#like it makes sense so far?? the sheer fact the machinery is working in ways ot definitely shouldn’t and is reading out literal statements

[m3ntal-hiatus]

FROM “LOFI CHARMED” TAPE RECORDERS TO COMPUTERS OLDER THAN “THE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE”?? THE WEB IS STILL ACTIVE IN TMAGP????

FUCKING FUCK.

THEY ARE SO SCREWED

[lore-of-the-silvereyes-rwby]

I am power I am due process I will smite

We talked about Ironwood's personality, history, major theories, and his possible origins. Now we will discuss the prime and major aspect of his character that has impacted the story the most. His overall status, power, and abilities as the leader of Atlas Military, Headmaster of Atlas Academy and the major de facto Leader of the entirety of the Atlassian Government and how it has made him lose sight of what he was fighting for.

Status

As a general, Ironwood normally doesn't associate himself with the front lines of combat and usually orders his forces using his tactical know-how and military knowledge. However, when pressed, he is very adept in combat.

In "Remembrance", he has two seats on the Atlesian Council, assuming both seats symbolize as Headmaster of Atlas Academy and General of the Atlas Military, giving him a even greater amount of authority and influence over the Atlesian Council and the Kingdom of Atlas, allowing him to make unilateral decisions such as initiating a Dust Embargo, closing off the Borders of the Kingdom from the rest of the world and even initiate and enforce Martial Law should he deem it necessary.

Rank

This is probably the most difficult to point down and to make a solid argument since the writers haven’t really explored the command structure of the Atlas Military but since they’re claiming it to be the America of RWBY we will be using facts and details of the U.S. Army rank structure as a logical comparison as well as listing the potential base requirements for Ironwood’s current rank and overall status.

Takes 30 years average to achieve the rank of [a 4 star] General

Candidates for Flag officers (General ranks) must have over 22 years of service as an officer

3 years in grade as a colonel to qualify for flag promotion(Time In Service at best 25 years for earliest promotion)

Atlas equivalent of the US chairmen of the Joint chiefs of Staff (Must be a 4* Gen)

As well as the Secretary of the Department of Education

Most likely achieved the rank and status of General 1-4 years prior to his debut in V2 (Assuming his age is somewhere between 47-50)

With these facts for both his status and rank it's quite clear that potentially Ironwood hasn’t had much time or experience being a leader or General. As I stated before in the Chosen one section chances are that Ozpin or his predecessor have been manipulating Ironwood’s career in order to gain an inside man over what can be assumed to be the most unstable Kingdom on Remnant ready to wage war. Because of this It has led Ironwood to descend further down into his ego and narcissism as he would see his fast success as his own accomplishments that he achieved on his own with his power, instead of the truth that it was all handed to him by Oz. Because of that Ironwood has thought of himself better than Oz and believes in his own hype as his power increased.

The source of his power

With his rank and status aside let's now discuss the source of his power and how it solidifies Ironwood’s overall role in the plot.  The source of his power being his complete and total authority over his home Kingdom of Atlas. This is the only reason why he is even the plot in the first place. He is the de facto leader of the world’s strongest and advanced Military that is allied with the main heroes. The main heroes didn’t come to him for a plan nor did they come to him because he has some special power, they came to him just to get access to his army. That is the entirety of his role. He is supposed to be the guy that is supposed to lend his assets for the heroes, specifically the assets of Atlas entirely.

Now, Atlas is a country with very strong military and technology, isolated and far away from all the other countries. Despite the strong military, it is limited in number,  resources, and assets. Since Ironwood came to power he has hoarded almost all of them and gives the world the bare minimum. Not because it is limited or because he is preparing for war but because he  believes that he is the only one that can win. He wants to be the hero. Ironwood’s overall power stems from the consent of the people to his authority, and their willingness to die for him and his cause.

He needs people to make his plans happen.  He needs people to make his war machines. He needs them to supply his army with troops willing to die for him. But more importantly he needs people to validate him and his choices in order to fuel his ego and his “For the Greater Good '' mantra as well as to fuel his false sense of chosenness. He’s a barely competent General who genuinely wants to protect & win for the sake of others, but he is not a noble leader of his or any people who he will use to get the mission done.

Individual Powers & Abilities

His overall combat and abilities are pretty standard to $417 honestly. In comparison to other RWBY fighters I would have to say that Ironwood isn’t in the top 10 or top 100 of the World's best warriors. Decent skills maybe, but nothing new or special that would make him stand out from a regular joe combat wise.

Semblance

To start, let's discuss the key element of RWBY’s combat system that gives it its uniqueness; Semblances.  Now this is actually a key factor and component to the RWBY lore and Universe as a whole.

A Semblance is the manifestation of one's innate and personal power as an ability unique to each individual, with the effects varying greatly from user to user. With the sheer number of people unlocking their Semblances, it can lead to unrelated people gaining similar abilities. The nature of one's Semblance is noted as representing an aspect of their character.

Basically it's a physical representation of one's soul

(Note due to the vague description of his semblance I had to browse through around to get a solid idea for what his semblance is in a manner that everyone can agree and understand)

Ironwood's Semblance is revealed to be Mettle, which strengthens his resolve and allows him to carry through with his decisions, helping him hyper-focus. His semblance is possibly  “passive”meaning he has no control over it. It also gives him a surge in concentration and pain tolerance so that he can accomplish whatever goal he’s fixated on.

An example of its use on-screen was when he ripped his arm out of the hard-light construct Watts trapped him in during their fight in Volume 7.

It speculative if he does have any control over his semblance or if it works in the same manner as Qrow Branwen’s semblance(Always Active)

One argument saying that it is active is from the lyrics of Hero;

“Our enemies destroy, Mettle I’ll deploy, No chance that I won’t take, My oath to you I won’t forsake”

The words in bold help hint at the possibility that he has some control over his semblance but it does remain unclear whether or not if it's truly passive or not

To help summarize as to what his semblance does; Ironwood's Semblance, Mettle, allows for  temporarily increased brain processing power. This can be utilized to help James hyper-focus, blocking out everything else to help him achieve his goals.

His semblance is also a manifestation of his tenacious character trait and allows for mental health to affect his semblance like everyone else. The changes here are slight, but meaningful and could probably still be worked on to make it sound better.

Also to help better understand here is the definition of Mettle;

A person's ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way.

His semblance is probably ideal on the battlefield but not much in terms of Administrative and/or Political issues

His semblance isn’t exactly ideal or overall useful in most fights since it's possible that he can’t control it

As well as it does seem to be a self indulgent power that only benefits him in regards to his psyche and nervous system

With that in mind I think Ironwood would have to find other ways to enforce his power without a semblance in a world where it seems to be a common phenomenon.

Physical

Due to his lack of unique abilities or useful semblance Ironwood would have to focus his efforts on other forms of combat to compensate for his handicap.

One of them being his physical prowess.

Due to his status as General his individual combat efficiency has diminished to an extent due to basically being a military politician.

With that in mind it's possible that Ironwood hasn’t seen active combat on a regular basis since he was a Captain(O-3) which is the most common officer rank in any military as well as the most common rank to be seen on the field of combat in comparison to ranks above that.

In other words his combat experience has probably diminished during the later half of his career as the headmaster of Atlas Academy and later when he became The most senior leader of the Army

Given this Ironwood’s personal combat style has been reduced to the basics that he learned during his Basic Military boot camp training.

This is best seen during his fight with Arthur Watts who was possibly also a member of Atlas Military given his surprising combat abilities to be on par with Ironwoods. But this is due to the both of them relying on a mixture of their combat training from boot camp, and the experience from their respective career fields. In this case it's an administrative politician vs a scientific inventor both of whom are in career fields that are non direct combat orientated relying on their shared knowledge and training of basic military combat.

To further add to this an allegory example for the Ironwood vs Watts fight would be a Army mechanic vs Army Sniper. These are both non direct combat careers in the military and are less likely to see any form of close quarters combat that an infantryman would as one works with heavy machinery and repair while the other does stealth and ranged operations.

But if we put these two into a free roam boxing match to the death chances are these two would have to rely on their basic training as their current career paths don’t focus much on CQC or any direct combat. As such the sniper would most likely adopt a fighting style similar to an out-boxer given his light build and frame needed for the stealth part of his career while the mechanic adopts a slugger style given his greater body build needed to lift and operate heavy tools and other manual labor.

The mechanic will also have a need to be direct and end this as quickly as possible as he may be use to a finish by the time quota mentality while the sniper knows that he is physically out matched but uses the speed granted to him by his smaller build to his advantage and tries to tire out the slugger and wait for an opening while the slugger tries to end it all in one hit.

In the case of their fight Ironwood was the slugger forfeiting strategy for brawn and strong one shot finishers, while Watts was the out-boxer who knew he physically stood no chance and focused on tactics and unconventional combat via the terrain settings of Amity Colosseum to tire and weaken Ironwood enough for an opportunity to incapacitate him

Another key aspect of Ironwood’s physical prowess are his Cybernetics.

Now we don’t know when or how he got them but it's quite clear that they were made to enhance his strength evidence from the shockwave that shattered the ground when he and an alpha beowulf parried each other in V3 Chpt.10

So yeah his cybernetics probably have doubled maybe even tripled the strength of his right side.

But sadly these are probably outdated and old as again we don’t know when he got them but they seemed to have been on him for awhile which would make sense as his status would grant him cybernetics that would be advanced for their time but with the down side that he can’t replace them for newer and better models

Evidence for this is when Ironwood had a new state of the art arm made for yang when he probably could have had a new arm made for himself and equipped it onto him, but he can’t cause his cybernetics are permanent and non changeable

As such he’s stuck with prosthetics that can only enhance his strength and nothing else. With unchangeable cybernetics aside let's look at the non cyber part of him and how it may be failing him.

The downside of his human half is that it still ages and with age comes physical deterioration and later mental deterioration. After looking up some medical research human beings start to deteriorate at the median age of 50 and as such start to weaken physically, losing the abilities of their prime

If my estimation of his age is accurate his body is nearing or is already deteriorating and with the added amounts of stress and PTSD may as well caused his mind to deteriorate prematurely as well.

Also his semblance apparently allows him to tolerate pain and damage allowing him to have some form of berserker mode like wolverine(Basically an adrenaline rush)

Also remember its passive and only happens at random so yeah it's not really that useful in long drawn out fights even if it's active.

With these facts in mind Ironwood at present may now be aware of his physical limitations and as such would have to rely on a another form of combat where he would have to rely on others to do his fighting for him

Leadership

Now this is his most defining trait at present that has been explored the most in the show and the center of controversy for his character

As stated before Ironwood lacks any special powers that could give him the edge as well as that his physical body is starting to fail him due to age, greatly weakening his usefulness in a fight.

As such he is left with the only viable option that he has to enforce his will without direct contact.

His command and Authority over others, and their consent to die for him and his needs

In order for him to have this kind of power may have been a result of his leadership style.

His leadership style appears to be a mixture of 3 different types of leadership styles.

These 3 being Autocratic, Authoritative, & Pacesetting with Autocratic being the dominant of the 3

Autocratic

The phrase most illustrative of an autocratic leadership style is "Do as I say." Generally, an autocratic leader believes that he or she is the smartest person at the table and knows more than others. They make all the decisions with little input from team members.(Sound familiar)

This command-and-control approach is typical of leadership styles of the past, but it doesn't hold much water with today's talent.(Times of war maybe?/Times of peace, nope!)

That's not to say that the style may not be appropriate in certain situations. For example, you can dip into an autocratic leadership style when crucial decisions need to be made on the spot, and you have the most knowledge about the situation, or when you're dealing with inexperienced and new team members and there's no time to wait for team members to gain familiarity with their role.(He would be more suited as a mission handler instead of a strategic tactician)

Authoritative

The phrase most indicative of this style of leadership (also known as "visionary") is "Follow me." The authoritative leadership style is the mark of confident leaders who map the way and set expectations, while engaging and energizing followers along the way.( Basically him in V 2 & 3 before things went to $417)

In a climate of uncertainty, these leaders lift the fog for people. They help them see where the company is going and what's going to happen when they get there.(He may be a man of vision poor vision but had a some sense of direction just poorly showed, & executed for others)

Unlike autocratic leaders, authoritative leaders take the time to explain their thinking: They don't just issue orders. Most of all, they allow people choice and latitude on how to achieve common goals.( It’s a 40/40/20 split with this being the least)

Pacesetting

While the pacesetter style of leadership is effective in getting things done and driving for results, it's a style that can hurt team members. For one thing, even the most driven employees may become stressed working under this style of leadership in the long run.(Mantle, Vale and the Heroes are prime examples of that)

Ironwood’s Leadership is quite the mix bag of results

In some situations specifically Combat oriented ones it works and is effective to a certain degree

But for most of the time in situations like politics, commerce, and peace in general it can lead to the worst outcomes imaginable hence all of the conflicts plaguing rwby present

With this in mind it probably won’t take long to realise that Ironwood is an ineffective leader of and for the people

Remember most of the power that he holds now is through the consent of the people

Whether they be soldiers, scientists or civilians they are the only things that keeps him in power as well as make his position of power legitimate in order for him to plan and execute his plans.

Also as evidence from extended sources and media most of the progress and advancements of Atlas have been done through Ironwoods efforts ergo Ironwood has more or less become the main benefactor of the kingdom through their eyes

This however more or less makes him the de facto king of Atlas if you think about it and as most troubles that befall a king it's usually their own pride that can get the better of them especially if they surround themselves with enablers that paint them in a almost god-like light

Also with the added reveal of his semblance It does have a very heavy affect on his mind in terms of decision making but sadly it tends to happen on impulse and isn’t much suited for a political or administrative environment

Sadly he has done a poor job trying to keep the people on his side and as such has justified the revolution to bring down his ineffective & immoral leadership

Effectiveness

Depending on the situation the effectiveness of Ironwood's overall power and command  is moderate to ineffective in all honesty

This mostly stems from the fact that Ironwood’s ego and overall favoritism of his kingdom tends to clash with the general idea of the common goal of peace that is shared with the heroes (Ozpin, Ruby, Oscar, etc) and the world as a whole

As such it has fueled his need to be validated to raging war, even though the results would be catastrophic in order to do so and completely unnecessary

The effectiveness of Ironwood's overall impact on the world is mostly done in self-indulgence as he believes his dreams and goals are what is best for everyone.

In a true totalitarian way unless something can further his power or goals it's good to him, while anything that threatens it is bad to him

This is first seen when he discredited Ozpin as he saw it his way of handling the situation was not ideal even though he is his ally. In doing so he became the head of the security force and further discredited Ozpin to the point that his position as headmaster was in jeopardy. Even though Oz is the leader of the group that is meant to keep the peace in secret as open conflict would result in heavy losses which is what the fall of beacon was. A preview on a small scale as to what could happen had Ironwood his way all the time and the results that it would yield.

By V7 Ironwood acknowledges his failure with the amount of power he had brought, except unlike most people he hasn’t learned anything from the ordeal and continues down a path of paranoia and warmongering. Instead he chooses to find ways that would benefit his power and goals.

Fear and rage aside Let talk about his overall planning and strategy

Most of his plans that have been shown and revealed so far have had a tendency to backfire

The first of his plans that took a turn for the worst was the P.E.N.N.Y. project during the Vytal tournament as well as his power grab at beacon which led to its fall

Okay this is speculative but I do believe Ironwood was field testing Penny for his upcoming war based on dialogue from her in V2 and used the Vytal tournament as a means to do so. Thus turning an event of peace that was meant to celebrate the end of war just to test new weapons for his upcoming war of change.

This accompanied by the army of robot soldiers that he insisted to have as security brought to question the practicality of Ironwood's methods. This is also brought into question as the people are unaware of salem' existence thus from the perspectives of the Vale citizens and the world in general, Ironwood's interference with Vale security would basically be needless foreign intervention, to them that would eventually lead to disaster. Which it did as both were used to portray him and atlas as the villainous force at the fall of beacon and has contributed to salem's plans.

The second of his plans to go off the deep end was the dust embargo and the closing of borders

Though granted with drawing from the rest of the world seemed like a good idea to ease tensions of war but overall it had lasted too long especially if you take into account that Atlas was Remnants source of Industry and main economic and technological center that the world desperately relies on to survive.

This would make it difficult to rally anyone to his side as from their perspective he and by extension his kingdom would only be seen as the ones who left them for dead and would think twice before trusting him with any plan especially one of war.

The third plan of his to go astray was his confrontation with Watts

This isn’t much of a plan but an overview of his strategy during that fight and it could have gone better honestly.

By the way that entire fight was essentially a capture mission for Watts. Which is self explanatory as to why Ironwood didn’t straight out kill watts when he can use him to his advantage so I’ll give credit for forethought of enemy interrogation but the means and execution as to obtain watts were very poor and half thought out

To start where it began to turn to s*** was how he essentially went in alone without backup. Remember he is a General during a time of peace, who at this point probably has very little combat experience to rely on for this fight. I really don't see the point of why he would fight the crazy mad scientist alone when he could have at least had winter with him or a squad of soldiers to assist .Hell even a sniper could have been beneficial. It's not like everyone, was needed to evacuate the city of  mantle.

Which brings me to my second point of the fight; why did it have to be Ironwood to capture watts? From a fan perspective the answer was probably to give a character a good fight scene but in universe why did it have to be the general of the entire army to capture one cyber terrorist. Especially when there are other more qualified fights that have seen more action in a week than Ironwood has in his entire military career. That may be an over exaggeration but as I stated before Ironwoods career shifted from the battlefield to the political and administrative.

Meaning his combat experience has diminished since his 30’s? as he became more focused on running a kingdom rather than micromanaging the battlefield as he used to. So with that in mind Ironwood should have at least thought of someone more capable of capturing Watts than him. He could have sent Winter or Qrow or even the ace opts who probably are more qualified to disarm and detain watts faster and more effectively than how Ironwood’s fight went without complications.

Now we come to the fight itself where Ironwood for no reason drew out the fight longer than it should have been. For example we know that his cybernetics are possibly capable of doubling the strength of his right side. So once Ironwood had gotten within grabbing range of watts after depleting his Aura Ironwood should have at least tried to crush the bones of either of Watts arms thus disarming him and making it easier to detain. He also could have taken a page from Nora and broken his legs thus immobilizing him and limiting Watt’s options of escape.

Maybe Humans are more durable in rwby, than humans of our world but if you need to capture someone alive they don’t have to be in perfect condition. They just need their head intact to give info  and the necessary vital origins needed  to live. They don’t exactly need their arms or legs unless you want to risk the chance of escape from them

Here comes the standoff which is another point that's problematic given Ironwood's intentions. If Ironwood knew Watts was out of ammo why did he just taunt watts instead of making a move to subdue him. Instead of pointing out his enemy was out of ammo he could have shifted his gun a bit and put a bullet in his shoulder and  making his arm useless and make the necessary preparations to capture watts alive without any further risk to himself and probably wouldn’t lead him to flay his only remaining arm to win

(Assuming he was out of ammo as well hence why he was taunting again he has cybernetics that can double his strength if need be which he could have used to break any part of watt’s limbs without further damage to himself.)

Now we come to the final issue of the fight that honestly could have been avoided or at least handled better. Ironwood didn’t necessarily have to sacrifice his remaining arm to get free. He could have tried destroying one or all of the rings that were keeping his arm trapped. I do believe he has the strength in his cybernetics needed to crush the rings no problem. If he couldn’t then he could have shimmed his arm out through the side instead of pulling it out and burning it.

Overall Ironwood had plenty of options to his plan to capture Watts but it was his narrow mindedness that led to the escalation of the fight and cost him greatly when it could have been avoided and ended quickly without much loss.

The only plan that seemed to have been ideal and would have benefited everyone was the Amity project, and restoration of global communications but it had its consequences the way he had led it.

Communication is a very crucial and essential tool needed for any society to help better coordinate and resolve the issues that happen during a crisis. Overall his plan for amity was probably the least Atlas centric that would have benefited the world but his intentions for it and means to obtain it were problematic.

His intentions for the amity project were not based on altruistic or selfless motives but were based on his desire to gain and gather resources for his war with salem. Ironwood wanted to restore global communications just to convince the people of the other kingdoms to rally to him and to fight for his cause.

The means of how he obtained it also lead to problems as he had to siffen off resources from the 2nd impoverished city in the world that needed those resources to help keep it safe just to gain a way to recruit soldiers and acquire more resources needed for his war

This is also furthered by the fact that he intended to reveal a world shattering truth that would cause a lot of negative emotions of disbelief grief and fear that will fill the remainder of the world. Meaning Ironwood knowingly and was willing to cause global panic and take advantage of the chaos that would follow just to further his needs  for war.

That may be speculation but based on the latter half of the plan from A New Approach it pretty much highlights the Values and lengths of Ironwoods Motives and intentions for war and what he may be willing to do to get his way;

Ironwood: Yes, panic is inevitable, and panic brings Grimm. But I believe we are ready. Once Atlas has come to grips with the fight ahead, I'll use Amity Tower to spread the message to all of Remnant.

Weiss: But everything will fall apart. Grimm will be everywhere!

Winter: You're right, but Atlas is willing and prepared to assist.

Ironwood: Trying to hide the truth from the world will eventually kill us all.

So the highlight of his plan will eventually cause more problems and the eventual fall of the other kingdoms especially given their current states

Vale; Beacon infested with Grimm and the Main city on the brink being overrun by them

Mistral has Almost no Huntmen left to help with the kingdoms defense and already struggles with the criminal underworld that plagues the kingdom

Vacuo has no official structure or system of government besides Shade academy which is currently struggles to maintain order with the flooding of students going to it in order to train very much needed huntsman

This in all honesty will just wipe the slate clean and undo almost a century's worth of progress that will only leave what remains, fair game that can be claimed by anyone or to be specific to be claimed by Ironwood and Atlas.

Now I know that's a theory and it would paint Ironwood as a villain but it's not far from the likely truth and motives considering that Everything Ironwood has done has and always been in the best interest of Atlas and since he and the kingdom are synonymous at this point, his best interest as well.

Which brings us to his final and current plan

Abandoning Mantle and Raising Atlas

Okay we all know that this is probably one of the most talked about things that has divided the fandom the most in recent times sparking the debate of the morality and choices of RWBY’s characters. The most of those debates revolved around Ironwood’s current last ditch plan of survival. As it has been debated and analyzed over the last few months everyone has already discussed the pros and cons of the of this plan but I’ll summarize and give my thoughts of this plan as well as point out how it reveals Ironwoods hypocrisy and personal agendas

Pros;

Had everyone gone with ironwood on this plan and left Mantle to die this would at least give the heroes and the military some time to prepare for the next engagement should it come

while at the same time keeping at least 2 of the four relics away from the villains.

And the Winter Maiden as well

Cons;

This however would only be a short term retreat as eventually the city will need resources to sustain themselves as well as to gather even more resources to meet Ironwoods war demands.

But when it comes to getting those supplies the other kingdoms would have heard at this point how atlas abandon its own citizens and thus deny them the supplies needed.

This would also play into salem's hands as its not unlikely that she would spread the news of Mantles demise to turn the other kingdoms against Atlas

With this in mind and Ironwoods decent into extremism and desperation this would lead to atlas having to forcibly extort the other kingdoms for resources further playing into salem's hands and starting Remnants 2nd great war and all salem has to do from here on out is watch the world burn and wait for an opportunity.

If that outcome seems unlikely then lets cover another possible outcome of this plan succeeding but with this question; What happens to Remnant in the absence of Atlas?

Assuming that Atlas is self-sustainable as Ironwood said this would eliminate the need to make contact with the surface and need of supply runs.

However this also highlights the possibility that once Atlas is far and high enough Ironwood most likely won't return to help aid the rest of the world

As invoked by Oscar, raising Atlas will mean Salem will have free reign to slaughter the millions of people left on Remnant.

The truth;

Oscar says this not only to convince Ironwood not to abandon Mantle but not to abandon the world as well. When he said this Oscar is trying to convince Ironwood that it's not a lost cause and run away as that would only lead to further lost and the world ever closer to Salem’s rule should Ironwood run now(Like Raven did)

This is also given more credibility as when Ironwood abandoned his original plan for amity which was intended to reunite the kingdoms

Taking this into account and his plan there doesn’t appear to be any hint or motivation to return to or go to the other kingdoms for help or anything once Ironwood runs away.

This is an unintended byproduct of Ironwoods Paranoia and distrust for others as well as the unveiling of his hypocrisy and self survival.

This is hinted at in the V7 finale as Oscar tries to talk Ironwood down in the Relic Vault, where the latter blames everyone, from Robyn, to the council, to the Kingdom and even to  Oscar, for not seeing the bigger picture and getting in the way of doing what he thinks is right, and not once does Ironwood stop to consider that he himself may have had a role in things escalating as badly as they did.

As I stated before Ironwood is probably the main catalyst for everything that has gone wrong in the current events of rwby as he was the one who ended up giving the villains more opportunities and ammo needed to get their way.

Results;

The volume also focuses on the heroes, Robyn and Ironwood all having different ideas about how to protect Atlas and Mantle.

When they finally come together to help evacuate Mantle, the truce quickly falls apart once Ironwood realizes Cinder is in town, Salem is on her way and Team RWBY leaked intel to Robyn. He orders the arrest of the heroes, the forcible extraction of the Winter Maiden powers, and the abandonment of Mantle to save Atlas.

As a consequence of his extremism and paranoia corrupting his judgement, he loses the Relic of Knowledge, the Winter Maiden, almost all of his allies, and stands alone when Salem arrives on his doorstep.

By the end of the volume everything that Ironwood has done has been for nothing. Every decision Ironwood has made in the last few chapters winds up being for naught. Ordering the heroes to be arrested gets his best agent Clover killed and allows Tyrian to escape custody. Neo takes advantage of his arrest order for the heroes to confront Oscar and get away with the Lamp of Knowledge. Sending Winter to claim the Maiden power led Cinder right to where Fria was being held and ultimately causes the power to go to Penny, who sides with the heroes due to Ironwood's extremist methods.

Also Salem was far closer than the general realized, so even if things had worked in his favor it still would have failed.

In earnest most of Ironwoods recent and current plans and ideas have had negative results. His individual powers and abilities aren’t as impressive or out of the ordinary as others in the series. As well as not as useful as they could have been.  His semblance is pretty lackluster if I'm being honest. His status has only fueled his ego and arrogance and has left him blind to his purpose as a guardian for all of remnant, not just one aspect of it.

But what exactly was going on in Ironwoods head to make him like this? To answer that we need to know the practices and beliefs of his homeland as the Kingdom of Atlas has had more influence on Ironwood than anyone or anything else in his life.

The Altasien Philosophical ideals

Now we don’t really know any of the political, religious, or philosophical ideas of Remnant, or Atlas especially but we can make a guess and see how it might have affected Ironwood. As best as I could see Atlas seems to have a philosophy equivalent to Nietzscheism. Below are the facts, concepts and ideals of Nietzsche's Philosophy.

