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celticcrossanon · 3 years

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I’m so sorry for the rant. I just needed to clear my head and got compelled to do it in your inbox. 🙇🏾‍♀️

Not a question just some thoughts. Sorry I’m spamming you so much. I just read your latest reading about the wanna be“tour” and all I can do is SMH. I think to some extent we saw this coming but they are dialing it up and expanding. Conscious humans would’ve called it quits by now. The Remembrance Day pap walk, Going to elementary schools, “donations”, writing letters like they are world leaders, etc. On one hand I can’t see this becoming much of a “thing”. I don’t think MM and Jarry will go on doing this for long unless they can get some Hollywood to pay attention and acknowledge them. I think another reason with the more public European Royals work so well in their media is because their countries are relatively small, like California and Texas are on the large side in comparison, am I right? So much can happen on one side of the country that I only hear of thanks to friends back in California. I can’t see these two visiting any farm in Montana as “royals” if ever. They got a Clinton and Perhaps more big names and “engagement” is to come (oh god 🤦🏾‍♀️) I’m sure they and the sugars are just loving it but it all looks, sounds and feels so incrediblly STUPID & ABSOLUTELY VAPID AND INSULTING. etc etc. I cannot stand entitled people and the fact that these two cut off, trashed, and demand from their own families for a fleeting moment in the spotlight is unfathomable. That’s a testimony to how strong narcissistic delusions can be. It must be the best high I could ever ask for. 🖤Im new to “Royal Watching” if you can call what I do ‘that’, so I don’t really care about all the other indiscretions. I don’t trust the media and I think it’s just the BRF turn in the hot sun to catch hell. See Andrew, see the Clintons and all the others. Whatever drama is going on with Charles, see the rest of big business. I’m a narcissistic abuse survivor and I still study on the disorder. Now here I am watching these two who make my skin craw, this train needs to SPEED UP . I think I’m just looking for a bit of JUSTICE in the world right now. Between this administration, COVID, my job and all my other drama (I’m sure we all have some, if not BLESS YOU and pass it on 🥺) I’m flabbergasted and a little sick in my stomach at watching yet another set of people be able to walk through life seemingly so unbothered. It’s like the world is closing in and I’m suffocating. 🖤Like, your telling me that just because he was born a Prince and she married him and found a way to have children they get to get away with all of this?. The entitlement, the lies, the forced Wokery, using heavy and important subjects like mental health and racism for a PR boost all just to get a⭐️ on the Hollywood walk of Fame? For a couple of royals they sure know how to dump cold water on ya, they are the epitome of LIFE ISNT FAIR. And I’m sure that all depends on perspective, for example; their sugars who must be going diabetic RN. THEY think they have suffered as well. Look at the Cambridge’s who have not put a foot out of place yet have to deal with these tantrums from all over their family. All families have drama and I can see how the Harkles and the rest could be a payback of the Firm and family as a whole. The Queen covered so much and never really saw that Henry and Andrew and god knows who else were set straight. Look what having so much privilege can do. But is there a limit, anywhere?🖤

🖤Anyways, another thought I had was, this could be the end for any thought of reunion. This Narcissist has worked her magic and this clueless tone deaf fool has really gone and done it. I was driving and I thought of Prince William and the entire remaining Windsors & Mountbatten Windsor’s and the whole Aristocracy cutting the Harkles off entirely because the BRF called a wrap (or had to) and the UK became a Republic after Her Majesty. MM get the privlage in her narcissistic head that she’s the last ever to become a Duchess, Cathrine wouldn’t become the Princess of Wales and it all came down in part because of her and Henry’s actions. Yes Andrew and whoever else aren’t helping but these two made it exceptionally difficult. I think they would take pride in that especially publicly but only when they are praised for it. I think the Cambridge’s would have an easier time with moving on with their family, free to live as they please with no pressure to serve the public. Cathrine can be “lazy”, sleep in, & raise her kids and Wills is free to🖕 the paps who would surely still follow them. A La “where are they now”. The two that would have it the worse are the Harkles as they last bit of what they had to separate them from the rest of Hollywood is gone, no more Royal sheen but they don’t have much now. It would be stupid to use the titles after an abolished monarchy but they’d do it and expose themselves further.🖤 If you made it this far, one last thing. I got cut off while driving. That’s not unusual in this Miami traffic and usually i ignore it but with my mental state I couldn’t help but to compare. it was a packed road and I just really wanted to know where the heck the fire was. Why did this person need to rush so much on a busy road that no one else mattered even though we all have somewhere to go? That’s how I feel about the Harkles. What’s the point, where are they going? They went to New England for Christ sake to play faux royalty, in more trashy outfits might I add. 🤦🏾‍♀️

I guess I do have a question, DOES THE WORLD REALLY BELONG TO THOSE WHO JUST Get UP AND TAKE IT?

Thanks for humoring me and providing this space. ✌🏾

Note: My apologies for this very long post, everyone. I can't put a page break in and the writer needs to let it all out. I am sure a lot of you will be feeling somewhat similar to them.

Reply under the cut, so this is not any longer

Hi april14vc,

You are welcome to rant here.

It sounds like you have a lot going on at the moment and it is all becoming a bit much to handle, as there is no relief anywhere. Is there something fun and relaxing that you can do for you sometime today, just to have a break from it all? I feel like you need to tune out for a bit and do something that is just for you.

I am so sorry that you suffered from narcissistic abuse, and so glad that you survived this. I think the Harkle shenanigans must hurt you in a more personal way than those of us who have never suffered under a narcissist. It is very hard to watch the Harkles seemingly get away with all their entitled abuse without any form of justice coming for them.

I think the Harkles are suffering. They usually are unable to get any sort of attention from the media unless they pay for it, and even then they don't trend - it is a 'blink and you miss it' situation. Look at what happened with Meghan's 40 for 40 program - it was dead in the water before the day was over, and she spent a fortune on PR for that. Compare that to the natural (not paid for) hype that surrounds anything that the BRF does, especially the Cambridges or HMTQ. That hype and attention is what Meghan wants, and she is not getting it.

What the Harkles are getting, and what they hate, is mockery. Look at the response to their Times 100 cover. Look at the comments on this pseudo-royal tour. They are a walking joke, and no narcissist would like that. They tried to cull all negative press while they were members of the BRF, were unsuccessful in stemming all of it, and now have no clout at all to stop any negative media attention. The Harkles may live in a delusion of success, but to the vast majority of people they are no more than very risible z-list celebrities.

The Harkles also have serious money troubles. They may be ignoring them, but those debts will have to be paid, one way or another.

What we are seeing now is the slow slide of the Harkles into obscurity, and their desperate attempts to reverse the process, which never work. They are no more popular and wanted now than they were at the time of Megxit, and in fact their popularity has declined since those days. They may look like they are winning, but it is all an illusion, caused by the amounts of money they are prepared to pay to give the illusion of wealth and star-quality celebrity. The paid for events happen, and then nothing. The paid for PR happens, and then nothing. Their slide downwards continues, and nothing that they do is reversing it.

Yes, at the moment they are on a high and beaming put of every report on their activities. Wait a week and then see where they are. This is like the Oprah interview all over again.

My next reading is going to be on the consequences of this pseudo-royal tour for the Harkles, so maybe there will be some justice for you there.

Edited to add: As for taking down the monarchy, I can't see that happening. For starters, the British government would have to put the matter to the people for a vote, and even if they are insane enough to do that, I can't see the British public voting to remove a beloved Queen because of the antics of two people who are despised that that country. The logistics of replacing the monarchy are also staggering - you have to rework the entire government of not just Great Britain, but of all the commonwealth realms who have HMTQ as Head of State, and that is not an easy task or a light undertaking. In addition, those Commonwealth Realms can keep HM as their head of state even if she is ejected by the British people (which would never happen, but I am stretching the bounds of probability here). After HMTQ comes Charles, who will have a short reign simply because of his age and health, and then William will be king, and he is also loved by the British public. I just can not see all that thrown away for the Harkles, who are rightly hated by the British public.

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jaybug-jabbers · 3 years

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Shuffling Save Files Between Pokemon Red/Blue and Yellow

Here’s a fun experiment: what happens if you load a Red/Blue save file into Pokemon Yellow?

(Note: these experiments were performed with VBA 1.7.2. This is not a perfect emulator for Gameboy games, so keep in mind some behavior may differ on real hardware.)

Red/Blue In Yellow

I took a Blue save file from Cinnabar Island. In fact, this save file was one I used for my Glitch Pokemon playthrough of the game. Then I simply renamed the file into a Yellow save and opened up Yellow.

The map loads into a sort of Glitch City-esque scramble. When I tried to walk, my steps were very laggy but still worked. Eventually with enough walking, the lag went away and I walked like normal. Flying away from this ‘glitch city’ will refresh the map and make everything look normal again.

Checking on the pokemon in my party and PC, I find that I have pokemon perfectly transferred over. The glitch pokes are all of the Yellow counterparts. For example, here’s Wobbles (E9). In Red/Blue, E9 is “c”, a Bug type, and in Yelllow, E9 is “4HI?”, a Nidorino hybird.

(There are differences in stats and levels due to the species differences)

Is that it, then? Can you transfer a Red/Blue save into Yellow without any other issues besides a temporarily scrambled map?

Well, not quite. It seems some of the event flags get messed up. For instance, here the Old Man is in a state where he has both had his coffee and has not had his coffee, simultaneously. I like to call this the ‘Coffee Paradox.’ If you enter Viridian City and try to pass, the Old Man will stop you, despite his double lounging around up there looking just fine.

This can be fixed-- just fly to Pewter, walk through the forest and talk to the cranky man from the other direction.

He’ll walk away and you’re all free now.

However, this isn’t the only Coffee Paradox that occurs. In the Blue save file I was using, I had all the badges except the Earth Badge. In Yellow, the man is no longer blocking the Viridian Gym’s door and announces the gym leader has returned. Yet, when you go inside his gym . . .

He’s not in there! You can fight all the other trainers but Giovani is nowhere to be found. I visited Blaine’s gym to see if the flag re-set there, but nope, I couldn’t defeat him a second time. So, looks like further progress can’t be made unless you use cheats or exploit glitches.

Yellow in Red/Blue

What about the reverse, now? What if I tried to move a Yellow save file into Red or Blue?

The results are pretty varied and entertaining, as it turns out. A lot of the time, when attempting this, you will load in a very glitched map, unable to move or open your menu. Sometimes, random NPCs will be walking across your screen in a loop. The correct music plays for whatever location you had saved in Yellow. And, the game apparently may even try to load in the Pikachu that follows you in Yellow. As you can see here, the odd shapes below Red are in the location the Pikachu was last seen in Yellow:

However, it’s pretty much broken. If you hit the ‘a’ key, the game usually just resets.

Other times, when trying to open a Yellow save, the game may have a jumbled screen and flash very rapidly.

However, OTHER times . . . you may load in a glitchy map but retain the ability to move/use your menu. (In fact, one time, the game seemed to load in a random sprite to act as my following “Pikachu” and it followed me as I walked!) You might be able to talk with NPCs who give you error messages and play music or make strange sounds. The doors to buildings might even work for you-- which is a huge bonus. You can enter the building and find things normal inside. After that, you seem free to play the game as normal. It can actually work-- you can bring your Yellow save into Red/Blue!

How exactly you do this consistently, I’m not sure. I tried a lot of different locations. When I saved the game inside a building, a single step away from the door, and then moved the Yellow file to Red/Blue, I often had success with that. That seems to make it much more likely that you keep the ability to move and eventually clear up the glitchiness.

Can you play the Yellow save file on Red/Blue normally after that, though? Well, maybe, but maybe not.

In one experiment, I began a new Yellow game. I played through until I got my starter and obtained Oak’s parcel and got the Pokedex. Then, in Viridian City, I saved my game inside the Pokecenter, one step from the door. I moved the file to Red. The Pokecenter looked very glitchy but I stepped out the door. I exited the building, but then my character re-entered the building automatically, and then the Old Man tutorial was triggered. The tutorial played out as normal and I was returned to the Pokecenter. I stepped out of the Pokecenter once more, the final bit of Old man dialogue popped up (You have to weaken the target pokemon first!) and then from there, things seemed normal.

. . . except, well, walking into Pallet Town crashed the game. I was able to progress if I ignored Pallet Town, though. I could catch pokemon, I beat Brock’s gym, etc. So, in conclusion, there may be residual glitches from the process.

Fooling around with these save files also offers some interesting possibilities with the opening of the game. In another experiment, I began a new Yellow game and saved after I took a single step into the tall grass. (In Yellow, you need to take two steps into the grass before Oak intervenes. In Red/Blue, it’s one.) Then I moved the save file to Red. Pallet Town was very glitched as usual, but I could walk, and I bumped around until I somehow eventually found the entrance to Oak’s lab.

In there, I could see what Oak’s lab looks like before you trigger the Oak ‘follow me’ event. You find Professor Oak right by the entrance of the lab. If you speak to him, he gives you a single question mark.

I’m guessing this is a failsafe, similar to when you try to speak to the Pokemon in the tiny ‘zoo’ in the Safari Zone, which normally you can never reach unless you use walk-through-walls.

If you walk further into the room you will find there are in fact two Professor Oaks in the lab:

Also, curiously, Bulbasaur’s ball is absent. I don’t know why. If you speak to Gary, he will say “Gramps is not around,” and if you speak to this Oak, he will ask you which pokemon you want. If you interact with the pokeballs, however, the game will just tell you “Those are Poke Balls, they contain Pokemon!”

It seems like a softlock, but if you go out and try to leave Pallet Town, the Oak follow-me event will trigger. Then you re-enter the lab and this time, you can accept a pokemon. As long as it’s Charmander or Squirtle. We’re fresh out of Bulbasaurs.

If you take Squirtle, Blue will take an invisible Bulbasaur, though. And interestingly, if you choose Charmander, Blue will pick up Squirtle and Oak will be left with an empy table. It’s just kind of neat to see!

Anyway, those are my experiments for now. Next I might fool around with swapping save files between different language versions of the game, or test this out on a more accurate emulator.

#pokemon #pokemon glitching #glitch pokemon #mystuff

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devintrinidad · 4 years

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So since you’re working on a Cancer driven story. I’m going to ramble about the semi popular reverse role au where 3802 is the WBC and 1146 is the RBC. I’ve only seen some (really good) fanart (by the same blog that did fanart of some of your stories!) and read one or two stories on it. But today some stuff hit me and I want to try to make hc’s on how that’s a thing.

For starters In this verse some things are switched around. The whole shock incident happened already. I wanted DB5963 to be around and the shock incident wouldn’t propel 1146’s character development any since I see him as being already RBC.

Anyway 1146, 2001, 4989, 2048 and 2626 are all RBCs (I’m kind of thinking Esinophil too. If only because I wanted her to still be 1146’s close childhood friend. Or Idk, maybe she can be a cell who grew up to be a young Macrophage so she’s still someone he knows since childhood even if it’s not the same. But whatever).

On the flip side, 3803, 5100, 4201, PO1076 and 4201 are all WBCs.

1146 is pretty much a perfect RBC. He’s experienced. He’s always savvy about routes and knows his way around the body so well he doesn’t even need to carry a map. He’s brave and relentless in the face of danger. He knows how to maneuver around bad areas so often times he’ll recklessly run past bacteria and figure out how to use his environment to his advantage. He’s seen as a great role model of a proper, if not a little extreme, RBC.

3803 is still a little fresh. She gets easily flustered about sudden calls for help in areas she’s unfamiliar with. She’s a bit absent minded with her weapons and sometimes might drop her sword (I’m inspired from CAW Black where the female WBCs all have swords instead of knifes. In this verse just for fun, guys wield daggers, girls wield swords) which her friends are always finding and giving it back with various ranges of amusement to anger born of worry. It’s not that she’s a horribly clumsy. 3803 is a good weapon user. But she’s more into the hand punching to leg kicking to bite ripping flesh combat. Sometimes in the heat of the moment she’ll surprise her enemy by going ape on them and then surprise herself when she realizes she lost her weapon somewhere.

And yeah she still gets lost easily and often is found helpless stuck in walls while transmigrating.

Before I go into the rest, I’ll go over the others: 5100 is 3803’s main mentor in the squad. She’s both supportive and faithful to helping 3803 grow. But she also worries and acts more protective since their line of work is more dangerous. She calls 3803 on the radio several times a day and if 3803 doesn’t check in fast enough, she panics. Her and 1076 are the typical brute warrior WBCs. They stick to protocol and do what’s expected of them. They’re typically always a duo so they have excellent teamwork. But 5100 displays her best teamwork with 3803 when the two are in berserk mode at it’s best.

5963 is a new addition that came with the armada of RBCs. He quickly established himself as the unofficial leader of the squad without any fuss from anyone. His positive and relaxed demeanor makes him easy to work with. However he’s the most experienced so he’s no softy on the battlefield. He’s brutal and can scare any non immune cell watching into fainting.

4201 is the newest recruit to the squad. She came sometimes after the shock incident so she wasn’t there to witness the end of the world. She’s a prodigy in her knowledge of Bacteria weakness multiple forms of self defense. She knows protocol like the back of her hand and is above average in nearly all areas. Her biggest weakness is that she gets easily defeated in overwhelming situations and will lose her nerve if there’s a enemy she thinks she can’t win against. She’s assigned to shadow 3803 around her big moment of realizing she has a lot to learn from 3803 is when Cancer shows up. Beyond that she usually partners with 3803 for patrols. Also she dislikes the Killer Ts and finds a lot of them obnoxious but is professional enough to never let that interfere with work.

