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starlightrevolution · 3 years ago

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The Arrow of the Stars

Pandora walked through the dark halls of the castle. The place was silent, and she could clearly hear every single one of her footsteps, however, as she approached the door at the end of the corridor, she began hearing the gentle sound of strings. She opened the door, and gasped slightly as she found herself hoovering over a city. It did not look like any city near the castle. It was likely Lord Hades had transformed his room into a window, to see what was happening somewhere else in the world. She looked forward, to see Steven standing with his back turned to her. Pandora bowed and began speaking.

“Lord Hades, I–”

Steven signed for her to be quiet, which she instantly obeyed. Steven played a few notes in his ukulele, before tuning it for a moment.

“Let’s try… F, A7, Bb, Bbm.” Steven whispered, before he once again played his ukulele, and the city beneath them suddenly fell apart, leaving behind nothing but ruins as the room was filled with screams. Steven turned around to face Pandora, as the view of the city faded, and the room turned back into the regular throne room inside of the castle. “Good evening, Pandora.”

“Lord Hades, I’ve come to inform you that Papillon Myu has been defeated by an unknown enemy, and that the Bronze Saints have escaped Death Queen Island.” Pandora explained, as Steven put down his instrument. A small dog ran from behind her and towards Steven, before the boy gently took the animal in his arms. “We are working to find their current location.”

“Yes, I am aware. Let me know as soon as you find them.” Steven commented with a smile, as he gently petted the dog. “By the way, Pandora. How are the Specters that we’ve sent to the Sanctuary?”

“I’ve been told that they were about to arrive there just a few minutes ago.” Pandora explained. “You don’t have to worry, Lord Hades. Gryphon Minos, the Celestial Star of Nobility, is one of the Three Judges of the Underworld. She is one of the most powerful Specters in our entire army. Even Papillon Myu is but an ant when compared to her power. To a puppet master such as her, their Sanctuary is nothing but an amusement park.”

Steven looked up, and Pandora quickly followed his gaze, to see some of the stars in the miniature sky above them were beginning to go out, being consumed by darkness.

“It seems like their battle has already begun.” Steven commented with a smile, as he once again petted the small dog in his hands.

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Right outside the Sanctuary, Greece:

“AGH!” One of the Silver Saints screamed in agony, as their body began being pulled and forcefully twisted by invisible strings. “I can’t… let you approach the Sanctuary…”

Minos closed her hand, before the bodies of the Silver Saints around them were forcefully ripped to pieces, filling the stone floor with blood as their remains fell near the Specter’s feet.

“Damn you, Specters!” Minos heard, as she turned to see a team of more Silver Saints running towards them. “What did she just do to those Saints?”

“I did the only sensible thing I could.” Minos answered, not intimidated by the several Silver Saints running towards her. “I threw them away.”

“Ripping Saucers!” Auriga Capella declared as he fired his silver disks.

“Phôtia Roufihtra!” Centaur Babel declared as he threw a punch in the air, the friction from his fist creating a powerful blast of fire.

“Phantom Arrows!” Sagitta Tremy declared as he fired several golden arrows, which seemed to appear out of thin air.

“Die, Specter!” The three Silver Saints yelled in unison, before Minos calmly raised one finger, and their attacks suddenly stopped in midair, as if they had struck an invisible barrier.

“Why wouldn’t I throw away a broken puppet?” Minos asked, as the Silver Saints suddenly felt their bodies moving against their will.

“What is going on?” Tremy asked in desperation. “My body won’t obey me!”

The three yelled in pain as the strings pulled them off the ground and forced them to dance, while Minos laughed and moved the fingers of her hand. Minos smirked, before closing her hand, as the bodies of the three Silver Saints exploded into millions of pieces.

“I pull the strings of your destiny.” Minos declared, as she calmly walked past the body parts of the dead Saints. “I can end your miserable life with the movement of a finger.”

“It won’t be long until we reach the entrance of the Sanctuary, mistress.” Declared one of the Specters following Minos.

“Perfect. It was getting boring to break those worthless puppets.” Minos commented. They continued walking, until the ancient Greek ruins of the Sanctuary became visible in the distance. Minos smiled, when a fast-moving object suddenly struck the ground right in front of her feet, as if a warning telling her to not advance. She looked down, to see the object was a shining golden arrow. Minos looked up, to see a tall figure sitting on a nearby pillar, wearing a Gold Cloth. “Who are you? The final barrier between me and the Sanctuary?”

“My name is Bismuth. I am the Sagittarius Gold Saint.” She declared, as she looked down upon the Specters, holding her golden bow tightly, before she reached for her back. Another golden arrow appeared in her hands, seemingly out of nowhere, and she aimed it towards the Specters. “I cannot guarantee that any of you will remain alive if you dare to take even one more step.”

“You idiot, do you really think you can defeat us Specters with a bow and arrows?” Asked one of the Specters, as three of them dashed towards Bismuth. “We Terrestrial Stars can move at a speed of Mach 5! Those arrows will look like they’re in slow motion when compared to us!”

Bismuth’s body seemed to glow for just a moment, before the Specters fell to the ground, groaning in pain, and looked down to see three arrows were fired, each of them perfectly piercing the hearts of the three Specters.

“It was just a flash of light… She fired at the speed… of light!” One of the Specters whispered, before they stopped moving and died.

“When she says that she is ready to kill us, she is not threatening or trying to intimidate us, she speaks as if she simply stating a fact.” One of the specters commented, as Minos turned around to see a small and skinny Specter walking out of the crowd. “As honest as the stars, and as straight forward as an arrow. She truly is quite a sight to be seen.”

“Cheshire.” Minos whispered to the small Specter.

“It is just like the little one said.” Bismuth declared, as she leaped out of the pillar and landed right in front of the group of Specters. “How will it be? Will you rather die by my arrow, or run away with your tail between your legs?”

“How dare you?” One of the Specters yelled in anger. “We’re going to kill you.”

“Stand down, you idiots.” Cheshire declared, jumping and blocking the way of the Specters. “Even hundreds of you put together wouldn’t be able to even scratch her Cloth.”

“What? Do you expect us to just run away?” Asked one of the furious Specters.

“Watch and learn, fools!” Declared Cheshire, as he leaped ahead and landed right in front of Bismuth. “I will be her opponent!”

“Aren’t you too young to be in a war?” Bismuth asked.

“Joke while you can.” Cheshire laughed. “My human name was Soup, but now I am Cait Sith Cheshire, the Terrestrial Star of Wildness.”

“It would be against my code of honor to kill a child… but you’re not a child anymore, are you?” Bismuth commented, as she pulled another arrow and pointed it towards Cheshire. “You are just a Specter wearing a child’s body, and now that you’ve approached me, death is your only option.”

“Do you think we Specters fear death?” Cheshire asked in a mocking tone, as she smiled widely. “We’re all dead here.”

“Sagittarius Golden Arrow!” Bismuth declared as she fired the golden arrow right onto Cheshire’s chest, piercing her right through the heart, as a look of desperation replaced her smile, and she began falling to the ground.

“Only joking!” Cheshire declared as the smile once again formed on her face, and her body seemed to evaporate into nothingness, leaving behind only her smile and eyes, which slowly vanished, as the golden arrow that had seemingly pierced her heart fell to the ground, without even a drop of blood. Bismuth pulled another arrow and prepared it, looking around for the small Specter.

“Illusion?” Bismuth asked herself. “No, I am sure my arrow struck her. She is hiding herself with some bizarre power…”

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” Cheshire asked in a mocking tone, her voice seemingly coming from every direction.

Bismuth suddenly felt a sharp pain in her back, and notice Cheshire had appeared behind her and struck her with the cat claws. Bismuth turned around and prepared to fire, only for Cheshire to once again evaporate, as she felt the claws piercing her stomach, and looked down to see Cheshire smiling before disappearing once again.

“Hide and Seek!” Cheshire declared as she continued to strike bismuth from several different directions while evaporating. “This is the ultimate technique, allowing my body to evaporate into nothingness!”

Cheshire struck Bismuth several more times, as blood began coming out of the wounds all over the Gold Saint’s body.

“I know there is a small village, not too far away from here. It is filled with civilians, who do not have any power to defend themselves!” Cheshire declared as she continued to strike and evaporate in quick succession, as Bismuth’s eyes widened in surprise. “Maybe we should pay them a little visit before going to the Sanctuary. What do you think, Gryphon?”

“I bet Lord Hades would love this idea.” Minos commented with a smile.

Bismuth closed her eyes, right before Cheshire struck her face with her claws, blood coming out of the wound. Bismuth sensed the movement of the air around her, ignoring Cheshire’s attempts to distract her with the sound of her loud laugh. Cheshire struck Bismuth several more times, before Bismuth turned around and fired an arrow downwards, nearly hitting Cheshire, only missing by a few centimeters.

“You idiot! Even if you can fire at the speed of light, you can’t hit pure nothingness!” Cheshire declared maniacally, as she attacked with her claws once again, aiming directly towards Bismuth’s throat, only to find her claws suddenly stopped, as if her arm had suddenly been paralyzed. “What?”

“Did you think I had missed?” Bismuth asked while opening her eyes, as Cheshire looked down, to see the arrow Bismuth had fired had struck the ground right on top of Cheshire’s shadow. “Shadow Arrow! The arrow that locks your shadow in place. If your shadow cannot move, neither can your body!”

“You pretended to miss so you could get me by surprise!” Cheshire yelled in shock.

“Curiouser and curiouser, don’t you think?” Bismuth asked with a smile, before she fired yet another arrow, which flew and pierced Cheshire right through the forehead, the tip of the arrow coming out of the other side of her skull, before Cheshire fell to the ground dead. Bismuth calmly turned around and stared directly towards Minos. “What will you do now, Underworld Judge? Will you send those other Specters to be slaughtered as well, or will you finally come so I may kill you myself?”

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Rodorio Village, Greece:

“What is going on out there?” A carpenter asked. “I’ve been hearing screams coming from outside the village all day!”

“The Saints are fighting again!” The woman who worked at the marketplace declared in surprise.

“The Saints of Athena?” A little girl asked, as she looked down at the small scarf around her neck. “I wonder if Miss Bismuth is involved.”

“The Saints are going to be too busy protecting Athena and the Sanctuary to care about us!” The carpenter declared. “If we get attacked, we’ll be completely abandoned! We will end up involved in the Holy War just because we live near the Sanctuary!”

“You are wrong!” The little girl yelled, as the two turned to look at her. “The Saints of Athena are the protectors of the Earth! They would never just stand aside when innocent people are in danger!”

The girl once again looked at the scarf around her neck.

“I am sure they are going to protect us no matter what!”

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Right outside Sanctuary, Greece:

“You’re an interesting person, Sagittarius Bismuth.” Minos declared as she took several steps towards the Gold Saint. “You will be quite an interesting marionet for me to play with.”

Bismuth prepared her arrow and pointed it directly towards Minos’ heart.

“My human name was Jenny Pizza, but I am now Gryphon Minos, the Celestial Star of Nobility. One of the three Judges of the Underworld.” Minos declared with a wicked smile. “You will have the honor to be killed by me!”

Bismuth fired her arrow, before Minos suddenly flapped the wings of her surplice, and a powerful gust of wind flew from her body, flying in every direction. The wind continued to speed up more and more, before becoming powerful enough to blow the arrow away, and forming into a gigantic hurricane. Bismuth protected her eyes from the wind, as the ruins around them fell apart, and even the other Specters were blown away by the powerful wind of the gryphon’s wings.

“Infernal Wings!” Minos declared.

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Rodorio Village, Greece:

“What is that?” The woman asked, as they saw the gigantic hurricane in the distance. “It’s like the world is about to end!”

“Miss Bismuth!” The little girl whispered in worry.

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Right outside the Sanctuary, Greece:

“Such a violent attack! Is she trying to destroy everything?” Bismuth asked in surprise, before she opened her eyes to see Minos standing directly in front of her, close enough for Bismuth to feel her breathing. Bismuth threw a quick punch, knocking Minos’ helmet off, before leaping away and preparing yet another arrow, only to find herself unable to pull the bow. “What? Why won’t my body move?”

“Cosmic Marionet!” Minos declared as she moved her fingers, and the invisible strings she had placed around Bismuth’s body while she was distracted with the hurricane began forcefully pulling her body, making the bow and arrow fall off her hands and hit the ground. “How do you feel without the protection of your golden bow? You must feel like a fragile arrow about to be broken in a half.”

“Damn you, Specter!” Bismuth groaned in pain, as the strings began pulling and twisting her body, making her dance awkwardly against her will, while Minos smiled and moved her fingers. “My body is moving against my will!”

“It seems like not even one of the twelve strongest warriors in Athena’s army is more than a puppet for me to control!” Minos smiled confidently. “Now, let’s go to town on that pretty face of yours!”

Minos moved her fingers, as Bismuth looked down to see her hand closing into a fist, before it struck her own face, making blood come out of Bismuth’s nose. Minos laughed as she continued to use Bismuth’s own fist to attack her.

“It would be a waste to break you so fast.” Minos commented. “Specters, go attack the village. I’ll play around with this Saint for a little bit.”

“Yes, Mistress!” The Specters declared, as they began running past the two.

“No!” Bismuth declared, before her golden aura of Cosmo began burning, taking the shape of millions upon millions of shining arrows of pure Cosmo, which flew towards the Specters at the speed of light, piercing right through their bodies millions upon millions of times. “Feel the burning arrows of Sagittarius, capable of destroying the stars in the night sky! Infinity Break!”

“Impossible! How can she fire those arrows without her bow?” One of the Specters screamed, before the light from the arrows obliterated them all.

“Did you really think that a Gold Saint would be so reliant on a weapon? The Golden Bow is used in most of my attacks, but I can also fire arrows by simply using my own Cosmo!” Bismuth declared, as she prepared her shining arrows and fired them towards Minos. “Infinity Break!”

“It seems like you’re not as much of an insect as I had imagined, however…” Minos commented, before she raised her finger, and all of the arrows blew up in midair, as if they had struck an invisible force field. “You’ll need something way stronger to defeat me.”

“That is… a shield?” Bismuth asked, as she realized Minos had created a gigantic shield made entirely of invisible strings, which she used to swat away every single attack with incredible precision and accuracy, giving the illusion that the attacks had just stopped in midair. “So that’s how you avoided the attacks from the Silver Saints!”

“You figured out my trick after only seeing it once. Impressive.” Minos commented. “I wanted to play around with you a little more, but now that you killed all of the other Specters, I’ll have to go and finish the job by myself. But don’t worry, I’ll still pay a visit to that village before destroying the Sanctuary.”

“I won’t let you!” Bismuth declared.

“Quiet, you broken puppet.” Minos declared, before she closed her fists, and massive wounds appeared around Bismuth’s body, before the Gold Saint fell to the ground and a puddle of her own blood formed beneath her. “That Gold Cloth of yours truly is durable. Had it not been for it, your body would have been torn apart, just like those Silver Saints from before. But regardless, you’ve lost enough blood to kill any human.”

Minos walked away, as Bismuth stayed on the ground, unable to get up.

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Sanctuary, Greece:

“Hm?” Lapis asked, as she opened her eyes and began staring into the distance, right in front of the Capricorn Temple. Her eyes suddenly widened in surprise. “Bismuth!”

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Rodorio Village, Greece, Two years earlier:

The little girl sad in the sidewalk, under a piece of the roof of a closed store, which she was using to protect herself from the rain. Her clothes and hair had gotten a little wet when the rain started all of the sudden, but she managed to find cover before they got soaked, which was a good thing, since she didn’t really have any other outfit.

She heard footsteps, and glanced at the source of the sound, to see two figures walking down the street, one muscular and the other skinny. The two were protecting themselves from the rain with umbrellas, but that was not what caught the girl’s attention. The two were wearing shining Gold Cloths. The muscular one stopped walking and glanced at her, before gently holding the skinny one’s shoulder to make her stop as well. The skinny one turned to the girl, before turning to the muscular one and nodding. The muscular one approached the girl.

“Hey, girl, are you okay?” The Gold Saint asked. “Where are your parents?”

“I don’t have any.” The girl explained, hugging her own legs. “I don’t have a home either.”

The Gold Saint reached for the scarf around her own neck and took it off, before gently placing it around the little girl’s neck.

“What is your name?” The Gold Saint asked.

“Agathia.”

“You have a beautiful name, Agathia. My name is Bismuth.” The Gold Saint explained, as she took the girl by the hand and helped her to her feet. Bismuth turned to the other Gold Saint. “Hey, Lapis, I’ll take this girl to an orphanage. Tell the Pope that I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Lapis nodded, before she began walking away. Agathia looked up to see Bismuth smiling kindly, as she carefully placed her umbrella above Agathia’s head, and the two began walking together down the street.

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Rodorio Village, Greece, Present day:

“This place is so calm and peaceful. I can see why Sagittarius wanted to protect it.” Minos commented as he stood on top of one of the buildings in the village, before a wicked smile formed across her face. “Infernal Wings!”

The flapping of the Surplice’s wings created a massive blast of wind, which blew up the building and began expanding, shattering right through several smaller buildings nearby, before Minos began jumping around the city while laughing maniacally. He heard the sound of the civilians screaming and running for their lives, as the wind generated by Minos’ attack continued to ravage the city in the form of a massive tornado.

“What is going on?” Agathia asked as she stood amidst the crowd of fleeing people, becoming lost amidst the chaos.

“Hey, kid! Don’t just stand around! Run!” Declared the carpenter as he ran toward Agathia alongside the woman from the marketplace, when a nearby building suddenly exploded, and a large wall fell upon the two adults, crushing them both. Agathia tried to run towards them, when she suddenly saw a tall figure dressed in black coming out of the smoke and jumping right in front of her. Agathia stared up at Minos in fear, before taking a few steps back and falling to the ground.

“That scarf around your neck stinks of a Saint’s Cosmo.” Minos declared, smiling maniacally. “I wonder how it will look like when I paint it red with your blood.”

Agathia stared up at the Specter, trembling in fear as Minos approached her, before she finally gathered enough strength to speak.

“M-Miss Bismuth is coming to save us!” Agathia yelled from the top of her lungs.

“Really?” Minos asked sarcastically, as she began burning her Cosmo, a dark aura appearing around her. “Let’s see if she can save you from this!”

Minos fired a large blast of Cosmo towards Agathia, who screamed and covered her eyes with her hands. Agathia saw a bright light, before something knocked Minos’ blast away, and Agathia saw a glimpse of a Gold Cloth.

“Miss Bismuth?” Agathia yelled, before she looked up.

“I, Capricorn Lapis, will not allow you to hurt anyone else in this city.” Lapis declared, as she held up her hand in the shape of a karate chop.

“Capricorn, hm?” Minos commented. “I’ll get to kill two Gold Saints before even entering the Sanctuary. Talk about a lucky day.”

“How dare you? Attacking defenseless civilians who don’t even know how to burn their Cosmo!” Lapis declared.

“And what are you going to do about that?” Minos asked in a mocking tone.

“I’ll slice your head right off!” Lapis declared.

“Lapis!” They heard, before Agathia’s eyes widened, and she turned around to see a figure walking towards them.

“You are…” Lapis whispered.

“What? But how?” Minos asked in surprise.

“Miss Bismuth!” Agathia yelled, as Bismuth approached the battlefield, blood coming out from the several wounds all over her body.

“If she wants to get to Capricorn, she has to get past Sagittarius first!” Bismuth declared. “Minos is my enemy!”

“I broke every bone in your body!” Minos declared angrily. “Just how the hell can you still move?”

“If I died without protecting this village, I would not be a worthy predecessor to whoever comes to wear this Cloth after me, would I?” Bismuth asked, as she prepared her bow and pulled an arrow, aiming it right at Minos’ heart, before her Cosmo began burning. “Infinity Break!”

Bismuth fired millions upon millions of light arrows out of her Cosmo, which Minos swiftly blocked by putting her finger up and swatting each of the attacks away with her invisible strings. Bismuth’s Cosmo continued to grow more and more with each arrow, as she continued to fire endlessly, even as all of the wounds in her body began bleeding intensively.

“Miss Bismuth!” Agathia yelled, before Lapis pulled her away and began shielding the girl’s body with her own.

“I’ve never seen Bismuth fire so many arrows before! She, who is the most powerful among all twelve Gold Saints, is pushing herself to her absolute limit!” Lapis declared in worry. “But if she continues to burn so much of her Cosmo with those wounds… she will die from blood loss for sure!”

Bismuth continued to fire her powerful arrows, as her body continued to bleed, before her vision began to blurry, and she fell to her knees, just barely being able to hold the golden bow, struggling to continue aiming at Minos’ heart as her hands began to shake.

“It seems like you’ve reached your limit, Sagittarius!” Minos declared, before she fired her strings towards Bismuth, once again tying her up like a puppet. “Cosmic Marionette!”

“Now!” Bismuth declared, before she screamed and exploded her Cosmo outwards as much as she could.

“What? Impossible!” Minos declared in surprise, as the strings around Bismuth’s body began burning. “She used all of the Cosmo she had left in a single burst of energy to destroy my strings!”

“Sagittarius Golden Arrow!” Bismuth declared as she fired her arrow, which flew at the speed of light and struck Minos right on the chest, piercing through her heart, as the tip of the arrow came out through her back. Bismuth fell to the ground as her wounds continued to bleed intensively.

“I… Gryphon Minos… the great puppet master who pulls the cosmic strings… have been defeated by an arrow…” Minos asked, before she fell face first to the ground. “Is this the power of the Gold Saints?”

Minos closed her eyes as she died, before Lapis and Agathia ran towards Bismuth in worry.

“Is Miss Bismuth going to be okay?” Agathia asked in worry.

“I don’t know!” Lapis declared as she took Bismuth in her arms. “I’ll take her back to the Sanctuary! She needs medical treatment, immediately!”

Agathia looked around, to see the several destroyed buildings, with several bodies stuck under the debris, several people hurt and screaming in pain, or dead in the middle of the streets.

“If this Holy War continues… more people are just going to get hurt and die!” Agathia yelled in despair, as tears began coming out of her eyes. “Why does it have to be like this?”

“Agathia…” She heard, before she looked up to see Bismuth was awake, just barely being able to keep her conscience. “We don’t fight to die… nor to hurt others… We fight… so that we can protect love and justice in this world… We don’t fight for death… We fight for life… Even if death is all that awaits me in the end of this fight… I am going to keep on fighting…”

Agathia stared at Bismuth for a few moments, before nodding. Lapis nodded as well, before she began running towards the Sanctuary with Bismuth in her arms.

“Don’t worry, Agathia…” Bismuth thought, right before she began to faint. “It is not time for me to die yet.”

To be continued.

Author’s note: This was the first chapter in the story that focused on characters entirely separate from our main cast. This was a thing I always loved when The Lost Canvas did, it really gave the feeling that this is an actual war, not just a small battle that focuses only on our protagonists, so I tried to do something similar. Did it work? Out of the Gold Saints revealed so far in the story, which one are you guys the most curious to see more of? Thank you for reading.

Cloth designs:

Auriga Capella wears the Auriga Cloth, that looks like this:

Centaur Babel wears the Centaur Cloth, that looks like this:

Sagitta Tremy wears the Sagitta Cloth, that looks like this:

Cait Sith Cheshire, Soup’s Specter form, wears the Cait Sith Surplice, that looks like this:

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wisdomrays · 3 years ago

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TAFAKKUR: Part 424

THE SUN

SURELY EVERY PERSON AT SOME TIME LOOKS UP AT THE SUN AND MOON AND THE BRILLIANT STARS AND ASKS, WHO POSITIONED ALL THESE SO PERFECTLY ON THE FACE OF THE SKY’?

People have always marvelled at the stars and planets. But they have not always realized that there is a harmony in their positions and movements, a law and order, as indeed in the whole universe. For example, seen from the perspective of the ancient Greek astronomers, celestial bodies in the universe are aimless objects. That seems to be the implication of the term ‘planet’ which means ‘wandering’. The Greeks may have thought the ‘wandering stars’ or ‘planets’ moved in unstable orbits, more or less randomly.

The ancient astronomers’ judgement was not founded upon the Oneness of the Creator Who orders everything in the universe. Inevitably they did not have a clear grasp of the orderliness of the macro-cosmos and did not seek it.

The Qur’an revealed many centuries ago that it is Allah who created the heavenly bodies and put them into their peculiar orbits. There is nothing in the Islamic teachings that argues the view that phenomena or events are random.

Do they not look at the sky above them, how We have built it and adorned , and there are no flaws in it. (50.6)

We have built above you seven strong (heavens) and placed therein a blazing lamp. (78.12)

The ‘blazing lamp’ referred to is the sun.

People have always been fascinated by the thousands of gleaming lights sprinkled across the night sky. Today many enjoy looking into the heavens and learning about the patterns and positions of the stars, and discovering what stars can tell us about our universe as a whole. From our planet, if very high buildings and city lights permit, we can see about 6,000 stars with the naked eye. They change in colour, size, and brilliance.

We are near enough to one particular star, the sun, to find out many details about what these celestial bodies are made of and how they function. A star is composed of gases and other substances compressed together under the force of gravity. The pressure at the core of a forming star is sufficiently intense to initiate nuclear reactions that begin generating energy. During this process, matter is converted into energy, releasing large quantities of heat and light.

The sun may not catch up the moon, nor may the night outstrip the day. Each one is moving smoothly in its own orbit ( 36.40). Here an essential fact is clearly stated, namely the existence of the solar and lunar orbits. At the time of the Revelation, it was generally believed that the sun orbited a motionless earth. This, the geocentric system, had held sway from the early second century (the time of Ptolemy). It continued to do so until the sixteenth century. Fourteen centuries ago, the Qur’an directed the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and, through them, all of mankind, towards the truth. The demonstration of the existence and details of the solar and lunar orbits is one of the recent achievements of modern astronomy.

Those who do not believe in One Creator maintain that everything comes about by chance. They do not realize that every creature in motion, from minute particles to the planets, displays on itself the stamp of the Eternal and of His Unity. Also, by reason of its movement, each of them, in some sense, takes possession of all the places in which it travels in the name of Unity, thus including them in the property of its Owner. As for those creatures not in motion, each of them, from plants to the fixed stars, is like a seal of Unity that shows the place in which it is situated to be the letter of its Maker. That is to say, each flower and fruit is a stamp and seal of unity that demonstrates, in the name of Unity, that its habitat and native place is the letter of its Maker. What all that inter-connectednes means is that one who does not have all the stars within his command does not have command over a single small particle either.

There are two other verses in the Qur’an about the sun and the moon and their usefulness to human beings, not only as light, but also as points of reference for space and time:

Allah subjected the night and the day for you, the sun and the moon. The stars are in subjection to His Command. Verily in this are signs for people who are wise. (16.12)

Allah is the One Who made the sun a lamp and the moon a light and ordained for it mansions, so that you might know the number of years and the reckoning (of the time).

Allah created this in truth. He explains the signs in detail for people who know (10.5)

The solar system comprises the sun and the nine planets that orbit it. The closest to the sun is the planet Mercury, at an average distance of 58 million km; the farthest, Pluto, is 5,900 million km from the sun. The closer a planet is to the sun, the shorter the time taken to complete its orbit. Thus, Mercury takes only 88 earth days to go round it, while Pluto orbits the sun only once in 248 earth years. Absolute time and distance are nowadays both measured in terms of light speed–a metre, for example, can be defined as the distance the light travels in a certain ‘space’ of time, in fact, 0.000000003335640952 seconds.

It is hard to think of the sun as a passing event. Nevertheless, its ‘term’ is fixed–the Qur’an is explicit on this point: And the sun runs its course for a period fixed for it (36.38). So, how long has the sun left to run? Astronomers nowadays calculate about 4.5 billion more years in its present state. It will still have nearly the same surface temperature (6.000 Â°C) and yellowish colour that it has now but it will appear about twice as bright because it will be about 60 percent bigger. Its next 4.5 billion years will have begun to take their toll on the sun’s nuclear fuel supply. What then? We don’t really know. Any calculations we make can only be made on the basis of theory.

