#the only leak there was of it was where she was pasty as hell AND NOW WE GET TO SEE THE FULL.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

i think i hauve covud

[sanjuno]

how do you reckon things would change if Obito and Kakashi remembered their past lives as Izuna and Kanna? (And have you given a past incarnation of Rin in the Warring Era?)

… @deverickracoma you mean, like in canon? Huhhhh…

Well first off before Rin was Nohara Rin she was Senju Touka. Which makes this situation super fun because both Izuna and Kanna died before Hashirama strong armed Konoha into existence and Touka only went along with it because Her Stupid Little Cousins Need Some Common Sense. XP

In her lives as both as Touka and as Rin she holds the single (1) braincell for this Disaster Trio.

So Izuna dies via Tobirama’s sword. And then Kanna kinda… revenge rampages with Madara until the critical angst threshold is reached as Kanna just… explodes both theirself and the battlefield. 

There’s a whole lot of background stuff behind the suicide run such as Kanna’s Hatake side suffering from mate-loss depression and their Uchiha side suffering from Makengyou Madness and also Really Bad post-partum depression compounding it and yeah. Unfortunately Madara is just as wrecked from Izuna’s death so he can’t really support Kanna and it all goes to shit because we all know canon is a shitshow.

But anyway Touka is there to see Izuna die and she is well aware that Tobirama has just made a horrible decision driven by unacknowledged jealously and overzealous paranoia. Then Touka barely manages to save Tobirama’s pasty ass from the screaming revenge demon that she later learns was Izuna’s wife. And then Touka stands witness as Hashirama forces peace at sword point.

So Touka is just there like, “Oh for fucks sake we’re all going to die horribly.”

And, of course, Touka was right everything is horrible and everything hurts. 

Only now it’s plot-twist time and Touka, who was investigating certain questionable sources about the ongoing breakdown of social order in Konoha gets killed by Zetsu in order to cause even more tension against the Uchiha in Konoha and hey guess what? Yeah, that’s right Rin remembers the creepy plant-demon thing gloating about stealing Uchiha Madara (aka the only one vaguely strong enough to combat Kaguya at that time given he had naturally manifested the Rinnegan) for his own use before Zetsu killed her in a suspiciously ambiguous manner.

Shit.

Fuck.

Four year old Nohara Rin has a vendetta and the ability to kill a grown man. 

So obviously given that the Plant Demon is trying to kill off the Uchiha using shadowy assassinations and rumour mongering the Plant Demon is afraid of the Uchiha. Ergo the Uchiha are a threat to the Plant Demon otherwise it would confront the Uchiha more openly.

So.

Rin therefore needs to make super-duper ride-or-die best friends forever with at least one (1) Uchiha. And then, on the first day at the Academy, Rin runs into an absolute dork wearing Madara’s face.

Ah. Says Rin, channelling canon!Madara. That One. That’s The One I Need For My Plan To Succeed.

Cue the Rin and Obito Bonding Moment ™ that will repeat as a flashback every time their history is at any point mentioned in the narrative.

As for Obito, well… when he was Izuna he loved his Clan but then when he was reborn he read the Clan Histories from after his death and the public history of Konoha and Obito knows his Clan are a bunch of fucking traitors who stabbed his big brother in the back and that’s why Obito is both disgusted by the Uchiha and overprotective of the Clan’s reputation because Madara still loved their Clan even after they turned on him.

I may include Obito unearthing Madara’s private journals from a hidden cubby in the Naka Shrine that only Izuna would have known to look for. Just for the sake of an extra knife and also so that Obito can find proof of Zetsu’s sabotaging his brother’s mental health. 

Obito is more than a little weepy and sentimental over the fact that Madara honoured Izuna’s last request to the point Madara destroyed himself and his connection to the Clan. Obito can’t blame Madara for giving in when Hashirama forced peace to try and protect the few loyal Clan members who remained. Obito decides to protect Konoha and the Uchiha because he won’t let Madara’s last wish go unfulfilled but he’s going to become the fucking Hokage and tear out all the Senju-inflicted rot infecting his Big Brother’s Dream.

Obito is openly disdainful of the Clan Elders and the only people he even vaguely respects is the Head Family. Mostly because Mikoto is descended from Izuna’s daughter and even though Izayoi married “Tobirama’s student Kagami” she was still his baby girl and Mikoto is his great-grand daughter and he loves her because she’s his family.

Mikoto, Obito, and Shisui are all descendants of Kagami and Izayoi’s kids so they’re second-third cousins. Obito spends a lot of time pondering the overlap of self-care and I-love-my-grandbabies. It’s a fun little exercise in existentialism.

In the meantime Kakashi is still a little shit-disturber of the highest order. Kanna was taught all the fun Uchiha Clan Skills as Izuna��s wife and now Kakashi has learned all the fun Hatake Clan Skills from Sakumo and the little bastard is even more terrifying than canon. Kakashi is more gender-fluid than agender the way Kanna was though which is a fun new flavour of dysphoria-through-reincarnation that I’ll probably enjoy exploring.

Now, this does mean that Kakashi starts wearing his mask before Sakumo gets scapegoated which is a minor yet still significant change from Kakashi’s canon characterization-and-motivations.

So Kakashi blitzes their way through the Academy in like, 6 months because Kakashi has negative chill and an understandably paranoid focus on keeping their dad alive this time around. The only people Kakashi respects are the Military Police and their Dad everyone else can perish. Minato is A Constant Despair because he cannot control this sassy hell child Sakumo-sempai pls tell your son to l i s t e n t o m e.

Sakumo-sempai goes “LOL nope” because Sakumo is also a troll but is better at hiding it than Kakashi is.

So Rin and Obito are BFFs then Kakashi rips through their class like ground lightning and the sparring scene happens but the kickback of Uchiha-memories manifesting as body action means the spar is a familiar dance and so Obito is like “OMG K a n n a” and cue Obito stalking Kakashi like a schoolgirl with an obsessive crush and no concept of personal boundaries.

Enough shenanigans occur to 1. make Team Minato a cohesive and functional thing instead of a train wreck, and 2. keep Sakumo alive because Kakashi recognizes their Dad’s suicidal tendencies for what they are and so they set their ninken up as watchdogs to make sure Sakumo doesn’t do anything stupid. Because Kakashi’s biggest regret is leaving Madara and Izayoi to suffer grief without them and they refuse to let that sort of despair take away anyone they care about again.

So now Team Minato is bonding, and they are friends, and they are all slowly coming to the realization that they all remember their previous lives. So they start to share information and gradually piece together where Zetsu’s influence has been applied as they try to figure out what the Plant Demon’s endgame is.

Which means that Team Minato is 100% more paranoid about mission intelligence than they were in canon and also Rin more than ready to gut the Iwa-nin who tries to kidnap her during the Kannabi Bridge Mission so that’s fun. Team Minato has also made a point system for rooting out moles, spies, and traitors to hand over to T&I. 

Sarutobi had a lovely headache when the knowledge that Sakumo’s mission had been sabotaged “accidentally” got leaked. (Kakashi had given the old man more than enough time to fix the rumour mill so it’s on Sarutobi’s own head that he didn’t take action before Kakashi did.)

Also Team Chaos Gremlins Minato manages to charm Orochimaru over to their camp via one of Obito’s rage fuelled rants about dismantling the hypocritical indoctrination of the institutionalized status quo. Specifically, the fact that the Hokage is supposed to be a public service position voted on by the people who only really has complete executive power during war time. Instead of a unilateral dictator chosen by the previous Hokage’s undisguised bias and favouritism.

Also because they’re all proof of the reincarnation cycle existing. Orochimaru is living his best life especially when Team Minato trash talks the other two Sannin. 

Rin is the Most Offended by Tsunade fucking off and abandoning her responsibilities. Tsunade basically inherited all of Hashirama’s worst traits without any obvious redeeming qualities to balance it out. Because, let’s be honest, the only reason Hashirama got any level of respect is because he was Over Powered to the point of ridiculousness and because Tobirama plus Mito were in charge of his public image.

Kakashi and Obito are both hyper-loyal so having Jiraiya decide to just not come back during wartime and for Tsunade to abandon her responsibilities as a healer and Clan Head has destroyed any possible respect they might have had.

Obviously Orochimaru is the best Sannin so he’s the one they’re going to make friends with. Also they drag Orochimaru back to the Hatake Clan House to commiserate with Sakumo about being the target of a Village wide smear campaign. Which strengthens both Orochimaru and Sakumo’s spirits enough to resist their Bad Endings from canon.

All of this basically allows Team Minato to have the leverage to track down Zetsu’s creeper cave and they find Madara trapped and blinded and leashed to the Gedo Mezo, and Obito nearly has a world-destroying breakdown. Rin stands guard while Obito and Kakashi have a tearful reunion with Madara and there’s a lot of dramatic apologizing and sobbing.

They all know that they can’t leave Madara here with Zetsu, but detaching him means he’s going to die. Eventually Madara makes the decision himself to break the connection because he refuses to be used as a hostage against his little brother. So Madara tells Obito where his eyes are (which means that the Ame trio are going to get kidnapped by Team Minato eventually) plus a run-down of all the subversive plots Zetsu has had a hand in, and then Madara outright smashes the statue.

Normally nothing would be able to destroy the Gedo Mezo given that it’s basically the fossilized corpse of a god but Madara is currently part of it which means that the statue’s defences don’t realize Madara is a threat. So, statue goes boom, the cave starts to collapse, and Team Minato runs away with Madara’s body so they can give him a respectful burial.

Zetsu has approximately ten thousand aneurysms in the space of one (1) second.

From here the kickback really starts to pile up because Obito now makes a habit of dropping in on newborn Uchiha to check and see if Madara’s been reborn yet. Which means that Sasuke has a really invested older cousin hanging around to take Itachi’s place when Itachi make dumb decisions.

Rin is grumpy because basically every Clan who joined Konoha had a bunch of Senju marry into their Clan so finding Hashirama’s reincarnation is basically impossible. (And then, of course, Naruto is born and Rin faceplams 1000 times because of fucking course.)

Kakashi is laughing at both of them. Right up until they take command of Team 7 and notice a hated familiar chakra under the skin of a pink haired little girl. (All three members of Team Minato nearly die laughing because Tobirama is a pink haired little girly girl heeeeee~)

Anyway aside from all the family drama Team Minato also manages to dispose of Danzo and exposes his “plot against the Hokage”, boosting Sakumo’s public image to the point he gets named as the Fourth, fixing the stigma Orochimaru faced despite being the only loyal member of the Sannin, and basically terrorizing Konoha with Political Activism.

Zetsu probably goes a bit around the bend thanks the Team Minato destroying all his hopes and dreams plans. Also they keep putting the pressure on and exposing Zetsu’s schemes and eventually that gains enough momentum that the other Villages are taking a good hard look at shit that’s going down and hey wait w h a t t h e f u c k …

Obito eventually takes over as the Fifth Hokage and tears apart the corrupt government systems like a Tasmanian Devil going through a rotting carcass because Big Brother’s Dream Will Become A Reality B E L I E V E I T !

The End. XP

[c-atm]

Steven A2 Insane

He stood still, his face down, darkness all around him seemingly asleep or dazed. He was lost within his imagination. Giving no movement of consciousness as the door to his cell room opened.

 

"Is this...My family secret? "

 

A young voice filled with fear and wonder hit his ear, feminine.

 

"How long has this been under our home?... Now's not the time to be curious. I have to find it quickly!"

 

'Anxious.' He thought to himself.

 

"Where is it!?" 

 

The voice called, the sound of books falling and glass breaking accompanied by a stressful scream echoing through the room.

 

"I heard something from the cellar!" 

 

A voice screamed in alarm. The sounds of heavy footsteps slowly rose like rumbling thunder.

 

"no, no, no! They are going to kill me…" a murmur of panic and tears came from the first voice. "No, no! Not like this." 

 

'They have fire in them.' He mused, hearing the strength in the panic-stricken woman.

 

-SLAM!-

 

"Here you were, cousin." A new voice spoke—sinister, smarmy, and masculine. "You gave the boys and me quite the chase." 

 

"I swear, if you don't leave this house, you won't be leaving at all!" Passion and fury ranged from the woman.

 

"Such fire, I can see why uncle wanted you as hier. So much, he overlooked me." 

 

'Jealous welp.'  He mentally growled.

 

"No matter, he was already on his way out. I just helped him along...Shouldn't I be rewarded for giving him a pleasant passing?"

 

"Kevin! You're a swine! " 

 

"Hey Connie, getting a bit aggressive, pointing that blade at me."

 

"You dare talk about killing our uncle with pride! Smiling like you are fulfilling something!"

 

"But I am, I'm taking my destiny. My treasure, My birthright, and I refused to be opposed by a little orphaned bitch!"

 

" Heh, no wonder you weren't even a choice of inheriting the head of the family. Who would trust an asinine, insolent snake! Taking your skull will be my first act as the family head!"

 

-BANG!-

 

The ringing of a gunshot resounded, followed by the clanging of metal against a stone floor and the feminine groan of pain.

 

"See what you made me do… How are you supposed to be a good servant girl, wounded like that." 

 

"Your aim...sucks as always!"

 

"You're going to learn quite a bit about that, Nini." A new voice spoke, another male with perversion leaking from his tongue evoking a bevy of laughter from others.

 

'6 men.' He thought to himself as he heard the woman; Connie growled in defiance.

 

"Ok, I'm bored of this game.… Boys have at her,"

 

He heard her gaps as the sound of a stampede rocked his ear. The shift of stone and a grunt as a body landed close to him. 

 

"What the hell!?" "Where'd she go!?" " The wall opened and swallowed her!"

 

"Shut up and find her idiots!"

 

He heard her sucked in a breath as the footsteps headed out of the cellar. Once it was silent, truly silent...He heard tears. 

 

Broken, hopeless sobs.

 

 That just didn't feel right coming from 'Connie.'

 

"I. I can't win...Not like this. Seven to one, outmatched, outmanned, outgunned; dropped the only weapon I had… Argh, and this bullet in my shoulder hurts!"

 

 Connie gripped her shoulder as she laid back, looking up into the stone ceiling that allowed little sunlight to seep in. Her teary black eyes blinked as her mind went back to the conversation. 

 

"Uncle…I'm sorry. " She broke down again. "You taught me to be strong, enduring, and powerful, but this...This is overwhelming...I-I need help!" She closed her eyes as the tears streamed down.

 

"Help?"

 

Connie's eyes widened, her body jolted to a sitting position as she turned and faced the back wall and felt a strange chill run through her spine.

 

 Bit of daylight shined a spotlight on an inhumanly thin, pasty-skinned man with an imprint of a diamond at his navel. His pale pink hair dropped and snaked on the floor.

He was blindfolded, dressed in only a pair of torn, ratty jeans, and bound to the floor by a strange-looking circle.

 

"Do you want help?"

 

His raspy, weak voice, ironically, held much strength and appeal.

 

"I..Who?"

 

"Do you want retribution?"

 

"I.." Connie took a deep breath and clenched her first, "Yes."

 

"He smirked and snarled, "there's that fire I felt…what-?" He was surprised as his eyes were greeted by light, by color…

 

By Her. 

 

"Pink eyes, huh?"

 

He could only stare at the young umber shade woman with onyx orbs. Her narrow nose, flaring as she nursed her shoulder, wrapping his blindfold over it. "Luckily, the bullet went through flesh alone." She muttered to herself before turning to him. " Who..or what are you?"

 

"You are curious and cautious."

 

"I came down here looking for my family's secret weapon and found a thin frail...Whatever you are."

 

"Anger and anxiousness."  His nose twitched as if he was scenting something, "A note of fear as well."  He smacked his lips as if tasting a treat.

 

"Are you...Smelling my emotions."

 

"Yes...Your sentiments...are flavorful. It's been so long since I've experienced such...Please, what is your name?"

 

"I believe I asked you for your info first." Connie folded her arms under her breast and pursed her lips in slight annoyance.

 

"Yes...My name is...last human name I went by was 'Steven Demayo,' so let's go with that…."

 

"Kahanni...Kahanni Yasha Maheswaran...But I answer to Connie."

 

"Maheswaran…" He chuckled at the name, memories flowing back to the last time he was unbound. "Ms. Maheswaran… No.." 

 

Connie was taken back as Steven prostrated himself in front of her. 

