#learned about the DiSC assessment over the weekend

[smolgreybunny]

[manorbagofsand]

he takes mental inventory of everything he's eaten since yesterday morning.

coffee.

an english muffin.

a few handfuls of spicy peanuts.

the last few plantain chips.

a beer.

another beer.

kombucha, free from your housemate’s job.

another beer. 

a wash of shame comes over him. he shouldn't drink this much. but he knows he won't change. he at least shouldn't try to hide that he drinks this much, leaving the empty cans on the floor between his bedside table and the bed until he can covertly discard them. 

is he an alcoholic?

he takes inventory. he's not very functional while drunk, that's why he drinks, after all. alcohol gifting him a sense of complacency unavailable to him otherwise. he has, 1 or 2 drinks a day, and only most days. he's only been drunk at work twice, before, both after a night out with Esther, both miserable experiences, vomiting outside in the median between the sidewalk and the street where some bright-eyed city planner probably thought would have flowers, but actually just has bark mulch and the shiny glint of litter. he thinks of his ex's dad, asleep over a glass on the table. he thinks of the characters in lucia berlin stories, the desperate night errands to buy a fifth, how the other addicts told her she wasn't really one of them if she wasn't a wino. he only really drinks beer? he is fine when he doesn't drink? well, fine meaning miserable and desperately seeking escape. he feels another wash of guilt thinking about all the alcoholism screening assessments he's lied on. lately he's been putting down eight. that's one for four days a week, two for another two, and taking a day off. he tries to convince himself of this. he can’t remember the last time he took a day off. he buys two six-packs a week. he drank half a six-pack just yesterday. 

okay so what if he’s an alcoholic, he can’t manage otherwise. maybe he should have a drink before he leaves to see tony. is noon too early?

he takes inventory, he can only think of one time he started drinking alone that early in the day, and it was before a date. a first date, at that. he thinks that felt justified, but also is an incredible bad look. okay, no, he doesn’t need a drink now, doesn’t even want one. he thinks about Wendy in Little Fish, Jonny Appleseed, Jessa in Mostly Dead Things and it doesn’t make him feel better, but he is at least able to move back to what he was trying to think about –

this morning, coffee.

more coffee.

he decides, as usual, to forgo, breakfast, even though he still has more english muffins and even has the right brand of almond butter. in addition to all the wrong brands he's never going to touch. he thinks he probably won't get fucked until evening, so he doesn't want to give his digestive system any ammunition with that much time.

he takes inventory of all the things he needs to dispose of while his housemate is out of town this weekend.

the four empty beer cans under his bed.

the cake he made last week and never even cut.

the pie his friend gave him that he also never cut that is now starting to grow mold.

the remaining slices of bread that are too old.

the potatoes in the fridge he cooked and didn't like the texture of.

the soup he made on monday. but what if the soup is still good? probably, but he probably won't eat it so he should just let it go now. it makes him feel worse to consider how careful his housemate is about not wasting food, that thinking about what he might think washes him with yet another icy bucket of shame. if he discards it now, maybe his housemate won’t notice, or just think that he ate it. he feels bad, but not enough to actually make him eat it. 

he should go to the farm stand and buy produce tomorrow. or maybe he shouldn't because he's just going to compost most of it anyway.

the half a roasted sweet potato, that he weirdly had cut into circular discs rather than his usual wedges. actually, he will eat that still. sweet potatoes have become a go-to for him in the last few months. long-shelf life. they keep well after being cooked. and also, he pretty reliably still feels interested in eating them even after they’ve finished roasting. what kind of motherfucker can’t even be interested in eating food through the forty minutes it takes to prepare? they don’t do anything suspect to his shit, which is to say, he can’t see them again on that end. 

he takes inventory of all of the things he’s stopped eating because they come out identifiable in his shit. quinoa. corn. grapefruit. carrots. he thinks about the girl who lived with his ex-, who had her eating disorder diagnosed because her therapist noticed her hands had turned orange because she only ate sweet potatoes. how she had speculated Japanese sweet potatoes wouldn’t be as obvious. how it all came crashing together then for him how his hands had also been orange when he was in high school. for him, baby carrots. he tried to remember when he still ate bagged processed vegetables. 

he tried to remember what it was like before anyone had told him there was something wrong with him. before there was something wrong with him?

no, he remembers standing in the shower, circling around if he could be pregnant. he hadn’t had sex with anyone, but what if? he remembers having a doctor recommend he get tested for female athlete triad syndrome, how he still was new to interacting with doctors and didn’t realise they weren’t actually going to follow through at all on that. feeling like there was not anything wrong with him, that he was finally in control.

the dirty condom from a few nights, when he didn’t want to clean himself out, let alone clean the toy off afterwards. he laughs how he still doesn't have a trash can in his room. this seems the most reasonable of all on this list. yes, he’s an immature fag with no blinds and dirty condoms on his floor. this is a flaw he’s willing to lean into, to pretend he is loose and free and reckless. but he isn’t. he is so wound up in his head. he has practiced these worries too many times today already. the only kind of reckless he could actually claim is the four burn scars on his arms from cooking while drunk in the last year. which he worries people will ask if he did intentionally. 

what if he did do it intentionally? 

he doesn't want to be like this. the shame layers on, shame that he hates how he is, but doesn't change. no matter how rational he is, he cannot actually convince himself that no one cares. shame that he has no control over his shame. 

he has to leave in hour and half if he’s not going to be unacceptably late. he wonders if he can make it out of the house by then.

he heads for the bathroom. puts the fan on the 40 minute timer. worries his housemate will wonder what he is up to. tries to convince himself he already knows, that he does not care. he wants that, but he can’t convince himself. 

he’s also covered in sex-bruises all the time on his neck and shoulders and wrists and he does not hide them, and no one even says anything. does his housemate know that he is gay?

is he gay enough? 

he feels shame that he still uses the same beginner douche kit he bought years ago. he remembers the pang of jealously of learning about posh gays with a whole douche attachment for their shower head. what if he were that put together? 

he flips the toilet seat up, so it won’t get splashed, and tries to focus on relaxing his sphincter. 

he’s not actually ashamed of his body. except for the way his skin hangs loose on his abdomen, refusing to show his faint hard work of abs. except how his chest and legs are covered in red welts and scabs. except that he is covered with scars, most of them self-inflicted, which are visible enough that he feels constantly conscious of them, but not gnarly enough that people actually ever ask about them. except the way he has a bald spot right under his chin on his beard, how the whole thing is still pretty sparse, maybe he should just shave it but then he feels shame about looking pubescent. 

but he thinks he’s not ashamed of his bodily functions. he’s not afraid of his own shit. he thinks about the shame of the dirty condom on the floor of his room. he thinks about all the times he’s scraped his middle finger a circle around the inside of his rectum, feeling for any residual chunks to decide if he needs to douche another round. he thinks about the time after getting fucked that somehow he had shit all over his own feet, how his ex had gently gotten paper towels and wiped them off, gently, and wordlessly. 

and yet, it’s been years since he’s been on so much as a first date without cleaning himself in advance. it’s not that he’s afraid of someone being spooked when their cock comes out streaked, it’s just that it seems worth the relief to be able to avoid it. except that relief is fleeting. untrustworthy. whatever. he knows its what he needs to do in order to actually leave the house. he scrapes his finger around the inside, up through the second mouth, which yields to show it has nothing else to reveal, like Monty Hall opening the first door.

placated, he gets in the shower. he thinks about how freud would have had a heyday with him. 

he really doesn’t want to have to have that conversation. he thinks tony already seems to think he doesn’t eat. this isn’t quite true, but he is charmed by the simplicity of it. he feels some obligation to uphold that expectation, to be able to avoid eating in front of him. he wants to avoid the intimacy of having a conversation about his pre-sex routine, which seems only possible by keeping a very strict pre-sex routine. 

tony asked him recently to take a weekend trip with him. the travel. the prolonged company, sharing meals, the ruined veneer of being ready all the time. 

he could come up with five hundred reasons why he can’t go, but are any of them good enough to say to someone else? could he suffer through just a weekend? 

could he, 

maybe, 

even, 

have an okay time?

[bubble-tea-bunny]

bird of prey

[diego hargreeves x reader]

author’s note: this idea came out of nowhere, but it was fun to write. enjoyyy

word count: 13,373

It’s a beautiful Monday morning when Mister Crane robs the bank.

The earthy smell of wet asphalt still lingers in the air, the last traces of a rain that had begun last week and continued on through the weekend, pouring from dark thunderclouds hanging low and which, to the particularly superstitious type, were perhaps a sign of foreboding. This dramatic downturn in the weather had been completely unexpected. No forecasts showed rain, much less a rainfall to this degree. Umbrellas have worked overtime the past several days, and fought against an incredible onslaught of wind. They seem to sigh in relief as they’re put away once the clouds finally recede, and the sun greets the city with a welcome wash of warmth.

With his mask on, Mister Crane can’t smell the drying roads. All he can smell is the lavender he’d placed at the end of the beak. It’s there solely because it’s his favorite scent. There were more important reasons for placing herbs in this spot in the past, of course, but it’s not the past. It’s the twenty-first century, not the seventeenth, and there was no miasma to protect himself from.

His only companion for today’s endeavor wears a black gas mask, and the visor, like his own eyepieces, are black, successfully concealing their identities. “Are you ready?” he asks.

Your eyes slide from staring up at the bank with its tall columns to Mister Crane. His words are slightly muffled, but you understood him perfectly well. You nod in response.

Mister Crane grins even though you can’t see it. “Good.” He stretches his hand out. “Shall we?”

You walk up the steps side-by-side and through the double glass doors. A few people pass you on their way out, casting at first confused glances in your direction, and then, like they were able to see the future in the darkened visor of your mask, realization hits them and they rush away from a sight that is sure not to be pretty within the next ten seconds. Neither you nor Mister Crane pays them any mind.

From the duffel bag hanging off his shoulder, Mister Crane produces a gun and aims the barrel at the ceiling. He lets off warning shots, and small bits of stone and plaster crumble and fall to the polished tile floors. Screams bounce off the walls in reaction and he can’t help it: he laughs. It’s music to his ears and he takes in a deep breath like he’ll smell the fresh morning air but he smells lavender which, for him, is just as good.

“This will be over quickly, so long as you cooperate,” he announces, voice raised so everyone can hear him. Suddenly, there’s the sound of a low whirring, and then a translucent blue disc flies past him, colliding with the workspace of a bank teller, scattering papers and frying the terminal. She yelps in shock, and he spots her hastily removing her hand from beneath the desk as she backs away.

Mister Crane raises a brow. You have sharp eyes. She hadn’t been able to press the panic button. He glances over his shoulder at you, several paces behind and another blue disc at the ready. “Thank you.”

He turns his attention to the teller you’d frightened, walking up to her counter and leaning on it casually. He speaks to her in a relaxed tone, as though this were any other day and he was merely here for a routine withdrawal or deposit or what have you, and she was going to assist him with a smile and a polite inquiry as to his wellbeing. Except she isn’t playing her part—she’s shaking and looks on the brink of bursting into tears and if Mister Crane is honest, it’s a little annoying.

“Don’t try to make this any harder than it has to be, darling,” he remarks. The statement is a referral to her attempt to call the police—an action which would make him very unhappy—as well as a demand for her to be compliant, for he continues on, “The vault. Now.”

The teller nods quickly, not keen on another forcefield coming her way, or a bullet. Mister Crane follows her behind the counter towards the back, casting no instructions back over to you. You don’t need them. All he says is “We’ll be just a moment.” You’re not sure if he’s saying that to her or to you.

Your job while he goes down to the vault is simple, and the people you’re now holding hostage are doing half of it for you. They’re all on the ground, up against walls or cowering beneath desks. Some stare up at the mask covering your face, and some keep their stares down, keeping track of your movements by your boots. If anyone looks suspicious, you don’t hesitate to throw a forcefield their way, missing their fingers or their faces by inches, and you don’t say anything but they get the point: you won’t miss the next time.

As you patrol the floor, occasionally you check outside past the windows for any sign of police. Even if you had stopped that woman from alerting them, by this point, pedestrians outside must have called in. But you don’t yet see the flash of blue and red lights nor hear the siren. You tense up regardless, forcefields humming lowly in your grasp, because you’ve learned to trust your gut, and your gut is telling you that despite the lack of telltale signs that anyone has arrived to thwart Mister Crane’s little field trip, someone is already here.

Whoever it is, they’re good. You’ll give them that. If only the person they’d tried to scoot past hadn’t slid their shoe along the tiled floor. It prompts you to glimpse in that direction and you twist around, throwing out a forcefield without hesitation. A figure clothed in black dives out of the way, so it hits the counter.

He doesn’t hesitate either, and the knife he throws whistles through the air. You raise your arm in a motion to block it, and a larger forcefield forms. The knife bounces off your makeshift shield, which pulses with the strength of the impact, and it falls with a clatter. You bend down to pick it up, but before you can throw it back, he’s thrown another. You start moving then, making yourself a harder target to hit, and seek cover.

You exchange blows, the screams of anyone who nearly gets hit only background noise. You’re careful to keep yourself between your opponent and the door leading to the back where the vault is. Killing him was a secondary goal. First and foremost, you had to stall long enough for Mister Crane to get what he needs.

There’s the faraway noise of cop cars rushing down the road to the scene, and as if on cue, Mister Crane emerges once more, the teller he’d gone to the vault with kept close via an arm around her neck. He drags her out the door towards the getaway car—an armored truck that screeches to a halt on the curb. The masked man you’re fighting is poised to turn his focus to Mister Crane, but you interrupt him and draw his attention back to you.

You keep track of Mister Crane’s position in your peripherals so you know when to make a break for it. But one second of distraction is all the man before you needs, for as you spare a glance out the window, a knife embeds itself in the spot just beneath your clavicle. You yelp, and the forcefield in your hand fizzles out as you stare down at the knife protruding from your body.

He moves fast, but you move faster. You don’t take the time to pull the knife out, instead grabbing the first one you’d stopped that you had placed in your pocket, and without bothering to aim, for it wasn’t really necessary, you fling it in the direction of a few people huddled together on the ground. Forced to decide between stopping Mister Crane or saving the hostages, the man opts for the latter, as you’d expected.

His own period of distraction is enough for you to run outside, Mister Crane’s head peeking out of the back to urge you to hurry. The teller he’d used for a shield is on the ground, shoved there when he’d jumped into the truck and too in shock to move. Your fingers curl around the knife still in your body and pull it free with a growl. You drop it as you join Mister Crane, and he slides the door shut as the truck speeds down the street.

Diego throws the doors back and curses when he finds you’ve escaped. He spots the bank teller still on the sidewalk, and he jogs over to her. “Hey, are you okay?” he asks gently.

She shakes her head and he sighs deeply. Of course she isn’t. Poor girl had her life on the line. No one would be okay after something like that. There would no doubt be an ambulance accompanying those police cars. They’d help her better than any soothing words from him could.

His discarded knife glints under the sun, and he goes to pick it up. Rather than red staining the blade, there’s blue. He furrows his brows in confusion but doesn’t have time to think much about it, at least not right now. The increasing volume of sirens breaks his train of thought and reminds him that the priority is to leave the scene before the cops show up.

He’s two blocks away and making his own escape via the rooftops by the time they get to the bank. By then, all that’s left is damage to be assessed, scared men and women to check on, and a vault a whole lot emptier than it had been at eight o’clock this morning.

———

At 9:43 PM, Diego is mopping the floors of the boxing gym, but his mind is elsewhere. When he’d heard about the bank robbery on the police scanner, he hadn’t been too worried about taking care of it, even if a big heist like that warranted multiple criminals. It would leave him outnumbered, but his knives always made up the difference. As such, he’d been surprised to discover there were only two people inside (the third one, the getaway driver, was offsite, for Diego hadn’t seen the truck parked outside when he got there). It would’ve been easy to become overconfident and go in guns blazing (not technically, but the point still stands), but he’d been right to continue to play it safe, and on top of that, be even more cautious.

The gravity of the situation didn’t give him a lot of time to study you completely. He had to act fast. What he noticed first were blue sparks flittering around your hand, dancing around your fingertips and swirling in your palms. He might have owed it to a weapon, something new and something dangerous, but you were clearly not holding anything. It stopped him short for a moment. He didn’t know what would happen if you attacked, and therefore had no way to prepare. But he continued pressing forward. His original plan held: get rid of you quickly and quietly.

Well, it held for about three seconds anyway. He shushed the people who spotted him, bringing his index finger up to his lips, and crept ahead. He was halfway to you when someone nearby moved. The motion alerted you, and he wasn’t thinking as he immediately dodged whatever you’d thrown at him. He watched it hit the counter behind him and disappear, and he turned to you to see the sparks had formed discs. Briefly he wondered what they could be, but when you block one of his knives with a larger disc that stretches to match the length of your forearm, he figures it out. Forcefields.

