#mostly likely still send them through; if nothing else maybe they can find law enforcement when they get out

[moonfurthetemmie]

Moonfur!

I made this :)

Haha. Been emotional neglected until slash. Even if she was to hurt. She would tend wound even if it's for her own amusement and entertainment. She is gentle like a real parent

:((

Poor kid

[letarasstuff]

Minimal Loss - Maximal Stress

(A/N): This was requested by an anon and plays in the intern universe. It’s based on 4x3 “Mininal Loss��. I didn’t follow the exact plot, but the quint essence is there (you’ll see what I mean). I hope you enjoy it.

Summary: An intern goes along on a seemingly undangerous case with Emily and Spencer on a ranch under the lead of Benjamin Cyrus. What could go possibly wrong (well, everything ig)?

Warnings: Mentions of child abuse, guns, vomit, swear words, ususal Criminal Mind stuff

Wordcount: 2.9k

✨Masterlist✨ ________________________________

“Do you guys really think it’s a good idea to bring a child to an interview about child abuse?” Agent Lunde asks skeptically while steering the car towards the ranch, where the allegions originated from.

“(Y/N) is our intern and we thought she has to make some experience in the field and since this is the most peaceful case you can find within the BAU, it’s her opportunity”, Emily defends the team’s decision.

“Also, she is nearly the same age as the girls, so it’s easier for them to open up to her and she is incredibly bright, meaning she can help us deducing a profile”, Spencer adds. The teenager doesn’t acknowledge anything they say, too engrossed in listening to One Direction over her bluetooth earbuds.

Soon the quartet arrives at the Saptarian ranch. “I’m looking for Benjamin Cyrus.” “You found him”, answers the man, who sits in front of a chapel.

“He really is nicely placed. I feel like I looked like this in my math classes. I was like beautiful decoration, but had no use”, (Y/N) whispers to Emily. She in turn has a look of confusion on her face. “You aced math, you graduated with an A+ in it.” “Just because I have good grades doesn’t mean I’m not stupid. I mean, I’m educated, but stoopid.”

A little later she sits across from a blonde girl named Jessica, asking her questions about the 911 call. Her mother continuously steps into that conversation.

“Jessica, can you tell me, if anyone here were ever touched inappropriately?” “Is this really necessary? You are a child yourself, shouldn’t ask one of the other agents the questions?” Slowly the teenager’s patience is wearing down and Spencer can definitely see that from five meters away.

“Ma’am, with all due respect, but I’m perfectly capable of conducting this interview, if you stop interrupting me. I may be young, which doesn’t stand in my way of being an intern for CPS and still knowing my way around, so please step to me colleagues or something and let me do my job.” Hesitantly the mother gives the two girls their space.

As soon as she is out of earshot, Jessica begins to explain. “Nobody is touched in a way they shouldn’t be touched. Or is it wrong for a wife to share a bed with her husband.”

(Y/N) remembers Emily telling her to not judge anything anyone of the girls will say. But damn it, this girl is really hard not to judge.

“Wait wait wait. Let me get this straight: You are simping for that walking quote machine?” Okay, maybe she is judging. But just a little bit.

“If simping means deeply in love then yes, I am simping for Benjamin Cyrus, my husband.” At this point the other three agents get closer again. “Jessica, the state of Colorado demands parental consent. You aren’t married to him unles-'' The black haired woman cuts the young doctor off. “She did give consent.”

(Y/N) can barely contain the unsurprised “surprised” gasp leaving her mouth. But it would have been cut short nonetheless, since sudden gunfire erupted outside the school building.

Fairly quickly everybody is evacuated through the tunnels. As Cyrus tells the cult members to trust in god, the teenager turns to the agents. “This much to it’s safe for me here. Didn’t anybody check for weapons or something?” Flabbergasted because of the whole situation Spencer answers. “Yes, Garcia checked with the authorities and nothing was suspicious.”

Suddenly Lunde takes all the courage she has (maybe because a teenager she brought into this is in immediate danger like all the other kids) and goes up with the cult leader to speak to the shooting law enforcement officers. Shortly after the other three get the message of her death.

But they don’t have any time to think about her, since they all are shoved into the chapel.

While Cyrus holds a speech about trust in god in dangerous and trying times like this the BAU in Quantico learns about the shooting through the tv news report.

“HOTCH”, Morgan yells up to the Unit Chief’s office, probably giving everybody else a heart attack. Alarmed Aaron storms out into the bullpen followed by Rossi, who is attracted by the tumult. “Aren’t Prentiss and Reid on that ranch?” Derek asks, his eyebrows furrowing in worry.

Squinting at the screen, horror etches on the other agent’s face. “(Y/N) is also there”, he says, realizing that they sent a minor with zero field experience into a lava hot situation.

Suddenly the whole bullpen’s phones ring, which results in Hotch barking his first commands.

After a nightflight to Colorado the team sets up at the crime scene.

“Dave, I was appointed to determine the primary negotiator”, Aaron tells him after he pulls him to the side. “It makes sense. I trained most of the people here, if you want me I can give you a few recommendations.” But the Unit Chief shakes his head. “No, I want you to be the negotiator in this.”

Now it’s Rossi’s turn to shake his head. “Aaron, I can’t do it, I’m too emotionally involved.” “So are all of us and why should I take the student if I can have the teacher?” The older one sighs in resignation and accepts the offer. They don’t have the team nor reccourses for any mistakes in this.

As he goes to prepare for his task at hand, Hotch hears a man complaining loudly. “I demand to talk to know why I wasn't told that the FBI was sending undercover agents into the Saptarian ranch?” “The only thing you are in position to demand is a lawyer”, he says while stepping closer to the scene.

“Who the hell are you?” The man spits out into his direction. “I’m Aaron Hotchner, Unit Chief. I’m the guy who is gonna tell the Attorney General of the United States whether to charge you with obstructing a federal investigation or negligent homicide.” “You can’t talk to me like that”.

Upon closing the little bit of space between both of them, Aaron stares him down. “Get off my crime scene.” Just a few seconds of the intense and pissed Hotch Stare are enough to chase that man down to his car and go on his way to Coward Island.

Meanwhile the first contact is made, Emily and Spencer tell (Y/N) in hushed voices what the situation means. “There are three groups here. The leader, in this case Cyrus. The hard die hard believers, the goons of him, and the followers”, Spencer explains.

“In a case like this we go for minimal loss. We try to get as many of the followers out as possible, because the rest won’t give up as long as they can breathe. At first we go with one or two people, children mostly, then with smaller groups and in the end we get out as many of these people we can. Soon, there will be the first supply delivery from our team, but it’s gonna be bugged, which means we know they are listening. Understood?” Emily adds.

Aside from the knowledge that there is a great possibility that they won’t come out alive of this one, (Y/N) is pretty calm. “Honestly, it’s pretty extra here. I mean I can’t even, look at the walls and the whole pseudo decoration. Why would anybody choose this willingly? But yeah, I understand.” Seeing that these phrases are a kind of a coping mechanism, the two agents aren’t too concerned about her right now. I mean, of course they are pretty much on edge because they all are in a hostage situation, but since the teenager doesn’t seem to be on the verge of a breakdown she has to be fine.

“Is there anything you want to know?” The black haired woman asks, stroking the younger one’s hair out of her face. “No, not right now. This is anything but basic, but I’ll hit you up if something shoots into my mind.”

When Rossi comes in to hand make the first delivery, he looks beyond worried. It seems like he got years older in the span of the last 24 hours. As he glances through the rows of people, he subtly acknowledges their presence and well being.

“How do we know this will be nothing like Waco?” (Y/N) asks out of the blue as all the members get a cup of wine. Surprised Emily turns towards her. “You know about Waco?” “Duh? I told you, I’m educated. So, how do we kno-” “And together we drank the poison.” “Oh well, I guess we do now. It’s nearly iconic how bad his acting is.” Now both of the agents look confused at her.

“What? Didn’t I tell you that I was a theater kid? Also, his goons are writing the reactions down, so it’s just a test to know who to separate from the group and who not.” Even in a situation like this a girl in a red and black flannel over a white graphic tee - it is a Doctor Who Tardis - astounds them.

Not long after this, the three of them are shoved into a small room, which looks sort of like an office.

“Which one of you is it?” Cyrus asks. Confused Prentiss, Reid and the intern look at him. When nobody speaks up he pulls out his gun. “One of you is an FBI agent. So who is it?”

In the short silence he points his weapon at (Y/N). “Oof. Dude, what the fu-” “She is a child. The FBI doesn’t recruit children. But she is a good leverage. So, if neither of you reveals their identity, I will blow her brain out.” This is the final point for the teenager to slowly freak out.

“It’s me. I’m the FBI agent”, Emily confesses. Seeing the young girl with panic in her eyes sets something off in her. Roughly she is taken away by two big guys.

“No no no! This can’t be right. Nobody of us is from the feds. It’s not her, you stupid piece of boom-” With a swift motion of his gun Cyrus knocks her out.

“Damn, this is an annoying one. I don’t know how you can even take her seriously.”

(Y/N) wakes up half an hour later in the chapel draped over two stools with her head in Spencer’s lap. He strokes her hair while his mind is running non stop looking for a solution to this situation. A groan tells him that she is awake.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” The young doctor asks in a soft voice. “If good means your head feels like it’s dancing samba without me, then I’m good.”

He smiles. “We are going to get out here, soon. I convinced Cyrus that we are on his side. He also won’t hurt Emily any further. I saw her earlier, he held a speech. She is fine, just a bit roughen up.”

To lie to the girl like that feels wrong to Reid, but he can see signs of a concussion by her behavior and doesn’t want to worry her more than she already is.

Three o’clock rolls closer and closer, which makes both of them more nervous. Because of the lack of communication they don’t know the tactic the team will use to come in. They can only hope that they all come out alive and in one piece.

Since they are in the chapel, their attention is solely on the cult leader. They don’t even notice all the women and children leaving. As (Y/N) and Spencer spot Cyrus with the remote for detonating the explosives, she mumbles “Let’s get this bread”.

When the leader sees Spencer trying to convince one of the die hard believers that he has a choice to change his mind, he punches the young doctor so hard in the gut that even (Y/N), whose vision is slightly blurred, feels the pain he endures.

“Hey Cyrus”, she calls out, “TBH I think all the shit you are doing here didn’t pass my vibe check. Also, the whole system is pretty whack.”

“You are a child, you don’t know anything. If god doesn’t want me to do any of this, he would stop me.” As Cyrus cocks his gun towards Spencer, Derek runs in and shoots him in the chest twice.

(Y/N) crosses her arms over her chest, says “Ok, Boomer” and rolls her eyes.

“Are you ok, princess?” Morgan asks, going over to her and examining the wound on the side of her head. “Never felt better now that there are two Derek Morgans to protect me.” Concerned he goes to say something else, but is cut short by Spencer shouting “RUN!”.

A look behind them shows Jessica short circuiting upon her husband’s death and grabbing the remote.

When the explosion erupts, Emily looks terrified at the remains of the chapel.

“Morgan! Reid! (Y/N)!” She shouts, followed by the other members and their calls after the three. A certain fear captures every single one of them. If only one of them is- No. Nobody can go through this thought. They are going to be fine. They are alive and-

“Thank god”, JJ breathes as she spots three limping figures. They slowly approach the group of four. “EMILY!” The teenager shouts relieved, though a little loud for the proximity between them. “SPENCER WOULDN’T REALLY TELL ME HOW YOU ARE! YOU LOOK TERRIBLE! THANK HARRY STYLES YOU ARE FINE!” Yes, the explosion definitely messed all of their hearings up, since Morgan and Reid also speak with the same volume.

Emily hugs her. “I’m okay. But you need to get checked out.” But the teenager vehemently shakes her head as she hugs Aaron. “I DON’T NEED TO”, when she sees her teammate’s faces, she reduces her loudness. “I am ok. But Spencer, he got a good blow to his guts. I think the Queen in England even felt that vibe check.”

As Derek escorted the young doctor to one of the awaiting ambulances, JJ also gently stirs the girl in the same direction. “Just let a doctor look over your head, it looks like a nasty cut and believe me, you want to get this checked out, Honey.” “But Jayje-” She begins to complain, but gets cut off by bile rising up her throat. In the next moment (Y/N) kneels on the floor, letting out anything she got in her system over the course of the past few days.

“I think this is nothing your body should do, Bambi”, Rossi adds up. Unwillingly the intern goes with the blonde mother to the EMTs. They decide to have a doctor looking over her and getting her x-rays done at the hospital.

A few hours and uncountable complaints from (Y/N) later, the team is back on the jet on their way home. She thanked Emily in a heartfelt moment in the hospital shortly after she got pain killers, which made her loopy, for saving her life by putting her own on the line by exposing her identity. Even Prentiss had tears in her eyes as she saw the young and innocent girl so frayed by the just occured events.

Unusual for Rossi, he takes a seat on the sofa, petting his lap as (Y/N) sits beside him. With pleasure she lays her head onto it, cuddling closer into the fuzzy blanket she got from Morgan.

A few minutes into the flight, Rossi just got into describing the interviews he conducted with Ted Bundy, Aaron motions him to make space. David excuses himself with the reasoning of getting a cup of tea for her.

“I’m sorry”, Hotch says as he runs his hands through his youngest employee’s hair. He is careful to not mess with the bandage she has on the side of her head. Confused (Y/N) looks up to him. “What for?” “For sending you into a situation, where you got seriously hurt.”

This makes the girl sit up, though her world once again begins to spin. “Aaron Hotchner, I hope you don’t mean that. You nor anybody else knew that this was going to happen. You only wanted for me to get as much experience as possible while this internship lasts and I tell you, with that story I’ll go viral on TikTok. Just because I got a medium severe concussion and a wound, which hopefully will leave a badass scar, doesn’t mean you have to apologize. But you can do me one favor.” “Anything.” “When I fall asleep, please make sure I don’t choke on my own vomit. The doctor told me it could happen, that’s why I am not allowed to fall asleep unsupervised. But I haven’t slept in three days and I think I'm beginning to feel uncomfy because of that.”

Smiling softly Hotch nods and lets the teenager take her original place in his lap. Minutes later she is fast asleep. But one thing is certain: As soon as she wakes up and feels any better, she is going to tell everybody who wants to listen about the one time where she got blown up by a fifteen years old girl, who was married to a cult leader. And nobody is gonna believe her tea. Except for Penelope, who greets (Y/N) with a hug and the promise to never let her out of her eyesight.

All works:

@agentshortstacc

Criminal Minds:

@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl

Spencer Reid:

@calm-and-doctor

[doctorstethoscope]

The Right Chapter 22 || Aaron Hotchner x Fem Reader

helloooooo besties and happy Saturday! 

Read previous chapters of this fic here! 

contains: canon-typical descriptions of violence and death

wordcount: 1.9k 

You're passing the diamond on your chain between your fingers anxiously a few days later as you and Spencer pour over a map on the jet. You’re headed to Colorado after a family annihilator had struck twice in the same small Denver suburb. The whole town was on alert, and you needed to solve this one fast before the whole state devolved into hysteria. Hotch decided on the jet to send you, Reid and JJ to the precinct-- you and Reid will keep working on the geographic profile, and JJ will coordinate local law enforcement. He, Morgan and Emily are headed to the neighborhood to see if any of the locals had noticed anything off. 

“There has to be a connection to this specific suburb. Why come ten miles outside of Denver when the city, or even a closer suburb, would be a more target-rich environment?” You floated an idea past Spencer, who nodded in agreement. 

“You think he sought out these families in particular?” He asked, turning his attention to the pictures on the whiteboard. 

“Not necessarily. Garcia’s still looking for a connection between the families, but so far she hasn’t found one. I think these two families were practice for something worse, or for a family that matters more to him.” You conclude, hoping more than ever that you had profiled wrong. 

“If that’s the case, our presence here might trigger the unsub to escalate,” he points out with a grimace. 

“Or, hopefully, it will send him into hiding.” 

“We’ll never find him if he does that.” 

“We’re gonna have to.” You sigh, pulling your attention back towards the map. You pour over it, certain that if you look just a little closer, the answer will jump out at you, but it doesn’t. 

Geographic profiles are always helpful, and you and Spencer were great at them, but they rarely solved cases on their own. The reality of the situation is that without any info on the unsub or the connection between the victims, you were essentially trying to create something out of nothing. You push your chair out from the table, deciding to give your mind and your eyes a break, when your phone starts to ring. It’s Garcia.

“Oh, you’re just my favorite person.” You said into the phone by way of greeting, hoping that she’s going to present you with the missing piece that will make all of these seemingly unrelated pieces of information make sense together.

“Careful, peach! There’s someone else on the line who might object to that,” Garcia warns you. 

“What do you have for us, Penelope?” Aaron asks.

“So, the Sutton and Mack families have more in common than we thought-- not so much socioeconomically, but their kids were both enrolled at the local high school, although different ages, and the moms were on the PTA together.” 

“Were they friends? The kids, or the moms for that matter?” You ask immediately. 

“It doesn’t really look like it, but I’m going to keep digging,” she tells you. 

“And no connection between the fathers?” Hotch asks.

“Nope, Mr. Sutton was an attorney and Mr. Mack was a cab driver. Doesn’t seem like they ever would have met.” She tells you both. 

“Garcia, do me a favor and make sure Mr. Sutton wasn’t in Mr. Mack’s cab within the last month or so. Let us know when you have more.”

“Oh, sir, before you both go, there’s one more thing.” She blurts out before Aaron can hang up the phone.  “It’s about Josh.” 

You take a sharp breath in, and Spencer’s in tune to you immediately, his head jerking up from the maps, looking you over to make sure you’re okay. 

“What is it?” Hotch asks, sounding every bit as tense as you feel. 

“Josh was arrested this morning. Busted for possession during a traffic stop,” She tells you and you let out a sigh of relief. 

“That’s… that’s great news.” You say.

“I thought you’d both like to know.” Garcia tells you.

“Anything else?” Hotch asks, and you're perplexed by his lack of response to such a good update. 

“No, that’s all for now. I’ll call you back as soon as I have more on the case.” She says, and the line clicks.

“What was that about?” Spencer asks, bringing you back to reality, and you share the info from Garcia about the victims. You can tell that he knows that there’s more, but he doesn’t press and you don’t offer. 

“If both the kids and the moms knew each other, we could be looking at a bullied kid or a woman scorned.” You theorize. 

“A woman wouldn’t kill the kids, at least not a mother. And if the woman wasn’t from the PTA, why target these moms in particular?” Spencer argues, and you agree. 

“Could be a man, too. Maybe he’s jealous that he doesn’t have the picture-perfect family he’s destroying.”

‘That’s more likely. Although with nothing connecting two husbands, we’ll have a hard time profiling a man if that’s the case.”

“Okay, so for now we focus on the kids until we find something that pulls us another way. You want to take the Macks and I’ll work on the Suttons?” 

“Will do.”    

You work in silence for a couple more hours until Hotch, Morgan and Emily return. 

“Anything helpful?” JJ asks, coming into the room behind them. 

“The moms were friendly, but not necessarily friends. The kids mostly hung out in separate social circles, it seems.” Morgan informs you all. 

“Any obvious power imbalances between the kids groups, or bullying?” You asked. 

“None that any of the kids we interviewed brought up.” Emily tells you. 

“None of the moms mentioned it either-- and they’d be more likely to bring it up than the kids would.” Aaron tells you. 

“So we’ve got a whole lot of nothing.” JJ concludes, and you sigh. 

You all continue to work for a few more hours-- putting together profiles of each of the members of the families that ultimately bring you no closer to finding the unsub. 

“We’ll be back here first thing tomorrow morning-- there’s nothing else we can do tonight.” Hotch concludes as he pins the last index card to the cork board. “Let’s head to the hotel and get some rest.” 

Despite the exhaustion that has soaked its way deep into your bones, you and the rest of the team pull yourselves out of your chairs and towards the SUVs. You nearly sink into the leather, and if he wasn’t such a stark professional, you might have asked him to carry you up to your hotel room.  He did, however, offer you a very gentlemanly hand to help you out of the car, and wrap his arm around your waist as the two of you trudged your way into the elevator and down the hall towards your room. You collapse onto the mattress as soon as you make it through the door, and Aaron chuckles at you, taking a moment to brush his teeth and change. When he settles on top of the covers next to you, you speak up, although hadn’t really intended to do so.

“Aaron, can I ask you something?” 

“You can ask me anything, my love,” Aaron mumbles like it’s the easiest thing in the world as he leans over to set the hotel alarm clock that sits on the bedside table. 

“When Garcia told us that Josh was arrested… you didn’t seem happy.” You said, decidedly not a question. He answers you anyway, shifting towards you to look you in the eye before he speaks up. 

“I’m sorry honey. I’m relieved, of course I am. I was just focused on the case this morning. Maybe I haven’t fully processed it yet,” he confesses. “But of course I’m happy for you. I would have been happier to arrest him myself, but this is just as well.” He tells you with a rueful smirk. 

He’s lying, and you can see it in his face. Maybe lying is a strong word, but there is definitely more to it than he’s telling you. “You’re sure? There’s nothing else that’s bothering you?” You pushed, but he shook his head, looking down at his lap.

“I’m sure, doll. I really am happy. We’ll take Jack out when we get home to celebrate.” He tells you, leaning over to kiss your temple. 

