#the main thing is just like.. the tiny red dots

[normalcannibalism]

mystery hurt spot on my hand. it isn't red anymore, it's like. darker. purple ish. the fuck are you

[sunlightmurdock]

Like This Forever | 0.1 | J. Seresin

masterlist | next chapter

You’re thinking of the past, right as the future is about to change forever.

Warnings: accidental pregnancy, childhood friends to lovers, country singer!Jake, smut, pining, blissful ignorance, other warnings to follow. wc: 3k (18+ minors do not interact)

A U G U S T 1 9 7 4 / F E B R U A R Y 1 9 9 1

Driftwood — small town southwestern Texas, situated in Lockheart County. Springs, stony hills, and steep canyons. It’s good land, occupying a tiny patch of earth in the middle of the Edwards Plateu. That’s what they all say: good land, good soil. Large acreages of wheat for miles around, grown annually for harvest and winter through spring livestock grazing. The remaining two-thirds of the region is rangeland devoted to cattle ranching. Ranches in this region often seem older than the landscape itself. Lockheart County’s livestock industry is nationally appreciated, it was, even back then. Ranches here are huge, they’ve been there for generations. The town of Driftwood, itself, sits in a valley. It holds on to the people who settle there just like it holds onto the weight of that thick, summer heat all through the day. So hot that even the trees bend and furl like they’re seeking shade too.

Back then, Driftwood was even smaller than it is now. Post Office, Church, two schools, a fleet of locally owned stores on Main Street and a few other buildings for the fathers who weren’t ranchers or ranch hands to work.

On that day in early August, most of Driftwood’s thousand person population were nestled amongst the pews of St. Augustine’s Church, just outside of town. It’s a mile and a half from Main Street, and a mile and a half from the furthest fence on the Seresin Ranch. Their house is a sprawling thing that Bill’s grandfather had built — they haven’t got that kind of money now, and they didn’t on that morning in August. They’ve got three boys, who were squirming around the front pew, melting into the aged wood below them in their smart white button ups. They’ve got another boy too, standing behind Pastor James, holding a processional candle.

Jake’s their youngest. He was nine back then. Small for his age, especially when you stood him next to his brothers and their broad shoulders and long legs. His hair was beyond blond, lightened from the sun. His cheeks dusted with brown freckles and his eyes always narrowed into a type of John Wayne kind of squint. Jake loved John Wayne back then. He loved the cowboys on his bed sheets, and the fact he could see the cattle from his bedroom window. All he wanted back then was a pistol on his hip and a one-way ticket to El Dorado.

Mary-Lynn Seresin grew up in Driftwood, just like her husband had. She had known Bill since she was a little girl, and she had always known that she would marry him one day. Her nails were polished pink that day, sitting pretty atop the procession card as she fans herself with it. Two pews behind, you could still see a droplet of sweat bead from her neat blonde hairline and trail into the collar of her blue polka-dotted Sunday dress.

On that particular Sunday, the fans had packed up and stopped working. So, all six hundred of you who could make it out to St. Augustine’s we’re trapped in there — not just with Pastor James’ storytelling, but with the thick heat pressing down on the entire valley feeling like it had all been shut in this one room with the rest of you.

At the front, Jake Seresin’s cheeks were red, his hair was beading with sweat and his scarecrow, twig-like arms were trembling around the cross. He struggled with its weight and you had watched his green eyes flash out towards the crowd, briefly landing on his mother. Mary-Lynn gave him a proud nod. Bill was staring at the stagnant ceiling fans above their heads. You, were staring right at Jake.

Eight years old yourself, just eight weeks younger than Jake is, you have known that little grass-stain your entire life. In fact, Mary-Lynn and your mother found out that they were expecting just days apart. They had been in the same high school grade as girls, had married men who were good friends, and back then your mother had worked in the town’s hair salon five days a week. They grew very close through their pregnancies. Your mother was the first one to send flowers when Mary-Lynn went into labour a month and a half early.

Jake’s John-Wayne-Squint deepened through the heavy air, watching you like you were both about to draw pistols and settle this like men — right in the middle of Pastor James’ final verse. Your pigtails and your white Sunday dress weren’t fooling him. His robes and the heavy cross in his hand weren’t fooling you. Clearly following his brother’s gaze, Daniel Seresin turns and peers at you over his shoulder. He’s the closest in age to Jake, but he’s still five years older. Thirteen then and too grown up for childish squabbles like those, he just turned back to the front and shook his head.

The first three of the Seresin boys were all born within three consecutive years. Matthew, Noah and Daniel. They’re each tall like their mother, blonde like her too, and have inherited their father’s linebacker shoulders. Noah was fourteen and about to be a freshman in high school. After he fixed the chain on your bike at the beginning of summer, you were full-blown head-over-heels in love with him back then. You thought you were anyway.

Jake, however, had been in your class since Kindergarten and you had been forced to share your toys with him for even longer than that.

His arms trembled before you and your mouth had twitched. Neither one of you was listening to the service. It was almost over. Just a few more minutes until Pastor James wrapped up and the people of Driftwood and poured out of this sauna and out into the dry, morning sun.

Quickly, you shot a look at your mother sitting at your side. She was listening intently, staring right ahead with her neatly steamed clothes and her hair-sprayed hair. You’ll always remember the heavy smell of her rose-scented perfume. Every time you inhale it, you’re sitting at the foot of her bed, watching her fix her face in her vanity. Then, you looked to your father on the other side of you. Exactly the same. Pleased, you turn your attention back to the youngest Seresin boy.

Scrunching your nose, you had sat forwards just slightly and stuck your tongue out at him. Quite the diss back then. Jake’s green eyes had widened, sweat beading down his back under his white shirt and his service robes.

Driftwood is a safe place. It’s a fantastic town to raise children. The schools aren’t overcrowded and cars don’t speed through the centre of town. Country roads are a different story. But no one bats an eyelid, especially not back then, when their children are out of sight.

Mary-Lynn was busily detailing the events of her dinner party that coming Saturday to a group of women that are invited. She’s quite the hostess still. Your mother stood amongst them. Neither one of them were concerned about where their children were in the slightest. Until, that is, the sounds of muffled screaming filled their ears. The mothers of Driftwood rush to the commotion in their kitten heels and pretty dresses. Your mother was the first around the corner. She would recognise the sound of her baby’s screaming anywhere. But you weren’t the one in trouble. As usual, you had been causing it.

Your white dress grass-stained and muddy, dirt under your fingernails and covering your formerly white, frilled socks. You were kneeling. You haven’t yet noticed the crowd of women rushing in your direction. You’ve got Mary-Lynn Seresin’s youngest son pressed into the dirt, kneeling on his back and twisting his arm uncomfortably behind him.

“Say Uncle!” You demanded.

“You’re so dead! Get off!” Jake struggled under you, screaming with all the force that his growing lungs would allow. His voice must have been audible across the entire valley with how he was hollering. Freckled cheek pressed into the dirt, his white shirt was destroyed and he was in the middle of ruining his shoes with how he was scrambling for purchase in the dried dirt.

Quickly, your mother had grabbed you under your arms and hauled you off of the boy, spinning you to face her.

“What do you think you’re doing young lady?”

“He started it! — He said my dress was ugly!”

“It is ugly, you look like a girl!” Jake huffed from behind you as he had stumbled onto his feet and taken a look down at his church clothes. Slowly, he had lifted his gaze to look at his mother. Sullen and worried looking, he began to pout. It wasn’t working. Mary-Lynn had raised three boys by then, she knew when they were trying to play innocent.

The thing about growing up so close together, is that approaching double digits was a confusing time. It was around that age that your mother began to put her foot down when it came to all of those tom-boy activities. Girls might roughhouse and come home with holes in their jeans and mud on their faces, but young ladies didn’t. The dress was her idea.

Jake’s comment had been passing, just a whisper as his family had headed into church ahead of yours, but he was right — you did look like a girl. Back then, that wasn’t a compliment coming from him. So, you had cornered him outside and pummeled him into the dirt. Fair is fair.

“Mary-Lynn, I am so sorry about her — send me the dry-cleaning bill. I’m sorry, we should go.” Your mother had sighed in a hurry, frowning down at your ruined clothes, then looking towards Jake’s. You’ll always remember the smile on Mary-Lynn’s face after. Not pity, because she knew you were in a lot of trouble for this. Just fondness. She had gently patted your mother’s forearm and shaken her head.

“Let’s finish our chat. They’re already filthy. Let them play.”

Looking up at her, you hadn’t understood why she was siding with you back then. You had just almost broken her son’s arm for sport. As you grew, Mary-Lynn Seresin was always on your side. In her kitten heels and dresses, she remembered being a dirt-covered little girl once too. No one was telling her son that it was time yet, to be a man. There’s no harm in letting you be young a little longer.

Your mother had looked uncertain, but people in Driftwood always looked to Mary-Lynn for advice. She had somehow managed to keep four boys in line perfectly, her parenting expertise was studied by those around her. Finally, she had given you a brief nod.

You remember spinning on the delicate almost-heel of your church shoes, rounding on Jake, ready to brawl. You have no clue where the stick came from, but he was armed when you had turned around — but Jake always fought fair. He tossed you a stick of your own and took aim. Green eyes narrowed, he was trying to look down his freckled nose at you, but you were taller then.

“She’s gonna marry that boy someday.” Mary-Lynn Seresin had huffed with a wistful smile, watching the mud-caked children tear off through the field once again. This time, with sticks in hands and violent intent plastered across their dirty faces.

You’re not eight anymore. Jake’s not nine. This time of the year, you both happen to be twenty-six. You aren’t trying to kill him with a stick anymore either. You’re sitting at your favourite bar in Driftwood — there are four now — watching your best friend up on stage. He’s always confident. He has been since he hit that growth spurt when he was twelve. Since then, Jake has been unstoppable. But on stage is when he really shines.

The Dark Star feels like an old bar. It’s packed every Friday night. It smells like malt and smoke and Jake’s been playing here every Saturday since he was seventeen. This is the last time that it will ever be like this, and you don’t even know it yet. Jake’s in the middle of an original. People around here know him, they know his music. They might not get all the words right, but he always gets people singing.

Jake isn’t small for his age now. He grew into his nose, and he inherited those big shoulders, his skin’s tanned from his days out at the ranch. He’s strong and funny and kind. Sometimes it catches you off guard, when you turn your head and find a man in place of the little boy you once knew.

You’re in a booth, talking numbers. It turns out that you had inherited your mother’s knack for business strategy, and Jake’s way with words had rubbed off on you long ago.

You don’t look like the little girl Jake had once known either. If he was concerned about you looking like a girl before, then you can only imagine how dismayed he must be when he looks at you now. Breasts and everything.

“It’s more than potential, Stu — you saw how crazy people were for him when he was opening for The Ashford Band.” You tell him, fingers curled around a brown glass bottle. This is already settled, the deal is already done. You knew from the second that he walked in that you had Stu Adler suckered.

This is a deal that you’ve been mulling over for a couple of months now. Getting Jake on his first headline tour. His debut album came out last week and it’s doing well, but the record label is tiny and the publicity deal is even smaller. Jake’s making pennies compared to other people in his genre, but you’re about to change all of that.

“Six months is a long time on the road. It’s a different lifestyle,” Stu’s dishwater grey eyes flicker briefly up from the plunging neckline of your top to meet your gaze. He’s an older man, with a once successful career in Los Angeles. Now, he spends his time scrounging small towns for talent. He’s just a stepping stone in your plans for Jake. “You’re sure he can handle it?”

Stretching your legs out, you scoff incredulously at the accusation as Jake’s last song dwindles behind you. The beer bottle is cool against your lips. Stu swallows, watching your lips purse around the rim to drink. You know he’d die for the chance to get his wrinkly, old dick in your mouth — it’s why Jake’s about to get the best deal of his life.

“Jake? — Of course.”

“Can you?” Stu asks. The light on you for once makes you cringe. Even so, your poker face doesn’t falter. Calmly staring across the table at him, a small smile on your face. “Y’know, he’s going to need a manager that I can rely on. I.e. — one that he won’t dump, sweetheart.”

This only makes your smile grow. “Jake is like a brother to me. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

It’s that lie that secures the deal. Six months, a hundred and sixty dates across the US. Mostly small venues, but it’s his first headline tour — and it’s all because of you. Because of that one little white lie. Letting Stu think that he’s got a chance with you. Letting him think that you’ve never fucked Jake.

You have. Twice, already by this point. Once, after senior prom. Your date was an asshole and his was cruel. You’d parked his truck out in the west pasture of the Seresin ranch and got a little too drunk under the stars, and wound up with your legs hiked up over his shoulders. The second time was Thanksgiving two years ago. Your family joined his. All of his brothers have fiancés or wives now. Sharing Jake’s bed in his childhood home that night, neither one of you was drunk. You were just lonely, and maybe bored.

Tonight, there are a couple of different factors at play. Sure, by the time that you and Jake collapse down onto that red, velvet couch in the Dark Star’s ‘dressing room’, you’ve had plenty to drink. You’re not quite as lonely as you were that thanksgiving, though.

You turn your head and he’s grinning at the ceiling, chest heaving from the energetic final song. His arms stretch along the backs of the couch, his eyes closed for a moment. You watch him silently.

“You’re incredible.” Jake’s half-cut on an unhealthy mix of tequila and vodka, but smiling, eyes still shut, chin still pointed towards the sky. He gives his head a small shake. “A hundred and sixty dates.”

A smile plasters itself across your lips. As drunk as you are, it’s nice to be complimented for your hard work. “Yeah, we’ll see if you still think I’m so incredible when you’re living off of burgers and beer and still have eighty shows to go.”

The smell of cigarettes lives within the fibre of this room. Part of the furniture, nestled amongst the cracks in the red painted walls. There’s the couch that you’re sitting on, and an illuminated vanity against the far wall, and then a coat stand. It’s not much of a dressing room, but it’s fine.

You just wish it would stop spinning.

“I mean it.” His fingers rest atop your denim clad thigh, patting platonically. You hear him sigh from beside you. He squeezes at the supple skin under his hand. “Thank you.”

“Jake… since when do you have manners?” You ask him. Both of you are sitting with your eyes shut on this old, probably dirty, velvet couch. It’s five in the morning. The two of you might have gone a little overboard with celebrating. Wayne Mayhew, the owner of the Dark Star might have threatened to kick you both out of his bar if you didn’t finally get off of his damn stage ten minutes ago.

But there’s a high buzzing between the two of you that feels electric. Wordlessly, you know Jake feels it too. That this is the last night. Here, in this shitty hometown bar. Everything is about to change. After this tour, nothing will ever be the same again — for either of you.

Jake’s thumb trails back and forth in just one small pattern, reminding you that it’s there on your thigh.

It’s been on your mind all day, for no reason at all. That Sunday in August in 1974. Your ruined church dress and the fat bruise on Jake’s cheek the next day when you had seen him at the market. The start of it all.

Those late night drives and all the evenings you studied together. Jake’s football games and his band practices — back when he had thought he wanted to be in a band. Him drying your tears and making you laugh. Growing up together, talking for hours and hours about all of the possibilities. This was everything Jake had ever wanted, and he’s thanking you.

Your eyelids weigh double what they normally do — heavy as you blink open your eyes and turn your head. This time, he’s looking across at you. The tips of his fingers brush the inseam of your blue, low-rise jeans. His face is calm, he isn’t saying anything and he’s far from doing anything either.

Scrunching your nose, you poke your tongue out at him. Across the couch, Jake lifts his brows. The corner of his mouth twitches. He’s got stubble now. Stubble, and chest hair and an Adam’s apple. But that look, that glint in his eye that’s just daring you to try him has always been the same.

Jake’s fingers twitch, pressing into the soft flesh of your inner thigh. Dim lighting, fifteen year old red paint on each of the four walls, and that perpetual cigarette smell — it’s hardly a romantic fantasy. And this is far from a good idea.

But it’s Jake. Confident, loud Jake who gets shy when he’s around someone he really likes. Funny, smart-mouthed Jake who under it all is a great listener. Goofy, habitual Jake who has the nighttime routines of a fifty year old housewife.

Strong-willed, handsome, Jake, your best friend — who’s looking at you like you’re his next meal.

…

@fia-thefirst @daggerspare-standingby @dempy @v0id-chaos @moonlight-addisyn @grxcisxhy-wp @shakespeareanwannabe @coconut152 @330bpm-whiplash @takemetooneverlanddd @princess76179 @loveofvernonslife @averyhotchner @trickphotography2 @sushiwriterhere @the-romanian-is-bae @atarmychick007 @talktomegooseman @xoxabs88xox @thedroneranger @roostersforevergirl @buckysdollforlife @abaker74 @blackwidownat2814 @kmc1989 @whatislovevavy @lonelywriter10 @s-u-t @topguncortez @callsign-joyride @rosedurin @86laura11 @theenorthstar @mygyn @growup-thatbeautiful @percysaidnever @katiedid-3 @its-the-pilot

[aropride]

ok story before bed time. everyone gather around

you are me at age 13. you are an 8th grader who just realized he likes girls and recently had a gender crisis in the home depot lighting aisle. it is november of 2016, and trump has run for president for the first time. you are watching the map change over your dad's shoulder. you aren't really sure how it works yet but you are seeing a lot of red on there and you are very frightened. you just found out you have free will, like, last year, and you are only beginning to grasp the gravity of the situation- the situation being the united states of america in general- and it already is looking very bad.

when you wake up in the morning your dad tells you trump has won. he's too happy about it. you're skipping breakfast to make the bus in time. the sun's barely risen, btw, but you are 13 so you have little to no autonomy or rights, so you are in the fluorescent-light torment-nexus they call a "middle school" by 7:45am on the dot.

you see your friend as you're walking to your homeroom. he's a fellow gay emo middle schooler, he sucks, and he really likes to guilt-trip you into skipping class to hang out with him by telling you he's going to kill himself if you don't. you have other qualms with him, but this illustrates enough. he says hi, you say hi, there is a sort of thick dread in the air despite barely anyone in the building being old enough to vote and most everyone completely baffled by the concept of the "electoral college."

he asks how you're feeling. you say bad, and he agrees.

he looks you in the eyes and puts both his hands on your shoulders. he says, "don't worry about gay marriage. they can't get rid of it."

you don't say anything; he doesn't give you a chance to.

"i ran into the senate at subway yesterday and i asked them. and they said trump can't repeal gay marriage."

you do not know much about the government. you are not quite sure what a senator is. however, you know there are one hundred of them. you also know that the only subway in your little corner of maine is very small- there's, like, three booths to sit in. only a few people can even get in line to order at a time. you were born recently but you are able to draw some conclusions here:

1) there is absolutely no way that subway could fit 100 people inside of it at all,

2) there is no reason that the entire senate would be in a little town in maine the night after the election,

and 3) this guy is making shit up again, more than anyone's ever made shit up in their life.

you say, "okay. that's good." you are aware that gay marriage is not the only thing to be worried about, here. you are aware that this guy lies recreationally and it is not worth arguing the matter.

"isn't that great?" he asks. it is not great.

you go to homeroom and you do not stand for the pledge of allegiance (you never stand for it again). you go to pre-algebra. you listen to my chemical romance instead of paying attention. you go to english class, you go to study hall, you go to lunch. you go to social studies and your teacher lets you and your other gay friend (who doesn't suck and in fact you have crush-adjacent feelings for them) sit out in the hall to talk about the election, because you asked nicely. they do not try to tell you that they ran into the entire senate at subway.

you think about this interaction several times a month through the next two election seasons. you are a 21 year old man and you are still thinking about this. you are still imagining ways the entire senate could cram themselves into this tiny subway. you regularly share this story with new friends because you just cannot stop fucking thinking about it. he ran into the entire senate at a tiny little subway in maine at 7 in the morning. and they said gay rights were safe forever.

[killersfool]

fluff w bobby! idk smth like hurt/comfort. maybe she’s had a bad date and goes to bobby and they like confess , idrk but i think that’d be cute

Comfort | ROBERT KEATING

thank you for the request !!

PAIRING: robert keating x f!reader

WORDS: 3.4k

SUMMARY: reader goes on a terrible date. she calls her old work friend, rob, who comforts her and opens up about some hidden feelings.

GENRE: hurt/comfort, friends to lovers, fluff

WARNINGS: references to eating disorder

The worst date of my life occured on a Tuesday afternoon, starting at exactly 8.43pm. For starters, the guy was late, 13 minutes late on the dot. Never trust your Tinder matches. I guess I should've figured out what a mess the whole thing would be. I'd sat down at a window seat in Nando's. Sun glowed gently across the table. It gave me a positive outlook on the whole thing. But by the end of the evening, as I left that dreaded restaurant with a soggy bag of chips in my right hand, I was holding back tears. Rain was pouring. My umbrella had broken. Dark clouds had appeared in the sky. Pathetic fallacy. I could hardly even breathe as I sat down in the train. 

My first port of call — for some odd reason — was my old work friend. Rob and I had worked together in a restaurant just down my street. We'd been through hell together. My worst memory was when I dropped about ten glasses across the kitchen floor, accidentally smashing them to pieces. The manager heard the crash ring out through the entire restaurant. He ran through the kitchen doors. They swung open as if he was a wild beast prepared to eat me whole. Bones and all. This was the first time I'd made a major mistake as a kitchen porter. I was trying to prepare myself for the incessant shouting to soon ensue. But before I could even build a wall around me, a hand grabbed mine and pulled me out of the kitchen. I wasn't sure who it was grabbing my pinky finger or why they were helping me escape but I didn't complain, I just let them lead me through the main restaurant where guests were staring at us with patient eyes. They really believed we were running around just to ask for their order.

The long mane of curly hair made me realise who was dragging me alone. Robert Keating. The waiter who's sarcasm was off the charts. Each time he came into the kitchen, he'd be going on a rant about how stupid the job was and how much he hated the manager. Most of the chefs agreed. But they'd make sure to put on cheery faces whenever Mr Jacob came in to check everything was alright. Robert had worn Doc Martens to the beach when they had a dinner party to celebrate 10 years of the restaurant. I had made sure to come along with my best dress on and trainers. Robert had appeared with some Doc Marten boots, red shorts and Joy Division shirt, assuring everyone that his boots were 'made for walking on sandy terrain'. Then he complained about them for the entire time. He didn't make any sense.

Once we'd escaped through the front door of 'Jacob's Pizza', we continued running down the street until we got to the park. I knew by that moment I'd sure be fired. No one was running after us. No one really gave two shits about us. We weren't a necessity to the work force. We were just there. Looming.

Rob had sat down on one of the kid's swings (the tiny ones that you can't get into once you grow out of them). He allowed his infinitely long legs to dangle off the edge—not putting them through the holes because he'd surely get stuck which would've been a very Rob thing to do. The park was empty. It was a Tuesday evening. Stars lined the sky. Rob patted the swing next to him, asking me through his motions to join him. I complied. Awkwardly slotted myself in a mildly comfortable position onto the swing. I grabbed onto the rusty chains which had been there for dozens of years. Paint ripped away by years of use, years of bad weather.

"Mr Jacob didn't deserve us. We were too good for him." Sixteen-year-old Rob always thought quite highly of himself—not to the point of being a show off—but just enough to make you shake your head. The use of the collective pronoun was different for him. A change to usual. He was including me in his declaration of greatness. His blue eyes were shining and he'd thrown his apron to the ground. Black button-up shirt and black trousers. His smile was a lighthouse, illuminating that stretch of grass before us.

"I fucked up. Sorry, Rob." I'd looked away from him. Wrung my fingers together, picked at my nails. We'd been working there for months. Of course I had to be the one to make a mistake.

"Hey, don't worry. There's loads of jobs around here. I'm sure you'll find somewhere else," he assured. He reached out a hand between the two swings, let it linger on my shoulder. I followed suit with him. Chucked my apron into the nearest bin. One of those bins that never get emptied. Overflowing with fizzy drinks and sweet packets.

I allowed my head to drop down onto his hand. His fingers took a short hike through my hair. 

He then started to laugh. "How the fuck did you drop all those glasses? I swear you purposely tipped the tray over."

"What if I did?" I smirked. It had been accident. Or maybe my irritation at the place just wanted to come out. 

Rob was pressing his shoes to the ground, trying to make the swing fly upwards. He'd smiled to himself at my words. "Then I thank you for your service. I'd been trying to get out of there for a while. My band are getting way more gigs and the job was getting in the way of everything."

"Your band? You've never told me about that." I was intrigued. I had no idea he played an instrument. I knew that he loved The Strokes as he'd always put them on the kitchen playlist. I couldn't imagine him on a stage. Performing. Making music. It was the last thing I'd expected he'd do.

