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lloydskywalkers · 5 months ago

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moats and boats and waterfalls

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Post-Crystalized — after surviving apocalypse no. 2 (possibly 3, currently under debate) the ninja now face the unspeakable horrors of budgeting.

(Years late to the Crystalized party but here's part one of my seven billion fanfics about this season because there are Thoughts to be had about this one)

As it turns out, rebuilding a monastery is a whole lot more trouble than rebuilding the Bounty for the eightieth time.

And by trouble, Cole means incredibly expensive.

“Re-installing central heating costs what?!”

Kai’s horrified cry reverberates throughout the half-constructed monastery, the echo from the noticeably empty rooms only adding to insult.

Oh, what Cole would give to have his bed back.

“I guess we’ll have to use you during the winter,” Nya sighs, patting Kai on the back. “Lloyd, get ready to supercharge him.”

“Forget heating, do you know how much Wi-Fi costs?” Lloyd stares at the estimated summary like it’s personally kicked his pet. “Who even has that much money? God?”

“If god had money, he could’ve given Sensei Wu his inheritance and we’d all be loaded,” Jay mutters. “But noooo, ‘material possessions are the death of the soul’, blah blah blah, we’ll see whose soul is dead when the gas cuts out and he can’t make midnight tea anymore.”

“It does seem a bit extreme, looking at it all like this,” Zane remarks. Somewhat ironically, as he’s taken one look at the bill then wisely retreated across the room.

“Well, blowing up the entire monastery with us in it was extreme, so it figures repairs are just as bad,” Nya grumbles.

They all shift, the mood dampening at the reminder.

Lloyd opens his mouth. “I’m sor—”

“Do not,” Kai stabs a finger at him. “Even try.”

Lloyd slumps. “If I hadn’t gotten caught—”

“We all agreed to the plan, okay?” Cole says. “Also, no one knew we’d be sending you to Harumi, so the whole thing was doomed from the start.”

While he looks a bit miffed, Lloyd gives it up. Though perhaps that’s mostly in part because he desperately wants to avoid any more conversation about—

“So speaking of Harumi,” Jay starts.

Lloyd springs for the window.

Unfortunately for Lloyd, said window is currently boarded up by heavy-duty plywood, since quality window glass fell low on the list of priorities, which gives Kai plenty of time to tackle him before he can even raise his leg to kick it in.

“No!” Zane cries. “We can’t afford anymore plywood!”

“Or like, Band-Aids at bare minimum, so don’t you dare!” Nya adds.

“—overdramatic phase has gotta go, what are you, five — hey, no biting!”

Lloyd makes a muffled sound as he wrestles on the floor with Kai. Cole turns, very slowly, to glare at Jay.

“Oh come on, we were all thinking it,” Jay defends, reluctantly standing to help pry Lloyd from the floor. “Fine, hey, I promise we won’t talk about certain loser ex-princesses who are nice and cozy in their prison cells right now, okay? There, there, little gremlin, she can’t hurt you anymore—”

“I’ll bite you next,” Lloyd threatens, but he returns to his seat, wincing as Kai scuffs his hair.

“Turn Oni again, and that might be an actual threat.”

Lloyd startles terribly, staring at Kai with wide eyes. “That’s — not — I wouldn’t—”

“Kai,” Nya hisses.

“Woah, hey, no, I didn’t mean it like that!” Kai says quickly. “It’s supposed to be positive reinforcement! Easing it into a normal thing, y’know?”

Lloyd growls. “Nothing about this is a normal thing—”

“Except none of us are normal, so therefore it is,” Kai interrupts him smoothly. “Also we already loved you when you were a tiny demon, turning into a literal one is nothing. Give us some credit.”

Lloyd pulls his hood over his flaming face, thunking his head against the table. Kai pats him cheerfully on the shoulder.

“Additionally, unless we can swindle someone by selling Lloyd in his Oni form on the black market for cold cash before stealing him back, I don’t see how this helps matters.”

Zane finds himself on the receiving end of five blank stares. Lloyd, successfully having been pulled from his hood, whistles.

“I forget how evil you can be, sometimes.”

Kai gapes at him. “So that makes you feel better?”

“I mean, in terms of normalizing it—”

“Alright!” Cole slams his hands on the table, silencing them all. He glares them down. “Meeting room in five. We’re figuring out how to make this place livable if it kills us.”

There’s a brief silence, then Jay hesitantly raises his hand.

“Hey, so uh, we kinda don’t have a meeting room right now?”

Cole collapses on the table in despair.

---

Twenty minutes and one session of shoving chairs into what could have been the living room later — it’s hard to tell, with all the construction markings and plywood still up — they’ve kicked off the official first meeting of the Finish-Making-the-Monastery-Livable plan.

“Alright,” Lloyd announces, brushing his hands as he steps back from the chalkboard that may or may not have been stolen. “At the top of the list we have Wi-Fi, central air and heating, beds — huh, maybe those should go higher — running water, electricity — that one’s debatable, me and Jay can tag-team it if we get desperate — blankets-slash-pillows-slash-etcetera, stuff to cook with, actual food — y’know what, I’m putting that closer to the top—”

“So basically, we have nothing,” Cole says blankly.

Lloyd glances at the list, then to the sliver of chalk left in his hands. “Uh. Yeah.”

“Take the weaponry, sure, but all my albums?” Jay mourns. “I spent years collecting those.”

“I lost the blanket we stole from that super fancy apartment we lived in for like five minutes when Lloyd was a kid,” Kai sighs. “That thing literally made it through the apocalypse, just to bite it now.”

“Two apocalypses too many,” Nya says.

“Did the Preeminent count as an apocalypse? Like, a minor one?”

“Three apocalypses. It took three apocalypses to vaporize my closet,” Cole sinks lower in his seat. “Man, the hoodie you got me for my birthday was in there.”

“All of our photographs are lost, too.” Zane stares at his hands.

Lloyd murmurs something under his breath that sounds a lot like family pictures and figures.

The mood plummets a bit more, after that.

“Motherfu—”

“Alright, this isn’t helping,” Cole claps his hands. “We can all cry again later. Lloyd, overall mission status conclusion?”

“Well, like you said, we basically have nothing,” Lloyd sighs. “So unless Zane wants to stop chickening out and abandon his morals so we can just hack into everything and get it free, we need to find some way to pay for all this.”

“Again, I cannot hack in to rebuilding an entire cooling unit throughout the monastery, much less make the latest clothing line from Gucci materialize,” Zane says. Kai swears. “Also, that is called stealing.”

“You call it stealing, I call it a charitable donation,” Nya says. “I turned into the ocean for this city, the least they can do is cut me a check.”

“Besides, even if it is stealing, what are they gonna do, send us to jail again?” Jay scoffs.

Lloyd jabs the piece of chalk in his direction. “Don’t jinx us.”

“Too bad we wasted our chance at crime and didn’t even get rich,” Kai mutters. “All we got was Nya.”

He yelps as she punches him in the arm. “What, too soon?”

“You should be so lucky to have me,” she sniffs.

“Hey, but going on the donation thought train — do we know anyone who’s rich?” Jay asks. “Why don’t we have any rich friends?”

“Hey, you know what’s rich? That coming from the son of a billionaire.”

“Hey, you know what else got blown up? My inheritance!”

“Please, let it go,” Zane says. “We do have rich friends, I’ll remind you, we’re friends with actual monarchy. But we can’t exactly go and ask anyone else for money, since they all already helped out so much in getting the monastery rebuilt.”

There’s a moment of pensive silence. Lloyd draws a little sad face on the chalkboard next to ASK FOR DONATIONS.

“What if we just…sued Harumi,” Cole says. “Like, there’s gotta be some law that could work in our favor here.”

“I don’t think the court would go for that,” Lloyd mutters. “Since they’re all morally corrupt frauds who hate us.”

“Yeah! Down with the system!” Kai punches his fist in the air.

“Also, Harumi likely has very little in the way of money, either,” Zane says. “Considering she blew up any and all assets she might have had claim to.”

“Haha, what a loser,” Nya crows.

“What if we sued Garmadon?” Cole tries. “The courts have to hate him more than they hate us.”

Lloyd scowls, scrawling a large NO on the chalkboard. “Not worth the effort. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’s still couch-surfing at Vinny’s, which means also penniless.”

“We could sue Kalmaar,” Nya cracks her knuckles.

“Isn’t he dead?”

“Oh, yeah.” Nya looks disappointed.

“Did anyone survive that we can sue successfully?” Jay muses. “And actually get money out of?”

“Vangelis,” Cole snaps his fingers. “Wait. No, we ousted him from the throne, so he’s probably broke too.”

“Vangelis survived?”

As they dissolve into bickering over the status of enemies potentially living-or-dead, Kai squints at the chalkboard, where Lloyd is still scratching out letters despite having completely lost the room.

“We…are…fu—Lloyd!”

“Well it’s true,” Lloyd huffs, finishing off his message with a flourish. “Tada. There’s my grand plan.”

“That’s not a plan, it’s a pessimistic estimation at how things are gonna go.”

“It’s extremely rude language, is what it is! I thought we taught you better.”

Lloyd simply looks pleased with himself at having recaptured the room’s attention. It is, of course, then that Sensei Wu walks into that room. He stops, looking from where they’re all frozen in place, then to the chalkboard.

Lloyd pales.

Sensei Wu pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers and closes his eyes.

“My dearest nephew, you have three seconds to make that disappear, or I’ll be forced to—”

Lloyd springs for the chalkboard in record time, wiping frantically at his writing with the sleeve of his gi.

“People would kill for that thing, and here he’s using it as a chalkboard eraser,” Jay mutters.

It isn’t until later, when they’ve all retreated to the collective mass of blow-up mattress and borrowed blankets they’re calling a bedroom, that anyone breaches the topic again.

