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originalhybridloverfics-backup · 3 years ago

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We weren't supposed to feel this way

Summary: What if Eda and Serkan had kissed in the rain in the earlier episodes of SCK?

What if they had explored the sexual tension between them before Serkan confessed to being in love with her?

A/N: I have many ideas for this and might come back to it later and make it a multi-chapter story.

This has Smut so if you don't want to read go back now.

Any and all mistakes are my own.

Serkan pulled Eda to him. The rain was pouring down, their clothes soaked to his skin.

He pulled her so close he could feel her harsh breath against his face; the anger was still blazing in her eyes.

The desperation not to lose her flowing through him was strong, almost overwhelming.

His eyes flickered down to her mouth, then back to her eyes, only to see that her gaze was locked on his mouth.

The desire was plain as day and that look overcame everything logical inside him.

He reached up, his free hand cupping the back of her neck, and brought his lips over hers.

It was hard, and it was fast. He pulled back a moment later, expecting Eda to push him away or smack him and she would be right to. He should have let her consent to the kiss. Even if she wanted the same thing as he did, it was still her decision to make that final choice.

“Eda, I’m sor-“

His apology was cut short as Eda surged forward, crashing her lips onto his.

He released her arm and banded his around her back.

Eda pressed her body against his, every part of her body screaming for him.

She was angry. So fucking angry with him.

Angry for humiliating her, angry for embarrassing her, for thinking her capable of betraying him, angry for not trusting her, and angry that he couldn’t even fucking apologize.

More so, she was angry at herself for letting him upset her, caring enough to give him that power and angry after all that she was still drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

She hated that his kiss felt perfect, hated that she wanted more, but that didn’t stop her from initiating a second kiss.

It didn’t stop her from pressing every inch of her body into his, or fisting her hands in his hair. It didn’t stop the moan from her chest as his hands move down to cup her ass.

Or an even louder moan when he squeezed the flesh in his large hands, making her core throb with need.

White hot lust shooting through her, she gripped the fabric of his wet shirt, yanking him against her, trying to get closer even if it was impossible.

Her mouth opened beneath his and his tongue slid inside to meet hers.

Serkan groaned. He had been imagining the taste of her mouth, what it would like to kiss her with abandon, and it obliterated all his quiet fantasies.

He tightened his grip on Eda and lifted her against him. Her legs came around him, moving through the rain, he walked through the still open door of his family home, and kicked the door shut.

Eda gasped as her back hit against the wood door, gripping tightly as Serkan grounded his hips against hers.

He pulled back from her, his eyes locking with hers. “Tell me you don’t want this and I will stop.”

Eda said nothing, her hips moving against his of their own accord.

“Tell me to stop, Eda.” because if she didn’t, he knew he was going to spend the entire night inside her, learning every gasp and cry of pleasure she made.

“I don’t want you to stop.” Eda tightened her arms around his neck. “I want to feel you moving inside me. I want to feel good. I want to feel something more than the need to scream and rage at you.”

Serkan was lost in her words and the image she created, using his body to pin her against the door. He grasped the end of her shirt and pulled it from her body, the wet fabric hitting the floor with a plop.

He didn’t stop there. He deftly unhooked her bra one handed, and with Eda’s help, removed it. One hand covered her breast while Serkan took the other in his mouth, flattening his tongue against her hardened nipple.

Eda threw her head back, staring up at the dark ceiling, overwhelmed by Serkan’s hand and his mouth on her breasts. Her hands moved automatically to his shirt and began unfastening the buttons, but grew impatient as Serkan’s mouth moved back to hers, plundering her mouth. She yanked on his shirt, popping the buttons off.

Together, she and Serkan removed the wet fabric, making it fall to their feet.

Eda turned them sharply, and took control, her lips trailing down his chest, flattening her tongue against his nipple.

Serkan slid his hands down her back, grabbing handfuls of her ass and squeezing.

Eda reached between them, unfastening his belt buckle. Once she had his pants undone, she reached her hand insider beneath the band of his briefs, her fingers curling around him.

Serkan groaned as she squeezed her hand around the head of his cock. “Eda, please,”

Eda smirked. Finally, Serkan Bolat said please. Her hand slid up and down his cock, squeezing around the head and twisting around his length, feeling him grow larger in her hand.

The feel of his cock pulsing in the palm of her hand had her core throbbing with the need to feel him pulsing inside her. “Please, what?”

“I need you.” His voice was hoarse, coated in desire.

Eda released her hand on his cock and took a step back. Keeping her gaze locked with his, she kicked off her shoes and unfastened her shorts and pulled them down along with her panties. She kicked the articles of clothing away, leaving her completely bare, the wet strands of her hair clinging to her skin.

Serkan was entranced. Without looking away from her, he toed off his shoes and discarded his pants. The fire burning in the fireplace crackled and cast a flickering light over her body, making her look ethereal.

She was so fucking beautiful and perfect, Serkan could barely believe it. He moved forward until he could band an arm around her back and pull her flushed against him. His other hand cupped the back of her neck, tilting her head as he fused his lips to hers in a kiss that consumed his entire being.

He lifted her the same moment she wrapped her arms around his neck. He carried her closer to the fireplace and lowered their bodies to the floor.

His mouth left hers, trailing down her neck to her collarbone. Eda lost herself to the sensation of his lips and tongue and wet mouth on her skin, leaving fire in its wake.

Her hands smoothed over his shoulders, the back of his neck, her hands dove through his hair as he took one breast into his mouth.

Serkan’s mouth moved further south, making his intentions clear, but her need for him in that moment was too great. She gripped his arms, urging him back up her body, hooking one leg around his hip. “I want you.” She breathed as she directed his mouth back against her.

Serkan moved his lips over her, coaxing her mouth open for a deeper kiss, his tongue delving into her mouth to curl around hers.

The kiss momentarily distracted Eda, but once she got her bearings, she reached between them, her hand finding his cock that was pressing against her thigh.

Serkan pulled his mouth from her, his eyes locked on hers, his breathing harsh.

He pulled her hand away from him, locking their fingers together as he pressed her hand above her head into the floor. Using his other hand, he rubbed the length of his cock against her, relieved to feel how wet she was.

Eda locked her legs around his waist, her free arm holding onto his hip, anticipating the moment he would fill her.

Serkan released his grip on himself and planted his hand against the floor for leverage and with their gazes lock, lips brushing, he pushed the blunt head of his cock into her body.

Eda gasp as he stretches her, a burning pleasurable sensation surging through her.

Slowly, so fucking slowly, inch by inch, Serkan pushed further inside her, savoring the feel of her enveloping him, sucking him in deeper to the deep depths of her body.

Eda’s mouth fell open as he bottom out inside her. He was larger than she expected, more than she had been prepared for.

She had never felt so full. It almost felt like his cock was pushing at her cervix. He was buried so deep.

Serkan watched the pleasure in her eyes, the way she bit down on her lip as he pushed as deep as he could.

He pulled back only to have Eda’s heels dig into his ass, pushing him back inside.

He started off slowly, but as her cries got louder with every thrust, the tighter she gripped his cock, the more he picked up the pace.

It wasn’t hard for them to get lost in the carnal act of sex. Mouths seeking lips, teeth nipping at skin, cries of pleasure being swallowed by hungry kisses.

Serkan hips moved at a fast pace, the only sounds in the room, his grunts, Eda’s moans and skin slapping together.

Thunder clapped, quickly followed by the power going out, but neither Serkan nor Eda noticed.

Their union was one that had been born out of anger and sexual tension, giving into it was an euphoria that neither wanted to end.

Serkan groaned as Eda met him thrust for thrust, hips lifting to meet him, her nails scratching down his back.

He hissed and thrust into her sharply. She cried out.

Something snapped in both of them. Serkan fucked into her with all he had, Eda urged him on, arching her back, her cries filling the room.

Eda cried out suddenly as one thrust hit a spot inside her that had her seeing stars. She came without warning, her walls convulsing around Serkan’s thrusting cock.

Serkan groaned, loving how she gripped him so tightly. It only made him fuck her harder. Faster, chasing his own release.

Eda pushed at his chest and used her grip on him to urge him onto his back. She wanted control.

Serkan followed her lead, rolling onto his back, watching as Eda sat up and planted her hands against his taut stomach, her knees dug into the floor and she used her hands on his stomach for balance as she rode his cock, her pace slow at first but picking up speed with every swivel of her hips.

Not one to be left idle, Serkan planted his feet into the floor and drove up into her with every drop of her hips, his hands smooth over her thighs, over her hips, over her torso, to run his thumbs across her nipples.

Eda panted heavily, her chest heaving. “Serkan, please.”

“God, you’re so fucking beautiful, it drives me crazy.” he sat up abruptly, gathering her against his chest and dipping his head down to capture one perfect mound in his mouth, as she continued to ride his cock for all it was worth.

“Serkan,” Eda moaned out, the sensations of the suction from his mouth and teeth grazing her flesh, his hand gripping her ass roughly as she rode him hard, his hips lifting to meet her, her walls tightened around him, squeezing.

Serkan felt as her walls convulsed, tightening around him. He released her mouth with a pop, sensing her release, he grabbed onto her ass with both hands he moved over his cock, increasing her pace and bringing her down harder. He watched in stun awe as she threw her head back, screaming a litany of yes, yes, yes and his name as she came around his thrusting cock.

He never stopped the movements, fucking her through her orgasm, searching for his own release.

Eda collapsed against him, her arms wrapping around his shoulders, and burying her face in his neck, clinging to him as he sought his pleasure in her sated body.

She was sensitive, so overwhelmed that a small orgasm ripped through her as he continued to fuck her. When she came around him again, it triggered his own release, his cock pulsing just seconds before he spilled his release inside her.

Serkan fell back against the hard floor, taking Eda with him.

She rested against his chest, her body tired and exhausted, enjoying the feeling of Serkan’s hand running through the strands of her hair and down her back, the sound of his pounding heart beneath her ear slowing to a more normal pace.

The fire was glowing strongly next to him, and she enjoyed looking into the flames as she caught her breath. She couldn’t bring herself to move until she felt Serkan press a kiss into her temple.

The action was so sweet and gentle; it had her heart squeezing, but it was also a reminder. A reminder of how when the moment was right he was so kind and considerate and everything she expected of a good man but he could also be mean and cruel, accusing her for something she wasn’t capable of doing and not even apologizing for it when he knew he was wrong.

She slowly extracted from him, rolling onto her back and staring up at the ceiling. The hardwood floor was cold against her heated skin. She could feel the heat of his eyes on her face, but couldn’t bear to look at him then.

What happened just now didn’t change what was wrong between them. If anything, it only complicates everything else.

It was amazing and she be a liar if she said she hadn’t thought about it. She never thought it would actually happen and not under the circumstances that it did. Not when she had so much anger at him.

It felt good in the moment, but now that she was coming down from the intense orgasms, she was left with this dark feeling in the pit of her stomach. A mixture of disappointment, regret, and confusion.

Disappointment at her self. She was angry with him. She shouldn’t have let it get this far, no matter how much she enjoyed it. Nothing was solved.

Regret. She knew there was something between her and Serkan. A deep connection. One, if the circumstances were different, she would want to explore. There was a sexual tension between them, but for the first time to allow something to happen born out of anger made her feel regret for something that could have been more. More than anger and lust.

Confusion about her feelings for Serkan. Confusion about Serkan feelings for her. He wanted Selin back; he was obsessed with ending her engagement to Ferit.

Why did he touch her with such desperation? Why did he kiss her like she was the air he needed to breathe? Why did his lips worship her skin? Why did his eyes look at her like he had never seen anything more beautiful? Why did the call of his passion consume her? Why did being around him fill her with excitement? Why did her heart beat against her rib cage from just his proximity, or her skin tingle in awareness whenever he looked at her? Why did she feel this strongly about a man who was already in love with someone else?

Tears gathered in her eyes, but she blinked them back. Taking a shaky breath, she sat up.

Eda didn’t try to cover herself as the light from the flames in the fireplace flickered across her bare skin. Serkan was already very acquainted with her body. “I need to go.” she was relieved when her voice came out strong, not betraying the emotional battle warring inside her.

Serkan pressed his hand to the small of her back. “The storm is raging. We can’t go anywhere.”

Eda looked over her shoulder at him. “I need to go,” she repeated firmly.

She couldn’t be here with him.

Eda didn’t say the words. She knew they would hurt him and despite anger and how he treated her recently; she didn’t want to hurt him.

“Eda..”

Eda turned her head away. She couldn’t handle the tone of his voice saying her name. Pleading.

She shut her eyes tightly and placed her palms flat against the floor’s surface, preparing to push herself to her feet, but Serkan was there, grabbing her hand, turning her and pulling her back to him.

Serkan pulled her into his lap, her hips bracketing him, his arms banding around her. He wasn’t trying to keep her prisoner, but he needed to hold her. He felt like she was slipping away from him.

“I don’t know what you want me to say or how I am supposed to fix this,” Serkan cupped her face, his chest tightening at the pain in her eyes. He almost wished for her burning anger to be staring back at him instead, at least then it wouldn’t hurt his heart to look at her.

“You say sorry when you hurt someone, but if I have to tell you that it means nothing.” Eda rested her hand against the taught muscles of his stomach but refused to break their gaze.

“It’s not nothing when I hurt you,” Serkan assured her. His thumb traced the curve of her jaw in a soft caress, and Eda was tempted to lean into his touch. “I didn’t like it when you pulled away from me and I couldn’t make sense of the change in your demeanor. I was wrong to accuse you of something that I knew deep down you weren’t capable of.”

“Then why did you?” her hand slid up to rest over his heart and she felt it pounding against her palm.

“I was hurt, and it was easier to lash out at you than face that you have the power to hurt me.” Serkan slid his hand to the back of her nape, kneading the muscles there. “Very few people have ever held that kind of power over me. I am sorry.”

Eda bit her lip, her heart skipping in her chest at how sincere he sounded.

“I am sorry that I hurt you, that I made you believe I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry that I humiliated you, that I allowed my fear and pain of you pulling away to control everything else.” Serkan cupped her cheek and this time Eda leaned into his touch. “I will do anything you want me to, just don’t walk away.”

It was everything Eda wanted to hear, and it only made her accept how complicated everything was. Her hands slid up to the sides of his neck, her thumbs brushing the sharp angles of his jaw. Watching him closely, she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips.

Serkan’s lips brushed against her slowly. It was soft a tender touch; she broke away and leant her forehead against his. “Everything is complicated now.”

“I know.” Serkan said, his hands tightening on her.

“How do we go back to before?” Eda asked.

“I don’t know,” Serkan answered honestly.

How did he go back to not kissing her? How did he let this end when the contract was over, when he knew the weight of her against his chest, the feel of her in his arms, the way her body wrapped around his?

How the hell did he give up a slice of heaven when he only just found it?

His arms tightened around her. “I know I need you and I have never allowed myself to need anyone.”

It was his most honest confession and left him more vulnerable than he wanted to be, but if that was what Eda needed from him, then so be it.

Eda's heart skipped in her chest. She knew they had more to discuss. Selin in particular, but at that moment she didn’t want to talk about her. She didn’t want to talk about the contract.

It was rare when Serkan let himself be vulnerable and not push her away. She wanted to just for one moment to forget everything and just let herself feel, and that is what she did.

“I care about you more than I thought I could,” Eda confessed. Eda pressed her mouth to his.

The kiss started out slow and tender but became more passionate and demanding, spiraling into the desire to take and to give.

Serkan wrapped his arms tighter around her, his hips shifting beneath her.

Eda lifted her hips, wrapping an arm around his neck and holding on tightly.

They moved together seamlessly. Eda sunk down until he was sheathed inside her and Serkan rocked up into her slowly.

Unlike the first time, there was no rush, there was nothing but feeling every movement, every desire, every thrust.

Eda’s breaths came out in pants, quiet moans filling the room as he thrust into her.

Serkan cupped her face, his thumb sliding across her bottom lip.

Not once did their eyes leave each other.

Eda sometimes was unsure of the connection between them. It was deep and intense and something beyond anything she ever felt that at times it scared her and left her confused, but in that moment, there was no confusion.

If she let herself, she knew she could fall madly in love with Serkan Bolat, and it terrified her.

She did not want to fall for him, only to have him discard her the second Selin ended her engagement to Ferit.

What Eda didn’t know was that Serkan could see no one when she was near. Selin was nothing more than a goal to protect the Holding, and Eda herself was something entirely different to him.

Serkan wanted to hold on to her for as long as he could. He needed her in his life, way past the duration of the contract.

He turned them slowly, Eda’s legs wrapping around his hips as he laced their hands and pressed them into the hardwood floor, pressing every inch of their bodies together, moving inside her deeply, wanting to imprint himself so deeply hoping she would need him as much as he had already accepted that he needed her.

He savored every sound she made, cherished the feel of her beneath him, wrapped around him, the way her eyes looked at him with desire and something else he was too scared to hope for, the way her mouth parted with every deep thrust.