Also 4989 is the RBC who is always trying to invent better ways to transport packages. One time he slingshot his oxygen delivery into a 3rd story window and nearly knocked the poor Normal cell out.

Anyway, 1146 met 3803 while on the job. She was stuck in the wall and desperately calling for backup on the radio. Everyone was busy so 1146, having pity for the pathetic WBC, came over to pull her out. Before she could even thank him, he was one his way barely giving her a glance. 1146 wasn’t one for gossip or prejudice. He respected the immune system for what they did and had no ill will. But he was a professional and never had any reason or interest to interact with, much less be thanked by, them. He was a good guy but he wasn’t in the mindset for making friends with other cell types.

The weird WBC however didn’t think that. She followed after him asking for directions to the lungs. If this was any other WBC, 1146 admits he’d feel a little nervous since immune cells, from his pov, typically only interact with you to protect you or slay you if you’ve become a threat (1146 is experienced enough to have seen the latter happen to a few of his brethren). But this weird WBC came off as so unusual and weak he wondered if even a platelet could take her. The impression got worse when a Killer T and his squad showed up to mock her for her weakling status and how she was probably going to die and get the RBC killed with her.

It made him wonder if he should worry about his life or hers more.

He showed her to the lungs and parted ways. Determined to make his delivery on time so he could help out 4989 later with his double shipments as promised. Along the way the Bacteria shows up and 1146 distracts it from chasing other RBCs by throwing himself in harms way. Thinking this is it, he determines at least he made the delivery and saved some other RBCs. 3803 pops up at the last moment. Tumbling from the ceiling in a rather ungraceful way. But she doesn’t care. She’s just grateful she made it to the right vent this time!

3803 attacks the bacteria to defend 1146 and all other RBCs. She slashes away and nearly gets her head cut off a few times. 1146 uses the time to warn off all other RBCs, but can’t help but linger nearby to see if she’ll make it. When the bacteria is about to kill a wandering cell, 3803 goes berserk and ditches the sword and starts ripping into the monster. It’s the goriest thing 1146 has ever seen. 1146 sees the sneeze capsule and calls 3803’s attention to it. She gets the idea and pushes the bacteria to the spot and manages to push the button and save the day. She thanks 1146 again for his help and then starts doting on his injured hand by wrapping it up in bandages. Much to his surprise since she’s the one covered in gashes and ooze. She asks if they’ll meet again. He doesn’t think so. But he makes sure his goodbye is a little warmer then the last two times. He gives her his handkerchief so she can wipe her face and see a little better before parting ways.

That’s how the first meeting goes.

Some more hc’s.

3803 is a berserk beast. It wasn’t always apparent but one day when her favorite platelet, Leader Chan, got threatened. She went absolutely savage and all out. She will channel all her determination to win into a primal rage that has other WBCs respecting her more after that. Say what they will, she has that protective instinct and willingness to never give up down down to near perfection.

1146 will retrieve her weapons when he finds them and give them back to her. He often worries someone won’t pick them up for her or she’ll forget to find them if her signal goes off. If he doesn’t see her with her sword after a battle, he will automatically start looking for it.

Despite 3803 being the WBC, 1146 eventually becomes VERY protective of her. Almost overprotective. He helps her when she’s lost no matter what. He always checks out allyways to make sure she’s not stuck. He always helps her find her weapon. He immediately shuts up any ungrateful Normal cell or RBC that makes fun of her or acts rude in a very cold manner. Even if she’s not around to hear it.

One time he saw Killer T yelling at her after a fierce battle with Influenza. He was scolding her harshly for getting herself injured being so soft when saving a Normal cell instead of being more vigilante. If she wasn’t so useless she could do both easily. Her eyes start to water and she apologizes a lot and promises to do better. She runs off and before Killer T can react, 1146 is up in his face and very calmly asks him to never yell at her for trying to do her job the best she can. 1146 then coolly leaves Killer T stunned that some punk RBC just scolded him in a calm rage without any fear. Killer T and 1146 still have a unusual relationship in this verse (1146 is savvy enough to know Killer T can yell all he wants but he can’t hit him).

3803 will often tag along with 1146 during his deliveries and he teaches her all the routes he knows and how to better navigate. He comes to really enjoy it and gets a bit disappointed when she has to run off during one of her stories about her day.

NK cell first befriended 3803 in this verse solely because she seems to piss off Killer T so much (Killer T actually does respect her growth a bit and care about what happens to 3803 as a fellow immune cell. Yelling harshly is partly his way of caring. But her antics still annoy him). 3803 considers NK to be the coolest immune cell in the body (after 5100 or tied). NK gets flustered yet pleased with this attention and acts like another big sis to her.

1146 will wipe her face for her with handkerchiefs if she gets too much guts on them.

Cancer meets both 1146 and 3803 the first time around while they on walking together. She doesn’t realize he’s a cancer cell until much later. She spends almost the whole day protecting both of them from germs and Cancer appreciates 1146’s company and 3803’s kindness to other cells. When Cancer dies, 1146 approaches to pay his respects and 3803 (who landed the final blow, much to everyone’s surprise) ends up crying over him and devastated over his fate and loss of their friendship. Cancer falls in love with 3803 for being so different and unusual. He also vows to talk with 1146 again in hopes he’ll find the answer to his questions about life and destiny. 1146 is disturbed by both revelations (3803 didn’t get Cancer’s love confession to her. 1146 did and dislikes it and also how much Cancer made him think about life in ways he didn’t want to).

