#my family are track and field nuts

[jethroq]

speaking of athletic world records, javelin is just insane. the world record for javelin doesn’t improve, not because we have reached the limit of pointy stick throw far, but because for some stupid sense of tradition javelin is still thrown on the middle of the track, and the hard limit for the record is the end of the lawn and when atheletes start approaching that line the IOC has to tweak the design of the javelin to make it fly worse, so people don’t hit the high jumpers on the other side.

and you may also wonder, in this sport where you throw an aluminum spear as hard as the human body physically can, are there ever accidents? and there sure are. people let go a split second too early or late and it goes off in the wrong angle, and pierces the liver of someone waiting to do their long jump, or a referee observing another event on the sideline.

[libraford]

Have you shared the story of you joining the track team with us? I feel like you have but I can't remember any details.

I SHALL TELL YOU A TALE OF PURE FOLLY!

The year us 1999, I am in seventh grade. Like most seventh-graders, I hate everything that I am forced to do but I especially hate Pep Rallies. They are hell for my tiny little social outcast ADHD brain: loud noises, forced enjoyment of an activity, sports, pointless interaction with people I can't stand, and the potential for relentless bullying afterwards.

So we had a pep rally.

And I, for the first time in my rules-following life, decided to skip.

My class filed into the gym, I ducked into the bathroom, and waited for the sound of the doors closing.

Problem was that I didn't think I'd get this far and I've never been in the habit of delinquency, so I had no idea what to do next. I started wandering the halls just a little bit, testing out the freedom of having broken the rules, going down hallways that weren't part of my routine...

...when I heard dogs barking.

You see...

...the pep rallies weren't exactly about basketball. The pep rallies were an excuse to make lots of noise so no one heard the police dogs when they came looking for drugs in people's lockers.

And I am not where I'm supposed to be. I am where NO ONE is supposed to be. And I panic, because if I show up to the pep rally late they are going to notice.

I did not think this through.

So I start looking for somewhere to be while the police are searching for worse criminals than myself and I see a bunch of students in the cafeteria. One of them is a friend of mine, so I wouldn't be completely out of place in this location, so I came in and sat down next to her. A roster is being passed around and I sign it so that I can say that I was accounted for during the pep rally in some way.

The teacher who is heading whatever this is stands up in front of this group and says:

"Thank you for coming to the track and field tryouts. You've all made it in."

Uh...

...woops.

I think I'll just sit through this one meet and then quit. People do it all the time, I don't think anyone would notice.

Except that this is a small town and everyone knows everyone- so the teacher/coach helpfully informed my father that I'd joined the track team voluntarily and in no way was it a mistake of any kind.

My whole family is sports nuts. My dad was in charge of the sports page at the news paper, my mom will talk excitedly about college football, and my brother has excelled in every sport he's ever been in.

I'm a textbook case of Not That. Art student, lead violist, and the most exercise I get is dodging projectile rocks on my way home from school.

But my dad is SO proud of me when he hears about it. Lee is doing a Sport? A Sport that's physical? A Sport with a team? A SPORT!

Like... he bought me new shoes and stuff to clean the shoes with and all kinds of first aid stuff for my muscle pains and oh my god for the first time in his life I was in a SPORT!

(Just to emphasize- he has always been PROUD of me. He thought I was a genius because I showed him how to make chocolate dipped strawberries at home without a fondue pot like... he's pretty sure I'm going to save the world somehow. But this was the first time that I had ever shown even the smallest bit of interest in doing a Sport, which is HIS special interest and now we can BOND!)

So I try.

You know... I hate running.

I actually have a condition caused by a childhood illness that impacts cartilage development as well as asthma from a bronchial infection when I was in 5th grade.

But my dad came to all of the track meets that he could and I was so deep into the lie that quitting now would break him.

So I try my hand at non-running events: shot put and discus. I'd still have to run during practice, but I was allowed to go off and do Not Running for a little bit.

I can't remember the actual numbers or anything, but I remember that when I first did shot put with proper form, the coach kind of turned her head sideways and said 'damn.'

So turned out that being at the roly-poly stage of my larval development meant that I was still learning how my personal body chemistry affects the build of muscle. The answer is 'very quickly.'

It starts getting hard to find shirts that will fit my biceps and now I'm in trouble for wearing non-standard issue tank tops to school from practicing shot and discus.

If this were a movie, it would mean that suddenly being a jock meant that I had been accepted by my peers and something something Mean Girls something something. But no, because having incredible muscle as a thirteen year old did not do anything to disspell the rumors that I was a lesbian and unfortunately I was still bullied relentlessly. Nor did I ever throw a punch because I don't like hurting people and no one ever taught me how to fight. But it did mean that I had a handful of girls ready to use teeth and nails to defend the shot put champion.

Which is important because I was the ONLY shot put and discus thrower in the school.

And as I found out- the district.

I went almost an entire season without competing against a single person, winning the event by default.

Until the semi-finals.

And I did have to compete against an assortment of other thirteen year olds that were just now learning that they had upper body strength. But because they ALSO were the only ones competing in those events they had never competed against another person either.

So we all sucked.

I got gold in shot put. Bronze in discus. But to their credit there were only three competitors.

Huge fucking deal for my dad.

Not a huge deal for the rest of the track team, who all did really poorly in most events BUT throwing events, which meant that this was our last game of the season.

And so ended my short, accidental career as the middle school shot put champion.

"Did you try out again in 8th grade?"

Fuck no. I hate running.

[steviebunny]

Pretty Astute Observations

Ouef

20:40

“Graham, how would you feel about a partner?” Jack asks stepping in beside Will.

“I’m sorry- what?”

"What if I could pull in a profiler from the BAU to help keep you on track, Dr. Lecter said I’ve been pushing you too hard, and Strauss knows the Behavioral Science Unit is understaffed”

“I don’t need a babysitter Jack.”

“She wouldn't be a babysitter, Will. She’s extremely knowledgeable in her field and has experience similar to your…particular situation. ”

“Another psychiatrist, Jack? Hannibal, too busy for your liking?”

The bell for the following floor rings, and Crawford moves off the platform just before the doors close he says ���Not a psychiatrist actually, a marine.” The elevator doors close and Will Graham is left in stunned silence, having just missed his floor and apparently been assigned a new partner. 

—-

09:00

“Most of the time in sexual assaults, the bite mark has a livid spot at the center, a “suck bruise”. In some cases it does not. For some killers biting may be a fighting pattern, as much as a sexual behavior.” 

Jack slams the class door, open and shouts at the room full of students.

“Ok, class dismissed. Everyone out! What did I just say?! Let’s go!”

“You’re making it difficult to provide an education, Jack.”

Despite the previous evening's barrage by his pseudo-employer will still managed, to put together a lesson plan for the day. Little did he know it would not be necessary.

“ We found a match to a set of prints we pulled from the Turner home. They belong to a thirteen-year-old boy from Reston, Virginia. His name is Connor Frist.”

“Another kid?” Will wondered aloud.

“Another missing kid. Vanished ten months ago, case was never solved.”

“How many kids in the Frist family?”

“Three.”  Will’s head snaps to the door of his classroom, he hadn’t noticed the red-headed woman approach. She had a delicate and sturdy build 5’5, maybe 5’6, and dark jeans and a tank top exposing her muscled biceps as well as the tattoo ‘semper- fi’ wrapping around her left arm just above the elbow. “just like the Turner family.”

“Agent, Lena Gibbs, I’d like to introduce you to Will Graham.” 

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Will.” The man offered a nod in return. “Jack eluded to the fact you’ve had experience with empaths.”

“Quite the opposite actually, I spent some time in London with a man who self-identified as a high-functioning sociopath but it's a very similar skill set the two of you possess.”

“Well…we’ll see about that. I’ll meet you at the car.” Will bristles and collects his coat, just barely brushing shoulders with the woman as he makes his way out.

“He’s a tough nut to crack, but he’ll warm up to you.”

“I’m not worried, Crawford. It’s nothing I haven’t experienced before.”

__

“Mr. Frist and the children killed first, saving Mrs. Frist for last. Same as the Turners.”

“Not exactly the same. Something went wrong.”

“Not a single present under the tree for Mrs. Frist…Are we all not going to acknowledge the Navy Brat in the room?”

“Always a pleasure Bev, the unsub took her presents, he took her motherhood.”

“Shooting her once wasn’t enough. The first bullet, travels beneath her scalp…to its final resting place, base of her neck.”

“Do we know the type of bullet? Trace the bullet, trace the possible gun, trace the killer.”

“No, the shell exploded on impact, what we could piece together wasn’t identifiable,” Price told her passing over a small glass jar with bullet pieces rattling inside.

“Do you mind?” She asked. No one in the room answered so she pulled out her phone and called an often-dialed number.

“Fortress of solitude at your service.”

“Hey, Babygirl can I ask a favor?”

“Anything for my favorite agent”

“Don’t let Morgan hear you say that. If I send over some photos of an exploded shell do you think you can use the naval ballistics database to piece it together”?

“I’m insulted you even have to ask.”

“You're the best, Garcia”

“I know.”

Turning back to the stunned room full of BSU agents and in Will’s case, an outsourced professor. “I give it thirty, minutes before we know the bullet type. Not that I don’t have faith in you guys but the Marine Corps has the largest database of fragmented shells and an algorithm made by a forensic analyst at NCIS to predict their shatter pattern, that most of the FBI just doesn't have access to.”

“And how do you have access?!” 

“My father,” she answered Zeller before moving back between Jack and WIll. “So who is our additional corpse in the fireplace”?

Will cleared his throat and said “I’d say Connor Frist. He’d been prepped to shoot his mother, not watch her suffer”

“Connor couldn’t put his panic back in the bottle. So he got shot too.

"Whoever shot him…disowned him.”

—

“Garcia got a hit on the ballistics match.”

“C.J. Lincoln disappeared six months before his mother’s murder. He hasn’t been seen since.”

“ He has none of the characteristics of a sadist or a sociopath.”

“Right, no shoplifting, no malicious destruction of property. No assault, no battery. He was kind to animals, for God’s sake.”

“Firearm says we are looking at Peter Pan to our lost boys.”

“ But it takes a sophisticated level of manipulation to convince young boys to kill their families in cold blood.”

“ Kindness to animals doesn’t suggest that particular kind of sophistication.”

“Well, he’s older, he’s been out in the world. Maybe he picked up a few things.”

—

13:00

Will walks through the entrance of Dr. Lecter’s practice holding a gift, he drops it by the foot of Hannibal's desk before moving further into the room.

“Good evening, Will. Please come in. Has Christmas come early? Or late?”

“Was for Abigail”

“Was?”

“I thought better of it, I wasn’t thinking straight, I was upset when I bought it. Maybe still am.”

“What is it?”

“A magnifying glass. Fly-tying gear.”

“Teaching her how to fish. Her father taught her how to hunt.”

“That’s why I thought better of it.”

“Pretty paternal, Will.”

“ Aren’t you?”

“Yes. Our good friend Doctor Bloom has advised against taking too personal an interest in Abigail’s welfare. Tell me why are you so angry?”

“I’m angry about being assigned a partner, I’m angry about those boys, I’m angry because I know when I find them, I can’t help them. I can’t, I can’t give them back what they just gave away.”

“A partner?”

“Yeah, Lena Gibbs. Jack introduced her as a marine though.”

“Fascinating…Tell me did she mention anything about the UK”?

“Yeah, actually. How did you-” Hannibal stood from his position to retrieve his tablet, he typed out a phrase and handed the device to his colleague. “I keep an eye on media around the world,” he said, taking in the man's reaction to the words.

“She was engaged to Sherlock Holmes, I’m sure you heard of him. She and a man by the name of John Watson both contributed to Mr. Holmes’s private detective work, right up until the moment he threw himself from St. Bart's hospital, according to speculation he did do to prevent Ms. Gibbs and others from being attacked by a terrorist known as Moriarty.”

“I didn’t take you as one for speculation, Hannibal.”

“Sometimes it’s a necessary measure when secrets are so heavily guarded.”

“Is that a warning?”

“Who said they were her secrets?”

“Well, that's not vague at all.”

“I’m sure with time, you will come to bond with this new partner. Now tell me more about this ‘murder family.’”

“We call them “The lost boys”.

“Ms. Gibbs is likely lost too. And perhaps it can be our responsibility to help her find her way.”

—

16:00

“Bangor, Maine. Stanford, Connecticut, and recently Reston, Virginia.”

“Right.”

“You’re trying to establish a geographical pattern, when the murders were weeks apart.”

“ Other patterns too. Our shooters are minors middle children from traditional affluent families.”

“ We know they’re moving South, so that means we wanna cover the border of North Carolina and Georgia. We need to get files on every missing boy within two hundred miles of North Carolina.”

“There’s a pattern, less to do with geography than psychology."

“What kind of kid does this?”

"And what kind of kid follows a kid who does this?”

“There’s no indication that these kids came from abusive families.”

“No, no, no. Capture bonding. A passive psychological response to a new master has been an essential survival tool for a million years. Bond with your captor, you survive. You don’t…you’re breakfast.”

—

As the S.W.A.T vans pull into the scene Lena, and Will rush to the home, an agent passes the woman an M-4. She remains behind to steady herself for the shot as the rest rush forward. The eldest boy of the group raises his pistol to his “sibling’s” father, Gibbs pulls the trigger and sends off a round through the teenager's shoulder.

The scene erupts into chaos and the youngest boy runs off toward the pool. She and will chase after him, at the edge of the water the child grabs a pistol of his own aiming it at Will’s chest, 

“Don’t shoot!” Will isn’t only talking to the boy, he’s telling her.

Don’t shoot.

“Chris, wait. Don’t shoot. It’s OK. You’re home now, put the gun down, Christopher.”

His kidnapper emerges from the pool shed, and grabs the boy “Shoot him, Christopher.”

Don’t Shoot

“Christopher, please.”

*BANG*

Will freezes, and the kidnapper drops to the ground his ears ring out slightly as Lena moves to disarm the young boy.

“Chris, buddy are you alright?” Will can’t tell if she's whispering or if his ears are still ringing from the shot. He stands like a statue his gaze on the kidnapper's body, a single round through the middle of the eyes. Efficient, he can’t help himself but think. He doesn't even notice as his partner picks up the child and takes him over to the SUV. It’s not until Beverly taps him on the shoulder he breaks out of his trance.

—

05:00 The next morning

“I seldom have patients that ask to see me at such an early hour”

“Am I burdening your routine Dr. Lecter?” If he didn’t know better he’d think the question naive.

“A friend is never a burden.”

“A friend?”

“Would you like to be, or I could simply be your psychiatrist, someone to who you tell everything?”

“The last person I told everything…Killed himself, Doctor. I don’t think that's a track record you’d want to be a part of.”

“I think you and I both know that’s not why Sherlock did what he did.”

“Are you trying to defend him?”

“No merely seek the truth.”

“He was swayed by an evil hand.”

“Evil is subjective.”

---

“Evil is something that consumes. It digests. The rest of time it waits hungry and unseen waiting for the time to strike.”

Coquille (chapter 2)

[canmom]

Man, it is refreshing to find someone else who wasn't impressed by Frieren's demon arc. It is not like I disliked it, I do like this kind of shonen action bullshit, it is fun. But to me it seems like a step down to the earlier episodes, the show downplaying its own strong points to do common action. It is surprising to me so many people seemed to love it as much as they did, it is the lowest point of the show so far for me.

Mmm. 'Didn't dislike it, but a step down' is a good summary - it deemphasised what made the show stand out narratively, to try to be something else. If I was in the mood to watch Kimetsu no Yaiba or Jujutsu Kaisen I would! Fortunately, we seem to be getting back on track with ep 11 - I'll be writing that up once I've watched another 4-6 more episodes. I'm getting pretty near the end of the first cour, so I might watch up to there.

Bit of a weird cour length at 16 episodes, but honestly that's good - I'd love to see 'seasonal' anime be more able to break free from the pacing constraints of 'it must always be 12-13 episodes'. Sometimes that's not the best way to slice up a manga!

One thing I do appreciate about the simultaneous success of Frieren and Dungeon Meshi is that they're both fantasy anime which don't do the isekai thing and put some effort into establishing a setting which feels like people live there. They're both very overtly RPG-influenced, but neither is actual litRPG, which is very much to their benefit. Ryōko Kui's passion for lovingly constructing her fantasy setting goes without saying. I'm told the Frieren manga sketches its setting rather loosely, but the anime is doing a whole lot to flesh it out as a place people live, because they let Seiko Yoshioka go absolutely nuts.

I was chatting with kvin on the sakugablog server (senpai...!) and he mentioned one particular instance - there's a scene Eisen is tending to the graves of his family. In the manga it looks like this:

Nondescript piles of dirt with a rock on top that are just next to his house. (Also, oof, this colouring. I thought this was a fan colouring at first but no that's official.) When we cut forward 50 years, we see Eisen leaving flowers: they're in big wrapped bouquets like you'd buy at a supermarket. The little Minecraft hut hasn't changed at all.

In the anime, it looks like this:

Not only do we have the recurring use of fields of flowers as a symbol of remembrance, there's clearly been some thought put into the design of the grave markers - even if we're not told what the spherical stone might mean, it obviously means something, and you have the stone as a symbol of permanence. There's those little ritual plates for offerings. And, significantly, it's clear that Eisen has added to these graves over the intervening 50 year period: the graves in the later time are larger, with more stones. The area around the grave site has more flowers and another tree that's grown. It's clear he's been carefully tending to this site his whole life. It's that kind of attention to detail that really makes this anime shine.