"Yeah. We've called it Inhaler. An ode to Eli's asthma—"

"Hewson? He's in it? Fuck no." I'd never been the biggest fan of Elijah. He'd dated my friend and left her heartbroken. I'd never personally spoken to guy but from a distance, I was the slightest bit terrified of him. 

"I had no choice! He forced me into it."

"So he's singing, right? Then you're playing what?"

"Bass."

"Really? That's..."

"So sexy. I know."

That's when I shook my head, smiling. His face was serious but as my teeth appeared, so did his. We were both laughing at nothing, giddy because of the air cooling our cheeks. Just his presence, him being next to me, made me feel so much warmer.

Now my eyes are teary, my throat is raw. I'm sat in the corner of a train compartment. Toddlers are screaming at their parents, music is blasting in my ears and the fields turn to blurs of green as I lean back into my seat. 

The guy was a prick. A self-centered waste of time who thought the whole world revolved around him and only him. I was asking all the questions. He didn't want to know anything about me. His mouth would never stop moving. I hardly got a single word into any conversation. He showed off about his job, his money, the university he went to and he joked about how much I ate. He'd stared at my stomach when I stood up, as if he was trying to measure my waist with his eyes. That's when I just walked out of the place, taking my remaining chips with me. I don't know why I even agreed to go. He wasn't even nice on the app.

Phone ringing. Hand over my stomach. I had gained weight. I'd started eating more than I had months ago. Food was a comfort, food was a memory-store, food was something to keep me going. There were all kinds of flavours that would bring me back to figments of my past. Eating was a way to reminisce and a way to make new memories. It had irked me—that look in his eye, the raise of a brow. I was skinnier on my Tinder profile. But back then I wasn't happy. Constantly focused on my calorie intake, on how much exercise I had done in a week. 

"Hello?" Rob picks up. His words play through my headphones. His voice hasn't changed since I last saw him. It's still low and raspy.

I sniffle, finding it hard to even get my words out. I can see in the train window that my skin is blotchy and red. My bottom lip is quivering. I'm trying to hold everything in. I'm like a bomb on the verge of explosion. I don't like crying. I especially don't like crying on a train where eyes are glancing over in my direction.

"You alright?" He whispers. It's 10pm and I'm wondering what he's been doing. Has he been at a show? I've been trying to keep a track of where they've been going on their tour. Right now he could be absolutely anywhere. The last I heard he was in Scotland.

"What are you up to?" I try to divert the conversation to him. I just want to hear him talk. Anything he tells me, I'll listen.

"I'm back home in Dublin. Eating mince pies. I know it's early but my Ma is too obsessed with Christmas for her own good. It's what, 2nd of November? And she's already got her tree up. Tinsel and everything. What's up with you? You sound different. Has Eli been giving you shit again? That gobshite needs his head knocked in."

He's in Dublin. I'm in Dublin. 

"I miss your Ma." I remember the one time we walked home from work together. His Ma had given me a lung constricting hug. She'd thought I was Rob's girlfriend. Told me that he non-stop talked about me. I didn't believe her. I still don't believe her. I could never see Rob having a crush on anyone, let alone me. "It's nothing to do with Eli. Although I agree, he is a little bitch. It's actually this shitty bloke I met on Tinder. He thought he was all that. Most boring guy I've met in my life."

"Instagram, please?"

"I don't trust you with anyone's Instagram."

"At least tell me his name. I want to make fun of him."

"Albert."

"What a name. Honestly, I'm thinking about getting my name legally changed to that. Albert. Wow. I'm impressed." 

"He told me his nickname was 'Alby'. I almost laughed." I smile to myself, wiping tears away. I hear Rob snort through the phone. 

"Found his Instagram. That was easy. He looks weird. Shit hairline."

"Rob!!! Keep away from his DM's please."

He went silent. He was most definitely already sending him stupid messages. I didn't really mind. The guys deserved shit after what he put me through. Two hours of nonsense. At least the food was good. Nando's is my favourite.

"Aren't you in Dublin? Do you want to come play some bird bingo? It's been a while since I saw you. We've got at least a years supply of mince pies."

I'm cheesing. Sucking in quick breaths as my tears stop falling. The train comes to a halt in the station. My head is leaning against the window, my mouth opens wide as I see a figure sat down on a bench. That familiar mop of hair, those shining eyes, an entire bass guitar case sat beside him. I'm gobsmacked.

The call ends before I can try to speak. Before long, my legs are moving and I'm shuffling through crowds, trying to find the exit. Maybe I was just imagining him. Maybe I just wanted him to be there. But then I'm outside the train, walking down the platform and two arms wrap around my stomach. 

"Hey," is all he says, straight into my ear.

He isn't usually this touchy. We used to go for coffee and he'd never hug me. We weren't that kind of friends. Now his arms are holding me flush against his chest and his hair is tickling my ear and I just want to close my eyes and blow the world away.

I turn around to face him. His hands are still on my waist, scrunching the material of my jumper. He has a cardigan on, his eyelashes are so long, he's watching me with worry etched upon his features. 

Then I break down. I can't deal with it anymore. I can't hold it in.

"Sweetheart..." He pulls me straight into his chest, hands cupping my head like it's going to split into two. I sob into his cardigan. My palms are against his shoulderblades and his head is on my shoulder. I can feel his nose smush into my skin and he mumbles quiet comforts into the air. "He doesn't deserve you. He's an idiot. Piece of shit." Words of comfort are usually just insults from Rob—but they still make me feel way better.

I don't know what I would've done without him. I keep imagining myself going home and crying into my pillow, no one there to tell me it'll be okay. I'm so glad he's here. I'm so glad he's holding me.

"Let's go home?" He pulls me away the slightest bit just to see my face. His thumb jumps just beneath my eye, wiping away the falling tears. He then gently kisses my nose. I'm shocked and confused. The warmth of his lips against my freezing nose is a welcome relief. I'm sure a sigh escaped my lips at the gesture. 

I'm not sure which home he means. His or mine. But wherever we're going, I'll follow him. I want to be somewhere warm. I want to eat some nice, warm food and forget that guy ever even existed. Rob still has an arm around me as we walk through the station. He gives me a packet of tissues and buys me a hot chocolate from Starbucks. Even whilst carrying his entire bass along on his other shoulder, he makes sure to keep an arm around my back, fingers curled over my waist. 

"How come you've got your bass?" I taste the hot chocolate. It burns my tongue. My spare hand points along the rather massive case which is definitely heavy.

"I was practicing with the band. I was about to head home when you called me so I ran to the station instead."

"So you lied about the mince pies?"

"Oh no. That is very true. You'll see when we get back. I just lied about where I was—you know, for the surprise element."

His then. We are going to his. I've never been inside his house before. I've only walked down his street and glanced through the windows. He'd always have the best Halloween decorations. The Keating house was always a go to in order to get the best sweets. His mum would come out dressed in the most flamboyant costume possible. Rob would always be standing beside her, forced forwards with a bag of sweets in his hands. 

Up past his parents' cars. Still some Halloween stickers on the windowsill and pumpkins next to the welcome mat. He twists his key in the door. It clicks and opens up to a corridor. He was right about the Christmas decorations. Snow globes on a bookshelf,  wreath on the door, Christmas tree lights are colourful through the window. The whole living room is dark green.

The house is silent. The dishwasher is wildly spinning and wind is wailing. Other than that it is extremely quiet. And warm. So very warm. I can actually feel my fingers now. 

Rob takes my hand once I've pulled off my shoes. He pulls me along into the living room, we crash down onto the sofa.

"Tell me everything," he says. He stretches out his legs and places his feet on the coffee table. He has fluffy socks that have the face of a red robin. "All the nitty gritty. Get it all out of your system."

"I don't even know where to start." I pull at the skin of my cheek, look up at the ceiling. "We went to Nando's. It was my idea. I got there bang on time but had to wait for ages for him to get there. He was late—"

"First red flag."

"Right? I should've just left. Anyway, he came in. Blamed his lateness on traffic when he literally lived in the town I went to. Like wouldn't you just walk? He ordered hardly any food then got all weird when I ordered my usual. I had a pudding too. He was just so judgy. He told me about his degree in Maths and how he was doing a phD. He didn't seem to impressed about my Law degree. He barely even let me talk. Then the last thing, the cherry on top, was when he stared at my belly when I stood up as if I had some kind of disease. I felt ill. I've never been so insecure in my life."

Rob's mouth was open wide, jaw dropped. He kept his eyes on mine. Listening. It was so nice to have someone just hear what I was saying for once. 

"You're the prettiest, most intelligent girl— I'm going to have a right word with that nob— I'm going to have a right fucking word with him. He thinks he can just..." His burst of emotions makes him stand up and pace around the room. I smile at his compliments but frown when he starts to get angry.

"It's fine. I'm here now. I don't have to think about him again."

Rob sits down again. Then his head falls onto my stomach. He closes his eyes. His arm reaches over for the coffee table. He grabs two mince pies. One for me, one for him. Bending his arm and extending it, he passes one up to me. I gratefully take it. I peel off the metal then take a bite. It’s delicious. Rob is smiling up at me. There’s a little pastry on his chin. I wipe it away with my thumb. My finger seems to have a mind of its own. It starts to trace lines along his face. Beauty spot to beauty spot. Like his skin is paper and I’m doing a join the dot. My thumb lands back on his lips and I trace along the two pink shapes. A little chapped, warm and soft. He opens his eyes again. 

Then I’m hit by this weird feeling. Like I’m reaching a high. Or I’m slamming the accelerator. Or I’m at a claw machine and finally win a prize. That hum of euphoria, singing through your ears. He’s twisting his head on my belly like it’s a pillow. My thumb is still at the corner of his mouth. My heart is beating in my ears. There’s something clicking. A realisation.

I’m in love with Rob. I’ve always been in love with him.

“Look, I know this is a really bad time to say this,” Rob speaks. His words a gruff. I listen intently. 

“What’s up?” I brush his hair out of his face. Curls between my fingers.  

“You’ll think I’m stupid.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

Rob closes his eyes again. He breathes out. He looks for my other hand and places it on his chest, his hand resting just above it. I can feel his heart pounding like crazy. I never knew a human heart could move so quickly. I never knew that here, in this dimly lit room, after my heart has been torn into two separate pieces I’d be feeling Rob’s heart under my fingertips.

“Geez, Rob. Am I that scary?” I stroke his hair again, his fingers now grazing my knuckles.

“Yeah, terrifying.” 

“Just tell me. What is it?”

“I love you.”

The whole room falls apart. My whole body feels like it’s been ripped into two then sewn back together. His eyes close again but he peeks a little with his left one just to gauge my reaction. I’ve stopped moving. My brain isn’t working. 

“Christ. Really?” I whisper.

“Yes. I think of you every time I buy pizza, every time it’s Halloween, every time I’m drinking from a glass. Everywhere I go, you’re there. Whenever we went for coffee, I’d feel empty when you left. It just—even when you told me about this date. I was jealous at first. I want to take you on dates and fall in love with you even more.”

He sits up. He grabs onto both of my cheeks.

“I love you too,” I say before pulling him into a kiss.

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Minimal Loss: Final Part

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.6k

Summary: You and Spencer go undercover to a ranch that is run by a man who thinks he’s God. When you and Spencer are trapped there, you will do anything to protect him, even if it means putting yourself in danger.

Warnings: canon violence, canon language, canon talk of death, methods of kill

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Criminal Minds. All credit goes to their respective owners. If there are any warnings that exceed the normal death/kills from the show, I will list them. If you’ve seen the show, then it’s the same level of angst unless otherwise stated

x

"Those of you that are standing, please collect your belongings and report to the front hallway immediately." Everyone who was called does as they're told, and they are released immediately. Now, all that's left are the true believers. When Rossi sees them leave, he calls Ben to thank him. "We will surrender tomorrow at noon. I want the press there to ensure that we're treated fairly. We'll discuss the details in our 7:00 AM call. I'll see you then, Dave."

"I look forward to it."

"Oh, one more thing. Could you send some food in?"

"Sure. What would you like?"

"Fried chicken and all the fixin's."

"You got it."

"I don't understand. Why did you let them go?" Chris asks once Ben hangs up.

"They weren't prepared to do what needs to be done," Spencer answers, but that angers Chris.

"You're not one of us. You don't know what it takes to be prepared!"

"Listen to him," Ben says calmly. "Tell him."

"They failed the test. They had a chance to prove their faith when Cyrus told them that they'd sacrifice themselves for God. Instead, they showed they weren't worthy. That's why he wants the media to bear witness to your true final act of sacrifice."

"How do you know that?"

"I'm always looking for signs of things to come."

Spencer knows Rossi can hear him talk, and he knows exactly what Spencer means.

"Reid's talking to us," Rossi states. "He wants a sign when we're coming in. He's telling us this is it. Time has run out. We've got to go in."

A large amount of food is brought in so that Rossi can bring it to Ben. His first thought is to drug it, but that won't work. He needs to get the message to you and Spencer about what time they are going in.

"Drugging the food is not an option because of the children. We have to go in," Hotch says.

"The best time to hit them is when they're least mentally prepared. Their biorhythm cycle is at its lowest at 3:00 am."

"We need a diversion. Something that plays into his expectations," Derek says.

"Whatever we're doing, the plan depends on Reid and Y/N separating the diehards from the followers, and delaying Cyrus's diehards from reacting to our assault," Rossi says.

"That's not my main concern. Reid and Y/N know what they need to do. My main concern is letting them know when we're coming. The whole thing hinges on them being ready for us at 3:00 am."

Instead of drugging the food, everyone plants tiny bugs inside the food that's small enough not to be noticed when or if eaten. The food takes some time to prepare, and it's after the sun goes down that they start to bring it in. You're lying in bed with your hands tied to the bedposts.

There are bugs everywhere, so you know if you start talking, they might be able to hear you. You lift your leg and reach out towards the blinds on the window. You fit your foot in between the blind and wiggle it just in case they are watching.

"If you guys can hear me, I know you're coming. I can try to get the women and children down to the tunnel, but I need to know when you're coming."

You repeat this phrase three times before you get something from them. Something shines on the wall, a red dot. Whoever is doing this has a laser pointed to the wall.

"Okay, I see you. What time are you coming?"

The red dot flashes three times on the wall, and since it's nighttime, you can only assume that they're coming at 3:00 am and not 3:00 pm.

"3:00 am?" you ask, and the red dot moves up and down as if the person is nodding. "Understood. Spencer is on the first floor somewhere with Ben. Please remember there are children here." You can hear someone walking down the hall, and you quickly move your leg back down. "Someone's coming."

Kathy comes into the room with a glass of water, and you lift her head as she helps you drink it. You're grateful for her kindness, but you need to get out of here.

"Kathy, Ben is planning a mass suicide. I know you made the 911 call."

"This is all my fault," she sighs. "None of this would have happened if I hadn't made that call."

"You were trying to protect your daughter."

"There were other girls before Jessie. He would marry them in secret, and after a while, he'd take another. We weren't permitted to speak of it, so when she asked for my consent, I wanted to just take her and run. I was afraid she wouldn't leave him."

"You wanted us to take her?"

"I wanted to save her from Cyrus."

You have to trust her because she is the only one here who can help you and your team out.

"I can give you another chance. The FBI is coming here at 3:00 am. I need you to gather Jessica, the kids, and the other women. Get them into the basement just before 3:00 am."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I have faith that you are a strong enough woman to do the right thing for Jessica."

She quickly leaves, but you can feel her doubts for you. You groan in frustration and bang your head on the pillow. Did you make a mistake by telling her? You hope not. Minutes later, she comes back with a worried look on her face. She starts to untie you as quickly as she can.

"You were right. They're setting the place to blow up. I told Jessie that Cyrus wants her to gather the women and children."

"Where is the man I came in with?"

"He's in the chapel with Cyrus. It's 2:45 though. We gotta hurry."

There is no time to get Spencer right now, and Hotch would kill you if you chose him over saving everyone else. You two leave the bedroom and escape down to the basement where Jessica and the others are. She doesn't question it since she thinks Ben wants her to do this.

"Come on, right through here," you whisper and guide them into the back of the basement where the tunnels start.

That's where your team is going to come from. Fifteen minutes later, Derek, Rossi, Emily, and the tactical team come rushing in with guns raised. Derek sees you and immediately rushes over to you.

"Y/N, are you okay?"

"They've wired explosives. They're going to blow the place up."

"Come on, everyone. Let's go this way," Kathy says.

"Where's Reid?"

"He's in the chapel with Ben."

"We gotta get you out of here," Rossi says and grabs your arm.

"No," you panic. "I need to get Spencer. He's still in there. Please, it's not safe up there!"

You try to get out of Rossi's grip, but Derek stands in front of you to block your way.

"Y/N, I will get your boyfriend, okay? Get out of here. Get to safety."

"Cyrus didn't call for this," Jessica cries to her mother. "You lied to me!"

"No, Cyrus lied to you, honey."

"He's my husband!"

Jessica dodges everyone's attempts at keeping her here, and she rushes back into the church. Kathy screams out for her and tries to go after her, but Derek stops her as well.

"No! I will get her for you. Rossi, get them out of here. Torre, get your boys. Let's do this now."

Rossi and Kathy get all the women and children as Derek, Emily, Dan and his team rush up the stairs into the chapel. You have no choice but to leave Spencer and pray that he finds Spencer in time. Everyone files out of the chapel where Hotch, JJ, and the other team are waiting to collect them.

You turn back towards the chapel, but Rossi doesn't let go of your arm. He can't have you running back in there to save Spencer. Five minutes have passed, but it's the longest five minutes in the world. You have no clue what is happening inside the church, and unfortunately, you're about to.

You're this close to going inside of it yourself when the entire building explodes. You scream out for Spencer and jump into action, but Rossi wraps an arm around your waist to prevent you from running into the fire.

"No! Spencer!" you scream and cry. "Let me go! I have to find him!"

Just when you think you've lost the love of your life, you see two people emerge from the smoke. You shove Rossi off you and run over to Derek and Spencer who are coughing from the smoke. You run right into their arms with tears streaming down your face.

"We're okay," Derek coughs.

You let go of him, but pull Spencer closer to you. You have your arms wrapped around his neck and your face is buried into the side of it.

"I think all the kids are out," Hotch says.

"Where's Jessie?" Rossi asks, but all Derek can do is shake his head.

Jessica is dead as well as Cyrus, but all you can think about is Spencer and the fact that he is okay.

Spencer is safe. Spencer is okay. He's safe. You're okay.

The plane ride home is tense. Everyone wants to rest, but you and Spencer are sitting away from everyone else. He is dabbing some medicine onto your face, making sure to take care of you.

"Never do that again," he whispers.

"I need you to listen to me." You move his hands so you can look into his eyes. "It was my decision, Spencer. What Cyrus did to me was not your fault. I'd do it again if it means you're safe because that's what I do for the people I love. It was my choice, and I stand by that choice."

"I love you."

You lean up and kiss him slowly but passionately. Resting doesn't seem like a bad idea, and you pull away from his lips only to rest your head on his shoulder. He kisses the top of your head before resting his head on top of yours.

"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it." - Ayn Rand

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[wouldntyou-liketoknow]

It Might as Well Happen! Life is Already So (Old) God(s)damn Weird!

(Disclaimer: three of the characters in this story belong to me. You can find more information about Cruz here. You can find more information about Penn and LeviathanPat–who is only mentioned here, but he still gets the clarification because I said so–here. EldritchPlier and Illinois belong to the Markiplier Cinematic Universe.)

(I wrote this as a birthday present for my amazing friend @sammys-magical-au! So, of course, we’ve got another special guest appearance by their badass OC! Please go reblog Sammy’s ideas, check out their Wattpad, and show them some love for being such a great writer!)

(Also: the awesome @inkbedou has created some lovely artwork of the main character here! Please go check out their stuff and give them a follow!)

(Trigger Warnings: body horror, implied murder/death, blood/gore, knives/blades, implied animal death, occultism, mentions of ritual/sacrifice, mentions of eating/drinking, strong language. Please let me know if I missed anything.) 

(If you’d like to use distorted fonts like the one you’ll be seeing in this story, then I recommend going here).

Drip. Drip. Drip. 

Anything and everything came with its own sets of Give and Take. A lot of people—more than your mental health would probably be prepared for—had trouble understanding that sometimes, but not Cruz. 

For example: it was difficult to hear crimson splattering over the notes of his violin, but the small pool of blood at the head of his room was very much noticeable. There was that strong, infamous metallic scent of course, but it’d also be pretty hard to ignore how droplets were slowly but surely floating up to give his ceiling an impromptu polka-dot paintjob.

(Which, to be fair, was pretty damn cool to watch if you were in the right headspace. Yeah, it’d be so much harder to clean, but still.)

Honestly, this blatant middle finger to gravity wasn’t even the strangest thing that had happened tonight. Or even several past nights, in fact. 

The more time you spent with sentient crimes against reality, the more reality warped around you. 

Especially the creature Cruz was waiting for right now: among his many horrific titles, he was nothing if not the personification of Fuck You I Do What I Want.

The blood began boiling and churning on its own accord. It was a little louder than the dripping chorus, but that still didn’t quite break through the violin’s voice. 

And then. . .the red started to drain.

The blood itself wasn’t drying up, the puddle wasn’t shrinking or evaporating at all. 

No. That rich, organic color started seeping out of the fluid, slithering into the air past the veils of rising steam, leaving the small pool to resemble liquid silver. . .or the skin of someone who was just about ready for putrefaction. 

The red seeped its way under that tiny gap of space between the floor and the bottom of Cruz’s bedroom door. It then spread to outline the door from the other side entirely, a white-hot glow mixing into it. The new light was impossible: dark and vibrant at the same time. Almost like an eclipse.

A low, echoing growl rumbled from the other side, announcing the arrival of the same guy Cruz had made a bargain with a few years ago.

It quickly evolved into a guttural, keening roar that made the door shake in its threshold and the air feel like it was blistering. If not for how much time and effort Cruz had put into adjusting, his ears would’ve started to bleed. 

Always up for collaborating, Cruz pulled the bow across his violin’s strings at a new angle, eliciting an evil HSSSSSS from the instrument. 

After about fifteen seconds, the monstrous cry transitioned into a voice, deep and smooth and tinged with grating, surreal venom.

“Heͪy͉ͬ͝ t̄̊he̖̪̬r̹e͍̽͢.̬ͥ Ho͈ͣ̂w͂̓ h̑̀a͖̖v̪͈̽e thi̷̾ͨng͖s͢ ḇͭ̉eͬ̇͞en̶̢?ͮ”

Cruz offered both a nod and a shrug, knowing that the abomination could see him through the wooden barrier. “Pretty alright. Can’t complain.” 

The voice hummed thoughtfully. “W͕ͧ̀el̲̑l̜͑ͯ,̖̿ I don't̾̈ͦ mea̲̓n̾ ṯo ål͈a͊͡r̭͖m̬̅̕ y̬oͤ̊̓u͚ͦ,̋͛̋ b̎ͮut̺̹ͅ th͇̗er͔̔eͪ'̶s͐ͅ s͗̓o̘ͧ̃m͙e̘o̞̼͆n̖ͥ͌eͥ ś̚tͪ̕and̋̓͢í̈́͞n̘̔g̃͊̚ o̅n̶͒ͤ t̏͑͝h̳͑ͮe f͗r̦o̓n͠t͍ p̩͗̚o̗r͛ch.ͯ́”

Cruz felt his hackles ever-so-slightly rise—

“O̘̼ṙ, d̴̎id̼͒̈ y̶ȍ̗̺u_̫ aͮ̓ļ̲ȓ͓̏e͒a̫̘͐dy̋ kn̻̹͗o̦͗̄ẇ̊ thͬa̷ͩͧt̉?̑ͥ” The voice continued. “I m̰ͅean,͈ͬ̀ iͮͨt_̨'d̙ͬ̿ b̩͋eͫ̔̒ pȓ͕e̒ͣ͞t͊ͯty̰̠ͬ ha̕͟r̭̺̃ḋ t͔ͦ͛o̴̫͎ mí̼̭s͚̈s̼ͧ him, ŵ̙h̛̄a͘ţ͍ͨ w̛̥it̖͖͠h̝͋ t̬h͙̊̽e̷͔ ća̜ͪͣmͮer̢̚a c̴̃͞r͜ȩw aņd̍̒ t̓h̨̫̾aͦt̯̚ u̯̍͢n͇̊n͈̱eͫ̄c̵̝͘e̢s̪̮̒sͦa̅ri̩͑͆l͗ý̛̅ lạrg̜eͤ c̀h̢̔ͯeͯc̦̓k͖̫̭ i̵n̚ h̠̎͗iş h͋̚͟a͔nḋ͓͝s͉̓͟.́̈́̎ . .̏̀͆”

—and almost immediately flatten back down. Cruz sighed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah-yeah, sure-sure. We both signed that contract a long time ago. You know you don’t have to keep trying those tricks on me, right?”  

