#the other day i went and found that fucked up data collection with the massive charts

[malebodyexhibit]

En-Coaching (a free commission tale)

“Holy Mackerel,” I said. The words felt odd leaving my mouth, but what else could be said as I looked upon my reflection. Only, it wasn’t my reflection. It was me. But not me. “What’s happening?!” I brought my hands to what was my—this—whoever’s this chest was. The touch of meaty pecs filled my hands. I started to cry out, but I noticed my voice was deeper, growly, and more manly.

The me standing across from where I stood started to act similarly freaked out. He stooped lower and ran his hand through his hair. He didn’t seem to react, just slowly digesting what he saw. Then he brought his hand up to his—my?—chest and looked down at himself in confusion. “Jesus, fuck!” He cried with my voice—a high, whiny sound.

“Calm down, both of you,” Devon stated. Well, technically Dr. Devon, but between him and I, we both used our first names. It was too pretentious for two friends to call each other ”doctor” for their PhDs. “I can explain.” And he did, stopping every now and then to see if we digested what happened. So basically, when the Chad (the college’s football coach) and I (the chemistry professor) volunteered for an experiment with our friend Devon (the “Mad Scientist”) in exchange for a couple beers, he switched our bodies.

Needless to say, Chad and I gave Devon a piece of our mind. On this one thing Chad and I agreed on. Usually he’d tease me for my weak noodle arms or my nerdy glasses. And I’d purposefully make him feel stupid and brutish. But despite me calling Devon swears in several languages and Chad threatening to beat Devon into a pulp (with my tiny fists by the way), Devon told us the switch couldn’t happen just yet. He needed to collect data from us.

I thought I would hate being the dumb, jock coach, but when I had to run the football practice, I found it was exciting. His body already knew what to do. His reflexes were innate to his body and I used my mind to figure out what was supposed to happen. The jocks all fell in line. I used to hate them when they were in my chemistry classes. They were clumsy idiots who always skirted by on the favors of the college to graduate. Now they looked on me like a hero, a leader, a mentor. I worked those boys hard. Eventually I felt myself acting more and more like the coach.

Chad did poorly in my body. He lacked my knowledge and skill, so he blundered his way through the lessons. I should have felt awful (especially since it was my career at stake), but I couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t my problem. Let that nerd figure it out. Because of his poor performance, the students started to respect him less. The boys from the team gave him such a hard time. Chad still thought he was their coach and bro, but he was just some nerd prof trying too hard to relate to jocks. It was pathetic really. Chad was trying to show off his football knowledge in his scrawny body. Trying to be a bro.

When he got his ass handed to him, I got bored and went home (well, Chad’s home). A day after coaching and working out, his body smelled rank. I stripped off his clothes and I admired his body in the mirror. I guess I should call it my body. I felt up his abs. The way his skin stretched tightly over this stomach was so hot. I flexed in the mirror and kissed each bicep. My body was so hot! I laid on his bed and started to fondle his huge balls. I stroked his massive cock. It was amazing how it still looked massive in his large hands. With my old hands it’d look even bigger. More impressive. I was close to getting off when I heard the front door of his house open. I wasn’t worried. His body gave me so much confidence. It wasn’t something to be hidden, but something to be shared and loved.

Chad’s wife came in to the bedroom. By the look on her face, this was a surprise: to find her husband ass-naked on the bed, smelling like a college locker room, stroking his massive cock. But she welcomed the surprise. With a smile she asked if it were her birthday, and I said, “yeah, babe, blow the candlestick.” I made that bitch choke on this cock. I need to call Devon and ask about making this situation more permanent.

[sharkinlovewithadolphin]

.

[softboywriting]

Gravitation | Nathan Bateman | Ex Machina

Summary: Twin Flames; a single soul that is split into two bodies. You and Nathan have a connection like none other. He has an idea why, and you’re about to find out. [Soft!Nathan] [Soulmates Trope] [No Use Of Y/N] [Assistant!Reader] [F!ReaderxNathan] [Swearing] [Pet Name] [Invasion of Privacy - Mentioned] [Drunk Nathan] 

Word Count: 5k

|Masterlist in Bio|

The moment you met Nathan you knew there was something about him that was unlike any other person you had met up until that point. It wasn't his massive ego, his minor God complex, or his genius intellect that got your attention. It was his eyes. Something in his eyes held more than his big mouth could ever express, something familiar like you've known him since the day you were born and even before that. You doubt he knows it, that his gaze tells you every truth, every lie, every moment of his history leading up to the moment you met. He feels it though. That you can confirm. He feels something when you stare at him as he speaks and you know that it makes him uncomfortable in a way he doesn't know how to explain because he gives you looks as if you're something he's never seen, something he can't quite figure out. You are an enigma to him some days and it keeps him on his toes.

Two months pass as you live out your days with Nathan in his sprawling complex of a home slash research facility. It was strange how you came to be here, a memory almost it seems. You had been receiving emails for weeks from an unknown sender, something about a research assistant position. You didn't pay much mind, as you weren't looking for an assistant position. You wanted to land a job doing website building for Blue Book. That is what you applied for and that is what you have skill in doing. So when your phone rang in the dead of night and you found out it was the CEO, Nathan, calling you directly about the emails and the assistant position, you were shocked. One thing lead to another and you found yourself living with Nathan while he began building AI.

Being Nathan's assistant isn't exactly what you hoped for, but it's not bad. You get to see how he works, what makes that genius tick. He's not as bad as you had heard, not as full of himself, but maybe that's just because he likes you. Working with him consists of observing him, helping him document things, getting tools and equipment while his hands are full, doing facial tracking studies, talking out loud in long sequences while he records your speech patterns. Some days it feels like he studies you more than he works on the AI. Not that you mind, his gaze is undeniably attracting, so much fascination and wonder behind those wire frame glasses. He leaves you with butterflies and longing for more than casual touches.

______________________

"Nathan?" You call softly from across the lab table he is sitting at, pushing wires into the gel mass brain unit to hook it up to his laptop. "I have a question."

"Shoot."

"Why did you choose me?"

He looks over his glasses as his hands still against the gel mass. He's going to lie, you know this look. It's so easy to tell. "I didn't choose you, it was random, I needed an assistant and you were a good fit."

"That's not like you. You wouldn't have some random mediocre website builder be your lab assistant."

"It's not like me? How would you know?"

"Well, I've been here for two months and I've worked and lived with you nearly every day for all hours except for when I'm sleeping. You're too calculated, precise, and prideful of your work to allow some random person into your life like this. So again, why did you choose me?"

Nathan sits up, folding his arms over his chest as he looks at you with a small smile on his lips. His eyes meet yours and you can tell he's intrigued. He has that look, like you're something shiny and new that he has yet to figure out. God you love that look.

"Well?" You push insistently. He sucks at lying to you and he looks as if he's going to try again.  

"I chose you because I studied you. For weeks I went through your data, your work, your photos and posts on social media. I selected you because I could see something in you that terrified me."

You raise your eyebrows. That was not the response you expected. The data thing did not surprise you, it's Nathan and he can do almost anything on the internet with the software Blue Book is built from. You expected an answer regarding your physical appearance, reducing you to the beautiful assistant, eye candy. Not that you terrified Nathan, which in turn terrifies you because you're not sure what about yourself would ever be deemed as such.  

"Cat got your tongue?"

"Yes." You smile softly, turning your head away to break his gaze. It's too much. Too intense. "You've thrown me for a loop."

Nathan pushes away from the table and walks around it to sit beside you. He turns on the stool and tilts your head to look at him, fleeting fingers careful against your jaw, eyes meeting, faces only a few feet away from each other. "I chose you because I see myself staring back at me."

"What?"

"The eyes are the window to the soul. When I saw your photo I knew I had to meet you in person. I would have done anything to meet you, to see you face to face because I wanted to be right."

"Right about what?"

He gathers your hands into his and your heart beat picks up, cold sweat prickling at the back of your neck. "There is a theory that a human soul can be split into two people. It's interesting to consider, not that I believe it entirely. It's a bit of a fairytale and all. I'm curious though and I wanted to study it."

"So you brought me here to study me?" You swallow harshly. This whole time you've been part of an experiment it seems. Wonderful.

"I did."

"So I'm not your assistant. I'm your specimen."

Nathan drops your hands and stands up, walking around the lab slowly, pacing almost. He has never seemed so nervous. "You're still my assistant. You assist me do you not?"

"Yes."

"Then you're an assistant."

"Nathan. You know that isn't what I mean."

He chuckles. "Don't worry about it too much."

"I'm going to worry. You're studying me!"

Nathan sighs and walks back over to you, cupping your face in his palms as if to make you listen to him better and your heart threatens to explode. He has never been this physically affectionate with you ever yet his touch is so familiar. "I would be studying you anyway. You're my assistant, my little poseable doll, my muse which I collect data from."