The sun is full of gases composed of two thousand trillion tons (2x103 kg) of matter,

with the remains of other elements. For every million atoms of hydrogen there are about 85,000 helium atoms and only about 1,000 of any other kind. Pressure from all that mass compressing into the centre of the sun is high enough for the hydrogen atoms to fuse in the core to form helium. This simultaneously creates new energy which keeps the sun from collapsing further and provides the energy that allows it to (or makes it) shine. A series of nuclear fusion reactions, whose end result is the conversion of hydrogen to helium, happen on a vast scale and release very great amounts of energy in the form of heat, light, X-rays and so on. A part of this reaction must be the release of so-called neutrinos. Neutrinos are particles that interact so little with other matter that they can probably float through entire galaxies without being affected. They exist but have no mass nor any other physical property, which is like saying that they simultaneously exist and do not exist: we know they must be around by the way the movement of other (‘real’) particles is affected. If the theory about the way that the sun shines is correct, the sun should be producing about 180x1036 neutrinos each second. Obviously, only a small portion of these neutrinos will come in the earth’s direction.

The sun generates magnetic fields deep in its interior. Through mechanisms not yet fully understood, some of these fields erupt periodically through the sun’s surface, the photosphere. The high temperature and structure of the corona are produced by energy pumped from the photosphere up into the outer layer of the sun’s atmosphere along these magnetic fields.

The sun has been fusing hydrogen into helium throughout its present lifetime of 4.5 billion years, using up less than half of the available hydrogen in its core. By another 4.5 billion years, 90 percent of the available hydrogen in the core will have been converted into helium. Serious questions about the fusion rate in the sun still remain, but according to one theory, the humans of the future will face a sun that is running out of core hydrogen.

When that happens, the gas temperature and pressure will drop and the interior of the sun will collapse under the weight of the surrounding mass. The pressure in the collapsing gas will build up sufficiently for a rind of hydrogen to start burning around the core, now helium. This fusion will provide an outward force on the outermost layers of the sun, pushing them farther out than they are now. The surface of the sun will expand outward until it reaches the orbit of Venus.

Finally, this hydrogen outside the core will run out. The core of the sun will continue to contract, trying to replace the heat no longer generated by hydrogen burning. When the internal temperatures reach 100 million Kelvins, the helium (generated by the hydrogen burning) will itself start to burn. This will happen quickly, forming a carbon-rich core. Around this burned-out core, helium burning will start, and then the rind of hydrogen also will start to burn. The vast energy released by both rinds will push the sun’s outer layers further out until they reach the orbit of Jupiter. Earth will then be ‘inside’ the sun. The temperature on the surface of earth, around 6.5 billion years from now, will be around 30,000 Kelvins, and everything organic will be burned to a crisp.

Intelligent beings on earth 5 or 6 billion years from now, if any, would face the pressure to leave earth and, indeed, the solar system. They would need to have colonized planets around younger (therefore more stable) stars in order to survive. It is likely that humans in the near future will move off the earth in search of mineralogical and economic gain, whereas the future beings of our speculation will move off in order to save the species. The ageing sun will give future life a focus and a goal. And then, if we may be permitted to use the expression, a sort of Doomsday will have happened: certainly, the sun will have run to the end of its appointed (muslaqarr) time.

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lady-divine-writes · 5 years ago

Text

Trust (Rated NC17)

Summary: After close to a decade of not seeing one another, a box shows up at Aziraphale's bookshop, its contents a reminder of emotional wounds ...

... and a cry for help. (4931 words)

Notes: So yeah, apparently I lied when I said I was finished writing au's based off of @whiteleyfoster's 'Prince of Omens'. This idea hit me quite out of the blue, that by creating the Prince of Omens au, it sort of altered the timeline of the original story, which then led me to imagine filling in the gaps of history with stories starring this version of the characters. This takes place, I would say, sometime between the Blitz and the 60s, which may have fed into some of the decisions taken place by the characters between that time. Plus, I thought it was a very romantic, touching, and hot moment for the two of them, being sniffed out by Hell. Anyway, let me know what you all think <3

Read on AO3.

Please say you trust me.

Those are the only words written on the gold card tucked inside the box that shows up at Aziraphale’s bookshop on Thursday afternoon, packed alongside a few other choice items: a white blindfold, a pair of golden handcuffs, and a hotel room key. There’s no return address on the box, no name on the card, only the initials AJC.

But Aziraphale didn’t need those.

He knew.

Before he opened the box and saw its contents, he knew who’d sent it.

He could sense Crowley’s magical signature all over it.

Aziraphale examines the contents for a long while, his heart pounding in his chest. They’re not a random collection of offerings. Aside from how Crowley means them, each one is symbolic.

The white blindfold harks back to the ribbon that has become so sacred to Crowley - the one Aziraphale tied around the plant he gave the demon back in Egypt.

The meaning behind the cuffs comes from around that same time.

Standing on the banks of the Red Sea, watching Moses tend to his flock of the faithful as they readied themselves for the journey on, Crowley had gazed across the water in the direction they’d come, the bitterest, sweetest expression of sorrow on his handsome face.

“What is it, my dear?” Aziraphale had asked. “Why do you seem so melancholy? All’s well that ends well, don’t you think?”

“How is it,” he’d said, staring at the water, unable to look Aziraphale in the eye, “that I can continue to be such a tremendous failure?”

“How can you say that!? None of these people would have been able to escape Pharaoh if not for you! You’re a hero!”

“But just as many lost their lives because of me! Because I was too arrogant to be specific with my instructions! But that’s just who I am … what I do …”

“No, my dear …” Aziraphale put a hand on his arm “… that’s not true at all. Stop saying that … please …”

Crowley turned to Aziraphale but with eyes shut, unable to take his kindness, accept his sympathy.

“It’s humbling. They showered me with riches, built me a temple. I’d planted myself as a God among them so I could stir up a little mischief, but they tempted me. And like an idiot, I fell for it.” Crowley shook his head. “To be brought to my knees, have that torn away … it makes me realize what I really am. What I’ve been all along.”

“Lesson learned then,” Aziraphale said. Crowley’s eyes snapped open, heartbreak dulling their shimmering gold depths. “Because you are what you should be. And that’s free.”

Crowley’s brow furrowed. “W-what do you mean?”

“The temple, those clothes, the gold - they had strings attached. They kept you beholden to Pharaoh. Turned you into a slave.” Aziraphale shifted Crowley’s gaze away from the water and aimed it towards the land, to the people gathered there. “By doing what you did, helping these people, enduring, suffering … you’re not a slave anymore. Not to Pharaoh. You’re free.”

Aziraphale recalls those words, the smile they’d brought to Crowley’s face, the embrace that followed, the dozen kisses and more … and he frowns.

Because where it’s true that Crowley freed himself from Egypt, he’s still a servant.

As is Aziraphale.

They’re both in the same boat - conscripted to a higher power that commands their moves, often using them as pawns.

Or worse.

As toys.

And they play with them the way spoiled children do.

Roughly.

If they break, Heaven and Hell will consign them to the bottom of the toy box and find new angels and demons to replace them.

Aziraphale has a sinking suspicion that’s part of what’s going on now - Hell commanding its servant, holding his feet to the fire. But to do what, Aziraphale hasn’t a clue.

The words written on the card are a linchpin.

Please say you trust me.

Aziraphale had said something similar to Crowley when they’d made love in his temple and he’d used his precious white ribbon on him as a blindfold.

Crowley repeated the sentiment back to him when God sent Death to reap the first born. Death would have reaped Crowley, too, if not for Aziraphale. Crowley promised he would try to save the innocent but that Aziraphale needed to have faith in him.

Aziraphale said - “Always, my dear.”

Faith.

Trust.

Aziraphale and Crowley had known one another for 2500 years by the time they met up in Egypt, but it was during that time that Aziraphale truly learned to trust Crowley. Crowley had been gifted Aziraphale’s trust during the years they spent watching over Moses. He lost it, but earned it back in spades. Since then, he’s run to Aziraphale’s rescue time and time again, saving him from beheadings, bombings …

… re-assignment.

And despite this cloak-and-dagger, Aziraphale trusts Crowley now.

Aziraphale didn’t know Crowley was in town. They hadn’t seen one another in close to a decade. Aziraphale knew Crowley would turn up one of these days, but not like this.

He holds out hope the objects in the box are for pleasure, but he’s sure they’re for business. Trust or no, that makes him nervous. He doesn’t like not knowing what’s in store for him. The real torture will be in waiting, guessing.

But, luckily, not too long.

Aziraphale finds out the following night.

He had no idea when Crowley would call for him. He’d hoped Crowley would come for him himself - show up on his doorstep in a smart black suit, all seductive secrets and sly smiles.

A car comes for him instead, driven by a human chauffeur.

A block away from the hotel, he senses them.

Demons.

Lots of them.

Lurking around corners, hiding in the shadows, ducking out of sight.

Watching him arrive.

Even on this main thoroughfare bustling with people, there are more demons around than he’s ever felt in a single place.

His body goes cold.

“Long night?” Aziraphale asks the driver, making small talk to keep his mind off of whatever’s waiting for him ahead. It feels like a trap, every molecule of his celestial form screaming at him to get out of the car and run, that he’s been betrayed. But he can’t think like that. Crowley wouldn’t put him in harm’s way.

He has to believe heart and soul he wouldn’t.

Especially not after that note.

Please say you trust me.

“You could say that.”

“Where are you headed after this, my dear?”

“I’ve been hired on for the night by the blokes who hired me to get you,” the man says, peeking at Aziraphale through the rear view. “Good thing, too. Heaven knows I need the money.”

“Hard times, hmm?”

“It’s my daughter Liza,” the man says with a lump in his throat. “She’s come down sick. The doctors here don’t know what to do for her. We’re hoping to take her to the states. We’ve heard there are doctors there that can help her.”

“I see.” Aziraphale scans the streets around them. Something doesn’t feel right (on top of everything else that already doesn’t feel right). Evil clings to this man, though, in his heart, he is good.

It’s not him, Aziraphale discovers as he reaches out with his angelic senses. It’s the company he keeps. He’s been hired by demons. Not Crowley but others. They’ve promised him a great deal of money to be their errand boy - escort prostitutes around the city and deliver some dangerous packages to some powerful people.

But they have no intention of paying him.

Because he will not survive the night.

He’s disposable. A nobody in the grand scheme. That’s why they hired him. That’s what the demons are counting on - cruel since demons can masquerade as humans and do their own dirty work.

But it’s loads more fun to trick some unsuspecting mortal to do it for them.

In the end, after he’s taken part in some shady deals (unbeknownst to him) they’ll have his soul for Hell. It’s a demonic loophole. (They have enough lawyers to ensure them it’s sound.) And even though Aziraphale wants to maintain a low profile, he can’t let this happen.

The chauffeur pulls up to the curb in front of The Savoy and puts his car into park.

“Here we are,” he says, looking over his shoulder at Aziraphale. “Do you need help up to your room or …?”

“Not at all, young man.” Aziraphale reaches into his pocket and pulls out a rolled-up wad of notes bound together by a rubber band. The driver waits patiently for Aziraphale to count out his tip. His eyes blow wide when Aziraphale hands him the entire thing.

“I … are you serious, sir?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says with a smile. “For a job well done. Best ride I’ve had in ages.”

“I … I can’t accept this!” the man says, an expression of pain passing over his face as a voice in his head - probably his wife’s - screams, ‘Yes, you can, you idiot! Don’t argue!’ “I only drove you twelve city blocks!”

“You can accept it, and you will.” Aziraphale snaps his fingers, using a little angelic magic to cease any more arguing. “And now you’re going to drive straight home, pack your family up, and head to the airport. Get on board TWA flight 530 to Los Angeles, and get your daughter well.”

A second snap of his fingers sees to that. Liza will greet her father at the door to their humble flat completely cancer free. But Aziraphale needs to get him and his family out of town. He knows what will happen when the demons discover this man has skipped out on his duties.

Needless to say, they won’t be happy.

“Thank you, sir! I … I don’t know how I could ever re-pay you!”

“I do. Forget you ever saw me. And forget the men who hired you.” Aziraphale snaps one last time, gets out of the car, and heads for the front door. He pauses when he hears the car pull away from the curb, watching it drive off into the night. If a demon ever does manage to catch up with him, they should be able to tell that his mind has been wiped by an angel. That and the fact that he’s blessed should keep them off his back.

Aziraphale shows his key to the doorman, who directs him to the room he needs. He declines any more offers of help and continues on alone.

For a Friday night, it’s pretty mellow at The Savoy. Most everyone is out on the town, living it up. Which means no one notices the middle-aged man in the cream-colored coat slip down the hallway and take the elevator to the top floor.

No one will notice if he disappears.

He starts out with shoulders squared and head held high, carrying the box Crowley sent him tucked under one arm. But as he walks down the quiet hall, the demonic smell growing stronger and more pungent with every step, the box creeps out from underneath his arm to his chest where he hugs it close.

He stops in front of the door and fits the key in the lock, his hands shaking as he does. He breathes out slowly, counts to three. He hasn’t even unlocked the door but he feels him on the other side.

Crowley.

In this room.

Waiting for him.

Crowley summoned him here and now Aziraphale is about to turn himself over to him.

Him and about a dozen other demons.

His heart double-thumps with excitement.

His head swims with fear.

He unlocks the door, pushes it open.

It opens unto darkness.

“Hello?” he calls inside, reluctant to take a step in but he knows he must.

Please say you trust me.

Those words ring in his ears. They aren’t simple words, not easy. They have weight to them, a history.

They’re a plea.

It’s not until he closes the door behind him that he notices Crowley’s silhouette standing beside the foot of a large bed over by the window.

The door locks behind him without him touching it.

It’s more than a bit unsettling.

Aziraphale walks over to the bed and sets the box down .

“Crowley?” he says, waiting for the demon to acknowledge his arrival in any way. Aziraphale wants to rush into his arms, kiss him on the mouth, whisper words of love against his skin.

But a voice in his mind tells him this isn’t the time for that.

It’s ridiculous. He knows he’s in very real danger of being discorporated but he can’t help noticing … Crowley looks stunning. He’s been growing his hair out. It’s not long yet, but it’s not short either. It’s just long enough for Aziraphale to run his fingers through, wind the strands around and pull him close. He’s dressed for bed - barefoot, black pajama pants, and shirtless, the planes of his chest and his flat stomach on enticing display. Even his scar - that horrible scar from Aziraphale’s flaming sword - looks delicious in this low light.

Positively kissable.

And he’s not wearing his glasses. Not hiding his eyes.

Though he’s never had to hide his eyes from Aziraphale.

Crowley doesn’t look at Aziraphale as the angel inches closer, eyes searching his face for an explanation. Aziraphale gets within touching distance, but Crowley takes a step away.

“Take off your clothes,” he commands.

“Wh-what?”

“What’s wrong, principality? Did I stutter?”

“No,” Aziraphale says, fighting to maintain a composure that’s a feather’s touch away from shattering like a plate glass window, “you didn’t. But I …”

“Then be a good little angel and obey. Maybe you haven’t noticed but you’re not the one in control. You have no power here.”

Snickers travel around the room and from the strangest of locations: in a closet, under the bed, on the ceiling. Aziraphale doesn’t look up to check. If there is a demon hanging from the chandelier above him, he’d rather not see it with his own eyes.

Stunned into silence like Crowley slapped him in the face, Aziraphale slips off his coat and lays it on the bed, then reaches for his shirt. With every button he undoes, his mind reels, searching for a solution. From the smell of this place, there are demons everywhere - in the room, in the hallway, on the street outside. So running is not an option. He could miracle his way out, but that would cause a paper trail he’d have to explain to Gabriel, which would lead to three possible outcomes: one - Gabriel reprimands Aziraphale for the use of a frivolous miracle (because, apparently, saving himself is considered frivolous); two - this incident starts a battle with Hell, which may not end well for Earth as a whole; or three - Gabriel presses Hell for answers and Hell offers up Crowley as a sacrifice.

Aziraphale can’t risk hurting Crowley any more than he could risk hurting Earth. Plus, that would leave Crowley at the mercy of Hell since his mission would have failed.

Aziraphale has no choice but to play along and hope that an explanation comes to light.

He’ll keep you safe. He won’t hurt you. He’ll explain this to you. Trust him.

“Everything,” Crowley says when Aziraphale stops at his pants, his voice undeniably softer when he says, “I want to see everything.”

That softness, more than anything, encourages Aziraphale on.

When Aziraphale has completely undressed, Crowley approaches. His eyes - a serpent’s eyes from rim to rim where they’d normally appear a bit more human - are uncharacteristically unforgiving, but Aziraphale doesn’t miss the subtle once over Crowley gives him, how it causes him to miss a step.

Crowley reaches out a hand. Aziraphale thinks he’s reaching for him, his body starving for his touch. For a second, Crowley seems to consider it. But he grabs the box instead. He opens it, exposing its contents. He reaches inside and pulls out the golden handcuffs. He grabs Aziraphale’s wrists, locking them in front of him.

“C-Crowley? What’s going on?” Aziraphale asks, starting to get nervous, the other demons in the room an ominous presence even though he doesn’t see them. “You’re going a bit fast for me.”

Crowley leads Aziraphale to the bed, maneuvers him like a dog on a leash by the chain of those handcuffs, has him climb up on it and kneel on the mattress. Then he takes Aziraphale by the chin and stares deep into his eyes. “Pay attention, principality, because I won’t tell you again.” Crowley starts to speak, posturing on about how Aziraphale is his prisoner, how he’s there to serve him, please him, bend to his whims. Aziraphale hears him, his words playing in the corner of his mind like a scratchy record on an ancient gramophone, warped and skipping, out of tune.

But what he hears louder than that are the words Crowley projects to the forefront of his brain.

Words that tremble, steeped in fear.

‘I need your help, angel. Please? Do what I say? They’re watching.’

Aziraphale sees Crowley gulp, feels his own throat ache with the bob of his Adam’s apple.

Crowley’s power is fueled by his imagination. That’s one of the things that makes him unique among demons. Aziraphale and Crowley had discovered long ago that he can make Aziraphale hear whatever he wants him to hear, even over long distances.

He’s using that power now to communicate with him.

‘I know you feel them. I can’t explain but I promise, I won’t let them hurt you. I swear it.’

Crowley takes the blindfold out of the box and starts tying it over Aziraphale’s eyes.

‘I … I don’t understand, Crowley,’ Aziraphale thinks, knowing Crowley will hear.

‘I’ll explain later but please … please say you trust me.’

Aziraphale nods. ‘Always, my dear.’

‘And no matter what I say … know that I love you.’

‘I do.’

Crowley knots the blindfold twice - once to secure it, a second time to stall, giving him a moment to gather the courage he needs to say what’s coming next.

‘I need to compel your wings. They want to see them. They want to see me … force you to reveal them.’

Aziraphale shudders, memories of having his wings ripped into existence by other demons flooding his thoughts.

Crowley sees. His hands ball into fists.

Having one’s wings compelled can be an uncomfortable, even painful business.

It’s also the ultimate humiliation.

But for Crowley, Aziraphale would do practically anything.

‘Of course. Just … be careful.’

‘I will,” Crowley promises, his voice thick with curses and a deep hatred of himself that Aziraphale can’t help but feel. He wishes he could put a comforting hand on his shoulder and give him strength.

With any luck, there will be time for that later.

Aziraphale breathes in deep, trying to relax when he sees Crowley raise a hand. Aziraphale closes his eyes, surrenders control of his wings to Crowley, telling himself it will be okay.

He’s with Crowley. His Crowley. The Crowley he’s known and loved for thousands of years. They’ll get past this hurdle, attack the next.

They’ll get through this together.

The pinch in his shoulder blades feels all too familiar and almost sends him into a panic. He recedes deeper into himself, reminds himself of better times he’s had with Crowley in bed. The room goes silent, the demons observing on the edge of their seats, captivated by the events unfolding in front of them. In the midst of that silence, Aziraphale can hear his own heartbeat.

Immediately following, he hears Crowley’s.

Then their breathing mixed together, the mingling of it bringing a wash of calm to Aziraphale’s mind. A blue glow builds beneath his skin, filling the room, casting eerie shadows of the hiding demons across the floor.

Then his wings begin to appear.

With his eyes closed behind the blindfold, Aziraphale doesn’t see the glow, can’t notice the demons. He feels the heat of Crowley’s power sink into his skin, spiral through his body, coaxing his wings out of hiding with the caress of hands born of fire.

Aziraphale gasps when his wings break free and unfurl, a completion in its own right.

An intensely intimate, highly erotic experience.

Aziraphale stretches his wings when Crowley relinquishes control of them. It is part of the dress code for angels on Earth to keep them hidden, but he feels comforted by them. They soothe him, give him a sense of security.

‘Aziraphale …’

Crowley’s voice pierces its way through Aziraphale’s calm. It’s both welcome and a harsh reminder that this isn’t the end of their ordeal. There’s more to come.

‘Yes?’

‘I need to … umm …’

‘Just tell me, my dear. I’ll do whatever it takes to get us out of this.’

Crowley hems and haws, but he can’t find the strength to say. ‘They’ll want it to look like I’m forcing you.’

‘Do what you must.’

Aziraphale could very well choose to see through the blindfold but he decides not to. He stays in the moment with Crowley, let’s the suspense of his next move well up within him, give the demons in the dark the smell of his anticipation to feast on while they mistake it for fear.

He hears a rustle of fabric, feels Crowley’s hand on his head, a whimper rising from the demon’s throat.

He doesn’t want to do this. Aziraphale knows he doesn’t want to do this.

Crowley pushes down, dragging Aziraphale’s head to his crotch. Aziraphale pretends to struggle. But when he feels the head of Crowley’s cock nudge his lips, he forgets to protest, forgets that they’re in anything even close to danger.

Because he loves Crowley. Crowley loves him.

And it’s been too long since they’ve had one another.

Aziraphale opens his mouth and slowly, ever so slowly, slides down over him, licking along the way, the way he knows Crowley likes, doing his part to remind him that they’re in this together, that he’s with him whatever it takes.

Crowley threads trembling fingers through Aziraphale’s hair, bites his tongue to keep from moaning Aziraphale’s name. He thrusts up with his hips, pushes down lightly, his body begging with every twitch for Aziraphale to go faster.

For him to get this over with, put him out of his misery.

Because Crowley has dreamt of this - just this - since the last time they saw one another.

It’s cruel that he should get it now in front of prying eyes.

He rises to his knees, putting his hands on Aziraphale’s head and taking over, assaulting his mouth shallowly, trying to make it appear to the eyes around him that he’s fucking his mouth, violating him, hurting him. He doesn’t do this to his angel. He’s never done this to him. He wouldn’t.

But it’d be too easy.

It feels too good.

Not just the physical sensation of Aziraphale’s mouth around him, but the pushing him.

The forcing him.

The demon inside him rises up with each thrust, whispers in his ears to snap his hips harder, push in farther, hold Aziraphale’s head flush against him till tears leak from his eyes with the strain of his corporal form holding its breath.

But he can’t do that, he repeats to himself. He won’t do that. He won’t give in.

He won’t become like the owners of those coal black eyes watching them.

“Stop,” Crowley mumbles, mostly to himself, slipping out of Aziraphale’s mouth, regretting it the moment the cool air touches his skin. “That’s not how I want to finish. Hands and knees. Now, angel!”

‘Tell me to stop,’ he projects, ‘then beg me not to. Really sell it.’

“You … you can’t do this!” Aziraphale scrambles to obey, rolling onto his hands and knees. And even though this is fake, his nerves scatter, wondering about the origin of the edge in Crowley’s voice.

The fiery yellow simmer in his eyes, the one he’d glimpsed before the blindfold.

“Please, Crowley! I … I’m begging you! Don’t …”

“Sorry, angel. I want this too much. I need this too much.”

Crowley doesn’t give Aziraphale time to get comfortable. He grabs him, shoves his face to the sheets, spreads his cheeks apart, lines his cock with the angel’s entrance, and pushes in. Pushes hard.

It doesn’t hurt, but Aziraphale cries out.

Crowley curls black painted nails into the soft skin of Aziraphale’s hips, leaving bruises that rival the scars on his back. But even through this facade of violence, Aziraphale feels Crowley’s love. He still tries to make this good for Aziraphale. Crowley leans forward, presses the odd kiss against his skin, plays with speed and angles, searching out new spots that will make Aziraphale’s eyes roll, his back arch and his toes curl, make him moan louder despite himself. The thought that others are watching should make Aziraphale burn with embarrassment but he doesn’t care.

It’s been so long.

And he’s missed Crowley so much.

“No …” Aziraphale whispers, the fight fading from his voice. “Don’t … stop … d-don’t stop …”

“I claim you, angel,” Crowley growls. “Soon you’ll feel my fire inside of you. From this day forward, you can never escape me. I’ll be able to find you from here to the ends of the Earth. You’re mine. You belong to me.”

“Oh …” Aziraphale squeaks. Crowley’s words sound rehearsed but they feel real.

Like a vow.

“Yes,” Aziraphale moans beyond improvisation. “Yes, I … I belong to you. Claim me, demon …” he continues, his voice dissolving into gasps. “Claim me … I’m yours …”

Crowley shudders at those words.

‘Oh, Aziraphale.’

‘Crowley …’

‘I love you …’

‘I love you, too.’

“Oh,” Aziraphale sighs. “Oh Go---”

Crowley grabs a handful of Aziraphale’s hair, pulls his head back and crashes their mouths together before he can finish. “She’s not here right now,” he says, his voice heavy with anger and regret. “Your words belong to me, angel. Your moans, your whimpers, they’re mine. Say it!”

“They’re … they’re yours. All yours. I …”

Crowley cuts him off with a kiss, his body shaking as he comes inside his angel. Aziraphale follows, his knees giving out, sliding out from under him. He lands on his belly with Crowley on top of him.

His favorite position to be in, all things considered.

Through his orgasmic haze and the utter joy of coming in Crowley’s arms, he hears a mass of uncomfortable whispering, some sinister laughter, and one derisive snort.

Aziraphale feels the demons retreat, slide into the shadows, evaporating into the black.

“They’re … they’re satisfied,” Crowley pants, the relief in his voice seeping through Aziraphale’s skin and winding around his heart. “They’re going back to Hell. Hastur isn’t happy about it but they … they won’t hurt us.”

Hastur.

Aziraphale’s breath hitches.

Hastur was there.

A Duke of Hell.

Aziraphale had convinced himself that the demons in the room were minions. Underlings. He had no reason to believe that, really. No proof. It’s simply something he assumed.

But Hastur?

Who else had been there? Who else had watched?

Beelzebub maybe?

Will they report to Satan?

To the Archangels!?

Aziraphale knows that some of the higher demons do.

Will Michael find out? Uriel?

Will Gabriel?

Too soon, the warm glow of satiation, of being wrapped in Crowley’s arms again, his cock buried inside his body, siphons into the chill around them.

“I … I don’t want to stay here,” Aziraphale says, starting to shiver.

“Neither do I.” Crowley unfurls his own wings. He curls them around Aziraphale, wrapping them both up tight. Then, with a snap of his fingers, angel and demon disappear.

***

“It was a test,” Crowley explains, lying side by side with his angel in a different bed, a different room, grooming Aziraphale’s wings with careful fingers. “I wasn’t performing up to par for Hastur. I failed my performance review.” He chuckles. “First time in history. So I had to come up with something big. Something that would get them off my back for a few centuries.” From behind, arms wrapped around him, his chest pressed to Aziraphale’s back, Aziraphale feels Crowley swallow hard. “Hastur was adamant it was your fault. My associations with you, no matter how few and far between, were making me soft. They were planning on coming after you to get to me. I had to do something to get us both off their radar. Corrupting an angel …” Another hard swallow “… was the worst thing I could think of.”

Aziraphale smirks. “Little do they know I corrupted you a long time ago, my dear.”

“It was selfish, a-and it was wrong,” Crowley stumbles. “And I’m …”

Aziraphale tilts his head back, kisses Crowley gently on the lips. “I didn’t despise it, my love. I quite like role-playing with you. Maybe, someday, we could do it again. When it’s just you and me.”

“I didn’t want to turn you into a spectacle,” Crowley says, refusing to let Aziraphale absolve him so easily. “That wasn’t my intention. I didn’t want to humiliate you. I just … I didn’t know what else to do. I …”

Aziraphale kisses Crowley again when he feels tears roll down his cheeks that aren’t his own.

“You kept me safe,” Aziraphale whispers. “The way you promised. And I’m not going to lose you. We won’t lose each other. It was worth it.”