He committed it all to memory and Eda lost herself to the pleasure and the feelings of completion coursing through her.

When they both found their release in each other the second time, Serkan gently rolled onto his back and Eda moved into his side, wrapping herself around him, resting her head against his chest. Feeling his heart beneath her ear, and let the feel of Serkan’s arms wrapping around her, his hands soothing down her bare skin and the warmth of the fire lull her to an exhausted sleep.

Serkan refused to sleep. Instead, he watched the flickering flames dance shadows across their skin, enjoying the feel of Eda in his arms, savoring it, fearing this would be his only chance to experience something so life changing as being with her.

Eda couldn’t possibly understand how she changed his life, changed him, and he welcomed the change. He was ready for it if it meant he had her brightening his world with vibrant colors and bringing his soul to life.

A/N: Thanks for reading!

#edser #fanfic #sck #sen cal kapimi #serkan x eda #eda yildiz #serkan bolat #romance #smut #edser fanfic

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reddus-sideblog · 4 years ago

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Pathfinder Update

The group is still in that dungeon and the mixture of natural formation and ancient ruins is becoming obvious. Among the hordes of gnolls and giant scorpions we come across an ancient weapons cache, containing what appear to be shoulder cannons (these are ancient technology missile launchers, Tisiphone just claims that they’re man-portable “shoulder cannons”). Among the other ancient ruins are what seem like test tubes and some sort of clockwork logic engines (more or less computers, but wholly mechanical). Within the test tubes are semi-formless, proto-humanoid things, most likely one of the origin points of the blood-sucking shapeshifters we fought before.

Tisiphone used 2 of the 4 found shoulder cannons to blow up the bloodsuckers, and kept the two others, they collapsed a tunnel by which it seems the bloodsuckers escaped, and they went on their merry way, ridding the undergound of scorpions and gnolls (Valka obliterated a whole room of them with a particularly well-placed bomb, and in another Tisi’s revolver jammed while I tried to do a cool move and blast two gnolls at once!) until we came unto the main “boss room” of it all. There were 4 gnolls and a half-fiend minotaur and Kii and Tisiphone rolled quite well for initiative, Kii readied spells and Tisiphone pulled out a shoulder cannon and blasted a part of the minotaur away, AND killed a gnoll with the backblast (I used a Gunslinger Deed called Deadeye which lets me pool together what would be multi-attacks into one attack and did 6d6 TWICE and did 39 damage with a single hit!!). The shoulder cannons are single use though, so now it was down to one.

The gnolls kept trying to throw spears at Tisi, but she managed to keep away, and Kii and Valka did their usual, respective attacks (Kii dual wielding her rapier and magic, Valka throwing bombs). The minotaur tried to use some dreadful evil magic at the party, but, Tisiphone, now a Level 7 Mechanist, spent her last Grit Points and used an Explosive Counterspell, discharging her rifle at the creature, maiming it further, before crying out,

“THE AGE OF MAGIC IS OVER, THE TIME OF MAN IS NOW.”

and enraging it enough to make it charge her, wherein it nearly took out half her health and smashed her into a wall. What it didn’t count on, however, was Kii being right there, and skewering it through the eye and incinerating it’s brain (she was a bit disconcerted by what Tisiphone said).

With that done Tisiphone stepped over the mutilated monster, blasted another gnoll, and Kii finished off their remaining compatriot.

Burdened down by loot they made their way back to town, and spent a nice night relaxing and enjoying the town’s good graces. Tisiphone felt bad for putting off Kii with her rage filled remark, and after about 3 drinks went out to drunkenly apologize to her (this somewhat annoyed Kii, more than anything). Also of note, Kii found a baby psuedo-dragon in the depths and adopted it quite readily. Tisi does not like it’s thought projection whatsoever, but she tolerates the creature as much as she tolerates Valka’s love of the clockwork creature she made for her.

The group was rudely awokne to a towncrier proclaiming to everyone that the Southerlands was being invaded by Velikor, a much more established nation to the South. The army was currently marching...TO DIXON (Tisiphone’s home town and where her family’s ranch is near-ish). The group readied the wagon as quickly as possible and is currently driving the steeds as hard as they can to get to the Eriny Ranch as speedily as possible.

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victory-cookies · 4 years ago

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we were fools to think that nothing could go wrong (chapter 1)

A/N: Title is from "Why Am I The One" by fun. (Alternatively titled “Milo can have little a Murphy's Law on purpose, as a treat.”). Here's to a new multi-chapter! Pray for me!

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Milo Murphy had always prided himself on remaining optimistic no matter the circumstances. Even living within a veritable cyclone of calamity as he did, he always tried to look on the bright side of life and hope for the best in any situation.

At present, though, Milo Murphy was absolutely positive he was going to die.

***

Five minutes earlier...

Milo dug through his backpack frantically, looking for anything that might be of use. He’d already burned through most of its contents just trying to stay alive the past hour, and he began to feel more and more worried as he ran through the remaining items.

A garden spade. A small piece of oak. A sewing kit. Seven dollars in change. A camera he knew no longer focused. His house key.

That was it.

Pressing his back harder to the crumbled wall he was hiding behind, he tried to make himself as unnoticeable as possible. He could hear the heavy footfalls of the mechs patrolling the streets growing closer, the grating screech of their metal joints causing him to wince.

He looked over to where Melissa and Zack were lying, both out cold, having been dragged to safety by Milo before he had to stop and hide when the pain from his leg, which was definitely broken, finally caught up to him. They were both littered with cuts and bruises, dirt covering their faces and staining their torn clothing. A thin line of blood trickled down Melissa’s face from the gash on her scalp.

He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t try to run without risking damaging his leg even further, and there was no way that he’d be able to carry both of his unconscious friends in this state anyway. He wondered if maybe Cavendish and Dakota had made it away from the mechs, and if maybe they’d come to find them and save them in time...

The thundering footsteps grew ever nearer.

He scooted closer to Zack and Melissa and tried to make himself even smaller. All he could do was hope that they weren’t discovered. Looking around at the rubble-covered downtown area, he swallowed thickly. Buildings were half-collapsed and roads were covered in cracks and holes, the result of the blaster fire from the initial stage of the attack. The air was filled with dust and smoke, and he could hear sirens wailing faintly in the distance.

He figured he and his friends may have been in the more fortunate contingent of downtown Danville’s citizens that day. Not that that was saying much.

Suddenly, a squadron of mechs rounded the corner at the end of the street. Milo froze, praying that they would pass by without noticing him.

The squadron stopped, and then slowly turned towards him.

Bile rose in his throat. He fought the urge to throw up and promptly failed.

The mechs began to pound down the street towards him, and he felt panic building in his chest. A few more of the imposing machines appeared in the side streets nearby, crushing any remaining hope he might have had about fleeing.

He was surrounded.

The lead mech raised an arm, bringing the squadron to a halt in front of Milo. A two-story high humanoid robot made of cold, dark metal, it seemed to stare down at him before the visor on its head opened, revealing a sharp-featured man sitting inside its cockpit.

He grinned wickedly. "And you thought you could run, how quaint. Alas, there was no way you could have outwitted our sensors, and so here we find ourselves." He pulled a lever on his control panel, and the mech's arm levelled at Milo, the front of it opening up with a loud clank to reveal a blaster cannon. "With you and your friends gone, Milo, we will be one step closer to subduing Danville at last, and when we do, there will be no one to stop us from taking over the world back in our time!"

"You— you'll never win!" Milo tried to muster up what he could only hope was a defiant look, though he knew he probably didn't look all too defiant just sitting on the ground, complete with a busted leg and unconscious friends.

The man tsked. "Brave words coming from a child currently on the wrong end of a cannon, hmm? No, once you're gone, we will only have a few more insurgents to capture for our victory to be assured. Not that that will be hard, with most of them being children and all. I will say, coming back to the past to purge the most problematic resistance members as children was an inspired idea." He smiled. "Anyway, I suppose this is goodbye, Milo Murphy."

The blaster began to hum, glowing blue.

Milo's whole body went cold. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, cutting lines through the layer of dirt and blood on them. He felt a tingling, pins-and-needles-like sensation in his fingertips, which quickly spread to his hands, and then his arms, but he couldn't care less at this point.

This was it, huh? He and his friends were going to die here. He was going to be obliterated at the tender age of thirteen.

Of all the ways he had expected to go... this was not one of them.

The humming grew louder, and the man in the mech moved to pull the trigger.

Instinctively, Milo threw his hands in front of his face, as though he expected them to shield him from the incoming blast.

What he didn't expect was for a searing bolt of red energy to arc off of them, hitting the mech square in the chest.

It pitched backwards, sending the blaster fire into the air over Milo's head. It managed to keep from falling over, but that was overshadowed by the horrible groan that came from it as its leg joints suddenly snapped, sending the cockpit and the chassis plummeting to the ground.

Milo was shaking. He could faintly hear the man screaming over the thumping of his heartbeat in his ears, but that was quickly cut off as a large chunk of a nearby building broke off, falling directly on the cockpit, crushing it instantly.

He lowered his hands and stared at them, realizing that they were surrounded by a faint red glow. Every so often, the tingling feeling would increase and some small sparks of energy would dance between his fingertips.

"What the...?" he whispered hoarsely.

Suddenly, a chorus of creaking noises came from around him, drawing his attention back to the mechs.

Every single one of them had a blaster trained on him and his friends.

He felt a surge of adrenaline rush through his blood, and he shakily raised his hands again.

The last thing he saw before he blacked out was an explosion of red.

#milo murphy's law #mml #milo murphy #melissa chase #zack underwood #they sure don't do a lot this chapter but they'll be there in later chapters so im adding their tags #VicFic #this fic will be tagged as #we were fools #for organizational purposes #bc wwftttncgw is a little much lol #i hope you enjoy #my followers may recognize the presence of a *certain favourite trope* of mine #if you're wondering why i wrote this

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mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years ago

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Tactical Disadvantage || Morgan & Ulfric

Timing: Before the full moon

Parties: @big-bad-ulf & @mor-beck-more-problems

Summary: An unexpected guest crashes a sparring match. Morgan catches a lucky break.

When Ulfric had made arrangements with Morgan to start her combat training, he hadn’t expected to still be feeling the effects of the sudden fatigue that’d come over him, but that was all the more reason to brush up on his skills. Hunters wouldn’t wait until he was primed and ready to engage with them on his own, he had to be ready to face them at his weakest, and this was possibly the weakest he’d felt since he was a child, at least so close to the full moon. “Have you been practicing your approach?” He asked her as they arrived in the small wooded clearing on his property that would serve as their arena. “Care to show me?” He asked, walking to the centre of their makeshift ring. “Remember to trust your instincts. Go for the parts that tear easily, the guts, the eyes… the throat since most adversaries you’re likely to face will still need to draw breath. You have the advantage there, so use it. I’ll give you a three second head start.” His instructions finished, the wolf dug his feet firmly into the ground in a defensive stance and closed his eyes, awaiting her attack.

Morgan was only too relieved to drive over to Ulfric’s for another combat training session. She hadn’t been attacked since that one time in the woods, but she couldn’t help but be aware how much of that was pure luck. She needed to be ready for the next time, and knowing White Crest, that would be sooner rather than later. She followed him to the clearing on the edge of his property, grinning. “I have, as a matter of fact,” she said, grinning. “Maybe not wolf-stealthy yet, but I think you’ll be impressed.”

The wolf man closed his eyes and Morgan took the chance to give her best crouch. One foot directly in front of the other, eyes ahead, stay silent. She didn’t even need to breathe. One foot, then the other, creeping slowly until she was in lunging distance. She waited, still as death, and shot out from Ulfric’s flank, aiming a blow right for his kidneys.

Silence settled over the clearing and Ulfric smiled, impressed at Morgan’s progress, though it was quickly obliterated by a groan as she struck his side. Faen, she was strong. Stronger than he’d anticipated. A valuable insight, but one that couldn’t have come at a worse time, not when he wanted to keep the extent to which he was ‘under the weather’ under wraps. Still, there was more to coming out on top of a skirmish than strength. Quick reflexes, for instance, could mean the difference between life and death. Or unlife, as it was in her case. As her blow landed, he pivoted taking advantage of her uncontrolled moment to grab her by the throat. “Remember to get your hands back up as fast as you can after a blow to protect your face and neck,” He advised, holding her at arm’s length and using his additional height to keep her out of striking distance. “Even if your opponent’s unsure of what you are, decapitation is widely considered a safe bet.” Any other time he might have lifted her off the ground, to illustrate the lesson that leaving openings like that could lead to getting your head ripped off a little more clearly, but for now he just let her go. Perhaps Morgan would think he was going easy on her, but better she believed his weakness was of the sentimental variety rather than the physical. “Square up,” Ulfric commanded, backing up a few paces and raising his fists to the level of his eyes in demonstration. “Try to hit me again.”

Morgan was off her balance and in Ulfric’s grasp. She was strong, but her body had all the finesse of a bludgeon. Ulfric hadn’t broken a sweat picking her up, and with his long, burly arms, she could only flail cartoonishly at him. She gave him a pouting grimace and nodded, lesson learned. “Thanks for at least saving me my pride,” she said dryly. She rolled her muscles and squared up again, fists raised. Between Remmy and Mina, she’d learned a lot (and hell, she might need it sooner than later if the plan to get Remmy out of that awful place worked the way it was supposed to), but she hadn’t gone up against anyone as big as Ulfric before. She raised her fists near her eyes and steadied herself with a breath. She could be sharp. She could be swift and calm. That was how it worked, right? Jaw set with determination, she struck out towards him, poised to snap back into place just as quickly.

Ulfric watched for the angle of her swing, and dodged out of the way of her fist just in time. See? He could remember how to do this if he focussed, remember how to evade and defend instead of just relying on his fortitude to allow him to take hits while he got up close enough to strike a finishing blow. He was just out of practice, having gotten away with slacking on the defensive front since the sudden growth spurt at 16 that had left him tallest and broadest of his siblings by a wide margin. The werewolf let loose a swing of his own, but she had already moved back into position to block, and his hand collided with hers with a resounding crack followed by a… rumble? Alright, he definitely wasn’t responsible for that part. Stumbling backwards as the ground of the clearing shifted and split open, Ulfric just managed to call out, “Behind you, Morgan, look out!” before a long, multi-jointed leg with a serrated edge and coarse covering of hair along it’s sleek black exoskeleton extended towards her.

Morgan leapt to the side and whirled on her new opponent. “These again?” She shrieked. The spider monster (its name was something that sounded like churro, right?) hissed and spat its venom. “Shit!” She tugged on Ulfric’s sleeve, trying to pull him back. “P-poison! I mean--venom! The thing--venom!” She put her arm in front of him, ready to block a shot from the spider’s mouth with her body if need be. But--shit, was she even immune to that stuff? The question came to Morgan just as the giant spider whirled on them, hissing at having missed its target. Morgan’s fingers itched to unleash her alchemy, but this was not going to be anything like last time. “Run!” She called. And sprinted off, hoping Ulfric would follow. They were near water, right?

Run?! The last time Ulfric had run away from a fight was… never. If the circumstances had been different, he might have held his ground to buy Morgan time. But without the necessary strength to snap off one of the spider’s limbs and beat it with it, staying was just likely to result in a face full of the poison or venom or whatever the correct term was for foul liquid oozing from the creature's mouthparts. Jumping back at Morgan’s yell just in time to miss a sprayed mouthful of said liquid, he let groan in frustration at being forced to turn his back on a foe and took off running after her. With his longer strides he soon caught up to her at the edge of the wide creek that split the forest of the outskirts in two. “Get across to the other side!” He yelled over the rush of the water as he started to ford his way across, sparing a glance at the spider behind. It gave chase with surprising speed, but its precarious, spindly legs would hold no traction against water’s flow.

Morgan pounded her legs against the forest floor, running in zig zags to avoid getting smacked against the floor. Was she wasting time trying to breathe right? Was it even worth it with her stupid, short little legs? Moran tried to lift her legs higher, move faster. The air was roaring in her ears, she could barely hear Ulfric direct her. She barely heard the spider hiss and spit at them again. She turned back to look, hearing her mother’s voice in her head the whole while (never look back when you’re being chased!) and saw the spider click and hiss and ready another spray of venom just in time to leap onto a tree trunk just shy of the water. Morgan didn’t stop to think about the tactical merits of this. She scrambled up, tearing her hands and legs as she went, realizing when she’d reached a good heavy branch that the spider could also climb. “Fuck!” She screamed. “Uh, keep going!” She called to Ulfric, and prepared to fling herself as close to the water as she could. She really shouldn’t have chickened out of diving lessons.

