#like if it's the aesthetic of your teeth that's bothering you why not do braces or whitening... but like all the idols getting it have

[liinos]

tbz please never let the veneer trend touch you 🙏🏻

[sabka-dentist07]

Orthodontic/Braces Treatment

Many people have a problem with the misalignment of the teeth. Some of the general problems involve crooked teeth, crossbite, underbite, overbite, or other teeth misalignment. The misalignment of the teeth is treated through Orthodontic treatment using the braces. You can improve your smile with braces treatment with better teeth alignment. One of the better ways of dealing with the teeth misalignment problem is getting Orthodontic treatment. Teeth braces are used in Orthodontic treatment. Orthodontic treatment helps the teeth to move in a specific direction until they achieve the desired position. The teeth misalignment causes many problems like improper biting, inappropriate smile, difficulty in cleaning the complex areas of the teeth, etc. Braces make it easier to get the proper teeth alignment. It can help to improve the biting and make the smile look better. Due to a lack of proper knowledge about the braces cost in India, many people tend to avoid these treatments. The teeth braces cost in India varies on the type of the braces and a few other factors.

What is Orthodontic/Braces Treatment? Orthodontic treatment, commonly called braces treatment, involves the correction of misaligned teeth using braces. Apart from aligning teeth, orthodontic treatment helps to restore a person’s bite, the function of their teeth, and aesthetics. In fact, it plays an important role in preventing dental conditions like cavities and gum diseases, that commonly occur in the case of malalignment. Orthodontic treatment, commonly called braces treatment, involves the correction of misaligned teeth using braces. Apart from aligning teeth, orthodontic treatment helps to restore a person’s bite, the function of their teeth, and aesthetics. In fact, it plays an important role in preventing dental conditions like cavities and gum diseases, that commonly occur in the case of malalignment.

Why Should I Get Braces? Apart from aesthetics, most people are not really bothered about their crooked teeth. However, little do they know that their misaligned teeth can become a problem for their dental health. Many people wonder — “Why should I get braces? or “Do I need braces?” Here are a few conditions that need braces: Overbite Crossbite Open Bite Misplaced midline Spacing Crowding Forwardly placed teeth

Phone number — 9222233111

Address — Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Nagpur, Nashik, Pune, Surat, Satara, Vadodara, Assam

[vengeancewise]

".........."

There was a bit of silence and Tweek had placed his palm onto his face, lightly groaning while he still laid down there on the bed, and eventually turned himself over and places a pillow onto his head, almost forgetting he even wearing an earbud, which he felt fall out, but he barely cared at the moment.

Was Craig's teasing like that really necessary? Though to be fair, Tweek was practically the one who started the teasing to break the silence a little when the two were listening to music together and just vibing, really.

Could Craig be trying to hint at something?

"Why would I dream about you and your crooked teeth, y-you assfucker?!" Honestly the braces on Craig's teeth didn't bother him. Tweek just needed to toss a lame insult back at him along with another of his friend was going to keep on teasing him.

There's no way. Tweek isn't his type. Sure Tweek does find his friend handsome, and admires his love for space. Craig's space aesthetics had started to grow on Tweek, but no way the two would ever be romantically involved with this jerkwad that just enjoyed seeing him suffer like this or in any way.

How did these two even become best friends anyway?

If Tweek really wanted to, he could have zapped the guy with his lightning powers, or even sent literal chills towards the guy with his ice powers already for how much Craig just enjoyed teasing him and watching him suffer.

It didn't that that long for Tweek's reflex to react whereas he quickly popped himself up from the bed and hit Craig with the pillow.

"W-Why are you treating me like this?! Are you implying something, Craig?! Huh?! D-Do you just enjoy making people suffer, you asshole?! Do you just enjoy toying with people's feelings?!"

Maybe Tweek has gone a little far on this now... But at least it was just these two alone this time and not in public where back then the two had put on an act for that incident, and without realizing it, Tweek had actually hurt his best friend's feelings and later wanted to make it up to him somehow.

Perhaps that's how the two actually became good friends. Though the two also go way back, starting with being manipulated by Stan, Kyle and Cartman to fight each other back in elementary school.

Tweek however...

After all these years, while he tries not to look back on that one incident, judging by how much Craig still enjoyed teasing him if Tweek were to make a few jokes here and there, he couldn't help but wonder if there really was something Craig wasn't opening up to him about, or maybe Tweek was only overthinking it. Part of him was hoping he was only overthinking it. Tweek was considered the easy target of their little circle of friends, though he liked to believe he wasn't that much of an easy target anymore.

╰─ ✰ ❝ Hey....We don't talk about that time, we were dumb kids ❞

Craig would huff as he shot Tweek a slight glare, They were dumb kids back then and nothing more. That whole Metrosexual thing was dumb and Craig knew that all too well, just a trend he hopped on to fit in with the other kids. He wouldn't do it now, he barley followed the trends currently.

Craig's attention would however change as he watched Tweek's face turn a red color, a small playful smirk spread on his lips at the sight, and how panicked the boys voice turned. It was fun teasing Tweek because Craig knew exactly how he ticked and what set Tweek off.

╰─ ✰ ❝ Haha come on Tweek I'm only fucking with you ❞ The Peruvian boy spoke, flashing a braced filled smile at Tweek ❝ Sure~ I've bet you've dreamed of me enough times to count Tweek ❞

This was all just Craig teasing Tweek again, watching the boy get so flustered from such simple words seemed to spark something in Craig, mainly the bully part of his personality. This was nothing more than him teasing his best friend.

[yourheartonfire]

The protagonist was grimly determined not to kneel, and briefly they succeeded. When the guards dragged them to the command tent and shoved them down, the protagonist hit their knees and kept going, landing face first on the carpets spread over the muddy ground. It felt kind of nice, to rest their aching head a few seconds on something soft.

Above them there was silence, and then a heavy sigh. "When I said, 'patch them up and then bring them to me,'" said the oh-so-familiar tones of their old playmate, "I thought it was clear that the 'then' in that sentence meant when they were no longer dying."

"The, ah, prisoner is weak from loss of blood and general trauma," said a medic nervously from somewhere near the tent's door. "But their wounds have been tended and they are stable, your highness."

"Your highness?" the protagonist mumbled into the carpet threads. "Coming up the world, huh?"

The medic cleared their throat again. "They're also on a great deal of painkillers. But they will live to see tomorrow."

"That remains to be seen," said that exquisitely cold voice and an ugly laugh ran through the tent.

There must have been a signal because hands gripped the protagonist's bound arms, hauling them up to their knees before their old friend.

 The antagonist was a black hole in the center of the protagonist's spinning vision. They lounged across their seat, wineglass dangling from their fingers, in a way that made the simple camp chair look luxurious. They were flanked by some very angry looking generals, nobles, the normal assortment of court flunkies. The protagonist saw a few familiar faces, but no friends. Not in this tent. 

"[Protagonist]," the antagonist said with that too-calm, too-bland court voice that boded violence for someone later. "You are under arrest for high treason. You will be brought before my father, the Emperor himself, for judgement. I don't expect it to go well for you. Have you anything to say for yourself?"

The protagonist bared their teeth in a bloody smile for the room, ignoring the twinge of pain from their split lip. "It's a long journey from here to the capital."

The antagonist conceded the point with a tip of their glass. "I am considering breaking both your legs."

"Wow, you are really leaning into the whole dark lord aesthetic," the protagonist drawled, fighting to form the words. God they were tired. And it wasn't just the morphine. "Is that red wine? You hate red wine."

The antagonist gave them a too-tight smile. "If you don't like it," they said, each syllable crisp and sharp enough to cut steel, "perhaps you shouldn't have had the prior occupant of my position killed."

There were any number of responses to that. The costs of war. People that the protagonist had lost too to far worse fates. But the former crown prince had been a fixture of the protagonist's childhood too. For once, the protagonist bit back their snappy response.

The antagonist's eyes narrowed. They put down their glass and stood.

The guards' grip tightened as the antagonist approached. The protagonist braced for the strike; a punch, a kick, maybe even a knife to the gut. But the antagonist did something worse; threading those fingers heavy with rings, through the protagonist's roughly cropped hair. The protagonist bit the inside of their cheek, hard, to resist leaning into that caress. But they couldn't help the shudder that went through them as the antagonist's touch lingered on the swollen, tender bruise at the protagonist's temple.

"Oh darling," the antagonist said softly. "All this chaos and death, just to scratch this rebellious itch of yours. Was it worth it?" The protagonist tried to jerk away but the antagonist tightened their grip, forcing the protagonist's head back to face them. "All this blood just to wind up back where you belong. On your knees in front of me. "

The protagonist swallowed, feeling their throat bob against the antagonist's hand. They could see it in the antagonist's bleak gaze; the old mute plea under the regal bluster, asking the protagonist for a laugh, for a lie, for the love and attention everyone else was too busy to give the second royal child.

It would be so very easy to step back into that old role. Give them what they wanted. The apology. The repentance. But there was a limit to the protagonist's sympathy.

The protagonist raised their chin higher. "Why do you care? You've got the prize, the crown, the throne." They lowered their voice, going for straight for the heart. "Don't you like having everything you've ever want-?"

The antagonist's hand, heavy with jewels and gold, whipped out with a crack. Everything went black and twinkling for a second. The protagonist came back to themselves hanging in the guards' grip, their cheek a livid, wet wound.

"Very well. Let's do this properly," came the antagonist's voice from overhead. "Clean that up, sedate them..." The antagonist's hand stroked across the protagonist's newly aching face. They flinched. "And put them in my tent. We'll continue this conversation in private, darling."

There was another ugly laugh from the room as the guards hauled the protagonist away. The protagonist didn't bother trying to get their legs under them. They had to conserve their strength if they were going to escape.

The antagonist wasn't a kid anymore. But then again, neither was the protagonist.

[speedypandaweasel]

One Big Adventure - a Wilford Warfstache and Abe story (Non-Ship) (2,914 Words)

Thank you for the request @canceltheact! I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

If you would like to submit a request, see the information at the Masterlist and submit through the Q and A!

PSA - THIS IS NOT A SHIP oke, let us begin...

Dazed images fog up the minds of two *very* hungover men as they stagger their way up to the apartment. Abe fumbles his way through the door and over strewn clothes. He continues on and manages to put together the kaleidoscope of scenery that is right in front of him. To his left, a saggy sofa sits and a cheap TV dangerously hangs off the stripping wallpaper by a thread. To his right, a grimy kitchen is on display which even the worst chef in the world wouldn't waste his time in. The other man, however, is blabbering away, slurring his words like a car on an icy motorway. "HA!, I tell *hick* you Abe, I'm so glad I remembered you, you see *hick*, I can't even remember where I put my-" Aaaand he's gone. His body moulds into the cushions that poorly support his droopy frame, and his scuffed platform boots dangle over the side. Abe smiles, slightly soberer than before. Who would have thought that this stock still of a man, whose only aesthetics were the colour beige and veterans, would somehow have a goofy, lighter side to him? All the criminals he's met and caught among the years...

Hold up, has he met anyone? He can't remember any experiences where he HAS met any, so why did he think that? Hm, must be the Tequila talking. Abe hopscotches over the empty Wine and Martini bottles that are decorated across the stained carpet. Damm, William has not been taking care of himself. Mind you, neither has he so he can't really say anything. He arrives into the walk-in kitchen and opens a dusty cupboard. His tired eyes only meet with shot and tumbler glasses.

How much does this Man drink!? Shuffling used plates and greasy cutlery out of the way, he fills a scotch glass with water. Dowsing the liquid felt like heaven. His exhausted physique felt like a body that's been stuck in the desert for a considerable amount of time and didn't know it needed water to survive. Oh, now he feels the headache coming on.

Reader, you know when water tastes funny? It's because your brain hasn't been receiving enough H20 because you've been drinking too many energy drinks. Yeah, that feeling is exactly what Abe is feeling right now. CONTINUING ON!

The scotch glass watches from the draining board whilst the Detective plays the quietest game of the floor is lava, whilst the moustached man is making much more noise. He manages to reach a corridor which he thinks leads towards the bedroom and tiptoes down the tight hall to find a vacant room. On the way, he passes another room. It was Barnum's. His mind was split in two, Does he go in? Or stay out? Through the crack in the door, the catastrophe has indeed spread into his sleeping quarters. A mountain of flamboyant disco clothes gathers dust in front of his Chester draws, the bed's not made and more liquor bottles are having a social gathering on top. Oh William, you may be a murderer, but you need to prioritise yourself. He takes a last look at his passed out flatmate down the hallway, before shutting the guest bedroom door. Grey. It's all he's met with. Much like his exterior. He slips his shoes off and starts to unbutton his off-white shirt. he runs a hand down his chest and over the scar. How the Hell did he survive that? He can't be bothered to go into it right now, he's too tired. He snuggles into bed and does the infamous cold bed dance.

You know the one.

Abe gets out of the tempting bed once more and walks back into the living room. He creeps over to William, the man's mouth catching flies. He carefully takes his enormous shoes off and places them on the floor. Barnum's mismatch socks disappear underneath the blanket. "Night William."

~ A gorgeous smell of Breakfast wanders its way through the apartment and Abe groggily wakes up. His eyes peel open and with a yawn, he trudges through to the living room. Remembering from earlier this morning, he needed to position himself for his dance routine around the non-existent floor. "What are you doing my main man?" Barnum brightly asks, a hearty chuckle accompanies the question. Resided in the pristine kitchen, his big, strong hand holds a Skillet and two China plates are centred on the pebble grey marble island. Abe, however, is currently squatting as though he was playing a game of leapfrog with some imaginary friends. The Detective goes to jump but then is taken back at the sight. The apartment is now spick and span, no more Wine Bottles, no more strewn clothes. The windows are tied wide open and it overlooks the sketchy neighbourhood that they reside in. "How did you do this?" "Do what?" "You know, clean up this quickly?" Barnum checks his watch. It's 7:30 am "Oh well you see, I ironed a nice pair of jeans and found a lovely dandelion coloured shirt. Accompanied by some rainbow braces I think I look quite dashing don't you think so?" "No William, I-I mean the Apartm-AAH!" Abe clings his hand over his head, damm this- "Headache is killing you?" William slides a glass of water over with an Aspirin pill. "And no, I didn't clean the apartment, she did." Wilford looks- wait, why are you looking at me!? "Anywho, we need to get going my slightly hungover companion! But first, breakfast!" Wilford sets a serving plate down of a full English Breakfast: Sausage, an Egg, two cooked Tomatoes, Bacon rashes, Baked Beans and a slice of Buttered Toast. Wow. He didn't know William could cook? The two men got stuck in right away and the TV is turned on. Two bright and very similar faces appear on the screen "Badgers the secret Killer?... And now for the weather, Jim?"

The camera pans to, what they believe, is Jim. Their face resembles a deer in headlights. "I swear, they don't know what they're doing. It's hilarious!" The Detective says with a mouthful of Toast. Barnum laughs, wipes his mouth with a napkin and takes a swig of his Orange juice. "Right! I mean, who is their boss anyway?!" The men eat and laugh their way through their plates talking about what topics they would cover if they were reporters. After a while, they both recline back into their bar stools and the cook starts to tidy up the dirty dishes. "Oh, no, let me do it. It's the least I can do." "You're alright my man, I've got this. Besides, you need to freshen up!" "But whe-'" "First door on your left"

They share a light chuckle. "Thanks Wilford, I really appreciated that," Abe says before going back down the hallway, whilst Wilford rolls his sleeves up and starts to clean the less-silver cutlery.

He smiles. That's the first time he's ever said that to him. "No problem Abe."

~

The passenger door slams shut on the Detective's Vintage SUV and Wiford pulls out a gigantic map from his pocket. This map includes hundreds of paths scrawled with crayons and a hint of Martini can be smelt.

"Are you sure, you know where you're going?" Abe questions. Judging by what that map reads, they are going to get lost very easily.

"Of course I know where I'm going! I am Wilford Motherloving Warftsache after all." A pang of guilt hits the Detective, he genuinely can't remember who he was.

"Ok, Wil, you can drive."

After playing at least 3 rounds of rock paper scissors, or when Wilford won, Abe hesitantly let the murderer drive. God knows where though.

Wilford excitedly thrust the keys into the ignition. He couldn't wait for what the day entailed!

"Careful Willford, you're gonna break the keys!" Abe says through gritted teeth.

"Oh pah-lease! I know how to drive" he retaliates. His brown boot floors the pedal and reverses straight into the iron fence.

"Yep, it's working."

The Detectives face, now pale, grips tighter onto his seatbelt and his feet are glued to the floor. "Wil, of course it's working. Now, step on the ga- nope, that's the brakes Wilford."

Pedestrians quiver in fear as they see a horribly driven brown vehicle screech to a stop and then start again. They have to clamp down on their ears as the monster of a car drives past them down the alleyway, swerving left and right much like the driver's speech the other night.

The SUV survives to the end of the road and dents a stop sign perched, well once, straight on the kerb.

"Will, which route are we taking?" Abe asks as he takes the map from the driver's hands.

"It's the one marked Highway of Life, it's gonna be a good one, trust you me."

"Well, this has got off to a surprising start so why not go for an adventure?" Abe says. He's given up at this point.

~

"LIFE IS A HIIIGHHWWAYY! I WWAAANNNA RRIIDDEE IIT ALLL NIIGGHTT LOOOOONNGG!" The two pop stars start belting out of the car as Wilford drives them to their last stop. Who would have thought that two polar opposites positions of the law would be in the same car together, let alone blasting Disney songs out of the car.

Wilford's hair whips away from his face as the SUV's top winds down.

"LIFE NEEDS A BIT OF MADNESS EH ABE?"

"HELL YEAH IT DOES"

The Afternoon sun blazes down onto their blacked-out sunglasses and the Golden Gate bridge paints a picture for the Detective that prescribes him with a carefree attitude.

Life was his to choose and he was here for it.

~

The SUV turns off the Highway onto Richmond Street. The Afternoon sun glowing dimmer.

Just in time.

Now reader, if you haven't read my WKM Tumblr Song series, then you won't understand this next section.

The SUV passes bountiful shrubberies and picket fences. Cherry Blossom dust drift its way into the car and Wilford starts to tear up.

"You ok Buddy?"

"Yeah, I'm ok." After all his years of interrogation, Abe knows that that answer was a lie. Yet, he didn't want to push it.

The car comes to a halt and is parked underneath a summer coated oak tree.

"Why'd we stop?"

"I want to show you something."

Abe opens the vintage door and steps out. In front of him, wildflowers and grass sway on the cliffs breeze and small pink flowers grow on its edge. Overhead, a sea glistens with sunlight rays and pink and amber hues dust the sky.

Man, this is enough to make a grown man cry.

The cars driver door can be heard shutting and a shadow walks up behind him. An intimate silence roots itself between the two men.

"You may be wondering why I brought you here."

Abe nods, still looking forward, yet intriguingly listening.

The man sighs, "I used to come here all the time as a young lad. We used to have picnics and dance until dawn. We were so free up here. Away from life, away from Duty, and she was away from Him, that was all that mattered. "

His voice breaks.

"But things change, people change and suddenly, I couldn't do that anymore.

That's why I want you to see it."

Wilford wanders over to their spot and picks up one of the pink flowers sprouting through the grass.

"You may have thought of us as the scum of the Earth Detective. But there are two sides to every story."

The Detective joins the Murderer and puts a hand on his shoulder.

Wilford chuckles. The last time he was here, he was completely and utterly alone. He was like- like a freshly born fawn still trying to find his legs into this world that didn't make sense.

But now...but now things are looking a little brighter.

"If there is anything I can do to make it up to you, just name it."

"You can't do anything really, it's just the way this messed up world works."

The two friends sit down in the grass, making fresh new imprints into the cliff edge, next to two fading ones.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure" "How many people have I killed?"

...

That question lingers in the air for an uncomfortably long time. All that can be heard are the lapping of the waves below them and the occasional swallow talking in the trees.

...

"I don- don't know Wilford," Abe breaks the silence, "I should know, but I-I don't.

...

Abe looks at Wilford, his broken and tear-stained eyes manage to glance back before returning to look out at the sunset.

Abe must do something here. But what? He said himself that nothing can be done so what can he do?

He reminisces on the day they were reunited. So much anger, so much confusion. But Wil was so cheerful, not a care in the world!

Now look at him.

And it was all his fault. If only he didn't get involved...

A second flashes by and Abe does something he should have done the second Will did it.

He hugs Him.

...

"I'm sorry Will."

...

Moments cling on for seems like forever and the embrace is broken. The two tear-stained friends look up.

The afternoon sun has now gone beneath the horizon and is replaced with the all too familiar twilight scenery, which glows softly for miles and miles, each star a lantern that has been entrusted with keeping something special.

"There was another reason why I wanted to bring you here."

Wilford wipes his eyes with his sleeve. "Do you see that star, the big one?"

"Yeah" "That's the Evening Star. That Star is the reason why I have hope. And now I want to share that hope with you. I know we got off the wrong foot but since we're in the same boat now, I think it's time I opened up about where I've actually been."

Abe swallows, this man is truly broken, and he can't do anything about it.

"Thank you for trusting me." "We're not done yet. It's your turn!" "What?" "Make a wish." Cautiously, the Detective slowly stands up from his permanent grassy imprint and walks towards the cliff's edge. The man looks around and sees only patches of shrubbery and wildflowers.

And his newfound friend encouraging him to proceed.

He clasps his hands together and wishes hard. His eyes scrunch together as he becomes a child once more as well. His once tight shoulders have finally become relaxed. After so many years of searching for answers, he doesn't need to worry any more.

A single tear is swept away from the Murderers face as he watches on from the patch of grass. He remembers that feeling and the dream he wished for all those years ago. Yet now, his wish is slowly changing.

Granted, he can't remember who he was but bully does he know what he wants to be. And being here for him, at this very moment, is a wonderful way to start it.

Abe's hands fall to his side and he stares out onto the ever stretching view. His feet are glued to the spot and his mind is only fixated on that one goal. Wilford slowly joins his side, already having a hunch on what he dearly wants.

"What did you wish for?" The Murderer asks.

The Detective huckles, "Now if I told you, it wouldn't come true, would it?"

"Very true my friend."

Little did the men know that their newly found wishes were the same.

