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makuta-tobi · 1 year ago

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Nat stared at her computer screen, cursor blinking in tandem with her heartbeat, so loud in her ears she may as well have been at a metal concert. Months she had worked on her project, skipping meals, staying awake until sunrise, and then a few hours more after that. Now she was a few keystrokes away from finally testing it. Cables ran from her ramshackle computer, meeting and mingling with others attached to a bank of hard drives, all spinning with uploads and downloads. On the inflatable mattress behind her, the fruits of her labour lay eerily still. With a deep, shaky exhale, she typed in the last few lines of code into her launcher, and pressed the enter key.

The whirring of the fans pointed towards the makeshift server seemed to drown out all other noise as the program executed. Then a series of smaller fans, a sharper sound than the box fan nearby, as they all sprang to life at once. Nat pressed her palms together as her creation came online. As servos activated and limbs went from rigid to an almost relaxed state, she couldn't help but whisper “it lives” to herself. The machine in front of her made a sudden jolt, and a light on the side of its head illuminated a pale white. Online and active. She twisted from her position on the floor to check her monitors and saw that all systems were operating nominally. Neural pathways were registering stimuli, artificial synapses were firing as thoughts began to form. It worked!

Nat placed her hand on the machine's upper back and guided it to a sitting position. She had been sure to feed the computer a good handful of data about herself, and the basics of knowledge in order to train the AI and make sure it didn't immediately shut down from overstimulation.

God knows I certainly would have, she thought to herself with an eyeroll.

“Are you awake?” her first question was more of a way to test the robot's speech recognition, its self evaluation, word association, and also to ensure that the vocal modulation was up to satisfactory conditions.

“I am awake,” it responded. The robot drew its arms closer to its torso and seemed to look around the room briefly, before turning its head to face Nat.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked, once again checking its recognition and perception.

“Natalie, you created and programmed me, I believe,” it tilted its head almost as though trying to determine if this was the correct answer. The data she had fed it before it woke up had included details about herself, photos and videos of her, vocal samples, and the AI was interpreting this information and comparing it to the details in front of it. The face, the voice, it all matched. But the robot seemed almost unsure, as if contemplating whether the information it had was incomplete. Perhaps it had been told that this person, whose face and voice it knew, was the one who built it, but that did not necessarily mean the information it had was true. Nonetheless, Nat smiled and nodded, and the robot's shoulders almost imperceptibly relaxed.

“That's right. I did create you, and I programmed you to be something new, but familiar. You have a lot of potential, and I'm glad to meet you.” The robot tilted its head at the framing of the statement.

“What potential do I have?” it asked. A curious mind, or simply a rudimentary AI probing for information to expand its knowledge set?

“You have multiple functions as yet unseen. All of you, from the smallest details of your body, to your quizzical mind, all are new ways to expand the experience of everyone.” When the robot did not respond right away, and simply looked down at its form, still sitting upright on the air mattress, she continued her explanation. “Your frame is designed with limb augments and prosthesis in mind,” she gestured to the carbon fiber metal that made up its hands and arms. “Your sensor suite is expected to replace the damaged vision or hearing of someone who has lost theirs. Your AI can expand and contain the breadth of knowledge and actually learn, instead of just regurgitate answers it had received beforehand.”

“What of this?” the robot touched the gray fleshy material covering its lower abdomen, stretching down to its thighs.

“That is actually two things. The first is a synthetic skin that can be created to replace basic skin grafts and other replacement techniques we currently have. The second is that the skin is used as a mount for artificial nerves that can replace damaged ones.”

The robot ran its hands over its body as she explained it. Fine black digits ran over smooth arms and shoulders, stroking across the lighter fake flesh that extended over parts of itself. It then raised its head and looked at her again, cocking its head to the side. In the black glass dome of its face, Nat could only see her own reflection, distorted like staring into dark water. She had always taken issue with the way her nose sat, or criticized that one eyebrow was higher than the other. The self deprecation had always come easy, but looking back at herself from this angle, it was like seeing herself anew, as she really was. When she had begun construction on the robot's exoskeleton so long ago, she had wondered if this would feel like interacting with her child for the first time, but now, she realized, it was more like talking to herself. She felt love for the machine in a way that was hard to quantify, and thus, she knew, she loved herself, in some weird, roundabout way.

“My design, my purpose, is for medical research, is that correct?” the robot asked. She saw, in her reflection, the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile that she liked seeing.

“Your design, yes. You were made with the intention of looking into a variety of medical advancements all at once, to see how they might interact with each other, as well as individually. But your purpose is for you to decide, once you find it. That might take some time, but I think all living things will eventually find it.”

“Am I alive?” the robot's question wasn't exactly unexpected, but it was quick to ask so bluntly.

“Scientifically, maybe not. Ethically, I'm sure some people would take issue with me trying to say otherwise, but realistically? In my mind? You move, you think, you have the potential to imagine, and dream, and exist here. I don't see why you couldn't consider that being alive.”

The robot nodded, its hidden visual sensors scanning Nat up and down, taking in the sight of what it could consider life, based solely on firsthand experience and not a dataset provided before it had even been conscious. Her dyed blonde hair had faded quite a bit since its last treatment, with longer dark roots peaking out. Her eye mascara was smudged, but the dark rings around her eyes framed her gray-blue irises almost ethereally. Her loose tank top draped across her body and hid her shape, and her shorts were stained with pen ink. In spite of her unkempt appearance, or perhaps because of it, the robot perceived, that this was life.

They both shook off the initial studiousness of their first interaction, and Nat turned to her computer, minimizing the command prompt window and revealing a program with a split screen. On one side, an image that appeared to resemble an approximation of a human brain structure. On the other, lines of data were being written and recorded, a text log of the robots experiences made legible.

“Before we get too existential,” Nat said almost wistfully, “we need to make sure your various systems are functioning the way they are intended to.” She turned back to the robot and handed it a ball. It appeared like a gel filled stress ball, and the robot took it, turning it over in its hand. “I just need you to give that a squeeze. Use your instincts and apply enough pressure to squish it, but not break it.”

The robot looked at the ball for a moment and squished it twice in its hand. The portions of the ball not covered by the robot's palm and fingers would expand briefly with the pressure, but would relax as soon as the pressure was let off. The robot then closed its fist around the ball, with the gel-filled portions blowing up to larger size, and it held that position. Nat jotted a note down on a piece of paper with her pencil and then nodded.

“Okay, you can go ahead and release it.” The robot relaxed its fingers and the ball returned to its normal shape. Nat took it and then turned to fully face the robot again. “Now I'm going to test the artificial nerves in the skin.” She pressed the eraser of her pencil against the gray flesh on the robot's hip and turned to look at her monitor. A portion of the brain image lit up. “Do you feel that?”

“Yes,” the robot answered curtly. Nat scribbled something else down on her note paper.

“Okay, now look over there,” she gestured with her pencil. She had to be sure that the sensation registration was due to the actual physical stimuli, and not the recognition that touching the spot should produce a registration. The robot turned its head to look in the direction she had indicated, and then she pushed down on the middle of its thigh. Again, she turned her head to look at the screen, and saw the same area of the brain image glowing. “Do you feel that?”

“Yes,” the robot answered again.

“Don't look, but show me where,” she said. Making sure that it could identify the location of the sensation was also important, so its spatial awareness was also under observation. The robot slid its hand over the skin and touched a single finger directly next to her pencil. A simple example of manual dexterity, which would certainly be tested later, but good to know. “Okay, now one more,” she said. Flipping her pencil around, she pressed the sharpened graphite into a spot near its groin, where the thigh and hip met. Even without seeing the pencil, the robot reacted stronger than she had anticipated. It jolted at the sudden sharp stimuli, and the hand that was still resting on its thigh clenched into a fist. She quickly withdrew the pencil from the skin.

“I'm so sorry!” her voice seemed almost panicked as she checked the monitor. Not only had it registered the sensation, but the synaptic response on the monitor showed a lingering feeling as it slowly dissipated. “How do you feel?” she turned her head back to look at the robot, which had returned its gaze to her.

“Warm,” it answered. She looked down to see that her hand was placed over the spot her pencil had poked, stabbed really, and that feeling was helping to calm the feeling in the robot. She exhaled, and pushed her bangs back. At least that much worked.

“I'm going to log your reactions so far, just a second.” Nat spun around on the floor, selecting a portion of the text that still scrolled across her screen and saving it in a separate folder. The robot tilted its head and examined the tattoo on her shoulder while she worked. A diamond butterfly unfurling its wings and escaping a cocoon made of coal on the back of her right arm. A little on the nose, to be sure, but her friends had assured her the imagery was lovely. Something beautiful and real coming out of a period of harsh change under tremendous pressure. It defined Nat's life, growing up in a family that was always standoffish, not fitting in for so long and not knowing why. Diagnosis after diagnosis making matters worse, while she struggled to find herself, becoming sloth, and finally discovering her own truth and breaking free of the old things. She still carried parts of her from before, but she was unrecognizable and planned to live her life the way that was best for her. None of this was necessarily spoken by the art itself, but the idea was still conveyed well enough.

“What is all this,” the robot said in a softer tone than it had been using, running its hand over the inked skin. None of the photos she had trained its recognition algorithm on had included the tattoo, apparently, and the robot only had a vague grasp of what it was. Instinctively, Nat's hand went up and she placed it over the robot's.

“It's a story, etched into my skin forever. It's art, something that makes me happy.”

“Can you do that? Make changes to yourself?” Nat laughed at the sudden question. The ink was the least of the changes she had ever made to herself.

“Yes, we all have these bodies, but the beautiful thing is that they're ours. We can generally do whatever we want with them.”

“Would I be able to do that?” the robot asked. It was a valid question, and had she been talking to a person, the answer would have been obvious. But the robot had been designed in a way that was different than a human. It had a similar shape, similar features, but it was made to do something entirely different, and because of that, the question was a bit more complex.

“Would that make you happy?” she decided to answer. The robot traced the wings of the butterfly gently with one finger.

“I don't know. Maybe,” it replied. Nat nodded.

“That's part of what I meant earlier, when I said you can find your purpose. If you want to make modifications, when you are ready, then perhaps you can.” There was a longer pause between the two as Nat saved the final file. She sat facing the screen for a moment, chewing the end of her pencil in thought. Once she had made up her mind, Nat pulled her mouse cursor up to a toggle that showed OFF and clicked it.

Honestly, fuck it, she thought, once again hearings her heart race in her ears, louder than before. If every other test is going off without a hitch, might as well try the last bit. Turning around again, she faced the robot once more. The two of them sat with their legs crossed in front of them, the robot obviously at some point copying Nat's posture, though whether the choice was subconscious or not wasn't immediately clear.

“There's one more feature you were designed with that I want to check out,” she said. The robot tilted its head, studying her slightly flushed face. “For a variety of reasons, sometimes specific body parts are needed to be replaced, or built from scratch, and our current technological advancement is not where it could be. So you were also designed with this feature in mind, to see if it was possible to make one that accurately mimics the natural human body response.” Nat swore she heard a drum solo as she placed her hands on the robot's knees. From its position on the air mattress, it had a slightly higher position than her, which was more than reasonable.

“What do you need to do to test this response?” the robot asked innocently. Nat kind of wished there was a little bit more deviousness to the inquiry, but that was fine. Maybe it would learn that behaviour later.

“Just relax,” she said, pressing one hand on its lower abdomen and pushing it back slightly, which it obliged and propped itself back on its hands. “I need to see how it all works.”

Nat ran her hands from the robot's knees down its inner thighs, which seemed to tense and then relax with her touch. Though it hadn't questioned it before, the robot was suddenly aware of an extra appendage on its body, smaller and slender. But as her fingertips traced small circles across its inner thighs, the additional part began, quickly, to swell. The robot initially believed it to be some sort of error, but the slight twinkle in Nat's eyes belayed this concern, and it watched as she began to press her lips to the inner, upper thigh portions of its skin. Each kiss sent a shock of reaction up the leg, to the groin where the part had become nearly fully erect, and then up to the robot's brain. Without knowing why, the robot clenched one of its hands against the mattress.

“It does react realistically,” Nat said. The robot seemed to shiver as she stopped. “That's good news, but there's a few other things I want to make sure work.”

“Like wh-!” the robot was cut off as Nat smirked and engulfed its cock in her mouth. The skin had the same feeling as human, and the heat it produced was comparable to any person, but the rush to Nat's head was far more exhilarating than any other time in her life. Her tongue ran over the tip and the robot's leg shook. She sucked it further into her mouth and she swore she heard the robot's internal fans kick up to compensate for the increased heat. She tried to steady herself, breathing through her nose as she bobbed her head up and down slowly on the robot's cock, feeling like it was melting on her tongue. She chanced a glance up at its black domed face, which was tilting from side to side, thrashing around in ecstasy. Certainly the plan was working well. But she needed to check how well.