A booming chuckle rattled through the house, carrying the scent of sulfur. “Aͥ͋h͗ͯͪ,̧͚͌ c̢̍'m̸͔̼on̤. I͞t̨͔̔'̙s̤ͪͅ go͇͓ỏ͎̿d̨͚ pr̲ͨa͇͜c̥̤̈ti̚_́c̗͖͞e͋ tͭ̅͊o̥ k̝̭̅e̩̙ep̮ f̯̥o̢͊͛l̹l͍̀ow̳̘e̛͔r̊̌s̿́ o̥ͥ̾n t̅̒́h̳̖̀ei̮ŗ͒̑ toę̳s̝.̵̦ B̺͗e̹͘s̶id͖͠e͌s̭̋͌,̰ o̥ͮld̃̇̽ h̾̋ä͔́ͭb́ͩ͗i̤t̛͔͟s j̝us̯t die̾́ h͑a͠ȓ̴̚d͖͂̋.͍”

Exasperation lingered in his features, but Cruz’s energy had never left. “And speaking of dying, you see what I put together?”

“I doͅ,ͯ” the abomination–whom Cruz had learned to call Plier, as it was the only part of his title that could be pronounced by a human tongue—replied. A faint sloshing noise followed his words; he was inspecting the large, ornate bowl that Cruz had prepared with tonight’s offering not even half an hour ago. 

Cruz nodded, grinning. “Everything should be nice and fresh. I mean, apart from the blood, since you said it's better when it’s aged a little.”

A thoughtful hum oozed under the door and into Cruz’s ears. A slick, grotesque, near-bubbling sigh came along, the type of sound that could only come from a (once) internal organ as it was sliced apart by something with razor-sharp edges. 

“W͖ͨe̖ͪl̨l,̽ šo̅ f̀́͡ar, n̤͕ͫo̢ͪ̽ v̧̩ir̠̾g̱ͪ͢in͉̍͋'̧͔s͚͜ t̪é̤͂à͑rs oͮ͘͟r͊ ć͘͠a̧̰̥pt̩͢u͒̐r̼͊ed mo͈o̸͉nͦl̿i͕͒g̟͖h̰̎t̠ i̪͌n̠̔ h̏e̶re.͆ O̵r̽, a̫̳͂t l̪͍͠e̹a͔̒̓ŝt, n̨̉ot̖̟ͦhing I wͮͯoͧͮ͋u̦lḏ̈́̿ ć̄å̹l̻͔̋l͍ a m͆o̲̚ṙ̶e̎̄̀ sͨ̔͛p̕į̩ͥrituaļͫ iͅn̰̼͆gre͙ͯd̪͆ͯi̫̾̑enͮtͪ͐͊.̀͞,” Plier announced. “M̬ayb͓͉̚e y̡où'̋̀v͙̈́eͩ̔͛ l̜os̘t̃̀ y̳̌ó͖̾ȗ̮͙ṛ̙ͅ t̥ouc͌h͚. .̨ͫ̕ .͜”

Cruz raised an eyebrow, unable to keep from sputtering a bit. This was done in jest, of course. He’d been working for Plier long enough to have built up some genuine trust; he knew how to dissect the monster’s words, how to tell what he truly felt or thought about things. 

For a centuries-old Stephen-King-wet-dream-come-to-life, Plier had a typical juvenile meanstreak. Sure, he saw most other humans as pitiful little playthings, but when it came to the rare few he found interesting enough to be worth his time, he was big on unconventional motivation.

His critical and condescending jabs were meant to be taken as a challenge, an open invitation to keep going and impress him.

At least, that’s how it was half of the time. . .

“M̛̀̐ȧy̨͇̬beͬ̅ y̼̰ou'v̥̍é̱ l̐̉ọ̔͑s̈́̈́t y͕̝͈our̎̌̕ touch̴̫͋,̠͊��” Plier repeated, raising his voice just a bit after pointedly clearing his throat. “T̀ͬ̾his̝̆͡ d_́o̱eş͎̍n'̡ͨt̀ h͖̕ͅa̩vë͟͠ e̎̂ve̮̘n̒ h̗̞av͋ͧe̎ͪ aǹy̛͊̇ w̸̦a͘ṭͬ͞e̮ͨͪr͝ th͖͂ͭã̤̕t p͞ëo̯̦̽p̝ͧ̆l̜̂ͯe̞ͧͭ d̝͙̱ŗ̥̌o͟wn̬ed̔ i͔̳n!͟”

“Oh, you’ll get some in the future. Count on that,” Cruz assured, folding his arms across his chest.

Plier hummed again in a way that just screamed of how he was pursing his lips and mutilating those lips in the process thanks to the multitude of too-long, too-sharp teeth in his maw. But then, it wasn’t like pain was really a problem for him, considering he’d had a hand in creating pain itself as a concept.  “I sh̋oͩ̍uͥl̷dͤ gͤͭī̀ṿ̩̎ẹ̽ i̵̧ͅt t̿́̕ḧe̯ b̒ͧe̲ͪnef̧̛̖ịt o̿f t̗̃h͙̭e d͗ǫ̶̩ù̢btͦ. Ẃ͉oͥ͟ul̛ͬdn͖̆'̏͡t̺͟ w͗ȧ̖̒nͯt̄ t̾͗̓o͊ͤ̐ h͊_̹u̓ͫrt͛ yo̘u͉̝r̠͘͢ f̠r̈ag̵̑̎i͟le hum͍a̖n fe̷̵e̩͗_li̍ͬň̎gs.̷̼”

. . .And the other half was him just being a facetious asshole because it wasn’t like any mortal could dare try to stop him.

Cruz clicked his tongue, a dry chuckle seeping through his gritted teeth.

And with that, a mind-bending symphony of crunching bones, snapping tendons, and tearing flesh filled the air, all leaking through the door.

Cruz rocked back and forth on his heels.

After a moment, Plier gave pause with a bitter, sickening gulp. “Oh̯͔͟, g̈́o͆̆͌atͨsͧ͞ a̪͍̎g̒̃͢a̍in̞̔̈.̤̰͇”

“I thought goats reminded you of the Wars,” Cruz said, tilting his head to the side.

In fact, he knew they did, since Plier had regaled him with so many tales of the days when he’d first started climbing the eldritch hierarchy, of abhorrent conquest, of the streets in twisted cities in various dimensions running red (or green, or blue, or whatever colors non-mortal blood could be). 

“I̽́̚ s̴ͦ̈ee̴̵͆m͔̟̈ ẗ́͐͊o r̦e̟m͔͢e̜m͛ͯbe͌ͮ͟r̻͙̣ y̧̬ͬo̹u͘̚ te̍l͔̣͞l͂́͊ing̒͢ m͉͌̍e t̷͂̈h̨̎a̓ͮ̈t͚̖͊ I c̷̋oụ̬͠ldͥ̎͋ exͣp̷e̵̼͢c͍̀ͮṯͤ̚ ṡ͉o̢͘ͅm̤͘eͨ h̛u̙m̷̸a̷͕n̪ ř̫em̍̚ͅa͉i̸̬̯n̷͎ś s̒o̯o͍n̸͋,̧̠̟” Plier mentioned. A steady drumbeat murmured as he spoke–those had to be his claws tapping against the hallway’s floor. “P̰̕lͩuͣͦs̠̀̿,̢̞͐ ǒ̧̤b̅͌v̓îo͆us͍̯̫ḻ̆̽y͊̍ a͘ ni̒͜cë̳́,̨̞ raẁ͔ so̢ú̠̒l͉͙͡ to hạ̻̌r͂v̮es͕͐ͣt o̢͙̒n t̯o͓̾p̩ of͎̀͑ ț̊ͮḣ̿aͭͫ͗t̶͍.̈̏”

The upcoming retort died a quick-yet-brutal death on Cruz’s tongue. He chewed at his lip, then heaved a sigh and trudged across the room to flop down onto his bed. 

This elicited a startled, layered mrowh! from one end, where a vaguely cat-shaped creature with five piercing eyes and dark carmine fur that almost looked fluffy. . .almost, so long as you were a safe distance from it. When the small monster got to its paws and stretched before wandering over to its owner, it became more and more clear how that “fur” was a coat of spikes that could easily flare up at a moment’s notice.

Fortunately for Cruz, plenty of bonding time had passed by now, and so Macaroon was content to just nudge at his forehead and stick out a disturbingly long forked tongue to give him a classic kitten-lick.

Cruz reached over to gently scratch his pet’s tattered ears. He knew Plier was still watching him, still waiting for an answer. “. . .I tried, okay? I really did! I lined up five patsies for this month’s initial plan. Five! But for whatever reason, none of them ended up taking the bait! And after that, the goats were all I could afford to get!”

A long-suffering sigh echoed from the door, doused in oil and disappointment. “Y͐ỏ́u̶̡'̈́v͌̍ͨe̾͐́ t̘̿͢r̈́i͌̎ck̾̇͜ē̶d ḑ͙̓o̪ͮ̇z̛eͣͯnsͤ̄͐ ô̩̠f m̜̗o̵̬͐rͧt͆a̼͙ͥlͨ͠s̙͛ͨ,͓ Ċruz͚.̜̹ Wh̩ǎ͓͢ţ̎͟ c͐͛͞o̧ͥuĺͦ̇d'̢̐ve pͮ͑ǒ͘s̜̹͝s̻̃i͈̟̔b̑l̪̦̃y̫̞ b̻̆̽e͗͞en͊ so d͎̃i̵f̌ͦf̹͇͢ę͚̓rͬe̹̊nt̬̔ a̮b͗̚o̜ͤut̀́ t̫̽h̺ͨ̐ośe͊ o̓ṅ͙es̴̯ͫ?̠”

“I don’t know!”  Cruz threw his hands up in empty air. “I have no idea how or why it even happened! I acted my ass off for all of them! I thought I’d given more than enough charm and last-minute-guilt and likeable awkwardness!”

Memories of the recent past came rushing through his head. The quartet of nights he’d spent in a cheap motel just a few miles away, using the dingy little bathroom mirror as a makeshift scrying station. 

The phone calls he’d made each night to five “friends” he’d recently made, each one hailing from a different cleaning company; the way he’d requested they stop by this very house, one after the other, to tidy up on his behalf. 

The way each of them had just. . .not. Doubled. Back, even though human survival instinct was pRETTY MUCH ALWAYS IGNORED IN FAVOR OF CURIOSITY BUT APPARENTLY NOT THESE TIMES BECAUSE SCREW ALL THE PLANNING AND LURING AND EFFORT CRUZ PUT INTO HIS PROJECTS!

“Aͤͤ̉ndͤ̒ y̸̮̱óu̅ s͚u̓mmö́ͥͪn͕e̳͆d a̠̙ Mả̰nͣͣè̸ foͧr͂ͥͮ t̶̘ẖ̐̒a͓̬ͪtͥ,̳” Plier added coldly. “O͔ͫn̸ͨe̩ͭ o̿̑ͤf̨̌͜ t̵͎ͨḫ̷͠e̙͐ͯ Te̜̭k̗̿e Teͦ̈͆kͮe v̦͖̬a̙̓ȑ̋̄i̖̺anͬt͐ͦͮșͯͩ,̕ ri̋͞͞g̛͋hͮt̮͚̆?̺̲̒ W̆ė̽ak a͎s̭͖ͦ t̩͂̇hey͚ aͤr̢͂͘e͕̽͜, th̥͢os̨͛e t̍y͖̑p̛͓͟es̵̰ͨ a̝re̽͝ s͍̘̾t͈̙i̞l̊̀͟l̬͋̈́ pr̰̔e͋ͬ͢t̟ͯt̪y͗ d̩à̘ͬmnͪ ŗ̯ͬar̡͕̒e̤̪͈.̕”

“Don’t remind me,” Cruz begrudgingly agreed, muttering a few colorful phrases in Portuguese under his breath.

 Manes were the lowest of low in abyssal environments, but they were never in short supply, so they could still be somewhat useful for anything demon-related. So long as you were ready to deal with their tantrums or the invisible bile that drained through their pale skin like sweat. . .(The fluids that had leaked from the exposed, dangling guts of the one Cruz had used hadn’t really helped.)

“Y̭oͨu c͚̫̕o̙u̘̚ldn̻̗'t͇̣́ h̓͑ä͂̕v̝̆ȩ͍̮ j̲̉ͬù̽̄s̟̺ͫt͈̃͢ c̝ͨ̾a̜p̟̐̕t͠uŗ̮͟e̘͂d i̠̝t̊̈ aͥ͐͘n͋dͫ̔ͤ h̶͐ȇͥľ̬͘ḏͩͅ i̟̊͂t f͚͔ȍr̫̟ͮ t̡̯o̍͐n̨͊͗i̖͍̳g͉h̸͍̽t?ͯ͘ F̨la̐y̛͑̐ingͮͮ it́ͅ wŏ͖ͣȕ̓̕l͉d̴͇̄'̤́̅v̫e͟ b̈́̈ȩ͎en s̀u͖̲i̤taͩ͐b͐l͇̪̄e̽ en͈̉͜t̽͘̚e̮̪̒rtai̓ņ̣ͯm̂̓͛e̛̽nt̞,͔ s̯͘in̛̛͘c̶͔̾e͞ t͟h̺ͨͩẽÿ̰́͞'r̭̈́̿e â̮lwaÿ̯s̝ ŝ̤ͯǒ̴̟ d̉͘e͕̐͟s̡͔p̀͘eͫȑ̐͡a͋͟t̽e̽͜ t́̋o eͯx͒iśtͅ.”

“That was my Plan B!” Cruz insisted. “I knew it would do if I couldn’t get any people, but. . .”

He trailed off, cringing in spite of himself. 

“B̤̠̬ut. . ?̹ͫ” Plier echoed in the deadpan to end all deadpans. 

“. . .One target in particular sort of. . .scared it off,” Cruz reluctantly finished, remembering the last of his intended victims. A tall, lanky man in his thirties with fair skin, chocolate eyes to match his hair, the aura of a not-so-new father, and a Midwestern accent with a laugh that could only be described as the most adorable goddamn thing. 

He hadn’t done the task alone: throughout the staged cleanup job, a ginger-haired friend had followed along, chatting so brightly and casually. 

Loathe as Cruz was to admit, it’d almost made for a pretty wholesome little spectacle. . .well, until Mr. Dad Reflex had realized that Cruz kept two different types of trash cans in this house. Or, from Mr. Dad Reflex’s perspective, trash cans and hampers, the differences of which he had vehemently ranted about for at least five whole minutes.

The Mane, as they usually were, had been brazen enough to show itself. . .only for Mr. Dad Reflex to nearly smack it upside the head with the mop he’d brought along from his company’s storage warehouse. 

Hell, it’d gotten to the point where Mr. Dad Reflex had even found the bloody mess of Cruz’s summoning ritual for that particular exploit, only to clean it up and give a worrying amount of legit knowledge on cleaning bloodstains.

(As well as rant some more about how the wax residue from the candles was a bigger issue and. . .something about cleaning knives?!)

So, yeah. Even if Cruz had only gotten to know the basics in order to gain some of Mr. Dad Reflex’s trust, he now had a feeling that Mr. Dad Reflex would’ve been a powerful enemy that he decidedly did not want to make.

Plier was silent for a very long, very uncomfortable couple of minutes, no doubt reading Cruz’s mind to validate the claims for himself. Cruz didn’t bother trying to shield his thoughts; he’d read every single term of that contract. Letting Plier see into his head was just standard business. 

Eventually, Plier heaved a groan. Outside the door, the floors creaked and the walls trembled as the monstrosity shifted in place.

“Y͇o̪uͨ'̷ͥͯre̊ lu̓c͓̿͞k̭̣̇y̷ͪ th̄ͫ̽á̝̉t̻͂͐ yo͎͜uṛ̯ͣ ḿ̵ͪi̴n͇̊͛d̼͉͞ h̷̩ͭa̦s s̙̞͋o̮̿ͣme̓ a̦̖c̣̤͒t̆ͪṳͥ̈́aĺ͉ ș̔̉ù̥̙b̊́̎ş̏t̥́a͐́n̆ce͈̥̕.̟͝ O̺ͣt̛͕ḫ̺́eͧr̘̔͒wͥi̱͑̊se̾,ͪ̎̇ I̵̾ w̑ó̫̦u̇ͭ̈́ld'̻͘ve͇͚ jụ̵s͂͛t̤̒̅ tà̴̒ke͠n̟ tͥͯ_h̢ͣoͬse̫͆͠ p̅̇r̢e̴̬͘t͚͠ṱ̱̇y̸͖ l̀i̪t̸ͯt̅le̯̗ ē̾͌yẻ̢ͨs̸ of͛̾ͫ y_̩̀ò̧̅u̙rs̪ a͇ͩn͇̆d ȑͨe̶p͊l̠͕̬a͍͐c̨eͯ́ͨd̛ the̯_̘m wiͬ͢t̏hͥͪ ba̽͌͠by h̡̍ͤe͎a͌ds͓ s̡̿͠oͨ͒ I͗͡͠'͖͗d n̫̍ẹͩ̒v͓ͭ͌ȩ͡r̓̀ͤ h̠ͧ͠a̵ͤ͆v̪̀͜e̙̞͊ t̞o̭̱ l̦̭̺i̇͠s̲͟teǹ t͈͆o w͉̣eir̢̹͝d̺̲̑-̞͔ͬa͝s̑s̺̄ ẽ̳͡xc̝ͬus̡̏ͩes lͭ̋ik͎̩e ťhͬ̑i͔͜s̬̃.”

A smile etched its way back onto Cruz’s face. He lifted his head, fluttering his eyelashes in a very theatrical manner. “D’aww, you think my eyes are pretty?”

“Do̢̰͜n'͛tͩ p̷͛̈́u̳ͮͫshͧ̌ i̘ͮt͕,” Plier warned, but the new calmness of his voice betrayed him. The gnashing and chewing chorus resumed; he was focusing on Cruz’s offering again, greedily eating the corporeal parts and harvesting whatever emotions lingered from the goats’ departed souls with gusto.

Cruz sat upright, relief washing over him. Even with his and Plier’s contract, eldritch wrath was nothing to sneeze at. Besides, entities like Plier tended to have very special and very serious diets.

Cruz may or may not have learned the hard way that if even a spoonful of spleen-juice was missing from tribute after the stroke of 1:45 AM, the ensuing migraine from the consumer would quickly graft itself onto the offerer.

(Please read migraine as a literal tiny demon appearing out of nowhere, wielding a literal tiny ice-pick, and trying to crawl under your eyelids to reach your brain unless you add a layer of tinfoil to your ceremonial protection mask.)

A plume of fleshy-looking steam curled from under the door, gliding around Cruz’s violin from where he’d left it on the desk before fading into nothingness. 

“.̋ .̸ .̣̐̚Y̌ou̚͘ c̆̐͐aṅ k͙̉eͅe͕p̙̘ͅ p̹l͕̦a̼y̻̪̅in̸̓g̰ͫ if͉̌͘ y͇ͪ͋ou͇ wa̲ǹͅt̓͟,̇” Plier mentioned around all the horrible snaps and crackles and pops going on between all his teeth. He then huffed and hurriedly added, “Ah͚,̂ j̔̂̾u͖̼͍s̗̆t̞̤̐ s͞ơ͒̚ th̝i̚n̞̂ͥgs̨ a̷͋r͞ẹn'̄t̐͆̓ s̀͋o̺ͬ͝ d̸̏͘aͮm̯ͪn̡̗ͩ a̕wk̩̘̗w͍a̮̎̉rd̶̟ͥ to̸̹ͯni͌g̈h̞̊͠t̅̃.̹ Ca̝͘n̮̊̓'t͇ b̀̎͘eli͌_͛e̵̘̓v̏ͪe͡ yóu̡̱ t̪ͨhi̊̿nk I͕'ͭM̎ g̜o͕͝ṅͨ̿n̳̺ͭḁ̰ d̰̏o͚ all t̊hͤē̵̬ co̙ͩn̎vérsá͉̄t̷ì̝oͩn̎ͫͬ-̈c̙̜͟a̱ŗry̑͛į̑͒nͪͦg̣̽ h̗̽e͢rͤ̇e.̘”

“Right, right. How dare I,” Cruz chuckled softly, knowingly. It was just nice to know that even abominations beyond comprehension appreciated music.

He hardly even felt the violin’s weight against his collarbone as he started pulling the bow back and forth, back and forth. Once he found the right rhythm, he settled on “Mx. Sinister.” He still couldn’t believe it’d taken so damn long for him to discover IDKHOW, let alone all the covers of their songs. It was hard to download stuff onto his trusty mp3 player, but that was the price to pay for having a device that couldn’t be tracked. 

Cruz began absent-mindedly pacing the floor, swaying in time with his notes. Macaroon watched curiously, pawing at the air and trilling to the tune, the pitch of his meows a bit all over the place. 

Plier made for a mostly courteous audience. He listened to the beginning, then hummed along as he sucked the marrow from glistening bones at the bottom of the bowl.

He even murmured the lyrics of the last chorus in his hideous native tongue. . .at least, until he cut himself off with a loud gasp. A subsequent thump called from outside the door, rattling on much longer than it probably should have. 

The music came to an unsteady halt as Cruz froze, his eyes snapping back open.

“What? What is it?” 

“S̙͞h͡ù̆̚t̲̊ͧ u͍p̩!̹͇” Plier snapped, his voice suddenly so much more hollow than Cruz had ever heard before. “I n͈̪̓e͋ed to̷̞ c̜̗o̠͇̿n̩̿͋c̰e͊n̳̆t̻ͨr̝aͥͩ͢t̟ͩe!̹̲̓”

The air itself quivered and went numb; any sort of heat or coolness was drained right out of it before Cruz could even register the change. A vein tried to burst somewhere under the skin of his face, but years of adjustment pushed that natural response aside. 

Macaroon’s head jerked up, ears flattening and spikes puffing up as he let out a low, cautious yowl. That made something clammy grip at Cruz’s ribcage.

Obviously Plier’s senses were far more advanced than his own, even with all his practice, but Macaroon was a simpler creature. Yes, he had his own type of monstrous power, but he was still a cat at the bottom of each of his six (or was it seven? Cruz had such a hard time remembering) hearts. If he was picking up on something and responding like that, then it had to be serious.

Cruz approached and sat back down beside Macaroon, carefully stroking his pet’s back. Macaroon’s only response was to lean against him, still shivering as his too-long, too-elastic tail wrapped around his waist. 

It felt like an hour had passed before Plier finally piped up again, his voice now much louder and sharper than before as he seethed.

“Ḧ́̾ E̡ͩ '̓̚ Š͑͡  B A C Kͥ̚ .ͦ”

Cruz swallowed a lump in his throat, hesitating before he wondered aloud, “. . .Who?”

Instead of an answer, he got to watch the pool of color-drained blood blink out of existence, no stench or stains or anything left behind. Not even the spots on the ceiling remained. 

“Pǎ͈̩cͦk ỳ̳̍o̢̎ū̩͢r͕ͧ̑ t͕̑ͦhi̵͆ń̛̥g̤͓̓s̶̗͢,̨̲ͮ” Plier demanded. A cacophony of scraping and scuttling pounded at the walls around him in the hallway outside. “Y̘̑͘ȯ̹̹ŭ͕'̇͠r̴e̋ mo̕͢vͧiṇ̸̿g̳ͭ̔ ou̘t. Rͯĩ̪ǵhͣ̃̀t̝ͬͅ no̻̞̿w̆.”

Cruz fidgeted in place, a shiver racing up his spine. While he was no stranger to home-hopping—you could never afford to truly settle down and get attached to a place when you did the stuff he did—there was something in Plier’s tone that he didn’t recognize. And, as open to change as he was, he did not like it. Not one bit.

“But. . .wait, hold on—”

The air around him rippled again, and his lungs suddenly felt like they were melting from the inside. Cruz shook his head, grinding his jaw as he steadied himself. 

“I̸̔ s̑a͜i͍͌͛d,̲̐̃ S̪̾H̸UT̸̘ͪ U̖̽͑P̬ͪ,͈̲” Plier hissed. “T̘h̼̪eŗ̼̌eͯ̑'ͣs̢͚͊ nͭͭ̍o t̵̢̛i͌m̗e̩ͫ̓ t̹o éͪxͬ̃͋p̸͓̓lͦ͜a̢̗͑in̤̎͠, a͒nd̝̖ͥ ḙ̥ͩven̥ if̄ t͟h́̎͌er̸̨͊e̽ w̠̎͑ä̼̟s, I̞ w͓̞ǒ͌̇u͌_̡l_̵ͩd̼̹n't̩̱́ h̵͙a̷̬v͚̚e tͭo̚.̯ Yȍͧ͡u'̒ḻ̐l̪̄͝ f̷̌ö̫́̈́l̰͓l͛͛o̹̰ͩw̒ a̓̀̚lo̎n̖g̝̞ ḁ͇ͤn̲͂dͨ k͒̿̕eè̩ͬp͚ ȕp wį̪t͕̙h ṁe.̖̓ Ğot͔͊̿ i̅t?”

