#most of my taxes are already gone because of bills and stuff

[thenexusofsouls]

"Well if I failed it, that means I didn't learn it, right? I dunno, though, honestly, real life's not like school. They try to tell you, 'Memorize these eighteen vocab words or you'll grow up a loser and won't get a job,' but really... as an adult, if you wanna know somethin', you look it the hell up." Wade really thought that today's American schools were doin' a real disservice to kids, with the memory recall and repetition techniques instead of teaching them important things like critical and independent thinking.

"I think 'steada teachin' kids to memorize shit, we should be teachin' 'em life skills, like how to use a library or a computer, how to do your taxes, how to manage your finances, stick to a budget, how to ask the right questions, basic email etiquette, how to network socially, how to make a resume, that kinda stuff. That's the stuff you need to know to be a functional adult, not what sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia means." There was a quiet beat and then, "Brain freeze. That's what it means. You know, like when you eat ice cream too fast? I just love sayin' it, that's the only reason I know it," he said with a chuckle. "I dunno, I learn better by doin', not by readin' or studyin'. There's no substitute for life experience, man."

He saw Rockland's energy be taken down a peg about being a responsible person, and he understood why. "Yeah, I know, bein' responsible's no fun, and it sucks that you've gotta do it so young, but it really is admirable. And it'll give you a leg up later in life, definitely. You're already ahead of most kids just because you pay attention to all this stuff they don't. So keep that in mind. It sucks, but it pays off, trust me," he tried to say by way of encouragement and cheering the kid up a bit. Sometimes life gave you lemons, but if you learned how to make lemonade out of them early on, you were better off later.

As the conversation shifted to Rockland's mom, Wade could see the conflict in the young boy's eyes. He shrugged at little at his assumption that her leaving meant she didn't care. "Eh, not necessarily. People leave for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it's not even really under their control. For example... I once was paid to find a guy who'd completely disappeared. His family was lookin' for him, he owed all this money, he let all his bills lapse, that sorta thing. Guy was gone for years. His family was thinkin' he was a total jerk and just took off to start a new life somewhere. Turns out he actually did. I found him a couple states over livin' a completely different life. Here's the catch, though... The guy had been in a car accident, got a head injury, and suffered almost total amnesia. He didn't know who the hell was and started over again somewhere else. Isn't that wild? So it's not always that people don't care. There can be a lotta reasons why someone leaves."

Wade started chuckling as Rockland asked him if he slept. "I'm not Dracula, buddy. Yeah, I sleep. I just usually do it from morning to late afternoon 'steada at night, that's all. So I'm not tired right now, I just got up a few hours ago. I just didn't wanna get you into any trouble keepin' you out late. Also I'm not lookin' to be accused of kidnappin'. That'd kinda look bad on my resume, you know?" he joked.

Well that caught their attention alright. A middle finger had shot into the air, directed at a group of teens across the street who were hovering by a Duncan Donuts long closed for the night. The boy beneath the hoodie, propelling said finger, sneered. Just like that, the group of five moved towards him, the tallest, Shacks, sauntering forward with an irritating air of confidence. And to think, there'd been a time when Rockland had thought he was cool.

"You can't seriously blame us, Rocky." He looked to the others with cruel amusement, "It was a prank, get a sense of hum-" Too busy searching for the favour of his crew, he'd missed the draw of the younger teen's fist before it met his cheek.

"Prank my ass, I could've been arres-oof." Rockland was tackled by Archie, the smallest of the bunch, who was about a head shorter than he was, but kinda stalky for his age, and with the element of surprise on his side. Cane clattering out of hand, and across the sidewalk, the lanky teen scraped across the pavement, electric pain radiating up from his tailbone. He caught the breath that had been knocked out of him just in time to catch the thump of a fist to the nose in return. - For Wade

Wade didn't know what to make of this city yet. He'd only been here a couple days and was still trying to get his bearings. It wasn't a bad city, he thought, just cold. Just... really cold when you're alone, like all cities are. Nevertheless, Wade did some hunting and stocked up on other supplies, always wanting to stay on the move. That's how he got jobs, and that's how he kept sane.

Tonight had been quiet enough so far... that is until he heard sounds of a fight. But a fight... between kids? Was he hearing this right? Wade made his way toward the sounds, and sure enough, some kids whose parents were absent and whose bedtimes must be fast-approaching were going at it. Or rather, several kids were beating up on one unfortunate one.

"Hey! Come on, cut it out, what the hell're you guys doin'?!" Wade yelled, hoping to scatter the bullies. "You know better than this, get off him! Don't make me call the cops!" he said, watching as they all scattered... save for one. Wade knelt down beside the boy lying on the ground. "Hey, buddy, you okay?" he asked gently.

[tariah23]

My upcoming check is so pitiful wtf

[reikunrei]

feeling incredibly averse to posting this but i'm just gonna drop my kofi link here in case anyone wants to help me get out of my increasingly shitty situation living with my parents

more info below ig

after having given my parents nearly $100k over the last four years, i'd love to be able to actually leave. my future job situation is still up in the air (i've submitted for about a dozen positions and the only one i've heard back from and interviewed for hasn't gotten back to me yet), and i haven't been able to build up any savings because, again, i was (and still am) helping my family afford rent and bills, and probably the taxes my parents are behind on, but if i think about that, i'll get too angry. no joke, i've given my family, at the bare minimum, 85% of my income over the last 4 years. the rest of it has gone toward medical stuff and, now, my car

at this point, with the combo of my mom refusing to lower her standards and my dad's seeming refusal to hunt for a new full time job, i don't see how they won't continue to bleed me dry. my dad even has a bad habit of taking money out of my old savings account that he's a joint owner on or whatever from when i got it set up when i was 16, even when i stopped actively putting money in it, so now any time it gets its automated $1 transfer from my checking account, he'll just take that $1 without consulting me. i'm not exaggerating, even if it has $1-2 in it, it'll be gone within a week

i've even put off starting on testosterone because of this. i wanted to start it like 3 years ago, but kept putting it off because of money issues and wanting to save as much as possible. i got really close to actually starting it this year, but because of how messy everything is, i put it off again bc having one more thing on my plate, especially when my parents are already weird about me being trans, was not something i wanted to deal with

not to mention, we're still currently not living under a lease in our house that we're, as far as i'm aware, still tens of thousands of dollars behind in rent on (again, my dad refuses to disclose our financial position honestly with any of us) and it's developed many, many issues bc the landlord, even before we were behind on rent, is shit and refuses to actually fix anything. and my dad loves to just ignore things unless we beg him to do something

i'd love to be on my own (in the, much more affordable, midwest) by the end of summer. i by no means want to rely on donations and i have other avenues i'm working with to make money (i still have my current full time job, but i'm going through my old belongings and selling a lot online), but i'll take any help i can get atp because i'm truly at my wits end. i'd start doing art commissions again if i could, but doing that from 2020-2022, partially on top of my full time job, absolutely wrecked my right hand and i'm still in enough pain that i can't make it a regular activity

idk how much else there is to say. there's more i could say but... i don't really wanna air all my dirty laundry here. i'm miserable in so many ways and it's just become increasingly clear that my dad expects me to constantly cover his ass. my younger brother gives money too, but he manages to go on big cross-country and overseas trips with friends, so i think i've been stuck with the burden of giving the most money. there's so many more things going on in the world rn and everyone is stretched thin so i don't expect much, or anything, but. idk. might as well throw it out there, right?

i’ve also since taken down the gfm i set up last year when we got our first eviction notice bc, while we still need the money, i don’t feel right keeping it up for multiple reasons, including “i don’t want to give any of that money to my family” and it feels too… serious to keep it up when i could just throw out my kofi instead

i just want to make sure i have some sort of safety net to catch me if i move before anything job-wise is finalized. i need to be able to afford a place to live for at least a month so i can job-search while physically being in the area i wanna move to, which would ultimately make it easier for me to find a job at all. i'm working on being more firm with giving less money so i can actually have the means to move and be safe and comfortable, but... that never lasts long in this house

anyway. that's it, i guess. thanks for reading

[littleststarfighter]

You don't have to answer this at all, just wanted to give some perspective/info from someone who's been doing illustration commissions for about 15 years: in my opinion, it's always better to work backwards from an hourly rate rather than doing value-based pricing.

When working with private individuals as clients, US$30-50/hr is pretty standard for custom freelance stuff depending on experience, but since you're new to commissions I'd recommend offering a discount for the first few slots (both to get things moving, and also to give yourself lower-stakes "training" until you get used to the process—sometimes your workflow will change in ways you didn't expect under the conditions).

Personally, I prefer to offer a fixed quote based on my hourly rate, because that gets any kind of sticker shock out of the way. I estimate the amount of time it'll take me, add ~10% as a buffer, and apply my hourly rate. The fixed quote also gives me a little freedom not to stress out if it's taking more or less time than anticipated; I just make a note for my next quote and adjust accordingly.

The hourly rate might seem high to you, as it often does to people who are used to more traditional salary structures. But keep in mind that as a freelancer, you're also your own admin support: you don't bill for time spent emailing, researching, invoicing, etc. Tax can also get a bit complicated if you start doing a lot of freelance work.

My own base (non-commercial) rate is US$60/hr, because I've been doing this for a very long time. Frankly, the reason I have a lot of long-term repeat clients who pay my rate is because I communicate well and deliver on time. I set out a timeline up front with scheduled check-ins at various stages, and then I stick to that timeline no matter what. As someone who's also hired many freelance artists in the past, I know that reliability will win over genius every single time.

Speaking of timelines, ALWAYS be specific about the number and scope of revisions you offer. Depending on the project, I might phrase it as "2 rounds of revisions, with up to 1 hour of work per round" or similar. I bill anything beyond that scope at a higher hourly rate, usually about US$90/hr, billed by the half-hour. This also gives you leverage to say "Sure, I can add a whole new character and completely change the background; that will take about X hours which will put us into hourly billing territory at X rate." Either they'll back down or you'll be well compensated for the trouble, and most importantly (from a client services perspective) you've not told them no, you've given them options and reminded them what they've already agreed to.

In terms of payment plans, I normally require 50% up front (non-refundable) and 50% on final delivery. Since you haven't yet built up a rep as a commission artist, I recommend a lower up-front rate (maybe 20-30%). I do strongly advise getting SOMETHING up front to lock clients in and make sure they can't completely ditch if something happens. Plus, refusing to pay a small deposit is a major red flag.

I offer a 5% discount for complete payment up front, because it's honestly worth that 5% just to not have to deal with chasing people down and sending invoice reminders and whatnot.

I'm sorry to hear you've been going through such a tough time, and I hope this was helpful and not too overwhelming; it's just stuff I wish someone had told me when I was first starting out, and I think it's important for working artists to share info about business practices. I wasn't strict about a lot of things back then (like number of revisions), and it always ended up coming back to bite me. It might seem counter-intuitive, but I promise that thinking through and setting a lot of rules/boundaries up front will save you a lot of stress and trouble in the end.

I seriously want to thank you for this. It's incredibly informative not just for me but I'm sure other start out artists too. You've gone over things that I'd have no idea to do, thank you.

I'm certainly looking into how to pay tax as being in the UK I've never had to work that out before as we have it done for us in most jobs. So that would have been something I'd have forgotten about and it's not something you want to miss. I definitely have to time myself working as I don't know how long I take as I've never thought about that either. I just know I'm slow. It's interesting to see what you'd charge hourly as I see a lot of fan commissions having a low fixed rate depending on what you offer.  So definitely have to look whether to offer that or like you suggest a more freelance rate of pay. I'll admit US$30-50/hr made me gasp but that's because I'm used to working for UK minimum wage (roughly $13 a hr) so that seems a lot to me. Gives me something to think about. Though I worry about pricing people out to begin with what with being quite slow and a nobody. And yes! Never forget about getting a deposit. I learnt that the bad way decades ago when I did try to do a commission and was never paid. That's what made me nervous to even begin as I can be a pushover. So need to be more strict in what I can offer and of course revise too.

Seriously thank you this is so helpful. Like you say there's so much people don't share about getting into freelance and commission work. Getting that step up, even if it's me doing it, is something I've no idea how to even start on. I get people saying why aren't you working in art? But my answer is always 'how?' It's something no one's told me about. How to sell yourself and your work. Even commission work confused me. So please don't worry this is beyond helpful and I'm very grateful for you taking your time to help me. It's been a very rough few months but I'm trying to stay positive. This may help me while I find work. Much love, Lucy 💖

[nanatsumu]

TEENAGE FEVER

pairing: iwaizumi hajime x f!reader, oikawa tooru x f!reader

synopsis: iwaizumi has strung you on long enough and you’re finally at the end of your rope.

genre: heavy angst... like make your heart wrench in pain heavy, one sided pining

warnings: manga spoilers, bad grammar (didn’t know it was that bad until i used grammarly), MATURE themes, drinking, smoking, alcohol, iwaizumi being an asshole (he’s also a frat boy because surprise! frat boys should never be trusted), subtle hints at sex, bittersweet ending

word count: 6.7K

series masterlist

part one | part two | part three | part four

“y/n we know you’re in there, someone told me they saw you run in here.”

great!

you slowly sit up from the toilet, dragging your feet across the bathroom tiles until you make it to the door and begin unlocking the lock at a snail’s pace. but before you can even get a chance to twist the doorknob, somebody is already doing so on the other side of the door and the next thing you know, reina’s screaming ‘HURRY UP’ and you’re assaulted by the bathroom door.

“REINA!” you scream as the result of the door flying into your face has you clutching your head.

“SHIT! SORRY Y/N!”

“geez, why are you so fucking slow,” oikawa complains as he sucks his teeth, pushing the door in a little wider so that you can see standing him behind reina as well. “did iwa-chan’s kiss mess you up that bad?”

“your friend is a prick, oikawa!” reina jabs him in the side, eliciting a grunt from the poor man. “it was supposed to be a quick smooch but that guy had to be extra and start using tongue!”

“what kind of guy kisses a girl who he’s only met once like that?!” your female friend cries.

“only someone as ballsy as him would even try and do that,” oikawa stops scratching his head, his eyes widening like saucers as if he’s just realized something. “and don’t put all the blame on iwaizumi! y/n, you literally moaned! and i even saw you kissing back!”

“don’t make me feel shittier than i already do oikawa!” you jeer.

“he...” you sigh and you can feel the tears start to prickle your eyes. “i feel so humiliated, and embarrassed.”

“and i-i felt so... so exposed.”

oikawa’s playful expression falters as he hears the hurt in your voice and manages to squeeze his way past a protesting reina before kneeling down so that he could meet your glossy eyes.

“listen, i’ll apologize on his behalf for now and i’ll take him about it later, alright?” he awkwardly pats your shoulder, not sure what to do as he’s never been in a situation where he’s had to comfort a girl bawling her eyes out.

“y-you... don’t have— t-to do that,” you whimper. “i’m just being a big crybaby, it’s just a silly kiss.”

“no it’s not!” reina blurts out a little louder than she intended to. “that prick completely disrespected you and embarrassed you in front of everyone! it wasn’t even a matter of him kissing you, it was a part of a game, but that dude took it too far and crossed the line!”

“listen, this is why i told you to stay away from him in the first place,” your roommate shuffles closer to you and pulls you in for a hug. “let’s go home alright?”

“let me walk you guys home, it’s getting late outside and even though you two are together, you never know what’ll happen.” oikawa offers, and while you are quick to accept, reina wavers momentarily.

“how do you know you’re not gonna take advantage of us, hm?”

“please, if i wanted to i already would’ve given the circumstances but i haven’t because i. do. not. want. to!” he smiles patronizingly which irks reina.

“whatever, but if you even think about trying anything then i’ll cut your dick off and feed it to my lizard.” she threatens but oikawa doesn’t take it to heart.

you finally get the last of your sniffles out as you stand up to your feet and exit the bathroom with oikawa and reina trailing along right behind you, similar to an assembly line of ducks— a very... tall duck, a crying duck, and an angry duck.

the walk home was rowdier than you had expected it to be. while you were quieter than usual and still in a bad mood from earlier events, that didn’t stop oikawa and reina though from causing a ruckus on the way back to the dorms.

“you’re telling me, that THAT’S hajime? like hajime iwaizumi? the notorious playboy of irvine?” reina gapes as she stares at the photo of iwaizumi back in high school that oikawa had saved in his phone.

even you were surprised to see what iwaizumi looked back then when reina practically shoved oikawa’s phone in your face, the brightness radiating from his phone screen only further irritating your bloodshot eyes.

while he still had a bit of muscle on him back then, he looked a lot lankier in comparison to his university counterpart who had grown twice in size. his once pale skin had become almost a sun-kissed tan color that complimented his features. but what shocked you the most was that the iwaizumi shown to you in the photos was free from any blemishes on his arms and his ears weren’t dressed in dangly silvers or studs.

“that’s iwaizumi?” your jaw dropped and oikawa was quick to make a teasing remark about how your mouth was wide open enough for flies to fly in.

“what happened to him?!” reina cries.

“sometimes i wonder why he hasn’t visited japan in the past 4 years but when i look back at this photo and then compare it to present him, i would piss my pants too if i were him and had to go back home to my mom.”

“does his mom not like tattoos or piercings?” reina questions as you and oikawa give each other a look before turning back to the girl.

“i don’t know about iwaizumi, but my mom is pretty strict about tattoos and piercings,” you start to explain. “she’s the ‘girls shouldn’t get tattoos!’ and ‘guys shouldn’t get piercings!’ type of mom, so she’s not completely against it, but if i came home with a huge ass tattoo like iwaizumi then she’d sure as hell chop my arm off.”

“japan’s pretty strict about piercings and tattoos, especially when it comes to students because tattoos are kind of a sign of the yakuza in japan,” oikawa adds in addition. “piercings aren’t as frowned upon as tattoos but it’s usually the younger kids who have ‘em.”

“yakuza?”

“like a gang basically? or a mafia i guess.” you answer reina to the best of your abilities.

you start kicking a pebble around and breathe in the crisp california air, watching as a puff of smoke escapes your lips with every exhale.

“you alright?” oikawa asks as he begins growing worried since you haven’t said anything in the past few minutes.

“yeah, just thinking,” you stuff your hands into your pockets and continue kicking the pebble beneath your feet. “california is a lot hotter than japan.”

“you think california is hot? just wait ‘till you spend a day in the summer heat in argentina.” he counters.

“maybe one day,” you say in consideration. “maybe when i graduate university i’ll consider traveling somewhere before my life completely revolves around paying taxes and bills.”

“if you do come to argentina one day then just give me a call and i’ll be more than happy to give you a tour around.” he beams.

“my cousin is playing volleyball in brazil, i think?” you say, remembering your mother telling you that hinata had gone to play beach volleyball in brazil. “he’s blood-related but he lived in miyagi while i lived in aomori so we never really got to see each other that much.”

“miyagi? i used to live in miyagi too!”

“huh? really? do you know a hinata shoyo then?” you ask, intrigued at the newfound information. “i heard from my mom that he started playing volleyball in high school so he’s probably played you once in a game if you played volleyball in high school too.”

“i did actually, his team beat mine during the qualifiers for spring nationals my last year of high school and man, i think i probably broke the record for most bowls of ramen eaten in one sitting that day.” he chuckles but it comes out sounding more half-heartedly in your ears, almost like he’s recalling an unpleasant memory from the past.

“so what made you go to argentina?” you ask and oikawa answers like he’s been asked this countless of times (which he has.)

“when i was a kid, there was this volleyball player i really looked up to,” oikawa starts. “his name was jose blanco and there was a tournament happening in sendai that i went to where he played against japan, and at the time there was a young ace on the team who was a fledgling star,”

“he made a big impression during the first half of the tournament but he started getting worse as things progressed. he was kind of off for the rest of the game and i thought that he was gonna be subbed out but it wasn’t until they switched setters that i noticed the ace was getting back into his groove. jose was a veteran setter, 38 years old i think? and if you were to be asked who the star of the game was then you’d probably say the ace since he was the one who scored most of the points right? but if you ask me, i think the setter was the star of the game!”

“he was so cool too! like he was so calm the entire time and he inconspicuously helped the ace get back on to his feet and just simply left the court,” oikawa continues to ramble. “i even got an autograph but that dumbass iwaizumi took the paper that i bought and got the autograph of some dude on the japan team so i had to give jose the jersey i bought earlier that day instead. although it did end up getting washed though....”

“hah! desperate much?” you laugh as you bump shoulders with him.

“desperate time for desperate measures! no way was i gonna leave without getting the jose blanco’s autograph!” he emphasizes.

unbeknownst to you and oikawa, a cheeky smile creeps upon reina’s face as she watches you and oikawa converse with each other like you two were long-time friends catching up for the first time in forever.

you, on the other hand, were starstruck by the man that is oikawa tooru.

the story he told you left you feeling heart-warmed because you noticed how his eyes sparkled and his lips curved into a genuine smile as he talked about his idol and the sport he is so passionate about. oikawa was many things: a flirt, a smooth talker, a sly fox, and he could get a little handsy sometimes— but you could tell the love he had for volleyball was like no other and you respected how committed he was to the sport, even going as far as to going to argentina in order to follow his long-time idol.

“i think it’s really cool that you’re so passionate about volleyball,” you smile as you peer up at the night sky. “in my opinion, i think being committed to one thing your entire life is a bit hard depending on who you are, but at least there are guys like you who are one-in-a-million.”

your words strike a chord in oikawa and reina is quick to notice the way his lips part as he holds his gaze on you.

“oh would you two quit flirting!” reina lets out an inhumane noise that startles you and oikawa.

“you scared me!” you take a deep breath and frantically clutch your heart.

“just say you forgot that i was here because you were too busy getting chummy with oikawa!” she groans while pulling her face.

“you’re just jealous i’m stealing your roommate away,” oikawa sticks his tongue out at your roommate before stopping in his tracks and pulling you into a hug. “but don’t worry! i’ll take extremely good care of her.”

“no way buddy,” reina takes a hold of your arm and uses all of her strength in order to pull you away from oikawa. “she was my roommate before she was your friend!”

“wow i feel so popular,” you say sarcastically, accompanied with a roll of your eyes. “it’s 1 now and i think i would very much rather be at home right now in my jammies instead of listening to you two bicker back and forth.”

“you don’t mean me do you, y/n?!” reina wails as she clings onto you.

“oh look! it’s a bear!” you point out to the other side of the street and reina snaps her head in the direction you’re pointing in.