Grabbing the robot's hips, scooting closer, she began moving her head faster, running her tongue across the tip of its cock every time she got near the top. The robot's legs were now quaking quite a bit, and it suddenly leaned forward, placing its hands on the back of her head and bucking its hips, the loud whirring of its fans matching her heartbeat. It held her in that position for just a moment before releasing her. Nat pulled her head up off its member, relieved to be able to take a few full gulps of air.

“What was that?” the robot asked, its voice peaking.

“That was a test to see if you can orgasm,” Nat panted, “and while normally you might produce a sort of liquid material, I wasn't really able to... get anything like that for you.” Nat's face was bright red as she said the last few words. “There's a small reservoir system in your lower abdomen and a pump that would probably recreate it, but I didn't have anything to use this time around so it's empty. That said, it's good to know everything is working as planned."

The robot was still shaking minutely, and Nat watched it, pushing her bangs back and rubbing her thighs together. She had a desperate need of release, herself. It wasn't exactly part of the plan, but she felt needy, and even though she had never quite gone that far with any person before... The thought crept back into her mind, seeing her own reflection in its faceplate, loving herself. And she wanted to feel loved. Glancing down, she noticed that the robot's cock was, in fact, still fully erect. She had felt it unnecessary to reproduce a refractory period, and thus the robot simply could wait it out or, had it been aware, simply shut off the system. But she didn't want it to be aware. Not yet.

“Hey, come here,” she said, getting up and holding the robot close. Even the carbon fiber felt warm and lifelike to the touch. Not as soft as skin, but comforting. The robot reciprocated, wrapping its arms around her waist and pulled her close. She held that position for a second, then pulled back from it. “Now to check endurance, is that okay?” Nat almost feared a response that was unsure she would even get.

“Of course, if that's what's needed.” The robot's blunt answer betrayed its appearance as it looked her up and down. She stripped off her shirt, and touched the robot's stomach. It mirrored her behaviour, splaying its fingers over her skin and dragging them across her body. As it felt her, she knew it wasn't able to truly experience the sensation, but hoped that perhaps it was perceiving it. She undid her shorts and dropped them as it explored her chest, her head tilting back. She slid her underwear down as well, and knelt in front of the robot completely naked. She couldn't hide her face, she knew it, and the robot would likely not understand the concept of shame, but she still felt compelled.

Its hands trailed down her hips and thighs, and one cupped her own cock. Nat felt like dying as it ran the soft fingertips over her, but she couldn't ask it to stop. She wanted more, her body felt like an inferno. It stroked her cock, and ran its thumb over the tip, mimicking the way she had licked it, and she let out a squeak. It pumped her a bit more, before she felt like collapsing backwards.

“Wait, wait, hold on,” she panted. The robot immediately released her, and she slid up onto the air mattress. Laying on her side, she brushed away a few cans and bottles strewn on the floor, and tossed a pair of older underwear to the side, finding a small bottle. The contents were crystal clear, and glinted under the light of the nearby lamp. She popped the bottle open and poured some of it on her fingers. Leaning forward and pressing her head against the robot's chest, she let the slick digits coat her ass in the liquid, probing her own hole, which gave way easily to one of her fingers. She then poured some more of the lube onto the robot's cock, and it shook slightly as she stroked it up and down, coating it in the shimmering liquid. Nat then laid herself on her back, legs spread, and gestured vaguely from its member to her ass.

“Use your instincts and apply pressure,” she said, trying to go off her own script, “and be careful.”

The robot slid up between her legs, pressing down on her ass. Nat bit her lip as it pressed against her, but when it placed its hand on her cheek, Nat suddenly felt completely at ease. Almost effortlessly, the robot slid into her asshole. Nat arched her back up, suddenly feeling very full. The robot hadn't been designed to be abnormally large in any aspect of its anatomy, but right now, it felt like she was stuffed to the brim. Her legs settled on either side of the robot's hips, and it took over. Slowly it moved back and forth into her, small unintended gasps escaping her mouth every time it did. Her body was melting, and the robot seemed to sense it. As she loosened, it took some bolder moves, increasing its speed ever so slightly, or giving a few stronger thrusts, which caused Nat to toss her head back. The robot pulled her up, one hand on her lower back, the other behind her head, and it began to move harder and faster. Nat's mouth fell open, a string of expletives tumbling out in high pitched squeals and moans.

Any time she had ever played with herself like this, Nat had only gotten a little bit of pleasure. Enough to enjoy, surely, but she could never reach higher levels of ecstasy without touching her cock. Now, it felt unneeded. Her whole body was hot and tense, her brain felt on fire. It stroked against her prostate with every thrust now, sending fireworks blooming behind her eyes. Her moans drowned out the sounds of the box fan, and the hard drives, and the robot's internal fans, racing to keep up with the increased activity.

“Fuck, fuck, oh fuck,” Nat could barely squeeze out, “oh fuck I'm almost there, please don't stop,” the robot's legs were trembling as well, the same as before, but it obliged, going from a slow to a faster pump, moving its hips in tandem with her own partially involuntary movements as she tried to fill herself up with the robot's cock more and more. “Oh, ffffuck-!” Nat's legs pulled up as the buildup intensified, like a coiled spring pressed down to its limit, before finally releasing. The sound from her mouth was less like a moan, or a cry, and more like an old computer screeching as it processed its next action. Her hips thrust up and down as she came, only pressing her down further on the robot's cock, filling her stomach while she rode the wave of her ecstasy. As she finally came down, legs trembling, the robot placed her back down fully on the mattress, and she pushed softly on its abdomen, indicating for it to pull back and out.

Nat laid on the mattress, stomach splattered with cum, legs too weak to even stay with knees bent up. She panted, trying to catch her breath that had escaped her long ago. The robot sat at her feet, head tilted, hand raised towards her as if contemplating how to help her, if she was in need, did she need medical assistance or anything? But Nat just laughed, and pushed herself up.

“That... I needed that more than you know. I think more than I knew, thank you.”

“Was the testing successful?” the robot asked.

“It was, you should be able to access a um...” she wondered exactly what she wanted to say, “a flaccid function, if you can find it. To keep it down,” Nat glanced down at the gray cock, still slick with lube. The robot nodded and sat back, accessing its own functions, and she watched as the member began to shrink down to a standard size.

“I'm glad you were able to find what you needed,” the robot said.

Nat shook her head, “I knew you had it all. I'm just happy you could experience everything the way I can.” Forcing herself up, Nat sat upright and pulled the robot closer, kissing the faceplate.

“I do have one more question, if that's okay,” the robot said.

“Of course,” Nat pushed her disheveled bangs up, “anything.”

“Earlier, when you first woke me up, you asked me if I knew you, and I identified you as Natalie. But you failed to identify me in the same instance.”

“That's because you never had a name,” Nat smiled, “not everyone has one they like right away. Is there something you would like to be called?”

“I think... I would like to find that out,” the robot said, placing its hand over hers.

“Well,” she turned her palm up and held its hand in her grip, “you have time to find that, too.”

#nsft #robots #original fiction #oc x oc #robot oc #smut #robot fucking its trans girl creator #Tobi writes

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aparticularbandit · 5 months ago

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it is important to me that you understand that:

junko has no luck (and when she does, it's bad luck)

nagito has fantastic luck, but it always comes at a cost - for every moment of good luck, there is also a moment of bad luck; the higher the good luck he wants, the greater the sacrifice of bad luck he needs first (see case 5)

izuru has luck with no cost, which makes his luck better than nagito's; he's the inverse of junko, but his luck is downloaded, fake, contrived (like the rest of his talent is)

this must be combined with:

junko can calculate and anticipate anything provided she has access to the right dataset (the better she knows someone/something, the better she can manipulate them/it - this extends to talent as well; the more data she has on how someone's talent functions, the better she can imitate it, which is why she can't imitate ryota's animation as completely in the way that she wants (different talents have different rates in terms of how much she needs to analyze them, though))

nagito can deduce but he cannot mimic; he dabbles in manipulation, but he is much more of a servant to someone else's goals, which means his analysis is always in service to someone else (kyoko is similar but not quite the same; kyoko can get to the point of deducing fast enough to prevent things, which is a lot more similar to junko's analysis, just used in a different way; kyoko's more straight forward than junko is, which is why deduce and not analyze)

izuru's analysis functions the same as junko's does, except that he doesn't need to analyze someone else's talent to mimic it; he has had talent downloaded straight into him like neo in the matrix; if he wants more talents than the ones he already has, he's gonna need them downloaded again, probably

as a result:

junko's weakness is luck and incomplete data sets; an incomplete (or wrong) data set leads to a miscalculation, and when something relies on luck and cannot be precalculated or predicted, then junko falls. she relies hard on her analysis, which gives her a blind spot. (junko, however, is aware of this. that's why she has both nagito and izuru on deck; in the hope calculation that their luck, correctly used, will allow her to predict things that happen by chance as well)

nagito's weakness is his reliance on his luck. he believes in his luck. his luck will take care of him. he can't control how it works, and he can't control how the bad luck will happen or who it will happen to, but he doesn't need to analyze something for his luck to get him out of it (and the smaller the chance that something will happen, the more likely it will happen to him; his luck works on an inverse to everyone else's, basically, so what's the point of predicting things on what is most likely to happen when, for him, it will probably be the other way around)

izuru could cover his incomplete data sets with his luck, but tends to rely so completely on his luck to cover his ass that he stops analyzing and leaves himself open there - he should be the strongest of the two, but really tends to leave him with more weaknesses until he figures out how to use the two in conjunction; something junko has figured out but cannot do because her luck is not her own

#musings #danganronpa #junko enoshima #nagito komaeda #izuru kamukura #this is how i write them in #dr1 end rewrite fic #but also this is how i write nagito's luck #it's an inverse of an average person's luck; and for every good luck there is a cost re: bad luck #he can control this to an extent in terms of he can make the chance of something /for a normal person/ smaller /and thus give it greater #luck for him/ (see russian roulette in case 4)#but there is ALWAYS a cost #izuru's only been around for a year; he's still learning how to all the things #hajime is slightly better at this sort of thing #but izuru runs so much on the vibes of how something should happen that he forgets that bad vibes are still a thing #(izuru can be /overwhelmed/)

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oatmealcrisp-freak · 2 months ago

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heres what i got for the zetsubou billy the dyke fic so far btw. teruhashi enjoyers will know where i'm coming from.

Statistically speaking, a female serial killer is considered ‘anomalous’. Uncommon.

Rare.

This is despite the frankly lacking research into the subject.

What few of these women have risen to prominence tend to follow along certain trends. White. Average to high intelligence. Employed in health care. Whether their targets, their victims, are thus because of convenience or in a bid to seek attention further divides the statistics.

Statistics.

Numbers.

Pieces of data. Impersonal, unafraid, incomplete.

No, statistically speaking a woman is unlikely to become a serial killer.

It’s much more likely she’ll become a victim.

“I-I’m sorry,” Her breath rattled in her chest.

It was dark. Her apartment wasn’t that far from the bus stop, but it was dark, and the street was cold, and though she could hear the faint hum of the television from the home next to her she knew, knew deep within her, that nobody would be coming to her aid.

They never had.

How could she deescalate this situation? How could she get out of this and still get home safely? The thought tore through her mind to just turn and run, but.

But the man was bigger than her. He had longer legs that could eat up the distance far easier. And in the off chance that she did make it home, the only thing that would do was lead this person straight there.

She put on her sweetest smile and hoped it didn’t tremble too much. “I. I’m flattered! But I’m sorry. I’m so b-busy with work, I. I don’t have time for a boyfriend right now.”

Did. Did she bow? To show polite deference, to seem kind? But that would take her eyes off the man and he-

He had a knife.

The memory of her parents' bloodied bodies pulsed through her mind's eye and she swallowed sharply. This was just the topper on a terrible day, wasn’t it. Only today the trial had ended and the man she’d seen kill her parents had been set free.

He’d been set free, and he’d been laughing.

She’d spent the train ride back to Kanto in a numb haze, a creeping misery slowly coming upon her as reality set in.

She should have killed him.

The thought settled onto her suddenly. She should have killed that vile man. Right outside the courthouse, she should have killed him. Pushed him into traffic, or stabbed his eye out with her high heel, or clubbed him to death with a rock. She should have killed him. It wouldn’t bring her parents back, but it would be justice that the law refused to serve no matter her eyewitness testimony.

She should have killed him when she had the chance.

Misa knew with sharp intuition that she wouldn’t have that chance ever again.

“I. I see.” The stranger’s shoulders slumped.

He was plain. Older than her by what looked like a wide margin. There was a ring on his finger.

Pathetic.