Nietzsche’s Big Ideas

Favored perspectivism, which held that truth is not objective but is the consequence of various factors effecting individual perspective;

Articulated ethical dilemma as a tension between the master vs. slave morality; the former in which we make decisions based on the assessment of consequences, and the latter in which we make decisions based on our conception of good vs. evil

Belief in the individual’s creative capacity to resist social norms and cultural convention in order to live according to a greater set of virtues.

The Will to Power

the drive of the superman(ubermensch) in the philosophy of Nietzsche to perfect and transcend the self through the possession and exercise of creative power.

a conscious or unconscious desire to exercise authority over others.

Master Morality

Nietzsche defined master morality as the morality of the strong-willed. Nietzsche criticizes the view (which he identifies with contemporary British ideology) that good is everything that is helpful, and bad is everything that is harmful.

Slave Morality

Slave morality is the inverse of master morality. As such, it is characterized by pessimism and cynicism. Slave morality is created in opposition to what master morality values as "good". Slave morality does not aim at exerting one's will by strength, but by careful subversion.

The übermensch

the ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values, originally described by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–85).

After reading this you can probably agree that this is the default guiding philosophical mindset of the Atlasian people and Ironwood especially but in the extreme and toxic. Which suits Atlas given what we know of it. The Kingdom is filled with people who believe they are this superior race and that everyone else is below them. As well as the fact that they are willing to throw away morals to get their way and are willing to crush those that stand in their way. As for Ironwood he is sadly a part of this toxic mindset whether he likes it or not as it's the greatest flaw of his character that he is just simply an extension to enforce Atlas and their immoral ways.

Atlas as a whole, not just the military, perpetrates the whole no emotions thing. Colors, feelings, individuality are bad. Look at how Atlas is presented. It’s detached from the rest of the world, and is devoid of warm colors. It’s all the same color, that cold grayish blue. So while yes, the Atlesian military definitely does it’s best to crush all those things too, it’s not a foreign concept to Atlesians. I’m fairly certain that if you were born on Atlas, not Mantle, that you would already be conditioned to start thinking this way even before you decided to go to Atlas Academy.

The Atlesian Military is a huge part of the problem as well, but if Atlas is already crushing individuality and feelings, it makes sense that the military would just continue to do so. Considering the fact that the military is not separate from their government, it shows how Atlas just continues the cycle of crushing and indoctrinating their citizens.

Atlas is this poisonous mindset of destroying emotions and individuality. Which is why those who leave it become better people and change for the better. Weiss leaves Atlas and becomes a better person. She loses the Ice Queen persona and has fun. She makes friends because she likes them, not because their skills would be most effective in a battle.(V1 ep.4 with Pyrah) She embraces her quirks and they become her strengths. Penny learns about friendship and the joys of life outside of the mission. Robyn knows that there is more to life than to keep advancing ahead. She knows that there is good in protecting the past and that we cannot forget the old. Advancement and efficiency will only take you so far. If we leave the human part of ourselves behind, what we become is much worse than being less efficient.

It’s so heavily ingrained in Ironwood, to the point that when we first see him he is already this inhuman machine that will carry on the will of his home kingdom regardless of the truth that the world knows, and that truth is that it is evil and inhuman.

The Strain and Revelation of power and responsibility

“But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary. ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary.”

If you are unsure of what that quote meant, basically this section will explain the truth of Ironwood's character through the revelation of what his power has turned him into.

Though granted there is nothing wrong with power. However it becomes a problem when one gains too much that they can no longer control it. In Ironwood's case he had amassed too much that had burdened him with too much responsibility that he wasn’t prepared for.

As people began to rely on him which is actually part of his job as a General/councilman/Headmaster of a toxic government, the stress and burden had increased.

One could argue that his job as a general, who is under a lot of pressure, especially after the fall of beacon and people not understanding the true dangers of the real enemy. Ironwood lacks the skills needed to do his job as a protector and guardian. Which has led to him being this toxic and immoral person that keeps making mistakes, and the situation worse.

The strain of his power is having him make choices that has slowly made him break away from his human soul. But if Ironwood’s power has turned him into an immoral person who’s choices escalate the situation for the worst, why has he not been removed from this role of power and given the proper time needed to adjust and contemplate the understanding of his power and responsibilities of his assigned role?

Why toxic senior leaders survive — and sometimes thrive — in the military

From what I’ve found that has been able to determine, it comes down to three major factors: individual competence of the toxic officer; lack of personal accountability up and down the chain of command; and senior leader fear of loss of confidence.

The first major factor that results in the retention, and sometimes promotion, of toxic senior officers is intellect and work ethic. Most of the senior leaders in the military are highly intelligent with tremendous drive and ambition. While some senior officers have proven themselves unfit to lead others, there is a desire by some senior leaders to retain that intellect, drive, knowledge and experience to the benefit of the service.

Atlas and Remnant in general needs to fix the way it selects and grooms officers and people for leadership roles

Atlas is not designed to produce good leaders

Being in a leadership position does not make you a leader. Unfortunately, the Atlas Military  officer system sees it differently. They talk a good game, but the system is seriously lacking.

The second factor contributing to the retention of toxic senior leaders is a lack of accountability and transparency by those who have sponsored the toxic leaders.

Leaders we can believe in

There has to be a demand to finding smart officers, but Atlas must do more to find good leaders and sideline the bad ones

Rationally speaking, this makes sense — if the offending people can still provide good service to the nation, why not retain them? After all, the service failed to properly prepare those individuals to lead and made the additional mistake of placing people unsuited to leadership in those positions. Before we judge toxic leaders in the military too harshly, we should remember that the institution failed them as much as they failed the institution. Unfortunately, the lack of explanation from their most senior leaders leaves the rank and file with the perception that there is a complete lack of accountability at higher ranks. They are not entirely wrong.

Atlas must do a better job of screening, educating and evaluating its officers, especially for grades O-6 and above(Col to General)

The truth of the role he didn’t understand

That being said. I do believe James has the best intentions. But as he accumulated more power, the tendencies to be in control - or be in control of every facet of a situation - as much as any commander of armed forces wishes to be,  has clouded his judgement.

As a military leader,  his word is law. That is how his men are trained. But as a politician ruling over the common citizenry,  the common citizen is not indoctrinated into that lifestyle, thus presents random uncontrollable elements in his plans.

Ironwoods lacks the experience to deal with that entirely. He is surrounded by other like minded individuals who follow his orders unquestioningly. What he really needed and could have used the most of his career was a consultant. As to help better understand how his choices will affect those around them and how they will have to live with his decisions

A descanting (preferably civilian) opinion to counter his directives and provide the means for a more balanced perspective. The problem is Ironwood doesn't have the social skill or experience to handle dissenting opinions. Which is why he and Qrow clashed so damn hard in V3.

And why he was so shocked when the rest of the Ozluminati placed the blame squarely at his feet for the unrest in Vale during the second and third volume. He was astonished to realize that his views weren't universal in the group. He didn't comprehend the civilian mindset,  let alone the foreign civilian mindset in a country that isn't militarized like Atlas is.

He was just simply not suited or ready to be in a position of power that deals with the responsibility of Safeguarding peoples’ lives and maintaining world peace. His ambitions and sense of entitlement have led him astray from his assigned purpose. Because of this he has become a man of War instead of Peace like the other heroes and Oz are for.

His Power had stripped him of his soul and made him more Machine than human that even if Salem drops dead tomorrow what's next for him?

(Note; The words in bold at the bottom are links to the next section)

I am Machine I never sleep I keep my eyes wide Open

[laineybug04]

A Helping Hand

Amy has a hard time being taken seriously after Chaos destroyed Station Square. So when she has a vision of a boy stuck in a capsule who may be the key to Eggman's next big scheme, no one is willing to listen or help her. Determined to help save the day this time, Amy strikes out on her own to save the mysterious black hedgehog from her dreams 

Chapter 1- Next Chapter

I saw this concept while browsing tumblr. Special thanks to mewmewhakusho and another-sonic-blog for letting me play around with this idea. I've been a Shad/Amy shipper for YEARS and I've never seen this idea play out before. Here's my take.

Extra special thanks to Nothin' Fancy for beta reading for me once again!

Visions of Grandeur

A delicate white-gloved hand hovered over a deck of cards spread in an arc on a table covered in red lace. The cards were shiny and looked almost brand new. Amy knew better- they were a family heirloom passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. If her mother was to be believed, they were almost as old as the chaos emeralds! The candle sat to the right of the cards- its flickering light dancing against the shadows, causing the patterns on the cards to sway with them.

A young pink hedgehog stared with green eyes bright from excitement, and glowed in contrast to the dark, ominous mist which surrounded her. The mist was thick with sinister whispers, yet the girl hardly heard or cared to listen. Her anticipation at what was in store trumped any caution she may have had.

She greedily took three cards from the deck and laid them hastily but neatly in front of her. One straight horizontal line that would reveal her destiny. Her hands gently laid them perfectly straight, over the first to the left that represented the past that she needed to know. She continued over the present that the unknown past had affected. Finally she caressed the final one on the right- the future! She twirled in place, her joy was just too much! Sure the last one tended to be fuzzy, but she could usually guess based on the first two, so it was mostly just to complete the rule of three.

Amy Rose was no stranger to tarot readings, in fact she had even used them to find out how to be with her hero, Sonic! They'd shown her Little Planet, where Sonic had bravely saved her life. They'd shown her future- a life of adventure, thrill, new friends and becoming a hero alongside her Sonic in their fight against the old, and nasty, Dr. Eggman.

A gleeful smile took over as she imagined what the cards would show her now! Their first date? Kiss? Wedding day? THEIR CHILDREN? She giggled in sheer delight at the prospects of her happy future. But even as her heart pounded, demanding she quickly reveal her fate, she took a shaky breath to calm her nerves. She wanted to retain some adult-like dignity- this was her future after all! Amy steadied her hand, and flipped over the first card on the left.

The shadowy mist that surrounded her table converged on her and turned to an unforgiving steel color. Her smile faded and her happiness ebbed away- the past was almost never this cryptic. Not unless something horrible had happened. She searched through the fog but only found a large window with thick glass and a foggy reflection. Immediately her heart began to thump painfully, and so quickly, she felt it could give Sonic a run for his money. She pressed her hand to the cold glass and listened to the horrors going on behind her. She heard screaming, gun-shots, and shouted orders over stomping boots. When she inhaled, her nose was assaulted with an unfamiliar scent, it was a sharp coppery smell, with a dark, burnt undertone to it. Her whole body hummed with fear and hopelessness, a heavy weight of despair pressed down on her from all sides.

Amy tried to breathe, and her throat seized, so desperate to help, but with no way to know what was wrong, she floundered. Even in a lucid dream, it was so hard to make out the view behind the glass. It was blurred at first, but as she strained her eyes, she started to make out small white dots within a deep velvety black. The sounds behind her muted slightly as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. And then she realized, she was staring out into the void of space. She looked down, and to her despair, she saw her beautiful home planet of Mobius being drenched in blood that was flowing from the window.

She stared on in horror- she had no way to fix this. Worse still, she hadn't seen Sonic, or really anyone who could help her. She turned back into the fog, trying to see something, anything that the fog could show her how to stop the blood. She searched but still saw nothing and only heard the same conniving whispers under the sounds of the invaders. She growled in frustration and just jumped into the fog. She cried out, "Where are you!? Please, I can-"

She heard a gunshot, one that was louder than the rest, almost as though it was by her head. That wasn't what stopped her in her tracks. No- it was a scream that was so broken and filled with such heartbreak that she'd never heard in her life. The voice was young, maybe only a few years older than her, and it was deep and gravely with fear. Tears burst from her eyes as her heart broke from the anguish in his scream.

"MARIA!"

Amy could feel herself being pulled back out of the dream but she fought it, bringing herself back to the table and looking at the face of the card. She rolled her eyes, she should have known- Eggman's emblem was plastered over the dark background of space- it's eyes bleeding down to the earth below.

"The Death Egg," she decided, shaking her head, "Like that's a big surprise."

Still, her whole body shook. She knew the terrors Eggman had brought onto the world- the Great War between mobians and humans had been unkind to both sides. Eggman, specifically, had chosen himself over either side. It was only recently that Princess Sally and King Nigel had reached out and cultivated a more friendly relationship with them. But the history between the two people was still painful. Even with Eggman as a common enemy...

"I wonder if the United Federation will be involved," she murmured cryptically.

She glared skeptically at the second card, her excitement from earlier had been murdered and thrown out into a ditch. Now she was hesitant to see what else these cards had in store for her. Her frown deepened and she squared her shoulders- she knew how her tarot worked. It would not show her the past unless it was going to have a huge impact on the unseen present.

Amy flipped the card.

This time the mist retreated entirely and she found herself deep in the heart of a jungle. Lush greenery surrounded her, and the warm, tropical wind rushed around her, making the leaves rustle in a soothing lullaby. Her head bent backwards and she saw small twinkles of the afternoon sky between the gaps in the thick canopy above. Her eyes closed for a moment, as she felt peace enter her troubled heart and chase away the horror from the previous vision. She took a deep breath, allowing the damp, warm air to embrace her. She felt light, joyful, and her feet started to move in rhythm with her happiness. As she twirled, her eyes caught the glimmer of gun-metal that froze her heart.

She fell before she could get a better look at it.

A gasp ripped out of her throat as she fell into darkness, but then there was a glow of harsh chalk on a concrete background, 'Was that red chalk?'.

Her fall slowed to a stop before she hit the ground and the writing on the wall was gone. Before her was what looked like some medical, mechanical monstrosity. She looked around to try and get a grip on where she was, but found only more rusted metal, abused cables, and neglected machinery around her. She looked up and saw the ceiling so far ahead, she wondered if she wouldn't die from the fall, normally. The walls were an uninteresting metal grey, and Amy decided to move her attention back to the console in the middle of the room.

As she got closer, she found the thing was so old and covered with dust, she couldn't quite see into the capsule. But she could see the outline of someone inside. She rubbed at the glass desperately, calling out to them. She let out a frustrated huff when she couldn't get them to respond. Instead she made her way to the console attached to it. She ran her hands over the dusty console and saw four buttons specifically that glowed through the dust on them.

"A... R...I...M..." Amy read out loud, "Arim?"

The scream from earlier ripped into the forefront of her mind and she realized the 'A' key had been pressed twice. She looked on in the capsule in sadness, "Are you Maria?"

The capsule pulsed, not in assent, but in Anger. Red mist seeped from the cracks in the capsule and the walls echoed a scream that was much older than the one she'd heard before. This was the roar of an older man- not a child like before. But before she found herself back in the room with the red table, she felt the room ring with a terrible, evil laugh- very much like the one she'd heard come out of Eggman before.

When she was back in the red room, she looked down at the card. It showed multiple strings of chains, some an old, but strong metal and others almost see-through. They were wrapped around a black arm that clung to them so tightly they practically bit into the skin. Over all of the chains was stamped what she recognized as Eggman's insignia. She scoffed in annoyance and confusion, "What the heck is Eggman up to this time?"

A small, scared part of her wondered if it would be worse than what had happened with Chaos and Station Square. Using a literal god of destruction hadn't been enough to take Sonic down. What else was that crazy old doctor willing to do in order to win against the Hero of Mobius?

Her jaw set as she looked at the final card on the table. She knew she wasn't going to get too many answers from it- the future was never truly set in stone after all. This time the main character of the cards was not Sonic or her, but Eggman. She was worried about what the future may hold, but she shook her head. Amy still had no idea what Eggman was up to and she knew she couldn't leave here without at least a tiny clue about what he was up to.

She flipped the card.

Now she was in a new, dark room. The walls were scrawled with the same crazed red chalk she'd seen earlier that seemed to pulsate with malicious intent. In the center of the room sat a lone black hedgehog, curled into a ball with his hands over his ears.

"Hey!" she called out as she ran to his side, "Are you okay?"

The ball unfurled and was on its feet so quickly Amy gasped in surprise. The hedgehog twisted around to face her and Amy was struck by what she saw.

There were dark red streaks in his fur that matched the writing on the wall and his wide eyes. A snarl twitched on his lips as his white gloved fists clenched at his sides, ready for a fight. The white puff over his heart heaved with his labored breathing. To anyone else, this creature would be terrifying. Who on earth had naturally red eyes that seemed to permanently glare into your soul? However, Amy's heart broke for him- the hedgehog was barely out of boyhood, almost Sonic's age, chained to the floor of the room by his wrists and ankles.

"Here," she reached out gently, "Let me help you."

The hedgehog's eyes widened in surprise and he seemed to lean forward for a brief moment. But the next second his sneer deepened and he swung his arms out, "Don't touch me. This is where I belong!"

Amy looked around incredulously before shooting him her own shocked look, "You... don't look happy being here."

"Tch," he scoffed as he folded his arms, "It's not about happiness. It's about what they deserve. What I deserve."

Now the walls seeped with a red mist that the boy was starting to choke on and walls rumbled ominously. Still she stared on at the shadowed hedgehog in front of her and all she could think about was how to get them out of there. She reached into her pockets and was amazed and elated to feel her fingers brush against the cold, metal shape of a key. Amy smiled- she knew this was the key to the hedgehog's chains.

"Nobody belongs in a place like this," she called out in spite of the poison surrounding them, "Come on! Just give me your hand and we can get out of here."

The boy growled and lashed out with the chains, "I said NO!"

Amy dodged the chains and now she was angry, "Stop being silly! This place is going to kill you!"

"You're too weak to stop it!" he growled out, his sneer turning into a soft but cruel smile, "You're pathetic!"

Now Amy's cheeks puffed out in rage. She clenched the key in her hands and she lunged for the hedgehog, "I'LL SHOW YOU WEAK!"

She was pinned to the ground before she'd reached him. As the hedgehog stood over her, holding her down by her throat and his other arm pressing down on her chest, the room began to collapse around them. The mist surrounded them and was only pierced by the glow of seven bright lights that circled around them ominously. The boy's red markings faded into a shadowy mist and his whole body blurred into a vague black monster that held her down and kept her from breathing. As the world faded around her, Amy saw the final card float in front of her- the earth and moon shattered against the backdrop of space.

She heard a sad sigh reverberate in her mind...

Amy found herself on her back, in her bed, with the shadow creature still trying to choke her.

She groaned lowly in frustration. This creature was not the same boy she was trying to save in her vision but some vague dark monster that would try to "choke" her while she woke from her lucid dreams.

"Ugh," she thought as she began to hold her breath, "Sleep paralysis. My favorite."

Amy held her breath for what felt like forever- even as her body shook with desperation and fear of the monster in front of her, she knew there was only one way to escape the beast. She waited as her body slowly woke from the hell, first with tingling sensations in her toes. It was not a pleasant feeling, it felt like tiny, heated needles poking into the pores of her skin. It slowly gravitated up her legs and when she attempted to move her feet to quicken the process, she found she couldn't move them.

Maybe twenty seconds later she finally felt herself wake up and she shot up from her bed with a gasp. After several harrowing seconds of catching her breath she searched the room for the shadow demon from earlier. Only when she found no signs of it did she rest her head in her hands with a groan. Normally she loved being able to consult her tarot cards, even if it always ended in her being caught in sleep paralysis. They tended to show her premonitions of hope, happiness and adventure!

Tonight though...

Amy shook her head, she knew she wouldn't get another wink of sleep tonight. She turned to the window and saw the soft light of the night just before dawn. Amy heaved a large yawn and got up anyway. She dressed in her signature red dress in the dark of her small windowed tent, bemoaning the loss of her apartment six months earlier. As she picked up a bucket from the corner of her room she dreamed about the running water she used to enjoy. She walked out into the pre-dawn landscape, swinging her bucket despite her conflicted mind and got ready for the day.

She walked out into the cleared ruins of the outskirts of Station Square. As desolate as the area was, she couldn't help but give a small smile. The tents each represented at least one person from Knothole Village who chose to help in rebuilding Station Square. At a glance, Amy counted well over three dozen tents- almost a third of the population of Knothole. Amy scanned the horizon- the work on the city was slow going but it was coming along. The water had been completely drained since about a month after the god, Chaos, had wreaked havoc to the city and the buildings were now mostly safely demolished. Despite the devastation, the Mobians were determined to help rebuild what the human's had lost to be better and stronger than before.

"Not to mention learning more about human building techniques," Amy thought with an eye roll. She'd overheard Sally bring that up at the beginning of the rebuilding project. She couldn't argue with how smart it was, and it had gotten so many more volunteers out. Amy couldn't help but feel a bit leery at the phrasing, however, "It's like people can't just help because they can."

Speaking of helping, as Amy filled her bucket from the well- a mechanical marvel very unlike the traditional wells they'd had to use in the past- she couldn't help but think back to the poor boy she'd tried to save in her dream.

"I wonder what Eggman wants with him," she murmured under her breath, "And why he's okay with it...

"If he was okay with it," she corrected herself, a sad weight clutching her heart, "What was that writing on the wall, anyway. Part of the curse...?"

"Hun?"

"I wonder if those lights were the chaos emeralds," she continued to mutter under breath with a shrug, "Wouldn't surprise me if they were involved, somehow."

"Rosie!"

"There's always got to be some sort of magic when it comes to Eggman," she sighed as she stretched her neck mindlessly, "For a mechanical genius, he sure relies on the supernatural a LOT."

"Amy!"

Amy was pulled out of her reverie and shrieked when she saw her bucket was overflowing and she was wasting so much water. She scrambled to shut the water off and turned apologetically towards the person behind her.

Bunnie Rabbot looked on at Amy with a concerned raised brow over sharp green eyes, one mechanical hand resting on her hip and the other holding her bucket. One mechanical foot tapped methodically against the silence before she pointed to Amy with her good arm. But before she could say anything, Amy gave a little chuckle,

"Hey... Bunnie!" Amy smiled sheepishly, "Sorry, I got a bit distracted."

"Y'all right, there Rosie Cheeks? It's awful early in the morning for you to be up. You sleep alright?"

Amy stood aside to let Bunnie get her water before shaking her hand in a 'so-so' motion, "Could have been better. I... I drew my cards today"

Again, Bunnie raised her brow, "Drew your cards? That a Station Square sayin'?"

Amy shot her a deadpan look, "My tarot cards? The ones I used to find Sonic? The ones that told me to move to Station Square?"

"Right, right. Sorry Rosie-Cheeks, I forgot," Bunnie shut off the water and gave her own sheepish look, "My stahs, I've been runnin' mahself ragged out here. 'Tween helping Sugah 'Twan with the soup kitchen and the main construction site I've been getting pulled in all sorts a ways..."

She giggled but then blanched at her joke, "Don't read too far into that, I shouldn'ta said that..."

Amy rolled her eyes- at twelve years old, she was way too used to hearing the older crowd telling her what she should or shouldn't hear, "Sure... anyway... have you heard anything about where Sonic is? I need to talk to him about what I saw."

Bunnie winced with a small sympathetic hiss, "Ah'm sorry, hun, but Sugah Hog left to go chase a rumor about Doctor Eggman. He left a while ago for Oil Ocean Zone just a few minutes ago..."

Amy's cheeks puffed out and her hands found her hips, "UGH, SERIOUSLY!? He didn't even say goodbye?!"

Bunnie sighed, "Ah'm sure if you called him he'd answer. Or you could talk to Sally..."

Amy's arms crossed and she scoffed, "Please, he never answers his calls. And Sally's been too busy rubbing elbows with the President. Rotor and NICOLE don't believe in my 'mumbo jumbo' and Tails has been loosing it over his stupid project..."

"Now, Amy," Bunnie chided while picking up her bucket and pointing at Amy in a scolding manner, "He helped save the city from Doctor Eggman, too, you know. He deserves a rest..."

"He isn't resting though!" Amy cried, "And I helped save the city too!"

"Of course you did, Rosie-Cheeks. Takin' down that Zero fella really took a lot outta you... but, we're all doing our part," Bunnie chided dismissively, "Look... I get that you had a bad dream..."

"Vision."

"Yea... that," Bunnie took a deep breath, "If it's that important to you I can listen for a bit. I don't need to check into the kitchens for a while..."

Amy stared her down in frustration before she sighed, "Yea... okay... So you know how Tarot readings usually include a past, present, and future card?"

"Can't say I do, but I believe you!"

"Okay... Anyway, the past card had me in space and... I think it was another Death Egg."

Bunnie gasped, "You don't say..."

Amy nodded, "So at first I thought Eggman was hiding in space, but that's in the past. So the present one had me in a jungle and I dropped into a cave with really creepy red writing on the walls and I thought maybe that's where Eggman is hiding."

"Right, okay..."

"But the last card, the future card, didn't have anything to do with Eggman at all!" Amy ranted, "It was a black hedgehog... I think Eggman's going to use him for something really bad..."

"Oh, really? Who was the hedgehog?"

Amy shrugged, "I don't know. I've never seen a hedgehog with red tiger stripes in their quills like that, and the way his quills bent is like I've never seen before... and his eyes... he looked so angry and sad..."

Now Bunnie gave a knowing smile, "Well I'll be, I never thought it'd happen!"

Amy shot her a confused look, "What?"

"I didn't think you'd get over Sonic so quickly, Rosie-Cheeks!"

Amy's eyes widened, "Weren't you listening? This isn't about him!"

Bunnie rolled her eyes, "Sure it isn't. Look, hun, I don't think it's about Eggman. AH think, yer getting a lil crush on someone else and you're feel'n guilty 'bout leaving Sonic behind..."

"But I'm not..."

"And y'all shouldn't!" Bunnie put her bucket down and grabbed Amy by the shoulders gently, "Yer growing up now and that comes with a lot-ah complicated feelings. It's okay ta look a lil closer and see what happens! Don't ya feel bad about chasin' yer happiness Rosie-Cheeks! Yer still so young. Don' be afraid ta go chat up your lil friend when you see him 'round the camp again. I'm sure he'd really like a nice chat with a cute lil lady such as yerself!"

"But I haven't even... I don't have any..." Amy, enraged, stumbled over her words, "You're not even listening to me!"

"Aw, Ah'm sorry I couldn't help you more sweetheart," Bunnie said glumly before gasping, "Oh, I gotta go! Sugah 'Twan's waitin' on me and I still haven't gotten myself presentable yet!"

Amy huffed and sputtered as Bunnie waved goodbye and called out, "Go talk to Sally-girl if you need more help! She'll help y'all with your new boyfriend!."

Amy shook with frustration and her cheeks burned red-hot. She gave a growling shriek and kicked her bucket of water over. Too late, she realized she would have to wait in a now much longer line for water to brush her teeth and wash her hands. As she grumbled under her breath over not being taken seriously, again, she resigned herself to a long drive to Central City and a meeting with one Princess Sally Acorn.