 

"My Paramour! I am what you've been looking for...An Incubus in service to the Maheswaran for many generations, if memory serves correctly."

 

"No way… You don't look that much older than me…."

 

"I am twenty-two in this current life, but memories of my past lives are accessible."

 

"Only two years older." Connie muttered before shaking her head, "Wait, you said Incubus, as in SEX-DEMON, INCUBUS."

 

"Emotion, dream, spirit, and vitality demons, really. Intercourse just happens to be the most substantial way to get our fill." He looked up, meeting her analytical gaze, his nose twitching before sighing in appeasement. "Doubt and intrigued… Not that big of a fan of the first, but the second is salivating."

 

Connie narrowed her eyes," Why have you been down here so long? HOW have you been here so long?"

 

"Cause my last master passed...and with them, I was bound to this spot until a new worthy master came about...Until you came, My Paramour."

 

Connie was about to dissuade him, calling her that when the voices of Kevin and his men were heard above them outside, getting her attention. They were still searching. 

 

"Is it like a blood pact?" She turned to Steven, "This bonding, or partnership..or whatever. Do I need to give you blood or something?"

 

"A taste of emotion...A kiss shall do."

 

Connie's cheeks flushed at the suggestion," a Kiss...Really?" She grimaced, "I'm guessing it needs to be open mouth...I must be desperate to go along with this."

 

Closing her eyes, Connie cupped Steven's cheeks before willingly kissing the stranger thoroughly. Trying to simulate those she saw on tv or in manga.

 

 She gasped when she felt a tongue caressed her own as it lashed around her mouth, feeling him pull her close by her waist. Her heart was a war drum, and her body was set ablaze as the urge to kiss deeper rose in her. Choosing to follow his example and assault his tongue with her own.

 

It was then she felt something was being inserted and taken from her simultaneously. It scared her, prompting her to break the kiss, albeit more reluctantly than she figured she would.

 

"So is that eno-" Connie started as she began to wipe her mouth, only to pause as the circle and his imprint began to glow an eerie pink while Steven held his head down, muttering lowly.

 

"Passion, determination, affection, rage,  fright, pride, vengeance...it's been so long since I tasted so many different emotions. Pure and unfiltered, directly from a bottomless sooo~ource." 

 

Connie took a step back as Steven laughed in devious, mad mirth turning to face her.  

 

His mouth was wide open as tears ran from his eyes, and his drool trickled from the left corner of his mouth with his brows furrowed together. His left eye glowed with a haunting glimmer as dark pink mist rose from the circle and into him.

 

She gawked as his body grew in mass and muscle. His skin and hair gained a healthy light tan and dark pink complexion, respectively, and an imprint that almost gleamed with its new fresh pink.

 

 In a matter of seconds, what was a thin, frail twig of a man bound to a circle changed to a sizable burly beast that towers over Connie, looking down with glowing, predatory eyes. Steven's steps sounded like a heavy bag colliding with the floor as he caused her to retreat to the wall, back pressed.

 

"I'm not afraid of you," Connie growled, despite being cornered by the human-looking monster.

 

"I know." 

 

Connie's eyes widened at the cool and calm voice.

 

"Your injury should be healed." He pressed her shoulder gently, nodding in approval. "My saliva has healing properties."

 

Connie covered her mouth as she rotated her shoulder, "Better than before." She narrowed her eyes at the demon. "So now what?"

 

Steven smiled madly before dropping to a knee, his head down, "I am yours; use me as you see fit, My paramour."

 

There was something about his tone as icy as it was, there was an eagerness to it, and it did stroke a flame in her—a dark, dominant ember.

 

"As I see fit, you say." She grinned.

 

"Advisor, tool, bodyguard, weapon."

 

"Partner," Connie suggested. "You are my partner, " she held out her hand to him, "I...Can't lead this alone, and a strong ally would be indispensable..even if it's just to rid us of rivals."

 

"Then, my Paramour.." Steven rose to his feet, kissing the back of Connie's hand, "point me to our victims."

 

Steven smiled while flowing with an urge to eradicate while his eyes held a desire to please. Connie found herself being charmed by his insanity as she smirked and pointed upward, where she heard the voices of her would-be murderers and abusers could be heard.

 

Steve looked up before leaping up and bursting through the stone ceiling and landing outside.

 

Connie moved to the side as that side of the ceiling caved in, revealing the afternoon sky. 

 

And the sounds of her partner taking care of their adversaries.

[parchmateshp]

Thinking Out Loud || Solo

A rustle of branches was all the warning he got before the leaves, laden with water from the previous day’s rainfall, dumped their contents on top of his head and his lunch. Drops of water bled into his eyes and he glared up at the now blurry vision of warm skin and messy curls. “Bloody hell, Hermione.” Harry took off his glasses, trying to wipe them clear with the robes he bundled in his hand, but only succeeding in streaking them further. “A little warning next time.”

He knew her well enough to know she was smirking at him, even if he couldn’t see it at the moment. She said nothing though. Instead, Harry watched as her arm moved deftly over the ground, tracing what looked like a lowercase ‘d’ through the air. The air above the ground warmed and the mud slowly hardened, moisture seeping away until nothing was left but hard packed dirt. 

“Drought charm,” she said in response to his raised eyebrows. She lowered herself to the ground, rearranging her robes as she made herself comfortable. “We read about them in fourth year when we were trying to figure out a game plan for the second Triwizard task.”

Harry, who could barely remember what they had learned yesterday in class, said nothing. As usual, this did nothing to deter Hermione from her goal. “Are you missing lunch because you’re still thinking about all of the stuff with your parchmate? Y’know, the sexuality stuff?”

As if he had stopped thinking about it since the subject first came up. He gave a stiff nod and tossed a bit of his, now sodden, pumpkin pasty into the lake. They waited a few moments, watching as the ripples in the water grow bigger and bigger until a large, purple tentacle broke the surface. As quickly as the limb had appeared, it was gone, pasty in tow. Harry repeated the process until the rest of his lunch had disappeared. Finally, he sighed. “Ladon reckons that I should just go out and find a bloke to kiss,” he muttered. “To see if I’ve turned bi or not, I guess. Do you think I…”

A weight settled on his arm, fingers curling cautiously around his wrist. “Honestly, Harry, you can’t turn any kind of sexuality. I would have thought your Ladon would be responsible enough to explain that to you.” He didn’t bother correcting her that Ladon wasn’t his. Ladon wasn’t his, but it still felt like he was sometimes. A little his. “If you are bisexual,” she continued, blind to his inner musings, “then you’ve always been bisexual. It’s just a matter of discovering that about yourself.”

There was a beat of silence. He waited, but the silence stretched on until it was tangible around them. When she still didn’t offer any more information, he pulled his arm out from under her hand. “And?” he pressed.

“And I can’t tell you what your sexuality is, Harry. You have to decide that for yourself.” Her brown eyes met his and the softness in them made him avert his gaze. “What I can tell you is that I have heard you rant about how attractive several men are throughout our years of being friends and that most straight people probably don’t question their sexuality. Whether that means anything or not… That’s up to you.”

Disappointment washed over him. He was so used to Hermione having the answers, so it was a real let down when she couldn’t provide them. An inkling of guilt crept over him at that thought; he could remember her frustration on their hunt for the horcruxes at being left to do most of the magical legwork and it wasn’t fair to put all of the responsibility on her. “You’re right,” he said, with a grudging sigh. 

She nudged him in the side, digging deeper into his ribs until he finally looked up, annoyed. “Ladon was right about finding a guy to kiss though. If that’s what it’s going to take for you to know for sure, then you should do it, Harry.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

“Yes. Otherwise, you’re going to obsess about it and over analyze it for months because not knowing will drive you mad.” Exasperation leaked into her voice. “You always do that. It would be much kinder to yourself to just take the plunge and see what you feel.” She tilted her head towards him, eyes glittering and a sly smile curving her mouth. He braced himself, sure that he wasn’t going to like whatever came next. “Take Ron for example,” she said. “He’s been far less insufferable about Viktor since he came to help with the war clean-up effort and I gave Ron a free pass to kiss him. Haven’t heard a single word against Viktor since.”

“I… you… Ron… What?” Harry spluttered, not knowing what to do with the information that he now possessed. Hermione watched him, eyebrows raised as his brain began to slot old memories into place. 

Ron’s adoration of Krum at the Quidditch World Cup; the careful way he’d divvied up his money to ensure that he could support his team at the match but still have enough left over to purchase an action figure of the opposing team’s seeker; how he’d nearly pulled Harry’s arm out of the socket when Krum had shown up for the tournament; the way he’d made room at the Gryffindor table, hopeful that Krum would sit next to him; Ron’s mouth hanging open, mouthing wordlessly, as his eyes slid over the length of Krum’s navy robes. 

“You really are quite unobservant about these things, aren’t you?” 

The world tilted slightly as the implication of those memories hit him. Ron hadn’t been jealous of Krum; he’d been jealous of both Krum and Hermione, and he hadn’t known who he wanted to be with more. His view of the world was tunnel visioned, he saw that now, but how many more hits could his vision take before it shattered completely?

Harry struggled to his feet, fighting against the mud that had suctioned him to the earth. “I need to take a walk,” he muttered, not daring to look at the pitying look he was sure was on Hermione’s face. He waved his wand over his robes with a quick tergeo and wandered off into the woods without a backward glance, needing some time to just exist without other people.

----

Harry wandered to the more secluded side of the lake, where he, Hermione, and Sirius had almost lost their souls to dementors. He sat on a log that had been long since claimed by moss and weeds, and contemplated just how much he’d missed out on his time as the chosen one. Entire relationships had come and gone without Harry so much as noticing them. There was an entire subset of Hogwarts culture that he simply wasn’t privy to because he’d been too focused on not dying. It was like entering the wizarding world again for the first time; only this time, people weren’t as forgiving at his ignorance. Not when he’d been living in the world, oblivious. 

He wasn’t entirely sure how much time passed while he sat there, but the light shifted through the trees and the temperature rose to a toasty nine degrees before starting to drop once more. Harry barely noticed. He was starting to realize that his time at Hogwarts had not been as full as it could have been. Dumbledore and Voldemort had robbed him of his time to just be a teenager. The old resentment bubbled up inside of him at his snatched youth and he fixated on that for a long time as he stared at the surface of the lake, picturing what could have been. The light had shifted further until it was barely peeking behind the trees, when Harry realized he was wasting even more of his time pitying himself. With a sigh, he forced himself to standing and started picking his way back through the overgrowth towards the inviting warmth of the castle.

----

Shouts bled out of the Great Hall, a cacophony of sharp and panicked voices. He heard something about a rescue. All thoughts of the bacon butty he’d been hoping to grab fled Harry’s mind. He took out his wand as he raced inside, heart pounding against his chest, as he mentally prepared for whatever he was going to meet. Ex-death eaters out for revenge? Rouge dementors that had yet to be rounded up? 

Harry banged through the doors with a deafening boom and skidded to a stop, wand held aloft as he prepared to help fight. “Who.. what…” he puffed. 

All of the sound cut out as around fifty pairs of eyes turned to stare at him, mouths open. Headmistress McGonagall stood at the front of the room, looking war ready. Around the room stood what looked like all of the seventh and eighth years combined. Even the Slytherins were there, though they looked the least panicked out of anyone. In fact, they looked downright bored. Was Pansy Parkinson filing her nails?

“What’s happened?” he managed to huff out. “Who needs rescuing?”

An uncomfortable cough sounded in the back, several people turned away awkwardly to stare at their friends or dust in the corner. Pansy rolled her eyes, turned on her heel and walked out of the room, not even stopping the perfecting of her nails as she did so.

Confused, Harry glanced back at the Headmistress, and was even more puzzled to find her swelling with rage. “We were coming to save you, you ungracious, procacious, ignoramus.” The students twittered nervously, now that Harry was apparently not in any danger.

Now was probably not the time to point out McGonagall’s rhyming skills, as respectful as they were.

“You were coming to save me from my walk?” “Your walk?” McGonagall’s accent grew more pronounced the angrier she got, Harry noticed. Had it always been like that? “Potter, you’ve been missing for six hours! Ms. Granger finally came to notify me of the situation ninety minutes ago.” He glared across the hall at Hermione, who didn’t back down from his gaze. She merely met his eyes and shrugged. “We were about to send search teams out to comb the grounds! What do you have to say for yourself?” 

What Harry wanted to ask was if they would have gotten this worked up over someone who wasn’t, well, him. If they would have even noticed if someone who wasn’t Harry Potter was gone for a few hours. Instead, he sighed, finally lowering his wand. “Sorry, Prof- er, Headmistress. I just needed to be alone for a bit and I must have lost track of time. I didn’t mean to worry you. Or anyone else.”

McGonagall harrumphed at him but looked mollified. “You can’t disappear like that, Potter. At least let Ms.Granger know where you are. If you aren’t going to learn to send messages with your patronus, then you need to see about getting a new owl.”

Harry stiffened at these words and turned his eyes towards the enchanted ceiling, trying to keep the image of green light and a feathery body tumbling to the ground from his mind. He swallowed hard around a knot in his throat. Pressed his lips together. Nodded. “Yes, Headmistress,” was all he could manage to say in response. He wasn’t getting a new owl. Not any time soon.

She studied him for a moment over her spectacles before nodding. “Very well. Off to bed. All of you,” she said the last part pointedly to the gathered crowd, who began gathering their things, muttering to each other.

Great. Just what he needed. To be the focus of the school’s conversations, again.

He didn’t wait around to talk to his fellow students like everyone else did. He simply turned on his heel, not waiting for Hermione to make her way across the room to him. Surely she had explanations and apologies for whipping the school into a frenzy, but he didn’t want to hear them. With all the magic she had in her arsenal, there had to be a way to find him that didn’t involve stressing everyone out. He wasn’t going to shut her out but talking to her could wait until the morning when he wasn’t so annoyed.

----

The common room was deserted, probably because all of his classmates were still talking about him in the Great Hall, and Harry went to his dorm before he had to face anyone. About five minutes of laying face down on his bed was all he got, before Dean burst into the room and flopped down on the bed opposite Harry.

“Just like old times, eh? Classic Harry Potter.”

With insurmountable effort, Harry lifted his head off his bed and glared. “Sod off.”

 “So,” he said, chuckling. “Where did you run off to for six hours? Ginny was in the Great Hall, so I assume not with her.”

Guilt coiled in his stomach as Harry realized he hadn’t even looked for her. Or thought about her. “I wasn’t with anyone,” he mumbled, pushing himself to sitting. “Like I said, I just wanted to be alone. Had some stuff to think about.”

“Ah.” Dean looked at him with a knowing smirk. “You’re still on about the identity crisis then?” Heat licked Harry’s ears and he spluttered indignantly, causing Dean to roar with laughter. “Come off it, mate. All year you’ve been skulking about, asking me about my relationship with Seamus and how I knew I was into lads. It doesn’t take Hermione Granger to put the pieces together.”

Everyone seemed to be really good at figuring out things about his life before he was even aware. At this point, he was fairly certain that he could just live on autopilot while his peers filled in the gaps for him.  He gave the begrudging sigh of someone who has been heavily put upon and began to tell his tale, ending with what Ladon and Hermione thought was the solution to all of his problems.

Dean rubbed his neck, deep in thought as Harry finished. “You know, we’re due for a good party. Haven’t had one since we started eighth year. Far too long in my opinion. I’ll let Terry Boot and Hannah know so they can spread the word to their houses. Hufflepuff is always good for snacks and Ravenclaw is good for music. They’re both good for spin the bottle. We’ll get you snogged yet.”

He grinned lavisciously at Harry but something about the statement bothered him. After a moment of puzzling it out, he figured out what it was. “What about Slytherin?”

“Slytherin? What about them?” The thought seemed to confuse Dean.

“We’re inviting them too, aren’t we?”

His question was met with a chortle as Dean laid down on his bed. “Good one, Harry.”

All of the conversations with Ladon ran through his mind, the discussions about no one really giving Slytherins a fair chance. How the wizarding world could pretend that they were healing but it didn’t matter when no one wanted to change their attitudes. “The whole us versus them thing is what got us into a war in the first place,” he insisted. “We can’t keep holding their parents’ mistakes against them. We share a common room, the least we can do is extend the invite. They probably won’t even take it.”