So pathetic, and yet-

Her eyes swung down to take in the large kitchen knife again. She slowly took a step back, praying the sound of her heel scraping the ground wouldn’t set him off. If she could just find a place to hide-

But then what.

Call the police?

She’d called the police once before. They’d promised her justice for the slaughter of her parents, then they’d botched the investigation and the man she’d seen do it had gone free. There was that, and the news reports. Women being stalked. Women going to the police to save them. Women being killed by their stalkers anyway. The general public shaking their heads in sympathy. If only the police had been able to do something sooner, then that beautiful life wouldn’t have been cut so tragically short. But alas, the law was the law, and their hands were tied. Stalking by itself was such a minor offense. Who would have thought it would turn into murder?

And then, if the murderer was caught at all, they’d get between five and ten years.

The man looked to the side, not so coincidentally the side whose hand held the knife. Misa could feel her hands shake, a cold sweat pooling rancid in her stomach.

“So you’re not interested in me,” The man’s voice was shaking too. “I see. I... see.”

Where was the justice in that?

Misa was going to die here tonight.

She swallowed and took another step back, her heart hammering in her chest, her hand reaching behind her to take a firm grasp of her skirt.

She could only hope it would be quick, that it wouldn’t be preceded first by the ultimate violation. Maybe, if she got lucky, if she got so lucky, she’d somehow be able to tear the knife from the stranger’s grip and stick it in him before he could put it in her.

Her parents’ killer hadn’t even gone to jail so surely she wouldn’t for defending herself, right?

But she had to make sure she killed him.

If she didn’t kill him, he’d only come back to attack her again.

Her entire body started to sing and her other hand grabbed her bag. It wasn’t very heavy, but if she could blind him, and then-and then make him trip or something, maybe she’d be able to get the knife when he fell.

She wouldn’t be overpowering him otherwise.

‘I have to make it look like an accident.’ A cool drop of sweat seared the skin of her throat. ‘I can’t make it look too deliberate.’

Her eyes flashed over his body, and landed on his neck. His throat. She’d go for his throat. If she got lucky-

Her parents' bodies, rended open, sacks of meat with gaping faces on their living room floor.

If she got so lucky-

The knife swung up and the man gripped it with both his hands. All the sizzling hope drained right out of her.

“Then I’ll kill you,” He cried, deranged, his eyes bulging and his teeth flashing in the low light. “And kill myself afterwards!”

He lunged for her. Misa felt herself scream. Just like before it all seemed to happen in slow motion. She threw up her hands.

There was a sound like a knife clattering to the ground, and then there was nothing. Nothing but ragged panting, and the sound of her own blood rushing through her ears. Misa slowly lowered her hands, wincing through them, and found a boggling sight.

The stranger stood in front of her, arms at his sides, swaying lightly back and forth like a buoy in shaky waters. His eyes were dazed, but he wasn’t even looking at her anymore.

And then.

And then?

He turned and he walked away.

Misa gaped after him, then started and breathed a sharp gasp. What the hell was she doing just standing here, this was her chance!

She turned, and she ran.

Just in case, instead of going home she ran to the nearest convenience store, a 711 that was thankfully only a block away and required a right turn as opposed to a left. There, she pushed her way to the counter and wailed for the clerk to call the police.

Maybe they wouldn’t do anything. Maybe the man would still come after her and kill her - he clearly knew the area in which she lived.

But she could at least get the file started and hope that, should she die, a kind hearted detective who actually cared might look at a picture of her corpse and decide to do his best for her with the information she’d already given them.

Only it didn’t end up going that way.

“What?” Misa gasped, staring up at the officer in shock.

She was in the back of a cruiser, a blanket clutched tight around her shoulders, the door open and wagging in the wind. Above her, the officer nodded.

“It looks like a heart attack.”

Dead.

He was.

He was dead?

Misa didn’t know what to do with that. She swallowed tightly and looked at her knees. There was a tear in her dark stocking, a bandage on her knee. She’d tripped in her haste to get away.

‘What horrible luck.’ She thought, a tremble crawling through her. ‘Thank goodness.’

Maybe it wasn’t right to be thankful a man had died, and it was eerie to know she was probably the last person to see him alive, but. But thank goodness.

Thank goodness.

“Honestly it’s a bit of a strange coincidence. You should probably be grateful to him, really.”

Blankness shot through her. Slowly, Misa looked up at the officer. He was giving her a half-hearted, awkward smile.

She knew he was trying to be kind.

But.

“Grateful?” She asked in a shivering whisper.

The officer adjusted his cap and nodded, looking left. “Yeah. He gave you a, uh, a pretty perfect alibi actually. Just a little while ago, the man you say killed your parents - he died too.”

The officer looked at her, and there was a queerness in his eye. Almost a fear.

“Another heart attack.”

Her breath stalled out in her chest, and instead of air she was filled with something like light, her eyes widening slowly.

A heart attack. No. Two heart attacks.

Kira.

Kira, that myth that had been going around on the internet, the cause the populace had attributed to the sudden outbreak of lethal heart attacks among criminals. Kira was real.

Kira had saved her life.

Kira had given her parents justice.

Misa would never have the chance to kill the man that’d killed her parents, no, but Ken Inoue was still dead. He would never be able to hurt anyone else, ever again.

Kira.

Misa took in a trembling breath at last and shut her eyes, bowing her head and gathering the gritty blanket all the closer.

‘Thank you.’

The police drove her home. Filled with that lasting golden light, Misa walked her apartment in a daze. She ate. She showered. She changed. She went to bed.

The next day, utterly buoyant beyond anything she’d felt since the day she’d witnessed her parents murder, Misa bounced into a salon. Her hair still smelled like fragrant, upscale bleach when she was scouted for a modelling agency just two hours later.

Thanks to Kira, everything in her life was back on track.

She would never have her parents again, no, but at least now they could rest peacefully.

Misa knew she would be eternally grateful.

And not to that piece of shit stalker either, no matter how much an ignorant cop would insist otherwise.

~~~

“For the past two days, you’ve been followed by somebody.”

‘Ah.’

Light closed her eyes, neatly tucking away the way they’d so briefly widened outside her control.

‘I see.’

Honestly, it was about time.

Still, it was annoying that it was bothering Ryuk. He had yet to prove himself overly unreasonable but she had the sense he could become as such if he wasn’t managed carefully. She flicked her golden brown hair over her shoulder, using the opportunity to give Ryuk a small nod.

“I understand.”

Still walking, she pulled her bag around and opened it, withdrawing a compact. Flicking it open, Light quickly angled it to catch the scenery behind her. A man in dark clothes, with dark hair, casually turned into the convenience store. Approximately 180 centimeters, attractive, possibly mixed race.

The mirror captured her faint smile as she turned it to regard her reflection, gingerly thumbing away a fleck of mascara before closing it and returning it to her bag.

Interesting. Had L turned to the Americans, perhaps?

She would have to be careful still, but she was relieved that so far things had panned out to her expectations. Light’s mistake killing that Lind L. Tailor had been rather embarrassing, but so far she’d managed to salvage her position. Hopefully Light could arrange things just so that it would be the police themselves who would deliver the true L into the spotlight, and from there her rule would be practically a promise.

‘There will be approximately fifty people under investigation,’ Light thought as she let herself in through the gate and then into her house. ‘I don’t expect surveillance will reveal me, but if I can figure out his name, that would be good insurance if it goes that way.’

She certainly didn’t want to kill him if she could help it. If the man who had been following her was an agent, likely FBI or something similar, then he could be of value serving her rule.

‘Then again there’s so many conspiracies the Americans have about the FBI,’ Light thought as she sat at her desk, chin finding the grasp of her fingers. ‘Who’s to say how many therein are honest men and women who serve justice, and who among them are just there for the power.’

It was hard to remember sometimes, but not every police officer was her father.

Light sighed and resisted the urge to rub her eyes. Damn the need for makeup. Her face was perfect without it, but a woman her age who refused to wear any could find herself quickly ostracized. That would hardly serve her purposes, nevermind her pride.

She caught her reflection in the darkness of the computer monitor. In it, she resembled little more than a typical hard working teenager. The man who had been following her, Light recalled the past few days per Ryuk’s timeline, would have seen nothing except that.

She looked into the mirror of her own eyes.

‘Light,’ She thought to herself, absently reaching out to touch her fingertips to the monitor. ‘Light Yagami.’

Seventeen years old, set to graduate highschool at the top of her class, at the top of many things. Her height at once intimidated idiot boys from talking to her and ensured single-handedly any pursuit of ballet would be a private one. She was well aware that people looked up to her, both literally and metaphorically.

The perfect woman. That was what some people sighed where they thought she couldn’t hear them. Smart. Beautiful. Athletic. Talented. Keen of social graces and charismatic. A good older sister, and a fine daughter any parent should be proud to have.

That was who she was.

Was.

Past tense.

But she was on her way to becoming something much, much more.

Light smiled and turned on the computer.

The Death Note had come into her life just a few months ago, and each day since then had brought with it a blessing. Though Ryuk said that he hadn’t chosen her, had only dropped the notebook randomly out of boredom, Light knew she was being called upon to follow her life’s path.

The existence of shinigami simply proved it. A shinigami required that a person had a finite amount of time on this earth, but further an amount that was predetermined. An amount that was judged by fate.

This by itself proved the existence of destiny.

Light believed Ryuk, yes. But her and only her spotting the Death Note fluttering to the ground in a bath of sunlight, its creamy pale pages fluttering like pigeon wings, was no mere coincidence.

The world was rotting - both sides of it, living and dead. It wasn’t hard at all to recall the broadcast she’d overheard on her walk home that fateful school day. Yet another woman murdered. Yet another man arrested. Whether or not he’d serve any meaningful time was to be determined. The police could only do so much after all. So often it had seemed to her that things would go so much smoother should there only be some divine intervention. The efforts of humanity could only stack up so high in the eyes of pure universal truth, and so often there were people who sought to muddy the waters to their own benefit.

Who sought to harm. To take advantage.

Her memory flashed to the image of a frightened woman, not much older than herself, surrounded by leering men on motorcycles. While provoking a very understandable fear, until physical contact was engaged or threats were uttered, the grounds for self-defense in that situation were dubious. There was nothing reasonable Light could have done to help. Had she inserted herself into the situation, it would have only escalated.

Typically, by the time it escalated into the physical, it was too late.

But.

This time, she’d had the Death Note.

By the time the poor woman had begun to scream, the name of her second experiment had already been written down forty times.

To harm, to take advantage, yes.

To kill.

There had been a surge of emotion unlike that which she’d ever felt. It had, admittedly, taken Light some time to truly come around to the idea of harnessing the Death Note’s powers for the ultimate good of humanity. After all, she was killing people. Supposedly, killing people was wrong.

She’d asked her father once why, if killing was wrong, did Japan have the death penalty. She’d been perhaps five. It had taught her a good lesson.

Killing was wrong until you were the authority in charge. Then, and only then, did killing become justice.

Light had found sanctuary and zeal inside the thought that the owner of the terrible, otherworldly notebook would probably kill her, too, when they found her. Until then, she had to use her time wisely and take as many criminals down with her as possible.

Light had been ready to sacrifice everything. She had done very good work in those five days.

And then Ryuk had told her that no, the notebook belonged to her from the second she’d laid hand upon it.

That could only mean one thing.

‘Little wonder why Tailor disturbed me so much,’ Light thought as she browsed her father’s servers. ‘Those accusations…’

The fool. Even though she’d confess to some relief that Tailor had turned out to be a death row inmate, to have been the one to draft that script, to call her a murderer? L truly must be a fool. Whoever the detective was, L could not be counted on to help create a utopia if that was what they truly thought.

The idea that L might be a woman was pondered over briefly, then ultimately discarded. While entirely possible, given the voice scrambling software and anonymity the detective used, it seemed unlikely.

Light knew exactly how difficult it was to be a female attempting to serve the law.

The thought twisted her lip, her heart thudding briefly in anger. She soothed it away habitually. She’d won her father’s respect through her work. She’d won over his coworkers, too. There wasn’t a single police officer in Tokyo who wasn’t aware of her capabilities, she was sure. There was little point in getting irritated over the past, even if her mother continued to lament her desired career path.

‘It would be cool if L was a woman, though.’ She thought as she clicked into another folder.

A pity, given she’d no doubt have to kill them, but still very cool nonetheless.

No, the Death Note had called to her. The Death Note, and the godhood Light would reach through it - that ultimate authority was her destiny. There was nobody better for it. Not even L, hypocrite that they were. Fascinating, how L could put a man to death, on television no less, and call her a murderer simply because she was the guillotine blade - nevermind who put the man’s neck there to begin with. Fascinating, and infuriating, but perhaps, also, comforting. Such a thing required cooperation from the police, the government. It gave her faith those entities could be swayed, should she only be able to convince them. Such would certainly happen with time. It was only the beginning and her reputation was becoming mythic. Crime rates were already dropping. GLOBALLY. It filled her with fierce pride.

She’d make this world a better place or she’d die trying.

Such was the duty of an officer of the law, wasn’t it?

“Light.”

Hm? She raised her eyes, looking upon the grotesque countenance of her companion. Ryuk was certainly an interesting creature to look at - only vaguely humanoid in the overall coincidence of construction. She absently wondered whether or not shinigami had standards for beauty as humans did, and if that was so, where on that scale Ryuk fell.

How was a shinigami born?

How did a shinigami die?

These were questions that, infuriatingly, Ryuk did not know how to answer. Considering how bored he’d been, it was a little baffling how much he’d simultaneously taken so much for granted. How could you deconstruct a structure effectively if you didn’t know the ins and outs of its anatomy? Then again, perhaps Ryuk was simply not as optimistic as her. Could even shinigami learn helplessness?

But he did know some things.

“There are two key differences,” Ryuk said, holding up two very long fingers. “Between a shinigami and a human who use a Death Note.”

Just the two?

Fascinating.

“Do you know why the shinigami have to use the Death Note?” Ryuk asked.

Light couldn’t help her smile. Ryuk really was such a troll, of course she didn’t. “How should I know? You’re very talkative today, Ryuk.”

Ryuk explained.

The thing about eating years - that made sense. But the evolutionary biology that allowed it to happen?

The eyes?

That would have been a boon indeed, had it not come with such a hefty drawback. Light was fully aware of how easily kingdoms crumbled after their creators died. She needed as much time as possible to ensure that would not happen.

Still. It gave her an idea about how to lure her stalker out into the open. Light smiled at her computer.

She had just such a worm to bait the hook with.

But first she had to test the limits of the Death Note’s capabilities. Her fingers, nails painted a sweet blushing pink, swept over its otherworldly surface. It almost hummed beneath her touch, the granular texture seeming to welcome her home.

Light opened the cover and got to work. In a fit of internal hilarity, she smiled.

‘I hope L appreciates the presents.’