"This isn't making me feel any better. Actually, I feel insulted."

"I'm not insulting you."

"Doll?"

"Fine." He says harshly. It's as close to an apology as you will ever get.

"Thank you."

Nathan drops your face and walks away again. He seems anxious now. He strides along the length of the brightly lit lab tables, hands in his pockets. The silence that fills the room is stifling, awkward, and increasingly thick with unsaid thoughts.

You slide off of your stool and wander toward the table in the enclosed chamber at the back of the room. There are mechanical body parts on the table, like a person laid out for an exam or a surgery. It's strange to think that eventually these parts will be a working form, these wires and plastic and metal plates will be an artificial life form that looks and sounds like a real human. You turn suddenly and look back at Nathan. He's staring, your fingers touching the shoulder of the body before you. It's as if you could feel his eyes on you, as if you could see yourself through them actually.

"What're you doing?" Nathan asks as he leans against the entryway, his tone far calmer than his eyes would portray.

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Let me tell you." He steps in the room and around to the opposite side of the exam table. "You're breaking my rules."

You pull your hand away and curl it against your side. "Am I?"

"Yes." He leans on the table, arms open, hands pressed to the cold top. "You're touching my work."

"Nathan I touch your work all the fucking time. I literally carried a leg across the lab for you earlier. What the hell are you talking about?"

"With permission. I gave you permission to carry that leg."

"Okay?"

"Did I tell you that you could come in here and touch this?" He gestures to the parts on the table. "Did you consider that it might not be a good idea to do that?"

"It's just laying here Nathan."

"But do you know that? Maybe I have something going on that requires these to be perfectly still."

"I put these in here yesterday. I laid them down and you haven't moved them since." You cross your arms and stare him down. "You're just trying to start a fight because you don't like the awkward tension in the room and a fight will change the subject off of why you hired me."

Nathan's head snaps up and he glares. Oh how he glares daggers right through your soul. You know you're right and he knows you're right. It's killing him not to have a comeback ready. He was so ready to fight about the AI parts that your breakdown of his thought process has destroyed all means of retaliation. It's satisfying, watching him flounder for a second.  

"Cat got your tongue?" You say with the biggest smirk. His own words, his own choice of phrasing thrown back at him.

"See this is why you terrify me."

"Because I called you on your bullshit?"

"Yes." He turns and heads for the entryway. "You call me out before I even realize what I'm doing."

"So you didn't plan on coming in here and trying to start something?"

"No, I mean I did I guess but it wasn't a coherent thought. I didn't go "oh I'm going to start an argument now because I want to deflect this awkwardness", I just did it because....well I guess it was my instinct." He runs a hand over his head and braces it against the back of his neck. "I need to go for a run."

"It's raining."

"So?"

"Wear a coat."

"Are you my mother now?"

"You're doing it again." You point at him and he scowls.

"I'm leaving."

"I'll run a hot bath."

"For what?"

"For you when you get back inevitably cold and sore because you over do it on the trail."

Nathan growls, literally growls and looks pissed. "Stop! Just stop! Get out of my head!"

You walk out of the chamber and past him toward the hall door. "You'd like that wouldn't you?"

"Don't."

"Didn't do anything."

"You will."

"Maybe. Go run."

"Fuck."

______________________

You decide to do some research of your own while Nathan is gone. You're not supposed to get on his computer, or really contact anyone in the outside world as per your non disclosure agreement. There are exceptions though. You technically cannot discuss anything that happens in the complex but you can discuss everything else. You could call your parents but you've not had the best relationship with them since you took the job with Nathan. They didn't understand, thought you were being coerced by him and they never wanted you to be in the tech field. They wanted you to be a doctor or a nurse. If only they knew how much Nathan paid you. They would forget about that medical field shit so fast. Unfortunately your pay is related to the job so you're not able to discuss it.

You take a seat at Nathan's desk and bring up the center screen. You can see him on the security camera on the backside of the house. He's sitting on the open air deck, rain pouring down on him. Not running. This is actually perfect, you can make sure to get off the computer as soon as he leaves the camera view.  

You pull up Blue Book and search "split soul theories". Tons of information pops up. You wade through the crap. Book titles, movies, songs and stuff. The only information you want is about the actual theory itself. Finally you find it, some spiritual website has the explanation you're looking for.

"Twin flames?" You mutter, skimming through the paragraphs of text.

The pages tell you about the theory that a soul can be split in two and those people are drawn together and are like two sides of the same coin. Kind of like soulmates but deeper, more connected, lives spanning every reincarnation. You shake your head. There is no way this is what Nathan is interested in investigating. It's too wild. He's a man of logic and science and biology. Not spiritual at all. Besides, you're not like him. At least you don't think so. Maybe you are...in some ways you can see how you're similar. That's disturbing and you're not going down that road.

The screen on the left is empty, the camera showing just a feed of the empty deck. Shit. You scramble to close the tab but it's too late.

"Oh dear, what are you doing?"

"Fuck," you whisper and turn around slowly to see Nathan standing in the doorway to the office. He's changed into his favorite white long sleeve and some sweatpants.

"Should I pretend you aren't on my computer with the browser open or should I just fire you now?"

"I wasn't doing anything against my NDA." You stand up and he gives you a look over his glasses.

He moves past you and sinks into his chair, turning abruptly to pull up your closed tab on the browser. "Twin flames huh?"

"Yep. Just looking shit up."

"Uh huh."

"Is that what you think we are?"

"No."

"Then what do you-"

"It's what I know we are." He turns back and raises his eyebrows. "You were watching me on the cams?"

You shrug. "Maybe."

"You're a little shit."

"As if you don't watch me when we aren't together."

"Touché." He stands and circles around to grab a book off the shelf behind you. He flips it open and starts scribbling something down.

You lean over trying to see and he tilts the book up. "What is that?"

"A notebook."

"Smart ass."

"I am." He gives his butt a smack and grins at you cheekily. "Don't worry what this book is."

"Secrets make enemies, don't you know?"

"Yes," he puts the book away on the shelf in plain sight. He knows you won't try to get it. You wouldn't disrespect his things like that, even though the lack of respect for your own is considerable in this house. "I have lots of enemies."

You roll your eyes. "That's because you're insufferable, Nathan."

"No it's because I have secrets."

"Wait, you just changed the subject...circle back here. What do you mean you know we're twin flames? How did I miss that?"

Nathan chuckles and puts his arm around your back. "You'll see, one day."

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

"Oh no it does." He guides you into the hall and closes the door behind him. "Once you think about it long and hard you'll realize it."

You walk ahead of him. "I don't get what that means and you're talking in riddles. I'm going to bed."

"I'm going to make dinner."

"And you're going to eat alone. Goodnight Nathan."

___________________

"I know you're awake." Nathan's voice floats through the door to your room. It's some time after midnight, days since you got into it with him about the twin flame nonsense. Yet it's been playing on your mind nonetheless. "Mi luna, can I come in?"

Mi Luna? What the hell is that about? He must be shit faced drunk. You know if you open that door you won't get any sleep. You also know he could just open it since his card is all access, but he is still asking. It's the little things.

"The door is open!"

Nathan peeks in, just his face appearing around the heavy glass door. "Mi luna, it's so bright in here."

"Yeah? I've got the lamps on. It's subterranean, remember? No windows."

He slides in and closes the door. As if someone were ever going to interrupt the two of you. "Lights off."

The lights go down to just the night lights under the vanity and in the bathroom remain on. You raise your eyebrows at the man walking so carefully across your bedroom. He doesn't seem to be stumbling. That's a good sign.

"What is mi luna all about?"

"Do you like it?"

"I don't know?"

"It means My Moon."

"Okay?"

Nathan flops down on the bed and crushes your feet under his butt. "I was thinking about pet names earlier. I hate them all." He's definitely drunk.

"But you like mi luna?"

"Yeah. Mi Luna y mi sol." He extends his arm up as if to touch something out of reach on the ceiling. "My moon and my sun. Sounds romantic."

"Romantic? Since when do you like anything romantic?"

He turns his head to look at you. You're glad you can't make his face out clearly in the darkened room. You fear his eyes will tell you more than you wish to know. "You make me soft."

"I make you soft? How?"

He lets his arm go limp, falling behind him on the bed. "You're so pretty, and you're smart too. So smart." He sighs heavily like a man with much on his mind. "I've had too much tequila."

You chuckle softly. "Oh boy."

"What?"

"I've never seen you drink it, tequila makes you a different kind of drunk."

"Yeah." He reaches out to you and you take his hand. He wiggles his finger tips against yours and makes a little do-do-do noise to go with it. "I wanna marry you."

"What?" Your heart stops and his hand goes limp under yours. "Nathan, what did you just say?"

"Nothing?"