This realization is already plenty of food for thought. No one just had forcefields. It wasn’t an ability that could be learned. There were no tools to make it possible. No, there had to be a natural ability, a natural affinity for them. He connects the dots fast, not that it was difficult, and the conclusion he draws he gives no voice to. It almost seems unnecessary to put it into words. The heaviness which settles in the pit of his stomach serves as evidence for the recognition of what you are.

But in the same instance of acknowledging that, his stomach then starts to turn, a motion of discomfort like he’s eaten something bad or he’s experiencing motion sickness. Because you being what you are, and you having the powers that you have, you choose to do that. You put others in danger. While you hadn’t killed anyone at the bank, he doesn’t doubt that you would, if you were presented with the opportunity. The burn of ferocity in all your movements (and in your eyes, he’s sure, if he could see them) as you fought eliminated any of his would-be skepticism. The fact is simple: you’re bound by the leash your boss keeps you tethered with, but if he let it go slack, you’d charge ahead with snapping jaws eager for blood. Cynically, Diego thinks perhaps your boss is saving that for another day. Dogs left to starve rip and tear all the more savagely when finally let loose.

Eudora’s told him over and over to keep his distance from police investigations. And it’s not as if he’s ever really listened (how could he ignore all those calls for help on the scanner?), but he sure as hell can’t let this case drop. Based on what he saw today, he knows the cops are outmatched. You’re one of a very rare forty-three, and Diego almost feels responsible for subduing you. Maybe it could be taken as the urge he always gets to catch criminals and make the world just a little bit safer, and that’s certainly part of it, but there’s a sense of obligation here too. As much as he wants to distance himself from you, he can’t deny that at the root of the matter, you and he are the same. It’s what puts him on level ground with you, gives him a better fighting chance than most others.

The only thing that confuses him is the blood on the knife he hit you with. Were there others born that same day with blood like yours? Diego’s only ever known six others aside from you, and as far as he knew, all of them had red blood like him. Was it even blood?

“That spot’s looking real shiny there.”

Diego blinks and looks up from his task to see Al exiting his office. That’s when he notices that he had indeed been mopping the one area for the past few minutes, caught up in his thoughts as he was. “You workin’ late?”

“Yeah, had some things to finish up.” Al waves a hand dismissively and shrugs on his coat as he makes his way to the front doors. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Diego.” He tosses one last wave over his shoulder.

Diego grins and holds his hand up in goodbye, though he knows Al can’t see it. “Bye, Al. Have a good night.”

Diego wishes he had a good night. His sleep is restless, plagued with images of you and that gas mask. You’re fighting again but this time you successfully hit him, and the gash seers hot with pain. He brings a hand up to the wound, applying pressure to stem the flow of blood. The gush is so strong it seeps through the cracks of his fingers, but he doesn’t see red. He sees blue. His eyes widen and he doesn’t know what’s going on. More sparks flutter in your hands, looking for a target. He tries to kick his own body into gear, to fight back, to do something, but it’s not cooperating, and he’s unable to throw any knives. As he checks all the belts on his person, he finds he had none to begin with.

We’re the same, aren’t we? The question echoes ominously, like you’re in his head. Your own tilts to the side. A picture of fake innocence and genuine mockery. Though I was hoping for someone who could put up a good fight…

Get out, he growls. His hand has returned to the injury in his chest. Get out of my head. His fingers curl and his nails dig into his skin, but the sting is secondary, easily ignored in favor of the ugly laceration you’ve dealt and that you’re now appraising like a work of art. Your work of art. And you raise your hands, forcefields at the ready, to add the finishing touches.

You’re my magnum opus, Diego. You should be honored.

These words cause him to pause. You know his name? That’s impossible. When would you have…

Then it clicks, and he grows conscious suddenly that this isn’t real. This is a dream. And he assumes that would remove some of the tension, but it’s difficult to ignore the burn of his wound which feels too real and makes him think his life is currently hanging in the balance. Maybe this dreamed up version of you can tell that he’s figured out, but you’re nonplussed, perhaps because you know that even still, a tiny part of him is convinced this is very much real life, and it’s this which puts you at an advantage.

You throw out more forcefields, edges sharp as his own blades, and he’s helpless to defend himself. But it’s fine, he thinks. He won’t die. He might die in the dream but all that would do is wake him up.

Right?

…

Right.

His eyes shoot open and he gasps, a deep intake of breath as though wanting to assure himself that he is alive. His fingers claw at his chest instinctually to check for injuries, but he feels nothing but the pounding of his heart. He closes his eyes and swallows hard, trying to calm down. But closing his eyes isn’t a good idea because then he’s just seeing you in that damned gas mask again.  

The first light of sunrise is peeking in through the window, and Diego has never been so thankful. He sits up, prepared to get an early start on the day. There’s no way he can go back to sleep.

———

Contrary to what Diego first thought, the vault at the bank hadn’t been emptied of most of its contents. Rather, most of it remained untouched. According to the news, the only safety deposit that had been broken into was that of Ulysses Ferdinand. Upon hearing this name, Diego’s brows furrow. He’d heard that name before.

The anchor continues on, answering Diego’s unspoken question. Ulysses Ferdinand is a scientist who had been kidnapped three months ago. His whereabouts are totally unknown, but authorities were conducting their own search. Diego had begun one as well, when cops and private investigators appeared to be coming up empty-handed, but he hadn’t had much luck either. This is the first piece of information anyone has received regarding what happened to him.

A commercial break begins, and Diego huffs, deep in thought, as an infomercial about a blender plays on the screen. What was in Ferdinand’s safety deposit box? And how did he connect to you and the man you work for?

This revelation motivates him to work harder on this kidnapping than he had before. He actually has clues about this case that he can build on, and he can work his way to you that way. Currently, anything about you or the man you were at the bank with is up in the air, and any assumptions are mere guesses.

The following week, Ferdinand’s name is all over the news. Again. His name is well-known in the scientific community, and when it was first brought to light that he was missing, it was the only topic on every news channel. Everyone wondered how he could’ve disappeared. Everyone wondered why. Speculations ranged anywhere from plausible to downright ridiculous. Diego half-listened to some of them, but for the most part, wrote off the majority as not worth his time.

With the latest news, however, the theorizing has started up once more. Diego resumes with his investigation and with his half-listening, television on low volume and police scanner standing on his dresser. This case wasn’t his own focus, simply the biggest one. He still responds to calls he overhears, of home burglaries or convenience store robberies. But he’s still on edge with every dispatch, prepared to hear of something substantial, something that could only mean you were involved. He gets no such alerts.

What he does get, four weeks later, is a breakthrough on Ferdinand’s potential location. He’d done a lot of questioning of a lot of shady people, and he knows he’s ahead of the authorities on this one. Things move quicker for him since he gets his answers using methods which are none-too-nice. There are no rules he has to follow, just a goal to get to. And apparently, that goal is on the far side of town.

When Diego looks up at the old building, abandoned and crumbling, he can’t help laughing a bit. This seemed… too obvious. He treks inside through the front, where one door is missing. His boots crunch quietly over broken glass, and he tries to tread lightly in case anyone is lying in wait to ambush him. But as far as he can tell, this whole floor is empty. It’s getting dark, and in the last slivers of light, he approaches an elevator.

As soon as he presses the button to call the lift, there’s a ding and the metal doors part. The inside is similarly roughed up as the rest of the structure, and it groans and creaks as it lowers, down into the sub-basement. It occurs to Diego that it will ding when it reaches that floor, and he sincerely hopes no one is nearby to hear. His job would be easier if he could avoid conflict for as long as possible, and get an accurate scope of the situation. If he finds Ferdinand here, he’d prefer to sneak him out if he could. Fighting while trying to keep someone alive at the same time is a challenge, and while he likes a challenge, he’s smart enough not to risk it.

There’s the inevitable ding of the elevator as it sputters to a stop, and as the doors open, Diego gets low, searching for cover in case anyone is there. In contrast to the ground floor, the sub-basement is like a science fiction novel come to life, like a glimpse into the future. The air is cold and sterile, and terminals with various readouts line the wall. Workbenches are littered with tools and pieces of paper, on which are scrawled sloppy equations and diagrams. This is where Ferdinand is supposed to be?

The lab appears to be empty, so Diego stands back up. He surveys the lab, a knife in each hand. His eyes vigilantly comb the room both to look over all the tech and to make sure no one is hiding in the shadows. The farther he moves into the room, the more he wonders if that quack on channel seven might’ve been correct—that Ferdinand had disappeared of his own accord, entirely on purpose. To work on something top secret is what the man had said. And he would emerge when he was done, to share his work with the world. Why he would need to go underground to carry out his research (literally, Diego muses) no one could say, not even the originator of the hypothesis. It just sounded like a load of bull, and Diego knows he wasn’t alone in thinking that.

But now…

Is Ferdinand not actually in any distress? If it were true, if he dropped off the grid to work here in peace, that would wrap up one case but lead him to a dead end on another. He’d been so confident Ferdinand’s disappearance was related to you, but if he was wrong, he’ll have gotten nowhere with you. He’d have to start from scratch, scrounging up clues and evidence and who knows how long that could take? His intention was to find you before you could do anymore harm, but his doubts now about what seeing this lab could mean are causing him to worry that the next time he’ll hear anything about you is when you commit your next big crime.

He turns the corner into the next room, where there’s another workbench in the center. But this one isn’t full of tools and blueprints. There’s someone laying on it. He walks over carefully to get a better look, and as the face comes into view, he exhales steadily. Speak of the devil. He doesn’t recognize you at first, since you wore a gas mask. What tips him off is a small suture by your collarbone that matches the color of your skin but is slightly raised. It matches the width of his knives.

In this state, you hardly seem dangerous. Your face is relaxed, your chest rising and falling slowly. There are no blue sparks to be had at the tips of your fingers, but they twitch like you’re trying to form forcefields subconsciously. Diego’s eyes narrow as he takes you in, and they settle on your left forearm, the skin of which is pulled back, revealing intricate wiring and small blinking lights.

What the hell? He’s no stranger to technology like this, to robots. Mom was one. But what differentiates you from Mom is your ability to use forcefields. A power like that couldn’t be instilled into a human, much less an android. Something like that had to be natural. Yet he’d watched you use them, and the stitching in your skin confirmed that it was you at the bank. Were you what Ferdinand has been working on? That would make him responsible for what happened at the bank. Had he been the other masked figure you were with?

Diego decides that while he would like to know the answer to these queries, this isn’t the right time to be mulling them over. There isn’t anyone else in the lab with him, but it might not stay that way for long. He has to work fast.

Producing a knife from his belt, he twirls it so the tip points downwards. He stands by your head and aims the blade at your torso. It would be simple: stab it into your chest, and drag downwards. He had to damage as much of the circuitry as possible. So his grip tightens on the handle, and he purses his lips, readying himself. Before he can bring it down, however, there’s the sound of rushed footsteps and a yell: “NO! What you doing?!”

Diego looks up. A man with wire-frame glasses and a wild mess of white hair is on the other side of the room, eyes wide and breathing quickly in panic. He resembles all the pictures online and on the back of all his books, so alike that it’s unmistakeable. Ferdinand.

“Did you make her?” Diego questions. His hand is still suspended in the air, knife trained on you. “She’s a criminal.”

Ferdinand sputters, clearly understanding that Diego is correct but trying to spit out a reason for why he shouldn’t kill you. His mind is running a mile a minute, and it takes him a moment to be able to put the words together. There better be a good reason. “I know, I know, but… she’s my creation. S-She’s special—”

Diego hums skeptically. “Yeah, not helping your case here.”

“She’s capable of more than all that!” Ferdinand rushes out, like if he doesn’t speak fast then it’ll be too late. “That… killing, that soullessness. Her lack of empathy was programmed, and I can reverse it.”

“Why would you program her like this in the first place?”

“I had no choice. Please. I’ll explain everything after you put the knife down.”

Diego hesitates for a moment, gaze sliding from Ferdinand down to you and back again. You’re still breathing deeply, but you’re not asleep, not technically. Your systems are idling presumably because Ferdinand had been working on you. He knows you aren’t waiting to spring a surprise attack the moment he puts his knife away, but he’s unsure if Ferdinand would try wake you up. He wants to believe he won’t, and whereas before he would’ve trusted Ferdinand weren’t at fault, to find that he was the one who built you… Diego can’t be blamed for his suspicion.

He spares one more glimpse towards the scientist, who watches him closely in turn. He’s the picture of a mad scientist with his crazy hair but the look in his eyes doesn’t match. What he says isn’t sprouting from insanity. He knows exactly what he is saying. His desperation is clear. He cares for you, and he wouldn’t risk anything that would result in you being turned to scrap metal.

With a heavy sigh, Diego tucks his knife away. Ferdinand visibly relaxes, shoulders drooping, and walks to the terminal next to the workbench you lay on. “Thank you.”

Diego grunts and stares at Ferdinand’s hands as they fly over the keyboard. “How did you end up here? The cops have been looking for you for months.”

Ferdinand doesn’t respond immediately, though Diego’s not certain if it’s because he’s focusing on the screen in front of him or because he doesn’t know what to say. Finally, he speaks. “I was kidnapped by a man who calls himself Mister Crane. [Name] was already with him, on the brink of death. He wanted me to fix her.”

“[Name]?” Diego glances down at you.

“Yes.” Ferdinand nods. “[Name] [Last Name]. She was in a car crash three months ago.”

“What did Mister Crane want with her?” Diego has a feeling he knows exactly why, but he wants it confirmed.

“I think what you saw during that bank robbery is enough for you to figure out why.” Ferdinand flashes Diego a small grin, but it’s mirthless. He turns back around. “She was—is—a very special person, with the things she can do. Her ability is reminiscent of those of the Umbrella Academy, from all those years ago.”

And there it is. Diego did have that underlying instinct that you and he were alike, but it still comes as a shock for it to be affirmed by an outside party. It confirms to him that he wasn’t imagining it, trying to draw connections that didn’t actually exist, in a search for others like him. All his life, he had wondered who else was out there, what their powers were and what they were doing with them. He and his siblings were trained to be crime fighters, but that couldn’t necessarily be the case for the remaining thirty-six. Maybe some hadn’t honed their skills, letting them lie dormant beneath the surface while they carried on completely normal lives. Maybe some really were like him and his brothers and sisters, using their powers for good. He always hoped no one would use them for evil, but now that he’s older, he understands that’s too much to hope for.

“Mister Crane wanted her like this?” Diego asks. “Without feelings? Without a… a moral compass?”

Ferdinand nods. He grabs a couple of wires and reaches over to connect them to the hubs in your opened forearm. “He wanted to use her to forward his plans, and figured it easier to control her that way.” Evidently, he can see Diego itching to ask for elaboration on this point, but he skips over it. “There will be more time to expound later, but first, we must move quickly. I don’t know when Mister Crane will return.”

A quiet buzzing emits from the terminal, and Diego keeps silent so Ferdinand can focus. He occupies himself by studying you, and the cords protruding from your arm. This explained why your blood was blue. You aren’t human, not entirely, not anymore. And it makes perfect sense why it was Ferdinand that Mister Crane kidnapped. Ferdinand’s papers gained traction because of his work on cyborg enhancements. There was no one more fit for this type of work than him.

You truly did look harmless laying on the workbench, the farthest thing from a monster, and that’s because you were. This hadn’t been your fault. For all Diego knows, you had been one of the other thirty-six who chose to leave your ability alone. You were probably under the radar, and would have remained there successfully if Mister Crane hadn’t found you and taken your near-death experience as an opportunity to twist you into a weapon.

In the past, Diego might not have seen that as a reason to excuse what you’ve done. He might have instead reasoned you could do it all again. But he’s matured over the years, and he knows that wouldn’t be fair to you, if he snuffed you out without giving you second chance. And if you were just a normal girl (well, as normal as you can get for being able to use forcefields anyway), surely that part of you was still in there somewhere. Besides, Ferdinand appears to genuinely care for you and your wellbeing, and if he has faith that you can come back from this, Diego does too.

Another several minutes pass before Ferdinand pulls the cords out and replaces the cover on your forearm. The edges of the piece of metal blend in until it’s impossible to tell there’s anything there other than skin. “It’s finished. She’ll wake up in a few hours.”

Diego nods determinedly. “All right. Then let’s get going.” Carefully, he scoops you up, one arm placed beneath your back and the other in the bend of your knees. Your head hangs limp as he carries you along. As he follows Ferdinand to the elevator, he spots your gas mask on a workbench. He leaves that behind. You’d have no use for it anymore.

