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thetriggeredhappy · 3 years ago

Note

in the dadspy au, what if jeremy was just going to be an assistant/cook/janitor at the base while his dad was being the mercenary (since spy didnt want him to follow the "career" but didnt want to be separated from him), but then jeremy turned out to be even better than the hired scout so they promote him to that position and spy is not happy with this at all

ok i was gonna put this in the queue to post but im impatient because im happy with this one. only thing i didnt have was spy being upset by this development

(warnings for canon-typical violence, discussion of mercenary-type things, paranoia, alcohol, and exactly one proper fight scene. consider this pg-13)

“Would you prefer the good news first, or the bad news?” Dad asked.

Jeremy looked up at him from where he’d snatched up the sunday comics from his dad’s newspaper and was doodling little hats on the characters while they waited for their food to arrive. “Uh,” he said, “good news first.”

“Alright. The good news is, do you remember that line I’ve been tailing? The one in New Mexico?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jeremy said, then nodded a little more confidently. “Immunity, safehouse, somethin’ like that, right?”

“...Something like that,” Dad agreed carefully, and that made him raise an eyebrow. “It went well, and I think there’s the very real possibility that I’ve all but closed the deal, all they want now is an interview.”

“...Interview, singular,” Jeremy said slowly.

“That’s where the bad news begins. Unfortunately... merde, how to phrase this?” He drew a hand down his face. “They’re fully willing to hire me on, but this is a more... corporate affair than I’m used to. They have rules, stipulations. Long story short, they will not hire you as a mercenary on the basis of your age.”

Jeremy tensed. “What?” he demanded. “That’s stupid, I’m old enough to drive and buy guns and whatever the hell else.”

“But not rent a car, at least in many places in the United States.”

“But—“ he started, and remembered they were in public, and lowered his voice to a hiss, leaning in. “We’re hired killers, thieves, criminals. Do they really think we’re above having fakes? False documentation?”

“Actually, that is one of their requirements,” Dad said dryly, taking a paper from his jacket and consulting it. “I’m not happy about it either, mon lapin, but those are their rules. Already they have slightly bent them for one individual, and already I am on thin ice. But I may have a way to manage this.”

“Yeah?” Jeremy asked, nervous now.

“I know the woman responsible for new hires and managing the team I’ve applied for. She owes me a favor—a fairly hefty one. When I go in for the interview, one of my demands will include you being hired on, not as a mercenary, but for... for custodial purposes, something like that. Cook, janitor, security guard, secretary—whatever job there is that needs doing there, and I am sure that there will be one. Something to allow you to live there. Pay will likely be her stipulation, and the play I hope to make is that really, you’re overqualified for the position and she’s lucky to have someone so competent available, and in the worst case scenario, the pay is still good enough even for just one of us that we will not cut too deeply into the savings.”

The savings. That made Scout blink, because they only ever brought up the savings when—

“You think this could be it?” he asked quietly. “Like, it it?”

A hard exhale, and he leaned his cheek on his hand. “Potentially,” he finally said. “I don’t want to get your hopes up, but the job promises a variety of things. Medical attention available, extremely low levels of danger, and most of all, confidentiality. The only people who will know any name we give them would be the woman in charge of hiring us and their singular medical professional. There is no mode of communication to or from the compound outside of emergency lines to the organization and a single secure payphone located two miles away, there is no civilization within a twenty-five minute drive minimum, and this operation has been going long enough that the local authorities have long since grown used to being paid off, and likely don’t even remember what for anymore. I cash in a few valuable favors and ask this employer to turn a blind eye, we’d have somewhere remote and secure to spend our time after our deaths are faked and once the contract is over, we can start over. No ties to the past.”

“Freedom,” Jeremy marveled.

Silence for a few seconds, broken only by the quiet chatter of the rest of the diner. “I want to warn you, this work may not be glamorous. It may not even be particularly easy. I’m giving you the option of saying no,” Dad said.

“What?! Yes, hell yes, are you joking? To get us to living like normal people? Steady work? Livin’ in one place? Count me in!” he laughed.

“What if the job is something you won’t enjoy? Long hours, boring work?” Dad asked, entirely serious.

“I’m still on board.”

“What if the other people working there are rude to you? Disrespectful?”

“Well most of the people I meet through our job now try to kill us, so really it’s an upgrade.”

“What if there’s no diner nearby?” he asked, and there was a glint of humor in his eye.

“Damn, sorry, that’s the dealbreaker,” he joked right back, and that made him snort, shake his head, greet the waitress as she came back with their coffee and soda and then informed them that their food would be out shortly.

“I’ll ask,” was what Dad said once she was gone again, and that was that, and they started driving to New Mexico two nights later.

“—A warm welcome to our two newest recruits. This is the Spy, and this is the Guard.”

“Guard?” asked one of the men at the table, his accent thick and distinctly Russian. It made Jeremy tense slightly, but he didn’t let it show.

“Night Guard,” Jeremy answered, voice clipped.

“He’s not technically hired on as a mercenary like you all, he won’t be joining you on missions,” the short woman apparently named Miss Pauling (Jeremy was fairly sure it was a fake name) said, hands folded in front of her neatly. “He’s here to work security. Keep an eye out during the night, filter through the camera footage, handle the archiving, things like that.”

“We’re hiring on a civvie now?” asked another man, thick Scottish accent a little harder to digest than the eyepatch and the grenade he was in the process of fiddling with the internal mechanisms of.

“He’s combat ready, and will still be armed. His job is to essentially make sure you’re all safe enough to sleep through the night,” Miss Pauling said.

“I’m not some chump,” Jeremy agreed. “I know my stuff.”

“How old is he?” another man asked, this one in a hardhat with a heavy drawl, looking concerned.

“Twenty, for your information,” Jeremy said, a little sharply, eyes narrowed.

“If you have any other questions, there’ll be time later on. For now, I do need to show our two newest recruits where they’ll be staying,” Miss Pauling cut in.

There was an audible scoff from one of the men at the table, a dramatic rolling of eyes. Jeremy glared at him. He unfolded and refolded his extremely tattoo’d tree-trunk-like arms, tugging the visor of his hat between. “Sorry,” he said, accent thick and distinctly Californian. “I just don’t have the most trust for some scrawny kid in slacks and creep in a ski mask.”

“Scout, don’t start,” Miss Pauling warned.

“Just saying,” this man, apparently called Scout, muttered under his breath regardless.

“Don’t,” she said again, more firmly, and ignored the second eye roll she got for the trouble. “If you two would follow me.”

And they were shown around the base, and Jeremy in particular was shown into a room stuck behind three locked doors, where he found camera feeds and recording equipment. She gave him a basic overview and a thick packet of instructions and policies labelled ‘highly classified’ and a phone number to call if he had any further questions, and a set of hours that were apparently meant to become the new standard for him (with the quiet addendum that if he finished early that was alright, and that technically he could turn in early if two or more members of the team were already awake for the day and he was caught up on the archiving of old tapes).

Then he was left to “get used to the equipment”, which he assumed meant his dad was getting a similar rundown of his job, and it took a pretty quick glance through the packet to understand that clearly this place ran on an extremely secretive and closely monitored series of systems. In the packet, between the sections on camera maintenance and operation hours, were a few sheets detailing what were apparently the movement patterns of the various members of the team, including frequented locations and previously recorded large-scale infractions (mostly on the part of the Soldier, the Medic, the Scout, and one from the Demoman).

He wasn’t the one with the title Spy, but fuck, it seemed like he might as well have it. His entire job wasn’t even necessarily to keep the team safe overnight—he was just meant to watch all of them to make sure nobody was anywhere or doing anything out of the ordinary.

The next time he saw his dad, waiting outside the infirmary to get some sort of physical evaluation, his face was arranged carefully enough that he could tell he’d figured out something was up, too.

“Got your job assignments?” he asked quietly in French, glancing towards the door into the infirmary.

A nod, a glance. “I’m intrigued by the methods used in employee evaluation,” he deadpanned. “Especially the fact that apparently, they’re willing to assign employees for the explicit task of doing them.”

“How often?”

“Weekly.”

“Thorough,” Jeremy deadpanned, and glanced towards the hall at the distant sound of laughter, echoing from somewhere else on the base. “That’s basically mine too.”

There was a long silence, and when Jeremy looked back over, his dad was giving him an almost expectant look, waiting. All he had to offer him was a shrug, which was returned after a moment with a vague shake of the head. “I don’t believe it will be a problem,” his dad said simply. “Not for us, at the very least.”

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. Uh, anyways, good luck with the… physical, or whatever,” he said, and received a pat on the shoulder before he walked back off down the hall, hoping to figure out what exactly he was supposed to do with an entire room all to himself. He’d almost never had one before.

He was used to time changes and jet lag, to needing to switch his sleep schedule on the regular, but the switch to a straight up night shift was a rough one.

His nine-to-five was actually a ten-to-six, as in 10 PM through 6 AM. This meant that, assuming he managed to get his schedule in order, he’d be able to join in on the team dinners if he woke up early and could eat breakfast with them before he went to bed.

Very quickly he realized that going to dinner and breakfast with the team was going to become a staple part of his routine, because it didn’t take long before he began to feel extremely lonely all of the time. In a dark little room, everyone else asleep, scrubbing through tapes from during the day while half keeping an eye on the live feed from around the base that never showed much of anything, it was brutal. It was suffocating.

It was easy, at least. It didn’t take long before he got efficient at it and could start zoning out, and it wasn’t like he was under much pressure. His was the only room without any cameras in it. Security risk, apparently.  And to be honest, what small amount he and Dad interacted with mercenaries and other criminal types, Jeremy didn’t really tend to like them much. A lot of them were loud and rude and had the potential to turn around and try and kill them whenever they felt like it. He didn’t expect that he’d like the team as much as he did. He especially didn’t expect to like them so much without ever really talking to them.

But watching the camera feeds from throughout the day, seeing what they were up to, they were just... nice people. Soldier out by the dumpsters practicing rocket jumps and wrangling raccoons and apparently trying to learn how to spin a rifle, Pyro’s regular minor explosions in the kitchen while cooking and the surprised and frantic way they cleaned it up every time, the Demoman’s tendency to whistle wherever he went, watching through the feed as they all played cards and argued and jostled each other. They all seemed really nice. Really cool. Really dorky, too, but mostly just really nice and really cool.

And there were a few of them he was less sure about—he couldn’t get eyes on the Medic most of the time, what with the one camera in the Medbay being tilted down at an angle that made it hard to see much of anything but the occasional bird (probably by those same birds). The Heavy tended to just sit and read, and was pretty much silent most of the time otherwise. The Scout tended to leave the base pretty often. And the Sniper didn’t even live on base, he had a van outside that he could only occasionally see movement in when he squinted at the far edge of the camera leading outside. But even then, Heavy and Sniper mostly just seemed quiet, and Medic just seemed busy, and the Scout just seemed like a little bit of a dickhead.

But then one day when Jeremy was at breakfast the Heavy caught him leaning to try to get a look at the cover of the book he was reading, and he blurted that he was just wondering what book was so great that he’d stay up until like four in the morning reading, and then the entire team was gawking at him and asking questions and insisting that it was insane that there was someone actually watching all those cameras, and he shrugged and said there was always supposed to be someone watching the tapes back it was just usually some office worker type a hundred miles away. And they seemed almost... upset with him. And maybe that was fair, it wasn’t like he ever talked to any of them much, mostly he just spent breakfast and dinner half-asleep and listening to their chatter. And Demoman admitted that he’d honestly assumed that Jeremy slept his entire shift, he just always looked so tired at breakfast. There was almost this discomfort. This distrust.

And so, now that the jig was up, he made it a point to say some things to certain members of the team. To tell the Medic that his camera was tilted down so that he couldn’t see most of the room, and to very pointedly say that it was weird how that happened and that he didn’t know why they set it up like that in the first place, but it was really none of his business. Made it a point to warn the Engineer in the morning that the previous night, Soldier had been doing something in the fridge for a while, and to maybe check the labels before he made breakfast. Made it a point to tell the Demoman that the camera in his workshop was right in plain sight, and that if he moved one of his blackboards an inch or two to the left, it would obscure the room a pretty hefty amount. Made it a point to tell the Sniper that the camera on the rooftop seemed to be glitching out, and it’d just sort of lost the tapes of the previous two nights, and that it was really unfortunate since for all he knew there might have been someone ignoring the signs about there being no personnel allowed up there.

In return, he found that Pyro would sometimes make little sparkly notes with smiley faces on them and stick them to the door to the security room. That Sniper started tipping his hat at the camera above the door into the base from the garage. That on occasional drinking nights, the team would suddenly turn and start waving at the camera, laughing the whole way. On one night in particular he could hear through the low-quality and tinny speakers that they were trying to cajole him into leaving the security room for a while to join them for cards, and god, but he wanted to.

And he noticed more things. Soldier walking with a slight limp some days when rocket jumps had rough landings. Being able to count the doves in the infirmary and even tell them apart to some extent through blurry close-ups. The Engineer making it a point to sweep really regularly regardless of what project he was working on.

And then he noticed a weird thing.

It took him a long time to get used to the patterns of hallways, the cameras not really lined up linearly after a while, too many branching paths. He learned to follow progress, to flick from one camera to the next as someone walked around corners. And for a while he thought maybe he wasn’t very good at it.

Until he realized two things. First of all, that in a hallway where he knew there were five doors, he could only see four—apparently the door to Pyro’s room was just barely out of sight of the camera. He only figured it out because one day it swung open wide enough to almost bang against the wall.

And then, when he realized there was somehow that massive blindspot, that there was a corner with a blindspot too. One where that Scout kept disappearing.

He watched a few more times to make sure, and yep. He’d see the Engineer walking around the corner, flick to the next screen, and there he was, continuing down the hallway. And then later that same day, the Scout, walking, and flick to the next camera, and he wasn’t there.

One of the worse parts of the job was that he never got to see Dad anymore, never got to just sort of hang out the way they did all the time when he was growing up, and he knew he would miss it but he didn’t know how much. And he found it was even worse when he had something important to say, doubly so when he had something important to say but no idea if it was actually important.

He tried to bring it up casually, in the like ten minutes of time he ever got alone to talk to Dad. Dad was fighting the kettle trying to make some tea and he was trying to stay awake long enough to figure out how he was going to say this.

“Uh,” he said, and Dad looked at him. “So, uh, what’s the read you’re getting on that Scout guy?”

“Lazy,” Dad shrugged, looked back at the kettle. “Arrogant. He seems to care very little about doing his job correctly and has horrible communication on the field.”

“Right, right,” he nodded, fought a yawn down. “Uh. So like, kind of a dickhead.”

“Indeed,” Dad said, nodding vaguely.

“So uhhh... not the best.”

“Where are you going with this?” Dad asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

“I, I dunno, the guy just likes hanging out in this one blindspot in the cameras, and it’s kinda freaking me out,” Jeremy said, scratching at the back of his neck.

Dad frowned. “Strange. I wasn’t aware that there were any blindspots in the cameras.”

“There’s only a few, and only for pretty small spaces I think? But apparently he just likes hanging out in one of them.” Jeremy scuffed his shoe on the ground, glancing over as voices started echoing down the hall towards them. “Just thought it was weird.”

“I’ll look into it,” Dad muttered, voice quiet, and then raised it again slightly. “I refuse to keep up with sports.”

“C’mon,” Jeremy said, knowing this game well, changing subjects into something more normal as people entered earshot. “I’m not even asking you to keep up with sports, I’m just saying, I’d kill to go to a baseball game right about now.”

“The American Pasttime!” Soldier called from the room over.

“Exactly,” Jeremy agreed, nodding at Soldier as he also entered the kitchen, a half-asleep Demoman in tow.

“Any ghosties or ghoulies on the cameras last night, lad?” Demo had enough energy to ask, blinking blearily at the contents of the fridge.

“Oh, a billion,” Jeremy said.

“Guard!” Soldier barked, the most awake person in the room. “Should these ghost-ghouls appear again, don’t be afraid to point me in their direction! I have significant experience with them already and do not fear the likes of them!”

“Yeah sure,” Jeremy shrugged.

“You’re a champion, Guard,” Demo said with what was either a really disoriented blink or a wink, slugging him on the shoulder and wandering back out into the common room with the entire carton of milk in his other hand. Jeremy gave him a mock-salute that Soldier copied with absolute conviction. He and Dad shared a glance after the two of them left, and Jeremy was the first one to break, snickering under his breath.

“I’ll look into it,” Dad said, and also left the kitchen, and Jeremy nodded and started trying to remember what else he’d been planning on doing before bed.

“So,” Dad said a few days later, materializing next to Jeremy when he was in the middle of his jog and making him almost jump out of his skin, skidding to a stop.

“You’re enjoying that new watch way too much,” Jeremy panted, out of breath and still very much startled.

“Maybe,” Dad said, and he was smiling. “But as I was saying.”

“All you said was ‘so’,” Jeremy pointed out, giving him a look.

“There’s a juvenile joke here about how I’m your father and so of course I say ‘so’, but if you wouldn’t mind it, I did have something important to say, mon lapin,” Dad replied, and Jeremy rolled his eyes hard at the horrible joke and cheesy name, fighting back a smile of his own.

“Go for it,” he said, and took the opportunity to bend and tighten his shoelaces.

“So. Regarding that Scout and his habits. You mentioned he spends time in blind spots of the cameras, oui?” Dad asked.

“Yeah. Keeps, uh, I guess he keeps getting infractions for going off base too much, too. I’ve logged him leaving like three times this week already,” Jeremy nodded.

“Indeed. Well, considering how new we are to the team, I did not want to jump to conclusions, and so contacted Miss Pauling and asked on your behalf for any older records, and I found out something very... intriguing.”

Jeremy looked up at him, blinking. ‘Intriguing’, historically, had always been a very, very bad thing.

“Apparently, it has been two years since they last had a Guard situated on base. The previous one was a much older gentleman, retired from being a full member of the team due to health complications but not entirely ready to part with the company. The previous guard was somewhat strict, and the Scout—the same as we have now—very much disliked the man. He continued acquiring near-constant infractions under the man’s watch for leaving when he was not meant to, so much so that the previous Guard proposed enstating trackers on the team when they went off-base. And before this policy could take hold, the previous Guard left the base one day and did not return, and finally was found dead a state over, one month later.”

Jeremy blinked once, twice. “Holy shit,” he said, and took note of the wary look on his face. “Okay. So we’re thinkin’ the same thing, right?”

“I would assume so. And…” Dad hesitated, moved to fidget with his cufflinks. “And I would not be particularly concerned about this, as I’m confident that you wouldn’t have gotten his attention from what you’ve been up to lately, and therefore wouldn’t be in danger yet should history attempt to repeat itself, but… he’s already taken a disliking to you.”

“What?” he asked, eyebrows shooting up.

“I believe it’s something as simple as some sort of shallow jealousy. Another American on the team, also relatively young, filling the position of someone he disliked previously. He regularly complains about the fact that you don’t need to go do the same job as the rest of us.” Dad shrugged, glanced over at him. “That, combined with the fact that you have somewhat conflicting duties, well, he tends to rather tetchy. He claims that considering he’s meant to be the first line of defense, they shouldn’t also need a guard at night.”