“You’re serious?” Dean studied him pensively from across the room, trying to gauge whether Harry was pulling an elaborate prank. Finally, he shrugged. “They can come. But you’ve got to do the inviting.” 

Harry spluttered in protest. “Me? Why me? They’ll kill me!”

“Eh, the world has been trying to kill Harry Potter for a long time now. If anyone has a chance of surviving then it’s you.”

How the tables had turned. Harry grunted his assent, not looking forward to the task of approaching a group of Slytherins to invite them to a party. Even if there were only four of them. Even if Ladon was one of them. Well, he reasoned, Malfoy was their de facto leader, which meant that was who Harry should approach. Great. With that pleasant thought in his mind, Harry rolled over, not bothering to change out of his robes, for a night of, what was sure to be, restless sleep.

[eclecticstarlightconnoisseur]

Edinburgh to Boston - Chapter 3 The Flight - Part 1

Hello all,

As promised here is Chapter 3.  Just so that you know part of my real life leaked into this chapter.  I have been studying for my Advanced Cardiac Life Support recertification this week.  I have been practicing with the simulations and going through the algorithms all week including shocking the characters.  So Claire is acting out for me in the story. I have ACLS on the brain.

I hope you enjoy the Chapter.

I give you:

Edinburgh to Boston

Chapter 3 - The Flight - Part 1

James found Claire standing by their seats struggling to put her carry on into the overhead compartment.

"Here, Beauchamp, let me help ye with that." James took the suitcase and easily slid both their cases into the compartment.

"Thank you, Fraser. That was most kind of you. I don't know how I would have managed." Claire looked up at James coquettishly through her eyelashes and flashed a charming smile.

"Ah...yer welcome. Anytime at all." Christ, is she flirting with me?

May as well be a gentleman. "Beauchamp, umm, which seat would ye like, the window or the aisle? It doesna matter to me which seat I have."

"Oh no, James you must take the aisle seat. You would have more leg room it wouldn't do to be uncomfortable during such a long flight." Claire placed her hand over his squeezing gently.

She felt it in an instant, the heat of the man as well as something else altogether.  It was an intense feeling, coursing through her hand, snaking up her arm, centering in her chest diffusing outward warming her body. It was like a radiant glowing sun growing, expanding, discharging heat and energy. Then there was something else. Something she could not put a name to but it pulsated, throbbed feeling primitive, primordial, something more...something dangerous, perhaps, possessive.  She never felt anything like it before. The sensations threatened to consume her, devour her. Isn't that what the woman said, he wanted to devour me? Could the old lady have been right? Could there be something between us?

Claire quickly removed her hand from James as if she had been burned. No, Claire decided. No, she decided she had let the old lady get into her head and she had to stop those thoughts now before things got out of hand.

She is flirting with me! Tiny beads of sweat formed on James forehead and upper lip. He ran his finger along the collar of his blue dress shirt trying to let a little air in.

"A bit warm in here is no’ Beauchamp?" James asked as he took his suit jacket off feeling the cool air of the cabin brush across the sweat-dampened shirt molding to his back. His hands were damp too. Surreptitiously he rubbed them against his suit leg hoping that she wouldn't notice what he was doing. He dropped gracelessly into his seat placing his jacket over his lap, his head slumping back against the headrest.

Claire turned to look and her eyes went wide with shock. James had turned a rather unhealthy pasty color much like the color of day-old parritch. Sweat formed on his face and he looked a right mess.

"James, are you ill?" Claire asked a worried expression splayed across her face. "Do you feel faint?" "Are you having a heart attack? Do you feel chest pain?" She was becoming nervous and concerned. "Here let me see if you have a fever."

Her cool hand came to rest on his brow causing him to shiver at her touch. The man was a furnace, not with fever, but with his own body heat. She swiftly took his wrist checking his pulse, fast but regular. Breathing deep but again regular.

"Here let me help take off your tie."  Nimble fingers made quick work of removing James' tie and opening his collar. She began to fan James furiously with the magazine in the pocket of the seat. If she fanned any harder, she would have caused a tornado.

The woman will no’ stop touching me! "I'm fine, Beauchamp."

Her hand is sae soft, sae cool. I wonder what her bonny wee hand would feel like on my…

It was in that moment that James understood that settling his jacket across his lap was a very fortunate thing, as his traitorous anatomy would have put him in a very embarrassing and compromising position.

James closed his eyes, exhaled a deep, low, anguished groan. In an effort to gain control over himself, he began to mentally pray. Lord, I need ye guidance for the challenge I am to face. Grant me ye wisdom, strength, and direction.

Claire took James’ groaning to mean he was worsening. He didn’t look any better either. It seemed that he was growing paler by the second.

“James?” There was no response. “James!” Claire gave him a little shake. He still did not respond.  His pulse was strong and regular.

Fearing that the worst might happen, she signaled the flight attendant who popped up next to her like the jack-in-a-box.

Adopting her surgeon's persona, "I am Dr. Claire Beauchamp and this is Dr. James Fraser. Dr. Fraser is not well. I need your assistance." Claire proceeded to tell the attendant what she would need and gave her an imperious look sending the young woman scampering off.

With all her strength, Claire grabbed the blue button-down dress shirt and yanked it open sending the buttons flying in all directions like tiny projectile missiles. James' chest was exposed; it was toned, well muscled with copper-colored hair lightly furring his chest. I want to touch him.  

By this time the flight attendant returned carrying the AED.

The sound of tearing fabric prompted James swift return to consciousness; he looked at Claire, saw what she was doing and grabbed both her wrists.

"Beauchamp," James said very calmly, "What in hell are ye about? Have ye gone mad?"

Claire startled as if she was watching Lazarus rise from the dead.  Her eyes glistened with tears creeping toward the edges.

Her mouth quivered, moving wordlessly at first, "You...You're alright then?" Her face contorted with relief.  Claire’s hands cupped his cheeks tenderly and stared at his face searching for an answer to her question.  "I thought...I thought I would lose you," she said in a shaky voice. "I thought you were going to die. I had the AED here just in case." One hot fat tear escaped her eye striking James on the chest.

"Hush lass, dinna weep, it's alright, it's alright," he soothed."I was just taken queer for a moment, but I’m alright now. But does that mean if I am taken so again, ye'll try tae undress me once more?" he said while quirking an eyebrow at her and giving her a little chuckle.

Claire took hold of herself, appreciating James’ effort to try to make light of the whole matter allowing her time to regain her composure. She blotted at her eyes and sniffed.

"Don't get any ideas in your head from this Fraser. It just means that I am relieved you're not dead. I wouldn't want to have to go back to the chief and try to explain this. And by the way, be very grateful I didn't try to shock you," Claire huffed glaring at him as if this were all his fault.

“Aye, Claire, I am truly grateful ye did not. It would have hurt like hell,” he smirked.

Both she and James profusely thanked the flight attendant for her assistance and watched her walk off grumbling.  

James stood took down his suitcase, rootled about, found a new shirt and marched to the lavatory with all the dignity he possessed. He passed by where Harry and Maizie were sitting. Harry raised his hand signaling James to stop.

"A moment lad after ye've made yerself presentable, aye?"

James really did not want to talk to Harry again. He thought that Harry was trying to fill his head with ridiculous ideas. He decided he would just walk by.

No such luck.  Harry was waiting for him outside the door. Harry gave James a firm push back inside the lavatory, stepped in and locked the door. There was barely enough room for both large men to stand. James standing at 6' 4" and Harry at 6'; the room was positively claustrophobic.

"Ye ken horses lad?"

What does that have to do with anything? "Aye, I do. And what of it?"

"The lass loves ye, that I ken; it's just that she's scairt, like a young filly that's been misused ye ken.  Someone has hurt her, and hurt her bad. Ye ken what ye need to do with a scairt hurt filly? Be gentle with her."

"Mr. MacLennan, may I ask ye what ye do for a living, sir? Are ye a matchmaker? If so, I dinna require yer services."

"Why I'm a kilt maker,” replied Harry proudly. “And to answer yer other question, no, I am no’ a matchmaker.  Just a man who believes in the power of love. May I ask the same of ye sir, what is yer occupation?"

"I'm a heart surgeon."

"Weel lad, ye may ken how to repair other people's broken hearts. But ye have a long way to go to fix yer own and that lass. Mind what I say to ye." Harry gave James a look imploring him to heed what he said and left.

A kilt maker was giving James love advice. He thought he must be going soft in the heid.

*************************

As Harry pushed James into the lavatory, Maizie took off from her seat rushing up to speak with Claire.  She found Claire picking up the buttons from James’ shirt that had been scattered literally everywhere.  The buttons not only contained the threads in the holes but pieces of the shirt itself was still attached.

Maizie spoke to Claire tenderly, “Lass, are ye alright? And yer lad, is he alright then?”

Claire looked up taking in the genuine concern written across Maizie’s face. “Yes, we’re alright. I guess you saw what happened.”

Maizie chuckled, “Ye caused such a stramash that I think the whole plane kens what happened.”

Claire was mortified. Her face glowed a lovely shade of rose reaching to the tops of her ears. She covered her face and uttered a small sob.

Maizie, in her best grandmotherly gestures, pulled Claire to her bosom and gently cradled her head against her shoulder. “There, there lass, ye meant well.  Ye were only protecting yer man.”

“He’s not mine,” Claire said whimpering against Maizie’s shoulder.

“Aye, lass he is. Ye just dinna ken it and neither does he. What kind of work do ye and yon man do?”

Claire looked at Maizie, tears running down her cheeks, “We’re heart surgeons.”

“I kent ye for a smart lass. I’m going to give you a bit of advice, be yerself, lass, no’ his doctor. Hmmm? All he wants is ye. He loves ye, I am certain of it.”

“But what if he doesn’t like what he finds? I’m afraid I could lose him as my friend.” Claire did not know why she was confiding in this woman who she had known for all of 10 minutes. There was something about the force of her personality that compelled trust.

“Claire, give the lad a chance. He is a special one. Lads like him dinna come along every day.” Maizie gave her a knowing look, “I ken his type well. Trust him.”

Maizie lifted Claire’s chin up.  She inspected Claire’s face, removed a clean but crumpled tissue from her sleeve and wiped away Claire’s tears. Maizie held the tissue to Clare’s nose, “Now blow.” Claire did as she was told.

“Besides, ye are building memories with the lad. Even if ye dinna think them to be good just now.  Ye will laugh at them in later years. On this ye can be sure.” Maizie smiled and winked at Claire.

Claire leaned toward Maizie, gave her a kiss on the cheek, “Thank you Maizie, for everything.”

“‘Twas nothing Claire.  Here,” Maizie handed Claire the buttons she was holding.

“I needta get back to my seat or Harry will worry I ran off with another man.” Maizie gave her a wink and turned hurriedly walking back toward her seat.

Claire sat down, wondering how she would apologize to James.

*******************

Maizie made it back to her seat before Harry came out of the lavatory. Harry took his seat next to Maizie and nodded his head.

“Ye spoke with the lass?”

“I did and ye were right.  She was hurt by someone. Who, I dinna ken. I think she was hurt bad though. She is afraid to lose him.  I told her to just be herself. Did ye speak with him?”

“Aye told him I thought she had been hurt before and was scairt. I told him that he needs to be gentle with her.”

“I think we gave them the best advice we could have. It’s all up to them now,” said Harry with a shrug.

“Aye, ‘tis,” Maizie agreed.  All we can do now is hope for the best.” Harry and Maizie’s hands intertwined. Harry raised her hand to his lips and kissed her wedding ring. “Tha gaol agam ort, mo chridhe.” Maizie looked Harry with such love and devotion and said, “And I you.” She kissed him sweetly on the lips.

*********************

James returned to his seat making himself comfortable after a harrowing start to his trip.

He found Claire sitting there serenely, although it looked as if she had been crying before.

“Fraser, I want to apologize for all the trouble I caused you.  Of course I will pay for the shirt I tore.” Claire blushed at the mention of the shirt.

“Dinna fash, Beauchamp. It’s nay bother. I ken ye were trying to help.  I’m glad of it.  Always kent ye would be there for me. Even if ye kill me in the process.”

Claire gave him a wry smile and gently jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.  “Thank you for understanding.”

He laughed, smiled graciously at her, and patted her hand ending the matter.

The jet made its final turn on to the runway. With a roar of the engines the jet began to gain speed, gaining momentum leaving the terminal buildings behind in a blur. The jet thrust forward, cutting through the air freeing itself of its earthly bonds and suddenly it was airborne.

Finally. They were on their way. James relaxed into his seat sinking down as deeply as he could and he drifted off into what would become a fitful sleep.

Claire, too, yawned and stretched. Sank down into the cushioned seat, curling into herself as best as she could.  Soon she was carried off by Hypnos into the land of sleep.

There was music and dancing. Claire was in the arms of a tall red-headed man dancing around the room with the other couples. The music was fast; she was spinning and twirling about.  The man took hold of her by the waist, lifting her up spinning them around. Her head tossed back in a joyful laugh. He stopped and lowered her down, sliding her body over his. Her messy curls damp from exertion clung in ringlets to her face and neck. “I love you,” she whispered bringing her lips down to meet his. His lips were soft, warm, and tasted of whisky. The kiss warmed her to her core, setting her body on fire for him, only him.  She knew she never wanted to be anywhere else, with anyone else for the remainder of her life. James.

[amarantine-amirite]

The Butterfly Effect

if you read a lot of time travel books, then you're probably pretty familiar with the butterfly effect. It's the idea of small action having really large consequences later on in life. People often think about how going back in time and stepping on a bug alter the course of history, but they don't think of little tiny things they can do today that can alter the future in ways that they never imagined.

I'm aware of that. I'm aware of how little decisions today can make big changes in the future. I know, because I've experienced to myself. I don't care what area my parents or any of my friends say; who I am now can be traced back to Valentine's Day when I was 9 years old.

the year was 9 years old, Valentine's Day fell on a Saturday. It was also the Saturday the my dad decided to take me to something called Lunch Bunch. for those who that don't know Lunch Bunch is a program that is meant to help kids on the autism spectrum with their social skills in a fun environment. Sure was the problem with that: the concept of the Lunch Bunch program seemed great on paper. But the problem was it was hosted in a noisy, cramped, and possibly leaking portable and the aides who were helping the autistic kids with their social skills were pretty young (and bratty. In fact I was starting to think that none of them were older than high school age, and that the only reason they were there was because they were serving community service as a punishment for something). It was a disaster. A couple of fights broke out, actually.

I don't think it's fair to make kids volunteer for anything related to helping people disabilities as a punishment. If you do that, they will start to see people with disabilities has a burden instead of, you know, people. Yet that's the case. The more I think about it, the more I think the the Lunch Bunch thing school setup was designed to be a punishment for the kids that were acting as the aides. They held it at 7 AM. It was in the middle of winter, and the portable it was held in didn't have much in the way of heat. It wasn't fair to the people that needed the Lunch Bunch to help their social skills, but that's how it was. And if it hadn't been for that, I think my social skills would have been much better. I would have it in better with my peers. I would have been more confident. I would be about 40 to 50 pounds thinner. I would not have failed 11th grade. I would not have quit high school. I would be a totally different Diana.

It sounds ridiculous, but its true. Everything that has happened to me that has ended in failure can all be traced back to that disastrous Lunch Bunch.

The fight the broke out during the Lunch Bunch that cause this entire fiasco was something out of a different world. And the only reason it started was because the people who were volunteering at the Lunch Bunch we're only there because they had to. Because they were being punished. Worse, they took it out on us, the people who Lunch Bunch was supposed to help. When it came time to pick up our meal, they decided that they would call us up by birth month to pick up our food. I was born in February, but they never called that month (I later found out that those of us who were at Lunch Bunch that were born in February weren't the only one that had this problem. June, July, and November were also never called). Which meant I didn't get my food. I was starving. It was so bad that I walked up to someone else's plate and picked up a couple of their tater tots when their backs were turned.

The aide sitting at the head of the table saw me. "Hey, greedy" she barked, "that isn't yours to take!" I responded in a calm and civilized manner by giving her the middle finger.

"Do you fucking want a piece of me?!" She bellowed, "because your pasty ass is going to get it!!!" She wasn't kidding around. She had a fork, and was prepared to throw it at me.