Luckily, they get out with no trouble. Mister Crane is still gone. As Diego pulls out of the lot, Ferdinand lets out a deep breath of relief, slumping against his seat. You’re laying in the back, out like a light. “Thank you,” Ferdinand says simply. The stress of being held captive all those months are finally catching up to him, and Diego notices that he sounds and looks more tired than he had been when he saw him in the lab. “And thank you for giving [Name] a chance.”

“You’ll need to leave town,” Diego decides. “It’s too dangerous for you to stay while Mister Crane is here. I’ll bring you to the bus station.”

“I have no complaints about that. I have family a couple of states over who I’m sure will be glad to see me. Though I imagine they’ll be wondering why I don’t have any bags.” Ferdinand still has the energy to emit a quiet chuckle.

It’s quiet for a while as Diego drives down the highway. It had been getting late when he went to the abandoned building, and at this time, the roads are nearly deserted. He’s glad for that. Operating under the cover of night was most advantageous, and Ferdinand could get out of the city without risk of many eyes spotting him.

He only speaks when he takes the off-ramp and comes to a stop at the red light. “What did Mister Crane steal from your safety deposit box at the bank?” Ferdinand’s eyes had slid closed, and it looked as though he were asleep, but evidently he was just resting them, for at this question, they open again. He looks over at Diego, then sticks his hand in his pocket, fishing for something. He produces a small USB drive. It’s the shape of a key, colored gold with an ornate bow. “All my research on cybernetic enhancements is on this flash drive. What I did for [Name] I was able to do without it, but when Mister Crane demanded more androids—built from scratch, mind you, and not a hybrid like [Name]—I couldn’t do it without this.”

Diego’s brows furrow. “He wants an army?”

“He does. I’m not sure what sort of nefarious deeds he intended to commit. While none of them would be as powerful as [Name], since she has abilities none of them would have, they could still win out with brute strength and numbers.”

“Did you build any?”

“Just one. I tried to work as slowly as possible, but I could only keep that up for so long before Mister Crane became suspicious. It’s just a prototype, but don’t let that name fool you. It’s fast, fluid, and strong. I would be prouder of it, to see some of my research become reality, but, well, the circumstances aren’t the greatest…”

“But you have [Name].”

At this, Ferdinand smiles. A genuine one. “Yes. You’re right.”

Diego’s car is one of two cars in the bus station lot, the other most likely belonging to the nighttime attendant. He pulls up to the curb and Ferdinand gets out, shutting the door as Diego lowers the window on that side. Bending down with forearms braced on the sill, he says, “Thank you again.” And then his eyes flicker over to you. “What will you do with [Name]?”

Mimicking Ferdinand’s motion, Diego turns his head to watch you.“I’ll take care of her. Just focus on getting out of here and getting somewhere safe.”

Ferdinand holds a hand out, and Diego shakes it firmly. He stands up straight and retreats inside, and Diego stays where he is as he watches the scientist approach the counter. After he purchases his ticket, he looks out the bus station windows and throws up one last wave.

Because it’s so late, Diego is able to bring you in through the front doors of the boxing gym. Holding you and looking for his keys in his pocket is a little difficult, but he manages. It’s pitch black inside, and he automatically reaches to his right to switch the lights on. He left before the gym was closed, which means there’s still cleaning to be done, but he’d return to do that later (granted, if he doesn’t fall asleep first).

He sets you gently down on his bed, then plops down in the chair against the wall. The only part of his outfit he bothered to take off were the belts with his knives, but he was too tired for much else. He teeters on the edge of consciousness, and spends those few minutes staring at you sleeping, truly sleeping this time. Soon, you’ll be waking up, but not because your system is being activated after being idle. You’ll wake up because the sun is rising, and you’ll be ready for another day. In this moment he could swear that you are human. Entirely so.

———

By the time Diego wakes up, the gym is already open. Panic washes over him when he’s jarred to consciousness by the sound of people chatting and setting up equipment. He hadn’t done any of the cleanup. Usually there’s never any big mess, but he always did some form of upkeep regardless. However, it seems Al had no complaints about the state of the gym, for he hadn’t knocked. A stroke of luck, considering you’re in here.

His eyes slide over to you. You’re stirring slightly, brows furrowed like you’re attempting to ignore the bustling outside. But it only gets livelier, and soon, your own eyes open, and it’s the first time he’s seeing them.

As you sit up, he asks, “Hey, how do you feel?”

[Eye color] eyes blink the sleep away and find him a few feet away in the chair. He sits up straighter as well, and barely suppresses his groan from the stretching of his spine. Sleeping upright like this was not good for his body, and his neck feels strained too. “Um… fine, I guess, but… who are you?”

“My name’s Diego.”

Your sights are trained on him, cogs spinning in your head as you process the information. You avert your gaze to the table where his belts are, and spot the knives in them. It all rushes back to you then, the crimes you committed and what you’ve done to the man before you. “Oh.”

Diego notices your expression of recognition.“Do you remember it?” He doesn’t specify, but you don’t need him to.

You nod forlornly, not bothering to meet his eyes. You almost can’t bring yourself to, knowing you’d fought him weeks ago, fully prepared to kill him if he got in your way. In fact, three weeks ago, you were fully prepared to kill anyone you had to. You hadn’t felt anything at the prospect of doing it, yet now, the guilt is overwhelming. In the months you had been under Mister Crane’s control, you painted your hands red. It was too late to take any of that back. But the thought that you would have continued doing so, a mindless machine, is what prompts the shame to bubble in your stomach.  

“I remember it all,” you whisper.

Diego sighs. You look so tiny, curling into yourself as memories of your wrongdoings flood back. He could tell you that it wasn’t you, not really, but it wouldn’t be a good enough answer. It was your hands, your powers, that did those things. And separating yourself from your abilities was impossible. They’re part of you. He understands that, perhaps better than anyone. So he changes course, preemptively answering a question he’s sure you were bound to ask.

“Ferdinand reprogrammed you to give you your thoughts and feelings back,” he states.

You instantly look up at hearing Ferdinand’s name. “Is he okay?”

“He is. He took a bus, left town. Hiding out until this all blows over.”

“Good.” You try to smile but only manage a small, emotionless upturn of the corner of your mouth. You’re glad to hear he’s safe, but you’re still weighed down by what you went through. This is the first time you’ve been aware of right and wrong in months, and having to assess everything you’ve done in the space without your moral compass makes you unable to muster up any sort of sincere grin.

“We’re gonna stop Mister Crane, you and me,” Diego states. At this resolution, you meet his gaze, and he holds it to make sure you know he means it. It’s a promise, and he hopes you can see that in his eyes.

You take a deep breath. “Okay.”

There is a silver lining to you retaining your memories, and it’s that you remember Mister Crane’s scheme. He had a grudge against the mayor. The details of this he never divulged, but you gathered that the mayor wronged him in some way when they were younger. And that’s why he wanted the androids. Enough at his disposal to prove his power, and to exact his revenge. He planned to attack during the mayoral speech in front of city hall, ensuring as many eyes as possible were on him, and were around to witness the humiliation of a longstanding rival.

You mention offhandedly that despite it seeming wrong, you feel bad for Mister Crane. It’s screwed up, I know you say, and you laugh a little at the ridiculousness of it but Diego doesn’t think it’s ridiculous at all. It’s incredible the level of sympathy you exhibit, and he can’t believe it could even be stifled. You’re bursting at the seams with compassion and no one is out of reach, not even the one who’d taken those emotions from you. This is who you were, before Mister Crane, before your accident. This is who you are.

You’ve told him your story about growing up with your ability. You never did much with your forcefields until recent years. You didn’t actively seek out trouble (Not like you, Diego, you remark with a smile) but if you came across it, you’d step in. You don’t have the formal training Diego does as consequence of being in the Umbrella Academy, but you handle your powers well enough.

He can hardly detect the person he confronted during the bank robbery when he looks at you. He recalls vividly the dark visor of your gas mask, reflecting his face and the destruction you wrought. It acted as a barrier, stealing away your humanity and fulfilling Mister Crane’s vision for what you should be, and were to him: nothing but a machine. With the mask fallen away and the figurative veil over your eyes lifted, that ghost in the machine had taken a breath of fresh air, long suppressed.

Truth be told, he can’t say he’s very certain the forcefields were your only power. That benevolence spilling from your heart, too big to be contained, made a good case for itself. Perhaps on October 1, 1989, whatever higher beings that had caused the anomaly of those special forty-three children had also decided to bestow you with all the goodness to keep the world turning.

An announcement is made on the morning news that the mayor is going to give a speech the next day, a routine update for everyone in the city about various public works and amendments. Your face as you watch the television with crossed arms is grave.

“Think Mister Crane is going to be there?” Diego asks.

“He wanted to have an army of androids at his disposal to confront the mayor,” you begin, “but I think he’ll go through with it even without one. That prototype Ferdinand developed is incredibly strong; I’ve seen it in action. It’d still give the police a run for their money.”

“Then we’ll be there waiting for him. We can keep to the periphery, where we can’t be seen. If he’s a no-show, no one at city hall is any wiser and we get out of there.”

In the days leading up to this point, you had expected Mister Crane to search for you. You were always looking over your shoulder for that android of his, sent to pursue you like a dog. But you’ve been left alone, and rather than setting you more at ease, it serves to make you more tense. There was purpose in his not coming after you, and you wracked your brain for what it could be. Now with the knowledge that the mayor’s speech is tomorrow and you’ve had no signs of your former employer attempting to find you, you’re confident you’re about to walk into a trap.

You voice these concerns to Diego as you sit down on his bed, the mattress bouncing beneath you. He’s at the table sharpening his knives but he’d been listening to every word.

“I can’t think of any kind of trap he might have. Without Ferdinand and his tech, he doesn’t have much in the way of surprises.”

“Maybe I’m paranoid, but I was just so sure he’d come after me, and since he hasn’t…”

“Don’t write off a gut feeling,” he tells you. “We’ll exercise more caution tomorrow. Watch our backs more closely.”

When the next day rolls around, you’re outfitted similarly, clothed fully in black. The speech begins in an hour, and you pick nervously at the hem of your long-sleeve. Your fingertips are buzzing, a familiar sensation when you’re anxious, small sparks threatening to flicker to life. It’s your fight or flight response encouraging you to form forcefields to defend yourself, and prepare for a battle.

Diego is rummaging in the dresser but you’re not paying attention, instead watching the morning’s stock market segment without really processing any of what’s being said or what’s shown on the screen. A small banner running along the bottom shows a reminder about the speech.

A small hum of victory leaves Diego’s mouth once he finds what he’s looking for. There’s a pause, and in your periphery you catch him glancing at you before he dives back into the contents of the drawer. Your fingers tingle again, and you consider redoing your ponytail for the fifth time to alleviate the sensation and give them something to do that didn’t involve forcefields. Just as the news cuts to a commercial break, Diego slides the drawer closed and approaches you.

“Here. You can’t leave your face exposed.”

You turn your focus to Diego to see he’s already wearing his mask. Then your eyes slide lower to the object he’s holding out. While his own domino mask is angular with more rounded points, the one he’s giving you has longer edges on both sides, with tapered tips at all four corners so that they resemble wings. Gingerly, you take it from him, running your thumb over the smooth material.

“I got it a while ago, but didn’t think it suited me much.” He chuckles. "Good thing I held onto it, huh?”

You stand, turning over the mask and putting it on. It fits snugly to the contours of your face, and you angle your head to look at yourself in the mirror up against the far wall. When you smile, you can actually see the curve of your lips. Staring into the mirror, you recognize that what stares back is you. Unlike with the gas mask, some of your features remain exposed, a reminder that you are human, like Diego, like Ferdinand, like all the people you want to keep safe from here on out. The notion of humanity cared not for the circuitry that comprised your being.

“Yeah,” Diego comments, appraising you as well, and approving with a nod. “It suits you a lot better.”

The two of you sneak out to Diego’s car via the back exit. On every street, your eyes are scanning left and right, checking the sidewalks and the cars waiting for their turns at the intersection. You didn’t fully expect for Mister Crane to confront you before the mayor’s speech, since there’s no doubt it would cause a ruckus, and word of the impending danger would prompt the police to cancel the event and bring the mayor somewhere safe. No, if Mister Crane wanted to deal with you, he would do it at city hall. Two birds with one stone.

A sizable crowd has formed at the base of the white steps, a combination of press, with their microphones and cameras, and regular citizens. A podium with the city’s seal on the front rests on a platform. There are a few council officials already on the small stage, and one of them walks up the podium to share opening remarks.

You find a place to hide in an alley across the street, concealed by dumpsters filled to the brim with trash bags. The smell leaves a lot to be desired, but the important part is that you’re out of sight. Still, Diego can’t help waving a hand in front of his face, a futile attempt to mitigate the stench as his nose scrunches up in distaste. While it’s pungent enough not to be ignored completely, you show no signs of being bothered, too distracted with staring straight ahead. If you’d been skittish on the drive over here, that was nothing compared to now.

Mayor Turner replaces the first politician’s place at the podium, with a thank you and a clap on the shoulder. The speakers that had been set up boom with his voice, carrying along the stretch of street. A couple of police cars are parked on the curb, cops standing by the doors, attention on the crowds in search of anything suspicious.

The tingling at the tips of your fingers has begun again, and Diego is twirling a knife absentmindedly. Both of you are on high alert, prepared to spring into action the instant anything appears off. But before long, the mayor shares his closing comments, then the question and answer segment begins. And nothing else thus far that would merit your intervention.

The lack of any trouble is no grounds to relax, and the distinct silence between you shows you understand that. There may only be ten minutes left, but that’s ten minutes too many to be comfortable. Still, that doesn’t leave much time to get to the mayor, and your eyes narrow. Had you been wrong in your assumptions about Mister Crane’s plan? Is there something else he’s doing?

A gust of wind blows strong enough to ruffle your hair, and you reach up to tame the stray strands in your ponytail. The breeze had also kicked up a fresh wave of the smell of garbage, and Diego recoils.

“Gross.” It’s the first thing said between you two since you had claimed this place as your stakeout spot.

At the same moment he speaks, the screeching of tires rounding the corner cuts off Mayor Turner in the middle of his sentence. The same armored truck from the bank robbery speeds down the road, not bothering to keep to a lane. The other cars on the road honk and try to veer out of the way, but not all of them are successful. Those that get caught in its path are knocked aside, points of impact crumpling like paper. The truck, however, is none the worse for wear.

It’s heading straight for the steps, and once the crowd there realizes this, they scream and rush to split up. Rather than running into any people, it collides with the empty stage, barreling over the podium. The microphone rings shrilly as it gets jostled, but the sound dies quickly because the speakers get crushed as well.

The rumble of the engine cuts off, and the large door at the back slides up, revealing Mister Crane’s android. His stare is hard as he examines the chaos, looking for his target. Once he spots it, he jumps out and takes heavy, purposeful steps.

The mayor is being ushered towards a car, but the android is catching up quickly. He seems to speed up his pace as he gets closer, and without a moment’s hesitation, you run across the street. Your hand buzzes with a newly manifested forcefield, which you throw ahead of you, in the direction of the android. Instead of colliding with him, it zooms by right in front, forcing him to pause.

When he turns to look at you, you immediately send more his way, keeping him distracted long enough for everyone to get to safety. He has no issue receiving the brunt of your forcefields. There was no flesh for you to cut up; the metal skeleton protected his wiring, and you couldn’t penetrate that. Diego, however, who follows close behind, could. His knives were tangible, with sharp enough points to puncture. A well-placed shot, while perhaps not enough to shut the android down entirely, could slow him down considerably.

The police who were on the scene have drawn their guns and started shooting. The android hardly blinks as the bullets bounce off him and treats them like they’re merely a nuisance.

“Hey, get out of here!” Diego yells to the cops l. He could sense the android was going to go after them, and they had no fighting chance. “It’s not safe!”

As if on cue, the android braces his hands beneath one of the cars on the curb, and hoists it over his head. It creaks precariously as it’s lifted from the ground, yet the one who holds it up hardly looks winded. He flings it across to where the police stand, and they scramble, but before the car can land, you’ve stretched out your arm and encapsulated the vehicle in a translucent blue bubble that floats high above your heads.

You need not argue with the cops anymore than that. They flee, and you try to let the car down as gently as you can. But Diego shouts for you to watch out, and you barely dive out of the way of a wooden barrier hurtling towards you. With your concentration broken, the car falls the rest of the distance and crashes roof-down onto the concrete.

The android is standing by the armored truck, fists clench and eyes trained on you and Diego, prepared to launch another attack. Both of you brace yourselves with feet apart and shoulders squared. You breath heavily, adrenaline coursing through your veins. You’re about to strike when the sound of clapping floats out from the still open door on the truck.