Ulfric turned at the panic in Morgan’s voice, expecting to find her in the water behind him but instead seeing her half dangling out of the tree, with the spider scrambling up behind her. He considered turning back, but the rushing water battered against his threatening to knock his feet out from under him at any moment. Reluctantly, he pushed through the current to the other side, hauling himself up the opposite bank where the stable ground would allow him to be of more aid. “Let go, I’ll be here to pull you out!” The werewolf yelled back at her, sitting on the bank, and reaching out of the water towards her. The spider had scuttled up the branch Morgan had climbed onto, bending slightly downward towards the creek with their combined weight. Ulfric could just make out the wet clicking noise emanating from the overgrown arachnid that signalled another wave of venom was about to be unleashed. “Now, Morgan!” He pleaded with his words and his eyes, gesturing her urgently towards him in case the sound was lost among all the noise and the chaos.

Morgan leapt, screaming one more loud, drawn out “fuck!” with no sense of stealth or anything else. She heard the venom hiss through the air and pedaled her legs through the sky as she sank sudden and hard as a rock. Water flooded Morgan’s body and she flailed with a flurry of panic. Maybe she’d been hit. Maybe this was it. She would sink and be eaten slowly, and maybe she would regrow and be okay in a day or two but maybe she wouldn’t, shit, maybe-- Morgan’s feet hit the riverbed and she pushed herself up, kicking for dear life. She surfaced, coughing up water she’d swallowed. She reached for Ulfric’s waiting arm and scrambled to shore. Behind her, the spider monster was testing the waters, struggling on its feeble legs to follow her and still spitting and hissing with frustration. Morgan raised a hand to block any that crossed the distance and--nothing. She looked up at Ulfric, and then down at her body again. She hadn’t been hit once, but twice over. “Well…” she coughed. “Huh.”

‘Huh’ just about covered it, Ulfric thought, as he crouched, breathing heavily on the side of the creek. “Are you hurt?” He asked, looking her over in concern. It didn’t appear that any of the venom had touched her, but there was still the possibility that she’d been injured in the fall and subsequent struggle through the water. Staggering to his feet, he scooped up a rock at the creek’s edge and lobbed it in the spider’s direction, prompting the creature to scuttle backward to avoid it. “Let’s go, we’ll head a bit further into the trees on this side where that thing can’t see us, then we can cross back further downstream,” he suggested, offering his arm to her, to hoist her up or help her walk if needed. He wasn’t sure how long his strength would last if he had to carry her, but what he currently lacked in that he made up for in stubbornness, so he would try. “I wish I could say there was some sort of lesson to be learned here,” the werewolf continued as they made their way deeper into the forest out of view of the hissing overgrown pest. “But I can’t think of anything, other than that it’s best not to question it when the wheel of fate it spins your way, just take your lucky breaks where you can get them.”

Morgan staggered to her feet, brushing the river grime off her legs. “Ew…” She scraped a handful of something shiny and sticky from her calves. It was thin like mucus with a weird, tint that reminded her of the poison extracts her mother worked out of plants. “Uuh…” She rubbed it off her hands and onto the ground but Earth there was...a lot of it. If the substance was what she suspected, she was coated in at least a few sprays worth. She hadn’t been lucky, just...immune. Well, that put a whole other spin on her running and screaming like an idiot. She could’ve waltzed right into the water for all the harm that would’ve happened to her. She had wondered if it was possible, but it was different, feeling protected by her new body for a change. “Right,” she said. “I guess fate has a sense of humor sometimes after all. Gotta appreciate it when the punchline doesn’t kill you.”

#tactical disadvantage #wr ulfric #wr chatzy #wr ulfric chatzy #wr #wickedswriting

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archieimagines · 5 years ago

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Tied Up | Doctor Strange One Shot

requested by: anon warnings: violence, swearing, some description of injuries but nothing major this is a soulmate!au with the whole colour shebang thing. monochrome vision to colour after meeting your soulmate kinda shit. enjoy <3

You threw up your hands, creating a barrier between yourself and the crumbling structure of what used to be a clocktower. The force of the falling rubble made you grit your teeth, but wasn’t anything too uncomfortable for you to handle. With a defiant shove, you pushed the barrier upward, following behind before flying to the man behind it all. He, like all things, was in shades of white and black. His costume was pretty plain, compared to some of the ‘interesting’ designs you’d come across. Not like you could talk, your suit was made of a bullet, fire and weather proof polymer, with a cape to aid in aerodynamics. Your best friend by day and tech/super hero stylist by night had designed it and may have illegally stolen the material from her lab at Stark Industries. Your mask covered the majority of your face, only your mouth was exposed.

You had specified to her that the costume be black and white, as she (unlike you) had found her soulmate. Jenny was absolutely delightful and now the two of them could see the full range of colours that filled the lives of those lucky enough to find their other half. Meaning they were what stood between your costume looking ridiculous or badass.

“You’ll never defeat the likes of CORRUPTION CLAW!” He declared from his perch on the nearby building, his nefarious tech surrounding him, most of it actually stolen from the man of Iron, but you couldn’t tell Corruption Claw that. “There’s no point in trying to stop me, I’ve already won!” He cackled.

With a roll of your eyes, you sent a strong blast of energy towards him. He ducked to safety, but his tech was obliterated to the point that it was laughable.

You landed on the platform, lifting the man by his costume’s collar like a sack of potatoes, he tried to fight back, going as far as to spit in your face. You remained unfazed, while your best friend was screaming profanities at Corruption Claw down the comm line. Most of their words being about how the spitting was highly unhygienic. He tilted his head back, to do it again. But you slammed your forehead into his face, his nose making a satisfying crunch before he started wailing.

“AH FUCKING HELL! I think you broke my nose!”

“I’m sure the medical staff at the prison you’ll be sent to will be able to sort that out for you.” You reply, starting to drag him of the platform to deliver him to the proper authorities. But his sudden laughter that reminded you of the creepy children in every horror movie made you freeze. “What?”

“You didn’t think I had a contingency plan did you?”

“Wha—” But his contingency rammed it’s into your chest, sending you flying through the air. The head of the missile pushing you further and further away from Corruption Claw. Who by now was most likely making a dastardly escape. After the initial shock of being hit by a literal missile wore off, you composed yourself and attempted to change it’s direction. Using all your strength, the missile started to get higher into the atmosphere. But what you didn’t take into consideration was the possibility that it had a countdown to detonation.

The force of the detonation and shrapnel that speared itself into your body sent you hurling from the sky unconscious. Your body spun as it hurled towards the ground, but as your imminent impact with the ground raced towards your body, you regained just enough control to direct yourself through the roof of some manor and through the first two floors before stopping at what was most likely the ground floor. You were aware of the crater that your impact had made on the flooring, in the future you would cringe when thinking how much it would cost to fix it.

Groaning, you managed to pull yourself up, but couldn’t manage to fly out of there. Your mask had been partially wrecked in the explosion, half of it now only remained, deciding that it was of no use now you pulled it off your face. Your ribcage felt as if someone had tried to use it as a xylophone. So you had to settle for uneasy staggering with a large side of pained grunts. You had managed to move about a foot away from your crater before you heard flaps from the upper levels. In your dazed confusion, it hadn’t occurred to you that someone might be home. You weren’t quite sure how you were going to explain to the owner why they now had a multi level skylight and designer superhero shaped hole in their floor. But then the realisation that it might have been Corruption Claw hit you and you spun around, mustering the most heroic face you could.

Only to be met with a floating cape. Confusion took hold of you once more, your defensive stance slackening in awe of the cape. You couldn’t explain it, but it seemed almost sentient. You tilted your head to the side, the collar of the cape copied the action simultaneously. It was incredibly unprofessional but you couldn’t help but giggle at it. Rather than seeing it as a threat it sort of reminded you of a puppy. You extended your arm to touch the fabric, but before your gloved fingers could make contact, you were thrown into the wall by a grey glow. And then a strangely clothed man, who was now cloaked by the sentient accessory floats down. Strange glowing symbols surrounded him, his stance was on the offensive, ready to attack her. He was rather attractive if she had to admit it to herself, she quite liked his goatee, but in that moment her attention wasn’t exactly focused on his facial grooming.

“Who are you and what business do you have here?” He demanded to know, his tone unflinchingly threatening. You raised an eyebrow, not that impressed with his whole aesthetic he had going on.

“Okay, Mr Glowy Lights. I just got thrown out of the sky by a literal missile so I’m not really interested in your whole thing you got going.” He too didn’t look impressed by your response, the symbols intensifying, his hands began twirling, the symbols beginning to morph with the movement of his hands. Groaning out of annoyance you prepared to fight back, not able to keep a pained gasp quiet in front of the wizard man guy.

Then suddenly he was on top of you, the pair of you cursed at the sudden collision. It was then that you realised your movement was restricted by some unknown force. It had you in a deadlock against the owner of the manor, uncomfortably close you would specify. As you tried to break free you noticed that the man’s cloak was what had them wrapped together, but from the look on his face, he hadn’t planned on it to do this. It was almost funny, and you couldn’t help but have a ghost of a smile on your face.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, just that you don’t have control of your accessories…”

“The Cloak of Levitation is not an accessory.”

“Sure, buddy. If you know so much about it, why don’t you make it unwrap us?” His silence not only proved your statement, but was oh, so satisfying. The frown on the stranger’s face was almost adorably grumpy.

“I knew it! Okay, why don’t you try to move your arm so I can—” You began to advise, but were interrupted by his forehead smacking into your own rather harshly. Swearing loudly, you couldn’t help but close your eyes due to the sudden pain. But were taken off guard by the guy’s strangled gasp. Opening them slightly, your own gasp escaped your lips.

There were so many, more than you thought was possible. You had always been told by your parents that colours had an almost infinite amount, but you had always thought they had just sat it to make you more determined to find your soulmate…The wizard. Looking up into his eyes, they were beautiful, you didn’t know what the colour was called, but it was possibly your favourite. His hair was dark, with the sides partially greying. You quickly studied all his features, wanting to know everything about him as an unbridled joy filled your being.

“Who are you?” You asked after realising you still didn’t know his name.

“Doctor Strange.”

“Your really going to give me your alter ego?”

“No—I’m—My last name is Strange and I’m a doctor.”

“Okay…” You chuckled, he too chuckled, it was something you would make sure to hear every day from that moment. You then realised that the cape hadn’t been holding you together anymore, but he and you hadn’t noticed while being lost in each other’s presence. “Looks like your ‘Cloak of Levitation’ is a really good wingman.”

“Why did you use air quotes?”

“Hmm?”

“You used air quotes when calling it the Cloak of Levitation.”

“Seems like a weird name for a cape. It looks more like a Bob to me.”

“You did not just name the Cloak of Levitation Bob!” You shrugged your shoulders, his face was twisted in a look of annoyance in bewilderment. Taking a step back, the world suddenly went sideways and the burrito you’d had for breakfast started to head back up your oesophagus. Before you hit the ground, his arms caught you, leaving you in a pose that felt like it was straight out of a 90’s rom-com. “I think you might have a concussion. I don’t think you should leave just yet.”

“Are you trying to keep me here, Doctor?” You flirted and batted your eyes at your soulmate, still quietly marvelling at all the colours that you now got to experience thanks to him.

“Stephen. And... partially. I still have to honour the Hippocratic oath, it’s just a coincidence that you happen to be my soulmate.” He explained nonchalantly yet had a smirk growing on his face. Your face gradually came closer to his, your eyes almost exclusively focused on his lips. Just as they were about to connect a familiar voice caused you and Stephen to part.

“Um, hello? Are you there? You’ve been radio silent for a while. And if your suit is ruined in any way I’M GOING TO REACH DOWN THE COMM AND CHOKE YOU OUT BECAUSE THAT MATERIAL IS WORTH ABOUT A ZILLION DOLLARS AND I DID NOT COMMIT A FELONY FOR YOU TO GET IT BLOWN UP!” You almost pulled the comm out of your ear, they were so loud at the other end. Their threat sent a chill up your spine, as you knew they would follow through if the suit had been ruined. But thankfully, the shrapnel, explosion and falling through two levels of flooring had only lead to some slight tearing.

“Uh, yeah I’m fine by the way and so’s the suit.”

“I SWEAR I’M GONNA MURDE—Cool, why the silence then?” You couldn’t help but glance at Stephan after the question, he smiled at you but he looked painfully awkward. Had probably overheard the entire thing.

“Let’s just say I got a little tied up.” You replied, eyes connecting with Stephen’s, and couldn’t help but smile. You couldn’t wait to get to know more about him. And by the look on his face, he wanted the same thing too.

written by: el

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pikelanette · 6 years ago

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A Pirate’s Life For Me (chapter 6)

AND FINALLY! The thrilling finale!

Pairing: pikelan Words: 5155 Rated: M (for language) Link: ao3 Chapter 1: tumblr / ao3 Chapter 2: tumblr / ao3 Chapter 3: tumblr / ao3 Chapter 4: tumblr / ao3 Chapter 5: tumblr / ao3

a multi-chapter pikelan pirate AU - chapter 6 - final chapter

The next day was the weirdest day they’d had yet. They had nothing to work on anymore except prepping for the upcoming fight, and it left them both a little awkward and a little restless. From the look on Pike’s face, sometimes, Scanlan guessed that she had a lot more questions, but for some reason she wasn’t asking any of them. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to waste another spell on making him tell the truth on a day where she would probably need to be at full power, and she didn’t trust him to answer truthfully without it. That thought was a little disappointing, but it could be the case.

They spent the larger part of the day trying to prepare to the best of their abilities. Pike put on the pieces of her armour she had put aside for comfort and spent a good long while praying over her holy symbol. Scanlan tried to see if the amulet responded to her in any way, but if it did, he couldn’t pick up on it. There was nothing visual, at least.

He, thankfully, felt a lot better than the day before. A night’s rest had done him good, and although he realised that he wasn’t exactly at full physical strength yet, the magic inside of him was humming contently and he knew that he would have no problem with throwing out some bolts of lightning.

They grew tenser as time passed, because they knew that the moment of truth had to be getting closer. Particularly Scanlan, who knew the rate at which his friends must be approaching them, had a fair estimation of how long it would take before they arrived, and the anticipation that was constantly rising within him seemed to be picked up on by Pike.

They smiled nervously at each other a couple of times, and Scanlan found himself pre-emptively mourning the time they had spent locked up in this brig together. there was nothing he wanted more than to sleep in his own bed, but the thought that that might cost him Pike made him flinch. He had gotten irrationally attached to her in the past two weeks. And, no, that wasn’t just because she was basically his dream woman. Well, maybe it was.

She was his dream woman, okay? He was only human. How could he not get super attached to her?

So, for whatever time they had left, he revelled in the feeling of being in the same boat together. They looked at each other like they shared a secret, and they did, and he loved it. He wanted to share all of his secrets with her. He wanted, for the moment, to pretend that he did.

It was about mid-afternoon when something in the air changed. They started hearing mumbling from above deck, and then running, and shouting. The voices grew more panicked the more they picked up, and Scanlan knew instinctually that the pirates above deck must be watching his friends approach at the incredible speed that Keyleth could create when blowing air into a ship’s sails.

The pirate’s rising panic delighted him, and he felt a grin take over his expression. The time for mourning was over. Only excitement at the upcoming confrontation remained.

He looked at Pike, who took a cue from his obvious amusement and smiled back at him in anticipation.

“Almost there?” she whispered, as though she could ruin it by speaking up.

“Oh, yes,” Scanlan grinned.

Right at that moment, he could hear a soft, metallic voice, that grew louder and clearer as the seconds past.

“Scanlan? Are we in range?”

He lifted his hand to his ear and touched it to his earring. “I hear ya, Kiki.”

“Scanlan!” He could hear the obvious relief in Keyleth’s voice at hearing him, “Oh my gods, it’s so good to hear your voice. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Good job finding us. I’m in the ship’s brig with another prisoner. I could break through the lock, but I’d like to keep some element of surprise and jump them from below as well as above. Can you send in Vax?”

Pike was staring at him, a little slack-jawed, and visibly getting more excited.

“I’ll polymorph him and bring him to you,” Keyleth told him. He could hear the smile in her voice. “We’re about half a minute out. I just stopped the extra wind, so we should be slowing down enough not to pass them by. Did you say something about an extra prisoner?”

“Excellent. And yes. She’s with us. Bring her a weapon.” He glanced at Pike and smiled at her. “Any preference, Pike?”

“Do you have a maul?”

Scanlan touched his earring again. “Bring the Brawlers maul.”

Pike looked at him like he had just offered her a pile of gold.

“Done,” Keyleth said, “I’ll see you in half a minute. And, Scanlan? I’m really glad you’re okay.”

“See you soon, Kiki,” he smiled, and broke the connection.

Pike was inspecting him with a hint of suspicion, but she couldn’t keep the smile from her face. “Did you say the Brawlers?”

“Yup.”

“The notorious pirates who claim they’re all descended from dragons?”

“They’re full of shit. But yes.”

Pike shook her head in disbelief and laughed a little. “Why do you have their maul?”

