#small scale enterprises

[sreepadamangaraj]

If this is the year you finally going to get your act together and start that business, listen up! I will help you every step of the way. Let's turn your goals into a reality!

[champstorymedia]

From Local to Legendary: Effective Branding Tips for Small Enterprises

In a world where businesses are rising and falling at a rapid pace, establishing a strong brand is vital for small enterprises looking to go from local to legendary. Branding is more than just a logo; it’s the essence of your business and how customers perceive you. This article delves into effective branding tips that can transform your small enterprise into a legendary brand, attracting a loyal…

[marwahstudios]

Sandeep Marwah Honored as Patron by BIZZ Association of Small Scale Enterprises

Noida: Sandeep Marwah, a distinguished figure with nine World Records to his name, was recently honored by the BIZZ Association of Small Scale Enterprises. The founder of Noida Film City, President of Marwah Studios, and Chancellor of AAFT University was recognized as the Patron to the Chamber in a grand ceremony held at Hotel Holiday Inn.

The event, marked by its grandeur, saw the presence of numerous dignitaries and industry stalwarts. The president of the BIZZ Association, Jitender Chawla, delivered a detailed speech highlighting the significant contributions and achievements of Sandeep Marwah. Chawla lauded Marwah’s visionary leadership and his relentless efforts in promoting the media and entertainment industry in India.

Marwah’s illustrious career is a testament to his dedication and passion. As the founder of Noida Film City, he has been instrumental in shaping it into a hub for media and entertainment. His role as the President of Marwah Studios has seen the institution become a beacon of excellence in film and television production. Additionally, as the Chancellor of AAFT University, Marwah has been pivotal in nurturing the next generation of media professionals through innovative educational programs.

The BIZZ Association of Small Scale Enterprises recognized these monumental contributions by bestowing upon him the prestigious title of Patron to the Chamber. This honor not only acknowledges his past achievements but also positions him as a guiding force for the association’s future endeavors.

In his acceptance speech, Sandeep Marwah expressed his gratitude to the BIZZ Association for this recognition. He emphasized the importance of small-scale enterprises in the growth and development of the economy and reiterated his commitment to supporting their initiatives. Marwah also highlighted the need for continued innovation and collaboration in the industry to keep pace with global trends.

The event concluded with a ceremonial presentation of the award, followed by a series of cultural performances and a networking dinner. The attendees left inspired by Marwah’s words and the event’s celebration of excellence in enterprise.

[laxmienterprises]

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[jaythes1mp]

Here, Kitty.

Yan batfam x cat hybrid reader -> CH1

12609 words, 71519 characters, 719 sentences, 224 paragraphs, 50.4 pages Next chapter

You can't recall exactly when or how you first came into contact with the billionaire and his sons, but if you could, you would go back in time and prevent that meeting from ever taking place. In a heartbeat.

Sitting obediently on a glass table tucked in the center of a crowded Wayne Enterprises boardroom, you find yourself ensnared as Bruce Wayne diligently delivers a familiar presentation, each sentence having been painstakingly practiced during the car ride over. Having overheard his repeated rehearsal with Alfred, you find yourself unconsciously mouthing along to every word. The tight black and green collar around your neck only worsening your discomfort, its stiffness constricting your movements and snagging on your freshly groomed fur.

The man continues on with his presentation, his polished demeanour and authoritative tone captivating the attention of the surrounding investors and executives. However, you find it difficult to focus on his words, the ridiculous knitted Nightwing sweater pressing against your back causing an uncomfortable itch. You shift slightly, wincing as your freshly combed coat brushes against the stiff fabric.

The weight of Bruce's unwavering gaze lands on you like a furnace, and you can almost picture that infuriatingly fond smile plastering his face. Just the thought of it made your stomach churn with disgust. Your tail swishing side to side in distaste.

He continues to drone on and on; and you find yourself struggling to stay still, the uncomfortable position, itchy sweater, and the heavy weight of Bruce's stare making it increasingly difficult to focus on anything he's saying. The only thing you want to do is scratch the infuriating itch, but the tight collar around your neck and Bruce's looming presence ensure that you remain obediently still. You know better than to cross them. How willing they are to punish you, so you stay still.

Your thoughts drift to a time when you were still unburdened by this enforced domestication. A pang of longing and bitterness settles in your chest as memories of your previous life come flooding back. You remember the simple freedom of being able to move about unmonitored, the comfort of lounging in the sun, unbothered by the Wayne families suffocating grasps.

Your paws effortlessly propel you across the icy rooftops, leaping and bounding with a careless grace. The cool night air brushes through your untamed, unhindered fur, the wind whistling past your ears. A bag is clenched between your sharp teeth, the fabric muffling your breathing slightly as you scale each building with purpose.

The city's neon glow stretches out beneath your paws, the distant lights casting a soft, surreal hue on the urban canvas. Free to go wherever you please. You could spend minutes, hours or even days just wandering under Gotham’s starry sky, with no one to tell you what to do or where to be.

You pause your journey and arrive at the edge of a dark alley, peering down at the scene below. A woman holds two teens hostage, a pistol pressed against their shivering frames. Your tail involuntarily fluffs up, matching the tension in your body as your slitted eyes dart to each potential escape route. A hiss escapes past your teeth, and you set the package down at your side before delicately pawing at a loose brick in the wall. You slide it from its position just enough to create a domino effect, the brick falling directly onto the woman's gun-holding hand.

A small, satisfied mewl leaves your throat as the woman wails in pain, her broken wrist cradled protectively in her grip. The two teens immediately seize the opportunity to make their escape, scrambling out of the alleyway. The gun slips from the woman's grasp, and she drops to her knees clutching her wounded hand. Your ears fold back and a low hiss escapes your lips at the sight, but you remain perched on the roof-top, unmoving. You slowly lower back down to take your package, then turn away. Your paws hitting the nearest rooftop with a small thump.

Your paws carry you further and further away from the robbery, the events replaying in your mind like a vivid, disjointed dream. You launch yourself from roof-to-roof in a series of quick dashes and leaps, your body seemingly on autopilot as you weave through the city's darkened backstreets. The silence of the rooftops envelops you like a comforting blanket, the city below finally at rest. A cool night breeze caresses your untamed fur, rustling its unkempt strands. Balancing the package carefully in your mouth, you bound toward your home’s familiarly cluttered balcony.

Your eyes scan over the cluttered balcony, taking in the random assortment of books, clothes, and trinkets strewn across the small space. Your padded paws land quietly on the rough wood, a subtle thump breaking the silence. Your muscles relax ever so slightly as the familiar surroundings wash over you. Without a second thought, you make your way to the edge of the balcony, lowering the package with your paws before curling up beside it, your ears folding back in an almost contented manner.

Your eyes had just shuttered closed as you basked in the soothing midnight breeze, when the sudden crash of metal yanks you from your reverie. Your ears perking up and pivoting towards the source of the disturbance. A low, frustrated huff escapes your snout. You stretch out your limbs, your tail flicking in annoyance as you lower yourself from the edge of the balcony and peer over the side.

Peering down from your perch on the balcony, your eyes widen in surprise. It’s...a boy? Wearing a skin-tight red and black bodysuit with a vibrant yellow cape. A flicker of familiarity sparks in your brain; you’ve seen this one before. Red Robin.

You observe him silently from your vantage point, tilting your head to the side as your eyes rove over his frame. He lets out an exaggerated groan, grappling awkwardly with an unfamiliar piece of gadgetry. A low, scoffing hum leaves your throat and your tail lightly thwaps against the wood, twitching in amusement. You had only seen him in pictures before, but damn, they didn’t lie. He looked absolutely ridiculous.

You lower yourself with a single, fluid motion onto the metal stairwell, feeling the rough surface scraping against your little paws. A small hiss of displeasure escapes your throat, but you brush it off and continue. You approach him curiously, taking a moment to inspect him. Your nose twitches as you sniff at his cape before finding a comfortable spot to sit and look up at him expectantly.

He doesn’t immediately notice your approach, his mind seemingly occupied by the malfunctioning gadget in his hands. You watch as he fiddles with the device for a few moments before his attention finally snaps to you. He visibly jumps, startled by your sudden proximity. He lets out a startled breath, eyes widening. You had gone to him.

You let out a snort of derision. Him, a vigilante? A detective? Unlikely. The thought of him trying to solve a case or outwit a criminal is absolutely absurd. You let your gaze wander over his costume once more, imagining how differently he would react if you were in your human form right now.

He slowly lowers the gadget, his eyes fixed upon you as you recline before him, behaving like an awaiting house cat. He observes you with quiet, analytical interest, his gaze roaming over your small form, taking in your twitching tail and reasonably-groomed fur. He seems to ponder the sight of you, weighing in on your not-quite stray, yet not-quite pampered appearance.

You gingerly shift closer, standing on your hind legs before pawing at his pants. A small indignant huff of disappointment escapes your lips as the material refuses to tear, the tightly-woven fabric holding firmly against your claws, unable to even tear the slightest thread, but you mask it with a small, almost cute "mew". Nevertheless, you are determined to make the most out of this situation. Planning on coaxing all the pets you possibly can out of this man.

He shoots you a curious look, tilting his head to the side. You can almost hear the cogs turning in his brain. He then slowly reaches out a gloved hand, hovering it over your head hesitantly, waiting for your response.

The end of your tail gives a happy flick, betraying your eagerness for his touch. You press your cheek against his knuckles, enjoying the sensation of his fingers against your fur. Instinctively, your ears fold back, granting him better access to run his fingers further through your soft fur. Sucker.

A soft, delighted purring sound fills the air as your eyes flutter closed, your purrs becoming a constant, steady low rumble in your chest as he continues to gently stroke your head and down your neck. Oh, this is heavenly. Your tail swishes contentedly, and you lean into his touch, almost shamelessly seeking out more.

His gloved hand is much bigger than your entire head, the soft fabric of his suit brushing against your fur. Yet, his touch was gentle and deliberate, slowly tracing the outline of your ears and down your spine, causing a blissful shiver to run through your small body. Your eyelids droop further, nearly closing completely, your purring becoming louder as you relax into his touch. You don’t notice the pleased knowing grin that crosses his face.

The weight and warmth of his gloved hand was almost soothing, his fingers weaving between your fur with a sort of rhythmic motion. You let your body go limp, your head rolling back to further expose the underside of your chin, silently begging for more of those slow, careful caresses. Your eyes are almost completely closed now, a small rumble in your chest the only sound you remember how to make. God, you haven’t been pet in weeks.

His hand moves from your spine to the base of your tail, and a low sigh of pure contentment leaves your mouth. He seems to sense your delight and focuses his attention there, running his fingers through the base of your tail, causing you to involuntarily arch your body towards him, purring in approval.

He seems to know exactly what to do, his touch deliberate yet tender. A little too well. It's as if he's somehow mapped out each and every spot that you secretly adore and is now exploiting it to great effect. The constant caresses, pets, and scrabbles have worked you into a sort of euphoric, almost trancelike state, your mind becoming blissfully devoid of conscious thought. All you can focus on is the warm, firm touch of his gloved hand.

The moment is shattered, however, as deep voice from his comms shatters the sweet, blissful moment. Your little pointed ears perk up, instinctively responding to the sudden intrusion of sound. “Tim? Why does it say you’ve stood still?”

You pull yourself from your blissful state with a reluctant huff, the sound of the deep voice in his comm jarring you back to reality. Your ears flick back, annoyed at the interruption. Tim– Red Robin seems to tense up, his hand frozen in mid-pet. He lets out a small, nervous chuckle, looking down at you. "Sorry, I got…distracted."

Your tail lazily swishes against the stairwell, silently expressing your irritation at having been interrupted. You can practically hear his sheepish, nervous chuckle, can practically sense the tension in his frame. "Distracted?" The voice in the comm questions, but you huff, tuning out the conversation.

You let out a small, frustrated huff before turning your focus back onto Tim's still form. Ignoring the man's comm conversation, you push your little, fluffy face against his leg, letting out a needy demanding mewl to regain his attention. You're not done yet, damn it.

His eyes flick back over to you, a mix of apology and amusement evident in his gaze. He resumes his prior motions, sliding his hand down your spine with a soft, comforting caress, tracing the same path he'd followed before. All the while, his other hand is fiddling with the comms device, probably replying to the man on the other end. Good. As long as his hands are still touching you, you don't particularly care what he's doing. “You found them?”

You sigh and let yourself relax once again, the soothing motions of his fingers against your fur quickly working you back into blissful indifference. You let your eyelids flutter closed, sinking back into the soothing rhythm of his touch. The only sounds you can focus on are his breathing, the soothing rasp of his glove against your fur, and the low hum of the comm conversation. This is nice.

He continues this motion for what feels like an eternity, the blissful sensation of being pet taking over your senses and dulling your brain into a euphoric, mindless state. You find yourself leaning heavily against his leg, the steady rise and fall of his chest and the low rumble of his voice against the comms acting as an oddly soothing background noise. Damn, you could get used to this....

Gradually, you become aware of him shifting, his hand leaving your spine. A low whine escapes your throat, your eyes opening to look up at him with a mixture of annoyance and pleading. Come back. You meow, demanding.

You let out a low grumble of complaint as he stands and picks up the device once more. Irritated at the interruption of your moment, you bat at his leg with your small paw, then quickly scamper away, leaping back onto the balcony from before. Now alone, you let out a sigh and circle the small space multiple times. The wood scraping against your claws sharply.

With a quick shift, you transform back into your human form, the small package clutched delicately in your hands. Turning, you slide open the door to the balcony and step through, the cool night air rustling against your clothes.

Tossing the small package onto the countertop, you drag yourself over to the couch. Your limbs ache with exhaustion as you collapse into the cushions with a thud. You bring the well worn blanket with you, wrapping your tired body in its familiar comfort. Your muscles are screaming out for rest. Which you happily oblige.

You're wrenched out of a fitful sleep, eyes fluttering open as the familiar, infuriating sound of construction greets you. Fuck. A loud, frustrated groan escapes your chapped lips. You pull a nearby couch pillow over your head, desperately trying to muffle the noise. With bleary eyes, you squint at the digital clock reading 5:42. You want to die.