“Maybe a bike ride and some ice cream? I haven’t been out on the bike with him since he got his training wheels off.” You suggested. 

“Sounds perfect,” he tells you, reaching to kiss you again and moving to wrap his arms around you, which you dodged. 

“Get the bed nice and toasty for me while I change,” you smirked, rolling off the mattress and heading towards your suitcase for some pajamas.

You were back at the police station before the sun rose the next morning, pouring over the transcripts of what had come in from the tip line the night before in the hopes that you might find something useful. Your desk looked the same way it used to when you were studying for exams in the academy-- papers and highlighters scattered everywhere, color coordinated page flags littering all of your documents. 

“Cupcake, if I didn’t know any better, I might think you were the serial killer,” Morgan comments with a smirk, setting a hot cup of coffee in a relatively-unoccupied patch of desk. 

“Very funny, Derek.” you rolled your eyes. “I’m only letting you live because you brought me coffee. And because I’m too tired to kick you,” you told him.

“Do you want any help?” He offers, and you smile, but shake your head at him. 

“No, thanks. I’ve got a pretty strict organizational system going on over here, if you hadn’t noticed,” you chuckle. “But you can come to the medical examiner’s office with me in an hour or so?” 

“It’s a date, mama.” He confirms, rapping his knuckles against your desk before going back to his own workspace. You flip through a few more pages, leaving scribbled notes and wayward highlighter in the margins, before you notice something and call Garcia. 

“Good morning, peach! What can I do you for?” Garcia asks in her usual cheery tone, clearly far ahead of you in terms of cups of coffee consumed. 

“Morning,” you say to her. “Listen, something came in through the tip line last night, and it’s probably nothing, but I just have this feeling…” 

“Lay it on me,” she tells you encouragingly. 

“So, Mark Vexper is a long-term sub at the high school where all of the kids went. He didn’t go to work the day after both of the murders. He had a scheduled personal day the first day, and he called in sick the second. Like I said, probably just a coincidence--” 

“No stone left unturned, kitten! I’m on it. Buzz you when I have more.” She says, hanging up unceremoniously.

“Good catch,” Hotch says from behind you, and you startle. 

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” you brush the compliment off. 

“Maybe, but we won’t know until we look into it,” he tells you. “You feeling okay?” He asks. 

“I just really want to catch this guy and get home to our boy.” You tell him, and his heart warms. Looking around surreptitiously, he drops a quick kiss to the crown of your head. 

“Me, too, angel. We’ll get him.” He tells you. 

An unexplainable chill runs up your spine, and you have a strange feeling that Aaron’s not talking about this unsub.

tagging:  @romanogersendgame @wanniiieeee      @zheezs14      @greeneyedblondie44 @angelic-kisses13  @baumarvel @ssamorganhotchner  @ijustwannaread2k19    @rexit-mo @shmaptainhotchnersmain @qtip-blog @averyhotchner  @the-modernmary @itsmytimetoodream @choppa-style @hotforhotchner11 @infinite-tides @isthatme-thatsme @g-l-pierce @bakugouswh0r3 @ssahotchie @sleepyreaderreads

[popatochisssp]

Hello Poppy! I hope you slept well! Here is the reminder you requested to create a mob au hc post like the cowboy post. Have a wonderful day!

Thank you, it’s finally time! I’m gonna put it under a cut immediately because having twenty skeletons makes every post with all of them automatically a long one!

Full disclaimer-- none of the boys are bosses, that falls on the monarch(s) of their universes... but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own roles to play~

(Warnings: mentions of crime, drugs, violence, sex, brief sexism [probably not the way you’d think] and ableism, plus all the usual mob-tropes I may have forgotten to mention)

Sans (Undertale): He’s a...humble purveyor of items, quality goods produced economically in order to pass those savings on to the crafty consumer who might not want to pay full, exorbitant price for ‘name-brand’ luxuries... Yeah, he’s the ‘you wanna buy a watch?’ guy and he spends most of his days (strategically) wandering around the city looking for customers to hock knockoff, lookalike watches, wallets and bags to. The fuzz know him by name but can never seem to find anything to hold him on, so he’s mostly just a harmless nuisance to be shooed along elsewhere if there’s been any complaints. (He’s real good at making friendly conversation with the law enforcement and keeping all eyes on him, and frankly, if there were any real shady business going on somewhere nearby... well, the cops certainly wouldn’t know about it, too busy hustling him along down the street, now would they?)

Papyrus (Undertale): An upstanding citizen, unlike his brother who’s always in some little trouble with the law or other. He is gainfully employed at a fitness center, and he commutes there by car, because paid for his license to operate one and practiced his driving skills and saved up until he could afford a very beautiful, shiny car of his own! It’s a very nice vehicle...so nice, even, that he doesn’t like to drive it for...recreational outings with friends, in case the paint might get scuffed. That’s why his friends let him borrow their cars when they go out, and let him drive very fast (but safely!) all over the city, even at strange hours or by ‘suspicious’ locations. He’s certainly never seen anything suspicious going on, he just waits outside, and if he happens to keep a First Aid kit in his glove-box, that’s just taking precautions, isn’t it? Accidents happen, you know! (He’s the best getaway driver in town and he knows it, but plausible deniability--the less he ‘knows,’ the better.)

Sky (Underswap Sans): Just your average, ordinary businessman, running a nice little bar for average, ordinary folks of all kinds. Well... he co-owns the place with a buddy of his, Grillby, but Grillbz is a free spirit and a real man about town, so really most of the ‘running’  is down to him. And he loves it! So many people (monsters and humans) to meet and chat with and serve... human food and alcohol, of course. Monster food and alcohol isn’t legalized yet to serve to humans, and a black mark like that against his little establishment would be just awful. He adheres fully to the rules and regulations set forth by human governmental agencies, no magic in anything he passes across the counter, skeleton’s honor! ...Total bullshit, obviously-- he’s running a speakeasy for humans who want to partake in a little monster food or booze, because it’s not harmful to humans and that makes it an even stupider regulation than prohibition was. Grillby taught him most of the menu and cooks on the rare occasions he’s in, while Sky handles the liquid menu and keeps an eye-socket out for snitches and inspectors trying to catch him in the act. He’s never missed a rat yet.

Paps (Underswap Papyrus): He works at his brother’s place. In the back. Only part-time, though, Sky’s got it mostly buttoned up there, so Paps has a lot of leisure time to wander around the city, hit up his favorite joints, chat with friends--and strangers that can become friends, he’s a friendly sorta guy. And if he’s ever seen sharing a cigarette or two with one of those friends, of course it’ll be a totally normal tobacco cigarette, and no exchange of money or anything else incriminating about the interaction. ...Doggo is the one that does the deals, he’s got the Dog Treat supply and a client base that’s steadily starting to include humans--but since Dog Treats are classed as Monster Consumables and illegal to distribute to humans, in spite of being non-addictive, only mildly affective, and non-irritant to lungs, things get a little more convoluted. Paps hits up Doggo at Muffet’s (a wholly monster establishment) for the Dog Treats and a client list, ‘refurbishes’ the Treats to resemble cigarettes, and then meets up with anybody who prepaid for their order real casual-like to fence ‘em. He gets a little cut of the profits, and a discount when he’s picking up for pleasure instead of business--like a (slightly) more illegal girl scout cookie racket.

Jasper (Underfell Sans): Him? He’s just an average joe in all respects. He’s got a little auto shop, spends his days tuning up cars and bikes and such as the like, and most evenings out having fun with anybody else who’s out looking to have a good time--food and drink and maybe a little gambling, but small games, low stakes, for charity, yanno? Nothing illegal, he’d freely assure anyone concerned about the law. Yep, he’s a perfectly normal, law-abiding citizen...as far as anyone can tell. If he does a little work on the side, when specifically requested to, by perhaps one of his monarchs or one of the parties they’d approved to ask for his...services... Well, he’s certainly too quick and clean about it to leave any hard evidence behind, and he’s always far away from...whatever may have happened...with too many witnesses all in agreement that he was there and couldn’t have been anywhere else, unless he could somehow make it across town in the blink of an eye. (His side-gig is as a hitman. He keeps his shortcut ability very tightly under wraps to make for perfect alibis, and takes his targets out with magic bullets which he can disappear afterwards. If he’s ever somehow implicated in anything, he’s happy to point out to the nice officers that he doesn’t even own a weapon. They’re free to look, but all they’ll find is a set of knuckledusters he keeps on his person, purely for protection--and look how shiny the brass is, never even been used, officers! Guess they’ve got nothing on him, after all...)

Pyre (Underfell Papyrus): A law-abiding citizen. He must be--surely one can’t get more law-abiding than a lawyer...right? He actually does keep his (lack of) nose clean, but studying the convoluted mess that is human law doesn’t leave time for much else--even when your studies are funded by royalty and you’re given everything you need to open up your own practice as soon as you’ve passed the bar. Still, his skill and knowledge in arguing the law is very valuable and his services are in high demand, so he’s well-compensated for his chosen career and lives his life outside of it both comfortably and legally. His clients...are innocent until proven guilty and it would be an extreme failing of his duty to give any of them anything less than his best in the courtroom, regardless of their character, their associations, and what they happen to have been accused of. (Yeah, he’s a mob lawyer, used almost exclusively by Asgore and Toriel to protect them and anyone they send to him and all of their collective...interests. He respects the law, but values justice above it, so in spite of having a lot of clients who are definitely criminals in one way or another, he has no trouble sleeping at night.)

Mal (Swapfell Sans): He’s an accountant, nothing more, nothing less. ...For Toriel, of course, so he’s paid well for his services. And he has quite a head for numbers and figures, so he plays the stock market and does quite well there, too, smart investments and reading the writing on the wall, and all that. It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for his very healthy finances and his lavish lifestyle--fur coats, fine suits, fancy cars, shiny gold pocket-watches-- it’s all expensive and almost over the top, but hey, he is the money-man and all the numbers check out. It seems that he’s just very good at handling and investing his capital, it’s no wonder the monster-queen herself hired him on... (He is, of course, running several money laundering schemes at any given time, taking all the less-than-legally-obtained money earned by constituents of the [former] Empire and layering it through official channels to make it look legal in such a convoluted, complex web that it doesn’t raise any significant red flags. He’s got his claws in a lot of pies, and he takes what he needs off the top to live a little luxuriously, with Toriel’s knowledge and permission-- a perk for the necessary service he provides.) Whatever else may be true, it’s a simple fact that he’s very, very good at his job.

Rus (Swapfell Papyrus): With the lucrative career his brother has, the lucky SOB doesn’t have to work a day in his life if he doesn’t want to, but he’s using the safety net to pursue his passion in art. Subjective as it is, it’s hard to say if he’s really any good, but people seem to like what he produces well-enough--not a household name, but people passionate about the subject might recognize his work and his pieces sell with at least moderate success. For all that it’s probably not going to make him famous or rich(er than his brother), he’s dedicated to his craft and regularly makes bulk purchases of his supplies, canvas and reams of paper and paint and ink and the like, to keep up his steady work and art sales. He seems like an altogether normal and down-to-earth sort of guy, nothing suspicious about him at all. (He’s a counterfeiter and works in tandem with his brother--they even hit a Bureau together to lift a set of plates for the one and only active crime he was involved in--and his art is just a really good cover for why he needs so much ink and paper and other supplies on a regular basis. He does love and care about his art career, that part’s not fake, but he’s also got a good eye-socket for detail and steady hands to replicate it, and if fake human money that looks really real can help monsters, he doesn’t really see why he shouldn’t.)

Slate (Horrortale Sans): He’s...been through a lot. All monsters have, really, but he was hit kind of especially hard and... Whatever Gerson, or Undyne, or whoever’s running things now up on the Surface are getting involved in...he doesn’t really want any part of it. He gets regular stipends for some unspecified ‘service’ he performed for the Queen, Underground, and while no human (alive) knows what that was, it’s apparently enough to live off of relatively comfortably without being employed himself. He has a nice little place with his brother on the outskirts of the city and he lives there quietly, peacefully. He rarely goes into town, just the occasional walkabout, stopping at restaurants or scoping out the architecture. (Part of his one concession to being left out of whatever illegal, mob-type business may or may not be going on: he needs a good mental map of the city and at least a few landmarks that he’ll definitely remember, because he’s the emergency evac should...anything...go especially south. The house phone doesn’t ring too often in the middle of the night, but when it does, he needs to know where he needs to be, and quick.)

Papy (Horrortale Papyrus): He’s, ah... not involved in any ‘business’ either, but he does spend a little more time out of the house, at the local hospital. He was allowed to make a study of human medicine and become a nurse by Very Special Exception--mostly due to some friends (or at least one) in high places, and some very backwards human attitudes about parts that constitute a ‘man’ and how a skeleton without any parts could perhaps be allowed into nursing--and he’s proven himself a valuable member of staff and even made friends with all of his coworkers. He’s happy at his job, and with his life, and returns home to his quiet, peaceful house every night with a smile. (He has a go-bag ready by the phone for those late night calls, though, full of healing items and medical equipment he may have subtly nicked from the hospital, just so he has everything he needs to treat a monster or a friendly human that may have gotten hurt...somehow...and for reasons they have no need to specify, can’t risk going to a doctor.)

Ash (Undergloom Sans): Just a poor street musician...or at least, that’s what most people figure, ‘cause he doesn’t dress too well and the trombone he plays while sitting out on the sidewalk looks like it’s probably the nicest thing he owns. He gets a couple bucks from time to time, but rarely any second glances, and that... That works in his favor. You’d be surprised how much people talk about when they think nobody’s listening (or at least...nobody important) and he can pick up a lot of interesting information of what’s going on in the city just by setting up in the right spot and waiting for folks to talk business. He’s pretty quiet when he’s not tooting the ol’ horn and great at blending into the background, and that’s made him the guy to go to when you want to know something--like how much somebody else knows, or if there are any plans in place for say, a raid or a sting or some kind. (Law enforcement is the worst about keeping proprietary information ‘proprietary’ when they think their only audience is some nobody monster bum sleeping on a bench...) He’s also got something of a whole information network going on with the actual homeless people in the city, since he gives great tips about places who are hiring or somewhere to get a meal or a bed for the night and he always gives his earnings from busking to those who need it more than him. He’s paid for the service he provides and he’s got a home to go back to, it just seems right that the music-money goes to help somebody else.

Yrus (Undergloom Papyrus): He works as a nanny for the Queen! Not too long ago, she might’ve opted to just stay home and look after her newly adopted child herself, while Asgore handled business with the humans, but... They’re freshly split now, and Toriel wants to be just as involved in things as Asgore as much as she wants to s l o w l y ease into being a full-time mother again. Yrus is the solution, already fond of little Frisk and a very warm and trustworthy soul who stayed bright even in the gloom of the Underground. He happily takes the job when asked and splits his time between supervising and caring for Frisk, and tutoring them in all the important subjects (math, history, magic, et cetera). He finds he has a passion for teaching and thinks he might go into that someday, when Frisk is older and Toriel has a little more time and confidence to no longer need him as a buffer. (Whatever it is, specifically, that takes up so much of Toriel’s time and keeps her out so late that he sometimes has to wait around well past Frisk’s bedtime for her to come back and ask after them... Yrus couldn’t fathom a guess and isn’t going to ask any questions. That would definitely be out of his scope as a simple child-minder and even if he knew anything, it would be an extreme violation of the family’s privacy for him to tell tales, which he’s happy to point out to anyone with a lot of questions for somebody so close to two of the Dreemurrs.)

Brick (Horrorfell Sans): He’s on his brother’s payroll. It seemed like the best way to kill two birds with one stone: he’s a big, scary-looking wall of bone who isn’t well suited to a regular-joe sorta job, and his bro’s a very high-profile guy who needs somebody big and scary-looking to stand next to him and be a deterrent. Nepotism, maybe, but they’ve been looking after each other their whole lives already and it’s something Brick knows he can do--he’d do it for free, but if King thinks it’s better (and safer) to have it as his job description, he’s probably right, so Brick’ll take the paycheck for it. King’s also very likely the only one who could stop him if he...lost control...somewhere out and about, so sticking close to him makes Brick feel better and hey, maybe they’re actually killing three birds with this stone of an arrangement. Still, he mostly just goes about town with King, standing around and watching his back and staring people down when he needs to while his brother carries on with his conversations and business. He hardly ever has to do anymore than that...almost never. (One of his favorite places to go is a little hole-in-the-wall craft shop, where King always pretends to take longer than he needs so Brick can peruse the yarn and try to pick up a little sign language from the nice old deaf lady who owns the place.)

King (Horrorfell Papyrus): Yes, yes, he’s very high profile--he did lead monsterkind for a time, getting everyone up to the Surface and settled there--but he’s since stepped down. He’s retired, and anything his successor may be involved in... surely, he couldn’t say. He and Toriel are barely in contact and the money he receives from her on the regular is a gift of goodwill, mostly for medical expenses (his leg, and his brother’s...well). All he does these days is collect for a charity, a pet project of his, Monster Reparations. Lots of people give such generous donations when he goes around to ask for them, maybe impressed a little by his fame, but he can’t feel too terribly about using it for such a worthy cause... (It’s a thinly veiled protection racket and the people and businesses who buy into it tend not to fall victim to ‘mysterious’ criminal activity. Toriel may be officially calling the shots now, but King, as the monster who put her back there, is in a very unique position of power in having her ear, an unofficial underboss totally off the books. Some ‘donate’ more than necessary when he comes collecting, hoping to earn preferential treatment, and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don’t--it’s entirely down to King’s opinion of them personally. ...The old woman who runs the craft store pays about half the going rate, and the immigrant who imports the miniature trees he likes gets a heavy discount, too. The deli-owner he overheard hurling discriminatory epithets at a customer, however, pays triple. You get the idea.)

Merc (Horrorswap Sans): He’s a researcher. Highly confidential, he’s sworn to secrecy and even mentioning that he’s being funded by Elder King Shroomba is pushing the boundaries of what he’s allowed to talk about. Still, he has his own facility, and several assistants, monster volunteers and sometimes human ones--but they have to sign papers swearing not to talk about what goes on in the lab, too. From what they are allowed to say, the gist is just that it didn’t seem like anything sinister was going on; not even a blood-draw... Merc seems pretty happy to leave at the end of every day, though, and whenever it comes up, he talks very fondly about being able to finish the project. (He’s researching DT, specifically how it can be used to enhance monster physiology and make them more resistant to damage from intent. Merc’s misadventure with DT destabilized him, but from 1HP he’s now more durable than ever, and his second attempt with his brother had less dramatic but still noticeable and successful results. The king wants that safety net for more monsters, especially ones who are on the front lines of...potentially less than legal dealings...who could really be at risk. Merc is reluctant, but with the stipulation of informed, willing volunteers for DT extraction and infusion, he can’t bring himself to turn down the resources and funding to research his own condition and bring the possibility of being normal again ever closer. He still has a hard time with the idea of ‘enhancing’ monsters, but the fact that it’s at least being done safely, willingly, and with a whole team behind it this time helps a lot.)

Ell (Horrorswap Papyrus): He’s in a wheelchair but not letting it keep him down, and he’s running a modest little newspaper stand on the corner--papers and magazines and cheap books--nothing all that special but boy, what an inspiration, good for him that he’s got a job and can run the place by himself! All kinds come and go from his stand, and sometimes he closes it up for a little bit in the middle of the day to take a...er...roll, with some people who must be friends of his, but he’s never gone too long, so nobody says anything to the poor guy about the inconvenience. He’s a dedicated businessman, or trying to be; won’t even let people help him with those heavy-looking boxes of deliveries he gets, and for a fella with no legs, he seems to be doing his best! (...The whole thing is a low-key smuggling operation and he is making bank off it. There’s a system of code-words in place related to the publications he sells for a ‘customer’ to indicate whether they’re buying or selling, and what--magic consumables, stolen/hot items, imported goods, the works--and where and when they want things to go down. There’s even hidden compartments in his custom-built wheelchair for some of the riskier stuff, because he knows no cop in their right mind would force a guy with no legs out of his chair just to search it with witnesses around. And that’s presuming any law enforcement were to even catch wise to his set-up, which he kind of doubts: he’s sly and subtle and even if he weren’t, he knows people see the chair before they see him. Why not take advantage of that?)

Pitch (Horrorswapfell Sans): He makes his living as a boxer, and a subsequent minor celebrity. Pretty much any match he’s in is an exhibition match--not just a monster, not just a little guy (...relatively), but a short skeleton monster who’s blind, wow! You don’t see that every day, that’s a spectacle! Plenty of ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s in the packed stands every night the sightless skeleton scrapper is in the ring and nobody can figure out how he bobs and weaves so well that he hardly ever gets hit. He loses some matches, that’s to be expected, even for a ‘normal’ fighter, but hey, people love an underdog story, so when he wins, it’s an uproar every time. (For his part, Pitch hates most of his ‘fans’ who think of him the same way they probably think of a silly little dog who learned a funny trick, but the fame in general, and the thrill of the fight... Those are enough to keep him in the ring. Just... maybe not quite enough to keep him fighting clean. He’s as dirty as sportsmen come and he and a few other monsters regularly play his own odds with the bookies: he’ll subtly use magic to cheat and stay in longer, or go down when he could easily keep fighting, whatever’s more profitable with the over/under from match to match. If he’s going to be a circus act doing what he loves, he may as well get hazard pay for his dignity... and y’know, a couple of idiots who think being able to fight is a ‘trick’ because you’re blind aren’t nearly so annoying when you’re being driven away from them in a luxury car, to your expensive house in the hills decked out with all the amenities.)