White House-Central City, United Federation

10:16

Amy's mood had not gotten any better after her journey to Central City. Not that she was surprised, she'd had to walk the entire way to the other city because the buses to the other cities wouldn't let her on without permission from her mommy.

Amy growled in her seat in the waiting room of the White House, practically grinding her teeth down to the root. While she'd only been there a grand total of ten minutes, each moment seemed to tick by at a snail's pace and she was left consumed in such an angry aura that no one wanted to be anywhere near her.

"I swear, if Sally keeps me waiting just one second more, this whole house is going to be nothing but rubble when I'm done with it!"

"Miss?"

Amy's eyes shot the older human man, who dared to interrupt her incensed thoughts, with such a withering look she made the rest of his group flinch in fear. She was both angered and relieved to see the older gentleman was entirely unphased by this and even seemed mildly amused by her pouting.

Amy took a deep breath to reign in her temper, but her voice still came out curtly, "Yea, what do you want?"

The man raised one brow and replied, "I was hoping to ask you the same question. Are you lost?"

Amy's pout deepened but rather than give into her rising rage, she smoothed out her dress and held her nose up at him with an air of importance, "I'm waiting to see Princess Sally Acorn. I have important information about Dr. Eggman's whereabouts that I need to share with her."

Amy raised her eyes smugly to him, only to see that man's eyes widen only ever so slightly. She was even more infuriated when he folded his hands behind his back and leveled her with a condescending look, "Oh? That's odd. We've just gotten very reliable intel on his location. I imagine you've done your own well-founded research to come to your conclusions?"

Amy's cheeks puffed out. To be honest, she didn't have a reliable source and all she really had to go on was a jungle...

But her heart never steered her wrong- she knew she had to talk to Sally as soon as she could, "Call it a woman's intuition. I need to talk to her. Tell her it's Amy Rose."

His brows crinkled slightly and Amy was struck by the man's eyes. She'd never seen eyes that were different colors- one green, one brown. Something stirred in her heart and told her to be kinder to him. She took in his clothes- a deep green, almost black military jacket with matching slacks and the shiniest black shoes Amy had ever seen. Two stripes over his left breast pocket and the numerous medals put him high in the chain of command, although Amy had no clue where exactly. He was conspicuously missing a name tag on his uniform- a bit annoying but then she could always ask.

Finally the man offered a kind smile, "I recognize you now- you were with the princess upon her arrival a few months ago. I'm on my way to a meeting with her and the President. I'm sure we can spare a few moments for you two to... have a little chat before our meeting..."

If looks could kill, the old man would have keeled over from the terrifying glare she shot his way. He had turned and began to walk away by the time she took a few deep breaths and began to follow him. Slowly but surely, she soothed her irritation as they briskly strolled through the winding corridors of the mansion. Through it all, a persistent feeling thumped in her chest- a sort of deja vu that refused to let her go. Finally she turned to the old man, "I'm... sorry, I never got your name."

"Lieutenant Commander Towers," The man said with a restrained smile, "I'm with the G.U.N."

"...The...?"

"The Guardian Unit of Nations," he answered, "We oversee the defense of the United Federation against her enemies."

Amy frowned in confusion- the feeling of deja vu was just getting stronger, "...Did you... fight in the Great War at all? I feel like I know you from somewhere..."

The man stopped in his tracks and eyed her with concern, "Did you?"

Amy shook her head, "I was only three when Eggman took over. My parents did. Sorry, I thought I'd maybe seen you or your name in one of the old history books. It's starting to bug me, actually."

The man sized her up and Amy couldn't help but straighten her back and face him head on. For all that he'd made a poor impression, Amy still wanted to measure up. Finally, he offered a sad smile and a nod, "We're almost there, right this way."

He moved, and Amy was immediately gripped by tunnel vision. Her eyes honed in on a map of what she presumed to be the entirety of the United Federation from the Western shores of Soleanna to the Eastern most tip of Chun-An up to Holoska and down all the way to the most Southern edge of Mazuri. Amy scrambled to get a closer look at the map and zone in immediately on a tiny spot of an island almost 100 miles off the coast of the Mystic Ruins. Amy was just taking in the latitude and longitude of the island when the man came up ever so silently behind her, "Ms. Rose? Something the matter?"

Amy pointed to the island immediately, "Does this island have a jungle on it?"

The man frowned in confusion before deciding to humor her. His face quickly hardened then smoothed over when he had a moment to realize what island she was talking about. Despite his brief unrest, his voice was smooth and seemingly unconcerned, "I couldn't say- I've never been."

Amy huffed then gave a small determined grin, "It's off the coast of the Mystic Ruins... it has to."

The man shrugged, "I believe you. Now, if you'll follow me, I believe you have important information to share?"

Amy pouted and folded her arms over her chest, "Yea, yea, I'm coming, Abe..."

Now the man froze completely and halted Amy with a look that was both highly suspicious and entirely ill at ease, "What did you just call me?"

Before Amy could answer, someone called from around the corner, "Lieutenant Commander! There you are!"

They both turned to see a broad, stout man with an impressive beard in a similar military outfit to Towers. He clapped the tall, lanky Towers on the back and started to guide him away, "Abraham, you won't believe the progress the young princess has made in her little country, and so close to enemy lines! My dear, Knothole village has been in very impressive hands!"

"Thank you, Commander Thunderstrike," Amy heard the smooth, but very tired tones of Sally's voice and her heart lifted in relief, "That is very high praise coming from..."

She turned the corner and her eyes widened in surprise, "Amy! What are you doing here?"

If Amy had been the type to look before she leapt, she would have seen Sally was in no position to entertain any surprises. The princess looked tired, her hair, while not technically out of place, was drooping. It was clear to almost everyone that Sally had been in the middle of meetings with barely a chance to change clothes before the next stage of plans. All for the sake of having a mutually beneficial relationship with the humans that the mobians hadn't seen in literal centuries. It was clear that such lofty goals bore a heavy price. As determined as Princess Sally was, she was at the edge of her good graces.

It was a shame Amy caught none of this. She pointed immediately to the map, "I know where Eggman's hiding!"

Sally frowned in confusion while Amy lunged towards her and grabbed Sally's hand. The Commander and Towers looked on as Amy dragged Sally to the map.

"Oh? Do you, young lady?" Now the Commander turned his amused gaze to Sally, "Another savant in your entourage? Wonders never cease with you young critters, isn't that right Towers?"

Towers only gave an uneasy nod as Amy pointed to the island she'd been so fixated on moments before.

"There! Right there! He's on that island!"

There was a pause just before Sally gently massaged her temples and the Commander began to roar with laughter, "Oh, there's a good one. Trust me, my dear, no one is on that island."

"I know Eggman is!" Amy retorted, "Or at the very least he plans on being there soon!"

Towers' frowned down his nose at her, "And your sources?"

"None," Sally groaned, "Amy, please. We don't have time for this. We're in the middle of planning something. Go back to Station Square. We have everything under control here."

"Sally, please, you have to believe me! Something is going on on that island and we have to send Sonic there to check it out!"

"No, we don't," Sally countered, "We know where Eggman is and he's not on some desert island-"

"Jungle island."

"-WHATEVER island in the middle of nowhere!"

"Then let me go and check it out!" Amy begged, "Please, I know I can handle it, and I can at least see what's going on!"

"Absolutely not!" The Commander thundered, "Your Highness, I can allow some modicum of freedom within the country but..."

The Commander began to stumble over his words as he realized he couldn't very well explain how he knew Eggman wasn't there in the first place. In answer to his prayers, Towers took a step forward and offered, "This is within our sphere of influence and if Ms. Rose's information is even remotely legitimate, it's worth at least a cursory investigation. Allow us to look into this on our own while we work together on our separate venture to bring Dr. Eggman to justice."

Sally sighed, "Thank you, Lieutenant Commander. I appreciate your diligence and kindness in this matter. I suggest we consider this settled."

She shot Amy a look that made the pink hedgehog's blood run hot with embarrassment, "You don't believe me, do you?"

Now Sally's eyes flashed with anger and she grabbed Amy's arm roughly in turn.

"Excuse us for a moment gentleman, I'll return for the second meeting shortly," the princess said hurriedly as she dragged Amy around the corner into a room.

The room was filled with a series of maps and blueprints on it. The room had only two others in it, another tall man that Amy recognized as the President of the United Federation, and a white bat, with bright teal eyes that looked on in the barest hint of interest. Sally let go of Amy just long enough to grab a small pile of papers and slam them in front of her. Amy looked down, her heart frozen in shock as Sally revealed the pictures of a clearly reactivated Eggman base in the middle of Oil Ocean zone near Shamar. As Amy's hands gently hovered over the pictures, at one point even hovering over one of Eggman himself, Sally spoke to her in low but harsh tones.

"I understand that you want to be a Freedom Fighter. I admit we've given Tails a lot more leniency and responsibility that we've given you. And I promise once this is over we will be taking your training much more seriously than we have in the past-"

"I don't need training, I need you to listen to me!" Amy growled, "There's a boy who needs our help! A black hedgehog with red eyes!"

Sally continued unimpeded, "You're being incredibly childish and nearsighted if you really think you're the only one doing anything about all of this."

"Eggman has to be tricking you! Just let me go with them to the island and I can..."

Sally's fist clenched and she barely stopped herself from slamming it on the table. She took several deep breaths behind clasped hands before she tried again, "I believe you have visions. I believe you have insight into things that we don't. But this is hard evidence that anyone can see while yours are just vague apparitions that we can't analyze the way we can with these. There are only so many resources we can spare and frankly- I can't focus on some unknown black hedgehog, and Eggman, and rebuilding at the same time. So please… just..."

Now Sally drew close and her voice was now a harsh whisper, "Go back to Station Square. Stop throwing a tantrum and help where you're needed."

Amy stared into the cold, hard blue eyes of the princess, and she felt tears begin to burn at the corners of her eyes as she realized that once again Sally insisted on treating her like a small child. Sally put her hand on Amy's back and opened the door to the room, and with a gentle push, ushered the young girl from the room. Mortified, she saw the commanders had been right behind them, faces pale but unmoving. Amy only started down the hall when the door was closed softly behind her and she was left alone and with a pounding sense of anger and determination.

Back inside the room, Sally took several more deep breaths before she addressed the President directly, "Forgive me, sir. That was one of our trainees. She's... very excited to officially join our ranks."

As the President waved off her apologies, Sally failed to notice the stoic, almost fearful silence between the two commanders of the G.U.N and the bright, interested look of the President's mobian guest.

Mystic Ruins-Tails' workshop

15:22

Tails was in the middle of the most peaceful sleep of his life. For days before this, he'd stayed up late into the wee hours of the night- tinkering with the chaos emerald he'd been awarded for his part in saving Station Square. It was all worth it. If everything went as planned, the days of Eggman getting the jump on them or someone using the chaos emeralds for their own nefarious purposes would be a thing for the history books. He dreamed of being awarded the World Genius prize, the parades in his honor, and best of all- the thumbs up and hair ruffles he'd get from Sonic. He could practically hear the magic words come out of his mouth, "I'm proud of you, buddy!"

Just as he was about to get the key to the world and a solution to grow four, no, FIVE inches taller- he heard a frantic pounding at the door of his house. He gave a loud shriek as he was pulled from slumber and jumped from his bed. He fell, in a tangle of blankets and tails, to the floor below him. His eyes were so heavy, he could barely keep them open as he wrestled with the fabric prison that kept him from shutting the incessant pounding up. He groaned pitifully as he stumbled his way through his house and towards the door. He opened the door and was immediately blinded by the light of the summer afternoon. Tails adjusted his eyes and found, not Sonic, or a key to the world, or even a tiny emergency. To his dismay, he only found one Amy Rose at his doorstep with a wicked smile on her face and a full backpack behind her.

"Hey, Taaails... whatcha doin'?" She said in a cloying sing-song voice.

Tails glared at her pathetically before rubbing his eyes, "What'dyou wan'?" he whined.

"I need a faaavor~"

"I'm not driving you anywhere and I don't know where Sonic is," Tails quickly ground out while rubbing his poor blood-shot eyes, "Tools are over there, take whatever you want, just let me sleep and don't break anything."

Amy frowned, "You sure? I need to..."

"Please... Amy," he shot her a look that was practically in tears, he was so exhausted, "I... need to sleep. I don't even care if it's the Tornado. Just bring it back when you're done and let me sleep..."

As Tails stumbled into the wall a few times, Amy gently took him by the shoulders and guided him back to his room. Tails whined under his breath but allowed her to tuck him in and tousle his hair gently, "Sleep tight, Tails. And thanks for your help!"

Tails yawned and grumbled something under his breath before snuggling into his pillow with a smile. He was snoring by the time Amy marched back through his kitchen and into the basement area that led to his garage. She turned on the lights and was amazed by the absolute armory this kid had in his hangar. The walls cut deep into the cliff side, using the natural formation of the cliff to provide protection against the elements. Cables and rebar laced the walls from the ceiling all the way down to the water and they were lined with tables laden with gadgets, and experiments. The water, at high tide at that moment, was snaked purposefully around the machines like a moat. When she looked up to the ceiling, she saw the outlines of trapdoors that would open and lead up to the runway just outside his house. She ooh'd and aww'd over the planes for a moment before she stopped and frowned.

"These are great... but I don't know how to fly." She grumbled a little bitterly. She hadn't asked for flight training, but then Tails' hadn't either, if she remembered correctly. The empty promises of the princess, the Freedom Fighters, and even Sonic to teach her the basics mocked her at the edges of her mind.

"Why does Tails get to learn all the cool stuff? He gets to go on missions, be involved in planning… but I'm the one too young for that?" She thought, a little jealousy bubbling to the surface.

Amy shook out those miserable thoughts. Now wasn't the time to wallow in self pity or petty jealousy. She had a mission to complete. Someone had to look out for that haunted boy from her vision, and if everyone refused to help, she'd do it herself.

"Just like Birdy, and his family," she decided with a resigned nod.

She huffed in frustration but eyed the ATVs and the two cars Tails built and her frown deepened, "Those won't work..."

Her eyes feel on a three half-built boards on display over his workstation that sent her foot tapping in frustration, "I could boogie board my way there, I guess, but once I get to the island I'll be too tired to spy on Eggman!"

She pursed her lips and looked around the garage some more before she leaned against one of the cars. To her horror, the car actually started to slide. Before she could stop it, she had fallen over and the car had slipped and crashed into the moat of water around its display. She scrambled to try and get the thing back out of the water. As she pulled it back she realized that rather than sinking, the large car had started to float?

Upon closer inspection, she realized the car had a point in the front with a white bottom and bright golden yellow stripes on its sides. The seats were shaped like regular seats in a car, but the bottoms were now exposed so they could swivel and the floor was replaced with a hard wood deck. The clear black writing on the side declared this vessel to be dubbed, "The ROS Tsunami MKII". There was a lot of room to move about the cabin turned deck and Amy's smile grew brighter. She clapped and squealed with glee as she threw her bag inside and climbed aboard.

"I can't fly. But I can drive!" she crowed, "A boat can't be much different than a car! How bad could it be?"

She looked over the console and studied the buttons before her eyes fell on something that made her gasp, "A chaos emerald?"

And there it was, in all its golden yellow glory, sitting in the center console under a glass display dome that secured it into the boat. She smiled at this, "Great! No need to worry about running out of fuel! Now... where's the... AH HA!"

Amy found the button that displayed the map and fumbled through putting in the coordinates that she remembered from the map. She gave a victorious whoop as the engine roared to life and jerked towards the exit of the workshop. Her whoop turned to shrieks of fear as she barreled headlong towards a wall of rock. Just before she hit the solid wall she lunged towards the bow and summoned her hammer. She swung against the wall with all her might, opening a gaping gash that led out to the ocean. The boat sped out over the waves, leaving Amy to melt in a relieved puddle on the bow. She crawled back gingerly towards the captain's chair and practically slid into it. She wiped her brow and watched the console as it revealed the map to her destination.

"Okay... just a slight bump in the road," she murmured warily, "I can fix that when I get back. Tails never has to know. I can take some pictures, prove that Eggman is on the island, figure out what that capsule thing is and maybe find that boy stuck in the curse room! Easy as pie..."

Little did she know that pie is just... an absolute bitch and a half to make.

[wordslikeskyscrapers-blog]

Nildur

From Narrow Lands Saga, Book One: Light’s Splendour

Nildur cursed all the deities they could think of, all at once.  At this point they didn't really care what happened to them for blaspheming an entire pantheon, and then some.  They were far beyond giving a single shite about any of this really – the kingdom, the treasure, the company – all of them could go straight to any one of the nine hells as far as they cared. They would likely be better off actually, come to think of it.  Certainly it would be a good deal warmer.   "Maybe I will go there next" they thought, "Straight to Malkor.  I will march right up to her royal heinous queen of all that is unspeakable and horny and let her smack my tiny bony ass in exchange for some of that brimstone and fire" Their teeth chattered in the cold icy depths as they ruminated. "Provided I still have feet to march on after this..."

They trudged methodically through the dark, their breath harried, labored and practically turning to ice in thier mouth as they exhaled.  The straps of their backpack had long been busily sawing off their arms with every step, accompanied by the slap of their scabbarded knife on their hip, the leather chaffing their side through their shift.  As they considered their poor condition a moment longer then they likely should have, they slipped, and the jangling and din of their misstep echoed menacingly in the darkness.  Normally the dark didn't bother them but this abyssal darkness was something else.  In their line of work, spelunking in dungeons or relieving the rich of their trinkets in the deep of night, Nildur could rely on the gifts of the ancestors, in this case the ability to see in darkness, to augment their skills and give them an edge in this business. The trick however is that there had to be some light; starlight, moonlight, the reflecting light of a torch a mile down an underground corridor.  In this, this utter darkness,  it was of no use.  No amount of additional photoreceptors in their overly large eyes could help in a realm completely devoid of light.  So, using a frost burned hand along the wall to guide them, they carefully placed one foot in front of the other so as not to slip and lose the precious ground they had covered.  There was no promise that there was sanctuary at the end of this climb, no portend of salvation, no real idea at all where they were going.  There was a vague incline which certainly seemed a better idea than the depths of the dungeons they had found themselves fleeing from.  And up, they hoped, meant out.   Said incline had already caused them to fall multiple times, sliding back a ways into the darker dark of before.  Incline it was however, and that meant up.  Each time they fell, there was a brief shadow that crossed their mind as pain wracked them from tiny feet to the tips of their pointed ears, to just lie still and let the cold take them.  If their companions were still alive, or still in possession of all their limbs, they had no idea, no inkling of this bitter cold that lead an onslaught over their heads. The frost giants they had encountered should have been the first clue they were definitely not in Kandids anymore.  

An eternity passed.  One tiny foot.  Then the other.  A slip.  The creaking of frozen leather pants and straps threatening to seize completely.  Steadied with cold, dead, frost bitten hands. Then one foot.  Every step was agony.  Each small piece of progress a sacrifice. Nildur thought perhaps they had already walked all the way to Hell, and this was thier torturous reward.  Wait... ...was it getting lighter?  

They shook their head to clear the perceived fog, a sodden and frozen pony tail of brown hair swaying heavily behind their head.  No, that was actual fog.  Just at the edge of the darkness, Nildur thought they saw a glint off the frost covered wall.  For the first time, they realized that the corridor they had been ascending also had a spiraling curve, and somehow this sparked an irrational sense of hope.  They chose to believe that this was by someone's design, that a spiraling corridor that ascended meant there was a specific destination, an intent to rise from the depths. Their pace quickened with their heart rate, as they leaned forward, propelling themselves by sheer will, in hope their torturous journey was near its end.  

The passageway continued to brighten as it carried them ever up.  The fog they had thought a trick of their icy psychosis was in fact sublimation as the frost covered walls became increasingly free from the icy fingers of winter once exposed to the light of some distant reflected sun.  Their feet's purchase became more sure, allowing them to take bigger steps without fear of falling.  The light swelled, searing their eyes as they blinked back tears.  Nildur let the wall go, crossing their arm over their brow, shielding their eyes from the supernova blooming with every foot fall. Suddenly, vengefully, the cavernous dark gave way to daylight.  With their last step past the threshold of the mountain passage, they were inundated by a chill wind. They gasped.  All was light and cold.  It took a moment for their eyes to adjust, a bit of overload from the prolonged utter darkness in the depths of the mountain.  Slowly their eyesight cleared.  A grand mountain vista greeted them, blanketed in snow and ice as far as they could see.  Jagged peaks raked the sky, pointed and broken like the bony corpse of some great wurm.  Far in the distance, perhaps a score of leagues or more, a single great peak rose into the sky, it's top obscurred by clouds.  Some lighting broke in the distance, followed by the inevitable boom of thunder, the delay signalling it was still a ways off, but the warning was clear.  Things were about to get much worse.   Some very little scrub and brushes clung desperately to the sides, smashed on all sides by buffeting winds.  Desperately they hung on to the side of the mountain, some still with leaves, which if they'd thought about it would be very odd indeed at this altitude, but for the moment the only idea that came to Nildur was that it would make a great source of fuel.  They grabbed a handful nearest the ground and yanked, their numb fingers completely devoid of feeling.  They were certain they still had flint and steel in the bottom of their backpack. If they could get back to the turn in the corridor right before the light slapped them, then the approaching storm would likely by weatherable.

They moved back into the maw of the corridor's entrance.   They took one, maybe two steps and were immediately greeted by cold stone.  'Wait... ...what?' They took a step back out onto the ledge to check for alternate openings.  This crack in the mountain was the only one.  The rest of the mountain face stretched up and to either side.  The platform they were on was perhaps only 15 feet wide before it dove off into the canyon beneath them.  They had heard no scrapping, no machinery, no rock sliding or creaking.  Just the wind, the endless wind.   They clutched their precious fuel under one arm and reached out both hands as they retraced their steps and tried to enter the corridor once more.  Their cold numb fingers were greeted almost immediately with the unmistakable and unyielding mountain .  They frantically dug around the mountain face, practically unprotected from the wind by the tiny alcove that remained.  Desperate, they clawed at the wall, searching for any edge, any discernable crevasse or seam, but it was no use.  After another minute of scrabbling their fingers across the mountainside, Nildur took a step back, their nails broken, their fingers bloodied, defeated.      

The passageway back into the mountain was gone.  

[tsarisfanfiction]

Tremor I

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen (may wibble upwards into AO3′s Mature later) Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Angst Characters: The Hood, Scott Tracy

Here we go again!  This week our sense is Hear from @gumnut-logic‘s SensorySunday challenge.

Not everyone worships the ground International Rescue walk on.

The rumble of thunder rolled across the hills, sending vibrations straight through him as echoes reverberated all around the dusty valley.  There were many words he could use for the machinery, but regardless of the fact his personal opinions on the matter tended to run contrary to the rest of the world, he had no intention of denying that the Thunderbirds were impressive.

Very impressive.  A sheer stroke of genius, decades ahead of their time, and piloted by little more than children.  The second generation of International Rescue – it would be a lie to say that he had never met them, but while he knew their names, their achievements, the last time he had clapped eyes on any of them personally, there had been nappies involved.

And only one of them, rather than the veritable swarm Jeff had since sired.

That same boy was now, regrettably, taller than him, although the lack of nappies was appreciated. Scott Tracy had not yet left the area – an unfortunate cavern collapse, trapping several miners deep inside with no choice but to call for the miracle of International Rescue.  The elusive organisation had, of course, responded, with the sleek silver of Thunderbird One and the powerful green of Thunderbird Two appearing barely minutes after promising their aid.

He’d always known they were based nearby.  The purchase of an entire island was difficult to conceal, especially from his own acquaintances, even if Jeff had long since cut ties to him.  That still rankled, if he let the name Jeff float around in his mind for too long.  Then again, that was the entire reason for this little outing.

Jeff might be long gone, in an accident that gave him conflicting feelings – satisfaction and rage – but his legacy was not.  If Jeff Tracy wanted him to play the role of a villain, then he would do it, and do it properly.

There was never any use in only doing something half-heartedly.

From beyond the grave, he hoped Jeff regretted inviting him to take this path.  If he didn’t already, he certainly would by the time he triumphed victoriously over the Tracy legacy.  International Rescue would topple, not for their beautiful, roaring machines – although no small part of him looked forwards to having those under his control – but because they were the sons of Jeff Tracy.

One step at a time. The injured miners – which just so happened to be all of them, it had been such a nasty cave-in – had been evacuated in Thunderbird Two, who was little more than a green speck on the horizon already, engine noises a whisper compared to the initial thunderous take off.  Only three humans remained in this desolate strip of land – Scott Tracy, the wife of the landowner blubbering into his awful blue uniform, and him, the man slowly but surely approaching from behind.

The woman was wailing utterly pathetically, her arms wrapped around Scott Tracy like a vice.  Ever the gentleman – ever the hero – he was doing what he could to console her for the devastation that had occurred on her husband’s land.  The entire affair was disgusting to the extreme, but sometimes one required to operate outside of one’s comfort zones to get the desired results.  A healthy dose of plausible deniability never hurt, either.

In this case, the desired result was the needle in his hand slipping into Scott Tracy’s unguarded neck; like a naïve fool, he’d never even noticed his approach over the woman’s wails for attention.  The young man stiffened and attempted to turn, only to find himself imprisoned by the vice-like grip of the woman.  It was too little, too late.  The sedative was potent but fast acting – he knew Tracy tenacity better than most.  Give them an inch and they would take a mile.

He gripped dark brown hair, stopping the head from turning, and counted the seconds of thrashing Tracy. It was fortunate his arms were pinned, otherwise he might have landed some nasty blows – the boy had spent some time in the military, and more time around his erstwhile niece – and it took some quick footwork to stop his kneecaps being caved in by a vicious stab backwards with a foot.

It took seven seconds of ever-weakening attempts at freedom before the sedative set in, and he found himself taking the weight of a muscular young man against him as Scott Tracy lost the battle against the drug.

He had been much lighter the last time he’d been this close to him, but he supposed the infant had grown up somewhat since then.  The woman ceased her hysterics immediately and assisted him in dragging the limp, unco-operative form into an area sheltered by rocks before also ceasing to be a woman. The cloaking device rippled once, twice, to reveal one of his minions – he didn’t know the name, nor did he particularly care to.  He cancelled out his own disguise as well, the familiar buzzing hum of technology in his ears falling into silence.

“Boss?”  The idiot wasn’t looking at the downed Tracy, but rather the Thunderbird looming in front of them.  Even Thunderbird One was a large machine, if usually dwarfed by the gigantic Thunderbird Two.  He ignored him and the machine both for the moment, lowering Scott Tracy to the ground.

This close, it was obvious the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree in looks, as well as their ridiculous penchant for heroics.  Not quite a dead ringer for Jeff Tracy at the same age, but with his eyes closed to hide the piercing blue that had surveyed the scene upon his first arrival, there was little difference.  He even had his father’s infernal dimples – no doubt women all flocked to fall at his feet, too.