The relentless hammering, banging, and drilling outside the thin walls of the apartment pierce your eardrums. You swear you can feel each blow of the hammer, every screech of the drill, deep in your bones. Make it stop. You press the pillow more firmly against your ears, trying in vain to block out the incessant din. You silently promise yourself that if you ever meet the city planner responsible for approving this construction, you'll kick him square in the nuts... Or right in the vagina– whatever. Now is not the time to debate over this.

With a groan of irritation and an abundance of hissing, you force your tired body into a sitting position as you squeeze your eyes shut tightly. You take a moment to rub your temples for some relief from the dull ache forming behind your eyes.

You open your red rimmed eyes and swing your legs over the side of the couch. The exhaustion from last night feels ten times worse now after being woken up prematurely by the construction racket. You mentally curse whoever’s in charge here, and their entire bloodline. Silently wishing for the noise to stop. Maybe you can sleep in the bathtub later...

You brace one hand against the side of the couch as you use it as support to rise to your feet. A series of satisfying cracks and pops resonate down your spine. By the sound of it you’re a chiropractors wet dream.

You let out a low sigh of relief as you straighten, your back now less taut than it was a few moments ago. Small mercies, right?

With your hands clamped tightly over your tender, sensitive ears, you stumble into the kitchen. You begin searching through each cabinet with a desperation that borders on violent. Your mission? Find the strongest headache pills you have.

After hastily flinging open each cupboard and shelf, you finally find what you’re looking for. A small, white bottle filled half way with little white tabs. With a quick twist, you pop the lid open and pour two pills out into your palm, before downing them dry.

You lean against the kitchen counter, eyes squeezed shut as you press the heels of your hands firmly into your temples. Come on. Work already..

You wait in silence, only the buzzing of the refrigerator and occasional hammering outside filling the air. You press your palms against your temples, as if physically willing the pills to work faster. The tension between your shoulders tight as piano wire.

You let out a frustrated groan, turning the tap on, lowering your head under the rushing water. You gulp down a few mouthfuls, letting the water run over, through, and past your lips. The noise of the tap muffling the sounds of the construction. The coolness of the water temporarily soothes the ache behind your eyes.

You let the water slide past your lips, closing them to savor the cool sensation. Your mind grows blank as you lose track of time, lost in tranquility despite the racket outside. Then, with a shaky hand, you turn off the tap, stepping back as you reach for a tea towel to dry your face and neck. The cloth rough against your tender skin, but the motion is calming, and your shoulders loosen the slightest bit.

You lean back against the counter, the cold marble seeping through your shirt, almost numbing any sensation on your skin. You take another moment to towel dry your hair, the rough material scraping against your scalp, and sending a pleasant shiver down your back. The small action temporarily distracting you from the pounding in your head.

You drop the towel, letting it fall onto the counter behind you. A long exhale escapes your mouth, your shoulders dropping as you relax. For a moment, the water seems to have worked. Unfortunately, the relief is short lived as the headache slowly creeps back in. A low growl escapes your lips. Ugh.

You scan over the bottle, reading the small print. Only twenty minutes before the damn things start to kick in. Shit. You shove the container back inside the cupboard, a frustrated huff leaving your lips. You drag your body over to your room, every step a tedious task.

You stumble into the room and collapse onto your bed, face first. You let out a low groan as your body lands on the soft, fluffy mattress. It welcomes you with open arms. You let yourself go limp, letting the comfort and softness of your bed lull you into a quiet state of half numbness. You can’t tell if it’s the lack of rest, or the pills finally starting to work, but you’re suddenly feeling incredibly woozy.

With a sluggish effort, you shift your head up, wincing at the sharp, persistent thrum in your skull. Despite the throbbing, you slowly extend your arm to reach for the pair of shorts laying on the edge of the bed.

With a weary sigh, you shuck off yesterday’s cargo pants and pull the new shorts up your legs. The simple motion feels like climbing a mountain. Deciding that the headache pounding through your mind was too much to change your shirt, you collapse back onto your bed. The sheets cool against your overheated skin.

You lay there for a moment, letting the comfort of your bed take hold. Despite the headache still pounding through your head, exhaustion slowly starts to take hold of you. Your eye lids flutter as sleep slowly creeps in. But just as you’re about to doze off, your stomach lets out an obnoxious gurgle, the sound piercing the silence. Great.

You let out a frustrated sigh as you shift up from the bed, grimacing as you do so. Your untamed hair sticking up in random directions. You rub your temple, as your stomach lets out another loud grumble. You let out an annoyed whine as the realisation sinks in. You’re out of groceries.

With a disgruntled huff, you haul yourself up for the second time. Reaching for your jacket as you quickly make your way towards the front door. This time choosing to forego the balcony and just walk like a normal person. You swing open the front door and step out into the hallway. The fluorescent lights buzz annoyingly overhead.

You step into the hallway, your shoes slapping softly against the tiled floor. The sound of the construction is no longer muffled, the endless banging and grinding now clear as day. You wince as the onslaught suddenly becomes unbearable. You quickly make your way to the staircase instead of the elevator. You can’t handle being jammed into that tiny space with the sounds of hell right now.

You take the steps of the staircase two at a time, just wanting to get out of this damn building as soon as possible. Each step echoes with a rhythmic thudding against the cold concrete as you make your way to the ground floor. The headache pills have finally started to work, but the pounding construction outside is slowly undoing their efforts.

You stride past the workers, shooting each of them a murderous glare. It’s not their fault they’re just doing their job. But goddamn it, the headache is worsening and it’s all you can do to not snap at them. Instead, you settle for shooting them a glare that could rival Batman himself.

You bite the inside of your cheek, trying to suppress the angry words building within you. Just keep walking. It’s fine. They’re not at fault here. It’s stupid to be angry at them. You repeat the mantra in your head like a broken record as your legs carry you further down the street. Further away from that blasted construction noise.

You keep walking, your shoes thumping against the concrete as you go. The further away you get from the construction, the more the headache starts to abate. You let out a quiet, shuddering breath of relief as you glance around at your surroundings. Barely anyone was out at this hour, the streets still mostly asleep.

After walking another ten minutes or so, you pause in the middle of the street and let out a string of quiet curses under your breath. The stores won’t be open for at least another four hours, and your stomach is starting to demand sustenance again.

Frustration builds inside of you, your teeth clenched tight together as you shuffle in place. You can’t go back to your apartment because of that goddamn noise, and all the stores that aren’t run by mobsters are closed.

You sigh, resting your tired body against the graffiti-filled wall behind you. There was another option you could try. But whether or not you were desperate enough to do it was something else.

You chew on your bottom lip in contemplation. You hadn't eaten much more than a small yogurt cup yesterday, and your stomach was protesting it's emptiness in a loud, gurgling complaint. You release a long sigh, doing a quick glance around to ensure no one was nearby before shifting into a cat.

The transformation is swift and graceful as you shift into the form of a sleek cat. Your body shrinks, limbs elongating and changing shape as soft multicoloured fur sprouts from your body. You stand on four paws, tail swaying languidly. You give yourself a quick shake, licking your little paws for good measure before looking around again.

You take a moment to get used to the new body you’ve assumed. Everything felt a tad bit more sensitive in this form. Your ears swivel around at minuscule sounds as you sniff the air with your sensitive nose, picking up on the various scents floating through the street.

You decide to try your hand at pity first, before resorting to thievery if your first plan fails. You slink down the street, your paws silent against the pavement beneath you as you search for some poor unsuspecting soul to assist you.

You stalk down the street, ears pricked and head tilted as you listen for the sounds of anyone making their way through the quiet street. You make yourself as adorable as possible: wide, begging eyes and sticking out your chest. A pitiful meow leaving your little cat mouth every so often, just for good measure.

You make your way through the city, heading towards the more upscale side of Gotham. You sway your tail idly behind you, the appendage brushing against the concrete and gathering the dirt that sticks to your fur. You make sure to rub up against some objects, gathering enough dirt and debris to make yourself appear slightly disheveled, but not enough to set off your instincts to want to groom yourself immediately.

You reach a neighbourhood of opulent high rises and well manicured lawns, plush houses and gated communities starting to become more frequent, a stark contrast to the graffiti-filled blocks you had passed before. Your fur is dusted with enough dirt to look untidy without feeling uncomfortable, and you let out a small meow as you glance down the street, scouting for a likely target.

You spot a man of considerable height, around 6 foot tall, with an intimidatingly built physique. His shirt clings just slightly too tightly against his chest, leaving little to the imagination. A scar mars the side of his face, making him look even more menacing. But you’ve seen far scarier looking men loitering at the end of your street. Saying that, doesn’t mean you’re any less scared of his imposing figure. So you quickly duck under the nearest parked car, attempting to conceal yourself beneath it.

You watch in trepidation as the man begins strutting towards the vehicle you’ve hidden yourself beneath. He kneels down in an unhurried, smooth motion, and peers right under the car. His gaze instantly locks onto you, your eyes widening in response to his intense stare. For the briefest of moments, you could have sworn there was a look of softness in his eyes, as if he hadn’t expected to see you.

“A cat?” The man lets out a small huff, shaking his head in what seemed like disbelief. His gaze drifts to your disheveled appearance, taking in the dirt that clings to your fur. He lets out a low hum, continuing to watch you with a mixture of intrigue and curiosity. His muscles slowly relax. A smirk appearing on his face as he studies you closer.

Your tail sways behind you, your ears perking up at his relaxed gaze. A sly little grin of satisfaction threatens to rise to your face, but you hold it back, instead letting out a pitiful meow as you slowly shuffle closer to him. He doesn’t move away, watching your every movement with unwavering eyes.

You lower your head, slowly moving towards his boots. You let your body press against the soles of his shoes, a soft purring sound escaping your little feline mouth. The dirt from your fur slowly coats the previously clean material of his boots, but he doesn’t seem to mind the mess.

You continue to press your body against the hard leather of his boots, leaving behind a dusting of dirt. He crouches down, gently reaching out a big hand, careful not to scare you off. You can see the muscles in his arms flex with the action, the veins prominent on his knuckles. He gently runs a finger over your head, scratching just behind your ears.

The feel of his big hand against your head is gentle, his touch unexpectedly tender as he lightly scratches at the skin behind your ear. You let out a rumbling purr, unable to fight the comforting sensation that slowly starts to take over. Despite his intimidating appearance, he’s surprisingly sweet towards you.

He’s a hard-looking man, his appearance disheveled and weathered, a white streak through his jet black hair. His wide physique is almost intimidating, but you can see his heart already start to soften after a few moments. It seems even he isn’t immune to the charm of a pitiful stray cat begging for food and affection.

"What are you doing all the way out here, kid?" The man's deep, slightly grating voice calls out as he continues to gently scratch behind your ear. He's staring down at your small form with an odd expression of concern on his face, his eyes drifting over your disheveled fur.

Your ears perk up at the sound of his voice. Something suddenly seems terribly familiar about it. You tilt your head, glancing up to get a clearer look at the man’s face as you try and place where exactly you’ve heard his voice before.

You look closer at the man, studying his features with a furrowed brow. There’s no mistaking it now, you’ve definitely seen this guy somewhere before. You’re sure of it. But there’s no way you’d ever know anyone this big and intimidating before… right?

The man stands, gently scooping you up into his arms. He gives you a light pat on the head before he starts to move. “Come along then, I don’t need that little shit on my ass for leaving their little obsession stranded so far from home,” he mumbles, as if he’s talking to himself and not you.

You’re left blinking in surprise as you’re lifted from the ground, cradled in the man’s arms. You look up at him as he starts walking down the street with you, a bewildered look on your face. Obsession? Stranded? What the hell is this dude on?

The man continues walking, his stride even and unhurried. He glances down at you and scoffs, as if he’s amused by the sight of you. He mutters something under his breath as he walks, something that sounds like “God dammit, B.” He brings his hand up to give you a gentle scratch under your chin, the gesture almost affectionate.

Your stomach chooses the perfect moment to let out a loud grumble, the sound amplified by being so close to the man’s hand. You can feel his hand twitch against your belly slightly, and he lets out a low chuckle.

“Hungry, huh?” The man drawls out. He stops his stride for a moment, pulling out his phone as he keeps you cradled in one arm. You can’t see anything from this angle, but you can hear the sound of him making a phone call.

It’s only a few rings before someone picks up on the other end. You can faintly hear a voice chatting softly on the other line, even though you can’t make out what they’re saying. The man lets out a small huff of annoyance before holding the phone up to his ear, shifting you in his arms to keep you comfortably balanced against his chest.

“Hey,” he says into the speaker, his voice gruff but surprisingly soft. “Yeah, I’m out on the east side. I found something.” There’s a pause as the person on the other line responds, and you can faintly hear them say something, although it’s muffled and indistinct. The man snorts, his eyes drifting down to you for a moment before he continues.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m bringing ‘em back. Relax,” The man responds to the person on the other side of the line, rolling his eyes. You watch the side of his face as he talks, your ears pricked, ears catching snippets of the conversation. Relax? What do they mean by that? Are they talking about me?

“No, it’s fine. I’ve got it,” the man says, shifting you around again as he begins to resume walking. “I’ll be back in an hour.” The person on the other end says a few more words before there’s a beep signifying the call’s been cut. He shoves his phone back into his pocket before bringing his hand back to keep you cradled against his chest.

You huff softly, feeling a strange mix of irritation and intrigue swirling inside of you. In an attempt to distract yourself, you reach your small paw up, lightly tapping it against the man’s cheek.

It’s a small action, intended to be nothing more than a curious little jab. But against the rough, scarred skin of the man’s cheek, your tiny little paw seems almost affectionate. He glances down at you at the contact, his eyebrows raising slightly in surprise.

He studies you for a moment, a look of almost curiosity on his face. It’s a far cry from the gruff, hardened exterior he had been portraying up until now. He stops his stride for a moment, lifting you closer to his face to look at you more closely.