Nemo (Horrorswapfell Papyrus): He’s got a place he looks after, keeps things running. Just a small joint, nothing fancy, a little cabaret variety show type place--singing, dancing, drinks on tap, that kinda thing. After dark, some of the...performances... might get a little more risqué, stuff that titillates like burlesque and striptease, but rest assured, his permits are all in order and everything’s on the up and up. Nothing illegal whatsoever going on here, just a bit of singing and dancing and everybody having a good time. (Most of the performers are sex workers--monsters, but some humans too--and patrons can negotiate private shows or off-the-clock ‘meetings’ at their discretion. Nemo opts to not know too much of the details of what his dancers do when he’s not looking, for legal reasons, but he makes sure they have a safe place to do it, are paid for their services, and don’t have repeat problem-patrons if any slip through. Being one of the gentlemen running such an establishment in the city that doesn’t happen to touch or steal from or mistreat the performers, his place is the place to get hired if that’s your line of work. He’s mostly just happy to be able to provide the job security and the job safety for a group that really seems to catch a lot of hell up here on the Surface just for how they make their money.)

Sunny (Gastertale Sans): He’s a busy guy, bouncing around from place to place, job to job... Being so scattered, you might think he’d be having money troubles by now, but while he may not be the type to stick with one thing and stay there for a good few years, nobody who knows him would say he’s unreliable--he’s the type of guy that you can give him a call anytime and if you need help, he’ll be right over, and he’ll get the job done well, too! Of course he lives with his fancypants brother, and the King and Queen probably spot him a loan or two now and then, since they’re friendly, so all in all, no one really wonders how he makes enough money to live so comfortably. The answer’s right there in their face...isn’t it? (Yes and no. He is the kind of guy you can call anytime to get a job done, and he will do it well, but the money he gets from Asgore and Toriel is less of a ‘loan’ and more of a ‘payment for services rendered.’ He’s a cleaner, the guy you call to make things go away, things that aren’t supposed to be there: stains, papers, weapons, evidence... He’ll get rid of it for you, and if you need a convincing coverup or an alibi for...whatever it is that you weren’t there doing, he’ll take care of that, too. If somebody’s calling him up for his special brand of help, they probably just want to put it all behind them and forget all about that nasty business. He’s happy to facilitate--after all, what are friends for?)

Aster (Gastertale Papyrus): Like his brother, he gets on well with the King and Queen. (They both feel like they’ve known the monarchs much longer than they actually have...somehow...) But in any case, unlike his brother, Aster is very well-organized and thoughtful, so he’s a natural choice as an...advisor, of sorts, when monsters surfaced and it was...decided that perhaps there would be some...activities and...ways of doing things that...should remain unknown to the humans. Not unknown to Aster: he keeps track of everything, reminding the monarchs of little details they may have forgotten, pointing out things they may not have noticed, making educated suggestions for courses of action with likely positive outcomes based on past experiences... He’s the linchpin between Asgore and Toriel that makes them terrifyingly more efficient than they would be without him, a consigliere-equivalent who certainly isn’t a boss himself, but he has the bosses’ trust and their ears and that makes him a person of great interest. But...no one can get anything useful out of him: he’s loyal, above all, and much as he values truth, he also realizes that perhaps not everyone deserves to know the full truth of everything, especially not those who might use that truth to bring some sort of harm or misfortune to his friends...or to monsterkind at large. ...And trying to directly seize his extensive notes on the private and personal business-doings of the Dreemurrs is an even more doomed endeavor--he writes them all in a strange jumble of symbols that no one’s ever seen, and the code-breakers never have it long enough to decipher anything useful before its back in his hands, reclaimed quite speedily after unlawful seizure of private property containing confidential information. Lots of well-meaning law enforcement have their sights set on him as some sort of criminal white whale, but the simile is all too accurate-- they’ll never catch him, and even if they do, there’ll be nothing to hold him on. He simply has too many friends (and family members) in very high, very useful places.

[hydrasweapon]

@weaponizedembrace gets the longest starter in history for our thing

            Howard doesn’t find Steve. Even after days, after months, he doesn’t find Steve. He keeps on searching, though – maybe because he cannot stand Bucky’s face whenever he comes back empty-handed. In the meantime, Bucky’s injuries heal up. Way quicker than should be possible, he’s as fresh as a daisy – minus the arm, of course. They want to send him home. He tells them very sincerely fuck you and that’s it. He guesses it’s also Carter’s and maybe Colonel Phillips doing that they leave him alone, but he doesn’t care. To be honest, Bucky doesn’t care about a lot of things anymore. VE-day comes and goes and he toasts with the other Howlies but then he walks back to the barracks, surrounded by screaming, partying people, and he feels nothing. The war in Europe is over and he has never felt more lost, not even in the trenches with shells detonating right next to him. 

          He reads about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and wonders what Steve would have said to that. Then he has to put the newspaper away because it feels like his heart is going to give up on him. He gets a lot of letters from his family but doesn’t know how to respond, so he only puts them in his duffel or sometimes in the pocket of his jacket and feels bad for never finding the right words. 

           In late August, Carter tells him that she’s going to go to New York City to continue the SSR’s work and also that there’s going to be an official state funeral for Steve in Arlington. Nobody, not even a super-soldier, could survive months without food or shelter in the icy, windswept wasteland of the Arctic. Bucky listens and doesn’t answer but he turns up the day Carter and Stark leave for the States in Stark’s private plane. 

          The ceremony is pompous. The Arlington National Cemetery is bursting at the seams because every politician wants to say goodbye to a hero and hopefully get some good publicity while doing that. Bucky has to puke three times behind a tree before he is able to walk up to President Truman to get his own Purple Heart medal and receive Steve’s Medal of Honor because there is no other family member left to take it for him. They even conjured a fucking statue up out of nothing. They want to take photos in front of that statue. Bucky is glad his stomach is already empty or he would have puked on the shoes of the President himself and wouldn’t that be something to put on the front page. 

          He doesn’t stay longer than it takes to get the medals, do some hand-shaking and take some pictures. There is a speech. The President said some words, too, but the real speech is by Colonel Phillips himself and Bucky can’t listen to that, he just can’t. They will think he’s rude but he’s pretty certain Phillips understands. He leaves the cemetery and promises himself to never come back to this place.

          Bucky takes the train up to New York. After half an hour, he feigns to be asleep because people keep thanking him for his service and welcoming him home and it makes his already empty stomach roil again. His parents and Becca are waiting for him at the train station. It’s when Winifred Barnes wraps her son up in her arms, that something breaks inside him. Bucky takes a deep, shuddering breath, and now the tears, finally, come. They stream down his face, soak his mother’s blouse, and he cannot get enough air into his lungs, everything is hurting, the pain squeezes his chest, his insides, his heart, and he falls to his knees and Winifred sits down next to him on the cold, hard ground, and just keeps him close and rocks him back and forth like a child, but he will always be her child, won’t he? No matter what.

          Bucky doesn’t manage to get a grip on himself for half an hour. All the time, his mother’s tight embrace doesn’t waver; Becca shields his vulnerable left side and his father’s hand is heavy and protecting on his shoulder. George Barnes glares at every passenger even thinking of making a stupid remark concerning this scene on a public station platform. 

            Then, somehow, Bucky manages to stop crying, or maybe he is just – empty. His father bundles his family up in the car and they drive through Manhattan and back to Brookly, home. Bucky is too tired and exhausted and falls asleep with his head on his sister’s shoulder. He doesn’t even notice when George picks him up carefully and carries him inside as he used to do back when he was a young boy and drifted off listening to the wireless in the evening. His and Becca’s child room changed into Winifred’s sewing room years ago but there’s still his old bed and when his father puts him down there and covers him with a warm quilt, he curls up and sleeps for hours.

            During the next couple of weeks, neither Bucky nor his family knows how to treat each other. Winifred bakes a lot, George urges Bucky to play cards with him in the evenings. Becca comes over whenever she can. Bucky visits his grandparents' grave; they had died while he'd been overseas. Apart from that, he doesn't really leave the house: There are always people on the street he knows. They welcome him back and either tell him how sorry they are for his loss or ask where Steve is (if they didn't put 2 and 2 together yet).

            He stays in his family home and stares out of the window and lets his mother put some meat on his bones and wonders what on earth he is supposed to do now, without his best friend and without a left arm besides.

            It’s shortly after Christmas (a rather silent affair) that Margaret Carter knocks on his door and kind of bullies him into joining the SSR once more. She knows all the perfect words for him to agree -- that Steve wouldn’t want him to spend the rest of his life this way, that he cannot live off his parents forever, that he is still a useful member of society. He agrees just to get her out of his room because she makes him feel scraped raw. Shortly after New Year’s Day, Bucky starts to work for the New York office of the SSR.

            The years pass. They are -- mostly a dull succession of days. His sister marries in 1949, a guy called William Proctor, who works for a shipping company and never saw the European Theater due to really bad eyesight. Dancing with Rebecca on her wedding day is one of the few memories Bucky will cherish for the rest of his life. She is so happy. 

           Unfortunately, being a married woman seems to mean that she absolutely has to marry her brother off, too. She introduces him to friends at least once a month and invites him over for dinner with -- what a coincidence! -- single ladies all the time. She also makes him visit the dance halls with her every other week. He doesn’t mind the last one -- it’s really nice to watch all the couples dance, learn this new Boogie Woogie thing. He is not interested in the gals, though. He simply cannot bring himself to think of love again.

            He's no longer working for the SSR but for an agency Carter, Stark, and Phillips formed of its remnants: the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. The acronym makes Bucky want to both puke and cry. It doesn’t change much, workwise, though.

            1954 is a big year. He attends the weddings of Dum Dum Dugan and Jim Morita and it’s almost as if the Howling Commandos are back together. Even Falsworth comes to the States for the occasion, him and Gabe sharing pictures of chubby Montgomery Junior and little Steven. Gabe looks a little sheepish when he tells Bucky the name of his son and Bucky might be a little choked-up but he’s certain Steve would have loved this little, full-faced namesake. Only Dernier doesn’t make it.

            1954 is also the year Bucky has a vocal dispute with Peggy Carter and quits his job quite aggressively. But what else is he supposed to do when he’s down in former Camp Lehigh for a work thing and crosses paths with Arnim godfuckingdamn Zola? It’s only due to three coworkers that he cannot bash Zola’s face the moment he spots him in the corridor. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about Operation Paperclip. Carter’s words are like poison in his ears. He doubts she believes them, herself. But she has the greater good in mind and was probably overruled in Zola’s case. Bucky does not care. He will not work for an agency hiring this piece of dirty shit. He has nightmares for weeks, always seeing that grubby little face with its evil smirk in front of his eyes. 

            It’s complicated to find another job. Nobody wants to hire a cripple. Labor work is impossible for him, too. Shortly before Thanksgiving in 1954, Bucky notices for the first time that something is off. That he is -- wrong. When he asks for a job in a nearby factory, the boss asks him how he lost his arm. He doesn’t believe the war-story. “Look at you, you’re too young to have been in the war, son.”

            That evening, Bucky stares into the mirror. The guy is right: He looks like he came home from Europe yesterday. He looks like a guy in his mid-20s, not like a man going on 40. His younger sister looks older now. There’s not a single white hair. There are no wrinkles. He drinks a whole bottle of whisky and tells himself he’s having excellent genes. 

Shortly before Christmas, he gets a new job thanks to his brother-in-law and works as an accountant in the same shipping company as William Proctor.

            1958 is both a joyful and terrible year. Becca gives birth to her first child after years of trying to get pregnant. Little Emily Sarah is the cutest thing on earth and Bucky loves her with every fiber of his being. He tries to ignore the women gushing at him ‘being such a young, handsome father’ when he takes her out for walks. He turned 40 two months ago. He should not look like this.

            In late August, George Barnes dies. The doctor speaks of a heart attack. Bucky cries late at night, in his bed, when he doesn’t have to be the strong one anymore. He moves in with his mother again to support her -- so she can keep the apartment she lived in for nearly 45 years already, and so she has company and someone to watch over her. She, too, is getting older and frailer. Bucky could be her grandson, now, given his looks. When their old neighbor Mr. Lowenstein mentions this, Bucky cannot ignore it any longer. He calls Howard Stark.

            The passage of time manifested itself in a lot of wrinkles in Stark’s face. That’s how a man his age should look like. That’s what Bucky wants to see when he’s standing in front of a mirror. Stark looks taken aback at his sight, then explains in great detail that he’s an engineer and usually doesn’t do biological stuff but he draws a vial of blood either way and looks at it under a microscope and then tells him that he could be mistaken but the last and only time he ever saw cells like Bucky’s was shortly after they shot Steve up with Erskine’s serum.

            Bucky thinks of Zola and his countless injections and fire in his veins and pukes right across Stark’s workbench. Stark says there’s nothing he can do. That was Erskine’s area of expertise, not his. He really doubts Bucky is immortal but he will probably live to see his 150th birthday. Bucky could ask Zola, of course, Zola who’s working for S.H.I.E.L.D. now. But he’d rather cut his remaining arm off than ever seeing him again.

            He doesn’t tell his mother nor his sister. He tries to live on as if nothing happened but it’s hard. He notices now that he heals way quicker than the average human being. He gets bonuses because he never calls in sick for work. On a sleepless night, he walks through Brooklyn and over to Manhattan and back to the docks for work and doesn’t feel tired at all. He’s----he’s like Steve now. Or rather, was since that factory in Kreischberg. He just chose to never notice.

            He sees his mother age and little Emily Sarah grow up and his own face doesn’t change at all. Sometimes he wonders if everyone he knows is going to die and he will end up alone in this world. It’s a terrifying thought. More often than not he finds himself standing on the docks after work, staring into the muddy water. Steve is down there, too. A cold, dark grave. He wouldn’t want Bucky to off himself. He would be furious. That, and maybe whatever Zola did to his body would prevent him from dying, anyway. So Bucky thinks about it but never acts on it.

            In January 1961, Winifred Barnes dies. Bucky, confused he doesn’t find his mother in the kitchen as usual in the morning, goes to check on her. She looks like she’s still sleeping but her hands are cold. Bucky sits down next to her for three hours and cries and hides his face in her neck that still smells like her. It’s only when his brother-in-law pounds on the front door because he didn’t turn up for work that Bucky gets up and calls his sister.

            They bury their mother next to George Barnes. Bucky brings flowers every week.

            One year later, shortly before the assassination of Kennedy, Howard Stark pops up out of nowhere, looking mad and excited. He talks a lot of gibberish Bucky doesn’t understand, but he gets the gist either way. Howard invented the prototype of a mechanical prosthesis that will work like a normal arm made of flesh and bone does. It’s absolutely batshit crazy. The surgery needed to implant the sensors of the arm into one’s brain will probably kill the test subject. Bucky agrees, anyway. First of all, he doesn’t mind dying. Sooner rather than later (which means in over 100 fucking years). Secondly, having only one arm sucks. He has gotten used to it, over the years, but it’s still crap. And, in the end, if Stark manages to develop a working prosthesis far superior to what they got now, all the other poor cripples will benefit, too.

            Bucky doesn’t tell his sister because she would try to stop him. She’s mad as hell at him, though, and refuses to speak to him for one month when he comes back with a metal arm (because of course, he did not die). Emily Sarah thinks her uncle is absolutely amazing. 

The arm is better than any prosthesis he had so far. It’s not a real arm but he doubts anything will be like the real thing. He keeps it covered up whenever he goes outside. According to Stark, there’s nobody else who would survive such extensive surgery. He puts the blueprints away for later generations. ‘Now is just not the time’, he says.

            Then there’s another war. Bucky wonders why on earth the United States engage in whatever is happening in Vietnam. 20 years later and everyone seemed to have forgotten about Europe. They probably think now that there’s a wall dividing Germany and thus Eastern and Western countries, they have to do their bombing and shooting somewhere else. He’s getting more and more nightmares just reading the newspapers. Steve didn’t sacrifice his life so humans could fight on another continent. But nobody cares about Captain America anymore save perhaps for stupid comics and stupid movies and stupid biographies they want to interview Bucky for.

            His mood, never back to being cheery and humorous after the war, turns even darker. There are no more mirrors in his apartment. He’s sick of seeing his young face. He knows Becca and her husband noticed, too, but they don’t say anything. Some ghosts you just cannot explain. Some ghost you just cannot understand if you didn’t see them yourself.

            His only glimmer of hope is little Emily Sarah. He lets her dance on his feet. He lets her play with his metal arm. He picks her up from school if his job allows it. He tells her about a guy named Captain America he met in Europe who was really brave and heroic and saved them all. Those stories are her favorite. Unfortunately, she also notices the comics and thinks it’s absolutely hilarious that Captain America has a young friend whose name is also Bucky. Neither Bucky himself nor her parents tell her the truth.

            Then, on a rainy day in April 1966, Bucky gets the worst message imaginable. Car accident. Slippery road. No survivors. 

            He breaks down when he has to pick a coffin small enough for a child. 

            He lays them to rest next to his parents. Carter is there, too. She puts a huge bouquet of lilies in front of the headstones and squeezes his arm. Her cheeks are wet. Bucky doesn’t thank her, cannot open his mouth because he fears he wouldn’t be able to stop screaming. She knows, though.

            Bucky has to clear out his sister’s apartment the next day. When he stands in front of the big mirror in the main bedroom and sees his youthful face, chestnut hair, the skin free of wrinkles, he puts his fist through the glass. There’s a sharp-edged shard embedded in his wrist. He pulls it out and stares at the blood oozing out and then sits down and hopes. 

            Two hours later, the wound is scabbed over and the dizzy feeling has vanished. He takes the photos and other mementos and leaves the apartment.

            Stark does not seem surprised to find Bucky visiting his Estate in Los Angeles. ‘I tried to, you know,’ he tells him. ‘To reverse the effects of that serum. But I did not succeed. Maybe smarter minds in the future will be able to.’

            Bucky stares at him, feeling all the pain of the world settling on his shoulders. ‘I can’t wait that long. I can’t. Put a bullet through my head or reverse the effects, I don’t care.’

Stark is silent for a long time. Then he says: ‘Maybe there’s another option.’ And leads him down to the basement.

            The thing that looks like an iron maiden from the Dark Ages is supposed to freeze a person like you’d put a piece of steak into the freezer for eating it later. Little does Bucky know that Howard’s idea for it comes from Arnim Zola himself. Having received a terminal diagnosis, there is absolutely no idea too crazy for Zola to extend his lifespan or survive until more advanced medicine will save him. Stark toyed with the idea himself. What if he would get sick? What if he wants to go to a future where he isn’t limited by his own time and state of research? He doesn’t tell Bucky any of that. He only says: ‘It might kill you. It will kill every normal human, that’s for sure. If you don’t die, though, maybe scientists can help you in the future.’

            Bucky needs a week to take care of his belongings, money, and the apartment. He never felt more alive in the past 20 years than this week. He only keeps what reminds him of his family and Steve. It fits in two suitcases. He offers Stark all the money he’s got and the billionaire looks affronted. It’s probably only peanuts, for him. He takes it anyway, ‘to make investments. Gonna need money in the future, pal.’

            Then, on a Sunday evening, Bucky unscrews the metal arm, undresses, and steps inside the tank-like machine. The metal is cold under his bare feet. 

            ‘Do you really want to do that?’ Stark asks one last time. Bucky looks at him, all the tiredness of the world in his eyes. Then he closes his eyes. He doesn’t feel the cold at all.

[lurafita]

Law Enforcement Avengers & Good Criminal Peter

Okay, have we considered the following:

Non powers AU

Avengers are some kind of police force (detectives/FBI/special agents/belonging to a special unit/whatever), that covers mostly high scale theft.

Peter Parker, though no one knows his real name cause he is always costumed and goes by the alias Spiderman, is a high scale class thief.

However, Spidey is a kind of ‘Robin Hood’ criminial. His victims are Mob bosses and Crime Syndicates and corrupt higher ups and pretty much anyone who has some kind of dirt on them.

Because of that, not every victim of Spiderman reports whatever he has stolen to the authorities, fearing that an investigation might uncover their dirty business.(Though many still do, believing themselves smarter than the police)

Which is why after every heist, Spiderman makes a call to the agents in charge of apprehending him, the Avengers unit; usually to the units head: Tony Stark.

Usually with the words: “Guess what I just stole.”

And, okay, technically, Spiderman is breaking the law and they should really put more effort into finally finding and arresting him. But thanks to this guy’s thefts the Avengers have been able to put some major bad guys behind bars (some of which had been the real scum of the earth). Also, Spiderman is never armed (aside from this weird bio-degradable web stuff he uses), and has never harmed an innocent (a black eye or a dislocated shoulder to a hired gun is blissfully overlooked by the agents.)

So, they kinda like the guy, okay? Have even given him a nickname: Spidey.

Not even their unit chief: Nicolas Fury, is much on their asses about catching the Spider already.

One day, Tony’s little daughter Morgan gets kidnapped, and the whole team is frantically trying to find who grabbed her. Is it someone they are currently investigating, or one of their cases that is going before a judge soon. Is someone trying to use Tony’s daughter to blackmail him and the team, or is it old fashioned revenge?

