#oh lordy that was unpleasant. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

itsallavengers · 7 years ago

Note

so how about Tony facing his worst fears in order to save Peter? And then in return, Peter rides out the subsequent panic attacks and mental breakdowns that come from it. (Bc I'm a sucker for that angst haha)

The first thing he noticed when he came back to consciousness was the hand that carded gently through his hair.

He jerked, hands flailing wildly as he attempted to fight off the ghost of his attackers. God, his head hurt. He felt woozy; nauseous in a way he hadn’t since developing his powers. Everything felt a little off-kilter, and as he rolled to the side, his head fell from the soft surface it had been resting on and down toward a far harder, unforgiving one, which only increased the pain in the back of his head-

“Hey hey hey, Peter, whoah, calm down, it’s okay, it’s just me. It’s just me! You’re good, kid, you’re good,” someone said above him, and Peter groaned a little, but let himself relax instinctively at the sound of the voice.

Safe voice. Good voice. No threat. That was nice.

“T’ny?” he slurred, rolling back around and opening his heavy eyelids, trying to focus on the figure that was leaning over him.

“That’s me,” Tony replied, giving him a weary grin. His lip was split and there was a cut running across his cheek which was bleeding pretty heavily, so the whole thing looked rather grim, but still. Peter guessed it was the thought that counted. “You feeling okay? Kinda woozy? Gonna be sick, do you think?”

Peter thought about it for a second, before shaking his head. “Not g’nna hurl. J’st feel like…”

“Garbage?”

“Garb’ge, yeah.”

Tony nodded, patting him on the shoulder. “Yeah, that’ll be the drugs. You remember what happened?”

Peter furrowed his brow, trying to think back. His whole head just felt fluffy- like trying to wade through candyfloss, or catch smoke. “There was…lunch?”

Tony let out a brief bark of laughter. “Of course that’s the part you remember. Yeah, you were in the SI cafeteria, grabbing me some food. It was break, so there were a tonne of other people too.”

Peter began to nod a little as the memories cam back. “An’ then… then there was…gas?”

Tony grimaced. “Fucking HYDRA. Gassed the whole room out, came in with all their shitty guns, told me I had one minute to get down there or they’d start shooting. Honestly,” he shook his head, and had Peter not felt the slightly shaking hand on his shoulder, he would have thought Tony was more annoyed than afraid, “they’re so goddamn crass sometimes.”

Peter made a face. “Why am I here, though? Did I fight ‘em?”

“I’m not sure. I left before I could see the rest of the footage. But the last thing I saw was you…” Tony stopped, looking rather haunted, “you were the last one standing. I think it took more for your body to be overcome by the gas. They must have…fuck, I don’t know.” He shook his head, hand gripping a little tighter to Peter’s shoulder. “They must have recognised you. You’re seen with me a lot, so I guess they just thought you were valuable. Probably because you’re gonna be useful bargaining material,” Tony muttered, face like thunder as he rubbed a hand over his eyes. “God, I’m sorry kid. I’m so… fuck,” he whispered, looking away, eyes flicking up and over Peter’s head for a moment, before resting back down on Peter’s face. “I won’t let them do anything to you, though, Peter, I swear- God, I’ll torch their entire foundations to the fucking ground if they do and they fucking know it, so I don’t know what they’re thinking-”

“I’ll be fine,” Peter said quietly, finding Tony’s hand and gripping as he slowly hauled himself into sitting position. It sent a wave of dizziness over him, and he wobbled precariously for a moment before settling. “I’m enhanced. It takes a lot to hurt me.”

“Hey, hey, just lie down, Peter- you need to conserve energy. The drugs were only designed for normal humans. It’ll hopefully be out of your system soon, and you can get out,” Tony told him, pushing him back down so his head was resting in Tony’s lap once more. Peter wasn’t even strong enough to push back.

“Fuck,” he cursed. “This’s the f’rst time I been kidnapped,” he muttered.

“And I’m gonna make sure it’s your last,” Tony replied harshly, speaking more to himself than Peter. He looked pretty stricken, and his eyes kept goddamn shifting-

Curiously, Peter turned, rolling on his shoulder until he was facing the other way. He hadn’t properly taken in his surroundings yet, and the position he was lying in meant that he had his head facing the tiles of the wall

As he turned, his eyes widened a little. It took a while for his focus to shift back in, but once it did, he noted the large glass pane that separated them from the rest of the room.

They were in a holding cell; nothing more than a box, really. No features, no windows. Just like a part of an empty room had been cordoned off by glass. And on the other side…

There was some weird, futuristic-looking device. Like a vat, but completely see-through. Peter could see the water that glistened, eerily still in the light of the afternoon. It was the only thing in the huge warehouse.

A deep, primal sort of fear struck him as he took it in. It wasn’t some fancy schmancy death machine, it wasn’t intricate or even obviously threatening.

It was just water. But that held the potential for many, many unpleasant things.

(read more, mobile users!)

“Just concentrate on me, Pete,” Tony said, tapping the back of his head and drawing his attention back, “it’s gonna be fine. Someone will have alerted the cops, or SHIELD or something- they’ll find us,” he said, nodding his head adamantly and then taking another sharp little breath.

His eyes were wide, pupils dilated in fear. There was a constant tremor in the hand that gripped Peter’s shoulder. He looked like he was having trouble breathing.

Peter wasn’t oblivious. He knew fear when he saw it.

“We’re gonna be okay, Tony,” he said, sitting up again. He felt a little better, if still somewhat woozy. He was sweating as if he’d just sprinted a solid mile, and he knew it was his body getting rid of the toxins. He’d be okay in a while. They just had to hold out.

Tony looked down sharply at him. “I know we are. I’m the one assuring you.”

Peter smiled. “I’m all assured up, Tony, don’t worry.”

He wasn’t. Not really. He felt like he was suddenly in too deep. This wasn’t Spiderman dealing with the problem, here- he didn’t have his suit. All he was was Peter Parker, the 15-year-old schoolboy.Peter Parker might not be good enough for this.

Tony looked at him like he knew exactly what was going through his mind, because he shook his head and jostled their shoulders together. “They’re gonna pay very, very dearly for this,” he muttered, again, more to himself as he stared ahead of him angrily and wiped the blood off his lip.

“How long have we been here?” Peter asked, his head dropping on sleepily on to Tony’s shoulder.

He felt the little shrug Tony gave in response. “I’ve been awake about twenty minutes. They knocked me out when they put me in the van. Going from the fact that the toxin’s still in your system, I’d say we’ve been gone around an hour.”

Peter nodded in silent response, watching Tony as he stared straight ahead of him, through the glass wall and over to the tank with an almost disturbing intensity. His breathing was coming in a little short again.

As soon as he saw Peter watching him, though, he somehow managed to school it away; turning it into more of angry stare than one of fear. It was quite impressive, really- Peter wondered how much practise it had taken. “Glass is reinforced, too. Couldn’t break it. Guessing whatever…whatever that’s made of is too,” he said, cocking his head over to the tank with a little swallow, like he was physically trying to force the fear back down his throat.

Peter opened his mouth, response ready on his lips- but it never made it past his teeth, because suddenly a new noise filled the room.

A door was slammed open on the other end of the large hall, and five men marched in. One was quite clearly the leader- fancy suit and expensive watches and carefully styled hair- whilst the other four simply looked like enforcers. Huge, muscled men carrying various weaponry and all of them with expressions like someone had spat in all their faces.

“Tony Stark!” The leader called out with a smile, clapping his hands together, “how lovely it is to finally meet you!”

Slowly, Tony pulled away from Peter. “Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t draw any attention to yourself at all, understood?” He muttered into Peter’s ear, and the tone allowed no room for argument as he slowly got to his feet.

Peter watched, heart beginning to hammer in fear of what was to come as the five men made their way across the hall, wandering casually, as if simply strolling through a park rather than….doing whatever they were about to do.

“I’d say the same,” Tony began, and Peter was incredibly impressed with the complete 180 Tony managed to do in the time it took for him to turn from Peter to the glass wall and face their captors- gone was the fear, and the hunched, scared posture- here was Iron Man, Tony Stark, ready to fuck your shit up and then go home for dinner, “but unfortunately, I’d be talking directly from my ass, and I promised myself not to do that any more.”

The man simply laughed, clapping his hands together as he wandered forward some more, until he was nothing more than a few meters from the glass. “Ah, you really are like everyone says you are, aren’t you? What a delight.”

“I’d like to think I give a stronger handshake than I do a first impression,” Tony said with an easy smile, “so how about it? Shake my hand, fucklord I double dog dare you.”

The man laughed again, shaking his head and waggling a finger. “Ahh, if only it were that easy, Mr Stark, if only. I came here not for a handshake, unfortunately. I came here for information.”

Tony rolled his eyes, raising his hands to the air and generally looking exasperated. “Oh, lordy, what a gosh darn surprise! I haven’t had the ‘we want information’ kidnapping in quite a while- the past two have been a ‘we want inventions’ ones. I was hoping it’d get switched up a little bit, honestly, I was getting kinda bored,” Tony explained, stepping to the side as he put out a hand and leaned against the glass.

Peter almost made a noise; Tony had just blocked him from view, and now he couldn’t see the other man’s face.

He guessed, however, that that had been Tony’s intention.

“Well, Mr Stark, I assure you this will be far from boring,” the man purred, in the type of voice that sent Peter’s spidey-sense tingling with apprehension.

That was a good sign, though. It meant he was coming back to himself, Meant he was getting stronger.

“Tell me where my Ascension disk is, Mr Stark,” the man said loudly, looking down at his nails.

Tony stopped moving about between his two feet, pulling a face. “I’m sorry- the whatnow?”

Their attacker just rolled his eyes in mild irritation. “The Ascension disk- do not play dumb here, Mr Stark, I know you are aware of its existence.”

“I can assure you, I really don’t,” Tony responded, voice hard as he stepped forward, “believe me, if I knew what it was, I’d tell you as much just so I could spit in your faces and tell you to suck your own asses if you asked for it.”

“You’re not too good at knowing when to keep yourself out of trouble, are you Mr Stark?”

“So I’ve been told,” Tony grinned at them, rocking back on his heels and shoving his hands in his pockets.

He was irritating them, and everyone knew it. Peter wanted to scream; Tony was doing it for him, and that was the only reason. Peter had seen Tony negotiate in hostage situations before, it had been nothing like this. He was surprisingly collected, and he never ever set out to try and piss the attackers off.

Peter being present was the only difference here- and so now Tony was drawing all the attention to himself- making himself the worst guy in the room, because he knew Peter stood a better chance of being ignored if they were so focused on punishing Tony instead-

Fuck. Peter needed to get them out of here, and he needed to do it yesterday.

“I’m going to ask you once more, Mr Stark,” the voice was barely above a whisper now, and coated with a tone that truly sent shivers down Peter’s spine, “or I’m going to be forced to use… alternate methods,” at that, his gaze shifted, turning around and raising an eyebrow toward the tank of water.

Amazingly, Tony didn’t even flinch. “And I’m going to tell you once more, I don’t have a fucking clue.”

The man paused, and then he sighed, shaking his head a little. “Shame. I would have preferred not to involve the boy.”

The change was immediate.

The four guards stepped forward at the same moment Tony stepped back, hand stretching blindly for Peter as warning growl was pulled from the back of his throat. “Don’t you fucking dare, don’t you fucking dare-”

he grabbed Peter by the front of his shirt, pushing him against the wall and then standing with his own back against Peter’s chest, effectively shielding his body. Peter felt a little dizzy from the sudden jerking movement, and his vision whited out just for a second, but by the time he came back to himself, the huge guards were putting some weird green card against the glass and then sliding through the sudden opening it made for them.

“-I swear to you, I don’t have a fucking clue what it is, I don’t, you fucking shitheads, just listen to me, I haven’t been messing in HYDRA’s shit for months now, that’s what the Rogue Avengers have been doing, not me, just leave him out of it!” Tony snarled, barely even registering as the guns were pointed in his face. His hands were behind his back, gripping Peter’s arms, holding him in place

Peter was struck with it, suddenly- the sudden terror of the situation. He was in the middle of a God Damn kidnapping, and they were about to try and take him. He was weak, he was clueless, and he was, admittedly, absolutely fucking terrified.

