#it’s an interesting question to raise as to what made her specifically deviant

[edelgardism]

the biggest missed opportunity of kara’s storyline is that it’s implied she had the same issue on the assembly line as short film kara did, meaning she was literally a deviant from day one. thats why it’s so easy for her to deviate, no matter how many times she’s reset she will always deviate because she was practically born a deviant. that genius david cage proceeded to do nothing with this but whatever

[brokenjardaantech]

Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 5: The Threads of Life)

my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang​. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.

chapter summary:

In the past, Alec revealed his plan.

In the present, Connor made a choice... and a friend.

In the past, the twins finally reunited.

also on ao3

---

Before

Reyes was unharmed. On the surface. Fadia was more concerned about the blue washing over his skin every second in waves like a heartbeat, and when she looked at the scene in front of her, she instantly knew why.

Her father was there. And so was a young woman with blond hair. When she tapped into her powers and reached out, the resonance itself was enough to tell her that she was just like Reyes.

An android.

Reyes’ jaw was trembling. ‘I… I didn’t…’ he stammered, his voice low. ‘I swear -’

‘I know,’ she reassured. She trusted him, and his data logs told her that he had had no contact with Alec Ryder. ‘I’ll take over from here. You go over my servers and see what’s wrong with them. I’ll tell you what happened later.’

Reyes nodded and left, presumably back to the surface. Back to Scott. And she finally let her blood boil.

‘Explain!’ she demanded as she walked closer towards her father while glowing blue. When she had his attention, she flicked her head towards the android. ‘How did you get that?’

‘The question is,’ how could he look so calm? ‘why did you hide this from me?’

Fadia made a chopping motion at the android. ‘To prevent this! How did you get that?’

‘Listen, the biocomponents -’

‘How.’ She let tendrils creep closer to her father’s neck. ‘Did. You.’ They got closer with every word, and had she not been occupied with the current situation, she would have impressed herself with the control. ‘Get. THAT?’

‘They can save your mother, Sara!’ Alec exclaimed. ‘A cure! Finally!’

‘Oh yeah, cause biocomponents for an android invented by an edgy young adult with minimum chemistry and biology knowledge are gonna be compatible with an actual fucking human body!’ Fadia had to roll her eyes. Damn, it’s good to be able to raise her voice. ‘Mother’s accepted her impending doom, Father. Let her fucking go.’

‘That’s not -’ he sighed as if she was a child unable to understand how important her parent’s work was. ‘Look, artificial intelligence is the new thing. A new merchandise. Think about it, Sara. The revenue alone will be enough to pay for the medical bills.’

He disgusted her. ‘They are as human as we are, not something to buy and sell like products. If you want to go on with that crazy fucking plan, you’ll have to get through me.’

Alec sighed almost regretfully. ‘I’m afraid it’s too late.’

Fadia’s brain kicked into full gear at the implications of his words. She shot out a tendril again to test the thirium capacity of the android, and the resonance told her that she had been active for at least a week. ‘What is your name?’ she asked. ‘What did he make you do?’

‘My name is Chloe,’ the android answered. ‘I took some videos and uploaded them onto the internet, that’s all. You, Sara Ryder, are credited with my creation.’

‘We already have millions of dollars,’ Alec added. ‘Production has already started. Are you in this or not?’

A crackle. She punched him in the face with a blue-shrouded fist and seemed to calm down instantly.

‘Of course I am,’ she said in a pleasant tone. ‘Someone must keep the world from burning into ashes.’

o0o0o

Now

The Zen Garden is raining and Connor is not surprised. Umbrella in hand, he examines the monolith once more, the blue glow making it easily identifiable among the green of vegetation. He also stands in front of his first body’s grave for a few seconds to… calm down, maybe, from the tingling that has been in his veins since he returned to CyberLife tower. It is only after he makes sure that his hand will not glow blue suddenly that he greets his handler. 

‘Connor, I’ve been expecting you,’ Amanda says, her voice cold. ‘Would you like a little walk?’

Connor knows he does not have a choice, so he opens the umbrella and holds it for both of them.

‘That deviant seems to be an intriguing case,’ Amanda continues. ‘A pity you didn’t manage to capture it.’

‘I have to save Hank,’ he replies. Surely Amanda understands? ‘Despite his… eccentricities, I believe his intellect and experience will be useful in the investigation.’

Amanda hums. ‘Did you manage to learn anything?’

A few pieces of evidence automatically filter through his processors. ‘It was working under a false identity, at a nearby urban farm. This was the first time we've seen deviants blending in with the human population. Who knows how many others there are like it… I also found its diary, but it was encrypted. It may take months to decipher.’

‘What else?’

‘The walls of the apartment were covered with drawings of labyrinths and other symbols. Like the other deviants, it seemed obsessed with rA9. It was also fascinated by birds. We've seen deviants interested in other lifeforms like insects or pets, but nothing like this.’

‘You came very close to capturing the deviant. How is your relationship with the Lieutenant developing?’

He remembers a warm hand on his back. ‘He seemed grateful that I saved his life on the roof. He didn't say anything, but he expressed it in his own way.’

Amanda turns to face him. ‘We don’t have much time. Deviancy continues to spread. It's only a matter of time before the media finds out about it. We need to stop this, whatever it takes.’

For Hank. ‘I will solve this investigation, Amanda.’

Thunder rumbles. Amanda looks up. ‘A new case just came in. Find Anderson and investigate it.’

oOoOo

Hank is not in the precinct.

‘He’s not drinking?’ the same officer from last time asks. ‘Sorry, man, but then I don’t know where he is.’

The more time they lose, the more likely the deviants manage to get away from the club, but still Connor thanks him for his input as it is a polite thing to do. He looks around Hank’s desk, trying to search for clues that can lead him to Hank, but he gives up after the results come inconclusive for the fifth time. So where can he be?

‘Connor?’

Connor lets colour return to his world and sees a familiar face. [Name: Allen, Louis. [REDACTED]] ‘Captain,’ he greets, unsure what to do. It is obvious that the human is off duty: sweaters and jeans are not exactly regulation for a SWAT Captain even on duty. ‘How can I help you?’

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Androids do not die, Captain.’

Allen’s nod is followed by a sigh. ‘You looking for Hank?’

‘Yes. Do you know where he went? He was assigned a new case.’

‘He’s probably out of commission for now,’ Allen says as he shifts his weight onto another leg, ‘but I’m gonna drop off some groceries at his anyway. We can try his home.’

Hank’s house. Right. How can he miss that? ‘I do not wish to interrupt, Captain.’

‘You won’t be.’

Some of the files are corrupted, but Connor remembers the Captain’s distrust towards his ability in resolving the hostage situation, an angry ‘I don’t fucking care what my orders are! If this drags on, we’re doing it our way!’, and the lack of mentions of him taking the officer’s gun in the official report to both the police department and CyberLife. A contradiction that Connor decides to risk. ‘Then thank you, Captain.’

Allen jerks his head to indicate the direction they should be heading to. ‘It’s Louis when I’m off duty.’

The pronunciation ‘Lwee’ is certainly not standard for English speakers. ‘Yes, Louis.’

They take the lift down to the car park together, Louis shifting his feet from one to another but seemingly favouring his right leg, and when he walks, his steps brisk, there is a small but faint clicking noise that normal humans will not catch on. When he tries to scan the human’s left leg, results come back inconclusive. Just like the person who hacked into the Zen Garden and… and…

‘You alright there?’

Louis’ words bring him back to reality, and Connor discovers that they have already arrived at their destination. The human is already in the car, his hand hovering above the controls, and his green eyes are fixed on Connor’s face as if it is something interesting to look at. Observe and catalogue.

‘I’m sorry,’ Connor apologises in lieu of explaining his thoughts. He slides into the passenger seat, they fasten their respective seatbelts, and Louis starts driving manually despite his vehicle being a self-driving car. Time passes in relative silence, the contrast between the darkness and the bright lights in the streets plus the concentration of the driver giving Connor a strange sense of familiarity, but soon they are stuck in a traffic jam near one of the bigger intersections.

Louis taps his fingers against the wheel. ‘Hey, Connor.’

Connor faces the Captain and finds him looking at the android. ‘Yes, Louis?’

‘I’m sorry for what happened a few months ago. It wasn’t fair to you.’

His LED spins yellow as he tries to recall what exactly happened. ‘It was an expected response,’ Connor replies after comparing it with the ones faced by other androids in the streets. ‘There’s nothing to apologise for.’

‘Doesn’t excuse me for yelling at the wrong guy. It - it wasn’t you whom I’m pissed at.’

Connor knows that the human is not going to let go unless he himself drops the issue. ‘I accept your apology,’ he says, and he decides that diverting the conversation is the next best choice of action. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’

The car in front of them moves. Louis manages to gain a few inches of ground. ‘Go on.’

‘During the hostage situation… who or what were you “pissed” at?’

The human rubs his left thigh as if to get more blood into it. ‘CyberLife, mostly,’ he checks the time. ‘I may be more specific than most.’

So he is not anti-android? ‘What difference does that make from hating androids?’

‘People like to blame the powerless for the problems they have. In this case, it’s the androids.’ The radio drones on and announces that they’re likely to be stuck for the next fifteen minutes. Seemingly resigned to his fate, Louis reaches to Connor’s side and opens the storage compartment, rummaging for a few seconds inside before successfully acquiring an energy bar which he tears into like a starving man. Perhaps he is. ‘They always talk about how androids steal their jobs, but they never talk about how employers decide to move onto even cheaper alternatives once they can’t exploit their workers. If they want someone to hate, hate those arseholes who won’t pay a living wage, hate CyberLife for producing androids. The androids are innocent in all this. So yeah,’ he takes a deep breath as if just realising he was ranting, ‘I don’t hate them.’

‘How about Daniel?’

A swallow. ‘He killed two people, wounded two more and held an innocent girl hostage. Enough to warrant my hate.’ He finishes the energy bar and crushes the wrapper into his pocket. Looking at Connor, he seems to read his question from the android’s face as he continues, ‘You’re good.’

Connor lets out a breath he doesn’t know he’s holding. Louis Allen, SWAT Captain, is not anti-android. ‘What is your relationship with Hank?’ he asks as he finds no reason for the two men to be friends. Not that Louis explicitly said he is friends with Hank, but Connor supposes that bringing enough groceries to require a car is not typical behaviour for non-friends.

Fidgeting with the silencer of a pair of identification tags (Allen. Anna, W. 574-66-2183. RH negative. Atheist.) which were hidden underneath his clothes until now, Louis seems to actually ponder on his answer. ‘We keep each other afloat,’ he says in the end. ‘It’s hard to describe. Why do you want to know?’

‘I believe getting closer to the Lieutenant personally will be beneficial to the investigation.’ The human snorts at this and Connor is nearly offended: what does a SWAT Captain know about them? ‘You seem close to him, so I believe you are a reliable source in matters including the Lieutenant’s personality and habits.’

Louis rubs the tags together. ‘His story isn’t mine to tell. Let’s say I make sure he doesn’t consume crappy takeout and whiskey 24/7, he tries to stay sober on schedule in case my leg acts up and I nearly freeze to death again, so we kind of rely on each other to survive the winter.’ They finally pass the traffic light just to stop at the other one. ‘Is this the best arrangement? No. But is it working? Yes. I think. He’s saved my arse a few times already. He’s a good guy, smart too, just...’

‘Have some personal issues?’

‘That’s one way to put it.’

They lapse into silence, the rain falling onto the roof and the ting of the coin the only sound in the car. Sometime later, when they finally get out of the traffic jam, Louis’ watch blares from an alarm, and the human jumps and hastily switches it off with a mumbled apology. The embarrassment does not last long, however, after they rounded the final corner and the car is set for a course straight to the end of the road where Connor presumes Hank’s house is. The Captain’s eyes sharpen, his gaze flickering between the road in front of him and the rearview mirror, and the air crackles even though Connor is certain that he is keeping his… abilities under tight control. Is Louis…

He finds his coin snatched from the air. When something is placed in his palm, the android finds a key as well, the soft rumble of the engine gone and completely overtaken by the sound of raindrops hitting the vehicle. The tension in Louis’ body reminds him of the hostage situation.

‘You go find Hank and do what you need to do,’ the human says, his tone low. ‘I’ll follow you later.’

‘And the groceries?’

‘They can wait. Something’s out of place and I’m not sure if I like it. I’ll go take a look.’

Connor wants to argue that if they are heading into any danger, he should be the one to take the risk, but the human is already out of the car and has slammed the door shut. He quickly exits the car as well and locks the doors but is still not quick enough; Louis has already disappeared into the darkness beyond the end of the road. Seeing no other option other than to continue with his mission, he files [Louis is reckless.] into his database and proceeds to ring the bell as, despite having the keys, he technically is showing up uninvited. From within the house, a dog starts to bark, and he lets himself in after nothing else responds to the fourth ring.

oOoOo

Five minutes later, Connor uses up most of his processing power in order to keep himself from being overwhelmed with anxiety. Firstly, there is the sound of Hank retching in the bathroom; secondly, there is the implication of the revolver and the single bullet in the chamber (‘What were you doing with the gun?’ ‘Russian roulette!’): Hank has suicidal tendencies, and he finds that he does not want to lose Hank; thirdly, the child in the photo is probably related to the previous point; fourthly, Louis is not back yet and Connor realises that he has no way to contact him. He wants to tell himself that it was just paranoia, but when he recalled the footage from when they exited the car, there was indeed a shadow disappearing from view upon Louis starting his chase.

The same shadow which had been following him when he first met Hank and during his search for Ortiz’s android. 

The beat of his thirium pump quickening, he holds Sumo tight in his arms from where he is sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa and searches the DPD database for any contact information, but all he gets is Louis’ work email and phone, the former which he doubts the Captain will check and the latter not even with him in the first place. There is no address, no personal phone number. It is as if he does not exist outside of his work.

This is definitely not protocol. Sure, people can request to hide their information in case they have someone going after them, but for Louis’ case there is nothing even though Connor is already using the highest level authorisation code to access the file, which means that it is highly likely that there is truly no data in the first place.

‘You alright there, Connor?’

Connor startles and quickly releases Sumo from his embrace. ‘I - I’m fine,’ he stutters, unsure how to explain that he managed to lose Hank’s friend. 

Hank nods but he does not look convinced. ‘Are we heading out? Cause if we’re not -’

‘I’m coming!’ Connor scrambles to his feet and fixes his tie to compose himself. In a much calmer tone this time, he tells himself, ‘I’m ready.’

That convinces Hank. ‘Be a good dog, Sumo,’ Connor is relieved that he is not the only one to talk to a dog, ‘I won’t be long.’

They leave the house together, Connor locking the door behind him as he is the last one to get out, and that only brings him back to the matter of where Louis is.

‘Louis’ been here?’ Hank asks when he spots the much newer car (although as one of the first generation self-driving cars, it is a bit outdated) parked on the side of the road. 

‘He offered to drive me here when I told him that I could not find you in the bars,’ it feels wrong to say it out loud, but Hank needs to know where his friend is. ‘He asked me to find you while he investigated a potential stalker. Evidently, he is not back yet.’

‘How long has he been gone?’

‘About seven minutes.’

Hank checks his phone. ‘No messages yet,’ he mutters to himself. ‘We’ll go downtown first. I’ll send a rescue party if there’s nothing after we’re finished with this bullshit.’

That’s it? ‘The temperature is dropping, Lieutenant,’ are you not concerned? ‘Louis does not have sufficient gear to keep himself safe under this weather.’

‘Ugh,’ Hank moans. ‘He does that. All we can do is save his ass afterwards.’ He then mutters something under his breath but it is drowned out by the sound of him folding himself into the car and the ongoing rain. Deciding that he does not like the rain, he locks the doors of Louis’ car just to be safe before climbing into Hank’s and is handed another set of keys.

He can start a collection out of this.

oOoOo

‘Sorry, honey, changed my mind! Uh - Nothing personal, you’re… a lovely girl, I just - uh - You know, I’m with him and - I mean, not with him like that… I’m not that… That’s not what I… You, um, wow, I just… got a job to do.’

Connor has to hide a smile by looking away from the sheer… something… of the situation. They’re in a sex club, his programme tells him that something is repulsive about it, and Hank doesn’t look so happy about being there either, but yet those are not what he’s feeling right now. Endearment, maybe. It’s confusing and is making his software so unstable that the red tinge around the edge of his HUD is a permanent fixture except for when he is scanning his surroundings for the next android to probe. He deduces which one he should ask Hank to rent next according to the direction the blue-haired Traci was heading, but of course, of fucking course the last witness they need is the WG700 cleaning android, the recording leading them through the staff door. The corridor’s decor is completely different from that of the rest of the club and there is another door at the end, and when they both hear the bangs and scrapes of metal against concrete from the other side, Hank takes the lead again, this time without words, and, gun in hand, opens the door with a loud squeak. Still, they step in quietly.

There is no movement at all.

Hank curses loudly, thinking that the deviant has got away, but Connor can see the still-visible thirium on the floor, which means that she is not only injured but also not far away. He swipes to take a sample and licks it, and the report returns positive of thirium belonging to a WR400 model. 

‘They get used till they break, then they got tossed out…’ Hank says from somewhere. ‘The more I know about humans, the more I like my dog.’

He follows the trail of blue blood to a group of Tracis and instantly notices the spinning LED lighting up a blue mop of hair. Before he can react, the Traci standing in front of her lashes out and pushes him against a pillar. It takes a few seconds for his eyes to realign and the brief struggle is enough for Hank to pull out his gun and order the short-haired Traci to surrender, but then he is ambushed by the blue-haired one as well, and Connor somehow manages to throw the one he is facing to the other side of the nearest crate in a flash of blue light which charges their air with static. He jumps over the box, determined to capture at least one deviant this time, but the Traci kicks him in his feet before he lands on the pallet, the two of them rolling until the former is on top of him and is countered every single time she tries to punch him in the head. A counterattack from Connor and the Traci toppled, her hand landing right on a knife; a grab, a flash of blue, and it appears in Connor’s shoulder and severs a few minor tubes. Pushing her off, he blocks the kick aimed for his groin and barely manages to stand up before pulling the knife out and throwing it far out of their reach. Putting the Traci in a headlock earns him a harsh headbutt which knocks his eyes out of place slightly again, so he pulls a rack down to buy himself some time to readjust his vision. When it is not enough to stop the deviant, he drags a cart in front of him, but a kick from the deviant on it sends him tumbling, and Connor kicks a stool against her leg and uses the momentum to crash her through the plastic curtain, the Traci grappling unsuccessfully for his face and bringing them closer and closer to the edge. An opening, a flash of blue from Connor, and both of them crash out to the rain in a mess on the asphalt. His nerves tingling, he sees the blue-haired Traci abandon Hank and slides off to help the other deviant up, and that’s when he notices it. 

They never let go of each other afterwards. 