The team isn’t making any progress, there are just too many suspects, not enough info to send them in the right direction, and Tony is about to have a fucking break down.

Then his phone rings and as he answers, anticipating to hear the voice of the kidnapper of his little girl, the familiar voice of Spiderman speaks instead.

“Guess what I just stole?”

Tony likes the guy, but he doesn’t have time for this right now, and he tells Spidey as much, and is about to hang up, when suddenly Morgan is on the other end of the phone call with a happy “Hi Daddy!”

Turns out Spidey’s latest target was the guy who had kidnapped Tony’s daughter, because the Avengers had arrested the guys brother a few years ago, and the brother had just recently been killed in prison.

When Spidey was scoping out the place for his heist, he found little Morgan locked up in some dark, dank room, and got her out.

And Tony is in tears, because thank fuck is baby girl is safe. Then Spidey is back on the line and tells him to meet them in some diner that’s not far away, and also where he found her, identifying the person behind the kidnapping.

Tony and the others race to the diner, where they find Morgan making her way through an impressive amount of pancakes topped with ice cream and a chocolate milkshake.

Tony beelines to her and scoops her up and is just “Oh thank god. Are you alright Morgan? Did they hurt you? It’s all gonny be okay now, Daddy’s got you.” and so on.

And the others get some hugs in too, and everyone is just relieved and happy and Morgan seems to be unharmed and thank god.

Then they notice the young man who is sitting across from where Morgan sat in the booth, an iced coffee before him, who is just looking at the scene with a little smile on his face.

He introduces himself as Peter Parker, a bystander who had been handed the child from some guy in a costume with the order to wait with the girl in the diner until her father and his friends come to pick her up.

And they know, okay? It’s not a good cover story, and Spidey isn’t even really trying right then, and they just fucking know that this is the thief they have been (kinda but not really) trying to catch.

And they don’t fucking care.

They thank him profusely for ‘staying with Morgan’ and keeping an eye on her (read: saving her from her kidnapper). and then most of the team gets back to the precinct to get ready to arrest the son of a bitch who kidnapped little Morgan, while Tony and Morgan stay a little longer in the diner with Peter, because: “But I haven’t finished my pancakes, Daddy.”

And Morgan tells Tony all about how Spiderman broke her out of the smelly room and took her piggy back and scaled that one wall that was “So high, Daddy! I thought we were gonna fall, but Spidey wrapped those sticky webs around me so I wouldn’t slip off, and then we was jumping and climbing like in those parkerkour videos that my friend Amy showed me and it was so cool Daddy.”

And Morgan keeps stealing little looks at Peter whenever she talks about Spiderman, so Tony can guess that the young man probably lifted his mask for her (probably so she wouldn’t be scared of him). But Morgan is nothing but not loyal, so if Peter asked her to keep him being Spiderman a secret between them, then that’s exactly what she will do. (Even though she is very bad at it.)

And... then I don’t really know. Things will happen, the team and Peter (Spidey) will get closer (Tony  and Peter in particular) and maybe things even get to a point where Spidey is offered a consultant job with the team, in exchange for a prison sentence, or something like that. (It takes a thief to catch a thief, after all. And Spidey can provide a lot of insider info for the department.)

Or something else. I don’t know.

I primarily thought of this for a Starker pairing, but I think it could be worked out for IronDad and SpiderSon as well.

[seijch]

BY DAY, you attend classes and sling drinks at the campus cafe. By night, you’re known as the Harbinger, an individual with the Gift of shadow and darkness. Your two jobs have never had any reason to collide…not until the appearance of a fellow Gifted by the name of Ace, anyway.

[ read luck of the draw here !! ]

this is an extra post for me to infodump on all the worldbuilding details i never got to fit into my already obnoxiously large fic 🕺🏻🕺🏻 its holding my brain hostage so maybe posting this will help!!!

please read luck of the draw before clicking the readmore !! there are spoilers abound (and you probably won’t understand much of what i’m saying if you haven’t read the fic LMAO)

ABOUT THE CONCEPT

the very core of luck of the draw isn’t actually unique to kenji or to haikyuu in general; in fact, it was originally a part of a superhero!skz series i was planning to write but never got around to. the foundation of this fic -- kenji’s power and the idea of them being opposing forces that slowly draw together -- was originally given to stray kids’ hyunjin. i never went past the Thinking Stage with it, so it was fairly easy to hand the concept over to futakuchi when i moved fandoms.

the dynamic of this fic in general was inspired pretty heavily by miraculous ladybug’s “love square,” but i ... obviously wasn’t going to write all four sides of it so i stuck to the civilian identities (the reader and kenji) and the alteregos (harbinger and ace). in the kpop version of this wip, the reader and hyunjin were coworkers, but in moving from one fandom to another and reworking it for futakuchi, i decided to make them friends instead. they’re not particularly close (they’re definitely comfortable but not close Emotionally) to start with, but there’s potential for something to start!

ABOUT THE WORLD

in this universe, the city is ruled by two major factions that control much of the economy: seijoh, who controls the entertainment/tourism industries and has its fingers in most of the smaller businesses around the city (such as johzenji and dateko) and nekoma, who is partnered with the equally large fukurodani to control shipment of all kinds as well as the food industry (among others). nekoma has allies within the local government, and seijoh all but controls the law enforcement.

karasuno, on the other hand, works entirely from the underground to overhaul the way things are run in the city; it’s a bit .... corrupt as of right now, and they seek to change that. 

at the top are typically individuals blessed with special powers known as gifts. these gifts can be as mundane as the ability to make flowers bloom wherever you walk or as powerful as being able to alter the flow of time. there exist a series of regulations (and a shit ton of paperwork) that come about whenever an individual happens to manifest a gift. 

however, the city’s gifted demographic is incorrectly represented; a chunk of the gifted population are instead drawn to the allure of making money by doing illicit deeds for companies like seijoh or nekoma. these individuals’ gifts are never properly documented due to the traceability it lends itself to, should a job go wrong.

the government is supposedly in talks to enact stricter laws on the gifted, despite them making up a comparatively small percentage of the population. the head of the department of gifted individuals, ushijima wakatoshi, is a particularly overwhelming force in support of better regulation of his fellow gifted.

ABOUT THE CHARACTERS

in the first draft of luck of the draw, the sequence of events and relationship dynamics were MUCH different. in the final draft, you see the alteregos being drawn to each other first before you see the civilians come together. 

in that first draft, it was originally centered on the civilians getting together despite kinda-sorta being attracted to each other’s alterego? as a result, the kiss scene between the alteregos was still there but it was DRASTICALLY different. the whole idea of it and imo moral ambiguitity (kenji and the reader never went official with their relationship in the first draft) didn’t sit right with me at all; it felt a little like i was using cheating as a plot device which ??? no.

to make the long story short, the execution of that (tbh poorly developed) idea was.......less than stellar.

so i took a look at the chronology and basically upended the entire midsection to make the concept something that was less awful morally? that’s what i hope happened, anyway LJSKDFLSD

in the first draft, the reader (as harbinger) was also much less competent than they are in the final draft as a result of having been affiliated with karasuno for a shorter time. in truth, the harbinger’s origin story didn’t surface until i was in the middle of writing the second draft!

when it comes to the other characters:

oikawa doesn’t have a gift, which is rather rare for someone with their thumb sitting so heavily on the city’s pulse point

iwaizumi’s gift is entirely up to interpretation! him and oikawa making formal appearances in the story was something that only came up towards the end of draft two, so i didn’t have the space (word count wise) to really give either much thought

kyotani came into his gift without any control over it, and is only given amnesty because he was found hiding by iwaizumi

i really really wanted to talk about kyotani in this fic but ultimately it wasnt revolving around him + i once again didn’t have space to even tease an encounter with him (so in the fic proper he’s mostly there as a cameo + to scare you as you read into a potential action scene)

aone and kenji actually come from the same company that happened to come under seijoh’s control, so they’re more comfortable with each other than anyone else!

hinata has the gift of manipulation as long as you’re making eye contact with him; unfortunately, if he wills it, it’s rather hard to break eye contact once you’ve made it -- aone made the mistake of glancing at him during the takeover at seijoh hq, leading to his hold on harbinger loosening

kageyama obviously has the gift of ice/hail/snow manipulation to a rather strong extent, considering he can create it where there is none and lower the temperature of the air around him (the reader cannot create their own darkness, only manipulate what is around them)

he also has some beef with oikawa (or is it the other way around?) that involves him formerly working under seijoh -- not one of their many smaller companies, but seijoh itself (much like iwaizumi and after kageyama leaves, kyotani)

in terms of who’s been with karasuno the longest of the introduced cast, it’s tsukishima/three-eyes > hinata = kageyama > reader (but not by much)

MISCELLANEOUS

following the takeover of seijoh, tsukishima finds himself at wit’s end much more often LMAO

there are a good amount of deleted scenes and scenes that were only added in at the very last second!

among the deleted scenes is a scene where the civilians are at the park -- in the first draft, it happened in the middle, but in the second it was towards the end. it got taken out because come the end of the second draft, i realized it no longer fit ...

in terms of completion status, it probably ?? took a little over a month from this to go from Thinking Stage to the 14.2k monstrosity you see now? there were a couple of weeks early on where i did nothing on my ipad and laptop except outline and write, respectively

i definitely got burned out halfway through (which is abt the time i posted the xc2 au .. i NEEDED to work on smth else)

the idea of the clock tower wasn’t present at all in the first draft!! i only really came up with it in the second draft because i’d rather have them meet somewhere consistent and identifiable rather than some nondescript building

the running joke (?) of them getting drinks together wasn’t present until the third and final draft -- originally the scene where ace asks “do you remember our last conversation?” had a different beginning

in fact, a lot of the scenes that are a bit more...emotionally charged (see: every scene after ace’s unmasking as well as the movie night scene where the civilians struggle to define what their relationship has become) had to be overhauled dramatically

ummm i love kenji thats it! none of this would be possible if i didnt have the strongest mf brainrot for him so ... ! theres that LMAO

(theres probably more im forgetting to say ........ if any of you want to pick my brain regarding the chronology or the characters or why i had them say something or do something send me an ask! this post tbh is almost entirely for me but i didnt put this much thought into a fic that long to NOT share it with everyone else)

[youareiron-andyouarestrong]

39 + 87 + rebelcaptain

survival/wilderness + aroused by the sound of her voice 

always had high, high hopes 

It could be worse was the first thing Kay had said after the meeting that officially declared he had been put under Cassian’s jurisdiction. The one they got after Cassian had to convince Intelligence and the members of the Council that walking into the Rebel base with a reprogrammed Imperial enforcer droid was a good idea. 

It could be worse, Kay had said, they could’ve dismantled me down for parts and had you demoted. 

Intelligence agents don’t get demoted, Cassian had replied. We get burned. 

Oh. Kay had sounded like he was recalculating his formulas. Not much worse, then.

Since then, it became a kind of mantra Cassian had adopted. It could be worse. That was what he told himself when times became darker and harder. Things could be worse. He could be dead. It was always easier to feel a little better about your immediate situation when you weren’t irreversibly dead. 

After… well, everything, he had made the mistake of saying such around his team (his people, his network, his rogues). Then of course, inevitably, someone (Bodhi, Kay, Baze, Jyn) would start listing all the ways it could be worse. They could be stuck on a swamp planet. Bodhi could be missing another arm. Baze could lose all his guns, and the spare grenades. Jyn might miss the evening meal. The suggestions would become increasingly more and more ridiculous as time went by and they stretched their imaginations (which were truly considerable) to the limit.  It became a game, a slightly morbid one perhaps, but one that amused them at least, and allowed for them to gently tease Cassian out of his darker moods. Of course, someone would eventually trump them all with pointing out, We could all be dead on Scarif. And then game would end, at least until the next time someone said, It could be worse. 

Cassian was trying to remind himself of that now. Things could be worse. 

He and Jyn were on an uninhabited (hopefully) forest moon, true. They were laying low from the Imperials searching for them, that was nothing new.  Practically routine. It would be about seventy-two standard hours before their ship came into orbit and Kay and Bodhi could reach them. They had food and shelter and it wasn’t raining anything other than water outside their little cave. Frankly, Cassian had survived on less than that. 

If it wasn’t in a Force-be-damned cave, then he might’ve gone so far as to say he had definitely had worse. 

But it was a cave, and anything that wasn’t in the immediate city proper was outside of his experience and thus Cassian hated it. None of his training had covered wilderness survival. He had been placed solely in cities and military bases and maybe an outpost or two, if he was unlucky. He had never needed to learn to survive in anything other than outside the law and within the Empire, and that was hard enough by anyone’s standards. 

This was probably what kept Jyn from needling him too much about his (entirely deserved) grousing. When it was established that they were stuck here for the next seventy-two hours, Jyn had simply nodded, and said, “Time to find shelter.” In the time it took for Cassian to try to set up a transmitter and send Kay the needed coordinates, Jyn had found them a cave, wove a curtain of vines together to disguise the opening, found firewood and then headed out and returned with this particular moon’s species of fish. Somehow she’d gotten wet wood to catch flame and was now comfortably cooking what she’d neatly gutted and cleaned out of her catch. 

Cassian could only blink at her. 

Jyn raised her head, caught his bemused stare. “What?” she asked. “I learned with Saw. He was pretty empathetic about it, actually.” 

“I can see that,” Cassian said finally. “How did you get the fire to catch?”

“I keep a little bit of flint in my pack at all times,” Jyn replied. “Plus, I used your spare flimsy.”

Cassian’s head snapped up at that, only to see Jyn’s grin flash like silver in the gloom. “Very funny,” he said flatly, in much the same tone of voice he used when Kay was attempting to be comforting or encouraging. 

“I thought so,” Jyn replied comfortably, giving the fish a little tweak. “I only used my spare flimsy.” 

The fish was good. Better than good, though Cassian had privately wished he could have a little pepper, maybe some spices to season it. He had given Jyn some of his closely hoarded supply of coarse salt for the fish, a small packet he kept on his person at all times. Along with roasted in the embers an edible root Jyn had also found and brought back, it was, all in all, not the worst meal Cassian had ever had. 

“Are we starting the I’ve-had-it-worse game again?” Jyn asked as she smoored the fire. “You’ve got that look on.”

“I can think of other things to do,” Cassian said, mostly for the form of it.

“Mmm.” Jyn settled down comfortably. “Better string them out, if we’re here for the next seventy-two hours.”

“I have my datapad,” Cassian said, his eyes drifting closed. The sound of the rain was soothing, the smell of woodsmoke and fish comforting, and Jyn’s voice a pleasant hum in his ear. “I could get some coding done.”

A chuckle escaped Jyn. “With what signal?”

He opened his eyes then to give her a look, which just made her chuckle again. “City boy spy.”

“Civilized,” he grumbled, not with any real heat. 

“I can’t believe you never had any wilderness training,” Jyn said, stretching out in the heat of the fire like a lazy felid. “My next training for the Pathfinders is going to cover that.”

“Poor bastards,” Cassian murmured, just to hear Jyn’s chuckle again, a sound he valued more than the beep of a transmitting code, the whirr of a well-programmed droid, a whisper in the crowd, Fulcrum, freedom and rebellion一 “And I wasn’t stationed in the wilderness; there was no use for me there. I was more useful in the cities.” 

“Useful,” Jyn echoed, and then shook her head. “It was still short-sighted and ill-prepared. When you write the report for Draven, you can tell him I said so.”

“He’ll take it under due consideration,” Cassian replied and Jyn snorted. 

A companionable silence fell between them for a moment, until Jyn tilted her head back to glance outside. “We’re going to have to share body heat once nightfall comes.” Her profile was averted to him and her voice now dispassionate, which might explain why Cassian’s initial response was an absentminded “Hmm.” Then when what she said registered, he let out a startled, “Pardon?”

“Body heat,” Jyn repeated, now stubbornly facing away from him. Hiding a blush? The rich light of the fire made it hard to tell. “Plus the bedding. The ground’s not going to do your spine or leg any favors,” she added with a scowl in her voice. Any mention of his bad leg or back always made Jyn glare like she’d like to make the misbehaving tendons and bones work for him, or else.  “And I don’t know how much the temperature is going to drop between now and nightfall. Probably a few degrees, enough to make us uncomfortable. So it’s only practical.”

Cassian felt himself automatically move to wet his lips before checking that tic. Never mind she couldn’t see it.  “I’ll trust you then.”

Now Jyn did look at him, straight through the firelight and into his eyes. “I know.” The words vibrated with the seriousness of the statement, and how Jyn was going to follow through with it with every fiber of her being. The dim red gold light make her look gilded and shadowed, something wrought from gold and onyx and ivory. 

Cassian gave an involuntary head shake. This what came of being in caves. They stripped away all your common sense. 

*

The night came on, and Jyn’s prediction about the temperature came true. It was more than enough to make them uncomfortable and to break out the temperature conserving blankets. Jyn had layered their bedding as much as she could and rolled up their jackets to use as blankets and pillows, as needed. One thing they both knew all too well in this life of theirs was to sleep whenever it was offered to them. Jyn slept facing the fire, and Cassian’s back to the right wall of the cave so that they both faced the entrance. He ran warmer than Jyn, who always seemed to be a degree or two cooler than everyone else. There was some awkward fumblingーwhere to put his arm, where she could rest her head. But they managed it. Cassian could smell the woodsmoke clinging to her hair, the weave of her scarf under his head. He kept himself as still as possible behind her, resting on his good hip. 

It didn’t feel like his life, this part, this small island of quiet. His life was shadows and hard edges and smog filled skylines. It wasn’t the smell of rain and the warmth of a fire on his face and Jyn resting on his arm. 

This wasn’t his life. It was just a respite. 

*           

Cassian woke slowly, only to find that the fire must’ve died down at some point during the night. That would be the only plausible reason for why Jyn was currently so thoroughly entangled with him that he couldn’t tell his arms and legs from hers. 

It was either still dark or almost dawn. That strange, unreal, dreamlike time when the edges of the world were misty and indistinct. It could be worse, he tried to tell himself, registering Jyn’s warmth and her slow, steady breathing. The way her cheek rested on his arm. How relaxed and soft she was in sleep, such a contrast to her waking self.  Things could definitely be worse一

Jyn let out a sigh, a little sleepy sound of pure contentment, snuggled back into him, her rear fit so snugly against his hips that he almost choked. 

He did not want to think about any other time Jyn might make that noise. He absolutely did not want to imagine what other circumstances could possibly arise一

Shut up, Cassian told himself only somewhat frantically. Just shut. Up. He wasn’t some over eager teen falling all over himself over a member of the opposite sex--

Jyn rolled over in his arms, somehow one leg sliding between his, blowing all of Cassian’s rational thought to pieces. Another soft sigh, warm breath brushing against his neck, her left leg slung over his hips一who knew Jyn was a cuddler? Not him. He hadn’t even given himself permission to imagine what Jyn was like when she was asleep一

This is a dream, Cassian thought. It was arguably the worst (best) dream he’d had in awhile, so he might as well enjoy it while it lasted, and hoard the memory for the dark nights and shadowed days. 

Jyn sleeping peacefully in his arms, soft sighs in his ear, warmth against his skin, the sound of rain and a quiet place untouched by anything bad or hard and dark一 

Another sleepy sound, almost like a moan as she tried to get comfortable against him, tugging his arm to better adjust it for her head… 

Don’t let me wake up, Cassian thought. Please, ancestors, the Force, whoever is running this forsaken galaxy, don’t let me wake up. Let me keep this, I have asked for so little for all my life, and this isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, it’s probably the best, please let me keep it… 

Jyn sighed against his neck, shifted slowly and languorously, her lashes falling and rising against his skin. “Cass…?” her voice was a low, husky rasp, one that made his blood run hot and fierce and what time was it even? Was this still a dream somehow? 

In the dim light, he could see Jyn waking herself up, getting her bearings again. Her eyes flicked down to take in their entwined limbs and then back up to his face. Unconsciously his arms tightened around her, and then loosened again immediately. If she didn’t want to be there, then he wasn’t going to keep her there, he would never do anything against her express wishes if he could possibly help it.

“Cass,” she repeated in a whisper. If she wasn’t comfortable in this clench, there was no sign of it in her voice. But her eyes were watchful. “How’s your back?”

“I think it’s fine,” he whispered back. It felt too early to speak. 

Jyn was quiet for a second or two, her fingers flexing against him.  “You need to… do you have to go?” he asked still in a whisper. 

“No,” she whispered back. “Do you?”

Never, ever, they could kill me here and I would die content, only you’d never allow that一

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

They lay there in the dim, the world a very great distance away. 

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” Jyn said softly. “We can just stay here… just for a little while.”

“Yes,” Cassian agreed. This was, after all, a very nice dream. “Let’s just stay here.”

The corners of her mouth lifted into a smile, a smile Cassian had once thought he would die to earn, and maybe still would. 

“You make for a very good pillow,” she murmured, her body utterly relaxed along the length of his. “Best sleep I’ve had in awhile.”

Cassian was silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Me too,” he said back, almost too low to hear. But she heard it. Of course she did.   

[michellehasmusings]

Here I sit on day 72 of the COVID-19 pandemic overtaking our lives. It’s still jarring and surreal to me to see everyone in masks, but it’s more upsetting seeing people without them. 100,000 Americans have died, and the virus rages on. As of today there is no end in sight and we kind of live day-by-day. Things are reopening everywhere in spite of those facts, and it’s not going to end well. It’s already unfathomably horrific, mostly because of the complete failure of the federal government under Donald Trump.