Uhm that might be it for now.

~~~~

Okay, where were you when I wrote Transmigrating Universes? XD OTL

Hahahah! Look at all of this head canons and snippets of what could really be a wonderful, well written au! Seriously, I love how you included the different relationships among characters and how they would have adapted as different cell types! Special spotlight on 4989 because he would definitely be that one innovative red blood cell while the rest try to get him to use more traditional, and standard regulated dollies.

But, of course, the real star of the show is definitely 3803 and 1146. I love how you reworked the first chapter/episode here. It goes to show how differently they would react to different situations, how they would have adapted, and ultimately, how their relationship would evolve. Although different, there is still that sense of platonic/romantic relationship that is based on true friendship.

And that whole Cancer bit at the end,,, hahaha!

Thank you so much for the delightful, in depth analysis! It was truly inspiring and terrific!

Thank you and I hope that you have a wonderful day! :D

#caw #cells at work #hataraku saibou #caw anon #anon ask #devintrinidad author #devintrinidad #devin trinidad author #devin trinidad #ae-3803 #3803 #ae3803 #u1146 #1146 #u-1146 #caw cancer #caw cancer cell #submission

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zenfulmockingbird · 4 years

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Spellbound ep.2: Corryvreckan Surprise

A Pokemon Journey. For most starter, this event helps us expand our horizon and allow us to see interesting sights. That what I trained for before meeting him. That why I prepared myself for the anything unexpected...but with even with all that, I was not prepare for what happened. The sun was shining that day as we started our Pokémon journey. We decided to look around for some Pokemon to join us. If only I knew what was going to happen to them. We met Balto again along with his mate Jenna. They told us that they wanted to come with us. At first, I thought Itzal was going to just take one, but I was surprised that he decided to take them both. Same for when we caught a two Zigzagoons and two Wingulls. Did he caught them because of he knew what was going to happen or was he going to be one of those trainers who catches whatever he sees. We met the gym leader Norman and Wally at Petalburg. Turn out Wally had an illness and was going to move away and came to gym leader for help in catching a Pokémon for him to take with Vendaturf Town, but Norman could not because he had a gym battle later on. Itzal offer to keep a close eye on Wally while he tried to capture one. Norman agreed to the arrangement and gave Wally a Zigzagoon. We looked around and manage to find a male Ralts name Odin and Wally caught him with no problem. I thought that would be the highlight of our start to our journey...Boy, how wrong I was. I do not know why it happened, but the Pokémon we caught; our allies... the transformed. At first, I thought they were evolving due to the familiar glow, but when it started, they didn't start to take on the shapes of their evolved form, instead they took on shapes of other Pokémon... Balto was no longer an alpha male Poochyena, but instead a tiny blue Taillow, Jenna became a gigantic metal titan Aggron, Carmelita became a Poochyena, while her brother Sly became a red and grey flying type Pokémon; Fletchling, and finally Waker Wingull became a Rotom, a living spark Pokémon... Thus, bringing us back to here. Standing in the middle of Petalburg Forest in a daze. “What just happened?” Jenna looked around in confusion, “Why does is everything smaller?” “I feel like I went through...” Balto froze “Why is my voice sound higher?” Itzal frantically pull out a mirror a showed them what they had become and let out a scream. “Why are we different species of Pokémon?” “Magic,” Itzal answered nervously, “But you have to believe me when I say I am not the one behind this. I was dumbfounded by his response “None of us were suspecting you till you opened your big mouth.” “Wait, wait, wait. Let me explain.” Jenna tap her feet “You got two minutes to explain.” “Okay,” Itzal took a deep breath “My dad’s side of the family has a curse dating way to a few years ago after the Kalos wars. The curse transforms Pokémon into a different being and we are not just talking about into different species. We’re talking about levels, we’re talking moves, we’re sex.” “Sex?” Balto stepped into a bush. Moment later he stepped out drained of all colors “my...my..my...” Jenna gaze at him with concern “Honey, what wrong?” “My dong is gone.” Itzal pulled out his Pokedex and started scanning everyone “Acordding to Pokedex, you’re now a lv.5 female Taillow. Jenna is now a lv.54 Aggron, sex still the same. Carmelita is now lv.2 male Poochynena, Sly is a lv.3 Fletchling, and Waker is.” “not having any of this.” We all looked at the Rotom in confusion “I joined this team in hope of becoming a Pelipper much quicker, not to become a floating power source.” “And didn’t sign up to end up with shlong,” Carmelita said before setting her gaze on me, “Also you listed everyone except for Manami. Why didn’t she transform?” That what caught my attention. I am the only one unaffected by this “...The wizard who cast this spell likes a challenge and keep the starter as is.” I felt no drop of confidence in those barren words. “Bull!” Waker shouted, spark flying from his body “You and she are in cahoots,” I was shocked by what he by his frightening claim. I was being falsely accused of being accomplice to causing what happened to them “Reverse this spell right now.” “I don’t know.” “Then,” Carmelita snagged her Poke Ball and snagged the Poke ball smashed it against the ledge “I’m leaving.” “Same,” Waker replied “I don’t want to do with anything with these bastards.” Carmelita grabbed the other Waker’s and destroyed it of them dashed, each one going into different directions. Not long after that Jenna and Alue followed them as well. Itzal was frozen like Deerling caught in a headlight. All of the Pokémon he caught had just up and left him. I called to him “Itzal?” “Let’s go.” I was taken back by what he said “Huh?” “They’re free to do whatever they want. I cannot make them do something they do not want to do.” He started to head deeper into the forest and yet despite the smile, I could sadness in his eyes. As we continued to trek the forest path we ran into a scientist. “Hello,” Scientist greeted us “Have you seen any Pokémon called Shroomish around here? I really love that Pokémon.” Itzal shook his head. “Blast. Still, I won't give up my search.” A thug that looked wear a white and blue striped shirt, black pants and bandana with a small white A on. In front of him was a Poochyena; growling ferociously at us. “I was going to ambush you,” the threatening look man groused “but you had to dawdle in Petalburg Woods forever didn't you? I got sick of waiting, so here I am! You! Devon researcher! Hand over those papers!” Itzal and I stepped in front of the scientist. “Oi, ye landlubber best get out of my way or I’ll have my mons mess you up.” “Bring it.” Itzal said. “Manami, use Water gun.” I fired jet stream of water at the Poochyena, causing it to be pushed back a little. The strange man growled in anger “No one crosses Team Aqua get any mercy, not even some guy and his reject Pokémon! Poochyena use howl.” Poochyena let out a courageous howl. “Use water gun again.” I launched another one at the target. I could tell from its heavy breathing that it was almost finished. “Sand attack,” the bite Pokémon kicked some dirt into my eyes. “Hahaha. That should slow you lot down enough for to turn the tides.” “Manami, focus and use water gun.” I nodded and focused on my sense. “Don’t see what good that will do ya. Finish it.” I could sense it. Poochyena charging toward me. I launched one last water gun and heard a yelp. Everything was silent and my heart was racing... I was nervous. The sand had blinded me and if they had something that could make my radar useless and if it is something, I’m weak against, I’ll be in trouble. “Damnit,” I heard a Poke ball recalling it, but it was also of something that I detected that was also making me feel uneasy I heard rapid footsteps getting farther and farther as our new guest got closer and closer I felt someone lifting me and water running down on my eyes. I looked in the direction it was coming from and saw that I was in Itzal's arm and behind him was Jenna and Balto. That why that man ran away. He saw Jenna and Balto. The scientist ran up, grabbed Itzal hand and shook “Thank you kind, sir. Take this.” He hands over a strange collar to Itzal “It an Exp share. Give this to your Pokémon and the EXP it earns will be shared in battle.” He flashed the scientist a coy grin “Thanks. So, why was that guy after you?” The man scratched his head for a moment before his pupils shrunk “I need to go.” “Wait. What going...” Before he could get a word out edge wise, the scientist dashed off, “I wonder what that was all about?” “I do not know, but there one question we could answer right now,” I looked at Jenna and Balto “Why are you two back? I thought you two left along with Carmelita and Waker.” Balto shook his head “No. We didn’t leave because of Itzal concealing this from us. Me and Jenna went after them to convince them to come back.” We were shocked. Itzal gathered his composure, “To comeback?” “Yes. We tried to convince them to comeback just in case you find a way to reverse, but they refused.” “It’s for the best. We cannot force them to come if they don’t want to.” “Then mind I we tagged along instead” we looked behind us and saw Zigzagoon and a Shroomish walking toward us. “Who are you two?” “Names Willy Wonka” the ZIgzagoon greeted us before pointing at the Mushroom Pokémon “and this girl right ahere is Yoko. We saw what a-happened and we got four word to say to ya.” Yoko replied, “We want to join.” Wonka flashed us a grin “Well it mighty interesting ta be a different Pokémon.” “I just want a stronger form,” Yoko chimed in “like really cool, like a Blaziken or Salamance.” “Okay but,” Itzal said “be warned. This curse if is unpredictable and you might not get what you want. Do you still want to join?" They both nodded their head in unison. Itzal pulled out two Poke ball and tossed them at Willy and Yoko. A red light enveloped them, and they were caught with no problem. A faint light surrounded their balls for a moment. Itzal walked over and picked up Willy Wonka's Poke ball. “First up, Willy.” Itzal gently tossed it in the air and white light shot out. Willy was no longer a Zigzagoon, a stripped Litleo. “A Litleo” Willy spoke “... and a mighty purdy girl by the sound of my voice. This will be an interesting ride.” “Next up Yoko.” Itzal called out Yoko and reveal that she has transformed into a Scatterbug. When Itzal showed her reflection, she was displeased by the result. “A Scatterbug,” Yoko griped “Why?” “It’s not that bad.” “My defense is weak as glass and my attack can't do shit. I wanted to become something stronger.” “Then hone the abilities” Balto answered “instead of whining about your form.” “Harsh, but Balto right,” I chimed in “A warrior use the tools they have on them.” Yoko let out a sigh “Fine... Maybe I can get some powerful moves in this form.’ “speaking form,” Willy spoke up “since I’m no longer a boy...” He looks at Itzal, “Am I girl now?” Itzal scanned Willy with his Pokedex, before nodding his head confirming her suspicions, “Well since I’m a girl now, best go by a new name. Call me Jane after Calamity Jane.” “Okay,” Itzal answered “Welcome to the team Jane.” “And what about me?” Yoko asked, “Is my gender the same or did I get rule 63.” Itzal checked “You’re the same gender.” He turned toward Balto “What about you? Do you want to go by a different name?” Balto shook his name. “Alright. Let us get on out of here and rest up at Petalbrug.” We all headed out the forest and back to Pokemon center. As we walked our way back, I could not help but feel sense of unease. Balto Poochynea turned into Hasty Aleu Tailow, Likes to fight, lv5 Jenna poochyena became Heavy Greta Aggron, Hardy, Proud of its power. lv. 54 Carmelita zigzagoon -> male Poochyana lv.2, Mild, Highly persistent. Sly Zigzagoon -> Passerouge, lv.3, quirky, Hates to lose. lv.1 Sparks Rotom was Waker Wingull lv.5 BAC Magikarp was Jetwave Wingull. Willy Wonka Zigzagoon became Jane Litleo (lv.5, docile, often lost in thoughts.) Shroomish became Yoko scatterbug (lv.2, Jolly, Very Finicky)

#pokemon #nuzlocke #wonderlocke #digital art #story #fanfic #mudkip #spellbound

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honeyjaez · 5 years

Text

Maze of Miroh- Chapter 10 “The End of a Family”

Hyunjin sprinted up the stairs, his face being overshadowed by his damp hair that fell in front of his eyes. He was being chased. By Dogs. By Agents. He didn’t exactly know, but needless to say things weren’t going exactly according to the plan.

As he reached another level he busted through the door and slammed it shut behind him, falling onto the ground in a heap of panting mess as he reached inside his jacket pocket, pulling out his cell phone.

“Channie hyung….” he breathed after a few more moments. “We have a problem.”

Minho and Jisung sprang themselves into the small room, wanting to waste no time. The younger boy jumped towards the Master Computer which sat near the front and threw his laptop out on the table, immediately clacking away on its keys.

“What are you doing?”

Jisung didn’t stop typing at Minho’s question but momentarily looked back towards him by throwing his head in his direction.

“I’m looking for anything in their files that will tell me how to shut off the Electric field.”

Minho nodded “Good. While you are at it, see if there is anything about reversing what they did to him.”

Minho heard Jisung’s furious typing cease abruptly and he looked over to see the boy now standing still, his head facing straight ahead.

“Minho…” Minho heard Jisung’s voice trail off, detecting an unexpected uncertainty in his voice.

“There has to be a way” he interjected, knowing full well what was going to be said.

“…and what will you do when there isn’t?”

»»»»»»»

“I swear to fucking god Hyunjin if I hear that one more time …..”

“Channie hyung” the tall black haired boy interrupted “This is serious”

He knew his own voice was exposing his panic and his leader Chan picked up on that almost immediately.

“What is it?” he asked seriously.

“I know we said I would be the one to shoot the bombs off as a distraction” he started “but it would seem The Order is taking matter into their own hands. I witnessed their lead head of security start the fail-safe program.” Hyunjin’s voice trailed off as he continued to catch his breath on the floor. Chan hadn’t said anything so Hyunjin opened his mouth again, his voice genuinely concerned. “Hyung….this building is coming down, along with anyone still inside.”

»»»»»»»

“…and what will you do when there isn’t?”

Jisung’s words were so quiet that Minho had barley heard the words escape the younger lips. But sure enough, he caught them and he felt anger surge through him once again.

“Is there something you’d like to share with the class Jisung?” he spat

Jisung spun around as Minho’s tone struck a chord within him and glared daggers into the elder. His brown eyes narrowed in annoyance and ….. Was that worry?

“Well if it’s sharing time then yes! Yes I do have something to say to you!” Minho watched as the boy placed his laptop on the table next to him, never once taking his eyes off of his own.

“You!” he started while pointing at Minho “For starters are an idiot with a death wish! I mean honestly! Why could you have just gone to the safe house like you were told? No you had to be an idiot and stay in the city. You had to be best friends with a fucking Miracle and YOU had to be the one to “tag along”” he emphasized those words by air quoting “Do I have something to say to you? Yes! Because of you, Changbin almost died! Hyunjin and Seungmin were taken hostage! They could have died! And now we are in so much shit! But all you can do is hide right? You are such coward letting us do all your work for you! Chan, Woojin and Innie, they are up there risking everything to get us out of here! But do you care? No! You don’t care about them, all you care about is Jeongwoo! Well I’m sorry to be the one that says this, but this single Miracle isn’t worth it!” Minho had gone frozen stiff during Jisung’s rant, but noticed that tears were flowing down the younger’s face as he yelled, almost as if the words he was saying hurt him too. Jisung knew this but made no attempt to hide it. “He isn’t worth them!” he managed to choke out.

Minho watched with slightly wide eyes as Jisung wiped his eyes, trying to calm himself down. The younger let out a few shaky breaths before raising his head turning his gaze back on towards Minho’s.

“You need to stop being such a coward and prepare yourself for the inevitable.” He growled softly “Jeongwoo isn’t going to survive this. Realize that now before it breaks your heart later…”

Minho knew it deep down. He did. Just one look at the younger boy could spell out his fate to anyone and even if they do manage to get him out of here, unless they magically found Jeongwoo’s DNA again, the boy was still going to change. That or die.

Minho knew that. Of course he did.

But he couldn’t accept it.

Slowly, lifting his head, he turned his gaze to match the intensity of Jisung’s, feeling his fist tighten up into small balls. He could finally feel the weight of the day crash onto his whole body and he suddenly felt as tired as he should have been at the moment. He didn’t have much strength left in him and that spelled danger if they didn’t get out soon. Minho gave the younger boy a small sad half smile, his eyes brimming with unspoken sorrow.

“If…..” his voice choked up as he could feel tears threatening to fall “If it was one of them….if it was someone from your family” he started, staring directly at Jisung “Wouldn’t you do anything in the world to save them? Even if you knew it was a lost cause?”

Silenced filled the room as Minho watched the younger boys eyes widen, something obviously running through his brain.

But before he could ask, a loud ring echoed throughout the room and Jisung slowly went into his pocket to pull out his phone.

“Chan?” Jisung’s voice broke slightly as he answered the phone and Minho was caught off guard at how frail and small he sounded.

Minho watched as Jisung’s eyes narrow, his face now grave.

“Understood”

Minho watched as Jisung hung up the phone, closing his eyes. After a few more moments, let out a shaky breath.

“ Whatever.Be useful and look for something like a switch. None of this will matter if we don’t get him out.”

Minho narrowed his eyes at the younger boy who now turned his back towards him, something not settling right in his gut. There was something he wasn’t telling him.

“What did Chan have to say?”

Jisung was as frozen as a statue, the only sound being that of his fingers on the keyboard typing more furiously than before.

“Nothing. Now hurry up. The sooner we free him the sooner we get out of here.” his voice was cold, his voice was hard. Minho knew right then and there that Jisung hated him more than anything. And for some reason the thought of that made him sad.

Minho nodded, feeling the tears forming in his own eyes. He spun back around and begun his search around the room, wanting to forget about the conversation all together. The room they were in was smaller than that of the main room the cages were staged in, but cluttered with various objects. Farther down the room from Jisung and the Computer were multiple panels that Minho noticed had some on, and some off. Minho walked closer and realized that the panels functioning had various readings on them that were reports on the state of the Miracles bodies that were still locked in their cages. His eyes searched for Jeongwoo’s name, but was stopped when his eyes noticed something in the corner.

It was a small touchscreen sitting on top of a pedestal like statue nearby. A switch sat underneath with the big letters that read electricity. There was an outline of a hand sketched out on top and Minho realized with a sinking feeling in his gut that the only way to deactivate the shield was by hand print. An Authorized hand print at that.

Slowly, he laid his hand over the outline, hovering slightly above. After a few more moments he sighed and retracted his hand back. No way was his hand print going to work.

“Jisung” he called. “I found the switch but we have a slight problem.”

He heard footsteps coming up alongside him and could feel Jisung’s presence next to him. Minho heard a small audible gasp escape the Younger boys lips as he registered what he was looking at, and placed his laptop down on the ground examining the pedestals base.

“Can you break it?” Minho asked quietly.

There was a few more moments of silence as Jisung’s eyes darted around the contraption before he let out a sigh and closed his eyes. “Maybe…. But I need time”

Minho felt his body temperature rise and he tensed his fists up.This was it. This was his one chance to rescue Jeongwoo.

You are such coward letting us do all your work for you!

Jisungs words ran through his mind and he stood back up, a few found determination in his eyes

He wasn’t going to let this moment slip from his fingers.

“What do you need?”

Jisung momentarily stopped fiddling with the base and looked up at Minho’s intense gaze, something flashing in them. But it was gone before Minho knew it and he watched as he reached behind him.

Jisung ripped something out of his backpack and unrolled it to reveal various tools . “Keep watch for me. With that alarm, we are sure to have company. Make sure no Agents get in here. If I can do this, and that’s a big IF, my computer will need to uninterrupted for at least 10 minutes.” His voice trailed off and was quiet for a few moments before continuing fiddling with his tools.

“Chan called” he said suddenly, not looking up. “It would seem The Order plans on blowing this place off the map……Chan…he ordered me to retreat….told me to take you back even if by force….and yet here I am.” he paused letting out a small laugh as if his words triggered a memory within him and looked up at Minho finally, eyes narrowed “Do you understand that? If my laptop get interrupted even once then that’s it. We’ve lost. Jeongwoo will die down here as the building collapses.10 Minutes Minho….. that or its game over.” he said, unscrewing the back panel.

Minho nodded, wasting no time in turning around towards the door. He was going to do this. Sure, he was terrified. The thought that the building could come down any second didn’t help his nerves much. But he was going to do this. He wasn’t going to let the fear overshadow him again.

All of a sudden it was then that Minho could hear a strangled noise coming from the main room. He shot out the door and rushed forward in the direction of the noise, realizing with horror that it was coming from Jeongwoo’s cage. As he rushed forward, he managed to catch glimpse of the boy, and what he saw, broke his heart.