There’s a loud rustling as Cole turns over where he’s precariously shoved between Kai and Zane.

“…can we sue the mayor?”

There’s a noted pause of silence, only broken by the whirring of the cheap oscillating fan.

“You know,” Zane says slowly. “In terms of slander and defamation…”

An evil, sharp-toothed smile spreads across Lloyd’s face. “I like the sound of that.”

“Hey, let’s sue the new ninja, too,” Jay grins. “Can Pixal retroactively trademark our vibe?”

“You cannot sue them based on vibe appropriation.”

“Yeah, but I can sue them for impersonation.”

---

They cannot, as it turns out, sue the mayor, because legal work like that costs even more money.

They can, however, ruin his year by filing (and forging) every possible insurance claim under the sun, so they all walk out of the office a little more satisfied than before.

“I hope all your socks go missing in the laundry!” Nya yells toward the building as they hit the streets. “I hope you have a rock stuck in your shoe for the rest of your life! I hope you’re plagued with a mildly inconvenient headache every waking moment and never fully enjoy anything ever again!”

“Alright, alright, we’re getting looks,” Cole grabs her arm. “Let it go.”

“As much as I appreciate it, I am not going back to jail,” Jay shudders. “Twice was enough.”

Kai frowns. “Twice? When else did you get arrested?”

“We all did, re—” Jay cuts off, suddenly aware of the absolute daggers Nya is staring at him. “Uhhh…aw, snap, another mental breakdown, haha!”

“Is this the whole ‘we all have missing memories you guys are definitely hiding from us’ thing again? ‘Cause I swear—”

“I said I’m getting to it, it’s a really boring story anyways—”

“Didn’t you say you lost an eye—”

“Oh look, a window!”

This time, Jay is thwarted by Lloyd, who’s simply jumped out enough windows to recognize when someone’s about to try it themselves. Except Jay is aiming to jump inside a window this time, so they both go crashing into Pixal just as she joins them.

To her credit, she barely flinches. “I thought I heard clown noises nearby.”

Lloyd stares at her in such utter betrayal, the mental breakdown thing might become valid.

“Pixal,” Jay simply begs. “Please. Help your clowns scavenge our clown dinners.”

Pixel surveys them all, a fond smile tugging at her lips. “There is a nice pizza place down the block.”

The cheers she’s met with nearly succeeded at knocking her over where Jay failed.

Dinner that night comprises of actual, warm, take-out pizza, which nearly moves Cole to tears.

“Definitely changing the priorities order,” Lloyd says blissfully through a mouthful of cheese. “Food goes at the top, no questions.”

“Seconded,” Kai mumbles.

“Thirded.”

“Fourthed.”

“I cannot believe, that after everything we’ve been through, we did not qualify for the post-apocalypse discount,” Zane bites out.

“Well,” Jay says brightly. “Pixal hacked the card reader, so technically we got a hundred percent discount.”

Zane stares at her, in equally utter betrayal. “Pixal?”

She shrugs. “They can try to send me to prison. They will fail.”

---

Two days later, Skylor cements herself as everybody’s most favorite person in the entire world by not only saving them from starvation by demanding they sit their butts down in the restaurant and eat for free, but also donating six pillows and a year’s worth of shampoo.

“I know it’s not a lot, but I’m on the lookout for more,” she tells them. “I’ve asked other people to help chip in, too, so hopefully that’ll make things a little easier.”

“Skylor,” Cole nearly sobs into his new, beautiful pillow. “If Kai doesn’t marry you, I will.”

“H-hey!”

“No marriage necessary,” she snorts. “Consider keeping you all fed my way of saying thanks.”

“But you already helped out with the monastery,” Nya says, around the same time the rest of them assure her there’s no need for thanks, despite the fact that no one has the slightest desire to relinquish their food.

“Fine, then,” Skyler huffs, her cheeks turning pink. “Make me say it out loud, will you — consider it my way of showing that I care about you all. Very much.”

“Aww,” Lloyd says.

Kai makes a face somewhere between melting and heart eyes.

“I hate all of you,” she mutters.

“We love you too, Skylor,” Cole grins.

“Hate you!”

Despite her words, they all leave with six boxes of leftovers and free dessert.

This, of course, brings another slightly-pressing issue to mind.

---

They end up getting a refrigerator for a steal of a bargain, which is probably again influenced by Pixal’s criminal extremely generous activity.

Given how enthusiastic they all are about getting it installed, Kai is half-expecting there to be no work left for him at all by the time he returns from the food run.

He’s…not entirely disappointed when he walks into the kitchen, though he is rather baffled.

The room freezes as if on record-scratch. Jay is perched on top of the counters, Lloyd has a sledgehammer raised halfway in the air, and Cole is on the ground beside the refrigerator crying.

“What?” Kai asks, blankly.

“The fridge…doesn’t fit…” Cole moans into the floor.

“We didn’t leave enough space between the cabinets,” Jay informs him through a mouthful of gummy worms. “So the door can’t open.”

Kai looks at Lloyd. “So the sledgehammer is for…?”

“DIY home improvement,” he shrugs.

“Huh.” Kai glances at the cabinets. “Put some safety goggles on first, okay?”

Lloyd only gets about two swings in before Zane descends with the all wrath of the Ice Emperor and adds to the tally of times-the- Green-Ninja-almost-met-his-doom, but it’s fun while it lasts.

They were ugly cabinets, anyways.

---

While his love for his family could potentially fuel a nuclear power plant, Kai does grow tired of being the living team space heater rather quickly.

The effort of keeping his power going all night just gets annoying (and exhausting) — so by the time he’s tagged in Lloyd to use his power to keep him going, they’re up to two moody ninja short on sleep, and no one wants to deal with that.

While they’ve scrounged up a few dollar-store quality blankets, Jay takes the opportunity to highlight his accomplishments in arts-and-crafts.

“You mean your mom’s accomplishments.”

“Hey, we made it together! It counts.”

The it in question quickly gains the name “god-awful-t-shirt-blanket” simply because the blinding combination of all their cast-off shirts sewn together is impressively terrible.

“I still think this is a waste of good clothes,” Kai grumbles. “It’s not like we have outfits to spare these days, you know.”

“Do you wanna keep heating the room at night or no?” Nya threatens.

Kai quickly shuts his mouth and returns to sewing Cole’s old plaid shirt to one of Jay’s neon blue shirts that features a dolphin printed in enough colors to kill a man.

“So, what do we think?” Lloyd steps back, wiping at his forehead with his arm as he surveys their masterpiece.

Staring at the multi-colored mess they’ve patched together into a quilt, Nya announces, “It’s the ugliest blanket I’ve ever seen.”

“Harsh.”

“Hey, we did our best!”

“See if I ever sew for you again,” Lloyd huffs.

“I didn’t say that was a bad thing,” Nya quickly interjects. “It looks a little like us!”

“Are you saying we’re ugly?!”

“Nya, no, our family genes are enough to carry us through this, I promise—”

---

They’re in the middle of figuring out how to steal Wi-Fi from the government when Tox drops by, Karloff in tow.

“You really…need…to get an elevator…or something,” she pants, red-faced and sweaty as she hauls several large bags behind her.

In contrast, Karloff looks unfazed, casually toting a hideously floral-patterned sofa over his shoulder.

“Skylor mentioned you need furniture, no?” he says. “It’s not much, but you need somewhere to sit.”

“Karloff,” Jay tells him, very seriously. “This is the most beautiful sofa I’ve ever seen.”

“Haha! Karloff is right once again,” he brags to Tox.

Tox stares at Jay in flabbergasted despair.

“You can’t put that in your home,” she mutters. “You can’t. It’s a crime against eyes everywhere.”

“Well, it’s better than no sofa, and we’re literally turning down nothing these days,” Nya says cheerfully. She leans over to peer at the bags Tox has managed to drag up. “Speaking of…?”

“Oh, yeah.” Tox heaves the bags in front of her. “Skylor said you guys needed help interior decorating? So I brought a couple rugs. She also mentioned something about the ugliest blanket she’s ever seen, so we called up some of the other Elemental Masters and got like, six or seven together. They’re not exactly works of art, but they’re okay?”

Kai tears open the first bag, his eyes lighting up. “They’re beautiful,” he whispers reverently. “Hey, guys, we got blankets! Dibs on the one with a wolf.”

“Oh, no, not that one, it’s from my awful middle school phase—”

“What do you mean, dibs, I want the wolf one!”

“Oh yeah? Down to fight for it?”

“You’re on. Training ground in five.”

“Absolutely not, we are not fighting over a blanket we’ve been so generously gifted,” Zane snaps, snagging Kai and Cole by their collars.

“Yeah, we also don’t really have a training ground anymore,” Lloyd says, half-buried in a blanket embroidered with countless bug-eyed fish. “It went ka-boom.”

Nya rubs her temples. “Zane?”

“Already factored into the expenses,” he sighs.

“Oh wow, you guys weren’t kidding,” Tox says. “Do you want, uh, like a keychain? I have some mints here too I can donate…man, Karloff, help me out!”

“Does the monastery need a metal helmet?”

“We’re really not that broke,” Nya says hastily, pushing away the offered mints. “But thanks.”

“Speak for yourself.” Lloyd snags the mints, clasping his hands together in prayer at Tox before slipping back into the emerging blanket battle.

Nya sighs. “Do you guys want tea? We’ve got three whole mugs, now.”

Tox glances from the other ninja, where Jay has been successfully rolled into a blanket burrito and is in potential danger of being rolled right down the mountain, to Karloff, who’s the reason said danger is potential.

“We can spare a minute, I guess.”

