#like straight gun powder piss and earwax

[bunbunism]

Merry crust mas

Heres a time bomb I did with my new actual pen and not my fingers or a battery (ref under thecut)

Ohand like I'm also going to post one big poo dump of all my wipe thisyearlol

[rrrawrf-writes]

look who’s back

“Who’s truck is out there, Hal?” Kawai asked, kicking the door shut behind her on a cold wind full of snow. The receptionist barely looked up from his computer. “Sam finally get a decent car?”

Hal shook his head, browsing idly through a schedule of drag queen events. “Scorch is here. With a friend.”

“What’s a cape doing here,” Kawai asked, frowning as she waved her security badge in front of the door lock leading into the bullpen office. Hal, who was never particularly useful, decided he was done giving her any kind of information at all and merely shrugged. Kawai rolled her eyes as she let herself into the office.

Scorch stood in civilian clothes, speaking to Scopes; both of them were showing a remarkable lack of ill will towards each other. Scorch had several inches on Scopes and a mannish build, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She glanced over and nodded politely as Kawai shouldered the office door open.

Mickey was loudly complaining, their whining voice grating on Kawai’s nerves. A scruffy blonde man in his late twenties sat on the edge of their desk, pawing through Mickey’s collection of video game figurines. There was something familiar about him; Kawai frowned as she dropped her things on her desk.

Mickey instantly directed his pleas towards her. “K,” they whined, scooping their meticulously arranged line-up of toys into their lap, “make him leave my stuff alone, his probation officer won’t do anything about it.”

The scruffy man looked up, with a tired, crooked smirk and a flash of green eyes that Kawai last remembered glinting at her from a rearview mirror.

She stared, and then snarled, “You little son of a -”

“Oh, f-,” Wings started to say at the exact same time, sliding off Mickey’s desk and scrambling to put it between him and Kawai as she stormed forward.

“Yale,” snapped Scorch, as Scopes swore and added, “Wait, Kawai -”

Mickey yelped as Kawai shoved their chair out of her path, but Wings had already put several desks between them, hopping directly over one with an easy agility she envied. 

“Get back here!” Kawai shouted. “You --- ---, you stole my ------ pistols, you got my truck shot up - what the hell are you doing here -”

“Aw, K, come on.” Scopes sighed as she - rather fearlessly - interjected herself in Kawai’s way, straight-arming her back. “They just got here, you can’t start cussing people out until, like, at least three minutes in.”

Kawai stopped, if only because she was half a foot taller than Scopes, and outweighed her by several pounds. She wanted to wreck Wings, not her coworker.

Scorch passed by on her way to collect Wings; Kawai felt a wave of heat radiating from the woman as she navigated the scattered desks in the bullpen. Wings evaded her as easily as he had Kawai, at least up until he walked face-first into Javed’s opening office door.

“What’s going on,” the director sighed, frowning around his door at the short, lean man edging around his office. Scorch caught up to Wings a moment later, plucking at his hoodie. “Ah, Ms. Kaplan. Sorry, I was on a conference call.”

“Yes, so I heard from, ah, Scopes.” Scorch gave Javed a tired smile, seemingly unsurprised that he knew her proper name. “You did say we were on a time crunch, though, so I hope we can get things rolling now.”

Javed met this barely-veiled rudeness with a thin smile and a penetrating look that Kawai knew from experience was an unsettling threat of his power. The room warmed considerably after a moment - a show of force from Scorch herself.

Wings rolled his eyes. “You done with the pissing contest yet?” he grumbled.

“Go sit down, Yale,” Scorch snapped at him, and then glanced back at Javed. “I would like to apologize in advance for Winn Yale, here, but you said you needed help finding something. He’s your best bet.”

Kawai transferred her glare from Winn, who dropped into Eli’s empty desk, and snapped it to Javed. “Wait - that’s the help you said you were gonna get us?”

“Apparently so,” Javed said dryly. “In turn, Ms. Kaplan -”

“Jackie, please.”

“Jackie. I would like to apologize for - whatever my employee has her back up about this time.” Javed gestured vaguely towards Kawai, who bristled.

“That prick stole my pistols and forced me to take him halfway across the country,” she seethed. Jackie narrowed her eyes.

“When was this?” she demanded of Winn. “You can’t possess any guns.”