"No you said you wanna marry me."

"If you heard it then why did you ask?"

"Because I wanted to see if you'd lie."

He scoffs and sits up. "I didn't say that."

"Yes you did!"

"No I didn't. You misheard me. I don't even believe in marriage."

"Nathan."

"I'm going to the lab." He pushes off the bed and wobbles on his feet.

You kick his butt and he stumbles forward. "You're an asshole."

He looks back and even in the darkened room you can see his smile. "Am I?"

"Yes! Now get out of here. I want to sleep a few hours before you inevitably wake me up at an ungodly time despite having slept about three hours yourself."

He chuckles as he pads softly to the door.

"What's so funny?"

"I like waking you up early." He leans on the door frame, allowing it to support his body entirely. "It's my favorite part of the day. Your sleepy little yawns, heavy lidded eyes, they way your voice sounds so soft."

You ball your fists in the comforter and force down the butterflies that stir in your stomach. This isn't Nathan. This is a drunk lonely idiot. You can't catch feelings for him, he's your boss. It's honestly too late but that's not any of his business. "Go!"

"You like meeee!"

"Nathan please just go away!"

"It's my house. I don't have to." He teases and you throw a pillow at him. He laughs and slips out the door to avoid further projectiles.

You pull a pillow over your face and scream into it. He's frustrating, whiplash embodied. Fuck him and fuck how he makes you have butterflies in your stomach.

______________________

"Can I ask you something about the AI?"

"Any time." Nathan says as he punches at the bag hanging on the deck. He's been going at it for about an hour now.

You've been sitting and watching him, curled up on the bench wearing his white long sleeve shirt because it's cool out and you didn't want to go get something of your own. You've been sketching the scene of him boxing as if to preserve the memory. As if you won't be here again in a few days doing the same thing.

"Is this your first? The one on the table that we- you are building?"

He stops, steadying the bag a moment and giving you a troublesome smile. "No."

"What was the first one like?"

He returns to punching the bag in a steady rhythm. "She's human like. A little taller than me. I didn't get to make a head before the body malfunctioned."

You raise your eyebrows. "It was a woman?"

"Is. She is a woman, yes."

"She's still in around?"

"Yes." Nathan hugs the bag and looks at you almost lovingly, clearly excited to show you this AI he's kept a secret. "Do you want to see her?"

You stand from the bench you've been watching him on and he starts unwrapping his hands. You take note how his fingers look a little bruised, as if he were going too hard on the bag. "She's here?"

"Mmhmm."

"Why haven't you shown me?"

"You haven't asked."

"But we've been building a new one for this long. Why wouldn't you tell me you had another?"

Nathan grabs his glasses from the counter in the dining room as you pass through, following close behind him. He chuckles. "This new one is not going to be like the others."

"Others?"

"Yeah, the others."

"Nathan, how many are there?"

"Five?" He glances back and does a little hand motion to signify that he wasn't sure. "No, six."

You stop dead in your tracks outside the lab door. "Six? You've made six?"

He turns at the end of the hall and puts his hands on his hips. "I've been here for three years. Of course I've made six. Come on, do you wanna see them or not?"

You hurry ahead and step into where he's leading you. A lounge with big rock walls and built in cupboards. He scans his badge at the first cupboard door and opens it. Inside is half of a bot, no head, just a mechanical body with legs and no arms.

Nathan opens the next one. It has a head with a face, no legs but a torso and an arm. He opens the rest and you walk down the line. The closer you get to the end you realize they look more and more human. They have skin, and unique features, hair and everything. It's when you reach the last one that your heart stops.  

Before you is a spitting image of yourself. It's as if you were made of wax. Not quite right but not off the mark. She's complete, no missing parts, but only her face is skin, the rest is the robot base model.

"Do you understand now?"

"I don't understand anything. What the hell is this?" You step back, hands clinging to your sweater at your stomach. "Nathan what is going on?"

"I built her last year. This is part of the reason why you terrify me."

"But you said...you said that you saw yourself in me and that's what terrified you?"

Nathan closes the door and stands in front of you. "You're freaked out, I get it. When I said I saw myself I meant my mind, my vision. Not like me, obviously you don't look like me. I see my soul reflected back at me."

You stumble back onto the futon and stare up at the man before you. "You brought me here because of that? Because you made a bot that looks like me?"

He steps forward and sinks down, squatting in front of you, hands landing on your thighs. "I saw you in a dream, a very vivid dream like I was in another life all together and I modeled her after what I saw because I couldn't forget. I had no idea you were real until I came across the twin flame theory while researching dreams and I decided to try and find you."

"But how did you find me?"

"Blue Book. Once I made her I scanned her face for recognition and found hundreds of matches. I cross referenced her specific features, rough age estimate, a few other things and then I found you."

You shake your head in disbelief. "I was trying to work for Blue Book. I put in dozens of applications. I was gravitating toward you all along."

"Yeah." He says breathily. "Yeah you were."

"You're my soulmate?"

"Mmmhmm." He rubs your thighs comfortingly. "It's more than that. Soulmate is a pretty blanket term but what we are is twin flames. A soul split in two that rejoins in every lifetime. I never believed in something like that, but that dream was so unlike anything I've experienced it changed my mind. I'm a man of logic and science not fairy tales and fantasies. It tore me up for a long time."

You let out a little bubble of laughter and you quickly cover it up because it's not funny, it's disbelief. "You? Nathan Bateman is my other half?"

"Don't say it like that. It's not funny."

"This is a gag right? You made that mold of my face and slapped it on the AI for this. You're fucking with me." You push him and he falls back onto his ass. "You're an asshole."

"What?!" He gets to his feet as you stand from the futon. "You think I'm lying to you about this?!"

"Yes! Why would a man like you ever believe in that stuff? You don't even believe in marriage. You're lying to get me to sleep with you or something. You're playing into my feelings and fantasies and hopes of someday finding someone to share my life with forever." You head for the doorway and Nathan grabs your hand to stop you. "Let me go. This is cruel. I never thought you would go this fucking far as to-"

"I would never do that to you." In one fluid motion he pulls you close, cradles your face and presses his lips to yours. Fireworks explode behind your eyes as they fall closed. Your heart races, body frozen against his as the world comes crashing down around you. All at once you're dizzy, breathless, excited. You're overloaded, overwhelmed and you don't know what is happening.

"Do you feel it?" He asks and you open your eyes to find him only inches away. The moment your gaze meets his you know he isn't lying. "You're the only person who I've ever felt this connection with. You know how picky I am."

"You're not lying." You mutter, remembering all the times you couldn't stop staring at him. The times when you couldn't remove your eyes from his once they met. The way you move seamlessly around each other, as if you knew each other's next move every step of the way. And most of all how you can't imagine being away from him, how you never get tired of being in his company. "Since we met I've had this feeling, and when our eyes meet-"

"We can't look away."

"Yeah." You lay a hand on his cheek, fingers fanning out over his beard. It's a strange feeling, foreign under your touch. "What do we do now?"

"We keep going."

"Keep going? Going where?"

"Ahead, with the AI, with our relationship." Nathan presses his head to yours. "Together we're going to make a perfect AI. If I hadn't started this, gotten this far into it and made the AI I based off of the dream I had of you, we wouldn't be here right now. You wouldn't be here, we wouldn't have met. I wouldn't be able to make the newest model without you."

"Yes you could. This isn't like you to say you need someone. Have you slept?"

He chuckles. "Yes I've slept."

"You could make this AI without me. You don't need me."

"But I do." He steps back, cradling your face in his hands, thumbs on your cheeks stroking softly. "You've been the key to everything. I can study your features, your expressions, your eyes...fuck your eyes, man. Sure I can get all the data from Blue Book like I did before but you're different. You make me think differently about everything."

You lean into his hand on your cheek. "Kiss me again."

"Don't have to tell me twice." He slides his arms around your back and pulls you flush against him. His mouth covers yours, a sweet kiss turning hungry quickly. He backs you against the wall, arms caging you in as he licks into your mouth. He lets out the softest moan as your hand explores his chest. It's the most vulnerable you've ever seen him.

You arch against him and he lifts your leg up as you hook it around his. You run your hand over his back and stop at his shoulders, cradling the back of his neck. "This is what Nathan in love looks like?"

He kisses along your jaw and pulls back, glasses a little askew. He looks wrecked, completely gone. Like he's drunk but on you instead of liquor. He smiles, pressing another kiss to your lips.

"You're damn right it is."

End

______

Thank you for reading. Please reblog if you enjoyed! - A

Header by delicate-venus

*****Note: none of my works should be posted anywhere outside of my linked accounts. I do not give permission to repost with or without credit to my accounts. Please notify me of any reposted works.*****

[iamtheempress]

A Vegeta x OC Fanfiction (part 4) ¤ ¤ ¤

Calamatta managed to roll out of bed and redress herself. Pulling on the suit and grabbing a spare to bring with her on her trip to To-Rot. Leaving her room she met with Nappa. "There she is!" He chugged a caffeinated hot beverage down like it was nothing, Raditz stood beside him counting his wad of cash and stuffing it in his armor. 