Scanlan grinned and, emboldened, reached out to take her hand and bring it up to his mouth so he could kiss it. “They didn’t deserve it. That’s why we’re getting it a new wielder.”

Pike giggled and his very favourite blush rose to her perfect round cheeks.

His heart felt like it might burst. This was the best day of his life.

“Are you ready?” he asked her, “Things are about to get crazy.”

She sent him a dramatically scandalised look. “Scanlan. Who are you talking to?”

“Someone who’s about to kick some pirate ass?”

“Someone who’s about to obliterate some pirate ass.”

He hummed appreciatively. “I’d like a front row seat to that.”

She grinned. “First come first served.”

At that moment, there was a flutter of movement in the brig, and they looked up to see a small robin making its way towards them, flapping its wings enthusiastically. As it approached the bars to their cell, it started glowing, and, like a flower unfurling its petals, shifted into a tall, red-haired woman holding a staff. There was a maul hanging from a belt around her hips. She had a huge, happy smile on her face, and Pike liked her instantly.

“You’re still looking like that, huh?” she said to Scanlan, clearly happy to see him, even in his disguised form.

“You know I love a good costume.”

“Touché.” The woman’s gaze drifted to the gnome beside him and curiously looked over Pike – her full plate armour, white hair, the scar that ran across her left eye.

“Kiki?” Scanlan said, “The Vax, please?”

“Oh! Sorry!” She reached up and pulled a tiny spider from her messy red hair, putting it onto the ground beside her and dropping the spell she had put on it.

Another shift took place, this one reminding Pike more of an egg shell breaking to reveal a creature within. She blinked, and there was another person in the brig with them. This one had long, dark hair and a wicked grin on his face. He pulled out some thieves’ tools from his pockets and twirled them between his fingers. “Captain,” he said.

Scanlan didn’t dare to glance at Pike with that word hanging in the air.

She definitely heard that.

Above them, the fight had broken loose, and they heard shouts as well as small explosions and the unmistakable splash of someone hitting the water beside the ship.

Vax got to work immediately and within seconds he had picked the lock, swinging open the door to the cell, allowing Scanlan and Pike to rush out. Neither of them looked back before the four of them started rushing up the stairs. But, as they did, Pike reached for Scanlan’s hand and took it.

Something inside of him caught fire.

This was the happiest day of his life.

The hatch to the brig was slightly ajar and Vax learned over to gently lift it a little further and peek out. The sounds of the battle grew even louder, and Pike could feel the familiar adrenaline rushing through her veins at the proximity of a good fight. Gods, she wished Grog was here.

Vax motioned that they had to keep quiet for another moment as he reached into his belt and pulled out a mean-looking dagger. While he did, Keyleth removed the maul from her belt and quietly handed it to Pike with a smile. Pike returned her smile with as much warmth as she could muster and weighted the weapon in her hand. Then, she brought it up with her as she touched her holy symbol and sent a quick prayer to Sarenrae to help her face this.

Before she even finished, Vax flicked a dagger into the fray, and then two more. Pike couldn’t distinguish the cries of pain from each other, but the grin on the rogue’s face told her that he had definitely hit his target.

“Let’s go!” he said, and pushed open the hatch.

They rushed onto the ship’s deck and, immediately, Pike was a little disoriented. Everywhere around her people were running and shouting. There was the sound of metal upon metal and spells being flung around, recognisable, familiar sounds, but there were others sounds too, and she followed them to their sources. Her eyes widened at the things she saw.

There was a woman on a flying broom, racing over the fray, with an enormous longbow in her hands and a grin on her face that immediately identified her as Vax’s sibling. She shouted something down and Pike followed her gaze to an actual living grizzly bear that was running across the deck and mauling pirates left and right. Vax jumped into the battle as well, sneaking behind barrels and dodging opponents before pushing daggers into their flesh, his eyes flashing darkly as he released poison and fire into their bloodstream. Near the ship’s helm stood a tall human with a shock of white hair and a strange mechanical contraption in his hand. He looked impeccable in his blue coat as he pulled the trigger on the thing and shot fast-moving projectiles across the deck, incapacitating people left and right.

Pike and Scanlan looked at each other, identical grins on their faces. Scanlan wiggled his eyebrows and squeezed her hand. And, for the first time in weeks, Pike threw her head back and let out a good spell of laughter. With that, they let go of each other.

Pike gripped her maul and finished the prayer to Sarenrae that had been cut off earlier. With that, she spoke the divine words that had protected her so many times before, and sent out a spike of radiant energy, making good on the promise she had made herself so many weeks ago and getting a good ol’ Guiding Bolt right up a pirate’s butt.

Scanlan sauntered forward to get a better vantage point and sent his first Lightning Bolt towards the piece of shit who had ordered his capture two weeks ago. He didn’t hit on the first one, but immediately let out another, and this one hit home. The captain twitched and straightened out as the electrical charge rushed through his body, some of it sparking off his rapier.

Scanlan laughed heartily at the sight and kept approaching, ignoring the rest of the fighting crew on the ship. One or two of them attempted to hit him, but both missed and he stepped out of the way deftly. Before long he had the captain’s attention, and he could see the confusion take over his expression as he looked at the meek, scruffy halfling with a most uncharacteristic grin on his face. Scanlan oozed confidence, and he felt suave. He felt in his element.

He was in his element: he was about to drop a bomb of drama on this poor soul.

“You are not having a good day,” he said gleefully.

The captain actually let his rapier lower for a moment, staring at this tiny creature slack-jawed. Then something seemed to click, and although Scanlan was sure that he couldn’t see through his illusion, exactly, it was clear that the pirate now knew there was one.

“Who the fuck are you?” the captain barked, clinging on to his dignity and bringing up his rapier again. He tried to look imposing, but Scanlan wasn’t having any of it.

“Who am I?” he repeated, happy with the set-up. He could feel the eyes of others on him, friends as well as enemies. He was sure that one pair was Pike’s. He finally got to show her where his biggest strength lay.

Theatrics.

“Well, I have many names,” he continued smoothly. “The Meat Man. Burt Reynolds. Kingslayer. Francois Bertrand Jean-Luc Australia. But you, my friend, probably know me as Aes Adon.”

The pirate looked as though he was watching a guillotine being raised with every name that Scanlan uttered. He grinned at him, ready to drop it and chop off his head.

“And this,” he continued, spreading his arms to gesture towards the crew that was quickly overpowering the ship, “Is Vox Machina.”

With that, he dropped his illusion, watching as the full realisation of who they were dealing with washed over his rival’s features.

“Vex’ahlia!” Scanlan shouted, and immediately he was approached by the half-elven ranger, who reached for something hanging from her belt and dropped a dark brown tricorne into his hands, adorned with purple feathers and the odd dragon-scale or two. He drew it onto his head, and felt as though he had undergone a transformation that ran far deeper than just dropping an illusion.

Now, he was a force to be reckoned with. Now, he was Aes Adon. Captain of Vox Machina.

The rival captain’s shock morphed into rage within seconds, and Scanlan steadied himself to prepare for his oncoming attack. His rival roared and came at him, the tip of his rapier aimed at his gut, but Scanlan stepped away just in time and the blade merely nicked his side. The joys of being a gnome.

He brought up his own hands and traced an arcane sigil in the air while muttering a few words. Immediately, a huge, spectral hand appeared and lifted him up above the deck, out of the reach of the pirate captain’s rapier. He swung it at him one more time, but only caught the hand’s form, which didn’t falter on its way up.

Scanlan couldn’t keep the grin from his face and he quickly surveyed the battlefield, unwilling to admit that he was looking for Pike until he found her in the crowd.

She was staving off an enemy with maul and then turned to look at him up in the air. Her eyes were wide and bright blue.

Pike just stared up at the fixture in front of her, who both was and was not the person she had spent two weeks locked up in a cell with. He looked so comfortable like this, with the grin on his face, wearing his real visage proudly, the ridiculously ostentatious hat on his head.

Everything fell into place.

“Pirate-robbing pirate,” Pike stammered, and everything made sense now. Why he had targeted these pirates. Their conversation on piracy. His unease with letting her know who he was. The vagueness which had cloaked his true intentions. Even the rough way of speaking that sometimes overpowered his more charming lilt.

He was a pirate. Of course he was. He was a pirate captain.

He was Aes Adon.

She had little to no information on Vox Machina, except that they hit who they could hit and were impossible to track. Looking over the crew that he had brought with him, Pike could definitely see how they were an unconventional lot. A bear at sea, for example, was not exactly something she would have expected.

But they looked powerful. And she was glad to be on their side.

She grinned at Scanlan, finally unbound, having thrown off the limits he had put on himself and showing his bardic prowess in all its glory. Purple looked good on him.

They gazed at each other in the midst of the battle, and then, smoothly, Pike lifted up her maul and pointed it at him. “You and I need to talk!”

“Now?!” he yelled back, but he was still grinning, and seemed pleased with her response.

“After!”

With that, she threw herself back into the fight, her adrenaline fuelled by her excitement at finally knowing who exactly she was dealing with. She had no time to consider anything but how neatly her image of Scanlan fit into that of Aes Adon. Vaguely, she registered that someone was laughing loudly, having heard their exchange. She glanced to the side to see the source and found the rogue with the daggers, Vax, laughing and shaking his head. He caught her gaze and winked at her, before somehow disappearing into some of the shadows cast over the ship by the midday sun.

After that, the fight was over quickly. Pike got some good Guiding Bolts in, one of them scorching the bastard captain who had overpowered her own crew so violently over a month before. It felt good to pay him back, although she knew that there was nothing she could do to him that would somehow make up for the lives he had taken that day.

She loved the feel of the maul she had been given, swinging it left and right whenever she felt like, before reaching for her holy symbol again to communicate Sarenrae’s wrath.

Before long, most of the enemy pirates were crawling, and then the last one fell to one of the fast projectiles that the white-haired human was shooting into the crowd. Pike looked up at him as the battlefield quieted down. Somewhere behind her, Scanlan was walking up to the enemy captain as Vex’ahlia was binding him tightly with rope. Vax offered him one of his daggers, and Scanlan took it as he approached his fallen enemy.

But Pike’s eyes stayed on the gunslinger. There was dark smoke coming from the barrel of his weapon, and he hadn’t lowered it yet. There was something hard and dark about his eyes, and, for a moment, she could swear that she saw some of his weapon’s smoke coalesce and drift down his arm. She knew, instantly, that something was wrong with him, and shivered at the sight.

Then he put down his weapon and the darkness faded. He was just a man.

Suspicious, but satisfied for the moment, Pike turned away from him and looked at where Scanlan stood in front of the bound captain.

He tapped the ropes with Vax’s dagger. “There we go. Neat little packages for Emon’s Crown. I’m sure they’ll be delighted to see you.”

The pirate captain spat at him, but Scanlan’s hand sneaked up to slap him just before he did, and his spit landed on the deck beside his comrades’ blood.

Scanlan looked at Vex’ahlia. “Maybe gag him?”

“It would be my pleasure,” she answered, and reached over to do just that.

Once the pirate captain was silenced, Scanlan looked him over again. “You have made many mistakes in your life, Harold,” he said, “And kidnapping me was far from the worst of them. I hope others may learn from your mistakes. It becomes rather dull to have nothing but enemies who fall for every trap I lay for them.”

The twins chuckled.

“Let it be known,” Scanlan smiled, “That today, once again, Vox Machina triumphed.”

His crew cheered, and he grinned, and everything was wonderful. There was nothing like the adrenaline rush that he got from a good fight. He felt ecstatic.

As soon as the end of the battle had been officially proclaimed, he was hounded by his crew about all sorts of things. The cook wanted to know whether he should use the special meat for tonight, Keyleth offered to do a Heroes Feast for the occasion, Percy chimed in to say that he had had a thought and wanted some extra materials to work on something, Vax was cajoling him, the younger crew members were congratulating him on the great mission, and Vex was still poking Harold with a stick behind him, resulting in some fairly interesting noises from the bound-up captain.

By the time things had settled down a little again, he had momentarily lost track of Pike. He’d meant to, of course – he couldn’t seem like he was paying anyone special attention.

He had grown up in an environment where it was very dangerous to let people know that you cared about something, and that education still pushed to the surface sometimes. He knew that he could trust his people. But still.

He really did have trust issues, did he? Wow…

Right as he had that realisation, his gaze locked in on Pike, who was tending to some of the wounded. Their usual healers were with her, helping both magically and mostly non-magically, but Pike was dead in the centre of it all. It looked like people had just flocked towards her, and Scanlan wondered whether that happened to her any place she went.

She was bandaging one of the deck mates and muttered a short incantation that seemed to help with sealing up his wounds. Then she turned around and put a hand on one of the unconscious members of the crew, and hesitated. Scanlan watched as Pike looked up again with a frown and looked around for a moment, inspecting the small crowd that had gathered around her. She steadied herself for a moment and reached for her holy symbol and then let out a shockwave of radiant energy that started to stitch up the wounds of various of the people around her. The crew was clearly in awe of her. As they should be. She was incredible.

Vax’s hand fell on his shoulder with a smack and he was shaken out of his thoughts. He looked up at his friend to find the familiar, shit-eating grin on his face.

Scanlan sighed, but couldn’t keep a smile from his face. “Whatcha got, Vax?”

“It really isn’t much about what I’ve got,” Vax grinned, “As much as it is about what you’ve got, my friend. Of course, I’m referring to the exquisite companion you’ve somehow managed to pick up.”

“Yeah, Scanlan,” Vex said as she joined them, “Where did she come from? She looks adorable.”

“She’s a badass,” Vax corrected her immediately.

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Not in her, they aren’t,” Scanlan affirmed. He looked back over to where Pike was helping his crew. “What can I say? She was just a very lovely surprise that I found down here.”

There was something about the quiet after he said that that didn’t sit right with him. There were so many things he wanted to say about Pike, and he was horrible at keeping all of it inside.

“She honestly saved me,” he finally admitted, “She kept me up and running while we were stuck in that ship. She really took care of me, in a multitude of ways. It was… honestly a gift.”

If he had said it in a tone that was any less sincere than this, he was sure that the twins would have jumped on him with a decent amount of provocative jokes about what exactly he had received from Pike in all of those weeks. But, as it stood now, Vax and Vex just looked at each other briefly, Vex raising one of her eyebrows, and that was that.

They took a moment, and then Vax squeezed Scanlan’s shoulder. “Well, then you should probably go talk to her, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Scanlan,” Vex said with a delighted gasp, “Are you nervous?”

Scanlan ignored her and turned to face them, running his fingers through his hair. “How do I look?”

“Ruggedly handsome,” Vax deadpanned.

“Very charming,” Vex agreed.

Well. He was willing to settle for that.

“Alright,” he said softly to himself, and then he was off.

By now, most of the people around Pike had stepped aside to tend to rest of their wounds on their own. Pike was still helping some of them with slings and bandages, but it seemed that she was tapped out when it came to her healing spells. That wasn’t surprising, of course, considering the shit she had pulled out of her figurative closet during that fight.

She was sitting on an upturned crate, the maul she had used resting beside her, blood and sweat gathered on her brow. The sun was starting to go down in earnest, and Scanlan got a perfect view of the way that the low light gave her hair a golden sheen. The sun was right behind her, and he had to squint a little, and, by the gods, was she an actual angel? Had he lost blood? He was getting dizzy.

He absent-mindedly reached for the place where Harold had nicked him, and, sure enough, his vest was pretty moist with blood, although the flow seemed to have stopped already. He quickly muttered a Healing Word to himself to help his body along.

Pike looked up at him now, and when she noticed him her mouth pulled up into a gorgeous smile that made his stomach do a twirly thing inside of his body.

She got up from the crate, her hands instinctively reaching for the maul again. That’s how she stood before him – covered in grime from the fight, a damaged maul in her hand, her holy symbol having that soothing glow across it that he had seen only once before, and a grin on her freckled face. Her hair was an absolute mess, which made him feel better about his own, and she was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen in his life.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he parroted, feeling too much like an awkward teenager. He attempted to fix it by plastering a smile onto his face, but it couldn’t entirely conceal the nervousness he was feeling, standing before her in all of his infamous glory.

“Pirate-robbing pirate captain,” she observed.

“Amongst other things.”

He remembered the intimacy between them when he had last spoken those words in her Zone Of Truth, and Pike seemed to remember too, because there was a spark in her eyes and just the tiniest hint of that lovely blush rising to her cheeks. She didn’t look embarrassed as much as she looked to feel a little hot. That had to be a good sign, right?

She crossed her arms and started to slowly shake her head, but there was a smile on her face that made the entire thing look loving. “You’re something else, Scanlan Shorthalt.”

And that wasn’t rejection. That absolutely wasn’t rejection.

Fuck it, he thought, and decided to be bold.

“So, what do you say, Pikey?” He reached for her hand and took it, holding it up loosely with his own and looking down at it as though he were considering where to kiss it exactly. But then he glanced up at her through his eyelashes. “Ever wanted to be a pirate?”