That familiar plague doctor mask comes into view as Mister Crane stands at the edge, boots thudding on the metal. “I planned to make an appearance sooner,” he starts, “but I was having so much fun watching the show.”

He hops out, taking his time as he walks over and comes to a stop next to his android. You can’t see his eyes but you know he’s staring straight at you, cold and calculating. He chuckles and it’s humorless. “Traded one mask for another, I see.” He pauses, as though expecting a response, but you’ve nothing to say, and evidently he knew you wouldn’t, for he continues on. “This would have been a very simple job, if you hadn’t gotten in the way and… mucked it all up. But no matter. Here’s your chance to redeem yourself: stand down.”

Diego scoffs from your left, clearly not taking it seriously, but you don’t match his feelings that such a request is silly. Mister Crane doesn’t just make supposedly facetious demands. “Why would I do that?” you ask.

Mister Crane claps his hands together once, but the sound is muffled by his gloves. “Ah. Wonderful question.” The android retreats back inside the truck upon his prompting, and there are sounds of a struggle. But the android has no issue dragging a man along with him back out of the vehicle and forcing him to his feet.

It’s the wild mane of white hair that catches your attention first. A piece of cloth tied around his mouth prevents him from saying anything comprehensible, but he’s trying to yell out to you and Diego anyway.

Diego, in particular, is caught more off guard about this. He’d kept in mind what you said about Mister Crane setting a trap, having something up his sleeve to take you by surprise. But he never expected that it could be something like this. “How did you—”

“—find him?” Mister Crane finishes. “Rather than waste my time trying to find [Name], I did something more worthwhile: search for dear Ferdinand. I didn’t do it so he could continue to work for me. Oh no. After what he’s done, I’ve no use for him anymore. No. Now, he’s merely leverage.”

As soon as he finishes this sentence, you know the offer he’s going to make. You feel sick. You don’t want to entertain the question he’s about to present you with. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Ferdinand was supposed to be somewhere safe, in hiding, and you and Diego were supposed to stop Mister Crane without harming anybody else. But Mister Crane was a step ahead, figuring out a way to keep you from interfering.

“Allow me to proceed with my plans in peace, and I’ll let Ferdinand go.”

You swallow hard, eyes sliding from Mister Crane over to Ferdinand. He’s shaking his head frantically, and even with the gag, you can tell he’s telling you Don’t do it. Your stomach turns uncomfortably. Of course he would tell you not to. There’s a greater good to fight for, and his death would be minor in the wider scope of things. If let to his own devices, Mister Crane would only kill more. Yet you can’t bring yourself to resist so easily because you know the saying goes kill one, save a thousand but you want to save everyone and you hate that you can’t do that. The fighting wasn’t the difficult part about all this, about being thrown into the fray and stopping evil at the front door. It was the decisions you were forced to make.

Slowly, the forcefields in your hands fizzle out, and when Diego hears it, he turns to look at you. “[Name], you can’t be serious—”

“I’ll stay out of your way.” You ignore him, raising your voice so Mister Crane can hear you. “We both will.”

“Wait—”

“Excellent!” Diego gets cut off a second time as Mister Crane responds. He gives another wordless command to his android, who shoves Ferdinand away. He tumbles to the ground, unable to catch himself since his hands are still bound. He grunts in pain, and as the android rejoins Mister Crane, Diego squashes down any protests he had and focuses on helping Ferdinand, using a knife to cut the rope and pull out the cloth wrapped around his head. He had no idea what the hell you were thinking, but it was your decision, and it was too late to try to reason with you.

With his gag removed, Ferdinand says your name—quietly, but you can still hear him fine. He’s shaking his head again. Don’t let them go. Diego looks over his shoulder at you as well, waiting for what you would do. You don’t respond, not saying anything or nodding or anything that would let him know you even acknowledged what he’s trying to tell you. You’re rooted to the spot, but before Mister Crane and his android can re-enter the truck and proceed with their hunt for the mayor, sparks begin whirring in your palms again and you aim for Mister Crane.

The android is fast, however, and blocks it easily. Mister Crane turns around, shaking his head in mock disappointment, but something tells you he’d known this would happen. “Tsk tsk. We could’ve done this the easy way.”

Diego throws a knife towards the android, who ducks out of its way before running at him. You only have a brief moment to glance over to see Ferdinand has retreated behind the wrecked police car before Mister Crane is on you.

He’s shed his gloves, and your eyes widen to see that in place of human hands, he has fully robotic limbs. They’re clear, allowing you to view the circuitry and the subtle movement of the mechanisms with his motions. Every punch is heavy, kicking up a breeze that you feel every time you dodge.  He probably had Ferdinand give him those enhancements, and you never knew because he always kept his hands covered. In fact, you didn’t know what he looked like at all.

You put up a forcefield to block a hit coming straight for your chest, and it pulsates from the impact, but it’s strong enough to knock you off your feet. You roll to the side as he brings a fist down, leaving a crater in the spot of concrete where your head just was. His strikes come out too quickly for you to find an opening, and you can only do your best to block the onslaught.

In the midst of his struggle against the android, Diego can hear you fighting Mister Crane. He can only spare a glance, but it’s all he needs to know you’re not doing well either. With the brief moment of reprieve he’s afforded when he knocks the android back, he throws a knife in your direction.

The whistle of the blade cutting through the air grows louder as it gets closer. You watch it soar past you, but then, as if remembering where it was suppose to go, it turns back around, flying into Mister Crane’s back.

He cries out in pain, and it allows you the opportunity to retaliate. You charge forward and bring him down to the ground. This pushes the knife in more, and he groans, squirming and trying to reach behind him to pull it out. Your weight atop him prevents him from being able to grab it, and you clench your fist, watching as your forcefield morphs to wrap around your hand, like armor.

It’s your turn to deliver the blows. His mask cracks with every hit, yet you don’t feel any of it. Not even when the eye pieces snap and the glass crumbles. Soon you can see Mister Crane’s face poking through, in the growing fissure of the mask. You note, firstly, that he’s bleeding profusely. His lip is split, and his nose is most likely broken. The second thing you note is his heavily scarred skin, and the particularly large one stretching across his face. His left eye is cloudy, light enough that from a distance it would look entirely white. Purple splotches dot his cheeks, growing darker and angrier with your punches.

He goes slack, too weak to fight you off or continue his efforts to extract the knife, and you’re panting when you finally stop. He’s still breathing, you know that. You had no intention of going so far as to kill him.  

“What—” Mister Crane coughs, and his inhale is scratchy, slow with the amount of effort it requires. “What are you waiting for?”

You hadn’t been looking at him, but you do now, eyes full of contempt. You huff as your heartbeat returns to normal and shake your head, sliding off of him to the ground and landing ungracefully on your haunches. You’re quiet for a few seconds, the silence interspersed with Mister Crane’s raspy breaths. In this space of time, Diego walks over. You hadn’t noticed that his struggle with the android went silent.

“I told myself I wanted to save everyone,” you declare, and this statement is followed by a deep sigh of exhaustion.

Diego stands behind you, staring down at Mister Crane, and purses his lips. He can’t help the swelling of his chest at your words. You had a goal, and you set out to do it. You exercise the self-control he wishes he always had. He knows the hate you have for Mister Crane, and he doesn’t blame you for it. How could he? Yet you hadn’t let it consume you, and if anything, that anger has ebbed away into weariness, and a desire for it to just all be over. And it was now.

He stretches his hand out to you, and your head turns slightly when you see it in your periphery. You take hold of it and he hoists you up. “You okay?”

Diego’s watching you with genuine concern, as he had the day you first woke up at the boxing gym. The heaviness weighing on you feels a little lighter at his inquiry. The rest would be alleviated with rest, and a lot of it. You manage a small smile. “Yeah. I am now.”

From over his shoulder, you can see Mister Crane’s android face down on the ground, a knife sticking out the base of his neck. And you spot Ferdinand, peeking up over the upside down police car to check if the coast is clear. Upon finding that it is, he stands up fully, and you and Diego meet him in the middle. You repeat Diego’s question to Ferdinand, and he too grins in response.

“A little shaken up, but it’ll pass.” You’re about to speak up, but he shakes his head. “There’s no time. Both of you need to get out of here. The authorities will be here soon.”

You don’t seem to want to leave, but Diego gently curls a hand around your forearm, as if to lead you away. “Come on,” he says quietly. You look back at him, then over at Ferdinand, who gives you one last reassuring nod. With a sigh, you acquiesce, allowing Diego to pull you along, back across the street, through the alley, and towards his car. By the time he’s pulling away, you can hear the sirens.

———

As far as anyone else is concerned, the only things Mister Crane had forced Ulysses Ferdinand to do were give him cybernetic enhancements, as well as build an android to do his bidding.

He leaves you out of the picture, and for that, you’d forever be grateful. This kept you out away from any sort of media attention. It also let you do your crime fighting anonymously. If word came to light of your abilities, it would render your mask useless, and if anyone wanted to come after you, it’d be easier to do with a name. Though you’ve had a while to adjust, both to your new body and to using your powers more regularly, you can’t quite believe you’re thinking about it so casually, as though this has always been the state of affairs.

You never anticipated this is where you would end up. Then again, you never anticipated that car crash either. According to Ferdinand, you nearly died, and would have if he hadn’t stepped in. But you can’t resist entertaining the what-if’s. The route your life could have taken is drastically different. The alternative would have been a safer life, certainly, but these days you have no qualms putting it on the line if it meant you could help others. That’s one of the aspects you’ve learned about yourself as a result of what has happened, and it felt good. You wouldn’t be willing to give that up for the sake of a normal life.

And there are other reasons you’re perfectly happy with the hand you’ve been dealt, and he sits to your left at the bar, head tilted back and taking a giant swig of his third bottle of beer. When Diego sets the bottle down on the bar top, you notice he’s nearly finished it already. You’re still in the middle of your second.

He feels you looking at him and meets your gaze. “What?”

“How do you do that?” you ask incredulously, pointing at his bottle. “You’re so fast!” You hold up your own to show him how much you have left (never mind being an entire bottle behind) and he laughs.

“Better hurry it up, sweetheart. I’m about to order another round.”

You laugh too and shake your head. The jingle from channel 5 news chimes on the flat screen behind the bar, signaling the end of the commercial break. Ferdinand’s back for another interview today. By this point, the talk and hype about the circumstances of his disappearance have passed, and he’s back on television for the reasons he had been prior to being kidnapped: to discuss his research.

It makes you smile seeing him there, conversing jovially and enthusiastically about his recent discoveries and his plans for the future. The debacle with Mister Crane hadn’t scared him out of the public eye. You, and you’re sure many others, would understand if it had. He’s a prolific scientist in his field, and there’s no doubt these interviews had been why Mister Crane decided to capture him. But he acts as if nothing’s changed.

No, not as if nothing changed. As if it’s water under the bridge. He won’t deny what happened, but it’s in the past now, and there’s no sense lingering on it. The way he’s handling the situation is what you try to follow. He’s bouncing back from it a better person, and you want that for yourself too. You figure you’re doing a pretty job of it so far.

Diego orders another beer for himself, then looks up at the television. “Ferdinand’s hair is wild as ever,” he remarks.

You chuckle, and when the camera cuts back to Ferdinand and you see that crazy mane in its full glory, you set off on another fit of giggles. “Hey, he makes it work.”

“You guys still been e-mailing?”

You nod. You and Ferdinand had begun correspondence fresh off the Mister Crane situation. At the start, most of the contents of the messages were how to calibrate and do repairs on your system. Ferdinand had also promised that his door was always open, if you needed to come in for work that required more specialized tools. But then it shifted from solely technical talk to how you’ve been coping. He gave you what advice he could, able to empathize with you since you’d both been through that fiasco.

“Less and less these days,” you reply. “He’s just been so busy. But I think it could be on  purpose too. You know, helping me along, teaching me to fly, and then letting me go.” You shrug matter-of-factly.

Diego says a quiet thank you to the bartender as he returns with his beer, then smiles fondly at you. Catching his stare, it’s your turn to ask What? and all he says is, “I’m proud of you.”

You raise a brow but you’re grinning as well. “Thanks, dad.”

He laughs. “Hey, I mean it. The shit you’ve been through… I dunno if I’d be strong enough to still be standing at the end of it.” He brings his beer up to his lips.

“I mean… it helps that I hadn’t been alone.”

Diego sets his drink down, looking at you seriously now. You can see in his eyes that he wants to know what you mean, so you elaborate. “You rescued Ferdinand. You rescued me, gave me a chance instead of tearing up my wiring and leaving me for dead. Not that I would blame you if you had; I did some pretty awful things. But then on top of that, you helped me take down Mister Crane. So I think it’s safe to say you are just as strong as I am.” At the end of the explanation, you grin softly.

Seeing your smile prompts Diego’s chest to tighten, almost painfully so. Admittedly, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Every instance you’ve sent one his way, he felt it. A knee-jerk reaction by now, and he’s not left to wonder what it means. With every passing day he wants more and more just to hold you close and kiss you and if his whole body responds the way it does when he merely sees your smile… Christ, he can’t imagine what would happen if he got to feel it, whether against his own mouth or with the pad of his thumb, gently running across the length of your lips and committing the graceful curve of his salvation to memory.

You’re still watching him, and before the seconds stretch too long and become awkward, he laughs quietly. “I always wonder how that’s possible.”

“How what’s possible?”

“To have a heart as big as you do.”

The comment stops you short, and in a rare moment of bashfulness, you look away, suddenly becoming interested in your bottle of beer (still half full). You twirl it around absentmindedly, staring at the condensation dripping along the sides. Diego waits patiently for you to respond, watching your lithe fingers around the bottle, and then your face—the curve of your lashes, the line of your jaw and the smooth column of your neck. The strands of hair too short to be tied back no matter how many times you redo your braid. You turn back to him finally, and he’s afforded a close-up of your eyes, bright and wonderful.

“I’ve got too much love to give. I hope you don’t mind being collateral damage,” you tease. Your voice has lowered in volume due to your proximity, which had been shrinking, and shrinking still.

Diego shakes his head. His gaze flickers down to your lips, and that’s when he knows he’s a goner. “I could never.” And throwing caution to the wind, he leans in the rest of the way.

Farther down the road, he’ll tell you that he used to imagine what it would feel like to kiss you, and that when it happened for real, he wasn’t disappointed, and you’ll laugh, your cheeks warming because he always wants you to know that you had him in your grasp from the beginning, that it was your warm eyes that did him in. But right now, he’s focused on the taste of your strawberry lip balm and he’s being sincere when he concludes the strawberry milkshakes at Griddy’s Doughnuts could never hope to compete with you. His heart twists and he thinks it might explode.

You pull away slightly but remain close enough that your lips brush, and your gaze is half-lidded and he loves you. There’s a commercial playing on the television for a cellular service, an old song from a long gone decade floats through the room from the speakers, and the other patrons of the bar are chatting and laughing and ordering drinks. All of it is background noise, and in these few seconds the world seems to come to a halt.

Then you smile again, dreamy and contented because, he hopes, you’re just as love drunk as he is. And you make the world start turning again.

Later that evening, a call comes on the police scanner regarding a residential break and enter. Nothing need be said as both of you suit up, and as per usual, on the drive over, Diego is trying to toss name ideas your way.

“No, Diego, c’mon, I don’t need one—”

“But why? It would be fun! How about Falcon? Black Falcon?”

“Who would even use it? I thought the whole point of operating at night was so no one saw us.”

“If you ever need to announce who you are.” Diego shrugs.

You roll your eyes, but you’re grinning.

Diego parks far away from the actual location of the house, and you go on foot the rest of the way there, staying away from the street lamps and ducking past houses with their lights on. There are no sounds of a struggle coming from inside once you arrive, and you’re able to take the burglars by surprise. You draw them away from the family they’ve tied up, dispatching them at a safe distance.

When they’re laying incapacitated on the ground, Diego grab his knives back and aids you in untying their captives, cutting ropes and slowly removing the duct tape over their mouths. As he peels back the tape on the father, he says, “Your family is safe now.”

The television is on in the lounge, and when your task is done, Diego walks in to see the breaking news segment that has flashed on the screen. You come in behind him, not quite catching the beginning, but entering just in time to hear the name of the deceased. You aren’t personally acquainted with the one who’s passed, but you still can’t contain your quiet gasp.

“Diego…” you trail off. “I’m so sorry.”

Diego swallows, frozen to the spot, incapable of much movement. But then he simply shakes his head. “Don’t be.” He turns on his heel and walks past you, back to the front door. You stay put momentarily, staring at the portrait of the late Reginald Hargreeves, before you also proceed to make your leave. You give one more reassuring grin and nod at the family, as if to give them the okay to call the cops now. You and Diego would be increasing your distance and getting far away from the scene.