He seems almost… fascinated by you. His eyes rove over your soft fur and little face, taking in every detail. He lets out a low hum, slowly reaching out a hand and gently stroking your back. “The kid’s is gonna kill me for letting you get all dirty.”

The hand stroking gently down your back is surprisingly soft, despite the callouses and ridges of his fingertips. You can almost hear the wheels turning in his head, probably trying to deduce what to do. “You’re a mess,” he mutters, his gaze drifting over your disheveled coat.

You can feel the urge to roll your eyes at the man’s words, the comment practically begging for a sarcastic reaction. But you hold it back, reminding yourself of the delicious meal you’re hoping to get out of him. Better hold back on the sass, for now.

Instead, you let your tail flick idly, trying to appear as innocent and pitiful as possible. Come on, man. Have a heart. Feed me.

The dude glances down as your tail continues to flick against his arm, almost as if you’re trying to lure him into doing something for you. A light snort escapes his mouth, his fingers trailing down to give you a little scratch on the head. “You’re a sly little bastard, ain’t ya?”

His statement is more of an off-handed comment rather than an actual critique. He continues to scratch behind your ear, seemingly unable to resist giving you a little affection. His gaze drifts over your disheveled form, taking in the dirt-matted fur and slight exhaustion in your eyes.

He lets out a soft grunt, his touch gentle as he runs his hands through your fur. You can almost hear the cogs turning in his head, his eyes never leaving your disheveled appearance. “How long you been out here all alone, huh?” he mutters, his voice gruff but strangely sympathetic.

The man lets out a low huff, glancing down at you with an almost sympathetic look on his face. “It’s earlier than we planned,” the man mutters, a hint of regret coating his words. His hand still softly stroking through your fur. “But the renovations are nearly ready,” his eyes taking in your exhausted form. It’s hard to say if he’s talking to you or to himself, a note of assurance in his voice. “So soon, kid.”

You look up at him with a bewildered expression on your face, your little mind still trying to make sense of his words. What is he talking about? Renovations? Who’s he talking to? Who are the people he keeps mentioning? What is even happening right now? But you quickly cover it up and let out a tired-sounding meow, hoping he won’t notice the hint of confusion in your little feline face. He glances down at you, his hand slowly rubbing a soothing circle on your back.

“Don’t worry, little one,” he murmurs, his voice still gruff but the tone softer this time. “You’ll be safe soon enough.” He gives you a gentle pat on the head before resuming his stride. You can feel his arms cradling you against his chest, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat almost lulling you into a sense of security.

Even as your mind races with unanswered questions, the beat of the man’s heartbeat seems to soothe you, acting as a strange form of comfort. His warm arms keep you tucked against him, the gentle rise and fall of his chest steady and unhurried. It’s an almost reassuring presence.

The man carries you down the street, the rhythmic sound of his footsteps and steady rhythm of his heart slowly lulling you into a trance-like state. The exhaustion from the past few days is finally catching up to you, a small yawn escaping your little mouth before you can try to fight it.

You can feel your eyelids growing heavy, exhaustion taking over your small body. The steady rhythm of the man’s heart combined with the gentle rocking of his arms as he walks send a wave of fatigue through you. You try to fight back the overwhelming tiredness, but another small, squeaky yawn escapes your little mouth.

With a soft contented sigh, you stretch out your little paws, making yourself comfortable in his arms. The man lets out a low chuckle as he watches your little legs extend, giving you a gentle pat on the back.

It’s strangely comforting, being held in the man’s strong arms. The sound of his laughter rumbles through his chest, and you can almost hear a hint of affection in the gesture. You feel the weight of your fatigue start to increase, your eyes slowly blinking shut against your will.

You blearily blink your eyes open, suddenly finding yourself lying on a soft cushion. The fabric feels luxurious against your fur, the plush material enveloping you in a comfortable embrace. You dazedly look around, trying to recall how you ended up on this soft surface.

Your little ears fold back as you look around, slowly taking in your surroundings. A brief moment of confusion washes over you as you realize that you had fallen asleep in the man’s arms. But seeing him still here, you let out a relieved sigh, your entire fluffy body moving up and down in the process. Thank everything that he didn’t leave me on the side of the road.

He glances over at you, noticing that you’re now awake. “You finally back with the living?” he says gruffly, his voice tinged with amusement. You can see a hint of a smile on the man’s face, betraying his hard exterior.

You lift your chin up in a defiant huff, letting your tail flick against the soft cushion as an additional statement of irritation. The man lets out a snort, his shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter at your small act of feigned irritation.

“Feisty little thing, aren’t you?” he mutters, his voice taking on a slightly amused tone. He reaches a hand out to give you a small pat on the head, his rough fingers gently stroking your fur.

Your chest lets out a soft rumble, purring at the feeling of his hand stroking through your fur. Your gaze drifts around the room, your nose twitching as you pick up on a delicious scent. Food, your stomach rumbles. Please, be food.

The aroma is tantalizing, making your little stomach grumble loudly in response. You wonder if it's your imagination, or if the man actually has food nearby. The man lets out another amused huff as he notices your nose twitching and your stomach rumbling. “Impatient little thing, eh?” he mutters, lifting his hand from your head to look at you with a slightly entertained expression. Your little paws twitch slightly, as if you’re preparing to go searching for where the wonderful scent is coming from.

He chuckles at your eagerness, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Calm down, bud,” he says gruffly. “Food’s coming in a minute. Ain’t gonna starve ya.’” He gives you another gentle pat on the head, his hand large enough to practically cover your entire body.

You let out a dissatisfied huff, your gaze still darting around to try and find the source of the delicious scent. You want to rush out and find the food immediately, but the man's large hand keeps you pressed firmly on the soft cushion. You squirm a little impatiently, your tail flicking idly against the fabric. Your cat instincts taking over.

He lets out an amused laugh at your squirming, your restlessness making it hard for him to keep you in place. “Hold still,” he says gruffly. “You're making it hard to keep you in one place.” He reaches his hands out again and gently holds you down, preventing you from moving around any further.

You’re not a fan of this guy keeping you down, your instincts flaring up in defiance. Despite the delicious promise of food in the air, you’re tempted to lash out and scratch him just for holding you in one spot. Release me, your inner self growls.

You pause in your struggle, your little ears perking up and your whiskers twitching as the clink of dishes and the soft sound of footsteps approaching comes from nearby. Your nose twitches with anticipation, the delicious smells in the air becoming more concentrated. Food.

You crane your head to get a better look at the approaching figure, your little body shifting slightly on the cushion. The man holding you down also looks up, watching as someone walks into the room carrying a tray of food. Your little mouth starts to salivate, the enticing scents wafting over to you and making your stomach rumble loudly.

The guy releases his grip once you stop squirming, letting you move freely again. You can feel your instincts taking over your little body, your tail curling around your side as you focus your attention on the tray of food being presented in front of you. “Here you are, Master Jason.”

Your eyes are almost glued to the tray, filled with the most tantalizing smells that you've come across. The man– Jason watches you quietly, amused by your little display. The person holding the tray sets the food down in front of you, the various dishes arranged in an almost tempting manner.

You want to purr in delight as you look at the food laid before you. Thank god there’s none of that dreadful cat food in sight. You've had your fair share of people trying to feed you that horrible kibble in the past, and you're definitely not a fan. This food smells a million times better than anything that ever came out of a can. Meat.

You shoot him a glance of appreciation before hopping onto the table, greedily pouncing on the food in front of you. You dive right in, devouring the food with gusto, your little tongue lapping at the meat hungrily.

You pay no mind to him as you feast on the delicious meal laid out in front of you. The smells, the texture, the taste; it’s all absolutely heavenly. You eat like you've never eaten before, your little body almost shaking with contentment. This might just be the best meal you’ve had in a long time. Maybe ever.

Meanwhile, Jason watches your little display with a slight smirk on his face. He doesn’t say anything, just watching as you devour the food on the plate in front of you with relish. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, quickly taking a picture of you digging into the food to send to the family in case they ask how you're doing. He lets out a soft huff of amusement at your behavior, a hint of fondness in his eyes.

You're so lost in the food, you don't even notice the older man taking a picture of you. All your focus is singular, eating as much as you can before it’s taken away. The man watches you with a mix of amusement and something else that you can’t quite place. Too absorbed in your meal to notice his reaction.

Once you’ve practically licked the plate clean, you finally feel a sense of fullness, your little belly pleasantly satisfying. You give yourself a little shake, a little bit of food still stuck to your whiskers. Jason chuckles slightly, watching your little satisfied display. He breaks the silence as you finish cleaning yourself off.

“Had enough?” he asks in a gruff voice. His words are gruff and blunt, but you can sense the touch of amusement within them. You let out a little huff, feeling satisfied but also a little bit embarrassed at how fast you had eaten. Too much food, you think, your little stomach feeling a bit bloated.

The next thirty minutes pass by in a blur, your mind fuzzy and filled with the sensation of being inside Jason’s leather jacket as he mounts his bike. He doesn't have a bag or carrier to keep you secure, so you cling onto his shirt for dear life, your little claws digging tightly into the fabric. The wind whips through your fur as the bike roars to life, the force of the breeze making you instinctively cling even harder.

You had assumed that Jason was simply taking you back to the spot where he had found you under the car. After all, there was no chance in hell that you were going to poke your head out of the top of his jacket to check yourself. However, as he stops the bike and unzips the jacket, revealing your familiar surroundings, your tail begins to fluff up in surprise. Your eyes widen as you realize you’re at home, as in, right outside your apartment. The fur on your back bristles, ears folding back. You’re quick to jump off of the vehicle, backing away. What the fuck?

You scramble off Jason's lap and onto the sidewalk, your little paws almost slipping in your haste. The moment you land on the pavement, you take a few stumbling steps back, your tail puffed up and your fur standing on end. How could he possibly know where you live? You hadn’t given away any indication that you lived here, or anywhere for that matter. You had been so careful to stay out of sight, blending into the shadows. There was no way he could have known. And yet… here you are, outside your home. You take a tentative step back, your little feet moving instinctively. Your instincts are screaming at you to run, to get away from this guy who seemingly knew too much about you.

Your eyes dart from the man to the building behind you, your mind racing. Everything inside you is telling you to run, to flee and go hide. You were supposed to be so careful, so cautious about keeping your identity a secret. And now this man standing in front of you, this guy you barely knew, had just pulled up right outside your home. How the hell did he know where you lived? Run, your instincts yell. Run, run, run.

You take another jerky step back, your little paws almost slipping on the rough pavement. Your heart is pounding in your chest, your breath coming in short, panicked gasps. You almost trip over your own feet, your mind flooded with a mix of fear and confusion. How does he know? How the fuck does he know!? You’ve been so careful, covering your tracks, making sure no one followed you home. But here he is, standing in front of you, looking all too calm and collected. You don’t know what’s worse, the fact that he knows where you live or how calm he seems about it.

You don't waste another second, your little feet moving as fast as they can. Your instincts are screaming at you to run and get away as fast as possible. So that's what you do. You take off like a shot, darting away from the bike, from the man, from everything. Your focus is on nothing except getting away, getting somewhere safe, somewhere away from this guy who apparently knew more than he should. You dart upstairs faster than you thought physically possible, breath coming out laboured as you panic, not bothering to check if anyone’s nearby as you shift back to human, unlocking your door and slamming it closed behind you.

Jason let out a heavy sigh, running his fingers through his hair in frustration as he watches you scamper off. "Fuck…” he mutters under his breath, watching as your small form quickly disappears from sight. "I didn’t think that through." He scowls, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. He hadn’t expected you to panic quite that much.

Your knees suddenly give way, and you collapse to the floor with a thump. Your hand instinctively moves to press against your chest, trying to calm the frantic beating of your heart. Your mind is racing, your body shaking from the adrenaline and panic of the situation. You’re suddenly hyper-aware of your own breathing, your chest heaving as you gasp in sharp breaths.

You feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest, the adrenaline pumping through your veins making it feel like it’s about to explode. You can barely breathe, your gasps for air coming in quick, sharp pants. Your head is swimming, the world around you seeming to spin and tilt with each jerky movement. You can’t think straight, your mind filled with a swirling mix of panic and confusion. It feels like everything is closing in on you, the walls of your apartment suddenly feeling claustrophobic.

You try to focus on taking deep, calming breaths, but your body doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. Your breaths come out ragged and uneven, each one feeling like a struggle. Your chest is heaving, your heart pounding against your ribcage so hard you’re starting to wonder if it’ll burst. You drop your head down, resting your forehead against your knees, trying to steady yourself. Your mind is racing, thoughts and questions and doubts swirling in a confusing mess.

You desperately try to calm down, to ease the frantic beating of your heart. But nothing seems to work, the panic and confusion making it nearly impossible to think straight. Your head spins as you struggle to take deep breaths, each one catching in your throat like a lump. You can feel your body trembling, your muscles tense and coiled like a spring about to snap. The thought of the man outside your door, the man that knew where you lived, makes your stomach twist in knots.

It feels like your privacy has been invaded, your safe sanctuary no longer feeling so safe. You feel exposed, vulnerable, like a small, trapped animal. Your mind races, trying to come up with some kind of plan, some kind of solution to this messed up situation. But you’re too lost in your own head, too focused on calming your panicked breathing to come up with anything coherent.

You feel like you’re drowning, your body overwhelmed by the flood of emotions and the physical response. You need to get yourself under control, to get your thoughts sorted out and figure out what the hell to do. But it feels like your mind and your body are in a constant tug-of-war with each other, neither one willing to give in. It’s like being stuck in a nightmare that you can’t wake up from.

You’re suddenly aware of the silence in your apartment. It’s an eerie stillness that seems to echo the chaos in your mind. The only sound is the soft rush of your own breathing, the beat of your heart a steady drum in your ears. It’s too quiet, and yet it’s almost deafening at the same time. You stay slumped on the floor, your head still against your knees, too overwhelmed to even think about getting up. You can’t breathe.