"Pay looks nice." She yawns and stretches making her cute tail curl and back arch abit. "37,000. Not bad but could be better. Vegeta got the most of it." Nappa nods and pushes the yawning female saiyan a mug of the hot beverage. "Thanks...gonna need it." "Damn right you are! Vegeta is still sleeping. Weird he said he was gonna get up before us.. eh whatever. Lets get your pod and stuff ready then well worry bout him." Nappa said as Calamatta shined off the mug and pushed it away.

Upon going to the pod, her coordinates were set and everything was packed into there Raditz, who was standing besides her piped up, leaning against the pod with his massive arms crossed. "Dont take this the wrong way Calamatta but… why are you so…" he moves his hands in an hour glass shape and tilts his head. Calamatta went wide eyed and fixed her suit where her ass is. 

"If thats how you flirt with women that was a strike out, good lord! And I have know idea why! Its just my body shape idiot…" she comments hearing Nappa wheeze as he fixes some wires within the pod, followed by him clanging his head leaving. "Im not! I d-dont flirt its just that… well… shes got… n-nice legs and … a great fa-" Calamatta thwipped her tail like a nervous cat. The bay door slid open and Raditz's poor excuse for flirtation was stopped DEAD in its tracks. "Stop harassing Calamatta on her body type Raditz, Saiyan women were given bodys to kill, shes built like a fine tuned weapon whether you see it or not." Vegeta points up at Raditz who scowled with a full face of blush. "Oh so you look at her too Vegeta?" Calamatta slaps her forehead and raises her voice flicking Raditz in the forehead for his really stupid comment. "Can yall stop talking about me like im not fuckin here??" She snapped annoyed and heard Nappa close up the oxygen port.

 "Ready boss?" She asked Vegeta, who nodded and got into his respective pod and punched in the coordinates manually. "Later guys!" She got in and Raditz and Nappa left the pod evac room. 

Vegeta's voice sparked to life on her scouter. "Theres a hidden base by the most recent Frieza Force there.. we should make it there in an hour so that will be our base of operation. No breaches from outside forces." She nods and for the 2nd time in her life the pod flew straight out of the mothership into the cold vacuum of space. 

She crossed her arms and watched Vegetas whiz right past her hurtling with effort and ease to the planet that only seemed to become larger.. if that wasnt already more possible.

 She marveled at it… it was amazing. It was a shame she was there for a job to do. 

It was under 50 minutes where there pods broke entry to the planets atmosphere, careening and becoming hot to the touch, cold metal heating up faster, and faster becoming scorching red hot. Then the mountain range came into view, with the ship in sight the two pods crashed right into a large cave system. 

Welding their pods into the hard rock walls to jut through with 0 damage just enough room for the pods to open on the opposite side of the mountain. Calamatta and Vegeta pushed the button to open the pod bay doors, they took one solid whif of the atmosphere and Cala sighed. "To-Rot huh.. so wheres the base ship?" Cala steps her boots onto the alien planets surface. "5 miles that way. Stay within the tree line, follow my lead." The prince cracks his neck and blasts away leaving a trail of dust and debris behind him.

 "Say no more.." she stated following close behind Vegeta. Vegetas eyes were trained ahead. Toa ship that was covered in dirt and over growth. He tapped his scouter to be sure. "Perfect.. no signs of power levels. Excellent!" He smirked, the prince and Calamatta landed outside of the ship. Vegeta punched in a code and they were both let in. "Good.. now.. lets have a look around. The recent failed mission logs should have data from their logs. Have a look around for food and whatever else when i find the log ill call for you"  Vegeta announced as the hangar door shut behind them locking followed by a robotic voice. 

'Systems Armed'

Calamatta turned on her heels and scampered to the back of the ship. Vegeta watched the eager Saiyan trot away, with a sigh and a roll of his eye he headed towards the command deck of the ship. 

Collected with dust and opened up first aid kits, Vegeta scanned the surrounding area cautiously. 3 lone scouters covered in blood sat on the front of the deck. An ominous reminder of the past couple of grunts who died here. 

He snagged the three up and turned to call for Calamatta "Found them! Get up here!"

Calamatta dropped this box of rations she found and walked quickly to the front to see him plugging in the scouters logs. An unfamiliar voice chimed to life. 

"F-Force log number 1, we have arrived at To-Rot, this area is to be our base of operation since the inhabitants cannot scale plateaus or fly. We will commence terraformation and return in a week." Vegeta clicked the 2nd video, a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. 

"F-Force Log number 2… uhm.. Que, Roa, and Gil went missing yesterday. We have been here for 3 days now and i have seen hide nor tail of them... ill send a distress warning to the mother ship but i will go and find my crew." 

He pressed the last one and the room suddenly became much heavier. "F-Force number 3… i found my crew.. w-whats left of them…" he held up baren bones and armor. "This planets fucked up… if you know whats good for you send the Saiyans.. theyll do a better job.. i couldnt save my crew! This is Nutte signing off… i'm going to look for Roa.”

"Thats… not good.." Vegeta groaned and plugged in the next scouter, A new crew came up on the screen, a crew of ten. The crew was looking around, brows raised and sweat on their brow. “So we are the 4th crew to come to this planet alone, from what were aware these uh… the main population of this race is highly hostile and we need to utilize lethal force...Well update as we go along.” After that log there was no update, no commanders log. He stepped away and swiped a hand through his hair. “Last log…”  He clicked on it which was 7 full days ago. 

A Log List of all the times this one computer has been logged into popped up. It was far more then 4.

10 Crew lists came through. Crews of upwards of 5 being the smallest to 30 being the most. All vanished within days of arrival. All of them mentioning, to send someone stronger, someone more capable. The Saiyans, they begged for the Saiyans help and they were all sent on suicide missions back to back to back to back.

Vegeta slammed his hands down on the console making it glitch the screen. “Of course theyd call for us…dammit!” He barked and kept his back turned away from her. “So they sent them on suicide missions because… they didn’t want to send us?” She questioned, furrowing her brows trying to wrap her head around the situation. “Frieza didnt want to send me and the other two… He sent US on a suicide mission.” Vegeta turned quickly and stared daggers into Calamatta, the overwhelming feeling of concern rain heavy within her head, and sat uncomfortably in her stomach like something she shouldnt have eaten.

Vegeta crossed the room and pointed his finger right into her chest a deep growl emanating from behind his bared teeth. “He went and sent ME with YOU so we can both perish!” “Hey hey what the hell! Calm down abit, well make it out of here ill follow orders.” Vegeta’s vein popped out on his forehead, eyes narrowed furious.

 “Thats not my point. Your optimism is the closest thing we have to any cocky behavior! It doesnt surprise me why Frieza sent me to a month long mission..” She put up her hands and once again her heart sunk; she went wide eyed staring into the princes heartlessly infuriated black eyes.

Friezas words rattled in her skull ‘your life is as forfeit to me as it is Vegeta…’

“I dont get why he would send both of us to die.” He turned back around and walked to a table with a map on it. “You stood at Frieza’s side for as long as you have been able to speak, you wanted freedom from him, now you might as well see the harsh reality, he never had any good intentions for you Calamatta. He wants you dead, so much so hell send the both of us to a lethal planet to terraform on our own…” He said flatly, Calamatta remained silent her tail loosely hanging from her waist. Her dignity and pride feeling like it was oozing out of her very pores. “Now get over here and lets get an idea of the land… this moon has two moons and we have to plan accordingly.” The map is very detailed of the entirety of the planet from the red deserts to the lush green forests and then to the grayed out city scapes. All of them giant hot beds of activity, teaming with life as they knew it. 

His orders were direct and bland. Calamatta dragged her feet, depressed. Feeling less and less like a Saiyan by the moment, it wasnt so much Vegeta.. it was how quickly she was starting to realize Frieza was right, and goddamn did it grate her nerves to know that... The idea of freedom is going to be lightyears more heavier then she could imagine, shes not even close and this is what she has to deal with. Calamatta tightened her tail back up around her waist and listened to her Princes expertise plan of attack.

