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youngster-monster · 4 years ago

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An act of love and mercy

In the wake of Sasha’s death, Sam finds himself at a loss for what to do. Grief, he finds, makes him restless. Or rather the avoidance of grief. For himself to be busy enough not to be sad, he needs something to be busy with. And there’s not much that a newly ghostless Guardian can do around here. He doesn’t have that many marketable skills, after all. Especially since he still hasn’t gotten used to his new lack of depth perception, which skews his aim something fierce.

He ends up calling in every favor owed to him by fellow Hunters until one of them can present him with a bounty fit for his new limited abilities. He has no qualms about leveraging the death of his ghost to get it for himself.

She meant for it to be a relaxing, low-stakes job in-between bigger expeditions. That means it’s a little too dangerous for a guy with only one working eye. Fortunately Sam is used to fighting without Light by virtue of spending most of his active duty career in the farthest, darkest corner of the system. He’s never run a mission with no light or backup before, but he makes up for the difference with a little bit of a death wish.

The mission is simple at least. A Fallen ketch crashed near the Cosmodrome for unknown reasons, and he’s supposed to go investigate and get rid of any hostiles.

Easy enough.

He must have jinxed it though, because the first thing he finds when he shimmies in through an exhaust vent and into the ship proper is a Fallen corpse, half-buried in the disgusting organic growth tell-tale of the Hive.

And where there’s Hive, there’s usually troubles.

You should call for back-up, the ghost (hah) of Sasha’s voice whispers in his mind.

He’s heard these exact words in her voice thousands of times before, and has never listened to them. Why would he start now?

The advantage of a bow is that it’s quiet enough that even when you’re trying to remain undetected you can afford to miss. Since his shots tend to only hit their mark one time out of five nowadays, Sam is thankful for that much.

In the close quarters of the ketch he ends up using his arrows as melee weapons more than projectiles anyway.

He’s only found a handful of thralls so far, which he dispatched quietly, although he can hear the distant roar of a more substantial force deeper in the bowels of the ship. They’re far outnumbered by the bodies. Everywhere he looks he finds the chitinous plates of Fallen, what little isn’t buried under Hive growth covered in their blood. Few of them wear armor, he notices.

He’s starting to get the disquieting feeling that this might have been a civilian ship.

But what would it do near Earth of all places? He has yet to find a House banner; impossible to tell if they were fleeing something or lost the trail of their fleet.

He checks every room, hoping to find an answer. Records of their last communications, perhaps, or of their trajectory. If Hive is infesting Fallen ships — if Fallen are bringing their civilians near the City — then surely the Vanguard needs to know.

What he finds instead is a nursery.

The place is… A nightmare. There was an attempt to retreat here, he assumes from the numerous bodies piled in the same place, some so small he feels bile rise to his throat. He has no love for the Fallen, certainly not now. But children are children no matter how many eyes they possess. Any man with a heart would be upset by such a sight.

His fingers twitch around his bow as a high-pitched chitter breaks the deathly hush of the room. Nothing moves. He’d think he has imagined it if his senses weren’t so well attuned to danger; he’d think it came from some distant threat, echoing through the walls, if it wasn’t followed by the slightest shift in the shadows as four small lights blink in unison.

Staying low to the ground, feet light against the metal flooring, Sam sneaks towards the source of the faint glow. Again that chattering noise. Like cicadas in the summer, only… diminutive, somehow. One single cicada.

Or, it turns out, one single Fallen, buried beneath its dead brethrens.

Sam freezes at the unexpected sight. It’s… Small. The size of a large cat, maybe, though it’s hard to tell when it’s curled on itself like a pillbug.

A hatchling. It stares up at him, then opens its mouth filled with rows of needle-sharp teeth, and lets out the same clicking sound. He gives the surroundings a brief once-over, expecting more to come crawling out, but nothing echoes its call. It’s all alone, saved from the slaughter of its kin by a miracle or the body of its caregiver collapsed over its small body. Easily overlooked if not for the sound it persists in making.

The first thought that comes to his head is, it must be hungry. It’s only logical. Children cry when they’re hungry; why wouldn’t a Fallen hatchling do the same. Quickly following in its steps comes the much more disquieting, it doesn’t know it’s going to die.

The idea chills him. He’s not sure why it bothers him so much — he’s certainly killed his fair share of Fallen — only that it does.

Probably because it’s so small. Vulnerable, with a soft, translucent shell that’s nothing like the hard exoskeleton of the older specimens and about as likely to protect it as a paper umbrella. It doesn’t look old enough to walk. Not that he knows at what age the Fallen learn to move about on their own. But it looks reasonably toddler-like that he’s willing to make a few assumptions.

(Not that he knows what age a toddler starts actually walking, either.)

He lifts a hand to his quiver and finds it shaking. It can’t leave the ship on its own; even if it managed that feat, how would it feed itself? What does a Fallen even eat, at that age? It would be merciful to put an end to its life before it can starve to death, or be found by the Hive. Really, he’s being pragmatic.

The shaking doesn’t abate.

(Sam Fletcher sneaks out of the ship with the hatchling bundled up in the torn fabric of one of its dead brethrens, held tightly against his chest with one hand even as it makes climbing out the way he came more bothersome. Let someone else clean the place; a true Guardian, maybe.

He’s always had too much of a soft heart.)

Sam hesitates on his way to the City, and ends up making a detour through the European Dead Zone. His jumpship needs fuel, is his excuse; but the truth is that he’s not sure he could enter the City with a Fallen hatchling and leave it with both of them alive.

He’s already gotten a little attached, although he’ll blame that on the sunk cost fallacy born from the effort it took to get the bug out of the ship undetected. He feeds it bits of jerky while he lands his ship near Devrim Kay’s church. He doesn’t know the man overseeing the region personally, but he has it on good authority that he’s… nice. Nice people don’t shoot babies on sight.

And indeed Devrim does not shoot either of them on sight, although he does stare for a very long time before politely asking, “And what… Do you have here?”

Sam shrugs. The hatchling, clinging to the fur ruff of his cloak, shifts with the movement. He summarizes in a few words the events that led to him finding a baby Fallen and keeping it; Devrim is nice enough to keep any comment he might have to himself. And when Sam says that he has no idea what to do with it, he says,

“The Awoken of the Reef have opened their ports to Guardians. Maybe you could find one willing to ferry the little one along to one of the… less hostile houses.”

It’s a decent idea. Perhaps even a good one. Sam considers it for a little while. Of course that would require finding a Guardian who can be trusted with the life of a newborn, but that can be arranged. He knows people. Mostly Hunters, so no one he would trust with the life of a human child, let alone an alien one, but he’ll manage.

“Why did they open their borders?�� He asks, because it’s been a while since he’s been aware of any Guardian business.

Devrim scratches his beard. “There’s been talks of a Fallen uprising,” he says wryly.

Ah.

That does complicate things a bit.

While trying to find a way to get the hatchling back to its people, Sam tries to find it a nickname. It’s a little awkward calling it ‘the hatchling’ all the time, is all. He’s not getting attached.

(Devrim stares evenly at him and wisely doesn’t say anything to that.)

But getting rid of it seems less likely by the day as the Wolves rebel against their Awoken sovereign. What Fallen would agree to meet with a human peacefully, let alone take in a child that does not belong to them? Perhaps one of those living on the Shattered Coast, but the place is a den of smugglers and Sam knows what happens to small, vulnerable individuals there.

(He’s dealt with the Spider once. Never again.)

It chitters quietly in his ears from its perch in his fur collar.

“Sounds a bit like a cicada, doesn’t it?” He says idly. He’s perched next to Devrim, helping keep an eye on the surrounding area even though he’s mostly looking at the baby Fallen.

The other man offers no commentary beyond the slightly amused tone of his wordless hum. Sam reaches back and plucks the Fallen from his shoulder, holding it in front of his face and examining it closely.

“Yeah. Cicada,” he says resolutely. “That fits.”

By the time the situation in the Reef has calmed down somewhat, Cicada has gotten downright clingy, and the House of Wolves — the only House friendly enough to meet with — has all but disappeared.

Sam stares at his small charge and thinks that this might be a more long-term commitment than he previously assumed.

He’s been running around helping Devrim, but that’s becoming more difficult as Cicada grows and becomes impossible to hide in his cloak anymore. He’s alright with bringing his own mortal ass to a gunfight; a child, not so much.

“There’s a farm not far from here,” Devrim says, “They could probably find you something to do in exchange for room and board.”

“Oh, I’m sure. The Fallen stowaway might be a dealbreaker though.”

“I’ll send them a word. Suraya isn’t the biggest fan of Guardians, but for a kid I’m sure she can make an exception.”

Sam doesn’t ask how Devrim came to know someone who’d like a Fallen better than a Guardian. He’s just glad for the offer. He can live rough and risk his life all he wants, but the kid hasn’t asked to be brought along. He can’t do that to it.

Sometimes, kinderguardians will stumble to the Farm, lost and confused despite the guidance of their Ghost.

Against Hawthorne’s complaints — those are mostly for show anyway — Sam insists on feeding them before sending them on their way to the City. Most of them have never gotten a real meal in their life before ending up here, and he’s already cooking for two anyway. Why not more?

And if they don’t look too weirdly at the small Fallen clinging to his shoulders or trailing after him, running on all six limbs to keep up with his stride, he might even give them a few pointers. They’re hopeless, all of them, and he might no longer be the sharpshooter he used to be, but he’s still a veteran. If it keeps them from getting themselves killed stupidly, he’ll take it.

Sometimes they come back. For more help, or just to say thank you. He appreciates it, even if it’s weird as hell to have people thank him for so little.

One of them comes back with ether as a gift. He stares at the little canisters, dumbstruck. He figured Cicada would need some of the substance, since Fallen seem to depend on it, and getting his hands on it has been a hell and a half. They guard it ferociously and there’s only so much a single, mortal Guardian can do.

“I thought I would help,” the Guardian explains. “Like you helped me, even when I had nothing to offer in return. So when I found these on my last mission, I thought…”

“It’s appreciated.” Then, because it feels rude to only say thanks, “Do you want to stay for dinner?”

They keep coming after that — Sam has gotten pretty good at cooking, and he guesses most Guardians don’t learn to do it for themselves. He certainly didn’t.

And because they seem to think there’s an ether fee to pay for the privilege of homemade food, he ends up with quite the stock. He’s not sure how much a growing Fallen needs, so he just… gives Cicada as much as she demands. Which ends up to be a lot.

At least she’ll grow healthy. He hopes.

The first time Cicada speaks — the word food warbled through her many teeth and alien mouth — Sam nearly has a heart attack.

The second time, he grabs the nearest Guardian and asks if they could find him an Eliksni language dictionary.

It doesn’t seem right to keep her from her own language. And if he has to learn how to make the weird sound with his own very human mouth, well. He’ll try. Even if it’s really cute when she tries to beg scraps from him with her odd, scratchy voice approximating human syllables.

One day — years later, when Sam has gotten a little more grey in his hair and a lot steadier in his one-eyed aim — Cicada, now much bigger, will point at one of the picture hanging over his bed and ask,

“Who’s this?”

And he will look at the picture of him and his Ghost and feel only the soft, blunt ache of an old scarred wound. It’ll be a small surprise to find himself, if not healed, at least over the hurt. And he’ll pick up his kid, even though she’s much too big for him to do that easily nowadays, and say,

“That’s Sasha. She was my family, before I found you...”

#writing #destiny 2 #my ocs #sam fletcher #baby eliksni time <3 #long post

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iwaasfairy · 4 years ago

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Fairy!!!! Fairy, you will not believe the scare I had just like 3 minutes ago! So I have a dog, and as such, I have pads for her to potty that I throw out. Well, today, apparently, God said "Hey bish, ya've been complaining about shit ya've been dealing w for years, so let's give ya a reason to say something bad's happened!" So I pick up the pad, change it, and go to throw the baggie (baggy?) out, right? Right? Well, I go towards the side a the house, and before I make it there, I look around the neighborhood and what do I see in my next door neighbors' yard? A fookin big ass, at least American quarter sized, white spider!!! Just chillin and making it's web bigger. Now, no one here knows this, but I got arachnophobia so bad, I can't even see pictures a cartoon ones without yeeting the damn screen I'm seen it on. The good thing is, one a my sisters was with me, so she decided to go the rest a the way to throw the baggie (I'm stickin w -ie) away, the kind soul, she saw how jumpy I was getting just being within 10 feet a the monster (and knows being near them makes me have panic attacks). So yeeeeeeee, don't really feel like goin out for at least the next month or so!! Sorry this was so long, I don't really know how ta control my rambling.

This sounds like a horror story onsndkdkdkndk. I would have yeeted my shoe at it too so I fully support you 💕💘💓💞💗

#that actually does sound horrible #I’m not scared of spiders but I just think they are so gross so #iMDKDKDKDKD same bby #tw.spiders #honey mail

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afewmarvelousthoughts · 5 years ago

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Only For A Moment Ch. 46

Master: @afewmarvelousthoughtsadmin

Pairing: Bucky X Reader

Summary: For most of your life you’d been able to keep your abilities a secret, that is until Hydra got wind of you. After years of being in their clutches, you break out when The Avengers expose SHIELD/Hydra. Since then, you’ve been on the run. Things are going as well as you could hope when you see a familiar face… Could the Winter Soldier really be in Bucharest too?

Warnings: Canon violence, blood, trauma, feels

A/N: SURPRISE! Remember how I was like there are two more chapters (making this the final one)? Remember how I’m a liar? Yeah. Good times. There is one chapter after this that will put a bow on this long and winding part one of OFAM.

I’m deep in my feelings. I hope you all enjoy it.

And, of course, shout out to @wonderlandmind4 for being my beta and supporting my bullshit. (God read everything she does it’s wonderful.)

Tags are open!

When Steve offers to drive to the rendezvous with Sharon Carter you aren’t inclined to argue. You’d passed out the night before but it was nowhere near enough.

In the back of the Beetle, you curl up next to Bucky, not that there was much choice. He tucks you under his arm and the sound of his steady heart paired with the motion of the car lull you back to dreamless sleep. You don’t stir until you hear Steve’s door creak open.

Bucky shifts a bit next to you, clearly uncomfortable in the cramped space, trying not to jam his knees into Sam’s back as Steve had to him the night before. Glowering a bit at Sam for clearly ignoring his situation.

He looks in the rearview mirror at Sam, “Can you move your seat up?” His tone measured, clearly trying to sound polite despite his annoyance.

“No,” Sam says completely deadpan, not even bothering to meet Bucky’s stern gaze in the mirror.

Silence lingers. Bucky attempts to shift just a little closer to you though there’s nowhere to go. You look between the two men and a laugh bubbles up. You try to contain it but Sam’s expression pushes you over the edge and you cackle, the sound filling the car.

“You are the smallest person here so I don’t want to hear a thing from you.” His tone is serious but you catch the faintest glimmer of a smile in the mirror.

Your laughter fades into an uncomfortable grimace as soon as Agent Carter turns her gaze to the three of you. With a tight smile on your lips, you lift your hand in a weak wave.

“A wave, really?” Sam throws a sideways glance your way.

“Just trying to be polite.”

“From what I hear you beat her ass yesterday. I think polite is out the window.” Sam gets out to help Steve with the gear.

“Why’d you attack her?” Bucky asks.

“She was going for you.”

“Not like she didn’t have a good reason to.”

“Yeah, well-” you shrug- “I also headbutted the Black Widow so I’m down two for two on my girl power points.” He chuckles pressing a kiss to your temple.

With the car stuffed with bodies and gear, Steve steers you toward the airport. The closer you get the heavier the silence, each person wrapped in their own fears and concerns.

In an attempt to calm your racing thoughts you lean your ear back against Bucky’s chest, counting the steady beats. It doesn’t do much but remind you just what you’ll do, what you’ll sacrifice, to protect this heart.

The moment Steve parks, you feel your stomach flip. Your gaze flits to Bucky’s only to see him looking down at you too. Sam and Steve step out but the two of you linger for a moment, knowing it may be the last time you have alone.

“We’re gonna get through this. Together,” he says it like he’s trying to convince himself as much as you. You try to take a deep breath and nod.

“We should-”

“Yeah,” he cuts you off.

You reach forward to push the driver’s seat up. He pulls you back kissing you deeply. Breathless his lips hover above yours. Your heart skitters, the intensity in his gaze sending chills down your spine.

Though you both want this moment to stretch, to last forever, you know it can’t. Begrudgingly he pulls back, allowing you enough room to extricate yourself from the cramped quarters.

As you get out you catch the gaze of someone you recognize from Avenger’s coverage to be Clint Barton. He looks from you to Bucky, eyebrow cocked up in a knowing gaze. Feeling like a kid who’s been caught making out behind the bleachers you quickly turn away, rounding the car to stand beside Bucky as the five of them continue to chat.

He slides his hand in your’s giving it a squeeze before interrupting, “We should get moving.”

Before anyone can respond a voice crackles over the airport intercom. As the announcer repeats the evacuation notice you glance up at Bucky, the muscle in his jaw twitching.

“Stark,” Sam and Steve echo.

“You’re not wearing that?” Clint nods to Cap, a smirk on his face. Steve shakes his head and pops open the trunk, stuffed with their contraband gear.

“Let’s find someplace to get our bearings,” Steve says as he hands Sam his wings.

You all hunker down in what seems to be a large custodian closet. There’s just enough space for you all but no extra room for modesty, not that it matters much to you.

Geared up, everyone makes quick introductions, to both each other and who or rather what you’re all facing. The details out of the way Steve begins to layout a plan of attack as best he can, given the limited information available.

“We’ll split,” Steve says. “Bucky, you and Sam head into the terminal. If Stark and the others are here they’ll have the jet. Find it.” Bucky slides you a sidelong glance, drawing you closer, but doesn’t protest.

“Wanda, you and Clint stick together and be my distance support. Scott, Y/N, you’re with me. They don’t know what either of you can do so the element of surprise will be useful if it comes to that.”

Steve looks at everyone, every inch the leader, “Ready?” Nods from all, “Let’s make this as quick and clean as possible. No one needs to get hurt.”

Before you head to follow Steve Bucky pulls you to him suddenly, his kiss fleeting and a touch desperate. His mouth opens as if to say something but he shakes his head. Lifting your hand to his lips he kisses your knuckles. As soon as he releases your hand you turn on your heel and sprint to catch up with Steve, too afraid that if you stop or look back that you’ll lose your nerve.

From your position behind a storage container, you can clearly hear every word that falls from Tony Stark’s pompous mouth. Somehow each syllable makes you angrier than the last. You know Steve is just stalling but you have to actually hold your tongue between your teeth to keep from telling him to fuck himself.

A voice that sounds far too young to be here hits your ears and you almost peek out. Bigger fish, Y/N, you coach yourself.

Finally, Sam’s voice comes through the comms, “We found it.”

“Alright, guys,” Steve says.

This was your go. The tension in your muscles release, and you spring to the top of the container and over to Steve, your feet never once touching the ground.

“Who the hell?” The guy you assume is James Rhodes says. His body language showing the surprise you can’t see on his face.

You couldn’t blame him. Lang, lands by you and Steve, handing him his shield, now back to his normal size in a matter of seconds. It was impressive and a little jarring to even you.

To her credit, Romanoff doesn’t look the least bit phased. She gives Lang a once over, clearly trying to assess him. When her appraising stare falls to you, you’re a bit surprised to see more admiration than anger in her expression considering your last encounter.

Stark, however, wastes no time. He heads for Wanda and Clint while Rhodes clocks Bucky and Sam’s position.

You’re ready to move on Rhodes when King T’Challa growls, “Barnes is mine!”

“The hell he is!” You wrap your power around his torso as he sprints for the terminal, tugging him back hard, as Steve launches his shield at T’Challa’s back.

“Cover Rhodes,” Steve says as he pursues T’Challa.

There isn’t time to argue though you want to. You can better handle someone with air proficiency and Steve is better suited for the ground. Still...

“Got it,” you grudgingly acknowledge turning to face Rhodes as he pulls out an oversized stun baton. Could he have picked a weapon you hated more?

“Look, I don’t know who you are but… I really suggest you stand down,” he says.

“Thanks for the suggestion,” you say, a shit-eating grin plastered on your face.

Ensnaring the baton in your grasp you pull it from him. Simultaneously you land another invisible blow directly to the middle of his chest that sends him spinning back. The baton comes straight into your waiting palm just before he rights himself.

“What the hell?!” He exclaims once more as you brandish his own weapon.

“This thing is hefty-” you give it a once over- “overcompensating?”

“Real funny,” he quips before shooting straight for you.

He’s fast, but a big target is easy for you to get a feel of. Thrusting your power before you like a net, he slams into it. The reverberations of the impact thrum through your brain, pain sizzling at the edges of your vision.

Pushing the discomfort aside you lift yourself from the ground, propelling yourself up and over him by stepping on his helmet. Pulling your power back he tumbles forward, you lasso his ankles, slamming him to the ground as you land behind him.

The instant he moves to turn you swing the baton with all your force, landing it in his shoulder. Between the impact and the electricity, it manages to short the suit--at least for now.

You’re going to have to tell Bucky he was right. All those hours of training did pay off. Damn.

“Uh… can we get some assistance,” Sam’s voice pipes up in the comms. “We’re a little… tied up.”

“Heading your way,” you respond, sprinting toward the terminal.

You try, you really do, to not laugh when you see them. Despite your best efforts and the absolute shit show of this entire situation you fail. The two of them are stuck to the ground with the same substance that spider kid had shot at Steve.

“Really boys? You let a 12-year-old get the drop on you?”

Bucky stands, brushing the webbing off his arms. “He may be a kid but he stopped my left hook like it was nothing.” Your brows raise in surprise. “Who the hell would bring a kid into this?” Bucky’s expression is black with rage.

“Stark,” is all Sam says in response.

The three of you hustle from the terminal, running full tilt to catch up with the others. You coalesce and for a moment it actually feels like you’re going to make it to the jet, like just maybe this is going to work. That fleeting hope is severed when a beam from somewhere above you blasts a literal line into the tarmac.

You stumble back a bit into Bucky’s arms. He presses you tight against him as you both look up to see someone straight out of science fiction--Vision, Steve called him.

Even with the quite literal line drawn you all know there is no turning back now. There is too much at risk if you do.

Bucky’s arms tighten almost imperceptibly before releasing you, gesturing for you to take Wanda’s side. You do so, the two of you exchanging a meaningful glance.