This wasn’t looking good.

“If you don’t have it, then you still know where it is! You’ve been in communication with Captain Rogers multiple times over the past month-”

“JUST FUCKING TEXTS ON A GOD DAMN BURNER PHONE! I haven’t been discussing Avengers business, or HYDRA, Jesus fucking Christ!” Tony yelled.

The man glared at him, long and hard before there was a quiet “get away from the boy, Mr Stark,”, and the guards moved forward another step, closing them in, guns trained to Tony’s head.

Tony stared over at him, the corner of his mouth tilting up, just a fraction, almost as if he were amused. “Oh, if you really think I’m gonna do that, you got another thing coming.”

The man on the other side of the glass hissed, a hand slapping against the glass, but Tony shook his head, running with the fraction of a pause he’d managed to draw himself. “Oh, and another thing- if you shoot either me or him, let me tell you, you will never find out where it is,. You want to get anything at all, you use me. I swear to everything I have that I will not mutter a single fucking word about your shitty little disk otherwise.”

There was silence in the room, filled only with Tony’s furious breathing and the sound of Peter’s own heartbeat in his ears. “Tony…Tony, don’t,” he whispered, shaking his head a fraction, horrified. He didn’t want Tony to put himself forward- Peter was scared, but he was also stronger than Tony. He could take more, and he would take more, if it meant Tony didn’t goddamn have to, not for him-

“Fine,” the man said eventually, smile creeping up his face as he clapped once more, “we’ll put you in first, then, seeing as you’re so darn desperate.”

Peter’s jaw dropped in horror, and his hands instantly shot out, tugging at Tony’s arms. “No, no, Tony, don’t, don’t- let me, let m-”

Tony smacked a hand over his mouth before the jumbled words could get any louder, and he had one second to look Peter in the eye and say “I’ll be fine,” before a guard smashed his gun down against the back of Tony’s head and sent him crashing to the side.

Peter held on to him, stopping the fall and then spinning with it, throwing out a vicious kick as he went, because he wouldn’t let them, he wasn’t going to let them take Tony, not when the man was quite clearly terrified of what laid in store- so Peter would just have to be the one to fight instead, he’d get them out-

The kick landed, and it did its job. Both man and weapon went flying across the room; the force Peter exerted being enough to knock him clean off his feet. But he was still woozy- the spin sent him off-balance, and he found himself wavering wildly, unable to follow through and hit the next target that approached.

He was forcibly ripped from Tony’s grasp, and a guard raised his hand, ready to hit, but his arm stopped mid-swing as he heard Tony’s voice rasp through the air.

“Did you not hear me, shithead? You hurt him…” Tony wheezed a little, crawling back up to his hands and knees simply so he could shoot the guard a poisonous glare, “and I don’t say a damn word.”

“Stand down,” the man behind the glass said, and with a nod, the man released, letting Peter drop messily to the floor.

He’d failed. He’d let Tony down.

“I’m sorry,” he choked on the floor, tears pooling in his eyes as his hand reached for Tony’s across the floor. “I’m sorry, I didn’t… I’m sorry, Tony.”

Shaking fingers grasped against his, just for a second, before Tony was yanked backward roughly. “It’s okay, kid,” he called out, hand still outstretched, and Peter tried to follow, but there were two guards pinning him and he just wasn’t strong enough to fight, “it’s okay. I believe in you. Sweat it out. Kick some ass. You’ll be okay.”

The guards let him go just as Tony was hauled through the entrance, and they left a second before it closed up again, leaving Peter alone in the cell, watching through the glass as they pushed Tony forward.

“Okay, Mr Stark,” the leader began, “here’s how this works. That,” he raised a hand, pointing behind him and toward the tank of water, “is 100 gallons of water, at the temperature of about four degrees. It has a sliding roof, and on my command I can open and close it. Tell me, Tony- how good are you at swimming?”

Peter could see, even from afar, how badly Tony winced. But the reply came, effortless as always. “Actually I was my school’s 100 meter freestyle champion for like, 2 years running, so-”

“Put him in,” the man said with a roll of his eyes, waving the guards away.

“No!” Peter banged uselessly on the glass, and he could barely even recognise his own voice, it was so ragged and harsh. The same thought kept spinning- round and round and round in his head, you let him down, you let him go, you failed-

and because of him, they were going to torture Tony.

Tony struggled the whole way up, but he’d been knocked on the head one too many times, and Peter could see his balance was off too much for him to be able to do anything real.

Peter had to stop this. He had to. He couldn’t… he couldn’t let this happen.

Shutting his eyes, he breathed deep. He thought hard, about who Spiderman really was.

Him.

“You can do this. You can do this, Peter,” he hissed, eyes clenched, hands gripping his own hair as he leaned against the glass.

His head felt thick. But he knew he was capable. He still had the power. Still had the capacity.

Glass was only as reinforced as the person trying to destroy it, after all.

Another deep breath- he took a look over toward Tony, who was now struggling wildly at the top of the stairs which led up to the lid of the tank.

He punched the glass, with everything he had.

“I’LL TELL YOU!” Tony finally screamed, all bravery gone now, replaced only with the most basic of emotions- terror being the most prominent. “I’ll… I’ll tell you. Fuck- it’s under the Dorium. Just…if you type it into SHIELD’s databanks, you’ll see-”

“Tony, Tony, Tony,” the man interrupted, face almost splitting with the smile he was wearing, “do you really think we wouldn’t be aware of the booby-trapped SHIELD server? HYDRA are not fools.” He shook his head, lifting a hand as he appeared to speak into his watch. “Dan Kraig, 8-9-9-8-2. Open,” he said, watching in what Peter could only describe as glee as the tank appeared to follow his command, roof sliding open silently.

Peter made the first crack in the glass just as Tony was shoved under the surface of the freezing water, and had the lid closed over him..

He couldn’t watch. He physically couldn’t- his eyes were too blurry with tears, and his hands were too busy punching into the glass to wipe them away.

He just kept going. He screamed and punched and pretended as if he couldn’t hear Tony punching back, on a different glass surface.

A bigger crack split through the glass.

Howling in fury at how fucking slow it was going, Peter spun on his head, running to the other side of the room before kicking off and using the momentum from his run to hurl his foot into the crevice forming in the glass.

There was a bigger shatter, that time, and now, you see- now it was a race. Peter had always been competitive; it was what drove him. This could drive him

It was a race. That was all it was. To see if he was fast enough to save Tony’s life.

It was just a race.

He kicked, again and again and again, feeling his foot jerk in pain, but knowing he could continue. He had to. He had to win.

He looked up, just for a second, and saw Tony, as his banging on the roof slowly became less and less animated, and more filled with lethargy.

It was the final straw. Putting everything he had into it, Peter screamed and punched one more time.

The entire frame vibrated, and then the spiderweb of cracks Peter had made exploded outward, falling to the floor in a litter of glass.

He didn’t waste a second. As soon as he saw his opening, he forced his way through, hurtling into the hall with a scream of fury.

Instantly, the guards pointed their guns at him, but Peter had it now. He was in the lead, he was winning, and nothing was stopping him.

Rolling to the side, he dodged each other their bullets with ease, Spider-senses allowing him to move through the fire like they were simply suspended in the air.

Sprinting across the room faster than it would have taken for the two guards stood at the foot of the ladder to breathe, Peter threw himself forward, legs rising into a plank as he drop-kicked the first one into the base of the tank at a force that resulted in immediate unconsciousness. The second one yelled, swinging his gun around, but Peter caught it and yanked, sending the man stumbling forward into his waiting knee.

That nose would probably never look the same again. Not that Peter gave a shit.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Tony give a sudden spasm, convulsing in the trapped barrel of water as a hand clawed up his throat, desperate for air. It had been a minute, now.

Race. It was a race.

Leaping vertically, he grabbed the underside of the ledge that the last two guards were stood on and hauled, sending himself somersaulting up to the top. Legs in a scissoring motion, he pushed them both off the sides, one falling right off the ladder and toward the floor in a sickening crack, and the other landing with a dull thud over the roof of the tank Tony was trapped under.

Peter didn’t wait. He threw himself on top of the guard, using his momentum to roll the man off the ledge.

It all happened in less than five seconds. Peter felt a little detached from his body. He didn’t know what he was doing- all he knew is that he had to. He had to do it. He had to protect what little family he had left.

At all costs.

Grabbing the gun off the lid of the tank, he directed it toward the last man. The leader. The one with the power to make the tank open once more.

“Do it,” he hissed, seeing the blood already on his hand- his own, from the glass shards that were dug into his knuckles. “Open it or I’ll shoot.”

The man paused, eyes widening a fraction, before a smug smile curled his lips. “No you won’t.”

“I’LL DO IT!” Peter screamed, gun shaking in his hand, and he knew he was running out of time, Tony was running out of time, he couldn’t wait-

But he couldn’t shoot, either. He just…couldn’t.

He’d lost.

Screaming in something he could only best describe as agony, Peter leaped off the roof of the tank and hurtled toward the other man, kicking him in the chest hard enough to crack the sternum and send him crumbling to the floor with nothing more than a pathetic whimper.

Peter was alone. The room was silent.

There was a tap against the glass.

Peter’s head jerked up. Tony was at the side of the glass, looking at him, one hand pressed up against the wall as the other knocked vacantly.

Peter was there in a second.

“Tony, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know-” Peter cried, tears slipping down his cheeks as his hands fisted where Tony’s were flat.

Tony looked at him, and he smiled softly. Peter was reminded of how it was said that drowning offered the most peaceful death, in the end.

On the other side of the glass, Tony knocked once more, before curling his hand into a fist, bringing his index and middle finger up straight along with his thumb, until he made a gun gesture. He pressed the tips of his fingers to the glass, and then-

His eyes fluttered shut.

Peter looked down at the semi-automatic in his hand. And then he fired the rest of the chamber at one spot near the bottom of the barrel.

Crack, crack, crack, crack-

the chamber emptied.

But Peter wasn’t giving up now.

Taking another few steps back, He dropped the gun. He wiped the tear tracks off his face. Took a breath.

Ran faster than he had before in his entire life, and kicked.

There was a deep, booming crack, and then suddenly Peter was drowning. Bowled over completely by the sheer force of the wall of water which came up to meet him, he barely had the chance to suck in a breath before water was everywhere. Horrible, sickening, freezing water. It set his skin on fire, stabbed like a thousand tiny needles, completely overwhelmed him for a second before he wrestled back control and curled into a ball, allowing himself to be pushed along by the current.

Eventually, his back hit the floor, and he rolled a few times before finally, finally the water was gone. He could breathe.

“Tony,” was the first word out of his mouth.

He wheezed, wiping the water out of his eyes, looking for another body. It wasn’t difficult to find; Tony was the only one out of all of them currently sporting a deep red jacket.

Scrabbling over on hands and knees, he grabbed Tony’s shoulder. Rolled him to the side. Smacked him hard on the back.

Tony convulsed again- before suddenly hacking up a mouthful of water and choking on the bile that followed.

Peter sucked in a breath- a proper, real deep breath- for the first time in about two minutes. “Oh my god, oh my god, Tony, thank god, thank god-”

Tony continued to splutter for a few minutes, but his hands were rising shakily, jerkily, searching for something-

Peter grabbed hold on instinct, and Tony clutched around his bony fingers like it was a lifeline.

“Urghhhhnn,” he groaned, eyes still shut against the floor before he coughed up another round of icy water and then curled up a little further in on himself, “a-a-are… are you…are…ok..”

Peter almost wanted to laugh. If that wasn’t the most Tony thing on the entire Earth, he didn’t know what was. “Yeah, Tony. Yeah, I’m okay. We gotta get you outta here, though, you gotta get someone to see y-”

“No!” Tony yelled suddenly, gripping tighter to Peter’s hand, eyes flying open, horror-stricken. “N-n-no, please… p-p-please, no-one else. You…y-y-you’re f-fine-”

“Tony… you nearly drowned. I can’t just… you’re hurt, please, I need to… I need to get help,” Peter argued weakly. He was exhausted, he was hurt and he didn’t know what to do because Tony was apparently refusing to go anywhere.

“I can’t,” Tony whispered, curling up further, eyes shutting again, never letting go of Peter’s hand. “I can’t… n-no one else…they’ll hurt m-me…I’m not…I won’t build….”