His appearance was not of immediate concern, however – that honour went to his uniform.  He had no doubt it was riddled with all sorts of technology equally as advanced as the Thunderbird near them, and the temptation was there to take the technology and leave the boy.  Common sense prevailed, however.  He would have all of their technology in time; after all, that was the plan.  Making amendments to the plan at this stage would be the height of foolishness, and as taunting as the impressive technology was, a hasty attempt at retrieval would only end in disaster.

All this impressive technology left traces, trackable traces that would ruin everything, so it was with nimble fingers that he worked at the buckles on the baldric, setting it to one side delicately, before turning his attention to the uniform itself.

Maybe he should have some sort of emotional response – some restraint, if you will – to stripping a man young enough to be his own son down to his birthday suit, but notions such as morals had long since fled, if indeed he’d ever had some in the first place.  After purposefully exploding a mine he owned (under a pseudonym, of course, he wasn’t born yesterday) all in order to get his hands on Jeff’s successor, the idea that even underwear was a potential tracking security risk far outweighed any concerns about an unconscious young man’s perceived requirement of modesty.

It would be most tedious to go through this much effort only to be thwarted by something as avoidable as that.  There was still the risk of an embedded device, which his niece or half brother might have had just enough paranoia to insist upon, but bug sweepers were easily enough obtained, with the right contacts.

He, of course, had the right contacts, and a knife handy in case some impromptu surgery was required.  It was almost a disappointment that he came up clean.  Almost.  He might be the most villainous of villains, but he prided himself on not stooping to barbaric levels; that said, there was some merit to getting his hands dirty if required.

There was nothing more to be gained by remaining there.  Folding up the uniform neatly – he was many things, but a slob was not one of those – and leaving it in the sheltered area behind the rocks, he turned his back on the Thunderbird’s lusciously tempting presence and gathered the unconscious pilot into his arms.  Scott Tracy was heavy, but despite his crisp, businessman appearance, he had done some physical labour in his life.  Carrying an unconscious man was not beyond his abilities, even if this one was somewhat inconveniently tall.

“Come,” he ordered to the minion, who had been gawking at the Thunderbird uselessly the entire time.  If it wasn’t for the fact that his schemes occasionally required some dumb muscle, he’d never keep any of the fools around.  “We have what we came for.”

“But, Boss,” the idiot stumbled.  “The Thunderbird?  I thought-”

“I do not employ you to think,” he cut in.  “I employ you to obey.”

Yes, the Thunderbird, unguarded, all alone, was most inviting, but he was no fool.  If the uniform was a tracking risk, a Thunderbird was a tracking certainty.  A man could go… missing, as the Tracys were about to unfortunately discover.  It required far more careful planning to obtain a Thunderbird, and he wouldn’t truly have any until he located their mysterious eye in the sky – another Thunderbird, to be sure, but one whose location was a far better protected secret than their little island base.

He would have them all in time, but first, he needed information, and who better to get that from than the commander himself?

“I hope you enjoy your little nap,” he murmured to the man in his arms, whose head lolled back limply in unconsciousness.  He had not yet decided if his likeness to Jeff would be in his guest’s favour or not, but whichever way it fell, he did not think the immediate future would be particularly pleasant for the young man.  “I fear our conversations may not be quite so much to your liking.”

Hidden behind the collapsed mine, his ship roared into life.  While not quite so loud a thrum as the earlier departing Thunderbird, the noise was still of the impressive variety, and he strode towards it confidently as the loading ramp lowered to the ground with a muffled thud.

“Welcome aboard,” he declared to his unconscious armful as they entered.  “I would say I hope you enjoy your stay, but I fear the hospitality may not be to your liking.  In fact, I highly doubt it.”

A small smirk played across his lips.  No, Scott Tracy would not enjoy his stay one bit, but that was of little concern to him.  Jeff’s legacy would crumble, and the technology of International Rescue would be his.

As soon as Scott Tracy told him what he wanted to know.

And he would.

Part II

[zhonglisimper]

`` the city of unity `` | dystopia au

⇢ 1,028 words of a flash-forward several millennia of a godforsaken world.

⇢ Contains profanity, dead animals, implications of rotting corpses, mentions and/or implications of police corruption (bribery).

⇢ Any similarities between characters, timelines and places is purely coincidental. This is nothing but a work of fiction. All rights reserved to Mihoyo Inc. for the canon characters, titles and locations to be named.

⇢ Cr. to Liam Wong for the banner used below. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5Lnn9Lg48jv1RvvvLnKKrJK/neon-dreamland-atmospheric-photographs-of-tokyo-after-dark

OTHER NOTES:

will be cross-posted on my AO3 once i finally set that account up. ();u;)

oh shit school will be coming in like 30 hours at the date of posting on tumblr so i can’t promise i’ll post regularly, especially since i signed up for this one event,, fuck

another reason i can’t promise i could even continue with this is because 1) this was very impulsive and was actually an attempt for me to go to sleep at 4-5am 2) i didn’t plan far into this, the last thing i worked on were the characters and even then i doubt i’m finished bc i’m not satisfied bye

also this doesn’t strictly follow the official lore, whether from the manga or not. the official lore definitely did serve as a basis, but there might be statements in the narrative that are deviated from the official facts and that is perfectly intentional! damn right i beta read but only bc i had to write everything from my broken phone to my laptop manually

Only the dead archons from long ago know what millennia it currently is.

In any case, speaking from the perspective of a human being currently reading this - presumably one from a distant present, considering the methods I have undertaken to preserve this: my envisioning.

I’m sure the overbearing gods and goddesses in Celestia will strike at me with a snap, which is why I am in a hurry to note as much detail of my revelation as possible. I am no priest, nor chieftain of a tribe, but a mere... dreamer? Or delusional? Perhaps both; regardless, my identity is but a trivial matter, now and in the future.

Let me begin by the strong iron gates I envision myself stumbling upon every weekend. The gates are tall and proud, and thicker than Madame Lisa’s bookshelves. It is evident that this holy gate is meant to keep away the unwanted. Which is understandable - for the world beyond the gate, once one looks behind themselves, is nothing but the never-ending void. It is dark and will certainly suck the life and joy out of someone.

Perhaps that is why so many outcasts line themselves up to get to enter the sacred City of Unity, the only cluster of civilization left standing after the Interstellar War. Surely, the darkness beyond the walls of the thriving city are all because of the towering mountains of garbage that take up all the light. The dusty haze of unknown substances wafting in the already-putrid air don’t aid in letting sunlight in either.

This, my lieges, is the price the denizens of Teyvat shall pay for being blinded by words and revelations of Celestia and its power-hungry archons. They (the archons) are just as much of tyrants as the Lawrence Clan was. You’d think that they had it all - beauty, grace, brains and power - so what was there to thirst for, especially in the mortal realm?

Much to my dismay, even I, who is but a mere mortal, cannot answer such a complex thought.

Nevertheless, the city appears to be very futuristic; there are significant technological and scientific advances. Alchemy is but a dead folklore, and the mysterious denizens have evolved to “cyberpunk” technology. Visions have also become nothing but dead folklore. After all, what on Earth would any of the denizens need a Vision for when cutting-edge technology was at their feet, giving them the power to alter their godforsaken appearances? Their physical and mental capabilities? Their senses? It gave that damned civilization a sense of security, a sense of wealth and elegance and power, regardless of social status.

But tyranny has revived itself once more; the ever-so-humble wishes of the Lord Barbatos have blown away with any sanity left during the War. All of the Geo Archon’s hard labor into shaping the lands into precise perfection have gone down the drain, and Fontaine’s famously just system has evaporated into nothingness. Tyranny hails in the City of Unity, and the wealthiest of entrepreneurs take their holy seats. For in the City of Unity, it is widely believed (and affirmed, even a drunken fool can see the facts and statistics) that the said city would certainly not be where it is now - eternal florescent lights, advanced machinery, unparalleled science and evolutionary bio-alchemy that not even dear Miss Sucrose can match - without the diligence and intellect of the leading entrepreneurs. After all, they are the ones that funded the scientists who discovered and created all the blessed machinery that the city so desperately depends on like a drug and its pusher. Like an alcoholic and his wine.

Because of their seemingly endless wealth and sheer social power, the military turn a blind eye to the graft and corruption of the famed entrepreneurs. Even when a brave soul speaks up with the appropriate evidence, that evidence will never be able to compare to the five lawyers hard at work for their single client.

And it’s not like Miss Angelica, founder and chief of Honey Entertainment, can indulge on the secrets of her fellow business partners, for everyone in the business realm has something to say about everyone. One misstep could lead to the ultimate downfall of any entrepreneur, with all of them equally knowing the way the general public despises them. They are arrogant, but not ignorant - no good businessman would get where the holy seven are now if ignorance to the general public’s opinions blazed in their cores.

But who are they (the general public) to comment, the rich ponder, when it’s all thanks to their ‘philanthropy’ that the rats below their aristocratic asses have food to eat in the first place.

And at the end of the day, the rats below can only hope to make it another rainy day in the ever-raining city as they snake through the cramped alleyways that still hold the scent of cigarettes, beer and cup noodles, all combined in one nauseating scent altogether. And goodness, it’s been two weeks, haven’t the exterminators stopped by yet? The corpses of the actual rats are beginning to pile over the dark corners behind the trash cans. Do they not get paid enough? Probably not. No one in the general public ever does.

Mora is still a thing of the future. No one has ever bothered to change its name, despite the God of Mora dead during this future. Honestly, it’s not that they still want to honor him, rather, nobody cares. In this world, money is money, and it’s only the value and profiting this money long money that matters. Where it came from, how it came to be, what the fuck others call it is irrelevant. Besides, it’s not like the entrepreneurs could think of a more fascinating title befitting for the very currency that feeds their mouths and provides all their pleasures.

And although Mora had been a name for eons, its value had, for once, been disputed. ‘Tis but a powerful curse laid upon the techy city by the entrepreneurs. Still, Mora has, fortunately, been the only currency the City of Unity uses. Even if they’ve converted to online banking and “ATM.”

[vagrantblvrd]

Sky Factory Android Shenanigans is giving me so many ideas?

That super cliché sci-fi AU where Michael’s an android on the run (because reasons???) and he ends up on one backwater planet/colony somewhere. Parts on the fritz thanks to a run in with some black ops/assassination squad and he needs repairs but doesn’t know who to trust?

Broadcasts reporting him as, idk, malfunctioning and the whatnot and a danger to the public – do not approach or engage – and call the authorities if you see this unit.

(Unit, like he’s not a person anymore, had his autonomy stripped away along with his humanity and goddamn him for being stupid enough to trust whatever organization he signed up for that got him killed, turned him into this and fucked him over again with all the secrets it was keeping he hadn’t even guessed at before stumbling on them, hence the android on the run part of things? But yes.)

And then he overhears someone talking about this lunatic living on the fringes of whatever settlement he’s come to. Like something out of the true crime stories he used to follow when he was a kid – or is that just another implanted memory?

Shady as hell and rife with con-men and thieves and worse, perfect place to hide out for a while until his stupid body shuts down and he dies for real out here.

Half-blind most days because that shot to the head and it acts up at the worst times. Almost gets him killed a few times when some of those thieves and worse ambush him in an alley and it’s sheer luck he manages to get out of it without suffering more damage.

Anyway, anyway, he hears about this lunatic who’s supposed to be some kind of mechanical genius, right? Doesn’t run a real shop, lives out by the main scrapyard like a weirdo. People bring their busted machines and gadgets and the whatnots to him and he fixes them up nice and pretty-ish. (Cheaper than the officially licensed technicians near the spaceport and a hell of a lot more discreet to boot.)

So.

Michael makes his way there, half-convinced he’s walking into a trap but it’s take that risk or end up being a pile of spare parts in the guy’s scrapyard anyway, right?

And at first the asshole doesn’t even respond when Michael knocks on his door, pretends he’s not home or whatever and Michael’s just.

At the end of his rope and angry and defeated and he starts yelling at the fucker until his vocalizer glitches out, and that’s when the door snaps open, sending Michael tumbling inside where he lands on his face because his everything is fucked up and he doesn’t react fast enough.

Looks up to see someone staring down at him, implants and augments like whoa because no human has an eye that glows red unless it’s in one of those old horror holovids.

“What do you want?

Surly bastard, which lines up with the things Michael overheard before.

Loner who doesn’t really gt left alone because people need things, don’t they, and there’s not a lot of  money coming into a place like this. Old mining planet/colony where the companies pulled their operations out when the mines ran dry and only the worst kind of people come by anymore.

The few decent people left behind too poor to relocate, so it’s a shitshow and as someone with the skills to he has he gets visitors more often than he’d care for. (Customers or someone hoping to take what he has any way they have to, which explains the weapon in his hand and Michael’s almost to point he’d just let the fucker shoot him to be done with it, but.)

He stands up, servos and whatever else he’s made of these days creaking and groaning and this little flash of light that may be actual sparks coming off him and he sees the guy’s grimace at how bad off he is.

Like Jesus, if he wasn’t what he was Michael knows someone would have scrapped him a few planets back, but whatever.

The guy – Ryan, of course it’s Ryan – flips the lights on and they get a good look at one another.

Michael’s headed for a full-system shutdown and Ryan?

Looks like he’s been through some shit. Enough augments and implants that the legal system would be hard-put classifying him as human anymore, leaning past cyborg and dangerously close to being an android himself like some of those soldiers Michael’s seen who got caught up in the outer worlds skirmishes a few years back.

A lot of them look cobbled together from whatever parts he could find out here, which makes sense if the guy’s here of all places. (People don’t end up somewhere like here if they have resources to call on, you know? And no one ends up somewhere like here if they’re not in some kind of trouble, so. Yeah.)

They regard each for a long, long time.

Michael knows Ryan recognizes him, but he’s too tired to bother running – been doing too much of that as it is – and he wouldn’t get far in the shape he’s in if he tried

Last resort and the way that goes and Ryan sighs, gesturing for Michael to follow him and he does because what else is he going to do?

Ryan fixes him up, this long on-going process that takes a long damn time because Michael’s so busted up. Has this little helper bot he’s built out of old construction bots or something because its still sporting that distinct yellow paint job, little black and white stripe along its side.

Beeps and chirps and boops whenever Ryan asks it to bring him this tool or that, dig through the bins along one wall for parts or whatever. Hovers along just behind him when they’re not in the workshop/lab loyal little helper and kind of cute in a weird kind of way.

Ryan calls it E.D.G.A.R. and when Michael asks what the acronym stands for Ryan shrugs because hell if he knows, he just thought it was appropriate, which what does that even mean???

Ryan and E.D.G.A.R. dig through the bits and pieces he has stashed in his workshop/lab/lab, cannibalize worker androids – makes and models who didn’t start out as humans like Michael did – for some of it. Searches through the scrapyard to find parts he can modify for the rest.

Once he gets Michael functioning to a high enough level he can lend a hand Michael’s out there too, digging through piles of appliances and machinery and trying not to look too hard at the scattered android parts and chassis tossed in there too. (Some look too human, synthetic flesh torn and weathered from being unprotected from the elements for who know how long)

They don’t really get friendly, the two of them, but Ryan forgets to play the curmudgeon the longer he works at fixing Michael up.

Doesn’t ask who Michael is or how he ended up here, doesn’t seem like he’s waiting on the authorities to come claim him either.

Kind of a confusing time for them both because it’s clear Ryan’s got his own secrets, you know?

More than just some guy who picked up what he knows ‘along the way’, no.

There’s an order to his workshop/lab/lab Michael recognizes from the days right after those fuckers turned him into a machine, the way he works.

Meticulous as hell and so precise and just. More care than any of the hacks Michael’s gone to since he’s been on the run.

And then!

And then there’s – Michael doesn’t know when the shift happens but he bitches about something and Ryan laughs, quiet little huff of air and this tell-tale quirk to his mouth, and he gives Michael this. This look.

Something thoughtful to it he doesn’t really understand, can’t fucking compute, but who cares, right? Because Ryan’s less of a bastard after that, they get along better and Michael stops worrying Ryan’s just waiting for the right moment to turn him in, thinks his luck might be changing on him – so of course that’s when things go to shit.

Someone must have seen Michael before, recognized him and figured out he went to Ryan for help because the people chasing Michael?

They find him.

Assassination squad(s) and both of them unprepared for it and Ryan gets hit, gets hit bad.

More machine than man, but there’s still enough squishy human left to him that a bullet/energy weapon shot in the right place will kill him, you know? (Besides, all those augments and implants are hooked up to his squishy human parts in amazingly delicate ways and it’s real fucking easy to use that against someone if you know how.)

Michael doesn’t get away unscathed himself, but of the two of them he’s far more functional. And even though Ryan didn’t have the right parts and components to bring him up to factory specs again, so to speak, he did a damn good job with what he had on hand, you know?

There’s also the fact that the people who made Michael what he is now didn’t expect him to turn on them, thought they had a nice loyal dog in their hands and they made a mistake giving him the teeth and claws they did. All these built-in weapons because he’s a prototype, isn’t he.

New war machine to sell to the highest bidder and better than all those soulless robots people were using before because there’s a human mind in there capable of making the kind of decisions and choices and whatever else a simple computer program or AI could ever hope to. (Real fucking close to the complex sort of AI they’d need for that, but not close enough to satisfy the corporations or military forces who would commission them.)

So.

Michael gets them out of there, follows E.D.G.A.R. to this ship Ryan’s got hidden away – looks like shit but Ryan – stubbornly hanging on – insists it’ll get them to safety, just don’t fly them into the sun or a fucking planet, for Christ’s sake.

Michael gets Ryan into the medbay which – surprise, surprise – looks like a smaller version of Ryan’s workshop/lab/ than a medbay, but who cares at this point.

Hooks him up to machines to keep him alive until he can give him proper medical care and gets them away from any pursuers.

When he goes back down to check on Ryan it’s to find the asshole directing E.D.G.A.R. to open up this   pod on the wall. (Looks more like a casket.)

Human shaped and something about it unsettles Michael who demands to know what’s going on, because Ryan shouldn’t be doing what’s he’s doing.

Seriously injured and lost a lot of blood and any normal human would be dead by this point, and Ryan.

He sighs, gives Michael this look because they both know he’s not going to get better from his injuries, you know? Squishy human parts all fucked up and augments and implants malfunctioning worse than Michael had been when he went to Ryan.

Only a matter of time and Ryan knew something like this would happen one day – all the things Michael was careful not to ask Ryan the same way Ryan didn’t ask Michael because secrets. (And Plot Reasons, but c’mon, you know how this works by now.)

E.D.G.A.R. cracks the pod/casket open and oh, wow, surprise, surprise there’s an android body inside it.

Looks a hell of a lot like Michael’s, but this one is a little bigger, bulkier. Looks like an older version, one that was modeled more after the construction androids, used for heavy labor and the whatnot. No synthetic flesh cover its frame, all powered down and waiting and -

“Don’t do this,” Michael says, because Ryan thinks he knows what he’s doing but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t.

(Michael doesn’t know what else they can do, but this - there has to be another way.)

Ryan gives Michael this sad little smile and it’s horrifying because internal bleeding and everything else, and he’s just.

“Michael,” he says, and he sounds so tired. “Why do you think I knew how to repair you?”

Because Ryan didn’t end up in some backwater planet/colony by accident, you know?

Doesn’t know the things he does because he read about it somewhere or had a job working in a goddamned repair shop on one of the inner worlds.

None of those easy little lies Michael kept telling himself, no.

Ryan used to work for this corporation, big on advancing science and all that bullshit that had major funding provided by the military and so on and so forth. People real interested in cutting down on human bloodshed and what better way than to create machines to do it for them?

Things went wrong along the way, and they got desperate as project after project failed to live up to expectation. (Some key component missing and it wasn’t until someone decided morals and ethics were oh so troublesome they made any real headway.)

People like Michael and accidents here and there, soldiers offer a second chance and there’s an experimental program that hasn’t been revealed to the public. Dangerous, of course, but -

Some people got a choice in the matter, sold their souls for that second chance. Others like Michael never had that luxury.

And Ryan, oh. He was part of that, wasn’t he.

Designed the androids because the science of it all, but he never expected things would lead where they did.

Got to watch as his creations were used in the worst possible ways, saw the early days where human brains couldn’t cope with the transfer progress. Breadth and depth of what makes a human mind (soul?) shoved into a computerized/cybernetic shell of its former self, most without warning and the fallout -

Most committed suicide, some went mad. The others had to be destroyed as they decayed.

And Ryan.

He tried to expose them, did what he could and it almost, almost worked.

But one man against a vast conglomeration fueled by greed and corruption and it almost killed him. (Should have, maybe that would have been better.)

He had a handful of augments and implants before everything went to hell to help him in his work, but afterward.

Well.

Squishy human bodies are just that, aren’t they. Get injured so badly they can’t be fixed and he ended up needing more and more until he might as well have been one of those androids he created once upon a time. (Poetic justice to it, or so he thought when he bothered to think about it at all.)

And anyway, anyway, that doesn’t matter at this point because it’s either transfer his squishy human brain-stuff into the waiting android frame or die.

Before all this, before Michael, Ryan might have chosen death. Figured it’s what he deserved for his part in things, no way he can expose the people responsible when he’s failed before, but.

Michael makes him want to try.

(Ryan knew, you see, while he was fixing Michael that the idiot would go right back out once he was done and try to do the impossible. May have drawn things out longer than he should have to prevent that from happening because he likes Michael, okay? Too much, maybe.)

This isn’t the way he saw things going, but he doesn’t want to die now. Doesn’t want to leave Michael alone to fix Ryan’s mistakes. (And maybe it’s not all on Ryan to fix, but who else is going to do it?)

So.

Michael hates it, hates it so much but he does what Ryan tells him to do. Gets him hooked up to the right machines, boots up the right programs and whatever else and watches Ryan die as he turns himself into an android.

He doesn’t know why Ryan’s doing what he’s doing, thinks it’s because he doesn’t want to just fade away into nothing, but Ryan tells him later.

Tells him everything as he’s figuring out how his new android body works, the two of them following gossip and rumors surrounding this broadcast someone’s sending out about the people responsible for making Michael what he is. Things said people are trying to shut down, shut down hard, but can never catch.

He tells him and Michael listens and it’s not easy, God is it ever not, but they come to an understanding  or something like that.

Ryan didn’t know, not for the longest time and when he did he tried to do something about that, and that has to count for something.

(He saved Michael’s life or whatever the hell you’d call it when he turned up on his doorstep, and that counts for something too.)

And just.

Michael’s got his own mistakes too, okay.

So.

They figure things out, and Ryan fixes up his android body so its face looks like his human one and he maybe upgrades it, Michael laughing at him when Ryan goes on and on and on about laser hands or whatever the hell. (Ridiculous and impractical as hell, but goddamn does it sound cool.)

Also, also? Ryan doesn’t have the combat training/protocols Michael does so ~training. Partly to get him used to how his new body moves, partly because they don’t have access to adequate things at first and Michael runs him through the basics, right?

And he teaches Ryan how to compensate for it when his targeting whatevers are on the fritz and Ryan proves to be a better shot than Michael? (New ways to bring old cliches and tropes into play, is what I’m getting at here.)

Those moments where Ryan comes up against the limitations of his new body, realizes what he’s lost when he chose to become an android and Michael just being there because he’s the best person to understand what he’s going through?

The two of them becoming this amazing team over time that is an actual threat to the people after them? (And E.D.G.A.R., because Ryan is too damn fond of the bucket of bolts.)

They run into assassination squads and whatever else and finally, finally find the source of the broadcasts and of course it’s Matt and all these misfits and outcasts with grudges against the assholes after Michael and Ryan and it’s just.

Shenanigans in space as this group of supposed space pirates/smugglers/criminal types take on a corrupt corporation because reasons.

Also, yes, totally FAHC AU in space, but different ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

================

More of this AU with Jerevin this time???

[mobius-prime]

105. Sonic the Hedgehog #62

Icon

Writer: Karl Bollers Pencils: Steven Butler Colors: Frank Gagliardo

Sonic and Tails continue their search for Naugus, flying over a desert in the middle of nowhere, when they abruptly begin to run into engine trouble. Sonic tries to find a safe place to land, and manages to aim the plane directly at the only tree in the entire desert, crashing and uprooting it. Great job, buddy!

Uh, sure, Mr. Rabbit Man! This issue contains some flash…aways? (I feel like that's the only logical thing to call something that isn't a flashback but acts like one, as a break from the main action. I dunno man.) We get to see Snively biding his time in the Devil's Gulag, and actually get some new info on the place, namely that the place is named for the fact that the island the prison resides on is surrounded by volcanoes that superheat the ocean water around it, causing the waters to boil with no obvious method of getting away, which is about as close to hell as you can get on this mortal plane. Snively keeps bragging about how he's trained up his mind and body to escape, flexing some pathetically tiny arm muscles while Drago laughs his head off at him, and really, can you blame him for laughing? Snively is about as threatening as the Universalamander's original form at this point. Back to Sonic, and we learn that this tank-drivin' cybernetic-eye-havin' rabbit, named Jack, is just an honest to god huge fan of Sonic's, going so far as to take inspiration from the Freedom Fighters and modeling his own band after them to drive back Robotnik's sub-bosses in the area. But that's not the only trouble they face…

For whatever reason, these Robians never got the memo that they were free of Robotnik's control, much like the Mercian Robians, and they've been viciously attacking Jack and his band of Sand-Blasters. Sonic hops out of the tank and impresses Jack by creating a tornado with the sheer power of his spinning speed, sending all the attacking Robians flying. He gets back from his show of heroics just in time to be dazzled by the sight of Jack's city in the distance, glowing amongst orange rocky cliffs with a bright yellow forcefield grid stretching over the entire thing. And here, as they enter the city, is where we come to the first of what I'll go ahead and call the "satellite sequences." Remember that, 'cause I won't show them all as many look very similar, but they're very important to note, now that they've started showing up.

What's going on here? What's activating? What's it locking onto, and perhaps most importantly - who's activating it? All answers that will come in time…

Inside the city, everyone is greatly pleased to have the hero Sonic himself here to help them defend their land. Sonic initially thinks they're going to a nice hotel where they can rest, but nope, they're going to the "most important spot in town," which turns out to be…

…a little much, don't you think? I mean, be real, first of all - that's not even how Sonic would be posing after a battle. It makes him look all solemn and grandiose, when the real Sonic is more prone to, I dunno, running around talking smack, grinning like an idiot, and stuffing his face with chili dogs after a battle. Jack is hopeful that now that they have the real Sonic around to help them, they may be able to drive off the hostile Robians and no longer have to rely on the forcefield surrounding their city to protect themselves. Back we go to the Devil's Gulag, where Snively is reclining on his bed and filing his nails while detailing all the dastardly things he plans to do once he escapes his cell. Naturally, Drago isn't having it.