Jeremy had a number of opinions about that, but he stuck to the most relevant ones. “I really don’t like this guy,” he said. “Might be, uh. Worth keeping an eye on.”

“Agreed.” Dad glanced back over his shoulder towards the base, then at his watch. “Enjoy the rest of your run. Don’t forget to eat.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, hit the bricks already, old man,” Jeremy scoffed, waving him off, and Dad rolled his eyes, disappearing again in a cloud of smoke. “You’re gonna be using that thing all the damn time now, aren’t you?”

“Oui,” came a voice from nowhere, and Jeremy huffed a laugh, meandering his way back into the rest of his jog.

Jeremy hummed along to the radio, flicking between cameras on autopilot and wondering when exactly to take his lunch break.

He didn’t face the clock or anything, so he wasn’t sure, but he thought he had a pretty solid rhythm at that point. Click, click, click, between the camera to the road, the camera to the main entrance, and the camera in the hall towards the middle of the building, for about one second each. At just about any time after 11 or 11:30, those were the only three in real time that he needed to keep an eye on, mostly for people coming back late from bar hopping or if Miss Pauling was rolling in on a delivery. All the other cameras he could see out of the corner of his eye, and any movement he’d pick up on pretty quick, even if it was usually just the doves fluttering on the camera to the Medbay. After he cycled through those (and there was almost never anything there) he’d cycle back through to the tape he had in, put it on high speed, and watch it for about two or three minutes, get through a chunk of that time. Mostly he’d just be making sure nobody had been in the base while the team was away ni o(which indeed there never was), so there wasn’t much of a reason to take it off high speed, and the second part of the night would be watching the tapes for the time the team was back on base.

Movement on a camera made him click the pause, and he glanced off to the side. One of the doves had shuffled to face the other direction. He rolled his eyes, looking back at the bigger monitor again and pressing play.

The second half of the night was a little more interesting. He just had to look at the tapes for the time the team was there, check for discrepancies that might point to Dad messing with the disguise technology off-the-clock or the enemy Spy having infiltrated. For the most part things were straightforward, but he at least got to see his teammates up to funny things sometimes. Pyro’s antics were usually entertaining. Soldier he only caught some of, on the basis of him often walking off out of range of the cameras when he went on his excursions. Demo was funny sometimes. Honestly, just seeing the Sniper anywhere but as a fuzzy distant shape was interesting.

Movement on a camera. Same dove. He ignored it. Click, click, click, all three cameras clear, back to the fast-forward of the same empty hallway as before.

He really needed to figure something out, for the Scout. Maybe he and Dad were just being paranoid. It would be insane for him to try to outright kill anyone who inconvenienced him, not to mention reckless, and stupid to boot. Acting like that in their line of work would make him a lot of enemies extremely quickly. It would make more sense for the old Guard disappearing to be unrelated, to be honest.

Yeah. Hell, he barely knew the guy, and here he was assuming he’d straight up whacked a guy for getting a little too on his case about something. Maybe they were wrong.

Movement on a camera. He glanced over and froze outright.

It took him five seconds to come to his senses enough to pause the playback on his screen.

Figures. Shapes. Not at the front entrance, in the hallway, there next to the back way, by the garage. At least three, moving carefully, hard to make out in the darkness.

Okay. Okay, don’t panic, focus.

Jeremy ran through a few things in his head. He’d already done a headcount, the only people he wasn’t sure about were the Sniper and the Medic, but he hadn’t seen the Medic in any of the hallways out of the infirmary. Three figures were two too many to be any of the team, and besides that, they didn’t look like the Medic. Too short to be the Sniper, moving differently. Different clothes.

Three people. He hopped up, rushed over to the wall, yanked open the panel he had there. Three buttons, which he needed to hit in order. The first would send an alert to Miss Pauling, the second to whoever was assigned to be on alert that night, the third would set off the alarm.

He hit the first, hit the second, and hesitated on the third.

Okay. Technically if he didn’t hit that third button, he’d be breaking protocol, which was, according to the manual, ‘grounds for termination’. He was pretty sure that meant a long swim with some concrete shoes. And it was apparently recorded every time he hit these buttons, so they could deduct from his pay on false alerts. So they’d know if he didn’t hit this third button. He needed to think fast.

This was a different button than the alert button. The alert was more subtle, set for just one person. The alarm was throughout the entire base, over every loudspeaker. Louder than a fire alarm. If he hit this one, these intruders would hear that there was an alarm going off. Anyone smart would book it, high tail it the hell out of there. But he still didn’t know where they came from.

There hadn’t been movement on any of the screens, and he looked at the camera feed facing the road already, a few times even. He should’ve seen them. And if they found their way in once, they could do it again.

If he didn’t hit the button, on the other hand, whoever was on alert would wake up and wonder why they’d gotten an alert but the alarm wasn’t going off. If they were clever, which they probably were if they’d lasted this long, they’d come to the security room to see what was up and they could work from there.

He closed the panel again and moved to wait.

A minute later, still no movement from the hallway where most of the rooms were. That was fine, they’d just woken up, and probably needed to get dressed and grab their guns.

Another minute later, no movement, which was fair, they just needed a second to get their bearings. The intruders, meanwhile, were just lurking, slowly making their way down the hall.

Another minute later, no movement, and he opened the panel to press the button again before he continued waiting. Maybe they didn’t hear him the first time.

Another minute later and he took to standing next to the panel, mashing the button rapidly, eyes on the screen where the intruders were passing the kitchen, starting to get pretty far into the building.

Another minute later and he stomped his way into his sneakers, grabbing his flashlight and gun and guard cap from where they were hung on the wall. “Fine, I’ll fucking do it myself,” he grumbled, and carefully shouldered open the door, taking one last glance at the camera before he shut the door behind himself.

He kept his footsteps quiet, squinting into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to finish adjusting as he crept towards where he’d last seen the figures. It was near-silent in the base at night except for the distant, quiet hum of generators and occasional shift of plumbing. It was getting more and more familiar, and he found himself able to tune it out somewhat, instead listening intently for footsteps besides his own, making sure to click the safety off his gun while he was still alone and not when he was close to whoever had decided to break in.

Okay. Dad did this all the time. He could handle this.

He slowed as he approached the corner near the kitchen, peering around as carefully as he could, tugging down the brim of his cap to try and hide any potential shine from his eyes. He caught sight of a vague shape standing near the doorway, hesitating before it crept inside, into the common area.

Not ideal, on the basis of that being their goddamn kitchen, but at least there would be cover.

By the time he managed to sneak up to the doorway, he could make out the sound of vague whispering. It was far enough that it gave him the boldness to peer into the room, and just slightly lit by the glow of the clock on the oven he could see two shapes there in the kitchen, the third lingering nearer to him, there by the table.

Jeremy was only just starting to make a plan, relieved to have the jump on them, when there was the distant sound of a generator humming to life, and all the figures stopped, paused for a moment.

“Fucking spooky here,” one whispered, barely audible.

“Calm down,” another whispered. “What, scared of ghosts?”

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, shifted onto the balls of his feet and started creeping a little further into the room. If he could just get all three of them to one side, so he wouldn’t need to pivot so much…

“You don’t know, maybe there’s ghosts here,” the first protested, and swore quietly at what sounded like their winging their elbow against the corner of the tale, and Jeremy tried to stick near the wall, managed to creep half-behind one of the chairs, trying to keep his silhouette indistinct. “These guys kill people.”

“So do we,” the third mumbled, moving out of sight in the kitchen, and Jeremy bit down on a swear, starting to inch behind the couch. “Don’t be a coward. And stop making so much noise.”

“You can’t shoot a ghost,” the first pointed out, moving a bit closer to the kitchen, giving the table a wide berth now. “Or punch it.”

“I can try,” the second said, and stopped at the sound of a rustle.

Jeremy held his breath, weight half-balanced against where he’d tried to step, newspaper trapped beneath his foot.

“That one wasn’t me,” the first whispered. There was another, more significant rustle throughout the room, and Jeremy could see a glint as the intruders drew their weapons.

Jeremy inhaled, exhaled, and just barely managed not to swear out loud.

The first one was the closest by, lingering beside the arm of the couch Jeremy was crouched in the shadow of. “Do they have a cat here?” they asked, voice quiet.

The second was approaching into the main room more carefully. From the sound of the footsteps, trying to keep a shoulder closer to the wall, clearly paying more attention to the door. “Are you stupid or something?” was the reply, voice also quiet.

The third didn’t speak, but huffed out a laugh, which was enough to tell Jeremy that he was out of the kitchen.

Jeremy inhaled shakily, exhaled shakily, shifted his grip on his handgun and flashlight, and took a split second to think. Inhaled one more time.

He leapt to his feet, swinging his flashlight like a billy club and clobbering the first figure across the side of the head, sending them tumbling to the ground. From the sound of the impact, a dislocated jaw at the very least. One down.

A shout from the other side of the room, arms moving to try to aim, clearly struggling to see him, but that third figure was in the doorway, silhouetted against the faint light from the oven’s clock, and that was enough to figure out where the head and chest were. He aimed, fired, got what he was pretty sure was the neck considering the brief spray of blood that splattered against the oven, darkening the room completely.

A swear from the second figure, and Jeremy wanted to swear too, because he’d hoped that second figure would be stupid and try and charge him, but now he was ten steps away and didn’t have time to fiddle with and cock the gun again, other hand full with a flashlight and no way to—

Oh, duh.

“Stay where you are,” the second figure ordered, but Jeremy’s eyes were a little better adjusted and besides that, he wasn’t the one talking. He lifted his flashlight and clicked it on.

The second figure cried out, recoiling at the sudden blindingly bright light in what had been near-darkness, and Jeremy had time to finagle his thumb up to cock his gun again, now able to aim with absolute accuracy, this shot connecting with the figure’s head.

He exhaled.

It took Jeremy two minutes to remember to fire a bullet into the chest of the unconscious guy, and another minute for the other mercenaries to start showing up, half-dressed and armed. Dad, presumably to prove a point, showed up pretty close to the middle of the pack almost fully dressed. Jeremy wasn’t entirely sure how long it took before Miss Pauling showed up, but he wasn’t even halfway through their questions by that time.

“Guard, headcount?” she asked before she even bothered saying hello, still wearing her motorcycle helmet and looking more than a little bit miffed.

“Uh,” he said, eyes drawn away from where Medic was assessing the bodies on the kitchen table, “seven present and accounted for. Sniper’s probably out at his van, don’t know about the Scout.”

“Alright. Pyro,” she said, and Pyro stood at attention, bunny slippers squeaking at the movement. “go wake up Sniper and get him in here.”

Pyro nodded, handing their weird unicorn plushie thing to Jeremy as they passed by, giving him a solemn nod before hurrying away.

“Okay. Guard, hit me with a rundown, then,” she said, and shot a glance around the room. “No peanut gallery needed. And Medic, please don’t take them apart too much. I gotta get rid of those later.”

“Uh. Spotted these guys on the cameras, hit the first and second alerts,” Jeremy said.

“And not the third?” she asked pointedly.

“They were, like, right next to the door, and—here’s the thing, Miss P, is I dunno how the hell they got in here,” he said, and there was a general balk from the room. “No, seriously. They didn’t come in on the main road, they were in one of the back hallways by the garage. There’s gotta be a hole in the cameras or something, because I seriously don’t know where they came from. And if they booked it, they’d take whatever vehicle they used to get here, too, and we might not figure it out. Thought I’d just wait for whoever the hell was supposed to be on alert so we could… I dunno, at least see which way they went.”

“Guard,” she admonished, and he shrank a little bit. “That was incredibly reckless. What if nobody had shown up to help you?”

“Uh,” he said, blinked, “but… nobody did show up.”

A pause. She blinked. “What? You’re the one who did that?” she asked, entirely shocked, pointing towards the three bodies on the table.

“Uh, yeah? Isn’t that my job?” he asked carefully, shifting the stuffed animal under his arm.

“No, you’re—you’re just supposed to be the Guard, you’re supposed to watch cameras, not—“ She paused, taking a second to push up her glasses and rub at the bridge of her nose, inhaling, exhaling. “Okay. Points for… going above and beyond, here, but Guard, don’t do that again.”

“Sure thing, Miss P,” he mumbled, tugging on the brim of his guard cap, and sighed to himself as Miss Pauling moved away to try and stop Medic from attempting to covertly steal a few organs from the corpses. Dad clapped him on the shoulder supportively, and that did make him feel a little better. He wasn’t expecting a clap to the other shoulder, and looked up, surprised to see Heavy there, looking just slightly less grim than usual.

“Little Guard man is credit to team,” he said simply, solemnly.

Jeremy straightened up slightly. “Oh. Hey, thanks,” he said. Heavy nodded at him.

“It’s true,” Demo called, and he looked over, got another approving nod. “Really saved the lot of us, lad.”

“I, I mean, hey, it’s… what I’m here for. Or, uh. I thought that was it, anyways,” he shrugged, glancing away. “I mean, yeah, I’m pretty cool, though.”

Dad bumped his arm for the last part, and he snickered. “My question,” Dad continued, doing his best to ignore him, “is primarily regarding who, precisely, was supposed to be present to help Guard with this. Who is meant to be on alert?”

“It’s meant to be Scout, ain’t it?” the Engineer asked from nearby, frowning. A general murmur of agreement. “Could he have slept through it?”

“Heavy doubts this,” Heavy grumbled, looking troubled.

“Why’re we awake?” asked Sniper from the doorway, and various teammates called out a greeting. Sniper seemed half-gone, and completely grumpy, but not as grumpy as Pyro, and not nearly as gone as the man leaning heavily against Pyro’s shoulder.

“Hey,” the Scout managed, grinning, speech garbled, visibly sloppy and unbalanced. “What’s up, guys?”

Groans from parts of the room. “Drinkin’ again, Scout?” the Engineer drawled, visibly irritated.

“That’s my trademark, lad, go on,” Demo laughed, but the enthusiasm wasn’t entirely there.

“Scout,” Miss Pauling said, voice firm in a way that made Jeremy almost flinch in sympathy. “Are you aware that we’ve had a situation here while you’ve been sleeping?”

“Weren’t sleeping,” Sniper murmured, and eyes turned to him. He scratched at the back of his neck. “Came stumbling in ‘round when I was heading in. He was out for the night. Bar, looks like.”  “What?” Jeremy demanded. “Why the fuck didn’t I see him leave on the cameras?”

“Alright,” Miss Pauling said, and Jeremy looked at her. Her expression was hard to read. “It’s possible he went through the back tunnel.”

“Back tunnel?” Jeremy asked, and glanced around. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t heard of it.

“For emergencies only. Scout’s the only one who I’ve given a key card to. I have one too. It’s supposed to be used for transporting especially sensitive information, most of the team isn’t supposed to even know it exists. If there’s a gap in the cameras around the back of the building, he might have been using it to… sneak out to go to town, even though he knows he’s already in hot water for leaving the base so much,” Miss Pauling said, glaring at Scout, who was looking increasingly annoyed.

“Whatever, it’s not a big deal,” he protested, scoffing.

“That tunnel is for emergencies only,” Miss Pauling stressed. “I trusted you with the privilege of knowing about it account of having worked here for so long, and you’re using that privilege and key card to mess around?”

“He was coming back from around the front of the building, at least,” Sniper chimed in, and Pyro nodded. “Not that I’d understand the point of sneaking out if he’s going to just walk back in the front door.”

“Key card?” Medic repeated from near the table, eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, it’s, it’s a magnetized card, that can be read by a card reader, used like a key,” Miss Pauling explained, deflating a little bit.

His eyebrows furrowed further. “Would it happen to look anything like this?” he asked, picking up a lanyard from the table and holding it up, showing the room the card clipped onto the end of it.

Two beats of silence. “Spy, would you mind?” Miss Pauling asked politely, nodding towards the Scout, who had gone pale.

“Not at all,” Dad said just as politely, and walked over towards the Scout and Pyro, then circled around behind them, and sank a blade into the Scout’s spine. He promptly crumbled to the floor, dead.

“Well. At least that’s that mystery solved,” Miss Pauling sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose again. “Now I’ve gotta block off time tomorrow to get rid of three bodies, and then hopefully that’s the last we’re gonna hear of this or else the Administrator is gonna kill me.”

“What about the Scout?” Heavy rumbled.

“…Scratch that. Four bodies,” she mumbled, face dropping into her hands. “And then I need to find his replacement. Ugh.”

“Can’t imagine you’d need to go far,” Demo said, and Jeremy looked up, and Demo was very obviously tilting a thumb in his direction.

“He’s proven himself to be better at this job,” Dad agreed, shrugging. “And I would say on a bad day he’s still a better runner than the previous Scout on a good one.”

“He can clearly handle a firearm well,” the Engineer noted, looking over one of the bodies.

“And a blunt object,” Medic chimed, just a bit too pleased. “This jaw is almost completely shattered!”

“Okay, okay, fine, sure,” Miss Pauling waved off, one hand still pressed to her face, clearly overwhelmed and tired. “We’ll get his paperwork in tomorrow. Congratulations, you’re the new Scout, any questions? Can the questions wait until morning? Great, thank you. Good night, everyone. Medic, have the bodies in bags for me at least, okay?”

A distracted thumbs up from Medic, and Miss Pauling was groaning, wandering back out of the room, and most of the team followed, yawning amongst themselves. Sniper half-attempted to ask again why the hell any of them were awake, but gave up halfway through. Pyro, for one, made sure to at least retrieve the plushie from Scout’s arms before wandering off, giving him an appreciative pat on the shoulder.

“So,” Dad said, and when he looked over, he was smiling. “A promotion, mon lapin. Congratulations, new Scout.”

“Do I gotta wear that stupid outfit he always wears?” Jeremy asked, entirely serious. His reply was a laugh and a pat on the shoulder before he disappeared in a puff of smoke. “Pops, I’m serious. Do I? Dad!?”

“—So that’s why I figured, y’know, might as well tell you guys,” Jeremy finished rambling, hands in his pockets, continuing down the hallway. “Because… I dunno. I could tell Miss P, but it’s nice having secret stuff, y’know?”

“You think this is how they actually got in?” Demo asked, looking dubious. “Little blind spot in the cameras?”

“Only a couple feet wide, you said?” Sniper grumbled.

“Sounds possible,” Heavy said hesitantly.

“I dunno. Maybe. But if I tell Miss P about it, they’re gonna fix it,” Jeremy shrugged, turning the corner and stopping. “There. I knew it.”

They stopped with him, following his line of sight. “You’re takin’ the piss, mate,” Sniper deadpanned. “You want to tell me he’d been climbing out a window like a teenager?”

Jeremy shrugged, moving to open the window in question. It swung open easily, just large enough to push through with only a little bit of a problem, barely needing to turn his shoulders. “He’s not much bigger than me, and what the hell else would he be doing here?” he pointed out.

“Heavy cannot fit through that window,” Heavy deadpanned.

“Yeah. Sorry, big guy,” Jeremy apologized, leaning back inside and closing it again. “But hey, mystery solved, right?”

