#i’ve been hovering around 10k for quite some time now

[amnesiaguy]

36 away from 10k followers 😳

[hlcreators]

AUTHOR REC: louistomlinsons / @adoredontour 

Be sure to show some love by leaving kudos and comments!

this town’s just an ocean now (31k)

“I have really great friends. Do you remember Louis? You guys were always hanging out when you were growing up.” Harry remembers Louis. Harry remembers Louis. Suddenly, his throat feels way too dry, despite the ice cream he keeps licking at. He chokes a little on a chocolate chip before saying, “I, uh. I remember Louis.” Her face brightens. “We have dinner every Sunday. He owns the house now. His parents moved further north, and he wanted to stay here, so they just gave it over. Now if you want to worry about someone being lonely, that’s who I worry about.” inspired by watermelon sugar, featuring picnics on the beach and boys being dumb

daydream about me (21k)

“Anything else going on for you at the moment?” she asks, leaning forward on her elbows across the table, mindful of the radio equipment in front of her. “What about you and that Louis Tomlinson?” Harry sputters, mouth moving but no words coming out. She can feel her cheeks heat up, darkening with embarrassment. “It’s not, Louis and I, we don’t—” Harry can’t finish the sentence, tongue heavy in her mouth. She takes a deep breath, thankful they’re not being videoed, and tries again, “We’ve never even met, actually.” alternatively titled 'harry styles does not have a crush on louis tomlinson and other lies she tells liam payne'

robbers and cowards (33k)

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think that you’re enjoying yourself.” The familiar voice immediately gets Louis’ blood boiling, shoulders tensing as he calmly spins around, trying not to draw any suspicion to the pair. “You don’t know me at all,” Louis spits, managing to maintain the polite smile he’s been wearing all evening. “You’re just some asshole who always ruins my nights.” “If I keep ruining your nights, why do you keep going home with me?” Harry asks, taking a sip from his own wine glass. “I don’t go home with you by any choice of my own,” Louis says. “I think you’re annoying and I have no idea how I keep ending up in your bed.” “You end up in my bed because you knock on my apartment door at two in the morning.” Louis wants to punch the smirk right off of his face. “Maybe you should move,” is what he says instead. or a modern day robin hood au where louis and harry (don’t really) hate each other but they hate greedy billionaires more

I’m a Rocket Man (47k)

All he could hear were the faint sounds of Pina Colada coming from the radio and his own heart beating erratically against his chest.

“Oops,” he heard coming from the other side of the front window. He quickly pushed the grey rubber towards the back of the car, the rubber of the thing groaning and squeaking as he did so. Finally, after wrestling the thing away from him, Harry came into view, face pressed against the other side of the window.

“Hi.” Louis smiled, looking towards Harry, eyes curious. He almost got lost in the way Harry’s face was so cutely pinched, green eyes glowing in the sunlight. He was brought back to reality when Harry tried to move, causing the grey whatever it was to push against Louis again. “What the fuck is this?”

“Uhh... it’s Randy?”

or, Niall is an investigative journalist, Liam is his biggest fan, Zayn is just along for the ride, and Harry probably isn’t an alien. A roadtrip au no one asked for.

sip it slowly and pay attention (12k)

“So I’ve got a guy I think you might like,” Louis says. He’s standing in the doorway of Harry’s office, drinking from what is most definitely Harry’s mug. “You’re going to set me up?” Harry asks, rightfully wary. He can’t imagine that this could end well. “Don’t look so afraid.” Louis takes a sip from his mug, wincing as it burns him. Harry rolls his eyes. He’s always warning Louis to be more patient before he loses all his taste buds. “I know you better than anyone else. Who better to set you up on dates than me?” “I guess you’re right,” Harry says, still slightly hesitant. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Louis, but. He doesn’t trust Louis’ taste. Louis has about the same track record with men that Harry does, if not quite as extensive. or, harry is a guidance counselor, louis is an english teacher, and harry just wants to go on one successful date

i hope that you won’t slip away in the night (13k)

He turns back to Maybe Jessica. “Who’s going to be here?” “Harry Styles,” she says. “The one-” “I know who he is,” Louis snaps. “Who invited him?” “Uh, you did, sir.” Louis didn’t think that was serious. When he had responded to Harry’s cheeky tweet about the gala with his own cheeky ‘You should come - I’ll put you on the guest list’ he hadn’t expected anything to come of it. Least of all for Harry to show up. or the one where louis is a prince and harry is a popstar

feels like we’re finally free (13k)

louis just wants to write a breakup novel. falling in love was never part of the plan, but the cute barista at his favorite coffeeshop makes him think otherwise.

who’s that girl? (13k)

“So, do you want to tell us a little bit more about why you’re here?” “What do you mean?” Harry asks, furrowing his eyebrows together. “I’m here because I need a place to live and you guys need a roommate.” “I guess let me rephrase that,” Leo (or maybe Liam) says. He taps his pen twice against the notepad, drawing Harry’s attention away from a large hole in one of the walls. “Why do you need a place to live?” “Oh, that’s easy.” Harry sits up straighter in his seat. “I walked in on my boyfriend of four years banging my boss. I couldn’t very well keep living with them, could I?” harry is canadian, louis owns a bar, zayn comes and goes as he pleases, liam's just trying to keep everyone alive, and nobody knows what niall does. a new girl au.

we’re not who we used to be (30k)

“Harry…” Louis’ voice catches in his throat, thick with tears threatening to fall out, so he coughs to clear it before trying again. “Harry is Liam’s best man?” “You didn’t know?” Harry is standing at the entrance of the garage, mouth slightly open and face pulled together. He sets his bag on the ground and puts his hands on his hips. When he does that, he looks just like the Harry that Louis remembers (and loves, he thinks with an aching heart). “I’m sure I mentioned it,” Liam says, but Louis can tell he’s lying by the way he chews on his lower lip and twists his fingers together. “You’re all a bunch of dick heads, I’m getting in the car.” Louis isn’t sure if he’s being unreasonable. He has no idea what the protocol is when your ex-boyfriend shows up after three years and nobody bothered to give you a heads up. He’s pretty sure he’s allowed to be upset about it, even if it’s only for a bit. or an exes to lovers canadian roadtrip au

old macdonald had a farm (5.1k)

Louis is a hedgehog, Harry is a fish, Niall is a parrot, Liam is a golden retriever, and Zayn is Zayn. It’s a crazy twenty-four hours.

or are you giving it to someone else (3.3k)

“Dude, last night I couldn’t tell if he was being murdered or having the best sex of his life,” Louis said, taking a sip of his beer. He tried to say it as quietly as he could in the loud pub, worried about who may overhear him. “Is this your neighbor?” Liam asked. He was newer to the group, and therefore, newer to the situation. He had only heard a handful of the stories about the strange things Louis heard his neighbor doing, as opposed to the book Louis could most definitely write about the man. In the hallways, he seemed perfectly normal. He would smile at Louis and sometimes make polite conversation. He didn’t seem like the type to be having loud, kinky sex every night at the craziest hours of the day. But he was. or, louis hears his neighbor having loud sex through the walls and it's not a problem until it is

The F Word (23k)

When Louis finds himself at a party for the first time after his boyfriend cheated on him, the last person he expects to meet is Harry. They hit it off immediately, conversation flowing all night. Louis finally thinks he’s ready to jump back into the dating scene, when a wrench gets thrown in his plan.

Harry has a boyfriend.

Or, a movie AU based on the F word

tonight’s not over (come over and stay) (16k)

Zayn doesn’t say anything for a moment, pausing and worrying at his bottom lip. Finally, he asks, “Have you heard that Cox guy is coming out with a new song?” Louis freezes, fingers hovering over his keyboard where they had been typing his password. “No, I hadn’t,” Louis says truthfully. “Where did you hear that?” “Tell anyone this and I’ll kill you, but I’d consider myself a big fan,” Zayn says. His face doesn’t change in expression, completely serious as he admits this to Louis. “Big fan? Like run a blog and everything?” or, harry is a famous singer and louis is a student who just wants to write his novel

honey, honey (7k)

another sorority au that no one asked for - featuring squirt guns, copious talks of marriage, and more useless lesbians.

fall in love with the moon (and everything beautiful) (10k)

“It’s adorable that you think you can compromise with me on this,” Louis says. He places his hands on his hips and tries his best to look intimidating. “But I am not budging on this. Every book pun you say will result in one quarter in the jar.” “What jar?” Harry asks. He furrows his eyebrows together. Louis rolls his eyes. “Like a swear jar, but now I’m going to make yours ‘Harry’s dumbass pun jar.’ Maybe I’ll have you put a quarter in for every pun you say, not just the ones about books. Niall was right - you tell the worst jokes.” “One time Niall told me I’d never said a funny joke in my life,” Harry says casually. “Funny. He told me that too.” or, louis and harry work in a bookstore together and harry tells dumb jokes and they fall in love

get a little bit nervous (14k)

Liam goes to say something, probably something dumb, but he chokes on his spit, coughing loudly. The man in front of him is one of the prettiest people he’s ever seen in his life; he’s got thick eyelashes that fan out and frame his dark eyes and tanned unblemished skin. Liam forgets all of his previous thoughts. “You okay, mate?” he asks, concern filtering into his voice. “Yeah, yeah,” Liam says, still choking and coughing. “Sorry.” “We all reacted the same way we saw Zayn for the first time,” Niall says from next to him, laughter evident in his tone. “He’s a god, isn’t he?” or, ziam farmer's market au where liam, louis, and niall work at the produce stand, harry and zayn work at the bakery stand, and nobody's straight

i’ve heard it both ways (26k)

“I, uh.” Harry is scrambling, trying to think of something believable on the spot. He remembers the woman from reception and her phone call and says the only thing he can think of. “I’m a psychic.” Everyone stills. Zayn laughs, Detective Edwards looks confused, and the officer holding the door open looks mildly frightened. “A psychic?” Zayn gets out between his laughs. “I’ve heard it all. You’re definitely spending the night in the holding cell now. You’re wasting all of our time here.” an au based on the tv show psych where harry is shawn, louis is jules, liam is gus, niall is mcnabb, and zayn is lassie.

i just know you (got to taste like candy) (3.9k)

Harry seduces the cute cell phone repair girl with her phone's wallpaper.

i just want you to dance with me tonight (7.6k)

The sorority au no one asked for. Featuring a prank war, Lirry friendship, and useless lesbians.

beautiful wreck, colorful mess (4.4k)

Harry's been desperate to try out the toys she bought for her and Louis.

she says she doesn’t love me (don’t believe her) (17k)

Harry is a disaster gay who works in a coffee shop and Louis doesn't want to admit she's in love.

only you know me (4.5k)

“It’s just unfair.” Louis can’t help her complaining. “You always get these opportunities I would die for to throw parties. I’ve got, like, a billion siblings, so I never get the house to myself. You’re home alone at least three times a semester. Your parents wouldn’t even be mad or anything.” “That’s not even the point,” Harry says, calmly and evenly. Sometimes it’s frustrating to Louis just how easily Harry keeps her calm. “And what is?” Louis asks, throwing a goldfish cracker in Harry’s direction. It misses. “That I don’t want to.” - Based on the prompt, "Nothing really specific just a harry/Louis sleepover while Harry's parents are out of town involving sexy lady times? "

[shadow-assassin-blix]

It’s a Grey Area

CHAPTER 7

A/N: Okay... so. I kinda sped through a lot of the plot in ep 9, and changed some things obviously. Um. Next chapter will finish up ep 9 but the adventure shall continue. There is a character death. Umm. The dream sequence will make more sense eventually. That’s all for now! Enjoy!

Taglist: @mikeisthricedeceased​ (if you want to be added to list please lemme know)

About an hour had passed, and Poe woke up slowly. He turned his head to look down at Blix who was passed out on his chest. He smiled softly at her, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, before gingerly trying to move out from under her. He didn’t want to wake her up, so his movements had to be gentle.

Once he was up, he tucked the blanket firmly around her, and let her sleep some more. He made his way into the cockpit where Rey and Finn sat, talking lowly.

He takes his seat in the copilot and checks their position. They were approximately 30 minutes away from Kijimi.

“Blix still asleep?” Rey asked with a small yawn.

“Yeah. She hasn’t been sleeping well, so I try to let her get as much sleep as she can,” Poe explained checking the systems.

Blix was currently dreaming and the dreams… rapidly became confusing and terrifying.

*Dream*

Blix looked around trying to figure out where she was. She was on spaceship but couldn’t figure out what kind. She heard voices speaking.

“We are picking up lifeforms?”

“Where?”

“Scarif”

“That’s impossible, no one could’ve survived the Death Star destroying it,”

“Scarif was only half destroyed. It is possible”

The scenery changed. She saw her mother, at a table, crying. She held a photo in her hand, but she couldn’t see of whom. Her grandfather’s lightsaber sat on the table.

She tried to call out to her but found she couldn’t speak.

The scene changed again, and she was surrounded in darkness.

A gravelly voice began to speak into her mind.

“Ahhh. A Kenobi. I’m quite surprised. He never seemed the type. Why do you fight for a side that has caused you so much pain? You said it yourself… Being a Jedi is dangerous when a Skywalker exists. Join me. Together, my granddaughter and you could create greatness. Such power the two of you would have, all you’d have to do is say yes. Yes, to the Dark side.”

She glared deep into the void and tried fighting the numerous voices that were now filtering into her mind. She heard her family, Poe, and everyone she cared about telling her to say yes.

She clamped her hands over ears, trying to drown them out. She eventually felt herself scream.

A scream that could be heard in the outside world.

Poe hearing her cry, jumped up and ran out to her. She was thrashing in her sleep, trying to fight off something invisible. He began to shout her name.

“Blix! BLIX! C’MON HONEY WAKE UP!” He called out, trying to shake her gently.

She could hear his voice. Hear him trying to wake her up. So, she ran to where it was loudest. More images kept flashing before her eyes, more confusion as to what she was being told, before finally---

She jerked away, her head smashing into Poe’s. She winced atthe throbbing pain in her head from both the hit and what she had seen. She shakily wrapped her arms around him, trying to find comfort.

Poe briefly said ‘ow’ before pulling her into his arms, shushing her lightly as sobs began to rack through her body.

She tried so hard to calm down, but she could feel herself panicking as she remembered more and more. He held onto her the entire time, pulling her in as close as he could. He would press kisses to her face and forehead trying to soothe her.

It took several minutes before her sobs became sniffles and her breathing slowed down. She pulled away, wiping her face hurriedly, looking away. He sat there waiting patiently.

“…he knows… he knows about me… about my lineage… wanted me to join the Dark side… kept… showing me stuff that made no sense I-… I don’t know,” She tried to explain as calmly as she could.

“Shh. Alright. He knows. We knew that that was a possibility. As for the other stuff, we can sort through that piece by piece whenever you’re ready, okay?” He assured wiping away an errant tear.

She nodded her head, her hands reaching for his. She took one of his hands and held it firmly, trying to stop shaking. She held onto him like he was a lifeline. Like he was the only thing keeping her grounded.

Rey called from up that they were about to land, and Poe looked at Blix.

“Are you up for this? It’s perfectly okay if you’re not,” Poe reassured trying make sure she didn’t feel pressured.

“I’m okay,” She whispered standing up slowly.

They got ready for their trek on the freezing planet that they were on and began following Poe to these spice runners.

They wound up having to cut through alleys multiple times for the streets were filled with storm troopers running every which way.

Eventually they run into a group of goons who tried to stop them. Rey knocked out 2 and Blix took out the rest. As the goons laid at their feet, a feminine robotic voice called out to them, telling them to halt.

Poe, Blix noticed, froze. He slowly turned, shoving his hood down to reveal his face.

“Zorii.” He greeted.

Blix looked at him and then at her, slowly realizing who she was. Blix stepped in front of Poe and said, “You harm a hair on his head, and I’ll kill you.”

Her hand hovered over lightsaber, daring this woman to try something.

“Where did you find a Jedi, Poe? Especially one so loyal to you?” She asked curiously, lifting her visor up to take her in.

“She saved my life. We need to see Babu Frik. It’s urgent. Please,” Poe requested trying to stay polite.

Zorii was quiet for several moments before turning and walking away.

Poe followed her without question and Blix stared at him as he willingly chased after her.

“What was that?”” Rey asked stepping up to Blix.

“Poe was a spice runner,” Blix began.

“A spice runner!?” Finn and Rey both exclaimed.

“It was an undercover mission for the Navy. That… was the woman who stabbed him… and he’s just... blindly trusting her,” Blix finished, annoyance in her voice.

Finn and Rey ran to catch up with him as 3PO toddled behind them. Blix remained there staring blankly. BB-8 stayed by her side, beeping at her concernedly. She blinked rapidly trying to refocus and quietly followed after them. When she caught up, they already had 3PO wired up and was preparing to override him.

It was then revealed that this process would lead to 3POs memory being wiped. As they continued to get him ready, Blix noticed that both Poe and Zorii had disappeared. She tried to let it not bother her, as whispers of doubts and distrust rang through her mind.

She stood in the back quietly, waiting for the information to be revealed. As the translations began, she winced as she continued to hear murmurs, the constant barrage of thoughts causing a headache to form. She crossed her arms and sighed heavily when it was revealed that they would have to go to the Death Star to find the Wayfinder.

When the translation was done, Blix stepped outside, the blast of cold air feeling good against the headache that she was currently battling. She closed her eyes, taking in slow deep breaths. She was trying to ease her thoughts as best as she could.  She could feel a bitterness setting into her bones and she was trying her best to not let negativity choke her.

“He loves you, you know,” Came Zorii’s voice as she joined her outside.

Blix looked at her as Zorii stood next to her.

“How do you figure that?” Blix asked tiredly.

“You didn’t see the way he looked at you, when you stepped in front of him to defend him,” Zorii said truthfully. “He never looked at me like that.”

Blix smiled softly at that.

“Are you… are you okay? You seem a little… stressed?” Zorii hesitantly asked, observing Blix’s closed off behaviors.

“Had my brain picked apart and had 10k images and insecurities flash before my eyes, 20 minutes before we ran into you. So, no. Not okay,” Blix muttered, kicking at the snow angrily.

“Don’t… know how to help you with that… but. I can say this… don’t shut him out. Like I said, he loves you. Let him help you,” Zorii concluded, before heading back inside.

Blix sighed heavily, squatting down and taking a handful of snow and pushing it against her face. She felt hot, even in the freezing temperatures. The snow felt amazing against her burning skin, and as she ran a hand over her face to wipe it off, a ringing began in her ear.

She pressed a hand to it, wishing it away, as she applied pressure and wiggled her ear. As she opened her eyes, she saw not snow, but tiled floors. She stood up looking around, not recognizing where she was.

“My master says you’re a Kenobi. Must say… I’m surprised,” Came a feminine voice behind her.

She turned to it, and saw a young girl, with red skin and black tattoos in geometrical patterns on her head.

“My name is Maeve. A grandchild of the great Darth Maul,” She introduced staring at Blix curiously. “Funny. You don’t act like any Jedi I have heard of.”

“Hello Maeve and that’s because I’ve seen the dark side. Hell, I’ve even given it a taste but that’s not the life for me,” Blix explained dully.

Maeve reached forward and grabbed Blix’s arm and suddenly they were back on Kijimi.

“Where are you? C’mon… let’s talk… join us and we’ll release the furbag we capture earlier,” Maeve bribed in a sing-song voice.

“So, Chewie is still alive? Good to know. Now get out of my head before you hurt yourself,” Blix threatened as she threw out mental shield and blocks, pushing Maeve out of her mind.

A moment later she was alone again, no one buzzing about in her mind. She was breathless and numb.

Poe who stepped out to check on her, rushed over to her quickly.

“Baby? Honey? You’re bleeding!” Poe exclaimed gently wiping away the blood that dripped from her nose.

“Chewie’s still alive. Got a lil visit from mini Sith. We can save him,” Blix whispered fighting off the exhaustion she felt.

“Okay. Cool. Great. Can I focus on you?” he asked pulling her into his arms as her knees weakened.

“Guys! Let’s go, we got work to do!” Poe called out picking Blix up bridal style.

Rey, Finn and the droids (including a new one called D-O) came out and they rushed back to the Falcon. Poe laid her down on the bed she was in earlier and he rushed to tell them what she said, as they left the planet. The First Order was nearby, and the rescue had to be quick.

Poe and Finn ran off to rescue him, and Rey stayed behind to protect Blix who was barely awake.

“Hey sis… talk to me. What’s up?” Rey spoke softly to her, grasping her hands into her own.

Blix blinked up at her, opening her mouth to answer but wasn’t quite sure how to start, so she closed it.

Rey then gently pushed Blix to scootch back, laying down next to her.

“I keep seeing… images of Scarif… and several other images that make no sense. A lot of them involve my mother… and only in one of them… can I actually see the person’s face. I think… it was possibly my father? I don’t know. Nothing makes sense,” Blix slowly whispered to Rey.

“Scarif? But… wasn’t it destroyed?” Rey asked just as confused.

“It was partially destroyed. The Death Star wasn’t at full power when it attacked Scarif. It wasn’t until later, when they destroyed Alderaan that it was capable of fully destroying a planet,” Blix explained with a small sigh.

“Is it possible that someone survived? That there may be someone alive on Scarif?” Rey inquired, her brow furrowing in thought.

“Anything’s possible, I just… I don’t want to get my hopes for something that may just be lies,” Blix admitted biting her lip.

Rey laid there thinking, trying to figure out what she could say or do in this moment to comfort her.

“How about this? We finish the fight against the First Order, and the four us of will venture to Scarif together? We’re a team. Family. We’ll figure this out together,” Rey proposed with a smile, gently tapping her head against Blix’s.

Blix nodded, smiling back. It was a good thirty minutes before Poe and Finn returned with Chewie, all of them looking a little worse for wear.

Blix, who was finally feeling a bit better, asked, “What happened to you 3?”

“Uh. Found Chewie. Got caught. Almost killed. Phasma saved us? And is apparently the spy?” Poe explained quickly making his way to the cockpit.

Blix blinked at that info she was given, somewhat stunned, “Okay then.”

“Chewie? You okay bud?” Blix questioned, turning to the Wookie.

He quickly told her; he was fine, just tired before joining Poe in the cockpit.

They began to make their way Kef Bir, hoping that the Falcon would stay in one piece long enough to get them there. It had taken some damage as they escaped Kijimi.

When they landed, Chewie stayed behind to make repairs as they ventured out. They looked around, a slight chill in the air from the harsh breeze that blew across the vast ocean before them. There in the midst of the torrent waves was a section of the Death Star. They stood there, trying to figure out how they were going to get over to it when a voice called out to them.

“You’re the fighters of the Resistance?” Came a powerful female voice from behind them.

They all turned to see a woman leading a group of people, a bow in her hands. She was dressed in a pale-yellow shirt and a fluttery cape to match, with a pair of capris and sandals to top it off. Her armor was light, but that didn’t appear to matter too much for how she held herself. Her stance, and her presentation commanded attention, especially as they looked to her people whose body language showed relaxed confidence.

“My name’s Jannah. Babu Frik told us you were coming. How can we help?” She asked, stepping forward to greet them.  

Poe and Finn stepped forward and began talking with her, leading her and her tribe over to the Falcon. Rey and Blix looked at the Death Star heap and were looking to see if there was a way to it.

Rey spotted a sea skiff and pointed it out to Blix. Blix nodded her head, and they made their way to it. They got on and held on tightly as Rey steered it toward the wreckage. The waves thrashed against the skiff hard, making it fly up at times. After what seemed to be hours but was really only mere minutes they were near the wreckage.

They pull themselves up onto a platform that they could reach and began to carefully maneuver their way inside.

It took some time but soon they were standing in a room with a throne.

“Alright Rey. If he really is your grandfather, this room will only respond to you,” Blix noted as they moved forward.

They looked around and as Rey touched a wall off to the side, a secret door opened. Rey jumped back slightly, not expecting it.

She started to move forward but stopped when she noticed Blix wasn’t following.

“Are you coming?” She asked expectantly.

“I can’t. This… this is your defining moment honey. Whatever you face in there, I can’t help you with. You are about to be presented with a choice. A choice I can’t help you decide. I’ll be here when you get out,” Blix said sagely, knowing that that this was Rey’s moment.

Rey looked scared for a moment but when she looked at Blix, she knew what she was trying to convey. She straightened up, took a deep breath and walked forward.

Blix could sense the dark presence that appeared near Rey and waited patiently. Moments later, the presence was gone, and Rey walked out with the Wayfinder, excited.

“That was terrifying, but I did it!” She exclaimed rushing up to Blix.

Blix laughed softly, “Good job. Now, let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

“Not so fast… We have unfinished business,” Came Maeve’s voice from above them.

She jumped down, lightsaber lit and swung hard at Rey. Rey trying to dodge and get her lightsaber out, dropped the Wayfinder. Maeve picked it up and using the Force, she destroyed it.

Rey yelled out in rage and began to fight Maeve harder. Her swings were harsh and powerful, but Maeve was the same. Blix chased after them as they made their way outside. Blix pulled out both of her lightsabers and jumped in between them.

“Enough! Both of you!” Blix yelled trying to stop them both, her lightsabers blocking both of theirs.

Rey stepped back but stood at the ready just in case. Maeve held her lightsaber against Blix’s, pushing as hard as she could to get her to yield.

“Maeve. How old are you?” Blix asked her over the roar of the waves crashing all around them.

“15. Why?” She asked with a snarl.

“15. Why are you fighting an old man’s war? That man does not give a damn about you. Just ask all of his other apprentices. He uses them like they are tissues, and tosses them when they are no longer useful,” She began staring her in the eyes. “If Sidious successfully turned his granddaughter to the Dark Side, what happens to you, hm? Siths only have one apprentice.”

“He wouldn’t. He promised that I would be his successor, that I would have all the power,” Maeve disputed shaking her head.

“Baby girl. All he thinks of is power, and how to get more of it. He would sooner see his bloodline take the throne, than a granddaughter of a Sith that he hated in the end. Listen to me, you know. You know deep down that I’m telling you the truth,” Blix pleaded softly, turning off her lightsaber.

Maeve lower lip trembles slightly, before asking, “What do I do?”

“You got a couple options. One, you leave here, you go be a normal teenager. Two, you go back to Sidious knowing that he will betray you in the end. Or three, you come with us and I’ll be your teacher,” Blix listed out with a sigh.

Maeve snorted, “Let me guess: teach me the ways of the Jedi, and how to be good and pure?”

“No. I’m not a regular Jedi. I’m a Grey. I know what it’s like to be fueled with rage and hate. I know what it’s like to want revenge. I even know what it’s like to take a life. Yet, I also realized that wasn’t the life for me. That being that angry all the time… is exhausting. It tears down your soul. You have a choice, and I hope you choose one that doesn’t involve being an expendable soldier to a man who should’ve died 30 years ago,” Blix spoke truthfully, hoping Maeve would see reason.

Maeve stared at her for a moment, slowly turning her lightsaber off. She bit her lip before asking, “Would I get a cooler lightsaber color?”

Blix chuckled softly at the childlike question and said, “Yeah. We can make you a cooler lightsaber.”

Blix reclipped her lightsabers to her belt and held out her hand to Maeve. Maeve contemplated for a moment, her eyes flicking back and forth between her hand and her face.

She slowly reached out but stopped. She turned around and made her way over to her modified TIE fighter.

Blix sighed in disappointment, thinking she didn’t convince her. Rey stepped forward, placing her hand on Blix’s shoulder, “You tried.”

Blix then noticed that Maeve was now making her way over to them again.

“You needed one of these, right?” Maeve confirmed holding a Wayfinder in her hands.

Blix smiled brightly and said, “Yes. Yes, we do. Let’s go, yeah?”

They used the TIE fighter to get back over to land, the 3 of them squished into one chair. When they landed, Poe and Finn were armed, ready to fight.

“Whoa boys. Chill. It’s just us,” Blix called out as the 3 of them crawled out.

The three of them stood there, soaking wet, and slightly shivering.

Poe gazed at Blix expectantly, looking between her and Maeve.

“This is Maeve. Maeve, this is Poe and Finn. Maeve decided she wanted to be on the winning side, and even gave us her Wayfinder. Be nice. Now, can we get out of here or at the very least, can we go get changed?” Blix introduced quickly, ushering Rey and Maeve to get inside.

“Hon?” Poe called trying to regain her attention.

“Yeah babe?” Blix responded innocently.

“Tell me… do you plan to adopt every Force Sensitive child out there?” He asked somewhat seriously but the smile that was creeping on his face said otherwise.

“Maybe? Is that a problem?” She questioned worriedly.

“Gonna need a bigger house than,” He mumbled, shaking his head.

“Well. My family home is quite large, enough for us to adopt and… have some of our own,” She whispered to him, moving closer to him.

“Oh? Is that so? Good to know,” He whispered back, pressing a small kiss to her lips. “We can discuss the logistics later along with that nightmare you had earlier.”

Blix nodded her head in agreement, and the two of them turned to get inside the Falcon. She quickly moved into one of the more private areas to change clothes when she felt something.

A wave of sadness washed over her. She reached out through the Force, trying to figure out what happened.

She contacted Ben, ‘Whats going on? What just happened?’

Ben’s reply… took a moment… but he slowly told her, ‘My uncle… he… healed my mother…’

It was then she knew why she felt the wave, the disturbance. Luke gave up his life for Leia.

‘We’re on our way.’ Blix stated making her way back out to the center room.

Rey looked at her confused, “What was that? What just happened?”

“Luke. Luke saved Leia,” She began to explain, her voice cracking.

“Okay… but wh-” Rey stopped, realization hitting her.

Poe and Finn looked at the two of them confused, Finn asking, “Isn’t that a good thing?”  

“Jedi can heal. But if the damage is great, then it becomes a life for a life. Luke saved Leia, but it means he gave up his own lifeforce for her. However, that… that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s cured. I’d have to check on her when we get back,” Blix quietly explained as Rey came up to her and hugged her.

Poe nodded his head and made his way to the cockpit starting up the Falcon. Finn walked over and took Rey into his arms, holding her close as she cried.

Maeve stood there quietly before joining Poe up front. He glanced at her briefly but as he and Chewie took off, he turned to her.

He scrutinized her for a moment before informing her, “I hope you know; she’s putting a lot of trust in you. She’s vouching for you, and I hope you don’t let her down by betraying her.”

Maeve nodded her head, “I understand.”

“Do you have any family left, kid?” He asked curiously.

“No. I have no one. Been that way for a couple of years,” She answered truthfully.

“Well. I hope you’re ready for the family you just earned. We’re a little bit crazy but we mean well. May as well get settled, it’s a long way back to base,” He noted as Blix stepped inside.

Blix smiled at him softly and took a seat next to Maeve. This war was nearing its end, the final battle was upon them. They needed to gather their numbers, and hope that the rest of the Republic would join them in the final blow to the First Order.

[gwoongi]

𝗅𝖺𝗇𝖺 ♥︎ jeongguk (ft jimin)

𝗅𝖺𝗇𝖺 jeon jeongguk / reader (ft jimin) genre: pornstar au, smut rating: explicit words: 7391

This position is particularly ambiguous; your face is almost gone, only slightly in frame, with the lens zoomed further in to your ass and Jeongguk’s thighs, his ass there but moving as he leans for the lube across the bed. If he wanted, Jimin could pretend the figure beneath Jeongguk was a boy- could be him, if he wanted. He does not want. 

a/n: literally nobody asked for this. yes, the namjoon sequel is coming soon, so don’t worry about that :-) it’s time for baby boy jimin to have some fun <3 also this exposes my desire to eat koos ass. its pretty i just wanna nom nom :3

warnings: graphic sexual content, porn themes, fingering, anal fingering, anal sex, rim jobs, sex toys, dirty talk, bisexual jimin, ass eating, really slight blasphemy, overstimulation, anal virginity, daddy kink, mommy kink, koo and y/n are freaky okay, probably an unrealistic interpretation of pornhub livestreams, whore-shaming (?), cock slut shaming (?)

Jimin was bored. With most of the fraternity out for a party that Jimin was sadly not invited to (not that he exactly cares for parties held by Jackson, because let’s be honest, he doesn’t really like the guy), Jimin sat at home on his bed with the telly flicking with a show he cared little about, the pictures talking silently.

“Please tell me you’re going to be home,” Jimin had begged, clinging uselessly to the oversized sleeve of Kim Namjoon, who reluctantly pulled away from his fisted hands and grabbed his coat from behind the door. Sorry, little man, I’ve gotta get out of the house more. “But I’m going to be all alone. I’m the only one who wasn’t invited to that shitty party.” I’ll come home early for you, if you’d like. “I would not like. Just go, get out of my face.”

Namjoon didn’t know what else to say other than sorry, patronisingly running his fingers through Jimin’s hair. Unlike Namjoon, who had already spent two god-awful years at University, Jimin was a newbie, a first year, dipping his toes into waters to figure out which one he liked best. Namjoon shrugged his coat on halfway, tossing Jimin the phone charger he asked for moments prior. Try to entertain yourself, he had said. Watch porn. Hey, I just recently found a new porn duo to watch!