“I don’t...Tony?” Peter asked, a delicate hand moving to his shoulder, and then immediately pulling away as Tony response was a flinch and choke -off scream. “Tony- what’s wrong? Tell me, Tony!”

Tony did a full-body shudder at the raised pitch of Peter’s voice, “Kid... you g-gotta...run. They’re- they’re gonna make me b-b-build...I won’t...run...”

Peter looked down, beginning to panic once more as Tony appeared to lose touch with the real world entirely, rocking gently back on forth on his side as his whole frame shook. It was something Peter had never seen before- he thought briefly that perhaps the lack of oxygen to his brain had made him snap.Go crazy.

Then he remembered, vaguely, what he’d seen in a documentary one time a couple of months ago with Aunt May. About war veterans. How they’d sometimes have relapses, where they thought they were back in war, and hide under tables, scream, cry, curl up in a ball and look vacant until the episode passed. They’d used to call it shellshock, but now it was a proper medical condition-

PTSD. Tony was having a PTSD attack.

And Peter didn’t have a single damn idea what to do about it.

He opened his mouth, trying to think of something to say, anything he could do to pull Tony out of it. But his head was throbbing again, and he could already see a thing as his vision begin to blur out. He guessed he didn’t have long before he blacked out again; left Tony to fend for himself in the middle of what looked to be a horrible PTSD episode-

Luckily-thankfully-amazingly, though- as it turned out, Peter didn’t have to worry.

There was an eerily familiar noise above him, and Peter ducked instinctively, covering Tony’s body with his own as something fell through the roof with a resounding metallic clang.

Peter’s heart clenched. He wasn’t strong enough to fight again. He just couldn’t. He…he couldn’t.

“Peter? Peter, it’s okay, it’s okay- it’s me, it’s Rhodey. I’ve come to save your asses. It’s okay. You’re safe now, but you gotta let go of Tony, okay, he needs space right now,” someone spoke gently to his left, and Peter looked up, saw Rhodey’s face smiling back at him.

“I…Tony’s having a PTSD episode, I don’t know what-”

“hey, hey, I think your work is done for today, right kid? You’ve done brilliantly. Saved the whole damn day. Tony’s gonna have to make you 100 different upgrades to make up for that. But I’m gonna take over, now, okay? I need to get Tony somewhere nicer, and SHIELD were right on my tail, so they’re gonna be coming any minute now.”

“Any…any minute?” Peter asked quietly.

Rhodey nodded. “Any minute.”

“I… okay,” Peter said quietly, “I think I’m just gonna… lie down for a sec, then,” he mumbled, slowly sliding on to his ass, and then to his hands, until his face finally pressed into wet floor. “Just a…sec.”

Before Rhodey could even protest, Peter was unconscious. His hand was still gripping tightly to Tony’s.

Tony avoided him completely for the next two weeks, after that.

Didn’t answer phone calls. Sent Peter home when he tried to go over to the labs. Was constantly away on business meetings or trips.

Peter knew when there were just unfortunate coincidences and when there were deliberate attempts. He knew and he had had enough.

“Why are you not talking to me?”

Tony yelped, dropping his bagel as he jerked up and looked in shock at Peter, feet stuck on the pane of his window whilst his arms folded in front of him.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” He screamed, stumbling forward and grabbing a chair from the breakfast bar along the way. “PETER, YOU’RE 95 STORIES UP, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU D-”

“Why are you not talking to me?” Peter asked again, as Tony pressed the chair up against the glass and leaped on it in order to unleash the clasp and open the window properly, a hand shooting out to haul Peter in.

“What is wrong with you?!” Tony breathed, looking out of the window in horror as he stared at the drop, “why would you….I was just eating a goddamn bagel, I did not need to be scared like th-”

“Tony!” Peter said, grabbing his arm and holding it, desperate. “What did I do wrong? I’m sorry, okay- I tried to be faster, really, I did- but it took a while for me to be able to get back to normal, and then I had to break through the glass and beat people up and then kick through the glass again and-”

“Whoah whoah whoah,” Tony said, gaze suddenly sharpening as he turned, looking at Peter in concern, “what the hell are you talking about?”

Peter stopped, looking down. “I know it was my fault. I’m sorry. But please, don’t be mad, I tried-”

“Kid, stop,” Tony hissed, and Peter clammed up immediately, looking down at the floor.

Maybe coming over hadn’t been such a good idea after all. If Tony wanted space after everything that had happen, that was totally understandable after all-

“-Peter? Peter, are you even listening to me?” Tony asked, his hands gripping tightly to Peter’s shoulders.

Peter looked up, and shook his head. Tony just sighed. “Okay. Okay, right-” he broke off, pulling Peter into a sudden hug that took him completely off guard.

“You are so so so so so so far off base there, Peter,” Tony told him firmly, as he pulled away and then steered Peter in the direction of the kitchen. “Like, seriously. so far. It’s not even on the pitch any more. It’s gone. Out the stadium. Landed in another state. Not even on the same continent-”

Tony stopped, shutting his eyes briefly and sighing. He looked…scared? Peter wasn’t sure, but it definitely seemed that way.

“Look,” he finally said, avoiding Peter’s eyes as he turned and pulled a mug from the shelf, “I need to level with you here Peter. I am a fucked up human being. And I mean, fucked up. Morally, mentally, physically- you name it, I’ve probably gone through some intense fucking bullshit with it,” he said bitterly. “I am…bad, at life. I am not what you think I am, okay? I’m not. You saw that much when I…” he paused, tapping his temple and then twirling his finger around in a circle. Every edge and line of his posture was tense, defensive. “Well. You know what you saw.”

“I saw you nearly drown, Tony,” Peter said, frowning indignantly. “Why the fuck would that change my opinion of you, at all?”

“I mean what happened after,” Tony snapped, banging his mug on the counter before deflating a little, “which is not… never something a child should have to see, Jesus-Fuck I’m awful-”

“Tony,” Peter stopped him, face utterly incredulous now. He couldn’t believe Tony was even thinking any of that. “You put yourself forward to drown so I wouldn’t have to, and then had a PTSD attack because of it. You can’t seriously think that’s like… an overreaction to the situation?”

“It is when you were still there, and you still needed-”

“Did you think I was stupid when I freaked out over the building collapse?” Peter asked him bluntly, folding his arms.

Tony stopped, and then made a face. “Different circumstance.”

“I disagree.”

“Uh, not allowed, my opinion is worth two extra votes.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Look. You didn’t leave when I had my…whatever it was. And I don’t think any less of you because of whatever your thing is. That’s it. That’s all there is to this.”

Tony frowned deeply into his mug as he took a sip. “You are surprisingly un-freaked out by my weird episode of insanity.”

“Is that what you were expecting?” Peter asked suddenly, “for me to be…weird with it?”

Tony just shrugged. “You’re a kid. It really wouldn’t be a big reach to assume as much. I wouldn’t blame you either.” He looked up, then, and put his mug down, walking the last few steps toward Peter before folding his arms in front of him and looking down solemnly. “But seriously, buddy- do not ever, ever think I’d be disappointed in you. For anything, at all, ever. Aside from literal murder, I just assume everything else you’d do is with good intention. Even possibly murder. I don’t know, I’m pretty flexible.” Tony stopped, then, waggling a finger in Peter’s face. “But don’t murder anyone. That’s bad.”

Peter swallowed, nodding a little. “So you’re really not-”

“I’m really really really not,” Tony confirmed, before smiling a little. “You saved my damn life, Peter.”

“Technically, you saved mine first,” Peter argued, and Tony squinted at him, before grunting non-committedly, giving him a little shove as he wandered past.

“Whatever, kid, just shut your face and get down to the lab, I need to remake the bagel you destroyed upon entry, but then I’ll be down,” he explained, looking sorrowfully the breakfast which was currently smeared across the floor, before sighing and picking it up with a look of disdain. “I’m charging you for that,” he muttered, tossing it in the bin.

Peter’s face broke out into a sudden smile. “So I can stay?”

Tony avoided his gaze when he spoke next; fingers tapping against the counter as bit his lip nervously. “You’re probably gonna see that again, at some point.”

“Then you can explain to me how best to deal with it, can’t you,” Peter answered firmly.

“It’s not pretty.”

“It would be kinda weird if it was, to be honest.”

“They’re different every time. I can’t...I don’t have control over them-”

“Again, would be kinda weird if you did.”

Tony looked at him, somewhere between relief and surprise, before finally rolling his eyes and huffing out a laugh, biting down on his grin as he shooed Peter away. “You’re a freak, kid, you know that?”

“I learn from the best,” Peter chuckled, backing away down to the elevator and giving Tony had most innocent-looking grin as the man shot him a look.

“Menace!” Tony yelled after him, grabbing an orange and hauling it in Peter’s direction. Of course, Peter just caught it with ease, giving him one last thumbs up before the elevator doors snapped closed.

He was still smiling when he reached the bottom floor.

#peter parker #tony stark #dad tony #avengers #marvel #Idk this got really angsty #god poor peter that probably traumatised him 4 life #???#itsallavengers writes #badly #i was writing this in a bit of a rush so apologies if it's kinda garbage hfnddgfdh

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lucydorling1980 · 4 years ago

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Foaming Cleansers..... Are you a yay or a nay? In this disgustingly hot, sweaty, stormy weather I am a yay and was looking forward to testing these out, however they are not for me. Cerave Foaming Cleanser is ok, nothing special, doesn’t strip but oh Lordy does it smell weird. I’m going to keep it but only to wash my makeup brushes in. Verdict= most disappointing 👎🏻 Alex Steinherr Pore Balance Low pH Sulphate Free Cleanser, again ok nothing special but what is with the weird smell again?? It’s so odd both smell so chemically and are actually unpleasant to use. Again 👎🏻 I’m going to pass this on to my bestie’s daughter to see if she wants to try it. Cleanser fails.... #skincare #reviewingskincare #skincarereviews #skincarefails #beauty #beautyblog #beautybloggers #365inskincare #365inbeauty #discoverunder5k discoverlessthan5k #cleansers #foamingcleanser #cerave #alexsteinherr (at Witney, Oxfordshire) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDzBT2uHNdj/?igshid=115ijt7p2283m

#skincare #reviewingskincare #skincarereviews #skincarefails #beauty #beautyblog #beautybloggers #365inskincare #365inbeauty #discoverunder5k #cleansers #foamingcleanser #cerave #alexsteinherr

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drsteggy · 3 years ago

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Hey so to update cause it got worse.

I’m now on my third week out of work, and I’ve got at least one more. I still have a swath of my face that looks really bad and I’ve got swelling around my eye (like my right is my normal old lady eye bag and the left looks like I hit the fillers a little hard). I’m also numb along the lesion, which is cool because it includes half my upper lip and bonus the upper molars on that side feel like I’ve got nova sine but also have weird, unpleasant pressure 24/7.

Getting a medical professional to deal with this has been a fuckimg nightmare. Urgent care looked me dead in the eye and was like oh yeah that’s a known painful condition but we are not prescribing anything for that (I’m pretty sure they thought I was drug seeking). Anyway, I’ve been to an ophthalmologist twice because this is close to my left eye and herpes lesions on your optic nerve is apparently not a party you want an invite to. The ophtho kicked me out of work this current two week period because I should avoid stress and yeah, my job is not the place for that.

Anyway Ophtho suggested I see a dermatologist- part of the problem here is I don’t have a primary care doc, so if you can GET ONE because otherwise no one wants to deal with a cell outside their specific body system. I already had a dermatologist and I saw him today and Lordy he was PISSED about the shitty care I’ve been getting and anyway, I have cellulitis and a secondary bacterial infection so good times I get to start IV antibiotics in the morning (it would have been today but the infusion place couldn’t get me in).

The derm is super blunt. Like, I’m blunt. He makes me look like a delicate flower. I think I like that though because he was just like here is how bad this is “you can die from this shit” and I’m like yeah great. Anyway he also gave me his cell (I think he just gives out his cell to everyone) and I already called him because I felt like crap (hello doxycycline) and talked me off the ledge I was on.

So this has been a completely bang up summer so far and I really hope things get turned around in the next week because goddamit.

Hey people of the internet.