It's clear this anime was a real labour of love, and I don't want to deny that there is a lot to praise in the demon arc. I didn't mention it in my post, but the scene where Frieren commands Aura to kill herself (after Aura's mind control attempt backfires) is impressively brutal - apparently episode director Nobuhide Kariya acted that scene out with an umbrella, complete with expressions. (The expressiveness of the acting does a lot to foreshadow the demons having more complex characterisation, too. I hope.) It's just quite a weak storyline off the bat, so the execution can only do so much to elevate it.

Honestly, skimming the manga a bit, I'm all the more impressed by this adaptation. Admittedly, some of it is down to a weak scanlation that doesn't read very well, but it really doesn't have the same impact at all on paper. It's not just the fight episode - throughout, the anime staff clearly gave themselves freedom to interpolate and expand in ways that end up making the manga feel like a rough draft.

...actually come to think of it, they did a similar thing with Bocchi. The manga is a 4koma (by all accounts a good one), and they fleshed it out into a more substantial story with a strong emotional arc and also all the wacky experimental animation gags you could hope for. So I guess that's kind of just how Keiichiro Saito rolls! But it's really impressive how adeptly this team is able to handle such a completely different register. Bocchi and Frieren could hardly look more different on the surface.

Anyway, I'll save any more comments for the next part of this impromptu liveblog.

[readingbythestreetlights]

- what happens after a crash?

depends on the crash- if it’s minor, we can deal with the crash under a yellow caution flag. they clear the crashes car(s) from the roads and the rest of the cars continue slow laps while clean up occurs. in worse situations, when the cars crash and mess up the walls or something, we’ll go into a red flag which makes the cars all stop until the issue is fixed. the drivers, depending on the crash, may have to leave the race and be evaluated by the in-field care center but once they get out of the car, they can’t race anymore that day

- testing? training?

a lot of it, i’m pretty sure, is just trainjng like a normal athlete? driving like they do puts a lot of strain on the body and of course they do driving simulations and stuff but that’s about the training, ya just gotta be good at driving and be fit enough to handle all the force

- just like roughly explain the grid—it’s more fluid than f1, right? how does that work?

grid as in like the way the cars line up? qualifying is typically the day before the race and from that qualifying race, the winner, the fastest times, gets the pole position, he gets to start the race first- from there, we have stage winners and every time you pit, the lineup goes all wonky as people come in and out or don’t go in at all- i’m unfamiliar with f1, but nascar lineups make more sense once you see them happen in real time

- time off—summer break???? weeks off between races????

race day is sunday and qualifying is typically saturdays so you’ve got about a week between races. of course, they’re not totally off during the weekdays and stuff, they’re doing little things to prepare for the race, but the drivers at least, have some time between races to spend with their families and stuff before they fly into the race towns- we have a long-ish break at the end of the season for them before the season starts again

- are they as tied to certain teams/are there set teams like in f1? <- also do drivers live in certain places according to where teams are based, where race tracks are, etc?

there are teams, usually have two or three drivers, but you hear all about them when someone’s in a team- childress is a big team, that one from keslowski too, and then gibbs racing i think. dunno if the teams determine their living spots based on teams or race tracks, a lot of the time they just live wherever and stay wherever when it comes time for racing, they might stay as teams cause it’s more convenient though, i’m not 100% sure

- how do they celebrate wins? do they have podium celebrations at all?

after they win, they get the checkered flag and they get to do a victory lap and do a little doughnut out in front of the grandstands, it’s fun and they go nuts. usually after that, they climb out of the car and stand on the roof or window for a second and shout, (sometimes they do funny things like backflips or smashing watermelons) and then they get snagged for interviews afterwards before going off to get their trophies

- how easy is it to win a race?

not overly easy i guess? racing is racing, it’s a combination of the driver and the car, of the weather and the track, of the pit and the rest of the guys on your team and not. every week is different, but there’s definitely a lot of guys who’ve been racking up a bunch of wins

- 🏁

omg anon i’m absolutely in love with you!! you are my hero; thank you so so much for taking the time to answer these!! ❤️❤️

[terresdebrume]

So first off: yes, very true! I too am amused by this trope.

On the other hand, as penny-anna pointed out in tags: a lot of us do have to deal with so much paperwork (blegh). So, just in case anyone is interested in what Type of paperwork teachers (in secondary school, at least) may have to deal with (besides grading tests, which is well known), here is one:

Before school starts/at the beginning of the year:

Schemes of Work (might be referred to as 'SOWs'): a document that says which part of your curriculum you're going to work on at different points in the year. Can be term by term, month by month or, like my school, week by week.

Curriculum: What things you're going to study and how you're going to assess your students about it. The amount of time and work you need for it varies depending on how experienced you are, how well you know your subject, or if you're using a manual. (Or if your school picked a curriculum online, in which case you might mostly be doing reformatting so everything fit your school's preferred format.)

Emergency class lists: In my school, that means a list of students for each of the classes I teach (ie. Year 7, Year 8, etc.) in A5 format, laminated, so that in case of a fire I can just grab this and know how many students I'm supposed to have at the evacuation checkpoint. Admin is supposed to take care of that one (at least in my school) but sometimes you're a month into things without one and you take matter into your own hands.

Class lists for personal use: this one probably varies a lot more depending on your personal preference and what you need! But since I teach an optional course where students of different classes are mixed together, I have a list of students who take French, which indicates which class they're from, how long they've been learning French, their gender, and other information relevant to everyday life in the class. I also have one for the class I'm Homeroom Teacher for, because our school registry is super unwieldy imo.

Throughout the year:

Tests: amount of work may vary depending on subject, the possibility of reusing past papers, and what your school admin wants you deal with. Tests generally also come with a marking scheme (aka an answer sheet with how much point each answer is worth) and if there's a listening portion you're expected to also provide a transcription.

Test vetting: For midterms, in addition to making the tests, we also have to have them proofread, first by another colleague and second by our head of section. In my school, we do this on paper, which means I have to print 'drafts' + a paper where I fill in the exam specifications (date, class, level, curriculum, etc.) and which my vetters also have to fill in with their remarks and sign.

Lesson plans: My school doesn't do that for now (thank fuck) but some schools want the teachers to provide weekly lesson plans, aka what you're going to study during the week. Some places are absolutely nuts and want one for each lesson, and I hope I never work there.

Grading books/assessment records: keeping track of everyone's grade, sometimes through a system your school imposes on you. I use google sheets for convenience.

Probably at least twice a year:

Report cards! That's the paper we send to your families to let them know how you did and stuff. In my case, it means I have to fill individual comments for each students' performance in French + their grades, and a general homeroom comment for each of the kids in my class.

Occasionally:

Risk assessments: mostly for field trips. This is the paper where you list everything that can potentially go wrong and use a formula to grade your risk levels which the school uses to approve or deny your field trip. Can lead to fun questions like: "okay so they're going to talk and draw with an author but there's a bus trip where we technically go off the road and die...should I use the highest Severity rating which is the risk of death?'

Letters to/communication with parents: the most common being the field trips permission forms. It's generally a good idea to have a template.

Material/transportation requests: this is where you ask the school to provide some material for you. It's a pain and the reason why I buy some supplies myself.

Incident reports: paper you write in case of incident that result in serious conflict between students or injuries. Covers everybody's ass, still a pain.

Safety concern reports: or whatever they're called. You fill this one when you think a student might be in a dangerous situation at home or when they potentially present a risk to other students. (Or both. That's a fun combo.) Hopefully this results in a kid getting help, though the one time I filled it the student in question ended up kicked out of school.

Students of concern reports: Might not exist in every school. We use ours to list a variety of issues ranging from 'X may have ADHD/Dyslexia/Autism/Other mental illness issues' (often in much less explicit/discerning language) to 'This kid that the principal enrolled and told us spoke English decidedly Does Not Speak English and it's a Problem'. The issues listed in the document then take a couple months to several years to be addressed for various reasons.

Again, this is my experience in one specific schools, other teachers might do less or more paperwork or use different names for basically the same things but, you know. It's one example.

We don’t talk enough about how fanfiction writers love to give character large amounts of non-specific paperwork they hate doing

[disgruntledspacedad]

The Rules of Engagement (3/5)

The Better Love Series

pairing: Javier Peña x fem!reader/ofc (Ears)

summary: (slow-burn, sexual tension, angst, a little bit of h/c in later chapters) He’s a DEA agent. You work for Centra Spike. Peña’s not your boss, exactly, but you’ve been fwb long enough that certain people are starting to think of you as An Item, and that just won’t do. 

words: 3.4k 

warnings: 18+ for alcohol, language, smut, violence, body horror, general trauma. Please, please heed the warnings on this chapter, guys. It gets pretty intense.

a/n: Unbeta’d. I know I said this was going to be three chapters, but I lied. Sorry, my dudes - this one got away from me. Inspo credit goes to @tiffdawg​, as always.

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five

MASTERLIST

Well, fuck. You bite back a massive sigh.

You really, really don’t want to walk through that door.

It’s been a month, and you life has changed profoundly.

For one, you’re not at the office as much anymore - Stechner had made good on his promise to consider you for more flyovers, and boy, has Centra Spike been busy. Some new vigilante group is terrorizing Medellín, and while it’s not Search Bloc’s priority to go after them, they’ve undeniably kept Pablo and his sicarios busy. The radio frequencies are hot right now, and you’ve been doing eight, sometimes ten flights a week. 

You absolutely love it. The hours are less predictable and definitely more shitty, but listening to a radio from the cockpit of a plane is much more fun that listening to a radio in a stuffy basement office, so you consider it a fair trade.

It keeps your brain busy, too.

Your social life has taken a massive kick to the nuts. Ana is back at university, and you miss her more than you thought you would. You’ve reverted to communicating with Emilio with gestures and smiles more than words. It’s nice because he’s nice, but you miss actual conversation, stilted as it was. Ana wasn’t all that bad, either.

And then there’s Javi.

You haven’t spoken to him since That Morning, not even a polite 'how are you?' in the hallway. Granted, you’re not seeing him as often anymore, given your new position and hours, but then again, you haven’t exactly sought him out, either.

The memory claws at you every time you relive it - and you relive it often. That anger, that wounded expression. The slammed door, his retreating footsteps. Each time you’re in that building, the walls seem to close in on you, and you have to stop yourself from looking for him, actively keep your gaze from roaming straight to his desk.

God, as if you could make it more awkward.

You’d had one nasty conversation with Murphy about a week after the incident - you’d told him in no uncertain terms that he could either mind his own business or fuck right off, you didn’t care which. He’d left you be, throwing his hands in the air and muttering something about how “you two deserve each other.”

Asshole.

Still, that aborted conversation haunts you - so many aborted conversations haunt you - and you wonder what would have happened if you’d just taken the bull by the horns and addressed the issue with Javi head on.

I’m sorry you caught me rubbing one off on the morning after you almost died, Peña. I can assure you, it won’t happen again. Your friendship means the world to me.

Yeah, right.

God, though, but you miss him.

You miss him so much it aches, a gaping hole that reaches right down to the core of you, but there’s nothing to be done about it. You’d fucked this one completely and thoroughly - any chance of restoring your friendship had drained away with the shower-water, and the more time you spend fretting over it, the more awkward - and pathetic - it would be to say anything.

So, you’d cut your losses, held your head high, and tried not to waste too much time wishing you’d have just kept your fucking fantasies to yourself.

Now, though, you’ve got no choice.

You’d been on Centra Spike’s early morning flight, just another routine scan over Medellín. The shift wasn’t intended to be more than a training run for you, but as luck would have it, the Medellín cartel’d had a busy night, and you’d been caught in the crossfire.

Your plane had just touched down half an hour ago, and now you’re standing on the front steps of the embassy building, fingering a shoebox cassette player loaded with a freshly taped recording full of juicy intel destined for the desk of DEA Agent Javier Peña - an entire, private conversation featuring none other than Verdugo himself.

You’d know that voice anywhere. You’ve studied it for hours, what few snatches you’d been able to glean from the embassy archives. It’s almost as if Verdugo is smart enough to steer clear of the city, or to just avoid phone conversations all together, the absolute fuckwad.

Until early this morning.

On the plane, you’d intercepted a new signal and tapped in on a whim, intending to practice your Spanish more than anything, but what you’d overheard was a fucking gold mine of information.

Verdugo is in Medellín. The sicarios are getting ready to move Escobar. He didn’t say where - fucking bastard knows not to spill all of the beans in one conversation - but apparently the plan requires a rendezvous in El Centro first. Verdugo is en route, and will be there until the next morning.

You’d worked frantically all night, tracing and retracing the signal, triangulating potential addresses, then back-tracking to account for environmental distortion. Each calculation had led you to the same place - an unassuming little house right smack in the middle of Medellín.

Bingo.

“You take it in, Aarons.” Torres had declined your offer to do the honors. “It’s your intel.”

So here you are, bleary-eyed and running on less than two hours of sleep, cassette player clenched tightly to your chest, summoning up all of your courage just to go speak with your ex... well, ex whatever-the-fuck Peña is.

‘This is your job,’ you remind yourself fiercely. ‘You can do this.’

As pep-talks go, it isn’t very effective.

Fuck it. You toss your head back, wishing you’d had time to at least grab a cup of coffee on the way in, and breeze around the corner.

“Agent Peña.”

He glances up lazily, thoroughly uninterested in whatever you have to say. When he realizes it’s you, he blinks once, dropping his cigarette in the ashtray and sitting up to eyeball you with a wary expression.

"What can I do for you?” he asks cooly.

You remember him saying that once before, but the context was totally different.

You shake it off. “Centra Spike has new intel that you’ll want to see right away.”

He purses his lips, tilting his head to indicate the growing pile of bullshit on his desk. “You can leave it here.”

Oh, so that’s how it is, then?

“I can’t.” You pin him with a stare, and he meets your gaze evenly, raising his eyebrows in silent challenge. You clear your throat and clarify. “I won’t.”

He scoffs as you carefully rest cassette tape on his desk, along with a map of El Centro. “We intercepted a four minute conversation with Verdugo this morning. He’s here.” You point to the safe house on the map, which you’ve already circled in red ink. “Feo and Limón are with him. They’re leaving early tomorrow.”

Peña frowns down at the spot where your finger rests. “And can you corroborate that information?”

Oh, the motherfucker. “I verified his voice personally, Peña,” you say carefully, doing your damndest to keep the annoyance from your tone. It’s well within his right to ask questions, after all. “It’s a direct match for the audio samples we have.” You tap the tape for emphasis. “You’re welcome to listen for yourself.”

He doesn’t make a move for a long time. Something hot and painful burns in your gut as you wait.

God, he knows you, knows you better than anybody else in on this goddamned continent.  He knows that you know your shit, that you want to catch Escobar as desperately as he does. And this evidence that you have spread across his desk, recorded on tape and marked plainly in red ink, is irrefutable, undeniable - it’s a huge break. He knows that, too.

His apathy is palpable, and it’s driving you up the fucking wall.

When he finally glances up at you, it’s with a doubtful little smirk on his face. “Hmm.”

And oh, wow, you’re shocked by just how much that hurts.

All your life, from the moment you were born into a family of brothers, you’ve had to fight tooth and nail to be taken seriously. It was a fact of life as early as you can remember - ‘look after your sister,’ or, ’she’s just a girl,’ or ‘wow, you’re really great at math, for a woman!’ You’d settled on your career as an analyst because you’d wanted it, not because you’d had something to prove, but still, the military is a male-dominated field, and from the start, the odds had been stacked against you.  Landing this CIA gig had been the achievement of a fucking lifetime. Still, the bar is set high in the Colombia, and it’s set that much higher for a woman. You’re well aware of this; you’re reminded every single day.

Point being, you’re used to defending yourself and your abilities; it comes as natural as breathing.  

But until now, you’ve never had to fight this battle with Peña. He’d taken you at face value from the moment he'd laid eyes on you, treating you like just another operative. Sure, he might take a crack at you every now and again, but that's all in good fun, and you’ve never been one to shy away from a laugh.

Christ, you never realized just how much that respect meant to you until suddenly, it’s gone.

“If you have something to say about my skills and qualifications, Agent Peña, then I suggest you say it.” You lean over his desk, speaking quietly, enunciating each syllable with deadly precision. “Otherwise, I think we both know that it’s in the best interest of Search Bloc and the Colombian people that we collaborate quickly, so we can put boots on the ground and land this motherfucker behind bars where he belongs.”

Peña’s eyes narrow, and he cocks his head, studying you. You meet his gaze, biting back a snarl. You won’t back down. You won’t allow him to intimidate you.

When he nods sharply and reaches for his phone, you know you’ve won.

♠

Ten minutes later, you’re situated in a conference room with Peña, Steve Murphy, Martinez, and a couple of the other higher ups of Search Bloc whose names you haven’t memorized. Your maps are spread over the table, your tape displayed for all to see, and every eye is on you.

“Verdugo is here,” you say, leaning over the map to indicate the marked house. “He and his entourage arrived late last night, and they’re planning to leave early tomorrow morning.”