The t-shirt blanket is later relegated to the living room, where it lives as a throw blanket over Karloff’s floral sofa. They unanimously decide it’s the perfect home for it, and the only real critic is Skylor, who’s almost reduced to tears the next time she visits.

---

They celebrate their achievement of having a living room by all eating dinner on Karloff’s floral-patterned couch. This comes with a good deal of kicking and squirming and the tragic loss of Kai’s fortune cookie, but they make it work.

“This is kind of depressing, though. Sitting in the dark,” Nya remarks.

A muscle in Jay’s jaw twitches. “Well, maybe if someone hadn’t melted all our candles—”

“You were the one who had the brilliant idea of trying to barbecue with them, genius!” Kai snaps.

“It was a pretty spectacular fire,” Lloyd admits. Then, hastily, “In a really cool way!”

“Perhaps a lamp should go next on the list,” Zane says. “Rather than relying on Kai as our light.”

“Hey, I’m a great light,” Kai scowls. “I’m the light of your life. I could light this place up all day!”

“Yes, and I’m sure it would end similarly to the time you nearly burned down a building under the belief that you were achieving your true potential, but were, in fact, just dehydrated.”

Kai gapes at Zane in betrayal. “You said you’d take that to the grave!”

Zane carefully laces his fingers together. “Technically, I did.”

“No you didn’t!” Jay interjects. “We never buried you, so you never had a grave! Ha!”

Zane looks affronted. “I didn’t get a grave?”

“You got a statue!” Kai quickly consoles .

“Yeah, what’d you want us to do, pick your exploded pieces out of the street for half a year then toss ‘em in the ground?”

“Oh, as if that’s any worse than being left to pour your corpse out in cups of water.”

“It wasn’t my corpse, I was still alive!”

“You were the literal ocean. Fish swam in you.”

“Ew, does that mean—”

“Finish that sentence and I will drown you where you stand—”

“You’re all in desperate need of counseling,” Pixal mutters.

“Tell me about it,” Lloyd says, leaning back on the armrest of the sofa.

Cole shakes his head. “Lost causes, all of them.”

Pixal stares at them both, expression pinched, before deciding to respect the hopelessness of lost causes.

“Hold on, I think Kai’s crying,” Lloyd moves to sit up, only to wobble, slip sideways, and go crashing to the floor gracelessly.

“Just like when I fell to my doom off the Bounty,” Cole reminisces.

Pixal’s eyes glaze over.

---

Later that evening, Pixal adds “therapy” to the list of potential expenses on the fridge door. Regretfully, it loses miserably in the debate against hot shower expenses, so it too joins the pile of repressed memories that will undoubtedly haunt them in the future.

“But hey, a hot shower can cure depression on a good day,” Cole says, and that settles that.

---

Hot showers, as it turns out, are a hard-won priority.

It’s less so after Jay, Nya, and Pixal camp out overnight near the pipeline and perform their own less-than-legal maintenance, but one of Zane’s carefully filed insurance claims actually went through the other day, so they’re taking their luck as they can.

It’s not until they get working on the bathroom itself that the true difficulty makes itself clear.

“Hey, uh,” Kai stares down at the patch of rotted floor he’s ripped up, wiping at the fog that’s spread across his safety goggles. “Is the base layer supposed to look like that?”

“Look like what?” Cole abandons the tiling he’s been placing to glance over. His face drops. “Uh-oh.”

“Is that all black mold?” Nya gags, nearly dropping her bottle of cleaning bleach.

“FSM, no wonder we’re all crazy,” Cole mutters.

“Alright,” Kai strips off his rubber gloves. “Nothing for it. Back up, guys, I’m barbecuing this baby.”

“Wait wait wait don’t—”

Ten minutes and a good deal of hacking and wheezing through teary eyes later, Cole murders Kai while they all look on.

Well, he attempts to.

“You filled the monastery with chlorine gas, you absolute moron—!”

“How was I supposed to know that would happen, I’m not a chemist—”

Nya glares ahead darkly as Lloyd gingerly treats the reddened blisters on her hands.

“None of you,” Zane says, through gritted teeth. “Are touching cleaning chemicals for a year.”

---

“Not sure I wanna know how you pulled off poisoning yourselves, but I’m kinda impressed you did a better job of it than most criminals would,” Ronin tells them, once the monastery has been successfully de-chlorinated and the bathroom tiles firmly put in place, sans black mold.

“Maybe we can hire ourselves out to them when we’re strapped for cash,” Nya sighs.

“We’re literally always strapped for cash. We’re broke.”

Ronin laughs, clapping Jay on the back. “Welcome to adulthood, kid.”

“I don’t think normal adulthood gets their home blown up on a regular basis,” Lloyd hisses.

“Fair point,” Ronin nods.

“Well, thanks for saving us all from a slow and painful death,” Cole scrubs his hands over his face. “We can pay you back sometime in the next century. Maybe.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Ronin waves them off. “It’d be like kicking a dog when it’s down, askin’ you all to pay. Besides, I probably owe you one.”

“You sure do,” Jay glares.

“Hey, hey, I said I was sorry for the whole human sacrifice thing,” Ronin placates. “Want some good news, at least?”

“Is it actually good news?” Lloyd eyes him shrewdly.

“Lighten up, captain trust issues.” Kai barely snags Lloyd before he lands himself back in jail. “I looked into some more of those insurance claims you filed, and you actually got somethin’ out of it. I, uh, helped the bank along a bit, with the refund.”

“Bank?” Cole whispers.

“Refund?” Jay’s eyes shine.

“Yeah, got you all your checks right here,” Ronin says, tugging six neat envelopes from his jacket. “Just don’t blow ‘em all at once, okay? Haha.”

Zane looks as if he might propose to him on the spot.

“Hey, this isn’t too bad!” Kai exclaims. “We got money!”

“Guys,” Lloyd says, staring at his check. “You know we should probably pool all this together and spend it on necessities, right?”

“Yeah,” Cole sighs.

“It would be the smartest course of action,” Zane adds.

There’s a noted silence.

“Or,” Lloyd says.

---

In their defense, they spend exactly two-thirds of their checks on household items.

Whether or not these are needed household items remains a debate.

“If we’re all buying lamps for the living room, can we at least attempt to match?” Zane sighs.

“Booo, where’s your joy and whimsy?” Jay sticks out his tongue.

“That isn’t even a lamp, it’s a light-up axolotl.”

“The heck’s an axo-lot—”

“It lights up, doesn’t it? Ergo, it’s a lamp.”

“Ergo, what are you, Sensei Wu—”

“We’re never having guests over again,” Cole remarks, as Lloyd and Nya maneuver a five-foot-tall rendition of Godzilla into the shopping cart that may or may not light up.

“The monastery’s gonna look rad as heck, we’re forcing everyone to come over and look at it,” Kai corrects as he tosses a set of flame-patterned curtains into the mess.

“Absolutely not.”

“I actually might like them,” Zane muses. “They would capture the energy of our kitchen perfectly.”

Kai beams. “Flame curtains are a go!”

In the aftermath, they total around six individual blankets, five mismatching lamps and one light-up axolotl, a table that no one knows how to put together, one set of flame-patterned curtains, another hideous couch, and enough cutlery and kitchenware that no one has to eat out of Sensei Wu’s incense bowls anymore.

“Alright,” Lloyd says. “We’ve got three hours until the stores start closing. Everyone take the rest of your checks, don’t think about how much of a disaster the monastery still is, and start thinking about how valid retail therapy is.”

“Aye-aye,” Kai salutes, before immediately booking it for the clothing outlets.

---

Three hours later, Kai’s happily blown his entire check on a new wardrobe and exactly one pair of name-brand brand shoes. He’s unreasonably proud of himself for his restraint, until he catches Cole with three pairs of his own name-brand shoes, and immediately regrets being responsible.

He spots Jay going off in the N-Pop section of a music store, Nya investing in a sinfully-priced espresso machine, and Zane walking toward the clothing outlets himself with a high-quality pair of noise-cancelling headphones.

He doesn’t find Lloyd until well after he’s picked up his own clothes, already sporting an oversized hoodie he could’ve just stolen from Kai.

He’s more concerned when Lloyd proceeds to blow the last of his check at the sporting goods section of the local convenience store. Considering how long Lloyd spent looking wistfully at the candy aisle, Kai is baffled by the decision.

He’s even more baffled when Lloyd proceeds to box up his purchase for delivery instead of keeping it himself.

He’s utterly horrified when he sees who it’s addressed to.

“Are you serious?!” he asks shrilly, torn between ripping the box from Lloyd’s hands or immediately calling the mental health hotline. “You’re sending her gifts?”

“It’s not a gift, it’s — look, it’s a long story, you wouldn’t get it,” Lloyd grumbles, plastering another layer of duct tape over the box. “Just help me deliver it to Kryptarium and I’ll show you, okay?”

Kai very much does not help, because he’s not an enabler and he cares about his brother’s mental health, but he does follow Lloyd to Kryptarium Prison and lurk behind him as he eagerly watches the surveillance screens.

Harumi stares at the box before her, looking every bit as baffled as Kai is.

“Who would send me a volleyball—”

She freezes, her face going utterly blank. A muscle in her jaw twitches.

There’s a brief flash of what could be amusement, a brief expression as if she’s eaten something sour, then a fury like no other eclipses her face.

“LLOYD! I’LL KILL YOU MYSELF, YOU THINK YOU’RE HILARIOUS—”

Lloyd’s still laughing by the time they’re escorted from the premises, hard enough that Kai has to catch him when he trips at the top of the steps.

“What’d you even write on the note?” Kai finally asks, a bit in awe.

Lloyd grins. “I told her good luck getting together her villainous volleyball team in jail.”

Kai blinks. “Do I…want to know?”

“Nope!” Lloyd says airily. “But I’ve made my point.”