"Don't you mean, Best Friend?"

CRACK

The heartwarming moment is abruptly stopped by the sky blasting wide open and millions of sounds exploding across the cliff. The light breeze has rapidly sped up into a storm and is propelling thick gusts upon the two.

"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL NOW!?" Wilford yells at the hole, completely unfazed.

"YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS!?" Abe yells at his Friend.

"OF COURSE I DO, IT'S TIME FOR WORK."

"WORK!? SINCE WHEN DO YOU HAVE A JOB!?"

"WE ALL HAVE A JOB - WE'RE ACTORS! I'LL EXPLAIN EVERYTHING IF WE DON'T GET SPLIT UP."

"IF WE DONT GET SPLIT UP!? WHERE ARE WE GOING!?" "I HAVE NO IDEA! BUT THAT'S THE FUN OF IT! AFTER THREE, WE WALK IN."

"ARE YOU CRAZY WE'RE GONNA FALL!"

"TRUST ME, WE WON'T."

Wilford grabs Abe's hand and he stares at him. Abe stares back, fear-stricken. Finally, he nods.

"TOGETHER?" "TOGETHER."

"ONE"

"TWO"

"THREE!!!!" The two Actors charge straight over the cliff and into the blinding light.

~

Wilford finds himself in some kind of leather chair with neon lights surrounding him. A script in one and his prop gun in his other.

No pants on, no wonder he feels too comfortable.

He scans his scene and sees his co-actor, Kathryn, running her lines on the other side of the room.

A chair sits opposite him and behind that, a red T-30 minutes until showtime sign is displayed for him.

Abe, however, isn't needed on set yet. His adventure hasn't begun.

But both of their characters will have to cross at one point or another, it's just a matter of time. Yet for a fact, no one can edit their Friendship; Their Joint Wish.

Because, as they say, Life is a road that you're travelling on, when there's one day here, and the next day gone.

[sanstropfremir]

it’s the episode 8 review!!! how many episodes is this show supposed to even be?

the stages from the episode feel like such a grab bag.... i still don’t understand why they didn’t put all the skill stages together, and then did the normal two episodes of the third round. i guess it makes sense that they didn’t want to have six stages in one episode and then three in the other two, but eh. 

feeling kinda average on these as a whole, there’s a lot of good elements going on here but probably because of my own preferences (i don’t listen to ballads or blackpink) none of them really hit all the buttons. hopefully this will be a shorter review because i'm only going to do a quick rundown of the vocal stages; i dont really have that much to say about them because they are (intentionally) not very stage picture focused. i'll do the normal stage breakdowns for the other two though, even though i won’t rank them because we still need to see the other four!

vocal stages

sf9 + tbz + ikon

not much to say here other than wow, that’s RED. glad to see some more specific use of spotlighting and i always love when they light things on fire. i do wish they had fill lit with a brighter amber so we could actually get a bit more detail on their faces, especially because there’s six of them. i appreciated the simple blocking and only using one of the ‘stages,’ this stage didn’t need to be anything complicated and it wasn’t. i don’t love spinning camera shots because they make me a bit ill, and i'll forgive the constant cutting because it's a vocal stage and there isn’t any other real movement that we should be paying attention to. not my favourite of the two, i found it visually a bit too repetitive and complex at the same time. always love a crushed velvet suit though, so bonus points for that.

atz + skz + btob

i was braced for the worst and i dont know what kind of miracle happened but it was listenable! like i said, not a ballad fan but i could listen to eunkwang all day. i love a good plinth for a ballad stage, they’re one of my favourite devices in kpop design and i especially love it with a good groundlevel fog. glad they kept it black and white for the first half of the stage, it was in line with the blooming flower projections, and it made a very clear colour arc. they kept the visuals clean and simple with very little blocking at all, a very smart choice for this stage. not sure why they decided it would be the chanel time stage, which i disapprove of because i don’t like chanel, but i do love eunkwang’s shirt with the cameo buttons and the massive turnback cuffs, very 17th and also 19th century. i know they never do it because they dont read on stage normally but yes absolutely more thin chain pendant chokers on men, thank you! i also liked that there was emphasis on a more traditional lighting scheme, there weren't any crazy concert effects, just some good directional beam spotlights and the rear stacks in the climax. 

third round stages

ikon

costume

the first look for them is definitely my fabourite of theirs so far. there’s enough variation in the jackets that the base layer of tshirt and jeans don’t look too repetitive. and i do love a good statement jacket. my favourite is probably donghyuk’s because i'm a sucker for fringe always.

i don’t like the backup dancers costumes, but given the way i’ve reacted to every other all black outfit for this entire show i don’t think anyone was surprised about that. these ones particularly irk me because they’re very matte; there's pretty much no texture or pattern differentials to define the shape of the limb, which makes them disappear when theyre all grouped together (mostly on the women). i think they probably were intending to make a statement/emphasis on the hands because of the sleeve cutoff point, but there were so many arm movements that were just totally missed because the costumes were just black voids. most egregious parts are here, with the female dancers up center. i can barely tell what the movements are unless i’m paying specific attention to them because there's so many black shapes. maybe it was the point for it to be an indiscernable writhing mass, but it wasn’t my vibe.

don’t love this styling on lisa. i hate peeptoe shoes in general but peeptoe boots are the worst offenders. they make you look like you have duck feet, no matter who you are. especially with a flat cutout like that. a universally unflattering shoe, and i would know, i worked in a shoe store for two years. this whole look is just pg-13 rihanna cfda awards 2014 and really nobody should try to run up against rihanna.

also i have to mention this because it’s actually really bothering me, but lisa’s backup dancers are serving very allgemeine ss looks and i do not like it. generally when we see ‘military’ uniforms in kpop theyre usually modelled off older styles (pre wwii) of western uniforms that usually aren’t in circulation, and they’re usually non-matching and embellished in ways that are deliberately not military. i know logically that it's a budget constraint+they’re backup dancers+current trend thing but the clean lines with only button detailing and the all black and that specific harness shape? it hit my brain the wrong way. i mean, technically those uniforms are designer because hugo boss did them, but the uh..... girlboss move didn’t land for me.

this is my PERSONAL OPINION please for the love of all that is holy do not come yelling at me about this. it’s all under a cut, you chose to read the post.

set

very glad to see some busy kitschy sets! this is a massive build, since there’s essentially three full sets here: the temple, the jungle, and the first tiny room. and all of them are very heavily decorated. 

the starting room is just five walls on casters (wheels), that have been set into place with the cameraman and ikon inside at the start, and then once they exit the walls can be easily struck and rolled off set. simple, smart, and convenient!

i missed it the first couple times around but glitching out the projections in the temple for a split second was a neat little trick.

the silver and polygonal nature of the tiger/panther/cat(?) head is a bit disconnected from the gold and the aesthetic of the rest of the stage for me. the difference between the original room set and the jungle tracks, but the cat head isnt able to make the same leap for me. i'm also not a fan of mixing metals so maybe that’s why.

the tiger/panther/cat(?) head is a fun physical transitional device; i'm a big fan of tunnels and small transitory spaces like that and if they’re well dressed like this one they do so much for establishing place and mood.

i'm very sure i’ve seen this style of polygonal animal head with laser eyes before....i cannot for the life of me remember where or for what. i know wang yibo did a panther stage for sdc3 that had a human formation panther with green laser eyes, i wonder if i'm just crossing wires.

OH nevermind it’s because it looks like the witcher medallion. wires were definitely crossed.

lighting

using purple/teal lighting for the jungle was a smart choice because purple is the direct compliment to the gold and also is much more flattering on humans than green. green is one of the colours that humans can see the most variations in, so when something is green when it's not supposed to be (like human skin), we register that very quickly and associate it with unease and sickness. you know how old fluorescent lights have that greenish tinge that kinda makes you feel ill? it's your cone cells and your brain recognizing that you’re looking at things that are not supposed to be green.

very clean colour arc, i love to see it.

sound

it’s.....fine? i don’t listen to blackpink and have no opinions on their music other than it's not my type. i dont really know what the thematic connection to the visuals is, which is not strictly necessary in a lot of cases, but i don’t particularly care for the conflation of ‘savage’ and a (presumably) precolonial religion that’s assembled from stereotypes of real colonized cultures. you can come at me about how ‘it's not that deep’ all you want but i am here specifically doing an in depth analysis, and i gotta point it out. i'm not here to pass judgement on you if you didn’t realize or don’t care or whatever, i'm just saying that it's important to consume content with a critical eye. what you do with that information is your own personal choice, but you should be aware of it at least. 

staging

they took a big risk eating popcorn right before singing, and we definitely got some residual mouth noises of them trying to clean out their teeth. eating on stage is difficult in general because you have to make sure it's not going to dry out the performers mouths, because they dont have access to water and it takes WAY longer to chew and swallow something than you would expect. there’s a LOT of testing that goes into making stage food and guaranteed it’s not made out of what it looks like or what its supposed to be; i worked on a production of amadeus were we did literal weeks of testing amalgams of different desserts to make sure that salieri could actually eat the ones onstage without totally drying him out, because fun fact about that show, salieri doesnt leave stage like, at all, so there was no way to get him water. poor bloke.

i thought the blocking of this was really smart. the long take from the ‘normal’ room and transition into the jungle was super slick, even if that weird circle the camera did while pointed up at the ceiling was unnecessary and pointless.

bobby’s ‘acting’ was extremely funny and that’s the only way people are allowed to act surprised now. edvard munsch scream style only.

the pacing is a bit off and this time it wasn’t mnet’s editing that fucked it up. as fun as it is to have a feature, clearly she wasn’t allowed within proximity of the rest of them for covid or other yg related reasons, but it made for some extremely long transitions, especially the one out of her verse. it kills the momentum of the stage in that beat, even though they manage to pick it up after.

this is a very simple little narrative arc that’s easy to follow and doesn’t require any extra explaining. which is exactly the kind of arc that groups should be doing at this stage in the game. this is a good formic step up for ikon!

i thought the turning off of the monitor at the end was fun and a good callback to them watching the videos at the beginning of the stage. a nice clean way to make it circular.

skz

costume

FINALLY something different on the skz boys! these were mostly fun eboy looks for them, and i like it on the basis that it's not the same as the last set of costumes.

bang chan out there with his thigh OUT and a (fake) bridge piercing? LOVE to see it. great work.

(copy-paste every thing i’ve said about backup dancers wearing all black)

the backup dancers that were dressed as bystanders/extras were great! they should have kept that with all of them because it would have given a little more shape to the choreography and establishing what function the backup dancers were supposed to have.

set

that is meant to be a giant rice cooker on stage, right? i think so because it's a god’s menu mashup? if that's not a rice cooker i have NO idea what its supposed to be

there’s only two large setpieces here, which was a smart way to go. i LOVE the subway car doubling as the truck, even if the truck itself makes no narrative sense. what a fun way to double the use of a single big piece. you’ll be able to see the way it moves in the full cam but it splits down the centre and there entrance doors at the back with attached stairs that bang chan and the dancers use to climb up.

lighting

not a whole lot happening here. i like the cool white leds in the subway car and the contrast with the more warm tones of the outside, which is good atmospheric establishment, but i can't discern a visible arc. 

not a fan of these projections; they’re in line with what we’ve seen from skz so far, which is: extremely literal. i dont think they’re that distracting, but they’re not to my personal taste. they really should have kept the comic panel theme that they did for changbin’s first verse, because that was inventive and fun to watch! and a great atmospheric indicator! i would love to see a bit more experimental projection use but it's hard when they don’t have a lot of time to build these stages and the lighting team is definitely working remotely.

sound

i love that they made the choice to do some actual talking, it’s a good gimmick and it works for the deadpool/comic book/fourth wall break theme, but australian accents take me the fuck out i am so sorry i cannot listen to either felix or bang chan speak english without laughing uncontrollably. 

i don’t like this arrangement but i'm not surprised about that, given my predilections. i'm also tired of skz shouting STRAY KIDS in every performance they do. i know on music shows it's probably more relevant and yea producers tags are a thing but we’ve been watching this show for nearly two months at this point. we know who you are, you can stop yelling. be more creative with it!

staging

my biggest issue with this stage is that it doesn’t have a payoff. there is an arc here: they’re stealing the truck, but why are they stealing the truck? who are they stealing it from? who are they fighting against? it's kind of important in a stage where the theme is stealing and fighting someone that you tell us who that is. in both of ateez’s previous stages were they were both stealing (rhythm ta) and fighting (wonderland), they made sure to show us who the villain was. there needs to be tension for a big blowup climax to actually pay off. whether it be against a a balloon arm kraken or a fascist government. this stage could have reached that next step if they’d just done a little bit more exposition. 

there were a lot of fun choreo moments here, and this is probably my favourite choreo of theirs so far. i thought the whole first bit in the subway car was excellent and a very fun play on those viral videos that we used to see roll around every so often of dancers doing routines in subway cars.

did it need the guns? not in the slightest. more on this point later. i could talk more about weapons and weight here, but i’ve done that several times already.

like with the tbz game of thrones stages, theyre relying a little too much on the audience's preconceptions of the source material in order to carry the theme. the guns are there because deadpool likes guns, but they don’t actually use the guns for anything? the most we get of the stealing segment is felix and the safe, which admittedly is a great bit with him leaping over and under the ‘laser’ lines (theyre likely led strips). because comic books are by nature procedural and deeply tied to narrative, it's unsatisfying when there’s no tension and no payoff.

HOW did we manage to get two stages that are blackpink covers with remote/tv static gimmick and durags? i know the slot machine of kpop tropes is not very big but surely the probability of hitting triple sevens on this one was pretty low. i’m pretty meh on both of these stages overall. skz was unsatisfying but i loved the choreo in the subway bit so that bumped it up a little ahead of ikon’s in my personal preferences, but i'm reserving my actual rankings for next week. assuming we get the other four stages next week and they dont do something stupid and only show two. which they very well might. i’ve stopped trying to understand why mnet does things the way that they do. 

as always the ask box is open, drop your comments/questions/personal opinions, i love to hear ‘em! but don’t be rude just because some of this is touchier subject material.

[drjackandmissjo]

it’s nice to have a friend

previous chapter --- chapter 9

feysand masterlist

“Feels like home, Stay in bed the whole weekend.”

NSFW!

The first thing Feyre realized before even opening her eyes was the lack of a warm body next to her. It wasn't unusual for Rhys to get up before she did, either to fix something for his day's lectures or to train, but Feyre was never particularly fond of his absence as she woke up begrudgingly. Cassian teased her non-stop about how little of an early bird she was compared to his brother, but the main reason she ever woke up before noon, without counting work, was to at least kiss her husband goodbye before he left for his own job.

The second thing she noticed was the crispness and general sense of 'new' that came from the sheets and the softness of the mattress she laid on. It felt as if she was being slowly swallowed by a cloud and the sensation was a stark contrast to what she was used to. All their family constantly teased them for their favour of silk beddings and pillowcases, but Rhys always commented that they were just jealous of their bacteria-free bed. Eventually everyone got converted from the cheap cotton they used in college to silk, as all of their bank accounts could spare the expense and splurge now that they weren't broke college students anymore. Not that any of the Nox brothers nor the Golden Queen, as Mor had been playfully dubbed by Amren, was even remotely broke to begin with.

"It's all for the aesthetic" had once told her Cassian on their old apartment roof, pissed out drunk and desperatedly trying to get her to help him decorating a cake for his Post-Spring vacation assignment . "Just think about it! Your talent and my sugar paste!". She had outrighted refused when he began claiming how he would not share the finished product, a three layers with different percentages of cacao each, with her. "It will be a masterpiece. We can't eat masterpieces!"

"Well then don't make it a masterpiece, I wanna eat it already!" said an equally wasted Azriel, comically clutching an empty packet of chips with a saddened expression. Feyre sent Amren a long suffering look and was met back with an understanding one from the only other sober person on that roof, while the tiny woman mouthed her " The Joy of Babysitting" as she stood in between a bottle of Vodka and a very handsy Mor. Rhys hadn't arrived yet and she tried not to feel disappointed. It had been over a month since her breakup and she was nowhere near ready for another relationship, yet she wanted him with them, with her , even if she wasn't ready to admit it to herself.

Feyre stretched her arms above her head, taking away the last morsels of sleep from her eyes before opening them. She was immediately brought back to reality: she and Rhys had organized a weekend away to celebrate their anniversary in peace. Mor had demanded a fancy party like the one two years before, but both of them had preferred to spend the time quietly with each other, on a beautiful resort in the Illyrian mountains that one of her clients had suggested.

His side of the bed was still warm, also thanks to her own body heat as she had scooted over him in her sleep, but she could hear the sounds of the luxurious shower running. She debated for a couple of minutes whether to join him, knowing that they wouldn't emerge from the bathroom for a while if she did and therefore miss breakfast time, when she heard the water coming to a stop.

And there was her husband, one towel wrapped low around his hips as he dried his hair with another. "You're a sight for sore eyes" he told her after having taken her in, bed hair sticking in every direction and clad only in a sheer nightgown. They had arrived the night before, too tired after the long four hours drive to do anything other than hold each other throughout the night. Despite it being the middle of August, the weather up in the mountains was still rather cold and they had enjoyed each other's warmth immensely.

"You're not so bad yourself" she said right back, letting her eyes trace over the plains of his abdomen, defined by years of training.

He chuckled at her blatant staring as he inched closer to where she rested against the headboard, the bed dipping under his weight as he moved closer, capturing her lips in his. She opened up for him, deepening the kiss as her arms twisted around his neck, bringing him fully down with her. She would never get enough of this, she thought with a smile, never get enough of the kisses and the hugs and just him . Her hands moved once more, tracing a path down his bare back as he positioned himself between her legs on top of the covers. Her laugh filled the room as he began to remove the straps of her nightgown with his teeth, a playful gleam in his eyes as he then moved his attention to her shoulders nibbling at the bare skin, turning her laugh into soft whispers of encouragement. Her hands had now reached the towel, untying it swiftly and leaving him bare before her. His own began to trace the fabric down her body, exposing every inch of her skin to his prying eyes. His lips returned to hers as he twisted them around, his back now against the soft mattress as she straddled his hips, hands never leaving the exploration of each other's bodies.

"We will be late for breakfast" she said breathlessly as his mouth worked her neck, hands caressing her back. She couldn't really care less about anything that wasn't him at the moment, but the sensible and hungry part of her grounded her to the reality of her empty stomach.

"There's room service" he called from the space in between her breasts as she reclined back, grinding against his hips in desperate need for friction, "We can order in and not move an inch". She was lost in sensation, unable to speak anything other that his name and a few choices of curses as he teased her endlessly, his hands on her hips, keeping her still as he worked on her upper body.

"Darling?" he called at her before his mouth closed around one of her nipples, teeth grazing the delicate skin and elicing a moan from her throat.

Feyre's hands moved on his feverish skin, dragging her nails over his shoulders and arms, moving downwards before one of them stopped its trek and was placed around him cock, pumping it into her palm a couple of times before bringing it into her mouth. Rhys made a strangled noise from the back of his throat, his hands fisting into her hair as her own kept on moving up and down on his length.

He was a bubbling mess, incapable of speaking. A sound of disapproval rose from the back of his throat as she removed her mouth from him, the tight grasp on her hair moving to her backside as she aligned herself over him. She slowly sank down into him, stilling to adjust herself around him while a soft moan escaped her lips. He immediately brought her downward, moving his mouth against hers as the subtle change of position elicited a series of sounds from both of them.

Instantaneously she began to move, aided by his strong hands on her ass.

"Yeah let's do that" she replied arstly, hands bracing over his chest as she slowly rose into a kneeled position between his legs to sink further into him.

They chose to move in a slow rhythm, both knowing each other's body like their own. Her fingers followed the path of his tattoos, replacing them eventually with her mouth.

It was heartbreaking slow and brutal at the same time, the pace they set, yet neither complained. Rhys only moved to capture her lips once more as she drawed near her peak, one of his hands leaving their comfortable home on her rean to move to her center, flickering her clit viciously as he heaved himself into her with more vigor from under her.

Feyre's vision shattered a few thrusts later, her back arching as the room filled with her shouts. He followed shortly, pumping into her throughout her climax and drawing it out as much as he could.

"Let's stay in bed the whole weekend" she then said, momentarily sated as she tried to regain her breath that was coming out in frantic pants, not bothering to move nor to remove him from inside of her, "Let's not move from this bed until it's time to leave."

"Why, my Darling Feyre, that is probably the best idea you ever had!" said an equally spent Rhys, toying loosely with her curls.

"I thought my best moment was agreeing to marry you!"

His dark and rich laugh filled the room, "I don't think so. The best moment was talking Greek myth in your room as we were just friends."

"Yeah. It's nice, having you as my friend" she whispered, holding him closer to her naked body as she planted a kiss over his heart. "Well then I hope you don't do those kinds of activities with all your friends."

"I don't know what you're talking about" she claimed, her face a mask of pure undiluted innocence.

A wicked smile appeared on his lips. "Allow me to re-freshen your memories then."

They didn't leave the bed for the entirety of the weekend indeed.

[readyaiminquire]

The Future as Vapor.

‘The semiotic phantoms, bits of deep cultural imagery that have split off and taken on a life of their own.’

              William Gibson, The Gernsback Continuum.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. Not wholly sure as to why, perhaps it’s because we’ve just moved from one year to another, and taking stock is only natural; or perhaps because of the peculiar nature of the year that has just ended, with its pandemic, lockdowns, and the many challenges and tragedies borne out of it. Perhaps my research and its focus on time and temporality makes me particularly vulnerable to this sort of introspection; perhaps I am just predisposed to it? Likely, it is a mixture of all of these, but I already digress from the main point I was making, which is, quite simply: I have been thinking a lot about time lately. I’d wager the year that has just been, and which doesn’t feel as if it has fully ended quite yet, has a lot to do with it. My soundtrack for 2020, if there was such a thing, has undoubtedly been vaporwave, dyschronous ‘trapped-in-a-loop’ music for a year where everything stood still: a semi-ironic haunting from the past with empty, tinny beats and retro-synths, just mangled enough to sound new, but not too mangled so as to lose its retro-80s soundscape. It is, as absurd as it sounds, Muzak with teeth. The ironic resurrection of a dead aesthetic, brought back with a vengeance and with a purpose.