“Plenty of time to get a team together.” Murphy interjects, glancing between you and Peña with open curiosity.

You narrow your gaze at him. Drama-mongering bastard.

Peña’s not moving. He’s standing with his hip cocked toward the desk, frowning down at the map with his fingers curled to his chin like he’s totally oblivious to everything happening around him.

You know he’s not, though. That’s Javi’s thinking face, the one he makes when he wants people to shut the fuck up and forget about him until he can work something out. You’re pretty familiar with that one.

The others are babbling in Spanish, discussing logistics and the likelihood of this being another trap.

It’s not. You know this deep in your bones. You’d heard that conversation in real time, had translated, triangulated it.

This is legit.

You’ve just decided to leave them to it when Javi snaps his eyes open.

“I agree with Aarons,” he announces out of nowhere. You’re startled by the confidence in his tone. Curious, you glance up, but it’s difficult to get a read on him. He’s pinning every person in the room except you with a hard stare. “We need to move out now.”

Several of the others make noises of protest, but Peña shuts them all down, one by one. Finally, his eyes flicker up to meet yours, just for a brief second, but there’s something different in his gaze, something new and heavily guarded.

You think it might be an apology.

“Let’s end this.”

♠

He’s on a plane to Medellín within an hour, wearing that stupid bullet proof vest. For just a split second, you wish that you were going, too. You don’t have enough experience, though - you’re not an agent; you haven’t handled a gun since basic. You’d be useless in a real fight, a liability, even.

Still, you feel some ownership in this operation, today more than ever. You don’t even try to kid yourself about Javi anymore, either. Those fucking feelings haven’t faded in a month, not a bit, not even after the awkward conversation you’d had in his office.

‘But he stood up for you, too, afterward,’ something whispers in the back of your mind. You replay that little glance in the conference room over and over as you watch Search Bloc board the plane.

He’s looking for you this time, standing on the ramp with his eyes shaded like he knows you’ll be waiting. He doesn’t nod and you don’t wave, but you make eye contact for a lingering moment, and again, there’s something in his expression that you don’t recognize.

Then the plane takes off down the runway, and you feel as if your heart is swooping away with it.

♠

You volunteer for the late shift at work, monitoring the radio lines in case something comes up. It’s an unusually quiet night, as if all of Bogotá collectively holds its breath, and you mostly spend it watching the clock, calculating the hours in your head.

One to land in Medellín. Two more to mobilize the men. Another half to get in location.

From there, your speculation gets fuzzy. There’s no way to predict the outcome once Verdugo is engaged. Javi’s told you a million stories, each more unbelievable than the last - car chases and rooftop shootouts, standoffs in the street, a fistfight in a church sanctuary, bodies of children littering dark alleyways… you cut off the recollections. They aren’t doing you any favors.

Verdugo is a dangerous man. Anything could happen.

By seven am, your brain is mush and your eyes are hyper-focused in that bleary way that happens when you’ve gone too long without sleep. Your third cup of coffee has gone cold, and people are starting to trickle in. You wave half-heartedly to Torres as you slip out of your headset, rubbing your fingers over your scalp to ease the tension that comes from wearing heavy earphones all night. A shower sounds nice, you decide, and maybe a quick nap afterward.

Somebody will page you with news.

Getting out of the building does a lot to wake you up. There’s something oppressive about the CNP headquarters that seems to abate when you step into the streets of Bogotá. The city buzzes with life even in the early morning, and air is warm in a way that seems to energize rather than sedate. Optimism is easier to invoke as you walk down the street in broad daylight.

Javi had looked at you, at least. He’d listened. He’ll call in to the office as soon as he can. Your intel was good, and they’ve flushed out the rat, he’d promised you that.

Everything will be okay.

You round the corner of CRA 70 and Circular, waving to Emilio, who is working the register of the pharmacy today.

“Orejas!” He shouts, reaching below the counter to hold aloft another bottle of aguardiente. “¡Mira! Solo para ti!”

You grin back at him, raising your voice to shout a greeting, and then, with absolutely no warning, the store explodes.

A loud boom.

A whoosh of impossible heat.

A massive orange fireball billowing from the windows.

Your body flying, flying through the air.

Bright blue sky, and then darkness.

♠

You find yourself lying flat on your back in the middle of the street. Your ears are ringing. There’s a pat-pattering in the air, soft like falling rain.

You blink hard.

It’s not rain, you realize dizzily.

It’s fucking ash.

The air is dark with it, hot and heavy. It coats your tongue and stings your eyes. It’s hard to catch a breath. Your throat hurts, your chest aches. You cough weakly. The smell is terrible, acrid and bitter like burned metal. You can taste it on your tongue.

Slowly, you tense your muscles. Your chest is still burning, but there’s nothing sharp to suggest a serious injury. Your back is sore, your head fuzzy.

You sit up, wincing a little, relieved to realize that you’ve just had the wind knocked from you. You’ll have some bruises tomorrow, but that’s all.

Sound slowly filters in. The hiss and crackle of flame. A shout in the distance. Further away, a wailing siren.

Reality slams into you all at once.

Emilio!

You stand, wobbling more than you think you should, but you push past it. Reality seems to pitch and roil, as if the ground is hitching its breath beneath you. Rubble coats the street, dust clouds the air.

Oh god.

A gaping, smoking crater is all that’s left of Emilio’s pharmacy. The windows are blown out of the businesses on either side, their outer walls bowing under the pressure. Your apartment on the top floor is demolished, the roof caving in, flames licking at the the collapsed floors.

You gasp one long, shuddering breath, taking it all in, and then you’re running, sort of, picking your way through hunks of concrete and twisted metal.

“Emilio! Emilio!”

Your voice is hoarse, the world hushed. Nothing sounds quite right. Your legs are shaking and you can’t catch your breath. Some of the rubble is hot to the touch, and you feel like you’re moving underwater, slow and awkward and stupid.

You approach what’s left of the store, and the smell hits you first. Like cooked meat - charred, greasy, heavy.

You press your hand to your mouth to stifle a scream.

You found Emilio. He’s pinned beneath part of the collapsed roof. You look away quickly, but not before you catch a glimpse of blackened flesh, of bone, blood, and pink frothy tissue.

Acid rises in your throat, and you stumble to your knees, stomach clenching painfully into your ribs as you vomit onto the street. It goes on and on, over and over for an eternity, tears and snot and bile and ash leaking mingled down your face until there is nothing left in you to expel.

The encroaching wail of a siren draws you to your senses. You glance up, suddenly painfully aware of your situation. The ceiling is arching above you, just to your right, and it’s creaking ominously. The fires are still burning, and your shirt is clinging painfully hot against your back. You stagger to your feet once again, dizzy, almost drunkenly. A small crowd has gathered, pointing and gawking, calling out to you in Spanish that you are far, far too overwhelmed to translate.

Gasping, you raise your hands and side-step away, careful of the debris that litters the street around you.

A firetruck arrives on the scene, squalling to a stop between you and the onlookers, and you leap at the opportunity, ducking down the nearest alleyway before anybody can follow.

♠

You aren’t sure how much time you waste in the alleyways of Bogotá.

Seconds?

Minutes?

The time after the explosion is all a blur, and you run until you literally can’t anymore, until you’re doubled over and wheezing, coughing, hacking, panting.

Some primal survival instinct clicks in your brain then, and suddenly, your mind is clear. You glance around, swiping at your cheeks and brushing the ash from your shirt.

Now what?

You take a shaking breath and think.

Okay, first order of business, you’re absolutely disgusting. You need a shower before you can even think about doing anything productive.

Your bathroom just went up in flames, along with all of your clothes. Your heart clenches as you think of Ana - she’s at university, so that’s out. The embassy has a nice bathroom, but no showers that you’re aware of.

There’s only one place you know to go, and that’s Javi’s apartment.

You glance up at the sky. The sun is still pretty low - it can’t have been more than an hour since you’d left work, and that was around seven am. Javi obviously isn’t home, and you don’t have a key, but if you hurry, there’s still a chance that you could catch Murphy before he leaves his flat.

It’s a long shot, but you decide there’s nothing to lose for trying.

[evilminji]

Oh my god? Klarion just showing up at the end of the rampage WITH Maddie like "Sup, new siblings! We brought souvenirs!" And Maddie is like "Sweetie~☆ I'm baaaack! *gross smooching with her husband* I brought a suprise! It's a New Son! He needs a loving and supportive home that accepts him for who he is. So I kidnapped him!"

And just? Klarion standing in broad daylight. With teekle. In this tiny Midwestern town. OPENLY a chaos lord. Grinning with Too Many Pointy Teeth ™, like the Fae-like demonish hell child he is... and?

The rest of the family goes?

Yeah. Yeah, okay.

It goes COMPLETELY UNADDRESSED from that point forward. Klarion the Chaos Lord... is a Fenton. Goes to the reunions and everything. They GET him. Support him unconditionally. Naturally get up to insane shit WITHOUT his intervention, so it's never boring.

Sometimes he'll show up to a fight with a baby cousin in tow. But! Critically! It's a FENTON cousin. So that ten year old is build like a brick shit house and could bust through walls BEFORE he put the "hamster ball of safety" (as they call it) on them.

Then he let's then have Fun!

Have a lollipop. Actually, no, that's boring. Have 20! Go nuts! Run to your lil hearts content. Go "play" with the Heros buddy~☆! Take stuff apart! Smash whatever you want! Cousin Klarion is the FUN cousin!

:)

And they doooooo. It's horrible. Grown Heros out here getting their asses handed to them by hyperactive Fenton Children. Who they can't even TRACK because of COURSE Klarion wouldn't expose the faces of MINORS! He's not irresponsible! Hehehehe~

So they can't even beg their parents to STOP this! And what are they gonna do? Attack children?! Who are being deceived? I mean, some people who WEREN'T hero's tried that.. but...

You ever see a pissed off Chaos Lord? Like, a genuinely angry "no, I'm not joking. I am actively fucking pissed" furious, Chaos Lord? It... it uh.... dude, it was BAD. The second the kids got genuinely scared, all hell broke loose.

Half a mountain is just straight up GONE.

And that was him trying NOT to further upset the 5 year olds.

Their ONLY lead? Is the terrifying one woman Ramage Of Super Death And Kung-fu Skills that blew up... like... SO MUCH of Luther's shit. WHILE he was president. Waller knows where she is. Refuses to say a damn thing. They BONDED somehow. Became "nightmare women from hell" BESTIES.

Apparently "I would have LOVED to work for you! That sounds FASCINATING. But I must sadly decline, I am committed to my research and raising my beautiful kiddos. I'm open to contract work though!" Is a great answer. Waller respected her convictions... and willingness to sell fucked up super death weapons. Strong women in a male dominated field and all that.

Jack? He's just glad his wife is home.

And, unrelated, no need to question anything, really. Making some phone calls to the Cousins! ALL the cousins! Whole Family, really. You know... to let them know that Maddie is back!

Back from where?

Oh, back from Bein' Kidnapped By Lex Luthor! Yes, that Lex! President! Mmmmhmmm! Oh SURE, go ahead and tell your in-laws! The more the merrier! ....for support! Of course. Yep. Nothing illegal here! No, sir. Yeah, spelled L- U- T- H- O- R! You have fun with those curses you definitely aren't doing! See ya next reunion! *click*

It just occurred to me~

Wanna know the SINGLE most destructive force you could unleash upon a world?

Maddie "you've kidnapped me and made my babies cry? P E R I S H" Fenton~! She don't play that! She is the "well'p! Guess we're gonna have to kill this man, sweetie!" Of the two doctors Fenton. Jack has the morals, you see. SHE has the aim.

And the willingness to murder.

But THAT comes with motherhood~☆ :)

Where was she~? Oh yes! Everyone in this warehouse is going to DIE! Slowly. And screaming. If you DON'T send her back to her babies n honeybun, m'kay? *sound of lazergun charging up*

NOW.

Just? The one woman Terrifying Rampage of blood, explosions, death, explosions, screaming, tears and explosions. No one could ever recover from it. She's out here gutting toasters and a pack of gum to make DEATH MACHINES. She's stolen the presidents car! High speed chase with lazers! Martial arts duels in the rain on top of speeding trains!

It's been less then 24hours!

Everyone is crying, screaming, and throwing up because WHAT IS SHEEEEE!?

Upset. The answer is very, very upset. You terrified her babies. Tried to KIDNAP HER SON. Successfully kidnapped HER. Separated her from both her lab AND the love of her life! And?? Jack JUST made her favorite fudge! A whole pan, just for her!

She is going to tear REALITY apart until she is back where she should be.

And if YOU all suffer for that?

Well~ Should have thought of that, shouldn't ya~? ☆ :)

@hdgnj @legitimatesatanspawn @babbling-babull @lolottes @hypewinter @nerdpoe @mutable-manifestation

[wouldduskwood]

Descendants of Despair Part 28

I wandered through to the bedroom to find Jake staring at the computer screen in mild frustration. “Yeah, not feeling the phone thing when you’re just through here.” I mumbled. Jake turned and smiled at me, capturing me in his arms. “I agree, having you here is far more pleasing.” He murmured softly.

“Okay, here’s the situation, I’m wired as fuck right now. Biting my tongue doesn’t always come easily. Also, I can’t remember the last time I ate and we have yet to find clear escape routes. I think we need to remedy some of this stuff, before I go completely nuts.” I sighed, hating to show any form of weakness.

Jake nodded solemnly. “I get it, I’m finding it hard to concentrate on this and making stupid mistakes. We need to sort the food situation out pronto." “I can go into Duskwood and pick something up?” I suggested, only partly joking. “No deal, we go together or not at all.” Jake responded with finality. “Okay, but you stay in the car where cameras can’t pick you up and I get in and out. Deal?” Jake nodded again. “Okay, but we order online from some place near here but not Duskwood. You go in and pick up, that’s it. We can’t get much, I don’t have a lot of money.” Jake sighed, embarrassed. “Yeah, money isn’t much of an issue.” I shrugged. “We order what we need and I pay for it in cash.” Jake looked at me, cocking his head to the side in apparent skepticism.

I sighed, “ I don’t trust banks with that much information about me...oh surprised?” I grinned, seeing his eyes widen briefly. “Very little of my money is used through banks...only what I want people to find actually. I withdraw a fair bit of money whenever I can. I purposefully use machines close to casinos to give the illusion of a gambling problem, but in actuality I keep the money in various envelopes with different quantities. A few days before I had to take off, I had gathered it all into my backpack. I kind of suspected I'd need to leave sooner rather than later. I guess this is a habit I picked up on the street. Hidden cash in various portions. If someone robs you on the street, they usually stop when they find something. If you spread it out in various places, they won’t find it all. Anyway, I guess I feel comforted having cash. It will also be helpful now, right?” I prodded Jake.

“Wow, you really are perfect aren’t you?” he grinned. “I have been busy racking my brain with how I will raise enough money to keep you alive and here you are sitting on money that will save us.” I smiled. “I think it will be plenty to keep us going for however long we need. There is a little less than $200,000.” This must have taken Jake by surprise as he stepped backwards momentarily.

“That much?” he croaked.

“Yeah, I spent a bit after I left the last place I was staying, on clothes and shit, but there should be enough here for as long as we need.”

“Uh, not to sound ungrateful or anything, but is it all...legally obtained?” Jake questioned. “It’s just...they can trace the serial numbers…”

I smiled and paused before responding. Jake looked at me questioningly. “Okay, yeah it is all legal. See, I told you I became qualified in teaching and technology. Well...I kind of found a little bit of a loophole. See, many international families want their children to learn English through a qualified English as a first language teacher. So, I found that if you...taught in a more relaxed and fun style than what the children were used to in their home land...well they tended to enjoy it more. They learnt fast. They also told their parents how great it was. Many of these families respect teachers and the market is massive, so they pay well...they also get their friends involved. Well, once I had a few networks set up, I worked out I could get more money if I taught more than 1 kid at a time, so I organised online classes. Parents were happy, their kids were happy, they were learning English and I was receiving full tutoring rates for every single child I had...no matter how many I taught at a time…I was pulling in a fair bit of money, even with taxes taken out, until I stopped recently to focus on you and Hannah…The other benefit was, I could do it on the run. I had tried once, ya know, to have a normal life. Began a normal job teaching and quit soon after as my past caught up to me.”

Jake shook his head slowly. “You are even more incredible than I ever thought before. Maybe it is no wonder I fell in love with you. You are perfect.”

I smiled then prompted Jake once more “So, groceries and essentials?”

“Come here and help me order,” he murmured, as he sat on the floor and pulled me onto his knee. We spent several minutes playing the happy couple as we browsed stock and picked out the various things we needed to survive. It was momentarily peaceful, but soon my phone was buzzing, notifying me that I had not yet escaped from my obligations to Duskwood.

“Fuck off,” I groaned out loud.

Jake grinned. “They won’t give up, you know.”

“Can I say ‘Be right back, after I have done some fine shagging?’ I questioned innocently, partly serious. I didn’t think it deserved the belly laugh it got from Jake.

“No you cannot!”

“But it would be conversation stopping!” I pointed out

“Or rumour starting!” He countered. “Fine,” I sighed. I opened the Groupchat and once again ignored the messages to pen my own.

GROUPCHAT

MC: I am going to get groceries. I need food and sleep. I promise I’ll talk to you later.