Jeongwoo, still on the ground, was dry heaving and his whole body was juddering violently as he coughed up splatters of blood. He let out a shriek of pain as his hand went to his chest.

“Jeongwoo! Jeongwoo!” Minho shouted landing as close to him as possible without touching the cage. His heart pounded in his chest as he looked at his tiny little boy suffering. Jeongwoo didn’t respond, but looked in Minho’s direction. The whites of his eyes now a sickly yellow color and he was sweating profusely as his chest rose up and down viciously.

“J-Jeongwoo” Minho never felt more hopeless than he did now. That split second of determination now washing away with Jeongwoo’s pained cries.

“H-hyung” his voice was so small, almost like a whisper as tears fell down his face. “D-Don’t-“

But his last words were drowned out by Jisung yelling at him from the doorway.

“Minho! Look out!”

It all happened so fast.

He heard Jisung’s shout a second too late and the next thing he felt was a pair of boots hitting him straight on his face. His body rolled violently in the air and he on the other side of the room, crashing into the bars of a cage and feeling the surges of electricity pulsating through his body again. All of his senses were lost to him as the pain took over. He landed with a dull thud, his body unmoving.

»»»»»»»

Chan chewed his bottom lip as he overlooked the scene below him. Agents flooded the entire area, guns at the ready as they ran about trying to evacuate the area. Their group had ditched the van in an attempt to flee before being surrounded, and now stood on the top of a roof nearby. Felix and Seungmin had managed to find them in the chaos and Woojin was off to the side examining Changbin’s wound while the younger boys watched over Innie as he slept nearby.

Chan was left alone to worry as fires erupted down below and more agents filled the streets.

“Dammit Jisung….” He said quietly “Where are you?”

»»»»»»»

Everything in Minho’s world was dark. A never ending tunnel. Slowly he regained his senses and could vaguely hear someone yelling his name. He tried to move but his body screamed at him in protest. His eyes fluttered open and through half opened lids, he could see the outline of someone standing nearby Jeongwoo’s seizing body. He blinked a few times as he regained control of his body more and more and noticed the stranger was wearing black from head to toe, his face fully covered by a black mask and hood. At his sides sat two twin daggers. Minho’s eyes widened as his eyes opened fully and he looked at the man who looked like he was straight out of a video game.

“W-Who are you?!” Minho weakly demanded, struggling to stand up.

But the masked man did not answer him, and chose to just stare down at Minho’s weak attempt to stand up, a near silence filling the air. Minho could still hear the pained wheezes coming from Jeongwoo and realized with horror that this stranger was the threat he had to face. He was here to stop them, and Minho couldn’t let him.

Minho shook off the pain as best as he could and slowly stood up, not taking his eyes off the masked man who in turned continued to look down at Minho’s injured form in silence. The alarm continued to blare, but all Minho could hear was the pounding of his heart in his chest and the blood roaring in his ear. His thoughts were running in circles as he tried to size his new enemy up. Fight someone? Sure! Shoot Agents with guns? Okay? But nobody said anything about swords! His hand went down to touch the cold steel of his gun. Guns won in sword fights right? His eyes flashed down to the twin daggers that sat on either side of the man’s hips. Even from here he could see the sharpness of them and audibly gulped.

“Go home”

The voice snapped Minho out of his thoughts. Something about his voice took him off guard. Whether it was the dark cold tone he used, or the way it trailed off at the end after he told Minho to go home. Something about it resonated with him but he didn’t know why.

Nor did he have no time to worry about it because suddenly and without warning, the masked figure rushed forward, not waiting for Minho’s answer and hit him with inhuman like speed. For a second time Minho felt a blunt force hit him square underneath his jaw, and he was launched in the air. He gasped out in pain as his back crashed into the wall behind him, bringing some of the dry wall with him as he fell.

“Weak”

The voice was so cold, so emotionless. Minho didn’t like it one bit. He looked up to saw the black figure standing over his own body now. Minho knew he needed to defend himself, he knew it, but the reality of being much weaker than his opponent set his fear into overdrive and Minho began to feel overwhelmed. His body was frozen on the stop as his eyes locked into the black eye holes. He could feel the fear flowing through his veins almost like a drug. He could vaguely hear Jisung yelling at him from afar to fight back but it was useless.

His body refused to move despite his fight or flight instincts and he knew he was in trouble.

Next thing Minho felt were a pair of hands encasing themselves around his neck as the masked man picked him up. He squeezed Minho by his throat as he lifted him in the air. He tried to fight back as his arms began to flail around desperately, the lack of oxygen waking him out of his frozen state. But he couldn’t get a good enough grip on the man’s arm and he knew he was losing oxygen quickly.

“You are too weak.” the voice said again, muffled slightly by the mask. Minho desperately grabbed for anything he could get a grip on but failed as he felt his body giving up. The blood roared in his ears, and he looked down at the stranger who was strangling him with one arm. He was relentless in his grip, and Minho could feel his eye lids grow heavier as the need for oxygen became too great. Soon, his desperate attempts to knock himself free of his grip began to cease and he felt his eyelids begin to close, the last bit of light landed on Jeongwoo’s still body.

…

And then just like that, the pressure on his throat was gone, his body slumping to the floor.

Minho let out a few strangled breaths as he regained his oxygen levels and looked up, letting out an out of breath gasp.

There. Standing in front of him. Clashing weapons against the masked man, was none other than Han Jisung, pushing hard against the man’s daggers.

Minho blinked a few times and realized that Jisung was wearing what he could only describe as brass knuckles on each hand. But unlike the normal gang related weapon, bolts of electricity shot out from their tips. If they weren’t in a life or death situation he would say it was rather cool looking.

“J-Jisung!” he choked out while trying to stand up. But pain shot through his side once again and he fell back on one knee.

“Tch!” he could hear Jisung click his teeth in annoyance while pushing harder against the villain. “What are you doing you idiot?! What did I say? This is out only chance! If he gets his hands on my computer then we won’t be able to save Jeongwoo! Why aren’t you fighting?!”

The two fighters continued to clash their weapons against each other, and Jisung grunted as he pressed back the masked man with one final push. The man stood still as he looked in Jisung’s direction. With a blink of an eye the man quickly sheathed one of his daggers and took fighting stance against the slightly out of breath Jisung.

“You’re too weak. You won’t win.”

Jisung let out a tired laugh and mirrors his stance, ready to charge. “At least I’m not wearing some stupid Halloween costume in June”

Minho watched as the two fighters stood at a standstill, neither of them moving.

“This place is already a goner” Jisung finally said, his tone calm. “The Order won’t miss one missing Miracle….especially not when they have sentenced the rest to death.”

The masked man flipped his sword around so that it was facing the other way. “I don’t care about the Miracles. Take them all for all I care. But he” he said while pointing his sword back at Minho “I’ve been given strict orders to take him, and I can’t fail.”

“Me?” None of this made any sense Why did they need him? Was it because he was a wanted man? Maybe that was it.

This caught Jisung off guard as well and his eyes flashed behind him towards an unsuspecting Minho “Orders? What were your orders?”

The man nonchalantly shrugged and took up stance again against Jisung, a dangerous stillness radiating off his body “If you manage to beat me, maybe I’ll tell you. But that won’t happen. I’ll kill you and then take your friend here to my boss.”

“Tch” Jisung spat quietly “You aren’t going to do either.”

The Minho stared at Jisung’s back, eyes narrowing in worry. The boy he thought was nothing but a brat was now risking his whole life, credit for himself, but Minho couldn’t help but think it was also for him and Jeongwoo as well. Up until now, Jisung had done nothing but pick fights with him, abet Minho didn’t help their situation either but his first impression of the boy was nothing good.

Now, eyes resting on his back, noticing the strong set of shoulders he carried, Minho couldn’t help but think that there was more to this boy. Something courageous. Something honorable.

His fists tightened.

But that only made it worse.

As if on Que, the masked man rushed forward, dagger poised and ready. But Jisung was ready for him and aimed one of his electrified fists to parry against the incoming dagger with unsuspected force. The masked man stagger back a few steps and Jisung used the opening to aim his other fist towards his stomach. Unfortunately the masked man predicted that and easily dodged it to the side, rushing back at him, this time with both daggers poised. His inhumane speed catching Jisung off guard just enough to where he was unable to dodge and had to meet the daggers head on.

There was a loud screech that echoed throughout the room as Jisung’s electric volts clashed against the hard metal and both fighters seemed to be expending most of their strength as they both panted hard. They were at a standstill, neither giving up. Finally the deadlock was halted when the masked man used one last act of force to push Jisung and monetarily confuse him enough to kick in squarely on his side. Minho watched, frozen, as Jisung’s body was flung off to the side but before he could do anything about it the man came at him again, this time wrapping his arm around Minho’s neck and getting behind him in the process, using his arm to push Minho farther into his chest, choking him in the process. Minho was stunned and he could feel a dagger up against his side.

“Now come with me.”

Minho tried to fight, he did, but his inexperience with this world, and the overall exhaustion was finally setting in, and he could barley manage to push the deadlocked arm away before securing it once again around his throat. His eyes flashed towards Jeongwoo’s still body. He knew the boy was still alive, he could see the faint rise and fall of his chest, but Minho knew he didn’t have much longer.

“J-Jeongwoo” he coughed out.

This seemed to catch the masked man’s attention and he made Minho take a few steps towards the cage, pointing a dagger at the small boy.

“Give up on him. He is a lost cause”

Minho violently shook his head, trying to rip himself free and away from his captor.

“What can you do?” The voice jabbed “You can’t save him. You can’t save anyone!”

The pressure around his body vanished and Minho spun around to see Jisung latch himself on the older man’s side, ripping him off of Minho and off to the side. Now Jisung stood in front of Minho, blood smeared around his mouth from the impacted into the ground. He gave a smirk to the masked man who staggered backwards.

“Don’t sell me out just yet you Halloween freak. He may be a bit useless, but I still have much more fight left in me.”

The masked man stared at Jisung, and even through the mask Minho could tell he was annoyed by Jisung. Once again, Minho felt a dangerous stillness radiate off the strangers body, but this time there was something more menacing to his stance compared to last time.

“Jisung” Minho tried warned, not taking his eyes off the powerful masked stranger.

“Shut up” Jisung spat back, causing Minho flinch. “You get no say here. Not unless you fight ba-“

Jisung was cut off with a grunt in a flash when suddenly the masked man appeared in front of him, almost like teleportation and jabbed a dagger into his stomach.

Minho’s eyes went wide, his mouth opening to call out the younger name but finding it dry. Jisung, who hadn’t moved yet, slowly looked down at the dagger impaled in his body.

“Jisung!” Minho cried out.

As if he heard his name, Jisung’s head slightly turned and locked his eyes with Minho’s desperation in his face as if he knew. “Idiot” he breathed quietly. “What are you doing? Protect the computer. Save Jeongwoo.”

Minho was about to respond, but almost as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone as the man pulled it out. That’s when Jisung crumpled to the ground in agony, the pain being too much. But he wouldn’t get a chance to rest because Minho watched with horror was the masked man kicked him when he was down – literally, sending him into the cages nearby. Minho could only watch as Jisung’s blood stained body erupted into sparks of electricity, as his whole body was electrocuted. After a few more painful moments, Jisung’s body peeled itself off from the cage and crumbled to the ground, motionless.

Minho could only stare on frozen stiff as the scene just replayed through his mind over and over again. The masked man seemed to stand back up from where he kicked Jisung and turned towards Minho.

“Now see what you did. He’s dead because of you. Come with me before anyone else kills themselves for you.”

If he was saying something, Minho didn’t seem to hear him, or rather couldn’t. All of his senses were focused on the motionless body that laid on the ground.

He was dead. Somebody good was dead. And not just anyone, but Jisung. Jisung was dead. And it was HIS fault.

It doesn’t matter if you do not want to be a part of this. The fight is coming. The fight is coming whether you want it or not.

Jisung’s words rang clearly though his mind as he stared wide eyes at the corpse. He was right. I didn’t want this fight. I just wanted to save Jeongwoo and Hyunjae. But now….

He clenched his fist and seethed in anger, his body shaking violently as he continued to star down at Jisung’s lifeless form, blood staining his shirt.

Who was this boy? This boy who would sacrifice everything, his family, his life, for something like him? And who was Minho to use this boy as a human shield? Why couldn’t he be bit braver? A bit more valiant? Why couldn’t he be more like Jisung? Like Felix?….like Hyunjae hyung? He wanted to be. He HAD to be.

Minho’s eyes landed in front of him, where Jisung’s knuckles landed after being flown off from the kick.

He was going to be.

As if the masked man could read Minho’s thoughts, he could see the figure rush towards him, but Minho was faster and managed to grab the knuckles, throwing them on and activating their electric currents just in time to hit the man directly in his neck area.

He stumbled back towards Jisung’s body, coughing up blood as he did so. His hand shot towards the place of impact and stared at Minho as he rubbed the area.

“So now you fight?”

Minho narrowed his eyes, the shock of losing Jisung clearing the fog of fear that had infected his mind. There was something about him, something about his voice that was achingly familiar.

He stared back, blood dripping down his face as he tried to copy Jisung’s battle stance from before.

“I may be weaker. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try”

This seemed to rouse the man and Minho swore behind the mask, the guy was smiling. He let out an amused huff and copied the battle stance.

“Then fight”

He rushed forward towards Minho, but Minho was quicker. Something about this reminded him of all those times he ran with his hyung and he quickly caught on to the fact that he had speed of his own. Minho ducked out of the daggers way and jabbed a fist forward into the man’s stomach, but missed by a hair when he took a step back and out of the way.

The man utilized Minho’s position and tried kicking him off his feet, but Minho acted quickly and placed a foot behind him, spinning back up and out of the man’s reach. Minho took the opportunity and rushed forward only to see the man vanish in a flash and appear beside him, punching him in his side.

Minho’s eyes widened as he felt the full punch but quickly recovered himself, using his hands to push himself back up, expecting the next wave of attacks.

But it never came.

Minho looked up to see the masked man standing still. He seemed to be observing Minho and Minho thought he could almost see a smile through the mask.

“You certainly are funny.” He almost laughed

Minho narrowed his eyes at this, but before he could ask what he meant his body went back into overdrive, sensing the dangerous aura the man was once again radiating.

“But you as you are now isn’t enough”

Next thing Minho knew was being pushed hard into the ground, a knife on his throat. Minho tried to slip out from under him, but the man pinned him down with his thighs. There was no escape.

Nevertheless. Minho tried.

“Stop Squirming!” he growled.

Minho did not stop.

“For God’s sake Minho, stop squirming or else you’ll open up you wound!”

The concerned tone is his voice made Minho freeze in his spot, as did the masked stranger. Minho looked directly up him, eyes widening.

“Who-“

Before he could finish his question, Minho’s vision of the man above him was interrupted by a large metal pole being hit directly on his face followed by and a rather loud cracking sound. The weight above him vanished and Minho’s eyes locked onto Jisung’s, a metal pole in his hands.

“I told you” the younger boy heaved in pain “Don’t count me out just yet”

Minho’s body relaxed in relief slightly before tensing up again seeing Jisung’s current state.

He was up. He was alive. But the knife still went into him He was hurt, and badly. Minho shot up, immediately place on the younger, wanting to get a closer look at his face. Jisung looked back at him, a little tired, face sweating from the pain, but he was alive. And Minho felt a great sense of relief at that.

A groan interrupted the two boys, and Minho spun around, standing protectively in front of Jisung as the masked man cradled his head in pain. Slowly the man lowered his hands and Minho let out an audible gasp.

This masked man……...those beautiful brown eyes. Agonizing familiar voice. He most certainly knew who this person was.

And it shattered what was left of his world.

“H-Hyunjae…..Hyung?”

Minho’s voice was so small, was as frail, almost like a little child being scolded for the first time. But what else was he supposed to do as he stared down at the person who was most definitely his best friend, dressed up ready to kill.. His best friend that absolutely tried to kill Jisung. His best friend that was supposedly working for The Order. His b-best friend w-who knew about…. Who knew about Jeongwoo….

Minho bottom lip began to tremble.

Don’t cry. Don’t you dare cry.

He was trying to keep it together. He really was.

He looked back up and locked eyes with Hyunjae’s immediately, silent tears rolling down his face.

“H-hyung” he slipped out, voice cracking and eyes begging “….please”

Hyunjae’s eyes tore themselves away from Minho’s, almost in shame. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but immediately closed it as a banging noise could be heard from the stairs. Hyunjae locked eyes with Minho’s again, but this time they were hard and cold. Something he never once witnessed in his eyes.

“I’m sorry Minho. But I have to do this.” Minho shook his head, this was not his Hyunjae hyung. This was not his….his…..

“No!”

Jisung yell snapped Minho out of his thoughts and realized with horror that Hyunjae now had his gun. His gun which had just now shot through Jisung’s computer, directly through its core, and causing it to shut down.

Hyunjae turned back towards Minho, a flash of guilt crossing his face before vanishing back into his calm facade.

“Good bye” he whispered, before turning back around and vanishing without a trace, leaving Minho with a badly wounded Jisung, and a broken heart. Jisung lurched forward towards his broken computer, his own despair written on his face. After examining it, Minho watched Jisung throw the broken toy in a fit of rage.

“Well?”

Minho winced at how broken and defeated his own voice sounded.

Jisung looked up from where he was on the ground, shaking his head in sorrow.

“I-I’m sorry Minho….. “

No. This couldn’t be happening.

He wasn’t about to lose Jeongwoo too.

He couldn’t lose both of them.

His brain was unable to compute the situation, nor any words for that matter and he just stared at Jisung, tears flowing down freely as the weight of Hyunjae’s betrayal finally hit him.

Hyunjae knew Jeongwoo was a Miracle. Hyunjae knew where they were keeping him. Hyunjae tried to stop Minho from saving Jeongwoo and succeeded.

None of this was supposed to happen. Minho knew that going in. They were going to rescue Jeongwoo and they were going to wait their days at the safe house until Felix found his Hyunjae hyung. Then they would live out their days quietly, but together.

That’s how this was supposed to happen.

He slammed his fists on the ground, falling to his knees. Tears splashed down on his arms and hands as he stayed there.

“No….” he choked out “No…..”

“Go hyung”

Jeongwoo’s voice was still so small, so frail, but rang clear through Minho’s mind. The elder turned to the little boy in his cage. He still was lying down, but his body had stopped shuddering and he was no long coughing up blood. He stared at Minho with a sad, knowing smile and he reach out his hand towards the elder. Minho jerked forward, tears still fresh on his face.

“Y…..you need to go” Jeongwoo continued and Minho found himself shaking his head from side to side violently as if the very idea burned his skin.

“Not without yo-”

“I’m already gone hyung” he whispered, his words causing Minho to flinch. “Even if you could save me…..I’m already changing...and you can’t stop that” his breathing started heave as another wave was about to hit him “….I don’t…… I can’t.........” sobs now could be heard from the small boy, as he laid on the ground, unable to move.

“Please Hyung” he cried “...I….I don’t want to live like that…...I don’t want…..I can’t become one of those things… You’ve done enough for me….you’ve always done enough for me……but this time…. Let me go“

Silence filled the room as Jeongwoo turned back to look at the ceiling of his metal prison. Minho stared at him, once again not being able to find the right words to say to him. He was never quite good at that.

“Promise me something hyung”

Minho winced “Anything” he managed to choke out.