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #prince of omens #ineffable husbands #anthony j crowley #aziraphale #crowley x aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley

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schraubd · 5 years ago

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The Good Place: Final Thoughts

*MAJOR SPOILERS*

At the conclusion of season three, I registered my prediction of how The Good Place would end:

The abolition of the afterlife in its entirety (no more good or bad places); a re-emphasis on doing as best you can when it matters (i.e., during one's actual life); the core quartet is sent back to Earth to live out the rest of their natural lives as friends.

I would say that, like most religions, I got about 5% right. The afterlife, as we knew it, is abolished. And the series does end with all of the human characters passing on. But in between, The Good Place takes a much more audacious swing: a genuine attempt to reform the afterlife. And -- and I think this is perhaps even more profound -- an essential acknowledgment that this attempt fell short. A perfect paradise was not created, and in fact the final conclusion of The Good Place seems to be that such a paradise is impossible even in concept. After all, cut away the underbrush and the heroes' solution to the problem afflicting The Good Place was to offer the choice of suicide. And while the penultimate episode suggests that perhaps just having the option will suffice to stave off the ennui of eternal bliss, the finale refuses to accept that out. Every human character, eventually, kills themselves. Their happy ending is that they are content to die. The best possible paradise is one where people can and do eventually choose to erase themselves from existence. Skip over the beatific forest setting and the stipulation of emotional contentment, and that's a rather melancholic, if not outright grim, conclusion. It's easy to draw a parallel between the last episode and the need for fans to accept the voluntarily-chosen end of a great show like The Good Place (it's even easier to draw it to the need to accept our own mortality). But another recurrent theme in The Good Place is the failure of systems. Over and over again, the systems the characters find themselves in are revealed to be either malfunctioning or outright designed to immiserate them. From the very beginning, Eleanor and Chidi confront the brutal harshness of the points system, which results in nearly all people being horrifically tortured for eternity (incidentally, that Chidi isn't immediately repelled by -- and suspicious of -- this set-up is a rare miscue in terms of characterization, if not plotting). They resolve to try and improve Eleanor, only to find out that they're actually in a perpetual torture chamber which will literally reset every time they come close to escaping it. At this point, the series becomes a repeated effort to find ever-higher levers in the celestial bureaucracy that can be appealed to. They find a judge, who is at best indifferent to their predicament and not particularly interested in helping them. Upon returning to earth, they discover first that they can't ever improve enough to enter The Good Place (because -- knowing the stakes -- their motivations are corrupt) and then that nobody can successfully enter The Good Place because existence has become too interwoven and morally interdependent for anyone to satisfy the standard of admission. They meet the actual Good Place committee, who are worse than useless and content to let everyone suffer forever because taking any concrete action risks violating some procedural norm. And when they finally enter The Good Place, they discover it's as dysfunctional as everywhere else -- gradually sucking the life out of its residents who, given eternity, eventually tire of everything. All the systems fail. All of them are doomed to fail. They can't not. Hence, the suicide gate (and sidenote: If The Good Place ever has a spin-off series -- and lord knows it shouldn't -- it should definitely involve exploring the first murder in the Good Place when someone gets involuntarily shoved through that archway). By the time it reaches its conclusion, The Good Place is one of the few depictions of the afterlife to take the concept of eternity seriously. Some other venues glance in this direction. Agent Smith in The Matrix tells Neo that humans reject a simulation of paradise -- the implication is because we're diseased, but perhaps also indicating that perfect, eternal happiness ... isn't. Maya Rudolph's other afterlife vehicle, Forever, certainly touches on this theme. The Order of the Stick has an afterlife where people can eat all the food and have all the sex and otherwise satisfy all the "messed-up urges you people have leftover after having your soul stuck in a glorified sausage all your life". But this is only the "first tier" of heaven: once you're bored, you can "climb the mountain" to search for a higher level of spiritual satisfaction. And while what this entails is left vague, it is not death -- those who ascend can, if they wish, descend back down to the lowlier pleasures (OOTS also introduces the very neat concept of "Postmortum Time Disassociation Disorder"). But the story which provides perhaps the most powerful foil to The Good Place's view of eternity and immortality is (and of the approximately 143,000 Good Place retrospectives being written right now, I bet I'm the only one to make this comparison) Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. The ultimate adversary in HPMOR is not Snape, or Malfoy, or Voldemort. It is death, and Harry is committed to the "absolute rejection of death as the natural order." The message on the Potters' gravestone is, after all, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (and it's a sign of my cloistered Jewish upbringing that I thought this was a Rowling original -- it is in fact a quote from I Corinthians). Harry Potter wants people to live forever. And the story anticipates the objection, placed in the mouth of Dumbledore, "What would you do with eternity, Harry?"

Harry took a deep breath. "Meet all the interesting people in the world, read all the good books and then write something even better, celebrate my first grandchild's tenth birthday party on the Moon, celebrate my first great-great-great grandchild's hundredth birthday party around the Rings of Saturn, learn the deepest and final rules of Nature, understand the nature of consciousness, find out why anything exists in the first place, visit other stars, discover aliens, create aliens, rendezvous with everyone for a party on the other side of the Milky Way once we've explored the whole thing, meet up with everyone else who was born on Old Earth to watch the Sun finally go out, and I used to worry about finding a way to escape this universe before it ran out of negentropy but I'm a lot more hopeful now that I've discovered the so-called laws of physics are just optional guidelines."

The last few episodes of The Good Place are, in a sense, a calling of this bluff. Even if you play out the string all the way to extinguishment of the sun or the heat death of the universe -- well, forever is a long time. It can wait. Harry argues that the only reason we accept death is because we're used to it, and if you took someone who lived in a world where there was no death and asked them if they'd prefer to live in a universe where eventually people ceased to exist, they'd look at you like you're crazy. The Good Place provocatively argues the precise opposite -- that if death didn't exist, people would have to invent it. Or they would go crazy, with infinite time on their hands. And so we are, perhaps, back to where we started. The paradise the heroes create is certainly better than that which they replaced. But it still is deeply, tragically flawed -- and The Good Place seems to believe that these flaws are fundamentally inescapable. The suicide option is the clearest manifestation of how cracked paradise must be, but there is another issue that the show alludes to: paradise depends on other people, and on their choices. Way back in the first season, "Real Eleanor" raises this precise point: if her soulmate doesn't love her, "this will never truly be my Good Place." Sure it's actually a contrivance to torture Chidi, but it's easy to imagine it as real. What if your paradise is to live blissfully with a certain special someone and ... that person doesn't love you back? Both Simone and Tahani seem okay with Chidi and Jason respectively choosing someone other than them (Eleanor and Janet). But that's in harmony with the audience's happy ending. It's not hard to imagine a different world where they were less sanguine about it. Or take a far more direct problem: If paradise comes with a suicide option, what happens if your loved one takes it? Harry's excited declaration of all the things he'd do with infinite time is not fundamentally, the reason why he desires immortality. When push comes to shove, he's motivated by a far more basic yearning: to make it so "people won't have to say goodbye any more." Eleanor's utter panic at the thought of losing Chidi forever was, for me at least, the most visceral emotional gut-punch of the entire series -- even more than the finale of season three (at least there, we could be reasonably assured their separation was temporary). She eventually comes to terms with it. But sit on it a little more: imagine a "paradise" where your soulmate has left you forever. People fantasize about heaven to be reunited with their loved ones, yet we end up looping right back into eternal separation. What kind of paradise is this, where people still have to say goodbye? So we have two problems that seem to threaten even the conceptual coherency of a paradise:

First, if paradise is forever, eventually everything will become tired. That suicide is presented as a good solution to this problem shows just how serious it is (and, for what it's worth, I'm not sure the suicide "option" would necessarily bring relief. It could easily generate crippling anxiety -- a sense of trappedness between the irrevocable permanence of death and the unbearable ennui of existence).

Second, if paradise depends on the choices other people make, how can we be sure they'll make choices compatible with your happy ending?

The Good Place presents the first problem as unavoidable and skates past the second entirely. But could they be overcome? Maybe. In the penultimate episode of The Good Place, one solution proposed to the problem of eternal ennui is to reset people's memories, so the things that bored them become fresh again. This is swiftly rejected as a repetition of how the quartet was tortured in The Bad Place. Too swiftly, in my view. Neighborhoods were also used to torture -- should those be jettisoned too? The problem with eternity is that eventually, everything gets repetitive. Go-Kart Racing against monkeys may be a blast the first time, but it loses its luster after a million reiterations. The wistfulness comes from wishing one could go back to that initial burst of discovery and experience -- before one had the memory of doing it all over again. This was my immediate solution to the ennui problem -- not that some demon should periodically reset you, but that you should be able to choose when, where, and how to reset yourself. It's not just about going back in time. It's reoccupying any memory state you've ever possessed. Go back to before you ever raced against monkeys -- then zoom forward to when you've already experienced all the monkey-races you could handle. It's like a load/save system for your mind. Hell, you can even adjust the "difficulty" level. It's true that, for many, a "paradise" where one simply automatically gets whatever one wants will feel unsatisfying. But one needn't set the parameters of paradise to guarantee success. It can be as hard or easy as one wants; people can be as pliant or obstinate as one likes (not for nothing is one of the afterlife attractions in OOTS -- a fantasy roleplaying-based setting -- "The Dungeon of Monsters That Are Just Strong Enough to Really Challenge You"). Or dream bigger. If one has infinite ability to reverse and remake memory as one wishes, then one could at any point adapt any set of memories one ever could have had. Don't just live a different life, remember a different life. Then jump forward and remember all the different lives you lived -- each of which (when you lived them) you had erased the memories of all the others. Every single possible timeline is lived -- and can be relived in all its glory, as many times as one wants. For me, at least, this dissolves the problem of others' choices as well. If anyone can make not just any possible choice, but live through any possible timeline, what does it mean to ask which one is "real"? If your paradise involves loving and being loved by a particular someone, will in your paradise, the person you need to love you, loves you, and stays with you as long as you need. In their paradise, they might love someone else. You enjoy a timeline where people choose exactly the choices that would make you most happy; they live in a timeline which is the same for them. Of course, the sorts of philosophical questions that would raise (among others: What does it mean for the "same" person to simultaneously exist across multiple timelines? Who, exactly, is "choosing" which version they occupy? And if the one that does choose doesn't choose a timeline that involves them loving you back, is the version that does love you really "them"?) are even more esoteric and less accessible to a network audience than the moral philosophy questions The Good Place did try to introduce. So I don't blame them for skipping by it.

* * *

The last enemy to be defeated may not, after all, be death. It may be time. Time ruins all things. Eventually you run out of it. And even if you never ran out of it -- you had infinite time -- it would defeat you in a different way: via boredom, repetition, and ennui. We can, perhaps, imagine a world where we vanquish death. But can we imagine one where (forgot about possibility, and just think conceptually) we defeat time? I can. Barely, but I can. Of course, it's in many ways a moot point, since I'm profoundly skeptical that humanity ever will master time in this way -- or even if it's practically possible (that it won't happen in my lifetime is actually less material, given that if it ever did happen we'd probably be at Omega Point anyway). But at least it holds out the possibility of an actual happy ending -- where the last enemy is truly vanquished, and nobody has to say goodbye. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2GK19Yo

#stories #television

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tessatechaitea · 5 years ago

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Scarab #8

Scarab fucking Eleanor.

It's hard to admit that I believe a toilet paper commercial was written better than this psycho-blather.

John Smith may have over-corrected on the balancing act between Vertigo phrasing and techno-gobbledygook used to explain plot advancements. When the Vertigo phrasing is used simply to show a character is fucking weird so it says stuff like, "Ergonomic celestial tampons bloated from the cosmic rays to staunch a black hole," you can let it go. But when it's used to explain what the fuck is happening, it just becomes another shitty episode of Star Trek. Although "Ergonomic celestial tampons bloated from the cosmic rays to staunch a black hole" makes for better plot explanation than "Agnostic angels of the quantum mesh safeguarding the integrity of the world-mind." Just as Scarab begins suspecting these two guys aren't what they seem (although what they are seeming to be is too confusing for me to even bother with contemplating that it's an obfuscation of their true selves), Eleanor begins to wake and he flies off to make sure he doesn't help out at all. Maybe everything that has gone wrong so far is because of Scarab's blue balls. It'll all right itself when he and Eleanor finally fuck (as depicted, grossly, on the cover).

Is he suggesting these feelings are similar? I'm going to throw up now.

Eleanor has transformed into some sort of ectoplasmic vagina which must be what Louis is into because he rushes into her room naked.

That's what a vagina looks like, right?

I'd really like to say that the last few pages of the series are just Louis fucking that thing. But even non-Comics Code Authority approved Vertigo probably couldn't get away with that! Also, the rabbit wasn't around to witness it, so it wouldn't fit the title.

Okay, so he's fucking it on panel. But I wasn't wrong! This doesn't continue until the end of the comic book! Also, Harvest was definitely meant to be vampire Tim Drake from the future!

I just scanned three panels in relatively quick succession so I'm going to pass on the panel I really wanted to scan: another raccoon! Scot Eaton is quickly becoming my favorite artist from the 90s! While the entire world begins its end in Iceland, Louis and Eleanor fuck. They fuck and they fuck and they fuck. And it's fucking gross. I can't believe my caption on the cover was correct. It was supposed to be a joke, John Smith! A FUCKING JOKE! I did not want to see Scarab fuck his greasy ectoplasmic bubbling oil slick of a lover! While Scarab and Eleanor fuck, the rabbit goes mad, Bobby Dazzler dies, and the portly guy with the hands for wings passes out. When he awakens, the chrono-storm has subsided and their sea horse drones begin to fix the collective unconscious of everybody in Reykjavik to make it seem like nothing happened. Much like the rest of this comic book. The Cosmic Plumbers were from the Labyrinth (which they called the Gyre) which is why Scarab sort of recognized them. So I guess the Labyrinth is sort of like where The Endless live but for Time Soldiers? Eleanor tells Scarab that he's the Minotaur, so I guess he's the main Time Soldier. He just doesn't know it yet. And he never will because this series never went any further than eight issues. Scarab #8 Rating: C-. Scarab achieved nothing in this series. He merely sat around waiting for Eleanor to get better and she eventually did. Then they fucked. The end!

#Scarab #DC Comics #DC #Vertigo #John Smith #Scot Eaton

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thepaperpanda · 7 years ago

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Under The Setting Sun || Chapter I

Words: 1705

Warnings: none

SUMMARY: When the world is falling apart, the only thing that humanity needs are heroes. Namely the united heroes. In an uneven fight against the forces of evil, they will have to lay down their fate on the edge of the providence. Which of sides will suffer a defeat and which will plunder in glory after a delightful victory?

Author: Manaick

A/N: This is our interpretation of Avengers: Infinity War {We based our story on the trailer and our own premonitions regarding an upcoming movie}. Hope you will enjoy it.

This was their only home. The spaceship was simply constructed of something iridescent. Straight lines were forming the walls, a large window at the front was allowing to navigate properly. The frame around the surroundings was filled with ominous brittle silence, for there was no gravity to hold them firmly nor was there gravity to supervise their zeal and minds. They somehow knew that something was around.

The blackness engulfed their thoughts. Stretching out in front of them, the unknown studied their fears, courage and knowledge. There was no life here. That was simple, no thriving population, no signs of past living. The darkness had overcome any sense of purity, consumed all hope of cleanliness and had wiped out all desire. "Do you really think it's a good idea to go back to Earth?" Loki said without conviction in his voice, looking at the dark emptiness of space in front of him. Thor looked at his brother with a soft frown. "Yes, of course, people there love me. I am very popular." He explained, gazing at his brother from time to time. "Let me rephrase that. Do you really think it's a good idea to bring ME back to Earth?" Loki repeated himself a bit worried. "Probably not, to be honest." Thor said. "I wouldn't be worried, brother... I feel like everything's gonna work out fine..." After these words something has happened. Suddenly, both brothers saw a huge spaceship, emerging out from the darkness of space, right in front of their ship. Both men were looking up in disbelief of the view. "I think you spoke a bit too early, dear brother..." Loki spoke with a bit of irony in his voice. "What is that?!" Thor asked out loudly. "No idea, brother... But I have a bad feelings about this..." Loki muttered, watching the ship carefully and taking a little step backwards.

A wry smile crushed on his lips as he watched the ship in front of his one. "Kill 'em all. No hostages." His voice echoed from the walls of the great hall of his ship. Sitting in his spacious chair, he rose his huge hand, calling a specific person by this gesture. "Yes, my master?" a tall woman stood in front of him, her figure tensed but her eyes never left his. "I want to have this gem now. I've been chasing it for too long. Find it." Blue-haired woman gave a slight nod and turned around to leave the hall. "I count on you, Proxima." A formidable voice could be heard. She stopped for a second, however she didn't turn around. She tightened the grip on the spear she was holding in her hand. "I won't let you down, master." After these words, woman left leaving the Titan alone.

It didn't take aggressors long to crush the main gate of Asgardian ship, which were separating passengers from the vacuum. Titan's warriors entered the other ship quickly, they didn't leave too much of a maneuvering field for others to defend. Valkyrie was ready to fight with Hulk and volunteers that offered themselves. "We can't let them win! Fight, brothers and sisters! Fight, Asgardians!" Woman yelled and everyone started to attack. Hulk, using his superhuman strength smashed several aliens easily. Valkyrie did same, killing few of the Titan's warriors. "Thor! We ain't gonna push back this attack, there's too many of them!" dark haired woman yelled looking around for the God of Thunders. Thor, hearing this, threw a gaze at his brother. "We have to stop them!" Loki's heart was pounding hardly inside his chest. "Any ideas, brother? I just hope it's not gonna include the GET HELP action, isn't this?!" Loki growled darkly finishing one of the enemies off.

Everyone who was able to fight was doing that. Man. Woman. No exceptions. Asgardians have united to defend aliens. To protect their last piece of something that once was their home.

Some men tried to take all children to safe place, namely to the bridge chamber of their ship, unfortunately they failed. Others could only hear loud screams and howls of their compatriots when Thanos’ aliens broke to the room.

A string of screams unraveled from Thor's tongue, like yarn unfurling, as one of the creatures advanced. It's slick skin shimmered with hot anger along with it's dark, cold eyes. Every step it took rattled his bones and struck his heart. Thor tried to dodge a swing from its massive claws, but it struck his side and he tumbled into the floor. He could hear nothing, all was silenced, the yells of the Asgardians, the hisses of the creature, all inaudible. All he could do is feel. Feel the cold ground pressed against his form, the heat from the pain, and the rhythm of his terrified heart. He looked upward through the huge window in the front part of their ship, into the stars. Thor closed his eyes as he felt a searing pain.

"Brother!" Loki knocked another enemy down and rushed to Thor.

With few agile movements he killed the huge creature.

Black haired man knelt down next to Thor and pressed hands to his wound.

"Hold on. Just don't decide to faint, okay?" Loki tried to sound as calm as it was only possible, but he knew how faltering his voice was at that point.

Thor involuntarily pushed Loki's hand off.

"I am alright.. People.. Save as many as you can. I'll be fine.." with a loud hiss Thor got back onto his feet.

Loki nodded and once again he threw himself into a combat.

The fight against the enemies was continued.

The battlefield lay quiet, for it was now a graveyard of the unburied. Mad Titan's army was much stronger than people of Asgard. A lot of blood was shed before the fight has ended. Many people died devoting their lives in the fight against the invaders. Their eyes were as immobile as their limbs. Their souls had long departed to the celestial places to walk with the ancestors. The battle was lost, the enemy had won. Thor was laying in the second chamber of the Asgardian ship, being beared up by Valkyrie and Banner. Suddenly, the violent sound of crushing metal rented the air with a shower of sparks. The bulkhead has been destroyed. A tall purple person has entered the main chamber without hesitation.

"Proxima!" tall man yelled aloud.

Midnight came out of the shadow, her hands were covered in clotted blood. "I've looked everywhere. No signs of Space Stone, my mas...." Titan put his large hand up in the air silencing her. "I feel it. I can smell it" he said deeply and a mischievous smile crawled on his lips. He took few huge steps ahead and he entered another chamber. "Oh! Look at that!" chap stood in the middle of the room looking around until his eyes fell on the Valkyrie, Bruce and Thor. "Space Stone. Where's it?" Valkyrie slowly dropped her head down closing her eyes shot and squeezing Thor's hand hardly. "Who're you?" Banner asked simply getting up of the floor. "I've asked you a question, mortal!" Titan vociferated audibly. It didn't take long for Banner to get frenzied by emotions and within seconds he has changed into his green version. As he turned into Hulk, he attacked the purple tall man, unfortunately unsuccessfully. With one hit, Titan has sent Hulk to the floor so easily. "Anyone else?" he laughed wryly. "And now. Where's the Space Stone?" The silence was inscrutable. "Aa I can see, none of you will be useful. You're all gonna die." Proxima approached her master and she prepared her spear aiming at Thor with a rude smile on her lips. "STOP!" Titan and Midnight both turned around. Loki was standing in the passage, his dark hair were put behind his ears. "Well, well, well. The God of Mischief himself" Titan laughed grossly. "I thought you're dead. But they kept you alive. Great." Loki raised his mouth corners in a grimace and he slowly entered into the chamber, stepping above dead bodies of his fellows. "Could I interest you in negotiations?" Loki asked carefully going into Titan's direction. "I'm in possession of something which might be precious to you." Thanos narrowed his forehead. "Continue." Loki threw a brief glance at his brother and rest of the team. He reached his hand ahead. A blue light of Tesseract glowed around.

Thanos didn't say a word, he only nodded at Proxima. She once again aimed her spear at Thor. "Give it back to me, Loki. And in my generosity I'll let you all free" Thanos reached his large hand towards Loki. "If you won't cooperate, I'll make you all suffer. Do you really want to have them on your conscience?" Titan pointed at three people behind him. "Decision is up to you."

“No! Loki, no! You can't!” Thor leant his weight on his elbow. “Don't do this, brother! It's too powerful to be entrusted into his hands!!!”

Proxima made few long steps and slapped Thor’s face with her spear. Loki looked briefly at Thor and turned Tesseract in his hand few times observing delightful cold light of the object. With a deep sigh, man made few more steps and handled Tesseract to Thanos, bowing his head a bit. "I'm doing this with a pain in my heart. It would be more useful in my hands.. Now, let us free." Thanos took Tesseract in his hands and within a second, in a coruscation of light, he pull the little blue stone out of it. Smiling proudly, Thanos put the stone at the one of free places on his glove. The smile didn't get off his disgusting lips. He looked at Proxima above his shoulder and uttered. "Kill them and destroy the ship." Loki paled more after those words. "You promised.." Thanos giggled darkly. "Don't trust anyone but yourself. And you'll come with me." Titan left the chamber and went back on his own ship while two of the aliens pulled Loki behind them leading him in the same direction. "NO!!! NO!!!" The last thing Loki heard was screams of Thor and sounds of scuffle. "I'll come back for you, brother" Loki whispered under his breath.

Gifs by Cass

Pandies🐼: @blue-dragon-ice @calkingwood @imidarogerson @grossograsso @thewildgardensstuff @irai-lauri @leven-and-ashley @la-verdura @bearded-steve-rogers @sebbystan-plantlover @atuckyismylife @krispyjellyfishzombie @personality-within @haseki-huricihan@choppedgardenwhispers @vroobelek @lattimelka @chris-beamz @hidden-secrets69 @side-blog-of-me @purepearls @i-am-margerita @volcanoxxx @kastrup-sofie @mikkal-akasaki @withoutashadowofhope @radbluebirdeagle @marvel-fan-site @smutloversblog @buquete @super-psycho-love69 @tanglesss @peter-sommer @baysidewest @vegemania @philip-stan @chodiusmmm @subwaystunnel @tykorclint @dagger-dragger @kurant @nothing-can-least-forever @oxfordkipem @deliciousbouquet90 @tuptuptup @hellenna80 @karina-marina9 @latimeriaaa @bratko @wurld89 @scott-evans @kiss-me-rouge @ovonel-espaniol @dancing-tacco @ratugadhi @white-tiger-shangrila @peter-sommer @axn69 @eternal-life-awaits @mrs-laura-harmon @artsy-inside @gleeeeees @darkllaama @jatut @agawux @fuzzy-tigrrr @jrjohnsson2 @cassandbeast @maaargoshaaa @dontgetmewrongman

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astrogeoguy · 7 years ago

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The Hot Little Planet Peaks in Visibility, and the New Moon mounts a Messier Marathon!

(Above: The Messier Marathon is a bucket-list observing challenge for amateur astronomers. On the weekend of March 17, 2018, it’s possible for observers in mid-northern latitudes to see all 110 objects in Charles Messier’s list of celestial showpieces. The first two objects to observe, the galaxies Messier 74, shown here, and 77, set soon after dusk.)

Astronomy Skylights for this week (from March 11th, 2018) by Chris Vaughan. (Feel free to pass this along to friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics.) I post these with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are Eastern Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested joining me on a guided field trip to York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory, or another in your area, visit www.astrogeo.ca.

If you’d like me to bring my inflatable digital planetarium to your school or other daytime or evening event, visit DiscoveryPlantarium.com and request me. We’ll tour the Universe together!

(Above: My portable digital Starlab Planetarium in action.)

Public Events

Taking advantage of dark moonless evening skies this week, the members of the RASC Toronto Centre will gather for dark sky stargazing at Long Sault Conservation Area, northeast of Oshawa on (only) the first clear evening from Monday to Thursday this week. You don’t need to be an RASC member, or own any equipment, to join them. Check here for details and watch the banner on their homepage or their Facebook page for the GO or NO-GO decision around 5 pm each day.

On Monday evenings, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party - broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. On Wednesday evenings after dark, they offer free public viewing through their telescopes. If it’s cloudy, the astronomers give tours and presentations. Details are here.

A Spectrum of Stars

If you missed last week’s guide to seeing the colours of bright winter stars, it’s here.

Zodiacal light

For about half an hour after dusk during the period between now and the new moon on March 17, look west-southwest for a broad wedge of faint light rising from the horizon and centered on the ecliptic. This is the zodiacal light - reflected sunlight from interplanetary dust particles that orbit in the plane of the solar system. Try to observe it from a location without light pollution, and don't confuse the zodiacal light with the brighter Milky Way to the northwest. I posted a beautiful picture here.

The Moon and Planets

Between today (Sunday) and Friday, the old crescent moon will appear low in the southeastern pre-dawn sky - growing slimmer and also moving from a fully dark sky into the pre-sunrise twilight. The shallow tilt of the morning ecliptic will cause the moon to rise at roughly the same time for several mornings in a row – just as the Harvest Moon does during autumn evenings. The moon reaches its new phase on Saturday morning, giving the coming weekend dark skies that are ideal for seeing the best deep sky objects. (More on that later.) Your first chance to spot the freshly minted young moon occurs Sunday evening after sunset, when its very slim crescent will linger briefly over the western horizon.

(Above: For the past week, the evening sky has featured the inner planets bright Venus and dim Mercury. On Thursday evening, shown at 8:20 pm local time, Mercury reaches its widest point east of the sun and peak visibility.)

Extremely bright Venus continues its escape from the western evening twilight this week. You can look for its bright bauble well above the western horizon after sunset, until it sets at about 8:30 pm local time. Much dimmer Mercury is easy to see this week. It will sit about four finger widths to the upper right of Venus. On Thursday evening, Mercury will reach greatest eastern elongation, its widest separation east of the sun. Viewed in a telescope the hot little planet will exhibit a waning half-illuminated phase, while Venus will be nearly fully illuminated. The best viewing time for Mercury falls between 7:45 and 8:45 pm local time.

Dim and distant Uranus is located about 17° (1.7 outstretched fist diameters) above the two inner planets, in Pisces (the Fishes). But you’ll need the sky to fully darken before you can see it in binoculars or a telescope.

(Above: The string of pre-dawn planets continue to define the plane of our Solar System along the Ecliptic (green line), with Jupiter rising before midnight, then Mars, and finally Saturn. Shown here for 6:30 am local time, the old crescent moon will join them on Monday morning before continuing its trip sunwards on the following mornings.)

The pre-dawn planets continue to delight us this week. Extremely bright Jupiter will be rising about 12:15 am local time. It will reach its highest elevation (about three fist diameters) above the southern horizon by 5:30 am local time. And it will continue to catch your eye as you leave for school or work until close to sunrise (about 7:30 am local time).