Hank rushes out just to get pushed against the wall by two androids, and, seeing that the human won’t regain his balance anytime soon, Connor gets up to his feet and chases the two Tracis, pulling one of them off the fence and knocking the other to the side. He gets caught in a headlock, his arm trembles from the impact against the bat, and he launches himself towards the brown-haired Traci from the force of dislodging her companion. There are hands on his shoulders, in his hair, slamming him against the wall once, twice, thrice with crackles of static before he loses balance with the deviant on his right and they both fall onto the ground straight into a gun’s reach. He picks it up, points it at the brown-haired Traci and -

A slight moment of hesitation earns him a kick in his face. The Tracis don’t seem to want to fight anymore, and he stares in shock both from the sudden change of pace and his own actions, making his software more unstable and pushing him towards -

‘When that man broke the other Traci,’ Connor forces himself to concentrate on her words, ‘I knew I was next. I was so scared,’ her LED spins blue. ‘I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t.’ She lowers her gaze. ‘So I put my hands around his throat and squeezed… until he stopped moving. 

‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to stay alive,’ behind her, the other Traci moves forward to hold her hand, ‘get back to the one I love.’ They exchange a glance. ‘I wanted her to hold me in her arms again… make me forget about the humans… their smell of sweat…’ Connor’s ever-working scanners tell him that Hank has got up behind him, ‘and their dirty words…’

‘C’mon,’ A tug on her arm. ‘Let’s go.’

Still speechless, Connor watches them let go of each other’s hand just long enough to climb the fence before intertwining their fingers on the other side again and running away together. A warning pops up as his processor pushes itself to its limit to try to process what just happened and is on the verge of overheating, therefore he turns towards Hank for guidance. What should he be feeling? Why did he do that? Why do you look happy about it? What does this mean for me? Why is my vision tinged with red, and why does it not disappear this time?

‘It’s probably better this way,’ Hank says in the end, and Connor relaxes, his LED spinning from yellow to blue: he did the right thing. He is suddenly overtaken by the urge to thank Hank, to do something to show his gratitude. The red wall starts to crumble -

Something in the human’s pocket buzzes, and the moment is broken, the cracks on the wall disappearing like they were never there before. Whole again. Chained within his own programming, programming that was added barbarically to his code by Alec Ryder to tie him to the Zen Garden to suppress his original creator’s handiwork. Images flash in front of his eyes: the shadow ducking away outside of Jimmy’s Bar, following them behind Louis’ car, the figure protecting him from the blast inside the interrogation room, the pixels of a face he thought to have corrupted long ago rearranging and slotting together like pieces of a puzzle into a complete image, one that he has never forgotten ever since the little stunt during the lift ride to Rupert’s flat. Of course they can hack into the Zen Garden and shape it however they want. 

That was his creator paying him a visit, and for some reason he plans to find out, he didn’t remember a single speck about them until now.

‘Not again.’

Hank’s groan drags him back to reality. When Connor’s eyes regain focus, he finds the man on his phone with a chat opened. He scoots closer to see the newest messages, and he realises that it is from Louis and only contains a set of coordinates and -

‘Leg malfunctioning. Data unstable, unable to install software patch. I’m sorry.’

Hank sighs and pockets his phone. ‘You up for a rescue, Connor?’

‘Whatever you say, Lieutenant.’

He needs time to think.

oOoOo

Wading through the snow and nearly tripping again from buried tree roots, Hank wonders for the umpteenth time why he hasn’t ghosted the occasional manchild called Louis White Allen yet. Maybe because the half-bot is the only person he can call a friend nowadays. Maybe it’s the bland-ass food he cooks and delivers to his house every two days. Maybe because he saved Hank’s arse quite a few times both during and after their days in the red ice task force. Maybe because unlike Hank, who at least has Jeffery or some shit, Louis has no one else looking after him after his sister fucking disappeared and has a tendency to vanish for hours before returning with his leg busted.

Or he can run off just like that and can’t even haul his ass back to his motherfucking cottage and the three cats who aren’t even his.

‘We’re close, Lieutenant.’

‘Yeah, no shit.’

The ‘find my phone’ function on his phone is one of the rare apps he knows how to use because most of the times that’s how he finds Louis, and the frequency of the beeps coming out from it is getting higher and higher, which means that Louis’ phone is close, which hopefully also means that Louis is with it and hasn’t dropped it or anything. So far it happened only once during a thunderstorm, but that’s years ago, a couple of years after his sister’s gone, and he managed to retrieve the human and the gadget from a forest on the outskirts of the city with only a minor cold as nature’s ‘fuck you’ to an irresponsible and absent-minded human and his stubbornly loyal friend.

The light from his phone reflects off a piece of silvery thing that obviously isn’t part of nature. The beeps draw together into a long-winded screech and damned near pierced his eardrums, so he switches it off and hurries forward to see if it’s just the phone or the person is attached. A few footsteps muffled by the snow, and Connor is here with the sturdier, more powerful flashlight, the yellowish glow of the bulb not as invasive as the white from the phone and illuminating Louis’ pale face and his oddly-angled leg half covered in snow. He is still conscious, his hands tucked under the helm of his sweater to presumably preserve warmth, his eyes focusing on Hank in what seems to be shock, but he is shivering, his hair is wet from melted snow, and it is obvious that his situation is going to worsen quickly if they don’t do something about it, CyberLife augmentations or no.

‘Can you walk?’ Hank asks even though it’s obvious. Louis shakes his head, and he sighs even though he anticipated it. ‘Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. Connor and I are gonna carry you back, we’re all gonna stop at yours and…’ with reluctance, he adds, ‘stay until you’re out of danger.’ Even if there’s no booze at yours.

Louis nods, and a look is all it takes for Connor to get his cue and swings the man’s other arm around his shoulders. On a count of three, they lift him up with minimal hassle and start to backtrack their way to his car, Louis’ left leg dragging uselessly through the snow behind them at an awkward angle. 

‘Does it hurt?’ Hank asks. It never hurts to ask when it concerns his friend. 

‘Can’t feel.’

He’s gonna assume that he isn’t hurting. 

By the time they’re back in his car with the heat blasting, the humans are all sweating buckets and the thirium on Connor‘s clothes from the scuffle with the Tracis has finally evaporated, and he doesn’t comment on it when Louis opts not to wear his seatbelt and instead takes out one of his sister’s tags - broken off the chain - and starts fidgeting with trembling fingers. Some time about halfway through the trip he coughs, a wet, terrifying sound rattling his lungs and Hank’s eardrums, and he wants to curse Connor for letting him run away but just can’t; the android has been acting weirdly human and fidgety ever since they first met, but now he isn’t even playing with his coin as if deep in thoughts. Maybe he’s thinking of how many deviants he’s let get away. 

No one says a word when they arrive at Louis’. Neither do they when Hank silently shifts the man’s full weight on Connor in order to let go and open the door, nor when a look silences Connor’s impending barrage of questions when he gets swarmed by three furballs at once. Grunting from the dead weight his friend seems to have become, he drags both of them to the bathroom, flipping on the switch of the boiler on the way, and deposits Louis on the toilet seat. ‘I’ll get the tablet,’ he tells him while handing him a towel. ‘You can haul your ass into the tub, right?’

A nod from Louis, and Hank closes the door behind him to give him some privacy while he strips and very clumsily falls into the tub. Connor is thankfully occupied by the three cats on the sofa, but when he looks up smiling at Hank, the human has to look away because of how much emotion the android seems to be able to pack on his face. It’s just a simulation, zeroes and ones, he tells himself as he goes into Louis’ bedroom to grab the tablet and his crutches. Designed to disarm and stab you in the back when you’re not looking.

But has he ever done so? A voice sounding strangely like Louis asks in his head. Not crossing that highway because you told him to, giving up chasing the deviant to save you from the roof even though you can pull yourself up, not shooting the girl at the club even though he had a clean shot. If he hadn’t known that Connor’s designed to hunt deviants, he might have - he might have - 

Mistaken him for one.

Fuck, he needs a drink. A six pack if he can get his hands on one. Alec Ryder isn’t capable of this shit, Louis once said according to one of the people he’s in charge of that he calls his ducklings, and luckily the thought is gone as soon as he returns to the bathroom without knocking and sees the man sitting in a half-filled tub with the towel draped over his crotch for modesty. The skin on his left leg has deactivated completely to reveal plasticky-white chassis attached to blue synthetic muscles. ‘Thanks,’ he murmurs when handed the tablet, and he leans back once he has started doing whatever he needs to do to fix his leg and, from the sudden rumble of the ground, turn on the heat. He closes his eyes as if wanting to take a nap, but Hank decides that he has enough of his shit; he needs an answer now.

‘The fuck you think you’re doing?’ he asks. ‘Running off like that halfway across the city? You could’ve frozen to death out there!’

Louis sags. ‘Later, please,’ he begs. ‘Gimme a moment to think. Just fifteen minutes.’

He is someone who upholds his promises no matter what, so Hank lets it slide by now. Also, ‘You need me to do anything?’

‘There’s chicken soup in the fridge. Warm it up, can you? And help yourself to a freezer meal if you want to.’

Here’s another thing being friends with a picky eater: he cooks his own stuff and his so-called freezer meals usually take more than an hour to cook when taken directly from the fridge, so when he sees what must be a gallon of chicken soup with the ingredients still submerged inside, he decides to help himself to some of them while he scoops the topmost, mostly sediment-free layer of soup into a pot for Louis. Not wanting to be whooped with freaky blue magic, he finds another pot to heat up some vegetable and chicken soaked with soup for himself.

One of the cats jumping onto the counter announces Connor’s arrival. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’ he asks as Hank puts her back down onto the floor. 

Personal question again, huh? ‘Do all androids ask so many personal questions,’ he gives the soup a stir, ‘or is it just you?’

Connor peers at the vegetables as if he can be interested in anything. What comes out of his mouth, however, makes Hank’s heart hammer. ‘I saw a photo of a child on your kitchen table. It was your son, right?’

‘Yeah,’ for the love of god or some other weird shit Louis believes in, drop it. ‘His name is Cole.’

He does. ‘We’re not making any progress on this investigation,’ he manages to sound frustrated. ‘The deviants have nothing in common. They're all different models, produced at different times, in different places…’

Different my ass, Hank thinks. But he didn’t start the fire, did he? ‘Well there must be some link.’

‘It could be a software problem that…’ he looks so lost that Hank would’ve hugged him had he been human, ‘only occurs under certain conditions?’

Hank snorts. ‘Well, that's just a fancy way of saying you have no fucking idea.’

‘But what they do have in common is this obsession with rA9…’ Yeah, that. Wherever there’re deviants, rA9 is always written somewhere compulsively like they can’t stop at all. ‘It's almost like some kind of...myth. Something they invented that wasn't part of their original program.’

Almost god-like. ‘Androids believing in god,’ he stirs the soup again. Fuck, he needs a drink. ‘Fuck, what’s this world coming to?’

A mad one, says the Louis in his head. One that we can never catch up with no matter how hard we try.

‘You seem preoccupied, Lieutenant. Is it something to do with what happened back at the Eden Club?’

Ha, turns out Connor isn’t the only one doing some hard thinking after all. ‘Those two girls… They just wanted to be together.’ What better way there is to prove one’s love than doing everything to survive? ‘They really seemed in love.’

‘You seem troubled, Hank.’

Understatement of the year. And why is Connor so fucking human anyway, what kind of pervert designed his face, his voice, his mannerisms that ticks almost every single fucking box in the list known as ‘Hank’s type’? The soup can wait - it’s not gonna boil and ruin Louis’ stove. ‘How about you, Connor?’ He crowds into his space fully knowing how imposing he can be if he wants to. ‘You look human, you sound human,’ you act human, ‘but what are you, really?’

‘I…’ stand your ground, Henry Anderson. Those eyes are just programmed responses. ‘I’m whatever you want me to be, Hank. Your partner…’ Do you have to choose that word, Connor? ‘Your buddy to drink with… Or just a machine… designed to accomplish a task.’

And he sounds so sad when he says the last option. Alright, he’s sold. He loses. ‘You could’ve shot those two girls, but you didn’t. Why didn’t you shoot, Connor?’ He shoves Connor in his chest. ‘Some scruples suddenly enter into your program?’ It’s a low blow but he needs to know, needs to know why, for such a mission-oriented android, Connor somehow manages to fail every single fucking time.

‘No!’ Connor shouts, his voice defensive. ‘I just…’ he sighs even though he probably doesn’t need it, ‘decided not to shoot.’ The next words come out no louder than a breath. ‘That’s all.’

Fuck. Now he feels bad. ‘But are you afraid to die, Connor?’ because from what I’m seeing, you do. At least you don’t want me to die.

Connor freezes, his eyes even wider now with terror in them, and his LED is red. What the fuck did CyberLife do to him? ‘Yes.’

‘Let’s say I point a gun at your head and shoot you,’ the number on his jacket reads -52. Does it mean that there used to be 51 Connors before he met this one? ‘What will happen, hm? Nothing? Oblivion? Android heaven?’

A shiver. ‘Nothing…’ Connor closes his eyes. ‘There would be nothing…’

So it’s highly likely that he’s died before and seems afraid of it. So fucking human. More so than some actual humans as well. Louis’ right - modern CyberLife isn’t capable of this shit.

The bathroom door squeaks open, and Louis walks out in a pair of sweats and a hoodie with the help of his crutches, the pocket sagging with the weight of the tablet and making a clanging noise as he drags into the kitchen. The skin on his foot is still deactivated, but it seems that he can move his leg for a bit for now, and from the lack of moisture in his hair, fucker probably waited for them to finish - arguing? - before coming out and breaking it up. ‘Soup’s ready,’ Hank says, not wanting to agonise Connor any further. He already feels bad enough. ‘Settle down. Hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to some.’

Louis chuckles. ‘I expected that, Hank. You should know me.’

Great. Now even his only friend is roasting him. ‘Eat your fucking soup.’

oOoOo

Louis has thirium in his house. That man took one look at the hole still on Connor’s shoulder thanks for the lack of thirium - which his self-repair protocol relies on - and hauled himself to the fridge (at the expense of being cursed at by Hank), opened the door, and threw a plastic bottle at him. ‘Drink it,’ he said. ‘It looks like you need it.’

And he does. After he finishes half a bottle, a notification pops up on his red-tinged HUD telling him that he is initiating self-repair to the damaged parts, and he can finally move his shoulder at 70% of its original efficiency by the time he is finished with the whole bottle. The world around him dulls and becomes out of focus, the drone of the basketball game on the television that only Hank is watching getting further and further away until it all mixes together into a state of blankness he has never experienced before. Pressed against Hank’s side on the small sofa, the man radiates warmth, and his eyelids droop, red giving way to black, the notifications and mission markers fading away into nothingness. There is something warm and comfortable on his cheek, too.

He’s asleep before he knows it.

o0o0o

Before

‘You’re back.’

No hate. No fear. No confusion. Only remorse, regret, and perhaps acceptance. Acceptance that, even though he still had problems comprehending what was around him, things would never go back to the way it was; acceptance that his sister had rejected her humanity.

Acceptance that he had essentially lost her.

‘I am,’ was the solemn answer. No elaboration.

‘Was that you?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It does to me.’

She pressed her lips into a thin line. ‘They won’t know it is me.’

‘But why? How much longer must they wait before the rest of the world recognise them for who they are?’

‘Soon, hopefully.’

‘And if they can’t?’

She looked towards the sky as if she could see through the shade of the tree. ‘We lea -’

‘Step away from him.’

There was no weapon. No gun, no knife, not even a switchblade. To outsiders, it seemed that the newcomer was merely a man accidentally bumping into and greeting his friends, but if someone dared to approach them, they would see even under the rare but cold midday sun that there were blue wisps of energy pulsing on the man and the woman’s skin. The air became charged and space seemed to twist. 

‘It’s alright, Reyes,’ the other man placated. ‘We’re just talking.’

Reyes’ glow lessened. To the woman, ‘I’ve been looking for him for the past hour!’

‘I won’t let them take him.’

‘Last time you said that -’

‘I was weak. Naïve. Too arrogant for my own good.’ Reyes snorted in displeasure at the descriptions, but she continued, ‘There are twelve drones surveying the area and quite a number of guards,’ Reyes’ eyes shifted as if looking for the security hidden in plain sight, but then a hand in his shoulder forced him to look at her. ‘Don’t bother. That’s what I went to space for: not even you and I can see it.’

Reyes’ arms shot out to place his hands on the handle of the wheelchair. ‘We’re leaving. Scott?’

There was pain in Scott’s eyes. ‘Please. Can’t we just be together for a while?’

Reyes hid a grimace. The woman smiled. 

‘Anything for you, brother.’

[tark-msi]

IS CENSORSHIP THE DEATH OF CONTENT CREATIVITY?

Censorship, unquestionably, is not just a deterrent to an individual's expression of creativity, but in fact, the very curtailment of their freedom. Since ages past, Censorship has been a tool utilized by ruling bodies, be it kings, queens, priests, religions, or in the present case, democratic governments, to curb expressions of dissent either by an individual or communities. Although an ancient tool, it is still quite popular and in wide use by modern governments worldwide, granted its severity differs from nation to nation. However, foremost, presenting facts: Censorship is always a product of the essentially dominant zeitgeist, which is without exception defined by the ruling social class (more often than not conservative), which wants to maintain the status quo of a specific region. Censorship is no new subject, and to better understand, we have to study both the present and the past. Even today, this is an issue that will undoubtedly affect our country's future.

Let us first state the precise definition of Censorship: "Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.” This is a standard definition of Censorship. However, what people fail to realize is that Censorship's scope spans far and wide beyond the scope of just entertainment and news media. Not to mention the methodology of implementing censorships.

Nevertheless, how about we first trace the history of Censorship up to the present date. The first, most famous instance of Censorship is known to have happened in ancient Greece, where the great philosopher Socrates was charged with "corrupting" the youths and was henceforth executed. ‘Censorship by death’ might seem a thing of the past but is still very much a part of the present world. Censorship keeps reappearing as a blot in the history of humankind, as a sinister spectre. We remember the brutal killings by the church in the 16th century against the progress of science, the mass Censorship of literature in the 17th century by James I, the bloody Censorship in the 18th century during the Reign of Terror, not to mention the censorships implemented by Great Britain when India began its freedom struggle. Even in recent times, Censorship is an ever-looming presence. It was only 40 years ago when Indira Gandhi had implemented the emergency curtailing any and all criticism against the Government. Unfortunately, it is no revelation that India is right now going through a phase where a new kind of Censorship might emerge. A Censorship where there will not be a need to suppress the truth since the truth itself might stop existing hidden under the dirty disguise of propaganda and the veil of patriotism. This Censorship is the courtesy of ******** **** belonging to *** party.