Jeongwoo turned his head and looked back at Minho, tears strolling down his face as he gave his elder a wide toothy grin like he used to.

“Stay a family. You and Hyunjae hyung….Grandma Yoo ….live a life worth living….never settle for anything less than a perfect life….. Promise me hyung…..do it…..for me” the last part was cut off as another spasm hit his body.

Once over, fresh blood now coated his mouth and he looked back at Jisung, who now stood over Minho, starring sadly at the broken Jeongwoo.

“T-Take care of my hyung” he coughed out “he doesn’t think very highly of himself and likes to always put the blame on him. H-He needs someone….needs someone to watch over him.”

Jeongwoo’s words shattered Minho’s resolve and he broke down again, sobs racking his chest.

“You have my word.” Jisung’s voice was genuine. “On my life Jeongwoo, I will watch out for him.”

“My Hyunjae hyung too” he added with a warm smile. Minho felt sick to his stomach and he knew Jisung was making a face as well. Jeongwoo must had been so out of it with pain that he didn’t know Hyunjae’s current situation.

“H-Hyunjae too” Jisung lied.

Jeongwoo gave him a toothy grin and turned his head back towards the ceiling. “Thank you. I’m glad I got to make another cool hyung before…..well you know…” he added the last part with a small laugh.

“Jeongwoo…”

“Im not afraid hyung. Of dying I mean….” He clarified “I’ve never been afraid…..I knew I would die one day….so why waste my life being fearful of it?”

Minho let out a muffled cry, rubbing his face free of tears.

“Don’t forget hyung. You still haven’t promised me”

Jeongwoo looked down at Minho, eyes turning into crescent moons as he smiled. “Now promise me. Promise me to live every day like it’s your last. Never settle for anything less than a perfect life.”

Minho stared helpless at the dying boy, his heart both being broken and mended by this little boy words. He nodded once, tears still streaming down his face but his sobs quieting down. This single nod seemed to satisfy Jeongwoo as he gave another toothy grin.

“Good! Then get out of here. You don’t have much time before the building collapses.”

Jisung’s eyes widened slightly and he eyed Jeongwoo curiously. “How do you know about that?”

Jeongwoo let out a quiet chuckle.

“Funny thing about Miracles and their DNA. I guess even if you remove the DNA from our bodies…part of our power still remains within our body. It’s a fraction of it, but our power nonetheless. In my many seizures, I saw it……I saw the building collapsing….I saw how I would die.”

“Precognition” Jisung breathed

Jeongwoo nodded, not looking at either of them.

“Now go!” he suddenly yelled “You don’t have much time!”

Jisung grabbed a hold of Minho’s arms, pulling him up.

“N-No!” he protested “ Jeongwoo….Jewongwoo I still have so much I want to say to you” he cried.

“I know hyung” Jeongwoo smiled sadly at him, pain etched into his own face. “I already know it all.”

Minho couldn’t believe this was happening. He thought back to just last week when the 3 of them, he, Jeongwoo, and Hyunjae were sitting at home, tears in their eyes as they made from of Hyunjae’s cooking. He thought back to that fateful day when he and Hyunjae watched Jeongwoo skip off happily at the thought of seeing his sister again.

Jeongwoo. Hyunjae. Minho.

They were a family. A family not by blood. But by heart.

A now his family was gone….just like that.

“Jeongwoo!” he called as Jisung continued to push him towards the stairs. Memories of their time flashed before his eyes and he took one last turn around and stared at his little brother who was drifting farther and farther from consciousness.

“I love you.”

»»»»»»»

The alarm blared throughout the compound as Minho and Jisung made their way back up towards the entrance. The entire building had been already been evacuated minus the other Miracles so no Agents were about to stop them. Minho had Jisung, who was still rather wounded wrap an arm around his neck like he did with Changbin and together they made their way up in silence, the weight of the day finally hitting both of them. Minho’s face was covered in dried up tear stains, the pain of losing both Jeongwoo and Hyunjae in one day being too much for him. He turned and looked down at the live person next to him, unexpectedly grateful for Jisung, for Jisung being alive.

“Thank you….” he said suddenly, breaking the silence.

Jisung didn’t say anything but glanced upwards at the taller boy in question. Minho sighed and took it as a sign to continue.

“For saving me. I would have been as good as dead back there if not for you.”

“And I would have been dead myself.” Jisung muttered. When Minho looked down at him he rolled his eyes, turning away and puffing out his cheeks in embarrassment Hyunjae knew exactly where to strike me, and if you weren’t there I would have died from blood loss…..So I guess I should thank you as well.”

Minho smiled softly at the younger boy, a sense of fondness hitting him as he watched the embarrassed boy. But his words reminded Minho of another heartbreak he has yet to deal with…

Hyunjae.

“One more thing” Minho voice was so calm, so cold, that it caught Jisung off guard and he looked up at the older boy in question.

“I know I shouldn’t be asking this” he started “but I will anyways” Minho let out a shaky breath “I’m going to ask that you don’t tell the others about…..about Hyunjae hyung…..” he paused, looking down in shame knowing that this was a lot to ask “I just…...I need to talk to him…..I need to find out for myself…I need to know Why”

“I’m pretty sure him almost killing us was a clue” Jisung muttered. Minho nodded, his lips quivering knowing the younger was right.

“But…” Jisung continued “I get it…..”

Minho’s head snapped up and he looked towards Jisung, who was staring straight ahead, not looking at him. Feeling his gaze, Jisung turned his face slightly to face back at Minho, his expression sincere

“I promise”

»»»»»»»

The night sky was dark and heavy as rain pounded down on 6 small silhouettes. When they had returned to the top he was amazed to find The Order had gone, but when he asked Chan how that was possible, he was met with quiet faces. Chan had his secrets.

Woojin and Jeongin had gone back to the hideout with Changbin to get looked at but the rest of them stayed to wait for them. Minho, who had never been real touchy with people outside of Hyunjae grabbed hold of Felix, hugging him as tightly as possible, needing someone to hold him. Felix, slightly caught off guard welcomed it however and hugged back just as tightly.

True to their word, The Order made the building collapse in on itself, and already news outlets were reporting the ’abandoned area’ as a freak cave in, that no one had luckily been hurt.

Of course these were all lies.

But Minho now knew that lies were the only way The Order controlled things. And he could not stand for it. Not anymore.

Now Minho stood still over the pile of rubble that was once The Order’s secret hideout. Felix and Jisung standing at his side, Hyunjin, Seungmin and Chan off nearby. His wet hair clunged to his face and he was soaked to the bone. But he didn’t care. Not anymore.

Jeongwoo was dead.

Hyunjae. HIS Hyunjae Hyung was gone……

Just like that. His family was shattered. Never to be together again. Now Minho was left on his own and his own internal struggle. Should he fight? Should he die? What should he do?

He felt his mind race as he stared down at the crumpled building. He was not the same Minho that went down there. He was not the old Minho that avoided. That ran. That hide. That Minho died with Jeongwoo.

And then he thought of Hyunjae. And his betrayal.

He thought of his promise to Jeongwoo as the last of his life breathed out of him.

“Promise me to live every day like it’s your last. Never settle for anything less than a perfect life.”

Minho felt his hands ball up into tiny fists.

“Chan….” Minho suddenly spoke out, knowing the blonde heard him. “I know you’ve asked me this once before and I turned it down. But-”

He stayed still for a few moments before spinning around and facing the rest of the group, his eyes falling directly onto Chan’s.

“Let me join your group. Let me be a member of SKZ”

#kpop #stray kids #stray kids au #maze of miroh #lee know #han #minho #jisung #minsung #changbin #felix #changlix #woojin #chan #bang chan #woochan #hyunjin #seungmin #seungjin #jeongin #i.n #ot9

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wendip-week · 5 years

Text

Of Masks and Men

(Here it is: part 3. And I managed to get this out in time for Halloween, too! Hope you enjoy.)

For what might have seemed like an eternity but was really no more than an hour-and-a-half, there was darkness. It was not necessarily a foreboding darkness, but rather almost uncomfortable (but not quite). It was the kind of semi-lucid darkness one might experience as they try for a catnap in the afternoon. You doze and find you find out that you can't sleep but realize that you've killed so much more time than you expected (or vice-versa). And in a hidden place in Gravity Falls known only to a few, a certain twelve-year-old boy found himself in such darkness (not that he was totally aware); for a while, anyway.

"Abel..." said a voice from out of nowhere. "Abel, wake up..."

"Abel. Hey, you in there, dude?" said another. This one sounded vaguely female.

"Abel. Time to wake up." This time, the previous voice (definitely male) spoke, sounding very clear.

Abel Wood, who had started to realize he was probably asleep, began to stir. He groaned and raised his head before opening his eyes with a little difficulty. As his eyes adjusted, he realized he was sitting in the middle of some kind of library, or maybe a study. Either way, there weren't any windows, and there was something covered by a tarp right in front of him. His head had just cleared when he found out he wasn't alone.

"There he is," said that distinctly female voice. "Hey, Abel. How has your day been progressing?"

"Huh? Aunt Wendy?" Abel replied as he saw her coming around to face him. "I-uhhh…"

"You don't need to answer that." From the other side, his great-uncle came into his line-of-sight. "We've already got a pretty good idea how it's been. That said, we need to talk."

It took the pre-teen a moment, but he realized what the man was talking about. "Wait a minute! You knocked me out! And... you tied me up!" he said as it occurred to him that he was tied to the chair he was sitting in.

"True. Sorry about that," Mason replied.

"We had to keep you from panicking and doing something stupid," Wendy added.

"I take it you probably have some questions for us?" Mason asked.

Abel scowled. "What did you do with Grunkle Mason and Aunt Wendy?!" he demanded. The aging couple looked mildly surprised at the question. "And who and what are you?"

The two adults looked at each other. After a moment, the man nodded to his lady, who decided to speak. "To answer your first question, I am your great-aunt, Wendy Pines, just like my husband over here really is your grunkle, Mason Pines, or as everyone used to call him, Dipper."

"As for what we are..." Abel's supposed-Grunkle Mason continued. "We are part of a race of sentient, mutated pistachio-plants."

"We're called Pistachions," said Wendy. "And to make things easier, it might be prudent if we show our real faces while we're explaining things. That okay with you, Mason?"

"If you think that's best, Dear." The older-gentleman turned back towards his supposed-nephew. "Alright, Abel. Try to keep an open-mind." He and his wife placed their hands on their necks and pulled at an inconspicuous line. It required some stretching in places to get them to properly move. In the bunker, it had happened so quickly that Abel didn't get a chance to see anything. Seeing these two doing this slowly and carefully was really creeping him out.

Finally, the two of them had them off. "Much better," said Wendy. "I don't look too shabby, now do I?" Abel wasn't sure what to expect, but he was surprised to see quite a contrast between his great-uncle and great-aunt. For starters, unlike Mason, who had but a few leaves on the back of his shell-like head, she had a full head of red-hair with some leaves growing here-and-there. She also had more prominent eyelashes and apparently even wore lipstick under her mask, because it was pretty visible over her mouth full of sharp fangs...

"Oh, crud!" Abel thought. "She has fangs! And so does Grunkle Mason (if he even is my grunkle)!"

"Hey, Abel. I know that look. It's something I'm all too familiar with. I'm gonna need you to keep your cool," Mason spoke, interrupting his thoughts.

"Fine... Where are we?" Abel asked.

"Under the Shack, in the refurbished study of the late Stanford Pines," said the nut-like woman in front of him. "Next question?"

"Right. Wait, hang on. How the heck are you my uncle?" he said, turning his head in said creature's direction. "You're supposed to be my grandma's twin. I'm pretty sure me, Dana, and everyone on Grandma Mabel's side of family are human. What's the deal with you?"

"Good question," the male "Pistachion" replied. "Okay, well, for starters, your aunt and I were humans originally. It was around the time we were dating. We and your grandma went on a cross-country road trip. Now, weirdness exists outside of the Falls, and one of our stops resulted in Wendy and me getting captured by Pistachions in disguises like the ones we wear.

"Their leader, Derek's, plan was to take over the world by transforming all the humans into plants like him and his kind. Wendy and I were among those zapped by his machine. But thanks to some time-travel shenanigans, all of the Pistachions got erased from history; all except for us. We created some disguises for ourselves and have been living like this since."

"After that, Mason and I formed a plan to restore our lost race in secret," added Wendy, who began to explain how they reversed-engineered Derek's "MULCH"-technology and made use of local nut farms to create new Pistachions. It eventually led to two societies forming. One was living in the valley; the other lived in the town itself (they, too, disguised themselves as humans).

"Seriously?" Abel asked.

"Sure," Mason replied. "Half of Gravity Falls are like us; born or transformed."

"So... does that mean all of your kids are like you? Aunt May and Uncle Chaz?"

"Yes. Something would definitely be wrong if May was born a human. And the Valentinos are old friends of ours. Assimilating them was a given. This was before they had Chaz, obviously."

"Oh. And Uncle Danny and Aunt Arctica?"

"Yes, being May's twin, Danny's a Pistachion. Arctica, well... was originally human. Being a valuable business partner and a friend, we couldn't turn her mother (or father, for that matter). Of course, after Pacifica passed and her husband retired to Florida, we found out Danny had already revealed himself to Arctica in secret. Long-story short, after he proposed, she agreed to become a Pistachion, too. Before you ask, yes, the others are also plants like us."

Abel looked shocked (and for good reason): almost everyone on his grandmother's side of the family were plant-people in disguise, which raised another question. "Sheesh. Okay, that's something that's going to take a while to wrap my head around. So... you guys just walk around in rubber costumes all day long? Doesn't that get uncomfortable?"

Wendy replied, "Sometimes. The masks especially. We definitely make it a point to at least get those off by bed-time. Otherwise, our faces might conform to the shape of them."

"But is that even a big deal? I mean you're disguised as yourselves, aren't you?"

Mason blinked his black-and-red eyes: "Huh. Never really thought about it that way. I suppose not. But it's still uncomfortable, and we're rather accustomed to the contrast."

Abel chuckled. "I wouldn't be surprised if Grandma had decorated your masks while you were asleep, like during that road trip."

The horticultural couple just stared. The pre-teen in the chair, not understanding, stayed silent, studying them for a moment. He wasn't too sure, but it looked like he might have seen traces of guilt, like that time Dana admitted to cheating on that test in fifth-grade. Finally, he decided to break the tension. "What did I say?"

Mason turned away. "She doesn't know," he quietly admitted. "And it's going to have to stay that way."

"Wait, what?" Abel replied. "Are you seriously telling me that all this time, you kept this from your sister, or that she never caught you?"

"First of all," replied Wendy: "No human knows about our true-selves. But either way, we couldn't tell her. If by some odd-chance she was cool about it, I doubt she could have kept it secret. And if she thought this wasn't right, she might've blabbed to Ford, who'd have probably tried to find a way to change us back."

"Time-out!" Abel interrupted. "Why wouldn't you want to be human again?"

"Probably the same reason you don't want to be a Pistachion," said Mason. "You don't, right?"

"NO!" Abel shouted.

"That's what we figured. Look, for us, it's almost as though we've always been this way. An instinctual feeling, I suppose.”

“Generally-speaking, we’re not exactly fond of humanity, anyway,” Wendy added. “Again, instinct. That isn’t to say we hate them. That’s an old mentality of a long-dead generation of Pistachions.”

“Right…” said Abel. “Is that also why you kept this from her?”

“No,” said Mason. “Look, we love your grandma. And it isn’t as though we haven’t thought about telling her, but the right opportunity never presented itself. Your aunt and I thought of telling her after our Grunkle Ford passed away (and there being no one else to change us), but on top of losing him, Grunkle Stan died a month later. It was devastating for everyone. If we had said something so soon after, it might have crushed her. Then we lost our parents; your great-grandparents. Then Pacifica left us too soon. Old Man McGucket… And after… after… after that…”

The humanoid-plant trailed off, but Abel had a pretty good idea of where this was going. “You’re talking about me and Dana’s parents, aren’t you?” he asked solemnly.

“Your dad was her only kid. And she loved your mom like her own. So much happened in succession; we don’t know if she can take it. She was always excitable, but this might be too much, especially at her age.”

Abel sighed. This was not how he expected this to turn out; eventually leading to a sore subject. He still didn’t know what their game was. This situation had gotten terrifying, sad, and awkward. He needed to break the tension (partly because he couldn’t break the dang vines that kept him restrained). “What’s the point of all of this? What are you planning?”

“To live, basically,” said the horticultural redhead. “Study, protect the town, hang out with our family, and in my case, spend time alone with my man.”

“We also want our race to have this opportunity, too,” added the male Pistachion.

“Seriously?” asked Abel skeptically. “No plans to take over the world somehow?”

“Oh, please,” said his great-aunt. “We’ve lived through that kind of scheme multiple-times. Appealing as that might sound, it’s a pipe-dream.”

“Plus, we also don’t want to hurt anyone: human or Pistachion. As the unofficial leaders, we have a rule against such plots. Anyone who violates that answers to us.”

“We’re in charge, sucka! Either get with the program or get out!” The plant-man and the boy just stared at her. “I can’t pull off ‘teen-as-cool-as-ice’ anymore, can I?”

“No. Now you’re just cool.”

“Awww, Mason!”

He chuckled quietly before turning back to his supposed nephew. “So that’s the gist of it. A lot to take in, huh? Abel…?” The pre-teen was staring off into space.

“I… uh… yeah. This is… I don’t even know.” He looked up at the two. “How do I know any of this is real? How do I even know you’re telling me the truth? How… do I know you’re really my aunt and uncle?”

The Pistachions paused for a moment, seemingly taken aback. Finally, the nut-headed scientist without hair spoke. “I don’t know. How can we prove that?”

Abel took a moment, before remembering something brought up recently. “What did you tell me at me and Dana’s parents’ funeral?”

Without hesitating, Mason answered, “We’re family, and family sticks together. Even when they mess up, they can still find a way to reunite.”

“It’s that bond that makes losing our loved ones so hard. But it’s also what makes it so important that we come together when we go through such times,” Wendy continued.

“And we want you to know that like your grandma, we’re here for you and Dana. If you ever think you’re alone, remember-”

“-You’re wrong,” Abel finished. He looked at the two plant-people in front of him and noticed something he hadn’t seen before about them. Very subtley, on his aunt’s shell-like face were brownish speckles right where her cheeks might be (if she even cheeks); they resembled freckles. As for his uncle, on his forehead was a faint indent just visible under the right light. It resembled the Big Dipper, just like his grandmother told him. “It really is you, isn’t it?”

“Yes. We are, Abel,” said Mason. “That’s why we’re so conflicted about what we must do with you, now that you know our secret.”

To be continued

(Hope everyone's having a happy Halloween.)

#wendip #Wendy Corduroy #Dipper Pines #Gravity Falls #WenDipWeek #fanfic #older!Wendip #older!Dipper #older!Wendy #submission

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everydreamtilldawn · 5 years

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Endgame Thoughts *Spoilers obviously and a whole lot of venting*