“Well, if I ever need windows to climb out of, now I know just the lad for the job,” Demo said, nudging him. “Thanks, Guard. Or, er, Scout. Och, now that’s going to take getting used to, aye? Might just stick to calling you ‘laddie’, laddie.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he laughed, nudging him right back. And as much as they ribbed him for it, he did see a kind of appreciation there. Just like he’d figured, they seemed to take note of him taking their side and not just Miss Pauling’s.

Now he just needed to switch back over to the day shift.

#father-son bonding au #dad!spy #tf2 #team fortress 2 #shut up me #my fanfiction #everybody talks #really happy with this one even if it took Way Too Fucking Long

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bitimdrake · 3 years ago

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sorry if you've talked about this somewhere already, but can I ask for some detail about what you mean when you say you're "reading comics chronologically"? I assume you're not literally reading like, every comic dc has published in a given month one month at a time?? can I ask how you've ordered your reading and what series you're including in your list?

I'm not sure if I've talked about it fully either!

I'm definitely not reading every comic dc has published. That is too much even for me, plus a lot of characters and worlds I'm just not interested in. However, for a specific set of characters, I am reading every comic I know of for them in, as best I can manage, literal in-universe chronological order.

It's not quite the same as publishing order, but it's vaguely close. So, like, I don't cycle one issue at a time through each run because I try to keep arcs together when possible, but I do jump between runs alongside the characters. Which is why I can say stuff like "I'm currently in 2014." (but I can't specifically say I'm in a particular month, because I tend to be at a slightly different spot in each run).

what i'm including is every major appearance of Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph, Cass, and Damian, plus most appearances of Donna, Kory, and Barbara (I was not going to get every Oracle appearance), any particularly famous or good Batman story, big Crisis events, and also whatever random thing I get attached to along the way. (This list also inherently means I end up reading most appearances for other Titans like Raven or Vic or Gar too, but Titans that are attached to other hero families I don't follow outside the Titans. I do want to do an arrow family read through once I finish with bats though, so I can properly hit all of Roy's appearances especially.)

Also this only applies from post-Crisis on. Technically I went "chronological" pre-Crisis too, but it wasn't thorough--I read a handful of comics from the 40s, then a few from the 50s, and so on. Until I hit New Teen Titans in 1980 and started reading the whole run.

how I do it is a lot of organization effort (that I also genuinely love doing!!). The dcuguide character chronologies have been an essential starting point, and the dc wiki's list of appearances for each character help me fill in the gaps. Basic process:

make The List:

Copy the dcuguide chronology of each character I'm following who is present in this era of comics.

Color code each list so I know which appearance belongs to which character.

Find any appearances that overlap, and stitch the lists together so I make sure to hit those appearances at the right time for both characters.

[For example! If Robin!Jason appears in a bunch of Batman issues, and then in NTT#36, where Dick stars, I want to make sure I read BOTH Jason's preceding Batman issues and NTT up to #35 before I read NTT#36 with both of them.]

make The Spreadsheet:

Rows are for each month (based on cover date since that's the easiest to find and reference). Columns are for each run that one of my characters has a starring role in. There are also columns for miscellaneous runs.

Drop in all the issue numbers for the main runs, using the dc wiki for month reference.

Grab the list of appearances for each character from the dc wiki. These are unsorted, so throw out the appearances already included in the chronologies I have, and then sort the rest by cover date.

Log those misc issues into the spreadsheet.

and then we Read:

Follow the List I made in part one.

Keep an eye on the misc appearances in the spreadsheet so I can try to read those at roughly the time they were published. Again, publishing order isn't exactly chronological order, but it'll get me in the ballpark. I don't want to try to read an issue from 2008 when I'm still mostly in 2004 (or vice verse).

Grey out issues in the spreadsheet when I finish them, and remove them from the first List.

As I read, make A Newer, Better List with the comics I've finished, including little notes for myself of what happened in them or any other details that will help establish order. Keep adjusting and moving around the issues as I read more and more and nail down exactly where they all sort.

(Because a lot of issues with different characters happen simultaneously or else don't have any particular order, I do also have notation for specifying that.)

Use my beloved new list, my pride and joy, as reference for everything.

As you can imagine, this has gotten more complicated the more characters are involved. It was easy peasy back when Dick and Jason were the only batkids, or Dick and Tim and guest character Stephanie Brown. I didn't actually make a spreadsheet until mid 1998, when I realized I finally could not keep things straight with just a list. It is very tricky to sort all these kids out now. There is a lot of color coding involved.

I, uh, hope this answers your question. (And I'm always happy to share chronological lists, just with the disclaimer that they are chronological, and not based on quality or even best reading order.)

In conclusion, here is a snippet of my current spreadsheet, the end

#dc #*dc #*#ask #anon

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hawkfurze · 2 years ago

Note

22, 29, and 39 for the writer asks?

22. How organized are you with your writing? Describe to me your organization method, if it exists. What tools do you use? Notebooks? Binders? Apps? The Cloud?

I used to be incredibly disorganized but had started changing the habit this year. My biggest change has been making a section in my Discord server with separate channels for notes for each of my projects. Its been an absolute life saver for me, especially with Not Quite Somewhere Else, because I will be day dreaming and brainstorming future scenes and have an idea for something then go immediately type it in there. Later when I’m scripting the next part I’ll go back to the channel and look through what I had noted and see of my ideas still work for how I want them to go. I also have been using it to organize the storyline for it too (The next update will be the end of this arc, then we will have 3 “fluff” updates before we get into the next storyline which is already completely planned for 8 parts). I plan on doing this with all of my projects, NQSE is just the one thats the most fully planned ATM.

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

Music a lot. A lot of my writing and brainstorming is done while I listen to music, which I think might be distracting for some people, but it helps me. Its why some of my playlists have songs on them for characters the song might not actually fit that well, it’s mostly cause I had a writing breakthrough about a character while listening to said song. If nothing seems to help with inspiration I usually just go to other media. I was in a huge creativity slump for most of 2020/ beginning of 2021; I got into TMA after some personal things were making me want to be less involved with the FC5/FCND fandom and I had ideas for things I wanted to try and make into a podcast but they ended up not becoming something I knew I was gonna wanna continue once I started. NQSE pulled me out of that slump and I ended up taking the ideas I likes from those podcast ideas and put them into In Harmony, which after a long process of brainstorming, is something that I am now incredibly excited to be working on.

39. What keeps you writing when you feel like giving up?

Taking a step back and rationalizing my thoughts. I have bad anxiety and am not being treated for it so I kind of had to figure out my own way for coping with whenever I feel like I can’t do it. I had a horrible experience with a writing teacher when I was younger and wanted to be an author and it completely turned me off from writing until I was in my early 20s, so it was easy at first for me to wanna quit, especially when I first started posting fics and would avoid AO3 for the rest of the day cause of how cringy I thought my stuff was. Now if I get frustrated with my writing I just put it down and get back to it once I figure out where I’m stumped. I had this happen a lot with writing NQSE updates, especially since I’m writing pages as I’m drawing them, and have had thrown out multiple pages on some updates and redid them because I was getting frustrated with writing them and couldn’t figure out where the issue was.

#damn it hawkfurze #tma spoilers #in harmony #not quite somewhere else au #NQSE is most organized cause I pretty much have this story planned from start to finish #i also currently don’t plan on changing anything in my comic when tma 2 is revealed cause I dont wanna ruin my story just to fit it in #its called an au for a reason #im keeping my mind open in case that maybe there I can add to add onto nqse #but if anyone was wondering yeah ATM I plan on keeping NQSE just the way it is

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makeste · 4 years ago

Text

BnHA Chapter 300: Days of Our Todorokis

Previously on BnHA: Hawks was all “hey Jeanist, wanna go on a road trip with me to my mom’s house?” Jeanist was all “you know it,” and so they hopped into Jeanist’s jercedes and took off. Hawks took a nap and had a flashback to his Dickensian childhood living in a abject poverty with his jerk mom and jerk dad, thinking heroes were make-believe until one day Endeavor arrested his dad and Baby Hawks was all “OH SHIT.” And then he saved a bunch of people, and the HPSC was all “what do we have here,” and blah blah blah, you know the rest. Back in the present, Hawks was all “well my life is currently in shambles, but on the plus side there’s no one bossing me around anymore so that’s pretty cool,” and then decided he was going to talk to Endeavor. Fandom was all “I can’t believe Hawks would side with his childhood hero over the man who burned his wings off and posted a video calling him a violent murderer who took after his abusive dad,” so that was fun and stuff. I can’t wait to see what piping fresh takes this new chapter will bring.

Today on BnHA: Our old friend Carbonation Carl tries to loot a Starbucks and gets his ass kicked by a senior citizen. Society is all “YEAH, WE’RE REALLY STARTING TO GET SICK OF THIS SHIT.” Old Man Samurai is all “this room won’t stop me because I can’t read it” and abruptly decides to retire, which, fun fact, is literally THE LEAST HELPFUL THING ANYONE HAS EVER DONE. Anyway so then a bunch of other punkasses follow suit, and while I won’t say that I’m actually starting to root for Stain to kill some peeps, just for the record I’m not not saying that either. Back in the hospital, Endeavor cries some tears because his life sucks, and then is confronted by his entire family, LED BY QUEEN REI, FIRST OF HER NAME, BACK IN BUSINESS AND LARGE AND IN CHARGE. Rei is all “fuck feeling sorry for yourself, we have a rogue Murder Son on the loose” and I swear to god I have never felt so alive.

so here we go! and just for the record, even though the last two chapters have been phenomenal, I don’t necessarily have any sky-high expectations for chapter 300, mostly because chapters 100 and 200 consisted of Mei Boobs, and Toadette and her horrific quirk lmao. so go ahead Horikoshi, what are you gonna pull out of your hat for this one

oh, back to this stuff again. sob

I guess there was only so much time we could spend having hospital antics and exploring Hawks’s past before we got back to dealing with the whole “the world has gone to absolute shit” issue huh, lol

omg

what’s with these bizarrely cute Noumus. why do I want to pet them

so the narrative text is going on about how people have been super paranoid about the Noumu ever since the USJ incident a year ago. so yeah, I guess the fact that there are now a bunch of them confirmed to be running around is really freaking people out even on top of everything else

wtf is happening here

what did this poor lil glass ever do to anyone. r.i.p.

OH MY FUCKING GOD

SODA SAM IS BACK ON THE LAM

tsk tsk tsk. my man has graduated from snatching purses to raiding cafes. going after that big money. this man has no business sense whatsoever lmao

OH BUT WATCH IT NOW!!

OH SNAP THE PEOPLE ARE FIGHTING BACK. WHATCHA GONNA DO NOW SAM

THIS MAN IS 172 YEARS OLD AND HE’S NOT HERE TO PLAY GAMES!!

WTF IS HE LIGHTING THIS THING ON FIRE OR SOME SHIT. GETTEM GRANDPA YEAHHHH HE’S CHARGING AT EM YEAHHHHHH

lmao so that was fun. and now we’re cutting to Wash!! omg. look at him

he’s so dedicated. too bad you don’t have a car like Best Jeanist. probably takes a while when you’re just running everywhere

you see?? you were too slow!!

NOOOO, GRANDPA. he defeated Pepsi Pete, but lost his life in the process. this is too tragic

anyway so the good news is that the cafe has been saved! but the bad news is, there really isn’t much of a cafe left. huh. I guess that’s one of the reasons why people are supposed to get a license to use their quirks like this

oh snap and now everyone is coming outside, and they’re none too happy to see poor old Wash over here

seriously Wash, get a bicycle or something. also the way this guy is gesturing so dramatically with his hand in this sort of “YOU SEE!! YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS!!” manner is sending me

OH MY GOD

HE SPEAKS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS. IT MEANS JEANS PUNS ARE YESTERDAY’S NEWS, FOLKS!! MAKE WAY FOR THE LAUNDRY PUNS. CAN’T WAIT TO WATCH THIS ALL... UNFOLD

“the heroes had dwindled away” okay real talk you guys, it is literally only a matter of time before they press-gang the children into picking up their slack. I still don’t know how to feel about that, but it is happening one way or the other regardless. Child Soldiers 2 Electric Boogaloo. wonder if we’ll see a rise in vigilante action as well

OHO WHAT’S THIS? THIS IS A CHAPTER OF GRANDPAS HUH

-- no fucking way

WOW. WOW. WOWWWWWW

wow. so he didn’t do a fucking thing while the rest of the top ten were being turned into red mist in the previous arc, and now that it’s all over and they need his help more than ever, he decides... THAT IT’S TIME TO RETIRE. holy shit. “fuck you” doesn’t even begin to cover it my guy. you stand there and soak up those boos you coward

ohhhhhhh shiiiiit you guys. oh shit

the “I am not here” breaks my fucking heart for real though y’all. oh man. everything he worked for is gone just like that

(ETA: okay so a couple of the takes I’ve seen on this make it seem like All Might is somehow the bad guy here?? “this is what happens when society puts a bunch of glorified cops on a pedestal”, “finally the cracks in hero society are showing”, etc. etc. so, just a friendly reminder that this isn’t happening because of too much trust and a lack of critical thinking; this is happening because the villains killed all the heroes and broke a bunch of murderers out of jail. it’s happening because an organized league of terrorists succeeded in terrorizing, and so society is now understandably awash in fear and panic. like, it’s just wild to me that AFO is RIGHT FUCKING THERE, and yet week after week fandom still has their “IT’S ALL THE HEROES’ FAULT” signs still up on their lawns. BUT WHATEVER, MOVING ON.)

also though, so exactly how much time is passing here now? I wanted to go straight back to the hospital and see what happens with Deku and the Todorokis. please don’t tell me we’re jumping ahead sob. my aaaaangst

OH SHIT

STAIN. LISTEN UP BUDDY. I KNOW WE’VE HAD OUR DIFFERENCES, AND I STILL DESPISE YOU FOR CRIPPLING TENSEI AND TRYING TO KILL MY BEST BOY TENYA. BUT AS IT HAPPENS, THERE ARE ONE OR TWO OTHER HEROES OUT THERE NOW WHO I WOULDN’T MIND YOU PAYING A VISIT I’M JUST SAYING

LOL BUT IT ACTUALLY ISN’T THIS MAN, FFFFFF

sob. yeah I was talking about Old Man Samurai actually but YEAH. HEY THERE ENJI

also is this entire hospital actually run by characters from Super Mario Bros though. first Yoshi and now this guy, come the fuck on that is not a coincidence

lmao they stuck him in another one of these cavernous creepy hospital rooms

wtf is it with Horikoshi and these giant fucking rooms lately. Kacchan’s in chapter 298, then Tomie’s colossal house furnished with like one table and a TV, and now this. and the weirdest thing about it though is that “huge space with nothing to fill it up” is like the exact opposite of what you’ll usually find in Japanese homes lol

so now Enji is just sitting there thinking things like “my head is fuzzy” and “I’m alive” lmao okay. not quite all there yet, huh. I’ll give you a minute

I’m so fucking curious as to who his first visitor is going to be omg. either way it’s going to be interesting af, and either way fandom is probably going to feel some way about it but OH WELL

okay now his thoughts are getting more coherent! and he’s remembering Touya, and feeling regret for freezing up and forcing Shouto to deal with everything instead

!!! OH HERE GOES BRACE YOURSELVES Y’ALL IT’S ABOUT TO GET SPICY

NO TOUYA PLEASE DON’T CRY HONEY NO PLEASE

ohhhhhhh man

okay, I mean I didn’t expect you to, but so instead then you’re just going to do... what? lie there and wallow in regret and self-pity for the rest of your life? son you know that’s not how we deal with our problems here in Shounen

though also, I totally do get it though. honestly, thinking on it, I probably would have been disappointed with any other response. but so this is where the rest of his family (including his adopted son) come into play now though, because like it or not they’re all in this thing together. and so friends, I am once again asking you WHO IS GOING TO BE THE ONE TO VISIT ENJI FIRST

AHHHHHHH

KRANCH!!!! OMG AND THE OTHERS ARE SO TINY NEXT TO HIM THAT I ALMOST DIDN’T SEE THEM AT FIRST. IT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE TWENTY MILES AWAY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS REGULATION HOCKEY RINK OF A ROOM

holy shit I’m so excited lkjlklhlglkasdsjldfk

SDKFJLSKHLKJL

the way she has him by his collar lmaoooo. “lol nah you’re not going anywhere pal.” damn straight, siblings have to be ride or die in situations like this. banding together for survival. strength in numbers

OH MY STARS I’M JUST WARNING YOU NOW THAT I’M ABOUT TO DISSECT EVERY LAST REMAINING PANEL OF THIS CHAPTER PROBABLY YOU GUYS. WE COULD BE HERE A WHILE

love how Fuyu has absolutely no idea how to segue into THE SINGLE MOST AWKWARD CONVERSATION SHE’S EVER HAD, so she just GOES FOR IT in pure small talk mode like they’re meeting up for brunch somewhere

I KNOW IT’S A SMALL THING, BUT I APPRECIATE THAT THE FIRST THING ENJI ASKS IS WHETHER THEY’RE OKAY

lastly while I can’t wait for more of this delicious Natsu angst, I also just have to say that Enji has as much reason to cry right now as anyone on the planet. you can’t deny that being confronted by your not-dead-but-you-thought-he-was-dead son who’s all “SURPRISE DAD I GREW UP TO BE A MASS MURDERER AND I HATE YOU AND EVERYTHING IS ALL YOUR FAULT AND NOW I’M GONNA MAIM YOUR OTHER KID” with a side order of “EVERYONE HATES YOU AND SOCIETY IS CRUMBLING AND NOTHING WILL EVER BE GOOD EVER AGAIN” is enough to bum pretty much anyone out. there’s a Pagliacci the Clown joke here somewhere. BUT DOCTOR, I AM THE NUMBER ONE HERO

oh man lol he is seriously falling apart

damn. like you guys, I’m sorry, go ahead and cancel me, but I do feel compassion for the man. it’s therapeutic for me to see an abuser actually feel remorse and be truly sorry and want to change and want to make it up to his family. and it’s also compelling as fuck to read a narrative about a family that’s trying to grapple with that, because let me tell you straight up, as someone who’s done a version of that song and dance -- it is exhausting. it is a piping hot mess. it’s a gigantic mishmosh of extremely volatile emotions that all somehow all contradict one another. love, hurt, hope, anger, betrayal, resentment, attachment, longing. it’s something you can both be desperate for and also want nothing at all to do with. and attempting to portray all of that and write about it is a monumental task, and one which Horikoshi has done so, so delicately thus far, and damn but I appreciate it. anyway, so I’m here and I’m ready for my latest helping of Todoroki Fam Feels you guys

GASP

oh man. OHMANOHMANOHMAN. CAN IT REALLY BE. IS THIS THE REDEMPTION ARC OF CHAPTERS 100 AND 200???