Reddish Mars is dimmer than Jupiter, but it is steadily brightening as Earth closes our distance from it. Over the next five months, Mars will outshine everything but the king of planets, the moon, and the bright star Vega. For this week, Mars will rise at about 3:15 am local time and appear a bit more than 3 fist diameters to the east (lower left) of Jupiter.

The red planet is steadily moving towards yellowish Saturn - with Mars now only about one fist width to Saturn’s upper right. The ringed planet rises just before 4 am local time, putting it two fist diameters above the southeastern horizon just before the dawn sky begins to brighten. The teapot-shaped constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) will sit directly below Saturn all year.

Messier Marathon Weekend is Coming!

Charles Messier’s list of the best and brightest showpieces in the night sky is popular with astronomers of all experience levels. During the new moon period in early spring each year, it’s possible for lovers of deep sky objects, who live anywhere on Earth between latitudes 20° south and 55° north, to observe every one of the 110 objects within a single night. For many amateur astronomers, this observing challenge is a bucket list item known as the Messier Marathon. This coming weekend is your chance for 2018!

(Above: A gallery of all 110 deep-sky objects in the Messier List, starting with Messier 1 at upper left. The collection includes a sampling of nearly every type of deep-sky object, including galaxies, nebulas, and star clusters. Images like these are a helpful preview of what you will see in your telescope. Source SEDS.org)

The Messier list (or catalog) objects are designated by their “M-codes”, M1 through M110 (or Messier 1 through Messier 110). Astronomers commonly refer to the group as the Messiers. Most of these famous objects also have proper names, such as the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), the Pleiades (M45), and the Beehive Cluster (M11).

The objects in the list are distributed throughout the night sky visible from mid-northern latitudes. (Messier and his contemporaries observed them from Paris.) None of the objects are found in the area between Pisces and Aquarius, so when the sun moves between those two constellations in late March every year, it allows us to see all of the Messier objects between dusk and dawn. The idea of a running a “Messier Marathon” originated in 1979 with another comet hunter, Californian Don Machholz.

To see the fainter Messiers, pick a moonless night within a day or two of the new moon, which occurs this Saturday, March 17. A clear sky all night long is a must, so check the forecast and choose the night that offers the best conditions. If more than one night looks promising, make your attempt on the first night, so you have the option for a second try.

Pick a site free from direct lights and light pollution, with open sightlines to the horizon, especially to the west and the southeast. To improve your site selection, use a star chart, planisphere, or astronomy app to preview where the objects will be, especially the ones that will be observed when they’re near the horizon. A site at higher elevation will also give you more time to observe the low objects. Bring warm clothes, and stock up on snacks and drinks – you’ll be awake all night!

(Above: Many of the Messier objects, such as Messier 45 (at top center left, also known as the Pleiades), are bright enough to see with binoculars or unaided eyes. Others require a telescope of at least 80 mm aperture. Bright stars can guide you to many objects. For example, Messier 34 is located about midway between the stars Algol and Almach. The sky is shown for the Great Lakes region at 8 p.m. local time and the Messier objects are highlighted.)

Many Messier objects are visible in binoculars – 10x50 models offer a good compromise between weight and performance. The dimmer objects will require a telescope. A 3-inch diameter (80 millimeter) telescope will work under very dark sky conditions, but a larger aperture telescope will make the job easier. Low power, wide field of view eyepieces are recommended. Be sure to set up your telescope, and organize your other equipment, well before sunset.

To start your marathon, you will need to quickly catch the objects that set in the west after sunset – specifically the dim galaxies M77 and M74. By the time the sky has grown dark enough to see these galaxies, they will be nearing the horizon. It’s a good idea to limit the time spent on the first galaxy so as not to miss the other one. Immediately after viewing those two, you’ll look for M33, the large face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation of Triangulum (the Triangle), and then the Andromeda Galaxy trio of M31, M32, and M110.

From this point, you will have time to work your way systematically across the sky from west to east. As you do so, more objects will rise in the east. By late evening, you should arrive at the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. When you have viewed the 17 objects there, you can take a break until the next group of Messiers rises into view at around 3 am local time. Here’s a website with a recommended viewing order. The objects aren’t ordered simply by their setting time, because brighter objects can be picked out during twilight, while dimmer objects need more darkness. (Be careful not to confuse the viewing order with the Messier number.)

(Above: After a long night of Messier hunting, the final object, the globular star cluster Messier 30 (bottom center), will rise shortly before the sun. Ensure your observing location has a low southeastern horizon, and use a sky chart or astronomy app to predict the direction where the object will appear. The sky is shown for the Great Lakes region at 6:45 a.m. local time. Southern USA observers will benefit from having a shorter twilight period.)

The final wave of objects includes M55, M75, M72, M73, and M2, which rise in the pre-dawn. The last Messier is the globular cluster M30, which will rise in the east as dawn starts to break - so it will be a challenge to see this object. Observers in southerly latitudes will have an advantage because the sun rises and sets more vertically, giving them a shorter twilight period.

Several astronomy organizations will recognize your achievement if you observe all of the Messier objects. The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada will issue an RASC Messier Certificate to members who complete the list and provide documentation. The society recognizes both the Go-to and manual approaches. The Astronomical League will send a Messier Program Certificate to members-at-large or members of affiliated astronomical societies who provide observational notes for 70 objects found without a Go-to telescope. The organization will send a lapel pin and honorary membership certificate for completing the entire list (over any time frame). Both organizations’ websites have information and observing forms to download and print out.

Good hunting! If you’d like more details, check out my latest Mobile Astronomy column on Space.com. It’s here.

Keep looking up to enjoy the sky! I love getting questions so, if you have any, send me a note.

#space #astronomy #stars #galaxies #Messier Marathon #Messier #New moon #mercury #Venus #Jupiter #deep sky objects #nebulas #star clusters

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the-science-of-our-times · 8 years ago

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What are some of your favourite celestial bodies and why? x

Hello there, thanks for asking!!I have always been a bit of a basic bitch when it comes to my favorite celestial bodies so how could I look past some of the classics.First of all we have the big ol thing Jupiter. Just one of those bodies in the sky that you really can't look past when we are talking favourites, when I use to stargaze more, that is when I lived in the countryside, I could spend hours tracking Jupiter across the sky, so many moons makes for such an exciting viewing experience, sadly the one time I tried to photograph Jupiter and the nifty ass moons it was a really hot summer's evening and the air was really dusty but if you are really keen I am sure it's in my astrophotography tag. Of course what could follow Jupiter but another planet which happens to be right next to it, the planet that if you are a famous astronomer you might be easily fooled into thinking this planet has ears; of course it's Saturn! The rings have had me slain every single time I have peered in it's direction and to be honest it is just so surreal to think that even though the scale of solar system the rings themselves are many orders of magnitude smaller in one dimensions. And holy heck when we are talking about Saturn we couldn't possibly omit Enceladus, with it's water geysers constantly spouting ice out into the abyss, one of the many things in the solar system that even a skilled writer probably wouldn't think to write about.I think the third of the bodies I would like to share is M42 or everyone's favourite The Orion Nebula. For those playing along at home if you look up at Orion, scan down to his sword, the middle 'star' is what we are talking about, whilst it is visible with the naked eye it is best appreciated with binoculars or a small telescope. Coloration is stunning, structure is stunning, its dominance over the sky is stunning. I love everything about it and would probably say it is my top pick for any night of the year. Though it might not be as large or as majestic as the Magellanic Clouds or have remarkable similarities to earthly objects like The Horsehead Nebulae it will forever hold a special place in my heart as a bearing for which I can always look up and admire, it has always been there and it is attached to my earliest stargazing memories, my earliest astrophotography memories (check the tag again, but I feel you probably already have...), it has a far greater impact on my life than any other celestial body so I have to say that it is my favorite.Thank you for asking, we should talk more xx

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vizkopa · 8 years ago

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Celestial (FallenAngel!Doflamingo x Reader) CHAPTER 1

Chapter 1: To Fall from Grace ~

The sound of the bell signalling the end of the school week—and the beginning of the much anticipated weekend—rang through the corridors. You shouted to be heard over the clamour of your students rushing to be first out the door. “Don’t forget, the Lyrid meteor shower will be at its peak tonight! Before dawn is the best time for viewing!” You received a few looks of horror at the thought of getting up before dawn on a Saturday and you chuckled. Being a high school Physics teacher meant you received those looks on a regular basis, but you wouldn’t trade your job for the world. The room was cleared within minutes, everyone eager for the weekend and you were no exception. You had planned your whole weekend around the meteor shower and damned if you were going to miss a second of it. So you sped through your preparations for the next week and hurried out the door, already calculating the best position in which to set up your telescope for optimal viewing pleasure. “Where are you off to in such a hurry, [Name]-ya?”

Speaking of pleasure… The smooth voice stopped you in your tracks and you fought to control the blush rising in your cheeks. Trafalgar Law never failed to leave you flustered. He was relatively new to the school, assuming the position of Human Biology teacher after the previous one had retired. And you had wanted a lesson in ‘anatomy’ from him since the day he’d introduced himself with that sleek, velvet voice. You turned to face him, smiling pleasantly. “Mr. Trafalgar! I could say the same to you. You’re heading out early.” He smiled—more of a smirk, really. One that made you weak at the knees. “Please, I’ve told you to call me Law. And I was hoping to catch you on your way out, actually.” “What can I help you with?” “Are you free tonight?” You hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh… Actually, I already made plans…” “I should have guessed,” he chuckled, but you could see the disappointment in his eyes. “The way you were rushing just now, you could only have a date tonight, am I right?” “You could say that,” you said with a laugh. “The Lyrid meteor shower peaks tonight. I’ll be observing the whole thing from home for my paper.” He laughed and god you could get used to that sound. “Of course, another time perhaps. In that case, I’ll remember to look to the sky tonight and think of you.” He winked and you felt your face flush red. “See you on Monday, [Name]-ya.” With one last smile he said his goodbyes, leaving a tingling warmth where his arm had brushed yours as he passed. And you were left standing in the empty corridor a blushing mess. You hadn’t even been able to bring yourself to say goodbye, you were so afraid of tripping over your own tongue. You had almost invited him over to watch the shower with you, but it had been a long time since you’d had a guy over and, as much as you wanted it to happen, you weren’t sure that was the message you wanted to send. You shook your head, clearing your thoughts. That man was a walking distraction and you couldn’t afford to fall all over him like a blushing school girl. You had a celestial event to catch. On your way out, you dropped by the school library to return a stack of books you had borrowed. Robin, the school librarian and History teacher, and Nami the Geography teacher were chatting as they sorted through the returns to be placed back on the shelves. You dropped your stack of books loudly on the table in front of them. “Trafalgar Law just asked me out.” They both stopped talking abruptly and turned to you, Robin with a look of smug amusement on her face, while Nami looked like she had just won the lottery. “And what did you say!?” she squealed. You scrunched up your face at her. “I told him I was busy this weekend.” Nami’s face fell. “[Naaaame], why would you do that? You’ve been looking all lovey-dovey at each other for weeks. This was your chance!” “The Lyrid meteor showers peaks tonight and—” “Oh my god, the meteor shower happens every year. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity!” “I’m sure I’ll have other chances,” you muttered, absently playing with the cover of a book. “He said he’d be thinking of me tonight.” “Oh my,” Robin chuckled. Nami rolled her eyes. “Would you rather him be thinking about you, or making love to you niiice and slow like you’ve been—” You blushed furiously. “Woah, woah, woah! That’s not—” Nami raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?” Your blush deepened. “An office romance would only be a distraction.” “Good. ‘Cause you sure need one.” “You work too much, [Name],” Robin agreed. Nami grasped your shoulders, forcing you to look her in the eye. “You two are meant to be, [Name], I just know it.” She let go and sighed. “Just promise me you’ll at least call him? Let him know you’re still interested. Hell, maybe you can watch your damn meteor shower together and make love under the stars—” “OKAY!” you interrupted before Nami could go into too much detail about your non-existent sex life. “Nami, you know I don’t believe in all that destiny crap.” You caved under her disapproving look. “But I’ll call him tomorrow. Promise. Now, I gotta go.” Robin waved you off as you hurried out of the library, Nami calling after you. “I’ll hold you to that!” You shook your head, knowing she was dead serious, and made a mental note to call Law the next day. The drive home was uneventful and by the time you reached your house on the outskirts of town, the sun had already begun to set. You made yourself a quick dinner of leftovers, and put on a pot of coffee for the long night ahead. The night was quiet as you set up your telescope in the highest window in the attic, a steaming cup of coffee close at hand. The window faced west, offering a spectacular view of the setting sun and allowing you to look out over your generous backyard and the forest beyond. The trees stretched away for miles, which is why you had chosen the attic as your viewing position. The rest of the town lay in the opposite direction, so the forest meant no light pollution to dampen the effects of the shower. Unfortunately, this year the peak of the shower happened to coincide with the full moon, which would mean your viewing would be limited to before moonrise and a small window before dawn, but you weren’t about to let that dissuade you. As you were lining the scope up with the stretch of clear sky above the forest, a streak of light crossed your vision—there and gone again in a moment. You pulled back and frowned. That was odd. You shouldn’t be able to even see any meteors for another few hours yet at least. You stuck your head out of the window and looked up. To your surprise, a bright object was hurtling across the sky, far too close to be one of the smaller meteors you had been expecting. Most were so small that they burned up in the upper atmosphere before they could even reach the ground. But not this one. It blazed brighter and swept overhead, leaving behind it a streak of smoke against the darkening sky. You weren’t sure, but at its current trajectory and the speed it was travelling… It’s going to crash in the forest! With a flash of light and a low rumble that shook the foundations of your house, it impacted and you were left stunned, staring out into the dark trees. What the hell was that?! Without a second though, you snatched up your coat as you raced out the back door and through the yard. You switched on the flashlight app on your phone and made your way under the cover of the trees. You shuddered as the shadow of the forest enveloped you. You had practically grown up in these woods and you knew its many trails and hidden tracks like the back of your hand, but you still held your father’s warning clear in your mind. ”Never go into the woods alone after dark!” Once when you were younger, you had been playing in the woods and lost track of time. Before you knew it, the sun had started to set and in your panic to get home, you’d lost sight of the path. You recalled the way the shadows had lengthened in the rapidly fading light, making the trees appear to be closing in around you. For a few, terrifying moments, you though the forest would swallow you whole, until your father had heard your crying and come to the rescue. You cast off the uneasiness that began to creep up now and forged on ahead, following the well beaten path into the heart of the woods. You could smell a faint aroma of smoke in the air and all you needed to do was follow your nose to its source. It wasn’t long before the trail you were following became overgrown and difficult to see by the light of your phone. The light bounced off the tree trunks, making everything appear oddly flat to your eyes, and messed with your depth perception. You felt the seeds of a panic begin to take root in your mind, but pushed your doubts aside. You had a good sense of direction. You were certain you could make it back out again. Besides, from the smell of it, you had almost reached the site of impact. Up ahead, you saw the yellow flickering of fire. The acrid smell of burning was now almost overwhelming in your nostrils. Smoke stung your eyes and you pulled a handkerchief out of your pocket to hold over your mouth and nose as you entered the clearing. The first thing you noticed was the crater: the earth in the clearing was scorched black and smoking, and small spot fires burned where patches of grass had once been. You kicked dirt over them and stamped them out as you made your way through the clearing, halting the flames in their tracks before you had a wildfire on your hands. The second thing you noticed were the feathers—some the length of your forearm and longer, blackened with soot and smouldering at the edges. Your first thought was that the meteor (or whatever it was) had hit a bird’s nest as it crashed through the canopy, but the feathers were far too large for any bird native to the area. Or any bird ever for that matter. You watched them smoulder in the dirt, curling in on themselves before disintegrating into ash. The third thing you noticed was the object at the centre of the crater as you peered over the edge. It wasn’t deep, but it was wide, and at it’s very centre lay something half buried in the earth. You screwed your eyes shut and opened them again. It was a man. The largest man you had ever seen. You pinched yourself for you could only have been dreaming, but instead of waking up in your cosy bed at home, you were still there, the impossible right in front of you. You looked closer, peering through the smoke. He was definitely a man. Standing he must have been over ten feet tall. And he was very much naked. You turned away, eyes wide and face reddening. Never mind the fact you had just found a human being in a crater in your backyard, but he was naked as the day he was born too. You took a deep breath, almost choking as you breathed a lungful of smoke, and turned back to face him. His eyes were closed. From this distance, you could not tell if he was alive or dead. Surely he couldn’t have survived a fall like that? There was only one way to find out. You jumped over the edge of the crater, charred earth sizzling beneath the soles of your trainers as you approached the stranger warily. He didn’t move. When you reached him, you kneeled down beside him, determinedly keeping your gaze above the waist as you searched for signs of life. He was covered head to toe in soot, but he seemed, for the most part, unharmed. He didn’t appear to be breathing. You hovered your ear close to his chest and breathed a sigh of relief when you heard a steady heartbeat. You pulled back. Now you had determined you didn’t have a dead body to deal with (much to your relief; you didn’t much fancy trying to explain this to the police) you debated what to do. You could call the authorities, but again, how were you going to explain that a giant naked man fell out of the sky and crash landed in the forest behind your house? No, you couldn’t call anyone. They’d only think you were crazy. That left only one option: you had to get him back to your house. Which was a feat in and of itself. A man of his size must weigh near half a ton. As you were debating what to do, a movement caught your eye. Thinking that the man might be waking up (which posed a whole lot of other questions and dilemmas over what you should do) you fell back slightly, heart pounding as you waited to see what happened. But instead of waking up, right before your very eyes, he began to shrink. You blinked. Surely you were imagining things? But after a few seconds, there before you was a man of normal size (and by ‘normal’ you meant still well over six foot), still very much unconscious and naked in the middle of your forest. But at least now you thought you might have a chance of getting him home. You contemplated how you should best approach the task. There was no way in hell you’d be able to carry him all by yourself. Perhaps you could drag him? Yes, that could work. If you could hook your arms beneath his armpits, you could probably manage the distance back to your house. You paused, considering his current state and cringed. Maybe dragging him over scorched ground and through a forest was not the best of ideas. You thought of the tarp you kept stored in the garden shed at the back of the yard. But you weren’t confident you could find your way back to the clearing again without the flames to guide you. Perhaps you could fashion some sort of sled out of branches? Well, it was worth a try. It took you the better part of an hour to gather the materials you needed, and all that time, the man slept on. He remained disturbingly unmoving and you felt the need to check to ensure his heart was beating every so often, but it was always there, slow and steady and completely at odds with the rest of his appearance. When you had finished your work, you had a sled of questionable durability, but it was the best you could do. Now came the question of how the hell you were supposed to complete the next task. Wiping the sweat from your brow, you looked to the man in the crater below. You had since discarded your jacket and placed it over his waist to preserve his modesty (hey, it was hard to work with that staring right at you). “Well, nothing to do about it,” you muttered. Hesitantly, you rolled him onto his side and gasped at what you saw. You had previously thought him to be unharmed, but you had been wrong. His back was caked in drying blood and two long, jagged wounds ran parallel from his shoulder blades almost to his hips. You could see the white edges of bone peeking out from between the ragged edges. You frowned. It almost looked like… wings? You could still see tufts of bloodied feathers clinging to the wounds. No way. Nope. You refused to believe it. Clearly there was a logical, sensible reason for all of this, you just couldn’t see it in your dazed and disoriented state. This was a matter to debate in the morning when you’d had a good night’s rest and a cup of coffee. The bleeding seemed to have mostly stopped, so you put the thought out of your mind for the time being and focused on getting him home. Getting the man onto the sled was perhaps not one of your finest moments (you weren’t quite sure where you should put your hands) but you made it work, and soon you were on your way back to the house. You were exhausted, and you were certain you had missed the start of the meteor shower, but right now you couldn’t care less. You just wanted to take a long shower and go straight to bed—if sleep was even a possibility with a naked stranger in your house. You still hadn’t decided what to do about that. You figured you’d let him sleep and when he woke up, he would explain everything and return to his life just as you would return to yours. You prayed he wasn’t some sort of criminal on the run from the authorities. Although you had no idea what kind of criminal would be lying naked at the bottom of a crater in the middle of the woods. Maybe he was some kind of pervert? Were you making a mistake bringing this man into your house? You shook your head. These were all problems for when he woke up. He couldn’t possibly be a threat to anyone right now. As you left the cover of the trees, you looked up to the sky. The full moon was at its peak, flooding the yard with cold, white light. The stars winked at you from where they hung amongst the thousands, every so often a faint streak of light passing between them as the Earth hurtled through the cloud of comet rubble on its path around the sun. Could it even be possible that a man could have fallen from those stars? Every fibre of your being said it shouldn’t be possible. Couldn’t be possible. And yet… You made up the bed in the spare room on the ground floor for him, ensuring you cleaned him up and bandaged his wounds as best you could before laying him down beneath the crisp white sheets. Now that his face was free of soot and dirt, you could see that he was quite handsome, with sharp features and pale, platinum blonde hair. By the time you had finished, your hands were shaking violently—from exhaustion or shock, you couldn’t be sure. You took a shower as hot as you could stand it and watched the ash and grime and blood that caked your hands be washed away by the scalding stream of water. The strange man’s blood was red like yours, but something told you he was not what he seemed. Before you retired for the night, you took your father’s pistol from the locked drawer in his old office and loaded it, placing it on the night stand by your bed. You hoped you would never need to use it.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

#one piece #doflamingo #donquixote doflamingo #doflamingo x reader #fallenangel!doffy #reader insert #xreader #one piece fanfic #one piece fan fiction #one piece imagines #one piece scenarios #angst #romance #alternate universe #angel!au

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mystacoceti · 5 years ago

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longish excerpt of John Barth’s “On with the Story”

She (I mean our distraught “Freeze Frame protagonist) happens to be gridlocked in actual sight of that river: There’s the symbolic catenary arch of the “Gateway to the West,” and beyond it are the sightseeing boats along the parkfront and out among the freight-barge strings. As She tries to divert and calm herself by regarding the nearest of those tourist boats — an ornate replica of a Mark Twain-vintage sternwheeler, just leaving its pier to nose upstream — her attention is caught by an odd phenomenon that, come to think of it, has fascinated her since small-girlhood (happier days!) whenever she has happened to see it: The river is, as ever, flowing south, New Orleansward; the paddle-steamer is headed north, gaining slow upstream momentum (standard procedure for sightseeing boats, in order to abbreviate the anticlimactic return leg of their tour), and as it begins to make headway, a deckhand ambles aft in process of casting off the vessel’s docklines, with the effect that he appears to be walking in place, with respect to the shore and Her angle of view, while the boat moves under him. It is the same disconcerting illusion, She guess, as that sometimes experienced when two trains stand side by side in the station and a passenger on one thinks momentarily that the other has begun to move, when in fact the movement is his own — an illusion compoundable if the observer on Train A (this has happened to Her at least once) happens to be strolling down the car’s aisle like that crewman on the sternwheeler’s deck, at approximately equal speed in the opposite direction as the train pulls out. Dear-present-reader Alice suddenly remembers one such occasion, somewhere or other, when for a giddy moment it appeared to her that she herself, aisle-walking was standing still, while Train A, Train B, and Boston’s South Street Station platform (it now comes back to her) all seemed in various motion.

As in fact they were, the “Freeze Frame” narrator declares in italics at this point, his end-of-paragraph language having echoed mine above, or vice verse — and here the narrative, after a space-break, takes a curious turn. Instead of proceeding with the story of Her several concentric plights — how She extricates or fails to extricate herself from the traffic jam; whether She misses the interview appointment or, making it despite all, nevertheless fails to get the university job; whether or not in either case She and the twins slip even farther down the middle-class scale (right now, alarmingly, if Bill really “cuts her odd” as threatened, She’s literally about two months away from the public-assistance rolls, unless her aging parents bail her out: she who once seriously considered Ph.D.hood and professorship); and whether in either of those cases anything really satisfying, not to say fulfilling, lies ahead for her in the second half of her life, comparable to the early joys of her marriage and motherhood — instead of going on with these nested stories, in which our Alice understandably takes a more than literary interest, the author here suspends the action and launches into an elaborate digression upon, of all things, the physics of relative motion in the universe as currently understood, together with the spatiotemporal nature of written narrative and — Ready? — Zeno’s Seventh Paradox, which three phenomena he attempts to interconnect more or less as follows: Seat-belted in her gridlocked and overheating Subaru, the protagonist of “Freeze Frame” is moving from St. Louis’s Gateway Arch toward University City at a velocity, alas, of zero miles per hour. Likewise (although her nerves are twinging, her hazel eyes brimming, her pulse and respiration pulsing and respiring, and her thoughts returning already from tourist boats to the life-problems that have her by the throat) her movement from the recentest even in her troubled story to whatever next: zero narrative mph, so to speak, as the station wagon idles and the author digresses. Even as the clock of Her life is running, however, so are time in general and the physical universe. The city of St. Louis and its temporarily stalled downtown traffic, together with our now-sobbing protagonist, the state of Missouri, and variously troubled America, all spin eastward on Earth’s axis at roughly a thousand miles per hour. The rotating planet itself careens through its solar orbit at a dizzying 66,662 miles per hour (with the incidental effect that even “stationary” objects on its surface, like Her Subaru, for half of every daily rotation are “strolling aft” with respect to orbital direction, though at nothing approaching orbital velocity). Our entire whirling system, meanwhile, is rushing in its own orbit through our Milky Way Galaxy at the stupendous rate of nearly half a million miles per hour: lots of compounded South Street Station effects going on within that overall motion! What’s more, although our galaxy appears to have no relative motion within its Local Group of celestial companions, that whole Local group — plus the great Virgo Cluster of which it’s a member, plus other, neighboring multigalactic clusters — is apparently rushing en bloc at a staggering near-million miles per hour (950,724) toward some point in interclusteral space known as the Great Attractor. And moreover yet — who’s to say finally? — that Attractor and everything thereto so ardently attracted would seem to be speeding at an only slightly less staggering 805,319 mph toward another supercluster, as yet ill-mapped, called the Shapley Concentration, or, to put it mildly, the Even Greater Attractor. All these several motions-within-motions, mind, over and above the grand general expansion of the universe, wherein even as the present reader reads this present sentence, the galaxies all flee on another’s company at speeds proportional to their respective distances (specifically, in scientific metrics, at the rate of fifty to eighty kilometers per second — let’s say 150,000 miles per hour — per “megaparsec” from the observer, a megaparsec being one thousand parsecs and each parsec 3.26 light-years). Don’t think about this last too closely, advises the author of “Freeze Frame,” but in fact out Alice — who has always had a head for figures, and who once upon a time maintained a lively curiosity about such impersonal matters as the constellations, at least, if not the overall structure of the universe — is at this point stopped quite as still by vertiginous reflection as is the unnamed Mrs. William Alfred Barns by traffic down there in her gridlocked Subaru, and this for several reasons. Apart from the similarities between Her situation vis-à-vis “Bill” and Alice’s vis-à-vis Howard — unsettling, but not extraordinary in a time and place where half of all marriages end in separation or divorce — is the coincidence of Alice’s happening upon “Freeze Frame” during a caesura in her own life-story and reading through the narratives of Her nonplusment up to the author’s digression-in-progress just as, lap-belted in a DC-10 at thirty-two thousand feet, she’s crossing the Mississippi River in virtual sight of St. Louis not long past midday (Central Daylight Savings Time), flying westward at an airspeed of six hundred eight miles per hour (so the captain has announced), against a contrary prevailing jet stream of maybe a hundred mph, for a net speed-over-ground of let’s say five hundred, while Earth and its atmosphere spin eastward under her, carrying the DC-10 backward (though not relatively) at maybe double its forward airspeed, while simultaneously the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, and so forth all tear along in their various directions at their various clips — and just now two flight attendants emerge from the forward galley and stroll aft down the parallel aisles like that deckhand on the tourist stern-wheeler, taking the passengers’ drink orders before the meal service. Alice stares awhile, transfixed, almost literally dizzied, remembering from her happier schooldays (and from trying to explain relative motion to Sam and Jessica one evening as the family camped out under the stars) that any point or object in the universe can be considered to be at rest, the unmoving center of it all, while everything else is in complex motion with respect to it. The arrow, released, may be said to stand still while the earth rushes under, the target toward, the archer away from it, et cetera.

[. . .]