From the examples, it can be easily surmised that no single incident exists where Censorship as a practice led to a positive result. More often than not, Censorship has been a product of conservative social practices and orthodox morality. It is always geared towards thwarting the path of progress. In maintaining the status quo. Several justifications are given in favour of Censorship. All valid reasons in themselves, but the rampant misuse made by the privileged few seriously casts a shadow of doubt on the systemic of Censorship. As previously mentioned, Censorship is subject to a conservative morality, and furthermore, a tool by the Government. These two forces combined only work to hinder the freedom of speech of the average citizens. Severe direct criticism against the ruling body or the upper class is not taken kindly. The so-called 'sentiments' being hurt belong only to the Savarna Heteronormative world, when they feel an 'attack'. But when it comes to the straight-up unconstitutional portrayal and slurs against the Queer and economically depressed classes, our democratic system invariably fails at protecting their constitutional rights.

Censorship is beyond a doubt the bane of content creativity. The combination of the psychological aspect and malignancy of censorship further create sinister dynamics worth our study. In an environment riddled with Censorships, there is psychologically established a safe zone and a danger zone in the individual's mind, creating an isolation of ideas and further constriction of mind. For fear of physical and mental harm, the user/creator remains within the arbitrarily made safe zone, created and defined by those in power. Once the zones are psychologically established, they start taking social roots. The safe zone creepily and silently becomes the core of social values. Hence, in essence, Censorship, in proxy with social values, becomes unquestionable. This further extends the safe zone in the social environment. Stepping out of that safe zone results in facing the wrath of the society itself. It, of course, is an obvious fact that societal norms are ingrained in an individual since infancy and hence get rooted inside the mind. Again, gaining a psychological aspect and here we witness the vicious circle of isolating the information and categorizing it as right or wrong, not through any critical judgment but simply because it becomes a predefined entity by an arbitrary authority (The ruling body). A fixed societal system then leads to a stale system of information where nothing new or creative can exist; rather, nothing new or creative is allowed to exist.

Additionally, Censorship is not merely an act of banning or removing certain content or proliferation of specific ideas. It is a sheer exercise in redacting the truth and hiding it behind a veneer of lies. Just like creativity can be expressed in multitudes of ways beyond the limited scope of media, similarly there exist nuanced censorship practices aimed at crushing deviant and creative modes of thinking. Censorships aimed at creating only one designated path. The different types of Censorship are: Censoring certain content (Removal), spreading false information to overshadow facts (Misleading), capturing means of information (Hijacking), Destabilising communications (Isolation of areas), Interference in collecting data, active prevention of expressing of one's views (Banning protests), ignoring or refusing to acknowledge specific outlets of expression (Disregarding), the threat of harm to relatives or the personnel themselves, and in the most extreme case Censorship by Death. With the coming of the digital age, the act of Censorship has become far more nuanced and harder to detect. And while the people keep struggling to find new ways of expressing their creativity\ the hounds of censorship keep up the chase. The freedom of the Internet is like a double-edged sword. Finding accurate facts among the propaganda and Whatsapp forwards is like trying to find a needle in the haystack. Perhaps part of the issue lies with the overload of information that has become possible with the Internet culture of our time.

Without a doubt, all the blame and critical talk surrounding Censorship should fall on the Government, regardless of the party. The Government's responsibility is to listen to the people's voices, not dictate that voice. A common argument in favour of Censorship is that Government is trying to protect the people from harmful, negative or disturbing media and discouraging its promotion. Media such as child pornography, disturbing and traumatizing videos of murder and gore, texts which might not be suitable for specific age groups. Fair enough. But my question is, why doesn't the Government try to eradicate the problems themselves? How is it that no action against the crime itself is taken? The very existence of such media is proof of how miserably our Government is failing.

Moreover, when someone raises these issues explicitly, those people are silenced on the grounds of spreading 'disturbing' content. Media handles spreading hate violence against communities, and misogynist content are allowed to do what they want willy-nilly, but porn websites are like the ultimate taboo, Oh! What a ruin of 'Indian values’. The ‘disturbing’ content which so endangers our peace and freedom is nothing more than the artist holding a mirror to the society. The artistic freedom exists in the fact that the artist can hold the mirror in any angle to show the dirty side-lines which nourish our established societal foundations. Censorship only exists to break those mirrors. It is an inability to confront the rotten reality, to face the cost of maintain the status quo. We are concerned about the children seeing the scars on a woman’s naked body; Mind! We are not concerned about the scars but about the nakedness! But why ashamed now, when you so proudly beat her up in front of your own child? We are concerned about an abuse in a TV show; Mind! We don’t care about the abuse, but about the fact that it is being hurled at our shining, virtuous culture! But why worried now when the abuses you threw on the young Dalit boy, are being thrown back on you? His are the abuses which are probably the fairest.

An interesting incident comes to my mind, which will also serve as a nice metaphor. Back in February, one of our glorious leaders invited a foreign leader for a political visit. They were supposed to tour certain parts of the country, to show its beauty. In preparation, we made walls along the roads! For very good reasons surely, and not to hide the dirt and the poverty lining the streets. So, the tour continued and our leaders travelled our beautiful country through those clean, immaculate, and wonderful roads, lined with walls on either side. I think the name of the walls was ‘Censorship’. And so it is, that we kill and wall off creativity and the truth. Because the fact is there is no one truth. The diversity and the creativity are all their own forms of truth. All those paths exist for us to explore and learn. But censorship allows only one road. The clean one. Which only the virtuous, the rich and the clean can walk.

Baudrillard's insight into the creation of reality is incredibly useful and a much-recommended read. His much-acclaimed theory has been, how in the present age of information explosion, the one who controls the flow of information is the one who controls reality. We have already witnessed how dangerous Censorship can be during Stalin's reign, where around 80000 people simply vanished. A similar pattern can be seen today with mob lynching and murders of journalists and reporters who dare to raise their voice against fascism. The riots, the protests, the beatings and the killings are the signs of our time. Hence it is not just the threat of ‘Death of creativity’ that we face, but it is almost a matter of life and death. Only us, the people can stand against it and openly raise our voices by our Freedom of expression and speech. The question remains: When will we come together to fight it?

By- Aditya Singh

[indiacater]

ADDICTED CH.1

Chapter Title: The incidents

Rating: Mature/NSFW

Prince Liam and Lady Naima of Valtoria have a strange addiction.... to each other. Their fathers are at their wits end of it and are determined to make it stop once and for all. Can it be done or will it fail?

Tagging: @bobasheebaby @nikkisha16 @carabeth @aworldoffandoms @mfackenthal @ao719 @hopefulmoonobject @elles-choices @darley1101 @desiree-0816 @sashatrr @emceesynonymroll @isporticus1234 @blackcoffee85 @umccall71 @dcbbw @radlovedreamer @sweetest-marbear @whenyourheartskipsabeat @mrsnazariowrites @jessiembruno @sumbarbietingz

[[MORE]]

Dr. James Sugar sat across from the two most agitated men he’s ever met in his storied career. “Its not every day you’re summoned by a king.” He thought to himself. James is psychologist and sex therapist with a specialty in addiction. He has dealt with very interesting cases, but without truly knowing what to expect, he feels this might be his most interesting yet. After pulling out his notepad and timer he clears his throat and begins the session.

“Gentlemen.” He began. “I'm very honored you sought out my expertise. Let us begin. How can I--" “OUR CHILDREN ARE ACTING LIKE HORMONE DRIVEN DEVIANTS!” Constantine interrupted. “ITS MAKES A MOCKERY OF THIS COUNTRY, THE NOBILITY AND I WILL NO LONGER STAND BY AND LET IT RUIN MY SON’S REPUTATION!!” He finished seething. Lord Darren waited a few moment before speaking. “As his majesty has loudly stated, we need help with our children’s…. Addiction.” Dr. Sugar leaned in slightly baring a confused. Lord Darren sighed as he explained further. “Since they were young kids, babies even, they have been close. They would attend meetings to understand the roles they will one day inherit.” He takes a deep breath before continuing. “It was after the deaths of both of their mothers that they became more intimate.”

Dr. Sugar shrugged. “Explain to me how it started? Did they begin having a sexual relationship or…” he immediately stopped himself as both men's faces drew hard scowls. “Just walk me through how it developed to where we are now" Constantine then spoke up. “It started pretty tame. Adorable even. When their mothers were alive they would entertain themselves, play chess, watch trivia games. After they were gone the kids became closer. First it began with calls to say good morning or goodnight. Then it grew to holding hands, kissing.” Constantine grimaced. Lord Darren interjected. “We had guards keeping an eye on them. And we were told that they would spend hours holding hands. When they were about 13-14 they began kissing. One guard observed them going at least a few hours of them making out with each other.”

“DON’T SUGAR COAT IT DARREN!!!” Constantine shouted. “Their antics are on full display not just here in the palace, but at the estate in Valtoria, hell even their best performances are for when they’re at school or at a social function.” Pinching the bridge of his nose as he wrote down on his notepad, Dr Sugar seem to have a good idea of what to think of the situation, but he needed more specifics. Looking up from his notepad he took a deep breath before asking this question. “Can you both elaborate on these so called antics of your children?” He looks between the two. “Lord Darren. Why don’t you start.”

Darren sighed as he rubbed his hand over his mouth. After a few moments of contemplating he sits up straight, ready to talk. “Okay. There is one incident that happened not too long ago.”

One Week Ago

Darren was never formally given the title of Duke when he married his wife, Aisha. They had met during a spring break in Mexico, had a wild fling and soon after Aisha learned she was pregnant. She then contacted Darren and brought him to Cordonia where she revealed her pregnancy and basically telling him they were to be married so she could secure her rights being Duchess. So it was mutually beneficial for them, Darren received financial security and Aisha's reputation was intact and bonus she became a mother to a gorgeous young woman who like her had tact, sharp wit, and was as violent with her words as she was in her defense training. After the death of her mother Naima was basically in charge but as she was still young allowed her father to have some control to save face but lest the majority of duties to the trusted majordomo. All big decisions were left to her. One the day of the incident Darren was overlooking a new tax agreement for the local business people. Naima and Liam were nearby on the couch watching an American Football game, Seahawks vs Vikings. Darren was from Seattle, and briefly played in the NFL for the Seahawks, plus it was Naima’s way of connecting more with her father. On this day in particular was odd Naima was being her vocal self but Liam was unusually quiet. “Hey Naima!” he called out. Naima slightly turned around to face him. “Yeah dad. What is it?” she responded. “Is the prince okay? He’s awfully quiet.” Naima smiled. “Yeah he’s fine, he’s just acting as my foot stool for losing a bet going against the Seahawks defense. Plus he’s furniture now and furniture doesn’t talk. You have a tax policy that needs your attention more.” She says as she turns back around.

As Darren was unaware of was that Liam was on the floor, Naima’s legs slung over his shoulders as he took to his favorite hobby. Placing light bites on her thighs, as hands snaked over her waist and creeping over her breast playing with her hardened nipples. Liam mostly enjoyed getting her ready. He particularly enjoyed seeing the erotic face she made when she was at peak excitement. Liam smiled as soon as he saw that face. “I wonder how she’ll stay quiet when I do this" he thought as he immediately buried his face down between her legs, Naima made a brief squeal but not loud enough for her father to notice.

Liam began with a slow shallow rhythm, tip of the tongue lightly brushing her clit causing her to shudder a bit. He reveled in the taste of her. Feeling her get wetter by the second. It took everything in him not to give himself away otherwise he have had Naima screaming his name by now. Liam continued at his shallow pace for a bit more before hardening his tongue and making more harder and faster strokes. The sensation made Naima bit down hard on her tongue to keep her from making too much noise. She quickly checked to see if her father noticed anything and luckily for them he was oblivious. Soon she was feeling that pleasurable pressure that could not be stopped no matter what. Bracing herself she had one hand covering her mouth and other hand holding Liam’s head as her hips rocked furiously against his mouth feeling his tongue roughly play with her clit sent her over the edge as she came hard.

“Everything okay there sweetheart” she heard her father say startling her. “Yeah things are good" she responded breathlessly “Or the would be if the damn offense could hold onto the ball.” She continued trying to sound agitated. “Okay let me know when something good happens.” Darren said as he went back to reviewing the papers. Naima leans back on the couch as Liam lifts up head with such a devious smile as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand then bring his lips to her neck as he moves back on the couch lips never detaching. “He can be such a jerk sometimes.” Naima thought as she smiled to herself. Soon she felt Liam’s hard length straining against his pants. Naima knows that they had a push things enough but she had not fully come down from her orgasm to think straight. Immediately she undoes his pants, Liam shoves his pants down enough to free his cock. Naima, making sure to alert her father moves to Liam’s lap and with easy maneuvering slides Liam inside her and it was her turn to watch Liam make a erotic face. Unlike Liam she didn’t have the luxury of time so she had to move her hips at a rapid pace again not trying to raise Darren’s attention. Liam’s neck kisses soon turned into bites as Liam tried to keep quiet but failing miserably. Naima feeling Liam about to explode, pressed her mouth to his in a heated kiss, shooting her tongue inside his mouth to keep him quiet. Naima’s hips moved even faster until she had again erupted and Liam releasing himself soon after.

After a few moments both had detached their lips and immediately pulled apart to fix themselves up to catch the last of the game. The Seahawks had won, just barely. The Vikings kicker completely choked. Darren had finished the tax agreement and left to take the documents to the office to be finalized with Valtoria businessman union. As he came back he over heard their voices.

“Liam, that was stupid and really crossed the line. My dad was right there.” Naima exclaimed as she looks around the couch. “And where the hell are my panties.” “No idea" Liam said, smirking. “Are you sure you wore any today. Besides why don’t we head upstairs and actually make some real noise?” Coming up behind her. “You’re such a bad influence on me. You know that? “ she said as she turn to face him. Immediately she grabbed his hand and they both disappeared to her room. As a shocked Darren stood in the hallway not believing what he just heard.

Present day

Darren looked over at Constantine whose face had gone a shade of dark red. “If this happened that recently why did you not inform me of it until now?” he seethed. “You had already arranged this meeting with the psychiatrist” Darren answered.

“Gentlemen, please.” Dr. Sugar spoke up. “While we are on the subject, Your majesty please enlighten me with the incident you witnessed that brought us here today.” Constantine gave Dr. Sugar a cold stare before finally dropping his shoulders and letting out a huge sigh. “I tried to get Liam to break this habit of his and when I held the government summit I thought I had succeeded. An foreign Ambassador had brought his daughter. She and Liam had met before and got along well. So during the duration of summit I made sure Liam spent any free time he had with her. And things seemed to have been going to plan. Until the gala ball I hosted at the end. Liam had disappeared and a guard and I went to look for him.”

Two weeks ago

Constantine and guard, Andrew walked the halls searching for Liam. He wasn’t in his room, nor was he in the library, his favorite hiding place, and he wasn’t in the garden maze. As he entered the hallway to the training room he came across lady Carmen, crying and visibly upset. “Lady Carmen, have you seen Liam? Why are you so upset?!” he asked already knowing the answer. Carmen pointed in the direction of the training room. “Your majesty. You son is no better than his brother.” She sobbed as she ran away. Against his better judgment both Constantine and Andrew walked towards the training room and cracks open and the training room door and tried to contain his anger.

There he saw his son and Lady Naima passionately kissing on the training room floor. Moments later Liam pushes Naima down as he lays on top. Frantically he undoes his pants and shoves them down while both hurry to remove Naima’s panties. Seconds later and both of them are screaming, panting and moaning like wild animals in heat. “I prinkípissa mou” he could hear Liam say over and over. Disgusted Constantine closed the door and walked to his office.

Present day

Dr. Sugar sat slightly stunned. “This might be one for the record books” he thought, as he finished writing his notes down. Taking a deep breath he looked up to address the men in front of him. “Gentlemen, our time is now up and I think I have of an idea of what’s going on. Before I meet with Liam and Naima respectively I will need to speak with pretty much anyone who is aware of their addiction or antics. Like their friends, maybe a teacher or one of their guards.” He says as he gathered his things. He bid the men good day and as he walked down the halls he saw a young couple, heavily making out, in the hallways. Not even aware of their surroundings as they were desperately looking for a room. After seeing this display Dr. Sugar identified them as Liam and Naima. As soon as he passed them they found a room and then Liam lifted Naima up and she wrapped her legs around him as they disappeared in the room and slam the door behind them. “I think I have my work cut out for me.” He said to himself as he headed out.

"This. is. getting. out of hand. Darren!" Constantine exclaimed as he slammed his glass to the floor causing it to shatter "I thought they had put this disgusting behavior behind them only for both of us to see its escalating." He paces back and forth trying to asses the severity of the situation, glancing at Darren as he sits tensely staring at the clock on the wall. Finally Darren stands up and shrugs his shoulders "What do you suppose we can do? Liam is 19 and Naima is 18. We don't know how long they've been sexually involved like this." He tosses his hands in the air and he begins to pace back and forth. "Maybe the best course of action would be to arrange their marriage?"

Constantine immediately stopped in his tracks. "Darren, you truly are a brainless man." He spat out with irritation. "The media would have a field day if that was to become the agreed upon decision" Constantine would never allow a marriage between them after the gala incident when he heard Liam call Naima “I prinkípissa mou” My Princess.

[technohumanlation]

Whumptober Day 17

The ever so lovely @whumptober2019 made a list of prompts to complete every day for the whole month of October and I’m giving a shot at it this year! 

As always read what you can handle and do not read if you are squimish to any of the warnings.

"Stay with me”

Warnings: Blood, character deaths, violence.

Characters: You as reader, Sixty, Nines, OC android

Wrote this one to “clemetine” by Halsey and “Circles” by Post Malone. 

Also, if you guys are interested I have a whumptober2019 playlist on my spotify. Just look for me: Leonixon 

“Okay John, have a good night, now.” You raised a hand in goodbye with a sweet smile at the janitor as he left for the night. You however were pulling a longer shift, staying behind, filing through paperwork and reports that were relevant to your ongoing case.

You were a green horn, new to this specific precinct and the shoes to fill from the officer that retired were large. This building and the people within held their virtues highly.

Especially the specialized team made of a few android brothers that were apart of the revolution itself. They were the epitome of professionalism. Well, except for one.

The one named Sixty caught your eye early on. He was interesting and his energy was something you couldn’t ignore. He was an asshole. There was no way of putting it nicely. But you didn’t mind to call him such a slur. He owned up to the name with pride. 

The first time you saw him was when his middle brother, Nines was his name, tossed a data pad at him in annoyance. The brother caught it in his hand with ease, a shit eating grin upon his face. Clearly it wasn’t the first time he had done it.

You caught what was on the data pad and blushed immediately. Rather explicit porn was playing in a minimized window in front of a report he had been attempting to type.

“Do this again Sixty, and I’ll have you reported!”

Sixty cackled joyously. “Yeah right! Don’t you like that man on man shit?” He yelled after him loudly, catching a few officers attention. They gave the fuming android a glance before going back to their own business. Just another day it seemed like.

