I never thought about the malleable aspect for why he's called the Golden Guard but I think that is some pungent symbolism, I love it.

I don't really imagine it being intentional on Belos' part tho. But I think that would depend on any given person's interpretation of Belos. Because Hunter was not the original Golden Guard, so it wasn't a joke at his expense.

I definitely think Belos is prone to making inside jokes with himself. Like naming his latest clone Hunter. But I also think that at this point, he's kinda like a dormant volcano. He's usually very numb to all the alleged betrayal and fury he felt because of Caleb, (even though its still buried deep inside of him, occasionally exploding out in angry outbursts) so he's cool with not taking this grimwalker shit seriously and doing immature stuff for shits and giggles. Yknow. To cope.

Also he only has one outlet for talking about these things and it is an omnipotent 8 year old. I'm sure the Collector definitely had an influence on Belos' sense of humor getting progressively more juvenile as the centuries wore on. I know he was like "What if I named him Hunter" and they were all like "Hehehehehe that's funny >:3"

However, I think when Philip Wittebane was neck deep in grimwalker prototypes, he was a different man entirely. He wasn't numb to the pain and anger he was feeling. The wounds were still raw. He was obviously unstable and hadn't learned how to mask his insanity yet. And he had completely gaslit himself into believing that his reasons for building a new version of his brother came from a morally good place. He was trying to save his soul. He was trying to give him a second chance.

I don't imagine him having the self awareness to make the Golden Guard title a sick joke. He's definitely doing this out of some subconscious desire to have a living breathing bleeding punching bag with his brother's face, but he doesn't reflect on himself enough to know that yet.

I do think the title was based on purity. He wanted to recreate Caleb as a servant of God, so he dressed and titled him accordingly.

It's also the usual colour of halos in religious paintings. So it could be Philip already making plans to become a Christlike figure of the demon realm, with Caleb his apostle by his side.

Also found this

But like. Do I think Hunter would think his title was a cruel joke on Belos' part? Yeah, I could absolutely see him coming to that conclusion.

I think Hunter knew Belos better than anyone, but only as the total monster he was during his last sixteen years of life. But he didn't know the person Belos used to be. Nobody does.

He was well and truly out of his mind, but I don't think anyone will ever peel back every individual layer to discover that he was more sick and depraved than they could have ever imagined. He will remain a mystery.

[theworldvsyoshiko]

A current state of affairs, since I haven't posted an overall update in a while:

The settlement hasn't changed shape much. The main update of note is those tunnels off to the east. One thing with this map: the exposed area is a relatively small crater in the center, with one real narrow route in or out. This makes it incredibly defensible against people attacking on foot. Against drop pod raids and such, though, it means that there's very little available space for them to spawn. Most drop pod raids end up landing basically in the middle of the base, even ones that are balanced around not doing that. This makes them the biggest threat by far, and there isn't much I can do about them in the current setup.

So, the girls are starting to migrate underground. (With lots of chokepoints built in to mitigate the risk of insectoid infestations.) This will be a slow as hell process, because all of the rooms they're going to spend much time in need to be smoothed out to make them not ugly, and this is a group genetically dispositioned to be bad at Construction.

Almost everybody has the gene for Psychite dependency now, because it's basically free metabolism. Yeah sure I'll make my biochemical processes dependent on a special easily-produced tea in exchange for eating 40% less food.

Almost everybody also has a Bionic/Archotech Eye and genes for quick wound healing, slow bleeding, and Scarless, which is already a pretty solid combat loadout.

Karina McClain

Look don't ask me what's going on with the Very Diligent Student trait.

Karina's decent at basically everything but art. I think her Crafting skill purely came from making clothes before Cupcake was old enough. Despite the 20 Shooting, she's only the main combatant because of her mechanitor stuff. Otherwise, that title goes to...

Karina "Cupcake" McClain

Sure, Cupcake's a bit worse at shooting than Karina, but she has some other advantages. For one thing, Trigger Happy, which makes her shoot twice as fast for a bit of an accuracy penalty. Since she isn't using her utility slot for a mech pack, she can also use a ranged shield belt, which makes her much safer to venture out of cover. She's got an Archotech Arm, which combined with her tail gives her 142% Manipulation for fighting and crafting. But also,

Outside of combat, Cupcake's also the lead researcher and crafter.

Karina "Damage" McClain

Damage is also good at everything. Being giant means that she's a nice big target, so she also has a Painstopper (0 pain), a Healing Enhancer, and a Toughskin Gland. Damage currently has higher armor than Karina, who's wearing marine armor. But then also:

... and then the snake tail gives her an extra melee attack, and being giant gives her a shitton of health. She should probably pick up Robust to balance out Wimp, but frankly it hasn't been an issue yet. Damage can take a truly ridiculous amount of, uh, damage.

