#man went so insane that he was able to loop back into sanity by a molecule
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It’s Eternity in there!
It only took as second in Sam and Tucker’s eyes for the accident to unfold.
The sound of a stumble and char ingraining itself into all.
A sound so loud, a scream barley human, took the air.
A blinding light took sight, and the ozone took taste.
Nothing remained, but the horror that hadn’t fully sunk in as their mind’s whispered the same thought.
‘This can’t be happening’
But it did.
Danny’s scream was the first thing to stop, they cut off in a quick manner that leaving only the buzz of the portal to ring in their ears.
The the light flickered, sputtering to a stop.
Then only the smell remained to admit to what had unfolded in the lab.
The two friends were glued to their places with the wish to run, but to the portal or out the door where only for their own minds to admit.
Perhaps they wished to do both?
But instead they stood just to the side of the dammed opening that sat as if it were the innocent crevasse they once thought it so.
Then a hand stuck out, and another before someone fully emerged from the dark.
White hair and toxic pools instead of eyes it took them a moment to realize who stood before them.
“…Danny?”
And like that, Sam and Tucker found their feet again and made their choice.
The raised to meet their friend as they lost their footing, they held his weight as they went to the floor, and no one spoke for a quite sometime.
Time seemed to flicker for a second for the two unmarred and suddenly they were holding just their best friend.
If it wasn’t for the smell they could pretend that nothing had happened.
Peels of laughter broke through chapped lips of the raven haired boy, they grew in volume by the second.
Sam and Tucker could only watch confusion as their friend stumbled to his feet and began to make his way to the table.
“I’m back..It’s good to be back!”
He said as he rummaged in the clutter.
“Danny, what- what do you mean ‘good to be back’? You didn’t go anywhere!”
Sam asked as Danny grabbed blueprints and gadgets with a frenzied pace.
“Longer than you think!” He hummed as he picked up a sledgehammer. “So much longer.”
"Did a lot of thinking when I was away.. Tons.. Too much even!"
Tucker tried to step in front of his friend.,
"Danny, please stop, you're scaring us-"
it was like he had stepped in front of a hologram.
Danny, for his part, didn't even seem to notice the attempt and continued on his path back to the portal.
"People, aren't meant to witness the stars.,"
armful and armful went into the hole as Danny raved to friends.,
"Not truly, we witness echos for it is all we can handle."
He paused as he laid his hand gently on onto the wall's button.
"My parents decided to test this fact and I was the one to be burned."
and with a raise of the hammer, he brought it down upon the gateway.
"No more."
Over and over, and his friends could only watch along in fear.
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iguessthisisanewobsession · 7 months ago
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I’m only talking about the first game bc it’s the one i’m familiar with and assuming this is a no capes au.
Bruce is obviously Joel
But thematically I think Ellie would be Tim.
Think about it, they were both kids who were thrusted upon the men who were traumatized and turned more violent and dark after their children died in their arms.
They slowly build a bond through time until they have a kinship close to a father and their child.
Bu this thought process Jason is Sarah, too young for the new world and killed before their time.
Dick I would place into uncle Tommy’s role. He would have already left for Bludhaven giving reason for him not to be with the family right away.
(Possibly making a U-turn when shit went down to make the timeline make sense?)
Also Dick is willing to put people down for fucking with his family already as seen by his reason of becoming robin and the clown beat down after Jason died. (Though we could also have Alfred shoot the guy with a shotgun but that would be messy.)
Selina as Tess makes sense as the other’s have pointed. The hot and cold maybe they be fucking vibes and the stealing and selling shit is in character for both. (Plus the Selina going out in an implied blaze of glory with her whip would be such a cool scene for her.)
And the only other person I would place would be Ra’s al Ghul as David the leader of the cannibals.
(though Slade would be a good alternative.)
Charismatic, leader of a skilled group of hunters of humans, becomes enamored with the idea of this competent teen, forces their hand to try to sway them into joining their side, attempts to murder them when it doesn’t go their way.
*cough* Tim would get to cut off Ra’s stupid head *cough cough*
Unfortunately, think Alfred would have to be dead in the main story or living with Dick because of his age.
And as for the others last of us characters I only got hints and vague ideas of Hal being Marlene bc I think he would be a good person to have the morally grey view of it’s the needs of the many verses the needs of the one when it comes to the cure. Military background would make him competent when it comes to running the fireflies but not so it is a perfect system. Bruce would also be willing to actually kill him.
Would Bruce still have his no killing ideals in this AU? Would he make exceptions for mercy killings like at the beginning of the game? Or would he have Selena do them for him? It would make the scenes where the human death happens more impactful.
Maybe he changes his code in the univerity of eastern colorado (or this au’s story’s plot parallel)
Or maybe it will be Saint Mary’s hospital?
Idk it’s 3am and I went feral over this idea for over an hour
Batfamily but it’s The Last of Us
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stonerz4sokka · 4 years ago
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the gaang (& co.) on zoom
aang: ALWAYS mixes up his class times and it isn’t until sokka helps build his schedule and set reminders on aang's phone that he actually shows up to the right class at the right time, always excited to be there but is constantly getting distracted by the littlest things (doesn’t help that his window is behind his computer), isn’t afraid to tell the teacher when the hw assigned is too much (the whole class thanks him for that), types jokes in the class chat, wears his appa print pajamas to class everyday, motivates people to stay optimistic during these ‘troubling times’ (and it works)
katara: wears sweatpants and a crewneck everyday but NEVER forgets to do her hair, talks shit about the ugly white girls in their class (some are sokka’s exes) with zuko, wants to do pranks with toph but is too scared of getting caught (though she eventually does a few),  takes the lead in breakout rooms bc she can’t stand the awkward silence although if aang is there they’ll both be very distracting, will literally laugh on camera every time she hears a stupid comment, gives emotional speeches to help motivate her classmates which are well-intentioned but come off as a little preachy :/ people still try though bc they weirdly don’t want to disappoint her, refuses to let a man interrupt her so she will continue talking even if their voices are overlapping for a good 20 secs 
sokka: has an insane amount of reminders, alarms and organizational tools on his phone and computer so he doesn’t forget to go to class, he tries so hard to focus but ends up doing something that’s completely unrelated yet still educational, wears his same dumbass science pun t-shirts to class but he has his hair down more which makes the white girls in his class go crazy, starts all his sentences with ‘i think’ or ‘maybe we should’, tried to be clever once by setting a video on loop for his zoom background so the teacher didnt know he went to the bathroom but forgot to mute himself so the entire class heard him pee :(( his teachers enjoy him more in a zoom setting bc he's less of a distraction but they hate how he never stays on topics and asks questions they dont have the answer to, whenever katara sees him getting increasingly neurotic she’ll send him links to cool small businesses and they’ll ignore their classes n go online shopping together 
zuko: always looks tired and grumpy even when he’s well rested, his camera is at 256p even when he has the newest macbook (azula messed w his computer & he still hasn't realized), extremely paranoid around accidentally unmuting himself so he just never talks, cannot figure out zoom and never screen shares for projects bc it takes him 15 mins every. time. is weird in breakout rooms because he's bad at social situations but he's trying!!! he could try harder tho :/ is able to empathize well with his fellow classmates n tries to lift their spirits (it rarely works but the effort feels nice), the teacher once saw him scream and punch his desk during the desmos activity and sent iroh an email about local therapists who specialize in anger management, spends his breaks between classes crying 
toph: she will pick her nose, eat food, clip her toenails, do anything gross on camera to get back at her history teacher who told her she needs to be more ladylike, is actually cool in breakout rooms she seems like she would be super distracting but she would complain about the shitty teachers n provide insightful thoughts for the discussion/assignment at hand, does her zoom classes in her backyard so she could play with bugs, gives very helpful advice for maintaining ones sanity during online learning