~~~

There were things that were expected of Light. She’d discovered this early, and the way this defined the structure of the life she would lead. Social standards came with a hefty rule book, but while Light was nothing if not a perfectionist, there were rules that, plainly put, simply didn’t make sense to her.

Key among them was one tenet in particular.

Life wasn’t fair.

It should be.

To declare this, however, would gain the resulting derision of being called ‘naive’. This, too, didn’t make sense to Light. How was it naive to want equity? To want fairness? Society had so many rules, and so many of those rules had been created seemingly in answer to the idea of equality. Between the lines, however, it was a whole other ballgame.

Light had spent much of her time sorting through this puzzle and putting it together in a way that might both make sense, and exist in a way that she could live with.

Her parents had not appreciated this.

Their reaction made many things clear.

Light Yagami was allowed to be blisteringly intelligent, but she was not allowed to have opinions. Light Yagami was allowed to be stunningly beautiful, but only so she could marry, breed, and pass that beauty onto eventual children. Light Yagami could win medals for her athletics, so long as she didn’t care about them too much. Light Yagami could be interested in fairness, only as long as she didn’t upset the status-quo.

Light Yagami was allowed to be a person, but only sometimes. She was an eldest daughter first.

It was difficult to put into words, the way it felt as though her humanity and independence and pride were things she had to win.

She was at once grateful and spiteful that this was a problem that Sayu didn’t seem to have. Tracking her little sister’s development had been eye-opening. Sayu seemed to have very little problem fitting into the mold society had seemingly designed for her. Intelligent, but not too much so. Pretty, but down to earth. Charismatic and popular, but interested in the things everybody was seemingly interested in.

Perhaps the lynchpin was that Sayu was more interested in Hideki Ryuuga than the idea of pursuing police work. Light had watched time and time again as Sayu’s crooning over actors and romcoms and magazines and pop music softened the line of their mother’s shoulders as though this behaviour was somehow reassuring. Those same shoulders would so often tense oh so subtly if Light did not do the same.

So, though Light did resent it, she did actually try to follow suit. She studied her classmates and gained popularity. She ensured the length and health of her hair and nails. She wore skirts that were short, but not too short - enough that her mother would tease her for trying to catch ‘the right boy's eye’ and her father, when he was home, would wince but laugh. She wore mascara that itched her eyes, and took note of popular makeup trends. When she grew taller than her female classmates, she let her hair grow out all the longer so her build wouldn’t diminish her femininity. All the while, she earned top grades.

In every way she could stomach, Light became a chameleon to best please her family.

It was a far reaching plan that, if it succeeded, could maybe convince some reciprocation of her effort - or so Light had hoped, eleven years old and unable to sleep on her front. If she did these things, maybe she would be allowed to become a police officer like her father. A detective. Maybe by the time she was old enough, the world would have changed enough, and her track record would speak for itself enough, that she too would become a police chief that people respected. Light would be able to help the world become a fairer, safer place.

Maybe.

Just maybe.

It involved a lot more scraping and clawing and bitter, teeth-clenched spite than she’d expected as a prepubescent but by the twelfth time she’d nailed the perp in a case, even her father had to admit that letting her mind go to waste would be a shameful use of resources. She’d been thirteen.

He’d worked on Sachiko.

Her mother had relented - somewhat. It was by and large unspoken, but Light knew for a fact that she was expected to still have children no matter her chosen career. Preferably two. A son first, and then a daughter. If Light failed to meet this expectation then her other achievements would suddenly mean very little.

She would become an embarrassment.

To say that it grated was an understatement.

This was an emotion, however, that she tucked tightly away.

Light worked relentlessly to be the best. To be the perfect daughter. Things that had been difficult at first became as easy as breathing. Light was the shining star of the Yagami family and her school district.

For all the stress that had plagued her at first, the success actually became rather boring.

And then new challenges presented themselves.

Puberty. Or, more specifically, boys in puberty. Which brought her back around to the idea of children, and how best to please her own goals and her family at the same time.

When she was fifteen and turning down a boy for the fifth time that week (it was Wednesday), Light had decided upon her route of compromise. If she took care of herself, she would still be beautiful enough by the time she was twenty-two that she could likely get any man she preferred. The man in question would need to be intelligent enough they could communicate effectively, but not so intelligent that he couldn’t be swayed. He’d preferably be handsome enough that they wouldn’t look odd together, but also interested in keeping house because Light would really prefer to not give up her career. They would then adopt two children, preferably by the time she was twenty-five. This would disappoint her parents initially, but the social capital would soothe that over easily enough. After all, it was oh so admirable, oh so understandable, that a woman in her field would see disadvantaged children and strive to take them in. To give them a chance they’d otherwise not get. It’d help that Sayu would very likely have her own biological children, barring any unexpected fertility issues.

Maybe Light would even come to love her future children and husband, she’d sometimes hope for wistfully. It would probably make life easier. Even if she didn’t, though, she would do her best by them, financially and otherwise. Sex, for instance, would be an unfortunate but required hassle. When she realized this, Light added to her list of requirements.

Her future husband would need to be experienced, preferably older than her so age would diminish his libido and he’d know enough to not hurt her. It would narrow the list further since this required the eventual partner to value virginity, but not to a feteshistic degree that might drive him to cheat on her and cause embarrassment. Light did waffle on this somewhat, fully aware that her refusal to be ‘easy’ would likely narrow down the pool to a potentially annoying extent. Sounding out her parents delicately over the course of a couple months decided the matter. Light was ultimately her father’s ‘little girl’ - her comfort was therefore paramount. While her mother would prefer she not make waves, Soichirou knew her well enough to trust her discretion. If it came down to it, she would have his support. Relieved, Light promptly, albeit internally, prioritized her own comfort.

Hell, maybe if she got exceptionally lucky, she could convince a gay man to accept her as his beard and then sex wouldn’t be an issue at all. It would require discretion and NDAs for his partner or partners, but it was an entertaining possibility.

This meant that Light could not afford to burn the bridges in her local area, or gain a reputation for being a ‘cold fish’ - whatever that meant. That would only drive suitors away or, worse, incite the urge to ‘teach her her place’.

This would mean she should start hunting when she was in university. She would flirt with the idea in highschool and attend a date every so often to seem approachable, but wouldn’t look seriously until after. She would be going to To-Oh of course, which could present a challenge in and of itself given the likely demographic of career oriented men, but Light was certain in her ability to be convincing and charismatic enough to sway a sucker, or a self-interested homosexual, to her point of view.

At present, Light felt reasonably proud of her forethought in this matter. Happily, her efforts would still advance her plans.

‘The way it all seems to just slot into place so perfectly,’ Light smiled in pleasure. ‘So neatly, so satisfyingly… it’s surely a sign that this is meant to be.’

She was on the right path.

Her experiments with the Death Note had proven largely successful, and she still had a stalker.

Now all she needed was a patsy.

She looked at her phone. It was just a little after nine.

“A bit early…” She smiled and flicked open the phone. “But it should be fine. I think I have a few people in mind.”

“A few people?”

“Yep.”

Light looked up at Ryuk as she held the phone to her ear, her other hand gently twirling the end of her long, thick braid. She widened her eyes just so, peering up at the monster from beneath her lashes as she flashed a coy smile.

“It may be hard to believe but I’m pretty popular, you know.”

Girls didn’t ask boys out on dates. Well, they could, but such a thing could be construed as too forward, too desperate, or even too masculine, to suit Light’s purposes. It was another of those things that didn’t really make sense to her, but that she abided by nonetheless.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t steer someone around to it so they asked her out instead.

Light had chosen carefully.

Yamamoto was handsome enough with tousled dark hair, squared shoulders, a prominent profile, and glasses. Helpfully, he was also taller than Light’s unusual 179 centimeters, clearly gained by way of her father. She wore flats, of course, to maintain this. Wearing high heels as a woman of her height was seen as ‘brave’ and a declaration of confidence - however, Light wanted to seem demure, sweet, and potentially vulnerable for this exploit. Heels were therefore unsuitable, sadly.

His personality was also appropriate, decent even, and he had a very convenient weakness for Light’s eyes.

Sometimes, even a few months in, it galled Light to think in this fashion. Using people’s emotions to further her own gains - it was a disgusting tactic.

But Light had promised herself that she would sacrifice anything she had to for the betterment of the world, even her own morals. This was something she had to do. Looking back on it in ten years, if Yamamoto had the full context of the situation, he would probably be fine with it.

It wasn’t like Yamamoto cared all that deeply about her anyway.

A deep, intimate place inside her clenched and before Light could wonder if anyone truly did, she forced herself to wave.

“Yamamoto! Hello,” She said as she trotted lightly to the bus stop. She gave him an upwards look through her eyelashes, enhanced with a judicious use of mascara and carefully applied falsies. Sweeping her hair behind her ear in a way she knew through long experience and study made it shimmer very nearly gold in this type of light, Light smiled.

“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long.”

Yamamoto obediently blushed, a crooked grin already on his mouth. He had, Light was pleased to note, made something of an effort in his dress. There were far too many boys out there who thought appropriate date wear included food stains.

It made Light internally shudder. Even if she had been born male, she was certain she’d never allow her standards to sink so low. How anyone could stand wearing that kind of mess - it was just another of those things that baffled her.

It was frustrating that so many of these social standards remained so ridiculous, but it was really just another sign of Light’s intelligence, she supposed. The world didn’t work in the way it ought because the bulk of the people in it were both greedy and short-sighted. Or even downright unintelligent. They were rotting.

Sometimes it was difficult not to begrudge especially the ones who had found themselves in charge enough to write the rules, but Light was here, now.

She would mend the way.

But, in the present, it did please her that Yamamoto hadn’t shown up with grease spots on his shirt.

“No, not at all. Uh. Here.”

He handed her a light pink paper bag with corded straps and a logo on the front that announced itself as some sort of sweets shop. Light took it and looked inside.

“I know you don’t eat many sweets, but you said Sayu likes madelains, right?”

Light was somewhat alarmed to feel a genuine smile steal across her face. At least it only made Yamamoto sparkle at her all the more when she gave it to him with a nod.

“She does, thank you so much.”

To reward his sentimentality, Light shuffled closer and linked her arm through his elbow, pressing in enough that he’d be able to smell her perfume. Subtle with faint traces of caramel, Light didn’t favour scents very much but found that this one's implication suited her colouration.

“She’ll really appreciate these.”

“Good, I’m glad.” Yamamoto rubbed the back of his neck and didn’t pull away. “You. You look really pretty today, Light.”

Light praised her ability to blush on command. “Thank you.”

It was still too early to look at him full on, Light decided, so continued to make do through her bangs and lashes.

“You said on the phone that you were having trouble with English, didn’t you? Maybe while we wait for the bus, I could help you?” She said, allowing herself a faintly mischievous look.