“What’d we do Cap?” Sam asks, though his tone says he knows the answer as well as the rest of you.

“We fight,” Steve replies joylessly.

Everything that follows happens so fast.

You and Wanda fall into a fast rhythm, tag-teaming the aerial targets by lobbing projectiles in an attempt to ground them. While your aim is excellent her force far outweighs yours.

“I’ll hold you land the hit,” you call to her. She nods. You grip the kid mid-swing and she slams a piece of debris into him knocking him down. “Damn you’re good!”

“You’re not too bad either,” she grins.

Before you turn your focus to Rhodes you glance around to spot Bucky. He’s going hard blow for blow with T’Challa.

Wanda and you exchange a glance. She nods and you split.

Running at a dead sprint you try to catch T’Challa’s next blow before it finds it’s target, but you’re too slow. He lands a kick that sends Bucky careening into a stack of crates with a sickening crack.

T’Challa stalks forward, blocking your view of Bucky’s collapsed body, with claws out. There is no time to consider if Bucky is even conscious. He’ll kill him, is the only thought you have.

Sending your power out to T’Challa, you’re surprised to only find purchase on the surface, unable to sink under his suit to do any internal harm. It doesn’t matter though.

Mustering a level of force that sends shivers through your body you hurl him away from Bucky. T’Challa rights himself in the air landing gracefully, claws sparking against the concrete, as you place yourself between Bucky’s unconscious form and him.

“You,” he growls. The word barely hits your ear before he charges.

His attacks are painfully quick with a fluidity you’ve never encountered. Even Bucky wasn’t this good. He lands several blows but your power reacts instinctively, cushioning them enough that you aren’t brought down. Soon you are able to hone in on his rhythm, managing several good moments of contact yourself.

“This isn’t about you!”

“It is if it’s about him,” you spit back.

He roars in frustration, his leg swinging to kick your feet from under you. It’s the slightest bit less refined than his other moves, nowhere near sloppy but it’s enough that you’re able to clock it quickly. You kick away from the ground, landing behind him.

This gives you the advantage you need. You manage a well-placed blow to the backs of his knees and he falls forward. Winding your power around his middle you squeeze tight enough to hear a small gasp and force him away.

You only glance behind you for a breath, just wanting to see if Bucky was ok. The relief from seeing him get to his feet doesn’t have the chance to sink in. Turning back all to the fight before you all you register is a block blur before searing pain tears through your chest.

“Y/N!” Bucky screams.

But you don’t make a sound. Your eyes are fixed on the splashes of red spattering the concrete as you hit your knees, still not registering that it’s yours despite the pain. A shaking hand rises to your chest, coming away covered in blood from four deep gouges.

A feral sound draws your eyes up to see Bucky attacking T’Challa with a ferocity you’ve never seen. Still, he holds Bucky back until you see a red cloud grab hold of him, throwing him away.

“Doll!” Bucky calls out, running to your side. He grabs your shoulders, jostling the wounds on your chest.

Now you scream.

“Fuck,” he breathes.

“I’ve got her,” Wanda’s voice from behind you. It’s strange to be moved like this by a force that’s not your own. Wanda’s power—red, warm, tingling like static—gently moves you, resting your back against the crates Bucky had been thrown against a moment before.

“Y/N’s down,” Bucky says in a tight voice.

“I’m ok,” you say through clenched teeth. “Go.” Wanda gives you one last look before listening. Unsurprisingly Bucky doesn’t budge. “Bucky-”

“Don’t,” he cuts you off, unable to take his eyes from the wounds in your chest.

His hands hover awkwardly over you, unsure where to touch you to avoid causing more pain. He settles on resting a tentative hand on your thigh. When he finally looks you in the face his expression is something you’ve never seen—a terrifying combination of utter fear and abject rage.

“Holy shit,” Steve breathes as he crouches next to you both.

“’ Tis but a scratch,” you say attempting to sit up straighter. Bucky’s eyes narrow. “Seriously, I’m going to be fine.” And you suspected you weren’t lying, the blood had already slowed some even if it hurt like hell.

“How’re we gonna get her to the jet?” Steve asks. You’re a little touched by the deep concern in his tone.

“We aren’t,” Sam says over the comms.

“What?!” Bucky bellows so loud you flinch.

“There’s no way all of us are getting out of here,” Sam responds.

“As much as I hate to admit that Wilson’s right-”

“He is right,” you cut off the rest of Clint’s words covering Bucky’s hand with yours. “You two have to go.”

“No,” his voice shakes.

“We’ve got her back,” Sam reassures.

“Absolutely,” Clint says backing him.

“Don’t ask me to do this,” Bucky choaks out.

With a shaking blood-stained hand, you push a strand of hair from his eyes. “This is bigger than us.”

“Dammit,” he says through clenched teeth. “Fine. Ok.”

“Alright, Lang,” Steve confers over the comms, having been laying out a plan while you convinced Bucky. “On your mark.”

“Help me up,” you ask Bucky.

“You really should-”

“I’d rather be on my feet.” Begrudgingly, he helps you stand on shaky legs.

Leaning into Bucky for support, you watch in wonder as Lang becomes the size of a jet. An awestruck laugh bubbles up before you can stop it, moving the muscles in your chest causing you to hiss in pain.

“Y/N?” Bucky asks, tone frantic. You pat his chest reassuringly.

“Guess that’s the signal,” Steve throws a look at you both.

Bucky’s eyes are desperate, still, you say, “Go.”

He takes your face in his hands, kissing you deeply before pulling back. “I love you.”

“I love all of you.”

“Remember your promise.” It’s not a question.

You nod, “Don’t make me keep it and I won’t make you.”

“Deal,” he says with a sad smile.

“We gotta go,” Steve says.

Bucky backs away from you slowly before turning to run. The wounds in your chest nothing compared to the hurt of watching him go.

Your fight isn’t done. Cradling your left arm across your chest, hoping to alleviate some of the pressure on the wound you start to make your way forward.

“Nope,” Clint drops down in front of you. “Sit your ass down.”

“I-” He cuts you off with a look and you lean against the crates until he’s satisfied. It only lasts until you see the blast from Vision sending debris tumbling to block Bucky and Steve’s entry to the jet.

You hardly breathe as you run, pain searing through your chest, clouding your vision. Wanda catches everything giving them enough space to get through before Rhodes hits her with something sending her to her knees.

Anger swells within you, momentarily taking place of the pain. You heave Rhodes away from Wanda before collapsing yourself. Clint rushes to your side, holding you up.

“What did I say?”

“I’m a bad listener.”

“Clearly.” He positions himself behind you so you’re able to lean into him.

The jet bursts from the hanger and you feel yourself relax. They can do this, they can fix this. Steve will bring him back.

“What now?” You ask Clint.

“We wait.”

None of you fight back when military police descend on the airstrip knowing this is what you signed up for by staying. Medical whisks Rhodes away and sees to the kid in the spider suit while you sit on the tarmac bleeding, breathing through the pain.

“Anyone, gonna get to her?!” Sam berates the officers.

“It’s fine Sam.”

“It’s not. You’ve lost a lot of blood, Y/N.” He looks around, “Hey! Come on!”

“That’s enough,” one of them remarks before grabbing Sam’s arms and forcefully cuffing them behind his back.

Hands come from behind you as well, grabbing your forearms and wrenching your arms behind you. You can’t hold in the scream as the motion pulls the gashes across your chest open wide, fresh blood seeping into your ruined shirt.

A chorus of anger rises from your ragtag team, though the words are lost in the onslaught of pain. That is until someone kneels in front of you, pressing a clean towel to your chest.

“Thank… you,” you manage, trying to gulp in air.

“You’re welcome,” a woman’s voice says. “Maybe don’t head butt me this time.” You look up to see Romanoff.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Your eyes squeeze shut as your body sways from blood loss.

She steadies you, pressing the towel tighter against your chest. “What is Barnes to you that he’s worth this.”

You look up into her vivid green eyes, mind clear suddenly. “Everything.”

She stares for a moment to see if there’s more before her brows raise. “Oh… Oh.” Natasha looks back as a jet lands, a few official-looking men stepping off.

“Can we get medical over here? She needs to be seen to,” Natasha says as they approach.

“She’ll be seen on the jet,” an older gentleman says in a grave tone.

“Secretary Ross,” Natasha places herself between you and the man.

“This the only injury on this side?”

“Side? This isn’t a war, Secretary.”

“Isn’t it?” He steps around her, looking down at you. You unflinchingly meet his gaze.

“Secretary, with all due respect, this woman needs-”

“Wilson, I suggest you shut your mouth unless you intend to tell me where Barnes and Rogers are heading.” The Secretary gives everyone a once over, “Load them up.”

Everyone but you is locked into their seat on the jet. As you climb in altitude your head swims and you fold forward.

“Sit back,” Clint says gently. “You want to keep your heart elevated.”

You force yourself back, head thudding painfully into the metal of the chair behind you.

Secretary Ross enters, a med-tech behind him pushing a cart. He stands stoically, looking down at every person in the room. The tech approaches you, irrigation bottle in hand.

“Come on,” Sam grumbles. “Can’t you at least see her in a med bay?”

“She’s lucky she’s being seen at all,” Ross says in a chilling tone.

He watches as the tech soaks the towel, removing it from your chest, despite the ache you refuse to make a noise. You’d had enough interactions with men like this Ross character to know that you never show them an ounce of fear or weakness.

The tech studies your wounds for a moment hands working swiftly to attach a blood pressure monitor to your wrist. He looks at the reading, brows creasing in disapproval.

“Blood type?” He asks.

“AB.” He takes a note before turning a more focused gaze to the gashes.

“We’re going to have to cut the shirt off, likely fibers in the wound.” He turns to the cart and shuffles around, when he turns back there’s a needle in his hand. The blood pressure monitor on your wrist begins to beep as your heart ticks up, the increased blood flow making your chest throb.

“What is that?” You ask, hating the way your voice trembles slightly. Flashes of countless needles being forced into your veins fill your mind.

“Morphine.” He reaches for your arm and you pull back as far into the chair as possible.

“No.”

“Ma’am,” he sighs out clearly annoyed. “You’re gonna need sutures-”

“I don’t need drugs. I’ll be-”

“I don’t think you understand how much this is going to-”

“I’ve had worse,” you say matter of factly.

“Give her the damn sedative,” Ross demands.

“She said no,” Wanda says. Ross turns an indignant gaze her way.

The tech moves to try and administer it again but you latch your power onto the syringe in his hand, crushing it. He stares, confused and a little scared at the liquid dripping down his arm.

“Maximoff,” Ross starts but then pauses. Slowly he turns back to look at the shattered remains, seeming to realize that Wanda’s signature red glow didn’t accompany that action.

His cold stare lands on you. “Just get her cleaned up Aarons.”

“Yessir.”

Ross storms off, pausing at the exit, “I will deal with all of you on the Raft.”

Aarons pulls two small folding stools from the cart and guides you into one with surprising gentleness. With your back facing the others he cuts open your shirt. You hear him let out a puff of breath as he sees the scars there.��

You have to hand it to him, Aarons works quickly, truly trying to not cause more discomfort than necessary. His eyes search yours on occasion, especially in moments he expects you to grimace or show pain.

He finishes bandaging you up and guides you back to the chair. “Sorry,” he says, motioning for you to place your arms in a position to be manacled. You say nothing, simply do as you’re told.

“You’ll need a transfusion. I’ll try to get to that before we land.”

“Thanks,” you say. He nods and leaves.

They do not get to it. Not that it matters much. You know your body will heal, whatever Hydra had filled you with would ensure that. Your heart though…

Already the distance and uncertainty weigh heavily. Every few minutes you have to talk yourself down, silently coaching yourself that he will be ok, he must be ok. They will succeed. But if they didn’t… Well, your broken heart would be the least of the world’s concerns then.

As soon as they land on The Raft you’re shuffled out with the rest. Until now you didn’t understand what The Raft was—a prison, a floating prison for the worst the world had to offer. When you’d agreed that some of you would have to hold back you’d assumed they’d put you all somewhere but never this.

They march you all down a long corridor, opening into a large space where several other corridors branch off. Everyone else is led to the right while they jostle you to the left. Terror makes alarms sound in your mind but your expression stays impassive.

“Where are you taking her?!” Sam calls out. “Hey, wait!” There’s a thud, you look back to see Sam doubled over, his eyes look up and meet your own. You shake your head no as they lead you away.

He means well, but you have a feeling he’s never been a prisoner before. You on the other hand… you were a seasoned pro—captivity almost felt like an old, unwelcome, friend. The key was to give them nothing. Not fear, not anger, not even respect. The key was to become… nothing.

Comply.

Survive.

You’re left in a cold room, cuffed to a metal chair--still with nothing more covering your torso than bandages and a blood-stained sports bra--for an indiscriminate amount of time.

You don’t move, barely flick your eyes around the space, just stare forward. Because you don’t need to move to know your surroundings.

Sending your power out you find the small pinhole cameras embedded in the metal walls, you feel just beyond those walls other rooms. You push it a bit further, into the corridor, to get a feel for the activity happening around you, and keep your focus there so you will know when someone is entering.

Is it muscle memory that keeps you stiff, upright, expression impassive? You’re bone-tired and should be fighting sleep in this quiet space, body demanding shut down. But no. You’re alert, ready at any moment for anything.

You aren’t startled when the door behind you opens, don’t even turn to look back. It’s not until Ross sits in a chair across the metal table from you that you realize you’d been bracing your body for a blow or the crackling feeling of a shock baton.

He doesn’t say anything, studying you with a cold appraising glare. After a time he nods to unseen eyes and images fill the wall behind him.

At first these photos of a woman going about mundane daily tasks—waiting for a train her hair in a messy bun, head thrown back in a laugh with friends around her, standing on a street corner impossibly balancing bags of food and four drinks, sitting on a bench looking out at the water—mean nothing to you. Just still life images.

Clarity careens into you like a freight train. It takes effort to keep your impassive mask in place as you stare. That woman… that was you.

How did you not immediately see yourself? How could you not see Nix, a portion of his Cheshire-like grin captured on the edge of one image? How did you not recognize the bright pink of Marcus’ hair in another? How?

Suddenly they’re gone. You want to beg them to bring them back, let you see just the smallest glimpses of the people you lost, the person you were. But you don’t. You sit, like a statue, as a video begins to play.

A woman with long thick curls hanging around her face stares down an unseen person with a look that could strip paint— That’s me, you remind yourself. The audio is a bit crackly but you can make out the sound of your own voice well enough.

“I suggest you back off, mother fucker,” this past you growls.

The camera becomes a blur, the sounds of scuffling and fabric obscuring a mic are all that can be heard for a time until—

A loud thud and a groan ring clear, the image clears revealing you staring down at your hands and back at the man. You look horrified and confused, a bit of blood trickling from a busted lip.

Memory cracks through you like lightning. This was only a few weeks before they took a wrecking ball to your entire life. You’d run home and Nix had been furious that you refused to go to the cops until you told him what you did, how your ability lashed out. There was no more arguing after that, he understood the necessity of this secret.

Nix helped you get cleaned up, ordered pizza, and braided your hair while you both watched old movies into the wee hours. You could almost feel his sure fingers finding their way through your curls, weaving them together in tight plaits.

Ross’ voice pulls you back from the void of loss threatening to engulf you, “When Ms. Romanoff released Hydra’s files to the public we took special interest in cases like yours. Of course, we assumed that you’d been put down… Reaper.”

That fucking name. The code Hydra gave you. You hate that you flinch just a bit from it. Hate the burn of bile in your throat.

“Or do you prefer Sara Madison?” The name you’d taken at 16 when you started a new life. “Or is it Y/N Y/L/N?” The name you’d been born with. New images flash onto the wall behind him. These faces you recognize instantly.

“I’m sure they’d all say, Reaper, is far more appropriate.”

It takes everything to fight the nausea, to keep the tremors at bay. Don’t give him the satisfaction, you tell yourself.

“Nineteen confirmed kills. Given your methods, I don’t doubt there are more.” He opens a folder and lays out several more faces you know. “Heart attack, brain aneurysm, stroke—nothing suspicious about natural death.” He leans back in his chair, crossing his arms. “It’s a masterclass, truly.”

Such a good attack dog, that Hydra bastard’s voice rings in your head.

“All of this is enough for us to try you on everything from first-degree murder to treason. I can assure you that it will not end well for you.” He moves his hands into his lap, “But, we’d be willing to reconsider legal action if you’d simply tell us where Barnes and Rogers are.”

You almost laugh. Instead, you just raise a brow, continuing to stare straight at him. The quick flash of anger in Ross’ eyes fills you with satisfaction.

He takes a deep breath, his own composure falling back in place, and stands, circling behind you. A heavy hand lands on your left shoulder, fingers reaching around to the tops of the freshly stitched wounds there. Slowly but steadily he applies pressure to them, pain exploding. You grind your teeth, fighting the scream.

“I should also inform you,” Ross growls into your ear, “that for all rights and purposes you don’t exist. A trial would be a formality.” His grip tightens suddenly and you can’t hold back the hiss of pain.

“Personally,” his other hand grabs your hair, forcing your head back to look up at him, “I would rather not waste taxpayer dollars on trying things like you and Barnes. If you push me, I’m sure I can find creative ways to extract the information we need.”

You can’t fully place why your face fills with a smirk or why it grows into a full smile. Maybe you’re delirious with pain and exhaustion because the smile breaks out into a belly laugh. It hurts your chest but you can’t stop. Ross’ backhand cracking across your face doesn’t even stop it. Peals of laughter pour from you.

“Lock her up,” he barks to someone behind you.

Rough hands grab you, dragging you from the room. You’re still smirking when they unceremoniously toss you into a cell.

Stumbling forward you barely catch yourself before crashing into the wall. You rest your forehead against the cool metal until your knees refuse to hold you any longer. Turning you lean against the wall and slide down it.

Across from your cell you can just see the edge of Wanda’s. She’s staring into your cell intently, arms bound in a goddamn straight jacket. Anger flairs in you—she couldn’t be more than 20 for fuck’s sake.

She gestures to her chest with her chin then nods at you. Glancing down you notice that blood has soaked through the bandages there. You give her a weak smile and a thumbs up. She rolls her eyes and a true smile lifts the corners of your mouth.

Muffled sounds outside the cell wake you. Honestly, you hadn’t even realized you’d fallen asleep on the hard floor.

It takes a moment for your eyes to focus in on what they’re seeing—Wanda fighting back against guards trying to take her somewhere. She can’t use her ability without her hands you realize. Still, she kicks and thrashes, anything to slow them.

You stand legs wobbling a bit, and approach the glass and metal door to your cell, letting your anger rise with each step. Taking as deep a breath as you can manage you push a wave of your power out. Unfortunately, it catches Wanda’s footing too but it’s enough to get their attention.

Startled eyes slide around the room, unsure of where to focus their anger. One of the men stand and you immediately throw him back. Another does the same and you toss him aside, truly surprised at the amount of force you’re able to muster.

This continues on for a minute before a flurry of new guards, led by Ross, pour into the cellblock.

“What the hell is-” You grab Ross before he can finish and slam him against the wall hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. He stares at you, hatred dripping from him.

“Leave her alone. She doesn’t know shit.”

Ross clears his throat, “You ready to talk?”

You shrug, “Thought you wanted to get creative.” Ross nods at you and they open your cell, dragging you out.

“No!” Wanda yells as they push her back into her cell.

“It’s ok,” you tell her over your shoulder.

While you didn’t doubt that the US Government could be very imaginative you did doubt they were true masters like Hydra. And if they were…you could take it, you already had before. All you needed to do was keep Ross distracted enough that he stayed off of Wanda and the others.

It was the least you owed them.

Tag List:

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#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky #bucky x enhanced!reader #civil war #CACW #captain america

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michael-massa-micon · 4 years ago

Photo

Daring Jumping Spider - October 2020 Kathy and I stopped to eat lunch at a picnic shelter near the entrance to Fort Pulaski. As we were eating, something black scurried across one of the neighboring tables (image two). I thought it was one of the crabs so I got out my camera and Kathy’s and we started taking pictures. Then I realized that it wasn’t a crab. It was a large, very active spider-- bigger than a nickel, but smaller than a quarter. I took a bunch more images, but kept my distance. This charming gentleman is a mature Daring Jumping Spider (Phidippus audax). At least the article in Wikipedia said that the blue “iridescent chelicerae” indicated a mature male. I thought the blue was his eyes, but evidently they are his jaws. Somehow that makes their size and color less appealing, but the closeup of him is still a nice shot. MWM

#georgia #savannah #fort pulaski #jumping spider #daring jumping spider #phidippus audax

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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years ago

Text

Cowboys And Cavemen

This one’s gonna meander, but it’s about cavemen and cowboys and dinosaurs, so some of you may wanna stick around…

. . .

Recently watched the colorized version of One Million B.C. with Victor mature, Carole Landis, and Lon Chaney Jr.

I remember frequently watching the original black & white version of this as a kid; it popped up on local Early Shows a lot primarily because it could be chopped down to fit an hour’s running time without losing too much of the story (Early Shows were afternoon movies with a local host that typically ran only 90 minutes from 4:30-6pm; with commercials and host segments there wasn’t much room for uncut films and as a result they featured a lot of B-movies with 65 minute running times, or else cut out sequences from longer films not germane to the plot).

The colorized version surprised me in a couple of ways.

First, I’d forgotten just how well done One Million B.C. is in basic film making terms: Once past the opening scene, in which an archeologist explains some cave drawings to a group of mountaineers who then imagine themselves in prehistoric times, there’s no recognizable dialog; the film is told in purely visual terms.

Second, the colorization was incredibly sloppy: There’s a lot of weird blue artifacting going on that lays a strange mist-like quality over several scenes, and in several places the colorists inexplicably either colored the actors’ bare legs blue or else overlooked the mistake in the final color correction.

Third, the sloppy colorization doesn’t matter: If anything, it adds to the weird dream-like quality of the film. As an attempt to realistically recreate the prehistoric past, it’s gawdawful; taken as the imaginings of an average contemporary 1940s person with no real knowledge of prehistoric times (viz the prolog), and it’s pretty entertaining.