---

Regardless of some behaviors, the mental health hotline remains a constant idea. It simply happens to come up at inconvenient times, such as when Cole drops a dresser on his foot halfway across the courtyard.

He swears so loudly the whole monastery echoes with it.

“Oh geez, Cole, are you okay? Why’d you lift the whole thing on your own?”

“We could have helped,” Zane rushes over. “You don’t have to do it all yourself—”

“Yes I do!” Cole yells. “I’m stronger than that, I’m supposed to be stronger, I have to be stronger or you’re all going to die next time—”

He cuts off abruptly. Zane looks heartbroken. Jay—

Is suddenly busy smacking Cole upside the head.

“No, you don’t!” he snaps back, even louder. “You don’t have to do it by yourself! None of you do! Every time anyone tries to do something by themselves it all goes wrong and we lose someone, so we’re never — doing that — again!”

He seizes Cole around the arms, his wild eyes meeting Cole’s wide ones. “No one blames you for the stupid tunnel. I don’t care how strong you are. We’re all here and that’s what matters, so don’t you dare put that at risk.”

“But I—”

“No.”

“Jay, I—”

“No.”

“I—”

“No!” A manic expression overtakes Jay’s face. “No, no, no! No one’s taking the blame. No one’s isolating themselves. No. One. Is. Going. Off. Alone. You hear me?!”

The others are frozen, halfway outstretched hands caught as if suspended in ice. Kai’s expression is twisted painfully. Lloyd’s eyes are on the ground. Zane is as frozen as the metaphorical ice, and Nya looks devastated.

“No more being alone,” Jay says, the fire in his voice giving way to something wetter and considerably more sniffly. “No more. Don’t — you can’t—”

“Okay,” Cole whispers. He carefully takes Jay’s hands from his shoulders, grasping them in his own instead. “Okay. No more going at it alone. I promise.”

The monastery courtyard seems a little colder, in the silence.

“Anyone feel like circling back to the whole ‘suing Harumi’ idea?” Kai finally speaks up.

Jay gives a wet snort.

“Well, we’re probably gonna need to afford tissues,” Lloyd says. His own voice isn’t exactly dry, either.

---

The downside to sticking therapy smack at the bottom of their priorities is that they all really are, in fact, not okay.

Most of the time, they manage.

There’s a solace in being together, a comfort in having the people you trust and care for most in the world right next to you when the nightmares get bad. When Jay awakens screaming for Nya or clutching at his throat for air, Nya is already holding his hand and Cole’s holding the rest of him.

When Zane lapses into silence too long, emotions a roiling mess that leave him paralyzed, Kai is there with one-two-three’s for breathing and Lloyd is there to draw little cats with him until the world subsides again.

When Cole’s eyes shadow in training and his hits grow wild, Zane is there to pin him before he bloodies his hands and Jay is there to sing horrible off-key songs he loves until the panic ebbs.

When Nya stares at the water too-long, her eyes misty and her expression dreamy, Jay is there to hold her tight and Kai is there to talk until his voice goes hoarse and hers returns.

There are other times, though, when it’s harder.

It hits Kai this time about halfway through painting the walls of the kitchen a cheerful yellow, said paint splattered up to his elbows, courtesy of Lloyd. He glances down — to joke, to laugh, to not think—

And pauses. With the headband he’s stolen from Pixal in place, pushing back the mass of thick blond hair, Kai can just see the purple-red edges of the swollen, irritated wounds that scar Lloyd’s scalp. The twin marks are a better sight than when Kai first glimpsed them, bleeding circles that looked as if someone had drilled into Lloyd’s skull — but not by much.

“S’fine,” Lloyd mutters, catching Kai’s devastated expression. “I can’t even feel ‘em. Not really.”

“Liar,” Kai rasps. “They look awful.”

Lloyd makes a face. “Gee, thanks a lot.”

“I mean it. What if they get infected, or worse, or — have you had Sensei look at them?”

Lloyd wraps his arms around himself, avoiding Kai’s eyes. “No. I didn’t really…I did what he asked. What they both did. And then screwed the whole thing up, so it was all useless anyways, so I—”

He bites his lip, hard enough to crack the already dry skin.

“I don’t really wanna hear anyone telling me what else I’m doing wrong with myself, right now.”

Kai is angry enough to feel sick.

“That’s stupid. That’s so stupid, he should — it shouldn’t be like that, it’s — why didn’t anyone—” he shakes his head. “Why doesn’t anyone ever ask us if we wanna be — if we wanna—”

Lloyd’s hand closes around his wrist, gently tugging Kai’s own hand from where it’s clawed unconsciously at his arm, leaving ugly red stripes against his skin.

“You asked,” he says, quietly. “That meant a lot.”

Kai looks away. “Lot of good it did.”

Lloyd’s grip tightens. “It meant the world to me,” he repeats, stronger this time.

“But I couldn’t—!”

Lloyd abandons his hold on his wrist to wrap his arms around Kai entirely, holding tight. Bony and strong and familiar, Kai’s little brother to the core.

“Thank you,” he says, fervently enough that Kai can feel the ache in his voice. “Thank you for looking out for me.”

Kai’s voice is a miserable mess of fought-back tears. “I couldn’t even do anything.”

“You asked me what I wanted,” Lloyd says once again, and Kai can hear the edge of tears threatening his voice, now. “That was everything.”

Giving in, Kai drops his head into the mess of blond curls and hugs Lloyd back. Lloyd’s hair smells like blood and paint and steel and the strawberry shampoo Skylor gave them, and now it’s gonna smell like Kai’s stupid snot and tears.

“Hey, having another hug party without me is lame.”

Kai gives a wet, broken response as Nya throws her arms around them both.

“Idiots,” she murmurs, resting her head atop theirs. “I love you both, you know that?”

“Ew, gross,” Lloyd snorts wetly. “Hey Kai, Nya loves us.”

“Little jerk, who you callin’ gross? And here I thought you loved us too.”

“Well obviously I love you guys back, who’s the idiot now—”

Kai simply clutches them both and cries harder, as if holding onto them will stop himself from falling apart.

It works, in the ways that matter, though it’s always because they’re holding back even tighter.

Later that evening, Zane bathes Lloyd’s head in antiseptic and Jay forces them all to sit through the PowerPoint presentation he’s made with Nya titled “Every Super Cool Totally Good Character with Horns Ranked”. He loses them the minute he brings anime characters into it, as everyone suddenly develops incredibly passionate opinions about the rankees, but Lloyd’s laughing too hard to have his own opinion and Kai doesn’t feel like he’s drowning under inadequacy anymore — just choking to death under the weight of Jay’s elbow for daring to insult Re:Zero as an anime “since it actually has Oni in it, idiot, your opinion is trash—”

They get things back to being okay, one way or another.

---

Somewhere in the third month of renovations, they finally scrounge up six whole beds. It takes a good deal of dragging and cursing, but they finally manage to move into their own rooms, the once-empty spaces looking a little less lonely.

“Now we don’t have to all sleep together in the same room anymore,” Jay announces. There’s no small amount of celebration at that.

The celebration lasts up until sometime around three in the morning, at which point the consistent nightmares land them all right back in the pile of communal air mattresses.

“Just for like, one more night,” Kai yawns, as Lloyd curls closer beneath his arm.

“Totally, yeah,” Nya echoes, one leg spread across Jay, her arm sprawled over Kai.

“Go to sleep already, FSM’ sake,” Cole begs, before slumping over Zane.

For all Cole’s begging, he’s still the first to act when Zane suddenly lurches up from the bed, gasping for air like he’s drowning and giving them all joint heart attacks.

“—hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s just us—”

Cole’s hands hover, non-threatening, as Zane buries his face in his palms, breathing ragged. The others have begun to get up now as well, the slow kind of approach that lets Zane know exactly where each of them are.

“I despise this,” Zane spits, as his hand drags down to fist over his chest. “I hate feeling like this. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it—”

“I know,” Cole says. “I know.”

“This is why — it’s so much easier—“

“It’s okay, it’s—”

“It is not! I do not need to breathe, and yet I can’t!” Zane bursts out, frustrated and frightened. “I’m not supposed to break down like this, I do not, I do not—”

“You’re not a machine,” Cole says steadily. “You get to break down.”

“But if I—”

“You don’t,” Lloyd murmurs. “You don’t have to turn ‘em off, Zane. You’re one of the strongest people I know.”

Zane’s head lowers, his eyes shadowed. “It wouldn’t hurt,” he says, but it’s reluctant.

“Yeah, you’d never hurt, but you’d never be happy, either,” Kai says. “And that’d suck.”

“It’d suck for us, too,” Cole speaks up. “We’d have to live without your laugh. Without your sassy remarks. Without your kindness.”

“We’d live without you,” Lloyd says, quietly. “And you wouldn’t really be living, would you?”

Zane crumples, his shoulders shaking as he allows Kai to pull him close.

“If it gets too much, just come to us,” Jay says. “We’ll be more, okay? We’re pretty good at that.”

Zane gives a wet, stifled laugh.

“Don’t go, even if it’s just your emotions leaving,” Nya murmurs, her head against his. “It isn’t worth it.”

With slowing shudders, Zane lets himself relax, the warmth of their little family pressing around him. Kai is an immovable barrier at his side, save for where Lloyd’s tucked beneath his arm. Jay’s legs tangle with Lloyd and Cole’s, his hand held tightly in Nya’s.

“Leaving isn’t worth it,” Nya echoes. “Not in any lifetime.”

---

Bit by bit, the monastery comes together.

The smell of new paint gives way to a familiar scent of mixing elements and laundry soap, one that’s followed them since the first Bounty. They comb through every online shop until they find the exact brand of sheets that feel like the first apartment they ever lived in together. Thrift shops and sales and birthdays stock closets once again, new hoodies that are quickly stolen and passed back and forth. The collection of CD’s and movies rebuilds into stacks once again through shared movie nights and pirated music.