Vaporwave gets its name from ‘vaporware’, software that never was. Vaporware is software that has been announced, sometimes even showcased, but which then disappeared into some development maelstrom and seemingly vanished from view. It is neither cancelled, proclaimed dead and left to rest in the pile of ‘what could have been’, but always kept alive – a zombified software – as a potential. Its nonexistence-with-a-side-of-potential is precisely what makes vaporware vaporware. What does vaporwave take from this? The music is a form of Muzak, seemingly generic elevator music perfect for blending into the background but never meant to be listened to. This implies a vaporware existence (existence in nonexistence; or rather nonexistence in existence), vaporwave has more to it than that. It is precisely its purposeful meaningless soundscape that gives vaporwave ability to critique. Often made up of repeating synth riffs, tinny beats, sometimes sounds or jingles reminiscent of 1980s and 1990s TV and radio commercials, it is not an accident that the genre has modelled itself on Muzak. It is an echo of a past that has long disappeared into memory, even into cultural memory; a haunting reminding its listeners of what was, through its twisted soundscape of an otherwise well-trodden cultural form. The genre is best described as music optimised for abandoned malls.

Vaporwave is the audial version of a ruin. Or rather, it is the erection of a folly among ruins, a means to highlight the absurdity of the action itself. Its soundscape exists as a reminder of a past that promised a future that has not appeared; its central thesis – if it were to have one – is that we live surrounded by the ruins of this future-that-never-was. Crucially, and this gets at the heart of the present predicament, we only live and operate among these cultural ruins strictly because we have been unable to reconfigure these cultural building blocks into something new. The ruined landscape of a future that never existed has only come to pass because it has not been replaced by the new. Instead, the orientation has shifted to focusing on the past in the present, not the future ahead of us. The emergence of vaporwave in the present is thus by no means a result of the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the perceived stalling of time as a result, but rather predates it. The pandemic has likely brought such feelings of standstill to the fore, but it by no means created it.

This essay was prompted by a post on Reddit. Paraphrasing, the posted said something to the effect of ‘I don’t want to play the video games from when I was a kid, I want to feel like I did when I played the video games from when I was a kid.’ This, again, gets at the heart of the predicament. That feeling many of us remember from the past is one we have not felt in a long time – myself included. Indeed, video games are a fantastic case study for this development. Using an example from my own experience: I remember when I first played World of Warcraft. I know, your mental image of me as the narrator just shifted substantially, but bear with me. The nature of a fluid massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) wasn’t new by the time WoW was released. Still, it had never been done quite so well: the graphics were fantastic (at the time…), the level of interaction, the fluidity and connectivity of the world, the social aspects and community building… the list goes on, but the software was an adventure, and I (and countless, millions of others) couldn’t get enough of it. It was an unrivalled experience in many ways. Nothing like it had existed before. It was a completely new cultural artefact. It invoked a sense of future-shock.

WoW is, in addition, an interesting example as its original (well almost original) game was re-released in 2019 to thunderous applause, and a community bracing itself for another nerdgasm. The re-release was undoubtedly popular, it was undoubtedly fun, but it wasn’t the same. The feeling that it evoked in the past was no longer there. The future-shock with which it had once been densely packed had melted into air. This disconnect has even been picked up by parts of the community. A debate has raged between players who wish for no changes to be made to the original, for it to be released in its ‘pure’ state (as some changes had been made around specific mechanics, bugs that were never ironed out originally had been, and so forth), and players who call not for a recreation of the original game, but a recreation of the feeling of the original game.

But this is the issue with nostalgia. The original feeling of something unique, the future-shock as it were (or what German historian Reinhard Koselleck called the Überraschung; lit. surprise) cannot by definition be re-created; it must be created anew, with something new. The tragedy faced in the present, then, is that the dominant form among popular cultural media is that of nostalgia: a harkening for past experiences not for the experiences themselves but for that feeling of wonder that came with them: the surprise when playing your first 3d video game, or when first using a smartphone, or at the choice of music on an iPod (not to mention that the songs never skipped if you bumped it!). In many ways, this sense of surprise and wonder has been lost, even if innovation has sped up. Computing is faster than ever. Technology is near-ubiquitous in some parts of the world, yet nothing new seems to come from it. It is the same experiences, but faster, or in higher fidelity – occasionally this even folds back unto itself: vaporwave being a prime example — the mockery of a past cultural form that is only made possible with new technologies and innovations. In short, for all this new potential, nothing new is created.

Much has been written on what has caused this predicament, be it Mark Fisher’s argument that the foundations for innovative cultural forms have all been eroded with the rise of neoliberal capitalism, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s analysis that the future has disappeared because social imaginaries have been eroded with the rise of global techno-capitalism, or indeed Fredric Jameson’s take that capital is too effective at rehabilitating the radically new. To varying degrees, these thinkers (and others) speak to the problem of nostalgia, specifically how the marketing of nostalgia is but a logical conclusion. In the present neo-liberal configuration, innovating is a risk, especially within the realm of culture and pop-culture. It is much safer, and more in line with the underpinning profit motive, to repackage and re-sell old cultural forms as nostalgia and pastiche: think of the Star Wars universe's resurrection yet again, or indeed the example above with the re-release of WoW.

‘Fine’, you say, ‘you’re right’, you concede, ‘but what’s the problem?’ you finally ask. The issue with nostalgia becoming one of the main pop-cultural articulations is that it reorients the present away from the future and towards a past long gone. A lack of future orientation, in turn, takes out much of the hope surrounding societal and cultural development and innovation. To frame this less abstractly: it is hardly news that scientific research and literature, typically in the form of science fiction, exist in a feedback loop. They both take inspiration from one another. Scientific breakthroughs lead to authors to push the boundaries of the imaginable, which in turn inspire scientists, engineers, and inventors to make science fiction science reality. In the words of William Gibson: ‘There are bits of the literal future right here, right now, if you know how to look for them. Although I can’t tell you how; it’s a non-rational process.’ Just think of how many present innovation and inventions we have already seen on shows like Star Trek. Lacking this future orientation, in short, invariably leads to a form of social and cultural stagnation. Let me be clear here: this is not a piece lamenting the ‘fall’ of some romanticised Western culture or some such nonsense. Instead, much of our present social, political and cultural order is underpinned by a futural orientation insofar as it is a belief in a future that drives engagement, innovation, and creativity; that creates future-shock. Why bother changing anything if ‘this is it’? It is precisely this process that ‘Bifo’ Berardi described as the slow cancellation of the future, and that the late Mark Fisher referred to when he asked, “Is there no alternative?”

When I say that nostalgia has become the dominant cultural form, this is what I mean. The conventional means of artistic productions have been subsumed under an unmoving profit motive. As a result, real, shocking, surprising innovation cannot take place. But I wish not to end it with such a conclusion, as merely pointing at a problem isn’t necessarily helpful. Instead, new & radically different forms of production must be discovered. Fredric Jameson calls such an exercise cognitive mapping, the process to resituate oneself in the cultural landscape and thus gain a new perspective. To continue a metaphor: to move out of the ruins and into new vistas to regroup, reshape, and ultimately rebuild. The first step is to realise the impasse faced, the second is to do something about it. This process can already be seen in some spaces, especially among grass-roots movements like the markers’ movement, citizen scientists, and other groups – be they tech-focused or artists’ collectives. What ought not be understated, on the other hand, is the importance of ensuring such a shift takes place, lest we end up reading our own collective epitaph:

‘[…]

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

              Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818.

[trashmenofmarvel]

Devil’s Backbone Chapter 11

Pairing: The Winter Soldier x S.H.I.E.L.D. agent!Reader

Summary: With your team dead and your mission failed, you’ve been taken by the assassin to an unknown location and are at the mercy of your cruel tormentors. (This fic is explicit, 18+ only, mild dubcon)

Chapter Warnings: Blood, wound care

Word Count: 6.4k

0017 EST, January 12th, 2014

You guided the assassin to the couch after having felt along the wall for the light switch and flicking it on. You tried your best to lower him onto the cushions as gently as possible and not dump him like a sack of potatoes, no matter how tired your arms were. It was difficult; with his tactical suit and the metal arm you guessed he weighed at 250 pounds. Most likely more.

“Easy,” you said when he braced his metal fingers on the edge of the cushions and pain flashed across his face.

He met your eye, that same look of edgy wariness you had seen a few times was there very much still in place. You got the sense he was assessing you, taking your measure, but then his gaze quickly shifted away. His stare went blank and he seemed to sink within himself. Something was going on in there, something you couldn’t see or perhaps even guess at.

Unfortunately, you didn’t have the luxury of keeping your distance, so all you could do was hope he didn’t do to you what he had done to his former allies.

Leaving him on the couch, you went to the hallway closet to raid it for what you would need. If memory served, it should be well-stocked with supplies and clothing. You found it was, cataloging what you needed: a large white medical kit, an armful of towels, a blanket, a flashlight, and a grey sweater jacket. That last one you pulled out and tugged on, zipping it up your chest. The heat had been set to fifty degrees to keep the pipes from freezing in the winter, and you turned the heat up on your way back to the living room.

You carefully pulled out the supplies you wanted and made your way back to the living room, placing the goods on the nearby glass coffee table. The assassin’s face was pale and sallow in the garish light of the ceiling fan lamp, his left side and leg almost black with blood.

When you sat on the edge of the coffee table and reached for his chest, he flinched away, his eyes wild but glassed over. His hands clenched and released in rapid succession, but he didn’t seem to know exactly how he wanted to react himself.

You backed away a few inches, palms up to show you meant him no harm. “I need to check your wounds. Unless you want me to take you to a hospital.”

His gaze flickered from your hands to your face. When he didn’t respond, you said, “Yeah, didn’t think so. I need to stop the bleeding. I’m going to be as gentle as I can, okay?”

His taut shoulders loosened and fell marginally, the tightness of his eyes softening just the tiniest bit and he gave a small, single nod.

It was the best you could hope for. Now all you had to do was figure out how to remove his clothing, a task that would be much more difficult than it seemed at first blush. His tac suit had a halter harness strapped across the chest, and the rest of it didn’t seem to have any discernible openings.

Well, gotta start somewhere.

You slowly reached forward and cautiously unsnapped the weapon harness, pulling it away from his chest. You realized the vest had buttons; you had thought they were simply decoration at first. A ridiculous conclusion, considering how practical the assassin was. You doubted he did much for the aesthetic.

As you unsnapped each button, you watched his face, looking for signs that he was going to lash out. Sweat beaded his forehead and his eyes were glassy with dark circles underneath, but he seemed calm enough. His breathing was uneven. You assumed it was from the pain.

When you finally got through the buttons—so goddamn many of them since they went the entire length of his torso—you very carefully peeled back his vest. The assassin winced but didn’t make a sound when the Kevlar fiber parted from the blood-tacky skin beneath.

There was a lot of it smeared across the left side of his chest and stomach, but most of it was dried and very little of it was fresh. The fact his wounds had clotted was a good sign, but you had no idea how much internal damage there was. He could just as easily bleed to death on the inside.

“All right,” you released a held breath as you eyed the cause of all that blood. “I count two gunshot wounds, one below your ribcage and the other above your hip. I can’t tell how deep they are. Um…”

The assassin moved and you drew your hands back quickly, but he only stripped off the rest of his vest and tossed it to the floor.

You stared. You couldn’t help it. Your eyes fastened onto the place where his artificial left shoulder joined his body, signified by a seam of jagged scars. It was brutal, looking as if the metal had been soldered to flesh without any care or consideration for the man.

Efficient and cruel.

Your eyes wandered over his chest, then. The large pectorals, the defining lines of his abs, the sheer power in his biceps and forearms. You had thought without his bulky gear he would look smaller, less intimidating. If anything, he looked larger and more primal.

You cleared your throat and forced your eyes back down to his bloodied and torn flesh. Methodically moving your focus downward over his clothed left leg, you saw two or three more possible wounds, but you wouldn’t know until…

“Don’t freak out,” you said with a slight wince, “but your pants need to come off.”

You chanced a glance at his face. He remained as immutable as ever, his heavy gaze bore into yours until you looked away. Christ, you could feel your cheeks heating up. You weren’t sure if it was from his glare or the fact you were trying to strip him naked.

“So… do you want me to do it or…?”

Without a word, the assassin reached down and unbuckled the gun holster across his waist. There was a zipper along each side, following the angles of his pelvis. He unzipped them, and without warning, pulled his pants down his hips.

He wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

“Okay,” you remarked to no one in particular as you quickly looked away. Of course. Why would a deadly assassin bother to wear underwear?

Commandos go commando, you thought in a moment of fleeting, anxiety-induced, borderline-hysterical humor. Oh, God, this is really my life now. Mad scientists and sexy underwear-less assassins.

You managed to keep your face blank as you took deep steadying breaths. You weren’t even sure why you were freaking out. You had seen plenty of your teammates naked, an unavoidable occurrence when you went on overnight missions together, and you hadn’t given a shit then.

Of course, none of your teammates had fucked you with their tongues or fingers, either.

Seeing the towels on the coffee table, you grabbed one and held it out in his general direction.

“You can cover up with this.”

Per usual, he remained silent, but you did feel the towel being tugged from your grasp.

You needed to focus, get your shit together, patch up the maybe-friendly killer, figure out what the hell was going on, and plan your next move. The last thing you needed was to be thrown off and sent reeling just because of a little bit of exposed skin.

Or a lot of exposed skin, as the case was. When you turned back to look at him, his pants were around his calves, his torso entirely bare, and the only thing covering his crotch was a towel that was, in retrospect, much too small.

The fact he was mostly naked vanished from your thoughts when you saw the next two wounds. You winced, leaning closer to peer at them.

“One in the hip and another in the thigh. They’re not bleeding anymore, but… you’re going to want an actual surgeon to remove all of these. So for now, I’m just going to clean and cover them—“

“Take them out.”

Your eyes shot upward to his, finding he was prompted up on his elbows, staring down at you with a hard expression.

“What?” You swallowed as his intense stare stirred something between your thighs. Your body had the worst timing. “No. I’m not doing that.”

Somehow, his gaze became even harder. You could feel the tension in your pelvis increase likewise, and you became much more belligerent and irritated than you meant to be.

“Listen, buddy,” you snapped, “this isn’t like the movies. If I go digging in there I will definitely make it worse, and that’s if I don’t kill you on accident. The best thing to do is to leave them be and—”

He moved too fast for you to react. Grabbed by the neckline of your jacket, he hauled you off the coffee table and nearly onto his chest where he glared into your face, inches away.

You froze like a rabbit between the wolf’s teeth.

“Take… them out,” he growled. Actually growled. It should have been funny. Instead, it made you feel something close to fear and not far from arousal.

For a moment, you said nothing. Your limbs were taut with distress, your heart pounding in your ears. After a moment you swallowed and blinked to clear your vision. His blue eyes seemed to fill your whole world, but you forced your tumultuous thoughts into something more coherent and focused. There wasn’t time for this bullshit posturing. He might be some kind of super badass who can murder two dozen people and then take four bullets from a machine gun, but that didn’t mean you were wrong.

You took a deep breath and looked him straight in the eye.

“I didn’t bring you here, with me, against all gut instinct and better judgement, just so I could watch you bleed out on the couch.”

He blinked. It was the only reaction to your words aside from the curious way his eyes flicked between yours, as if searching for something. After a long, drawn out moment… his expression lost its hard edge and his fingers loosened their grip.

“I won’t,” he mumbled, too softly, too vacantly, and then released you.

With a lingering look you hoped made your irritation clear, you returned to your place on the coffee table and pointedly ignored the way your heart was thrumming in your chest.

Oh, yeah. You were irritated. Even a little scared. You were also undeniably turned on.

Great.

“Okay.” You muttered, pulling out a pair of forceps and sanitizing them with rubbing alcohol. “I’m just going to make it worse, but if that’s what you want... I’m warning you now though, if I do worsen it, then I really will take you to a hospital.”

He didn’t respond verbally, but he did lean back against the cushions and tensed his jaw as he stared up at the ceiling. You knew that rigid position from experience: he was mentally preparing himself for overwhelming physical pain.

You stared at the wounds and then back up at his face as you said, “I don’t have anything to anesthetize you with—“

“It doesn’t matter,” he cut in, gruff. “No more stalling.”

You would have prickled at his words, but his tone wasn’t cruel or mean. It was unnerved. He knew it would hurt, further confirmed by the fact his normal arm was gripping the back of the couch tightly.

The grim gesture prodded at your thoughts, and it made you wonder what had happened to him to provoke such a reaction. Did he have previous experience with having bullets dug out of him while awake? God, you hoped not.

You took a deep breath and began to work. You dealt with the highest wound on his side first, wiping at it with iodine, being as gentle as possible as you smoothed the cloth over the damaged skin. You took a pair of forceps and paused when you realized you needed to shine some light into the wound itself to see what you were doing.

He held his metal arm away from his body, the silver forearm propped on the coffee table next to your hip. You were nearly touching him already but you scooted closer, trying to get a better angle of approach. You leaned down and placed your free hand on his flank, feeling the taut muscles under your fingers. You clicked on the flashlight and lightly tapped it against his arm, making a metallic clicking sound.

He peered down at you cautiously, and you indicated the flashlight in your hand.

“Hold this, please.” You aimed the light at his injuries. “Just like that.”

He wrapped his silver fingers around the black handle of the flashlight and pointed it where you had instructed. In doing so, he had to lean the artificial limb against your thigh. You could feel the cold metal through your pants and you struggled against any reaction.

Praying you didn’t pass out yourself, seeing as you weren’t exactly trained to be a field surgeon and go digging around inside someone’s body, you carefully moved the forceps into the illuminated, bloody opening. You could actually see the shiny metallic surface of the bullet. It should have been much deeper than it was, considering a goddamn machine gun had shot him. You set your jaw and tried to steady your hands as you dipped the forceps into the wound and very delicately grabbed the slug.

You heard the shift in his breathing that told you he felt it. You paused and searched for something comforting to say.

“Remember to breathe,” you told him. “Wiggle your toes.”

You glanced up at his face and saw the confusion there, settled in a severe crease between his brows. You shrugged and felt your cheeks heat. “That’s what my dentist tells me when something is gonna hurt. It’s silly but it works.”

His gaze became even more piercing if that was possible, so you cleared your throat and returned your attention to your task. You grabbed hold of the slug again and began to pull it out. It took a little bit of wiggling and you went slow, trying your hardest not to cause any additional damage.

The couch creaked ominously as the assassin dug his fingers into the woodwork underneath the fabric. You couldn’t imagine the kind of pain he was experiencing—your own gunshot wound had been nothing more than a deep graze—but he bore it in silence.

It was unnerving. You almost wished he would make some kind of noise, if only for his own benefit. He certainly didn’t need to hold back on your account, and it couldn’t be healthy to repress so damn much. After all, this wasn’t the first time you’d notice him do something like that before.

Pleasure or pain, he seemed to just… hold it back.

Finally, the slug came free. You stared down at the warped piece of bloody metal, almost fascinated, before you put it down on one of the towels nearby.

One down. Three to go.

You continued onward, freeing the second slug in his side with as much ease as the first. You tried to be more careful with the bullet in his hip, suspecting it was close to the bone. The one in his thigh was also difficult. The thick wall of muscle did not make it easy for the bullet to be extracted, and you were sure you had caused some additional tearing on its removal. You kept mumbling apologies, wincing whenever his leg twitched, but he remained quiet.

The assassin may have carried the pain with stoic silence but it was definitely affecting him. Sweat trickled down his forehead and dampened his hair, his cheekbones were so prominent he looked almost gaunt, and his pupils had contracted to dark pinpricks. His fingernails had ripped small tears into the couch. The pain you were inflicting must have been excruciating, yet the control he had over his own body in the face of it was impressive, and you had to admit, a little concerning. It didn’t seem normal.

You were able to extract all four bullets first and then patch the wounds after since there was so little blood to speak of. After washing them with iodine one last time, you pulled them closed and sealed them shut with a cutting-edge medical glue, one that would expedite the healing as well as protect the wound from infection. You finished them off by taping gauze over them, protecting the glue and skin until he could get more thorough medical treatment.

You were beginning to suspect he might not need it. The assassin’s injuries should have been much worse; deeper with much more damage. You didn’t understand it at first, but then realized it was surprisingly familiar.

You had seen Steve Rogers take a few nasty blows; wounds that should have put him in a hospital. Yet somehow, more often than not, he simply walked them off and returned the next day looking as if his wounds were several days old.

The idea that the assassin could be enhanced or even gifted should have crossed your mind before now, but to be fair, you had been a little preoccupied.

“It’s done,” you said, breathing out in a long exhale. Your fingers were coated with red and orange, and they trembled with fatigue. You began to clean up the mess when his voice caused you to halt.

“Thank you.”

You looked up and found his gaze already settled on your face. The sight of those pale blue eyes watching you so closely sent heat through your cheeks.

“You took them for me,” you said, trying to sound blasé and failing when your voice slightly cracked. “It’s the least I could do.”

Needing a moment to collect yourself, you stood and picked up the soiled towels. Walking around the couch, you went to the washing machine in the hallway and tossed them in before going to the kitchen and throwing out the bloodied wipes. You went back to the living room and returned to your perch on the coffee table, grabbing the medical kit and pulling it toward you. Digging through it for a moment, you found what you were looking for and pulled out a bottle of pills, ones you remembered from your field training.

Sensing a heated gaze on the back of your neck, you nervously twisted off the top and shook four pills into your hand. When you turned to where the assassin was still lying on the couch, you saw he was watching you closely. He seemed to do that a lot, and it made you feel self-conscious.

“What is that?” he asked, his tone matching the suspicion is his pale eyes.

“A drug created by S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medical doctors for injured agents in the field.”

His eyes narrowed. You already knew where this was going, but you pushed on, hoping you were wrong and he would act like a reasonable person.

“It suppresses bacterial growth and promotes healing. I donno, something they cooked up in the labs—“

“No.”

He stared at you. You glowered back.

“I don’t want it.”

“Do you want those wounds to become infected?” you snapped. “Because that’s what’s going to happen.”