Even in times of darkness, light can be found. I look for it each day, because it’s all I know how to do to survive with this fear and death and disease. Find your light. For me, something very profound happened on Friday. For it to make sense in the present, I have to go back to the past.

In 1989, when I was 16 years old, a 29 year old woman named Victoria Cushman was murdered in my city. She was brutally killed in her own home; she had been beaten to death. A letter she had written was found at the scene. It was addressed to a man she had been having a brief affair with, and who she was struggling to move on from when he broke it off. His name was Jeffrey Scott Hornoff. He was a local cop she had gotten to know when he came into her place of employment relating to his duties on the police dive team. The affair burned hot and fast and then it was over. He was married and had a baby at home. There was never any hope for Vicky and Scott, but she couldn’t let him go. The letter she had written, but was never sent, expressed how difficult it had been for her to try to move on. This looked bad circumstantially to law enforcement. When they questioned Scott, he initially denied the affair. His alibi for that night left an hour unaccounted for. On its face, it looked suspicious. Scott was eventually charged with her murder and convicted. He received a life sentence. There was never a single piece of evidence that tied him directly to the crime.

I remember at the time thinking he must’ve done it. He was a police officer. Surely they would go above and beyond to prove the innocence of one of their own if he didn’t do it, right? Except he didn’t do it. He was innocent. Todd Barry, an on/off boyfriend of Vicky’s, walked into a police department well over 6 years into Scott’s life sentence and confessed. The guilt of living with what he had done and the knowledge that an innocent man was being punished for his crime became too much for his conscience. The news hit like a shockwave.

It was November of 2002. Scott had been living with this nightmare for 13 years, incarcerated for half of that time, for something he had nothing to do with. Before this, I had been more naive and pretty ignorant to the facts about wrongful imprisonment. I was horrified to discover that this wasn’t a fluke. There are thousands of innocent people behind bars even as I type. This immediately changed my views. I could no longer fool myself into believing that everyone in jails are guilty. It was a really life-changing moment. I had been raised in a strict, Conservative family. Law and order. What happened to Scott was one of many giant cracks in the worldview I had been raised to believe in. I wondered how he would survive the trauma, how he would carry on on the outside now with the justified anger and distrust he must be carrying. It kept me up at night thinking.

Two weeks later, my father died suddenly at work. He was only 58. This completely rocked my world. He was my rock. He was my protector. He was my daddy who loved me and hugged me and everything was okay because he was here. Then he was gone in an instant. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

My aunt came over the next morning and gave me an angel pin, which I put right on my coat. In the haze of grief, my mom and I had to go shopping for things we needed for the services. I vividly recall walking around the store and looking at everyone else going about life as usual. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs and ask them how they can just carry on when the world had just ended. Then I turned around and found myself face-to-face with Scott Hornoff.

I instantly recognized him, and I knew he had only been released a couple weeks earlier. Almost immediately, my feeling of empathy for him overtook my own grief and I forgot for a moment the terrible pain I was in. He appeared to be overwhelmed, and I completely understood why and at that lonely, sad moment in time I felt like someone else was sharing my grief; separately, but together in that shared space. I felt compelled to let him know he wasn’t alone. I looked down at the angel pin on my shoulder, and everything in me wanted to take it off and give it to him. Having struggled with anxiety for years already by that point, I recognized that look in his eyes. I tried to put myself in his shoes and wondered how I might feel after everything he had just been through and being thrust back out into the world without any preparation. I decided that even though I might feel better by giving him the angel pin, that it wasn’t about me. Maybe he was hoping nobody noticed him. Maybe he felt stared at and judged. Maybe the noise and the busy world was scary. Maybe I should just send him some positive energy from where I stood and wish the best for him in this life. So that is what I did.

Over the years I have thought of him occasionally. I have hoped for his happiness and success. I have sometimes regretted not giving him that pin. I have wondered if maybe it would’ve helped to know someone that he didn’t even know cared.

Not long ago on twitter, I tweeted something about us being on lockdown due to the virus. Someone commented saying, “I’ve been on lockdown. This isn’t so bad.” It was such an unusual comment that it made me look at the name of the tweeter. You know who it was, right? That’s right. Scott Hornoff. What were the odds of this??? I noticed he was following me and I told him I knew who he was. I thought he followed me because I was local to him, but that turned out to be a complete coincidence. He had seen a tweet of mine and followed me randomly. This felt like the universe telling me to share with him that story that I had never forgotten about our paths crossing on the day I needed it most. He was really touched by that gesture I wanted to make for him so many years before. We got to be friends. This past Friday he told me he would be at a store that happens to be two streets away from where I was. We decided to say hi in person in the parking lot. It was such a profound moment for me that I felt tears welling up in my eyes, which I was hiding behind my giant Jackie O. sunglasses. He told me he had something to give me. It was a little gold pin of a DNA strand that supports exonerees. It is the same size as the angel pin. I will treasure it always, along with my new friend, Scott.

Please support The Innocence Project. They do amazing advocacy and legal work for the wrongfully imprisoned. They deserve their freedom and our support. https://www.innocenceproject.org

To read more about Scott’s story, check this link:

https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190312/wrongfully-imprisoned-hornoff-appeals-to-lawmakers-to-compensate-ris-exonerees

[mutantsrisingrpg]

Congratulations DYLAN! You’ve been accepted as NEPTUNE.

Dylan, I was so excited to see you apply for a second character and even more excited to see you apply for Neptune! The cosmic metaphor that you weaved throughout the entire app is something that I absolutely loved. Making Avery be the second born and comparing it to leftover cosmic energy had me howling! I also loved that you wrote about how special twins are when it comes to mutants - their powers being the yin to the others yang was especially something that stood out to me. I’m so, so excited to see you bring Avery to life! 

Welcome to Mutants Rising! Please read the checklist and submit your account within 24 hours.

Out of Character Information:

NAME/ALIAS: Dylan

PRONOUNS: He/Him

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL: GMT. 6/7 Days

In Character Information:

DESIRED ROLE: Avery O’Brien aka Neptune

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Male, He/Him

DETAILS & ANALYSIS:

Avery can take you by surprise. At first you might just see this edgy kid walking down the street, fists clenched and ready to throw them at the first person to give them a skew look. With a packet of Marlboro in his back pocket and tongue primed with his general response, ‘fuck off’, you just simply wouldn’t expect Megan the Stallion to be blasting through his earphones as he walked.

Sure, Avery definitely knew how to get himself into trouble and he had picked up a few bad habits along the way but Avery would probably be the kindest and most loyal friend you could make. He’d often babysit his neighbors kids and he genuinely enjoyed it. His aesthetic was mostly a facade, tough and ready to rumble when he’d definitely prefer to avoid a fight if possible.

He might be young, but don’t underestimate him. He’s been on the street long enough to know how things work and life has definitely taught him how to look out for himself and his sister. He’s pulled off countless jobs since their parents kicked them out and has managed to keep his hands as clean as they could be. So what gives Avery the edge? He’s cunning and smart, he knows how to work angles and get what he wants, one way or another.

As for Avery’s powers, he doesn’t really understand them, and nor does the rest of the world, to be honest. He’s read multiple essays and watched countless videos on dark matter and energy and what that meant exactly. When he uses his powers, it’s as if he can feel each individual molecule of something, measuring up its mass. He can then change how gravity affects the object, making it ‘heavier’ or ‘lighter’. He’s also experimented with dark energy blasts which seem to be an invisible force that pushes everything out of its way and constantly expands if he doesn’t control it. Honestly, his powers frighten him, as does the unknown to all humans. What really gets to him is that if Dark Energy is what causes the universe to keep expanding, should he really be playing around with that shit?

BIO:

TW: Homophobia

Penelope was born first and then Avery, like the leftover cosmic energy when a star is born. The two were inseparable and doing so would bring about the same results as splitting an atom, metaphorically. As they grew older, they spaced apart but were still always in each other’s orbits, one revolving their life around the other and visa versa. As far as Avery could remember, his early childhood was a good one, or maybe he was just far too young to really see how his family life really was. He went to school, worked hard and would come home only to spend the rest of his free time with Penelope.

As he got older, Avery was always testing his boundaries. How far could he push his luck with his parents, peers, teachers, and even law enforcement. He hung around with the wrong crowd and got pulled into things he never originally wanted to do. It was nothing serious until he was involved in the destruction of a school bus. Nobody could explain how the bus had been crushed nor who had been involved. It happened just after summer break, Avery and a group of his friends had snuck onto school campus that night just to mess around and smoke some weed. Avery was mainly there for Mitch Evans, Avery’s love interest at the time.

The night progressed and the group ended up hanging out in a school bus. The group whittled down to just 4 kids when Avery finally gained the courage to make a move on Mitch. He had tried to kiss the other and Mitch’s reaction was violent and resulted in Mitch punching Avery in the face and shoving him out of the bus. The flurry of embarrassment and heartbreak felt as if it was crushing his soul and before he knew it, the bus started to creak as the metal began to indent. The group inside had mostly been able to get out untouched, everyone except Mitch, who’s leg got stuck under a chair whilst the bus was imploding. After managing to free Mitch from the bus and getting him to the nearest hospital, the group vowed never to mention what had happened out of fear that whatever crushed the bus would follow them. Little did they know that Avery was the one that had crushed the bus and the only other person to ever know this would be Penelope. That was also the last time that Avery ever spoke to Mitch Evans.

That was just the beginning of weird events that would follow the O’Brien twins. Their father seemed to end every day with a bottle of whiskey and their mother seemed to become more unhinged every day. Avery pushed through, working hard at school, knowing that getting into college would be his escape. Having Penelope was also a blessing, having someone he could trust and open up too was a privilege he knew not many had.

Half-way through high school was when it all changed. Their parents had officially rejected them and kicked them out of the house. They had nowhere to go and started crashing on their friend’s couches. Soon Avery was given the opportunity to work a job with one of his friend’s older brothers and he took it. They robbed a yacht and got away with a bag full of expensive jewelry and cash from the on-board bar. It took a couple of weeks before the money was laundered, but Avery got his cut and a reputation. He was asked to do a couple of more jobs and started learning the ropes. It was his senior year when he pulled off his own job. He put most of his money into a savings account to buy a place for him and his sister. He finished school and was given a bursary to study engineering at a local college.

Now, at the age of 24 he is still studying engineering and lives in a decent apartment with his sister. He also works as an intern at a local high-end engineering firm that specialises in space technology. At night he works as a bartender which is mostly a cover and is where he gets approached by most of his clients to pull off jobs for them for a percentage of the cut. There’s been a change in the winds recently though and whispers of new and powerful mutant gangs coming to Miami has him watching his back.

His life is extremely busy so he’s constantly living in the now. If you stopped him and asked him what his goals were, he’d default to saying something about making sure that Penelope is safe, not that she needs his protection, but he barely thinks about what he wants these days. That’s why everyone in his life that has a ‘more than friends’ status seems to come and go, Avery doesn’t think about what he wants and always puts others first before himself, stretching himself as thinly as possible which often leaves his partners feeling neglected or toyed with.

EXPANDED CONNECTIONS:

Penelope O’Brien. It’s said that twins have some sort of special connection, and if that were true for humans, it was definitely true for mutants, especially if their powers were the yin to the other’s yang. Penelope was like the birth of a brand new star whilst Avery was the death of one. They were each other’s best friends from the second they were born. Not only was Penelope always there for him, she was the only one he confided in after the school bus incident. They spent countless nights staying up until sunrise chatting about boys and girls, school, life goals, games and so much more! Penelope was the first person Avery spoke to about his powers and he was so happy that he wasn’t the only twin with ‘gifts’. Being able to support each other was so much easier since they shared a secret. If anything weird would happen they’d race to the other and tell them, learning about each other’s powers together. Penelope wasn’t just his twin sister, they were his best friend too! Considering that Avery struggled to keep love around, this meant a lot to him. He couldn’t imagine what his life would be like without her and that’s why he’d die for her. He’d rather not be alive than live a life without her. This is where Avery’s loyalty turned fierce and where he would definitely cross a line if need be. In a sense, Penelope was Avery’s weakness in more than one way, emotionally and physically. He was sure that if there was anyone that could match his powers it would be Penelope and to what extent, he had no idea and he hoped that he’d never have to find out.

EXTRA:

Oh boy oh boy. I MEAN. What shouldn’t I put here?

I’m thinking that his reputation might get one of the groups to approach him? Maybe more than one group gets him to work for them as a freelancer?

Honestly I’m probably going to make a lot of content for Avery throughout the next week purely because I have so much muse for him, but I also kinda wanted to get this app in and this doesn’t influence decisions so… but here’s a link to the Pinterest board:

https://pin.it/3FkPGew

I might also make a mock-blog? And on there I’ll have graphics and headcanons? IDK. I’ll send it in if I do.

ANYTHING ELSE: Nope! All good! I honestly love this RP so much and I’m waaaaaay too invested for my own good.

[eights-of-spades]

Supply and Demand 12/31

It was not entirely clear what Taji Tumet sold out here, except she did it without having to pay into the licensing structure of the Eorzean Alliance and without fear of inspection by Idyllshire's non-existant law enforcement. Nothing looked to be of much value at first glance; the sacks had the texture of sand when poked, and a half-open crate bearing the stamp of 'ARUN ALCHEMICAL' only showed a top layer of rocks. The rest was just scrap lumber. The Xaela had just finished a loud and frankly nonsensical conversation with a goblin, who was reassuring her that windsails would be available the end of the next span, and that no, he did not want to buy dirtsponges. "But these mushrooms are very good," Taji was insisting, palms flat against the counter, leaning over it and flashing plenty of teeth at the smaller creature. "Very fresh. You like VEGETABLES don't you."

Eight was ‘blending’. Also known as overdressing for any occasion. His favorite pastime that didn’t include drinking or stealing things. He was incognito as your run of the mill adventurer/craftsman. The miqo’te sauntered up to Taji’s counter, resting his elbow on the stall’s top as he grinned in a way that clearly said he was up to no good. Looking between Taji and the goblin she was trying to pawn some mushrooms to. The goblin and Taji. Back and forth. “Best dirt sponges you’ll find outside the Shroud. Have you ever had one? They’ll make your braincage explode with flavor.” He declared, making the mind-blown gesture with the hand he wasn’t currently propped up. “I came here all the way from Southern Thanalan just to buy them. Good thing you don’t want them now I can have them all to myself.”

Taji visibly brightened at Eight's appearance, flashing him an appreciative lopsided grin that was indistinguishable from any other threat display but for the excited twitching of her feathered tail. "Gobbies already have many eatplants..." The creature protested in between audibly ragged puffs through its mask. It seemed somewhat impressed to be addressed directly by such a fine specimen of engineering, though - Eight could have easily passed for any of the magitek technicians that came to the area to assist the goblins restore Sharlayan technology. "...Did this one really fly all the way from sand castle to buy these?”

“...Yeah, did you?" Taji asked him, curiously, fingers splayed over the side of her mouth to render the question inaudible to her hapless customer. She banged her fist against the table and gestured to the withered purple fungi, "And these will flavor your eatplants. Buy them. Buy them. Three hundred gil. Buy them. I'm supporting your business, you should support mine! Else I will ask this fine gentleman where he docks his airship."

Ma’sae remained leaning rakishly against the counter, plainly enjoying the spotlight as he seemed to have both Taji and the gobbie eating up his performance. He picked up one of the mushrooms tossing it up into the air before catching it and turning his hand over to show the tiny beastman. “Of course! The shroud doesn’t do business with outsiders like you and me, friend!” He declared to the Goblin. “But this fine lady has product for all! Best taste, best prices. Fairest trades. Now while I said I was going to buy them all myself, I would feel terrible if I sent you off without even a few after telling you how great they are. Too cruel, too cruel.” He declared as he set the mushroom down on the counter in front of the prospective buyer. “Go on, get what you need for you and your loved ones. They’ll thank you. I’ll buy after you.”

The goblin had begun babbling to itself as it set a money pouch on the counter and pushed it towards the dark-scaled purveyor without committing to letting go of it - plainly nervous at Taji's cheerful threats to revoke her business. Ma'sae's reassuring pitch had it looking at the basket in a new light - and so the jinglyshine was exchanged, and the goblin waddled off happily with a few additions to its stew. >

"Thanks for your participation in the food chain!" Taji called out after it, swiping the money pouch before Eight could get to it and tossing it up in the air. She tracked its motion up in the air with the angle of her shoulders, and it landed in her hood. She turned to the other Keeper and beamed at him. "Two hundred and ninety-eight gil," she informed him. "Family discount! Especially if you haven't bought Starlight gifts, yet? Lux loves reminders from the Shroud!"

Eight snorted and picked up one of the mushrooms, wiping some of the dirt off of it before he took a bite. He immediately made a face and set the bitten mushroom back down on the basket where he had retrieved it from. “Nope. I still hate mushrooms.” He declared cheerfully. “Nah, not gonna buy any but you’re welcome for the extra sales. ANOTHER BUT. I will in the future. How do you feel about custom orders.”

Taji paused at the question, tracking the motion of the mushroom he had just put back. Her grin lessed by several degrees; her eyebrows settled unevenly over the scandalized squint of her eyes. "You think you can just come to my place of business and bite my wares? Do I come to your warehouse and randomly drink out of your potion bottles and fill it up with water to disguise what I've done?!" She did. Taji just reached over to yank the offending item out of the basket and finish the job, finally answering around a mouthful of bitter fungus. "What kind of order? I didn't think you were interested in my line of business, but--" She swallowed. "You wouldn't be the most unlikely customer I've had."

Eight grinned and waggled his thick brows as he was scolded. It was just a stupid mushroom. “Listen, what I’m bringing here is gonna be worth more than an entire turn’s worth of fungus.” He promised as he leaned further onto the counter to lower his voice. “What’s a mage’s prize possession. The thing they value more than even their stacks of books, stuffy robes and fancy sticks.”

Taji gave him a dubious look, finishing the rest of the mushroom in a series of thoughtful and unladylike bites as she considered the riddle. 'Hats' seemed like the right answer, and she mimed flicking up the brim of some feathered monstrosity she currently wasn't wearing. "Their heart," she said instead. "Even if they have nothing else, they've still got one last thing to barter away."

“Great, that’s good.” He declared, pointing a finger gun at Taji as though to indicate she’d shot the target dead-on. “But I can’t sell them an extra heart for double the dubious decisions. But what’s almost as good as an extra heart…” He began, then decided maybe this wasn’t the best game to play with Taji. She had an artist’s spirit and a bard’s mind. She’d come up with something from way out in the far fields and he’d spend all day dragging her back. “Soul crystals.” He answered for her. “Crystalized knowledge and intuition to let them unlock unknown potentials.”

Taji slammed her hand down on the table, sending the entire thing shuddering - but it had been heavily reinforced by steel to withstand even the most energetic of xaelic monk gestures. "Aetheric fungi," she declared, apparently agreeing with him. This was the good thing about Idyllshire - they could talk about such things out in the open without fear of having it carry to the wrong set of ears. "The fastest path to reincarnation. Yeah. As good as selling an extra heart. Or charging them for removing theirs and hiding it away somewhere." She propped her elbows on the table, plainly intrigued. "...You're bringing me some? Are you -- err." Eight didn't actually read the reports, and Taji wasn't convinced Jyhun was honest about what they'd recovered from the corpse.

Eight lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Here’s the problem. Lots of people want them, almost nobody has them.” He explained plucking a mushroom and setting it down on the countertop. Then a few carrots as well. “One mushroom for all these carrots. Doesn’t work. Only one gets it. Not a huge problem because mushrooms can be grown.” He dropped a few more onto the counter as well. Mostly just making a mess now rather than actually illustrating anything useful. “Now what’s say we could grow soulstones.”

@exmhachina

[soy-em]

day 6: undercover models Part 2

Hello! Sorry for the late submission again, but I hope you enjoy it! I’ll be sending in the third part of the fic later for the last day of WLW :D

**************

​"I still can’t believe I got stuck with ‘Chad,“ Sam complains as they’re on their way to 

Armel’s

 modeling studio a couple of days later. 

The turnaround on them being hired by Armel’s for such an apparently competitive catalog shoot is a lot quicker than Dean initially assumed it would be and while he likes to think that it’s because the casting department took one look at him and decided he was the most handsome son of a bitch they’ve even had the privilege to look at (and Sam’s okay too, he generously allows), he knows that it’s most likely because Bobby’s modeling agency pal was  able to spin some kind of bullshit about their non-existent modeling experience when they contacted the studio. It probably didn’t hurt that they were left short handed and scrambling due to the fact that several of their models had either been hospitalized or, you know, died. Things weren’t exactly shaking out too well for them. 

"You’re the one who let me fill out the applications,” Dean points out with a smirk, ignoring the way Sam’s eyes narrow at him. “And technically, your full name is Chadwick Hilton. You just prefer to go by Chad.” Dean himself had gone for the name Theodore Vanderbilt, claiming that it’s just the right kind of name for a snooty model. Sam claims that it’s more like the kind of name that a rich guy who gets caught embezzling from his company so he can pay off the mothers of his many illegitimate children would have. There’s a reason why Dean occasionally likes to screw with his brother. 