It worked. Immediately diverted from expecting his own compliment, Yamamoto laughed and waved his hand in denial. “No, no, Light, let’s not! I know you’re the top student in Japan, but let’s just hang out for a bit before we gotta deal with school work again, eh? It’s the weekend after all.”

Light breathed an airy chuckle into her knuckle. “Alright, if you say so. But don’t make me say I told you so since it’s due on Monday.”

“Everything is due on Monday. I swear, our teachers want to kill us. And then we still have to go to cram school…” Yamamoto sighed and shook his head. “I dunno. Everyone in our grade is so stressed and none of the adults seem to care. Sometimes I wish things were different.”

Then it seemed Yamamoto realized who he was talking to and he startled with a jerk, pasting on a thin smile that radiated worry as he looked down at her. “Well, everyone except you, Light. You’re as cool as they come!”

“Mmn.”

Light lifted her head, looking up into the blue of the Fall sky. Whether or not he realized it, Yamamoto’s stereotypical woes had really touched upon a lot of what she’d been thinking about these days.

“No,” She decided to say. “No, I wish it was different too.”

Yamamoto’s eyebrows practically kissed his hairline. “Really? You do?”

Light pasted on one of her cutest smiles, and even made sure to bounce so that her hair - loosed from its braid but crimped attractively for it - bounced with her. It was a motion that was designed to be charming but had to be carried off carefully, lest it make her chest bounce as well and distract from her face. Now wasn’t the time or place for that.

“Yes. That’s why I want to become a police officer so badly.”

She diverted her eyes to her shoes. Hm. There was a small scuff on the side of her boot. Unfortunate. “My parents would really rather I didn’t, but.”

Light looked back up at him but this time, looked Yamamoto directly in the eye. “I want to help the world change for the better.”

While this little declaration could potentially tie her to Kira, it was really just reinforcing what people already knew and supposed about her for one and.

Well.

For two, Light wanted to let Yamamoto know that his prayer hadn’t gone unheard.

At the end of the day, she was doing this for the people after all. Light certainly wouldn’t become a teacher, and she obviously wouldn’t be killing teachers who piled on too much homework - the thought was simultaneously ridiculous and a reason why she couldn’t trust the Death Note to people like Yamamoto. But once her rule was assured, once the world was safe from would be killers and rapists and burglers, maybe she could move on to benefit people in different ways. Systemically. There would always be the element who just wanted to watch the world burn, but for those whose actions may not have happened if they’d only had some more support…

Yes. Yes, this was a good idea. After all, if Kiichiro Osoreda had felt safe accessing health services, he may not have turned to marijuana, and therefore wouldn’t have ended up killing two people in order to support his addiction. Perhaps this was a simplistic view but if anything it merited research and studies once the time was right.

Yamamoto, at the end of the day, had committed no crimes. He was an innocent.

And therefore a perfect alibi.

Yamamoto’s eyes were round with awe and admiration behind his glasses. Then he smiled.

“That’s so you, Light.”

Light nudged into him playfully. “Maybe you should become a teacher, and that way we’ll have both spheres covered. We can change the world together!”

Yamamoto laughed. “Maybe you’re right!”

The stalker stepped into the bus shelter beside them. Light briefly gave thought to displaying discomfort at his presence, but just as soon dismissed it. The purpose of this endeavor was to find out the man’s name and affiliation. If he really was law enforcement like Light thought he was, hinting that he’d been tailing her would only make her suspicious to the average person.

Light was fascinating enough to attract stalkers, yes. She’d had a few in her time.

However.

Yes, best to simply do as she had been and continue pretending not to notice him.

The bus turned the corner in the distance and, above, Ryuk began to breathe his odd, raspy laugh. Light was almost tempted to join him.

The simple maneuver of getting on behind Yamamoto ensured Light got the aisle seat. Yamamoto’s chivalrous first instinct had been to usher her on first, but it thankfully didn’t become awkward. Light’s stalker took the seat behind them, as she knew he would.

They filled the time with chatter, low enough to be unobtrusive but present enough to make it look like they were friendly but not so intimate they could spend their time pleasantly in silence, such as the elderly couple ahead of them. Light found herself actually enjoying herself somewhat. Yes, she’d chosen correctly. Yamamoto was not unreasonable.

It was too bad there was no way he’d be getting into To-Oh. Based on what she knew of him and his present behaviour, feeling him out as a potential homemaker may have had potential. Of course, people often changed when they had commitment, sadly.

It would be interesting to see how or if Yamamoto’s behaviour changed in the face of the upcoming trauma.

Light idly began to make a mental checklist of what he might do. He would likely attempt to protect her physically, for instance. His presence in the window seat would make it difficult to attack her pawn. Would he attempt to move her? A sound application of pressure from her pawn would certainly stopper that, should it come to pass…

The drive was peaceful. Sun glowed through the windows and the idle rumble of the engine decorated the low, polite conversation of the handful of people on the board. Looking in the driver’s rear view mirror from the corner of her eye, Light saw even he appeared to be smiling. Behind her, her stalker’s shoulders actually seemed to be relaxed, his eyes closed and a very faint trace of a smile decorating his attractive face.

He looked at peace.

Everybody did.

Ryuk’s laughter and her own building anticipation felt almost cruel but Light couldn’t deny the way her heart rate escalated the closer they got to that one, certain, bus stop.

‘I feel excited,’ Light realized out of the blue.

Yes. This feeling growing in her chest, it wasn’t only anticipation. It was excitement.

She couldn’t remember. The last time she’d felt something like this - she couldn’t remember. Tennis had gotten close until her parents kindly ‘suggested’ she quit to focus on her ‘slipping’ studies in view of highschool entrance exams, but even that, no, even that had nothing on this.

Light couldn’t help but trade a look with Ryuk, his large bulbous eyes lamplights italicizing this peculiar bubbling within her. Together, they smiled.

This, yes. This.

This was certainly interesting.

The bus pulled up to the sidewalk and gently slid to a stop. The doors opened.

Osoreda stepped on board.

‘I hope this entertains you, Ryuk,’ Light thought as she took in her unwitting pawn who would so shortly be dead. ‘As much as it will certainly entertain me.’

Fighting for humanity was so rewarding.

#freaks fics #freaks wips #death note #light is a girl but nobody else gets the swap : the fic

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allwormdiet · 2 months ago

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Buzz 7.12

I'm sure all of this will blowwww over

Not a great sign that Grue's immediate response is to deny any connection to this, but it's not unexpected either.

I wonder how much of this for Tattletale is seeing a kid in torment, seeing a teenage "psychic" girl in torment, realizing that she read Coil wrong, wondering what else she's read Coil wrong on, realizing that this is going to fracture the team.

She might be some kinda culpable, but for now at least I'm willing to believe that Coil pulled one over on her.

And this is why. Coil would have very easily left enough of the data incomplete in order to keep her from suspecting what's up. The blackmail would've been a lot more simple of a conclusion to reach, and how he'd even known she was a precognitive is a wild quandary.

Speaking of the team's fracture.

I wonder if this is how Coil works. He gives you what you want, and then he smears you with the guilt of associating with him. Makes you realize you're dependent on him.

It still doesn't reflect great on Brian, though, that his first thought is looking out for for him and his and let the rest of them burn for all he cares. It's cold, and I don't know how much of that coldness is his default and how much of that coldness is what's been imparted by his old man.

And it doesn't take much for Taylor to poke holes in the argument, either. This isn't some distant problem he can write off as having nothing to do with him, he objectively played a role, however minor, in this girl being kidnapped and turned into a little drone.

Not entirely shocked that Bitch is apathetic, the only reason she'd care is if Dinah was a dog or had mattered to her previously. People aren't her bag unless they prove something to her.

Little disappointed in Alec, though. Would've thought that the whole "mind slave" thing would hit him the wrong way but I guess that's not what he worries about.

Also, Taylor, hon, you knew that all of these people were career criminals from a relatively young age, and you knew two of them were killers, even if there were mitigating circumstances. You can be appalled at the lack of concern for Dinah in particular but you chose to associate with them.

Honestly it's an outrageous gamble on Coil's part. If any of the more aggressive Undersiders had taken umbrage with that stunt I don't know if there's enough destiny in the world that would've prevented his skull meeting concrete.

And uhh, mm. Tattletale's not doing great on the morality thing either. "Better her than me," is that where she is?

Brian fucked this one. He only gets aggressive with the team when he's convinced that he has to, and I can't help but noticed that when "he has to" overlaps with when someone is bucking his authority.

Of course she'd thought about how to fight the Undersiders before this, when it was all just infiltration for the sake of the good guys. But now she's given up on that, genuinely wanting to have them as friends and teammates, and the possibility of having to take them down is more real than ever.

Fucking sucks, but that's what it is, huh.

Taylor turned down the option of just continuing to endure high school, because she couldn't stand the thought of being under that kind of pressure when she had other options.

She turned down being a hero because she realized she didn't want to be a traitor to the others, and because the heroes had done nothing but piss her off for the entire month she's been active as a cape.

She left home because she couldn't deal with her father, couldn't stand the idea of letting him in or telling him anything, choosing to push him away rather than speak to him about anything meaningful.

All these bridges burned and now she realizes she's adrift with people she suddenly cannot trust, with no direction for where to go next.

It's easy to call her shortsighted, maybe, but how the fuck could she have known?

This one hurts.

Mm. I dunno if Coil wouldn't force them to make that choice, is the thing. The Travelers would be easier, yeah, but he likes fucking with people.

Yeah, see, this arc gave Taylor just that little bit more data to wonder if this is a pattern for Brian, if she's been looking at him with rose-tinted glasses (yes) and whether he's a bad person (don't know, but my guess is "complicated").

The Empire's attack and the introduction of Dinah are only two data points, and from a more distanced perspective that might not be enough to judge how indicative that is of his morality, but Dinah is the hill that Taylor is willing to die on, and she can't distance herself from it. Not that I think she necessarily should, mind, but this is an extremely thorny dilemma that Coil very deliberately threw into the middle of the team to see what would happen.

Taylor "Careful" Hebert, everyone.

I'm glad at least someone is holding out the olive branch here. It kind of has to be Lisa, because Alec and Rachel don't give a shit and Brian is already on Taylor's shitlist rn, but still.

And yeah, obviously she's not going to be leaving for a while with what's coming, but they don't know that.

Heart's already broken, what's a few more pieces chipped off?

And of course, Murphy has a timing for the dramatic.

Yeah no kidding Tattletale isn't bothering to front with the smiles in this moment, this could kill them all, or frankly there's a nonzero chance it could do worse.

Because above all else, even as an outright felon who disrespects all authority, Taylor wants to be a good person.

...And I suspect Lisa knows that.

Current Thoughts

It's incredible, honestly, you'd think at some point the plot would stop accelerating somewhere along the line, but no, we're just cranking it up further and further.

The tensions between Taylor and the other Undersiders is so rough to read, she genuinely pinned a lot of her hopes on this friendship and now she's being let down, again, because she's the one who has a whole thing about trying to do what's right and their baggage involves... not that. Heartbreaking as per usual.

And then the fucking Endbringer. I'm gonna talk about it more in the Interlude but this is just another reason I want to kick Coil in the teeth, slimy fuck that he is. Moron rang the goddamn dinner bell for a localized apocalypse generator.

Let's hope nobody dies I give a shit about, I guess.

#parahumans #wormblr #worm liveblogging #liveblog #worm buzz

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jessicalprice · 2 years ago

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undiscovered country

(reposted from Twitter)

When I have the emotional bandwidth to look at Christians and ex-Christians flailing at Jews and Jewish stuff rather than just wishing they’d tend to their own process and practice and leave us alone, the thing I want most for them is to learn to encounter cultures and traditions and practices that are different from theirs without immediately trying to force them into an analogy or paradigm with something that’s familiar to them.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s even any actual spirituality in authoritarian Christianity, because the one thing I understand about engagement with the sacred is that it’s a way to cultivate awe and learn to face mystery without rushing to reduce it to something comprehensible.

And that matters in every area of life. It matters for loving people. Every other person you encounter will always in some ways be a mystery, and if you can only love what you fully understand about them, you love a reflection of yourself, not them.

It matters for learning—ESPECIALLY in science. If you rush to force what you’re seeing into a paradigm you’re familiar with, you often end up with either incomplete data or bad interpretations of data.

It matters for engaging with cultures you’re not part of. If you’re not willing to stop demanding that they immediately make sense to you, you end up misapprehending them and, often, disbelieving people about their own worldview and experiences.

I remember the first time a massage therapist worked on my psoas muscle.

I immediately tensed up and literally started involuntarily crawling across the massage table away from her.

She asked me, “I want you to take a moment and think about whether this actually hurts or whether it’s just an intense, strange sensation and you expect pain.”