¤ ¤ ¤

Tags:  @memevember @dragonblobz @gonuclear @msgreenverse @fallen--lilith ​ @jimbobslurpnchug @dragonballcollector @nikabriefs @lilhemmo @supremeleadershitlord @thotful-writing ​ @chickiedinner @anti-jaina @lizardhipsdontlie @dragonball-hcs-or-sum-shit ​ @solidsock​

[tinycrow]

I don’t believe in miracles

Chapter 2: Discovery

:: Unknown Location ::

It had officially been half a decade since Mission City. The autonomous robotic organism and caretaker named Ray was no longer finding ‘babies’ that were sparked by the entity known as the All-Spark. She hoped that this was because she had collected them all, rather than the babies dying off or being otherwise ‘acquired’ by another agency. With no real reason to risk being seen, she spent most of her time raising the sparklings at her home base. This was fine, she thought. She enjoyed seeing her sparklings grow to become upstanding workers in what was now a bustling, little city.

There were massive infrastructure changes that had been going on since the events in Egypt. There were 5 major underground tunnels that stretched across their territory. 3 of five tunnels led to an underground bunker that would hopefully protect any humans/non-humans that needed to wait out an attack on their fair city. It wouldn’t survive a direct hit from a nuclear explosion, but it was placed in such a way that it would hopefully not be targeted. It would keep warm and safe any occupants for a couple years. Other than the bunker, the tunnels provided a warmer route between buildings in the city, especially for humans. Still, it wasn’t uncommon for non-human residents to take up the role as “taxi” for other, smaller friends aboveground.

Because of this shift in foot traffic, non-humans were able to speed through the streets, rarely having to stop. Street racing was becoming a problem in recent years, to Max and Ray’s chagrin. There had been ongoing talk of incorporating bigger ‘bots into Max’s team in order to better police the streets, but ‘bots reaching near Ray’s size tended to be rare, considering how young all the other ‘bots in the city actually were.

There were also more places in the city to just hang out as well as enjoy food and drink. The greenhouse now sported a nice café as well as a plethora of flowers and other plant life.

“Okay. We’re going for a drive.”

“It’s... cold out,” Ray lamely refused, shoulders hunching slightly as she sat at a desk to read reports on her large data pad.

“It’s always cold out. We live in the freaking An-“

“I’m busy.”

“I know for a fact that you’ve already read through the security and finance reports. The rest can wait.”

“My babies-“

“-Are being taken care of by a team of now fully-trained humans and ‘bots. Besides, you don’t usually attend them at this hour anyway. We won’t be gone that long.”

Ray was silent and contemplative as she stared downward at Linda Davies, her long-time friend. Back when she was still roaming America, the red-headed woman had been one of her only companions, worried only about helping them both survive the next day. Linda was the one to suggest the novel idea of creating a place to call their own in a place outside the jurisdiction of any opposing government. It was a crazy idea from a possibly crazy friend, but then again, Ray’s life on Earth wasn’t sane from the very start.

Linda glared back in defiance. “You need a break. Enjoy some sunshine. Talk with friends.”

The ‘bot contemplated arguing with Linda more. They both knew, however, that Ray would be going with Linda. With a sigh, Ray put away the data pad and stood.

“Inside the city, or...?”

“I’ve got my eyes on someplace warmer.”

==

:: California, America ::

It was a much different experience, driving at a sedate/normal pace along with the rest of human-driven traffic. Ray didn’t mind it, but Linda seemed peeved as she shifted irritably in the front passenger seat. Perhaps she was too hot? Ray checked the temperature of the cabin and found it to be at a comfortable level with her cooling unit already on. Maybe she wanted some music? She pulled a playlist from the internet that seemed pretty popular.

Linda’s mood barely improved.

“What’s wrong, Linda?”

“I hate traffic.” She grumped, “How about... we stop for coffee and then drive farther from the center of town?”

The holoform in the driver’s seat frowned in thought.

“I guess... Though I feel less safe the farther from the ground bridge we are.”

“We won’t be long.”

==

An hour passes, and the two friends were driving along into the California countryside with the windows down and a coffee in Linda’s hand. Music was blaring from Ray, pulled from various sources as well as internal storage. They didn’t speak much, just enjoyed the feeling of being on the road again.

“Ah, I missed this,” the not-so-young woman said nostalgically, “I love our home, but I wish we had this kind of scenery, you know?” Linda griped with a smile.

“I agree. California’s nice. Actually... Earth is very nice.”

Linda smacked the dashboard lightly, causing the holoform to flicker out for a millisecond. The black-haired and green-eyed holoform grimaced with a small admonishment.

“Sorry. But you talk like you weren’t born here.”

Ray seemed to pause at that. “I suppose it is weird.” She hummed, and explained, “Sometimes it feels that way, you know? Being so different from the literal billions of humans that populate this planet.”

“And your time... before you changed?”

“Well...” The holoform exhaled harshly, “I lived a pretty lonely life. Other than the times I would help out local charities, nothing really made me happy. I’m pretty satisfied with where we are now, and I want to continue working in making life at home better for all of us. For all our kind.”

It was Linda’s turn to be thoughtful. She slowly formed the words, “You really want to open our home to the aliens.”

“Yes.” The answer came subdued but serious.

A familiar car turned onto their road.

The radio turned off.

“Linda, don’t be alarmed.”

Said woman’s back straightened. “Okay, we’ve gotta talk about ways to deliver bad news. What’s wrong?”

“That car behind us...  is one of the aliens we were discussing.”

Linda looked into the rear-view mirror and saw the silver sports car quickly gaining ground on them.

“Fuck no, he don’t.” Linda looked at the holoform of her friend, very displeased expressions on both their faces, “Can’t you go faster?”

“That depends. Are you going to throw that coffee away?”

“Is this really the time to worry about— “

“THROW IT.”

“OKAY!”

The coffee cup went sailing out the window and into the dry, yellow grass. The moment it hit the ground, Ray’s engine revved and her speed started steadily but quickly climbing. Because the road was fairly straight most of the way, she wasn’t worried about having to suddenly turn 90 degrees.

~ Ray and Linda to Shawn and Max. Linda and I are being followed. I need an emergency ground bridge. Are either of you at the console? ~

~ Shawn, here. I’m not, but I can be. Where are you, Sunshine? ~

~ Ray. We are in the California countryside. I don’t want to lead them back to the warehouses. Max, are you— ~

There was a huff of exhaustion as Max chimed in. ~ Max. I’m at the console. Send your coordinates. ~

Ray sent her coordinates as well as those of the car behind her. She told them how fast she was going.

Max swore. ~ There’s no way you can slow down, but if I send a ground bridge, you’re going to be a pancake on the building wall. I’ll look up exits. ~

Linda, hearing the conversation in her earpiece, gained a look of grim revelation.

~ Linda, here. I know none of us want to consider it, but we may need to fight. ~

Max was dismissive of the idea. ~ There are many reasons that won’t work. For one, they’re much more skilled at fighting than we are. There’s also the fact that they may be getting backup, while we don’t have anyone to backup Ray, unless we use the children— ~

Ray’s hackles rose at the thought, and she interrupted, ~ You are not sending my children after me. ~

Max sighed, sounding like he’d heard this, many, many times before.

~ I wasn’t going to. Look, there’s a gentle turn coming up, if you can pull a miracle and lose him, I can send a bridge to Point A. ~ Max sends Ray coordinates to a nearby farm.

~ Or to Point B. ~ He adds a new pointer further away.

~ Keep me apprised. ~ Max said, finally.

Ray affirmed the decision and planned. Knowing Linda would not approve, she kept it mostly to herself. She turned off the holoform, wanting to reserve processing power. It caught Linda’s attention.

“Ray?”

“Do you trust me?”

Linda narrowed her eyes at the dashboard, hearing her voice echo throughout the cabin.

“Do you trust me?”

==

~ Prime, that strange, unknown Cybertronian appeared again. They appear to have a human with them. I’m following them. ~

~ The human must be returned unharmed. Send your coordinates and we will block their escape routes. You are not to attack while they have the human. ~

~ Understood. ~

==

Ray took the gentle, right turn with slightly less speed but fully screeching tires. She would not let her friend come to harm. If this was to end in a confrontation, she would see her friend home, safe and sound with her people.

The dilapidated barn designated as Point A was coming up fast, and she swerved violently as she skidded to a halt, kicking up a massive storm of dust and dirt. She popped the door open. Linda jumped out, expecting a fight to happen. Just as expected, Ray transformed into her bipedal form, stance loose but looking vaguely like she was ready to fight.

~ Lin’, run to the barn and get that bridge open. ~

~ On it! ~

As the dust cleared, Linda had disappeared into the barn. Ray stepped cautiously forward, wanting to put distance between Linda and the other ‘bot. The silver car drifted in, transformed, and pulled out their blade all in one well practiced movement.

“Release the human, Decepticon, and I will let you live.”

Ray attempted to stall for time. “Not even a hello? A name? I’m afraid you got me at a disadvantage, sir.”

He stepped forward predatorily. She took a hesitant step back.

“Don’t play games with me, ‘con.”

~ It’s open! Hey, Max, wha—hey! Let me go! Ray! ~

Ray cut the transmission with some guilt, and opened a silent communication with Max.