A week ago I went to work with screaming dental pain. I’m stoic. If I’m distracted with pain, it’s a big deal. My dentist got me an emergent appointment with an oral surgeon and I walked out of a waiting room full of my own client, including a bitch who stated it was not her problem that I was not feeling well, demanded to be squeezed in with a non emergent issue and then brought an extra dog and that is exactly how I remember to charge you for every single thing I do every time I see you.

Anyway I was initially diagnosed with sinusitis and about 24 hours later I broke out with a rash on my face that made me go hey that looks like it runs right along my trigeminal nerve. If I were a cat, I’d say this was a herpes flare fuck I have shingles.

I saw an MD who confirmed this.

Shingles on your face is the opposite of a good time. I was never a pretty girl but this looks like it might end in some epic scarring on the left side of my face and while I realize there’s fanon about where Wild has scars I was not planning on going that hard for cosplay.

Anyway. The exact second you can get a shingles vaccine GET ONE. I would wish this on no one.

#personal #shingles #sometimes being old sucks #also I hate fucking fighting the medical community #like do your job #and stop passing the buck

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tinfoil-jones · 7 years ago

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Motorcity: Legacy, Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Motorcity, or the song. Motorcity belongs to Disney, and the song belongs to Lordi Title: Burners Legacy Rating: T-M depending on chapter Summary: He didn’t want to be his carbon copy, but he might have to be in order to rescue him from Deluxe. Pairings: MikexChuck, DutchxTennie, ClairexFoxy, DukexBabs, Juliex?, OCxOC Warnings: Don’t read if you don’t like or are triggered by violence, death or dystopian societies Author’s Note: Some characters you like died.

~~~

Chapter 1: Blood Red Man

\They called me “The Leather Apron” They called me “Smiling Jack” They prayed to the heavens above That I would never ever come back

Can you hear how the children weep? Chills of fear like a sawblade cutting deep\

“You look so much like Mike.” Was something Mitch was told frequently throughout his life; and it was true. He was already taller than Mike at age seventeen, taking more after Chuck in that regard, his hair was the same thickness but a slightly lighter shade yet still dark brown, and his nose was long instead of broad and his cheekbones were set slightly lower. His eyebrows weren’t as thick as Mike’s, and he lacked the signature sideburns. But other than that, he was a dead ringer for Mike Chilton. And when he was younger he loved it; his father was a legend amongst Motorcity after all, and being seen as ‘just like him’ gave his younger self a false sense of pride. Back then, Mitch even had a very similar hairstyle with short, but straight hair and a cowlick at the center of the part.

Nowadays, he hated the comparison. Not because he hated his father, but because people always told him he looked just like him with such amazement as if he didn’t already know that because he was told it constantly. It irked him so much he spiked up his hair with copious amounts of gel just to create some differentiation between them. But that was after the incident.

Then the incident occured when he was fourteen.

The incident was called ‘Hellfire Rain’ and for good reason. It started out as a siege of the Cabler settlement, which wasn’t an unheard of event. Mitch was left at Jacobs place with his baby sister while it happened, and his parents in Mutt left to respond. The everything went wrong. A series of bombs were thrown around by the Kane Bots and one caused a large cable to fall down and explode, which destroyed about ten percent of the Cablers settlement.

The cable had fallen right next to Mutt and then exploded; Mike had survived, but was unconscious and then captured by Kane’s forces, Chuck was killed either by the explosion itself or the resulting fire, either way according Texas all that was left was a charred body. Mitch really hoped, in a morbid way, that it was the explosion that had killed him, because he didn’t want his dads last moments spent suffering by burning to death. Chuck wasn’t the only one to meet his demise at that initial battle either, as Tennie’s father perished as well when he was trapped behind rubble and suffocated on smoke.

That was just the start though, Kane forced were rejuvenated through the capture of Mike Chilton and decided to go after the rest of Motorcity while they were at it, and a series of raids and bombings followed. No one was untouched by the Hellfire Rain; all of the Burners allies were affected. The Duke had a portion of his dump incinerated during a raid, he and his daughter Dutchess and some of his goons managed to survive the war, but some of his goons were killed, including his late wife Babs.

The assault on the lower half of Detroit lasted for four months. Near the end, during a last stand where the remaining gangs rushed Kane’s forces and drove the bots back to Deluxe, Claire’s wife Foxy was killed when her vehicle was T-boned by a warpod. Claire was from then on absolutely done with Motorcity and stayed in Deluxe, forcing their son Teddy to stay there with her (although he did eventually run away and return to Motorcity).

After the Hellfire Rain incident, Mitch saw less and less of the original Burners; with Tennie’s father dead, Tennie had to take his place as the Cablers leader and Dutch stayed by his wife’s side and helped her take care of the settlement. Julie had somehow upgraded from intern to an executive in Kane Co and was practically second-in-command, which was unexpended but not entirely unpleasant because she would still not hesitate to rally to Motorcity’s defense even if she couldn’t carry on being a full time Burner. And of course he never saw Claire since as her amity towards Motorcity was so strong she couldn’t even go down there to drag her son back to Deluxe.

Currently, Mitch and most of the rest of the ‘new Burners’ reside at Jacobs place, which was being run by Texas, as Jacob was too sick and frail to do much anymore.

“Still bummed about yesterday?” His co-conspirator Miles suddenly asked, as he laid on the hood of his car Moonstruck, one arm behind his head and the other holding a book in front of his face which he was barely paying attention to. Inactive, Mitch had his jacket in his room and was wearing only the black turtleneck he usually wore under it, his black jeans, and his black sneakers with a blue and green stripe.

Miles was an older teen, about nineteen, who was tall but stood a few inches below him still. She had light brown hair pulled into a ponytail and bangs held in place with a red hair clip, her eyes were the same color of her hair and framed by wire-rimmed circular glasses. She usually wore a yellow-trimmed red leather jacket with the Burners emblem on the back, but now that they were in the garage she had it off; she otherwise wore a sleeveless white v-neck, black tights and red-and-yellow converse boots. She had a red-and-yellow gaping-maw facemask that she usually pulled up to her nose when she was riding, but now that she was idle she had it around her neck instead. Mile’s wasn’t like the other Burners in the sense that she had no connection to the former Burners, the only thing she had in common with them was that she had also been affected by Hellfire Rain, as her mother had died during one of the assaults.

“Go. Away.” Mitch muttered, after yesterday’s failure in rescuing his father from Kane Co he was in no mood to deal with anyone right now.

“Oh come on Mitch you’ve been on the same page for an hour.” Miles told him as she leant over the black hood of his car; Miles wasn’t as into cars as the rest of them, which is why she had a motorcycle called Prowler instead. He sighed and put his book down; she was right.

“I got him Miles, I actually got him out of suspension and ten feet away from that port but I still lost him.” He said “If it were the other way and dad was saving me we would have made it back.” Miles adjusted her glasses at his self doubt.

“You did your best,” she comforted “for gods sake you phased through that building for three hours looking for the specific room he was in.” For over a year ever since he got a firmer grasp on hacking Mitch had been scouring all the files and archives he could looking for some reference to a private cell of some kind, as Mike Chilton was not listed as an inmate at the maximum security prison in Deluxe. After a while, Mitch came to the conclusion that there was no way that Kane would have any file that could be exploited by cyberterrorists such as himself. So he figured he had to manually sweep the building. Mitch had to do back alley deals and even resorted to stealing to get the tech he needed; he managed to snag himself a wristband that allowed the user and any person they were touching to become intangible and invisible; but when it was shorted out at Kane Co, the program that provided this function was too corrupted to allow further use so he had to delete them.

“My best? What does my best matter if I couldn’t even save my father.”

“We’ll try again another day!” Miles insisted “You know that Kane won’t kill him.”

“I don’t care, I don’t care until he’s finally home safe.” Mitch shot back, then stood up and walked away, back to his room.

Or at least he would have if an excited squeal followed by a crash didn’t suddenly permeate the garage from the kitchen, followed by a deep encouraging yell. Rolling his eyes, Mitch went to the kitchen to find what he expected; a ramp formed by a wooden board propped on top of a large steel pot, and his baby sister Little T on the ground with a small scooter about a foot away. Little T was laughing at what must have been a ‘stunt’ and their caretaker Texas has standing by and above her laughing also. Texas had matured but only physically he no longer wore his racing jacket and wore a white tank top instead, and his hair was gay-streaked and a lot longer than it used to be, making him look almost like a past era metal head.

“Yeah that was awesome Little T! Let’s do it again!” Texas whooped and struck an action pose, and Little T immediately got back on her feet and reached for her scooter.

Mitch picked the toddler up and held her in front of him “I think four crashes in one day is enough,” he said, studying his baby sister for any abrasions or bruises. Little T pouted at her brothers fussing.

“Stwong!” She complained and held up her arms as if to flex but all there was was baby fat “Awesome!”

Little T’s actual name was Tory, and she looked more like Chuck but still managed to hold a heavy resemblance to Mike and by extension Mitch. She had shoulder length brown hair the same colour as Mike’s, and she had his nose also. She had fair skin though, with freckles, and blue eyes. At age three she didn’t have all of her teeth yet and had a fair few gaps here and there, but it made it look adorable when she smiled, and she always wore a black t-shirt that was too big for her with the sleeves and the stripe down the middle red, and brown shorts. Since she usually stayed at Jacobs place she usually didn’t wear shoes and just wore mismatched socks instead.

Surprisingly, her main caretaker besides Mitch was Texas and he doted on the toddler. At first, he was pretty lost and confused because he didn’t know the first thing about taking care of babies let alone a baby girl. And as with any female he couldn’t even initially remember her name and just called her ‘Little T’, as in Little Texas. And the nickname was well deserved because as she got older and more active she was practically just like Texas. It surprised and relieved Mitch to no end that her first word wasn’t Texas, because now that she could say it she shouted it as a ‘battle cry’ just like the man himself.

“Just practicing with scooters before we move her onto cars.” Texas said with a grin as he crossed his arm. Bless his soul he meant well and he loved her, but sometimes it’s like he didn’t understand just how fragile three-year-olds really were.

“That’s not for another thirteen years.” Mitch deadpanned and placed his baby sister on the counter, he reach into the drawer and put a bandage on her nose where there was a scratch.

“It’s never too early to start little dude! She’ll be out racing you before you know it.” Texas exclaimed. “You were her size not too long ago!” Mitch only rolled his eyes again.

“Nap time.” He said to his baby sister and held her again.

“Noooo! Nap bad!” She said and thrashed around.

“Too bad.” Mitch said and carried her to his room, where he placed her on the bed behind him as he sat at the edge of it. Luckily, unlike Texas, Little T was actually quite obedient and begrudgingly crossed her arms to curl up for her nap.

Of the people who lived here, Mitch had the cleanest room; he had a clear desk with all of the contents in the drawers, a twin-sized ‘bed’ in the corner which was a mattress propped on top of another mattress but it was still neatly made, a bookshelf full of hand-me-down books and a few figurines, a closet with no door, a chest in front of the foot of his bed, and a black stratocaster in a different corner next to a beat up and obviously scrapped amplifier.

“Mit?” She said, it was a nickname she had for him because she was too young to say his name without making it sound like ‘bitch’.

“Yes?” Mitch responded as he grabbed his jacket - his jacket was actually the same cadet jacket their father used to wear when he was in the Kane Co military, it was just dyed and customized; it was mainly dark blue, with bright green where the white used to be, the Burners logo was where the Kane Co symbol used to be, and the ‘K’ on the other side was changed into a ‘B’. People used to think he would wear his father dark-blue-and-orange jacket, but out of respect for his fathers eventual return he kept it in the display case in the garage where it had been ever since Hellfire Rain.

“When daddy home?” She asked, playing with the cover on the pillow. Mitch froze. She didn’t remember their parents, as she’d only been six months old when that fateful day came. She was, however, well aware that Mike was alive, and was always assured that he would ‘come home soon’.

“He’s… going to come home soon.” Mitch promised hallowly and kissed her cheek. She didn’t pout this time because this was always the answer she got, and she just closed her eyes to sleep. Given that she’d been raised primarily by himself and Texas, she didn’t quite understand the significance of ‘daddy’, it was really more of a word to her. “Soon…” He repeated, he placed his hands on his knees as stared at them as he thought.