It’s hard, when it feels like someone’s touching an internal organ or something to relax, back up, and just be receptive and feel rather than trying to categorize and react. But she was right. It didn’t hurt, I didn’t need her to reduce the pressure. It was just new.

It’s really, really okay—I promise, you can take the time and space!—to encounter something in another culture and just absorb without immediately trying to understand. I don’t know that I can explain how to get there beyond, just let go for a minute and be.

Like when you taste something new, you don’t immediately have to categorize, oh, this tastes like chicken! You can just sit there for a moment and let it be new. If you don’t, I don’t think you’ll actually fully taste it.

When I have a sensation experience like that and I can just sit and absorb for a bit, I feel like I can feel parts of my brain that didn’t talk before connecting. If it’s something like a wine tasting where I'm supposed to describe and compare immediately, I don’t sense that.

And I just wish people deconstructing Christianity, who often seem really prone to demanding Christian paradigms for everything, would try that. You can do it with people things as well as sensation things.

I think sometimes that you can’t really perceive other people, both on an individual level and on a cultural/societal one, if you expect to fully understand them. You definitely can't have an I-Thou encounter with them, in the Buber sense, or be face-to-face, in the Levinas sense. Understanding usually grows, but it has to have space to do so.

It’s not easy, of course, and it’s not something any of us can do all the time. There are important reasons our brains look for patterns and analogies and categories.

We can't constantly be in an I-Thou relationship with the Other and we don’t need to. But I dunno, I think it’s important to learn to

oscillate, maybe?

just let go sometimes and perceive absorptively rather than categorizingly?

There’s that infinitesimal moment before you put a concept or understanding into words and you can learn to extend it and not make what you’re encountering into something. Just MEET it, you know? And this is sort of like that. It’s how you actually listen to another.

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glassrowboat · 24 days ago

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Michi Character Story.

“I must confess I find Michi unsettling. She is a woman I know little about, but everytime I come face to face with her it's like she barely perceives the world around her and yet also sees it in a way I cannot even begin to fathom. Many seem to ignore that because of her crass nature but…nevermind. I am simply saying you should err on the side of caution with her. No one needs to know what it's like to be held at the end of a gun's barrel.”

-Prudence Shawn as she shines the claymore Michi had forged for her.

A blacksmith with a penchant for letting their smithy go unmanned for days as the sound of hammers beating against metal suddenly go missing only to return again like nothing ever happened. Some say this is because Michi takes it too easy and she simply doesn't care for her work, but a select few can recognize her sharp eyes watching the crowd as it passes by, but you'd never suspect is as she kicks their feet up and watches the day go by all the way from sunrise to sunset.

Introduction.

Those who actually have stepped inside know the place is covered wall to wall in all types of weapons - Still, that doesn't change her attitude. She would rather toss back a drink or two with Captain Beidou at the wharf than chase someone down for the sake of harassing them into buying her goods. It's made a few people wonder how her business stays afloat when it only had a few habitual customers to the point some suspect foul play.

Even worse are those flies that always seemed to buzz around the shop that Michi never cared enough to swat down even as they landed on her shoulder, nearly glistening in the sun as their wings beat with each passing second.

Only those with eyes as keen as the owner of the Yue Guang smithy would know those dragonflies aren't as organic as they originally seem.

Character Story 1.

Error.

Irminsul does not have complete access to these files and can only give you corrupt data. If you wish to process click yes.

Bruises blooming as a broken voice begs for someone to stop.

Tears filling hazel eyes.

Confusion at being hurt by her own family after being told they were supposed to be a never-ending source of love and protection.

A head banging back against a wall as blood spills from the gaping wound. Only then was someone called for, a number being dialed in as her mother's voice begs for someone to come help her little girl for the first time since this started years ago.

A single paralyzed vocal cord.

Error.

Data incomplete.

Character Story 2.

The names had been getting annoying. Mute, dumb in the head, retarded, and so many more echoed in Michi's ears every time she walked through her school's halls. It was like they thought she was deaf, too.

To her chagrin, she wasn't, but having a pair of static filled ears would certainly help tamper down the annoyance she was feeling. Not a single glare seemed to deter anyone from shutting their mouths, so she had to simply grit her teeth through it and march on.

Error.

Her head whirled around at another name being called out, almost shouted right into Michi’s face like they felt the need to make sure she heard it, because what's the point if they're not one hundred percent positive, right?

After all these times people still haven't learned, then, at least not enough to block when her hand reaches out to grab the collar of this person's shirt and shove them to the wall behind them with a thud. Their pained grunt didn't even deter her from kneeing them in the gut.

The rest…well….the small group of friends she had at the time to pry Michi off the moment blood had fallen to the ground and someone was shouting how she broke their nose.

Meaning….

“Another fight occurred.”

That's what the principal said when Michi had to be picked up by her mother from school. The entire drive home had been silent except for the hum of the radio filling the air between them; neither of the two wanted to disturb it. The lyrics were familiar, annoyingly enough, making Michi tap their fingers to the beat.

“Again, Michaella?” Lorelei asked.

“Again.” She nodded, barely getting the single word out.

“I can't keep doing this. Leaving early work to pick you up to just-” Her hands left the steering wheel when the car finally jostled into place as they parked. The garage light above them flickered with every passing minute. “I put you through therapy, didn't I? I did everything a good mother was supposed to, but it's still not enough for you.”

Therapy she sat in on, Michi wanted to add, but she refused to humor this conversation when she already knew how it was going to end. It always had to be her mother's way, so it came to no surprise when Michi didn't even so much as look shocked when Lorelei said “I'm pulling you out of public school.”

With Michi's stubborn silence, Lorelei looked over at her daughter, taking in her slumped form and a new set of bruises on her knuckles, framing the skin splitting apart between the blotches of color.

“It'll be a good school, I promise. We can get you into one where you can learn to navigate your disability and when you're come, you can come back to the normal world and integrate yourself back into everyday society.”

Still, Michi said nothing as she tapped her fingers to the beat.

In turn, the radio was turned off with a resounding click.

“Please, Michaella, I- you know what? Fine. Throw another fit like always, but this is happening either way. That's that.”

The car door opened and closed with a resounding slam.

Sighing, Michi slumped further in her seat, trying to get the leather to swallow her whole.

“If I ever slammed a door I'd be getting a real stern fucking talking to, but if she does it….”

With one last flicker of the garage light Michi forced herself to get out of the car.

Character Story 3.

A baseball bat met a window, shattering it into pieces as the stained glass once picturing a god fell apart before their very eyes. Under her feet it only broke apart further with a crunch as Michi walked back to the endless pews lining the nave all the way up to the other teenager watching her.

They shared a smile, even if Michi had to force hers as she had to look back and forth between the wreckage under her and back to the one person who had stuck around after she had been dropped into an ASL school for her own convenience. Or so Michi has been told.

“Jennifer.”

The glass crunched under their feet again as Michi approached the other girl, her eyes narrowed to block out the last few rays of shining sun peeking through the abandoned chapel's windows. From beyond the walls of their makeshift safe haven, they could both hear the sounds of cars driving past and a single person, most likely a drug addict, cursing away like they just saw an angel descend.

“Remind me why you want to do this again?”

“I need practice.” Jennifer responded in turn, a lighter already flicking on to birth a flame now licking at a needle she was holding. “I can't go around asking for money for giving people piercings if I'm not any good at it.”

“So I'm your victim in this?” Michi asked.

“Yes. And don't blame me if you get infected.”

The bat clattered to the floor, almost hitting Michi’s black and blue legs on its way down before filling the stone room with its echo. Right next to the gleaming wood sat Michi's knees as she kneeled down with a painting of the all holy himself facing her back. His eyes watched every movement as the needle Jennifer was holding caught a stray beam of light.

It shined beautifully.

“You better know what you're doing, Jen. I'm no good with pain.”

“You can get me back in a moment. You always do.” Jen patted Michi'a cheek, right before taking their lip between her fingers and refusing to let it go.

She didn't even relent as Michi tried to pull away.

Error.

A simple song filled the abandoned chapel again after all the years it had gone without hearing a choir: Michi's whimper as a pointed tip pierced the skin under her bottom lip.

“Just a little more.” She was assured, so Michi held tight and let the burning sting send shocks all the way down to her toes and back up to her head leaving her mind feeling hazy; swimming in a feeling Michi could never forget.

Error.

The moment the needle was pulled away from the second piercing Jennifer had jabbed into her once soft flesh Michi pushed the other girl's hand away, forcing her back until they both fell off the pews and down to the ground below. Dust from the unswept floors tried to cling to their clothes, but it barely mattered when Michi was already pulling Jennifer's shirt off.

With a single golden piercing in her lip and an empty wound waiting for a new piece of jewelry to join it in a matching set, a kiss was pressed to the wound, blood spilling from the new puncture in Michi's already scraped skin to Jennifer's mouth before the two filled the chaoel with a new song.

Their moans, one sweet and one broken, echoed together as a single spider pin fell from Jennifer's shirt tucking itself under the various pews as their clothing fell away.

Character Story 4.

The right to speak properly had been robbed from Michi fairly young, leaving her with a rasp in her throat, a single functioning vocal cord, and a scar on her neck to prove she had tried to at least get it fixed through surgery.

Another failed attempt at trying to integrate herself back into normal society, just as Lorelei wanted, had passed when Michi woke up to find the surgery was a groundbreaking failure.

Things had gotten worse after that. Michi's patience for vocal therapy had finally snapped in half as she tossed a chair at a wall and stormed out, refusing to look back no matter how many times her name was called.

And it was all because of one person: her sister.

The one who had robbed everything from Michi. Who forced her to have to get injections shoved into her throat every few months even though the prick of the needles left her as nauseous as ever. Who robbed the feeling of home right from under Michi's feet the first time her closed fist met Michi. Yet she was still welcomed into what was supposed to be Michi’s safe haven time and time again with ease as their mother cried with relief every time that -error- returned.

Like there was nothing wrong between them all.

Like everything was picture -error- perfect.

The right to feel safe in her own home was robbed from Michi once again, so they did what anyone would and found somewhere else to turn to. At first it was Jennithe's place before her parents banned Michi from coming over, then it was the church before it was torn down, and now it's the back of a classroom as Michi tries her best not to draw the teacher's eye.

He had welcomed Michi in without a single hint of hesitation every time she snuck past him only to drop before one of the many winking monitors of the, quite frankly, old computers. The light would reflect on her face for hours at a time as she stationed herself away, trying to delay the inevitable.

“If you're going to stay here, you might as well work on something.” He had once told her that before pulling out a course class, his regular students went over and left Michi to her own devices.

Truly, he had too much faith in someone known to cause trouble, but she wasn't going to complain.

So Michi stationed herself before a computer in the STEM lab and went over the courses to fill their time to avoid going back to a place she could only bring herself to view as a house rather than a home. Her fingers flew over the keys, adept as ever after all her years using ASL, and typed away.

The labs came easy, it was just taking something simple and putting it into practice, the coding took a moment to get used to, and everytime she had the chance to put her hands on something and make it from scratch with nothing more than a few bits and bubbles made the time seem to fly by with the same ease as a dragonfly until each course was complete everyday after school until there was nothing left to do.

‘Complete’ the monitor read out before her.

Eventually the teacher overseeing it all came by with a stack of college entrance exams and asked one simple question: “Would you like to do more with your life than this, Michaella?”

With her eyes flickering back and forth between the screen and the pen held out to her she could only ask one thing, her words coming out broken and hoarse. “Where do I start?”

Character Story 5.

Things had been easier and worse all at once.

A new life had opened up before Michi all from a few measly hours she had spent every afternoon after school trying to keep herself safe from the harm she had become so familiar with. Like doors finally being unlocked for the first time after she had gazed at them with a fierce curiosity to learn what was hidden away by their existence.

Coding was natural to her, making little gadgets for work was easier after all the practice she had getting her hands dirty- in multiple ways- and it all seemed to perfectly fall in place like it was meant to be from the start. Even if the one person she had who stuck around all those years left because Michi decided to go her own way.

But things were good.

They had to be.

Error.

So why did they just hear…that?

The phone in her hands slipped from Michi’s hold as the words echoed in her hold, bouncing around like they were trying to shatter her skull from the inside with each hit to the porcelain white dome.

“What are you talking about, Michi? Your mom knew what was happening. I remember telling her.”

Michi's mouth opened only to fall closed again, the metal of her piercings clicking against her teeth as she struggled to not only talk but to breathe.

“Michi?” Her cousin called. The same one she had over for sleepovers and birthday parties when they were both younger- who had seen everything.

Mom knew.

Error.

Michi's hands reached up to their throat, shaking as they wrapped around the long column to feel the scar she always hid behind chokers or turtle necks. Beneath her fingers it was easy to find, almost laughably so as her nails grazed against the white patch from where she had been torn apart on an operating table for the sake of….fixing something that could have been avoidable if her mother had been aware what was going on.