I don't know what possessed me to quote Clint Eastwood but that moment, but I sent to her, "Go ahead, chubby. Make my day" now that I think about it, maybe I was trying to be funny. If I was, then I don't think it worked. All the aide did was get mad at throw the fork. It didn't hit me, but it did hit a parent.

I could go on about how ticked they were. But, for now, I’ll just say a fight broke out. The fight was insane. People were throwing chairs, the volunteers were boxing each other; and I have a weird feeling that some of the parents were slamming each other against the walls. It didn’t feel like something that would happen at Lunch Bunch. If anything, it felt like something that would happen in a bar after some guy made a pass at a biker’s girlfriend. Despite how manic the fight was, nobody called the cops until about three hours into the whole thing.

It did not get better when the cops arrived. The first question they asked was, “Who started this?” The aide that threw the fork pointed at me.

I don't really remember what happened after that. But, it doesn't really matter. That disastrous day at that Lunch Bunch, change my life forever. And not in a good way.

Most people say I failed the 11th grade because I was some combination of lazy and stupid. they don't understand the events leading up to it though. They don't understand the concept of a cascading failure. That disastrous Lunch Bunch set in motion a chain of events that led to one catastrophe after another. If I heard someone else describe it to me, I would think they were making it up. I am not making this up in any way. and I don't care how convoluted it sounds, and I don't care what anybody else says; but it was that disastrous Lunch Bunch that made me fail the 11th grade and ultimately quit high school.

The first place that things went horrifically wrong was in 5th grade. I did string band back then (I played the guitar) and I moved up from Beginner B (which is ages 6 to 9) to Lower Intermediate (ages 10 to 12). Since they were planning to phase out paper sheet music that year, everyone starting in lower intermediate had to do ear training. I guess the expectation was that everybody would develop absolute pitch so that they could play back the assigned pieces of music just by listening to them rather than using the sheet music as a guide. Things went wrong because the ear training instructor was the mother of the girl who threw the fork at the Lunch Bunch. I could tell right away that she felt the the whole thing was my fault, even though it was her kid that through the fork. I could tell she maintained it was my fault because I was the one that drove the girl to throw the fork. Therefore, she went out to her way to make ear training hell for me. After all, I was the one that got her "innocent" kid in trouble. Yes, I did try to take the tater tot up somebody's plate, but what choice did I have? I was starving! Because I didn't get my meal. I don't think I was my fault, the idiots running Lunch Bunch didn't get me my food!

But that doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I hate that people can do whatever they want to hurt other people, and everyone else just has to sit there and take it. It's not fair. It's not right. But that's the way it is.

At the end of October, ear training for the Lower Intermediate group wrapped up; and then it came time for us to audition. I was one of the last people to audition. This frustrated me, mainly because the fire alarm kept going off. I think the fire alarm went off between four to five times between the start of auditions and the halfway point, and twice after that. Now, when it was my turn to play, the fire alarm didn't go off. Something else happened: just as I got my guitar and amp set up, the power went out. Since (in the interest of saving time) we were auditioning two people at the same time, I wound up having to give up my spot to someone whose instrument didn't need electricity to function. I didn't make it into the next level of strings group

Why did I fail the audition? I didn't find this out until later, but it was because the woman that was the ear training instructor deliberately shut off the electricity not just fro the building where the audition was held, but for the entire block. Yes, she shut off the electricity for at least 20 buildings just to get me to fail an audition. The lengths that she went to so as to screw me over were just astonishing. It was like using a flamethrower to kill an ant. Total bullshit. Complete and total bullshit. But, that’s the way it is. It’s not fair. It’s not right. That’s just the way things are.

The worst part is, it doesn't stop there. Even though they kicked me out of strings group, my parents still got the bill for it. That's right, they were expected to pay for strings group lessons that I wasn't even at! As any sane person would be, they got mad. It got to a point where they filed a lawsuit. There wasn't much to say about this lawsuit, though. Nothing earth-shattering happened, it ended up getting thrown out of court. But we never got an apology from that string group. Worse, we were short a crazy amount of money, and we had to find a cheaper place to live. My parents and I ended up having to move in with my grandpa on my father's side. Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against my paternal grandfather. In fact, the living situation wasn't the problem. The problem was school.

When I say the problem with school, I didn't mean middle school. The middle school I went to during that time was actually OK. In fact, it was better in the school I was attending previously. The problems with school started once I entered high school. When I started high school, my English teacher was the guy from Lunch Bunch that got hit by the thrown fork. And it's because of him that my grades went downhill.

Once I hit high school, it got harder and harder for me to do my assigned work. If I did it poorly, I didn't think it was enough. But if I did well, then I get worried that people would think that I cheated. It felt like a no-win situation; that the only way to get buy was not to do the work at all. The teacher knew this, and he went out of his way to exploit it. I had done so badly and all of my courses, especially English. it would take a miracle for me to pass English. I had one last assignment. One last thing to be completed. The teacher told me, and the guy was lying through his teeth, not to worry about thinking that he thought I was cheating. He told me the only thing I should worry about was doing a good job on the work and making sure that I understand what was being taught. I made the mistake of letting my guard down and doing the work. Before I handed it in to turnitin.com, he had (unbeknownst to me) hacked my laptop and already handed it in to turnitin.com under his own name. He did that so when I submitted my essay on turnitin.com, it would get flagged for plagiarism, even though I did the work myself.

I think I got suspended for over a month. But regardless, I had a hard time doing school work after that. I ended up losing all my motivation, all my drive to succeed in school. I ended up doing the bare minimum in all my classes, and even then, it still wasn't enough. Things got so bad, I wound up failing every single class I had in 11th grade. So that's how I wound up failing the 11th grade. People think it's my fault that I wound up failing 11th grade. It's not, it's because I couldn't do the school work, because I had trust issues brought on by his teacher that hacked my laptop and framed made for cheating.

After I filled the 11th grade, I realized that I was stuck. There was no way I was getting anything back. There was no I was going to be able to catch up to everyone else, no hope that I would pass any of my classes. So I took drastic action: I quit school. You might think I was overreacting, but really, I wasn't. I didn't have any choice. Everything was ruined for me.

The worst part is, everyone thinks this is my fault. Nothing could be further from the truth. The thing that made me quit school wasn't getting accused of cheating in 9th grade. It wasn't because we had to move. It was all because of that crappy Lunch Bunch thing that I went to that Valentine's Day when I was 9 years old.

[sammyhale]

J2 SPN UK 2018 Main Panel

J2 come out on stage at the end of Misha’s panel and they both hug him as he leaves. 

J2 are joking about doing a Saturday panel since they normally only do Sundays. 

Jensen: No one understands Jared he’s an enigma lol 

Jensen now teasing Rich. 

Jared: Has anyone been to a convention before? We’ve been doing this for 10 years where the fuck have you been? Jensen: Someone just said they weren’t born yet :P 

J2 finished filming 2 weeks ago. 

Jared is jetlagged but happy to be here. 

J2 threaten the fans with spoilers lol. 

Jared says this is the first time there is a confession (concession?) stand in a convention hall. 

Jared has somehow changed food into pasties and the stripping music has started. Jared’s pronunciation of pasties is cracking everyone up. 

The J2 panel has descended into nipple tassles and Jensen just did a nipple tassle.

Jared: Don’t call them fanny packs in the UK, call them bum bags! Jensen: They call it sun cream! Jensen is blown away that they call it that lol. “Why do we call it sunscreen? It’s not a screen at all.” 

Jensen to Jared: You’ve got sun cream and pasties in your bumbag!

Jensen about a bartender: Wow, he was kind of a dick to me... he was kind of a sausage roll. 

J2 agree Adam would be pissed if he finally got out of the cage. Jensen would love to have Jake back on the show, Jared thinks Adam would be pissed but relieved. Jensen: He’s messed with the Winchester’s before and look where it got him. 

Fan: What personality trait from your character is most like you? Jared: My hair. Jensen: Yeah [his hair] has a personality of its own! 

Jared reads instruction booklets. He and Sam are similar in that way of study first before doing something, likes to research. Jensen and Dean both loved baked desserts, good music, as well as just fix things however they can. Dean thinks he can fix things with a can of WD-40 and a roll of duct tape. Jensen: Do they even have WD-40 here?” 

Jared says Jensen laughs at him at times, Jensen mouths silently “A lot” lol 

Jared: Shep’s a quirky kid. Jensen: *pats hand over heart* Jared: Yeah, they’re kindred spirits, these two (Jensen and Shep) <3 

Jensen just whispered something to Jared and then he started cracking up even more. 

Jared took off his jacket. Jensen checks his watch, “Right on time.” Jared then goes for his belt. Jensen, checks watch, “Oh, a little early.”

J2 making each other laugh :) 

J2 are whispering to each other and doing full body laughs. 

Jared: I think if you’re acting properly, then you’re learning something about your character. 

Jared: Happens a lot when they read the script and notice things Sam wouldn’t do but also gives him a chance to explore and then realize after doing the scene that it makes sense. 

Jared said he doesn’t think Sam would’ve lived with Amelia. 

Jensen: Sometimes they challenge back the writers if something doesn’t make sense. He says 9 times out of 10 writers get it right/they’ll find a happy medium. 

Jensen: You get a bro hug in the next episode. He said they made it unique like a “hey, are you okay?” hug. 

J2 find little challenges in each script that they’re not sure how they’re gonna play until they shoot the scene. 

Jared: Option 3 just change the scene and don’t tell the writers lol. Jensen says sometimes they just plain change it without telling the writers. 

Jared: Jensen and I love Alex. Alex reminds him of a young Misha and messes with him lol. Favorite part of s13 for Jared was Alex, says he’s so gracious and talented and it was great having him there. Enjoyed showing him the ropes, welcoming him to the family. 

Jensen: A few months ago we actually had to stop filming because it was raining so hard! Perhaps the 2nd time in 13 years. Jared wasn’t filming and was in his trailer wondering what was taking so long lol. 

Jensen: “The physicality of what I had to do during the season finale was a challenge.” 

The snow with Ketch in the AU was not planned. Jensen says that the cast and crew making this day work (re: rain and snow) are the moments he’s most proud of. 

A fan said something and Jared didn’t understand what she said so she repeated it and apologized and Jared said “it’s okay” in the softest way.

Unlike Jared, Jensen doesn’t like to read ahead unless he has to in order to keep it all straight in his head. 

Did Jensen know what John said to Dean in 2x01 (when he whispered about him maybe having to kill Sam)? He did not. He doesn’t read far in advance script wise so he doesn’t accidentally bring something from one script to another.

Jared doesn’t think even the writers knew for sure what John said. Sort of go with the flow and see what works.

At times Jared will be reviewing a scene with him and Jensen has no clue what he’s talking about cause he hasn’t read it lmao. Kevin Parks will also sometimes come in to discuss future scenes, still not getting Jensen hasn’t read it yet and he’ll try to bullshit. 

J2 both just rubbed and twitched their noses in sync :P 

The writers are currently working out the next season from the huge cliffhanger left at the end of Season 13

JP: Sam wasn't meant to be soulless for so long and Amelia longer but writers adapted due to the level of success. 

Jared would tell his past self to “buy bitcoin.” lol

Jared “I almost lived parallel to Sam. I sort of grew up with Sam.”

Jared says if he could see a glimpse of the future he would say no, he doesn’t want to know the future. 

Jared used to have a lot of issues with the industry, wanted to get out (early seasons it sounds like) and even spoke to his lawyers about leaving the show without being sued. “I talked to my on-screen brother, Jensen” and Jensen told him “we can do this,” that they could get through it. 

Advice for past character? Jared thinks Sam (& him) had to go through what they did to get where they are. 

Jensen: “If I could talk to my season 1 self, I’d say settle in.” Jensen says he never used to settle into jobs because “I’ve never been on a show longer than a season or two.”

Jared prefers "life is long" to "life is short.” Life is short gives him anxiety. “Life is long. Be the person who you want to be. Live now how you want to look back and remember who you’ve been.” 

Jensen: “Somebody once said, people aren’t gonna remember the things you had planned, they’re gonna remember what you’ve done.”

Jared can hear an annoying blender in the background: “I hope that’s a great smoothie.”

“it’s the vapers” - Jensen when Jared shouted turn the blender off... there’s a vape convention in this building lmao.  

Jared’s favorite monster death was Lilith because of the cool build up! Jensen’s fave death was Alastair. 

Jared on mental health prejudice: “I think we’ve come a long way but I feel like there’s still a long way to go.” He feels the same about gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. 

Fan: “I came from Hungary for you guys.” Jared “I just ate so I’m not hungry.” :P 

Jared just got a semi-rimshot from Norton. Make that two!

Jared: “YES! Two rim shots.” Jensen “Stop saying that!”

Jared: Had to fly across the pond to get a rimshot...w/ innuendos lol.

Fan: Does your character leak into everyday life? Jensen: Absolutely Jared: She said leaked not licked. Jensen: I know that? Jared: Okay it’s just the accent sounded like- Jensen: Not to anyone else! 

Jensen: “I have had moments where Dean leaked....” Cracking up lol

Jensen: “one of the ways that Jared and I bridge the distance at work is, we FaceTime our kids.”

Last question: Did their kids ever want to be on the show & would they let them? Jensen: No. They FaceTime a lot but Jensen is often in bloody make-up. JJ thinks it’s disgusting & doesn’t want to work where he does.

They keep saying Uncle Jared and Uncle Jensen it's cute as hell.

Jared: A baby pic of Tom was in a scene. He also says that the kids were on set and watching daddy and Uncle Jensen creeping upstairs with flashlights and Shep grabbed Uncle Ackles’ flashlight and joined in thinking they weren’t actually playing pretend :)

Info via: Maisie, Jenn, Kelli, Sil’s livetweet list

[youmightaswell]

Die!

In Honor of Barney’s Closing 

I just read that sadly Barney's is shuttering it's doors forever. The iconic luxury department store will soon be no more. Disappearing New York and all that jazz.

So in honor of this monumental loss, here's a #fbf (2004)  iconic journal essay about that spot. 

***

It was right after Thanksgiving. Christmastime. The streets had a distinct holiday chill to them; they were crowded with store bags pushing into each other being carried by tired, overworked shoppers.

My close friend Chris decided he would get me a pair of Sevens for Xmas this year. I had never had a pair and just felt wrong about paying $130 for a pair of jeans, no matter how great, yet the bargain hunter in me was silenced by my vanity and covetness. Every time I saw how great Sarah looked in hers and blandly stared at my own Levis I felt a pang.

So it was decided and he told me to go to Barneys—ahhhh, Barney’s—after work and pick out a pair and he’d reimburse me that night at a fancy lobster dinner. He shopped there often; I have never made a purchase.

I paid special attention to how I looked that morning while I dressed. I carefully put on a chic black wool turtleneck, paired it with a pair of demure and brand new black and white large checked pants and donned pointy toed boots. Atop I put on my black knee-length shearling, put my hair up in a sophisticated bun, smeared on the red lipstick and headed to work. As soon as 5 o’clock hit I literally ran to Barney’s, the excitement was so great. I sauntered in and headed straight to the jeans floor. They call it the “Denim Jeans Bar”, and everyone looks so chic and made up listening to phat pumping bass you'd naturally expect to sidle up to the cashier and ask for a Barneytini on the rocks. Racks and racks of Sevens and Paper Denim in glorious piles lined the area. I wasn’t sure my size in Sevens so I picked about 5 different styles (all the same pocket design) and took one of each size 28, 29 and 30. I had at least 15 pairs in the fitting room.

Being Christmastime the fitting room situation was chaotic. There are about 20 claustrophobic rooms each about three feet by three feet. There is only a mirror and a concrete, uncarpeted floor. It was hot. I was tired, it being after a long day at work. Rushing out the office and into the hectic crowds was not the worst of my problem. The fatigue was bad, the heat in the fitting room was worse, but the worst was that I needed to pee…..badly! Still there was a long line of women out front waiting for a fitting room, and I was not going to give mine up and start the maddening process of finding the right pair of jeans. There was no bathroom on the floor, the salespeople were crazed and unhelpful and took forever to bring additional sizes and I was going to be late for my big dinner with Chris.

Jeans, jeans, jeans. Women reading will know that this is just as bad as finding a bathing suit that fits. The length must be right, the rise and color must be right and with Sevens the stretch must be right. I swear I tried on 3 different styles of them all in size 29 and all fit completely differently. Even 28s in the SAME style fit differently.