And little by little, with the consistent passage of time, photographs line the walls of the monastery once again.

A little older, a little worn, but a collection of family all the same.

---

“Except we still don’t have damn central heating—”

“Suck it up and light the fireplace, hothead.”

“No respect in this city. None at all.”

#lego ninjago #ninjago #post-crystalized #my fanfic #had to post one (1) at least #tbh this is terrifying! i forgot how to write #my fic

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theramseyloft · 5 days ago

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We Finally Have Our Buildings!!!

Our heartfelt thanks to Oakland Buildings, who moved these both for $700.00!

That is the coolest trailer I have ever seen!

Here they are, in their final placement!

A lot of work still needs to be done before the flock can move in!

The former loft, which will be the new quarantine building, needs the porch patched, latice and screen panel replaced, the flooring torn out and replaced, the wall and ceiling paneling pulled down, mouse ruined insulation replaced, and paneling put back up.

The 10x12, which will be the new loft, needs pretty much nothing undone, but does need a ventilation system installed, flooring installed, insulation in the walls and ceiling, plywood, some kind of easy to clean paneling, and a screened in, covered porch built wide enough to accommodate the door and width of a person.

But at least we should be out from under the rent by the end of the month.

This is going to be a long, expensive process, and if you want to help us get it taken care of sooner, please consider joining our Patreon.

The server is back up and running for paid and free members, and I am a lot more active there than much of anywhere else.

#the ramsey loft #relocation #loft buildings #repairs needed

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dailyanarchistposts · 3 months ago

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Somewhere in the Lacandon Jungle, Chiapas: The roots of the rebel Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) have long been intertwined with the roots of what remains of the Lacandon rainforest. The Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tzotzil and Chol indigenous farmers who now form the core of the EZLN first came to the Lacandon as part of the great stream of settlers that poured into the forest 30 years ago. According to sociologists their long struggle to remain in the region, despite the objections of environmentalists dedicated to preserving the integrity of this unique lowland tropical jungle, have shaped the demands and the militancy of the Zapatista Army. Now, as tensions between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government ratchet up, environmentalists fear renewed hostilities could do irrevocable damage to the rainforest.

When the European invaders first reached this paradisical region in 1530, they literally could not find the forest for the trees. The rainforest extended from the Yucatan peninsula southwest, blending with the Gran Petan of Guatemala at the Usumacinta river, a swatch of jungle matched in the New World only by the Amazon basin. The Lacandon region was a three million acre wilderness of pristine rivers and lakes, its canopy teeming with Quetzales and Guacamayas under which lived ocelots and jaguars, herds of wild boar and tapir, and the Indians who gave the forest its name. The first Lacandones and the Spanish interlopers fought a guerrilla war that did not end until the Indians did — by 1769, there were just five elderly Lacandoes left living outside a mission on the Guatemalan bank of the Usumacinta.

The story of the Lacandon jungle is one of massacres, both of Indians and trees, relates Jan De Vos, the San Cristobal-based historian of the Chiapas rainforest. Soon after Chiapas won its independence from Guatemala and Spain, expeditions were sent to explore the “Desert (jungle) of Ocosingo” — De Vos uses its more poetic name “the Desert of Solitude” — all the way to the juncture of its great rivers, the Jacate and the Usumacinta. Timber merchants soon learned how to move logs on the rivers, and priceless mahogany and cedar groves began to fall. By the turn of the century the jungle was seething with logging camps — monterias — in which the Mayan Indians, gangpressed in Ocosingo, were chained to their axes and hanged from the trees. The conditions in the monterias were exposed to the world in the 1920s in a series of novels by the German anarchist writer Bruno Traven.

Foreign investors bought up huge chunks of the jungle — the Marquis of Comillas, a Spanish nobleman, still lends his name to a quarter of the forest. In the 1950s, Vancouver Plywood, a U.S. wood products giant, bought up a million acres of the Lacandon through Mexican proxy companies, and made another dent in the forest. The Mexican government later cancelled all foreign concessions and installed its own logging enterprise, initialed COFALASA, which took 10,000 virgin mahogany and cedar trees out of the heart of the Lacandon every year for a decade.

The settlers began to stream into the forest in the 1950s, boosted by government decrees that deemed the Lacandon apt for colonization. Choles, pushed out of Palanque, settled on the eastern flanks of the forest. Tzotzil Mayans from the highlands, expelled from landpoor communities like San Juan Chamula under the pretext of their conversion to Protestantism, arrived in the west of the Lacandon, as did landless Tzeltales and Tojolabales, newly freed from virtual serfdom on the great fincas (haciendas) of Comitan and Las Margaritas. In 1960 the Mexican government declared the Lacandon jungle the “Southern Agrarian Frontier” and non-Mayans joined the exodus into the forest. Oaxacan Mixes displaced from their communal lands by government dams, campesinos from Veracruz uprooted by the cattle ranching industry, and landless mestizos from the central Mexican states of Guerrero and Michoacan all pushed through Ocosingo, Las Margaritas and Altamirando, on their way down to the canyons — Las Canadas — towards the heart of the forest. The land rush narrowed the dimensions of the Lacandon and upeed its population considerably. In 1960 the municipality of Ocosingo had a population of 12,000 — the 1990 census was 250,000.

The new settlers were not kind to the forest. Infused with pioneer spirit, the campesinos cut the forest without mercy to charter and extend their ejidos (rural communal production units). Other settlers were more footloose, aligned themselves with the cattle ranchers, slashed and burned their way into the Lacandon, planted a crop or two, and abandoned the land to a cattle ranching industry fueled by World Bank credits. The zone of Las Canadas, the Zapatista base area, was one of the most devastated by the logging and cattle industries.

Two government decrees sought to brake the flow into the forest but backfired badly. In 1972, President Luis Echeverria turned 645,000 hectares of the jungle over to 66 second-wave Lacandon families and ordered all non-Lacandones evicted — settler communities were leveled by the military. Seeking to crystalize communal organizations that could defend the settlers from being thrown off the land they had wrested from the jungle, San Cristobal de las Casa’s liberation Bishop Samuel Ruiz sent priests and lay workers into the region to build campesino organizations such as the Union of Unions, Union Quiptic, and the ARIC — formations from which the Zapatistas arose years later.

Then, in 1978, a new president, Jose Lopez Portillo, added to the turmoil by designating 380,00 hectares at the core of the jungle as the UNESCO-sponsored Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, declaring that all settlers living inside its boundaries must leave. Forty ejidos, twenty-three of them in the Canadas, were threatened. A young EZLN officer, Major Sergio, remembers well the struggle of his family to stay on their land in Montes Azules: “the government would not hear our petitions. We were left with no road except to pick up the gun.”

Many Zapatista fighters — the bulk of the fighting force is between 16 and 24 years old — were born into the struggle of their parents to stay in the Lacandon in defiance of the Montes Azules eviction notice. “The first experience the young colonos of Las Canadas had with a factor external to their lives was the pressure brought by environmentalists to preserve the forest,” writes sociologist Xochitl Leyva in Ojarasca, a journal of indigenous interests.

A 1989 environmentalist-backed ban on all wood-cutting in the Lacandon also led to resistance and frequent clashes with the newly-created Chiapas forestry patrols. In one of the first EZLN actions, two soldiers, thought to have been confused with forestry patrolmen, were killed in March 1993 near a clandestine sawmill outside San Cristobal.

The EZLN uprising has highlighted the development vs. conservation controversy that has raged in the Lacandon for generations. The EZLN demand that new roads be cut into the region drew immediate objection from the prestigious Group of 100, which, under the pen of poet-ecologist Homero Aridjis, complained the new roads would mean “the death of the Lacandon.” The Zapatista demand for land distribution also worries Ignacio March, chief investigator at the Southeast Center for Study and Investigation (CEIS), who fears the jungle will be “subdivided” to accomodate the rebels.

“Ecologists? Who needs them? What we need here is land, work, housing,” Major Mario remarked to La Jornada earlier this winter, when questioned about the opposition of the environmental community to EZLN demands.

The June 10th EZLN turndown of the Mexican government’s 32-point peace proposal has heightened fears of renewed fighting, a worst-case scenario for ecologists. S. Jeffrey Wilkerson, director of the Veracruz-based Center for Cultural Ecology worries that a military invasion of the Lacandon by the Mexican Army would mean the cutting of many roads into untouched areas, the use of destructive heavy machinery, the detonation of landmines, bombings and devastating forest fires and even oil well blow-outs.

Because of national security considerations, PEMEX, the government petroleum consortium, does not disclose the number of wells it is drilling in the Lacandon — some researchers think there are at least a hundred. From the air, the roads dug between oil platforms scar the jungle floor, and painful bald patches encircle the drilling stations.

One of the Zapatistas’ most important contributions to preserving the integrity of the Lacandon was to force 1400 oil workers employed by PEMEX, U.S. Western Oil, and the French Geofisica Corporation to shut down operations and abandon their stations during the early days of the war.

Despite disputes with the environmental community, the EZLN may be one of the most ecologically-motivated armed groups ever to rise in Latin America. The Zapatista Revolutionary Agrarian Law calls for an end to “the plunder of our natural wealth” and protests “the contamination of our rivers and water sources,” supports the preservation of virgin forest zones and the reforestation of logged-out areas. The lands they demand, the rebels insist, should not be shorn from the Lacandon but rather stripped from the holdings of large landowners.

The EZLN approach to the forest in which they and their families have lived for decades draws grudging approval from some environmentalists. “Few armed groups have ever included these kinds of demands in their manifestos” comments CIES investigator Miguel Sanchez-Vazquez. Andrew Mutter of the Lacandon preservationist Na’Bolom Institute is also sympathetic to the environmental roots of the EZLN: “this revolution rose from the ashes of a dead forest...”