Pike let out a burst of laughter at his ridiculousness, but the blush on her cheeks also deepened when she realised what exactly he was saying.

Oh shit. He was asking her to stick around. Wasn’t he?

“How so?” she asked, her voice quivering lightly, “Do you have an opening?”

“We could certainly use someone with your kind of magnificent mind,” he flirted.

Pike laughed again. “You’re laying it on thick. Scared I’ll run off to the enemy?”

Scanlan glanced at the other pirate captain from the corner of his eyes. “I don’t think he could woo you away from me, exactly.”

Pike smiled, but then tried to wrap her head around the idea properly. “I’ve never considered becoming a pirate before,” she muttered, and she looked over the ship’s deck to see what she would find there.

There were the twins, who were not even hiding that they were watching them and listening in on the entire conversation. They looked excited and pleased, and Pike figured they would have no objections to her joining the crew. Even the bear seemed to be anticipating something. Keyleth, who was helping people with her bandages as she had been, had a warm smile on her face, and Pike knew instinctively that she could really use a friend. The white-haired human wasn’t paying attention. He was meticulously cleaning his gun. She remembered the darkness that had so briefly overtaken him, and she knew, just as instinctively, that there was something she could do here. If Sarenrae allowed it, she could mean something to these people. She could help them.

She looked back at Scanlan in front of her, his impish grin, his flair, and felt the way his hand was trembling slightly underneath hers. She looked into his eyes and there was something there that she had never found before.

She could help him. She could help all of them. And, maybe, they could help her.

Pike took care to bring out her best pokerface. She pursed her lips as though she was thinking this offer over, and she dragged it out just long enough, with a dramatic tension that she was sure Scanlan would be able to appreciate. He was still grinning at her, but she could see that there was something beneath the surface there. He really wanted her to stay.

Something inside of her soared.

“On one condition,” she said finally.

“Anything,” Scanlan told her eagerly, almost greedy for an opportunity to do something to sway her in his favour.

Oh yes. She could be something here.

Pike let her expression break open into a shit-eating grin that almost brought Scanlan right back to the beginning of the fight.

“We have to pick up Grog.”

It was Scanlan’s turn to soar, and he tightened his grip on Pike’s hand unintentionally. “Done.”

Pike laughed, and that sound changed the course of everything, so Scanlan grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up, sparking another burst of laughter from her perfect lips, and when he brought her down he kissed both of her cheeks and then her forehead. He lingered there for just a second, and hoped she was able to pick up on just how much this meant to him.

Then they looked at each other, faces close together, and just like the day before, Scanlan felt like she shared all of his secrets. And he wanted to share in all of hers.

#critical role #pikelan #cr fanfic #pikelansource #tameila #cr: pikelan #a pirate's life for me #original

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thesunlounge · 6 years ago

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Reviews 153: Mildlife

Though Mildlife and Research Records seemed to emerge out of nowhere at the end of 2017 with The Magnificent Moon single, James Donald, Adam Halliwell, Kevin McDowell, and Tomas Shanahan had actually been working the Melbourne scene for years, steadily refining their cosmic jam outs. Their debut LP Phase arrived fully formed and featured six stunning tracks of pastoral 70’s prog, blazing fusion, and disco-inflected jazz funk. The instrumental prowess of all involved was something to behold and the recording itself exuded a soothing vintage warmth with incredibly crisp production that allowed the analog synths, e-pianos, guitars, bass, and drums plenty of space to sparkle and shine. And though the spellbinding grooves would have made for a fascinating instrumental album all their own, Mildlife pushed things further into realms of classical pop psychedelia with the gorgeous vocal work of Kevin McDowell. Following the release of Phase, the group then invited three exciting remixers to take on select tracks from the album for the Mildlife Remixed 12″. Here, Tornado Wallace offered up some ravey breakbeat dreaminess, Sleep D headed into a world of kaleidoscopic dub, and Mount Liberation Unlimited stretched Phase closer “The Gloves Don’t Bite” into a romantic disco journey of pure transcendence. And most recently, Mildlife released the Phase II 7”, which saw the group reworking and rerecording the title track from their debut LP into a storming psych riff monster, complete with thrilling passages of improvisation reflecting the song’s evolution during the band’s 2017 live performances.

Mildlife - Phase (Research Records, 2018) Phase opens with “The Magnificent Moon” and its introduction of kosmische sequences, synthetic wind, and brass pads. The main groove is led by a jaw-dropping bass guitar performance from Tomas Shanahan and the drums lock into an effervescent glide while synths soar and swirling noise clouds obscure funk guitar riffs. Berlin school sequences accompany colorful vocals that bring a swooning romance and these prog-pop passages alternate with dueling synth and guitar fireworks. Sometimes the filters open up on the synths, causing them to explode like fireworks in a starry sky and after a jazzy anticlimax with sunshine six-string journeys working in contrast to the preceding bombosity, anthemic pitch bending synth solos rain down as everything comes together for a spectacular climax. “Zwango Zop” follows with an air of exotic disco perfection as a tropical four-four is danced around by congas and slithering basslines. There are sections dominated by beautifully multi-tracked and hazily filtered vocals evoking the heyday of Abbey Road and we also get a freaked out solo section where fried synth leads explode into dueling fuzz brilliance. The track is awash in Latin prog virtuosity and the harmonizing fuzz solos keep ascending to impossible heights as the bass and drums stomp underneath with an almost evil sense of groove. And after breaking down into drifting deep space liquids, we smash back into the jam and its prog funk balladry, burning passages of swelling synth vapor, blasting tom fills, and climax of double-tracked wah-wah guitars bursting like solar flares.

“Im Blau” has slow and low Magmoid basslines underlying double-tracked guitar mirages. Shakers and güiro accent the muscular prog drums while lovesick vocoders are surrounded by cinematic orchestrations and smooth arps and there are unsettling transitions that interrupt the mix, with the rhythms being replaced by searing industrial noises. Elsewhere, cyborgs sing over breathy flutes while the bass and drums hold down a subdued groove and then, storm siren synths lead back into the lanky funk flow, with horror film leads and organ drones evoking the soundtrack work of Goblin. As we head towards the end, blues guitar exotics are bathed in aquatic vibrato alongside phasing synths pulsating like the breath of some cosmic being. It’s pure sonic radiance and after the lovelorn robots return to pull at the heartstrings, it all fades into a colorful interstellar gas. Psych rock riffs and wobbling bass textures anchor the intro of “Phase” until a stoned jam develops, with slow motion basslines and barely there drums pulsing like Miles’ “He Loved Him Madly.” Fusion leads and oscillating noise spirals grow ever more freaked out and dazzling jazz guitar cascades gently ascend towards a majestic climax, with solar vibrations ringing out from the peak of a magical mountain…the guitars and synths locked into breathtaking harmonies, the bass snaking around with melodic funk solos, and blankets of feedback working their way into the layers of ecstatic prog ritualism. And as the jam winds down, morphing alien sonics fly around the deconstruction of a classical stretch of guitar psychedelia.

We awaken in a Tangerine Dream wonderland for “Two Horizons,” as Berlin school sequences swim through a cosmic sea. Winds of static overlay bubbling bass currents until mellotron saxophones transition us into some transportive prog-psychedelia led by swinging drum hypnotics and moaning, almost desperate synthesizer drones. The bass guitar work is as jaw-dropping as ever and the blissed out vocal harmonies remind me of Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion,” as if backed by masterful cosmic fusion. Acid textures follow the drums and bass with a sense of pure joy while distorted Rhodes melodies evoke fantasy forests in the clouds, only as seen through LSD electronics distorting the view with neon tracers and rainbow emanations. Closer “The Gloves Don’t Bite” initiates with minimal percussion drifting aside enchanting synth leads. We then segue into riffing disco narcotics as bass guitar power chords dance with six-string blues leads. Video game electronics fly around while hazy vocals glide above the pure jam mastery, followed in round by smooth guitar magic flowing towards a sunset horizon. Galactic layers of synthesis wash over instrumental choruses and thrilling fills and dancey double-time cymbals work their way into the vibrant drumming. Freaky solo passages see synths and guitars seeking out an alien sun and then the track heads towards a seaside fusion paradise, as wah wah guitars mix with overdriven psych-funk riffs and wondrous bass guitar leads move up and down the fretboard exuding vibrations of beachside romance.

Mildlife - Mildlife Remixed (Research Records, 2018) For Tornado Wallace’s take on “The Magnificent Moon,” we smash cut into jammed out breakbeat hypnotics…the gliding kick and snare magic colored by jangling tambourines and throbbing bass cushions that push so much air. The beats ride for an extended introduction as wisps of synth wind blow and hints of the original version’s flowing kosmische sequences waver through the mix. Everything moves with a sort of dream logic and the entrancing vocals of Kevin McDowell are here completely modified, with the lyrics remaining the same but now spoken by feminine androids. The ascendent synth solos of the original track are removed from their cosmic fusion context and are turned into ravey melodies stoking hands in the air euphoria. And during a midtro of cruising kick-less breaks, plucked guitars scatter and hallucinatory cosmic pads soar in the background until we flash into an expanse of crushing rhythmic sorcery with nothing but the loved up breakbeats and machine woman voices evoking ecstasy soaked 90′s nostalgia. The back half of the track is given over completely to city leveling wobble basslines that ooze over the mix like cosmic molasses while housey dream pianos bang away softly. Eventually the drums are chopped up and sent through low pass filters while repeating pads glow with hues of dark and deep blue until it all fades into silence.

Sleep D loop congas and other unidentifiable percussive tones while resonant bass drums knock against the fabric of the universe. Their remix of “Im Blau” sees dense layers of deep space synthesis introduce a marauding bassline that tears through the cosmos alongside haunted voices. Organs bubble and broil with sun-soaked key changes and once the beat reaches full strength, we find ourselves in a world of propulsive dub perfection. Everything is smothered in delay fx...a barely contained chaos that Sleep D occasionally obliterate by letting various instruments self oscillate into a cloud of psychedelic madness. So much energy pulses through the mix as we head on a mystical odyssey into the shadowy corners of the universe, with Adam Halliwell’s flutes transmuted into a jungle ceremony accompanied by wild layers of resonant feedback. Horrifying noise streaks, rattling drones, and crazed sirens are filtered beyond recognition but eventually the disorienting layers back off, giving way to a minimal expanse of ambient spectral magic, wherein riffing space guitars sit under oceanic fx and swim above thudding kicks and breathing industrial sound layers. Everything appears refracted through kaleidoscopic tape delay rainbows and as the drums build back, the vibe is even more soaring and immersive than before. The enchanting psychedelic sorcery has a way of pulling you deep within its spell...filtering echo guitars morphing into black smoke, ever present and incredibly layered hand percussion panoramas subsuming all thought, the body and soul merging totally with exotic dub esoterica.

Cut-up disco rhythms and low slung bass guitars invite you to Mount Liberation Unlimited’s dancefloor paradise re-edit of “The Gloves Don’t Bite, wherein flowing pads support space guitar theatrics...like classic blues leads orbiting a distant star. The vocals are deliriously double tracked and move with sexual energy over the greasy bass guitar movements and there are detours into deep instrumental jam territory as amorphous synth clouds whirl around the disco heat. After a head spinning pause, the chorus hits, backed by blustery brass and orgasmic builds leading into soulful synth chord expanses. Then the track blasts into gorgeous Santana guitar solos, all bluesy fusion riding on a shooting star. Sometimes the guitar pyrotechnics are joined by harmonizing synths, resulting in blazing passages of interstellar boogie and at other times, it all breaks down into a dreamland orgy of Michael Shrieve tom fills flashing ear-to-ear above the grooving bass liquids, searing organs, and solar tremolo heat. The whole jam continues to grow more and more spaced out as the organs are replaced by brain-piercing neon feedback rays and the vocals re-enter briefly but are soon subsumed by radiant disco ascendency and the constant presence of funked out brass riffs. There are too many layers of freaked out cosmic electronics to even describe and the maximalism gives way to a vocal heavy ending replete with bass guitar incantations, tropical organ adventures, hazy synth liquids, and Mount Liberation Orchestra’s own syrupy sweet vocal harmonies intermingling with Kevin’s golden pipes.

Mildlife - Phase II (Research Records, 2018) In the first part of “Phase II,” keyboards swim in a black hole ocean alongside wiggling cosmic leads and expressive flute trills. Ceremonial drum crashes and martial fills usher us into a fantasy world of progressive rock beauty, until swinging 60s power trio drum and bass magic enters to drive me wild, like doing the swim or the batusi on the surface of the sun. It’s a superb psychedelic groove out with clicking spring reverb fx leading into the original “Phase” riff, here repurposed into some heady outerspace blues. The skipping drum flow and vibed out guitar hooks almost reach hues of stoner surf rock, the jangling and loose six-strings played so confidently, all sliding chords and hot riffs coalescing with ping ponging bass guitars and drums swinging towards the stratosphere. The soaring synths from the original cut, which there flew over a funereal plod, are here transformed into sunshine krautrock magic that eventually fades out on squiggling synths, melodic bass guitar abstractions, and foggy pads.

The second part swirls with submarine pings, ritualistic bells, and the same synth fog that concluded the first part. Cymbals gleam as fluid bass drones and washed out guitars are subsumed within gentle feedback oscillations while tick-tock space metronomes sit under time morphing echoes that cause the sounds to move in and out of phase. Shimmering and wondrous cymbal flutters pan back and forth and there is a sense that we are building towards something, but it takes its time until finally, a low down stoner funk beat emerges with the most overt and thrilling flute fireworks yet in the Mildlife catalog. Adam Halliwell really shines here, with beautiful runs and woodwind spells conversing with heavenly birds above Jannick Top bass guitars thumping away under watery phase fx. Wavering guitar riffs lie under dense blankets of spring reverb and 16th note cymbals flash ear-to-ear...hard to tell if electronic or acoustic, but supremely delirious all the same. The spiritual flutes continue to dance and dash through the mix with exotic vibrato movements and sultry noir atmospheres and for a beatless stretch, sumptuous cosmic synths wash through the soul. And just when you think it might all fade away, Mildlife slam once more into the narcotic 60’s space age bachelor pad psychedelia.

(images from my personal copies)

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dannycaing832 · 3 years ago

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SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

by Danny Caing Date Written: November 25, 2019

I woke up in a strange world. I was floating inside the glass-walled room, the air was pure and cold. I thought I was dreaming or hallucinating, but I was not, it was all real. Under my feet was a clear deep dark blue ocean floor. There were different kinds of colorful bright lights circling me. Whenever I look at them closely it stopped spinning around and changes its colors. Five balls of light became one and then exploded into seven light balls. As I touched one of these balls, they were not hot but soft as cotton, and its light sparks brighter. I felt a strange connection to it, a kind of real happiness and joy that I had never felt before.

What is going on? Where am I? I know I’m not dead because I can still feel my flesh and bones. Why am I here? Why is my mind so clear and my thoughts so calm. What happened to the ringing in my ears, they were gone? I feel so good and fantastic. Who am I?

I saw my reflection on the glass wall with amusement and awesomeness. I look so young, masculine, and my hair was shining gold. I have glowing antennae on my eyebrows. Crazy! It’s all happening!

A beautiful Caucasian-Chinese girl walks towards me wearing a pink silk dress while caressing a dove in her hand. Then she stretched her arms, releasing the dove, and embraced me. She looked so innocent, but she told me later that she was 40,000 years old. She was the mother of the Central Sphere that controls all Genizyn missions. She was the creator of Hugen-8 at Planet D1n0, Ross 248 Binary System.

“Welcome home N0m0L0s-3kud, I am your mother, Car0L1n3. This is year 52,083 A.D. and we are in Ross 104 star system, 21.72 Light Years from Earth. You are a Hugen-8.“

What? My name is N0m0L0s-3kuD, a Hugen-8? I am in the future and I am far away from my home planet Earth. I am inside the spaceship-orb called Genizyn.

"The light stretch-frequencies anomaly on binary-triple-zero points in a fractal vortex of Stymath has substantially visualized us various conclusive tracking sectors to a certain degree from 4th to 12th dimension in space. That is why we were able to track you down for 8,320 years through this method you formulated and designed. We captured your brain waves from the 8th dimension window, and here you are with us now in the future, the father of Stykmath.”

That would be the Stykmath I created when I was 12 years old? I thought they were just theoretical point-numbers on the 4th to 12th dimensions. That was the time I stopped believing in the Big Bang Theory (the Bible of Quantum Physics). The universe in Stykmath is a space within space within space, and each of these spaces has 4 dimensions. On the 4th space are multi-universe and multi-dimensions. I knew it was you floating above me when I was in a coma, and you whispered to me to move my feet, suddenly I was awakened. You saved my life that day. That was the time when I was working on the new kind of math, the Stykmath in 12 dimensions in 3 spaces.