“where?!”

with her attention off of you, you take this chance to slip away from her and run towards your dorm building along with oikawa who’s right on your tail.

“you’re... really... fast!” oikawa pants as he speaks in-between breaths. “like a lo— WOAH!”

he trips over a slab of concrete that was out of place and out of reflex, he latches onto the nearest object— and unfortunately, you were the closest thing he could grab onto.

“H-HEY!” you screech when you feel yourself being pulled down onto the ground.

with the split second that he had of clarity, oikawa took advantage of the opportunity and moved his hand under your head so that it wouldn’t make contact with the concrete and his hand, would instead, cushion your fall.

you hit the concrete with an ‘oof!’ and while you were awaiting the sharp pain in the back of your head to come, it never came. instead, you open your eyes only to see oikawa’s brown ones staring right back at you with an astounded expression that mirrored yours.

“so, how are you doing this fine night?” he grins.

“pretty good, up until your dumbass tripped and pulled me down with you,” you snort.

reina gasps dramatically when she catches up to you guys and sees the position you two are in.

“you deny your chumminess with him and then you run off to get all handsy with him!”

“this idiot tripped and then thought it would be a good idea to pull me down with him,” you stand up after oikawa offers to pull you up. “what kind of thought process do you even have to think that i could catch your fall?”

reina squeezes his bicep, triggering him to let out a yelp.

“oh it’s hard alright.” reina smirks as oikawa yanks his arm away.

“do you work out a lot?” you sneak up behind oikawa and put your hands on his broad shoulders.

“yup!” he flexes his arm and gives you both a cheeky smile. “i gained 10 kilograms of muscle mass!”

“1-10?! isn’t that like 20 pounds?!” reina gawks at the volleyball player.

“yeah and guess what, i only grew one centimeter so it was all me baby!” he laughs almost mockingly.

the rest of the walk home was full of laughter and heartwarming bantering between the three of you and you were happy that you were able to meet reina, an amazing roommate, and oikawa, who was a cocky shit but still managed to squeeze a laugh out of you.

it was going to be a long 4 years away from home, but just as long as you were surrounded by the right people, you were sure that these 4 years would fly by in a jiffy.

when you guys finally arrived at your dorm building, you notified reina that you would stay outside and chat with oikawa for a bit and so she gave you the okay and headed up to your room first so that she could get ready for bed since she was about ready to knock out right then and there.

“thanks for walking me home, oikawa,” you pull him in for friendly hug that he didn’t expect, but nevertheless, he hugs back anyway because who is he to decline a hug from you? “i feel bad for having you walk me home even though you probably want to hang out with iwaizumi.

oikawa feels his stomach churn at the mention of his best friend and guilt creeps upon him like bile rising in the back of your throat.

oikawa had turned a blind eye to iwaizumi’s bad habit of playing around with girls and leaving them after he’s had his fair share of fun because iwaizumi was his best friend and despite the drastic transformation he had gone through within the 4 years that they’ve been away from each other, oikawa knew deep down that he was still the iwaizumi he knew and loved— the iwaizumi who had stuck with him through thick and thin during his adolescent years.

however, now that he’s taken the time to familiarize himself with you personally and grow to learn what type of person you were— someone with a good heart but isn’t afraid to voice their own opinions and stand their ground when people try to walk all over them— he can’t help but be greedy and want you all for himself.

“say, y/n,” you give him a soft hum in response which prompts him to continue taking. “you wanna grab some milk bread with me tomorrow at the cafe you were talking about?”

“are you asking me out on a date right now?” you wheeze. “you’re pretty bold for asking out someone you’ve only met twice your entire life.”

“it’s not a date unless you want it to be.” he wiggles his eyebrows.

“a platonic date sounds good to me, don’t you think?”

“there’s no such thing as a platonic date, y/n.”

“maybe not to you since you’re probably used to girls flocking around you all the time,” you say and he’s visibly upset at the fact that you think he’s a casanova or something when in reality he still hasn’t had his first girlfriend yet. “so you in? i’ll even call it a date if you’d like.”

“yeah i’m in,” he puts his fist out for a fist bump, which you are content with returning, and he beams at you with the biggest smile you’ve seen him give you. “does the afternoon work for you?”

you pull your phone out of your jacket pocket and open up the contacts app before handing it to the male.

“just give me your number and we can go over the specifics over text tonight.”

he punches in his number, saving the contact as “tooru👽” before handing the device back to you.

“an alien emoji?” you laugh as you read his contact name displayed on your phone. “you’re a dork.”

“like you’re any less of a dork than me.” he playfully rolls his eyes as he pulls his phone out and gives it for you to return the favor.

you clumsily put your number into his phone, accidentally pressing some random digit one too many times, and save your name as “y/n :3” before handing his phone back to him.

“a bunny face?” he threw his head back and let out a humorous laugh.

“shut up!” you give his shoulder a gentle push. “as if an alien emoji is any better, at least my emoticon is cute!”

“yeah yeah, whatever you say.” he slips his phone back into his pocket before giving you one last final hug that feels a bit warmer than the ones he’s given you before.

“get home safe, oikawa.”

his eyes linger on your face for a bit longer than he would’ve liked.

your eyes were crinkled and your smile lines were more prominent up close, but it didn’t stop oikawa’s heart from skipping a beat.

“sweet dreams y/n.”

you awaken the next morning to the sound of your phone ringing and reina’s abnormally loud snoring (you’re surprised that the girls in the next room over haven’t come knocking at your door telling your roommate to snore a little quieter.)

with the sleep still present in your eyes, the brightness of your phone screen causes you to squint before your vision clears up and you’re able to make out the numbers ‘7:30 A.M’ displayed across your screen.

when the haziness finally leaves your system, you take a look outside your window and realize that the only speck of sunlight present at all is the sunlight that’s provided by the rising sun, peeking out from across the horizon.

you mentally curse oikawa out in your head as your fingers dance across your keyboard to type out a brief response to oikawa’s suspiciously ominous text message.

you reluctantly get up from your bed and slip on your fuzzy bunny slippers before treading over to your door, unlocking it, and then swinging it open, revealing your tall, brown-haired friend standing right where he said he would be.

“nice jammies,” he lets loose an unrestrained, boisterous laugh as he reaches out to fix the strap of your tank top which slipped off your shoulder. “i dig the bunny slippers by the way.”

you haphazardly shuffle your feet, gaining a smile from oikawa as he chuckles softly.

“can i come in?” he peers into the room by leaning over a bit where he sees reina sprawled out in a weird position on her bed, snoring loudly.

“uh, reina’s actually asleep,” you sheepishly scratch the back of your head. “the dorms don’t have separate bedrooms, everyone just sleeps in the same room with their respective roommates.”

“so movie night’s no longer in question?”

“i guess if you don’t mind reina being a plus one,” you shrug as you gesture for him to come in, letting him enter the room first so that you can close the door on your way in. “she’s a heavy sleeper so don’t worry about waking her up.”

oikawa throws himself onto your bed, even going as far as to slipping under your covers and making himself right at home, which, you don’t hesitate to scold him for doing so.

“what’s the point of coming all the way over here just to go back to sleep?” you cross your arms as you walk over to your bed, your knees hitting the edge of the mattress.

“the bakery opens at 8:30 so i wanted to pick you up since the walk there is 25 minutes from here,” oikawa pulls his phone out and checks the time. “it’s 7:37 now so hurry and get ready!”

you shuffle over to the worn-out dresser that has been with you since the day you moved into the dorms and pull out the drawers that contain a majority of your most worn pieces. taking into account the outfit that oikawa was currently sporting— an oversized hoodie, a loose pair of sweatpants, and some sneakers that looked to be on the pricier side— you decided that wearing something similar to that would suffice.

“can you turn around?” you ask as you grab a pair of black sweatpants, not bothering to check the design since they looked all the same anyways, and an oversized hoodie that you forgot you even had in your possession.

“hm? why?”

“i’m gonna change?” you shrug. “unless you don’t mind staying here by yourself? or you can just step outside for a minute if you want to.”

“oh yeah, sure.”

you watch as he heeds your request and begins to turn around to face the wall before proceeding to take off your pajamas, making sure to keep a close eye on him just in case he decides to be a peeping tom.

“you know, you’re pretty credulous trusting a guy you’ve only met last week.” he says as he rocks side to side, head still turned facing the wall.

“well i don’t have to worry about you peeping because i’m already done changing,” you pull down the rest of the bunched up fabric of your hoodie that’s around your waist before slipping on a random baseball cap you saw laying around. “even if you did turn around, i have a 5-pound textbook and i’m not afraid to use it.”

oikawa’s about to make a snarky remark in return to your futile threat when suddenly a loud snore escapes reina’s mouth, encouraging the two of you to give each other a flabbergasted look that leads to you both erupting into a fit of hushed laughter.

“let’s go before reina wakes up and gets a heart attack after seeing you in here.”

“no way!”

after exiting the dorm building and beginning your journey with oikawa to the designated cafe, you two arguing about whether or not milk or cereal should go first after oikawa mentioned to you that he was a firm believer of “milk first, cereal last.”

“if you put milk in first then you’re just gonna get less cereal and who the fuck eats cereal just to drink the cereal milk?” you shoot him a grimace.

“when you pour in the cereal after the milk, then it’s just gonna float there and who takes satisfaction in seeing that shit?” you add. “that’s why cereal first is way better because you get a bowl full of cereal and it’s just... perfect!”

“but your cereal is gonna be soggy by the time you put the milk back in the refrigerator!” oikawa retorts.

“then just wait until after you’re done to put it away? how long do you even take to put the milk back in the refrigerator that when you come back your cereal gets all soggy?!”

“and aren’t you supposed to be an athlete? i’m seriously concerned if it takes you at least over 15 seconds just to put back a carton of milk.” you take a jab at him.

“i will not allow this oikawa slander from you!” he stops in his tracks before abruptly picking you up and throwing you over his shoulder.

“h-hey! put me down! i’m heavy, oikawa!” you squirm around in protest, but oikawa shows no sign of letting you go anytime soon as he starts to pick up his pace.

“i didn’t gain all of that muscle for nothin’ baby!” he laughs maniacally as he’s practically full-on sprinting down the street now.

luckily enough, the cafe was just around the corner of the street that oikawa started running down from which meant there was finally a reason for the male to let you down, despite the fact that you had been punching his back for the last minute or so but you couldn’t seem to crack him, his arms, nor those broad shoulders of his.

you let out a huff of feigned annoyance once you’re down on your feet while oikawa is still laughing his ass off as you two walk into the establishment.

“not funny! i almost dropped my hat when you pulled that stunt!” you complain as you’re frantically trying to fix your hair: when oikawa abruptly picked you up and threw you over his shoulder, the baseball cap on your head was about to fall off but thankfully with your reflexes, you were able to catch it in the nick of time— however, at the price of your own hair.

“here, i got you,” oikawa extends his hand out to your head and starts to brush away at your mess of a hair. “if it makes you feel better, it’s on the house.”

“i was gonna make you pay anyways.” you stick your tongue out at him playfully, feigning annoyance.

“pft, and you brought your wallet anyways?” he grabs your wrist and pulls it up so that you could see the object in your hands.

“it has my id in it you doofus,” you roll your eyes but there’s a hint of blush on your face as you realize he’s practically holding your hand. “and what if you forgot your wallet, hm?”

he lets go of your wrist before slipping his hand into his sweatpants pocket and pulling out a black wallet.

“i never forget my wallet sweetheart,” he winks and you laugh. “especially if i know i’m gonna be going out with a pretty lady— don’t wanna leave a bad impression y’know”

“i think you’ve already left quite the impression on me from your stunt earlier.” you bump shoulders with him.

“so see anything you like on the menu?” he puts his hand on the small of your back and guides you over to where the menu is so that you could get a closer look at all of the options the cafe had to offer its customers.

“we’ll... we did come here originally for milk bread,” oikawa notices how deep in thought you are over something as trivial as baked goods and he can’t help but smile a bit when he notices the little pout on your face or the crease that forms on your forehead when you scrunch your face a little bit. “but i wanna try their matcha bread! and their boba looks good, or is it a little bit too early to be drinking boba?”

oikawa’s so lost in thought (*correction: staring at you) that he doesn’t even realize that you’ve been trying to grab his attention by calling his name 5 times— and it’s only when you physically have to shake him a bit that he snaps out of his little daydream.

“oh, sorry!” he gives you an apologetic smile. “what’s up?”

“i was asking if you wanted to share one of their drinks with me but you were too busy staring at me to hear.” you sneer. “do you have a crush on me or something? heh.”

“pshhh, no way!” he has a sheepish look on his face that you can’t stop yourself from laughing at.

“you better not go falling for me anytime soon, you playboy.” you jest while nudging him with your elbow.

“i’m pretty sure i should be the one telling you that,” he rolls his eyes playfully. “i’m surprised you haven’t confessed your undying love for me yet.”

“i don’t fall in love that easily, pretty boy, and i certainly do not fall in love with someone i’ve only recently met.” you snort at his comment.

“hi there! are you two ready to order?” a voice startles you and oikawa as you both turn your heads towards a woman standing behind the counter.

“oh i’m so sorry about that! i’m sure you didn’t come to work just to see the two of us play around.” you giggle as the woman mirrors your action.

“it’s nothing new to me, it seems like this place is a hotspot for couples to come and hang out so it’s kind of the norm for me now.” she reassures you.

“are you a college student?” you ask the cashier, taking note on how she looked to be around your age.

“i actually graduated from culinary school about 2 years ago,” she starts off. “my parents supported me throughout my 4 years of culinary school, but when it came down to actually opening this cafe, my boyfriend— well, fiancé now— helped me look for a good place to rent out and it was history from there!”

“it was a bit hard at first since i was still fresh out of culinary school and i could barely start this business with the funds i had saved up, but thankfully my boyfriend was able to pitch in and help make my dreams come true,” she continues and you feel your heart grow fuzzy at how whenever she mentioned her boyfriend, her face would soften and a small smile would make its way onto her face. “i honestly cannot imagine a life without him, he’s been with me since high school so he’s always known about my longtime dream of owning my own cafe. he’s always been my rock during my hardest times and— oh my! i started rambling didn’t i?”

she starts to apologize for burdening you with her life story, but you dismiss her worries by waving your hands in front of you, oikawa laughing and copying your motions.

“i think he’d be really happy to hear that you think so lovingly of him.” your lips curve into a gentle smile, which the woman reciprocates.

“what’s your name?” she asks.

“i’m y/n! and this big guy is tooru.” oikawa waves at the woman, her following suit.

“ah i see! well y/n and tooru, my name is maia and it’s so nice to meet you two!” she brings her hand out for a handshake, which you and oikawa return. “are you two college students?”

“yeah! i’m actually a student at the university of irvine!” you answer enthusiastically. “tooru is just visiting from argentina at the moment so i wanted to take him around the area before he left.”

“argentina, really?” her mouth forms an ‘o’ shape. “it must be hard doing long distance, huh? i couldn’t even imagine if my fiancé and i had to live that far away from each other.”

you and oikawa turn to look at each other in confusion before an invisible lightbulb goes off in both of your heads and you bring your attention back onto maia, who’s now equally as confused as you two are.

“we’re actually not dating!” the pink hue from earlier creeps back onto your cheeks and from the corner of your eye you can see oikawa fiddling with the sleeves of his hoodie. “i met him at one of the frat parties i went to last week and we kind of just clicked.”

“i’m so sorry for assuming!” she has a distraught look on her face and you’re quick to tell her that it was just a misunderstanding. “you two just look really cute together, plus i’m also really used to a lot of couples coming here that i was quick to assume that you two were dating!”

“i mean, we’d be a cute couple right, y/n-chan?” gone was the nervous oikawa you saw just a second ago, and back was the cocky oikawa you all know and love.

“you wish!” you scoff, not bothering to shrug off the arm he slung around your shoulder.

“anyways, is it alright if we can get two of your milk breads as well as a matcha bread and a oolong milk tea with boba?” you order and maia quickly input the order into the tablet in front of her.

“will that be all for you today?”

“anything else you want, oikawa?” you ask him but he shakes his head in response. “i think that’ll be all for us today then, maia.”

you’re about to insert your card into the chip holder when suddenly oikawa grabs your arm and plucks the card out of your hand.

“h-hey! what are you doing? give me my card back!”

“didn’t i tell you that it was on the house earlier?” he looks at you with a teasing smirk on his face and before you could protest again, a pleasant sound comes out of the machine, signaling that the transaction was successful.

“such a gentleman! you should snatch him up before someone else does, y/n!” maia coos.

“i think it’d be best for someone else to snatch him up, i don’t think i could handle all of... this.” you motion to his entire body.

“are you flirting with me?” oikawa had a shit-eating grin on his face that you were so tempted to wipe off, but his actions from less than a minute ago still caught you off guard and you had to admit, you were glad he wasn’t a cheapskate and offered to pay in your stead— well, more forced you out of paying.

“thanks, oikawa,” you didn’t know what you had the other day to make you act so bold, but you stood on your tiptoes and planted a chaste kiss on his cheek out of gratitude. “for being the only gentleman on campus, even though you’re technically not a student here.”

out of instinct, oikawa’s hand immediately flys up to the spot where your lips touched his skin and starts to graze it.

“heh, i like your spunk, y/n.” he shows you a cheeky smile.

“don’t let it get to your head, it was just a complimentary kiss.” you laugh and it sounds more melodious than usual to oikawa’s ears for some reason.

“so...” he starts and you let out a small ‘hm?’ which prompts him to continue. “do you have any plans for the rest of the day?”

“i don’t think so? i have the dorm all to myself from when reina goes to her blind date and up until she comes back, so if you wanna do something then i don’t mind squeezing you into my schedule!” you reply, but a thought suddenly resurfaces in your mind. “no frat parties though, i heard one of iwaizumi’s friends are hosting one tonight but i don’t think i can think about another frat party without having to gouge my eyeballs out.”

“got it, no frat parties,” oikawa chuckles. “if it makes you feel any better, i never liked those frat parties anyways and i only went because iwaizumi is the only person i know here which meant i was obligated to follow him around everywhere but now that i know you, it changes the whole game!”

“i’m just as new to california as you are oikawa, don’t get your hopes up too high.”

“but that’s the fun part about it, right? we get to explore california together! it really feels like we’re a couple don’t you think?” he blurts out in the heat of the moment but quickly comes to realize the weight of his words. “oh shit— sorry... i hope you’re not uncomfortable hearing me say that out loud.”

“not at all!” you look down at your shoes for a fleeting moment before looking back up at oikawa. “it’s quite... endearing? i’ve never really had a lot of ‘guy friends’ and mostly hung around with girls so this is the first time i’ve ever really had a guy show any interest in me— platonically of course!”

“and you’ve never ever had a boyfriend before?” oikawa lifts an eyebrow.

“nope, never even had my first kiss,” you say but you think back to the events that took place last night. “well, up until yesterday...”

you tried to hide the grimace on your face as the memory of you and iwaizumi kissing kept playing on repeat in your mind, but oikawa was able to see right through your mask and clenched his fists as he recalled the distressed look on your face when he and reina found you crying in the bathroom.

oikawa believed that you should have deserved to have your first kiss taken by someone who truly loved you, but instead, it was taken away by his scum of a best friend, who, he was currently disappointed in for treating you the way he did last night.

oikawa is about to open his mouth up to say something, but he’s interrupted before he even gets a chance to say anything when maia announces that your order is ready.

“it smells so good, maia!” you say after you skip over to the other side of the counter and take a whiff of the freshly baked pastries.

“oh you’re making me blush, y/n!” maia cups her cheeks bashfully while you laugh at her antics.

you shake up the cup of boba so that the pearls were evenly distributed throughout the drink before taking a straw and puncturing a hole through the film on top of the cup, taking a small sip after you mix the drink around one last time with the straw.

“mhm! so good!” you lean back, not realizing that oikawa had moved to stand right behind you, resulting in you crashing into his chest.

“shit, you scared me oikawa!” you laugh as you slap his chest. “want some?”

you hold the straw up to his lips, and you notice the way his eyes widen by a fraction.

“you wanna share?”

“well yeah? unless you’re scared of getting cooties or something, what are you? 12?” you tease. “or are you worried that it’s an indirect kiss? i can always get another—”

your rambling is cut off when his lips wrap around the straw and he takes a long sip of the drink in your hand.

“there, we just indirectly kissed!” he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before shooting you a goofy grin.

“pft, how childish do you have to be to be freaked out over an indirect kiss.” you mumble, but it doesn’t cover up the blood that rushes up to your face, painting your cheeks in a pinkish hue which oikawa finds endearing.

part one | part two | part three | part four

TAGLIST:

@katsukibabe • @thecaptainyuri • @satorisflatass • @daphnxy • @aonenthusiast • @felixsamour • @literaleftist

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[thorcat]

I should also write down what happened the last weeks here.

it’s about ex boyfriendo and what started at first at parting in good ways..

At first there was no issue and we were both gucci with the break up. Then he broke the first promise we made to each other that the new lover would be not brought to the current apartment out of respect.

He brought her new (old?) flame to the apartment cause he knows he since a while. It was the ex girlfriend she met before me. Said ex girlfriend went to me and told me to move out that she can move in. He didn’t even bothered to tell me this little information himself because she said -he was shy-.

Things went on and she came in and out as she pleased, eying me items and forcing me to actually make a list to make sure nothing was suddenly missing, while basically controlling my ex. Whenever she came over he stopped work because she was more important. They were most of the time gone and instead of the promised help to find me a new place to live, i got on a daily basis messages from them “when are you moving out?” “did you finally found something?”.

I was under heavy pressure and didn’t even slept proper anymore cause i was scared i could miss a new apartment offer.

She was also not very gentle with me, when i has to ask him questions in our native language (which is german) about some paperwork. Attacked me that i was being ultra rude and impolite to dare speaking english when she was present, since she can only speak english and russian (she is native russian).

As soon as i got my apartment, i had to pay the rent in advance and 2 rents on a separate account called “rental deposit“. In case something breaks, that this money is used for repairs. Due the high amount i was already kinda low on cash because bills and tax i had to pay on top. Now he’s yowling at me to pay back the 2 months of rent of the current apartment, cause i owe him those. The most horrid part of it is, that he got enough money on his account to live in that apartment easy for 20 years..and ignoring my current struggle.

I am very sure at this point, that his new gf got a ton of influence on him and changed him into something i’ve never seen before. It’s sad to see that change and i am very happy about the moving part now to get actually away from him.