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frettchanstudios · 5 months ago

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Just wrapped up this mural for Waypoint | PLEA Community Services.

Some of the youth had the opportunity to practice their painting skills and assist me while I worked. Thank you for having me!

The salmon come through this area so including them in the mural was important along with a suggested eagle. I decided to have the eagle catching a salmon. The eagle will be fed and the carcass to be dropped to not only feed other animals but also the earth through the soil that will feed our forests. The salmon are such a vital and precious life source.

This was a pretty large undertaking! They wanted to find a way to pretty up the SeaCan with a mural and corrugated surfaces are a nightmare. So we opted to dry out 5 pieces of pressure-treated plywood earlier this year and install those on the side of the bin as a canvas. It wouldn't have been possible without the technical and installation help of our contractor friend Frank, my father-in-law Darrell, and my husband Joshua.

#frettchanstudios #indigenous #indigenous art #eagle #mural #public art #first nations #formline #scenery #british columbia #painting

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itscolossal · 2 years ago

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Blackened Plywood Shards Rupture Inside Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s Chapel in Leonardo Drew’s New Installation

#installation #wood

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copperbadge · 1 year ago

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lustfulpasiphae

What do you mean when you say birch sheets? The cabinets in my apartment are kind of rough inside and I've been trying to find better liners than the kind of rubbery stuff

I hope it's okay that I pulled this out to turn into a post of its own, because I took some photos to share :D When I say "birch sheets" I'm just referring to thin 1/8" (3mm) sheets of birch plywood, cut into planks. Here's what they look like installed:

[ID: Two images of cabinets in my home; one, stocked with toilet paper, the other with a large bin in it. Both have long, thin planks of wood covering the original floors.]

I was having an issue with my bathroom cabinet (on the left) because the bottom of the cabinet was water damaged before I moved in, and wasn't molding or anything but had begun to sag. I wanted some stiff thin boards I could pop into place to make a clean, flat floor without having to replace the entire cabinet. I found these birch sheets that were the perfect length, but I had to order like 10 of them and only needed 3 for the bathroom, so I put the rest in a cabinet in the kitchen that happened to have an ugly-looking floor (and apparently misplaced several, not sure what happened to them). It really spruces up the look of a grotty cabinet.

Anyway, this year I was contemplating re-lining my upper kitchen cabinets; I put paper liners down when I was renovating before I moved in, but those only last so long and that was five years ago. I thought I'd install some birch sheets instead, which wouldn't warp or shred the way the paper liners have. My plan is to cover them in freezer paper, pop them in, and then just pop them out every so often and re-line them, which is easier than trying to put the paper straight into the cupboards (awkwardly located for that kind of work) or trying to remove the shelves.

I ordered the ones for the cabinets from somewhere new to me, so can't vouch for the quality yet; I was able to order them custom-cut to the size I wanted at that page, and while it's slightly more expensive per piece, I also only have to buy as many pieces as I need and they should fit snugly, so it's less expensive overall as a purchase. I'll post up when they arrive and I install them!

#naclyoho #home renovation #lustfulpasiphae

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lanninglurksnomore · 4 months ago

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Okay, it's Monday morning and I'm sleep deprived and I'm sure this isn't as funny as I think it is right now but why the ever-loving fuck am I seeing ads for 'high-quality plywood' on Tumblr.com?

Note to self: install ad-blocker on work computer.

#fucking plywood I can't even #is it gay fannish plywood #for gay fannish construction contractors #niche market

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mybeingthere · 1 year ago

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Jumaadi (born 1973) moved from East Java, Indonesia to Sydney in 1997 to study at the National Art School. He graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Art, and in 2008 he received his Masters in Fine Art.

1994 to 1995, Jumaadi was an Art Educator at the PPLH Environmental Education Centre in Seloliman, East Java (Indonesia).

From small, poetic gouache on paper works to large scale drawings which can exceed 3 x 20 metres, his paintings are comprised of mixed media [water, acrylic and oil etc.] executed on plywood, timber, cloth, canvas and buffalo hide. Jumaadi is also recognised for his sculptural works in wood and metal, as well as installation and performance work.

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writinginthesecrettrees · 6 months ago

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I had a plumber in today (yay! my garbage disposal is both fixed and installed in the right place!) so I shut my cats in the living room while he was here.

The living room is giant. It has three entrances - one from the foyer, one from the kitchen, and one from the back patio. It is also the room where their water, food, litter box, and cat tree are. It is the room we hang out in during the day. It is a good room and they like it.

They do not, however, like being shut in with me on the other side of the door.

I am aware of this, so before I shut the kitchen door I barricaded the foyer. I used a giant box of paper towels, my recycling bin, a framed art print, several shoes, and one of their cat carriers. See, they like to shred the carpet by the door in an attempt to claw their way out to where I am. So I thought "hey, why not prevent them from doing even more damage to my home?" and barricaded it.

Guys. These cats are like some sorta horror movie eldritch creatures disguised as simple housecats.

Not 10 minutes after leaving them in the room (with fresh food and water!!!) I hear the sound of ripping. I look over.

There are paws extended from beneath the door, wildly scrabbling at the floor. There are more paws than there should be. The paws are grabbing the doormat, pulling it under.

How did they even *get* to the door, to be able to reach under it? How did they reach far enough to snag the doormat? How are there so many paws???????

The plumber arrives. He does the job. He gives me some good maintenance tips for both the garbage disposal and my hot water heater which is apparently nearing the end of its lifespan... hope I can eke a few extra years out of that one!!! He leaves.

I cautiously enter the living room. My cats are nowhere to be seen. This is not surprising, these cats have burrowed into the bottom of my box spring to create a hiding place for themselves. In the living room, there is a cabinet, a recliner, and a chest of drawers that they are able to secret themselves into.

I look over at the once-barricaded door to the foyer.

The recycling bin is lying on its side. The cat carrier has been shoved off at an angle. The giant-ass box of paper towels, which is waist-high and reasonably hefty, has been knocked over and pushed away.

The framed picture, at least, is right where I left it.

These tiny horrors have managed to shred several inches of carpet down to the plywood floor underneath.

Thank god they don't have opposable thumbs. I'd be doomed.

#cats #eldritch horrors #it's the same picture

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akaanade · 5 months ago

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PAIRING: Crosshair x Fem! Reader

SUMMARY: Crosshair must reach into a dark place to rescue from a group of pirates who captured you during a mission. But you show him there's always a way out of it.

LYRIC: "Tell me it's alright/Give me the green light." - 5 Seconds of Summer

WORDS: 4.7K

WARNINGS: Blood, Violence, and Swearing

This story is dedicated to @intricatechaosofyou as part of the Clone x Reader Song Fic Exchange.

I am profoundly sorry about how late this is. I had a stressful month due to a cardiac issue, which has been resolved now, and I didn't realize how long it would take to tell the story I wanted to tell. As a result, I wrote this as fast as I could. It's not my best work, and I'm still getting used to writing for the Clone fandom, but the ending is fluffy.

It was an honor writing for you, and I beg your forgiveness for the delay.

@callsign-denmark @jedi-princess-kestis @cloneficgiftexchange

Idanus’s dual moons shined high in the Outer Rim’s azure night sky amongst an endless sea of twinkling stars. The verdant branches of the planet’s montane forests danced in a temperate breeze, causing water beads from a recent rainstorm to slide from the glistening leaves and drip into the muddy underbrush below amidst an aroma of petrichor. Despite being nighttime, a chorus of nocturnal creatures performed a soft melody of buzzing and croaking throughout the scrub as they socialized and foraged for food.

An abandoned Republic intelligence base stood in a sprawling meadow against the idyllic scenery of herbage and mountain ranges. Nature had long since begun to reclaim her rightful lands from the behemoth, spreading greenery across the rusted grey walls with an eerie beauty. A lone red scroll from Clone Wars, bearing the torn visage of a black Galactic roundel, hung adjacent to one of the base’s entrances, the final thread of a tragic past. Yet, the square turquoise lights decorating the installation’s facade continued to flicker, meaning someone reactivated the power after years of activity.”

Several pirates dressed in discordant, makeshift armor stood guard in the staging grounds with DC-15 rifles resting against their shoulders, probably burgled from the armory. They conversed under the watchful eye of a rival sniper lying prone on the roof. He scanned the jungle horizon from a provisional nest constructed from plywood, searching for any hungry predators who caught a taste for unwashed humans. Little did they know, a much more dangerous and unprecedented hunter watched them like prey above an overlook.

A scowl appeared on the sniper’s scarred face as he noticed brush moving on the cliffside through his night scope. “What the kriff was that?” he grumbled as he switched to thermal imaging and returned his eye to the lens. He hoped to pick up the heat signature of a small harmless rodent who emerged from its underground burrow and scampered around the precipice. Instead, the scope detected the tall, lithe frame of a fellow marksperson flat upon the ground with their crosshairs fixated on the base. The pirate scrambled to his feet and activated his communicator, yelling, “Hey, we have a problem out here! There’s another sniper across the cany-”

“Nest, could you restate that?” buzzed the person on the other side of the radio. But his crewmate could only manage an anguished groan as he released his rifle and fell forward deceased. A miniature burn hole sizzled with tibanna residue in the back of his skull, the characteristic entry wound of the 773 Firepuncher. Startled by the response, the crewmate bellowed, “Nest, do you you copy?! Nest!”

Crosshair chuckled as he rose to his knees and tapped the side of his helmet to access their communication frequency. “What’s the matter? Did someone lose their sniper?”

“What? Who are you? How the kriff did you access our comms?” the perplexed pirate said.

“It doesn’t matter because none of you will be alive to tell the tale.”