Maybe going it alone hadn’t been the best idea, but what other choice did he have? The invisibility/intangibility function was limited to the user and anyone he was touching. He couldn’t sweep through the building with four people hanging on him and each other, not quietly or quickly at least. The current Burners consisted of him, the leader and software specialist. Miles, the scout. Dana, the hardware mechanic/specialist. Kameron, the muscle and spy. And Teddy, the resident medic. No… they couldn’t have been as much help as a hindrance. Going through Kane Co undetected was a solo mission and he messed it up and it was his own fault. He should have saw Mike’s weakness early on, of course he was going to be slow he’d been in stasis for three years.

And why did he have to tell him the truth about his other dad…

Right then had been the worst possible time to tell Mike the truth about Chuck. Mitch should have just lied and told him the truth later, he should have put his honesty aside just long enough to get his father back in Motorcity.

Whoever said that lying was a sin really should have put situations like that into consideration.

Making sure Little T was asleep, Mitch reached between the mattresses and pulled out a ziplock baggie, inside of it was a worn out picture frame which he took out of the bag. At the bottom of the picture frame ‘Chilton Family’ was sloppily scrawled in marker, the ‘L’ had been left out initially on accident and added later. The picture was a black-and-white faded image from three and a half years ago; he was thirteen and small for his age, Mike was standing behind him with his hand on his shoulder and was looking lovingly to the side at Chuck, who was a holding a just recently born and swaddled Little T.

He gritted his teeth as he looked at the picture, and twin trail of tears ran down his face.

—

Julie stood by her father with her arms behind her back, staying quiet as her father was yelling; the now elderly ruler of Detroit Deluxe was pacing back and forth in behind his desk; in front of the desk were some of his other executives, Admirable Gordy of the military, and his ‘private contractor’, Red. Behind her was her son Kameron the ‘intern’, in his Deluxe issued clothing and holding the same pose as her. Unlike her, Kameron could not lie about his parentage, because he looked as much like her as Mitch did to Mike; he had the same rounded cheeks that she did but he had a squarer, more prominent jaw, and his eyes were a darker shade of brown, but he had the same dark red, smooth hair just in a short style. However, since there was still a small amount of people who knew that Julie was Kane’s heir, there was no reason at the time to lie about Kameron.

Red was knelt on the ground as he listened to the ranting of his boss and employer; Julie always felt a special contempt for the man; almost three decades and he still couldn’t let his hatred for Mike go and still worked on behalf of Kane, even though that meant he was a menace to his original home of Motorcity. Ever since Mike had been captured he’d been more mellow than he once was, but he was still twitchty. No doubt just wanting Mike dead instead of in stasis.

“I can’t believe Chilton almost escaped!” Abraham Kane barked; he was past his seventies but due to the extended lifespan typical of Deluxe he was still strong and lively for his age, he hadn’t lost any muscle mass and the only thing different between him now and him when Julie was a teenager was that his hair was mostly white. “I thought the Burners were disbanded!”

“It appears these are new Burners, sir.” Red replied; Red had present during the initial Hellfire Rain attack that had Mike captured and Chuck killed, he’d sustained enough damage that his vocal chords were burnt by inhaling burning fumes and he had to be fitted with a mechanical voice module, which rendered his voice completely robotic.

“That Burner was nothing short of a clone,” Kane pointed out crossly; Julie knew that her father didn’t want a repeat of Mike “he looks like Chilton spat him out.”

The head scientist of Kane Co’s tech department was fiddling around with a projection screen, he appeared to be hacking into some files from Motorcity “It appears this boy is Mike Chiltons son; Mitchell Chilton. He’s seventeen years old.” He explained. Julie had to keep back a flinch at the previously unknown information about the existence Mitchell, but the hospital files in Motorcity weren’t as strongly protected as they would be in Deluxe and comparatively easy to hack.

“Another Chilton?!” Kane groaned in frustration and pinched the skin between his eyes.

“With him in the Burners it wouldn’t be far fetched that these other new Burners are also children of their predecessors.” The head of the tech department said; Julie saw a worried look briefly flash in Admirable Gordy’s eyes; his niece Dana was one of those new Burners.

“This is ridiculous, those Burners have been out of my hair for three years and they shoot up out of the ground like a ragweed by breeding like rats?” Kane inquired angrily, then looked down at Red, pointing at him “I want you to go down to that sewer and gather information on these new Burners.” Kameron, a Burner, was beginning to look uncomfortable as well.

“What kind of information are you looking for, sir?” Red asked, looking up at him from the ground; Julie imagined there was a smug look behind that visor.

“Whatever information it takes to end the Burners once for all.”

—

“That was a bunch of bull.”

“Language, Kameron.” Julie chided her son.

“But it was.” He said, looking down at her slightly; Kameron, being eighteen, was one of the oldest new Burners save for Miles who was nineteen, putting him in a slightly different position than she had been when she was a young Burner, even though he was also a spy. “Why don’t we just… you know.” Julie automatically elbowed him hard in the side which made the boy yelp a little “Oh come on! It’s not that much different than waiting for him to die, which could take thirty more years.” Kameron was adored by his grandfather, naturally, but Kameron believed in the liberation of Motorcity so much that unlike Julie, he thought it was best to just kill Kane.

“You don’t mean that and you know it, Kameron,” Julie tugged the younger redhead down slightly by the ear “you talk like that but we both know you’re not capable of that. And he’s your grandfather.”

“He’s evil.”

“Not entirely.” Julie insisted and let go of the boys ear, which he rubbed to relieve the soreness “If you were to… kill him, that wouldn’t make you any better than you think he is. And no one would rally to either yours or my own leadership if we usurped power instead of legally inheriting it, which is what we are going to do. Now, go to your room.” Hands up defensively, Kameron scrambled to where his room was, but no doubt he wouldn’t be there very long and would go to Motorcity within the hour.

Only two other executives knew that Julie was the heir to Kane Corporation, and by extension, Deluxe; the remaining original Burners still didn’t know. Her son Kameron was also sworn into secrecy, for his own safety. There were plenty of people willing to hurt Kane by any means, even if it meant going after someone who was on Motorcities side.

Julie sighed and headed to her office to ponder on what was said during the meeting; her father saw Mitchell and all he saw was another Mike, but that wasn’t the case. Kane was expecting another Mike Chilton and that was the mindset he was staying with; this put the actual Mike Chilton at risk of being terminated early just to kill Mitchell’s resolve.

Julie wanted very badly to save her friend from stasis herself, but there were some secrets Kane wouldn’t give even to her and that was one of them. He was the only one who knew were Mike was currently being held and he never put it on file, keeping that information to himself instead, the one place that could not be hacked. And as often as the blueprints for the building were updated there were so many changes so often it was impossible to saw where Mike’s pod was being kept, and she looked often but still found nothing. Mitchell had chanced it by manually phasing through walls. At this rate it might actually take until her father died of natural causes before she would know.

She had to passively stand by as she watched her old friend get arrested in front of the closed off ports, as he was dragged back into the building, and given another grandiose speech from Kane about how his time was over, and he didn’t even fight it as he was shoved into a new pod that would soon after be moved into an undisclosed location; her old friend had looked at her, and only nodded, as if to acknowledge that he knew that she had no choice.

In her office, she closed and locked the door; on her desk there was a projected image in one corner of her holding an toddler Kameron, and Claire with an infant Teddy. Time sure did go by quickly, at this point she’d really hoped her father would have accepted letting Motorcity exist autonomously, but of course he didn’t. He wanted to control everything. She sat down at her desk chair; she would always love her father, and would always believe he had good in him, for she’d seen it before and so had Kameron.

Sometimes though, she wondered if it was selfish of her to covet her father’s life at the expense of others…

Foxy, Chuck, Tennie’s father, Babs, and Tooley for example…

Her communicator started to beep and she made sure her door was locked before answering; a pixelated head icon of Mitchell appeared.

“Hello Mitchell.” Julie greeted with a bittersweet smile.

“Kam just called me and said something big went down at Kane Co, should I be concerned?” The head icon asked.

“Maybe just a little bit…” The executive began “Kane just sent Red down to Motorcity.”

“Red? Isn’t he satisfied enough?” Julie could hear the teen huff “My fathers already on ice what more does he want?”

“I’m afraid he and Kane are just a little bit…” Oh dear, how does one properly explain the ‘sins of the father’ trope? “…Off-put by your appearance, because, well…”

“Because I look a lot like my dad?”

“Mitchell.”

“…Because I look almost exactly like him?”

“Yes.” She confirmed “I’m going to send you specs of Red’s suit and warpod so you know what kind of weaponry your dealing with. Red’s old, but he’s no pushover.”

“Roger that boss.” Mitchell said “Can you queue that for an hour from now?”

“Why?”

“I have to clear some space on my hard-drive first.”

“It’s not that big of a file.”

“I know but…” He paused “My drives still kind of fuzzy since it shorted out, I need to do another scan to make sure any new files won’t be corrupted.”

“Alright Mitchell, and please keep an eye on Kameron when he gets down there.”

“No problem.”

—

Mitch hadn’t been lying when he said he drive had been fuzzy when it shorted out; but he’d fixed his wristwatch - the incident where it shorted out taught him a lesson he’d been told of but never realized the importance of until he failed in rescuing his dad.

Always have a your files back up.

That was something his late father always told him, but he didn’t quite grasp just how important that software concept was; some tech he was. No matter, he understood that now. He would still mainly use his wristband, but he had just finished syncing it to a chip; the chip was small, tiny even, but it was capable of all of the functions his wristband was; it had immediate access to his data cache and would have all of the applications of his wristband automatically downloaded to it meaning it would hold the same functions even if his wristband shorted out.

However, it was just a chip and needed some kind of carrier and external user that would allow it to carry out these functions.

And it was making him nervous, because he knew exactly what that ‘carrier’ was going to be.

Mitchell grabbed a bottle of lidocaine; a local anesthetic. Something Teddy used for minor treatments like stitches, but today he was using it topically. He grabbed an eyedropper and sucked up from the solution before dripping about two drops into his right eye, and blinked a few times until he was sure his eye was numb. He then grabbed a tiny fork-like spreader and used it to keep his right eye from blinking anymore once he was sure his eyeball was numb.

He grabbed a cloth and place it between his teeth to bite down on.

He grabbed the chip and began pressing it against his eyeball until the retina gave and allowed the chip to slip right inside. Both of his eyes teared up because the solution had been topical and only numbed the outside of his eyeball and not the inside, but he continued pushing it inside of his eye with a now trembling finger

And once it was right where he wanted it, he howled in pain; making the cloth fall out of his mouth.

—

Texas was in the living room with Little T “You can do it Little T,” he whooped at the toddler; she was standing on top of the TV “on the count of three jump off and do a backflip onto the couch!” He cheered, she nodded excitedly with a gappy grin as she prepared a dismount.

“AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

The scream startled them both; Little T fell off the TV onto the floor, thankfully onto one of the cushions Texas had surrounded the TV stand with. Texas blinked in confusion and looked over to where the sound had originated.

“…Chuck?” He inquired; that sounded exactly like how Chuck screamed alright, he’d recognize that lady-like scream anywhere.

“Fun!” Little T babbled and laughed as she stumbled over to him, grabbing his leg with a giggle, Texas picked her up and held her under his arm as he went over to the noise to investigate the sound; he down the hallway and could hear the still continuing scream behind Mitch’s door, so he took the only action that made sense to him.

He kicked Mitch’s door down “TEXAS!” He hollered “I HEARD YOU SCREAM ARE YOU OKAY MITCH?” He yelled, seeing Mitch hunched over his desk in agony.

The teen turned around; his hand was covering the right side of his face and he was still mostly hunched over and has his head hanging. The brunet stumbled over, almost tripping a few times until he was by Texas and was gripping his shoulder seemingly for support.

“Mitch?” Texas inquired.

“01000110 01110101 01100011 01101011 (1).” Mitch groaned in agony; why he repeated ones and zeroes Texas had no clue other than it was the geek language that Chuck had taught the teen.