The last days were him coming to me to tell me i need to clean some stuff in the house before i leave. Mess he made.

He also tries to kinda fuck me over with asking me when i need to go in the morning to the bathroom in order to make myself ready for work. When i tell him at 8:00, he blocks the bathroom from exactly that time for more than a half hour..so i have to stand up very much earlier in order to not miss my train to work.

The main reason i was very much inactive here was exactly this shit show, so i hope i can return to my usual self as soon as i am gone from this place.

[mandysimo13]

2020 has been a helluva year

I know it’s not technically new year’s yet but since it’s on my mind, let’s do a year in review. 

This year has been so fucking disorienting, in so many ways, and it’s hard to believe anything is real. Every other day there’s new outrage, new disgust, new triumphs, new joys, new fears, new ways to cope with existence. 

First we list the good from this year. 

My two best friends welcomed brand new daughters into the world. I was lucky enough to spend two weeks with one of them, helping her out since her in-laws are too compromised to help and her own mother is gone. I got to see my brand new niece have her first few experiences in life, hang out with dogs, and spend lots of time with my sister-from-another-mister. 

I got engaged to an amazing partner who is everything I’ve wanted in a spouse. He’s sweet and funny and makes me want to be a better person and work hard towards my goals. He’s the most supportive of my new career path and while he’s not always super interested in what I’m researching, he’s always willing to listen to me info dump when I get excited. He lets me help him and kick him in the ass when he needs it, lets me hold him when he needs it, and I never feel unloved or unwanted with him. Not to mention, the sex is really good, too, lol

I’ve started working on a new career path and trying to make history my job. I’ve been doing lectures on niche history and working towards making it a legitimate job and a legitimate company. I’ve been gaining a following and legitimacy as I make networking connections and getting my foot in doors that will open up opportunities for me. 

I have not lost anyone very close to me during this pandemic, even if a couple have gotten sick or injured. I did lose an uncle to covid, though he was 90 and was already in declining health. The other people who have caught it have so far managed to recover and haven’t had any obvious long lasting problems (yet *knock on wood*) 

I got on anxiety and depression medication this year and it has made all the difference this year; not only with the every day stuff but with some of the pandemic craziness. I honestly don’t know how I would be doing, mentally and emotionally, without it. I am very very very grateful for my meds, despite the very few side effects I’ve had. 

Now for the bad

Every day there is something new and awful to be had. Whether it’s US politics continually shitting on struggling americans or murder hornets or natural disasters or covid deniers or police brutality or fear mongers or throw a dart at this bingo card from hell year we’ve had. It’s all been fucked up and Too Much™

The isolating and social distancing, while absolutely necessary, has been exhausting and terrifying, and it’s been rough. I’m an extrovert. I thrive around people. I miss crowds. I miss walking around through stores without freaking out about distance. I miss being able to give hugs to people other than the people I live with. I miss traveling, which was my previous job, and the students I used to expose to the world. I miss being able to actually be part of the world.

I’ve been fairly lucky that my closest friends have kept small bubbles so we’ve been able to hang out from time to time but nowhere near as often as I need in order to feel balanced. I miss my historian happy hours. I miss movie theaters. I’ve been to a few restaurants since they’ve opened but it’s definitely not the same and I feel bad for everyone (including myself) caught between having to go out and make a living and staying home and staying safe because this country’s “social safety nets” are a fucking joke. 

And speaking of those safety nets, I’m on unemployment. For the first time in my working life I’m cashing in those tax dollars and all I’m entitled to is $450 a month. Thank fucking god I live with family and don’t need to pay rent. Thank fuck that my dad pays for our internet and majority of our food. Because aside from a few donations for my services every month, I **just** have enough to cover my few bills. This has been my poorest fucking year and you know what the kicker is? 

It was supposed to be my most profitable. This was supposed to be my busiest year for tour work since I got into the business. I missed out on so much money, so many work experiences, so many opportunities because of this fucking plague. And because our government couldn’t get their shit together. Because people fucking suck and they’re selfish and they decided their convenience was more important than safety. And those people are still fucking denying its “that big a deal” and denying the need for a vaccine. I’m so tired of hearing people say that covid is a hoax or overblown or whatever the fuck. I’m tired. 

In lieu of being around people, like most of you, I’ve taken to being on social media more. More zoom calls, more video chats, more messenger chats, and more facebook groups. And what I’ve found is that living almost entirely on the internet is doing something fucking awful to us: we’re forgetting there’s real people on the other side of the screen. We’re forgetting that humans are complicated beings, both capable of goodness and shittiness and we’re focusing too much on the bad because it is often louder than the good. I’ve seen so much infighting and gatekeeping and nastiness between people who are supposedly “on the same side” in every group from political to fucking memes. Like. It’s ridiculous and tiresome and it makes me want to clunk heads together. Or leave earth for awhile. 

Just. All in all, this year has been hard. There have been highlights but for the most part everything is so heavy and dark and I feel like as a society nothing is actually getting better. I don’t have a lot of hope for 2021. I am not encouraged by what I’ve seen this year and how people insist on behaving and treating each other. I fear that 2021 is going to be worse before it gets better. 

But hey. At least Biden won (don’t get me started, he was not my first choice) and I get to marry the love of my life in October next year. 

And, if we’re really lucky, we’ll be able to celebrate with our friends. 

Here’s to 2021, hopefully you’re not a giant suck salad. 

[smartguyreviewed]

1x7 - A Little Knowledge

Original air date: May 7, 1997

Hello there, friends. How are we holding up during these “unprecedented times?” I am currently holding up by pretty much being high 18/7, not sleeping and obsessing over a show that pretty much nobody talks about because I am that bored.

Really, I do want to thank anyone who takes the time to read this blog and/or drop a like. I started this blog because I enjoyed reading reviews of Lizzie McGuire and Boy Meets World. And then I thought of how not that many black sitcoms are pretty much ever really discussed. I watched Smart Guy so much when I was a kid but didn’t realize how important it was to even be watching it because we had so many other black television shows during my childhood, the complete opposite of how it is now. I always thought about even making a YouTube channel reviewing that black ass nostalgia that I love so much, but since I’m in the ugly phase of growing my starter locs, I figured I’d blog for now. 

Alright! There’s my intro. I really did mean it, but I had no idea how else to segue into the opening for this episode. By the way, if anyone is a super meticulous asshole and thinks the numbering of the episodes is off, I was honestly confused because Disney omitted a whole ass episode of the show, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbering of the episodes is different here but nowhere else on the web. The first season is already less than 10 episodes, so whatever.

Okay, so we open to Floyd about to do his books but he needs the little precocious calculator to help him out. This triggers me because I still have not done my taxes even though the deadline was extended. Luckily, it doesn’t appear that the Hendersons have any timely bills due but they are broke. After TJ adds up all the numbers, Floyd sees he is definitely not in the black. 

Because the episode is about money, naturally, both of Floyd’s grown children need pricey things all of a sudden. Yvette comes down and asks for a coat to replace this...thing that she’s wearing because it’s clearly ill-fitting. Floyd says he can buy her a new coat, as long as she’s not particular as to which winter she gets it in.

Up next is our Marcus, asking for something totally egregious. At least Yvette was asking for weather appropriate clothing. Marcus is asking Floyd for a $1500 bike. And now I’m confused. Why the hell would Marcus of all people need a bike? If he’s really trying his damndest to get the girls, I thought the band alone served that purpose. Regardless, Marcus needs it and he’s a teenager so the world is going to end tomorrow if he doesn’t get this deathcycle of his. He even tries to manipulate his dad by showing him a photo of Floyd on his bike. I actually think it’s cute how Floyd lights up at the sight of younger him. Maybe he met his deceased wife during these years? 

Floyd breaks out of memory lane and reminds Marcus that he, a human parent, wants the finer things also, including the chance to see his old friends at his high school reunion but that doesn’t seem to have a snowball’s chance in hell of happening. Yeah, because Floyd has to put food on the table for a woman and three guys (yes, I’m including Mo and guys eat a lot and I don’t wanna hear shit about how girls eat a lot too because guys just eat more and that’s a fact) and school all of his children. No room for the finer things.

He then says that Yvette and Marcus can buy what they want but simply have to get jobs. Marcus balks at the idea and says he wouldn’t want work to interrupt his studies. Yvette and TJ have a nice little kii over this since hahaha “Marcus is dumb,” hahaha.

We cut to TJ in his room attempting to strategize ways for the Henderson clan to save money while watching a bootleg version of Jeopardy!. Marcus comes in on the phone with Craig, the guy selling the bike, and convinces him to not sell it, even though Marcus only has 4.2% of the funds. Yvette barges in and is pissed at her annoying little brothers for not unlocking her door when they’re done with the bathroom. See, they share a bathroom in this episode. In another episode, Yvette gets her own bathroom built...somewhere because she’s tired of sharing with them. This bathroom is never mentioned again. In another episode, Marcus temporarily moves to the attic. I just wonder exactly how the Henderson house is built because it seems like there’s so much space yet so little space? 

The boys aren’t listening to Yvette however, because she stank. She credits this funk to the job she just got at the Cluck Bucket, “yanking the gushy stuff out of chickens,” as Marcus eloquently puts it. She brags, saying she makes $100 a week, which is obviously $1000 a week in 90s money. 

After TJ proposes that Yvette cut Marcus’s hair, Marcus realizes TJ is attempting to optimize their family’s finances. TJ really is doing a lot for a 10 year old here. Normally, he’s being extremely rude to them, but in this episode, he’s trying to use his intelligence to fix a problem that he has no business worrying about. Clearly, this intelligence is a gift and a curse. I’m about to be 29 and I worry all the time about things I can’t even control along with the things I can. Imagine being 10, gifted AF and stressing only about adult things you can’t control.

Marcus actually delivers good advice this episode, most likely unbeknownst to him. He commands TJ to turn off his brain and stop worrying because this is something he can’t fix. And Marcus is right. A 10 year old has zero reasons to be trying to balance the family checkbook. It would have been better if he threw a Gameboy at him and told him that’s his homework instead.

But this is TJ and he is the determinator AKA hard-headed. Bootleg Jeopardy! is about to end but the host announces a junior version of the show. TJ checks all the boxes. Youngster? Check. Living in the D.C. area? Check. In desperate need of $25k? Double check!

TJ and Marcus are back home and go over how they’re going to break the news to Floyd since obviously he wouldn’t have given TJ permission to audition if they asked. Floyd seems pissed at first when they tell him but Marcus makes sure to place emphasis on how TJ kicked ass. Floyd is proud now, even though a few moments ago, he was about to go full Papa Bear.

The next day, Piedmont is buzzing about TJ’s television debut but he’s confused because he only told his fam. We then cut to Marcus blabbing to some girl about how he can get her a seat next to him so she can give him a handjob on the sly. (Of course, we don’t even see said girl at the show.) TJ tells Marcus he didn’t want everyone to know because, understandably, now there’s more pressure on him. Marcus responds to this by putting even more pressure on him, telling Craig that TJ is going to win him the bike. Then he puts a damn anvil on it by telling Craig to raise the price to $1700 and he’ll just take the bike now. This will end well.

TJ, under immense pressure because the show is filming in 6 hours at this point (film/TV people, if you’re reading, feel free to say if this is even normal for it to move this quickly especially for an underage guest?), is up late at night studying his ass off and high off legal coke. He’s awoken Marcus who is wondering why on earth TJ would be up this early studying for a quiz television show that has a large monetary prize and they’re broke. He wants TJ to get some sleep by he’s in the zone because he had 20 cups of coffee. After a drug fueled rant, he just passes out. 

6 hours later and TJ is still high. Floyd chalks it up to nerves before TJ starts sprinting around the set. Marcus shows up, announcing he just chained up his new bike to a dumpster. This will end well. He checks in on TJ who is still coked up and not coming down anytime soon. His dad calls him over to meet the other contestants which include Dylan Roof and Yung Sharpay.

After the kids are ushered onto set, Floyd goes to the other hoity toity parents, bragging about their kids’ accomplishments. He dismisses them and says TJ actually has a life. Floyd, you dick! Afterwards, the show begins. The host is opening and says he believes that children are our future. Floyd and Marcus are backstage and in true black parent fashion, once TJ is announced, they lose their shit!

The game is now underway and Yung Sharpay and TJ are caught up. Dylan Roof is pretty much just there because he’s so far behind that it doesn’t even matter. Amy loudly tells TJ that he has a broken leg and they’re loading the shotgun because she just caught up to him. Of course, nobody heard this even though she was loud as hell. Also, racial implications much?

Yvette comes late in her work uniform and is hurriedly trying to tell Marcus a bit of info he’ll want to act fast on, but naturally, he shushes her to listen to the game that TJ is about to possibly lose. Yvette is also a petty asshole, so she doesn’t even try to tell him again. They cut to break and Yvette announces then that Marcus’s bike is gone. Turns out, locking it to a dumpster isn’t the best idea because some guy in a garbage truck stole it dragged the dumpster away. Marcus is pissed and lets slip that he paid $1700 for it which gets him in trouble because he just told Floyd that he was taking it on a test drive. Then the rest of the truth spews out. Marcus says he wanted something from the money TJ was going to win and oh mama is Floyd pissed because he naturally expects the worst from Marcus always and thinks he forced TJ to be in the competition which wasn’t even the case. Floyd tells Marcus he’s going to talk to TJ and warns him to “brace himself” for when he gets back. Yvette gleefully says she’s going to get chalk for his body outline. What did Marcus do to everyone to make them hate him so much? TJ does way shittier things than him and he’s still held in high regard. Hmm.

Floyd comes over to TJ to check in and lets him know that he’s aware of what’s going on. TJ, who has only consumed coffee and chocolate for the past few hours, is now dizzy. Floyd has to remind TJ that he has plenty of time to worry about rent and bills and student loans and credit card debt and finding a therapist and the pressure to have it “together” by the time you’re 30 which is crazy unrealistic. Good lesson and one of the few times I don’t wanna strangle TJ. Understandably, with the pressure off, TJ wants to dipset. The host, while seeing TJ and Floyd leaving, says they signed a contract so somebody needs to fill in for TJ. Cut to one of the funniest scenes in the show, hands down.

The question is how much did Thomas Jefferson, another TJ, pay for the Louisiana Purchase? This is word for word what Marcus-as-TJ says.

“Well uh, let’s see. In DC, the most you can take out of the ATM is $300 and you would wanna hold back a $20 in case something comes up, so I’m gonna say $280, Hugh.”

Yvette’s reaction says it all.

In the end, we see Yvette at the Cluck Bucket, putting on her functional gray pea coat that she probably got from Contempo Casuals or something. Marcus is the janitor now because he has to work off his debt to Craig and because remember, Marcus is a dark-skinned buffoon and couldn’t get the same job as Yvette for some reason. Whatever. I wonder what Yung Sharpay did with her prize money.

Stuff I Noticed:

- Yvette’s jacket. What is this?

- Marcus’s face for Lil’ Dylan and Yung Sharpay versus TJ. I love black families.

White lady on the left does not approve.

- No Mo this episode! :(

[xellandria]

tw: death

My father died sometime last night.  My mom woke me up at around 4:20 (blaze it?), after she found him, ran around in a panic for a bit (her words), and called 911.  I’d only gone to sleep a couple hours earlier, and neither of us had checked on him until then (he went to bed much earlier than the two of us ever do) so it’s hard to say when it would have happened; we might learn more later, or we might not.  I’m not actually sure how much more information we’ll get—or want, really—when whatever examination happens happens, or if there will be an examination/autopsy/whatever.  All I know about that kind of thing comes from media, and it’s always convenient for media to have an autopsy.

About nine months ago, he was out on a hike and slid down some scree and hurt his back in some way.  Prior to the whole pandemic, he’d been going through all sorts of various treatments and tests to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it, but he’d been in pain for a while.  Supposedly it was at least getting a little better with time—mom says he hadn’t taken his pain meds for the last fifteen days or so—but it was definitely there, and he hadn’t been exercising much (if at all) as a result, and gained a lot of weight from the inactivity.

About a week ago, he started coughing and having trouble breathing, and apparently was having issues sleeping as well.  He called his doctor about it yesterday, and they had him go get tested for Covid.  The results for that won’t be back til Mondayish, but it’s sort of a moot point now, I suppose.  Well, partly moot—if he tested positive, mom and I definitely have to be a lot more nitpicky about our own health.  We’ve not been going out except as absolutely necessary, but I can’t help thinking that we did go to Walmart and Costco on the 16th and while he was wearing a mask of some sort on that trip, his mask procedure was not the best and that was about a week ago.  That’d be a little fast for Covid symptoms I think, but maybe?

I don’t know.  I wasn’t hearing much about it (we’ve been on different tracks for the past week so I haven’t seen much of him) but when we were talking to various relatives about an hour ago, mom seemed to imply that it was a lot of trouble breathing—which makes me ask why he didn’t do something about it if it was really that bad, but that’s not something I can or should ask at this point; I can’t ask him and giving her more to agonize about or regret is absolutely pointless (I still beat myself up on bad days for not being sterner about getting Emmett to a vet when I knew he wasn’t fully right, and he died like five or six years ago at this point; I absolutely do not want to inflict that kind of thing on my mother about her husband, for god’s sake, and I didn’t push harder for my own health and safety when I was having heart issues last year until I finally caved and went to the ER; I could have made that trip a lot sooner too instead of fucking around with my doctor half-ignoring me and limply running tests for six months).

Because it’s just me and mom out here on this coast, we’re probably not going to have a funeral.  Things would probably be different if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic (his sisters might want something, I don’t think we thought to ask), but they can’t come out here and we can’t go over there and neither of us really want to deal with it.  She knew his preferences (at least for disposal—he wanted to be cremated) so we’ve got that under control, at least.

I’m sure it’s partly shock, but I definitely feel guilty as hell that I’m glad that the pandemic is giving us a good excuse to not have a funeral.  Maybe he would have wanted one?  I don’t know.  I know my own preferences (only if my survivors need it for themselves; I don’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, but the idea of death and corpses and such spooks me something awful and funerals and burials and such are obviously the worst for that) and mom was the one who said no when I asked her if she wanted one (though maybe I should ask again when we’re both less shocky).  If the dead do exist beyond death in some capacity, I hope he understands that it’s not that we don’t love him... but that’s a lot of money and time and mental energy for a lot of pomp and circumstance that doesn’t make... well, I was going to say “doesn’t make anybody feel better” but someone must get comfort from that kind of thing, even if I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who has.

There’s a lot of unknowns right now.  Dad was the one who handled all the household finances and I know he never went over it all with me, and I got the impression that he and mom never got around to it either (though we both mentioned that it was something we’d been thinking about, it’s obviously too late now).  Mom’s worried about the taxes, and what bills are on auto-pay and all that, and it’s going to be a nightmare to go through his computer and phone and make sure all that stuff is handled... but that’s not today’s worry.  I mean, I almost wish it was—it’d give me something to do now that we’re done talking to the EMTs and the police and the people from the funeral home and calling the relatives (and before I work up the nerve to call his old work friend, who is the only other person I can think of that deserves to know), but it’s also not something to walk into with two hours of sleep and a broad-but-vague understanding of how to access the data, but not what to do with it.

I haven’t cried yet, and I feel guilty about that too (though again, I’m putting it down to shock).  Cat death/injury is so triggering to me that I burst into tears nearly at the mention/thought of it, but my own father is gone and I’m just sitting at my computer, typing out a lengthy essay about how I want to consider myself a piece of shit for it, but I know it’s all part of the process, etc. etc.  I remember when my parents woke me up to tell me my maternal grandmother had died, I definitely cried then (and was angry) so I know it’s possible for me to feel things, or was at one point.  I’m sure the depression isn’t helping (and the fact that I think my med dosage may not be good enough anymore).

I’m sort of glad for the pandemic too, for the social distancing and masks that all the strangers that came to our home at 4-6am were wearing because I haven’t taken a shower in a couple days and I am disgusting and unshaved, but hopefully they didn’t notice.  At least they didn’t comment on it in my hearing, so I can maybe hopefully pretend.

Anyway.  I’m currently distracting myself by writing this out, but there’s not much more I want to say at this point.  I’ve posted out of my guild’s raids indefinitely for the moment (it was the first thing I did after I got out of bed while we were waiting for the EMT, and the second was tweet about it; my priorities are so fucked, y’all).  I don’t really know whether I’ll be able to stay on top of D&D—it’s only once a week, it’s a much smaller group of people who are much less likely to make some sort of unthinking or triggering remark (frankly, the idea of listening to my guild leader and some of the non-raiders talk about their jobs as doctors/upcoming medical practitioners is absolutely not what I need in my life right now, and I can’t tell 19+ other people to watch every word that comes out of their mouths or from their fingers above and beyond the guild rules because it might make the baby cry (or tilt her off the face of the earth)... but I can probably get away with asking only four other people to do that) and it’s not like we’re doing much where there might be schedule conflicts.  I’m gonna have to tell them for sure (well, Naha knows cos he follows me on twitter, and Kattii might cos she also follows me but I’m not sure if she keeps up with her timeline, but I don’t think the others do).  I should definitely not isolate myself entirely—I don’t know a lot right now, but I know that’s a real bad idea no matter how depressed I was before this happened—so I may keep the D&D up.

I’m not sure if I should go to the Sunday Jaina runs or not, since I won’t really be part of the prog team and shouldn’t take mounts out of the mouths of people who will actually be around.  I already felt kinda guilty about going to last week’s when I’d posted out of raid for mental health reasons (and had missed the week before’s entirely for same).  I dunno.  I’ve got a day and change to think about that one, and what I want to do with myself.

Oh, and M+ is a thing too isn’t it, fuck me.  I dunno.  If I do Jaina and I do D&D, I should probably at least do the M+ too; it’s only one or two runs a week even if it has been stressful because we’ve been scrambling for a filler every week for a few months now (Intol’s been wrapped up in the whole pandemic thing on his side of life, and none of us have had the time or energy to find a consistent/reliable filler until he’s ready to come back).  At least I have a good excuse to not be the one scrambling for that weekly filler anymore, eh? lol :T  That’s also a small group size so that should be all right.  Jaina will be touchy for the larger group size reason too actually, now that I think about it (although I can probably get away with not being on discord for most of the run).

I dunno.  I’m rambling now, and now I’m also rambling at Naha in DMs so maybe I should stop rambling in at least one location.