Cruz nodded, and the melting sensation vanished from his chest. 

“Gọ̑o̤͟ḋ̫͟.̛̱͌ No̴̰ͤw, y̶̡o̩̞͊u n̯ȅ͈ed t͙́ͨo͇̒ get͇ o̱ͬ͡u̮t o̴ͮf̑̆̚ h͎eͤͮr͎e A̲̍̃Ṡ̗A͎P̻ͦ.́͊ I alͅr͔e̾ady̡͂̋ hä͘v̪̋ͧe a ne͗w͐ pͣ͝l̡ͭa̸̐̐ce̞ f͍o̢̞ͦr yo̠u̡̖̰ t͂o̫ g͟o̜̜̍.̾ O͋̕n̡ce̥̅ ýo͂ǔͫͬr̤͆̃ car̸ͨ ì͎͞s̏̓ lo͉a̴͗͌d̆̀e̢͓͜d̗ͬ u̞p,̮͒ I̶̱'ͬ̓ͬl̽͆̚l ğ͇̀ui̺̤d̉̃e you th̩́̿e̴̫ͤrḙ.̫̙”

Unlike many times before this, there was no snark or unconventional chipperness to be found on Cruz’s end. He was quiet and efficient, fishing spare boxes from his closet and filling them up with everything in his collection. 

All the old books with yellowed pages bound in slowly-decaying leather, all the various artifacts he’d managed to buy on the Dark Web that reeked of old blood or curses or pieces of stubborn spirits. It didn’t take long before the trunk of his car was full. The bare essentials—his mask, his robe, toiletries, etc.—were quickly crammed into his leather messenger bag, which soon found its place in the backseat.

The driver’s side door was halfway open when Cruz froze, sentimental panic wracking his stomach. Cruel irony, like the absolute bitch she was, struck. Something important was missing, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember where he’d put it even though he’d been holding it just a few minutes ago!

Cruz was just about to turn on his heel, to rush back into the house and tear it apart from the inside out. . .when a muffled yip rang in his ears. He glanced back at his car to find Macaroon sitting in the passenger seat, the well-worn fabric handle of a violin case between his jagged teeth. 

Cruz just about collapsed right there, a helpless laugh leaking through his lips as he got in and buckled up. 

“Thanks, buddy,” he said, reaching over to tuck the case back with his other bag. “You’re a real lifesaver.”

Macaroon rolled his shoulders, raised a paw to preen at his ears with a very smug air as if to say, Damn right I am.

And with that, he was off, making sure to keep his headlights out as he left his latest burner-house behind. Macaroon rose up on his hind legs, bracing his paws against the window to watch the world pass by. 

True to his word, Plier’s voice was in Cruz’s head the entire time, nearly palpable as a tumor as he gave directions. 

Hours came and went, but Cruz never felt tired. He’d grown accustomed to a more nocturnal schedule anyway, but right here, right now, it felt like volts of electricity were thrumming in his blood. He just kept driving, kept following instructions, kept telling himself that things would (hopefully) make sense again sooner or later. 

The stars were still glinting when Cruz blinked and found himself pulling into a parking lot. If not for the distinct lack of bars or casinos nearby, he would’ve assumed he’d driven all the way to Las Vegas.

The building now in front of him was enormous, decorated with patterns of blinking lights. They all gave off a red-tinged glow; some were darker—like rusted metal lying just beyond a campfire. Others, meanwhile, were a much brighter, pale-yet-warm…fleshy hue—almost reminiscent of how a flashlight’s beam could still manage to shine through your skin if you pressed it hard against your palm. 

Large posters adorned the outer walls, set in metallic frames and too far away for Cruz to make out any details in the pictures. Plus, they were all so glossy that the various shades of red illumination from above glared against them.

“Ȧ̜a̷͍̎a̱̾͞aằ̖à͇̥a͠n͙ͤͩd͓ h̍͠ẽ̱͐reͣ wͫ̚e a̵̐͟r̯̦e͈!͊” Plier crowed. “Tr͕̳̉y͉̣̘ n̵̘ͭo̬͑ͅtͯ t̮̬͈ó t̖͔ä́͞k̘̚é̷̤ i̘͠tͫ a̟ͮ̕l̼l̛͚̔ in̠͇ at̖͎̽ õ̩n̍c̖͢e̴̵̛.” His voice was still comparable to molten lead as it poured into Cruz’s mind, but it was a little more calm than earlier, so he took this as a good omen.

“Where’s here?” Cruz asked, squinting. 

At the very front and foremost spot on the roof, glaring down at everything, was a sign outlined by glowing wires and cables. They all worked together to form the shape of a sphere—no, a planet. A crater-lined planet that shone with a pinkish-white color as it hung over a body of scarlet water. 

Cruz immediately thought back to all the times he’d gotten a chance to stroll along a beach during sunset, to watch the moon slowly rise out of the horizon and climb its way into the sky. 

But as he kept looking, he realized that the sign was not depicting something so simple and natural. The likeness of that planet wasn’t just floating and casting its reflection against that crimson ocean. Rather, it was actually sitting in the glowing water—no, not water. 

Blood, a voice in Cruz’s head insisted. It was just too red to be depicting water, and too dark to be depicting wine or anything somewhat less sinister.

In fact, the crimson waves seemed to be in the middle of wrapping around the planet, trying to pull it under, staining all its craters so much that they resembled open wounds. 

Underneath the huge picture, deep scarlet words set in a sleek, intriguing font: THE DROWNED MOON

Just below the name, slightly smaller: Horror/Thriller Cinema

And lower than that, another luminous sign stood to the left of what had to be the entrance: COME AND WATCH WHEN SLEEP IS HIDING FROM YOU

And on the right, another greeting(?): CONSUME AND DREAM WHERE THEY CAN’T FIND YOU

“T̩̄h̞̔͢e mͯa̫î̥̈n pͬar̦t̳ o͘f͕͎̿ mŷ te̸̚ṟ̆r̖̚i̘̪t͉ͥ̎o͚r͈y̡͛ o̲̜̐n͛̚ È̷̤arͥt̤h,̨̮̏” Plier explained, pride boiling. “Ȉ̮t̕ u͞sͧ̔͜éd͙̯̂ to b̜eͣ ḁ̳͞ t͊̑h̻eateŕ̘̹ t͍̉͝h̖̬at̊͒ s̨pecif̗ͨ̎i̠c̸̾a͟l̝ͤl͌y̤ s̍̓ͯho̮͚̓w̟̅e̐d͛ͧ́ à̛̺l͖ͧl̉̚ s̛͙or̸͇̉t̛s͔̍͠ o͑f̤ͪ c͇u̚ḽ̈́̈́tͨ c̣͓̑l͉ͧasͅsi͚̜ͤc͐ͪs̳̐͊,̴̐ p̖ͭ͠lu̵̗s ťͥh̛ͫę̢͝ ẅ͆͞ĕ͉͐írd̙͂͗ u̩p-̢ͪa̠͍͙n̶̗d͆ͩͦ-͉̓ͤco̦̘m̈́i̓nͨͨg̃́͞ f͕_̈il̮̹mͧ p̎ͤ͞ro̧j͎̟̣e͘c̲t͖͕ͥs͢ ṭ͔̽ȟ͡a̟͙͜t͌ th̛ͦ̈ë̵́͌ l͍̙̈a̍r̃gͯ͢͝ĕ͝ṙ̢̇ c͜ȯm̛͎paͧn̷̢i͎̦ͯe̕s̼ a̦r̵͓͢e to̻���̱͇ b̆it̅c͊̏̀h̖ͬy̵̮ t̳͢ơͮ͗ ac͞c̥̉ep̫̉̂t͜.”

Cruise nodded, humming. “And ever since you got your hands on it?”

A shrug was evident in the monster’s tone. “O͛̏h̨ͯ,͋ it̸̲̐'̹s b͑̔͠a͚̽s̸͛ic̲̚a̦ͭ̐ll̤͗y̌̿ t̤h̸́ḛ̠ sa͆͑ḿ̙̹e̺ͧͪ t̛̑͞hin̑g̶.̲̖ I̚ jù͈s͞t̰̰ maͬ͂͠d͙͌͡è͉ á͘ͅ fe͈̣w.ͪ .̼͌̓ .̒s̷ͥ͒p̫͠e̜c̰͈̑i͙̥a̗l re̿_nnov̸̰̆a̷͕t̳̑̀io̡nͨs,͉ ĺ̡et'ͨs̡̎̾ s̵̏a̷͈̐y.̼”

A sinister chuckle slithered around Cruz’s skull.

As soon as Cruz parked, the glass doors at the front swung open. A small group of people filed out, walking with a stiff-jointed gait. 

Acting on instinct, Cruz tightened his grip around the steering wheel, but Plier only laughed again. 

“R̰̥͊ȇ̎l̷ȃ̖̖x̗.̢̤ͧ T͍̂h̎͠i̲ͬ̑s pͫ̃͡l̙̥̘a̱c̓ĕ̆ d̺̉͡o̍ͪu̴̧͔b̬̊͐l̏é͗̔s a̢̖͗s̀ a̵̯̞ hò̏l̛dḯ͇̃ng̘ pͫ͞ȩ͟n f̖̓͞ǫ̵̪r͌ s̩̼̎ome o̤͐͊f̷͉̚ m͇̲͕y̮̓̓ ṭ̉͂h͈ral̑lͬ̎͑s͔ͪ̀. T̘h͔ͨ̇ĕ̏͡y c͑a̛̗͛n'̗t h̳urt y̦͞o̳ͅu u̶ͥ͌n̛̐le̙̐s̼̽́s͉ I̪ t̥̿e͂͟lḽ̄͒ t̝h͒͡eͯm_ ṫ̼̅ọ̬_,̼ͤ ạͪň̒d y͋o͑u͇'ͨ͘r̐e͙͎ s͌t̡̀̆i̶͐͢lͫl͝ to͔̍̕o̷̜ͥ uͦͥș̇͠e͔f̒ul fo͕̰͈rͪ an̷̢̚y̷t̿ḧ̖̽i̜̜n̲͎g l̅͗ike̝͆ th͜_à̵̝t͖̏.̯̫”

Cruz pursed his lips and offered a half-nod. Even if Plier always insisted on mixing potential threats and potential promises together, it was still nice to know that, by process of elimination, he still didn’t (completely) consider Cruz a puppet who needed an internal lobotomy in order to work. 

Cruz hopped out of the car. Macaroon followed suite, quickly growing to the size of a large dog. He stayed by his owner’s side, tail slowly lashing and shoulders arched in a protective warning. 

The thralls barely even seemed to notice; their eyes still blinked and moved and saw, but whatever was behind them had been dead for a long time. The wide, unmoving smiles on their faces didn’t do them any favors. One of them popped Cruz's trunk, allowing the others to each take a box and wander back into the building. 

Cruz hummed, taking his messenger bag and sliding it over his shoulder. Keeping a gentle hand on Macaroon’s head, he trekked along behind them, approaching the now wide-open doors. For all the glow and glam on the outside, it looked like there were only a few flickering lights on further inside. 

“Y͐̿òu͖ l̛͈ỉ̤̂ve͎ h͛e̻ře͈ͣͅ n̬ͦǫ̽w,” Plier declared. “Y̜̮o͍͖u̴̻ cͬǎ̛̹n̤ͤ sͧt̘͆ȉ_l̺͟ĺ̿ f͎͋ind̫ d͈ͥ̉eĉ̷o̔yͤ p̛ͩ͝lͣaͣͦ͞c̽̒e͛̽͝s̤ͥ̂ f̪̰ͅor̿ ce͎̚r͛ṭͬ̏ai̯ͪn r̙͞it̎u͍͙̓al̮_̈ş if y͗́͡o̬͒u_͌ l̢i̗̦ke,̐ bu̙ͩ͞tͯ t̵͊̍h̸͐̕i̛̫̊s î̛s p͉ͥͣe̓̇ͅȓ́̕m̤e͉͞n̮͛ā̱̄nt̒ͬ.͗͢ I͉̋f͝ y͙͋ò͈u'rͯe̪ ģo͟ͅnn͠a̤͐ w͚ͤͣơr̶͎k͆ ḟ̯ǫ͕r̢͜ me̡͉̘,̠ t͇͡h͢en̴̤̿ y͑͝o̟u͡ m̝͓i̛ģ̴̈́h_̾t̙ ás̆ weͪll be͚ a l̪̕itͣ̓t̘͈͎l̫ḛ̵̡ c̎lo̗͆͟s͗̄ͅe̤̥r. Fͅor͊ m̼o̟ṟ̛̙à͖̩l̂éͤ.͚”

Cruz stopped in his tracks, his heartbeat suddenly thundering in his ears. “. . .Really? You mean it?”

“I̾͆ m͙e̒a͐n iͭ́t̝̝.” Plier’s voice was suddenly softer than silk, having tapered down to a whisper. His smile was evident: malevolent yet, somehow, genuine. “Y̾o͡u̢͐'̮̽r̢e̖͍̽ ǹͩ͐o̴t͠ q̛ũi͇͐t͜e̼ͮ r̷̭̐e͂̏͜ady͇̗̕ f̝orͪ t̉he ne͇x͖̦́t̥̄ͅ st̝ͩe̜̼̖p̷̧̀s,̧̢ b͐ut̛̯̃ y̔̎̕o̡ͣ̒ŭͤ̉'̖͉ͬr̅e gé͚́tti̘̣̠n̗̊g̣̫͠ t͐h̝̄͠e͞r̼͇e.̺ͤ́ It̷͕ͮ'̩ͥs̙ o̠nly̵̅ a m͊at̼̅ẗ̡́e̪͐ȑ̬̣ ǫ͔̞f t͚ͧi̵̅͐m͛e.͂_”

Cruz’s eyes wandered up to the full moon. For the next couple minutes, all he could do was stare at it. In fact, the longer he did, the more its cold, pale glow seemed to shift, just barely lifting a veil to reveal. . .something else. The illusion was gone in an instant, but Cruz could’ve sworn he’d seen veins, seen an iris, seen a pupil. . .

“Thank you,” he breathed, his lips stretching into a new, excited, hopeful grin. “You won’t regret it.” 

“Y͡eą̢͝h̤̀,͚ w̨͔ẽl͈͐l, y̸̻͒ou'ḓ͊͐ b͐́et̸tẻrͪ n̽ot m̗áͬͧk̦͉̰e͟ me̼̿,̣” Plier snorted. “Ñ̦_o̽̈́ͣw̿ hu̸͔r̯ry u̧̫p and̎ g̩ͮe͇ͥţ ì̤͠n̸ͧs̺̔̂i̭de͍̞̍.ͯ́̚ W͚͛ë͔̹́'v͙̎̀e st̼̄īl̨̑l̜̉ got́̚ s̥̬̈́om̫e͈̤ͧ w̨͍͖o̢rk̅ͥ͘ to̻͕͘ dͬ̒͂o̶.́”

“Yes, of course.” Cruz quickened his pace.

As he took the first steps into his new home, all the anxious joy buzzing through his head dredged up something else. 

“Hey—” Cruz blurted. “It looks like there’s a little more breathing room than earlier.” 

That seemed to catch Plier a bit off-guard. “Ú͉̻h. . .̵̮̑Ȋ͖̹ g̜ͭue̦ss t̠̙ͬh͗e̜͙̓r̞̹ͯe i̟s̻̈́.̖ Ẇ̧̇hy?͉̺”

“Well, can you tell me anything about what happened now?” Cruz inquired. “You said that someone was back. So. . .who are they, exactly? How do you know?” 

“O͕ͣh̲͡. R̫i̼g͍̋̾hͨ͜t͡.̡̯͘ H̒ I͐̑ M̴͒ .” Plier seemed to growl deep in his throat, aggravation sparking into a flash-boil. “T̅͟h̳a̵̓ͪnk͙̋s,ͯͫ y̩̅̀o͜u ĵ͢ủ͓̂st̶̹̘ H̾A̭D to_ ru̥in my̶͈ mo̩͊̌o̦̿d̢̛͒ a̺̪l͕͍͟l̢̓ o͘v̪ͭeṙ̻ äg̺ą̎ī̯̃n.̖̀̾”

Cruz held up his hands in a defensive lame gesture. “Hey, it’s only a question. I just feel like I’m owed some explanation after all the rush, don’t you think?”

“Ma̞ͤy̒b͝e,̪̙̍ ma͔̫͝y̋b͜è no͆ͅ_t̟͓,ͧ̃” Plier snipped, his cryptic nature watered down by how obvious it was that he was now sulking. “L̗ͅo͓õ̹k͎̿͋,̈ t̢ͨh̨a̫͎̕t̞̦ͤ'̖̱s̑ a̻̽ͨ w͜h̤̠ͤol̝͖ë̢-͖̔a͞ss s̥t̂̓̆or̻͎͗y̴͝ fͦ̚or̍̂ a͐n͘otͭ̔h̶̫̙e̹ͩ̚r͊ d̩̓͘a͑y͕͡. Ri̭͖g̥ͨh̬t͉͉ ň̠͡o̮w̸̹͝,͖̠͝ ả̵̏ll͖̱̾ ÿ́̍̇ò̮̾ư̼̇ n̳̣e͎̘̐ȩd͎̞̓ t̷̓o̎ k̥̺̀n̼o͂ͅw is̽ th͋͞at͛ an old ri̻͞v͖̾à̢͈l̶̈́ o̱̕fͦ̎ ṃ̣͜iń̰e i̘s̓ A͑P̞̂̔PͬḀͧͅR̶̤͊E̶̵N̯͆̓TL̬̻ͪY̶͇ͦ o̤̰̊u̳ͮt̿ o̵f h̍̓ib̆e̝ͧͫȓ̑͆n͎aͩͤt̿̕io̒n̡.̧ͨ”

He paused as though wondering if this rival in question could hear him. Cruz sympathized, since there was a decent chance that really was the case. 

“Ạn̵̘͓d̓̊ a̒l͍ͬ͟s̲̀̌o̬͚͎ t̸ͤha̩̳͑t HͮEͮ̇̕ C̎A̝͇͊N̪̿͡ S̗͋ͧÚ̢C̮ͮK A̺ͨ VHOC̪̐T͎ͬ͜Ȍ E̞͓̿G̽͂Ġ̥ͨ!̷̸͟”  Plier added, raising his voice enough to make ancient church bells crack. “A̭̮͔ W̹ͪHÔ̸͙L̦̥E CL̡̻U̢̞͛T̅ͨĆ́H̙ͣ O͖̿̐F̰ͨ '͐ĘM̦̼̺,ͥͦ Ș̸͖O̚ Ḭ̗̼ C̨A̪͇Nͭ W̯͐ͦA̛͎̫T̋ͭͥCͦH̱͠ H͚̯IMͪ T͈R̙͞ͅỲ͈̐ T͐O Ṟ̷ͦU̮̙̺N H̷̛͔IS̈ M͌ͫO͇ͣU̘͗TH̘͜ WĨT͜H͟ H̯̏͠I͓S̞̀̆ B̡͌UĻ̓͂L̤̃S̀͗H̤Į̛̺T̳ P̮Ŗͯ̊O̷P̦̋̚HͭE_C̗͎IES W̄̿͞H̞͟E̝̣͘N͡ T͕Ḫ̌E̤̎ S̸͝H̴͉̳E̠͓͑L͇͚͜L͜S M̭͇͍AKE H̴̝̪I̜̮̊Ş̑ TƠ̭͝N̒̚G̤̋͟UÈ͓̙S̗̏ ŚHR̴I̙ͪVE̥̓Lͤ́ U̔̀P̑̆!̤”

“. . .Well, alright then,” Cruz murmured, now digging through his pockets in search of his mp3 player.

___

As adaptable as they always tried to be, Sam Ryder was not in the best mood right now. 

To be completely fair, not many people would be too thrilled at having to track energy signals, drive day-and-night to some middle-of-nowhere desert, sneak into a motel at the heart of some rest-stop town and lockpick their way into a specific room only to hide out in the darkness of its little lavatory and wait for what felt like FOREVER for the occupants to return. 

Ah, yes. Just another questionable charm of the industry built on stealth and secrets that most people were probably better off not knowing. 

Sam shifted from side-to-side, muscles tense, bored and impatient from having to be so still and so quiet. But this current, last-minute mission was important.

If those energy spikes the team back home had picked up were anything to go by. . .if there was even the slightest possibility that something out here was related to the Rift—

The door swung open.

The room’s main light clicked to life.

Two figures trudged inside, their movements exhausted yet shaky. 

Sam held her breath as the duo passed by without even glancing in her direction. She could hear them shuffling around the room, hear something heavy and solid being dragged along the floor, then lifted up and plunked onto a mattress. 

She set her jaw, cracked her knuckles as quietly as possible, and then waltzed out like she owned the place. There were a precious few more seconds for her to study the duo, as they both still had their backs to her. 

That changed the very millisecond she cleared her throat.

“Professor Jenkins—” she greeted, looking at the one with raven hair that nearly tickled his shoulders and features that seemed to point to some kind of Asian background. 

She glanced at his companion, a brunette man with fair skin and warm eyes that quickly grew to the size of dinner plates. “ —and Doctor James, I presume?” 

Part of her had expected a scream or two, but the most they were given were strangled gasps, as well as flinches so bad that her own stomach almost started churning with that cold, infamous type of shock.

“H-How. . .how do you know—?” Dr. James asked, stammering badly as he held up his hands and backed away, clearly trying to put something, anything between him and this surprise guest. 

“What, you think cable is dead or something?” Sam rolled her eyes. “Your reputations proceed you, and all that jazz.” Indeed they did. While she honestly preferred YouTube for entertainment these days, she could remember catching a few news stories about ancient tombs being explored, as well as at least three new species of dinosaur being discovered. 

All accompanied by respective photos of the men who stood before her. 

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” Prof. Jenkins demanded, quickly moving to stand beside his companion. 

“That’s not important right now. Don’t try anything stupid, and you might get a little information for your trouble.” Sam took a few steps forward, making sure the authority was clear as crystal. “I have some questions of my own for both of you, actually. And you’re going to answer them. Honestly. One way or another.”

The two archeology buffs exchanged concerned glances. Prof. Jenkins’ brow furrowed, but confusion shifted into understanding at breakneck speed. The same went for Dr. James, though he started shaking again, mouth opening and closing with no words coming out. 

That made Sam pause. Now that she could finally see their faces, it was clear how they’d both been wracked with fear long before she’d surprised them. 

They’d both already seen something. 

Something very, very bad.

Sam couldn’t help but cringe at herself. This had to be handled carefully.

You caught more flies with honey than vinegar, after all.

(Even though she’d definitely laughed very hard at sentiments like that more than once in the past.)

“Listen, I’m not looking for any trouble. I’ve just here because I got word that whatever is underneath this area might be extremely dangerous. And, unfortunately, it seems you guys have gotten way too close to it,” she reiterated with a sigh. “I can tell that something big happened around here today, but that’s just it. For the sake of my work, I need to learn more.”

As they listened, the duo seemed to ever-so-slightly calm down. Their adrenaline and fear was still very obvious, but it looked like they were at least considering trusting her now.

Sam spotted a desk near the corner of the room. She slowly approached and settled down onto the swivel chair set before it. She motioned for her two new conversation buddies to take their own seats. “As long as you cooperate, nothing bad will happen. I promise.”

Another moment of painfully awkward silence dragged by. But just as Sam was about to add a little more force to their elevator pitch, Prof. Jenkins heaved a sigh.

“It’s a bit fucking late for that,” he announced, hesitantly crossing the room and sitting down on the corner of the other bed; that must’ve been the one he’d claimed after check-in time.

Dr. James’ face kept twisting with stress and anxiety, but he, too, eventually took a seat on his own mattress. “Not sure how things could get any worse,” he agreed, reaching up to knead at his forehead, his hand still trembling a bit.

“Nice job tempting fate,” Sam said with a mirthless chuckle. She glanced between them. “So. What’s apparently worse than anything right now?” 

“. . .We’re not entirely sure ourselves.” Prof. Jenkins fidgeted in place. “There’s a few underground cave systems just half-an-hour away. The only reason we came out here was to check one of them for fossils, or gems, that kind of stuff. We—we didn’t mean any harm.” He groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “I’ve seen shit that would turn anyone white, but. . .he was something else.”