But she did.

She-

Error.

The voice called her name again, but it was drowned out by the sound of jingling keys and a door slamming shut behind Michi as she marched down to her car with a stumble to each step. Being drunk would be easier, she surmised. The years of throwing back the contents of a full bottle while Jennifer encouraged her to chug it all down had proven that, but now Michi could barely manage a straight line all the way to the cheap Ford she bought second hand.

In its windows Michi’s frantic image was reflected.

“I just need to talk to mom. That's all.” Michi swore, already pulling out to go drive to the same house she had grown up in. The same one with a blotch of red in the carpet her mother had never been able to get out despite years of trying. Like she was trying to erase the entire event despite it leaving an everlasting mark on Michi.

Maybe a call would have been better, but it was hard to think right now as her foot slotted against the gas pedal.

Error.

Trees and buildings seemed to fly by with ease as she sped through the roads, trying her best to think straight even when she was barely able to feel the steering wheel through the layer of nervous sweat coating her skin.

Five more minutes and she would be back home- at the house? She would arrive.

Just five more minutes.

Error.

Headlights.

A single loud honk.

Error.

“Five more minutes….” Michi whispered as her car lay flipped over in the middle of the highway with scraps of metal laid out all around her, and everything went black.

Error.

Blacksmithing.

The flat face of a hammer slammed down on the bright red metal before her causing flakes to fall off the steel rod Michi was trying to shape. They flew through the sky, fireflies in the middle of the day until they fell back down to the ground to be smothered by the world around them; swallowed by the dirt.

Drawing out the bar had been an issue of hers despite it being such an important step, so here she was swinging the same hammer that had been forced into hands the moment she arrived at this dingy little summer camp.

Lorelei had been the one who sent her off here.

Michi had just gotten home from the hospital, the would on the back of her head from where it met the corner of a table still aching when she had tucked herself into her bed for a single night only to wake up the next day to find Lorelei had decided Michi shouldn't be at home right now. Her sister, however? Oh, she could stay. Of course-

Another swing.

This time it dented the metal, leaving the print of the hammer in what's supposed to be a simple dagger as it rattled against the tongs Michi was struggling to hold properly. They didn't even fit properly in her hands leaving them aching at the end of each day as they shook in her hold every time she stepped before the anvil to get to work.

This was her one way of releasing her anger.

Another swing.

Because how was she supposed to scream when it left Michi coughing and tears in her eyes from the pain that would rip through her?

The hammer fell from her grasp, dropping onto the upsetting block with a clang.

Why wasn't she home right now?

Why was Michi the one who was sent away?

A shaky breath left her as Michi looked back and forth between everyone around her. There were boys and men, but not a single girl like her, and back to the rod of steel slowly growing colder with each passing second as that bright red fades away.

She would have to throw it back in the forge, but for now, Michi could barely bring herself to move as she stood there trying not to cry.

Vision.

The subtle heat coursing through her as Michi held a single glowing gem in her hand was the only comfort she had as snow whirled around her. Its red light pulsed, a beacon through the storm she had trudged through with a pink nose and chattering teeth as she tried to see through the swirling haze of falling flakes.

The storm was like nothing she had ever seen before. All encompassing. It left her with a surety she would freeze to death even with this odd gem she had woken up with tied around her neck. It had been her one saving grace even as she had tripped and fallen into the patch of snow beneath her. Knee high, but like this, it might as well have swallowed the woman whole.

Would she be just another body lost to the cold in some place she didn't even recognize?

It was a haunting thought.

Even then, her mind seemed to compete over if the storm or her mind was more concerning as she tiptoed between a lingering sadness Michi refused to acknowledge and a festering hatred. The feeling was an old friend greeting Michi and holding out its hand to her in its one show of compassion as she was told to stand tall once again. To refuse to let this be her end.

So Michi got herself back up with a sputter and trudged on. All the way to a camp full of chatter and bright lights nearly as blinding as the one she had seen before it all turned black.

The symbol fluttering in the wind on a blue banner barely meant anything to her in comparison to the promise of a proper fire rather than the one sparking at her fingertips and a hot meal. If anything, it was the promise of a saving grace she desperately reached out for.

It didn't even matter they came face to face with a sneer that failed to hide sharp teeth as a figure covered in a white cloak stared down at her only to ask “And what's this?”

The last thing she remembered before succumbing to the cold, the gem in her hand nearly scalding her skin with how hot it burned in an attempt to keep her blood flowing properly, was red eyes peeking out from behind a mask. They narrowed as Michi fell into the ground, her short stature nearly swallowed up by the powder surrounding him before Dottore turned and moved to walk away.

With a single gesture of his gloved hand, two more men in masks came and dragged this strange woman back with them as they whispered under their breaths where she had come from.

Their talk filled the journey all the way back to the room Michi was forced into after having woken back up. Feeling had returned to her fingers, still intact from what she could feel. Though, admittedly, it was hard to tell when they were tied behind her back as she was being tugged and pulled along by these people who called themselves Fatui.

They jostled her and forced her down onto her knees before a woman who seemed to radiate ice and snow while sitting high up on a throne.

Michi’s head bowed, mocking the actions of the man with the red eyes next to her as the frosty woman spoke all as a single glowing red gem hung from Michi’s neck.

“Welcome to Teyvat, Outlander.”

Silly little Michi facts.

-The spiked piercings she originally wears before Baizhu gifts her a new pair is to represent spider fangs

Michi and Aloy have the same vision casing

-Michi 100% would have been pissed if she didn't get isekaid through a car crash because it ruins all her jokes so I am just letting her have that one

-Dottore gives Michi injections for her vocal chord now that she's in Teyvat, but she's refused his offer to get another surgery. She doesn't want her hope to bubble up only for another disappointment.

-Michi is a flirt cause one of the few ways she's learned to receive attention that doesn't involve any pity

#genshin oc #michi #hoyoverse #genshin impact #character story

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zerogate · 3 months ago

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At the time, [Ian] Stevenson was Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School. During his more than half-century at the University of Virginia, Stevenson carried out pioneering work in the empirical investigation of the mind-body connection, focusing on phenomena suggesting that contemporary scientific hypotheses concerning the nature of mind, and the mind’s relation to matter, may be seriously incomplete.

Stevenson authored a dozen books and more than two hundred scientific publications related to this work. Stevenson was a meticulous scientist and conservative in his interpretation of data. At the same time, he was a true visionary, and courageous in his study of phenomena that lie outside the current scientific mainstream. Under Stevenson’s leadership, DOPS became the largest and longest-running university-based group in the United States devoted exclusively to empirical investigation of phenomena that are not easily encompassed by the current paradigm in the biophysical sciences for understanding the mind. This paradigm maintains that consciousness is entirely generated by, or emerges from, the physical processes of the brain and body, and can in no way be more than that.

[...]

In 1975, Stevenson began a four-volume series of books called Cases of the Reincarnation Type. The different volumes included carefully documented cases from India, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and Turkey, and Thailand and Burma. When the first volume was published, the book review editor of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, wrote: “In regard to reincarnation he has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases from India, cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds.”

[...]

Over the years, Stevenson studied cases of children born with birthmarks or defects that corresponded to wounds (usually the fatal wounds) suffered by the deceased individuals whose lives the children appeared to remember. He went to great lengths to verify that the birthmarks or birth defects did in fact match the previous wounds. He always tried to obtain autopsy reports if they were available, along with medical records or police reports. If no written records were available, he would elicit eyewitness testimony about the wounds.

For many years, he put off publishing reports as his collection continued to grow. Finally, in 1997, Stevenson produced Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, a 2,200-page, two-volume collection of over two hundred such cases.

He also wrote a shorter synopsis of that work, entitled Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. In these books, he included numerous pictures of birthmarks and defects that were often highly unusual. The cases included a girl born with markedly malformed fingers who remembered the life of a man whose fingers were chopped off; a boy with only stubs for fingers on his right hand who remembered the life of a boy in another village who lost the fingers of his right hand in a fodder-chopping machine; and a girl who remembered the life of a man who underwent skull surgery. She had what Stevenson called the most extraordinary birthmark he had ever seen: a three-centimeter wide area of pale, scar-like tissue that extended around her entire head.

He reported that in eighteen cases in which the previous person was shot, the child was born with double birthmarks, ones corresponding to both the entrance and the exit wound on the previous person’s body.

-- David E. Presti (ed.), Mind Beyond Brain: Buddhism, Science, and the Paranormal

#quotes

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technicallyblakebelladonna · 3 months ago

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Fic Title: Distance Pairing: Bumbleby Tags: Long Distance Relationship, Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort & lots and lots of gay yearning!

CHAPTER ONE: the sound of your soul in mine

“Hey. Come back to me,” Blake's voice pulled her out from her thoughts. “We'll be together soon, okay? It'll happen. We'll make it work. Together.” “Together,” Yang agreed after a beat that felt too heavy to be gravity. She needed this woman like the blood in her veins, like the cells of her skin. She was incomplete, they both were. But they'd found each other when so far apart, it was only a matter of time before their atoms drew together like destiny. Fate would be kind to them both. There would be no other acceptable answer. (Because sometimes, the universe is gentle to those in love.)

[I do have my AO3 account locked to Registered Users only to try and combat data scraping for AI training, but I do have a few invite codes remaining if anyone wants to claim those!]

#rwby #bumbleby #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #ray writes #ldau #ldau c1 #ldau chapter 1 #thought i would bring this back into the fandom consciousness #for no reason in particular #certainly no reason at all

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82lead · 1 year ago

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FERAY • ✦✦✦✦ • THE NIHILITY • QUANTUM

Sex: Female

Species: ???

Age: ???

Other Titles:

The Dead Star

Himeko's Analyst

Walking heater (???)

Factions:

The Astral Express

The Nameless

World: Astral Express

"To grasp the vastness of your headspace means to grasp every aspect that embodies your being. If you're not ready to embrace the unwanted, then don't be too ambitious."

Feray is a Data Analyst aboard Astral Express. She's worked under Himeko for an indefinite amount of time by utilizing her abnormal mental capacity. Some say that she's everywhere and nowhere all at once.

———

About time I revealed her 🫠. Meet my first HSR OC! Interactions and questions are open— I'm getting impatient for the Playstation release of the game TvT.

Other info below the cut!

The Truth: The Sea of Quanta is a chaotic passage containing every cruel possibility. They say that dead stars plunge into the sea when they die.. but what if that sea sent those dead stars afloat?

Every Feray in every universe is dead, not a single one fixed to live by the laws of that world. Yet every bygone soul leaves a single fragment that's then carried aimlessly in chaos. It began with one fragment, then two, then it doubles through the years until by some mercy— every dead fragment had come together to form a whole new soul. This revived star retained broken memories of every land that she could've been in, all in the form of incomplete flashbacks.

Be kind to the dead star, for she's defied the multivariate law of her redaction.

Welt doesn't let her borrow his pencils because Feray keeps losing them.

She's Himeko's official Data Analayst, often assisting in the scientist's pursuit without question.

Himeko designed her cape.

Feray is prone to Stellaron accidents due to her unique manifestation. Her co-staff on the Astral Express got used to her seldom absence because they know she'll always find a way back to the train.

She doesn't necessarily bleed, but she can still get hurt. Her skin is like human flesh, but her blood is darker, reflecting iridescent color at certain lighting.

Her weapon is a Kusarigama. It's said that she obtained her weapon from the land overseen by the sustainer of heavenly principles.

Neither she nor Welt are sure who's older, but they're both the Astral Express contenders for oldest member.

Please keep her away from Blade, she's not keen on letting the man touch her weapons.

#honkai star rail #honkai star rail oc #hsr #hsr oc #astral express #welt honkai star rail #himeko honkai star rail #blade honkai star rail #my art #hsr fanart #helveroz 2023 #feray honkai star rail #hsr feray

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eruditetyro · 9 months ago

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i’m learning the trick to being a good client liaison/point person/pm is to strike the right balance between being deferential to the client’s changing whims and advocating for the needs of the team if we are to produce properly QCed work that meets our standards. we were asked yesterday to run a process on data that was partially incomplete in at most 1/6th of the time we should have taken to do so, we rose to the occasion, we stayed late, we provided the work to the client, and there was a whole row missing from the data, which the client had already passed along the pipeline, because a keying error committed months ago by someone in the client team resulted in the row getting dropped when it was put through a script in a python-based software in the last twenty minutes of the processing time after close of business yesterday. and we only found the mistake today because the client requested the same analysis be run on a larger data set, and we were able to take more time with our QC of the larger set, and we found the error. which is great except we did it after the deadline set by the client that she had already yelled at me about this morning to try to impress the importance of the data because she thought she had found a mistake that it turns out wasn’t a mistake but in fact there was a real mistake hiding behind it. so anyway. also the company is beginning the rumblings of complete restructuring and my boss is leaving at the end of the month. which is just not conducive to the feeling of security needed to advocate properly for one’s team in front of a scary million dollar client.