MC is offline.

“Take this, before I throw it.” I asked Jake then headed for the car, with Jake following close behind. “Once you go into the store, you take this back. I’ll field their comments. You focus on the task at hand, but I need to know I can track you if something does go wrong.”

I nodded weakly. It was taking some getting used to, having someone so concerned for my safety...and my own feelings of having someone I cared for more than myself.

“Jake. I love you.” I murmured quietly, partially trying not to be heard. Jake smiled, kissed my lips softly, then pulled on his mask and handed me my cap. “Time to cover up again, my Princess, and never forget, I love you more than life itself.”

Part 29

[freudensteins-monster]

You Say “Mad Scientist” Like It’s A Bad Thing

Based on my own tumblr post: 3am thoughts… Has anyone written Jane Foster as a mad scientist, I mean like a villain?

Chaotic neutral Darcy and Jane featuring modern/human SHIELD Agent Bucky.

Available on AO3.

Content Warnings: Implied/Referenced Torture, Aftermath of Torture, Amnesia, Memory Suppressing Machine | The Chair (Marvel), Dark, Sort Of, Ambiguous/Open Ending...

In a world full of megalomaniacs, straight up supervillains, and fricking aliens, mad scientists were a dime a dozen. Dr Foster was one such scientist who was quickly moving from mildly irritating to SHIELD’s Most Wanted.

Dr Foster’s gimmick was portals. She first gained international attention when she claimed responsibility (via an untraceable Instagram account, @dr-mthrfckng-foster) for diverting LA’s 405 to a dirt road in rural Australia. Then came a string of impossible robberies – bank vaults and the private collections of the world's richest assholes stripped bare in seconds. Then she created a portal that caused an Indonesian typhoon to bear down on Wall Street, flooding the trading floor. And then she robbed a top secret government black site of some classified technology.

And that’s when Director Nick Fury made finding and stopping Dr Foster SHIELD’s number one priority.

Agent James Barnes had been stuck on suspension for two weeks, with two more to go, and was itching to get back into the field. He had way too much free time on his hands: he’d caught up on his sleep and everything in his Netflix queue. He’d cleaned out his refrigerator, done laundry and enough meal prep to last him until next month. He’d caught up with his family, cleaned his whole goddamn apartment twice, and now he was well and truly bored.

He was out for his fifth run of the week (and it wasn’t even Wednesday) when his work phone rang.

“Thank Christ,” he muttered before answering.

“Barnes.”

“It’s Hill. How’s the arm?”

“Fine,” Barnes grunted, rotating his metal shoulder irritably. “You got something for me?”

“Are you up for a recon mission?”

Usually he would have protested. He headed tactical units. He was an elite ‘first through the door’ kind of field agent. Not that he couldn’t be stealthy and patient - he’d been a sniper in the army for christ's sake - but going unnoticed in public was kind of a problem for him these days; he’d have to wear jackets and gloves in the middle of August to hide his prosthetic for starters.

On the other hand, his mother had been calling him every second day to feed him carb-heavy meals in exchange for help around the house, all while dropping not-so-subtle hints that he should start dating again. Requests for more grandchildren couldn’t be far behind.

“I’ll be there in thirty.”

Thirty-five minutes later Agent Barnes was back at his desk at SHIELD HQ perusing through the increasingly large file of one Dr Jane Foster. 

She had been a brilliant student and had earned a PhD in Astrophysics from Culver University by the age of 25. By all accounts she should have been one of the leading researchers in her field, and if doctoral programs handed out superlatives Dr Foster’s would have been “Most Likely To Win a Nobel Prize By 30”. 

Unfortunately for Dr Foster, and the rest of the world, she had been forced from that path by a sexist tenured professor who publicly denounced her theories, and the woman herself, as crazy, discredited her published work, and used his influence to ensure she was denied all of the more lucrative research grants.

When federal agents went to interview him after the 405 incident they found his office looking like a tornado had gone through it and the professor himself was nowhere to be found. A few weeks later he stumbled into a US Embassy in Russia after being found wandering in from the forests outside Vladivostok, half mad and still decrying the evils of allowing women into scientific fields.

He had been placed into witness protection and promptly admitted into a psychiatric facility under his new name, and was being monitored by several undercover agents in case Dr Foster felt like punishing him some more. 

Anyone else who had a part in ruining Dr Foster’s legitimate career was also under surveillance, as was her mother in London, a terrified ex-boyfriend in Boston, and a handful of known associates, though Dr Foster hadn’t been in contact with any of them in years.

SHIELD and other federal agencies had tried the usual methods of tracking down a rogue mad scientist. They tried to find out where her base of operations was, firstly by looking for any properties in her name, but Dr Foster had been a broke student with an impressive amount of debt (until the day she decided to wipe it, and the rest of Culver’s student debt, out). So if she had property it would definitely not be in her legal name and all but impossible to trace back to her. Then they tried to look for drains on the powergrid. However she managed to generate her portals - SHIELD scientists still hadn’t figured that out - it surely had to be using huge amounts of electricity. So far they’d found six grow labs and two server rooms running illegal god-knows-what, but no Dr Foster.

Agent Barnes read the file twice, reviewed all the transcripts of the interviews with her known associates, and came to one very important conclusion: she had an accomplice. 

As smart as Dr Foster was there was nothing in her academic history to suggest that she had a background in computer science that would account for the notable hacks and the untraceable nature of her activities. To add to that several interviewees had made passing remarks about her not having a cell phone for most of her academic career, and how she had zero interest in social media.

Two days later, after getting the okay for a field trip from Hill, Agent Barnes made his way to Culver University to speak to anyone who had even the vaguest recollection of Dr Foster. And that’s how he learnt about the intern.

He’d started by dropping by one of the physics labs where Dr Foster had spent most of her time, and by pure chance met a doctoral candidate who remembered her, and her intern.

“I think her name was Darlene. Glasses. Always on her phone.”

…which led him to the academic advisor who put the two of them together...

“Darcy. Darcy Lewis. She was actually a PoliSci major but left it too late and Dr Foster’s internship was the only one available. She had only been working with her for a few weeks before… before Dr Foster’s funding was revoked and she was asked to leave.”

...who pointed him to one of Darcy’s former professors…

“Average student. Good debater. Often late, and always had a coffee in her hand.”

...who gave him a few names of some former classmates who might remember her…

“Not the worst person to be stuck with on a group assignment. Pulled her weight. Obsessed with her stupid iPod.”

“I swear she lived off pop tarts and coffee. And not Starbucks either. Some stupid hipster chain.”

“Deja Brew. Serious problem. Went through one of those loyalty punch cards every week. Always complained about having to go home for the holidays and resort to big chain coffee shops.”

...which had him driving out to Darcy Lewis’ hometown, located a few hours south of Roanoke, Virginia, stopping first at the local high school to speak to the school principal…

“She’d always been good with computers but wasn’t allowed to use them at home for some reason so she spent a lot of time at the local library using theirs. We had to suspend her once. One of her classmates accused her of accepting payment from other students to hack the school’s records and alter their grades. Their grades were definitely getting altered, but we couldn’t get any concrete proof it was her.”

...who was able to find a photo of 16 year old Darcy in an old yearbook and told him what bar he could find Darcy’s mother in.

“She knows not to come to me if she’s in the shit, because I would call the cops in a heartbeat. Especially after that stunt she pulled before she went off to college…”

“What stunt was that, Ms Bennett?” Agent Barnes asked patiently, hoping he wouldn’t have to enable her alcoholism to get some useful information. 

“I made some mistakes, okay,” she slurred defensively. “I was having an affair with my boss. Don’t know how Darcy knew. She told her stepfather but he didn’t believe her. Then a few weeks later we went out to dinner for my boss’s birthday... all the tv’s in the bar start showing security camera footage of us falling into offices and motel rooms. Took her all of a minute to ruin two marriages and a law firm.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied diplomatically. “Is there anyone she could turn to for help? Her father, perhaps.”

“He died when she was about twelve. They were as thick as thieves,” she recalled with a tinge of bitterness.

“Was there any place that was special to them? Someone she might go to ground?”

She shook her head. “He used to rent this old cabin near the Catskills off a buddy of his every other year. Winter or summer, Darcy loved it. But it's long gone. Forest fire, I think, the year before his accident.”

Back in his car Agent Barnes reviewed the data points.

Dr Foster had a base of operations somewhere. Had to be private, and as best SHIELD could guess it must be off the grid and Dr Foster must be generating her own power.

Dr Foster was a space nut at heart, and while an abandoned observatory might be too much to ask for, she’d probably want somewhere with minimal light pollution.

And while they could portal anywhere, neither of them spoke any other languages and had no familiarity with any international locations, so they were most likely still State-side. (Dr Foster’s mother had moved to London when Jane was twenty-three, but she’d never found the time to visit.)

Miss Lewis was familiar with the Catskills area. A base of operations there could be very isolated.

Dr Foster was most likely building and modifying her own own equipment so she had to be able to access materials. Sure, she could portal to her local hardware store, but having Darcy drive into the nearest town for supplies would attract less attention.

Miss Lewis had an addiction to coffee procured from Deja Brew, a small hipster chain with only a handful of locations along on the east coast. While she could have found another way to get her caffeine fix, people were creatures of habit.

Miss Lewis was also known for stocking up on poptarts. In one of the only images of the other side of one of Dr Foster’s portals there was what appeared to be, if one squinted, a box of limited edition pop tarts on a counter.

He plugged it all into SHIELD fancy search engines and got a few results back. The most promising was an abandoned ski chalet turned abandoned research station halfway up a mountain, an hour drive away from an up and coming tourist town, whose main street hosted a Deja Brew cafe. They also had a small mom and pop hardware store, as well as a post office, and a grocery store that had still been selling pumpkin pie pop tarts around the time Dr Foster’s portal had been caught on camera.

Agent Barnes came to with a groan. The flesh of his shoulder where it met his prosthetic felt like it was on fire, and he was pretty sure he could smell fried wiring.

The research station had come up in SHIELD’s initial search for a potential mad scientist's lair, but had been dismissed for not using any power and for not sending back any heat signature readings. Perhaps they’d found a way to fool the scanners. Or maybe they just weren’t in the day the readings were taken. Whatever the reason, Agent Barnes had a good feeling about it. He filled his tank up at the nearest gas station and got on the highway, forgoing checking in at the Triskelion on his way past in favour of driving all night. He’d call Hill when he had something solid. 

** *** **

“Fuck…”

He willed his eyes open and came face to face with Darth Vader.

Barnes reeled back at the sound of the synthesized voice. “Who sent you? Who do you work for?! The Rebellion?” 

“What the fuck!”

It took him until his eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lighting to realise that Darth Vader was wearing a grey knit dress and black tights. Darth Vader laughed and ripped off his mask to reveal a smiling bespectacled brunette underneath. The accomplice. Darcy Lewis.

“Sorry, I was just messing with you, dude,” she teased, tossing the mask over her shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to do that. But seriously, who do you work for? Who knows you’re here?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he lied. “I was just camping in the woods, man. I saw the lights and decided to check it out,” he rambled in a lazy Canadian accent. “How the hell did I get here? Did you electrocute me?”

He used his not-quite fake panic to test the limits of his restraints. He’d been strapped into some sort of junkstore barber chair, with thick metal shackles locked around his wrists, ankles, and chest. His metal arm could probably make quick work of them but the damn thing was not responding. His panic became a little less fake.

“Just camping, huh?” she echoed back with a raised eyebrow, leaning forward to the point where Barnes couldn’t avoid getting a good look down her top and the 15-carat pink diamond (worth about 40mil and reported stolen in one of Dr Foster’s vault heists two months ago) hanging around her neck. “So that wasn’t you poking around town this morning?” she asked pointedly, drawing his attention to the wall of monitors he hadn’t noticed showing various street cameras around the town. “I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, dude. You got into town bright and early in a beat up looking truck with plates that didn’t exist two weeks ago and started flashing my yearbook photo around. So, who do you work for?”

He levelled his best steely-eyed agent stare at her and switched back to his native pissed-off Brooklynite accent. “I ain’t tellin you shit, sweetheart.”

“C’mon now,” she cooed, taking a seat on his lap. “Who do you work for? FBI? Interpol? SHIELD? Crawford County Library Services? Listen, I was totally going to return Eat Pray Love, but we had to skip town in a hurry and it got lost in the move. I will totally pay to replace it.”

Years of training (and regular poker games with the Black Widow) had taught him to school his features, even if that last one threw him for a loop.

“Nothing? You sure you don’t want to talk to me? Fine,” she whined. “Jane!”

It was only then that Barnes switched his focus from his captor to his surroundings and realised that there was another occupant puttering about on the other side of the large telescope that took pride of place on a hydraulic platform underneath the research station's retractable roof. The infamous Dr Foster.

“Jane!”

“What?” came the irritated reply. 

“Come over here and practise your monologue. Look! You’ve got a captive audience and everything!” she announced, laughing at her own joke. 

“I don’t have time, Darcy,” the disgruntled voice argued. 

“Hey! I spent two days writing up that monologue, the least you can do is spend twenty-five minutes reading it out loud so I can make sure it doesn’t make you sound too much like a cartoon villain.” 

“Twenty-five minutes?! Are you kidding me?” Dr Foster stormed out from behind the telescope to wave a wrench at her assistant. She looked less put together than her ID photo, appearing to be long overdue for both a shower and a nap. “I’m in the middle of something. I’ve almost figured the problem with the mobile portal generator, and… Darcy, why is there a man tied to a chair in my lab?”

“This man?” Darcy snorted, taking Barnes’s chin in her hands and wiggling it about. “This is the intruder. You remember the intruder alert, like fifteen minutes ago? Lots of flashing lights and alarms? Well, I found this guy passed out on the lawn. For most people, hitting my force field would be like getting lightly tased, but this bad boy,” she continued, tapping a fingernail against his dead metal arm, “meant you ended up getting the full 50,000 volts to your heart. Thanks for letting me practice my CPR by the way,” she added with a wink.

“It’s not a force field, Darcy. It’s a glorified invisible pet fence, upsized and modified so it reacts to the electrical impulses in the human body.”

“It keeps people out; I’m calling it a force field.”

This was definitely the weirdest interrogation he had endured by a large margin, Barnes mused as he followed their bickering like a pingpong game.

“Who is he, Darcy?” Jane sighed wearily. “What is he doing here?”

“Fiiiine. Janey, meet Agent James Barnes of SHIELD.”

“What?! SHIELD?!!”Jane screeched. “Why did you bring him here?”

“He found us, Jane. What was I supposed to do?”

“Something other than bringing him inside our secret hideout.”

“I am not killing him and burying him in the woods; I just did my nails.”

Jane scowled, turning the full force of her overtired fury on James. “Why can’t you SHIELD issue jackbooted thugs just leave me alone? Can’t you understand how important my work is? I am challenging the very foundations of modern science - of the laws of the universe! I am on the verge of a breakthrough! And if you or Nick Fury think you can stop me, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Before his mouth could betray him and ask how the hell they knew his boss Darcy spoke up.

“A little off script, but I like the energy, Jane. Very much the mad scientist vibe we’re going for. But next time, try not to make it so personal – we’ve got to hide the target of our frustrations, remember? Instead of saying “SHIELD” say “government”, instead of saying “Nick Fury” say “president”.”

“Right, right,” Jane nodded absently, tapping the side of her head with the wrench she had just been waving around like a weapon.

“Now, go back to work. I’ll handle this.”

“Okay, thanks Darce. Oh, have you seen my soldering iron around?”

“It’s in the locked cabinet because you’re not allowed to use it unsupervised, you know that. Gimme ten minutes, I’ll bring it to you.”

Jane wandered back to her side of the observatory, muttering under her breath, leaving Barnes at Darcy’s mercy.

“She’s not the criminal mastermind here, is she?” he wondered, his eyes roaming over the strange cupcake of a woman in his lap.

“Not exactly,” Darcy admitted. “I mean, it’s not like she set out to be a mad scientist. I kind of rebranded her after that little freeway incident.”

“Rebranded?”

“Yeah. She was in a bad way after New Mexico and then when the first live test of her portal engine went a little sideways I didn’t want dudebros on the internet coming after her, so I changed the narrative. Instead of ‘girl scientist makes mistake, should stick to making sandwiches’ I changed it to ‘Dr Foster, genius astrophysicist, causes chaos, totally on purpose.’”

“And all those robberies?”

“I may have encouraged that. I’m all for sticking it to the one percenters, and Jane needed to fund her experiments somehow,” she added with a shrug.

“So Jane’s the absent-minded professor and you’re the brains behind this operation, huh?”

Darcy laughed and slid out of his lap causing a distracting amount of friction. “I’m really not. So you, Coulson, and Fury should be really, really scared.”

“How do you know those names?” he had to know, cover be damned.

“You don’t know? Of course you don’t,” she huffed. “Fury and his clearance levels. I’d tell you to ask him about New Mexico sometime, but you’re not going to be able to.”

“Why not? What are you going to do to me?” Barnes fretted, unable to ignore the sinking feeling that he was in big trouble; she wouldn’t have told him anything if she intended on letting him walk out of here.

“Oh, relax. I’m not going to kill you. I’m just gonna scramble your brain a little.”

She circled his chair, flipping switches as she went, and something behind him started humming ominously.