Karina "Kitten" McClain

Kitten inherited Evil Twin's genes. The last memory of Karina's ex-wife...

Kitten doesn't have a lot special going for her just yet, but she does have

Karina "Scratch" McClain

Like Kitten, Scratch doesn't have much to distinguish her yet. Apart, of course, from

... if I give this kid six bionic/archotech arms, I assume that she'll be the fastest worker on the planet. High Manipulation makes most things faster, but bonuses to quality and such tend to be capped around 100% Manipulation.

Karina "Shorty" McClain

is baby

The only really notable thing about Shorty at this point is that they got a minor mutation in the cloning tank, and came out with like 10% more melanin than the rest of the group.

Spider and Lustthrist

The resident ghouls. Meaning: they're incapable of basically everything that isn't hand-to-hand combat, but they feel no pain, don't sleep, don't have any non-food needs at all actually, and regenerate ridiculously fast. Melee shock troops, basically. They've both got armor plating bolted right onto their skin, metal barbs jutting out of it, a nuclear stomach that makes them eat 1/4 as much in exchange for bombarding them with radiation that they don't mind, and their heart has been replaced with one that drops a lot of that pesky 'blood' stuff to generate acid for them to projectile vomit.

Once the girls have a little more research done, they'll be replacing some of the ghouls' limbs with weaponry, and other fun things like that.

[ectonurites]

am I stupid or is that definitely not the main universe kon? "mom"? "haven't been on earth that long"???

no anon you’re not stupid, and I do think there’s a possibility it’s another earth, but… I fear it may be more of a ‘the writer doesn’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to Kon & his history’ situation just given DC’s track record with… how they treat Kon & his history.

but yeah, he doesn’t have a ‘mom’—not one he calls ‘mom’ at least. like, he does have Ma Kent of course but he always calls her ‘Ma’ (like… everyone else does). it’s very introductory level Kon info to know that literally part of his whole thing is the fact that he doesn’t have regular parents because he’s a hybrid clone

‘haven’t been on this earth long’ i’d give a bigger pass to though, bc in the grand scheme of comics it was only like four irl years ago he had been stuck on Gemworld and before that had been on a different earth (the pre-flashpoint one)… but still.

until we get the story we won’t know for sure—my gut reaction is just Fear and Angy—but honestly even if it does turn out to be an alternate earth’s Kon, I still just don’t like the idea of the ship bleeding into stories related to the main continuity comics like this

[wirewitchviolet]

Twitter is dead. Get off it. This is an intervention.

So, back in... what was it, November? Elon Musk was forced via legal action to make good on a boisterous offer to buy Twitter. At the time, the reaction of literally everyone I know was roughly “oh damn, that’s the end of this place, that idiot’s going to kill the whole site. Where are we bailing to?” I feel like if there was a clear answer to that, maybe people would really have done it, but... a dozen people came out of the woodwork with really hastily thrown-together Twitter clones which all had weird quirks that one could be leery of, regarding security mostly, and thanks to choice paralysis, the general consensus seemed to shift to “watching this idiot try to speedrun killing this website is comedy gold, I’m going to ride this sinking ship to the bottom of the ocean, then deal with ditching it.”

The problem though is, that already happened. I guess people thought the metaphorical ocean was maybe deeper than it is, but that site really is on the bottom of it, and it really is time to move on.

Clearly, there’s some benchmarks people were waiting to see that just aren’t ever going to happen. A lot of people really expected there’d be a point where they’d just try to load up the site and get a 404 page because the servers are all permanently disconnected. Mostly people figured this would happen because Musk would realize that the site is absolutely bleeding cash like there’s no tomorrow and there’s no way it’ll stabilize again, but that’s not going to happen. He didn’t buy it to make money, he bought it to pressure bootlickers to pretend they think he’s cool, and that’s totally been working out for him. It’s costing him an absurd amount of money, but he has basically infinite money and doesn’t care.

Some people also thought this might happen because, well, he immediately fired like most of the staff and started randomly deleting huge chunks of load-bearing code and breaking contracts and not paying rent and stuff but.. yeah somehow that didn’t do the trick. A skeleton crew is mostly keeping the lights on. A lot of stuff keeps breaking temporarily but it’s held together with duct tape and someone seems to be restraining Musk from finishing the job. It’s as broken as it’s getting.

I’ve seen goalpost moving like “I’ll drop the site when it gets to the point where marginalized people are getting banned en masse and it’s just wall to wall nazi propaganda. That happened already. In November. Countless leftists, many celebrities, got taken out like day one. I got knocked off literally for the crime of being trans within the first week or so, as did a ton of other people. These are all bans that can’t be repealed. You’re hanging out in an online country club that doesn’t allow in a bunch of “undesirables” and that’s you actively propping up white supremacy if we’re really being honest about it.