That’s how Jimin found out about koopid, the porn couple that his Big, Namjoon, had been locked in his room jerking off to. With rooms joined by one thin wall, Jimin was unsurprisingly familiar with the channel, never invested enough in doing his own research, mildly sexually frustrated by Namjoon’s rutting mixed with the unnecessarily loud volume of his laptop. If he can help it, Jimin doesn’t usually watch straight porn. He never denies it, but he’s an experimenting bisexual- pretty sure he likes both, and his history of girlfriends and boyfriends throughout high school prove it, but he’s not quite sure where he stands yet, or where he’s comfortable standing. He sits in his bedroom, alone in the fraternity miles away from Jackson’s venue, his laptop blinking on Google waiting for a command to be punched in.

On telly, a re-run episode of Friends comes to an end and Jimin watches with mild boredom as it switches to an advert, advertising a new bleach that is guaranteed to remove 98% of bacteria from inside your toilet. He turns off the telly, sighing and looking over at his laptop, the Google tormenting him with a grin: I know you want to. I know you’re tempted.

Jimin sighs to himself, dragging the laptop over to his thighs and almost guiltily typing the phrase koopid into the search engine. He’s half expecting nothing to really show up, because Namjoon has creative porn taste and they’re probably not that popular. However he is embarrassingly wrong; the search floods with links to lewd videos, the official koopid channel being the top search. On Google Images, he quickly presses and sees the slightly grainy faces of the couple, a picture from Instagram that he sees as quite romantic. The boy holds the girl with his chin pressed into her neck, a smile on his face and the camera not exactly centred. Jimin’s instinct is to coo, and saw “aww”. He’s not expecting much from koopid when he clicks on their channel. It’s just another straight couple having sex, it’s nothing he hasn’t already seen.

His eyes widen slightly as he takes in the fifteen videos, spotting the red button indicating that the channel is currently live. He’s tempted to click in, sit back, see what they have to offer. The livestream title reads “10k thumbs up and i’ll let y/n eat my ass”. 

It’s so very tempting, but Jimin pauses with his cursor hovering over a video titled, “first time doing anal with y/n”. The thumbnail is an inviting image of quite possibly one of the nicest dicks Jimin has ever seen in straight porn, the tip red and exaggerated and in preview, the thumbnail moves for a few seconds, showing a small asshole stretch to accommodate the dick, the whole length disappearing. He’s conflicted, half off the bed with intentions to run and get his box. The box, with dildos of every shape and size. When the thumbnail clip loops, Jimin misses it, already on his feet and crouching to get the box from underneath his dresser.

When he gets back to his bed, Jimin notices that his hands are trembling. In the drawer next to his bed is his lube, a strawberry flavour that he’s never indulged with before. Today he will, and he grabs that alongside a dildo that looks uncanny in resemblance to koopid, save the colour being a solid bright purple. He shakily moves it beneath him as he slips out of his jeans, pressing and tightening with discomfort as he looks back at the screen. He wants to feel guilty about this, but there’s nothing to feel guilty about. And, nobody’s home to hear him or see him, and for good measure, his bedroom door is locked.

Once he clicks on the video, there is no turning back. His body trembles as the video begins to play and he’s greeted with the view of a girl on all fours, her head tossed over her shoulder to stare at the camera. She’s pretty, really pretty, already naked for the audience. Jimin stares wordlessly, because what is he supposed to say? On each asscheek, Jimin notices that the boyfriend is particularly ruthless, faded palms still lingering upon the skin that strangely resembles silk, or marble, or soap. He quietly hears the boyfriend mutter a polite introduction, introducing the pair of you to new watchers like Jimin. He hears a Jeongguk and a Y/N, and it’s evident who is who.

Jeongguk shuffles into frame, pressing his hands to each cheek and palming softly. You respond by letting your head fall slightly, rolling the kinks out as Jeongguk sinks deeper on to the bed, until his face is in view. Jeongguk’s smart, and he knows what people like. They like seeing him, all of him and his face and yours, in various positions and conditions. Unlike the porn videos Jimin sees of overly acted situations, where the girl gets caught out after curfew and is punished over a desk, hands bound with the leather of the guy’s belt, Jimin is slightly taken aback at how fast Jeongguk jumps into things- his own cock is out, bulging and huge as expected, and he doesn’t let the audience know what he’s doing. Everybody knows; they can read the title, they can hover the mouse over the timeline and see the frames.

The hand rested upon your right asscheek begins to move in circles, stroking it affectionately as the other hand belonging to Jeongguk slides down the length of your leg. You shudder when his fingers feather across your thigh, twisting inwards to cloyingly play in the warmth. Jeongguk pulls your legs further apart, your cheeks slightly widening with the view of your hole being all Jimin can currently focus on. To the side, Jeongguk grins and chuckles quietly, hot air breathing out of his nose. He likes what he sees, because he’s never been up close and personal with it before. Anal was the promised land that he had not been granted entry to, until today, or rather this morning, when he had rolled over in bed and slipped an arm around your waist, kissing your hair and said, “hey, good morning, wanna do anal later on camera?”

Jimin watches in an expressive silence, timidly stroking his dick as Jeongguk claps his hand against your ass, the sound loud and sharp. A loud moan leaves your lips and Jeongguk pulls apart your cunt from behind, the lips barely visible from the angle but still there, definitely. He idly curls a finger around the wetness, lubricating his fingers. From where he is kneeling, he side-glances at the camera and smirks, holding the inside of your thigh with his left hand and curling his right up, all the way until his one soaked finger tauntingly circles your hole, as if daring to enter, and then slips inside.

The feeling is new, foreign, and you hadn’t anticipated the tight feeling of his finger curling inwards, exploring. Jeongguk lets out a noise of interest at how you shudder, writhing gently and without really noticing, pushing back onto his finger until it entered all the way to the knuckle. Jimin thumbs the head of his dick, silent; Jeongguk marvels at the way you fuck yourself onto one finger, his mouth in an open smile that left his mouth dry. He swallows thickly, impressed.

“Wow, baby girl,” he comments, finally, and Jimin can now hear his voice, “look at how you’re fucking yourself onto my finger. You’re a needy girl tonight, aren’t you?”

You whimper in reply, maybe even say something that Jimin can’t hear.

“Let’s add another one,” Jeongguk suggests sweetly. “You take one like a champion, let’s see if you’re wide enough for two.”

He adds a second, his middle, twisting both fingers in right up to the knuckle. From where the camera stands on a tripod, it gives way to a gorgeous view of your hole, clenching tightly around the digits. Jeongguk laughs warmly, satisfied with the results. It’s close enough for Jimin to hear sounds, the slick and almost sticky sounds of wetness from Jeongguk’s fingers, coated in the thick layer of arousal and lube he had tossed somewhere, an extra coat for ease for the camera. Every so often, Jimin would spot Jeongguk looking at the camera, at the viewfinder to see if you were still in shot. You carried yourself on your arms, your ass and hips raised upwards with your back in what looked like an uncomfortable slope, a position Jimin sympathised being in once or twice.

“Mm, perfect,” Jeongguk says slowly, dragging it out like he did his fingers. They are almost free, until he pushes them back in, practically glowing with pride when you groan out, pushing back onto his knuckles. His fingers sink deeper inside of you, tickling inner walls and finally scissoring, stretching you open in anticipation for a third finger Jeongguk had waiting. You’re tight, tighter than Jeongguk had ever seen you since the first time you had sex together two years ago, that virgin hole Jeongguk had the honour of ripping apart. “You look so perfect, baby. Can you manage a third?”

You nod with effort, “Yes, Daddy.”

“You don’t have to call me Daddy tonight,” Jeongguk offers. He wants this one to be personal, in respect of firsts being mutually taken. You whimper in reply, not in the mood to reply with words. Jeongguk continues a pace with his fingers before adding in a third, letting out a hiss of air at the tightness closing in around his fingers.

“Shit, you’re so tight.” Jeongguk groans to himself between his teeth, ramming his fingers in and out to get a feel for every single space inside of you, “Nobody’s ever fucked your ass like this, have they, baby?”

“No,” you breathe out, trying to look back at him over your shoulder. “Just you, Guk.”

He makes a noise of content, pressing a kiss to your ass and then slapping it with his free hand. You jolt, sinking up and down off his fingers. “That’s right. Only I get to fuck you like this. Fuck- you’re so tight, imagine what it’s gonna feel like with my cock in there.”

“Puh-please, Guk,” you rasp, slumping slightly against this sheets. This time, they’re pale pink, like the colour of unripe strawberries, the stinging colour of your asshole once Jeongguk pulls his fingers out. “Please fuck me already. Please.”

Jeongguk, like always, pretends to think about it. He addresses the audience, finally, by looking back at the camera with furrowed brows, as if genuinely conflicted on if to give in and fuck you. Jimin’s hand is still moving around his dick slowly, his own ass rising off the comforter.

“Alright,” he replies, almost indifferently. He even throws in the shrug of his shoulders, his body oozing with charisma that makes Jimin bite down on his lips to contain a whimper. The intimidation always scares people into desire. “Toss the lube, and move so everyone can see your ass.”

Jimin wriggles uncomfortably, not being able to relieve anything by simply touching himself. Instead, he gapes at the screen, thankful the webcam is covered so his assigned FBI agent can’t laugh at him for being so obviously sexually frustrated, rutting into his own hand as you shuffle across the bed on all fours, still slightly tight around the air as you drop with a slight huff, assigned to the side. This position is particularly ambiguous; your face is almost gone, only slightly in frame, with the lens zoomed further in to your ass and Jeongguk’s thighs, his ass there but moving as he leans for the lube across the bed. If he wanted, Jimin could pretend the figure beneath Jeongguk was a boy- could be him, if he wanted.

He does not want. But, he still imagines, even with you there and patiently waiting for Jeongguk to hurry rubbing the lube across his dick, up and down. Jimin can’t help but gape at the size in Jeongguk’s hand, which is already large and veiny, but he concludes that the bigger hand makes Jeongguk’s cock look bigger, scarier, more erect. It’s so big that when Jeongguk lets go, it stands to a salute up to his stomach, the tip nearing his belly button. Jimin groans, reaching behind him for his own lube and the dildo that he almost forgot about.

It’s as if Jeongguk is giving Jimin time to prepare; instead of being ruthless and shoving his dick inside the tightness, Jeongguk pulls apart your cheeks with fingers and licks around your hole, collecting up the juice he left there from his fingers, a mixture between the cherry and the sweet taste of your pussy, the juices clinging to be tasted. He groans into you, taking kitten licks around the rim and taking extreme pleasure in the way you moan against him, your ass square in Jeongguk’s face. 

Jimin hurriedly coats the dildo in lube, almost excessively, licking up the remains off his smaller fingers. He stares at Jeongguk’s hands in longing and his teeth gnaw on his lips as you moan relentlessly, tight and girly breaths of pleasure that Jimin never thought he’d like hearing. Jeongguk’s own cock twitches against his stomach, the length staring at Jimin and being the only thing Jimin can keep his eyes on.

He fiddles with the dildo, feeling his face warm with a crimson heat. On the other side, Jeongguk pulls away from your ass and kisses your right cheek again, muttering something in a low voice that the camera barely picks up. I love you, he says, between quiet pursed lips. Jimin wants to cry.

Jeongguk moves your hips, deciding on where he’s going to have you. Eventually he decides to have you at an angle where the camera captures your hole perfectly, clenching around nothing, surely with enough frame space to capture his cock moving in and out. It can’t be that different from doggy, from one of your first videos on the channel where he took you from behind with a fistful of hair. You were blonde back then. Jeongguk and Jimin both prefer the dark colour you have presently, and the way it makes your face look brighter, adding an element of sensuality that Jimin wasn’t sure was possible for a head of hair.

“You took my fingers so well, baby,” Jeongguk tells you, prodding your ass with his hands as if preparing himself for the penetration, “but let’s see how well you take my cock.”

As always, Jeongguk wastes no time. It was like he suddenly feared that the lube around his cock would dry, for he prods your entrance with the tip, hissing softly as he pushes it in. He begins slow, as if stomping his foot on ice to see if it would hold, and then, once the tip is in, Jeongguk grunts and rolls his shoulders, the bottom of his back clenching with muscles on display until he finally sank his whole length inside you. He groans, his hands gripping your waist line with vigour and he slowly began to move his hips, moving in slow waves in and out. His movements were experimental yet professional, still candid enough for Jimin to almost believe this tape was amateur. Grabbing the dildo situated under his hips with one hand, Jimin, without looking away from the screen, aligns it with his ass and slowly sinks down on it, his head immediately rocking back at the feeling.

Jeongguk becomes more familiar with the feeling and the movements, understanding that an asshole really was no different to a pussy, except the feeling inside and the placement. To him, and to porn, it was just another hole to shove his cock into. He moves quicker, finding the strength inside of him to clench your hip-bones and pull them down onto his cock, the rhythm so consistent that after a few short seconds, the clapping arises.

Jimin watches from his bed, his reflection slightly visible in the screen, the pathetic view of him bouncing up and down on the horrendous purple dildo. He stares long and hard at Jeongguk’s fat cock, his mouth practically watering at the way it fits perfectly in your hole, each thrust coming out with a wet and slick look, the vein bulging. Jimin wants to finger his mouth, like a whore, but he resists, instead shyly reaching down and grabbing his cock as Jeongguk maintains a pace.

“You’re taking my cock so well, princess,” Jeongguk grunts. Usually, he can keep his composure, keeping up the act of the boyfriend who likes to fill the boots as the boss. Tonight, however, he’s sloppy, slacking on duty. He’s a boss neglecting his reputation and duties, his head filled with sawdust as he focuses on your ass, and the tightness of it around his dick. For a while, it feels almost hard to move, the need to stand still and let it become familiar overwhelming but at the same time dangerous. He wouldn’t want to upset the ratings. Literally, he can’t afford it.

The stretch burns, your eyes rolling back with powerful pleasure and your body feeling as though it was a clump of jelly, wobbling and sliding around on a plate, each tip sending you closer to the edge. You moan with almost every thrust, the way everybody likes it, and from underneath your armpit, you spot Jeongguk’s thighs, the occasional glimpse of his balls slapping against the backside of your pussy.

“Yeah? Tell m-me,” you gasp out, crooning to him. “Tell me how good I feel around your big dick.”

Jimin hadn’t been expecting a sudden role reversal, and by the sounds of it, neither had Jeongguk. Without having any prior experience fucking with koopid, Jimin reckons this may be the first time on record that Jeongguk has been dominantly submissive. What he lacks in vocals he clearly makes up for with physical ability, your words sending him into a rutting fit of fast pace, his dick hitting sensitive spots inside of you. Jimin whimpers to nobody, to Jeongguk, to you, as the dildo brushes his prostate, rubbing against his insides. It’s big, and Jimin closes his eyes to pretend it’s Jeongguk. 

He’s so caught up in the fantasy that he can physically imagine the feeling of Jeongguk’s large thighs on either side of his body, his hands that are big and veined holding his tiny body like he was a prized China doll. He wants it so bad, he pictures it perfectly. The thought sends a ripple of tingles throughout his body, a rush of erotica to his cock and it throbs, it hurts and it twitches, erect, touching his stomach. Jimin fingers around his slit, other fingers lost in the short wisps of hair, meanwhile the other hand holds the dildo in place so it doesn’t slip out.

“Mm, baby, you feel so good around me, you’re so good,” Jeongguk praises, his voice unusually breathy and lost, as if he’s struggling. Perhaps he is; it makes Jimin cry out with pleasure as the dildo hits the spot, Jeongguk’s dick inside of him hitting his good spots, making little Jimin horny. “Shit. Your tight little hole is making Daddy feel so good.”

So he’s bringing Daddy back, Jimin thinks. He feels guilty suddenly at the lack of attention he’s giving you, and you’re delivering a spectacular performance, the moans high enough to sound like his own, when he likes them to be. He focuses on that, pretends everything about you is him. For a moment, Jimin eyes the shape of your tits hanging underneath you. He makes a promise to himself that next time, he’ll watch one where you’re the star. You’re too gorgeous for him to ignore you, to shrug you off as if you don’t matter. Without your ass, he wouldn’t be feeling this good.

“Yeah?” you pry. “Do you like fucking my ass?”

“Mm, I love it,” Jeongguk agrees. He lets one hand go off your hips and snakes it underneath, where no doubt, he’s playing with your cunt, threading his fingers through the wetness as if it’s the same casualness as flicking through the newspaper. You barely bat an eyelid, grinding further onto him. “I love the way you make me feel. Always so good for Daddy. Hm? Huh, look at you.” He thrusts sharply up, and you cry out with surprise. “Look at how your ass takes my cock. You’re such a little cockslut, so desperate for my dick.”

“Yuh-yes. You’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” Jeongguk replies cockily, regaining his own slipping dignity. Jimin doesn’t care if he plays the role of dominant Daddy, or submissive slut. He just cares about the fake cock up his ass and the computer screen.

Underneath Jeongguk, you whimper out a moan, that leaves pitifully like a whisper, practically unheard. You want to scream, tell everybody and the neighbours about how good it feels, how full you feel with Jeongguk’s dick inside your ass, going so far inside that the air is knocked out of you. Rendering you speechless, almost. In fact, you’re so cock drunk that you have nothing of use to say, nothing erotic to mutter to your boyfriend as he relentlessly pounds into you, feeling his own energy bite back. He slaps your cunt once when he notices you’re being quiet, silent, and that’s not good for ratings. Or for him- Jeongguk likes to hear you, he likes to hear whatever nonsense is coming out of your mouth as he fucks your brains out, to the point where you can’t even make sounds, let alone sentences.

Jeongguk knows your body as well as he knows his own, spotting the signs of an approaching orgasm. He had every intention to deny it, finding a tremor of satisfaction at the thought of seeing you crying, begging violently to cum, please, Jeongguk let me cum. He can hear it if he focuses. But it’s the first time he’s ever been a big boy and put his dick somewhere else besides your cunt and your mouth. It’s special. He wants it to be.

He moves, his dick moving with him inside of you, brushing against sensitive spots that are still unexplored, like levels waiting to be unlocked in a video game. As Jeongguk shivers and readjusts, Jimin lets out his first physical sob, not noticing he’s milking his second orgasm of the night. When was the first? He thinks it was when you took control, those dirty words coming out of your mouth. Like an angel taking sins from the Devil, like a nun hiking her dress above her hips to flash her cunt to the Father. Erotic. Sinful.

“Are you close, princess?” Jeongguk asks sweetly, his voice not loud but also not too quiet, a soft volume that the camera picks up well enough.

“C-can’t hold it much longer, baby,” you admit to him, trying to see him over your shoulder. The sex is heavy, holding you down in restraint. “Can I cum again?”

“Again?” Jeongguk laughs, genuinely. Jimin practically spits out a moan. The audience like it when Jeongguk and yourself break out of character. It reminds them of who you are, reminds them that you’re in love. You’re listed in the Verified Couples category, so the audience have got to be looking for the love somewhere. “Ah, greedy girl.”

“I am, I’m so greedy, so selfish,” you splutter. “Daddy makes me feel so good. I wanna cum again, just for you. Juh-just for Daddy.”

Jeongguk makes an elevated noise, as if he’s just been told something he didn’t know, like he’s been secretly given knowledge nobody has, Chinese whispers.

“You’ve been so, so good for me,” Jeongguk says, “so patient. Your ass is fucking perfect, baby. Just wanna fuck it all damn day.”

Gladly, you moan to that. Jimin feels his cock throbbing in his hand, the tip so sensitive that if he were to brush it with his hand, he might cry. It’s red, and abused, but ready for more, he can feel it. His balls are swelling- he wants to be fucked so badly. He wants to feel a dick inside of him, be filled up with cock, have a warmth around his like Jeongguk has. Nothing about koopid makes him feel different sexually other than the fact that Jimin has never been so entertained with straight porn in his entire life. He wants to thank Namjoon, but thinking about Namjoon is too dangerous right now. Jimin might spend too long thinking about him, and that would do him no good. Somewhere along the way, the dildo changed from Jeongguk’s cock to Namjoon’s, but only for a split second, until Jimin forced the thought away.

“Cum inside me?” you ask sweetly, finally finding the strength to pick your head up and glance at Jeongguk over your shoulder. He nods, a smile on his face and you match it, only briefly and the camera doesn’t capture it anyway. You lean back down, gathering every last breath of energy by pushing your ass up higher for Jeongguk. He hums appreciatively, spanking you as thanks.

“Every time I spank you from now on, I want you to thank me,” Jeongguk explains, preparing for the build up to the end, “I want you to say, thank you Daddy. Can you do that for me, angel?”

“Yes,” you reply with a newfound determination, that drips from your voice confidently. Jimin wriggles his hole around the dildo. His ass is so sore, overfucked, but he can’t get off.

Jeongguk stops moving around you, steadying you around his cock and then, without warning you, bringing his hand sharply to your ass. It’s the left cheek, the one with the fading prints and bite marks. It’s going to be the cheek that hurts the most, but Jeongguk likes that it hurts. He counts in his head: one.

“T-thank you Daddy,” you squeal after the first clap. It only comes as a surprise because it was one.

Jimin snakes a hand up his body, fingering around his nipple. “Thank you Daddy,” he whispers.

Two.

“Feels so guh-good, Daddy. Thank you.”

Jimin bounces heavier. “Mm. Daddy- feels-”

Three. You cry out. It hurts now, the sting worse because of the way he’s done this recently, spanked your ass until it was red and sore, until you couldn’t sit down.

“Mhmpf! T-thank...thank you, Daddy.”

Jeongguk makes the hum, his signature hum that collects comments. It sends a wave of excitement through Jimin, the sound clear in his ears. He wishes he had his earphones in, so he could hear it closer, pretend Jeongguk was whispering it in his ear. His shy hand toying with his nipple moves to his throat, and it clenches for a few seconds, the choked out string of Daddy crossed with timid Jeongguk’s leaving his lips like leaves blowing in the wind. Then his hand moves up, and he shoves his fingers into his mouth. He can take a couple, his reflex isn’t bad.

Jimin thinks he passes out for a few seconds, because when he opens his eyes, his vision is blurry and he chokes around his fingers, staring at the screen with wide eyes in time for the grand finale. Jeongguk is muttering something that Jimin can’t make out, but he isn’t sure if it’s because of the weird feeling in his body. It’s like he’s underwater. He’s so overfucked that he feels faint, but he’s not giving up on koopid, not now. 

Jeongguk groans loudly (again), and thrusts himself inwards for the final blow, and the way his body stutters violently and his thighs tremble, Jimin suspects he’s finished. It’s confirmed when Jeongguk, after a moment of catching his breath, pulls his dick out of your ass.

The sound is splendid, the squelch matching Jimin’s as he lifts himself up off the dildo, saving his asshole in preparation for tomorrow morning’s soreness. Your asshole clenches around the absence, still not fully aware of Jeongguk pulling out, but he falls down to his knees, using both hands to part your cheeks like he would hair if you were being sick, revealing the way his cum rolls out of you again, out and around your thighs. A trail even creeps down, all the way to where Jeongguk suspects your pussy is, pulsing with pleasure. He knows you’ve come multiple times, he can tell by the way you’re slouched, your hips still rutting as if trying to fuck the air, fuck the ghost he’s convinced stalks the apartment.

Jimin quickly presses the back button.

He doesn’t know what has come over him, but he needs to see you both, doing real things, to confirm that what just happened was real. Jimin heads straight for the live feed, wondering if you’ve already hit that 10k. When the tab loads and the screen fills with the sight of your tits in front of the screen, Jimin ignores and looks at the likes. 9,992. It’s so close.

Jeongguk sits underneath you, his chest against your back and his hands somewhere in front of you, curling to cup your sex as you rub against his palm. It’s like feeding a pony, as you jut your cunt on his hand like it’s your life mission to do so. You’re talking, and it’s the first time Jimin acknowledges the fact that koopid is a channel of real people, a real couple, who do and say human things.

“Ah, only five more likes,” you say, tossing your hair to the side and lifting, revealing Jeongguk’s coy expression over your shoulder. He’s biting against your neck, and Jimin can see his tongue running flat against the skin. He hums, as expected, in acknowledgement, his hand moving against your pussy. He dares slide a finger in, to tease, and you hiss with a grin. The likes are on 9,999. Jimin realises he wants absolutely nothing more than to see Jeongguk getting his ass ate on live camera by his girlfriend.

So he clicks like.

A little heart floats up on the screen, like on an Instagram live. When you notice it rising up like a stray balloon, you grin wildly, laughing as Jeongguk thrusts fingers into your pussy, not looking at the screen, sucking solar systems into your neck. Jimin’s username flashes on a banner at the bottom of the screen: 10,000th like from angelchim.

“Woah. angelchim, thank you so much!” you giggle, grinding your ass onto Jeongguk and finally your boyfriend looks up. He squints briefly at the screen, playing like he can’t read the banner, but he can. He sees the likes increasing as more people come in. Someone must have shared the link, or they’re only gaining likes for the title. He smiles.

“Well, a promise is a promise,” Jeongguk says evenly. He looks up at you, his hands creeping up from your waist to your breasts, so perked and slightly small. He cups them and you rise with a pleasurable sensation that sends him giggling under his breath, so oddly childlike that Jimin does a double take, and then Jeongguk releases you, tapping your skin and shuffling into position.

From somewhere in the fraternity, Jimin hears a door open. He pauses and looks towards the door, momentarily missing Jeongguk get on all fours and spread his legs, revealing a well groomed ass that he would have liked to see. It’s clean and gaping; the audience suspect Jeongguk’s no stranger to things being put up there. He looks like the type, one comment laughs. Jeongguk’s a cockslut too.

Jimin wonders silently who else is home. It might be nobody, and he’s hearing things. There’s an even chance that it’s Taehyung, a second year who keeps to himself mostly and studies art, locking himself away on evenings when there aren’t any major parties, painting. He doesn’t remember if Taehyung’s gone to Jackson’s party with everybody else. For a moment, he’s embarrassed that Taehyung, or whoever is home, has heard him fucking himself, but the thought disappears when he turns back to the screen and sees Jeongguk’s ass in the air, a grin on his face as you take the role of Boss.

“I don’t want to hear you calling me Y/N, or baby, or angel, or anything,” you tell him, the voice of authority thick and it makes Jeongguk laugh. It’s just a game to him, for now. It’s only a game until you’ve shoved a finger in there, or licked at it. 

Jimin’s weirdly attracted to both sides of you, and both sides of Jeongguk. He’s too tired to fuck himself again, or even entertain the thought of touching himself. So instead, he sits back and hikes the comforter higher up over his body, his cock still out between his legs, semi-hard and sore, and he watches the stream like it’s a tv show on in the background. He’s nonetheless invested, not being able to pull his eyes away.

“Okay,” Jeongguk nods. He gets it. “What should I call you, then?”

You mock his hum. “You can call me Mommy tonight. Okay?”

Jeongguk nods awkwardly against the bed, strangely excited. You’re smothering your fingers with lube, undecided on which one should go inside. It’s all so exciting, taking control. Jimin writhes, too tired to pretend physically but he lets his thoughts wander- Jeongguk lives the most perfect life, an equal balance of fucking his girlfriend and being fucked by his girlfriend. He’s flexible, and excited when you gently prod a finger at his asshole. Jeongguk fidgets, eager and restless. Any other day, he might be cautious of your nails, slightly sharpened at the end, because he likes the way it feels against his skin when you cling to him, digging deep enough to draw blood when he’s done. He likes the marks the next morning. He likes hurting when he knows he’s hurting you.

Jimin gets to hear Jeongguk moan submissively as you slide a finger in, and then another, because Jeongguk and his asshole are bigger, and he’s a big boy. He can take two right away, even when he squirms.

“Mmf, Mommy,” Jeongguk starts. He breaks off, unable to say anything for a few seconds as you wiggle your fingers around inside of him, clawing him and making him shudder. The comments are going crazy. For some reason, they didn’t think you’d follow through and finger him, but as Jeongguk rightly said, a promise is a promise. “Feels so good.”

“God, look at you,” you laugh humorlessly. “Look at how you’re fucking Mommy’s fingers. She’s only just started.”

He pushes his hips backwards. “Luh-like it when you touch me, Mommy. I like it when you finger me like this.”

“Mm.”

As Jeongguk whimpers, you decide to curl your fingers upwards, touching and feeling around inside. It’s about time he gets a spoonful of his own medicine, a taste for his own torture. He likes it, he groans with a smile, his eyes searching to find you over his shoulders and when he spots your eyes on his, he winks.

“You can add a third, Mommy,” Jeongguk offers, faking a sweet tone that has a few commenters giggling. Jimin smiles, too. He wishes he could cum, he wishes he could fuck his hand, but he’s too tired, too fucked out. “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Hm,” you reply, “only since you asked nicely. I’ll add a third, and I’ll get right to business. Is that okay, baby boy? Hm?”

“Yuh-yes, Mommy.”

“Good boy. My good little boy.”

His ass shifts, wiggling almost in a taunt and you shove your three fingers in without a word of warning. Jeongguk groans with discomfort. He’s had dildos, toys, everything and anything up his ass, both before and after he started dating you. For some reason, the sensation of your three fingers up his ass feels different, not wrong but also not good just yet. He gives you a moment to adjust, finding a rhythm and eventually, after his hips move and he finds himself, he begins to feel the coil in his lower stomach tightening.

“Feel good?” you ask, almost shyly. The last thing you would like is to let him down.

He makes a noise of agreement. “Yes, Mommy. Yes, really good.”

“You sure?”

Jeongguk blinks, quietly saying, as if off the record, “Y/N, this feels amazing. It’s okay.”

Jimin feels like he wasn’t supposed to hear. It’s like when you’re in the loo and somebody comes in, spilling secrets to a friend by the sinks, applying lip gloss in the mirror. You’re not in the conversation, not wanted in the secret exchange.

It puts you at ease, enough for Jeongguk to spread his legs further, shuffling back until his foot accidentally hits your thigh. He grunts, as if blindly finding his way around, and you shuffle right between his legs, following his movements from the video Jimin just watched. You pull your fingers out after a few minutes of fucking, and Jeongguk moans with a high tone when you pull away, moving your hands to his ass cheeks. The camera captures Jeongguk’s face in frame; he looks small, tiny, with cheeks that are round and full now that his face is flush on the bed, his waist looking tinier now it’s arched and in the air. The only thing intimidating about Jeongguk now is his thighs, still large and muscular and scary in their own unique way. Jeongguk whimpers furiously, tears choking at the back of his eyes with a burning sting that is ripped away by a sob when you smile at the camera, and lean in within the same second, pressing a little kiss against his hole.

Jeongguk shudders. You move back in, spreading his cheeks further with your hands and guiding his ass back to your face. You start with licking the rim, like licking sugar and lime from around a shot glass. Jeongguk moans, and fingers the quilt covers. With your tongue flat, you lick at his hole, mocking those same kitten licks as he once did, for a few moments anyway until you both grew comfortable, and you continued licking at his hole, prodding and drooling. He tastes natural, as expected, crossed with the coconut body wash that he used in the shower before the livestream, the same body wash you used at the same time, sharing a shower together with your skins flushed and hot and wet, bubbles as bikinis.

You have to admit to yourself, in a private intermission, that you’ve never eaten an ass before. You had a temporary girlfriend when you were fifteen, because you were hormonal and confused and she was the prettiest girl in school. You’d eaten her out, but it was her pussy, and you’re certain that at some point during high-school, there had been another girl. You can’t remember, your eyes closed as your tongue milks the taste of Jeongguk’s ass. He preens, pushing it against your face slightly with his face buried in the covers.

“Muh-mommy,” he cries. “Oh-fuck.”

“Feel good?” you ask him, your mouth muffled against him. He nods with a moan, although it sounds just like a messy noise, a noise you’d find on a porn soundboard. You smile proudly, being selfish yourself. It feels good knowing you’re the first girl to eat Jeon Jeongguk’s ass, and on camera too, for 28,000 people to see. Jimin sits back with his head on the headboard, staring through heavy half lids. He quite likes this view, this role reversal. He quite likes Jeongguk with his ass in the air. He watches for the finish eagerly, soaking every scene up like the last drops of ice-cream dripping down the cone.

“Ngnh, can’t hold it any longer, Mommy,” Jeongguk wails. He fists the sheets, looking at you underneath his arm. He can’t see your face, only your cunt. He doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter. “Please let me cum.”

“You want to cum?” you repeat. “How badly?”