I had asked the salesperson several times for different pairs and each time she took forever and finally thrust about 20 extra pairs on top of the door.

So there I was doing a new form of aerobics—jeanbo, if you want to call it that. Bend knees, pull up jeans, squat, suck in gut, turn, turn, look, turn — all to the blaring hip hop beat in Club Barneys. But with each pair I tried on the pressure in my bladder got worse and worse. The mere bending and stretching motions caused me to feel I’d pee myself any second. The tight denim thrusting itself near my urethra combined with my thong getting pulled further and further up made me feel like I was going to explode.

And here is where this story will begin to go down a very dark path.

There is no bathroom on the floor. I mentally take myself down the elevator after waiting for the packed boxed to finally come to my floor. I run around like crazy looking for the nearest restroom, which, in department stores is always hidden away down the farthest, longest corridor, hidden behind racks of missy petites or August Silk that no one wears.

Nope, I rationalize, this will not work. It would take too long and time was something I did not have at this point. I was breaking out into a sweat, secretly hoping I could sweat away my fluids so the pressure would lessen. The walls of my tiny fitting room felt like they were closing in and I was trapped with my mirror image. My own grimaced face stared back at me. I mentally chided myself for scrunching up my forehead in dismay, noting I was just a year or two away from needing Botox. I was in Barney's after all, these things needed to be addressed.

I had walked in feeling so sophisticated, so adult. Buying expensive jeans in a chi-chi department store and here I was, my outing being ruined because of a non-sophisticated bodily function. There had to be a way to quickly address this annoying problem. A blip in my jeans-buying radar. At this point there was absolutely NO time to try to get redressed and find a bathroom. I needed a solution and a needed one fast.

I looked around. Survival instincts kicked in. I stared at my reflection; it stared back. I winked; I winked. I looked over shoulders and under the door—which, by the way, only came down to my knees. I peered over the door and just left of it I saw the line of frustrated and impatient women growing. I knew that there was no way I could run and find a salesperson to hold the fitting room and my horded jeans.

The music sounded like it was getting louder and faster, but it was just my heartbeat. Things crossed my mind, unspeakable things. Yet these are unspeakable things are now become writable things.

I looked around once again. To my left was a pile of jeans in the corner—the huge pile. To my left was my big leather handbag, next to it on the floor was my still unopened water bottle of water. My big canvas and leather overnight bag crowded itself into the opposite left hand corner. There was barely enough floor space for my sweaty socked feet. I had to find a receptacle, FAST.

I eyed the water bottle. Looking nervously from it to my lower regions. I pulled off the thong underwear to reduce pressure. The bottle was full. I thought of drinking some so I could possibly pee in it, recap it and move onto more important chore at hand. I gingerly picked it up and moved it towards my waiting urethra. The opening was so small. It would be impossible to aim it in and the thought of drinking just a sip seemed incomprehensible. I put it back in the corner, frustrated.

“Oh my God, I have to pee NOW!” ran through my head over and over in desperation. I said a small prayer. Tried to will myself out of my 3 X 3 hell. In quick jagged movements I picked up my purse. It was big and sturdy. I could hold pee. But how much pee could I possibly have? I could dump out the wallet and scraps of paper and makeup and…. “Wait,” I thought, "this purse was fine Italian leather. It cost about $80 on sale.” What was I thinking? How could I pee in my purse? I had dignity. I was sophisticated. I was in Barney’s!  I was well-coifed and smelled of Chanel. I just couldn’t. I threw it back on the floor exasperated. I stared into the mirror at the grimace growing ever-wider.

I cursed nature, God, Barney, All Mankind.

I was making little abbreviated gasps. Outside the clicking of shoes back and forth, back and forth outside my bathroom, I mean, fitting room. Naked from the waste down, pasty legs in black socks, hair rapidly wilting from chic to messy. I looked like a mental case, my red lipstick that of a diabolical clown. I went through my overnight bag. Nothing. N.o.t.h.i.n.g that even resembled a cup.

I could feel the warm urine traveling down ureters from kidneys, down to the bladder which jerked and sputtered like a car warming up. I only had seconds left.

I threw things out of my purse one by one and came across a small brown prescription bottle, labeled with my name from the local pharmacy. Celexa it read. 40 mgs. My antidepressants. Could this work? Was it possible? Beggars chouldn’t be choosy. I rationalized that I wasn’t really going to do it. Of course not. I was simply going to pour the few remaining tablets into my purse and merely hold it up to my crotch and just look.

Hand in slow motion, still eyeing myself in the mirror, ashamed for the poor girl standing sheepishly in falling socks. And the minute it reached my opening the floodgates opened.

For a few brief moments all was right in the world. The relief was earth shattering. I smiled, feeling resourceful, successful. Yet, I was peeing in Barney’s in the fitting room with people just feet, inches, away. The feeling of pride in myself for being so quick thinking and so sneaky filled me, much as my urine filled the tiny bottle. And then it all too quickly reached the top. Almost suspended in time I reached for the next bottle. Where was the next bottle? “Damn you, hand it to me!,” I screamed silently to the girl in the mirror. But sadly there was no next bottle. The urine overflowed onto me, onto my socks, onto the concrete floor, onto the Sevens. There was no stopping it. It was an impossible ride with no way off. The room spun, the urine splattered. The girl in the mirror was in denial, in shock.

Once the tidal wave ceased I stood mortified. The impact of the situation reaching me with its cold clammy hands.

I had just peed in Barney's. Worse than peeing in Barney’s, I was peeing on Barney’s. 

There I stood, urine-filled prescription bottle in right hand, standing cartoonishly on left foot, all the while trying to reach down for the bottle top that I had thrown somewhere under piles of jeans. Finally finding it I placed it back on and wondered if childproof caps were also leak proof. I wasn’t taking my chances. I had taken way too many chances. I placed it neatly back in the corner.

Now for damage control. Hopping, I pulled off my socks and began to mop the saturated floor. I used my panties too. Thongs and socks do not absorb enough. I used my black and white wool pants. Wool doesn’t absorb liquid well. I swished them around like a stream of consciousness. I gathered them up and tied them in a plastic bag I had in my overnight bag, careful to segregate them from the more appropriate articles. I kicked my overnight bag halfway out the door so it wouldn’t become saturated from the still-wet floor. I pulled on sweats I had in there for the next day and returned my boots on sans socks.

The Sevens, poor pathetic pants, lay in the corner, at least 23 pant hems soaked.

I must act quickly. How soon does urine start to smell? I wasn’t sure but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I sniffed in and out but all I could smell was the starchy new clothing smell prevalent in retail shops. My still-wet feet squished in my boots. I rationalized that surely it was just the sweat. I stacked the jeans on top of the fitting room door with their hems tucked under. Pair after pair after pair.

I suddenly knew how it felt to commit an unfathomable crime and need to cover it up. This was not premeditated, I rationalized further. I never planned on peeing in Barney's this way. Surely no civilized person would ever willfully do such a thing. It was all a mistake. It got away from me. It didn’t really happen. Surely the liquid was just water. Yes, that was it. My water spilled from my uncapped water bottle. By mistake. I then purposely spilled a bit and left the bottle on its side.

I was formulating a plan. I would stage it to look like nothing more than a spilled bottle of Poland Spring. I put on my shearling, fixed my hair, put my heavy overnight bag over my shoulder, carrying the two dry and untouched pairs of Sevens I still intended on buying. I threw my purse over my shoulder and resumed my haughty stance. I was sophisticated. I was buying not only one pair of $130 jeans, but two. I was fashionable and in control.

I peered over and under the door. I saw my chance and made a break for it leaving wet boot prints in a trail to the cashier. I stood on a lengthy line nearly hyperventilating. I.must.get.out.before I’m discovered. I stood stone-faced as the cashier rung me up. I knew giving my credit card was an unfortunate mistake as now thye’d have my identity in their hands. But alas, I did not have $260 plus tax in cash. I signed convincing myself I was forging my own signature. I am not that girl—the girl that pees in a classy department store. As the cashier took the slip from my hands I quietly and almost conspiratorially told her I was sorry but that I spilled a half a bottle of water in the fitting room and that she should have someone mop it up so the clothes don’t get wet and so that nobody would slip. And then I took off.

Once outside I felt victorious. Instead of being ashamed I felt great. I felt like I got away with the crime of the century. I was free. I was actually chuckling to myself. I was late to meet Chris and suddenly I was ravenous. But I still had to throw out the socks, the thong and most of all, the prescription bottle that was tucked still in my right hand hidden in my pocket. I pushed and shoved my way through sidewalks crowded with bustling robots. I snickered at the thought of my little secret. Hey you! Pretty lady. I bet you can’t guess what I have in my pocket, I taunted in my head.

I got to a public trashcan and opened the plastic bag tightly tucked intomy overnight bag and opened it. I threw the black socks in looking left and right to see if anyone had seen. The thong disposal would be harder but at this point I was up for any challenge. Lastly I tossed in the bottle as if a coin in a fountain and made a wish.

Hopped in a cab, ran to the table with a waiting Chris seated ready to order and showed him my purchase.

I went to the restaurant bathroom and removed my boots and took paper towels with water and soap and scrubbed my feet and legs. I wiped off the underside of my bag and hurried down to a scrumptious lobster feast.

Once at Chris’ apt after dinner I made a beeline for the tub and soaked and scrubbed. I fell asleep and the next day I wore my Sevens happily.

It’s taken me a long time to confess this story and now I feel purged. This written excretion has made me feel relieved. I didn’t tell a soul for years. At times I wonder how this happened. I wonder if maybe I lack certain boundaries and am missing crucial skills in judgement. Yet, I am more and more fascinated with myself and feel this occurrence just makes me more multi-faceted. I finally told a friend who encouraged me to tell it and often. She declared she was sure this would be my ticket to fame;to a one-woman show. She was sure it’s a gold mine –a golden mine that will surely get me showered with accolades.

***

Epilogue:

I still own one of those pairs of jeans, now shorn into a pair of cut-off shorts.

[mamepwrites]

Ebb and Flow

Below is a short story I wrote for a creative writing class last year. Inspired in part by southern gothic/film noir.

(This has since been rewritten and expanded.)

Ebb and Flow, by Mesba Bhuiya

The sun was too goddamn hot today. I could’ve sworn the surface of the bayou was boiling with the way it steamed, or something like that. I’m no weatherman.

“You there yet?” buzzed the radio.

“Just about, chief,” I said back. “I’ll be done soon enough.”

“Way out there in the middle of hicksville nowhere. Watch out for the river.”

The worst had passed, but would come again: the fens upriver kept reaching for the road, like tendrils. Every glance I got of them made the hair on my neck stand on end. Along with that, the drive was a good forty minutes already. I couldn’t take the 333 here, not on this side of the river. And the dirt roads down here were nameless. No signs, no nothing. I should have been used to this by now.

I saw a man in the distance, wearing a red cap and a plaid shirt which bursted open from his pot belly as he ran out of his house, flagging me down.

“You came, sheriff,” he said, breathless.

“I’m not the sheriff, just Deputy Serrafib. Are you Mr. Fora–Foret, was it?”

“Foret. Bill Foret.” The T wasn’t silent, I thought, making the correction on my index card. We went inside his home.

“I was told you called about a missing child. Is that right?”

“Missing? He might as well be...My boy, yeah. Mason’s been gone since yesterday, around the afternoon. Shit, he took my car too.” He lowered to a mumble. “I’mma beat his ass when I find him.”

“Now, Mr. Foret, why’d you call us directly? 911 is fine for missing persons.”

“I did. Twice. Something must have been wrong with the line, or they hung up. I went to Beth Dufrene down the road to try again, but she said I should call you, that the folks up in Esther don’t do jack for us.”

Someone down the road, in this phantom town. I shifted slightly, peeking behind Bill’s head. The heat of the zenith covered the rest of the “town” in a highway mirage, but I knew what those huts were. Drug dens. A dark mist began to cover my eyes and the huts. I shook it out.

“Did you see which way he took the car, sir?”

“He went thataway,” he said, pointing behind me. Figured the dens could be ruled out. Thank God.

“Well, it’s a hell of the trip from Abbeville to here, Mr. Foret. Can you tell me about your son?”

Bill gestured to the stairs, and we walked. “It’s not the first time he’s taken off in my car, I can tell you that. But he’d always come back by midnight.”

“I mean physical details, sir.”

“Oh. Well he’s tall for his age, over six feet now. What was he again, seventeen, nineteen?”

I gave him a blank stare at the turn of the staircase.

“Nineteen,” he said. “His hair’s like sand, and on his arm he’s got a tattoo of...Sky—of...well...”

“A tattoo of what, Mr. Foret?”

“A tattoo of a woman, deputy. Curly blonde with a small nose, head in the clouds.”

***

“Come on, you can go—un—slower, sha. I wanna enjoy this too.”

“Shut your mouth.” I pushed. I wasn’t here to enjoy things, though her bouncing curls were fun to watch. But I thought of the tendrils again. So I closed my eyes and pushed.

I threw the rubber in the trash, where the others were. Lying back on the bed, I lit a joe while she grabbed me with a bit of spit, pulling up and down.

“How come we never talk no more, Tony? You always had so many things to say to me about your cases, Mr. Poe Leese.”

I glanced at her from the side of my eye.

“You ain’t ploughing me no more, least you can do is speak.” She pulled harder.

“Alright, alright.” I gave her a few cigs. The place already smelled like rot and cancer anyway. “You know anything about a Mason Foret? Tall, sandy hair. He come to you?”

“Oh, he comes to me every weekend,” she said, chuckling. “He’s a big guy.” She squeezed at the top.

“Cut the shit, Skylar.”

“I’m serious! Every Saturday at nine o’clock.” She giggled. “Oh, the whispers he gives in my ear...Say, what’s your time this week? Six minutes? You could learn a thing or two from him about technique. He tips well, too. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he loves me.”

“That don’t sound like love, Skylar. I’m here every Sunday and you don’t hear me whispering jack to you.”

“Well you should. A lady like me wants more...worthwhile friends. Ones who can reciprocate.” She moved my hand over her breast and made me squeeze and play with the nipple.

“Skylar.”

“Fine then.” She dropped my hand, but kept pulling with her other. I felt like I was going to burst.

“What can you tell me about Mason?”

“Well, he came here last night with his boys. He’s been bringing his camera a lot lately. It’s the instant kind, he’s a bit old fashioned. Sometimes I don’t know whether he’s paying more attention to me or the viewfinder.”

“Do you study photography or something? Whatever, Skylar, his room’s covered in your pictures.”

“As a matter of fact, I majored in pho—hold on, did you say covered?”

“The kid’s dad went batshit when he first saw it. So he said.”

“For real, Tony? I was just joking, I didn’t think he was that obsessed…”

“That, and missing. We’ve got patrols going around for him, posters  and all. Have you any idea where he is?”

“Hmm...before his boys left him last night, he said something about some junkyard...in New Iberia, I think. They were gonna shoot up or smoke. I don’t know.”

I swung my legs off the bed and pulled my pants up. There was difficulty in buckling the belt, so I let her finish me off and clean up.

“You stay safe, now,” she said. “He’s a rowdy one.”

“It’s not like I’m mowing his lawn.” I scoffed. “Before I go, how much was it for the Percocet?”

“For you? Ten a pop.”

***

Now, New Iberia was out of the Vermilion Parish, and so it was outside of my jurisdiction, but I checked it anyway. Going plainclothes saved me trouble, since sheriffs around here had a nasty tendency to get pissy about their territory, and my boss up in Abbeville was no exception. Yet here at the junkyard, it felt like no man’s land. By the time I came closer to the bonfires, already I saw three people tussling, with rusted knives, brass knuckles, and whatever else they scrounge up from the trash heaps. A tire was thrown somewhere. The only law enforcement here was whoever was still standing by the end of it.

The shadow of the bonfire crawled along the ground, entangling those teens laying limp on the ground with vomit crusting at their cheeks. For a moment the fire went dim and damp like a shrouded sun, and all I saw were the kids floating on the surface of the junkyard. All I could think to do was finger my gun, but step by step I made it out. Mason Foret was not here.

It’d been a few days since the kid’s dad called, and with all of my other leads snapped from the strings they hung from, I made the drive back the next day, and in uniform again. I still hated these goddamn fens. I should never have come to Louisiana.