I’ve seen the argument made that freelance writers and artists “need to be on twitter” in order to get commissions, and there’s a few ways to approach this one. First, do you really? Have you not reached a point in your creative career where there’s regular clients who hit you up, and don’t need to see you actively posting on Twitter to remember you exist? Do you not get any work from anywhere else? If it has traditionally been just Twitter, ARE you still getting work there? Because they don’t let you post off-site links to promote your stuff anymore, and they murdered all the discovery algorithms to instead promote far right conspiracy theorists and weird Musk sycophants to everyone instead of people whose stuff they might be interested in.

If though we live in a world where with all that being said, and all the massive bleeding of users we’ve already seen, you still want to insist that Twitter is the only place in your field one can get work offers though, then in sticking with it for that reason, you ARE kind of uh, you know, actively benefiting from your status as someone the open bigot running the place doesn’t have it out for? Again, would you join the whites-only country club? Would you apply to work at the business that refuses to hire any women or queer people? Some of us out here are literally facing homelessness because we ALSO rely entirely on commissions, and we aren’t allowed to be on that site, so, the longer that site remains the place you get commissions from, we can’t find work. Please hasten it’s fall for our sake.

Setting that aside though, there’s also the moral argument that you really should not be supporting what is quite plainly at this point a site maintained by nazis, explicitly to cater to other nazis. Like, the easy joke here is that the people who previously ran Twitter were cryptofascists, while the guy running it now is instead a crypto fascist. This of course ignoring the powers that be at Twitter also going all in on that, remember the hexagons? But seriously, with no investors to keep happy and no interest in keeping advertisers happy, Musk and the policies of the site both official and unofficial are just... full on mask-off nazi stuff now. Everyone who’s ever been kicked off the site (which traditionally had a bar of like, actually personally trying to have someone killed or personally threatening a celebrity) is back. There’s some stated transphobic policies on the books, Musk is personally posting a bunch of weird George Soros crap and hardcore propaganda like “nearly all crimes are commited by black people” and hardcore anti-vax stuff, and not only is none of this going anywhere it’s being actively pushed into everyone’s feeds constantly. You’re basically hanging out on a mirror of Gab, and your very presence there is feeding it, not financially per se (I mean, what income Twitter does have IS still advertising based, which in turn directly translates active users to dollars, but again, Musk has basically infinite money), but like, the nazis don’t just hang out on Gab is they need the attention of non-nazis and the legitimacy of hanging out in the same spaces.

So far this is me making moral arguments, but also, like... are you getting anything at all out of being on that site these days? I’m banned but private windows are a thing, and there’s still people I care about who adamantly refused to just like, be present on Discord or something so I can check in, so I do glance at people’s feeds now and then, and literally all I have seen from ANYONE in the past uh... 7 months from anyone on Twitter is just people’s live reactions to the site dying, the owner being an idiot, and having nazis shoved in their faces.

In the before time, one of the things that arguably made it worth having a presence on that site was people setting up a bunch of automated accounts to like, give weather reports and such (which you can just look up on a dedicated weather site/an app on your phone you don’t even need to open by the way) and stuff like those accounts that post a cute picture of a cat/wolf/fox/skink/whatever every hour on the hour. Those are all dead now I believe, because the idiot in charge heard someone saying that hated “bots” and thought people meant actual automated accounts, not the fascists shilling crypto and shrieking at marginalized people from their hundreds of burner accounts.

The thing though, that I’ve heard from quite a lot of people, is that not only did those feeds go poof (also anyone who hasn’t logged in in a month- dead friends, old joke accounts, etc.) but if you look for a replacement by just searching the site for say, “dog” or “cat,” because it is now a site by and for nazis, you get domestic animal snuff film gifs. The sort of thing nazis pack all their favored haunts with to deter people whose souls aren’t dead from looking at what they’re posting. I saw a lot of that stuff back in the day helping get other dedicated nazi sites offline, and that crap’s been haunting my dreams since. Why the hell are you there still?

You could jump ship and flee to some mastodon instance or whatever else is out there, or hell, you could also just... not. People had web presences before freaking Twitter. I’m just posting stuff on Tumblr here. I’m on some forums with people I’ve known for years. I’ve got Discord for live conversations (although wow, it’s really looking like it’s time to scout out the next thing there), there’s e-mail to randomly shout at people. You don’t need a doom scroll site replacement, honest.

And like, I get it. You don’t want to just be trickling out one by one. You want some oomphf, some momentum. So here’s the plan, share this around: You post whatever “here’s where to find me” stuff you need to now-ish. Then you wait... about 3 weeks. Then the date is going to be 6/9. You wait for the date to roll over, you make a single post where you just say “nice” and then you never touch the site again.