Back, rather, she goes, to that extended digression, wherein by one more coincidence (she having just imaged the arrow in “stationary” flight — but not impossibly she glanced ahead in “Freeze Frame” before those flight attendants caught her eye) the author now invokes two other arrows: the celebrated Arrow of Time, along whose irreversible trajectory the universe has expanded ever since Big Bang, generating and carrying with it not only all those internal relative celestial motions but also the story of Mr. and Mrs. W. A. Barnes from wedlock through deadlock to gridlock (and of Alice and Howard likewise, up to her reading of these sentences); and the arrow in Zeno’s Seventh Paradox, which Alice may long ago have heard of but can’t recollect until the author now reminds her. If an arrow in flight can be said to traverse every point in its path from bow to target, Zeno teases, and if at any given moment it can be said to be at and only at some on of those points, then it must be at rest for the moment it’s there (otherwise it’s not “there”); therefore it’s at rest at every moment of its flight, and its apparent motion is illusory. To the author’s way of thinking, Zeno’s Seventh Paradox oddly anticipates not only motion pictures (whose motion truly is illusory in a different sense, our brain’s reconstruction of the serial “freeze-frames” on the film) but also Werner Heisenberg’s celebrated Uncertainty Principle, which maintains in effect that the more we know about a particle’s position, the less we know about its momentum, and vice versa — although how that principle relates to Mrs. Barne’s sore predicament, Alice herself is uncertain. In her own mind, the paradox recalls that arrow “at rest” in mid-flight aforeposited as the center of the exploding universe . . . like Her herself down there at this moment of Her story; like Alice herself at this moment of hers, reading about Hers and from time to time pausing to reflect as she reads; like very one of us — fired from the bow of our mother’s loins and arcing toward the target of our grave — at any and every moment of our interim life-stories.

[. . .]

[. . .]then returns, glass in hand, to the freeze-framed “Freeze Frame,” whose point she think she’s beginning to see, out of practice though she is in reading “serious” fiction. To the extent that anything is where it is [the author therein now declares], it has no momentum. To the extent that it moves, it isn’t “where it is.” Likewise made-up characters in made-up stories; likewise ourselves in the more-or-less made-up stories of our lives. All freeze-frames [he concludes (concludes this elaborate digression, that is, with another space-break, after which the text, perhaps even the story, resumes)] are blurred at the edges.

An arresting passage, Alice acknowledges to herself.

#pearl diver

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shipsbcshesdiabetic · 6 years ago

Text

Chapter 28

Tuesday, June First, Thirty Thousand Seventeen, 9pm- Space, I Guess

Our bright, blue home planet melts into obscurity as The Commander and I venture out into the endless horizon of the universe. It’s silent, save for the clicking and whistling of the buttons plastered on the interior walls. There’s nothing to do out here except observe the beautiful star-laden cosmos, each electrified dot gleaming brightly and brilliantly. The ship propels us farther and farther from our base and our people with each passing second, thereby inflating the painful loneliness shared by us two space cadets. We’re smaller than ever before, a mere quark in the presence of all that exists. We are alone, but there is glory in insignificance. We are in control of nothing and are nothing, yet we are the sole masters of time and space.

Adventure is laced in our gasoline, propelling us through the airless blackness. The fundamental laws of physics that rule over Earth no longer rule over us. The concept of time stretches into an ever-thinning straight line, the passage of each moment no longer having to find its way through the bend of gravity. Entire lifetimes on Earth pass in the time it takes to blink my eyes. Everyone I love is dead. And I don’t care. Their bodies and memories will all fade out into nothingness and revert back to stardust, but we’ll still be here, dying on our own time.

It’s hard to believe that death will ever come for a person living in a science-fiction thriller. I feel immortal, like a character in a story. Space never ends; it goes on forever. I’ll never run out of stars, even as the particle accelerator kicks into full gear and propels the rocket forward as the g-force turns my flesh into a blanket of lead and my organs into stone. I unzip my space suit and float out to the back window. The solar system is nothing but a speck, the planets moving around the sun like electrons revolving around the nucleus of Bohr’s model of the atom.

Back home, everything revolves around something else due to gravity, or perhaps due to stubbornness. The moon orbits the earth. The Earth orbits the Sun. The Sun orbits the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The Milky Way orbits the Local Group. The Local Group orbits the Virgo Supercluster. The Virgo Supercluster is a thought swirling within the Mind of God. The adults revolve around stress, the sad revolve around sadness, the depressed revolve around their vices, and the idiots revolve around the more powerful idiots. Girls revolve around girls, boys revolve around boys, boys and girls revolve around each other, and it’s all very stupid and very lame.

A field of stars dies before our very eyes, exploding into bundles of color and energy. The supernovas let out sprouts of light that form bouquets of flowers laid out in an endless grave. Vermillion poppies and purple painted daisies bloom and explode within and around the bright streaks of the goldenrods. Cherry-red hydrangeas adorn the space below the fiery, burnt orange chrysanthemums and the pastel pink carnations. The colors of the orchids’ petals ebb and flow from the inside out, melting the milk chocolate and the honey and the bubblegum flavors into one candied bundle. The irises expand and contract with the light in the midst of the blush-colored pansies and the hot pink lipstick of the tulips. Soon, our ship makes it through the field, and we coast along another patch of nothing.

Specks of colored pollen drift out from the blasts and watercolor the blank starry sky. The electric neon nebulas hold in glittering pennies and smoke and seafoam. The dust blows into nothingness as The Commander presses the accelerator.

The cartoon rocket’s autopilot jolts us forward at a million miles a minute into a crazy collage of constellations. The Big Dipper points us to where we want to go, allowing us to navigate through the celestial soup. We dive deeper into the sea of the sky, exploring the world beyond our own world. We take a left at Polaris, then a right at Ursa Major. The bear’s claws scrape the window as we escape its sudden wrath. Canis Major barks loudly and kicks around our spaceship with its paws. We fly out and land in the circuit of Orion’s belt, spinning around in it twice before escaping once again.

The territory of the zodiacs comes into view next. The stars seem to have fallen out of line. A disrupting energy has been cast over their dominion, preventing them from properly ruling over the hearts of humankind. Where there should be love and peace, there is conflict and discord. The crab and the scorpion antagonize the twins until they have no choice but to climb into the cradle of the scale’s cups. As the lion nips at the archer’s heels, he fires arrows at the bull and the ram just when the two of them interlock horns in a battle. The maiden and the water-bearer mercilessly take away the life-giving fluid, letting the fish and the sea-goat flop around and choke.

We nosedive to avoid Halley’s Comet, the force lifting me out of my seat a little. Unfortunately, we zoom straight toward the asteroid belt. An assault of flying boulders heads right for us. Miraculously, the first ten or twenty rocks miss us by a hair. But when the first one hits the underside of our ship, my throat tightens. The Commander overrides the autopilot and takes control over our direction, but it’s still not enough to save us. For a while she manages to weave in and out the path of impact, until a large one takes her by surprise and shatters the front windshield.

Everything immediately goes into slow motion as we prepare to die. In the midst of my shock, I lose the ability to hear. The blunt force of the impact rattles my insides, giving wake to a sudden wave of humility and listlessness. We are not in control. We are at the mercy of fate. The factor separating our life from our death is completely out of our hands. The universe will decide the outcome of our trial as everything implodes at a snail’s pace. White shards of glass lick our exposed skin, slowly falling into our laps like fresh snow. I try to shut my eyes, but all the glass is gone by the time I manage it. I hold my breath to conserve oxygen as the frigid cold crystalizes under my skin. My fingers are turning blue. A plume of flame explodes to my side. The raging fire quickly consumes the rest of the shoddily-drawn up ship around us, eventually reaching the fuel tank.

The rubble spits me out, sending me spinning in every direction at once. In an instant, my lungs go flat and I grow even colder. I desperately flail my arms around, grabbing for support that doesn’t exist. The momentum eventually begins to lessen as I continue to slowly roll through space head first, my headache near unbearable. When I come to a complete stop, my vision clouds, and there’s nothing left to do except suffocate in the stillness. The stars turn into streaks of muted light in the distortion of my tears.

My last heartbeat reverberates into itself, my blood painfully searching for any remaining oxygen, but to no avail. Little red dots evaporate out of my skin, leaving behind a pale corpse-like figure. A quick hotness stamps itself onto my stomach, and I look down to find a pancake of liquid silver slowly spreading from that point. The strange fluid runs over my clothes and my skin, eating away through both and replacing them with itself. The last little bit flows down over my fingers, completing the transformation. Tendrils of air reach my lungs and knock the life back into my body. My mechanical eyes click themselves open. I breathe in easily, the manufactured life turning the cogs in my new system.

The scope of the darkness expanding in every direction for an infinite number of miles hurts my head. It’s all so intensely blue it’s back and so intensely black it’s blue. I swim up, kicking my legs and moving my arms for a while, forever. There’s no way to know how far I’ve traveled, because there are no landmarks, and I have no clear destination. And in the vastness of the universe, what is the significance of the distance I have gone? I may as well be travelling by treadmill.

I stop and stand where I am, surprised to find that the bottoms of my feet touch a made-up surface, as if someone laid out an invisible floor for me. The corner of my eye catches a spot of gray in the distance. It looks different from the all the stars freckled across space. A feeling catching in my throat, I start to run as fast as I can toward it. The thundering sound of metal clanking against metal pushes silence out of the way. After cresting a hill, I happen upon my old home: the solar system. The unfiltered, blinding sunlight hits my glittering silver skin.

I immediately see her a short ways away. The Commander. Relief sends an electric shock through my programming. I’m not alone anymore. I am a part of something other than myself once again. I sit down and let myself revolve around the sun, like I’m on a carousel. The planets, once too large to comprehend, seem to be small enough to hold in my hand.

Just when I begin to relax, a golf ball-sized object hits the back of my head. I quickly get up and turn around to find The Commander looking at me with a smug look on her face. I lean over and pick up Pluto, the closest one to me, squeezing the foam ball in my hand before launching it at my opponent. I miss and hit the sun. A brown plume of dust bursts out from where it entered.

A war of planets sends dodgeballs flying through the field one after another. I run for it and catch Mars in my hand, steadying myself so I don’t fall. Some of the blood red dust rains into the void of space before I toss it back. She ducks behind the sun, letting the planet roll out into obscurity. The Commander then, with great effort, manages to throw Jupiter back to me, the side of it grazing my leg. I fall to the ground, laughing due to the sudden, fresh adrenaline.

I chase after her, and she retreats into the distance. We speed away from home again, likely moving at a pace of a thousand miles per step, reality trailing along behind us. Giant plumes of new nebulas of every shape and shade appear to either side of our path as we skate across the universe. The variety and kind of the vibrant colors surpasses the magnificence of every work of art I’ve ever seen before, putting even the Renaissance to shame. Out of energy, The Commander stops and turns around, and I do the same once I catch up.

We humbly lay our eyes on the disks of white and gold littering the dark with hurricanes of stars. I open my mouth a little without meaning to, allowing a breath that doesn’t exist to escape. Our own Milky Way Galaxy blends right in with the rest of them, a small pool of pure milk amongst others just like it. It’s weird how the universe wouldn’t notice or care if our galaxy disappeared, but we sure would. It’s everything to the insignificant nothings, and nothing to the significant everything.

The Commander carefully steps onto the Andromeda Galaxy, letting it hold her weight. She leaps for the Triangulum Galaxy next, careful to land where she wants, and not into the nothingness. Farther into the beyond, ten or so white whirlpools ahead, I spot a fissure in the fabric of space glimmering like a fresh gash. I tag along now, using the stepping stones as a makeshift path to another plane of existence, a portal to anywhere, a guide to new realms of existence.

The wormhole sucks us into its woven tapestry of pastels and neon lights, gently and swiftly passing us from one end to the other like we’re liquid in a straw. The plasma surrounding and enveloping my metal casing grows hot, smelting me into a single bullet-shaped capsule. Time doesn’t exist anymore. Numerically calculable movement has ceased. Instead, everything occurs in a singularity of motion, a mere blast of Now. The Big Bang happens as man lands on the moon as dinosaurs rule the Earth as I walk into Alcorn High School for the first time as hot liquid rock spins out and forms spheres of baby planets as the Civil Rights Movement begins as the Civil War ends as Beatrice kisses me as everything and everyone dies. A wrenching headache pulls my mind out of the present just when the forces in charge flatten my being until I’m only one atom thick. We’re flat paper planes fluttering by on flimsy paper wings. As we finally near the exit, we’re compressed once again, this time into a single, so-small-it’s-imaginary dot. This is the epitome of not mattering.

I wake up in a small room with harsh lighting. I’m back in my pink dress and boxers. Despite how hollowed and atrophied my body feels, the weightlessness allows me the strength to fly to the door and open the latch. I drift from room to room in the International Space Station, being careful to not disturb the white wires and machines on all sides of me. I reach the airlock room and open the door without thinking over it.

I slide out of the hatch and swim into the open nothingness directly above the vast Earth. I look at the space station one last time, and I spot an astronaut working on the exterior wiring. He looks back at me and releases his grip on his wrench. It stays afloat right next to him. I stare at my reflection in his helmet as I finally allow Earth’s gravity to take hold of me.

I’m falling. The moon shrinks like a white balloon that someone let the air out of. Everything becomes smaller and smaller with each microsecond, but I feel as though I am still in space. Everything that exists is space. I spread out my limbs, but the added wind resistance does little to stop me. I involuntarily flip over stomach-first, looking down on North and South America. I fall through the clouds, and I’m able to see a residential area with big houses and gardens. I can feel the clocks in every one of those buildings ticking faster and faster as I return to the surface of the earth. I hit the hard dirt next to the road at the same time that a black truck speeds past on it.

I wake up to the sound of a struggling motor and Kirsten yammering on about something. It’s completely dark outside now. I yawn. Still too exhausted to think or move, I watch the yellow lines flow into and out of the glint of the vehicle’s old headlights. A cloud of unsuspecting gnats hits my half of the window, a few of them sticking to the stains of random crud. I feel heavy. And exhausted.

“Lily,” Kirsten says, snapping her fingers. “Lily!”

“Huh?”

“We’re at Jacob’s house now.” She swerves into his driveway. The bright lights from the massive house’s windows shine on the freshly power-washed brick driveway.

I’m not going to ask her why we’re visiting him. I’m too tired and heartbroken to talk about anything at this point. Besides, I daresay I’ll find out what kind of fucked-up adventure we’re on now sooner than I’d want to anyway.

I prepare to unbuckle my seatbelt. Just two seconds before the wheels stop rolling, the truck jolts upwards as a terrible, animalistic sound twists around in my ears. My throat goes dry and I stop breathing. For a moment, neither of us wants to move. Still shaking, I open my door cautiously. Then Kirsten does the same.

She extracts her phone from her jacket pocket and turns on the flashlight, pointing the beam at the front tire. My breathing stops again. I hear hers hitch too. The exposed mass of orange fur slowly soaks up the blood running out of the crushed veins of the animal. All four paws look unharmed, which only makes it all worse somehow. Two white triangles, which I suppose are the ears, peek out from the front of the tire. It’s an awful sight.

“How are we going to tell Jacob that we ran over his cat?” I blurt out.

“We don’t.”

“But… isn’t he going to wonder what happened to it?”

“That’s not our issue. We’re not telling him.”

“Well, Kirsten…” I begin, breathless still. “He’s going to find out. It’s bleeding out in the middle of his front driveway, for fuck’s sake. How did you not see it? You had your headlights on, right? And…”

“Shut up,” she says curtly. “What’s done is done. You have to clean this up so he never finds it. We need to forget it ever happened. Otherwise… we’re just done. We’d be so screwed. I have a plastic bag in the back that you can use to pick the thing up.”

“Me?” I respond angrily. “Why should it be me? You’re the one that ran the damned thing over!”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I’ve moved enough dead bodies to last me a lifetime. I just need a break from cleaning up bodily fluids, you know?”

I think it’s shitty of her to use her sister’s suicide as a way to guilt-trip me, but if I call her out for it, I’ll definitely be the one in the wrong.

“…well, I still think you should clean it up,” I insist, though I’m less sure of it.

“You’re doing this, or I’m going to call your parents and tell them to pick you up, and you can explain everything to them and drown in your own self-loathing on the long car ride home. Then you can spend the entire summer with no friends and nothing to do, so all you do is cry and think about why Beatrice left you as your parents try to distance themselves from you. So unless you’d like for that to happen, I’ll drive the truck back a few feet so you can clean it up.”

“You’re a complete piece of shit, Kirsten. You know that, right?” I seethe, talking through my teeth.

Kirsten smiles sarcastically. She throws a box of tissues and a plastic bag at me and shuts the passenger side door. “Have fun,” she deadpans as she walks away.

I pull out a generous amount of tissues from the box and divide them up into both of my hands. The lighting from the front windows of the house provides just enough light for me to get this done without casting too much detail onto the corpse. I put my nose in the crook of my arm for a moment to filter out the sickening smell of fresh blood. Cursing all the choices that brought me to this point, I bend down and get to work.

Chunks of cat debris fall out of my tissue-hands as I scoop the bloodied fur pile into the bag. A few handfuls later, I reach the bowels. I spring backwards immediately at the smell, retching. I throw my fluid-soaked tissues onto the ground so I can reach around and unzip my dress a bit. Quickly, I pull the loosened fabric in the front up and over my nose and mouth. My nose doesn’t want to smell. My eyes do not want to see. My brain does not want to think. Losing my mind, I rip a bunch of tissues out and then pace around quickly, trying to keep it together. My consciousness cuts in and out as I force myself through the grueling process. I don’t feel like I’m crying, but tears are relentlessly streaming down my face as evidence that I am.

Jacob’s recliner is really soft. I slowly sip the iced tea that Jacob’s mom gave me. He and Kirsten are here with me in the living room, sitting on the couch in front of me, playing a video game together. Kirsten legitimately seems to be largely unbothered with the events that just transpired. There are times when I think that she doesn’t actually care about anyone or anything but herself unless it’s convenient for her to do so. It’s like she has the demo version of empathy. Jacob’s mom looks up from her computer and notices me staring down the back of Kirsten’s head. I give her a quick, nervous smile to make myself seem less on-edge. She says something that I don’t focus on, and I give an automatic response. She shuts her computer and goes into the other room.

Jacob keeps looking at me about every ten seconds, and I don’t know what that means. Sometimes I think he’s creepy on purpose just to make people uncomfortable. But at the moment, all I can think about is how his acne seems to have gotten a whole lot worse. The large red circles in combination with his greasy skin give him the exact appearance of a fresh pepperoni pizza. His skin even has a sickly tinge of yellow, just like the melted cheese. He never goes outside, so his only light comes from the glow of his TV when he plays video games or when he watches, I’m assuming, tentacle porn.

“Why the hell are we here, anyway?” I ask Kirsten as Jacob turns around for the tenth time. I get up and stand between them and the TV.

“Oh, right.” She puts down the controller for a moment. “Jacob, I’m going to have to borrow a lot of money,” she says bluntly.

He doesn’t even question it. “How much do you need?”

“I don’t know. As much as you can give me, I guess. I’m willing to do something to earn it, if you have any suggestions.”

He looks at me as if he wants me to disappear, then whispers something into her ear. I find this strange, since Jacob’s generally an open book with everyone about everything. I analyze Kirsten’s face to try to make a guess at what he’s saying to her, but she’s not reacting in any way.

“No thanks. As much as I love dick in my mouth, I’ve had more than enough of it in one 24-hour period.” I squint at her. Kirsten seriously concerns me sometimes. “On a related note, do you have any mouthwash?”

“Alright, well…” I begin, uncomfortable. “I’ll be… in another room.”

“Did you not hear what I said? I’m not sucking his dick.”

“Yeah, I know.” I feel their eyes on me. I quickly dab. Kirsten grabs her forehead in disgust.

Whenever something awkward happens, I usually dab to try to make it go away. My philosophy is, the best way to make someone forget something cringey and stupid you did is to do something even cringier and stupider. It usually stuns everyone around me enough to where it actually works.

I leave anyway, because I have to use the bathroom. For some reason saying that in front of Jacob would make me feel unsettled in a deeply unexplainable way.

Somehow, I forget to pee and end up standing at the sink for ten minutes, staring into the middle distance as water rushes down the drain. I wish I could flush myself down the toilet and escape into the ocean. I start to half-heartedly tear up. I’m too tired to even cry properly. It’s the kind of pitiful, lazy cry that comes from simply forgetting to blink out the warm water. I would just hang out in Jacob’s bedroom instead of in here, but I’m really afraid of what I might find in there. You only make a mistake like that once.

Jacob has an unhealthy obsession with Hitler and all things Hitler related. I really don’t think that he’s a neo-Nazi, or even agrees with anything that Hitler stands for, especially since he and his family are incredibly Jewish. But for whatever reason, he’s completely, undeniably in love with his image. His room is covered top to bottom in various articles of Hitler paraphernalia. His white carpeting has hundreds of tiny Hitler pictures on it. I have no idea where he bought something like that, or any of it, for that matter. Like, where the fuck do you get Hitler pillows? Or a Hitler bedspread? Or a life-sized Hitler doll?

It doesn’t stop there. Every single day at lunch, he watches a Hitler-centric Taiwanese amine series that loosely translates into “Hitler My Love”. The language is in Portuguese, and the subtitles are in Spanish. Don’t ask me how that makes any sense. Based on what he’s forced me to watch of it, it seems to be centered on a crack ship pairing of Hitler and the Buddha. And honestly, it’s not that bad.

Jacob also likes painting, even though he isn’t that good at it. He has about a thousand pieces of his work in this bathroom. It’s mostly random landscapes, different animals, or, of course, Hitler. However, a single painting of a yellow car on the wall catches my eye as I sit on the toilet. A twinge of pain hits me in the chest. A flash of headlights breezes through my mind’s eye, and an imaginary gust of wind moves past my face. And then, all at once, I’m gone.

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

FOUR MONTHS AGO- 1am

The rapping at my window makes me drop my phone onto my face. My stomach drops and I stop breathing until I realize what’s really happening. My hands scramble to pick the glowing phone back up as I look at the window. Beatrice smiles at me and waves. I glance down at the time on my phone. A little mad, I unlatch the window and open it so I can talk to her.

“What are you doing here? It’s past 1.”

“I texted you ten minutes ago, saying that I wanted to hang out, and you said sure.”

“Yeah, but I thought you meant, like, tomorrow.”

“I even told you I was on my way.”

“I thought you were kidding.”

“I wasn’t. But that isn’t the point. Are you going to come with me or not?”

I shift my weight onto my other foot. I don’t know what to do. “Uh… I don’t know. I want to hang out with you and everything, but… it’s really late at night, and… I’m tired, and…”

“Come on. I have something I want to show you. I think you’re going to have a good time tonight, Lily. Just go with me.”

“I really want to get some sleep…” I begin.

“Oh, come on. Please?” she begs, folding her hands and batting her eyes.

I force myself to not smile in awe of her. She doesn’t need to know how cute she’s being, because she’d have complete control over me if she only knew her effect on me. “Okay, I’ll go with you,” I finally say, unable to resist it.

I put on a jacket over my pajamas and slip on my sneakers. I grip my forehead as my vision clouds. My body isn’t used to moving this late at night. Regardless, I’m glad that this is happening. If I’m being honest, I’d probably spend another ninety minutes or more on my phone if Beatrice wasn’t dragging me out of here. I turn around to see if she’s still watching me. She is. I hurry up and exit my room, go down the hall, and leave my house, careful to slowly rotate the knob so it doesn’t click too loudly. If my parents heard me, that would be the end of me and Beatrice, and, by extension, the end of the most interesting period of my life.

Classic rock softly sounds from the speakers in her car. The second thing I notice is that it smells a lot different in here. I sniff the air and look around to see what’s changed. Beatrice eyes me weirdly. “What is it?” she asks.

“Nothing. It just smells like…”

“Flowers?” She glances sideways at me as I nod. “Yeah. It’s a rose-scented air freshener that I bought recently. It masks the weed smell.” She turns off the internal lights and starts the engine.

“Oh. Cool.”

“I bet you’ve never snuck out of your house before.”

“Nope... I’m not really that kind of person.”

“I don’t think I could ever live like you do. All you do is go to school, eat, and take naps. You literally never do anything. I love you, but you’re really boring sometimes, and that annoys me.”

“Gee, thanks.” My brain fogs up with regret as I realize that she’s right. “You know… my life really is kind of… flat. I’m fully aware of that, and I’ve always been. I don’t do much of anything. It sucks.”

“I mean, of course it does. You never take any risks, ever. You’re glued to one spot. I think if you did something out of your comfort zone for once, you’d be a lot happier. That’s why I’m taking you out here tonight. For a little while, I’ve had to listen to you complain about how boring your life is, and how much you hate it. About how you do the same boring shit every day, and that you want to break out of it. Here’s your chance.”

“I never said that I hate my life. Just that it’s dull.”

“Still, you need to take a risk sometime. Just do something without thinking twice. I do whatever I want in the moment without thinking about it much. It makes living a lot more interesting. There’s so much more to life than taking naps and playing it safe all the time, you know.”

“Maybe, but I honestly think that if I had your lifestyle, I’d be dead by the end of the week,” I say, thinking about all the stories she’s told me.

“I don’t do things that are unsafe. I’m not an idiot. I just say yes to mostly everything, and do mostly everything I want to do. Any time I make a decision, I ask myself if it will almost certainly kill myself or others, and if it won’t, I do it. I don’t think about it. I do it.”

“You see, I prefer listening to your stories rather than living them out myself. It doesn’t take much for me to not be bored, but you risk everything you have every time you go out to do something fun. That sounds like a terrifying way to live.

“It isn’t, once you get over yourself and think about what really matters. I don’t think many people at all think that way. It’s not like people can punish you for being direct, or for doing things that are out of the ordinary. I just say whatever I think, and it’s not a big deal to me how they respond to it. And almost always, the things I do go well. You’d be surprised by how many people will give you what you want if you just ask for it.”

“I still don’t get how you are the way that you are. I couldn’t imagine just letting it all hang out. I think I’m content with being boring, because I don’t think I could handle the alternative.”

“Do you want to know how I had sex with a girl for the first time?”

“Uh…”

“I was in a park, and I saw a girl, and then I went up to her and said, ‘Hey, do you want to have sex with me?’ and she said yes.”

“…Is it really that easy?”

“Everything is that easy.”

She can’t see the color of my face in the dark, but I look out the window anyway. A slow coolness radiates off the glass and into my skin, my forehead barely a hair away from it. She gets everything she wants from people because she asks for it, and she lives like she doesn’t know she can bleed. It’s so wildly different than how I live.

“Hey,” I say subconsciously, catching myself off-guard. “Where are you taking me, anyway? I just realized that you never told me, and it seems like important information.”

“I’m taking you out to an abandoned warehouse so I can murder you and leave you there without a trace. You’re the first on the list of many killings I will carry out tonight.”

“Ha-ha. You think you’re clever,” I say, even though I half-believe it. We’ve only been dating for a week. I don’t really know her well at all.

I barely make out the basic shape of her facial expression. By the look of it, she knows I got a little scared. “Of course I’m not killing you, you idiot. I’ll tell you that, at least.”

After a good bit of driving, Beatrice goes off the road and into a seemingly random field of overgrown grass. It’s the kind of place that you would never think about or recognize, even if you went past it every day of your life. For a couple of minutes, she doesn’t get out. She sits there, her eyes closed, motionless. She’d never admit it, but she’s just as exhausted as I am.

The night sky here is endless. There’s no major source of light pollution around for miles. The black is solid black, and the white is solid white. No barrier lies between us and outer space. The natural light of the cosmos throws a faint, blueish pallor onto the dead stalks of grass. It’s simply perfect out here. I want to say something to her about how pretty the stars are tonight, but that seems like it would be stupid somehow.

My eyes lazily open as I hear her door pop open and slam shut. She opens my door, allowing the slightly chilly air into the car. I stretch my limbs and get out.

“Okay. Don’t turn around just yet.” She puts her hands over my eyes. “Okay, turn around 180 degrees and walk forward a little.” It’s a bit awkward to walk like this, but we make it work somehow. “Behold,” she shouts enthusiastically. She quickly removes her hands from my face. The lights at the top edge of the billboard faintly illuminate the message below.