LMAO SHE’S ALL “WE ALL FEEL BAD YOU JACKASS STOP CRYING ABOUT IT”

LAY INTO HIM REI!! SORRY ENJI YOUR PITY PARTY HAS BEEN CANCELLED IN FAVOR OF A “SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT” PARTY COURTESY OF QUEEN ELSA OVER HERE. THE PEOPLE TOOK A VOTE AND WE WANT LESS WHINING AND MORE ACTION

oh my god look at this lady folks

NOTE THE HAIR BLOWING IN THE NONEXISTENT WIND. NOW WE KNOW WHERE SHOUTO GOT THIS POWER FROM

(ETA: btw guys, seeing Rei handle this crisis like an absolute champ despite everything she’s been through is everything, though. I’m reminded of Hawks’s line last week about people sometimes unexpectedly finding liberation when they’re backed into a corner. like things may be shit but goddammit her kiddos need her.)

THE CHAPTER IS ALREADY ENDING SOB, IT’S ONLY A 17-PAGER THIS WEEK, BUT GODDAMN WHAT A WAY TO CLOSE

oh my god. oh my god oh my god. AND FUCK YOU HORIKOSHI FOR CUTTING IT OFF THERE sob. it’s like each week the wait for the next chapter becomes more painful. the Todofam is about to get real, and on top of that Hawks is gonna crash the party at some point down the line, and on top of that we’re still waiting for Kacchan to have his own heartfelt discussion about What The Fuck Are We Supposed To Do Next with his best friend who’s currently in a coma. all I want to do with my life is read about these three things, and all I can do is simply wait as they are portioned out in agonizing, addicting little installments every week

anyway! tune in next time as we answer the question of whether or not fandom will finally run its train of logic all the way through to its natural conclusion and somehow manage to cancel Noted Abuse Apologist Todoroki Fucking Rei. don’t act like it can’t happen. you all know nothing is sacred lol. anyways but I’m ready for anything lol, bring it

#bnha 300 #endeavor #todoroki enji #todoroki shouto #todoroki rei #all them todorokis #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #I can't believe I've done 300 of these now lol #think I'm gonna finally have to update the post index again

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gamergirlshelby · 3 years ago

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"Can we talk about the BNHA OC Comeback timeline? I've been dying to talk about my theories for the BNHA OC Comeback timeline all day!"

-Me to anyone willing to listen.

Here are the ramblings of me, someone who has no restraint when it comes to coming up with crazy theories about their interests, rambling about their theories on how the BNHA OC Comeback timeline could work.

Note: this is all speculation, and if the people in charge of the AU deem it to not be canon it is not. This was just something I did for fun because I wanted to do some writing. That is why I said could happen and not should happen, because this is all just fun speculation, and none of the other fandoms I am a part of have been able to scratch that itch for me lately.

Also, I will be talking about spoilers for a majority of the anime, but mostly stuff revealed in seasons 3-5, with a little bit of stuff from seasons 1 and 2, since those are the seasons with a lot of the important details that I will be attempting to write work arounds for. I will also be using the Wiki's names for story arcs (a list of which can be found here) when referring to specific plot events.

My ramblings about my theories are under the read more:

Also, to start this off, this speculation was pretty much brought upon by this post from the official BNHA OC Comeback blog, but what is important here is the tags.

I think the idea of Class 1-A and Class 1-B being third years would be a good starting point for what I want to be diving into.

First point should be a little obvious but in this timeline, Deku still inherits One for All from All Might. This is mainly because if he didn't, if someone where to write or draw an interaction between this version of class 1-A with, lets say class 1-X for this example, Deku would likely not be there, due to not having a quirk, causing the question of "who is the 20th student in class 1-A?" One for All would likely be passed down to someone else (most likely Mirio because Nighteye was going to recommend him to All Might in the first place, and if Deku is not going to inherit it, I doubt there would be anything in the way of Mirio getting One for All)

Second point I want to point out is the battle between All Might and All for One that had happened before the events of the show. I think All Might will still suffer from his injuries from the fight, and continue being the symbol of peace, even if it is killing him. BUT I think it would be best if All for One gets defeated and gets put into hiding, not initiating any of his plans or finding Tomura Shigaraki. Tomura never getting taken in by One for All would also cause the League of Villains to never form (at least not in the way we are familiar with) so we.

Third Point is, although this is speculation, and I do not know where Nomus come from, I do think, even without the league of villains, there would be some sort of lab somewhere where Nomus are being created, likely as one of the last things All for One was able to set into motion before going into hiding in the AU. (I mostly went with this because I think Nomus as a concept are really cool, and I think it would be great to have some sort of generic enemy for the 1-X and 1-Y students to have to face without the need of creating a new organization)

Fourth Point is because All for One is in hiding, so All for One can not force All Might to reveal his "injured form" (I dunno what else to call it), but I do think when All Might and Sato get engaged, he will maybe (and this is a big maybe) reveal it to the public on his own, as more of a "I'm retiring and settling down now" then a "You must keep fighting because I can not" thing, causing crime to not sky rocket, but still rise because there is no more symbol of peace, since there is still the possibility (at least in the publics mind) that All Might could come out of retirement and go back to saving people.

Alright now I begin with some of the actual stuff that actively happened in the show that Class 1-A and Class 1-B had experienced.

Alright so everything at the beginning of the anime is the same, going up until the USJ arc. This is because, as stated previously, there is no League of Villains to attack the USJ. The only thing I can think of that could possibly stay the same is the All Might vs Nomu fight, because I think Nomus as a concept are cool and that was an awesome fight. The only way for the fight to happen though is that the Nomu is let loose somewhere else, like a highly populated area, because it makes no sense for it to be at USJ without the League.

Next is the sports festival, and this would also go the same. But after that is probably the most interesting arc I leave mostly unchanged, being the Hero Killer Arc. This is because, even without a League of Villain's, there would still be people following Stain's ideologies after he is detained, so I think maybe there could be some sort of small unorganized group of people following Stain's beliefs that there are no more "true" heroes. The group of stain followers would likely be the characters that had joined the League of Villains after the Hero Killer Arc (like Dabi, Himiko Toga, and Twice). It is also unchanged in the sense that the students are interning with Pro Heroes, and that Nomus are running around, being a cool concept (can you tell I like Nomus? I just think they are neat.).

Next is the Final exams Arc, which would go unchanged, but the next arc, the Forrest Camp Training arc, would also not have a League attack (because there is no league), and Class 1-A and Class 1-B have a normal experience at the training camp, causing there to be no Hideout Raid arc, because there is no hideout to raid.

Next, the Provisional License Exams are the same results, so no change here, except Camie Utsushimi would be there instead of Toga's impersonation of her, and still ending up to need to take the Remedial Course.

After that is the Shie Hassaikai Arc and then Remedial Course Arc. The Shie Hassaikai Arc would actually largely go unchanged because it is mainly just another internship for the Hero Course students, with the only change to the arc being the League involvement being removed, even though this would leave some plot holes, which I will fill by saying the small unorganized Stain followers would take the place of the league (since Toga and Twice are apart of the Stain followers group, so they would still end up working for them, filling the same rolls they had in the original Arc). Also Overhaul doesn't lose his arms because there would be no reason for him to get them ripped off (because there is no League of Villains). ALSO this means Eri would be canon to the BNHA OC Comeback, which I wanted to mention since from my knowledge she is a fan favorite. After that, the Remedial Course would go unchanged.

I'm also going to say that Mirio will have already gotten his quirk back during the main events of the AU, since Nighteye had predicted that he would get it back before Nighteye had died. How he gets it back will likely go unanswered, since I have not read ahead to the most recent chapter of the manga, only watching the anime, so we should leave the answer to how he got it back to be unclear just in case he gets it back in a spoiler-y way.

Then, lastly as of right now, the rest of the arcs would go unchanged up untill the latest arc where Todoroki, Midoriya, and Bakugo are interning with Endeavor, excluding the parts of the arc going into the Meta Liberation War, which can not properly go through thanks to their being no League of Villains, but especially because there is no Tomura.

Alright now we get to the stuff some of you are here for, being the new info and timeline stuff that occurs during the year Class 1-X and 1-Y are first years. First off, Class 1-A and Class 1-B would now be third years, which was a concept brought up in the original post that cause my brain to go into theory mode.

I would also like to pose the idea of a new "Big Three", replacing Mirio Togata, Tamaki Amajiki, and Nejire Hado (and also the nameless "Big Three" from when 1-A/1-B had been second years in this AU) since 1-A and 1-B are now all third years. This new "Big Three" would be made up of Katsuki Bakugo, Shoto Todoroki, and Izuku Midoriya, seeing as out of Class 1-A and Class 1-B, those three have shown to be the most consistent heavy hitters (and also being the most relevant to the original plot).

Aside from that, Class 1-A and 1-B would not be doing that much in the AU aside from the new "Big Three" occasionally helping out the first year Hero Course students with their studies.

Anyway if you read this far I really appreciate it. I have some more ramblings about stuff in the tags, but its more side stuff that doesn't really effect this AU within another AU.

#bnha oc comeback #skiduffle #long post #hoo boy did i go a little over board here #this is mainly a bunch of head canons on my part of what could possibly happen with the original story since there where some retcons #since not everyone is super familiar with all of the story of My Hero since the AU is just here to let people play around in the setting #But man do I have quite the habit of going crazy with theories #best comparison that i think a lot of the people will get is how deku would get super analytic whenever discussing quirks #thats basically me when i'm in theory crafting mode #but i don't plan on theorizing how to work around other story arcs #not because i don't want to #its more of a time thing #this is pretty much all i've been working on all day tbh #since we don't know the time his fight with All Might took place #so my attempt to fix some lore might have also messed up some of the lore in the au #bonus: the meme at the top of the post is probably my favorite part of the post #i'll probably redesign my sona at some point though #so the meme will not be the most accurate #anyway that's enough speculating for me

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winterscaptain · 4 years ago

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Now that I've started putting words to paper, I've come to realize that keeping the timeline of Criminal Minds straight is a massive headache. I'm cursing getting inspired to try a reader insert across the show. How the heck did you go about the planning for your own timeline?

it’s a pain in the ASS and i LIVE AND DIE by my spreadsheets. i have a bunch of them that i use to keep track. i have some screenshots and more explanation under the cut. this turned into.....a Lot and this is definitely not necessary, but all tools that help my little brain!!

here are some spreadsheet samples!!

^^^ this is my master calendar. i have a printed copy on the wall of my bedroom that i annotate frequently, and it’s my favorite excuse to get out of my writing chair when i get stuck. this also helps me visualize “dead space” where fics are just...absent. like in 2019, for example. which is, rigth now, totally empty.

it’s organized by week, with the usual month placements marked out. the blue ribbons mark ongoing things i need to consider when writing - mostly for continuity

^^^ i fondly call this one “kid sheet” because it’s a master of all the kids and what the fuck they’re doing. aimz helped me build this and it’s been a lifesaver because there are SO MANY OF THEM and they do DIFFERENT THINGS

(sometimes i curse myself)

^^^ this is the MASTER master of all the fics. i use different colors and conditional formatting (which is a lifesaver) - the dark purple/pink is for stuff i’ve already posted, blue is for finished and scheduled, green is for WIPs, and baby pink is for not started. all i have to do is add a row and fill out the “status” column and the conditional formatting does the work for me. the far columns are something i added later, when i realized i needed to keep track of revisions.

fuck that was a lot i’m so sorry pls let me know if you want any more info on any of these sheets. i have tabs for the idea form and the tag list that auto-update whenever someone fills out the google form :) i also have a fun one where i put all the data so i can look at the pretty graphs!!

ALRIGHT SO NOW THE TIMELINE

the way i started was kind of haphazard. i hadn’t finished the series when i wrote what would become the first installment (day off) so i had to kind of retcon it when it became a big thing. here was my (not so) quick rationale:

reader (who wasn’t called ‘mom’ generally yet lmao) wouldn’t be much more than 40 for the last kid (that didn’t exist yet - elliot was a creation of the ajf ‘verse along the way) so i wanted to give myself a little wiggle room

so i decided mom would be born in 1982, because that would put her at about 25 joining the bureau in 2007, which is about the time jj joined, so it was already plausible. in a perfect world, i would have mom from the beginning of the series, but i just couldn’t swing it.

than i said “okay there are three extra kids. there has to be time for those pregnancies, plausible dating/marriage/misc courtship timeline, also accounting for haleys death.” those were....some variables to figure out and i took pen and paper to it for HOURS

so i worked out the birthdays in 2016 and 2018 for isaac and the girls, figuring hotch started dating beth about two years and change after haley died (so late 2011, early 2012), a long dating period where they could really get married any time, and then a baby. whcih would put day off in about 2020. that was my benchmarker for a while.

i also had to fuck around with aaron’s age because in canon his birth year is sus (could be 1971, could be 1966. both are on papers somewhere), so i pushed it to 1968 (which is still pushing it to the younger side, frankly, but whatever) and called it a day

the rest of it just kind of came up as i went through it? that’s the nice thing about writing out of order - i can push and shove and wiggle things where i want them most of the time. i also!! stopped doing fics that cover huge swaths of time (for the most part) because i always want to give myself space to add stuff without a full-on revision.

whew. okay. so god bless you if you managed to get this far. i am more than happy to elaborate on anything if you have more specific questions, and i hope i answered this in a... i dunno... helpful way??

#tali talks process #ajf meta #tali talks cm #writing #schlooper #tali answers stuff

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piduai · 4 years ago

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what do you like or dislike about living in japan? i'm half myself, and ive never really lived there, and i always wonder how hard it would be to navigate living and working there, as someone who is a foreigner to the system (sorry if this comes up as rude...)

i like how neat and organized and effective everything is, i like the clean streets, i like the trains that are always on time and how accessible the train system across the whole country is, i like the busy train stations, i like the blood orange of the torii gates, i like that people get into an orderly line when boarding a bus, i like the spotless condition in the free toilets in convenience stores and how they’re everywhere, i like that all bureaucratic processes are causal, i like that people in the service and other industries are never rude to you, i like the bidets, i like the pretty packaging on most things, i like that selling subpar goods is unheard of, i like the starbucks seasonals, i like that vending machines are everywhere, i like that everything comes with a very detailed and comprehensive how to use guide be it a product, a service, a process or a task, i like that i don’t feel unsafe on the streets, i like that people don’t smoke while walking, i like that there’s no littering, i like the orange trees, i like the amount of shops, places and activities you can go to, i like sakura in bloom, i like the view of the mountains in small towns, i like the pebble paved gardens by traditional houses, i like amazon prime, i like that everything has a designated place, i like the cafes with neatly arranged beige tables, i like that everyone keeps quiet on public transportation, i like that people who have been brought up in safety and economic security feel lax enough to leave their phones on the table when they go to use the bathroom, i like hydrangea blooming in june and manjusaka blooming in october, i like that nobody robs the passed out drunks on sunday mornings in the middle of shinjuku, i like the trust system of leaving 100 yen when you draw the omikuji, i like the amount of shiba dogs i see on the street and how their owners let me pet them, i like a lot of other stuff. when i say that i love japan i always think of small, trivial things in daily life rather than general big ones (which i like too!) like a big economy or a good infrastructure. i grew up in a post-soviet country in poverty and abuse where mcdonalds was a luxury, bribes were not only normal but expected and encouraged, people are aggressive, poor, unhappy, close-minded and suspicious, so it’s all a matter of comparison. a lot of the things that westerners may take for granted are marvelous to me. another thing is that i chose japan specifically because it’s a secluded island difficult to reach so i could escape my family and give them no opportunities to haunt me. they know nothing about my life and can not do anything to me while i’m here.

what i don’t like is mostly small things too. fruit is unreasonably expensive, the shift of going from, say, 100 yen for 1 kg of peaches to 500 yen for 1 peach still hits me hard, i love fruit and being unable to have it often greatly annoys me. a lot of foods that i consider staple are overpriced in general, cheese is expensive as fuck and tastes like shit, the milk is weird, the bread and the chocolate are absolutely disgusting, bruh THE PIZZA is both wildly overpriced AND tastes absolutely repulsive... i think it’s mostly food lol i do miss the cuisine from home and so did every single other foreigner i knew who stayed here for longer than 2 months. i think that no matter how much you love a foreign food you’ll always long for the stuff that you were eating your whole life, that’s just how humans are... what else. i don’t wanna talk about work culture, hierarchical law, cultural misogyny, nationalism, overwhelming amount of prostitution and pedophilia, those are heavy subjects that all require contextualizing. there are a lot of small things that annoy me i am sure but i prefer to just not focus on them so i forget about them unless i have to confront them. oh and the summer heat and humidity, summers in japan are fucking BRUTAL as all fuck.

immigration is a difficult process that requires sacrifice and putting up with certain things you don’t want to put up with regardless of the place. at the end of the day an immigrant will always be an outsider and a different kind of person, even if completely naturalized. i don’t know where you live, but if you were born in the global west and don’t need to go through the hardships of moving countries in order to chase a better life, i’d be counting my blessings. i’ll always be envious of people who were lucky enough to be born somewhere where the rest of the world wishes their children could move to.

also i don’t want to be discouraging but every single halfie i’ve met who has lived in the west expressed a desire to go back, like not a single exception. they like visiting but they definitely preferred their lives in europe/the us/oz. the experiences of complete foreigners and half-japanese people are very, very different. halfies always seem to be in a transcendent place, if they don’t look foreign enough they don’t get the automatic special treatment that the foreigners get, they’re judged more harshly if their japanese is lacking or they mess up at something, but they’re still considered _foreign_, not part of the whole, outsiders. on the other hand they can pass as locals and get the privileges that come with that. difficult situation. as i said i’ve never met one who would be like ‘actually i like life here much more’, they always wanted to go back. at the end of the day japan is very much a conservative, traditionalist, rigid, patriarchal society with a lot of corporate abuse, if you’re like me and grew up in the same climate this whole thing isn’t new, but if you’re a westerner and grew up used to your human dignity and rights being respected and having individual freedom, it can very much feel like a downgrade.