Sam blinked, brow furrowing in confusion. That certainly didn’t sound like anything to do with the Rift, but they’d been wrong before. “I’m sorry, ‘he?’ You’re saying you found a person in one of those caves?”

“Not a person,” Dr. James argued, fear quickly spilling onto his features all over again. “A monster! A goddamn monster! O-or a demon, or a spirit, I have no idea. But whatever he was, he was not human! And now he’s somewhere out there and no-one else can go into that place and it’s all our fault!” 

He curled in on himself heaving a combination of sob and sigh. “So many teeth and eyes and moving skin. . !”

Prof. Jenkins was back by his side in an instant, grabbing one of the paleontologist’s shoulders to help him stay steady.

Sam, meanwhile, felt their heart sink. While they were now at least eighty-five-percent sure that the team didn’t have to worry about the Rift. . .it looked like different-yet-just-as-horrible option was on the table.

After a long few seconds, Dr. James straightened his back again, though his eyes were still so full of pain and panic. “I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just been such an awful day. One traumatizing thing after another.”

Sam nodded, a generous dose of empathy worming its way into her features. “Well, that’s a good summary, but it’s still not quite enough.” She sighed again, then leaned back in the chair. “Start from the beginning, please.”

@sammys-magical-au @inkbedou @mostlyghostly42 @safe-hayven @sunny011387 @heichoublack @m0naca @beomjunniz

[x-bee-x]

I was thinking of a color and like describing things someone in the server would associate them with, decided that someone would be Pac, then went through the rainbow and then some.

Prism

816 words

Pactw lives in a world of color.

Dipped in a vat of rainbow from the first blink of life.

He does not ever say what his favorite or least favorite shade of the world around him is when asked.

Because sometimes it's red.

Like his heart, like most anyone's heart he supposes, what was most commonly associated with love.

Like the sky looming above them on that other island, the one where they called Watcher took them and made them play games that required winners but none were exactly keen on winning, the place where three children were apparently also waiting and needed looking after.

Like the blood that ran from his leg, or the place it used to be, but was now running along grey stone floors, and in the stubble and along the smiling teeth of the person across him.

Like poppies, his niece's favorite flower, that she handed out to each beloved member of the island and was later placed in a vase or sewn onto backpacks or tucked behind ears.

But it's also orange.

Like the outer petals of his son's favorite flower.

Like prison jumpsuits, the kind he wore in Alcatraz, after he and Mike were a little to reckless and got caught and were lead away and kept behind metal bars until their escape.

It could be yellow.

Like the main color of the jersey his son wore, sitting too big on his tiny and oval body.

Like the halo that sat above Bobby's head, where he stood waiting for his parents and other island residents, behind a wall of glass and inside an all white room the Federation lead them too.

Like the yolk that dripped like blood from the weapon belonging to someone that looked like an employee of Cucorucho, but had a single eye in the center of their face, the body of his niece on the ground nearby.

Like the innertube with features of a duck that sat around the frame of his nephew.

Or sometimes it was green.

Like the numbers on the front of and around the neck and sleeves of his son's jersey.

Like the "moss" that dotted Badboyhalo's back when they got back from Purgatory.

Like Mike's eyes, and the shirt he wore with a creeper on the front, and his soul.

Of course there was also blue.

Like the underside of his hair that was dyed before his date,

Like the flames of which his team were named after on the other island.

Like the hoodie he wore basically every day.

Sometimes it was purple.

Like the particles that surrounded a person when they used a warpstone.

Like the veins that glowed and pulsed along the inky wings of Philza.

Like the almost translucent portal encased in obsidian that no one was allowed to go through, except the president one time, and he came back wrong.

Like the mushroom hat with white polka dots his niece liked to wear.

There was also pink.

Like Mine, the partner of his soulmate, of her eyes and hair.

Like the color of the pills, that were flavorless and tasted more artificial than anything, from the bottle with a smiley face he held in his fist.

Like the almost certain blush on the apples of his cheeks as he lifted and hid his face in the collar of his shirt at being asked to go do a dungeon, just the two of them, sort of like a date.

But it could also be brown.

Like his own eyes.

Like the leather band of his second son's goggles that sat around the top of his head.

Like the crates on the cargo ship that sat along the side that brought him and his companions to the island.

Like Cell's hair, who had since added a second syllable to his name, but it still hung kind of curly and in his face the same as prison.

Like Fit's favorite tee shirt.

Or sometimes it was black.

Like his own hair.

Like the blocks of concrete left behind in the place of children, along with notes of worry and love, and blurry pictures, dotting the land like weeds.

Like the ten and a half pairs of legs and feet running around giggling and needing cookies.

And it was white.

Like the shine of Badboyhalo's eyes since his revival.

Like that stupid bear and their stupid employees and the stupid walls and floors of the buildings they worked in.

Like the bottle of pills that sat in a locked briefcase, and his hoodie and pants which had been replaced, and the teeth of the too wide to be honest smiles that he and the president shared.

Like the shells of his children and nieces and nephews.

Pactw lived in a world of color.

He liked and disliked each shade for their own respective reason.

But his world never lacked.

[echothealien]

Yokai Au updates/headcannons.

The chapter I posted is completely irrelevant to the main story, I'll write it on Wattpad and post it here so I can keep a word count and edit easier.

Yokai Sonic is a punkupine, a long with Knuckles, Amy, Surge and any other quilled character because Yokai is very limited, they are different, I know but my thing is they're origans are from different regions of Japan to accommodate to their looks, Knuckles is from the mountain regions where he needs big hands to dig and a longer snout to get bugs and berries from low bushes without hurting his self.

Sonic, Leonardo and Espio are trans! Sonic is pansexual, Leo is gay, Espio is bi.

Sonic markings around his eyes glow in the dark a long with his freckles that turn soft white in the dark and a few quills.

Espio has more prominent scales scattered around his body, they're a little darker or lighter than others, he has 3 fingers like the Ninja Turtles cuz its cool.

Leo is fruity as usual, I gave him a more markings that a red eared slider has and he paints on the full eye stripes because as he was put into the wrong body female red eared sliders only had tiny red dots.

Silver is still from the future, just not the messed up one with the Kraang, timelines and stuff, yay.

Tails is taller than most everyone, Sonic is the shortest (because its funny, he's a Short KIng) he has brown markings and he's like 12, instead of him being weird for having two tails he's weird because he doesn't have 6 tails as a kitsune! when Kitsunes are born they have two tails, he just never got the rest.

Shadow appears much, much later he's not from space, he was created on Earth and put into a time capsule pod. Maria is sadly dead but of old age after GUN took Shadow away after she was healed, its been 80 years instead of 50. Shadow is 20, forever. He is 3 foot 8 inches, 8 inches taller than Sonic (I love making fun of Sonic's height, its just too good to pass up)

Knuckles is like 34, a parental figure to Sonic and Tails, like Raphael is to his little brothers and how Vector is to Charmy and Espio.

Vector is basically Leatherhead, because he's the best, he's loyal and he's amazing.

More updates later.

[bunnywalkcr]

prompt 002.

who: bunny / self-para when: september 28, 1990 where: the walker estate ; 12:41 am

In the wake of the storm, Bunny finds that she can't quite sleep.

The winds have died away and the skies have long since cleared. Even now, looking beyond the wide window beside her bed, Bunny sees the faint pinpricks of stars dotting the night sky. But when she closes her eyes, the stars vanish; suddenly, she's back where she was when the storm hit, with its howling winds and wayward whispers...

It was her love of coffee that had brought her downtown. And not just of a regular, black cup of coffee—something she could have easily made at home—but one of the seasonal lattes they made at The Ceramic Cup. Autumn always brought specialty flavors like cinnamon apple and chai spice to the local coffee joint; sweet drinks that could chase the chill from her bones on cold, grey days.

Not to mention, Bunny had fond memories of The Ceramic Cup: sitting in the sun-spotted café as a child, sipping strawberry milk through a straw; her mother drinking espresso from a tiny cup, her lipstick leaving a red crescent moon on its glossy side. Meeting boys in high school for first dates outside its glass doorway, sitting side-by-side with past crushes on the creased vinyl couches. It was a place that made her feel connected to the way things used to be. Even as she'd parked her cream convertible Chrysler TC in one of the angled public spots near the square and slid out of the driver's seat, she'd noticed the sudden weight of the clouds above her head. When she had left home, the clouds had been little more than a layer of white frosting covering the blue sky, with sunlight occasionally peeking through. Now, they seemed suddenly darker, swollen, charged with a pre-storm tension.

She'd wrapped her arms around herself as she'd turned the corner and marched up the sidewalk, the wind tugging at her hair with restless fingers. The warmth inside The Ceramic Cup was welcome; stepping across the threshold, Bunny let out a breath she didn't quite realize she'd been holding. But a shiver ran down her spine all the same as the door rattled shut behind her.

No sooner had she settled herself at a small table, a purple mug brimming with latte foam cradled in her palms, than she noticed the way the wind had picked up. Loose sheafs of paper and empty bags spun along the sidewalk in addition to brown and golden leaves. The top branches of trees bent unnaturally forward, as if being tugged on by a string. The tiny bell above the coffee shop's main entrance tinkled ominously in the draft that seeped through the cracks in the doorframe.

Bunny waited, coffee cup clutched between her breasts, watching through the window with wide eyes. She waited for the rain to break, for the thunder to boom, for lightning to split the sky. But the winds only grew more fearsome, howling and hungry as the clouds swirled above. When the windows started to shake, other patrons looked up, too—some with furrowed brows, some with anxious eyes. The door began to swing open and shut on its hinges, and a few customers rose abruptly from their tables to grasp the handle and pull it closed. Mugs chattered on the wooden shelves. Is it a tornado? one worried voice asked. Or an earthquake? another chimed in. Branches were wrenched free from the trees and the ground seemed to quiver. The worried voices rose, a swell of anxiety. One of the baristas shouted for everyone to take cover! Bunny was on her knees beneath the table before she realized she was moving. Around her, the uneasiness grew. The voices of her fellow patrons were muffled by the screaming winds. A baby began to wail, and a mother shushed it too loudly, frantically.

And then she heard the voice.

( Maybe, she thinks now, maybe it was just a voice inside her. Her hateful inner monologue adopting a new tone. But then, at that moment the voice had felt surely and entirely separate—something else, something other, something had invaded her her mind and violated her thoughts ).

I see the truth behind those carefully spun lies, the secret your family hides for you and the darkness you can't escape.

The voice faded almost as quickly as it'd come, drowned out by the rattling of windows and anxious cries of the people around her. But the impact of those words seemed to settle inside her, a weight in her bones. It made it hard to stand back up.

The wind had quieted soon after, and Bunny had emerged alongside others from beneath the relative shelter of their tables. Eyes had met with mutual expressions of fear and confusion. Hands had trembled and mugs had broken, shiny ceramic shards of green and pink and yellow across the linoleum. Bunny abandoned her own half-drunk latte on the tabletop, slinging her purse haphazardly over her shoulder to push through the front door of the coffee shop, into the mess that lay before her.

[spookyspaghettisundae]

All Other Eyes Be Damned

The walls had eyes. Tiny cameras dotted every corner of Future Proof’s headquarters. Every stream of data ran through security systems, monitored by a combination of ever-churning algorithms and vigilant human attention. Every employee offered another set of eyes and ears in the hivemind, witnesses to any wrongdoing or espionage.

If they noticed such a thing happening. If.

Working previous jobs in corporate cybersecurity, that network of eyes used to feel like an extension of herself. Beady plastic eyes with electronics for innards, connecting to the eagle-eyed observers at the center of the hivemind.

Filled to the brim with loyal worker bees and cutting edge infrastructure, a towering skyscraper like Future Proof’s would have offered her a treasure trove of tools in her previous occupation.

Now, Chloe Grant was a grunt again. A well-paid mercenary on the frontlines, but a field operative. Her job was to contain and send dinosaurs coming through temporal Anomalies back into their proper eras.

Her job description did not include monitoring potential spies or ensuring the general public never learned of Anomalies or dinosaurs. The CEO, Malachi Spencer, had not hired her for that. And it wasn’t like she missed that line of work, either. Counterintelligence was always a dance on the razor’s edge—doing your job just good enough to make sure the oiled machine kept running without a hitch, yet never drawing so much attention to yourself that you became the subject of suspicion.

Yet here she was. Every step she took down the hallway towards Communications was going to make her look like she might be a spy herself. She had no reason to go there.

The walls had eyes. Those beady plastic eyes with electronics for innards watched her every move.

Now, she felt all those burning eyes on her. As she walked down the hallway, she had to wonder who would be sitting behind a desk and watching her every move from a security monitor. Wondering who’d sound the silent alert if she stepped out of line, or started acting overly suspicious.

After his arrest, Singh was out of the picture. That only left dozens of other people in the company who could be gunning to take down someone like Chloe Grant for a quick win.

Someone could have been composing a note on her in that very moment. For all she knew, Spencer might be reading that kind of memo by the end of his meeting in the boardroom, and activating everybody to get her fired, and entangled in lawsuits going deep enough to keep her impoverished for life.

Paranoia flared up as brightly as the burning fires of those tiny red dots on all the security cameras, the myriads of eyes all around.

She paused by the door to Communications. One such eye’s tiny red dot glowed above the door. Grant caught herself staring at it longer than she should have. Long enough to catch the attention of anyone behind a security desk and monitors.

Snapping out of this trance, she waved a hand, and the door slid open with a soft hydraulic hiss.

Danielle Bennet sat in the main hub of Communications, on a sleek swivel chair, illuminated by the cold blue glow from a wall of curved monitors. Only few of Bennett’s screens displayed security camera feeds from on-site premises—her main focus centered around myriads of dashboards accruing staggering amounts of data, camera feeds from other cities worldwide, and a show on YouTube where a young woman was talking at the screen.

Bennett hadn’t heard Grant nor noticed her enter Communications. A steady stream of chatter from two tiny earbuds plugged into Bennett’s ears likely occupied her entire attention, or served as white noise that conspired with the data she was monitoring on the screens to distract her entirely.

The other desks were currently unoccupied. With Singh absent and any other personnel out of office, Bennett sat alone in Communications.

Grant almost sighed in relief. She shoved all the creeping paranoia down into a dark hole, then slammed the hatch shut, and locked it. She pursed her lips and regained her composure, then approached Bennett from behind, giving her new colleague two light taps on the shoulder.

Bennett gasped and clutched her chest with a slender hand.

“Oh my f—Chlo—uh, Miss Grant. What can I do for you?”

Bennett forced a smile so nervous that it looked painful. With a flick of her wrist, she blindly closed the YouTube video she had been watching. And catching how Grant spotted that interaction with a furtive glance, Bennett’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment.

“Hi,” Grant said. She paused while she silently struggled to find the right words. She bridged the gap with a question. “Do you have a moment?”

“Yah, uhm, yeah. W-what’s up?”

Grant was a tall woman, easily standing over a head taller than Bennett when next to one another. With Bennett sitting at the hub’s desk and Grant standing next to her, she must have towered over her the same way Future Proof’s HQ overshadowed the surrounding city buildings. A dizzying difference in heights.

Grant leaned in and cleared her throat, ready to drop her volume to a conspiratorial murmur. Bennett flinched and her cheeks turned a darker shade. Her eyes glittered with apprehension.

“I… need your help. This needs to stay in this room, between the two of us,” Grant said.

Bennett blinked. Blinked again. Rendered speechless, she stared at Grant, doe-eyed.

Grant chewed on her lip before continuing, knowing she needed to be more specific.

“I think there’s a spy in Future Proof, and we need to make sure. I think there’s someone spying on Spencer and the stakeholders as we speak right now. What do you say? Help me out, okay?”

Bennett blinked again. It was taking her too long to absorb the gravity of their situation.

Grant waited patiently, even as every second of time painfully ticked, and her chance at learning what she needed to know slowly slipped away. She needed Bennett’s help, but she couldn’t force her hand. Not now.

Not yet.

“Wh—uh-uhm, o-okay,” Bennett sputtered out. With a hasty gesture, she swept her hair back behind an ear and her gaze blanked. The gears were beginning to grind. The blank gaze hardened and then focused on Grant, locking onto her with a serious expression. “What do you need exactly?”

Grant nodded.

“I think there’s a bug planted in the boardroom. I need some way to intercept the signal, to listen in on it or to trace where it’s transmitting to. I know we can do that, I’m no newb to electronic warfare. Question is, can we do that really quickly somehow?”

Bennett narrowed her eyes. The gears behind her forehead continued to grind. Her brain was visibly running through a million calculations at once, chief among them a burning question: was Chloe Grant the actual spy in this scenario, engineering a situation where she could gain access to information she shouldn’t be getting?

Some part of Bennett must have navigated that maze of a million calculations fast. To go out on a limb here. She nodded in response to Grant’s question.

“Yeah, I got an idea, but, shit. Miss Grant—”

“Call me Chloe.”

She flashed Bennett a small smile.

The Communications operator’s cheeks flushed red again.

“Okay, Chloe, well, I have an idea but, shit, Singh just got into serious trouble, he’s—”

“I know Singh’s in hot water. But he’s in hot water with the federal government, not with Future Proof’s management. I haven’t been here long, but it’s clear we need to act before things get even worse. We all know the Midland disaster was the result of sabotage, right? Come on—think about it. Call’s coming from inside the house, Bennett.”

Grant clenched her jaw. Bennett stayed silent, stunned by this waterfall of conspiratorial assumptions. Some of them had struck a chord.

Grant softened her tone and asked, “Danielle?”

Bennett broke eye contact and rubbed her temples. Staring into the sea of data as it continuously churned on her wall of screens, she continued rubbing her temples while she processed everything.

“I can rig one of our portable Anomaly detectors to single out the signal from all the other noise and then trace it. Are you…” Bennett sighed. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Sure as dino shit,” Grant said, ringing powerfully with confidence.

She almost believed it herself.

Bennett switched gears and practically jumped out of her swivel chair. She zipped around Communications like a fluttering fairy. Within a matter of minutes, she cluttered her desk with tiny tools, grabbed one of the spare PADs, gutted its electronic insides, and rewired the device entirely.

Grant still felt watched. Even in here, an artificial eye was watching their every move. Systems continuously recorded everything. If anybody ever started digging, the hivemind would know what had  happened in this room. There would be uncomfortable questions.

She had to keep telling herself she was acting in everybody’s best interests, so this wouldn’t get her or Bennett into trouble. Hell, if everything worked out, it was bound to make her more popular with Spencer.

Even so, she licked her lips with a dizzying sense of apprehension, almost as if she was standing at the edge of a steep cliff. Stretched this thin with time ticking away, Grant’s patience waned. The longer they waited, the sooner the CEO’s meeting in the boardroom on the top floor would end. The sooner someone could remove the bug and dash any hopes of tracing it back to the spies.

All those eyes. Everywhere. Yet so many of them stayed blind.

Bennett beamed with triumph. She presented the modified PAD to Grant, quickly ran her through how to adjust the tracker to different Wi-Fi and radio signals, and proudly techno-babbled about how she had already filtered out all frequencies and signals commonly present and used throughout the building.

Finally, she handed Grant the earbuds.

“Once you’ve singled out the signal, the PAD should display any video feed, and you can listen in on whatever audio it’s transmitting. If it’s neither one or the other, it’ll just be a bunch of noise, but it’ll be recording everything on this puppy.”

“You are a wizard. I owe you one,” Grant said with a genuine and warm smile.

Before she could register any response to that, or truly absorb how Bennett kept blushing in her presence, Grant stormed out of Communications. The artificial eyes in the walls could continue watching her for all she cared.

Courage and vigor renewed, confidence swelled in her gut as Grant sensed she had found an ally in Danielle Bennett. She quickly dismissed a tiny spark of paranoia that Bennett might be involved in the espionage herself, and leading her into a trap within traps.

Riding the elevator up, Grant’s pulse started racing again. Time slowed, colors brightened, and her awareness sharpened.

Her wristwatch revealed she had lost fifteen minutes already. She hoped Spencer and the stakeholders would be filling a scheduled hour-long meeting in the boardroom.

People as important as the “Three Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse” had other places to be. Things to do. Lives to ruin elsewhere, more millions to shovel into shell corporations and off-shore bank accounts.

Worst case scenario, they were already done talking up there.

Grant muttered at the elevator’s level display, urging it to hurry up in its ascent, as if that would help accelerate anything.

The elevator dinged and its doors swished open.

She ducked past two people she had seen before but forgotten the names of, two office worker bees from the top floors. One of them was Spencer’s personal assistant. They chattered about coffee. They also largely ignored Grant.

The PAD in her leather jacket pocket weighed a ton. Cold sweat gathered in her palm around the small device she kept clutched in there, hidden.

She turned a corner to get out of sight from other human beings, and switched the detector on. Its screen winked to life. First, the display of Future Proof’s logo glitched out with graphical distortions, then replaced by plain text and numbers of Bennett’s hacked tracker superseding the PAD’s installed programming.

Grant plugged in the earbuds and started searching. Meandering around the top floor of HQ, adjusting the tiny dials on the device, and thumbing through Bennett’s new settings. She quickly passed by the main offices and glimpsed the boardroom through its sound-proofed glass walls—Spencer, Cole, Jae, and Romero were still in there, speaking to each other.

Good.

“I see you,” Bennett said, words arriving with a hint of static in Grant’s ears by way of the earbuds. However insecure Bennett may have seemed earlier, she now spoke with authority, and a sing-song in her tone. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I figured you could use some backup. Say hello to the audience at home.”

Grant spotted the nearest camera in the corner of the hallway. All eyes were on her, after all. Though her heart still raced—with excitement, and a creeping sense of dread—part of her was relieved that all those eyes were Bennett’s right now.

She greeted the camera with a timid wave.

Bennett answered with cheer, “Yep, that’s me. Hi!”

Grant flashed the camera a crooked smile. Had little time or space to appreciate Bennett’s sense of humor. So, she continued searching. Tweaking the PAD’s settings.

Then she swore when a sharp metallic whine eclipsed the soft white noise from her earbuds. Almost ripped them out of her ears, but then the whine died down before she could act upon it.

The PAD’s screen flashed with a red alert.

She had traced the signal. And more than that…

NO VIDEO, said the screen with a small error icon.

AUDIO DETECTED, it added beneath that, with a button prompt she could press to start playback.

Grant’s thumb hovered over that on-screen button. Her paralysis wouldn’t last long.

Curiosity won out. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Grant had always hated comparing herself to animals, anyway.

Human through and through. She tapped the button.

While she raised the PAD to continue tracing the signal’s path, speech from inside the boardroom filled her ears.

Spencer spoke as sharply to the stakeholders as he did to his employees.

“…and you don’t think it’s convenient that our satellite imaging and the ADS were offline up until Captain Rose and his team were precisely on top of the incursion?”

The ensuing silence in the boardroom was deafening. Someone clicked their tongue in frustration.

Spencer continued. “What makes the world go round, Mister Jae, is cold, hard cash. You represent the ITC but there’s more than one way to secure the necessary funds, and we might need to consider those alternatives if you cannot ensure our systems are running at full operability worldwide. Let alone in our backyard.”

Another long stretch of silence followed. Grant followed the signal all the while. It led her down a corridor she had never seen before.

Bennett asked Grant, “Should, um, should we be listening to this? This, uh, uhhh—”

“Focus. Never mind what they’re saying,” Grant replied. Tremors rocked her voice, echoes of her racing heart. “Let’s focus on the facts. Someone’s eavesdropping on the boardroom meeting, and we need to find out who.”

Kim Jae finally broke the silence and answered Spencer. His every syllable dripped with venom. “What’s the point in shifting the blame around here, hm? You know better than anybody else that we’re not interested in some government goons meddling with your work. It affects our bottom line as much as yours. Which is to say: badly.”

Grant stopped. The signal was leading her up. This was the top floor of the building, so that left only one conclusion for her to draw.

The signal was being sent from the boardroom to the skyscraper’s rooftop.

“You think they’d be using an on-site antenna to bounce the transmission?” Grant asked Bennett.

“Well, no, I doubt it. Risky move to pull if anybody started looking too closely,” Bennett said.

“We do have a lot riding on this,” Romero chimed in. Her words carried no audible venom, but reminded Grant more of the slithering of a rattlesnake through tall grass. “And do not forget this, Malachi. As much as you can replace us, a corporate entity like yours can be replaced as well. A fancy logo and a glass house filled with a bunch of drones are easy to build. Just takes another yahoo with enough drive to sneeze at a new startup and we’d have another face to work with. Remind yourself of that before you even consider threatening us again.”

The boardroom’s silence, again, was deafening.

Grant stepped into the emergency exit stairwell. She followed the steps upstairs. The detection hack confirmed her suspicion, the on-screen flashing continuing to grow in its intensity. She was getting closer to wherever the bug was transmitting to.