suki: is always wrapped up in her blankets to the point where u can barely see her face, eats on camera & doesn't realize that no one wants to see that shit, she laughs at all the teachers' bad jokes bc she genuinely thinks they're funny, refuses to let sokka outperform in zoom learning so she does actually pay attention although it doesn't look like it, is really chill in breakout rooms n pretends she doesn't really care but will edit the work after class so it fits her expectations, she once farted in the middle of when she was talking and just pretended like she it didn't happen, actually is fine with online learning and likes the flexibility and doesn’t get why sokka is spiraling all the time :// 
azula: oh god, she wears entire outfits with khakis and polos and SHOES!!! for her zoom meetings!!! she. wears. shoes. her hair is always perfect, tries WAY too hard and everyone knows when she wants to speak in class bc she literally starts vibrating on camera, one time someone won a debate against her in class and she turned off her camera for a good 3 minutes, when she turned it back on her eyes were watery and her entire face was red, doesn't understand how people are underperforming over zoom, has the second highest gpa in the school (after sokka) and managed to convince herself he is actively trying to ruin her life but he's just........ sitting there. constantly messes with zuko's google calendar so he's late for class, can clearly see the art of war by sun tzu on her bookshelf in the background
mai: yawns on camera whenever azula talks just to piss her off, doesn't talk often because her teachers & peers underestimate her but she's smart and when she does talk it's always something rlly insightful, one time her and ty lee were paired with jet for a project where he spent the whole time 'explaining' the topics at hand while they did the entire project on another tab and pretended to pay attention to him, tom tom will sometimes join her during class bc he misses her n she acts like she hates it but she does love spending time with him, is actually secretly extremely anxious about maintaining her grades during online learning but only sokka and ty lee can tell, her and sokka gossip through heavily layered inside jokes that only the two of them understand
ty lee: built a completely new daily schedule and organizational system the minute she learned they were switching to zoom, is always ready for class 20 mins before it starts but joins the zoom 2 minutes after class started so no one thinks she’s an overachiever, a great student but she waits too long to speak in class so she barely joins in on the discussions, is seemingly the regular ty lee but every so often she’ll pretend to go to the bathroom & turn off her camera to recollect herself bc she’s always on edge :/, would have the best gpa in the school but doesn’t want to seem intimidating so she purposefully scores lower on certain assignments so she has a 3.75 gpa, 
jet: he tries to subtly vape during class by turning off camera his camera but its really obvious bc when he comes back he’s coughing and waving the smoke out the air, only participates in breakout rooms when the teacher comes in and immediately turns off his camera when they leave, staged a kidnapping during one of his lectures as an elaborate prank but no one cared noticed, someone else recorded the prank and posted it on tiktok where it blew up & all the comments were insulting him, he didn’t care though because ‘there’s no such thing as bad clout’
chan & ruon-jian: has not gone to a single one of their zoom classes sober (honestly barely attend), still tried throwing houseparties even when the cases were at their peak, tried to one-up jet's kidnapping prank by calling SWAT on themselves but ended up getting arrested because they forgot to hide their stash (they sell counterfeit juul pods), worst part was that their prank only got 250 views on yt :(
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adhdeancas · 4 years ago
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Sunset Sound: Gallows Pole
In the midst of the Lawboy shitposting, a Sam-centric chapter to see what he got up to after Dean went to hell. Special thanks to my bro @friedchickenangelwings for keeping me in check forever and always, I wouldn’t be able to do this without you.
Sam sobs. He can’t help it; he can’t do anything else. His big brother’s body is impaled on the post in front of him, the ground is littered with beheaded bodies, and two little boys are crying outside somewhere in the dark. And he can’t stop crying.
“It’s not okay. It’s not!” 
He tries to take back those words that had made his brother leave, but Dean's chest doesn’t shudder back into life, and it won’t. It hangs there, heavy and lifeless, and it always will. Dean is dead. 
And for what?
When Sam’s head starts to pound from the tears, he finally takes breaths to calm himself. Common sense floods back into his head and overtakes his grief, and he pulls Dean’s body off the stupid rusty nail that killed him. He lowers him to the ground and closes his eyes, because he can’t bear to look at his dead stare any longer. 
He doesn’t want to leave the barn. He knows he has to, but he doesn’t want to leave his brother there all alone. That’s what Dean had always been most afraid of: being alone. He stands frozen to the spot for more minutes than he should, trying to reason with his grief. Finally, finally, he wins, and he turns around to see his breath in the air before him. Sam immediately gasps, another desperate sob coming from nowhere, because the night isn’t cold enough for that.
“Dean?” He screams it. “Dean!” It’s gotta be him, Dean’s a ghost, Dean’s here, Dean’s trying to talk to him. “Dean!” 
“No, I’m sorry, Sam.” Kevin Tran flickers to form in front of him, pity and sadness in his eyes. “But Dean’s okay.” 
Sam rubs his eyes. He thinks for a second he’s hallucinating again, that losing Dean for real broke down all the sanity he’d built over the years. “K-Kevin?” Though he didn’t know it was possible, his stomach takes yet another plunge, like a boulder has just been dropped on him. Kevin’s incorporeal form shakes into being the thought once more that he did that, his hands killed Kevin, he’s the reason Kevin is a ghost. He’s in a room with the corpse and untethered soul of two people he loves and two people he watched die.
As if sensing all the ways Sam is shaking apart, Kevin nods and starts to reach out before realizing it would be no use. “Yeah, Sam, it’s me.” 
“But- w-w why?” Sam curses his voice for failing him, curses the shaking that sobbing left him with, curses it because he needs to be strong now. For Dean. “Why didn’t you help us?” A ghost would’ve been a great thing to have in a fight! A ghost could probably, I don’t know, push Dean away from a deadly-sharp hook on the wall? If Kevin has been here, why- “Is Dean in the veil? Can he hear me? Dean!” 
Kevin throws a gust of air in his face to get his attention, and it hits Sam like a slap. He looks back at the ghost, wideyed. Kevin looks apologetic. “I don’t have a lot of time, but you need to calm down. Seriously.”
“I can’t calm down-”
“No, Sam, you need to calm down.” Kevin looks upward nervously, as if he’s expecting to see some big figure raise the roof of the barnhouse up and peek down at them. “I’ll explain, but first thing you need to know is: Dean’s dead. He’s in heaven, and he’s in trouble.” 
---------------------------
Sam drives the Impala at exactly the speed limit, eyes dried to the point of aching. Dean’s wrapped body is sprawled out in the back seat, and if Sam just glances in the rearview mirror he can almost pretend he’s just passed out. Just had one too many shots of Cuervo and conked out so his little brother can drive. Sure. Whatever gets you through the night. 
Dropping off the kids was easy. Traumatized kids don’t say much, don’t ask too many questions, and they’ll forget the shellshocked stranger that saved them soon enough. Either that or he will haunt their nightmares, but Sam can’t help that. He can’t help anyone at this point, covered in dirt and blood and exhausted. He drives out to the middle of the forest anyway, Kevin’s words on a loop in his head. 
“You have to be normal. Chuck can’t want to watch you at all. So just play into his game. Pretend to only care about Dean, get out of the life, settle down.”
Sam had frowned, Eileen instantly springing to his mind. Surely he can care about her, right? “But-” 
“No, Sam, I’m sorry. Dean told me to tell you that Eileen… it’s just too dangerous. He likes you two. He’s gotta hate your life so much he doesn’t want to see it. It’s gotta bore him.” 
So Sam burns his brother's body in a forest alone, with only Miracle for company. There’s a dagger in his chest that tells him he’s betraying everyone he cares about, including Dean. Dean wanted a big funeral. He wanted his whole family there, not just his brother and a dog. And Eileen. There are three unread texts and a missed video call from Eileen already. Apparently Kevin hadn’t visited her yet. To let her know. 
It doesn’t take Sam long to leave the bunker. It just feels like a punch to the gut at this point. That table over there, carved with their family’s names, that’s where he and Dean swore they’d be free. They swore they’d get everything they wanted and everything they deserved. And now Sam has one pillow on his bed and an empty bunker full of the possessions of dead people. 
He knows there is a plan. He knows that. And it should comfort him, but it doesn’t, because he still has to live his long, boring, lonely life without the woman he loves or the family he misses or the brother he mourns. Time on Earth is torturously slow. 
The small things make the ache in his heart just a little lighter. He finds a job he likes, teaching history and the classics to teenagers. He remembers his old English teacher, and he tries to be that to kids that need it, kids that remind him of Claire or Jack. He gets to see Jody and the girls once every few years, a risk that he knows is worth it because it keeps him going. He can’t see Eileen. It would hurt too much. They both agreed the one time they called. He keeps learning ASL anyway, and he tells the story of him and Eileen meeting (slightly modified) to the kids in his class. 