“So, admittedly I didn’t major in hard sciences. I had an ex who did, but he also fancied himself something of a cat burglar, so when he went to jail I liberated all his college textbooks and gave myself a crash course in electrical engineering. And it helped that those HYDRA designs were really easy to follow.”

“HYDRA?” Barnes cursed.

HYDRA had been the scientific branch of the Nazi regime and believed that discovery required (human) experimentation. They were supposedly eradicated at the end of WWII but Project Paperclip saved some of HYDRA’s greatest minds, giving them immunity in exchange for their genius. If Foster or, more worryingly, Darcy had aligned themselves with some surviving HYDRA faction the results could be catastrophic.

“Yeah, I found them in that SHIELD warehouse when we recovered Jane’s stolen research.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They just call it ‘The Chair’, which is totally not creepy at all,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And this is the Halo,” she added, drawing Barnes’s attention to the whirring circle of metal that was lowering itself over his head.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, renewing his efforts to break free of his restraints. “Get that piece of scrap metal the fuck away from me!”

“Hey! Don’t mock my work. It may look like I raided a junkyard for the components - and I did - but my welding game is on point. It’s totally safe. Mostly safe. It’s just going to send focused electrical pulses to your…” she paused to consult some smudged writing on her hand, “hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.”

The Halo stopped moving and two metal plates extended, pressing against the sides of his head, holding it like a vice.

“Please… don’t do this,” he begged as she approached him with a rubber mouthguard.

“C’mon, open wide. You don’t want to end up braindead and unable to chew your food,” she jested, waving the thing in front of him. “Oh, just one question before I fry your brain,” she added just when he was about to give in. “How did you find us? I was so careful,” she whined.

Agent Barnes, terrified as he was, still managed to look smug at his small, short lived success. “Deja Brew coffee.”

“Curses!” she wailed theatrically. “Betrayed by my one true love!” 

Darcy huffed and quickly returned her attention to the matter at hand. 

“Thanks for that,” she said with a smile as she forced him to bite down on the mouthguard. “I’ll know better for next time. Start making my own coffee at home… but it never tastes as good,” she muttered to herself.

She stepped away from him and bent down to pick up a similarly frankensteined industrial remote with long wires snaking back to the chair and a clichéd big red button at its centre. He began struggling anew, screaming around the foul tasting rubber, begging for mercy.

She took great delight in his terrified expression and put on her best supervillain voice, “Give my regards to Nick Fury.”

Nick Fury observed his agent from behind a two way mirror as he sat behind a table in an interrogation room. Barnes had been sitting there for the past hour as still as a statue, except for his unfocused eyes which flitted about the room. 

In true horror movie fashion, Agent Barnes’ screams echoed down the mountainside like an avalanche, sending animals fleeing in terror for miles around.

** *** **

Local LEO’s had found him wandering aimlessly down a stretch of highway just outside the ruins of what had previously been Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, and ten minutes after they ran his prints Agent Romanoff had been on a quinjet to collect him. She’d been directed to the nearest hospital and found him sitting up on a bed but not responding or reacting to any of the medical staff as they buzzed around him. Agent Romanoff took a cautious step forward and held her breath as his unfocused eyes settled on her. 

“Hello James...”

An excruciating minute later the veil lifted and he attempted a smile. 

“Hey Tasha.”

She’d brought him back to base and dragged him to SHIELD’s medical bay for more tests - not that Barnes put up much of a fight, in fact he was terrifyingly compliant. The SHIELD doctors confirmed what the New Mexico doctors suspected: the bruising and electrical burns around his temples and his memory loss were indicative of some back alley version of electroshock therapy. His memories should come back in time - how long was anybody’s guess - but for the moment Agent James Barnes had no memory of the last four weeks.

Fury picked up a tablet with depressingly little information on its screen and stepped into the room, waiting for Barnes eyes to focus on him before taking a seat. 

“Agent Barnes.”

“Director.”

“I know you’re probably sick of questions by now, but I have a few more for you, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah, sure…”

It rankled Fury to no end how meak and passive Barnes seemed. Heaven help him, he missed the argumentative sonofabitch.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being called into your office.”

“What for?”

“I punched Rumlow.”

“Why?”

“He was bragging about taking advantage of a drunk woman at a club when he was last on leave. He didn’t like me calling out his shitty behaviour. He punched me, I punched him back.”

Fury sighed. He hadn't gotten a straight answer out of Barnes at the time of the incident and he couldn’t feel happy about getting one now. 

“Do you remember what happened once I called you into my office?”

His brow creased and his eyes zipped back and forth like the carriage of a printer as his mind searched for the elusive memory.

“You suspended me?”

“I did,” Fury confirmed. “For a whole month. But two weeks into it I pulled you in for a special assignment.”

Barnes tensed, shrinking in on himself. The confusion about his lost time seemed to be the only thing that got under his skin, but only when someone brought it up. Once the moment passed he forgot to be concerned about it.

Fury took pity on him. “For the past two weeks I had you running down leads on the whereabouts of Dr Jane Foster.”

“The scientist with the portals? Did she do this to me?”

“It’s not exactly her MO, but then again no law enforcement agency’s ever managed to have a confrontation with her. Never had the chance. Those portals of hers let her keep at a distance. You might have been the first person to have a face to face with her, but I can’t confirm it because I don’t know where the hell you were when this happened,” he grumbled, letting a little more of his usual exasperated tone filter through. “You missed check in by two days. The last we heard from you, you were at Culver running down leads on what you said was a potential accomplice. We found your car in Tromso, Norway, a day after you were found on the side of a road in New Mexico. You don’t appear on any security footage or speed cameras in the area. There’s no activity on your work or personal credit cards. Your activity logs on our highly secure system for the last two weeks are nonexistent, as are your call logs on your work phone. Even the messages you sent Romanoff from your personal phone complaining about your assignment have since been deleted - from her phone too. She’s real pissed about it. As far as your digital footprint is concerned you disappeared from a gas station outside Roanoke, Virginia, last week - do you know how weird it is to know you were headed out towards a place called Roanoke only to up and vanish?” He sighed at Barnes’ painful silence. “Is there anything you can remember, anything at all about Dr Foster or her accomplice? Anything that will help us catch up to you without talking to everyone on campus to figure out what you discovered?”

Barnes’ brow creased in painful confusion.

“I think… I think I saw Darth Vadar.”

Director Fury blinked. “Right…” He took a deep breath to stop himself from venting his frustrations at Barnes, the sorry bastard looked like a kicked puppy as it was. Instead he got up and tapped the tablet against the metal tabletop harder than strictly necessary. “Well, I’ll just go put out a BOLO out for Darth Vadar then.”

“Okay,” Barnes murmured, and promptly zoned out again.

Agent Romanoff exited the viewing room looking uncharacteristically unsettled. 

“I want a full detail on him at all times,” Fury ordered as he stormed off towards the elevators. Hill had just stepped off and was looking even more grim than usual. “Until his memories come back he’s vulnerable, and once they do he’ll be a target.”

“I’ll get a STRIKE team on it. Not Rumlow’s.”

“Get another one along with any assets currently not on assignment. Flood that campus, interrogate everybody. I wanna know who the hell Dr Foster’s accomplice is, and I wanna know yesterday. Understood?”

“I think we might have more pressing concerns, sir,” Hill reported, tapping at her tablet as it beeped erratically. “Coulson’s said there’s an issue with the Tesseract. Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from it fifteen minutes ago.”

“NASA didn't authorise Selvig to test phase,” he grunted, taking the tablet from Hill.

“He wasn't testing it, he wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous advancement.”

“Motherfucker.”

[ka-writes]

——————

Notes: I had already started on the second chapter before I posted the first one, so don’t expect updates every day... I also had to do a lot of googling for this chapter.

——————

Chapter 1 in case you missed it:

——————

Inspired by:

Humans are Space Velociraptors

By:FreshRoses_InMyGarden_NeedTheRain

Some kids come from storks, others come from crashed spaceships

By: mmmajora

Home Again, Home Again

By: teeth_eater

All works can be found on Ao3

——————

Warnings: Cussing, needles, character conflicts, intentional poisoning, poisoning, Jaws reference

——————

“Humans are [and text here]”

Chapter 2: What is this, an interview?

Tommy was now restrained to a chair six feet away from the weird scientist alien. He had a dark brown lab coat with a fuzzy yellow sweater underneath, matched with black pants and black leather boots. His gold rimmed Harry Potter glasses slipped down his nose bridge a bit before he pushed it up and shuffled through papers. He wore a red beanie with a big whiff of his curly chocolate hair. His skin was a weird translucent grayish color with blue speckles decorating it. He had deep brown eyes with an odd electric blue circle outlining the pupil.

His tongue licked his finger as he turned the page. This was a habit that most of the weird teachers and counselors did. It always annoyed Tommy. This time fear was also mixed into that annoyance. His saliva was tinted blue and he had sharp teeth which immediately reminded him of a shark.

“You have shark teeth.” Tommy stated absentmindedly. Clearly, this caught the scientist alien off guard.

“I have what?” The alien asked, confused.

“Shark teeth.. ya know like the weird fish creatures that eat people.” Tommy started rambling causing the shark-alien to become even more confused and slightly alarmed. “I mean I think they eat people. That’s what the shark movie showed… what was its name, Jaws I think? I dunno, my foster mom freaked out in the middle of it and we went home. That lady was weird.. She made us wear itchy clothes and take weird photos before she sent me back to the group home.”

“What?..” The shark-alien asked. Tommy jumped a bit. He forgot he was rambling to a stranger. Alien stranger at that.

“Doesn’t matter.. What's the first question bitch-boy?” Tommy liked the way the alien jumped at the randomly timed insults.

“Er- right.. First off, what’s your name?” The shark-alien asked after collecting himself.

“Tommy Innit. Yours bitch-boy?” Tommy replied.

“Wilbur Soot. Stop calling me bitch-boy!” Wilbur huffed.

“Next question, bitch-boy!” Tommy emphasized the name, getting an even angrier expression in return. Wilbur’s weird blue circle flashed red for a second which caught Tommy off guard.

Wilbur took a shaky breath before asking the next question. “How old are you?”

“Old enough! I am a big man!” Tommy stated. Yet another thing that pissed him off.

“Age?” Wilbur asked, clearly irritated.

“18.” Wilbur raised a brow, “14.” Tommy huffed. His age should only be his business not some alien-bitch who didn’t even have his file.

“If you keep lying, I may have to get the truth serum from the back.” Wilbur half-heartedly threatened. Tommy, the big man that he is, did not get scared at that statement, only slightly unsettled which clearly showed on his face.

“Now, do you have a family?” Tommy tensed at the question. It was a touchy question and was not one that was asked often especially with his reputation.

“I am a big man. I don’t need a family to be great.” Tommy stated, happy with the answer. The alien-bitch shifted awkwardly.

“Right… What is your diet?”

“Umm.. I dunno, whatever I can find. I am allergic to nuts though..” Wilbur nodded in understanding and wrote things down in his notepad.

“What plants are poisonous to you?” Wilbur asked without looking up from his notes.

“Ermm, poison Ivy, poison oak… uh I think parts of rhubarb, and most wild berries. I am not sure other than that.” Wilbur nodded while adding bits to his notes.

“What was the place you lived like?” This time Wilbur glanced up to look at Tommy. This was again another touchy subject… How many times would this alien bitch get into the sad background?

“Shitty.” Tommy snapped. That was the only response the bitch was gonna get.

“Right.. Do you have music on Earth?”

Tommy scoffed, “Of course we have music, dumbass!”

“Can you tell me about the animals there?” Wilbur asked, almost hopeful.. which was weird. What was he hoping for?

“Erm I guess..” Tommy mumbled, trying to figure out where to start, “There’s a bunch of animals. Mainly on land. My favorite would be the cow.”

“What’s that?” Curiosity stained Wilbur’s face. This got Tommy excited; he was practically beaming as he started talking.

“Well they are these big ruminants that make milk and have horns. There are a bunch of types too like the highland cow, which obviously is the most poggers one. They are a Scottish breed with really long hair. I met one once, on a field trip his name was Henry.” Tommy rambled on for the next two and a half hours, jumping from topic to topic and explaining anything that wasn’t personal. He usually ended those paths with short insults.

——————

Wilbur hated to stop the kids' detailed story, but two and a half celestial hours had already passed, and Dream would be coming to check soon. Luckily, he had a couple new poisons that could pass off as a research development. He had even managed to send the distressed signal and no doubt Phil would already be there with the SBI craft ready to fly at any given moment.

“Alright Tommy.” His voice dropped to a serious tone causing the kid to stop his story of how he got poisoned by mushrooms on a camping trip. “You’re gonna have to trust me just for a bit. I am going to get you off the ship at the next stop but in the meantime I need you to tell me how allergic you’re to nuts.” The kid immediately tensed at the question.

“I am mainly allergic to tree nuts.. almonds being the worst. After a few minutes I can’t breathe properly and I usually pass out. The doctor said if I don’t get it treated within 15 minutes, death is most likely.” He took a moment to go through the information. The kid most likely has an anaphylaxis reaction to tree nuts. Meaning either he would have to know the exact time of landing and exactly where Phil was or he needed another poison that was less severe.

“Alright, here is what we’re gonna do. I have a chemical mixture that is similar to that of rattlesnake venom. I also have a chemical substance that numbs any pain you may feel. Side effects would include being very very tired and delirious over the next few days. Along with being knocked out for a good ten hours. To put it simply I am gonna fake poison you, in order to get you off the ship. It’s your choice if you’re willing to do it.” Wilbur paused to study the kid still restrained in front of him. It was odd how relaxed the kid seemed to be in a situation like this. He had no urge as far as Wilbur was aware, to fight against anything that happened. His complaints only being those that touched on personal matters. It was unsettling to say the least, and intrigued Wilbur. He really wanted to unravel the life the kid had lived before this and how he was actually dealing with the situation.

There was a long pause before the kid spoke, “I wouldn’t mind getting away from the weird smiley bitch.. plus you seem nice and to know what you’re doing so sure. Poison me bitch.” He said the last sentence with an enthusiasm Wilbur wasn’t expecting. He took a moment to rethink his plan, which was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Dream says you better have advanced in your stupid testing. Otherwise he’s gonna kick you off the ship at the next stop.” Stated the rather rude blazeling, Sapnap. The blazeling never liked Wilbur and made a point to argue against any advancements at meals. That led to Dream installing a new system of emails and Wilbur eating meals alone.

“Yea yea, it’s going!” He yelled through the metal door.

“Better be.” The blazeling snapped before making a non quiet track back to his quarters.

“Stupid blazeling.” Wilbur grumbled as he sorted through vials and picked up new needles and measured out the substances. “We are going to start with the anesthetic then move onto the poison.” He softly addressed Tommy.

Wilbur swiftly disinfected Tommy’s shoulder and gave the needle. He then gave the second needle. Immediately Tommy slumped over. Wilbur swiftly took off Tommy’s restraints and moved him on to the patient bed in the back corner of the room. After the transfer was done he clipped the body restraints around Tommy and waited for the alert signaling landing.

After about five minutes the light next to the door turned blue. He moved over to his seat and clipped on the safety belts. The light turned green and the ship shook momentarily before a thud could be felt. Quickly as Wilbur could, he emptied the needles into the waste bin and waited for his soon-to-be-ex-boss to arrive.

Dream stepped through the door and glanced around the room before heading to Wilbur for his report.

“Report.” The dreamon commanded.

“The subject's body would have gone through a painfully slow death and have multiple organ failures if I did not intervene. The chemical mixes used created a conflict in the patient’s body which resulted in the patient falling into exhaustion as they recovered.” He responded in a monotone tone. Dream looked over Tommy. He flinched back in disgust as Tommy grunted in his sleep.

“Is that all?” The dreamon questioned.

“No.” Wilbur swallowed down his panic, “This is the last testing I will be doing with this crew.” The dreamon scoffed.

“I am assuming you’re getting off at this planet?” Dream spit. Wilbur knew he absolutely hated when people left his crew as he saw it as a direct violation of his loyalty.

“Yes.” The phantom stated, keeping his even tone apparent. With that Dream stormed out cursing in Siestian. Somewhere in the mess of words he told Wilbur to get his things.

Without hesitation he grabbed his bag from his quarters, which was held in a small room that branches off the lab. He half sprinted down the short hallway and straight to the bed Tommy was on. He swiftly unrestrained the human and sat him up. He slipped on boots and gloves then tied a cloak around the kid. He pulled the hood up and carried him off of the closest exit. There were faint yells from Dream down the hallway and reassurances from the only two beings that put up with him. And with that Wilbur was off to find the only craft he had ever called home. The SBI ship.

——————

Chapter 2- End

Words~ 1774

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End Notes: ‘‘twas to lazy to reread... sorry for minor mistakes. Also suggestions are always appreciated!! Please reblog...

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Chapter 3:

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Wilbur:

[1962dude420-blog]

Today we remember the passing of James Garner who Died: July 19, 2014  in Los Angeles, California

Garner was born James Scott Bumgarner on April 7, 1928 in Denver, Oklahoma (now a part of Norman, Oklahoma). His parents were Weldon Warren Bumgarner, a widower, and Mildred Scott (Meek), who died five years after his birth. His older brothers were Jack Garner (1926–2011) and Charles Bumgarner (1924-1984), a school administrator. His family was Methodist. After their mother's death, Garner and his brothers were sent to live with relatives. Garner was reunited with his family in 1934, when Weldon remarried.