Was Ruiz on the rooftop himself? He couldn’t be that bad of a spy, right? Or was he just that ballsy?

“Uh, Gr—Chloe. Please, I really don’t think we should be hearing any of this,” Bennett spoke into Grant’s ear. “It’s making me feel preeetty uncomfortable.”

Grant had no reason to keep listening. Yet she couldn’t help herself. Curiosity had killed the cat. Curiosity had also killed people before. If she was a cat after all, she probably still had a few lives to spare, right?

She yielded no response to Bennett.

Spencer’s words cut like knives again. He spoke with a gravelly gravity to match a death threat.

“Do I sound like I’m threatening you, Lena?”

More awkward silence.

Grant could almost picture Spencer in front of her: hands folded with an eerie calmness before him as he sat at the head of the table, with his usual stony and cold expression. His eyes resembling those of a predator in the wild, unblinking, piercing in their murderous gaze.

Unmoving, unflinching. While poised to pounce.

She pushed through the door. Violent gusts of wind swept over the rooftop, whipping Grant’s hair around.

The signal was close. The display on the PAD offered her a sense of direction. It flashed brighter and brighter and as she neared the receiver, pinging with subtle beeps in her earbuds that kept growing louder with every step.

“Almost there,” she muttered.

“Can barely hear you with all that wind,” Bennett replied, raising her voice.

“Listen, baby,” Kim Jae said, punctuated by a long groan. “We’ll figure out who was fuckin’ around with the Midland op. Call it an act of goodwill or whatever you want, but we’re as vested in seeing who’s fuckin’ around with you as you are. There’s some problems you wanna, y’know, nip in the bud? Before they grow into more serious problems. Like I said, we’re all sweating a bottom line.”

Grant reached the edge of the rooftop. The screen flashed with a direction indicator pointing to her right.

Past a long, precarious stretch. She backtracked, looked for another way.

There was no other way.

Cole spoke up. “And I can pull some strings. Find out who’s behind Rose and his team, and get them off your back. You have enough burden to bear as it is. Your efforts are not going unnoticed.”

Romero closed. “We all have a lot to lose. Big investments we poured into Future Proof, returns we’re all expecting to see down the line. You keep doing what you’re doing, and the imbeciles who think they can cut into us will pay. Your deliveries to the FIP task force are about to yield first fruits, I’ll have you know.”

More silence.

Grant wasn’t afraid of heights, but the vista from up here was enough to make her stomach churn. It looked like the city beneath the tower was a million miles down. Coated in bright pink by the setting sun, the skyline glittered and its streets teemed with streams of ant-sized cars and microbial people.

She needed to tear her gaze away from the dizzying depths, and focus on the PAD’s tiny screen. It still flashed, still indicating the source was located to her right.

About twenty paces along a narrow, precarious ledge. That’s where the bug was transmitting to.

What she spotted there was not a receiver.

“It’s a fucking relay,” she hissed.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Bennett responded. “I don’t even see you on any of the cameras. Keep in mind, if you grab the relay now, or disrupt the signal in any way, they’ll know someone knows about it.”

Spencer said, “Please enlighten us then, Lena. What are you cooking up overseas?”

Grant had never seen Lena Romero smile, but she could envision it. Like the rest of the people in that boardroom, they could have all served as villains in a James Bond movie. Therefore, Grant imagined Romero to be showing a devious, confident smirk.

Romero said, “Bio-weaponry, and it may prove to be more effective than that old EMD tech you have been using to neutralize, herd, and capture specimens.”

A shudder ran down Grant’s spine. The heights added to her dizziness, threatening to turn into full-blown nausea. Everything Romero had just said had sounded all kinds of wrong. Red flags and warning lights had all flared up in Grant’s mind.

And she had no time to dissect it properly.

The winds howled around her on the skyscraper’s rooftop.

If she wanted to get to that relay in time, she had to balance along the narrow ledge. The walls and a vent offered some handholds she could grip to secure her way across, but a single violent gust of wind risked her sailing off the building’s edge.

“The Containment department might appreciate such developments,” Spencer said. The crooked grin on his face surfaced in his tone. “There will be no sneak peek, I presume?”

Grant committed another mistake of looking down. She rattled down a whole string of disjointed profanities.

“You okay?” Bennett asked.

Grant grunted in approval while she shimmied her way along the ledge. “Mhm.”

“Of course not,” Romero responded to Spencer. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up if something doesn’t… pan out. I don’t want to make any false promises.”

Another gust of wind whipped hair into Grant’s face. She gripped a vent’s grate so hard that her knuckles turned sheet-white. The thin sheet of metal whined and started to deform, bending to her body’s weight.

She envisioned herself slipping, dropping from the edge, falling to her death.

Cole asked Romero, “You wouldn’t be keeping such developments to yourself now, would you, my dear?” He chuckled. That chuckle contained something dark, mirroring his colleague’s verbal poison.

Just a few more steps of shimmying. Grant’s leather jacket scraped and scuffed against rough concrete walls as she clung to the edge of the building with all her might. It crossed her mind how fearless Ruiz must have been to plant the relay in such a dangerous place.

Romero laughed a rehearsed laugh. Hollow, courteous, and disingenuous. “Why, of course not, love.”

Grant reached the relay. A small black chunk of plastic, an unassuming electronic device with a long antenna unfolded from its side—no screens, no blinking lights, nothing noteworthy but a small button. A spidery mess of Velcro appendages from its back kept it fastened to another metal ventilation grate.

Spencer guffawed. “If that is all, then I believe our meeting is adjourned.”

Someone clapped their hands a single time in the boardroom.

Grant needed to hurry.

She cursed again as she fumbled, trying to detach the relay device with a single hand. The other hand was tied up in holding on for her dear life. Another cold and cutting gust of wind threatened to rob her of her balance, reminding her of the deadly drop, above which the heel’s side of her boots freely hovered.

Howling wind almost drowned out a flurry of meek words from Bennet’s end. “Hey, Chloe, if this is too dangerous, maybe we should… I don’t know. Just be careful, okay? I’m up here with you, got your back.”

“I got it, I got it,” Grant lied. Her heart pounded so hard that it wanted to escape from her chest.

Shuffling sounds filled the boardroom. Hands were probably being shaken. A door opened.

The Four Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse were leaving. Meeting adjourned.

The Velcro straps tore. Grant hissed in triumph as she clutched the freed relay, and made her way back across the ledge—just twenty paces that could have just as well been two thousand.

Forcing herself not to look down again, for every glance downwards only added to her sense of gravity, as if each glance kept adding more weight to her body, making it harder to hold, to not fall. Every cruel gust of cutting wind reinforced this notion, as if the grim reaper itself was flying closer, ever closer, ready to pounce and pull her down.

With white streaks on black leather, where she had scuffed her jacket and pants on concrete walls, Grant gasped with relief as soon as she stumbled back onto safer grounds upon the rooftop.

Bennett was standing there, awaiting her, with both hands folded over her mouth to suppress any gasps. Wide-eyed, she removed her hands and her eyes flashed with a relief to mirror whatever euphoria Grant now felt flooding her insides, as if she had experienced the same adrenaline second-hand.

Grinning stupidly, Grant shared her triumph with Bennett. She held the relay up high and repeated, “I got it, I said I got it!”

“Okay! Okay,” Bennett said. She smiled and stepped up to Grant, then snatched the relay from her hands. “Let’s have a look.”

Grant dropped down into sitting, catching her breath. Everything was catching up to her, and the breathtaking vista of the pink horizon and glittering skyline around her started spinning. Her lungs screamed from all the breath she had been shortening during her death-defying balancing act.

Winds still howled where they swept over the rooftops.

Bennett knelt beside her, enraptured by her laptop, and the relay device sitting next to it while she run diagnostics and scans on the signal.

Scanning.

A small window on her screen kept flashing with those words, repeating.

SCANNING.

Adrenaline and euphoria both faded.

Grant wondered what this all meant. Was Ruiz a spy for competition? For the government? Someone else entirely?

The conversation in the boardroom was over. The bug was still capturing silence and transmitting it into the earbuds, drowned out by howling winds and the hurried tapping of Bennett’s fingers on laptop keys.

“Almost got it,” Bennett said. “The receiver, tracing.”

Another window on-screen zeroed in on a satellite imaging map. It zoomed in with big leaps, first on the globe, the USA, on Texas, and then all the way down into Austin.

Grant scooted over and clapped Bennett on the shoulder.

“You are a wizard. This is amazing.”

Bennett blushed. She asked, “What are we going to do with this, what’s next? Do we tell Spencer?”

The on-screen window zeroed in on a small café. Zoomed in until its outdoor tables and chairs and umbrellas gained definition. Blocky pixels turned precise, drawing a clearer image. Text nearby spat out an exact address.

Grant shook her head.

“No. Sit tight, hold onto this stuff—do not tell anybody,” she said. She used her phone to take a snapshot and pointed at the satellite image of the café on screen. “I’m going to check that place out.”

Bennett uttered no protest. Grant soon left the building, rushing past security guards and metal detectors, and slamming her car’s door shut.

She clocked several miles per hour over the speeding limit as she stepped on the gas. The city flew by while her heart pounded again with a mixture of fear and excitement.

Night had yet to fall. The setting sun still painted the city in bright orange and pink hues, with lights glittering all around, forming streaks as Grant’s car sped down streets, swerving through traffic. Neon signs flickered to life, and storefronts lit up. Faces in the crowds melted away, swallowed in the sea of streaking lights, both natural and artificial.

By the time she arrived at the café, Ruiz was mounting his motorcycle by the curb, slipping a helmet onto his head. Ready to go.

A beautiful red-headed woman in a three-piece suit was sitting at a table nearby, watching him leave. Grant had never seen her before.

Contrary to what she had told Bennet, she didn’t know what to do next.

Two trails to follow, and she now had more questions than answers to show for it.

Only now did it cross her mind: What if Spencer knew? What if Grant was sabotaging something he knew about, something he was accounting for? After all, he wouldn’t have been the first CEO to sell out his own company, to make off with a golden parachute once the ship started sinking.

The Four Horsemen of the Corporate Apocalypse had gathered in a boardroom—a nest of deadly vipers.

Whose eyes were on Chloe Grant now?

And who would her own eyes follow?

Stewing in such uncertainty, she felt as dizzy as she did when she had been shooting glances off the rooftop of Future Proof’s skyscraper. Feeling the weight of gravity growing with every look.

Ruiz’s motorcycle rumbled as he ignited its engine, then the vehicle roared. He drove away.

Grant stayed put. She could always figure out how to find Ruiz, though she’d miss his next steps, and those might have been crucial to understand his motives or allegiances.

Instead, she watched the redhead. The unknown unknown. Hoping to answer more questions than following her might raise.

She was going to tail her. See who this was, what she was up to, with her own two eyes.

All other eyes be damned.

[valiantwarriorsquadroncomic]

MISSION 6

Within a classified meeting room inside the HARRIS, armed erasure unit guards surrounded the area as Andrew Norman reported to the secretary of defense and the C-USA president Melissa Dowell, and director of America’s intelligence agency, the ODS. “I’m thrilled that operation trifecta went along swimmingly” he said as a large, bat-like man in a large horned mask loomed next to him with a tiny thermos. “George smith and Sgt. Gustavo are as good as captured.”

“Excellent work, Mr.Norman.” Said Madame president. “We had some doubts that these special interests groups would cooperate, but it appears our fears were exaggerated. “You managed to arrange a coordination exercise that also doubled as a rescue of multiple POWS, needless to day, I’m very impressed.” Andrew saluted the president with a subtle smile.

“You honor me, Mrs. President.” He replied. “We shall commence a multi-pronged attack for both targets, QM’s spy network has damaged ALA intelligence, monitoring George smith’s every move.” He took another sip of tea from his thermos cup. “The HCA are destroying any airborne aircraft on sight, and even the FPU are providing support in regards to supply and resources.” A large map of prospera was projected within the meeting room. Several red dots blinked near prospera’s no-go zones. Giant red arrows blinked indicating movement, pointing to mainland south america while others simply stopped flashing. “Our intelligence agency and CNGS intelligence have detected multiple ALA bases being destroyed while large swathes of ALA members are fleeing to Argentina.” Andrew nodded as she brought up a middle aged German man with thinning hair. “The HCA defector responsible for the Berlin bombing has yet to flee to south America, HE is to be VWS-1’s next target.

“And what of my senior corps orders, madame president?” asked the mask man.

“BERSERKER, your team shall continue to apprehend WNM6 members and question them about the whereabouts of their main headquarters and leader. She answered. “Bring in high ranking members alive, but I have no concern how you deal with any ALA member that gets in your way.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Said BERSERKER, as he let out a low, menacing chuckle. The erasure unit soldiers surrounding him and Andrew began to sweat, those not in the usual mask peered at each other in fear. After dismissal, BERSERKER walked Andrew alone to his office.

“Quite a feat.” Said Andrew casually. “It’s hard to strike fear into erasure unit soldiers.” BERSERKER ducked behind a sign to ensure his 7 foot 10 frame wouldn’t smack into it. “Especially those two, who are refugees from Eastern Veledovia.”

“I’ve been informed about the veledovian conflict.” Said BERSERKER. “refugees from veledovia period are almost like spartans, hardened from being raised in abject poverty to mandatory army conscription at 18. He held open the door for his superior. “Even its government cabinet of both east and west have adamantly clung to independent status despite the inevitable submission to our union dedicated to global security to the rest of Europe.

“Many of my colleagues in the CNGS advisory council and the white house were very sore upon hearing President Juan’s decision to remain independent.” Andrew said in a neutral tone. “I don’t understand why, with the agreement with other independent countries for a balance of power, and east valadovia’s ally to global security status, we will be properly compensated in the near future.” Meanwhile in the small medical wing of the HARRIS, Joseph visited Logan after 10 days of his rescue, ducking under a broken directory sign.

“God damn, that thing’s been broken for weeks.” Joseph muttered to himself. “They have the cash to fix it, I don’t know why they just wont.” Joseph showed his badge to the guards, who noticed he had proper clearance and disinfection to enter the recovery room.

“Damn, they’re working your ass off, huh?” Said Logan, noticing Joseph’s tired expression.

“Yeah, they made us go through a boot camp so we’d be ready to snatch George smith from his bunker.” His fist clinched as George smith’s face flashed in his mind, but quickly returned to Logan. “Something weird happened to me.” Logan got quiet, as he was still trying absorb everything that happened. “I’ve been able to sense a person up to 65 meters now, and I’ve developed some sort of enhanced reflexes.” He said, remembering how he somehow outmaneuvered that ALPHA KOMMANDO member and was able to stab him in the neck. He tried to change the subject to hide the discomfort of the changes that made him feel less human. “You’ve really made a comeback since the last time I saw you.” Joseph said as Logan was doodling in a large sketchbook.

“That lion lady you talk about is a really fucking great doctor.” He said, showing a cartoon of Laleh to joseph. The cartoon depicted Laleh fully furred and walking on two legs, like something out of a cartoon. Logan had despited her accidentally bumping over a wooden chair with her hips, her face bright red as it fell. “She kept on apologizing to the head nurse, but this place feels like being crammed inside a little box.” He continued, showing another cartoon of him and fellow patients being shoved into a small cardboard box, the head doctor angrily jumping up and down on them. Joseph laughed upon the sight, and Laleh, while she was a bit embarrassed that her little table incident was immortalized, was overjoyed to see her friend in a joyful state. “Also, SO.AKROPOLIS was really thrilled that to see my art!” he said, showing several torn pages of his sketchbook.

“Let me guess, she took them?” joseph asked.

“She literally screamed with like an insane fangirl at a boyband concert and took all the drawings I made of her.” Laleh’s jaw dropped. “It scared the hell out of the guards.”

“She could’ve asked you first!” she with a snort, putting her hands on her hips. “I need to have a word with her, then!”

Logan held up his hands as joseph laughed at laleh’s reaction, but was also full of pride that at her becoming more assertive when someone or something upsets her. “It’s okay, really!” Logan said, reaching for his wallet, and pulling out a sizable bundle of cash. “She’s probably the best paying client I ever had!” the private room grew quiet as Logan noticed a look on Joseph’s face. “I know what you’re gonna ask me.” He said as Joseph’s expression severed.

“If it’s OK to ask, did…your mom know about your dad?” he asked. Logan put his sketchbook down.

“I think she probably knew, but didn't know what to do…” he replied quietly. "I mean...what the HELL was ANYONE supposed to do?" He sighed. "We both saw him get more weird about South Africa and stopped talking to his friends...he made me clean a bunch of guns we didn't even KNOW he had... Laleh's eyes widened in disbelief. "I think she was too scared to call the cops, and at least she was rescued from the ALA, thank god. He looked up to joseph again. “Those communist guys said that I have to wait a while to see her again. He drummed his delicate fingers on the hard back cover of the book. “I know she’ll be okay.” He finished with a hopeful, but sad smile.

“That’s what made me fall for you in high school.” Joseph said as he caressed Logan’s cheek. “The ability to see the bright side when things are fucked.” Laleh began to tear up, wiping her eyes.

“That’s just terrible.” She whimpered. “You’re so brave for dealing with all this with such stride. Logan shrugged sadly

“It’s not like collapsing to the floor and crying is gonna help my mom.” He replied giving laleh a box of tissues, joseph rubbing her hand to comfort her. Joseph’s gaze peered to Logan, his hands folded in front of him, staring into space with an empty smile. His scars pulsated rhythmically. The same vertical scars he and RM III had. It was apparent to him that what ever an “RM” was, he was one of them. “I heard they’re running your ass ragged at that bootcamp.”

“Yeah…” said joseph. “They’ve also got me wearing a new piece of armor. Joseph thought back to the first time he was brought to the bootcamp training room in prospera. “Their briefing room was just a dinky broom closet, and the CNGS special forces representative plopped the helmet in front of me.” He shuddered as he recalled the disturbing smile the Representative have. “Like, since RM II defected, it feels like they’re hoping I’ll be their replacement.” He recalled the face of the prosperan special forces operative who ran him like a dog with sniper drills and combat training. “They REALLY wanted to make sure that I was familiar with anti-material rifles.”

“Does the helmet look like mine?” Logan inquired, as laleh became silent. Joseph slowly came back from reality when he recalled the special forces operative taking a long drag from a cigarette as joseph sat exhausted parallel to him . He remembered the sad look on the operative’s scarred, wrinkled face he regaled joseph on horror stories from the prosperan civil war. He replayed the older man’s cynical, yet forlorn tone as he told joseph how it was prospera’s “proud tradition” to try and kill each other as shook himself out of his daze.

“It’s like yours…and it kind of looks like her.” He said, pointing his thumb back at her. A sudden BANG went off in the ceiling, causing joseph to instinctively flee toward the small table in the room and flip it over while Laleh thundered towards him and shielded her friend as if he was under attack. She desperately tried to search herself for a weapon as joseph pulled a combat knife from his vest. Logan’s eyes bulged as he saw the spectacle.

“Are…you guys fucking okay?”

Joseph and Laleh snapped out of their sudden trances. Laleh noticed she was foaming at the mouth and tried to wipe it off in a panic. Joseph also got a grip as he put his knife back into his vest.“Looks like everyone’s having a shit day.” Said Logan.

“It’s just been a little tough lately.” Joseph said. “I think all the horrific bullshit we’ve seen is catching up on us.”

“We should ask for another round of therapy before this mission, I feel that should assist in easing our troubled minds.” Laleh answered, attempting to smile and ease Joseph’s concerning glance at her manic state. Undoubtedly, he was being reminded of her breakdown on their very fist mission. “You’re understandably on edge because we’ll be confronting the man whose incompetence harmed you in a way he can’t take back.” Commented laleh, gently gesturing joseph. “I also assure you that I’m just a little tired, and to not be concerned about me.” Joseph nodded as the two made their way out. the flat screen TV down the hall flashed to a breaking bulletin, causing a hoard of CNGS personnel to flee to in in shock and horror. Joseph and laleh peeked around the hallway to understand the commotion. The TV swooped down to the FPU president, Il presidente Juan Hidalgo Ramirez fleeing and ducking behind a concrete barrier with several FPU soldiers as his podium was shot to pieces by sniper rifle fire. He was shoved into an APC which sped off with several other military and government vehicles. The crowds of prosperan citizens panicked and fled as FPU soldiers fired into the rooftops where several assassins fired back.

“Today at 11 am central time, president Juan Ramirez of the FPU was celebrating his country’s official independent nation status and the country’s military being mostly repaired after years of war.” Said and anchorwoman. “The ceremony ended with Independent Germany gifting an old destroyer to the prosperan navy. However, the celebration was cut short as an attempt was made on the president’s life.” The TV cut to several white men in balaclavas, reading off a piece of paper in English. “the American branch of the ALA, the largest and leading branch of the entire terrorist organization has claimed responsibility, as retaliation against attacks on their bases.” The room feel silent as joseph began to close the door. “What was supposed to be a celebration of the United Prosperan Federation pulling itself out of poverty and war was dashed to pieces.

Joseph felt his phone vibrate several times, and discovered fritz texted him 3 times in a row. He whipped out his phone as he tried to steady his nerves from his sudden PTSD episode. From the corner of his eye he saw laleh’s fearful gaze as he opened his messages.

“THE FPU’S MINSTER OF DEFENSE ALMOST GOT KILLED BY AMERICAN ALA OPERATIVES” “THOSE NEO NAZI BASTARDS LITERALLY JUST DROVE UP AND THREW A PIPE BOMB AT HIS VILLA” “FPU GOVERNMENT CABINET IS IN AN UPROAR.”

Joseph suddenly felt cold at the recent developments, as if something terrible was looming on the horizon. Not helping things was that tomorrow morning was the date that the VWS would attack the airfield and raid the George Smith’s shelter. Meanwhile in the Harris hanger, Veronica barked at a crew of her personal guard as they loaded an escape craft into the underbelly of the RISENFLEDERMAUS. She flipped through digitally generated 3d schematics as her aircraft’s engines were tweaked to accommodate the new weight, the face plate being freshly replaced. She chewed through her pen as sweat dripped from her brow. The extra engineers she hired barked at each other in farsi and English. Her brother scrolled through a news article about the prosperan government uproar, a Representative demanding that America take action against the ALA’s recruitment and troop dispersal as it was founded and staffed mostly by white Americans. Fritz approached his overwhelmed sister, noticing the chaos.

“Is everything OK?” he asked as she tightened a bolt on the escape vessel.

“NO, OF COURSE NOT!” She yelled. “DO I LOOK OK?” she continued, waving at the escape craft being finalized. “I’M LUCKY I EVEN GOT SOME EXTRA HELP WITH INDEPENDENT IRAQ AND INDEPENDENT AFGHANISTAN’S AERONAUTIC ENGINEER CORPS!” the mechanics occasionally watched over their shoulder at the giant monster woman as they finished their work. A worker dragged over a chair with some headache medicine and a cold towel to their boss. “Thanks, you are very sweet.” Said veronica, pulling out a business card. “Email this number so you can all properly get the overtime you deserve.” The engineers began cleanup, hurriedly rushing around fritz as he noticed the RISENFLEDERMAUS’s new addition.

“A second aircraft.” Fritz stated.

“No, it’s an escape vessel.”

“It looks too…polished and advanced to be some escape pod.”

“Don’t tell me you’re complaining about me caring about safety!” “I’m not.” Replied fritz, sitting next to her. “You’ve been testing and tweaking the RISENFLEDERMAUS for days with this thing attached, not to mention how you’ve run enough safety checks to get three separate certifications that it’s safe for field and combat use.” Veronica took a giant swig of water from her giant water bottle, a worker gently dabbing her head with the cold towel. “It’s about what happened to mom, correct?” He said, looking right through her. She shot up in surprise, frightening her worker.

“She almost got shot down, and told me it shook her so badly, she’s going to retire to politics.” The giant monster woman took the towel for herself. “Thank you Khalid, you’re an angel.” She said, pulling a large stack of money and shoving into his pocket. “Get your wife and mother-in-law something nice.” Veronica rose from the chair wearily. “FINISH YOUR WORK AND LEAVE IN AN HOUR, THE HCA ENGINEERS WILL FINISH THE REST, YOU’VE DONE ENOUGH FOR ME THIS PAST WEEK AND A HALF.” Fritz unwrapped a large chunk of dried and cured ham, a favorite treat of hers when she became stressed. She smiled sincerely at her brother’s kindness before eating the large piece of meat into two clean bites. The two continued to conversation in a private room. “Got another call from some of the old farts in the HCA court.” She said in a bored tone, pulling out a tablet, her work email filled with angry messages.” “YoU’RE NOt SUPPoseED tO pAY thEM EXTRA” she said in a mocking, crotchety tone. “THey’RE supposed TO wOrk PRO-boNO To PaY OFF HCA iNTERvenTION FoR StaBLIZing THieR cOUNTRIES” she snorted as she sent the messages to spam. “We’re supposed to support our fellow independent countries getting back on their feet after years of instability, not hold that over their heads until they die.” She logged off her email. “Worthless, old bastards.” She added.