Technically the movie is a mixed bag. The special effects are pretty seamless (yeah, you can tell when something is a rear screen shot, but then again rear screen shots in every film of that era were obvious)). A travelling matte shot of a hapless cavewoman buried under a flood of lava is particularly well done and as amazing today as it was then (though the colorists dropped the ball and didn’t tint it a vivid red or orange in the colorized version).

There’s a lot of monsters, but they range from well done to just plaine…well…

The best are a woolly mammoth (i.e., an elephant in shaggy fur costume) and a baby triceratops (a large pig in costume) that really seem to capture the essence pf those creatures.

The worst is a guy in an allosaurus suit who kinda just shuffles along like a grandparent going to the bathroom, and in the middle are various lizards dressed up with fins and horns.

The lizards bother me more and more over the years. At first it was because they were disappointing -- they don’t look like dinosaurs, dammit, but like lizards with fins and horns glued on -- but now it’s because I realize they were goaded by their handlers into fights and reactions shots.

That’s plain ol’ animal cruelty, even if they are reptiles and not mammals.

There’s an armadillo and a koala-like animal that appear thousands of times their normal size. The koala-like critter (sorry, but I don’t know what it actually is) is passable as a giant cave bear or sloth, but the armadillo is just an armadillo (there was something about armadillos that 1930s audience found creepy; they’re waddling all over the Count’s hiding place in the original Dracula).

One Million B.C. was produced by Hal Roach and Hal Roach Jr. The senior Roach goes all the way back to the silent era, so this was not a huge stretch for him.

Originally D.W. Griffith was to direct the film, but while he did a lot of pre-production work including screen and wardrobe tests, he either dropped out or was replaced on the eve of production. (Reportedly he wanted the cave tribes to speak recognizable English and left when Roach refused.)

The special effects wound up in a ton of movies and TV shows over the ensuing decades; modern audiences are more familiar with the film through 1950s sci-fi than its original version.

All else aside, the picture is carried by stars Victor Mature and Carole Landis. Ms Landis in particular is a spunky, charming cave gal with a blonde-fro and while Mature would never be an Oscar contender, he at least has the physicality and screen presence to get his character across.

The scene where he thinks Landis has died in a volcanic eruption may be corny, but you can feel his character’s grief.

. . .

A quarter of a century later it was remade as One Million Years B.C. with John Richardson in the Victor mature role and Raquel Welch in the Landis role.

No disrespect to Welch, who by all accounts is a nice person, but she never showed one iota the acting chops of Carole Landis. Welch is beautiful, and as a generic pin-up model cast as a film’s “sexy lamp” (look it up), she presented appealing eye-candy. She appeared in one good sci-fi film (Fantastic Voyage), one campy monster movie (i.e., One Million Years B.C.), two incredibly campy WTF-were-they-thinking movies (The Magic Christian and Myra Breckenridge), and a host of instantly forgettable spy films and Westerns. The best movies she appeared in were Fuzz, based on the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain (a.k.a. Evan Hunter nee Salvatore Lombino), where she did an acceptable supporting turn as a police detective, and Kansas City Bomber, a roller derby movie that many consider her best role.

Landis never enjoyed the same level of fame (or notoriety, depending on your POV) that Welch did, but holy cow, could the gal act. It’s a pity Hollywood is crowded with talented, beautiful people because she certainly deserved a bigger career capstone than One Million B.C..

Welch’s personal life certainly proved less traumatic than Landis’, however. When actor Rex Harrison broken off his affair with her rather than divorce his wife, Landis committed suicide.

The scandal exiled Harrison temporarily back to England. A few years later One Million B.C. and Landis’ other films started playing on television.

Who knows what opportunities may have opened for her in that medium?

. . .

The original One Million B.C. is vastly superior in all areas but one (well, two -- mustn’t leave out the catfight between Welch and Martine Beswick): Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion dinosaurs

Mind you, most of the dino scenes in One Million Years B.C. are underwhelming. To stretch the budget the producers used close ups of spiders and an iguana to simulate giant monsters, a brontosaurus does a walk through in one scene and never appears again, and the first big dino moment has cave gals poking sharp sticks at a big sea turtle.

On the other hand, the remaining trio of dino scenes are the aces and vastly superior to their corresponding scenes in One Million B.C.. The latter film’s allosaur attack is one of the best dino scenes ever animated, and the ceratosaurus vs triceratops battle followed by the pteranodon grabbing Welch are almost as good.

Both versions of the film had an interesting influence on films that followed. One Million Years B.C. was followed by a host of prehistoric films, most of which existed only to cast voluptuous actresses in fur bikinis although When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, a direct follow-up, offered more monsters and a better story.

While One Million B.C. wasn’t the first film to sub real life lizards for dinos, it certainly told budget conscious producers that such substitutions were okay.

The 1959 version of Journey To The Center Of The Earth cast iguanas with glued on fins as dimetrodons, and for once the impersonation proved successful as the two species do bear certain similarities.

Producer Irwin Allen (he of Lost In Space and Towering Inferno fame) hired Willis O;Brien (the animator behind the original King Kong) and his then assistant Ray Harryhausen to do accurate-for-the-era stop motion dinosaurs for The Animal World documentary but apparently frustrated by the time it took to get results opted for lizards in his version of The Lost World (which, ironically, O’Brien worked on in a non-animation capacity despite having done the original silent version of the film with stop motion dinosaurs).

I saw Allen’s Lost World as a little boy and felt grossly disappointed by the obvious lizards, especially since the script identified them as belong to specific dinosaur species when they quite clearly didn’t (had the script said they evolved from such creatures, the way the most recent version of King Kong did, it would have been less egregious).

Allen’s lizards popped up in several TV shows he did, most notably the TV version of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. That show’s co-star David Hedison played a supporting role in The Lost World so once a season they found some excuse to get him out of his Navy uniform and into a safari jacket in order to match footage with stock shots from the movie.

The Animal World wasn’t the first time O’Brien and Harryhausen worked together, and Harryhausen followed up One Million Years B.C. with The Valley Of Gwangi, an O’Brien project that the older effects artist never got off the ground.

. . .

Let’s back up a bit to discuss “O’Bie” (as his fans refer to him).

O’Brien was a former cowboy-turned-cartoonist around the early 20th century who became interested in animation.

Movies were in their infancy then, and O’Bie shot a short test reel of two clay boxers duking it out.

This got him financing to do a series of short films ala The Flintstones with titles like Rural Delivery, One Million B.C. (the titles were often longer than the films).

These shorts featured cartoony puppets, no actual actors. O’Bie followed it up with The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain which was the first time dinosaurs were animated in an attempt to make them look real, and that was followed by The Lost World in which O’Bie combined live action with special effects, climaxing the film with a brontosaurus running amok in London.

O’Bie wanted to follow it up with a film called Creation but that got deep sixed. However, producer Merian C. Cooper saw O’Bie’s test footage for Creation and hired him to do the effects for the legendary King Kong.

While O’Bie followed that success with the quickie Son Of Kong he never got to work on a dinosaur film of such scope again.

War Eagles (a lost-civilization-with-dinos story) was supposed to have been a big follow up epic, but the Depression and the growing threat of WWII caused it to be cancelled in pre-production.

During the 1940s O’Bie pitched a number of stories to studios involving dinosaurs or other monsters encountering cowboys, one of which was Gwangi (he also pitched King Kong vs Frankenstein which eventually got made as King Kong vs Godzilla using two guys in rubber suits, not his beloved stop motion effects).

Gwangi had cowboys discovering a lost canyon inhabited by dinosaurs, chief of which being Gwangi, an allosaurus. O’Bie never got Gwangi off the ground but decades later Harryhausen did with Valley Of Gwangi.

. . .

I never cared for Valley Of Gwangi and much preferred One Million Years B.C. over it (and, no, not because of Ms Welch).

Growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I enjoyed cowboys as much as dinosaurs.

I’ve posted elsewhere how my interest in dinosaurs led me to dinosaur movies which led to monster movies which led to science fiction movies which led to literary science fiction which led to science fiction fandom which led to my writing career, but my genre of choice before age 10 was Westerns.

As others point out, most Westerns are actually crime stories, what with bandits robbing stagecoaches and banks, rustlers making off with cattle, etc. The climax usually involves a lawman (or a vigilante who carries the weight of the law) confronting the evil doers and bringing them to justice.

Sometimes these vigilantes wore masks (Zorro and the Lone Ranger). Sometimes those they pursued wore masks, and sometimes those masked villains pretended to be ghosts or phantoms.

They weren’t, and were invariably exposed as frauds.

Westerns based themselves in a rational world.

Other times a criminal in a Western would be after some invention that could bring either a great boon (say an energy source) or great harm (a death ray) to the world, and wanted it for their own selfish ends.

The story would invariably use the invention as a mcguffin device, maybe letting it figure into the villain’s eventual comeuppance, but never really influencing the outcome of the plot.

Westerns and fantasy genres (including science fiction) don’t mix well, The Wild Wild West not withstanding (and The Wild Wild West was not a Western per se but rather what we would now call a steampunk commentary on James Bond filtered through the lens of traditional American Westerns).

(And don’t bring up Gene Autry And The Phantom Empire, just…don’t…)

Dinosaurs and cowboys don’t really go together.

That didn’t stop O’Bie from trying.

In addition to Gwangi, O’Bie had two other projects that he did get off the ground: The Brave One and The Beast From Hollow Mountain.

The Beast From Hollow Mountain is a standard Western about mysterious cattle disappearances and quarrels over who might be responsible, only to discover in the end it’s really -- surprise! surprise! -- a solitary tyrannosaurus that somehow survived since prehistoric times.

The movie is constructed in such a way that had the dinosaur element not panned out, they could have removed it and substituted a more conventional ending.

While O’Bie didn’t work directly on the film after he sold the story, it did feature a variant of stop motion animation known as replacement animation. Instead of building a realistic looking puppet with rubber skin and posable limbs, the dino in Beast was more solid and featured interchangeable limbs that could stretch and squash in a more realistic manner (rather, the movement looked more realistic, the dino sculpture no so much…).

The Brave One started life as a story about a young Mexican boy who raises a prize bull for the ring, only to have the bull face an allosaurus in the ring instead of a matador.

The producers who bought that idea hired blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to turn it into something filmable, and Trumbo sensibly jettisoned the dino to focus the story on the boy and his bull, much to the film’s advantage (it won an Oscar for best story when released, but Trumbo’s heirs had to wait decades before the award could be recognized as due their father).

The Valley Of Gwangi was yet another variant on the same basic idea, more expansive than the other two in terms of dinosaurs, and with at least a nod in the direction of trying to explain them (a “lost canyon” giving them shelter instead of a mountain plateau or remote island).

It never connected with me, despite having more extensive dino sequences than One Million Years B.C..

O’Bie animated stop motion cowboys fighting a giant ape in the original version of Mighty Joe Young but the context proved different. The cowboys’ presence in Africa is acknowledge in the film itself as a publicity gimmick, and therefore not a true blend of the American West with a fantastic element.

Mr. Joseph Young of Africa himself, a 12-foot tall gorilla, was also presented as an exceptionally large but otherwise natural gorilla, not a throwback to a prehistoric era.

. . .

Before there were action figures, but long after there were tin soldiers, we had plastic play sets.

They came in all eras and varieties, but among the most popular were Wild West sets, Civil War, World War Two, and dinosaurs.

My father took a business trip to Chicago when I was four, and when he came back I remember eagerly crowding around the suitcase with my mother, grandmother, and aunt as he opened it and brought out souvenirs for us.

I forget what they got, but I remember feeling disappointed and forgotten since their stuff was on top.

But, underneath everything else, sat a large cardboard box, and in that box was a Marx Prehistoric Times playset.

It’s hard to adequately describe the joy that filled my heart when I opened it; it was one of the best presents I’ve ever received.

And while I later acquired a Civil War set and a World War Two set and a bag of what we then called cowboy and Indian figures, the dinosaurs remained my most favorite.

I bring this up because I think the Marx playsets explain the origins of two comics books, Turok, Son Of Stone (an on-again / off-again series from 1954 to 1982 from Dell / Gold Key) and The War That Time Forgot (1960-68 from DC).

In both cases, I’m sure somebody from each company saw some kid combing their Wild West or their World War Two playsets with their dinos and realized there was story gold to be found there.

The War That Time Forgot felt much more my speed, a lost island inhabited by dinosaurs and visited by American and Japanese forces during World War Two.

World War Two effectively ended any hope of their being a lost island with prehistoric monsters; pretty much the entire planet was scouted either on foot or by air.

Turok, Son Of Stone didn’t connect with me. For one thing, it was too much like a Western in concept; for another, Turok and his brother Andar, being pre-Columbian Native Americans, were already from a neolithic culture, and the various cavemen and Neanderthals they encountered in their lost valley seemed more drab and colorless than their tribal background.

The dinosaurs they encountered always came across as large, dangerous, but wholly natural animals, different only from bears and wolves and bison by size and appearance.

Despite my indifference to Turok, I can absolutely understand why others love it and disdain The War That Time Forgot.

Different strokes for different folks.

. . .

We can’t close this without taking a look at The Flintstones, and we can’t consider The Flintstones without first examining Tex Avery’s The First Bad Man in order to bring this post full circle.

There’s a long history (har!) of contemporary satire using a prehistoric lens. The Flintstones started life as a knockoff of Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners told in a prehistoric setting; the series made no attempt to present itself as realistic in any shape, fashion, or form.

Among the many cartoons and short subjects that preceded it (including Chuck Jones’ Daffy Duck And The Dinosaur) is The First Bad Man by Tex Avery, an MGM theatrical cartoon.

Tex told the story of Dinosaur Dan, the world’s first outlaw, using Western tropes told through a prehistoric lens.

It works, because it’s a parody of the Western form, not a sincere effort to blend it with the caveman genre. It works because it’s a jarring clash of genres, not despite it.

The caveman genre itself has fallen on fallow times. Despite films like The Quest For Fire and Clan Of The Cave Bear attempting to do realistic takes on the topic, most people seem to prefer more fanciful approaches, best exemplified by the movie Caveman which sent up the entire genre while not skimping on the stop motion dinos.

With sword & sorcery / Tolkienesque fantasies finally acceptable to mass audiences and thus providing a venue for humans to directly fight giant monsters, there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand for a return to the glories of One Million B.C.

#Compare And Contrast #One Million BC #One Million Years BC #Ray Harryhausen #Willis OBrien #Victor Mature #Carole Landis #Raquel Welch #Hal Roach #DW Griffith #cavemen #cowboys #dinosaurs #sci-fi

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the-energon-hole · 6 years ago

Note

Could I request some fall/autumn/halloween headcanons with tfp Smokescreen and Bee with their s/o's?

((A/N - I got stuck on this one, so I’m sorry if it seems a little off in anyway I had to adjust it so many times.))

Bumblebee

-”Oh, do you like that picture Bee?” You asked as you sat in an old lawn chair in the garage next to him. You were wrapped up in a nice warm blanket sipping a nice warm cup of coffee in your pajamas, it was a little self indulgent to do this with Bee, but the two of you decided that a night in could be relaxing and fun. No Decepticon Autobot War, no patrolling around the dusty old desert to keep watch for danger, and absolutely no one else but the two of you just sitting around and having a good chat. It was becoming a rarer and rarer commodity that the two of you would get time to yourselves beyond the little sneaks of affection you could squeeze in when there was down time at the base- it was nice to just sit and relax and talk to each other the way normal domestic partners were able to do, even if your relationship was far from normal. Bee beeped quizzically at you as he found one of your old photo albums lying on one of the workbenches in the small concrete room, you let him go through all your old photos… even if some of them hurt to look at and remember. The one he was asking about though was a fond memory you had from when you were younger and much more entrepid than you were now. It was a picture of you wrapped up in a warm and colorfully knitted scarf with mittens to match that were covering your hands, and as you had them thrown over your head there were leaves of so many varying colors flying around you in a messy fashion, some even sticking to your flushed looking face and to the dark beanie that covered your head. “That picture? Hmm… I can’t remember who took that one, but it was a trip I took up to the mountains so I could see the changing of the leaves for the first time. You don’t really experience seasons out here in the desert, so it was nice to be able to experience it at least once in my life.” Bee beeped at you quizzically again with a lot of inflection in his tone, and it finally hit you what he meant through his words… he had never experienced Autumn either. He hasn’t been able to see the world beyond the desert and the city the resides within it. It was then that you vowed to take him on the most amazing road trip once this whole war was over, you were going to show him the most amazing and beautiful places that the world has to offer.

-You sat cross legged on Bumblebee’s yellow and black hood as you examined a medium brown shipping box that was surprisingly light for its size. Bee beeped quizzically at you as you rotated the box in your hands as you shook it a little to try and guess what was inside. It was a package you ordered months ago and completely forgot about due to the fact you got swept up in an alien war between a species that consisted of giant robots- you argued that was a pretty fair reason to forget about your mail delivery on a consistent basis. Bee beeped at you again a little louder, which pulled you from you thoughts enough to chuckle and answer hks question- “Sorry, Bee, it looks like a package I ordered a while ago. I forgot what it was that I bought and I was trying to think of what it was that I could have ordered.” Bee responded with a noise of understanding as you adjusted yourself on the top of his hood so that you could properly open the box without making to much of a mess that you would have to clean up later. “Oh! This is the knitted Fall Ware I bought from that online designer I like” you exclaimed as you pulled out a plush looking scarf that was very soft to the touch, the next item you fished from the box was a sweater made of the same material that had a beautiful and artistic depiction of a tree losing its leaves that had changed to all different kinds of colors as they almost appeared to sway in the breeze on the still image on the piece of outerwear, and the last thing you pulled from the box was a cute little beanie that had a similar pattern to that of the sweater that was made of equally soft material. Bee beeped at you again as you wrapped the scarf around your neck in glee as you strokes at the fabric with your fingers, “These were fashion accessories that were apart of a bigger fall line by this internet designer, aren’t they cute? It’s a little too warm to wear them out here in the desert, but I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to snag myself a set when the time came.” Bee didn’t understand what you meant by fashion, but he was happy that you were happy about getting clothes that were meant to match the season of autumn. Besides, he thought you looked nice with all your new pieces of clothing- the warm colors matched your personality in a way he couldn’t describe, it was like a reflection of not only the changing of the season but also of who you were on the inside.

-You sat in your driveway in your new Halloween costumes as you watched the sun orange and yellow sun begin to dip down over the horizon. You’d be surprised at the fact that this small town does have quite a population of children, young children specifically- the ones that like to dress up in fun costumes and run around and collect as much candy as their bags could carry. You always loved Halloween and being able to celebrate it when you were little, and now that you were older and able to give out sweets on your own, you found it endearing and cute to see all the little ones running around asking for candy. You had the driveway decorated in a small way- a few body parts here and a few spiders there, but the big focal point of your decorations was none other than the bot himself, Bumblebee! He stood there nervously as the first group of kids of the night ran up to him and marveled at the “decoration” while the parents asked how you managed to accomplish such an amazing feat of engineering. “How did you get it’s eyes to glow so bright?” “It makes sounds just like a real machine!” “Oh, wow! It’s so warm and not cold at all!” After the night went on for awhile, you noticed Bee was actually having a good time receiving so much attention- you knew he would like pretending to be a statue more than he thought, olus, it was a good reminder for him about what it was that he was fighting for here on earth. These kids, these families, these people all called this floating rock their home and had nowhere else to go in the entire universe- this was a good way to not only see what he was fighting for, but for him to feel appreciated by civilians without giving away the fact he was an alien machine from another galaxy. so many kids dropped by that there was almost a party there on your block, but as it grew later and passed their bedtimes the crowd of people began to dissipate as they all waved goodbye to both you and the “statue” you let out a sigh of relief as your street was once again empty with all the houses that had light in them begin to grow dim. “How’d you like your first Halloween, Bee?” You asked as he transformed back into a car so you could usher him back into the privacy of your garage. He beeped happily at you as he began to describe all the kind things those kids said about him when they came up to place their hands on his frame- he felt so warm and loved as they spewed kind words at him in a way he had never experienced before. It made you smile as he continued on and on about his whole experience as if you weren’t there to see it, and it warmed your heart so much as you politely sat and listened to him speak with great passion and love.

Smokescreen

-You sat inside Smokescreen’s quarters that was located in the Autobot base doing nothing more than making a huge mess out of the project you had began just a few hours ago, but then again, the whole fun of this project was to get messy and mushy while teaching him the wily ways of humanity on the side. “So, why are you making a big mess again?” Smokescreen asked you as you sat on his desk covered in orange stringy pumpkin guts as you were trying to make the most traditional Jack-O-Lantern you could from this small one you picked up from the grocery store, you sighed at his question again as you tried not to touch your face out of frustration because you were still very sticky, it was literally about the third time he had asked that question- “It’s an old Hallow’s Eve tradition that dates back generations of humanity. Some people say that these little guys are supposed to protect your home from the undead, and others say they are meant to light the way for the good spirits to come and find you and give you blessings…” You explained as you finally began to carve into the surface of the pumpkin with your carving knife. “And… You believe that?” He asked in a rather crude tone as he cut you off before you could even finish your story, but you know he didn’t mean it on purpose- he just didn’t understand human customs and traditions quite yet, so it was only natural for him to think that what you were doing was rather… alien. “Does it matter if I do or not?” you shot back at him in a lighthearted tone as you placed a small tealight candle into the now hallowed and carved out shell of the tiny pumpkin “The point is that it’s tradition- and this tradition in particular can bring a lot of happiness to people. It’s a fun family activity that helps everyone get into the mood of the season, you know?” You light the candle and closed the pumpkin up to show Smokescreen what it was that you were trying to teach him about. It was nothing fancy, just your run of the mill goofy face with triangle eyes and a jagged mouth, but it seems Smokescreen just made a strange noise as he just couldn’t wrap his mind around the concept as he looked down into the face of the Jack-O-Lantern you just carved. “C’mon, help me with the next one you big grump.” You snickered as he made a face at you calling him a grump- you pulled out another round pumpkin that was much bigger than the last one that could really use a face- the point wasn’t for him to understand really, the point was for you two to finally spend some time together doing the things that you wanted to do instead of having to worry about the war that was going on outside of these walls, and he was just happy to be spending one on one time with the one person who understand him… even if he doesn’t understand you completely yet. Hew was trying to understand, and you really appreciated the effort, even if he did fall flat sometimes.