Marriage =

1 man + 1 woman

Sponsored by the Fordville Baptist Church

“I like my dad, and I usually like what he preaches, but this was stupid of him. I’ll make him pay for this eventually, somehow. ”

It’s too dark to make out what face she’s making. “How so?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I want it to be something big, something that will make him reconsider what kinds of messages he decides to put on display. And unless he wakes up one morning with an insatiable urge for dick, it doesn’t seem like he’ll come to that sort of conclusion on his own.”

“Does this sudden thirst for revenge have anything to do with the church dance class he made you sign up for recently?”

A look of mild terror washes over her face. “That dance group is so fucking gay. It makes me want to backflip into a pool of acid.” She sighs. “If a genie gave me three wishes, all three of them would be used to take my face off of that ‘Dabbing for Jesus’ album we made.”

I laugh. “This is the first time you’ve told me about that. You need to show it to me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you still like me somehow, and I don’t want you to stop,” she jokes.

“Well… I won’t.”

The moon and the halo of stars above her head cast a bright, heavenly glow on her face, allowing me to see a smile creep onto it. The night sky is on full-blast at this dark, quiet hour, but my eyes have completely adjusted to it in this moment. I stare at her; the darkened, blue figure that I suppose is Beatrice. She stares back with the same amount of intensity.

“You’re so cute,” she says, getting a little closer to me. Before I can even process her statement, she walks past me and heads for the billboard.

“Where are you going?” I choke out, flustered.

She turns around and gives me a mischievous sort of grin. “We’re going to the top,” she says matter-of-factly.

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

The bathroom lights are off. The world is gone. All that exists is the feeling of my pulsing fingertips on my burning face. Every cell of my head is on fire, and the smoke is choking me, and I can’t breathe anymore. I reach up to flick on the switch, done remembering. I messily unravel a wad of toilet paper and wipe my tears and blow my nose in it. I open my legs and drop it into the toilet.

When I’ve least expected it, memories of her have been coming back for the past two hours. Smatterings of details rush in and knock the wind out of me, like someone ripped a carpet out from under my feet, and then kicked me straight in the teeth. Usually, it’s simply a brief glimpse- a single muted Polaroid clipping depicting her touch, her smile, the corner of her face, or simply the emotion of those things. And in the rest of the image, she is lost in abstraction. A swirl of muted color surrounds the most striking details of her essence.

But, on rare occasions such as these, the memories are as strong and life-like as the experience itself. The faded clippings are taped together and digitally enhanced against my will. They all run through a system that orders them, and they’re printed and taped together seamlessly. And then, frame by frame, photo by photo, the memory reel rolls through my mind’s eye, producing a stunning HD motion picture that’s as good as any cringey romantic comedy out there.

The result is a strong memory unlike any regular memory. Normal memories are made and forgotten. This memory of her transcends flimsy synapses between neurons. The actor in my head that plays Beatrice speaks each act, scene, and line with cruel accuracy. Each element of the story is personified and exaggerated like it would be in big-budget movie. Her Hollywood charm pushes through the human weakness of forgetfulness and allows the film to replay with stark clarity. Every feeling is a knife flying and gleaming in the harsh stage lights. The roses are elegantly sad pools of freshly bled love.

There are so many details about her that I wish I could forget. Her pink lipstick. The smell of her perfume. Her smooth voice. How her face would light up whenever she saw me. The way the endless sparks dancing in her eyes looked exactly like the stars in the sky. The way she does anything. Her soft hugs. Her intoxicating kisses. Her lightning bolt earrings. Her yellow VW bug. Her blonde hair and blue eyes- just like what Hitler would have wanted.

I go back into the living room, trusting that nothing mentally scarring is going on in there. The flat screen TV in the living room displays the results of a video game they just finished playing. I breathe out a sigh of relief and walk in. Jacob has a smug look on his face, signaling that he was the winner. I look at Kirsten’s half of the screen, then at her.

YOU LOST

GAME OVER

Kirsten’s hands are still going strong, quickly flicking and clicking at all the buttons, her mouth half-open as she stares blankly into the screen buzzing with static. She looks dead. The sight of her makes me feel deeply unsettled. It’s like watching someone trying to walk through a wall over and over again.

“Stop it, will you?” I say, trying to yank the controller out of her death-grip. Arms aching, I lift her up out of her seat for a second before she falls back down. It’s like there’s not even a person in there.

“Hey,” Jacob begins, “After this game, I have to let the cats inside,” Jacob mentions, staring intently at the screen, poised and ready for Kirsten’s video game persona to show up.

I watch the remaining broken flicker of light die in Kirsten’s eyes. Her right one twitches. She puts her controller down and covers her mouth with one hand. Jacob swoops in quickly, gunning her character down. Kirsten looks at me with a panicked expression.

“We have to go now,” I say, speaking for her. “It’s getting really late.”

“Oh,” Jacob responds, disappointed. He sets his controller down. Discomfort hits me. I know he wanted us to stay, because he never gets any visitors. He hardly has any friends at all, besides us, maybe Jordan, and his cat.

The start of the car ride is silent. I know for a fact that Kirsten is thinking about the sack of cat purée sitting in the back as much as I am.

“How much money did you get?” I ask.

“Enough.”

“How much is enough?”

“Something like… nine hundred or a thousand or something.”

I choke on my spit. “That’s… that’s a lot of money. Think of what we could do with that. We could go anywhere we wanted. This could actually be good. Great, even,” I suggest, desperate to believe that all of this can be good for me.

Kirsten says nothing. I look over at her. Her lips are pursed tightly, and her eyes look even more dead than usual. She stiffly reaches for a button on the CD system. The sound of a blender being grinded up in another blender penetrates my eardrums.

“Is… is that, uh… an Anal Cunt album?”

“Yeah,” she says, turning it up. She accelerates, staying unnaturally still as she does so. Even over the tortured screaming, I can make out her sniffling.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“That’s a stupid question.”

“…sorry.”

Admittedly, Anal Cunt is really good at cutting out invasive thoughts. If I listened to this all the time, I’d be having a better time at blocking things out. As the “music” keeps playing, I really get into it and let the screaming take over my head. However, the brief seconds of bliss are kicked out from under me when Kirsten decides to turn down the volume to finally express her feelings.

“The Earth is still spinning. Society is still functioning. And the world isn’t on fire and burning to the ground. That’s what’s wrong.”

“…oh.”

“It’s weird to see how the rest of the planet goes on just fine without her. Her death didn’t leave so much as a scorch mark. Nothing fundamental about anything is different, as if she never even existed. It’s strange how insignificant we are, in the scheme of things.” She pauses. “Also, you really suck at talking to people. I hope you know that.”

“I do.”

“Another thing. Other than the smoothie I just had and half a sandwich, I haven’t eaten in three days. I’ve barely even slept in three days…” she mentions.

“Oh. That’s… not good.”

“I want to eat somewhere. Chin But would be the only place in this area open past 9. Does that sound good to you?” she asks hollowly.

“Yes,” I agree, only because I’m afraid that she’d run over me and put me in a plastic bag too if I said no to anything.

Chin But is a Chinese buffet that honestly sucks actual shit. It’s like school cafeteria food that was left in the back of a freezer and became too old and disgusting to feed to students. The congealed mix of pig assholes and duck tongues they call their “mystery meat special” isn’t even the best part about this place. Parts of the sign shorted out at some point, leaving the sign with the letters “Chin--- Bu--et”. Later on, someone decided that it would be funny if the sign read “Chin But”, so they knocked the “e” off by throwing a bottle at it, as made evident by the broken glass littering the space under it. It’s a really classy place.

The original Chinese buffet that was in this building turned out to be a front for money laundering, so it was shut down. Later, it turned into a Walgreens, but its profit margin wasn’t high enough to justify its location, so it moved to the city. Now it’s a Chinese restaurant again.

The exterior of the restaurant isn’t super inviting. It’s been repainted over and over again by the staff in a feeble attempt to cover up the graffiti, but it hasn’t worked out for them yet. New vulgar messages spring up on occasion from people who feel the need to confess that they banged my mom. The thick, red paint peels off a lot, especially at the bottom where kids can pick at it. Homeless men scream at sometimes as customers enter the door, sometimes for a reason, and sometimes for no reason. The inside smells like dead fish and undercooked horse meat, and the lights flicker every five minutes.

“Mac n’ cheese, my favorite,” I say in a monotone, too tired for vocal inflections. I take the cheese-crusted ladle’s handle in my hand and scoop out the sludge, plopping it liberally onto my plate.

Spaghetti is actually my favorite food. Macaroni and cheese is more like my side hoe.

Kirsten’s already sitting at our table with a plate full of food. Even with the array of pungent foods violating my nose, I can still detect her BO from here. It’s revolting. I aimlessly walk around, looking for something that looks edible, but I’m not in the mood to eat at all, and the crawfish and questionable-looking oysters aren’t doing much to bring my appetite back. However, if we weren’t in this shitty Chinese restaurant right now, I’d be at home, all alone, crying myself to sleep. I guess the fact that I’m not a hysterical mess right now is my one small victory for the day.

I sit in a seat in front of Kirsten, noticing that the table is oddly sticky. I cringe. I lift my spoon and dig in.

“You’re not sitting with me,” Kirsten says as I take a mouthful, as if she’s some popular girl in a bad teen movie. “I want to eat alone.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Her eyes slowly move to the left, then to the right, and then back onto me. “No.”

“Well, fine,” I say, getting a little angry. “I’ll sit over there then.” I point to the table across from the original one.

She doesn’t even care enough to respond. In a huff, I sit off by myself like I was told. The strip of yellow florescent lighting above me begins to short out. The little taste the mac n’ cheese did have is gone now. I set my plate to the side and go over to get a new plate, dragging my feet.

I listlessly mix my bowl of egg drop soup around with my spoon as I try to psyche myself up to eat it. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to go to sleep so I can forget about how much I suck. This has been the longest day of my life.

I jump a little when a homeless man sits down in front of me. A few seconds later, I notice a blow-up doll with yellow hair and large blue eyes stuffed into the space beside him. It slides into the ground and grazes my leg. Stiff and uncomfortable, I wait for him to look up and say something to me, or acknowledge my presence in some small way. When he doesn’t, I get really confused until I eventually realize that he doesn’t even know I’m sitting in here. He must be so far gone that he can’t detect when another human being is in his presence. If no one gave me the time of day for long enough, that’s what would happen to me. He starts to shovel his plate of rice into his mouth with his fingers, spilling it all over the table and his lap. I don’t mind it too much. He seems interesting.

I’m wondering how long he’s been like this. Judging by his smell and the layer of dirt covering him, probably a while. All homeless people seem to have the same tired face and matted hair, no matter their age. He really could be anywhere from thirty to sixty. From what I can see of his eyes as he’s hunched over like that, they seem to be hollow and vacant. His black leather jacket, riddled with holes and unidentifiable stains, is sliding off his thin, gaunt shoulders. It’s awkward how much he looks like Kirsten.

My stomach drops to floor. The question of whether or not I’ll end up just like him screams in my head. My breathing slows down as I try to remain calm and gather my thoughts. I slowly take a sip from my cold soup, gagging immediately as my brain registers the new taste as an old person’s ass, and then letting the vile liquid run out of my mouth and back into the bowl. I sit there for a couple of minutes, not moving. I look around at the near-empty restaurant, as if it could distract me from my future image.

This man has fallen out of the social web as I have, and as Kirsten has. This man’s story will forever be a mystery to me. Maybe he’s out here because the ones he used to be close to dropped him, or maybe he’s here because he dropped them. As for me, I know which one I am, and I feel like a shit-rag for it. I can sit and look down at him and feel sorry for him now, but I could very well end up being just as unkempt and pathetic as the meth-scabbed homeless man in front of me.

The weight of what I’ve done hits me fully. It’s evil, sinful. I’ve cut myself off from the entire world. I don’t matter anymore. It’s a selfish thing Kirsten and I have done, to run away from ourselves. I’m now a stain of darkness on the lives of those who know me, now that I’m gone. I’ve ruined the people who love me. The people who sat with me at lunch every day. The people I would have met and affected throughout my life in Fordville had I stayed. My classmates. My parents. My teachers. My friends Trinity and Tyra. And Jacob and Molly and Jordan. I have left my world. I’m not in a web of people anymore; I’m a meaningless dot in the sky. I’m untethered to anything; there is no gravity to save me.

I would be willing to return if Beatrice wanted me, loved me. But she doesn’t, and I’m going to have to learn to live with that. I have to keep on going out into the dark unknown and leave everything behind if I am ever to find myself again. Everyone else can go fuck themselves. Maybe that decision makes me crazy, or even unusual, but I don’t care. It might be fucked up, but I don’t care. I simply can’t be bothered to think about anything but myself today, and I hate myself for that. I feel so guilty about this, but not guilty enough to change anything about how this night is going.

The homeless man glances up at me. A look of vague disgust washes over his face as he finally realizes that I’m there. Grunting, he hobbles away, carrying the sex doll under his arm. I look to my right at Kirsten. She’s smirking at me. I put down my fork and look up at the ceiling. I’m about to file a complaint with God.

“I’m sitting with you, and there isn’t anything you can do about it,” I say, trying to hide the tone of desperation in my voice.

“Okay. I couldn’t give less of a shit, so…”

“I’m going to go ahead and leave the check with you,” the waitress says, setting down our cups of water and then the piece of paper. “We’re closing up soon.”

“You too,” Kirsten says. I raise an eyebrow at her, but then I decide not to question it.

She still doesn’t look at me. Taking the cup in both hands, she takes huge gulps of the water, not stopping until half of it is gone. She slams it down on the table and wipes her mouth.

“Do you even breathe?”

She belches. “I wish I didn’t.”

There are many paths I can choose from where I am right now in this place in time. All of them are bad. Half of them will get me killed. The other half will also get me killed. I’ve got crosshairs on my neck no matter what. Tears start to well up in my eyes, because I never know what the right thing is. It would be crazy of me to return.

The tension inside me builds up as I fight with myself over whether to go home or to go with Kirsten. The closing restaurant’s silence is getting to me. Any remaining sounds are drowned out by the buzzing of the confusion.

“I’m scared that I’m doing the wrong thing here,” I begin, unable to contain it. “My parents are probably so worried. And yet, if I contact them in any way, they’d be so mad. I can’t call them. I can’t go home either… I’d rather die. I’ve badly messed up and I don’t know what to do.”

“Whatever you decide to do is whatever you decide to do. It doesn’t even matter, in the vast scheme of things,” she replies unhelpfully, passively picking a hair out of her noodles with her fork.

“It’s just that I don’t want to disappoint them, you know? They’ve come to expect more than this from me, and-”

“I don’t think you understand how much I don’t care about your problems.”

“- it would hurt if I saw a world where they didn’t think so highly of me. I don’t want to crush them. I can’t stand people being disappointed in me. Maybe it’s dumb, but I’d rather never come home than face that. And besides, after the whole Beatrice situation I mentioned earlier, I don’t have anything to stay for.”

“You can fix what happened between you and your stupid girlfriend. You have no right to feel like this is it. She’s still alive, isn’t she?” she says as if she’s genuinely asking.

“Yeah?”

“Well, then. There you go. Everything can be fixed, and everything can be mended until someone involved in the shit-fest dies. All it would take to fix your problems would be a conversation. As for me, I need a time machine.”

“Still, I just can’t go through with it. I’m not strong enough to crawl to her and beg her to hang out with me, and I’m definitely not strong enough to talk to my parents ever again.”

Kirsten takes out her phone, seemingly in order to actively block me out. She touches the screen a few times, and then quickly looks at me. “I’m calling your parents.”

My insides fill up with knives. “No. You can’t. I swear, Kirsten, if you do that…”

“Then you’ll… what?” We both look at the screen as she flashes it toward me. “It’s ringing.” She gives me a smug look as I try to grab for it. “Do you want to do this, or do you want me to do it? Because it has to happen, one way or another.”

“Give it,” I spit, desperate to end it. “You promised that you wouldn’t call them.”

She places a hand gently over the screen. “This isn’t the end of the world. It doesn’t matter if I tell them everything. It doesn’t matter if I don’t. One day, we’re all going to be dead anyway, and our useless monkey skeletons will evaporate as the sun swallows the earth whole. If you look at the small shit, it just seems so pointless to believe that anything we do matters. So, stop panicking, because it’s really annoying. The universe isn’t going to disappear over this.”

“But…”

Kirsten shushes me and puts the phone to her ear. “Hello, is this Mrs. Sandoval? Yeah. Hi. This is Kirsten Bloom – you might remember me from the book club- and… uh… your daughter’s with me. I just thought you should know that she’s safe, since it’s so late and everything,” she says with an unusual level of calmness. It’s really weird hearing Kirsten speak in a polite tone to someone. It sounds so artificial.

I fold my arms and put my head down, desperate to block it out. My conscious digs itself deeper into the table as I do everything in my power to pretend that this isn’t happening. My fingers somehow find my ears, and I plug them. Nonetheless, pieces of the conversation somehow reach me from miles away, entering me about once every seven seconds. They build up and bounce around in my head, unnerving me with each syllable.

…asked her to be the one to talk to you, but she didn’t want to. I think she’s…

…found her at the gas station, and…

…but she really wants to stay with me. I’m going to keep her with me for…

…I swear I’m not her girlfriend. I swear I’m not. I barely want to be her friend. Goodbye.

She taps me on the shoulder. My sense of sound slowly comes back. The chatter of the employees closing up the place fills my head.

“Is it all over?” I ask, peeking out from over my arms.

“No, the universe is still here, unfortunately. I checked a few seconds ago.”

“Fuck off. You knew what I meant.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

She slaps a handful of 1s on the table and stands up. “I’m going out to smoke. Meet me by the truck when you’re done.”

I grab several cookies from the desert bar and rush out the door a few minutes later. The homeless man is sitting outside on the sidewalk, setting up his camp for the night. Kirsten’s over in the far side of the parking lot. A large plume of smoke billows up every so often, each particle lighting up in the neon Chin But sign. I look up. The sky is a lot darker now, but not dark enough for the stars to show up yet. As I eat the last cookie, I circle around to the back where we parked. I try the passenger’s side door, but it doesn’t open.

Kirsten comes back five minutes later, looking more disheveled than ever before. However, the first thing that catches my eye is the sex doll she’s dragging over here by the ankle. My eyebrows come together as she unlocks the door and throws it into my seat.

“Did you seriously steal that from the homeless dude?”

“Yeah,” she says, like it’s the most obvious and sane thing in the world.

“Why?”

“Because I’m fucking tired, Lily, and I need some fucking sleep. And I didn’t bring a pillow or anything with me. This will have to do. And you’re going to have to hold onto it while we’re driving, because she’ll fly away if we put her in the back.”

I give her a quick nod and get in, forced to let the doll stay in my lap because there’s no room elsewhere. I don’t have the energy to pursue any kind of argument with her. If anything, I just want this day to be over. But above all else, I just want to leave her and go off on my own.

There’s something deeply absurd about running away from the person you’re running away with, but it’s definitely something I should consider. Kirsten is completely unstable, more so than usual. She keeps getting us into horribly complicating situations, and since she’s grieving her sister’s suicide so heavily, there’s a very probable chance that she’s going to end up getting pissed enough to murder me if I don’t get away soon. However, I have a sick feeling that I wouldn’t get too far.

Runaway Teenager Found In Ditch Clutching Heavily-Used Sex Doll

I blink back that image as I buckle myself in.

The sex doll’s plastic beach-ball-like material is sticking to my legs from all my nervous sweating. I wrap my arms around her waist because I don’t have another decent place to put my hands. I rest my head on her back and breathe in and out, trying to fall asleep again. A disturbing thought shocks me back to life. My eyes snap open. For a while, this is probably the closest I’ll ever get to the loving caress of a woman.

“This is my new girlfriend,” I say.

Kirsten laughs hollowly. “We should name her,” she says flatly. “How about Lexi?”

“Lexi? You mean, like that girl in our second period?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I’ve never met a girl named Lexi that isn’t a total whore. It just seems to fit.”

I go into a haze as Kirsten begins to accelerate at an unsafe speed. It’s not making much of an impression on me. No adrenaline comes. I may as well be watching Wheel of Fortune at my grandfather’s house. In this moment, I’m speeding on the highway in the middle of the night. I have a sex doll named Lexi sitting in my lap. I should feel like I’m on the top of the world, but I’ve never felt more constrained. I’m past caring. I’m past thinking. I’m so tired that I’ve floated off to the world of dreams without my mind. My brain keeps tuning in and out, but each muscle fiber in my body is painfully tense and very much awake.

The engine shouts out an incessant roar as Kirsten continues to press her foot firmly on the gas. She moves up the gear shift until it won’t go any farther. The windows on either side depict an image of only dark brown. My consciousness is ripped from my body as we reach ninety-five miles per hour.

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

Highway 16 is quiet. There is nothing but chirping bugs and tall, rustling grass for a hundred yards around. The world is so still that one could hear the energy from the stars buzz. Everything is deathly peaceful.

A disturbance comes in from the distance, a little ways away down the road, the vibrations finding their way into the high-tech microphones near the edge. The low rumble of an overworked engine grows from a whisper to a scream as the seconds pass. Headlights blind the darkness as the engine cuts through the silence. From light-years away, beacons of starlight slowly penetrate the hazy gray-blue night sky. Earth and space melt into one once again.

Tires screech as the driver makes a sudden turn to the left. The camera catches the blur of the worn tires as they zip past, disturbing the sleeping flowers and grasses. The camera then pans over to the front window of the truck. The mics pick up remnants of the sound waves from the Anal Cunt song blaring from the speakers. Through the foggy, messy window, two girls are detected, and the lenses quickly focus on them. Both of them look tense, yet blank, with their mouths slightly agape. The shorter one is holding Lexi’s hand. The taller one is smoking a cigarette. And all three of them have the same facial expression.

The film crew can’t keep up. The director wipes his forehead and ushers everyone to pack up the equipment. The drone comes back and flies into its compartment. They drive back into the city as the truck continues to speed on to nothing and nowhere.

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

I grab Lexi’s plastic tits so I can move her out of my line of vision. I squint at the road, making sure that I’m really seeing the two yellow lines to my right, and the single white line to my left.

“Oh my God… You’re driving on the wrong side of the road.”

She’s not listening. I shove Lexi’s flaccid body down into the floorboard and lean forward. I passively watch for oncoming traffic with a glazed-over feeling in my eyes. I’m still not fully absorbing the weight of the situation.

A pang of fear does whisper in my chest when I see the faint glint of lights of the 18-wheeler headed right for us, at about two football-field lengths ahead. I quickly look at the driver. She isn’t changing her speed or her direction. If anything, she’s going even faster than ever before.

I mindlessly grab the steering wheel and jerk it to the side. My neck nearly separates itself from my head as the vehicle spins out of control. Kirsten takes her foot off the accelerator, but the momentum still has us going. The front tire hits a rock, deflecting the vehicle, making us spin around a few times. The tires eventually stop running away from our control. Kirsten gets out immediately, completely unfazed.

It takes me a few more seconds to recover. I sit there stiffly, staring at nothing but the fuzz in my tired eyes, my back as straight as a perfect line. I get out, dizzy, but I walk it off and pretend that none of that even happened.

I help Kirsten fix our bed in the back of the truck, which is basically just carelessly shoving boxes and trash onto the ground and putting layers of blankets on top of the rest of the mess. Kirsten gets Lexi out of the front and tosses her where our heads are going to go. I climb in, my bones filling with lead. A crippling wave of exhaustion overtakes my body as I touch the soft blankets draped in the back of the pickup. It bowls me over, and I have to fight to not collapse and die from how badly I suddenly need sleep. It’s like not knowing you’re hungry until you smell food.

There are still random articles of clothes and garbage surrounding me where I lie, but I’m in no place to complain. My breath stops when I see The Bag. It’s still here. Neither Kirsten nor I ever got rid of it. I pluck it from beside me and set it back down again immediately. I can’t do it.

“Kirsten… can you dispose of the cat, please? I don’t want to stand.”

She sighs. “Sure.”

She stands and takes the tied ears of the bag and grips it firmly in her hand. She carelessly swings it until it gains momentum, allowing it to make three full rounds before she lets it go. I lift my head to watch. The carcass lands a good distance away from us, making a sickening rustling sound as it hits the ground.

“Christ…” I mutter.

I slowly flip myself over and lie down. My body joins with the softness underneath me, and my heat begins to recycle itself in the best way. I lie there motionless for a moment, taking in the feeling, and looking at the empty land around me. I glance in the direction of the road.

My throat constricts, and I gasp for air. My heart starts to pump too quickly, thumping and thrashing and trying to get out. I shut my eyes and try to get the pictures to stop swirling, but they don’t. Of all the vast, empty fields we could have crash-landed on, why did it have to be the one with our billboard? My eyes widen, and the memories swarm them, sending me to the past.

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

“C’mon,” Beatrice says gently, slowly letting go of my arm. Sparks fly out from the trail of her fingertips. She smiles at me.

“Okay,” I say without thinking twice.

I awkwardly trail along behind her, trying to tread and move through the tall grass. I can’t help but feel like I’m catching a bunch of gnats and crickets in my clothes. My skin grows hotter as I keep running after her, my lungs getting tighter and tighter with each pathetic gasp.

We finally get to the circle directly under the billboard that has been recently mowed. Without saying anything to me, or even looking at me, Beatrice starts to effortlessly, thoughtlessly scale the weak-looking ladder, like it’s nothing. I swear exasperatedly under my breath. My vision clouds with fear, and I consider yelling up at her that I’ll be waiting in the car. I grab a bar with one hand, and it is frozen cold to the touch. Looking up, I realize that the ladder is straight up, with no incline whatsoever. There’s no way my clumsy ass could get up there without falling and breaking my back.

I do it anyway. I force myself to breathe out and climb the ladder without thinking. My eyes are closed, but my head is still spinning anyway. Some deep part of me knows that I’m doing this, no matter how much I try to not care about it. I decide to open my eyes despite the wind-chill. My hands are sweating, but my death grip is more than enough to keep me anchored as I keep going. The nerves in my hands are jumping around, waiting for me to let go and fall backwards in a moment of carelessness. Every time I lose my grip and my hand slips even a tiny fraction of an inch, avalanches of nerves rumble and cascade through every spot of skin on me, supplying me with bursts of adrenaline and power. I’m not afraid of falling anymore; I could swear I could fly.

I crest the top and climb onto the wooden platform, breathing heavily as my muscles buzz and ache. I feel alive, crazily alive, and more awake than I’ve ever been in my life. Weakly, I stand, and look down at the ground. Fighting off the weirdly instinctual urge to jump off, I back away slowly from the edge. I walk toward Beatrice, and I sit down next to her, both our legs dangling off the edge. We silently look at the vast swath of land below, knowing that nothing down there matters at all. This is purely exhilarating, and nothing less.

“You know…” I begin, reluctant to break the perfect silence. “Before tonight, I was scared of heights.”

“I’ve never been.”

“Well, you’re different. You’re not actually scared of anything, and then you do things like this, and drag normal people like me along. And to be honest, that alone about you is slightly terrifying.”

“You should take notes from me. Life is better when you live recklessly.” She looks up at the stars. I do the same. They’re a little more prominent, now that we’re so high up in the air. It’s a black ceiling covered in Christmas lights, and we could touch the wires and tear it all down, if only we jumped just high enough.

“Do you ever wonder what’s out there?” I ask.

“You mean, in space?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I guess so. You know, I’ve always kind of wanted to be an astronaut. I think I’d like to experience what it’s like to be completely weightless.” She looks out into the world. “I’d like to be the first person ever to do something uniquely groundbreaking, like figure out once and for all what dark matter is made of, make contact with intelligent aliens, or visit an alternate universe. The last thing is especially interesting to me. The idea that everything and every situation that can exist does exist somewhere, out there, is just… neat.”

“That is cool, actually. Like, in one alternate universe, everything is the same as it is in this universe, except I’m wearing blue pajamas instead of green ones.”

“In another alternate universe, you don’t exist at all, and neither do I.”

“And in another alternate universe, we exist, but we exist at different time periods. And we are, like, immortal and famous. Imagine getting to meet every single president ever. Imagine all the things we could change about the world. That would be cool.”

“And in another, I’m fucking your mom.”

“She’s straight.”

“Not in that dimension, she isn’t.” She pauses. “And in another dimension, at this very moment, I’m getting gangbanged by all the presidents at once. That’d be great.”

I laugh, because it’s just so ridiculous. “So, you want to go to space just so you can fuck every single president?”