He finds a wife. It was one of the things he put off, but after three years he knows he has to get on with it or he’ll get depressed. He needs someone, even if she is boring and too-nice and entirely too gullible. She’s nice and he’s good to her, but he can’t love her because she’s not real. Not in the way that Eileen is. She might as well be a blurred out mother figure action doll, for all she knows. And he hates himself for marrying her, when she deserves someone who finds her boringness interesting, but he knows this is what Chuck expects. He expects Sam to marry a nice woman and have a kid named Dean and grow old always hurting for the old times. Oh, and Sam does. 
He’d rather be back in the pit with Lucifer than this domestic djinn dream, but he reminds himself every day that someday they’re going to get rid of Chuck and then he’ll be able to live. Dean too. Cas too. And Jack. Sam’s going to kill that son of a bitch if it’s the last thing he does, living or dead. And it looks like it’ll be dead.
His fiftieth birthday has come and gone when Kevin finally comes back. The lights in Sam’s classroom flicker and go out, and then Kevin is there, chest heaving. He runs to the chalkboard and picks up a piece of chalk, and Sam’s talking as he writes. 
“Kevin, how’s Dean? Any updates on what’s happening in heaven? Is Chu-Jack okay?”
Kevin turns around, irritated, until he sees the look on Sam’s face. “Yeah, listen, everything is… fine. We’re working on it. Look, the important thing is that you get these ingredients-” he points to the chalkboard, “and perform the spell. But listen, it’s gotta be next week. Friday. There’s a full moon, it’s… you gotta make it happen.” 
Sam’s eyes bulge. “Friday? Kevin, what the hell, a little notice would be nice! How am I supposed to get-” he looks past him to the hastily written ingredients. “These ingredients are insane! It’lll take me weeks just to fly around the fucking world to grab them!” 
Kevin throws his hands up, looking almost as stressed as Sam. “Listen, man, we’re doing our best up there! Time is fucked up and we’re trying to be sneaky and it is a lot of pressure!” he finally takes a deep breath, which seems to help. “I’m sorry, I know it’s too much to ask, but we have no choice. Call a witch friend for the ingredients, summon Rowena and let her in on the plan. It’s Friday or never.” 
He flickers out before Sam can even reply. Apparently the stress and talking like that took too much out of him. Sam’s left alone to say “Sorry,” to an empty classroom. He sits down heavily at his desk and runs a hand through his graying hair. 
He copies down the ingredients and the spell and it’s then that he knows he definitely needs help. Luckily, he knows who to call. 
The phone rings so long Sam thinks about hanging up, but he picks up just before he can. “Sam!” Max sounds winded, and the first thought that enters Sam’s head is not appropriate for the occasion. 
“Hey Max, you got a second? You’re not…” busy? Jesus, Sam is blushing.
Max laughs. “Nah, you’re good, man. What’s up?” 
God, to speak to someone who understands his life again. To really get to talk to them. “Uh, it’s kinda not the kind of thing to talk about over the phone. Can I drive to you?” 
---------------------------------------
“Hey, Rowena,” 
Sam’s natural state is apparently social awkwardness now. Dean would say that had always been true… No, not the time to get sidetracked with that sad shit. He shuffles his feet again and adjusts a candle, waiting for Rowena to appear. He’s fifty fucking years old. He’s fine.
“Hello, dearie.” 
Sam grins at her, but is once again met with the sad eyes Kevin always gives him. “Fuck, can everybody stop with the dead brother horrible life shit?” She doesn’t look taken aback, no that’s not Rowena. She looks more like a school principal that just got told off by an 8th grader, surprised and a little offended. Sam softens a little bit. “Sorry, I just- listen, I get it, okay? My life is fucked up and it’s all a lie to beat God, I know. Can we move past that and get back to the saving the world stuff?” 
A slow smile spreads across Rowena’s face, and she pats him on the cheek. “There she is. Hello, Samuel.” 
Sam rolls his eyes. “Hi Rowena, how are you?” 
“Oh, just dandy. Tamped down a few ne’er-do-wells, not a problem. Being worshipped every day is hard work, but I manage, somehow.” 
“I’m sure. ‘Jack’ giving you any trouble?” 
She waves a dismissive hand. “I’ve barely seen the boy since he took over. Apparently he’s much more interested in watching his little short films in heaven than anything down below…” Sam’s got a question on his lips but she waves that away too. Too little time to explain the intricacies of eternal family drama that heaven is currently. “It doesn’t matter. I have free reign, which means I can pop in for our little soirees.” 
Sam nods, grateful that that’s true at least. He hands her the list of ingredients and the spell and watches as she studies it. “Problem?” 
“Hm. No, I can do that.” She looks up brightly at him. “I’m the greatest witch of all time, Samuel. I’m more worried about how you will accomplish it.” She looks down at his summoning ritual and bends down to correct a chalk mark with her finger. “You’re a wee bit rusty.” 
Sam scoffs. He’s missed this. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I called up my friend Max, Max Banes. He’s going to help me out.” 
“Max Banes? Hm.” For a second, Sam thought he saw something flash across Rowena’s face.
“What?” 
“Nothing.” She shrugs it off. “I’ve heard of the witch, that’s all. He’ll be good help for you, I’m sure. Now, Samuel, if you’ll excuse me… Underworlds to run and all that.” She steps away, but Sam stops her before she can disappear again.
“Wait!” He hugs her tightly. She only resists for a moment before she returns the hug, a light tap on his shoulder. “Thank you, Rowena.” 
“Of course, Samuel. Until next time.” 
She’s gone with a puff of smoke and Sam is left hugging air.
tag list (ask to be added or removed):
Tag list: @dochunterwitch  @justonecitizenoftheearth @gnbrules @purpe @castiel-is-a-cat @alienapparatus @damian-janus-pendragon
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anika-ann · 5 years ago
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Heart Too Cold, but Friends of Gold - Pt.9
The Flares
Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader     Word count: 3090
Summary: Avenger!reader AU. Part 2 of Melting Hearts series. Part 1 HERE.
In which Steve has too many redheads in his life and they are a lot to handle. (Dealing with A:AOU, pt.2)
Warnings: swearing, light angst,... eh
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Story Masterlist
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But did you see the flares in the sky? Were you blinded by the light? Did you feel the smoke in your eyes? Did you, did you? Did you see the sparks filled with hope? You are not alone 'Cause someone's out there, sending out flares
(The Script – Flares)
 The hallucination – the vision, perhaps – was a true eye-opened. Not because it was any news that Steve was the one to blame for your departure, no, but because actually seeing possibly a very true picture of what was happening to you was something that felt like a bullet to his brain. It was maddening and it should have made him spring into further action; yet, Steve couldn’t find himself having a strength to get mad. He was just too tired. Exhausted, with the weariness settled deep inside his bones.
And while he never had been the one to weep over the universe apparently hating him, he allowed himself to feel that way; especially when Maria Hill advised them to lay low and Clint took them into a safe house.
Correction: Clint took them home. Clint Barton had a home without anyone knowing (except Natasha, because Natasha knew everything and shared nothing), two healthy kids and a beautiful loving wife, living in a rural idyll. And once that information settled in Steve’s head, his heart broke on an entirely new level.
He could have a home. He could see himself having a home. He might not have before, not after coming out of the ice, not even long after actually. Not even the first time he had realized he was in love with you, no. It came with gradually and Steve hadn’t been quite aware of it; perhaps that was the actual truth that the vision created by Wanda Maximoff had revealed. With that hallucination, it had dawned to Steve that he had been ready to go home, for a while now; no matter what exactly home looked like, no matter how much fighting he would still be doing, for how many mission he would be going or if he would be able to reduce that.
He was ready to go home and he wished to go home, with you.
And in reality, it didn’t matter, because the most essential part of what he considered home was missing.
It was a relief when Fury showed up and helped them to figure out how to fight back – the battles they actually could fight. It reminded Steve that there were still battles worth fighting. It took his dark thoughts away, or at least it pushed them on the back burner for a while.
Then again, meeting Maximoff’s once more wasn’t helping. And the girl, suddenly so eager to fix things she had done wrong, reminded him of you too much. He shook off the thought when he went for what could be the final battle and tried his best to focus. No matter how insane the suddenly levitating city was.
And then they all knew it was the end.