-”Thanks for taking me all the way out to the nearest coffee shop, Smokescreen” you said as you swirled the hot cup of liquid around in your cup as you sped down the freeway to head back to Jasper. You felt a sense of comfort when you felt the warm liquid swirl around in the paper cup that was in your hands, it was a little sappy, but you knew that this little cup of coffee guaranteed that you were going to have a great start to the new season (even if you didn’t really get to experience it due to living in a desert climate). “Anything for you, though, I have to say- it smells a little funny but also a little familiar… funny in a good way, I think?” He responded as you took a big whiff of your coffee through the small ventilation hole on the top of the cup. Pumpkin Spice, for you it was the perfect sign to let you know that it was the changing of the season, a perfect way to remind you that the rest of the world is experiencing cooler and cooler weather while beginning to prep for the upcoming holiday season. “It’s a special kind of spice that uses seasonal vegetation to celebrate a successful year of harvest- it’s a very popular scent on top of flavor. I use it all the time in the house as a candle because it’s kind of comforting.” You told him as you took a sip of your slightly too hot coffee- you might have to wait for it to cool off just a touch before you can really enjoy all of the flavors in the bitter liquid. “That must be why it is familiar! It’s comforting for me too… it reminds me of you, and anything that reminds me of you always makes me feel better.” You made an ‘aww’ noise at his words ad you put your hand on his dashboard. You could hear his voice stutter a little bit as he made a noise of sucking in air “I-I mean, you know- I like you and stuff but I- ummm.” He was stumbling through his words as he was trying to articulate his thoughts- he was so bad with words and it was so endearing and adorable to you. “You care about me and it’s very sweet, but don’t worry, just because you spill your guts to me it doesn’t make you any less of a macho mech.” You heard him sigh in relief. “Good! I mean- not that I think that kind of thing matters or anything. I mean- it does matter, but it doesn’t also… I mean-” “Relax, Smokescreen your emotional secret is just between you, me, and this cup of coffee.” You cut him off as you raised your cup a little to signify a mock toast as you took another sip of your seasonal drink. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” You just chuckled as you got comfortable in the driver’s seat once more as you opted to just watch the dry scenery pass you by once more- you reminisced about never being able to truly see the colors of fall, but that was ok, so long as you were surrounded by the people and bots that loved you nothing else really mattered.

-You jumped in your seat as you placed your hand over your chest in a way to try and quell the dramatic beating that you could feel inside of it. Smokescreen made a surprised noise as well, but his reaction was less dramatic than yours, which made you laugh harder at your own silliness. You both sat in front of a projection screen in his room just watching old classic horror movies from the 80s, you have seen all of these movies so many times as they aired as reruns on TV or they are always playing in the background during this time of year in shopping malls and movie theaters alike. “This is pretty gruesome! Why would those two teenagers stop in the middle of the woods to exchange fluids?! There is a guy trying to kill you!” Smokescreen emphasized as he was having a hard time understanding why humans would willfully do sexual things when there is a crazed serial killer on the loose. “You know Smokey, though this is a fictional movie, it has been known that adrenaline can increase the libido in humans- so scary things can make humans a little frisky.” You explained as you watched the killer hack up the poor teenagers who were screaming and begging for their lives. You didn’t really think beyond the words that came out of your mouth, as you were pretty much used to explaining things like this to Smokescreen, but when you caught him staring at you it made your face begin to flush as you asked him what he was looking at you like that for. “Are you watching this movie to… get your… libido er- going?” you nearly choked on your own oxygen as you coughed and almost panicked at what it was that he was implying. “Of course not! It’s nearly Hallow’s Eve and I was simply trying to get into the spooky mood!” you exclaimed as you put your hands on your cheeks to feel just how warm your face hard really gotten. “Ah…” He replied as he shifted a little in his seat on his berth. “Does that disappoint you?” you asked in a stoic way as you saw your opportunity to try and force Smokescreen into being more open and honest with his feelings. “I-I mean… I don’t- I don’t know. Yes? No?” He stammered as he too tried to cover his face in embarrassment “I mean- I like you. I think you’re attractive and I mean- who wouldn’t want to lay with you? N-Not that I want to right now! I mean, if you want-” You just chuckled as your face began to return to it’s normal color as you watched him struggle to find the words that were stuck in his audio box. “I know what you mean Smokey, I was just teasing you, you big goof.”you said as you gave him a gentle punch on his his servo- it was the closest appendage to you that you could reach to emphasize that you were just playing around with him. “Ok, good! Good” he sighed as he tried his best to turn his focus back onto the movie and to not try and think about the jarring conversation he just had with you where he nearly let his whole spark just puke out all of the deepest thoughts he had locked up in his processor. It wasn’t the right time to talk about that yet, but when it will be, he hopes that he doesn’t stammer and lose track of his words like he did earlier.

(02/11/2019)

#Long Post #Transformers Prime #Bumblebee #Smokescreen #Headcanon

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nowitsdarkfic · 5 years ago

Text

chapter thirty-three (the ghostly subway again)

“When I am king, you will be first against the wall. With your opinion which is of no consequence at all.” -“Paranoid Android”, Radiohead

Sandra is quick to the lock on the handle of the front door to keep the scorpions out there, and then she turns the sign in the window to prove that Smell the Magic is in fact closed for the New Year. Marcia and Sonia close the display case; meanwhile, Lars and I are huddled in the corner once again with the radar detector and that book opened over another milk crate right next to my left knee. The rain is coming down in torrents now—I think it might flood because there's already a good sized river running around the roundabout outside of the bakery here.

“There are drones utterly everywhere,” Lars informs me.

“All those little donuts—” I gesture to the dish, which is utterly littered with those markings indicating the drones. Down at the bottom, it gives a key to what's what: the scorpions, meanwhile, are indicated by tiny chevrons. And where there isn't a donut, there's a chevron. Which means we're surrounded by these damned things.

I can only imagine what the scorpions look like. Are they mutants like the banana slugs? Or are they massive like the spiders? Either one gives me the heebie jeebies. Those big lobster claws, those faceless plated bodies, and of course, those tails. I'm giving myself the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.

My throat's dry, but at least the pressure is off my stomach a bit. It's gotta be from all of this happening at the moment. That guy downstairs wouldn't give me a glass of milk, I still can't believe that!

Marcia and Sonia duck into the kitchen right at that moment; the former leans over the stove top of the lead oven to switch it off. The latter squats down in between us and eyes the radar detector.

“How you boys doing?” she asks us.

“Thirsty,” Lars replies.

“And a little tense,” I add to it.

“What's—all that?” She nods to the dish.

“The drones and the scorpions headed our way,” he says. “See, there's a key down here—this thing is smart. Picking up—nearly everything that's got a trace of radar or radio waves to it. I only had to point it at the ceiling one time to get this reading—here, let me do it again—”

He picks up the radar detector by the handle and points it up to the ceiling. If I didn't know, I'd swear he's pointing a label maker at the ceiling. There's silence, except for the rain on the roof over our heads. Then there's a quiet beep.

He lowers it to better examine the dish and gestures to the top.

“Yeah, see? It's recalculating—and it did. Wonder how the scorpions are being picked up. Looks they've backed off—unless they're underneath us.” He lifts his gaze to me and I shake my head.

“I didn't see any downstairs,” I confess to him.

“Wonder where they could be,” Sonia wonders aloud. Another pause. Then—

“Oh, my God in heaven.” It dawns on me. And Lars, too, as he gapes at me and his eyes widen.

Sandra then yelps out from the front room. Marcia leaps back as she barrels into the kitchen.

“Scorpions!” Sandra shouts as she shuts the door behind her with her apron in hand. Her face is as white as a sheet. “They're crawling all over the outside of the windows.”

“The only thing more terrifying than a bunch of giant spiders is a bunch of giant scorpions,” I say aloud.

“I think both are pretty horrifying, Joey,” Lars points out.

“See, the thing with scorpions is you don't know what happened,” I continue on. “Yeah, they're desert creatures,” Sonia tacks on. “It's weird to see them in New England, whereas spiders you can find anywhere in the world.”

“What should we do?” Marcia asks us. Sandra, who's fanning herself and trying to calm herself down, turns to me.

“What's it like downstairs?”

“Aside from the idiot who wouldn't give me a glass of milk? Chilly. And a little wet. Forgot to tell you ladies, I fell on my ass into a puddle down there and my butt's all wet.”

“Oh, man!” Sonia declares.

“Yeah, I'll say. At least it's warm in here, though.”

“Well, I was thinking we could go down there because that's where the stash is,” explains Sandra, “the staples. The dairy, the bread, and the potatoes.”

“Yeah, that's where the smell of potatoes is coming from!” I say to Lars. “I should tell Angeline that.”

I stop for a second. I don't know if it's the presence of the drones all around us or what.

“Angeline!”

“What about her?” Lars chews on his bottom lip.

“The drones are in the City! If there's an infestation here, there's gotta be one there 'cause we're so close!”

“Oh, SHIT!”

“She also told me if I have any questions, I should ask her.”

“Well, let's go ask her 'cause—we have tons of questions!”

“How are we gonna get to New York City, though?” Marcia demands to us as the three of them are now all gathered around us. “It's pouring rain outside and there's scorpions trying to get in.”

I turn to my coat, folded over on another milk crate, and I pry into the pocket on top. I take out the arrowhead pendant.

“Of course!” Lars exclaims, switching off the radar detector and sticking it back into the burlap sack.

“What is that?” Sandra asks me.

“No ordinary pendant, that's for sure,” I tell her, and I can't resist the grin on my face. I return to Lars. “I just have a question. Can you take stuff with you through the wormhole?”

“Oh, yes,” he answers, putting the book back in there. “I found that one out pretty quickly after I got my place down in New Orleans.” He slings the sack over his shoulder.

“Have at it, Joey.”

I make a wormhole over the empty racks, one that's big enough for all of us to climb through. I focus on the headquarters for the New York Times as I stand to my feet and dive through it with my stomach sucked in. But then I realize I don't remember exactly where it is in the City. I only know it's in the City.

Shit. Ah, shit.

It's the French Quarter all over again, especially when I look up and I see I'm in the subway.

God, not the subway.

I look behind me to find Lars had landed right on his ass on the cold floor, right next to Marcia and Sonia. And I realize I'm laying face down on a bench. Not a good position to be laying in when the stomach's full of pastries. Sandra, meanwhile, landed upright on the bench next to me.

“The subway, Joey?” Lars demands to me, his voice echoing over the floor and the walls.

“Apparently so,” I confess to him. It's cold down here, and I don't know if it's from the rain outside or the fact the tunnels are haunted. I raise my head and lift myself onto my elbows so I'm laying on the bench like a sphinx. I not only landed on a bench but on a disheveled copy of the New York Times itself. I turn it over to the back page: there at the bottom is the address. I lift my head up to examine the wall behind us.

“Where are we?” I wonder aloud. “Like—what terminal is this? Sandra, is there a plaque over there by you?” She leans to her right.

“Yeah, right here.”

“What's it say?”

“125th Street and Lexington.”

“125th?”

“Yeah.”

I glance back down at the paper.

“The New York Times is down on 41st and Eighth Avenue—which means—”

“Manhattan?” Lars wonders aloud, climbing to his feet.

“This here says we're in Harlem,” Sandra continues.

“Yeah, 41st is down in the heart of Manhattan. I know that from all the times I hung out with Anthrax.” I turn my head to find Lars, Marcia, and Sonia already to their feet; Sandra stands up from the bench in front of me. Ugh. Fine. The subway it is.

My chest aches from landing on such a hard bench as I pick myself up and straighten myself out. I stand to my feet and guide them towards the platform. The whole station is deserted: we're the only souls in here. Or least, the only souls in here with fleshly bodies. Even the railway is empty.

“I don't even know if it's in operation right now,” I confess to them, stuffing my hands into my pockets.

“It's New Year's Eve,” Lars points out as he adjusts the burlap sack over his shoulder, “it's bound to be.”

“Okay, so how far are we going?” Sandra asks me. “I just want to know.”

“Basically we're going all the way down towards Time Square and then before we get there, we're hanging a right.”

“We're definitely not in Portland anymore,” Marcia declares.

“Not at all. When I was with Anthrax, I found pretty quickly that you better get disoriented easily in order to get lost here, especially once you realize the blocks are organized the way they are. It just seems like a lot if you're an outsider or if you're on foot, on a bus, or in a cab. Five minutes upstate or in over Portland for that matter seems like forever down here. If we're standing here on the one hundred and twenty fifth block of—basically a grid, like the one we saw on the radar detector—assuming there aren't any stops, it's not gonna take very long to get down to forty one. Add to this, you guys don't have to deal with the chilly city folk, too.”

“Yeah, the worst thing we've gotta deal with is bicyclists who aren't paying attention,” Sonia laughs.

“There's just—one problem with the subways, though,” Lars says in a low voice.

“What's that?” asks Sandra.

“The tunnels are haunted.”

“They're haunted?”

“Totally,” I answer for him. I glance down one side of the terminal, down the pitch black tunnel. Nothing there. I take a glimpse down the other way. Nothing there. “He and I were down here the other day—we went through Grand Central, which is right near there—and we actually saw… a ghost.”

“A boy with no hands and no face,” Lars joins in, shifting his weight. “Glowing bright like a glow stick.”

“Oh my God.” She sounds appalled by that. “Where did he come from?”

“No idea,” he confesses. “Not a single idea where he could've come from. I guess there's a whole community of ghosts down here, too. Like—” He stops and I turn to have a look at him pointing to the left of us. “—I believe that's one right there!”

There's a pale white light emerging from the darkness to our left. It's getting bigger as it's coming closer.

And then we hear the ungodly metallic shriek of brakes grinding it to a halt.

“It's the train, Lars!” I shout over it slowing to a stop before us.

Once it does, the doors slide open and the five of us file into this car near the front. As we're taking our seats on the hard benches, I think back to what Candace had told us about the ghosts down here. And I remember that sign I saw in the Bronx that day I came down here. Yeah, I have no doubt that they like to prey on kids in particular, so I'm riding with my guard fully up and the lapels of my coat covering the bottom half of my face. I still feel like a kid sometimes after all. A kid who's lost in the City.

When the doors close, I sigh through my nose and close my eyes. Aside from the fact the tunnels are haunted, I really don't know why I'm so nervous. Sonia, who along with Marcia is sitting across from Lars and me, shows me a little smile.

“You look like a secret agent, Joe,” she cracks.

“He kinda does,” Marcia joins in.

Lars mouths something to them and I don't what he said, especially since the train is starting up again and whirring down the pitch dark tunnel. I'll admit it, I'm a little paranoid right now. There's a myriad ghosts down here and we've got a metric shitload of scorpions that may or may not be of unusual size coming after us.

Once we pass through Grand Central, I feel I've calmed down a great deal and I fold my collars over so I can breathe again. At one point, I look around the car, and I lean past Lars to better examine the one behind us.

“I just realized we're the only ones in here,” I declare. “That's probably why we're making such excellent time.”

“We are,” he notes as he takes a look around himself. “Where is everyone?”

“Also, who's driving the train?” asks Sandra. I take a look to my right to the other side of the car: we're two behind the lead one. Usually there's a guard or someone on board with us, but it's just us. As far as I can tell, there's nobody there.

“I—I don't know,” I confess to her.

“Do you know where we're getting off, Joey?” Marcia asks me. There's no signs lit up in here, and usually there is, but it's as if we boarded a train that's out of service that's going nowhere.

“Here!” I exclaim. “Ring the bell, Lars—”

Lars reaches up behind him but before he can even touch the thing, there's that shriek of the brakes again. He grips onto the pole next to him and I brace myself. I don't trust this thing. I don't trust whoever's driving, that is if there is anyone there.

The lights of this next terminal flood into the car. I don't even know where we are.

“Here?” Lars repeats.

“Yes!” And I don't hesitate once the doors slide open: he follows me out, then Marcia, Sonia, and Sandra. We gather around a bench in the middle of the platform to regather our bearings, but I keep walking to check out who's up in the front of the car. The windows are dark but as far as I can, there is in fact, nobody there. We were riding on a ghost train. I return to them right as Lars is slinging the burlap sack over his shoulder.

“Do you know where we are?” Sandra asks me.

“I don't, but there should be a sign somewhere around here that should tell us—”

Indeed, there's one on the wall down towards the stairs.

“42nd Street Bryant Park,” Lars reads aloud. “Where’s that?”

“If I remember correctly,” I tell them, “I think Angeline's office is right near here. If it is, we're good. If not, you guys can blame me for royally fucking things up.”

We make our way over to the stairs and ascend into the City, the heart of I think is Manhattan, which is lit up to the brightest neon I have ever seen in the wake of the incoming night. It's like the University District of Seattle all over again but much bigger and with far more overkill. Everything has some trace of neon on it. Everything. Even the crappy bus stop behind us and even the payphones on the corner. I raise a hand to my face to shield my eyes it's so bright.

“Bloody hell,” Lars remarks, squinting against the bright light.

“Yeah, I'd say Maxwell has maxed out here,” I declare. “Let's walk. I think we got off at the wrong place. It's not easy to get lost here but it is easy to get turned around, though.”

“I think we did in fact get off at the wrong place, Joey,” Lars adds as the five of us start walking up the street, “because there's Grand Central, also known as 42nd Street. And we should've gotten off there!”

“Like I said—you guys can blame me for royally fucking things up, 'cause I'm a country boy. I ain't from the City.”

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iola-s · 4 years ago

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“Warrior Guts” written by iola

~~~AMAZING PIECE~~~

~~~inspired by @normal-horoscopes and their horoscopes~~~

~edited~

“I understand your fear,” A little girl, 15 years old, said to God one day. Or she thought she understood the fears of an immortal. Lanie McAdams was a naturally fearful gal, fearing the smallest spiders and the largest cliffs that decorated this God-Given gift of a world.

“I understand your fear,” Lanie, one day, said to the crisp cool air that surrounded her.

“I understand your fear. I’ll go and kill the monster you fear, the beast in the woods. I promise.” Lanie vowed. While she was fearful, she was too kind and impulsive. Lanie knew she would die in the feat, that didn’t dwindle down her hurtful optimism though.

So, an hour later, young Lanie left her Grandma’s house with her deceased Granpa’s sword. She began venturing into the Great Unknown, pride in every step. Looking at the forest floor, she found a cool rock. It was way more than a rock.

What if I get hungry? She pondered for a moment, standing in the wild woods, before turning right around to head to the plaza in her hometown.

“I’ll get some bread for this special, extravagant rock.”

Pretty quickly after turning around, the familiar view of the colorful tents popped back up in the view. The tents lined the streets of Echkar, large and small tables decorated the plaza. Lanie walked through the clutter of people, a soft smile on her face.

“Hey Julien!” She waved energetically. Julien’s face lit up seeing the girl again.

“How can I help you, young girl? Why do you carry your G-Pa’s sword?” He probed gently. Lanie laughed heartily even though a twinge of anxiety centered in her stomach.

“Oh you wouldn’t like the reason.” She looked away.

Moments later, she pulled out the cool rock she found and showed Julien.

“Look at this!” She held up the black and purple rock to the sky’s natural

Light. A little glow, a blue, iridescent glow emitted from the rock. As people caught a glimpse of the rock, they began crowding around Lanie and Julien.

“Whoa!” Some people gasped, some shouted at the obvious beauty.

“I’ll trade you this cool rock for a loaf!” She exclaimed before letting Julien hold it and feel the rough edges and the smooth side of the rock. He smiled.

“Alright, gal. I can do a quarter loaf, no more than that.” Immediately, Lanie agreed and grabbed the bread and sprinted off into the woods.

By the time she was halfway to the heart of the woods, the green magical forest welcomed every step she took. The lazy, warm wind would kiss her skin love and luck. The flowers that bloomed around every step would cherish her “Oohh's and “Aahh’s, every flower messaging love and luck, even if she didn’t know any flower language. Her heart knew the message the woods seemed to chant silently.

When the sun hid behind the trees and clouds, the wind cooled and the flowers turned into frosted weeds. Lanie knew she was in the Beast’s Lair. When the cold air bid “Adieu” to her life, she started fearing for herself. Before she walked unknowingly into her death, she had romanticized her standing on the Beast's big, ugly head and herself never fearing for herself or her life ever again.

Now that she was here, now that she had promised to try the beast’s slayer, she had to.

“I’ll be okay,” she found herself whispering to herself as the aura of the Great Unknown darkened.

“I’ll be okay,” “I’ll be okay,”

By now, it was pitch black in the woods. Somewhere beyond tree roots and beyond the cold wind, a skeleton appeared to Lanie. The bones were stark white and they wore a robe of a king and carried a skateboard. They mumbled something about “The Graveyard”.

Knowing immediately that that’s where Lanie was headed, Lanie swallowed her anxiety and tightened her grip on the sword and attempted to approach the… skeleton.

The talking and walking skeleton with no meat on their bones, no nerves, no brain. Yet they walked and talked. They continually walked forward, never hearing her cries for them to slow down.

As she followed the skeleton, calling out for them to slow down, begging for them to at least stop, they stopped abruptly. Their head turned to the side. A crunching noise followed the turn of the skull. The sounds, the cool air, the fear in her belly, it all made the adventure she was on; seem no fun anymore.

In that moment, all of her memories, her hopes and dreams, and troubled days came out. She puked into the dying soil, hoping to God that this wasn’t real. She was scared, so scared at the moment. “What If’s” stormed her mind, leaving her swirling in a giant tsunami of terror. She let it all go, tears and puke hitting the dirt.

Instead of the skeleton ignoring her completely, it approached. Their tendon-less, skeleton hands reached for the back of her shoulder to pat her on the back to comfort her. The rigidness of the bones, carved with truth and pain, love and loss, made with precision and sigils, all of it made her all the more frightened.

“CHILD, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” It asked in the calmest, kindest of voices she’d ever heard before. Closer and kinder than her passed Mother’s.

Lanie blinked away tears. This voice, although never hearing it, was a verbal home. It was the place she imagined about, yet it could also be the energy that calmed her soul. It made her want to live.

“I’m here to kill the beast, the one God fears.” The child stuttered. The skeleton nodded knowingly.

“LANIE MCADAMS? I KNOW OF YOU. BRAVE ONE, SIT, SPEAK WITH ME.” They said loudly. To Lanie, the loudness of their voice gave her a moment’s relaxation from the anxiety. How, on God’s green Earth, did it enunciate so clearly when they didn’t have vocal cords?