“Are you threatening us?”

“I don’t make threats. I make promises, especially when a bunch of bandits steal someone precious to me.”

“Screw you and your girl!”

“Let this be your first and final warning. Run while you can because when I come down there, I will hunt you like the cowardly little rats you are…” Crosshair stated as he returned his eye to his scope, watching the frantic pirates as they fled back into their hovel. They pointed their carbines in all directions as they backed towards the door, desperate to find and incapacitate Crosshair. After some time, the group reached the base’s gargantuan metal doors and scrambled inside, closing them with a thud. “...and eliminate every one of you.”

A Klaxon blared in the background as the line went dead. “Let the games begin!” Crosshair announced, standing and looking across the ravine.

His gaze followed the seemingly endless cragged escarpment as it fell several hundred feet until it met a thin cerulean creek. Straining, he could almost see the whitewater from the violent rapids splashing against the boulder jutting out from the water. Crosshair returned his attention to the base and shook his head, attempting to eliminate his vertigo. He couldn’t risk jumping several hundred feet without the team here, but neither could the pirates or the Republic analysts who once called this place home.

There had to be some way across the chasm.

Suddenly, the soft chord of an engine’s roar appeared in the background of the verdure’s orchestra. Crosshair lifted his reticle again and espied a pair of massive in-groud doors opening to receive the inbound vessel. It was less than a klick away and approaching fast based on its dynamics, meaning Crosshair would only have one shot at accessing the base as he loaded an adhesive grapple and aimed it at the starry sky.

His knuckles tightened around the gun’s handle, holding his breath as he waited for the cruiser to zoom past. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, almost as if it was urging the ship to hurry the fuck up. As the minutes ticked away, a torrent of thoughts ravaged his mind over what would happen if he couldn’t get there swiftly. Crosshair attempted to assuage the pain spreading through his bones that you were a talented mercenary who could get out of almost anything. However, the past year taught him that skill sometimes does not displace luck. Images of finding your corpse in the middle of the base, executed for being dead weight, taunted his psyche. He didn’t know what he would do or say if he returned to Pabu with your body for burial.

The ship’s engine crescendoed until a Z-95 appeared against the firmament. Crosshair pressed the trigger, launching the adhesive toward an opening section of the ship’s dirty red and white chassis. It stuck and lifted Crosshair into the air as he retracted and tightened the line. As planned, the Z-95 carried him across the gorge’s breadth toward the gaping metal maw. Crosshair lifted his head as the ship stalled its engines, preparing to land. Sirens across the hangar illuminated the room red and blared at each other like a pack of ice vultures fighting over carrion. However, aside from the pilot, there appeared to be no one else in the vicinity, giving Crosshair ample opportunity to begin his rampage.

The pilot landed on the pad in the center of the room and quickly unbuckled his belt before grabbing his gun. Crosshair shifted his weight, moving closer to the ship’s edge to see better the impromptu chauffeur racing down the exit ramp. Like the others, he wore mismatched armor, most likely pieces stolen from his victims. However, aside from a knife attached to the outside of his thigh, he didn’t seem to have any other weaponry. The man ran to a console on the other side of the room, speaking into his intercom to get an update from the crew.

Crosshair loaded several armor-piercing bolts and fired at the tarnished metal plate protecting the corsair’s torso. A smile crept across his face as his target crumbled to the ground, unmoving. He stowed his rifle and crawled out from underneath the cockpit, resembling a spider who caught a fly in its web. On and off, and on and off, went the hangar’s red siren lights as Crosshair stalked towards his paralyzed prey.

The frightened pirate whimpered, watching his mysterious hunter with wide eyes. “Please don’t hurt me. I don’t know what you want. But I will give you anything, anything you could want. Please, just let me go,” he sputtered.

“Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no! Please don’t tell me that kriffing nerf-herder is in the base!” pleaded a horrified crewmate over the mounted console’s comms.

Crosshair circled the incapacitated desperado lying on the floor, not shifting his gaze as he wandered over the terminal and pushed its green PTT button. “Tick, tock, tick, tock!” he hissed. “Also, don’t worry about your friend. We’re going to play a little game, which will be a blast.”

As he finished his sentence, a shot whipped past Crosshair’s head, leaving a burn spot on the enormous automatic doors sealing both him and the pilot in the hangar. But Crosshair didn’t flinch and instead coldly glanced over his shoulder to the pirate, who held a blaster in his trembling hand. The man moved the gun back and forth, in a final attempt to escape the encounter alive but could not find an efficient target on the angel of death before him. Crosshair crooked his head, standing frozen and watching, taunting the sobbing bandit. He permitted several more minutes of sniveling and pathetic invocations before pouncing on the man’s hand and twisting his wrist.

“Drop it. Drop it now before you wind up with a broken hand and a bullet through the skull,” Crosshair growled, applying more pressure to the man’s wrist. After some time, the bandit’s finger unfurled from the handle and trigger, allowing the blaster to fall with a clatter. A satisfied Crosshair pushed the firearm to the other side of the room before kneeling on the man’s arm to prevent him from doing anything foolish.

He watched as the bandit struggled to free his arm, like a rat caught in a trap, before continuing, “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? Here’s what will happen. I meant what I said when I would hunt all of you down. But you, you little cretin, are helpful for now. Thanks to your friends, this whole base is in lockdown. The good news is that all Republic bases have a door code allowing the officers to travel freely between the halls. I know you know it because I heard you asking for it from your friend. Tell me it and your death will be clean.”

However, the man only responded with a gulp and some snuffles, staring at Crosshair with tear-filled eyes. “What’s the matter? Does a Loth-cat have your tongue? Well, maybe a little paint will loosen it,” Crosshair said as he grabbed the man’s knife and drove it into drive into his bicep. A torment cry fell from the bandit’s lips as he attempted to pry his arm away more vigorously, but the activity only caused more of his blood to seep out from his armor. “You’re bleeding pretty heavily. This is your last chance. Tell me the code before I bleed you dry.”

“It’s 192225! 192225!” the guy shouted in desperation.

“Are you lying?”

“No, I ain’t lying. It’s 192225 after 19 BBY, the year the Empire decommissioned this base.”

Crosshair rose to his feet, leaving the knife in the man’s arm, and said with a click of his tongue, “How touching and do not move the knife. I need you alive for a few more moments.” He typed the code into the console, causing the hangar doors to part. “Well, it appears some of you bandits are truthful after all. I appreciate your honesty. Pleasant dreams.”

Crosshair fired a blast into the man’s head, causing it to fall back onto the floor with a burning hole. His eyes shifted to the knife, still embedded in his arm, reflecting the forming blood pool on the mirror of the blade. “I will also take your knife. Aberrantium is hard to come by now that the Empire has depleted almost all of the mines,” he stated, removing the dagger and painting his chest plate with blood.

Leaving the corpse to exsanguinate in the landing dock, he stepped out into the hallway and turned his attention to the resounding sirens. He had no reason to be silent as he detached and stowed his silencer. The last thing these assholes will hear is their screams echoing through the base would be the roar of the Firepuncher, and screams of horror as the syndicate falls.

And that is precisely what Crosshair did.

He walked the ghostly halls, only giving the bandits a brief look at his deadly mien before striking the darkness. Blaster fire erupted as the pirates did their best to stay alive, but it was too late as Crosshair dodged their bolts with balletic precision and transformed the base into a killing ground. One by one, bodies fell upon the ground as anything and everything in their maelstrom’s path became a weapon, from an unassuming shard of glass to one of the stolen DC-15s. A metallic fetor soon permeated the air as Crosshair continued his rampage, staining the walls red.

A xenohistorian, several millenniums in the future, would eventually stumble upon the

base and wonder what monster caused the carnage. Little did they know that the brute was a passionate man trying to get back one of the few people in the Universe who loved him past his flaws.

“There you are, you bastard!” the pirate said as Crosshair opened the doors to the inner warm room. He tightened the grip his forearm had around your neck and dug the barrel of his blaster into your temple, dragging you further into the room.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Crosshair derided, stepping into the room.

“It doesn’t matter because I’ll take you down myself.”

Crosshair held up his knife perpendicular to his helmet, a testament to his strength and skill. “Do you see this? This is all that remains of your crew. What makes you think that you’re any different?”

The captain stood there in silence, watching the vitality of his people drip from the tip with a steady rhythm. He tried to retain his stoic facade as he shifted his body and grip on you. But he couldn’t hide the minute tremors in his shooting hand or beads of sweat forming on his forehead. With each passing moment, it became more apparent that there was no way out for him without releasing you. He shifted his gaze between Crosshair, who had now lowered his dagger, and you. “Fine. If that’s how you want to play!”

“Hey, asshole! Do you want to play a game?” you blurted out before he could pull the trigger.

“A game?”

“Yeah, a game. Have you ever played Red Light, Green Light?”

“What that kriff is that?”

“Come on, just humor me as a last request,” you teased, moving your head to rest your chin on his forearm and creating space between him and your larynx.

“Alright, fine. How do you play?”

“It’s easy. All you have to do is reply ‘green light’ after you say ‘red light.’ Ready?”

The captain furrowed his brow but affirmed with a not.

“Red light!”

“Uh, green light?”

Before he could finish his sentence, Crosshair launched the knife by its tip. It flew across the room and wedged into the captain’s skull between his eyebrows. He let out a gurgle as a rivulet ran down his nose from the wound before loosening his grip around you and falling backward.

You and Crosshair watched the body briefly before he looked at you. “What were you thinking? How could you be so stupid as to run off without telling anyone?” he finally said. “It’s good that I planted a tracker on your suit.”