“Don’t judge my fetishes. It’s rude,” she says, pretending to be deeply offended.

I squint. “What even made you come to that idea randomly? That’s so weird. And, like…”

She smiles shyly and plugs her ears. “Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of Abraham Lincoln’s balls slapping against my ass.”

We wildly laugh again because there’s no one around to judge us for our sheer cringey stupidity.

“I just realized something,” I say.

“And what would that be?” she asks.

“Nothing is awkward with you. Well, okay. That was a lie. I still feel awkward around you. But I don’t feel as high-strung around you as I do with other people. I feel comfortable talking to you about things I’d never talk about with anyone else.”

“I’m glad.” She pauses. “In an alternate universe, everything is the same, except you’re cool and not awkward,” she says just to tease me.

“In an alternate universe, you’re normal.”

“That’s fair.”

As the night turns, we connect and flow together as we enjoy the high of being young and dumb. It’s a calmness that reaches the sub-atomic level. Each beyond-microscopic string of particles and waves in our beings are vibrating at just the right frequency as we delve into the throes of cosmic love. This newfound power allows us to defy the known laws of quantum mechanics and to defy time itself. She is the only place where hours feel like seconds and seconds feel like hours.

Time is my enemy, and I must defeat it somehow. If I don’t, I will have to return to my regular life and leave this feeling. If I can stop the rotation and revolution of the Earth, I might have a chance. Perhaps if someone, anyone, stopped the moon’s gravity from pulling the tides of the ocean, time itself will stop. If the wind stopped blowing through the tall, blond grass, if our blood stopped pumping heat into our connected hands, if the conductor of movement stopped waving his baton, then this might last forever. If my breath and blood in my body halted for only a moment, perhaps I could catch and savor a new high vertex of the happiness in me, hold onto that single photograph and in some small way, become timeless. But even if all these things could be achieved, there is still the wind blowing cool, soft air into our faces. It is relentless. The wind carries feelings, and the wind carries time.

“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to come back down to Earth, ever. But morning will come eventually and ruin this perfect night. I like hanging out with you, and I wish this could last longer,” I say quickly, interrupting her and the natural flow of our conversation.

“Maybe it can,” she says slowly, looking down at her swinging feet.

“And how would that work?”

“We could just run away. We could just get in my car and leave this shithole town.” She looks at me. “I’ve always kind of wanted to go off on some kind of adventure with someone.”

“I can’t,” I say, my voice cracking a little. “I can’t just uproot my life and everything. I’m sorry. I think I’d like that too, but I just can’t,” I ramble, trying to explain myself.

“No- you don’t have to say anything else. I get it,” she says quickly, looking down again. “I’m sorry for asking. It’s just been at the back of my mind for a while. Let’s talk about something else now.”

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

The sound of the wind blowing atop the world ceases abruptly. Literal crickets fill the silence. Fireflies dance around in the blackness, blurring the barrier between the sky and the ground. Everything is serene, and so still that it seems as though I’d break the landscape like glass if I so much as breathed too heavily or thought a single negative thought. It is too sacred a place, with the chirping of the crickets and the twinkling of the bugs and the stars, to ruin it with anything other than exhaustion.

My throat suddenly becomes raw with a fresh wave of regret. I look around and find a can of whipped cream near my head. I’m not hungry or anything, but I figure that maybe the sound of whipped cream jizzing out of the can will drown out the sound of my imminent ugly-crying.

“I wouldn’t eat that. It’s been sitting out for nearly a week,” Kirsten says.

I let it roll out of my hand and clink against the bed of the truck. “Oh.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll go to the grocery store and get some more food. And then we’ll get out of here.”

There’s some kind of itch deep inside myself that I can’t scratch. Looking up at the stars isn’t cute or whatever when you’re in a terrible mood. It blinds you from the fun version of thinking about space, which involves wondering what’s out there, and having the desire to wander through its eternalness in order to find out. The depressing version of space is the one I can’t get out of my head now. In the vastness of the universe, why do I, a particle, matter in it? When I think about the stars, this reinforces this view. They’re the only break in between the dark nothingness expanding in every direction for an infinite number of miles. Each one is pure and beautiful. It’s strange how I wouldn’t notice one star missing, but I would definitely notice if every star was missing. Everything is insignificant, especially when you’re alone. I’m swirling in the toilet of Not Mattering, staying awake instead of going to sleep.

Honestly, if there are any aliens out there who are willing to abduct me, I’d be open to it.

“Lily, I need you to promise me something.”

“I’m scared, but continue.”

“Don’t ever die.”

“…okay.”

“I mean it. You have to be immortal.”

“Okay.”

This insanely impossible promise is the only thing that is making me hold on.

This universe alone is bigger than the human mind can comprehend. To think that everything that exists is so big that it goes beyond the infiniteness of our own home is mind-boggling. Our world is just one bit of water in an infinite hall of glowing raindrops. Every situation conceivable is playing out somewhere, no matter how impossible it would seem to us. For example, somewhere, out there, there’s an alternate universe where Beatrice gives a shit about something.

She was the only thing that made the usual melancholic, mundane life I live worth it. Everything was inherently interesting. The mere act of waking up became an event. I’d wake up every morning, thrilled to go to school just so I could talk to her in class. Even on stretches of days where I couldn’t see her or talk to her, every color was a more vibrant shade. Every second, no matter what I was doing, no matter what was happening, I was happy. I was on a constant, delirious high, whether I was doing my homework or climbing to the top of a billboard.

Today, I went to space. I helped my friend steal from a homeless man. I hid in a gas station trashcan, naked. I’ve almost been shot. Twice. I nearly died in a head-on collision at a hundred miles an hour. I scraped a dead cat off a Jewish Neo-Nazi’s driveway. I ran away from my home and the only life I’ve ever known.

And it all felt like nothing.

A low hiss screams out from our makeshift pillow. I guess she couldn’t hold our weight anymore. Kirsten and I glance at each other, neither of us knowing what to do. Wordlessly, we let our heads slowly lower themselves as the sex doll beneath us farts out its hobo breath.

“Well, goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Kirsten.”

0 notes

joyfulfartwombat · 6 years ago

Text

http://www.recitequran.com/es/tafsir/en.ibn-kathir/13:1

LEER

Tafsir

Ar Rad

El Trueno

Ibn Kathir – Inglés

CAPÍTULO

SÍGANOS

Versículo

Página 249

Which was revealed in Makkah

﴿ بِسۡمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ ﴾

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

﴿ الٓمٓر‌ۚ تِلۡكَ ءَايَـٰتُ ٱلۡكِتَـٰبِ‌ۗ وَٱلَّذِىٓ أُنزِلَ إِلَيۡكَ مِن رَّبِّكَ ٱلۡحَقُّ وَلَـٰكِنَّ أَڪۡثَرَ ٱلنَّاسِ لَا يُؤۡمِنُونَ ﴾

(1. Alif Lam-Mim Ra. These are the verses of the Book (the Qur’an), and that which has been revealed unto you from your Lord is the truth, but most men believe not.)

The Qur’an is Allah’s Kalam (Speech)

We talked before, in the beginning of Surat Al-Baqarah (chapter 2) about the meaning of the letters that appear in the beginnings of some chapters in the Qur’an. We stated that every Surah that starts with separate letters, affirms that the Qur’an is miraculous and is an evidence that it is a revelation from Allah, and that there is no doubt or denying in this fact. This is why Allah said next,

﴿ تِلۡكَ ءَايَـٰتُ ٱلۡكِتَـٰبِ‌ۗ ﴾

(These are the verses of the Book), the Qur’an, which Allah described afterwards,

﴿ وَٱلَّذِىٓ أُنزِلَ إِلَيۡكَ ﴾

(and that which has been revealed unto you), O Muhammad,

﴿ مِن رَّبِّكَ ٱلۡحَقُّ ﴾

(from your Lord is the truth,) Allah said next,

﴿ وَلَـٰكِنَّ أَڪۡثَرَ ٱلنَّاسِ لَا يُؤۡمِنُونَ ﴾

(but most men believe not.) just as He said in another Ayah,

﴿ وَمَآ أَڪۡثَرُ ٱلنَّاسِ وَلَوۡ حَرَصۡتَ بِمُؤۡمِنِينَ ﴾

(And most of mankind will not believe even if you desire it eagerly.) (12:103) Allah declares that even after this clear, plain and unequivocal explanation (the Qur’an), most men will still not believe, due to their rebellion, stubbornness and hypocrisy.

﴿ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى رَفَعَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٲتِ بِغَيۡرِ عَمَدٍ۬ تَرَوۡنَہَا‌ۖ ثُمَّ ٱسۡتَوَىٰ عَلَى ٱلۡعَرۡشِ‌ۖ وَسَخَّرَ ٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ‌ۖ كُلٌّ۬ يَجۡرِى لِأَجَلٍ۬ مُّسَمًّ۬ى‌ۚ يُدَبِّرُ ٱلۡأَمۡرَ يُفَصِّلُ ٱلۡأَيَـٰتِ لَعَلَّكُم بِلِقَآءِ رَبِّكُمۡ تُوقِنُونَ ﴾

(2. Allah is He Who raised the heavens without any pillars that you can see. Then, He rose above (Istawa) the `Arsh (Throne). He has subjected the sun and the moon, each running (its course) for a term appointed. He manages and regulates all affairs; He explains the Ayat in detail, that you may believe with certainty in the meeting with your Lord.)

Clarifying Allah’s Perfect Ability

Allah mentions His perfect ability and infinite authority, since it is He Who has raised the heavens without pillars by His permission and order. He, by His leave, order and power, has elevated the heavens high above the earth, distant and far away from reach. The heaven nearest to the present world encompasses the earth from all directions, and is also high above it from every direction. The distance between the first heaven and the earth is five hundred years from every direction, and its thickness is also five hundred years. The second heaven surrounds the first heaven from every direction, encompassing everything that the latter carries, with a thickness also of five hundred years and a distance between them of five hundred years. The same is also true about the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth and the seventh heavens. Allah said,

﴿ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ سَبۡعَ سَمَـٰوَٲتٍ۬ وَمِنَ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ مِثۡلَهُنَّ ﴾

(It is Allah who has created seven heavens and of the earth the like thereof.) (65:12) Allah said next,

﴿ بِغَيۡرِ عَمَدٍ۬ تَرَوۡنَہَا‌ۖ ﴾

(…without any pillars that you can see.) meaning, `there are pillars, but you cannot see them,’ according to Ibn `Abbas, Mujahid, Al-Hasan, Qatadah, and several other scholars. Iyas bin Mu`awiyah said, “The heaven is like a dome over the earth,” meaning, without pillars. Similar was reported from Qatadah, and this meaning is better for this part of the Ayah, especially since Allah said in another Ayah,

﴿ وَيُمۡسِكُ ٱلسَّمَآءَ أَن تَقَعَ عَلَى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ إِلَّا بِإِذۡنِهِۦۤ‌ۗ ﴾

(He withholds the heaven from falling on the earth except by His permission. ) (22:65) Therefore, Allah’s statement,

﴿ تَرَوۡنَهَا ﴾

(..that you can see), affirms that there are no pillars. Rather, the heaven is elevated (above the earth) without pillars, as you see. This meaning best affirms Allah’s ability and power.

Al-Istawa’, Rising above the Throne

Allah said next,

﴿ ثُمَّ ٱسۡتَوَىٰ عَلَى ٱلۡعَرۡشِ‌ۖ ﴾

(Then, He rose above (Istawa) the Throne.) We explained the meaning of the Istawa’ in Surat Al-A`raf (7:54), and stated that it should be accepted as it is without altering, equating, annulling its meaning, or attempts to explain its true nature. Allah is glorified and praised from all that they attribute to Him.

Allah subjected the Sun and the Moon to rotate continuously

Allah said,

﴿ وَسَخَّرَ ٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ‌ۖ كُلٌّ۬ يَجۡرِى لِأَجَلٍ۬ مُّسَمًّ۬ى‌ۚ ﴾

(He has subjected the sun and the moon, each running (its course) for a term appointed.) It was said that the sun and the moon continue their course until they cease doing so upon the commencement of the Final Hour, as Allah stated,

﴿ وَٱلشَّمۡسُ تَجۡرِى لِمُسۡتَقَرٍّ۬ لَّهَا‌ۚ ﴾

(And the sun runs on its fixed course for a term (appointed).) (36:38) It was also said that the meaning is: until they settle under the Throne of Allah after passing the other side of the earth. So when they, and the rest of the planetary bodies reach there, they are at the furthest distance from the Throne. Because according to the correct view, which the texts prove, it is shaped like a domb, under which is all of the creation. It is not circular like the celestial bodies, because it has pillars by which it is carried. This fact is clear to those who correctly understand the Ayat and authentic Hadiths. All the (praise is due to) Allah and all the favors are from Him. Allah mentioned the sun and the moon here because they are among the brightest seven heavenly objects. Therefore, if Allah subjected these to His power, then it is clear that He has also subjected all other heavenly objects. Allah said in other Ayat,

﴿ لَا تَسۡجُدُواْ لِلشَّمۡسِ وَلَا لِلۡقَمَرِ وَٱسۡجُدُواْ لِلَّهِ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَهُنَّ إِن ڪُنتُمۡ إِيَّاهُ تَعۡبُدُونَ ﴾

(Prostrate yourselves not to the sun nor to the moon, but prostrate yourselves to Allah Who created them, if you (really) worship Him.) (41:37) and,

﴿ وَٱلشَّمۡسَ وَٱلۡقَمَرَ وَٱلنُّجُومَ مُسَخَّرَٲتِۭ بِأَمۡرِهِۦۤ‌ۗ أَلَا لَهُ ٱلۡخَلۡقُ وَٱلۡأَمۡرُ‌ۗ تَبَارَكَ ٱللَّهُ رَبُّ ٱلۡعَـٰلَمِينَ ﴾

(And (He created) the sun, the moon, the stars subjected to His command. Surely, His is the creation and commandment. Blessed is Allah, the Lord of all that exists!) (7:54) Allah’s statement next,

﴿ يُفَصِّلُ ٱلۡأَيَـٰتِ لَعَلَّكُم بِلِقَآءِ رَبِّكُمۡ تُوقِنُونَ ﴾

(He explains the Ayat in detail, that you may believe with certainty in the Meeting with your Lord.) means, He explains the signs and clear evidences that testify that there is no deity worthy of worship except Him. These evidences prove that He will resurrect creation if He wills, just as He started it.

﴿ وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى مَدَّ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ وَجَعَلَ فِيہَا رَوَٲسِىَ وَأَنۡہَـٰرً۬ا‌ۖ وَمِن كُلِّ ٱلثَّمَرَٲتِ جَعَلَ فِيہَا زَوۡجَيۡنِ ٱثۡنَيۡنِ‌ۖ يُغۡشِى ٱلَّيۡلَ ٱلنَّہَارَ‌ۚ إِنَّ فِى ذَٲلِكَ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ • وَفِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ قِطَعٌ۬ مُّتَجَـٰوِرَٲتٌ۬ وَجَنَّـٰتٌ۬ مِّنۡ أَعۡنَـٰبٍ۬ وَزَرۡعٌ۬ وَنَخِيلٌ۬ صِنۡوَانٌ۬ وَغَيۡرُ صِنۡوَانٍ۬ يُسۡقَىٰ بِمَآءٍ۬ وَٲحِدٍ۬ وَنُفَضِّلُ بَعۡضَہَا عَلَىٰ بَعۡضٍ۬ فِى ٱلۡأُڪُلِ‌ۚ إِنَّ فِى ذَٲلِكَ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَعۡقِلُونَ ﴾

(3. And it is He Who spread out the earth, and placed therein firm mountains and rivers and of every kind of fruit He made Zawjayn Ithnayn (two in pairs). He brings the night as a cover over the day. Verily, in these things, there are Ayat (signs) for people who reflect. ) (4. And in the earth are neighboring tracts, and gardens of vines, and green crops (fields), and date palms, growing into two or three from a single stem root, or otherwise, watered with the same water; yet some of them We make more excellent than others to eat. Verily, in these things there are Ayat (signs) for the people who understand.)

Allah’s Signs on the Earth

After Allah mentioned the higher worlds, He started asserting His power, wisdom and control over the lower parts of the world. Allah said,

﴿ وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِى مَدَّ ٱلۡأَرۡضَ ﴾

(And it is He Who spread out the earth) made it spacious in length and width. Allah has placed on the earth firm mountains and made rivers, springs and water streams run through it, so that the various kinds of fruits and plants of every color, shape, taste and scent are watered with this water,

﴿ مِن ڪُلٍّ۬ زَوۡجَيۡنِ ٱثۡنَيۡنِ ﴾

(and of every kind of fruit He made Zawjayn Ithnayn.), two types from every kind of fruit,

﴿ يُغۡشِى ٱلَّيۡلَ ٱلنَّہَارَ‌ۚ ﴾

(He brings the night as a cover over the day.) Allah made the day and night pursue each other, when one is about to depart, the other overcomes it, and vice versa. Allah controls time just as He controls space and matter,

﴿ إِنَّ فِى ذَٲلِكَ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ ﴾

(Verily, in these things, there are Ayat for people who reflect.) who reflect on Allah’s signs and the evidences of His wisdom. Allah said,

﴿ وَفِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ قِطَعٌ۬ مُّتَجَـٰوِرَٲتٌ۬ ﴾

(And in the earth are neighboring tracts,) Meaning, next to each other, some of them are fertile and produce what benefits people, while others are dead, salty and do not produce anything. This meaning was collected from Ibn `Abbas, Mujahid, Sa`id bin Jubayr, Ad-Dahhak and several others. This also covers the various colors and types of diverse areas on the earth; some red, some white, or yellow, or black, some are stony, or flat, or sandy, or thick, or thin, all made to neighbor each other while preserving their own qualities. All this indicates the existence of the Creator Who does what He wills, there is no deity or lord except Him. Allah said next,

﴿ وَجَنَّـٰتٌ۬ مِّنۡ أَعۡنَـٰبٍ۬ وَزَرۡعٌ۬ وَنَخِيلٌ۬ ﴾

(and gardens of vines, and green crops (fields), and date palms…) Allah’s statement, next,

﴿ صِنۡوَانٌ۬ وَغَيۡرُ صِنۡوَانٍ۬ ﴾

(Sinwanun wa (or) Ghayru Sinwan.) `Sinwan’ means, growing into two or three from a single stem, such as figs, pomegranate and dates. `Ghayru Sinwan’ means, having one stem for every tree, as is the case with most plants. From this meaning, the paternal uncle is called one’s `Sinw’ of his father. There is an authentic Hadith that states that the Messenger of Allah said to `Umar bin Al-Khattab,

« أَمَا شَعَرْتَ أَنَّ عَمَّ الرَّجُلِ صِنْوُ أَبِيه »

(Do you not know that man’s paternal uncle is the Sinw of his father) Allah said next,

﴿ وَٲحِدٍ۬ وَنُفَضِّلُ بَعۡضَہَا عَلَىٰ بَعۡضٍ۬ فِى ٱلۡأُڪُلِ‌ۚ ﴾

(watered with the same water; yet some of them We make more excellent than others to eat.) Abu Hurayrah narrated that the Prophet commented on Allah’s statement,

﴿ وَنُفَضِّلُ بَعۡضَہَا عَلَىٰ بَعۡضٍ۬ فِى ٱلۡأُڪُلِ‌ۚ ﴾

(yet some of them We make more excellent than others to eat.)

« الدَّقَلُ، وَالْفَارِسِيُّ، وَالْحُلْوُ، وَالْحَامِض »

(The Dagal, the Persian, the sweet, the bitter…”) At-Tirmidhi collected this Hadith and said, “Hasan Gharib.” Therefore, there are differences between plants and fruits with regards to shape, color, taste, scent, blossoms and the shape of their leaves. There are plants that are very sweet or sour, bitter or mild, fresh; some plants have a combination of these attributes, and the taste then changes and becomes another taste, by Allah’s will. There is also some that are yellow in color, or red, or white, or black, or blue, and the same can be said about their flowers; and all these variances and complex diversities are watered by the same water. Surely, in this there are signs for those who have sound reasoning, and surely, all this indicates the existence of the Creator Who does what He wills and Whose power made distinctions between various things and created them as He wills. So Allah said,

﴿ إِنَّ فِى ذَٲلِكَ لَأَيَـٰتٍ۬ لِّقَوۡمٍ۬ يَعۡقِلُونَ ﴾

(Verily, in these things there are Ayat for the people who understand.)

﴿ وَإِن تَعۡجَبۡ فَعَجَبٌ۬ قَوۡلُهُمۡ أَءِذَا كُنَّا تُرَٲبًا أَءِنَّا لَفِى خَلۡقٍ۬ جَدِيدٍ‌ۗ أُوْلَـٰٓٮِٕكَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ بِرَبِّہِمۡ‌ۖ وَأُوْلَـٰٓٮِٕكَ ٱلۡأَغۡلَـٰلُ فِىٓ أَعۡنَاقِهِمۡ‌ۖ وَأُوْلَـٰٓٮِٕكَ أَصۡحَـٰبُ ٱلنَّارِ‌ۖ هُمۡ فِيہَا خَـٰلِدُونَ ﴾

(5. And if you wonder, then wondrous is their saying: “When we are dust, shall we indeed then be (raised) in a new creation” They are those who disbelieved in their Lord! They are those who will have iron chains linking their hands to their necks. They will be dwellers of the Fire to abide therein forever.)

http://www.recitequran.com/es/tafsir/en.ibn-kathir/13:1 LEER Tafsir 13 Ar Rad El Trueno Ibn Kathir - Inglés CAPÍTULO SÍGANOS Versículo 1…

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fiorekrp · 6 years ago

Photo

That’s EVIE IXORIAS —

She looks a lot like PARK CHAEYOUNG.

GUILD MARK : maroon mark, right below where her collarbones meet and above her chest

MAGIC : Gravity Change

the ability to alter the direction and force of gravity. since gravity is what keeps people and items to the ground, gravity alteration would cause the opposite. by using her gravity-changing abilities, evie is able to control many mediums and mimic telekinesis through the manipulation of gravity, although there is a huge gap between the two. she mostly makes uses of her arms and her palms to help her alter gravity, manoeuvring them towards the direction she intends for gravity to act upon.

ADVANTAGES :

gravity change enables her to alter her own weight; this highly enhances her mobility, allowing her to run up against vertical surfaces, move more fluidly and quickly and have abilities of flight.

she is able to manipulate the movements of people and objects by changing the direction of gravity; she can easily cause them to float away without having any sort of control over their movement, or have them pulled towards the ground and be rendered immobile.

she is also able to manipulate the gravity, granting her the advantage of being able to decide the acceleration of objects when they rise or fall, depending on the direction and force of the gravity. the stronger the gravitational pull, for example, the faster an object will fall, due to the force towards the ground.

when using her gravity-changing abilities, she can control and choose who and what will not be affected by her powers. for example, if she chooses to reduce the gravity of a particular falling object, other objects will not be affected.

DISADVANTAGES :

using her abilities to alter her own weight come with their consequences. the digits of her weight after her self-inflicted gravitational change will vary every time, and her body will take on a new figure depending on that new weight (chubbier when her weight is heavier, thinner when her weight is lighter.) her body will take about 15 minutes to bounce back to her original weight.

when using her gravity-changing abilities, she will acquire basic abilities of flight, but she is only able to move upwards and downwards, since gravity does not act sideways. this also applies to her control over the movement of people and objects.

the celestial spirit, libra, and anyone who has weight manipulation or time travel abilities can easily make her gravity-changing techniques useless.

her abilities work only on people and objects within a 15m radius. when using her abilities on such mediums, she can only last up to 3 minutes, shorter if the medium were heavier.

TRIGGERS : N/A PERSONALITY :

POSITIVE — energetic, faithful, intuitive

NEGATIVE — grudgeful, egocentric, whiny

BIOGRAPHY :

i. the darkness, greeting. you are a mere child. you view the world as vibrant and evergreen. you see the sky as wide and limitless. you flower the hopes of father’s return in prayers in front of the moon every night. you believe in the words mother feeds you every morning after. you are innocent — as you bask in the glow of the golden sunlight, filtering through a painful reality, hidden in plain sights. you are also innocent — as you insist to mother, one wrongful day, that you want to manifest magic in your tiny hands. you paint a canvas of your fantasies for her to see and you had her imagine you as a glorious mage, an eye-catching enchantress that is a splitting image of her. mother’s patience snaps like a thin string. she smears the entire dream with black, and screams for you to forget it. just like how she’s trying to forget father. you question his absence again in between sobs, and mother hastily feeds you another lie, but it doesn’t sit well in your stomach this time. you ponder hard on the truth as the stars come to light the sky that night, and you make another prayer by your bedpost, wishing for answers. ( prayers: they come true. ) a month flies, and it was raining hard when you receive an unexpected visitor. the door is yanked open by force, and fear immediately encapsulates your fragile little being, but relief calms you quickly when you meet with a familiar face, a familiar scent. you dash towards him for an embrace, and he feels very, very warm, just as you had always known. you then struggled from his hold to look for mother, so she can celebrate the good news too. father stops you, and cunning was he to convince you that this was all a game of secrets, and you’re close to winning. all you had to do was leave home and learn magic; his magic. how unfortunate — that your eyes were greedy for the prize. ii. the devils, dancing. mother ceases to exist in your mind. you remember nothing of her except that she left you, and it was father who found you cold and alone, neglected without a guardian that cared. all is a falsified memory crafted by the fingers of a corrupted magician, a friend to father, but you don’t know that. you learn that father is in a dark guild, and they call themselves grimoire heart. it’s a name that sends a tingle down your spine; you don’t know whether this is buzzing excitement or an instinct, telling you to run. but you trust father, so you coax yourself that he knows best, for he is the parent that did not abandon you. you begin to take after his everything. his preferences for food, his little habits, the way he walks with pride holding up his shoulders, and just as he had promised, his magic. you are a witness to your own dreams coming to life, as father takes your small hands and teaches them how to move, urging gravity to sway with the soft bends and twists of your wrists. father’s friends tell you that you are a natural. they also call you a legacy. you laugh with them and cluelessly agree, not knowing what it means. day by day, you absorb yourself into becoming another picture of your father. your gluttony to be far from weak drives you, and leads you to become better than your father. more and more join grimoire heart, and just like them, in you, lives the idea for the return of a world that fits the ideologies of the guild. just like how father taught, you exist to serve the ones who want their goals fulfilled in exchange for what grimoire heart needs for the big incoming change. your purpose is to abide and execute. your failure is your exit out of the guild, though you’d already crossed over your own heart that would never be an option. soon after, your already-written fate unravels. here comes the time you become the legacy they speak of. iii. the girl, regal. the seven kin of purgatory, they call it. father explains about it to you one evening, and you realize that it’s been a while since he’s looked this eager. purgatory: the state of suffering; the state of being sanctified. such power this name brings, that it sends you on an overwhelming thrill just thinking of being a part of it. you couldn’t wait for father to finish talking, as you plead for him to tell stories of her to hades, so his divineness would consider and place you amidst the ranks. you squirm, as you restlessly expect the response you desire. father grins even wider. he looks extremely triumphant. this is the message he sends to hades. she is ready. so hades calls for you; sets the crown for the seven kin upon your head. you sit on the throne, piled above all your ignoble deeds. you know you deserve this. you think this is meant to be. ( but, is it? )

#fiore: follow #fiore: accepted #fiore: grimoire heart

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starcitizenprivateer · 6 years ago

Text

Monthly Studio Report: June 2018

Welcome to Cloud Imperium Games’ Monthly Studio Report for June. This month, the team published Alpha 3.2, made progress on Squadron 42, and continued developing new systems ships and features for future releases. With that said, let’s dig into the details.

Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES

VEHICLE FEATURES

Mining was an exciting endeavor for the team this month, as they saw it come together to deliver a whole new gameplay element to Star Citizen. Working closely with designers and engineers in the EU studios, the team brought the scanning aspect of mining to life and into vehicles. They’re happy to add to the pool of activities that players can engage in, and hope everyone has fun searching the ‘verse for valuable resources.

Turrets were another large focus for the team this month. Manned turrets received some improvements, such as the ability to focus target a ship and the removal of the counterbalance speed restriction. Players can now also operate remote turrets in vehicles, which was implemented with the Item 2.0 System.

Moving into July, the team will polish what they delivered in Alpha 3.2 and continue work on the many things needed for 3.3.