…well, that was easy.

Back in Sand-Blast City, the next morning, Tails awakens while Sonic is still asleep, only to worryingly find their room's door locked from the outside. He initially thinks they've become prisoners while they slept, but then finds a skylight open for him to fly out of. He heads out to find Jack and his team covering Sonic's biplane with a tarp, and questions them on why. Interestingly as well, this is the first time we see Tails' eyes depicted as blue. It's only for a couple of panels as he flies out of the room to investigate, but as you might know, at this time the Sonic Adventure game was being developed (this issue came out in mid-1998, the game was released in December of the same year) and that game was the first to depict everyone with colorful eyes instead of the usual black pupils. The comic actually found a way to handle that transition, but it wasn't always smooth, as we'll see.

Sonic, don't be getting lazy on us now! Naugus may have already put his cloudy face back together, after all! We end on one final shot of the pandemonium unfolding in the Devil's Gulag, as Drago, Sleuth, the Fearsome Foursome, and even ol' Nack the Weasel begin a riot that spreads through the whole prison…

On His Majesty's Secret Service (Part 2)

Writer/Colors: Ken Penders Pencils: Art Mawhinney  

This story begins right where the previous one left off - turns out Geoffrey didn't get a good night's sleep after all, because as soon as he walks into his quarters, he detects an intruder - an intruder which then explodes violently!

Oh, hey, remember these guys? They helped out way back in the Knuckles Chaotix special, apparently friends of Mighty's, but never showed up again. Well, here they are now! Also, apparently Bomb survives by transferring his artificial intelligence into a new "vessel" every time he explodes, allowing him to essentially use himself as a walking explosive, escaping digitally at the last second before he goes off. I guess that makes more sense than how Bob-Ombs work in Paper Mario, so I'll take it!

The next morning, Geoffrey gathers his new recruits - Heavy and Bomb, Hershey, Wombat Stu, and the chameleon, whose name is revealed to be Valdez - in the armory to show off a cool new weapon. It looks like a block of machinery about the same size and shape as a tube of lipstick, but when he fires it off it straight up blows a hole in the roof, because who needs the training grounds to maintain any kind of structural integrity? He then promises the sufficiently dazzled recruits that he'll work them to the bone training them for combat and secret missions until he feels that they're ready, and demonstrates this by immediately dropping a trapdoor out from under Hershey, sending her plunging into a tank of water with a mechanical shark in it. Amazing leadership skills man, I'm sure everyone will trust you with their lives after a stunt like that!

Can we just remember that Hershey didn't even volunteer for this? She even asks herself "What was I thinking when I enlisted in this," but like, girl, you didn't. This madman just told you to show up here in the morning and then surprise dunked you. You have every right to walk away right now. She doesn't, however, and Geoffrey commends Valdez and Bomb for immediately jumping in and showing a spirit of teamwork to save their fellow secret service recruit. He also yells at Hershey for being upset that she got dunked, telling everyone that they'll have to work on making up for their weaknesses. I can tell Geoffrey is going to be an instructor who's great for morale!

[huberleo]

Once upon a time there was a strange man stranded in a strange city

Visitors must adapt for they are complete aliens, even if they were kinsmen in a previous life. The host does not feel comfortable with all these aliens and makes them adapt by force. Unless the intruder secures himself by flight, they seldom fail at last to kill or to take him prisoner[1] and make him subject to this new world.

Lenny finds himself in Vienna, dislocated, dispossessed, lost. There is no flock to lead anymore, no divinity to represent. Lenny needs this feeling of power, this machinery around him that listens to his every whim. He craves the fear with which people approach him. Fear caused by an underestimation of his person. He likes to toy with these people. They are not his equal and will never be. Lenny is obsessed with legacy, with power made real. Lenny says, I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others.[2] Lenny needs to rule over someone. Something. Lenny stands in front of the house. Ludwig is a kingdom. A realm complete in itself, surrounded by a wall. What king did not seat him at his table [3], Lenny asks himself.

Prepare for battle

Lenny stands in front of Ludwig. I'm ready to wage a war without end against you.[4] He sees himself as a being of greater glory and importance than his fellow men. He was of so great ability, even as a private citizen, that one who writes of him says he wanted nothing but a kingdom to be a king.[5]

Ludwig likes rationality, Ludwig likes to explain things, Ludwig likes a good encyclopaedia that defines the world and its inhabitants and divides them into categories. Ludwig likes the absolute truth, Ludwig does not want to acknowledge the fact that there might be another absolute truth that his. Ludwig is a house. Ludwig does not like his neighbours towering above him. Ludwig does not like to be reminded of his roots in this city, he does not want to be perceived as in need of support. It makes him feel less and he does not like to feel, it makes for bad objective judgements.

But Ludwig cannot explain Lenny. Lenny is an intruder. Lenny sees himself as a conqueror of worlds and Ludwig is his target. Ludwig is Vienna and Lenny is Suleiman the magnificent. Lenny likes the name. Lenny is self- indulgent and he is willing to ignore the fact that history already provided a likely outcome for his quest. Lenny sees himself as beyond the realm of man, he is genghis khan and therefore what he invades, he conquers. Lenny likes to pace himself in the pantheon of emperors, conquerors, military geniuses and deities. He is not man but legend.

Lenny enters Ludwig clad in the armour of his extreme perception of himself and his idea of a perfect world. Do they fight to the death? [6] While shutting the enemy in with his siege works he drove them to fall on their own swords.[7] That's the fate of power.[8]  He wants to conquer Ludwig and make him his subject, a being that exists for nothing but to serve its master in his glory. That master being Lenny. Of course. Ludwig prepares for a war.

Siege

In the eyes of contemporaries, siege warfare unfolds like a classical drama.[9] You hesitate before entering a new world, as an intruder, and becoming an alien. The anticipation of the moment may be more than you bargained for. Or it might be less. The city lives suspended in history, always waiting for someone or something, condemned to remain in precarious balance, always on the verge of resurrection but also a step back from the brink, exaltations following depressions.[10] It is a game of chess compromised of anticipation and waiting, always calculating the opponents next move, this fear, that it will be one you didn’t take in account. Nevertheless, a siege took tremendous organizational skill.[11]

A dog believes his master is at the door.[12] Ludwig is no dog. Ludwig is well read in the art of battle. Ludwig knows what to do step by step to repel attackers, for when the battle begins: here we are plunged into a world entirely mechanical. [13] In extreme conditions, when he was under siege, the gates were closed, the battlements were manned, and the house became the city became self contained for the duration.[14] It is the way Ludwig relates to his surroundings and their history, as a place that withstood siege. Ludwig has a wall. Ludwig is a fortress. Ludwig is not part of his surroundings. Ludwig is self-sufficient. Ludwig does not have to rely on support. Ludwig has one way in and when Lenny makes use of it he will strike back. Ludwig is armed neutrality, but you shall not escape. [15]  Away, run, haste, speed! [16]

War What is it good for?[17]

The threshold

A gate. A door. A void. A place between worlds. Between the two, there is threshold and fiber, symbiosis of or passage between heterogeneities. [18]  It is the momentary realization of leaving and entering at the same time. In a fraction of a certain time that cannot be measured you are both at once, past and future simultaneously without a present. Then you step into another world as another self and leave the alien in its pure form on the threshold only to assume its form again once you step back into the past.

Lenny stands on the threshold, he has breached the wall and the house is his. He will take hold of it, fly his flag and overwrite its mind and being. But there is only one way in and this position has been chosen by Ludwig. And though he, as the house is the most precise product of modern processes there will be entrenched within it this ancient loyalty invulnerable against the siege of our machines. [19] Every part of Ludwig is ready to fight. To defend itself with a degree of selflessness that creates legends. These assurances produced a degree of calm. [20] It was a dangerous calm, the one that makes you uneasy and dying to leave. Yet both fear the moment of truth when they have to confront each other not only in mind but in body. Lenny takes a step. The door was meant only for him. [21]  

After breaching the garden wall, Ludwig, then was placed under a state of siege[22] once more.

After the breach

The Garden surrounding the house in front of him feels strangely calm, almost surreal. Definitely not what Lenny expected, in his mind the battle to come had amassed to epic proportion but there were no raging hordes here was just a house, surrounded by a garden as calm as the house appeared minimalist to Lenny’s taste.

Ludwig studied the strange form in front of him. Ludwig had not expected this. This was not how invading armies presented themselves, just standing in the garden and staring. The unfamiliarity of their situation made both of them uncomfortable, very much so. Both wanted to escape this weird stalemate. It felt wrong and yet there was a fascination with a pull that was impossible to ignore.

Entering the house

Lenny enters the house, the door seemed to carry the weight of the entire building.[23] His moment has come, the door was meant only for him.[21] Right behind that door: Hell.[24] He tells himself it is because to conquer he must subdue his enemy but there is also some curiosity as to what he will find inside. Lenny stands on a threshold once again, determined to make this house a home, by any means necessary —a Modification of general features. [25]  Lenny comes from a world where everything revolved around him, he needs everything to be about him. The apparent lack of ornament disturbs Lenny, he wants Ludwig to become this bastion of his personal power far away from Rome. No reasoning power, no commandment, no force can override his inclination or his choice.[26] Still, Ludwig is a force to be reckoned with. Ludwig is intrigued by Lenny. But when Lenny goes about the house, his manoeuvre was accompanied by another change. [27] His demeanour evolved from invasive force to reluctant explorer. Nevertheless he needs to make changes to feel some sense of familiarity, of home. The sequence of rooms seems like a labyrinth, he feels the need to find a way out and tears down a wall, telling himself his greatness needs to be accommodated through sheer space. A lot of space. And maybe to compensate the fact that he didn’t have to tear down the garden walls.

But with each room Lenny goes through the needed changes are becoming less, becoming smaller until Lenny steps into the garden and there is not a single aspect of his surrounding that feels alien to him, no need for change. If the features change slightly, we can speak of a corresponding change in the fear.[28] Ludwig watches Lenny rummage through his rooms, rearrange his features. With every new room Lenny enters, his presence becomes more familiar to Ludwig.

All the hostility built up over the course of the siege slowly disappears until there is none left. Their intricate battle plans, strategies reliant upon battles past, become obsolete. With every threshold Lenny passes the alienation of a new room, a new world is like a blow to him. A turn every time he hadn’t anticipated. Hadn’t planned for. With every threshold Lenny leaves something behind. A trail consisting of fragments. Like an animal shedding fur, Lenny sheds hostility. Ludwig develops the need to accommodate Lenny, not as a guest but as an integral part of himself. For Lenny did not just leave parts of himself behind, he also infused Ludwig with them. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here,[29] but growth. With every new room Lenny enters while Ludwig watches they grow closer, they get to know each other. They lay bare their soul completely. Lenny standing at the threshold of the house looks over the whole garden.[30] Neither the parterre nor the surrounding groves show any original features.[31] yet they do not feel different, they merely feel just as they should be.

Change is evident. [32] But not in the individual. There is no winner because there was no battle.

Hortus conclusus

Enclosed space, a walled world, a wall around your own paradise/ hell/ purgatory – eternal state. Every time the being that occupies this safe space ventures into another, it is as if it travelled to another realm of reality. As soon as it enters the new space it becomes alien from the old one. Therefore the hortus conclusus has to adapt to accommodate the changed needs of its resident every time they come back to what they perceive as home. It is a place of personal refuge. A place of dreams, longing and desires made real. The inside so very intimate and secret there is need for the enclosure.

Lenny steps into the garden. It is his garden. It is also Ludwig’s garden. Their own paradise, their happy place, far away from the dangers and sorrows of the world. Another world, the world outside the garden walls. Even to the most prosaic it always holds something of a promise of the peaceful and pleasant place that lies within. [33] Together they walked toward the garden.[34] And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.[35] Their very own hortus conclusus.

How great a resemblance of a holy and virtuous soul is a calm, serene day. [36] Lenny has become Ludwig. Ludwig has become Lenny. The one cannot be without the other for they have achieved symbiosis. Their need for the familiarization of the unknown has merged them into a single being. Together they have become god of their own universe. Lenny stands in the garden. Ludwig sees Lenny standing in the garden. Both have become new versions of themselves. Same but different. And for this reason, whatever was uncertain among the ancients has now attained the most assured calm, and no source of indecision has been left. [37]  they are blessed, serene, and rejoice in their splendour.[38] The evening was extremely calm and beautiful.[39]

A door in a wall

Lenny opens his eyes and sees a single door in the wall. What lies beyond that door is the alien of Lenny’s former self. The outside world. Waiting for his former occupant to step over the threshold and resume his old life, but Lenny is no longer familiar with that, what used to be. He has become completely alien to the world outside of the garden walls, his garden walls. Still, he takes the step. Thus a door has been opened to invent ‘design worlds’. [40] These worlds were once Lenny’s. Not anymore.

He didn’t go out through a door? [41] Once you leave your creation there is need to revert back to what you were before. And if you want to go back to your creation you will do so as an intruder. Your own universe has become strange to you and the process of making it yours has to begin again. Now the same thing can’t be both known and unknown. [42] A perpetual state of rebirth on the threshold. They eagerly seek the agent of this metamorphosis, and hasten to his door. [43]

Lenny stands in front of a wall, he is ready to make whatever lies beyond his. Ludwig sees a possible intruder standing in front of his wall. How, indeed, was it possible for it always to fight and struggle against new enemies? [44] Ludwig prepares for invasion. Thus the struggle goes on. [45]

Here we go again. [46]

 [1] More, Utopia [2] Ludwig II [3] Cervantes, Don Quixote [4] The Young Pope [5] Machiavelli, The Prince [6] Seneca, Complete Works [7] Seneca, On Anger [8] The Young Pope [9] Alder, Engineering the Revolution [10] Payne, Renaissance and Baroque Architecture [11] Alder, Engineering the Revolution [12] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [13] Serres, History of Scientific Thought [14] Mitchell, Me The Cyborg Self and the Networked City [15] Ovid, Metamorphoses [16] Cervantes, Don Quixote [17] Strong Whitfield, War [18] Deleuze Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus [19] Ockmann, Architecture Culture 1943 1968 [20] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works [21] Zizek, Less Than Nothing [22] Marx, Collected Works [23] Sudjic, The Edifice Complex [24] The Young Pope [25] Kerr, The Gentlemans House [26] de Montaigne, The Complete Essays [27] Summerson, Architecture in Britain 1530 1830 [28] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [29] Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [30] Gothein, A History of Garden Art [31] Gothein, A History of Garden Art [32] Leatherbarrow Eisenschmidt, Twentieth Century Architecture [33] Stickley, Gustav Stickley s Craftsman Homes and Bungalows [34] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology [35] King, James Bible [36] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815 [37] Justinian, The Codex [38] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology The Complete Work [39] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works [40] Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture Vol 1 [41] Eco, The Name of the Rose [42] Aquinas, Selected Philosophical Writings [43] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815 [44] Michelet, The History of France Vol 1 [45] Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason [46] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[sserpente]

A/N: Two anon requests. I changed one of them a bit, I just couldn’t get it to work any other way. Enjoy, everyone! :-)

Words: 2010 Warnings: kidnapping, mentions of torture

The destroyed control panel was smoking. A few last lights blinked weakly as the machinery died down, replaced by the red and hot glowing of the angry streaks Kylo Ren’s lightsaber had caused. You stood there, fists clenched and chin lifted, defying his orders and refusing to allow yourself any fear. He would never hurt you, this much you knew.

“It should not have happened then,” you said quietly, taking a step back in an attempt to leave the room, having the last word in the process. “We should have never slept with each other. Me, a simple spy and you… it would never work anyway.” Quite obviously, however, your Commander was not having it.

“You are saying this because you feel hurt, I presume. I was…” he paused, fighting to choke out a word that usually wasn’t in his vocabulary “…kindly asking you to meet me in my quarters again this morning and you declined. When I repeated my offer more insistently, you declined once more.” He started, his voice distorted through that stupid mask of his hiding his beautiful face. None of those women… none of those whores he kept sleeping with had ever seen it. But you had. You had seen his vulnerable brown eyes, so full of desperation, hope and determination. Lust and desire when you had had sex in his quarters. You and the Commander of the First Order, in one room at the same time, limbs entangled, skin a sweaty mess, the air heavy with the smell of sex and arousal. Hux would fire you if he knew and still, you had taken the risk. Because there was something about him that intrigued you. The power, the sternness, the way he intimidated. It was like anger and danger was radiating right off him and  when you caught his eye about two weeks ago… when he led you to his quarters, pinning you down on the mattress and roughly fucking you into it until you saw stars before your field of view… you had fallen for him. A broken man, yet so strong and ambitious, with so much potential. He wasn’t evil, not really. If anything, he was just devastated.

“Because I am hurt?” You interrupted. He boldly ignored you.

“Do not forget your place because of what happened between us. It was an order. Declining was no option.”

“Oh yeah? Did you tell that your whores too? The whores you are sleeping with when I’m at work? What am I to you, Kylo? I am not one of those disgusting prostitutes. I went with you that night because I chose to. I like you, I am into you and maybe, maybe there could be more. It’s at least what you suggested by the way you treated me but apparently, I interpreted it wrong. It’s fine, really. It’s not your fault. Just stupid old me getting disappointed by yet another man. I thought you were different. Smarter.”

Kylo was silent for a moment. He tilted his head, his fingers clenching around his lightsaber as he weighed his options. Punishing you, telling the General about you, even killing you… the last thought was the one that for some odd reason hurt him the most.

“I have no obligations towards you. I can sleep with whoever I want,” he stated coolly, making you blink in a shocked manner.

“Am I one of them to you then? A quick fuck? I thought it meant something, spending the night with you, I’m sorry I feel this way. I mean, it’s not like it just happened once after… us, it happened over and over again and I feel like fucking shit because of it!” You yelled. It feels like you are cheating on me… you then added silently, unaware of how Kylo was able to read your thoughts if he focused well enough. He did not comment it. In fact, he didn’t reply anything at all. He just stood there, still like a giant chess piece until you snorted and stormed out of the room, hot tears forming in your eyes and streaming down your face as you rushed through the halls back to your quarters.

You would call in sick today and report for that new mission to pay Jakku a visit next week. Collecting information and staying incognito would at least help you to blow the cobwebs away. At least so you hoped.

It was bright in the room you awoke in, the light stinging in your eyes like hot needles. You didn’t recognise your surroundings, nor had you any idea how you had ended up here. Moaning in pain, you sat up from the mattress in the corner, attempting to look around.

After a little while, when your eyes finally got used to the brightness, they widened in shock upon seeing the prison bars around you and you remembered with a start what must have happened. Somebody… or something on Jakku had knocked you out kidnapped you. The hot pain in your skull confirmed your suspicions. Shit. You hadn’t been concentrated enough, not focused enough!

“You’re awake at last,” a familiar voice suddenly spoke up. You raised your eyebrows, searching for the source of it when Poe Dameron stepped into your field of view, his hands crossed before his chest. Now it all made sense. You had been fucking kidnapped by the Resistance. Just great. You were as good as dead now. “I guess I don’t have to introduce myself.”

“Most certainly not,” you spat, gritting your teeth when he sat down on a metal chair opposite your pathetic excuse for a bed outside the small prison. “What do you want from me?”

Poe frowned, staring at the floor for a second before answering you. “Well, you work for the First Order, so you have valuable information that could be useful for us. You know, when I got captured by your people, I was tortured for hours until they sent for their Commander to use… his ways to get they wanted.”

You kept quiet, waiting for his next move. It was something Hux had taught you. Study your enemies well and you will be able to beat them with their own weapons all the while they are still trying to figure you out, eliciting a reaction.

“We’re not gonna do this. No harm will come to you. No physical harm, at least. You’re a beautiful young woman. It’s a pity you strayed from the right path, you know,”

So they would torture you one way or another. Why the hell did they choose you, for Fuck’s sake? A spy? You delivered information, not hoarded it like a treasure. You didn’t know nearly enough about the First Order’s plans and schemes.

You still said nothing, whatsoever, waiting for Poe to continue. If you kept silent, he might blab.

“Luke and Rey… you have heard of them for sure… they… sensed something. Something rather inexplicable but we are willing to give it a try. You will be our guest for a while. Don’t worry, we won’t treat you as bad as your people treat their captives. Are you hungry?”

One week passed. One ugly week where you wouldn’t talk and hardly sleep and where Rey, Luke Skywalker’s stupid new apprentice would practice the ways of the Force on you. It was torture. She was young, inexperienced. Whenever she entered your head, intruding your most private and intimate memories and thoughts, it hurt. It hurt like hell, like thousands of needles stabbing your brain from the inside out.

You were desperate, ready to fall asleep and never wake up again. You still didn’t know what they were waiting for. Thus far, nobody had asked you any more questions about the First Order and given you a chance to tell them what you knew on your own accord. Instead, they kept sending Luke and Rey, day in and day out.

On the eighth day, you noticed something was off. Everyone you saw from your provisory little prison, was stressed out, scared and on high alert. It took a few hours until you realised why, the loud explosion you heard stirring hope in your whole body.

It was the First Order. Stormtroopers came storming in, shooting at people and injuring important Resistance members.  Now that serves you right, arseholes. Only then did you spot him.

He looked as intimidating as ever, fighting off blaster shots and physical blows with the sheer power of his mind as he approached you and opened the door of the prison cell effortlessly. Nobody had a chance to properly attack him—it felt and looked surreal.

“Kylo? You’re here?” It was the first words you spoke after seven days. Your throat and mouth felt dry as if you had wandered in the desert for hours and now, your body was desperate for water. Kylo was your water.

Despite everything that had happened between the two of you, you were so relieved to see him again, you forgot your lack of sleep and hopelessness for a moment. Before you even knew what you were doing, you threw yourself into his arms, clenching at his dark robes to hold on to reality, to the fact that he was actually here.

He must have planned an attack—a lucky coincidence you would be saved along the way. Hux would have sacrificed you. A simple spy was not worth saving after all.

“This is my fault.” He suddenly murmured into the thick curtain of your hair, making you frown and freeze. “This is all my fault.”

Even through the modulator of his helmet, you could, for once, hear the emotion in his voice.

“Kylo, what are you talking about?” Pulling away, you stared at his black mask in an attempt to make out his eyes.

“There is… a connection. Between you and me. Skywalker and Rey tried to use you and trawl your brain to get me to cooperate. As soon as I noticed I set up a team and came here, Hux was in a rage. I didn’t realise you had been captured.” He explained, however, his words only raised more questions than it answered. He had come… for you? You were the reason for this risky attack?

“What do you m-mean, a connection?”

“I noticed as soon as you left. How the Force drew me to you like it wanted to show me…” He swallowed, not managing to speak the words he longed for. “It tore me apart. I felt a pain that I have never felt before and I knew I had to find you. You were right about what you said. It did mean something. I just didn’t realise it sooner. I denied it, thinking I didn’t need this, thinking that I wasn’t allowed to feel something like... It’s my fault they captured you, my fault they tortured like this,”

Your heart skipped a beat when you finally understood. Although he did not speak it out loud, you knew exactly what he was trying to say. Kylo had fallen for you, the Force itself had made him aware of how much stronger he would be with you by his side. And you felt the same. This one fateful night were you had willingly and so unknowingly followed him to his quarters, something between the two of you had happened and it had happened for a reason.

“It’s not your fault,” you whispered quietly. “It’s not. I was careless, I didn’t pay attention, if I had, this would have never happened. I’m sorry. I failed this mission, I screwed up. None of this is your fault.” And neither of us can change the way we feel about each other.

Kylo nodded. It was a gesture you barely noticed due to the mask hiding his beautiful face.

“Show me your face, please,” you begged him, gently touching the helmet. He drew away slowly.

“Not here. Let’s get back to my ship. I’ll bring you home.”

There was a promise in those words. A sacred promise you would hold dear.

[ikonislife]

Better Together.

-Bobby x Reader

-Expecting parents au, fluff

-Here for You is another dad!Jiwon request I had. This request came in right after so I guess in a way, they’re in conjunction with one another. You don’t really have to read them together since they’re pretty much stand alone pieces but it’s nice to have a small continuation. Anyways, here ya go! 10 years late but I did it!!!

The world suddenly seemed so much bigger now that your range of mobility was limit to three feet out your front door, and occasionally down the street for a short walk with your dog, in which you’re no longer allowed to hold the leash. As per your doctor order? God no! In fact, your doctor always commented on how well taken care of you were at every single appointment. This preposterous house arrest is of course, as per your husband ordered. 

Jiwon had been beyond amazing throughout your whole pregnancy despite missing nearly every single parent-in-training class due to iKon’s hectic tour schedules. Possessing the vast knowledge of one book on pregnancy for dummy he once read before realizing that nothing the books offered could possibly save him from your fifth mood swing of the hour, nor the guilt he constantly feel watching you cried from the sheer endless aching of carrying a new life. Yet there he was every time your eyes glossed over with a new insane craving or another hormonal whine fest about how unfair it is that you’re the only one looking like a duck had swallowed a planet waddling around whilst he, dashing and breaking heart as ever. Every time you panic, every time you’d freak out over every little thing, he’d be there holding your hand, calm as a swan to guide you through. Even if only moments later you caught him on the brink of tear, rapping at top speed on the phone with Hanbin, no doubt letting lose all the worries he held back for the sake of your peace of mind. Poor Hanbin, bless his soul for being therapist/consultant for whatever it might be that Jiwon is ringing him up about now. He probably has it harder than you will ever experience because Jiwon has to be taking all that emotion somewhere. He sat through an hour of you ugly crying while sobbing because you lost the allan wrench that came with your new shelf. Even when Jiwon had presented another shiny allan wrench from another set of table he had saved after putting it together the week before, you were still bawling like a baby that it weren’t the same. The collection of bags under his eyes were at this point more extensive than your designer one that he had gifted you through the years. He took it all with the grace and braveness of a new dad, without ever letting you hear his complaints. 

Jiwon, your dear husband, he’s god sent, best you could’ve ever ask for so why was it you were screaming his name off the top of your lungs, muddling it with a strings of obscene curses? Well because it’s well into your 2nd hour of labor pain, which will only get worse from here as informed by your kind team of nurses. The insane hours of pain feels much like the wave crashing the shore, except, instead of the soothing water of the ocean and sunshine of the beach, it was waves of fire, and knives, and molten lava because all you could feel is searing pain. Jiwon sits beside you, his face had contorted into something so twisted he might as well check himself in for some surgery to morph it back to the handsome face he possessed before dropping all his schedule to rush to your side.

“Baby, does it hurt mu-” His whisper chopped off as quick as it had surfaced by a small yelp elicited by your nails digging into his palm. Now he had braved probably just as much pain as you had letting you clawed at him, pinched him, hold him to a point of bruising yet not even a whimper of complain. He knows whatever discomfort he might feel will never, ever be worthy enough to compare to what you’re about to go through.