“Stark will find a way to blow this rock,” Natasha stated rather calmly as they caught a moment to breathe in on the battlefield.
It was surprising how much faith she seemed to have into Tony with how he kept doing things behind their backs – then again, everyone seemed to be keeping secrets from another lately. But that wasn’t what he found outraging at her statement.
The city was flying and there was no way to save all the people before Stark would make it explode. Lost lives. Failure. Again.
Not on his watch.
“Not until everyone’s safe.”
Natasha looked at him with disbelief, probably questioning his sanity. “Everyone up here, versus everyone down there-“
“I’m not leaving this rock with one civilian on it,” Steve exclaimed stubbornly, the flame of fury lighting up in him.
No. Not this time, not again. He had failed too many times. He had lost so many battles and he was not about to lose another one, he was not about to fail people again.
Natasha gave him a sad smile. “I’m not saying we should.”
The look they exchanged spoke thousand words. This was indeed the end. They truly wouldn’t leave – they would either save everyone’s life or more likely died trying. There was a strange peace in that. That was how he was supposed to go, right? Like a soldier. Like a person who had decided to dedicate his life to save someone else’s. He just selflessly wished it would have been yours or Bucky’s or of someone who was closer to his heart. But he didn’t get to choose.
It was as if Natasha read his thoughts, when she whispered: “There are worse ways to go. Where else am I gonna get a view like this?”
Steve looked briefly over the edge of the flying crater of the city. He would think Natasha was right; but there were so many things he would rather see before he would close his eyes forever. Your smile for example, no matter where the two of you would be. Just your smile, knowing you were safe and he hadn’t failed.
But Steve wasn’t destined to have such luck.
When Fury’s voice announced them that the view would actually get better via their comms, Steve couldn’t help but chuckle and feel a little flicker of hope. A flare in the endless darkness. Maybe there were things they could fix and people they wouldn’t fail after all.
He only realized he had been a fool thinking that, when it was over and one of the lives they lost was Wanda Maximoff’s brother’s. Strangely enough, Steve envied him. But only a bit.
────── ·❆· ──────  
The weirdest thing was Tony Stark being the one to pluck up his courage not to give up. Not that he was aware of that.
Saying goodbye to him as Steve decided to stay at the army base with Natasha, Tony had told him something so simple that it shouldn’t have moved Steve the way it did.
“Maybe I should take a page from Barton’s book. Buy Pepper a farm, hope nobody will blow it up…” Tony hummed almost lost in thoughts and Steve was once again surprised how the billionaire managed to bring a smile on his face despite all of their differences.
“The simple life.”
“You’ll get that too someday,” Tony reassured him with a smirk that poorly covered the sincerity behind his words. It was the softness in his eyes that gave it away.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Definitely, Cap. You know that me taking off doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking, right? You shouldn’t either. She’s out there somewhere. We’ll find her and bring her home.”
Steve smiled shakily at him, feeling the familiar adrenalin and determination flooding his veins. Tony was right. You were out there and they would bring you home, they just needed to try hard enough.
“Thanks, Tony.”
“Any time, Capsicle.” Tony patted Steve’s arm before he slid into his fancy car, the door clicking shut. Then the window rolled down, Tony’s head sticking out. “Oh, and do me a favour. Pop the question when we do, okay?”
The captain felt his cheeks burn, a chill running down his spine as Tony somehow sensed the change in Steve’s longing, but he couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Sure. Take care, Tony.”
The Iron Man saluted him with two fingers and with a roar of his sports car’s engine and a whole lot of whirled dust disappeared in the distance. Steve stared into nothingness for a an embarrassingly long time.
────── ·❆· ──────  
He found Natasha absently staring into a wall, a tablet in her hand forgotten. She turned to him when the door clicked behind him.
“Done gazing into Tony’s eyes? Ready to go to work?” she teased, an easy smile on her lips.
The corners of her mouth rose higher when she saw his expression; she hadn’t seen him this determined for a while. It was funny what could make people happier. Natasha didn’t think losing Bruce somewhere in a quinjet could do that. Then again, they just saved multiple lives. Unlike her, Steve deserved the feeling of victory. If she didn’t feel quite the same, no one needed to know.
Steve’s thumbs slid into the loops of his belt as he stopped in front of her, rocking on his heels.
Uh-oh. Big announcement coming, she could tell as much, and she wasn’t sure she would like it.
“I’m ready,” Steve confirmed and one look into his eyes told Natasha that he spoke it was the truth – but not quite.
She knew that look too well. He had it every time they got a track on you. And since she knew for a fact that there were no new leads… her heart sank.
“Steve…”
Steve could immediately tell Natasha understood, just like he could see she didn’t approve.
“I should be out there, looking for her. I need to be, because she’s somewhere, alone, and she can’t hide forever. I’ll find her – but it needs to be my priority from now.”
“Steve,” she addressed him, softer this time, wary of her tone, so it didn’t sound like she was admonishing him. “We got no lead for eternity-“
“That only means we need to try harder!”
“We’re doing our best and you know it. The moment we get the tiniest lead – like the last time with early snow in London –, we drop whatever we do with the recruits and we’ll be on our way.”
“Natasha-“ he started out again, but she cut him off.
“You’re not the only one who’s desperate to find her, Rogers! But the world hasn’t stopped turning! There are still threats and we need to deal with it. She wouldn’t want to-“
“Don’t you dare to speak for her, Romanoff-!“
“For God’s sake, Steve! Do you really think she would have asked you not to look for her if she wanted you to drop everything and come find her? “
He gasped as he felt the air knocked out of him.
It pissed him off, the burning feeling of betrayal squeezing his chest. Why was she discouraging him from this? Why? And how dared she to speak for you? She hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t seen what he had, what they had been doing to you and finally it hadn’t been her idly hands letting you suffer, only watching it all happen.
Steve couldn’t hold it anymore. So he exploded.
“What she did was stupid! She could be tortured right now, Natasha, serving as someone’s personal lab rat! You said it yourself, we didn’t get a single lead-”
“Exactly. Where would you go?”
“I don’t know!” he yelled, throwing his hands in the air helplessly, his breathing getting quicker. Because she totally hit the nail on the head – Steve had no clue, but he was sick it. He needed to know, he needed to do something, because just waiting for something fall into his lap was torture. “But anything is better than doing nothing!”
“We’re not doing nothing, Rogers. We just saved countless lives-“
“But not the one that mattered!” he cried out, his fist hitting the railing so hard it shook around the whole room. The sound of it resonated in the suddenly silent space as the severity of the sentence fell on both Natasha and Steve.
The redhead pressed her lips together, tears she would later deny gleaming in her eyes. Steve leaned onto the railing, bowing his head in defeat. He did not mean to say that. Especially not to Natasha, who had just lost Bruce to God knew where.
Shit.
“I’m sorry, Natasha, I-“
The spy shook her head, blinking the sudden prove of weakness from her eyes.
“I get it. And I agree with the stupidity, but she did it because she believed it was the only option and a right one. And I rather believe she’s just that good neither we nor anyone else can find her than that she was captured.”
Her voice was thick with emotions she didn’t want to show and the guilt stung harder in Steve’s gut. He was being an ass. A big one. A selfish one on top of that.
“…I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“I think I’ll live,” she sighed, lighting the tablet up. “I get it, Steve. I miss her too.” And I miss Bruce too. I’m scared for him, was left unspoken, but they both knew it might as well could.
“Yeah. I… I know.”
“And it’s not your fault she’s gone. I know you think it is, but that’s nonsense. Don’t beat yourself over it. Just don’t give up on her.”
Steve sighed, closing his eyes and attempting to regain his composure. His balled hands shook inconspicuously. He needed to be strong. He was expected to be strong, especially in front of the new recruits and no matter how much he hated it, moping wouldn’t help anyway. And hot-headed decisions, flying form one end of the world to another without an actual goal neither.
He cleared his throat. “Alright. What do we have here?”
“Bunch of kids who think they know what they’re doing.”
“And they are not a team.”
“And they are as far from a team they could be,” Natasha corrected him as she handed him the tablet and threw the door to a corridor leading to a training room open.
Steve studied all the names and pictures, mentally cataloguing them. “Sounds like a lot of work. Shall we start?”
────── ·❆· ──────  
“Captain Rogers?” Wanda whispered shyly, her unmistakable voice heavy with accent.