Your lungs feel like they’re on fire, each breath a struggle against the tight feeling in your chest. Your body is shaking, the adrenaline and panic having physical effects that you’re powerless to stop. You try to focus on calming yourself down, to get your breathing under control, but it’s like trying to hold onto water. Your lungs seizing up with each gasping breath. You try to focus on your breathing, trying to steady the erratic rhythm. But it’s like your body won’t obey, each inhale sharp and uneven, each exhale ragged. You can feel your pulse throbbing in your temples, echoing the desperate rhythm of your heart. You need to get yourself together, to calm down. You need to calm down.

You try to mentally force yourself to calm, to slow down your breathing, but it’s like every part of your body is working against you. Your thoughts are a tangled mess, swirling around in your head like a storm. Your heart is still racing, the panic and fear making it almost impossible to concentrate. You try to focus on something, anything to try and control the chaotic mess that is your mind. But your thoughts keep slipping away, dancing just out of reach every time you try to grasp them. You can't think, you can't breathe, you can't move.

You’re trapped in your own mind, your own body. You feel so small, so helpless, so utterly alone. The silence in your apartment is deafening, adding to the feeling of isolation. You try to will yourself to move, but you’re stuck, paralyzed by your own fear and panic. Your heart is still thundering in your chest, the erratic beats echoing in your ears as you try to force your lungs to take slow, steady breaths. You need to calm down. You need to.

You force your shoulders to relax, your eyes fluttering open. Okay, okay… You can do this. You try to remember the steps you learned for managing panic attacks. Breathe in for four, hold for… You can’t think. Your brain is fuzzy, filled with a jumbled mess of thoughts and memories. You try to remember the proper way to do it but your mind refuses to cooperate. Four or seven? Or was it nine? Exhale for eight. Fuck, I can’t think.

Your mind is a blur, your thoughts chaotic and tangled. You can’t remember the step-by-step process. Something about breathing in for a certain number of seconds, holding it, and exhaling for another number of seconds. But the details are a hazy mess, your panic making it impossible to remember clearly. You try your best, sucking in a shaky breath and holding it for what you think is the right amount of time. But your heart is still racing, your hands still trembling. It’s not working. Why isn’t it working? Why the fuck isn’t it working?

Jason stands against his bike, his gaze fixed on the window of your apartment. He's on the phone with Bruce, his voice low and filled with frustration. "I know, I know…" he mutters, raking a hand through his hair. "I fucked up," he admits, grimacing at his own carelessness.

He listens as Bruce responds, his eyes never leaving the window. He can feel the weight of his mistake sitting heavily on his shoulders. He should have known that you'd react the way you did, and he should have stuck to the plan. But he didn’t. He just acted, without thinking. Just like always, his conscience needles him.

Jason sighs, his shoulders slumping slightly as Bruce continues to speak. He knows Bruce is right, he always is. He’s good at saying the things that are hard to hear but desperately needed to be said. It’s part of what makes him great, but it also makes him irritating sometimes. Like right now.

"I know," Jason replies, his voice slightly sharp. "I get it. But what am I supposed to do now?"

There’s a pause as Bruce replies, his voice muffled over the phone. Jason’s face tightens, his jaw clenching as he listens. Yeah, yeah. Be patient. Easy for you to say.

"I know,” he repeats, his voice strained. "But the kid bolted before I could even get a word in. Now they’re probably scared shitless in there."

There's another pause. Jason can hear the steady timbre of Bruce’s voice on the other end, his words blending in a stream of low, soothing murmurs. He rolls his eyes, bristling at the older man's calm, steady tone. It always makes him feel like a kid being lectured, even though a part of him knows it’s not entirely untrue.

He lets out another sigh, his body sagging against his bike. "I’m trying," he mutters, his voice barely above a whisper. "I know I messed up, alright? I’ll give ‘em time to cool off." He glances back at your apartment, a pang of something he can’t quite identify tugging at his chest.

He nods along to whatever Bruce is saying, his eyes flickering back to your apartment window. He wonders if you're watching him from behind those blinds, if you’re scared, angry, confused. Probably all three, his mind supplies.

He winces at the thought, his hand tightening around his phone. He hates the thought that he might have screwed this up before it even really started. Bruce is probably right, he should give you space. But the thought of just leaving you alone and confused chafes at him, makes him want to just go in there and fix things already. He knows Bruce can feel his tension, can sense the turmoil roiling beneath his stoic exterior. Damn Batman and his stupid emotional intuition.

"Yeah, I get it," he mutters into the phone, his voice tight. "I’ll back off, give them space. But I don’t like it." There's another pause as Bruce responds, his voice low and steady.

It soothes something in him, a part of him that still yearns for guidance and approval, even though he knows he’ll never admit it. It’s a part of him that he usually denies, pushes down, but moments like these have a way of bringing it to the surface.

He's silent for a moment, letting Bruce speak. The older man's voice is steady, a low, grounding murmur that somehow manages to both soothe and irritate him at the same time. He's always been good at that, somehow finding the exact words needed to either calm him down or piss him off even more.

Jason clenches his jaw, grinding his teeth together in frustration. He’s torn. Part of him wants to just march up there, kick down the door and force you to talk to him. But he also knows that would just make things worse. He’s not good at the whole patience thing, but he knows that just charging in like a bull in a china shop is only going to make things more difficult. Damn it. He swings his leg over his bike, settling onto the seat. He takes one final look up at your window, his gaze lingering there for a moment. He can almost feel the weight of your fear and confusion from here, like a tangible thing. It makes his stomach twist into knots, his hands clenching on the grips.

But he knows he needs to let you be, to give you the space you clearly need. So, with a heavy sigh, he revs the engine and pulls away.

You wake up with a start, your body jerking out of a fitful sleep. Your body is covered in a cold sweat, your clothes sticking to your skin in an unpleasant way. You sit there in the darkness, your breathing heavy and your heart thumping hard in your chest.

Your room is still, the only sound the faint hum of the air conditioning and the soft sounds of the city outside your window.

Three long weeks have passed since you last saw Jason. The days have slipped by in a blur of routine and monotony. You go to work, come home, eat, sleep, repeat. It's like you're living your life on autopilot, your thoughts often drifting to the man who showed up at your door that night.

Since that night, you haven’t shifted. Something deep inside you, some instinctual feeling, tells you that it’s not safe to do so. So you stay human, your animal form buried deep within you, a constant low hum of unease. The feeling of something bad happening if you shift is a constant nagging in the back of your mind, a feeling you can’t shake despite your attempts to dismiss it as paranoia.

The longer you stay human, the stronger your instincts become. You catch yourself acting cat-like in subtle ways: tilting your head to the side when you're listening, twitching at sharp noises, even finding yourself kneading at your shirt when you’re frustrated. It’s a constant internal struggle, your instincts demanding to be let out while your rational mind tells you to keep them contained. You know it’s not healthy, not sustainable, but you can’t shake the feeling that shifting is just too risky right now.

You’re acutely aware of how unhealthy this is. You can feel the tension building within you, the constant battle between your human side and your animal side wearing you down mentally and emotionally. Your thoughts are constantly consumed with the need to shift, the need to be in your animal form, the need to let your instincts take over. But something inside you is holding you back, some primal fear that won’t let you let go. It’s a constant struggle you can’t escape, a constant mental strain that's slowly but surely eating away at your sanity.

You groggily stumble out of bed, the cool night air hitting your skin like a refreshing splash of water. It’s late, the digital clock on your bedside table reading 2:47 AM. You shiver slightly, your muscles tight and cramped from your restless sleep. Despite the chill in the air, you can’t help the feeling of relief as you step out onto your balcony. The city is quiet at this hour, the usual bustle of the day replaced with a soothing, almost eerie calm.

In a moment of clarity, you realize you’re being ridiculous. You’re tired, you’re frustrated, and damn it you’re tired of living in constant fear. You’ve been tormenting yourself for weeks over this, letting your instincts fester and your body ache from the strain. And for what? What's going to happen in the middle of the night on a Wednesday? Nothing, that’s what. And you’re not going to keep making yourself ill over some bastard stalker.

With a rush of determination, you finally give in. You let your instincts take over, your body shifting and contorting into your animal form. The relief is immediate, the tension in your body melting away as you shed your human skin. The cool night air is even more refreshing in this form, your senses heightened as you take in the night around you. Finally, you feel like you can breathe again, the weight of your human anxieties falling away like a heavy coat. You felt free.

The world looks different through your animal eyes, the details sharper and more defined. Your ears twitch, picking up sounds you'd never notice in your human form. Your muscles twitch as your animal instincts kick in, a low purring sound rumbling through your chest. It's been so long since you've let yourself be like this, since you've just been. It's exhilarating, freeing, like coming up for air after being stranded underwater for too long.

You pad over to the edge of the balcony, your paws making almost no sound on the wood. You look out at the city, the glittering lights and silent streets a stark contrast to the chaotic hum during the day. It’s quieter, calmer, a sense of peace that you haven’t felt in ages. You take a deep breath, the air filling your lungs and making your fur stand on end. You feel more alive here, more yourself, than you have in weeks.

Your muscles ripple under your fur as you stretch, arching your back and tilting your head back. A low, rumbling purr vibrates in your chest, the contentment filling you almost overwhelming. You close your eyes, letting the sounds and smells of the city wash over you. You’ll deal with everything else in the morning. For now, you’re going to stay like this and enjoy the freedom.

You sit there for a while, enjoying the cool night air and the sensation of being so deeply in tune with your instincts. The city sounds become a soothing background noise, a comforting hum in the air. You roll onto your back, stretching out your body and letting your limbs go limp. Your tail swishes lazily back and forth.

You roll onto your stomach, your muscles coiling as you prepare to spring. With a powerful leap, you propel yourself onto the nearby roof. Your paws touch down silently, the soft pads muting any sound. Your heart is racing now, the adrenaline rushing through your veins as you break into a run. Running as an animal is different than running as a human. It’s more instinctual, more right. You can feel the ground underneath your paws, the muscles in your legs bunching and releasing with every step. You tear across the rooftops, feeling more alive than you have in weeks. The night air whistles in your ears, the city passing by in a blur.

Your stride is effortless, muscles straining as you push yourself faster, the wind ruffling your fur and making your tail fan out behind you. You leap effortlessly from rooftop to rooftop, your body a blur of motion. You’re not even thinking about where you’re going, your only focus is on the sensation of speed, the feeling of freedom. Gotham flashes past you in a dizzying array of lights and shadows, your world narrowing down to your heartbeat and the rhythm of your paws hitting the roof.

Time seems to blur together as you run, the hours flying by like seconds. The city blurs past you in a wash of colors and sounds, the lights of Gotham like stars in a night sky. You don’t focus on how long you’ve been running, or how far you’ve gone, or even where you’re going. For once, none of that matters. All that matters is the wind in your fur and the feeling of freedom coursing through your veins. Your body is sore and your heart is racing, but you feel alive.

You're so focused on the run that you don't notice the black boots in your path until you're upon them. You slam on the brakes, your body slipping and sliding as you come to an undignified halt in front of a pair of long, outstretched legs. You hiss in surprise and frustration, your heart racing from the sudden stop. You glare up at the figure towering above you, tail lashing.

Nightwing chuckles, a soft, amused sound that you can hear clearly even over the pounding of your heart. He lowers his eskrima sticks, holding them loosely by his side as he kneels down to your level. The hero's eyes are sparkling with mirth, his smile slightly crooked.

"Well, hello there." he says, his voice smooth and rich.

He tilts his head to the side, studying you with a curious gaze. You're still panting from your run, your body tense and braced for a fight. Nightwing's smile widens at your reaction, his eyes sparkling with intrigue.

"You're pretty fast," he remarks, a hint of amusement in his voice. He extends his hand towards you, the black, latex covering his fingers gleaming in the low light. He stops just millimeters from your face, allowing you to sniff and inspect him for a moment. His scent is clean and crisp, a hint of something sweet mixed in.

After a few seconds, he starts gently petting you, his gloved hand scratching behind your ears in a soothing motion. “You’re even prettier in person, kitten.”

A wave of unexpected pleasure washes over you as he starts petting you. His touch is firm yet gentle, just the right amount of pressure to soothe the tension in your body. His hand moves from behind your ears to scratching behind your chin, the soft hiss of latex against your fur the only sound in the quiet night. The petting feels ten times better after not shifting after such a long time. You lean heavily into his palm.

“You’re a runner, huh?” Nightwing murmurs, his voice a soft rumble. “Bruce isn’t gonna like that.”

His words are casual, almost conversational, but there’s an undercurrent of seriousness to them. He continues to pet you, his hand moving in a slow, soothing rhythm.

“Running around Gotham like this,” he continues, his tone dropping lower. “It’s dangerous. You should stick to the rooftops, little one. Makes it harder for the baddies to get to you.”

As your attention is occupied with looking up at Nightwing, you don’t recognise the second pair of boots that approach. You’re jolted out of your thoughts as another pair of warm hands suddenly scoop you up, grabbing your stomach and lifting you off the ground. The sensation is so sudden and unexpected that you don’t even have time to react. A startled yowl escapes you as you’re lifted off the roof and held against a broad chest.

Your body stiffens in surprise, a low hiss escaping your clenched teeth. Your instincts are screaming at you to flee, to lash out, to fight, but the hands have you in an unbreakable grip.

Nightwing straightens up, sliding his eskrima sticks into their holsters with a practiced flick of his wrists. He casts you a glance, his eyes softened with concern as he looks at your tense form in Robin’s arms.

"Careful, Little D," he says, a slight edge to his voice. "The kitty hasn’t been out in a long time."

Damian just scoffs in response, his grip on you tightening. His body is tense, his hands clenching in your fur, but there’s a gleam of curiosity in his eyes that betrays his indifference. His voice is as haughty as ever, a touch of impatience in his tone. "I know that, Grayson. I'm not a child."

Nightwing hums at Robin’s attitude, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning against a nearby AC unit with a slight sigh.

"Sure you're not,” he responds back to Robin with a playful tone of annoyance.

Damian just huffs, tightening his grip on you, causing you to let out a surprised, muffled meow in response. His eyes dart down to you, a slight flicker of fascination in his cold, calculated gaze. He loosens his hold subconsciously. Petting your head in a silent apology.