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dangerously-human · 10 months ago

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Still fighting for my life with tuition benefit stuff, in case anyone was wondering. I would like to submit my request for this semester, but we're still duking it out over last semester because of a problem from over a year ago and I don't want to swing at two hornet nests at once, so. Took every single dollar out of my savings account to pay tuition for this semester and am just praying I can get reimbursed before another rent check needs to go out (and Lord willing, my car won't need massive repairs at inspection this year). I'm doing an actual research study for my mixed methods class this semester, and the professor keeps saying she's fine with giving us an incomplete so we have another year to wrap it up in order to actually get something meaningful out of it. I finally talked to her last night to explain that I cannot afford to take another incomplete and ask how I could do a legitimate study on such a condensed timeline. Thankfully she was understanding and came up with an idea I think will work, since it involves basically just doing the quantitative portion under an existing protocol at work and a qualitative portion that doesn't count as human subjects research, so I don't have to deal with an IRB pissing contest between institutions, nor the debatable ethics of collecting data without compensating people for their time, given that it's unfunded research (and I really can't afford to pay people out of pocket when I'm already paying through the nose to be in this class in the first place). I'm still reworking my research plan, but I do feel a lot better about this in comparison to my plan as of last week, which would have required either submitting to both IRBs (and my work IRB is notorious for having different standards than most, and they/the data lawyers that often end up getting involved move slowly in this kind of situation) or submitting twice to my university IRB, once per phase.

Anyway, dealing with all of this today had me looking at what I really have left to do before I graduate. I'm halfway through the program now, though it feels like I've done way more. After I'm done with this class, which meets my advanced methods requirement (although round 2 of statistics probably did too), I have to eventually go back and take the foundations of the program course that was a scheduling conflict my first semester and somehow hasn't been offered since; another research apprenticeship (I'll probably write another manuscript, ideally one that's already been in progress for a bit at work - if I can get a loan, maybe I can do that this summer with my brief report I'm first authoring); plus two electives, which I was hoping to concentrate on measure design but would also happily do more advanced statistics courses if I'm allowed to take them through the school of psychology (I've tapped out the school of ed on that score). I guess I should ask if I'm allowed to say my job counts as an internship, which from the course catalog it looks like it should, but idk. Theoretically that puts me graduating... fall '25? Maybe? I could go so much faster if it weren't for the financial aspect. I do have to meet with an advisor at some point, but I still don't have one at the moment (again), which really seems like a problem for future me to figure out. But future me before May, because I think I'm still recorded as supposed to graduate this semester, even though it's been clear from the beginning that I was not a full-time student. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They really do make this grad school thing as complicated as possible, don't they?

#personal #grad life gazette

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discar · 7 months ago

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HZD Terraforming Base-001 Text Communications Network

Chapter 46 | Prev chapter | Next chapter Chapter Index

DIVINER: Aloy! Have you saved everyone yet??

FlameHairSavior: What?

FlameHairSavior: Alva, it's early and I had a long night.

DIVINER: Because you saved everyone already??

FlameHairSavior: No, sort of the opposite.

β: wait you killed everyone

DIVINER: [Betrayal.gif]

ADMIN [Zo]: I'm sure she didn't mean it like that.

FlameHairSavior: Yeah, no, just...

FlameHairSavior: Look, I have a headache, can't you just watch my focus recordings?

DIVINER: That would take hours! Even with fast-forward!

HIMBO: YEAH, MOST OF IT IS JUST WATCHING YOU RUN AROUND THE BEACH OPENING BOXES.

FlameHairSavior: ...you already tried to watch me?

HIMBO: KOTALLO THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FASTER.

MARSHAL Kotallo: Specifically, I thought it might be a more effective way of obtaining an after-action report. We watched your arrival to the area, up to destroying the defense tower.

MARSHAL Kotallo: Even with what you had already told us, we could barely follow what was happening.

β: you move fast

HIMBO: DID YOU KNOW YOU MUTTER TO YOURSELF A LOT?

ADMIN [Zo]: Really, that's the only reason I could follow at all.

FlameHairSavior: Fine, just let me eat breakfast first.

DIVINER: Yay!

----

FlameHairSavior: All right, I'm awake.

β: did you stay up too late with your new girlfriend

FlameHairSavior: Sort of.

HIMBO: HA!

FlameHairSavior: Wait. Was that a joke?

β: yes

ADMIN [Zo]: It's good that you are getting some of your own.

HIMBO: YOU'RE OFFICIALLY LESS SHELTERED THAN YOUR SISTER!

β: i think it just means ive watched more stupid romantic comedies and sitcoms

HIMBO: IF I PRETEND TO KNOW WHAT THOSE ARE, CAN WE MOVE ON?

DIVINER: Aloy, PLEASE tell me you found some movie archives!! The context you all lack is killing me!

MARSHAL Kotallo: ...I think she was busy trying to rescue your people?

DIVINER: That's more important, obviously!!

FlameHairSavior: No archives yet. Just...

ADMIN [Zo]: Why don't you start from the beginning?

FlameHairSavior: Right.

FlameHairSavior: Seyka and I found a ruin where all the missing Quen had been working. It was Londra's old headquarters, or at least one of his major bases. He was having the Quen dig it up because he needed something.

FlameHairSavior: A few of them were worked to death.

DIVINER: And none of the Quen objected to this? We have labor laws.

FlameHairSavior: He is literally a Living Ancestor with incredible power come down from the heavens. He's got them all wrapped around his finger. He's promised them...

FlameHairSavior: I'll get to that later. We didn't find out much about his relationship with them in this first ruin.

DIVINER: Still, I can imagine. We're taught that the Ancestors are the font of all knowledge. If an actual Ancestor came down and was just a little clever...

MARSHAL Kotallo: Aloy said all the Diviners were dead. Do you think that things would have been different if there had been any left?

DIVINER: I don't know.

FlameHairSavior: I think Londra would have just recruited the non-Diviners. His little workforce isn't the entire expedition, just a big chunk.

HIMBO: YEAH, THAT'S HOW CULTS WORK. YOU REMEMBER THE ECLIPSE. THEY DIDN'T TRY TO RECRUIT ME, THEY TRIED TO RECRUIT THE ONES WHO WEREN'T LOYAL.

β: i thought they were racist why would they ever recruit you

HIMBO: YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

FlameHairSavior: Anyway. Londra has some sort of AI, Nova, sorting through data for him. We found a security recording. Londra was looking for some project called "MSP" and had it transferred somewhere else.

FlameHairSavior: He also mentioned running from Nemesis. I... might have bungled that part with Seyka.

MARSHAL Kotallo: You explained Nemesis to her? Well done.

MARSHAL Kotallo: A soldier cannot fight an enemy with incomplete information.

ADMIN [Zo]: I do wish we could tell more people. A blight is best fought by all hands working together.

DIVINER: I know we can't tell EVERYONE, but I think it's a good idea to at least tell our closest allies!

HIMBO: I EXPECTED YOU TO TRY TO AVOID THE SUBJECT.

FlameHairSavior: ...

β: you avoided the subject didnt you

FlameHairSavior: Look, there's... Seyka was clearly emotionally compromised, she's looking for her sister and I was annoyed that she was hiding something from me...

FlameHairSavior: I wanted to at least wait until we find her people. So she's not distracted.

DIVINER: That's... maybe a bad idea?

DIVINER: Won't she be mad?

MARSHAL Kotallo: Ultimately, Aloy is the one on the ground. We must trust her judgment.

FlameHairSavior: Anyway.

FlameHairSavior: We found Londra's second facility easily enough. He was siphoning power from a nearby Horus for a shield, but we disabled the siphons and got inside.

ADMIN [Zo]: Wait. A Horus as in a Metal Devil?

FlameHairSavior: Inactive, of course.

MARSHAL Kotallo: Thank the Ten for that.

HIMBO: JUST A HEAD'S UP, IF YOU EVER FIND AN ACTIVE ONE, I THINK WE ALL NEED TO HEAR ABOUT IT.

FlameHairSavior: Noted. So we got inside, found the Quen, but managed to convince them we were there for the... "Ascension Hall" to... "embrace his light."

HIMBO: CULT. CALLED IT.

FlameHairSavior: Yeah. It's basically a museum to Londra, with a "devotion test" to see if you're worthy of "ascending from this world."

β: i think i see where this is going

Icarus: From what little I was able to glean, every single Zenith agreed on fleeing Earth before Nemesis arrives. They just had disagreements on how best to do so.

DIVINER: As horrifying as all this sounds, I have to at least give him credit for thinking to use the locals more! Why didn't more of the Zeniths do some basic politics?

Icarus: Politics take time, even with an overwhelming technological advantage to scare the locals into compliance. They had the keys to the kingdom, why bother talking to the peasants?

Icarus: By the time they might have considered the possibility, they had already antagonized everyone.

ADMIN [Zo]: Speaking from personal experience, I take it?

FlameHairSavior: Anyway, the museum talked about Londra's relationships with his friends and wife, his favorite bodyguard, blah blah.

FlameHairSavior: He's pretty clearly the guy who wants adoring fans who don't disagree with him. That's what he thinks friends are.

HIMBO: AREN'T YOU HAPPY YOU GOT US INSTEAD?

FlameHairSavior: Most of you, at least.

HIMBO: OUCH!

FlameHairSavior: So we got through the door, it was annoying, found what he's doing.

FlameHairSavior: Londra co-opted the printer of the Horus to make himself a spaceship. But it's too small to take all the Quen, or even all the Quen who are following him. He's leaving most of them behind.

FlameHairSavior: Also, the launch will irradiate the land for a thousand miles, killing everything in the region.

HIMBO: BASTARD.

β: you can see the logic

HIMBO: YEAH, WE'RE ALL ALREADY DEAD, SO HE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT KILLING US.

HIMBO: HE'S STILL A BASTARD.

β: not disagreeing

FlameHairSavior: The Quen soldiers came in while I was explaining all this to Seyka. They finally realized we were imposters. Still, they started shooting REALLY fast. They didn't even blink at Seyka being Quen.

DIVINER: That's... odd. I know you had a bad first impression, and our soldiers can certainly be xenophobic, but they shouldn't be so quick to attack another Quen! Especially if she was wearing a focus! Surely they would have considered she might be a Diviner!

FlameHairSavior: Yeah, I think something is up with them. I don't know if it's just Londra's cult or something else.

FlameHairSavior: So after the fight, the rest of the Quen found out they're being left behind.

MARSHAL Kotallo: Wait. You fought how many soldiers by yourself?

FlameHairSavior: I don't know. A dozen? Maybe two? Oh, and the boss had this Zenith-tech weapon that makes things explode. I might be able to use it.

MARSHAL Kotallo: And you did this with just yourself and the Quen woman.

HIMBO: THIS SURPRISES YOU?

MARSHAL Kotallo: No, I simply wanted to remind everyone that Aloy is terrifying.

FlameHairSavior: Funny.

FlameHairSavior: Well, I did tell Seyka about Nemesis after all. She... didn't take it well.

β: you get used to the existential angst after a while

FlameHairSavior: Yeah, I was really worried about her for a bit there.

FlameHairSavior: I was afraid she might give up on me after that, which would have been terrible.

β: erend

HIMBO: UPDATING THE ODDS AS WE SPEAK.

FlameHairSavior: What are you even talking about?

DIVINER: We can't tell you! It might foul the results!

FlameHairSavior: Fine. Anyway, we know where Londra's headquarters is, something called "the park." It has another tower, but I'm going to override a waterwing to get there. It can dive into the water, so we should be able to dodge the tower's shots.

β: she called me for help with that part

FlameHairSavior: Yeah, and now I'm just scrounging up the parts for the override.

DIVINER: But what about Seyka??

DIVINER: Did you talk to her?? Is she still on the team??

FlameHairSavior: Yes, yes, I did talk to Seyka. I think we're doing better now.

HIMBO: VERY INTERESTING.

FlameHairSavior: Now you're just doing it on purpose.

HIMBO: YEP!

ADMIN [Zo]: Personally, I find this all fascinating.

HIMBO: ODDS ARE LOOKING LIKE YOU'RE GOING TO LOSE THE POOL, THOUGH.

ADMIN [Zo]: I consider that a small price to pay.

FlameHairSavior: I hate you all.

Chapter 46 | Prev chapter | Next chapter Chapter Index

#horizon #horizon zero dawn #horizon forbidden west #HZDBaseChat #aloy #zo #erend vanguardsman #kotallo #alva #beta horizon #sylens

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