“What did you want to talk about, Caretaker?” Lanie asked the skeleton. The Caretaker didn’t speak for a moment. They, a brainless but vastly intelligent being, started slowly.

“LANIE, THE BEAST, THERE’S A CHANCE THAT YOU WON’T FIND THE BEAST… THE BEAST WILL FIND YOU.” The skeleton hesitated foretelling Lanie McAdam’s death. Her eyes glossed over.

“Oh.” Nothing else was uttered for a good few moments.

“I WILL BE THERE, IF AND WHEN YOU DIE… EVEN IF IT’S NOT TODAY, YOUNG ONE, I WILL BE THERE.”

With those frightening words, with those words of death, a shiver ran down her spine with such a tidal wave of fear. It was a riptide you could never escape.

“I don’t want to die, Caretaker.”

“YOU MUST BE BRAVE. EITHER WAY, THROUGH LIFE AND DEATH, YOU WILL BE OKAY. YOU HAVE NO REASON TO FEAR THE AFTERLIFE, AS I, AND OTHERS WHO SPIN DESTINY, LOOK AT YOU WITH THE UTMOST RESPECT…” The skeleton paused. Lanie, repeatedly wiping their tears, nodded.

“I MUST GO. I CANNOT SEE YOU CALL DEATH.” And with a snap, the skeleton was gone. Lanie blinked away more tears.

Hours later, she stumbled into a garden. The garden was beautiful with overgrown flowers for the people who used to live here. Lanie sighed slowly, wandering the beautiful plant-filled heaven. A tree in the center had beautiful, scrumptious looking red fruit. They looked way bigger than regular apples. Juicier. As she was tempted into taking a big bite out of the apple lookalike, a giant beast showed.

Without much thought, Lanie McAdams charged with a war cry that made her fears exit her body. Just adrenaline. She had no idea how to use a sword, but she kept trying to stab and slice away the beast

She shrieked in rage, she put all of her anger, all her fear she experienced in her life into trying to kill God’s fear. She understood fear but it didn’t understand her. It just pushed the fight or flight button, pounding it into her brain panels, over and over again. Lanie McAdams found herself lonely and scared of the world she grew up in. She didn’t need that, she concluded today.

Finally the ravenous monster grabbed her sword and swallowed it whole, leaving her defenseless. She stared at it, her big eyes staring it down. She eyed the monster as it approached slowly and menacingly. It’s eyes never left her’s.

“I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU!” She roared, picked up a sharp and angular tree branch laying in the front of the garden. As it sized her up, she, as fast as her long legs would take her, Lanie stabbed the stick in it’s eye, making it angrier. With one motion of it’s head, she was launched across the garden and hit the cliff face.

As promised, the skeleton returned to her side. Knowing how hard Lanie McAdam hit the side of the cliff, they knew she couldn’t return words anymore.

“YOU BRAVE, BRAVE WOMAN. I… WE ARE SO PROUD. GOD DID NOT DESERVE YOUR KINDNESS. I HOPE THEY REPAY IT WELL AND SOON.” They paused.

“AS A TOKEN OF YOUR BRAVERY, I WILL TAKE YOU TO THE AFTERLIFE. THE ONE MEANT FOR WARRIORS AND THE KINDEST OF PEOPLE. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO TRAVEL AT YOUR HEART’S CONTENT.”

#@normal-horoscopes pls love me #do u like it #creative writing #original #by me #older writing #writing