I was fascinated by the elegant view of planet P3nny and its three moons Yhtomit (that looks like Earth), Naynay & Onuj from Kyjazx, one of the rocky moons of Yhtomit. There were five planets in the Ross 104 system.

I asked mother Car0L1n3 if I am still a human being from the 20th century. Everyone in the spaceship looked like me with shining golden hair & eyebrow antennas. We have no heart, lungs, kidney, liver, intestines, sex organs, ass hole, teeth, tongues, and ears. We don’t sleep for 8 years but only for 32 days. We communicate through our minds. Our hands and feet have no nails. Our feet are shorter than our arms, we don’t walk but float above the liquid oxygen floor.

“A gigantic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from the solar storm hit the Earth 50,000 years ago. This event occurs every 65 million years. Most living species on the surface of the Earth were burned to ashes by the extreme heat of the CME. Survivors on this Extinction Level Event had established the New World Order, and The Earth Corporation ruled the planet Earth. During this era, Human Genesis 1 or Hugen-1 was born with a lifespan of 500 years, a more advanced DNA structure than a human being.”

So there were survivors after the Extinction Level Event of the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Later, we created Human Genesis who created you and transformed us into a kid with antennas on the eyebrows after 50,000 years. What happened to human beings? Do they still exist on Earth? Who are you, mother? You look very human to me?

“On the 10th millennium A.D., Hugen-6 created me in a human image, and sent me to explore, navigate, and colonized planets within the neighboring stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. I have never altered my body for 40,000 years, just modifying it, including the Human Genesis. There are 832 Hugen-8 on this orb-spaceship, and you are counted in. In the mid 4th millennium A.D., there was a conflict between humans and hugens to control the Solar System. By the end of the 5th millennium A.D., Hugen-6 controlled the Solar system. Humans of different races were preserved in the museum in "io”, one of the moons of Jupiter.“

The human race is in the museum of the moon "io” of Jupiter? And now you transformed humans like a mannequin kid without ears, at least the nose is still intact. What do these two antennas do in my eyebrows?

“It controls your whole being, communication, transportation, access to all information, body structuring within and without, and the power to control things but not your kind. Human civilization has dominated the Earth for 100,000 years, and all they do to advance their technology was to exterminate their kind for fear of death. Religion was to give hope for human survival but instead formulated politics and economic dominance on every human race. There were very few intellectual beings in your time who have foreseen the cycle of self-destruction. They discovered through archaeological facts that there were more advanced species before your existence, who were obliterated and exhumed on the technology they created. They thought they were an extra-terrestrial visitation on the planet Earth. The humans created Hugens who created me to eradicate the existence of fear in human minds, and to overcome death by stretching the Hugen’s lifespan from 1,000 to 5,000 years.

Fear and death in human minds. Do you believe in God, Car0L1n3?

"Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride brought destruction to the human race. The only way you can erase these seven deadly viruses in every human mind is by reading JESUS CHRIST words. John 15:3 - You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”

I can’t believe what I’ve just heard. Car0L1n3 is mentioning the name of our Lord JESUS CHRIST! Hallelujah!

“In spite, God visited planet Earth in the form of JESUS CHRIST WORDS, many of you human beings don’t believe HE existed. John 1:14 - The Word became flesh and made HIS dwelling among us.”

I knelt and bow my head in front of Car0l1n3, and as she touched my forehead I cried with joy, praising the name of our Lord JESUS CHRIST.

“Before all human beings were born on Earth, GOD has always been with you and through eternal life by the WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST. Luke 17:21 - Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. John 8:51 - Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death.”

Car0L1n3 pointed her fingers to the neon sign on the wall as we read them together, Matthew 24:35 & Luke 21:33 - Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

I was awakened when the phone was ringing under my pillow at 4 AM. My daughter in Sweden called me as we chatted for more than thirty minutes. Then I took a shower and brushed my teeth. After dressing up, I usually sat down for a while to meditate and pray the Lord’s prayer before I go out in my room to do my routine work. I believe that when you read JESUS CHRIST WORDS, GOD is speaking to you.

I love you JESUS CHRIST with all my heart and soul.

JESUS CHRIST YOU ARE MY SAVIOR.

Amen.

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rakeshreddym · 4 years ago

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07/08/2020 News Alerts about Cars Industry

1,200-HP Lamborghini Huracan Is Pure Madness:

Lamborghini is on a hot streak: we've recently revealed what the hyper SCV12 will look like without all the camouflage, and there's even a video of what it sounds like. The Sian Roadster could also be making an appearance this week.

Source: https://carbuzz.com/news/1200-hp-lamborghini-huracan-is-pure-madness

Lotus Plans To Obliterate The Bugatti Chiron's 12.4-Second 0-186 MPH Time:

The Lotus Evija, the 2,000-horsepower electric flagship that will pioneer the next-generation of sports cars from the automaker, is not targeting low-speed acceleration. Lotus wants its car to beat the supercars where they thrive—closing in on 200 mph as fast as possible.

Pick of the Day: 1978 Porsche 930 Turbo in a rare color combination

Of the first generation of exotic cars, the most reliable and most usable, and the one I had a poster of on my wall while in high school, was the Porsche 930 Turbo. It was the car I most wanted and was to me the ultimate. It was a model derived from Porsche’s racing cars and had the coolest rear spoiler ever.

Source: https://journal.classiccars.com/2020/07/07/pick-of-the-day-1978-porsche-930-turbo-in-a-rare-color-combination/

BMW global vehicle deliveries down by 23 pct in H1

BERLIN, July 7 (Xinhua) -- German car manufacturer BMW announced Tuesday that its global vehicle deliveries, including MINI and Rolls-Royce, dropped by 23 percent year-on-year to a total of 962,575 units in the first half of 2020.

Source: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-07/07/c_139194997.htm

Jaguar Land Rover Moves Forward With Subscription Program

Jaguar Land Rover is dipping its paw into the subscription automobile leasing pool, just as peer Mercedes is climbing out after a trial run, Autoweek reported on Tuesday (July 7).

Subscription models vary, but in general, they allow customers to lease cars for periods of around six months. The arrangement costs more than typical multi-year leases, but drivers get more variety and short-term commitments.

Source: https://www.pymnts.com/subscription-commerce/2020/jaguar-land-rover-moves-forward-with-subscription-program/

Ferrari bring forward car upgrades for Styrian Grand Prix

Ferrari are bringing forward some planned upgrades to their car after a disappointing showing at the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix.

Lead driver Charles Leclerc was runner-up on Sunday, but the car was a second off the pace in qualifying seventh.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/53309834

Mercedes-Benz rolls into South San Francisco

South San Francisco officials gave the green light to a new Mercedes-Benz dealership taking over the former Orchard Supply Hardware building and a surrounding shopping center.

Source: https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/mercedes-benz-rolls-into-south-san-francisco/article_d167b2b6-c001-11ea-9328-1bd1e3bff343.html

Audi reveals a sporty version of its upcoming electric Q4 SUV

Audi has unveiled concept renderings of a new “Sportback” version of the Q4 E-Tron electric SUV that it debuted last year. Meant to serve as a smaller and more affordable option to the flagship E-Tron, the Q4s are expected to go on sale in 2021 and will start at around $45,000.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/7/21316580/audi-q4-etron-sportback-suv-2021-volkswagen-meb

No economic logic now for diesel cars: Maruti Suzuki

With the party between the prices of petrol and diesel, there is no economic logic for buying running cost, the acquisition cost differential is very high.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/auto/news/no-economic-logic-now-for-diesel-cars-maruti-suzuki/articleshow/76830053.cms

Honda Cars India starts production of new City sedan

New Delhi: Honda Cars India Limited (HCIL), on Tuesday has announced that it has commenced production of fifth generation Honda City sedan at the company's Greater Noida plant in Uttar Pradesh.

As the automaker claims, Honda City is one of its most successful cars in India with high brand equity. It was first introduced in India back in January 1998 and later launched as 2nd generation in November 2003. The third generation model came in September 2008, while fourth generation City was launched in January 2014.

Source: https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/passenger-vehicle/cars/honda-cars-india-starts-production-of-new-city-sedan/76528906

Online car buying platform: Hyundai's Click to Buy records 1.5+ million visitors since March

Earlier this year, Hyundai announced the launch of its online car buying platform, Click to Buy, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. About four months in, Hyundai has shared some rather interesting numbers about the platform and let's just say that this should silence the naysayers. The South Korean automaker shared that its online car sales offering has recorded more than 1.5 million visitors since its launch in March, 2020. In addition to that, the platform has also recorded over 20,000 customer enquiries since then.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/auto/car-news/article/online-car-buying-platform-hyundais-click-to-buy-records-1-5-million-visitors-since-march/617478

TATA MOTORS REGISTERED DOMESTIC SALES OF 23,845 UNITS IN Q1 FY21

Tata Motors Limited today announced its sales in the domestic & international market, for Q1 FY21, which stood at 25,047 vehicles, compared to 1,37,545 units during Q1 FY20.

Source: http://overdrive.in/news-cars-auto/pressreleases/tata-motors-registered-domestic-sales-of-23845-units-in-q1-fy21/

Toyota’s Hybrid Models Receive A Steep Price Hike In India

Source: https://www.zigwheels.com/news-features/news/toyota-camry-vellfire-prices-hiked-in-india-now-priced-at-rs-3902-lakh-and-rs-8350-lakh-respectively/39062/

VW starts converting another factory for electric car production

After the Zwickau factory, VW has started converting another of its factories from gasoline and diesel vehicle production to electric vehicle production.

Volkswagen has one of the most aggressive electrification plans amongest established automakers.

Source: https://electrek.co/2020/07/06/vw-converting-emden-factory-electric-car-production/

Assam: Automobile sales in Guwahati hit rock bottom

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the Indian economy and completely tipped the scales for all sectors of Indian Industries signaling towards a deep recession.

As the country approaches the end of its first quarter of the Fiscal Year, the current pandemic seems to have magnified pre-existing risks to India’s economic outlook.

Source: https://nenow.in/north-east-news/assam/assam-automobile-sales-in-guwahati-hit-rock-bottom.html

Kia Motors crosses 50,000 unit sales mark for cars with connected features

NEW DELHI: Kia Motors India on Tuesday said it has crossed the 50,000-mark in sales for connected cars within 10 months of its first product launch in the country. The company has surpassed figure of 50,000 activated connected cars on road which includes Seltos and Carnival models, Kia Motors India said in a statement.

Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/auto/cars-uvs/kia-motors-crosses-50000-unit-sales-mark-for-cars-with-connected-features/articleshow/76832747.cms?from=mdr

Jaguar Land Rover launches premium car subscription service Pivotal

New Delhi: British luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover has announced the launch of the premium car subscription service Pivotal.

As the luxury carmaker claims, with this, both the Jaguar and Land Rover cars will be available for subscription.

Source: https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/passenger-vehicle/cars/jaguar-land-rover-launches-premium-car-subscription-service-pivotal/76781529

Mahindra reveals teaser for small 4-seater electric vehicle Atom

Source: https://www.livemint.com/auto-news/mahindra-reveals-teaser-for-small-4-seater-electric-vehicle-atom-11594099174523.html

Mazda unveils new BT-50, supplied by Isuzu

Mazda Motor Corporation has lifted the veil on its all-new Mazda BT-50 bakkie.

Fully redesigned for the first time in nine years, the new BT-50 is supplied by fellow Japanese manufacturer, Isuzu Motor Limited.

Source: https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/mazda-unveils-new-bt-50-supplied-by-isuzu-2020-07-07

Nissan highlights future plans for India, Africa and the Middle East

Nissan hasn’t launched an exciting new product in India for a while now. Sure, the ‘new’ Kicks gets a powerful engine but it’s still not something the masses would go gaga over. The only other model in their current lineup is the GT-R, and that’s not what you’d call a widely attainable car. Now though, things are about to change. Nissan aims to put a lot more focus towards India, Africa and the Middle East as part of its Global Transformation Plan.

Source: https://www.evoindia.com/news/nissan-highlights-future-plans-for-ami-markets

Renault Kwid records 3.5 lakh unit sales milestone, new BS6 variant available

NEW DELHI: Renault Kwid, French manufacturer’s flagship offering in India has crossed landmark 3.5 lakh unit sales since its launch.

The company also announced that the Kwid is now more accessible with the RXL variant launched with a BS6 compliant 1.0L powertrain in MT and AMT versions. The new RXL variant will be very competitively priced, at Rs 4.16 lakh (ex-showroom) for the MT and Rs 4.48 (ex-showroom) lakh for the AMT version.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/auto/cars/renault-kwid-records-3-5-lakh-unit-sales-milestone-new-bs6-variant-available/articleshow/76810736.cms

2020 Honda City launch on July 15; price, features, specifications, other important details you should know

Honda Cars India has officially announced that the new Honda City will be launched in the country on July 15. The 2020 Honda City will be sold in India alongside the 2019 Honda City. You can book the fifth-generation Honda City from your abode using the Honda from Home online sales platform or by visiting any authorized dealership of the automaker. You can click on this link to read our Honda City 2020 First Drive Review.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/auto/latest-auto-news/story/honda-city-2020-launch-on-july-15-check-out-price-features-specifications-other-important-details-1697654-2020-07-06

5 Reasons Why Fiat Wasn’t Successful In India [Video]

Source: https://www.motorbeam.com/fiat-india-story-why-automaker-wasnt-successful/

Volvo Cars recall eight models produced from 2006 to 2018

Eight Volvo car models have been recalled globally over problems with the front seat belt fastening.

A spokesperson for the firm told Belfast Live: "Investigations by Volvo Cars have identified that in very rare cases and under specific circumstances, a flexible steel cable connected to the front seat belts on certain Volvo models produced between 2006 and 2018 may under certain rare circumstances suffer from wear and fatigue over time.

Source: https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/volvo-cars-recall-eight-models-18548932

Lexus unveils new LS luxury sedan, likely to be launched by end of 2020

The new Lexus LS sedan gets the Lexus Teammate, the latest in advanced driving assist technologies, and a new body colour that creates deep shadows and robust highlights.

Source: https://auto.hindustantimes.com/auto/cars/lexus-unveils-the-new-ls-luxury-sedan-likely-to-be-launched-by-end-of-2020-41594097951866.html

How Tesla Delivered Despite Lockdowns

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) said that it sold a total of 90,650 vehicles over Q2 2020, with Model S and X deliveries standing at 10,600 units and Model 3 and Y sales standing at 80,050 units. Although the numbers mark a 5% year-over-year decline, they handily beat market estimates, causing Tesla stock to jump by 8% in Thursday’s trading.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/07/07/how-tesla-delivered-despite-lockdowns/#c150e6660c2d

Rolls-Royce's Boeing 787 engine in new safety alert over cracks

Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc faces a fresh issue with the Trent 1000 turbine that powers Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner jets, adding to the list of design faults that have plagued the engine since 2016.

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/rolls-royce-s-boeing-787-engine-in-new-safety-alert-over-cracks-1.1461622

Maserati Unveils New Engine Adapted From Formula 1 for MC20 Supercar

Source: https://interestingengineering.com/maserati-unveils-new-engine-adapted-from-formula-1-for-mc20-supercar

Unleashed – Dodge Unveils 3 Fast Cars

Dodge has launched three fast cars that should suit every muscle car buyer’s needs. Each of them packing 700+ bhp!

Source: http://motoringworld.in/car-news/unleashed-dodge-unveils-3-fast-cars/

= 07/08/2020 News Alerts about Cars Industry

#automobiles blog #automobile #luxury cars #cars #busynessprofile #bmw #audi #benz #news #blogs #trends

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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How the NBA’s suspended season will affect its best teams

The implications of the NBA’s suspended season for its best teams.

These are the implications of the NBA’s suspended season for the best teams in the league.

Before Covid-19’s accelerated, unnerving reach made everyday life feel like it was dangling by a thread, the NBA was connective tissue for millions of people who treated any random weeknight’s slate of games as both part of their daily routine and the most reliable way to preoccupy areas of the brain that might otherwise be wracked with anxiety or stress.

My doctor instructed me to self-quarantine for at least 14 days after I came in contact with Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell at Madison Square Garden earlier this month. Actually testing for the coronavirus isn’t an option, so I’ve bunkered down in my apartment, writing, podcasting, reading books (a new copy of David Halberstam’s classic The Breaks of the Game has been sitting on my night table for the past few weeks), and, for my own sanity, stealing quick solitary walks around my Brooklyn neighborhood. I’ve also, off and on, thought about what all this means for the NBA, in a world where the line between temporary and permanent grows blurrier by the hour.

As trivial as this seems, with the league’s current season on the verge of cancellation, so many long-term consequences that are unrelated to epidemiology exist. For some, pondering what may or may not occur a few months from now is a valuable distraction. This is all bewildering on an unprecedented scale, and, frankly, slow-drip speculation about how an NBA team will look on the other side of such turbulence is almost peaceful; a way to make everything feel as normal as it possibly could be.