The Forets’ front door was wide open, creaking in the wind. The house was otherwise quiet. Rain was about to fall soon. I drew my M1911 and went in. The house was dead as a dodo, and so was Bill Foret. Body at least two days old, leaking everywhere. Bled out from his gut and groin, long dried. Weapon missing. The kid’s room was now devoid of all features except for one.

COME FIND ME

It didn’t smell like paint. The red was dry on the wall, mostly covering up the spots where Skylar’s pictures once were, but you could still see some of the dust lines. The window was wide open, and through it I saw the huts in the distance, stealing my eyes. I radioed the chief for backup and drove off, deeper into the shades of this once-town. Deeper into the mist’s maw.

Ruins of old homes hit by years of storms dotted this edge of land, and in them were the dregs of the parish. I should have checked here sooner. The gun quavered in my hand just as the the black mist’s writhing fingertips probed my skull. Trigger control, trigger control. Behind the door was a wide room where the air felt...cracked, disjointed. Teenagers lay on one side of the room with crusted vomit on their mouths and eyes wobbling, trying to lock onto me. Middle-aged men lay on the other side, sprawled out wide, clothes stained black. Some even had skin falling off. They were all floating on the surface like a mass fish death. There was another room to the side, its wood splitting and salt-worn. I heard bated laughing.

“Hands behind your head!” Finger off the trigger.

He splashed in the depth of his polaroids, faded blue.

“I said hands behind your head, now!”

“Oh, Tony...Tony!” You’re the cop that’s been haunting me?” He shook his sandy hair back into the pile of photos. “Well I’ve been hunting you, but honest to God am I surprised it’s you. All I could get from Skylar was that it was a cop. She wouldn’t tell me your name.” He grasped the knife at his side, bloodied back.

“Mason, let go of the knife.”

“Alright. Alright. You just answer me one thing, Tony. One thing.”

I said nothing.

“Why’d you dirty her like that, Tony?” His voice scratched. “She’s my woman!” He started crawling, clawing at the floor with his cracking fingernails to pull himself forward. The black tendrils came slithering behind him.

“You stay the fuck back, boy!” I heard sirens in the distance.

“I’ll gut you and paint the walls with you, Tony. All the others did it with her once, maybe a few times. You and me, though?” He shook his head. “No way I’m letting you leave.” He grasped his knife again. I heard rumbling in the other room, but the bodies were still. My vision became muddled. Mason reached across the waters made up of the woman, pulling himself closer and closer to my feet. His eyes looked bulging and bulbous, and his skin scaly and pasty.  He grabbed the knife again, sticking it in the floorboards to pull on. The rusty thing broke and cut his face.

“You won’t take me from my Sky, nor my Sky from me.”

He kept screaming that as we dragged him out, handcuffed and wriggling.

“You doing okay there, Serrafib?” the sheriff said, arriving shortly after. I was on the threshold of the deep, with its dark arms reaching and pulling for me.

Ebb and flow.

Thousands of fish lay dead on the water.

[inadequeer]

title: Hang Me Up to Dry

relationships: jayroy

summary: When Jason happens to be state side training with another teacher Talia set up, he runs into someone from a past life.

a/n: Set during lost days. I wanted to write Jason helping Roy get clean instead of Dinah and Hal

[on ao3]

      Star City was a shithole, but in a different way than Gotham was a shithole. Star City was where you went to make it big, and where you died of an overdose in swimming pool fifteen years later. A sprawling southern California city and the center of the nation’s film and television industry. Where Gotham had endless families of organized crime and psychopaths in masks, Star City just had crime, plain and simple. Gang bangers and Pushes ruled the city while the rich movie stars snorted cocaine in their beach homes and pretended the world didn’t exist outside of Star Hills.

        The air reeked of pollution and sweat, and something left sitting out in the sun for too long. You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a homeless person or an aspiring actor. Jason didn’t know if he would burn Gotham or Star City down first if he had the chance, at least Star City had beaches so you could at least pretend it was pretty Gotham didn't even have that. He was only here on business, he never would have set foot in the hole otherwise, learning how to make poisons and toxins from a cruel Chinese woman who doubled as a heroin supplier. (Another pointless errand from Talia.)

        He was sprawling out on the couch watching some Spanish soap opera that he had gotten invested into while he waited for Soo to return, when he caught the tail-end of a conversation between two thugs who ran the streets for Soo, selling her product. In other words— scumbag drug dealers. They were both Mexican like him, one with a close shaved head and a tacky goatee, and the other was decked out in gang tattoos, including a tasteful teardrop inked onto his cheekbone.

“If we're short again this month, she’s going to kill us.”

“Relax. We just need to find Harper. He’s gotta be itching for his fix by now.”

“Haven’t seen him in a while. Maybe he finally ate it.”

“I hope not. He's a piece of shit, but he’s a regular.”

They whispered to each other in hushed Spanish— as if they thought because he was from Gotham he couldn’t understand them. The chatter was nothing interesting, but the name caught Jason’s attention. It was a name from a past life, a lazy grin, messy red hair, memories fleeting behind his eyes like a forgotten song. A person, he’d actually remembered a person, that almost never happened.

“Hola,” He greeted, stormy eyes bright and intense as he stood up and gave the two gangsters a casual grin. “Who’s Harper?” He asked in Spanish. They gave each other uneasy looks, unsure of what to do when cornered by an eighteen-year-old who looked ready to snap either of their necks.

“He’s just some white trash junkie. He’s a regular, but he hasn’t been seen for a while.” Jason cracked his knuckles and tried not to think about it, a mysterious someone slumped over a table, blood running down their nose with the needle still in the other hand.

“Can’t be a good business practice to off your regulars, but I guess that can’t be helped when you’re dealing drugs.” He mused to himself. After a month of working with Soo, it was clear that heroin was the deadliest thing she created. “What’s he look like? This Harper guy.”

“Like every other junkie living on the street. Why do you care kid?”

Jason whipped out his gun from the waistband of his pants and pointed it evenly at the first man’s chest without ever looking away. “Just answer the fucking question before I get mad.” He growled, finger tapping the trigger lightly. The one with the goatee responded by pulling out his gun, and snarling something at Jason. But the tattooed one just gave Jay a funny look.

“Hey hey— Whoa. Easy ese.” The tattooed guy said, raising both hands in the universal sign of ‘Don’t Shoot.’ “His name is Roy Harper I think, pasty, gangly sonovabitch with long red hair and usually wearing some stupid trucker hat.”

“I hear he’s a mutant.”

“Used to be one of those fucking superhero types, I heard, but now look at him. No better than the rest of us.” He scoffed, but Jason had stopped listening. Words weren’t his strong suit but Roy, that sounded right. So he had known… one of those hero types? How the hell? Had he really been in deep enough shit as a kid to get mixed up with capes?

Talia had told him not to go looking for his past. And she was right, it didn’t matter anymore, his past was just a distraction. But the opportunity was right there. What if this Roy had been his friend? And now he was hooked on some bad stuff. These guys said he was a regular, and if anyone knew what that looked like it was the sellers. Jason mulled this information over, chewing on the inside of his cheek thoughtfully before he finally made a decision. He slid his gun back into his waistband and gave the two of them a cheeky salute, tapping two fingers to his temple and then extending the hand towards them.

“Well, that’s all I need to know. Thanks a million you guys.”

        Jason had learned (remembered?) a long time ago that if you wanted to find a junkie the best place to look was Chinatown, so that was his first stop. He wasn’t sure what was really driving him to find Roy, god knows he had more important things on his plate than some barely remembered junkie, but Jason had so few shreds of his old life left to him. No matter who he is, this Roy deserved better than dying alone in the gutter.

Anger boiled inside of him, as he swerved through lanes of Star City traffic in his motorcycle.

        Just like home he thought bitterly pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up. Every big city in the world had their ‘bad parts of town’ and they were all pretty much the same, and no matter how hard he had tried he had never escaped — not really. He had made sure to park in the more touristy area because he wasn’t a complete dumbass and he didn’t want his bike stolen. From there he looked for the shadier areas, back alleys and rundown shops and the like. If you knew what to look for picking a drug dealer in a crowded street no problem. He watched a hooded man make a sale, palming off cash for a packet of white powder before he approached.

“You sellin’ smack?” He asked in a hushed voice, making a show of looking paranoid, and glancing around.

“Aren’t you a little young for H kid?” Great, a drug dealer with a conscience. Not where he expected a morality lecture.

“Who cares?” He snapped, crossing his arms. “If you’re too high and mighty to sell to a “kid” like me I’ll just go find someone else.”

“Hey, slow down it’s not like that. You have the money?” Jason reached into his pocket, then to his other and winced.

“Shit.”

“Sorry kid, you don’t have the cash you’re shit out of luck.”

“Please man! I just gotta find a buddy of mine, you know a guy named Roy Harper? He owes me big time, once I find him I’ll be able to pay the rest. Maybe you could float me until then?”

“No way in hell mijo, but if you want to get that money you’re owed be my guest. I know Harper and there’s a loft just south of here— old brick building where he and a couple’a other junkies go to shoot up. You go get your money and I’ll be right here.” Jason looked pained, ran a hand across his brow, where he didn’t even have to pretend to be sweating since it was hot as hell outside.

“Fine. Fuck you man.” He snapped, stalking off in the direction he had been pointed. The act dropped but his scowl didn’t. Shit. What the hell was he getting into. He shouldn’t care about some random ass junkie he didn’t even know anymore. So why did he anyway? Maybe he wanted to be the good guy for once. Maybe because he knew what it was like to die alone.

        Either way he didn’t stop, not until he was in front of the boarded-up brick building and forcing the door open. There was probably a secret entrance people used, but when you had super strength you don’t need a secret entrance. The smell of garbage, mold, and piss hit him and he groaned out loud. Yep, just like home, he thought as he pulled his shirt up over his nose, and flicked on the flashlight on his phone. He had stayed in places like this, he remembered that now. Jason had suspected he was from the street for a while now and this was only confirming it. Honestly he wasn’t surprised; how could anyone forget a smell like that, how it clung to you wherever you went, filling your senses and suffocating you.

Jason picked his way through the building carefully. From what he could tell it was an old department store, leaking pipes drooping from the ceiling and half assembled mannequins watching him with their painted on eyes and Jason didn’t care for that shit at all. The dealer had said they shot up in the loft, so finding the first floor empty wasn’t surprising. He moved towards the stairs, his gaze sweeping across the empty room with what some might call paranoia. He just wasn’t a fan of dolls, mannequins, or bugs and could you blame him? No.

        He was staring at a large black blob on one of the mannequins naked bodies trying to determine if it was a gargantuan cockroach or not when he stumbled on a disembodied mannequin head with a loud crash as he swore and grabbed the closest thing next to him. Which was a portion of the rotted wooden staircase, which he easily tore off as he fell.

“Fuck! Fuck shit son of a piss fucking bitch—“ He seethed, throwing the ruined wood to ground and jumping to his feet. Well if anyone thought they were alone in this building they sure as hell didn’t anymore. He was immensely grateful that no one had been there to see that as he brushed himself off and tried to calm down. “Okay, there was my heart attack of the day. Let’s not do this again.” He muttered to himself, shaking his head. He climbed the stairs, scanned the second floor before continuing upward. The building had five stories, and when he did finally get to the top floor he knew this was the right place. Tables were set up set up and littered with old Chinese food boxes and other garbage, with a couple of lamps scattered about, connected to long orange power strips that ran around the whole room. There was a shitty couch pushed up against the wall. It was clearly the place the dealer had been talking about, but it was empty, and judging by the smell of that take out, no one had been back here in days

“Damnit.” He hissed, climbing out onto the fire escape, unable to bear the smell any longer. The sun had set by now but it was still hot, street lights lighting up the city just as well as the sun. He took a moment to clear his head and think about where else he could look, probably the shelters, ask some other junkies if they knew Roy. When he stepped off the metal and landed in the road below he heard a low groan from behind a pile of trash and a couple of garbage cans.

“Unnnn…” Jason kicked the cans out of the way and the person who had been hiding behind it flinched backwards. Jason got a look at him from the light thrown down the alley by a passing car. He was scrawny, and dressed in a shitty tank top and tucker hat, with long red hair and green tattoos decorating his biceps.

“Roy.” He breathed out. Holy shit. Just seeing the guy’s face was bringing a burst of memories, if only scraps. Roy’s grin, his jawline when it was shaved, his laugh, Jason’s pulse racing at the sight of his arms…

Oh, god, oh god. Roy had been. His crush. Well, that answered the question of if dying had made him gay.

"Please tell me you're here to kill me,” present Roy moaned. This Roy was hardly recognizable from the snapshots remembered. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who had been to hell in these last few years.

“Nope. Sorry.” He reached out a hand to help Roy up, but he smacked it away.

“Fuck.” Roy swore vehemently, “If you’re not going to kill me then get me some goddamn drugs.” He whispered, his voice hoarse, his chapped lips cracking and bleeding. “Please, please please please. Common man, I’m dying here. I’ll do anything.” Jason grit his teeth and this time just fucking grabbed Roy.

“Not gonna do that either. Come on.”

“Get off me man! Let me go!” Roy snarled.

“I’m trying to save your life asshole!” Jason yelled back, shaking Roy violently, and sending him cross eyed.

“Fuck, oh fuck. Ouch it hurts, it hurts it hurts!” He sobbed, gripping his stomach and falling to his  knees in pain. As he pulled Roy up once more another car drove past, once again casting it’s headlights down the alley and illuminating the them. Roy went pale and stumbled backwards.

“You’re—!!” He choked out, staring up at Jason in shock. “You’re supposed to be dead. No this isn't real, you’re dead.” He insisted to himself. Jason didn’t argue with him on that front, he was clearly going through withdrawal and right now Jason’s priority was to get him off the street. He picked Roy up easily, the guy was thin as a rail and even without super strength Jason probably still would have been able to lift him like he weighed nothing.

“Jason…? Jason I’m sorry.” Roy was babbling, clinging to the fabric of Jason’s sweatshirt desperately and he chewed on the inside of his cheek. This was a bad idea. If Roy ended up telling everyone he was alive that would really throw a wrench in things. Roy probably knew other mask types  and that was a group he did not want up in his business.

“I don’t know who Jason is man, my name is Peter Reyes.” The lie felt wrong on his lips but it’s what he had to do. Better to let the world think he was still dead.

“Oh…”

“I think you’re going through withdrawal. How do you feel?”

“Cold, Shit— Ahn my gut is on fire.” He grimaced, and Jason nodded. All symptoms of heroin withdrawal.

“Alright, I’m gonna get you some place safe. Hold tight buddy.” He adjusted Roy on his shoulder, hoping the man wouldn’t throw up on his hoodie and walked south until he found a shitty motel. He helped Roy lean against the outside of the front desk and gave him a stern look.

“Wait here okay. I’m gonna get us a room.” Roy didn’t answer, instead he doubled over in pain his shoulders shuddering as tremors ran through his body.

The woman at the front desk didn’t even blink as she handed Jason the room key, and Jason figured she had seen a hell of lot weirder things. He dragged Roy up to room and to the bathroom, helping him kneel over to toilet as he began to wretch, holding his greasy hair out of his face.

Deja-vu made his head spin, the feeling like he’d been in this exact same situation before and when he looked down it wasn’t Roy puking into the shitty hotel toilet it was… some woman, with messy hair dyed bright red and smeared makeup. She looked like she had been crying, and looking at her made Jason feel angry and sad at the same time. She had the same track marks up her arms that Roy did, and the look she gave Jason was a complicated mix of pity and disgust.

“Drink some water.” Jason grunted, his brain snapping back to the present, to the man before him. “You need to stay hydrated.”

“Thanks…” Roy said wearily, taking the water bottle Jason pushed into his hands. He took a few slow sips, his hands still shaking before he asked “Do I know you? You said you’re not Ja— who I thought you were so who are you? I don’t know any Peter Reyes. Did Angel send you? Because you can tell him to go fuck himself.”

“Don’t know any angel. I’m just a guy who wants to help.”

“Yeah sure, and I'm Superman. What were you doing snooping around in that place anyway?” Even going through withdrawal he was still observant as hell. Jason had a feeling that Roy was a hell of a lot smarter than he let on.

“None of your business."