“The ALA may be fleeing from prospera and taking their high command leaders with them” said fritz as Veronica began to finally cool down, but they’re certainly enraged that they’ve effectively lost the war.” Veronica held her head in her hand as she swiped through a tablet. “Ironically, the more violent they act and the more they flee to other countries, the more incentive other countries aid in the fight against them.” He swiped to several news websites. “CHILE JOINS CNGS AS ALA OPERATIVES FLEE TO SOUTH AMERICA” “ARGENTINA BECOMES ALLY TO GLOBAL SECURITY AS ALA ACTIVITY SKYROCKETS ON MAINLAND SOUTH AMERICA FROM THEIR EXODUS.” It’s like watching a chess player with a single pawn futilely move their final standing piece as they’re cornered into checkmate. Fritz said cheerily. “Damned if they fight, damned if they flee, they’ve effectively brought mortal enemies together.” Veronica’s left air flopped to one side, lost in thought. “Once smith and Gustavo are captured…HE’s going to be the next target. Her ears shot up again, as her eyes became blood red. “I’m speaking the truth, he had fled to prospera and had been hiding for some time after he…”

“…masterminded the Berlin massacre.” She hissed. “I wouldn’t doubt he’d just use prospera is a temporary stop to flee to Argentina.” Her eyes slowly faded to a light orange. “I just hope those ancient old farts hold our services to the VWS over the CNGS’s heads either.”

“I never expected you to say something positive about the coalition.” Inquired fritz.

“No, I don’t give a fuck about those power hungry busybodies.” She answered. “I do however give a shit of they try to run Nathan, joseph or laleh into the ground or treat them like busboys.” Veronica clicked off her tablet. “Speaking of nathan, he’s been a little more quiet than usual.”

“He’s probably busy.” Fritz assured her, as her eyes returned to their regular, putrid yellow color. “He’s probably also receiving the word that Schmidt is to be pursued and captured as soon as possible after we apprehend smith.”

“Of course!” she answered, once again in her confident tone, trying to pretend that she didn’t hear Nathan’s screaming and crying last night that chilled her to the bone. Fritz noticed her discomfort.

“There’s been this eerie sense of dread since mother almost died, and I’m here for you.” He clasped his hands and looked around cautiously, noting his sister’s compromised state. “Perhaps I should change the subject.” Fritz’s hands fell to his side as his mood seemed to drop. “From what our informants on the HARRIS said, apparently…he’s in a romantic relationship with that Logan fellow he rescued.” Fritz’s eyes faded from the usual piercing yellow to a pale white.

“That fucking sucks, I know you were hell bent on treating him right.” Said veronica, heavily, but empathetically thumping fritz on the back.

“I’ll at least let him know of my feelings once things calm down.” Fritz replied, thinking of the BIOMENACE ALICE statue kit he had bought and a bouquet of roses when he prepared to let confess his love. “I know I can’t be his, but at least I’ll put this beast to rest so I won’t stare forlorn at his beautiful visage from a distance.” Before he walked away, he fumbled through his bag. “Mother wanted you to have these.” The young man presented his sister a large box and a small container covered in CNGS warnings. She wants you to present them to joseph.” Veronica quietly observed the foreboding packages.

“This can only mean that shit is about to get drastic.” She replied. Throughout the Harris, more activity bustled as the day of reckoning for George smith arrived. He was now in a “bunker” which seemed more like a poorly kept prison. a series of blotted out faces were chattering amongst each other. APOTHECARY had been suspected of foul play during his actions of the Fort NFELHEIM Subterranean bio-weapons accident, which set back their RENAISSANCE MAN serum experiments. Am dist the chattering, the center figure, an old man with a blotted out face, held up his hand. The rest of the figures suddenly fell silent with an instant. “GEORGE SMITH.” Said the voice.

“I HAVE COME TO THE UNANIMOUS DECISION THAT YOU ARE NOT GUILTY OF SABOTAGE OR DELIBERATE INTERFERENCE TOWARDS THE PATH OF THE ARYAN PARADISE.” APOTHECARY let out a sight of relief as he slumped back into his chair. “HOWEVER, YOU LET INEXPERIENCED STAFF HANDLE CHEMICAL HZ-98R, CAUSING THE UNNEEDED DEATH OF 5 MEDICAL STAFF MEMBERS, FORCING NFELHEIM STAFF TO EXECUTE A PREMATURE EVACUATION, AND LEAVING LARGE TRACES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION AND MATERIALS TO BE SNATCHED UP BY THAT BLASTED COALITION, INCLUDING RENAISSANCE MAN 4.” APOTHECARY froze up again. “YOUR PUNISHMENT IS DEMOTION TO COMMON MEDICAL STAFF, AND THE LOSS OF YOUR ALPHA KOMMANDO POSITION AND PRESTIGE.” A bombing run caused the monitors to flicker. “ONCE YOU ARE EVACUATED, THESE PUNISHMENTS WILL BE IMPLEMENTED POST HASTE. Gustavo’s video feed flickered as his safehouse was also getting strafed by bombing runs from the HCA and their advanced jets.

“You’re also working to get me OUT of this hellhole, my New Fuhrer?” he asked meekly. The older man paused for just a moment.

“HOLD OUT AGAINST THE ENEMY, AND WE WILL SEND SOMEONE TO GET YOU, AWAIT FURTHER ORDERS.” The old man turned to the other blotted out members. “OUR NEXT SUBJECT OF DEBATE SHALL BE OUR UPCOMING RAID ON CNGS FACILITIES FOR MATERIALS NEEDED FOR OUR ABOMINATION PROGRAM.” “WNM6 SHALL BE THE HERALDS OF THE ARYAN PARADISE.” The entire monitor flickered off as more jets flew above the bunker.

“A raid on the coalition.” Sneered APOTHECARY. “With those white sovereign lunatics in high command gaining more influence, I won’t be surprised they’d approve of something so needlessly stupid and costly.” He clenched his fists. “Mark my words, those blood thirsty MANIACS will be the death of this organization.” Within his barely disguised prison, APOTHECARY watched the footage of joseph encouraging Logan to keep fighting and to keep living. He looked back at his schematics for his abominations, the ALA sympathizers volunteering to be irreversibly changed to monstrosities to fight for the aryan paradise. He held his head in his hands as the weight of his misdeeds, and the courage and humanity joseph exhibited despite being a subhuman, racial untermensch in his eyes.

An alarm bellowed throughout the bunker as ALA communication experts had picked up the RISENFLEDERMAUS, and an unidentified aircraft with a large red star. The radio chatter picked up from central command showed the ALA soldiers and the other American auxiliaries panicking. Screams that “The Red scar and his pet lioness demon” were going to claim their souls. APOTHECARY adjusted his mask, and loaded his handgun as the VWS and E-12 touched down, HCA jets were surely destroying their own aircraft and providing cover fire. He was finally ready. Ready to surrender to the coalition, and he prepared himself move quickly. declaring surrender with being surrounded by ALA staff would mean certain death. Now he had to face the more deadly of the Renaissance men besides RM III. He had nowhere left to run, except to the very man whose life he had irreversibly harmed…

Upon the RISENFLEDERMAUS, Veronica swooped down to the least defended part of the airfield’s outskirts, joseph didn’t know whether to feel excited or disgusted. A mess of conflicting emotions swirled within him as he prepared to meet the man robbed him of normality forever. “I bet you’re excited to get your vengeance!” veronica called cheerily from the cockpit.” Joseph twiddled his thumbs as he gazed into the air.

“ I’m glad to put a stop to him before he hurts more people, but this is about justice.”

“You don’t have to be so high and mighty about this!” veronica called, preparing to land. “He’s gutter slime and doesn’t deserve any sort of mercy!” Nathan could detect an argument coming up.

“Oh, boy” Nathan muttered to himself.

“This isn’t my problem.” Fritz thought to himself, flipping through a new philosophy book, trying to be not annoyed. “God, I wish to desperately to just tell her off on these rants, but it simply isn’t my fight.”

“ You’re right in that he’s irredeemable.” Joseph replied. “Frankly if he dropped dead in front of me, if the ENTIRE ALA dropped dead in front of me, I wouldn’t give two shits.” Laleh grew uncomfortable at Joseph’s repressed bloodlust. “But I want to do things the right way, to get him as soon as possible, and get him shoved in a miserable little cell until he dies.”

“Frankly, I’d just blow his head off.” Veronica said. “If I confronted a man who took the lives of people I cared about, I’d probably put his head on a pike or sit him in front of a firing squad.” She let loose a disquieting, subdued cackle. “You should see the faces of the war criminals that CNGS hands to us, their reaction to THE WALL is the funniest shit ever.”

“That’s pretty fucking excessive.” Joseph sat up, annoyed. Before continuing he, peered into laleh’s worried gaze behind her helmet. He sighed and sat back down. “That’s just my opinion, and that’s all I have to say in the matter.”

Nathan shot a look at veronica, in which she also stood down. “OK, let’s drop this spat then.” Nathan smiled at her, giving her a thumbs up, internally sighing in relief that things ended before they got ugly. Joseph clutched his head, and his scars flared. “WATCH OUT!” he screamed, causing Veronica to sit back in her chair.

“Relax, I know its your wacky psychic powers going off, but we’re perfectly fine.” A small alarm blared as veronica continued to remain calm. “This thing can take whatever dinky little rocket the ALA throws at us.” The small alarm suddenly exploded into a blaring scream as the inside of the cockpit flashed red. “Oh, Jesus.” She wheezed. “HANG ON TO SOMETHING.!” she screamed, violently turning the vessel as a giant, black missile flew past her, only for it swing back around. “HEAT SEEKER!” she barked. “SON OF A BITCH!” she activated the RISENFLEDERMAUS’s automated machine guns, latching onto the missile, and destroying it. No sooner was it destroyed, another one was fired at her, followed by two more. “IT’S GONNA GET HAIRY!” she called out, as oxygen masks dropped to the passengers. Unfortunately, an engine burst into flame as a missile hit successfully, causing veronica to make an emergency landing. The automated system sprayed powerful extinguishing chemicals, thankfully stopping the inferno from spreading. She tried to regain control of the atmosphere of the RISENFLEDERAMUS, as everyone was terrified. “N-no problem!” she said, though nobody seemed convinced as she landed the jet. “I-I’m not scared, I’m j-just a little rattled!” she said, her hands trembling. This was the first time the RISENFLEDERMAUS sustained significant damage, with everyone in state of shock. Veronica sweat underneath her helmet, recalling her mother’s nightmarish near death as her own jet had caught fire. Nobody was receptive to the desperate attempt to make light of a desperate situation. The gang hobbled out of the downed aircraft, fritz puking out of stress and horror as laleh addressed any minor wounds. She sighed with relief as she checked joseph last.

“Nothing fractured or broken.” She said as she put a small bandage around Joseph’s wrist. “Physically, everyone else is OK.”

“Thank god.” Said joseph, rubbing his bandaged wrist.”

“However…” laleh said, looking back at veronica, impatiently pacing as nathan relayed their situation to a local QM field commander. “In regards to a psychological health…some of us are in need of more attention and care than others.”

“I’m trying to reach them as soon as possible, second lieutenant Gaertner.” He said gravely. “Fritz, scout the perimeter around the jet.” Fritz saluted as he dashed off again with super human speed.

“I-I could start repairs!” Veronica tried to explain. “I’m sure I could find some scrap to patch up the eng-”

Nathan put up his hand, causing her to shut up immediately. Joseph worriedly side-eyed the grim nature of two best friends in a rocky development. Nonetheless, he tried to sense any danger from anyone he psychically dowsed. “It would take too long, George smith is bound to be on some sort of escape vehicle soon, Nathan replied, the sweat on his brow betraying his level-headedness. “OK, understood.” “Thanks, meet up with you soon.” Nathan clicked off his ear-piece. “We’re gonna meet up with some E-12 soldiers to the east near the airfield, they got someone coming by to guard the RISENFLEDERMAUS.” He announced as Fritz returned, panting and taking a rest. “2nd lieutenant, make sure you don’t over-tire yourself, we can’t afford to have you weak in the middle of uncharted enemy territory.”

“Of course, Kapitän.” Fritz replied taking a large swig of water from his canteen.” Nothing unusual yet. No sooner than he said that, joseph clutched his head in pain.

“Oh fuck, what now?” Nathan griped loading his handgun.

“THE SCARRED BEAST SLITHERS TOWARDS US.” He whispered ominously. Laleh picked up on the term.

“That… terrible blond man from our mission when we rescued GHOST FANG…” she said, fearfully aiming her grenade launcher into the forest.

“Just keep us posted on his whereabouts, buddy.” Said nathan, putting his hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “We got to drag smith out of his burrow and bring him to justice.” Joseph shook out of his trance and nodded, training his gun in a certain direction as the gang made their way east. Nathan could see that they didn’t need a map to the airfield as HCA jets pummeled the airfield with napalm, large flashes of light signaled the decimation.

“I know you’re upset about the RISENFLEDERMAUS being in a sorry state.” Fritz said, trying to comfort his older sister. “You’ve put much love and craftsmanship into it, it must be terrible that you-” Veronica whipped around in subdued fury.

“Don’t treat me like that sniveling, weak little girl who used to cry at the drop of a hat.” She hissed at Fritz. “I’m just rattled that those MARXISTS will scuff up my masterpiece with their grubby hands.” She marched faster to get ahead of her brother, who continued to have his submachine gun primed and ready, its laser sight sweeping the darkness. That is, until his infrared scope picked up a humanoid form. Joseph’s scars flared as he dashed by fritz’s side. A familiar shaped stepped out of the foliage.

“Hell of a welcome party.” Said RM III, circling the VWS like a vulture to a dying animal. “You guys look pretty scared about something.” He said, tenting his fingers. “Did one of your fellow freaks die or something?”

Veronica lost her temper as she grabbed him by the throat, pinning him against a tree. She unsheathed her combat knife. “I’m not in the mood for your childish games!” She growled, pointing the knife inches away from his ribcage.”

“The combat armor’s new!” he said, peering back at fritz. “I know you call him childish, but you guys are bit too old to be playing dress-up?” I chuckled in Veronica’s face. “You HCA pricks always won’t shut up about knighthood, even though you’re a bunch of backwards, role-playing losers.” He turned to joseph. “Oh cute, they’re trying to strong-arm you into being their replacement Renaissance man.”

“Stand down, 1st lieutenant.” Nathan ordered, slowly approaching RM III, his hand gun trained on the blond soldier’s head. All of a sudden, joseph could sense danger from the trees, but not before RM III drew a handgun and shot the mysterious assailant on the head. The body of a poltergeist commando dropped from the canopy. The VWS stared at the abomination before immediately looking back at RM III.

“You’re welcome.” He said, putting up his handgun in a waist holster.

“What’s your game?” Nathan demanded, his gun still trained on RM III’s head.

“I’ve been separated from that miserable old fart, and I even I know wondering around this place alone is a death sentence.” His smug smile dropped as he grabbed his shoulder, a dark red stain formed under it. “Can’t believe that prick made me ambush that patrol alone.” He murmured mentally. “I swear that asshole is going to me killed one day.” Joseph noticed the wound on his shoulder and a bruise on RM III’s neck.

“Did RM II do that to you?” he asked, prompting RM III to pull his hand from the wound, and pull up his jacket.

“Don’t you have some have some prick to abduct?” he shot back. Everyone look toward nathan what to do. Time was of the essence, and smith could escape.

“If I wanted to kill you guys, you’d be worm food by now.” Said RM III, smugly turning towards The captain. “If you shove me into cuffs or sedate me until I’m a drooling zombie, that’s one less capable soldier.” A bead of sweat dripped of Nathan’s face. “You’re in a hostile place, coalition dog.” “You need all the capable soldiers you can to make a break to your allies.” Nathan refused to break sight from RM III or lower his weapon.

“Drop him and let’s go.” He instructed veronica.

“Is that wise, captain?” said fritz.

“If he tries anything, break his legs.” He replied. “Or shoot his kneecaps, whatever stops him from scampering off.”

“As you wish, captain.” Fritz answered. Veronica threw RM III to the ground, as they dashed towards the rendezvous point. RM III lagged behind, his body reeling from being tossed like a ragdoll. It wasn’t long until the VWS encountered heavy abominations, supplementing the ALA soldiers and their mercenary forces. Flashbangs went off as fritz gunned down hoards of neo nazis commandos, making sure to pace himself to avoid collapsing from exhaustion. Joseph used his danger sensing premonitions to snipe into the canopy as more poltergeist commandos dropped like flies. Joseph suddenly sensed danger, using his agility to leap from a heavy abomination that was lying in wait from foliage. Before he had a chance to kill him, RM III cut through several soldiers with his bayoneted assault rifle, leaping with superhuman agility of his own to drive the bayonet into the abomination’s skull. The abomination tried to pull the bayonet out in vain, only to fall backwards onto the trench. An audience of ALA mercenaries, demoralized from a lack of provisions and proper support watched in horror as RM III took out a large, bizarre looking knife. He began to decapitate the abomination, still clinging to life despite its grievous wound. It tried to let out a final scream as RM III finally sliced that last bit of muscle and tendon. Laleh was aghast as joseph ignored the vicious super soldier to concentrate fire on more marksmen. RM III gripped the decapitated head in his hand.

“I hope my techniques have left an impression on you.” He said proudly as joseph reloaded.

“Yeah, the impression that you need some goddamn help.” Veronica leapt on top of the trench, letting loose a barrage of heavy machine gun fire, signaling to joseph and nathan to stay back for their safety. Some of the ALA soldiers, were from the European chapter, some became frozen in their tracks at the sight of the giant bat woman.

“IT’S THE IRON EMPRESS!” a solder screamed in a thick German accent. “WE’RE ALL FUCKED, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” only the abomination soldiers were left to fight the VWS.

“FIELD COMMANDER, THE BULK OF OUR FORCE HAS FLED!” Yelled the heavy abomination commander.

“You are to stay and fight as well.” Answered their leader.

“WE DON’T HAVE SUFFICIENT NUMBERS TO FIGHT BACK!” he insisted, as the gunfire drew closer. “WE’RE STRETCHED TOO THIN!”

“You orders are to prevent the CNGS dogs from reaching their allies, you are to be the backbone of the ALA.”

“THE BAT ABOMINATIONS AND LION ABOMINATIONS ARE BREAKING THROUGH THE LINES!” “WE NEED BACK UP N-” the heavy abomination was cut off as one of Veronica’s bullets made contact with his head, splattering skull and brains onto other abominations.

“THE ENEMY ABOMINATIONS HAVE BROKEN THROUGH!” garbled a poltergeist commando, as he futilely fired upon laleh as RM III and joseph used her as mobile cover. Joseph was honestly a bit shocked that his best friends and the other animalistic super soldiers were abominations.

“So, have you finally figured out you’re basically the fourth Renaissance man?” sneered the blond super soldier.

“Oh, that’s what that meant.” Joseph said. “I suppose that makes sense.” RM III became annoyed at Joseph’s lack of shock. “The Renaissance man program was a super soldier program created by the coalition to cut down on specialized labor costs.” He said smugly sniping another poltergeist commando. "They wanted a soldier that could pull off multiple roles at once, and subjected them to a nightmarish training regiment to boot." "Plenty of guys died to perfect it.” Nathan was furious as he was going to let joseph know about the program in coalition guidelines. Laleh thundered in front of joseph, allowing her friend the safety as he reloaded once again. Joseph tuned the vicious soldier out as he continued his marksmen duties, saving fritz from an enemy sniper as he killed a poltergeist commando from stabbing his sister. RM III grabbed him, getting in his face. “You didn’t listen to a fucking word I said.” He barked, his face turning slightly red.

“I’m sure the CNGS has shit it’s keeping quiet about.” Joseph said, “I’m know I’m probably an “RM” thing or whatever, but I also know you could be full of shit.” Laleh grabbed RM III, and slammed him into the ground once again, ferociously growling.

“DO NOT TRY THAT AGAIN.” She sneered. “YOU WILL REGRET IT.” RM III scrambled to get back up, assisting in breaking through the lines as the VWS took cover using an overturned vehicle shell.

“Hey man, I just want to tell you the truth.” He said as joseph reloaded. “The CNGS lies to your face on a regular basis, anything to maintain their burgeoning neoliberal empire.” Joseph proceeded to ignore him, casing RM III to get even more exacerbated. “You’re better off with me and the old man, we’ll fight for our survival, not some stupid organization of hypocritical, bleeding hearts.” “The CNGS won’t ever let the choke chain off you, since you basically became a Renaissance man from stolen CNGS bio-slop that went airborne.” This finally got Joseph’s attention, as he shot back at RM III with a vicious stare. “Just dump the self-righteous losers who are trying to save a crappy world full of stupid, useless people.” “At least you get to retire and put your feet up and enjoy the fireworks as the unwashed masses kill each other.”

“I’ve had enough of your shitty, selfish attitude.” Joseph spat back. “The world’s in a bad place right now, even without the ALA.” As the gang drew closer to their goal, the ALA were suddenly sideswiped by QM soldiers. “I know damn well that putting George smith in prison won’t magically make the world a better place, and I know damn well that even when the ALA collapses that Nazis won’t disappear.” RM III was actually caught off guard by Joseph’s rough tone. “That doesn’t mean I’m not going to try to stop terrible people from doing terrible things.” A large green APC smashed through the underbrush, and cut down the abominations, forcing them back. “My life will never be the same again, and putting away smith won’t bring my friends back or reunite me with my parents.” RM III feigned annoyance, trying to conceal the pain of rejection. “At least I’m in a position to help others, and I can at least try to make the CNGS less conniving.” RM III was completely silent as no one had ever brought up the futility of his viciousness. “I’ll never join you, and I pray to god you get it through your skull that we have NOTHING in common.”Joseph’s scars flared again and proceeded to shoot into an unassuming pile of ALA corpses. RM III was simply speechless at this evisceration of his self-centered, social Darwinist lifestyle, but soon shook out of it when several bodies slid of a figure emerging from the corpses. It appeared to be another ALA abomination, but donned in a white mask, 3 vertical eye-holes on each side. The abomination wore large headphones with a single radio antennae on the right side. In the dead center of the mask, a large proboscis unfolded itself, its base resembling the remains of a human tongue. Blood poured from the bullet wound, staining the mask a dark red. RM III cracked a wicked grin as he dashed off to the dying monstrosity, digging his bayonet into its neck.

“Finally found that freak he kept bitching about!” RM III said, slicing through its neck muscles. “Thanks for clearing my path, idiots!” he sneered, tossing a flash grenade, causing the VWS to dive for cover. “You’re a fucking idiot for caring about a world that doesn’t care about you, hope it doesn’t come back to bite you in the ass!” RM III yelled to joseph as the super soldier disappeared into the jungle. “ITS NOT MY FAULT IF YOU DIE FOR SOME SHITTY, POWER-TRIPPING POLITICIANS AND THE SLACK-JAWED, UNCARING MASSES!” “I GAVE YOU A WAY OUT!” Despite his boasting, he winced at the bruise he received from a beating from RM II. A bizarre feeling rose in his chest as he saw the VWS fought to protect one another in the heat of battle. “Idiots.” He grumbled as the readjusted the refrigerated backpack filled with stolen abomination limbs and organs. “Relying on other people is a the saddest thing a person can do.” Joseph could sense RM III vanishing as the green APC opened up, revealing a muscular monster woman with a fleshy crest on her face, and large pincers that unfolded from her mouth.

“VEE!” she called out in a husky voice, waving at veronica. “MOVE YOUR ASS!”

“MAXILLA!” she answered cheerfully, rushing towards the muscular monster woman, and wrapping her in a hug.

“Save it for the after party, vee.” Said maxilla, gently pulling veronica off of her, cheerfully nudging the bat woman with her fist. “You guys got a prick haul off.” Before the VWS piled into the APC, several attack helicopter sped by. Joseph squinted at the copter’s insignia. Painted on it side was the words “FAFPU” as it sped off to the airfield. Moments later, Joseph and laleh leaned back, sighing with relief in the plush seats of the APC. Veronica began pestering nathan about the whereabouts of her jet, only for her to hush her as he got into contact with the senior officers. Fritz stared sadly and forlorn at joseph beneath his mask, as he pulled out a small diary to write in.