“S-so badly,” he moans, and his eyes clench closed. “Please. I’ve been good. You’ve made me feel so...so good, Mommy. It-it hurts, p-please-”

You hum tiredly, almost as if what he’s mumbling is boring you. You lick one more time, pushing in as he clenches around the tip of your tongue. It makes you want to laugh, and slap his ass, but he’s already done so much. You grant him the permission he begs to cum, and he does- reaching your hand around to cup his tender balls, Jeongguk clumsily spills on the sheets, the thick white substance leaking not only through the baby pink but also splashing up onto his stomach, getting stuck in the thick curves of his abs. Jimin sighs happily at the sight, high on life and the way Jeongguk squirms like a newborn baby bird who has discovered flight, still clumsy and frantic. His body is shaking, trembling like a glitched video game character, his hips stuttering with his orgasm. He groans with it, and then laughs, perhaps at his own realisation of what just happened, and where and to whom.

Jimin types at the keyboard his first comment: you look absolutely beautiful baby boy, and Jeongguk sees, sending a warmth burning in Jimin’s chest. Jeongguk spots the comments amongst other familiar icons and users and he smiles, his eyes disappearing into pleasant crescent moons.

“Ah, thank you, angelchim. It was an honour getting my ass ate in front of you, I hope you enjoyed.”

“Oh, I did,” Jimin replies breathily, and he’s about to type the comment when a knock thuds at his door. Jimin pauses, hyper-aware of the fact somebody is home. They don’t make another sound, just a knock and then a loud sigh that Jimin recognises to be in the voice belonging to Taehyung, as he suspected.

“Jimin, I’m sorry, I know you’re clearly quite busy-” he emphasises quite, and Jimin wants to vanish into the bedsheets, pretend he’s not home, - “but I text Namjoon about where the hell my phone charger is, and apparently you have it, so if you could please bring it out to me, I would very much appreciate it. You can finish...whatever it is you’re doing in there. I’ll, uh. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

And from the stream, Jeongguk laughs. It feels weird, because given the timing, it’s as if Jeongguk’s laughing at Jimin, at how humiliation creeps up his neck and to his cheeks. Everybody watches porn, he thinks. And he’s in a frat, now. He should wear it with honour, just like Namjoon had told him. He looks over at Taehyung’s charger wrapped in a snake cord by his box and he smiles. Tonight has been unsuspecting, but clearly, way better than anything Jackson could have ever given him.

[reflectionsofacreator]

I tried to puzzle out how I was going to cover the ending, but like. I honest to god feel like I can’t break this up easily, and to break it up would lose the emotional inertia behind it all. This is the end for the Ezio trilogy, as well as the end of Altair’s story, and there’s a lot of emotional weight that comes with it. This isn’t as simple as just throwing up a couple screens, though I could do that. Another reason why it’s hard to break into bits is because there’s sections of this that are gameplay, with others that are cutscenes, and it’s just a really good mesh of all of it together, and trying to pick it apart would be very hard.

I’ve cried at least three times over this, and I’ll probably cry again. 

Ezio opens the door to the Library and walks inside, lighting the lanterns as he does, only to find that the bookshelves are all empty. There’s nothing inside, save for cobwebs and a ring of chairs, and the one farthest away seems to have a person sitting inside. 

Ezio: No books.... no wisdom... Just you, fratello mio. 

Ezio gets closer, and finds Altair’s skeleton, sitting in the chair, dressed in his robes of the Mentor. In his hand is a final Key, which glows with light as Ezio approaches. 

Ezio: Requiescat in pace, Altair. 

The last key lights up, and we are pulled into the memory of Altair speaking to his son, Darim. Masyaf is about to be abandoned, just as Altair said it would, and he is sending Darim away. Darim looks older, so I had initially thought this took place another ten years after the last key, but this isn’t more than a few months after. I guess Darim’s older model wasn’t used for the last Key, though I can’t say why. 

The Mongols are coming to destroy the castle and the people inside it, so Altair bids Darim to take his books away to the Library at Alexandria. Darim expresses confusion over Altair sending his Library away, only to realize that it’s not a library at all, but a vault for Altair’s Apple, and the secrets it contains. Darim asks, but Altair tells him not to worry, and to go be with his family instead. Darim hugs his father, and then speaks one last time. 

Darim: All that is good in me, began with you, father. 

The Vault door slides shut, and you guide Altair down the same path that Ezio just walked, and you put out the torches that you had just lit as Ezio. Along the way you hear several snippets of conversation between Altair and Maria, a couple of lines from Al Mualim, and some from Darim. After hiding the Apple, then comes the thing that broke me

You guide Altair over to the chair, with the knowledge that this is the last time you’ll ever get to control him, that this is his end. Fuck I’m tearing up just writing about it. It’s so like, visceral, because you know that this is the only place it can lead, but the game won’t advance until you do so. And so you guide him to sit, and on shaking knees and hands he settles himself down. Never to be seen again, until Ezio finds him two hundred and fifty-five years later. 

As you regain control of Ezio, the room gets filled with strange lights from Altair’s Apple, and you’re prompted to walk over to it. It begins to glow, prompting Ezio to take it, only for him to realize no, and say that he “Has seen enough for one life.” He begins to strip off his armor, his bracers, all the while talking to Desmond, as the room around him glows brighter and brighter. 

“Desmond?” “I heard your name once before, Desmond, a long time ago. And now it lingers in my mind like an image from an old dream. I do not know where you are, or by what means you can hear me. But I know you are listening.” “I have lived my life as best I could, not knowing it’s purpose, but drawn forward like a moth to a distant moon. And here, at last, I discover a strange truth. I am only a conduit for a message that eludes my understanding.” “Who are we, who have been so blessed to share our stories like this? To speak across centuries?  Maybe you will answer all the questions I have asked. Maybe you will be the one to make all this suffering worth something in the end.”  “For now... Listen...” 

Got it hurts so much for Ezio to admit that his life just... doesn’t mean anything in the grander scheme. That everything about his life was engineered and manufactured so he could be Desmond’s Prophet, and simply pass along a message. Ezio is the kind of character that craves a purpose in his life, that needs a directive, a higher calling, and yet his ‘higher calling’ was simply to give a warning that would come only into effect some five hundred years later. It’s the same shit that Altair faced, where he was building a message for someone, but never knowing who. 

Ngl I started just. Bawling. At this point. Because like -- that purpose he craved? Amounted to nothing, it wasn’t him that was important, just what he would pass on. Merely a link in a chain, who’s whole story would only be known by Desmond. How lonely that must be, to look at his life and accomplishments, and realize that none of it really mattered, that it was all some grand plan, just for him to be the conduit of a message. He’s been serving as Desmond’s Prophet all his life, only to be pushed out of the way so Desmond can speak with the person who summoned him. 

We are pulled into a strange, glowing place, with an old man speaking directly to Desmond, via Ezio, calling him “Cipher”. The man speaks of Minerva, of the Nexus of Time, and just... God there’s so much. This is finally getting some answers to what the hell kind of warning Minerva talked about at the end of ac2, with the sun flaring up and killing everyone. 

The man, named Jupiter, says that there were several different methods considered, and that it was his, Minerva’s, and Juno’s purpose to try and save the world from the impending doom. None of it worked, and we are treated to a cinematic of the destruction that is coming for Earth. 

It’s, quite simply put, horrific. Earth quakes, lightning strikes, fire and blood that tears apart the entire world. And it’s coming again. 

Jupiter says that once the earth quelled, and the fires were put out, “Less than ten thousand of your kind still lived... and far fewer of ours.” This is a reference to the Toba Catastrophe theory, which posits that 75,000 years ago, there was a massive calamity that reduced the number of human breeding pairs to less than 10k, and that all humans are descended from those that were left. The actual theory is controversial, and doesn’t really work in real life, but it works for the purposes of this story. 

Jupiter tells Desmond that he has to go to where they “labored and lost”, and find the way to stop this from happening all again. But he warns that he does not know how exactly this will all end, because he is peering though the Nexus of Time, and so therefore Desmond will have to be careful. 

The game pulls back to Rebecca saying that Desmond’s moving, and he slowly, slowly wakes up, to William hovering over him, asking if he can hear. Instead of responding, Desmond looks to his right hand, which glows Precursor blue, and says quite simply, “I know what we need to do.” 

Aaaaaand credits. 

God I’m still not okay. I think this is one of the more emotional endings to a story that I’ve seen, and I’ve played Shadowbringers. While I have a lot of issues with how Revelations is set up, and the narrative plays out, this is ... whoof this ending took a lot out of me. I was pretty inconsolable for a day or two. 

This is like, and Ending. It’s not just a continuation from one game to the next, the way that ac2 or Brotherhood were, this is like, closure and and wrapping up threads in a satisfying way. It hurts that Ezio’s been used like this, sure, but there’s still threads of a happy life ahead of him with Sofia. Adding in Altair’s story, while short and sometimes questionable, undoubtedly helped the entire narrative, and made everything tie together. It hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt, a sort of good bye to everything that has happened so far. 

Revelations might be the one of Ezio’s trilogy that I have the most issues with, but it also I think is my favorite just for the sheer emotion that it pulled from me. 

Sorry I know this is a massive bit, and a hell of an ending to lump together, but I honestly didn’t know how else I was going to talk about it. 

[captain-aralias]

Hi, 1,7 and 22 from the fic asks please 💕💕💕

hooray! asks. these are some of the best ones too and it’s 11pm at night... basically, if you want to ask these questions again at the weekend, i will probably answer them better.

1. Describe your comfort zone—a typical you-fic.

fake relationship, possibly outside of the main ship (that penny/baz prompt today has my name on it. i almost wrote this exact fake relationship into ‘keep calm’ to get the two of them to the cottage, but i removed it because i JUST NEEDED TO GET TO THE PLOT). 

in ‘carry on’, my comfort zone is - something about vampires and how sad baz feels about being a vampire, it’ll be about 10k, and will alternate between only the two main characters. at some point someone will point out that baz is rich and maybe he should feel bad about that too. maybe our heroes will have sex. 

i’ve said before that i find writing smut hard. i also find it easy, despite that being a contradiction, because you know what the fic is about - it gives it an easy, safe arc, a beginning and an end. so that is helpful - the problem is having to write the actual shagging. 

17. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

i’m not a great prose stylist - i’m a writer of dialogue/i always wanted to be a playwright. i’m also pretty good at picking up an mimicking stylistic quirks. so you’ll see what i mean when i say, ‘carry on’ really plays to my strengths. 

a few years earlier, i had a great time writing first-person fics in ‘blake’s 7′ fandom where there were basically none. it seemed incredibly frightening before i started (and i still never wrote blake first person, too scary), but actually i loved it. 

if you like the things i write for baz, now, a lot of it is probably because i wrote this kind of thing for avon first:  

I realised belatedly that Blake had asked this because the hand I'd left on the back of the sofa hadn't stayed where I'd left it. It had crept upwards, and twisted itself into Blake's hair. I must have been toying with his curls. He was right – I must be very drunk. More than I realised. I have no idea how long my hand had been there. I began to draw it back, but Blake seemed to follow it, though I were tugging him towards me, rather than releasing him. By the time my hand had returned to my lap, Blake was most of the way onto my side of the sofa. I opened my mouth to protest, and found myself pushed back by Blake's body as he kissed me. Blake kissed me. Blake kissed me.

I have no idea why he thought this would be welcome, or even whether he’d thought that far ahead. Until that point I had no idea he was attracted to me, or even that he was attracted to men. I am not attracted to men, and I'm certainly not attracted to Blake. He— That is— Well, I can see why some people – some women – might be attracted to him, but it's an objective observation. I can see why women might be attracted to me, and I'm not attracted to myself. Most of the time I don't even like myself. Most of the time I don't like Blake. I certainly don't like him – it's nothing personal. No, it is personal – the regular dislike is, the dislike formed around the fact that a dangerous maniac who endangers my life on a constant basis – but my disinterest in him sexually is not personal. I'd just never thought of him in that light before. Why would I?

So I have no idea why I kissed him back, clutching at his hair with the hands I'd only just managed to remove from his curls earlier.

- Roj Blake and Other Phobias (2015)

a lot of what i wrote for avon is unreliable narrator but very VERY obviously unreliable, so the audience is very in on the joke that he’s kidding himself. for thousands of words. (in this, he is not like baz, who at least knows himself.) this was really good fun, and i think it’s fun to read. i think this kiss is quite sexy (i cut it before we got to that part, but it is) and i also like... even though it’s a cheap device... that i played on quite a famous line for this pairing - have you betrayed me? have you betrayed me? both obviously at the end of the first paragraph, but at other points throughout the bit i quoted where avon tries to clean up after himself even inside his own head by (here) emphasising different bits of the sentence. or correcting himself to make sure he is completely understood... 

and obviously he is completely lying.

22. Choose a passage from one of your earlier fics and edit it into your current writing style. 

this is my favourite question from the meme. i don’t think i’ll do it justice. 

i thought i’d go really early - because all the Blake stuff is still pretty much as i would write it (if not better). 

this is one of the last Harry Potter fics i ever wrote: Enslaving Fireflies (2005). 

May the first, 1972. “I’m not having any fun,” Peter said for the fifth time, lunging dangerously at another firefly that hovered five feet about his head and almost falling to his death. “Go inside then,” Sirius pointed out mercilessly, as he had done every time Peter had suggested that standing on a roof in the early hours of the morning trying to catch glowing insects was not quite as thrilling as James had made it seem inside the common room an hour ago. Peter scowled in his general direction, but stayed where he was. Sirius smirked and Remus rolled his eyes: after almost a year he, at least, had learnt that it was unwise to let Sirius know he’d won, even if Sirius already suspected as much. There was five minutes of silence and then Peter spoke again. “How many of these things do we need to catch?” “A hundred and fifty,” James informed him for the third time. “Thirty for will, twenty-five for you, fifteen for go, twenty for out, thirty-five for with and fifteen for me and ten for a question mark.” Peter considered this. “And how many do we have?” Remus lifted up the large glass jar that they had ‘borrowed’ from the kitchen that morning and which now held the product of the last hour’s work. “Four,” he said, seriously, “and I think this one’s dead, so that’s three.” “Only another forty-nine hours to go,” James said happily waving his net enthusiastically in the general direction of some more fireflies, “which means, minus the time we have to be in lessons, we should just be in time for her birthday.” Remus put down the jar and set to work again. Another five minutes passed and then Peter said, “I’m really, really not having any fun.”

-- 

i dont know if everyone else also had this phase, but at this time (and i was in university by this time - first year, but still) i had this crazy perception about how paragraphing worked. informed, admittedly, by reading books where this does happen. 

anyway - the first thing i would do to this would be to put line breaks in between the dialogue. 

i chose potter because i thought it would be fun to edit it into first person, given the above/it’s connection with ‘Carry On’... i don’t know if that’s the case, though. er...

1st May 1972 REMUS

We’ve only been at Hogwarts a few months, but I’ve already learned a lot. Like what a bezor is. How to get to the Shrieking Shack without waking up any of my roommates. And that if James Potter says something will be ‘fun’, you should be prepared for both pain and suffering.

“I’m not having any fun,” Peter says for the fifth time as he lunges for another firefly. It’s not the first time that he’s said this and it probably won’t be the last. 

“Go inside then,” Sirius says (also not for the first time). 

When Peter doesn’t, Sirius grins me - because of course, he knew Peter wouldn’t leave. But another thing I’ve learned is not to tell Sirius he’s right, even though - of course - he already knows he is. The gloating can last for hours.

etc

[justsomelarryfics]

Here are the fics that I read in the month of March, 2019, that I finished and enjoyed. I will first shows fics from this month, and then older ones.

Sorted by length

New this month

Do You Wanna Ride by @phd-mama -  When Liam's attractive new business partner wins riding lessons with Harry, hilarity ensues. (one shot, 4k)

Tell Me I’m Punk by @tiniinbookland - ""How punk do I seem?"" The one were Harry wants to be a punk but Louis loves him just like he is. (one shot, 4k)

Just Go With It by @rainbowsandlovehl - “Brett, there’s something I need to tell you,” he started, inwardly cringing at his choice of words before taking in a deep breath. Brett seemed curious, raising her eyebrows expectantly. “The reason I haven’t been texting you back is that...” “Harry, they were all out of organic guacamole,” a raspy, unfamiliar male voice interrupted, startling him into silence. “So I got us the normal one. Hope that’s alright?” Harry has no idea how to escape awkward situation but luckily for him, Louis swoops in to help. (one shot, 6k)

Only One at the Finish Line by @horsegirlharry for @1dgayboficfest - “What don’t I know?!” Louis shouts, and then Harry is rounding on him, close enough that he can feel the heat of his body, the rage and the glory and the pain of it so close that it blinds him.“I want to be another alpha’s omega,” is what he says, and it comes out like something reckless, something wild. Like he doesn't care anymore if Louis hates him or not, if Louis understands, he just needs to speak his truth aloud to darkness, to the slender pines that surround them like a jury panel. (one shot, 9k)

fall in love with the moon (and everything beautiful) by @microlouis -  “It’s adorable that you think you can compromise with me on this,” Louis says. He places his hands on his hips and tries his best to look intimidating. “But I am not budging on this. Every book pun you say will result in one quarter in the jar.” “What jar?” Harry asks. He furrows his eyebrows together. Louis rolls his eyes. “Like a swear jar, but now I’m going to make yours ‘Harry’s dumbass pun jar.’ Maybe I’ll have you put a quarter in for every pun you say, not just the ones about books. Niall was right - you tell the worst jokes.” “One time Niall told me I’d never said a funny joke in my life,” Harry says casually. “Funny. He told me that too.” or, louis and harry work in a bookstore together and harry tells dumb jokes and they fall in love (one shot, 10k)

Naked Attraction - Naked Attraction: a gameshow where the contestant views 6 naked possible partners and narrows them down based off of pure attraction. Harry was not a fan of the shallow gameshow, so he decided to mix it up a little. Louis Tomlinson was the only gay and unfortunate staff member chosen to step in for one of the six possible partners when someone drops out. He hated working there, and he definitely didn't want to agree, but it was too good of an offer to be turned down. Nothing would come out of it, surely, and they even agreed to keep his identity a secret.That all changed when famous singer Harry Styles walked out. Louis had no idea who he was, and Harry liked that about him.. . .Or the one based off a British TV show called Naked Attraction that I found hilarious. (one shot, 12k)

All I Want Is To Fall With You by @2tiedships2 - The pair looked at each other for a few moments before Harry moved forward and gathered Louis in an unexpected hug. It was nice, but why the fuck was an unknown alpha hugging him? Maybe an even better question would be why did Louis feel so secure in this stranger's arms? Harry quickly let go and Louis felt something pull at him."Sorry," Harry said, holding his hands up in surrender. "Shit, um, that just seemed a natural response for some reason. I’m so sorry." Louis smiled up at the alpha. "It's okay. Thanks again, Harry." "You're welcome. I know it's horrible weather, and less than optimal circumstances, but this was a brilliant meet-cute." What the fuck was a meet-cute? Or the weekend ski trip where omega Louis discovers that he can’t change a tire and his skiing skills are debatable but still manages to find the alpha who will change his life. (one shot, 16k)

the act of making noise by @suspendrs - “Oh,” Harry frowns, waving him off. “No, I could never. I respect myself too much to sing for a living.”It feels like a slap across the face, but Louis does his best not to stiffen, blinking once and then frowning. “What?” “Those people are always so miserable, you know?” Harry says, hopping down off his stool and straightening his sweater. “There’s so much pressure on them, and they have to work so hard to keep up appearances, I can’t even imagine how difficult that is. I can’t even stand to listen to pop music today, let alone watch TV or read the magazines. It makes me so sad, thinking that those people, you know, the ones who actually went into it with heart, they only ever just wanted to make music and instead they got turned into things on leashes being paraded around to make money for other people,” he says. “Anyway, you can have the stool.” Or, Louis's famous, Harry has no idea who he is, and they get snowed in together at a ski lodge in Vermont. (chaptered, may be continued, 22k)

Take Me Down Slow (Don’t Let Me Go) by @jacaranda-bloom for @1dgayboficfest - Louis has always felt different. Not necessarily on the outer realm of societal norms, but pretty damn close to the edge. As an Omega, he’s supposed to want certain things; to want to raise a family, to want to build a life with a partner, and to want that partner to be an Alpha.Well, two out of three ain’t bad.OR the one where Louis wants to find the right kind of partner to love, Niall hates snowboarding, Liam wants to settle down, Harry is really good with his hands, and mother nature could be the thing that changes everything. (chaptered, complete, 26k)

Steady Eddie - “We’re bringing in a guy.” Ben said. Eddie stared at him.“You’re what?” Ben shrugged. “Apparently the gay market is grossly untapped,” he commented. “We stand to make a fortune. We have it on good authority that the gays love you. Of course,” he added with a dirty smirk. “Your size and all…” “Of course,” Eddie replied drily; something smarting in his chest. “I’ve been asking for a guy for the last two years…” “Well, now you’re getting one,” Ben smiled. (chaptered, complete, 84k, locked, read tags for a better understanding of what this fic is about)

Older fics

sweet, sweet fate by @bottomlinsons for @1dshortficfest -  Harry’s lived with a NSFW soulmark for almost twenty-five years now. When he finally meets the man responsible, he gives him a little piece of his mind. (one shot, 1k, feb. 2019)

Say It With Flowers by @reminiscingintherain - From the prompt: Person A owns a flower shop and person B comes storming in one day, slaps 20 bucks on the counter and says “How do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?” (one shot, 2k, jan. 2019)

Got Me an Appetite by @flamboyantdaddy for @1dgayboficfest -  So it's something, and Louis isn't sure how to approach it. She doesn't want to sound ungrateful. The past few months have been heaven, and she doesn't want to make Harry feel like Louis doesn't worship the ground she walks on (ok, a bit over dramatic, but sometimes it feels like that). She just wants to make her girlfriend come. (one shot, 8k, feb. 2019)

All Hearts Come Home For Christmas by @itsprobablylarry - Gemma, who the fuck is that?” Louis hisses as he watches her wave back with a big smile. Her brows furrow for a second as she looks at Louis. “What? That’s my brother, you dork. Told you he’d pick us up, didn’t I?” Well fuck. Apparently, Mr. Handsome over there is Gemma’s brother. And Louis is spending a week with him. Pretending to be his sister’s boyfriend. Shit. (Basically: Gemma brings ‘her boyfriend’, Louis, home for Christmas and her brother is really hot.) (one shot, 8k, 2015, I also recommend the sequel)

You’re home now kitten by @thesedumbboys - “But, I'm just a stray” Louis looks so broken, sad, disappointed almost. Not even daring to look up from the floor, fumbling with his hands, ears down submissively. The sight almost makes Harry, known to everyone for his soft heart, tear up. “Nope, followed me here, this is your home now.” Harry smiles, speaking confidently, surprised himself that his voice didn’t come out shaky with emotion. “That’s the rule” He shrugs.... Louis is a stray and he follows Harry home. Harry likes him too much and makes him stay and Louis ends up quite liking it. (one shot, 9k, feb. 2019)

Your Touch Is The Only Thing I Feel by @2tiedships2 - Liam. Liam was finally here. Louis kept his eyes closed and cuddled farther into Liam’s side, revelling in the pheromones Louis’ body desperately needed. He wasn’t sure how long Liam had been holding him, but Louis figured it had to have been at least an hour by the way his body had loosened. The need of an alpha’s touch seemed to have been temporarily lifted from his mind. Louis listened to the sounds of the pub around him. It was louder than before he had fallen asleep and he briefly wondered why Liam hadn’t just woken him to go back to their flat.“Who the fuck are you?” Louis’ eyes flew open at the sound of Niall’s voice, and the arm that had been around Louis shoulders lifted in the same instant. He missed the warmth immediately. Louis looked from Niall’s stormy face over to the person who was definitely not Liam. The alpha Liam impersonator, who smelled a lot better than the actual Liam now that Louis was alert, looked back at Louis with wide eyes and familiar furrowed brows. Or the one where Louis refuses to settle for just any alpha despite intense touch deprivation. Fortunately Harry isn't just any alpha. (one shot, 15k, 2018)

bring out feelings in me i never show by @tomorrows - “I really think you should stop reading,” Liam says, having moved to hover behind Louis’ back at some point. “I can already see the cogs turning in your head, Louis, and I don’t like this.” “Shut up,” Louis waves him off and continues reading. I can do these things, at your request: openly hit on other female guests while you act like you don’t notice; start instigative discussions about politics and/or religion; propose to you in front of everyone; pretend to be really drunk as the evening goes on (sorry I don’t drink, but I used to); start an actual, physical fight with a family member, either inside or on the front lawn for all the neighbors to see. [Louis accidentally hires a felon to be his fake boyfriend for Thanksgiving. Or, the fake boyfriends au no one asked for, inspired by this.] (chaptered, complete, 24k, locked)

don’t tell the gods (we left a mess) by @bottomlinsons - After a misunderstanding with Liam’s mother, Louis agrees to accompany his best friend to a family wedding and pretend to be the world’s best boyfriend. But their simple plan goes awry when he learns that Harry, ex-boyfriend/ex-love of Louis’ life, will also be in attendance. (aka: fake!boyfriends with a twist ft. bromance, romance and cake.) (chaptered, complete, 71k, (I know, I also can’t believe I only just read this fic, as you can tell I was just really into fake relationships this month))

[kariachi]

Martin Mystery commission for @thenixkat!! A 10k rewrite of Hairier and Scarier, now featuring more Tonio and sorority girls!

Martin had, at first, been displeased with the Center work station that had been stowed away in his dorm as an alternative to giving him a raise. Diana had tried to convince him this was the better deal, but there was no way on the bright blue ball that was Earth he believed it. Even now, he would’ve preferred the extra five grand a year that had been tossed the others’ way. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t about to take full advantage.

“Check it out, Jav! The inside scoop on all of Torrington’s hottest hotties!”

Having a personal computer of any sort was handy. It gave him the opportunity to write stuff out and store it away without needing to take up physical space, which was especially useful when one was trying to gather as much information with which to impress girls as physically possible. With how important his studies of the paranormal, supernatural, and just magic in general were, there simply wasn’t enough space in his brain to remember all the little tidbits of information he managed to gather about, not just hotties, but also his friends and the occasional boy Tonio was into. And Center computers? Were all set and ready to make files on individuals, a program Martin was using with gleeful abandon.

He was very proud of himself for his work. Doubly so for how well he’d hidden it all. These files were all hidden in the folder he used to store his original fiction, which itself was labeled ‘Case Notes 4-73X-52K’. It was as secure as he could make it without arousing suspicion.

“Betty here,” he said as he showed off his work, “is president of the chick flick fan club, and guess who’s got two tickets to the premiere of Tears of a Teenage Beauty Queen?” He threw a smile at Java as he took out and waved said tickets, receiving a wide grin in return.

“Very smooth.”

“Thank you. Now,” he stowed the tickets back away and moved on to the next file, “meet Maria. Her locker is lined with posters of Rad Bradford- the world’s top male eyebrow model. You know, people say I have brows just like his.”

“If you say so.” It wasn’t the most encouraging response, but okay. Next file.

“And let’s not forget Louise- her favorite color is fuchsia, so wait until she sees me in this!” Martin pulled a floral print fuchsia shirt out of a bag by his chair, holding it up to himself. He had been warned against this color once before- against the whole pink-purple spectrum really- but he was not going to let the opinion of two sorority girls, given ages ago, stop him from getting a foot in with a hot girl. It wasn’t gonna happen.

“Nice shirt, for a limbo contest.” He also was not going to let his sister’s opinions stop him, but that was a vow going back several years. Java turned at Diana’s entrance with a smile. Martin ignored her, as was the proper brotherly way. Besides, he had other things to worry about- like ‘should I gun for a forth girl, just in case, given my track record’. It was a new technique he was trying, if going hard after one girl at a time wasn’t giving him results, maybe going less after more girls would give him more luck…

“Martin Mystery!” And she was going to sick her nose in it, of course. “You can’t use Center equipment for your own personal dating scams!” For a brief instant the smart-ass in him wanted to point out that he also sometimes used it to help Tonio get dates, though the thought was snuffed out quickly. Instead he just returned her glower.

“Why not? It’s not like anyone’s gonna find out.” He had this on lockdown, the only weak link in security was Diana herself and

And MOM’s face replaced Louise’s on the screen.

Fuck.

“I’m never quite sure,” she said as Martin felt every individual cell in his body try to back away, “whether you underestimate me or overestimate yourself, Martin.” She looked pissed. In a moment of panic Martin began trying to close the file, or bring up another file, or do anything really that would get that look off his screen. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. Diana, beside him, looked too damn smug, probably with the timing as much as anything. Java was edging away. MOM glared harder.

“Meet me in my office, Agent Mystery.”

~~~

Whoever oversaw maintenance for cell block C ought to have been taken out and shot. There was no way all of those cells could’ve gotten that dirty with regular cleaning, it just wasn’t physically possible. The doors, the walls, the floors, everything was covered in patches and puddles of muck and grime and other things that it made even Martin’s skin crawl to think about. And given the cleaning supplies at his feet, and the look MOM was giving him, he had the sinking suspicion this was all about to be his problem.

“Perhaps after cleaning the cages you’ll think twice about misusing Center equipment.”

“Ya know,” Martin replied, even as a voice in the back of his head told him he was pushing his luck, “why don’t I just go think about it now?” If anything MOM’s gaze got firmer.

“I can double the task if you feel like playing games, Martin.” It was no wonder she’d gotten the designation MOM, getting reprimanded by her was just as bad as by his own mother. For a moment he felt like he was six again, being stared down as he suggested donating all his clothes to charity so he could fit more comic books in his closet.

Was not a fun feeling.

“Sorry you got busted, dude,” Billy said, hovering to his side as MOM walked away. There was nothing Martin could do but sigh.

“A fair price to pay,” he said, not really feeling it, “MOM’s not gonna delete everything I had on there, is she?” He wasn’t holding out hope for his files, but… Billy gave him a smile and a pat on the shoulder.

“Your stories are safe and sound,” he said, and a bit of weight lifted off Martin’s spine, “but you can’t put them under false labels anymore.”

“When you say ‘can’t’-”

“Don’t or MOM will just take the whole workstation. And you still won’t get a raise.”

“Damnit.” Martin huffed. That was just his luck. “Well, at least I’ve got you to help out, right Billy?”

“Nope.” He was still smiling. That was not something you said to a guy who was about to clean all of this and still smile! “I’ve got my own work to do.” As everything from Martin’s shoulders to spirits sank like a busted freighter, Billy patted him again and hovered passed him towards the exit. “Have fun, Martin!”

That. Traitor.

Martin groaned and looked around at the cages again. Filthy was an understatement, even he managed to keep a cleaner space than this. His mom would’ve pulled out the flamethrower again if she’d seen the mess in front of him. And it was all on Martin to clean it, by himself, with the occupants of the cages still there. What was MOM trying to do, kill him?

“Well,” he said to himself as he spotted one- one- left empty and began to haul supplies to it, “might as well start with the easy cage.”

He didn’t have the authorization needed to open any of the cages in a single button press, and even MOM didn’t have the authorization to give him the authorization, so Martin was forced to type in his unique security password, plus the ‘punishment’ code- which explained why he was opening a cage and also barred him from opening any others until this one was shut and locked- followed by scanning his u-watch before the doors would open. The Center could afford overkill, but apparently not janitorial staff.

It was, he couldn’t help thinking, strange that this cell was as dirty as the rest of them despite having nothing in it. But then, if maintenance couldn’t be bothered to clean the cages that were in use, why would they touch the ones that weren’t. And he almost, almost, couldn’t blame them. These cages were well lit, but had nothing resembling an amenity outside a single bed that was, in all honesty, more like a bench than anything. No ventilation. No grates. This one in particular had a pile of shit off to one side and he was certain he was going to see more. There was just the bench, the tile floor, and a piece of paper taped to the back wall. It would’ve still been creepy and suffocating even without the mess.

Martin took a moment to check the piece of paper out, mostly because he wanted a distraction from his chore. It was an article! About him! About a werewolf capture he’d made what felt like ages ago. It even had a picture.

“Aw, someone was a fan.” Okay, that was a bright spot in his day. Kind of. If nothing else look at the angle in that photo, count on the guys from the Center’s weekly newsletter to get his good side. Still, something about the article rustled his jimmies, even as he settled in to start scrubbing some unidentifiable muck out of a back corner. There’d been something about that mission, it’d been a struggle and really unique and he found himself wracking his brain to remember why. It’d turned out to be a werewolf but there was something about it, it had been

A phantom. A phantom werewolf.

It’d been invisible.

Martin froze in his scrubbing, muscles going tense. He was alone, in a supposedly empty cage, that had an article on the wall about an invisible werewolf he’d put in here. His back was to the cage. He took a deep breath, moving slowly to place the rag he’d been using on the floor. The door was still open, he hadn’t seen a reason to close it, so. Best case scenario, nothing was in here, he was being paranoid. Next best case, it was asleep and he hadn’t woken it. Worst case, it was

There was a thud as something dropped from the ceiling.

Going with his first instinct, as soon as the werewolf hit the ground behind him Martin dove for the door, reeling back when it darted in front of him with a growl. Okay. Okay. It was between him and the door, all long limbs and dark fur and probably one hell of a grudge from the way it was growling.

“Hey there,” he said, plastering on the fakest smile he’d ever managed, “long time no see.” The growling got louder as it stalked closer. Martin tried to edge towards the door. “Look, clearly you don’t want me here, so how about I just leave, huh?”

To his utter lack of surprise, the werewolf did not step aside and let him walk out a free man. In a heartbeat it dove at him, knocking Martin to the ground as he clapped his hands around it’s wrists to hold back vicious claws and dodged away from snapping teeth inches from his nose. Fuck, the thing reeked as bad as it’s cage. Scrambling, he managed to get his feet planted against it’s belly and heaved, launching it across the cage and onto it’s back. Years of practice made it easy to jump to his feet, using the bench as a platform to bypass the monster as it recovered from the rough landing and flipped back over, just in time to grab his left arm as Martin bolted through the doors, setting off the automatic locking mechanism.

Oh god. Oh fuck. Oh shit.

Panic setting in, Martin grabbed his arm and began to heave against the werewolf’s grip, the machinery behind the plexiglass doors whirring as they applied gentle pressure along his arm where they’d have liked to be closing. A tiny piece of Martin’s brain took the time to be glad they weren’t just shutting anyway, taking the limb clean off, though that may have been safer than the position he was in now. It felt like an eternity, though probably it was only seconds, before the werewolf lost its grip and Martin fell back with a cry of pain, clutching his arm. As the door properly shut and sealed, he turned his attention from the still growling creature to his forearm. More specifically, to the four fresh, bloody gashes on it.

Fuck.