[lightthewayofficial]

Chapter One: Atticus

The Parish family have been in the service of the Klaus Foundation since 1853. Queen Victoria and King Albert, both partial to a Christmas celebration, had countless serving staff to make their holiday as spectacular as possible, William Parish being amongst them. Bill had shown a particularly commendable demonstration of seasonal good-will when he’d saved Queen Vicky from being set alight by one of the Christmas tree candles. Saving the British Monarchy from being burned alive was very much considered in line with the Christmas spirit, and he was thus knighted by the reigning Santa Clause (at the time, this was Georg Klaus II). 

Parish continued to serve the British Royal Family into his old age. Whilst his children did not receive work within the palace, they were offered a coveted place at the Klaus dinner table and an invite to the Boxing Day Ball every year. After Bill’s daughter, Molly, managed to quickly avert a Christmas pudding related crisis- rather too much brandy, rather a lot of bushy beard in proximity of the pudding’s flame- it made sense for Georg II to employ the Parishes permanently. The Klaus Foundations’ fire-putter-outers. Today, the most recent generation of Parishes has recently hung up his fire hose, though, disappointingly, he didn’t get much of an opportunity to use it. 

His son, Atticus Parish, is currently stepping off the District Line at High Street Kensington to meet his girlfriend, Saskia Harper-Smith. He is ready for a cigarette after a long day of photocopying, and he’s absolutely bloody starving, because a Pret-a-Manger crayfish salad may be delicious but it certainly isn’t filling.

I am that man. Enough of the pretentious third person- I am Atticus Parish. And if I have to spend one more day at that Advertising company, I may just start tearing the photocopy machine apart bit by bit, and throw all the pieces across the office. I feel like I could easily revert back to my caveman days if I slip, even just a little. One more ‘are you busy, Atticus? Could I trouble you to print 300 of these flyers?’ and I’ll be a monkey flinging poo at the zoo enclosure window. 

Usually, the Christmas spirit is enough to pick me right back up. These past few weeks, I’ve seen Kensington High Street putting up its lights, colouring its shop windows with stockings and wrapping paper, litter the streets with after-school and after-work shoppers. It’s nice. I can smell cinnamon when I walk past Starbucks. I can wrap my scarf closer around my neck and sink into that seasonal feeling that usually has butterflies fluttering in my belly. Typically, I’m that person who’s sickeningly festive and starts playing Michael Buble in October. 

What can I say? It runs in my family. 

But there’s something different this year. And the year before that. And before that. Really, it’s since I left University. It’s like, whatever little switch that I have in my brain that automatically flicks on when 1st December rolls by has gone faulty. The fuse has tripped and I can’t turn it back on. These past few years I’ve been fumbling in the boiler room cupboard searching for the bloody thing with a little torch, and I just can’t find it. 

Actually, I don’t think that feeling is just reserved for my missing Christmas Spirit. This disorientation has been a general feeling for a while. Sometimes, it seems like every single twenty-something year old feels the same. 

An ambulance screams down the High Street. Boys in their school uniforms trapse out of Sports Direct, unable to afford any of the shoes they’ve had their eyes on all year. I turn left and step in a puddle that smells suspiciously of beer and piss. That’s just the fragrance of London. 

I put in the keycode for Saskia’s apartment building, opposite the Indian Restaurant that I always have to go to to pick up the food because Saskia’s called shotgun. I take the steps one by one, very slowly, and I open the flat door with my key. 

Saskia is home. This is unusual. She sits on the dogleg sofa with her tight-clad feet tucked under her bum. She extends a cigarette towards me before I even get to ask her how her day was. 

I take the cigarette. She’s staring at the page of her book. “How was your day?” I manage to ask. 

“Oh,” she sighs, in the way that says, oh, you know. Shit as usual. “Wine’s open on the counter.” “Brilliant.” I see the bottle of Campo Vecchio open on the black, marble top counter. I walk past Saskia’s abandoned Leboutins, towards the bedroom. 

I leave the door open behind me as I remove a suitcase from our shared wardrobe and begin to throw in random pairs of underwear. 

I hear movement on the sofa.

“What are you doing?” she asks, as if she already knows. 

“I’m going to The North Pole,” I reply, a bit giddily. 

“Don’t be daft.” I can smell her cigarette smoke, and it reminds me that I haven’t lit mine. I take a lighter from my jacket pocket and light the cigarette dangling between my chapped lips.  “You haven’t told them you’re coming.”

I pause, pyjama bottoms in hand. “That’s true. I haven’t been back in about fifteen years. It’d be rude to turn up unannounced, wouldn’t it?” “It’s less that,” Saskia calls casually. “I’m sure they’ll be slobbering all over a Parish, back in the good old NP. It’s more that you might not have a job waiting for you there.” My packing slows as I begin to fold my pyjamas carefully. I tap my cigarette on the closest mug; the ash was very close to burning a small hole through my tartan PJs. 

“Ever sensible. What would I do without you, Sas.” “Well, you’d better start thinking up the answer to that fast. Pole’s a long way away, sweet.”

I come to a stop then. Slowly turning around, I measure the view of my girlfriend, sat in her minimalist living room with smoke drifting around her straightened, dark-brown hair. She’s still burrowed in her book. 

“I’m sorry, Sas.”

That makes her put down her book, looking at me over the back of the sofa with a frown. “What on Earth are you apologising for, Atticus? You and I both know we don’t love each other that way.” At this point, Saskia’s blunt delivery shouldn’t come as a shock. It does, even now, even after knowing her for five years. “I know. I mean. We’ve spoken about it. But that doesn’t make it less rubbish that I’m up and leaving.”

She turns back to her book. 

“I’d rather you’d go if it’s your gut instinct, Attie. Your gut’s always been a good guide.”

“Only when you need help choosing from the takeaway menu.” She doesn’t laugh. I laugh to myself a little, though. 

“What made you decide this now?” she continues. “You could pop back to your apartment and get some proper clothes. You haven’t left an awful lot here.” “It just struck me as I was walking through High Street Ken.” “Ah. The horrible commercial aspect of it all?” I’m on hands and knees, rummaging under Saskia’s bed. She has some of those amazing vacuum pack things with a few of my winter jumpers in. I pull one of the packs out and it’s rock hard, like a sachet of compressed cocoa powder. 

“Sort of,” I say, voice coming out strained as I try and open the vacuum nozzle. “It’s just-” I pop the nozzle open, and it wheezes like an air mattress. “All the stuff in the news. The horrible political situation. Ice caps melting.” “Mmm.” “And what people need most is hope, a light to guide them, and instead it’s iPhones and Build-a-Bears.” “I like iPhones.” “And I like Build-a-Bears,” I continue, opening the vacuum bag and finding my warmest Edinburgh Woolen Mill knitted item. I have a fair few. “I’m not diminishing the power of a good present, of those little gestures. Of those things in life that make you happy. But the world is just so much more complex than our parents ever made it out to be, and now-”

There’s a thud from the apartment upstairs. The neighbours’ toddler has just started walking, and she keeps bumping into things. The comes a shrill cry as she registers that she’s fallen over. 

“Now,” I continue, “even when there’s good intentions behind it, even when these material things are helpful or fun or good, or whatever, it’s hard to forget that it’s probably been made in some sweatshop. Or that the company that came up with it isn’t paying any taxes- or it’s burning down the Amazon Rainforest. Or that one action figure is wrapped up in layers of pointless plastic packaging.”

A deep breath. And then I fold a second jumper and put it in the suitcase.

“Oh. Sorry- mind if I steal your suitcase, Sas?” “No. Has all of this only just occurred to you? And when did you become such a pessimist, Atticus Parish? I’ve never known you to talk like this, and quite frankly it’s terrifying.” I’m searching through my shirts. Why don’t I own any turtlenecks? “I know, it really is terrifying.” “Does this mean that you’re officially pursuing the Parish family business at Klaus Foundation, then?” “I suppose it does.” I zip up the suitcase.

“I’m.” There’s a pause, and I hear here close her book whilst I’m zipping. “I’m happy for you, Atticus. It’s always mattered to you, spreading hope and joy and all those sorts of things. Much more of a natural at Christmas spirit than me.” I’ve forgotten my toothbrush. My voice echoes in the bathroom as I say, “How would you know? You could be a natural. You’re a Smith who’s never wielded a blacksmith’s hammer before. Have you ever wielded a hammer, Saskia Harper-Smith?”

“No, and I daresay I never will.”

I pull the heavy suitcase off the bed- I packed too many shoes, but never mind- and I suddenly catch my reflection in the full-length mirror. Red curls getting too long, nose still red from the cold outside. Looking more energetic than I have in a long time- which is only, really, the sort of thing you notice when you’ve been particularly sluggish for a long time. Suddenly, I feel like I don’t have the time to stop and think about all of this. 

The sound of the suitcase rolling on the polished concrete floor is horribly loud. Saskia is standing, cigarette put out, only halfway finished. Her large eyes look suddenly larger and more childlike than they ever have before. 

“Look after yourself, thank you,” she demands.

“Of course, darling.” I bring her into a hug. She doesn’t typically like them, but I do, and she acquiesces today. I feel her skinny hand pat me awkwardly between the shoulder blades. 

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I mumble into the material of her cardigan. 

There’s barely a beat’s hesitation before she replies, “Yes you do.”

✨✨✨✨

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been on the boat to Håperg. 

This close to Christmas, it’s frankly irresponsible that I’m on this boat close to the darkest, coldest time of the year- and it’s remarkably lucky that these kind people have offered to take me. But here I am, and here they are, and I’ve done my best to offer them some of my tea from my flask as a thank you but they just smile and shake their heads politely. 

Seagulls screech overhead. I’m always amazed by how far-out seagulls fly- I don’t know enough about their eating habits to understand what they’re doing here. They’re probably thinking the same of me. The water occasionally splashes over the side, though the current isn’t that bad. It’s the ice that’s the problem, and I can’t shake off that unsettling feeling that we’ll just be the miniature version of The Titanic and end up sinking out here. When I came out here as a child, I didn’t really think about my own mortality so much. Now, I’m looking around and all I see is the receding shoreline of Spitsbergen and the sun failing to reach the horizon, that weak, pinkish glow dusting the clouds. It’s a bit terrifying.  

It’s perfect here.

I remember how much I loved it the first time, when I was six; the second time when I was ten. My lasting memory of both visits is the taste of chocolate and the cold scraping up my lungs. I loved it here, I loved seeing where my father came to work four months of the year. I won’t ever fully understand why he tried to put me off it, and I won’t understand how he almost succeeded. 

I close my eyes and breath in, and let the gentle rock of the boat silence my thoughts. The old engine roars and the seagulls continue to sing. I watch the ripples in the water, the pink and the stars reflected in the mirror sea-surface. 

It takes a good couple more hours for the boat to moor. The ocean is eerily still, the wind whistling in a high-pitched shriek. It picks up the ice in the air and whisks it around. It’s pitch-black out here now, as it will be for the next few months of the year. And this would be a frightening place, if not for the glittering lights of Håperg in the distance. Like fallen stars on the horizon. It’s just as welcoming as I remember it, an atmosphere of comfort and safety that could almost make you forget how unbelievably cold it is. And how many days it’s taken to get this far from London. 

The two men who’ve brought me here from Spitsbergen busy themselves with docking safely. One of them takes my suitcase, completely ignoring my inarticulate complaints- complaints that are essentially just me waving my hands about uselessly. The other hums something tunelessly to himself, unknotting some rope and, amazingly, pulling away his fur-lined hood. These men are made of stronger stuff than me. 

The step from the boat to the ice is high. The ice is slippery. I wobble in my descent and make a bit of a tit of myself, but that’s to be expected. 

“First time, yes?” The man with my suitcase asks. I feel terrible, I had asked for his name, but he didn’t give it and I’m too awkward to ask again. 

“Yes. Wait, no, sorry. This is my third time. But, the first in a very long time. I came as a child.” Through the flickering whisps of fur, I see the wincing expression of a young man. “Good. You remember the cold.” “Oh yes, hard to forget,” I call out over the wind. 

We walk for a minute or two through the snow- no idea where- and I learn that his name is Jakob. He learns my name. He asks whether I’m expected at Klaus Lodge, and I say no. His jovial laugh makes me wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake. How incredibly presumptuous I’ve been, just turning up like this. 

Jakob comes to a stop by a shed and some parked sleds. The poor sod still has Saskia’s bright pink suitcase in his hand as he whistles loudly with the other, thumb and forefinger in his mouth. At first, I have no idea what he’s trying to summon. It’s dark and the flakes of ice in the air make it hard to see anything except for Håperg’s distant lights. But then, I see them. They bound over and I can hear their excited yelps. 

“Huskies!” I cry like a boy.

My new friend laughs. “You like dogs, I hope.” “I love them.”

I watch them run over, though I have no idea where from. There’s eight of them, and the front two are grinning with their tongues hanging out and breath blooming in clouds. There’s snow spraying around them like they’re jumping in puddles. And honestly, I haven’t felt such childlike joy in years. 

They crash to halt and run circles around us, yelping in excited, high-pitched cries as they jump up at Jakob. He pays them no attention, walking soberly towards the sled and expecting them to follow, which they do. They’ve been trained well, even if huskies tend to be a little bit bonkers. That much I remember. One of the front runners is wagging his tail so hard the whole back half of his body is swinging from side to side. 

“Blåbær will take you there.”

I run my gloved fingers through the frontrunner’s fur. He turns to nip playfully at me, perhaps also a bit defensively, before sniffing my hand and rubbing his face on my shoes. “I take it you’re Blåbær,” I call out to the dog over the roar of the wind. 

“He is best.”

I couldn’t agree more. 

Jakob loads me and my silly suitcase onto the sled so that we’re lying down in front of the handle and reigns. It makes me feel like a piece of luggage. And then I watch him hook up all the huskies, standing diligently in line and occasionally chattering to each other. And then I feel him take his stand at the helm. 

And then we’re off, and I get just the smallest amount of whiplash from the sudden start. I also get a faceful of snow from the huskies’ paws. It’s in my eye, which hurts a lot, and it melts in my mouth, too. I cling onto the suitcase. The mountains start to take shape through the flurry. I look up- the stars are watching our journey to Håperg. And- my God. The Northern Lights. They’re doing a Mexican wave above our heads in greens and yellows and blues, like an 80s synth dream. 

Something about it all has my heart radiating, making ripples of rightness through my chest. It has taken me too long to come here. 

At least I’m here now.

[prorevenge]

Don't tell mom the dog-sitter's dead.

TL;DR at the bottom.

This didn't happen to me, it happened to my sister.

My sister moved up to SC from FL about a year ago, but she still visits us periodically. We're a big and close family. Shortly after Thanksgiving, she flew down with her husband and son for one such visit. She has 3 geriatric dogs, so she got a house/dog sitter.

MS (my sister) went through the basics of how they can only be fed at certain times. They get let out at certain times. They need to be in their crates from X hour to Z hour. Most importantly, they don't get treats. They get vitamins in place of treats, but those vitamins have to be given only twice a day. No people food. Very strict diets. They're all happy and healthy, but only because MS is so strict with their regime.

This lady she got to watch her dogs had stellar reviews on the site she was found through. She's a stay-at-home mom who does this as a side thing for extra cash. I feel like I can end it here, you all can guess where this is going.

MS left for Florida for a week. The first 5 days, everything is going well. DS (dog sitter) texts MS regularly or video calls. She shows MS pictures and gives her regular updates of when she comes and goes to MS's house. MS just bought that house, btw. She's been working her butt off to finally be able to afford it. She puts so much into making that a nice home for her family.

MS has some health problems herself. She's got a ton of prescription medication in her medicine cabinet. She brought enough for the week, but left the rest at home. Stuff for epilepsy, asthma, and allergies. But she's also got a ton of pain killers from when she had my nephew not that long ago. She's paranoid about becoming addicted, so she kept the pills for safety, but never used them. It's a full bottle.

On top of that, she's been a collector of rare beer for about 15 years now. Beer that's not even sold anymore because they were promotional from micro breweries. Beer she can't get anymore because she doesn't live in Florida. Those bottles, she keeps as mostly decoration in her kitchen.

On the 6th day of her vacation, DS stops all communication altogether. MS texts, calls, emails. Nothing. Radio silence. She's got a bad feeling, but she doesn't want to kill the mood because she doesn't get to see her family very often anymore.

Day 7, she gets on a late flight back to SC. The plane gets there around 2 in the morning. They drive an hour to their rural town. They get home. The front door is wide open. The lawn looks like someone in a truck (which DS happened to drive) just tried to go drifting over grass and a tree before vacating the premises super quick.

MS goes to handle my nephew who is groggy and screaming. It's been a rough day. She's thinking the worst. That someone robbed the house while this poor lady was there. MS's husband (BiL) goes inside to survey the damages. It's all clear, MS and Nephew go inside too.

The back door is wide open. The couch looks like it exploded. The rug in the living room and the couch, and pretty much every square foot on the bottom floor is covered in the kind of pee and poop that can only be made from 3 geriatric furry buttholes.

The dogs are, thankfully, still in the backyard. But they're shivering and filthy. There are broken beer bottles everywhere. Some have been stuffed deep in the trash to hide the evidence. Some have been refilled with water and put back with their tops precariously situated on top so they might look like they haven't been touched.

82 bottles, each growler sized (roughly 64 oz) - gone. The medicine cabinet is like one of those Western ghost town's with a tumbleweed bouncing through. MS is already thinking this DS threw herself a party. No way in heck could someone 5'6'', 170 lbs, drink that much beer and take that many pills and not be dead.

MS called the cops. Obviously. The police get there to figure this must be a break in. They take a bunch of pictures, take an account of all the bottles and drugs that were missing. MS cleans what she can, but gets to sleep because thankfully the upstairs hasn't been touched.

One day later, the police find DS. MS has assumed she's dead and abducted, so the police were looking for her and her car. They found the truck run off the side of a highway, with this lady about two miles up, tweaking OUT OF HER MIND walking along the side of the road, screaming at nothing.

They take her in for whatever charges. Idk. Her husband bails her out and picks her up. According to her husband, this has happened before. DS has a drug and alcohol problem.

At first, she's messaging my sister, super apologetic, saying she'll reimburse MS and please don't press charges. MS quotes her the price of the rug, a new couch, and the vet bills because her dogs had somehow gained access to 9 containers of doggie vitamins and one of them was having liver failure. (The dog is fine now, but she's an old yorkie so who knows. Also, MS buys in bulk from a wholesaler, hence 9 containers). The total was somewhere around $800. MS didn't bother with the beers, the meds, the lawn, cleaning the house. She could have. Heck, I would have.

On top of that, MS demanded DS never dog sit again and she had to refund MS for her dog sitting. MS works in advertising. I won't say what kind, but basically if she saw/sees DS advertising herself as a dog sitter ever again, she has the means to drag this lady until all she sees is mud for the rest of her life.

DS insists she'd gonna pay it back, but that MS has to wait until they get their taxes back. Ok. So MS waits. Late February, she texts DS asking where her money is. DS immediately starts saying how she didn't do anything wrong, MS is a bad dog owner and her dogs are miserable, none of the stuff MS says DS did was actually done. MS has all the old texts of DS admitting to all of it sooo....?

This goes on for a while. Eventually, DS starts saying how "as a courtesy" she has a friend who owns a furniture store, she will give MS a credit of $200 for a new couch. And she has an old rug she doesn't want anymore that MS can have.

Erm... what?

She payed MS about $500, but and insists she'll get the coupon to MS soon. March goes by. Nothing.

Around March 20th, MS marches her happy butt to the small claims court and files. Then she snaps pictures of everything. Then she sends DS the message. "As a courtesy, I'm letting you know that I just filed this at the small claims court."

Then the fun starts. This lady goes OFF on MS. She says she's going to sue for slander and undue distress and harassment and blah blah blah blah blah. MS saves all of it, including the fun bits where DS threatens her family and calls her the C-word 20-dozen times.

Today is what? April 6th? Tuesday was the court date. Things move fast in a small town, idk. This lady shows up looking like she just got run through by a garbage disposal. She gives the judge her sob-story, talking about how she did nothing but give MS and her animals the best care, that MS is making all this up.

Yeah. MS has the OG cop with her. She's got pictures of all the damage, the vet bills, the bottles, proof that she was out of town, police reports of both the "break-in" as well as DS's DWI the following day. DS tries to spin it with that one law about how you can't serve alcohol to a known alcoholic. That obviously gets thrown right tf out.

DS then tries to appeal to Judge and MS's sense of humanity. She tells them how her husband just left her and is suing her for full custody (good!) and that if she can't dog-sit how is she supposed to support herself or ever get her kids back (tough cookies!). The judge takes my sister's side, for obvious reason, come tf on.

DS is homeless now, living with her parents. She can't see her kids, who btw don't want to see her. Apparently she was a drunk who ran her hubby's credit all the way down, she was abusive to her kids, and because of her heavy alcohol abuse - one of her kids has FAS. DS has 60 days to pay the remaining $300 or she faces jail time (idk how much time, sorry). Her husband filed for divorce already. Oh, and she lost her license thanks to that DWI.

As a former addict myself and someone who's been through a DWI, I want to sympathize. That's a lot of stuff to go through. MS gave her chance after chance, but at some point, you have to take responsibility for your actions. It really seems like this lady has just been using her husband as a crutch while she tries to get better, only to backslide hard. It's rough, I know. I hope she gets the help she needs.

MS's dogs are doing well. She got a replacement couch on Amazon for like $75 and a nice fluffy rug for even less. DS eventually coughed up that coupon. It didn't even work. It was for something like 20% off with a purchase of $500 or more, so um...no thanks.

TL;DR: World's poopiest dog-sitter trashes my sister's house after going on a bender. Claims she didn't do that, while also promising to pay for the damages. Never pays. Gets taken to court. Loses her home, job, kids, and marriage.

(source) story by (/u/anoukdaae)

[skepticraven]

Dear Trump Fans,

I keep hearing you say that Trump has done so much for America but you never elaborate on that, even when I ask you to. So, I’m asking again & my question is simple. What has he done that you think is so great? Aside from insulting people you don’t like, I just don’t see any achievements. This is what I do see:

-Trump didn't end the overseas wars like he promised. Instead, he got us involved in Syria. And he has nearly started a couple new wars with Iran & North Korea

- It seems you don't have your giant, waste-of-money wall. You have a small amount of fencing that anyone could cross should they want to. And Mexico won't EVER pay for it. Now, I’m fine with no wall but you shouldn’t be. 