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tickletherapy · 8 years ago

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Acceptance

“Are you sure there’s nothing you’d like to do, honey?” the woman asked. “No mum! There’s nothing here! Nothing at all! Well… nothing I want to do anyway…” her daughter exclaimed, glancing around. The older woman sighed and glanced around. The shopping centre was teeming with people, as it usually did during the January stocktake sales. It was fairly warm outside today, too. Thus, it made sense for people to escape the heat and seek refuge in a shopping centre. The slender, average sized woman wore a pair of sandal flats, a pair of white three quarter trousers with a loose turquoise blouse. At least she was better dressed than the other people here: they were ambling about in tank tops and flip-flops, showing off thickset beer guts and broad arms, or hairy chests. It made her shudder. Still, the woman ambled along, her eight-year-old daughter’s hand folded inside her own. “I’m still quite amazed that you’ve behaved so well today! I know you hate shopping, but wow, the way you’ve responded to everything today has been impressive. You’ve just rolled with it, honey,” the woman said. Her daughter tittered and glanced up, grinning gleefully. The young girl was small and skinny, with tanned skin and average sized hands and feet. She sported long light brown-blonde hair and forest green eyes. She currently wore a pair of white shorts, a green and white striped polo shirt and a pair of blue and black sandals. To most people, she would have appeared to be a surfer boy with longer than average hair! “Thanks, ma!” the girl said, grinning. “But I still can’t find anything I want!” the woman’s daughter replied. Her mother sighed and stopped in the middle of an intersection. In the direction they were currently facing in the large, airy, three-storey building, they could see the huge central food court. To their left there was a short passageway leading to every child’s favourite store: Toys ‘R’ Us. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like anything from the food court?” “No thankyou. We’ve already eaten, and you said there’s ice-cream at home,” the girl replied. “How about a toy? Or a video game you’d like? Perhaps some new kneepads for your skateboard?” her mother suggested. The girl shrugged. She seriously had no idea! Sweeping her long brown hair away from her face, the older woman continued glancing around. She hoped – no, she prayed – her daughter would find something. And in that moment, it was as if her prayers had been answered, for the woman suddenly felt her arm jolting. She glanced up to find her young daughter padding off in the direction of Toys ‘R’ Us. The woman smiled, realizing her daughter had found something. But as they hurtled towards the toy store, the woman’s daughter suddenly wheeled around to face the opposite direction. “I KNEW I could her laughter from somewhere!” the youngster cried, grinning at her mother with a mischievous smile. At last, the sweet, playful eight-year-old had found what she wanted. “What’s that?” the woman asked, glancing around, expecting to find some sort of punk shop or a skateboard shop. Her daughter, for some strange reason, had developed a love of punk music, but it was increasingly hard to find good songs without a bucket load of swear words in them… “There!” the youngling cried, pointing to a shop front. It looked like it wasn’t going to be sticking around for long; such was the case with most, if not all, popup stores. Some ended up becoming permanent locations, but this was rare. This shop was narrow, with a brightly coloured sign above it and on both sides of the entrance, at forty-five degree angles and facing the direction of on comers. These signs were brightly coloured, with a green and gold backdrop, with red letters. But these letters seemed to be made of feathers! ‘GIGGLES GALORE: A HOTFUB POPUP STORE!’ When the two females peered in, they could see a long red couch along one side, with fold down benches. At the back, there was an office desk with a small refreshments station. The desk had a computer on it, with several stacks of paper on it. The shop was brightly lit, with lighting in the white walls. There were red, blue, green and yellow glow sticks in the sides, giving the room a bright, fun appearance. On the walls, there were a few photos, containing children being tickled on their feet and upper bodies by feathers or fingers… But by far, the most interesting part of the shop was in the front. It looked like a dentist’s chair, but it also looked ten times scarier, yet ten times more enthralling at the same time. The little girl couldn’t help but amble closer, to steal a better look. The purple and white chair had a black beam directly behind the headrest, where a series of cuffs were located. At the other end, there was a huge wooden platform with two holes cut into it. They seemed to be padded, too. Beside the chair, there was a small, round white table with a chair, and also several items on it. The girl could recognise the hairbrush and paintbrushes there, but there were also feathers and electric toothbrushes! Right now, there was a boy currently sitting on the chair. His bare feet were secured in the restraints, and his arms were locked in position above his head. He currently wore a pair of shorts, but there was a tee shirt and a pair of shoes and socks on the floor. A woman was watching the action and smiling, snapping photos of the boy and encouraging a second lad. The restrained boy was frantically laughing his head off whilst his tickler’s fingers spidered about all over the balls of his tender, soft looking feet. The toes, currently tied back to stop scrunching and disrupting the tickles, squirmed and wiggled as much as they could. “NAHAHAHA MAHAHAHAHAMEEHEEHEE DAHAHAHAHAN’T TEHEHEHEHEHELL HIHIHIM!” the blond kid cried, screaming with wide eyes. The woman snapping photos, obviously his mother chuckled. She stood up, unable to control her impulse, and stepped up behind the restraints and began spidering her nails over the child’s soft, hairless hollows, resulting in another frantic bout of hysterical laughter. The woman’s scarlet nails spidered rapidly up and down all over her son’s ribs, pits and sides. She also occasionally grabbed at his tummy with the dreaded claw attack. Then, to make matters worse, she reached forward and squeezed his thighs too, resulting in even higher-pitched giggles, before returning to the upper body with a few belly button pokes. The foot-tickler was busily threading feathers back and forth between the boy’s tender, dainty toes, whilst scrubbing a hairbrush over the other foot with his other hand. He wasn’t doing a great job of it, since holding three feathers in one hand; a hairbrush in the other and performing two different methods was quite taxing on a young mind. Actually, it was rather taxing on anyone’s mental capabilities, no matter how talented they were! It could be done though, as this kid was proving. A sudden jolt to the sides alerted the little girl to the fact that she was currently in a trance like state. She had also been squirming as she watched, and when her mother zapped her flanks, she squeaked and giggled endearingly. “Come on Dixie, shall we go and have a closer look, my little tickle bug?” the girl’s mother asked. When her daughter nodded, she steered her towards the store’s entrance. Dixie, for as long as she could remember, had always been known as a tickle bug. She loved everything about it, from the sensations it made, to the laughter and the accompanying workout. She also loved how it made her feel relaxed, or wound her up, or pulled her out of a bad mood. It was the great all-rounder. Often was the case that if Dixie was bored, she’d ask for a supermassive tickle session, which her mother would happily dish out, teasing the girl’s body from top to toe for as long as the little one could handle it. In fact, if she hadn’t found anything, she was going to ask for exactly that when they returned home. The mother-daughter duo entered the shop. The woman currently tickling her son to pieces smiled at them. They smiled back. In fact, they couldn’t stop smiling, because a short, skinny young lady was ambling towards them. She wore a white sleeveless crop top, with blue jean shorts and flat dress sandals. She had long, yellow blond hair, which came down to just under her bosom. Her bright blue eyes twinkled in the light, and she smiled warmly. As she approached, Dixie saw a clipboard and a pen in her hand. “Hello, how are you today?” the young woman asked, smiling. “Very well thanks. How are you?” Dixie asked. She was never scared to say hello to someone. “I’m very well, too! I’m Libby by the way. Welcome to Giggles Galore, the HOTFUB popup store!” the girl exclaimed. As she spoke, it was evident that she had something of a lisp going on, and her voice was quite airy, yet deep at the same time. “Oh, it’s a pleasure to meet you! I’m Jane by the way,” said Dixie’s mother, smiling politely. “And I’m Dixie!” the youngling chirped back, grinning ever so sweetly. “Well it’s a pleasure to meet you both! I saw you watching from outside earlier. I guess you liked what you saw?” Libby asked, grinning. She gestured to the couch and they all collapsed onto it, so they could chat and watch the blond boy being tormented out of his little mind. “Yeah, we were!” Jane remarked. “So this is a HOTFUB thing?” “Yes, that’s right. So HOTFUB decided that the Christmas shopping time would be a time where many kids go to shopping centres against their will, so we organized this so kids can drop heir kids off and run around for up to half an hour. However unfortunately this is one of the smaller clinics. I believe the popup store they have over at Forest Hill shopping Centre is much bigger, with up to five chairs like that,” the woman explained, gesturing to the seat. “I see. Well this is nice and cosy. I like it,” said Jane. “Is there just you and that boy here?” Dixie asked curiously. “Actually we have rotating shifts with the kids turning over every three to four hours. And I’m here for the whole day,” the woman explained. “Oh okay, that sounds cool. So why are the stores here?” “Well, you can come here and be tickled or tickle one of the boys here. And we have sign up sheets and the like,” the HOTFUB employee explained further. “Oh cool! That sounds awesome! But what’s so different about it here? Like… I could go home and ask to be tickled at home, couldn’t I?” asked Dixie, grinning mischievously. “You could, I’m sure. But tell me something… do you have this fun chair and these awesome tickling tools at home?” the lady asked, smiling kindly. The brunette thought for a moment. “Um… no, we don’t… but we have toothbrushes and stuff at home,” Dixie replied. “Oh of course you do! Otherwise your breath would be all stinky!” “Ewwww hehe!” the girl giggled. “No, I meant as in you wouldn’t usually think to use them for tickling, would you?” Libby asked. “Oh… well now that you mention it…” Dixie replied, grinning at her mother, who smiled back. “So, will you have a session here today? It’s quite economical actually. It’s fifteen dollars to tickle our HOTFUB lad, or five dollars to be tickled,” said Libby. “Twenty dollars all up!” Jane exclaimed, feigning shock. Dixie glanced at her mother with wide eyes. “Oh well of course you don’t have to pay for both sessions,” said Libby, smiling. “Ah, well that’s alright then!” Jane replied, chuckling. “But I want to do both! Can I please do both, mummy?” Dixie asked, clasping her hands together as if she were praying. “Well I’m not sure. It’s very expensive. It’s twenty dollars you know!” the girl’s mother teased. “Yeah, and if I decided I wanted to buy skateboard pads, it would cost fifty dollars, hehe!” Dixie remarked cheekily. She knew which stores were not having clearance sales right now, and if push came to shove, she’d drag her mum to one of those ones if she said no here. “Of course… so I’m not spending as much here, am I?” she asked. “Not as much as you would if you were to purchase skate pads, no,” Libby giggled. But it was evident that Dixie was becoming antsy, as she was now standing up and bouncing up and down on the balls of her little feet. Meanwhile, the room had become much quieter now, since the tickling had ceased and the now ex-ticklee was climbing gingerly out of the stocks. His face was bright tomato red and he was sweating profusely. He looked like he’d just been destroyed! “Please mummy! Please! We don’t have this cool stuff at home!” she cried, pulling a puppy-eye face. “Oooh I don’t know,” Jane said, smirking slightly. “I mean…. I could just tickle you at home for free. But what the heck? Here we go then!” she said, smiling and reaching into her purse, drawing out the red twenty dollar note and handing it over. Whilst they’d been talking, the young boy’s mother slipped her son’s socks and shoes back on, since the poor, panting lad was too worn out to do so himself. He downed the entire cup of water the tickler handed to him. “That’s the spirit then! Nothing like a good tickle session! And we’re very thorough. So if you’re worried about her being full of beans when you return home, have no fear, because she’ll be out like a light!” Libby explained, her lisp becoming more and more prominent as her speech speeds up. “Oh that’s very good then! Much like that one, you mean!” Dixie’s mum replied. “Haha, my son just endured twenty-five minutes in this thing. If I could buy one for him, I would. He’s an absolute tickle holic!” the lad’s mother exclaimed, helping the exhausted kid to his worn out feet. “You ought to send him to HOTFUB!” Libby suggested. “Oh don’t worry, I intend on doing that!” the woman replied, taking her son’s hand and heading out the door. The two women chuckled and waved her off. The boy gave a tired wave to everyone too. Dixie stood up, leaving the adults to their chatting and inspected the tickle chair closely. It was quite an intriguing device, capable of exposing a kid’s body and thus allowing it to be tickled nonstop without any hindrance from flailing limbs. She liked the foot restraints. They seemed interesting… “Hello,” said a voice behind the girl, making her jump. She wheeled around on the spot. “Hi,” she said shyly, smiling. She was currently staring into the deep brown eyes of an Indian born lad. He must have been about her age, because he was about the same height, if not a tad shorter, but not by much. He was small and skinny. His liquorice black hair was short, and his bright white smile was broad and energetic. His skin was fairly pale brown. He currently wore dark blue sports shorts, with a grey tee shirt with the white Nike tick on it, and a pair of sandals. “I’m Kiran, by the way. I’m going to be your tickler today,” the boy said, with an Australian accent. “Oh okay. I’m Dixie, by the way,” the girl said. “How old are you?” she asked. “I’m eight, and you?” “Same!” the endearing lass replied, grinning. “Cool. So you like to be tickled, huh?” “Yeah, I do! It’s really fun. Do you?” “Yes, I do. But I prefer to be the tickler,” Kiran replied, tittering a bit. “Cool. Where is your most ticklish spot?” Dixie asked, grinning. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours!” the boy replied, giggling. “Well for me it’s my toes, hehe!” the girl squeaked, wiggling her little tootsies as she spoke. “I see. For me it is my armpits!” the boy replied, his arms clamping beside them. “Cool. So do you normally get tickled here?” Dixie asked curiously. “Actually not really. I very rarely get tickled in these places. I usually do the tickling,” the boy replied. “Oh okay. Well I asked for both types of sessions today, so I can tickle you as well!” the girl exclaimed, grinning mischievously. Kiran giggled, grinning broadly as he did so. “That would be nice. I don’t usually like being tickled too much, but sometimes it is fun,” he added. “I see. So do you work for HOTFUB?” Dixie asked. She couldn’t help the questions. Meanwhile, Libby and Jane sat together, watching with interest. “Yes, I do! It is very fun there. Now can I ask you to please to jump up onto the chair and place your feet into the holes?” Kiran asked. Dixie giggled and leapt up and sat down. She placed her feet through the open holes and allowed Kiran to close the top part over them. She waved her feet in circular motions, and grinned nervously. Jane supressed a chuckle, before leaning over to Libby. “You know, I always say to her to not take her shoes and socks off when I tickle her feet, because it’s like unwrapping a present for me as a tickler. It’s funny how she’s done the same here. I guess she’s just used to doing it like that, now,” the lass’s mother whispered. “Haha yeah, seems that way. I have to agree with you about the shoes and socks, by the way…” Whilst the two women whispered to each other, Dixie cast them suspicious glances, but her mind’s attention as redirected when Kiran locked her hands into the wrist restraints by her sides. “Not above my head?” the girl asked curiously. “No, not today I’m afraid,” the boy replied. “We have lots to get through, teehee,” he replied. He returned to the front of the stocks and unstrapped the left sandal. As he did so however, he also playfully tickled the youngster’s delightfully soft foot over the top. Dixie jumped back in her seat and tittered sweetly, prompting a smile from her tickler. “This is going to tickle so much!” the endearing child cried, tittering as the sandal slid over the foot, exposing it. The heel strap glided over the lass’s arch, sending her into a fit of cute, uncontrollable giggles. After placing the left shoe on the floor, Kiran turned his attention to the right foot. This time, he tickled the top of the foot between the two straps, then the tops of the little toes, and even the back of the heel, before unstrapping the shoe! Dixie giggled sweetly. “Just get to the good stuff!” she cried impatiently, and giggling rambunctiously in the process. The Indian born tickler tittered as well. He shrugged his shoulders and rapidly unstrapped the shoes. When the Velcro straps tore apart, they made that familiar uncomfortable scratchy sound, sending shivers up Dixie’s spine in the process. When the shoe was pulled free from her foot and slid over her arch, the girl tittered again. Placing the shoe on the ground, Kiran admired the tender soles for a moment. Since Dixie’s skin was quite tanned, the soles were a milky pink colour for the most part. They were small and delightful to look at. The heels were narrow, and at the balls of the feet, the super soft, silky smooth feet tapered out ever so slightly to accommodate the five little tootsies. There was a partial amount of toe stem visible on the second, third and fourth digits. The digits also complimented the small and slender soles, for they were just right in terms of their length and width. The big toe was naturally the biggest, and then from there they fanned down in a near perfect arch. “You have really nice ticklish looking feet,” said Kiran, teasingly. He grinned gleefully, wiggling his fingers ever closer towards the girl’s squirming soles. “Oh why thankyou! But if you think they look ticklish, just wait until you actually try it!” the girl teased, tittering uncontrollably and wiggling her toes frantically. “Okay, then I’ll do just that!” Kiran cried sweetly, flashing her a smile before tracing one curious finger from the base of the girl’s left heel up towards her big toe, zigzagging it up as he went. Immediately, the girl’s arms and legs twitched and she lurched forward, tittering desperately. The boy giggled and started on the right foot as well, raking all ten of his fingers up and down the soft, tender soles. “How is that, Dixie?” Kiran teased giggling as his fingers brushed lightly across the balls of the girl’s soft, sensitive feet. The girl by was cackling even harder, jiggling about in the restraints and shaking her head. Her eyes were practically bulging out on stalks, and she was squeaking as the tickles rushed through her delightfully sensitive and highly cute soles. “THAHAHAHAHAHAT REHEHEHEHEHEALLY TIHIHIHIHICKAHAHAHAHAHALS!” the youngster screeched back, thrashing hard as the boy fingers now progressed to a spidering method, working all over her little toes as well as the soles, tops and sides. He couldn’t help grinning as he teased her little tootsies. He teased across the pads of them, and in between them too. At first he used his fingers, but then reached to the table and picked up a special HOTFUB creation: the Tween Toes Tickler! This device had a special handle, and then five little fingers, each lined with fluffy and fuzzy pipe cleaner material. To make matters worse, the tips were plastic, and they vibrated, so they could easily tickle little toe pads and soles too. The tiny fingers had different colours on them. These were pink, purple, blue, green and yellow. The one on Kiran’s other hand had red, yellow, orange, white and black. The boy slipped both of these onto Dixie’s heels and slid them up her soles, so she could experience the tormenting vibrations. “GYAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA WHAHAHHAHAHAAHAT’S THAHAHAHAHAT?” she screeched desperately, her eyes widening in the process. The two women chuckled when they saw that response. They were both chatting about HOTFUB and TOYAAG and their differences. Kiran was half listening too, but he was also concentrating on making young Dixie scream her lungs out. He slipped the two Tween Toes Ticklers’ into the undersides of the girl’s little digits, before flicking each one up so they tormented the little digits. Since they were her weakest spot, the poor girl understandably screeched for all she was worth, thrashing about desperately and fanning her animated toes out. The tickler capitalized on her mistake, slipping the devices in between her little digits, and holding them there. “AHAHAHAHAHA NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA TIHIHIHIHICKAHAHAHAHALS TOO MUHUHUHUCH!” the girl cried desperately, thrashing as hard as her restraints would allow. They squeaked and croaked in protest to her frantic tugging and kicking. “You want me to stop?” Kiran asked. He rested the handle of each device on little holders extending up from the stocks, which had been fitted for this very purpose. With Dixie writhing about so much and kicking her feet, she was actually tickling her own toes! “NAHAHAHAHAHAHA IT’S FUUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUN!” the little girl screeched desperately, her cheeks blushing and a fresh wave of tears cascading down her cheeks. She shook her head to flick them off her face, before taring back down at the stocks where her feet were being tormented. The tickles only increased from there, for Kiran returned to the soles, his fingers skittering and scribbling relentlessly all over the heels, arches and the balls of the feet. The double ticklish assault made the poor girl scream even louder, and her laughter scaled an octave now. It also passed the threshold between proper laughter and nonstop squealing. “Well then I’ll have to keep going!” the young boy teased, lifting the Tween Toe Ticklers’ off his ticklee’s toes and picking up a few feathers instead. He started sliding them all over the girl’s soft soles, working the soles, sides and tops, as well the cute, squirmy digits. The feathers were delightfully ticklish for Dixie’s tender soles, and her heavy laughter subsided a fair bit. Her body wasn’t convulsing as much now, suggesting that this was quite pleasant. The tickler started with two feathers – one in each hand. They were stiff but big, and tickled greatly. Eventually, the boy switched to softer feathers, which tickled more. He added more of these soft, fluffier feathers, eventually holding three in each hand and sliding them all over the little girl’s soles and tickly toes. “AHAHAHA WE NEEHEEHEED THESE AT HOHOHOHOHOME!” the girl shrieked, as the feathers slid all over the arches and balls of her tender feet. Kiran turned to face Jane. “Would you like to have a turn with them?” he asked. The woman thought for a moment. “Yeah sure, I’d love to!” she said, racing over. But she didn’t take the feathers. Instead, her nails spidered and skittered relentlessly all over the little girl’s left sole, leaving Kiran to tease the right one. “WHAHAHAHAHAT? THAHAHAHAHAT’S CHEAHEAHEAHEATING! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” young Dixie screeched, as the two ticklers made short work of her tender soles. Her mother’s nails slipped effortlessly between her daughter’s hyper ticklish tootsies, teasing the tips and pads of them with ease, as well as between them too. She seemed to know exactly how to make it work and drive her young child completely insane. Kiran felt like this was almost unfair, but he decided against this idea, and after using the feathers thoroughly, he cycled through the feather dusters, paintbrushes and q-tips. Dixie’s soft soles seemed to be thoroughly reactive to the paintbrushes, since they were so dense and tickled well. In fact, for the first time in the entire session, and mainly since her soles were completely awash with tickles, the girl’s toes scrunched down! “Oh well, fortunately I have a way to fix that!” Kiran cried gleefully, picking up and pair of electric toothbrush and turning them on. When they whirred to life, Jane stepped back to watch the youngster work his magic. The brushes touched the tips of the eight-year-old brunette’s delightful big toes and she screeched! The poor girl actually screamed so loudly that she accidentally slipped into silent laughter! All that could be heard now was the banging of her arms against the restraints, the squeaking the chains and padded manacles and the scratching of tickling tools on soft bare feet. Occasionally, the poor girl squeaked. But as the brushes slid down over her tender tootsies, she had no choice but to unscrunch them, thus paving the way for the hairbrush tickles. “Will you hold the toes back for me?” the tickler asked as he slid the two electric brushes over Dixie’s tender soles, focussing namely on the arches and heels. “Oh, I think I can do that!” Jane replied. But she was quite devious on her approach. The woman eased back on her daughter’s tender, ticklish tootsies and slipped a piece of cord around the two big toes and the two littlest toes. “There, that should do it,” she said, winking. Kiran didn’t need further encouragement. He put the two electric brushes down, and brandished the hairbrush. When young Dixie saw it, she squealed. If electric toothbrushes had almost killed her, then a hairbrush would be pure hell. And she wasn’t wrong. Since her soles had started sweating up ever so slightly, thus blanketing them in a thin film of moisture, the plastic balls on the ends of the bristles ended up sliding up and down the girl’s tender feet with ease, thus heightening the sensations and making Dixie more jumpy than she already was. Her screechy laughter had returned, and she screeched as loudly as she could, making a few passers-by stop and edge closer for a better look. “It’s okay, she’s my daughter and she loves it!” Jane cried to a shocked onlooker and her own son and daughter, who looked to be about nine and eleven respectively. She shook her head however and padded off, despite the boy glancing back hungrily at the pop up store. The girl continued screaming her cute head off, thrashing wildly. But it was only going to get worse for the poor child. As the hairbrush continued sliding up and down each foot moving from he left sole to the right and back, Jane crouched beside her daughter’s midriff and began spidering her fingers all over the girl’s tender stomach and ribs, attempting to also dig into whatever she could reach of the sides. She wasn’t tickling under her daughter’s shirt, though normally at home she’d be topless for such a ticklish workout, which was how the little one preferred it. But the double attack suddenly caught the endearing lass off guard, and her eyes one again just about ejected from their sockets. And if there hadn’t been anything holding her down, there would have most likely been a Dixie-shaped hole in the ceiling by now. The girl kept screeching and screaming for all she was worth. “Are you having fun, honey? I’ve never tickled you THIS hard before,” Jane asked. She was slightly nervous at the moment, too. But Dixie nodded her head and squealed. “SO FUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUN!” she managed, before slipping into silent giggles again. The hairbrush was now sliding in circular motions over the girl’s soles. It did that method mainly over the balls of the feet and toes, where it was most effective. The girl also had to put up with heavy scrubbing across her heels, arches and the balls of her feet too, but the light circular motions were where it tickled most. A few moments followed, and Jane eased up on her daughter’s upper body, now returning to the feet. “If I hold the brush here, you tickle there,” said Kiran, whispering so Dixie wouldn’t hear. He picked up a second hairbrush and rested them lightly against the girl’s toes. Then, Jane placed her nails against her child’s arches and began scribbling her nails hard. The girl screamed with laughter and began waving her ticklish feet from side to side. But as she did so, she tickled her own toes against the brush! It all too much to bear now, and the youngster screamed desperately. “ORANGE OCTOPUS! ORAHAHAHAHANGE OCTAHAHAHAHAPUHUHUHUSS!” the lass cried. Kiran cast a sideways glance at Jane, who chuckled. “That’s her safe word. She calls it when she’s had enough,” the woman explained. The Indian born kid gasped and pulled the brushes away. “Hehe, I like that one! Orange Octopus! That’s a funny one, teehee!” the boy giggled. Dixie was a mess. She was sweating quite hard, and her cheeks were deep crimson. Her feet were red too, from the stimulation they’d just been put through. The girl was panting heavily, sighing and moaning every now and then as she did so. It was hard to get air in right now. As she panted away, Jane cuddled her daughter and kissed her, before releasing her wrists from the restraints. A few tired titters and an unlocking sound later, Kiran swung the device open, freeing the girl’s feet. She wiggled her toes gratefully, and sighed. Libby padded across the room with a cup of water for the girl. “Here, drink this, you’ll feel better!” she said. The little lass took the water and downed it all in one gulp, sighing. She was glad she’d relieved herself before they came here… “Man, that was awesome!” she sighed, her voice coming out croakily. “I think you enjoyed!” Jane exclaimed, as the girl leapt down from the seat and slipped her feet back into her sandals. The girl nodded as she stumbled back to the red couch. Her legs, arms and whole body in general felt like a huge pile of jello right now. “Yeah! Hehe! That was the best tickle ever!” Dixie cried, giggling. “I’m glad you enjoyed it! What was your favourite part?” Kiran asked, clasping his hands together and sitting on the tickle chair, facing her. “Oh, I’m not sure. I liked it when you tickled me with those funny vibrating thingies!” And the feathers were nice. They were really nice actually. If someone wanted to tickle me all day, I’d let him or her use feathers. They tickle, but they feel really nice, hehe!” the girl cried, grinning. “I bet they’d do the same at TOYAAG, so maybe you can join there,” Kiran suggested. At hearing those words, Dixie looked like she was about to be sick. “EW! I HATE TOYAAG!” the girl cried, her loving, peaceful and kind eyes flashing angrily for a second. “Oh? How come?” Libby asked, surprised. “They’re the girls’ tickling capital of the world, as they say!” “No, they’re really not. They don’t like all girls. They think some girls should not be allowed in. They didn’t let one of my best friends in because they said she was too fat. She’s STOCKY! And she wanted to be a tickler, anyway. But I’ve watched their videos and they don’t tickle very well… and I find the situations too boring and stuff. The best stuff they do is with HOTFUB, anyway,” Dixie explained. “Thank you,” said Libby, grinning. “Which situations do you find boring?” “Well, I’ve seen many of the on-site ones in their tickle studio. It’s just tickling for the sake of tickling. I really hate that. It just doesn’t seem as fun. Like the scene opens up and they’re tied into a device like that one and then it goes from there. There’s not really a story line,” said Dixie. “I like how HOTFUB do their sessions at the studios. You set them up well with a story,” she said. I mean I watched a video of a kid named George who signed up. His first sessions were about his feet, upper body and being tickled in different ways. But rather than just doing tickles for the sake of tickles, they set it up as a story, with him walking into a doctor’s clinic where they test for healthy nerves. Or they’ll do the ‘Camp Tickles’ one, which is a holiday program type thing. Those video clips are really good!” the girl explained. “I see. Yeah we had the same feedback so we changed it,” said Kiran. “And Syd, our director, usually asks us for our suggestions and stuff,” he added proudly. “See that’s what I’d like to be a part of! A place like that!” Dixie exclaimed. “I know, you always speak of how much better HOTFUB is!” Jane said, smiling a bit. “Because it is! The girls aren’t treated well at TOYAAG. They have to be a certain height and weight, and maintain their weight and all that. It’s not a fun lifestyle. You might as well be a dumb model. As you can tell I’m not big on girly things, hehe!” the tomboy exclaimed, giggling a little. “Oh okay. That’s alright though. Everyone is different,” said Kiran. “I think people would like you as a tickler and ticklee. You’re fun. If you could join up to HOTFUB, that would be awesome. I’d let you in now if we could!” he said. “So I can tickle you again properly, hehe!” the Indian boy replied mischievously. He was wiggling his own little toes in his sandals. “Come on you! Swing those feet around! I think my daughter wants her revenge and you’re holding her up!” Jane said. Libby chuckled and nodded in agreeance when the youngster glanced at her. He gulped and tittered, swinging his feet around. As he did so, he wriggled out of his tee shirt, throwing it across to the chair, which it draped over. “Nice throw, hehe!” Dixie giggled. “But yeah, I never want to be a part of TOYAAG. I wish I could be part of HOTFUB!” she cried. “Awww, we wish you could as well!” Kiran said. “Oh well, that will never happen,” the little one said. As she was speaking, Jane locked the stocks shut, and Libby took the scrawny lad’s little arms and secured his wrists to the padded cuffs above his head. The girl’s mother wiggled her fingernails tantalizingly close to the lad’s underarms and playfully spidered them inches from the soft, tender skin. It didn’t stop Kiran from barking out a sudden cry of tickly giggles. He squirmed in his chair, tittering. “Nawww, I wish you tickled my upper body longer,” the girl cried, standing up now that she felt recovered and padding over to the stocks. Jane smirked. “Well, if you’re up to it, we can have a mother-daughter tickywicky time before beddy tonight!” the woman said, grinning. The little girl giggled and nodded, brushing a few locks of brown hair away from her face. “You said you weren’t into girly things… what do you like to do?” Kiran asked, as Dixie stepped up to his feet. She thought for a moment. She knew he was stalling, but she played along. This was fun… “Well, I like skateboarding, bike riding, board games, listening to punk and rock music, playing my guitar and playing pranks on people. I have a whole box of tricks and stuff at home, hehe!” the girl explained. Jane grimaced and nodded her head chuckling, along with Libby. “I was a prankster too, in my childhood,” said Libby playfully. “Oh it usually ends up with her on he floor being tickled,” said Jane, grinning. “Why do you think I do it, hehe!” the youngster replied. “Fair call, haha!” her mother replied. “What do you like to do?” Dixie asked, now loosening Kiran’s left sandal straps and lightly spidering her fingers over the tender skin between each strap. She also teased his toes and the back of his heel, too. The black haired boy tittered endearingly, showing off his pearly whites as he did so. “I like airports and tickling,” the lad said simply. “He sure does! And he’s very knowledgeable in those areas, too!” Libby cried, grinning. “I also like other stuff. I just obsess over airports. I also like cricket and soccer,” he added. “Oh cool, those are good sports,” Dixie replied, grinning. “You know what else should be a sport?” “Tiggling!” The boy exclaimed excitedly, tittering as his sandal was pulled off. It brushed against his tender sole, eliciting a cute squeal. The eight-year-old lass nodded her head, tittering. “Yup! Don’t you think! The person who lasts longest wins,” Dixie cried. “In which case, you would be the winner for sure in the kids’ division!” cried Jane, back over at the red couch. Libby was at her computer, eagerly tapping on her keyboard. It must have been important. But right now, with one foot bare, Kiran’s tickly torture was about to commence. “Now I seem to recall that you liked to take my sandals off earlier, so I hope you don’t mind me having some fun with your feet as well,” Dixie teased, giggling. Kiran shrugged. “The less time you spend tickling my feet, the better, ehe!” the black haired kiddo squeaked, tittering sweetly. He wiggled his toes and his titters broke out again as Dixie’s short, rounded nails spidered and drummed lightly over the top of his foot between the two sandals straps. She also teased the tops of his delicate toes and behind his heel. After a few seconds longer, the girl unstrapped this shoe as well, peeling the Velcro straps apart and loosening them. Even that tickled a tad! “Normally girls don’t like feet,” Kiran observed. Dixie giggled and shrugged her shoulders. The lad wasn’t wrong either. Most of Dixie’s friends were pretty indifferent about feet, and even disliked their feet. But being the tickle bug she was, and considering they were her most ticklish spot, and her favourite spot to be tickled, it made sense that she, at least, appreciated and liked her feet. “Yeah, most girls I know are like that. But I like mine. I like how I can run and walk with them, and I’m lucky. I mean… some people don’t have feet. But I like mine. They’re fun, ehe!” the girl replied, removing the sandal from Kiran’s squirmy foot. She admired his tender, wiggly-toed soles for a brief moment, and smiled. The lad had very nice feet. “How come you have brown skin, but the bottoms of your feet are white?” the girl asked curiously. As she asked, she watched the feet closely. They were, like hers, narrow at the heels, but tapered out at the balls of the feet for the toes. Kiran had shorter toes, with a visible toe stem on only the second and third digits. The skin on his soles and toes for the most part was terracotta pale pink, whilst his arches were a slightly lighter shade. But above everything else, they looked hyper tickly, and they felt it too. Just from the initial touches on the lad’s tender, warm feet, the tickler could tell his feet were soft, smooth and well cared for. “Actually they are like that because the bottoms of the feet and palms of the hands don’t se the sun much in India, where I am from. So therefore the skin on the palms and bottoms of the feet are much lighter,” the lad explained. Occasionally when he spoke, a faint Hindi accent emerged. “Be careful with your questions, sweetie,” Jane admonished, though she herself had been curious about it too… “Some people might be uncomfortable with a question like that…” “Oh you’re telling me! People so titchy these days!” Libby exclaimed. “Actually it is quite alright. I am used to people asking me. I think they ask because they’re curious, not because they want to be mean,” the lad replied, grinning. Dixie smiled. “Ready to giggle?” the girl asked. The sweet eight-year-old shook his head and squealed sweetly. “I was born ready!” Kiran replied, giggling. “Oh really… good!” she cried. And with that, the girl placed her nails on the boy’s curved arches and began scribbling with all her might. Immediately, the brown skinned kid jerked his legs back and began twisting and struggling mightily. A bellow of hysterical, high-pitched screechy laughter accompanied the struggling, as did a pair of now wide eyes. The lad’s arches were his weakest spot for his feet, and he screamed furiously as they were scribble tickled. Dixie’s fingers spidered down to the heels and then back up towards the balls of the feet via the arches again. She even spider tickled the sides and tops of the tender feet, and then began working the child’s stubbornly clenched toes. Her nails scrubbed across them, resulting in endless peals of laughter emanating from the youngster’s wide-open mouth. He thrashed about, arching his back into the air and tugging hard at his legs. His toes by now had unscrunched, so Dixie grabbed the two big ones, scratching them with her index fingers. “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HOHOHOHOOHHOHO NOHOHOHOHOHOHOOOAAAHAHAHAHA!” the poor ticklee screamed furiously, still convulsing as cavalcades of laughter streamed out. “These little piggies went to market!” Dixie sang, scratching at the two big toes further. She switched to the next digits. “These little piggies stayed home!” she added. As she moved sequentially down the nursery rhyme, she switched down the toes, before arriving at the last two. She scratch tickled them extra slowly, grinning at her tickle target as she did so. “And these little piggies… they went… WEEWEEWEEWEEWEE ALL THE WAY HOME!” the tickler cried, scribbling her nails down over the balls of the boy’s feet towards his tender arches. “THEY WENT HEEHEEHEEHEEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OHOHOHOHOHOHOHO NOHOHOHOHOHO MERHERHERHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Kiran screeched. Dixie giggled at him, and his frantic laughter only encouraged her to keep tickling. She focussed on the boy’s bare arches, exploring them thoroughly, though she did also tickle away at his tender toes again, and the heels, sides, top and balls of the feet. It was all too much for the poor kid to take, and he could only sit there, screaming for all he was worth as the sensations engulfed him. They flew through his nerves to his already overstimulated mind, confusing him even further. All he could do was sit there, cackling away. The girl slowed her sensations down, and her fingers tickled lightly around the arches in small circular motions. As she did so, a second nursery rhyme came into her head. “Round and around the garden, like a teddy bear! One step!” she cried, spidering across the heels. “THAHAHAHAAAAAT’S NAHAHAHAHAT A STEHEHEHEP!” the lad frantically screeched. “Two step!” the girl cried, scrubbing her nails horizontally back and forth across the balls of the lad’s feet. “Quiet, or you’ll make me forget my place and you don’t want that, do you?” the girl asked, grinning as she listened to his intense, high-pitchy and almost banshee-like screamy laughter. “And tickle you under there!” she cried. Her nails now scrubbed hard over the undersides of the little toes. The boy’s digits pulled back and fanned out at this point, and the devious, revenge-seeking tickler giggled, glancing at her mother and Libby. She gestured to the tickle table and the little girl nodded excitedly, her pretty forest green eyes lighting up with exhilaration. “Well, I’ve wanted to do this ever since you did it to me!” Dixie cried, reaching across and picking the two Tween Toe Ticklers up. When Kiran saw them, his eyes just about bulged from their sockets and he shook his head. Tears for fears were written all across his face, and though he knew everyone wants to rule the world, the only one ruling his world right now was Dixie. She had him wrapped right around her little finger, and there was nothing the poor, about to be overwhelmed Indian cutie pie could do about it. “NOOOO! NONONONONONONO! NO! NO! NO! NO! AH! AHAHA! AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA MAHAHAHAHKE IT STAHAHAHAHAHAP!” the poor kid screeched for all he was worth, thrashing about desperately. Dixie giggled and shook her head. “You really can’t handle it, can you?” she teased, holding both devices to the kid’s arches. She held them there for a few moments, before sliding them up over the balls of the feet, threading them between the toes after titillating under them for fifteen seconds. By now, Kiran was sweating, and tears cascaded down his searing hot cheeks. He felt like he was going to explode. “Tell me Libby… what does he react well to? Should I do the feathers or the electric toothbrush and hairbrush?” Dixie asked. “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t you that!” the twenty-three year old replied. But Jane snuck her hand around the young HOTFUB worker and tweaked her side, resulting in a surprised squeal and giggle from the employee. “I have a sudden urge to tell you,” she said, pushing Jane’s hands away. “Good move, because my daughter and I would make you suffer in those things next,” the second woman replied, grinning wickedly. Libby gulped. She remembered her job interview, when her soon to be boss had her in the stocks for fifteen minutes. After that, she really had no idea as to how the boys could last longer than that. She as wiped afterwards… “Well, skip the soft stuff. Electric toothbrushes on his armpits and big toes will destroy him, as will hairbrushes on his feet, focussed naturally on his arches. If you want him to suffer more, the tickle lube he mercifully didn’t use on our delightful tootsies is there too, so if you apply some of that then he’ll be a real screamer,” the girl explained. “Thanks!” Dixie replied sweetly, continuing to torment her ticklee’s tender soles. She placed the little tickle tools on their holders, and returned to the soles, lightly spidering and skittering her nails all over them for a minute longer, before easing off. “I think I’ll leave that there, thanks!” said Dixie, grinning. The young girl was now standing behind the tickle chair. She held her hands out on either side, and then flicked them up into the child’s deep, slightly moist hairless hollows. He shrieked as hard as he possibly could, thrashing about and bouncing from side to side. “SERVES YOU RIGHT! YOU MADE ME PEE MY PANTS!” came a cry from a ten-year-old boy as he ambled past with his mother (and about three thousand bags of shopping). Dixie poked her head out from behind the chair and groaned. All those shopping bags made her feel nauseas, and she felt sorry for the poor kid. At least all their bags were in the car right now. They hadn’t purchased food, so they could get away with doing that, and covering it all up. “Oh dear,” said Jane, smirking. She was quite antsy herself right now. “Am I allowed to go and tickle him?” she asked, peering at Libby. “Oh yeah, go for it. You’d be surprised how many parents join in,” the young lady replied, grinning. At that moment, her computer made a ding, and she raced back over to it. Jane stood up and padded over to Kiran’s tender looking feet and inspected her nails. “OH DEAR PLEASE NOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOA AHHHHH! AHHHH! AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!” the kid screeched as the older woman edged closer and closer. Dixie’s nails were still skittering relentlessly all over the lad’s soft hollows, teasing them heavily. She teased the lad’s neck and shoulders briefly as well, before teasing down his ribs with light grazing sensation, to ease his giggles. “So, you decided to tickle my daughter, eh?” Jane teased, crouching beside the boy’s cute bare feet. “NO! NO! SHE ASKED! SHE AHAHAHAHAHAHASKED!” the poor eight-year-old squealed. This wasn’t just physical torture, but psychological as well, and this mother-daughter combo was good at it, too! “Well, then I think the punishment should fir the crime. Time to give you something to really laugh about!” Jane exclaimed, lowering her nails to the lad’s pink, soft, rounded heel and spidering slowly over them. She flicked her nails up over the soft, delightfully tickly soles towards the toes. She bounced her nails off the balls of the feet, like the skin was a trampoline and the skin was pushing her nails back each time she pressed into it. This only succeeded in having Kiran’s laughter reach new heights, and he screamed desperately, pleading for mercy as tears stung his eyes. By now, Dixie’s fingers were digging into the poor lad’s sides, alternating between that and the armpits. Each time she squeezed, the lad’s back arched out, and she spidered her nails all over the ribs as she returned to the delectable hollows. She also claw attacked his stomach with one, poking his tiny innie tummy button with the other. The poor kid’s laughter disappeared, becoming completely silent as the tickles continued to torment his body. Jane was still tormenting the HOTFUB ticklee’s soles right now, raking up and down his soles rapidly and occasionally spidering her nails over the balls of the feet or the undersides of the toes. She’s also tied them back, chuckling as she di so, because the youngster had somehow managed to dislodge the Tween Toe Ticklers’ and scrunch his little digits in protest. But now they were tied back, it was harder for the poor kid to defend his cute soles. Now, Jane’s nails wiggled all over the lad’s arches, starting of with gentle caressing, but building up gradually until she was scribbling rapidly there. That, combined with Dixie’s brutal torture inside the boy’s tender, sweaty hairless hollows, was just about all the kid could take! He screeched desperately and pleaded for mercy, but his cries fell on deaf ears. “We’ll give you mercy!” Dixie cried as she recited a trick her mother usually did to her. “I’ll give you mercy for the next ten second whilst mum and me swap places!” the girl added, giggling rambunctiously. She loved it when her mother would say something like ‘I’ll give you mercy whilst I let you run off for ten seconds��, but only to trick her and chase after her anyway. Those tickles were always very fun. But as predicted, the two swapped places, with Jane standing behind Kiran’s tender pits. She reached into them and began spidering slowly. The boy, with his nerves already on high alert and now feeling ticklier, yelped and jerked about desperately. He thrashed mightily, struggling as hard as he could to pull free, but all he wasn’t going anywhere! “NAW! NAW! NAHAHAHAHAHAHAWWWW!” the ticklee cried as his pits, ribs, sides and stomach were now teased all over. Dixie giggled, picking the two electric toothbrushes up and sliding them over Kiran’s big toes. At first, she treated them like manual toothbrushes, and then built up to turning them on, allowing the boy to experience the vibrations. He screamed again, and then fell into the pit of ticklish despair with silent laughter. But Dixie wasn’t quitting. She kept on teasing, listening to her mother’s taunts of ‘tickle-tickle-tickle’ and ‘cootchie-cootchie-coo!’ Her brushes slid down over the soles to finish off, but that’s when the girl found the tickle lube. “Destroy his pits, mum!” the young girl giggled, as she picked a paintbrush up and applied some of the oil to the bristles. Libby gasped when she saw that, but no one heard her because of Kiran’s frantic screaming. By now, several more onlookers had stopped to come and see what all the commotion was about. Some left, with disgust written all over their face, whilst others styed and watched. The HOTFUB office employee found it surprising that there were more elderly people watching and laughing at the affair. “NAW! NAW! NAW! NAHAHAHAT THE PITS! NAHAHAHAT THE PITS! NAT THE PIHIHIHIHIHEEHEEHEETS AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAAAA AAAAAAGH!” the kid screamed, his voice faltering more and more as the seconds wore on. Time was tireless, but he was tiring – rapidly, too. Jane’s nails scribbled as hard as they could there, but when she saw the oil covered brush, she eased off and returned to sit down with Libby, deciding she’d had enough – and so too had Kiran. Dixie slid the brush all over the boy’s soft soles and toes, applying several more drops of oil and lathering it up. The paintbrush made it tickle even more, which Kiran seemed to really struggle with. He shook his head and giggled excitedly. Throughout the entire tickle, despite his frantic screeching and struggling, the youngster’s eyes had remained full of energy, and he was still smiling broadly. That was about to change, because now his feet were oiled up and super slippery. “You may want to look away now. You may cry, you may laugh… and you may scream. Oh yeah… you’re really gonna scream!” cried Dixie playfully, holding the hairbrush to the lad’s feet. His eyes bugged out of their sockets and a look of pure terror spread across his face. He screamed, just as Dixie had predicted. The brush slid slowly from the left heel up to the toes on the left foot and back down. She scrubbed up and down slowly and lightly at first, but then applied further pressure and speed too, making it tickle even more. Next, she scrubbed the brush across the ball of the foot, and then the arch. Kiran screamed. But this time, his scream had something else attached. “AAAAH!” Dixie screamed, giggling a little in surprise. She glanced back at Libby and Jane. “I made him pee,” she said, blushing a bit and looking suddenly bashful. Libby chuckled and stood up. She grabbed a canvas blind and pulled it across the front of the store. It read ‘WHOOPS! CLEAN UP ON AISLE 9! BEAR WITH US WHILST WE CLEAN THIS SPILLAGE’. The poor kid’s shorts were soaked through now. “Don’t worry about it, Dixie. It happens quite a bit. And you heard that boy ambling passed earlier… so don’t worry about it. You get used to it after a while,” she said, releasing the restraints and fussing over Kiran for a bit. The boy was panting hard, and he was sweating profusely. With the sweating, tears and the accident down south, the young woman was surprised he had any fluid left in him! “Girls are evil!” he moaned through his panting. Dixie and Jane both laughed. “Haha, hey I’m going to get this one into the back room so he can clean up, and then I’ll be back to clean it up. Oh whilst I’m gone, can you please write your names and a contact number, postal address and email address down for me? There’s paper and pen over there by the computer,” Libby said, pointing. “I’ll explain when I return,” she said. Jane wrote her details down on the piece of paper provided. “Were you a bit surprised by that?” she asked kindly. Her voice was warm and full of love. She wasn’t upset with her daughter for pushing Kiran to that accident. It was an accident, after all. “A little. Well… not really. You’ve tickled me to that point before. It happens,” the girl said. “I guess… I hope he doesn’t hate me or anything.” “I see. That’s alright, sweetie. I don’t think he will. Like you said, these things happen.” “Yeah… and I liked how he tickled me hard too. He didn’t back of anything because I’m a girl. I liked that,” the brunette said, smiling. From the backroom, they could hear a shower running. By the sounds of it, thanks to the water main running close by, they were able to hook up to get a portable shower operating for kids having accidents as side effects from the tickles. “That’s clever!” said Dixie, jerking her thumb in the direction of the shower. “See I like how much thought HOTFUB outs into stuff,” she said. At that moment, Libby emerged again, wearing rubber gloves and armed with a bucket of hot, soapy water, hospital grade disinfectant and a cloth, along with some towels. “You’re armed and clean!” Dixie chirped sweetly. “That I am, sweetie,” the young woman replied, grinning as she set to work. She wiped it down, poured boiling water over the device, wiped it down again, and sprayed it with disinfectant before wiping it and washing it again, just to be thorough. Dixie and Jane watched the whole time. “So anyway, I just thought I’d let you know… I was messaging Syd earlier. He said that if he can get your contact details, he’ll try to get you into HOTFUB, Dixie,” said Libby. Upon hearing those words, the young girl cupped her hands over her mouth and grinned broadly, before squealing and jumping up and down in excitement. Libby smiled. “How about that, eh?” Jane exclaimed, smiling warmly. “Now you CAN make your dream come true!” “Yeah! Syd said he’s been hoping to get girls into his company for a while now. He has a few as ticklers, but they leave after a while. So he wants someone as a tickler and lee combo, and I think I’ve found him one. He has to pass it by the board of directors, but if they approve it, then you’ll be auditioning for a special position at HOTFUB,” Libby added. “Yup. It’s all about acceptance, you see. The girls at TOYAAG can’t accept boys or girls who don’t fit in with their beliefs. And we can accept girls and boys of all walks of life,” said Kiran, grinning. He was wearing his tee shirt with a different pair of shorts, and his sandals again. “Besides… it’s the right thing to do,” the lad added. “Yippee!” Dixie squealed, wrapping her arms around the boy and squeezing him tightly. “That means I’ll get to tickle you again!” she exclaimed sweetly. Dread filled the lad’s eyes. “Not before I get you back for making me pee my pants!” the lad cried. They both giggled *** In the following two months, Dixie ended up being granted a position at HOTFUB. Though she didn’t have to, she opted to take the audition. She failed, however this was overlooked since because Kiran was her tickler for the day. Though it started off rocky, the boys eventually soon came to respect Dixie, and spoke highly of her tickling abilities and her ticklee abilities, too. In fact, she was often requested for one-on-one tickle sessions by many of the HOTFUB lads. The audience soon came to appreciate her too, and they too spoke highly of her. By showing Acceptance and displaying diversity, Syd had proven once again that HOTFUB was a strong and revolutionary organization, leaving its only competitor back in the dark ages. It was a masterstroke that would play well into Syd’s hands in a matter of months…