#me: violet we're DEFINITELY keeping it short and concise this time ok? you can do it i believe in you #me when i'm finished writing and looking at the amount: hm.#anon

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echidnana · 3 years ago

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hey logan ! i’m thinking of getting into re8, so here i am at the re8 expert’s door for any lore and headcanon’s you have for any of the characters/place settings (i’m fine with ‘spoilers’!) :]

OMG OMG JACK HELLO I AM SO HAPPY TO OBLIGE

i’m adding a cut because i started rambling so the post ended up being a bit long. i tried to organize all the ideas as best i could and made some smaller sections to make it easier to process

also, i wrote this operating on the assumption that this is your first re game. so i might go too in depth for some stuff that you might already know i just like talking about re

TO PREFACE: i haven’t played 8, and i’m not sure if i’ll ever be able to. i’ve watched a bunch of edited play throughs and am currently about 2/3 of the way thorough snapcube’s full play through!

ok so. in my opinion 8 is VERY different from a lot of the other resident evil games in terms of atmosphere/setting. while most of the games before had been very ‘zombie/virus/mad science’ feeling, this game is closer to a fantasy type vibe (although it is all explained by science).

just to give a brief synopsis- ethan winters is the protagonist. his main motive is to rescue his daughter, who was taken into this village that is overrun by monsters. the village is run by mother miranda, who’s sort of a deity to the people of the village. the rest of the land is divided up amongst the four lords. i’m order to save his daughter, ethan has to fight through each of the lords.

my favorite lords

my favorite lords are donna beneviento and karl heisenberg. i hc them both to be trans and autistic :) to be honest, i hc every single resident evil character to be trans lmao

anyways. donna beneviento. she’s the doll maker and her portion of the game is probably my favorite. she only speaks once in the game, and you only see her face once. she’s very reclusive and typically speaks through her dolls. i also personally think she’s the most compassionate of the lords, despite her section being one of the most horrifying. her abilities rely mostly on causing someone’s own mind to sort of turn on itself and feeds into the person’s fears. but yeah, i love her and hc her as autistic :)

karl heisenberg is the magneto dude lmao. i love his parts in the game because he feels very… genuinely unhinged. like he’s HILARIOUS but not really on purpose, he’s just being really showy and dramatic. i personally wasn’t a fan with how they ended his part on the story bc i want to see more of him lmao

ok also. she isn’t a lord, but i adore daniela dimitrescu. she’s one of the daughters of the Tall Vampire Lady and she’s TOTALLY unhinged. even though i have favorite parts of the game, i love all of it. i wasn’t expecting to care that much about the dimitrescu section of the game but honestly all of it was so enjoyable

ethan winters

ethan winters is probably my favorite playable character of resident evil because he’s so… i don’t wanna say stupid, but he’s a dumbass

he’s like a horror movie protagonist that is in the situation they’re in because they made a dumb decision. but i think that’s so funny, especially for resident evil. his character in 7 vs 8 is pretty much the same- his objective is always to protect his family, and i think that’s really good for resident evil as well. most of the past characters’ motives were taking down huge corporations or stopping the spread of a virus, but ethan’s is just to protect his family and get somewhere safe.

tie ins to other games

i figured i’d add a section about this since i love all of the re games so much!

so the first obvious one- chris redfield is a relatively main character in this. he’s the co-protagonist of the original resident evil, so he’s definitely still involved with plot lmao. he was 25 in the first game, so in re8, he’s nearing 50.

at the end of re7, ethan winters meets chris redfield after escaping the baker’s residence. chris was working with blue umbrella at the time I THINK i’m gonna be honest i don’t keep up with what organization he’s with because he switches around so many times. basically he takes ethan and his wife and move them to europe as a sort of witness protection program. i like to think chris became close with them and would go over for dinner

anyways in re8 he gets tangled up in the plot in pretty significant ways. he’s one of the ogs of re so it was definitely fun to see him fighting monsters well into his 40s

there’s a few references to other games throughout re8. my favorites are

- the duke (who is the shop keep) has a line where he says something along the lines of ‘what’re ya buying? heh, just something a friend of mine says.’ this is a reference to re4’s merchant, who would say that when you opened his inventory. i thought this was a really funny implication- that the duke and the merchant know each other.

- one of heisenberg’s lines refers to chris as a ‘boulder-punching asshole’ which is capcom making a joke about themselves. in resident evil 5, there’s a scene where chris redfield literally punches a boulder into an active volcano. it was memed a lot because it was such a ridiculous scene, so this line is capcom acknowledging it

general/setting

i think resident evil 8 did a good job being a great game but also keeping the core resident evil elements. like the plot’s connection to the overall re universe is dumb as hell but it feels very resident evil. personally i feel like it’s super similar to re4 in the sense that it takes the typical zombie genre but gives it a completely different setting or tone than you’d usually expect. like, castles in a zombie survival horror game is BRILLIANT and not something i’d ever expect.

i’m also a huge fan of the sort of ‘mutating into something that isn’t human’ trope and resident evil 8 has SO MUCH of that. all of the lords are basically infected by a parasite that affected them all in a different way. so heisenberg can control metal while donna causes hallucinations and shit.

———

ok i think that’s most of my thoughts on it… re8 is such a good game and even though the plot can be dumb and full of contradictions the campiness and seriousness is balanced near perfectly in re8. one of the issues some of the past re games had is they took themselves too seriously. re8 does a great job at not taking itself too seriously in order to be a fun game.

i hope this wasn’t too long! i love re8 to death and will always jump to talk abt it lol. ethan winters is one of my favorite re characters ever, and this game is full of great ethan moments. i hope you enjoy it!! it’s definitely a great experience regardless of if you care about the lord and connections to other games.

#thank you SO MUCH for this ask i love talking about resident evil and my family is tired of me telling them random #lore facts out of nowhere #anyways. i hope this is helpful! feel free to just skim it bc i started rambling #i also tried to keep it relatively spoiler free #logan.txt #evil residence #asks

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corpsentry · 4 years ago

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behind the taylor swift gundam was in fact another, smaller gundam: a brief inquiry into the events of june 2020

so back in june this year june and i got together and we made this motherfucker of a story with this motherfucker of a thread to keep track of it all. but you already know that! and i’ve already got one foot and three elbows in my grave, so i’ll spare you the long-winded stuff. you wanna know how i wrote 93,035 words in 4 weeks? i’ll tell you how i wrote 93,035 words in 4 weeks-

-by linking you guys to copies of my planning documents because i feel like those words speak louder than any words i can offer in the present day. these are long documents. but they are also historical artifacts. very interesting. very weird. very, uh, full of cussing. so anyway, here’s

BIG DADDY: THE ORIGINAL PLANNING DOCUMENT

for those, like me, who have no motivation left in life to do anything and rely on summaries from others to acquire new knowledge, it all started with a single line.

prince of a fallen kingdom atsumu tries to kill hinata but falls in love with him instead

june, april something, 2020

with that in mind i tested the concept out with a few paragraphs of text, which you can find at the bottom of the Big Daddy document in the graveyard segment, accidentally sold my soul to the image of hinata with epaulettes, and then worked backwards, structuring an entire plot around two images:

a) hinata getting the shit beat out of him, with snark b) hinata and atsumu dancing in an empty ballroom under the stars

if you want a betrayal, you have to have something worth losing. if you want to fall in love with someone you don’t know, you have to meet them. if you have to meet them, there has to be a reason for that meeting, and so somewhere in between atsumu became a sword instructor and hinata the prince with daddy issues. june and i used this method of glancing anxiously over your shoulder to see what you’d missed to fill out the blanks in the story, after which i tacked up a bunch of post-its, typed out the plot, consulted june, typed out the plot again, and then broke the characters down into a bunch of questions, like ‘what do they want?’ and ‘what do they have?’ and ‘what are they afraid of?’

with the plot more or less ironed out, i decided it was time to start writing, and then i decided that i was actually too scared to start writing after all, so instead i set a couple of timers using classroomtimers.com (15-20 minutes long) and i sat down and i wrote about the world that hinata and atsumu inhabited.

each warm-up was 300-500 words long, and for the first few days, i’d write one before getting into writing the story proper. later these evolved into simply picking a scene from the story and launching straight into it, which became useful for opening those scenes later when i got to them organically.

then i got lazy! so i stopped. but these shitty little exercises were really useful for me because, unfettered by plot, convention, or any kind of tradition hovering over my shoulder, i was able to fuck around loosely enough to realize what i wanted this story to be. it was a very contrived kind of trial-and-error, an exploration of the characters, the story, but most importantly, the tone.

RESEARCH, PLANNING, AND VICTORIAN BOUGIE FASHION

this is a loose map of the castle and Important Locations within it, which i drew up at the start so i could keep track of where everything was and how i could get my characters from point A to point B. i wanted the story to have Some kind of internal logic, you know, even if that logic amounted to ‘a compass would function normally in this world whereas kageyama tobio would not’.

99% of my planning and organizing within those five weeks took place in this lovely dotted cat journal which my sister gave me for my birthday and i repurposed into a metaphorical Diary of Suffering while working on juno. i used it for everything from keeping track of narrative threads to clothing consistency checks, but the main purpose was this: each day at about 10 pm i’d crack open the cat book to a fresh page, stamp the date and the day of suffering at the top, and then write down a list of things i wanted to write, address, or fix today. then i’d sit at my laptop and write like a madman until about 7 in the morning. with breaks, of course, for sitting in the bathroom and staring at the wall and sitting in the kitchen and staring at the wall, but mostly i was writing. and complaining about writing. you were there, you probably remember that.

anyway, here are some pages from the cat book.

aside from the fact that my handwriting is complete shit, you can see that i made zero effort for any of this to be presentable. it was mainly a way for me to keep track of my thoughts because i have the attention span of an ikea wardrobe and tend to forget things as soon as i think of them. the lack of structure also mirrored the way that i went about writing juno. while i did proceed, for the most part, in chronological order, i had a lot of weird and useless revelations during lunch, which by this point was happening around 2 am, and in the 5 minutes before the exhaustion finally hit and carried me down to hell. i changed A Lot. again, to understand exactly how much the story evolved from day one onwards, please consult the big daddy document.

in the meantime, here’s something else.

once june sent over hinata and atsumu’s character designs i sat down like the fucking fool i am and spent 2 hours poring over a document about victorian and other fashion movements of the past so i could assign a noun, adjective, and verb to each element of their outfits. i don’t know why i did this. i certainly could have not, but i attempted to make sense of their ‘fits from a logistical perspective and that went into the cat book too. everything went into the cat book. the cat book is a relic of the past now, stuffed with artifacts such as the birth of oikawa tooru, and also his demise.

MEDIUM DADDY: EDITING, PROOFREADING, AND CREEPY MURDER CATS

i finished writing on june 26th, 2020, approximately a month after i’d first started planning, somewhere around may 27th or 28th. at that point i had about 90,000 words’ worth of story and no sanity left whatsoever, so i took a day-long break to stare at a wall and listen to taylor swift’s enchanted on loop.

and then i made a new document, which you can look at using the link above, and i laid out everything i had to do. i’d discovered a fuck ton of plot inconsistencies and general errors while writing and lying awake in bed at 9 a.m., sleepless in seattle, and now that i was free of the demon egging me towards the first finish line, it was time to Deal with them. i speed-scrolled through the draft, which was 200+ pages compressed into one google doc, because i like to tempt god’s wrath, and fixed up all the plot issues over the course of a few days. this was the fun part.

the actual, hard editing was the extremely un-fun part. i reread the entire thing, paragraph by paragraph, line by damn line, from start to finish, paying especially close attention to awkward phrasing, incomplete dialogue, and moments which had fallen flat in my haste to get on to the next one. this was really fucking terrible. i spent more time lying facedown on the floor than actually editing anything, but after a long time (about a week), that, too was done.

SMALL DADDY: TITLES, SUMMARIES, AND GOOD FUCKING BYES

i spent a good eighty days thinking about the title, though hilariously enough we ended up with something that was a blend of our names. june + elmo = juno, which is, all things considered, pretty perfect, but the process of picking the title was Hell, and i Did Not Come Up With The Title until about 2 hours before posting. you can take a look at the haphazard clusterfuck of my title-selecting process in small daddy, which is linked above.

so the title was a last-minute choice. so was the summary. and the chapter divisions. and actually all the songs in the playlist for juno. the day we dropped juno onto planet earth like a newborn baby pitched out of the sky, i spent an hour hunched over my laptop, cutting my 213 page google doc into chapters based on nothing more than a Vibe. two days before that, i also attempted to voice-act the entirety of juno, an affair which ended at the 20,000 word mark with a sore throat and the kind of exhaustion one typically wants to sleep in a coffin for 23 years to get rid of. so in all honesty, i did very little editing, which is why there are definitely minor typos and/or mistakes hanging out somewhere on that chunky ao3 webpage. but whatever.

my attitude by july 5th (was it july 5th? or 4th? somewhere around there) was basically whatever. anything so i could get finish this damn thing, chuck it out of the window, and never see another google doc until the next century. i’ve been asked a few times how exactly i wrote at a rate of roughly 2000-3000 words per day for four weeks straight, and my answer has always been this: i died. what died, you ask? my soul. my spirit. my Will To Live. i’m a creature of fixations, and juno was my fixation for june. will i ever be able to do this again? would i recommend this experience to anyone? is god real? the answer to all of the above is probably no. juno was a fever dream, and so is my cat book. and so are all the lattes i had. and so was my 9 am to 4 pm sleep schedule.

but what we made is real. the research, oikawa tooru, the 4 am conversations in which i was like ‘how the fuck do i end this’ and june was like ‘jade proposal’ (the proposal was her idea. all rise for twitter user atsuhinas. she is the mastermind behind all of the Inch Resting moments in this story; i just flapped a korok leaf in her direction and made sure the air circulation was working properly) are real as fuck, and looking back, there’s a lot i’d change, but i’m lazy. and college is starting. and anyway, i did write 93,035 words in just under five weeks, four if you don’t count the week of Editing Hell, so i think that’s pretty cool.

thank you for reading this to the end, and for following us on our journey through the enigmatic taylor swift gundam fic which quite literally consumed my entire twitter account for the five weeks i spent working on it. retrospectively speaking i really was butt-obsessed so i am frankly incredibly impressed with everyone around me for putting up with a Husk of a Man for a month. thank you for doing that. thank you for indulging my vague tweeting, and our butterfly dns, and for reading 93 thousand words of gay fanfiction set in a high fantasy world with epaulettes and galettes. on behalf of june, once again, we are incredibly grateful for all your support.

if you have any questions about specific aspects of the writing process, or anything you’d like to know in general with reference to JUNO, feel free to drop me an ask through my tumblr inbox, or through my curiouscat over here. i’m aware i didn’t cover everything, but there’s frankly too much to put in a tumblr post without passing away somewhere around the 56% mark, so let me know what’s on your mind, and i’ll try to answer that to the best of my abilities. but anyway, before i go, here are some

TAKEAWAYS

one: don’t try to write 93,000 words in five weeks. seriously don’t fucking do it you will end up jittery and sleep-deprived and you will leave all your friends on read for a month. pace yourself. set realistic goals. you wrote 2k this week? that’s fantastic. you wrote 4k in a day? you absolute motherfucker. i hope you’re taking a long fucking break tomorrow. your story will not run away from you, but if you run too fast, you will get tired, and then you will pass away.

two: you don’t have to know everything about your story before you start writing. in fact if you have a single camera shot of two characters holding hands under a rose garden awning, i think that’s fucking wonderful. if you look at big daddy, you’ll realize that my initial plot draft, and all the ones following that, are not perfectly aligned with the final version of juno. i improvised over half of the scenes in this motherfucker, and to be completely honest, some of the improvised scenes were the best. fucking oikawa tooru was improvised out of nowhere. he only got written in way later, around chapter 8 or something, because i realized i needed a plot device and a source of information to keep the playing table from toppling over. i Sat Down one day and was like ‘okay, it’s time to write oikawa into the introduction. because he matters now. he didn’t matter last week but now he does, and soon he’s going to be the fulcrum of the entire story, because it’s like that with oikawa tooru’. it’s okay to change your mind halfway. it’s okay to go back and rewrite entire scenes or segments. it’s okay to highlight 4 pages of fresh, sentimental writing, and hit delete. writing is a fluid process, and you Will make discoveries as you progress through your story alongside your characters. be understanding of that iterative process. be kind to yourself.

three: You Are That Motherfucker. you, me, your dog, your dog’s friend, your dog’s enemy, all of us are that motherfucker. i never thought i’d be able to write anything longer than the great big map, which was a much simpler, linear story in which the other main character did not appear in the current timeline until like the eighth chapter. juno was different. juno was the motherfucker, and i was scared shitless of it, and to cope with that fear joked constantly while writing that it’d never see the light of day.

but it did. it was a rocky process, and i was awake for 48 hours after posting it because of the sheer adrenalin stuck in my skull, but i got through it. and i wouldn’t have been able to do it without june, who stepped in when i flopped over facedown on the floor and dragged me to my feet like the badass friend she is, and without everyone else in my life, who put up with me talking about The Thing that i couldn’t really talk about, but juno’s up there now. forever, or until the internet collapses and civilization goes extinct. and if the nineteen year old clown with the attention span of an ikea armchair and an a level certificate from hell wrote the 93,000 word long thing, so can you. i mean this completely unironically and with every ounce of genuine emotion i can summon from the cracked asshole of my heart.

writing is hard. writing is scary. writing is an investigation of the world around you and therefore, by extension, yourself, and that kind of honesty is freaky. it’s like going skinny-dipping next to the president’s mansion. who’s going to see you? what if they take a photo? what if you lose your spot at university?

but don’t think about that. our world is overrun with stories the way cereal bowls are full of cereal, but it’s those stories that keep us all sane in the disgusting day-to-day muck of reality, so think about your story. what’s haunting you today? what message do you want to leave printed in font size 666 comic sans across the southern hemisphere of the planet? what will you be tomorrow?

a writer. you’re going to be a motherfucking writer.

#my stuff

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opaquestrategies · 4 years ago

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2020 in review

tagged by @7rc --thank you, I love doing these kinds of things. and since i always write too much for them, the list is under the cut.

Top 5 movies I saw this year:

Emma. (last film I saw in a theater!)

Roman Holiday (hOW did it take me this long to watch this. how is roman holiday not more embedded as a fanfic au plot trope? a pure delight.)

The Host (went through all the Bong Joon Ho movies I could find after seeing Parasite and this one was my favorite. B-movie but make it art!)

Naussica of the Valley of the Wind / The Castle of Cagliostro / Porco Rosso (As of this year, I’ve watched every Miyazaki movie! all three of the ones I caught up with are great, and I can’t bring myself to choose between them.)

The Hateful Eight (we hooked our laptop up to our stereo to watch this after Liminal Election Week and it was so cathartic to live in a world with different, more visceral problems and to see people in lockdown for a different reason)

Top 5 TV shows I watched this year:

Halt and Catch Fire (I didn’t post much about this show at all when I watched it in June because it was so good that I watched all four seasons in one weekend. Stick with it thru the first season where it’s still just “diet 80s Mad Men and Lee Pace and MacKenzie Davis are there” and you’ll get a show that’s also a stunning mediation on how people you’ve grown apart from can still be part of you even after time changes both of you several times over and what it means to be able to forgive and be forgiven. you’ll feel like you lived a lifetime after finishing this.)

The Simpsons (first nine seasons! this is what I watched over the summer when packing up the apartment I’d lived in for four years)

What We Do in the Shadows (the first season was a great time, but somewhere around the Jackie Daytona episode was when I realized I was watching a masterclass sitcom)

Derry Girls (this was the perfect stress-barricading watch for the first week of quarantine! absolutely sublime.)