OK Endgame, here we go! The absolute disrespect to the audience, the actors, the characters, and all the other creators who put so much work and care into building characters and stories for the other movies and shows which led up Infinity War and Endgame. The Russos are so far up their own asses with how good they think they are. I'm so done with their pure spoiler free excuses. Not letting actors know what scenes they're in, who they're with - wasting oscar winning actors on their own bloated egos insisting adults can't be trusted not to cause a PR scandal over their fanfic. Those assholes put themselves into the canon as "the first canon gay character". Oh, Mr. Unnamed Guy 32 is the first gay character out of all these hundreds of people on screen? Oh Mr. Russo well we all better get on our knees and kiss your gay dick in thanks then you ass faced worthless shit for brain. What a fucking insult. Who has the actual nerve? Who actually has an ego so big they don't actually see the lgbt community and their issues as something to take seriously within their narrative - its like their heads have been under a rock the past few years thinking of only their wonderful, unbeatable movie that they have no idea gay people are main characters now and have their own movies elsewhere in the world. We're not nameless, background characters you dicks. The fact that 10 years led up to this is like spitting in the face of your audience and telling them exactly how little you actually care about them except for their money. Every bit of Endgame highlighted and emphasized the flaws that was the monstrosity that was Infinity War. Starting there - I will never get over the fact that the end battle of Endgame so clearly shows how awful the previous movie was. I think I've told you all the problems I have with IW before but to emphasize again - the "we don't trade lives" concept is still something I'm furious over. The fact that grand old captain america wasn't willing to kill Vision for the UNIVERSE but was ok with a few hundred Wakandan's dying for Vision to maybe live? Bullshit. AND that final battle? WTF so we're supposed to believe that in the... five?... ten minutes? after being snapped back to life all those people got off their asses? I can't even. They expect us to believe that when you put all those geniuses, warriors, battle proven tacticions, strategists and spies in a room that they still make all those obvious mistakes when they know the UNIVERSE is at stake? Where was that army of sorcerers in battle one? Why did Wong or whatever his name is really HAVE to protect that one sanctum even knowing the fate of the UNIVERSE was at stake? They had hours to plan. HOURS. If not days?!?!?!?!?! They went to different countries, they had time to sit and plan. They had time to call in the world's resources to prepare, to gather armies. Instead they fought with Wakanda and a handful of superheroes - why??? They literally knew the stakes, the only reason they didn't have the huge army battle scene in Infinity War is because Marvel wanted another movie. They wanted to make billions on Endgame cause they knew audiences would come back if they shock value killed half the universe and then brought them back for battle two but uhhhhhhh.... On your left was a great badass scene and all. But they had max like ten minutes to gather forces who legit just came back to life. Who sent out that distress call btw? Why did all these people NOW have a plan of attack and were gathered in preparation to fight?

Was it badass? Was the shot of Captain America alone against an entire army not iconic? OF COURSE. I loved that scene. I loved the women gathering around Peter and racing to fight against the army as one. It was legendary. There were some really funny, badass, and wonderful moments. But it was a bad story. It was bad writing. Working my way down from character murders that least upset me to most. Black Widow. She finally came to life in this movie. She was a leader, she had emotions, she was more than a catsuit, a sexy smile and a witty comment. I adored her. I despise her death. I hated that in the end she was still another pretty face lying sexily at the bottom of a pit for the life and will of a man. I’m half okay with her death, because it was almost justified. In this story where she was finally a fully-fledged and fleshed out person – she had wants and goals and those centered around protecting her family. The character she was in this movie didn’t even begin to exist until Endgame and it’s a tragedy that she was murdered before she even reached her full potential. But she did want to sacrifice herself so the universe could live again. She wanted Clint to go back to his family. She wanted to give her life for the only thing she loved. BUT Clint was the true perfect mirror for this narrative. Thanos sacrificing Gamora will never be okay. Gamora said it herself – that wasn’t love. That was glorifying abuse. Thanos never should have been given the soul stone under the ridiculous and unclear rules of the soul stone. Honestly, I’d believe Red Skull is just fucking with everybody at this point with how ridiculous those rules are. No way is what Thanos did love. I will come back to the Russos glorifying and being okay with child abusers when I get to Tony and his father. Clint would have been the mirror to Thanos in that moment. Instead of a father killing his daughter, it would have been a father dying for his daughter. His relationship to his daughter is even highlighted at the start of the movie and in his time travel moment. Clint hated who he’d become, he was ready and willing to sacrifice himself for his family and at that point he deserved it. As shown later with Tony – the theme of fathers sacrificing themselves is a relevant theme. So why Natasha in that moment. Why not the father? Why not the narrative mirror? Why the only woman on the team, the one who has grown to be a real person in the narrative and one who is now LITERALLY IMPORTANT TO THE STRUCTURE OF THE WHOLE WORLD AND THE UNIVERSE? She became the leader of the Avengers and expanded their reach across galaxies by communicating and coordinating with Rocket, Nebula, and Carol. She had a world to rebuild by coming home. It’s not like they’re going to give Clint his own redemption movie where he makes up for his half assed arc to becoming his Ronin character arc. I’m half okay with it, but I also think it was the completely wrong choice of which character to sacrifice.

THOR. The insult to Taika Waititi. The insult to Thor, Thor: the Dark World, and Thor: Ragnarok. The insult to Thor the character. Hell, the reversal on Thor -2.0 from Infinity War. Years of movies, years of work building this character. Them saying that not only does Thor, who finally learned to be the God of Thunder without his hammer, who took up Odin’s role and finally accepted his place as King, needed to be.... fixed?!?!?! They gave him back his eye for starters which reverses the whole meaning of him losing it in the first place. Of assuming the role of Odin, of King, of being Thor. Then they give him the axe and then the HAMMER. Thor moved on. Thor accepted himself. Thor in Ragnarok is proven to be stronger without the hammer than he was with it. Giving him the axe, making him obsessed with getting his hammer back, reverses three movie of character development. AND THEN. Making him FAT. Making him STUPID. Making him threaten children, abandon his people, abandon his duty, fall into a depression completely unlike his character who is a hardened warrior with deep emotional depth and understanding – a fucking soft hearted genius in his own right who was able to easily give forgiveness to Gamora and understanding that being the daughter of an abusive monster isn’t her fault. They have the audacity to spend a whole movie making fat jokes about him and decide to reverse him back ten year’s worth of character development. Oh hardy har, we’re such good writers. We understand posttraumatic stress and the mindset of heroes – look he’s drinking beer, and an alcoholic, and eat a salad you fat fucks. WTF. It wasn’t funny. It was mean. It was unnecessary. It was out of character like the Russos came up with it high on crack and refused to let it go. Thank god Chris H is a good enough actor not to show how insulting it must have been to have his character be paraded around in bad cgi and treated like he’s an idiot. Did the Russos not watch the other movies in the canon? Did they not care that Thor had become this deeply complex character who loved his people, would do anything for them, was ready to be King and lead – NO I guess they just don’t care. Like everyone who sat on their asses during the battle in Wakanda. It would have been amazing for Thor to have gone back in time to see his mother as the true and worthy King at last, if his final arc had been around idk his apprehension at how to lead his people after failing them, after them dying down to a few hundred. Having everything he could have been overshadowed by the Russos need for a running joke the entire movie is so very insulting. It shows just how little they think of the audience’s intelligence.

CAPTAIN AMERICA. The insult to women’s agency. I truly at this point think the Russos are lying fucks who have no respect for women. They’re sexists assholes. The insult to the entire team of Agent Carter. The insult to Peggy fucking Carter, the most badass woman who built herself up, who built Shield, who moved on, who had a life, a husband, children, who died in peace and was put to rest. Nope. Forget about everything she did. The Russos plot line is more important. Steve Rogers started out the movie saying how important it was to move on, and what does he do? Not move on. Lets highlight the insult that throwing in “the first gay character” is when facing the cowardice of switching Steve Rogers from being so obsessed with protecting Bucky Barnes that he threw away the shield, became a fugitive, and left the family and team he’d built in the future to chase after Peggy Carter who he HAD MOVED ON FROM. He kissed that one random blonde girl he had no chemistry with. He said goodbye and buried Peggy. Peggy had a life, she was happy. Did she miss Steve? Was she sad he “died”? Yeah. But now she doesn’t get a choice between the future she could have had and the one where Steve buts in and I guess Bruce didn’t have a discussion with Steve about splitting the path of time into multiple realities cause the Russos decided to fuck their own established logic and leave Steve in a new version of the past – where almost all the infinity stones are returned in their non-original forms, loki is fucking off with the tesseract and Thanos/his entire army/and Gamora are all in the wrong time never to forge the original war in the first place? They didn’t put a single scene between Steve and Bucky reconciling the past few years, Bucky’s dusting or the fact Steve was gonna go and never come back after ALL THAT. After Winter Soldier and Civil War, Steve said fuck Bucky, fuck the avengers, fuck this future that doesn’t have Iron Man, I want to go dance with a woman who HAD A LIFE WITHOUT YOU YOU ASSHOLE. I was touched by the old man Steve returning to give Sam the shield. I thought it was wonderful, I cried a little. But what about Peggy? What about the timeline? What about the rules????? Fuck it, there’s a gay character now and Thor is fat, the rules don’t matter anymore I guess.

Tony Stark.... deserved better. He is the true, real hero. The only hero. I don’t care about anyone else. Excluding his own 3 movies and Homecoming, Tony’s character was done so wrong in the Avengers movies by the writers, the audience and the other characters. So many people wrote him off as the person he pretended to be instead of the person he was. They saw selfishness and ego instead of the amount of sacrifice, the effort he gave into making the world a better place. He was such a good person. He grew so much. He gave his life for a world that never loved him, but that he never stopped loving. Natasha and Tony were the only people with something left to lose, but they were the ones who sacrificed themselves for a cold, uncaring universe and they deserved better. Tony finally had everything he never thought he would deserve – a wife, a daughter, a peaceful life at rest. All his wars were finished. He had everything to lose and he went into the endgame with the one condition that he would not give up what he had gained. And still they killed him. It was the only acceptable death for a hero like Tony Stark, but that doesn’t mean he deserved it. That doesn’t mean his daughter grows up without her father. That doesn’t mean its okay for that abusive, negligent asshole that was Howard Stark to get a last hoorah and be “redeemed” by a final conversation with his son. No. Tony had multiple arc, multiple points in his life where he had to rise above Howard and all that Howard stood for, all the ways Howard had hurt him and held him back. He was better than his father – going to be a better father than his father. Thanos and Howard will never, ever be men who should be looked upon as having loved their children enough for them to die in exchange for the greater good. It was so very satisfying for Tony to finally have it out at Steve for everything and I wish that scene had been longer. Tony deserved to live.

Final points. The timeline stuff, again, was bs. They insisted on not messing it up and still they messed up everything. The greater implications of all that is... astoundingly idiotic. Along with, why not just have Tony’s life ending snap send Thanos right back to the past along with the infinity stones to their rightful places and memories erased? If the infinity stones can do anything, such as kill half the universe, why not correct the flaws of the plot? I thought it was stupid that the only reason the time heist failed was because Nebula didn’t think about mind melding with her past self. The fact that’s even a thing... that happened. Really. The whole movie shouldn’t have existed let alone be three hours. They set such a great tone with the opening scene. It was tragic and heart wrenching and then seeing Natasha finally realized and the world broken. I can forgive dues-rat-machina bring Scott back cause I love Scott, but the time heist threw out all the tension. I didn’t feel the stakes, I felt like they stepped sideways into a whole different genre. That middle plot didn’t feel like a movie worth ending an era on. It felt cheesy and underdeveloped. Again – they had forever to plan. There was no time limit pushing them to go to the past immediately. They could have taken the time to think this out, cover every possible option – and they did. They’re shown doing that. So how, for the second time in these two movies, do these brilliant geniuses, tacticians and strategists believably fail to predict the outcome. And uhhhhhh did snapping all those people back account for the post snap casualties? Cause we saw helicopters flying into buildings, cars crashing, we were told that wars broke out and people went kinda crazy as they had a right to. The snap resulted in post snap causalities by the billions across the universe – had to have. So did all those people come back? What happens to the people who moved on and now have a 5 years younger mother/father/sister/brother/friend/loved one/wife/husband/etc to deal with who just blinked and suddenly half the people they care about are now five years older and the whole world is different? The sheer amount of housing and food crises that are about to begin post “snap 2: the snappening” are insane. And I get that its no fun to think about that in the fun of a big super hero battle and all that. But next movie will probably have zero mention of all that as shown by Peter’s entire class just moseying along on a European vacation in the next Spiderman. So Peter’s entire class got snapped, came back, and went on with their lives? The rest of the world’s infrastructure repaired itself in the time frame of Peter still being in High School? Yeah, right. But still – the fact that there’s an hour and a half of the movie that pauses all the tension and drama to be a comedy is just... whatever fine. It was funny. It was kinda cool, but it didn’t belong and it wasn’t necessary. Ok, I think I’m done.

#Avengers #Marvel #endgame spoilers #avengers endgame spoilers #avengers endgame #tony stark #natasha romanoff #thor #language warning #I say a lot of bad words and unkind things kiddo #you've been warned #Its been a few days and I'm still filled with rage #I did like a lot of parts of the movie #but I also hated a lot of the movie

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theuniversitychallengereview · 5 years

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UC 48.37 - Grand Final, Edinburgh vs Teddy Hall

Nine months. Eighteen hours of televised quizzing. More than two thousand two hundred increasingly complicated questions, like Russian dolls on a Mobius strip. Twenty-eight teams. Only two remain. Those are some statistics, but what of the people. These numbers tell part of the story, but they omit the crucial humanity that make this show unlike any other; the high fives and the fist-bumps, the hearts in the mouths and on the sleeves, the hopes and dreams that bloomed and ballooned, the lampooned and the festooned (a bit of a tacky end to the sentence, I know, but I was on a roll. You can count yourself lucky I didn’t try and get marooned in there, too).

For the first time in thirty-five years, Scotland has an institution in the Grand Final. Edinburgh, having fallen to the Champions Elect at the semi final stage in each of the past two series, finally made it one step further by beating Durham, who had earlier bested them in the quarter finals. They had previously swept aside Sidney Sussex in their opening match, before beating UCL on the final starter of their second round match, with captain Max Fitz-James sealing the victory.

It was Fitz-James who was the key to Edinburgh’s chances going in, with his twenty-six starters twelve clear of their next best buzzer, local lad Robbie Campbell Hewson, although RCH came up with some huge answers at vital times in their semi final. Fitz-James however, also leads the team, and the tournament (and is possibly the all time leader) in Negs, with ten incorrect interruptions to his name. He was also the go-to-guy for guesses, with a further fifteen non-penalized buzzes in his fingers. If he could get the balance right between reckless abandon and the pulling of rabbits from hats then his side might well have a chance. And they would go in knowing that caution would not serve them well given the man in the opposite captain’s chair.

Freddy Leo, described by the Times this week as "having drawn comparisons to Cristiano Ronaldo” (which, while perhaps not unlike analogies I myself may have drawn, coming from a national media which only ever covers the final, smacks of the kind of laziness eschewed by someone describing the Marvel Cinematic Universe as being ‘somewhat of a cultural juggernaut’ only in the leadup to the release of Avengers: Endgame), has amassed forty-one starters in one fewer game than Fitz-James, so the Frenchman will have gone in one hundred percent ready to flex those buzzer fingers at even the merest whiff of a guess, being fully aware that if he hesitated just the slightest moment, his German counterpart would be there to steal the points. Leo had already seen off this series’ other Big Bee (because they buzz so much, get it?) in his own semi-final, with Teddy Hall beating Darwin College despite Jason Golfinos’ best efforts and eight starter questions. He’s also shown that he has steel and nerve, with a comeback from a hundred points down against Bristol University (Bristanbul, maybe, for football fans) perhaps the grittiest performance in recent years.

But even he could not be a team by himself, with Agastya Pesharody and Marcelline Bresson popping up at important moments in their semi final victory. Completing their quartet was Lizzie Fry, and were they to win they would become only the second side in the Paxman Era (beginning in 1995) to do so having been less than 75% male.

Anyway, let’s not bother with the rules, here’s your first starter for ten.

As predicted, it was Fitz-James who was first out of the blocks, but not unsurprisingly, his speculative buzz of Maypole Dancing (not Maple dancing, as I’d originally thought he’d said) put Edinburgh in the not-unfamiliar territory of negative points. Fry, who would double her total for the series with three in the final (truly a player for the big occasion, rather like Cristiano Ronaldo in that sense) opened her account with Morris Dancing. One bonus on paperclips followed, with Leo dismissing the Netherlands as the country who had worn such items in their lapels because he knows that if they had, then the Dutch Bresson would have said so already. A sign of a team that trusts and is in sync with one another.

Leo claims his forty-second decimal of the series on the next starter, with his arm-cocked buzzer-stab technique deployed with trademark verve. Bonuses on the ever-relevant subject of ‘Persistent Courtship in the Nineteenth Century (specifically in novels)’ serve them better than paperclips, although Leo is perhaps fortunate to get the points on the first of these, forgetting to add the author of Far From the Madding Crowd to his answer (though to be honest requiring both seems pretty needless, given that the two pieces of information would never come uncoupled in the mind of a University Challenge finalist. They would know both or neither in this context). The third he pulls from the ether after a period of intense concentration, startling even his teammates with his sudden remembrance of David Copperfield’s Peggotty. Teddy Hall are forty-five points clear.

Neither side manages to guess what is essentially a ‘guess a number’ question, before Malusa bursts into life and fires Edinburgh back above zero. Paxman delights in delivering the bonus description in the manner of a stand-up comedian, ‘questions on the periodic table *pause for effect* in Chinese’. Cue laughter. This doesn’t trouble the Scottish quartet, who rattle through the hat-trick with little more than a ‘hmm, is it bromine or iodine? Its probably bromine’ (reader, it was bromine).

Wearing a burgundy jacket (and hailing from Burgundy, France, but not, presumably, having drunk any burgundy wine beforehand), Fitz-James gets his evening going at the third attempt (having also guessed on the ‘guess a number question’) with the Picture starter, a Shakespearean Venn diagram. He would also take the second Picture starter (little bit of foreshadowing for you there). With two of the bonuses, Edinburgh are level. Deuce.

A second starter of the night goes to Leo, and when Fry picks up another Fitz-James fumble it looks as if the game might be starting to get away from Edinburgh. But Pesharody is unlucky in forgetting that his answer on the next starter required two parts, and isn’t allowed the time to grasp for the second when he realises. Campbell Hewson, Edinburgh’s vulture, takes his correct morsel and completes it. Alpha and Omega. Romping through another hat-trick, this time on Iron Maiden, put the Scots firmly back on track.

The music questions came in three parts, with four sets of three tunes relating to the colours of the horizontal bands on national flags (if you’re not with me we’re about halfway round the loop of that Russian Doll mobius I was on about earlier, and yes, I have no idea what I’m trying to infer by that phrase either). No one gets the starter, for which, as well as containing three difficult clues, the answer was Armenia (the kind of question that makes a Queen of she who makes it), but Edinburgh manage to decipher Estonia and take the lead for the first time in the contest.

Now it is Teddy Hall who seem lost, and Edinburgh who have all the luck, Fitz-James throwing away the correct Aggripina with misplaced resignation and the assertion that he is wrong. Malusa, who had only five starters to his name before the final, then takes his second of the night, and a full set on Elizabeth Catlett completes a hat-trick of hat-tricks on the bonuses. All of these trebles meant that they had opened up a fifty point lead.

At this stage of the game most teams would have been beaten by such a margin, but Teddy had come back from twice that already in this competition, and the next hat-trick is completed by Fry as she steals a third starter from under Fitz-James’ over-eager nose.