He’s mentioned his siblings before, and their time together as the Umbrella Academy, but he never went into detail (That’s a whole other can of worms, he’d said). With this news, you know they’ll be returning to town for the wake. He doesn’t seem sad, he doesn’t seem happy, he doesn’t seem anything at the revelation of his father’s death or the prospect of seeing his bothers and sisters after years apart. But you meant it when you said he was strong, and if you got through what you did, he could get through this too.

[bitsandbobsandstuff]

A love that never leaves (2)

Summary: Sometimes when you go looking for the past, you find things you never expected. When an accident brings him face to face with something he never knew he lost, Bucky Barnes begins to understand an age old truth – it’s so easy, sometimes, to love the things that destroy us.

Characters: Bucky Barnes x Reader Warnings: Bad language. Sad Bucky.

A/N: The plot thickens. Bucky recovers from a shit situation and learns more about the person who found him. Remembering is really hard and memories do not cooperate.

I’m planning to post a chapter a week, on either Saturday or Sunday. I tried to tag everyone who reached out, but if I missed you, it was unintentional, so please send me a DM or ASK, it’s easier for me to track. Otherwise you can find the new updates each weekend!

MASTERLIST ALTNL MASTERLIST

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

Previously...

The figure halts. A gloved hand reaches to pull back the hood of the white coat and a woman’s face appears. Even through the howling wind, Bucky hears her question clearly and he doesn’t understand why the two syllables feel like a knife ripping through skin and bone and thick sinew, straight to his heart.

“Soldier?”

She speaks hesitantly, her voice tinged with a peculiar hint of hope. Bucky wants to ruminate further, but his fingers are rubbing the slippery edges of his gunshot wounds and the snow around him is greedy, lusting for the hot blood he spills.

He wants to answer. He tries to answer, he really does.

Instead, he falls face first into the soft snow.

*****

MISSION REPORT

CONTACT MADE BUT RESPONDENT ELIMINATED. BASE DID NOT REVEAL INFORMATION REQUIRED TO PROCEED TO NEXT RENDEZVOUS POINT. HOLD AND WAIT.

WITHOUT ADDITIONAL SUPPORT MISSION FAILURE IS IMMINENT. REQUESTING BACK UP FOR – 

For what? The words evaporate. Smoke in the wind. The pencil clatters to the floor and rolls away and his notebook follows. He goes to his knees in front of the brick wall and he slams his fist against it again and again, until his knuckles are shredded. 

He screams.

****

Bucky’s entire body is on fire.

Burning hot, scorching him from the inside out. This can’t be right, he’s done. He’s supposed to be done with this shit, what are they doing now? Bleary eyes open and he tries to speak. To tell them no, to leave him alone, to please just fucking stop. Heat races through his veins, suffocating him and he feels rivers of sweat coursing down his face, down his chest, down his arms. 

Above him, floats a blurry face, both intensely familiar and completely foreign. She wipes a cold cloth over his face and Bucky sighs in relief. 

Darkness comes again.

*****

We’ll meet again…don’t know where…don’t know when…but I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day…

The melody flows like water inside his head and Bucky follows it slowly, swimming languidly into consciousness. When he breaks the surface, his brain comes to life, but his eyes stay closed.

It’s a trait he perfected over the years, waking up without anyone realizing. Back then, he’d quickly discovered if you’re flat on your back and don’t know where you are, your safest bet is certainly not to show them you’re awake. Once they know, you lose your advantage.

That’s usually when the pain starts.

Instead, he starts his internal assessment. Ears straining for any hint of sound, he waits, listening for anything. The intake of breath, a quiet sniffle, the whisper of fabric, a footfall. Anything. The silence stretches and he’s finally forced to conclude – either his captor is just that good, or he’s alone. 

Cracking an eye, he draws a soundless breath, taking stock of his surroundings.

This is – interesting.  

The room he’s in is dim, suffused with swaths of muted daylight streaming in through the massive window in front of the bed. His eyes track the expanse of clear glass, stretching from the floor, extending up the vaulted ceiling and ending in a wide skylight. A small fireplace is tucked into the corner, a basket of logs piled next to the dark slate tiles, and the soothing pop and crackle of wood lulls him toward a sense of false security. 

Snow still falls outside, but it’s no longer the wailing blizzard; instead, fat, wet flakes drift quietly by, piling onto the tall evergreens hugging the window. 

Feeling the silky sheen of satin against his skin, he peeks under the sheets to find himself nearly naked, wearing nothing more than a crisp white bandage and skin-tight boxers. 

“What the sweet fuck is this shit?” he mutters, dropping the sheets and struggling to sit up. The bed is wide and covered in all shades of blue – a dusty blue duvet, sky blue sheets, a midnight blue quilt – and suddenly it all mixes into a watery blur when his vision goes sideways. Pain rips through him and he flops back, whining softly. Pressing gently against the bandage, the pain flares so fast, he digs his heels into the bed, spine arching unconsciously. He can feel it, actually feel it, the tugging sensation of his skin knitting itself back together. Sweat instantly pours down his face.

“Don’t scream,” he hisses through gritted teeth, “don’t scream you fuckin’ baby, don’t.”

Clamping his lips together, he swallows the sounds he’d desperately love to howl, focusing on counting the snowflakes drifting past the window. He loses count of the deep, calming breaths he takes and long minutes later, the worst appears to pass. For now. Bucky’s rigid muscles begin to relax.

He appreciates the whole healing fast thing, he really does, but the process is just fucking unpleasant.

Swinging his legs over the bed, toes curling into a plush rug, he wobbles to his feet. Looking around, he searches for his clothes, but he comes up empty handed. He doesn’t actually mind the lack of clothing, it’s more the lack of pockets for weapons that irritate him.

But a good solider can make a weapon from anything, so he snatches a log from the basket next to the fireplace, rotates his arm until the plates shift smoothly, and creeps from the bedroom.  

Tiptoeing down the steps to the first level, he stops short. 

The small town he’d infiltrated was derelict, gritty, downtrodden.

The home he finds himself inhabiting is the polar opposite.

Wooden steps lead down into a cosy stone and log cabin. The small kitchen has an island with a couple hand-hewn stools and an oak butcher block in the middle, burnished copper pots hanging from a rack above. The floor is a deep russet red, the wide-planked floorboards containing a myriad of knots and whorls. Above him, thick beams stretch the expanse of the room, with dark iron lighting fixtures casting a rosy glow through the room. In the centre wall of the living room, flanked with tall vertical windows, stands a fireplace, the uneven shapes of grey river rock fitting together seamlessly. From the tall windows, he has a clear view of a foggy mountain range. Another fire crackles and pops merrily in the calm silence. 

A cracked white pitcher filled with pine boughs gives off a sharp, clean scent and Bucky finds himself struggling to remain overly vigilant, because it’s beautiful. It’s a home. 

Beauty means nothing though. A lesson he learned the hard way through the years.

Slinking into the kitchen, he rummages through the silverware, turning up three finely sharpened knives. Two, he tucks into the elastic band of his boxers, feeling instant relief at the feel of the blades hugging his hip. The third, a large butcher knife, he flips around and holds outward, ready to swing.

Switching into stealth mode, he goes to work.

Rifling through kitchen cupboards and drawers. Lifting throw pillows and blankets from the sofa. Scanning rows of books arranged in alphabetical order. Searching a small linen closet. Ears perked for the sound of footsteps outside.

And yeah, he finds a few things.

A few weird things.

It starts in the small closet. Buried under a pile of quilts, he finds a heavy metal box. Pulling a bobby pin from the perpetual tangle of colorful hair-ties he keeps around his wrist, it takes a few tries before he has the lock picked. Lifting the lid reveals a perfectly folded pile of worn t-shirts. Shaking each out, he scans the logos – emblazoned across each one is a different city from Bon Jovi’s 1986 Slippery When Wet European tour. 

They’re just old t-shirts, the kinds you find people hawking at concert venues or in the bargain bin at a thrift store. Nothing special or expensive. Yet here they are, folded into neat squares and tucked into a box that could probably withstand an explosion. 

His confusion spirals, but Bucky fights a small smile. It seems odd, but hey, he really likes Bon Jovi too. Maybe he would do the same.

Re-folding the tissue thin cloth, he locks the box and stuffs it back in place.

Trying the bookcase next, he pulls books out, feeling behind them. Knuckles rap at random, tap, tap, tap, until he hears an unexpected thunk. The hollow sound gives it away and with a shove, he shifts the back panel and finds another small locked box. Holding it under his arm, he fiddles with the bobby pin again and the lid cracks. Two items appear.

A crushed red velvet jewelry bag.

A handful of cheap vintage postcards in a clear plastic bag.

Crouching to the floor, he shakes the contents of the jewelry bag free. A handful of silvery-blue pebbles clatter out and in the middle of the pile, a necklace. Bucky holds the worn chain up to the light. Spinning slowly on the end is a round disc, a little dingy and rubbed smooth, but he can see the outline. 

Bucky wasn’t exactly a good little Catholic growing up, and yeah, religion wasn’t the sort of personal expression Hydra encouraged for the Soldier. His knowledge of saints was spotty as a kid and is extensively worse now, but he recognizes the medal – he knows Steve had one, wore it during the war and was wearing it when his plane went down. He donated it to the Smithsonian when he returned. Most of the military seemed to have one back then and Bucky assumes he had one as well, although he has no clue.

On the little medal, is the image of Saint Michael. The patron saint of Soldiers.

Fingering the medal pensively, he tries to summon a memory, any memory. He figures he must have something in there that could build off this particular war-related trinket.

But no. Just like always.

Setting it gently aside, he opens the clear bag instead. Pulling out the postcards, he lines them carefully up in front of him, internally translating the languages.

Covered with palm trees, an exuberant statement in French: Welcome to sunny Nice!

A colorful boulevard linked with green trees in Spanish stating: The Beauty of Barcelona 

A laughing cartoon caricature of a man holding skis in Swiss German: Enjoy your Winter in Zurich

The solemn announcement in Italian, written over an image of the Coliseum: Hello from Rome: The Eternal City

Orange and red leaves, covering a giant beer stein in German: Oktoberfest in Munich!

And the dogged mantra of the stoic English, tall white letters against a soft pink backdrop: Keep Calm and Carry On

But the one that piques his interest the most, is last in the pile. A hand-painted postcard, the paint chipped and faded through time, of the Brooklyn Bridge at night. The title above in carefully printed letters reads: Brooklyn, New York – Thank God It’s Not Jersey. Bucky feels his heart stutter at the words, because he’s pretty god damn sure he and Steve used to throw out that same phrase. 

On the back of the Brooklyn postcard, he finds the inked shapes of two hearts tangled together.

Bucky stares hard at the image, so simple but vibrating with some unknown meaning. Flipping through all the other cards, he finds them blank, nothing more than a pretty collection. Bewildered and careening toward frustrated anger, he gathers them together and slips them into the bag. He bangs the box shut and hides it away again.

He finds three more locked boxes in his search, each containing innocuous items. One with a thin, moth-eaten baby blanket. One with a random assortment of old Life magazines.

After stowing away the final box, housing an envelope with three sepia toned photos of a tall man and a small girl, he spends another ten minutes searching for clues. Finally, he’s convinced the room has shared all its secrets - until he notices the crease in the rug below the coffee table.

Shoving the table aside, Bucky flips up the rug. In the middle of the floor, he finds a plank of wood slightly thinner than the others, with a small chink in the edge. Crouching down, he runs his thumb around it and nudges it up, finding a hidden space below.

There he finds one more box. His beleaguered bobby pin gives a final brave attempt and with a quiet snick, the lock pops open. 

Inside are three dusty books. Peeling gold letters line the spine of each, showing a single word, followed by three different numbers. 

Journal, 1967 Journal, 1968 Journal, 1969 

From the pages of 1969, a ticket stub flutters to the floor.

*****

Under the fall of lacy snowflakes, she walks. Circling the small cabin for hours, her toes are damn near frozen, but she finds herself unwilling to go back inside. He has to be waking soon and the thought of facing him makes her chest ache. Instead, she walks the narrow path along the bank of the rushing stream bordering her home and argues with herself.

Go inside. Ask him. Talk to him. See if he remembers. Tell him the truth! He deserves to know. Maybe he doesn’t want to hear it. Maybe he’ll just kill you and be done. Probably not though, you’re not that lucky.

Hysterical laughter bubbles up and she digs the puffy gloved heels of her palms into her eyes. She really needs to get out more. This constant talking to herself thing will get her institutionalized someday.

But she literally has no one else to talk to. And that right there, has always been the problem. 

Brushing the snow from a giant boulder, she gingerly sits. Bending forward, she drops her head to her knees and wraps her arms around her legs, trying desperately not to give in to the panic attack threatening to drive its anxious fingers into her brain. Memories begin to swirl and even after all this time, the sound of his voice rises so easily to the surface, a sweet, drawling Brooklyn twang that turns her stomach to knots.

“Je vais avoir de la chance ce soir. Il y a de belles femmes en France qui ne m'aiment pas?”

“Can I walk you home?”

“Wait for me darlin’, okay? Will you? I’ll come back for you. I promise I will.”

“You’re what I want. You’re what I’m always gonna want.”

“You and me, this kind of love, it lasts forever, okay? It’s never gonna leave.”

“Dammit. Shit shit shit,” she chants to herself. Thick and heavy, the memories press down until she buckles under the burden of remembering. Tears begin to fall, hot trails down her face and she wipes them away, her hands shaking. 

She stays on the frozen rock, letting time pass while the cold seeps through her clothes. The air is so icy, it makes her lungs seize.

*****

The butcher knife lays beside him, within easy reach. Bucky sits cross-legged on the floor, flicking through the pages at random. He pauses now and then, digging deeper, losing himself in the faded ink of another’s life.

19 May, 1967

America is strange. I arrived in Los Angeles with no goal, just rented a car and drove. First to the coast and saw the ocean. It was different than the first time Papa took me – I’ve never seen anything so blue. I tried not to think about it, but it was in my head. It’s always there. Blue everywhere. The water, the sky, his eyes. I can never leave it behind.

The songs on the radio here, they’re different too. It feels like the heart of this country is screaming and I see why. Vietnam is different. This war, it’s unexplainable maybe, but there’s a frustrated weariness in the words. 

But then again, is it really that different? No matter the fight, Soldiers still give their lives and leave their sweethearts crying in the streets. They promise to come home, that ridiculously naive optimism of youth, and instead they die in a battle they never wanted to join. It’s the universal truth of every fight, since the beginning of time. The tears should be enough to stop this all from happening, but no. War keeps coming, one after another, and soldiers answer the call.

I still remember what he said that night. It’s stayed with me more than anything else. They’ll run out of soldiers eventually, he said, like he was nothing more than a cheap commodity. He was so tired by the end. I should have helped him.

11 April, 1968

Last week I was walking by the book stalls down at the Seine and saw a bargain bin of English language books. I found a book of poetry and I swear to god, that damn thing fell open on this:

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. W.H. Auden

I don’t think I could find a better articulation of my mood. Either Fate has something against me, or I’m just that unlucky. I bought it. I couldn’t help myself.

21 July, 1969

Sometimes, I think miracles do still exist in this world.

Down at an old hotel, the entire town was crowded in the dining room. They had a TV balanced up on a shelf so everyone could see and they caught the BBC1 broadcast. The entire room was dead silent. It was overwhelming, I can still hardly imagine it. A man walking on the moon!

The whole time I kept thinking how much he would have loved this. How he would have laughed. How he probably would have tried to sign up to be a spaceman! The more I remembered, the more I thought about that night by the river, after we first met. All those stars in the sky. Decades later and I still wonder about it – how it’s possible to be so in love with someone – but then again, how could anyone fail to love him? He was so warm, so full of life and excitement and dreams. God. We had so many dreams, so many plans for the future. We were so naïve, thinking the world might owe us a little happiness. What a joke.

And now here I am. Alone with nothing but memories – just like always. That life we wanted, it’s as far away as the moon. Unreachable and impossible.

1 January, 1970 We never He was I thought A Soldier with a metal arm?

The journal ends there. 

Bucky looks at the ticket stub that fell from the delicate pages and the words bring forth a wavering reel of images, brand new and unfamiliar.

Moulin Rouge New Year’s Eve Ball Admittance: 1 Individual 31 December, 1969

The black lacquer of a piano. Silver sparkles reflecting from crystal chandeliers. The scent of fizzy champagne and the tang of blood and a dark apartment overlooking the twinkling lights of Paris.