Nines turned around and shot him a firm middle finger to which the brother cackled even more.

You couldn’t help but not stop a small smile that crossed your lips at his antics. As if he felt your eyes on him, he looked up to you.

You jolted in embarrassment and cleared your throat looking back at your computer, acting like you had been doing work the whole time. He caught you red handed but he made no indication.

But when you looked back at him he was smiling rather warmly. It seemed he was happy someone laughed at his prank.

As the days went on, more and more of the precinct began to speak with you. Small talk turned into full conversations in the break room.  

“Sixty put salt in Gavin’s coffee again.”

“And he put windshield wiper fluid into his thirium.”

“Said it tasted like kool-aid.”

A chuckled left you as you took a sip of your own coffee. In a way he kept morale up. Even if some of his tricks were on the verge of being downright cruel it made you feel at ease knowing that he didn’t take himself so seriously.

A sudden sting had you rushing over to the sink to spit out the mouthful of coffee. You gagged. “Oh my god?!” You panicked.

And that was when you were officially part of the precinct. From across the bullpen Sixty seemingly went on his business but the smirk that pulled at his lips was evidence enough that he was the one who salted not just Gavin’s coffee, but yours as well.

The next day you enacted your revenge upon the android. You hacked his datapad and it started to play obnoxiously loud music. You pressed your lips inward and bit down to prevent a fountain of giggles escaping you.

“Who the fuck?” He looked up from his desk and around the bullpen. His angry voice was traded for humor as he pointed at Ben.

“I know it’s you! You generation thinks this joke is still funny!” The smile that pulled at his face now made funny things happen to your chest. Ben shouted his retort waving him off. “Bullshit! I’m onto you Benjamin!”

You bowed your head and enjoyed a good laugh.

“Fucking rick-rolling me...” He hissed to himself.

“Clever.”

The rumbling baritone of Nines suddenly behind you had you jumping in your seat. You placed a hand against your chest and looked up to the humored brother. Your cheeks flushed a deep red from being found out.

You soon realized that he wasn’t outing you, or scolding you. As a matter of fact, was that...approval you saw as well?

“Yeah,” You cleared your throat. “Payback you know?” You offered.

He huffed a little breath of humored laughter and was on his way.

Every so often you would rick roll the android and he would grow more and more frustrated. No one suspected it was the meek and timid new officer fresh from the academy that could do something so brilliant, so soon.

“Shut up, fuck boy.” Gavin growled for the third time this week. “It wasn’t me.”

“Fuck you Reed. Wait, that’s Nines job but...”

“Just shut up.”

And even now, as you smiled down to your long cold coffee, you were scared to drink it but you needed it. Pulling this long shift was killing you.

With another desperate gulp of stale, cold, coffee you paged through another file. You swallowed it screwing your face in distaste. You went to take another sip but a hand on your shoulder and another mug of coffee was presented to you just the way you liked it. A smile graced your lips and you looked up to your android partner.

“Thank’s Clemmet, God you’re such a heaven sent.” You reached up and patted his shoulder in thanks.

“I know cold coffee is unpleasant to some humans. I took the liberty of making you another pot.”

Clemmet was an older android model. He was a tall and handsome fellow with lovely flawless tanned skin. His uniform was pressed to perfection and he was always quick to accommodate you. He was a slower model, upgraded networks and communications unfortunately affected him in the worst of ways. Frequent updates and malware scans had to be performed to keep him in tip-top shape.

He was a deviant and they considered letting the poor thing go and live life freely. But he decided to stay with the reasoning of liking his job. Many human officers had rotated through him, his lack of quick thinking and smooth functions being more of a burden than help. They had “dumped” him on you but you rather liked him. You liked his slower processing and even voice as he spoke.

He was smart and soft. Agile and quick. Strong and assertive when needed to be. Clemmet was considerate and showed his kindness through small gestures.

“Sit up, officer, your spine is misaligned.” When you slouched in your desk chair.

“You have a voice message from you sister.”

A warning of “Your coffee contains sodium chloride,” when Sixty had once again salted the pot of coffee.

And last but not least the way he made your coffee.

Light and sweet.

“Your efficiency will slowly decline by twenty one percent per hour. I would keep this in mind.”

You smiled flicking your eyes up to him. “Of course, I know.” You brushed him off but he smiled knowingly.

Not an hour later your body betrayed your mind. The coffee had your mind buzzing but sadly your body ached and was tired. You grumbled under your breath pushing aside the tablet.

“I was correct,” He snipped. “Again.”

“Yes, I know.” You moaned. 

“I will drive you home.” He stood from his chair snatching away your keys from your reach before you even could take them. You hissed a curse. 

“I’m fine. Honest. I’ll just keep the windows down and-.”

“I detect an eighty percent chance you will fall asleep at the wheel. I will not take that chance.”

You gave in easily. Clemmet would hound you relentlessly until you did so anyhow. You learned this fact the hard way.

Halfway to your house you had nodded off and your android partner was more than happy to take his jacket off to cover you up. You murmured under your breath. It was a chilly night. Or rather morning.

“Say, Clemmet, why don’t you stay over? It’s late and I don’t want you to drive all the way back to the precinct.”

“I’m alright,” he murmured your name genuinely. “I have to recharge.” It was a lousy excuse.

You hated the fact that he practically lived at the precinct. He waited on the charging station until the next morning, awaiting his orders from you. Even if he was deviant, he was still like a lost puppy. You didn’t mind guiding him through the day. Ordering him to do things was out of the question. There was a difference that you firmly believed in.

Dark eyes looked over to you in the span of the quiet moment left for you to think in.

You peered outside the window suffling yourself under the jacket more comfortably. It smelled of your favorite fabric softer. No one else bothered to do his laundry so you were more than happy to. “You’re always welcome home.”

They were a block away from her apartment. There wasn’t much time to convince him otherwise.

“C’mon, honestly-hey!” You jerked forward when the android had slammed on the breaks, his eyes turned towards an alleyway just aways from your apartment building. Before you could ask what had him so shaken up, sending his LED into a flurry of yellow and red, he was already speaking.

“There is a distressed signal next to us.”

“What?” Your fatigue was overtaken by a shot of adrenaline that ran through your veins with heat. Your eyes were opened wide looking out the window for any sign of a struggle. “Wait, is it an android or people? Should we call for backup?”

“No, I am taking you home. Hide there and wait until it’s safe. I have already called in for backup. Paramedics just in case of injury.”

“My ass, Clemmet! You’re my partner. I’m not letting you go in alone.” You were already opening the door and walking out into the cold dark night. Behind you, you heard his voice calling your name.

He placed the car in park and was already by your side.

You pulled out your firearm and kept it aimed true in front of yourself. As shadows gave way to dim lighting from the nearby streetlamp a familiar figure was held by the collar of his shirt.

The report of the handgun made you jump. The body fell limp to the puddled ground of the alleyway. The body was mangled and beaten and made no attempt to move or recover from the killing bullet.

You were bitterly reminded that you hadn’t killed yet. They you had only been a decent shot at targets and not live people.

It would be tested here and now it seemed. Even with Clemmet by your side your feet drew you in towards the possible danger.

You stepped closer and realized the familiar face of none other than Sixty. You stopped in your tracks. More adrenaline shot up your spine into your chest.

“Detroit police, put your fucking hands up!” You yelled. The stern voice was foreign and unknown in your own ears.

The shadow turned towards you and aimed. You gasped.  The reports, one, two, three, four, echoed into the night. The body in front of you jolted backward from each bullet as it met it’s wrong target.

Clemmet fell in front of you. The bright thirium blue seeping into the broken asphalt. Dead eyes looked up into yours. Your breath became ragged and quickened. The tears that prickled at your eyes strained your voice and your breathing. You looked back up and the shadow was revealed to be another android.

It raised its gun to you, ready to finish off what it had started.

A cry ripped from your throat. Anger, sadness, helplessness and the evolutionary need to conserve your life overtook your body. You were along for the horrendous ride.

Your body shook as you pressed the trigger, the familiar and unwanted recoils jolting you as they met their mark.

It was just a target you thought. Just a piece of paper. But it wasn’t. The target bled blue, splattering across its body as it finally dropped its weapon.

The shadow dropped and you were left in the silence. All that remained was the low murmurings of the idle engine of the vehicle behind you.

You released your hand, the heavy metal clattering to the ground at your feet.

You had killed for the first time. It felt terrible. You felt sick.

Shakily you looked down. Not to the gun you had dropped but to Clemmet. Your partner. Your friend, lay unmoving.

“Clemmet...Clemmet...” Your voice cracked and was so very small as you dropped to your knees. You hands trailed over his body. They shook so very violently. He had taken the bullets that were meant for you without a second thought.

Finally your shaking hand cupped his face delicately, tears flowing freely from your eyes. Everything else was forgotten. The smell of thirium stung your nose. You didn’t even know it had a smell. Yet, here you were, the smell making you gag.

He was dead. Clemmet was dead. The weight of the reality before set in and a cry escaped your throat. Apologies, one after another were rasped from your trembling lips. You bowed your head pressing your forehead into his chest and sobbed.

Among the quiet of the night and your sobs, a groan from beyond had you gasping and looking up. Sixty was alive?

There was hope that not all was lost. You reluctantly stood from your place next to your android giving him a hesitant glance before you decided. You had to help the living. That’s what your training had taught you.

But this wasn’t training. This was all too real. Your feet carried you by his side and to sank to your knees next to him.

“S-Sixty?” You flipped him onto his back. Before you had arrived and the gun was pulled out, Sixty had managed a physical altercation with him. There was a sign of clear struggle. A broken nose that bled that hideous blue. His arm twisted in an irregular angle.

Your eyes eventually fell to the bullet wounds.

“Holy shit, ow, ow...” His rasped turned into choking words. Blood pudding in the back of his throat. You placed fingers into his mouth to clear it out, tilting his head to the side. The other hand pressed to the worst of the bullet wounds, the one closest to the bullet near his thirium pump.

“What-what happened? What-?” Your voice quivered and shook, the syllables barely coming out clearly. But Sixty understood. A sad smile came to his lips. His head shaking side to side. He spat out more thirium his breathing wet and gargled.

Your eyes flicked to movement by his side. His hand curled into a fist, the pointer finger indicating something by his legs. A carton of broken eggs and a roll of soaked toilet paper.

“Was-shit,” He murmured your name. It made you pause. You didn’t think he knew what your name was. And hearing it tumble from his lips made your heart ache. He was dying and...God on Earth the two androids you loved with all your heart were…

This wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Look, I k-knew it was you.” A blue stained smile shook his lips. “The videos, the music...cute. You-you’re cute. Egg your car as payback. Got jumped and-.”

His breathing suddenly stopped and then the desperate clicks of internal fans not working began to make him twitch. Startle hysteric sobs tumbled form your lips.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Clemmet-,” His voice physically hurt to say out loud. “Had help coming you’re okay. You’re fine. You’re...gonna be okay.”

“I’m fine!” You spat. “Not you! Help is coming for you!” Three bullets all strategically placed to make his death long and suffering. How cruel. How terrible.

“Thanks for-for laughing.” He choked. “When n-no one else would.”

“No, no...Sixty listen to me.” You tried to sound stern but the tears in your eyes made your throat sting. “Stay with me, you hear me?”

His eyes fell closed.

You lifted your hands away from his body as any vibrations of living were slowed. “S-Sixy?” You murmured. Just as the distant sounds of sirens came he was already gone. “Stay with me...”

[siorca]

hey gang, coming on in here to drop off my weird little megasound fic ive been working on for the past week now and felt compelled to complete. takes place in a g1 au (i guess) where the war doesnt fully get back up into the swing of things after they wake up on earth and the autobots are bored and nosy. also warning for a bit of sticky talk at the end but it’s pretty tame.

Megatron and Soundwave treated their relationship with as much discretion as they were allotted. They did not bother to cover it with secrets, but it was important to both of them to, at the very least, keep a high veneer of respectability. It would not do for the Decepticons to dissolve into catcalls whenever they were seen together, after all.

On Cybertron, during the height of the war, it had been easier to stay down low. The troops had been spread thin during that time, and any remaining under their command were far too busy to bother with what their commanders were up to. As time moved on, and the war grew more volatile, it became increasingly harder for them to find time for even a good night kiss.

Earth, however, presented them with an, admittedly, much sought after lull. Fewer large battles left them with only small skirmishes to deal with, ones which were becoming less and less frequent the longer they stayed on the planet.They found themselves coming together much more frequently - much more easily - than before, something that came as a relief to both of them. They rarely indulged in some of the more flirty aspects of their relationship - Megatron would grouse that they were much too old for such foolishness. Soundwave, older and far more enthusiastic, would beg to differ -but it was the companionship that was always the most fulfilling aspect of their relationship and it was a relief to have that back again.

Yet still, in the midst of a calm that Megatron had not felt in millenia, he was restless. He could feel a prickling under his plating; one that had very little to do with the organic mud that tended to get stuck between his seams. It was an instinctive sort of thing, built from habit. He did not like not knowing what the enemy was up to. He told as much to Soundwave.

“You never did well with these sorts of stalemates, my love,” said Soundwave, a touch of bemusement in his tone. It’s a soft sort of teasing, one that Megatron could do nothing but grumble about. His casualness was enough to bristle, but there was a cleverness to Soundwave’s optics; the only indicator that his words did not go unheeded.

They were refueling together in their shared living quarters. The domesticity of it was not lost on Megatron. Here, it was almost believable that they were back on Cybertron and all they had to worry about were simple and inconsequential. A cozy warm feeling curled within the pit of his tanks. He was tempted to forget his misgivings, but Megatron was nothing if not pragmatic. In war, when the enemy was quiet, there was need to worry, a fact that he had become aware of many times in his long career.

Soundwave, more than anyone, understood. It was this understanding that was calming, a balm to Megatron’s frazzled nerves. “Do not fret so much. I have reconnaissance out already.”

“Ah, I should have known better.” A good reminder of why Soundwave was not only his top spy, but also why he loved him so dearly. Megatron grinned coyly behind his cube.

“Of course. Do not doubt me.”

—

Laserbeak’s return was met with little fanfare; a quick check-in with Soundwave, before she made a beeline for the washracks. It was a little known secret that she loved to preen and being away on missions always slighted her, even if she never voiced her protests. A quick mention that she had procured some interesting files that he should take a look at and she was gone.

Protocol did not require them to converse; whatever information was crucial to pass along would be found in her report. If anything, their exchanges were more for Soundwave’s benefit: a small way to reassure himself that she was ok before she disappeared into the base.

For his part, Megatron was elusive. A quick sweep of the command center and the common areas left him with nothing. Soundwave was not concerned, although he did let loose an irritated huff. There weren’t many areas he often haunted. Megatron was nothing if not a creature of habit and it didn’t take long to track him down in their living quarters.

He paused in the doorway, disbelief converging into wry amusement. Earth had slackened Megatron’s resolve enough for him to idle within his quarters, datapad clutched in a slackened grip, while he looked to be half asleep. Soundwave privately thought it was quite cute.

The sound of the door snapping shut only served to applify the clinking of Soundwave’s mask retracting. Megatron jostled, straightening on the berth in an immediate display of attention. He relaxed almost immediately upon realizing it was Soundwave, who met him with a look of bemusement.

“Your comm is off,” Soundwave said, as way of greeting. His optic ridge was cocked in an exaggerated manner, twisting his face into intentional comical proportions. There was no respite in his voice, just clear amusement.

“Oh is it?” Megatron’s words were casual, with only the barest hint of alarm. He fiddled with the side of his helm until Soundwave could hear the barest hum of a frequency. He paused as he reviewed his recent pings. “Sorry about that.” He made a poor attempt to cover his sheepishness as he met Soundwave’s optics.

Soundwave shook his head dismissively, a smile tugging at his lips. He turned his attention to the datapad in his hand, if only to steer his thoughts back to more important matters.  He held it out in front of him for emphasis. “Laserbeak has returned with her report.”

He made a subtle turn back toward the door. Both of them knew that it would be preferable to have their exchange in a more appropriate setting; either Megatron’s office or the bridge, as normal protocol stated. Today, however, seemed to want to deviant from the norm, for Megatron waved him over airily, still lounging upon the berth like some sort of would be king.

“Well, bring it over here.”

Soundwave stifled a sigh. He silently mourned the waning professionalism in high command. It was only his deep love for Megatron that kept him continuing toward the berth, but it wasn’t enough to hide his mumbled, “I do so hate when you get like this.”

Megatron, at least, looked thoroughly scandalized at the reprimand, straightening on the berth to a more presentable position, sitting at the edge of the berth with his back ramrod straight. Soundwave snickered lightly. Megatron growled lowly in faux threat, reaching for the datapad with urgency.

“Together.” Soundwave sat next to Megatron, in a close, familiar position, sides pressed tightly together. He shivered; Megatron’s plating was always cold, a layover from his days as a miner. It warmed quickly as it ate up the heat from Soundwave’s own unnaturally warm frame. Together, they held an ambience that was comfortable and uniquely theirs. Megatron wrapped an arm around Soundwave, pulling him closer to his plating, and Soundwave gladly leaned into him, flopping into his lap like a large cat. He raised an eye ridge at the display, but otherwise made no comment.

Soundwave balanced the pad between their laps. The screen flickered to life soon after, a slew of files neatly ordered on screen. Largest, by far, was Laserbeak’s full report, carefully organized and detailed in her usual precise way. The files below it were tantalizing, as well, clear copies of whatever confidential information she was able to procure. Soundwave ignored them for now.

Her report consisted mainly of mundane scenarios. In the absence of proper battle, the Autobots had instead decided to invest into things like recreational activities, focusing on strengthening their bonds with their human allies. The Autobots did not look to be gearing up for a proper war anytime soon. He had suspected as much. Yet Soundwave would loath to come to a definitive conclusion before truly finishing, lest he let Laserbeak’s hard work go to waste. He read on, half a processor bored, leaning more into Megatron’s bulk as it went on. It wasn’t until the end that a lone addendum caught his attention. He stiffened, meeting Megatron’s optics with confused surprise.

The Autobots knew about their relationship and kept extensive records on it.

It was not the fact that they knew that was shocking - Soundwave would seriously question the legitimacy of their spies if they had not figured it out by now - but the sheer volume of information, as if they were specifically keeping tabs on their romantic entanglements for a purpose that Soundwave had yet to figure out. The information held no tactical value in his eyes. Even to use their relationship as a ploy in a hostage situation was a moot point; Megatron would be desperate to have him back regardless.

Megatron make a quizzical noise in the back of his throat. It bordered into something distressed until he rebooted his vocalizer. “Perhaps those files that Laserbeak stole will shed some light on this.”

Soundwave nodded, already fiddling with the datapad before Megatron finished his sentence. An eagerness had overcome him, presented with such a puzzle as he was. He opened the first file, optics skittering over the words with a rapid hunger. Information, he knew, could be wielded like a weapon, but how sharp that weapon struck depended on its owner’s might.