Oh and meanwhile, hey, again, I really do live off commissions, and I’ve had a hard time getting new ones since... well some former clients decided to not work with trans women anymore apparently, really, so I kinda need to beg for money to live, if you want to maybe toss some my way? Also there’s a new Zelda game out and that weird Bayonetta prequel thing, and I’m literally putting every single cent I can get my hands on towards paying my rent and utilities (the government’s covering groceries). I can’t even afford one of those streaming services. So uh, anyone feel like maybe doing the wishlist thing?

[workingchemistry]

After rambling paragraphs in your comment section I have come on Tumblr to write more lmao. Seriously I wrote 4 journal pages of thoughts about your au it's very good!

Ok so first, I love how the fight dynamic is: jump Fox when he is being stupid -> 17 breaks up fight -> profit. Except now everything's all wrong so they had to call 17 over to fix things in post. Just hilarious and good continuity.

Your manipulative Fox is excellent show don't tell. It's honestly really hard to write a smart dude without being basically psychic or actually failing a lot. So like even though a lot of people love manipulative Fox it's hard to show in such a low stakes fashion. Usually wr just see him blackmailing people or otherwise winning instead of slowing gathering intel and influencing someone. The pacing and POV just makes it work.

Ace!Fox and Allo!Bly solidarity is hilarious. It cracks me up that the Kaminoans somehow didn't realize that most of the clones are ace spectrum. Like i question if the whole defective CT for CC batches worked even once as intended when every CC is only interested in adoption. "Natborns are obsessed with sex" indeed. Fox knows what's up.

Fox being more genuine with Bly and 17 and even Laruk was adorable. Especially with 17 where we got to realize that all the cadet style military discipline is affectionate with 17. Feral!Fox and his barely older dad my beloved.

I love how the deterministic gene editing totally matters but also doesn't matter much at all. Like all it really did is make a hierarchical family dynamic. Alphas will absolutely parent solo because they are competitive. CCs are big on being at the middle level of parenting and ori'vod-ing because they are only as competitive (for affection) as necessary to get the primary position in a cuddle pile. CTs are totally comfy with looking after younger siblings while still being looked after by the CCs. Ultimately they are all chomping at the bit to create a found family irrespective of genes.

Satine and Fox are so interesting because Satine cares that he is bleeding because of her principles not because she is being kind. Fox likewise pretends to be nice constantly so that she doesn't die on his watch and he gets blamed. Like him expressing understanding over natborn women being uncomfortable with men is just so he can do his job. He gets it but he doesn't really care about a stranger's hypothetical trauma.

Caring about your appearance is absolutely not a baseline experience for clones. Choosing to deviate from regulation at all is a huge expression of individuality even if you still present as a man.

Also like, Satine they are not soldiers by choice. Why would they have a culture that values violence above all else when they don't choose that life. As Fox was explaining in the creche, violence between vode is about love and survival, bot bloodthirsty bloodthirstyness or glory.

Also yeah, Satine will be totally offended by Fox's philosophy on death and murder. "The only deaths I care about are my brothers and they die all the time. If the purge was real I would fix the overcrowding in the senate dome no problem."

lol. They had a Method. It’s always a struggle when your younger brother is both smarter and dumber than you are. Usually beating him up and getting lecture by the only person he listens to is effective but then they tried to beat him up without Seventeen being there and it just didn’t work as well.

Ahh. Thank you. 😭 Fox is so fun as an unreliable narrator because he’s being purposeful about what he tells people when and even what he lets himself thing about but it makes me so nervous that I’m showing too much of my hand lol.

😂😂 I’m just too obsessed with the idea of the clones being ace mostly because I’m ace and so I love the idea of a culture where being allo is met with confusion. I don’t think the Kaminoans thought about sex drive at all until the trainer pops up saying it’s a problem. They give the CCs a CT and they seem more pliable so I guess it must have worked. Meanwhile the CCs are losing their minds over having a new tubie to take care of and mother hen. The CTs on the other hand are dubious but willing to be babied bc they’ve gone from living under the threat of decom to being protected by the most feral clones they’ve ever met. 😂

Seventeen acts a lot more aggressive than he really is. He’s not against thrashing his kids to make them behave but he always does it with affection. I just love to think about like Kenobi and company realizing their commanders and troopers are actually the semi domesticated version when they start digging into things and see the kinda shit that Fox and the Corries pull off unsupervised.

That is such a perfect description. 😭 the Aureks are extremely possessive and don’t really trust each other while the CCs don’t really trust outsiders. The CTs on the other hand are comparatively easy going despite what natborns think. They see these men doing crazy things on the battle and think they’re insane but actually CTs are very affectionate and willing to adopt everyone into their found families. They’re just also more willing to listen to a no. Aureks Will Forcibly adopt anyone from the younger series and CCs will latch onto anyone and dig their teeth in until they’ve subdued their targets.