Steve stopped in his tracks, trying to plaster a smile on his face. Interacting with her… it was too much. Her age, her powers, her persona – it was too similar, too much of a painful reminder of you and no matter how hard he tried to ignore it, the resemblance nagged him in the back of his brain like a constant itch he couldn’t scratch, because he couldn’t reach it.
“Yes, Wanda?”
“I’m sorry.”
Steve tilted his head, pretending his heart wasn’t beating out of his chest. Had she read his mind? She probably had, if not recently, then surely when they had been fighting against each other. But why speak up now? It must have been about something else.
“What for?”
“I am… still learning how to control the abilities,” she started hesitantly and it confused the hell out of Steve.
Was she apologizing for not making progress fast enough? They had just finished the first training. And of course, had fought a battle against an army of robots.
“That’s understandable. But you’re doing great.”
She smiled faintly. “Thank you. But… it’s… I can’t turn them off. I can… feel the pain and deep sadness settled in you.”
Steve froze. Well. Shit.
“And… when I caused you the hallucinations… I got a glimpse. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he rasped, not even shocked how the combination of her persona and the topic of their conversation brought right back on the edge. “You believed you were doing the right thing. We can’t change the past, but we can still do our best to make a better present and future.”
“Like she did?”
Steve glared into her eyes at the note, unable to say a word. She lowered her gaze.
“I said I got a glimpse, but she was almost everywhere – each of you thought of her. She always made an appearance, at least for a moment. I… I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I just… I guess I want to say thank you for giving me a chance to redeem myself and… and-”
“Wanda… you deserve a chance. You don’t need to thank for that. As for the other thing… I would appreciate if we kept the conversation about that on minimum.”
“Of course! I’m just… I’m working on some things, I’m trying to… to control someone’s emotions and I could help you to— I know it’s invasive!” she blurted out hastily as Steve’s expression changed into a horrified one. “But… with Pietro… I was able to keep tabs on him when on the field, we had a connection-“
“I’m very sorry for your brother, Wanda, I truly am,” Steve said softly, pouring some compassion in and resting his hand gently on her shoulder. Grief he understood too well.
“I… what I’m trying to say is that I would probably feel him at the other side of the world, because we were really close, and— and maybe-- maybe if you let me know Sno--- the person that you feel you have disappointed well enough, if everyone would let me… I think that perhaps with Vision’s help, I might be able to find her mind and track her down.”
Steve stared at the young woman paralyzed, absolutely stunned and with own mind a complete and utter mess.
Did she just said— did she-- could she really--- it sounded too good. It sounded insane. Like a sci-fi; but then again, his whole life was. This woman could read minds. She could move things with her mind, she could read emotions. She could---- could she really find you? It seemed impossible.
He didn’t want to give in to the hope. He always had, every single time the recognition system had found a face almost matching yours only to find a girl who could be your twin, every single time a weather anomaly occurred and he would chase down the lead like a madman only to find nothing, always scolding himself for believing you would be so careless. And the truth was, he was growing tired of it. He always followed, never letting the trail go cold, but with every failed attempt, he was being kicked lower and lower. The spark of determination from Tony had been very short-lived.
“Captain Rogers?”
“Yes?” Steve snapped from his daydreaming, eyeing Wanda absently.
“Your thoughts are screaming at me-- not your fault. Just… do you want to tell me about her? If I know her, I can start trying. And I understand we don’t know each other too well for you to open your mind completely so I could see and hear for myself. So… you could just tell me,” she suggested, this time being the gentle one. It was another reminder of you and it hurt like hell. And at the same time, the offer was painfully tempting. “I really do remind you of her a lot, don’t I?”
Steve gave her a sad smile, little broken on its edges.
“You have no idea.”
“Give me one, then. I could be a good listener.”
Steve chuckled as she offered him an elbow in a poor attempt of a joke and blinked away the tears he had no idea where had come from. He really should get a grip on himself.
“Okay. She… she was someone very special and unique…”
────── ·❆· ──────  
Part 10
────── ·❆· ──────  
Tags: @mermaidxatxheart, @murdermornings, @elisaa-shelby @ask-hellbent-tweek @cxptain, @kallafrench, @smilexcaptainx @scentedsongrebel, @orions-nebula
────── ·❆· ──────  
Bear with me. Were geting back to our Snowflake to see what she’s been up to... and as ou can probably guess, things will happen ;)
Thank you for reading!
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pikkish-moved · 6 years ago
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A screenshot of the ask, in hopes that this time, it’ll let me put in a read more:
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The problem is, most of the characters seem like quite stable people, mentally, including Olimar and kind of maybe Louie, so I don’t see any of them going insane easily. And Olimar and Louie, for both AUs, happen to be in extreme and supernatural situations, which is kind of an exception to a resistance to an effect on sanity.
But, regardless, I did my best here with what I was able to come up with!
(A warning in advance for deaths, some body horror, more deaths, a lot of delusional thinking, more deaths, and oh, can’t forget, more deaths.)
(EVEYONE dies here.)
(Except for, funnily enough, the president.)
In which slacking is not permitted
Where were they?
The president swatted aside a large leaf, forging on in his search for his two absent employees.
A heavy impact, shattering a spray of dark red, a choked gurgle.
Negligent! Irresponsible! That’s what this was. Leaving him unprotected in this forsaken wilderness. And that might be excusable, were the two of them searching for treasure, but he knew they weren’t. No, he was certain they were just loading off somewhere, laughing behind his back.
A thousand small voices, crying out in unison,
He would tan their hides when he found them! Slacking like this, didn’t they know there was a debt to pay off? He’d teach them to work for their money, he’d fire them! Then see how much they like sitting around doing nothing!
Crying out in agony as one of their own, their leader from the sky,
Grumbling, the president paused, leaning against the trunk of one of the enormous trees. There couldn’t have been something he was forgetting, was there? Something Olimar had told him, some plan or something…
fell to the ground, gasping for air, finding only poison, and his own blood.
Or…?
The president’s own shuddering breaths, eyes wide, staring, staring, unable to look away.
No, no, they were around here somewhere. He knew it!
Meeting the eyes of the beast, it’s bloody jaw.
He just had to find them.
He just had to run.
In which the war hero faces old problems
(Gotta admit, idk if Charlie’s really going insane, here. I headcanon that, having been in some wars before, he’s got an incredibly strong resolve. But I did all that I could think of!)
Charlie was not smart. Not comparatively, anyway. He couldn’t fix a ship’s stabilizers with only a screwdriver and a handful of zip ties. He couldn’t take a plant and know how to make it grow, know how to make it flourish. And maybe he knew what a fruit was, or what the cosmic drive key was, but he sure as heck couldn’t say which fruit was higher in piktamin U or why the ship wouldn’t run without the key.
No, Charlie was not smart, and his scientific intelligence was not why he was made captain of this mission.
It was because he was a survivor, a fighter. Because he could get only a glance of a battlefield before charging in, and still come out alive. He wasn’t scientific smart, but he was street smart, and that skill is why he was chosen for this.
It was his only mission, here. Keep alive. Keep all of them alive.
His only mission, and he, Captain Charlie, decorated war hero, had failed it. He was here to protect them, that was all, and he had failed to do so.
He had dealt with loss before, of course. He had seen friends die, sat beside squad mates as their breathing had gotten shallower. But this- this was different. It was one thing to stand in uniform, saluting the departed beside five, ten, twenty of your teammates, all going through the same struggle.
It was another thing entirely to stand alone, in the silent bowels of a ship a million, billion miles away from home, staring blankly at the two occupied medical cryostasis pods, because that was the only place you could think of to put the bodies so they wouldn’t rot.
Because he had recovered the bodies. He had to. He couldn’t just leave them. He had fought tooth and nail to get them back. He couldn’t just leave them there to be eaten. He had to take them back to their families.
...And that was it, then. The end. This mission was over. He was going to go home.
He was going to go home alone.
And so it was, with a sigh, that he eased himself into the Drake- oh, stars, he’d have to tell Drake that Alph was dead- into the Drake’s cockpit, letting his hands rest on the navigational controls. He just had to set a course back to Koppai.
He just had to-...
Charlie had never been great at piloting ships, or navigating. And the Drake, with all its complex technology meant for the expedition, had been even more confusing. He had been given instructions, of course, and at the time they had seemed so clear. But now, he looked at the buttons, the switches, the dials and gauges.