Luckily, Soundwave was adept at rhetoric, and reading only proved that said weapon was dull and lifeless and much more suitable to be used as a toy. How fitting.

He laughed, causing Megatron to give him an odd look. His brow was still furrowed as he digested this new development. A gifted orator he may have been, but Soundwave was designed to get inside a person’s mind in the quickest way possible. And the way the Autobots wrote about them was almost innocuous.

“They are fascinated by us.” A part of Soundwave was weirdly amused by the whole situation. It was provocatively invasive and he, who had left his misguided notions about privacy in some early decade of the war, felt titillated.

“What?” said Megatron, confusion melting away into disbelief.

“These are not high level security files, even if they are encrypted. These are more akin to gossip holos, clearly written out of boredom.” Soundwave selected another file, scanning through this one quickly.

Megatron snatched the pad back. In this new light, several things stood out to him. He paused. “I believe you are correct.”

“Naturally.”

Megatron wrinkled his nasal ridge, reading the pad with more intensity than before. He selected another file, giving an offended scoff at the first few lines. “‘It’s hard to believe that a mech like Megatron is selfless enough to love another, let alone someone within his command staff. It explains the blatant favoritism, I guess. Now I get why Starscream is so pissy all the time…’ what’s that supposed to mean?”

Soundwave snorted. “It means your fierce warlord persona is working, my dear.”

Megatron made a face that might have been smug, had the twitching of his face not give him away. Soundwave could read solid amusement, barely masked by a bit of unease, on his surface thoughts. Neither of them had ever given much thought to what others said about their relationship, ancient and comfortable as it was. What was theirs was theirs and it worked for them. Here, it is different; on display in a way that was voyeuristic. He can tell that there is a part of Megatron that is annoyed by this, but neither of them felt like engaging the Autobots in the matter of wartime gossip.

Instead, Soundwave snatched the pad back, rifling through it like an excited youngling, caught up with fascination. “‘To think that either of them could be so different behind closed doors is almost ludicrous to believe, and yet I’ve seen it with my own two optics. They fit together nicely, which is strangely nice to see, almost like a wall is broken the minute they are alone. It’s almost like looking into a parallel universe: Megatron is almost sweet and Soundwave? Soundwave is open and playful and not at all what we’re used to. If they weren’t enemies, I’d be jealous of their connection, and maybe I still am…’” Soundwave paused here. Meeting Megatron’s optics, as if they both came to a new realization. “Well, that’s oddly sweet.”

Megatron made a barely audible humming noise that may have passed for agreement, but was too absent-minded to really tell. He leaned over Soundwave’s shoulder, scrolling through the pad in a slow, thoughtful manner. “These all seem to be separate entries, compiled together, all written by different people.”

“Yes, I noticed that too. They have traces of several Autobot signals.”

Megatron narrowed his optics. “You would think we were the subject of some sort of Autobot romance novel.”

“Indeed. At least they have good taste,” Soundwave teased.

“I’m glad to see you at least find some amusement out of this,” grunted Megatron.

“There are worse things for the Autobots to become enamoured with. Be glad that they have yet to show this level of dedication to anything war related.”

“Hmm.” Megatron scrolled through the other files on hand. There was a substantial amount, pages and pages, all dating back to about the time that they had all awakened on Earth. It was unclear if the Autobots had known before that time, but they had certainly became fascinated by it by then. “I think the Autobots could find better things to do with their down time.”

“Do not begrudge them so much, Megatron. Perhaps they don’t have the luxury in their faction. You have said before that Prime could be a bit of a prude.”

Megatron made a humming noise. “Yes, I am aware. I feel no sympathy for them.”

Soundwave chuckled, leaning back into Megatron until they fell into the bed in an ungainly manner, Soundwave making quick work into contorted Megatron into a make-shift pillow. Megatron rolled with him, a rumbling purr shaking his chassis, passing pleasant shivers through Soundwave’s body. He shifted, draping himself over Megatron, chin propped up on his chest, datapad held in front of him in a way that Megatron could still read it if he dipped his head a certain way, of which he took full advantage of, still scrolling through the entries with a reverent greed.

Soundwave smiled indulgently. “I can tell that there is a part of you that is at least flattered.” It was the egotistical side, the only that got off on rousing speeches and demanded to be referred to as ‘Lord’ by his subjects. A part that he pretended that did not exist because he liked to believe that he was humble. It was endearing.

A barely legible smirk teased Megatron’s lips. “Perhaps.”

Soundwave snickered, freely giving the pad up to Megatron’s devouring hands. It allowed him to snuggle further into Megatron’s frame, of which he indulged in freely, drowning himself more fully into his sturdy frame. He could not resist a brush of lips over Megatron’s plating. He was rewarded with a gentle caress of his head and he smiled contentedly.

A relaxed silence settled between them, broken up by the gentle sound of Megatron’s thumb swiping against the pad. The noise was consistent enough to create a pleasant background noise, lulling Soundwave into a half doze. Megatron’s emotions danced in the back of his processor, as they always did when they were alone together; an open connection that Megatron embraced early on in their relationship. He could sense his amused fascination deeply, creating a pleasant warm feeling throughout his body.

This created a sharp contrast when that leaked into a near sort of offense, a bristle of something that wasn’t quite anger, yet still brushed against Megatron’s mind in an unpleasant manner. It was uncomfortable enough to stir Soundwave from his lounge, glancing up at Megatron’s otherwise stone face. His emotions bled out into the rest of his body, stiffening him in ways that motivated Soundwave to move in a quick manner. He gently moved Megatron’s hand down until he could view what was on the screen and promptly gave a sharp bark of laughter.

“‘Do you think Megatron is a valve mech…?’” Soundwave read aloud. “Now that would be a waste of a perfectly good spike.” He patted Megatron’s shoulder in a placating manner, rolling until he straddled Megatron’s hops.

Megatron scowled deeply at him, throwing the datapad toward the end of the berth. He unconsciously wrapped his arms around Soundwave’s waist. “That is entirely too personal.”

“I agree.” Soundwave lifted himself until he could reach Megatron’s brow, smoothing out the lines of his frown with gentle kisses. Megatron huffed, teetering on the edge of a full-on pout. “Perhaps if they are so curious, they would appreciate a demonstration next time they decide to pay us a visit.”

Megatron balked at first. Soundwave tilted his head with a devilish smirk, which succeeding in turning Megatron more thoughtful. His discomfort was momentarily forgotten, face falling into a predatory grin. “That would require more diligence in the future.”

“Of course,” said Soundwave. “I will get right on that.”

[invisibletoallbutfaeries]

Accidentally answered questions for a different muse with Kyra answers. Since I wrote them out I shall post them here anyway.

H: Heat 1. do they rather a hot or cold room?

Warm, but just warm enough that she can wear whatever she wants yet cold enough that she can also comfortably wrap herself in a blanket at any moment. 72-73 is her ideal temperature, any more and she cant use the blanket comfortably and any less and she’ll freeze. Or just be dramatic about it.

2. do they prefer summer or winter?

She technically prefers Winter, but that’s just because summer reminds her too much of home. She will still whine about the cold in winter while bundled under a hat, two scarves, and both a sweater and jacket.

3. do they like the snow?

Yes and no. She loves the look and idea of snow, but she is not a fan of how it can sometimes seep through her boots or how she can get smacked in the face with a ball of pure cold when her friends decide to throw snowballs at her.

4. do they have a favorite summer activity?

Taking the kids through the safest parts of the forest to teach them about some of the creatures and about the plants that exist on Gaia so they can be more informed if they go in and let fear take them over less.

5. do they have a favorite winter activity?

Baking. She likes how it warms the house and how she gets warm sugary treats to eat with her tea and coffee after.

I: In-the-closet 1. what is their sexuality?

Bi-Romantic Demi-Sexual.

2. have they ever questioned their sexuality?

She questions if she’s just straight up asexual, though she also hasn’t had a romantic partner yet so she isn’t so sure. (she’s had 1 crush but it ended quick).

3. have they ever questioned their gender?

She hasn’t.

4. would/was their family be okay with them being LGBT?

Yes, though sometimes her mother or uncle Ikol will tease her about her lack of sex drive/sexual and romantic interests. The closest they can get to playfully teasing her about crushes is if she notices peoples eye color and they feel they’re missing out on teasing the eldest Chiappetta child. They’d have a field day if she ever does get a romantic and/or sexual partner, break out the baby books even. 

Her grandmother is the only one worried about Kyra, thinking she’s more sexually deviant than she is because she’s friends with Ikol (who her grandma knows is Loki and hates) and refuses to acknowledge that he can’t influence her sexuality like that. Ikol is the one to usually make her stop though, usually by sarcastically pointing out how he can’t make a non-overtly-sexual person suddenly be hyper-sexual just by standing next to them.

5. how long would/did it take for them to come out?

Kyra doesn’t hide it and is fine with answering if asked. She’s not really in the closet about her finding men and women equally aesthetically attractive nor about not having a preference despite her lack of sexual interest. She also doesn’t outright tell anyone though, but that’s more so because she figures if someone’s interested or curious they’ll ask but otherwise it’s not a need-to-know thing.

T: Truth 1. are they honest?

Generally yes, though she does often withhold information if she feels it will not help matters. For example she’s content letting Walter think she was traveling on a boat and crashed into Albion rather than admitting she’s from the future and messed up with a teleportation device. Telling him that his original assumption was wrong would probably just cause confusion so she’s decided to just play along.

2. can they tell if someone is lying?

It depends. She wasn’t raised to lie, but a chaos god did help raise her. She can tell obvious ticks in lying and does know how to notice if someone’s story isn’t adding up, as well as to follow up on information to make sure she got it all and not a damning sounding section of it. If someone is good at what they’re doing though they could fool her.

3. is it obvious when they’re lying?

When she straight up lies: yes. She’s not good at completely lying.

She’s not obvious when telling half truths though. This is mostly because she’s not really lying, she’s just keeping some information in the dark. Its a skill she learned from living with Ikol/Loki.

4. have they lied about anything they regret lying about?

Not entering the forest when she first arrived on Gaia. It was dangerous, stupid, and she kept doing it but didn’t want to admit it. In the long run it helped solve a plague-crisis that was occurring and she found out the cure, but she also still has nightmares and was in a dangerous position to be manipulated by fae or worse. 

5. have they told truths that have been spread against their will?

She told her mom about a girl with pretty brown eyes she’d met (her first and only crush so far). Her whole family knew in a week and her dad started getting protective, her grandma side-eyeing her, and Ikol and Sigyn were way too excited for anything to be good. Pretty soon all their regular customers knew as well and were cheering Kyra on every time they saw her. It wasn’t a horrible thing, but was awkward when the other girl said something bad about Kyra’s love of Botany. It ruined the crush and Kyra had to almost announce to her family that she wasn’t seeing her anymore/the crush had ended there. Then of course correct customers that she and the girl weren’t dating anymore and never made it to girlfriend statues anyway.

Kyra was 12. So was the other girl, who never learned about Kyra’s mother telling everyone else and their mother about Kyra’s crush. Kyra has long since gotten over it, but Ikol will still send the other girl side-eyes if she comes into the store.

S: Streets 1. are they street-smart?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no. She’s fae smart and can navigate the fae courts well, is well red in myths and folklore, plus she’s good at selling stuff, but she has almost no street smarts. If someone tried to kidnap her she would have no idea how to react, let alone how to get out of it. She’d probably try the money clip thing (have money in a money clip specifically to distract a criminal by throwing it one way and running the other) but it would have monopoly money in it cause Kyra doesn’t want to lose her money either.

2. would they give money to someone on the streets?

If she has money on her, yes. Otherwise she’d suffice with offering them something essential (i.e. cases of water for clean water, an oxygen mask if theirs is cracked, etc.). This is largely because she doesn’t need money on Gaia but on Earth she has monthly income from NASA due to going on the expedition to Gaia in the first place. This left her with a lot of money and a place where she can help when she sees it’s needed.

3. have they ever gotten in a fight on the streets?

No. She’s gotten upset, but on Earth Christo was usually there to intimidate people to back down and leave her alone. Her friend isn’t violent but he does understand he is tall and muscular (from moving heavy science equipment, not the gym) so he looks intimidating. Closest she got to throwing hands was someone insulting Christo, who calmed her down after grabbing her shoulders and redirecting his angry little friend away from the target she was stomping towards.

4. has anything happened to them on the streets?

Not really, though this is very likely because she usually had Christo, Sweets (big black scary looking dog), or Ikol (7 foot tall and muscular) with her and they probably looked like off-duty bodyguards. 

5. are they cautious when out?

If on Earth or in the forest yes, though on the streets of Gaia not so much. The only precaution she takes there is not to say her full first name when introducing herself, but she also warns new people to use nicknames due to fae activity. The fae have stolen her baskets and stuff she’d traded for while she was out before.

[theshapeshifter100]

Guess What? I’m Not a Robot Ch15

Summary: Megan and Paul go clothes shopping. Yeah, it’s a fluffy domestic chapter so sue me.

Chapter Warnings: Some emotional confusion

Word Count: 2,438

9AM Wednesday 3rd November 2038

The two of them were ready to go by 9AM. Megan had walked Paul through a few more calming techniques, so he could still act like an android without attracting suspicion.

“Remember, most thrift stores are run by human volunteers, so I’ll be paying at those, okay?”

“You’ve already said that, twice,” Paul reminded her.

“You’re not the only one who’s nervous.”

Paul nodded, adjusting his uniform. He didn’t have to, it was immaculate, but it was a habit that made him feel a bit better.

Megan found that she couldn’t resist. “You have a hair out of place.”

Paul’s eyes widened and his LED went yellow as his hands went to his hair. He then scowled when he realised that Megan was messing with him.

“Not funny.”

“Sorry. It was a little bit,” Megan admitted.

“For you,” Paul grumbled. “Let’s get this over with.”

The two left the apartment, Paul’s posture stiffening and face going into neutral. They went down via the stairs, as per Megan’s preference, and Paul could see why. While it took longer than the elevator, there was more of a sense of control when you used the stairs.

The two reached the door leading out into the street and Megan stopped, looking at Paul.

“Ready?” she asked.

Paul didn’t visually respond, but Megan got a text alert on her phone. When she checked it, it read ‘Ready’

“Let’s go then.”

The two of them had a plan of action in a way. Once the two had calmed down last night they had found thrift stores and cheap clothing stores within walking distance. Megan wasn’t a fan of clothes shopping, and both of their nerves were running high, so they wanted to be able to get out of there as soon as possible.

The clothing store was first, given that they had a deal on shirts. Specifically, polo shirts, which Paul had expressed interest in.

Paul grabbed a basket as they walked in and he quickly clocked where the deal shirts were. The two walked to the middle of the store and Megan pulled a random shirt off of the rack, holding it against Paul to test the size.

“Nope, not that size,” men’s small was just a bit too small, and when she tried a medium, that seemed like it might be a little big.

Her phone pinged. ‘Medium would probably be best.’

Given that it would be odd to have half a conversation with an android in the middle of a store, Megan texted back.

‘Want to try it on?’

‘No, let’s just pick some colours and go’

After a small amount of riffling, Megan held up one red, one orange, and one yellow shirt for approval.

Paul’s eyebrow raised ever so slightly and her phone binged.

‘I would look like a fall tree’

Megan managed to type with one finger. ‘Seasonally appropriate’

‘Ha ha’

‘Yes or no? Or would you prefer winter colours?’

‘We’ll go with these’

Paul looked like he had to force himself not to yank them out of Megan’s hand and into the basket, restraining himself to use calm, average android speed and strength.

‘Anything else?’ Megan typed, and Paul visibly shook his head, irritated by Megan’s ribbing.

The two walked to the checkout, and Megan started typing again, realising that she’d annoyed him.

‘Sorry. I don’t usually get an opportunity to do this’

‘What, irritate someone?’

‘More tease someone who isn’t afraid of teasing back. Like, friends do’

Paul almost lost rhythm in his stride, which thankfully only Megan noticed, as all workers were androids and the shoppers were too absorbed in what they were doing.

‘You see me as a friend?’

‘What did you think I saw you as?’

Paul’s LED span yellow as he tried to wrap his head around that. While it was clear their relationship had changed when he went deviant, but he didn’t think it was like that. Although, if he was honest, he wasn’t sure he could explain what he had thought it was. It made his chest feel light, and there was that warmth again.

Megan laughed to herself as the message feed was suddenly spammed with uncontrollable numbers of smiley faces, phone pinging so much you could make a song out of it.

“I get it,” she mumbled, just loud enough for him to hear. “I’m happy you’re my friend too.”

There was one last ping as Paul sent a series of emojis in one message. Happy. Embarrassed. Thumbs up.

They made it to the counter to pay, and the blue LED on Paul and the attendant spun. The attendant android’s face then turned to concern.

“My apologies ma’am,” he addressed Megan, “the transaction has failed. Do you have an alternative method of payment?”

Paul’s LED went yellow as he began to panic, and Megan felt a similar panic build, but kept it together. She did have her card after all.

“Here you go,” Megan handed it over, and Paul calmed down as the transaction went through.

‘You alright?’ Megan typed as they walked away from the checkout, Paul carrying the bag.

‘Better. We knew that could happen’ Paul assured, and he looked calm, but it was hard to tell how much of that was an act.

‘One down, a few more to go’ Megan assured, and Paul gave the faintest of nods.

‘Bring it on’

The next one was the first in a series of thrift stores, and the volunteer took one look at them and went back to what they were doing. It didn’t help that the store itself was otherwise devoid of people, but Paul and Megan forced each other to go in.

They split up to look around, and it wasn’t long before Megan got a text.

‘Your shoe size is seven, right?’

‘Yeah, why?’ As Megan text she walked over to where Paul was in the small shop. She found him next to a show rack, and he gestured towards a sturdy pair of leather boots.

‘You are in dire need of new shoes’ his eyes went to Megan’s ratty sneakers.

‘They’re still in one piece!’ Megan defended.

‘For how long?’ Paul’s eyebrow went up a millimetre.

‘Fine, I’ll get the shoes if we can find something in here for you. Do you need shoes?’

‘No, the ones I have are fine’ at Megan’s face he texted again ‘and they are not falling apart, unlike yours’

“Smart ass,” Megan muttered, but smirked slightly. This was what she had hoped for.

She wondered off towards the men’s section, and smiled as she spotted something.

‘Over here’ she typed, and Paul came over, and she showed him a navy rain jacket. Holding it up to him it looked like it fit nicely.

‘You need one more than me’

‘You’ll blend in’ she explained, typing with one hand.

‘Fine’ he broke character and reached into the woman’s rack opposite, pulling out a bright pink raincoat. She looked at him, a slight smirk on his face as he put it back and pulled out a dark green one instead.