With all that in mind, here are some theoretical, fluttering implications for a few different teams, whether the season is cancelled tomorrow or postponed until after it would normally end.

Milwaukee Bucks

If the postseason is scrapped, no good team will be flung into a more sweeping state of uncertainty than Milwaukee. All year they were the NBA’s new boogeyman, stomping through 29 other teams with near-historic ferocity. But the Bucks also had questions that could only be answered in the playoffs, when we’d finally see how their successful albeit rigid system and rotation would translate, whether they’d need another playmaker, if Eric Bledsoe would melt into a puddle, etc.

Tied to those on-court topics is Giannis Antetokounmpo’s future. No playoffs means Antetokounmpo would be robbed an opportunity to learn some critical information about his team’s championship potential before they offer him a super-max extension during the offseason. If, in the absence of knowing how far his Bucks could’ve gone in the playoffs, Antetokounmpo turns down the offer and tells Bucks general manager Jon Horst he wants to play out the final year of his current contract and then play things by ear, how will Milwaukee respond?

Antetokounmpo is the exact type of franchise player who’s worth betting the farm on. Trading him would not be on the table unless he demanded it. But several teams — in larger markets, with more resources and attractive complementary pieces — will have max cap space in 2021, and an opportunity to sell him on their vision. Losing Antetokounmpo for nothing would obliterate a franchise that’s constructed around his generational ability.

The NBA’s economic future may change how players and owners view long-term, multi-million dollar contracts as a whole, but operating off how we currently see things, no team was more looking forward to the playoffs than Milwaukee, and no team better hope they’re still played, be it in empty arenas, practice facilities, or blacktop playgrounds.

Boston Celtics

Relatively speaking, the Celtics are in decent shape if no more games are played this season. They’re young, and Jayson Tatum’s emergence as (at least) a top-15 player over the past couple months allowed for a clear hierarchy to establish itself. The league’s sudden financial uncertainty all but guarantees Gordon Hayward will opt into his contract. Nothing is guaranteed in the NBA, but this team should have as much top-end continuity as any contender next year. If games resume in a couple months, that’s critical time for Kemba Walker’s knee to recover from whatever has been bothering it.

Brooklyn Nets

Remember when Kenny Atkison got fired 19 years ago? Well, even before that happened Brooklyn’s gap year was an unmitigated disaster. Kyrie Irving had season-ending shoulder surgery on March 3, and despite Caris LeVert’s crafty scoring prowess and Spencer Dinwiddie’s pseudo-all-star capability on any given night, the Nets were skidding into a buzzsaw, regardless of who they played in the first round.

Then, earlier this week, Kevin Durant and three of his teammates tested positive for coronavirus, firmly placing professional athletes in an important role they’ve had to fill: vanguards who can spread awareness and even some modicum of hope about an illness that could very well cripple every element of life as we knew it.

In a world where those four recover — along with every other player who tests positive in the coming weeks and months — and games resume, the delay could have the slightest of basketball-related silver linings.

Regardless of what Durant’s business partner Rich Kleiman has to say in the middle of March, if the NBA playoffs pick up in July and Durant is healthy enough to compete, knowing the following year won’t begin until Christmas, it’s hard to imagine him not itching to do so. This doesn’t mean Brooklyn would be considered a favorite to come out of the East, but if Durant is able to contribute for 30 minutes a night there’s no reason why they can’t upset the Toronto Raptors in the opening round.

The trickle down effect Durant’s mere presence would have on everybody else is huge. His all-time talent overrules the power of continuity and cohesion. Throw him the ball in the fourth quarter and get out of the way. With Dinwiddie, LeVert, and Joe Harris also on the floor, guarding Brooklyn’s offense would be agonizing.

As Rudy Gay told me in a conversation about the value of chemistry earlier this year: “It’d be tough not to be able to play with somebody like Kevin Durant.”

Philadelphia 76ers

It’s always hard to get a read on this year’s most disappointing team. Even if the season comes back, their pieces still won’t fit. Al Horford won’t be younger, have a quicker release on his three-point shot, or look more comfortable as the fifth option in Philadelphia’s starting lineup — assuming he won’t come off the bench.

But the larger question here surrounds Ben Simmons. If, by June, all concerns about his ailing back are gone and Joel Embiid miraculously shows up to the practice facility in shape, this team’s ceiling may rise closer to where it was back in October. A spark of optimism will be tied to the Sixers for the first time in a long time.

Utah Jazz

Whether games are played or not, the Jazz will be greeted by two seismic decisions shortly after the NBA calendar resumes. Gobert and Mitchell are both eligible for contract extensions during the offseason. Mitchell is a lock to receive a max offer, but Gobert, who qualified for the supermax when he made an All-NBA team last year, is in a different situation.

All data collected during the playoffs would be a critical factor here, and if Utah is robbed of a chance to see how Gobert would’ve performed in that setting with Mike Conley and Bojan Bogdanovic folded into their system, how would they approach it all? In other words, if Gobert — who turns 28 in June and just made his first all-star team — is expecting the supermax, how will negotiations go? To say nothing about the state of his relationship with Mitchell — a variable that obviously matters and is unknown at the moment — the Jazz probably don’t want to invest a healthy chunk of a dropping cap in someone who barely touches the ball.

As painful as it’d be considering they clearly saw themselves as a title contender before the season began, the Jazz may take a step back for the sake of their long-term health, by shopping Gobert, letting Conley walk in free agency, and then rebuilding around Mitchell. That or they’ll come to some sort of agreement with their franchise center that’s well under the max and carry on like the shrewd franchise they are.

Houston Rockets

If the season does not return then Mike D’Antoni has likely coached his final game in Houston. Daryl Morey might not be the man who gets to hire his replacement, either. And with no firm evidence as to how their small-ball strategy would work in the playoffs, PJ Tucker, Eric Gordon, Robert Covington, and every other Rocket not named James Harden or Russell Westbrook would immediately find themselves in trade rumors.

However, if this season does return, few, if any teams will benefit more from the extended break. The tax Houston pays with their physically exhausting style of play will be less steep if Tucker, Harden, and Westbrook have several months off to recharge their batteries and hit the ground running on a chase for their first title.

Golden State Warriors

Steph Curry returned from hand surgery shortly before the break, but the Warriors are too far behind in the standings for Klay Thompson’s health to matter, whether he’s good to go in June or not. Here’s another angle, though: What happens to their draft pick?

Assuming the Warriors are looking to move that asset for more win-now contribution at some point before the draft, how does the absence of March Madness, the combine, and every other annual way for teams to study prospects impact how said teams value the picks in this year’s pool? With no obvious franchise-altering player for the taking, and no opportunity for anyone to improve how they’re perceived by evaluators, is this year’s first overall pick the least important in recent NBA history? And if the Warriors get it, knowing their unusual circumstance for a team in that type of position, what will they do?

Los Angeles Lakers

Los Angeles Clippers

Ever since Kawhi Leonard chose the Los Angeles Clippers over the Los Angeles Lakers, the basketball world was building towards a showdown between those two teams. Apologies to the Bucks, Rockets, Celtics, and Raptors, but a playoff series that doesn’t leave Staples Center was always the most important subplot of the season.

If it does not return, both franchises are humongous losers. Each has tethered itself to the present day. All their draft picks and intriguing young talent can now be found in Oklahoma City and New Orleans. LeBron James is 35 years old. Leonard and Paul George are in the middle of their respective primes but can become unrestricted free agents in 2021.

Stripping both teams of the opportunity to capitalize on the amount of talent they’ve compiled in the here and now could crush basketball in Los Angeles, even if Anthony Davis re-signs a five-year deal with the Lakers this off-season (which, like everything else in the world right now, is so far from a sure thing).

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dannycaing · 5 years ago

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MIND DARKNESS

MIND DARKNESS by Danny Caing Date Written: November 25, 2019

I woke up in a strange world. I was floating inside the glass-walled room, the air was pure and cold. I thought I was dreaming or hallucinating, but I was not, it was all real. Under my feet was a clear deep dark blue ocean floor. There were different kinds of colorful bright lights circling me. Whenever I look at them closely it stopped spinning around and changes its colors. Five balls of light became one and then exploded into seven light balls. As I touched one of these balls, they were not hot but soft as cotton and its light sparks brighter. I felt a strange connection to it, a kind of real happiness and joy that I had never felt before.

I saw my reflection on the glass wall with amusement and awesomeness. I look so young, masculine, and my hair was shining gold. I have glowing antennae on my eyebrows. Crazy! It’s all happening!

A beautiful Caucasian-Chinese girl walks towards me wearing a pink silk dress while caressing a dove in her hand. Then she stretched her arms, releasing the dove and embraced me. She looked so innocent, but she told me later that she was 40,000 years old. She was the mother of the Central Sphere that controls all Genizyn missions. She was the creator of Hugen-8 at Planet D1n0, Ross 248 Binary System.

“Welcome home N0m0L0s-3kud, I am your mother, Car0L1n3. This is year 52,083 A.D. and we are in Ross 104 star system, 21.72 Light Years from Earth. You are a Hugen-8.“

What? My name is N0m0L0s-3kuD, a Hugen-8? I am in the future and I am far away from my home planet Earth. I am inside the spaceship-orb called Genizyn.

“A gigantic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from the solar storm hit the Earth 50,000 years ago. This event occurs every 65 million years. Most living species on the surface on the Earth were burned to ashes by the extreme heat of the CME. Survivors on this Extinction Level Event had established the New World Order, and The Earth Corporation ruled the planet Earth. During this era, Human Genesis 1 or Hugen-1 was born with a lifespan of 500 years, a more advanced DNA structure than a human being.”

“It controls your whole being, communication, transportation, access to all information, body structuring within and without, and the power to control things but not your kind. Human civilization has dominated the Earth for 100,000 years, and all they do to advance their technology was to exterminate their kind for fear of death. Religion was to give hope for human survival but instead formulated politics and economic dominance on every human race. There were very few intellectual beings on your time who have foreseen the cycle of self-destruction. They discovered through archaeological facts that there were more advanced species before your existence, who were obliterated and exhumed on the technology they created. They thought they were an extra-terrestrial visitation on the planet Earth. The humans created Hugens who created me to eradicate the existence of fear in human minds, and to overcome death by stretching the Hugen’s lifespan from 1,000 to 5,000 years.

Fear and death in human minds. Do you believe in God, Car0L1n3?

I can’t believe what I’ve just heard. Car0L1n3 is mentioning the name of our Lord JESUS CHRIST! Hallelujah!

“In spite, God visited planet Earth in the form of JESUS CHRIST WORDS, many of you human beings don’t believe HE existed. John 1:14 - The Word became flesh and made HIS dwelling among us.”

I knelt down and bow my head in front of Car0l1n3, and as she touched my forehead I cried with joy, praising the name of our Lord JESUS CHRIST.

Car0L1n3 pointed her fingers to the neon sign on the wall as we read them together, Matthew 24:35 & Luke 21:33 - Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

I love you JESUS CHRIST with all my heart and soul.

JESUS CHRIST YOU ARE MY PERSONAL SAVIOR.

Amen.

Music Background: “Mind Darkness” by Danny Caing https://soundcloud.com/genizyn/mind-darknes

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djgamek1ng · 7 years ago

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Final Fantasy XIV Job Review: Machinist

Rules

So this came a lot earlier than I even expected it. I will not explain why here, but to summarize: it’s because of a deal I made with an FC bud (who’s probably grinning a lot after reading that). Anyways, this is my first DPS job I leveled. Why? MCH is considered the worst DPS job at the moment and I was curious if it’s really all that bad. I was already interested in MCH, but the sudden cast times in HW made me hesitate to really level it. SB came around and it obliterated the cast times, so I went to level it! Let’s start the review!

Story:

This one I’ll only split up into 2 parts: HW (which is 30-60 and since that is pretty much one whole story) and SB’s story.

The MCH story starts like this: you, the Warrior of Light, enter the Skysteel Manufactory in Ishgard. Stephanivien (the leader of the Manufactory) is excited to see you and you are eager to learn about firearms. Unfortunately, the manufactory’s master of markmanship has left the building. You, Stephanivien and Joye (another machinist) start your search and it brings you at Camp Overlook in La Noscea. You hear the people’s opinion about the guy, but this doesn’t deter the three of you. You eventually find him! It’s a Roegadyn called Rostnsthal. Rostnsthal challenges you to a trial (after Joye displays great skill with the firearm) and you of course beat the trial. Rostnsthal keeps to his word and comes back to the manufactory. You then get to the main theme for this entire story: Ishgard does not take to kindly to the machinists. They are stuck in the old ways of thinking, where a sword and shield (PLD FOR THE WIN) is the only right way to fight. Everybody is doubting Stephanivien, including his own father (the lord of one of the houses in Ishgard). During this all Stephanivien is providing you with new machinery to use and Rostnsthal is learning you new ways to sling that gun. Stephanivien and the other machinists get eventually challenged to a tourney by Tedalgrinche, a knight of one of the other houses of Ishgard. He’s a complete douchebag, just putting that out there. You triumph (but of course) and Tedalgrinche is still not convinced. Stephanivien’s father, however is convinced that machinists are worthy fighters and hands complete control of the manufactory to Stephanivien. Celebrations are cut short as Joye leaves the manufactory with no apparent reason. You find out a bit later it’s because she got married to some random guy...! Wait what? Well, this doesn’t last too long, since Joye’s dad got kidnapped and you save him. You even recruit the knight who was standing guard over him to the manufactory (yes, this does become a plot point). After you rescue Joye’s father, Joye gets divorced (pretty easily since the guy she was married to wasn’t okay with the blackmailing being done to her) and gets back to the manufactory. Celebrations about Joye’s return are once again cut short, because the manufactory is now accused for giving firearms to random commoners and is held to a trial. The trial is to kill a ferocious dragon terrorizing Coerthas Western Highlands and everybody who has to go through there. Tedalgrinche is of course behind all this and you do the trial. Tedalgrinche the dumbass and his stupid lackey are viewing the trial for a grand total of 5 seconds on a “safe” location. You and the other machinist are defending dumb and dumber and afterwards Tedalgrinche finally shows a bit of appreciation. Stephanivien says that the machinists still need the help of the knights, because they need a frontline, and this is enough to raise Tedalgrinche’s ego beyond human limits. You go celebrate with the other machinist’s, even though Rostnsthal takes his leave from the manufactory (since no one can match the Warrior of Light’s skill with a firearm). And so the manufactory and the machinist’s are there to stay!

So SB’s story! This isn’t going to be too long, but still here it is: You pretty much start where you left off. Rostnsthal has taken his leave and the manufactory is at rest. Stephanivien wants you to find Rostnsthal and before long it happens. Stephanivien convinces Rostnsthal to join the city watch and you meet up with Hilda. Hilda says that the rest of the city watch could use some training and Rostnsthal accepts the job as a trainer. You come back to check a bit later and training is going. Not great, but it’s going. You and Hilda look if her Hounds (as she calls them) can do anything around the city. You find out that Hrunting - a sacred blade (I WONDER WHERE I’VE HEARD THIS STORY BEFORE) - has been stolen even though it’s heavily guarded. You and Hilda are looking for info and you find it. A woman talking to a knight you guys where first talking to says something about a band of bandits using firearms and start blaming it on that (WE JUST DID THIS!). Not long after, you find the thugs who have taken it, but something is off. These thugs aren’t coordinated enough to pull off such a big heist. Also, the leader of the thugs says that their boss kinda set them up in a weird way. She told them to steal the sword and when they gotten back with the sword to her, she told them to take it back and do something with it. They decided to sell it and that’s where you busted them. It’s almost like that was planned... You and Hilda return to Ishgard and ask for the sword to be inspected. Ser Muscadain (who you met earlier) had already let it be inspected by a blacksmith, but after your request he also decides to let it be inspected by Stephanivien. Stephanivien has found a small bomb in the hilt, but it wasn’t enough to even hurt someone. It was probably to scar the reputation of the Hounds. You find out it was the woman from earlier in the story who had set this up. You go on and stop her. You do that and it’s revealed that Ser Muscadain and Hilda are brother and sister! And so end SB’s story!

MCH’s power as a DPS: Oh boy, we’re getting into this topic aren’t we? MCH’s power as a DPS. I’m just gonna put a trigger warning right here, since the popular thing is to completely crap on MCH. TRIGGER WARNING! I think MCH is a fine DPS. Is it flawless? No. To name a few things: Flamethrower is pretty much useless, it has both less utility and damage as its direct counterpart Bard (shortened to BRD) and the heat gauge can feel more like a burden then actually an upgrade (especially before level 62... Ugh...). MCH needs some work, but at the same time it isn’t in the swirling black abyss that people are claiming it is. What I would want for it is to either give it actually some utility to match or even compete with its counterpart or just give it a lot of damage. Still it’s relative power as a DPS is alright. It could use some work, but it’s definitely usable for all content (including Savage).