Garner's father remarried several times. Garner came to hate one of his stepmothers, Wilma, who beat all three boys (especially him). He said that his stepmother also punished him by forcing him to wear a dress in public. When he was 14 years old, he fought with her, knocking her down and choking her to keep her from killing him in retaliation. She left the family and never returned. His brother Jack later commented, "She was a damn no-good woman". Garner's last stepmother was Grace, whom he said he loved and called "Mama Grace", and felt that she was more of a mother to him than anyone else had been.

After the war, Garner joined his father in Los Angeles and enrolled at Hollywood High School, where he was voted the most popular student. A high school gym teacher recommended him for a job modeling Jantzen bathing suits. It paid well ($25 an hour), but in his first interview for the Archives of American Television, he said he hated modeling; he soon quit and returned to Norman. He played football and basketball at Norman High School, and competed on the track and golf teams. However, he dropped out in his senior year. In a 1976 Good Housekeeping magazine interview, he admitted, "I was a terrible student and I never actually graduated from high school, but I got my diploma in the Army."

Shortly after his father's marriage to Wilma broke up, his father moved to Los Angeles, leaving Garner and his brothers in Norman. After working at several jobs he disliked, Garner worked as a merchant mariner in the United States Merchant Marine at age 16 near the end of World War II. He liked the work and his shipmates, but he suffered from chronic seasickness.

Garner enlisted in the California Army National Guard, serving his first 7 months in California. He then went to Korea for 14 months, as a rifleman in the 5th Regimental Combat Team during the Korean War, then part of the 24th Infantry Division. He was wounded twice, first in the face and hand by shrapnel from a mortar round, and the second time in the buttocks from friendly fire from U.S. fighter jets as he dived into a foxhole. Garner received the Purple Heart in Korea for the first wound. He qualified for a second Purple Heart (eligibility requirement: "As the result of friendly fire while actively engaging the enemy"), but he did not actually receive it until 1983, 32 years after the event.

In 1954, Paul Gregory, a friend whom Garner had met while attending Hollywood High School, persuaded Garner to take a nonspeaking role in the Broadway production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, where he was able to study Henry Fonda night after night. During the week of Garner's death, TCM broadcast most of his movies, introduced by Robert Osborne, who said that Fonda's gentle, sincere persona rubbed off on Garner, greatly to Garner's benefit.

Garner subsequently moved to television commercials and eventually to television roles. In 1955, Garner was considered for the lead role in the Western series Cheyenne, but that role went to Clint Walker because the casting director could not reach Garner in time (according to Garner's autobiography). Garner wound up playing an Army officer in the 1955 Cheyenne pilot titled "Mountain Fortress." His first film appearances were in The Girl He Left Behind and Toward the Unknown in 1956.

In 1957, he had a supporting role in the TV anthology series episode on Conflict entitled "Man from 1997," portraying Maureen (Gloria Talbott)'s brother "Red"; the show stars Jacques Sernas as Johnny Vlakos and Charlie Ruggles as elderly Mr. Boyne, a librarian from 1997, and involved a 1997 Almanac that was mistakenly left in the past by Boyne and found by Johnny in a bookstore. The series' producer Roy Huggins noted in his Archive of American Television interview that he subsequently cast Garner as the lead in Maverick due to his comedic facial expressions while playing scenes in "Man from 1997" that were not originally written to be comical. He changed his last name from Bumgarner to Garner after the studio had credited him as "James Garner" without permission. He then legally changed it upon the birth of his first child, when he decided she had too many names.

Nominated for 15 Emmy Awards during his television career, Garner received the award in 1977 as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (The Rockford Files) and in 1987 as executive producer of Promise. For his contribution to the film and television industry, Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 1990, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame that same year. In February 2005, he received the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role that year, for The Notebook. When Morgan Freeman won that prize for his work in Million Dollar Baby, Freeman led the audience in a sing-along of the original Maverick theme song, written by David Buttolph and Paul Francis Webster.

Garner was a strong Democratic Party supporter. From 1982, Garner gave at least $29,000 to Federal campaigns, of which over $24,000 was to Democratic Party candidates, including Dennis Kucinich (for Congress in 2002), Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and various Democratic committees and groups.

On August 28, 1963, Garner was one of several celebrities to join Martin Luther King Jr. in the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom". In his autobiography, Garner recalled sitting in the third row listening to King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

For his role in the 1985 CBS miniseries Space, the character's party affiliation was changed from Republican as in the book to reflect Garner's personal views. Garner said, "My wife would leave me if I played a Republican."

There was an effort by California Democratic party leaders, led by state Senator Herschel Rosenthal, to persuade Garner to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor of California in the 1990 election. However, future United States Senator and former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein received the nomination instead, losing to Republican Pete Wilson in the election

Garner was married to Lois Josephine Fleischman Clarke, whom he met at a party in 1956. They married 14 days later on August 17, 1956. "We went to dinner every night for 14 nights. I was just absolutely nuts about her. I spent $77 on our honeymoon, and it about broke me." According to Garner, "Marriage is like the Army; everyone complains, but you'd be surprised at the large number of people who re-enlist." His wife was Jewish.

When Garner and Clarke married, her daughter Kim from a previous marriage was seven years old and recovering from polio. Garner had one daughter with Lois: Greta "Gigi" Garner. In an interview in Good Housekeeping with Garner, his wife, and two daughters, conducted at their home, and published in March 1976, Gigi's age was given as 18 and Kim's as 27.

In 1970, Garner and his wife briefly lived separately for three months. In late 1979, Garner again separated from his wife (around the time The Rockford Files stopped filming), splitting his time between living in Canada and "a rented house in the Valley". The two resumed living together in September 1981, and remained married for the rest of his life. Garner said that the separations were not caused by marital problems, instead stating that he simply needed to spend time alone in order to recover from the stress of acting. Garner died less than a month before their 58th wedding anniversary.

Garner's knees became a chronic problem during the filming of The Rockford Files in the 1970s, with "six or seven knee operations during that time". In 2000, he underwent knee replacement surgery for both of them.

On April 22, 1988, Garner had quintuple bypass heart surgery. Though he recovered rapidly, he was advised to stop smoking. Garner quit smoking 17 years later.

Garner underwent surgery on May 11, 2008, following a severe stroke he had suffered two days earlier. His prognosis was reported to be "very positive". Garner was a private and introverted man, according to family and friends, On July 19, 2014, police and rescue personnel were summoned to Garner's Los Angeles-area home, where they found the actor dead at the age of 86. He had suffered a "massive" heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. He had been in poor health since his stroke in 2008.

Longtime friends Tom Selleck (who worked with Garner on The Rockford Files), Sally Field (who worked with Garner in Murphy's Romance) and Clint Eastwood (who guest-starred with Garner on Maverick and starred in Space Cowboys) reflected on his death. Selleck said, "Jim was a mentor to me and a friend, and I will miss him." Field said, "My heart just broke. There are few people on this planet I have adored as much as Jimmy Garner. I cherish every moment I spent with him and relive them over and over in my head. He was a diamond." Eastwood said, "Garner opened the door for people like Steve McQueen and myself."

[sigmadecay]

You said you can info dump about Jonestown massacre? I'm here to learn about Jonestown massacre.

OHOHOHO YES

okay so if I start from Jim Jones’ early life this is literally gonna take me hours to write and probably take you forever to read so I will try to cliffnote the context of....y’know, his life

He didn’t have super present or even very parental parents, his mother worked a lot & his father was a disabled WWI vet. A neighbor took him to church w her family on Sundays and that began his interest in religion. He went to different churches all the time to see what they were about but had a particular interest in the Pentecostal church, it was loud & interactive & joyful but they did get a bad rep for “speaking in tongues”

Jim married his wife Marceline when he was 17 or 18 and she was like 20-21. She was working as a nurse in a hospital that Jim did custodial work in while he was trying to get himself through school. I have a lot of thoughts about Marceline Jones and most of them are “she deserved better” but we will come back to Marceline later.

Fast forward fast forward and Jim & Marcy have a number of kids, their “rainbow family” which consists of one bio child and a number of adopted children I think?? Listen in my defense he ended up with nine (!!! NINE) kids and they’re hard to keep track of but I know Stephan was their biological son and they adopted Jim Jr. who was black and Lew & Suzanne who were Korean which was a bigass deal at the time. More kids cropped up over the course of things but y’know. When Jim founded the Peoples Temple he got the MLK Jr award for racial equality because his church was the first fully integrated church at least in Indiana which was fucking nuts at the time??? Lots of people liked him. It appeared that he was doing good things.

And then shit like faith healings started where he would stage religious healings from cancer and shit and his congregation began regarding him as a deity. Someone would be blessed and would spit out a “tumor” (a piece of chicken liver) or the woman in the wheelchair who got up and walked turned out to be Jim’s secretary. Completely bogus nonsense, but it was a good, integrated church and they all thought he was a good person.

So, (and I’m leaving out details here sorry) Jim starts teasing like an escape to a “promised land” type deal. And he goes to a bunch of places looking for one—he spends time in Brazil especially—until finally settling on Guyana. The Guyanese govt was excited to have Americans coming bc they were at war with Venezuela and it was...sort of like insurance, but yeah. They gave the Peoples Temple a couple hundred acres in the middle of basically the fucking rainforest. And it was touted as like this socialist utopia and shit. It’s work but there’s housing and you grow your own food, and it seemed nice! Especially for people who were so disillusioned with the government and racial inequality. So they move out to Guyana and start to build houses, and shit is pretty alright at first, but...The soil isn’t fertile and almost no food actually grows. The hours are long and the work is backbreaking, not to mention the HEAT, but it’s like, deal-with-able until Jim Jones gets there. At this point Jones is like completely totally paranoid and he’s losing his grip on reality. He’s been doing drugs for years and his sermons have gone from “the US government is bad because it’s capitalist and racist” to “the US government is literally plotting to kill us.”

Some people managed to get out, and formed a group called the “concerned relatives.” They were, you guessed it, concerned relatives of the members who’d been whisked off to the Guyanese wilderness. Lots of people wrote off their concerns because of how many people, namely politicians, liked Jim Jones for his work in racial equality, but the one guy who listened to them was Congressman Leo Ryan, who was by all accounts a Pretty Solid Dude. He didn’t think anything fishy was happening, necessarily, but his whole stance was “I hear you & your concerns, and we should check it out to put your mind at ease! :)”

By this point, life in the Temple is falling! the fuck! apart! Jim Jones has a PA system set to run 24/7 that either play a) recordings of past sermons or b) his announcements happening Right This Second. People work for like 16 hours a day, there are armed guards at the entrance and around the fields to keep people in, the housing is cramped and overcrowded and they do Not have enough food for the almost 1000 people there. They are also getting record low amounts of sleep because Jim Jones, Nutjob Extraordinaire, has gotten into the habit of blaring the air raid siren at god knows what our and calling all his followers into the pavilion for a White Night. Which is, if you can even fucking believe it, a PRACTICE MASS SUICIDE BY KOOL AID.

Talk about foreshadowing.

So anyway, Leo Ryan rolls up to the compound, relatives and an NBC camera crew in tow, and is like “hey what’s up! :)” Jim Jones has been COACHING PEOPLE to tell him how much they love it. It’s fucked up. But okay

So they put on this dinner and a show type deal for the congressman and all the visitors, and Marceline (remember Marceline?) gives them a whole tour and shows them her pride and joy, the school she’d built and helps teaches at, and the medical center, and the daycare, like Marceline ADORES children this cannot be overstated. There are about 300 children in Jonestown and she loves them with her whole heart. ANYWAY

And everyone is having a funky good time, except Jim Jones, whose sanity is coming unraveled like an old sweater and his 950-ish overworked undercompensated cult members

But as Leo Ryan is leaving, someone slips a note to one of the reporters, BEGGING him to get them out of there. And then someone else comes forward. And then another. There are like....maybe 10 people total that come forward? Jim Jones loses his mind, naturally, but Leo Ryan is still like “hey, 10 out of 950 isn’t bad at all! They just miss their families :)” and they get going.

Unfortunately, because the number of people traveling back to the US from Guyana is greater than before, and they came on a small plane, they’re all posted up at the Port Kaituma airstrip waiting for a second aircraft. And this is when shit gets fucking real.

Jim Jones secretly sends his Red Men (read: “guards” with shotguns) to the airstrip to kill everyone because they’re going to give their secrets to the CIA or whatever. So they fucking roll up in this trailer and...open fire. Leo Ryan is killed, an NBC cameraman is killed, some of the defectors and concerned relatives are killed, many of them are wounded.

The Red Men return to the compound and report back to Jones. And then he gets on the PA and tells everyone that the USA’s destruction of them is imminent. He lies and tells them that the pilot will be shot and the plane will go down, and the US government will come into the compound for retribution and kill their seniors and kidnap the children and rape the women. You can hear a recording of this on YouTube! It’s called the Jonestown death tape and it will absolutely ruin your day if you listen to it. Anyway.

People are panicking. It’s time for the real White Night. Jones gets a vat of Flavor-Aid (off brand Kool-Aid) filled with cyanide and narcotics and says “drink :)” and...everyone is...understandably afraid. They’re tired and exhausted and terrified and have no idea what’s true or not. One woman, Christine, argues and pleads for another solution, like running off to the Soviet Union. The entire rest of the compound shouts her down.

So, finally, people drink. Those who won’t, and young children, are injected with it. The death is not painless. People suffer for a long time, and move to the back of the line, lie down, and die. At a reception house in Georgetown, one of Jones’ aides kills her three children and then herself with a steak knife.

A handful of people get out. Maybe five are able to hide, and three of Jones’ sons are away at a basketball game in Georgetown while this is all going down, so they live.

Jim Jones does not drink the poison. Jim Jones shoots himself in the head, and his private nurse does the same.

Marceline Jones screamed, sobbed and struggled until every single child had died, hoping at least one of them would be spared. And when none were, she dried her eyes, resigned herself to her fate, and drank the Kool-Aid.

The 900-something bodies, about a third of which were children, began rotting in the tropical sun almost immediately. Many of them were decomposed beyond recognition by the time the US troops got there. Those unidentified are buried in a mass gravesite in...California, I think? It was the largest loss of American life not due to a natural disaster up until 9/11. The place is still there, though now it’s overgrown, and it’s just...haunting. There’s a number of documentaries on it (recommend) and if you have a really masochistic streak, the Port Kaituma airstrip shooting and the Jonestown death tape audio are both on YouTube the last I checked.

Thank you for indulging me my special interest, and I’m happy to expand on anything here or give more details :3

[writingbakery]

“an andorian, a bezoid, & a tessian walk into a bar”

another one of my favorite works is here! i originally wrote this for a different fandom, & rewrote it to fit here. i’m in love with this story, it’s one of my absolute favorites; please leave me feedback about it! a second part is in the works ✨ taglist; @secondhand-trash @redbeanteax @togasknifes

[some notes: denki is an andorian, a very tall race of aliens who are very nimble, skilled silent warriors when needed. hitoshi is a bezoid, from a mining planet, broad, tough, good with any sort of weapon but mainly guns, & you are a rare species called tessian, lil shapeshifting aliens that were often sold as slaves way back in the day on illegal black markets due to their skill! ULC means universal language chip, & the fleet is my version of the interspace police! ]

[pairing; poly!shinkami x reader]

[warnings; space jokes, cussing, dangerous scenarios, extremely Buff Aliens, violence, angst, fluff]

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

if you asked hitoshi shinsou what he would describe as a perfect day, he would tell you this: waking up in his quarters on the isla bella, the smooth glide of their ship through space flowing uninterrupted. there are no parts that need replacing, no angry merchants on their tail for undelivered merchandise, nothing but the clean quiet of the stars & the faint glow of space flitting through the small window by his bed, denki fast asleep against his chest. he’d card his fingers through the andorian’s glimmering gold hair, kiss along the slope of his nose & bask in his quiet beauty. that would be a perfect day for him; lounging in bed with his freakishly tall, giggly lover without a care in the world.

the last thing he’d consider to be a perfect day is running across the burning - literally in flames burning - sand of a deserted planet with two grogorians firing photon lasers at his skinny ass, skidding between the roaring flames of the ground beneath him & the sting of the lasers with denki screaming unintelligible commands & curses in his ear via comm. he’d consider that a bottom of the barrel kind of day.

you can probably guess which kind of day he’s having.

cursing under his breath as he slips between the burning flames, he does a cursory peek around the open desert, eyes searching for the opening that denki was furiously insisting “was right there, hitoshi shinsou for the love of god open those damn sultry bezoid eyes and LOOK” - he refuses to acknowledge the compliment, focused on the seven million fucking grains of sand & his boyfriends panicked voice in his ear when he finally spots it. a haze in the heavy heated air, almost like a mirage, a split in the vast landscape that led down somewhere dark, hidden. he lets out a sigh of relief loud enough for denki to hear, a sign that he’d found the entrance, before a photon blast skims just past his ear, leaving a three inch skidded burn across his cheek.

oh right. the grogorians.

stealing from the grogorians was the stupidest goddamn idea denki had ever come up with, which was saying a lot; once, he’d thought the seven suns on Naboor all rose & fell at the same time, shrieking in hitoshi’s ear about “planetary instability” & “socio-economic collapse” for a full ten minutes before he saw the suns rising & falling one after the other, in turns. that had been a field day, not one hitoshi was eager to repeat. the grogorians were fiercely territorial, completely tucked away from modern civilization & technology, & were at least seven feet tall. you could fit two shinsous in one of their chests; he wasn’t quite ready to see that up close.

ducking & weaving across the barren landscape, he slides through the slit in the ground with practiced ease; he’s run for his miserable life far too many times at this point. he can hear the grogorians shouting above the hole in the ground, too big for them to pass through, & he winces as his ULC - universal language chip, something kaminari had insisted he get implanted- deciphers the strangled words into curses he can understand. he’s really glad his parents are dead, because whatever blood curses the grogorians are spitting at his family tree sound awful.

the cavernous tunnels he’s slid down into are cool, spacious; coned lights illuminate the rocky path deeper & deeper into the planet. its all but deserted, the only inhabitants the two grogorian guards he’d narrowly escaped from. denki’s voice filters in through the comm again, calmer now that hitoshi was safely inside.