Disoriented, Bucky sets the book down. What the hell is this? Who is she? She must be Hydra, she has to be. How else would she know the Soldier? Why did she take him, what does she want? Why does she have journals from so long ago, what do they mean?

It’s the eternal tragedy of his god damn life – always questions, never answers. He looks around the warm, peaceful little cabin and scrubs his hands down his face. He needs to plot his next move, but the bullet wounds throb with fresh, fiery pain and he’s suddenly and overwhelmingly exhausted.

So, he remains seated, surrounded by pages upon pages from someone else’s life.

Blinking back frustrated tears as he stares at the books, he knows without a doubt, that these three years of writing hold more memories than he could conjure in the lifetime he’s lived.

Distantly, he hears the slow crunch of boots on snow. Rousing himself from the miserable train of thought, he scrambles to his feet, turning to face the front door when footsteps hit the porch steps and begin to climb.

Bucky wipes the tears from his eyes. And he lifts his knife.

*****

Pacing back and forth across the small porch, she stops in front of the door and reaches for the handle.

And draws away again. Curses and keeps pacing. Tries again, pulls back.

“Open the door, you god damn coward,” she whispers harshly.

Squaring her shoulders, she turns the knob and pushes it open before she can lose her nerve. Stepping inside, the room is silent, just as she left it. Orange flames flicker in the fireplace, the smell of smoky wood and pine needles hangs in the air. She shuts the door quietly, shakes out her coat and hangs it on the rack. Taps the snow from her boots and unwinds her scarf. Rubbing her temples, she takes a deep breath and starts for the stairs, determined to face him.

She takes three steps, before the wind is knocked clean from her lungs.

The heavy body hits her from behind, one arm curling around her chest, the other pressing her butcher knife against her throat. The voice in her ear is so gut wrenchingly familiar, she nearly faints. 

“Leaving a strange man alone in your bed with access to knives – not your best move.”

When he was lying unconscious wrapped in her quilts, she thought he seemed smaller than she remembered. Now, the breadth of his body against her back makes her realize just how wrong that assessment was. 

“Yes. I should have hidden the knives,” she tries to speak. “Something to remember next time.”

“Tell me who the fuck you are.”

She should be terrified right now. The most prolific assassin of the 20th century has a razor-sharp blade sitting at her throat and a metal arm digging into her chest. With the slightest move, he could crush her lungs or slit her throat. He wouldn’t even have to try. 

She should be terrified, but she’s not. Because the years, the decades, have been nothing more than an empty echo without him, and now he’s here. Against all odds, he is here with her. Relaxing in his arms, she leans back and closes her eyes.

Bucky stiffens abruptly at the movement. 

Her hand floats up and reaches for the wrist flexing at her throat. She feels his grip tighten further, but for some reason, he allows her curious touch. Fingers trembling, they find the thin ridge, running down the long white scar curving from his right thumb across the back of his hand. 

It’s nothing more than a gentle caress, but – 

Like a hammer to his skull, his head splits head open. With a frightened snarl, he shoves her away and she stumbles forward, catching herself against the sofa. Slowly, she turns to face him fully. 

Dark hair frames his face in sweaty tangles and his blue eyes are wild. 

“What the fucking hell was that?” he hisses. The knife is held outward and he scratches at the scar, trying to scrub away her touch.

“I’m sorry,” she says, rubbing her throat. “I wasn’t – I’m sorry.”

“How the hell did I get here?” Bucky barks. “Last thing I remember, I was gut shot and bleeding out in a god damn blizzard.”

“I found you. Brought you here.”

“Yeah, obviously. Except I’m fuckin’ heavy and no offense, but you don’t look much like a super soldier. So, I’ll ask again - how the hell did I get here? Who else is working with you?”

“No one, it’s just me. And I’m not working. You – I don’t know, you just followed me. When you collapsed in the snow, I rolled you over and shouted your name, and your eyes just – they opened and you got to your feet.”

Bucky glares at her. “Convenient, that you knew my name. And how to wake me up.”

Jaw clenching, she glares back now. “I didn’t know how to wake you up. You were bleeding everywhere, but you stood there like you were waiting for something.”

Biting the inside of his cheek, he grimaces. He thinks he knows what’s coming.

“Say I believe you. Then what?”

“You asked for instructions, so I told you to get in my truck and I brought you here. I’m sorry, I didn’t know – I wasn’t sure what to do. When we got here, you wouldn’t go upstairs. You just laid down on the dining table and – ”

She pauses, but he sighs resignedly. “Keep going.”

“Both bullets, they were still – inside. I had to dig them out. I got bandages and tried to stitch up the wound. You were awake, I thought you were awake, the entire time. You were telling me what to do. Kept asking if – you kept asking if I was new.”

Bucky feels his face heat in embarrassment. Shifting uncomfortably, he grudgingly explains. “That was a secondary protocol. Something happens to the Asset, it’s programmed – I mean I was programmed - to help fix the problem.” 

The cabin is quiet for a drawn-out moment. 

“Oh,” she finally says. Her voice sounds small. 

“So? You’re former Hydra then?”

She blanches at the comment. “What? No! I was never with them.”

“Really,” Bucky says sarcastically. “You just happened upon me and knew my name and brought me to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for no reason? That was all just luck?”

“Stop being a jerk. I said I don’t work for them,” she snaps, anger seeping into her voice. “I’d slit my own throat first.”

Bucky goes quiet, considering the statement. His loses some of the hostility when he replies, but his tone is still suspicious. “But we know each other. You know him. Or – me. The Soldier.”

“Yes. I know the – Soldier.”

“Well, I don’t remember you,” Bucky says harshly, and he watches her face fall. He feels a pang of remorse at her disappointment and almost points out that she’s not unique, he never remembers. But he holds his tongue.

Eyes dropped to the floor, her shoulders sag. “I didn’t expect you would.”

An awkward silence fills the room. Bucky feels that strange ache in his chest once again, a desire to smooth the unhappiness from her face, and an apology tumbles from his lips. 

“I’m sorry I don’t remember. Trust me, it’s definitely not you.”

“No. Please don’t apologize,” she says quickly, looking up. She shakes her head like she wants to say something more; instead, she swallows the words and offers an olive branch. “Do you want to know? I mean - do you want me to tell you?” 

Bucky considers the offer. Before him stands a lovely woman. One who knew the Soldier, who met the worst incarnation of himself, but without the security of Hydra to help her. He comes to a swift, depressing conclusion.

Chances are, he did something shitty to her.

Does he want to know then? Does he really need another gruesome memory clogging up his brain? 

Sure. Because Bucky never knows when to quit.

“Yes,” he says firmly. “Tell me. I want to hear it.” 

“Okay, I can do that,” she says softly. She motions him to sit on the couch, but Bucky hesitates.

“Can I, uh, have some pants first?” He asks stiffly. “This is sort of awkward.”

The surprise on her face makes Bucky think for one fleeting moment that she might laugh. But then she nods and disappears through a small room off the kitchen. When she returns, she’s holding a neatly folded stack of fresh laundry and he recognizes the contents of his backpack. 

“Here,” she sets it cautiously on the dining table. “I’m sorry I went through your bag, I didn’t have any men’s clothing, so…anyway, I washed it all.” 

Bucky snatches his ragged Captain America t-shirt and black sweats from the top of the pile, shimmying into them. Pulling a rainbow colored band off his wrist, he ties his hair back and drops to the couch. 

She takes the armchair across from him, as far away as she can get in the small living room, and tucks her hands under her legs. Bucky knows he’s unlikely to enjoy whatever she has to say, but he folds his fingers together and waits. She stares down at her feet, appearing to gather her courage before meeting his grim stare head on.

Her voice is steady, as she starts to speak.

“Paris was cold that December and it snowed early. It was New Year’s Eve in 1969.”

*****

Next Chapter

*****

Tags are open right now, if you want one, please send me a DM or ASK.

[abrahamwebster]

Reiki Master Video Fascinating Tips

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What Do Reiki Practitioners Do

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Reiki Therapy Jobs

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[itsworn]

Tom King’s 1956 Ford F-100 Custom Cab Small Window

There are some experiences in life that are so moving they stay with you forever. More often they are private, known only to ourselves, but every now and then they bubble to the surface and help define who we are. One look at Tom King’s cool truck and you’ll know the one that changed him.

Tom joined the Marine Corps when he was in college and was commissioned upon graduation in 1958. He was a rifle platoon commander in the First Marine Division and attained the rank of captain before being discharged, remaining in the Marine Corps reserve until 1965. “It was a wonderful learning experience,” he told us and its influence is still obvious. While Tom may have found another occupation in civilian life, working in real estate finance and development, he never really left the Corps. The proof is his beautiful 1956 F-100. It’s his first custom truck and it came about because he always admired the look of 1953-1956 Fords. “They are like the deuce coupe of pickup trucks with their classic lines,” he told us.

Tom found the truck on the Internet, located in Lawrenceville, Georgia. It was on consignment at a restoration shop and had received a cosmetic restoration with some suspension and engine work. The red truck looked good and although he was able to drive it home, there were a few issues needing correction. Living in Jacksonville, Florida, Tom made a great connection with Jim Mercer of the Street Rod Shop in Orange Park, Florida, the place where some of the minor problems with the truck were corrected. Tom couldn’t help but notice the impressive upgrades that Mercer had made to other vehicles in the shop and decided he would take his own truck a step further. The list grew and the sophistication of the Ford increased, but it was not a quick process. During the four-year upgrade, the decision was made to completely disassemble the truck; when the sheetmetal was dipped and stripped, it uncovered some serious body issues. As a result of prior repairs, many of the parts were beyond saving and after a painful assessment everything but the cab, the hood, a fender, and one running board were replaced. Once the structural rigidity of the body was reestablished, upgrades to the frame were next, boxing it for strength and installing a 19-gallon fuel tank between the rear rails. The frame, suspension pieces, and inner fender panels were all powdercoated in Silver Vein for looks. Suspension mods were next, beginning with rejuvenating the 1979 Firebird front clip that came with the truck. Global West upper and lower tubular A-arms modernized the frontend and a Chassis Engineering ladder bar upgrade was added to hold the 1968 Monte Carlo 10-bolt rear, also on the Effie when it was purchased. Strange coilovers stabilize all four corners.

To take advantage of the crisp new suspension, the 302 V-8 was sent to Jasper Engines in Indiana for a complete rebuild. All the internals were upgraded and Tom opted for a showy Holley Tri-Power setup with progressive linkage that works the three two-barrel carbs. The center carb provides economical cruising but all three can smoke the rear tires when Tom hits the long skinny pedal. MSD electronic ignition lights the fire and BBK shorty headers feed a pair of Flowmasters, creating a mellow performance rumble. A March Performance serpentine belt drive system powers all the accessories, the oversized Griffin radiator is augmented with a 16-inch SPAL electric fan, and the engine room benefits from a smoothed firewall and chrome 302 emblem. The potent V-8 is matched up to a Ford AOD four-speed trans that turns 3.73 gears.

Once the powertrain upgrades were complete, the attention shifted to the interior, beginning with plush Cadillac De Ville eight-way power seats, complete with center armrest, console, and embroidered F-100 emblems. The tilt and telescoping 1962 Cad steering column is equipped with a Lokar cruise control and topped with a Lecarra wheel. Changes to the dash included new paint along with a separate panel added below to handle the clock, stereo, and power door lock controls. The original gauges were refurbished and the auxiliary tach from Super Pro keeps track of the high-revving V-8. Creature comforts include power windows, power door locks, and Vintage Air for those warm Florida summers. The Custom Autosound stereo controls the 10-CD changer hidden below the center armrest. The setup fills the cab with old-time rock ’n’ roll and an occasional Souza March when Tom feels the need for a little Marine motivation. Mike’s Auto Upholstery in Callahan, Florida, did the stitchwork, covering the seats and door panels with Soft Touch Perforated blue and gray vinyl, then accenting the interior with dark blue carpet and Marine Corps floormats.

Tom liked the lines of the classic F-100 so body mods on the Custom Cab Small Window 1956 were kept to a minimum. The tilt forward hood now properly displays the detailed engine and a new Dennis Carpenter Ford Restoration Parts bed replaced the original. Oak planks separated by stainless steel strips provide a traditional look to the bed floor while custom oak side rails match the oak inserts on the running boards. Tom’s pride in his Marine Corps heritage can be seen in the bed, beginning with the World War I Marine Corps ammo box, now holding the truck’s battery and the special oak cradle for the bed-mounted spare tire, also sporting a Marine Corps emblem. An additional Marine emblem was added to the front bumper and there is an Eagle Globe and Anchor on the rear bumper. The Marine Corps license plate shows the year and model of the truck. (No doubt there will be a few more Corps-related accents since those of us in the Corps know you can’t be a Marine without bragging about it!) The final step was paint, with the Honda Blue Pearl and BMW Metallic Silver sprayed by the Street Rod Shop. The truck rolls on American Racing 15×7 wheels and 70 series BFGoodrich rubber.

The truck has been complete since 2009 and it sees occasional show duty and is a weekend cruiser. When we asked Tom if he was happy with the way the truck turned out, he smiled and said, “I’ve told my wife when I check out, just put me in the Ford and bury us both with a big backhoe!” No doubt, when the time comes, he’ll be in Dress Blues.

Tom & Donna King

1956 Ford F-100 Custom Cab Small Window

CHASSIS Frame: Original frame boxed and powdercoated Rearend / Ratio: GM 12-bolt / 3.73 by Jasper Engines and Transmissions Brakes: 1979 Firebird power front discs, 1970 Impala power drum rear brakes Rear Suspension: Chassis Engineering ladder bar with Strange coilovers Front Suspension: 1979 Firebird front clip, Strange coilovers Steering: 1979 Firebird power steering Front & Rear Wheels: American Racing 15×7 Front & Rear Tires: BFGoodrich 225/70R15 Gas Tanks: 19-gallon tank from a 1970 Barracuda

DRIVETRAIN Engine: Mustang 302 built by Jasper Engines and Transmissions Heads: Stock/Jasper Engines and Transmissions Valve Covers: Satin black with Ford and V-8 logos Manifold / Induction: Holley Tri-Power Ignition: Mallory MSD electronic ignition Headers: Ceramic-coated BBK Shortys Exhaust / Mufflers: 2.5-inch exhaust and Flowmasters Transmission: Ford AOD / Jasper Engines and Transmissions Shifter: Column

BODY Style: Custom Cab, Small Window Fenders: Stock Hood: Tilt forward hood Grille: Stock, painted to match the body Bed: Dennis Carpenter Ford Restoration Parts with oak floor, side rails, and running board inserts Bodywork & Paint By: Street Rod Shop, Orange Park, FL Paint Type / Color: Honda Midnight Blue Pearl and BMW Silver metallic Headlights / Taillights: Stock headlights / Reproduction taillights with blue dots Outside Mirrors: Stock Bumpers: Stock, chrome

INTERIOR Dashboard: Painted to match the exterior, auxiliary lower panel added Gauges: Factory gauges with auxiliary Super Pro tach Air Conditioning: Vintage Air Stereo: Custom Autosound with 10-CD changer Steering Column: 1962 Cadillac tilt/telescoping with Lokar cruise control Steering Wheel: Lecarra Seats: 2003 Cadillac De Ville, eight-way power Upholstery By: Mike’s Auto Upholstery, Callahan, FL Material / Color: Soft Touch perforated vinyl/blue and gray Carpet: Blue carpet over bedliner and Dynamat

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[mrlylerouse]

How Kyle Whissel Wins Listings in California’s Competitive Market

As the housing supply shrinks, California’s sellers markets are heating up fast. In fact, the top 3 most competitive markets in the nation are all in California. Seller leads are obviously golden for your business, but how do you go about finding seller leads and converting them?  

Top-performing BoomTown client, Kyle Whissel, of Whissel Realty in San Diego, knows second place pays zero, but since he’s typically carrying 20 to 30 listings at a time. he also knows how to nail a first impression with seller leads. We chatted with him to get the real deal on sourcing seller leads and delivering brutally effective listing presentations, to help you stand out from the competition and land those listings in your California market.  

Step 1: How to Generate Seller Leads

First things first. If you’re feeling hard-pressed to even generate seller leads to even start to win over, Kyle has some tips.

Adopt a buyer

Whissel has seen it too many times. After the sale, when he’s been representing a seller, the buyer’s agent vanishes. That’s when he swoops in.

Introduce yourself to the buyers. Congratulate them on their new home. You can even bring them flowers or balloons and send them a congratulatory card. Although they just bought a home, they are future sellers. Making an impression and staying top of mind with them will have them seeking you out in 3-5 years when it’s time to upgrade/downsize/relocate.