Satine is so much fun to play against Fox because they’re kind of the same subset of person but with different ideals. They both come across as very helpful and caring and it’s not that they aren’t but they aren’t altruistic—even though Satine values altruism, everything she does is to further her ideals and people so it’s not actually good for good’s sake. Satine cares about Fox’s wellbeing because she feels responsible for him and Fox cares about Satine’s wellbeing because he is responsible for her. She wouldn’t be more sad about him dying than she would any rando and he would say good riddance to her if his family could get away with it.

The clones in other battalions get to play around with their appearance at least, but Fox can’t let his Corries even do that. Too much hinges on them being interchangeable. Those with identifying scars get pulled off of Senate duty and when he got his facial scar he had a whole breakdown because it meant he couldn’t step in and pretend to the others anymore. So that means what little individuality he can give to them is extremely precious and if that’s just which pronouns and names being used, he will fight for them. If they are already too identifiable with scars, he lets them grow out their hair and dye it as long as they leave enough undyed roots so it can be shaved off in an emergency. Makeup and nail polish and accessories are shared freely and used by everyone regardless of gender identity within the barracks.

The love/violence and inaction/hate culture clash is so fun to me. Like hurting your brother so that the trainer doesn’t do it is love as far as the vode are concerned. Standing aside and not correcting a mistake is setting your brother up for a decom. Satine’s preconceived notions about war and the reasons natborns fight doesn’t fit when these are just men who aren’t allowed to anything else. Like sure they enjoy killing sometimes. They enjoy getting a job done and they’re desensitized to murder. It has nothing to do with the actual killing. Later this will be highlightened when we get to see Fox doing the bare minimum to protect a natborn compared to Rex, Cody, Wolffe, and Bly all nearly killing themselves to protect their generals. Inaction vs action is a huge thing for them. Fox quite quit his job years ago. He’s just keeping his men alive at this point. Fuck everyone else.

Fox really said if the terrorists wanted to be harder to catch that would be great actually. Oh no he’s accidentally dropping the plans to the senate dome. If he could guarantee that no one would be alive to retaliate afterwards, he’d commit a murder spree, take his troopers, and book it out of there.

[seldomscilence16]

Whumptober day 11:

"All the lights going dark, and my hopes destroyed"

Animal trap | captivity | "no one will find you."

Fandom: Ducktales

Prompts used: All

Soooo this combines things with Donald in it, meaning small things were changed here and there. Including the whole Webby being April and May and June being clones etc. If you don't know my military headcanons for Donald, I have a chapter explaining it in the 'Dime a Dozen au'. Brief recap is basically he and his team (including Josés older sister) were held captive on their last mission and experimented on. Donald loses feeling in like half his body, and two members on his team. Any questions, don't be afraid to ask!

…

Donald really needed to just, stop trying to do things. Obviously he just wasn't good at it, wasn't made for this world of doers, was cursed to never be able to complete anything. He thinks the only people that were ever able to work with his bad luck without his detriment, were the Caballeros and co. It feels like every other thing he can think of ended badly for him more often than not. And yeah, sometimes that was okay, 'cause it was saving others, but he's so tired.

He had gone on this little trip, by himself, because it was rumored to have exactly what he wanted. When you have a family like his, it was hard to get them gifts. Donald always hated that he couldn't spoil the boys like he wanted to, but he could do better now. And this time, all he needed was the mineral he could supposedly find here. To make a compass for Huey, a boomerang for Dewey, a shield for Louie-and maybe a piece for him to sell, a dagger for Webby, a new leg piece for Della, a handle for José's cane, a new piece for Panchitos guns, and new glasses frames for Uncle Scrooge.

He had a whole plan, was even hoping he'd find excess for a couple extra gifts for one, but of course, why would anything go his way? 

He feels numb, flat on his back staring up at the sky, one leg is bleeding profusely where iron has punctured skin, something he should definitely take care of, but he can't seem to get the gumstion to rise. He wonders what creatures out here would warrant such a trap, and why it was on a path instead of off it, or he wonders until a shadow falls over him and a face comes into view. 

How many times will he almost die before he does? Especially for being a part of his family, or for the friends he has, he should have kept his emo stage and stayed indoors. 

"Hello Mr. Duck." 

John D. Rockerduck had disappeared after the whole FOWL thing went down, along with several other nemesis' of Scrooge. So why wouldn't Donald find him on his first trip alone? He would have preferred Glomgold, he did not typically use traps such as these- though Donald supposed the hired muscle might of- but as it was, he's got a leg clamped in a foothold trap, an old arm injury acting up, and zero quacks to give. 