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years ago

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The right way to Configure Google Analytics for Native Companies

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The right way to Configure Google Analytics for Native Companies

The creator’s views are completely his or her personal (excluding the unlikely occasion of hypnosis) and should not all the time mirror the views of Moz.

Google Analytics is a strong device for companies of all sizes. When used correctly, it generates vital info that may assist to make precious enterprise choices in online marketing or search engine marketing efforts.

On this week’s Whiteboard Friday, visitor host Alex Ratynski goes via 5 vital steps that native companies can take to configure Google Analytics effectively. Test it out under!

Click on on the whiteboard picture above to open a bigger model in a brand new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Mozzers. My identify is Alex, and I am the founding father of Ratynski Digital. We’re a neighborhood search engine marketing consultancy for small and medium-size companies. As we speak what I wish to discuss is learn how to configure Google Analytics for native companies.

Now Google Analytics is a brilliant highly effective and environment friendly device when used correctly and when configured precisely. This tells us vital details about our web site, our guests, what pages are performing properly, even perhaps what search queries we’re coming from, particularly when it is related with Google Search Console. Quite a lot of vital info that may assist us to make precious enterprise choices for our online marketing or search engine marketing efforts.

1. Exclude bots and spiders

Now there are 5 vital steps we will discuss at this time for a way we are able to configure our Google Analytics account probably the most effectively. The primary one is to exclude bots and spiders. Now that is vital as a result of some research have discovered that upwards of 25% of all visitors is bot visitors. Any of us which have actually gotten tremendous granular into our Google Analytics account, I am positive we have really seen a few of these examples of very apparent bot visitors.

So the best way we are able to really do that is Google really makes a pleasant little device inside Google Analytics. You go to Admin > View > View Settings and there is a good little field that claims Bot Filtering. What this does is it pulls from the IAB, the Interactive Promoting Bureau and it really makes positive that it pulls from the listing of identified spiders and bots and makes positive we’re to filter towards that.

2. Filter spam and private visitors

The following step we wish to filter spam visitors and private visitors. Now the explanation for that is inaccurate information is nugatory information, proper? If we do not have correct info, we’re actually going to wrestle to make correct enterprise choices relating to our search engine marketing efforts or our online marketing. I am unable to inform you how typically I run into enterprise house owners who’ve wildly inaccurate numbers and so they’re making an attempt to make choices primarily based off of it.

So it is tremendous vital that we get as correct info as we are able to. There all the time shall be some margin of error, however something we are able to do to reduce that the higher. The best way we are able to filter out our personal visitors is to go to Admin > View > View Filters after which Add Filters. What we wish to do is be certain that to filter out our personal IP handle, maybe the IP handle of our group, our dwelling workplace, our bodily predominant workplace location, issues like this.

The best way we are able to do that’s to search “What’s my IP” in Google. You will really be capable to discover your IP handle, after which from there you may really exclude it.

three. Arrange targets

Quantity three, organising targets. Targets are tremendous vital as a result of organising targets really helps us to trace our success, proper? It is success monitoring. So we are able to arrange targets by going to Admin > View > Targets after which New Objective.

Vacation spot primarily based targets

There’s quite a lot of totally different objective varieties that we’d be capable to arrange, and it actually relies on the enterprise and what you are in search of. However one of the vital in style ones is a thanks web page or a vacation spot primarily based objective.

For instance, think about you are an HVAC firm who’s making an attempt to amass new prospects and also you wish to see how is your web site performing, which pages are bringing the visitors, and what’s sort of the URL path or the objective path if you’ll.

So a method we are able to monitor that’s by utilizing a destination-based objective. We wish to guarantee that after anyone fills out a type, they really are despatched to that thanks web page, and each time anyone interacts with that thanks web page, they land on it, it might really be counted as a objective. That is actually useful to sort of see the success of what we’re in search of, no matter it’s, our enterprise targets, what we’re making an attempt to realize that month or that quarter that we are able to monitor that precisely.

Occasion primarily based targets

Now one other kind of objective, there are greater than two, however we’re simply going to speak about two at this time — vacation spot primarily based targets versus occasion primarily based targets. Occasion primarily based targets are somewhat extra superior to arrange, not too tough, however somewhat bit extra so than vacation spot primarily based targets. Occasion primarily based targets don’t have anything to do with a selected web page or URL, however really, as you would possibly guess, the precise occasion that occurred.

So, for instance, if a consumer fills out a type or they click on a selected button, these are examples that may be tracked to an occasion primarily based objective. Now there are some execs and cons to every. A vacation spot primarily based objective, if in case you have any particular parameters throughout the URL and it would not match precisely, you won’t be capable to be counting for that objective.

A method round that is you may change it from “equals to” to “begins with.” Another choice, it is most likely somewhat bit extra of a greater choice, is to study common expressions. That may assist us to sort of filter out these totally different choices and get us extra correct info. With occasion primarily based targets, one other little caveat that we wish to be careful for is to guarantee that we have now correct validation arrange.

So, for instance, if a consumer begins to fill out a type however would not really fill it out, once they first click on that button, it may need been tracked as a objective, though they did not really full that objective. So there is a couple additional steps we wish to guarantee that we are able to determine earlier than we sort of publish it and depart that. That method we are able to get correct info.

four. Join GA to GSC

Quantity 4, join Google Analytics to Google Search Console. Now we have now these two highly effective assets of reporting and knowledge, and we wish to be certain that they’ll discuss to one another effectively. As everyone knows, Google Search Console has plenty of precious information relating to our natural search, what particular search queries, particular pages, how they’re performing, the typical place, a lot of info like this.

We wish to guarantee that it is related to our Google Analytics account. Now a method we are able to do that’s by going to Admin > Property > Property Settings after which there’s somewhat alternative there for Search Console. Now earlier than we do that, all the time just remember to even have your Google Search Console account arrange. That is all the time the first step. So if we are able to get that arrange, then it will be rather a lot simpler to attach these two.

The truth is, you may’t do it except you have arrange your Google Search Console. So guarantee that’s arrange after which be sure to can join these.

5. Use UTM monitoring codes

Then final however not least, use UTM monitoring codes. UTM monitoring codes are a very highly effective method for us to trace the effectiveness of particular campaigns, the place did our customers come from, our web site guests come from, and what particular sources or mediums or campaigns have been efficient in that regard.

An instance of that is you may add a UTM monitoring code in your Google My Enterprise hyperlink profile in order that any customers that come from Google My Enterprise, in your Google Analytics account you’ll precisely see that categorization of web site guests that got here particularly from Google My Enterprise. Now this must be carried out commonly, not within the sense of Google My Enterprise, however it must be carried out commonly for every marketing campaign.

So when you’re a smaller, native enterprise who possibly has a restricted period of time or budgets for whoever may be engaged on this, possibly it is higher to concentrate on simply among the bigger campaigns, something that is somewhat bit extra everlasting or any particular giant marketing campaign. Maybe you are doing a neighborhood occasion or you might have a particular promotion a pair occasions a 12 months. These may be occasions that we actually wish to monitor the effectiveness of those campaigns and utilizing UTM monitoring codes.

We are able to really set this up, for anybody who’s considering organising their UTM monitoring code, you should utilize Google’s Marketing campaign URL Builder. We are going to be certain that to hyperlink to that precise web page right here within the notes under. However there’s a few totally different parts of a UTM monitoring code. Now we’re simply going to concentrate on three at this time, these being the medium that they got here from, the supply, after which the marketing campaign identify.

So an instance of this may be the medium being e mail, the supply being no matter particular e-newsletter was despatched out, after which the marketing campaign identify could be what you really need it to point out up as in Google Analytics, the way you need that marketing campaign categorized. So these are the three totally different sections of what may be included in your UTM monitoring code. You may enter all that in inside Google’s Marketing campaign URL Builder. There’s additionally quite a lot of different URL builders. However Google offers one which makes it good and straightforward for us.

Professional tip: study Google Tag Supervisor

One final professional tip. Be taught Google Tag Supervisor. There is a little bit of a studying curve to Google Tag Supervisor, however it’s positively doable. I assure you are able to do it. Whenever you study Google Tag Supervisor, it makes plenty of these different issues rather a lot simpler, particularly with organising issues like occasion primarily based targets and connecting a few of our totally different accounts, like Google Search Console and Google Analytics even.

Google Tag Supervisor is a brilliant highly effective device. That is all we have now at this time for this week’s Whiteboard Friday. Please be at liberty to succeed in out, ask any further questions on Twitter at @alexratynski. You can too attain me at ratynskidigital.com. Be happy to ship me an e mail. I am more than pleased to talk to the Moz neighborhood. I completely love all people who’s right here.

Actually respect your guys’ time. That is all for this week, and till subsequent week when there’s one other version of Whiteboard Friday.

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kivircikedebiyatii · 6 years ago

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Why You Must Experience SEO 2019 At Least Once In Your Lifetime

SEO is about growing naturally, and also to develop a good effective, organic online marketing strategy, it's important to not just look at SEO, but content material marketing and social media, as well. Still, even for the particular best websites, maintaining a best organic SEO ranking requires constant keyword monitoring and content re-doing. Writer and consultant Peter Kent offers helped businesses including Amazon plus Zillow with SEO and on-line marketing. Very first, understand that schema markup will be one of the most effective, least used parts of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION today Schema are basically short snippets of data that may give extra information to look customers and search engines. SEO is usually a marketing discipline focused upon growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. 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igothxmewcrk-blog · 8 years ago

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Peter’s Childhood & Spider-Man Origin FINAL CHAPTER (MCU Edition/Personal Canons)

With Great Power Comes Great ______

This check was not just slightly less than commercialized. It’s just one-quarter away from a measly grand. Peter was optimistic that his skills would win him at least most of the money amount that was promoted on the fight show flyers just a week ago.

“Seven-hun and fifty? I can’t even buy a flat screen with this, you cheapskate!” The flyer said $5,000 for five minutes in the ring with the opponent. Peter made one minimum wage, forty hour labor paying check as opposed to cold hard Benjis in a small briefcase.

“HEY,” shouted the promoter, “I gotta reputation to hold up, and a sponsor who’s demandin’ a bigger cut now that a ‘Spiduh-Mane’ just hospitalized one of his favorite wrestlas.” Later on, this mysterious fan would be revealed to Wilson Fisk, a man behind bars for a crime elsewhere in the city, but with a still loyal organization doing his bidding here and there.

“Ya good, kid, but you oughta stick aroun’ in dis gig a li’l longer, learn the ropes with someone better experienced than Blacky. Hit the lockers and get the hell outta my face before I call security, punk!”

As he leaves the office, a man in a ski mask is rushing past rent-a-cops in the hall. The mugger’s cardio outdoes the police, who can’t immediately put him down without starting a scene. The masked robber is now in the office of the entertainment center, holding the manager at gunpoint of course, for all the money in the vault below his desk.

“Aren’t you gonna help that guy, Mistah Winner?” teased one of the officers who is totally capable of handling the situation.

“Someone needs to jip that asshole to let him know how it feels.” said Peter, distraught about his low pay for a mostly fair fight.

Peter swings home, but is halted by an unusual sight in the Forest Hills neighborhood. A coroner vehicle, ambulances, all necessary first response vehicles in front of his home, and May a sobbing mess as she’s being consoled by a police officer. It’s just dark out, but the lights will shine on the red and blue fighter trying to make his way home from above the neighborhood rooftops.

Perched on an oak tree in the corner of the street, Peter takes off his hoodie and mask, a normal t-shirt under his suit that won’t give off the vibe of him having done daring deeds or fought someone three-quarters the size of the Hulk. He gets back to ground level, his suit in his school bag, as he tries to walk as calmly as possible back to his house.

“May, what happened?” he asked, heavy concern riddling his mug.

She is bawling too hard to speak, and simply grabs Peter and embraces him, as his father figure, Uncle Ben, is being dragged out of the Parker home, lifeless, blood drenching the left chest of his shirt and jacket. Ben’s mouth was open, but not to form words, just his final expression before meeting his end by a few bullets shot in his chest.

May told Peter the mugger needed a getaway car. Ben had a fuel efficient Camry with great gas mileage, and it was a few months new for him then. There was no way he’d allow someone to make Swiss cheese out of his affordable means of work commute. The mugger threatened both Ben and May, May hiding out in a locked bedroom while Ben tried to calm the man. But the mugger said he wasn’t having any run-around shit from the elders he was threatening. Two shots at the uncle’s left pectoral, and Ben is falling to the kitchen floor. His keys in the opposite breast pocket of his jacket, the mugger steals them and takes off.

It’s after an engine revs that May leaves the bedroom, believing Ben had tried to get away, or that perhaps a neighbor had dialed dispatch. She screams in agony at what she finds in her kitchen.

And Peter’s world shattered just the same as he realizes he was not there to help. And that would be the final time he’d ever be unavailable to help.

“What does the sketch make of him?” he asked a detective sternly, as the cops were made aware of Ben’s license plate number early on, but weren’t immediately going to chase after the killer on the run.

That same detective gave him the description, and soon enough a fellow officer radio’d in that they found the suspect at a warehouse in Brooklyn. It was time for Spider-Man to pay him a belated visit.

“Could ya pick somewhere less cliche to hide?” he asks the mugger, finally at his hideout.

“WHO’S THERE??!” asked the man, firing bullets to warn anyone intruding on him. Peter swooped down from a nearby wall in the shadows, letting himself be seen through a small shine of city light through the window.

“You’re that punk from the fight earlier,” the mugger deduced that much. Peter was unaware of who the man was.

“You’re the coward who took my old man’s life tonight.” Peter yanked the gun from the killer’s hand, and practically flew toward him with a swift kick to his cheek.