Pesharody makes up for his earlier mistake (like Cristiano Ronaldo when he scored a hat-trick (oh look, another hat-trick) in the second leg of Juventus’ Round of 16 match in this year’s Champion’s League versus Atletico Madrid, having scored what looked suspiciously like an own goal (although it was credited to Diego Godin) in the 2-0 reverse of the first leg) with yet another pick-up from an ill-considered Fitz-James guess. It almost looks as though his (Fitz-James’) second picture starter of the night won’t matter, as first Leo, and then Bresson (with the speed and conviction of five-time ballon d’or winner Cristiano Ronaldo) buzz in decisively to swing the lead back down to Oxford with only seconds remaining by the slimmest of margins.

There would only be time for one more starter. Nine months. Eighteen and a half hours of televised quizzing. More than two thousand two hundred increasingly complicated questions. Only time for one more...

Answer as soon as your name is called. What two digit number...

If Fitz-James had the gumption he could have gone for a one in ninety (note: ‘How many two digit numbers are there? would be a good starter question) wild guess, but he doesn’t. Wise.

...is equivalent to the Roman numerals that form the first three letters of the city that was the birthplace of...

This is such a classic University Challenge question that its almost like they planned for it to be the deciding question in the final.

...William Gladstone...

No one has the faintest.

...Beryl Bainbridge...

Some cogs start to whirr.

...And Wayne Rooney...

By now everyone knows it, but they’re frantically trying to convert LIV into a two digit number. Leo launches downwards, but Campbell Hewson has beaten him to it. Elbow perpendicular to the desk, with his hand curled and a few inches from his face as if he wants to lapse into the classical philosopher pose but knows it would be too meme-able, he frowns, but does not hesitate.

Fifty-four.

Fifty-four is correct.

They can be pretty sure they’ve won it now, but they add two more bonuses before the gong sounds to confirm them as University Challenge champions.

Final Score: Edinburgh 155 - 140 St Edmund Hall, Oxford

Max Fitz-James, Marco Malusa, Matt Booth, Robbie Campbell Hewson. The first non-Oxbridge institution to claim the trophy since 2013. The first Scottish winners of University Challenge since 1983. Congratulations, gents. You sent Proud Edmund’s army homeward, to think again.

What a match, and what a series it has been. Leo and Teddy Hall have to be immensely proud of their achievements, and were unfortunate that they came up against an Edinburgh side who had the quiz of their lives.

Novelist Sebastian Faulks came on to present Edinburgh with the trophy, and he echoed the sentiments of many viewers when he said he found the questions staggeringly difficult. Comedian Ed Gamble recently said that he’s watched almost every episode of Only Connect and never got a question right. To some, that might seem nonsensical, being as an observer so far away from the level of the players, but people watch football knowing full well that they would be unable to tonk one in from thirty yards (yes, like Cristiano Ronaldo), and the joy of University Challenge, like all sport, comes from the thrill of the competition, and from watching people who are exemplary at something being exemplary at it.

Until next time, goodbye.

#university challenge #bbc2 #st edmund hall #teddy hall #oxford #edinburgh #jeremy paxman

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allonsysilvertongue · 7 years

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Wiping History

“What will happen when we get to your arena?” she demanded. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.“ 75 arenas and one colossal task for Effie Trinket. Hayffie. Post-MJ. Previously

4. The Old Colleague

For the second time that day, Effie checked her watch as she hurried down the third floor corridor of the Parliament that Plutarch had so graciously given to her for the duration of the project.

Inwardly, she cursed Enobaria for being the reason she was running late.

The phone call Effie had placed to the victor of District Two had been disastrous from start to finish. For starters, Enobaria had not been pleased at all that Effie had her contact details much less knowledge that she had moved to District Five. Of course, Effie had tried to explain that any information pertaining to her whereabouts she received from Plutarch which in itself was a mistake because the woman blew her top, going off about being tagged even after President Snow had fallen. Truthfully, Effie did not think there was any surveillance on any living victors except that the Government kept information on where they were currently residing.

Effie was not easily intimidated not even by a woman with fangs but she did grow tired of being on the receiving end of her tirade. When Enobaria finally slammed the phone down after Effie managed to get a word in regarding the arena, Effie let out a breath in relief. She took Enobaria’s ‘do not ever call me again or I’ll rip your throat out’ to simply mean ‘no’.

Some people just wanted to live in peace without being dragged down memory lane and she could certainly respect that.

Effie pushed open the door to the meeting room and hurried in, quickly noting that nearly everyone was present, including Barron Holland, the leader of their demolition team. She nodded at each of them in turn, apologising for being late.

“I was not expecting you here, Plutarch,” Effie remarked.

“Oh, just the off-chance that I was around the area and as it is I also have some excellent news to share,” Plutarch smiled. “Haymitch Abernathy will be joining the team. I have since officially appoint him as representative of the victors as a whole.”

If Effie was the kind to groan outwardly in displeasure, she might have done so. The only indication that she was in any way affected by the news was by the slight clench of her jaws.

“From my visit to Twelve a few days ago, I had the notion that he might be,” Effie said when Cressida turned to look at her questioningly. “He said something to the effect of wanting to see the destruction of the arena through.”

“Perhaps he does not trust us to do the job,” Plutarch chuckled. “But be that as it may, it will make for a good publicity.”

“No,” Effie disagreed firmly on that. “This will be difficult on the victors as it is. We do not need to make a spectacle out of it. Cressida and Pollux will film what is necessary for their post-war documentary with the interest of preserving this as part of our country’s history – that is all and nothing more.”

A murmur of assent rippled through the room, and Barron who came from a district seconded her decision for which she was grateful.

“It is too short a notice for Haymitch to attend this meeting but I trust that you will keep him updated?” Plutarch said in a clipped tone.

“Yes, certainly,” Effie nodded. “Plutarch, I need your word that there will be no camera crews except for Cressida and Pollux when each of these victors arrives in the city. If the public noticed that they are here so be it, this project would hit the papers soon enough, but I will not have them hounded by the press. I gave them my word and now I need yours.”

Plutarch, she noticed, looked as if he had swallowed something sour. It was not every day that he was talked to in this manner by anyone, much less her but those victors are hers and she would protect them while they were here to the best of her ability.

“Of course,” Plutarch bowed before excusing himself from the meeting.

“That went better than expected,” Cressida commented.

“Yes, I am glad he did not argue on it. He controls the media and if I do not draw the lines….”

They spent the next half an hour going through the procedures with Effie giving Cressida full creative control on her plan for the documentary. From Cressida’s history with the victors, Effie trust that she would have their best interests at heart and thus gave her permission to interview the victors as long as they consented to it.

“The hovercraft should leave for the first arena as scheduled,” their pilot updated. “We’re planning for two arenas per day. If any of the arenas are situated close to each other, the plan is to do more – at which point, I will advise you accordingly.”

Effie nodded.

“We’re on track,” Barron chimed in. “My team is ready, and the explosives are stocked.”

“Haymitch should arrive before then,” said Cressida.

“He will,” Effie assured.

That was another thing she needed to arrange. He would need some place to stay and she certainly was not going to offer the extra room in her apartment to him.

XxX

Haymitch arrived one day before the day the first arena was scheduled to be destroyed. He hopped off the train with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, his hair messy from the wind and his clothes a little rumpled from the journey, and just like that, at the sight of him, her heart skipped a beat.

She hated how traitorous her heart was.

“Sweetheart,” he greeted, his smile was cocky and smug as if he won something just by being here.

Still, she was not an idiot. On any other circumstances, Haymitch Abernathy would not have been happy to have to set foot back here in the city but since he was here on some personal challenge that he had set for himself, and because he knew she really did not want him here, she figured it was the exception.

“Haymitch,” she said cordially. “I never thought I’d say this but welcome back.”

He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“I’ll be gone as soon as it’s done," he said and then looked her way. "And you'll be coming home with me this time 'round."

He was so certain, so confident but Effie said nothing to that.

She spent the entire car ride staring out of the window wondering just how he was acting as if the argument they had on the day he brought Katniss home didn’t happen. That scene was still fresh in her mind even after all these months, and she could remember how hurt she felt when she found out he was leaving her again or worse, the betrayal that twisted in her heart when she learnt of his vote.

The feelings had dulled with time and she had months to think it through. Haymitch had never done anything without a reason, she understood that. Still, he could at least have told it herself instead of her finding out from Johanna.

You forgave Johanna, a voice whispered. She voted yes.

Except of course, Johanna didn’t leave her behind twice and because of their history, she somehow held Haymitch up to a certain degree that she did not impose on Johanna. With Haymitch, it was the cumulative events and she had been exhausted, hurting and angry.

“You excited?”

“What about?” Effie turned her gaze to him.

“Working together again – you and I.”

“Could it be that the position has reversed?” she asked, referring to years before when she had been eager to work together with him.

He narrowed his eyes and she went back to staring out of the window until they reached their destination.

"What's Clemens getting outta this?"

"I am not privy to the details," she answered truthfully, "but he has run out of favours and I'm certain he knows it will be in his best interest to cooperate. Now," she turned to him just outside of the door of the place he would be staying for the coming weeks or months, "are you completely sure that you want to do this?"

She was still trying her luck to dissuade him but he had always been as stubborn as her.

"Yeah."

With that, Effie turned the key and pushed the door open. She had managed to rent the place on a short notice and billed the expenses to the project's finances. Considering that she did not have much time to look around, she was still proud of this place. It came completely furnished, granted the furniture were a little mismatched from her taste but one cannot really be choosy right after the war. There was one bedroom and an adjoining kitchen. The living room had a two-seater sofa, coffee table and small television.

He let his bag fall to the floor with a thud and surveyed the place.

“You'll be staying here until the end of this project. The faucet in the bathroom sink is not working unfortunately, a burst pipe or something," she waved her hand and she had used that little fact to ask for a reduced rent. She could be very adamant when she wanted to. "Other than that, everything works as it should be. I trust it is to your liking?”

“I'll stock up a couple bottle of booze and everything will be right as rain,” he shrugged. “You'll tell me where I can get the alcohol, yeah? This place's changed."

She produced a map of the neighbourhood and he smirked.

"Always prepared," he chuckled, taking the proffered map from her. "Where are you staying?”

Effie held her tongue and then duly released the information to him. Sooner or later, he would find out.

"There," her finger tapped an area on the map, "about ten minutes' walk from here."

"So that it'll be easier for you to come over and haul my ass out of bed in case I'm late?" He teased.

That had certainly been one of the points she considered when choosing this place but she merely smiled at him.

“You want me to walk you back?” he asked, startling her.

“I will be fine. Thank you for the offer.”

Haymitch sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Don't do this, Effie. Don't talk to me like... I'm a stranger."

She looked away and that was when she saw the glint of gold under the sleeve of his shirt. It was the bangle she had given him during the third quarter quell and he was still wearing it after all this time, even when he had no reason to.

"See you tomorrow, Haymitch. Nine am. Do not be late."

With that, Effie closed the door behind her and let out a trembling breath.

Haymitch isn't the only one who can be protective. Effie can be protective over her victors just as well. Now that they're both here in the same place, tell me what you think!

#hayffie #effie trinket #haymitch abernathy #plutarch heavensbee #johanna mason #wiping history

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cassie-babyz · 7 years

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[170420 Kstyle] B.A.P, Their long-awaited comeback as a whole! “Gathering together like this is a true blessing, like a dream.”

In Seoul during late March when it’s still chilly. We went to interview B.A.P who had pulled off a comeback as a whole with 6.

Recently completing their 3-day Seoul concert which served as the starter for their “B.A.P 2017 WORLD TOUR ‘PARTY BABY’”, B.A.P didn’t show a trace of tiredness on their faces and worked through a day of photoshoots and interviews. At the scene of the rumoured “most-close-knit KPOP idol group”, you could see them relaxed from their core amongst sounds of joking and laughter.

Whilst talking about how they felt about the absences of the group’s pillar-like presences, Bang Yongguk & Himchan, regrouping again, and episodes from their new single to be released in late April, they also trailed off a little into past memories. From the secrets to maintaining on good terms to the cute complaints that the members spilled, we give you this harmonious interview.

“I can’t imagine B.A.P without Bang Yongguk”

―― It’s been a little while since seeing B.A.P as 6 hasn’t it! Leader Bang Yongguk has now returned, please tell us your honest thoughts about restarting activities as a whole. DH: With Yongguk’s absence, it looks as if the group is missing something, so having his return, and standing on stage together again made me feel that we were complete. I felt confidence bubbling inside me too. The fans were really happy about it too, so it was perfect. ZL: Yongguk carries a huge part of B.A.P, so when he came back, I thought, we really can’t make it without him. Like, I can’t imagine B.A.P with Yongguk. So I was very happy. YJ: Promoting as 6 really is great. We’d been promoting as 6 for a long time already so although it would’ve been a given that he would come back to us, I still was truly glad. JU: With just one person gone, the empty space is huge and I felt how important B.A.P was, how important standing on the stage together was. HC: We got really excited and it was a good time. Gathering together like this is a true blessing, like a dream. It’s a shame that I had to pull out midway, but I came back again for the final day of the Seoul concerts yesterday and had a blast.

―― Himchan, you performed as if you had no injury at all, but how was your actual condition? HC: Yes, I’m ok. Since I’m a pro after all. DH: (in Japanese) Just like I thought HC: (Laughs) There was some pain but I wanted to show my professional side on stage so. DH: (in Japanese whilst applauding) Just like I thought

―― During the talks, you mentioned that “I felt quite a bit of pressure” about taking over the leader’s spot in Yongguk’s place for your previous release “FLY HIGH”. How’s it thinking back to then? HC: Having to do the work of 6 people with 5 people was tough. Changing the choreographies, thinking about what to do about Yongguk’s parts which weren’t mine, it was tough to me because they were parts that I didn’t understand, but when Yongguk came back and we were 6 again, I felt at ease. It was mentally straining as well, but we worked ourselves to the bone because we wanted to show our perfect selves as pros, and although I don’t know how the viewers felt, it’d be good if our performances became good memories for everyone.

―― I’m sure Yongguk had regrets because of his condition, how did you feel about the members who were filling in your absence? YG: All the members did well so I have thoughts that they did good work and thoughts of gratitude.

―― Releasing your 6th single “ROSE” in March in Korea and as well as appearing on many music shows, were there any memorable things? DH: The most memorable thing was of course whilst making a comeback as a whole, and then having another slight mishap with Himchan’s injury. Our schedule was packed, so we thought to do anything to accomplish it, and that we’d make our fans worry if we don’t stand before them even as 5. But with the concert as our platform, we were able to stand in front of everyone as 6 again and although there were many happenings during the promotion for this album, in turn, I think there will be many good things from now on so I’m looking forward to the upcoming world tour.

―― For this album, it’s been a hot topic that the production team has prominent domestic and foreign artists participating. Please tell us the reason for choosing “WAKE ME UP” as your comeback title. DH: We were originally thinking of a different song for the title track, but after some changes, “WAKE ME UP” was the result from discussions by the members, the company and various people. It was put on the backburner twice before we made the decision, but when we tried recording “WAKE ME UP”, it turned out really well. Everyone that we showed it to commented “it’s really good”, so we decided to go with “WAKE ME UP”. The other songs “DIAMOND 4 YA” and “DYSTOPIA” were possible title track songs too.

“Our personalities are something that can’t be done, can’t be fulfilled by another member”

―― Finishing your comeback activities in Korea, next up is the release of your 7th Japanese single isn’t it. I heard the same song will be released. HC: That’s right. Whilst preparing for this single, there was talk that an original Japanese song would be good, but because “WAKE ME UP” was created so well, we thought about a remake track instead. The Japanese fans will seem to like “WAKE ME UP” so we decided on that.

―― When releasing Korean comeback songs in Japanese, are there any things that you note in particular? DH: When we’re recording in Japanese, the thing we prioritise the most is pronunciation. We haven’t mistaken the Japanese before, but we’re still not used to the pronunciation. HC: (suddenly) Tsu, tsu, tsu. [T/N: A Japanese syllable] DH: There’s nothing much apart from the pronunciation. HC: (again, suddenly) “Nazo nazo” [T/N: ‘a riddle’]. They’re lyrics from my part (laughs).

―― Here’s a question relating to the title of the song. Whilst promoting as B.A.P, has there been anything that you’ve “woken up to or discovered”? DH: We’re continually discovering something and always want to level up, but talking about recent events... Yongguk going on hiatus and Himchan taking a short break, I’ve felt and become aware of the member’s positions. I’ve come to properly understand “ah, this member has this role on stage, this is what they carry [in the group]”, and gain a lot in that sense. For example, in Himchan’s case, his overwhelming presence on stage and ability to grasp each and every frame. In Yongguk’s case, I think it’s the powerfulness in his rap. ZL: The 6 of us all have different personalities, and I think that each of us have something that can’t be done, can’t be fulfilled by another member. That’s why when we allocate our parts on stage, it’s tough to try and do something about it when even 1 person is missing.

―― Is there a member who can’t “WAKE (ME) UP”, and doesn’t do well when awoken? DH: Readyyy go! (whilst pointing at him with the other members) It’s Jongup (laughs) JU: (in a tiny voice) Yes, it’s me. DH: When Jongup wakes up, he’s exactly like the Pokemon “Grimer”. It’s a character that’s all grimy. He won’t wake up even if he’s called, he doesn’t answer his phone either; he’s the last person to wake. I’ve given up.

―― Then on the reverse, who has no problem with waking up early? DH: (with confidence) That’d be me, the only one. I can wake up myself. HC: What are you saying, I can wake up myself too. YJ: I can wake up by myself too. DH: You can wake up by yourselves, but you just don’t make it in time right guys (laughs).

―― Next is relating to the lyrics for “WAKE ME UP”. There is a distinctive line “up the stairs of an adult”, but is there anything that you’ve done recently that you thought you “climbed the stairs of an adult”? HC: I feel that when I go to the TV stations. Me and Yongguk both don’t think we’ve aged that much, but there are kids who are 12 years younger than us debuting, so the age gap is huge (laughs). DH: Samchon (laughs) ALL: (laughs) HC: Since it’s like that, we continue growing older and I feel that we’re going up on the stairs of an adult. DH: I left the dorm and live by myself now, so I have to pay for the electricity, utilities, taxes, insurance and such by myself, and as I become more like a member of society, I thought “ah, there’s a process to becoming an adult”. HC: Ohh, how cool! DH: (pointing at Himchan) This person, about how much the utility bills are, about how the taxing system is.... HC: I know. DH: Oh, so you know (laughs) ZL: Those lyrics were the part I thought up and wrote. We’ve always sung songs with societal messages with a B.A.P twist, and although I’m the youngest, I have many things that I feel and want to protect. It’s the part where I wrote the lyrics, wanting to have the many people who listen to B.A.P’s music to empathise with it. JU: Umm, when I’m going through a really rough time... (silence) DH: Like right now? (laughs) JU: When I’m physically and mentally worn, I think, “ah~ I’ve ageddd”.