~~~

He didn’t finish his cleaning. They couldn’t have made him, not with a gun to his head. Martin Mystery was not a man prone to fear, but he was a man who had grown up with magic and been interested in the supernatural since he was old enough to focus his eyes and he was not, under any circumstances, going to let a wound from a werewolf fester. As soon as he’d come down from the adrenaline and shock of a sudden werewolf attack and the realization that he’d been scratched, Martin had shucked his shirt- it wasn’t like he didn’t have more- and used it to wrap his arm just long enough to flee back to Torrington.

Stowed safely away under his bed was what may well have been some of the most valuable stuff at Torrington. Most people, from just looking at the cache, would’ve laughed at the idea- a mangled disaster of a book, a handful of various stones, bundles of leaves, grasses, herbs, and a few little carved items of wood, bone, one of gemstone, still nothing fancy. But it was, more valuable than damn near anything. Nowhere else on school property were you going to find a higher concentration of magic and spell components than in the dark wood box cleverly hidden behind a take-out container and a pile of possibly-sentient-at-this-point socks.

It was this box that Martin dragged out as soon as he’d locked the door to his dorm and drawn the curtains. His spellbook, the sapphire frog, a few different herb bundles, and because he wasn’t quite stupid the first aid kit he’d promised his mother he’d keep somewhere accessible back when she’d first signed the paperwork for him to begin work at the Center. He had to have, somewhere in there, or in the myriad of other books on things so many people thought weren’t worth studying with the fervor he threw at them, there had to be some way to prevent werewolf curses settling in. There had to be.

Martin Mystery spent the next seven hours trying everything he possibly could before he finally went to bed.

Then he spent another four trying them all again.

~~~

Lunch the next day was… interesting.

Martin headed to meet Diana in the lunchroom, arm still aching from both the wound and his attempts to make sure there wasn’t any curse to it, only to be met with wide eyes and a noise somewhere between impressed and concerned.

“That must have been some punishment.”

“Yeah, it’s not easy being me, Di.” He stretched and clenched his fingers as he spoke. Tonio had seen him without the bandages that morning and expressed worry that it might be bad enough to screw with his movement, so now Martin was worried about it too despite himself. Maybe he should ask Diana about that? If anyone would know how deep a wound it would’ve had to be to cause problems it’d be her... He threw his gaze around the room as he considered the option- maybe he should get lunch first? Despite the breakfast Java had brought up when he hadn’t shown at the cafeteria, he felt like his stomach was gnawing on it-

Wait, stop, Betty was right there!

“Now if you’ll excuse me-” And he was gone, leaving his sister blinking in his dust as he all but teleported across the room to Betty’s table. Betty who didn’t look to happy to see him. Well, that was going to change soon enough. “Betty! Just the girl I was looking for.”

“Get lost, Martin.” He was not deterred. He was never deterred. He was hungry, but not deterred.

“Hey, is that any way to talk to someone who scored two tickets to tonight’s premiere of-” What was that smell? Oh god it smelled amazing- He looked down and was immediately enraptured by the contents of Betty’s plate. “Those look delish!” At no point had any cafeteria food, even Java’s, looked or smelled so wonderful as that chicken did to Martin in that moment, standing there with his stomach consuming itself like a black hole.

“You don’t mind if I take one of these, do you?” he asked, throwing up a smile as he snatched a wing off her plate, not even noticing the way he was practically draping himself over the plate or how Betty backed away. What he did notice was Luke straight lifting him off the ground by the back of his shirt.

“Dude,” the other boy said firmly, “some manners around my girlfriend!” Girlfriend? His? Between this new information and the fact there was chicken in his hand and not yet in his mouth Martin was at a bit of a loss.

“But, I’m just so hungry, I can’t help myself…” It wasn’t a lie, but it was still about to get him punched before Diana jumped in to save his life.

“Luke, wait!” It said something about how she was held at this school as compared to her brother that Martin was immediately set down, Diana automatically grabbing hold of him. “Martin’s just, part of a science experiment I’m running. He hasn’t eaten in three days, it’s making him loopier than normal, I’m so sorry.” She steered him away from the table as she spoke, Luke glaring after them, and Martin was grateful- in a confused way- until she reached for the food.

“Back off, Di, the wing is mine!” he growled as they briefly wrestled over the chicken, only for her to wrench the item out of his hands. Martin all but whimpered as she turned with a tense grin and replaced it on Betty’s plate, then took advantage of the continuing confusion of everybody involved to grab him by the undamaged arm and haul.

“Are you crazy?!” she growled under her breath as she lead the way to the door. “What’s wrong with you?!”

“I don’t know,” he replied, and it was the honest truth even if he wasn’t really paying attention to her. No, his eyes were on a new plate of chicken, hot and fresh and smelling delicious and going right passed them. “But I have to eat!”

Laser focused on the plate, Martin pulled out of his sister’s grasp, hardly noticing the world around him until after the crash, when he was on the floor next to Jessie, wrapped around her plate like a cat with a yarn mouse.

Floor chicken was awesome.

~~~

The floor chicken, alongside a plate of his own Diana grabbed him and the first of her plates, was thankfully enough to take the edge off Martin’s hunger. At least, enough of an edge that he could think about other things, like the slight itch that was leading him to rub his shin against the inside of his jeans or, more importantly, the fact that while Betty had been a bust he and Di shared an art class with Maria and they were currently working on figure drawing and anatomy.

So of course when Ms. Sachs called for a volunteer, Martin was immediately in motion. After all, as he pointed out with a gaze in Maria’s direction, he was a dead ringer for Rad Bradford. In fact, now that he was started-

“This pose,” he told Maria, who from her small jump clearly hadn’t been expecting him to suddenly be practically hanging off her easel, “is for you.” That’s it, Mystery. Who the man? You the man.

“Get your own girlfriend, loser.” Wait, what? When did Brody get there? And when had he started dating Maria?!

“Heh, sorry,” Martin replied, backing off sheepishly, “I didn’t know she was spoken for.” Because she hadn’t been three days ago! What the fuck? First Betty, now Maria? Thankfully he was broken from that spiral of confusion and poor timing by the sudden impact of a piece of charcoal against the back of his head. A quick turn to investigate revealed who else but Diana, ready with another piece to throw if he didn’t get his butt in gear.

“If you’re gonna pose, pose already,” she insisted, and though Martin rolled his eyes he went to do so. After all, there were still a few hot girls in the class- though sorority ties barred him from moving in on two of them- so he may as well peacock while he had the chance. He made his way to the stool in the center of the studio and struck a classic pose, brow twitching when Diana immediately laughed. “The Thinker? Really? How about something more believable?”

For a brief moment, his temper flared, and he seriously considered mooning her in front of the entire class. But, Taylor was to his right and would’ve nailed him with something heavier than a bit of charcoal if he did, so he instead settled on pulling down his lids, twisting his face into the most grotesque mask he could manage just long enough to get his friends to laugh and Diana to comment on its appropriateness before settling back into something more relaxed.

Things were fine like that for about ten minutes.

The problem with posing for a class, especially semi-impromptu posing, was that there was nothing to distract you but your own mind. Normally this wasn’t a problem for Martin, his imagination ran like an ostrich through the savannah, but today was just proving, difficult. He was still hungry enough for it to keep him from thinking, and the more he sat there the worse the itching from before seemed to become. Maybe if he’d had some music going or something he could’ve focused on that instead, but in a quiet room it was like it was getting worse and worse until finally he just, had to scratch. He tried to keep it low-key at first but…

“Stay still, Martin.” Diana was not alone in this request, the rest of the class either grumbling or looking at him in concern as his scratching got more intense.

“I can’t, I’m all itchy! The fuck, did I get fleas or something?” If that werewolf gave him fleas on top of everything he was quitting the Center and reading tarot for a living like his grandmother. The majority of the class picked up their easels and moved back a step, the rest descended into chuckles and open laughter as Martin scratched like he was trying to take skin off, having to actively stop himself from just gnawing on his own leg.

“Try doing your laundry once in a while!”

He could only fucking hope that was the problem.

~~~

At least during gym there were things to keep his mind off his hunger, and itching, and the fact he was starting to ache a little bit. Plus, Java was there and much less likely to judge him than his sister was. So Martin felt pretty good, not great at this point but pretty good, strolling in with his new shirt and the sort’ve confidence only he could manage. There were always cheerleaders nearby during his class, always, and lovely Louise was among them. Yes, he was down two out of three, but he still had a chance to get a date by the end of the day.

Little mind was paid to him as he walked by the rest of the mini-squad on his way to a curious Louise’s side, laying on the Mystery charm.

“So, Louise, I saw you admiring my shirt…” And immediately every one of them started giggling, which even he knew was never a good sign.

“I’ve just never seen a guy wear fuchsia before…” At least Louise was smiling at him as she said it, that was progress, right? Right? Martin blinked, beginning to second guess this decision- maybe he should’ve listened to Ivy- and smiled sheepishly at her. But before he could continue on chatting, a basketball slammed hard into his gut. He just barely caught it, flashing the girls an ‘I’m okay’ grin.

“My girl has better things to do than chat it up with you, Mystery.” And Martin heard nothing beyond that. Chip? Louise was dating Chip? Number one, since when? All of these girls had been single last he’d heard, where the fuck were these relationships coming from? Number two, why? He threw a confused look at Lil, two cheerleaders down the line. She responded with nothing but a shrug and a grimace that clearly communicated how much she didn’t approve of the matter either.

“Mystery!” Oh, yeah, person talking. “You playing ball, or what?” Martin grinned at him, cutting around him, dribbling the ball.

“With my mad skills? Step aside!”

One downside to working with the Center was that he simply didn’t have the time to devote to things like sports, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable. He’d always been the athletic type, and his missions were often more than enough to keep him in shape even when he wasn’t doing proper sporty things. In fact he’d once been referred to as the ultimate geek-jock fusion, and he was more than happy to show off what he could do for an audience, any audience, but especially one including girls. Lil applauded him from the sidelines as he dribbled hard, fast, and in as ostentatious a manner as was physically possible, right until the moment he got an angle wrong and sent the ball directly into his ankle.

Chip didn’t even look at him as he fell over, just snatching up the ball with a curt “you’re skins”. Rude.

“You alive, Marty?” Lil asked as Martin got back to his feet, heading back their way even as the other cheerleaders chuckled over his tumble.

“Right as rain, Lils,” he said with a smile, “gonna take more than a vicious basketball attack to stop me.”

“We’ll keep that in mind.” He blew her a raspberry and shook his head- so mean, and to him, her good friend- as he turned his back to the lot and began to shuck his shirt.

He got most of the way there before he looked down and saw a sea of orange fuzz.

Eyes blowing wide, he slammed his shirt back on and looked around erratically, suddenly horrified someone might have seen the fur covering his chest. That hadn’t been there ten minutes ago when he’d gotten changed, it just hadn’t. This was bad, this was bad bad bad-

“Java!” He was so glad his friend worked his class, he needed the security of just, having him there, and clung one-handed to his arm. “Did you see that? Did anyone see that?” Martin scanned the room again. Cheerleaders were talking amongst themselves, didn’t seem to be paying him any mind. Other boys looked like they wouldn’t have noticed if he’d died on the court. And then Java, frowning slightly at him.

“See what, Martin?” Okay. Okay, nobody noticed. Alright, that was- He quickly darted a hand under his shirt to confirm that had happened. It had. Fuck. Martin took a deep breath and tried to relax. He could handle this. He could handle this.

“Look, Jav,” he said, throwing up a laughably fake smile, “I’m not feeling so well, can I sit this class out?” Java’s frown deepened in concern, but slowly he nodded.

“Go to nurse,” he said, and Martin nodded vigorously before bolting for the door.

~~~

Things were getting worse by the minute and the nurse was the last place he planned to go. He’d gotten to watch in real time as the fur overtook his legs as he changed back into his standard clothes. His nose was getting keener and keener, with every step it felt like, which didn’t help that his stomach was rumbling again, louder and fiercer than before. The itching was getting insane, everything ached, and the world was just, too damn loud. He could hear everything, from squirrels running around to other students talking under their breath as he stalked by with a growl building in his throat.

Martin was a good ninety-percent sure what was going on. He would’ve had to be stupid not to be, and no matter what his grades said Martin Mystery was not stupid. At least, not about things like this. Attacked by a werewolf? On the night before a full moon? (It was a full moon tonight, he knew, he was one of those people who kept track of that shit.) Being beset afterwards by intense hunger? Heightened senses? Sudden fur? A turtle could’ve followed that trail.

This wasn’t good. This really wasn’t good. What was he going to do? What could he do? He’d already tried everything! There was nothing he could do with magic to stop or fix this, and he wasn’t going to the Center for help, not after what he’d seen yesterday. He was going to have to

He stepped around a corner and just barely missed being hit by a ball being tossed between two other boys. Without missing a beat he twisted around, leaping through the air to catch it in his teeth, landing on all fours on the ground with a skid that made his palms hurt. Before what he’d just done could even clock with him, he was shaking the ball with a growl.

“Um, Mystery?” When he glanced up Todd was slowly kneeling down beside him, one hand hovering near his shoulder and the other gesturing somebody behind Martin away. “You okay dude?” No, no he wasn’t, but how precisely do you explain ‘I got scratched up by a werewolf yesterday and now this’ to a civilian? You couldn’t, not without the Center having to get you out of the psych ward afterwards. Instead of a proper answer his jaw tightened around the ball and a whimper forced itself out of his throat, making him flinch with just how bad this all was. Tentatively, Todd started petting his hair.

“Um, it’s alright? Look, I sent Marcus to find, somebody…” Oh this was just getting better and better, they’d probably track down a teacher, or Diana-

“Thanks, Todd, we were looking for him.” That wasn’t Diana. The figure that ran up alongside Marcus and dropped to his side was very much Lil, followed closely by Darcy. “Marty? Buddy? Can you give Todd his ball back, we can get you inside?” He bit back another whine and forced his jaws apart, the ball plopping out into Todd’s open hand.

“Sorry man,” Darcy said as the girls helped Martin to his feet, each with a firm grip on one arm. Todd shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve had to wash worse than Martin-spit off this thing. Just, take care of him?” Their grips tightened.

“We plan to.”

~~~

“I call to order,” Sarah said, standing at the front of the meeting room, “this meeting of the Psi Psi Psi sorority and Tonio Antonelli to address the topic of- Martin Mystery, the fuck?”

This was a rare moment in which Martin did not want a crowd of girls looking at him. The entire sorority was there, plus Tonio- who they had hunted down specifically because he was the Senior Martin Specialist once he’d demanded nobody get Diana or Java involved. Java might have been safe, maybe, but if Diana figured this out she’d call MOM within four minutes. Fuck, the girls might call the Center if they found out.

“Is this a vampire thing? How worried should we be here?” Oh thank god. The vampire thing was old hat at this point, he could work with it.

“It might be?” he lied through his goddamn teeth, swallowing down a handful of peanuts from the honestly scarily large package Taylor had found him. “I don’t know. I’ve been feeling, weird, lately.”

“Uh-huh.” Tonio looked him over and for a long moment Martin remembered just how damn well he knew him, especially when his eyes flicked to Martin’s bandaged arm. “For how long?”

“Almost a week now.” Lying was good here, lying would keep him out of a cage. Yes, Tonio’s eyes narrowed at him, but he didn’t argue and that was all Martin needed. A few of a girls sighed.

“Martin,” Aria said, “you have to tell people when shit’s extra weird, or else we can’t help.” He shrugged sheepishly.

“I thought I had everything under control.”

“Uh-huh.” Ten different people at once with that one. Sarah sighed.

“Okay,” she said, “from now until we get this worked out, someone is always on Martin Duty. Keep notes, keep him from getting the cops called on him, the usual.” Wait, no, fuck again!

“Guys, it’s not necessary, I’ll just hole up in my room a bit, up my calorie intake, it’ll be fine.”

“Martin,” Tonio patted his arm with too calm an expression, hefting a book in one hand, “fetch.”

It fucking burned that as soon as the paperback went flying he did.

~~~

“Tonio, man, our rooms are connected, you don’t need to do this.”

“Yes, yes I do, because you’re a disaster.”

Martin groaned and flopped back against the pile of dirty laundry he was using as a mattress. Tonio was insisting on sleeping in his room tonight, for the sake of keeping an eye on him, and Martin wasn’t rude enough to make him sleep on the floor.

“Seriously, I’ll be sleeping, what sort’ve trouble can I get into?” What he wanted, more than anything in the world in that moment, was to not be sharing a room with one of his best friends when he surely went full werewolf. He liked Tonio too damn much to want to maul him.

“Knowing you? All of it.” Tonio stretched out on the bed, smirking at him as he reached for the last light in the room. “Just whine if you need me to escort you to a tree or something.” Martin scowled at him.

“Oh shut up.”

As Tonio laughed and that final light shut off, he pulled his blankets around him and shut his eyes, praying for an uneventful night.

~~~

Martin Mystery woke up on the floor of the Psi Psi Psi meeting room, surrounded by familiar faces.

“So, good news- it’s not vampire shit.”

“Bad news- you’re a werewolf, Martin.”

“Don’t make Harry Potter references at him, the idiot’s been through enough.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

Martin groaned, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes like it might make all this a dream.

“Are you sure?” he asked, as if he didn’t damn well know.

“Well-” It sounded like Tonio was somewhere towards the back of the room, and that was definitely his ‘why are you my best friend?’ tone- “given I woke up… seven hours ago? to your tail in my face? We’re pretty damn sure.” He sighed. “I knew you were lying... Why do you not tell me these things? I share a suite with you, this is relevant!”

“I was scared getting people involved would make things worse!” He was. He really, really was. Those cages kept flashing in front of his eyes, alongside images of blood and bone. “Is everybody o-” As he pulled his hands away from his face, Martin noticed the long, black claws sticking out of each finger. A small, distressed noise rose in the back of his throat.

“Yeah, like we said,” Darcy said, taking a gentle hold of one of his wrists- oh, look, his wound was gone, that was terrifying- “definitely a werewolf. Claws, your ears are all pointy right now, and there is just, so much fur going on. And everyone is fine.”

“Yeah,” Maddie chimed in. “You were less Cujo and more Clifford.”

“We were all more worried about you chewing a hole in yourself than one of us,” Sarah added. “Speaking of which, do you want a flea collar? We were talking about what sort’ve supplies Diana and Java’d need to keep you healthy now and, that might be handy.”

“They aren’t going to need anything to keep me healthy.” It was a relief to know he hadn’t hurt anyone, apparently hadn’t even tried, but still. There was no way this could get out. No. “Not a word about this leaves this room.” Brows raised incredulously all around him.

“Martin,” Tonio chimed in, “speaking as your voice of reason- at the very least Diana needs to hear about this. I mean come on, are you gonna go home for the summer and just hope you never walk out of your bedroom during a full moon? Your family’s gonna have to know.” Martin shook his head, muscles tense, and lips pulling back from his teeth.

“If Diana finds out, the Center will find out. If the Center finds out, I’m going to end up in a cage.” Paige scoffed.

“Over the bodies of twenty-three girls and a Tonio you will.”

“Martin, seriously,” Darcy still had her grip on him, and clearly wasn’t planning on letting go anytime soon, “we can’t be there for every full moon. You’ve gotta tell somebody.” Martin whined under his breath.

Fuck fuck fuck.

~~~

In the end they compromised. The others wouldn’t tell Diana unless directly questioned about his potential werewolfness, and he’d call his grandmother and tell her he was now at risk for canine distemper.

This was easier said than done.

“Yes, Gramma.”

“I know, but-”

“Look it’s a very recent thing-”

“Gramma telling Diana is an actual health risk here.”

“I tried that- Yes, yes, I know.”

“But Gramma, I-” Flinching, Martin nodded along and held the out the phone. “Tonio, she wants to speak to you.” The other boy took the phone as if it might bite.

“Hello, Mrs. Mystery. I’m doing fine, how about you? Oh great.” Of course, Tonio she was chill with.

“No, no, we’ve got things under control, we think. Just figured someone in his family should know about this. I mean full moons still happen over the holidays… Uh-huh.”

“Oh no, he was great, perfectly manageable, plenty of food, a few hours of fetch, and everything was fine.” Well, that was good to know at least, even if the idea that he’d played fetch made Martin pout even harder than he had been. Who knew being a werewolf could be so humiliating?

“Huh, that would explain it. Okay, I’ll let him know. Bye, ma’am. Same to you, bye.” All eyes in the room- which wasn’t that many at this point, it’d been decided that the people who’d actually gotten a decent amount of sleep should carry on as normal while the rest slept or handled this werewolf business- were locked onto Tonio as he hung up the phone. With a deep sigh, he flopped down bonelessly beside Martin.

“So, that necklace is supposed to stop the worst of the vampireness?” Martin sighed.

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Your gran thinks it should’ve stopped the werewolfness too, but since it didn’t she’s gonna call up some of your aunts and try to get a new one together that will.”

“So,” Sarah interjected, hanging off the back of a chair, “we only have to worry until they do. Then everything should go back to normal Martin weirdness, right?”

“That’s what she thinks. She wants us to keep an eye on him until then.”

“Well fuck, we were gonna do that anyway.”

On the one hand, Martin couldn’t help but notice they were talking about him like he wasn’t there, especially as they continued on. But on the other, what they were talking about was ‘our friend is a werewolf, how do we manage this without him ending up in a cage’. Everyone there had sat up last night making sure he was okay and under control. Sophia and Maddie had gotten hold of a PetSmart catalog and were arguing over what dog beds looked more comfortable.

As worrying as the situation was, his grandmother and aunts had his back and his friends, honestly, seemed just to get more awesome the more they learned about his weirdness.

And after the holy water incident he hadn’t thought they could be more chill about his shit.

~~~

The lot of them were in the middle of a discussion about collar colors- half of them, including Martin, felt red was the best option because warm colors were his thing, while Tonio was with the other half in thinking a blue collar might work to bring the color of his jeans up to balance the rest of his color scheme- when the u-watch went off. And everything immediately stopped.

It chimed.

The screen went to its pre-call static.

Darcy wrenched the watch off Martin’s wrist and yeeted it across the room.

They all watched in silence as it ricocheted off the back wall, hit the floor, and bounced into the darkness under a desk. After a brief moment, the space was illuminated, and MOM’s voice rang out.

“Martin? Agent Mystery, where are you? Answer me!” A brief pause. “Goddamnit…” And the screen went dark again.

Silence reigned for several seconds more, three sets of arms wrapped protectively around Martin, Tonio’s hand clamped onto his arm. Slowly, everyone turned to Darcy.

“What? I panicked!” Martin released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, the others following his lead.

“Fingers crossed, she just thinks I’m slacking off.” Lil nodded against his shoulder.

“Fingers crossed.”

~~~

“Bad news, everybody,” Hannah said as she stormed purposefully into the meeting room, waking up two girls and Tonio in the process.

“Because we haven’t had enough of that lately…” She threw the short blond a sharp look, then turned her attention back to the room at large.

“Chip’s dead-”

“Well, that makes my life easier.”

“Lillian!” Lil doubled down, arms crossed and back straight.

“He was a piece of shit.”

“Louise is a mess!”

“She’ll live, better off without him anyway.”

“Okay,” Sophia said, stepping between them with hands raised, “can we stay on topic? What happened, Hannah?” Shutting the door behind her, Hannah walked across the room to hover casually and worryingly protectively around Martin.

“What was left of him was found around the other side of the building this morning, in the bushes. Everyone’s talking like it was some sort’ve animal attack.”

Martin’s gut fell clean out of him, eyes blowing wide. There weren’t animals at Torrington large enough to take out a teenage boy. They weren’t even allowed cats for fuck’s sake, nonetheless anything that could leave ‘what’s left’ of anything bigger or badder than a pizza. All there was was- And he’d been at odds with Chip, sort’ve, just yesterday-

“Oh no, don’t you start with that look!” There was a light thwop against the back of his head and when he turned to look there was Tessa, with a firm, no-nonsense expression. “You’ve been alone for ten minutes out of the last eighteen hours, that is not long enough to break out of a locked room, find a jock, eat him, clean yourself up, break back in, and lock the doors or windows or whatever behind you.”

“I could if I wanted to,” Martin countered on pure instinct, baring his teeth at the thought he couldn’t do damn well anything if he wanted.

“Yeah,” Tonio said, tone flat and as unimpressed as everyone’s expressions, “maybe if you were a were-cheetah.”

“The point is,” Hannah said, laying a hand on Martin’s shoulder, “we know you didn’t kill him, but, we don’t know what did. And until that thing is caught, anyone who finds out about you is gonna see you as the prime suspect.” Hackles raised around the room at the thought.

“Okay everybody,” Sarah said, glaring at nothing in particular, “sounds like we’ve got more and more shit to worry about.”

~~~

Another meeting was called for that afternoon.

Nobody was really sure how they were going to handle the ‘strange beast eating schoolmates’ situation. They couldn’t even agree on if they should. Several of the girls were of the opinion that they should just leave well enough alone, it probably was some animal that made its way onto campus and it was better to let the professionals deal with it. Others felt it was better to know for sure- find out what it was that attacked Chip and then decide whether or not to be worried.

Martin had enough of an instinct for his work to know it wasn’t going to be some animal. That was the sort’ve thing Diana would suggest, and she was rarely right when his gut said ‘supernatural’. He might be wrong, but she wouldn’t be right.

“I’d put my life savings on this being the sort’ve thing the Center should get involved with,” he said, slumped down in his chair at the head of the room with the rest of the council, idly scratching his arm.

“Even if it is,” Ivy countered, “we’d still have to get involved. You’re the Center employee here, we aren’t leaving you alone, and you don’t want your sister or Java involved.” He hated a lot of things, but mostly that she was right. Whatever was going on he could probably handle it alone, but nobody was going to let him. Maybe Diana and Java would handle it, but the idea of not being there to help them made him queasy. Or maybe that was the hunger again. Just in case he tore open another bag of Fritos.

“I’m just saying, guys, I can handle it. Give me like, two hours-”

“I’m sorry, did we not already have this argument yesterday?”

“Yesterday a guy wasn’t dead!”

A knock rang from the door before Sarah could answer. Again, the room went quiet. Another knock.

“I know you all are in there,” Diana called from the other side, “we need to talk to Martin!” Goddamnit. This was the problem with getting your whole damn social group together in the usual place, you were too easy to find. Martin swore to find them all a new meeting room, in a different country if he could swing it. In this moment though, everyone in the room shared a look before Darcy stood and cracked the door.

“Martin isn’t here.” Bless that girl.

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie?”

“You’re already Martin’s friend, who knows how much lower you’d sink.”

“Hey!” The affront on Tonio’s face at that, as Martin’s oldest friend, was golden.

“Tonio’s here, Martin’s here, let us in.”

“No.”

“Darcy, please.” Logically Java, who Martin had no doubt was also out in the hall, would’ve been able to open the door with ease. He was, he had to assume, just too kind-natured to risk hurting or scaring her. “Think he might be sick.”

“He’s fine.”

“Listen-” Wait, was that Billy? That sounded like Billy. Fuck. “-this is going to be hard to believe, but we think he might be a werewolf-”

“Yeah, we know, either that or he’s possessed by a golden retriever. It’s all under control, goodbye.” As everyone inside struggled to not laugh or throw something at her, Darcy closed the door. Or, at least she tried to. The door stopped before it could click shut, and despite her best attempts creaked open enough for Java, a disguised Billy, and a very affronted Diana to force their ways in.

“You know?!”

“Well yeah,” Darcy responded, holding her ground between them and the others, “he was chasing balls out front yesterday, it’s not exactly rocket science.” Diana gaped for a moment, the boys waving behind her in an attempt at being friendly, before craning to glower at her brother over Darcy’s shoulder.

“Martin! What the fuck! You tell them but not us?!” He licked barbeque flavoring from his claws and waved.

“Hey guys. Um, nothing to worry about? Gramma’s working on keeping me from going all, furry.”

“-er.”

“Shut up, Ivy.” If anything Diana glared harder.

“You told Gramma, and not me!”

“Well Gramma doesn’t have a direct line to the Center, now does she?” Tessa reached out and grabbed Darcy’s arm, slowly pulling her back into the seats as Billy and Java edged towards the front of the room.

“Martin,” Billy said, “you really should head back to the Center-”

“And end up in one of those cages?” Martin tensed at the very thought and when he did everyone did for one reason or another. A few of the girls half-rose from their seats, eyes on his team and on Billy. “Yeah, no. We have everything under control here and Gramma’s working on keeping me from changing. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Nobody’s going to put you in a cage, Martin,” Billy said, hands raised placatingly. “If anything you’ll be killed alongside the rest of us.” Wait what? Jaw going slack, Martin’s face twisted into a confused grimace. “The werewolf that turned you escaped yesterday, as per protocol we had to call Security Chief Jones back in from her vacation and after looking over the footage she’s angrier than I’ve seen a person in years. You’re dead, I’m dead, MOM, the Assistant Security Chief, Head of Maintenance… If any of your friends here want work at the Center, we’re about to have a lot of openings.”

It took a minute for that to sink in. Normally he’d take such a threat with a major grain of salt, but if there was anyone working for the Center he would count on to follow through… That was honestly kind of scary. Thankfully other people were paying attention for him, namely Sarah, who was the one to pipe up with a-

“What do you mean ‘escaped’?”

“Oh, yeah,” Billy said, apparently so caught up in his imminent demise he’d forgotten, “that’s why MOM was looking for Martin. And because he hadn’t finished his cleaning-”

“In my defense I did get attacked by a werewolf.”

“-but mostly because he’s the one who caught it last time and we were worried it might hold a grudge.” The room went quiet again as everyone let this sink in. The other werewolf was loose, it may or may not be out for Martin’s blood, if it was, then it was probably heading for or already at

“Well,” Tessa said, “at least we know what probably killed Chip.” Java sighed, some tension leaving his shoulders.

“Am glad not Martin.”

“No, no,” Tonio said, “you haven’t seen wolfy-Martin, he wouldn’t take out a bacon cheeseburger.”

“I am right here.”

“We know.”

“But if the werewolf is after Martin,” Diana asked, “why would it kill Chip?”

“Because he was an asshole?”

“Stop it, Lil. Was probably just hungry. After all, it’s not like it had Darcy there feeding it jerky.”

“By the way, thanks Darc.”

“No problem, Marty.”

“Okay,” Sarah raised a hand for silence as she spoke, motioning the newcomers to take a seat with the others, “so, we know the extent of the werewolf problem. Now,” she looked directly at Billy, “what more can you tell us?”

The ‘having them sit’ thing turned out to be useless, because the moment Billy pulled out the werewolf’s file everybody was out of their seats again, crowding around him for a better look. It had everything. Height, weight, preferred diet, blood type, known history, Martin’s report on the mission during which he’d captured it. Even a photo, which got a lot of ‘huh’s from the crowd.

“That looks, nothing like you did, Martin.”

“Really?” he and Diana asked as one. Lil nodded.

“Yeah, you looked a lot more humanoid. Like, blatantly very canine, but not nearly as much as that guy. And you were fluffier. And more colorful.”

“You think maybe the vampire thing has something to do with it?” Tonio asked, and Diana glared at Martin again.

“They know about the vampires too?!”

“Look, after the holy water incident I had to come clean with some stuff.”

“What holy water incident?!”

“The one where Darcy dumped some holy water on his head as part of an in-joke and he started smoking.” It was a rare and, in Martin’s mind, beautiful moment where Diana had no words. She just gaped at him, eyes wide. He shrugged.

“I’d rather not talk about it. Whatcha thinking, Tonio?”

“I’m thinking,” Tonio leaned back as he spoke, “maybe you’re not becoming a werewolf like one that because you’ve already got the vampire blood going on. Maybe werewolves that are vampires or are gonna be vampires are a different type, and that’s why you’re fluffy and colorful. Or maybe that necklace of yours is working on it, just not entirely. So you’re only half-turning.”

“Gramma’d be glad to hear that,” Diana said, “it would probably give her less work to do.” Martin nodded along to that, it would, it really would, but Java shook his head.

“But not help with phantom werewolf,” he said, and he was right. If that thing was eating people, and looking for Martin, then they had to recapture it. And hopefully find someplace more humane to put it. Maybe Martin could gain survival points with Jones if he puppy-eyed for the werewolf’s well-being… But first.

“Well, I did catch it once,” he said, standing tall and grinning toothily around the room, “and that was in way worse circumstances, this’ll be a breeze.”

“Worse than on a high school campus while you yourself are transforming into a vicious beast?”

“He wishes.”

“Shut up, Tessa.” Martin’s grin widened as he aimed it at Billy, who shifted away slightly at the sight of sharp teeth. “Of course! Last time I was inexperienced, human, and only had half a clue what I’d gotten into. This time I’ve got people behind me, I’m a fucking werewolf, know exactly what I’m dealing with, and, I have time to plan.” He stretched, rolling his shoulders. “Who wants to help catch a monster?”

All around the room hands went up. Not all of them, but that didn’t matter when every face in the room held a confident expression. Everyone here trusted him, and whether they were willing to help with this specifically or not- it was a dangerous event to be involved in after all, even if he didn’t plan for any of them to be in harm’s way- they all had his back.

He’d known there was a reason he liked all these people.