"Finally I can hit McDuck where it hurts!" 

"Oh? Is your money bin bigger than his?" Donald knows that he's almost never understood, but he'd burst if he kept all his comments to himself.

"Had to be the noisey one though, no matter. Jeeves!" The lumbering half dead butler muscle comes into view, bending down and slinging Donald under his arm with ease. "It's gonna be over for you, and with Scrooge at his weakest, I will finally show the world who's better!" 

Laughable really. But Rockerduck can think what he wants, Donald can at least envision his face when he realizes he's failed once again at Scrooge's hands, even if he doesnt get to actually see it. 

Panch and Zé had worried about him going alone, worried about his mindset and all that. He can see why now, laying limp in an enemy's arm, leg useless, feeling less than spectacular. He should be angry, fighting, screaming nonsensical barbs… wow, it's a rare state to find him feeling meh without the anger. 

"Say hello to your new home!"

 

Before he can even look up and make a snip about free real estate, he's airborne with an undignified squawk. He sees smooth dirt on all sides for several long moments before he lands with a thump- only years of falling that keeps him from braining himself, though his body would still bite back with a 'hurts like heck'. 

"If you try and get out, I'd keep an eye out for the night beast the locals are all chatting about. Oh and don't worry, no one will find you. Bye Bye!" Donald can hardly make out his silhouette above him, hole so deep the light barely creeps all the way down.

With both his legs, it probably wouldn't be too hard, Donald has gotten out of worse, but with his leg as it is itd take awhile, and he would rather not take his chances if there is a night beast. One could argue it's not laziness if he's avoiding a larger problem. 

Ah, is that where Louie's brain goes? 

Well, if he dies here, his family will surely kill him again for dying so soon after his last almost death with the whole FOWL thing. Maybe Duckworth would let him stay with him? 

Deciding to be semi productive in the meantime, Donald grasps at the two springs on the trap and pushes down as hard as he's able, moving his leg diagonally and hissing as it pulls free. Casually ripping his sleeve off he binds his leg as best he can, grateful it didn't get to the bone breaking part. This is certainly not nearly as bad as his time in the Navy. 

He leans back against the compact dirt wall, cool and damp as the heat of the day fades. But with the fading heat goes the sunlight, and his hole is slowly filling with shadows. He and the moon may not be on the best of terms, but he wouldn't mind its light right about now. 

He jinxed himself, he should know better by now really. Shaking his head, curling closer to himself to keep warm, All the lights going dark, and his hopes destroyed once again. He'd just wanted to make his family some gifts. It was just supposed to be a nice easy trip. 

How long would he wait this time? Would they look for him? Was the effort of getting out even worth it? He scratches absently at the wall, only to catch on something solid. Curiosity piqued and reaching through the bars of his mind, he put more effort into his scratching, revealing exactly what he'd come here for. 

What irony, to be thrown in a hole where his objective was waiting. His laugh is on the edge of hysterics, as he finds his time occupied with digging. Filling a makeshift bag- his undershirt sacrificed for the duty- full of the material, he uses the gouges as hand and foot holds. 'Look at me being productive and stuff, ha!' 

Just as he reaches the ledge, thinking just maybe he could brush all this off and pretend it didn't happen, a growl echoes around him. He groans, dragging his leg over the ledge like the dead weight it is, and lays there for a moment. He ponders staying there vs running- or well hobbling- and ultimately his hard earned loot wins out. He rolls, momentums himself into a standing position, balancing on one foot. He glares at the nature around him and the dumb moon that still evades his vision and leaves his surroundings annoyingly shadowy. 

Before he can get his first embarrassing hop going, the growling is right behind him, echoed by a scottish accented response. He turns an unimpressed head to find Scrooge and Della on a bear of all things.

"Donald!" 

"That's a bear." Donald states it, hoping to remind them of their mortality- however vague it may be. 

"Bah, I speak bear lad, dinnae worry about it." 

"Uh, but maybe worry about your leg, or we'll be twinning from head to toe!" Dellas' flashlight aims right at him and he shields his eyes with a glare.

"Rockerduck is on his way to the mansion." 

"Oh good, Webby's been wanting to test the new defenses. Get on lad, we'll get ye home." 

"I was rescuing myself." Donald says, making his way around the bear cautiously, weird hop not even causing the animal to flinch. 

"We should have been here sooner, we'll do better, no more rescue worthy scenarios!" Della heaves him up, and Donald can see her worry up close. 

A strange thing, what ten years and several life or death scenarios can do to a relationship. Did they care before? Maybe.

He looks at them as they make their way towards the awaiting plane. 

Are they working on it now? 

Yeah… maybe they are.