“You couldn’t have picked literally anything else?" 

"Dude, with that mop of hair and your collection of polo shirts, you’re totally a Chad. Didn’t you even used to be in a fraternity?" 

"I have maybe fourpolos,” Sam corrects with a sour expression on his face. “…and I only pledged the fraternity for like two days. I seriously regret telling you about that." 

"You should.” Dean laughs at him and takes another bite of the breakfast burrito he’s trying to finish stuffing into his face before they arrive at the studio. He even decided to forgo ordering it with extra bacon this time; gotta stay model thin, after all. 

Sam continues to glare at him and quietly reaches over to hit the eject button on the Metallica tape that’s blaring in the car, just out of sheer pettiness and Dean berates him for it  through a mouthful of  scrambled eggs and tortilla. 

Just business as usual. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dean never thought he could ever be this unhappy while in a studio filled with some of the hottest women that New York had to offer, but it turns out that being a catalog model is really fucking boring half of the time and just plain irritating the other half. He’s currently being shoved into a hair and makeup chair for the third time that day and forces himself to stay still as the stylist, a mousy woman named Sophie, fusses over him and chastises him because he apparently doesn’t use the right kind of shampoo for his hair type. He didn’t even know there was a wrong kind of shampoo for him to use.  Who does she think he is, Sam?

Speaking of which, if there’s one thing he can be grateful for, it’s the fact that Sam’s getting it even worse right now than he is. The guy has not one but two people surrounding him and putting various products in his hair and arguing over how it should be styled. Judging by the way that Sam is digging his fingers into the armrest of his chair, he’s clearly struggling not to jump out of it. Dean takes some comfort in the fact that they’re mutually suffering. 

Sophie is actually a fairly pleasant and chatty woman  when she isn’t berating him about his hair or trying to coerce him into adding some seventy dollar face moisturizer to his skin-care regimen (he can’t imagine she would take it well if he mentions the fact that he doesn’t even have one to begin with), and Dean feels like he’s had his first stroke of luck all day when he realizes that Sophie is also a huge gossip. On the occasions when they’re not impersonating law enforcement, it’s a bit more difficult for them to ask questions related to the case in a way that’s not overly invasive, so gossips are generally their bread and butter since it doesn’t take very much at all to grease the wheels. 

For the most part, Sophie spends the better part of half an hour giving Dean every salacious detail about the catalog shoot  so far, although it mostly has to do with which models are fucking each other (all of them) and which ones are doing drugs between photo sessions (a lot of them). When she leans down to whisper in a conspiratorial tone about the fact that she was sure that at least a couple of the recent hospitalizations were due to the said drug consumption, Dean jumps on the chance to try and wheedle some information out of her about Sophie before she breezes on to another topic. 

“That’s horrible. Didn’t a model even die a few days ago? I thought I heard people here talking about it earlier in the cafeteria,” Dean says, playing dumb. He isn’t actually sure what people in the cafeteria were doing earlier. It sure as Hell wasn’t eating, he knew that much. 

Sophie is standing behind him, but when Dean looks at the mirror, he can see her expression fall a little. “Oh,” she says sadly, “that was Laura. It’s hard to believe that she was sitting in my chair just a few days ago. They said that her heart just gave out suddenly, poor girl." 

"That’s so crazy,” Dean says, schooling his face in a disbelieving expression. “How does something like that even happen?”

Sophie glances around as if making sure that no one else is able to hear her. “If you ask me, Laura was practically worked to death,” she says lowly. “The director of the shoot insists on doing an insane number of pieces each day because he wants the catalog to be absolutely perfect. A lot of people have been looking a bit worn down because of it, but Laura didn’t seem like she was dealing with with the stress well. She was such a sweet girl…" 

*************

After a few more hours of being posed like a doll and getting yelled at whenever he fails to wear the right expression on his face for whatever product or clothing he’s supposed to be showing off (how the Hell is he supposed look "reserved and excited at the same time” about a pair of one thousand dollar cuff links? ) he’s beginning to understand how someone could be worked to death on a modeling shoot. Nothing ever seems to be quite good enough for the photographers, especially not to the director, Renaldo Toscani. With his dark, well groomed beard and immaculate clothing, he would probably be considered a handsome man to most but Dean can’t get past the smug look on his face and the fact that he doesn’t seem to have any sense of decency. To Dean’s best estimate, the man has caused at least three models to break down in tears on set so far that day due to how gruelingly he runs the shoot. Dean’s pretty sure he isn’t going to cry, but he’s definitely having a hard time not hauling off and punching the douchebag right in his face. 

Weirdly enough, for someone who can be so awkward, Sam actually appears to be thriving on the set pretty well and seems to be correctly interpreting whatever bizarre directives are yelled at him ​because he doesn’t get criticized nearly as much as Dean. Right now, they have Sam staring sultrily at the camera while wearing low slung jeans and a partly open button down shirt as a fan points at him and blows through his ridiculous hair. The scene should be goofy and mock-worthy but instead, Dean has to admit that Sam makes it work. Really work, in fact, and the thought is one that Dean tries desperately not to think too closely about. Apparently, Toscani agrees with him because it might be the first time that Dean’s heard the man actually praise someone on set, and he can hear him and that dumb (probably fake) Italian accent of his from across the room go on and on about how Sam’s apparently the only one on set that day who’s capable of properly executing his impeccable vision for the shoot and blah, blah, blah. 

Normally, he would be amused by the embarrassed expression on Sam’s face, but the way that Toscani stands a little too close and keeps his hand clasped on Sam’s shoulder the entire time raises Dean’s hackles, and he finds himself fighting the urge to to go over there and make the guy back the hell off. Instead, he lets himself get dragged away from his violent imaginings by another photographer so he can wear a pair of artfully torn, expensive as hell jeans while looking “bold, but also very mysterious." 

Fucking modeling. 

By the end of the day, all Dean wants to do is find Sam and go back to the motel so they can call it a night. He’s exhausted, hungry, and a little pissed off that he’s made hardly any progression in the case at all, aside from finding out that Toscani is an asshole. But at this point it’s impossible to tell whether he’s the one literally sucking the life out of people or if he’s just metaphorically doing so by treating all of the models like trash. 

Well, he thinks as he finally finds Sam standing in the lobby with a strained smile on his face as Toscani says something to him, maybe not all of the models. 

”–very nice of you to offer, but I actually have plans with someone tonight,“ he hears Sam say when he manages to get a little closer. To anyone else, the words would sound polite, but Dean knows Sam well enough to hear the tension beneath them. 

The sleazy grin on Toscani’s face falters for just a second before he plasters it back on and leans in more closely, nearly backing Sam into the wall they were standing in front of. "Are you sure?,” he needles, “I’d love the opportunity to take an exquisite and hard-working young man such as yourself out to dinner so I can give you some…suggestions about all the ways in which you can advance your career. Who could you have plans with that would be more important than that?”

Dean isn’t entirely sure what suggestions someone like Toscani wants to give Sam that would advance his (non-existent) modeling career, but he’s pretty sure he can take a wild guess, and the picture that his imagination paints has him seeing red. As he stomps towards the pair, Sam finally spots him and Dean can see relief flash across his face for a second as he realizes that he’s about to be extracted from his awkward encounter. 

“Me,” he says, answering the question for Sam. “And we’re nearly late, so we should probably be heading out soon, S– Chad.” He tries to aim for a tone that doesn’t sound as openly hostile as he feels (getting fired from the studio by the shoot’s director on the first day wouldn’t exactly be conducive towards solving their case). Judging by the sneer on Toscani’s face, he isn’t quite sure that he succeeds in doing so. 

“I see,” he says to Dean coldly before turning his attentions back towards Sam. “Well, if you ever change your mind, my offer remains. I’m sure we’ll be able to find time for it sooner or later." 

Not if Dean has anything to say about it. 

********************

"Christ, that guy really pisses me off,” Dean complains when they’re driving back to the motel. “He thinks he can just do whatever the hell he wants." 

Or whoever, apparently. 

"Yeah, he’s pretty…intense,” Sam admits. 

“Intense? He looked like he wanted to freakin’ devour you or something." 

"I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration." 

"Whatever you say, Sammy,” Dean says incredulously. “Look, I’m just saying that if this guy ever tries to lure you to a windowless van so he can conduct a 'private photo shoot,’ then you should walk the other way." 

Sam’s face turns an interesting shade of red and he suddenly finds picking lent off of his jeans to be particularly fascinating.  

"Did you make any headway on the case?” he asks, clearly trying to change the subject as quickly as possible, and Dean lets him. 

Dean grunts. “Not much. Mostly just things we already knew in the first place: Laura was well liked on set, didn’t seem to be caught up in drugs or anything like that like some of the other models, and she had been looking noticeably worn down before she died. What about you?" 

"I didn’t have much luck either. I managed to talk to a couple of models who were friends with some of the people who were hospitalized but, as far as I know, they don’t seem to have much of a connection with each other aside from the fact that they were all working for the same studio,” Sam explains, shaking his head ruefully. “As far as I could tell, they all seemed tended to mostly work with different photographers and weren’t even in any of the same shots. Maybe if we could just find a solid link between them…" 

"I guess we’ll just have to try even harder tomorrow then,” Dean says, not remotely looking forward to going back to the studio. 

“Right." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things are still creeping along the next afternoon and Dean groans he sees a tall, blonde woman wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard making a beeline towards him. That’s never good. 

"You,” she says, pointing at him as if Dean doesn’t understand what the word 'you’ implies. “Are you between pieces right now?" 

"Uh…yeah?” He has the sinking feeling that whatever she’s about to ask him to do will involve him doing work that isn’t already on his schedule for that day and he’s pretty sure that she isn’t about to take 'no’ for an answer.

“Great,” she says, scribbling something on her clipboard. “We need someone to shoot a cologne ad and you look like you’ll complement the other actor we’ve already got on the set pretty well. Get to wardrobe and be at Stage C in twenty.” Before Dean can have a chance to respond, the woman turns on her heel and walks away, clearly not needing Dean’s input on the matter. 

He grumbles all the down to wardrobe and throws on the silver pinstriped black suit they give him with little gusto, although when he admires himself in the floor length mirror, he has to admit that he looks damn fine in it. He’s not looking forward to doing a shoot with another person in it though; he’s done several over the past two days and they always seem to be the most awkward. 

When he gets to the stage and sees his brother waiting on it (wearing a similar suit, except with an inverted color scheme, that makes his already ridiculous legs look even longer and hugs his body in all the right places), he realizes that the shoot is either going to be  a lot less awkward than he anticipated since it’s a familiar person or infinitely more, depending on the positions they’re about to be finagled into. Cologne ads are usually entire platonic, aren’t they?

“What’s the name of this cologne again?” He asks a nearby assistant before she can bustle past him to go to another stage.

“Let’s see,” she says, flipping through the pages on her clipboard. “Ah, right, this one’s called Forbidden Desire.”

Of course it is. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Are you sure we need to stand so close together?” Dean asks, looking imploringly at their photographer. For the shot, he’s supposed to be pressing Sam up against the wall with one hand grasping his suit jacket and pulling him forward slightly while the other hand is tangled in his hair, their faces tilted closely towards each other to suggest that they’re about to kiss. But for obvious reasons, Dean’s having some trouble actually doing it, and his movements are stiff as he makes only the barest physical contact with Sam. 

The photographer sighs dramatically. “Theodore, my dear, it’s important to me that you understand that we’re trying to sell a product called Forbidden Desire, not Awkward Encounter With a Former College Roommate Who Hasn’t Been Seen in Ten Years. We’re looking for something a bit…provocative. Are you saying that you can’t muster enough passion for poor Chad over there?" 

He might be starting to muster up too much of it is the problem. 

Knowing that there doesn’t seem to be a way out of it, he inches a bit closer to Sam but still stands at as much of distances that he thinks he could possibly get away with. He can tell that Sam is as uncomfortable as he is, and neither of them can meet each other’s eyes. 

"Oh God’s sake,” he hears off stage in an accented voice that he, unfortunately, immediately recognizes. “Are you truly so incompetent?”

When he gets on the stage, he moves Dean bodily away from Sam and takes the position he was in. “I would be happy to provide a demonstration that you can follow so that you can cease wasting the studio’s time with your dithering." 

Yeah, Dean’s completely sure that it isn’t at all because he wants to get up close and personal with Sam like a creep. Right. 

Toscani presses himself against Sam’s body, manhandling him into position as he does so, and Dean can see that Sam is biting his lip and clenching his fists at his side, probably trying to resist letting his temper get the best of him; Dean, for one, would love to see him deck Toscani. Hell, he would probably make Christmas cards out of it if the moment was caught on camera. 

He also knows that Sam wouldn’t jeopardize the case by doing such a thing and, sure enough, Sam forces himself to relax and let Toscani maneuver him. But when Sam visibly flinches  as the man’s fingers tangle in his hair and yank him downward, far too roughly by Dean’s estimate, Dean has enough. 

"I get the idea,” he growls out. Toscani smirks at him before stepping away, and Dean takes his place. Sam looks a little shaken up from having his personal space invaded, and Dean vows to just get it right the first time so Toscani has no reason to interfere again. He’s so close to Sam that he can feel the heat of his body against his own, and he’s pleased when Sam’s previously stiff body begins to relax against his own; when he gently grabs the front of his jacket, he can feel Sam’s heartbeat thump against  his palm and Dean can’t decide if the frantic beats are due to excitement or nervousness.  When he carefully weaves his fingers through Sam’s hair and tugs him down, Sam leans forward a little more until their mouths are almost touching and Dean nearly ruins the position when he hears the photographer speak, having almost forgotten that they have an audience. 

“Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Now just hold that exact position; don’t you move an inch." 

Dean hears the sound of a camera flashing and he should be relieved by the fact that the shoot is going to be over soon, but he isn’t sure that he wants it to be. In fact, even though he knows he he isn’t supposed to move, he finds himself wondering what would happen if he brought his lips forward just the barest amount of distance so that they touched Sam’s own. Would Sam kiss him back? Would– 

He’s jarred from his thoughts suddenly and flails away from his position as he hears the loud resounding thud of someone falling to the ground, followed by a woman’s startled scream. When someone calls out to the room demanding for an ambulance to be called, he shares a grim look with Sam. 

It looks like they need to step up their game.

This is amazing! I’m loving it so much and can’t wait for the finale! Poor Sammy getting stuck with Chad, but I bet he looks just wonderful as a model. No wonder Dean can’t cope...! Sorry for posting this late today, been a busy one, but I really love it!

[dismuch47]

Roswell Sequel Series Outline

@anheiressofasoldier Hooooo boy, are you gonna regret saying that you would be willing to read my pitch. Mwhahahahaaaa! (but seriously, thanks. I’ve been meaning to write this out since it has been so vivid in my head, down to the song that they play at the end, leading to the credits of tasteful, retro animated graphics of tabasco sauce bottles, waitress uniforms, and flying saucers...)

So let’s see if I can keep this down, somewhat...

EDIT: HAH. So long. Forgive the typos. So late and I don’t want to read through all of this when I spent so much time writing it! Not done yet...

So we open in Roswell, shots of some of the old spots that bring nostalgic feels, but years have passed: the old highway/gas station, a football practice at Roswell high, the diner (and they’re still wearing the old uniform style), UFO center, through some neighborhoods until we get to a house. We vaguely recognize it, but it focuses on an older man at a few computers, and some gentle panning reveals law enforcement memorabilia until we close in on the man’s glasses and those pale blue, worn eyes. Why it’s our beloved Jim Valenti! And he’s typing away on some conspiracy message board with wacky avatars that convey that he’s probably conversing with younger persons. There is a message for him and someone wants to meet him, to get the answers he promised. He contemplates, is reluctant, but then responds to meet him in the place that they originally agreed upon, in two weeks. He sends the message, exhaling, maybe this is a mistake... but then he looks at a picture of Kyle, grinning that Valenti smile, winning ball in his hands. Jim nods to himself, it’s decided, and he gets up to get coffee...

That’s when men in black suits bust in through the door, armed. Jim drops his cup, hands up. He’s too far from his guns, says something smart-ass to distract them... while his hands charge and a blinding flash of light comes from them.

That’s right. Jim Valenti has mother effing powers!

The men stumble about, whilst Jim dashes to the computer screens, holding a hand over them to blast out the hard-drive with energy pulses. He picks up a handgun that was strapped beneath the desk and takes out two men before he is thrown against the wall. One of the MIB has his hand raised, a supernatural opponent. None of the other MIB look phased. Jim looks up, wincing in confusion. One of the MIB asks the attacker if they should relocate Jim to “the compound” with the “others.” But the leader decides that Jim is too old to withstand any of the rigorous testing... he’d only be dead weight. He raises his hand to finish Jim Valenti off...

And we see Jim’s gaze wander back to the picture of his son, as his assailant’s hand glows...

And cut to black with a flair of cliff-hanger: Cue Roswell theme song and Roswell graphics...as it morphs from Roswell to more recognizable location of midwest city, the coast, New York, China, India, London...all tainted with something extraterrestrial/galactic... promising more of the unknown at a broader scale. 

And then we start up in Cleveland, Ohio, of all effing places. 

(And now I’m going to get less detailed; just thought it was important to establish the mood and intrigue first ;) Oh, and I also have like NO final name decisions for a lot of these characters, so forgive the half-assedness with these names.)

The character that we will ride on the back of to get to the characters we know and love is a hispanic youth (mid teens), who is clearly living in poverty and trying to keep his nose clean. Let’s call him...Alex. (: I had too; to honor the original). Alex is special, because he has powers, And he is a co-mod on a message board that reaches out to others with abilities. The main mod, who has been very encouraging and helpful in avoiding attention while still developing the abilities, has finally okayed meeting up for the first time with Alex (It is... was... Jim ): The halfway point that they agree upon is Nashville in two weeks. Alex has no money, but he has to find out why he has these abilities. He was dying from a shoot-out when he was young, caught in the crossfire, he was healed... it’s too hazy a memory, and ever since then, powers.  and he’s not the only one.

In real life, Alex has 1 friend who moved from New York, (let’s call him Nicky) who also has abilities and shares a similar origin story... only it was a terminal illness while living on the streets. In his dreams, however, he knows Yen...a Vietnamese-American girl who can dream walk into anyone’s dreams. They’ve never met face to face, but they have bonded. Online, however, Alex is aware of 37 users who claim to have similar experiences with “the healer”, whether they remember it or not. Descriptions vary, so they can’t nail who he/she is. Alex, Nicky, and Yen (in dreams), decide to go on an epic road trip to meet the board mod, who Alex is CONVINCED is the healer.

So we have couple episodes of teen-powered shennanigans, meeting Yen in person, meeting up with some of the other “healed” (they have their own hand signal and everything); some awesome... some fake. So they reach Nashville, in the spot... and mod never comes. Alex knows something is up; the mod never would have pulled this (father complex issues). They do some investigating, looking for clues and they find something left behind. A floppy disk... which none of them know what the eff to do with. And then, someone seeks them out. Let’s call him...Greg. Late teens, maybe early 20′s...knows everything about Alex and is able to convince Nicky and Yen that he’s legit. (but he’s totally not legit). And Alex is wary, because he always got the vibe that mod was... older? With a full grown kid. Some simple questioning, and he’s able to trip up Greg, who also doesn’t have powers.

Outted, Greg shows his true colors and summons the MIB and takes the three youths after a brief skirmish (they put up a good fight, but the MIB are so experienced with their powers), they are taken to “the Compound.” (dun dun dun). The Compound is basically a hold and experimentation facility for HUMANS with extraordinary abilities; the “healed.” Alex and crew think it’s the dark government... but it’s actually aliens; Antarians, cleaning up human anomalies left over from their failed hybrid units. And, get this: they call “Greg”...ZAN. Oh yes. Very “human” Greg is Max’s estranged son, who bounced around in the foster system, has nice shiny baby memories of being the son of a king and queen and loved... only to face a very cruel world that recognized him as nothing. He’s mostly an icon, being the son of two hybrids, but he’s though of being less by the Antarians because of his powerless genetics. He’s out to prove himself to the elitist species. 

Alex, Nicky, and Yen are able to escape from the compound with some clever thinking, and rallying beaten down inmates...on of the eldest being a man who was experimented on for 3 years. Despite his once peaceful ways and dry humor, he’s now a mind-warper with mad-skillz: Kyle Valenti (oh yeah. He HATES that that is his ability; self-loathing galore). The gang picks up another female, let’s call her Roxie (cause she got no-where to go!) and Kyle decides, after seeing what’s on the floppy disk (his dad, explaining why he started the website; because it was for the terminal kids who would grow up to have abilities, just like everyone else Max healed... but more people from the outside, all over, were getting abilities as Max and pod squad were on the run. Kyle is moved, and he decides that if the 4 want to meet the one who changed them to gain closure, he would be their guide. He explains the events of Roswell and the pod squad: the teens are floored that they are wrapped up in Alien stuff.