He ignored you and actually tried to sit up, so you said, “Nu-uh,” and placed your palm against his bare chest. It was all too easy to push him back down, his strength sapped by his wounds. His skin was warm under your fingers and you quickly pulled back.

He looked up through his strands of sweat-darkened hair and you met his gaze unflinchingly.

“Why are you so hell-bent on suffering through this?”

You weren’t sure why you asked. Why you even cared whether he was in pain or not. He didn’t answer, and instead broke off eye contact, looking away.

Your anger vanished, leaving you feeling tired. All you wanted was to crawl under the covers of the only bed in the entire small house, but you couldn’t. Somehow, it had taken root in your mind that the assassin was your responsibility. Whatever happened to him, whatever he did, it was on you.

You got up and went into the kitchen, proceeding to rummage through the cupboards until you found what you were looking for. Most of the shelves were filled with MRE and canned foods, but you found the bottles of supplemented water without much difficulty. You knew you were dehydrated and probably malnourished, so you took two from the cupboard instead of just one.

“At least drink this,” you muttered as you returned. You held one out to him, the blue liquid sloshing mutedly inside the bottle. He eyed it as if it were an IED. When he neglected to move, you squared your jaw. “You need to replace your electrolytes.”

He studied your face for a moment, and then carefully took the bottle from your hand. You stared at the metal fingers wrapped around the curved plastic, so lightly it didn’t even bend the material. You were curious as to how sensitive those fingers were.

Nope. Don’t go there.

“What you probably need is a blood transfusion, but this particular safe house doesn’t come with its own blood bank,” you remarked as you sat back on the coffee table, facing him as you unscrewed the top of your bottle.

You were relieved to see he had pulled his pants back up around his hips while you’d been in the kitchen. You weren’t so happy he was up in a sitting position. At least he was leaning back against the cushions. In the event that he did pass out, you wouldn’t have to carry him anywhere else. Or deal with him cracking his skull open.

The assassin made no remark to your dry comment and instead downed the bottle in one go. You were pulled from your sour thoughts at the sight of his large Adam’s apple bobbing with each gulp.

Oh, for fuck’s sake—

Needing a distraction, you pulled out the bottle of pills he’d rejected. You opened it, tapped out two pills into your palm, and popped them into your mouth, swallowing with the supplemented water. After the torture, dehydration, exposure to the elements, and the incredible psychological stress, you hoped they could tide you over until you sought actual medical help. The beating your immune system had taken, not to mention the actual beating at the hands of the soldiers, was going to take a nasty toll. Already the fatigue and pain was settling into your bones and muscles like a dusting of broken glass.

You realized the assassin was staring at you again.

“So,” you prompted suddenly, “Do you have a name?”

He blinked and slightly tilted his head, mouth forming into a frown.

“I… I don’t know.” He paused, chewed on his lip, and added. “I think it’s… Bucky.”

You raised an eyebrow.

“Bucky? That’s a… unique name.” You had almost said it was a weird name, but you decided to try the diplomatic approach rather than the dick-ish one.

The assassin remained quiet, his eyes staring somewhere near your knees. He looked almost lost in thought.

It didn’t seem as if he would say anything else, so you cleared your throat and said, “Well… my name is—“

“I know who you are.”

You snapped your mouth shut, feeling the corners of your mouth tug into a tight frown.

“Okay. Then maybe you can tell me why you killed the people you worked for and opened my cell door.” You hadn’t meant to sound so scathing and annoyed, but now that the danger of him bleeding out had passed, a restless urgency for answers was taking hold of you.

The assassin met your eyes only briefly before they slid away again.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much, do you.”

You could have winced at the ice in your cold words, but it was the effect they had on him that made you feel like a real piece of shit.

He looked downright miserable as he stared at his hands and said in a faint voice, “I’m sorry.”

His odd change in behavior and personality made you remember this wasn’t the first time he had acted this way. There was something very wrong with him.

Guilt needled at you. When you spoke again, it was with a gentler tone. “What can you tell me?”

A blank look passed over his face, followed by furrowing brows.

“It’s… hard. There’s fragments. Bits and pieces, but I can’t… focus on them. I try, and… they slip away.”

It was the most words you had ever heard him speak at once. But the next ones made your breath catch in your throat.

“I think… they did this to me?”

He raised his eyes to meet yours, a pained expression that was disturbing to see. He looked like a soul lost in the wilderness. “I can’t remember,” he added, his eyes trailing down to stare near your shoulder again.

Perhaps you should have been afraid. Or at least alarmed that you were stuck with a killer assassin with retrograde amnesia, but his words, his behavior, everything about him prodded at something vulnerable within you. A chink in your well-hewn armor.

You had maimed. You had killed. You had done truly despicable things in the line of duty, but at the end of the day, you could put all of that away in nice, tidy little boxes. But this man refused to go into a box quietly. Every time you tried to pack him away, to forget what you had done with him in the loneliness of your isolation and treat him like an enemy at worst and a hostile ally at best, you just… couldn’t.

He had dug himself under your skin and seemed intent on staying there.

“Who were those men?” you asked, making an effort to get him to keep talking. “The ones who kept and tortured me?”

“HYDRA,” he replied simply.

You sighed heavily. No matter how many times you heard that name, it was still difficult to swallow. You made one last-ditch effort at denial.

“The last time I checked, HYDRA doesn’t exist anymore. S.H.I.E.L.D. wiped them out in Nazi Germany.”

He shrugged. “They didn’t.”

You fought the urge to roll your eyes, and instead rubbed your tongue across the front of your teeth. To say this man was taciturn was putting it mildly.

“Okay. For the sake of argument, let’s say they are HYDRA. Why would they go after Mister Kartal? And why take me?”

The assassin set his jaw into a grim line, but this time when he spoke, he met your eyes.

“Because there is no S.H.I.E.L.D. HYDRA has been within them from the beginning.”

You could only blink at him.

“I’m sorry?”

“Kartal was a HYDRA agent stationed within S.H.I.E.L.D. He took steps to go to the FBI and expose HYDRA in exchange for protection. I was ordered to kill him, his family, and all of the agents involved.”

His pale eyes drifted over your face.

“Except you.”

You felt like you couldn’t draw a full breath of air.

“I don’t understand,” was all you could say.

“I was ordered to bring you in. Alive.”

“But… why?”

He looked away.

“They didn’t tell me.”

You sensed he wasn’t being entirely truthful, but then he was talking again before you could follow-up.

“What I can tell you is that the man who gave me my orders is S.H.I.EL.D. I don’t know his name, only that he has a lot of power in your organization. And he’s implementing his plan in a few hours.”

You frowned, remembering the conversation that had taken place in your cell.

“The man who asked you all those questions? Was that him?”

The assassin studied you before nodding once.

“Do you know what he’s planning?” you asked, dread sitting in the pit of your stomach.

The assassin pressed his lips firmly together. “He has been working towards this for a long time. The ability to assassinate millions of people in an instant. And at your headquarters, using three Helicarriers, he’ll be able to achieve that.” He swallowed once before adding, “The launch is in less than twelve hours.”

You were glad you were sitting down already, because you were fairly sure you would have planted ass-first into the carpet. Everything he was saying was unreal, unbelievable. And yet… you couldn’t deny things had gone horribly wrong from the moment the first vehicle of the convoy had flipped in a plume of fire and smoke. That mission, not to mention the escort route itself, had been kept secret; from the feds, from the state department, even from S.H.I.E.L.D. besides the members of STRIKE who had been there.

Yes, you had sensed something was wrong from the start. But still, you hadn’t realized the situation was so fucking dire. Like, world-ending, apocalyptic dire.

“I have to do something,” you said flatly. It was your responsibility. Especially if you and this man were the only ones aware of what was really going on inside S.H.I.E.L.D.

The assassin’s expression changed, and at first you couldn’t understand what it was. But then you realized he was… almost smiling. But God, you had never seen such a sad, hollow smile in your entire life.

“The last mission directive he gave me was to wait for… for Steve Rogers to arrive at the Triskelion. I had orders to kill him.”

His words should have disturbed you; instead, they filled you with sudden hope. You got to your feet and exclaimed, “That’s it!”

The assassin looked up at you, wide-eyed.

“Captain Rogers!” you explained with a wave of your hand. “He can help! I mean, if you were sent to kill him, he’s definitely not HYDRA, right? He’s not compromised. We have to contact him, tell him what’s going on. And then help him stop the launch, and…”

Your words trailed off, dying as you caught sight of the expression on his face. You had thought he would have been glad to hear your idea. Apparently, were wrong.

He looked down and sighed through his nostrils.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” you asked, scrunching your face. You were completely confused over his reaction.

“He won’t trust me.” He curled the metal fingers of his left hand. “Not after… what I’ve done. And I don’t trust me either.”

You sat down slowly on the coffee table again. The ease with which he had spoken earlier was gone, and he had returned to sounding unsure, his speech halting and hesitant. There was no mistaking the shame there; you of all people would recognize it.

“I don’t even know who I am, or… what kind of person I was.”

“Hey.”

He looked up, dragging his eyes as if with great reluctance. You met his blue eyes steadily. He might be unsure, but you weren’t.

“By the sound of it, none of that was your fault. Those men, those people did something to you. Brainwashing, maybe.” You sighed and ran a hand through your hair, recalling just what they had done to you by the aching points along your scalp. “Psychological torture and manipulation falls under the purview of HYDRA if I remember my history lessons correctly.”

At the mention of HYDRA in a historical context, something tugged at the back of your head. History. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s history. There was something there you needed to remember. It was too bad history had been your worse subject at the Academy.

Your mind tried to grab the loose thread to pull it, but it was just out of reach—

“But…”

You blinked, focusing your attention on the assassin. He was staring at you again, and you were alarmed to see he looked on the verge of tears.

His voice was soft and edged in horror as he stammered, “You… how can you try to defend my actions? After… after what I did to you?”

A heavy stone dropped in your stomach, splashing with a ripple of dread. This was the closest either of you had gotten to acknowledging what had happened aloud. You pressed your lips together and looked away. You couldn’t think about that right now. There were bigger issues to deal with.

“You may not know what kind of person you are,” you said quietly, “but I can tell you this much. You’re the kind that saves someone from being tortured to death. And you’re the kind that wants to prevent more lives from being lost.”

When you looked back at him, his eyes were no longer as glassy but his expression was so sad it was almost sweet. And in that moment, all you wanted to do was run your fingers through his soft hair and tell him it was going to be okay. The urge was so strong your hand actually moved across your thigh.

You halted the movement and rose to your feet so quickly you saw spots in your vision.

“You need sleep and so do I,” you announced, not quite meeting his eye. “Even a couple hours will help clear our heads so we can come up with a better solution for the… HYDRA threat.”

And then you hesitated and looked at him. In fact, you eyed him for so long that he tilted his head and asked in a curious tone, “What?”

You chewed on your lip. This was a bad idea, but what were you going to do? Handcuff him to the couch?

“Can I trust you?”

He searched your eyes, his jaw tensing into a grim expression.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” You took a breath. “Can I trust you not to kill me in my sleep?”

His expression fell; you immediately regretted asking. Or at least, being so cruel about it. Why couldn’t you use your damn head before you opened your mouth? You had just told the guy he had saved your life, and then you go and say something like that. Goddamn typical.

Before you could continue berating yourself, his face smoothed into that unreadable look you were becoming familiar with.

“I won’t hurt you.”

You hugged your arms in front of you, knowing it made you look defensive but really you were doing it for self-assurance.

“How do you know that? If you’re still under someone’s control, I mean, how do you know you won’t hurt me?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

It was circular logical. A nonsensical appeal. But his tone was open and he managed to hold your gaze without looking away again. You trusted he believed what he was saying, and that would have to be enough for now.

“All right,” you said slowly. “Can I trust that when I come back out of that bedroom in the morning you’ll still be here?”

His eyes softened in that sorrowful way again.

“Where would I go?”

I really do have a way of making myself into an asshole every time I open my mouth, don’t I? But he did have a point, as sad as it was. Even if he had a safe place to hide, safer than here, he was being hunted just as much as you were. And while you had no doubt he was still dangerous, he was also vulnerable until he was fully healed.

It occurred to you that he needed you. Maybe as much as you needed him.

Realizing he was still staring at you, you cleared your throat and said, “There’s only one bed, so… the couch is all yours.”

The assassin didn’t speak but he nodded once, his eyes dropping to focus on his hands with hard scrutiny. You could almost feel the waves of guilt radiating off of him, and you sighed. Grabbing the blanket you had fetched earlier from off the table, you held it out for him.

“There’s food in the kitchen if you get hungry, and the shower is down the hall. Help yourself to it. I’ll be… in the bedroom. If you need me.”

Not that he would. But you wanted him to understand that whatever this weird thing between you was, you weren’t afraid he would hurt you. Maybe you should have been, but you weren’t.

He stared at you for a moment before taking the blanket. You turned around, your cheeks heating up again, and you prepared to make a quick exit.

“I know you… saved my life.”

You paused, his soft voice halting you in your tracks.

“You didn’t have to. You could have just left me there, but… you didn’t.”

His speech was awkward but heartfelt. You glanced over your shoulder but he wasn’t staring at you; he was looking down at the blanket in his hands.

“I… appreciate what you’re doing. Trusting me. And… believing me. About HYDRA.” He paused and clenched the blankets tighter. “I’m not used to... all of this.” He said it as if he meant more than the immediate situation. It felt like he was saying he wasn’t used to being treated as a person. As human.

Something churned within your stomach. A sensation.

Guilt. Shame. You had endured so much over the past few days and you weren’t sure when the full realization of everything was going to hit you. You knew when it did, it would be ugly.

You wanted to help him. But you didn’t even know how to help yourself. So you did what you always do in uncomfortable situations. You pushed it away.

“It’s nothing,” you responded flatly, turning back towards the bedroom so you wouldn’t look at him. “You saved my life. I saved yours. We’re even now.”

You tried to make it sound like it didn’t mean anything. It was just an exchanging of debts. A life for a life. And now he would help you stop HYDRA. He was a means to an end. That was all.

The effect was lost by the slight waver in your voice. You ducked your head and left the room, feeling his gaze on the back of your neck every step of the way.

Next Chapter

[maryqueenofmurder]

I just got braces, time to project onto Ex.

Tw:  Mouth pain, aches, refusal to eat.  Slight allusions to Wormman/Ex

Disclaimer!  While my braces may hurt, I have Ibuprofen and spahgettio’s.  Doesn’t hurt that much, I’m just exaggerating for the sake of torturing Ex.

@ihavenoconsistentname and @kool-aidd more angst!  Enjoy <3

——————————————————————————————

Ex needed braces.  Why!  He was a grown adult!  Braces were for teenagers whose teeth and jaws were still changing.  Unfortunately for him, void trickery gave him the shorter stick.

Despite having the same physical and mental age as Xisuma, Ex had only existed for 13 years.  And for some reason, his teeth were shifting.  Don’t get him wrong, he knew his teeth were... different.  They were sharper, especially the canines, and they were stronger.

Ex’s teeth weren’t the only thing about his mouth that was off.  His jaw was oddly shaped, better for biting and holding on.  Having an extra weapon that no-one could remove was good, but a human-or whatever he was-wasn’t meant to have that shape of a jaw.  The braces and expander would fix that, though his ability to bite things would probably stay the same.

So Ex was to get braces and an expander.  He was understandably nervous.  Ex confided to Wormman that he was getting braces, and asked Wormman to come along as moral support.  Wormman laughed at first, thinking it funny to be afraid of such a thing.  At seeing the fearful and ashamed look on Ex’s face Wormman stopped laughing, and comforted Ex instead.

Wormman was totally going to go with Ex.  Wormman remembered when he got braces, and was determined to make Ex’s experience more enjoyable.  Or at least not totally awful.  Boy, did he fail in that regard.

——————————————————————————————

As they rode up the elevator Ex seemed to get increasing worried as the time went on.  They sat in the orthodontist’s office for what seemed like forever, but must have been only a few minutes.  Wormman squeezed Ex’s hand when they called him.  Ex paled, got up, and went into the office.

Wormman severely regretted not bringing anything to do while Ex was in the office.  A torturous hour and a half later Ex walked out.  He seemed fine, and had braces with red rubber bands.

“Red, Ex?  Seriously?  At least it wasn’t black.  Glad to know you aren’t going through your teenage emo phase.”  Wormman joked, trying to dispel the tension.   Ex had told him about the whole being thirteen years old thing.

“It’s for the aesthetic.”  Ex fired back, easily slipping into their natural banter.

“You feeling okay?”  Worman asked, remembering how Ex had acted.

“My teeth feel weird, but otherwise no pain.”  Ex replied, running his tongue over the metal in his mouth.  Wormman smiled, and they headed to Wormman’s home together.

By the time they got home Ex had started complaining about his teeth hurting.  A couple hours later he was lying on his bed, trying and failing to focus on reading a book.  His teeth ached, and Wormman didn’t have any ibuprofen.  Every once in a while he’d wimper, and mess with his teeth.

Wormman got up abruptly.  He headed to the way out, not bothering to disguise the heavy way he was walking.

“Where are you going?”  Ex asked softly.

“To Xisuma’s to get you some pain meds.”  Worman answered stiffly.

“Ah-wait, don’t go I,”  Ex’s teeth clanged together harshly.  He let out a stifled whimper. “n-never mind, please get me some ibuprofen.”

Wormman nodded, hoping Ex could see it, then booked it out the exit.  He was huffing by the time he got Xisuma’s.  Once inside he walked around yelling.

“XISUMA!” At the top of his lungs.  Xisuma came racing over.

“Stop yelling!”

“Sorry.  Do you have any ibuprofen?”

“Yeah, why do you need some?”

“Ex got braces and now his teeth hurt.”

Xisuma seemed to immediately shift into over protective brother mode, gathering everything Ex would need.  Then Xisuma dragged Wormman off to Ex.

Ex was very glad to receive ibuprofen.  Xisuma sat next to him on Ex’s bed, stroking Ex’s hair.  Wormman silently hoped that tommorow would be better for the three.

[sabka-dentist07]

Orthodontic / Braces Treatment

An improper alignment of the teeth can be treated with Dental Braces Treatment. It is one of the traditional methods of treating Orthodontic issues. With braces, proper pressure is put on the desired teeth to move in a specific direction and get in the proper position. Metallic Braces, Cosmetic Braces, Ceramic Braces, and Lingual Braces are some of the main types of braces used. What is Orthodontic / Braces Treatment? Are you confident about your smile? This question usually has mixed responses because most people wish they had a more attractive, well-aligned smile. However, not everyone has well-aligned teeth to give them a perfect smile, isn’t it? Malalignment of teeth can be resolved with orthodontic treatment. When you have improper teeth alignment, it becomes difficult to smile. A proper fixed orthodontic treatment can help you to achieve teeth alignment. Overbite, underbite, crossbite, and the gap between teeth, etc are some of the problems caused by misalignment in teeth. With Orthodontic treatment, you can fix all these teeth misalignment problems and achieve proper teeth alignment. Many people are unaware of the Orthodontic treatment cost in India, which makes them avoid Orthodontic treatment early. Orthodontic treatment, commonly called braces treatment, involves the correction of misaligned teeth using wires. Apart from aligning teeth, orthodontic treatment helps to restore a person’s bite, the function of their teeth, and aesthetics. It plays an important role in preventing dental conditions like cavities and gum diseases, that commonly occur in the case of malalignment. Why Should I Align My Teeth? Apart from aesthetics, most people are not bothered about their crooked teeth. However, little do they know that their misalignment can become a problem for their dental health. Here are a few conditions that need a wire on your teeth: -Overbite -Crossbite -Open Bite -Misplaced midline -Spacing -Crowding -Forwardly placed teeth

Email — info@sabkadentist.com

Phone number — 9222233111

Address — Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Nagpur, Nashik, Pune, Surat, Satara, Vadodara, Assam

[nochuuuenthusiast]

tag!

hii~ so i got tagged by @snugglemejeon thank you so much ! i think this is really cute hehe (to the people i tagged: i’m sorry if i tagged you and we haven’t talked that much... i don’t know that many people on tumblr... and also, you don’t have to do this challenge, so feel free to ignore it !) 

rules are: (1) tag the person who tagged you (2) answer the questions (3) tag 10 people (sorry i don’t know that many people here on tumblr so i’m only gonna tag one or two :( but ps! if you wanna be friends with me, don’t hold back and just talk to me hehe) 

(1) how tall are you? 

i haven’t checked in a bit but i’m about 5′2″ (ish) so that’s around 158cm (*sighs* yeah i know... i’m pretty short) 

(2) what color and style is your hair?

i actually got a haircut yesterday before my blackpink concert hehe so now my hair is layered and it goes a little past my shoulders. i didn’t start growing out my hair until late last year since i used to always cut it short (like, a little above my shoulders) so yeah... i used to dye my hair a longgg longggg time ago but now it’s its original color which is dark brown 

(3) what color are your eyes? 

a solid brown (not totally light, but not too dark) (my mom has really pretty light brown eyes but they didn’t get passed down to me so ahhaha *cries*) 

(4) do you wear glasses? 

yes, but no (?) i have glasses but i don’t wear them 24/7 since my eyesight isn’t that bad... i only wear them in class when i’m too far away from the board. i have kinda circular, brown glasses (lmao, i know no one asked but...) 

(5) do you wear braces?

i used to wear braces a couple of years ago so now i just wear my retainers once a week (you’re supposed to wear them every night but whatever,,, i’m pretty lazy and irresponsible and my teeth haven’t shifted sooo once a week will do ahah) 

(6) what’s your fashion sense? 

i care about how i dress but i don’t worry about how i look all the time soooo... i’ll sum up my style in a few words: 26 year old single korean girl walking to an aesthetic cafe on a sunday afternoon. yeah. that’s basically my style. lol i hope you guys understand what i mean... if not, i’m terribly sorry

(7) full name? 

only a few people on tumblr know my name... but i don’t want to reveal it here since i know everyone can see this, and tumblr is the only social media platform where my identity is hidden sooo... 

but if you want to get to know me and learn my name then you can definitely message me or send something to me :) i’m nice, i swear

(8) when were you born?

july 2001; i’m 17 ;) 

(9) where are you from and where do you live now? 

i was born and currently live in los angeles, california however, i am 100% korean. both of my parents were born and raised in south korea. and yes, i am fluent in korean. 