Simone Giertz’s youtube channel (loved the consistent experience of being able to watch a cute, talented woman follow the inscrutable exhortations of her soul, especially when those exhortations were things like “make a coffee table out of matches and then light those matches,” “build a robot deer I can hunt with a compound bow” and “build a scissor lamp.” her whole spirit of “yeah, fuck it, I’m just gonna manifest this thing because I want to” is infectious and brought a lot of joy back into covid summer)

Top 5 Songs:

Choose literally any Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters track and insert it here

Fleetwood Mac - “Angel”

Throwing Muses - “Not Too Soon”

Adrienne Lenker - “Anything”

Haim - “Don’t Wanna”

Top 5 Books I Read This Year:

The first four Earthsea books by Ursula Le Guin, with special mentions to The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu which both gave me the delightful “I am spending a week just living in this book and lapping it down as if it’s water” experience. #tenarhive.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I was going to describe this novel where pretentious students form a Greek cult and then murder the weak link of the squad as “fun” which seems a little incongruous but like...it’s a taut, perfectly paced thriller and I got to understand the Greek allusions in it and there was some delicious dramatic irony in how the book’s narrated. so yeah, i did have fun with it. it’s fun.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Baldwin can write epigrammatically and that’s how I first encountered him, as a quotation. But the reason he gets quoted is because he makes sure to never simplify his ideas or reduce the world to something less complex than it really is, even when he’s also going for pith and wit. And of course, like all writers, he improves all the more with context. As a Christian, I found his critique of how the church has let itself be used as a tool of white supremacy particularly lucid and helpful.

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. “Fictional oral history” is such a fun and breezy conceit for a novel and I tore through this one in a day during the first week of quarantine. a lovely little pastiche of some very familiar tropes if you happen to love the archetypes and mythology of popular music and/or are a boomer. this is what is responsible for the Fleetwood Mac.

Pyrrhus and Cineas by Simone de Beauvoir. I leaned on this little essay A LOT for the honors thesis I spent this year writing and reread it three times. It’s such a clever and intriguing discussion of why we bother doing anything at all or why we should choose one goal over another when it all just ends in us dying anyway, which are themes that really hit this year. The last paragraph of the first part always gives me chills.

Top 5 positive things that happened to me in 2020:

this was back in the part of 2020 that isn’t part of 2020, but I had one really fantastic 48 hours back in February where I helped host the speakers my job invited to a philosophy of religion conference, went to two really nice dinners, talked about so many interesting things, and then went on a impromptu outing with an art history major to see a pop art exhibit.

I participated in several different classes and reading groups, mostly organized by two of our professors, that gave me something to do over the year other than doomscroll and vegetate. I read Kafka, Nietzsche, Toni Morrison, Camus, Philip K. Dick, and Foucault for the first time over the course of these and it was a precious gift to have a built-in venue for social interaction when I was stuck in an apartment by myself.

I moved to an apartment in another city with one of my best friends to ride out quarantine together and that decision has been such a boon for my mental health in the back half of this year. finding the place was a nightmare, but it’s in a nice neighborhood that has a beautiful park and a sculpture garden in walking distance and it was wonderful to put up art and make the place our own. it was a refreshing and much needed change in a year when change was hard to come by.

I used online school to go home for thanksgiving for the first time since I moved away and then just stayed for the rest of the holidays. I usually only get three weeks down here on winter break, so it was nice to have a month and a half instead.

I graduated from college! and one silver lining of having no idea what 2021 is going to look like is that I’m forced to take at least a semester break to heal from the burn out instead of automatically starting the application cycle for grad school (although the “oh I have no idea what I’m going to do about grad school” is dawning on me and figuring that out will be a huge part of whatever happens next year).

i feel weird tagging people to think back about this last year now that we’re safely out of it? like don’t go back into 2020, that’s where the 2020 is! but, if you want to, i’m tagging @justthatspiffy @aahsoka @theraisincouncil @cosm-i @letsoulswander and you, if you also wanna revisit this kind of stuff.

#asks #2020

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cupcakemolotov · 5 years ago

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Scatter the Die: Part 2

Okay, this was supposed to be part of @lalainajanes birthday present, and in true birthday form, exploded. And since I cannot imagine giving a birthday present without some kind of smutty bits, this is going to have to have more added onto it later. But my brain has been stubborn and I am hoping that getting something posted will help me get something else done!

You can read it here at A03 (including Part 1) if you prefer!

Warnings: death, monsters, discussion of murders, dismemberment and so on.

Caroline shifted her weight uncomfortably, lip caught tightly between her teeth as she bit back a hiss, stubbornly rotating her ankle. Stiff and sore, today was her first full week without cast or crutches, and she refused to spend one more minute than necessary desk bound. The two weeks she'd been forced to take it slow had seriously rankled. Her partner's running commentary about pre-apocalypse medicine had not improved her temper. Witches’ spells could do a lot, but broken bones still needed time to heal.

There was no one here yet to see her wince through the PT exercises anyway. Taking a slow breath as she finished the motion, Caroline glared at the paper files that had recently become her life. Not that she’d been given much of a choice.

If you’re stuck on a desk, Detective Forbes, we might as well make use of you. Salvatore did a number on the servers. Find me what he wanted to hide.

She supposed it at least had given her something to do as she’d never sat well for long periods of time, and digging through the files of old ghosts hadn’t improved her mood. Lifting her eyes, she gazed across the silent desks, frowning as her eyes lingered where she'd nearly died. She’d made a point to walk over it every day since her return, refusing to let the nightmares that left her sweat-soaked and shivering gain root here.

They'd replaced sections of the concrete floor, patches that hadn't quite darkened to match the rest. They were a bitter reminder of the blood of the cops who had died under Tyler’s teeth, and his escape along with the fae-witch he’d brought in under the pretense of an arrest still burned a hole in her gut. It was a poor consolation that the bullet she’d put in Tyler would have done almost as much damage as what the collapsed wall had done to her leg.

Of the injured survivors, she'd been the luckiest. A mangled ankle was at least fixable. Alaric had lost a hand to the fae, and not even magic had been able to reattach it. Matt was still in a coma, his condition unknown. There were a dozen others simply outright killed.

Brushing a hand down her face, she rubbed her tired eyes. It would be a long time before the precinct forgot the horror of being betrayed by their own. A longer time still, before she stopped re-playing the scene in her head and wishing her bullet had been a half of an inch further to the left.

Noisy, and deliberately loud whistling broke into her thoughts and she rolled her eyes as her partner came around the corner. Caroline shook her head as she took in her partner of four year’s messy hair and stubble. Clearly he hadn’t slept yet. “You're late.”

Detective Enzo St. John snorted and dropped a bag onto his desk before shuffling the paper cups in his hands to offer her one. “Someone is picky about her donuts. I'll never stop being surprised at the line at this time of night. It’s three am. People should be sleeping, not trying to clog their arteries.”

Caroline accepted the coffee and made grabby hands at the paper bag. In the seven decades since the barrier had gone up, humanity had clawed its way out its primitive post-apocalyptic society. They'd restored the US Government, running water. Electricity. Phones.

Donuts were her personal favorite.

She scowled when Enzo reached into the bag produced something that was decisively not a donut. “Were they out of the good stuff?”

“I've got two glazed in the bag for you, Gorgeous, but you need to eat something that isn't puffed sugar,” he drawled as he wiggled the napkin in her direction. “I don’t want to have to explain to that witch-friend of yours why you keeled over on my watch.”

Sighing heavily, Caroline accepted the sausage roll. Gia would have many, many words to say to her if she fainted on the job. “This better have cheese.”

Enzo rolled his eyes, pulling out a jelly filled donut and biting into it, mumbling through his mouthful. “As if I dared give you subpar food. Well, not twice, at least.”

Glaring at him for his lack of manners, she polished off the snack in quick bites. Her partner was a good man, someone who’d been her friend before they’d gotten thrown together. He’d migrated from Britain at some point, and stubbornly maintained that crisp accent, and was mostly human. The non-human part of him was classified as void.

It was his void magic that made a lot of cops nervous, but Caroline hadn’t minded his oddity, fully aware that magic always came with a price. For her partner, when he absorbed magic, his body converted that magic into harmless energy, but that energy had to go somewhere. Most people would’ve considered being somewhat immortal a gift, but Caroline had seen pictures of the wife he had buried.

Still, having a partner who could eat magic was extremely helpful when magic fireballs started getting tossed about. The number of times Enzo had saved both their asses with his magic had risen exponentially over the past twenty-four months. She knew that he stilled raged that he hadn’t been on sight when Tyler had sprung his trap, that he and others believed that things would have gone differently if he had been here.

“How's the eye-bleeding going?”

Caroline shrugged and dusted her hands, studying her friend. “It's all organized and set to be added back into the database.”

Enzo threw his feet onto his desk and grinned, tossing her the paper bag which she caught with a scowl. “Find anything interesting?”

She grimaced and dug out her first slightly squashed donut. “Only in regards to what is missing. It's like the files were scrubbed long before I got my hands on them.”

Which made sense in a way. Mason had been their commander for six decades, for nearly as long as they’d had a precinct to work from post-apocalypse. He’d likely been keeping an eye on the written reports as long as they’d been making them.

It was why Caroline had always been so very careful with what she put into writing. Mason had been someone she’d trusted to do his job, and that trust sat in a bitter knot in her chest, but that trust had had limits. There were some things she’d only ever trusted Enzo with and after everything that had happened, that wasn’t likely to change.

“We knew Mason was most likely a figurehead for the group,” Enzo said tightly, jaw working harshly as he mentioned their previous Commander. “Any chance you can figure out what's missing? Computers might not work as well as they used too, but usually stuff isn’t really gone. Or so I’m told.”

She snorted at the wry note in his voice. Computers didn’t always work right around Enzo and he was lucky she didn’t mind doing the bulk of their reporting. She was pretty sure it was why he’d been shuffled to her in the first place.

“Maybe,” Caroline said. “Most of the detectives originally assigned to the cases are dead, but one or two did survive into retirement. I can call in a favor, meet them to see what they remember, but I'm not sure we’ll get much. Whatever Mason was hiding, he was thorough.”

Enzo leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head as the springs groaned. “The new Commander won't like that.”

Caroline grimaced.

Interim Commander Katerina Petrova had shown up two days after Mason Lockwood had disappeared. Caroline had still been in the hospital recovering, but Enzo had done a dramatic retelling of how she'd strode in on her Louboutin heels and turned the entire precinct on its ear. Most people grudgingly agreed she'd been mostly fair, but some of the older detectives were considering more than grumbling.

It certainly hadn’t helped Commander Petrova’s popularity that she was zero percent human. Most cops could accept a certain amount of weirdness, Enzo and then a few others who were witch born or shapeshifter were eyed suspiciously, but mostly ignored. And while Changelings were considered less dangerous than some of the other fae species who’d been cut off when they'd raised the barrier, nothing about them was human.

Their new Commander was gorgeous, demanding, and dangerous. She wasn’t the sort who Caroline would have pegged as a cop, much less one that played at a local level. Magic users with any power preferred state and federal politics, and they played viciously. The Feds enjoyed little more than stepping in and taking over from the locals as soon as there was a whiff of anything interesting.

Cops, in turn, generally distrusted anything with true power. They saw too much from the creatures that slipped through the cracks, and New Orleans’ barrier was notoriously thin. It made the city a hotbed for any number of political maneuvering, and too many good cops died in the crosshairs of some FBI agents' personal agenda. Magic users would bleed each other dry if given the opportunity, and even dead, Fae magic lingered.

Having an FBI Bureau located in New Orleans meant keeping cases local and off the radar of coven or Fae families difficult. Once an agency got involved, the answers they could provide to a family were limited to the most political of answers, if they could even give them that much. Missing persons cases were rarely solved even if they had recovered bodies, and some murders were pushed under the rug entirely.

Caroline hated it.

Before his betrayal, Commander Lockwood had given the impression that he'd fought for his people. He’d gone toe to toe with the feds, had occasionally won. Werewolf or not, he'd been trusted. But Mason had used his people's acceptance of his werewolf nature to betray them, and it was still a bitter taste in the department's collective mouths.

It would be for years.

Now the Feds were watching them closely and they'd put a changeling in the precinct. Tongues were wagging, and Caroline wasn't certain who to trust.

“I’ve got a buddy or two,” Enzo interrupted her thoughts, words slow. His chin dipped so that his eyes met hers, gaze serious. “A couple of ties to some of the alphabet agencies.”

“Do you?” Caroline murmured, intrigued. It didn’t surprise her. Enzo knew a lot of people. “What sort of gossip has been going around?”

“You aren't going to like it,” he warned.

Caroline paused. “It doesn’t have to do with any of our past cases, does it?”

Enzo eyes darkened as he absorbed her words and his head moved in a barely perceptible no. The fist around her lungs loosened, and she bit into her donut and motioned for him to continue. His expression turned rueful, and she braced herself.

“Rumor has it our new Captain has some fascinating ties to a certain Mikaelson.”

Caroline’s eyes closed in silent aggravation.

When she'd been a fresh faced street cop, determined to work her way up the ranks to detective, she'd never have imagined it wasn't magic that was going to cause her the most aggravation, but the politics. She’d learned how complicated they could be at her mother’s murder, had watched it destroy good men who promised to find her answers. But she’d never thought herself incapable of traversing them. What had been important was bringing closure she’d been denied to families. But the better she became at her job, the more she found herself staring at insurmountable roadblocks.

And of those cases, Special Agent Klaus Mikaelson was a particular pain in her ass.

She'd met him nearly a half a decade earlier during a case involving a kelpie that had tried to kill her. The Irish water horse had taken on a humanoid form and drowned her victims on land, and New Orleans had been ideal hunting grounds for her. She might have even escaped notice for a few more years but her preferred meal had been male cops.

Caroline had been one of the detectives hunting the cop killer, but it’d been Mikaelson she'd butted heads against repeatedly. Klaus had thought she was unnecessarily reckless and Caroline had been frustrated by his unwillingness to share information. The fact that he came from a family with deep pockets and even better connections had left her teeth grinding, particularly since she'd known he was keeping things close to his chest.

To make it worse, she’d found herself grudgingly admiring the fact that he'd never backed down from the bite of her temper. She'd told herself repeatedly during those first few months that the urge to bite his smirking mouth, to see how well he'd bluster with her tongue against his was the result of her dry spell. The chemistry between them had been explosive, and if he hadn't been a Fed intruding on her territory, she might have been intrigued enough to let him charm her.

But later, he’d shown her the truth of himself and she hadn’t really known what to think. She still didn’t but whatever was between them it wasn’t fear. Fear was a cold sweat and tight lungs in the middle of the night, the ice of possibilities. Klaus burned, and the heat between them threatened to send them both up in flames if she gave him even an inch.

“How fascinating?” Caroline said, voice taut with frustration. “Is she in his pocket?”

Enzo pursed his lips, gaze flicking across the mostly empty bullpen and he pushed his chair closer. “That's a question I don't have an answer too.”

“God dammit.”

He nodded in agreement, gaze careful as he phrased his next question. “Have you found it curious that the FBI is so interested in you? Because I have. No offense, but smart and resourceful aren't necessarily what they are looking for. And they rarely try to recruit full humans.”

Caroline had no answers for him. Whatever Klaus thought he’d seen in her, he had offered no explanation. If it hadn’t been for the way he kept popping up in her life, in her cases, she’d have written it off as a whim. The man was mercurial enough for it but he was also unyielding when it fit his fancy. But there was no good way to explain to her partner the way Klaus watched her when it was just the two of them. “Who knows what goes on with the Feds?”

Enzo sighed. “I don't think it's much of a secret that the veil between worlds is getting thinner each year; that we're looking at a catastrophic break here in New Orleans. Whatever prisons the supernatural made, whatever it is that they’ve tried to vanish beyond our world, we both know they are starting to slip back through in higher and higher numbers.”

She nodded tightly, thinking of the cold iron knife she always wore, the cuffs that set heavy against her hip. Standard police ammo included silver bullets and her medkit had fresh sage and blessed salt. “I thought finding a way to close those weak points is a priority.”

“Sure, that's what our departmental memos are going to keep spouting, but you don't exactly see the witches succeeding at it,” Enzo drawled, brow arching as the truth of their jobs sat in his eyes. “Shit is going to go down eventually, and humanity is going to be the collateral damage. We’ve already seen it.”

Caroline grimaced. She'd seen the trend, over the years. Humanity made the perfect buffet for a lot of the nightmares behind the veil, and as a species, humans reproduce quickly, unlike many of the supernaturally gifted. Most Fae and the other not-humans thought of humanity as nothing more than an easily replaced buffet.

Then there had been Silas.

Enzo nodded, voice low. “So we’ve got a situation brewing in New Orleans. The Bayou is a perfect place for things that go bump in the night to find a hiding place while they regain their power. And even keeping both eyes on a situation, we don’t always know about a problem until it goes boom.”

More and more bodies dumped into the bayou were never recovered. Gator hunters were home well before dark, and will o'wisps haunted the water. The kelpie that had attacked cops was the first of three that had been killed in five years. There were rumors of sirens in the Mississippi and gremlins lurked in the shadows of the most brightly lit alleys.

New Orleans was a powder keg.

“Yeah,” she said tightly, mouth thinning. “We have seen it. We’ve also reported it to all the right channels.”

And until Tyler had killed twenty percent of the cops in her department, until his fae-witch had sunk her hands into the chest of good men and turned them feral, no one had listened.

“Did I ever tell you that I requested a transfer here?”

Caroline blinked, shook her head. “No. Why on earth would you?”

“Voids aren’t born, Caroline. We’re made.” His mouth twisted in an old memory, eyes dark. “The process is terrible. If anyone survives. After my wife died… well. This city has very established ancestral magic, and a bureau ready to stick its nose into the smallest hint of trouble. Not to mention that the federal government cannot afford to show weakness when it's becoming clearer and clearer every year that humanity is no longer the apex predator; and those that are just happen to wear our skins, sometimes. New Orleans should appear to be a lot safer than it manages.”

Caroline winced, tried not to think about how literal that was about faces. She’d killed a doppelganger three years ago who had worn her face and sometimes that case played a part in her nightmares. “That doesn’t explain why you wanted to be here?”

“I wanted to know why the strength of humanity and the power of witches was failing,” he said bluntly. “Why I was tortured and suffered and lost years with my family if we were only going to fail in the end.”

“Did you find your answer?”

He shook his head. “The veil falling might be inevitable. But I know why we’ve held it so long. Being here, having you as a partner, it’s reminded me that not all of humanity is bad.”

She wadded up the donut bag, tossed it as his face. He ducked with a frown and Caroline smiled. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“So what does all this have to do with the Commander?”

“She’s tied to the State AG, not the local prosecutors. From what I've been able to glean, we’re not the first precinct she's been brought in to clean up. She was in Ireland five years ago, New York before that. She did a short stint in Chicago, but didn't stay long. What I can't find is where she goes once she leaves.”

Caroline licked her lips, pondering those words. “Wait… the new AG? I think I saw something about a replacement when I was in the hospital. It was Elijah something, right?”

“Full name is Elijah Mikaelson.”

“Elijah Mikaelson? Please tell me he’s not…”

“Related to the Very Special Pain in your ass?” Enzo interrupted with a wry grin. “Oldest living brother. There is also a younger sister and brother, both witches. You'll be interested to know she’s recently relocated into the area. And the younger brother has moved stateside.”

Caroline ran a hand down her face. “How do you know all this?”

“Been around awhile,” Enzo said. “Got a few friends, still willing to give me a tip or two. But the Mikaelson horde isn't the only family making a move into the area. There's been an uptick in the locals complaining about being priced out of good apartments and the housing market has taken a surprising turn for a place full of monsters.”

“A State AG,” Caroline said slowly, eyes narrowing, ignoring his grumble about housing. “A Special Agent with the FBI who has enough leeway to fly into the city as he wishes, and witches. What are the Mikaelsons looking for?”