~~~

In the end fifteen extra people- including Tonio- made light work, and preparations were complete well before the sun finished setting. Which left plenty of time to argue about who would be involved in the actual ‘werewolf capture’ portion of the event. And it was an argument. Too many people wanted to be involved with that. In the end they managed to pare it down to just Lil- who could not be deterred and made the compelling argument that she was the most hardcore athlete present so she was fairly certain she could handle whatever Martin and Diana could- alongside Diana and Java, with Martin acting as bait and- at his own insistence- the only one on the ground.

That had been an entirely different argument, but he’d won it with logic and empathy and forward-thinking and Diana damn well better have been proud of him.

So it was that, as the moon rose over the rooftops, he found himself standing alone at the edge of the campus. He could feel more of the wolf coming over him, just as he had the day before. Aches, hunger, heightened senses, that itching that was still fucking going. Martin chewed at one hand as he paced, face shifting into a short muzzle, tail growing through the hole Jessica’d cut in his pants and boxers earlier. Even if the other wolf somehow wasn’t after him, which he doubted, it was certain to find him, and that was all they needed to set things in motion. For it to take any sort’ve interest.

The damn thing took another hour, it’s scent rousing Martin from a potato chip-induced half-sleep before it came within sight. Setting his spine, he climbed back to his feet and let out a howl. One graciously answered.

“That’s it, buddy, come get me…” He stood tense, waiting, waiting, until the snarling form of the phantom wolf slipped out of the deeper shadows. Why it was showing itself, Martin didn’t know, but he certainly wasn’t about to complain. It came closer, he moved back, closer, back, rinse, repeat, until finally the tension in the air broke and the beast leapt with a roar.

Martin ran.

Through the grass, vault a shrub, it was on his heels, longer legs serving it well, up a path, under one of the larger trees-

There was a yelp as the werewolf followed him.

With a sharp grin, literally, Martin spun on his heels to face his foe. Java and the girls grinned back at him from up in the foliage, and beneath them- one very colorful werewolf.

“And now you can’t do your phantom thing.” Phase one, complete. Phase two, a go.

The werewolf charged him again and this time Martin stood his ground, grabbing it by the shoulders and twisting as it went for his throat. Together they hit the ground, a mass of fur and claws and teeth. The goal, as Martin wrestled with it, was to get it subdued enough that the others could bind the thing. Originally they’d been going for a net, which would’ve left the dye and paint they dumped over it unnecessary and kept this whole fight much shorter, but preliminary testing had proven Martin could shred it easily and they were going off the assumption the other wolf could do the same.

Thankfully, Martin considered as a lucky bite got lost in his mane, he was a lot better protected than last time.

With a snap, a snarl, a familiar kick to the gut, the werewolf broke out of his hold and darted back to give itself space. Which also gave Martin time to get hold of the x-rod, quarterstaff style. Having a weapon couldn’t hurt. Besides, this way he could smack it from a distance and there was feeling deep in his soul that was satisfying about smacking something coming at him with a stick.

Now that he thought about it, this was probably the instinct called upon during the invention of baseball.

One sharp crack stunned the wolf, sending it to the ground, and Martin sprinted to pin it. Not that he was quite fast enough, by the time he reached it it had enough sense back to try for another bite, one hastily blocked with his staff. And so, with jaws around his weapon, Martin did one better.

A staff pressed against the back of it’s jaw held the wolf’s head to the ground, Martin’s weight on it’s middle kept it from maneuvering. At first, the wolf tried to swipte at him, but his own thick fur and clothing made it a waste of time. The best it could do was try to lift the staff like a barbell in a bid to even the odds back up, and even that was an attempt that wouldn’t last long. Now they didn’t have to worry about the teeth, Java, Diana, and Lil jumped down from the tree and came to Martin’s aid- each swaddled in a painful number of layers for safety’s sake.

Java grabbed the wolf’s forearms and carefully pulled it’s hands from the quarterstaff, pinning them above it’s head so the girls could tie them with a length of wire carefully covered with cloth and cotton for safety. This was repeated, with even more care, with it’s flailing legs. Then, while Java held the legs and Lil held the arms, Diana pulled out one of Tonio’s belts (“Nothing deserves to be bound in anything of Martin’s”) and wrapped it loosely around the wolf’s muzzle. Carefully, carefully, she tightened it as Martin pulled the staff away, like the world’s most dangerous game of Jenga, before yanking it tight the instant the staff was clear.

Thoroughly bound, gagged, and pinned, there was nothing of consequence the phantom werewolf could do. Martin patted it’s head consolingly.