VEHICLE PIPELINE

The team proudly launched the Anvil Hurricane with 3.2 and look forward to feedback from the community as they take it out for a spin. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into the Hurricane by the Art, System Design, and Tech Art Teams in LA, who collaborated with other global teams to get it flying. Additionally, the Tech Art Team wrapped up their damage passes on the other new and updated ships: the Aegis Avenger, Aegis Eclipse, Origin 600i, and Esperia Blade. They can’t wait for you to blow these ships up!

Meanwhile, progress was made on other vehicles: the Consolidated Outland Mustang Alpha rework is art-complete and currently in the hands of the System Design Team. Additional Mustang variants are close to being handed over to System Design as well. Tumbril Cyclone variants also made great progress on the art side, while the System Design Team is working with Engineering on new tech to support their release. Finally, System Design worked closely with the Art Team in Austin to wrap up their greybox phase of the Constellation Phoenix.

GAMEPLAY FEATURES

The Gameplay Team was happy to see the Group System make it easier for players to match up and play together. Currently, the team is polishing the feature to give players the best experience possible. After witnessing the response, the team continues to plan ways to improve upon the ways players can interact with each other.

NARRATIVE

The Narrative Team churned out a wide variety of content to flesh out and expand the Star Citizen universe. They released lore that highlighted commercials commonly seen on Spectrum in 2948 and featured an interview with controversial new Drake CEO, Anden Arden. Subscribers got to read the exciting final chapter of the new short story Hostile Negotiations, while a trip into the Jump Point archives saw the wide release of an Observist Dark focused on Grim HEX and the second chapter of The Knowledge of Good and Evil. Finally, June’s edition of the Subscriber magazine, Jump Point, explored the development of the Aegis Reclaimer, met the team behind the new mining mechanic, and explored the history of the MISC Prospector.

Behind the curtain, the team worked with design on further defining NPC behaviors like bartenders, bar patrons, security officers, and more. They fleshed out set dressing documentation to add further environmental storytelling to the PU and Squadron 42, wrote new mission text and clothing and armor descriptions. They wrote a number of articles slated to be included in the eventual release of the Galactapedia and provided copy for a myriad of community and marketing materials, including the Vulture promotion page and brochure.

CHARACTERS

The Character Art Team finalized and released the Legacy Armor sets into the PU, as well as the new clothing that makes up the Olisar collection. The team appreciates the comments from the community – getting direct feedback from the players makes all the hard work worth it.

There are a few mission givers in development that are almost finalized, which you’ll see in the next quarterly release. The team is still committed to releasing everything that’s on the public roadmap, so work on other PU outfits and Hurston’s clothing collection are well underway.

With the PU getting a lot of attention this release, the upcoming month’s focus returns to Squadron 42 and its vast cast of characters. The team is creating levels with every character in a lineup, so they can see which outfit each one wears in a specific chapter.

As we saw in Around the Verse, a lot of development time went into the Vanduul armor, spear, and knife. Progress was also made on the updated flight suit and work was started on another major character.

Austin

AUSTIN

DESIGN

Design was heavily invested on working through several issues remaining for quantum travel. This included helping groups travel together and tuning how quantum splines work to ensure an enjoyable experience when traveling from one side of a celestial body to another. Issues were also addressed to ensure that accidents between a moon’s surface and a ship moving at quantum speed are minimal.

While the majority of the team’s focus has gone towards improving the quantum travel experience, work has also gone into adjusting the economy by tuning rewards for missions, cargo deliveries, and mining runs. Work also progressed nicely on ensuring that bars in future releases feature a well-crafted and intelligent bartender to make the experience fun and believable. Although it’s still in the early stages, Design is excited about the first iteration coming to a PU pub near you!

BACKEND SERVICES

The Backend Services Team grew as a new engineer joined to help with the rewrite of Services under the new Diffusion Architecture. Several Services have already been rewritten while support for the legacy architecture continues. This month focused on taking the legacy p-cache and breaking it up into smaller, logical microservices. Much like replacing parts in a moving engine, legacy work still needs to be maintained until the new shiny goodness is ready to go. When implemented, it will allow for better performance, scalability, and functionality.

Here are some of the Services being created to replace legacy work:

Entitlement Processor Service: handles all purchased and rented items from the website and assures that real game items are created and managed.

Loadout Service: caches and manages the various loadouts for all ships and the player avatar configuration, including outfits and weapons. Right now, the game servers and clients can only access metadata from objects that are currently spawned on a game server. Usually, the devs want to view data of an item that has not been loaded into a game server.

Variable Service: solves the loadout problem above by decoupling the metadata from the items and providing a runtime cache and API allowing game servers and other Diffusion services access regardless of the state of the item.

Wallet Service: deals with changes in currency and manages the current balance in-game. An API is setup to allow for other services to query or modify the player’s balance.

ANIMATION

Animation was hard at work on the next set of mission givers that will bring more life to the PU later this year. There was also rapid progress on the retargeting of male animations to female skeletons, which brings players closer to being able to choose a female avatar in the PU.

Animation also supported outsourcers by creating master retarget files to process all the motion captures shots for the PU, S42 cinematics, and gameplay. They also helped finalize the Vanduul pipeline, which makes converting motion capture data into in-game assets quicker and easier.

ART

Ship Art put the finishing touches on everyone’s favorite stroke of lightning, the Anvil Aerospace F8! All that that’s left for them to do is to finalize the Level of Detail (LOD), make some last-minute material/art adjustments, and be on call to fix any bugs that arise during testing. Also, after an official kickoff meeting, work began on some early concepts ideas for the Origin 300i rework.

The team proceeded on the highly anticipated Constellation Phoenix. Extra care has been given at every stage of the process to ensure that the quality and luxury of RSI is properly showcased. The interior and exterior were fleshed out and are now going through an edit to cut back on some of the busier areas. Next up, the modeling portion in the master bedroom and flight-prep art (interior damage) will be finished, so Tech Art can start with their damage process. Once these steps are done, there will be another lighting pass to get the interior dialed in and closer to completion.

DEVOPS

The 3.2 release was especially rewarding for the DevOps Team as it included features they’ve been anticipating for a while. On the build side, they’ve been tuning and supporting the feature streams, which are a subset of the main development branches that the dev teams use. This project helped to further isolate each team’s specific feature work and stopped it from interfering with the work of other teams. This led to significantly more builds, as each feature team gets their own on top of the test and general use builds. For this month alone, over 200 unique builds were generated. Overall, the build support improvements have been very helpful and well received, but the team is still working out minor details and constantly tuning the branches for the best output.

The Publishing Team supported daily deployments to Evocati and PTU, and assisted the dev teams with the collection of server performance and bug reports. Server reports are typically more fun on a big publishing month because there’s so much new data to track and report. As many have already noticed, the team increased the pace of publishes again, completing 16 PTU deployments in June. These additional publishes helped the dev team work out the final touches of new features. The team also ramped up the servers in anticipation of Alpha 3.2 release and can’t wait to see them fill up.

PLAYER RELATIONS

The Player Relations Team coordinated with Evocati to test Alpha 3.2 on the PTU and prepare it for live service. They focused on the core features of 3.2, including scanning, mining, ESP improvements, quantum linking, and the new ships.

Now that 3.2 is live in the PU, the team would like to remind all backers of the new Knowledge Base. They’ve added quite a few guides for the update, and now have over 90 articles published. Players should check back regularly, as it will continue to grow with new ‘How To’ articles, patch notes, and live service notifications.

Finally, the team wants to encourage everyone to continue using the Issue Council (IC) to help triage and rate bugs/functionality. They’ll use your feedback to prioritize future updates, plus IC participation makes you eligible for earlier PTU waves.

QA helped push the 3.2 builds to Evocati and PTU, which included publishing checklists for build patches that went to the PTU.

On the game side, QA focused on the 3.2 features, bug regression, and performance testing. Things tested included the mining feature, the new ships, the Avenger rework, quantum travel, the group system, and kiosk purchasing and player wallet updates. They also tested updates to the Editor and Subsumption tools.

On the leadership side, it was business as usual coordinating testing priorities with counterparts in LA, UK, and DE.

Wilmslow & Derby

WILMSLOW & DERBY

GRAPHICS

The Graphics Team focused on bugs that covered a wide range of topics, including fixes for SLI/Crossfire, missing LODs on mining rocks, and flickering shadows. They also added a few minor features to improve the overall player experience, such as adding drop shadows to all transparent ship UI screens, adding brightness/gamma/contrast support, optimizing the glass shaders, and fixing multiple issues with RTT on the ship-targeting UI which reduced the cost by a factor of 10.

After fixing the 3.2 bugs, the team’s focus has shifted to Object Container Streaming, which is crucial to ensuring this critical feature isn’t blocked.

UI supported the 3.2 release at full tilt, working on the Item Kiosks to add as much as possible ahead of the live release. Alongside this, the team supported the Mission Team by creating new screens for Comm Array missions, provided the Gameplay Team with quantum travel UI elements, and helped the EU Vehicle Team with their work on overclocking.

UI also focused on critical bug fixes ahead of 3.2. This included multiple issues with the ATC system, such as making the UI clearer for color blind players. Changes for the PMA/VMA included making select ship items uneditable and ensuring all armor pieces are displayed correctly.

ANIMATION

The team worked on the new Spec Ops AI combat set and prepared it for full implementation. This set includes cover, high and low enter and exits, peeks, stepouts, blindfires, reloads, and grenade throws. Iteration and feedback on weapon recoil continued with the goal of providing a solid first-person experience across the full range of weapons available in S42 and the PU.

Preparation started to replace the AI base locomotion sets with finalized data. New capture footage was reviewed with an eye to implement improved AI motion sets and visuals.

Further animation work was completed on Master-at-Arms Chakma to fill in any gaps that the Design Teams had in implementing his behavior for Squadron 42. Work on the Vanduul concentrated on close-combat and weapons.

Player grips now allow varyingly sized objects to be held and carried in a more flexible manner, whether it be one or two-handed props.

Finally, the team completed general bug fixes for the 3.2 release.

GAMEPLAY STORY

The Gameplay Story Team delivered previsualization (pre-viz) for 150 scenes that the Design Team requested, which was achieved a week earlier than expected. This gave the team a couple of weeks to do more in-depth implementation work on high priority scenes. Pre-viz work on the remaining 66 scenes will happen during the first few weeks of July.

ENGINEERING/PROGRAMMING

The Squadron 42 Gameplay Team worked with Cinematics to implement more functionality in the trackview tool to get new cinematic scenes working. Among other things, these changes improved the ability to animate the player by blending them into a cinematic sequence, gaining control over the player’s camera, and allowing a set amount of player-controlled head-look.

The Actor Team got one-handed grips working with props of all different sizes and shapes. They started with two different grip types, one for round objects like a bottle or a cup, and another for square items like a book or datapad. The animators created two versions of each grip, open and closed, and the code can blend between the two allowing the player to hold props of different and awkward sizes without the need for multiple animation assets. The programmers have also been improving the animations used when moving from standing to running and back again. They are trying to keep the response times fast by reducing the amount of foot sliding and animation glitches.

The Social AI Team held a mini summit with the Lead AI and Lead Engine Tools programmers and the AI team in Frankfurt to discuss the latest usable tech and the next steps in development. They are now looking to create a visual tool to help the workflow of setting up usables and reduce the amount of knowhow currently required.

The EU Vehicle Team continued development of overpowering and overheating items with a focus on the quantum drive, shield, and cooler. They also expanded item wear to account for overheating.

The Core Gameplay Tech Team moved Object Container Streaming to the stage where they can turn on the background loading of individual entities. Now, it’s up to QA to find out what bugs come from this change. They also worked on the base functionality of loading and unloading individual object containers. The individual features teams have done a fine job of making their entity components thread safe, as well as moving the Lua script over into C++, all of which is required for Object Container Streaming.

SHIPS

The Ship Art Team finished the remaining tasks needed to get the 3.2 ships ready for release. They also created trailers for the Esperia Blade, Aegis Avenger, and Eclipse, along with promotional shots for the Origin 600i. Other work included whiteboxing the Origin 890 Jump to establish the final room layout and proportions, and R&D work on future Banu ships, with a focus on the Defender. Finally, the Hammerhead is getting a damage pass for the exterior and LOD pass across the interior.

AUDIO

The Audio Department worked on all four of the 3.2 flyable ships trailers. They supplied the music heard in the Hurricane and Blade trailers, music and SFX for the Eclipse trailer, and music, SFX, and dialog for the Avenger.

The Audio Department also supported the 3.2 mining feature with regards to UI, mechanical SFX, and beam SFX. Additionally, there was a focus on re-balancing audio in line with the IFCS 2.0 update.

ENVIRONMENT ART

The UK Environment Team has been finalizing assets for the new ship hangars, as well as making passes on their dressing, branding, and props. They prepared for upcoming sprints, including sprints for new habitation modules and security checkpoints. Elsewhere, the team investigated and began to whitebox ideas for new small points of interest to populate Hurston beyond Lorville. They did all this in addition to supporting the Alpha 3.2 release with usual bug fixing and maintenance.

VFX

As 3.2 drew to a close, the team completed flight ready effects on the remaining ships, including the Esperia Blade and Aegis Eclipse. They also worked on effects for the Avenger and Eclipse trailers. They finished off the remaining 3.2 weapon effects, including the Kastak Scalpel ballistic rifle, and continued to fine tune and fix any issues with the recent weapons 2.0 conversion. The team collaborated with the mining and scanning/radar feature teams to ensure the effects were as polished as possible. They also worked with the Graphics Team on numerous developments to the GPU particle system, including improved ‘spawn chance’ and more robust parent/child hierarchies.

Frankfurt

FRANKFURT

ENVIRONMENT ART

The Environment Art Team continued their push on Lorville Section One Nine (L19), bringing more and more areas to a final state. With L19 coming alive, they’re kicking off production on the surrounding areas, including the procedural tiles that represent the wider city. Regarding organic environments, the team wrapped up the first pass on the Hurston biomes and moved onto defining Hurston’s four moons. Each moon has its own look and feel and reflects some of the elements found on Hurston itself. These new moons are an example of the planet tech system’s flexibility – being able to reuse, remix and create new locations using all elements built to date saves a lot of time, and the process is getting faster as the tools and assets mature.

BUILD ENGINEERING

The DevOps Teams in ATX and DE are coordinating a suite of tools to accommodate the various Feature Teams. This includes extending the existing auto-integrators behavior, which involves enabling classic chronological integrations as well as parallel, non-chronological integrations based on an acyclic dependency graph. This is similar to what’s used in code compilation to determine the ordering of tasks. Any stream of changes flowing via auto-integration can communicate directly to whoever the owner of the changelist is, or be deferred to a single stream stakeholder if they choose to oversee the resolution of integration conflicts themselves. As new options are added, a counterpart API is being rolled out to enable complementary tools to hook in. The first tool to hook into the API is a merging tool that handles laborious integrations from feature stream teams back into game-dev.

LEVEL DESIGN

The Level Design Team focused on areas of the Persistent Universe, including the flagship landing zones of Lorville and Area 18, and the Rest Stop space station layouts generated by the procedural tools. They completed a versatile whitebox version of a security checkpoint that can be easily adapted to locations of different sizes and security levels, and revisited the interiors of the Refinery space station.

TOOLS

The Engine Tools Team improved the general game editor stability and usability, and fixed bugs for the 3.2 release. They added the Look Development Mode for artists to unify and isolate light setups for assets. Artists and Designers can now select any asset in any level and activate this mode to have a consistent light environment for tweaking their materials – it’s important to have a consistent and neutral material setup across all assets as it results in much higher visual quality. The Look Development Mode supports a flat light setup for tweaking materials to get as close to a neutral in-engine light environment as possible, along with a presentation mode to get the best visual quality out of a given asset. With the push of a button, this in-engine mode works with all asset sizes, from little props to capital ships. It’s a great tool, as it avoids error-prone and inconsistent manual light setups, so saves time on tweaking the assets for the game.

The QA Team started June by joining the EU Gameplay 5 Feature Team. One QA member was embedded with the team to attend weekly sprint and planning meetings and work closely with Developers to identify and resolve issues related to the Transit system. The Transit system includes elevators, metros, trams, and similar methods of transportation. Memory testing with the logging of Environment Variables enabled is also underway. In the first run-through, QA assisted the Engine Team in identifying a memory leak within particle emitters. The Graphics Team quickly created a fix and confirmed it once the changes were checked in. This type of testing will be a regular occurrence to ensure the team can stay on top of any potential future memory issues.

In addition, they continued to test new versions of the Subsumption Editor, as well as stay on top of regression and inputting new issues encountered by the development team. The new Subsumption versions consisted of fixes that needed verification as well as a new option to allow subsequent messages to be skipped when there are multiple invalid callback functions generating warnings upon initialization. Functionality in how Activities read information from the platforms has also been improved. A developer can now directly edit an NPC’s schedule loadout via the Activity the platform is being called from. Physics refactoring has also started to pre-emptively catch any new issues from the introduction of these new changes. QA will be doing a weekly Physics smoke test every Monday to test the PU, Arena Commander, and Star Marine in the Game-Dev branch. Then, a report is generated and sent for review and any new issues introduced from the Physics refactor are addressed.

ENGINE

The Engine Team continued with Physics optimizations that allow for more overlap during terrain patch physicalization. They also optimized raycasting when flying over the planet grid along with shadow batch processing. Look Development Mode was introduced to the engine to enable the team to test shading setups in a controlled environment. They improved horizon SSDO quality and performance, which is now enabled by default. They started streamlining the asset pipeline flow for consistency in shading, cleaning up asset presets, and changing the plugin to improve consistency.

For general code development, they supported the inline function expansion in callstacks presented via JIRA and Sentry, and improved support to compile Linux targets through Visual Studio. They completed the first iteration of the mining painter, continued to work on the telemetry system, and made skinning and vertex processing improvements.

WEAPONS

The Weapons Art Team completed all work, bugfixing, and polish for the 3.2 release. This included work on the Gemini F55 light machine gun, Klaus & Werner Demeco light machine gun, Kastak Arms Scalpel sniper rifle, and the Associated Science and Development distortion repeaters (size 1-3). They also spent time on Vanduul lances and knifes.

VFX

The VFX Team worked on and optimized the 3.2 mining feature. They tackled effects for the fracture beam, the tractor beam that sucks up rocks, and for various rock impacts and explosions. They also worked on the cinematic destruction pipeline for the soft body destruction simulations. They smoothed out the pipeline for importing the soft body simulations from Houdini into 3ds Max, and then from 3ds Max into the engine. This will be used for bespoke, cinematic destruction sequences.

SYSTEM DESIGN

The System Design Team worked to make enemy ship AI more fun to engage with. Initially, it was built as realistic as possible, but that doesn’t always make for the best gameplay. For example, a computer is extremely good at using the decoupled mode, far better than any human. While this is technically the best solution for fighting in space, it also feels unnatural and unintuitive to the player. They want to strike a balance between realism and giving the player a fun, challenging experience by cutting down the number of unnatural maneuvers the AI can perform.

The team also focused on FPS AI for multiplayer, making sure they function similarly to the single player mode. The push with the Vanduul reached its completion and their behaviors are almost locked down. A lot of work went into how the Vanduul navigate the environment, attack, defend, melee, and react to various weapons. They also spent time on civilian and guard behaviors, adding as much life into them as needed. The team primarily focused on designing modular conversation vignettes, which are blocks of randomly changing dialogue that can be controlled by various AI parameters like morale, hunger, etc. Basically, it’s a giant tree of animation/line clusters. The AI simply navigate through them and every time there’s a vignette, it produces a different outcome based on those parameters, so the same combination of lines will be a rare experience. They also put finishing touches on planetary mining. While some improvements are still needed, they believe it’s at a point where players can enjoy it.

The AI Team was busy implementing new functionalities and fixing/optimizing existing systems. For Subsumption, they introduced the concept of global variables: for single player campaigns, designers might require the definition of generic variables available across different missions. Global variables are visible globally on the various missions and can be saved so that the game status can be preserved and restored for the players.

They also improved the way entities can receive ranged events. A ranged event is started when an entity is in proximity of another event. The proximity can be specified by designers in the definition of the event.

They introduced a new Subsumption task that can mark the entities to be notified so that the game code can efficiently calculate ranges only for the specified objects of the world. Work was done on improving and generalizing the way assignments are handled by entities. Assignments are a sort of command or suggestion designers can send to the AI entities. They can vary from ‘attack my target’ to ‘move to the specified position’, etc. Assignments are a very generic way to influence systemic behaviors and can be used to both script mission flow and/or give AI entities commands. The mastergraph is now responsible for bringing the assignment request to the execution phase, unless the behavior is defined to override the handling of the scenario. For example, while throwing a grenade, the behaviors might wait to handle an assignment that requests his relocation, while if the NPC is just patrolling, it can immediately fulfill the request.

The team had numerous people visit from the UK office for a week of meetings regarding the useable system. They discussed numerous use cases and possible improvements on the system and worked side by side on both existing and new code. Items that came from the meeting to be implemented are a new tool to speed up the usables pipeline, as well as new functionalities in Subsumption to describe complex scenarios of NPCs interacting with the environment. This ensures that their behaviors maintain a simple logic while the complexity remains embedded within the system itself.

Ship behaviors received significant improvements for the future Alpha 3.3 release. The team started implementing different behavior strategies associated with different ship types, so pilots can use the best capabilities of their specific vehicle. They also improved the way accuracy is calculated, so that ships attacking enemies feel more natural and are respectful of the new skill levels recently implemented. Human combat is also being polished. The team is currently going through as many use case scenarios as possible to validate the system works as intended.

TECH ART

The Tech Art Team worked on the Sandbox-Editor-to-Maya live link tool for synchronizing animations between the Digital Content Creation (DCC) and the game’s editor which, for this particular purpose, is essentially used as a rendering backend. Now that the underlying interprocess communication and object serialization frameworks are in place, animators will soon be able to see their changes on in-engine character assets live within the Maya viewport, rendered with all the advanced shading effects that the game engine provides. This will not only allow them to create better animations in less time, it will also facilitate animation asset and rig asset/deformation quality control and make for a much more immediate and precise workflow. They also integrated Motion Based Blending into Maya to enable the animators to easily remove any potential foot sliding after changes were made to an animation.

They implemented a ‘light rig’ switch into Maya that improves performance in heavy scenes and, in return, raises the frame rate during replay to make it easier for animators to work in heavily populated scenes.

Multiple FPS and Ship Weapon bugs were also addressed for the 3.2 release.

LIGHTING

The Lighting Team focused on tasks and bugs related to the upcoming 3.2 release. In addition, they collaborated with the Environment Art and Level Design teams on Lorville. Their current goals are to provide a first pass for lighting and atmosphere across all areas, as well as ensure that the level is built to allow for easy optimization and better performance in the future.

CINEMATICS

The Cinematics Team worked with UK Gameplay Engineers to create a Cinematic FreeLook control system that works with Star Citizen’s unified 1st and 3rd person character rig. Cinematic FreeLook allows a player that’s locked in position during a 1st person cinematic to look around freely. Cinematic designers can specify up/down/left/right limits and steer the player’s headcam towards specific things, like a character, vista, or an important event in the distance. The original Cinematic FreeLook system was limited as the player’s body was not fully considered, so looking too far in one direction meant the player could potentially see part of their own face inside of their helmet. This new system allows the player to work in 1st and 3rd person with performance capture on the body/head, additive animation of the headcam rotation, and Cinematic FreeLook active. The FreeLook system works with the mouse and gamepad thumbstick input, as there are areas that slow down control towards the edges of the ‘look window’ and a smooth re-center after a specified time with no input.

They also gained the ability to run Mannequin fragments on any NPC in Trackview, which will create seamless blends between locomotion and those performing in scenes via Trackview. The Cinematic Animation Team also worked on testing how far they can technically push the Walk & Talk AI conversations. The goal is to retain the performance that the actors brought to these talks while running numerous real-time additives, such as layering upper body performance capture on top of a personalized per-character locomotion walk set. The tests have so far yielded positive results.

Platform: Turbulent

PLATFORM: TURBULENT

This month, Turbulent wrapped up the Friends feature in Spectrum, provided support for the latest Drake concept, and finished the services build for groups system 3.2.

SPECTRUM

The team deployed two Spectrum builds, ‘3.7.13-friends.2’ and ‘3.7.13-friends.3’. The main features included the addition of friends, friend requests, and the Message of the Day (MOTD). Lobbies can now have a MOTD that appears at the top when someone joins.

Friends and friend requests are now complete and easily accessible through an entirely new Quick Access Sidebar. Also, included in this sidebar are Notifications, Search, and Lobby Users. When someone receives a friend request, a transient pop-up appears and an orange dot is displayed next to the friend icon on the Quick Access toggle button. Friends can be grouped by common Organizations.

Additionally, the author of blocked thread replies can be hidden as an option under general account settings. A special thank you to the Spectrocati and everyone who helped test these new features!

RSI PLATFORM

The RSI Team supported the reveal of the Vulture, Drake’s latest ship. The Vulture is a light industrial salvage vessel that needs just one crew member. The Design Team had a lot of fun developing the page to house this rugged workingman’s ship. They also added new controllers in your account settings to allow better management of the content you want to receive in the weekly newsletters. Go to Account/Settings to pick and choose your RSI content.

GROUP SERVICES

Turbulent made multiple releases supporting the backend control for services. Each iteration of the service was followed by a round of support during QA. The work Turbulent did creates and disbands groups. It handles all the requests for invites, accepts invitations, and declines invitations to a group. It then tells the service that these players should be grouped together. This service also controls the necessary permissions around leadership of a group, including transfer when the leader leaves the group or chooses to move it. Additionally, they added a kick function if a member of the group is offline for a certain period.

Community

COMMUNITY

With this monthly report, the team says goodbye to the second quarter of 2018 and welcomes Star Citizen Alpha 3.2!

Maintaining the quarterly release cycle, the team was proud to publish another content update, with players exploring the new content since last Saturday. From group systems to quantum linking and mining, it feels fantastic to see people having fun in the game on Twitch and YouTube.

Thanks to all the dedicated testers who helped make this release possible. The entire CIG team sincerely appreciates your efforts during Evocati and PTU phases.

While Cloud Imperium Games wasn’t present at E3, the latest PU trailer was shown at the PC Gaming Show, showcasing the beauty of the ‘verse. Watch it on our YouTube channel if you haven’t yet.

If you’re a content creator, there’s currently a contest running that celebrates one of the recent editions to the flyable fleet in Star Citizen – the Origin Jumpworks 600i. The team is looking for player-made commercials showcasing the beauty of this multi-role luxury vessel. Running until July 15th, it’s your chance to grab one of the fabulous prizes on offer, including a standalone Aegis Eclipse with complimentary Lifetime Insurance.

The Community Team has been planning a wide variety of activities for you to participate in throughout the year and into next, all coupled with sweet prizes. So even if this contest isn’t for you, there are some exciting opportunities coming for you to leave your mark in the Star Citizen universe. Seriously, there will be more contests in 2018 than EVER before!

The team is always amazed by the contributions made by the community – whether it’s fan art, a cinematic, a YouTube guide, or even a 3D print of your favorite ship. This month, they brought back the MVP (Most Valuable Poster). Every week, the team will select one piece of content submitted to the Community Hub and reward the content creator with an MVP badge on Spectrum and a mention on the MVP section of the Hub.

This month, Centurion subscribers received a limited Voyager-edition Klaus & Werner Arrowhead sniper rifle, while the Imperators netted an exclusive Pathfinder variant. The mighty Aegis Reclaimer spearheaded the ship of the month program that gives subscribers the chance to try out a new vessel.

With the Drake Vulture concept promotion still in full effect, the team recently released the Q&A on Drake’s dirty bird. Want to rip wrecks apart like a pro? Head over to Spectrum to see answers to the top-voted community questions on this unique industrial salvage ship.

Finally, the team keeps getting asked about the availability of CitizenCon 2948 tickets. The good news is that they will be available again shortly if you haven’t already snagged one. Make sure to follow Star Citizen on Twitter, or subscribe to the newsletter to find out when the next phase of ticket sales is available. CitizenCon in Austin, TX, is the perfect place to chat with the developers and get the latest updates on the development process. It’s also a chance to meet with org mates and old friends, or make new ones and recruit members for your crew.

Conclusion

WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT MONTH…

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