He shrugged, something almost sympathetic behind his eyes. “Good question. You might get a chance to ask him sooner than you think.”

She eyed him warily. “What's that supposed to mean? I'm not exactly on regular speaking terms with any of them.”

Not that it did much good. The first hint of something powerful in her case and Klaus turned up, butting his perfect nose where he wasn’t wanted. She cursed him for it, often. If she’d learned who was tipping him off, they would have had words.

“Yeah,” Enzo drew out slowly, inching his chair back. “Did anyone mention he showed up at the hospital during your surgeries?”

She froze. “What?”

“Hmm,” Enzo held up his hands in a placating manner, still moving slowly backwards. “Brought in his sister, the witch. Rebekah. Interesting girl, very prickly.”

Caroline blinked at the edge of amusement in his voice, that faintest hint of interest. “Wait, did you flirt with her?”

“Regretfully, I didn’t have a chance. Agent Mikaelson was pretty determined to get her into your theatre to make sure that whatever magical damage was done could be corrected.”

Her jaw dropped, lips parting as she gaped. “No one thought to mention this?”

“Yeah, killing the messenger? That's something most people are pretty sure you'd attempt. I'm telling you now,” Enzo said with a shrug. “Besides, that's not really the fun part.”

Her stomach dropped at the word fun. “What does that mean?”

“Your Very Special Agent has relocated. Rumor has it he's now Supervisory Special Agent, and New Orleans is considered his territory.”

“Goddammit.”

Enzo nodded his agreement. “So the real question for all of this is now pretty much isn’t if there is going to be a second apocalypse, Forbes, but when. And are these folks here to stop it or to capitalize on it?”

Caroline dug out her second donut with an air of someone on the executioner's block. Klaus had made New Orleans his home. He was in her city and she’d no doubt he’d turn the FBI Office into his personal fiefdom. She hadn’t forgotten that show of power from him, the truth about himself he’d shown her as she’d sat in the ambulance, half drowned by a kelpie.

“I guess we’ll have to find that out, won't we?”

“You up for that?”

She sighed. “I don't think I've much of a choice.”

Enzo echoed her expression, mouth twisting. “Good luck, then. If you need me to distract his sister, just let me know.”

She glowered until Enzo spun around at his desk, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

When Caroline had learned a Bennett witch had moved to New Orleans, she very deliberately went out of her way to avoid her. She’d potentially had time during her PTO to arrange a meeting with her old friend, but hadn’t. Bonnie Bennett was an old ghost, if no longer a familiar one. But while Bon was no longer part of her nightmares, the things she represented still lingered like a bad taste in her mouth.

Liz Forbes had never liked witches. Caroline couldn’t remember if she’d had an opinion before her mother’s murder, but after, the sly smiles and flashy spells from ‘expert consultants’ had sat like lead in her chest. Something about the ease of finding her mom’s killer, the neat little bow tying up all loose ends had always seemed wrong.

Years later, she’d been proven right.

But as a grieving teenager, her last real memories of Bonnie had been wrapped up in that grief and a sense of abandonment. She remembered Grams quiet disapproval of the witches invading Mystic Falls, and she’d kept Bonnie confined to the house until the investigation was all over. Caroline had known that hadn’t been Bonnie’s fault, but it had still hurt. Her life had been so violently turned on its head, and she’d wanted her closest friend. In the end, when Caroline walked away from Mystic Falls, she'd gladly left those ties behind.

Bonnie moving to New Orleans had been a quiet reminder that while she’d solved her mother’s murder, leaving her past completely behind was an impossibility. It had also been another warning that whatever was going on with the barrier, it was getting serious. Caroline might have left Mystic Falls behind, but she’d kept a distant eye on its on-goings.

And Bonnie was a power.

But finding her childhood friend ankle deep in mud, frowning over the corpse of a rotting body in the swamp wasn’t how she’d imagined what was probably an inevitable reunion. The tip about a dead woman in the swamp had come through dispatch, and Caroline had called in her response as she’d driven out to secure the scene.

If she was lucky, the worse she’d seen would have been gator marks. If it was worse, having her partner on hand would be the wisest course of action. She had no real desire to be cursed or eaten. The swamps were dangerous and she had a healthy sense of caution when it came to finding what was potentially a feeding ground.

But all thoughts of containment had disappeared when she realized she’d been beaten to the body, and by who. The visible surprise when Bonnie had watched her get out of the car had echoed her own. The witch’s dark eyes were hidden by a pair of neat, designer shades that were in such contrast to her clothing that Caroline wondered if she had borrowed them.

“Caroline,” Bonnie started and then stopped, flipping her glasses on top of her head instead. Her hair was twisted away from her face, the elegant bones of her cheekbones surprisingly delicate for the force of the personality behind her eyes. “Or is it Detective Forbes?”

Caroline let her lips curl. “It’s Detective.”

A hint of what might have been sadness briefly tightened her mouth, but then it was gone. Giving a short nod, Bonnie’s eyes lowered back to the corpse. “I thought I was the first one to the body.”

As far as Caroline knew, Bonnie was correct. Dispatch had said the call had been from a gator hunter, and they were too smart to linger where a dead body had washed up. Very few things ever made it to a shoreline. This body was situated about five feet from solid ground, a strange mudflat having made an appearance around it. “News spreads quick, I suppose.”

Those dark eyes studied her, and the right side of her mouth tugged upwards. “I’d heard that about you.”

Caroline arched a brow as she considered the mud between them. It was likely that Bonnie would be fine, and while the mud was a problem, something else about the scene itched at her. Grabbing a camera, she checked her side piece and knife before moving to join Bonnie. Sighing heavily because she liked her boots, she moved carefully down the sharp drop of the bank where the swamp should have pushed up against the shoreline. It was almost as if this area had been drained of water, leaving nothing behind but the thick, sludge-like carpet of mud. It didn’t smell, but there was a disturbing lack of debris and the only visible movement was from Bonnie.

“Be careful, the mud is deeper than it should be,” Bonnie cautioned as Caroline made her way over. “Something altered the swamp around here, and it’s not good.”

Pulling a face as her boots deeply into the muck, Caroline scowled. “I can see that. And what exactly did you hear? I didn’t think you’d been here that long.”

“Nothing bad, just that you still have a nose for trouble.” A small noise as if Bonnie was remembering something amusing. “And that you’re quite stubborn, but I already knew that.”

“I didn’t really keep up with anyone from home,” Caroline said. “I’m not sure who’d be telling tales.”

“I asked around when I got here.” Her teeth worried her lip for a moment and Bonnie shrugged. “Not that your fellow cops talked much. I barely managed to find out that you were hurt, and that came from different sources entirely.”

Caroline carefully came to stop a foot from the body and studied the remains. Bloated, with her face scarred beyond recognition, whoever this had been had spent enough time in the swamp they should either have started to decompose or been eaten by a gator or worse.

So why hadn’t she? And where were the insects?

“I didn’t catch what you're doing here,” Caroline said after a moment, tugging a pair of latex gloves free from where she stuffed them into her back pocket. It took a moment to tug them on, the humidity leaving her skin sticky. “You seem pretty prepared for a witch who just happened upon a body.”

Bonnie also wore what looked like police issued latex gloves, the material spelled with a little more protection built in than the average pair. But as a witch, Bonnie could have done the spells herself. It was the neat little kit next to her, filled with what were probably samples of the mud and whatever she had been collecting from the body, that really said that Bonnie wasn’t here as a concerned passerbier.

Huffing, Bonnie used her forearm to wipe at her cheek, her skin sweat damp in the muggy heat. “I’m the new Forensic and Magical Anthropologist for the Bureau. And no one ‘happens upon’ these things, Detective. I’ve been seeding the area with detection spells for weeks now. I just didn’t expect them to pop quite like this.”

Caroline snorted as she absorbed that bit of info. “A Fed? Really, Bon? Did Grams shit a brick?”

Shooting her an exasperated look, Bonnie bent back over and continued her examination. “We’re not that bad.”

“Uh huh,” she retorted. “If you stayed out of my cases, maybe I’d believe that.” If they stayed out of her cases and had been more willing to tell the families the truth. Secrecy left behind open wounds.

“I could say the same thing,” Bonnie shot back, eyes challenging. “You do realize that since I was here first, this scene belongs to me? My boss will make the decision if we turn it over.”

Caroline frowned, trying not to think of who that boss was. “The remains are a bit fresh for your field, aren’t they?”

Bonnie shrugged, unconcerned. “I’ll have the body delivered to the morgue; we’ll have to dispose of the flesh anyway. Whatever happened to this victim isn’t quite right, even for a fae-mauling. They should have started to decompose and nothing here has tried to eat it. That concerns me.”

Warily, Caroline glanced around. “You think it’s a trap?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll hit us both with a bit of magical napalm to kill anything that might try to attach when we’re done here.” She blew out a breath as she sketched a few quick runes over the body, the symbols glowing faintly for a few quick moments. “Though it seems clean, I don’t trust it. We’ll need to make sure the bones are contained.”

Caroline glanced at her. “Contained?”

A solemn look. “Monsters aren’t the only thing interested in the dead bits and pieces of potential biohazards, Detective.”

Considering those words, the truth of them, Caroline finally sighed. “Do you need help moving anything?”

“Nope. I think anything else will need to be collected once we get the body situated.”

“Alright, I won’t kick up a fuss if you share whatever you find.” Caroline lifted the camera off her neck, and she started snapping careful pictures. Whoever the Feds sent to move the body would likely do the same, but Caroline liked to have her own copies. Plus, the camera was special.

Bonnie nodded. “Deal. But I want a copy of your pictures. That camera isn’t standard. In fact… It feels like void magic. But that’s impossible.”

Lips curling into a smirk, Catoline agreed. “It’s an experiment.”

Looking interested, Bonnie tipped her head to the side. “What does it do?”

“In theory, it’ll filter out any magical interference.” Gia and Enzo have been working with Enzo’s magic, to see if they could embed it. They’d started the project after what had happened with Silas and the collected evidence had been magically corrupted. So far, they’d only had mixed results.

Bonnie’s brows lifted. “In theory?”

“The pics will either turn out or end up a weird mess of colors,” Caroline shrugged. “Your forensic minions should have more reliable equipment when they show up.”

“True,” Bonnie said slowly. “But Void magic is still mostly a big mystery. So very few survive the process. I’d be interested in watching these experiments.”

Caroline made a noncommittal noise. Enzo was her friend and her partner, not a science experiment. He could decide what experiments to allow, but that was his business. No one else's. Even if she was found surprisingly comfortable around Bonnie Bennett after all these years.

“Did you find anything interesting?” Caroline pointed the camera away from the body, snapped a few pictures of the swamp around them. “I don’t like this place.”

Bonnie sighed. “Agreed. And it’s hard to say what I’ve found. I’ll know more later.”

“Well, I trust your magical nohow over whomever took over for Alaric. Grams never trained a fool in her life.” Caroline reluctantly admitted as she straightened, glancing back towards her car as she heard the sound of vehicles driving carefully along what there was of a road. Backup was finally arriving.

“You clearly don’t remember my mom well,” Bonnie replied dryly but there was no heat. “And I think the position of Medical Examiner is still technically vacant. Didn’t you hear?”

“Hear what?” Her gaze narrowed as she recognized the SUV’s pulling up as Federal. Her phone beeped in her back pocket, but she didn’t dare touch it until she’d been cleared of magical contamination. The camera had enough of Enzo’s magic to eat anything that tried to attach itself.

She was still glaring at the slow moving vehicles when Bonnie spoke. “With the growing concern that we are likely to experience a catastrophic breach of the barrier, the State Legislators have decided that full cooperation between our departments and yours is necessary. We don’t need a morgue. You have one. Though I’m told it’s going to receive a few magical upgrades. Rebekah is… particular.”

Caroline muttered a few choice words under her breath as a familiar figure stepped out of an SUV, the door shutting loudly behind him. His ruffled curls were as recognizable as the tense line of his shoulders. Something twisted in her stomach at the first sight of him, awareness brushing along her skin. For a moment, she faced him, tongue tucked between her teeth as she tried to absorb the impact of his presence even so far from her. Shoving his sunglasses into his hair, Klaus stared back, the long line of him tense as he watched her.

Deliberately turning her attention back to Bonnie, heart a staccato in her throat, she pulled a face. “Oh, goody. More Feds.”

Bonnie laughed softly and finally straightened, her field kit held firmly in one hand. “I don't think I can learn much more here. We should probably head back to shore, let the paramedics pack up the body.”

Knowing that she couldn’t avoid Klaus forever, Caroline nodded but hesitated, letting her eyes scan along the swamp. Bonnie paused as well, looking around. “What’s wrong?”

Caroline shook her head. “I’m not sure. It just feels like there should be more here. It’s too clean. I don’t trust clean. Not in the swamp.”

Bonnie looked troubled, and jerked her chin towards solid ground. They both started the trek back, and tension ran down Caroline’s spine until she noticed that Klaus was watching the swamp behind them, ignoring everything else. The tense line of her shoulders eased a hair. They’d at least get a warning if something charged them.

“I don’t disagree,” Bonnie finally murmured as they neared the incline. “Did you get anything useful from your tip?

“Just a tip that there was a body lying out in the open without a single scavenger,” Caroline replied. “My money is on a gator hunter who knew better than to stick around. I’ve got a twenty pound bag of rock salt in my trunk if you think you’ll need to ward the area.”

“I might.”

Caroline looked up when a hand appeared in front of her as they approached the bank. She frowned to find Klaus waiting on her. His eyes were blue today, and there was something about the set of his mouth that prickled warning down her spine. He arched a brow and she bit the tip of her tongue to keep from doing something dumb. Enzo would never let her hear the end of it if she fell into the mud instead of accepting help with her ankle still healing.

She was still tempted. Touching Klaus was risky, it gave her dreams too many details and left her wondering about things that were better left as mysteries, but today it didn’t look like she had any choice. Taking his hand, Caroline let Klaus help her back onto solid ground. It was a strain, not to notice how solid he felt beneath her fingers and palm, the heat of his skin noticeable even through two layers of latex.

“Thanks.”

He nodded, studying her face, and he didn’t immediately release her hand. “Of course, Detective. My understanding is you’ve just been cleared for field duty. I’d hate for you to relapse.”

She wasn’t at all surprised he’d been tracking her recovery, especially if Katerina was a mole for his family. Giving a slight tug, she refused to feel relieved when he finally let her go.

“Is it?” She shrugged. “I heard you got a promotion.”

Stripping off her gloves, she kept an eye on the Feds as Bonnie gave orders as she secured her kit in what looked like a box fashioned from cold iron. Beside her, she watched the slow curl of Klaus’ mouth out of her peripheral vision. A herd of wild horses couldn’t drag out of her just how unfair she found the shape of his mouth, but her abdomen went tight at the hint of dimple in his cheek.

“Keeping track of me, Caroline?”

She snorted and tossed the latex into the biohazard bag one of Bonnie’s people brought over. Several more were slugging through the muck with a body bag. She did not envy them that job.

“I don’t need your people butting into my cases,” Caroline reminded him firmly, ignoring his question. “It was bad enough when you were sticking your nose into things. Now you have minions.”

“That may be so,” Klaus said, studying her with an intensity that felt like a touch. “But even you must recognize that there are some things your department doesn’t have the firepower to deal with.”

Setting her jaw at the carefully worded reminder of the recent events, she lifted her chin to growl back when the ground suddenly bucked and someone screamed. She staggered hard, ankle twinging painfully, and Klaus caught her. For a moment she froze like that, the hard line of his biceps beneath her palms as he steadied her, the feel of his skin fever hot.

When the ground continued to shake, he yanked her up against him, and the firmness of his hand and arm a brand against her spine and side. The smell of him changed to the scent of an open flame, and she felt the magic gathering around them. Curling her fingers into his shirt, she hung on as the shakes continued to turn the ground violent beneath their feet.

Someone started screaming.

Klaus barked a handful of orders, the edge in his voice easily carrying over the shrieks of his people. Gripping his shirt with both hands, Caroline twisted her head to stare at the swamp to see and inhaled sharply. Where the dead body had laid earlier, there were tentacles, nearly a dozen of them. The largest was at least seven feet in length.

The Feds who had been sent out to collect the body had been scattered. Two were being swung through the air, their screams full of pain filled terror. One agent was scrambling through the mud towards the bank, her face bone white as she tried to get to safety.

Caroline couldn’t find the fourth.

But it was clear the Feds weren’t the main attraction. Instead, unbothered by the mud and lack of deep water, one of the large tentacles wrapped around the body and dragged it back beneath the mud. The ground shuddered violently, but Klaus remained rock solid against her.

Terror turned her mouth to ash as she watched the thing move. The tentacles were more than long enough to reach the shore and grab more victims. Only the feel of Klaus, hot and solid, kept her from sprinting for cover. She had a shotgun in the truck, but she wasn’t sure even rocksalt would penetrate the thickness of those tentacles. Horror closed her throat, and she heard seams pop from her grip on Klaus’ shirt. He remained rock steady against her, fingers splayed against her hip fever hot.

“Bennett,” he growled. “A little urgency.”

Bonnie stepped forward, palms lifted, but before she could cast whatever spell she’d been planning, the tentacles suddenly retreated with alarming speed. The agent who had nearly reached the shore screamed as a tentacle snagged her around the waist. The sounds of guns firing seemed to do nothing as it dragged the agents beneath the mud. For several tense minutes everyone was unnaturally silent after the boom of the last expended cartridge died as they waited for it to come back. Caroline’s breath burned harshly in her throat, and she was unashamed by the grip she had on Klaus.

Giant tentacle monsters were way outside her paygrade.

“Bennett, secure the perimeter. Kol, help her.” The sound of Klaus’ firm voice broke through the shocked silence. “Someone secure those remaining samples and find me a response team. I want to know where it went and if we have a chance of recovery, and I want it five minutes ago.”

Forcing herself to release his shirt as the feds scrambled, Caroline leaned back. Klaus didn’t move, hand curved firmly against her hip. Biting the tip of her tongue to hold in her wince as she put pressure on her ankle, she tapped his wrist firmly.

“Agent Mikaelson. I need to call this in.”

His gaze lowered to hers and she forced herself not to flinch when she saw his eyes. The blue was gone, the white hot center of his pupils bleeding his iris gold and turning his gaze inhuman. There was something dangerous about the set of his mouth, the angle of his jaw but she had never let him intimidate her and she wasn’t going to start now.

“This is our scene, Detective.” His gaze flickered over her shoulder. “The veil is far too thin here.”

Caroline nodded. This was way past her precinct's ability to handle. Whatever was going on in the swamp was dangerous. Most cops weren’t equipped to deal with tentacles and unholy swamp mud. “Agreed. But I still need to call it in. We get a half dozen reports a day that a body has been found in a swamp; real and fake. I’ll need to let the precinct know that those investigations need to be directed to you. My partner is also on his way, he needs to be warned.”

Klaus’ head dipped, eyes sharp and too bright against her face. “You’re not usually so helpful.”