“Don’t worry, dude, we gonna make sure you’re kept in better conditions this time.”

~~~

Two months passed and thankfully nobody died, though several did lose their jobs, and even MOM walked on eggshells for a few weeks. Plans to improve conditions in the cages were rushed through the approval process, though the phantom werewolf would never see them. That one had been transferred to another facility with nicer cells that also was plenty far away from Martin.

He’d gone through two more full moon cycles since being turned, none of which had resulted in any harm to any individual. At least, not any harm that put them at risk of turning. Getting knocked over by an enthusiastic werewolf was not a big threat. As it was he’d spent those nights out in the forests behind Torrington or locked up in the meeting room, always with someone to look after him, often with a ball to chase and snacks to eat. It was actually kind of fun, now that he was getting used to it. But nothing lasts forever, and amount of the shaving and nail clipping he was having to do to maintain his cover was really crimping his style. It would’ve crimped Diana’s style.

“Hold still, Martin!”

“If you’d hurry up I wouldn’t have to!”

“Do you want this to stay on?” Diana demanded, aiming an knee to the small of his back, “then sit still!” The new necklace their grandmother had sent was… tighter than the last one. More of a choker than anything. Supposedly to make sure it stayed in place, as if Martin had ever had a problem with keeping it on before. He supposed it probably had something to do with how often he got transformed into things, especially lately. This was supposed to make sure he didn’t turn into any more supernatural creatures before his time, or give into any of the relevant urges, and if it didn’t work she was probably going to come up and ward him personally.

Again.

“There, finally! How many ways to close a necklace are there, and how did Gramma find them all?”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Martin replied. Before his eyes his claws were receding, and he could feel the hunger dying down. He turned to grin at his sister. “Thanks, Di.”

“No problem.” She brushed her hands off and sat back on his bed. “It’s going to be nice to have the, well, comparatively normal you back.” He laughed and scooted back himself, throwing an arm over her shoulders.

“Tell me about it. If I never wake up with a ball in my mouth again it’ll be too soon.”

[graemeruns]

London Marathon 2019

It’s never easy running two marathons close together, and in my case, because I had put everything into the Manchester marathon and was not able to run for a week after, the three week recovery between the two races was not enough. I managed to build up some miles again in the second week post-Manchester, and enjoyed a fast parkrun at Lloyd Park where I knocked 5 seconds off my course PB there, but then I was into the taper again. In my final week I always do a marathon-pace effort in the shoes I intend wearing on the day, but just 4km wearing my On Cloud X lightweight racers aggravated my calves again, so I decided not to wear them for London. Shoe choice then became a dilemma: I thought I would wear my Mizuno Wave Sayanoras, then after referencing my training log and discovering that I had never run further than 13 miles in them, ditched that idea and resorted to my Mizuno Wave Riders. I’ve worn these in road marathons before, but at 312g they are quite heavy, and I would have preferred something a bit lighter. Still, there was no way the 13mm heal-to-toe drop would overuse my calves, and the cushioning would be nice too.

Friday, expo day; Saturday, taking it easy doing stuff around the house; Sunday, up before my alarm, usual pre-marathon breakfast of porridge and toast, and off to catch the 8:05am train from West Wickham station. For once, I wasn’t at all nervous, because I had no pressure to do well. The weather was cool, although fairly breezy, but very decent conditions for running.

There was quite a gathering of Striders and other local club runners on the train, so the 20 minute journey to Lewisham went in the blink of an eye. Then there’s the 25 minute walk to the start, which meant I was there before 9am. This year, London marathon had split the Good For Age competitors among all starts, and I was on my own in the Yellow start. There were definitely some Striders and other runners I know in there somewhere, but I couldn’t find any of them. It was pretty chilly when I handed my bag in at 9:20, and so began 50 minutes of waiting for the start; I actually entered the starting pen at 9:40 thinking that it would be warmer surrounded by other people, which it was, but after 20 minutes of standing I was noticing how much my hamstrings were already aching. It wasn’t a good beginning to the race!

Despite getting in the starting pen quite early, it still too me 2 minutes to get over the line after the gun went off. I was keen to get going, and warm up, but the aching hamstrings were not helping. I set about trying to maintain a good pace; with no idea how much I had recovered from Manchester, I hadn’t really decided what pace to aim for, but just to run as naturally as my body felt, with the hope that I might be able to sneak in under 3 hours. I covered the first 10k in a satisfactory time of just over 41 minutes. The next 10k was quite a bit slower, in 42:40, but that still meant half-way came up in around 1:28:30, so if I could maintain this slower pace I could be on for something close to 3 hours. However, I was already feeling very drained; I remember at the time thinking it felt as hard as the last few kilometers of Manchester a few weeks earlier, but there was still a long way to go. At 25k I was still slowing, and soon after this Andy from Striders overtook me. I thought about trying to hang with him for a while, but by now my legs were very heavy, and the effort to catch up and try and hang on for a bit might ruin me completely, so I let him go. (Andy finished with a new PB of 2:58:24).

By the 20 mile mark my hope of a sub 3 had gone, and now the time really didn’t matter, and it was all about getting to the finish as quickly as I could muster to end the pain. I covered the remaining part of the marathon averaging a fairly pedestrian 4:45 - 4:50/km, but my heart rate was hovering around 160bpm, which is the top end of my marathon-pace range, so I was doing about as much as I could. My time over the line was 3:06:38 (you can see my run on Strava here). Everything considered, I was absolutely OK with that: I had done what I could, tried a plan, but my Manchester recovery just hadn’t been enough. There’s a lot of people who would be absolutely thrilled with that time, finishing within the top 3000 of 42500 runners. For me it was just the end of another race, and time to analyse the damage done.

I find it fascinating how your body reacts to different scenarios. It was easy to compare both my marathons because running conditions had been very similar: cool, overcast, with a breeze (though a bit windier in places at London) and mostly flat. The main differences were: freshness, shoes and congestion. Let’s take one at a time:

1) Freshness: Manchester had definitely taken more out of me than I thought. Once I had started to run during the recovery weeks I felt very sluggish, and the weekend two weeks after the marathon where I ran a fast parkrun followed by the Sunday Striders off-road run had wiped me out for 2 days. Then I did a marathon paced run of 4k that made my calves sore again. All of these were mistakes when you are due to run another marathon so soon, and definitely put my recovery back. In hindsight my runs in-between the events should have been at an easy or recovery pace.

2) Shoes: the last minute choice to change to my marathon training shoes from my On Cloud X was probably the right thing to do based on the hammering my calves at taken at Manchester. I did some research before London, and tests have show that for every 100g extra a shoe weighs slows the runner by around 0.8%, which is around 1.30 minutes for a 3 hour marathon. 1:30 is a lot, but when you aren’t sure whether you will run sub 3 or 3:20, it didn’t matter. What I find interesting is, because I got tired by half-way, my running form must have fallen apart and the high heel-to-toe drop of the shoe forced me to overuse my quads, ‘dragging’ my legs forward rather then activating the hip and hamstring in a pendulum motion. Result: extremely sore quads afterwards, and bruised toes from heel-striking rather than landing mid-forefoot. My calves were completely unscathed though!

3) Congestion: not a huge issue, but even getting to the water stops this year was difficult if you were on the wrong side of the road. There were also far fewer water stations this year (apparently this was on purpose to reduce waste, but I must have missed the email) and far too many Lucozade and gel stations. So, for the first time at London, I think I got dehydrated this year, because I ignored some water stations thinking there would be another in the next mile, but there wasn’t. I even had a cup of Lucozade at one point I was that desperate!

So that’s my summary of the Virgin Money London Marathon 2019. I’m not saying this based on my performance, but I genuinely didn’t enjoy any of it this year. I don’t like crowds -  I can get panicked and stressed around too many people, and this year I found the marathon overbearing - the number of runners, the crowds, and the noise, was just too much. I actually covered my ears during some of the ‘cheer’ zones. Having run it 4 times now, I will give it a break next year - I have already entered Brighton Marathon 2020. I’m excited already to think of going back to where I ran my first ever marathon in 2014. My over-ambitious plan is to try and run it 25 minutes faster than I did 6 years previously - 2:49:23. Is it too big an ask at my age to run four and a half minutes quicker than my recent Manchester time? Maybe, but I think I just need a plan, and, as some of you will know, there’s nothing I like better than a nicely structured, good old fashioned training plan.

[readyplayerhobi]

Symphony of Sin - The Graveyard Series

A series where I just post whatever I’ve written of fics I have no intention of finishing. Someone may as well enjoy them! They’re obviously not finished, nor are they proof-read, nor will they likely make sense! Scenes may jump around and so forth but...who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy?

Metal Vocallist!Taehyung x Reader

Word Count: 2.8k

Synopsis: Your world is softness and sweetness, gentle ballads of pure words and light, catchy beats merging together in dreams come to life. His world is hard and loud, songs of anger and rage pounded out of instruments in nightmares given song. But what happens when those worlds collide?

-

The tinkling of windchimes in the light breeze combined with the warmth of sun as you leaned back on your hands. Eyes closed, it felt like a tiny piece of heaven right here on Earth and you were loathe to ever let it go.

“Okay, nice! I’ve got it!” Momo called out, causing you to open your eyes and look over in her direction. She’s knelt on the floor, a Canon camera in her hands with a large wide-angle lens protruding from it that she’s currently intensely looking at, checking over the photos she’d taken.

You were both shooting your new music single cover image, lovingly titled ‘Afternoon Sun’. Sitting down next to her, you take a peek at the photographs and smile fondly. In the tiny image viewer, you’re sat on the windowsill with rays of sun beaming in and lighting up dust particles the float aimlessly around you.

The sheer, gauzy white curtains are blowing gently and the lighting gives an odd juxtaposition of shadows and brightness. A navy blue dress reaches mid-thigh and your legs drape over the edge, ending in pointed toes that years of ballet have given you.

It looks ethereal and whimsical, like a dream sequence that has been brought to life and to you, it’s like your song has taken physical form. Smiling at Momo, you connect up the camera to your MacBook and begin to upload the images, getting ready to edit them to perfection.

There’s plenty of people that happily call you hippie, deriding your indie music and style with a sneer. Your music is light hearted lyrics that belay deep meanings, softly sung words that when listening closely reveal your soul being poured out.

Songs about love and life, your health and your friends. Songs about heart wrenching love and songs about soul crushing despair. They are the songs that live in your head and are poured out onto paper, a keyboard, a piano; whatever you can find that will let the melodies and words flow.

While artists such as Shawn Mendes, Ed Sheeran, Lorde and Adele have made music and songs like yours more popular, there seems to be a limit to what people will accept. Music that is produced by the big labels is lauded as beautiful and game changing, smaller singer-songwriters like yourself seem to struggle and get derided.

Hippie music, boring music, music to die to. It seems that if there isn’t a voice layered over itself sixteen times along with a little auto-tuning and a ton of electronic instruments, people aren’t interested. It doesn’t bother you though, as you’re just happy making the music you like with the people you love.

Your little musical corner wasn’t very big, and you’re listener count hovered somewhere around 10,000 people on Spotify. Not even remotely enough to make a living off but you enjoyed self publishing your music. Your main job was as a photographer and videographer, though even that made living hard sometimes.

It did make shooting your music videos easy though as you simply asked your friends to help and your boss, the owner of the photograph studio, was always happy to expand his skills on his time off. You’d become a little renowned among your small circle for your high quality videos made on a low budget that spoke of sincerity while showing creativity.

But despite your small following on Spotify and Soundcloud, your fans were incredibly loyal and supportive. Any negative tweets when you were having a bad day were responded to with plenty of love and attention, causing a smile to rise each time.

You loved each and every one of them, even if you couldn’t meet all of them. The small fanbase you had was part of the reason you kept doing this, even though you had no real reason to carry on like you did.

So caught up in your photographs, finding the perfect one required close scrutiny to ensure there was nothing wrong and that the angle and lighting were perfect, you didn’t notice Momo’s sharp inhale of breath next to you.

It’s only when she begins to poke your stomach insistently that you look over, a frown marring your forehead at the interruption. She doesn’t notice though, too busy focused on her phone and gesturing to it insistently.

“Oh my god, oh my god! Y/N, oh my god!” Is all she says constantly, waving her phone around so much you can only see a blur of light. Scowling, you grab her arm to stop her.

“What?! What is it?” Momo looks at you with wide eyes before turning the phone screen to you, allowing you to see the familiar layout of Twitter staring up at you. The tweet is from some verified account that you’ve never heard of, answering someone else’s tweet. The original tweet is in a little box under their answer and you read that first.

Claire Fairngold @3scap3th3vort3x

@enterthevortex Taehyung! What’s your favourite song lately? #kimtaehyung #taehyungtime

The verified account had answered it and your eyes read over it for a moment without quite taking it in.

Enter The Vortex @enterthevortex

Thanks for your question! My favourite song right now is ‘It’s You And Me Against The World’ by @Y/N. Probably not what people expected but check her out, she’s very good!

You stare in confusion at the words, confused as to who on Earth this person was that had recommended your song. It was a year old song and one of your favourites, written when you thought you were in love and could conquer the world. The relationship had fizzled out but you still remembered happy times when you listened to it.

It’s only then that you capture the retweet and like counts and your eyes widen immediately in shock.

67K retweets, 367K likes and over 10K replies, to a tweet from someone you’d never even heard of! Tapping the user handle, the page loads up to reveal a cover photo of a huge arena crowd with six guys stood in front of them, hands held up together as stage lighting illuminates them from behind.

The profile picture is a band logo that is elegant yet imposing at the same time, white text on a black background. 7 million people follow this group, and you’ve never even heard of them. Looking at Momo in confusion, you watch as her lips twist into a smile before she’s leaning over, fingers pressing on the touchscreen and navigating back to your own profile.

“Look at that. That’s just in the last half an hour since he tweeted that. This is ridiculous!” She squealed, hands clapping together excitedly. In complete opposition, you sit in silence as you stare at your own follower count.

It had been hovering at just over 5,000 people for a few weeks now and you’d been pretty happy with it. But now you had over 100,000 followers and the number kept rising and that was to say nothing of your mentions which were exploding with people replying to the original tweet, including your own handle.

“Who...who are Enter The Vortex?” Momo stops looking at the phone to stare at you with creased brows, shock written all over her face like a New York Times bestseller.

“You...you’re kidding right? I know they’re a metal group but they’ve had a few songs hit the Top 40 over the last few years,” Your blank stare causes her to face forward in shock. “Okay, hold on.” She grabs hold of the phone and brings up YouTube, typing furiously before scrolling to find the video she wants.

Turning the device around, the screen rotates to fill out the whole width and you proceed to watch the video. At first there’s nothing but a haunting cello playing, the video taken up by a wide shot of a dead tree surrounded by mist. And then the wall of noise sounds.

Well, a wall of noise is being cruel. You can hear the melodies underneath the pounding bass, frenetic drums and relentless guitars, with an underlying piano subtly heard throughout. But it’s the screaming that causes your face to scrunch up.

Loud, like it has been filled with the rage of a thousand souls who died too soon, the vocals sound as if they are being ripped from the guy’s throat. And just when you think you’re ready to reach out and press stop, they suddenly vanish and a hauntingly sweet voice takes over, harmonising over the top of a deep and sultry voice.

They play with each other, rising and falling together before sliding in between the gaps each leaves open in the song. The unending energy and heaviness of the instruments makes it hard for you to truly love the song, but from a musical perspective you appreciate the complex melodies they have produced and the vocalists take your breath away.

“Well, it’s not my cup of tea I guess but the vocals were beautiful. I never thought that you could have vocals like that in a metal song?” The words are tinged with confusion and surprise, causing Momo to look at you with a raised eyebrow.

“I think you of all people should know to not judge things like what kind of music someone makes, right?” You look down at that, suitably chastised as you remember all the people who’ve criticised your music and put it down.

“Okay, but I did say they have nice vocals. How did they manage to crack the Top 40? This is not Top 40 material.” The video has ended now and it’s only then that you notice that the entire thing had been telling a story, with no band members present. Or at least you’re 95% positive that girl is not a member, though maybe she plays an instrument?

Momo chuckles lightly, taking the phone back as her fingers begin to tap away once again. “Oh girl, metal may not be your style but let me tell you...these guys are to die for. I’m not ashamed to say I started listening to them because I’d let every one of them ravage me.”

Eyes popping wide, you lean back at the phone that’s been shoved back into your face. The image you’re now staring at is of seven guys, which seems a little excessive for a band but what do you know?

And you have to give it to Momo, she’s not wrong. Each member exudes bad boy, and given the music they make they can probably back it up, but you have the disconcerting feeling that they could walk into Gucci tomorrow and come out models.

The main things you notice are muscles, oh holy wow muscles, tattoos, so many tattoos, and piercings. Momo begins pointing to each member and talking about them individually, the drummer called Hoseok with all monochrome tattoo sleeves that match his black hair that’s swept up to the rhythm guitarist named Namjoon, with his black hair shaved on all sides but the top platinum blonde, intricate art scenes blooming up his arms and along his neck.

She taps two individual members suddenly, two fingers pinching the screen and expanding it. One of them looks youthful with bright, colourful tattoos spreading along his arms and throat, a ring speared through the centre of his lip and a ridiculously large number of piercings in his ears. Black hair that looks soft but mussy, as if he’s rolled out of bed and run his hands through it a few times has a slightly blue tinge.

He’s unbelievably attractive with the cocky little smirk on his lips, just a hint of white teeth peeking through but its the glint in his eye that makes your stomach clench. He has a face of innocence and eyes of sin.

“That’s Jungkook, he’s the second vocalist. The one with the higher voice?” Momo sounds uncertain of how to describe it but you nod anyway, remembering the almost sweet voice that soared high. His face suits his voice, but the man next to him does not.

Hands pushing back fire engine red hair that looks soft and silky to the touch, his arms are dominated by bright splashes of colour that spiral their way up his muscled limbs, creeping underneath his shirt only to reappear around his neck. His lower lip is caught between his teeth, tugging the two lip rings on either side gently while his dark, eyeliner smudged eyes are hooded as they stare deeply into the camera, promising all sorts of dirty things you suspect he could fulfil.

Jungkook has the kind of youthful beauty that will make him popular for years to come, but this guy has a refined attractiveness that would inspire statues to last centuries. A sharp, cutting jawline is met with a perfect nose, a ring piercing his septum, leading up to two intense eyebrows that just add to the sheer magnetic pull of his face. You’d never considered eyebrows attractive until right now.

“He’s the main vocalist, Taehyung.” Momo’s voice is almost background noise right now as you observe him closer. This man, this celestial body turned into human flesh, did not look like he was the one who had been screaming out rage. But at the same time, he didn’t look like the kind of man who would croon darkly seductive tones with a deep voice. Everything about this man was a walking contradiction.

A face that belonged in artwork that would be revered in centuries to come and yet he had turned his own body into a walking canvas to be displayed to the world. A voice that could sing an angel into a fall from grace and yet he chooses to strain those vocals with unrestrained power and emotion.

Momo must take your silence as a positive as she nudges your shoulder teasingly. “He’s the one who recommended you, if you can believe it.” A soft giggle lets you know she’s just as shocked as you are, she’s just handling it better.

10 minutes ago, you would have said a metal band was incapable of listening to your music and enjoying it. Hell, even after seeing the pictures of them you’d think the same thing. But looking at Taehyung now, you’re not surprised.

Because his colourful tattoos, that would be taken as gaudy and offensive at first, are interwoven with layers of culture spanning centuries. His left arm, from wrist to elbow, at first looks to be a wild mess of colour but you spot the intricacies quickly. Blues, yellows and whites swirl together beneath musical notes, melting timepieces and more. He’s brought Van Gogh’s Starry Night to life on his arm.

His other arm has a stylised version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream that melts into the hyper coloured world of Leonid Afremov’s paintings. While there are plenty of things merging into these, they cause a smile spreads over your lips without warning as you realise that this man, who’s vocals sound like his throat is being ripped out, is a man of the arts. Something that surprises you intensely, instantly making you feel bad about your stereotypes and preconceived ideas.

Passing the phone back to Momo, you simply smile as she continues to scroll through all your new notifications. Picking up your own phone, you unlock the screen and navigate to the Twitter app, heart racing as you see the continuously increasing follower count. You’re not entirely sure why you do it, given their music really isn’t your scene, but you press that little blue follow button on their account.

It takes exactly three minutes for them to follow you back.

For a few days there’s no more interactions between the two of you, though that might be because you’re too busy making sure that your new song is fully mixed and ready to go. It’s at 12pm exactly that you release the song on Spotify and YouTube, sending out a quick tweet with a link and a little ‘surprise! Hope you all enjoy it!’.

So it’s a shock to find your tweet almost instantly liked by the verified account and a reply a few minutes later.

Enter The Vortex @enterthevortex

@Y/N love the new song!

Is all it says, but immediately your timeline begins to fill up with people practically screaming into it. You can’t quite figure out why this metal band has taken such an interest in your work, particularly given you can’t even get most mainstream artists to listen to your stuff.

[fmlfpl]

Lineup Lamentations - GW11

Our Transfers, Captains, and Starting 11s for the week!

And if you missed it for subscribers Friday My Life episode just came out!

—

WALSH

TRANSFERS:

OUT: N/A

IN: N/A

I'm on a save this week with CHO as a big problem as well as Pukki but no real straight swap seems good enough to make with zero doll hairs in the bank.

Will just sweat the Chelsea team sheet and hope the chips fall in a place that is kind to my fucks.

GK:

Pope (shu)

Pope been naturally pissing me off lately quite a bit. Discussed how annoying he is but Burnley have four good on paper fixtures so hopefully he will be able to get a few points in this run to rectify his standing.

Certainly doesn't feel like the long long term keeper we had all expected when we put him in the GW1 team. At least not to me.

DEF:

Alexander-Arnold & Robertson (avl)

Still going with double barrel Livp fullbacks Trent and R0bbo.

Been absolutely dying for a clean and this weekend is as good as any for one to come in. Even though they have kept an extremely small shitty number of cleans so far they are still both in the top 5 defender point total and I fully expect them to finish 1-2 in that regard come seasons end assuming health.

Fixtures look good outside of the City game so maybe they'll go on a run of cleans.

Lundstram (BUR)

Alongside is Pointstram of course the legend. Great fixture, back at home, get in there ladstram.

MID:

Pretty straightforward quintet here.

Salah (avl) and Sterling and De Bruyne (SOU)

Mo/Raz/Kevin have been in for a while and will probably stay for a while.

Late twitter fuckery surrounding Mo possibly not having trained all week obviously isn't great but whatever fucking fuck it. Hopefully he is fine as Klopp has said he is. Or he's not and life is great.

Hudson-Odoi and Mount (wat)

Double Chelsea children CHO and Mount go to Twatty in what might be a tough game? Idk.

Twatford look so diabolical and horrendous it wouldn't surprise me to see them get put to the sword against a team with actual attacking quality.

They've been a tight ship recently though so who knows.

FWD:

Abraham (wat)

Same two Tammy and Pukki up top as I have had for the past fair bit.

Pukki (bha)

Really not sure how I keep tricking myself into thinking Pukki isn't a huge fucking massive issue but here I am.

Brighton look like an open game so praying to all hell that he pops up with a return. Just even an assist god bless I'd take it. Just do something you Finnish cuck.

CAP:

Sterling (SOU)

Easy Raz this weekend. Really nothing to discuss. He looks prime and ready to tit, home banker, rested midweek, blabhlabhalh. Get in there Razzybaby.

—

ALON

TRANSFERS:

OUT: Aubameyang & Gunn

IN: Vardy & Gazzaniga

Alright so we’re making some progress here. Putting out some fires. Ok ok ok.

Still have CHO and still have Pukki which is BAaaaaddddd feeeeeelsssss baaaaaaaddddd. But it’s ok. At least Pukki will start and CHO hopefully will start should be fine to tide me over.

Next week maybe a hit to get rid of both we’ll see???

Anyway I’m terrified of Aubz hauling now that he’s free from my grasp but whatever he’s a bad pick and Arsenal are fucking bad... Vardy and Leicester are flying and have the fixtures... And as discussed on Friday My Life Gazz and the money just makes more sense for me and my future moves.

Need that $ in the bank to put out the next fires.

GK:

Gazzaniga (eve)

Alright GAZZZZZ.

Everton are Jekyll and Hyde but I feel like they usually score at home so I’m not really expecting a clean here but it’s certainly possible. Would be cool if Poch plays Vert over Davinson that would make it feel a lot better...

Either way hopefully the save points keep flowing and I can keep Gaz for a long time.

DEF:

Lundstram (BUR)

Lundy in a decent home fixture; we take those.

But don’t be tricked into thinking this is a banker. Burnley are good at attacking now, get with the times.

Tomori (wat)

Don’t love this away but really the way Watford are setup these days with essentially two “attackers” (no strikers) and mostly a super conservative bus the clean should be there for the taking really... Just don’t let them counter and don’t give them set pieces and Chelsea should coast to a clean... Easy right?

Söyüncü (cry)

Nice clean fixture for Soy.

Leicester should be able to strangle Palace to death in this one imo.

MID:

Salah (avl)

This ankle rumor shit is so fucking annoying.

Ugh just hoping he’s fine and shit. I’m already very anxious about it.

Sterling and De Bruyne (SOU)

Fantastic players, fantastic attacking team, home banker. Easyyyyy.

Hudson-Odoi (wat)

Give the boy a start Frank. Come on. Pleasaasasase???

This kid is a problem. Bad / unlucky timing that we brought him in when we did but here we are.

A problem for another GW.

FWD:

Vardy (cry)

Feels great to not have to type some bullshit for Aubz in this slot like I have been doing for weeks in a row now.

Vardy is fucking good and Leicester are good and here’s another good fixture.

Abraham (wat)

Tammy is a little bit off the boil now but really he’s still getting chances and he still looks good to me. He was beyond red hot at the start of the season this is just a normal thing.

Chelsea are still super good at attacking and he’s still nailed so get the fuck in there.

Pukki (bha)

I would take a two pointer at this point. Fucking Pukki AKA Mitrovic.

CAP:

Sterling (SOU)

Really really easy cap this week. Like I said on Friday My Life I don’t even hate a triple cap if you’re feeling it... Yeah yeah “everyone will be on him” but also don’t forget: 60.5% of teams in FPL don’t even own him.

Get the fuck in there Razzy.

—

RANDOM SLACKER OF THE WEEK: HOUSE OF KANE (ON WILDCARD)

The words of Random Slacker are not officially endorsed by this website nor any employees of FML FPL LLC.

TRANSFERS:

OUT: WILDCARD

IN: WILDCARD

After a great start that found me peaking around 10k at GW9, I’m now on four big reds and hovering around 100k. Last week I tried to do the mature and steady thing, making no transfers after a disastrous GW 9 (rank 6m). I was *not* rewarded for my steadfast patience, so naturally I kneejerked my WC on Sunday afternoon.

Biggest issues I wanted to remedy were Ota, Pukki, Kun, Haller, maybe-injured Salah, not having TAA, and a worthless bench. Of course it feels bad wildcarding with two frees but here we are.

My general strategy in FPL is to get on the template as quickly as possible, ride it through the holidays, and then slowly and steadily start to spike differentials through the end of the season. The fact that my WC is very similar to the Slack Hivemind’s bodes well in that respect.

The team feels balanced and good for now.

GK:

Gazzaniga (eve)

It was between Ryan and Gazz and ultimately I went with Gazz because he’s cheaper, has better near-term fixtures, and even if Spurs can’t keep a clean, we now know that he can get 12 saves on a good/bad day.

Think he’s also nailed until 2020, being the clear second choice after Hu-god, not to mention that he *happens* to be from the same town as Poch (Murphy, Argentina - population 3,540).

DEF:

Alexander-Arnold & Robertson (avl)

Going Robbo over Trent to start the season was my biggest regret, so he was the first name in my WC squad.

Doubling with Robbo was easy, especially because I’m going without a Liverpool mid. Having these two gives me a chance at cleans and a steady trickle of offensive cover (if such a thing exists).

Lundstram (BUR)

I’ve had Lundstram since GW1 and he’s not going anywhere.

A nailed 4.0 DEF is a season-long keeper, regardless of team, and Lundy happens to be playing out of position *chefs kiss*. Going with him over Soy this week because it’s home and a better fixture than Palace.

MID:

Sterling and De Bruyne (SOU)

I’ve had Kev all season and he’s good. Barring injury, he’s not going anywhere this year.

I’ve somehow been without Sterling all season, and it’s finally Raz time. Very excited to be adding him when in-form and following a string of blanks.

Mount (wat)

Cheap attacking mid on a top 4 attacking team, easy set and forget.

Martial (bou)

I think the top things to look for in FPL are attacking < 5.0 defenders, a nailed 4.5 forward, and an out-of-position mid on a top team.

Gloves ticks that last box with an elite pedigree and unfulfilled promise to boot. Once Rom was shipped out, Tony became a must-own for me. I think Tony will be a captain option at some point this season.

FWD:

Vardy (cry)

Feels kinda bandwagon-y but an easy one to jump on while the team looks so good ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... He’ll get his goals.

Abraham (wat)

Haven’t had him yet, glad to be here now. Chelsea attack is legit. Tammy is nailed up top. Let’s go.

Maupay (NOR)

My “fun spot” instead of [generic Leicester midfielder] as a fifth mid, I went with Maupay because every year Walsh picks some guy that no one is talking about, and I think it could be Neil.

The numbers are really good, Brighton looks decent, and I didn’t want to miss out on the best fixture of the season.

BENCH:

Söyüncü (cry)

I’ll be playing a 3-4-3 most weeks, with Soy as my first guy in. Cheap and on a good defense.

Rico (MUN)

< 4.5 defender on set pieces on a nominally-attacking side. Easy bench fodder.

Grealish (LIV)

Along with Maupay, Jack’s the other half of my “fun pick.”

When you watch AVL play he’s the guy with his calves on display, doing everything he can to earn a transfer to Man U in the next year or two.

I’m planning on rotating him with Maupay, which is a new strategy for me. Doesn’t feel great to have a ~6.0 guy on the bench every week, but with the fixture pile-up coming, it might be smart?

CAP:

Sterling (SOU)

I haven’t had him all season, I love him, and I finally get to root for him not to blank.

[heatherrdavis1]

$12M Bet on Bitcoin to Crash (Crazy BTC Manipulation?)

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Do you guys remember the great bull run of April twenty twenty? It was epic. The price surged to nine point two K was the time of our lives. People were picking out lamb bones and measuring yachts for helipads. The question people want to know now is, was that it? Is it over? It’s what some traders are saying. Find out if they’re correct. Let’s get it. Welcome to deploy Crypto News Edition once per day. I’m here to break down the biggest news stories in the space for you. So if you want to know where Bitcoin and all coins are heading to complete, make sure you hit the subscribe button and join both my telegram groups, the big squad, for just regular crypto chat and also Bitcoin traders to discuss trading strategies. A great place to bounce ideas off people. All right, guys, today we are mostly going to be focusing on the price of Bitcoin and where it could be going. We’re going to be taking a look at whether or not all coins will be pumping as well. Later in the video, we’re showing you guys a new IOW def that is making huge waves that I just put two thousand dollars of my own IWC into. And I’m looking to make some bigger turns on that. And at the end of the video, I’m also going to be showing you guys why one whale believes that Bitcoin is going to absolutely crash. And I want to give you my opinion on that. All right, guys. So here we are. I’ve got the by bit char pulled up on trading view. And I want to be honest with you guys. I lost a lot of money today. I made a trade and I lost a considerable amount of money on this buy signal right here. Now, here’s here’s the important thing. The important thing is when I saw this bicycle here on Famo Trender, I said to myself, I feel like it’s about to pop. I mean, we had just gone up to about nine K. It pushed back down. I bought somewhere in this range right here. And I was excited. I thought, man, we are really going to pump. So I went with irresponsible leverage. Not 100 hundred exec. Somebody messaged a friend of mine who created this foma trender indicator and said, man, I traded seventy five X and I lost my money. You can’t trace every five x twenty five X as irresponsible leverage, which may be about where I was at today. But here’s the thing, guys. This is what happened. I made this trade and it was not. There was no reason for me to make this trade. Because when you look at the famo trader indicator or Foma Train or indicator here, it gave the buy signal. But we were still in the in the sell zone. So what you want is you want to line this up. Your buy indicator with the Green Zone. So right here, for instance, you get the buy signal. It’s in the Green Zone. That’s how things line up. That’s how, you know, to fire the trade. But I got a.. I decide, you know what? I’m just gonna fire off a trade. I’m going to gamble a little bit here. I’m going to go and just go on what I feel like the market is going to do. I didn’t wait for the confirmation. And I got absolutely crushed. So just, you know, just a reminder, when you guys are living trading and you’re using indicators. Wait for them to line up. Don’t be like me. Don’t be a degenerate gambler and things like that. Because if I would’ve waited, you know, I’ve seen we’re clearly in sideways action here. We’re in an accumulation zone, you know, similar to where we were about here, similar to where we were right here. We’re just in one of these accumulation zones. And that’s OK. But sometimes people really feel like they need to overtreat. And I’m certainly guilty of it as well. So if you do want to leverage trade responsibly, don’t go 75 X, you guys can check out by bit use Mylie and you can get 90 bucks for free. But just make sure you’re being responsible. Don’t don’t take a big loss like I did today. OK. So we’re going to take a quick look at the markets here on Claymore Capital. Com Bitcoin come in 1864 theorem to 14 X. Arpey was a twenty three cents drop down to twenty two biggest winners a day H bar. Coming up, huge or 20 percent gainer today. That is a beautiful chart. Biggest losers of the day. We got U.B. T coming in at second with a five and a half percent drop. It is on quite the correction over the last couple days. But what I really want to show you guys is the Bitcoin dominance level. This is a huge number that is tied to whether or not all coins are going to pump. Right now, it’s come in at sixty five percent. Well, we want to see is that number come down when you pull up the chart? You can look. You see, there is a very clear correlation between the Bitcoin dominance level and the rise of all coins. So you look here, Bitcoin dominance level goes down. All coin levels go up. And for all coins season to happen. That’s really what you need. The biggest all seasons were when these coins were peaking the highest. These to this spot right here and then this part right here, kind of hard because this thing always pops up and I really hate it. That’s what she said. But anyways, guys, right now we’re looking at when you look right here at September of 2019, we are in a clear downtrend in Bitcoin dominance. It was it about 70 percent. It’s gotten down all the way down to about 63 percent earlier this week. And we want to see that continue to fall. And if we do, we could get the all coins season that a lot of people are thinking world get prehaps. So speaking of the happening, a big consensus has what is considered to be more accurate, having countdown. It basically goes off of the current hash rate, not the average hash rate over a period of time, which is number on the bottom. Here is what you get, which will get were the main bitcoin happening. Countdown, as you guys can see right now, we’re mining a little bit faster. So as of this moment, it looks like the having could be on May 11th, not on. Well, we’ll have to stay up to date and watch this. But right now, this really this article from Quinn Desk really points out how much faster Bitcoin is being mined at the exact moment right now. Bitcoin miners usually create six blocks per hour. They just banged out 16. So the excitement around Bitcoin to get as much mind as you can before the happening, before those blocks rewards are reduced is really, really key right now for miners. So we might see that happening speed up a little bit. Everybody wanted to be on the 12th. Maybe it could even be as early as the 10th. A while back when Bitcoin was really pumping earlier in the year, people thought it might even be end up being at the end of April. So we’ll just have to see and watch this date to see if it actually happens earlier than people are expecting. OK, so Bitcoin’s been doing really well, but is it over? Was that it? Well, let’s see what some traders are saying about the current price action surrounding Bitcoin. So one thing is when you look at the BTC futures, the aggregated daily volumes here, you will see that obviously we have had a huge surge in volume for futures trading. That includes by bit bit Max. Okay. Ex Bemax, all of these that we’ve talked about in the last couple of days. But Jose, if you look the last time it did really well, that was cell action. That was when the price was crashing. So the thing about futures trading is you can write it up or you can write it down. So anytime there’s a lot of action on the market, you’re going to see that surge, whether or not it is positive or negative, depending on how you look at it, buying or selling action. So as you can see here, we’ve had a huge amount of volume increase in the last couple of days. Now, some people believe that, you know, we’re in a very bullish, a very bullish scenario for Bitcoin. As you can see right here, a one guy says, one trader, a founding partner. It a bit bitches. New capital says ninety five hundred, though, despite the bullish action is a logical place for BTC to take a breather. And I kind of think I agree with him here because the question is, do we really want to surge to 10K and get rejected at 10K? Again, it almost seems better, in my opinion, for Bitcoin to hover right below 10K before the happening. The happening occur, maybe see the price retrace back to about 80, 500 somewhere around there before making that final push above 10K. And hopefully when that happens, we’ll never see prices below 10K again. So there are some more bullish scenarios here. One trader says, I personally think the local top is in little premature to call it. But looks like an SFP. Of the nine point two liquidity void, a bear has blown the F out. Believers, believers, euphoric, would want to see eighty four X hold for continuation. Otherwise, seven point seven K to ACA is the next area of interest to long. So those are some key levels to be looking at. Now, before you get to our story about a whale that says Bitcoin is going to crash. I didn’t want to talk to you guys a little bit about power mine. Now, I will say this. Thank you to Power Mine for sponsoring this segment. However, after I did this, I actually put more of my own money into power mine. But about two thousand dollars of ISC into power mine to stake to buy PPY mine the token. I put more money into it than I was paid to do the segment. So I want you guys to understand that this is something I really do believe in. I vetted the guys who are behind this extremely well. I think they would probably, you know, they’re probably knowledgeable about me vetting them at this point. And this is something that I do think is a really good opportunity for people that are into IWC or into making passive income with DAPs to check out. So let’s look at exactly what power mine is. Power mine diversifies the bank roll across multiple investments within different sectors and change of crypto. The end goal is to have as many different assets providing returns for P mine holders and hedge the bankroll by being extremely diversified. Some of the current types of assets we’re in include both a theorem and try and Yoona. Swap Liquidity pools, bankroll, save bankroll, swap Tron Prime. We also have some exposure to staking tokens such as IWC, which is diversified across high yield nodes. Bitcoin interest earning positions and so much more. In order for an investment to happen. The bankroll has to fund it. It’s got to fit certain criteria of investments. The investment needs to have a great chance of appreciating and value in the future or producing cash flow. The daily distributions to P mine holders to on the profits the bank roll makes. So having a diversified portfolio and thoroughly studied assets is very important. The goal is to grow both the bankroll and the distributions, always from a fundamental investor and long term perspective PMA and simplifies having to spend countless hours researching multiple projects and provides the maximum level of diversification as an individual investor in order to match the diversification and hedging the P markets. It requires a lot of time, which most investors just don’t have. Additionally, the team and the core community members have been in crypto and in the DAP defy space since the start. So they have previous experience to use it. Pea mines advantage would be mine. You can look for time, efficiency, diversification, growing cash flow and risk hedging. Check it out today. If you want to check out a power mine, I will put the link down in the description. And then also, they do have a perpetual dice game coming soon. Right now is just taking. But there will be a dice game as well. So I will put that information down below along with our telegram link. But I do want to talk about this story because I think this story is very important, guys. Bitcoin will suggest BTC price will crash. Having is priced in others. The same thing we saw people saying during 2016. But check this out. So this is a Bitcoin whale. And ironically, it’s the same Bitcoin where we looked at yesterday who is down millions of dollars as he is shorting the market. Joe, Double 070, big trader on before next. He says, no, of course not. It’s not priced in. On the very day of the great happening, everybody will finally realize how underpriced BTC is. They will all rush to buy it in droves with their unemployment checks. Joe, you say that very sarcastically, basically implying that because the stock market will continue to not do well, that people are not going to have money to go and buy Bitcoin. He’s put his money where his mouth is. And you guys can see we looked at yesterday. He is down eleven million dollars in a short. Now, here’s the question that I would want to look at here, which is, is this a fake out by this guy? Okay, yeah. He’s down 11 million dollars and he is putting his money where his mouth is in a short. But he’s such a big whales that money is not really that significant to him. So a lot of times we seem whales manipulate the market. So is that his way of doing this? Is he trying to manipulate the market maybe to go up higher to the upside? We usually see whales manipulate market down instead of up. But if we ask during a big bull trend, then maybe we might see that change. So definitely something to watch out. In my opinion, I still think a look, guys, you guys know this. If you watch my channel. I am definitely more bullish than bearish. I’m bullish almost all the time. If I even say something relatively bearish on this channel, people destroy me over it and things like that. I am bullish. I do think that the president wins going above 100K. I think it’s eventually going to get to a million. I think that happening is going to see a huge pump. We will see a drop, in my opinion, immediately following the happening. I do think we will see that. But ultimately, the price is going up. And I think it’s going to go up significantly. We could see the price drop back in the 6000 to 7000 dollar range. But I would probably think that really the seven thousand dollar range might be where we end up before, you know, after that happening. Maybe if we get up high enough, it could drop back down to K or so. But, you know, when we have of saying this is definitely something we have to pay attention to. So let me know what you guys think. Tell me what your thoughts are on the Bitcoin happening. Do you think that we’ve seen the all of the pump we’re going to see before that happening? I think we have another leg up. Do you think we’ll break 10K, drop all those cancers down Downbelow in the comment section? I’d love to hear what you have to say. And I hope you enjoy this video. If you did, please make sure to smash the like button and subscribe to become a member of the big squad. Thank you so much watching. Have a blessed day, boy.

Via https://www.cryptosharks.net/bet-on-bitcoin-to-crash-crazy/

source https://cryptosharks.weebly.com/blog/12m-bet-on-bitcoin-to-crash-crazy-btc-manipulation

[scottmapess]

$12M Bet on Bitcoin to Crash (Crazy BTC Manipulation?)