“I don’t have any,” Winn complained, “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

Kawai stormed forward again. “You little piece of -”

“Taule’alo!” Javed snapped out her difficult last name in record time. Kawai stopped, sparks of electricity snapping around her fingers. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume the two of you know each other.”

“We don’t,” said Winn.

“We do,” said Kawai.

They glared at each other.

Jackie sighed and leaned against the wall. “How do you know each other? Shut up, Yale, we can’t trust anything you say.”

He threw his hands up and sighed in disgust.

“Five years ago,” Kawai started.

“Seven,” Winn interrupted, pulling open the drawer to Eli’s desk. Kawai wanted to strangle him.

“Whatever,” she seethed. “I was on a job and that little bastard snuck into my truck and threatened me with the ------ Omega Device if I didn’t drive him somewhere -”

It was Jackie’s turn to interrupt. “Wait - Yale, you had the Omega Device?”

“No,” he denied instantly, green eyes widening. “No, I never touched that thing. This never happened. I don’t know her.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. Kawai said icily, “Can I go on?”

Javed waved a hand at her, while Mickey leaned forward curiously. Scopes wandered off to the break room, losing interest already.

“He wanted me to take him somewhere. Got in a friggin’ firefight with some morons, and then I dumped him off at a gas station in Boise.” Kawai scowled as she stuck her hands in her jacket pockets. “He stole my pistols, and my wallet.”

Jackie pursed her lips, glancing from Winn to Kawai. “You’re just going to deny all of that, aren’t you.”

“You aren’t putting me back in prison, Jackie-love.” Winn leaned back in his chair, propping his scuffed sneakers on top of Eli’s desk. “Even if those were the best pistols I’ve ever shot in my life. I didn’t steal them.”

Kawai kicked another of the ubiquitous office chairs out of her way. “I’m going to kill you.”

Winn straightened up and pointed at Kawai. “Kaplan, that was a death threat,” he announced. “From a powered person. You’re s’posed to stop that kinda thing.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” Jackie said, making a show of digging earwax out of her ear. “Of course, I’d be willing to extend protection to anyone giving me a tip on where the Omega Device disappeared to seven years ago.”

Winn scowled at her. Javed pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“Taule’alo, you can’t hurt him,” he said sternly. “We have to find that - thing. He can do it?”

Jackie shrugged, as Winn and Kawai eyed each other. “I’m sure he can. You just have to get him to work.”

Javed hmmed. He moved towards the desk Winn had commandeered, leaning his hip against the side of it. Winn leaned back in the chair and gave him a mild look.

“We have three weeks. You get a cut of the paycheck,” Javed said, ignoring Jackie’s strangled protest. “I know your probation officer said this was a community service sort of thing, but I don’t think that’s fair to you.”

Winn dropped his feet off Eli’s desk and onto the floor. “I’d be more willing to go along with this crap if I knew I was getting paid for it,” he conceded. Javed smiled at him, the kind of smile that Kawai knew preceded a beatdown. 

Javed leaned in towards him. “Of course, I need some kind of guarantee that you’re going to behave,” he said flatly. Winn’s eyes narrowed. “I know all about you, Wings. You’re difficult to work with and you made a habit of double-crossing your clients. I’d like to believe that that’s just rumors about a stupid little kid from before he got himself caught. I'd also like to believe that the stupid little kid actually learned his work, because I’m not about to contract with an amateur thief who pretends that the reason he doesn’t have a reputation is because he’s too good for one, instead of simply being too incompetent to gain any renown.”

Winn abruptly stood up. Javed had to shift back to avoid getting headbutted in the face, and straightened so that he maintained his three or four inches of height over Winn.

“Cute little speech,” Winn said, and glanced down at his hands - now full of Javed’s wallet. The director blinked, and then went to pat his pockets. Kawai hadn’t even noticed Winn picking Javed’s pocket. “How ‘bout I tell everyone here what’s in your office? Guitar, computer, desk, pictures -”

Winn opened Javed’s wallet and pulled out a picture of a pretty, strawberry-blonde woman. “I’m assuming the other pictures are of her, yeah? And I’m assuming that those little baggies of powder in the third locked drawer of your desk aren’t drugs, or else this is gonna be really awkward, what with a superhero hearing us right now. Oh, look, and here’s contact information for a John Anderson - isn’t that the Bull? Hey, Scorch, you want this number -”

Javed punched him in the face.