She gave him a tight lipped smile. “That’s because you usually stick your nose into places you aren’t needed. This?” She jerked her chin, encompassing the swamp and everything in it. “Totally your kind problem.”

Those bright, calculating eyes narrowed but his hand fell away from her side. His gaze lowered, dragging down the line of her legs and lingering on the mud encrusted mess of her boots. Something his jaw shifted, mouth compressing before his eyes lifted to her face. “Agreed. It is my kind of problem. And as such, we’re going to need your boots, love.”

Caroline dropped her eyes to her feet and groaned. She was caked to her ankles in mud, and after seeing what had come out of the mud, she was wearing evidence. “Goddammit.”

Klaus made a noncommittal noise in his throat. “You’re probably not going to want to track that around. We’ll get you some plastic to wrap up in, but you’ll need to come with us to the morgue. I’ll have one of the agents drive your car.”

Glancing at the baby faced agents wandering around, she gave him a look full of disbelief. “You must be joking.”

His lips curved, the hard gold light in his gaze finally softening into a more familiar blue as he finally stepped away from her. The air was hot and muggy, but somehow she still felt a chill now that he wasn’t holding her. “Afraid not. Driving with both feet wrapped in plastic seems a bit unsafe. You can take the front seat in my SUV, if you like.”

The only thing worse than being chauffeured around by Klaus would be being stuck in the back seat. Huffing, she shifted her weight and couldn’t quite hide her wince as her ankle throbbed. His gaze sharpened, and she shook her head, cutting off whatever he was going to say. “I’m fine. It’s nothing that needs immediate attention.”

She watched as he clearly considered fighting her. Gaze dropping back to her muddy feet, he finally exhaled harshly. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his keys. Offering them, his head tipped towards one of the large SUVs. “Let’s get your feet wrapped and you tucked into my car, then. Bekah can look at your ankle when we’re at the morgue and you’ve gone through decontamination protocols.”

Caroline frowned, trying to pin down the familiarity of that name. “Bekah?”

A slashing look. “Dr. Rebekah Mikaelson. My sister.”

Turning on his heel, he started snapping out a series of orders. Bonnie twisted around a moment later and stared down her feet with an irritated expression, mouth drawn tight. Her gaze snagged Caroline’s, and for a moment they stood with mirrored expressions of complete exasperation. It almost made the way she had to bite her tongue as they wrapped her feet in plastic worth it.

The clothes she’d been given after decontamination were two sizes too big and worn thin after too many washes, and she really wished she had a jacket. Morgue’s were never warm, and the hum of the air conditioning was a steady buzz to combat the muggy heat of New Orleans. The ice that Klaus’ sister had all but slapped onto her ankle wasn’t helping much either. Dr. Rebekah Mikaelson’s gaze had been frosty enough to freeze a dead body solid in thirty seconds as she’d demanded Caroline keep the bag in place for fifteen minutes before she’d disappeared with both her and Bonnie’s boots.

Bonnie had shrugged at her, warm and cozy in her back up clothes, expression slightly sympathetic. “Rebekah takes some getting used to.”

Caroline snorted. “I can’t say I’d have noticed.”

Her old friend relaxed enough to smile, eyes warming a little. “Honestly, the whole family is like that but they do… grow on you, I suppose. Some of them, anyway.”

She made a noncommittal noise, unwilling to comment on anything about that particular family. She’d be willing to bet a significant portion of her life savings that there were a number of spells in the room monitoring their conversations. She’d have assumed Bonne would have noticed them, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

“How long have you been with the feds?”

“Almost a year,” Bonnie answered easily enough. Her head tilted. “You’ve been here, what, six years?”

“Almost seven,” Caroline corrected. That information would give no secrets away and was a matter of public record. “A detective for most of that.”

Bonnie nodded, eyes going a little distant as she fell into her own thoughts. Caroline let her, the familiar tug of post-adrenaline exhaustion tugging at her bones. Needing a distraction, she took a moment to study the room. She had never spent much time in this section of the building, wouldn't even have known a break room existed if one of Klaus’ minions hadn’t ushered her and Bonnie into the small, but tidy space. Klaus had disappeared further into the morgue, and she hoped the staff here was used to him. It wouldn’t be easy studying samples while he prowled behind them, his impatience and temper sharp in the air.

She sympathized.

It’d been a long ride back into the city limits. They hadn’t spoken much, but she’d gotten the impression he was riding a knife edge of anger and if he tipped the wrong way it would be disastrous. She couldn’t help but think about the feel of his magic, the heat of it burning in his eyes. She’d done a good job over the years, not letting the mystery that was Special Agent Klaus Mikaelson niggle at her in those rare, quiet moments in her life. But sitting in his oversized vehicle, the tense muscle and bone of him next to her, she’d wondered if the status quo between them had inevitably changed. The veil between her world and the nightmares the fae had tried to banish was weakening at an alarming rate and the witches had no answers.

No one did.

But it was starting to look like more than one magical family had a plan, but only time would tell just what those plans were and how badly humanity would come out on the other end. The first apocalypse had taught a lot of hard lessons, and left deep scars. What did it mean that Klaus had angled himself into this city, into a position of such authority? What did he want? And what did she do with the knowledge that watching him fume, the line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders rock hard, his magic noticeable to even her senses that she wasn’t worried his temper would pick her as the target?

There were too many questions she didn’t have the answers for. What she needed to figure out was what exactly he wanted and how deeply involved his family was in this mess. Dr. Rebekah Mikaelson seemed competent, and if Enzo could be believed, she was responsible for the magical repairs on her ankle.

Deciding that was something to deal with later, she studied the seemingly mundane around her instead with cop eyes. There was a coffee pot, a small mini-fridge, and the couch was clearly new. Rebekah’s influence, she decided. None of those items came cheap, and department budgets were always stretched too thin. Here, most of the allotted money would have gone to maintaining the air conditioning. No one wanted dead bodies exposed to warm, muggy air. The mini-fridge was a relic of the past and probably had been converted to an icebox which was easier to maintain with spells, but the look of it was cool. She wondered what kind of favors it’d take to get a pot of coffee going. She’d bet whatever Rebekah had on hand would be far better than the swill she’d spent her shift drinking.

At least the couch was super comfy, and if she’d been anywhere else, she’d have settled in for some quick shut eye. Whatever had happened that afternoon was going to cause a stir and nothing good could come of it. Giving herself a moment to mourn the bed she wasn’t likely to see for several hours yet, she settled in to wait instead.

“How long have you known Klaus?”

Caroline glanced at Bonnie as she broke the silence between them. “What do you mean?”

Bonnie's gaze was curious. “You seemed familiar with each other. I expected that but…” her words stopped and she frowned, gaze darting behind Caroline. “Ah. I think your partner is here.”

A moment later, Enzo strolled in carrying a very familiar bag over his shoulder. His expression was tense, but the hard line of his shoulders relaxed at the sight of her though his mouth tightened as he caught sight of her ankle. He offered her the bag he was carrying with a sigh. “I thought we’d agreed to fewer life or death situations when you were on your own.”

She accepted the emergency bag she kept at Enzo’s place with a murmured thanks, yanking on the zipper and digging for the sweater she knew was buried inside as well as her spare pair of sneakers. “It’s not like I planned on there being a giant tentacle monster hiding in the swamp, Enzo. And I did call you even though dispatch should have messaged you.”

“And yet, somehow I didn’t manage to make it out of the city limits before the fun was all over,” he replied dryly. “Exploring the swamp by yourself isn’t exactly wise for any number of reasons.”

Caroline rolled her eyes as she pulled on the extra layer. “I wasn’t by myself.”

Enzo’s gaze shifted to the witch next to her. “Oh? Replacing me already?”

Taking the hint, Caroline made introductions. “Enzo, meet Dr. Bonnie Benett, the new Forensic and Magical Anthropologist for the Bureau. Bonnie, this is Detective Enzo St. John, my partner.”

Bonnie smiled. “It's a pleasure.”

Enzo lifted a brow. “Bennett? From Mystic Falls, that Bennett?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, head tipping to the side.”But how would you know that?”

“You exposed that little heretic cult problem that was trying to bring down the veil. Helped catch Kai Parker. It was memorable.”

Bonnie’s eyes narrowed. “I’m surprised you know about that. Not many people do.”

He smiled, charm thick in his voice.“I had an interest in keeping an eye on that case file, and I know people. I hear things.”

Her old friend didn’t look impressed with his explanation, and Caroline wished her luck. When Enzo clamped down on a source, not even a strange, self-proclaimed fae-god could get him to talk. She knew, because she’d seen Silas try, right before Enzo had sucked him dry. Shifting the bag, she carefully slid her camera inside, tucking it between her second favorite set of sweats before closing the bag and casually tucking it behind her legs.

“Dispatch sent around a very interesting warning about fifteen minutes ago and is requesting that all patrol calls check in every half hour.” Enzo continued, his gaze moving between the women with something hard behind his eyes. “Quite a curious change of events, when they were so adamant that things were getting back to normal. So what exactly did you two do?”

“What do you mean what did we do?” Caroline questioned, gaze narrowing. “This wasn't my fault; blame dispatch. I was just following up on the tip since everyone else had their hands full.”

“And the fact that you were off duty and should have been heading home to grab some shut eye?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Semantics.”

Enzo let out a long sigh. “And you wonder how you find so much trouble.”

A muffled cough filled the room, and Caroline turned her head to glare at a clearly amused Bonnie. “Really, Bon?”

The childhood nickname slipped out, but Bonnie only smiled. “He’s not wrong. You do have a knack for trouble. You always have.”

“It seems to be something you share in common.”

The clipped, british accent broke into their conversation without warning, and Caroline turned to find that Klaus had finally joined them. She narrowed her eyes, she hated it when he snuck up on her, and he met her gaze unflinchingly. Behind him stood his sister and another dark haired man who shared their dimples and Rebekah’s cheekbones. Another family member then.

How many did Enzo say he had?

Bonnie’s chin lifted. “I followed protocol to the letter.”

“Come now darling, going into a swamp all by your lonesome with only a human cop as backup?” The dark haired man tsked. “Seems risky. Did you not take my warnings seriously about what I would do if you managed to be pulled into the otherside of the veil?”

Definitely related, she thought, recognizing that particular brand of threat. Bonnie didn’t seem particularly impressed by it, and it made Caroline like her childhood friend just a bit more.

“No one takes anything you say seriously,” Bonnie returned flatly. “The idea that you’d do something for someone else without expecting an equally great favor in payment is even less believable.”

Kol’s eyes narrowed, and as much as Caroline wanted to let the argument play, see how much they could learn, now wasn’t the time. Enzo’s gaze met hers and the exasperation there had her fighting a smile. But her partner gamely inserted himself smoothly into the conversation.

“Must have been something pretty impressive at the swamp to get your team so riled, Dr. Bennett.” He crossed his arms and smiled, ignoring Kol’s narrow-eyed look. “What exactly did my partner get herself involved in?”

“It was a kraken,” Rebekah answered, her back still to the room and her voice bored. “A tiny one.”

Enzo straightened at those words, expression going flat. “A kraken.”

“I thought kraken kept to deep waters,” Caroline said slowly, something cold settling in her gut. “There hasn’t been a sighting in a few decades.”

Rebekah huffed and walked across the room to what would have once been an electric teapot that had been converted to run on magic. Hitting a button, she stared moodily at it as it started to heat the water. “We’ve known for some time that there was a possibility that the creatures on the other side of the veil are adapting, mutating. It seems like we now have proof.”

Bonnie reached up and rubbed a fingertip between her eyes as if to chase away a growing headache. “The veil shouldn’t be receding this quickly; the magic that formed it isn’t breaking, it's disappearing. Not even Kai was able to do that, and he did more than enough damage.”

Caroline wondered if that was why Bonnie had been putting out so many detection spells and made a mental note to ask Enzo about Kai Parker, and what exactly his little cult had hoped to accomplish. That Rebekah had named the monster at the swamp a kraken, that it was a small one…

Uneasy, she glanced over at Klaus to find him watching her. His eyes were blue now, the worst of his rage tucked back into the hidden spaces where he kept it. There was something about the tilt of his lips, the angle of his eyes that concerned her far more than the words that Rebekah and Kol had been tossing around.

The veil was going to fall.

“How much time do we have?”

To his credit, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand her.

“Days,” Klaus said. “Maybe a week, if the deterioration continues at this rate.”

The dark haired witch smiled brightly, eyes gleaming. “I, for one, can’t wait. This is going to be so much fun.”

“Kol,” Bonnie snapped, voice hard.

Kol sighed and shrugged, hands sliding into his pockets. “Oh, don’t look so annoyed, witchling. Everyone in this room has known this was coming for years. That something sped up the timeline just makes it interesting, don’t you think?”

“A lot of people are going to die,” Caroline said flatly. “I don’t find that interesting.”

An amused look full of cocksure arrogance. “It's not like you're going to be one of the unlucky ones going into something’s gullett, darling. Not with Klaus keeping both eyes on you, though I’m not particularly sure of the appeal.”

Caroline didn’t bother responding to his baiting, recognizing his type. She didn’t doubt that Kol was a powerful witch, but he was as likely to use that power for a prank as for anything else. Any help from him was likely to bite.

Enzo gave him a lazy smile. “Short sightedness does seem to be an affliction of witches.”

Those dark eyes narrowed when Rebekah laughed, and then Kol smirked. “The Void. I had forgotten you existed. You do collect the most interesting friends for a human, Detective Forbes.”

“That’s enough,” Klaus cut in before Kol could keep going. “Rebekah, what do you need?”

She turned with a mug in her hand and stalked over, shoving it at Caroline. “From you? Nothing. The spells here will contain whatever magical residue the kraken left behind. Human flesh is its preferred choice for a meal, so I imagine more bodies will start popping up in the bayou.”

“Of course they will,” Kol said. “Human’s never stay where they are supposed to.”

Rebekah pinned him with a glare. “Then you won’t mind finding me one. Between us, I’m sure Bonnie and I can give a much more thorough report once we’ve had a recently dead specimen to study instead of just scrapings of rotting mud.”

“If I must.”

“You must,” Rebekah replied. “Until then, stay out of my morgue and stop terrifying my people.”

Bonnie frowned a little, brows bunching together. “The spells I’ve layered on the bayou will give us some warning if the deterioration escalates, but I’ll need to check them manually to confirm.”

“You’ll take another witch with you,” Klaus said firmly. “There will be no more solo missions.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Caroline asked when it was clear that everyone was done making demands, chin dipping towards the mug of steaming liquid she’d been given as she eyed the clearly annoyed witch.

“Drink it.”

“Yes, thank you.” She managed to say through a somewhat polite smile. “Why?”

“I spent a lot of magic putting your ankle back together,” the blonde said coolly. Tossing her braid over her shoulder, she gave Caroline a tight smile. “That will ensure the healing sticks. Drink it or not I suppose, but I won’t be fixing your ankle a second time.”

“Charming,” Enzo murmured as Rebekah swept out, his lips curling slightly in the corners. “I like her.”

Bonnie stood with a snort. “I suppose someone should. If that is all, Mikaelson, I’m going to go see just those slides Rebekah’s minions are studying for magical contamination.” Klaus tipped his head in silent permission and Bonnie paused in the doorway. Her eyes caught Caroline’s and they flickered briefly towards the gym bag at her legs. “We’ll talk later, Care.”

To keep from having to answer immediately, she took a cautious sip of whatever it was that Rebekah had shoved at it. It wasn’t the worst tasting tea she’d ever had, so she took another and very, very carefully didn’t look at Klaus. She’d wondered if Bonnie was going to bring up the camera in front of Klaus. She wondered what it meant that her old friend hadn’t.

Kol didn’t bother saying goodbye as he followed Bonnie down the hall, a jaunty whistle echoing down the hallway.

“Your brother is a piece of work.”

Klaus lifted a brow at Enzo’s words, unbothered. “He’s been called worse, all of it accurate.”

“I’m assuming I’m free to go?” Caroline asked when it looked like her partner was going to say something else. The last thing she needed was him picking a fight with Klaus. She wrinkled her nose, glanced at her tea. “After I finish this, at least.”

“I have no intention of keeping you here longer than necessary,” Klaus murmured, gaze lowering to skim along her body, a hint of gold glinting in his pupil. “But there are a few things we must discuss. How did you end up at my scene, love?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Its Detective, and I was responding to a request to investigate from dispatch. Information from the call should be logged.”

“I’m sure our delightful Commander-in-Chief is digging into the details,” Enzo supplied cheerfully. “She wasn’t particularly thrilled to learn that you were almost tentacle bait. Particularly since you were supposed to be off duty.”

Caroline shot him a sour look. “Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

Klaus tipped his head, considering her words. “There are still a number of locals determined to make a living off the swamp despite the dangers, I’m not sure we’ll get much from that front.”

“You think it was a set up?”

A shake of his head. “Unlikely. At least, it wasn’t a trap meant to catch anyone specific if it was a set up. More likely, someone wanted me to know they have power.”

“Wanted you to know?” Caroline repeated. “A bit arrogant, don’t you think?”

Something terrible moved behind his eyes, hot jagged lines of gold barely visible before disappearing. “Not at all. The veil is going to fall, Caroline. And when it does, the lines of power are going to change. I’ve claimed this city as mine.”

There were so many things about that statement that pinged her instincts. The glint behind his eyes, the set of his mouth told her he meant those words. He thought them true. The edge of his mouth kicked up, something possessive and territorial bleeding through his expression as he watched her before it disappeared again. “But I won’t keep you. You just finished your shift, if I heard correctly? Rebekah has cleared you of any potential magical contamination, but I expect you to call it in if you have any reason to think otherwise.”

Enzo made an amused noise. “She feels clean.”

Klaus studied her partner for a long moment before nodding. “Understood, but the orders stay the same.”

Caroline frowned at them both, eyes flickering from one to the other, exasperation turning her voice sharp. “Seriously? I’m not a rookie.”

A hint of a smile tugged at Klaus’ mouth but disappeared as he glanced back at Enzo. “I assume you can get her home?”

“I can drive myself,” Caroline tartly interjected.

“That’s the plan,” Enzo agreed, ignoring her pithy comment as his hands slid into his pockets. “I’ll make sure she makes it safe and sound.”

Klaus’ eyes gleamed as they met hers before something caught his attention down the hall. “I’ll have someone drop your car off. Do try to stay out of trouble for the rest of the night, love. The next few days are likely to keep us all busy. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.”

“Best finish your tea,” Enzo suggested into the silence after they’d watched Klaus leave. “We still have to call in an update to the commander and who knows how long that will take, and I for one am ready for my bed.”

Sighing, she gulped down the tea before shoving her feet into her sneakers and standing. Enzo took her mug as she gathered her things, putting it in the small dishwasher. Caroline paused for a moment to glance down the long hallway Klaus had disappeared. There had been something in his voice, the glitter behind his eyes that warned her she was only seeing a small part of the picture. Instinct and the nagging curiosity that made up the heart of who she was a detective was hyper aware of Klaus had gone. But she could let it go for now.

Because he’d been right.

She didn’t doubt she was going to see him very soon.

#my fic #klaroline #klaroline fanfic

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