(10) what school do you go to? 

i am a highschooler. and that’s all i’m gonna say. skool sucks :P

(11) what kind of student are you?

i would like to say that i’m more of a hard worker than a naturally smart person, but i am currently getting straight As and for those of you who live in the us, i’m taking 5 APs (which totally sucks :’( but i’m handling them kinda well... i think). and i don’t really like being complimented because one of my biggest fears is of me becoming arrogant so let’s move on,,, pls. 

(12) do you like school?

hell no. but i have to deal with it since everyone does so :/// school isn’t that bad if you daydream and think about bts all day hehe. but in all seriousness, i think school is okay if you have the right friends to hang out with and talk to 

(13) favorite subject? 

history!!! i know this is really weird since not a lot of people like history, but i love ittt!!! i think it’s really fun since it’s kinda like one big story of our world (i’m sorry, i’m such a dork)... i took ap art history last year and i fell in love with it! 

(14) favorite tv shows? 

i used to watch kdramas a longgg time ago, but i kinda stopped but idk why... but my favorite tv shows are friends, the office, stranger things, jane the virgin, etc, etc... i can literally name so many tv shows that i’ve watched but then i’d go rambling on and on and on and i don’t want to bore anyone...

(15) favorite movie? 

forrest gump !!! (and also, did anyone see the two bts movies? i watched both of them at cgv and i literally exploded when i saw the members... okay, moving on (sorry... i get off topic really easily)) 

(16) favorite books? 

i read a book called “pachinko” by min jin lee over the summer and it was so! freaking! good!!! i highly recommend it everyone~ it’s a historical fiction novel about 3-4 generations of this korean family who lived in korea and then moved to japan. it takes place a little before the korean war and it talks about the discrimination that koreans faced in japan at the time. i recently went to the library to check it out since i wanted to read it again but they didn’t have an english copy of the book so i’m reading it in korean at the moment. 

(17) favorite pastime? 

rewatching and rewatching and rewatching bangtan. oh, and streaming their new album ;) oh, and stressing over the new test questions on the fan cafe that the staff upload every week (i need to level up but the test is so hard... i cry every time) 

and writing for this blog! i originally made this blog to de-stress and write some scenarios and reactions and i didn’t know that people would actually like them and respond to them,,, so hey, thank you :) you make me happy every day 

(18) do you have any regrets? 

yes. too many to count. but i’m not gonna sit here and list them all lol

(19) dream job?

i don’t really know... but something in corporate law (?)

(20) would you ever like to be married? 

yessss! have you seen my entire blog??? it’s an entire fluff kingdom!!! i mean, i know that marriage is not just one big fluff and i know that it’s tough, but i would still like to get married one day 

i have my own little fantasies about how married life would be, but that’s a little secret so i’ll save it for next time ;) 

(21) would you like to have kids? 

as much as i love kids, i’m not too sure if i would want any... i mean, obviously my answer will change in the future, but i kinda want either no kids or just one kid... the responsibility of being a parent kinda freaks me out...

(22) how many?

oops, i kinda answered this already in (21) but i’ll answer again anyway: 0-1 

(23) do you like shopping? 

no, i absolutely LOVE shopping. i think i’m addicted lmao. 

psssss: i know no one asked, but my favorite retail shop is madewell

(24) what countries have you visited? 

ahhh finally... the question i’ve been waiting for... so if you get to know me, i really really really reallyyyyy love traveling and i’m so grateful for all the opportunities i’ve been given to travel at such a young age. 

so, let me just list all the places i’ve been to (an i know not all of these are countries, or out of the us, but just hear me out,,, okay?) : france, italy, south korea, mexico, us (hawaii, nevada, utah, etc (lol, i can’t remember all of them)) 

my favorite location out of all of these places is definitely italy <3 (italy has my heart)... i stayed at rome and i also visited pompeii and positano (which were absolutely stunning and beautiful). i went to rome last spring (around april/may) and i personally, really love sightseeing and history and since rome is full of those two things i reallyyy enjoyed it there. oh, and don’t even get me started with the food <3333 

i also really loved france... i stayed at paris and my favorite thing about paris was definitely the louvre museum (once again, i love art history) as well as this place called montmarte (ahh! it’s so pretty) 

and last but not least, (as much as i love love loveee south korea) i really enjoyed mexico! i love calming, relaxing vacation spots so i got to go to cancun (twice!) and snorkel and swim and see little fishies in the clear turquoise ocean... yeah, i miss it there... :( 

(25) scariest nightmare you have ever had

i would totally tell you guys, but it was too complicated so i’m not even gonna bother. 

(26) any enemies? 

i am a lover, not a fighter (hehe)

(27) any significant other?

does jungkook count? lmaooo it’s a joke... he doesn’t even know i exist lol. 

my answer is no. 

(28) do you get along with you family?

yes, yes i do.

(29) do you believe in miracles?

i believe things happen for a reason... so does that count? 

last but not least... (30) how are you?

i’m actually doing pretty well :))) i was in this really big emotional slump that kinda felt like a roller coaster ride last year, but i’m over it now so... yeah... i doing pretty well :) 

okay, so now that i’m done, i have to tag people, and like i said, i don’t talk to that many people on tumblr since i’m a loser lol so here are the people i’ll tag (sorry, i’m not gonna tag 10 people) : 

@pjmochii @jsuga @kpopsffct @ anyone who wants to do it... 

but yea, i seriously don’t know that many people since i haven’t been on tumblr for a long time, so i’m sorry to the people who i tagged (if i haven’t talked to you a lot, i’m sorry... i’ll try to be a better person and try to talk to you more ...) 

[swishandflickwit]

Lucifer — The Simplicity of Weaving 1/1

Summary: Trixie gets herself into a tangle. Good thing her Devil babysitter is no stranger to a bad hair day.

Rating: General Audiences

Words: 3.5k+

Warnings: Established Deckerstar (but no appearance from Chloe). Future fic. Step-Satan shenanigans. Kinda.

AN: Oh look, I wrote another Lucifer & Trixie bonding fic. What a surprise not!

Hahaha, but a little break from The Devil's Lucky Number series for some family fluff, yes? Hope you enjoy this one!

Also on: ff.net | AO3

Other writing

“With your mum in court for the remainder of the day and it being so hot and all—seriously though,” he huffs. “These scorching temperatures could put even Hell to shame. I mean, contrary to popular belief, it isn’t even that hot down there, you know? It’s all dark and ashen and about as ‘fiery’ as a drenched skunk—which sounds and smells as bad as you’re imagining, nay—worse. So if you think beige is a drab color…”

He’s fiddling with his cufflinks, toying with the idea of foregoing aesthetic for once (not that it would ever leave him, not even if he tried; he couldn’t, after all, be faulted for his effortless beauty no matter what vestments he may—or may not—be wearing) and opting for a more casual attire to battle this steady onslaught of a heat wave cresting over Los Angeles with no immediate end in sight.

It’s probably why he isn’t prepared for what greets him when he opens the door to Beatrice’s chamber—

“Anyway, I was thinking we head on down to Lux and grab ourselves some ice—"

—and expels a rather undignified shriek as a result.

“What—!”

“Listen,” she starts, her tone measured and her hands held out in front of her in calm supplication. Like he is some rampant, skittish animal that has somehow wandered from home, and needs to be returned to its natural habitat. “It’s not… that… bad…?”

Lucifer shuts his gaping mouth with an audible click, only to dissolve into spluttering speech instead.

“Beatrice, child—what have you done to your hair?” he exclaims, loftily musing that if there ever is a question between them both of who, in that moment, most resembled a wild animal, it certainly isn’t him.

“I swear I was following the instructions!” she waves towards her phone screen, propped upon the mirror of her dresser and opened on a Youtube tutorial for—

“A French braid?” he cries, voice dripping with incredulity.

“I just wanted to look like Elsa!”

“I do hate to break it to you,” he says, mouth puckered in a grimace. “But it’s looking more Grand Pabbie Troll than Majestic Ice Queen right now.”

He stands corrected. The frost to her glare could restore what little remains of the polar ice caps and freeze him on the spot if she possessed an affinity for such gelid destruction. But she didn’t, and being the sire of a Miracle could not gift her even that.

Small mercies and all.

“I’m in so much trouble,” she wails.

He sighs. It is his turn to appeal to her with more than a modicum of wariness as he meets her eyes in the looking glass and approaches her from behind.

“It can’t be much worse than the chocolate cake incident or the doll debacle.”

With soothing hands, he takes her by the shoulders and eases her back onto her chair, though he needn’t have bothered with the gentleness. As she lists against the wood with all the dejectedness of a usurped sovereign, he surveys the damage. At first glance, it does look quite atrocious—her coffee-colored locks teased and twisted into gnarly knots so they look more bird’s nest than actual, human hair. But further inspection shows it not so unsalvageable, her grubby, ten-year old hands thankfully still inexpert to inflict any lasting harm. At least she didn’t cut anything—then they’d have both suffered the wrath of the detective.

He shudders, before realizing he is the Devil and he cowers before no one that isn’t a slight but tough blonde, blue-eyed, five foot six inches badass cop. He squares his shoulders—a soldier bracing for battle.

“Right.”

From the array of headdress materials spread atop the vanity, he selects his weapon—the sturdiest-looking comb, or as sturdy as plastic can be. He would prefer one of silver or at the very least wood. This pink, sparkling, wide-tooth monstrosity would have to suffice, he laments.

“Now,” he grabs another stool and situates himself to his task, his figure a tower at her back even when seated. “Let’s see if we can’t sort this out, hmm?”

Her eyes widen with desperation.

“Oh Lucifer, you have to fix it,” she practically screams. “You have to!”

“Alright, alright,” he pitches his articulations low to convey his reassurance. It doesn’t erase his bewilderment, however, and at the quizzical brow he directs at her through the mirror she clams up.

Her reticence is an unusual occurrence, but the silence that trails in her wake is no less comforting as it allows him to dedicate his full attention to wrangling her wavy mop into some semblance of order.

He forges a meticulous path from her scalp to her roots, prying tangles apart before smoothing them over with the comb. His hands are light and dexterous as only a skilled piano player can be. Not once does she cry out in pain, of that he makes certain. With every knot unraveled, the panic in her gaze recedes, till every wavy strand is restored and her breathing is even in near repose from his ministrations.

“See?” he murmurs, returning the comb before resting his hands on her shoulders once more. “All better. Nothing a little Devil’s touch couldn’t fix.”

Her relief is palpable in the way she leans into his touch.

“Thanks,” she sighs.

“So what’s this about looking like Elsa?” He rubs kindly at the spot between her shoulder blades when she tenses. “I thought we were on a Moana bender this week.”

Her cheeks blotch with the strain of her blush.

“We are,” she asserts, a little too quickly. “I guess it isn’t really about Elsa. I just… wanted to try a French braid.”

He hums and lets more than a couple of heartbeats pass before replying.

“You know perfectly well Elsa’s from Norway. Do you honestly expect me to believe she’d go for a French braid instead of a Dutch one?”

“But all the Youtubers say—”  

“Oh, yes, because anyone willing enough to saddle themselves with the internet persona of ‘TwinkleTendrils87’ is such an authority on the conversion of animation to reality hairstyle. No,” he rolls his eyes. “Don’t think so.”

Her protest withers on her tongue. He smirks, waiting for her own orbs—which she had averted once he began his inquisition—to meet his.

“So do you want to try that again?”

“You can always tell,” she grumbles, unable to abate the accusation that bleeds through her intonations.

He grins.

“The title of Prince of Lies does hold true to some extent,” he drawls. At her pinched visage, he gives her an encouraging pat. “Well, go on. Tell Lucifer what ails you.” His face suddenly hardens. “Is someone giving you trouble at school again?”

She groans.

“If I tell you, do you promise you won’t get mad?”

“Darling, you know I don’t get mad,” he grins, all teeth and bite. “I get even.”

She narrows her eyes at him.

“Okay, so… maybe I do both but if it means all that much to you then yes, I solemnly swear not to get angry at or even with you.”

He raises his hands in surrender, humor returning as the edges of his mouth soften with fondness. She returns it with a radiant one of her own, swiveling on her seat so he receives the full wattage of her smile.

But as quickly as it comes, it dims too.

She lifts her legs and tucks them crisscross beneath her to prop an elbow on her thigh. She rests her cheek on a fist as she tilts her chin up and arrests him with her molten, solemn stare.

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

He blinks, slowly… deliberately.

“Is this a trick question?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I!” He shakes his head, baffled. “Aren’t you a little too young to be concerned about this?”

“I’m almost eleven,” she protests.

“Case in point, you haven’t even reached your teen years, for Dad’s sake! You could at least wait till your face is a Jackson Pollock of acne before getting all angsty. Not that you should be worried about such things.” He waves a flippant hand. “You are a Decker woman, hooker name notwithstanding, and all Decker women have clear skin.”

“Pretty sure I only understood half that sentence…”

“What I’m trying to say, rather poorly I suppose, but what’s new, eh?”

He waggles his eyebrows and though slight, it coaxes a smile to curl at the corners of her lips.

“You shouldn’t have to be thinking about this, much more be bothered by it.” He frowns. “What’s brought this on?”

With her free hand, she picks at the laces of her sneakers so intently, he thinks she won’t answer. His heart starts thumping to the beat of anxiety as he realizes that providing comfort to a ten-year old isn’t exactly part of his skillset and he is severely out of his league on this. But just as he’s about to suggest Beatrice speak with her mother once she returns, words trickle out of her mouth with all the ferocity of a broken dam and he is powerless against the onslaught of her unveiled insecurities.

“It didn’t used to, honest. But all my friends…” she sniffs and to his mounting terror, a suspiciously wet gleam fills those chocolate-molten orbs. “It’s all they ever wanna talk about anymore. It’s always make-up this or hairstyle that and all the latest fashion trends and how to get more followers on their Snapchat.” She throws her hands up with such awkward abruptness, Lucifer must lean back to avoid being casualty to her ire. “I just wanna play hopscotch and talk about Barbie Dreamhouse and fangirl over Rapunzel and Eugene! Is that too much to ask?” she blows a stray tendril from her forehead. “Well I guess so, since the only thing that matters to them is who the prettiest one in the group is.” And with that remark, all the vexation drains from her mien, till only a sadness that should have been foreign to her at such a tender age, remains.

“But one thing’s for sure—it’s definitely not me,” she sighs, a couple of teardrops hugging the curve of her cheeks, “which they love to point out.”

At the sight of the droplets coursing her face, he sees red. He has to remind himself that these are children, and the detective will not approve his slaughtering of the youth—no matter how justified it may be.

Squalid miscreants, he inwardly fumes. Vapid, insolent, pediculous, scalawags! Who do those brats think they are? How dare they—

Ensconced as he is in his rising fury on her behalf, his attempt at comfort is thwarted by the growl in his throat as he utters, “Dry your eyes, Beatrice.”

Unperturbed, and most probably used to his mercurial mood swings (and isn’t that a marvel that she doesn’t run away each time?), she does as told—albeit, the gloominess in her countenance remains.

“I take it these are the same birds from your last sleepover? Mary Beth and the two other ones? Bethany with the y and Bethanie with the i-e?”

Ridiculous, he scorns. Just as Lucifer has an abundance of Brittany acquaintances, Beatrice is saddled with multiple companions whose monikers involve some form of ‘Beth’ in it. At least his duplicates’ names had the same spelling!

Her hesitance is a palpable energy in the quiet that follows, but at his prodding scowl she eventually nods her affirmation.

With lightning heat boiling in his blood he doesn’t trust himself to issue any wholesome advice, so he bids her without speaking to face the mirror again.

“What are you doing?” she braves to ask through watery inflections as he begins dividing her hair into three parts.

“I won’t lie to you by feeding you some sentimental drivel like ‘it’s what’s on the inside that matters’ because humans are fickle things and only few have been exempt from such norms—humans such as your mother and yourself.”

He ignores the crease between her brows, his explanation in the way his hands are intent on their unceasing rhythm of weaving her tresses into a proper Dutch braid that starts on one side of her head and continues to hug the curve of her nape.

“Not to say that the idea is totally unfounded, mind. Beauty, true beauty, lies deep within a person’s soul. I should know,” he winks. “I’ve glimpsed into many a repugnant soul in my time, after all.”

She sticks her tongue out in disgust. He returns the gesture till her expression dissolves into chuckles. With a satisfied nod, he clears his throat before resuming.

“But there is a certain… power in making an impression with the use of one’s appearance. Exhibit A,” he smirks, briefly retracting a hand to gesture at himself. She giggles again, but it quickly fades at his considering perusal.

“Those girls,” a generous term, he thinks with a sneer. “Your so-called ‘friends’? Well, you don’t have to be Dr. Martin to discern that those cads are jealous of your beauty—the natural and inherent kind. And let’s not forget your quick wit. Top of the class, are you not?”

She neither confirms or denies, but she blushes and it’s all the answer he needs.

“Course you are!” he heartily praises.

Not that he can take credit, but his grin is smug enough for them both all the same.

“While I would love to march right into your classroom and give those bloody Beths a piece of my mind before decimating those shallow cows on the spot—”

“Lucifer,” she scolds, reminiscent of the detective, right down to the infinitesimal twist to her lips that betrays her mirth.

“I realize it won’t exactly win me any favors with your mother, so—hand me that elastic, would you, love? There’s a good girl—” he binds the end of the braid. “Here’s a lesson from Old Scratch—the greatest revenge is to be the best version of yourself, especially when you don’t even have to change a thing. Well…”

He cannot help the flourish of his hand as he trails it along the length of her hair, a ripple of stardust in his wake. Beatrice gasps.

“Maybe a little one.”

His beam could power the whole of Los Angeles along with the awe in her scrutiny as she spins at all angles to admire his work.

Ah, he always was a prideful one.

“W-where—how?”

“Who do you think Mazikeen got her styling tips from when we first got here?” he claims with hues of incredulity, as if it ought to be common knowledge that Demons, unless taught, had atrocious fashion sense when left to their own devices. “And when you have as many sisters as I do, and they all pester you at any given hour of the day because, and I quote, ‘no one does it better’,” he preens. “You learn a thing or two about coiffure, or rather, they learned and I got a lot of practice.”

“It’s beautiful,” she cries, her twisted russet locks the color of a dusk-ridden sky. The tiny drops of effulgence he had woven wink faintly at first glance but then burn with the resplendence of a thousand suns when they lace with the natural light.

“No, dear heart.”

When she turns to him, he holds her gaze steady so she cannot doubt his sincerity.

“You are.”

“But—”

He shakes his head and leaves no room for argument.

“I only enhanced what was all ready there. Have you ever known me to lie?”

“No,” she states simply, a small smile stealing along the breadth of her lips.

“Besides,” he lets his warmth diffuse into her dainty hands as he engulfs them with his own.

“I was the spark that set this universe and the ones after it ablaze. All that is light—within and without, between now and beyond—once lived, and continues to ignite, through me. So believe me when I say that of all the suns and stars in the whole of Creation.”

His lips find the crown of her head.

“You shine the brightest.”

He vowed not to be angry nor to get even with her, and when it comes to the Devil, his word is his bond.

A new school day dawns and with it, Lucifer styles her a new plait but the artfully streamed rivulets of stardust along the length of her auburn hair are unchanged.

And when he picks her up from school later on, he expects the envy that oozes out of the trio of Beths—the imps glaring longingly with all the subtlety of a stampede, as they first narrow onto the shimmer of Beatrice’s braided mane, then at him and his conspicuous show of wealth.

She kicks into a run when she sees him leaning against the hood of the ‘vette, and it is a testament to his fondness that he no longer flinches upon the collision of her svelte frame into his legs nor does he retract from the winding of her gangly arms around his waist.

With her face buried into his suit and the girls’ stares still trained on them, he takes this opportunity to brandish the sunglasses from his eyes. He purposefully allows the brown to fade to red, as his eyes flare with the fury of the million pyres of Hell, and he meets each dirty look with a glower of his own.

To their merit, they do not scream (he blames the distance), but their blanched faces and quaking limbs are a balm to his petty, petty soul—however temporary or minuscule. They ought to be grateful for their naivety and his leniency. Still.

“Good day?” he inquires sweetly as he returns his sunglasses to their perch on his face before opening the passenger door for her. She waits till he is seated behind the wheel before she answers.

“It was great!”

He passes her another pair of shades that he only ever reserves for her. She puts them on with a flourish.

“Even better now that you’re here!”

Unbeknownst to the detective’s daughter, he shoots one last devilish grin at the cowering trio of caked-faced-trying-too-hard swines. His canines glint with malicious glee beneath the simmering L.A. sun.

He did vow not to be angry nor to get even with Beatrice.

“Excellent.”

Such a shame that the same promise does not extend to her friends.

At her insistence, he tucks her in that night.

They don’t say anything once the evening’s chapter is finished, but it is as he folds her into the blankets that she murmurs, “You are too, you know.”

He quirks an amused brow.

“What are you on about now, child?”

She smiles, delicate fingers cupping at his cheeks when he leans over to unnecessarily fluff her pillows. He freezes at her touch, even when he is tickled by her digits scratching nimbly at his scruff. There is such innocence in the gesture, he is suddenly filled with shame to be at her presence.

“Beatrice,” he whispers, breath tinged with perplexity.

“You’re beautiful, too. Has anyone ever told you that?”

He wants to riposte with an arrogant quip or a jaunty remark, but finds he cannot speak through the lump in his throat nor the leaden weight on his tongue.

“Can’t say that they have,” he tries though it sounds more whine than tease. “But I am a fine specimen in human standards—”

She shakes her head. “I mean, even with your other face.”

He laughs, a tinge of hysteria to the sound. “Now I know you’re pulling my leg.”

“Don’t think I didn’t see what you did to my friends,” her hands tighten around his cheeks in a show of gratitude.

“No one is allowed to hurt you,” he says easily.

“Not that you could control that, but that’s what I mean. You are beautiful, inside and out, and I hope you know it. ‘Kay?”

She lets go, and he inhales greedily at the air like a drowning man who’s broken through the ocean’s surface. It is how he finds the strength to reply, softly, as her eyes droop and her breathing evens into slumber.

“Thank you.”