~ Thanks, Max. ~

~ You realize the consequences of what you’re about to do, right? ~

~ I do. I leave my fate in your and our council’s hands. ~

“Well?”

Ray raised her hands slowly in surrender. With determination and serenity, she watched as a semi raced up to his comrade and transformed into bipedal form beside him. She blinked her optics at the new weapon pointed at her.

“I am no Decepticon.”

Sideswipe sneered, “Likely story. What were you doing with that human, then?”

“We were enjoying coffee and a drive through the California countryside,” she said calmly, and at the looks of disbelief, she clarified unnecessarily, “Oh, she was drinking coffee. I find no nutritional value in it.”

“Where is the human?” Optimus asked, getting back to the crux of the matter.

“Oh, back home I’m assuming. Max came by to pick her up.”

“Who is Max?”

“He’s chief of security for a rather large community of people. Are you going to arrest me, officers?”

Optimus gave a look to Sideswipe. Sideswipe resisted grumbling and cautiously approached the possibly deranged Ray, who had yet to draw a weapon.

“You are to follow us to an extraction point. If you deviate from the course, we will be forced to subdue you.”

“Alright, if you insist. Don’t stare at my bumper, I’m quite shy.”

The two mechs stared at her, and then glanced at each other.

‘Taking them off guard would be more fun if I wasn’t so terrified for what the future holds,’ she thought, and she thought of the children she probably wouldn’t be seeing in a very long time. She thought of the danger they could be in if things didn’t go well.

She focused on the details of the two mechs in front of her, hoping to ground herself, and pushed her fears down. She followed one mech and was in turn followed by the other.

==

A pacific Ray sat, essentially blinded in most senses, in what seemed to be a place for general storage. They had temporarily cut off her sight and other various sensors, leaving her with hearing and what was the robotic equivalent to touch. She had guessed that her captors did not have a designated holding area for non-human prisoners (a brig), and to keep their own secrets safe, deemed it necessary to take these precautions. She tried to be mad about it, but a large part of her understood; the Autobots and the humans associated with them were looking for Decepticons, and most Decepticons would rather die than be taken prisoner. Shuddering in fear, she admitted being blinded and constantly guarded wasn’t the worst that could’ve happened to her.

She sang a slow, crooning melody to pass the time and ease any anxiety.

Watching nearby were a pair of cold, blue optics that shuttered briefly at the sound. Memories from long, long ago of similar songs sung to them as a youth slipped into their awareness. The owner of these blue optics resisted the feelings of compassion and sympathy that threatened to take them off guard.

==

In a room far from the femme’s prison, the Autobots (barring one) were in a serious discussion.

“The femme certainly doesn’t act like any Decepticon I’ve seen,” Ironhide admitted.

“And of course, there’s no insignia showing which faction,” Sideswipe said, “Though she did run when she saw us. That’s enough cause for me.”

Optimus rumbled in thought, “Ray associates with humans. For most Decepticons, that would be beneath them.”

A human soldier also piped up, “What about her eye colour? Don’t they usually have red eyes?”

“The colour of one’s optics do not necessarily mean anything. Many Decepticons you have seen may have had red, but there have been those on our side with red as well. Hers are green, which are rarer, but it does not hold any specific meaning,” Optimus explained for the humans’ benefit. “Ratchet, what are your thoughts?”

“The femme has been compliant in every procedure taken to secure her as our prisoner. She has no internal weapons system, however she willingly offered information about her subspace storage containing a rifle, which I have disabled access to as well.”

No internal weapons? Not even a blaster? What kind of warrior disables themselves by not acquiring a proper weapon, especially in a war? The room erupted in chatter.

“Quiet.” The Autobot leader ordered, and then urged Ratchet to continue.

“I have been analyzing the unique radiation that she emits and can come to no conclusions yet. I will note however, that there’s something familiar about it.”

“Familiar, how?” Optimus inquired curiously.

“I cannot say for certain,” Ratchet demurred.

“Keep me updated,” their leader acquiesced, to which the chief medical officer just nodded.

In a quick private comm with Ratchet, Optimus asked, ~ Might I assume you do not want to broadcast whatever it is that is ‘familiar’? ~

~ You are correct. The radiation emitting from the Femme seems to react uniquely with the materials immediately surrounding her. On a molecular level, they are... moving unnaturally. ~

This news surprised Optimus, as this ability was something entirely new. ~ Could it be a new weapon? ~

~ It is hard to say. However, it’s familiar to one of the abilities of an entity we all know of and have lost. ~

~ ... We will talk about this later. ~

~ Indeed. ~

“For now, we will keep her under constant guard. Ratchet, you will continue studying her. All of you are to report any suspicious behaviour. If that is all, you are dismissed.”

==

One week after capture...

She heard a particular set of footsteps approaching and looked up with a genuine curve of her dermas (lips). She recognized those footsteps that had been visiting her almost every day since her capture. She greeted him sweetly.

“Ratchet.”

Ratchet didn’t bother hiding his pleased expression, knowing she couldn’t see.

“You can leave,” he told the guarding Autobot.

Arcee’s optics shuttered and opened again slowly in shock. “Ratchet?”

“Don’t worry, Arcee, she’s not going anywhere. But I technically count as her guard while I am here,” he explained, “so let me work in peace.”

Arcee, aware of Ratchet’s legendary temper, took the out as she saw it gracefully. “Alright. I’ll check in with you in one earth hour.”

“See you later, Arcee!” Ray smiled at the air, not quite sure where Arcee was as the femme was light-footed or on wheels? It was hard to tell.

When Arcee left, Ray turned to where she thought Ratchet was. A puzzled look and an inquiry were sent up to his left shoulder plate, “Is there a reason you sent her away?”

Ratchet settled himself in for a long conversation. There was the squeak of metal compacting slightly as he assumingly sat down on a crate. Ray was already sitting on the concrete with her legs tucked to the side. Her back strut straightened in attention as this event was different to the quiet study and offhand questioning he usually does. Though Ratchet had been nothing but gentle—if grumpy at times—with her, she wondered if that was about to change. Her spark quickened in a small niggling of anxiety.

It must’ve shown in her expression, because he quickly said, “You’re not going to come under any harm in my care, I assure you.”

Ray relaxed slightly, but still had her doubts as she asked, “Is something the matter?”

“I’ve been talking with Optimus and we both agree that it’s time to consider long term plans for your stay here. You have proven yourself to be non-hostile as well as open to our prodding at you and your radiation field. Such good behaviour does not warrant what could be considered torture by sensory deprivation.”

She simply stared blindly at him for a second before slowly admitting, “It would be nice... to see whom I am talking to.”

It only took around 15 minutes to re-enable the appropriate sensors, and he was being intentionally slow and careful. The first thing she saw was thick, yellow-plated servos. When they pulled away, her green optics were wide and bright as they took in the much taller mech. He was sitting, but by her estimates he would probably be at least 5 feet taller than she was. She vocalised a high whistle and winked.

“Cheeky brat. I bet you and Bumblebee would get along just fine.”

Ray took a moment to look at one of her kind captors. She knew the aliens were well armoured and gunned; she had seen it on the day of her capture. However, even the kind medic that had been in her company for days now seemed alarmingly well built. Subconsciously, she pulled her legs up to her chest, in the foetal position. She never liked conflict, but she understood why good people fought. Once upon a time, she was a fighter too, before The Change. But those were weaker foes compared to the aliens she faced now.

“There’s something else we’ve been meaning to talk to you about. You constantly assure us that you are not a Decepticon, but none of us recognize you, nor do we see any mark of affiliation with us.”

She was silent for a while. Ratchet seemed to wait patiently as she seemed to deliberate, optics tracing a path on the ground. The black-armoured femme seemed to come to a conclusion and faced him with a brave speech.

“That is because I am neither a Decepticon nor an Autobot.”

Ratchet didn’t seem surprised by her answer. Truthfully, Optimus and he had been speculating on this ever since she came into their custody. It was hard to believe, but it was the only explanation that fit. The Neutrals had been exterminated early on in the war. This faction was mostly made up of ones who could not or would not fight for one reason or another. They usually had a hard time making a living, and Decepticon raids would eventually become the reason that no Neutral was thought to be alive to this day.

If Ray was a Neutral, it would explain her behaviour towards humans and conflict with either of the opposing factions.

It didn’t quite explain away the radiation that caused nearby molecules to dance almost excitably in her vicinity, or the way she could put you at ease in her presence—a feeling of protection and unconditional love. There was just something missing from this explanation that Ratchet needed to figure out. He had asked specific questions before, but hopefully this time she would willingly answer.

“What colony are you from?”

His question was met with silence. Ratchet withheld a sigh of disappointment, but something in his demeanour must have changed. She saw his disappointment and immediately felt guilty.