- Trump is trying to cut the CDC budget by almost 20% amidst a pandemic. 

- Trump fired the pandemic response team last year.

- Trump is already saying he wants everyone back to work by Easter & all of the churches full on Easter- except every doctor & all his medically educated advisors are advising Trump against that. The cases of coronavirus are still increasing rapidly. Sending people back into such close proximity to one another will only inflame the problem, increasing the number of infected & dead tenfold.

-Trump has violated the emoluments clause of the constitution by failing to put his assets in a blind trust & thus is charging foreign leaders & American politicians inflated prices to stay at his hotels to win his favor & get private access to the president since he goes there all the time

- Trump is guilty of blatant nepotism. For example, he appointed Jared Kushner to negotiate peace in the middle east, handle diplomacy with China & Mexico, address the opioid epidemic, manage the wall construction process, etc. Jared isn't qualified for any of that, he only has that job because he bones Trump's daughter. Jared wouldn’t be qualified to manage a Pizza Hut. He was born rich and has done nothing but lose billions when he landed in his father job because his father went to prison for tax evasion, witness tampering, & illegal campaign contributions.

- Trump, who claims to be tough on terrorism, signed a multi-billion dollar weapons deal with Saudi Arabia RIGHT AFTER they murdered & dismembered an American journalist. Not to mention the genocide they were waging in Yemen. There is a reason that 80% of the 9/11 terrorist were from Saudi Arabia.

- Trump has eliminated funding for programs that work to de-radicalize people in extremist groups/organizations & help them escape that life.

- Trump cut his own taxes & that of his rich buddies & corporations BY 40%. Due to all the tax loopholes & shady financial dealings (like equity swapping or offshore tax havens) which the wealthiest Americans & corporations do, they already historically weren't paying anywhere near the marginal tax rate they should be on paper. Trump cut the corporate marginal tax rate from 35% to 21%. So after the loopholes & their shady bullshit, they're very likely paying a lower effective tax rate than you are. Thanks to Trump, many paid no income taxes at all in 2018 like Amazon, Netflix, Chevron, IBM, Delta Airlines, General Motors, Whirlpool, Goodyear Tires, etc.

-Trump promised to reduce the deficit but he has actually raised it by a lot. When you decrease the amount of taxes coming in that drastically & you increase government spending that much, the deficit is going to increase. The Caronavirus situation has only exacerbated that problem but the problem was already there.

-Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, solely because Obama did it. And Mr. Art of the Deal did not even try to negotiate a new deal. 

- This great healthcare Trump promised hasn't happened. Less people have insurance now than when Trump first took office. Drug prices have only gone up. There have be cuts to Medicaid as well.

-Trump appointed a judge who clearly lied to congress & whom likely sexually assaulted someone. Why Trump did not pick a different conservative judge to nominate, I will never understand.

- Trump cut all the social safety net programs that help the poor & disabled: SSI Disability, Food Stamps, Medicaid, HUD, etc.

- Like it or not, Trump was technically impeached. He just wasn’t removed from office by the Senate because there are a bunch of scared Republicans who are too scared to do or say anything against Trump. Tribalism saved him. That’s it. Because he admitted on national television that he talked about Biden & his son on that phone call- you can even see the exact moment when he realizes he shouldn’t have said that. So, he did do what he was accused of.

-His administration is a revolving door of hiring & firing/quitting. Trump said he knew the best people so why would he need to fire so many of them? Think about how many people have come & gone. These are just some of the big names who left the administration but there are WAY MORE than I am listing: Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo, Scott Pruitt, Steve Bannon, John Bolton, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, Anthony Scaramucci, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer,  Sarah Sanders, James Mattis, Rick Perry, Nikki Haley, Dan Coats, Alexander Acosta, Scott Gottlieb, Bill Shine, Tom Price,  H.R. McMaster, Ryan Zinke, Mick Mulvaney, James Comey,  Sebastian Gorka, Omarosa Newman, Gary Cohn, Don McGahn, Rod Rosenstein, Michael Flynn, Sally Yates, Tom Homan, Ty Cobb, Tom Bossert, K.T. McFarland, Rob Porter, Dina Powell, Rick Dearborn, Matthew Whittaker, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Hope Hicks, Brenda Firtzgerald, Rob Snyder, Michael Dubke, Sean Doocey, etc.

-This is kind of a minor point but it does illustrate Trump’s hypocrisy.  Trump criticized Obama for golfing so much & then Trump turns around & plays 2.6 times more golf than Obama in his first 2 years and 91 days & has cost the tax payer an estimated $74 million more than Obama. 

- Does it ever embarrass you how little Trump knows about anything? Ever notice how he never goes in depth talking about anything? Its all vague because he doesn’t know enough about healthcare or the Iran Deal or climate change to address it in any kind of depth. You still see that idiocy spill out regardles. During an interview for SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. channel, Trump said that former President Andrew Jackson was angry about the Civil War. The only problem is, Jackson couldn’t have been angry about the war. He died in 1845. The Civil War was in 1861. Another example would be during a call with Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Trump claimed Canada burned down the White House during the War of 1812. Canada didn’t exist as a country until 1867. That was the British... Trump also claimed General John J. Pershing dealt with Muslim terrorists by shooting them with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. That did not happen. The story began circulating the internet around the September 11 terrorist attacks. Apparently Trump believed it was factual, talking about it during his 2016 presidential campaign & again after a terror attack in Barcelona. Then, speaking to the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump confused the Quds Force, a unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, with the Kurds, the minority group battling ISIS in northern Iraq (who he would later abandoned). Maybe that confusion could be forgiven for an average Joe but if you’ president, you need to know stuff like that (especially given the region these two groups are in). Hence why most presidents study political science, law, or economics in college or at least, they bother to read up on this stuff. But Trump doesn’t really read. The only book he claims to have read was a biography about Andrew Jackson whom, he thought was mad about a war that happened 16 years after his death & he also seems to have missed the whole Trail of Tears thing.

-  By pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal & the Paris Climate Accord, Trump has isolated us from our allies. Our word means nothing anymore. And who can blame them for being pissed? Whether Iran has a nuclear weapon effect more than just us. Given the size of our nation, our refusal to take the looming threat of climate change seriously is a detriment to the entire world that can & likely will have devastating consequences for everyone. Furthermore, Trump trash talks our closest allies & has placed tariffs on nearly all of them. For example:

AUSTRALIA: Shortly after taking office, Trump reportedly berated then-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over an agreement between the U.S. and Australia involving refugee resettlement. 

CANADA: Trump also attacked Canadian President Justin Trudeau as “meek, mild, dishonest, & weak” during a conversation on trade at the G7 summit in 2018. He also threatened to withhold the U.S.’s signature from a joint communique from the meeting over the feud. Trudeau he also found it “insulting” that tariffs were placed on Canada under a rarely invoked law that allows levies to be placed on a country in the interest of national security. Since when is Canada a national security threat? 

DENMARK: Trump also went after Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen after she refused to sell him Greenland. She called the idea “absurd,” & Trump referred to her as “nasty & inappropriate.” The people that live there don’t want to become American. You can’t just buy a country on whim. Greenland belongs to Denmark but its semi-autonomous. 

FRANCE: Trump threatened to slap tariffs on French wine & called French President Emmanuel Macron “foolish” after he signed a digital services tax on tech companies making at least 750 MILLION EUROS annually, a figure which meant U.S.-based tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook & Amazon would be included. 

GERMANY: Trump has had a particularly tumultuous relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The president has repeatedly threatened Germany with auto tariffs, saying if companies like BMW and Mercedes wanted to sell cars in the U.S., they should build them in the country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday criticized President Donald Trump's tweets about four Democratic congresswomen of color telling them to go back to where they came from. She said that the president's tweets contradict "the strength of America." "I distance myself firmly from this & feel solidarity with the women who were attacked," Merkel said. (Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau also criticized Trump for the same thing).

JAPAN: Trump has lamented the U.S.’s responsibility to defend Japan if attacked, saying the alliance between Washington & Tokyo is uneven. Trump has also threatened Japan with auto tariffs, though it announced in May it was delaying any levies for six months. 

MEXICO: President Trump has repeatedly torn into Mexico, slamming it on trade but focusing much of his ire on the country over immigration. Trump has threatened America’s southern neighbor with tariffs over its alleged inaction in working to stem the flow of undocumented migrants in the U.S. And let’s face it, he doesn’t exactly talk about the Mexican people in the nicest way and stroked racial tensions.

SWEDEN: President Trump feuded with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven after American rapper A$AP Rocky was detained in Sweden & charged with assault following a June incident in Stockholm. Apparently Kanye West told Trump about it. 🙄 The rapper was ultimately released in & returned to the U.S AFTER he was convicted & had to pay a fine (plus time served).

UNITED KINGDOM: While Trump has bashed the United Kingdom over trade practices, threatening tariffs on one of the U.S.’s closest allies to rectify what he sees as an imbalance, he has directed much of his criticism toward the country’s handling of Brexit. He also attacked the UK's National Health Service, claiming it is "going broke & not working." That’s not true but its not really his business either way. Trump is so disliked in the UK that at one point, 75,000 protestors gathered in central London’s Trafalgar Square to protest U.S. President Trump’s visit to the U.K

SOUTH KOREA: The Trump administration is reportedly demanding South Korea pay 400% more for U.S. troops in the region- despite the fact that having a base in South Korea is essential as much for us as it is for them. We need a base near North Korea should we ever have to attack. Maybe raising it some is reasonable but raising anything 400% overnight is a little absurd.

I see failure & corruption in Trump. I see a danger to America. Feel free to try to change my mind.

[notafightr]

It fic exchange!!!

so here's my reddie fic for @disneyfan567​ for the it fic exchange event! no trigger warnings, sorry for any mistakes or lack of skill this displays as i havent written in a long time and this is the first time ive written in this fandom

(°﹏°)

  Eddie was 13 when he moved to Ohio. Sonia decided she had had enough of Derry, and the small town was doing more harm than good to her delicate son. To describe Eddie's reaction, reluctant was an understatement. He was leaving his 6 best friends, his only real friends, all because of his mother's glorified temper tantrum.

  The past 3 years were (in)arguably the best years of his life. He met his best friends, more of a family than his own (which really just consisted of his overbearing mother), he had irreplaceable experiences and memories with his best friends, these friends entirely shaped and nurtured his character. So to have his mother rip all of that away from him, well it understandably upset him. Most of all, he didn't know how he was going to cope with the frequent flashbacks and nightmares that taxed him emotionally and mentally several times a week, dutifully owed to that short, albeit rather traumatic summer of 89’.

  For 3 long, yet oh so short years, Eddie coped with these strains through the support of his friends, especially a loudmouthed, annoying boy with Coke bottle glasses and slightly bucked teeth, named Richard Tozier, who couldn't find it in him to ever stop annoying Eddie, or stop telling him how much he loved him, or stop picking flowers for him on walks because he knew even though Eddie denied it, they really did make Eddie happier than he cared to admit.

  How do you cope with a demon clown terrorising you and your friends’ lives for an entire summer, haunting you as your worst fear, using unholy tactics to scare you in unimaginable ways, trapping you in its crack den, and almost killing you miles below land level, all at the ripe age of 10? Hopefully you found yourself down there with your 6 best friends. You also let your mind do the forgetting. Well, what it can. There's some things you can't forget.

  Until you leave Derry.

  Eddie started forgetting the moment the plane took off, whether he realized it or not. He managed to remember his friends for a short while, but vaguely. He didn't remember the poems Ben gave him every birthday, or that the friendship bracelet on his left wrist was made by thee Beverly Marsh. He didn't remember that the reason his room was always so tidy was because Stan Uris couldn't help himself every time they chose Eddie’s place as the hangout spot (when Sonia wasn't home of course), or all the scary stories Bill liked to tell at their weekly sleepovers at the ass crack of 3 am. He didn't remember how Jessica and Will Hanlon were by far the superior parents of the friend group and the snacks they so generously provided to said group were the best he ever had, no doubt that Mike directly inherited their kind and generous traits.

  When he woke up at the end of his plane ride, he didn't even remember that the lily flower in his hand was given to him as a parting gift by Richie, whose parents picked him up from the airport after he gave one last hug goodbye at the gate and waved Eddie off with flower in hand. Even after intently looking down, confused, and finally remembering it was indeed Richie who gave him the flower, he still didn't remember Richie’s endearing flower giving habit.

  He promised them he'd stay in touch, but it wasn't long before the initials BH, BM, SU, BD, MH, and RT were just meaningless letters next to a series of unknown house phone numbers.

  It wasn't until he forgot one particular conversation with Bill during a sleepover one night in 6th grade that he forgot Richie completely.

  “Bill?” Eddie whispered, lying down in Bill’s bed, not even sure if Bill was awake.

  “Y-yeah?” Bill replied after some silence.

  “So, we're best friends right?”

  “Well y-yeah, I m-mean all-” Bill started before being interrupted.

  “No I mean like, I know the seven of us are best friends obviously, but I mean, we’re best-best friends, you know what I mean? Like even before the lucky seven it's always been us right?”

  “Oh. Yeah I s-suppose.” Bill reassured him.

  It took Eddie a second to try and gather his thoughts and articulate what he was trying to say.

  “Well, I feel like, Richie’s different from all of you.”

  “Yeah n-no sh-shit Eddie, that k-kid can't k-keep his mou-” Bill was again interrupted.

  “No, that's not what I mean. I mean,” Eddie again had to organize his thoughts in his head, which proved to be difficult when not even he knew what he was thinking. “I mean I feel different with him. Like when he gives me flowers and stuff, and he's the only one that calls me Eds. But I know you're my best friend. My best-best friend. Am I wrong? Maybe Richie is my best-best friend?” At this point it felt like Eddie was just saying it out loud for himself.

  After a few seconds, which felt like several minutes to Eddie, Bill giggled.

  “What?” Eddie asked, almost panicked.

  While Bill didn't necessarily believe this, the thought amused him greatly. “It s-sounds like you have a c-cr-crush on h-him.”

  “Wh-... you th-” Eddie just about got whiplash from Bill’s statement. “You think I have a crush on him?!”

  “I n-never said that… I j-just said it s-sounds like you do.”

  “I'm not… I don't like boys like that. My mom told me what it means if you do and what happens, and I don't think I do,” he backtracked.

  At this point, Bill was almost asleep. “Okay Eddie, that's fine,”

  “I think maybe you're just both my best friends,” Eddie assured, but undoubtedly he said this more for himself than for Bill. Bill probably succumbed to slumber before Eddie could even start.

  Once any evidence of this conversation having occurred left his brain, any trace of Richie was buried deep under newer things. The others were already long gone. The nightly nightmares he experience fizzled out eventually, but they did resurface every once in a while. On the other side of the same coin however, he did have dreams about the good times with the losers. He never remembered them when he woke up, though.

  Not to mention, he was frequently frustrated at his lack of motivation to clean his room properly, wondering why his always clean room in Derry suddenly had no place in his new life in Ohio. Where's a Stan Uris when you need him?

  He tried to make friends. For a bit he was even in a nice friend group of people he clicked fairly well with, they were funny and kind and they welcomed him with open arms. But nothing felt right. They were funny, but it hurt to laugh at their jokes, they were nice, but almost too nice. If anyone so much as cracked a your mom joke, Eddie's first thought was an annoyed “Stop trying to be-” but always stopped short right there.

  Stop trying to be who?

  He didn't know. He didn't remember.

  So at the end of his sophomore year, when he asked his mom to sign his permission form for the classes he wanted to take the upcoming school year, his mom declined.

  “Eddie Bear, we're moving back to Derry this summer.” Sonia said apologetically, understanding he'll have to say goodbye to the friends he doesn't have.

  “Wait, what?” confused was an understatement. He had to rack his brain for a moment to even remember what “Derry” meant.

  “It’s getting difficult for me to support us financially here, so we're moving back near your Aunt Jodie and she's going to help us a little bit. We should start packing no later than the end of May, we’ll be out of the house and into the new one at the beginning of July in time for you to to get settled and start school at Derry High.”

  Eddie had never felt more indifferent in his whole entire life, while also feeling an inkling of hope he didn't quite understand. If anything, his biggest curiosity was why he didn't feel even a whisper of sadness for leaving the people he knew in Marietta, Ohio. While Eddie didn't care about moving back to Derry, and it meant almost nothing to him on the surface, the Eds inside of Eddie couldn't help peeking through.

  So they moved back. Eddie finished packing up his belongings before the deadline his mother gave to start packing had even passed, and he didn't bother telling any of his “friends” (perhaps acquaintances is a more applicable word) that he was leaving because the truth was, it was more trouble than it was worth. They would no doubt care more than twice as much as he did, so he left without so much of a trace of a goodbye.

  Now that Eddie was 16, he could drive. While Sonia wouldn't buy Eddie his own car, not over her dead body, she did allow him to use hers when it was available, and given her physical state and social life, it was almost always available. After a solid 8 hours of unpacking his things in his new, snug room on an otherwise uneventful July evening, he picked up his mom's keys.

  “Bye Mom!” he shouted loud enough for his mom to hear without bothering to hear her response as he shut the door.

  He shoved the key in ignition. Despite not having been in town for 3 years, he was still able to navigate the area without assistance. He drove to the coffee shop that he had vague memories of visiting during middle school winters for hot chocolate with some friends whose faces he couldn't quite remember yet.

  Walking in it didn't look much different. Not that Derry would care enough to update the coffee shop, or any shop for that matter, for any reason.

  “Hi, how can I help you?” a blonde girl at the register asked uninterestedly.

  She definitely hates her job, Eddie thought while pointlessly perusing the menu, already knowing what he planned to order. Sophomore year was not academically kind to Eddie, and a caffeine addiction to compensate for the mass amount of all nighters pulled did occur.

  “Can I just have a black coffee with sugar?” he asked while digging through his tattered black wallet he received as a birthday gift in seventh grade. He then flinched his head up in response to hearing another employee drop an entire pitcher of coffee on the floor.

  “Oh, fuck,” said worker pointedly exclaimed, which not only stirred a giggle out of Eddie, but his voice in combination with his oddly familiar black curly hair caused his heart drop, though completely lost as to why.

  “Your name?”

  “Hello?” She asked after a moment.

  “Hello!” the blonde girl repeatedly nagged, trying to catch Eddie’s lost attention.

  “What? Sorry I missed that,” Eddie finally grounded himself. Unfortunately his attempt to catch the other employees face failed as he stayed turned away and then hurried to his hands and knees on the floor.

  “I need your name for your order.”

  “Oh yeah of course, Eddie.” Not even seconds after his response, he heard something nearly inaudible, completely not understandable from the employee on the floor, which was confirmed by the blonde girl, which Eddie now gathered from her name tag to be Sarah, who exasperatedly asked about the other employee’s struggle.

  “You alright down there?”

  “Yeah, I’m just peachy, Sarah,” hearing the voice even clearer instilled a visceral reaction even stronger in Eddie once again.

  Sarah took Eddie’s cash, distributed his change, and set his cup down on the back counter for when the other employee to make when he was done cleaning up his mess. He picked a seat close by the counter and waited. After a few minutes, longer than probably usual, given time dedicated to cleaning up the coffee on the floor, Eddie heard his name called by the same antagonist and saw his coffee set on the counter, but employee was again out of sight. Eddie grabbed the coffee and with no reason to stay he made his way back to the car.

  Drinking his iced coffee on his way home, at a stop light he picked up his drink and studied it curiously. He noticed the boy who made his drink must have added his name for some reason because when Sarah set it down for him to make, there was nothing written on it. However, clearly on the cup, was his name:

  While looking at the little flower next to his name made him smile, it was a cute gesture, it filled him with a familiar sense of longing and loneliness, as if he was missing something. He got home, finished his coffee, continued unpacking, dreadfully argued with his mom about leaving the house without telling her where he was going, and went to sleep. It was less of a need for caffeine but more of an eagerness to learn about a curly headed, clumsy employee that brought him back to the coffee shop the next day.

  So he came back. He came back at the same time too, to have his best chance of the boy being on shift.

  “How can I help you?” Sarah asked.

  “Black coffee with sugar, Eddie.” successfully staying on track with Sarah this time around.

  Again, she set the blank cup on the counter and just like before, his name with a dainty doodle of a flower beside it. Unfortunately, even if he wanted to say anything to the employee which Eddie now knew wears a big pair of glasses, his introverted nature wouldn't allow it. Back to home it was, to continue setting up his new room.

  The next couple of weeks was the same routine, and quite lonely. Being in the middle of summer, with no school to be his vessel of socializing, and no friends, it was him, his lonely self, and his mom. For all intents and purposes, him and his lonely self.

  However one morning, in a hurry as he had a family gathering for brunch to attend to, he knew he wouldn't be able to get to the coffee shop in the evening so he came in the morning, despite knowing the shift would likely not be the same.

  He walked in and noticed it was in fact not Sarah at the register but didn't look further.

  “How can I help you?” The boy at the register was looking down.

  “Just a black coffee and sugar. Eddie.” He got the cash from his wallet and told the boy he could keep the change as he was already late to his aunt's house and confident he could do without the dollar and 74 cents. As he walked to the counter to get his coffee as soon as it was ready, he noticed the boy scribbling his name and a flower on the cup but his brain didn't process anything other than how late he was. He took his coffee eagerly and made his way back to his car, knowing his mom (who was already there after being picked up by her sister) was no stranger to yelling at Eddie for “caring more about himself than his family”.

  On the drive to his house he allowed himself time to think and thought about the boy at the register. He was familiar to Eddie and not just because he's seen him every day for two weeks, making his regular order with ease.

  The Coke bottle glasses.

  The flower.

  The unkempt, black, curly hair.

  But that was still too out of reach for him. He thought about it for as long as he could without having an aneurysm from working his brain too hard and decided he would come back the next morning for the same shift.

  Sonia greeted Eddie outside before he was able to come inside.

 “Eddie bear, why are you so late?”

  “Sorry ma, I was up late finishing my summer assignment and I stopped to get coffee when I left,” Eddie started despite knowing this wouldn't be enough to appease his mom.

  “Aunt Jodie is being very kind to help us out and this is the first time seeing family since we've gotten back, you should show your gratitude properly. Say thank you when we come in.”

  “I will, Ma. Why didn't you just wake me up and take the car here?”

  “Aunt Jodie wanted to catch up with me before everyone else got here. She took us to breakfast. I figured you'd have enough autonomy to drive yourself here on time. Are you feeling well? Did you sleep enough?”