The younger boy doesn’t respond to Dick’s remark, motioning for him to hurry up already.

With a grin, Dick holds his hands up in a mock gesture of surrender. He reaches into his utility belt and procures a small, emerald green and black collar. A symbol you can’t recognise embroidered onto the back where the latch is.

This isn't any average collar that you can find at a pet store. This is high-tech, bordering extravagant. There's a small, golden bell hanging from the front, jingling softly with every little movement made, and there’s a silver, gold-edged tag already attached with some information you can't see yet. But what catches your eye, and fills you with a sense of dread, is the blinking red light on the centre, where it latches onto your neck. With these hook-like latches all around the inside that look all too much like they’ll pierce into you.

Before you can even think to react, Nightwing's already moving. He's faster than you can even register, the collar snatching around your neck in the blink of an eye. It tightens automatically, locking into place with a soft click. You can feel the hooks pierce into your fur and you let out a strangled whine.

As the collar locks into place, the bell on the front gleams in the low light, a soft jingle sounding as you jerk your head back in surprise.

Nightwing steps back, taking in the sight of you in the collar with a critical eye. He reaches forward and gives the bell a couple of light taps, the sound chiming softly in the night air.

"Looks good," he comments, a hint of satisfaction in his tone. "Tim did good."

Damian hums in agreeance with a slight nod, his grip on you still firm and unrelenting. He casts a scrutinising glance over your form, his eyes lingering on the collar for a moment before moving back to you. He brings his thumb to the latch, pushing into the embroidered symbol. “What was the cast?”

As Damian brings his thumb to the latch, pressing into the embroidered symbol, you hear a soft click, followed by a low chime. You feel the collar loosen around your neck, but it still stays in place. For a moment, you consider trying to tear it off, but a warning tug from the collar's hooks and a glare from Damian stop you short.

Dick grins. “It’s our kittens name, D.”

Damian scowls, rolling his eyes, but he doesn't argue. Instead, he turns his attention back to you, his eyes studying your form intently. It's almost unnerving, the intensity of his gaze.

He presses his thumb against the seal harder, his voice a murmur as he utters your name. When you feel the collar tighten around your neck, you try to jerk your head back out of the way, but the collar holds fast, the hooks attaching themselves deeper into your fur. You try to resist, but the more you struggle, the more your mind grows fuzzy. An intense drowsiness rushes over you, your eyelids growing impossibly heavy. Your vision starts to swim, the world around you growing dark at the edges. As the collar locks into place, the hooks latching more snugly into you, you suddenly feel trapped. Your legs buckle underneath you, sending you sprawling into Damian's arms. The latch on the collar is gone, replaced by a solid, unbreakable ring. There is no way to take it off.

The collar appears deceptively normal, made of a thick dark green leather-like material with a simple golden buckle to secure it. The only thing that gives away its high-tech design is the absence of a latch to clip it open. Most people would overlook it, mistaking it for a regular, ordinary collar.

As you black out and lay heavily in Damian's arms, Dick coos softly, bringing a hand out to rub along your fur. His touch is gentle, his tone affectionate.

"Aren't they so cute asleep?" he whispers, his gaze softening as he looks at your unconscious form.

Damian nods silently in response, his embrace around you tightening just slightly, tugging you closer against his chest. He brings his face down, gently nuzzling his chin into your soft, multicoloured fur, hiding the hint of a smile on his lips.

Dick steps forward, a smile on his face as he watches his younger brother hold you close. He reaches out to ruffle Damian's hair affectionately, before speaking up.

"Let's go home."

Guess who spent three days working on this

Anyway, it’s finally out! Send a comment or msg if you would like to be @ in chapter two and for any anon answers that I do for the fic

I had milk and warm cookies while making this, like a child.

[decolonize-the-everything]

Why are they mining so much right now?

Cobalt has become the center of a major upsurge in mining in Congo, and the rapid acceleration of cobalt extraction in the region since 2013 has brought hundreds of thousands of people into intimate contact with a powerful melange of toxic metals. The frantic pace of cobalt extraction in Katanga bears close resemblance to another period of rapid exploitation of Congolese mineral resources: During the last few years of World War II, the U.S. government sourced the majority of the uranium necessary to develop the first atomic weapons from a single Congolese mine, named Shinkolobwe. The largely forgotten story of those miners, and the devastating health and ecological impacts uranium production had on Congo, looms over the country now as cobalt mining accelerates to feed the renewable energy boom—with little to no protections for workers involved in the trade.

The city of Kolwezi, which is 300 km (186 miles) northwest of Lubumbashi and 180 km from the now-abandoned Shinkolobwe mine, sits on top of nearly half of the available cobalt in the world. The scope of the contemporary scramble for that metal in Katanga has totally transformed the region. Enormous open-pit mines worked by tens of thousands of miners form vast craters in the landscape and are slowly erasing the city itself.

[...]Much of the cobalt in Congo is mined by hand: Workers scour the surface level seams with picks, shovels, and lengths of rebar, sometimes tunneling by hand 60 feet or more into the earth in pursuit of a vein of ore. This is referred to as artisanal mining, as opposed to the industrial mining carried out by large firms. The thousands of artisanal miners who work at the edges of the formal mines run by big industrial concerns make up 90 percent of the nation’s mining workforce and produce 30 percent of its metals. Artisanal mining is not as efficient as larger-scale industrial mining, but since the miners produce good-quality ore with zero investment in tools, infrastructure, or safety, the ore they sell to buyers is as cheap as it gets. Forced and child labor in the supply chain is not uncommon here, thanks in part to a significant lack of controls and regulations on artisanal mining from the government.

[...]When later atomic research found that uranium’s unstable nucleus could be used to make a powerful bomb, the U.S. Army’s Manhattan Project began searching for a reliable source of uranium. They found it through Union Minière, which sold the United States the first 1,000 tons it needed to get the bomb effort off the ground.

The Manhattan Project sent agents of the OSS, precursor to the CIA, to Congo from 1943 to 1945 to supervise the reopening of the mine and the extraction of Shinkolobwe’s ore—and to make sure none of it fell into the hands of the Axis powers. Every piece of rock that emerged from the mine for almost two decades was purchased by the Manhattan Project and its successors in the Atomic Energy Commission, until the mine was closed by the Belgian authorities on the eve of Congolese independence in 1960. After that, the colonial mining enterprise Union Minière became the national minerals conglomerate Gécamines, which retained much of the original structure and staff.

[...]Dr. Lubaba showed me the small battery-operated Geiger counters that he uses in the field to measure radioactivity. He had begun the process of trying to find and interview the descendants of the Shinkolobwe miners, but he explained that tracing the health consequences of working in that specific mine would be difficult: Many long-established villages in the area have been demolished and cast apart as cobalt extraction has torn through the landscape. His initial inquiries suggested that at least some of the descendants of the Shinkolobwe miners had been drawn into the maelstrom of digging in the region around Kolwezi.

In her book Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade, historian Gabrielle Hecht recounts the U.S. Public Health Service’s efforts to investigate the effects of uranium exposure on people who worked closely with the metal and the ore that bore it. In 1956, a team of medical researchers from the PHS paid a visit to Shinkolobwe while the mine was still producing more than half of the uranium used in America’s Cold War missile programs. Most of their questions went unanswered, however, as Shinkolobwe’s operators had few official records to share and stopped responding to communications as soon as the researchers left.

[...]“Don’t ever use that word in anybody’s presence. Not ever!” Williams quotes OSS agent Wilbur Hogue snapping at a subordinate who had said the mine’s name in a café in Congo’s capital. “There’s something in that mine that both the United States and Germany want more than anything else in the world. I don’t know what it’s for. We’re not supposed to know.”

[queer-n-here]

UHM-UHM-

Yeah I have no shame to just not ask anonymously- anyways!

May I please request a 6'1 reader who is stoic, bold, also handsome as Dazai but ain't a womaniser, and is VERY quiet. With Dazai. He works at the ADA with him. He follows Dazai around like literally, he acts and opens up more to Dazai than he does with others, he literally doesn't care if Dazai was In the pm (they met at 14) or abt his crimes, he can read Dazai's emotions And can see through him, they R lovers, he is loyal asf to Dazai. He Also is rich asf and has better fashion tastes! Pls make both a oneshot or hc or ANYTHING ABT THEMMMMM

(I'm very desperate BC of a certain fantasy of mine)

Ah, I gotchu you bruv.

[ Also, let's do a little quiz. What country do y'all think I originate from? Like, based on my language and writing and just... Yeah.]

And yep, I'm double posting today!

Canonically, there are no mentions of Dazai's past before the Port Mafia, so I made stuff up. Hope you like it!

Contents: Uhh...a lot. I got... *winces* I got carried away.

Warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort, mentions of death, suicide and violence, Dazai's life is sad and so are these hcs.

You and Dazai met when you two were 14 each. It was a chance encounter, really. Both of you were orphans, and both of you were ability users, even though Dazai knew more about his ability than you did yours.

Both of you currently had no one in the world. That was the key factor that brought you two together. Struggling to get by and find a place of your own in the world, you met.

Neither of you opened up at first, cautious and calloused as you both were. It just happened; it didn't happen one particular day, and before you two had realized, you'd become each other's sole support.

You turned fifteen, and three months later Dazai met Mori.

He told you about it later, describing in the sort of detail no one else would get to hear how he'd rescued the Port Mafia leader from an enemy gang, unintentionally impressing him and securing Dazai a place in the Mafia.

You didn't like it. The job was dangerous, and you didn't want Dazai's hands to get stained with blood. When you told him this, he laughed it off, and said that he could handle it. You dropped the matter.

He was wrong.

You watched as Dazai changed, despite his promises and assurances. He grew ruthless, cruel in a way that made you ache as you watched him, silent. He started hating everything, even himself, and sometimes you thought he hated you, too.

He had a beautiful heart, you knew. But Mori was destroying it.

You talked to Mori about it, too. You might not have anything on him, yes, he was richer and way more powerful, but you had your ability, and you were ready to fight to death. Before you could, however, Dazai intervened.

That was the first time you two fought. After that, you went to him and told him you wouldn't care if he didn't want you to. If he wanted to keep going down the path that he'd chosen, you wouldn't stop him.

Sometimes, you look back and wonder if there was something you could have done for him other than what you did. You still can't think of anything.

You opened up a small business after that, and it slowly grew to a scale larger than you had expected.

Then you two turned eighteen. Finally, you were able to register your enterprises under your own name, being a legal adult. You and Dazai got wasted that night, and you watched fondly as he tried and failed to put his coat on so you two could go and meet Ango and Odasaku.

They had probably begun then, your feelings for Dazai. You were only comfortable enough with him to actually talk, and not just say what was absolutely required and then shut up.

He knew you in a way no else did. No one else knew what it looked like when you smiled, or threw your head back and laughed freely. No one else knew what it was like when you cared, when you brought over Dazai's favorite refreshing drink every time you visited him in summer. Or when you helped him change his bandages, touch gentle and careful against his soft skin.

And you knew him the way no else did. No one else knew what it was like when he was genuine, when he'd look up at you with earnest eyes. No one else knew what it was like when he flushed slightly, the red of his skin always starting from the tips of his ears and descending to his cheeks. No one else knew what it was like when Dazai protected, when he offered to use his contacts in the Mafia to get rid of your competitors, even though you declined every time. He had enough blood on his hands without you pitching in.

Eight months after that, he left the Port Mafia. He came to your apartment crying that day. His face was ashen, his shirt was covered in blood and his lips were trembling. The tears that had been collecting in his eyes for who knows how long finally spilled when he saw you, and the only thing you could do for him in that situation was open your arms and let him cling onto you. He kept saying 'Oda's dead... He's dead...'

That night, Dazai changed. Thankfully for the better. That flame in his eyes was gone now, the one that made you worry if he would burn himself and the world.

Dazai slowly stopped hating after that. You and Ango were the only two he trusted, the only two he would be genuine with. He didn't close up in a way that hid his smile, or in a way that made him withdraw from people. Quiet the opposite. He pushed himself outward, adopting a cheery persona that joked around and bewitched everyone.

The only smiles that weren't created but slid across his face on their own were ones that he smiled with you, and Ango.

You couldn't help but feel slightly bittersweet. Dazai was out of that hellhole, that cursed gang that was making his heart black. But Odasaku was dead.

After that, as your twenties arrived, Dazai joined the Armed Detective Agency. You were happy, then.

You two celebrated at a lavish restaurant. Your business had grown to be Japan's No. 1, and the money that spilled in with it was something neither Dazai nor you had expected.

But your hopes for the ADA were too high. Sometimes, Dazai still wanted to leave. He said he wanted to kill himself, and even though he would always laugh it off, you couldn't help but notice that his eyes would always grow hollow when he spoke of it.

And so the only thing you could do was love him. You loved him and tried your best to let him know, buying him unnecessary gifts and putting him on top of your mental priority list. Even your staff knew you loved him; it was apparent and obvious.

Dazai was probably the only one that didn't notice it, that genius dumbass.

And so you tried harder. You had never been good with words, but you tried to be vocal about your feelings, telling him he was cute when you thought so, and saying that he looked good when he did.

Dazai still didn't notice. The day he found out was when you got drunk and blurted it out.

You still don't have a lot of memories from that night, and Dazai says that you passed out soon after confessing. He finds it funny now, even though he didn't back then.

Your confession made Dazai pull up a wall against you. This surprised you, hurt you, and you tried apologizing, tried to get him to just talk to you. You told him that it didn't matter if he didn't return your feelings.

Something was hurting Dazai, you could tell. But he just wouldn't talk to you, going so far as to changing his phone number without telling you.

So you showed up at his workplace. Kunukida knew you by sight; you often came to pick Dazai up from work. You two had a big fight, shouting in one hallway of the agency building, making such a ruckus that Ranpo and the others came over to watch.

It ended with Dazai turning around to leave, and you were planning to let him go. But then you saw a tear glisten at his cheek last moment, and hence gave chase.