―― In “WAKE ME UP”, what sort of dance will you show us? DH: Firstly, not only in the title, but in the lyrics too, there are many parts with the meanings “awaken, wake up”, and in the choreography for the chorus, there are moves where you really feel that it’s “wake up!”. If you look clo~sely at the whole dance and not just that bit, [you’ll see] it’s all cool from the start to finish where you can’t miss even one move. It’s a dance with meaning so please turn your attention to that too.

―― For the limited edition of your 7th Japanese single “WAKE ME UP”, I heard that the matoki smartphone ring included is being well-received for being cute. Is there anything you’re particular about your smartphone accessories or anything that you love using right now? DH: In the first place, we’re people who like our phones to be streamlined, so there are members who don’t even put cases on their phones. The ‘Apple’ image is cool so everyone doesn’t put on any accessories.

―― Have you actually seen the matoki smartphone ring? ALL: Of course! DH: It’s really cute and it seems like the fans will really like it. (Spotting one of the staff’s phone which has a matoki smartphone ring) DH&YJ: (in Japanese) Cute~ ZL: I want to go to Japan, and bring them all back.

―― This time, the new event called “flying kisses event” is a hot topic too. DH: It’s our first time so I’m looking forward to it. Handshakes and high touches are often done and commonplace, so the company asked “what do you want to do?”. After discussions, the result was “flying kisses”.

―― Shortening that, it seems like you call it “furapo”. HC: Ah, is that how it’s called? Furapo? YJ: Ohh furapo. DH: (whilst rolling his tongue) Furapo~!

―― (Bitter laughs) On the final day for the Seoul concert, Himchan was blowing kisses out at the end; which member blows out kisses often at concerts and such? HC: Everyone does it a lot. DH: Yes, we always do it at any moment.

―― Yongguk does it too? DH: Ah, Yongguk doesn’t do it much. (laughs) YG: I did it a lot in the world tour last year.

“We are still here, because we experienced both good and bad as 6”

―― I think you’re used to Japanese activities by now, but is there anywhere that you haven’t been to but want to visit? ZL: Onsens, rotenburo! And then, places where the fans are. I want to try going to the countryside too. JU: Mount Fuji. DH: Recently, I visited Sapporo in January for fun and I love the snow. When I see Mount Fuji, the peak is always covered in snow isn’t it. That’s why I’ve always wanted to go. HC: There’s this manga “Fantasista” that I like, and there’s this island that the protagonist Sakamoto Teppei lives at. Is it in the North? I’d like to go there. YJ: I want to go to Disneyland. I’ve been to Disneysea, but I still haven’t gone to Land yet. JU: Ah, I wanted to go to Disneyland too! The Disney characters, I like them.

―― If there are any things you must do or places you must visit when you come to Japan lately, then please tell us. YJ: Eating yakiniku! There are yakiniku places in Korea as well, but the Japanese yakiniku. There’s a yakiniku restaurant that I frequent in Japan. Pork and beef too... more like, I’ll eat everything on the menu (laughs) DH: My favourite food is tonkatsu so I have to eat tonkatsu regardless. HC: It’s pretty hard to eat authentic Japanese-style tonkatsu in Korea. The fat is still stuck to the meat in Japan isn’t it, for the pork loin. That is reaaally delicious! ZL: Mine is eating melon-pan. I love it. HC: When Zelo wakes in the morning, he always eats melon-pan with milk that has blue and white packaging. ZL: I go for bread in the mornings. In Japan too, I’ll buy bread in advance; (in native pronunciation) American style. Whether in Korea or in Japan, I like to have it with milk. JU: I watch Japanese anime and listen to Japanese music. I don’t know a lot but I like Ikimonogakari. YG: I will definitely go to the convenience store. I don’t know the name, but there’s a gummy that catches my eye and I always buy it. There’s grape and muscat flavours, and it has gold packaging.... (We deduced it was “kororo” afterwards.)

―― Even just talking like this, I can feel how close you are between yourselves. Are there secrets to maintaining this closeness? YJ: Not talking to each other when we’re in a bad mood. If you talk during those moments, the relationship will only worsen. ALL: (bursts out laughing) DH: It’s about knowing each other very well. And not only that, we’ve endured hard times as 6, and experienced both good and bad together. That’s why I think I’m here as we are now.

―― Can you tell if they’re in a bad mood just from looking at their face? DH: Yes, I can tell but... there’s someone who teases us whilst being aware.

―― Who is it? DH: I can’t say that. There’s that sort of an older someone. (Laughter erupts at Himchan who stares suspiciously at Daehyun) Why do you think it’s you? It’s Yongguk~ ALL: (bursts out laughing) JU: It’s hard to say if it’s a secret, but around debut when we were still trainees, we slept together in the same room. There were 3 beds lined up next to each other, and we would chatter away before sleeping. I wonder if that stuff made any difference. DH&HC: That’s right, that’s right~ (The two burst out in laughter for some reason) DH: It was really fun~ back then. HC: It was living with 6 guys after all. All the members were lying next to each other sleeping in the one room. If you tossed and turned, it was close enough that you would bump into someone. ZL: It was like a big family sleeping together in a huddle in the one room. ―― The youngest Zelo is 20 years old now, do you go out drinking together? DH&HC&YJ: We often do! DH: We don’t live together, but we’re all in the neighbourhood so.

―― What alcohol do you like? ZL: “Horoyoi”. Although there are many flavours, I like all of them. DH: In my fridge too, there’s some lemon flavoured “horoyoi” as well right now. YJ: Somaek!

―― To B.A.P who are close enough that you go out drinking together, regardless, is there anything that you think “please, fix this!” about a member? JU: Yongguk’s face is too small so I want it to be a bit bigger. ALL: (starts clapping and laughing) HC: I know I know. When I’m next to him in photos, my own face looks bigger. YJ: For me, Jongup is too good at singing and dancing on stage, so I think it’s ok if he doesn’t so well. ALL: (laughs) JU: (in a small voice) I won’t fix that.

Source: Kstyle Translation: cassie_babyz

Please take out with full credits

#bap #b.a.p #wake me up (jpns)#online interviews

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kosaka-ryoutarou · 7 years

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Kosaka Ryoutarou First One-day Valentine Tour in Mother Farm, February 19, 2017

This is a translation of the question and answer portion Ryoutarou had during his bus tour last February. All questions are from the participants of bus # 1. Questions from bus # 2 are here. For a general fan report of the event, you can read about it here.

Please DO NOT REPOST AND ALTER any part of this translation anywhere without credit. We’ll appreciate it if you link people back to this page.

Q. A thing you like and hate about Suga Kenta-kun A thing I like about Suga Kenta is… everything. But to narrow it down, it’s easy to be with him, and be just natural with him. Something I hate about him… [He was asked what he wants to change about Kenta instead.] Hm, I think there’s none. He doesn’t have anything that makes me angry too. Ah, I have one more thing that I like about him: when he says he wants to take a photo. I like it when he tells me he wants to take a photo with me.

Q. Impromptu rap, theme is something fitting (to the event) “Things about Suga Kenta are what I like~ But, from here on~ I will be hunting for strawberries~ So, Kenta~ Bye bye~”

Q. An instance where you made a mistake on stage. In Haisute saien, there’s a scene where Tsukishima makes fun of Hinata and Kageyama. In the part “It’s just a club,” I would throw the ball behind as we leave. However, I hit my forehead as I did. It looked like it was on purpose but everyone was laughing. I remember Kairi said, “We’re done for,” as he held onto my sleeves.

Q. In Juvenile, what did you bear in mind as the cast leader? Considering everyone’s mood and in order to have fun during rehearsals, everyone got along very well.

Q. Were you conscious of Kenta-kun in your curtain call speech in Juvenile? Because I did not see Kenta-kun that I was able to do it the way I wanted to. If I tell all the things I wanted to say, I’ll be like Kenta-kun. When Kenta came to watch so we could eat after, the first thing he said was “Your greeting was like me!” That is not good, is it? (lol) I did not imitate him, but it looked like I did.

Q. If you were to pick someone from the Gekidan Haikyuu to be paired with, who would it be? (Note: During the DVD release event, Kenta picked Ryoutarou.) Ah, Kenta-kun! It’s Kenta-kun, right? Kenta-kun… (Guide: It’s mutual.) There’s no one but Kenta-kun. (Guide: Like manzai?) If it’s manzai, then Bun-chan (Nagamatsu Bunta). We’ve done manzai skits in the dressing room.

Q. Your dream in the (near) future? An actor… (Guide: Aren’t you one yet?) It’s still the starting point. If I am to appear in a drama, I’ll like to co-star with someone from Haisute.

Q. Do you still listen to Tenchi Gaeshi (by NICO Touches The Walls) before a performance? I still do. But before during rehearsals, we were really into Fly High so I listened to that song a lot.

Q. What are you currently obsessed with? What’s popular in the rehearsals venue? For me, I’m into Monster Strike, and I watch Hikakin-san on YouTube. I’ve seen all the episodes of Prison Break in Hulu! I have seen Breaking Bad as recommended by Worry-san. In the rehearsals, there’s none. It might start with Kouhei-san telling us to play GameBoy.

Q. An interesting episode or an incident during rehearsals The other day, I was thinking of eating from Kenta-kun ‘s stock of Butamen. The pot slipped and hot water gushed to my legs. It was really hot!

Q. If you are to associate each Karasuno cast to Pokemon, who will they be? Kenta-kun is Squirtle. Keita-san is Golem. Tatsunari-kun is Umbreon. Kouhei-san is, I’m sorry, but Geodude! Kairi is Bulbasaur. Ken-chan is Archeus and Jus-kun is a half-blooded Pokemon Trainer! (lol) Hiroki-kun is a fire Pokemon. A starter pokemon! Kazuma-kun is… Goldeen. Shohei-kun is Diglett!

Q. Please tell us your goal for this year using your name. (This is quite difficult to explain but Ryoutarou was asked to compose it in a sentence using the alphabets in his name, “Ko-Sa-Ka”) “Korekara wa, Sanuki udon wo, Kanarazu taberu. Maiinichi! (From today, I will eat Sanuki udon without fail. Every day!)” (Guide: Eat sanuki udon? Do you like it? Are you an udon person or a soba person?) Maybe soba?

Q. Who is the person you respect? I’m embarrassed for always saying Kenta-kun, Kenta-kun… but it’s Kenta-kun. Aside from Kenta-kun, it’s Karasawa Toshiaki-san. He can do drama without fail but he can also be entertaining in variety shows. I love that about him. I want to appear in variety shows too.

Q. What is the most expensive thing you have bought ever? It’s probably this (the reversible jacket). It was originally 60,000 yen. Then it got cheaper by 20,000 yen. I don’t really buy anything expensive, clothes or even cheap ones. I’ll wear anything from one year ago like normal. I wanted this one so I saved up and bought it.

Q. Which animal do you compare yourself with? Maybe a sloth…

Q. The best impression that you remember during your student days Athletic festival in senior high school, it’s allowed to dye your hair. But because I have been in the entertainment business and I was the troupe leader too, I did not dye my hair. I was blond only for 3 days. I immediately dyed my hair back to black.

Q. What do you first order when you are in a sushi restaurant? Salmon. (Guide: Are you the person who has it at the beginning or ends with it?) I’ll have it all throughout.

Q. How long have you been playing Monster Strike? I stopped… Because of bills… Ah, I think this is the one I have spent the most on. (Guide: Do you spend money on it? / Fans: We do!) You do, don’t you? (lol)

Q. Please tell us three things you like about Kenta-kun Things I like about Kenta-kun. First is, uhm… he’s is veeeery respectable as a sempai. This might sound inappropriate too but he is also veeeery cute. Second is he is very skillful at drama/play and never cuts corners. Last one is when he says “Let’s take a photo!”

Q. Your favorite song? Kanjani8’s NOROSHI. I get really pumped up with it.

Q. Your favorite brand? I have liked Vivian for a while now. But I do not own anything Vivian or Supreme yet…

Q. An instance that makes you really happy. “After a productive rehearsal, you get into the bath and then when you’re already in your futon, you realize that it’s a day off the next day” kind of moment.

Q. A method you do to release your nervousness before showtime. Looking at the other castmates’ eyes. While our backs get slapped, we tell each other that it’s going to be fine as it is right then. Also, I write the character 人 (person) and swallow it*. I do that 10 times. I’ve been doing that since my piano recital when I was in elementary. * That’s the thing that Asahi does in Haikyuu too.

Q. Do you have a sibling? I’m an only child. (Guide: Your family must be very tall.) My mother is only around 162cm… But my mother’s father and grandfather are tall, around 180cm. Maybe it comes from that. (Guide: Did you enter the show business by yourself?) I appeared in Tensai Terebi-kun.

Q. Your favorite and hated attractions in Disney. My favorite is Space Mountain. In Disney Sea, I like The Journey to the Center of the Earth. I don’t have anything I hate. But I am definitely bad with Fuji-Q. That’s scary. I will never go in a haunted house by myself too.

Q. What is the color of your underwear today? Wait, I’ll look… (He takes a while to answer.) It’s red.

Q. What is your favorite scene and line in Haikyuu? When Tsukishima was able to block Ushiwaka’s spike… Also, the relationship among Asahi, Sugawara and Nishinoya being restored during the game with the Alumni Association deeply touched me. For my favorite line, it’s Nishinoya’s “I’ll protect your backs.” I admire that. I like Nishinoya.

Q. Please tell us your recommended restaurant that serves rice meals. Harajuku’s roast beef. It isn’t written here (as a question) but I went with Bun-chan, (Guide: You also like oysters, right?) I was with Kenta-kun and Keita-san when I first tried raw oysters. From then on, I cannot forget it. Whenever I have to eat oysters, I should be with Kenta-kun. (Guide: Definitely with him, huh?) Definitely.

All questions have been answered by then. Ryoutarou mentioned that if he is to do variety shows, he wants to do something like ItteQ’s Degawa English (an example). Also, recently, he’s been referring to some people with “君さあ” (a casual “you”).

Source: here Translated by: @tsukkinode . If you find a translation mistake, please message us so we can correct it.

#kosaka ryoutarou #translation #source: twitter #event: bus tour #source: fan report #hyper projection engeki haikyuu #haikyuu stage play #haisute #juvenile stage

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wolfliving · 7 years

Text

Jeff Bezos being Jeff Bezos

*He’s the Duke of the Stacks at the moment, so maybe it’s good to hear him out.

EX-99.1 2 d373368dex991.htm EX-99.1

Exhibit 99.1

“Jeff, what does Day 2 look like?”

That’s a question I just got at our most recent all-hands meeting. I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic.

“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

To be sure, this kind of decline would happen in extreme slow motion. An established company might harvest Day 2 for decades, but the final result would still come.

I’m interested in the question, how do you fend off Day 2? What are the techniques and tactics? How do you keep the vitality of Day 1, even inside a large organization?

Such a question can’t have a simple answer. There will be many elements, multiple paths, and many traps. I don’t know the whole answer, but I may know bits of it. Here’s a starter pack of essentials for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making.

True Customer Obsession

There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.

Why? There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples.

Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight. A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.

Resist Proxies

As companies get larger and more complex, there’s a tendency to manage to proxies. This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it’s dangerous, subtle, and very Day 2.

A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us? In a Day 2 company, you might find it’s the second.

Another example: market research and customer surveys can become proxies for customers – something that’s especially dangerous when you’re inventing and designing products. “Fifty-five percent of beta testers report being satisfied with this feature. That is up from 47% in the first survey.” That’s hard to interpret and could unintentionally mislead.

Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys. They live with the design.

I’m not against beta testing or surveys. But you, the product or service owner, must understand the customer, have a vision, and love the offering. Then, beta testing and research can help you find your blind spots. A remarkable customer experience starts with heart, intuition, curiosity, play, guts, taste. You won’t find any of it in a survey.

Embrace External Trends

The outside world can push you into Day 2 if you won’t or can’t embrace powerful trends quickly. If you fight them, you’re probably fighting the future. Embrace them and you have a tailwind.

These big trends are not that hard to spot (they get talked and written about a lot), but they can be strangely hard for large organizations to embrace. We’re in the middle of an obvious one right now: machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Over the past decades computers have broadly automated tasks that programmers could describe with clear rules and algorithms. Modern machine learning techniques now allow us to do the same for tasks where describing the precise rules is much harder.

At Amazon, we’ve been engaged in the practical application of machine learning for many years now. Some of this work is highly visible: our autonomous Prime Air delivery drones; the Amazon Go convenience store that uses machine vision to eliminate checkout lines; and Alexa,1 our cloud-based AI assistant. (We still struggle to keep Echo in stock, despite our best efforts. A high-quality problem, but a problem. We’re working on it.)

But much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface. Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type – quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.

Inside AWS, we’re excited to lower the costs and barriers to machine learning and AI so organizations of all sizes can take advantage of these advanced techniques.

Using our pre-packaged versions of popular deep learning frameworks running on P2 compute instances (optimized for this workload), customers are already developing powerful systems ranging everywhere from early disease detection to increasing crop yields. And we’ve also made Amazon’s higher level services available in a convenient form. Amazon Lex (what’s inside Alexa), Amazon Polly, and Amazon Rekognition remove the heavy lifting from natural language understanding, speech generation, and image analysis. They can be accessed with simple API calls – no machine learning expertise required. Watch this space. Much more to come.

High-Velocity Decision Making

Day 2 companies make high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and dynamism of Day 1, you have to somehow make high-quality, high-velocity decisions. Easy for start-ups and very challenging for large organizations. The senior team at Amazon is determined to keep our decision-making velocity high. Speed matters in business – plus a high-velocity decision making environment is more fun too. We don’t know all the answers, but here are some thoughts.

First, never use a one-size-fits-all decision-making process. Many decisions are reversible, two-way doors. Those decisions can use a light-weight process. For those, so what if you’re wrong? I wrote about this in more detail in last year’s letter.

1 For something amusing, try asking, “Alexa, what is sixty factorial?”

Second, most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow. Plus, either way, you need to be good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. If you’re good at course correcting, being wrong may be less costly than you think, whereas being slow is going to be expensive for sure.

Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes.

This isn’t one way. If you’re the boss, you should do this too. I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment.

Note what this example is not: it’s not me thinking to myself “well, these guys are wrong and missing the point, but this isn’t worth me chasing.” It’s a genuine disagreement of opinion, a candid expression of my view, a chance for the team to weigh my view, and a quick, sincere commitment to go their way. And given that this team has already brought home 11 Emmys, 6 Golden Globes, and 3 Oscars, I’m just glad they let me in the room at all!

Fourth, recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment. Without escalation, the default dispute resolution mechanism for this scenario is exhaustion. Whoever has more stamina carries the decision.

I’ve seen many examples of sincere misalignment at Amazon over the years. When we decided to invite third party sellers to compete directly against us on our own product detail pages – that was a big one. Many smart, well-intentioned Amazonians were simply not at all aligned with the direction. The big decision set up hundreds of smaller decisions, many of which needed to be escalated to the senior team.

“You’ve worn me down” is an awful decision-making process. It’s slow and de-energizing. Go for quick escalation instead – it’s better.

So, have you settled only for decision quality, or are you mindful of decision velocity too? Are the world’s trends tailwinds for you? Are you falling prey to proxies, or do they serve you? And most important of all, are you delighting customers? We can have the scope and capabilities of a large company and the spirit and heart of a small one. But we have to choose it.

A huge thank you to each and every customer for allowing us to serve you, to our shareowners for your support, and to Amazonians everywhere for your hard work, your ingenuity, and your passion.

As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. It remains Day 1.

Sincerely,

Jeff

Jeffrey P. Bezos

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Amazon.com, Inc.

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