It is as he reaches the frame of her door that she delivers one final blow that tips him over the edge and straight into this little girl’s heart, obliterating whatever chasm he might have fooled himself into believing he ought to maintain between them.

“I do love you, Lucifer.”

“I know,” he avers, all the while denying the waver to his speech. How wonderful, he muses, swept by the tranquility of her acceptance and awash as he is in the grace that her love reinvigorates in him. It is why he is only a little surprised, when he searches within for the torment and self-loathing and finds himself absent of both in lieu of the hope and faith and incandescence her presence has gradually pervaded him with, to discover—he believes her.

He believes in the veracity of her pronouncement. He believes in the purity of her caress and he believes in the ardor behind his own pledge when he avows, “And I you, Beatrice.”

His voice is the melody that carries her to the land of dreams, the carillon that will henceforth guide her to sanctuary as he intertwines the part of his soul that doesn’t belong to Chloe, to hers.

“And I you.”

AN: HAHAHA. WHAT EVEN.

(It wasn’t supposed to be feels-y at the end but Trix had a mind of her own smh)

Come say hi to me!

[idealorthodonticservices]

What You Ought To Know About Invisalign

When going through orthodontic therapy, you will certainly often be needed to put on clear aligners for a variety of weeks. These aligners are constructed from comfy BPA-free plastic as well as apply gentle stress on the teeth. During each treatment session, you will certainly obtain a brand-new collection of aligners. The variety of trays you will certainly require relies on your details bite issue and also aesthetic goals. Unlike steel braces, Invisalign aligners are nearly invisible as well as are practically undetectable. To start Invisalign treatment, your orthodontist will place little button-like add-ons onto your teeth. These work as takes care of on your aligners. As they move your teeth, they will certainly grip the accessories. Once the process is completed, you will certainly no longer require to use the aligners. You might even have the ability to eliminate them without any pain or pain. Invisalign treatment is a superb option for people with a large age range and extreme oral troubles. When you are 35 to 50, the price of tooth movement increases. Because of this, Invisalign is most reliable for young people as well as older adults. Nonetheless, tooth activity does not decrease for women in between 50 and 70. 

The cost of adult braces Lakewood treatment depends on several variables, consisting of the area and intricacy of your tooth placement issues. You should recognize that you may be required to pay in between $3,000 and $5,000, depending upon the type of therapy you call for. The advantages of Invisalign consist of a clear, detachable tray that gradually changes teeth right into place. The removable aligners can be secured when you eat or clean your teeth. Unlike standard metal braces, Invisalign is nearly undetected to others. Clients who undertake Invisalign therapy claim that the clear aligners make it very easy to smile and display their brand-new teeth! So, if you have been bothered with the inconvenience of putting on metal dental braces, Invisalign is the method to go. In addition to correcting your teeth, Invisalign is likewise a terrific alternative for preventing gum tissue illness. As a matter of fact, more than 60% of individuals report really feeling extra certain after obtaining straight teeth. Having straight teeth is among one of the most essential reasons that Invisalign is so popular today. 

If you have been asking yourself if this orthodontic treatment is right for you, don't think twice to contact a dentist for more information concerning the procedure. You'll enjoy you made the choice to select it! The benefits of Invisalign are lots of, but possibly one of the most significant one is its discreetness. The clear aligners are detachable and also will not conflict with your daily activities. Nonetheless, it's necessary that you comb your teeth as well as aligners often to maintain them healthy and balanced. If you do not, you can end up harmful your aligners. Invisible braces can likewise create some irritation, so be sure to comb your teeth after consuming. Invisalign can be an excellent option for adults that have actually experienced problems with traditional metal braces. Because they can be gotten rid of with a single step, Invisalign can assist correct teeth-shifting habits. Compared to conventional braces, Invisalign can enhance your general health and wellness as well as your confidence! As well as you'll take pleasure in an enhanced smile! So, why not consider Invisalign therapy? They're the excellent choice for grown-up patients that have issues with their teeth. Keep on reading this article to find out more info.

You can explore even more in this related post - https://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schechtman-dds/good-orthodontic_b_6610164.html

[hour13]

The Tower

A note before reading:

             Back in 2015-2016, a few friends and I were planning to work together on writing a serial story about a team of people known as The Scrap Hounds who roamed a post-apocalyptic wasteland.   We built an amazing world and a few great characters, but unfortunately things fell apart.  Before the collapse, I wrote The Tower, which was originally going to be released in six weekly installments.  

             The Tower is set in the Durante Desert, a land trying to reclaim itself after being the battlefield between two powerful nations, Myrora (MERE-Ore-Uh or Mai-ROAR-Uh, depending on inflection) and Sideah (Sih-day-uh).  The Scrap Hounds are a team of junkers who wander that desert collecting scrap from battlefields, wrecks, and abandoned towns and selling the raw metal to the settlements they come across.  The Scrap Hounds travel around the desert in The Land Whale a large vehicle colloquially known as a trawler.

The Tower

Writing by Tim Carroll

The character of Torva is a creation of Miles Rodgers

The world of the Scrap Hounds was a collaboration, see end of story for credits.

Part 1

             If you’re of the mind to listen, the sounds of the Durante Desert at sunset can form a sort of symphony. The buzz of insects finding their way home to their hives, the distant howls of coyotes, the percussive rattle of scorpions, the crackle of campfires, and, of course, the slow steady rumble of trawlers moving through the desert.

             Tonight, there is one more sound - if you listen closely enough -  a quiet hiss, a gasp of compressed air, as an artist presses on his canister of spray paint.   His canvas- a tower, hundreds of feet tall- his painting, hardly a painting but a story. A tadpole, swimming out of the flames of hell, to become a frog, live its life, and eventually be reincarnated as something greater.

             There were no entrances to the tower, at least none accessible above the shifting sands.  The only reason the Scrap Hounds had bothered to stop at all was because a zeppelin had crashed at the tower’s base nearly a week ago.

             Unfortunately someone else had gotten there first. The zeppelin had already been stripped down, the crew members buried, and everything of value taken.

             Another sound filled the night, a drumbeat, something pounding against the desert sands.   Selak raised an eyebrow, but did not turn around, as the seven-foot-tall armored man approached him from behind.

             “Hello, Torva.” The artist called, shaking a can of green paint.

             “Hello, Selak.” Torva replied, his voice a deep reverberating bass. The armored man tilted his head to the side as he took a long look at the painting. “Reincarnation,” he said, after a short pause.

             “You got it.” Selak smiled.

             “What did a frog do to merit being reincarnated?”

             “Lived a good life as a frog?” Selak offered, leaning against a pile of scrap, “I imagine the bar’s pretty low for them.  Eat flies, lay lots of eggs, respect the natural order.”

             “Then neither of us would merit reincarnation.” Torva observed.

             Selak raised an eyebrow, “You don’t think we’re good people?”

             “We do not respect the natural order.” Torva clarified, “Few humans do.”

             “Maybe that’s a design feature.” Selak replied, filling in the frog’s body, “If humans respected the natural order, we’d have too many people reaching nirvana and nowhere near enough people being reincarnated as insects.”

             “Perhaps,” Torva observed, as he pressed a button on his shoulder blade, igniting a floodlight that illuminated the dark picture.              Selak cleared his throat. “How’s Blue doing?”

             “I do not believe he will suffer any lasting harm.”

             “The scorpion didn’t pierce a lung?”

             “That is correct,” Torva replied, stepping forward, “The greater danger is the poison.”

             “It was just a baby, right?  Painful, not lethal.”

             Torva shook his head, “An adolescent.”

             Selak bit his lip, “You can cure that right?”

             “Our supplies are low. I have done what I can, but we will need to leave at first light to make it to Anodar.  There I will be able to purchase the medicine he needs.”

             “Sounds good.”  

             Torva paused. Selak sighed.

             “But you need me for something?” The artist asked, “Look I know you want to chew me out, but what happened was a complete accident, scorpions shouldn’t have been inside the main hatch, the kid—”

             Torva raised his hand, “I am not here to chastise you.”  He cleared his throat, “There is a cave not far from here.  The recent winds have cleared away dunes that were blocking the entrance.  Initial exploration suggests it may lead to the tower’s entrance.”

             “But tomorrow we’re leaving?”

             “Correct. At first light.” Torva repeated.

             “So if we wanted to know what’s inside this thing, we’d have to do it right now.”

             “Also correct.”

             “And you’re proposing a night mission, into an unknown, possibly trap-filled tower, in the hopes of gathering information about the old world or finding useful and/or pricy artifacts.”

             “For the third time, correct.”

             Selak grabbed his paint supplies from the ground and threw them into a canvas bag over his shoulder. “I’ll get my kit.” He said, “Meet you outside the cave in ten.  I’m in.”

Part 2

             If you’re of the mind to look, there is a beauty to nights in the Durante Desert.  The winds tend to die down, allowing one to appreciate the endless rolling dunes, watched over by a thousand twinkling stars.  But be careful, many have made the mistake of assuming that night’s reduced risk of dehydration and exposure meant a reduced risk of death.  It is night time when the most dangerous of creatures in the Durante Desert hunt – whether they be the giant scorpions out to secure sleeping prey, brigands out to catch their targets unaware, or the mutants lurking beneath the sands, hoping to catch a glimpse of the surface.

             There is beauty to be found in the Durante Desert, but there is far more danger.  

             Selak tried not to get distracted by the scenery as he approached the mouth of the cave.  He had tossed away his painter’s smock in favor of his exploration outfit.  A black flak jacket – spraypainted with shark scales and an open shark mouth on the torso. Inside the dozen or so pockets were every tool he might need for a night outing: chemical flares, lockpicking equipment, and – his personal favorite – the grapple gun.  

             Torva was waiting outside the cave, wearing a different evo-suit than before.  Although few other junkers noticed – most were too scared of the behemoth to pay much attention – the scientist’s suit varied from day to day, with pieces removed and added as Torva saw fit.  

             “I didn’t know you liked the mollusk suit.” Selak said as he approached.  The suit’s back was painted with a design of a golden crustacean shell, the creature’s appendages reaching so they rested upon Torva’s own arms.”

             “It is good for spelunking, and I appreciate the design aesthetic.”  

             “Was that a compliment?” Selak asked.

             “It was.”

             Torva touched his shoulder, and an instant later, a floodlight illuminated the path in front of them.  The two set off into the cave.

             “So I am a mollusk, because I am armored and collect things.” Torva observed, “Do you have an animal for each of us?”

             “I believe that each of you have an animal.”

             “Fair enough, what is Alexa?”

             “A hawk.”

             Torva tilted his head to the side, “Is that not the animal you attributed to your ex?”

             “First off, she’s not my ‘ex.’” Selak corrected, “And, second, there’s no reason that two people can’t have the same animal.”

             “So, I’m a mollusk for my nature.  Alexa is a hawk for hers.  Why are you a shark?”

             “You don’t think it suits me?”

             “You are not a predator.”

             “Have I not told you this story?” Selak asked, “The origin of my necklace?” Selak reached into the neck of his suit and pulled out a two-inch long shark-tooth attached to a piece of scarlet rope.

             “You have not.”

             “Really?” Selak asked, replacing the necklace, “Okay, well, brace yourself.  Way back – maybe a hundred years ago at this point – my family used to live on the south shore.  My great-grandfather was a fisherman and a mechanic, and he was damn fine at both of those jobs from what I hear.  Now, one day my gramps was out fishing when he caught the attention of a massive shark.  The thing, attacked his boat, damn near destroyed it, and nearly killed my great-grandpa.  Luckily, gramps kept a spear lying around and was able to fend off the animal until he made it back to harbor.”

             “I see…” Torva murmured, running his hand along the preternaturally smooth cavern walls.

             “Great-Gramps and the shark fought at least a half-dozen more times over the course of the next two years.  Each conflict was bloodier and more dangerous than the last.  Grandpa lost two of the fingers on his left hand, the shark lost several of its teeth and part of its dorsal fin.  

             Great Grampa dreaded seeing the shark, because he knew deep in his gut that the conflict would only end when one of them died.

             But that all changed one summer night.  There had been a massive storm, the kind where trees are ripped out of the ground and thrown around like toys.  And worse, about five miles off shore, an oil tanker was damaged, and was going to sink unless someone intervened.  

             But it wasn’t just the people that were in danger; everything in the ocean was at risk.  If that tanker capsized, the entire shoreline would be devastated.

             My grandfather was the only one with the expertise to go out and repair the tanker, but every boat on the shoreline had been wrecked.  There was no way they’d be able to get to it in time.

             That’s when the shark rose up out of the water near the shore, and allowed my grandpa onto its back. Together they swam over to the tanker and grandpa was able to repair it in the nick of time. Every person on the boat and every fish in the water was saved.  

             There was no more fighting after that.  My great-grandfather and the shark remained friends, and when it died, grandfather gave the shark a funeral, and took several of its teeth in memory of their friendship.”  Selak reached for his necklace again, “That’s why I wear this.”

             “Do you believe that story?” Torva asked.

             Selak shrugged, “It was told to me by people I trust.”

             Torva coughed, “So you are not decorated in honor of all sharks, but one in particular.”

             “The shark went against its nature, and joined with its enemy for the greater good.  Their rivalry, their language barrier, their species barrier.  None of it mattered.  I think there’s a lesson we can learn from that.”

             “The shark went against its nature…” Torva mused, “Per our earlier conversation, neither your ancestor nor that shark would reach heaven, they would both be reincarnated.”

             “Maybe that’s for the best,” Selak mused, “The world is a better place with animals like that, no matter what form their in.”

             “Or perhaps we were wrong to assume that going against one’s nature was a bad thing.”

             “Or maybe we—” Selak stopped mid-sentence as the two came across a stone door.

             Torva knelt down and rapped his metal knuckles against it.  “Granite,” he muttered, “At least three inches thick.”

             Selak ran his hands over the door, engraved into it, at head height, was an insignia.  “You recognize this?”

             Torva nodded.  “Have you ever heard of Dr. Alarus?”

             “No…” Selak paused, “Wait.  You’ve mentioned him before.”

             “Her.” Torva corrected, “Dr. Olivia Alarus was one of the directors of the Myroran militarized science wing, specializing in genetic research.  She had many projects, but her most infamous involved modifying humans in the hopes of creating the perfect soldier.”

             “How’d that work out?”

             “For the subjects: very poorly.  Many died in her experiments, many more were crippled.  It is said that the few “successes” if you choose to call them that – were used in combat operations, forced to act against their will.”

             “What happened to her?”

             “One night, there was a prison break at her facility.  A few of the mutants broke loose and were able to free their brethren. They captured Dr. Alarus and tortured her to death.”

             Selak shivered. “Do you believe that story?”  

             “It was told to me by people whom I trust.”  

             “So what’s that got to do with this symbol?”

             “It is the insignia of her lab.”

             “Could she be here?”

             “Unlikely.  Even if she had been able to escape from her lab that night, I doubt she would hide in such a noticeable dwelling.  In addition to her former test subjects, there are many who want her dead.  Those in the public who believe she must answer for her crimes and those in the Myroran military who she has shamed.”

             “Fucking Hell.” Selak let out a low whistle, “So what’s the symbol for her lab doing all the way out here.  We’re what two hundred-something miles from the Myroran border?”

             “I do not know.” Torva replied, as he ignited a blow torch “But it is my intention to find out.”

 Part 3

             If you’re of the mind to search, there’s a history to the Durante Desert – a tale of heroism, honor, betrayal, and blood-stained sand.  But be warned, any investigation into writings about the desert will lead a researcher through a labyrinth of bias, misinformation, and pride.  The Myrorans and Sideans both hold each other accountable for the attacks that reduced nearly a third of the land into a wasteland. Even the rare scholars who truly are impartial are confounded by the conflicting reports. Were there two factions in the war, before it was disrupted by the rebels? Or were there as many as five?  Was the rebellion truly motivated by a desire for national sovereignty? Or was it, like so many things, motivated by greed?

             The answers to many of these questions, like so much of the desert itself, are buried deep beneath the sands.  

***

             Selak took a few steps back as Torva knelt down and set to work on the door.  The acetylene torch in the scientist’s hands lit up the cave like a miniature sun, and even a half-dozen feet away, Selak could feel the prickle of perspiration on his forehead.

             “Hey, Torva?” Selak shouted over the tool’s hissing, “How exactly do you intend to melt through a stone door?”

             “Stone does not melt, Selak.”  Torva replied, not looking away from his work, “But locks are not made of stone.”

             “So you’re melting the hinges?” Selak asked, “And then we’ll kick it down. “

             “Precisely.” Torva grunted.

             “So how is this different than a door made out of metal?” Selak asked, “Wouldn’t that be easier to work with?”

             “You, of all people, do not need a lecture on symbolism nor aesthetics.”

             Before Selak could reply, Torva turned off his torch, and slammed his armored shoulder into the door, knocking it off its weakened hinges.  The stone door toppled forward, groaning like a dying beast as it did so, but an instant before it hit the floor, Selak heard a second sound, one that he had heard far too often in his life:  the sound of a bowstring being pulled back.

              “TORVA!” Selak shouted.  Acting on instinct, Selak kicked at the back of the scientist’s knees, knocking him- along with his exosuit – to the ground.  As his partner fell, Selak dove to the earth as well.  The two Scrap Hounds hit the ground simultaneously, as an iron crossbow bolt, crackling with electricity, sailed over their heads.

             “ROLL!” Selak shouted, as he and Torva tumbled to opposite sides of the doorway, where a layer of stone stood between them and their attacker.   Less than a half-second later a second crossbow bolt hit the ground between them, sending a flurry of blue sparks into the air. They had a foot-and a half of room on either side of the door.  Room to breathe, but not much else.

             Torva reached for his periscope while, Selak reached into his jacket pocket for a compact mirror.   The two peered around the corner. There wasn’t a human in sight. Just a large auto-loading crossbow resting on a table, with a tangle of wires attached, some of them leading to a black orb resting beside it.  

             “What the hell?”

             “An automated firing system.” Torva observed, retracting his periscope, “Rare to see one functioning.  The ocular technology they used was known to be problematic.”

             “Fascinating,” Selak hissed, “You got any grenades?”

             “I brought none.” Torva replied, “I was not expecting this kind of resistance.”

             “Looks like we’re gonna have to improvise.” Selak muttered, “Problematic ocular technology, right?  Is that big black thing its eye?”

             “In a manner of speaking.”

             “So let’s blind it.” Selak replied, grabbing a spray paint can and a long thin nozzle from his jacket, and fastening them together.  Carefully, Selak squeezed the trigger, spraying an arc of green paint over the machine’s electronic eye.  

             Torva removed the gauntlet of his exo-suit and waved the empty metal arm in front of the egress. No more bolts came out.  “It is disabled.” Torva replied, reattaching his glove.

              Cautiously, Selak shined his flashlight over the entryway.  “You see any other traps?”

             “Negative.” Torva answered, as he approached the crossbow. “Exquisite work.” He muttered.  

             “I like how ‘exquisite’ for you, doesn’t preclude ‘deadly.”  Selak replied, running his hands along the metal walls.

             “It is good that we did not use grenades.”

             “Why? You want to take it home with us?”

             “No.” Torva answered, “This device was only able to work because it has spent much of the past decade in darkness.  A month out in the desert, or an hour out in a sandstorm, would render it inoperable.”

             “So why was it good that we didn’t use grenades?”

             “These power cells,” Torva said, tapping two yellow and black squares with his metallic forefinger, “are what kept this system functional for so long. They are Myroran military technology.  Exceedingly rare.  If disrupted by an attack of sufficient force, they would create an explosion powerful enough to destroy this room, possibly even this cavern.”

             “And they decided to attach these to their defensive formation without any sort of protection?”

             “Perhaps they anticipated an attack by an opponent who did have grenades.”

             “Oh…”

             “This was most likely an off-site storage facility.”  Torva said, as much to himself as to Selak. “The hidden entrance and defensive machinery would be intended to keep out raiders, as guards for such a far off facility would be unfeasible.”

             “But why here?”

             “Field testing of Alarus’s mutants must have taken place in the area.  This was most likely a facility for holding them and experimenting on them pre and post battle.”

             “Would they still be here?”

             “Unlikely.” Torva replied, “The mutants used for battle were too valuable to be left to rot and too dangerous to leave to their own devices.”

             “So how does this thing differentiate friend from foe?”

             “On its own, this device would be incapable of doing.”  Torva replied pointing to the half-melted mechanism beside the door.   “If a member of the Myroran high command were to have come here, they would have needed a transmitter to ensure their safe entry.”

             “Press a button. Open the stone door.  Disarm the crossbow.”

             “Yes.”  Torva nodded, “Although…”

             “Something the matter?”

             “This crossbow appears to be a recent addition, the security system most likely originally used a firearm.”

             “Which leaves us with three options.” Selak replied, “Option one: The scientists here got bored one day, and decided to see if the motion tracker would work with different long-range weapons.”                “Unlikely.” Torva replied, “The scientists who worked here were corrupt, but not stupid.  Tampering with defensive equipment would have been tantamount to risking their own lives in an attack.”

             “Option two.  The gun was damaged in a raid, and they replaced it with a crossbow for whatever reason.  ”

             “Possible, although there is no reason that they would not have replaced the old weapon with a similar one.”

             “Which brings us to option three.” Selak said, “Which judging from the lack of bullet holes in these walls, I like best.  The gun failed due to mechanical issues over the years.  Eventually someone found the weapon and replaced it because they wanted to use this place as their new hideout.”

             Torva searched the room. “That would appear to be most likely.”

             “You do know what that means?” Selak asked, reaching for his pistol.

             “Yes,” Torva replied, “It means we may not be alone.”

Part 4

             If you’re of the mind to dig, there’s a world buried beneath Durante.  When the first shots of the war echoed over the sands, many of the desert’s denizens fled.  Some ran off to the southern shores, and began new lives as fishermen.  Others headed north to try their hands tilling the fertile plains.  But there were a few who took a different approach; they fled downward.    

             Lying underneath many towns in Durante is a spiderweb of catacombs. During the war, these undercities had a thousand uses, housing black markets, hiding families, and allowing rebel soldiers to outmaneuver and escape their opponents.  

             Most of the tunnels have been preserved since the war.  Many homeowners enjoy having a secret room beneath their cellar.