You chased him down all the way from Yokohoma to Kawasaki, only stopping when Dazai collapsed in the middle of a street, his frame shaking with sobs as he started hyperventilating. You crouched down beside him and pulled him to your chest, rubbing his back and conducting his breathing, your voice soft as it told him to inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale....

He fell asleep on your shoulder, in the middle of nowhere. You carried him back to your house, and tucked him into a warm bed. The next morning, he wouldn't meet your eye.

Usually, you would have let him; there was hardly anything that Dazai would do that you would disapprove of. But lately, you had been going against his wishes a lot, so you decided to do that one more time.

When he tried to leave, you pinned him to a wall and forced him to look at you. It wasn't difficult, Dazai had never really worked out, even as a part of the Port Mafia. His fighting style was more quick and clean moves than brute strength.

It worked well in your advantage as he tried to struggle against your hold and failed miserably, tears collecting in his eyes and threatening to fall.

"Dazai," You said. "If you want me to disappear from your life, I can do that." He looked up at you, eyes wide and blurred. "But there's one catch. You have to say it. Say it to my face, tell me to leave, and I swear on my own life, I'll vanish. You won't ever see me again." And then the tear that had been collecting in his eye all this time fell, sliding down his cheek and onto the collar of his shirt. His arms went limp in your hold, and he wobbled forwards. You caught him as he fell, and he sobbed into your shoulder again. His hands were clutching at your shirt as if for dear life, and even as you rubbed his back, more tears fell from his eyes. You held Dazai through his breakdown. The next time he spoke to you, he said the words, "I like you too much." It was a silent confession, almost muffled into your shoulder as the post-crying exhaustion overtook. You pulled him closer and pressed a kiss into his temple.

It was alright after that. You asked Dazai why he tried to run away, and the only thing he said was that he got scared. He chose not to explain, and you chose not to push him.

Now, everything is good. Dazai's job at the ADA does worry you sometimes, even if it's for the good, it's dangerous, but you know he loves his job, no matter how many jokes he makes about Fukuzawa's violation of the Labor Laws. And he loves you, that's all you've ever needed.

Being in a relationship with him is not always easy. He still speaks of dying, and the thought of him leaving you makes you panic. Sometimes, you still don't know what to do to make him feel better. But you manage to work through it.

You love Dazai, after all. You have ever since you two were kids.

[artsandculture]

The Water-Lily Pond (1899) 🎨 Claude Monet 🏛️ The National Gallery 📍 London, United Kingdom

For Monet, gardens offered a refuge from the modern urban and industrial world, although he and his fellow garden enthusiasts benefited from modern advances in botanical science that were creating new hybrid flowers in a wide choice of shapes and colours that could be produced on an almost industrial scale. He made modest gardens in the homes he rented in Argenteuil and Vetheuil in the 1870s, but from 1883, when he moved to a rented house in Giverny, about 50 miles to the west of Paris, he had more scope to indulge his passion for plants. He became a dedicated gardener with an extensive botanical knowledge, and sought the opinions of leading horticulturalists. As Monet’s career flourished his increasing wealth enabled him to fund what became a grand horticultural enterprise: by the 1890s he was employing as many as eight gardeners.

Monet began by refashioning the garden in front of the house, the so-called ‘Clos Normand’, replacing the existing kitchen garden and orchard with densely planted colourful flower beds that were filled with blooms throughout the seasons. He was able to buy the house in 1890, and three years later he purchased an adjacent plot of land next to the river Epte beyond the railway line at the edge of his property. The plot had a small pond with arrowhead and wild water lilies, which he wanted to turn into a water garden with a larger lily pond ‘both for the pleasure of the eye and for the purpose of having subjects to paint’.

The idea may have occurred to him after he had seen the water garden at the 1899 Exposition Universelle in Paris created by the grower Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac, who bred the first colourful hardy waterlilies. Monet began by requesting permission from the Prefect of the Eure to dig irrigation channels from the Ru – a branch of the Epte – to feed his pond, but the Giverny villagers objected, fearing it would contaminate the water and that the foreign plants would poison their cattle. Monet was furious, but three months later permission came through and he began to enlarge the existing pond, replacing the wild water lilies with Latour-Marliac hybrids available in yellows, pinks, whites and violets.

The pond was enlarged on further occasions – in 1901 and 1904 – tripling the size of the water garden. Together with the flower garden on the other side of the railway track it became the principal preoccupation of the last 26 years of Monet’s life. While the Clos Normand garden was laid out along fairly traditional lines, harking back to the formal French gardens of seventeenth-century Europe, with a central alleyway and geometrically arranged beds, the water garden was more Eastern in inspiration. Its less regimented, more natural design and more muted colours created a quieter, meditative atmosphere. Monet erected a Japanese bridge over the western end of the pond that took its inspiration from the bridges in ukiyo-e Japanese prints. He was a keen collector of these prints and he owned a copy of Hiroshige’s Wisteria at Kameido Tenjin Shrine (1856), one of the many prints that features a curved bridge. In a more general sense, the water garden reflected Monet’s admiration for the Japanese appreciation of nature.

Monet had to wait for his water garden to mature before he could begin to paint it in earnest. As he later recalled: ‘It took me some time to understand my water-lilies. It takes more than a day to get under your skin. And then all at once, I had the revelation – how wonderful my pond was – and reached for my palette. I’ve hardly had any other subject since that moment.’ In total, Monet painted 250 canvases of his water garden. Around 200 of these represent water lilies floating on the surface of the water, while the remainder also show the Japanese bridge, the weeping willow trees and wisteria and the irises, agapanthus and day lilies on its banks. In all these pictures Monet was painting a subject that was already ‘pictorial’ – a landscape that had been carefully composed according to his personal aesthetic. The National Gallery has three further paintings of the water garden :Water-lilies, setting sun; Irises; and Water-lilies.

Monet painted three views of the Japanese bridge in 1895, not long after it had been constructed, but then took a break from the subject, only returning to it in 1899. By now the pool was overhung by vegetation and surrounded by plants, but to judge from contemporary photographs it was never as enclosed as Monet painted it, and he exaggerated the feeling of claustrophobia. In December 1900 he exhibited 12 paintings at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in Paris, all of which showed more or less symmetrical views of the Japanese bridge.

In this painting, as in the others in the series, we are looking down onto the surface of the water, where the lily pads float into the distance, meeting the dense foliage on the far bank. Weeping willows are reflected in the pond and clumps of iris border its banks. The perspective seems to shift so that it is hard to find a single focal point; it is as though we are looking up at the bridge but down on the waterlilies. The picture, like the water itself, seems to oscillate between surface and depth. The mainly vertical reflections provide a counterpoint to the horizontal clumps of the lily pads. Different colours, applied with thick brushstrokes, are placed next to each other. This way of painting has more in common with Monet’s early Impressionist works than his more recent paintings of mornings on the Seine, where he had used softer, more blended strokes to convey hazy atmospheric effects.

The Japanese bridge series marked a turning point in Monet’s art. From now on his subjects were painted from an increasingly confined viewpoint, conveying the sense of an enclosed world. In later paintings of the pond, he would dispense with the banks and bridge altogether to focus solely on the water, the reflections and the water lilies. The culmination of Monet’s water lily paintings were the Grandes Dėcorations, 22 enormous canvases each over two metres high and totalling more than 90 metres in length, which he completed months before his death and donated to the French state. These are now on permanent display in two oval rooms in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

[centrally-unplanned]

Gonna make this a quick one since I just don’t have the spoons for a really big effort post: Pre-CCP 20th Century China Did Not Have Feudal or Slave-like Land Tenancy Systems

Obviously what counts as “slave-like” is going to be subjective, but I think it's common, for *ahem* reasons, for people to believe that in the 1930’s Chinese agriculture was dominated by massive-scale, absentee landlords who held the large majority of peasant workers in a virtual chokehold and dictated all terms of labor.

That is not how Chinese land ownership & agricultural systems worked. I am going to pull from Chinese Agriculture in the 1930s: Investigations into John Lossing Buck’s Rediscovered ‘Land Utilization in China’ Microdata, which is some of the best ground-level data you can get on how land use functioned, in practice, in China during the "Nanjing Decade" before WW2 ruins all data collection. It looks at a series of north-central provinces, which gives you the money table of this:

On average, 4/5ths of Chinese peasants owned land, and primarily farmed land that they owned. Tenancy was, by huge margins, the minority practice. I really don’t need to say more than this, but I'm going to because there is a deeper point I want to make. And it's fair to say that while this is representative of Northern China, Southern China did have higher tenancy rates - not crazy higher, but higher.

So let's look at those part-owner farmers; sounds bad right? Like they own part of their land, but it's not enough? Well, sometimes, but sometimes not:

A huge class (about ~1/3rd) of those part-owners were farming too much land, not too little; they were enterprising households renting land to expand their businesses. They would often engage in diversified production, like cash crops on the rented land and staple crops on their owned land. Many of them would actually leave some of their owned land fallow, because it wasn’t worth the time to farm!

Meanwhile the small part-owners and the landless tenant farmers would rent out land to earn a living…sometimes. Because that wasn’t the only way to make a living - trades existed. From our data, if you are a small part-owner, you got a substantial chunk of your income from non-farm labor; if you owned no land you got the majority of your income from non-farm labor:

(Notice how that includes child labor by default, welcome to pre-modernism!)

So the amount of people actually doing full-tenancy agriculture for a living is…pretty small, less than 10% for sure. But what did it look like for those who do? The tenancy rates can be pretty steep - 50/50 splits were very common. But that is deceiving actually; this would be called “share rent”, but other systems, such as cash rents, bulk crop rents, long-term leases with combined payment structures, etc, also existed and were plentiful - and most of those had lower rent rates. However, share rent did two things; one, it hedged against risk; in the case of a crop failure you weren't out anything as the tenant, a form of insurance. And two, it implied reciprocal obligations - the land owner was providing the seed, normally the tools as well, and other inputs like fertilizer.

Whether someone chose one type of tenancy agreement or the other was based on balancing their own labor availability, other wage opportunities, the type of crop being grown, and so on. From the data we have, negotiations were common around these types of agreements; a lot of land that was share rent one year would be cash rent another, because the tenants and market conditions shifted to encourage one or the other form.

I’m doing a little trick here, by throwing all these things at you. Remember the point at the top? “Was this system like slavery?” What defines slavery? To me, its a lack of options - that is the bedrock of a slave system. Labor that you are compelled by law to do, with no claim on the output of that work. And as I hit you with eight tiers of land ownership and tenancy agreements and multi-source household incomes, as you see that the median person renting out land to a tenant farmer was himself a farmer as a profession and by no means some noble in the city, what I hope becomes apparent is that the Chinese agricultural system was a fully liquid market based on choice and expected returns. By no means am I saying that it was a nice way to live; it was an awful way to live. But nowhere in this system was state coercion the bedrock of the labor system. China’s agricultural system was in fact one of the most free, commercial, and contract-based systems on the planet in the pre-modern era, that was a big source of why China as a society was so wealthy. It was a massive, moving market of opportunities for wages, loans, land ownership, tenancy agreements, haggled contracts, everyone trying in their own way to make the living that they could.

It's a system that left many poor, and to be clear injustices, robberies, corruption, oh for sure were legion. Particularly during the Warlord Era mass armies might just sweep in and confiscate all your hard currency and fresh crops. But, even ignoring that the whole ‘poverty’ thing is 90% tech level and there was no amount of redistribution that was going to improve that very much, what is more important is that the pre-modern world was *not* equally bad in all places. The American South was also pretty poor, but richer than China in the 19th century. And being a slave in the American South was WAY worse than being a peasant in China during times of peace - because Confederate society built systems to remove choice, to short-circuit the ebb and flow of the open system to enshrine their elite ‘permanently’ at the top. If you lived in feudal Russia it was a good deal worse, with huge amounts of your yearly labor compelled by the state onto estates held by those who owned them unimpeachably by virtue of their birthright (though you were a good deal richer just due to basic agriculture productivity & population density, bit of a tradeoff there).

If you simply throw around the word “slavery” to describe every pre-modern agricultural system because it was poor and shitty, that back-doors a massive amount of apologia for past social systems that were actively worse than the benchmarks of the time. Which is something the CCP did; their diagnosis of China’s problem for the rural poor of needing massive land redistribution was wrong! It was just wrong, it was not the issue they were having. It was not why rural China was often poor and miserable. It could help, sure, I myself would support some compensated land redistribution in the post-war era as a welfare idea for a fiscally-strapped state. But that was gonna do 1% of the heavy lifting here in making the rural poor's lives better. And I don’t think we should continue to the job of spreading the CCP's propaganda for them.

There ya go @chiefaccelerator, who alas I was not permitted to compel via state force into writing this for me, you Qing Dynasty lazy peasant.

[mariacallous]

Even amid the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukrainian entrepreneurs remain resilient. October set a new record for the number of new small and medium-sized businesses being registered, while hundreds of enterprises have relocated away from front-line regions so that they can continue their operations.

Buying a gift this Christmas from a Ukrainian company can help both these businesses and Ukraine’s economy. It also provides an opportunity to get to know Ukraine better through its artisans and creative brands.

While Ukrainians are also focusing on helping their own economy by buying locally, Ukrainian companies can benefit from all the support they can get from abroad.

The Kyiv Independent has picked out platforms and websites that can help you choose a gift that is not only unique, but also supports Ukraine.

[messydiabolical]

I've been going though all my old documents of drell worldbuilding and such, so expect various snippets and rambles over the next few days! Kolyat Krios' early memories of his first home.

He was barely out of toddlerhood, and it was before his eidetic memory had fully taken hold. The memories he could recall from this time were hazy, there but hard to grasp. A lot like how the humans and turians seemed to describe their own memorisations.

He could see their first home in fragments. He knew it was small, cluttered, ramshackle. It was also very loving. An odd word to describe a building perhaps, but loving is how he remembered it.

 Mother bathing with me in the tiny shower, cursing when the hot water suddenly went out, then laughing it off. ‘Well that’s one way to really wake up and start a day!’ she waggles her eyebrows theatrically as she tickles my cold body through a towel, making me giggle, forgetting the chill. Her subvocal song trills in joy and I try to copy it, stuttered bursts of happiness in a staccato beat to her soothing tones.