“Does it hurt, Jiwon? Does it HURT? Are you seri- Oh my fucking shit. Are you being serious right now?” The audacity of this man to sit here and question whether or not you’re really in pain. Does he still not know how it work after the half an hour of you going into an hysterical rant, explaining in excruciating details of how babies are born?

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know it hurts a lot. What can I do?” 

“Do you, Jiwon? I just had three different people shoved their hand up my damn vagina in the last hour alone while humming “not ready yet” like I’m a freaking pie in the oven all the while being display like a freaking 150 pounds piece of really shitty art made by someone with no artistic sense whatsoever for everyone to see. Do you really know?” Damn, Jiwon would be proud with how fast and powerful you had just gotten that sentence out in one single breath if he weren’t so scare, being married to a rapper really has it perk.

“I’m sorry. I’m here, hit me, scream at me all you want okay? But you gotta calm down baby... The doctor said getting upset isn’t good for little Y/n. What can I do?” Instinctively, just as he had all these years when the world becomes a little too much for you to handle, Jiwon pulls you into his arms, never mind your harsh words or that his left palm is now bleeding from how rough your hold on his hand were. He places a kiss on your sweaty forehead, with the good hand running through your matted hair. If Jiwon could be pregnant instead, he would. 

He had always been the one bugging you to get pregnant, although never quite mad, Jiwon had gotten short with you once before when you expressed your nonchalantness with having kids. He wants to take it all back now. How could he be so selfish, how could he make you carry a life just because he wants a mini Jiwon or mini Y/n when you weren’t ready. He had forgotten seeing Hanbin and his wife went through so much trials and tribulation with their twins, or how hard it was on Chanwoo’s wife when she had complication with their first born so he so selfishly blamed you for still not having someone to call him “dad”. What a screw up he is for blaming you, the only person that was willing to take him at his best and at his worst without ever questioning his intention. 

“Get me some water... as much ice as you can.” You whimper out and he nods furiously, not knowing how else to help. A heavy sigh left your lips just as his shadow bolts out the door behind him. You know how harsh all this was on him, and of all his fears but the pain had blinded you for the past few hours.

“Baby, here.” He rushes back to your side, thankful to see a more rested form of his wife smiling back. Lifting a few spoonful of cold salvation to your lips, he settles happily when you lean into him as you satisfyingly crunches on the ice.

“Jiwon... I’m sorry.” You mewl out, much to his surprise. 

“Whatever for, honey? You did nothing wrong.” Eyes widen, for the first time since arrival he was met with your tearful features even with the gut punches your body was preparing to welcome the baby are still rolling in with full force.

“I-I know all I’ve been doing is yell at you. First all I do is complain, now I just yell and hurt you. I don’t want you to think this is me now... I said it before, I’ll say it now. I’m happy to be able to welcome my child with you, our child. I know I don’t say it enough, or at all, but Kim Jiwon, you’re an amazing person.”

“Stop it, love. I’m far from perfect. I always expect this thing to be easy breezy, you know? I’ve seen Jinhwan hyung did it, then Yunhyeong hyung... Even Hanbin, and June, and the maknae. I just, I don’t know. I guess it’s not as easy when we do it ourselves, huh?” That strange chuckle, signature of your husband rings out so dearly and suddenly your heart is at peace. You snuggle further into his chest despite the strange position you both had taken on with the soon to be gone bump in between. “Like I said before, you’re the most beautiful person in this world and I thank God everyday for giving me you.” 

You must be looking like a rag doll after a tsunami but his words and those loving eyes just make you feel like a million dollars. His fingers find their way back to your face pushing away a few stray strand of hair as they would always do before he so tenderly presses a gentle kiss on your lips. Jiwon holds it there for what felt like eternity as he lets his heart and soul sear you with all his love, only parting way once the footfall could be heard leading to your room. 

Once more you experience what could only be describe as a frog prepared to get dissected during bio class, what’s with being prod at, poke, and examine. Another 4 excruciating hours and a few laps around the maternity ward later to loosen your muscles, you were prepped and primed for the main event. The world feels like such a blur, as if suddenly the Earth had decided to go on a race with its sibling planets. Blurs of people running in and out of the room, blurs of faces telling you to push, blurs of the incessant beeping of all the machineries, blurs of pain. In the blurry faded world flashing in front of your eyes, his face remains clear as day right beside you. Jiwon has his arms around you like he always had been when he walked you through rough spots in life. 

For God knows why, your memories rushes back to the day you had thought your journey with him was to end, back to the days of being young and being careless. You had gotten tired of waiting, angry at him for always leaving but too foolish to realize there were millions of other solutions before separating. “Let’s break up” you had said simply and watched as he said simply, “No.” Before you had realized what was going on, he already had his arms around you before repeating one more time, “No.” You were angry at first, the blatant disrespect he was showing by refusing to hear you but then you broke down crying in his arms and held him the tightest you’ve ever held anyone. “My naive girl, what make you think pushing me away will be the answer to your pain of never having me around? Did you think that parting way forever will help you get over how much you miss me? Because let me tell you right now, if you love me as I do you, that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever come up with because i can’t even fathom how much it hurt not to have you in my life.” And he held you for the next hours as you both snuggling up on your old worn couch, then the rest of the night when you buried your head in his chest while listening to his sweet, sweet voice. “When you’re thirsty, you drink water. When you’re hungry, you eat. When you miss someone, you should be with them. I don’t get your ass backward logic, missy. Tell me right now, would you rather me leave right now, and I will if you do. I don’t want to force you into a relationship if you’re already decided you don’t need anymore.” Your response was to pull him closer and never let go.  Just like that night, Jiwon is right where he needed to be and he protects you in his arms even when he doubts that it will help, he holds you anyways. Through the exhaustion and through it all, you smile because you’re all each other got and simply, you’re better together as 3 and counting. 

Then the world stops. A single cry tears through the musty sweat filled air like the clearest bell and all either of you could hear was that cry. The weight of the world lifted off your shoulders when you see the smile on his face, a smile that said you had just been demoted to second favorite as the nurse hands over your bundle of joy. 

“She’s so perfect. God,  I said I wouldn’t cry. Look at me now.” Jiwon half guffaw half chokes on his own tears as he delicately places his lips on her forehead, finger gently caressing her fluffy cheeks. 

“She’s perfect, just like her dad.” You lean back, forgetting that stitches were being placed, that your lower half felt like it had been through a meat grinder. Watching Jiwon holding your sleepy baby close to his chest as he coos “Hi baby, I’m your dad”, you’d go through this again and again. There is nothing more precious in this world than bringing a new life into this world and nothing will surpass the joy of doing it with Jiwon. You’re sure the weeks to come will be both painful and exhausting but seeing the excitement in his eyes as he shows off your daughter to the boys, you know you’re in good hands. 

[thenickelportrust]

djfkdksl,, do you think we could get a sneak peek/drabble of a ricky kiss with a taller mc? because it seems it'll be a while before we get it in the game and i'm just super curious -- previous person

Technically I made a promise not to write any more shorts before updates are done… but today has been a li’l more stressful for me so I kinda wanted to relax and I’m gonna break this promise for the purpose of relaxation.

So, it’s a li’l vague, cause of possible spoilers, but here you go! (This entire week has just been a Ricky week for me and now it’s almost gonna be weird to have to go in and write with other character’s voices like dang, boy, way to take up an entire week.)

You readjust the wig in the mirror for the fifth time. You’re sure that nobody will recognize you, being a bit of a nobody yourself, but the danger is less that they see who you really are and more that they don’t see who you’re supposed to  be. You pull the card out of the jacket pocket once more, Eli Finelli- black hair, green eyes, and completely plain-looking despite their important status. But it’s that good ole Regular Doe aesthetic of theirs that made them an easy target for impersonation. Sure, the contacts are just about as uncomfortable as a gunwound in the shoulder, and sure, the wig itches like a whole herd of bugs have decided to throw a parade atop your skull, and sure everything about this outfit of his reeks of the Desert Pine Oasis mini-cologne bottle that they keep in their lapel but other than that it’s fine… 

What even is a ‘Desert Pine Oasis’, anyway?

From the smell you’d be more likely to label it ‘Someone Took a Big Bowl of Orange Juice and Just Dumped A Whole Lotta Lemons in It, Then Set It On Fire’. But, sure, ‘Desert Pine Oasis’ works well, too.

A quick buzz against the suite’s bathroom sink shows a blinking alert on the timer you set before the party starts.

You take a deep breath of the illogical landmass cologne and brace yourself against the sink. “Five minutes. In and out. You didn’t go through the trouble of tricking Finelli just to give in now. You can do this.” With that, you set a timer on your phone, five minutes, just like you said. All you need is to get close to Denise Washington, slip her the note, and run before anybody recognizes that you… aren’t you.

Five minutes.

Simple, right?

It seems so at first, at least. When you’re in the elevator and everything is quiet and peaceful, filled with just the metallic grinding noise of machinery and the soft, subtle jazz tunes that ironically don’t actually come from the elevator itself, but get louder and louder as you approach the bottom floor. The high-pitched ding, however, definitely comes from the elevator itself, and then…

Then everything gets a lot less simple.

You force a smile through the glaring, flashing, seizure-inducing lightshow that is the press, herded like animals between a series of velveteen ropes. The photographers stretch their arms out as far over the boundaries as they can before a gold-suited security guard inevitably shoves the offending limbs back into the line… is this what you must look like on the job? Ravenous- almost beastial with a kind of unhinged hunger for even just the blurriest of shots.

“That’s Eli Finelli!” Well, at least they’ve given you a kind of confirmation that the disguise works. “Eli!” “Finelli, over here!” “How does it feel to be invited back to Ms. Washington’s soiree after you split?” “Eli! What designer are you wearing?” “Any comment on the Igneous-fiasco?” “What are the plans for reconstruction?” “Eli Finelli!”

The combined pressure of light and sound assaulting your senses quickly gathers a migraine, it becomes harder and harder to force a smile through the thick layers of dizzying pictures and camera-clicks. You feel the need to loosen the bowtie around your neck. You feel like you can’t breathe. Like you’re suffocating under all this social weight. Struggling desperately to keep yourself from gasping and passing out, you try to think of something, anything, any point of clarity to help you answer this onslaught of questions. As if searching for an answer your eyes dart frantically towards the already-passing train of other VIPs in front of you, many of whom have congregated just outside the spotlight- a safe distance away from the intrusive inquiries while still being able to soak up all the glittering, front-page attention. A few of whom look upon you and the other slowly trickling-out fashionably-late-comers with grim grins of amusement. Among them-

Is that…

Ricky?

He stands there, looking politely disinterested in all the happenings around him, with his back turned to the press- and to you, chatting with an older woman in an expensive-looking suit who has long grey streaks running through her fluffed-back black hair. You squander the urge to call out to him- for all you know he and Finelli could be rivals, after all, and you can’t risk him recognizing you… But even just seeing him seems to calm your racing heart. Somehow, the screams seem less loud, and the camera bulbs shine less glaringly bright. When you turn to the others, you can smile with more ease. You can practically hear Ricky’s voice in your head- calm, assertive, collected. 

You pause in your step, surveying the crowd with your hands confidently placed on the sides of your belt as you’ve seen Finelli stand in press photos. “What a lovely crowd gathered here tonight,” You can see his charming smile, perfectly even and poised, you’ve practically memorized that quirk of his lips, and that makes it easy to mimic, “I’m afraid I don’t have time to answer all your questions right now. Besides, tonight to celebrate Denise- not myself! Please, friends, wait for an official report or hearing, and then I’ll  be happy to supply. But for now, let’s focus on the hostess, shall we?”

When you walk away, they call at your back, but you can barely hear them. Instead you find your eyes continually flickering towards Ricky, who you can now see wears a weary look of exhaustion whenever his face is turned from the cameras. Subconsciously you can feel your feet trying to guide you over towards him, but you school yourself into walking a straight line. Denise Washington, you just have to find…

You subconsciously glance over to him one more time- and one time was enough, because at that moment Ricky looks up from the ground and spots you over the shoulder of his companion. You freeze up, and the person behind you nearly crashes into your back as you try and fail to tear your eyes away. Ricky’s gaze narrows, and you watch as his expression shifts between varying levels of confusion.

You should look away. If you look away and fade into the crowd right now he won’t recognize you. You’ll just be another face in the crowd. You can do what you came here for and-

Too late. His eyes quickly go wide with surprise and you can see by the sheer shock painted across his face that he’s either recognized you, or seen a ghost… Then again, maybe you could count as both right now. He turns to the woman, says something quick and quiet before walking away from her- towards you.

Which is your cue to get outta there.

You try to slip into the crowd, in fact, you make it two ‘Excuse Me’s’ and one ‘Pardon’ deep before a hand catches your arm. Turning brings you face to face with a very confused, and, if it were at all possible, even more surprised Ricky Dempsey.

The idea of trying to keep up the charade is briefly considered and quickly set aside, he’s got you and trying to play it off would only make you look more suspicious. Still, you can’t risk being exposed. “Mr. Dempsey! What a pleasure to see you,” You turn around and grasp his hand in what might appear to any onlooker as a friendly handshake. “It’s really been so long, how I’d love to catch up in private sometime.” You give Ricky a pleading look, hoping against hope he gets the message.

Ricky, for his part, recovers quickly, and that practiced smile you’d imitated just moments before spreads over his lips. “If it isn’t Eli Finelli,” You practically sigh in relief. “What an… absolute surprise to run into you here. I must say, I almost didn’t recognize you at first…”

“Ah, yes, well, it’s been quite a while.” You wave the comment away quickly, “Now, as lovely as it is to see you I should really be greeting our dearest hostess.”

But he doesn’t let go of your hand… and you can’t say you aren’t reluctant to force him to do so. 

“Come now, Finelli, it’s been too long for you to just… run off, like that.” Ricky counters, “Why don’t we… have a little chat, first?”

He squeezes your hand, almost imperceptibly, and you… You just sigh, “Alright.” and speak in your own voice, instead of the fake, high-and-mighty accent you’ve been putting on for Finelli. 

“Fantastic,” Ricky also seems to lose a little of his grandeur, but his is quickly recovered with a clearing of the throat, and too-slow-for-others but somehow too-soon-for-you release of your palm as he adjusts his tie instead. “Follow me. I know somewhere a bit… quieter.” He seems to completely lose his façade for a moment, nearly tossing a wayward glare to the press before he remembers that the two of you are in public- and that Ricky’s got as much a disguise to keep up as you do. With that same, strained smile he guides you almost effortlessly through the crowd. You can’t help but notice that people seem to part for him, even when they don’t realize it all it takes is a calculated wave of the hand and they’ll step aside with laughing apologies. Soon, the two of you stand in front of one of the gaudy-gold-clad bouncers, but Ricky flashes an invitation and speaks a few words too quick for you to catch- and the guard steps aside. He waves for you to follow him into what appears to be a previously-closed off ballroom in the hotel’s lobby, the guard meant to keep you out even holds the door open for the two of you as you enter. By the time you look back- the door has already been slammed shut once more.

“How the hell did you manage that?” You try not to sound very impressed as you turn around to Ricky with a relaxed smile on your face. Already the quiet that the sealed room provides makes it easier to breathe, alleviating some of the tension between your shoulder blades. Ricky, however, looks just as tense as he was outside. He leans stiffly against one of the tables, arms folded and lips pressed into a thin line while he stares you down. 

When you meet his eyes, he looks to the floor. “I could ask you the same thing.” He sighs deeply, and finally looks your way, “Do I even want to know why you’re dressed like Eli Finelli?”

Several excuses go through your head. Several excuses that would all be fairly logical and easy-to-explain. Several excuses that would probably be a lot better, and a lot smarter, than what you actually do- but you’re tired. Tired from this case and all the strain it’s put on you, and tired from having to keep up all these pretenses. You can barely remember the last time you had a quiet moment with Ricky, and part of you is happy that he’s just messed up your entire plan. Happy that he’s standing there, leaning against the table in one of his fancier suits, the bright, empty ballroom light falling across his face at a slant that makes the shadows look even more prominent by his nose and under his chin, looking as impeccable as always- if not a little moreso for the fancy occaison, though you practically didn’t think it was possible.

So you do the illogical thing, you grin and saunter towards him with a sly chirp to your voice, “What? This not your kinda thing?”

Ricky does his best to look surprised and annoyed that you just very obviously sidestepped his question, but even you can see the smirk tugging valiantly at the corners of his lips, “Not quite, no.” Ricky shrugs, looking a bit more relaxed as he settles into an easy banter. You’re practically toe to toe with him now, bright, icy blue eyes that seem uncharacteristically warm to for the color, “I think I much prefer you without the disguise.”

For all your grandiose speech and setup, the quick compliment catches you off guard, and the most you can reply with is a less-than-intelligible “Uh…” Followed by the brilliant quick recovery of “Thanks?” And what will inevitably amount to at least a week of crippling self-shame and embarrassment-fueled regret.

At least Ricky seems to get a kick out of it, a quiet, almost sarcastic snort slipping out as he tries to keep from laughing. Tries, that is, and fails.

“Well, wow, Ricky, you don’t have to laugh at me for it…” You grumble, but inevitably find yourself holding back a giggle-fit as well. Ricky pushes himself off the table, and suddenly the two of you are nose-to-nose and you’re watching those bright blue eyes of his once more. Almost subconsciously you reach a hand up and wrap it around the side of his jacket, grabbing onto it with a bit more stress than intended. Though you say nothing your gaze flickers down once towards his lips before being caught up again in his stare. The slightest of nods and you begin to lean down and-

Ricky steps away, nearly making you stumble forward into the table. “Well, now, I suppose I wouldn’t want to keep you from… whatever story all this requires.” You just manage to catch yourself, fingers slipping from his coat as he walks away, straightening his tie. He glances back at you, with a smug, self-satisfied smirk as you give him a shocked and frankly disappointed frown. 

“Oh, you’re cruel, you know that?”

Ricky chuckles, this time unrestrained, as he turns back towards you. It’s a rare and happy sound, one that you’re proud to say you’ve only ever really heard while you’re around. In a moment you feel his hands reach up and cup around the sides of your jaw, tugging you down as he stretches up to press his lips to yours. Again, he catches you off guard, as you’ve no doubt he was intending to do. Still, you use what you can to your advantage, wrapping your arms around him and lifting him ever so slightly to get a better angle. You savor the familiar feeling, and for a moment allow yourself to forget that you’re wearing someone else’s skin right now. Because now, you can feel like yourself once more- slipping back into a well-known comfort as all the stress and pressure and fear of discovery melts away until it’s just you and Ricky in this empty room. You close your eyes, and then even the unfamiliar room fades away- until all you feel, all you know for this brief moment in time, is that comforting, easy bliss.

When he pulls away, setting back down on his own feet, you’re still reluctant to let go. “How else am I supposed to keep up with you?” He asks in a quiet whisper, afraid to break the almost sacred silence. Your eyes flutter open slowly, letting time and place wash back in at a relaxed pace. Even then, the reminders of where you are only seem to make your grip tighten on the back of his jacket. Ricky’s eyes flicker around your face for a moment, “I wasn’t lying when I said I prefer you without all this. It feels… odd… when you don’t look like, well, you.”

You laugh, a little bitterly, “That makes two of us.”

Sadly, Ricky steps away- for real this time- and you feel a quiet pang as your hands slip away from him. “Well, then, perhaps I can help.”

“Help?” You speak the word slowly, each letter accented with confusion.

“Of course. You mentioned you were here to see Denise Washington, correct? Well, you may look the part of Eli Finelli but in the end, you aren’t them…”

“Your faith in my skills is remarkable.”

Ricky rolls his eyes “Oh, come now, it’s no comment on you. Finelli and Washington were lovers for quite some time and, as I’m sure we’ve established, it’s fairly easy to pick someone you care about apart from the crowd.”

“Lovers, eh?” You pass him a sly smile. “You saying you in love with me, Dempsey?”

Ricky coughs, and his hands- of course- reach up to run through his hair, a slight red tinting the edge of his ears, “That wasn’t the point and you know it.”

“But it was a point, wasn’t it?”

“Do you want my help to convince Denise Washington or not?”

You feign a bow, “Why, Mr. Dempsey, I would be delighted to have you accompany me on this grand night.”

“No amount of my help will save you if you keep acting like that.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Please don’t.” Ricky sighs heavily, shaking his head. “You may have a story to complete but I’d still enjoy keeping my reputation as it is as well, if you don’t mind.”

Your grin falls, “Right… reputation, of course.”

Ricky catches your look and glances away, he’s silent for a moment, arms once again crossed across his chest as he shrugs, “Before we go, I… suppose I should let you know- despite how… disruptive your visit is, this was, perhaps, the most enjoyable part of tonight.” The corner of his lip tilts upwards in a lopsided, crooked smirk- much less polished and poised than the even media-smile he flashes the press, “I’m… happy to see you here.”

You perk up almost immediately, “You know, Dempsey, it’s actually not that hard to give a straight compliment without adding in something backhanded, contrary to popular belief.”

Ricky snorts again, “Oh come now, I have a reputation to keep up, don’t I?”

“You’re starting to sound like me.”

“You’re a bad influence.”

“I’m the best influence.”

“Right…” Ricky uncrosses his arms, nodding towards the door once, “Well, then, shall we get going, Eli Finelli?”

You grin and step up behind him, falling with reluctant ease back into your disguise, “Of course, Mr. Dempsey. And, I do hope that we get to have a ‘chat’ like this again.”

“Of course. The sooner, the better.”

[trbl-will-find-me]

Every Exit, An Entrance 4/?

There are two (and only two) possibilities: either she led XCOM to victory and they are now engaged in a clean up operation of alien forces, or XCOM was overrun, clearing the way for an alien-controlled puppet government to seize control of the planet.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option.

In nine months, they have broken protocol once and only once, and even then, she’d argue extraordinary circumstances absolved them.

They had transgressed far more egregiously in the process of building XCOM. There were the little things, like the drawer in his dresser she’d claimed as her own, that they could pass off as matters of efficiency, practicality. Then, there are the incidents that are harder to ignore: November in Zurich, August in Rome, and of course, June in Berlin.

So, by comparison, they have behaved with absolute professionalism.

Time and place, she tells herself. Get through the clean up, deal with the Council, and you can deal with it then.

“Commander,” Shen’s voice crackles over the comm, snapping her from her thoughts. “Looks like we’ll be on target to deliver the new Firestorms by the end of the month.”

“Seems like that new art inspired the whole team. Give your daughter our thanks.”

The engineer chuckles. “I’m sure she’ll be pleased.”

“And so will Europe and Africa. Good work, Doctor.”

She breathes a small sigh of relief. Firestorms are bargaining chips --- good bargaining chips. Even if the plans were released, the crafts are still to resource-heavy to be built by a single member nation, and without Shen’s expertise, they’re far too difficult.

Even then, Shen’s brilliance hadn’t spared them a rocky first construction. Between salvaging enough parts and learning to negotiate the alien machinery, there had been more mishaps, accidents, and notably, explosions originating in engineering than anyone had thought possible. They’re all fortunate the fire containment system is well-maintained.

She shakes her head, smiling to herself, and turns her attention back to the tracking terminal in front of her. The skies are quiet, but they’ve begun to detect strange energy readings from cities that had previously been sites of alien incursions. Something is nagging at the back of her mind, something she’s forgotten, something that she hopes this might snap back into focus.

Her fear, her greatest fear, is another ambush, a new landing of alien forces even stronger than the ones they have already seen. She fears being overwhelmed, unable to defend effectively against an invader whose technological prowess still greatly outstrips their own. It is why the psi ops still train, why the lab has nearly free reign to pursue more in-depth analyses of recovered artifacts, and why she intends to have global Firestorm coverage by the end of February. She just has to keep the Council off their tail long enough to make it happen.

The energy reading flashes across her screen, but it’s gone too quickly for their recon network to pinpoint a location beyond the most general level. Asia, she thinks. Good. Very helpful. Not like Asia’s huge, or anything.

Still, she sets her datapad on the console and opens the media aggregator. Scanning the headlines, she’s at a loss to find anything out of the ordinary. Even a more detailed search of side stories fails to add anything to the puzzle. Whatever’s happening, it’s not a problem yet.

“Commander,” Vahlen’s voice sounds in her ear. “We’ve completed the protein analysis of the carapace armor. We believe we may be able to resynthesize it in a flexible form, but we’ll need more time.”

“Excellent, Doctor. Thanks for the update. Keep working at it.”

“Understood.”

Moira Vahlen has always worried her. It’s not that she doubts the woman’s intelligence or capability, and certainly not her absolute dedication to her work, a passion bordering on reverence. Without her keen mind, they would never have made the kinds of gains that they had in the fight against the invaders. Still, her sheer delight in employing the interrogation device was unsettling to say the least.

“High intelligence, low wisdom,” Central once said to her when she’d expressed her misgivings.

“More like: high intelligence, wisdom is a dump stat.”

“That’s what they pay you for.”

She thinks back on that conversation more often than she would like to admit.

There are other worries, though. Allowing the men brief periods of leave to make their way through downtown Manhattan always has its risks, chief among them the risk of exposure. Kansas State provides a veneer of plausible deniability for the range of accents and languages, but one drink too many, and her soldiers are liable to expose them all with one too many tales told just a little too loudly. There is the matter of the Council and the research, a matter that eventually cost her her freedom.

And there is the fact that, at the end of the day, she’s forgotten how to relax. She doesn’t know what to do with herself if there’s not some crisis to respond to. She’s afraid she’ll lose her edge, go soft, and when something does happen, as she’s certain it will, she won’t be ready.

It’s not that she misses the invasion, not at all. She is grateful that the world is safe, for now, save for its own machinations. She is grateful to no longer sleep with the sounds of screaming in her ears, the images of soldiers and civilians alike cut down in their tracks by plasma weapons at best, a Berserker’s fists at worst.

But she can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t the end, that it isn’t over. This is a respite, a lull, and they’re wildly unprepared for what’s next. It’s just a feeling, of course. There is no evidence to back it, save for the energy readings and even she can admit those might be harmless anomaly.

That knowledge does nothing to soothe the pit in her stomach every time she wakes. Always with a start. Always with the feeling that something is wrong.

She knows she isn’t the only one the war has taken a toll on. She doesn’t see Hershel without medkits hanging from her belt, or Bernard without a shoulder holster. Martin’s reliance on Aleve to keep the headaches associated with suppressed psionic abilities is getting to be all too common knowledge. Even on the best of days, there’s a haunted look in Royston’s eye, something the Commander doubts will ever truly disappear.

Then there’s Central, whose smile is a little less easy, whose jokes have taken on a darker edge, who still thinks nothing of taking a double shift as insurance.

Yes, they’ve won the battle, no doubt, but they’ve all paid in blood.