The plan is to go connect with Isabelle Evans, but on the way, Kyle diverts the trip when he sees an advertisement...for the singer Maria Deluca touring nearby (yeah, bear with me, I promise it will pay off). Nicky and Roxie are just rabid fans for Deluca so they are totes okay with this distraction. Touching reunion between Maria and Kyle. And Maria fills him in on the three years he’s been gone: 

War is coming to Earth. Kivar diverted political tensions to Earth with a very brutal and militant species. Like this specious tears through planets like a plague. Upset with Kivar, Antar sent emissaries to find one of the royal 4, from either set of hybrids, but only found Zan... who was eager to be found. With the promise of giving him powers, Zan was enlisted to track a hybrid down. He had a lead on Micheal Guerin, who seemed to be around the corner, during certain times in his life... but he was able to use Micheal to get to Max. Max thought that a reunion was to occur arranged by Brody...but he was thrown into a portal and beamed to an Antarian vessel. That was a year ago. 

Deluca declines going with the group to their next stop, unable to see LIz in the state she is in, getting pulled back into it all, and on top of it all...Maria is now a single mom of an adopted toddler: a boy. He’s her whole world and there was no room for anything else. Kyle and gang bids her farewell and continue  on.

I don’t know where Isabel is, but they arrive and she has a pretty nice house, job: picture of normalcy. But she’s a wreck... and she nearly falls to pieces when she sees Kyle after three years. Yes. They were a thing at one point; she she spent every night trying to connect to his mind and dream walk with him. She has a daughter, Cassie, who looks just like her mother and fully embraces her her alien heritage as a princess; she the worst. She gets to know Alex, Nikki, Yen and Roxie, and they are floored by her abilities... that she flaunts. (no, Kyle is not the father... and neither is Jesse: DUN DUN DUUUUUN)

After Kyle and Isabel have their well deserved moment, they decide that the kiddies can’t come along, because it’s WAR, so they are to stay at Isabel’s house. And not only that... but the Parker-Evans chldren (all 3 of them) are dropped off by SERENA, Liz’s work budy from the University Lab Research Team (WHO THE EFF IS SERENA???) Turns out Serena be cool, but she’s a human who doesn’t know about any of the alien stuff (but she’s like mad smart with theoretical science). So the adults leave to go on patrol, and the teens think this sucks, though the little Parker-Evans kids are happy to have new playmates. Cassie pipes up that she’s not going to stick around, since the eldest kiddo is 13 and can handle her younger siblings so she gonna go abuse her powers to go clubing. She coaxes Alex to go with her, Roxie is down... but Yen and Nicky decide to stay at the house to protect the kids. Yen isn’t so happy that Cassie appears to be sinking her claws into Alex.

Club shenanigans, but then Alex Guilts Cassie to give a crap about what is going on outside of her comfy life and she tags along with him and Roxie as they go to shadow after the adults. And what they find is is a Michael Guerin, Isabel Evans, and Liz Parker-Evans kicking some serious alien ass. They are trying to steal aboard a vessel to get access to the Antarian ship hovering over earth. Then this armored opponent appears and nearly smears Liz across the gravel, but Micheal and Isabel are able to hold him briefly, giving Liz and chance to get a clean shot... but she hesitates. She can’t do it... and the armored figure is about to break free. Things look dire for the three, so Alex and Roxie spring to action, getting in a good shot or two, but the figure retreats back to the ship in a beam of light. Liz, instead of thanking the teens, yells at them.

It had been Max. Stripped of his consciousness and replaced with the collective consciousness (see how I’m including some book stuffs???) of Antar: their memories of King Zan poured into the hybrid vessel, Max Evans. The idea was to have their reclaimed King challenge Kivar for the throne. But King Zan, a distorted version, as memories aren’t a replacement for a SOUL... and with the temperament of a human...straight up just kills Kivar. And leads Antar into a dark age. Wah-waaaaaah.

But there’s a problem: remember how Dupe Isabel made the comment that Max’s pod set are the defectives? Too human? Well, it’s true... and Max’s body, being too human, can’t handle the energies and massive power from the crystals that he’s wielding. (it’s all about the crystals, for Antarians: they bring people back from the the dead, serve as text messages, it’s great... oh, and some probably become huge ass weapons) So basically, Max’s body is dying from being too over-extended. It’s like a rubber band that can’t snap back into shape, but just get’s looser, and looser until it just TEARS.

Then of course we have to have an episode about how the main gang got to their current states: Liz and Max of course married right away, had their first kid a few years after Isabel had Cassie. Liz got an online education and worked her way up to a position at a research Lab, where she met Serena (WHO DAH EFF IS SERENA???) Meanwhile Max works a late third shift at a hospital, or rotates around, and heals the really desperate cases. Micheal is ever vigilant to protecting Isabel and Max/Liz’s families, being a hard as nails yet doting uncle.. but he’s kind of a bar fly, even though he can’t drink (he likes the ambience), but gets squirrelly whenever a Deluca Classic comes on the jukebox. He has regrets... many regrets. He wears down Max to give the kids a normal life, get a mortgage, enroll them in public school... cause they deserve the best life experience. Isabel had Cassie pretty early on...after Jessie...Isabel hit a low, especially when she facebook stalked him to find out he had moved on. So she goes out, grabs the nearest stranger, and... well...(but it’s kinda important WHO that person was... It was human-meat-puppet Kivar. Who’s never too far from his Valondra; he’s THE WORST) Meanwhile, Kyle bonds with Isabel during her pregnancy, provides for her, has a fling with her, but it is never fully realized because Isabel freaks and needs to have control over her life and her daughters, so he becomes a cool uncle to Cassie. He opens his own garage. Maintains highly secretive correspondence with his father, when he’s lured to meet up with his dad... which was never arranged by Jim. He was taken to “The Compound”. Max does get a house with a fence for his family, and just when they settled in, they get a visit from a mysterious boy: Ethan. And Ethan says “You’re my dad.”

But the thing is, Ethan doesn’t look anything like Max: it’s all Tess. The young man has a clear memory of his mother, that fits Tess’ description, and that she loved Zan. He’s a nice guy, sweet, but has had a slew of misfortune with abusive families. He grows on Micheal... in an annoying way. After a DNA test, at the insistence of Liz, they find that Ethan shares no DNA, and is certainly not human. And a simple alien connection reveals that this isn’t Tess’ son... but Ava’s...and Rath (WHA? EW! NO! But yusss. I’m not saying it’s a good match, but it happened) And Ava did love Zan, and wanted Ethan to find Max...because she wasn’t in a good situation and had to give up her son for his best chance (OUAT ALL OVER AGAIN) since Rath would probs chuck that full-blooded alien babe at Antar for brownie points. So Ethan is disappointed but willing to depart but Micheal is all “Stay with me, twerp. But get a job and help pay rent.” Ethan makes breakfast for his grumpy new big brother/dad everyday.

Feeling awful for her unwillingness to let Ethan in right away, Liz supports Max in tracking down his biological son. He’s afraid that the same fate fell on Zan Jr. Which, fyi, Zan lived a very average life... but he could REMEMBER the alien stuff, and his mother, and another world... so basically, he loathed his family and situation. So Micheal agrees to help track down Zan, because he’s become pretty good at that kind of thing, and reunites the two, with the help of Brody... and then... well... you know how that goes.

Okay. I have to stop for the night. UGH I’m almost thru. No, but this is GREAT, writing it down. Maybe finally this idea will be exercised from my brain permanently!

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

I'm not dead, and I haven't murdered anyone, I'll start off with that, though things weren't looking entirely certain there for a minute, on both counts.

I'll start with where my last letter left off, and try to keep from getting too angry all over again as I tell it.

We had our rest, and a good thing, too. And then as we all dragged ourselves back to our feet and considered what came next, Elyn and Cloudleaper got a little distracted with the robot, P.A., and messing about with it. We tried to get as much information as we could from it, about who we might be facing and what the situation might be beyond the door we'd barricaded, but there wasn't much more that it could tell us. It seems to have been designed with somewhat limited personal assistant functionality, and has only been able to help us as much as it already has because the smugglers muddled about in its programming.

I feel like this sounds like I'm disparaging the poor thing, and I think Elyn would strangle me if she ever got the sense that I did so. But it's been a dear, and it can't help what it's been programmed for. It's been as useful to us as it's able to be, and it made such sad noises whenever we asked it a question it couldn't answer, or asked it to do something it wasn't able. Elyn asked it why it was helping us, and I get the impression it decided it didn't like all the stealing its owners were doing, and, well. I suppose if you're going to muddle about in your robot's programming you should be prepared for it to decide it's going to use its expanded capabilities to take issue with your criminal enterprise, and do something about it.

In any case, we spent entirely too long talking with P.A., though we did learn that the second person we could expect waiting for us outside was designated Other Boss, and so we had a pretty good idea that we were going to be facing off with the halfling and the woman with the spider tattoos that Athan had told us about at the start. But then Cloudleaper started talking about searching the place for a storage drive, and-- Well, an hour to sit and catch my breath and stare at that warlock's face didn't really do much to make me less angry, and I was all too aware that giving ourselves an hour meant giving the two outside an hour as well, and that every extra minute we dallied could mean that they were further away, if they'd decided to run, or that much more prepared for us, if they were angling to fight, and either way I hardly thought that messing about with files and storage drives was our first priority. Cloudleaper, I gather, was worried about them deleting important files, but they'd had an hour to do that already. We had P.A., and we had the pictures that I'd taken with my LICD of the screens that had been up and running on the computers when we'd come into the room, and files are important in terms of evidence, I suppose, but wasn't it more important to find and stop these smugglers? What good were files on a storage drive going to be if these smugglers escaped and just resumed doing this somewhere else? If our investigation into them has proven anything, it's that they're slippery and they're very good at hiding and even when people know to look for them it's hard to figure out who they are. If we'd let them get away because we were fussing around searching for a storage drive, we would have solved nothing.

And what if we died because we'd allowed them to be so well prepared? What good would a storage drive be to anyone, then?

In any case, they both gave up the idea of a storage drive soon enough, and we moved aside the boxes that I'd used to barricade the door with and asked P.A. to alert us if any of the smugglers we'd tied up woke up, and then I ventured ahead with Squirt to try to scout out the area.

The hallway that our room was off of was mostly deserted, with crates scattered about that made fine cover as I moved up the hall, towards two doorways at the far end. I listened at both, and heard some quiet sounds from one, and nothing but silence from the other, so eased open the door to the quiet room and checked inside, just to make sure that it was empty and we weren't setting ourselves up to be ambushed from behind.

I nearly got a dart to the head for my trouble, which was embarrassing. If I'd been a little less hasty, maybe it would have occurred to me to check to see if the door was trapped before I opened it, but I was still angry, and still feeling the pressure of all the time we'd -- well, not wasted, it wasn't wasted, but all the same the knowledge of how long we'd given them to be ready for us made me hastier than I should have been.

That room proved to be another computer room, similar to the first. I only stayed long enough to make sure it was empty, and then I moved back into the hallway, and on to the last room. I used my LICD to write out a message to Elyn and Cloudleaper, so whoever was on the other side of the door wouldn't hear us whispering and scheming, and said that we should burst through the door and try to take whoever was on the other side of it by surprise. They nodded their agreement, and so we all got ready and I threw open the door and darted inside, my bow readied for whatever we might find inside.

What we found turned out to be the halfling man inside, his hair brown now rather than green, which explains a lot of our difficulty in finding anyone who'd seen him about the station. And he was smirking and snarking at us and not surprised at all, and honestly I am just so tired of smug assholes.

And then his companion attacked Cloudleaper from behind, and it's only good luck that she missed with her first swing, and there seemed little point in talking any further.

It would've been a fine plan if we hadn't ended up with someone behind us, but as it was it meant that we were bottlenecked, me and Squirt just inside the door facing the halfling man, Elyn caught behind us, Cloudleaper on the other side of her just outside the door, and the woman engaged with her, all of us grouped together and with little enough room to move about or try to find a better position to fight from. And the halfling man was quick -- you know I'm light on my feet, but even so it seemed every time I moved to strike him he was already gone, and my blade caught nothing but air. Poor Squirt tried to help me, too, and even he couldn't really land a good bite on him.

The woman turned out to be a monk, too, and one like Pika, who can jump from shadow to shadow, which is horrible to be on the wrong end of. Cloudleaper and Elyn kept her occupied while Squirt and I mostly failed to try to hit the barbarian. The first blow he landed on me with his great axe cut deep, and so once Cloudleaper and Elyn had managed to maneuver themselves out of the doorway, I traded my sword for my bow and retreated, hoping that I could run fast enough that I'd be able to get a shot or two off before he caught up to me.

Elyn ended up more in the thick of things than she usually tries to be, and and took more hits than any of us liked to see land on her, but eventually between her and Cloudleaper they managed to hurt the monk enough to send her on the run, vanishing from the shadows, and that was none too comforting but we still had the barbarian to contend with, so we turned our attention to him.

He was brutal, and Elyn is so fucking stubborn, throwing out attack spells even as she got more and more injured, until finally a blow knocked her off her feet and she didn't get back up, so that instead of shooting the barbarian again I had to pull out my wand of healing and pour nearly all of its power into her.

That might have been a mistake, because the barbarian just struck her down again on his next swing, and I was left with little I could do but try to do the same to him, as quickly as I could. There was a little bit of power left in the wand, but hardly anything, and when Elyn identified it when we first acquired it, she'd said that there was a chance it could break and quit working entirely if we ever depleted it entirely, and, well -- if Elyn's going to keep attacking when she ought to heal, we really can't take that chance.

The barbarian remained a smug asshole, snarking something about how he hoped it ate at us to know that he could've killed Elyn while she lay at his feet but didn't, and I was made enough and desperate enough that I snarked right back at him about how yeah, I was all torn up inside over it. But it was, I think, the parting blow of a man who knew he was going to be defeated, because it wasn't long after that before one of my arrows caught him in the leg and took him down.

I ran over to Elyn and poured a healing potion down her throat, while Cloudleaper ran off to the computer room, and Squirt bounded off after her. Once I got Elyn back onto her feet, we followed after them just in time to see Cloudleaper knocking the other monk down from where she'd been typing something on the computer, and while I made sure that the monk was down and was going to stay that way, Cloudleaper and Elyn looked to the computer and realized that she'd been deleting files from the computer, and they managed to at least stop the process from the file that was currently being deleted, though they don't know how much might have already been lost, or whether it's recoverable.

I commented that surely Adeng Kusuyo and the other law enforcement agents on the station would have some resources they could bring to bear, to try to recover the lost files, and Elyn suggested I make my way back out through the station's walls to where we'd entered, to call Agent Kusuyo and lead her team back to everyone. I hated the idea of leaving when everything in me wanted to shake that warlock awake and start asking him a hundred thousand questions, but she had the right of it. I was more likely to be able to find my way out and back again than either of them, so I settled for telling her to make sure she asked him how he knew to recognize a hound of the Fey queen, if he woke up before I was back, and then I took Squirt with me and made my way back out through the walls to the alley with its displaced paneling, and I sat and called up Kusuyo on my LICD and told her we'd found the smugglers and could she please come and take them off our hands. She seemed... well, I think I'd say alarmed, more than anything, but agreed to send a team out to me as quickly as possible, and then I called her back because I'd forgotten to make sure she knew to bring techy people who could maybe undelete computer files, and she assured me she would, and then I just sat there leaning in hard against Squirt and waiting for her, and trying not to wish I was back with Elyn and Cloudleaper and the smugglers.

It took her perhaps an hour to get to me, which at least was time enough to catch my breath from the fighting and feel a little less winded, and a little less wild. I led them all back through the walls once more, and back to Cloudleaper and Elyn, who was using P.A. to play some sort of game, which seemed an interesting choice to me considering she had an hour or more with the smugglers as well as their computers at her disposal. But in any case, there was little for us to do once Kusuyo and her officers were there, bustling about the place and taking charge, which I was honestly glad to hand over, though when I suggested that she ask the warlock how he knew a Fey hound on sight, she gave me the strangest look, and then said that she hadn't realized that our investigation into the smugglers was a personal one, and I told her that it hadn't been personal until he'd threatened to sell my dog.

On that note, at some point in all of this Elyn pulled me aside and said that she had seen the warlock's eyes turn pink when he'd cast one of his spells, and that she wondered if perhaps he didn't recognize Squirt was a blink dog because he had a fey patron, which. Well, it makes a great deal of sense and also just raises about a hundred more questions. She also told me, later, when we were back at the Curved Spirit Arms, that she didn't think he'd threatened to sell Squirt at all, that she'd gotten the impression that he'd thought I'd stolen Squirt or otherwise come by him illicitly and that he was threatening to return Squirt to the Queen of Air and Darkness to curry her favor. Which, well. Wouldn't that be a laugh, when he tried to present Squirt to her as a stolen hound returned, only to be told that he was the thief in the first place.

I mean, the only way he'd have Squirt to be able to return him to her was if I was dead, so I guess it wouldn't be funny in the end. But still.

Anyway, I've spent all evening, since we left Kusuyo and the rest of the station officers to finish dealing with the mess, trying hard to remember exactly what he'd said, if Elyn's right or if I am, but I just can't do it. He threatened Squirt -- either way, it was a threat -- and all I could hear was the rush of blood in my ears and a horrible scream of fear and desperation echoing through my skull, because Squirt was there in front of him and if anything happened to him, anything, I wouldn't have been responsible for my actions. All I remember is that terror and franticness and the certainty that I had to take the warlock down and I had to do it fast, before he did something terrible to Squirt.

I don't know. It's been hours now and I'm still so angry when I think about it that my hands are shaking as I type this to you. But Kusuyo said that maybe we could have an opportunity to speak with the smugglers while they're being questioned, or to give them a list of our own questions that they'll ask on our behalf, and I've been working with Elyn to try to come up with some in advance because I know if I try to do it while I'm facing him, any thoughts I had on the matter are going to be lost beneath that howl of fury and fear.

I feel so helpless, which is a strange thing to say when I've just figured out how to make my bow shoot lightning (I still haven't told you about that. I promise I will, when my thoughts aren't in a whirl and my hands aren't trembling), but there it is. I don't know that Kusuyo will let me talk to him directly -- and Elyn seems to think I shouldn't, even if I'm given the opportunity -- and what if she doesn't ask in the right way, or push in the right places? What if she doesn't know enough about the fey and the Feywild and the Queen of Air and Darkness to get at the information I need? What if I do talk to him, and I ruin it all because I'm too angry to think straight? What if this man's patron is someone the Queen is close to, and she takes issue with our fight against him? What if he isn't, but word gets back to her about Squirt anyway, and she realizes that I was right after all, and he's not a runt, and he's so strong and so brave, and she decides she wants him for her own again? 

I can't give him back to her, nenîth. I can't. I don't think he'd want to go, and I won't make him. You know maybe better than anyone that I'd fight to the death for him, against anyone, but oh gods, I don't want to pick a fight with the Queen of Air and Darkness. All of this just makes me want to pick him up and go tearing off with him as fast and as far as the nearest transport can take me, somewhere beyond the limits of even her reach.

I should sleep. It's late, and it's been such a long day, and I don't suppose either of those are helping with how unsteady my hands are. But I didn't want to wait to write you, and have you worry. I'll write you more tomorrow, when we've had a chance to talk to these smugglers, or have them talked to on our behalf. And in the meantime, if you know anything about the situation in the Feywild that might be relevant, or if you can think of any questions that I ought to be sure I have Kusuyo ask, please do let me know. I don't know what's going on, but I'm so worried I'm going to fuck it all up.

I love you. I'm sorry for worrying you.

Love,

Maliah

[thecoroutfitters]

Arguments have gone back and forth about whether mass killings are on the rise or not. A lot depends on how you define a mass killing. Leftists use more liberal definition (of course), allowing them to qualify more killings as “mass killings” or “mass shootings” than what the FBI uses.

Based upon the FBI’s definition, there isn’t any rise, but based upon the leftist definition, there is.

But there’s should be no question in anyone’s mind about the last week. Three mass killings in one week is way too much for any nation, even one as large as ours is. First there was the terrorist attack in Manhattan, where a supposed ISIS supporter drove a truck down a bike path, killing and maiming in his wake.

Then there was a shooter in the Denver Metro area, who entered a Wal-Mart and shot three people, before making his escape. Finally, there was the Sunday shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, leaving 26 dead and about 20 others wounded. All this, just a month after the Las Vegas shooting.

The Texas shooting is still a breaking story, as I sit here writing this. Little is known, other than the name of the shooter and a few other details. Motive, the most important thing for the investigators to try to uncover, is still at doubt. But it is interesting to note that the church he attacked was attended by his ex-wife and her family.

Devin Patrick Kelly, the Texas shooter, apparently has a history of violence, having been court-martialed for domestic violence in 2012; a crime that led to his incarceration, loss of military rank and a bad conduct discharge, as well as his wife divorcing him. This raises the questions, could this have been nothing more than a grudge killing?

Obviously, more details will come out as time goes on and the investigators look further into his life. One glaring fact stands out right now; that is, because of his history with violence, he should not have been able to buy a firearm legally. Yet somehow he did.

The Flaw in the System

One of the first things that investigators track down in a case of this type is where the murder weapon was purchased. In this case, the gun he used, an AR-15, was purchased over the counter in an Academy Sporting Goods store in the city of San Antonio.

Having bought firearms in an Academy store before, I can assure you that they follow the law explicitly when selling firearms. So what went wrong?

There are three basic steps required for buying a firearm in the United States.

The first is filling out an ATF form 4473, Firearms Transaction Record. There are several questions asked on this form, mostly involving things that would deny one the right to purchase a firearm. Obviously, the killer in this case lied on that form, or he wouldn’t have been able to make the purchase. But then, there’s really nothing to stop people from lying on such forms, any more than there is to keep them from lying on their taxes.