Little T laughed at her brothers pain and suffering “Bruber a sissy!” She mocked.

“Mitch?” Texas repeated, more sternly as he grabbed the teens shoulder with his free hand.

Rather than whimper Mitch looked up with a pained looking grin “H-Hold on.” He croaked as he pulled his hand off of his eye.

His right eye went from dark brown to green with a circuit pattern and a green comm screen was projected right from his eye.

“What the-” Texas had pause himself at just how awesome that was “dude can you shoot out laser beams?”

“Maybe later.” Mitch said as he straightened out and tested out the comm screen; he pressed a few areas on the screen and files streamed right in like a normal comm screen. “It worked!” The more apparent advantage of an comm screen out of the eye was that he could interact with the screen with both hands instead of just one like people who had their projection screens mounted on or implanted in a wrist.

“What did you do?” Texas asked; usually techno stuff like that didn’t impress him too much the the kid just summoned a comm screen from his eyeball.

“I inserted a chip into my eye; it connected itself to the electrical impulses in the nerves of my eye and is connected to my brain now.” Mitch explained, but Texas only paid attention to the first part.

The kid just shoved a chip into his eyeball - that was so goddamn /metal/.

“Dude that’s so metal!” Texas shouted.

“Mefal!” Little T tried to repeat, and clapped her hands excitedly; she didn’t understand much besides that it was apparently awesome.

Mitch breathed it deeply and tried to focus; the chip was controlled by his brain, but the impulses needed to activate it he needed to practice with, he’d summoned the screen but he needed to retract it now. He blinked a few times and focused hard, and the screen went away; his eye turned it’s natural dark brown color again.

“Duuuude you should put a laser function on that chip.” Texas said, putting his free arm around Mitchell best he could with their height difference.

“I’ll download the application later.” Mitch said, panting slightly at the pain in his eye he still had. “But I have to wait until Julie sends me another file.”

“What file?”

Mitch pulled back a little with a frown “…Red’s back.” and as expected, Texas flipped out.

“THAT GUY AGAIN?! FOOL ME ONCE SHAME ON YOU SHAME ON YOU, FOOL ME TWICE SHAME ON ME, FOOL ME THREE TIMES I BRING MY CAR, FOOL ME FOUR TIMES AND I.. I… TEXAS DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE’LL DO BUT ITS NOT GOING TO BE PRETTY.” To augment her caretakers point, Little T did the punching the hand thing to symbolize a beating.

“Calm down uncle Tex, it’s going to be fine. He doesn’t want to fight us, I think…” Mitch hummed and pondered, putting his hand in his chin “…I think he’s just trying to study us.”

“NO ONE STUDIES UNDER TEXAS’S WATCH!” The stronghorn driver yelled and stormed out of the room.

“Texas wait!” Mitch said as he followed the older.

“TEXAS IS GOING TO FIND RED AND MAKE HIM REGRET EVERYTHING.”

“FINE JUST PUT MY SISTER DOWN SHE ISN’T GOING WITH YOU ARE YOU CRAZY.”

—

“I can’t believe you of all people would do something so reckless - it’s all fun and games until you get a vitreous hemorrhage - the fact you didn’t shocks and confuses me.” Teddy told him he as he dripped a drop of antibiotic eye drops into Mitch’s eye.

“I know.” Mitch agreed with a little bit of a guilty saw; with his left eye he watched Little T start climbing Teddy’s cabinet, no bout after his jar full of lollipops. “But, what’s the damage, doc?” He asked.

“Amazingly just a tear in the cornea - seriously Mitch one wrong move and you could have made yourself blind.” Teddy took out a roll of gauze and an eye pad; he put the pad over Mitch’s eye and secured it there with medical tape.

“Teddy I need to use the chip.”

“Not until that corneal tear is healed.” Teddy stated simply, but firmly, to further his point he diagonally wrapped gauze around his head, covering the eye and eye pad. “Keep that there for three days, no excuses. Also, let me look at that periodically; your body might have a immune response to a foreign body like that, or infections - did you even sterilize that thing?”

“Of course I did!” Mitch waved his concern.

Teddy was the resident medic of the Burners, and son of Claire and Foxy. About a year ago he ran away from home and down to Motorcity, as Claire had kept him away from the city ever since his other mother died. Teddy heavily resembled Claire; having the same skin, eye and hair color and even the same hairline he just kept his hair close-cropped. However, his angular, pointed face shape and nose shape came from his other mother Foxy. Teddy was the only Burner who wore Deluxe style clothing; He wore a white hoodie with a light blue burner symbol in the front, and light blue pants with white stripes down the sides, and white-and-light-blue sneakers. The older teen explained that it was to stick it to Kane more, but Mitch didn’t quite follow his train of thought there. He also had a pair of lab goggles that he usually let hand around his neck but since he was treating a patient he had them up over his eyes.

Teddy was a passive Burner in comparison to the others; he usually stayed at Jacobs place and operated almost entirely as support; his vehicle, Sunback, was actually a modified ambulance with a tractor plow in the front and monster truck wheels. He only came on the scene if there was a medical emergency in which he would put patients in his vehicle and tow their vehicle. Teddy was, what his late father would describe of as ‘a healer and tank’. Teddy’s medical knowledge came from being a academic prodigy in Deluxe; he graduate early and trained as a paramedic, although he wasn’t there long enough to make it to full paramedic and instead was a certified Advanced Emergency Medical Technician, an AEMT which was between EMT and paramedic.

Little T was now on top of the cabinet and was helping herself to some of the brightly colored lollipops in the jar; it was a really good thing the medic had recently moved his bowl of complimentary condoms somewhere else.

“Now, change your bandages every day for the next three days,” Teddy continued to advise, not noticing the toddler on his work cabinet “I’d advise taking it off right before going into the shower, and afterwords put only one drop of the antibiotic on it before putting on new bandages.”

“That’s enough suckers for now, Little T.” Mitch deadpanned to his sister; Teddy finally turned around, then stiffened up and threw his arms up in exasperation.

“Little T! Not again!” He exclaimed and walked over; the toddler squeaked and slid down the cabinet with the jar tucked under one her arms and ran off; Teddy chasing her.

Being a teen ‘parent’ wasn’t easy, but it sure could be amusing sometimes.

His wristband pinged with an oncoming message; he pressed a button and a head icon of Texas appeared. “Hey unc-”

“I NEED BACK UP.” Mitch cringed and drew his wrist back to save his ears. Then he could hear what sounded like energy blasts and crashing.

“I’m on my way,” Mitch told the older Burner as he started rushing towards Moonstruck; Miles was still in the garage, but there was no sign of Dana or Kam yet “I’m going to lock on your coordinates alright? We’ll be right there.” The head icon of his caretaker disappeared “Look sharp Miles we have a mission.” He shouted to his co-conspirator as she looked at him confused “Just follow me, I’ll fill you in on the details!” The older teen nodded, pulled her face mask up to her nose, threw her leather jacket back on and jumped on her red motorcycle, which made a puma-like roar as it sprang back to life.

Hopping into his vehicle, Mitch reached into the center console and pulled out an old, warn skull module and popped it on top of the stick shift, waking Moonstruck up with a howl-like rev of the engine.

With his car awake and sharp, he raced out of the garage and attempted making a call to the rest of his team, but only Teddy and Miles would answer.

“What just happened guys?” The blocky head icon of Teddy ask, the familiar sound of Little T giggling was in the background, meaning the medic must have caught her.

“Texas sent out a distress call, he didn’t say what it was but it sounded serious, you know he’s not the type to request backup.”

“Have you picked up on his location Mitch?” The head icon of Miles asked; the brunet checked his screen and struggled to watch both the road and his console screen with only his left eye “He’s about five blocks away, I’m going to patch you the coordinates.” He said and had the coordinates of the destination sent to both of the other Burners.

“Received.” Miles said, and her head icon disappeared as she rushed ahead to the destination; Miles served as a scout because of her vehicle being a motorcycle she could get to a destination much faster than the other Burners and could drive through tight fits a regular car couldn’t. What she lacked in armor and size she made up for in speed and maneuverability.

“Ping me if anyone gets hurt.” Teddy instructed.

“Course.” The younger Burner agreed and shut off the call with Teddy but kept Mile’s line open, when he was three block en route he put Miles back on speaker “Mile’s I need a status report.”

“Almost there-” A gasp and the sound of a energy blast of some kind “Kane Co warpod.”

“Is it red?”

“Yeah.” He heard the older teen curse under her breath and what had to be her wheels skidding on the rough pavement.

“Do you see Texas?”

“Hold on - um- wait, I see Stronghorn, it’s, parked?” She managed to stammer between skidding and energy blasts. Mitch attempted a call to Texas but it just continues to ring, which shouldn’t happen because any driver can answer a call while driving since their communication lines were synced to the cars themselves. This meant that Texas wasn’t in his car.

Mitch took a sharp turn, running a red light but he didn’t really care because this was Motorcity after all “Is there an alleyway there?”

“Two, why?”

He didn’t answer; he connected wirelessly to the warpods communicator but also accessed the data cache “The warpod is acting remotely,” he told the older teen “it’s motion activated, if you /stop moving/ it will stop firing. Just stop riding, now.”

“Mitch-”

“Just do it, Miles, I’ll be right there.” He commanded and pulled up near the area, but not in proximity of the warpods range, which was actually rather limited compared to most warpods, must have been an older model. Making sure his weapon was calibrated, he pulled the skull module out of the stick shift and ran out of Moonstruck - he saw Miles in the area in front of the sinister-looked warpod, she was behind a car overturned on it’s side and had Prowler stationed right next to her.

He ran over and crouched next to her “What happened to your eye?” Was the first thing she asked.

“Just a scratched eye, doctors orders - listen, no ones in the Warpod or Stronghorn.”

“Then where’s Texas and Red?”

“They’re going hand-to-hand - I’ll look in the alley to the left and you look to the alley on the right. If you find nothing, come into the alley I went into, and vice versa.” He instructed, then peeked over the car slowly as not to activate the motion sensing weapons.

She nodded and adjusted her glasses, and got up, running might next to the weapon and having to dodge a few blasts on foot before making it into the alley. Mitch sighed deeply and slightly anxiously because he was going to have to do the same thing just on the other side of. He really hated being a rebel leader sometimes. Sucking in one last breath and holding it in, he ran out from behind the car and made a beeline to the alley, twisting out of the way of oncoming blasts and missing the shots by what had to be pure luck until he finally made it the the alley.

He heard a harsh exchange of words and ran further down the alley until he came to the end of the alley.

Texas was on the ground, on his knees clutching his arm with his other arm reaching around to hold what had to be a wound and was facing Mitch, but in front of him stood a man clad in telltale red lighted armor, and with his back turned to Mitch as he towered over the incapacitated Texas.

Texas tilted his head slightly to look up at Mitch, but this was a bad move because it indirectly signalled to Red that someone was there and the old enemy turned the hell to face Mitch.

Mitch pressed a button on his wristband to ping a medical distress call to Teddy.

“Well, well,” Red said in a robotic voice “if it isn’t the discount Mike Chilton I’ve heard so much about.” He said mockingly, circling slightly, Mitch circled back and kept his weapon hidden but ready “Didn’t your dad ever tell you not to poke your eye out?”

“What do you want, Red, my dads already in prison what more do you want?”

Red shrugged nonchalantly, which infuriated Mitch “Honestly I was fine with Chilton in jail, although I’d really prefer dead. But the big boss is concerned about his clone running around - I thought he was exaggerating your resemblance but now that I’m seeing you in person I have to say, it’s no lie. My eyes are bleeding just looking at you. I’m guessing that’s what happened to you?”

Angrily Mitch made a step towards the armoured man, who brought his fists up, they lit up and sparked in some kind bright red energy. They held an angry stare - well, Mitch held up an angry stare at least, he had to guess that there was an angry or mocking stare behind that visor.

“Go home kid,” Red mocked “I’m interested in Mike Chilton - not some wannabe clone who thinks he’ll ever live up to him.” This enraged Mitch to the point of boiling over and he charged at red with this hand fist going up as if to punch him; out of his wristband an energy-based spinning saw blade sprang out. Red just stood there until Mitchell was close enough, then ducked under him, grabbing his wrists.

“Argh-” Mitch gasped as the red energy tased him, but it was only a minor taze but enough to short out his wristband and deter him for a second, a second was all that Red needed to use the hold he had on his wrists to slam and pin him against the wall.

“Pathetic,” Red spat, laughing menacingly behind his visor. Mitch saw Miles running towards them from the entrance of the alleyway, Red turned to her slightly “STOP.” He bellowed, then placed one hand over Mitch’s chest, effectively stopping Miles “One more step and the kids getting his heart jump-ended.” Speaking of Mitch’s heart, it was absolutely pounding; how did this mission go so wrong?