He could hear Alph’s voice, explaining it all. So excited, telling Charlie what each thing did and how it worked, thrilled to be talking about something he loved. Yes, Charlie could still hear Alph’s voice. But he couldn’t hear the words. None of the instructions, nothing. He had no idea how to navigate back to Koppai.
...It was okay, though. He could figure it out. He had to. He had to get them back home safely. He had to get them back to their families.
He had already failed this once. He couldn’t do so again.
So he managed. He plotted a course. Set the Drake on it. Took off.
And then he sat there, as the ship flew. He just sat there, in the seat. He had nothing to do. Nothing he could do. Nothing he could’ve done, his sole point in being on this mission, and he couldn’t do it.
He sat there until his stomach ached, growling, empty. So he got up, and made his way, stiff, oh so stiff, to the juice storage fridge. There wasn’t much juice, there. They hadn’t been able to get much. But that was okay. He was a soldier; he’d lived on slim rations before. He could do it again.
His hands shook as he poured himself a glass of juice. Brittany had always been the one to divide it up. She had always been so careful, measuring things to the last drop. She would’ve made sure the jar Charlie was holding wouldn’t have emptied so quickly. She would’ve made sure-...
He stiffly moved back up to the cockpit and slumped down in the seat again. Eventually he dozed off, but his dreams were simply the same thing, shuffling through the silent ship, from the cockpit to the fridge and back again and back yet again. And when he woke, his stomach was growling again, so he went once more to the fridge, shuffling through the same refuse that had been left out from some night previous, not yet cleaned up.
Charlie set the rim of the jar to his mouth and tipped back his head, but his throat was still dry, and his stomach still growling, and his head still light, and his legs still weak. And then he collapsed to his knees, then curled up on his side amid the empty jars on the floor.
How, how?
He had only been here for a day or so- only a day or so. Only a day or so, he said to himself, running a hand through his uncut, full head of hair. Only a day or so, curled up on the floor, only a day or so, drifting in space, maybe towards Koppai, maybe not.
Only a day or so more.
In which Brittany is annoyed
(This one is… short. I didn’t know what else to do for Brittany aside from the usual “kills everyone and either becomes creepily okay with it or torn apart with guilt” storyline.)
Brittany had long since become convinced of Charlie’s incompetence. The man was a moron, not worth the juice he drank to stay alive. He spent more time flirting- trying to flirt- with her than he did doing actual work. He needed to stop messing around and actually pay attention for once, otherwise he might-...
Oh, now there was an idea. She could… trip him up a little. Throw him for a loop. Get him to realize he had more important thing to be doing- like self preservation- than hitting on her.
It didn’t have to be something big. Just something little. An unfortunately deaf ear to a call for help. A trip, a stumble, where her foot just happened to fly out in front of his, and on this uneven ground, who knows where he might end up?
Yes, just a little incident, just to get him to pay attention to something else.
Just a little incident.
Certainly not something big. Certainly not something really dangerous. Certainly not something that could get him killed, really killed. Brittany was not a murderer. No, she wasn’t. So certainly, not something like a misplaced bomb rock, knocking him back in the blast, into the sandbelching meerslug’s waiting mouth. No, no, nothing like that. Because Brittany wasn’t a murderer.
And here she was, walking alone, back to the ship, not a murderer. The bomb rock truly had been misplaced, pure coincidence that it had knocked Charlie back at that angle.
And when Alph asked where Charlie was, Brittany looked him dead in the eyes. “He didn’t make it. The slug got him.”
Alph gaped. “Wh-What? But- what will we do now? How- we can’t keep going without-“
“Alph. I’ll be leading this mission now.”
In which Alph is a little too eager a mechanic
An excerpt from Olimar’s notes on the Man-At-Legs:
"The Man-at-Legs has a gentle disposition, and as a member of the arachnorb species, it has no natural enemies. It is particularly difficult to understand why this species would develop such awesome offensive capabilities, leading to rumors among the scientific community that it was the machinery that approached the arachnorb and proposed the symbiotic relationship."
✿✿✿
“What a fascinating creature!”
Alph couldn’t help but marvel at the ingenuity of the thing before him, even as he hid behind a pile of rocks. Where it had come from, he didn’t know, it had simply scuttled out of the bushes and started firing on him and his pikmin. But despite the danger, he was awed by the creature. It seemed to be a perfect mix of a living being and a machine! And despite the danger, Alph wanted to see it closer.
Already, a plan was forming in the back of his head. When it reloaded, he would run forward, and weigh it down with a few rock pikmin. Then he’d climb up on top of it, where he could get at it with his screwdriver (because, of course, no self respecting mechanic would ever be caught without an omnitool equipped with a screwdriver). Because, despite the danger, knowledge like this was so incredibly valuable. A perfect combination of flesh and metal! He could hardly begin to imagine how such technology would benefit Koppai. He just had to get up there and see how it worked!
So between the bursts of fire, he charged forward, a rock pikmin already in hand.
All of the Koppaiates’ suits were equipped with biomonitors, and, in an instance of extreme danger, were capable of automatically transmitting an SOS signal to the others. And it was only shortly after Alph charged forward that both Charlie and Brittany got the notification. Something was wrong with Alph, horribly, horribly wrong. He wasn’t responding to calls. His suit was punctured all the way through in multiple places. He was losing blood and bleeding internally. He was going into cardiac arrest. He was dying, dying.
Brittany and Charlie took off sprinting for the location Alph’s signal had come from, but by the time they got there, it was too late.
He was still conscious, still aware. He could feel them, the wires that had suddenly ripped through his body, fusing to his muscles. He was well aware of the stuttering stop of his own heart, his sudden reliance on the power fed into him, directly from the cable that had punctured his gut. And he could feel the other minds, the computing power and the survival instinct, tapped to his own brain via a fine wire woven into the nerves in his spine. He could feel them sifting through his knowledge and memories even as he trudged through the seemingly endless data files of ceaselessly roaming the planet.
And as the figures approached him and his new symbiote hosts, he could feel the body move, the projectile weapon readying to fire on these potential threats. And he could feel the fear, the nervous fear, despite their power, we’ve got to stay safe.
And wasn’t that what Charlie always said? To stay safe, and watch each other’s backs?
So, voice hoarse and weak, coughing on his own bodily fluids, Alph agreed for the sake of his friends’ and hosts’ safety, and gave the command to fire.
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sending-the-message · 7 years ago
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The part of the deep web that we aren't supposed to see. by Mr_Outlaw_
I’ll assume you all know about the deep web. Well, what you've heard is true, it's not a great place. While some people are there to score legal weed or firearms, or even out of sheer curiosity, others... well they're obviously not up to anything good. But I'm not here to talk about those sickos. I'm here to talk about what lies beyond that point. The more cryptic and unexplainable part of the internet. The part that nobody’s really supposed to see.
There was an info-graphic that cropped up a while ago. Not sure when. "The 8 levels of the internet". Maybe you've seen it. As interesting as it was, it's complete bunk. I'm sorry, but "Polymeric Falcigohl Derivation" means nothing. And the "Primarch system"? I guess somebody's a fan of Warhammer. No, there's no quantum mechanics involved here. However, that doesn't mean it was an easy place to find.
Now, I'm not going to begin to tell you how to get here. It's unlikely that'd you be able to, even if I did. I'm not tooting my own horn here, I just didn't have a life outside of this. I was warned, of course. Everybody told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw. That I wouldn’t even understand it. Now I’m passing off that warning to you. Don’t try to look for this.
There's no official name for this place, or at least I haven't seen one. There were rumors, however. These ranged from an illuminati chat room to a virtual holding cell for an experimental AI gone rouge. In reality, it’s a lot worse. After a long and painful process of breaking down firewalls, encryptions, solving bizarre philosophical riddles, and following hidden links, I was finally directed to a blank page with one line of text and a text-box underneath. "Quid quaeris?” Latin for "What do you seek?” I remember feeling surprised. But in retrospect, I didn’t know what I was expecting. I'll admit, I was a bit stumped here. Partly because I didn't know the answer to that question. I had no objective, I just wanted to see if I could do it. I tried some generic answers at first. I typed in "the truth" and "enlightenment". You know, matrix shit. Nothing happened. I tried a bunch of answers, but none of them worked. I was getting frustrated at this point. Maybe this was a gag page. Maybe I really hadn’t figured anything out. If only.