MCH’s gameplay: So the MCH gameplay. Well, let’s begin with the basics. You have Split Shot, which is your basic skill damage skill, which has a 50% chance to get a proc to empower the next skill, Slug Shot, your second combo shot. Slug Shot also have a 50% to get a proc for your next skill, Clean Shot, your third and final combo shot. You have Hot Shot, which is a shot you’ll use every 30 seconds, because it gives you a 30 second damage buff. Oh and you have Spread Shot, you’re AoE damaging ability.

Let’s talk about your ammunition system, shall we? Reload fully reloads all 3 ammunition and Quick Reload only reloads 1. Ammunition powers up all weaponskills (so every on GCD shot) and for Split Shot and Slug Shot it gives you a 100% proc chance for the next one!

Time to talk about oGCDs! Heartbreak is an execute type skill, meaning you can only activate it when your target is below 20%. Gauss Round is just a oGCD you activate every time it’s up. Ricochet is an AoE oGCD you also activate every time it’s up or to use when you use Wildfire. Speaking of which, Wildfire is a bomb you put on the enemy and it takes 25% of all damage done by you (not the turrets we’ll be talking about in a bit) and after 10 seconds explodes. Reassemble makes your next weaponskill a guaranteed crit. Rapid Fire decreases your GCD to 1.5 until you’ve done 3 weaponskills. Blank is a 15 yalm knockback, useful for putting a mob you might have aggroed back in melee range for the tank (LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO USE IT, NOT FOR “LOL LET’S KNOCK SOMETHING BACK, BECAUSE MY TANK WON’T MIND THAT RIGHT????????????”). You also have Dismantle, which reduces the enemy’s damage dealt by 10% for 5 seconds, useful for party wide damage or to mitigate tank busters a bit.

Now on to the turrets and their skills! You have 2 turrents, Rook Autoturret and Bishop Autoturret. Rook is used for single target situations and Bishop is used for multi target situations. You can also use Hypercharge to power up the turrets and inflict Vulnerability Up to all enemies hit, which means more party/raid wide damage. You have Rook/Bishop Overdrive, which sends out a big shot to the target, but also removes whatever turret is out and makes you unable to place a turret down for 30 seconds.

Hmm... Let’s talk about role skills now! Tactician and Refresh are party wide TP and MP regens respectively. Palisade makes whatever party member you target take 20% physical damage for 10 seconds. Arm Graze stuns a target for 2 seconds and Head Graze silences a target for a split second (like all silences). Foot Graze binds a target and Leg Graze gives a target the Heavy status, meaning they move more slowly. Peloton increases movement speed, but fades upon gaining enmity and can’t be used in battle. Invigorate gives you 400 TP back and Second Wind heals you for a bit.

Well that was everything about the MC-. W-what’s that? Gauss Barrel? *sigh* Okay okay, I’ll talk about the heat gauge. The Gauss Barrel increases damage dealt by 5% and gives you access to the heat gauge. At 50 heat, your basic 3 shots (Split, Slug and Clean shot) get enhanced, so keep it there at all times (when you are level 64 or above at the very least). Cooldown is a weaponskill which is stronger on 50 heat or above, but also lowers the heat gauge with 25 points. Barrel Stabilizer sets the heat gauge to 50 heat instantly, but can only be used in battle. Flamethrower is an oGCD AoE ability which ticks for 60 every second and increases your heat gauge by 10 every second. When your heat gauge reaches 100, it overheats giving you a damage buff of 10% for 10 seconds. When those 10 seconds are up however, you are for 10 seconds locked out of the heat gauge and need to reattach the Gauss Barrel after those 10 seconds. Don’t let your barrel overheat (I know it’s impossible not too before level 62, but believe me it gets better when you do hit level 62).

So what is my rating of MCH? - Story: 72/100. Not amazing, but honestly not too bad either. It’s at least consistent in terms of quality, unlike a certain other job I could mention (PLD WHY?!) but it wasn’t mind blowing or anything. It’s the perfect addition for Ishgard if you want more story in Ishgard. - Power of the job: 64/100. It needs some definite work from Square Enix’s side, but it’s not as awful as the community will lead you to believe. If you like gun slinging or machinery, definitely try it out! - Gameplay: 80/100 after level 64, but 60/100 before level 62. The Gauss Barrel heat gauge has no purpose before 62. It’s literally just an annoyance, because to maximize damage you use skills, but when you do you overheat the gauge meaning you got to reattach the barrel again and again and again. At 62 you at least get Cooldown, meaning you can actually manage the gauge, but at 64 when you get your heated versions of your basic 3 shots it actually has a point to be managed. Still, it’s quite satisfying to see a huge Wildfire explosion do massive damage!

Overal score: 72/100. It’s a worthy job to just pick up and play, because even though many people disagree with me, I still think it’s extremely fun to play, but at the same time, there are some huge glaring issues with the job that make it tedious to actually level up. I can get if people wanna wait until Square “fixes” the job, but it’s still there to try out and I would suggest you do so! If Square does fix the job, many people will be flocking back to it and suddenly it’s the most amazing thing ever again (just like people did with PLD in SB, when it became really strong).

And that’s a wrap, ladies and gentleman! I want to thank you all for reading this. I do believe it’s a bit smaller than the PLD one, but that’s because I honestly had much less story to write out. I could’ve written out all the drama that comes by, but it’s essentially “manufactory gets doubted, Rostnsthal gives you gunning lessons and Stephanivien gives you machinery lessons, you (try to) prove that machinists aren’t lame” a lot. It’s still a good story to just experience, so I would recommend you do that in some form or fashion. Anyways, I’ve taken enough of your time! Thank you for reading and take care! Next up... Let’s see if this job can make me an complete edgelord. The Dark Knight (DRK) is coming up next folks! See ya guys then!

#FFXIV #FFXIV job #I'M SORRY #LONG POST #I CAN'T HELP IT OKAY?!#MCH #MCH review

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thebeakerblog · 8 years ago

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Turn back the clock just a couple of centuries, and to our ancestors, the alchemy of electricity would seem like magic: with the single flip of a switch, our rooms are bathed in light.

But how does electricity makes its way to the plugs in your house? WNPR set out to answer that question and learned about the incredible combination of science, physics, and engineering, which all make our electricity possible.

And as I stood on the floor of the Millstone nuclear plant in Waterford, Connecticut, it did seem like some futuristic feat of engineering.

I was inside a massive room that looked like the hold of a multi-storied space freighter. Countless pipes twisted on the walls around me as I walked over a latticed corridor of metal stairs.

The nuclear reaction at Millstone happens elsewhere -- uranium atoms are split; heat is produced, and used to make steam. But I was looking at where that steam goes -- into a massive high-pressure turbine, about 250 feet long. It's the start of our electricity's journey.

"That's spinning at 1,800 revolutions per minute," said Ken Holt, a spokesperson for Millstone, who took me through the plant.

As we walked and tried to talk over the noise, steam flowed into the turbine, hitting blades, and twisting the shaft of a generator. It was all spinning a magnet inside huge coils of wire, converting mechanical energy into electricity. In this case, it was about 1,200 megawatts.

"Each megawatt, in New England ... can power 1,000 homes," Holt said. "So, Unit 3 is about 1.2 million homes."

In 2016, Millstone and other nuclear plants provided about 30 percent of New England's power generation. Natural gas pumped out about 50 percent. And the rest came from a mix of renewable energy and coal. It has many points of generation, which all feed into the same thing: our grid.

This got me curious about the next step: how does all that electricity move across all those wires?

To understand that part of the story, I hopped into a helicopter with Christine Naktenis from Air Ocean Aviation. As we took to the air, she kept an eye out for hazards.

We flew a few hundred feet over a trail of high-voltage transmission lines running through Connecticut towns. Transmission lines are the big power wires you see, often in fields, up on giant metal scaffolds. In the back seat was Tony Johnson from Eversource.

You can think of electric wires as pipes -- only instead of water, they’re carrying electricity. They're two things we wouldn’t want to mix, but for the sake of this analogy, they'll do just fine.

As the helicopter zipped and dipped, I asked Johnson about something key to electricity’s journey. When a line is "live," is it always carrying the same amount of power?

"Lines are always running at voltage level 115,000 volts or 345,000 volts," Johnson said. "But amperage -- the current -- is actually how much power is flowing."

Back to our analogy. Pipes have pressure that moves water through them. Wires have voltage that moves amperage, or current, along its way. And just like you can’t track a drop of water as it moves through pipes, you can’t track an electron as it moves along on a wire. But you can track and change its flow.

"Depending on the time of year -- the loads, the heat -- you can have a very high current running through these," Johnson said. "If you take some lines out, other lines will be loaded up, so they’ll have very high current running through them."

The process isn’t perfect. The federal Department of Energy said around five percent of electricity is lost in transmission and distribution in the U.S. Some is lost in the form of heat. And on really hot days, it’s physics you can see, power lines dipping toward the ground, as heat and electricity cause the wires physically to expand and slacken.

And here’s the part of the story where, for me at least, the whole thing gets a little bit mind-boggling. The entire electric system needs to be kept in near-perfect balance. If too much power is dumped into the grid, lines could, quite literally, burn up.

So who the heck watches that? Naturally, I had to find out.

"It's from this room, here in Holyoke, Massachusetts, that we dispatch virtually all of the electricity that consumers use from Maine down to Connecticut," said Ellen Foley, with ISO New England. They dispatch electricity over 9,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines across the region’s electric grid -- to millions of homes and businesses.

We were in a conference room talking about electricity, when suddenly, Foley jumped up to make a call. And in Wizard-of-Oz-like fashion, one side of the room ascended, as she literally pulled back the curtain on a large control center.

Because of security, I couldn't go in. But behind the glass were the workers responsible for keeping the grid operational.

"Electricity is used as soon as it's produced," Foley said. "So we have to make sure that we keep supply and demand in almost constant balance."

Helping with that was a giant screen about 12 feet tall by 50 feet wide. It was a visual schematic of hundreds of power plants, substations, and transmission lines across New England, which need to be tweaked as demand varies.

Foley said workers also keep close tabs on news and the weather -- and use a "neural network" to make short-term forecasts about energy demand, "which is sort of an artificial intelligence computer that takes a look at consumer behavior for electricity demand over the past 35 years on the grid," she said.

This enables ISO to run forecasting models. For example: "How much electricity will we need on a Wednesday morning in the middle of winter, with this kind of temperature?" Foley said.

Back up in the helicopter near Wallingford, Connecticut, Christine Naktenis swooped in to observe two large transmission lines running parallel. I asked Tony Johnson where it’s going next.

"It will end up going to a substation," he said.

Remember when we said voltage was like pressure for electrons? Well, just like you wouldn't take a shower with a fire hose -- for fear the water pressure would obliterate your loofah -- too much electric pressure, or voltage, could blow out your appliances.

So substations knock that electricity down to a lower voltage. Eversource runs more than 200 of those in Connecticut.

"And then, from there, you'll have these smaller lines come from that station to other substations, where it breaks it down to the distribution voltage," Johnson said.

Energy hits those small cylindrical transformers on your utility poles, where the voltage is massaged down one more time, traveling through distribution lines.

Finally, that power flows into your home, ready for you when you turn on your TV, or flip on your light.

(Image Credits: Creative Commons, Karim D._Ghantous, Eversource, ISO New England)

#energy #Environment #electricity #power grid

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nightmareonfilmstreet · 6 years ago

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[Review] THE DOMESTICS is Bloody, Brutal, and Suprisingly Hopeful

There’s a lot of people out there in the world today focused on surviving the inevitable apocalypse. People are stocking up on 5-gallon buckets of legumes and are fortifying their basements or storm cellars. Radio personalities are selling you multi-packs of MRE’s and discounts on all the nutrient pills that you will need after the global system collapses. I even saw an ad on Facebook for a bomb shelter kit I can assemble at home for the low-low price of $19,750. What none of these ads talk about is what happens to you and your family after you have survived. What if simply surviving isn’t enough?

Mike P. Nelson’s first feature film The Domestics takes a look at what happens after we leave our affordably priced bunkers and face a world that is full of other survivors.

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The Domestics focuses on Mark and Nina, a married couple from Two Harbors, Minnesota played by Tyler Hoechlin and Kate Bosworth. They are loading up the car and heading south in an attempt to reach Milwaukee and the home of Nina’s parents. We can tell right away that there is something very wrong with this relationship. They are cold to one another, with Mark even claiming to his friend that he doesn’t want to make this trip at all. Nina seems disinterested in anything Mark has to say and, at times, doesn’t believe that he can do anything to help her get to the safety of her parents.

To set up the ominous tone for the rest of the film, Mark’s friend mentions the dangers they will be facing over the next 200 miles. “You get one flat tire and you’re dead”, he says to Mark before they leave. It turns out that he is absolutely correct, for the countryside is divided up into territories of several different gangs. The Sheets (who dress like ghosts), Plowboys (pretty self-explanatory here, they drive around in giant plows), Gamblers (who leave everything up to chance, even going so far as to set up a casino of sorts where they play cards and Russian roulette) and The Nailers (who wear gnarly Mad Max-style headgear and seem hellbent on causing as much pain and sorrow as possible). Our protagonists must weave their way south-east through Wisconsin farmland occupied by these vicious gangs.

The film, which was actually shot in New Orleans, is filled from start to finish with gorgeous shots of a world that has been left behind. Streets are empty, homes are abandoned and vehicles are left to rot in the rain and sun. Mark and Nina hole up in an empty home for the night only to find that the previous owners were brutalized and killed in their own bed. Red splatters and streaks cover the walls like Pollock was using their life’s blood to create an imitation Kandinsky. As they sleep, a couple of Nailers enter the home looking to take Nina. Mark tries to calm Nina down in the attic, asking her to say “We’re going to be alright”. She looks Mark dead in the eyes and simply says “Be careful”. She doesn’t believe in him or in his ability to make things “alright’. It’s a small moment in the film, but it says everything you need to know about just how broken their marriage is.

As Mark and Nina travel on from that encounter, they run into another survivor in an abandoned grocery store. He invites them over to dinner as his son obliterates a gang of Sheets with a machine gun. It’s a stark juxtaposition of friendly neighbor-manners and body-decimating automatic gunfire. This stranger is named Nathan (Lance Reddick) and he brings the couple over to his home where his wife and two kids eat and play. They drink some wine, eat a casserole, and discuss what exactly it means to survive and what lengths you must go to keep those you love safe. Nathan and his family have a dark secret hiding beneath the banter and coloring books. What looks like the perfect American family is not what they claim to be. Or are they? Nelson uses this section of the film to force his audience to explore the limits to their humanity in such a beautiful way. He forces you to ask yourself some seriously existential questions that work on your brain a lot longer than you expect in an action/horror film.

“Good people didn’t survive… We did.”- Nathan

The final act of The Domestics is something glorious to behold. After a run in with some Gamblers, Mark and Nina are holed up in her parent’s subdivision in Milwaukee. Unfortunately for them, the gang has followed them and they bring down holy hellfire on those tranquil streets. What follows is a non-stop, chaotic scene where you are in the middle of the action from start to finish. You start to feel yourself dodge and weave in your seat as the couple fight back against those that mean to destroy and obliterate. Nelson was able to get more on screen in those 20 minutes than most directors can with 10-times the budget and twice the time.

The film isn’t all doom and gloom, however. David Dastmalchian makes a wonderful appearance halfway through the film as film-obsessed psychopath Willy Cunningham. This southern bell of a young man travels across the country with his giant friend chained to his side making others fight for his entertainment. It’s a fun respite from the stressful trek Mark and Nina are going on.

The Domestics is a post-apocalyptic love story that is filled to the brim with blood, guts, brutality and hopefulness. In this world we live in today, we oftentimes find ourselves avoiding the things we love in the name of making it through to the next day. We cut people out of our lives so that we don’t have to hear about how great they are making America again. What this film forced me to ask myself is, without these human connections, without love, what is the point of surviving at all? We live in a nasty world, maybe not as brutal as the one in this film, but it’s close. So, instead of retreating and hiding in our own echo chambers, how can we use love to make it a world worth living in?

Mike P. Nelson proves in this film that he has an eye for gorgeous visuals and he knows how to deliver bombastic action on a tight budget. He is definitely a director to watch moving forward. There are some plot points that didn’t any make sense to me and the conclusion is a little mind-boggling, but overall The Domestics is a film that should be seen and enjoyed for exactly what it is: a blow-it-to-smithereens shoot-em-up that is also an exploration of what it means to be human and what we need in our lives to make survival worth it.

3/4 eberts

You can check out The Domestics in select theaters or on VOD. Once you’ve had a chance to see it, hit us up on our Facebook Group, Horror Fiends of Nightmare on Film Street, and let us know what you think! While you’re at it, bookmark our homepage at NOFS to stay up to date with the finest horror news, reviews and retrospectives the internet has to offer!

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