             And of course, there are the rumored-few, who liked their subterranean home so much, that they chose to never return to the surface.  

***

             The metal catacombs echoed with each step the pair took further into the lab.  

             “I guess the stealth approach is out of the question.”  Selak shrugged,

             “Stealth has never been my strong suit.”  Torva replied, as he examined the scratch marks on the walls.

             “That’s okay,” Selak replied, “I’ll just be sure to hide behind you if they jump out and shoot at us.”

             “That is hardly shark behavior,” Torva observed, “Would it not make more sense for you to charge ahead, so that I could use your corpse as a shield when you die, as my patron animal would suggest.”

             “Only if you’re comfortable living in my corpse after this is over.”

             “I doubt that I would…” Torva paused in mid-sentence, and knelt down.

             “Something wrong?”

             “This floor is made of iron.” Torva observed, rapping his knuckles against a section of the floor with four inch-long scratches, “And these gouges were not made by a machine.”

             “A wild animal?” Selak suggested.

             “Nothing natural could have done this,” Torva replied as he rose to his feet,

             “Could a mutant do something like this?”

             “If the stories are to be believed, Alarus’s mutants were capable of far stranger things.”

             “There are bullet holes in the wall,” Selak said, “You think there was a battle in this hallway?”

             “That would seem to be the case,” Torva nodded, “We should continue.”

             Less than a minute later, the hallway came to an abrupt end, with a stone staircase leading upwards into the darkness.  

             “It seems we have reached the base of the tower.”

             “Well, let’s get climbing.” Selak replied, walking up the stairs.  

             The two walked up the concrete steps. Selak listened closely after each step, trying to listen for any telltale signs that the stairs might come crashing down beneath him and his partner.  About five steps before the next level, the artist held up a hand, “Hey Torva, you smell something.”

             The scientist shook his head, “I do not. What do you smell?””

             Selak sniffed the air, “Do you know what hibiscus is?”

              “I am familiar with the flower,” Torva responded, “Not with its smell.”

             “It smells like that… and…. and sweat.”

             Torva shrugged, as the two arrived at the first floor.  The pair shined flashlights over the room.

             “Holy lord…” Selak muttered as he stared at his surroundings.  The room was three-stories tall and looked to be made of iron and stone. Stacked three-high in a dozen rows in front of him was over a hundred prison-cells, with catwalks running back and forth between them.  

             Selak shivered. Torva turned to his partner.  “Are you well, Selak?”

             “I’m fine,” Selak said, as he began walking, “Let’s just keep moving, it’s freezing in here.”

             There was not much to see in each cell.  Nothing more than a cot for sleeping and a large bucket for excrement.  

             “Strange…” Torva said, as he peered into the nearest of the cell, “All of these cells appear to have been used, but there are different accommodations for different subjects. Perhaps another experiment?”

             “I doubt it.” Selak replied, testing the lock on the nearest door.  It swung open with a shrill squeak.  

             “Oh?”

             “You’re thinking too much like a scientist, Torva, and not enough like a warden.  These weren’t subjects, they were prisoners.”

             “Why would that-“

             “If you’re in charge of prisoners –” Selak interrupted, running his hands along the bars, “If you keep people in cages for a living, what is the one thing you fear most?”

             “Those people breaking out.”  Torva surmised, kicking a loose screw into the darkness, “Those people putting you in a cage of your own.”

             “An uprising.” Selak concluded.  

             “And the distribution of blankets prevents an uprising?”

             “In order to rebel against a more powerful foe, you need two things: numbers and unity. Historically prisoners have always had the former.  It’s just not practical to have an equal number of guards and prisoners.”

             “So they take away their unity?” Torva asked, ducking under a low-hanging catwalk.

             “That’s where the blankets come in.” Selak explained, “In any group of people, there are gonna be the popular ones.  The ones who everyone likes.  The ones who could inspire a rebellion.”  

             “And you take away their blankets?”

             “No,” Selak replied, “Those are the people you give blankets to.”

             “I do not follow…”

             “Imagine you’re a prisoner, and you see that the man in the cell next to you just got a nice warm blanket.  What’s the first thing you ask?”

             Torva paused, “I would ask “Why?””

             “Exactly. Why are they getting special treatment?  Are they secretly working with the warden? Can I trust them?”

             “Preventing a rebellion with a few square yards of wool.” Torva concluded.

             “And that’s just the start of what guards can do with blankets.  Give them to obedient prisoners on a cold night.  Take them all away as a form of mass punishment if one person starts stirring up trouble…”

             “Where did you learn so much about managing prisoners?”

             “I…” Selak coughed, “I’ve had a few friends who’ve done their time behind bars.”

             “You would think that prisoners would learn that they are being manipulated.”

             “Easier said than done,” Selak replied, “To have an uprising you don’t just need one person to go against their nature, but dozens, maybe even hundreds.”

             “A mental revolution.” Torva agreed, as the two came across a steel door at the far end of the room.  

             “Hey, Torva,” Selak shouted, pointing at the walls – which were lined with steel fans, “Is there any reason they’d need to keep this room cold?”  What’s with all the air conditioners?”

             Torva shook his head, “I have no idea.  Perhaps they kept these rooms freezing to improve their use of blanket tactics.”

             “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

             “What name would you suggest?”

             “Blanket tactics sounds a little too whimsical for my tastes.”  Selak replied, “I’d call it what it is: torture.”

             The pair arrived at a set of double doors on the opposite side of the room.

             “No lock,” Selak observed as he pulled open the door.

             The next room was also three-stories high, and looked to be an infirmary.  Rows of cots lined the walls, with medical devices lying next to them.  Everything else seemed to be made of bare metal: The walls, the floor, the cabinets that covered the far wall.

             “Looks like they expected to have a ton of wounded.”

             Torva shook his head, “These beds are not equipped for emergency care.  And if one truly harbored concerns about the safety of the injured they would not put their infirmary so far from the entrance.  This was where they gave the mutants their treatment.”

             “Treatment?”

             “Most mutants are unstable.  The genome is a tool for gods, not man.  Most mutants required significant medical care in order to survive from battle to battle. Alarus considered it a small price to pay.”

             “This woman keeps sounding better and better.”  Selak mumbled, wrenching open one of the cabinets. “You think you can do anything with this stuff.”

             Torva looked over the contents of the cabinet.  “Antibiotics…” he mused, “Blood thinners… bandages… “Torva grinned, “We’re in luck. Not only should we be able to refill the Whale’s infirmary, but we will have a surplus to sell at the next trading post.”

             “Looks like the hounds will be eating pretty well for the next couple weeks.”

             “Why?  Did you see something that would get you off of cooking duty?”

             “That’s cold, Torva.”

             The scientist laughed, as the two approached the door at the far side of the room.  “Wait a minute…”  Selak stopped dead.

             “What is it?”  

             “Those prison cells, they were made of iron… just like the floor.”

             “Yes,” Torva replied, “Why… oh dear…”

             “If a mutant could tear through the floor, why couldn’t he pry apart his cell?”

             The two scrap hounds exchanged glances.

             “Something is not right.” Torva murmured.

             Selak nodded as he opened the final door. A staff kitchen with a large wooden table in the center.  In front of each of the dozen place settings was a black metallic box.  

             “Audio logs.” Torva said, picking up the closest one in his hands.  “Numbered one through twelve.”

             “Looks like there’s a story here after all.”  Selak said

             “Not only that,” Torva replied, “But someone here wanted the story to be known.”

             “Well then,” Selak replied, leaning against the nearest chair, “How about you and I oblige them.”

Part 5

             If you’re of the mind to care, there is a desperation in the Durante Desert.  The ceasefire brought an end to the war, but it was only the beginning of the true struggle.  For some, every day is a fight to survive.  Farmers hack away at the dirt, trying to raise a profitable crop. Junkers search through piles of wreckage hoping to find something to sell.  Architects throw structures together praying that they’ll survive the next sandstorm.  Some have called life in the Durante desert a constant sprint to stay ahead of the next disaster: A marathon that may never have an end.    

---

             “Status report:  Day 16.”  The recorder on the metal table buzzed, “This is Senior Researcher Richard Parvus.  Yesterday, Dr. Alarus returned to Myrora to continue work on Centurion III. As of today, I am the director of all operations here at Site 14 and all further status reports shall come from me. Our current priority for all personnel is ensuring the total obedience of subjects.  In addition to usual mass humanoid containment protocol, we are using both subliminal and explicit instruction to convince them that they cannot survive in sunlight without regular injections of Pherendalin. We are also using pheromone therapy to aid in containment.  The entirety of the prison is filled with pheromone mixture 21-B-epsilon, which dulls the strength and mental fortitude of our subject population.  

             Field testing will be scheduled when have ensured complete control of our prisoners.  Nothing further to report.”  

             “Disgusting,” Torva hissed, his hands clenched around the steel table.

             “Do you have any idea what happened to this asshole?”

             Torva shook his head, “His name is unfamiliar to me.”

             “Is there any news on what happened to Alarus’s aides after the war?”

             “Only rumors.” Torva replied, “It is impossible to separate fact from fiction.”

             “What do you believe?”

             “I believe that Alarus’s aides were removed from public record and transferred to other projects by the Myroran government.  Myrora would not let valuable assets rot in prison or be taken by the enemy.”

             “Amazing…” Selak mumbled as he reached to press the play button on the next tape. “Wait a sec,” He drew his hands back. “Pheromones… those are released from sweat right?”

             “In many cases, yes.”

             “Could that be why this place smells like sweat?  Artificial pheromones?”

             Torva scratched his chin. Or at least approximated the gesture through his exo-suit. “That would make sense.  It would also explain the excess of ventilation in the prison room.”

             “Just a thought.” Selak shrugged as he pressed play on the second recorder.

             “Status report:  Day 29.” Parvus’s voice droned, “This is Director Richard Parvus.  Another pair of mutants died today.  The fault rests solely with Dr. Bakir, who prescribed insulin at the average level needed for a homo Sapien, not a homo Servus.  I have informed him that a similar mistake will result in him sleeping with the mutants.” Parvus laughed before continuing.

             “We have lost 7 percent of our mutants since our arrival at Site 14.  I have decided to accelerate the schedule for field testing.  Our first operation will not be conducted in ten days, as was previously scheduled, but in three.  We will also be using forty mutants instead of twenty.  That is all.”

             Selak and Torva looked at each other.  A bead of cold sweat rolled down the artist’s forehead.

             “We do not have to continue,” Torva intoned.

             “Someone set this up for us,” Selak gestured at the table, “Maybe not us specifically, but someone wanted their story known.  We have an obligation to listen.”

             “Very well.” Torva replied, pressing play on the next recorder.

             “Status report:  Day 34. This is Director Richard Parvus. All subjects have been returned to their cells.  Confirmed Sidean casualties: 436.  Confirmed subject casualties: 22.  Field testing indicates that our mutants’ lack of ranged weaponry was a hindrance on the battlefield.  However, as-expected, hormonal injections did insure the complete obedience of subjects. Our next testing date is set for a week from now, we will use 60 mutants on the battlefield.  That is all.”

             “Hey Torva, not sure if this is outside of your expertise…” Selak turned to his partner.

             “Yes?”

             “How the hell do you control someone with injections?”

             Torva cleared his throat, “There are certain brain states that can be induced with the right combination of hormones and neuromodulators.  If one had been mutated or conditioned to have one of those brain states associated with complete obedience, then it would be possible to use hormones as a form of mind control.”

             “Injectable obedience…” Selak mused, “And just when I thought these bastards couldn’t sink any lower.”

             “They would most likely have needed some sort of pheromone failsafe to prevent the mutants from taking orders from the enemy.  Possibly there was--”

             “I know I brought it up,” Selak interrupted, with a shiver, “but is it okay if we end this conversation?”

             Torva nodded, and reached for the next audio log.

             “Status report:  Day 42. This is director Richard Parvus.  Our latest field expedition was an overwhelming success.  Confirmed Sidean Casualties:  286. Confirmed Subject casualties:  Merely 8.  Unfortunately, a new problem has arisen.  Some of our subjects appear to be developing a resistance to pherendalin.  This has led to six of our mutants developing severe UV burns on the battlefield.  We will increase dosage, from 20 ccs to 25 for those showing signs of acquired immunity.  

             I have consulted with command and they are interested in a more aggressive pace of field testing. Recent reports have come in of a Sidean Motor Pool, 60 kilometers to our north.  In three days’ time we will deploy 80 mutants to that base.  If the ensuing massacre doesn’t convince command we’re deserving of more funding, nothing will.”

             Torva and Selak looked at each other.

             “Funding?”  Selak hissed, slamming his fist into the table.

             Torva took a step back involuntarily.

             “Winning a war? I get it.”  Selak said, pacing back and forth, “Advancing science? I get it. But just earning funding!? I can’t fucking believe—" Selak’s words were interrupted by the sound of pounding coming from the wall next to him, “What the hell was that?”

             “Machinery?” Torva suggested.

             “Why would it still be running?”  Selak asked.

             “Perhaps they left more equipment than just their defenses running on advanced batteries”

             “Perhaps…” Selak said, “But the war ended—what a decade ago?  Did they just forget about this place?”

             “If these logs are anything to go by, then this seems to be a place well worth forgetting.” Torva tapped the play button on the next recorder.

             “Status Report Day 45.  This is Director Richard Parvus.  We deployed seventy-six of our mutants to the field today, along with twenty-eight of our guards and scientists.  We are currently running on a skeleton crew of scientists.  I remained behind to supervise experimentation of the seven mutants who were deemed unfit for battle.  

             Unfortunately, due to being understaffed, we were unable to stop Subject 44 from escaping before her third injection of Nafaltin.  Subject 44 broke from her restraints and self-terminated by throwing herself into the metal gears of the ventilation machinery. As a result…”  Dr. Parvus paused,” Oh… shit.”  The doctor nearly screamed, his voice notably higher “The vents are down, that means…”  A crash sounded on the recording.  

             A second voice – a man’s - rang out on the recording, “Forget something, Dick?”

             “Stand back!” Parvus shouted,

             “Or what?”  The second voice asked, “Richie, I’ve watched dozens of my brothers and sisters die slowly and painfully at your orders. So for the sake of science, I think it would be best if you experience that—”

             A gun shot rang out on the recording, and then a sound like a body being thrown to the floor.  A second later a crack sounded – the unmistakable sound of a bone breaking- and then another- and then another.   An agonizing minute later the screaming stopped. Followed by the sound of someone standing up.  

             “Is this thing still recording?” The second man said, “Did this guy honestly do daily monologues... How did he end them? There was a few second pause on the recording. “Uh…. That’s all folks.”

             Torva and Selak stared at each other in silence.

             Simultaneously, they reached for the next play button.

             “Status Report,” The voice of the man from the last recording began, “Day uh… yesterday plus one. This is Markov Karazden.”  Markov paused. “Uh… Updates:  Richard Parvus is dead.  Seeing as this is a science report, I would like you to know that, according to the very scientific experiment I conducted yesterday, he lasted nearly a dozen bone breakings before dying.”

             “For those wondering how this miraculous escape occurred, well there’s only one person to thank. Melanie knew that she was dying -- only had a couple of days left.  Yesterday she broke free during testing and jumped into the vents.  She – her body – clogged up the machinery.  Since our blood has the vish- visco-  stickiness of resin, they weren’t able to clean out the machine fast enough.  Without the vents they didn’t have the damn pheromones to keep us contained. Tomorrow night, they’ll be bringing our brothers and sisters back in groups of about a dozen at a time. They’re expecting that this place will still be run by Parvus.  Oh boy, do we have a surprise in store for them.

             The recording clicked and the two scrap hounds stared at each other.

             “An uprising.” Torva not-quite chuckled.  “Blanket tactics appear to have been insufficient after all.”

             “You think this is funny?” Selak asked,

             “Funny? No.”  Torva replied, “But it is fitting.”

             “Fitting?”

             “After all he has done, do you truly believe that Richard Parvus deserved to go gentle into the good night?  That he deserved anything less than what he received?”

             “What he deserved was to learn the error of his ways and try to amend them.” Selak responded. “His mutilated corpse doesn’t serve any purpose?”

             “And how would you ‘show him the error of his ways,’ Torva asked, “Mind-Control Hormones of your own?”

             “Torturing people to death isn’t something we should be cheering on.” Selak replied, “Violence just begets more violence.”

             “Said the ex-mercenary.”

             “Said the human being.” Selak corrected.

             “That is even less of an argument.” Torva responded, “I have spent years watching humans kill each other over minor slights and insults.   This is perhaps the most just killing I have ever witnessed.”

             “Saying that it’s the ‘most just killing’ is like saying that you’ve seen ‘the smartest buzzard’ or ‘the strongest housefly.’  A killing being more just than usual doesn’t suddenly make it justice.”

             “So you would prefer Parvus to be alive?”

             “No,” Selak shook his head, “I just wish things could have been different.”

             “Things are as they are, Selak.” Torva replied, “Now shall we listen to the next recording.”

             “Please.”

             Torva tapped the play button.

             “Status report day 1.”  Markov’s voice rang out, “Yes, we restarted the calendar.  The battle for research facility 14 is over.  Confirmed shithead deaths: 29.  Confirmed mutant deaths: 2.  Damn, I went ahead and spoiled the ending.  So sorry, let me set the scene.

             The scientists and guards were coming back from the Sidean motor pool.  There had been a massacre there, a ton of vehicles and equipment stolen.  They even managed to lift a few crates of champagne for the lab. I don’t know why there was champagne at the motor pool… is champagne something people keep at military bases… whatever… probably not important. Anyway, they figured this was their big break; three ‘victories’ couldn’t be a coincidence.  They figured a grant – you know, money for scientific research - was coming that would make them all filthy rich… oh yeah, and it would help their research, but I think we all know where their priorities were lying.

             Anyway, they had already started drinking the champagne when they walked the first group of mutants back, and you could tell that they were hurrying things along.  Ten guards and scientists escorted the first group of fifteen mutants in.  They’re so busy talking and hi-fiving that they don’t notice how faint the smell of pheromones was.  They only realize what’s going on when we jumped on them from above. We went straight for arteries and vein just like they had taught us.  A few managed to grab their guns, but let’s face it, they designed us too well. Two bullets hit me in the solar plexus and I didn’t even feel it.  

             Maybe twenty minutes later another group of guards came in, this time without any mutants, I could tell they were worried.  One of them had even ripped the big-ass gun off of the security device they have behind the stone door.  If we had had more time, I would have loved to have cleaned up all the blood, but we didn’t have that so the second they walked into the room, they saw the bodies of their comrades, and then we shot them before they could run screaming back.  

             We weighed our options after that.  We could either wait to see if any more of them would walk in, or we could head out to where the rest of our brothers were being kept outside. Alicia had the bright idea to put on the clothing of some of the guards, before we left the building.   It worked out well enough.  We were able to get the jump on the last few scientists, and escort the rest of our brothers inside before sunrise.

             There are 58 of us remaining.  Tomorrow we’re going to make plans for how to free the rest of the prisoners across Myrora.”  

             The recording ended.  

             The pounding in the room next door resumed, louder than before. The two looked at each other.

             Selak turned to his partner, “You sure you’ve never heard of this place?” He shouted over the din.

             “I have not.’ Torva replied, “Though there is another possibility.”

             The pounding stopped.

             Selak shrugged, trying to look more casual than he felt, “Go on.”

             “Earlier I told you the story of Alarus.”  Torva continued.

             “But she wasn’t here. At least not during the uprising.”

             “What if the two stories-- Alarus’s death and the prison break - have become conflated over time?”

             “It’s possible,” Selak scratched his chin, “But then we have to acknowledge another possibility.”

             “Which is?”

             “That Alarus is still out there somewhere.”

             Torva shivered, “I pray, for the world’s sake, that that is not the case.”

             A silence descended, as the two looked at each other.

             “Shall we go on?” Selak asked, gesturing towards the next recording.

             “Please.” Torva replied.  Selak nodded and pushed the button.

             “Day 3. Markov Karazden.  You know the drill.  Yesterday we took it upon ourselves to clean up the bodies.  All of us know damn well what happens to those who hang around rotting corpses. We burned the lot in the incinerator and mopped up the blood.  We then proceeded to celebrate, seeing as the doctors were kind enough to supply us with shitloads of champagne before their passing.”  

             Markov sighed.  “We have a problem though.  Because of my medical training, I’ve been put in charge of inventory.  It doesn’t look good.  In fact, it looks like the reason the reason the doctors were sending us out to fight so much was that they were running low on medical supplies.”

             Markov sighed again. “We don’t have enough to last us the month.

             The other problem is Pherendalin – which is spelled with a P-H, by the way.  Pherendalin is a chemical compound with a unique folding… you know what, I won’t bore you with details. It’s an injection, and we need it if we want to step out of the compound without being cooked alive by the sun.  They gave it to us every time we left the base, and now it looks like it’s losing its effectiveness.  Even if it was at full strength, there’s not nearly enough for us to all leave together.  We’re looking into jury-rigging some exo-suits for some of our more resistant brothers, but those aren’t exactly easy to make.

             Honestly, even without the guards, this place might still be our prison.”

             Selak shook his head… “Goddammit…”

             Torva reached a hand out.  Selak batted it aside.

             “God Fucking Dammit.” Selak hissed, “Why the hell would they do that.  The scientists.   We’re in a fucking desert.  Why would you want troops that burn in the sunlight?

             “It’s like you said earlier, Selak.”  Torva replied, “The one thing all jailers fear is prisoners getting out of their cage. It makes sense to have a last resort—”

             “And their government funded this?  A project that would leave them broken for the rest of their lives?  How can you be okay with this?”

             “I am far from okay with this,” Torva growled and Selak flinched.  “I am merely inured to the horrors.”

             “You…”

             “Believe me, If I had had the chance, I would have been happy to kill Alarus and all her ilk with my own hands.  If the Rebels had ever managed to eke out a victory on Myroran soil, I would have been happy to go there, hammer in hand for the chance of breaking the bodies of anyone who has abused science for an atrocity like this!”

             “Torva…”

             “I understand why the rebels accepted the terms of the ceasefire, but every day there is a part of me that wishes they had not.”

             “You wish that we’d attacked Myrora!?  Do you have any idea-- ”

             “You have travelled with me for less six months, Selak.”  Torva interrupted, “Do not presume to understand my reasons.”