And she can’t shake the sense that the real war is still coming.

--

Two days later, and he still isn’t speaking to her, outside of the most necessary interactions. They keep to separate shifts on the bridge, and he makes himself scarce when she’s out and about. He goes on a bender that leaves them low on liquor and Kelly breaking up ever escalating Royston-Bradford shouting matches.

She is lucky the crew has not followed his lead. 

If anything, the men and women under her command have embraced her, adopted her as one of their own. She has been called on to mediate disputes about the world before ADVENT, to prove her worth at darts, to entertain them all with stories of their predecessors. She has had company at lunch and dinner, and more quietly proffered cups of coffee than she can count.  In truth, she suspects Kelly and Royston of having more than a hand in the gestures, though she can only feel gratitude towards them for their efforts.

She is not alone.

Herlihy gets the debris cleared, making way for Rilke to start on the Proving Grounds facility. There is a minimum of difficulty, save for a few busted knuckles.  Tygan and Shen come through with a means of contacting other Resistance cells, and they are off and running with some scavenged equipment, and a full facility next on the build queue. For being a week out of the tank, things are progressing well enough.

She is not sure whether she should take this as a sign of imminent danger. She has learned time and time again not to underestimate the aliens. If they could decimate the Kansas base, it is well within their power to rip the Avenger from the skies, to turn its crew on each other, to dash them into the ocean somewhere far from land --- or worse, into a city center.

She wakes one night to the roll of thunder and the patter of rain against the hull. She laces her boots and shrugs on a nylon shell, then makes her way out and down. She passes Royston, half asleep on a monitoring console, Central’s coat draped over her shoulders, likely by the man himself.

It is third shift and the ship is quiet. ROV-R chirps at her as she passes through engineering.

“I’ll be right back,” she says, as if the tiny robot might harbor concerns. “I just need a minute.”

Undeterred, it buzzes alongside her, hesitating only as she crosses to exit onto the ramp.

“I’ll be fine, ROV-R. Go back to Shen.”

After a moment’s thought, it pushes on at her side.

Gently, she lowers herself onto the deck of the ramp, the chill of the metal seeping through her pants. She pulls her knees towards her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and draws in a deep breath, enjoying the petrichor hanging heavy in the night air.

She tries not to focus on loss. It’s not productive, and it fails to take into account all of the good that still remains. She’s been freed from the aliens’ control, she’s been shown kindness, and she has capable senior staff.  Save for the damnable headache, she’s in good health --- maybe even better than before she was taken. The memory of wires and needles blinks into existence, but she shakes her head, willing it away.

Not now. We’re not thinking about that now.

She scrubs at her eyes. The new crop of rookies is good – better than good, even. They’re brave and ferocious and dedicated, even if their aim does leave something to be desired. They know the odds, and yet, here they are. She is grateful for each and every one of them, for the sacrifice they are willing to make in the hopes of a better world.

She’s seen what happened to former XCOM personnel, at least insofar as Central’s been able to ascertain, thanks to the archives. Bernard was killed defending civilians outside of Nice six weeks after the base was attacked.  Hershel and Molchetti took their own way out once ADVENT began seeking XCOM’s psionic operatives. Martin was captured, tortured and experimented on; the file on the incident is attached to his service record, but she’s had neither the heart nor the stomach to read it. Royston was the last surviving member of Strike One, working as a Resistance operative until the end. She’d been killed during a retaliation, though the wound had been suspiciously inconsistent with ADVENT’s weaponry. Her file notes she’d been tracking an informant; the Commander wonders if it’s the same one Sally had hunted.

She doesn’t want the new faces she’s surrounded by to meet the same ends.

Her train of thought is cut short by the sounds of rustling in the bushes not far from the ship and she realizes too late that she’s completely unarmed. ROV-R bobs overhead, his capacitors beginning to crackle in preparation for discharge. She imagines dying here, on the ramp of the Avenger, to some unknown thing in the dark because she was too stupid to remember a pistol; the idea probably shouldn’t make her laugh, but that’s what eeks out amidst the terror. She can’t move, she can’t yell, but she can sit and laugh at her own stupidity.

It is neither a ferocious animal nor a crazed madman that emerges from the bushes. It is not some lost ADVENT bastard, either. Instead, it is Krieger and Thomas, covered in dirt and leaves, one looking self-satisfied and the other underwhelmed. They both turn a bright shade of red upon noticing her, tripping over one another’s words to explain themselves.

She just shakes her head. “I didn’t see anything, and I don’t know anything. Though, I’d get back inside before you trip the perimeter alarm.”

She takes comfort in the fact that some things never change.

Lighting cleaves the sky in two and rain begins to pour slantwise onto the ramp. ROV-R nudges at her shoulder, the message clear: time to go inside. She pushes herself up slowly, reluctant to let the storm pass without an audience, simultaneously loath to leave and absolutely unwilling to traipse through the bridge soaking with rain water.

Outside of engineering, she pries off her boots, hoping to avoid making an excess of noise as she passes the bar. She has no idea where her XO is, but she’d prefer not to have a confrontation at this time of night. She makes it back to her quarters without incident, and drapes the shell over her desk chair, then slips off to sleep to the sounds of the storm.

[noplanwithavan]

A BALKAN EDUCATION

I was pretty down on Albania in my last post. But journeying north, further from the coast, its redeeming features soon began to reveal themselves. The wilderness, dramatic beauty, political complexity and sheer “otherness” can’t fail to win you round. In fact, the entire Balkan region has woven itself firmly into our affections. In the last month we have journeyed through Albania, to Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia and finally Croatia.

My knowledge of former Yugoslavia - and the rifts and shadows cast by Europe’s last war - was sketchy to say the least. In many ways, its easy enough to ignore. The countries we have seen in the past few weeks share more similarities then differences. Driving across the many borders you see only gradual progressions in the food, landscape and slavic tongue. After a while the currencies too blend into each other, and its hard to keep track of the respective Leke, Denar, Lev, Dinar, Mark, and Kuna. The mediterranean olive oil and oranges we have become accustomed to have been supplanted by soft fruits and a diet rich in dairy. Just as one bucolic village with haystacks and higgledy-piggedly houses made from wattle and daub looks much like the next, just across the border, so too the roadside markets, bursting with cherries, strawberries, peaches, nectarines and apricots. In Kosovo we were given a guided tour of the local cuisine by a stunned supermarket shop assistant. “Why are you here?” she asked, fussing over the girls and high-5’ing them on account of their red t-shirts, emblazoned with the double-headed Albanian Eagle. Tourists are still a novelty in Europe’s newest country (whose independence was only recognised in 2008, and is still disputed by neighbouring Serbia). She followed us around the aisles, like a personal assistant, pointing out what food we should try - the best Ajvar (stewed aubergine and paprika relish), which brand of Kos (goat’s yoghurt). Yet study the war graves, etched with young men bearing kalashnikovs, the dates glaring out at you, impossibly raw and recent. Delve into any conversation in the Balkans and watch how you are immediately brought up short by an impregnable wall. We asked that same young shop assistant directions to Visoki Dečani - a UNESCO-listed Serbian monastery just outside the town. “What monastery?” she replied wide-eyed. “There is no monastery here.” It was only when we drove the short mile to the site that we understood. The entrance was under armed guard by the KFOR (Nato-funded Kosovan Peace Force). Following the 1997-99 war with Serbia, newly-independent Kosovo bitterly resents the continued presence of any Serbian who has chosen to remain on their territory. Inside this fortified enclave, was possibly one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen. Over 1,000 orthodox 14th century frescos adorning the walls, inlaid with gold and lapis from Afghanistan. One depicted a unique scene, “The only painting of its kind in the world,” our Serbian host beamed. It was Jesus bearing a sword. It wasn’t that our Kosovan supermarket girl didn’t know about this monastery. She wasn’t allowed to tell us she knew. And we were stupid for asking.

Kosovo was a special place. Somehow the complete lack of other tourists and top sights to see made it all the more beguiling. There were towns which appeared to offer little in the way of attractions, but whose charm lay in their sheer differentness. In Peja we were blinded by the ritzy dazzle of wedding dress shops, stopped to watch a man repair my broken sandal, witness a child bare-foot cleaning the gutter, and paused before an open shop door where inside young girls stretched and cut baclava pastry on a cloth the size of a ping pong table. The girls revel in one foreign word in particular which they are adept at pointing out on signs. It’s only now, 9 months in, that they’ve shown any interest in being able to read. Probably not unrelated to the fact we’ve eased up on the whole home-schooling thing big time. It’s too hot now for a start, and I’ve kind of ceded defeat, acknowledging that Marcus is far better at teaching than I am. He’s more patient, and doesn’t suffer from the frustration that it all seems so piecemeal. Like the fact you teach something one day and it’s disappeared entirely from consciousness the next. I have the word “Shitjet” to thank for this breakthrough. It means “for sale”, but they find it relentlessly hilarious. Sometimes they try and weave the word “shit” into conversation. “This honey is shit,” one of them might remark to a chorus of giggles. When I rebuke, the perpetrator retorts, “But I meant this honey was for sale!”

One highlight has been Albania’s Accursed mountains. By far the most impressive peaks we have seen so far on this journey. Just the name whets your appetite. They rise up before you like a vast vertical wall, softened only by a fringe of pine trees climbing the lower slopes. Above shark-like jaws of rock, arranged in snaggletoothed rows, guard the border to Montenegro beyond. Rain prevented any serious trekking, but just soaking up those mountains shrouded by mist was enough. Warned to stay away from one side of the valley because of the very real danger of brown bears, we scampered around on small excursions, foraging for elderflower, wild strawberries, lemon thyme, oregano and mint. The effort just to get here is testimony to the sense of rugged isolation. The only road in requires you first to travel 2 and a 1/2 hours on a ferry ride across the dammed Lake Koman. And the only way to continue is to walk up and out across the pass to Montenegro. Passing mountain villages dotted with haystacks, houses with wooden shingle rooves, and women wearing traditional Albanian dress, we bounced rather than drove the road to Lake Koman. Arriving by nightfall it was a surreal experience, agricultural scenes abruptly giving way to mining machinery and finally a kind of post-apocalyptic industrial dead end, as we emerged by a hydro power plant. At first I thought we must have taken a wrong turn, but we were waved down and sold a ferry ticket by an obliging young man, who told us to continue towards the dam and park overnight on the ferry. Following his scant directions to “Park in the middle, at the back,” we crawled our way up an ever more desolate road and into an endless tunnel. Just as it crossed our mind we may have been scammed out of €70, we emerged, and implausibly spy a tiny ferry moored alongside the dam wall.

The next morning we are awoken early as other passengers begin to embark. The girls refuse to take off their Albanian t-shirts, and here they attract much admiring attention. A group of young Albanians stop to chat and exchange high 5’s with the girls. One is very pally, with a comedy Estuary accent, “Alright, how you doin’? Yeah mate, yeah, right,” he reels in effortless patter. It transpires he’s spent a few years on a building site in Kent, and despite his status as a self-proclaimed economic migrant, has rather surprising views on the Brexit question. “It’s the Bulgarians mate, taking all the work and that.”

The ferry ride is incredible, just how I imagine the fjords of Norway may look if we ever get that far North. The compact nature of the top-deck makes for a friendly, communal atmosphere. While the young Albanians treat us to rousing nationalistic songs, putting paid to our peaceful surroundings, the girls befriend a group of Scottish pensioners. One man, Brian, is particularly indulgent, and becomes drawn into their play. Before long they graduate from roaring loudly at him, to clambering all over his person, inspecting his jewellery, trying on his shoes, and finally taking pictures of his body parts (all decent) in order to reconstruct later into a collage. A few days later Lulu draws a picture, and labels it “Brian” in her sketchbook.

Braving the bears, one day we dare to head further into the folds of the Accursed mountains, to hike from the village of Çeremi near the Montenegro border. The journey up the rough track is bone-crunching and spliced with the danger of a river crossing. Summoning courage, Marcus revs the engine and plunges across, grating the underside of the van. Its at times like these I wish we had gone for a 4WD. Felicity Evans you were right! When we can go no further we stop, and try to continue on foot. But within minutes the rain, which has never strayed far, is back, and we are soaked to the skin. Like so often on this trip, unwittingly our misfortune presents a unique opportunity. We find ourselves taken in by an Albanian family, sheltered from the rain, fed and housed for the night. Our “saviour” so to speak is some sort of scout, on the lookout for reckless souls such as we. Instinctively you sense there will be a catch, but we opt to follow him regardless, curious as to how things will play out. He is wearing the most incongruous outfit, given the location - a black baseball jacket with pinstripe trousers and black leather shoes. It looks even more ridiculous a few moments later when he confidently coaxes us across another river bed, where this time our van becomes firmly lodged. With a shrug he attempts to push us out, and the wheel spin flings mud all over his smart office wear. We’re taken to a farmhouse, and find ourselves in a small, low space where a family leap to their feet to greet us. A stove dominates the room, which, by the look of the beds made into seating, and the sink in the corner, serves many purposes. With no common language to fall back on, it is a bizarre mixture of mime where we play as best we can the theatre of hospitality. Our “scout” introduces the family, and we believe we can discern the relationships: a man, his wife, two daughters and his sister. The girls break the ice best, drawing the little 5 year old girl, Linari, into play by dressing up the family’s cat. The room is roasting and while we strip off, a round of buttermilk drinks are laid before us. It’s a challenge to say the least - rich, creamy, cold milk with an island of butter bobbing below a greasy surface. I watch as Marcus slurps a lump into his mouth, trying to disguise a grimace. Next comes the home-brew - distilled Reiki - followed swiftly by Turkish coffee. For the last month I’ve dismissed this coffee due to the fact it tastes like drinking warm earth, but out of the 3 drinks on offer it is by far the most palatable.  “Hmm,” remarks Marcus. “We’ve got all the makings of a deconstructed White Russian here. Shall I go and fetch the cocktail shaker from the van?”

The dairy theme continues. For dinner, the family lay a table top on the floor, scatter cushions around and gesture for us to sit down while they load up food and perch behind to watch us eat. There is pasta with cream, a yoghurt soup, salad and another dish of cheese melted in butter. That night we are shown to our “accommodation” in a back shed, consisting of two damp rooms with no lights. The girls room comes with bunkbeds and a chainsaw in the corner. Ours has a man’s clothes hanging up and musty-smelling bed clothes. The next morning things turn sour - and this time it has nothing  to do with the rancid salted yoghurt and bowl of melted cheese we are served for breakfast. The “guide” wants us to pay €110 for our stay, which by Albanian standards buys you 2 nights in a slap-up luxury hotel. It’s all a bit tense, as we only have the equivalent of €40 in Albanian currency, so we sit around for a while trying to ascertain whether they will allow us to leave or if things might turn nasty. In the end it is only the children who say their farewells without a trace of awkwardness. Little Linari has become attached to a pair of sunglasses, which the girls gracefully donate, blissfully unaware of the deals their parents have struck.

We still have the odd day of meltdown, when tiredness, endless questions or long hours of driving frazzle all of our nerves. But generally things are pretty harmonious, and the girls are markedly better at the art of negotiation now. Elsie in particular has blossomed in confidence, talking and chatting to people we have just met in a way she never would have done before we left on this trip. I’m amazed at how well they take it all in their stride. We are told “Twin team Albania” must remove their t-shirts in Serbia - an inflammatory act in the current climate. At the Kosovan border the guards purposely don’t stamp our passports to prevent problems later on. Elsie and Lulu kind of absorb it all, our whispered asides at border controls, and attempts to explain the tensions. They have an imprecise but workable understanding of both religious divides and communism now. Our favourite capital city has been Tirana, in Albania. Small, but relaxed, green and leafy, we took the girls to study the socialist realism paintings in the National Art Gallery, pointing out and discussing what they thought about the fresh-faced men and women depicted as mighty, eager workers. There have been so many border controls - including one where we walked from Croatia into Bosnia just for a coffee across the narrow Una river. The first thing they do, after studying the flag, is to ask, “So are they Muslim or Christian here then?” just to ascertain whether its safe to get out their Albanian t-shirts and football emblazoned with the flag of Kosovo. A few times we’ve just pulled off a motorway by a toll pay point and one of them will sigh, “Crikey, Is this another country again?”

But the onslaught of change and unrivalled hospitality doesn’t seem to faze them. Stopped by the Danube in the Serbian town of Donji Milanovac one day, we watched the girls scramble around a playpark, weaving between an army of gun-toting young boys. One father, with an 8 year-old son, engaged Marcus in conversation. Before long we had an invitation back to his house for a drink. I sometimes wonder what Elsie and Lulu make of these situations - what they sense when we find ourselves in odd places, trying unfamiliar home-made specialities, never knowing where we will be, who we will meet from day to day; following their parents into the unknown. Where the adults are nervous and thick-tongued, they act without hesitation - goofing around with 8 year-old Michaelo, who speaks impressive English. Too impressive in some respects - skidding his bike and yelling “What the fuck!” with obvious relish.

We have now racked up 16 countries in 9 months. In that time over 100 camping spots have been our home for a night or longer. I like to think we leave each one as we find it. Our only markers a tell-tale puddle of run-off water, and a small pile of swept scrapings from the van floor. Shells, nuts, pebbles; downtrodden relics from the recent past. But in truth, it is not all we have left behind. Our belongings are scattered all over Southern Europe - clothes, 4 pairs of shoes, tweezers, a stool, shovel, bodyboard, hats, sunglasses, 3 towels, 2 cheese graters, and an iPhone. All sacrificed along the way, through sheer carelessness or neglect. Each day a small parade of objects dance past us through the door, carried away to be used as props in Elsie and Lulu’s latest show. Before we depart, Marcus and I attempt to do a minesweep of the van’s curtilage, but invariably we fail to retrieve the odd thing, left behind like a discarded offering. Our plan of attack has been to tax their pocket money instead. It seems the only way to inculcate some concept of personal liability. So far Lulu has replaced her own hat and my tweezers from her savings, and Elsie saved up for 2 weeks to buy Marcus a new shovel. Their new found wealth has also proved a useful safety net for us. On at least 3 occasions we’ve had to raid their reserves after finding ourselves caught short at borders or toll booths.

There is a new urgency now, as we can sense our time is running out. The loop of the Balkans took as as far inland as Bulgaria. Our destination was the a tiny village in the countryside near Vratsa, visiting an old University friend of Marcus’s, Cen Rees. Despite having no contact for 10 years, it was effortlessly easy to be in his company, along with his wife Chrissy, daughter Islay and baby Olly. Another of their UK friends, Karen, was staying with her daughter, Tenzin, and we spent a glorious 4 days cooking outside, walking in the meadows and swapping stories. The simple way they lived their life - rich in time, not in possessions - was a pleasure to behold. The girls made mud pies, searched for horned vipers and spent many happy hours studying the contents of the long-drop compost toilet by shining down a torch. Little Islay’s biggest hero is the chubby survival specialist Ray Meers. While Cen treated us to a demonstration of fire-lighting “a la Ray”, Lulu picked up Islay’s considered way of speaking, with a Eastern European twang.

We have now moved on to Croatia. It feels like one big tourist theme park compared to the rest of former Yugoslavia. But at least here we can feel the breeze of the Adriatic coast, as the heat of summer begins to bite.

[oumakokichi]

About the "i wa uma" puzzle, wasn't the safe in Amami's inaccessible classroom until late game when the door was wrecked? So Ouma couldn't have seen the video, he found both clues but not what they meant. He knew it was important though and the note he left behind helped out Saihara tremendously with that timer counting down on them

Ordinarily it would seem that way, but it’s pretty certain Ouma cheated his way into the room! After all, the safe puzzle was something that required actually standing in the room and witnessing with his own two eyes in order to solve. There was no way for him or anyone else to know what kind of puzzle was in Amami’s research lab without actually, physically standing there and examining both Zodiac dials in person, and then trying out the possible combinations.

The note left by the safe that says “there’s a hint hidden in the school” seems to be written in his same handwriting too. While it’s perhaps possible that Tsumugi set up the “’i’ wa ‘uma’” clue herself, it’s actually very doubful. After all, Amami was already dead by Chapter 1, and the clue didn’t show up until Chapter 2. It was definitely not present when they all attempted the mini-game for the first time in Chapter 1, back when Amami was still alive.

The video was a “survival priviledge” meant only for Amami’s own eyes, and the puzzle was supposed to be for him to solve, not anyone else–he even says in his own video that no other friends are allowed to watch it with him, meaning that anyone who was not Amami himself solving the puzzle and watching the video was working outside of Tsumugi’s expectations. Since Amami was no longer in the game after Chapter 1, it doesn’t really make logical sense that Tsumugi would provide the clues necessary for him to solve his own puzzle.

In addition, when the message changes from “’i’ wa ‘uma’” to “kono sekai wa Ouma Kokichi no mono,” in Chapter 4, the handwriting stays undeniably the same. There’s no difference in any of the hiragana; it’s written by the same person the whole way across. So it’s clear that these clues were being left by Ouma, rather than things he was just stumbling across.

As a result, the most likely answer is that Ouma broke into Amami’s lab and left those clues himself, and that he did so ridiculously early into the game. As for the “howdunnit,” and why he could reach Amami’s lab on the 5th floor even when it was officially locked off for all the other students, there are a few likely answers to that.

Where most of the school was off-limits to everyone else early on, we can assume by the massive amounts of items that Miu created for Ouma (and I do mean massive, because Maki and Saihara find tons of diagrams in the boxes in his room of things that he either had Miu make or was planning to ask her about until she stopped) that he was basically snooping around way, way beyond the limits of what anyone else expected.

Miu’s technology included everything he could’ve wanted to get where he needed to go. She created a remote control that could basically hijack any huge electronic device, like the Exisals, she created the three electric bombs that would disable things like Monokuma’s hidden cameras and any nearby sensors, and she created the electric hammers that could deactivate panels, locks, and anything else in the way. She also created a vital invention that Saihara and Maki don’t find until Chapter 6, in Ouma’s room: a vacuum-powered jar that could suck up Monokuma’s hidden cameras as Ouma went through the school, preventing them from sending nearly as much feedback to Monokuma.

With these tools, it’s easy to surmise that Ouma was reaching places he normally wouldn’t be able to access, even very, very early on–and he was careful enough about doing it that Tsumugi didn’t notice, because she really believed he wasn’t a threat to her plans until late into Chapter 5.

What we know about Ouma’s lab too is that it wasn’t anywhere within the normal boundaries of the school, but underground. His own lab doesn’t become accessible to Saihara and the others until Kiibo and the Exisals’ battle blows a hole in the floor, and Saihara stumbles across it by sheer luck.

By seeing that Ouma’s research lab was underground, clearly away from the rest of the labs which were either outside in plain sight or else on one of the normal school floors, and knowing that he definitely accessed his own lab before he died, we can further guess two things: 1.) Ouma’s lab being underground and so far removed was probably indicative of Tsumugi’s desire to set him up to be the villain from the start, and that’s why he was given a very “mastermind-like” location, and 2.) by finding access to this underground lair and tunnels, Ouma probably knew just about every nook and cranny in the school and could access things far more secretly and securely than the rest of them, even very, very early into the game.

Therefore, likely by both relying on the tools Miu created for him and his own knowledge of the school’s layout as he charted it out for himself, we can guess as to how Ouma reached Amami’s lab–but it’s a pretty sure bet that he did reach it. After all, he left the ‘’i’ wa ‘uma’” clue as early as Chapter 2, and in a location where he was positive Gonta would see it and tell the others about, knowing it would catch their attention enough that they’d probably remember it much later down the road, even after he changed its message in Chapter 4.

This means he definitely had to have entered Amami’s lab, and he definitely examined that safe for himself, solving the puzzle of the dials, possibly even trying all 144 possible combinations individually (we know he’s extremely good at mathematics since he likely memorized the 57-digit code Monokuma provided for the machinery bay) before finding the correct answer and leaving clues to it all around the school. He made sure Saihara and the others would find those clues even in case of his death, leaving behind a will/suicide note that directed them to the location of the other dial’s clue.

I myself initially thought he must only have actually, officially gotten into Amami’s lab by Chapter 4 at the earliest, since that’s when the 5th floor officially opened up, and I thought that by then he definitely would have had the Miu-technology required for him to get past the locked door. But considering “’i’ wa ‘uma’” comes up at almost the beginning of Chapter 2, and that in order to know that was the correct answer, he’d have had to have seen the dials for himself… I can’t reach any other conclusion than that he really did get there that early.

It’s really honestly astounding just how far ahead of the group he was the whole time, without ever giving himself away entirely. The fact that he was investigating and putting clues together to this degree while simultaneously carrying on such a good act that Monokuma and Tsumugi didn’t even catch on to what a subversive threat he was until much, much later in the game is absolutely incredible.

This is also part of why I still think SHSL Chessmaster is his most likely talent: only someone capable of planning and predicting everyone else’s moves miles ahead of his opponents would be able to do the things Ouma does. If he could write a 300 page script the size of a phonebook that predicted multi-route possibilities for how each and every one of his classmates would react during the Chapter 5 trial, I definitely wouldn’t put this level of planning and foresight past him either.

I hope this clears up matters! It’s easy to get mixed up about things in the later chapters because so much has transpired across the game, and it’s hard to keep track of everything. It was really fun to be able to write more about how Ouma pulled this off, so thank you for asking!

EDIT: I can’t believe I forgot to add the fact that Ouma can pick locks to this post. Basically, as long as he could cheat his way to the 5th floor using Miu’s technology and his knowledge of the school, actually getting into Amami’s lab wouldn’t have been any problem at all for him. He already showed he could pick the locks to Angie’s lab in Chapter 3, so picking the locks to Amami’s was perfectly doable. Just wanted to add this bit, since I felt it was important!

[neostriatum]

Aliit ori'shya tal'din

[AO3] [Dreamwidth]

Reconnaissance missions are never easy. On a far-flung planet in the Outer Rim, Obi-Wan thinks, is not much better. His troops and friends, however, can make his work downright pleasant.

Aliit ori'shya tal'din - "Family is more than blood." (Saying.)

All Mando'a translated at the end of the story.

--

It starts off as a reconnaissance mission. Simple enough, if not particularly easy – nothing in this war has been easy, and it draws a muted scowl across Obi-Wan’s face.

But, simple. Simple he could do.

Situating himself in the dense underbrush peppered near the edge of a glen, Obi-Wan gave another cursory scan to his surroundings with both his eyes and the Force. Only the usual eclectic mix of wildlife and the seeping edges of the Dark Side that the war brought with it answered him, and so he tapped the comm unit in his ear. “Alright, everyone,” Obi-Wan called out through the comms, “Just like the drills. I’ll see you at the end of Phase Two. Oya!”