I tried something off the wall. Not sure how this came to me or why I thought it would work, but I typed in “what also seeks me”. Now that I think about it, this thing might have been an AI. To my surprise, the page went blank. Like fully blank. I waited. After about five minutes, I was directed to what looked like a forum. No, not even that. It was more basic. Just a list of links over a brownish-yellow background. The links themselves were indecipherable. Just seemingly random sequences of characters, symbols and letters. A lot of them I had never seen before. It almost looked like an alien language. Obviously, just a code I didn’t understand. At this point, expectations were off the wall. Each link was a shot in the dark. I clicked on the first one. It loaded up a live-feed of what seemed to be the Paris catacombs. I watched for a while, but it was ultimately uneventful.
I moved on to the next link. It was a shaky video in a dark setting. But I could make out men in tactical gear. They were in a house, opening doors and sweeping each room. Eventually, they kicked one down to reveal a creature. Tall and humanoid, with scaly skin. It was gnawing on a dismembered arm. They tried shooting at it, but it escaped out the window. The video stopped there. Well, I was floored. What the hell was this? It looked too real to be unreleased film footage. I was officially intrigued. Maybe this was worth the months of headaches and bloodshot eyes after all. I couldn’t stop now. I started working down the list of links. With each click, everything got more and more bizarre. More disturbing. I stumbled upon a document called “The Paragon project”, detailing trials of human experimentation that would lead to superhuman levels of strength and durability. It was an apparent success. Looked official too.
There were essays on space-time anomalies, glitches in reality, and apparent pictures of alternate dimensions. There were detailed explanations regarding Area 51, the Bermuda triangle, assassinations, disappearances, and the true nature of the Holy Grail. One of the more upsetting ones was a document referring to a “world-ending bomb”. A nuke that’s 720,000 times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima. I don’t want to know why we would need that. I found contingency plans for different kinds of Apocalypses - nuclear winter, biological weapons, viral outbreak. Some more peculiar ones were called “The Marianas Trench abnormality”, the bluntly labeled “Strange man on the fifteenth floor”, and one simply referred to as “Blackout”. Recovered logs of skin-walker hunting expeditions, 911 transcripts from residents of a town in Texas that went missing in 1977 and even the journals that belonged to the people involved in the Dyatlov pass incident. They didn’t go insane because of the snow.
I spent hours on there, looking through pages and pages of things I felt like I wasn’t supposed to see. I came across a trailer to a silent film made back in 1910. One that apparently made people claw their eyes out after watching that nearly derailed the whole industry. There was a live stream of a hooded man sitting in front of a camera, head crouched down. He eventually lifted his head. Even though he had no mouth, a deep, guttural, “Hello” came through my speakers. Somehow, I knew it came from him. I didn’t stick around for that. There were obscure sets of step-by-step guides that involved things like cutting off your own limbs and sewing on a corpse’s, performing religious incantations in the middle of the Siberian forest and going to coordinates that apparently housed captive fallen angels. It was unclear what any of these were supposed to achieve. There was a 20 second long clip titled “The futility of the living”. I didn’t watch it. That’s when I realized there was no way even the highest form of organized government had full control of this. One of the scariest things about this whole thing was that I didn’t find an end to the list. No matter far I scrolled down.
I think I had a meltdown and passed out eventually, because I woke up on my floor in the middle of the night. I looked at my computer screen to see looped helicopter footage of a massive, crab-like creature tearing apart a coastal island. I clicked off of it. I just sat there for the longest time. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, and I don’t think I really wanted to. Now, I’m not really sure why I kept going. My brain was screaming for me to take my computer out to the lawn and smash it into pieces. But I didn’t. I noticed something I hadn’t before. A small message at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I don’t know if it was always there or not. It was hard to read so I had to squint. More Latin. Translated into “Are you satisfied?” There were two options underneath it, yes and no.
Now, I knew the answer to this question. Hell no I wasn’t satisfied. I was horrified, scarred for life. But I should have clicked on yes. If I just clicked on yes it would have taken me out of that godforsaken place. Back to comfort and sanity. Even right now, I can’t tell you why I clicked on no. But once I did, the page seemed to refresh. It was still the same basic setup, except there were only four links. This time, there were no recognizable numbers or characters. Hell, it didn’t look like anything that could have come from this world. Just a collection of extremely crude symbols that didn’t give off any sense of pattern or direction. I clicked on the first link.
After about 20 seconds, I unplugged the computer. I can’t describe to you what I saw. All I know is that I wasn’t supposed to see it. NOBODY should ever see something like this. It’s not only that it didn’t make any sense, I can’t tell you why it didn’t. I couldn’t begin to grasp the images I was seeing. It wasn’t graphic or anything, not like that. I just couldn’t recognize anything. I could make out things moving, but not in a way any creature on earth has ever moved before. Colors that I’d never seen before. Just thinking about it gives me a splitting headache. This is the best way I can describe it. We have 3 dimensions here on earth. We can move left, right, 72.4 degrees upwards, etc. These things weren’t restricted to that. I can’t explain it any further. All I know is that I didn’t want to watch one more second. I don’t think I would have been able to.
I left my room. For the first time in a while, I was planning to leave my house. I needed fresh air. To take a walk or something. Hell, I was thinking about running a marathon in the middle of the night just to get my mind off of that shit for a few hours. I was putting on my jacket when I heard a knock at the door. I stopped dead in my tracks. Obviously, I wasn’t opening up. About a minute and five more sets of knocks came before somebody spoke up. “Open up. We know what you did, but we’re not here to hurt you. We just want to talk”. The tone wasn’t threatening. Eventually, I obliged. I opened up my door to two tall, slim men in suits. They smiled at me. “Can we come in?” I still don't know how they found me. I thought for sure that I was off the grid.
We sat down on the couch. I guess I was just waiting for answers at this point. One of them looked at me and said “What were you looking for?” “I don’t know. But I’m not going back”, I responded. He smiled again. Like this is what he wanted to hear. The other one piped up: “Who do you work for?” His tone was a bit more aggressive. I just shook my head. “Look, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I wasn’t looking for anything.” They just stared at me for a while. “I’m not gonna tell anybody. Trust me”. They finally responded: “We’re not worried about that. Doubt anybody’d believe you.” Another smile. Somehow it felt genuine. “We just wanted to know what your priorities were.” In retrospect, that was a very strange question. “Just do us favor and we’ll leave”. I perked up. “Give us the device you used to access it”. I didn’t ask any questions. I ran upstairs and basically tossed them my laptop. They both smirked at me once last time before heading for the door. Just as they were about to leave, one of them turned back. “I don’t think you need to be told, but don’t try this again. And don’t show anybody else how to get there either. We’ll know.” I didn’t ask who they were. I’m not sure I would have wanted to know.
It’s been a week now. I don’t go on the internet so much anymore. After this, I’m going to try and forget. To try and not to think about it anymore. I’ve started having horrific nightmares. Been seeing a therapist for that, but I don’t think it’s helping. Anyways, I’m not going to let this consume the rest of my life. The thing is, I’m afraid this might not be possible. There are some things we aren’t supposed to know about. Probably for our own safety and sanity. Don’t try and seek them out. It’s better that way.
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redditnosleep · 7 years ago
Text
The Part of The Deep Web That We Aren’t Supposed To See
by Mr_Outlaw_
I’ll assume you all know about the deep web. Well, what you've heard is true, it's not a great place. While some people are there to score legal weed or firearms, or even out of sheer curiosity, others... well they're obviously not up to anything good. But I'm not here to talk about those sickos. I'm here to talk about what lies beyond that point. The more cryptic and unexplainable part of the internet. The part that nobody’s really supposed to see.
There was an info-graphic that cropped up a while ago. Not sure when. "The 8 levels of the internet". Maybe you've seen it. As interesting as it was, it's complete bunk. I'm sorry, but "Polymeric Falcigohl Derivation" means nothing. And the "Primarch system"? I guess somebody's a fan of Warhammer. No, there's no quantum mechanics involved here. However, that doesn't mean it was an easy place to find.