He picks up the mugger and pushes him through a window, shooting a web to catch his fall, and then slowly reeling him in like a fish. “...you... you’re the robber from the arena.”

Heavily breathing, he considers dropping the thug, but he brings him back into the room. “I suggest you run far away from Queens. Don’t ever show your face where I can see you again. And maybe answer to the squad cars five stories below us.” Peter’s voice remained gravelly and stern. At this point, fire and rescue arrived just to prop a ladder far up enough to get the perp down and cuff him.

Peter realizes this is not easy to cope with, barely fifteen now and losing another father. It’s like the world planned to make him happy for so long just to take such beautiful things from him too soon. But there’s no escaping, either, the guilt that follows for refusing to do the right thing. Tonight would be his only surrender to evil of man.

#🕸️need more web fluid (headcanons)#v; yeah! a kid who can lift a bus with his bare hands!#MCU headcanons #MCU Origin

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maggiesimplelife-blog · 8 years ago

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Time goes by so fast, it has been 3 months since my last Beautycon unboxing. Beautycon box is a US resident only beauty box cost $29/quarter + handling & shipping. I still using the OGX hair spray I got from the spring 2017 box. It is amazing! It smells so nice and makes my hair so smooth. I also love the BrowGal Eyebrow kit. After I start using the BrowGal, I can’t go back to the eyebrow pencil. Generally, the total value of the box is worth way more than $29. I couldn’t wait to show you what I got in this summer essential box.

ColourPop Cosmetics – Ultra Satin Lip in London Fog

I have heard so many suggestion and positive review for ColourPop Ultra Satin Lip collection. I am so happy to see one in this Beautycon box! This London Fog is a pinky red color. If using a tissue to slightly pad on top of the lip, it will take away the satin shine and give a completed matte look. It is very long lasting. 70% of color remains after having a meal. I personally like it better after a meal since it will be less red and pinker. Since it is long-lasting, it is so difficult to remove. XD Please be careful when you use this. It is a trouble if it gets on clothes. I guess I know the brand of those “kiss mark on husband’s shirt”. XD

Deco Miami – Lemon Blossom Cuticle Oil

It is interesting that I get the Deco Miami nail polish from this month Allure Beauty Box. I guess they really want me to take care my fingers. XD This is my all-year essential, especially in winter. My fingers get dry and ugly in colder dryer weather.

Deco Miami – Beautycon Pink Glass Nail File

This is my first time to use a glass nail file. I thought it would give some squeaky sounds, but it just works like other nail files. I like it is harder and looks more beautiful than a regular paper/cardboard nail file.

Dirty Little Secret Cosmetics – Gold Plated Eyeshadow Crayon

I love this! When I use it like a pen, the color is golden brown. When I blend it out, it becomes a natural light gold. I think it will be wonderful to use it alone with simple eyeliner. It is very easy to use too. I just need to lightly draw on my eyelids. It is smooth, and it is shimmer but not glittery. It is natural and beautiful. I love it so much! I read on their site that it is vegan and cruelty-free.

Doucce – Lush Lip Gloss in Glistening Petals

I like this color more than the ColourPop London Fog. It is less bright and more to the neutral side. When it is on my lip, it looks like my natural nude lip color. I just hope it is not a lip gloss since I hate that oily shine looking and sticky feeling. The actual color is darker than the picture and it is more like a beige color. It is a new color to me. Not bad. 😉

Feel Beauty – Bamboo Charcoal Facial Sheet Masks

This mask claims to detoxify and minimalize pores. The instruction also says it need to leave on the skin at least 30 minutes which is opposite than most sheet mask. I am curious if it really does what it claim, and if it is moist enough to put on more than 30 minutes. I will post a short review in my Instagram later this week. I hope it is amazing!

Freeman Beauty – Renewing Cucumber Peel-off Mask

I had one when I was in college. It is a really nice weekly mask. I just try to avoid anything that pulls my skin. I think the pulling will cause wrinkles. It is painful if I get it on my eyebrows too. XD I also think it is not a good enough for oily skin unless using it more often.

Jonteblu – Electric Blue Eyeliner Pencil

I like this blue. It is metallic and reminds me of the avatar. XD Beautiful blue suits summer. I just hope it harder to remove. I can clean it easily with tissue only. I guess it is not an eyeliner for water activity or long day wear. It is quite disappointing. 😦

MakeupDrop x Beautycon – The Original Silicone Makeup Applicator

This little thing was so popular when it first comes out. I really like the concept. It is easier to clean and won’t absorb any foundation. After I tried it with my regular cc cream and cushion, I think my fingers can do better than it. XD It is so hard to use it to blend the cream. I may be using it wrong or not used to it, but I prefer my fingers better.

Manna Kadar Beauty – Flutter Mascara in Jet Black

I don’t really like mascara since they always melt in the middle of the day, and I always glasses. It is an interesting shaped applicator. It has a waist part int the middle and the tip is bigger and round. I like this shape better since it is easier to apply, but I hope the size is smaller since it just little too big for my eye shape. The brush is really nice. My eyelashes look longer and clean. It is good that my eyelashes don’t look like spider legs.

I use the blue eyeliner on the 1/3 of my water line. I want to use it to draw a cat eyeliner. It will be cute. On the upper picture, I use the Doucce – Lush Lip Gloss in Glistening Petals. You can see it is more beige.

On this one, I use the ColourPop Cosmetics – Ultra Satin Lip in London Fog. I like this lip better if I set up my hair. 😉 I also like that crayon since it is like a natural shadow and not obvious. What do you think?

I think this summer 2017 Beautycon box is doing a great job. I think I will use everything in this box. Honestly, $29 can’t get all these unless you shop during Black Friday and meet good deals. XD I will continue my subscription since they have something I like and new to me. I never own a blue eyeliner or any of these lip color. I hope you enjoy reading this post too! I will meet you again! Love you ❤

🙂 You can also reach me at:

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Full Face Makeup with Beautycon Summer 2017 Box Time goes by so fast, it has been 3 months since my last Beautycon unboxing. …

#beautycon #makeup #subscription box

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trendingnewsb · 8 years ago

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Wild Amazon faces destruction as Brazils farmers and loggers target national park

The Sierra Ricardo Franco park was meant to be a conservation area protecting rare wildlife

To understand why the Brazilian government is deliberately losing the battle against deforestation, you need only retrace the bootmarks of the Edwardian explorer Percy Fawcett along the Amazonian border with Bolivia.

During a failed attempt to cross a spectacular tabletop plateau here in 1906, the adventurer nearly died on the first of his many trips to South America. Back then, the area was so far from human habitation, the foliage so dense and the terrain so steep that Fawcett and his party came close to starvation.

He returned home with tales of a towering, inaccessible mesa teeming with wildlife and irrigated by secret waterfalls and crystalline rivers. By some accounts, this was one of the stories that inspired his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Lost World about a fictional plateau jutting high above the jungle that served as a sanctuary for species long since extinct elsewhere.

In their wildest fantasies, however, neither Fawcett nor Conan Doyle are likely to have imagined the modern reality of that plateau, which can no longer be certain of protection from geography, the law or Brazils international commitments.

Today, orange dirt roads, cut into the forest by illegal loggers, lead you to the north-western flank of the elevated hilltop. Now called the Serra Ricardo Franco state park, this is nominally a conservation area set up with support from the World Bank. Instead of forest, however, you find swaths of land invaded by farmers, stripped of trees, and turned over to pasture for 240,000 cows. There are even private airfields inside the parks boundaries, which exist on maps only.

Far from being an isolated area where a wanderer might starve, this is now despite its dubious legal status one of the worlds great centres of food production. In recent months, it has also emerged as a symbol of the resurgent influence of a landowning class in Brazil who, even more than in the US under Donald Trump, are cashing in on the destruction of the wild.

Locals say a member of President Michel Temers cabinet chief of staff Eliseu Padilha owns ranches here on hillsides stripped of forest in a supposedly protected park. The municipal ombudsmen told the Observer the cattle raised here are then sold in contravention of pledges to prosecutors and international consumers to JBS, the worlds biggest meat-packing company, which is at the centre of a huge bribery scandal.

These allegations are denied by farmers but there is no doubt the government is easing controls as it opens up more land for ranches, dams, roads and soy fields to meet the growing appetite of China. Last year, Brazil reported an alarming 29% increase of deforestation, raising doubts that the country will be able to meet its global commitments to reduce carbon emissions. Rather than an aberration, this appears to mark a return to historical norms for a country that has been built on 500 years of land seizures that were later legalised by the politicians who benefited from them.

The concurrent erosion of legal authority and natural habitat can be seen in many Brazilian states: the newest soy frontiers of Maranho, Tocantins and Bahia; the hydropower heartland of Par and the wild west mining and logging regions of Rondnia and Acre. But it is in Mato Grosso that the political forces behind deforestation associated with corruption, violence, weak regulation and deliberate obfuscation of land ownership reveal themselves most clearly.

The 158,000-hectare Serra Ricardo Franco state park is supposed to be a conservation area, but farmers and loggers moved in to clear the land. Photograph: Phil Clarke Hill/Corbis via Getty Images

The 158,000-hectare Serra Ricardo Franco state park sits at the intersection of three great biomes; the Amazon rainforest, the Cerrado tropical savanna and the Pantanal wetlands. Its western neighbour, separated only by the narrow Rio Verde, is Bolivias dense Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, which covers an area five times larger. Together, they make up one of the worlds biggest and most biodiverse ecological reserves.

To the east are the light green plains of Mato Grosso a state bigger than the combined area of the UK and France which was named after the once thick bushland that has now mostly been cleared for soy fields and cattle ranches.

The plan to establish a park in this geologically and biologically important landscape was agreed amid the giddy optimism of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which was hailed as a breakthrough for international cooperation on the environment.

Ricardo Franco was one of nine conservation areas promised by the Mato Grosso government in return for a $205m loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The primary source of funds was the World Bank, which noted at the time that the money was to be used for vehicles, staff training and salaries, office construction and research. The envisaged Ricardo Franco park was supposed to cover 400,000 hectares.

The reality was very different. After several years of studies, the park that was eventually established in 1997 was less than half the expected size. At least 20,000 hectares of it had already been cleared by farmers who were supposed to be compensated and removed. This never happened. Nor could the Observer find evidence of fences ever being erected, or administrative centres built either in the park nor the nearest town of Vila Bela da Santssima Trindade.

The only signs and boundary markers are for fazendas (plantations). Although the park is supposed to be publicly owned and used only for ecotourism or scientific research, many areas could only be accessed after paying an entrance fee or requesting a key from the owner of the farm occupying the property.

Serro Ricardo Franco is in one of the worlds biggest and most diverse ecological reserves. But reality on the ground is different, putting many animals at risk, such as Yacare caiman and giant river otters. Photograph: Angelo Gandolfi/Getty Images/Nature Picture Library

A quarter of the land has been cleared over the past four decades, but there are still areas of immense natural beauty and biodiversity that have changed little since Fawcetts time. Over two half-days, the Observer spotted an armadillo, spider monkeys, capuchins, otters, fish leaping a waterfall, clouds of butterflies, and a hand-sized spider that was slowly succumbing to the sting of a giant vespa wasp. Local guides report sightings of panthers, pumas, anaconda, pink dolphins and six-metre long alligators.

Trails now lead up to the previously undisturbed heights, but they are rarely used. The 5km hiking route to the 248-metre high Jatoba waterfall was deserted, as were the sapphire waters of the Agua Azul canyon. It was not, however, well maintained. Rubbish and used toilet paper littered one area. Another clearing was scarred with the charred remains of a barbecue (likely to be prohibited as a fire hazard in a well-run conservation area). On the banks of the Rio Verde, fishing lines were tangled on the rocks despite signs declaring Strictly no fishing or hunting. But it is undoubtedly the 20,000 to 39,000 hectares of farmland (the size is disputed) that has had the biggest environmental impact.

What is happening in the park is very sad, said a local biologist, who asked for her name to be withheld because she fears repercussions. This area is very important. There are species here not found anywhere else. But its degrading year by year.

Ranchers inside the park disagree. Ademir Talini, the manager of the Fazenda de Serra, boasts of boosting production of soy and beef on what he claims is the third most fertile land in the world.

Our municipality has the biggest abattoir in Brazil, the best beef comes from here and farms here contribute greatly to GDP, he says. He then points toward the nearby border with Bolivia. Over there is the biggest conservation area in the world. So what difference does 39,000 hectares make?

He points out that many of the farms preceded the creation of the park a refrain echoed by other ranchers.

The state government created a virtual park to get money, said Donizete dos Reis Lima, who owns the farm next to the border. Nobody here is against the park. I want a future for my children. But lets have a decent park. If we go, who is going to pay us compensation.

About 240,000 cattle graze within the cleared forest in the park. This farm is owned by government chief of staff Eliseu Padilha. Photograph: Jonathan Watts for the Observer

The issue is not black and white. The burly farmer says he is the legal owner of the land, having arrived in the area long before it was a park. But he also recounts how he opened up the roads to the region as part of his work as a logger. The area he cleared was later regularised by the land agency (Incra).

Then, as now, this process often involved corruption and collusion with the authorities. Elsio Ferreira de Souza, a retired municipal employee, recalls the illegal origins of land clearances in the 1970s. It was done with the connivance of local politicians and only later legalised, he says.

Regiane Soares de Aguiar, the public prosecutor who has filed multiple lawsuits against the farmers, agrees. All of the land was cleared illegally, she says. Even the landowners that were there before the creation of the park would not have had permission to deforest the land. Satellite data shows the problem has since worsened, she said, as more farmers moved inside the park, bringing more cattle that needed more pasture.

This illegal activity has done spectacular damage to forest and water sources. According to the prosecutor, JBS should share the blame because the meat company has bought livestock from inside the park despite a pledge to public prosecutors, foreign buyers and environmental NGOs not to source cattle from illegally cleared land. To get around this, it briefly launders the animals at untainted farms outside the park before taking them to the slaughter.

In a statement to the Observer, JBS said it had blocked sales from farms inside the park after being requested to do so by the prosecutors office. The company said it used data from satellites, the environment agency, ministry of labour and other sources to monitor its 70,000 cattle suppliers. The results, it said, were independently audited.

Since 2013, more than 99.9% of direct suppliers located purchases of cattle in the Amazon region comply with the Public Commitment of Livestock and agreements signed with federal prosecutors, it noted.

But cattle laundering is rife. Regulation is a challenge at the best of times. Even when the authorities impose a penalty for forest clearances or other violations, very few fines are ever paid.

I penalise them, but they challenge me in the courts and justice is so slow, says Laerte Marques, from the State Secretariat for the Environment (Sema). It has been very difficult. There is pressure from all sides. On one side there is the public prosecutor, on the other are the farmers.

The landowners have launched a campaign for the park to be abolished. Prosecutors, however, have urged the conservation area be administered on a more formal footing. Last month, they appeared to have won a victory when the Mato Grosso government announced a two-year study to determine the status of the park and what should become of its farms. But there are fears this will simply shrink the boundaries and allow the farms to be excluded.

Powerful landowners are trying to use this opportunity to reduce the limits of the park, said Aguiar. That would only benefit those who cleared forest. But there is a lot of economic power behind them, she warned.

Near the entrance of the Paredon 1 Fazenda is an overgrown airstrip and a dirt road that cuts through the state park to fields of cattle grazing among tree stumps on an otherwise bare hillside overlooking the Bolivian forest. This is one of several farms in the park owned directly or indirectly by Eliseu Padilha, the chief of staff. Locals in Vila Bela say he is an intimidating presence. He is not the only one. Several of Brazils richest businessmen as well as local politicians own land inside the park.

The forces lined up against conservation have deep roots. The post-colonial history of Brazil is, to a large extent, the history of deforestation. Following the arrival of European ships, settlers carved out roads into the jungle in search of gold. Since then, massive fortunes have been made by the clearance of forest, initially for coffee and rubber plantations and more recently for cattle and soy. Landowners happily backed the 1964-85 military dictatorship, which ensured that campaigners for indigenous rights and agrarian reform did not get in the way of farm and ranch expansions. The return of democracy initially made little difference. The first president under the new constitution was Jos Sarney, an old-school coronel who ruled the northern state of Maranho as if it were his personal fiefdom. Deforestation surged to new peaks at the turn of the 21st century.

The first time the problem came close to being brought under control was during the initial Workers party administration of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva (2003-06). His environment minister at the time, Marina Silva, put in place tougher penalties and a monitoring system that used satellites in the sky and rangers on the ground to identify farmers who burned or cut down forests. This resulted in an impressive slowdown that lasted nearly a decade, winning kudos from the international community and putting Brazil in an influential position in global climate talks.

But the effectiveness of this system weakened under Lulas Workers party successor as president Dilma Rousseff, who was much closer to the ruralista lobby than her predecessor. She had little choice. Increased demand for soy and beef, particularly from China, had made agriculture the main driver for economic growth and a political force to be reckoned with.

With 200 seats, the bancada ruralista had become the most powerful caucus in Congress. To placate them, Rousseff approved a relaxation of the Forest Code, which was the main legal tool against tree felling. It was a disaster for the Amazon.

Before that change in 2012, deforestation rates had been creeping down. After it, rates increased by 75%, according to Paulo Barreto, a senior researcher at Imazon, an independent monitoring organisation. He said this put at risk the commitments Brazil had made in international climate talks to reduce annual clearance to 3,800 square kilometres per year by 2020. At one point, we were on the right path. But last year, 8,000 square kilometres were cleared, double the goal for 2020, he points out. Two-thirds of Brazils carbon emissions come from this source.

Meanwhile, beef and soy barons have strengthened their grip on power. After last years impeachment of Rousseff, her replacement, Michel Temer, appointed several ruralistas to his cabinet and moved to dismantle and dilute the institutions and laws that slowed forest clearance.

His pick as agriculture minister is Blairo Maggi, the owner of the countrys biggest soy producer, Amaggi Group, and a former governor of Mato Grosso, who supported moves to abolish the Ricardo Franco park. The justice minister, Osmar Serraglio, is at the forefront of the beef lobby, which was his main campaign donor, and a fierce opponent of indigenous land demarcation (the most effective method of forest protection).

Under his watch, the National Indian Foundation (Funai) has seen its finances and personnel gutted. The foundations president, Antnio Costa, was sacked earlier this year. In a parting speech, he described Serraglio as a dictator. He is the minister of one cause: agro-business, he warned.

The counterbalance ought to be the environment ministry, which is headed by Jos Sarney Filho, the son of the top landowner in Maranho state. Although his ideals are widely praised by conservationists, his ability to act has been neutered. Last year, the environment budget was cut by 51% (compared to a 31% reduction of the Environmental Protection Agency in the US under Trump).

In March, the ministers weak position was apparent when he issued a grovelling public apology to JBS after inspectors embargoed two meat-processing factories that were alleged to have bought tens of thousands of cattle from illegally deforested areas of the Amazon. Rather than assess the rights and wrongs of the case, the minister said the action was badly timed because it could hurt a major exporter that was already bogged down in scandal.

Almost every week, there is a new roll back of forest protections. Last Tuesday, the Senate approved a bill that slashed protected areas in the Amazon by 597,000 hectares (about four times the area of Greater London). The previous week, the lower house of Congress paved the way for the legalisation of land that had been illegally occupied by grileiro a move that is likely to encourage more seizures and forest clearance. Environmental licensing requirements for agriculture have been emasculated.

Temers unhealthily close ties to the agriculture lobby may yet, however, come to be his undoing.

Earlier this month, the attorney-general formally accused the president and his aides of accepting bribes and colluding with top executives from JBS to buy the silence of witnesses in a corruption scandal. Temer has denied all wrongdoing. The evidence was provided in a plea-bargain by the owners of the beef company, which is reportedly looking for a clean bill of legal health so that it can relocate its headquarters to the US. If so, its links to Padilha and the cattle raised inside Ricardo Franco and numerous other conservation areas also deserves more scrutiny, as does the process for deciding whether farms will be excluded from the soon-to-be regularised park.

Foreign adventurers and Brazilian bandeirantes helped to pave the way for this development, even if their intention was to escape fazendas and cities alike. As Fawcett said: Deep down inside me a tiny voice was calling. At first scarcely audible, it persisted until I could no longer ignore it. It was the voice of the wild places, and I knew that it was now part of me forever.

With each day that passes, that voice is becoming harder to hear.

The tatu-bola armadillo was last year reclassified as at risk of extinction. Photograph: belizar73/Getty Images/iStockphoto

World Cup mascot is now at risk as forests disappear

The tatu-bola armadillo, the mascot for the 2014 World Cup, is now a symbol for a very different phenomenon in Brazil: the growing impact of deforestation on biodiversity.

The small armoured mammal was chosen to represent the tournament because it rolls up into the shape of a football when threatened, but its ability to protect itself has been undermined by a loss of habitat that is also devastating thousands of other species.

Late last year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature raised the alarm by reclassifying the creature also known as the three-banded armadillo from vulnerable to at risk of extinction.

This has prompted the group that led the campaign for its selection as a mascot to launch a crowdfunding drive last month to raise $500,000 to save the animal.

Samuel Portela, co-ordinator of protected areas at the Caatinga Association, estimates the tatu-bola population has declined by 30% in the past decade due to deforestation and hunting.It is fundamental that steps be taken towards the conservation of this species and its habitat, because under the present conditions, the tatu-bola could be extinct in 50 years, he said.

The animal is mainly found in the northeastern Brazil in the caatinga (an indigenous term for white or desert forest) and cerrado tropical savannas. Even more than the Amazon, these two ecosystems have been diminished by the expansion of farmland.

Scientists warn that many other animals face similar or worse threats and the risks are rising along with the pace of land clearance in Brazil, the worlds most biodiverse nation. Last year, the government reported a 29% increase in deforestation the sharpest rise in more than a decade. Forest clearing in Brazil has already condemned at least 20 species of birds, 10 species of mammals and eight of amphibians to regional extinction. Scientists estimate this is just a fifth of those that will die out due to habitat loss. Among the most endangered are giant otters and bare-faced tamarins. A 2015 study predicted half of the 15,000 tree species in the Amazon could be lost if current rates of deforestation continue.

According to the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, the tatu-bola faces a particularly hard struggle to recover its population because of the animals low metabolic rate, small litter size, prolonged parental care and long gestation periods.

WILDLIFE OF THE LOST WORLD