Open Houses

“But I don’t see any value in open houses.” Many agents shy away from this traditional marketing tactic, but not Whissel Realty. They embrace it, and put their own unique spin on them.

“The value we get from open houses is incredible. We put very little investment in, and then you  literally have people walking into a house that you’re selling, while you’re sitting there, and you get to build relationships with them face-to-face. Even those that are socially awkward will at least send an email asking questions after an open house.”

  Here’s how they do it:

Whissel Realty Open House

Kyle Whissel’s team averages 5-6 open houses on an average weekend with anywhere from 20-100 prospects in attendance.

  Promotion, promotion, promotion

Signs: Team Whissel typically puts out 100, yes 100 signs out around a neighborhood to promote an open house

Mail drop: They canvas the neighborhood and door drop invitations

Direct mail: flyers and postcards are also mailed out to promote the event

Calls: Team Whissel ISAs hop on the phones and call everyone within a mile radius of the listing

Social media: Invitations are posted in neighborhood Facebook groups and NextDoor

  Neighbors-Only + Public Open Houses

Whissel and his team structure their open houses so the first portion is open to the public, and then from 1-3, it’s a neighbors-only event. This is a great way to get the community involved and meet other potential sellers!

  Target Communities

When you focus on a specific area to generate seller leads, or geographically farm for seller leads, it’s an opportunity to tailor your efforts to market to a specific persona. Whissel and his team found that their wine and cheese parties were a huge hit with the younger, 20s-30s crowd, but in their older neighborhoods, where residents were 50+, their wine and cheese parties weren’t as much or a hit. Is the neighborhood filled with families? If you’re hosting an event or open house, rent a bouncy house and get some barbecue going in the backyard!

Step 2: Prepare for the Seller Prospect Call

This is the conversation that lands the listing appointment. Here’s how to prepare. 

Know Your Market

Nope. There’s just no substitute to understanding your market, knowing your stats, trends, and projections. Refreshing yourself on this information weekly and rehearsing how you’ll deliver and explain its significance is fundamental to establishing trust during your initial conversations.

I have a degree in economics and I’m a total numbers guy. What gets me every time is that people are following articles in the newspaper about the housing market, and that information is stale. They’re chasing lagging indicators not leading indicators. You’ve got to pay attention  to the most current interest rates, transaction data, inventory and the number of pending listings, etc. to get a current market snapshot.  

Know Your Value 

When you understand your value, you can handle any objection a seller might throw your way. What is your unique approach and differentiator? Clients respect value and professionalism.

Don’t compromise on price, as price is only an issue in the absence of value. When someone asks if there is wiggle room, the answer is no. Are we cheap? No. Are we worth it? Absolutely. I went head-to-head with another agent who takes a lower percentage. I did some digging and found that he historically sells house 3% less listing value that we do. Boom. There’s your value.  That’s what you tell your lead. 

Role Play and Practice your Scripts

If you use scripts, and you probably should, practice them so they don’t come across as canned, patronizing or robotic responses. This consistent prep will allow you to quickly and authoritatively answer initial questions from prospects. Whissel and his team role play on the phone 10x a week. ISAs, agents, people outside the company, everyone is involved.

Some of the best script inspiration comes from role playing. You can learn so much from other people. We choose a topic for the week and role play with a focus on buyers Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Sellers on Tuesday and Thursdays. We also always role play the actual listing presentation so you’re completely polished when you go in there and present to a seller.

Step 3: Making a Winning Seller Prospect Call

Most important thing: really focus on where they want to go next. Too many realtors are just focused on the listing. Whissel and his team want to get them excited about what the end goal is instead.

We call our approach “building a roadmap for people” if you know someone wants to go to Arizona, what attracts them? What’s out there for them? If you ever run into rough times, you can fall back on that end goal to get them excited.

The type of home seller you are speaking with will influence your overall approach:

For a first time seller, your conversations should demonstrate your understanding of the process and how you’ll coach them through it.

If they’ve sold a home before, they’ll likely have a good idea as to the process and what to expect, so you should focus on getting answers to the next three questions.

  Ask Your Seller Prospects the Right Questions

What Are you looking for in a Real Estate professional? 

By answering this question, you’re essentially receiving your success metrics; meet these metrics and you’re increasing your odds of winning the listing.

This is the question that’s changed everything. I want to make the presentation about you, not me, so getting a list of the things that matter to you, so when prospects answer this question, they’re basically handing me my listing presentation.

Just out of curiosity, are you interviewing anyone else?

When you know who you’re competing against you can gauge their weaknesses and strengths, so you can showcase the qualities that set you apart.

Why are you selling?

Try to uncover the psychographic factors of your seller prospect and leverage your knowledge of the DISC assessment to tailor your approach and communication style.

Step 4: Nail the Listing Appointment

Behind-the-Scenes Prep-Work

The first thing to remember is don’t wing it. Prepare at least one day in advance. Remember your value and your list of key differentiators, and rehearse saying them in context of conversation.

Since you’ll know your competition, anticipate what they’ll likely say and present. Neutralize their strengths and exploit their weaknesses by emphasizing your core strengths and key differentiators.

Familiarize yourself with the seller prospect’s neighborhood. Drive or walk around it. Know the market stats inside and out, and how to interpret and pull insights from these stats.

Understand that much of your competition will use a standard CMA product because it’s turnkey and easy. You can use this standardization to your advantage by looking at what unique assets or attributes you can bring to the CMA you present.

Sometimes sellers’ expectations are set by a portal AVM (i.e. Zestimate), so make sure you know how the portals are representing housing prices in your seller prospect’s neighborhood. Arrive armed with a detailed CMA that demonstrates the most accurate and relevant comparable data.

Put your understanding of the type of seller you’re meeting into action:

A first time seller needs education, coaching, and a detailed walk-through of the home selling process. With this type of client you’re a coach and mentor. Reassure them that you’ve got everything covered.

For a seasoned seller, you may want to touch on your experience and knowledge, but by and large these clients will want you to cut to the chase on your points of differentiation. How will you market the home? How large is your database of contacts and are they looking for homes that match up to the seller’s home?

For your luxury, downsize, upsize, or investor customers, make a list of five to 10 questions they’ll likely ask (based on your initial call with them).  Answer these questions and layer theses answers into your presentation.

Thank goodness for BoomTown technology! I was meeting with a $3.7 million listing. I knew he’d want to know how many homes I’d sold at this price point and I knew I was weak there. I didn’t focus on that. I focused on my ability, to right in front of him, open my database, and filter it down to 200 buyers looking in that price range and then even further to 33 buyers, with names, phone numbers, and email addresses that were looking for $3+million homes in his zipcode.

Here are some general guidelines to tailor your presentation around:

Luxury – They are all about the numbers and they’ve done their homework. Bring a marketing plan that goes above and beyond the status quo.

Investment – They care how fast you can sell the property and for how much.

Downsize – This is most likely the last home they’re going to sell and their retirement is top of mind.

Upsize – This seller needs to get the most for their current house so they can buy their dream home.

  When it’s game time, keep these tips in mind:

Dress for success

Prepare for a digital presentation but have a hard copy backup in case your digital devices fail

Have everything prepped the day before; this means your presentation, CMA, listing agreement, etc. NEVER prepare the day of the meeting

Always show up 15 minutes early but don’t knock on the door early as the seller may not be ready for you; but ALWAYS knock on the door at precisely the scheduled time. (It’s amazing how many agents are late to a listing appointment!)

Showcase your existing database to demonstrate how you’ll market the home.

Have two people in your meeting. You’d be amazed what situations arise during presentations, and having some extra hands and support can save the day.

  Ask for the Listing

Have your listing contract ready to be signed. Even if you’re first to present against your competition, ask for the business…you may be surprised that the homeowner is ready to move forward without meeting with the other candidates.

I like to go bold with my sales approach. I’ll ask the prospective seller if they’re like to go ahead and sign the agreement, and then I tell them they don’t need to have any other meetings and I’d be more than happy to take care of letting the other agents down personally, so they don’t have to have any awkward conversations.

Step 5: Follow up and Follow through with Seller Leads

Even if you don’t get the deal signed in the meeting, leave the listing agreement and follow-up immediately. Whissel and his team always send a handwritten card and then send a video through email or text thanking them for the appointment and going over key points from the meeting.

It’s crucial to have a seller follow-up process in place to stay in touch. Remember, polite persistence is paramount…no spam. Ask them the best way to keep in touch and setup a reminder immediately. 

The post How Kyle Whissel Wins Listings in California’s Competitive Market appeared first on BoomTown!.

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[rahulsenau-blog]

Preparation For Birth

As we approach your due date I like to have a longer discussion with you and your partner, to discuss your birth plan. You do not need to have a written document, it is good to be informed, and to have an idea of how you would like the birth to go, but it is essential to be flexible, as babies do not always behave as you expect or want them to, both during the birth and afterwards.

My aim is to help you achieve the birth experience you would like. If you are wanting a natural birth then being in the best physical and mental shape you can be for labour is important. Courses like Calm Birth can be very helpful in reducing anxiety, reducing physical tension, and giving you the confidence to try and trust in yourself and to trust your body.

It is important to remember what the ultimate goal is i.e. healthy mother and healthy baby. If it takes an epidural or forceps or caesarean section to achieve that then you should not feel disappointed that your original birth plan did not come about. As much as I want you to stay confident and positive it is important to consider some of the variations that happen in labour, as they are common.

The first is epidural. Four out of five women who have private obstetric care choose to have an epidural. Your likelihood of asking for an epidural is reduced if you are highly motivated, or if you have a single support person with you throughout labour, and if you have attended a Calm Birth course or similar. It is increased if labour is induced

If you are keen to avoid an epidural, and you are coping well with labour then there is absolutely no reason to have one. You get a natural high from the adrenalin and endorphins after birth, you can quite rightly feel a strong sense of accomplishment after successful vaginal birth, particularly if you have done it drug free.

On the other hand there is no shame in having an epidural, many women know in advance that they want one. An epidural may well be of help if your labour is progressing slowly, and this commonly occurs if the baby is in a posterior position, i.e. head down but gazing up to the sky. I will generally recommend an epidural if I need to do a forceps delivery, and sometimes if I need to do a vacuum or ventouse delivery.

Episiotomy:

Episiotomy is a cut with the scissors, usually from the lowest part, or V of the vagina, angled to the right. Many years ago an episiotomy used to be standard for all births. I do not perform episiotomy routinely, but sometimes they are necessary. I perform them always with forceps, sometimes with vacuum, and sometimes for other vaginal birth, especially when the perineum starts to tear early, or becomes very swollen, in which case it loses its natural stretch. If you do not have an epidural I will inject local anaesthetic into the perineum before doing an episiotomy where possible.

Ventouse:

A ventouse or vacuum delivery is required if we need to speed up delivery, either because you have been pushing for a long time, or baby is becoming distressed, or if baby is stuck in an awkward position. To do a vacuum delivery you need to have adequate pain relief, the cervix needs to be fully dilated, you need to be able to move the baby's head and with pushing and there needs to be enough space in the pelvis, all of which I assess on vaginal examination, sometimes with the assistance of ultrasound.

It is important for you to know that successful delivery with a vacuum is not always guaranteed. If I think there is a low likelihood of delivery then I might recommend forceps delivery, a caesarean section, or a trial of vacuum delivery in the Operating Theatres, with the option of proceeding to caesarean section if we are not successful. When the vacuum is applied there is a maximum amount of time when the vacuum can safely stay on for, and there needs to be some degree of success with each pull, whether it is rotation or decent of the head.

If the head does not move at all with the vacuum then I will generally need to do a caesarean section, if there is some descent with each pull then I will generally do up to three pulls, and a maximum of four, and then stop unless the head is by now partly out.

It is generally safer for your baby if I use just one instrument, so if I do not think that vacuum is likely to be successful I will recommend forceps. This is likely to be the case if the head is not very low in the pelvis, if there is a lot of swelling on the back of the baby's head, so the suction cap is likely to fall off, or if the baby's head does not move with pushing. If I do not think either can be tried safely I will recommend caesarean section.

Following ventouse delivery your baby will have a small round bun on the back of their head, in addition to the swelling that occurs naturally from being upside down in the pelvis. This usually settles within a few days. There is often a dark purple disc which can persist for around a week. Sometimes there is soft swelling under the scalp, which generally settles down after a few days. Occasionally this causes the baby some irritation, and your Paediatrician may prescribe baby Panadol.

Severe complications as a result of ventouse are rare, especially if we limit the number of pulls and the amount of pressure applied.

If your baby becomes stuck in labour or distressed before the cervix is fully dilated I will need to perform a caesarean section.

Forceps:

You require good pain relief for forceps delivery. Generally this means epidural. Sometimes I can perform what is known as a pudendal block, which is local anaesthetic injected inside the vagina. This is usually very effective.

I routinely perform episiotomy with forceps. This is to reduce the chance of a tear in the midline extending down into the sphincter muscle. The importance of such a tear, known as a third or fourth degree tear, is that if it occurs it can leave you with a greater chance of having little control over wind, liquids, and sometimes even solids from your bowel. Needless to say this is personally distressing and socially awkward, but fortunately it is rare. Even when it does occur it often improves and sometimes resolves completely with time.

Bladder function is often worse after birth. Many women report loss of bladder sensation, and loss of bladder control after birth, even after caesarean birth. The chance of reduced bladder control is greater if you have had long labour, big baby, ventouse delivery, and especially, forceps delivery.

Perineal Repair:

If you have a cut or a tear then I will suture or stitch the perineum with a dissolving stitch. This is usually a suture material known as Vicryl. In the deep layers the Vicryl is slowly dissolving, and takes two to three months to dissolve. In the skin layer the Vicryl dissolves after two or three weeks.

Because of the proximity of the perineum to the anus, and the multiple bacteria that live in the area it is very easy for the perineum to become infected. For that reason I wash the perineum extensively, before, after and during the repair, and I advise you to keep the perineum as clean and dry as you can after the birth

At the first sign of infection it is important to start antibiotics to prevent breakdown of the perineal repair. Early signs of infection are worsening pain, increasing tenderness, an unusual smell, and increasing redness of the perineum. Starting antibiotics promptly will generally prevent the perineum from becoming truly infected and the wound breaking down. If it does break down it will still heal, but healing will take longer.

The two issues I would like you to consider are issues after the baby is born. In a sense the birth is the easy bit if all goes well you push the baby out. If necessary I will do a vacuum or forceps delivery. If the baby gets distressed or baby gets stuck then I shall do a caesarean. Then the fun begins.

For most first time mums feeding and settling is a challenge. Most babies do not naturally attach to the breast. They often attach to the nipple and if that is not corrected then they will cause nipple damage which can be very painful, and take a while to heal. It is important, therefore, for both you and the baby to learn good technique from the outset.

Please take advantage of the expertise and support offered by the midwives on the ward. If necessary you can be referred to a Lactation Consultant. There are daily drop in classes, lactation consultant sessions and one on one sessions during the week, and sometimes even at weekends, depending which hospital you are booked at.

Your milk generally comes in on day three or day four. When it comes in you are often very tearful. Most babies lose between 5 and 10% of their birth weight in the first few days. If your baby loses much more than 10%, then you may need to supplement the breast milk with some formula, especially if your baby is jaundiced, or low birth weight to start with. This is something that you will be given advice on by your Paediatrician, in conjunction with the Midwife or Lactation Consultant.

Sleep:

By far the most difficult challenge facing new mums is coping with sleep deprivation. Before the birth please take some time to consider how you personally will cope with sleep deprivation. Most new mums are not prepared for just how difficult it can be to adjust to having a newborn, who, while delightful and engaging in every other way, wants to stay awake all night, and feed, cry, or play, or all of the above.

Most babies sleep in patches during the day so please take advantage of every opportunity during daylight hours when your baby goes down to have a rest as well. If partners or family are around then they can often take the baby for walks during the day while you rest.

I recommend you limit visitors to family and close friends. Visitors are well meaning, but often draining at a time when you need all your energy and resources. Take advantage of every offer of help from practical things such as shopping, cooking and cleaning, and offload peripheral responsibilities.

The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. For a while you may feel like there is a heavy fog hanging over you preventing you from functioning normally and making rational decisions. Over time you become accustomed to broken sleep, and learn to take advantage of the sleep opportunities you have.

Above all else I think it is important not to torture yourself trying to do things perfectly. Most first time mums especially want to do everything perfectly, and if it works then that is fantastic, but please have a plan B. Sometimes you will need to give your baby formula top ups and that is no crime. Sometimes it is necessary to preserve your sanity, and your baby will still love you just the same.

I look forward to finishing this journey, and remember it will all be worthwhile when you are holding the little one in your arms.