  “Yes, ma!” Eddie spoke as he got out of the car and locked it, handing the keys to his mom. “I just overslept. Sorry for being late.”

  However, while his cousins and aunts and uncles were asking him how Ohio was and if he was sad to leave his friends and if he left a broken hearted girlfriend back in Marietta, all he could think about was the coffee shop employee who never failed to doodle a flower next to his name.

  He got home late, worked on his summer assignment, because against what he told his mom, he had in fact not started yet. He made sure to wake up at the same time as the morning before and headed to the coffee shop. To his pleasure, the boy was at the register.

  “How can I help you?”

  Eddie stared at him.

  “Uh,” He couldn't help but chortle as Eddie stared, wordlessly, and then it appeared as though a freight train of memories hit him square in the head.

  “Oh my God,” Eddie nearly dropped to the floor. “Richie? Richie fucking Tozier? Is this a joke?”

  “Ya know Eds, I was starting to think you really forgot me. Or maybe you just hated me.” Richie allowed himself to laugh.

  “I… I did forget you? But how? We-” and at that moment Richie could visibly see It creep itself back into Eddie’s memories.

  “Holy shit? You forgot about that too? Do you have amnesia? What happened to that pretty little head of yours?” Richie put his hand on Eddie's forehead and pretended to feel his temperature.

  “Oh my God,” whiplash had struck Eddie again. “I need to sit down,” He started to move to a chair nearby when he remembered more. “The others! Beverly, and Ben, and Stan and Bill and Mike!” he quite literally felt like someone waking up from a 20 year coma, rediscovering everything that happened before he fell asleep.

  “They're peachy. Stan's actually getting back from visiting his family in Florida today.” Richie informed him. “Any reason you never stayed in touch like you said you would? Left a man hanging.”

  “It's like, wait- those initials were yours!” Suddenly three years of wondering who those house numbers in his binder belonged to clicked. “It’s like I forgot you guys as soon as I left,”

  “That soon? Ed's, you wound me,” Richie teased. “But you're still wearing the friendship bracelet Bev made.” He held out his wrist and displayed a bracelet of the same pattern but in different colors. “What’s she got that I don't?”

  For the first time in 3 years, Eddie let out a genuine laugh.

  “Are you busy, cutie? I'm on break in 15 minutes and I can get someone to cover the rest of my shift,” Richie asked, hopeful.

  “Yeah that's fine.. uh.. have you been working every day? All day?” Eddie asked, concerned.

  “Well the past couple of weeks at least a couple of us from the gang has been visiting family or doin’ some crazy shit so I figured I'd make use of time and make some money, we're doing a road trip in a couple of weeks.”

  “Oh that's cool-”

  “You're invited, if you want, obviously. What better way to celebrate you coming back than a road trip? Ed's, just wait till’ they find out you're back-” Richie cut himself off when he noticed another man walk into the shop and they both decided to end the conversation there so he could order. “Okay hold on I'm gonna take his order, and I'll be out in 10 minutes, you can wait here if you want?”

  “Sounds good,” Eddie couldn't help the smile on his face, it's contagiousness showing in Richie's smile.

  After waiting for a bit, Richie came from the back out of his uniform, a bag on his shoulder, and a rose in his hand. He held it out to Eddie.

  “Do you just, carry flowers with you?” Eddie looked at him curiously.

  “No but I- after I saw you yesterday morning and I passed this one on my way to work, something told me I should grab it.” Eddie took it. “Flowers still get ya goin’?” Eddie punched him in the shoulder.

  “Thanks, Rich.” He smiled.

  “Where to now, spaghetti?” Richie put his arm around Eddie.

  “For 3 glorious years I never had to hear that, don't call me spaghetti!”

  “Okay Eds, answer the question!”

[ununniliad]

LNH20 Comics Presents #22: "The Return of Captain Killfile"

She fell

and she fell

and with a rude THUMP! she fell back into the world.

She scrambled to her feet. Disorientation. A sudden confusing sense of place.

Cold, but not the cold of space, a natural, wintery chill. Dark - night. Greenery, trees, bits of snow - nearby, a fence. Quiet here, but the quick rushing-river nose of traffic nearby, the clouds glowing softly. A city. Not a battle.

Last memory. Fighting. People she loved. ...fighting the people she loved. Because... because she had been Hildy, but now she was Captain Killfile, and they were trying to stop her from saving the world...

And then the wind kicked up and a copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer hit her in the face.

She flailed around, electric crackling coming out of her gauntlets, and eventually managed to rip the paper off her face and examine it. What the-- Cleveland!? What was she doing in the second-most boring city in the nation[*]!?

[* In fact, the 2010 census shows Cleveland as the fourth-most boring city in the United States, with the current frontrunner being West Lafayette, Indiana! - Ed.(UE)]

She stared at the lines of ink, fragments of thought, memory, emotion bouncing into each other, forming new patterns before splitting and recombining. New city transit plan... tax breaks for people... protest against new law... rogue net.heroes... mmm. Something about that last one felt... off...

And only then, in her haze, did she paid attention to the date. February 20th... 2019?

Out of the fog, the memories rose up. The confrontation with her old team, now her enemies - the Saviors of the Net. Activating the great machine that would begin the process of healing. Sig.Lad, her mentor, her hero, the one who held her back and told her no until she had to leave, raising that damn sword, the Sword of .Sig, Excalibur, and pulling them away into a space where time blurred and softened... waking up and feeling the energies draining away, and draining away with them...

It had been twenty years. 

Well, shit.

How had it ended? Had her machine worked? Had she taken away the corrupting power of the net.humans - and had humanity managed to heal themselves?

She looked at the crumpled newspaper. Rogue net.heroes... But the printed words swam before her eyes. No. She had to see for herself. 

Captain Killfile... no, she told herself. Let's put that name aside. Right now, I am just myself; I am just Brunhilda.

Brunhilda seemed to still be wearing the gaudy gold-and-blue costume, from... before. When she'd taken over the airwaves, when she'd announced her plan to the world, standing in front of the camera and waiting. It'd been a bit spiteful; Sig.Lad had sent it to her a few months before as part of some weird attempt at reconnecting. That guy never knew how to do things in a normal way, just a net.hero way. That was part of...

Mmmm. Her mind was wandering, the fog still curling around it. She turned the hood and cape inside out, exposing the dark blue lining, and pulled the hood down over her face. Much less gaudy, pretty warm, and it'd let her see what 2019 was like without detection. Hopefully.

She slipped into the streets, keeping to the shadows, not hiding herself from passers-by but giving them more than a moment to pay attention to her presence. Subtle, like a ghost. Or like someone who lived in the world of ghosts, fighting them, death to a meaningless half-life...

Like Ghost Exterminator, the mysterious masked enigma of the 1950s. He (people thought it was a he, but nobody knew for sure) wandered thru the streets of San Francisco, stopping to help those in need. He didn't have any net.human powers, just skills, insight, and determination. Nobody knew why the name, either, but the big theory was that he was trying to rid himself of the ghosts who haunted him by helping others.

There had been more Ghost Exterminators in the decades since. It was an identity taken up by those who didn't want to operate under an identity of their own, living ghosts who fought the invisible specters that made society shudder and brought them into the light. Like she had. She'd seen what was wrong with the world that everybody else was too distracted or self-satisfied to realize, and fixed it.

Right?

Suddenly, action - damn, she'd left herself open in her distraction. Some kind of bright light next to her, and a loud voice-- "Greetings, Cleve.LAN.d!"

She rolled to the side and reached for her sword-- and it wasn't there. Falling back on net.hero instincts already, tch.

It was a giant TV, on the side of some kind of sports stadium. On it was a woman, a decade older than her, in a gaudy blue-and-gold mask and hood, with a megalomaniacal expression on her face. "I certainly hope you've missed me! But let me reintroduce myself!" She threw her arms out, flinging her gold-sequined cape to the sides. "I am... CAPTAIN KILLFILE!"

Brunhilda blinked. "...the heck you say," she murmured.

The fake!? took a step back, gesturing grandoisely at an enormous, complicated machine, all neon lights and chrome. "I have rebuilt my patented Kill-O-Ray, and am ready to unleash its awesome force!"

"That's not what it was called," snarled Brunhilda, her back going up. Some kind of awful parody, what was this?

"The fine government of this fair city has an hour to deliver ten million dollars in unmarked bills to the observation deck of the Terminal Tower - or I'll activate my device, and allow the dreaded Killfile to sweep over the land once more!" She pushed her face back into the camera, grinning with devilish glee. "Yes, you don't want that, do you? You may complain about your net.heroes, but ohhhhh, how you hated them going away! Ha ha!"

It felt like Brunhilda had been kicked in the stomach. What. No. Okay. No. Calm down. Fuck. Ugh. No. She pushed the storm of screaming thoughts out of her head and tried to concentrate on the screen.

"That's right!" shouted the masked face. "This is... THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN KILLFILE!"

"ugh shut uuuuup," she muttered, listening. Terminal Tower. Observation deck.

"And in case you doubt me..." The faux Captain stepped to the side, revealing a table with a shiny apple on a plate painted like a bullseye. Brunhilda noticed the glass lenses sliding along the machine's surface, passing past each other, clicking into place. They hummed, and the lights in the room seemed to darken, especially around the apple, which seemed to-- not disappear, nothing as sudden as that, but become less noticeable, more like the background, layer by layer, until it was completely gone.

Damn. That was absolutely real Killfile Energy. Sometime in the last twenty years, someone else had gotten up to her level - insult to injury.

"One hour, ladies, gents and honored guests! The clock starts--" Her hand hovered over a huge digital readout, pushed a big red button on it, and it started counting down. "Now!" The image disappeared, the screen turning an all-over blue with a big 'VIDEO' on it.

Brunhilda breathed in. Captain Killfile breathed out. All right. All right. Calm down. Breathe.

This was why she came out in Cleveland, twenty years later. To be shown this, to... stop this? To... understand? Ugh. But she didn't understand. Not yet. Why didn't... hated? Maybe it was a lie. Maybe it had made life better and this clown was like one of those politicians who talked about how much better things were with the new trade agreement even as it ground people into dust.

Or maybe she'd ground people into dust, thoughtlessly, caring only about herself-- no, calm down Hildy, you're okay, said the voice in her head that sounded just like Sig.Lad and ugh didn't that sting now. But she listened, and it said: See what's going on, take the time to understand, and see if you can help.

Okay.

Her Killfile Gauntlets were on the fritz, and she didn't have much time to tinker, but she knew just how to set up a killfile that would absorb energy weapons and shield her from detection, not to mention keep any externally-imposed killfiles from being placed on her. As for non-energy weapons, well, she'd just have to fall back on her fight training.

Now. Where was the Terminal Tower? Well, when you weren't sure where to find someone to fight, follow the police cars.

It turned out to be only a few minutes' walk. There was a big plaza around it with a bunch of expensive-looking restaurants and stores, now evacuated as the police set up a cordon. She kept back half a block, staying in the shadows to maximize the stealth effect of her killfile. How would she get in? Sure, she wasn't especially visible, but someone with that level of killfile technology would have ways of seeing thru it...

"Hi!"

"GAH!" She leapt in the air, spinning around and landing in a defense position, ready to strike at... a ten-year-old? What? Not only that, but a ten-year-old standing in an alleyway, wearing something that looked like miniaturized night vision goggles, but with googly eyes glued on them. He was looking right at her...

Then she recognized him. This kid wasn't just a kid, he was Kid Enthusiastic, an immortal who was actually older than her. (Not a lot older, but still.) He'd occasionally worked with the Saviors, but had never wanted to join - he had his own stuff going on. But it looked like he had a team now; there were a bunch of figures in colorful spandex behind him in the alley. Looked like teenagers, actually. Kinda familiar, but they must've been born after she disappeared...

"Who are you?" said the Kid. Damn, she was still zoning out. Okay, focus. "I thought I knew all the net.heroes operating in this area!"

"I'm, uh..." Captain Killfile was out, and she sure as heck wasn't going back to Kid Killfile. She flicked a switch on her gauntlet, appearing in the teenagers' vision like a spectre manifesting. "Ghost Exterminator."

"Ohhhhh!" Kid E clapped his hands with his famed energy. "One of them, gotcha gotcha. Well, I'm Kid Enthusiastic, and these are.." He gestured to the teens, who stepped out of the alley and posed! "The Ultimate Saviors!"

"Saviors?" Waaaaait a minute... she squinted. "As in... the Saviors of the Net?" There were five of them, all wearing masks, but their facial structures were clear as daylight, and... oh boy. Oh boy. 

"Yeah, that's right! Apparently W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R. wanted to clone them and have their own set of mind-controlled net.heroes! So we all busted out, together!" He spun around and pointed at them. "Ultimate Saviors, roll call!"

"Super Scary Dazzle Bird!" A young man in his late teens stepped out at Kid Enthusiastic's call. His costume was part black and part holographic sparklies, with long wings drooping off of the arms, and held a long fighting staff in a defensive pose. His eyes twitched back and forth, making sure that despite Kid E's loudness, no one was looking towards them. Brunhilda knew from the color choices alone that this must be the clone of Chromium Age Very-Scary-Disturbed-Creature Man.

"Robot Girl!" A girl whose skin glimmered chrome, with cat ears and a feline muzzle, wearing a green belly-shirt and shorts with a bright red belt, gloves and boots. She swept her long silver hair out of her face as it fluttered in the cold February wind and gave Brunhilda a level gaze, sizing her up. The outfit was terrible for this weather, but it didn't matter - this was the clone of MechaKat, who could nanobiologically turn flesh to titanium alloy. And if they had her, they probably also had...

"Action Lad!" A boy in a red wraparound jacket with silver trim and silver pants and wearing a transparent red visor, with a friendly but focused expression, and his hand on a sword hilt at his belt. Yep, that was him but younger - Sig.Lad, her old mentor, her new-old foe. She kept her face steady as the feelings whirled. Could this night get any more tuned to probe her insecurities?

"Kid Kindle!" This one was even younger - thirteen, maybe fourteen, with red hair that flickered with little tongues of fire as she watched, wearing a white robe with flames flickering along the bottom and a long scarf around his mouth. His eyes were excited, taking in the new visitor, and it was hard to keep her face steady, because boy did she ever know those eyes and that fire, boy did she know that boy - Flamebroiled Lad, avatar of the cosmic entity of intense emotion, the Flamebroiled Force. Her nemesis, her archrival, that stupid jerk who kept hogging the other Nintendo controller. Her brrrrr... o. Her bro.

And with a sudden shuddering shock that made the February evening feel balmy by comparison, she realized who the last clone would be--

"Kid Killswitch!" And there she came, in shining white armor with a bright red "power off" symbol on the chest, that familiar face, those familiar eyes, intelligent and curious and driven and broken, no, not that, said the voice in her head, but eyes that had known both pain and joy, like and unlike her own - the clone of Captain Killfile.

Brunhilda tried to release the churning whirlwind of emotions into some form that could be understood by men, but all that came out of her mouth was a murmured "...I'm too young to be my own mom..."

"...a?" Kid Enthusiastic tilted his head to the side, looking up at her curiously.

She shook her head, took a deep breath, and put away every feeling she didn't have time for right now. An incredibly useful skill from the life-or-death battle days. "That is, uh... Saviors, huh? So how are they ultimate?"

"Because they're the best and I love them!" Kid Enthusiastic spun around and posed, holding his arms wide as he showed off his team.

"Right yeah." Mecha-- er, Robot Girl stepped forward. "And apparently the lady what messed up the original Saviors is back and serious, so it's our job to stop her since they can't. Got a problem with that?"

Brunhilda couldn't help but smile. Well, well, the kids are all right. "Nope. Was just thinking the same thing."

"I don't know if I'd say it's our job," said Action Lad, stepping forward non-confrontationally into Robot Girl's confrontation space, "that seems to be basic survival."

Kid E nodded! "We've been laying low while we try'n contact the LNH. It's hard - W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R. has facial recognition technology they use on all the security cam footage they can grab, and they can grab nearly all of it. So we've been keeping under wraps."

"But we still have to get out there and save people!" Kid Kindle's hair burst briefly into full flame, and he grinned in enthusiasm. Great, another one taking after his mentor. "We can't just stay in a safehouse and send emails!"

"So we wear facial-recognition-defeating face paint when we're undercover, and go on missions without it, since it's going to be obvious either way that the team of five teenage net.heroes that appeared out of nowhere are the same five teenage net.humans that disappeared from not-so-protective custody." Super Scary Dazzle Bird (what a name!) looked off towards the Terminal Tower. "Speaking of which, if you're coming with us, we'd better get going. The clock is still ticking."

The LNH must be the Something Net.Heroes, and Whatever... Net.villans? Government agency? Something else? Bad guys, or so Kid Enthusiastic thought, and she had to admit, cloning her old team in order to have some kind of controlled force didn't seem like an especially ethical thing. Had they taken over during the Killfile, when there weren't any net.heroes to stop them?

Brunhilda released her anxious feelings again, though this time it was harder. "Right. Time to team up and beat the bad guy." Just like the old days, only now, the bad guy was her...

No, the bad guy was a cheap copy who had no idea what she'd actually been trying to do. And she could at least take responsibility for her imitators, and deal with whatever else she'd unleashed later.

Heh. W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R. else.

Kid Killswitch hadn't said anything. She was still looking at Brunhilda. But she nodded and followed along with everyone else.

Brunhilda took a battery from Super Scary Dazzle Bird and wired it into her gauntlets, extending the killfile to cover all of them. They snuck past the cops, Robot Girl and Action Lad keeping their eyes on the perimeter in case someone caught a glimpse.

There were a couple of muscly dudes in gold-and-blue suits standing next to the entrance. Kid Kindle reached out, a lance of emotional fire shooting out and hitting one of them in the back; nostalgia and guilt flared in Brunhilda's chest at the display of power.

The goon straightened up from his slumped position and pushed the other one roughly. "Hey, wake up! I don't wanna lose my paycheck because of you!"

Another blast of energizing anger, and the other goon pushed back. "Shut up! You're the one who said this was gonna be an easy job, and now there's ten thousand cops out there and we're probably gonna be left holding the bag!"

"You shut up! God, I should never have dated you!" The one goon slapped the other goon, and the other goon slapped back, and they grabbed each other and started rolling on the ground, passionately making out, and Brunhilda and the Ultimate Saviors snuck inside.

Down a small, lightless corridor, and down to the elevator. Robot Girl leaned in, removing the panel and sticking her fingers in among the wires. She stretched out her hand and a screen appeared showing datastreams zipping back and forth; Kid Killswitch and Super Scary Dazzle Bird leaned in to analyze it. Action Lad and Kid Kindle spread out, keeping watch.

Kid E bounced in place, watching his charges figure out the puzzle. Brunhilda leaned back on the wall next to him, watching them as well, especially the one who was-and-wasn't her. "They have a heck of a lot of personality, for people who came out of a vat not long ago."

Kid E nodded enthusiastically! "They're not just regular clones, they're biotropic duplicates! W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R. stole the device that Sig.Lad used to copy people's power signatures and used it to template them as they were growing? They even lured a Salamander[*] in to possess Kid Kindle! But we stole the device back and now Action Lad's using it!"

[* Also known as Ifrits, Salamanders are the fiery elemental offspring of the Flamebroiled Force which possessed and empowered Flamebroiled Lad! - Ed.(UE)]

"Ahhh." Brunhilda ran the tip of her tongue over her lip. "So... their personalities are clones too?"

"Sort of." Kid E wiggled his hand. "They're definitely their own people, tho - I knew the originals, and these guys aren't making the same choices they would've."

"Mmmm..." Brunhilda breathed in deep, let it out. "That's good, that's real good..."

"All right." Super Scary Dazzle Bird stood up and turned to them, all business. (God, that name. Not that it was any sillier than Chromium Age Very-Scary-Disturbed-Creature Man.) "We've hacked the elevator so that it'll take us to the top without triggering alarm system notifications. But to do that, it has to go slow - it'll take us fifteen minutes to get up there."

"We only have, like, twenty minutes left before the deadline!" Kid Kindle brought his fists against his chest, eyes wide in passion and fear. "What if she actually brings back the Killfile!?"

"She won't." Brunhilda straightened up, squaring her shoulders. "As you can probably tell, I have, uh, some experience with killfile tech." She gestured at the ceiling. "That machine she's got is advanced, but there's no way it could project a subject-based killfile broad enough to cover Ohio, let alone the world." You'd need a much bigger power source, and the one she'd used... wasn't available. As far as she knew.

"Could still do some damage, though," remarked Kid Killswitch, looking up at her. 

Aw, baby's first words... Brunhilda regretted the sarcastic thought immediately. "Oh yeah, and how. Killfiles can mess with all sorts of important shit. She could take Cleveland down hard, and her next blackmail scheme would seem all the more real."

"So we'd better hurry." MechaKat closed her hand, the screen disappeared, and the door of the elevator opened. They all shuffled in, and silently, it began to rise. In the background, a jazzy instrumental version of "Mad World" started playing.

"Right," said Action Lad. "Ultimate Saviors... waiting mode!!"

Brunhilda watched as all five of them sat down and immediately pulled Magic: The Gathering decks out of somewhere in their costumes, shuffling up with practiced speed. "Turn one, mountain, lighting bolt Action Lad." "Why me!?" "Because we don't have time for one of your weird blue shapeshifter decks!" "Awww..."

Kid Enthusiastic leaned back against the wall next to her. "So~"

"...so?"

"Feels like you've got some more questions in you! And we've got time."

The side of Brunhilda's mouth turned down at his easy poke at her boundaries... but it wasn't like she didn't have a thousand and one questions, bubbling and burning in her belly, about this new world she'd found herself one of the creators of. And the most burning of them all... "Well... you were around back then, right? What was the Killfile like?"

"Oh man. It mega sucked," Kid Enthusiastic chirped. "I mean, life was kind of normal, but the kind of normal where you're working a crappy job and it's gray and depressing outside, you know?"

"...oh." It felt like cold water had been thrown in her face. The boxes that she'd put her feelings in earlier burst open, flooding her system with complicated griefs.

"Like," continued Kid E, not noticing her face's fall, "there were so many bad guys and even though they couldn't build Kill-O-Rays or send robot goons at you, they could still just keep making things worse all the time." He hummed, looking off into the distance in appreciation. "Even though things really suck right now, people are really fighting, too. Back then, it seemed like hardly any of us could fight - or could even see there was anything worth fighting!"