He listened to the scattered repetition of oya! rippling into his earpiece, interspersed with the additional K'oyacyi and O’r taap muttered by the older soldiers. It would take a while for the confirmation to enter the busy comms on the 501st’s battlefield, but he was confident that the recipient push of Anakin’s Force presence to his inquiring pull would more than suffice as an update for now.

They were initially without aerial support; nothing for it, the Third Systems Army spread thinner than pre-holo paper, and the 212th would have to make do with naught but a trailing 501st for aid. Rex and Anakin were making good time mopping up the Separatist cells on the opposite side of the planet, but on a place nearly as big as Naboo, it could still be hours between their arrival and a call for help.

Those were critical hours, and so Obi-Wan had summarily dismissed the 501st from his initial plans, content to leave them as back-up for if something – hopefully not inevitably – went belly-up. They were needed on the other side of the planet, anyway, absorbed in a critical position that would make his and the 212th’s job easier. It was difficult to tell who was the foil to whom in this exercise of military strength. They couldn’t afford diverting so many troops to a single planet this far into the war, but their intelligence was scattered enough to warrant the Republic’s star team being sent to an ostensibly neglected planet not far from the industrial sector of the Outer Rim.

Brushing his fingers across the hilt of his saber in a bid for luck, Obi-Wan rose from his crouch, electing to take the long way around the shallow valley he had been directed to. His armor, beloved though it was, had been deemed too ostentatious and therefore a risk; he adjusted the dark cloak borrowed to him from Quinlan shortly after the meeting that decided upon this mission which splintered their forces into a loose clutch in the planet’s system, tossing the hood up with a deft flick of his fingers. Were it not for the heightened adrenaline that the solitude of his role in this engagement garnered him, the shadowed fall of the fabric would have been cosy.

As it were, it was yet another sensation to be pushed into deliberate ignorance, and Obi-Wan scaled the tree-speckled precipice with the cloak barely fluttering from his form. Small lizards and the odd bird peered at him in curiosity as he passed between them and the sparse greenery in an ostensibly random pattern. The Force ebbing around him showed no signs of higher-order sentient life – either organic or metallic – something that prickled the hair on the back of Obi-Wan's neck in unease.

The circumstances dictated that this section of the reconnaissance needed to be a single-man mission, the parameters of the data-seller’s security too narrow for even a squad to pass through without tripping several alarms. Obi-Wan paused, brushing sweat from his temple before it could drip into his eyes, and shook one sleeve up to check his chrono. Barely an hour had passed, but that should put Cody halfway through his own Phase One. It was likely to be busy on the commander’s end, so he scrolled through his contacts and connected with Waxer, instead.

“’Lek, alor?”

Obi-Wan listened for half a breath, cocking his head as he heard the muffled sounds of shuffling and the Force-aided whisper of hand signals passed between Waxer and the rest of Ghost Company. “Waxer,” He greeted him, “Tion'solet?”

A ripple in the Force, echoing discordantly the mundane communication he held with the trooper. His eyes fluttered, riding out the waves of information beheld in both streams. It was an easy thing to know the positive notes of the sitrep before Waxer conferred them to him, “Two-thirds of expected count.” A pause, tinged with amusement, “They seem distracted.”

“I’m sure Rex and Anakin will be pleased to know,” Obi-Wan hummed, lips tipping into a smile. A nudge in the direction of his old padawan confirmed as such, tangle of battle-fed emotions revealing the high of a well-earned victory, exchanged thought-quick with Waxer’s information. “Send my regards to Cody, will you?”

A huff was his answer, and more than enough to convince him that his own update was received. Obi-Wan tapped the comm off, and he obscured his chrono with a quick flick of his sleeve, resuming his pace to his destination. The Force was with him, a comforting tightness across the blades of his shoulders as he wove himself between the boulders and trees. Birds tittered quietly when they noticed him, more in tune with his Force-flickering presence than the sentient species he was accustomed to working with. They guided him, superficial snatches of thought serving as a confirmation to the poorly-trusted intelligence that the Clone Intelligence had provided them with.

He never liked these missions – at the very least, not during the war. Before, yes, an eloquent jumble of Force impressions from the Jedi Consulars briefing them which provided that subtle edge which made delicate negotiations less troublesome. Obi-Wan brushed aside a drooping fern, noting that the birds’ recollections were more numerous now. It felt a bit like treasure hunting, he mused, metal detector clicking away with dips and rises in frequency as one circled closer toward their goal. He let a soft note of gratitude drift toward the birds’ minds, smiling at the pleased chittering that he was answered with.

The door was well-hidden. Better hidden, in fact, than was indicated in the briefing. It was outside the norm for the Separatists, and indicated a more individual fellow with a penchant for anxiety. He settled in the niche twixt boulder and untended bush, an even exhale coaxing his mind to follow suit. Though all Jedi were taught the basics of using the Force to feel out mechanical items, and the inner machinery, some had a natural talent for it.

Such a talent was not Obi-Wan's, and it was only thorough practice that let his sense leak between the seams of the hidden door. There were ways of foiling Force-sensitives, and were simple if one knew what to implement. The fuzzy white noise filling his mind was difficult to parse – was it the usual jumping of electrons through wiring, the usual buzz of active electronics? Or was it something attuned to potential Force-sensitive visitors? Obi-Wan didn’t know, not immediately.

A beep from his earpiece skittered across his attention, jerking it away from his delicate tinkering of the door’s inner workings. Shuffling further into his hiding place, Obi-Wan tapped it twice; once to accept the call, once more to indicate radio silence on his end.

“Obi-Wan,” Cody greeted him, voice lowered in respect to his general’s position. It should be about the end of Cody’s first phase, and a quick check of the chrono confirmed this for Obi-Wan. “Me'vaar ti gar?”

“In the middle of knocking,” Obi-Wan huffed good-naturedly. The Force revealed to him his commander’s nod, in synchronicity with the acknowledging hum heard through the comms.

“ETA?”

He cocked his head, turning briefly back to the eddies surrounding the door, thinking upon his progress. “Less than fifteen.”

“I’ll call back in forty-five,” Cody reminded him as a sign-off, the click of a disconnected call in Obi-Wan’s ear.

It was a relatively comfortable amount of time, within the parameters of Obi-Wan's Phase Two. Anakin would have been better for the technical aspect of this branch of their plan, but his prowess on the field – and sheer, brute force chaos – was the better of Anakin’s proficiencies to balance the mission’s scope. They could afford the extra few minutes Obi-Wan needed to allot to himself for the fine trickery of electronic locks, provided Anakin’s proverbial, and misleading, storming of the gates was distracting enough to draw forces away from his former master.

Such a plan was something Anakin had agreed to with gusto, always willing to provide flashy back-up if it ensured some measure of Obi-Wan’s safety. Ahsoka, as the balancing leg of this enterprise, was coordinating ground troops with arriving aerial support to help cover any blind spots they may have missed. He was glad to have some old friends at his back, accompanying Ahsoka – there were fewer friends the longer this war ground on, lost to either the Force or the Sith. To have Bant leading the aerial strategization in the lull between her own duties to this sector of the Republic settled the ever-present unease Obi-Wan carried about the inherent flaws in intelligence-gathering. She had an eye for detail, and would guide Ahsoka into the finer nuances of its analysis, something Anakin had difficulty with due to his compulsion to solve the bigger picture first.

Hopefully, he thought, spying a route through the door’s circuitry and nebulous security codes, Anakin might absorb some of the Mon Calamari’s lessons by proxy.

--

The distant cacophony of victory vibrating through the Force drew a pleased uptick in Obi-Wan's mood. He had been correct in his estimation of time – the door took approximately six minutes longer than Anakin’s usual speed, but since it had marginally improved Obi-Wan's own best by nearly a minute and a half, he considered it a job well done.

His lips thinned out as he stalked the shadows of the twisting, barren corridors. There was just enough white noise from the copious amount of uninsulated technology lining the duracrete walls that a headache limned his thoughts. The Temple was, to use terminology borrowed from his padawans, “Jedi-proofed”. Walls bulked up with specialized insulators to maintain electrical resistance, lending a cocoon of tranquility to the inner sanctums of the Temple. The bunker he was forced to investigate was immensely distracting in comparison.

It made him press a cool finger to his temple in an effort to counteract the growing pressure in his head. He leaned into the ebullient mood of his nearby compatriots scattered across the planet, letting the positive notes dull the edges of his incipient migraine. It allowed him to shore up his mental walls, patching the cracks that this mission was creating, and hoped it would last him through the more difficult portion of this phase.

The structure of the bunker made him assume a forced, rather than voluntary, radio silence, and Obi-Wan counted on Cody and Bant to coordinate any impromptu plans in case they ran into hiccups. He checked his chrono: thirty-seven minutes until Cody’s check-in. There was nearly a kilometer’s worth of tunnels and rooms for him to work through, and his lips twisted into a moue of discontent at needing to rely upon their intelligence more than his trained senses with the Force.

Nothing for it. Obi-Wan breathed out a sigh, drawing up a mental recollection of what the bunker was suggested to look like. It was a simple thing to overlay it on his current perception of his surroundings, tangling his senses deeper into the Force to produce a mimicry of a hologram. Mapping out a route to scour the bunker for anything to confirm their intelligence coalesced itself between the shallow and steady breaths Obi-Wan paced himself through, images forming from his guesses of their presumptions, mixed with what he had observed already.

A few heartbeats later saw him with a nascent plan, the subtle use of the Force draining Obi-Wan only a little, long experience in such techniques granting him the stamina necessary for a swiftly-formed answer. His eyes fluttered open, having been drawn closed to aid his concentration, obscured as the movement was in the relative dark. Having the Force at his back in such an intricately-interacted manner bolstered his confidence in this haphazard plan of theirs, and it lent speed to his steps down the corridors.

Ideally, there were several data sticks and portable drives for him to abscond with – plans and financial records that would grant them insight into this particular flavour of weapons runner. Ordinarily they would scarcely bother expending such massive amounts of resources, especially with the droid war consuming so much of… everything, but their team of clone troopers had flagged this case in particular, too related to the minutiae of enemy movements.

Obi-Wan turned into a smaller hallway, running into a door that left him the impression of a service entrance. To what, he wasn’t sure, but the gentle compulsion to break the lock and press onward was slightly more insistent than usual. He grit his teeth against the white noise, leaning against the cool metal of the door to stave off the increased trickle of pressure under his scalp. He hoped that everyone else’s plans turned out superbly – he was going to look forward to a quiet and dark room, with naught but some pain killers and a pillow for company.

Pressing his tongue against the back of his teeth, he let the edges of his mental route blur, allowing him enough concentration to pick the lock with swift shoves of the Force. Some stressed heartbeats later, and the unkempt groan of an opening door was his reward. He slipped through, making sure to close – but not lock – the door behind him.

There was a faint impression from Anakin, carrying notes of Ahsoka’s own Force impression, and Obi-Wan let a tendril of thought meet the star-strong mind of his former padawan, reassurance twined with a nebulous half-thought borne from his memory of the wiring in the bunker a response to the man’s simple query of well-being. He let Anakin carry the brunt of the conversational load, mind buzzing with the rolling fog of pain from the electronics, quirking his lips at Ahsoka’s conveyed, cheerful greeting.

He let Anakin’s connection peter out, content to drag himself into the physical realities of his current situation. The room he had wandered, half-absently, into corresponded with the literal sketch he and Cody had been forwarded. For a moment Obi-Wan contemplated the possibility that there were many such rooms, identical or nearly so, within the bunker. Letting his fingers drift across his saber’s hilt, drawing upon the soothing steadiness of its Kyber crystal, the pressure in his mind bleeding away as the Force reasserted itself in a sublime slinking across his senses.

It made the room waver, shifting between that which was visible to the eye and which was to the mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing away the layered vision; still, the Force had revealed to him something useful – and immediately so, as his bounty stood out clear as moonlight on a cloudless night. Collecting the stash was quick work, relaying the news even quicker, never far was his from Anakin’s reach.

Making his way out, Obi-Wan reoriented himself, aware that there were at least two more rooms to investigate.

The Force guided him, as stalwart as his faith in it was. Finding the next and closest room was easily done, leaving him trepidatious about the last. It was a prickling thought in the back of his mind, aware that his consecutive successes had increased the risk of catastrophic failure should he be discovered.

A sense of alarm blaring through the Force was, curiously, not coming from his own environment. Anakin’s emotions tinged the scene in a panicked orange, momentarily obscuring his sight as they rocketed across his mind. He stumbled, instinctively curling into a niche that hid him from easy view. Obi-Wan cringed at the combined, if unintentional, assault upon his senses, bracketed between Anakin’s belted-out mental shouting and the exposed wiring shoved against his side.

Anakin, he gasped out, latent headache blossoming furiously into a migraine that occupied the space behind his eyes. He didn’t have the presence of mind for anything more articulate than a roiling mess of answering emotions, but luckily for him, Anakin was well-versed in his migraine-induced communication. The shouting quieted in intensity, less so in speed – he was received the impression of a spoiled cover, the need to rendezvous with the troops post-haste.

Cycling through deep breaths, Obi-Wan felt the pain ebb away into something more manageable, pressing a weak thread of acknowledgment and that his task was unfinished back. There was a lull, as if Anakin’s attention were divided, and the sense to abandon his task anyway. Abject concern chased the pronouncement, convincing Obi-Wan that it was more than the typical worry for Anakin’s old master at stake.

They had been compromised, and Obi-Wan was in the belly of their base.

--

Throwing himself into the Force’s wisdom, Obi-Wan bolted through the halls, knowing that now was not the time for subtlety. The hallways were a blur from his Force-enhanced speed, ducking into turn after turn with hairpin twists, saber feeling glued to his hand. Though what he could gather was securely secreted away onto his person, he knew the game would be up if he was captured.

So, best not to, He concluded faintly, stretching out his senses as far as they could comfortably go in order to parse for any arriving threats.

It was only as he reached ostensible freedom, shoving through the last door, that Obi-Wan belated realized this might have been an elaborate trap. He eyed the blaster inches from his nose, sliding his gaze to the similarly-armed others surrounding him in a loose half-circle. Sentient organisms had a more unique trigger-pull, and the confident way they aimed at him belied a well-trained sensibility on their parts.

Obi-Wan sighed, slipping his saber into the hidden compartment of his sleeve, raising his hands warily. “Well,” He said, all gracious charm as he yanked on Anakin’s connection to his own mind, “I know when I’m beat.”

His earpiece’s audio was remotely overridden, allowing him to hear running commentary from a variety of others on the other end, and maintaining a live stream from his end. The amount of bragging at his bounty, he thought sourly, was rather uncouth no matter how insightful it was. Obi-Wan felt that he would need to slip a word to Hondo about this, lest the Weequay think anyone had placed a stake on his perpetual claim. The dubious friendship he shared with the man was sometimes more irritating than it was worth.

At the very least, the pirate’s attention was predictable and therefore useful to leverage when the Jedi needed a grey-moraled contact. These… these ruffians were completely out of place on this planet. Honestly, Obi-Wan expected better of his impromptu jailers.

The travelling cell he was hauled into was a nice change of pace, however. It was nice to rest his legs, and catch an opportunity for a nap, despite the ongoing chattering in his ear. He dozed, only occasionally obliging to turn his head in whichever direction Cody or Bant wished in order to better record some of the easy conversation surrounding him. It allowed his mind to unspool thoughts in a relatively relaxed manner, teasing out the finer details of observations he had made earlier off the cuff.

Only after the light doze he had slipped into for what seemed roughly an hour, counted only by the rhythmic wobbling of his transportation and the flux of conversation in both ears, did ostensibly-inchoate reference points converge into a new conclusion. Obi-Wan resisted jerking awake, knowing all too well that the surreptitious attention on him was too alert by a hair, and curled his fingers around the manacles secured on his wrists.

It was too predictable. The bounty hunters, their conversation – even the way he had been so casually searched over, as if they were still wet behind the ears to their trade, and shoved into a container he could have escaped with his eyes closed had he not accepted the opportunity to rest before his inevitable escape. The Force was muddied with his realization, thoughts jumbling together in discordant array. He inhaled slowly, forcing a measure of calm onto himself, letting his training suggest the first course of action.

His mind ran to politics first, inevitable as the creeping presence of his latent migraine. Pooling so many resources at such short notice off into the Outer Rim was disadvantageous to the Republic. Sending the star Jedi team and their commanders, even more so. Obi-Wan stamped down the accompanying anxiety at leaving the Core unprotected, despite knowing intrinsically that they had planned for exactly such a vulnerability and rearranged the Third Systems Army accordingly. Spread thin, yes, but within manageable contact with both themselves and other Armies and Jedi.

Having Bant so close could only be a boon, an eye for tactics making her fine back-up for exactly this scenario. He exhaled, uncurling his fingers in a forcibly casual move. Quinlan wasn’t far away, and with Garen providing keen flying skills while they both handled minor busy work in the same sector, they could arrive quickly enough to be of aid. Four Jedi – Anakin and Ahsoka comparatively a breath away – skilled and hardened by the war, yes, they could salvage this situation. There would be no repeat of Geonosis.

It was up to him to get them the information they needed for a clean extraction. He roused himself in a manner convincing of the freshly-awoken, letting a hand cover his mouth in a yawn and tapping a quick code along his jaw to be picked up by his earpiece. Ver'mircit, ulyc.

The elided message was sure to be decoded by Cody, a new data point he was confident the commander could assimilate into whatever rescue mission they were planning. Two beats later, and he heard the man himself in his ear, “Acknowledged. Waxer will be on standby.”

Obi-Wan allowed himself a faint smile that Cody deemed this important enough to attend personally, cautious of the bounty hunter’s gazes flitting periodically toward him. “Alor.” Waxer greeted, not waiting for a response, “What have we got?”

Shuffling his manacles across his cloak-covered protective gear, Obi-Wan drew the attention of some surly-looking woman, “You wouldn’t happen to know where we’re going?” He asked her pleasantly, “You see, my padawan will be terribly upset if I miss another demonstration of his new speeder upgrades.”

He suffered the jab through the bars with good grace, despite the air whooshing out of him at the staff-end impacting his kidneys. It would bruise, but nothing more, despite the furious spitting of curses from his earpiece. Obi-Wan was glad that Quinlan had insisted on loaning his spare set of garb to him, knowing that the troopers closest to him would march him off to Medical after this. Still, he had gained nothing yet in terms of useful information, “That’s a pleasant way to treat a captive audience,” Obi-Wan quipped wryly, “You’ve come all this way for me, it would be in poor taste to not even know your names.”

The wary eye he received made him force back a smugger tone to his smile, keeping the congenial blandness that caught so many off-footed. He slumped further into his seated pose, peering up at the woman guilelessly. Despite the cat being let out of the bag about his status as a Jedi, Obi-Wan could only hope that the faint air of doddering interest – lent by the very real aches in his joints and weariness darkening the underside of his eyes – would be a convincing enough veil to the propaganda spread so liberally throughout the galaxy about his martial prowess. At least, he hoped, long enough to enact his own escape, arriving aid notwithstanding.

“Lara,” The woman finally responded, the lengthy pause that he knew was rife with indecision making the small victory even sweeter. Her lips twisted at the subtle scolding look some of her compatriots tossed her way.

Obi-Wan settled more into his impromptu guise, leaning his head against one of the bars, “Lara.” He smiled, eyes crinkling, “That’s a lovely name. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

The snort in his ear he ignored, content to let Waxer have his amusement. Glancing toward the rest within easy view, he let curiosity wax across his features, “And all of you?” He requested, the epitome of polite consideration, watching their shoulders slowly descend from about their ears. They hesitated, prompting him to add on a subtle goad, “I’m sure I would enjoy your company all the better if I had something to reference – I would prefer to refrain from using ‘hey, you’. Always came across as a little rude.”

Lara smirked, something Obi-Wan assumed was from his statement bringing up a memory. A humorous one, if her expression was any guide. There was a complicated passing of signals between the members of this little vagrant troupe, and he settled back to watch the results of his first verbal strike unfold. Waxer was quiet in his ear; he knew that the man rarely saw this form of fighting from his general, and Obi-Wan was sure that he was listening raptly for this rare occasion. His smile tilted into fondness, At least something good has come of this blasted ruin of a plan.

“Alor.” Waxer interrupted abruptly, and Obi-Wan restrained a startled jerk, “Al'verde en route, ETA one hour twenty.”

There was no practical way to acknowledge the news, so Obi-Wan covered his reaction by launching into a randomly-selected spiel, pretending this was yet another group of Initiates begging for a story. “I had the dubious pleasure one day, many years ago,” He began, “Of trying a blend of Devanian tea. Of course, the old woman who had rather more cornered me into her hospitality, had insisted that I try it. Had I known then that it was in fact an inherited – and quite strongly-smelling! – tea that was apparently fermented and aged for twenty years, I might have refused…”

--

Cody arrived with his usual aplomb, stern-voiced and unwavering with his blaster, “Move away from the Jedi.”

He couldn’t help but pout, watching as his new acquaintances scattered at the sight of a grizzled clone and- was that really the entire Ghost Company? Obi-Wan squinted, but couldn’t see everyone down the narrow path the bounty hunters had chosen. Tapping his earpiece, Obi-Wan sighed out an exasperated, “Waxer…”

“You know how Kote is,” The man replied, and damn him if they hadn’t adopted Obi-Wan's own penchant for professionalism obscuring amusement. He grumbled, turning off his end with a short tap.

Obi-Wan didn’t need to read the typical body language of Cody’s buy'ce to know the particular tone of his commander’s frown. “I didn’t get shot this time!” He protested, nodding in polite gratitude at the troopers that reached out to unlock his manacles and help him down, barely skipping a beat in his argument, “I think I’ve done rather well.”

Cody’s stare needed no words. Helpfully, though, a shiny nearby spoke up anyway, “But ver'alor said they hit you!”

He sighed, knowing Cody and the other elder soldiers were echoing him. Ah, youth. Obi-Wan exchanged a rueful, if fond, smile with Cody, before he turned to the shiny, “It was nothing I couldn’t handle,” He soothed the verd'ika, “But if you’re amenable, I’m sure Commander Cody would appreciate an escort for me to Medical?”

The accompanying nod from Cody was all the incentive the trooper needed, eagerly springing to Obi-Wan’s side in the precise bodyguarding formation that he knew was drilled into all 212th especially for protecting him. He shot a long-suffering look at Boil, shaking his head at the man’s gleeful posture. His easy capitulation may have laid to rest his newest verd'ika’s worries, but Obi-Wan truly needed to speak with Cody about this belief that he was always in trouble. That was rather pointedly Anakin’s job.

Tripping over a rock that had gone unnoticed in his preoccupation with making silent conversation with his closer compatriots wasn’t planned, but that it made the trooper so attentively at his side cluck over him was worth the minor embarrassment. Obi-Wan straightened with a smile, patting the hand that the young man had clasped around his elbow in an emphatic display of the same care Obi-Wan had learned was shared with all the men under his command. “Tell me, verd'ika,” He asked with a canted smile, laughing at the stuttered surprise to his slip into Mando’a, “I see your colours are still new – have you decided upon a name yet?”

A shy smile received to him in the Force – an adequate buffer to the helmets that the soldiers were all required to wear – made him squeeze the hand on his arm encouragingly, coaxing the reply out. Twisting in such a manner, however, reminded him sharply that a trip to their healers wouldn’t actually be amiss. For now, though, he ignored the flare up in his wrists, taking in the timid countenance of his companion. “Oh,” He said mildly, “You needn’t answer, if you wish.”

“Bes'laar.” The shiny blurted out. Obi-Wan beamed despite the mortification he could feel emanating from the young man, even as he followed up with a discomfited, “Alor."

Obi-Wan brought up his free hand to stroke thoughtfully at his beard, knowing but still relishing in the mental squirming the other was doing. He spied from his periphery amused troopers on one side, well aware of the mischief he was making. That only the Force betrayed the trooper’s nervousness made him swell with pride. Yes, this one shall do well. He decided to put the poor boy out of his misery, waiting upon his general’s verdict, “Bes’laar, eh? A fine name, and I’m sure you’ll grow well into it.”

Bes’laar preened, straightening up at his side. He resisted the urge to shake his head, knowing that the events on this planet warranted some pleasant news, “We’ll need to celebrate. Has anyone else chosen names today?”

“Yes, Master!”

The cheerful words occurred milliseconds before Obi-Wan registered both his padawan’s stark presence in the Force and the accompanying form barreling into him. Bes’laar squawked indignantly, nearly toppled over by his own padawan-cannon. He laughed, closing his arms around Anakin and hearing the excited laugh of Ahsoka next to them.

“We have so many new names today!” Ahsoka enthused, squeezing Bes’laar around the middle with her typical underestimated strength. She set the trooper down before he could truly gasp for air, though, so at least she hadn’t picked up all of Anakin’s bad habits. “The party’s going to be huge.”

Obi-Wan tsked playfully, “And what did Captain Rex say about all that?”

It was Anakin who sighed, slipping easily into the resigned doldrums of the young. He let his padawan sneak in one more hug, shifting back to observe the almost comical look of defeat that it seemed Rex had finally mastered enacting. “He said we have to finish our after action reports,” Anakin reported glumly, “And that I have to sign off on all the new names.”

“It could be worse,” Obi-Wan helpfully suggested, “You could be doing the damage reports.”

Anakin and Ahsoka groaned in tandem. How they convinced the Chancellor that so many explosives were needed in their daily battles seemed to be a mystery held between the Naboo man and the never-ending stacks of data pads ferried onto his desk. That Obi-Wan, and not them, had to sign off on the requisition forms for the Third Systems Army – whenever he couldn’t get them pre-filtered through the lower ranks – made their synchronized dejected faces hilarious.

He smirked, offering his arm back to Bes’laar. The trooper took it warily, reassuming their previous positions. Good; he would learn to be wary whenever Obi-Wan was so gracious about seeing the various healers who decided to treat him as their favourite pincushion. “I believe you were escorting me to Medical, yes?”

“… Yes, Alor.”

--

Mando'a Translations:

Oya - Many meanings: literally *Let's hunt!* and also *Stay alive!*, but also *Hoorah!*, *Go you!*, *Cheers!* Always positive and triumphant.

K'oyacyi - 1. *Cheers!* 2. Can also mean: *Hang in there* or 3. *Come back safely.* Literally, a command; *Stay alive!*

O’r taap - "In position" (military)

’Lek, alor - "Yeah, boss"

Tion'solet? - How many? How much?

Me'vaar ti gar? - How are you? (Lit: what's new with you?) Can also be used to ask a soldier for a sitrep. If a Mando asks you this, they expect an answer; it's literal.. The response for *I'm fine thanks,* is *Naas.* (Literally - nothing. )

Ver'mircit, ulyc - hostage, careful/carefully

Al’verde – Commander

buy'ce – helmet

ver'alor – lieutenant

verd'ika – private (rank) Can be used affectionately, often to a child; *little soldier* - context is critical.

Bes'laar - music