Dr Rahul Sen, 2017

The post Preparation For Birth appeared first on Dr Rahul Sen.

[kosherkathy]

From Personal Development and Leadership to The Final Project

At the beginning of this program, I wanted to be able to say that I not only have the experience it takes to run a company, but I have the education and expertise. How many times have you heard someone ask you, “What are you doing this weekend?” or “What are you going to do this summer?!” How about, “What are you going to do when you grow up?” Maybe the answer should only be spoken within. Maybe we are to take the time and look at the future and plan for it.

In Personal Development and Leadership, we were asked to recognize today's tasks and not just the future, but to gain as much as we can daily. I have not utilized this class as much as I should have. It is a lot easier to believe the delusion that we can run forward and fail continuously than to be strategic. Amazing how this final paper is the paper that reminds me to take the time to catch on to what was taught to me twelve months ago. Each day is a gift, so use it wisely.

In the Executive Leadership course, we reviewed John C. Maxwell’s, “Developing the Leader Within You” and Robert Greene’s, “The 48 Laws of Power”. In reviewing these two books, I can honestly say that I am 98% Maxwell and roughly 2% Greene. The leaders they present in their books are very specific. The stories told and the examples given are intricate to the adaptability I desire in my own home and work life.  

Maxwell's leadership role is constructed of what I consider to be honesty and integrity. Great examples are used in the book, such as “Human behavior studies show that People do not basically resist change; they resist “being changed” (Maxwell, Pg. 66). I am not easily changed, but I do desire to be a better leader and person. If change is what I need, then I will start on me and work from there.

Greene’s leadership roles and how-tos are a bit on the other side of the spectrum from Maxwell. The great part about his book isn’t how to become like these leaders, but how to see one coming and adapt to their way of thinking or get another job. Work within the parameters of this person's style and personality or be very unhappy in the working relationship, god forbid a romantic relationship with such a leader. 

Applying Greene’s book has given me the grace to forgive past employers that were so much like the leaders in the book that I now know I could work with them again and not take what they have to say to heart. Unfortunately, these types of leaders will not last over the course of time and it is best to stay away or be contracted to work with them. I knew that there were things about Edison I wasn’t a fan of, but Greene’s book uses him as an example in Law 7: GET OTHERS TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU, BUT ALWAYS TAKE THE CREDIT.  

                    “Everybody steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot                               myself. But I know how to steal.”                                                                                                                                  Thomas Edison, 1847-1931

There is more to life than burning each bridge you walk across to get to the next best thing. Our journey is a journey. The process is the best part. Life is beautiful, now is the time to remember that we only live once.

In Project and Team Management we practiced becoming project managers. I found out the more I know the more I need to learn. In 101 Project Management Problems by Tom Kendrick, he presents multiple opportunities for problem-solving. Kendrick states,

“Discussing what went well on a project highlights the positive, and it provides a good opportunity to give credit for achievements and accomplishments.”

I believe my initial understanding of what I would learn in the master’s program was a greater focus on leadership and less about budgets or finding the right people for the jobs needed to make the project a success. While in the middle of a character study with my amazing team, we were all asked to not only present something original but also to run our team as team leader for a day. We all may have had different upbringings and talents, but when it came down to it, the creativity that we presented to each other was inspiring. I was amazed at how much information came from presenting one piece of original work. Going forward, I will take the information I read from Kendrick’s book to new teams on projects in the future. I was reminded that this world we live in isn’t as large as it seems. We will work with some people for a short time and others for many years, but it is the time we put into the relationships that help build a better community in our industry. I can see how initiating team-building skills will only accentuate the team and give us grounds to know more about the people we work with in a shorter amount of time. 

When reviewing the DiSC personality assessment, I thought that while it may not cover all personalities, it was interesting for a personal character study. The assessment was nice in helping understand personality types and how to work with others. Conflict resolution is a trait that is needed in the industry and will carry a lot of power in leadership because we all know that the film industry is high stress and constantly moving. I am excited about the future and the tools that were taught in this program. I believe the greatest talent is to be able to bring multiple people together for one result and show that we can achieve it despite our personality differences.  

In Business Storytelling and Brand Development, we were to learn a strong business presence. It was an amazing opportunity to create a company name, logo and brand. These past few weeks have been eye-opening: I know who I am and what I want to accomplish, but I never thought about the importance of understanding “who” a company is. Giving an intangible company something like life and representing it with a brand or idea takes a lot of work. The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier is worth reading. It comes down to three little questions. Neumeier wrote,

                    “Wanna bring a high-level marketing meeting to a screeching halt?                      … demand unambiguous answers to three little questions: 1) Who                      are you?, 2) What do you do?, 3) Why does it matter?”

Neumeier breaks down the reasoning behind branding and what we can do to have our name fly across social media, be on the cutting edge of marketing and strive to the top of the industry we want to be a part of or already are, but need to rebrand. Taking the time to understand why and how to build a brand allows us the opportunity for greater success. We need to recognize branding as a network activity, and in order for there to be activity, we must connect on some level:

                    “The standard model for communication has three components:                         sender, message, and receiver. The sender (your company)                                   develops a message (web page, ad, brochure, direct mail piece,                         etc.) and sends it to a receiver (your target audience).                                           Communication complete.” (Neumeier, Pg 101).

We must be the first to reach out to the consumer. We can live on a secluded island away from everyone and hope for telegraphic pigeons to deliver our messages in a bottle, but if that is not the trending marketing technique for this hour, we need to research what that accurate marketing technique is and focus our advertisement towards the audience we are seeking. I am excited about the next step of our new company, the inventive logo and the connection we have found to reach the audience we desire to have.

In Entertainment Business Finance, we focused on all financial decisions and any other issues that the industry is facing today. What can be said about the entertainment industry that hasn’t already been said?! After reviewing financial and economic concepts for personal finance in the world of business entertainment, it has become extremely clear that this industry is not for the weak of heart, nor for amateur soothsayers. We’ve all heard “be direct” which, it seems, means “be abrupt”. What about “It’s business, not personal”? The more I read, the more I understand that these clichés may be the only way to stay successful and relevant. Since the entertainment business is considered a business with unstable cash flow, it would only make sense that the presidents and hierarchy of large companies make decisions that would err on the side of unstable. Are they grasping at straws or are they staying relevant? We may not know for a few years.

We live in the perfect time with the transition from television to digital devices; from watching a movie in a theatre to seeing it from the comfort of your own home on opening night. Starting an entertainment business now may not be the most lucrative idea.  But, maybe it is. Studying the last few years of Twentieth Century Fox (FOXA) financial statements, we can see that even with eighty years under their belts, they are struggling. It’s an interesting thought to notice that even with their staying power, an upstart might become their greatest competitor. Think I’m joking? Try being abrupt as a juggernaut; try it as a small firm.

Large entertainment companies are bleeding out. It might be time for larger companies to break up into smaller companies and start over once more. Scaling down the extravagance of old Hollywood and embracing the digital era we live in now (and have been living in for at least ten years) looks like the way to go. Unfortunately, we will see giants fall because they haven’t changed the way they do business or see their audience. There’s a saying, “what’s old is new again.” We will return to an old-Hollywood-style industry at some point in the future—just like bell bottoms come back into style and fall away. But the idea of old Hollywood will become a fad, and it won’t be able to last indefinitely. For now, it is time to scale back and ride into the uncharted territory that is the entertainment industry.

In Digital Marketing we focused on the development of a marketing plan that suits our own businesses and one that is effective in the recent industry, which is a living digital environment. In today’s market, most would attest to the world being paperless and only digital. Marketing is now geared towards a younger generation and demographic; forgetting about what a giant direct mail marketing was in years past. It could be said that direct mail marketing is still relevant and kicking. How does a small company harness direct mail in today’s market? Marketing segmentation is the key to finding the target market. Thus enabling a company to target a number of consumers who have a number of different perspectives from one another. This may seem a bit overboard, but it is best to put what money and time are available to good use.

In order to target the right people. there are three areas to segment. For starters reviewing the geographic segmentation. Geographic segmentation is targeting audience with different preferences based on where they reside. Followed by demographics segmentation, which is associated with splitting the target market into some or all of the following: age, religion, gender, family size, sex, income, ethnicity, and education. Finally, explore psychographics segmentation. Psychographic segmentation commingles lifestyle, personal interests and activities to define what the target audience is looking for in the products they invest in. Geographic, demographic and psychographic segmentation, all play key roles in finding the true target market for a companies product. Taking these steps will allow a small company to reach its target audience with minimal funds and time restraints. Thus keeping small businesses relevant and committed to reaching the accurate market for the product or products of interest. Now is the time to reach out by snail-mail and harness the power it has on the people that are waiting to know more about the products they are interested in investing in.

In Negotiation and Deal-Making, the class name holds the two essential business keys that enable entrepreneurs to establish a consistent business presence, company, and production. Here we are given the keys to present strong evidence in our favor for what we are presenting to another party. Whether the negotiation is over a contract or job interview the process is much the same.We can break it down even further. Negotiation is used in everyday life. Everything from being up-sold on what your hairdresser would like to do with your hair to find a compromise on children wanting to stay up past their bedtime. I felt that a new world was presented to me when we were introduced to game theory. I also felt that my parents forgot to share this tidbit of information with me as an adult because they seemed to be masters of this specific field.

Game theory is a useful tool from the perspective that it allows you to analyze every possible outcome to be prepared for any questions that may arise. All this time I had no idea my mother was using game theory on me to get me to bed and to do my homework! This may seem over the top to use for getting your children to bed, but if it has been used in predicting the building of nuclear weapons in Iran, I’d have to say that it is a very good mathematical theory to use. In regard to my parents using game theory to negotiate a favorable outcome, there were many times that it quickly became a dictatorship and I knew that we had gone from negotiation to war to surrender and bed.

In our Product and Artist Management course, we were engrossed in the process of applying our advanced management techniques or the lack thereof allowing for us to experience another avenue on how to better ourselves, our communication and our companies. I have come to the conclusion that I might be the right type of person to manage a writer and or a comedian. Management of entertainers was never something that I would have considered as a job. In learning more about what it takes to become a manager and who needs management, I found that I could manage certain entertainers. Knowledge is key to any job. 

The information I learned in this class is crucial to understanding what it takes to be a manager and where the industry is going. In this program, I was asked to take on two assignments that requested that I use scenarios of being a manager. The first one was to manage a writer that was publishing the third book in a trilogy with two previously successful books. The kicker was the writer had issues with large groups and small spaces. Being that I am a writer and understand the feeling of being claustrophobic, the issue to resolve the space concerns and crowd control seemed to come as second nature. I had even convinced myself that this would be a breeze and that we shouldn’t do a book tour on the east coast in the winter.

The second scenario was to manage a reality show. The kicker was to find a way to not only manage but to also get a few lines of product out on the market that showcased the show bringing awareness to additional demographics that would not be drawn to the show initially. Of course, the products would be purchased by fans, but the opportunity to bring in additional streams of income is part of the industry. Since we are pitching a reality show to a few industry greats this class has given me a better understanding of what they are looking for in a show and how to manage myself since I don’t have a manager. Little did I know that I would be working at The Hunted Fox and using the skills learned in this class for our latest adventure!

In Advanced Entertainment Law, I never thought of myself as someone that would desire to be an attorney, but entertainment law was so fascinating that I am thinking about taking the State Bar of California next year. In California, you do not need to have a law degree. In no way shape or form do I believe this would be an easy job, but the task of preparing for cases would be fascinating to me. In pursuit of answers on Trademarks and copyrights, we have had opportunity to follow cases that were brought about by accusations of trademark infringement, contract disputes and defamation of character. In this day in age, we need to be vigilant to pursue every issue, concern or wrinkle in a contract. Covering the company with insurance and the understanding that we cannot meet everyone’s expectations is part of running a business. You cannot make all the people happy all the time, but you can make sure that your contracts are well versed in entertainment law and give each person an efficient approach to breaking their contract if need be. 

Keeping the contracts simple, accurate and direct keeps the company professional and viable. Companies come and go, but to be a viable company in today’s industry, it is best to stay organized, keep an entertainment attorney on retainer. Allow a budget to have the attorney review all documents before anyone, including yourself, sign. Making sure that the company is staying within the most recent letter of the law. Being diligent to keep the company professional. There are several companies that have blazed the path for newer companies, like mine, to gingerly walk through the process of becoming a successful company.

We are not being led down a path that no one has gone down before. Technology is always changing but the basic information is the same. An honest and reputable company will stay that way through hard-work and accurate business practices. Pick a company that you look up to and follow in their footsteps. You will be happy you did. We don’t all make it to the same level of success, but we can enjoy the journey.

In our Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution course, we were presented with the ups and downs of media publishing and distribution. This course brought my love of costuming and working with textiles together with my desire to write and make films. Understanding that a reality show can be born out of this mix of the entertainment industry was something that I have wanted, but to see it take shape this month has been exhilarating. Part of the reading for the class was to read Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution by Kimberly Craft. The book is an easy read with insightful information to encourage the new kids on the “digital block” to move forward in the process of getting their name out in the industry by putting the best foot forward. Understanding the language of the industry and how to go about taking the right steps to self-promote is key.

We can all say that we understand how to go about doing this, but without a guide and or someone that has taken this part of the journey prior, we would be hard-pressed to take all the accurate steps needed. There comes a time in everyone’s life when we are to be the student. If you have been in the industry for many years or just starting, it would be beneficial to seek out information that will help you self-promote in the industry from the perspective of digital reach. Like many musical artists, they seek out a way to self-promote additional work that their label may not want to release, but being an artist is just that. An artist needs to be able to use every avenue available to them to keep the artistic juices flowing. With we are never too old to learn new tricks of the trade and staying grounded with the standard practices we have already learned. To be relevant in the industry today, we need to keep our fingers on the pulse of what is happening in our industry and this class has been a great help for me in doing just that.

In the Business Plan Development course, we were required to incorporate the skills we’ve developed over the entire program. This was not an easy class. Many hours and what seemed to be a sea of work, but it was so worth taking! Doctor Steven Burhoe is a great teacher and even though this course is not for the faint of heart, it is a beautiful class that melts all we’ve learned together into large amounts of compiled information that is easily read and understood. This class has by far surpassed my understanding of what I thought we had already implemented in our company. I have had opportunities, with this class, to reinforce an understanding we have with where our company is going and the accurate directions to expand in. I never thought to check and see what the average age of the local population for a greater footprint of success locally would be. We are an online store and it never occurred to me to break down our local demographics for greater success. In the process of this class, we chose to go in a direction that would not have been thought about without the understanding of where we live.  

With the introduction of “Successful Business Plan, Secrets & Strategies” by Rhonda Abrams, notes from our course, the discussion boards with my cohort and the openness to realize we have a long way to go. Our company is now growing in a way I didn’t expect. This class opened several different experiences for us to learn about. Their stories were presented in different industries with the hope that we can, not only be successful but where to focus for greater success. Reading about entrepreneurs from Detroit, Michigan, Spanx owner, Sara Blakely, the creator of Zappos, Tony Hsieh and a previous graduate of Full Sail University, Jayson Whitmore has opened a world of success that we knew was attainable, but showed us a different avenue those that went before us took. There is no one sure way of being successful, but there are many avenues that will allow us to grow and be true to ourselves, our own brand and the lives of those we influence. We are on the cusp of something amazing.

In the Business Plan Development part two course or what is called the Final Project, we have incorporated the skills we have learned and had polished by our previous professors. As a final polish on our hard work, we have been privileged with Professor William Thompson a seasoned veteran in the industry with a keen eye for what is relevant and enough experience to share better approaching to reaching and meeting the goals we have set for us and our companies. His help has been iatrical in helping us make better formal business plans. His feedback is worth taking note of and his experience is worth hearing about. In this class, we not only build business plans, but we reviewed companies that are looking for startup. For example, CDFI stands for Community development financial institutions. Companies like these are all over America. They are usually private financial institutions. The focus of the company is to dedicate most the proceeds to helping disadvantaged communities and people. The boost to the local economy is the focus of the company. The desire to bring about new jobs, and grow the local economy allows for companies such as this one to not be focused on the bottom dollar but to know that a greater increase will come in time. Having this understanding about alternative financing will help entrepreneurs get the funds that are needed to get their company off the ground. With a little elbow grease and a business plan, you too can be a business owner that has been funded by a CDFI. In California, a company can apply for a partnership in getting a COIN tax credit. Of course, the process is lengthy, but it is worth considering. On the California Department of Insurance page, it states,                         “Each year, the Department of Insurance allocated $10 million in                         tax credits to support $50 million in community development                               investments.”

That is a lot of cold hard cash to support those that may not have anything. I am amazed at the amount of information and finances I have available at my fingertips.