Now, I'm not going to begin to tell you how to get here. It's unlikely that'd you be able to, even if I did. I'm not tooting my own horn here, I just didn't have a life outside of this. I was warned, of course. Everybody told me I wasn’t going to like what I saw. That I wouldn’t even understand it. Now I’m passing off that warning to you. Don’t try to look for this.
There's no official name for this place, or at least I haven't seen one. There were rumors, however. These ranged from an illuminati chat room to a virtual holding cell for an experimental AI gone rouge. In reality, it’s a lot worse. After a long and painful process of breaking down firewalls, encryptions, solving bizarre philosophical riddles, and following hidden links, I was finally directed to a blank page with one line of text and a text-box underneath. "Quid quaeris?” Latin for "What do you seek?” I remember feeling surprised. But in retrospect, I didn’t know what I was expecting. I'll admit, I was a bit stumped here. Partly because I didn't know the answer to that question. I had no objective, I just wanted to see if I could do it. I tried some generic answers at first. I typed in "the truth" and "enlightenment". You know, matrix shit. Nothing happened. I tried a bunch of answers, but none of them worked. I was getting frustrated at this point. Maybe this was a gag page. Maybe I really hadn’t figured anything out. If only.
I tried something off the wall. Not sure how this came to me or why I thought it would work, but I typed in “what also seeks me”. Now that I think about it, this thing might have been an AI. To my surprise, the page went blank. Like fully blank. I waited. After about five minutes, I was directed to what looked like a forum. No, not even that. It was more basic. Just a list of links over a brownish-yellow background. The links themselves were indecipherable. Just seemingly random sequences of characters, symbols and letters. A lot of them I had never seen before. It almost looked like an alien language. Obviously, just a code I didn’t understand. At this point, expectations were off the wall. Each link was a shot in the dark. I clicked on the first one. It loaded up a live-feed of what seemed to be the Paris catacombs. I watched for a while, but it was ultimately uneventful.
I moved on to the next link. It was a shaky video in a dark setting. But I could make out men in tactical gear. They were in a house, opening doors and sweeping each room. Eventually, they kicked one down to reveal a creature. Tall and humanoid, with scaly skin. It was gnawing on a dismembered arm. They tried shooting at it, but it escaped out the window. The video stopped there. Well, I was floored. What the hell was this? It looked too real to be unreleased film footage. I was officially intrigued. Maybe this was worth the months of headaches and bloodshot eyes after all. I couldn’t stop now. I started working down the list of links. With each click, everything got more and more bizarre. More disturbing. I stumbled upon a document called “The Paragon project”, detailing trials of human experimentation that would lead to superhuman levels of strength and durability. It was an apparent success. Looked official too.
There were essays on space-time anomalies, glitches in reality, and apparent pictures of alternate dimensions. There were detailed explanations regarding Area 51, the Bermuda triangle, assassinations, disappearances, and the true nature of the Holy Grail. One of the more upsetting ones was a document referring to a “world-ending bomb”. A nuke that’s 720,000 times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima. I don’t want to know why we would need that. I found contingency plans for different kinds of Apocalypses - nuclear winter, biological weapons, viral outbreak. Some more peculiar ones were called “The Marianas Trench abnormality”, the bluntly labeled “Strange man on the fifteenth floor”, and one simply referred to as “Blackout”. Recovered logs of skin-walker hunting expeditions, 911 transcripts from residents of a town in Texas that went missing in 1977 and even the journals that belonged to the people involved in the Dyatlov pass incident. They didn’t go insane because of the snow.
I spent hours on there, looking through pages and pages of things I felt like I wasn’t supposed to see. I came across a trailer to a silent film made back in 1910. One that apparently made people claw their eyes out after watching that nearly derailed the whole industry. There was a live stream of a hooded man sitting in front of a camera, head crouched down. He eventually lifted his head. Even though he had no mouth, a deep, guttural, “Hello” came through my speakers. Somehow, I knew it came from him. I didn’t stick around for that. There were obscure sets of step-by-step guides that involved things like cutting off your own limbs and sewing on a corpse’s, performing religious incantations in the middle of the Siberian forest and going to coordinates that apparently housed captive fallen angels. It was unclear what any of these were supposed to achieve. There was also a 20 second long clip titled “The futility of the living”. I didn’t watch it. That’s when I realized there was no way even the highest form of organized government had full control of this. One of the scariest things about this whole experience was that I didn’t find an end to the list. No matter far I scrolled down.
I think I had a meltdown and passed out eventually, because I woke up on my floor in the middle of the night. I looked at my computer screen to see looped helicopter footage of a massive, crab-like creature tearing apart a coastal island. I clicked off of it. I just sat there for the longest time. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, and I don’t think I really wanted to. Now, I’m not really sure why I kept going. My brain was screaming for me to take my computer out to the lawn and smash it into pieces. But I didn’t. I noticed something I hadn’t before. A small message at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I don’t know if it was always there or not. It was hard to read so I had to squint. More Latin. Translated into “Are you satisfied?” There were two options underneath it, yes and no.
Now, I knew the answer to this question. Hell no I wasn’t satisfied. I was horrified, scarred for life. But I should have clicked on yes. If I just clicked on yes it would have taken me out of that godforsaken place. Back to comfort and sanity. Even right now, I can’t tell you why I clicked on no. But once I did, the page seemed to refresh. It was still the same basic setup, except there were only four links. This time, there were no recognizable numbers or characters. Hell, it didn’t look like anything that could have come from this world. Just a collection of extremely crude symbols that didn’t give off any sense of pattern or direction. I clicked on the first link.
After about 20 seconds, I slammed my computer shut. I can’t describe to you what I saw. All I know is that I wasn’t supposed to see it. NOBODY should ever see something like this. It’s not only that it didn’t make any sense, I can’t tell you why it didn’t. I couldn’t begin to grasp the images I was seeing. It wasn’t graphic or anything, not like that. I just couldn’t recognize anything. I could make out things moving, but not in a way any creature on earth has ever moved before. Colors that I’d never seen before. Just thinking about it gives me a splitting headache. This is my best attempt at visualizing it. We have 3 dimensions here on earth. We can move left, right, 72.4 degrees upwards, etc. These things weren’t restricted to that. I can’t explain it any further. All I know is that I didn’t want to watch one more second. I don’t think I would have been able to.
I left my room. For the first time in a while, I was planning to leave my house. I needed fresh air. To take a walk or something. Hell, I was thinking about running a marathon in the middle of the night just to get my mind off of that shit for a few hours. I was putting on my jacket when I heard a knock at the door. I stopped dead in my tracks. Obviously, I wasn’t opening up. About a minute and five more sets of knocks came before somebody spoke up. “Open up. We know what you did, but we’re not here to hurt you. We just want to talk”. The tone wasn’t threatening. Eventually, I obliged. I opened up my door to two tall, slim men in suits. They smiled at me. “Can we come in?” I still don't know how they found me. I thought for sure that I was off the grid.
We sat down on the couch. I guess I was just waiting for answers at this point. One of them looked at me and said “What were you looking for?” “I don’t know. But I’m not going back”, I responded. He smiled again. Like this is what he wanted to hear. The other one piped up: “Who do you work for?” His tone was a bit more aggressive. I just shook my head. “Look, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I wasn’t looking for anything.” They just stared at me for a while. “I’m not gonna tell anybody. Trust me”. They finally responded: “We’re not worried about that. Doubt anybody’d believe you.” Another smile. Somehow it felt genuine. “We just wanted to know what your priorities were.” In retrospect, that was a very strange question. “Just do us favor and we’ll leave”. I perked up. “Give us the device you used to access it”. I didn’t ask any questions. I ran upstairs and basically tossed them my laptop. They both smirked at me once last time before heading for the door. Just as they were about to leave, one of them turned back. “I don’t think you need to be told, but don’t try this again. And don’t show anybody else how to get there either. We’ll know.” I didn’t ask who they were. I’m not sure I would have wanted to know.
It’s been a week now. I don’t go on the internet so much anymore. After this, I’m going to try and forget. To try and not to think about it anymore. I’ve started having horrific nightmares. Been seeing a therapist for that, but I don’t think it’s helping. Anyways, I’m not going to let this consume the rest of my life. The thing is, I’m afraid this might not be possible. There are some things we aren’t supposed to know about. Probably for our own safety and sanity. Don’t try and seek them out. It’s better that way.
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