She wanted so badly to tell the truth, but it couldn’t be helped. Her people had rights to their privacy and security. She hadn’t gotten communication from the council indicating it was okay to share that information—Ratchet didn’t know but she had easily repaired the severed wires in her antennae. Anyway, it was doubtful that the council would ever agree to open their city to the Autobots, because she knew the humans were afraid. She wished that the time they spent in her and her babies’ presence would ease some of that fear, but it was still not an easy decision to make. She could only hope her feelings reached the people she loved and trusted.

Ratchet tried a different angle, “When did you arrive on earth?”

Ray’s optics, formerly gazing guiltily away, snapped up to Ratchet. This she could technically answer. Her voice was soft but sure as she answered.

“Sometime in the 80’s. But I didn’t start travelling until the late 90’s and didn’t find a place to settle until... the Mission City disaster.”

He thought on this for a bit. It was a bit telling when the femme would be forthcoming with all topics except for where she came from and where she was staying. It made him wonder if there were more Neutrals hiding somewhere.

“Who was that travelling with you when we found you?”

With a pang of anxiety, Ray cautiously revealed, “Linda. She’s a good friend of mine. She... gave me a home.” It was as close to truth as possible. Linda didn’t just give her a home but had helped build it.

“Is there a way we can contact Linda?” He asked, and seeing her wariness, he continued, “If you were happy with her before, I’m sure Prime would let you return as her guardian.”

Ray visibly struggled with herself. There was distress at wanting to be open about her home—she was so proud of what she had helped build—but wanting to respect her people’s wishes. Something in her rattled, and her dentas clenched reflexively.

“I want to... but I can’t... I can’t... It’s not safe... We do not trust...” Her processor stuttered through the many things she wanted or needed to say but was scared of divulging. It created a loop she could not break herself out of.

Ratchet’s servo braced itself on her shoulder, and her continued stuttering petered out. His voice was consoling as he assured her that the Autobots did not mean her or any friend of hers harm, that they had promised to protect humans from the Decepticon threat. The rattling of her mechanical parts somewhere in her quieted, and she took in and vented out air harshly in a very human gesture of recovery.

“There you go. Easy now. You’re safe.”

He tried to pick up the conversation afterward, but her continued silence was worrying. Did she not feel safe here? Granted they took precautions to protect the base’s secrets, but she had not shown any negative effects of the treatment until now. He would speak with Optimus about improving the conditions of her stay here.

==

Three weeks after capture...

It had taken a lot of arguing, but she was finally allowed to—under strict supervision and great limitation—to ‘step’ out of the storage room. Though, to protect the secrets of the existence of Cybertronians, she was only allowed to be in vehicle mode, and it would be in the evening when most of the day’s work was done. Perhaps they were afraid of spy satellites seeing their bipedal forms. With her sight restored, she took the time away from the constant interrogation to simply enjoy the sunshine and the sound of waves nearby. She drove circles or figure 8’s around her guard as well as objects to exercise her precision driving. She even asked her guards about stunts like wheelies, which the amused Autobots agreed to teach her in the limited time she had outside.

Inside the storage room, she would turn into bipedal mode to work her joints, cables, and pistons. She would contort herself in all the ways she knew possible before she grew bored. Sometime during the middle of the day, Ratchet would come along to poke, prod, or ask her things. Very rarely did she ever see Optimus Prime, the Autobots’ leader. When she asked once, she was told he was very busy dealing with the human government and their liaisons. It wasn’t explicitly said, but it was obvious to her that the human government wasn’t happy with the Autobots’ continued stay on Earth.

Though Ray did her best to keep the secret of her little city, she could see that the Autobots were beginning to piece together little things she had been saying (or hadn’t remembered saying). They brought up what she said when Sideswipe and Optimus first cornered her at the abandoned farm, about Max and Linda, about the mysterious warehouse that was obviously just a warehouse and nothing to be suspicious about—

She wasn’t very good at this secret keeping business. Ray supposed it was inevitable that a race so much more experienced than she would start to figure it out, and she only hoped that her people would forgive her.

==

1 month after capture...

Not much changed over the next week, except she obviously gained some level of trust with the Autobots and was involved in less discrete conversations more. Perhaps they had figured out her secret already. They avoided telling her what they thought, so she wasn’t sure.

It was a little over a month when she got a communication from Max, who obviously spoke for the council in this matter. The break in the comm silence ever since her capture took her so off guard, that she froze in the middle of an interrogation. When asked what was wrong, she was too shocked to formulate the words she needed to say, and instead asked to be given some time alone with her guard.

It took her two hours to gather her courage, but she asked to meet with Optimus and Ratchet, stressing that she wanted them alone or she wouldn’t reveal anything. After the agreement was secure, she tried to secure the area against listening devices or humans, using her powers discretely to do so.

It was time.

[empressxmachina]

--Also on Wattpad--

Mouse Trap, pt. 3

“I can see you just fine.”

“Oh… Oh, my god,” Lauren breathed in her own panic and filth, slid down her wall with her back to it, toppled in a puddle of regurgitated food, sweat, fear, and tears.

If she was indeed in one of his spaces as it had appeared, then it was sensible that he could see her whenever he desired. Knowing how or, worse, why, however, was another story that she wasn’t sure that she wanted to read. As exciting as the technology seemed, was she as safe as this overbearing onlooker tried to claim?

With every new action and word, Lauren’s confidence waned.

The enhanced zoom on the screen was then stretched further out, revealing the entire plaza that held Lauren and later, eventually, the whole block in which it was contained. Everything not within a certain radius from the center was smudged into a blur, almost as if he rubbed it all out for himself, giving all that was untouched a tilt-shift feel. Her form, now more antlike than ever, was illuminated in a bolder, verdant glow to differentiate her from everything else, which proved immediately useful.

Mesa Metro was, in her eyes, the miniature megapolis she had only envisioned it was to him up and over yonder.

The snapshot then became a living map of sorts, changing to a silent video with a snail trail in Lauren’s same green hue following her as she exited the area, taking some insectile public transit as far as she could go before walking the rest of the way. The rest of the days between then and now was spent with her glow spiraling in the same place as where she currently was: home, never leaving, never having expected a response.

With as much surveillance as she had for her things and how dystopian Mesa Metro could be at times, she never felt more out in the open than she did now. Luckily for her, there seemed to be no footage of her inside the house. Still, how much had he already learned of her domicile with her glasses and watch just sitting there?

Did his omnipresence include space within walls, too, or various altitudes of places, or other angles than the locked bird’s-eye – more like a midday sun’s eye – view? What were the chances he already figured out her house’s floor plan and her place in it?

“I haven’t gotten to probe your existence from end to end to know for sure, yet,” a new message started, somehow still legible from her further distance away, “but much is already clear.”

“Y-Yet?” Lauren echoed, audibly coughing from her own confusion. Whether he meant that he hadn’t finished or hadn’t started, she could only wonder... and hope he’d reconsider both options.

But she didn’t have to, for long.

“One could say I’m already halfway deep in prodding, managing this conversation and all,” the transcriptions continued. “So, why stop now?”

Lauren’s heart sank, her wishes vanishing like his words every few seconds. ‘Halfway?’ In only some minutes!? She was officially stuck in quicksand with not enough calmness to get herself out. The remaining semblances of peace she could imagine were all in the after, nothing in the now. With that crater from a pen’s cap still fresh in memory, multiple visions of ends of days once again flashed in her head, ranging from elongated and cataclysmic to subtle and swift, all of his doing, surely, and it was all her fault.

“Well… with you not having manipulated your new ‘update’ for some time, now, perhaps you’ve seen enough of it.” Truer words had never been spoken. Lauren had seen enough of a lot. “Though with that research I appear to have interrupted, I would’ve guessed otherwise, believing you’d want as much as you could get.” That statement did nothing to relieve Lauren, either, proving he could go and had gone further into her data – her existence, even – on top of reading her psyche unfortunately well.

How deep would he go? How far could he go?

The dictating carried on. “You’ve fawned over me with your tiny files up to moments ago, and you’ll continue to do so. But in this now, despite all that…”

The ellipsis lingered, and Lauren waited for a judgment to be dealt unto her. Whatever she was to get, she deserved. She couldn’t say the same for Mesa Metro and all past it if it came to it, despite their flaws; she prayed she’d be forgiven when it was all over. That end wouldn’t be today, it seemed, as the foul stench of a new purpose – extreme subjugation or maybe just her upchuck – began to waft over her.

“…I grow tired of this single-handing for what should be a two-way affair, so I shall leave you to satiate.”

Before she could say or think anything else about this whole encounter, the disembodied domineered, shutting down his presentation, sucking every visual and word into a simulation centered on the screen. For uncomfortably long, it left a frozen void in which Lauren could only stare at her drained, draining self as she pushed off the wall and crept toward it.