The second required step is to prove that you are who you say you are. This is easily accomplished by presenting a driver’s license, or other acceptable form of picture ID, preferably a government-issued one. Obviously, he was able to do that.

Finally, the seller has to contact NICS, the National Instant Criminal Background Check system, a sub-agency of the FBI. This computerized database is supposed to have records of all crimes committed by anyone in the country. Since he had assaulted his wife and child in 2012, there should have been records of that in the database, denying him the ability to buy the gun he used in the crime. Yet, somehow, he did.

Adding a touch of confusion to the case, Kelley was denied a Texas Concealed Handgun Permit, which would make it seem that he couldn’t pass the NICS background check. However, the background check for the Concealed Handgun Permit is much more extensive than that for purchasing a firearm. So it is possible that the NICS database didn’t have all the data that was used in the Texas Concealed Handgun Permit background check.

This brings to light a major flaw in the background check system that is currently in use. The “loophole” in the system isn’t the non-existent “gun show loophole” that gun grabbers love to talk about. Rather, it’s the loophole created by the simple fact that not all the information seems to make it into the NICS database.

Here we have a man who was convicted of two counts of assault in a military court-martial and served time incarcerated for it. Yet that felony didn’t keep him from buying a firearm, even though it should have. We don’t need more gun laws; we need the ones on the books to be enforced.

One of the problems with the system is that there is no federal law requiring that states send mental-health information to the NICS, only state laws; and those only exist in 38 states. Even then, the states only send records on those who have been judged to have mental health issues in a court of law. Most people with mental health issues don’t end up there.

Some are calling for doctors to be able to make that judgment call, without a court order. But that denies people the right of to defend themselves before the judge’s bench. If a doctor can claim that someone is mentally incapable of owning a firearm, then anti-gun doctors could literally say that of all their patients, without the patients having any recourse.

But while there is a mental health element to this particular shooting, that’s not the big concern; at least, not as far as him buying a firearm. His conviction for assault should have been enough for that. Does this mean that there are crimes committed in the military, which are not being reported to NICS?

For that matter, how many federal cases, state courts and municipalities are really reporting all crimes to NICS? I would venture to guess that there are a lot. If that’s the case, there are massive holes in the system, holes that are making it possible for criminals to legally buy firearms, just as we see in this case.

But with no penalty to states or municipalities for not reporting, there is no way to enforce this law.

Is This Like Other Mass Shootings?

The motivation behind the killing isn’t just of interest to investigators, but to all of us. Is this another mass shooting, in the style of Sandy Hook and Columbine? Is it a terrorist incident like San Bernardino? Or, could there be another motive behind the shooter’s actions?

Until investigators uncover the motive behind the killer’s rampage, there is no chance of learning anything to help prevent any future such incidents.

While little is known at this time, first indicator fit the model of other mass killings. The killer has been described as “creepy,” “crazy,” “weird,” “negative,” “quiet” and “depressed.” He was also an avowed atheist, which may have something to do with his choice of targets. All of this lends credence to the possibility of some sort of mental disorder; although no real evidence has been brought to light, other than anecdotal evidence, to show any true mental disorder.

The other thing that appears to follow the pattern of other mass shooters was his obvious preparation. While it is still very early in the investigation to have any idea of how long he has been planning this killing spree, he bought his rifle back in 2014, three years ago. Could he have been thinking of this for that long?

Even if he didn’t, this clearly wasn’t a spur of the moment action. He showed up at his target area in full tactical gear, including a ballistic vest. That alone shows that he took the time to prepare. He clearly went to that church with the intent of committing mass murder and didn’t want to be stopped before he could complete his objective.

This has led investigators to look into the possibility of Kelley being a member of a local militia group. Most militia groups are conservative, although since Trump became president, there have been some liberal ones that have risen up.

I would not be surprised if the investigative team finds extensive evidence in Kelley’s home, showing how he had planned this crime. That would follow the pattern of other mass killers and show that this crime was more than one of passion, but rather another such crime caused by mental illness.

A Good Guy with a Gun

A common trait of mass shootings is that the killer ends their own life, as the culmination of their act. The exception to this rule is when someone else ends it for them.

Video first seen on BP Network.

In this case, the shooting spree was ended by a good guy with a gun, a local resident, who heard the shooting and engaged the shooter with his own rifle, hitting him in the side, through a gap in his body armor.

This caused Kelley to drop his rifle and take off in his SUV, with the man who shot him and another man in pursuit. Whether this was necessary or not is yet to be determined, as the killer ran his vehicle off the road, hitting a tree. When police arrived, they found him dead.

Whether the killer was finally done in by his own bullet, by the bullet fired by the local hero or by the police is something that we won’t know until the autopsy is completed. But one thing is clear; as horrific as this crime was, it could have been worse, if it had not been for a good guy with a gun.

While leftists won’t admit it, guns are used to stop crimes hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of times per year. One study puts the figure at 2.5 million. Statistics for this are hard to collate, simply because most of the time when an individual uses a gun in self-defense, it doesn’t get reported.

There is no requirement to report a crime that didn’t happen, and 70% of the time that lawful gun owners draw a gun in the face of a criminal, that’s enough to cause the criminal to flee.

So, What Can We Do?

Ultimately, the big question for all of us is: How can we stop gun crime?

Those on the political left want to blame the crime on guns, outlawing them. They want to eliminate guns entirely and if they can’t eliminate as many as they can. But unless they can find a way to repeal the physical laws that make guns work, they can’t eliminate them. All they can do by passing laws is make it harder for law-abiding citizens to defend themselves.

But as long as there are evil people in the world, there will be crime, even violent crime. The earliest recorded crime in human history was when Cain killed his brother Abel, and he didn’t need a gun to do it. So until we can eliminate all problems with human morality (which is obviously impossible), people will continue to kill, maim and otherwise harm each other.

What we can do is to quit sensationalizing murder… or rather, the news media can. Mass killers are looking for their moment of glory, as a way to end their otherwise unremarkable lives. Going down in infamy may not be the best option, but in their minds, it’s better than ending their lives as an unknown.

There is also a strong mental illness factor in mass murder, which has never been dealt with effectively. Over and over we hear of these cases, only to find that the murderers were either on psychosomatic drugs or should have been. That alone should be enough to legally deny them their rights to own firearms, by court order. Yet it isn’t happening.

As a society, we need to figure out a better way of diagnosing and treating those with these sorts of mental illnesses. That part has to be done by medical professionals. But we also need to make the general population aware of who these people are, regardless of any privacy laws. We currently deny this right of privacy to sex offenders and I really can’t see a whole lot of difference.

Will we ever be totally successful in diagnosing and treating the mental illness behind mass murder? I doubt it. But we can and should do a much better job than what we are doing now. It’s time for Congress to take action, not to eliminate our Second Amendment rights, but to make these mental health issues a priority and fund them appropriately.

The Real Answer

But the real answer is the one I mentioned earlier… the good guys with a gun. While I hope to never have to kill one of these mass murderers, I live every day as if I have to be ready to do so. I carry concealed from the time I get dressed in the morning, to the time I go to bed at night, even at church.

Sunday, before hearing about the Sutherland Springs shooting, I was talking with a member of our church, a retired police officer, who has a concealed carry license. Although he is licensed and was a firearms instructor while in the police department, his gun was in his car. So had this event happened in our church, he would not have been able to help.

There are four of us who carry concealed in our church, and I can guarantee you we will be meeting together to discuss strategy, should such a thing ever happen in our church. While I realize the likelihood of that is slim, I also realize that it is not impossible. So we will be ready, should it ever occur.

Ultimately, our safety is in our own hands. If you don’t carry concealed, I’d like to recommend you start. Get your license, go to the range and practice, and be ready, should this ever happen to you.

While I would rather not have to kill a killer in my church, neighborhood store or anywhere else, I’d rather be part of the solution, than just stand their wondering if I’m going to become a statistic instead!

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.

Refernces:

http://www.abc15.com/news/data/mass-shootings-in-the-u-s-over-270-mass-shootings-have-occurred-in-2017

http://www.shootingtracker.com/

from Survivopedia Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

[drunkdragondoes]

Is it possible to send a prompt not on the list? Because if so then Qrowin(I am original I know :D) with 'I thought you'll die, I nearly lost you and now I need to be close' smut. Like Qrow gets into trouble sort of like with Tyrian on a mission...(because well, people tend to focus on Qrow's fear of losing people he cares about, and I've rarely seen it from Winter's POV an1/2

Basically I asked for clarification and we boiled it down to: Qrow gets hurt, Winter gets worried and explains why to him, and then smut occurs.

“What exactly did my husband break again?”

“Well, starting from the top, we have-”

“Oh, and in layman’s terms, if you would.”

“Very well then, Miss Schnee, he basically broke both his arms and wrists, his right thigh bone, and has a cracked rib.”

“… When exactly may I see him?”

It wasn’t the first time that Qrow had seen her mad. In fact, them being mad at each other was how their relationship got started. But here she was upset over the fact that while he had done ‘the right thing’, he was now looking like a horrid mess. He was in a hospital gown with both arms in casts, a series of bandages wrapped around his torso, and his leg was in a cast as well.

Had it been any other reason, she’d be pacing back and forth in front of him. But given that she had found purchase on a corner seat and the situation, she was simply reclining back, trying to sift through her feelings.

“You’re a sorry sight, Qrow.”

The man was lying down in a hospital bed opposite of her. “I’d probably be sorrier in other ways if I let that Deathstalker get through. I’m told I had bought the time we needed, so all this was worth it on the spreadsheet.”

“Just not right now.”

“Yep,” he gave a sigh, “Just not right now.”

Winter pulled her arms into herself, looking away from him. It was for a good cause, she reminded herself. But she still found herself unhappy that she had nearly lost him. He might have received medals or honors, but what good were flimsy pieces of metal compared to having his warm body next to her?

“I wish you hadn’t done it, though.”

“Winter?”

“Look at yourself, Qrow.”

“There was no one else available. You’re saying that you’d rather let people die?”

“No,” she firmly said, shaking her head. “I just…” her voice fell lower, “Did you have to try to fight it? Couldn’t you have tried to lead it away instead?”

“You weren’t there, though.” He mirrored her own low voice, trying to keep it an easy conversation. “I know you want to point out the other options now, but at that moment that’s what was going through my head. I needed to stop it and I did.”

Winter closed her eyes, fingers curling in her lap. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, it was true. She wasn’t there on his mission. She didn’t know what had occurred. It was a very valid reason and to judge him would be unfair. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have to like it.

“Qrow, only a few people know of our marriage,” she quietly spoke. “Your brother-in-law, the nieces, Weiss, and Ozpin and General Ironwood. So when I got a call from my superior officer about your current state of being, I don’t think I need to mention how worried I was.”

Her husband let his own eyes close, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Winter.”

“It’s not just that, though. He told me that it was bad. I… I was worried I would lose you.”

And those were the words. Qrow told her those, each and every time when she went on a mission. She had never been hurt seriously, often just a few scratches or a broken bone here and there. It was mostly a joke at times. But here, where he lay in front of her in pieces, it was something else.

“You’re not going to lose me that easily,” he said. “I’m made of tough stuff.”

“You don’t look like that at all in those casts, Qrow.”

He rolled his eyes. “I was hoping to draw your attention the fact that I’m tough enough to survive it all.”

“Qrow, I…” She bit her lip, “I think the best way to say it is like this.” She looked into his red eyes. “For a long time I was under the umbrella of my father. He bought and made things for me, tried to set me on what he felt was the best path. And though I have since left his influence, there are three things that I value the most in my life. One is my weapon that I made for myself. The other is my position, which I earned.”

“And… while I don’t mean to imply that you’re an object, you… you’re…”

“I get you, Winter,” he quietly finished.

“Do you really?”

“Enough to know that I should try to look at other avenues where I can.”

It was good enough for now. Rising from her seat, she walked over and planted a kiss on his lips. It was meant to just be a simple one, to seal the deal, but Winter found herself kissing him again and again, a little hungrier each time. She reasoned that it was because she had narrowly avoided a world where Qrow was no longer with her and she wanted to remind herself that he was still there. Soon her hands found their way to the sides of his face and she pushed her tongue into him, lapping up whatever piece she could find. When she finally pushed herself away, she was greeted with a groan from below.

“Damnit, Winter.” Qrow had thrown his head back in frustration. “Really playing the low blow cards today, huh.” He gave his hips a strained jerk, and her eyes traced to the raised cloth of the hospital gown just below his waist.

“Hm.” She looked at his injuries and then back at his member. “I guess that really would be low of me. You can’t even scratch your own balls with all these keeping you still. Not to mention the rib.”

“You’re not really gonna just leave me like this, will you?”

“I could do blowjob, but…” she tried to push aside the own heat building inside of her. “Well, even a 69 isn’t fulfilling if we have to pretend we’re sitting on glass. And we’re technically out in the public area.”

“Winter, please-” Qrow begged, “anything.”

“… How soon did the doctors say you would recover?”

He gulped. “Maybe… Maybe a week.”

“Well, your hasty recovery is more important right now, sadly.”

“Winter!”

She looked up at his whining face. “I’ll be back in a week and we’ll see how you’ve improved. Consider this as a bit of an incentive to stay in one piece next time.”

In the end, Qrow had begged a handjob out of her, but only after he promised that he would do everything the doctors asked him to and that he wouldn’t masturbate. Winter also told him that she would personally have him go through her own inspection to make sure he had fully recovered before they did anything requiring his penis, so there really was an incentive to make sure that he did everything Winter asked him.

As she counted off the days, she had found that Qrow was moved to a more private room, one that was on the higher floors. And while she had no way to really enforce whether Qrow played by himself or not, she had the feeling that between his broken arms and her words he would be compliant.

On the sixth of the seventh day, she shaved and waxed everything.

On the seventh day, after getting cleared by the staff to visit him, she walked into the sequestered room to see Qrow still lying under the covers, albeit without the casts on him. She had opted to go without the full ensemble of her uniform, instead wearing just a simple blouse and slacks.

“Hi Winter.” His voice was calm, though it was clear that he wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from her.

“Hello dear,” she returned. Moving to a chair in the corner of the room, she brought out a change of his clothes and set it on the table between them. “Were you a good boy this week?”

“Well,” he started with a quick snap, “I was in casts until yesterday, even though my aura had taken care of the major things since the fourth day.” He looked her in the eye, almost a little defiant. “So yes, I was a very good boy.”

She had no way of really verifying it, but she went along with his claim. “Alright, then. Let’s begin my little test.” She extended a hand towards his clothes. “Please dress yourself.”

After a brief nod, Qrow pushed aside the blankets, revealing that he was still in his hospital gown. He quickly pulled it off, letting Winter revel in his toned and naked form. A shot of heat coursed through her body as her gaze fell upon his soft member, and she wondered if he knew she was staring.

But it was over all too quickly. First he put on his boxers, then the pants, and then the shirt. Soon it was like he had never been injured in the first place. His red gaze met hers, “So, do I pass your little test?”

Her hands fell onto her chin, reviewing his movements. He didn’t seem particularly strained, nor did she hear any sounds of pain. Perhaps he was just a little stiff at some points. But for the most part, nothing had distracted her from her gaze. “I would say that you do.”

She wet her lips before she spoke again. “Now strip.”

Qrow balked. “What?”

“You heard me,” a furtive smile grew upon her lips. “Strip.” Qrow seemed to get it now, though, so he made no further complaints, his hands reaching for the hem of his shirt. But she spoke again before he removed it. “Slowly, and with a bit of flair if you can.”

A final pause, and now Qrow smiled. First was the shirt, given a little twirl before getting dropped next onto the table. Then came the pants, where he turned sideways, slowly pushing them down until gravity did the rest and he kicked them away. But he stopped at his boxers. Instead, he turned his back to her. With a coy look over his shoulders, his right thumb fell to the waistband as his left hand beckoned her to come over.

Winter had walked over before she knew it, arms wrapping around his body. She placed a kiss on his shoulder before he tilted her up to his lips. It was a brief peck, but she felt her chest rise and fall sharply.

His right hand fell over hers and dragged it to his boxers. “The honor is yours, Winter.”

With another breath, she hooked her hand into the garment and slowly began to drag down. Looking over his shoulder, she saw that his member was already straining against the cloth, hot and hard from her presence, from her promise. First was the soft flesh, tapering to form an upside-down V. Then came the base of the shaft, pointed down to the floor. With one last greedy tug, the tip was finally free, springing up from the elastic band and bobbing a small bit in the air. Letting go of the boxers, they crumpled onto floor and Qrow moved them away.

Her fingers circled around him and he groaned. Gently sliding his skin back and forth, her thoughts went back to the other officers in the military when cocks and penises happened to have come up in the conversation. And according to what she eavesdropped on-

“I believe you described me as…” he took a breath as his hand fell over hers again, softly guiding her, “exceptional?”

She kissed him before letting go. “Exquisite, actually.” With a quick tap on his bottom, she gave him another order. “Onto the bed.”

He moved without hesitation, laying on his back. Eying his flesh, Winter undid her pants and underwear, but left her blouse unbuttoned and she climbed over him. Grasping his hardened length again, she began to brush the tip against her already-wet opening, closing her eyes with a low groan.

“You remember the way I like it,” Qrow strained, reaching up to push aside her open blouse and kneading her breasts. “Shaved pussy and no bra.”

She gave a low chuckle, trying to rein herself in - they were still in public, even if it was a more private room. “I figured I would play to your favorites after what you’ve been through.” She gave a gentle tug, watching as he bit back a groan and closed his eyes. “I wonder though - did you really keep your hands off of yourself?”

“If the Ice Queen says no playing around, then no playing around.”

She was pleased with his response. With a final push, she slowly guided herself down, bringing as much of him as she could inside.

“Holy fuck,” was his strained voice, “Winter.” His jaw was clenched, eyes closed, hands tight on her hips, and she began to slide herself up and down. She leaned back, jutting her chest out and he sat up, bringing his lips to her chest. As fingers threaded into his dark hair, she doubted that he would last long, especially with the pace she was going at. She was hungry, but at least had her own fingers to give her relief during the week.

Qrow, in comparison, was starving and she could feel it. One of his hands slipped up her back to pull her into him. He sucked and nipped at her breasts, sometimes a little harder than she expected, and Winter hoped that the squeaking of the bed wouldn’t attract any unnecessary attention.

But with a quick push at his shoulders, he was brought back against the bed and she began to push against him harder and faster.

“Winterplease-” he pushed and begged through his teeth, “not so fast, notso-”

She was nowhere near finishing, though, but she leaned in and whispered. “Don’t worry,” she pushed down again, making him shudder and twitch, “I’ll get you to come twice.” With that, he finally seemed to let himself go and with a few more thrusts she felt his cock pulsing inside, a warm liquid pushing against her.

As she continued to move, drawing out what she could, his cum began to spill out, turning the slaps of flesh wetter and louder. Qrow was beneath her, panting ever so slightly, gazing at her with lidded eyes. She could feel him going just a bit soft, and she knew she would need to entice him again. Slowing herself down to a crawl, she leaned her body back to push her chest out again. Grasping his hand she put it over her breast, giving a light squeeze to get the message across.

As he continued to caress her flesh, she reached between her legs, touching the sticky wetness between them. Brushing against the thick fluids, she took a generous swab of it upon her fingers and brought it between her lips, their mixed tastes swirling upon her tongue. It was more of a show for him, but she knew that few things got him harder than seeing her eat their shared mess, even if it was only a little bit.

“Heh, pulling out all the stops, are we?”

This was a good sign, and Winter resumed her faster pace, a smirk on her lips. Wet smacks bounced off the sterile walls as their breathing and pace began to match the other. Qrow slipped his hand onto her back again, his other snaking between her breasts and down her front to play with that little bit of flesh.

“Q-Qrow.”

It was her turn to start crumbling. As much as she knew his favorites, he knew hers and soon it was she who was buckling over, letting his tongue brush past her lips. With hurried thrusts and sharp breaths, only a swell of her pride allowed her to recall her original goal to bring him over the edge twice.

She grit her teeth, head burrowing between his neck and chest. She tried to fight it off, to fill her sensations with other feelings. But between his hard cock pushing deep into her again and again, with one set of his deft fingers going through her hair and the other swirling around her clit repeatedly, there was an encroaching peak, and-

Oh, yes, there, right there-

Oh

O-Oh

Oh

Oh

Somewhere in the back of her star-addled mind there was another wave of warmth within her amongst the heavenly squeezes. There was another sense of wetness that wasn’t just Qrow’s this time. Her cheeks were flush and breath heavy, and she blinked her eyes just in time to try and fumble with a kiss from her husband.

He chuckled and so did she before he tried to bring his lips to her again. She met it with a defter return this time.

“Well, you certainly held up your end of the bargain,” Qrow breathily said.

She brought a hand to his cheek and felt all the happier when he leaned into it. Of all of the things that could have happened, he was here and real in front of her. “I was quite serious about incentivizing your survival, you know. Have to make sure you’re not doing something stupid with that exquisite body of yours.”

“Duly noted, Ice Queen. Now let’s get the hell out of here before the doctors start lecturing us about discretion and sanitation.”

She kissed him again. “And if they say you’re not ready to be released I’ll just tell them I took your temperature - twice.”