 The neighbourhood was noisy, full of life and interesting, questionable smells.

Children were always outside, playing in the streets. Groups of teens and adults would also gather and mill about, though in retrospect, probably not for such innocent pursuits.

In the apartment upstairs someone was learning to play what sounded like an entire orchestras worth of instruments, taking a jack of all trades, master of none approach to the enterprise. They were very fond of practising late at night, the ceiling thudding with the beats.

A neighbour below them would watch Kolyat in the days while mother and father both worked. She was very old, saggy scales and eyes clouded over like the stormy clouds out beyond the dome walls. He adored her. She’d cook delicious soups that he’d gum and gnash at with his sprouting fangs, getting more all over his face and clothes than actually in his mouth. She’d just laugh in delight, rub his face with a cloth while he blew soupy raspberries in protest. She also loved to read storybooks, putting on funny voices for all the characters. Sometimes Kolyat would sleep over, and she’d make him a blanket fort on the sofa. Kolyat loved her very much.

‘Please Orla, I must insist you take some credits for your time.’ Mother shifts me on her hip. Her frillrings sparkle in the sputtering, broken hall light. I reach out with a pudgy little hand to play with them.

‘Now now dear, how many times must I insist. you keep those credits for him’. A wrinkly, gentle hand reaches over, stopping me before I grab too harshly on my silver hooped quarry.

Mother and father worked a lot. Mother seemed to like her work, exhausted as it left her. The same could not be said for father.

Father would come home from work dirty, dejected. Mother would rub his shoulders, kiss his cheek and put me on his lap, and he would melt a little. Kisses on my brow and a whispered promise. ‘I’ll make things better, do better for us’. Holds me a little tighter.

Kolyat can’t recall the exact words exchanged, but he remembers the night his parents fought, the first time he heard anything but loving devotion between them. The apartment only had one bedroom, so he usually slept in a crib he was vastly outgrowing, squeezed in next to his parents' bed. They had waited until he was asleep before bitter whispering began, then moved to the living room when it was clear things were escalating. It didn’t do much good; Kolyat had already woken up and the apartment had thin walls. It was a long night.

The next morning Thane was gone and Irikah, usually so positive, so determined, seemed to have lost a little spark about her. Usually when she made breakfast she would play music on her omnitool, singing off key and dancing as she moved.

That morning was too quiet, mothers movements too stiff and precise.

It was a Kalsef, a drell weekend day. Kolyat had begun to recognise patterns in time, knew that this was the day daddy always took him to the temple after breakfast while mummy got some me time.

‘Where daddy?’ the little drell asked, confused by the change in routine.

“He’s-” She pauses, looks side to side, runs her hand across her brow. She looks back up, leans across the table, strokes my cheek.

“He’s away on business Kolyat”.

Away on business. That was the first time he heard it. It would not be the last.

Three, perhaps four full Kalsefs passed, and father finally came home. He was dressed in sleek, fancy clothes, nothing like the overalls he’d worn for work before. He was smiling wide, rushed to Kolyat and swung him up in the air. Kissed mother and told them both he’d missed them so. Mother was all smiles too, but something was different. Something felt off to Kolyat. Like they were too eager, too desperate to seem normal, natural, which only served to make it feel unnatural.

A few days later they were packing up their meagre belongings. Emptying the apartment. A lot of it they didn’t bother with, too broken, not worth keeping. Father assured them they could get better things at ‘the new place’.

They travelled then, taking a skycar and then a shuttle, higher in the sky than kolyat had ever been. He clung fiercely to Thane when they looked out the windows, the vast oceans so far below, the islands and domes little specks on the surface.

“Fear not my son, we are quite safe. We’re going somewhere wonderful, you’ll see”.

Their second home was a lofty apartment at the very top reaches of the dome of Da’quin city.

The view out of the floor to ceiling windows made Kolyat feel sick. He had his own bedroom now, and he’d pile up toys against the glass planes, building a barrier between him and that fathomless fall. His new big bed accommodated his rapidly lengehtening limbs, but it felt so many miles away from mother and fathers bed. You couldn't hear the neighbours from the apartment. Never seemed to meet them at all; they could have been completely alone up there for all he knew. There were certainly no Orla’s in this building. He never saw her again. His second home was lonely.

[solarpunkbusiness]

Italian company converts discarded fishing nets into chairs, car mats and Prada bags

Since 2009, Giulio Bonazzi, the son of a small textile producer in northern Italy, has been working on a solution: an efficient recycling process for nylon. As CEO and chairman of a company called Aquafil, Bonazzi is turning the fibers from fishing nets – and old carpets – into new threads for car mats, Adidas bikinis, environmentally friendly carpets and Prada bags.

For Bonazzi, shifting to recycled nylon was a question of survival for the family business. His parents founded a textile company in 1959 in a garage in Verona, Italy. Fifteen years later, they started Aquafil to produce nylon for making raincoats, an enterprise that led to factories on three continents. But before the turn of the century, cheap products from Asia flooded the market and destroyed Europe’s textile production. When Bonazzi had finished his business studies and prepared to take over the family company, he wondered how he could produce nylon, which is usually produced from petrochemicals, in a way that was both successful and ecologically sustainable.

The question led him on an intellectual journey as he read influential books by activists such as world-renowned marine biologist Sylvia Earle and got to know Michael Braungart, who helped develop the Cradle-to-Cradle ethos of a circular economy. But the challenges of applying these ideologies to his family business were steep. Although fishing nets have become a mainstay of environmental fashion ads—and giants like Dupont and BASF have made breakthroughs in recycling nylon—no one had been able to scale up these efforts.

For ten years, Bonazzi tinkered with ideas for a proprietary recycling process. “It’s incredibly difficult because these products are not made to be recycled,” Bonazzi says. One complication is the variety of materials used in older carpets. “They are made to be beautiful, to last, to be useful. We vastly underestimated the difficulty when we started.”

Soon it became clear to Bonazzi that he needed to change the entire production process. He found a way to disintegrate old fibers with heat and pull new strings from the discarded fishing nets and carpets. In 2022, his company Aquafil produced more than 45,000 tons of Econyl, which is 100% recycled nylon, from discarded waste.

More than half of Aquafil’s recyclate is from used goods. According to the company, the recycling saves 90 percent of the CO2 emissions compared to the production of conventional nylon. That amounts to saving 57,100 tons of CO2 equivalents for every 10,000 tons of Econyl produced.

Bonazzi collects fishing nets from all over the world, including Norway and Chile—which have the world’s largest salmon productions—in addition to the Mediterranean, Turkey, India, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and New Zealand. He counts the government leadership of Seychelles as his most recent client; the island has prohibited ships from throwing away their fishing nets, creating the demand for a reliable recycler. With nearly 3,000 employees, Aquafil operates almost 40 collection and production sites in a dozen countries, including four collection sites for old carpets in the U.S., located in California and Arizona.

[e-commercereblate]

What Is The Process for Starting a New Business?

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A solid business plan is essential for establishing your company's goals, tactics, and projected revenue. It serves as a road plan for your business and is important for attracting investors. Our business development services include assisting you with the creation of a complete business plan. We prioritize developing a clear vision, establishing achievable targets, and building solutions to overcome potential obstacles. This strategy will help you get started and stay on pace as your business expands.

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Choosing the correct legal form for your organization is critical for asset protection and regulatory compliance. This step requires determining whether to form a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or limited liability company (LLC). Reblate Solutions can help you choose the right legal foundation for your business, navigate the process of registering, and ensure you satisfy all legal requirements.

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Securing appropriate funds is an important part of starting a new business. It involves calculating your first costs, developing a budget, and looking into funding possibilities such as financial assistance, grants, or investors. Reblate Solutions offers financial planning services to assist you manage your money successfully. We also connect you with possible investors and advise on the best ways to raise the necessary funds.

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[communist-ojou-sama]

Okay so I'm gonna go ahead and put a disclaimer up top that these are the ramblings of a dilettante that shouldn't be taken too seriously, but I think that people (understandably) frustrated with with the ICJ ruling and convinced it will have no material consequences should consider some things before they say that.

The first thing I want to remind everyone is that the west is far from invincible. Their rule is not iron-clad and their ability to enforce their will on the world is far from complete and is waning apace.

I think a lot about how in the process of the transition to late capitalism (as I personally define it), one consequence of the mass financialization of the economy is the pricing-out of most common consumer commodity-based manufacturing enterprise in favor of transactions that are most elastic in price, and how the result of that is a mass outflow of raw productive capacity from the imperial core to the global periphery.

If I can frame that in another way, and forgive me in framing this in very neutral terms, but it turns these countries from production-rich countries to production-poor countries with economies defined by the phenomenon of asset-price inflation.

The resulting global situation is that, similar to the assertion that Africa for example is rich because it's where the natural resources that facilitate the global economy are located, Mexico is rich. Vietnam is rich. Bangladesh is rich. These countries are awash in raw capacity to create goods that have a use value. What is the one thing that keeps them relatively cash-poor?

That is, the law. There's a bit of poetry in the idea that just as how within imperial core economies the most important economic instruments are legal contracts to either some percentage of a company's equity or its debt, what sustains its (nominal) riches over the global periphery is a legal regime of ownership that entitles them to the rights to all of the profits going on in these incredibly production-rich countries in the Global South.

It is absolutely correct to say that at the highest level, these legal regimes are enforced at the barrel of the gun, we've seen how too much refusal to to honor these laws by heads of state can lead to mass disinvestment and eventually coups d'état, and even now it would not be a good idea to say, seize the productive assets of a bunch of US firms.

However, and this is where the ICJ comes back in to my point, let's not think about the US. Let's think about, for example, the Netherlands or Belgium. These countries maintain fantastic financial wealth via contracts of ownership with countries in the global south but they are also small and geopolitically unimportant, with little in the way of individual military power.

For little countries like these, genuinely the Only thing that secures their ability to act as a parasite on the global productive economy is the strength of legitimacy that international law affords them, and the position of overwhelming power the west Once had, decades ago.

But the power and prestige of the West continues, as I said, to wane apace. it's too early to happen now but these less militaristic countries are aware of how exposed their assets are to simple seizure if over time international law comes to be seen as a joke.

As awful and condamnable as the current global system is, it is not total dictatorship. It is only able to perpetuate itself because the overwhelming majority of countries that are parties to it have buy in and because, albeit much more slowly than they could have under socialism, they have been able to make dents in their own poverty with it.

The exposure of the international law framework as having absolutely no legitimacy, as being a naked tool of domination of rich countries over poor countries has knock-on effects that stand to be incredibly dangerous to less militarily capable countries that rely on them for their economic structures. On a long-term scale, especially as these countries become richer and more geopolitically influential in their own right, they may well begin to pose the question: why Shouldn't I seize these french factories in my country? Why Shouldn't I seize this Belgian-owned diamond mine? Why Should I pay back this IMF loan, if the ICJ framework can't even compel the Zionist Enemy to end a genocide? And I promise you, this is a reality of which at least some people in those countries are highly cognizant and wary, so I'd wait and see a bit before being Too pessimistic.

[theproperweirdo]

Nara and Sonja story for @noisette-tornade 🤞all copy and pasted directly from the in game stories

Nara - Heartcarver

The city known as Rustport may have once had a more conventional name, but if that is in fact the case, it has long been forgotten. A sprawl of ramshackle structures that sway and creak in the salty winds blowing in from the sea, taverns lean against gambling halls and establishments of ominous repute like crooked teeth. For every baker there are two thieves, for every blacksmith two pirates. When the sun sets, the woefully few honest citizens bar their doors and secure the latches on windows. It is a rare night indeed that passes in Rustport without a murder and a rare resident who has not seen the body of a victim by the time they are able to speak.

Within this city lies a district where not even the city watch will tread after dark-Mire Town.

It was here, among sludge-slick alleyways and chittering swarms of rats that Nara was born and raised. As an infant, her mother abandoned Rustport and the family she had there, unwilling to suffer the place any longer or see her daughter do the same. Nara's father was deeply in debt to a criminal enterprise, but still managed to keep his daughter fed and sheltered, paying meager installments to the gang without incurring too much physical injury. This continued for a long time, until Nara was nine years old and the criminals discovered that not only had her father not been paying as much as he could, but that he in fact had enough coin stashed away to pay off the entirety of his debt.

After abducting and "interrogating" the debtor, a confession was pulled out. He had been saving the money to skip town and start a new life with his daughter somewhere far away. Having what they needed, they disposed of him: A lesson to other would-be debt evaders. Orphaned, Nara was thrown out of the hovel she had shared with her father. She wandered the streets, stealing and scavenging to survive.

Every day was a fight for survival, and Nara quickly became callous and mistrustful. The other people on the street were simply targets or hazards, and she began to lose any sense of warmth or compassion she once had. The people she did engage with were invariably others like herself- orphaned children and runaways getting by however they could. Eventually, she found herself at the head of a small thieve's guild alongside Sonja, the only other child who could match her abilities.

They called themselves Whispers, for the faint whisper coins make on cloth while being picked out of pockets.

As season after season blended into another, they subsumed the smaller child gangs until they were the largest network of thieves in the city. The size of their operation had grown tremendously until there was hardly a street corner in Rustport that didn't have a Whisper lingering, waiting for a chance to make a quick profit. Other gangs of course wanted in on the Whispers' turf at first, but Nara was quick to show that she was capable of much more than theft. After the initial disputes, those who didn't work for her stayed out of her way.

After dominating the city's criminal underground while still just a teen, she began to look at expanding her horizons.

The most profitable market in Rustport certainly wasn't pickpocketing, even at the scale she commanded. Rustport has a bustling slave market, a plaza drowning in the noises of commerce and despair.

Maulers slump in their chains next to Wilders, men, and other peoples of Esperia.

Here the only distinction is between master and slave. If she wanted to make the real money, she'd need a good ship and lots of manacles.