“we’ve got twenty minutes max before their distress signal goes through,” the andorian warns him, tracking the surrounding space around the planet from the isla bella. “follow the main tunnel straight through. the crown should be there. ten minutes to get there, i phase you straight out, we fucking book it into warp drive & we’ll be seven million credits richer by tomorrow morning. and you can finally treat me to dajang.”

hitoshi rolls his eyes despite the fact that denki can’t actually see him, trudging through the tunnels a little wearily. “remind me again why i always have to be the one getting shot to hell & back?” he grumbles as he walks, no real heat to his voice.

“you love my ass too much to risk it getting shot at, baby you know that,” denki laughs through the comm, ever poking fun at hitoshi’s expense & he’s sure to give the andorian a long, drawn out sigh before switching off the comm & pushing further into the darkness.

denki’s right though, hitoshi muses as he moves, his eyes glinting violet in the lamplight. the bezoid would rather die than see denki in any veritable danger, keeps him up on the ship to guide him & yank his ass out at the first inkling of a problem.

he’d been protecting the stupidly tall, wildly cheery andorian from the first day they’d met, cooped up in some stuffy bar off V-7. he’d had absolutely zero self-preservation skills even then, picking a fight with a damned Dervisian of all people, just because the man had insulted his shirt. hitoshi, not overly fond of watching handsome morons get punched in the face by meatsacks twice their size - & maybe he appreciates the long, toned legs & pretty face a little more than he lets on - steps in with ease, no matter how short he feels between the two of them. the dervisian cracks a height joke, because he’s an asshole, denki stabs him in the shoulder with a four inch dagger he pulls out of his too tight pants - & of course hitoshi spends far too long wondering just how he managed to fit it in the first place, mind all fuzzy - & they somehow manage to kick off an interspace bar fight. wonderful.

once the dust has settled & the chaos calmed, hitoshi finds himself with three new bruises, a cut cheek, & an armful of very grateful andorian.

“i hear the fleets coming. wanna get married?” denki wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, & hitoshi chokes on his own spit.

“what for? they’re keepers of the peace, not wedding officials,” he manages, glaring up at the - stupidly tall, stupidly pretty - andorian that’s managed to wrap himself into his arms.

“if you’re married they can’t deport you. i’d really like to avoid interspace jail,” denki winces, & hitoshi snorts.

“or we could run, like normal deviants of the law,” he points out, much to denki’s chagrin.

“and where is the fun in that?” the andorian pouts, & hitoshi knows he’s screwed.

four years, seven interspace incidents, four run ins with the fleet, & one rusting junktrap of nuts & bolts they called a ship later, they were inseparable. one complete idiot with a penchant for charming the pants off everyone around them & simultaneously launching them into trouble, & his over exasperated, eternally exhausted boyfriend, who was consistently saving his ass. they were an unlikely duo, but they worked like magic, & despite the fact that he had to risk his ass every damn day, hitoshi was pretty happy. him & denki made a little solar system all their own, a shining sun & its orbiting planet, & he likes that. he’s happy.

as happy as a thief for hire could be, really.

the problem with their particular profession, however, is that denki is basically one big ass radar for trouble. if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, disastrously so, & hitoshi is always caught in the middle of it, fleeing for his life with someone shooting at his ass (it’s always his ass, & he can never understand why. )

it’s for that reason, & that reason only, that hitoshi is the one creeping down the dark, deep tunnel, his nerves frayed as he keeps his eyes trained on every nook & cranny surrounding him. he can see the faint glow of an upcoming room ahead & hurries his pace, eager to grab the crown & escape, maybe finally treat denki to that dajang he’d been whining about - he’d never been fond of the strangely shimmery, horned fish, but if it made denki happy, he wasn’t going to complain.

the tunnel opens up into a small, brightly lit room, warm & pulsing with energy. the grogorians kept the crown here for good reason, the sheer amount of dead souls crafted into the metal & jewels enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. hitoshi gingerly steps closer, hands twitching at his sides as he moves into the light and - wait a minute.

wait a goddamn minute.

there’s a person on the raised pillar, small & decidedly not threatening. your little body is curled loosely around the crown, shivering gently, & hitoshi realizes several things all at once:

one, the tiny body is a tessian, and a young one at that, a couple years younger than himself.

two, the grogorians have definitely arrived earlier than scheduled. fuck. he clicks on his comm to hear denki screaming incoherently about danger, & winces heavily.

great.

third, the booming, heavy rumbles of the grogorian ship - & denki’s frantic yelling - has woken you up, the little tessian, arms still caging the crown close to your chest as though seeking out its warmth.

up close, hitoshi can see a smattering of pink freckles dusted across your honey gold cheeks, bright, messy hair falling into big, bright eyes. you yawn, then blink, eyes flashing & settling into a light, rosy pink at the same time your little fluffy ears twitch atop your head, a matching color to your eyes. your tail twitches slightly, four light gold rings wrapped around it, & it’s obvious you’re about young adult age. you yawn again, a tiny, unfiltered squeak escaping you at the sight of hitoshi in front of you.

you’re absolutely adorable. hitoshi is absolutely fucked.

dimly, he registers denki’s panicked shouts & the shaking of the tunnel walls, can feel the ground trembling beneath him, & he snaps out of his reverie to glance at the crown again. said crown is tucked up against your torn shirt, tessian hands - so delicate, so cute - keeping it close.

“hey, hey! don’t touch that! there’s like, eight thousand dead people in there,” hitoshi scolds before he can think, & you simply cock your head, confusion written all over your face.

“no, don’t squeeze it tighter - stop it! hey! are you even listening?” he seethes, reaching out a hand to snatch the crown away. you shift back quickly, frowning just as deep as hitoshi as you hug the crown even closer. it’s clear you can’t understand a word hitoshi is saying, & the grogorians have started some sort of blasting contest right outside the caverns.

great.

hitoshi swears under his breath, racking his brain for any sort of solution. “hitoshi shinsou, you are ASKING to die, they’re blowing the fucking cave open! can i phase you out yet? you too busy admiring that handsome face of yours in the stupid crown’s fucking reflection?” denki sounds hysterical, voice on the verge of near meltdown & hitoshi knows he’s out of time.

he’s got two options: stay & deal with the grogorians, or run.

he runs.

leaning forward, he tucks both hands under your armpits & yanks you forward, tosses you over his shoulder, & books it out of the tunnel.

he can barely hear anything over the blood rushing in his ears, your tessian wails, & one denki kaminari screeching like the world’s ending.

“phase me out phase me out PHASE ME OUT-“ he’s shouting above the din, phaser blasts surrounding him on all sides, & he doesn’t stop running until he feels the familiar pins & needles of the transporter, turning them into a mess of glittering gold dots that wink out just as a grogorian fires right where hitoshi’s head had been.

he slams into the floor of the isla bella with a groan, denki immediately in front of him. he sits up slow, careful not to shift too abruptly & disrupt the reanimation process, when denki snatches you right out of his arms.

“hitoshi what the fuck, you were only supposed to grab the crown, not adorable little tessians! and what were you doing down there, young alien?” denki has gone into full andorian mode, pinching your little tessian cheeks as he sits you in his lap - hitoshi’s just glad he’s got the sense not to do that to him.

you still can’t seem to understand, tilting your fluffy bright head of hair as you stare up at denki. you chirp, then hum, one hand reaching up to pet denki’s head, before smiling brightly.

denki coos. hitoshi snorts.

“i found them sleeping on the crown. they can’t understand us, they don’t have a ULC, so i just grabbed ‘em & ran,” hitoshi explains, getting up to ensure that they were in hyperspace, blasting millions of lightyears away from the grogorians. he chances another glance at the tessian sat comfortably in denki’s lap; you’re a little dirty, clearly having been stranded in the caverns a few days.

denki frowns at hitoshi’s back, brushing over the phaser burn on the ass of his pants with one hand as he speaks.

“the poor thing must be terrified, being surrounded by all that. switch your ULC to interpret mode, at least we’ll be able to understand them, & talk to them,” denki says quietly; looking down at the fluffy bundle of tessian in his arms. hitoshi can already see the gears turning in his head.

once they’ve switched settings, denki speaks.

“what’s your name, sweetheart?” he asks softly, clearly trying to make you comfortable.

the series of chirps & coos you let out shift almost in midair, turning themselves into words that hitoshi can actually understand.

“[y/n]? [y/n l/n]? oh that’s so cute! tell us, [y/n], why were you down there all by yourself?” denki prods, voice still soothing & calm. you, the tessian - [y/n], hitoshi thinks, too precious - sit up a bit, animatedly speaking now that they can understand you better. the squeaks & chirps are downright adorable, & hitoshi has to look away from flailing hands & a sunbeam smile to center himself again.

“and what were the lot of you thinking, sneaking down there? your whole little tribe, just gone, huh? i’m so sorry, sweetheart,” denki winces, & hitoshi can sympathize - tessian tribes were tight-knit little groups, & losing them meant a death sentence for whoever was left behind. they were pack creatures, always in need of others. hitoshi can see the gears turning, & he speaks before the andorian can.

“no, denki.”

“toshi! look at them, aren’t they the cutest thing you’ve ever seen! we have to keep them!” denki all but wails, pulling you so close to his chest that your cheeks squish together. you don’t seem concerned in the slightest, just giggle against denki’s face. hitoshi’s resolve weakens a little.

“we’ve got no space, denks, not to mention we’re not exactly the safest group for them to latch onto,” hitoshi protests weakly, even as the andorian pouts at him.

“we can’t just leave them alone, they’re so small, & no one will protect them!” denki is dangerously close to tears, & hitoshi never does well with a crying denki. he opens his mouth to protest again, try & make his point, but just then you yawn again, slow & long, the tiniest of squeaks escaping you & when you open your eyes again, they’re gold just like denki’s hair, your ears matching.

hitoshi’s determination evaporates.

“fine, fine, we can keep them. but if anything happens to them, it's your fault,” he grumbles, settling into the pilot's chair to monitor their progress.

denki cheers. you chirp happily.

hitoshi bangs his head on the control panel.

what have i gotten myself into this time, he thinks dully, but deep down, he knows he doesn’t mind. not too much.

───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────

after finally managing to pry the crown out of your hands & delivering it to the client - hitoshi doesn’t even wanna know what the creepy old Lavastian wanted with it, he’d had to take three showers under the hydrospray to get the itch off his skin - they’ve set a course for the driard system, to rest before their next assignment. being that their work schedule is so…flexible, it gives the trio a little time to get adjusted. and by adjusted, hitoshi means getting used to having you, a fluffy little alien, hanging off him at all hours of the day.

he’d thought that denki was clingy, the andorian typically seeking out hitoshi’s hands to hold or shoulders to rest his head. his people were affectionate that way, much different than hitoshi’s bezoid counterparts. he’d adjusted though, sacrificed personal space & eventually, had grown both used to & comfortable with having denki draped over him like a blanket at all times.

[y/n l/n] is an entirely different species - literally & figuratively.

firstly, you’re a clinger. where denki lounges, you squeeze with - surprisingly - strong arms & legs, wrapped around hitoshi’s frame like a verealis vine.

you’re so touchy you’ve got denki beat, & the pair of you seem stuck in some sort of exceedingly needy, relentless cuddle war. hitoshi’s got his money on you, even if he doesn’t admit it.

secondly, you’re scarily helpful. you seem to turn up right when hitoshi needs something adjusted deep in the ship, or when denki can’t seem to locate something correctly on their navigational screen. you’ll shapeshift into a teeny, tiny ragran rat to scurry through chambers & fix a wire, or tap on the control panel just so to show the correct star system, & its quite frankly impressive.

hitoshi’s starting to think you were made for them, just a little.

normally he leaves the sappy shit to denki, the andorian’s well flowered language easily explaining all his emotions & thoughts. but there’s something about the little tessian that shakes him up a little, changes the dynamic. denki doesn’t mind one bit.

he relishes in hitoshi’s newfound sweetness, even if it’s just a “that wasn’t completely awful, great job, babe,” or “you know, that shirt isn’t as hideous as i thought. brings out your eyes.” he knows hitoshi is simply trying his best, knows that words never got very far on his home planet.

you like that he’s quiet though, for some reason. you chirp & chatter enough for the both of you whenever you’re together, silly stories of whatever disasters you & denki had gotten into on the ship - hitoshi’s suspicious you’re both responsible for the six broken panels along the corridors, impromptu games of touch & go be damned - or telling him memories of your time on Tessero, your home planet. you’ve got an easy way of speaking, soft & languid & it calms him down like no other, settling into his bones & dimming the chaos in his mind for a little while.

your cuddliness extends even to when you’re asleep, tucked up neatly between denki & hitoshi in the big bed of their quarters. you’re a calm sleeper, curl up tight into a little ball with the pair of them draped over you, like a tiny tessian heater. it’s sweet & soft & so fucking domestic that hitoshi has a hard time believing it sometimes. he’d even started pressing kisses into the top of your head as he moved along the ship, much like the gentle ones he presses to denki’s lips. he’s not scared by it, per say, but he is a little surprised; he’d always been a little closed off, reserved. you had snuck up on him swiftly, without him even realizing. he finds he rather likes it.

the few days of travel before you reach the driard system are calm, simple evenings of dinner & talking together as you all soak up the simplicity of space. somehow, it’s comforting. you’re a twinkling, bright little star amidst their solar system, & hitoshi likes that. a shining sun, its orbiting planet, & the brightest little star.

───── ⋆✩⋆ ─────

everything goes to shit once they step foot on Ovalia 7.

the leisure planet is tucked at the edge of the star system, a quiet haven for those always on the move. it’s denki’s favorite place to go after a successful deal, & they serve the best dajang this side of the galaxy. hitoshi likes that no one ever speaks to them there, everyone wrapped up in their own little vacations.

denki books them a room at their usual spot, ignoring the innkeepers curious glance at the request - one big bed, a nice tub, window view, & hitoshi’s certain he thinks you’re all a couple. the thought doesn’t bother him, & he realizes with a jolt that they act like one, all three of them. they cuddle & hug & kiss, & hitoshi sits on that a moment before shrugging it away. if denki didn’t mind it, neither did he, & he focuses once more on relaxing.

they’ve just settled into a local restaurant, plates full of dajang & ocuro & everything else that tickle their fancy when hitoshi hears it. heavy steps, familiar ones, although he can’t quite place it in the haze of relaxation. he ignores it in favor of feeding you some of his mulrag, the spiced meat a clear favorite with your tessian palate & he can’t help his grin. he lets denki feed him a warm bite of dajang, rolling his eyes at the andorian’s little smile & affectionate pinch of hitoshi’s cheek. everything is nice, sweet & lazy in the warm air.

and then all hell breaks loose.

eight of the biggest fucking grogorians hitoshi’s ever seen in his life burst through the door, weapons armed & faces set in such hostile expressions that everyone is scattering. denki hauls you up & to his side, dragging hitoshi by the collar until you’re all crouched behind the bar, hidden from view. “i should’ve known they’d track us,” he all but whines, peeking over the wooden edge of the bar. a photon shot quickly makes him duck down again, cursing lightly. “plan?” he asks behind clenched teeth, tugging you closer.

hitoshi pauses, weighs his options.

“the two of you book it to the ship. i’m going to distract them,” he says quickly, thinking back to the conversations he’d been eavesdropping on earlier - thieves never took a real vacation, always on the lookout for something new to snatch.

two very drunk, loud Avarians had been seated just behind them, rambling on about the very expensive, very valuable statue hidden deep in the recesses of the abandoned temple just off the main road. many had tried to steal it, but had always gotten stuck deep in the underground channels trying to escape. the elders guarding it weren’t exactly friendly either.

a plan starts to form in his head, one that would both enrich them & save their asses from this absolute mess. he’s quite proud of himself, if he’s honest.

then a bottle explodes just above his head, & he jolts into action.

he fires a few warning shots at the wall behind the grogorians, turning & racing out the door in a clear attempt to lead them out. the grogorians take the bait easily, & he races down the road towards the temple as you and denki sneak out the back of the restaurant.

the temple is huge, dusty & a little worn around the edges. the priests guarding the door take one look at hitoshi shinsou, panting & shooting over his shoulder at several grogorians & lose it, screeching & running for cover just as he’d expected. he pushes through the open door with the hostile aliens right at his footsteps, racing through the dark corridors deeper & deeper into the bowels of the temple. halfway down denki clicks onto the comm, hastily spitting directions & instructions as the grogorians start shooting again. “this is all your fucking fault! i told you stealing from them was an awful idea!” hitoshi shrieks as a laser just misses his shoulder, ducking as he runs.