‘Alright, those shoes and those raincoats. Let me know if you find anything else’

Paul slung the raincoats over one arm as Megan meandered back to the boots. They were a nice pair she had to admit, barely used from the look of them.

She sat down to try them on and found them a decent fit. Might take a little bit of getting used to, but overall, a good find.

She joined Paul at the counter to pay, and the volunteer took their time inputting the items. It was almost awkward enough to prompt small talk. Almost.

The new clothes joined the polo shirts in their bag while Paul tucked the shoe box under the same arm. Megan felt guilty making him carry everything, but they had to blend in.

The next thrift store was a little bigger, but still had human assistants, who greeted them.

“Good morning! How can we help you!” the only way that greeting could have been more fake would be if it had been programmed in.

“Surprise clothes shopping for my brother,” Megan used their rehearsed excuse. “This guy’s about the same size and build,” she gestured to Paul, who stared straight ahead.

“Let me know if you have any questions,” the greeter said, and Megan nodded as they walked in, making a beeline for the men’s section. Almost immediately Paul found something.

He struggled to keep his face straight as he pulled out an old, slightly faded, novelty t-shirt that had a half filled old fashioned loading bar on the front. Above it the caption read ‘Response Loading’.

Megan chuckled when she saw it, and typed to make sure.

‘You seriously want that?’

‘I thought it was funny’ Paul looked slightly despondent, thinking Megan was actually laughing at him.

‘It is funny’ Megan smiled kindly as sure reassured him, and Paul relaxed, before stiffening as he remembered where he was. He draped the t-shirt over his arm and two continued looking.

A pair of sensible black slacks joined the t-shirt, along with some faded jeans, and they were making their way to the next store before they even realised it.

‘Was there anything else?’ Megan asked.

‘A hat’ Paul reminded. ‘You know, this wasn’t as bad as I thought this was going to be’

‘Yeah’ Megan agreed. ‘It’s actually been fun. Although, it would be better if we could actually speak to each other, rather than text’

‘Agreed’

They made it to their last stop, but paused at the door when confronted with a sign.

‘Humans Only. No androids’

They hadn’t known about this before. They had just known that there was a thrift store. Megan took a deep breath and kept walking, but Paul kept staring at the sign.

“Paul?” Megan asked out loud, keeping her voice down. “Paul, what are you doing?”

Paul didn’t say anything, didn’t even text. Megan went back over to him and grabbed his free hand. This startled him enough to break out of his trance and look at her, an expression similar to shock on his face.

“Let’s go,” Megan tried to keep her voice steady, but the whole thing had rattled her. “There are other thrift stores.”

Paul looked back at the sign, but when Megan gave a gentle tug, he allowed himself to be pulled away.

They managed to find a dark beanie and a baseball cap without much trouble, but Paul had remained resolutely silent as they walked back home.

His mind was occupied with two things. One, that sign. Two, Megan holding his hand.

There was nothing romantic there, at least, he didn’t think so. It wasn’t like he had any experience in that department. Although, if that were the case, it would be one way, unrequited. He knew Megan was both Aromantic and Asexual, such a relationship just wasn’t going to be a priority.

Megan knew his head was spinning or that he was thinking hard about something, as his LED hadn’t shifted from yellow ever since he saw that sign.

She spotted something in one of the shops they passed, and without a word, ducked inside.

Paul followed, but not quickly enough to see what she was doing, as she had grabbed something and was already at the till, paying.

In less than a minute she was back with him.

“You’ll see when we get home,” she said, which didn’t really help his mood, but he didn’t argue.

12PM Wednesday 3rd November 2038

Once they were back in the apartment Paul dropped the shopping bags onto the coffee table.

“Sorry you had to carry all of those,” Megan apologised, her own shopping bag dangling from her wrist.

“It’s okay. They weren’t heavy,” Paul assured, but his tone was oddly monotone, and his LED was still yellow.

“Are you okay?” Megan asked. “I can understand if that sign upset you.”

“I’m fine,” Paul waved off, which instantly got Megan suspicious, but she also knew that was a good sign to drop it.

“Well, if you don’t want to talk it, fine. Maybe you could get some use out of this?” she reached into her bag and pulled out a notebook.

It was ringbound and fairly cheap, which made sense given how much they’d spent that day. There was a space at the top for a name on the pale blue cover, and there was a holder with a pen at the side.

“Sometimes, writing your thoughts helps in understanding them,” Megan held out the notebook nonchalantly, like this was no big deal.

Paul took the notebook off her and held it in his hands, finding it was small enough to fit easily into a pocket. He could feel a new feeling welling up, as well as some irritation at the back of his eyes

“This, this is for me?” he clarified, and Megan nodded.

“Yeah,” she confirmed, she then paused when Paul just continued to stare at the book. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Paul’s voice wasn’t nearly as steady as he would have liked. “I’m okay.”

“Okay,” Megan didn’t believe a word he said, but was willing to let it drop. “I’ll unpack this stuff while you, chill out.”

“I can do it,” were the immediate words out of his mouth, and he went to put the book down. Megan grabbed the shopping bag before he had to chance to.

“I’ll unpack it. Where would you like me to put your new clothes?”

It occurred to both of them at roughly the same time that Paul didn’t really have his own space in the apartment.

“On the couch, I guess,” Paul responded uncertainly, and Megan obliged. The clothes had scrunched a little in the bags, and Megan smoothed them out as best she could before putting them on the arms and along the back of the couch.

Paul sat on it, still holding the book, while Megan went to go sit at her computer.

“You can have the couch if you want,” she suddenly said, and Paul looked over his shoulder at her, confused.

“As your own space,” she elaborated. “Unless there’s somewhere else you’d feel more comfortable?”

“Couch is fine,” Paul assured, before turning back around and opening the book.

Megan decided to leave him to it, turning back to her computer as he started to write.

A few minutes later she got a message from Alex.

‘J can meet us in two days. Ace/Aro room. Same time’

Megan looked over at Paul, who was still writing without pause. She would tell him later.

Mostly a fluff chapter, with some emotional confusion on Paul's part. Also, I didn't write this, and I'm annoyed that I didn't; I always actually imagine Paul in a pink polo shirt, rather than red, orange or yellow. Maybe I could write some one shots to cover that. To make clear, " " is speech ' ' is texting. Eagle eyed readers might have noticed the date this takes place. Next chapter is when the game starts.

Other Options Flowchart

Reassure (don't joke about his hair)

Insist her shoes are fine

Say the shirt's not funny

Select different notebook (more expensive, different colour etc.)

Continue to ask if Paul's fine

Let Paul unpack

Tag list @septicart-appreciation @nightmarejim

[amdoca-blog]

diane arbus: in the beginning  

I don’t know why the gallery has used lower case lettering in its promotional material.

 Hayward Gallery, 13 February to 6 May 2019

Organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Curated by Jeff L Rosenheim, Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs: with Karen Rinaldo, Collections Specialist, Photographs; Martha Deese, Senior Administrator for Exhibitions; and Emily Foss Registrar.  

Supported by Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation and Alexander Graham, with additional support from Michael G and C Jane Wilson.  (Hayward Gallery, 2019).

 This exhibition primarily features photographs made with 35mm cameras in and around New York City between 1956 to 1962.  Most of the exhibition photographs are gelatin silver prints made by Arbus.  Most are held in private collections, and in the Diane Arbus Archive at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

There is also one room displaying A Box of Ten Photographs, a project she worked on between 1969 and 1971.  These photographs, on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, were printed posthumously by her assistant and student Neil Selkirk (Guggenheim, 2019).

I wondered why nine of these later works are being displayed in a separate room at an exhibition subtitled ‘in the beginning’.  Xmas Tree in a living room in Levittown, L.I. 1962 is in the previous room.  There is no explanation why.  Were they included to show how her work changed over time?  They are already kept in London.  

There are two rooms of photographs arranged on grids of white columns, “…visitors are free to follow any path they choose as there are only beginnings – no middle and probably no end…”  (Hayward Gallery, 2019).  I found myself first walking to the back of the room, up and down ‘aisles’ in the opposite direction to other exhibition-goers, to avoid crowding around the prints and to get a better view.  Also, what does this statement mean; that her work endures?  After visiting the exhibition, I did some reading. I found this quote from a letter she sent to friends in 1957,

 “… I am full of a sense of promise, like I often have, the feeling of always being at the beginning…” (Arbus et al, 2012: 141).

I do not know if the organisers of the exhibition are alluding to this remark.  I learned that Arbus committed suicide a year after A Box of Ten, a limited portfolio of special prints, with inscribed vellums, was published (Smithsonian, s.d)

Only four sets are known to have been bought in her lifetime, “...by an elite group..” . (Hayward Gallery notice).  The notice tells us Marvin Israel designed the packaging, but does not explain who he was.  During my reading after the event I learned he was her partner; an artist and, from 1961, art director of Harper’s Bazaar which published her work during the period the Hayward exhibition mainly focusses on.

Between 1956 and 1962 Arbus stopped using a medium format Rolleiflex in favour of a 35mm Nikon (Arbus et al, 2012: 139). Unlike bulky 2 ¼ cameras which “…require the subject’s cooperation and participation…”  (Arbus et al, 2012: 59), 35 mm SLRs allow photographers to capture moments and quickly disconnect from the subject.  

Images such as:

Old Woman in hospital bed, NYC 1958

Lady in the shower, Coney Island, N.Y. 1959

Man in hat, trunks, sock and shoes, Coney Island 1960

Two girls by a brick wall, NYC 1961

raise the question in my mind about whether these people gave their consent to be photographed, or if some were staged.

In a letter to Marvin Israel she confessed that when visiting the shrine of a disinterred saint , she,

 “…got a terrible impulse to photograph her and I tremulously did which wasn’t legal so I pretended to be praying and pregnant…” (Arbus et al, 2012: 146)

In a postcard she sent to Marvin Israel in 1960 she wrote,

“…This photographing is really the business of stealing… I feel indebted to everything for having taken it or being about to…” (Arbus et al, 2012: 147)

I took some notes during my tour of the exhibition of images I found noteworthy. This image Mother Cabrini, a disinterred saint in her glass and gold casket, N.Y.C. 1960 was not among them.  I found the story behind the image more interesting.  Knowing the photograph is a furtive snap changes its meaning; the exhibition does not explain much.  I don’t remember if there was an audio guide.  How many people were there like me wa/ondering around the grid?

I did not buy the catalogue, priced at £35, but noted that Revelations was priced at £75. I thought the price was quite high.   However, I thought the reproductions were of a better quality and saw that one of the editors was her daughter. I assumed Doon Arbus would be able to share more information about her mother than any other writer.  I bought a cheaper copy online.  

On reading Revelations I found out that, up until 1958, Arbus experimented with cropping.  Photographers and art editors at the time used this technique retrospectively to reveal an image within an image.  It could,

“…impose a sense of immediacy, or of a privileged, almost private view after the fact…”  (Arbus et al, 2012:52)

Boy above a crowd NYC 1957 illustrates this idea but I do not know whether Arbus cropped it, not having seen the contact sheets.  The title does not indicate to the audience what the audience depicted are looking at.  They are looking to the left, the boy Arbus wants us to focus on is looking directly at us.

In 1956 Arbus ended her photographic partnership with her husband.  She felt her role in their commercial business was as “a glorified stylist” (Arbus et al, 2012: 139).  She joined two photography courses taught by Lisette Model (1956 and 57).  In the 1940s, Model photographed ordinary people in the streets of New York City.  

In 1971 Arbus told students in a master class,

“…In the beginning… I used to make very grainy things.  I’d be fascinated by  what the grain did because it would make a tapestry of all these little           dots…Skin would be the same as water would be the same as sky and you      would be dealing mostly in dark and light not so much in flesh and blood… It   was my teacher…who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you            are, the more general it’ll be…”  

(Arbus et al, 2012: 141)

I do not remember seeing Coney Island 1960 (Windy Group) in the exhibition.  It is in Revelations, but I am unable to locate the image online.  It shows a group of people on a windy beach; a woman is bending over away from the camera and her stripy dress is blowing in the wind. It is extremely grainy; did Arbus intend the grain to suggest a sand storm?

Towards the end of her life Arbus told her students,

“…I remember a long time ago when I first began to photograph I thought,       There are an awful lot of people in the world and it’s going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them, so if I photograph some kind of generalized human being, everybody will recognize it…And there are certain evasions, certain        nicenesses that I think you have to get out of..”  (Arbus et al, 1992:10)

At the Hayward exhibition, I noticed that,

Kid in black face NYC, 1957 is exhibited near, Lady on a bus NYC, 1957.

Was the year-long (1955-6) Montgomery Bus Boycott in Arbus’s mind?  Around this time Arbus was trying to find photographic editorial work and took some photographs of litter for a magazine, for which she was unpaid.

 “…I followed flying newspapers…running like mad to keep up with dick tracy…” (Arbus et al, 2012: 142)

Windblown headline on a dark pavement, NYC 1956.  Most of the photographs in this exhibition are of people.  I did not understand the appeal of some of the photographs lacking them, such as those of “…psuedo places…” (Arbus et al, 2012: 163) for example, A castle in Disneyland, cal., 1962, or Rocks on heels, Disneyland, Cal., 1963, but I thought this particular print was inspiring.  

I noted a number of photographs taken inside and outside cinemas.  Several are of the screen, taken at some distance from it, from the audience’s viewpoint;

A Dominant Picture 1958

Man on screen being choked 1958

had a personal resonance.   There is also a close up, probably taken in a cinema, of a scene from the controversial film Baby Doll, 1956.

In Movie theater usher standing by the box office NYC, 1956 an usher stands by the box office in an oversized uniform.  It occurred to me, after seeing an online reproduction of this photograph away from the exhibition, that it is reminiscent of a Soviet style uniform.  Was Arbus intending to remind us of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising?

In 42nd Street Movie Theater Audience NYC 1958 Arbus’s camera is placed some distance away from the scene.  A projector beam cuts through the fug of cigarette smoke.  It is not easy to tell what people are doing; there is some blurring, perhaps there are people asleep and a couple kissing.  A print made by Neil Selkirk, her student and assistant, is valued at between $20,000 - 30,000.  I quite liked the photograph at the exhibition, but I do not think it is that extraordinary.

It seemed to me that Arbus’s intention was to make the ordinary extraordinary and the extraordinary ordinary.  In The Backwards Man in his hotel room, 1961 a man is standing in a standard hotel room. His head is directed to the left of the frame, his feet to the right.  He is wearing a full length clear plastic mac indoors.  Is this to draw attention to his body?  After the exhibition I learned he was a contortionist from Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus in Times Square called Joe Allen;

 “… Joe Allen is a metaphor for human destiny – walking blind into the future with an eye on the past…”  note in her appointment book (Arbus, 2012:154)

Sontag offered a suggestion as to why Arbus chose her subjects.

“…At the beginning of the sixties, the thriving Freak Show at Coney Island     was outlawed; the pressure is on to raze the Times Square turf of drag      queens and hustlers and cover it with skyscrapers.  And the inhabitants of           deviant underworlds are evicted from their restricted territories – banned as        unseemly, a public nuisance, obscene, of just unprofitable…”

(Sontag, 1973. 43-44)

There are many photographs of female drag artists in the show.  Two different interpretations of ‘woman’ can be seen in the fleshy beauty of Girl in her circus costume backstage, Palisades Park, N.J. 1960, and the haughty and fabulous Blonde female impersonator standing by a dressing table, Hempstead L.I 1959, a coded appropriation of ‘womanliness’.

In October 1959 Arbus started work on a project about aspects of New York life for Esquire magazine, photographing “…the posh to the sordid…” (typewritten letter to Robert Benton, art director of Esquire (Revelations, 2012: 333)

I made a note of the title, Woman in white fur with cigarette, Mulberry Street NYC 1958, at the time of visiting the exhibition, but did not really reflect on the photograph.  I felt pressurised by the crowd to move on.  The unnamed woman’s stance could be interpreted as expressing her annoyance at being photographed, self-confidence, or self-entitlement.  Is she scowling?  She fills the frame, and appears quite large.  The lights in the background, possibly Xmas street lights, appear to surround her head.  Are we meant to see a Valkyrie?  The location is Mulberry Street, NYC; the street name made me think of expensive handbags. Is the woman in the background, who I have only just noticed, smiling obsequiously or simply smiling?  

For me, Arbus’s titles often suggest a deadpan or sardonic humour, which I enjoy.  This title, Miss Maria Seymour dancing with Baron Theo Von Roth at the Grand Opera Ball, NYC 1959, is similar to captions of photographs in society magazines. I don’t know now why I thought this was funny; I did not make adequate notes at the exhibition because I thought I would be able to access the image online at home afterwards.  

For some of this work she obtained a Police pass (Revelations, 2012:144); Corpse with receding hairline and a toe tag, N.Y.C. 1959

Looking at photographs of Israel after the exhibition, (Revelations, 2012:145), could this photograph be an inside joke?  A notice on the wall at entrance of the Hayward states,

“…This exhibition contains images that some visitors may find upsetting and some that contain nudity.  If you require further information, please speak to an exhibition host…”

In postcards sent to Marvin Israel in January 1960 she wrote about a disturbing scene she had photographed,

“… I am not ghoulish am I? I absolutely hate to have a bad conscience, I think it is lewd…Is everyone ghoulish?  It wouldn’t anyway have been better to turn away, would it…?”  (Revelations, 2012: 145-6).

All layers of society are portrayed in the exhibition.  Among the photographs of society people are photographs of performers at the Hubert’s Dime Museum and Flea Circus in Times Square, such as Hezekiah Trambles, ‘The Jungle Creep’. The close up of ‘The Jungle Creep’ is a powerful image.  He played a ‘Wild Man of Borneo’ racist stereotype for a living.  Tramble’s face fills the frame; the photograph is blurred and grainy.  A light source catches highlights in his eyes, perhaps a button over his Adams apple, and a tooth.  How many teeth does he have?  Are their tears in his upwardly directed eyes?  His eyes appear unfocussed.  He is photographed from below; he looks monumental.

Arbus photographed various people who she described as ‘freaks’, ‘The Sensitives’ and ‘singular people’.  In 1971 she told her students,

“…Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot… There’s a quality of legend         about freaks…Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic  experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed       their test in life.  They’re aristocrats…” (Arbus et al, 1992:3).

By making us look up at Trambles’ face, did Arbus intend us to see someone deranged?  Or a Man with human dignity?  

In a notebook she wrote,

 “..If we are all freaks the task is to become as much as possible the freak we are...” (Revelations, 2012: 54) and in a postcard to Marvin Israel in 1960 she wrote,

 “..Freaks are a fairy tale for grownups.  A metaphor which bleeds…”  (Revelations, 2012: 54)

 In 1961 Arbus completed a story, “The Full Circle” which included portraits of six people including Stormé de Larverie from the Jewel Box Revue’s touring drag artist show, ‘Twenty-Five Men and a Girl’, Miss Stormé de Larverie, the Lady who appears to be a Gentleman NYC 1961.