             “I’m sorry,” Selak said, stunned “I--

             “I accept your apology,” Torva interrupted, “Please play the next log.”

             Day 7, Markov said in a defeated tone, “There was… another fight today.  It was worse than yesterday’s.  Christine… dammit… she killed Kaine, bashed his skull against a wall.

             I… We don’t know what to do with her.  Some of us suggested killing her, but I’m not willing to institute capital punishment.  Others suggested locking her in a cell, but unless we use the doctors’ pheromones it’s not gonna keep her in.  

             It wasn’t her fault. Not entirely.  We were designed to be aggressive, and without any sort of balances we’re slipping.  We’re losing our minds.  All of us. Little things are making me angry, and I know I’m not the only one.  If we don’t come up with a plan soon, we’re gonna end up killing each other.

             Some of my brothers are suggesting we take as much pherendalin as we can, and see if we can make it to the Myroran border.  ‘A few massacres’ they say, ‘and they’ll never mess with mutants again.’  I told them absolutely not.  I’m not going to have the blood of children on my hands, Myroran or otherwise.  We need to maintain control. We are more than living weapons”

             The recording clicked off.

             Torva turned to his partner, “I should not have yelled at you.” He said somberly.

             “I understand.” Selak said, “But thank you.”

             Torva tilted his head to the side.  “This may be the ultimate test of our earlier conversation.”

             “How do you figure?”

             “The nature of these people is clear.  To kill without end.  Now, they have to choose, to rise above it or to give in.”

             “I don’t see this as a contest.”

             “How you see it is irrelevant.”  Torva said, “What matters is how it is.”  Torva clicked play on the next recorder.

             “Day 8,” Markov’s voice crackled, it sounded almost as if he were crying, “Christine’s dead… she… she shoved a metal pipe into her heart.  I tried to give her a second chance, told her that we would trust her, but the others… they wouldn’t stop giving her shit about Derek… I mean, I know she killed him but...”

             Markov sniffled, “I guess it doesn’t matter now.  We need to get out of here, there’s no other way.  The others and I have been through our supplies.  Food is no concern of ours, as a result of our “condition.”   Markov spat the word like a curse, “But our medical needs can’t be met forever.  There’s not enough pherendalin for us to leave, but there is enough to stock an away party.  We’re going to draw lots tomorrow for eight of us.  There’s enough Pherendalin to last them each three weeks, more if they’re able to find caves to hide in during the day.”                Selak reached for the next recorder, but Torva grabbed his wrist.

             “What the hell?” Selak asked, jerking his hand free.

             “I’m curious,” Torva asked, “What would you have done with Christine?”

             “The murderer?”

             “Yes, would you have allowed her to go free or would you have done something else.”

             “I’d have killed her,” Selak sighed.

             “Why the sudden change of—“

             “It’s not a change of heart.” Selak replied, “It’s a change of situations.  Us junkers, we’re privileged.  If a fight breaks out between us and a rival team, we don’t have to end it with killing, we do have other options.”  

             “And what if it’s not a fight between the Scrap Hounds and another team.  What if a Scrap Hound kills another Scrap Hound?”

             “We’d have to look at the circumstances.”  Selak said

             “And you’d feel that way if you were the one that were killed.”

             “I don’t know what you guys are going to make of my death,” Selak replied, “But I hope to God it never gets used as a reason to hurt others.”  

             “Fascinating,” Torva replied,

             “Fascinating?” Selak asked, “What am I, a test subject?”

             “Not everything has to be an experiment for me to find it fascinating.”

             “Is that what my life philosophy is to you?” Selak asked, “An idle curiosity?”

             “No.”  Torva replied, “What’s curious to me is that you have managed to survive so many combat encounters with such a philosophy.”

             “Not everyone wants to kill, Tor.” Selak said, “Some people will take any opportunity to avoid killing.  They’ll make a deal with anyone to have one less face staring back at them when they close their eyes.”

             “Is that what you see when you close your eyes?”

             “Just play the damn tape.”

             Torva nodded and pressed the play button on the penultimate recorder.  

             “Day 10.  This morning everyone wrote their name on a scrap of paper and we threw them all into a bucket.  We shook it up and drew eight names. Sylvia, Raith, Colin, Esther, Jacob, Noah, Nina, and Reggie were chosen as our team.  They left this afternoon.   Markov sighed. Some people wanted to draw it out, to throw them a goodbye party.  But let’s face it, if we waited any longer we wouldn’t have been able to send them away.

             Their departure was emotional anyway.  Esther was sobbing when I hugged her goodbye.  I told her that I would see her again, but deep down, I don’t know if that’s true.  

              And then, before they could even walk out the door.  Another fight broke out.  I don’t even know what the cause was, but it was ten times more violent than the one a few days ago.  Three more of us were killed.  Nobody from the away team. Thank God, I don’t think we can draw any more lots.  I don’t know what to do.  I’m not going to force martial law on my own people.  My brothers and sisters…” A sound rang out like Markov punching a wall.  

             “God Fucking DAMNIT! When we sealed the entrance – replaced the turret with that electric crossbow, I thought it would keep us safe.  But it won’t... I don’t think anything will.”  The recorder clicked off.

             “Before we go on,” Torva said, “I thought I should tell you something.”

             “What’s that?”  

             “Selak, you said a few minutes ago that you hoped that no one uses your death as an excuse to kill someone.”

             “Yeah?”  Selak replied, “Is that so weird?”

             “I will not honor that request.”  Torva said, “If someone kills you, I will kill them.  I will break their body with my hammer, slowly and painfully, until they at last exsanguinate.”

             “You wouldn’t honor my last request?”

             “The desires of the dead should not outweigh those of the living.  As such, your desire for me to show mercy will not trump my desire to not live in the same world as your killer.”

             “It’s more than honoring my last request.”

             “How so?”

             “If I die, and you guys go on a roaring rampage of revenge, we’re gonna need someone who keeps the Hounds from becoming a full-on mercenary outfit.  And that someone’s gonna have to be you.”

             “You think I would be a good choice for that?”

             “Good? Hell no,” Selak grinned, “Best… probably.  But don’t worry about it. I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.”

             “No one ever does.” Torva replied, as he pressed down on the final play button.

             “Day 17.”  Markov gasped. “I am leaving this message with claws covered in blood.  I’m pacing through the halls of this prison, praying that I’m not alone, praying that just one of my brothers or sisters survived that fight.  I’ve been dragging bodies to the incinerator, washing away the blood stains as if removing the evidence will make them all come back. That last fight… it wasn’t even intentional. Kylie stepped on Sam’s foot.  That was all it took.  We’re powder kegs.  FUCKING POWDER KEGS!!!!”

             Markov took a few deep breaths “Sorry… I can feel myself slipping.  I’ve burned the last of the bodies, washed away the last bits of my brothers’ blood.  But I’m still searching.  Praying.

             Every time I turn a corner, I see ghosts, my brothers, my sisters, the scientists, the soldiers, my family, my classmates, the people I killed, all of them screaming at me, sobbing, wailing in agony…  

             It’s too much.

             I’m locking myself in the inner sanctum.  I’ll take the books, the supplies, and a healthy dose of sedatives to keep my aggression in check.  Maybe there’s a cure for our condition.   I don’t need to eat; as long as I can inject myself with those hypernutritional supplements I should be able to last for years.  I’ll last for as long as it takes to find the cure for our condition.  I WILL see the sun again.  No matter how long it takes.  

              Before I lock myself in, I’m leaving some recording on the table in the meeting room. This one and ten others.  Mostly mine, but a few of the asshole’s as well. I’ve labeled them 1 through eleven.

             Come to think of it, if you’re hearing this than you probably know all that by now.”  Markov gave a weak laugh, “Well that’s how the recorders got there, whoever you are.

             You know, I suppose I should give you a message, if I’m not there to greet you in person.

             If you’re a member of the away team, coming back after days, weeks, maybe even yeas.  I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that more of us couldn’t survive.  But I want you to know that from the bottom of my heart I am happy that you did.

             If you’re a member of the FUCKING MYRORAN GOVERNMENT.” Markov caught his breath before continuing, “I hope the atrocities committed here have made you realize…” Markov gasped,  “Made you realize how horrific mutating human beings truly is.  I know how important the war is to you, but if you continue down this road, there will be a day of reckoning.  Someday there will be an uprising that you can’t contain.  And when that day comes, there will be hell to pay.  Stick to non-living weapons.”

             Markov sighed,” I suppose there’s a possibility that you’re just a stranger.  A man who wandered into a secret lab, or a Sidean raiding an enemy facility.   I’m sorry, I’m not here to greet you, but I implore you to learn the lesson of what happened here.  

             PEOPLE… AREN’T… WEAPONS.”

             The recorder clicked off and the two Scrap Hounds eyed each other in silence.

             “Lord…” Selak said, after a couple of seconds, “I can’t believe it...”

             “It’s—” Torva’s words were drowned out as the pounding resumed in the next room, louder and more insistent than before.  Selak’s mouth fell open as the realization dawned.

             “Torva?” Selak asked rising to his feet, “Is what he said possible? About not needing food?”

             “Theoretically, yes,” Torva replied, “Although it would not be pleasant.”  Torva paused, “You don’t think…”

             Selak nodded, as he reached for his pistol, “What if that’s not a machine that’s making that noise.”

Part 6

             If you’re of the mind to feel, the Durante Desert is a wounded land.  The war cut a bloody swath across the landscape and the people of Durante, leaving a scar that may never truly heal. For three decades, blood and fire poured over this land; culture, landmarks, and scientific advancements, were all destroyed in a mad quest for victory.

             Hate burns in this land as brightly as the sun above.  For some, the anger is concealed: The shopkeeper whose price raises by the slightest of margins whenever a Myroran enters his store.  For others the anger is a badge, proudly worn: The veteran who sits at the Sidean border, sharpening his knife, and waiting for the day the ceasefire wavers.    

             ***

             The artist and the scientist stood on opposite sides of the steel door that led into the lab’s final room.  Selak held a pistol in one hand and checked the door’s handle with the other. “Unlocked,” Selak half-whispered, “He’s not sealed in there.”  

             Torva nodded as he flicked the switch on his electrode hammer.  An instant later it’s metal tip crackled with electricity that made the hairs on Selak’s arm stand on end.  

             “Okay, Torva,” Selak hissed over the sound of crashing on the opposite side of the door,  “No matter what state he’s in, we should try and talk things out first.  There’s no need to spill any more blood here.”

             “I am ready to negotiate if he is mentally stable.” Torva replied, “Are you ready to fight if he is not?”

             Selak sighed.

             “Are you?” Torva repeated.

             “Yes, Torva,” Selak said, “I am.”

             “Good,” Torva replied, “If I make contact with my hammer, he should be stunned.  It will not last long, but while his muscles are seizing, you will have time to shoot him in the head.  Any other bullet wound will not be able to stop him!  Do not attempt an incapacitating shot!”

             “I know!” Selak grimaced.

             “Good.” Torva answered, “Then let’s go in.”

             Selak nodded and pushed open the door. The second his hand made contact, the metal clanging on the other end stopped.  In silence, the two Scrap Hounds entered the next room.  

             It was a chemical lab, or at least it looked like it had been one once.  The dilapidated shelves clinging to the walls were covered in beakers and broken glass. Textbooks, their covers and pages shredded. Torva eyed a few of the stray pages with interest.  

             “Think we could put off reading till later?” Selak asked, “Maybe a time when we’re not in danger?”

             Torva nodded, as the two walked into an adjoining hallway.  At the far end of the hallway was a man-sized scientific instrument, with three of the batteries they had seen at the entrance attached to it. Selak looked at the machine, and tilted his head to the side.      

             “So what does this—” Selak jumped, back as the machine sprung to life, releasing a flurry of sparks into the air as its metal innards ground together filling the hallway with the pounding drumbeat from before.

             “It is an industrial-grade pestle.” Torva shouted over the din, “It is used for crushing medicines that are stored as minerals, but administered as powders!”

             “So this is what’s been making the pounding?”  Selak shouted back.

             “It would seem so,” Torva replied as the two rounded a corner, “But if that is the case then where is—” Torva stopped midsentence.

             “Well…” Selak cleared his throat…  “Fuck…”

             The man was shirtless, exposing his grey skin under the dull fluorescent lights.  He was propped up against the wall, a recorder in one hand and a pistol in the other.  His shoulder-length greying hair did little to conceal the olive-sized hole in his head, a wound filled with a grey-black mixture of dried blood and congealed brain.

             Torva knelt down beside him.

             “How long has he been like this?”  Selak asked.

             Torva shook his head, “Difficult to say given his mutations.  Several years at a minimum.”

             Selak reached for the recorder in Markov’s hands and rested his finger on the play button.  He glanced at Torva, who nodded solemnly.

             If you’re listening to this… well… If you’re listening to this than I guess you can see for yourself what’s happened.  Markov’s voice was raspy and far weaker than before, as if every word was a challenge for him to force out, I… I found a cure for the Pherendalin problem.  I’ve developed an injection to make my body fold proteins differently.  I’d essentially be able to produce Pherendalin naturally.  I’d need semi-regular injections, but I’d be able to make a lifetime’s supply with just the materials in the lab.

             I’d be cured…  Markov let out a soft sob.

             But I know that I can’t do that.  I know what I’m like unsedated.  My anger isn’t a flame in my chest anymore; it’s a wildfire, uncontrollable and deadly.  I wouldn’t be able to return to polite society.  I wouldn’t be able to return anywhere.

             Markov cleared his throat. I am done fighting the inevitable.  Out of the corner of my eyes, I still see my brothers and sisters, but they are no longer angry.  They are calling me home.

             I realize that these are my last words. Another sob escaped from Markov, “So I guess… I guess I should make it count.”  A weak chuckle.  “I remember back – was it weeks?  Months? Maybe even years ago, when Regis suggested we take what was left of the Pherendalin and go on a killing rampage. Get to the border and kill as many Myrorans as we could before the sun cooked us alive.   Markov let out a wet hacking cough.

             I don’t regret telling him no. And I hate the Myrorans.  I hate them so damn much.  But more than anything else…

             I hate the war.  I hate what it made this broken world into.  An orgy of blood and violence.  

             Whoever you are.  Thank you for listening to my story.  The story of my brothers.  Do not let it die here.  Let it be free.  This war is a cancer on the land.  Do not take part in it.  Bring it to an end.  Markov let out a weak chuckle and flicked off the pistol’s safety.  I guess that’s all I have to say.  It’s time for me to move on to the next life.  I hope that when I get there, I’ll get to see the sun again.  Or, at the very least, I hope that it’s warm.

             The recorder clicked off, Selak and Torva glanced at each other.  

             “What now?” Torva asked.

             “Now,” Selak sighed, “Now, I think it’s time to head home.”

***

             It took the artist and the scientist nearly a dozen trips to get everything they needed from the tower.  Together they sorted through the medical supplies, dragged out the most functional machines and batteries, sorted through the remnants of the textbooks, and pried as many armloads of iron bars as they could from the prison cells.  

             The prison incinerator was broken beyond repair.  So as Torva removed the last of its functional parts, Selak returned to Markov’s body and carried him away from the lab.  The emaciated corpse was uncomfortably light in the artist’s arms as he walked out of the cave into the desert night.

             As Torva sealed away the last of the supplies in the Land Whale’s storage, Selak found a rocky outcropping at the base of the mural he had been painting earlier, where he laid out pieces of dried wood, rubber, and strips of old bandages from the tower.  He laid down Markov’s body, and sprinkled it with gasoline, before igniting a match and pressing it against his dried skin.  It ignited instantly, the crimson flames illuminating the mural like a flare.

             “Did the others approve your appropriation of the Whale’s gasoline?”  Torva asked as he approached from behind.  

             “They can take it out of my next paycheck,” Selak replied, “Markov said he wanted to be warm, I think we should honor that.”

             Torva nodded, and for a moment the two stared in silence at the crackling flames.

             “You have been uncharacteristically quiet since we found him.”  Torva observed.

             “I thought you’d be celebrating.” Selak replied.

             “I like to think that I am not as cold as the metal exo-suit lets on.”

             Selak sighed, “It feels… hollow.”

             “What does?”

             “Tonight.” Selak said, “Everything we learned.  The mutants broke free, they escaped their imprisonment, but still they all died. They never got to be free again. Even Markov, he kept his sanity all those weeks alone, even managed to find the cure.  But then he killed himself for the benefit of people who will never know his sacrifice. ”

             “What about the away party?” Torva suggested,

             “It’s been years, Tor. If they ever came back they would have moved Markov’s body.  They’re either dead or living in a cave somewhere in fear of the sun.”

             Torva rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder.  “There were good things about today.”

             “Such as…?”

             “The batteries we took will be useful to us for years to come.” Torva replied, “The medical supplies will save lives in every town we come across for the next month.  The textbooks we salvaged will make worthy additions to the libraries in Dura.  And that is to say nothing of the value of the scrap we took from the prison cells.”

             Selak shook his head, “Forgive me if I still feel sad.”

             “I would never hold that against you,” Torva replied, as he walked away from the pyre, “After all, it is your nature.”

---

             If you’re of the mind to listen, there is a story in the Durante Desert.  A tale of junkers and jailbirds, love and loss, brotherhood and blood.  A story of a broken world and its denizens.  A story of murder and manipulation, of greed and guilt, of hedonism and heartbreak.  A story of those who gave their lives for causes greater than themselves and those who lost their lives for reasons they couldn’t comprehend.  A story of exploration and exploitation.

             A story as dark as the desert night.

             But as bright as the sunrise that comes after.  

 Notes on the Scrap Hounds

             As said in the opening, the world of the Scrap Hounds was a result of a five-part collaboration.  The five of us (in alphabetical order) were Talia Loeb, Derek Mull, Karlo Panganiban, Miles Rodgers, and myself.  I won’t try and piece together who is responsible for what or whose vision is most clearly represented.

             Each of us created a character for the Scrap Hounds that we would take creative control over.  Torva was designed by Miles Rodgers and Selak by myself.  If you want to read up on how Torva met Selak and some of their early adventurers, let me know and I’ll see about asking Miles to let me put up a few of his stories on here.  

             I have a few extra short stories set in this world that I may put up just for the hell of it, but I should specify that they’re all 2-4 pages, nothing on the scale of The Tower.

             Champagne – the bubbly wine – is referenced several times in the story. I went back and forth as to whether or not to change it since this story takes place in a world where the Champagne region of France never existed.  I eventually decided that it wasn’t a linguistic rabbit hole worth going down. They drink Champagne in Durante. They also speak English.  I offer neither excuse nor apology.

[dr-alka]

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So what does a smile makeover involve? We'll Show you right here.

Do You Need a Smile Makeover? There are varying degrees of dental work necessary to make your smile the best it can be. And every set of teeth is different. Let's take a look at some of the aspects of a beautiful smile.

Spacing and Alignment How are your teeth aligned? Good alignment means having teeth that are straight and follow each other naturally. If you had braces as a child , you might have pretty straight teeth. But if not, you may have crooked teeth or teeth that are set back from the rest. The same goes for spacing. You may have gaps between teeth that didn't fill in when you were a child.

Missing and Chipped Teeth Chipped teeth can be embarrassing, especially if they're in the front of your mouth. They can also lead to more serious issues like cavities. Chips leave your teeth vulnerable to substances that can break them down or cause pain in the root. Missing teeth affect your smile. But they also affect the way the rest of your teeth sit in your mouth. When you lose a tooth, space opens up for the other teeth to move around. This causes issues with the spacing and alignment of the rest of your mouth. If you're missing a tooth, it also affects how the teeth come together when you bite down. This may not be an issue at first, but as time goes on, it can cause lots of problems. Headaches, cracked teeth, and jaw pain are all issues that can come from a misaligned bite.

Color One of the most obvious smile issues is the color of your teeth. Fortunately, this is also one of the easiest things to fix. Coffee, wine, and other acidic foods attack the enamel and leave stains behind.

Length and Proportion The size of your teeth makes a difference. Are Your teeth proportioned to your mouth and to each other? Many people have one or two teeth that are smaller than the others, making the mouth look lopsided. And if your teeth are abnormally long or short, that can cause a problem too.

The Elements of the Smile Makeover A smile makeover is different for every patient. And you may not have all the issues discussed in the section above. That's why great cosmetic dentist can tailor your smile makeover to address the issues that bother you.

Here's a look at services that Dr Alka Dental Care an dental clinic in dubai offers to get your smile back on track.

Each set of trays is specially-made to fit your teeth. They are nearly invisible, making them more discreet than braces. And they're more comfortable than bulky, wire braces.

Plus, with Invisalign, you can take them out to eat and clean your teeth. And they often work faster than braces. Invisalign Usually corrects teeth alignment in about 12 months or half the time of braces.

Veneers Dental veneers dubai can correct almost any tooth problem you've got. Like other methods, veneers are custom-made for your teeth. The dentist makes veneers from a very thin, strong layer of porcelain.

The porcelain sits over the front of your existing teeth and the dentist bonds it into place. Veneers dubai can reshape a tooth that's too small or too large. And can cover up chipped or worn down teeth.

Implants If you have one or more missing teeth, dental implants are the way to go .With an implant, the dentist places a titanium post into your jaw where the root of the missing tooth was. On top of the post, they bond a custom-made crown. Dr Alka Dental Care provides the best dental implants in dubai for more than one tooth too. If You have several teeth in a row, they can all bond right to one implant. And They can even replace dentures.

Are You Ready to Revamp Your Smile? Your smile is often the very first thing that people notice about you. With a smile makeover at our clinic, you can achieve a beautiful and flawless smile that will transform your personality and lift your entire look.

​Dr. Alka Adyalkar is a reputed and experienced cosmetic dentistry dubai known for offering best-in-class Hollywood Smile Makeovers in Dubai. Combining her experience, technical skills, and aesthetic vision, she can deliver a stunningly perfect smile that will suit you well and accentuates your natural beauty.

It’s time to adorn yourself with a smile that is designed to mesmerize!

Schedule an Appointment with Dr. Alka Adyalkar today!

We also specialize in Dental Veneer, Dental Implant, Root Canal Treatment, Wisdom Teeth Removal & Extraction.