[a-vamp-and-a-half]

Neora giggles, making a small wave of sparkly swirls appear around her fingers, drawing a lizard waving back

“Unfortunate Host couldn’t find that lady though, Ferox” she hums as Evan sighs

“Yeah. Guess it’s my fault, I dunno why I reacted so weirdly-“

“Hey now” Neora tuts, taking a sip of her drink “I was about ready to start puking just looking at her, just thinking about it is making me nauseous” she chuckles, rubbing her stomach “I think we both had a normal reaction to a bleeding out skull lady laughing maniacally-“ Neora covers her mouth a second as Evan snorts

“I guess so-“

“Evan. Half her face was missing”

Evan snorts again before laughing, giggling as Neora nudges his elbow back “Okay okay I get ya I get ya. It’s just, not the first time I’ve seen that” a shiver passes his spine even as he says it

“Doesn’t make it any less jarring” Neora shrugs, unwittingly answering both him and his thoughts

“True. I guess I just hope she won’t be trouble, she didn’t have an entry stamp” Evan huffs with his chin on his hand, glancing up as Neora pats his shoulder

“That’s what the watchers are for Evs”

“Watchers?”

“The hunters on duty for watching” she says, grinning as he laughs “We aren’t on Ilaeris imposed watch duty right now”

“Yeah you’re right you’re right. Alright, let’s get the next node installed, I think Dark is almost done explaining stocks” he snorts, grinning bright as he helps a laughing Neora onto her feet

They jump off onto the next rooftop as Oliver raises a hand for a question

“Does that mean- does that mean my jawbreakers get cloned?” He asks to a tidbit about stocks

"Well, not exactly- oh, Krystal!" Dark waves her over. "You're just in time to hear about how the stock market functions."

"Wh- why?"

[joytraveler]

#42: The Death Master

"Yeah, if it was just Death Master that'd be one thing, but this is THE Death Master! Meaning if I wanna master death, this is the guy to train with! I have a huge thumb wrestling match with Death coming up so I should probably train and grow strong"

Lightning crackles on the title screen and THE DEATH MASTER logo shatters out of a towering monolith with a shower of blood(??) A barely-dressed, axe-wielding barbarian hero appears over the Press Start prompt, and begins swinging his huge battle axe at nothing.

Chillarmy_The_Bee: start playing, chop chop! Heheh aroseahorseboy: see, this is men being reduced to sex objects

"I know isn't it great?" Bea can't press start fast enough!

"This looks SUPER oldschool NES so you know it's gonna be hard, no rest for your poor queen I guess" She pouts.

This game is very much in the flavor of an early hack-n-slash like Rastan or Trojan. You really are the Death Master, all the monsters are SUPER easy to kill, and there's tons of blood! EVERYTHING bleeds red blood, from orcs and goblins, to plant monsters, robots and ghosts!

Butterfly_Defect: damn, you are destroying this entire country! Will anything be alive when Bea is done? Karbokarr: Axe dude is merciless Baconnaise: The MUSHROOM is bleeding.

She takes out horde after horde of enemies. "This is like the opposite of Samurai Jack, everything I cut turns to blood instead of robots! But I can't help but feel like this wasn't balanced that well? I think I can die but I'd have to let it happen!"

"I'm trying to think of something to name this guy and Alonzo keeps coming to mind" Despite the gruesome sprays of pixelated blood, he does have a certain charm.

The final stage is a cemetery town, where ghosts, ghouls and reapers swarm around 'Alonzo' and are dutifully chopped into alpo! It's been a fun ride even if it was way too easy. "At least we haven't been killing people, I don't think? Unless he burned down the towns we've gone through"

Boss time is upon us, though... And it's a Grim Reaper that's about two screens tall! Alonzo has to ride his scythe up when he swings it and swing at his face as he falls back down!

"That's a whole lotta Death" Bea mutters as the battle begins. She adapts pretty quickly but this is surely the toughest fight yet, no button mashing to victory this time!

"These games are definitely getting better as we keep going, we've come a long way from 'This Isn't A Snake Clone With A Tapeworm We Promise'" She hums the Kid Icarus fanfare as she refuses to fear the reaper.

Finally, with just a couple well-placed chops each, Alonzo scatters all the Reaper's bones but one-- the skull, which bounces helplessly around as they finally hit the floor below. One more smack, and it falls in half, dry and empty!

"Annnd here comes the candy- oh" She looks a little disappointed. "Oddly enough the final boss is the least bloody one! What a... BONE head!"

"Wait don't unsubscribe yet I'll have another joke in a minute, I promise"

The reaper's cloak comes fluttering down, and lands on Alonzo-- and his eyes glow red.

The words bleed onto the screen like open wounds: [YOU ARE THE DEATH MASTER.]