“Right, whatever guess I’m in no position to argue. So why are you doing this? I assume you’re trying to help me and you’re not actually a deranged psycho killer who brought me here to rape and murder me and then leave my disfigured body in the bathtub, because right now this whole situation kind of reads like a Criminal Minds episode.” Jason snorted at that and shook his head.

“Nah, you’re not worth the trouble.”

“Wow, fuckin’ rude.” Roy’s laugh was thin but genuine and he pushed himself up a little so he was leaning against the sink. “But seriously, what do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“I saw, fuh-fuck shit… I saw you jump out of that building. You a mutant?” He grunted gratefully when Jason brought over the comforter from off the bed and let him wrap himself in it. “You know about me? You gotta… That’s- that’s why you came. You want me to build you somethin’.” So he had a tech mutation or something? Jason was lucky that he had recognized Roy’s name, the fact that he couldn’t remember the details of his mutation— or if he was a mutant wasn’t surprising.

“No. That’s not it.”

“Then what is it. Why the fuck are you doing this?”

“Maybe I was hoping that you’d, y’know… Fall in love with me.” Jason wasn’t sure why he said it, and the second he did he felt like a fucking idiot, but he smiled boyishly and owned it. Roy laughed out loud when he said it and Jason liked that laugh.

“Oh yeah, that is such bullshit.” He said, grinning as he wiped his runny nose and scratched his face. “Trust me kid you don’t want me to fall in love with you. My ex-wife can tell you that much.”

Jason just shrugged in response, sitting down in front of Roy on the hard tile floor with a sigh.

“Can I ask you something?”

Roy raised a curious eyebrow but shrugged. “Sure.”

“Who’s— Who was Jason? The person you thought I was…” There was something in Roy’s eyes that he couldn’t place— grief maybe. Over some street rat kid like him?

“He was a kid I knew…” Roy looked up at the ceiling for a moment, shifting restlessly. “He was a good kid, he was smart, god he was so smart, and he was funny and brave, like crazy brave, like run into a burning house and save the puppy brave… and he died when he was fifteen.” Jason swallowed hard and looked down at his hands. “I used to be one of those superheroes you know, running around in a mask and shit— I know right, funny huh. I knew it was dangerous but none of that had ever seemed real until he… He saved my ass when we were kids, this one time in Pasadena he pushed me out of the way of some gunfire and ended up getting his dumb ass shot.”

Jason’s side tingled, his body remembering the sensation of a bullet passing through it. “He never let me hear the end of it, always making jabs at me reminding me how I owed him my life and how he got shot for me and shit but I never got to thank him, not genuinely you know? That eats at me every day. I think if he ever saw me now, and how I ended up he would kick my ass. ‘I saved your life for this? So you could become some piece of shit junkie?!’  but he showed us all what it really meant to be a hero. To wear the mask.” Roy shook his head to himself and Jason was shocked into silence. Was that really how he was remembered? As a hero? The thought left him shook to his very core and suddenly he couldn’t stand to hear about it anymore. He had to get away. He pushed himself up so violently it startled Roy.

“You don’t know that… Maybe he wasn’t as great as you think.” He said through his clenched jaw, his fists curled into a tight ball before he crossed the small distance to the hotel room door and slammed it behind him. He scrubbed angrily at his face, rubbing his eyes until he saw stars behind his eyelids. Then he pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit up, taking a long drag and letting it burn to the filter before he even considered going back inside that room. He smoked a second cigarette before he did, slower this time his hands no longer shaking.

This was a mistake. Coming to this city was a mistake, looking for Roy was a mistake. Fuck even just leaving Talia’s protection was a mistake. He would take being a blood bag for fucking Ra’s over this feeling. It felt like it was eating him inside out, hollowing him and filling the hole with molten rock. He wanted to throw up, he wanted to start a fight, he wanted to run. He smoked another cigarette instead.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck!! He ground the cigarette out on the wall of the motel with venom (the stucco was already disgusting, another black mark wouldn’t make a difference) before he came back inside. The smell of cigarette smoke drifting in with him, clinging to his clothes and making Roy sit up straighter, his fingers itching at his arms idly.

“You good?”

“Yeah. Just needed a smoke.”

“Got one for me?”

“My last one, sorry.” It was a deadass lie and Roy knew it, but he didn’t push the issue. “I’m gonna order pizza. What do you want?”

“Pineapple, anchovies with mushroom.”

“You’re disgusting. No, fuck you we’re getting meat lovers.” The ghost of a smile played on Roy’s lips and he shrugged.

“Whatever you say bossman.”

[hornetdiaries]

Sour Patch

I believe that I am a caring person.  I believe that I am the kind of person who takes care of others.  But I also believe that I have a goddamn limit and if I wanted to live with incompetence I would go back to North Carolina’s school system.

    It all started one fateful night. I had watched a bunch of the Walking Dead and was a scared little freshman getting ready for bed at one AM so I could be up in time for my eight AM class.  This was bad when I wasn't able to live off a solid three hours of sleep nightly. Now, everyone has always warned me to lock my doors, but at this time most people knew not to fuck with me so I didn't bother.

    I went to sleep, everything was fine, and in the morning I woke up bright and early and set about starting my day.   It was while halfway dressed, I felt the uncomfortable sensation of another presence.  Slowly I turned towards my roommates bed which should have been empty since she left to go home for the weekend early.  But instead of it being void of life like it had been when I feel asleep, there was now the perfectly cocooned shape of a human, wrapped completely face and all with her blanket.  The only thing I could see where the feet uncovered at the end.

    My mind ran down the list of possibilities as my hands started shaking.  The feet were too big to be any of the girls I knew, and the only man who would remotely attempt this was black which definitely did not match up with the pasty mayo colored feet in her bed.  I realized that I had absolutely no idea who this was that I had been sleeping beside for who knows how long.

    Carefully I grabbed the first thing available which turned out to be an empty juice jug laying on the floor.  It was probably a good idea that I forgot I had mace in my desk.  I began my approach with barely restrained horror, knowing that the main two possibilities would be for this man to either be someone who wandered in drunk off the elevator and barged into my room, or he was a zombie.  Having been fully immersed in zombie violence the night before I was absolutely certain that should it be necessary, I could beat him to death with my bare hands.  I was probably still half asleep even with the adrenaline because I was more than a little certain he was a zombie.

    I took the edge of the blanket by his face in one hand and whipped it off as fast as I could to determine what level of violence was necessary.  I was met with the hideously unattractive sleeping face of the dude who had slept with my roommate a few nights prior.

    “Nick?” He didn't wake up to my call so I shook him by the shoulder roughly.  He seemed to fidget a bit and mumble a few things.

    “Where's Emma?” He garbled unintelligently.

    “She's been gone for a day now, she went home.  What are you doing here?”   

    “I want Emma!” He threw his hands up and then flopped over onto his side, a loud rattling snore already leaking from his putrid face.  I tried again to prod him awake but he refused.  With no other options and time running out to get to class, I had no other choice but to hurry off to global health.  All the while my restless leg was more violent than usual as I waited for the starving children of Romania to stop needing help.  I just wanted to get back, reclaim my room, and get back to what was supposed to be my fun solo weekend of not talking or seeing anyone.

    I was the first one out the door, crossing campus and bursting into my room with record time.  The atrocity was still asleep so I threw my book bag down as loudly as possible.  Then I did it a second and third time, still getting no reaction.  He wasn't snoring anyone and his head was tilted awkwardly to the angle towards one side, his face not showing even a twitch of sleep.

    Beginning to worry I hesitantly put two fingers over his jugular.  When I didn't immediately feel the thump of a pulse my body shot ice cold, the image of my zombie suspicion flashing through my head with the force of a freight train.  But then pushing deeper I found the small little thumps of his gross veins.

    Now that I wasn't afraid of desecrating a corpse, I grabbed him by both shoulders and started shaking him with all my might.  He groaned and batted my hands away.

    “Wake up!” I shouted, actually getting him to open his eyes this time.

    “I feel sick” he grumbled, rolling onto his stomach like a beached whale.

    “Are you drunk?”

    “Noooo” he whined, arms outstretched as he rolled back to his original spot.  I could see the wiggly lines of the Saturn tattoo on his chest, the circle not completely round and the ring uneven portions around it.  He had explained that he had gotten drunk with a friend and he left him give him a tattoo right on his chest.  Apparently he had been given quite the surprise when he woke up with it the next morning.   

    I sighed and put my hand on his forehead, finding him to be running a bit of a temperature.   He wouldn't open his eyes for me but I already knew his pulse was sluggish.  Suspecting a fever, I knew I was completely screwed because there was no way I could throw out a sick person from my room, even if I did hate their guts and everything attached to them.

    “Are you sure you aren't on anything?” He whined at me and so I took it as a know.  I got him some water and a couple Advil, then tucked him back into bed.  Every time my clock turned another hour I thought he would rise and go find someone else to bother, but before I knew it, a rough estimate of twenty hours had gone by where he just slept.

    But finally, after I returned to the room from something or another, I finally found the bed empty.   Relieved that not only hadn't he died, but he also was out of my hair now.  That was of course until later that night when my door swung open and the fake blonde prick walked back into my life, a tall guy following him known only to me as ‘stoner sloth’ at the time.  We had a bad habit of only using nicknames to talk about people so it would take months to figure out who someone was.

    “Uh, did you forget something?” I asked as the two morons ignored me in my own room.  Nick put down his book bag on the bed and started going through it

    “Yeah man I got like, forty-five bars on me from ODU, it's good shit like, you only need to do half of one to get high, that's why I'm selling them for seven bucks each”

    “Wait, are you doing a drug deal in the middle of my room?”

    “Shit, I know they're in here, we were messing with it in the car driving back”

    “Did you come here just to make a deal?!” As he continued to ignore me and fumble with the bag, he soon found that the bag containing his large score of drugs was missing.  His eyes went wide as he became even more pale and sickly.

    “Oh shit, I think I remember now.  We were sharing it in the car, oh fuck, I think that's why I'm sick” the stoner sloth floated away once the drugs were off the table, leaving Nick to pace around the room looking deeply concerned.

    I wanted to tell him that there's no way he could do forty-five bars of Xanax in a three hour drive, even between a car full of people, but I honestly couldn't put that past him.  Every time he opened his mouth, something new and awful would crawl out, and for some reason he had bewitched my roommate into thinking that he was the hottest thing this side of the sun.  Even though living with Emma made my life hell on a good day, there was still a deep need in me to take care of her and put my own feelings aside for her happiness.  I thought of my father and how he would bring out the guns and show them to the boys I brought over, and I realized that my father just wanted to show off guns, not intimidate these boys into respecting me more.  I could either be wielding the juice jug to be the father figure that my roommate might need but didn't want, and make my life better, or I could be the opposite of whatever a pseudo redneck father is.  I don't know what fathers do above the Mason Dixon line.

    “Hey I'm going to have a friend over, could you go back to your place?” I asked, very kindly after he had decided not to leave my room and instead just bide time on my roommates still empty bed.

    “Wait it's that Pierre dude right?” I don't know how he knew that since I was fairly certain he didn't even know my name.

    “I mean, we're friends but he's not the one coming ov-”

    “No man it's fine, I can be here” I had to take a second to reaffirm myself that this was in fact my room and I wasn't mistaken.

    “Sorry but you really can't, you're gonna have to go”

    “Naw, my roommates have sex in front of me all the time, it's chill”

    “I am never in my life going to let you watch me have sex”   

    “Don't worry it's cool”

    “It's not!”

    He persisted on, trying to convince me that including him in my already pretty messed up romantic endeavors was a good idea.  Eventually it got to the point where I just kept yelling at him, borderline crying as I envisioned myself bashing his head over her desk and throwing it on top of all the fucking animal cracker crumbs he left lying around.  Finally he grabbed his jacket in a huff, extremely irritated.

    “Fine!” He shouted, “I'll be back after dinner” and with that he slammed my door shut.

    “YOU DON’T LIVE HERE!” I screamed, already hearing the elevator ping to take his slimy sack of skin down and into the world so he could infect it.

    Sure enough he was back after dinner, and with the return of Emma only brought him closer to my life.  He lived with us, he kept his things in our room, and he made my life hell.  At three AM he would return from his endeavors, come into our room without knocking, strip naked in front of my bed, and then wake up my roommate and have sex while I tried to curl up and block it all out.  At three AM when you have class at eight, there's nowhere to go, and if I did leave to go sit in the kitchen I would just wake up more and boil myself into a steaming pot of hatred that would result in me once again going into the woods to scream.

    If it wasn't bad enough that he was making my life a bigger waste of time than freshman year already was, he was also a complete child to my roommate.  Upon one occasion he got high and ate all the macaroni she owned and then informed her that she needed to go buy more.  He also guilted her into buying seventy feet of bubble wrap.  Seventy feet.  Seventy feet would not be enough to protect the world from him.

    On one occasion while I was trying not to vomit as I listened to him talk, he expressed how mad he was that his roommate had thrown his pants out their window which held his key to the room.  He ranted and raved for a long time about how inconsiderate and terrible this guy was.  I thought it was odd but disregarded it all the same.  Later, as I walked back from class I eavesdropped on the conversation of the girls in front of me, having nothing better to do.  The story I heard would change my life.

    So her boyfriend lived in a triple, and since there were only a handful of them in the campus I had a pretty good guess who this was about.  Apparently some time during the weekend at around three am, his roommate wandered in drunk as hell and proceed to walk into the middle of the room, not saying anything, and just shit his pants.  From there he proceeded to fall down and pass out, and the smell was so horrid that her boyfriend had to strip his pants off his unconscious body and throw them out the window.  Then, when the roommate had woken up he wondered why he was covered in shit and where the hell his pants were.  He screamed at the roommates and then left and hadn't returned since.

    There was no price I wasn't willing to pay to hear that story again.  But all good things had to end and shortly after that I met the breaking point to my ability to deal with him.  During the time he was in the middle of being kicked out for being caught with no small amount of weed.  There was a student trial that would be held soon and from there he could attempt to repeal his expulsion.  So while the end was in sight, it would not come fast enough.

    In my room I possessed a bowl of candy, sour patch kids to be exact.  My exams were coming up and I was a stressed little nursing major, just appreciating the small things in the world that made me happy.  Well who decides to take my bowl of candy?  And who decides that he would eat them all the way to his room and back?  And who thought that he should put the bowl down in front of me as I studied and informed me that he ate my candy before walking away?  Flunk out tattoo wannabe pothead borderline coke whore fake blond douche of the century, Nick.   

    Because not only does he eat my candy, he leaves the yellow ones there.  No one likes the yellow ones!  They taste like someone pissed Into a bottom of lemon pledge!  But Nick is apparently too good to eat yellow sour patch kids.  Jesus spent most his time starving in a desert but he can't even have the decency to leave a flavor other than sin for me.   

    I was more than livid.  At my friend's apartment I told my story of woe to the small group attending as they repeatedly supplied me with wine.  It was in the kitchen that I realized I was just intoxicated to really just let out everything that I was feeling, and as soon as I heard his name mentioned in the living room I knew it was time.  I marched into the room, red in the face and screamed at the unsuspecting crowd,

    “NICK WILL EAT ASS BUT HE WON’T EAT YELLOW SOUR PATCH KIDS!” Which was at the time really the best I could put together.  Everyone stared up in horror and I realize that I had definitely let that cat out of the bag.  See, Nick was a playboy, if one who never showers can be called that, and there had been quite a few girls before my roommate to unfortunately become intimate with his repulsive visage.  There was one in particular that had the misfortune of sleeping with him, during which she had instructed him “Slap my ass” and he had misheard her to say “Lick my ass” which played out as one might expect it would.  Nick was a fan, girl was not.

    However, I had planned to keep that one to myself because it was not just about the horrible depravity of this single man child.  But now that I had presented this information in such a dramatic and catchy way, it wasn't very long until anyone who knew him also knew a weird fun fact about him.  Thankfully though there was no shortage of girls who were involved with him and so the girl's identity was never compromised.

    To finally top off the last straw on the stupidity haystack, my hopelessly puppy loving roommate took the liberty of writing his appeal to the judicial board.  She even brought it to one of the faculty in charge who said that if this was presented he would probably be allowed to stay.  For a girl who almost never went to class or finished assignments, this was an amazing feat.  Yet, the day of the trail Nick was too lazy to come by and pick up the appeal, so he went to the trial and got kicked out of school.  Could have spent two minutes to not waste thousands of dollars and ultimately his life, but he just couldn't do it.