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Do you guys remember the great bull run of April twenty twenty? It was epic. The price surged to nine point two K was the time of our lives. People were picking out lamb bones and measuring yachts for helipads. The question people want to know now is, was that it? Is it over? It’s what some traders are saying. Find out if they’re correct. Let’s get it. Welcome to deploy Crypto News Edition once per day. I’m here to break down the biggest news stories in the space for you. So if you want to know where Bitcoin and all coins are heading to complete, make sure you hit the subscribe button and join both my telegram groups, the big squad, for just regular crypto chat and also Bitcoin traders to discuss trading strategies. A great place to bounce ideas off people. All right, guys, today we are mostly going to be focusing on the price of Bitcoin and where it could be going. We’re going to be taking a look at whether or not all coins will be pumping as well. Later in the video, we’re showing you guys a new IOW def that is making huge waves that I just put two thousand dollars of my own IWC into. And I’m looking to make some bigger turns on that. And at the end of the video, I’m also going to be showing you guys why one whale believes that Bitcoin is going to absolutely crash. And I want to give you my opinion on that. All right, guys. So here we are. I’ve got the by bit char pulled up on trading view. And I want to be honest with you guys. I lost a lot of money today. I made a trade and I lost a considerable amount of money on this buy signal right here. Now, here’s here’s the important thing. The important thing is when I saw this bicycle here on Famo Trender, I said to myself, I feel like it’s about to pop. I mean, we had just gone up to about nine K. It pushed back down. I bought somewhere in this range right here. And I was excited. I thought, man, we are really going to pump. So I went with irresponsible leverage. Not 100 hundred exec. Somebody messaged a friend of mine who created this foma trender indicator and said, man, I traded seventy five X and I lost my money. You can’t trace every five x twenty five X as irresponsible leverage, which may be about where I was at today. But here’s the thing, guys. This is what happened. I made this trade and it was not. There was no reason for me to make this trade. Because when you look at the famo trader indicator or Foma Train or indicator here, it gave the buy signal. But we were still in the in the sell zone. So what you want is you want to line this up. Your buy indicator with the Green Zone. So right here, for instance, you get the buy signal. It’s in the Green Zone. That’s how things line up. That’s how, you know, to fire the trade. But I got a.. I decide, you know what? I’m just gonna fire off a trade. I’m going to gamble a little bit here. I’m going to go and just go on what I feel like the market is going to do. I didn’t wait for the confirmation. And I got absolutely crushed. So just, you know, just a reminder, when you guys are living trading and you’re using indicators. Wait for them to line up. Don’t be like me. Don’t be a degenerate gambler and things like that. Because if I would’ve waited, you know, I’ve seen we’re clearly in sideways action here. We’re in an accumulation zone, you know, similar to where we were about here, similar to where we were right here. We’re just in one of these accumulation zones. And that’s OK. But sometimes people really feel like they need to overtreat. And I’m certainly guilty of it as well. So if you do want to leverage trade responsibly, don’t go 75 X, you guys can check out by bit use Mylie and you can get 90 bucks for free. But just make sure you’re being responsible. Don’t don’t take a big loss like I did today. OK. So we’re going to take a quick look at the markets here on Claymore Capital. Com Bitcoin come in 1864 theorem to 14 X. Arpey was a twenty three cents drop down to twenty two biggest winners a day H bar. Coming up, huge or 20 percent gainer today. That is a beautiful chart. Biggest losers of the day. We got U.B. T coming in at second with a five and a half percent drop. It is on quite the correction over the last couple days. But what I really want to show you guys is the Bitcoin dominance level. This is a huge number that is tied to whether or not all coins are going to pump. Right now, it’s come in at sixty five percent. Well, we want to see is that number come down when you pull up the chart? You can look. You see, there is a very clear correlation between the Bitcoin dominance level and the rise of all coins. So you look here, Bitcoin dominance level goes down. All coin levels go up. And for all coins season to happen. That’s really what you need. The biggest all seasons were when these coins were peaking the highest. These to this spot right here and then this part right here, kind of hard because this thing always pops up and I really hate it. That’s what she said. But anyways, guys, right now we’re looking at when you look right here at September of 2019, we are in a clear downtrend in Bitcoin dominance. It was it about 70 percent. It’s gotten down all the way down to about 63 percent earlier this week. And we want to see that continue to fall. And if we do, we could get the all coins season that a lot of people are thinking world get prehaps. So speaking of the happening, a big consensus has what is considered to be more accurate, having countdown. It basically goes off of the current hash rate, not the average hash rate over a period of time, which is number on the bottom. Here is what you get, which will get were the main bitcoin happening. Countdown, as you guys can see right now, we’re mining a little bit faster. So as of this moment, it looks like the having could be on May 11th, not on. Well, we’ll have to stay up to date and watch this. But right now, this really this article from Quinn Desk really points out how much faster Bitcoin is being mined at the exact moment right now. Bitcoin miners usually create six blocks per hour. They just banged out 16. So the excitement around Bitcoin to get as much mind as you can before the happening, before those blocks rewards are reduced is really, really key right now for miners. So we might see that happening speed up a little bit. Everybody wanted to be on the 12th. Maybe it could even be as early as the 10th. A while back when Bitcoin was really pumping earlier in the year, people thought it might even be end up being at the end of April. So we’ll just have to see and watch this date to see if it actually happens earlier than people are expecting. OK, so Bitcoin’s been doing really well, but is it over? Was that it? Well, let’s see what some traders are saying about the current price action surrounding Bitcoin. So one thing is when you look at the BTC futures, the aggregated daily volumes here, you will see that obviously we have had a huge surge in volume for futures trading. That includes by bit bit Max. Okay. Ex Bemax, all of these that we’ve talked about in the last couple of days. But Jose, if you look the last time it did really well, that was cell action. That was when the price was crashing. So the thing about futures trading is you can write it up or you can write it down. So anytime there’s a lot of action on the market, you’re going to see that surge, whether or not it is positive or negative, depending on how you look at it, buying or selling action. So as you can see here, we’ve had a huge amount of volume increase in the last couple of days. Now, some people believe that, you know, we’re in a very bullish, a very bullish scenario for Bitcoin. As you can see right here, a one guy says, one trader, a founding partner. It a bit bitches. New capital says ninety five hundred, though, despite the bullish action is a logical place for BTC to take a breather. And I kind of think I agree with him here because the question is, do we really want to surge to 10K and get rejected at 10K? Again, it almost seems better, in my opinion, for Bitcoin to hover right below 10K before the happening. The happening occur, maybe see the price retrace back to about 80, 500 somewhere around there before making that final push above 10K. And hopefully when that happens, we’ll never see prices below 10K again. So there are some more bullish scenarios here. One trader says, I personally think the local top is in little premature to call it. But looks like an SFP. Of the nine point two liquidity void, a bear has blown the F out. Believers, believers, euphoric, would want to see eighty four X hold for continuation. Otherwise, seven point seven K to ACA is the next area of interest to long. So those are some key levels to be looking at. Now, before you get to our story about a whale that says Bitcoin is going to crash. I didn’t want to talk to you guys a little bit about power mine. Now, I will say this. Thank you to Power Mine for sponsoring this segment. However, after I did this, I actually put more of my own money into power mine. But about two thousand dollars of ISC into power mine to stake to buy PPY mine the token. I put more money into it than I was paid to do the segment. So I want you guys to understand that this is something I really do believe in. I vetted the guys who are behind this extremely well. I think they would probably, you know, they’re probably knowledgeable about me vetting them at this point. And this is something that I do think is a really good opportunity for people that are into IWC or into making passive income with DAPs to check out. So let’s look at exactly what power mine is. Power mine diversifies the bank roll across multiple investments within different sectors and change of crypto. The end goal is to have as many different assets providing returns for P mine holders and hedge the bankroll by being extremely diversified. Some of the current types of assets we’re in include both a theorem and try and Yoona. Swap Liquidity pools, bankroll, save bankroll, swap Tron Prime. We also have some exposure to staking tokens such as IWC, which is diversified across high yield nodes. Bitcoin interest earning positions and so much more. In order for an investment to happen. The bankroll has to fund it. It’s got to fit certain criteria of investments. The investment needs to have a great chance of appreciating and value in the future or producing cash flow. The daily distributions to P mine holders to on the profits the bank roll makes. So having a diversified portfolio and thoroughly studied assets is very important. The goal is to grow both the bankroll and the distributions, always from a fundamental investor and long term perspective PMA and simplifies having to spend countless hours researching multiple projects and provides the maximum level of diversification as an individual investor in order to match the diversification and hedging the P markets. It requires a lot of time, which most investors just don’t have. Additionally, the team and the core community members have been in crypto and in the DAP defy space since the start. So they have previous experience to use it. Pea mines advantage would be mine. You can look for time, efficiency, diversification, growing cash flow and risk hedging. Check it out today. If you want to check out a power mine, I will put the link down in the description. And then also, they do have a perpetual dice game coming soon. Right now is just taking. But there will be a dice game as well. So I will put that information down below along with our telegram link. But I do want to talk about this story because I think this story is very important, guys. Bitcoin will suggest BTC price will crash. Having is priced in others. The same thing we saw people saying during 2016. But check this out. So this is a Bitcoin whale. And ironically, it’s the same Bitcoin where we looked at yesterday who is down millions of dollars as he is shorting the market. Joe, Double 070, big trader on before next. He says, no, of course not. It’s not priced in. On the very day of the great happening, everybody will finally realize how underpriced BTC is. They will all rush to buy it in droves with their unemployment checks. Joe, you say that very sarcastically, basically implying that because the stock market will continue to not do well, that people are not going to have money to go and buy Bitcoin. He’s put his money where his mouth is. And you guys can see we looked at yesterday. He is down eleven million dollars in a short. Now, here’s the question that I would want to look at here, which is, is this a fake out by this guy? Okay, yeah. He’s down 11 million dollars and he is putting his money where his mouth is in a short. But he’s such a big whales that money is not really that significant to him. So a lot of times we seem whales manipulate the market. So is that his way of doing this? Is he trying to manipulate the market maybe to go up higher to the upside? We usually see whales manipulate market down instead of up. But if we ask during a big bull trend, then maybe we might see that change. So definitely something to watch out. In my opinion, I still think a look, guys, you guys know this. If you watch my channel. I am definitely more bullish than bearish. I’m bullish almost all the time. If I even say something relatively bearish on this channel, people destroy me over it and things like that. I am bullish. I do think that the president wins going above 100K. I think it’s eventually going to get to a million. I think that happening is going to see a huge pump. We will see a drop, in my opinion, immediately following the happening. I do think we will see that. But ultimately, the price is going up. And I think it’s going to go up significantly. We could see the price drop back in the 6000 to 7000 dollar range. But I would probably think that really the seven thousand dollar range might be where we end up before, you know, after that happening. Maybe if we get up high enough, it could drop back down to K or so. But, you know, when we have of saying this is definitely something we have to pay attention to. So let me know what you guys think. Tell me what your thoughts are on the Bitcoin happening. Do you think that we’ve seen the all of the pump we’re going to see before that happening? I think we have another leg up. Do you think we’ll break 10K, drop all those cancers down Downbelow in the comment section? I’d love to hear what you have to say. And I hope you enjoy this video. If you did, please make sure to smash the like button and subscribe to become a member of the big squad. Thank you so much watching. Have a blessed day, boy.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bet-on-bitcoin-to-crash-crazy/ source https://cryptosharks1.blogspot.com/2020/05/12m-bet-on-bitcoin-to-crash-crazy-btc.html

[jeffrmayhugh]

$12M Bet on Bitcoin to Crash (Crazy BTC Manipulation?)

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Do you guys remember the great bull run of April twenty twenty? It was epic. The price surged to nine point two K was the time of our lives. People were picking out lamb bones and measuring yachts for helipads. The question people want to know now is, was that it? Is it over? It’s what some traders are saying. Find out if they’re correct. Let’s get it. Welcome to deploy Crypto News Edition once per day. I’m here to break down the biggest news stories in the space for you. So if you want to know where Bitcoin and all coins are heading to complete, make sure you hit the subscribe button and join both my telegram groups, the big squad, for just regular crypto chat and also Bitcoin traders to discuss trading strategies. A great place to bounce ideas off people. All right, guys, today we are mostly going to be focusing on the price of Bitcoin and where it could be going. We’re going to be taking a look at whether or not all coins will be pumping as well. Later in the video, we’re showing you guys a new IOW def that is making huge waves that I just put two thousand dollars of my own IWC into. And I’m looking to make some bigger turns on that. And at the end of the video, I’m also going to be showing you guys why one whale believes that Bitcoin is going to absolutely crash. And I want to give you my opinion on that. All right, guys. So here we are. I’ve got the by bit char pulled up on trading view. And I want to be honest with you guys. I lost a lot of money today. I made a trade and I lost a considerable amount of money on this buy signal right here. Now, here’s here’s the important thing. The important thing is when I saw this bicycle here on Famo Trender, I said to myself, I feel like it’s about to pop. I mean, we had just gone up to about nine K. It pushed back down. I bought somewhere in this range right here. And I was excited. I thought, man, we are really going to pump. So I went with irresponsible leverage. Not 100 hundred exec. Somebody messaged a friend of mine who created this foma trender indicator and said, man, I traded seventy five X and I lost my money. You can’t trace every five x twenty five X as irresponsible leverage, which may be about where I was at today. But here’s the thing, guys. This is what happened. I made this trade and it was not. There was no reason for me to make this trade. Because when you look at the famo trader indicator or Foma Train or indicator here, it gave the buy signal. But we were still in the in the sell zone. So what you want is you want to line this up. Your buy indicator with the Green Zone. So right here, for instance, you get the buy signal. It’s in the Green Zone. That’s how things line up. That’s how, you know, to fire the trade. But I got a.. I decide, you know what? I’m just gonna fire off a trade. I’m going to gamble a little bit here. I’m going to go and just go on what I feel like the market is going to do. I didn’t wait for the confirmation. And I got absolutely crushed. So just, you know, just a reminder, when you guys are living trading and you’re using indicators. Wait for them to line up. Don’t be like me. Don’t be a degenerate gambler and things like that. Because if I would’ve waited, you know, I’ve seen we’re clearly in sideways action here. We’re in an accumulation zone, you know, similar to where we were about here, similar to where we were right here. We’re just in one of these accumulation zones. And that’s OK. But sometimes people really feel like they need to overtreat. And I’m certainly guilty of it as well. So if you do want to leverage trade responsibly, don’t go 75 X, you guys can check out by bit use Mylie and you can get 90 bucks for free. But just make sure you’re being responsible. Don’t don’t take a big loss like I did today. OK. So we’re going to take a quick look at the markets here on Claymore Capital. Com Bitcoin come in 1864 theorem to 14 X. Arpey was a twenty three cents drop down to twenty two biggest winners a day H bar. Coming up, huge or 20 percent gainer today. That is a beautiful chart. Biggest losers of the day. We got U.B. T coming in at second with a five and a half percent drop. It is on quite the correction over the last couple days. But what I really want to show you guys is the Bitcoin dominance level. This is a huge number that is tied to whether or not all coins are going to pump. Right now, it’s come in at sixty five percent. Well, we want to see is that number come down when you pull up the chart? You can look. You see, there is a very clear correlation between the Bitcoin dominance level and the rise of all coins. So you look here, Bitcoin dominance level goes down. All coin levels go up. And for all coins season to happen. That’s really what you need. The biggest all seasons were when these coins were peaking the highest. These to this spot right here and then this part right here, kind of hard because this thing always pops up and I really hate it. That’s what she said. But anyways, guys, right now we’re looking at when you look right here at September of 2019, we are in a clear downtrend in Bitcoin dominance. It was it about 70 percent. It’s gotten down all the way down to about 63 percent earlier this week. And we want to see that continue to fall. And if we do, we could get the all coins season that a lot of people are thinking world get prehaps. So speaking of the happening, a big consensus has what is considered to be more accurate, having countdown. It basically goes off of the current hash rate, not the average hash rate over a period of time, which is number on the bottom. Here is what you get, which will get were the main bitcoin happening. Countdown, as you guys can see right now, we’re mining a little bit faster. So as of this moment, it looks like the having could be on May 11th, not on. Well, we’ll have to stay up to date and watch this. But right now, this really this article from Quinn Desk really points out how much faster Bitcoin is being mined at the exact moment right now. Bitcoin miners usually create six blocks per hour. They just banged out 16. So the excitement around Bitcoin to get as much mind as you can before the happening, before those blocks rewards are reduced is really, really key right now for miners. So we might see that happening speed up a little bit. Everybody wanted to be on the 12th. Maybe it could even be as early as the 10th. A while back when Bitcoin was really pumping earlier in the year, people thought it might even be end up being at the end of April. So we’ll just have to see and watch this date to see if it actually happens earlier than people are expecting. OK, so Bitcoin’s been doing really well, but is it over? Was that it? Well, let’s see what some traders are saying about the current price action surrounding Bitcoin. So one thing is when you look at the BTC futures, the aggregated daily volumes here, you will see that obviously we have had a huge surge in volume for futures trading. That includes by bit bit Max. Okay. Ex Bemax, all of these that we’ve talked about in the last couple of days. But Jose, if you look the last time it did really well, that was cell action. That was when the price was crashing. So the thing about futures trading is you can write it up or you can write it down. So anytime there’s a lot of action on the market, you’re going to see that surge, whether or not it is positive or negative, depending on how you look at it, buying or selling action. So as you can see here, we’ve had a huge amount of volume increase in the last couple of days. Now, some people believe that, you know, we’re in a very bullish, a very bullish scenario for Bitcoin. As you can see right here, a one guy says, one trader, a founding partner. It a bit bitches. New capital says ninety five hundred, though, despite the bullish action is a logical place for BTC to take a breather. And I kind of think I agree with him here because the question is, do we really want to surge to 10K and get rejected at 10K? Again, it almost seems better, in my opinion, for Bitcoin to hover right below 10K before the happening. The happening occur, maybe see the price retrace back to about 80, 500 somewhere around there before making that final push above 10K. And hopefully when that happens, we’ll never see prices below 10K again. So there are some more bullish scenarios here. One trader says, I personally think the local top is in little premature to call it. But looks like an SFP. Of the nine point two liquidity void, a bear has blown the F out. Believers, believers, euphoric, would want to see eighty four X hold for continuation. Otherwise, seven point seven K to ACA is the next area of interest to long. So those are some key levels to be looking at. Now, before you get to our story about a whale that says Bitcoin is going to crash. I didn’t want to talk to you guys a little bit about power mine. Now, I will say this. Thank you to Power Mine for sponsoring this segment. However, after I did this, I actually put more of my own money into power mine. But about two thousand dollars of ISC into power mine to stake to buy PPY mine the token. I put more money into it than I was paid to do the segment. So I want you guys to understand that this is something I really do believe in. I vetted the guys who are behind this extremely well. I think they would probably, you know, they’re probably knowledgeable about me vetting them at this point. And this is something that I do think is a really good opportunity for people that are into IWC or into making passive income with DAPs to check out. So let’s look at exactly what power mine is. Power mine diversifies the bank roll across multiple investments within different sectors and change of crypto. The end goal is to have as many different assets providing returns for P mine holders and hedge the bankroll by being extremely diversified. Some of the current types of assets we’re in include both a theorem and try and Yoona. Swap Liquidity pools, bankroll, save bankroll, swap Tron Prime. We also have some exposure to staking tokens such as IWC, which is diversified across high yield nodes. Bitcoin interest earning positions and so much more. In order for an investment to happen. The bankroll has to fund it. It’s got to fit certain criteria of investments. The investment needs to have a great chance of appreciating and value in the future or producing cash flow. The daily distributions to P mine holders to on the profits the bank roll makes. So having a diversified portfolio and thoroughly studied assets is very important. The goal is to grow both the bankroll and the distributions, always from a fundamental investor and long term perspective PMA and simplifies having to spend countless hours researching multiple projects and provides the maximum level of diversification as an individual investor in order to match the diversification and hedging the P markets. It requires a lot of time, which most investors just don’t have. Additionally, the team and the core community members have been in crypto and in the DAP defy space since the start. So they have previous experience to use it. Pea mines advantage would be mine. You can look for time, efficiency, diversification, growing cash flow and risk hedging. Check it out today. If you want to check out a power mine, I will put the link down in the description. And then also, they do have a perpetual dice game coming soon. Right now is just taking. But there will be a dice game as well. So I will put that information down below along with our telegram link. But I do want to talk about this story because I think this story is very important, guys. Bitcoin will suggest BTC price will crash. Having is priced in others. The same thing we saw people saying during 2016. But check this out. So this is a Bitcoin whale. And ironically, it’s the same Bitcoin where we looked at yesterday who is down millions of dollars as he is shorting the market. Joe, Double 070, big trader on before next. He says, no, of course not. It’s not priced in. On the very day of the great happening, everybody will finally realize how underpriced BTC is. They will all rush to buy it in droves with their unemployment checks. Joe, you say that very sarcastically, basically implying that because the stock market will continue to not do well, that people are not going to have money to go and buy Bitcoin. He’s put his money where his mouth is. And you guys can see we looked at yesterday. He is down eleven million dollars in a short. Now, here’s the question that I would want to look at here, which is, is this a fake out by this guy? Okay, yeah. He’s down 11 million dollars and he is putting his money where his mouth is in a short. But he’s such a big whales that money is not really that significant to him. So a lot of times we seem whales manipulate the market. So is that his way of doing this? Is he trying to manipulate the market maybe to go up higher to the upside? We usually see whales manipulate market down instead of up. But if we ask during a big bull trend, then maybe we might see that change. So definitely something to watch out. In my opinion, I still think a look, guys, you guys know this. If you watch my channel. I am definitely more bullish than bearish. I’m bullish almost all the time. If I even say something relatively bearish on this channel, people destroy me over it and things like that. I am bullish. I do think that the president wins going above 100K. I think it’s eventually going to get to a million. I think that happening is going to see a huge pump. We will see a drop, in my opinion, immediately following the happening. I do think we will see that. But ultimately, the price is going up. And I think it’s going to go up significantly. We could see the price drop back in the 6000 to 7000 dollar range. But I would probably think that really the seven thousand dollar range might be where we end up before, you know, after that happening. Maybe if we get up high enough, it could drop back down to K or so. But, you know, when we have of saying this is definitely something we have to pay attention to. So let me know what you guys think. Tell me what your thoughts are on the Bitcoin happening. Do you think that we’ve seen the all of the pump we’re going to see before that happening? I think we have another leg up. Do you think we’ll break 10K, drop all those cancers down Downbelow in the comment section? I’d love to hear what you have to say. And I hope you enjoy this video. If you did, please make sure to smash the like button and subscribe to become a member of the big squad. Thank you so much watching. Have a blessed day, boy.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bet-on-bitcoin-to-crash-crazy/ source https://cryptosharks1.tumblr.com/post/617264464841097216

[cryptosharks1]

$12M Bet on Bitcoin to Crash (Crazy BTC Manipulation?)

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Do you guys remember the great bull run of April twenty twenty? It was epic. The price surged to nine point two K was the time of our lives. People were picking out lamb bones and measuring yachts for helipads. The question people want to know now is, was that it? Is it over? It’s what some traders are saying. Find out if they’re correct. Let’s get it. Welcome to deploy Crypto News Edition once per day. I’m here to break down the biggest news stories in the space for you. So if you want to know where Bitcoin and all coins are heading to complete, make sure you hit the subscribe button and join both my telegram groups, the big squad, for just regular crypto chat and also Bitcoin traders to discuss trading strategies. A great place to bounce ideas off people. All right, guys, today we are mostly going to be focusing on the price of Bitcoin and where it could be going. We’re going to be taking a look at whether or not all coins will be pumping as well. Later in the video, we’re showing you guys a new IOW def that is making huge waves that I just put two thousand dollars of my own IWC into. And I’m looking to make some bigger turns on that. And at the end of the video, I’m also going to be showing you guys why one whale believes that Bitcoin is going to absolutely crash. And I want to give you my opinion on that. All right, guys. So here we are. I’ve got the by bit char pulled up on trading view. And I want to be honest with you guys. I lost a lot of money today. I made a trade and I lost a considerable amount of money on this buy signal right here. Now, here’s here’s the important thing. The important thing is when I saw this bicycle here on Famo Trender, I said to myself, I feel like it’s about to pop. I mean, we had just gone up to about nine K. It pushed back down. I bought somewhere in this range right here. And I was excited. I thought, man, we are really going to pump. So I went with irresponsible leverage. Not 100 hundred exec. Somebody messaged a friend of mine who created this foma trender indicator and said, man, I traded seventy five X and I lost my money. You can’t trace every five x twenty five X as irresponsible leverage, which may be about where I was at today. But here’s the thing, guys. This is what happened. I made this trade and it was not. There was no reason for me to make this trade. Because when you look at the famo trader indicator or Foma Train or indicator here, it gave the buy signal. But we were still in the in the sell zone. So what you want is you want to line this up. Your buy indicator with the Green Zone. So right here, for instance, you get the buy signal. It’s in the Green Zone. That’s how things line up. That’s how, you know, to fire the trade. But I got a.. I decide, you know what? I’m just gonna fire off a trade. I’m going to gamble a little bit here. I’m going to go and just go on what I feel like the market is going to do. I didn’t wait for the confirmation. And I got absolutely crushed. So just, you know, just a reminder, when you guys are living trading and you’re using indicators. Wait for them to line up. Don’t be like me. Don’t be a degenerate gambler and things like that. Because if I would’ve waited, you know, I’ve seen we’re clearly in sideways action here. We’re in an accumulation zone, you know, similar to where we were about here, similar to where we were right here. We’re just in one of these accumulation zones. And that’s OK. But sometimes people really feel like they need to overtreat. And I’m certainly guilty of it as well. So if you do want to leverage trade responsibly, don’t go 75 X, you guys can check out by bit use Mylie and you can get 90 bucks for free. But just make sure you’re being responsible. Don’t don’t take a big loss like I did today. OK. So we’re going to take a quick look at the markets here on Claymore Capital. Com Bitcoin come in 1864 theorem to 14 X. Arpey was a twenty three cents drop down to twenty two biggest winners a day H bar. Coming up, huge or 20 percent gainer today. That is a beautiful chart. Biggest losers of the day. We got U.B. T coming in at second with a five and a half percent drop. It is on quite the correction over the last couple days. But what I really want to show you guys is the Bitcoin dominance level. This is a huge number that is tied to whether or not all coins are going to pump. Right now, it’s come in at sixty five percent. Well, we want to see is that number come down when you pull up the chart? You can look. You see, there is a very clear correlation between the Bitcoin dominance level and the rise of all coins. So you look here, Bitcoin dominance level goes down. All coin levels go up. And for all coins season to happen. That’s really what you need. The biggest all seasons were when these coins were peaking the highest. These to this spot right here and then this part right here, kind of hard because this thing always pops up and I really hate it. That’s what she said. But anyways, guys, right now we’re looking at when you look right here at September of 2019, we are in a clear downtrend in Bitcoin dominance. It was it about 70 percent. It’s gotten down all the way down to about 63 percent earlier this week. And we want to see that continue to fall. And if we do, we could get the all coins season that a lot of people are thinking world get prehaps. So speaking of the happening, a big consensus has what is considered to be more accurate, having countdown. It basically goes off of the current hash rate, not the average hash rate over a period of time, which is number on the bottom. Here is what you get, which will get were the main bitcoin happening. Countdown, as you guys can see right now, we’re mining a little bit faster. So as of this moment, it looks like the having could be on May 11th, not on. Well, we’ll have to stay up to date and watch this. But right now, this really this article from Quinn Desk really points out how much faster Bitcoin is being mined at the exact moment right now. Bitcoin miners usually create six blocks per hour. They just banged out 16. So the excitement around Bitcoin to get as much mind as you can before the happening, before those blocks rewards are reduced is really, really key right now for miners. So we might see that happening speed up a little bit. Everybody wanted to be on the 12th. Maybe it could even be as early as the 10th. A while back when Bitcoin was really pumping earlier in the year, people thought it might even be end up being at the end of April. So we’ll just have to see and watch this date to see if it actually happens earlier than people are expecting. OK, so Bitcoin’s been doing really well, but is it over? Was that it? Well, let’s see what some traders are saying about the current price action surrounding Bitcoin. So one thing is when you look at the BTC futures, the aggregated daily volumes here, you will see that obviously we have had a huge surge in volume for futures trading. That includes by bit bit Max. Okay. Ex Bemax, all of these that we’ve talked about in the last couple of days. But Jose, if you look the last time it did really well, that was cell action. That was when the price was crashing. So the thing about futures trading is you can write it up or you can write it down. So anytime there’s a lot of action on the market, you’re going to see that surge, whether or not it is positive or negative, depending on how you look at it, buying or selling action. So as you can see here, we’ve had a huge amount of volume increase in the last couple of days. Now, some people believe that, you know, we’re in a very bullish, a very bullish scenario for Bitcoin. As you can see right here, a one guy says, one trader, a founding partner. It a bit bitches. New capital says ninety five hundred, though, despite the bullish action is a logical place for BTC to take a breather. And I kind of think I agree with him here because the question is, do we really want to surge to 10K and get rejected at 10K? Again, it almost seems better, in my opinion, for Bitcoin to hover right below 10K before the happening. The happening occur, maybe see the price retrace back to about 80, 500 somewhere around there before making that final push above 10K. And hopefully when that happens, we’ll never see prices below 10K again. So there are some more bullish scenarios here. One trader says, I personally think the local top is in little premature to call it. But looks like an SFP. Of the nine point two liquidity void, a bear has blown the F out. Believers, believers, euphoric, would want to see eighty four X hold for continuation. Otherwise, seven point seven K to ACA is the next area of interest to long. So those are some key levels to be looking at. Now, before you get to our story about a whale that says Bitcoin is going to crash. I didn’t want to talk to you guys a little bit about power mine. Now, I will say this. Thank you to Power Mine for sponsoring this segment. However, after I did this, I actually put more of my own money into power mine. But about two thousand dollars of ISC into power mine to stake to buy PPY mine the token. I put more money into it than I was paid to do the segment. So I want you guys to understand that this is something I really do believe in. I vetted the guys who are behind this extremely well. I think they would probably, you know, they’re probably knowledgeable about me vetting them at this point. And this is something that I do think is a really good opportunity for people that are into IWC or into making passive income with DAPs to check out. So let’s look at exactly what power mine is. Power mine diversifies the bank roll across multiple investments within different sectors and change of crypto. The end goal is to have as many different assets providing returns for P mine holders and hedge the bankroll by being extremely diversified. Some of the current types of assets we’re in include both a theorem and try and Yoona. Swap Liquidity pools, bankroll, save bankroll, swap Tron Prime. We also have some exposure to staking tokens such as IWC, which is diversified across high yield nodes. Bitcoin interest earning positions and so much more. In order for an investment to happen. The bankroll has to fund it. It’s got to fit certain criteria of investments. The investment needs to have a great chance of appreciating and value in the future or producing cash flow. The daily distributions to P mine holders to on the profits the bank roll makes. So having a diversified portfolio and thoroughly studied assets is very important. The goal is to grow both the bankroll and the distributions, always from a fundamental investor and long term perspective PMA and simplifies having to spend countless hours researching multiple projects and provides the maximum level of diversification as an individual investor in order to match the diversification and hedging the P markets. It requires a lot of time, which most investors just don’t have. Additionally, the team and the core community members have been in crypto and in the DAP defy space since the start. So they have previous experience to use it. Pea mines advantage would be mine. You can look for time, efficiency, diversification, growing cash flow and risk hedging. Check it out today. If you want to check out a power mine, I will put the link down in the description. And then also, they do have a perpetual dice game coming soon. Right now is just taking. But there will be a dice game as well. So I will put that information down below along with our telegram link. But I do want to talk about this story because I think this story is very important, guys. Bitcoin will suggest BTC price will crash. Having is priced in others. The same thing we saw people saying during 2016. But check this out. So this is a Bitcoin whale. And ironically, it’s the same Bitcoin where we looked at yesterday who is down millions of dollars as he is shorting the market. Joe, Double 070, big trader on before next. He says, no, of course not. It’s not priced in. On the very day of the great happening, everybody will finally realize how underpriced BTC is. They will all rush to buy it in droves with their unemployment checks. Joe, you say that very sarcastically, basically implying that because the stock market will continue to not do well, that people are not going to have money to go and buy Bitcoin. He’s put his money where his mouth is. And you guys can see we looked at yesterday. He is down eleven million dollars in a short. Now, here’s the question that I would want to look at here, which is, is this a fake out by this guy? Okay, yeah. He’s down 11 million dollars and he is putting his money where his mouth is in a short. But he’s such a big whales that money is not really that significant to him. So a lot of times we seem whales manipulate the market. So is that his way of doing this? Is he trying to manipulate the market maybe to go up higher to the upside? We usually see whales manipulate market down instead of up. But if we ask during a big bull trend, then maybe we might see that change. So definitely something to watch out. In my opinion, I still think a look, guys, you guys know this. If you watch my channel. I am definitely more bullish than bearish. I’m bullish almost all the time. If I even say something relatively bearish on this channel, people destroy me over it and things like that. I am bullish. I do think that the president wins going above 100K. I think it’s eventually going to get to a million. I think that happening is going to see a huge pump. We will see a drop, in my opinion, immediately following the happening. I do think we will see that. But ultimately, the price is going up. And I think it’s going to go up significantly. We could see the price drop back in the 6000 to 7000 dollar range. But I would probably think that really the seven thousand dollar range might be where we end up before, you know, after that happening. Maybe if we get up high enough, it could drop back down to K or so. But, you know, when we have of saying this is definitely something we have to pay attention to. So let me know what you guys think. Tell me what your thoughts are on the Bitcoin happening. Do you think that we’ve seen the all of the pump we’re going to see before that happening? I think we have another leg up. Do you think we’ll break 10K, drop all those cancers down Downbelow in the comment section? I’d love to hear what you have to say. And I hope you enjoy this video. If you did, please make sure to smash the like button and subscribe to become a member of the big squad. Thank you so much watching. Have a blessed day, boy.

source https://www.cryptosharks.net/bet-on-bitcoin-to-crash-crazy/

[kariachi]

New commissionwork for @thenixkat, this time a werewolfy, magicky Static Shock fic, with a side of Wonder Woman. Word count ~10k.

Warnings for gore, kidnapping, and technically mind control apply.

Stepping off the bus into the early autumn chill she could feel the state sink into her flesh like a million needles, feel it shifting beneath her feet, and her first instinct was to run. To turn around, climb back aboard, continue on to someplace more, hospitable.

That wasn’t an option.

Nothing had gone to plan thanks to that damn ‘hero’, breaking into her lair, ruining everything. She’d been so close and what did she have left? She’d been forced to burn through Louhi, the spellwork needed and her emergency teleport leaving her a literal husk of her former self, now nestled in her bag. She had no lair, and had only been able to fill one bag with supplies before she ran.

And now she was here, in the last place anyone would think to look for a magic user. The state was unforgiving, and wrong, but she wouldn’t be long, she swore. All she needed was to recreate and finish the ritual.

She might even be kind enough to make Dakota right when she was done.

~~

Two Months Later

~~

~~

There’s a person outside, circling the property line and eyeing up the house. He wants to say something, do something, but the way his mother’s bristled, the way she’s moved between him and the window… Something says to stay quiet.

~~

This is the third time the strange figure that isn’t right has shown up, and his father’s taken his gun with him to confront them. Something in him bristles, says to lay low.

~~

When has he ever been this hungry…

~~

~~

“Really, Virg, thanks for staying the night. Mom doesn’t want me home alone right now.”

“You’re doing me a favor, man. Gravitas saved the owner of one of those foreign groceries the other day and he gave her something called ‘seamu’? So I’m more than happy to hang out here and order a pizza.”

“You sure? Seamu’s actually pretty good.” The incredulous look that crossed Virgil’s face, like Richie’d just suggested he try flea stew, left the other teen shrugging as he plopped down on his bed. “Viking stuff. Grandma sometimes imports it from the old country.”

“Yeaaah.” Virgil shook his head, tossing his bag to a spot next to Richie’s desk and flopping down beside him. While his friend essentially half-lived at his house- the boy had his own shampoo there for fuck’s sake- Virgil was still working on building his own stock at the Foley home. It would never be the same ‘practically dual-custody’ arrangement, but fair was fair. “You guys can keep your weird Norse birds, thanks.” With another rolling shrug Richie fell back so they were laid side by side.

“Sharon’s probably messing it up anyway. It is good though.”

“Richie, I’ve seen you eat, your word means nothing here.” Ignoring the raspberry blown at him, Virgil lifted himself on his elbows and looked down at Richie quizzically. “Why’d you want to stay the night here, anyway?” Turning over onto his side, Richie’s eyes flicked to the window before he ducked his head conspiratorially.

“Someone’s been skulking around the house lately.”

“Wait what?!” Virgil tensed, instinctively tasting for the electricity that ran through the walls as Richie nodded.

“They don’t come onto the property or anything,” he said, “but they like, circle it, like they’re sizing it up.”

“So, what, you think they’re gonna try to break in?”

“I don’t know, things have been weird. Like, the security cameras and what we see don’t match up, and I think Dad might see something different from what me and Mom see.”

“That’s… that’s creepy, man.” Worrying his cheek, Virgil sat up properly. Richie mirrored him. “Can you be more specific?”

“Like, the other night, they went passed the house and Dad made a comment about them trying to pass themselves off as some random person walking their dog, but when I looked, there wasn’t any dog anywhere, and Mom looked as confused as me. He went out to confront them, but apparently they just, vanished.” As he spoke BackPack climbed onto the bed and nestled into his owner’s lap, laying his retractable ‘eye’ across Richie’s shoulder in what was either a comforting or protective manner. It was hard to tell when you weren’t Richie. “Dad’s cop buddies have been coming by the neighborhood periodically, but they haven’t seen anything.”

“I can see why your mom didn’t want you here alone,” Virgil said, absently patting Backpack as Richie stroked the machine.

“Yeah. She wanted me to stay at your place, since Dad’s on the night shift tonight and she’s working late, but…”

“But then she’d be here alone.” Virgil nodded, stomach knotting at the worry that was blossoming on Richie’s face. “A Bang Baby maybe?”

“Maybe.” With a tiny laugh Richie grinned. “That or a ghost.”

“The soul of a seamu,” Virgil added, with a chuckle of his own, “come to punish your family for eating them all these centuries.”

“I’ll ask Gran about dispelling dinner ghosts in my next letter.” A deep sigh. “I haven’t seen my parents this worried ever. Mom’s even been talking about sending me to Cousin Gina’s ‘early’ when they think I’m not listening, whatever that’s supposed to mean.” Leaning forward, Virgil put a hand by BackPack’s eye.

“And how are you holding up?” Richie’s next laugh was a little darker.

“After that Brainiac thing? It’s gonna take more than some creep to rattle me.” Virgil nodded, sighing himself.

“You should’ve told me ahead of time,” he said, pulling back. “You’re lucky I brought my Static stuff.” Snorting, Richie smirked and raised a brow at him teasingly.

“Dude, half the time you bring that stuff to the bathroom with you.”

“That, is beside the point.”

~~

It wasn’t the longest wait of their short lives, but it damn well felt like it as they sat there by Richie’s open window. There was no real guarantee that the unknown stranger would even show that night, but they had every night for nearly a week (a week, there were going to be Discussions about not telling teammates things) so the odds were in their favor, right? Right. As it was they were fully decked out, hoping Mrs. Foley didn’t come home before the stranger showed up. BackPack sat between them, recording everything he saw and showing it on Richie’s monitor.

If nothing else, they’d have further evidence of what was happening.

Showtime came somewhere around nine, with a hiss between Gear’s clenched teeth and repeated smacking of Static’s arm.

“Man, cool it-”

“That’s them!” Static followed Gear’s gaze, narrowing his eyes at the sight of a human shape walking through the neighbor’s yard, a mid-sized dog trotting along beside them, eyes straight ahead. His first instinct was to pat his partner on the shoulder, reassure him, joke about him being paranoid, but he bit back the impulse. What you saw wasn’t necessarily what was there, the tale of the other night proved as much. He turned to see what BackPack saw, the most reliable view they had.