You blinked several times, and your mouth fell agape at his words because of his tone and the revelation that you had a tracker somewhere on your person. You spun in a circle, searching every crevice of your suit until your elegant fingers ran over an inconspicuous bump in your underarmor’s sleeve. At first, you thought it was just a normal tear from being kept by a pirate crew for the past few hours. However, upon further inspection, something rigid and circular embedded into the suit fabric formed the bump.

“How did you get it in there?” you questioned with a scowl.

“One of the Pabu seamstresses helped sew in it.”

Your gaze softened, and you turned your head to your sleeve. You had no reason to be mad at Crosshair. When Fennec Shand contacted you about a lead on a job, you disappeared into the night without telling Crosshair or the rest of Clone Force 99 where you went. It was stupid, yes. But at the time, you thought you were protecting them because you were always wary of mercenaries. Pabu had been through enough over the past year, and the last thing you wanted was to bring them more trouble due to a job gone awry.

You returned your attention to Crosshair, who characteristically loured at you with his arms crossed. He remained surly and reticent even after he departed from the Empire and sometimes still stewed in his emotions when angry. However, underneath his withdrawn shell, there was a kind and selfless man if you dug long and hard enough. The blood spots on his armor attested to that. He just needed someone patient enough to wait for him until he was safe to express his emotions.

“Thank you,” you said with a smile after a few moments.

Crosshair furrowed his brow in confusion and straightened his back, clearly not expecting your gratitude. He assumed you would get mad at him for planting an unknown tracker in your suit, telling him that you didn’t need his help to stay safe. You had always been headstrong that way. But perhaps that was what endeared you to him, enough to make him travel across the stars to some backwater mercenary haven in the Outer Rim.

Back on the island, he would have to sneak into a nearby alleyway to prevent anyone from seeing him smile. The Force knows that Hunter and Wrecker would not let him live it down if they caught him joyful over something. However, he would always be nearby, watching you from the shadows. He studied your smile and memorized the intonation of your laugh as you played with the Pabu children along the shoreline.

The two of you shared a similar story: Imperial agents who left the Empire for a better life. Of course, your story didn’t have nearly as many trials and tribulations as his. You were an Imperial tactician sent to oversee the stormtroopers accompanying CX-2 in his mission to recover Omega. However, after the unwarranted destruction of Kamino, the decimation of Pabu flipped the switch on light flickering in your heart for a long time. The Empire never cared about its citizens and never would. As a result, you set your ship to self-destruct and jump off on the island’s sandy shores.

Given your past, it took some time for Pabu’s citizens to accept you. But as you helped the settlement rebuild, you started ingratiating yourself into society until everyone trusted you except Crosshair. He’d frown at you, never speaking, almost as if he used you as a catharsis for the pain he suffered at the hands of both of your former employers.

But your tactical training taught you therein lay the answer. Whatever happened to Crosshair still pained him.

While the rest of Clone Force 99 began to move on from their harrowing journey, Crosshair remained imprisoned in his cell. He continued to be irritable and withdrawn despite being reunited with his brothers and having autonomy over his life. Omega’s meditation techniques had created cracks in his proverbial prison. However, it would take someone who truly knew the brutality of the Empire, someone like you, to free him from his mind.

After weeks of trying, he initially relented because you were the only one who recognized that his pain didn’t end when Hemlock’s body fell off the bridge. However, minuscule changes began to appear whenever he was around you: a smile here and a gentle touch there. Now, he transversed half of the Outer Rim to rescue you from a backwater mercenary haven and murdered an entire base of people, a morbid but admirable goal.

Crosshair closed the gap between you and took your hands in his. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he whispered.

“Me too!” you replied, smiling and studying his angular features. “Now, let’s get back to Pabu. Omega will be expecting us for the summer festival.”

“Do we have to?” an annoyed Crosshair grumbled as you pulled his hand, leading him past his victims back to the hangar.

“You made a promise that you would be there.”

“I just fought an entire pirate crew. Can I not have a few moments of rest?” “We still have to make it off of Idanus. You can rest when we get back to the island.”

Pabu’s sun shimmered high in the azure sky, reflecting against the calm waves lapping against the sand. Avian creatures soared on the warm winds filling the tropical air, signing their gentle melody. Meanwhile, a pack of mischievous moonyos stole several pieces of fruit from bowls laid out by the residents before climbing back to their trees in Upper Pabu.

Due to the island’s small size and contiguous buildings, there wasn’t much room for expansive farms. But survivors adapt, after all. The residents scoured the Archium’s tomes, holding the secrets of the island’s ancient residents, searching for anything to assist their horticulture. To their joy, they found diagrams of farmers from a bygone era using hatcheries, vertical farming, and aquaculture to produce crops and marine resources to sustain themselves. They set about recreating the techniques described in the diagrams, constructing large poles for climbing vines and vast nests to capture fish and other wildlife.

The crop never yielded much, only enough to sate the island residents. Whatever surplus they received, if any harvest, got shipped off-world to help make little money for the supplies the island could not provide. As a result, whenever a good summer crop, the island residents tried to give back to the earth by hosting a summer festival to bring the community together. They used a portion of their production to cook enough dishes to make even a glutton like Wrecker sick and hung green lights around the settlement to signify growth and inspire the elements to bring them a good harvest in the fall.

The people sang and danced in the square, enjoying each other’s company. That is, all except for one. Crosshair was never one for soirees and gaiety. But in the interest of trying to put his past behind him, the two of you always kept proximity to the activities Today, however, he was gone, like a sylph. You searched Upper and Lower Pabu, from the beaches to the home the two of you shared with the rest of the Bad Batch, and found no sign of him.

Where could he have gone?

You sighed and placed your elbows on a half wall, looking out into the endless ocean as you restrategized and thought of any new places to search. Below, you could see Omega laughing and kicking a ball with a few children from below. A smile appeared on your face as you watched her finally receive the chance to be a kid. Though you had only known each other for a few months, you learned from the stories told by Hunter and the rest that she had a difficult life from the moment she left Kamino. Yet, no one would ever think twice about trying to leave her with the Lawquanes again. Her story, while arduous, made her and the Bad Batch who they are today. Nevertheless, it was nice to see her being a child for once instead of dealing with adult issues.

That’s when it hit you: the cove.

Since returning from Weyland, the cove underneath Lower Pabu had become a makeshift sanctuary for the group. The way nature carved the grotto permitted one to contemplate one's life under the comfort of shade and amongst the calming breezes and splashes of the sea. You grabbed a faint purple fruit shaped like a small melon, beloved by a particular sniper for its sweetness, from a nearby table before following the grand stairs down to the shore.

Cautiously, you jumped from rock to rock until you reached the archway to the oasis. You looked around at the beautiful decorations, surprised that a group of men who spent most of their time in frigid, austere military bases would have such an idea for detail. They scattered vibrant flowers throughout the area, complementing the pile of pillows and blankets in the middle. Against a wall, Tech's carved effigy stood as part of a small memorial decorated with little trinkets. The Bad Bad had a precious habit of collecting small items they thought Tech would like during their travels and placing him at his shrine to keep his memory alive. You smiled as you picture Tech’s spirit wandering around and talking to himself about the history and minutiae of the objects.

Near the sea cliff, a familiar person sat in meditation. He replaced his dark grey armor with a simple short-sleeved white tunic and tan pants, but he kept his Firepuncher by his side out of nervous habit. His remaining hand rested on his knee, just as Omega taught him, as he relaxed amongst the waves' soothing sounds and the sea salt aroma. You sat next to him and placed the fruit in his open palm, causing him to grimace at the sudden sensation of the fruit’s leathery skin. He played with it in his hand for a moment before opening his chocolate eyes to look at the vegetation.

“You’re missing the party,” you commented, gathering his attention.

“I don’t like people,” Crosshair retorted, placing the fruit in his lap.

“I know, but you’re usually not this secluded. I can typically find you somewhere in the settlement, not out here, which means you have something on your mind. Do you want to talk about it?”

A frown appeared on Crosshair’s face as he watched the green rays swimming around the estuaries. As if like clockwork, his hand left hand began to flex, mimicking the right one before he lost it during the Seige of Tanttis. It was a nervous tick he had whenever he was thinking about his time with the Empire, one that you knew all too well. You took his hand in yours, running a gentle thumb over the back while you waited for him to find the words he searched for.

After a few minutes, Crosshair lifted his head and sighed. “I keep thinking back to Idanus about how I promised never to use that training again. It reminds me of how close I came to becoming a monster and how things could be so different. I know that’s false, but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“You’re right. It’s not true because you’re not a monster,” you responded. “You’re Crosshair. Sure, you can be gloomy and a bit dark at times. But that’s part of your charm. There is a man worth loving under all that gibe, and I think allowing people inside has worked out for you so far.”

Crosshair turned his head to meet your warm smile and gaze. There was a glimmer of something unknown in his eyes. It wasn't anger or disdain but warm and inviting, as if the words you had told him so many times before had finally begun to affect him. Before you could even respond, he planted a peck on your cheek so fast that you almost missed it. You raised your hand to the spot where he kissed you and focused on a stalactite reaching down from the top, trying to stop your heart from racing. There was no mistaking. Crosshair, who seldom shared his feelings with anyone, had kissed you.

“If you tell anyone I did that, I will kill you,” he stated as he broke apart the fruit and handed a piece to you.

“That assumes you can touch me,” you responded, accepting the fruit and planting a more significant kiss on recoiling Crosshair’s cheek.

“You’re good, but you’re not good.”

“Excuse me, I have taken down several soldiers in my time.”

“From the safety of an Imperial strategy room, maybe. But I have taken down far more than that in hand-to-hand combat.”

You gave Crosshair a playful jab in the ribs as you sat in the cove, having your tête-à-tête while the others danced above you.

Peace, albeit temporary, had returned to the Bad Batch once more.

#star wars #the bad batch #crosshair

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