Miles put her hands up in a defensive pause; the female Burner unfortunately did not have a long ranged weapon and couldn’t attack Red from the distance she was at.

Red turned back to Mitch, who he had was pressing against the wall with the type of force Mitch wouldn’t be able to outmuscle “Now,” he said “where were we? Oh that’s right; I don’t know why Kane even bothers with a baby-faced punk like yourself. You’re no Mike Chilton. Your father would have had me beat by now but look where you are,” Mitch grimaced at the comparison “yeah, you’re definitely no Mike Chilton.”

Mitch began to shake - but not in fear, he was angry. He was tired of this, he entire life he’d been compared to his father, not just because of their actual blood relation but because of how he looked and it was bad enough to get it from other Motorcitizens but now Kane and his goons were going to stick to that rhetoric like flies on shit?

“Bitch,” Mitch swore, which seemed to catch Red just a little off guard “my name is Mitchell.”

He headbutted Red as hard he possibly could. It made stars dance in his vision but it was effective in getting the mercenary off of him.

And then suddenly Sunback came careening into the alleyway and slammed into Red; the hired gun was sent flying into the opposite wall of the alley; he was rendered unconscious, but alive, in a pile of old boxes and bottles.

Teddy jumped out “Get in!” He shouted, then fireman-carried Texas into the back of his vehicle, not questioning his orders Miles walked over and put Mitch’s arm over his shoulder, helping the now vertigoed Burner into the back of the ambulance as well. When everyone was secured into the back of the modified ambulance, Teddy drove out of the alley with a shriek from his tires, and headed back in the direction of their headquarters, getting an electronic tow-line on Moonstruck, Prowler and Stronghorn on the way.

“Are you okay Mitch?” Miles asked her friend as he sat wedged between her and Texas at the ambulatory-patient bench in the back of Sunback, he held his throbbing forehead in his hand, squeezing both of his eyes shut hard in an attempt to alleviate the pain. It didn’t work.

“…That really hurt.” He finally said, and she sighed in relief.

“Texas is fine by the way,” The Burners caretaker said from the other side of Mitch, which made Miles chuckle a little bit.

///

“You got such a knack for hurting yourself, I was wondering where your sister got it from I used to think it was from Texas but it must be genetic.” Teddy ranted as he shined his penlight into one of Mitch’s eyes and then the other one, he had taken the eyepad and bandages off of Mitch’s right eye so he could check both of them. They were back at the garage, and he was in Teddy’s workstation getting looked over. Texas was passed out in one of the cots, Teddy explained that he had no external signs of damage, meaning he must have been tased over and over instead “Okay… pupils equal round reactive to light.” He rambled “You shouldn’t have any real head trauma, but you’re going to have a killer headache.” The shorter teen put his penlight away and produced two tablets and a glass of water “This should help with the pain a little.”

“Thanks Teddy.” Mitch thanked, and knocked the pills back with a grimace. His little sister was ‘seated’ next to him in the doctor’s chair, and was bent on chewing on his arm and hand which he didn’t mind too much because at least she was distracted from doing anything destructive or harassing Texas. “I have a feeling Red isn’t done with us just yet, his mission is to study us and well, he’s already met me and Miles. This is far from over.” He told Teddy, who was nodding, still listening as he jotted down notes.

“Red bad?” Little T babbled, summarizing what what being said around her. He put an arm around her tiny frame, and she held his large hand in her two tiny ones but only to continue to gnaw on it.

“Red bad.” Mitch confirmed.

/Once again there is pain I bring flames, I bring cold I’m the Blood Red Sandman coming home On this unholy night I will make you my own Blood Red Sandman Coming home again I’m coming home again/

TO BE CONTINUED…

Authors note: Song is ‘Blood Red Sandman’ by Lordi. Cars revealed; Moonstruck= Wolf motif, black. Prowler= Cheetah motif, red. Sunback = Honey badger motif, cyan.

(1) He’s speaking binary, which translates to “Fuck”.

#motorcity #motorcity legacy #legacy #au #past!muck #past!muckles #past!dukexbabs #past!clairefoxy #dutchxtennie #burners #burners legacy

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spockandawe · 8 years ago

Text

So you’ve heard Spock is the actual literal devil

Have you heard that I’m a terrible person? A plagiarist? Have you been told that I’m only into transformers at all because I wanted to make this one random guy unhappy? If you’ve been told that, you’ve probably also been told that a year and a half later, I’m still making fanworks just to upset him. You might have even heard that shhhh, don’t disagree with Spock on anything, or they’ll hunt you down and harass you.

Right, okay. This is one hell of a saga that I will attempt to tell in as compressed a form as possible. It’s a lot. Years ago, back in HS, there was this one guy who policed the hell out of one of the character tags. I’m going to call him C. He’d pressure people not to make the content they were making, decry the hateful people reading with a malicious eye who thought the character would ever do anything bad (the character was a creep). And because being obnoxious wasn’t bad enough, if you didn’t cave to his demands, he just might do things like start whisper campaigns about how you support rape, casually out you as a survivor, cute little things like that.

This is not a story about that guy.

This is a story about C’s one-time attack dog, eventual boyfriend, and current ex. We’ll go ahead and call him R. I’ve tried real hard to avoid namedropping on my blog before, but could people find him from this? Probably. Have I stopped caring? Absolutely.

TL;DR, unsubstantiated accusations of serial harassment are a little questionable when they’re coming from someone with a years-long, extensively documented history of serial harassment and a personal grudge against me.

Cut for length.

Edit 7/2/2017: R has posted that he regrets making these posts about me, and admits that he said things that were out of line. And he’s stated that he’s going to try to do better in the future. I genuinely, truly appreciate that. I’m leaving this post up because there have been lies about me floating around for a while and I reserve the right to defend myself, but I really do appreciate that.

Oh balls, none of this makes sense without backstory (I’m so sorry)

If you think I suck or my work sucks, that’s fine! You do you, go enjoy the things that make you happy.

If you think I’m the devil because this one guy told you about my evil, evil past and all my terrible misdeeds, without anything at all to back up his words? You can ask me. I don’t bite, and oh lordy do I have receipts.

To be clear, R is totally allowed to hate me! I don't care. I don't care if he hates my writing, I don't care if he hates me as a person. But now he's escalated to spreading lies about me, and people are believing him, and I’m not enough of a doormat to let that just stand.

And I’m going to cheat a little. Here’s a memo with the cliffs notes version (not the original memo, I made a copy with C’s urls cropped out since he hasn’t attacked anyone in a long while). Warning, digging any distance into this turns up violent fantasies, violent sexual fantasies, creepy interactions with a minor, and lots more, it’s all really, really unpleasant. Evidence is thoroughly documented, please tread with care.

You would not believe how truncated that is compared to the reality.

Now, the worst of this came via C. Who has calmed down a lot these days, and I’m really happy that’s the case. Good for him. I hope his life continues in a direction where he doesn’t find it necessary to do this stuff.

Lucky for me, R was standing by to pick up the slack.

It doesn’t show up as much in the memo, which is mostly C-focused, but R was standing by C this whole time, defending his right to spread around private information about someone’s abuse history, sending nasty messages on the other guy’s behalf, and much,much more. it’s long, it’s awful, it’s unpleasant. R personally hurt people in some significant ways that I don’t want to link directly, for their sake. He expressed deep remorse a few times, but it never stuck.

Here’s my personal favorite quote from R. He’s speaking to the CSA survivor that C casually outed (with information given to him in confidence), and who they’d been running a long, long whisper campaign against, and who was understandably a bit upset over the whole thing:

oh go wank to your own tears [name]

#and get your sympathizers to help #nasty fucking people #maybe if you cry enough youll be able to go into second grade in the fall #ooc

Said, again, to a CSA survivor they outed and harassed. That person is such a sweetheart, and this screencap still infuriates me.

The first time I saw C pick a fight he had lots of friends. Shockingly, as he did things like loudly fantasize about how he wants to mutilate people and rant about how autistic people should die, those friends mostly drifted away. I know one person had a friend even help them stage a faux relationship-ending fight, so they could be sure they’d be able to completely cut and run from C. R stuck with him, though. Eventually they even started dating.

‘Spock followed R into transformers to harass him and stalks his favorite characters just to harass him more’

Then, transformers. Here, let me show you the first post (by R) that ever brought MTMTE to my attention. I spent years being aggressively uninterested in transformers, but this caught my eye

and honestly, ppl (adults too!!!) shipping someone who has the mentality of a child and is quite glaringly lacking a world of experiences and general understanding of things outside of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, with an adult, is just. very alarming and gross to me.

and honestly, the fact that there is a large portion of people who want him to become romantically (and sexually!!!) involved with either one of two fucking adults in canon, and hell, esp those defending it with ‘hes an adult too tho!!’ is really gross.

you can pretend all you want that hes ‘an adult’ because his body is, but theres no way jro didnt intent to code him as a child. stop fetishizing children lmao,

#pedophilia -/-/- #cygate -/-/- #if someone comes at me screaming ‘rule 38′ im gonna shove them in a locker

I didn’t know transformers, but I was pretty sure this was some straight-up bullshit.

(but don’t worry, he ships it now! no hypocrisy here, no sir)

It’s “really gross” to ship this adult with other adults. Mm. Given the reasonableness of the claims these guys have made in the past, and given their extensive history of harassing people over those claims, I hopped to the wiki to check it out. I read a bit about the comic and the plot, and all of it sounded so fascinating that I just had to give the comic a try.

Reader, I married it.

I shotgunned MTMTE 1-47 in two days, started doing fanworks right out of the gate, and I’ve never looked back. A lot of my art was cygate, because come on, the comic wants you to ship it so bad, my first readthrough ended with issue 47, and that was the first ship I’d ever read about for the series, even before I dove in.

Now, both these characters punch me right in the heart, in some painfully personal ways. Tailgate’s the more relevant one here, but I don’t even know if I could do justice to the emotions both of them give me.

I’m still not a fan of how R’s lies about me have edged me into needing to say this in public, but okay. I’m developmentally delayed. It’s been a rough ride. And Tailgate hits me in some of those spots so hard it just takes my breath away. I’ve got a lot of baggage over not being a real adult, and not in the funny oh-no-how-do-taxes-work way, more like an extended months-long meltdown my first year of college because I can tell that my friends are years ahead of me and I don’t know how to even start catching up, and just existing, as myself, is humiliating.

All of my relationship milestones have come painfully, painfully late. The whole thing is still one awful emotional bruise. I hate it, and I hate how easy it is to convince myself that yeah, of course you don’t actually deserve to be treated as an adult and you never will. Just look at you. So then it is unbelievably important to me that I can see someone someone who is like me, being treated as a legitimate adult, and being able to have an adult relationship.

Hearing that shipping someone like me is essentially pedophilia is the opposite of that.

But he ships it now, so everything is fine :)

Yeah, you know what? Another fucking receipt.

uGHGH im so tired of all the rabid cy// /gat// //e fans like even cy’s giving em a look like ‘leave my fucking child alone’

#i just #im hoping jro has some taste tho and doesnt make an adult date a child #and if not im hoping the outcome blows over soon bc im so tired of seeing people defend pedophilia #pedophilia -/-/-

Parental.

This continued even after JRO explicitly confirmed Tailgate was an adult.

Bonus ableism: shipping Whirl (another character who hits me way too hard) isn’t okay either. Even though there isn’t the excuse of ‘but he only lived three years--’ No, at that point, you’re saying that an adult who fails to adult correctly does not count, and isn’t allowed to have romantic relationships. It makes my skin crawl, and it is an issue which is very personally and directly important to me.

So some of my cygate was porn from the start (it’s what I write. it’s what I draw.), and some of the porn was made because I was upset over discourse that says someone like me needs to be treated as a child. I played with cywhirlgate too, because omg how could I not, and some of that was porn as well. It was ages ago, so I don’t remember the details for every little thing I made. But when I saw someone saying that Cyclonus and Tailgate had a parental relationship, I’m sure that helped nudge me in that direction. Maybe R thinks I should have channeled my emotions by starting a whisper campaign to exclude him from fandom spaces. But I think my way of working through bad emotions might have been a little healthier than that.

So when R accuses me of making cygate content to spite him? Half true. Just true enough to be real fucking dishonest. R spent a nice long time insisting that cygate was pedophilia. I channeled my outrage over that ableism into fan creations.