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. That was... that was...

Brunhilda Ampulle had been just another kid kicking around the foster care system, just kind of existing, and then she looked up and someone had reached out a hand and she'd taken it. And she'd become a net.hero because that hand had belonged to a net hero.

But that was only why she'd started doing it. She'd kept doing it because she could just reach out and help people, right in front of her. And she'd done that for a while and she wasn't just existing, she was living, and she was... getting better, most days.

And eventually she'd gotten better enough to where she could lift her head up, and look out at the world... and see that, actually, there were a lot more awful things going on out there, outside her city and her team, than she had realized. Things she couldn't just reach out and affect. Things none of the net.heroes seemed to be able to affect, even the stupidly powerful ones who Kept Watch Over The World. But those net.heroes kept going, kept getting into big splashy fights over things that seemed so small, and those faraway troubles just kept getting better, just kept getting closer. And then...

Look, people died all the time, she knew that, you fought guys with guns and that happened. But this hadn't been in a fight, and it hadn't been someone who signed up for it, and... it was so unnecessary, so meaningless, and Alice wasn't even... She was nice and kind and good and people like that weren't even supposed to...

Well. So she left. She left, and one of her little theoretical ideas turned into a big not-so-theoretical idea, and... and she became one of those troubles, and...

"It wasn't all bad, tho."

"--oh!?" Brunhilda jerked out of her reverie, hardly even caring that the Ultimate Saviors had all looked up at her half-squeaked exclamation. She settled back, and they returned to their game.

"Yeah, like..." Kid Enthusiastic rubbed his chin, teasing out a complex emotion. "I feel like... After  the Killfile, people appreciated us more. No, like, not just us, the whole... the whole idea." He put his hands out, squeezing something invisible. "Even when the government was trying to control us and there were a lot of people pushing against us, there were so many people who, it seemed like... had woken up after decades, maybe their whole lives, and realized that actually fighting evil is good?"

"I..." She closed her mouth, a little puff of breath escaping out her nose. That answer was... frustrating. Not exactly the positive impact she'd wanted from her efforts - "people suffered so much that they realized they had to give a shit".

...on the other hand... maybe that was the best outcome she could've hoped for...

She rested her head against the wall of the elevator and listened to the soft rumbling as it moved. Even before Alice... did it, Brunhilda had realized that there was something wrong with the world. A huge, low-level grossness, an apathy, spreading over it. She remembered seeing cartoons about Saving the Planet, and thinking they were lame, and then realizing that no, this was a real problem that kept getting worse as people kept laughing at it. She heard how stupid that woman who spilled coffee on herself was, and came to understand that the "joke" was that someone would want to get money and apology from a trillion-dollar corporation that just kept growing and growing and taking and taking, and how foolish and lazy that was. She saw that bombs were being lobbed every day straight into schools full of little kids who weren't white and weren't Christian and the generals shrugged and said "oops, accident" and it just kept going on in the background and everyone was grumbling about it but no one was shouting, no one really and truly cared and...

And it had to be someone's fault. It hadn't always been like this, someone had caused this, but who was powerful enough to change the entire world like that?

And she looked around herself and realized: It was us. The net.heroes, the net.villains. They were powerful and everyone looked up to them, the celebrities and heroes of the world. 

And the more she looked for it, the more she saw it. Their, our, weird self-obsession, our attachment to their own battles, and especially, the way that, whenever we tried to confront wars and environmental damage and real suffering, it never produced a solution that stuck. Even the Saviors, even Sig.Lad, only ever put band-aids on the problems.

And then... Look, sometimes you stretched out your hand to someone and they were in too bad of a place to take it. She knew that, she'd always known that, but when... When you got someone out of a burning building, especially when you sat and talked with them, and they turned out to be really cool, and nice, and maybe were going to join your game group, and said "I'll be okay", they weren't... Alice wasn't just supposed to... if you saved their life they didn't have the right to...

With effort she pulled herself out of that loop and glanced at Kid Enthusiastic. He gave her a cheery smile, then turned away, seeming to sense that she was done talking for now. She wouldn't have chalked him up for that kind of social awareness, but it was already clear he had a lot going on under the facade...

The music kept playing, a weird, jazzy loop, and as she watched the teen she had once been play, she slipped back into her memories...

So she'd taken a leave of absence from the Saviors.

...so she'd had an enormous screaming crying argument with the Saviors and left. And after she'd parked herself in a cheap hotel and cried everything out, she had made some plans.

She'd used the Saviors' wages she'd saved up and the modest royalties from her patents to buy a workshop in Clearwater Hill, one of Net.ropolis's poorest neighborhoods. And she set about working in the solution. The Killfile Device.

She'd been thinking of it as something she could present to the smart, reasonable heroes, talk it over and use it as a tool to scrape the worst bits out of net.humanity before it was too late. A decision she wouldn't have to make alone.

But... a few months in, people had noticed she wasn't with the Saviors anymore. Action Bimonthly, a mid-level magazine about net.hero goings-on, contacted her for an interview. And she was so excited, she could tell people - no, not all the details, but what she'd noticed, her goals, and get the message out, and there would be like-minded people who would come to her and they could work together...

And the interview came out and... nobody seemed to notice? Nobody came out of the woodwork to join in her cause? She didn't hear anything? 

No, it had been worse than that, because she had certainly heard things when she read the letters to the editor in Action. How people like her were making a fuss, distracting from the real issues, making the people who were actually trying to fix things look bad.

So she didn't take any more interviews after that. She just worked. She had already started and she couldn't stop now and she didn't think about what would happen when she was done.

But there was one thing she couldn't figure out, one thing she'd been hoping to get help with from somebody - a power source.

And a little voice was whispering in her head. Quietly at first, and she pushed it away and kept working, but louder and louder as she went deeper and deeper into single-minded focus. The net.heroes caused this problem. The net.heroes had the power.

Killfile Energy filtered, separated. She could separate the power from those who had it, use their own wasted might that had tried and failed so many times to save the world, to finally save it once and for all.

She built a power-channeling device. Just to test the idea. And if she found someone who wanted to help and had the power she could use it for that, right?

And the day came when every part of the device was done and there weren't any more tweaks left to make, and there weren't any more tests to be run, and she had to stop and face the prospect of actually using it.

By this time, the obsessive thoughts were a constant background pounding. She had to show them. She had to stop them. Before it was too late. It was almost too late. Something awful was going to rush up at any second, some net.hero with too much power was going to make a mistake, and smash the world flat, and it would be her fault. But it was okay. She had the machine, and she could use it and fix things, save the world... 

And she knew how she could get the power.

She knew how to bring net.heroes running. Net.heroes with the power to feel her machine. And part of her knew just which heroes it would end up being. Part of her begged her not to. She broke down into crying fits, finally telling herself that she would just talk to them first, that they'd have to hear her out when she had this power at her back.

She cleaned herself up. She put on that costume. She activated her stealth killfiles. She walked straight into the big national news studio with no one seeing, put every living soul who could stop her in a half-hour killfile bubble, put the cameras on her and sent out her message. 

This time she wasn't able to hold it back like she did in the interview. She told the world what was wrong with it and why; how the net.heroes had gone too far, and not knowing or understanding, had betrayed the rest of humanity. She announced her plan to clear them away and let the world heal. And she told them where to find her. Then she turned her killfiles back on and walked away.

And of course when she got to the workshop the Saviors were there already and of course they would have seen her coming in and of course there was no time to talk, right, it wasn't that she was striking the first blow because she knew in her heart that if she said what she meant she would be rejected again, of course not of course not

Even though Sig.Lad was already trying to reach out as she pushed them back with a killfile shell, even though Lurking Girl broke her solitude to ask why, even though she could see the bitter sadness in MechaKat's eyes

And the only one strong enough to break thru her shells burst in, as she knew he would, knocking her back against the machine, Felix, her stupid little brother fighting her again, she'd never told him she thought of him like that, he was yelling at her about how she was betraying them all, and she yelled at him about how he didn't understand because he only cared about fake shit like anime and being a hero

And she pulled the lever

And the killfile activated, splitting him in two, Felix Landers and the Flamebroiled Force, never to be reunited, discarding the one and sending the other into the machine, straight thru her

All the rage, all the fear, all the resentment, all the secret impossible buried hope, channeled straight thru her body and mind and into her machine and she felt it unfold, the dampening blanket enfolding the world

And in the distance, a glint of metal, Sig.Lad raised his sword, and somehow she could see his eyes, great and sad and knowing it was over, and summoning his own death, because the wielder of Excalibur could only have one end, opening the gate to the fairy world to sleep forever, and time slowing down and slipping away

and she'd been right some net.hero with too much power made a mistake and smashed the world flat and it was her that's what she was that's what she'd done it was her fault she wasn't a hero she'd never been a hero that's why Captain Killfile was the worst net.villain ever

"Hey... are you okay?"

Brunhilda jerked back to reality. Without realizing it, she'd slumped to the ground, legs folded up against her. Kid Enthusiastic and the Ultimate Saviors were gathered around her, looking down with concern and/or worry. Her head and face were tingling, and she reached up with a shaking hand to touch her face... yes, it was covered in tears.

"I..." She swallowed thickly, trying to find words, but all that came to mind was... the Killfile wasn't set with an ending date. It could have lasted for centuries. Somehow, the Saviors had stopped that but... it could have been so much worse and it was all her fault...

Wait, something was wrong, other than everything...

"The music stopped," she said.

Everyone's head turned. With a click, the doors began to open...

Kid Killswitch grabbed Brunhilda's wrist, grabbed the loose wire and touched it to the battery. The stealth killfile spread out to cover them.

The doors slid open. The guards stationed on either side of the elevator peered inside. Everyone held their breath...

The guards looked at each other, shrugged, and settled back in place. The door slowly closed. Everyone breathed out.

Robot Girl leaned in and slapped her hand on the button panel. "Keeping the door closed, keeping us in place."

"Right. Everybody, put your fingers in your ears and go la-la-la," said Kid Killswitch.

"...why!?" said Super Scary Dazzle Bird, throwing his hands in the air. "This isn't the kind of--"

"Just do it, nerd!" Kid Killswitch rolled her eyes. 

Kid Kindle turned. "Kid E, what do you--"

"La la la la-- were we not supposed to yet?"

Super Scary Dazzle Bird sighed. "Okay, okay, fine... la la la la..."

"I gotta keep my hand here," said Robot Girl, "but I'll turn off my audio inputs, okay?"

"Sure yeah whatever." Kid Killswitch waited until everyone was la-la-la-ing, and turned to Brunhilda. "Okay. Get up, Captain Killfile."

"I..." She took in a shuddering breath, let it out. Too late to deny it and she didn't have the composure anyway. She didn't even feel as shocked as she should. "How?"

Kid Killswitch rolled her eyes again. "We know who we're supposed to be. You think I don't know that face from splashing cold water on it at three in the morning, wondering when I would start feeling the urge to Go Bad?"

"...fuck..." The guilt stabbed right back into her brain. "sorry."

"Look--" Kid Killswitch shook her head and made a pushing-it-away motion. "Don't worry about it. I don't think there's anybody who didn't get their parents' anxieties. Maybe Kid E. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to say and we don't have much time." She ran her hand thru her hair, looking off to the side. "I read that interview. I wanted to know who you were and why you did it and I dug that up and... it made sense."

Brunhilda blinked, a bit of the haze of grief and guilt lifting, replaced by intrigued confusion. "...seriously?" She actually found a copy after twenty years? How-- wait, it made sense?

"Yeah. Like, I dunno if I agree with you twenty years on, but like, you were clearly not crazy, you clearly had a good goal in mind, you were clearly tryin'a help." She grinned that same always-a-bit-smug grin. "After I read it I didn't have quite as many nightmares."

"...wow." The huge weight hanging on Brunhilda's nerves and bones started to rise off a bit. "Y'know, you're the first one who's ever said that?"

"Not surprised. Controversial shit, and you were shooting it into the void. You didn't have anybody to talk over ideas with, did ya?"

"I mean..." She sighed. "The Saviors, but..."

"Yeah. They didn't get it." She looked over her shoulder, at everyone going 'la la la'. "It's different with these nerds. They support my stupid ideas, even if they give me shit for them. And I support theirs, even if they're morons half the time."

"Yeah..." Brunhilda was... jealous and happy at the same time. Today was just a smorgasbord of new emotions, huh. "You don't have to be like me."

"Hey, look." Kid Killswitch stuck her finger in Brunhilda's face. Jeez, she couldn't have been this rude, right? "My point is? I want to be like you."

"...kid." Brunhilda squinted in disbelief. "Thanks for being nice to the crazy lady, but. I just broke down crying because I fucked up the world so bad."

"EXACTLY, crazy lady!" Kid Killswitch gesticulated passionately. "You fucked up and you know it and now you're gonna try and fix it, right?"

"..." Flashes of what she'd done - the blanket, formed from her own resentment and pain wrapping around the world. "I don't think I can..." But under that pain... that purpose. To be the hand that reached out. "But... fuck it. Whatever I can do, I'll do." She breathed out, and a little more of that awful weight floated away. "That's who I am now. Someone who makes up for the Killfile."

"Right." Kid Killswitch nodded firmly. "That's who I want to be. Someone who makes mistakes and makes up for it and keeps going." She looked Brunhilda in the eye. "A hero."

Brunhilda sucked in her breath. "Damn. How are you this smart when you just came out of a tube?"

Kid Killswitch giggled, with that bit of familiar bubbly snottiness. She'd missed feeling that way. "I got it from you, bozo. I literally have your brain."

"Right." Brunhilda shook herself out, ran her hands thru her hair. "Well... thanks."

Kid Killswitch snerked. "Don't thank me, I'm being selfish. The others get to be clones of heroes, why shouldn't I?" She reached out a hand. "C'mon. Get up... Ghost Exterminator."

Brunhilda grinned and took the hand, pulling herself up. She still didn't feel like a good person, exactly. But hell. She didn't have to be, to be a hero.

Kid Killswitch tapped Kid E on the shoulder, and they got the others to stop la-la-la-ing while Brunhilda smoothed herself out. Super Scary Dazzle Bird fluffed out his cape irritably. "So what was that about?"

"Simple. Remember when Kid E told us about secret weaknesses, like Captain Minority being vulnerable to artificial vanilla flavor?" Kid Killswitch gestured to Brunhilda. "Well, Ghosty here just got hit with her secret weakness, and I figured out what it was and helped her out."

"'Cause you're so smart," grinned Kid Kindle, and held out his fist.

"'Cause I'm so smart!" grinned Kid Killswitch, and bumped it.

"And you didn't wanna expose the secret to everybody!" Kid Enthusiastic pumped his fists. "Good job!"

"Yeah, nice, there's problems," said Robot Girl, hand still on the panel. "The mayor gave in and there's a chopper that's gonna set down on the roof in like two minutes with the money."

"I mean, better for her to get away with the money than for people to get hurt," said Action Lad.

"Yeah," said Brunhilda, cracking her knuckles. "But even better to kick her ass."

"Just tell me when," said Robot Girl.

"Everybody!" called out Kid Enthusiastic gleefully, even though they were all literally right there. "Cool team pose!"

"Come on," groused Kid Killswitch, but she was grinning. She and Kid Kindle lined up on one side of Kid Enthusiastic, Super Scary Dazzle Bird and Action Lad on the other, forming a V. Brunhilda got over on the left side of the door, mirroring Robot Girl on the left. All seven of them got into action stances, and Robot Girl took her hand off the door.

With a ding, the door opened. One of the goons was kneeling down, whistling, examining the mechanism. She looked up, still whistling...

And Robot Girl's metal fist plowed into her chin, knocking her back and away.

The other goon straightened up, going for the ray gun at her side. "Ey, it's some kinda ghost!"

"More like a Ghost Exterminator!" Brunhilda's gauntleted knuckles impacted the goon's stomach. The banter was comforting.

"Oofda!" She went down too, and Super Scary Dazzle Bird and Kid Killswitch grabbed the dropped ray guns. The seven net.heroes ran down the hall and Action Lad kicked the door in.

The fake Captain Killfile was gloating at the cameras, as her goons moved her machine onto a dolly. "Thank you for your service, Cleveland! You've got a lovely city here - hope it stays that way, haha!"

Kid Killswitch lifted the ray gun she'd grabbed, aimed, fired it at the impostor... only for the beam to fade into nothing before it hit her!

"Shit!" said Brunhilda. "She's got a personal defense killfile!"

"Ha-hah!" the impostor crowed, turning to face them, pumping her fist in glee. "We have guests! Blacklisters, activate the Killfile Killfile!" 

One of the goons hit a switch on the big machine, and Brunhilda felt a soft wave of dampening energy roll over the room - dropping the Killfile that kept them hidden.

"Looks like we're doing this the hard way, guys!" Kid Enthusiastic leapt into the fray, and the team followed in his wake of morale.

She turned to the camera and gave it a wink. "Now the whole city will see the true might of the legendary-- Captain Killfile!!"

Of course she had to keep saying that, grumbled Brunhilda. And now "killfile" didn't sound like a word anymore.

Robot Girl lashed out with metal claws, slicing ray guns in two. "You have a team name for your minions? That's way too retro, lady."

"I dunno, though." Action Lad took the hilt from the scabbard he wore, and pulled out an enormous pen with a sword-like hilt and a glowing blue tip. He inscribed a name in the air, writing "Linguini Lass" with liquid light, in loopy, flowing cursive. "I'd say it's so retro it's cool again." He pulled the pen away, and the looping script flowed into his body, outlining him in neon blue. His limbs stretched out, noodle-like, to entangle the goons.

Kid Kindle shot empowering energy into the bodies of his teammates. "Yeah! I'm glad we got a net.villain with some style!"

Robot Girl knocked two goons' heads together and sighed. "Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say."

Brunhilda scooted sideways in the fray. "Hey," she murmured to Kid Killswitch, "I got an idea."

"I'm listening..."

Super Scary Dazzle Bird was attempting more shots at the impostor, reasoning that if the Killfile Killfile had killfiled their killfile, then her own killfile must also be killfiled. (And now "killfile" *really* didn't look like a word anymore.) Unfortunately, said impostor had made it over to the Kill-O-Ray, which seemed to be protected by a non-killfile-based forcefield, and was flipping switches and cackling.

Brunhilda stepped directly in front of the cameras. She summoned all the performative net.hero drama she was capable of, and pointed dramatically at the impostor with her right hand, bare now, her index finger aligned perfectly with her target. "Stop right there! I know you're not the real Captain Killfile!"

The impostor's body stiffened, and she spun around, her manic grin a bit stiffer and less real than it had been a moment ago. "Hah!" She straightened, tossing her arm so that her sparkly cape billowed dramatically. "And why would you make such a foolish proclamation? Some kind of net.hero trickery?"

"No." The heavy weight of grief and guilt was laying against Brunhilda's chest. But she knew, now. She'd let guilt fester in her, guilt over not being the one to fix the world all by herself, and it had lead to a lot of terrible things. You were supposed to share the weight of the world, because it belonged to everybody; you weren't supposed to hold it up alone until it crushed you and everybody else in the process. She didn't need to be the one to solve everything. She just needed to let out the knowledge, the feelings, she was holding inside - spread them to the world, as far as she could, and let everyone know the truth.

"It's because..." Brunhilda pulled down her hood, and looked up at the impostor. "Because my name is Brunhilda Ampulle. And I..." She looked directly into the camera. "I was Captain Killfile."

Everything was quiet for a moment.

"...wait, what!?" shouted Kid Kindle, before dodging yet another kick by a Blacklister.

"You..." the impostor's eyes narrowed. She ripped the gaudy cape and hood off, tossing it on the floor. From her belt she pulled a metal tube and hit a button on it, and out popped a blade of searing gray-white nothingness that hurt the eyes to look at - coherent Killfile Energy. "It's YOUR FAULT!"

Action Lad undropped his jaw. "G-- C-- Ghost Exterminator, catch!" He tossed his pen-sword thru the air.

Brunhilda caught it as it came down, just in time to block the impostor's blade. "Yeah, it was. All my fault." She danced back, parried, thrusted. "What's your story?"

"Jessica Blackstone, heiress to the scientific traditions of Patricia Blackstone!" Jessica dodged the thrust, going in with big, wild slashes - not as wild as they seemed, though, and Brunhilda had to twist and counter with expert timing. "I was eleven when the Killfile went up! My mother had been an expert in the field of killfile weapons research! Courted by governments, showered in grant money, treated like a queen! And I, her princess! We had money and wealth! And then it all went away!" 

"Gotcha. This is a revenge story." Brunhilda's attention was focused. She didn't think about the plan going off in the background, just on the woman in front of her. Keep her talking. Keep her fighting. "So what happened?"

"Hah, as if you didn't know!" The two blades, energy and narrative, locked against each other, and the two fighters were face to face. Jessica shouted in Brunhilda's face, little flecks of spittle flying - ew. "With the great Killfile up, killfile technology lost much of its power, for it's difficult to put a killfile over a killfile! My mother knew that problem could be cracked, but the powers that were did not care! We lost our prestige, our wealth! I had to go to public school!"

"...right. And then?" Brunhilda pushed back and fell into a defensive position, her back to the machine. She's ranting now, let it happen, no matter how dumb it is. 

"And then the Killfile fell, and I dedicated my life to cracking the problem! I became the world's preeminent specialist in Killfile Energy! And I swore I would use the position to take back the wealth and power that you had denied me!" She was far too angry at Brunhilda to attack her now, glaring, yelling, wanting her to hear every word. "I'm greater than you ever were! Stronger! Smarter!"

Kid Killswitch stepped forward, on Brunhilda's left. "Hey, bitch," she called to what's-her-name. "If you're so smart, do you know what happens when you bring together two rapidly fluctuating opposite-polarity killfiles?"

"...yeah," said Jessica, looking at Kid Killswitch like she was an idiot for asking. "You create a standing watchlist wave that destroys... destroys any killfiles--"

She jumped towards them but it was too late. Kid Killswitch lifted the right-hand gauntlet that Brunhilda had given her, the one she'd spent the fight rewiring to the opposite polarity and setting to fluctuate. Brunhilda lifted her left-hand gauntlet, still radiating Killfile Energy, and slammed them together.

A sphere of un-energy burst from the point of contact, knocking them apart, knocking back the impostor, knocking down the Blacklisters and the Ultimate Saviors. The room shone, dazzling and bright, everything standing out against everything else. The Kill-O-Ray sparked and smoked, and with a pop! an apple reappeared.