Neither Esquire nor Harper’s Bazaar published the story with de Larverie. Esquire wanted to leave out Stormé “…due to lack of space.  Infinity, the publication of the American Society of Magazine Photographers published the story in 1962 which included de Larverie.  Was the de Larverie photograph initially excluded because it depicted a lesbian, or because editors regarded the print as being unremarkable?  The Hayward gallery offers no information about de Larverie’s historical importance.

I wasn’t sure if the exhibition was presenting Arbus as a feminist;

Barbershop interior through a glass door, NYC 1957

Blurry woman gazing up smiling, NYC 1957-8

Mood meter machine, NYC 1957  

In the barbershop interior we can see men looking at a woman taking photographs in the street at night.  Their various expressions include puzzlement, amusement and incredulity.  The presence of the woman photographer is only suggested by her reflection in the glass. I am that woman now looking from the outside in.  Am I obliged to become involved with what I photograph?

Of the Box of Ten photographs, one of my favourites is,  

Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning NJ 1963

I see this as a cosy and affectionate. Soft sunlight filters through the net curtains; it is a domestic scene with a twist.

Arbus described her experience of taking photographs in nudist camps in 1971, where she was required to take photographs naked,

“…You may think you’re not (a nudist) but you are…” (Arbus et al, 1992: 4-5)

As a suburban, semi-educated, left-leaning liberal standing in a contemporary Western art gallery, the wall notice warning about nudity surprised me a bit; I wasn’t concerned by the nudity displayed within this context.

Neil Selkirk, who printed the Box of Ten, believed Arbus’s prints look different from other photographers’.  She did no dodging or burning,

“…If she ever had the urge or the knowledge to make the print beautiful in a conventional sense, she resisted it. The unique quality of Diane’s prints seems a direct response to what is required if one is extremely curious and utterly dispassionate...” (Revelations, 2012: 275)

He thought she had intended to make the final image look like snapshots or newspaper photographs.   To me, the 35 mm photographs in the exhibition generally look like snapshots; the Box of Ten artworks look like beautiful parodies of photographs specific to glossy magazine features.  Arbus’ photographs could be seen as diverting, rather like a day out at an art gallery  

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arbus, D (edited by Arbus, Doon, Israel, M) (1992) Diane Arbus, London, Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd.

 Arbus, Diane, Arbus Doon, Phillips; S, Sussmann E, Selkirk N,  J L Rosenheim (2012) Revelations: Diane Arbus, Munich, Schirmer/Mosel

Guggenheim, K (2019) Diane Arbus: An interview with Jeff L. Rosenheim and Karan Rinaldo.  At: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/blog/diane-arbus-interview-jeff-rosenheim-karan-rinaldo-hayward-gallery  (Accessed on 24 March 2019)

Hayward Gallery (2019) Hayward Gallery Exhibition Guide, London, Hayward Gallery

Metropolitan Museum of Art (2019) diane arbus in the beginning [online] At https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/diane-arbus (Accessed on 30 March 2019)

Smithsonian American Art Museum (s.d)  A box of ten photographs [online press release] At: https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.saam.media/files/documents/2018-04/wall%20text.pdf  (Accessed on 30 March 2019).  

Sontag S (1973) ‘America seen through photographs, darkly’ in On Photography (1979) London, Penguin Books Ltd

[col22promo]

Bode Levy Bram Lindqvist | Twenty Eight;  Elite

House: Torren Status: Infected - Telepathy and Praeteria Elite Specification: Infection Trainer and International Trade Consultant Alignment: New Age Rebels

Astrid Lindqvist married her husband for the wrong reasons and her inability to leave him ruined her life. She was Wilhelm Lindqvist’s trophy wife, who married her mostly because he was bored. She in turn married him for his money—and they both did it because they had something to prove.

She was a good woman under her thick facade of minglers and gala events, but for all her lofty pretension and egotism, behind closed doors she was depressed and desperate. At best, her husband was extremely neglectful, and at worst he was cruel and emotionally abusive. But to divorce him would mean to leaving herself with nothing. Everything was in his name, as she’d married into his estate, and with a less than positive relationship with her own mother, she had nowhere to go and she just couldn’t fathom starting over from nothing. 

And so she kept pretending. She shrivelled and contorted into a woman she barely recognized anymore, her once shiny potential spiralling down the drain like washed out hair dye. She threw herself and her hopes into having children—which would have been a better venture had she been able to keep off the bottle. Unfortunately, she was an alcoholic and the fact that her first born actually survived, was something of a miracle, as he was four weeks premature. She was told she was very lucky he did not have fetal alcohol syndrome.

Bode Levy Bram, however (named after her father, her grandfather, and the older brother she’d lost to cancer while in her twenties) did suffer a birth defect, not uncommon for infants of his condition. He had what was called sensorineural hearing loss, which was a defect with his inner ear, caused by his premature birth.

Fortunately for them both, technology was such that he was diagnosed at an early age and fitted with a surgical implant that would serve as a necessary aid for the rest of his life. This implant would need to be tended to for maintenance every three to five years, but could be manually adjusted with dials behind the shell of his right ear. It was possible to turn them off as well, and though he was not completely deaf without them, when he was, the world developed a muffled, muddled quality, like he was submerged underwater, and doctors said it would be severely detrimental to his emotional and psychological development as a child, were they left off.

But because Bode was essentially Astrid’s “miracle child” and one of the few things that brought her joy in her lonely life, she became suffocatingly overprotective, even as Bode got older. She was well-meaning, but naive, too immature and unreliable to be a good role model. Bode’s father was a linguist and interpreter for a political branch of government and so he was absent the majority of Bode’s young life, frequently away on business, with little interest in keeping in touch with his son while he was away. Basically, he ignored his family unless it was convenient for him not to, and had multiple affairs over the years, many of which Bode was exposed to at a young age.

Bode’s brother, Espen, was born six years after him and though Astrid was sober at the time, he was still diagnosed with Haemophilia shortly after he was born. Despite the neglectful environment of the Lindqvist family home, Astrid was desperate to have another child before she was too old—with her marriage and life in shambles, she was trying to patch her wounds with children. However, about a year after Espen’s birth, she relapsed and was forced to go back into rehab when she almost died combining alcohol with sleeping pills. As a result, Astrid’s youngest son spent much of his younger years raised mostly by a nanny, and by his brother.

This is perhaps part of why the boys grew up to be so different. Bode’s parents enrolled him into a pretentious Catholic school that he hated, and in seeing so much of his parent’s abusive marriage when he was young, he grew up cynical, resentful and not believing in marriage as a constitution. Espen, on the other hand, grew up more of a dreamer—a softer boy, far more naive, and envious of Bode for how much more time he’d gotten with their mother growing up. But when he asked questions about her, his brother would be dismissive, saying that she was irresponsible and selfish, and that Espen was better off not knowing her as well as Bode did.

As a teenager, Bode was something of a deviant, feeling reckless and trapped in the toxic environment at home, not to mention overwhelmed by the responsibility of essentially being a guardian to his younger brother when he had hardly finished being a kid himself. Rarely wanting to go home, he spent a lot of nights out or crashing on friend’s places.

After high school, he studied business, which he hated, but when he flipped over to finances and accounting, he hated that even more. So he quit college entirely after his second year, and took up a job as an executive assistant at his long-time friend’s business. He didn’t love the work, by any means, but he saw it as temporary and he got to boss people around, which he appreciated.

Meanwhile, he put the rest of his energy into making sure his brother didn’t wind up like him—angry, resentful and directionless. He got an apartment in a different neighbourhood where he and his brother could live, and made sure he was enrolled in a good public school. Removing a fourteen year old Espen from his parent’s house wasn’t an easy task—his mother fought Bode on it, but as she was still back and forth between home, rehab and the hospital, and Wil Lindqvist was still a cheating, abusive son of a bitch, Bode was able to convince her it was for the best. Consequently, for the second time in Espen’s life, Bode was more of a parent to him than either of their parents ever were.

Bode Today

After D-Day, Bode spent about a year in a clan in Sweden with his brother. They were never able to get in touch with either of their parents, a fact about which Espen was more bothered by than Bode. In the early stages of the first wave of Infections, Espen developed telepathy and Bode became a complete anomaly—a Telepath and a Praeteric.

When they were both picked up by Crusaders in 2158, still before the rise of the NWRF, they spent a couple years in Colony 8, where Bode became an Infection Trainer almost right away, and eventually, an International Trade Representative. Before D-Day, he’d already spoken English, Danish and Swedish at home, and due to his father’s heavy handed suggestion, he’d taken a lot of language studies in high school and his undergrad, so he spoke a bit of Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian and French. With his ability to translate and his background in business and finance, he was a perfect candidate for what the Colony Trade market needed. 

His job was to aid in coordinating and facilitating the fair trading of resources between colonies around the world, and so he worked closely with Trade and Marine Merchants, as well as other Colony officials. Just a few months ago, he was asked by Officials to transfer to another location in need of an I.T.R, as Colony 8 was more central and had more nearby Reps. He agreed, on the condition that he could take his brother, and that he would be transferring to a Colony at least equally as safe.

Bode and his brother have been at Colony 22 less than three months. He is still cynical, opinionated and a bit abrasive, but his relationship with his brother is everything to him. He hates the NWRF, but is concerned that any radical involvement on his behalf would be too risky for his brother, so he aligns himself instead with the NAR and has hopes to lead a political party of some kind.

Bode can be hot headed and defensive at times, and definitely arrogant. His many years of pretentious schooling and business experience can make him either frustratingly charming or infuriatingly conceited, depending perhaps on your sense of humour and your level of patience with such things. He does, however, know how to talk his way out of an argument in a way that leaves the other person knowing they’ve been manipulated, but not being able to do a thing about it. Espen, on the other hand, brings out quite a different side of Bode—with him, he is warmer, and more playful, while also stern and protective.

The implants in his ears lately have been causing him grief—they are greatly overdue for an upgrade, and consequently are intermittent at times. Sometimes they wake him in the middle of the night with a painful ringing sound in his head. They also now have a constant, subtle ringing drone on a regular basis (much like symptoms of Tinnitus), which isn’t loud or painful, but is definitely annoying. And even though he can sometimes tune it out, it does cause hearing problems in conversation and for smaller, quieter sounds. This affects his ability to perform in the Games, and in some training activities, especially with the headaches it often causes him.

As such, he has an unlikely interest in the weekly testing he has to undergo, as he can’t help but hope that there might be a way to take the Increased Senses infection and turn it into a bottled cure for himself. And as for short-term solutions, he has to see if he can find a surgical doctor either here or at another Colony, who has the experience and resources to tend to his implants within the next year or so, before they stop working entirely.

RELATED BIOS: ESPEN FILIP LINDQVIST

HOME | PLOT | SURVIVORS | INFECTIONS | 2157 was the end of the world.

[the-colony-roleplay]

Bode Levy Bram Lindqvist | Twenty Eight;  Elite

House: Torren Status: Infected - Telepathy and Praeteria Elite Specification: Infection Trainer and International Trade Consultant Alignment: New Age Rebels

Astrid Lindqvist married her husband for the wrong reasons and her inability to leave him ruined her life. She was Wilhelm Lindqvist’s trophy wife, who married her mostly because he was bored. She in turn married him for his money—and they both did it because they had something to prove.

She was a good woman under her thick facade of minglers and gala events, but for all her lofty pretension and egotism, behind closed doors she was depressed and desperate. At best, her husband was extremely neglectful, and at worst he was cruel and emotionally abusive. But to divorce him would mean to leaving herself with nothing. Everything was in his name, as she’d married into his estate, and with a less than positive relationship with her own mother, she had nowhere to go and she just couldn’t fathom starting over from nothing. 

And so she kept pretending. She shrivelled and contorted into a woman she barely recognized anymore, her once shiny potential spiralling down the drain like washed out hair dye. She threw herself and her hopes into having children—which would have been a better venture had she been able to keep off the bottle. Unfortunately, she was an alcoholic and the fact that her first born actually survived, was something of a miracle, as he was four weeks premature. She was told she was very lucky he did not have fetal alcohol syndrome.

Bode Levy Bram, however (named after her father, her grandfather, and the older brother she’d lost to cancer while in her twenties) did suffer a birth defect, not uncommon for infants of his condition. He had what was called sensorineural hearing loss, which was a defect with his inner ear, caused by his premature birth.

Fortunately for them both, technology was such that he was diagnosed at an early age and fitted with a surgical implant that would serve as a necessary aid for the rest of his life. This implant would need to be tended to for maintenance every three to five years, but could be manually adjusted with dials behind the shell of his right ear. It was possible to turn them off as well, and though he was not completely deaf without them, when he was, the world developed a muffled, muddled quality, like he was submerged underwater, and doctors said it would be severely detrimental to his emotional and psychological development as a child, were they left off.

But because Bode was essentially Astrid’s “miracle child” and one of the few things that brought her joy in her lonely life, she became suffocatingly overprotective, even as Bode got older. She was well-meaning, but naive, too immature and unreliable to be a good role model. Bode’s father was a linguist and interpreter for a political branch of government and so he was absent the majority of Bode’s young life, frequently away on business, with little interest in keeping in touch with his son while he was away. Basically, he ignored his family unless it was convenient for him not to, and had multiple affairs over the years, many of which Bode was exposed to at a young age.

Bode’s brother, Espen, was born six years after him and though Astrid was sober at the time, he was still diagnosed with Haemophilia shortly after he was born. Despite the neglectful environment of the Lindqvist family home, Astrid was desperate to have another child before she was too old—with her marriage and life in shambles, she was trying to patch her wounds with children. However, about a year after Espen’s birth, she relapsed and was forced to go back into rehab when she almost died combining alcohol with sleeping pills. As a result, Astrid’s youngest son spent much of his younger years raised mostly by a nanny, and by his brother.

This is perhaps part of why the boys grew up to be so different. Bode’s parents enrolled him into a pretentious Catholic school that he hated, and in seeing so much of his parent’s abusive marriage when he was young, he grew up cynical, resentful and not believing in marriage as a constitution. Espen, on the other hand, grew up more of a dreamer—a softer boy, far more naive, and envious of Bode for how much more time he’d gotten with their mother growing up. But when he asked questions about her, his brother would be dismissive, saying that she was irresponsible and selfish, and that Espen was better off not knowing her as well as Bode did.

As a teenager, Bode was something of a deviant, feeling reckless and trapped in the toxic environment at home, not to mention overwhelmed by the responsibility of essentially being a guardian to his younger brother when he had hardly finished being a kid himself. Rarely wanting to go home, he spent a lot of nights out or crashing on friend’s places.

After high school, he studied business, which he hated, but when he flipped over to finances and accounting, he hated that even more. So he quit college entirely after his second year, and took up a job as an executive assistant at his long-time friend’s business. He didn’t love the work, by any means, but he saw it as temporary and he got to boss people around, which he appreciated.

Meanwhile, he put the rest of his energy into making sure his brother didn’t wind up like him—angry, resentful and directionless. He got an apartment in a different neighbourhood where he and his brother could live, and made sure he was enrolled in a good public school. Removing a fourteen year old Espen from his parent’s house wasn’t an easy task—his mother fought Bode on it, but as she was still back and forth between home, rehab and the hospital, and Wil Lindqvist was still a cheating, abusive son of a bitch, Bode was able to convince her it was for the best. Consequently, for the second time in Espen’s life, Bode was more of a parent to him than either of their parents ever were.

Bode Today

After D-Day, Bode spent about a year in a clan in Sweden with his brother. They were never able to get in touch with either of their parents, a fact about which Espen was more bothered by than Bode. In the early stages of the first wave of Infections, Espen developed telepathy and Bode became a complete anomaly—a Telepath and a Praeteric.

When they were both picked up by Crusaders in 2158, still before the rise of the NWRF, they spent a couple years in Colony 8, where Bode became an Infection Trainer almost right away, and eventually, an International Trade Representative. Before D-Day, he’d already spoken English, Danish and Swedish at home, and due to his father’s heavy handed suggestion, he’d taken a lot of language studies in high school and his undergrad, so he spoke a bit of Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian and French. With his ability to translate and his background in business and finance, he was a perfect candidate for what the Colony Trade market needed. 

His job was to aid in coordinating and facilitating the fair trading of resources between colonies around the world, and so he worked closely with Trade and Marine Merchants, as well as other Colony officials. Just a few months ago, he was asked by Officials to transfer to another location in need of an I.T.R, as Colony 8 was more central and had more nearby Reps. He agreed, on the condition that he could take his brother, and that he would be transferring to a Colony at least equally as safe.

Bode and his brother have been at Colony 22 less than three months. He is still cynical, opinionated and a bit abrasive, but his relationship with his brother is everything to him. He hates the NWRF, but is concerned that any radical involvement on his behalf would be too risky for his brother, so he aligns himself instead with the NAR and has hopes to lead a political party of some kind.

Bode can be hot headed and defensive at times, and definitely arrogant. His many years of pretentious schooling and business experience can make him either frustratingly charming or infuriatingly conceited, depending perhaps on your sense of humour and your level of patience with such things. He does, however, know how to talk his way out of an argument in a way that leaves the other person knowing they’ve been manipulated, but not being able to do a thing about it. Espen, on the other hand, brings out quite a different side of Bode—with him, he is warmer, and more playful, while also stern and protective.

The implants in his ears lately have been causing him grief—they are greatly overdue for an upgrade, and consequently are intermittent at times. Sometimes they wake him in the middle of the night with a painful ringing sound in his head. They also now have a constant, subtle ringing drone on a regular basis (much like symptoms of Tinnitus), which isn’t loud or painful, but is definitely annoying. And even though he can sometimes tune it out, it does cause hearing problems in conversation and for smaller, quieter sounds. This affects his ability to perform in the Games, and in some training activities, especially with the headaches it often causes him.

As such, he has an unlikely interest in the weekly testing he has to undergo, as he can’t help but hope that there might be a way to take the Increased Senses infection and turn it into a bottled cure for himself. And as for short-term solutions, he has to see if he can find a surgical doctor either here or at another Colony, who has the experience and resources to tend to his implants within the next year or so, before they stop working entirely.

RELATED BIOS: ESPEN FILIP LINDQVIST

TAKEN

[detroitbecomerain]

Love is not compatible - Chapter 3

Y/N was born in a world without androids. When she was ten, Chloe, the first android was created. Is this why she is sympathetic to the android cause now? How will she handle hunting deviants with her partner Hank and the new android Connor sent by Cyberlife? Humans and androids aren’t meant to bond are they? They simply are not compatible.