"Death master, reaper blaster, my axe is also a stratocaster! BWEEOWOWOWOWOW! That's how a guitar sounds right?"

"So! Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds! Uh... Not sure how to feel about this? Surely I done good?"

As Death-Alonzo flies off into the sky... The previous levels pass by, and all the monsters, orcs and ogres you dispatched are returned to life! Some even have families, wives and children to embrace them with joy!

Karbokarr: wow, undoing all the damage DueyDecimal: It was... All worth it?

"Master of Mood Whiplash!" She watches in awe, and also in 'awww!' "What a nice way to end a gruesome slaughterfest! Not at all what I expected but I'm not complaining!"

Finally the Death Master lands in front of a grave with piles of fresh earth and pauses. Then he drops to one knee, head hung.

[THE DEATH MASTER CAN UNDO ANY DEATH IT HAS CAUSED.] [GOOD NEWS. IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT.]

"I... I.. I didn't want feels, don't do this to me"

"Aw hell, who's in the ground? Mom? Dad? Brother? Sister?? Was there an intro I skipped???"

Syrupentine: T___T aroseahorseboy: not much plot till the end but GEEZ

"If you guys picked up on something I missed lemme know. But..damn. Did we kill everyone and revive them for nothing?"

Syrupentine: I don't think there was any clue beforehand, no HNV: Maybe you were trying to clear your name? Or... no, if you can only revive things YOU killed, that would prove you did it DueyDecimal: You thought you were guilty but you weren't... Yay?

[verycleverboy]

For Your Consideration

Kate Andrews is the economic editor of the right-wing British magazine The Spectator.

Yeah. That Spectator.

Before that she was an Associate Director for the Institute for Economic Affairs, a neoliberal think tank which Sir Oliver Letwin glowingly characterizes as "without the IEA and its clones, no Thatcher and quite possibly no Reagan." They were also climate change deniers while we still had a fighting chance. In addition to that, Andrews was attached to the Adam Smith Institute, which also has its dirty fingerprints all over Thatcher's dismantling of post-war British policies. She's also a dual citizen who's had a cup of coffee with the Republican apparatus.

That's a lot of words just to say "Andrews' CV stinks like a week-old fish stored on the back porch", but all of those words are necessary to explain the stupidest goddamn thing I've read all day.

When Ronald Reagan was shot on 30 March 1981, his wound was not immediately noticed. It wasn’t until he started bleeding from the mouth that the car was diverted from the White House to the hospital. The story goes that upon arrival, the president said to the surgeons, ‘I just hope you’re Republicans.’ A doctor is said to have replied: ‘Today, Mr. President, we’re all Republicans.’ Let’s hope this anecdote is never debunked. It’s too good a story: about Americans who did not hesitate to put their country before the politics that so often plagues it. The attack on Reagan was the last (known) assassination attempt on a president – until a few hours ago. The shots fired at President Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania left him bleeding from the head. Two people have died. We don’t know the full details of the shooting yet, but from what can be seen on the video footage, it’s clear that the former president is very lucky to be alive. There is only one appropriate response to such horrors. Today, we are all MAGA.

(continue reading)

Okay, me again. Just a sec while I clear my throat. (ahem)

BULL. SHIT.

("Would you like to elaborate on that, sir?" "Okay, but let's keep it short.")

The message of the rest of the column is "Surrender now and maybe they'll go easy on you," but I hope it goes without saying that no, you are not obligated to "be MAGA" even symbolically just because some brain-sloshed individual fired shots at a political candidate.

In fact, to be MAGA (at least under certain conditions) is to embrace the idea that political violence is not only necessary but an acceptable part of the American system, the final boss in the game of checks-and-balances. Especially after they lose elections. Four in the crowd, five in the blue, all because of what he refused to do.

You remember what he said about that day of rage and violence, don't you? He said it was "a beautiful day". And we're supposed to shrug that off because of some right-winger's out-of-date idea that all liberals and leftists want to do is Kumbaya the world into submission.

You're all human beings, though, with your own thoughts and dreams and credit cards. You definitely have the option to reject politically-motivated violence, even against people you don't like (or who don't like you). But if you take it, that comes with an obligation to reject the type of leaders who would call for such things. Crass individuals who use threats of violence as a campaign tactic.

You see where this is going, don't you?

If you truly have the feeling that what happened to Trump is a terrible thing and want to honor it, you have to reject Trump, everything he stands for, and everyone who stands with him. If the inevitable conclusion is that he and his cronies instigated, by his works and by his words, the atmosphere of violence that led to his own assassination attempt, he needs a restraining order from his own leadership. Any other choice would be an act of hypocrisy.

Today, we are all human beings. So join me, America. Keep Donald safe from Donald. NO MORE YEARS.