I didn’t attack him. I talked about him some – on a private forum, with people who’d already been aware of him and had been watching him and C hurt people for years, plural. I haven’t told people on tumblr any real details about him until now. And R still is happy to talk about how it was his toxic ex’s right to post torture/rape/murder porn vent fic about actual people.

Tell me, how exactly am I in the wrong?

Bonus pettiness: I posted some cywhirlgate porn. The next day, R vaguely whined about robot pedophilia and turned around and wrote some obviously-a-response cywhirlgate. Where it was super platonic and the text explicitly said it was super platonic and it even had platonic thigh nuzzling. With two “children” involved. Of course I turned around and wrote more fic of my own, because jesus h christ that made my skin crawl. You want to play this game? I guarantee I can write faster than you, let’s do this. (he did not follow through on that)

I’d also like to say that forgetting inconvenient little details like this is a thing with R. Hard to call me terrible for writing spitefic when you write it yourself.

A history of Spock’s personal involvement

Let’s backtrack a tiny bit. You may notice I am up to my elbows in this nonsense for no clear reason.

I was friends with some of the people C was taking shots at, and I was unfortunate enough to believe his original smear campaign about that one artist (I’m still ashamed about that). I cared about a number of people C was trying to hurt. I think one or two fanworks of mine upset him, but he already had loads of targets. I kept tabs on him and R, because anxiety is the gift that just keeps giving.

Eventually, C fantasized about wanting to put my former datemate’s hand through a meat grinder (ey wrote a fic that portrayed his fave in a negative light). And R defended his right to do that.

The person he posted about is still feeling the effects of that incident. I’m still feeling the effects of that. And it wasn’t even directed at me, just someone I care deeply about.

R has recently posted that ‘oh my goodness, C sure was awful, remember when he posted this thing about a meat grinder and how unreasonable it was?’ Thanks buddy, glad you noticed, now just go ahead and keep on blaming me for the aftereffects of what your boyfriend did, and what you defended.

After that, it was months before I could properly look away from either of their blogs.

C posted extensively about trying to track down the street address of his ~enemies~ (including the one whose genitals he fantasized about mutilating). He posted about how autistics should die. He had skype chats about wanting to do amateur brain surgery on people. All while posting very often about finding real addresses.

Yeah, it’s more than a year later, and every so often I get a stab of anxiety and have to head off to double check on what these two are up to.

I will repeat that C has been pretty chill lately. He’s got a career he’s aiming for. Good for him, go find success, please don’t slip back into being an internet bully. It’s sad and upsetting to see R echoing some of the early patterns of his ex, and it’s so strange to see me labeled as his own personal enemy.

‘Spock will totally come harass you too’ and/or various accusations of ableism

So there are some things I did in the mix in this history that I regret. Occasionally, I went out and flipped through the blogs of C and R’s friends, seeing if maybe they’d had said something in their notes, did they have any vagueblogs C liked, did they post about— It got unreasonable. I admit that. Anxiety was at the root of it, but it absolutely got unreasonable. And also it is a massive time sink, and I can’t remember the last time I bothered with it. I enjoy life much more when anxiety and paranoia issues don’t have their claws in me. This hasn’t been an issue in a very long time.

I came down hard on some of the kinfeels and system stuff too, which I do walk back a bit. C’s approach was… hahaha. It was something. And he was my intro to the kin and system paradigms. I saw R talking about C’s approach being unreasonable too, pretty recently. So that was an unfortunate bit of poison in how I processed the next people I met who did that sort of thing. I don’t do kin stuff, but I get it. And DID may not strictly apply to all systems, by the formal diagnostic criteria, but I’ve learned there are plenty of other dissociative disorders out there. And I met people who were multiples and who did kin things that weren’t these two guys. Which helped a LOT.

But the big one, hmmm. C wrote a fic. The idea was interesting, but the execution frustrated me. Everyone but the main lead felt so… flat. Everyone was constantly cruel to the main, for no reason. I saw a way to riff on the original text while staying true to its shape, and writing my bad emotions out is also a major, major thing I do to cope. Now, my big thing is that I should have asked before I remixed. I’d been thinking in terms of, y’know, transformative fanworks. Even with authors like Anne McCaffrey and Anne Rice, who fought against fandom, people have still felt that it should be allowed, even against their wishes. So I wrote the remix. I gave full credit on ao3 in the ‘inspired by’ box, linked to the original with positive words, the whole shebang.

The guy was still furious, and… that’s fair. I thought I’d written a thing on self-sabotage that was pretty sympathetic and compelling, and the self-sabotage actually drew a lot on my own personal history. But I gave the main flaws he strongly disagreed with, and I didn’t ask for permission. I get why he was/is angry over it.

I’ve been a fixture on their shitlists ever since :P

It’s remarkable, even while R posts now about ‘oh my god, remember how C wrote the creepiest things?’, I’m still the one who’s the the actual worst, for being skeeved out by the creepy things and finding a constructive way to deal with it. R’s controlling ex gets full freedom when it comes to vent fic, even when it’s about wallowing in torturing, raping, and murdering an avatar for a real person (the original one they harassed!), or punching someone in the face until they agree to be your friend (another artist these guys targeted). But R’s position seems to be that only C is allowed to vent (even if it’s genital mutilation fantasies), and I’m definitely not.

Oh, and R has now expanded this remix into me totally having a consistent pattern of stealing ideas and plagiarism and so many remixes that are obviously done as revenge on anyone who pisses me off. So that’s nice.

So R hates your writing. Is that seriously why this post exists?

Ha, no. Let’s look at the concrete things R is saying. Here, let me post a little sampling of evidence.

These aren’t just things he’s shouting into the void, people have responded saying wow, I never knew that! These are lies that people are believing about me. And then yesterday, June 30, 2017, he warned a friend not to disagree with my meta, or I’d come harass them. A friend I’m aggressively leaving out of this, just as I’m leaving out other responses, because these people don’t deserve to be dragged into R’s bullshit.

Let’s have bullet points. Some of these are the silly spock-is-bad-at-writing complaints. Those are here because this whole mess is pretty fucking depressing and the ridiculous claims make me laugh, but these are all things he says.

Spock is evil – You know what, he’s not calling people pedophiles, which is a step up. I’ll take it.

Spock is a plagiarist – I remixed one fic with full credit, said only good things about the original, and linked to it in extra places so that people would have extra opportunities to click through and check it out. I arguably remixed inappropriately, but that’s not the same thing. Words have definitions. If I’m a plagiarist, so is everyone who’s ever written a fanfic.

Spock is something something mean when people disagree – I don’t even know, man. I’m actually shockingly conflict-averse. Is this because I make walls of text and explain why I hold opinions at great length? I enjoy talking about a thing I love. I’m autistic, I’m hyperverbal, and this is my special interest, so is it that I talk a lot? That’s the best I can do. I’ve talked about things I disagree with on a private forum, in which case mister pot has had a lot of fun in public on twitter, not only talking shit, but also spreading outright untruths. Maybe he wants to rethink this one.

Spock will come harass you if you disagree – You need to back the heck down, pal.

Spock’s meta/fic/characterization is bad and they should feel bad – Hahaha, fite me. He won’t, because I can articulately defend myself at significant length, and his criticisms seem to stop at ‘spock sucks’, but hey.

Spock used ableist language about Whirl - I... what? This one confuses me and makes me laugh so it stays here. Also, holy double standards, batman.

Spock is only into transformers to harass R – I checked out transformers because I was pretty sure R was being disgustingly ableist (he was). I stayed in transformers because I adore it. I had to adore it a lot to make me willing to share fandom space with these two. My god, I have better things to do with my life than spend all my time on something that bores me just to annoy one asshole on the other side of the internet. I’d ask if he thinks I spent dozens of painstaking hours cross-stitching Starscream just to bother him, but….. yep, pretty sure he does.

Spock goes after all of R’s favorite characters to upset him – R latches on to just about every interesting and/or sympathetic character that shows up. When he was dating C, they covered most of the cast between them. I don’t care who R likes best because I don’t agree with his opinions. I tend to stay away from his opinions because I don’t like reading things that bother me. This is asnine. I’m only allowed to like the characters R despises, I guess.

Spock makes fanworks for things R likes just to make him see them – Oh my god, I don’t caaaaaare. I write about things that interest me, unless I’m venting. Say, venting about the way R and his ex have deliberately hurt a shockingly high number of people I care about. ‘Spock made rodistar because I liked it--’ I made it because I wrote a thing about their parallels, and shipping was the obvious next step. R isn’t that important to me. Promise.

This is just exhausting, man. The anxiety bugs had been dying down, and it had been ages since I checked out this guy’s anything. C, who drove the whole initial blowup that led to this, has been quiet and chill on tumblr. But R has learned from his ex’s old example and has been having fun spreading lies about me.

In conclusion

Some fun history.

R was 18 when he told a CSA survivor upset about being outed and harassed to wank using their tears for lube.

He was older than that when he defended C’s right to post about wanting to mutilate someone’s genitals (for the crime of saying C’s logic didn’t make sense).

He was older than that when he complained about that person’s spouse being ‘vicious’ for reacting badly to C’s genital mutilation fantasy.

He was older than that when he nodded along as C called autistic people retards and said they should die.

He was older than that when he talked about being happy that someone he disliked was triggered, and nodded along when C fantasized about that person drinking bleach.

And he was older than that when he defended C, his twenty-something boyfriend, against the thirteen-year-old that C had been having incredibly inappropriate conversations with, despite skype log proof and everything.

And despite all this, I’m still the bad guy, because I didn’t think what they were doing was okay. I’m the bad guy for being upset by C's actions, even though... R is now upset by C’s actions. The ways I responded to C were inexcusable. My only motivation is to hurt people. Every thing I did that ever upset them still means I’m terrible, even though R is saying this while he’s busy posting about how awful C is. And this all means that he needs to warn his friends not to catch my attention, or I’ll come harass them.

So, I’m tired.

I’m very tired.

I’m glad he’s trying to grow past that history. Good. Maybe he can do that without making up a story about how I’m unrepentant villain who lives for villainy and who only takes joy in causing him pain. I’m sure it helps him, because it’s a story that brushes aside the shit he did that he regrets, and makes his past less painful to think about. But that doesn’t mean I’m okay with him telling lies about me.

I don’t know why I’m the one boogeyman he has left (I kid, it’s because I’m in transformers, and because he thinks I’m popular. he harps on it a lot, and it’s weird for everyone). I mean, whatever. I’ve aggressively avoided publishing drama details on here for a very long time. But there are two blog tags, miscellaneous other untagged blog content, three forum threads, and hundreds of pages of skype logs with hard evidence of this bullshit.

I’m pretty sure that if he tries to defend himself, one, he’ll place some blame on his ex. That’s fair. C was pretty darn controlling and demanding. But R is still absolutely responsible for his own actions, and is especially responsible for the harm he personally caused. He’ll talk about how it’s bullshit to pull up all these receipts from so very long ago. In that case, his receipts for me (whatever he even has) are equally old, so aren’t they null and void? No, because Spock is the devil. And it’s not so much bullshit if he’s clearly learned nothing, and has gone back to spreading outright falsehoods about people.

To be clear, a lot of the lies he told about me were told a while back. Weeks to a few months to a year. I was letting it sit, because I’d really, really hoped this was over. Yesterday, June 30, 2017, he warned a friend not to publicly disagree with my meta or I’d come and harass them.

It’s been three years since I first saw him doing this. I’ve watched him hurt a lot of people, and I’ve watched him admit, multiple times, that he has hurt people. I thought he’d learned to stop following these toxic patterns. Apparently he has not.

Edit 7/2/2017: To repeat the edit up above, R has said he regrets posting these things about me, and that he's going to try to avoid slipping into this in the future. I very much appreciate that.

#drama tag #abusaa tag #tw: all #i can't list them all it's too many #just tread with care

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