    So had I possibly done a terrible thing to him by perhaps giving him a very odd reputation?  Yeah, but if while I'm not an ‘eye for an eye’ kind of girl, I do feel like deserved it a bit.  Sometimes people go to college and the problems they have in high school just explode, and it's no ones fault but your own.  Nick was just a large drugged up child, whoever he was in high school wasn't the kind of person that could work in college and so instead of growing he just gave up.  I hated him not only for all the crap he put me through, but because I had been that bumbling child people thought was smart or mature because they could look the part.  While I was more or less forced into rising to the occasion, Nick just went back to what he knew which was drugs and laziness and being a genuine asshole.  The greatest accomplishment of my semester was when my roommate informed me that Nick hated me because I was too uptight.  If I managed to be the one person in his very brief college experience that wasn't kissing the ground he walked on and reassuring him that school was useless and he could make it out there without a degree, then I had done something right.   

    But also fuck that guy.

[starfreightersays-blog]

Alien: Covenant

Spoilers ahead.

Alien Covenant is a sequel to Prometheus, which are both prequels to the original Alien film made in 1979. Prometheus was said to explain the space jockey’s from the first film, however, most people were disappointed with the result since it didn’t answer any of the questions from the first film and instead created more questions which confused most people. Because of this I had hoped that Alien: Covenant would answer these questions and set us up with the origins of the Derelict ship in the first film.

The film starts off with David’s ‘birth’, Peter Weyland, and we get an idea of David’s superiority complex as he’s already asking, ‘who made you?’ to his creator and pointing out that he will out-live him. We are then taken to the Covenant, a colony ship on its way to a planet to start a new civilization. Suddenly, a solar flare hits the ship while the solar sails are out causing several of the colonists to die as well as the Captain of the crew. Other than the flat screens and holograms, which bother me because of the inconsistency with the originals big chunky cathode ray TV’s, I was happy with this start. It shows the isolation of space which sets up a good atmosphere for the film.

We then follow the crew as they attempt to fix the solar sails. Other than everything sounding like it’s underwater rather than breathing this part is fine, there are only very nitpicking criticisms. When Tennessee (Danny McBride) is returning to the airlock a transmission strikes him as he is outside the ships signal blocking influence. Once back on the ship the crew inspect the transmission and they find that it is coming from a planet which looks like it was made for humans. When they clear up the transmission Tennessee points out that is clearly ‘Take me home country roads’, one of my favorite points in the movie. Since this planet is much closer than their destination the newly appointed captain decides to check it out.

They arrive at the planet and find that there’s a large ion storm so they make their first stupid decision, like impatient children they just go in anyway despite knowing that the storm will affect communications between the ground team and the mothership. This seems like a ridiculous idea seeing as they know hardly anything about this planet and there is a mysterious human transmission where there shouldn’t be any humans.

When they land on the surface and straight away step out without any helmets. I thought they were stupid in Prometheus taking off their helmets at all, but here they don’t even bother! But we see that they have lots of guns, so who needs helmets, am I right? They now realise that communications aren’t great with the mothership but they decide ‘Hell, let’s go on an adventure!’. I wouldn’t have such a problem with this if they used their common sense later in the film but they never find it so I feel they deserve all their mistakes pointing out.

As they make their way towards the mysterious transmission they find wheat growing, like actual Earth wheat. One guy seems to realise the craziness of this but everyone else just seems to brush it off. And in case you’re wondering, they don’t explain why there’s Earth plants. The team goes all Scooby-Doo and they split up as a scientist and her bodyguard go off to do some good sciencing, which makes sense, she’s doing a better job than most of them! She starts collecting samples when her bodyguard says he needs to take a leak, which turns out to mean ‘I need to go smoke a dubey’. He then proceeds to step on what, to me after playing a lot of Zelda, looks like it could only be a hearty truffle so I’m going to refer to it as such. After stepping on the hearty truffle it releases these spores which are reminiscent of the black goo from Prometheus. These spores apparently have a mind of their own and fly into the guys ear and burrow into his skin.

Elsewhere, the rest of the crew have found the source of the transmission: a crashed engineer ship, the very one we saw Shaw and David leave in at the end of Prometheus. When entering the ship one of the guys (wheat guy I believe) finds and starts poking a hearty truffle which leads to him getting a face full of the spores. But he’s like ‘I’m cool’, and they carry on inside the ship. They get to the cockpit where one of the guys accidently activates a hologram recording of an undiscernible Shaw sending the transmission, even though last time David needed an understanding of the alien language to activate a similar function. But hey, at this point I’m still pretty interested and have hopes that we will soon find out what happened to David and Shaw.

We then go back to science-lady and her bodyguard where he’s not looking so good. They decide to head back to the ship and the others decide to do the same. The science lady and her companion are almost at the ship when he throws up blood on her face, which should been kinda disgusting but it was just funny to me. They are then taken to the med-bay which is very poorly placed up lots of stairs and walkways.

Once in the room the dropship pilot examines the poor guys back which is now doing pretty disturbing things, when his back stuff just pops on her face! She, like any normal person, decides that’s enough of this shit for her and she locks the guy and the scientist in the med bay and runs off to tell her husband, Tennessee. Following this the guy with the ear spores starts wobbling violently until a ‘backburster’ pops out in a pretty gruesome manner. On the floor lies a small pasty alien looking thing which unlike the original chestburster doesn’t flee but takes on a human straight up and mauls the science lady but not before she slips on the pool of blood from the creature’s birth. The pilot returns with a shotgun, because creepy alien babies need to be killed, and she runs in the room where, like a slapstick comedy, she slips on the gore and shoots the ceiling. I mean one person slipping was funny but two is hysterical, especially when they’re trying to scare you. The woman then tries to shoot the baby but keeps missing until she shoots the explosive red barrels that someone carelessly left lying around in a med-bay.

The ship then explodes just as the rest of the crew arrive so that her husband, the Captain, can see her burning body collapse. At this point it feels like these people are having the worst day imaginable and you’ve just got to just laugh as bad things just happen one after another. But remember, wheat guy also had some spores! Although instead of the baby coming out the back, this time he just vomits it up and it runs away. I just want to point out at this point that these creatures have been developing for a maximum of 2 hours and in that time they’ve gone from spores to something the size of a small cat…that’s crazy, but let’s continue.

The crew then set up a camp for the night when they are attacked by the two pasty alien like creatures which have been called neomorphs. The attack begins when one of the neomorphs sneaks up on Daniels and is saved by Walter, the android of the Covenant who is identical physically to David, as he sacrifices his hand for her. The two creatures then go crazy on the crew and some people get killed, but you don’t really care because you only know a couple of them and it’s really dark anyway, so who cares - Death! Excitement! The crew then manages to shoot one of the creatures but the other is scared off by a signal flare which is shot into the sky by a mysterious figure in a cloak. The figure tells them to follow him so they do because he helped them. Daniels must go back for the Captain though as whilst all of this was happening he was still standing by the dropship wreckage crying about his dead wife. I mean I’m just saying, if these neomorph were anything like the original alien then I think they would have silently taken out the guy on his own who’s oblivious to everything around him rather than bumrushing a whole group of dudes with guns, but since these neomorphs seem less intelligent and more feral, I’ll let it slide.

The mysterious figure leads the crew into what appears to be an engineer structure since there are lots of black fossilized bodies around the place. Someone asked whether the neomorph will be able to get in too and the figure reassures them that it can’t. Everybody seems cool with this despite there not being any proper doors or anything. The figure then reveals himself to be David with grown his hair, which I didn’t realise was possible or necessary for an android but who am I to judge Mr Weyland. He reveals that their ship accidently deployed the black goo and in the confusion the ship crashed, killing Shaw! Now at this point I’m really bummed. Firstly because at the end of Prometheus Shaw asked the question ‘why did the engineers create then try to kill us?’ which I think is a good question to ask since it doesn’t make much sense, I mean you don’t make a sandwich then seconds later want to throw it out for no good reason! The second thing that annoyed me was the off-screen death of Shaw. I hate offscreen deaths, especially between films, it’s like Hick’s and Newt dying at the start of Alien cubed, it just feels like a cheap way to get rid of a character who they didn’t have room for.

The crew tries to contact the Covenant but can’t get through the ion storm, which they should have thought about before running onto the planet with guns blazing. At this point, Tennessee is worried about his wife so takes the Covenant in closer to the storm to see if he can contact the rest of the crew because he’s understandably panicky about his wife, who he last heard screaming in horror.

The next part gets a bit weird since David teaches Walter how to play a flute, and although it sounds very strange it seems to fit in with the rest of the film. David then shows Walter the devastation of the city and reveals in a flashback that he purposely released the black Goo onto the engineers and the he supposedly loved Shaw, which is weird. I’d like to point out now that the black goo which supposedly weaponizes life just turned the engineers to burnt looking corpses, which makes what it does even more confusing. I would also like to note how the engineers are just as stupid as the humans since they allowed a warship which carried world destroying black goo to reach the surface despite it being missing for so long and the fact they didn’t even check to see if there were any engineers on board either. So maybe David killed them because they just lack common sense! However, we never do find out why David suddenly decides genocide is what he wants for the engineers. David is disappointed by Walter and for some weird reason he decides to kiss Walter and then kill him, which is actually the scariest part of the film because damn Walter’s creepy android face as he dies!

While David’s with Walter the other, now fully, grown neomorph sneaks into the building through an open window, which isn’t really surprising, and it decapitates some woman who, if I’m honest, I didn’t recognise. David then finds the neomorph and tries to befriend the creature. The Captain sees this display and shoots the neomorph, because you know, it’s already killed people. The Captain then shows some more initiative and asks David for answers. David leads him to a laboratory where we see similar neomorphs that have been dissected. David explains that he’s been studying the black goo and perfecting the life it created. Now at this part any normal person would take out David cause he’s being a crazy man but the Captain just plays along which leads to the most ridiculous part of the film. David says he’ll show the Captain the results of his experiment as he leads him to a room full of alien eggs. And the Captain is still pretty chill, it’s like he completely forgot about what the pasty aliens were like. One of the eggs then open and David says ‘look! It’s perfectly safe I assure you’, why this man trusts this guy nobody will ever know but next thing we know…there’s a facehugger on the guy.

Now at this point Tennessee is way too close to the ion storm but it pays off since the crew get a message through and Tennessee prepares an industrial crane thing to pick the crew up since they only had one dropship on such a big ship (makes sense right). Anyway, some time passes, like 5 minutes maybe, the Captain wakes up and immediately a chestburster pops out! Usually this takes several hours but Alien: Covenant doesn’t care. What’s more is the chestburster isn’t the pasty worm like creature that we are familiar with, but for some reason it’s just a really small alien which looks like a cross between an alien and Baby Groot.

Now the rest of the crew go looking for all the missing people and they find David’s laboratory along with what looks like Shaw’s dissected body. They go into the room with the eggs and unlike the Captain, they realise that they should probably start running. However, one of the guys gets a facehugger latched onto him but luckily before it gets on properly his friend cuts it off, causing him to get acid on his face! Unfortunately, his hero friend pulls the short straw as he gets ambushed by a fully-grown alien…. that’s right, in the space of like 5 minutes a tiny Baby Groot Alien grows to 7 foot! Ridley Scott just disregards the other movies and just reduces the alien’s growth from egg to full size to about 10 minutes, I swear it takes longer than this in the AVP movies! At least the alien is acting right its hiding and waiting to ambush but this doesn’t make up for everything else that has happened.

While this is happening David and Daniels are fighting and, suddenly, David kisses Daniels! Was David really horny after being alone for 10 years? It really makes no sense. But Daniels is saved at the last moment by Walter who, being an upgrade from David, has a self-repair function and knows his moves! This leads to a pretty cool fight between two Michael Fassbenders as Daniels makes her escape. As the two fight, we see Walter on top about to finish David, yet before we see him finish it we’re shown David’s hand reaching for a knife…and the scene cuts, totally not insinuating anything.

Tennessee reaches the surface just in time for everyone to get on board. Those people being Burny face guy, Daniels and now David who is dressed like Walter who I guess we’re supposed to think is Walter but after not showing a death and David going for the knife it’s pretty obvious what’s happened. As the dropship takes off the alien manages to get on board. Daniels being a badass decides to take it on. What follows is some crazy antics and flying action where Daniels is being tossed around in ways which would kill most humans and the alien being crushed in a crane jaw thing.

They return to the ship and everybody is happy and nobody checks Walter despite him being identical to David who is a crazy android who wants to kill everyone. They patch up burny face guy with some playdoh and relax…But wait! It’s not over, the alarms go off since they detect an unknown lifeform on the ship. A strange piece of technology which would have been useful in Aliens so they could have known about that Queen sneaking on-board but hey I hear technology gets worse in the future. Anyway, Daniels and Tennessee go to investigate, only to find burny face guy all dead and chestbursted. Once again, this film can’t even keep to its own canon of gestation time since this guy would have had the alien in him for at least 30 minutes or maybe even an hour! What’s more, this guy never was properly facehugged. The facehugger needs to knock you out in order to get the eggs inside you since otherwise you’d throw them up, and not only that but as we’ve seen in all the alien films (including this one), the facehugger takes time to implant the eggs it can’t do it in a couple of seconds! But anyway, the super helpful computer knows where the alien is heading which is towards the only other crew left, who are having a shower at this point. We then see them get snuck up on by a fully-grown alien who takes them out. I think if this scene was somewhere else it would be great perfect sneaky alien and a good way to sneak up on people. I mean I can kinda justify the fact they didn’t hear the alarms, but this one scene can’t save a whole movie. Enough of the praising because I’m not sure if you notice but the alien has grown up even faster this time, it’s gone from chestburster to 7-foot alien in about 2 minutes or 3 at the max, and presumably without eating! Either that was one heavy baby or these aliens are just balloons that just puff themselves up after they pop out.

Anyway, Daniels and Tennessee find the carnage and Daniels has a plan. They lure the alien to the terraforming bay and trap it in a truck to send it out the back into space. Once again, if not for the rest of the film this would have been cool, but it’s not over yet of course. Tennessee gets put into hyper sleep and as Walter puts Daniels in her pod she finally figures out that it’s actually David, but it’s too late.

David then proceeds to go to an embryo holding tray and reguritates up a couple of baby facehuggers trapped in bouncy balls….no joke. Tiny facehuggers that can fit in your palm and incased in a clear sack. I mean at this point I want to exclaim “what are these…Facehuggers for ants?!” because this is just ridiculous. And talking about these facehuggers, why can’t the omnipotent ship computer not detect them or for that matter detect David not being Walter? So to end it we’re left questioning what will happen next, and also, for me at least, how did you screw it up so bad?

So, I want to summarise some of the main problems with this film. Firstly, everyone is really stupid, they need better scientists in the future. Secondly, David’s motives are never explained, what made him so crazy on the way to the engineer planet that he killed Shaw and committed genocide on a whole species. Thirdly, they completely screwed up the alien’s life cycle by shortening its growth to minutes which makes it unrealistic even for a sci-fi. And relating to that they made the once mysterious and ancient creature a product of a human creation since humans created David who created the aliens. Fourthly, it contradicts the other films, I was a cheesed off when the engineer’s elephant faces turned out to be masked but this time they actually change the lore. Now the ‘fossilised’ space jockey from the first film is less than 20 years old and for some reason is carrying eggs created by David, it doesn’t make much sense at all. Also it contradicts the painting we saw in Prometheus of an alien in the dreadnaught, the alien skull in Predator 2 and the AVP films (although they’re awful they’re still pretty fun) not to mention it strips the aliens of their mystery and did I mention those eggs on LV-426 must have been there less than 20 years! And the last problem is the technology being more advanced than it is in the future, but only diehard fans of alien will understand my pain.

This film could have been so great! For example, if David had found the eggs in a lock up on the planet, it would have kept some mystery. When David and Walter were fighting, they could have made us actually think David was killed so that the reveal would have actually been good.

I don’t just criticise it for no reason, I want to criticize it so Ridley Scott will make a worthy Alien prequel, hell in my opinion Prometheus was better than Alien Covenant since it didn’t have repercussions for the entire alien universe!