No dog. Just a figure with a face like bleached bone walking much more slowly passed the house than they had first seemed, gaze locked solidly on the building until it passed their room and pale pink eyes flicked towards Gear and narrowed-

Before he could even form a thought he was out the open window, Saucer under his feet.

“Hey!” The figure didn’t look up that he could see, not even their ‘dog’ reacting to his presence as he flew straight at them, electricity gathering in one hand before everything went black, breath not even catching in his throat, more like it’d been yanked back down into his lungs.

“Static!” When the world came back into view the hero was hovering only a foot off the ground, greedily sucking in air. Gear’s hand on his arm was welcome, as was his worried checking of him. Behind them, he could hear BackPack pacing the roof, probably standing guard. “Are you okay? You just, dropped!” Slowly Static nodded, reaching out to clap a hand on Gear’s shoulder, eyes on the empty space the mysterious figure had occupied.

“We’re calling the girls.”

~~

“Richard Foley, we understand you’ve got your iffy moral stuff going on, and family crap you can’t talk about, but if you ever keep something like this a secret again I will dig a basement just to lock you in it for your own safety!”

“Yes ma’am.”

The rest of the night had passed without incident. Virgil had been woken up by a truly awful smell at one point, but that was all of note until they’d woken up the next morning and begun calling the rest of the team over a truly massive breakfast.

Turned out there wasn’t much that got everyone moving quite like the words ‘someone might be stalking Richie’. As it was they’d had the whole band together in the Abandoned Gas Station of Solitude by eight, and the past two hours had been spent grilling Richie for every detail ever and watching the security footage highlight reel on repeat.

The figure hadn’t even looked at Static until he was practically on top of them, and had waved their hand before he fell, just as Richie said, straight down out of the sky. After that they’d just, not been there. Nobody could really figure out how to describe it. All they knew was that they’d been there one frame and the next, nothing. Which certainly wasn’t helping the mood of a room that had, en masse, leaned protectively towards their blond when the figure’s eyes had locked on him. And when they’d done whatever it was they did to Static? Sharon had immediately all-but suction cupped herself to her brother in exactly the same manner he’d suctioned cupped himself to Richie.

It would’ve had to be a force of nature that dared try to bypass the sheer force of the Over My Dead Body emanating from that side of the room.

“Do we have any idea who that was?” Frieda asked, collapsing into a chair like she was made of putty. “Any clue at all?”

“I’ve never seen them outside of the whole, ya know, creeping around thing,” Richie said while the Hawkins siblings shook their heads.

“Haven’t found them on any databases yet,” Daisy said from her spot at one of the many, many computers that were- between her and the boys- beginning to take over their hideout. “Not even any maybes.”

“So, we have an unknown person stalking the Foley’s,” Sharon said, arms crossed tightly over her chest as she hovered- literally- behind the boys. “Well, I’m not risking it, who’s taking what guard shift?” For a moment it looked like Richie was going to argue that guard shifts were possibly overkill before Virgil placed a hand over his mouth.

“Rich, you have been kidnapped more than all the rest of us combined. And I’m counting the giant amoeba thing.” A ball of paper wafted across the room to collide with the back of his head.

“We’re not having it happen again when we have forewarning this time,” Frieda added, and BackPack whirred in agreement.

“Whose side are you on,” Richie muttered to the machine, but smiled at the others anyway. “Thanks guys.” Spinning her chair to face him, Daisy grinned reassuringly.

“We’ll figure out who this is and what they want,” she said, “don’t worry.” Her gaze swept the rest of the group. “I can take the ten to one shift.”

~~

Oh, she’d known this would happen eventually, with her targeting one of Dakota’s little ‘heroes’. A part of her that sounded suspiciously like Louhi had said she could still go back, change tack and grab one of those Bang Babies nobody wanted. There were a few that met her needs- Spaulding could’ve been brought to heel, and Stone, even the Hawkins boy from the night before, both would be grand for her purposes. But this one was perfect and soon the veils would part, it was better than she could dream, and she’d had every intention of having control before any of his little friends noticed anything afoot.

Damn Dakota, always making things difficult.

It poked and prodded at her, tendrils of it’s power sliding along the fibers of her magic. Plucking strings that sent a jot of fear down her spine. The longer she stayed the more it went from curious to passive-aggressive, the state miring her down like swamp mud and covering it’s citizens like the first snow. She had been upping and upping her game this past week and to her knowledge there had been no change beyond the boy eating more.

And now, now he had bodyguards.

She was done, this was happening tonight if she had to tear off his skin and force him to wear it.

Kicking over a carved pumpkin on her way passed a neighboring house (another thing this place wouldn’t let her do, her transportation spells flickered and died in her throat, refused to touch Dakota air, and this was as close as she could get in the layer below) she headed for the spot she’d taken last night. It wasn’t as close as those she’d used before, farther away to be harder to spot, but it was near enough and should work with what she had in mind.

No more careful portioning, no rationing, she had scaled the recipe up as far as she possibly could. Her entire supply of onyx powder was in the large container she pulled out of her satchel, already mixed with tomato seed oil and ready to go. Dried licorice and valerian soaking it up. A package of hay to act as kindling. The strike of a match.

Thick black smoke rose from the flames, fading into octarine as it drifted against the wind, settling over the Foley house. The girl on the roof slowly fell over sideways as it drifted in through open windows and cracks in doorframes. This would do it.

It had to.

~~

~~

He wakes up in the dead of night to growing fur and long, long limbs.

It itches. It feels right and weird and it itches, even after he’s brought up a foot to scratch at it. To scratch everywhere, because it is everywhere and seemingly endless. With a grumble he rolls off his back and onto his feet, yawning with a mouth that’s longer and longer and longer. He twists around with a quiet whine and uses it to snap and pull at the fabric covering his hindquarters- it was comfortable once, he remembers, but now is too tight too tight around his rump and he’s happy when it rips enough for his tail come through and continue to grow. So much better. Now he’s free to streeeeeetch as the itching slowly stops, shake free of the tatters left behind, and listen to the call coming along the frigid autumn air.

Come.

Be good.

Ignoring the little machine’s whirs of concern, he licks BackPack affectionately before loping out the open window.

~~

~~

The first thing Frieda was aware of was frantic poking and prodding at her shoulders, arms, face. Prodding that only disappeared after she called up a gust of wind to blow whatever it was away. It wasn’t gone for long though, quickly returning even more frantic than before, finally forcing her to blearily open her eyes.

She was still on the Foley’s roof, right where she was supposed to be, but BackPack was in front of her, all flashing lights and distressed whirring and chirps.

“BackPack. BackPack,” she reached out to push down on the machine, stopping his frantic scurry across the shingles, “what’s wrong?” With a whir that somehow managed to be even more distressed than those that came before, BackPack slipped out from under her hand and bolted for the edge of the roof near Richie’s room. Her gut twisted. Cautiously she called the wind to pick her up and carry her to the open window. She was tense and ready for a fight as she checked inside, but still her stomach dropped out of her and her heartrate skyrocketed.

“Fuck!”

~~

“Don’t tell Virgil, but I lost Richie.”

“You what?!” Frieda cringed as a voice that distinctly wasn’t Sharon’s came over the shockvox. Muffled at first, but clearer following the sounds of a brief scuffle. “What do you mean you lost Richie?!”

“He isn’t here!” She hissed, careful not to raise her voice, not to wake up Mr. and Mrs. Foley still inside. “I don’t know what happened!”

“You don’t know what-” Another scuffle and Sharon’s voice returned.

“Details, Frieda.” She almost stopped in her pacing back and forth on the Foley’s roof, but instead found herself pausing just long enough for a deep breath before falling back in step beside BackPack.

“I was standing guard, and there was this nasty smell, and then suddenly the next thing I know BackPack is shaking me awake and Richie is gone.” She still reeked. Virgil was struggling on the other end, she could hear it and practically see Sharon with a hand clamped over his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” Sharon’s voice was pinched, clearly panicking same as she and Virgil are, but age and experience were keeping her together. “It’s not your fault. We’ll find him.”

“We don’t even-”

“We’ll. Find. Him.”

 ~~

They had no leads was the problem. Every other time Richie had been kidnapped the whys and hows had been pretty fucking obvious. It was more a matter of actually tracking him down, which only ever took as long as it did because Dakota had more abandoned buildings than it did people. But this time… They didn’t know who they were dealing with. They didn’t know what they wanted Richie for. How much danger he was in.

At least if it was Ebon again they’d know he was bait, for all they knew right now he was being sold on the black market.

“I really doubt that,” Ultraviolet said somewhere around dawn, several hours into the team’s search for any clue at all. BackPack had recorded none of what happened in Richie’s room, if he’d even been active at the time. They didn’t even know when between two and three the boy had been stolen.

“It does happen,” Gravitas said. Ultraviolet shook her head.

“Not in Dakota though. Have you seen the statistics for that stuff? People’ll be kidnapped for trafficking, but they always escape one way or another. I once read that a few years back some guys were trying to take a girl across state lines and not only did their car break down, but then they were trampled by water buffalo.” The team froze and turned, as one, to stare at her slack-jawed. It was Static that spoke up.

“West end?”

“East, in the mountains.” Silence. Hurricane slowly shook her head and went to sit on a random porch, mindlessly throwing a breeze back and forth to move a jaunty skeleton decoration. Gravitas made a gesture of surrender.

“Only in this state.”

“Okay,” Static said, “so we know that’s not a problem. Doesn’t narrow much down though.”

“No.” Sighing, Ultraviolet worried her lip. No tracks, no signs of struggle, no sign of that mysterious figure. They were hitting a dead end. “We’re just going to have to keep looking. He has to be somewhere.”

~~

~~

The collar around his throat itches but it’s easy to ignore in favor of the smells and sounds of this city that is his. Smoke, oil, sweat, engines, music, yelling, meat meat meat sound and smell all around him and hunger thudding like a heartbeat through his veins-

He hunts. Leisurely, moving at an easy trot through the alleys and backstreets of the city, nose held high to track these many many scents. He’s so hungry, more than he’s ever been in his life, and all he needs, all he wants, is a good target…

There. A barking little beastie, chained to a fence and straining at him, teeth bared. At another time, in another shape, he may have backed away from sharp teeth and aggression he can smell in the air, but here and now all he sees is meat. A leap longer than the pit expected, jaws around its muzzle, a single good whip of his head, and there’s silence.

Breakfast.

~~

~~

Eventually, they’d been forced to split up. Ultraviolet and Gravitas had taken BackPack back to the Gas Station of Solitude with the goal of finding something, anything, to tie back to the mysterious figure they all knew was behind this, while Static and Hurricane continued the search of the city.

It was ten am, at least seven hours following Richie’s disappearance. They’d each of them fielded calls from a frantic Mrs. Foley. The police were getting involved.

There were still no damn leads.

“Well,” Hurricane said as soon as the door opened, “I had to stop Static dropping Kangor from a flagpole, so that was something.”

“Look,” said hero responded, following close behind her, “if he hadn’t tried being coy we wouldn’t have had problems!” It said something about how he was feeling about the whole situation that he immediately plopped down beside his sister, barely an inch between them.

“So,” she said, “ended up just interrogating everybody?”

“It’s not like we had anything else to go with,” Static said, “may as well ask around the Bang Baby scene.”

“We didn’t try everyone,” Hurricane added. “We figured if this person were involved with Ebon’s crew we’d have heard something by now, same with Puff and Onyx.”

“And Madelyn’s not this subtle,” Ultraviolet said. The others nodded.

“Exactly.” Sighing, Hurricane leaned against Ultraviolet’s desk. “But nobody knew anything, at least anything we could get out of them.”

“And we’ve found exactly jack shit,” Gravitas said with a groan, head falling back against the ratty couch she and her brother occupied. “Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic.”

“We just need one lead,” Static said, mirroring his sister and reaching up to pat BackPack when he climbed into his lap. “Just one, that’s all we’re asking!”

True to all rules of thematic timing, there came a knock.

The room went quiet as the heroes went tense, eyes darting between each other and the door. There weren’t exactly that many people who knew where to find them, and even fewer who bothered to knock. Under the best of circumstances they would’ve been on guard, and these were certainly not the best of circumstances. Patting Static’s shoulder, Gravitas stood slowly and made her way cautiously towards the door- probably for the best, given she was the oldest and along with Hurricane was the one most capable to turning the tide on a sudden attacker. The door opened with the loudest creak in the history of the world, Gravitas’s eyes blowing wide when she saw what was outside.

“Good morning,” Wonder Woman said, slipping into the doorway, “may I come in?”

~~

Nobody from the League had gotten the kind of welcome Wonder Woman got, which was all on the women. Static certainly hadn’t ever considered offering Batman a soda. But then, that was Batman, who probably didn’t even need to eat, thriving off sheer justice, and this was Wonder Woman, who’d gladly accepted not only his seat on the couch but also a coke and a handful of the fun size candies he and Gravitas kept sneaking from the community center. Because that’s what you did with free bowls of candy, no matter who you were. As it was, she had the full attention of the whole team, including the girls’ hearts from the looks of it- if there were any more stars in Gravitas’s eyes he’d have been calling Adam with a warning- leaving BackPack to do the fifth trawl of the many, many, many files they’d found and gotten into all on his lonesome.

“So,” Ultraviolet said, two fun-size snickers into the visit, “I’m going to guess this isn’t a social call?”

“Unfortunately,” Wonder Woman replied, “though I guess we probably ought to do those more often.” She sighed and scanned the group. “I was hoping to get your help with a, situation.” Yep, they’d known it was coming.

“What kind of situation?”

“There’s a witch somewhere in Dakota-”

“In late-October, yeah-”

“A real witch.” There wasn’t even a hint of humor in her tone or expression, but also no judgement for the comment. She took a sip of her soda before continuing. “Normally it wouldn’t be anything to worry about, the vast majority of magic users aren’t any trouble, even the ones from Dakota, but this one…” She shook her head, a sight that had the team all exchanging concerned looks. They didn’t even have information and this sounded bad. Again, it was Gravitas that stepped forward.

“We’d love to help,” she said, “but I’m sure you’ve noticed we’re down a teammate.” Wonder Woman nodded. “Gear vanished from his bed last night in what we’re sure is a kidnapping.”

“Well,” the older hero set her drink down, making solid eye contact with Gravitas, “I’m more than happy to help you find him. We’ll just have to handle more than one situation, perfectly doable.” Everyone was silent for a moment, up until Hurricane sighed, deep and heavy and blowing candy wrappers around the room, and dropped into the spot beside Wonder Woman.

“Fuck it,” she said, “not like we have any leads anyway. Gives us something to do while we figure this out besides worry.”

Well, it wasn’t like she was wrong.

“You first,” Ultraviolet said, leaning back against a desk with her eyes locked on Wonder Woman, “what are we dealing with, with this witch?” Nodding, Wonder Woman picked up her soda and settled back in her seat.

“She goes by Athame,” she began, “she’s, very ambitious. Too ambitious.” The young team, who had all heard that more than a time or two, raised their eyebrows in unison.

“Too am-”

“She wants to create a new source of magic.” Okay, that sounded, something.

“Alright,” Static said, “we may need some more background here.” Wonder Woman nodded again.

“All magic has a single source. There are plenty of items out there that contain magic, or run off of it, but there’s only one source of magic, and even just having it with you is enough to allow people with no magical talent to use difficult spells without issue.”

“Okay,” Ultraviolet nodded, “I can see where that might be dangerous if a skilled witch got a hold of it.” A hollow chuckle from the older hero.

“I wish she wanted to get a hold of it,” she said, “then it would be someone else’s business. What she wants is to make a second one, and she’s come up with a ritual she thinks will do it.”

“Will it?”

“Who knows.” She shrugged. “But we can’t take that risk. The best-case scenario is that the ritual does nothing, but if it fails violently then there’s too much risk of collateral damage with all the power it would need, and that’s not even taking into account it if works.”

“At which point we have someone running around with pretty much unlimited magical power,” Gravitas said, running a hand down her face. This was just, great.

“If the existence of two sources of magic doesn’t just tear reality apart.”

And that was even better.

A mass groan went around the room.

“What about your friend,” Wonder Woman asked, leaning forward probably as much to make sure they knew she was taking all of this seriously as out of actual interest, “what are the details there?” Static, being the first alerted to the situation, stepped forward.

“Some creep’s been stalking around his house the last week,” he said, “not that he bothered to tell anyone until the other day. Why the hell wouldn’t he tell us?”

“Because,” Hurricane butted in, “he’s the stupidest genius we know.” Beside her, Wonder Woman took on a thoughtful look, head bobbing slightly as she clearly tried to work out whether that actually was the stupidest thing she’d seen a supposed genius do. Gravitas, meanwhile, just looked at Static and wobbled her hand in a ‘that’s iffy’ gesture, earning herself a glare.

“Anyway,” Static continued pointedly, “he finally said something the other day and... They’ve clearly got powers of some sort, but this is Dakota, we had to deal with a dandelion with delusions of grandeur just last week, so that’s not really weird around here. What is weird is that we decided to take shifts to guard his house and he still disappeared right out from under us.”

“I’m still not sure what happened,” Hurricane said. “One minute everything was fine, then the next BackPack was waking me up and Gear was gone.” Eyes narrowed, Wonder Woman nodded.

“That is worrying…” Ultraviolet purposefully shoved away from the desk she was leaned against and half-turned towards where BackPack was working his not-quite-Gear-level magic.

“Come on,” she said, “we have video.”

The group moved as one, crowding in around her as she removed BackPack from the computer he was interfacing with. He found a comfortable spot in her lap as she sat down and went about pulling up the video from the night before last. Nothing was different from any other viewing- same too-pale face and eyes, creepy eyeballing of the house, looking directly at their now-missing friend. Same mysterious attack on Static and subsequent disappearance. But there weren’t many eyes for it this time. Instead everyone was focused on Wonder Woman, stood in pride of place directly behind Ultraviolet, watching her take in the event, her eyes going wide. When the screen cut to black, she reached out and put her hand on Ultraviolet’s shoulder.

“Well,” she said, “good news, we only have one situation.”

~

She ought to be happy, overjoyed with how things are going right now, but really she was kind of annoyed. Richie did whatever she commanded, which was perfect, just what she needed in a familiar, but… Well the problem was twofold. First off, Dakota let him wander around, through the layers of magic that made up the region, with ease. As if he was just walking through parting curtains. Meanwhile she had to struggle for every inch the state would give her, putting more and more power in to move around, to hold off the clash of ethereal jaws she could feel building.

Secondly, the child was a mess. It was bad enough that he’d slipped back into her lair covered in blood and back alley grime, reeking of death, but she couldn’t even wash him. To do so would risk clearing away the smoke that had settled into his fur, that even now filled the lair, and she would have to be mad to risk losing that control, even for an instant. The wool collar on his throat, the sheepskin he laid on, were enough to keep him in his shape, but for now that smoke was all that kept him in line.

Not for long though. With his help, soon everything would be ready. She would have a Source and then she could forgo the wool, forgo the licorice root, and keep him through power alone.

As soon as the veil opened…

~~

~~

He’s smart, and good, and now that he’s finally full his master has a job for him.

(something in his gut is screaming, it whines and hides when he smells her, sees her, hears her, says it isn’t right, she’s not right, but the call is true…)

It’s a big job too, very important. She wants peacocks, as many as he can find, and because the city is his he knows just where to look.

Seemingly out of nowhere he lopes into the center of the Dakota City Zoo, air crisp in his lungs and screams ringing out like the deep gong of church bells. The humans scatter around him, reeking of shock and fear, briefly flicking on his instinct to chase and play. Joyfully he twists, turns, leaps, nipping at heels and sending the guests scurrying with barking laughter. In their displays the animals bellow and shriek in time with the humans.

But eventually fun times have to end, there’s work to be done for his master, and so he shakes his head to clear it of ‘prey’ and ‘play’. Work. He’s here for work. Because he’s good.

Raising up on his hind legs, stretching out as far as he can, allows him to make a quick survey of the area. The humans make it difficult to see, but he doesn’t know the scent he’s looking for and he can just make out a few patches of blue among the greys and yellows that don’t look like clothes, that are moving on their own. With a heading in mind, he gives a howl that makes his heart pang (why call when his pack’s not there to hunt with him?) and drops back to the ground. Long legs make the journey quick, and the humans that come with guns drop them when he snaps at their arms, it’s easy easy easy to find the flock.

He runs forward and they scatter, but these aren’t humans, they don’t have long legs to take them far and can’t gain speed by dropping their tails. The tails that are so easy to grab with hand and tooth, to yank them out of the air so he can snap jaws around their long long necks and shake. The humans aren’t bothering him anymore, in the distance he can hear them fleeing en masse, working to get themselves and each other far far away. Not that he cares. He’s focused on the job, the fun fun job, and the pile of birds forming on the ground as he chases and grabs, snaps and shakes. A mass of blue and grey that only stops growing when he knows his mouth won’t hold any more.

With a carefree air he gathers up the bodies in his jaws, carrying them by their broken necks, and lopes, tail wagging, back the way he came.

His master, good (wrong) master, will be so proud.

~~

~~

When the reports of dead animals started coming in the police and animal control really hadn’t expected a handful of superheroes to show up to investigate, but given what had been going on lately there’d been no chance of them ignoring the cases. After all, it could have been the ‘normal’ tendency for sickos to start slaughtering black animals around Halloween, or it could have been tied into the actual witchcraft going on in the city. The fact it was happening the very day Richie had vanished from his bed only made the whole thing more suspicious.

What nobody had expected was to find all the animals eaten.

It was a gruesome sight, dogs, cats, a few birds all ripped to shreds. Soft, fleshy bits were all gone, as were a few of their heads, bodies held together with bits of remaining ligament and gristle. Bones gnawed, some cracked open to get at their marrow. The group hardly help it together until they’d seen all the damage, barely made it out of the room the corpses had been placed in before several of them where fighting over the nearest trashcan.

In a way, that made the call that there was a monster attacking the zoo a relief, even if the creature was gone by the time they arrived. As it was, the ladies hardly touched ground before an important looking zoo employee was running for them, his eyes wide and shoulders still trembling.

“Wonder Woman,” he called, because with her there the rest of them were chopped liver, “thank god you’re here!” A perfect professional- at least in the eyes of the younger set- she calmly placed a hand on the man’s shoulder.

“What happened here?” she asked in a gentle tone that soothed some of the frantic panic from the man’s face. “Is anyone hurt?” He shook his head.

“All the guests and workers are fine, shaken but no injuries. We’ve lost all but two of our peacocks though to that, that-” Ultraviolet stepped down off Static’s saucer, the electrokinetic hero following behind.

“Maybe you should sit down,” she said, “and then explain.” Nodding, he lead the group to the nearest bench and all but collapsed upon it, taking deep breaths to try to settle the shake in his limbs.

“Nobody is really sure where it came from,” he said, “just that it, appeared around the Asian Trail. Chased the guests around, snapped at people, then it just, killed our peacocks and disappeared.” The heroes looked at each other with eyes full of concern and fear.

“Are there any bodies we should take a look at?”

“No, just feathers left.”

Oh, thank fuck. Hurricane and Ultraviolet settled into the spots on either side of the man as Static stepped forward.

“What did it look like?” he asked.

“It was-” the man hesitated, beginning again to tremble, “it was just…” Another deep, steadying sigh. “There’s security footage.”

~~

It wasn’t a wolf. It looked like a wolf, kinda. Sorta. Maybe. If you’d never seen a wolf before. Or a dog. The colors were right and there was fur, how about that?

In reality, the creature trotting around in the footage looked more like someone had taken the important bits of a wolf- the eyes, ears, mouth, tail, fur- and stretched them out over a human form. Then they had clearly just, kept stretching from there. It’s back was so long to match up with the almost human limbs, limbs that kept it’s shoulders nearly level with those of the grown men it snapped and barked at. The lips were loose, constantly showing flashes of long, sharp teeth. They could easily make out the flat palms and soles of human hands and feet, stretched long and raised off the ground in favor of clawed fingers and toes too too long and flexible for anyone’s comfort.

There was no way, even in Dakota: Land of the Bang Babies and Weird-Ass Animals, that that was anything but

“There is a fucking werewolf in Dakota.”

Wonder Woman sighed, shutting her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest. Dakota’s finest, meanwhile, chewed their lips and exchanged concerned looks. Nobody there was stupid, hell all of them were brilliant, and, well. Bit of a coincidence, a werewolf showing up in Dakota with a witch running around… Static was first to speak.

“Thirty bucks it’s Richie.” Hurricane shook her head.

“Sucker’s bet.”

“What,” Gravitas suddenly spun to face Wonder Woman, shoulders tense and eyes narrowed, “would she want to make him a werewolf for?”

“Cheaper feeding?” Static said on autopilot, immediately shying away from the girls’ glares. “Sorry.” Now it was Wonder Woman’s time to worry her lower lip, looking over the team.

“She probably needed a familiar.”

“For…?” There was, in that moment, the very real chance of a small riot breaking out in that room, and a higher one of Gravitas punching the first person to not give her answers. This was one of her brothers they were talking about. Wonder Woman was smart enough not to risk it.

“The last I saw Athame she was using her familiar as a conduit to use more powerful magic,” she said. “I have to assume a werewolf is the best conduit she can get her hands on right now.” This didn’t help the mood of anyone in the room.

“So,” Hurricane said, “she’s probably going to use him for that ritual then? Would it hurt him?” All eyes stayed on Wonder Woman, who sighed again.

“He’s young, fit, and a werewolf. In theory he should be able to handle most anything that gets thrown at him, but I don’t know exactly what the limits on them are.”

“And if he can’t?” The room went quiet. Muscles tensed all around, even worse than they already had been. Static stepped forward, footfalls heavy and purposeful, sparks arcing between his fingers.

“Wonder Woman, what happens if Richie can’t handle the ritual?” She stayed quiet for a moment more, eyes downcast, visibly struggling for words, before she sighed and sadly met the hero’s gaze.

“Sizzle.”

~~

“Okay, ‘repenting for your sins’ apparently works.”

“Maybe if you’re in human shape, but I don’t think a giant wolf-monster can repent for much.”

“‘Piercing the wolf’s hands with nails’, yeah that’s not happening.”

“No nails, no silver, no beating him upside the head with a pipe.”

“I was just repeating what the book said.” With a grunt Ultraviolet went limp in her seat, staring down at the book in her hands. The library had been raided, the internet was being raided, in their desperate bid to find something, anything, that could bring Richie back to normal. That they could use to save him.

“Swimming across a river in the full moon’s light?” Gravitas suggested, only for Wonder Woman to shake her head.

“I’m not willing to count on us having the two weeks to spare.”

“Agreed.”

“Oh here’s a fun one,” Hurricane said, scoffing, “‘not turning into a wolf’.”

“Handy,” Static commented, “wish we’d known that was all it took before.”

“‘Getting a god to remove the curse’?” Everyone looked at Wonder Woman hopefully, but she shook her head.

“Demi-god. It’s not the same.”

“Damnit.” Everyone groaned as one. Why was everything so… this? Nobody deserved this sort’ve stress.

“So, so far,” Static said, “our options are looking like poison, silver, blunt force trauma, and death. Joy.”

“I really don’t know what to do,” Wonder Woman admitted, staring down at the book in her hands. “Either we kill him, or do something that might kill him, or risk him dying at the hands of Athame.”

No one looked at each other, eyes only on pages and screens. It didn’t look good. It really didn’t look good. They wanted him alive damnit! Alive and unharmed other than maybe a stomach ache which really the way he ate even when he wasn’t a monster he probably deserved anyway!

What the fuck where they supposed to do if they couldn’t save him…?

“Guys,” eyes flicked up, just enough to see Gravitas take a deep breath and release it, “I think this is one time when we should probably forewarn the parents.”

~~

Mr. Foley wasn’t home, not that anyone but Wonder Woman could bring themselves to care. If anything it meant this discussion was going to be easier. Nobody could guess what his response to ‘your son is a werewolf and may not come out of this alive’ would be, and they kind of hoped they never had to learn. Better to just get his mother on her own.

Unfortunately, there was no saving themselves from the look on her face when a group of somber superheroes showed up on her porch.

“Your son is alive,” Wonder Woman clarified before anything else, watching Mrs. Foley heave a massive sigh of relief, “but we have to talk.”

“Of course, come in,” she said, nodding and moving aside. The door was shut behind them. “Have a seat, please, I’ll get you something to drink. Soda, coffee, tea?”

“We’re fine, Mrs. Foley,” Gravitas said, only for the other woman to shake her head.

“Please, I need the distraction right now.” The heroes exchanged glances, knowing full well they weren’t going to argue.

“Tea would be nice.”

“Coming right up.”

Nobody spoke while she worked. She said nothing and there was a silent agreement among the heroes that she should be sat down when she heard the news. For her own sake. So, the house stayed too too quiet, broken only by the whistle of a kettle and the series of quiet ‘thank you’s that came along with getting their individual mugs.

“Alright,” breathing deep, Mrs. Foley settled into a seat and squared her shoulders, “what’s going on? Superheroes don’t show up at your door unless they have to.” As one Dakota’s heroes turned to Wonder Woman. She was oldest, most experienced, and the only one there that didn’t already know the woman, and as such was the unofficial spokesperson of the moment.

“We’re only mostly certain-” Static, Hurricane, and Gravitas all gave her pointed looks. As if they were only ‘mostly’ certain of anything. “We know your son’s been kidnapped by a witch-” Mrs. Foley made a pained noise. “-and we’re mostly certain he is, at the moment, a werewolf.”

Groaning, the redhead let her head fall back against the couch and muttered something under her breath with what was almost a growl.

“Mrs-”

“Maggie, please.”

“Maggie, could you repeat that please?” She looked at Wonder Woman, then around at the others, before straightening with a sigh.

“The witch…” she groan-growled again, “I knew something like this was going to happen, I said we should send him out to Gina’s, but no, Sean had to be a stubborn-” Catching herself, she took a steadying breath. “The werewolf thing is normal. He shouldn’t be turning for at least another few months, but once you get witches involved everything can go to hell in a heartbeat…”

The room went silent. Wind didn’t blow outside. Jaws were slack, eyes were wide. Static gaped like a fish for twelve seconds before he finally found his voice.

“You’re all werewolves?” Maggie shook her head.

“Sean and I aren’t, but it runs in both sides of the family. Richie’s shown signs for ages.”

“Does he know about this?!” Because there were family secrets and then there were things you told your best friend of forever- though this would explain that crush on the Wolfman in middle school, and his refusal to watch Sleepwalkers ever. Maggie gave an empty chuckle.

“I love my son, but we were hoping to hold off on telling him until any random passerby couldn’t get his full pedigree out of him with a double cheeseburger.”

Okay, yeah, that was fair.

“Since you seem to be the one in the know,” Wonder Woman said, leaning forward, “maybe you could help us turn him back? We couldn’t find any methods we had time for that wouldn’t put him in danger.”

“Of course,” Maggie said with a nod, standing, “give me a minute and I’ll get you the recipe for my mother’s wolfsbane brew.”

“Wolfsbane…”

“It’s a family trick, for when the kids get too caught up in being the wolf.” Slipping back into the kitchen, she raised her voice to ensure she was heard as she went through an assortment of drawers. “I don’t have any of the ingredients, since we were counting on having a few more months at least and being able to send him back west, but a good scrub down with sapphire should get him back to normal. Ah.” Her waving hand, a yellowed piece of paper clutched in it, appeared around the corner before she did. “Just make sure to check him over for any wool first. A witch only grabs a wolf for a familiar or for parts and either way they need to secure them in wool. Could be anything from a collar to a piece of string, but as long as it’s there he won’t turn back.” Every other body in the room nodded as she handed the paper off to Gravitas, who raised her hand slightly.

“You wouldn’t happen to be able to tell us anything about magic, would you? Such as, I don’t know, what to look for if this witch is going to be doing a ritual?” Maggie looked at her, eyebrow raised, and nodded.

“If they’re going to perform a ritual any time soon it’ll probably be sometime tomorrow. Thematics are very important in magic, and Halloween is a very thematic day. It’d be better if there was a full moon, but a new one is nearly as good.” Gravitas nodded even while Hurricane narrowed her eyes curiously.

“How do you know this stuff?” she asked, and Maggie smiled.

“Witches run in the family too.”

“…of course.”

~~

“Frieda.” Hurricane froze on her way out the door, shiver running up her spine at the use of her real name in costume. When she turned, Maggie was stood behind her, a soft smile on, holding out a glasses case. “He’s going to need these once he’s turned back.” Slowly, reminding herself to breathe, she took the case.

“Thank you, Mrs. Foley.” The smile widened.

“Thank you. Just, you kids try to be safe, please?” It took a lot of effort not to hug her, to just nod and smile back.

“We’ll try.”

~~

“I’m sorry, why am I the one in charge of boiling water of all things?”

“Because you have fucking lasers, if anyone is going to be able to get and keep 80 gallons of water boiling without it taking a year it’ll be you.” Scowling, Ultraviolet huffed and glowered at the cast iron tub Gravitas and Static had found in the junkyard. It was rusty, but she could laser that off as easy as she could boil fucking water.

“Richie owes me a pizza after this is done.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

~~

“The good news is,” Wonder Woman said upon she and Gravitas’s return to base, “we have all the wolfsbane we could ever need. The bad news is I’m going to have to explain to Batman why I bought five pounds of poison on the League’s dime.”

“I'm amazed I didn’t just start screaming,” Gravitas grumbled, dropping a large box one had to assume contained said wolfsbane next to the tub. “A pair of superheroes show up talking about needing wolfsbane for an emergency and you not only charge them, but I swear that man upped the price, there is no way this shit costs that much.”

“Just be glad the League is footing the bill.” Wonder Woman nudged the box with her foot. “Still I think I’ll have Superman go talk to him about taking advantage of those in need. He may die of shame right there.” Ultraviolet chuffed, tearing open the box and beginning the process of dumping dried leaves into the boiling water.

“Fingers crossed.”

~~

Static turned the hunk of stone over in his hand, eyeing it carefully. Mrs. Foley had ended up giving them the address of one of the nearer packs in hopes they would have the stones they needed and it certainly seemed so.

“Ya know,” he said, “I never thought sapphire could look like…”

“Just a big blue rock?” Hurricane smiled and shrugged, holding up the small bag of the gems they’d been given so he could return his own to it. Once he had she tied it shut, tucking it away in the deerskin cloak they’d also been loaned. “They said they were rough stones. Guess they’re only as polished as they are through use.”

“Or because it’d really hurt to get scrubbed down with a pointy rock.” She chuckled.

“Or that, yeah.”

~~

It was late afternoon before the group was all together again, the sky just beginning to go dark, costumed children starting to gather on the sidewalks of Dakota.

“Alright,” Gravitas asked, stood at the head of the room, “everything set? Wolfsbane brew?”

“Ready and waiting,” Ultraviolet replied. “It’s getting cold, but I think he’ll live.”

“Great. Sapphires?”

“Enough for everyone,” Static said as Hurricane dumped the bag out beside the tub, “we can tag team him.”

“Now all we need to do is find them.” Scanning the room Wonder Woman put out her hands compellingly. “Any ideas?”

“We asked the pack Mrs. Foley sent us to,” Hurricane said, “and they said if they were just appearing places then they were probably in a different ‘layer’ of the city? And gave us this.” She held up the deerskin cloak. “Apparently it’ll let us move between the layers ourselves.”

“Our idea was that we could put it on BackPack,” Static added, the robot perking up from his rather despondent spot in a corner at the sound of his name. “He can find them, put a tracker down, then come back. Then we go in.”

“That,” Wonder Woman said, “is a better plan than half of Batman’s. Good work.”

~~

~~

He’s lonely. He wasn’t lonely before, when he’d first followed the call to his master, then he’d just been hungry. After, he’d been enthusiastic. But it’s been over a day, his belly is full again of dogs and cats and one man who ran at the wrong time, and as he lays curled tight on the single sheepskin his master has given him all he can do is watch her paint patterns on the floor in peacock blood and feel so so lonely.

He misses his pack.

His dam. His sisters. Brother. His sire he can do without, but the rest of them he feels the lack of deep in his chest. He can’t hear them call, can’t smell them through the smoke, on the whirling breeze. He whines and the sound makes his master snap at him, which in turn makes the thing in his gut scream and snap back. Lonely and cold(wrong) and yearning(she’s wrong).

His pup had come. Slipped inside with fur of his own, hidden in the shadows, long enough to be nuzzled and cleaned before vanishing again. It hadn’t helped anything, only made the ache worse. His pup he misses most, and he had come and then just left him alone again…

“Richie, come here.” The command is welcome, a distraction from the loneliness and the too-small sheepskin. His tongue lolls from his mouth as he stands, stretches, plods to her side. She shoves it back in and holds his jaw closed as she begins to paint him in the same blood as the floor. It’s been mixed with something, he knows, but he isn’t certain what. Something that feels gritty against his nose. The blood-paint goes in patterns over his face, his neck, his legs, his body, and he behaves, he’s good, as it’s applied. He is good, he is compliant as she leads him by the collar to a spot among the floor patterns. As he watches, she crosses them to take the spot opposite his own, the dried husk of something (a leech, something in his head tells him, a massive leech) sitting in a marked spot between them.

She begins to speak a language he can’t understand and something strange starts to seep into his bones, the patterns going hot along his form as

A bolt of lightning flashes past his master’s shoulder

And Richie stops being good

He knows in his soul what that means, and even though he can’t smell them through the licorice he can’t help but jump to his feet, twisting in midair to face his pack, tail wagging so fast it’s but a blur behind him.

“Oh for the love of,” his master says behind him, “heroes just can’t leave well enough alone.” His brother is stepping forward to meet him, sisters behind him, when he suddenly collapses, gasping for a breath that only comes when a slam sounds back in the lair. Richie whines deep in his throat, turning to see his master dragging herself back to the ground, gaze darting between her and his pack. She’s clearly angered.

“Richie, attack.” He doesn’t want to, of course he doesn’t want to this is his pack and the something in his gut is screaming louder, fighting and howling, but the command sinks into him and despite his own wishes he turns and lunges teeth first at the nearest target. It’s a relief and a horror when instead of his brother’s face his jaws lock around something hard and metallic and burning- searing his lips and tongue as the person attached to it flings him aside. The pain doesn’t stop his body from following orders though, it rises on its own, flings itself forward again.

“Don’t, you’ll hurt him!” The woman he hadn’t noticed through the smoke and excitement of pack has raised her arms again in preparation for his attack, only to be shoved aside by his brother. A whine tears from his throat as his teeth dig into the blue cloth over his arm, as he bowls him over. He doesn’t want to, he doesn’t want to, and Virgil is straining to hold his mouth open enough with one hand, struggling not to lose the arm entirely to his teeth.

“It’s okay, man,” he soothes, kicking at his limbs as he tries to claw at him, “it’s gonna be alright, I promise, it’s okay-” Distantly, he can hear struggling behind them, deeper in the lair. Feel magic flying, see and feel the light and wind off his sisters. His pup reappears, sans fur, whirring and chirping as he helps to pry him off his brother. It’s difficult, even with him fighting his hardest to stop, but eventually Virgil’s able to roll away and a shout brings one of his sister’s gusts of wind under and around him, holding him safely in the air where he can snap and swipe and whine without injuring anybody.

It’s from here he can see the fight with his master end. Not with a bang, or a flash of magic, but with merely a quick turn directly into one of his sisters’ fists. His body doesn’t stop struggling, doesn’t stop fighting, even as he whines in pain and distress, even as his pack tries to soothe him from below. Eventually the woman from before, with the silver gauntlets, simply pulls out a long rope and begins the arduous process of binding his mouth shut, tying his limbs to his body, actions that only make his whining louder, his struggling harder. Even being lowered into the reach of their hands doesn’t help, nor the removal of his collar, or the placing of his pup on his back.

He whines and struggles all the way back out of the lair.

~~

~~

Turns out getting Richie into the goddamn tub is the worst part of the whole affair. You’d think it would be easy to just drop the bound and gagged werewolf into the water, but no, apparently he was a cat in a past life. Somehow, against all odds, his struggling had gotten worse as soon as he’d seen the water and he’d begun thrashing so much they struggled to line him up with the tub in the first place. They’d ended up having to wrestle him in and then have Gravitas use her powers to make him all but unable to move at all.

Still, it meant they could move on to phase two, and all five heroes grabbed a chuck of rough sapphire, picked a region of wolf, and got to scrubbing him down. And, despite all odds, it seemed to work. With each scrub more and more fur fell away, and with it went the monstrous shape of him. A patch there and he had a shorter muzzle. One here gained him a more humanlike arm. Between Gravitas and Wonder Woman his tail may as well have come off in one big clump. They scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, tub filling with grey and brown fur, until their arms were sore and finally the rope binding him fell away from the smaller, bare form.

“Richie? How are you feeling?” His breathing was ragged, exhausted from fighting and transforming. He moved his head only enough to verify that Static, Ultraviolet, and Hurricane were right there before lifting himself up enough to lay his forehead against Static’s shoulder.

“I really need some cocoa,” he said, spitting out some blood from the since healed silver wounds, “and a fucking salad.” A small laugh came out of Gravitas, tired but relieved, and proved to be contagious, growing louder as the rest of the team caught it and crowded in close, clapping hands on shoulders, in his hair, even Backpack nearly climbing into the tub, as if to prove to themselves he was there and safe.

“Figures it’d take turning into a man-eating monster to get you anywhere near one.”

~~

Once it was clear Richie was going to be okay, suffering nothing more than some trauma that he insisted still wasn’t as bad as the Brainiac Incident, Wonder Woman was forced to leave. After all somebody had to head back in and get Athame- if Dakota had left anything of her- make sure she met justice, return all the magic items they’d borrowed, and she felt confident the others could manage things like getting him home alright and finding him something to wear on the way.

(“Of course your mom would think to hand us your glasses, but not a pair of pants.”)

So, the heroes of Dakota found themselves spending the late evening in a massive cuddlepile in the Foley living room, laden with cocoa and testing the weight limits of the couch.

“I just hope I can talk mom out of shipping me off to Cousin Gina’s,” Richie said, by now ignoring the way BackPack had latched onto the back of the couch and refused to stop rubbing against his head affectionately, “don’t wanna leave you guys down one again if I can help it, even if it is just once a month.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” Frieda said, strewn across Richie’s legs with Daisy on top of her. “I mean, did anyone else see his face when we showed up?”

“May as well have been coming to get our dog out of the boarding kennel,” Sharon added. “You were like a puppy right up until you started trying to eat Virgil.”

“Which,” said other teen said before Richie could open his mouth, “you have never at any point been blamed for.”

“I’m sure we could keep you in line.” Daisy stretched out a kink and took a sip of her cocoa. “We just need to stay close and stock up on jerky.” Richie suddenly froze, Virgil and Sharon watching him warily from their positions directly at his sides, practically joining the other girls in his lap, as he narrowed his eyes at the half-eaten salad on the coffee table.

“I could be having jerky right now.”