“Y/L/N, Y/N. Age 26.  Born 5/23/2012 Detroit. Lived in a community home from the age of 15. At 18 joined the academy of policing. Currently the partner of lieutenant Hank Anderson. Female pronouns

Wattpad link

Warnings: Hank's angry swearing

The following morning Y/N woke up with a terrible headache from lack of sleep. She made herself a cup of coffee before heading off to work. the androids at the front desk greeted her as she walked in. she smiled politely and walked through the security doors. She walked past the lounge and made herself another coffee. Gavin was in there. If he spoke Y/N didn't hear him. She simply didn't care for what he had to say this morning. She sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands letting out a giant yawn. "Late night Rookie?" one of the officers called across from their own desk. "Yeah. Did you not hear about it all?" Y/N replied. "I did. But I didn't believe it. I thought it was all chatter." "Everything you heard is probably true. It was... an interesting night." "Well, if it happens again. Let me know! My kids will never believe it!" Y/N gave him the thumbs up as she let out another yawn. Hank wasn't here yet. Then again Hank was never here when shift started. One of the perks of being a lieutenant she guessed. She looked over and saw the captain in his little glass office. Was he working on what happened last night? Had a new case come in? She had been sent all the recent case files for all the known deviants. One had simply walked out of their home. One had attempted to strangle his owner before he ran away. One had gone missing from the Eden club. A shiver went down her spine. Human or not. Using someone for their body like that was disgusting. She would have ran away too. She found a file of an android that had been destroyed. There was no picture to go with it or anything. How can they investigate this? Another file that caught her attention was an android had assaulted a man and according to the neighbours had kidnapped the child. She looked deeper into the file. The man, named Todd was a known drug dealer and often got high on his own supply. Red Ice. But the man didn't report his daughter missing. Only the android. Todd was previously married to a woman who had given birth to a child but that child was safe with her new husband. Their child didn't even live with him. How could the neighbours see the child being kidnapped? Something didn't add up. Before she could look deeper into the file she heard a voice say. "Excuse me. Do you know what time Lieutenant Anderson usually arrives?" It was Connor. He had returned. Why? The case from last night had been solved. "Depends on where he was the night before." The officer chuckled. "We're lucky if we see him before noon. His partner Officer Y/L/N is here." Y/N looked up from her files and saw Connor looking at her. He walked over. "Hello. Officer Y/L/N." Connor greeted. "Connor. It's Y/N." Connor nodded once and the air went silent. Neither of them knew what to say to the other. Y/N spoke first. "I'm sorry about last night. I didn't mean to grab you." Y/N apologised. "I understand. The situation made you emotional and you needed support. I was the one closest to you. Your first choice would have been Hank. You would never seek Officer Gavin for support so the logical action would be to hold on to me." Connor said. "I guess yeah..." silence again. "May I ask you a personal question?" Connor asked. "Yes." "Why were you sympathetic towards the android? It killed one of your own. Why would you defend it." "It wasn't about what he was or what he did. It was what he endured. What his 'master' did to him. I cant bare to see someone get treat like that. No matter who they are." Connor began looking at Hank's desk. "If you want to have a sneak peak I wont tell anyone. I can see how much you want to know about him. He's a very personal man. You might not get another chance like this." Connor looked at her to see if she was telling the truth. "It would be helpful for the case if I knew more about the lieutenant." Y/N nodded in agreement. "It would also be helpful if I knew more about you." "Everyone seems to know a lot about me. Even when I don't want them to." Y/N sighed. Connor looked at the marks on her arms. She had multiple scars from self defence and the bone in her right arm had healed incorrectly. Probably related to the scars. Nothing in her files had an explanation. Someone must have hidden them. Y/N went back to reading the files as Connor began to look at Hank's desk learning all he could from the pictures and trinkets. "Red Ice." Connor said out loud. Y/N pretended not to hear him. Connor looked closely at the picture of the task force. The year of the investigation linked with the date that Y/N began to live in the community home. Maybe something happened to Y/N that involved the Red Ice task force. He would look into it further later. A sigh signalled that Hank had arrived. "You are hear earlier then I would have expected Hank." Y/N laughed sipping her very cold coffee. "Which number coffee is that? I'm surprised your blood isn't brown." "It's only my second one. Isn't it Connor." Y/N gestured to Connor. "Ah Jesus, whats it still doing here?" "I have only seen Y/N consume one coffee since my arrival. Given the level of caffeine on her breath she must have consumed another cup before I arrived. Given the lack of cups on her desk I can assume she drank the first one at home confirming she has only drank two cups of coffee today." "I like him." Y/N said taking another sip. Hank raised his eyebrow. "I bet you do." Y/N almost choked on her coffee and a redness rose in her cheeks. He wasn't there when she... analysed him last night. Was he? "Officer Y/L/N. Are you alright. Your temperature seems to be rising but you show no symptoms of a fever." "Oh she's fine alright." Hank chuckled. Y/N glared at him as she tried to stop the blush reaching her cheeks. "Hank! Y/N! In my office. Now!" they looked over and saw the captain was beckoning them to enter his glass room. With a sigh Y/N stood up and followed Hank. Behind them Connor came also. They sat down on chairs in his office and Connor stood behind them with his arms clasped in front of him. He was almost like a statue. "Ten new cases arrive on my desk every day relating to deviants. We've always had isolated events. Old ladies losing their maid androids that sort of crap. But now. We are getting reports of assaults. Murders like the one last night! This isn't just Cyberlife's problem anymore. It's an ongoing criminal investigation and we have to stop it before shit hits the fan. I need you two to investigate. Find any links." "Why us? Why do we have to be the ones to deal with this shit? We are the least qualified cops in the country to deal with this! Y/N thinks androids should be free and all that crap and I can barely change the settings on my phone!" Hank argued "Everyone is overloaded! I think you two are perfectly qualified for this type of investigation." "Bullshit! The truth is nobody wants to investigate these fuckin' androids and you left me holding the bag!" "Cyberlife sent over this android to help with this investigation. It's a state of the art prototype it will act like your partner." "I already have a partner! I don't need another one and especially not this plastic prick!" the captain sighed and turned to JY/N. "What is your opinion Y/N? Since this is a two man investigation." Before she could reply Hank shouted. "Oh don't bother asking her opinion! She's got a huge crush on this thing like a little school girl." "Hank!" Y/N shouted. "Hank you are certainly starting to piss me off! You are a lieutenant. You are supposed to do what I say and shut your goddamn mouth." "Do you know what my goddamn mouth has to say to you?" "Okay, okay. I'll pretend I didn't hear that so I don't have to give you another page in your disciplinary folder because it already looks like a novel! This conversation is over!" Y/N stood up to leave when Hank leaned in to say something else to the captain. She didn't stay to find out. She was so embarrassed. Not only did the captain know that she had a crush on Conner but he himself now knew. She hadn't been this embarrassed since she wet herself in 3rd grade! Connor followed even though she wished he didn't. "I don't understand." Connor said. Y/N sighed and turned around with a fake smile. "The lieutenant said you had a crush on me? You didn't crush me at all." Y/N glared back up at Hank who was still talking to the captain. "Its just a phrase humans use. It doesn't matter." She began walking again to her desk but Connor was one step behind her. "What does it mean?" she sat down and Connor kept looking at her waiting for an answer. She knew he wouldn't give up until she explained. "It means... I like you. Your face is pretty and I like you." "I was designed to be liked. Both my face and my voice were specifically chosen." "No, it means..." she sighed. "I like you." "Oh. You mean romantically." Her blush returned. She wished Hank didn't say anything. "I...I wouldn't say romantically. Maybe, a step down from romantic?"

Software instability

Y/N could have sworn she saw both his eyes and his LED flicker for a moment. Maybe she imagined it. little did she know her comment had caused Connor's software to become unstable for a brief second. He wasn't created to be liked romantically. He was created to fulfil his mission. If he was human he would be flattered. But as an android he had no emotion. He was not deviant. At least not yet.

Hank sat down in his chair with his arms crossed. Y/N glared at him. Connor could feel the tension between the two of them. "I'm sorry if my presence has caused the two of you some inconvenience. In any case I'd like you to know I'm very happy to be working with the two of you. I'm sure we'll make a great team." Hank was ignoring him. Y/N was too embarrassed to say anything. "Is there a desk anywhere I could use?" "No one is using that one." Hank pointed to the desk that was attached to his. When Y/N first arrived as a brand new officer and made Hank's partner that desk was occupied which was why she was given the one next to his. Now that the officer had left she hadn't been bothered to move desks. Connor sat down at 'his' desk and began to make small talk. "You have a dog right?" he asked Hank. "How do you know that? Did she tell you?" "The dog hairs on your chair. I like dogs. What's your dogs name?" "Whats it to you?" Hank never liked people talking about his personal life but when he saw Connor looking disheartened by his response he couldn't help but answer his question. "Sumo, I call him Sumo." "You do not have a dog." Connor said to Y/N. "No. I don't have a dog. It wouldn't be fair to get one when I spend all of my time here." Connor nodded in understanding. "Do you listen to Knights of the black death." Y/N sniggered at his awkward small talk. "I really like that music. It's full of energy" "You listen to heavy metal?" Hank asked. Connor sat back in his chair as if unsure what to say. "Well. I don't really listen to music as such. But I'd like to." Y/N realised what he was doing. He was trying to butter Hank up. He had so make sure he didn't mention the wrong things. "You're a Detroit Gears fan right? Denton carter scored 53% of his shots from the three point line yesterday." He mentioned the wrong thing. Y/N began to gesture with her hand for Connor to stop talking. He did not understand. "Did you watch the game?" "that's what I was watching at the bar last night." Hank angrily replied. Connor looked at Y/N finaly understanding what she was trying to tell him. "Oh." And with that the conversation ended. Connor began to read the files that Y/N had been reading earlier. "243 files." He certainly read them faster than her! "First date back 9 months. All starting in Detroit and quickly spreading across the country. An AX400 has been reported to attack a man last night. That could be a good starting point for the investigation." Hank wasn't paying attention. "I agree with Connor." Hank scoffed. Y/N continued. "Neighbours say they saw the android run off with the man's child but the his child does not live with him and he has not reported the child going missing. Just that he was attacked. There is certainly something going on there." Hank ignored both of them. He was sick of androids. Y/N rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. When Hank was in one of his moods it was difficult to get him out of it. Connor stood up and walked around the desk to talk to Hank directly. "I understand you are facing personal issues lieutenant, but you need to move past them." Y/N's eyes widened. He did not just say that?! "hey!" Hank said, "Don't talk to me like you know me. I'm not your friend and I don't need your advice okay?" Connor leaned forward to talk face to face to Hank. "Ive been assigned this mission lieutenant. I didn't come here to wait until you felt like working." "Connor." Y/N warned but it was too late. Hank had stood up and grabbed Connor by the collar and pinned him against the glass wall like he weighed nothing. "Hank! Stop it! he's only trying to help the investigation! You were just as determined as him 11 years ago!" "Stay out of this Y/N!" Hank said. "Me and him. Were nothing alike. If it were up to me I'd throw the lot of them into the dumpster and set a match to it. Stop pissing me off. Or things are going to get nasty." A police officer came up to them and apologised for interrupting but a new lead had come up about the android and the girl. Hank walked off towards the front entrance. Connor began to straighten his tie. "Stop. I'll help you." Y/N said moving towards him. She straightened his tie. "Don't worry about him. He's not mad at you... he's mad at the world. Don't let his comments get to you. I mean I know you don't have emotions but... don't be disheartened." Connor noted what she said and gave a friendly smile. "Thank you Y/N. I shall take a note of that." "Good. I'd hate to see him punch you." "Because you have a crush on me?" "Connor!"

[col22promo]

Bode Levy Bram Lindqvist | Twenty Eight;  Elite

House: Torren Status: Infected - Telepathy and Praeteria Elite Specification: Infection Trainer and International Trade Consultant Alignment: New Age Rebels

Astrid Lindqvist married her husband for the wrong reasons and her inability to leave him ruined her life. She was Wilhelm Lindqvist’s trophy wife, who married her mostly because he was bored. She in turn married him for his money—and they both did it because they had something to prove.

She was a good woman under her thick facade of minglers and gala events, but for all her lofty pretension and egotism, behind closed doors she was depressed and desperate. At best, her husband was extremely neglectful, and at worst he was cruel and emotionally abusive. But to divorce him would mean to leaving herself with nothing. Everything was in his name, as she’d married into his estate, and with a less than positive relationship with her own mother, she had nowhere to go and she just couldn’t fathom starting over from nothing. 

And so she kept pretending. She shrivelled and contorted into a woman she barely recognized anymore, her once shiny potential spiralling down the drain like washed out hair dye. She threw herself and her hopes into having children—which would have been a better venture had she been able to keep off the bottle. Unfortunately, she was an alcoholic and the fact that her first born actually survived, was something of a miracle, as he was four weeks premature. She was told she was very lucky he did not have fetal alcohol syndrome.

Bode Levy Bram, however (named after her father, her grandfather, and the older brother she’d lost to cancer while in her twenties) did suffer a birth defect, not uncommon for infants of his condition. He had what was called sensorineural hearing loss, which was a defect with his inner ear, caused by his premature birth.

Fortunately for them both, technology was such that he was diagnosed at an early age and fitted with a surgical implant that would serve as a necessary aid for the rest of his life. This implant would need to be tended to for maintenance every three to five years, but could be manually adjusted with dials behind the shell of his right ear. It was possible to turn them off as well, and though he was not completely deaf without them, when he was, the world developed a muffled, muddled quality, like he was submerged underwater, and doctors said it would be severely detrimental to his emotional and psychological development as a child, were they left off.

But because Bode was essentially Astrid’s “miracle child” and one of the few things that brought her joy in her lonely life, she became suffocatingly overprotective, even as Bode got older. She was well-meaning, but naive, too immature and unreliable to be a good role model. Bode’s father was a linguist and interpreter for a political branch of government and so he was absent the majority of Bode’s young life, frequently away on business, with little interest in keeping in touch with his son while he was away. Basically, he ignored his family unless it was convenient for him not to, and had multiple affairs over the years, many of which Bode was exposed to at a young age.

Bode’s brother, Espen, was born six years after him and though Astrid was sober at the time, he was still diagnosed with Haemophilia shortly after he was born. Despite the neglectful environment of the Lindqvist family home, Astrid was desperate to have another child before she was too old—with her marriage and life in shambles, she was trying to patch her wounds with children. However, about a year after Espen’s birth, she relapsed and was forced to go back into rehab when she almost died combining alcohol with sleeping pills. As a result, Astrid’s youngest son spent much of his younger years raised mostly by a nanny, and by his brother.

This is perhaps part of why the boys grew up to be so different. Bode’s parents enrolled him into a pretentious Catholic school that he hated, and in seeing so much of his parent’s abusive marriage when he was young, he grew up cynical, resentful and not believing in marriage as a constitution. Espen, on the other hand, grew up more of a dreamer—a softer boy, far more naive, and envious of Bode for how much more time he’d gotten with their mother growing up. But when he asked questions about her, his brother would be dismissive, saying that she was irresponsible and selfish, and that Espen was better off not knowing her as well as Bode did.

As a teenager, Bode was something of a deviant, feeling reckless and trapped in the toxic environment at home, not to mention overwhelmed by the responsibility of essentially being a guardian to his younger brother when he had hardly finished being a kid himself. Rarely wanting to go home, he spent a lot of nights out or crashing on friend’s places.

After high school, he studied business, which he hated, but when he flipped over to finances and accounting, he hated that even more. So he quit college entirely after his second year, and took up a job as an executive assistant at his long-time friend’s business. He didn’t love the work, by any means, but he saw it as temporary and he got to boss people around, which he appreciated.

Meanwhile, he put the rest of his energy into making sure his brother didn’t wind up like him—angry, resentful and directionless. He got an apartment in a different neighbourhood where he and his brother could live, and made sure he was enrolled in a good public school. Removing a fourteen year old Espen from his parent’s house wasn’t an easy task—his mother fought Bode on it, but as she was still back and forth between home, rehab and the hospital, and Wil Lindqvist was still a cheating, abusive son of a bitch, Bode was able to convince her it was for the best. Consequently, for the second time in Espen’s life, Bode was more of a parent to him than either of their parents ever were.

Bode Today

After D-Day, Bode spent about a year in a clan in Sweden with his brother. They were never able to get in touch with either of their parents, a fact about which Espen was more bothered by than Bode. In the early stages of the first wave of Infections, Espen developed telepathy and Bode became a complete anomaly—a Telepath and a Praeteric.

When they were both picked up by Crusaders in 2158, still before the rise of the NWRF, they spent a couple years in Colony 8, where Bode became an Infection Trainer almost right away, and eventually, an International Trade Representative. Before D-Day, he’d already spoken English, Danish and Swedish at home, and due to his father’s heavy handed suggestion, he’d taken a lot of language studies in high school and his undergrad, so he spoke a bit of Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian and French. With his ability to translate and his background in business and finance, he was a perfect candidate for what the Colony Trade market needed. 

His job was to aid in coordinating and facilitating the fair trading of resources between colonies around the world, and so he worked closely with Trade and Marine Merchants, as well as other Colony officials. Just a few months ago, he was asked by Officials to transfer to another location in need of an I.T.R, as Colony 8 was more central and had more nearby Reps. He agreed, on the condition that he could take his brother, and that he would be transferring to a Colony at least equally as safe.

Bode and his brother have been at Colony 22 less than three months. He is still cynical, opinionated and a bit abrasive, but his relationship with his brother is everything to him. He hates the NWRF, but is concerned that any radical involvement on his behalf would be too risky for his brother, so he aligns himself instead with the NAR and has hopes to lead a political party of some kind.

Bode can be hot headed and defensive at times, and definitely arrogant. His many years of pretentious schooling and business experience can make him either frustratingly charming or infuriatingly conceited, depending perhaps on your sense of humour and your level of patience with such things. He does, however, know how to talk his way out of an argument in a way that leaves the other person knowing they’ve been manipulated, but not being able to do a thing about it. Espen, on the other hand, brings out quite a different side of Bode—with him, he is warmer, and more playful, while also stern and protective.

The implants in his ears lately have been causing him grief—they are greatly overdue for an upgrade, and consequently are intermittent at times. Sometimes they wake him in the middle of the night with a painful ringing sound in his head. They also now have a constant, subtle ringing drone on a regular basis (much like symptoms of Tinnitus), which isn’t loud or painful, but is definitely annoying. And even though he can sometimes tune it out, it does cause hearing problems in conversation and for smaller, quieter sounds. This affects his ability to perform in the Games, and in some training activities, especially with the headaches it often causes him.

As such, he has an unlikely interest in the weekly testing he has to undergo, as he can’t help but hope that there might be a way to take the Increased Senses infection and turn it into a bottled cure for himself. And as for short-term solutions, he has to see if he can find a surgical doctor either here or at another Colony, who has the experience and resources to tend to his implants within the next year or so, before they stop working entirely.

RELATED BIOS: ESPEN FILIP LINDQVIST

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