The first expedition she attended personally. Though she was well past the stage in her career of doing the dirty work herself, she wanted to oversee this new venture. She selected Azure Cove as her target, a patch of water lending access to the forests of the Wilders. What she didn't know was that Azure Cove had a new protector. When her ship sailed in, Seirus the elemental sensed the malicious intent from the crew. In a single great wave, the ship was capsized, drowning all aboard.

Nara's body sank softly to the bottom of the cove. Her story was over, it would seem.

For days she lay there, the seaweed brushing against her pale, open eyes. Then, one night, the husk that had been Nara received the call. With a sickly flicker of green light, her eyes cast about the seafloor and she stood, trudging toward the shore.

If Nara was cruel and violent in life, she is far worse now. She takes great pleasure in the harm she can cause others, and does so as often as she can.

“How would you like to die?”

Sonja - Ruler of the underworld

Sonja and I have known each other for years. Back then she was a wan, listless little thing, scurrying around with us in the dark, lawless alleys of the slums. She had long, flowing blonde hair - not that you'd know it under all the mud and fleas - which she still stubbornly spent ages braiding.

She was one of us: another weak and downtrodden worm, mired in the silt of chaos and turmoil, all too often caught and beaten for her thievery. Now and then I would share with her some of the vegetables I'd managed to obtain and, maybe in response to such unexpected kindness, she in turn would tear off some of her stolen bread and return the favor. As the days, weeks, months dripped by, we inevitably got to know each other better.

Oh, Sonja was a clever one. She was in and out of the various traders all year long, and knew the black market better than anyone else. Am I the slightest bit surprised that she hit it off so well with Nara? Of course not. After all, Nara was the most agile and fierce of all our dank alley thieves.

Ever since they started working together, the two of them complemented each other so well that they were never again caught, instead going on to make a killing with every single job. They made sure to share their profits and goods with us, yet we still remained the target of extortion and bullying by the various other gangs.

One evening, Sonja came looking for us.

She and Nara, tired of the other gangs lording it over us, wanted to form their own group. This would give us orphans, the scurrying inhabitants of the alleys, a proper foothold in Rustport. Together with Nara, she told us of their vision, something we never would have countenanced in a million years: they wished for us to live well, able to eat and drink our fill, as one family. And so it was that the Whispers were born, and we felt we'd finally come home.

It didn't take long for the Whispers to earn a reputation for itself in Rustport.

While Nara's obvious ruthlessness and brutality terrified the other gangs, they still hadn't realized Sonja's strategy, which aimed to elevate the Whispers head and shoulders above the other Rustport gangs.

Blood and roses... These, to me, perfectly symbolize Nara and Sonja. Nara's savagery stained the ground of this sinful land with the blood of countless opponents, while Sonja was more a gorgeous, mud-encrusted rose, tangled and bristling with the thorns of sin.

In order to make real money, we Whispers had to carve out our own unique niche. We gradually found an emerging market in the trade of... "Special" goods, which became our best chance to make it big. Nara bribed her way to ensure the sea routes were open for the Whispers to bring back our plunder, which she held at port for Sonja to dispose of. The excellent coordination between the two have allowed us to really profit from this emerging new industry. As our business grew, Sonja discovered that smuggling was not without risk: while she had always respected and followed the unwritten code of smugglers, the expanding gang brought in more and more people, some of whom may not be so faithful to the criminal creed. There were those who were not above playing multiple sides for their own personal benefit. Once the smuggling lines were leaked, the Whispers had to contend not just with the threat of robbery, but also with the fact that the leaker may well be a member of our own little "family".

Inevitably, this fear became reality. Our secret smuggling routes were leaked to rival gangs by those closest to us. Nara wiped out those who ambushed our goods, while the leaker defected to our rivals.

Faced with those who had once shared bread and battle by our sides, and who now worked to harm the interests of our family, seeds of suspicion were sown and took root in the hearts of many of the Whispers.

This caused the very first argument to erupt between Nara and Sonja. Nara wanted to publicly execute those in the Whispers who were suspected of being traitors, to serve as a warning to others.

She even thought to begin with the earliest members of the gang. Her rage and distress terrified me, yet I was also cognizant of the arrogant, entitled attitude amongst many of these old "veterans". They were no longer satisfied by the wealth the Whispers generated for them, desirous of ever more power, and secretly making moves within our own ranks by leaning on the newest members.

Sonja, however, was more hesitant to take such drastic measures. Perhaps she was reluctant to dig too deeply into the treachery of those with whom she had risen from the mud of the slums. Whatever her motive, she was unwilling to kill the traitors, preferring instead the "merciful" option of banishment.

Their quarrel ended as Nara slammed a door and stormed off. Sonja said not a word, perhaps in resentment of her own hesitation, as she had never before had such a major disagreement with Nara. My own conjecture is that Sonja still believed in the Whispers' original purpose: to provide a stable home for the worms struggling in the mud of the slums. Now that this dream was realized, how could she evict her own " family"?

Nara vanished. One day she set sail on an ordinary voyage, and just never returned. Sonja exhorted all Whispers to search for them, but no trace was ever found. The other gangs felt that with Nara's disappearance we had lost our most powerful deterrent, and began eyeing what had previously been unequivocally under our command. Discontent inside the Whispers also surged, and even I could hear the tavern rumors that there were plans afoot to overthrow the Whispers from within.

Not everyone was rooting for Nara. Some of the veteran members secretly rejoiced, as they eyed Sonja's position as leader and dreamt of seizing power for themselves. For Sonja, these circumstances opened her eyes, stripping away her tolerance of and faith in the old guard. She abandoned her merciful approach, shook off the pain of Nara's disappearance, and began to ruthlessly screen all those around her. She discerns the traitors in her midst and, after a mental and physical flaying, rejects them back into the mud and slime of the slums, broken and dejected.

No one could have seen this coming. That the girl who used to cry because her moldy bread was stolen could make such a cruel decision. Sonja retaliated against the traitors even more than Nara, until no one even dared think of betrayal, and all of Rustport was in awe. Sonja no longer showed pity to those who shared her background, while those orphans she rescued from the slums had to pay everything for the privilege.

I almost do not recognize Sonja now. She has shaved off her long, golden hair, and carved roses into her temples. She no longer smiles at me, but beneath her ice-cold expression constantly wonders if I am tempted to betray her. She had trusted us, and we were unable to repay her with unerring loyalty. She can but watch over the Whispers and, even if she feels the task too heavy to bear alone, will never give up. She knows that only by making the Whispers even stronger, will Nara be able to find her way home.

Sonja is an iron rose blooming among thorns. She has trodden on the corpses of countless traitors, turned her back on the last vestiges of goodwill, and climbed step by step onto the throne of power. The Whispers is not just an empire she built with Nara, but also testament to her ambition and greed.

I am but a bystander to her life of sin, which one may call cruel, another great.

She will never be satisfied with what she has and, while she used to be kind, she now wields total control over life and death in the Whispers, despite never needing to ever again dirty her own hands.

"Desire is the rose that cuts its way through the sinful soil which is covered in blood. That is my weapon.”

Whispers and Shadows (Nara & Sonja union story)

1. The towering waves overturned thecargo ship from Rustport, causing the hull to flip onto the surface of the sea.

The crew cried out in despair as they were swallowed up by the raging waves.

Nara tried to grab the broken spar in front of her, but before she could press her body against the mast, she was dragged into the sea by the person next to her, her arms covered in blood. The pain of salt water rushing into her wounds was quickly drowned out by the crashing waves. During the last throes of her consciousness, the crimson blood that spread in the sea blinded her eyes, and the pungent seawater poured into her nostrils, suffocating her.

The last time she felt such suffocation was when she was a child. Back then, she used to hide with her father in the alleys of Rustport to avoid their creditors. They would bury themselves in piles of garbage reeking of rotten fish soaked in stale water - the same odor that invaded her nostrils now as the salty seawater threatened to drown her.

Nara's memories of her father were filled with hatred. The shameless old man had promised her time and time again that he would give her a stable home once he paid off his debts. But his broken promises only brought her endless disappointment. Eventually, even the disappointment faded away, because she no longer held any hope for her father. When her father was killed by his creditors, Nara hid in a garbage heap and struggled to hold her breath.

Perhaps when she woke up from her suffocating stupor, everything would have passed.

Nara became an orphan, wandering alone in the slums and surviving by stealing. Being beaten up black-and-blue was par for the course with her, and sometimes she even had to fight over scraps of food with wild dogs. She had lost all the innocence that she should have had at her age. Instead, she had to be cunning and even resort to deception to get a measly piece of moldy bread.

Life was like a bone-chilling deep ocean, and except to hold her breath, she was helpless.

She never harbored any hope for a rescuing hand to pull her out form the depths of this ocean. Not until Sonja appeared.

2. The seawater no longer stung Nara's scarred skin like a sharp blade. She even felt a soft touch. She tried to open her eyes, but could only see faint dots no matter how hard she turned her eyeballs. Gradually, the dots took on the familiar shape of Sonja's hand reaching out to her.

Their meeting began with a theft in a dark alley. Sonja, also an orphan, used to wander in the alleys of the slums before she met Nara. Sonja relied on her exceptional intelligence to secretly learn various knowledge that might benefit her.

Compared to Nara's roughness, she seemed particularly cautious. After all, given her lack of agile physical skills, she could easily be caught, beaten, and perhaps even die from that.

On that day, Nara, who was starving, went to a bakery in Rustport. Hunger made her clumsy and her mind dull. So much so that when she smelled the freshly baked bread, she almost lost her faculties and wanted to burst out from her hiding spot in the kitchen's corner and grab it right away. Even a piece of moldy bread was a delicacy that the homeless orphans in this stinking harbor could only dream of, yet at that moment, such a slice of heaven was within Nara's arm's reach.

When Sonja came across Nara, the latter was pinned to the ground by the shopkeeper, covered in blood and filth.

Such was common sight for Sonja, who was even considering using the distraction to swipe something useful from the cupboard. However, when their eyes met, Sonja changed her mind. Nara' s gaze was deep and filled with intense resentment and despair, as if she was calling for help while also declaring war on life.

Carefully, Sonja retrieved an unburnt piece of coal from the stove and used it to ignite the discarded wood planks in the back alley, while the shopkeeper was distracted. The sudden thick smoke frightened the shopkeeper, who abandoned Nara and rushed to put out the fire. Seizing the opportunity, Sonja pulled Nara out of the bakery, taking a few freshly baked loaves of bread on the way.

In this dog-eat-dog world of Rustport, exposing one's weakness to others meant putting oneself in danger. Yet Nara had allowed Sonja to witness her most vulnerable state, perhaps hoping that someone would see through her feebleness and offer a helping hand. For so long, Nara had been wandering the dark alleys alone, but now she asked Sonja if she would be willing to join forces and move forward together. She wanted to prove to Sonja that she was more than just the girl who was beaten and covered in mud, and show the nimbleness and agility that had kept her alive for so long.

Their bond began on the day they met and from then on, they established the Whispers together, building a sanctuary for Nara's soul. As long as she could return to Sonja's side, there would always be warm hands waiting to soothe her icy soul.

Yet, as the spark of life within her dwindled, Nara realized that she was stil a helpless victim of fate, unable to grasp the hand that was reaching out to her.

3. Nara no longer felt any pain, and the last glimmer of light in her eyes faded away. In fact, she knew from the beginning that everything up until now was just a dying dream. Nothing more than an illusion.

Before their latest voyage, Nara and Sonja had a fierce argument. Nara had angrily stormed out of the room, leaving Sonja behind. It was their last conversation, which yet ended in an argument. Nara could not understand Sonja's "hypocritical kindness." Perhaps as an intelligent person, Sonja had her own thoughts on the matter, while a reckless person driven by instinct like Nara could not weigh the pros and con like her. Nara had always relied on Sonja, believing that it was her friend's plansand decisions that had neutralized numerous threats to the Whispers.

Only this time, Sonja made a decision that went against Nara's beliefs.

Sonja often warned Nara not to be satisfied with the status quo, as they had already sacrificed too much for their cause. Nara's injuries, Sonja's sleepless nights - they were all for the sake of protecting those they wanted to keep safe... And yet they had been given tyrannical and cruel labels by the very people they were trying to help.

Nara knew that the argument over how to deal with the traitors was just a reflection of the Whispers' plight, but if she could become stronger and prevent the traitors from doing anything that would harm the Whispers, maybe she could bring everything back on track?

As she sank into the cold abyss, the darkness consumed Nara's vision, leaving her with no chance for regret.

The ocean currents pulled her deeper and deeper until she reached the ocean floor. In her final moments, she realized that none of it mattered anymore. The survival of the Whispers, or punishing the traitors—they were all irrelevant now. All she wanted was to return to Rustport, to the Whispers, and to Sonja's side, where those warm hands could once again comfort her icy soul.

4. "O slumbering assassin. Thou whose nature shy not from killing or plundering, shall be reborn. Serve me, and I will grant thee immortality."

After what felt like an eternity, a low whisper echoing through the deep sea stirred Nara's dormant, icy soul. She was surrounded by a hollow darkness, submerged in the depths for what felt like ages, until the voice infused her with a power that lifted her above the waves.

Penetrating dim light shafts came into her line of sight, and she caught a glimpse of brightness once again.

However, this light was tainted with the color of decay, just like her own rotten body. Her longing to return home had led her to hear the call from the abyss.

Despite knowing that the voice must have malicious designs, she did not hesitate to say yes. For even after spending dozens of days and nights at the bottom of the sea as a corpse, which had left her memories on the verge of shattering, she still remembered that there was someone waiting for her return in a place called Rustport.

As for the cost? That was never a consideration. Nara would gladly give all that she had.

"Go back. Return to where you belong, and embrace the pleasure that death brings you."

As her decayed body ascended from the seabed, her shattered hands regained strength. As she approached the sea surface, sunlight penetrated the dark water and shone on Nara's cold body once again. In a trance, she saw the blurry figure of an old acquaintance reflected on the surface, reaching out a familiar yet strange hand towards her.

Without hesitation, Nara reached out and grasped at that hand.

Yet there was nothing but air.