“This is the captain of VWS-1, we have successfully joined with the QM escort and on our way to the airfield, do you copy?” a voice crackled back.

“This is MacMillan.” Their special forces coordinator answered. “Good to hear, the senior coordinator would have my ass on a silver plate if you freaks wound up dead.” Nathan let out a chuckle at his ex-Co’s insensitivity.

“Any word from senior coordinator? He asked, as Veronica tapped her foot in the floor impatiently. “I just wanna check in to see of the senior officer corps’s mission to get Sgt. Gustavo is going well.”

“Extremely well.” MacMillan said, turning towards his senior counterpart. The large, masked bat-like man quietly observed a live video feed of the senior officers. Sgt. Nguyen knocked down helicopters with her short ranged, but devastating laser weapon built into her cybernetic arm. Equinox, the Japanese man and her 2nd in command, swiftly killed anyone with his handgun and combat knife that attempted to fire upon AKROPOLIS. GHOST FANG, recovered from his near fatal brush with RM II, took out poltergeist commandos with ferocity and agility. The large badger woman destroyed several bridges and protective fort walls, blasting hole into an underground tunnel that would lead to Gustavo. Finally, Charlotte descended from the sky, using several parachutes and her combat robot’s jet engine to slow her descent. However, she fell to earth at a noticeable speed, as if she purposely wanted to collide into the enemy base. The ALA soldiers screamed as the enormous hunk of metal acted as an improvised bomb, and were sent broken and flying as the monster woman made contact. The giant metallic beast was coated in blood, which only caused even more panic amongst the ALA. MacMillan looked away as Charlotte slowly removed an enormous assault rifle from a compartment, and blew away enemy armor and abominations. Body parts, blood, and organs splattered across the facility. “A bit too well, if you ask me.” He murmured in a concerned to Nathan.

“It’s shit like this that makes me glad we’re not fighting with the Coalition anymore.” MAXILLA said cracking her knuckles. “Some of our guys complain about being your allies, but it beats being labeled as a terrorist organization and threat to global security.” She rubbed a scar on her hand. “Don’t miss those days at all.”

“By the way, your 1st lieutenant’s little toy has been escorted into a QM safe-house, I know she’s probably pissing you off about that.” Nathan gave veronica thumbs up, and she soon fell back in her chair in relief.

“Alrighty, keep us posted, we should be arriving at the airfield soon.” He concluded, ending the communication. Joseph began to sense George Smith’s presence as they passed through a QM checkpoint.

“Hey uh…sorry for fighting with you before we crashed.” Veronica said. “He’s the person who hurt you and killed your friends, so while PERSONALLY I’d rather see him shot…you do you.” Despite being disturbed by her bloodlust, Joseph accepted his comrade’s attempt at an apology.

“I get it.” Joseph said. “Sounds like you’re also got a person to confront who did terrible things.” Veronica looked back at her friend Maxilla, who simply tugged her vest collar at the situation.

“You’re absolutely not one of those sad, mediocre apologists I run into with my own faction.” She said again. “So many times I’ve been told by the old farts in the HCA that excessive violence against the Nazis makes you as bad as them.” She leaned next to joseph, giving him a little side hug. “You actually WANT these bastards to be punished and you more than anyone here deserve to be disgusted by them.” Joseph smiled, which made fritz’s heart flutter momentarily before he got a grip and accepted joseph would never love him the way he wanted to be loved.

“I find myself occasionally enjoying killing these racist freaks.” Joseph confessed. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t like you in anyway at all.”

“And at least we’re not that blond coward who doesn’t care about human suffering or that abysmal state that the world is in right now.” She added. Maxilla whipped out a small portable radio device that was attached to a smart phone. She began tweaking it and swiping the screen with her finger until she heard a panicked voice.

“THOSE COMMIES BASTARDS BOMBED OUR FUCKING ESCAPE TUNNELS!” “THEIR ABOMINATIONS CHARGED RIGHT THROUGH US AND BLEW IT TO HELL!” Maxilla smiled to herself as she swiped her finger again.

“I figured we might get board on our little car trip, so how about a nice radio show called “we jacked these stupid fuck’s radio frequencies” She fiddled with the device again. A Englishman’s voice called out next;

“THE MAD SCAR’S BEEN SIGHTED NEAR THE AIRFIELD!” “WE’RE DOOMED!”

““I’M NOT SHITTING YOU! THE SCARRED HUNTER KILLED LIKE 6 SNIPERS WITH PERFECT HEAD-SHOTS BEFORE HIS GANG OF FREAKS KIDNAPPED ARTIFEX! “WE’RE FUCKED!” bellowed a man with a thick, Bostonian accent. Maxilla clicked the device again.

“THE RED SCAR KILLED WHITE WOLVERINE AND THE GREAT CUTLASS, I’M FUCKING OUT OF HERE!” Joseph suddenly remembered when he killed two snipers with a sword insignia and an insignia consisting of animal teeth. Another transmission got picked up with someone only muttering “Fröhliche Kaiserin.” Again and again. The VWS could hear another prosperan helicopter fly above them. Joseph looked around to see the multiple factions he had witnessed come together to stop the neo nazi threat of the ALA. For a moment, he was actually hopeful that people could put aside their differences to do the right thing. The VWS had finally reached the interior of the airfield, joseph once again picking up on George Smith’s presence. The green APC came to a screeching halt as URSA and another E-12 operative finished demolishing a cadre of American ALA soldiers.

“NATHAN.” Said Andrew Norman. “THERE IS AN ALPHA KOMMANDO MEMBER IN CHARGE OF THE BUNKER’S DEFENSES.” URSA provided joseph several photos of woman in the same sort of black camo and red armor as VELVET and the other abomination soldiers. SHE’S THE DEFENSE EXPERT OF ALPHA KOMMANDO, SHE SET UP MANY OF THE TRAPS AND SABOTAGED WEAPONS AROUND THE COMPOUND WHERE YOU APPREHENDED ARTIFEX. Joseph flashed back to the exploding rocket launcher that nearly killed veronica.

“You got it Andrew, we’ll watch out for her.”

“YOU ARE TO KILL HER ON SIGHT.” Nathan’s eyes widened at Andrew’s request. “AS WELL AS ANY AND ALL ALPHA KOMMANDO MEMBERS, INCLUDING N.1685.”

“Well, orders are orders.” Replied Nathan, his panicked eyes betrayed the concern for his superior’s blood-thirst.

“MY SUPERIORS HAVE DECLARED EACH OF THEM A LIABILITY.” “NO CAPTURE.” “NO NEGOTIATION.” “KILL.ON.SIGHT.”Joseph was perturbed by Andrew’s to the point order. His captain rallied them alongside the other E-12 members and QM soldiers as they headed towards the bunker.“MS GAERTNER.” Andrew said, speaking specifically to veronica. “IT’S TIME YOU GAVE THE CARE PACKAGE YOUR MOTHER GAVE YOU TO MR. BAKER.” Veronica felt around in her pack for a small box of sniper rifle ammunition. It read “ANTI-HOMO CENTONIBUS ROUNDS, ONLY TO BE USED AFTER GIVEN PROPER AUTHORIZATION, CODE 5-B512. A small note was folded inside, written in German, adorned with the HCA heraldry and an iron cross.

“THOUGH I AM UNABLE TO BE WITH YOU RIGHT NOW, I HAVE PERSONALLY TESTED ITS EFFECTIVENESS AGAINST THE FASCIST TRAITORS THAT DARE STAND IN THE WAY OF HCA BUSINESS.” GIVE THEM TO YOUR MARKSMAN, AND MAY HE SWIFTLY KILL THE FASCIST WHO TRIED TO TAKE YOU AWAY FROM ME.” Meanwhile, RM III could sense RM II’s presence as he made his way to the rendezvous point when he detected a presence hiding near a boulder. An ALA field captain in the same chocolate chip camo and dull red vest as the rest of his men crept out of his hiding spot.

“Renaissance man III!” he said with excitement. “To think I’d meet a fellow ubermensch in this hellhole! RM III stared blankly, his mask dripped with condensation and blood. “You don’t know how MUCH our organization respects you!” “you simply kill and take what you want without mercy or pity, no matter how much blood you must shed!” he said excitedly. “A true example of Aryan superior-” RM III said nothing as he took out his handgun and shot the ALA captain in the head, causing his brains to splatter all over the rock from which hid behind. The young man looked down at the Neo Nazi he killed, then to the bone fragments and viscera that stained the surrounding area. For the first time in his life, he felt the bitter twinge of shame and disgust. His face contorted in a hateful expression while he tried to fight back tears before scurrying back to RM II…

TO BE CONTINUED IN MISSION 7

[cracksh0t]

What’s your favorite character from your Fornite OC’s and do you have any particular headcanons you’re fond of? Also I love your work and lineart style, it appeals to me quite a bit :)

thank you so much!!!

my favorite little freak gotta be nick, my main crackshot oc... I do have a bunch of headcanons abt him that I enjoy :]

unnaturally sharp teeth: tends to bite and chews on things a lot (pencils, straws, etc) (all are shredded by the time he is done with them)

freakishly flexible... enjoys using it to his advantage and scaring people for funsies! or just sleeping in odd places cause he can cram himself in just about anywhere

what I call his "kitty qualities" ... has a few quirks about him that align with a cat; eyes shine from a flashlight, taking a nap in the sun is optimal (toasty), would probably go after a red laser dot given the chance, eyes get big and round if he sees something he likes (I usually draw him with tiny pupils so) ... stuff like that

he's very good at wood carving !! makes small little wooden trinkets, ornaments, etc.. likes giving them to his friends as gifts :] !!

he bakes pretty often.. makes worlds best chocolate chip cookies and other dessert treats. other than that do Not let him into the kitchen to make things it will randomly catch fire

ooh he also makes little stuffed animals on occasion.. finds sewing to be relaxing but it can prove a bit difficult with his prosthetic... so he mostly just sews if he needs to patch up an existing stuffed animal; he has a little teddy bear from his childhood that he can't sleep without.. it's name is Bubby

puts matches out on his tongue for funsies

keeps a flask with him (it is filled with gasoline) (he has accidentally drank it more times than he likes to admit)

[honmyoseagull]

CRIME SEINE ALBUM part 10 (Parisian places mentioned in Chapter X)

(below:) THE TEA CADDY: Little salon de thé, bit quaint, quite pittoresque, with a very british atmosphere and menu, in a rather old building (see the nice exposed beams). A bit out of the way, just in front of a teeny tiny little church, but very close to Shakespeare & co and Notre-Dame de Paris too. Excellent for a break after a long walk. (Where our punk recuperates from his night of dancing excess, though Bullsie wouldn’t know.)

Île SAINT-LOUIS, main street. The second pic sucks, but I like it because in the distance, yes, these are policemen on HORSES.

The caviste’s shop and its red façade. See? Can’t see blood on it! (a)

(In the text:)

The Tea Caddy:

He reaches for his phone, narrows his eyes at Daken-dot. He’s closer to home, now. On the other side of the river. Static, not too far from a little church, it seems. Bullseye squints. Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. Still... not... moving.

+

“Dunno. Took a night off. He’s not exactly the type I can take dancing. Paris by night with me is not exactly his thing. And I’m taking the long way home. Had lunch at a charmingly quaint little place called The Tea Caddy,” the mutant offhandedly mentions.

île Saint-Louis + Maison Tempus :

They’re walking together again, a meandering leisurely pace. They reach the island’s main street, which remains quite narrow, and it’s all quiet: the day has been turning steadily grey all along their walk, and now that a mist of rain has started to fall, it’s quite a bit deserted. They stop in front of a shop with a nice old-fashioned painted-red façade, a red of the dark color of burgundy wine.

“Ah, we’re there. The Maison Tempus. I think it will do as a caviste,” Hannibal says.

[katjasmiles]

so my friend julia and i started a thing we call pizza flipper fridays where we get ✨toasty✨ and take a frozen cheese pizza and zhuzh it up a little with a main mystery ingredient and whatever i have in my pantry/fridge.

my name is katja and since july i’ve been trying to teach myself how to cook and build a diverse pantry so i could create more satisfying meals at home at the drop of a hat for less than i’d spend going out to eat.

🍕🍕🍕

week one, our mystery ingredient was a nice big heirloom tomato

so we sliced up the tomato, crumbled some fresh cheese, drizzled some balsamic vinegar and put some dried basil on top

7/10 it was delicious and the flavors *were there* but it would have benefitted from a balsamic glaze rather than liquid-y balsamic vinegar flooding the pie. also some fresh basil for color. it’s just okay visually so i knocked a point off for it

i actually bought balsamic glaze after making this, it’s actually life changing i got it from whole foods.

🍕🍕🍕

week two, we had julia’s girlfriend lucy over and she brought the mystery ingredient zucchini

so this week we have some panko-fried zucchini, chopped red onion, and a mayo/gochujang drizzle on top.

10/10, absolute banger. panko added a nice crunch because we added it towards the end of the bake so it wouldn’t get mushy in the cheese. kewpie mayo and gochujang paste is my favorite combo right now and I’ve been putting it on everything. very visually pleasing to me, lots of colors.

🍕🍕🍕

week three we have julia and lucy back over again and our mystery ingredient is a rotisserie chicken

we went a little crazy this week and used a white pizza with spinach on top. it breaks the mold a little but pizza flipper fridays is always about thinking outside the bun.

lucy shredded up the chicken and tossed it in a sauce julia and i made up of gochujang, rice wine vinegar, a little soy sauce, a little sesame oil, and a tiny squeeze of kewpie mayo. put a very generous layer of chicken on top. lucy then rough chopped a couple cloves of fresh garlic.

now the issue, i forgot how we did the zucchini the last time and i cut the slices a bit too thicc and just plopped them on top. they got tossed in some salt, pepper, and olive oil. tbh i may have just been a bit too ✨toasty✨ to chop any thinner and was taking precautions.

overall though?

8.5/10, the zucc got baked just fine and softened up but it looks very silly like i have a polka dot pizza. the chicken was 🔥 and the white sauce really allowed the gochujang marinade be the star of the show rather than fight against tomato. if we panko fried the zucchini or even just sliced them thinner/smaller, i think this would have been a solid 10/10.

ALSO WISH I HAD RED ONIONS

🍕🍕🍕

thank you for reading this because it is very silly

stay tuned for the next pizza flipper fridays, where every day is friday (because it has never actually been held on a friday)

[cathrynworrell]

5 essential Photoshop tools you need to turn your drawing into a beautiful art print

As a self-taught artist, I’ve picked up most the skills I need for things like Photoshop as I’ve gone along. A Google here, a few Youtube videos there. Some notes scrawled on a scrap of paper or tucked away in a file on my computer (where I forget that I’ve put them), but I can usually figure out how to do what I need to do.

And one thing I’ve learned is that for anything you need to do with your artwork in Photoshop, you’ll probably discover there are at least twelve different ways to do the same thing. Eventually, you stumble upon the ways to use Photoshop that work best for you and stick with them. At some point, most of the things you do regularly become second nature, and you forget how you learned them.

It’s easy to assume that everyone else knows what they’re doing when they’re editing their work digitally. But I was talking to a friend and fellow artist recently who wanted to know how I made my greeting cards, and I was reminded that isn’t necessarily the case.

So today I’m sharing the essential tools I use in Photoshop to turn a sketchbook drawing into an art print, or at least a file ready for a printing company to do that for you.

I use 5 main Photoshop tools for this (plus a few others but we’ll stick to the basics here). Before we get to them, though, you’ll need to scan your sketchbook page/drawing so that it’s on your computer, and make sure it’s in the right ‘mode’.

What on earth is a DPI?

DPI stands for 'dots per inch', and the more dots (tiny bits of the image) there are per square inch of the screen, the higher the resolution, which basically means you can increase the size without it getting all fuzzy, and you'll get a higher quality print in the end. Most printing companies will tell you their minimum dpi requirements, so check that before you start scanning.

So the rule is: higher DPI = better quality print. You need to scan at a minimum of 300 dpi - never go below this for printing. I usually scan at 600 dpi.

Make sure the image mode is correct

Once you've got your scan, it's time to open it up in Photoshop and make sure you're using the correct image mode. There are two modes to choose from: RGB is for images that will be displayed on screen (like on your website or social media) and stands for Red, Green and Blue. CMYK is the format most printing companies require and stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (which is black).

We don’t need to worry too much about what all of this means but basically, it’s to do with the colours used to create an image either on a screen or in print and they’re different in each case. If you print an RGB image the colours won’t look right. Just make sure for print to use CMYK, unless your printing company specifically tells you not to (sometimes they’ll change that setting for you). To check/change this, go to Image > Mode > CMYK

Now we get to the tools you need to get your scanned image looking just right and ready to print.

1. Rotate your image

If your scan is sideways or upside down, go to Image > Image rotation and select which way and how much you want to rotate the scanned image.

2. Crop

Hit 'C' to bring up the crop tool, or go to the toolbar on the left of your screen, and you'll find it there - it's the one that looks like two right angles intersecting.

If your scanned image is on a white background, try to crop it as closely as possible to remove as much of the background as you can without cutting off any of your drawing.

If the artwork covers the whole page just crop it to remove any bits that the scanner picked up around your sketchbook/paper and a little extra to remove the curved corners of the pages if necessary.

While you're using the crop tool you can also rotate the image from just outside the corners if it's not quite straight.

3. Levels

The Levels tool in Photoshop balances the tones in an image out by making sure the black, white and grey tones are correct. his affects how all your other colours will appear too so it’s important.

Hit Ctrl + L or Cmd + L on a Mac, or go to Image > adjustments > levels

This opens the Levels panel where you'll see some slider controls and eye droppers.

You can just hit 'auto' and see what the result looks like but if it's not good (and usually I find it's not good), hit Ctrl/Cmd + Z to undo and use the sliders.

Drag the right-hand slider towards the centre to lighten the image, the left hand slider will make any dark areas darker and the middle slider will help you adjust the greys and mid tones. If you've got a nice scan you probably won't need to make any huge adjustments here. So when the colours look good, click OK.

4. Remove the white background

Unless your image takes up the entire page with no white paper showing, you will need to remove the white background. This is true even if you plan to have a white background on your finished print to make sure it's nice and clean.

There are lots of different ways of removing the white background and removing the background on a black line drawing is a bit more complex so maybe I'll go through that in a separate post sometime. But for a full colour image with the white page surrounding it, the easiest tool to use is the magic wand.

Just select the magic wand tool by hitting ‘W’ on your keyboard or selecting the tool that looks like a magician’s wand in the toolbar. Then click on the white background. This should select all the background and what you’ve selected will be surrounded by a moving dotted line (or ‘marching ants’). You can add to that selection or repeat the process later if some of the background gets left behind.

Then in the layers panel, double-click the background layer. This will turn it into a 'normal' layer. Hit the delete key and the white background will be gone. You might need to tidy up the edges of your drawing at this point and you can use the eraser tool for this (hit 'E' on your keyboard or in the lefthand toolbar look for the rectangle that's half black, half grey).

Then, if your background layer isn’t the colour you want in your final print, you can change that now.

5. Clone stamp tool

If you're working with a drawing or illustration that you created across a double page in your sketchbook you are going to have to deal with the 'gutter' where the 2 pages meet. You don't want that on your final print so in my opinion the best tool for this is the clone stamp tool. Inthe toolbar, the clone stamp looks like a rubber stamp.

With the clone stamp, you're essentially copying (or ‘cloning’) a small section from one part of your image and pasting it somewhere else in the same image to cover something up. So for this painting, I used the clone stamp to copy other areas of the sky and grass and stamp/paste them over that annoying seam down the middle of the screen.

Hold down the ‘alt’ key as you click to select the area you want to clone and then click without holding down the ‘alt’ key to paste that clone section over the middle of the image.

I'd recommend making the edges of the brush/stamp soft and varying where you copy from as much as possible, otherwise you risk the middle part of your image looking obviously patched together.

So they are the 5 main tools I use to transform a sketchbook drawing/painting into a file ready to print and frame. There’s a lot more detail I could go into about removing the white background, cleaning up your image and a few other bits and bobs but I’ll save that for another day.

Before I leave you. I’ll share one bonus tool with you.

6. Hue/Saturation

If the levels tool didn’t get your colours looking quite right, you may also want to try the Hue/Saturation tool.

You can find this in Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation or by hitting Ctrl/Cmd + U on your keyboard. Now you can play around with the 3 sliders for hue, saturation and lightness to tweak your image a little bit more.

That should leave you with a lovely print-ready file. Make sure you check your print company’s exact requirements before you send it away (they may want a JPEG, PDF or PSD file) and let me know in the comments if you have any questions or if I’ve missed something.

[sanddusted-wisteria]

A Builder, a Researcher, and a Rooftop, Ch. 6: Mechanized Bipedal Heavy-Load Mobility-Enabled Suit

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A/N: Somehow I managed to bungle the order of the main missions while I was outlining, and completely blacked out the fact that the bridge comes before the Gecko Station ruins. I decided to keep the chapter order the same, since it made more sense from the perspective of the builder's and Qi's relationship. So I guess just pretend that the builder could get to Gecko Station somehow before the bridge gets built? Whoops.

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It was already dark out by the time the builder decided to stop working. Qi’s robot was almost done, but there was still a ton of complicated wiring work left. They gave its goofy faceplate a pat, setting their tools down. They glanced out towards town. It was Saturday, wasn’t it? Qi was probably waiting for them already.

They left their yard slowly, half-considering not going. Whenever they saw him for the past week, all he could talk about was the mobile suit. Was it ready? When would it be done? Even when he poured them some of his tea, even when they handed him data disks for an upgrade to their grinder, that seemed to be the only thing on his mind. Was there any point in going this week? The second they show up on the roof, he’ll ask—

“How goes the mobile suit?”

The builder groaned. They weren’t even halfway up the stairs. Qi’s eager face peered down at them from over the edge of the roof.  

“Qi, that’s like the fifteenth time you’ve asked,” they said, shooting an exasperated look back up.

“I know, I know. But is it ready?”

They sighed. “No, not yet.” Qi’s face fell. “Almost. Probably by the end of tomorrow.” He instantly perked back up.

“Good. Good good good. Splendid,” he muttered as he pulled back, going back to sitting at their usual spot. The builder climbed the rest of the way and sat down beside Qi.

“So what’s the deal with this thing, anyways? Never seen you so excited for just one machine.”

“It’s not just–!” An indignant look flashed across his face for an instant. “Ahem. Well, I saw the bridge construction team struggling to finish their task in a timely manner, I so happened to have an old design of mine lying around that could accomplish it much faster, and you so happened to obtain a vital part in the ruins to make it a reality. I am simply happy to fulfill my occupation’s purpose of using science and technology as a driving force for improvement.”

The builder raised an eyebrow. “And…?”

“And what?”

“And…what about that, uh, inspiration of yours…?”

“I already told you, didn’t I? It’s from something rather obscure. Something I guarantee you never would’ve heard of.” His voice was steady, but the uncertain, sideways flick of his eyes didn’t escape the builder’s notice.  

A playful grin tugged at the builder’s lips. “Well, if you tell me what it is, I’ll hear about it then, won't I?”

Qi squirmed a tiny bit. “Mm, no. Most likely you’ll…confuse it for something else.”

“Reeeally. Coulda sworn I heard Heidi clearly say ‘Gungam’ the other day. I’ve heard of it. Never watched it myself, though.”

“Erm. Aha—if you’ve never watched it, there’s no way for you to know for certain that the mobile suit is inspired by that, is there?” It was hard to see in the dark, but the builder could just make out a tinge of red on his cheeks.

“But you do,” the builder said, tilting their head with a coy smile.

Qi let out a noise of frustration. “It’s for a…friend, alright? I have a researcher friend back in Vega 5 who grew interested in the…anthropological significance of Old World entertainment shows like these.”

“And that’s why…you’re the one with this robot design just lying around?”

All Qi could do was sputter indignantly. The builder could almost see his brain short-circuiting. They let out a lighthearted chuckle.

Qi covered his mouth with a rather loud cough. “W-would you look at that? Venus is incredibly bright tonight.” He pointed at some dot in the sky. It looked more like Jupiter than Venus.

“Huh, so it is,” they said, still keeping their cheeky smile.

They fell silent. The builder shot Qi occasional glances out of the corner of their eye, trying to catch any changes in his expression. Qi would shoot them glances in return, trying to catch them before they could say anything else.

They let out a silent snort. Qi, of all people, Mr. Stiff McScienceMan himself, had a weak spot for old cartoons of giant robots punching each other. And he read terrible romance novels in secret. And he got more excited over old hunks of junk from the ruins than Nemo with some spare jerky.

What a weirdo, the builder thought fondly, as they peered over at Qi, shoulders still tensed and eyes uncertain, hidden by the glint of moonlight off his glasses.

What a weirdo.

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