“oh sure, blame me for making sure we stay employed!” denki shrieks right back, your chirping frantically frantically filling the background.

hitoshi feels the heat of another photon bullet just barely graze against his ass as he books it down the narrow hallway, cursing every single god & denki kaminari for the absolute mess he’s been roped into. over the comm link he can hear the andorian yelling muted commands as he leads hitoshi through the vast hallways, the relic just within arms reach.

“i’ll phase you out once you have it!” denki starts, before hitoshi starts shouting again.

“i’m not gonna PHASE through solid rock, denki! just hold off, i’m coming!” he yells through the comm, feet skidding across the rough terrain as he snatches the little gold statue right off the podium. concerned little chirps & squeaks flood the comm, & hitoshi halts all his movements to swear loudly.

“[y/n l/n], you keep your adorable little ass on the ship, you hear me? don't even THINK about it-“ the ground shakes with another blast, the heavy yelling creeping from the farthest corridor.

hitoshi curses every single god & denki kaminari twice. and then he runs.

the maze of corridors gets more & more confusing as he bolts through them, solely relying on denki’s guidance in his ear & the gunfire right on his heels. finally, finally he can see sunlight again, pushing through the open door & stumbling into the street again - right into the waiting trap of about ten grogorian soldiers.

great.

they’d cornered him on both ends, trapping him in their space. denki’s shouting frantically, something about shield interference & blocking & hitoshi’s stomach sinks; they’ve got him.

“go to warp drive.” his voice is so sharp it shocks denki right out of his panicked rambling, the comm quiet.

then a furious “what the fuck did you just say hitoshi shinsou? we’re not leaving you-“

“take [y/n], & go to warp, denki! go, i can hold them off for a little while! the verlo sector, it’s rural enough that they can’t track you!” he bites out, eternally grateful that the grogorians don’t have ULC’s. he eyes them for a moment, takes a breath.

“i love you, denki kaminari, you crazy motherfucker. i love you. i love you too, [y/n]. take care of him for me,” he says softly, lets himself choke up a little, grants himself that one weakness. then he clicks his comm off, draws both his guns, & snarls. “let’s go, assholes! i don’t have damn day!” he shouts, keeps his voice level & confident.

and then he starts firing.

left, right, over his shoulder, he’s never shot so many times in his life, & its still not enough. there’s grogorians on every side, dodging every blast & hitoshi’s resigned himself to dying on this shithole lesiure planet, never seeing denki’s stupid bright smile again, or hearing your laugh.

and then he hears it, loud & wild & it makes both his heart soar & stomach sink.

“STOP SHOOTING MY BOYFRIEND YOU FUCKING JACKASSES!”

there stands denki kaminari in all his andorian glory, six foot six of anger & pent up chaotic energy standing just off the side of the gunfire. he gives hitoshi one big, blinding smile before he’s shooting right alongside him, the pair of them back to back as they fire.

“where’s [y/n]?” hitoshi calls over the sounds of the blasters, too emotional & charged up to address the fact that denki came to save him, denki who always, always stayed on the ship.

“i told them to monitor us from up there! once we take out these shields i can phase us up, i brought the control sleeve!” denki yells back, twisting & ducking as the grogorians rain fire on them.

the pair of them are deadly, lethal even, taking down one hostile alien after another until their guns run out. hitoshi curses at the dead weapon, tossing it to the side as he prepares to fight the remaining six grogorians hand to hand. beside him, denki gets into a similar stance, eyes narrowed sharply in defense.

“enough!” a voice bellows, harsh & loud, ringing out across the entirety of the street. hitoshi pauses, dread building up in the pit of his stomach. the grogorians part, & he hears denki gasp beside him.

the grogorian leader steps out slowly, every step sending a thundering rumble across the land. “you steal from us, fight us at every turn. your intolerance is shameful,” the alien snarls, fury written all over his face. hitoshi doesn’t point out that the grogorians stole that particular relic from the Astonians, & the fact that they’d been chased, not chasing. he has a feeling the man wouldn’t appreciate his sentiments.

“i will kill you myself ! your arrogance knows no bounds!” the alien thunders, hands reaching for the sword tucked into his belt. its easily the size of hitoshi’s entire body, & his blood runs cold.

“since we’re about to die, it’s time i fess up. i’m the one who broke your music box,” denki whispers behind him, hands clinging tight to the back of hitoshi’s shirt.

“oh for god's sake you idiot, we’re about to die & that’s what you tell me?”

“i’ve always loved your ass in these pants. skinny or not, they give you shape,” denki says tearily, & hitoshi nearly screams.

“denki shut up, for the love of space - stop fondling my ass, we’re about to die-“

a set of angry, loud chirps interrupt them all, the grogorian leader turning & snarling. hitoshi stops breathing.

there, in all your tiny tessian glory, stands you, [y/n l/n], clad in hitoshi’s favorite leather pants & denki’s too big sweater. your eyes are narrowed, an expression of pure fury on your face that hitoshi’s never seen before.

it’s a little hot. denki seems to agree, if the gasp he lets out is any indication.

the alien laughs, staring down at you almost in amusement. “come to watch them die, little one? i could probably get a hefty price for you, couldnt i? maybe pleasure slave, the markets always up for those.” you chirp angrily. hitoshi sees red.

“don’t you fucking touch them-“ he snarls, all traces of fear gone as he shoves the grogorian back, fists clenched. behind him, denki spits, eyes lit up with that special kind of rage hitoshi only sees when he's really caught up, the anger boiling in his blood. the grogorian shoves the pair of them back so hard they go sprawling in the dirt, his voice a growl as he steps towards them. “you dare touch me?” he bellows.

behind him, you let out a sound somewhere between a screech & a growl. and then you start shifting.

hitoshi knows that you can shift into any number of things, he’s not stupid. but they’d all been limited to small, cute things, adorable & easy to hold.

the form you take on is neither adorable or small.

a sixteen foot, scaly dragon stands before them, with the face & claws of a lion & the fiery rage of a bat out of hell.

hitoshi screams. denki nearly pisses himself.

the grogorians scatter, shouting & running & you pick them off easily, picking one up between your claws & tearing him clean in half. the rest die in a similar fashion, tossed against buildings & burned alive when they get too close to your flaming breath. the leader dies last, your sharp fangs tearing him limb from limb until he’s a tattered pile of mush at their feet. its singlehandedly the most horrifying, yet gratifying thing hitoshi’s seen in his life.

you shift back to your original form easily, small hands & cheeks covered in blood. there’s a bit of grogorian in your hair. you smile up at them like nothing happened, let out little chirps & squeaks & hitoshi is stunned, really.

denki pulls the bit of grogorian away from your fluffy ears, before wiping the blood off your cheeks & tugging you into a kiss. it’d be cute, if there wasn’t so much carnage around them. you smile up at hitoshi, chirps out something about love and tribe and home.

hitoshi pulls you into a hug, kisses the faintly bloody fluffy hair, & laughs.

“let’s go home,” he agrees easily, takes denki’s hand & thinks, for a moment, that he’s complete.

denki smiles so bright it puts the sun to shame, & you giggle into his chest, cheery as a star.

all the bits align just right, he thinks, & leads his little solar system home.

[geeky-writes]

Continuum - Chapter 5 Preview

Behind? Catch up HERE 😊

Amazing moodboard created by @crownofstardustandbone @therollingstonys thank you so much! 💖

********

“Pictures of what?” Ned asked as he suddenly appeared behind Peter’s left shoulder. Peter jumped, almost knocking into Gwen as he grabbed her hand, tugging her around.

“Jesus, Ned!” Peter exclaimed. “Dude, you can’t sneak up on me like that!”

Ned’s eyebrows knitted together. “Um… I didn't, but okay. But what’re you taking pictures of?”

“Peter’s gonna get a telescope this coming weekend,” said Gwen.

“Really?” Ned said. “Dude, that’s so cool! Are you gonna let us come over and see it once you get it set up?”

“Ah, it’s gonna be up at the Compound,” said Peter. “Sorry.”

“Oh,” Ned said. “Well, I guess that makes more sense, since upstate’s probably better for stargazing. It just kinda sucks that you’ve gotta go up there every single weekend.”

“Eh, it’s not so bad,” Peter said. “It’s actually kinda nice to get out of the city every now and then. It’s a lot quieter up there.”

“Yeah, I guess. But since when did you like it quiet?” Ned asked. “You know what, nevermind. Wait till you hear what my mom heard yesterday at her book club.”

“You mean her gossip club, right?” Gwen asked as they made their way towards their homeroom classroom. “‘Cause I swear all your mom seems to do there is talk about people.”

“Well… yeah, that is part of it,” Ned admitted. “You know my mom just likes to know what’s going on, so…” He gave his head a quick shake. “Anyway, she told me that one of her friends was walking in the city on Saturday afternoon and saw Dr Stephen Strange go into a comic book store.”

“Who?” asked Gwen, shooting Peter a questioning look. “Am I supposed to know who that is or something?”

“He’s that rich doctor that drove his car off a mountain a few months ago,” said Peter. “The neurosurgeon?” He didn't add that Dad had disliked Dr Strange ever since he and Papa had tried to get him to consult on Peter during his weeks-long coma after the battle in the Miami bunker, and that the surgeon had flat-out refused because he’d said that he didn't work on children.

And no amount of begging, pleading, or bribing could get him to change his mind.

Oh well, it’d probably been for the best anyway. From what Peter had heard about Dr Strange, he was a massive jerk, and Dad did not have a good track record dealing with medical professionals who were jerks. Dad was amazingly generous with most of the doctors and nurses who had treated Peter back when he was little, and sick most of the time, but Peter had witnessed him dressing down plenty of arrogant or jerky ones too. Since Dad had enough intelligence and knowledge to pretty much get his own medical degree in any number of fields, he tended to figure out who he could trust and who he could not very quickly.

As it turned out, Dr Strange wouldn’t have been able to do anything for Peter anyway, and not getting him involved ended up saving his dads from having to explain Peter’s genetic mutation and enhancements to yet another person outside their family.

Now that Ned had brought him up, though, Peter had to admit he was pretty curious as to what the former surgeon had been up to in the last several months.

“Oh, yeah, I remember my dad saying something about that,” Gwen said with a nod. “Okay… so…?”

“Well, I guess after his accident, he kinda went nuts trying to find a cure for the nerve damage in his hands. Ended up selling just about everything he owned to try some really weird treatments,” said Ned. “And then one day he just up and disappeared. My mom’s friend thought he was dead until she saw him again.”

The full chapter will post on Monday, September 28th 😊

[maraleestuff]

About: Alleilyn Willowwing

Tagged by @curiousartemis for this a few days ago, but getting around to it now lol. So cool to learn some more about Imi!

And now, a good character page for Alleilyn! Adding a Read More cause it’ll probably be lengthy.

Name: Alleilyn Willowwing

Alias: Leilie. It’s a penname she uses when she writes to Ayrenn (who has her own alias). Their letters are mostly personal, but it’s a precaution incase their letters fall into the wrong hands. Ayrenn is a Queen, after all. (Lore wise, I think Bosmeri use a special type of paper called vellum, if they write at all, with a special type of ink. So I might find a work around with magic.)

Gender: Female.

Age: 24.

Species: Bosmer (Wood Elf)

Zodiac:  aquarius / aries / cancer / capricorn / gemini / leo / libra / pisces / sagittarius / scorpio / taurus / virgo / unknown

Abilities/ Talents: Alleilyn is skilled in alchemy, restoration, and is well-learned in her knowledge of anatomy. She’s also worked closely with the Vinedusk Rangers, so on top of field medicine, Alleilyn has also been a scout, and can track/ hunt with a bow fairly well. Finally, Alleilyn is also a skilled necromancer, but she isn’t particularly proud of it; as she recovers her memories, she slowly pieces together how and why she has this skill in the first place. (I saw a writing prompt once about how healing and necromancy are similar, and I thought it would add an interesting layer to her character & story.)

~ Personal ~

Alignment: lawful / neutral / chaotic / good / neutral / evil / true

Religion: Alleilyn follows Yfrre. (My knowledge of tes universe religions isn’t that great tbh)

Sins: Envy / Greed / Gluttony / Lust / Pride / Sloth / Wrath

Virtues: Charity / Chasity / Diligence / Humility / Justice / Kindness / Patience

Language(s): The common tongue of Tamriel, and Bosmeri, though I’m not sure if the Bosmer officially have their own language.

Family: Alleilyn was close with her mother and her sister, Nivaia, but she never really knew her father, as he died when she was young. Her mother, since she raised them both on her own, doted on them and saw to their education and skills, so they could be independent. Nivaia (28) joined the Vinedusk Rangers, and helped against the Blacksap rebellion, but she died in the battle of Cormount. (Does backstory count as spoilers when Alleilyn is recovering memories in story?) Although she was never quite the same after Nivaia died, Alleilyn still remained close with her mother until she was sent, unwillingly, to Coldharbour.

Friends: Alleilyn has always preferred a good book to socializing, but she did make lasting friendships when she studied and practiced with the Mages Guild and the rangers. There was never any time, or will, for friendships while she was in Coldharbour; so even after her escape, she initially thinks of Lyris and the Prophet as tentative allies. She doesn’t know what to make of Razum-dar either, but after awhile, he starts to grow on her.

Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual / Bi-Pansexual / Homosexual / Demisexual / Asexual / Unsure / Other

Relationship Status: Single / Dating / Married / Widowed / Open relationship / Divorced / Not ready for dating / It’s complicated (with the planemeld and getting her soul back, it’s the last thing on her mind. Of course, life doesn’t always take intentions into account... 😏)

Libido: Sex god / Very High / High / Average / Low / Very low / Non-existent

In unofficial lore, or so I’ve read, Bosmer have the highest sex drive of all the races 😂 so that’ll be fun once I get to Romance (within reason).

~ Physical ~

Build: Twig / Bony / Slender / Average / Athletic / Curvy / Chubby / Obese

Hair: White / Blonde / Brunette / Red / Black / Other - caramel brown/ blonde

Eyes: Brown / Blue-gray / Green / Black / Other

Skin: Pale / Fair / Olive / Light Brown / Brown / Very Brown / Other

Height: 5′2

Weight: 110

Scars: Knife wound above heart, whipping wounds on her back.

Facial Features: She has an almost gaunt, but youthful heart-shaped face with wide eyes, green as the deep woods, sharp eyebrows, an upturned nose, and full lips. Freckles are scattered over her cheeks and nose.

Hair Style: Alleilyn usually wears her hair in a braid or updo when she’s traveling, doing missions on behalf of Ayrenn, or working with patients/ alchemy. When she isn’t busy, or is doing light work, she’ll keep her hair down. If she’s roped into a formal/ political event, Alleilyn will wear a more ornate style, with complex braids or buns.

Tattoo(s): None. She might consider one though, depending on what it is or why she would get it.

~ Choose ~

Dogs or cats? I’m not sure she’d get a house cat, but I can totally see her with a senche cub. Undecided on how she’ll get one though—as a gift from Ayrenn, or maybe she rescues one in the wild.

Birds or nugs? I’ll be honest, I have no idea what nugs are.

Snakes or spiders? She’s not afraid of snakes exactly, but she’s not fond snakes after dealing with the Maomer.

Red or blue? 

Yellow or green? (She doesn’t have any particular favorite colors, so I’ll assume these are for aesthetic)

Black or white? 🤷‍♂️

Coffee or tea? I’m not exactly sure how it fits into the Green Pact, if they can, but Alleilyn buys teas from merchants that come from outside Valenwood. She tries not to make it obvious though, when around other Wood Elves.

Ice cream or cake? Alleilyn enjoys her treats when she can.

Fruits or vegetables? She follows the Green Pact pretty strictly, so her diet is mostly meats, nuts and dairy.

Sandwich or soup?

Magic or melee? Alleilyn isn’t much of a fighter, but she will fall back on conjuration magic in desperate situations.

Sword or bow? If she must use a weapon, and not a staff, Alleilyn will use a bow. She hunted frequently with Nivaia and the other rangers, so she has an accurate aim.

Summer or winter? Alleilyn is used to the heat and humidity of Valenwood, even if she doesn’t remember it right away.

Spring or autumn? Alleilyn has learned to be appreciative of life, especially in the jungle, which is rife with it everywhere. Spring is a time of rebirth, but autumn is the time before winter—or hardship—which is equally necessary in life.

The Past or The Future? Ironically enough, despite having little to no memories before the prisons and misery of Coldharbour, Alleilyn feels almost trapped by the past. She doesn’t know how she got there, what she could have possibly done to deserve her fate, and ultimately, who she is. The only tangible memories she has is being tortured, and nightmares of her tormenters.

Well...that got dark. It does get better for her, I promise. Anyway, I’m not exactly sure who to tag for this but I’ll list other writers: @daedriclorde, @parasite-core, @stardust-crow​, @maxgraybooks​, @pearlll09​, and anyone else who’s interested!