Everything was quiet for a few moments. Then Kid Killswitch pulled herself up in front of the cameras. "Hey, folks... hope you enjoyed. City is safe, Captain Killfile is no more, and..." She thumped her chest. "You can call me Captain Killfile now." She clicked off the camera and sighed. "That feels good."

Kid Enthusiastic hopped up next, running across the room. "OMG good job!" He pulled out a glob of green goo and used it to stick Jessica's hands together and stick her to a pillar.

"...hey..." Jessica muttered, woozily.

He tossed another glob of goo between his hands, watching Brunhilda as she pulled herself up. "Don't suppose I need to stick you in place for the cops too~"

Brunhilda shook her head. "Think you probably guessed that I'm not gonna be fighting heroes anytime soon."

He giggled, but his eyes were a bit more serious, looking her up and down. "Yeah... I don't think you are." He put the goo away. "But what are you gonna be doing?"

"Better question, what are we gonna be doing," said Super Scary Dazzle Bird, dusting off his cape. "What happened to keeping a low profile?"

"That's net.heroing," said Action Lad. "This was gonna be big one way or another. Can I have that back?" He nodded to the pen-sword.

"Oh, sure." Brunhilda handed it back.

"Wait wait wait wait wait," said Kid Kindle, popping up. "Are we just gonna ignore that she just confessed to being Captain Killfile?" He turned to Kid Kill-- nope, she was Captain Killfile now. "Why do you want the name?"

Captain Killfille grinned. "Right of conquest. Claiming my heritage. And maybe I just wanna shock the norms."

Brunhilda grinned. "Hey, I'm not using it."

Action Lad grinned. "I guess this really was... the return of Captain Killfile."

Robot Girl covered her face. "Why."

Action Lad shrugged exaggeratedly~ "I've decided to lean into dad jokes."

"Seriously, tho," said Kid Enthusiastic, bouncing in place. "What's your plans? You're pretty clearly messed up, twenty years out of time by the look of it-- you gotta tell me how that happened-- and you probably don't have anywhere to go."

Brunhilda rubbed her face. "Yeah, you're right. And I gotta.." She closed her eyes, and felt the pain suddenly well up again, felt a tear threatening to form in the corner of her eye. The weight wasn't gone just 'cause she'd done one thing. But it didn't hurt quite as much.

"Actually..." She rubbed her eyes. "I think I was wrong, before. I think I definitely need to be taken into custody." She looked over the six of them. "But the 2019 cops sound like they suck. So how about y'all taking me in until you can remand me to that net.hero team you've been trying to contact?"

"...oh, good idea," said Action Lad, doing his post-battle stretches.

"I suppose that's the safest option," harrumphed Super Scary Dazzle Bird, crossing his arms.

Robot Girl rolled her eyes. "I guess--"

"WAIT WAIT WAIT." Kid Kindle skidded in front of Brunhilda, waving his hands at the rest of them. "You're really saying that we literally take in the biggest bad guy of all time!? Right after-- ALL THAT!?"

Captain Killfile stepped forward. "Dude." She looked put her hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. "I trust her."

"..." He siiiiiiiighed dramatically, flopping his head back and rolling his eyes. "Fiiiiiiine. I guess somebody's gotta keep an eye on her."

"Welp, that's settled!" Kid E clapped his hands. "Now... let's scram already, the cops will be here soon!"

"Right!" The Ultimate Saviors clattered down the hallway, but Kid Enthusiastic took Brunhilda's arm before she could follow.

"By the way," he said. "Hildy. If it's okay to call you that."

"Heh... you can call me anything you want, now, I guess," she said. "What is it?"

"Just wanted to let you know. Felix?" He smiled big up at her. "He's the leader of the LNH!"

One more burst of cold surprise for the evening. "...ah heck." She'd have to face him, eventually. She'd have to apologize... She could feel the tears welling up again, and quickly rubbed her eyes. He'd survived. He... her brother was okay. "Always... always knew he'd make somethin' of himself."

"Yeah." He smiled up at her, and took her hand. "Let's go, Ghost Exterminator."

And they walked off into the chill winter night.

[mitchmarnier]

semi charmed life | chapter six |  2.2k | teen |

“You guys have kept in contact this whole time?” Bill asked, brow disappearing underneath hair line as he looked like his old friends in amazement. “And you guys are.. what? Room mates?”

Eddie avoided looking at Richie as he answered. “Yeah, uh… room mates. Something like that.”

[or: the adult!losers reunion, done 2000s sit-com style, just like we all deserve.]

PREVIOUSLY ON SEMI CHARMED LIFE: “ At the start of next week, Richie would be switching over to the late show at his radio station. It was going to mean many more late nights, working until 2 or 3 in the morning depending. | “Why are you sitting on the side of the road?”“I’m considering quitting my job and moving here,” Ben said, only half joking. “But it’s not very comfortable.” |  You made it through a day with Spencer Pearsons, which is more than can be said about the mass majority of new hires. So what’s it’s going to be? Are you going to sink… or are you going to swim?” “They’re right,” Stan interrupted. “You’ll either get the hang of it or quit. So, Mike Hanlon, I guess you gotta chose. Are you going to at least try to stick it out or are you going to go back to Derry with your tail between your legs?” |  We’re going to have to change things. You know I love your writing, Bill, but hopes and dreams won’t pay for a baby.”

Goooddd evening New York! According to my time, we’re settling into a deep dark night here in our great city of large apples. So, my dear listeners, I know why I’m here, awake, at midnight on a Wednesday? It’s my job to be awake and annoying at midnight- so what’s your excuse?

Stanley Uris reached out and clicked off his desktop radio. Dead silence in the middle of the night was better than being tormented by Richie Tozier’s voice all night.  Sighing, Stan marvelled once again at how there was no reason for their branch to be open this late at night. In what world would a person be needed financial advice in the dead of the night?

Proving once again that Stanley Uris didn’t seem to know anything, there was a knock at his office door. Startled, Stan looked up at the pretty dark haired girl who seemed as surprised to find herself standing there as Stanley was to see her. “Hi…” she said slowly. “I was told you might be a good person to help me.”

“That might an matter of opinion,” Stan said back with a soft, tired smile. “Most people seem to mis-understand what it is I do.”

“I just wanted to talk to somebody who understands money,” she said lightly. “Because I don’t. At all. I never had to…” The woman came into the room and sat down in the comfy chairs. This office was one of the nicer ones in the branch, Stanley was only allowed to use when he was working the night shift. More often than not, he was stuck in one of the overflow rooms and spent the day playing Solitaire on the computer. Which, yeah, was also what he did when on the night shift but… at least he got to sit in the nice office and do it.

The woman rubbed her hands together awkwardly, giving a forced smile. “But now I… I’m pregnant and I guess I could just go to my dad’s accountant and bankers- they took care of my money my whole life, but…” She pressed her hands over her stomach. “This is the start of my own life, you know? I should do this myself.”

Stan nodded. “There’s nothing wrong with keeping the same accountant and bank as your parents, you should know. You don’t have to do it completely alone, but we can look at some of your options.”

“I just…” the woman shrugged. “My boyfriend… the father… I’m not sure if he’s the smartest. He’s an amazing boyfriend, I love him so much. But I’m sure if I can rely on him, when it comes to money. I have some stuff from my father, inheritance and whatnot. I guess I’m just wondering if it’s a good idea to maybe have my own bank account, and keep it separate from him.”

“It’s always a good idea to have your own account,” Stan said, nodding. “Especially considering you’re not even married. You’re not obligated to share anything with your boyfriend, no matter how pregnant you are. If you’re looking to open up an account, then you’ll need to go into your bank during operating hours. At least to make an appointment, we don’t do that kind of stuff here. We can advise, of course, but I do believe that having your own account is a very good idea if you don’t already.”

The woman nodded. “I’d like to come back and talk to you. You’re pretty much the first person who hasn’t told me to just marry my boyfriend because I’m pregnant.”

Stan smiled blandly at her. “How about this? I’ll take down your name and put you into our system as a taxes client? Then you can come back and request to talk to me whenever you’re struggling with your financial decisions? Can I have your name?”

The woman nodded excitedly. “Yeah, yes! That’s perfect. It’s Audra Philips.”

→  →  →

As night falls over this not-so-great city, you really do have to wonder. What am I doing awake when I could be asleep? I know I am, even for 12 hours an hour, wondering why I’m not just at home, instead of sitting awake in a 4 by 4 booth, more likely than anything talking to myself. Because really- unless something has gone terribly wrong in your life, you’re asleep at quarter to one in the morning.

“Man,” Kay laughed as she walked into the staff room.  Mike Hanlon was seated on the floor, surrounded by half finished plans for the new Ancient Greece exhibit, with Richie’s voice filling his ears. “That guy doesn’t hold back, does he?”

“It’s not exactly in his fashion, no.” Mike chuckled. “Richie has always been that way.”

“Richie? As in, Kaspbrak?” Kay asked, looking at the radio as though it had personally offended her. Mike blinked up at her, mouth opening slightly. “His husband’s a dick. They got a cute kid, though.”

Mike simply blinked at her. There was a lot to unpack there- possibly Kay thinking Eddie was an asshole being the oddest part of what she’d just said- and Mike knew he didn’t have the time or willpower to do it just now. “I… Pearsons told me that I’m not allowed to leave until I figure out the how to run the new Greek exhibit”.

Kay raised her eyebrows. “Spence is letting you take lead on the Greek exhibit? He must really like you.”

“Like me?” Mike burst out laughing. “I’m half convinced he’s trying to work me to death.”

Kay shook her head, sitting down crossed legged in front of him. “No, Spencer has literally never willing given up the lead on anything ever,” Kay took several of the printed pages and pulled them towards her. “If he gave you this exhibit in particular, he really fucking likes you. Ancient Greece is Spencer Pearsons’ passion.”

Mike groaned. “You’re just making me more nervous that I’m going to fuck this up.” Mike shook his head. “I have a million ideas and each one is probably worse than the others.”

“You have too many ideas,” Kay said with a soft laugh. “Why are you making it so complicated? It’s easy. If you want to impress Spence, make it simple. Give the information, give an easy layout and get rid of the extravagant bullshit. It doesn’t need to be fancy, it needs to be factual.”

Mike huffed out an annoyed breath, and clicked Richie off.

→  →  →

Nearing on 2 am, I’m still here. You’re still here too, if you were ever here at all. I could probably say anything right now, nobody would be any wiser. The earth is flat, all cats are aliens, men in suits make me nervous… whos’ even listening?

Ben Hanscom chuckled as the radio stopped as he turned off his rental car. He opened the door and walked out, looking at the three story houses at the edge and shaking his head. They all looked the same, of course, as the style grew throughout the world. He tucked his hands into the back pocket of his jeans and walked over to the fenced in area. Beverly Marsh was leaning up against the door, and Ben’s heart raced in his chest in a way it hadn’t since he was a teenager sneaking out.

“Ben Handsome,” Beverly called happily as she moved towards him, becoming more and more visible through the dark air. “And here I thought you’d lost my contact.”

Ben smiled to himself, remembering throwing her email into the trash… and remembering stumbling into his apartment drunk after hanging out with Bill and finding it stuck to the bottom of his shoe when he woke up in the morning. “I was just picking the right time to reach out.”

Beverly hummed. “We always have had the worst timing, haven’t we?”

Ben nodded in her direction and walked into the fancy living area. Beverly was looking at the houses with an air of familiarity that he felt in his bones. “You’ve been here before?”

“Yeah, Tom and I looked into this houses when they started going up,” Beverly said. “But we figured out pretty quickly that there was no way we could afford to live in them.”

“No average person could afford to live in them,” Ben said wisely. “That was the point. I should know- I designed them.”

Beverly slowed to a stop and looked at Ben with wide eyes. “You… I thought you said you were just an intern?”

Ben pursed his lips. “I am. One of my first tasks was to come up with a design for some high end townhouses. Next big meeting, my higher up was displaying my design and taking full credit. Told me to suck it up, and that I’d understand when I got higher up that the idea of the many was the idea of the one. I’m still not sure what that means besides fuck you.”

Beverly took to look at the houses. “They… they are beautiful.”

“They’re…” Ben exhaled hard. “Yeah. But all I want to do is burn them down. You know?”

“Destroying things won’t make you feel better,” Beverly said. “Trust me. I destroyed my whole marriage then walked out of it without a word. And I don’t feel even close to better.”

Ben scratched at his cheek, annoyed at the hair beginning to grow as it always was between his beard days and post-shaving. “I’m not sure that’s exactly the same thing here, Bev.”

“Sure it is,” Bev said simply, beginning to walk once more. “Discontent with your life is discontent with your life. Whether it’s your job, your relationship, it’s the same. You can’t just push away the thing making you discontent… you’ve got to find something that makes you happy to replace it.”

Ben sighed softly, nodding. “You’re right. I know you are… but I worked so hard to even get the internship I have. If I leave then what do I have to show for my whole life?”

Beverly nodded. “Yeah I get that. After I left Tom I sort of realized that I put everything into the marriage? I let being Tom’s wife be my everything but sometimes you’ve got to start everything. Find a new you.”

“I still want to design buildings,” Ben said, looking back at the fancy houses he didn’t think he’d ever be able to afford. “And even though I think I resent these stupid houses, they still make me proud? Like that’s mine, I created that, no matter who tries to take that away from me. And if I stick out these internship, I’ll move high and I’ll never take credit for something else does. I can make the system better for somebody else.”

“But is it really worth it if you’re miserable the whole time you’re getting there?” Beverly said lightly. “Maybe the reason all your higher ups are such dicks is because they were miserable, too. A brutal cycle.”

“I can break that cycle.” Ben said firmly and Beverly smiled at him sadly.

“If anybody can do that, it’s you Ben Hanscom.” She said softly.

Ben turned to her and brought out maybe the first genuine smile he’d had sober in weeks. “You know I liked you too, right? In high school, and… before that. Pretty much the whole time I lived in Derry.”

“I suspected but I don’t think I ever knew for sure,” Beverly said. “Richie was always saying you did- but I never really listened, you know? Because you were my best friend, so if you liked me then I don’t know what I would’ve done. High school me was an idiot, and if I’d ever done anything about you liking me then… we probably wouldn’t be standing here together now.”

Ben took Beverly’s hand in his and looked deeply at her. “Beverly…”

“I just left my husband,” she said almost brokeningly. “I’m living in Eddie and Richie’s spare bedroom and I don’t even have a job. I’m a mess, you don’t want me like this, Ben.”

“I’ve always wanted you.” Ben said openly. “and I will always want you.”

Beverly cupped the side of his face and brought their lips together.

Our time is coming to a close as we near 3 am. The sun is preparing to rise, and we’ve yet to set. You know? I think we all need to take a chance to think through our life choses. What has gone so wrong for us that we’re all sitting awake at three in the morning? Where did we go wrong? But if you’re still out there in the world, I have some advice for you: No good decision is ever made after 2am.

Bill Denbrough was debating lighting up his first cigarette in seven years when the man slid into the booth across from him. The man leaned forward and raised his brow at Bill. “I hear you’re looking for work.”

Bill cleared his throat awkwardly and praying he didn’t stutter. “I… I’m a writer, b-b-b-but my girlfriend-“

“She pregnant?” The man chuckled. “You’d be surprised how often that what we hear ‘round here. So, let’s make it pretty clear right now. I don’t care about your pregnant girlfriend, and I don’t care ‘bout why you’re here. I just care that you’re here and what we’re going to do about it.”

Bill nodded quickly.

“So tell me, good pal,” the man smiled, giving him a golden toothed grin. “You wanna pack or deliver?”

This is Rich Records signing off saying:  Go home. Find somebody you love and be with them. That’s what I’m going to do.

[conoscenze]

kaede and selfishness // 13.07.2019

“...---I might end up keeping him.”      Kaede says that with careless nonchalance, but she can easily grasp the audible gasp from the other side of the call. Personally, she doesn’t see it as that much of a surprise---though that may just be because she’s been thinking about this since a while, now. Only lately has the idea properly concretized itself. Kaede has grown more confident with the idea of taking care of a pet: her psychologist told her that it’s also thanks to her new friendships and social bonds. However, she thinks it might be that reason like it could be another.      “You want to adopt him?” Aimi repeats, her voice a mix between surprise and joy. Kaede’s expression is as tired as ever, but her lips’ corners threaten to curl into a smile.      “... Yeah, why not.” she says, “It’s not like there’s a policy against employees doing that, so I might as well. The little guy loves his home, but...” a sigh escapes her lips, and her fingers drum against her desk’s surface. Glance skims over the alarm nearby: 20:32 PM. For a moment, she hesitates, unsure whether or not she should express her feelings to their full extent. Aimi is a trustworthy, kind person. Kaede trusts her, and has no reason to hide things from her. Yet, a lot of times she finds herself stuck when it’s about talking about herself, rather than the more ‘stressful’ and technical sides of life, such as bills, taxes, etcetera. Kaede has been always used to keeping things for herself---it’s something she grew used to due to the peculiar (to not say abnormal) circumstances she lived in through the years.

Ever since she started making an effort, though, something changed. A little, screeching bubble has been slowly making its place amidst her misty, lazy charade of self-depreciation and cynicism---and with the passing of days, its voice becomes louder and louder, impossible for her to ignore.      “But, I think I want to give him a better home. One all for himself. So he can be as selfish as he wants, y’know?” another pause. This time, a soft chuckle precedes her continuation, “I mean, I know he doesn’t mind sharing beds and the room with the other kittens---but I want to make him feel special. He deserves it. He’s an adorable, loving cat. I... think... I’m ready to take up on that responsibility.”      Aimi, for a moment, lingers in silence. Kaede can hear soft chopping in the background---she’s cooking, she muses, and in her mind bubbles a wonder regarding when she’ll be able to visit her restaurant in the near future. “Well---Kaede, you know I fully support your decisions. As long as you’re sure, I’m sure, too. You’ve made a lot of progress since a few years ago,” a gentle huff follows (a deaf thunk!), “We’ve spoken before about giving you more responsibility regarding, like... hobbies and passions, right?”      “Yeah, we did.” (that was the first time Aimi brought up that offer, which she is still warily thinking over.)      “Since you love cats, this is the perfect occasion. You love him? He loves you? Bam! Adopt him. Cats are quieter and easier to manage, that I’ve heard. But no matter that, they still make the house feel less empty. A little more lively, if you will.” a short-lived laughter follows, and Kaede can’t help but smile on cue. “Reminds me of my---well, me and your pa’s grandma. She had this bird... I think it was a parakeet? I’m not sure. Anyway, sure, birds aren’t as silent as cats, but she loved it to bits! She adopted it when she was already old and she was still suffering grandpa’s death a whole ton.”      The pictures are vivid in Kaede’s mind: it’s amazing how her aunt can be so descriptive while using simple words. She vaguely remembers seeing some photos hung on Aimi’s fridge: aside from the ones with her grandparents, and then the ones with her long gone father, there were also photos dated way back. A young couple in its prime, with standing behind a middle-aged couple. ‘That was my grandma---which means it’s your great-grandma’, Aimi had said then while pointing at the lady whose hands were placed on her grandmother’s shoulders. The names escape her, as per usual: but the images are there. Picturing an elderly lady lightening up because of a tiny, little companion... makes her heart tremble. In the good way.      It sounds like a possibility.      “Anyway, birds don’t live excessively long... grandma was obsessed over its health and stuff, but it didn’t go over ten years. This is a bit sad, but... I remember her death not being too far away from her parakeet’s. I mean, I cried a lot. Oh, man! I was a damn fountain, that was for sure!... The point is, though... those last years were the best of her life. I know it. You could see it in her eyes, actions, words... The parakeet’s name was... Yuxi, I think.” a beat. “If this cat is going to be for you the same way Yuxi was for grandma, then... I’ll support you, one hundred percent. You know what I think, Kaede.”      Kaede doesn’t immediately reply, because she’s thinking. A hum escapes her lips, and for a second, she lets herself listen to the sounds of Aimi’s cooking, which makes for most of the background noise. It’s homely, and relaxing. Maybe one of these days... maybe, soon... maybe not with the whole family, maybe, maybe...

“... Then I’m gonna make it official.” they come abruptly, but Kaede does eventually blurt out some words. She turns on her chair, only to see countless of post-its of various colors decorating her bedroom’s walls. “I will get Kuro, no doubts ‘bout that. I don’t know how, but you have this magic power of convincing me into avoiding all bad decisions when we talk about this stuff,” her remark is obviously ironic; thankfully, Aimi catches upon that, and laughs in response.      “Oops. I corrupted you into doing something self-indulgent and self-pampering again, didn’t I?” now loud fizzling resounds through the call: Kaede supposes Aimi is frying something. “You deserve it, Kaede! You work so hard. I’ll be more than happy to hear more about the cat situation the next time we talk.”      “I will. Of course I will.” and that is a promise. One she’ll do her best to remember. “Ah... anyway. I think I’ve kept you hostage under my rambling for enough time, now. I’ll leave you be, alright?”      “Hm? Hostage? Darn, wish there would be more kidnappers like you, then.”      “Pffttt... I’d be a horrible kidnapper. For many, countless reasons.”      “Entertaining is definitely not a bad thing to be! But alright, that’s fine by me. Let me know whenever you need anything, as per usual.”      “Yes, of course---...”

Getting a cat shouldn’t be so difficult, Kaede thinks as she brushes her teeth. She’s doing her best to avoid looking at her reflection, but there’s no escape. She can spot those heavy eyebags, that bunch of badly scattered freckles and that tired, lifeless look with spectacular ease. It bothers her.      She spits and rinses her teeth, then lets her hair down, letting a brush run through black locks with ease. Having a cat shouldn’t be so hard, she muses. Then her gaze becomes conscious of the figure in the mirror once again.      “...”      Easily enough, Kaede’s mind briefly recalls about what Aimi earlier told her about her great-grandmother. Her and Yuxi. The sad old lady and the peppy little bird. The sad old lady’s days brightened by the loud and loving bird. Her heart squeezes once more, and that feeling of hope once again warms her heart, then her chest, for it to reach the corners of her eyes.      “Maybe, maybe,” Kaede mutters, a melancholic chuckle serving as a rhythm, “Maybe I can be like great-grandma, too. The sad old lady and...” it hurts. Oh, it hurts. “... And the lively black cat. Yeah...”      It shouldn’t be so hard to want something for yourself, for once.      “... I’d like that.”