Just as it started, it was nothing again.

Time went as slowly as her computer was dark, and she hated having to think for herself again. There were too many new variables now, and none of them made any sense.

“What… the fuck… was that?” Lauren interrogated herself, running a hand through her stringy hair, slumping in her chair. “Was… Was that shit real? Any of it?” With the pains in her body and the wetness on her clothes, there surely was no denying something bizarre went down just now. But saying that this was the first time she had ever gone delirious and malnourished in her own home would be a lie.

It was late. Lauren hadn’t gotten proper meals, exercise, sleep, or sunlight for days. The lack of lights on her computer showed that it wasn’t merely on standby or sleep mode but was entirely shut down, probably from inactivity. Her glasses and watch mirrored that, fading to a dim lime on the now dormant network connection. Her phone had died. Her room was a mess. She was a mess.  

Her present was a repeated past and a probable future. Nightmares as daydreams were a constant for her. While there was no way of denying the astral projection and municipal annihilation from days ago with her data and the outside news, she couldn’t think of any sane reason why a higher being like that – he – should waste effort on someone – something? ��� like her. Directly her.

She didn’t deserve the attention. She never did before, so why now?

Lauren could feel the essence of sleep attempt to overtake her, pulling her toward another haggard hibernation at her desk, despite her bed being within reach. On instinct, she began to pull her hoodie’s hood over her head and retract her arms out her sleeves to make a makeshift cushion that’d hopefully bolster her and any nearby gear and tools on her eventual fall out of consciousness.

A crick in her neck was eminent in a couple of hours as her figure faltered down… but the Fates decided to bring it in early with some sun.

Just as her eyes were to close, the computer suddenly awakened, shining its near-blinding light across Lauren’s scleras. She jerked back into action, seeing her lock screen come into focus.

“S-See?” she argued through a yawn. “It was just an update, after all. No need to worry.”

With no intention of continuing research further into the morning, Lauren decided to just play it safe, checking that the update didn’t set any progress back. If it had, she’d have to make a journey into one of her several external drives or servers and make a new surface-level copy. Going from program to program – note-takers, stimulators, other data aggregators – all appeared to be well, softening Lauren’s heart for a quick retiring to bed.

Her last stop was her blueprinting software, where she had a deconstructed view of the materials and layers used to construct her space-warping lenses and its logging watch supplement. So much technology stuffed within such a narrow space. Companies tried to do less with less success, yet here Lauren was, literally going out of the box, out of this world.

It was a marvel to see in action, and it was even more marvelous that it worked. Lauren knew she had prowess – she wouldn’t be freelancing, otherwise – but she was also her harshest critic. The collections of her own comments on her own works badgering how and why she did things in a particular way (and how they somehow managed to work) probably weren’t right for her mental state, but they pushed her to work harder with each new design.

The text and links in her margins and other documents linked externally were worthy of their own analyses and bibliographies. They all followed a just-as-intricate organizational system, too, categorizing thoughts by time, purpose, solution, and the like, along with graphic dividers like color, font, and size. With how frequently Lauren looked at her green sheen and its related script during testing and active use, she vehemently didn’t use them to jab at her own processes.

So, despite her tiredness, it was clear to see the lone flag of that scheme, amidst the waterfall of colorful banners and bubbles, slightly bolder and more massive than the rest.

“What?” Lauren questioned, scratching her scalp with uncertainty. Doing so showed her that she required a shampoo session, finding filth collecting under her nails, but that was an issue for another time. “Did… Did I make this?”

Hovering the mouse cursor over that flag, she found its author listed as not her name or alias but instead “<null>,” leading to several possibilities, all discomforting. A) it was her own comment, and self-referencing was apparently terrible, now, B) an invalid character was put in the wrong place, which could have its own map of reasons, or C) an unauthorized entity had gotten access to the system. Nothing in the background showed any signs of a virus, and nothing in the foreground gave any clue as to which cause was the true one. So, with bated breath, Lauren clicked twice and dove in.

The window hung for a period, a loading circle replacing the pointer and her anxieties with doubts of security again. She knew that doing anything when not at 100 percent or at least sixty percent had such a high probability of something going wrong or something important going missed. But she couldn’t back out now, not with her computer likely to lock up. Luckily, all stayed free and open, and that flag dimmed from being accessed. Though, from the looks of it, there was no reason why its reference should’ve frozen her system as it did.

It was a PDF with just a handful of pages, and two of them were blank.

The bookends were empty, and the inner layers didn’t have much to them, either. In fact, one of the pages was an exact copy of a print that Lauren had already made. Her materials list as diagrams was reposted as the second page. The page after that was similar, except that about half of the items were deleted. But the last page was a puzzle: an almost literal puzzle.

The second page was copied again; however, the missing items that Lauren knew were replaced with a new set in a similar style. They were all recognizable in some way, reasonably findable from a store or online, but a combination that she had never considered. Both as a group by itself and in totality with everything else, the question was how they all fit together.

Its creator, quickly made visible to not be herself, clearly knew what they were doing with the additional subtitle in the footer of the page: ‘to satiate.’ At the realization, a chill ran down Lauren’s spine.

It hadn’t been a dream.

There were no instructions, just visuals, and as the genius she was, Lauren knew what they all were meant to be, stating their purpose with a wheeze,

“An earpiece.” An optimized headset with a mic and speaker from which she felt a disgusting aura of déjà vu.

This was his earpiece: the one that put her in this debacle in the first place.

If her intuitions were right, then the construction wouldn’t be complicated. Maybe time-consuming, sure, based on the glasses and watch being the bases for it, but not hard. They would make things harder if she went through with making them, though. But did she really have a choice?

She was just a circuit in his machine, instructed to make new circuits for new machines for her circuitry in his machine to interact with the said machine and its circuits. It was laid out in front of her, like her monitor’s light across her face, including what would probably be an everlasting truth:

Her death would be heard.

[weaselle]

Sample fic, scifi

Wolfe came to, checked himself over, and sighed in relief before remembering to panic about the air. Logic caught up. He was breathing fine. That was, after all one of the primary reasons this planet had been chosen. Of course they hadn't quite trusted their extremely long range sensory data regarding the planet's atmosphere, but their emergency lan- no, the word “landing” didn't really apply. Their incoming circumstances... Well, they hadn't had much time. Wolfe suffered a quick flashback of tumbling through the air and shivered.

There had been serious errors upon entering the six-planet solar system. Equipment had broken. Backups had failed. By the time anyone knew anything was wrong it was far too late. Two thirds of the crew had been lost in an emergency transition out of stasis, as The Intrepid had been sucked down the gravity well of the local star. There was nothing that could save the massive ship. In their efforts to escape, the remaining crew wound up all crammed in the ship's dispatch shuttle, just barely kicking out of the star’s grav well near its second planet's orbit, aimed at the mission's target planet, down to fumes for fuel.

The science team members had worked in a morbid frenzy, half of them computing frantic equations, the others leading teams of military personnel through two engineering reconfigurations. This was because the shuttle was meant to dock in the mag. bay  of the the larger landing module, and wasn't designed for independent planetary landing. They had ten days of in-system travel to do something about that before they hit atmosphere. One team was to basically harvest the fumes and tweak the engine to maximize the dribbles of fuel they did have, while another team was assigned the shuttle's orbital communications satellite, removing everything except the metal-paneled framing, and redesigning it to fall completely apart at the push of a button. Nobody slept much. Everybody was both solemn and frenetic, like over-caffeinated zombies.  

The closer they got, the worse it all was, crowded, resources rationed. Fifty-nine people on a shuttle made for a crew of fifteen. They'd had time to pack some food and equipment, there was plenty of water, but the life support systems were taxed by so many lives, and  their chances of surviving planet-fall were slim. Tensions were high. There were no parachutes.

There was a brief, deathly earnest debate among the equation-working group that seemed to Wolfe to be essentially a three way argument of air friction versus planetary spin, versus 'just how damn sure are you of this value you've assigned gravitational pull?' Then they'd grilled the military pilot about in-atmosphere handling until the man was in tears. Of course, it wouldn't have taken much to bring any of them to tears, stuck in a giant metal can, hurtling toward an unfamiliar planet, uncountable light years from home. Not to mention... no parachutes. A nervous vote was taken among the mathematicians while an even more nervous crew stood by, and the proposed trajectory was altered 3 degrees. The plan sounded bat-shit to Wolfe. They were to come close in, flip to facing mostly backward, wait until less than a minute from impact, pulse the last bit of fuel in a fifteen second burn, and then launch the gutted communication satellite upward with themselves inside it in an effort to counter as much of their incoming velocity as possible. The satellite was meant to be deployed in outer space, and while the trajectory could be controlled quite precisely, the launch was mechanical, not fuel driven. Basically, it was a damn catapult. And the injuries, it was determined, would be worse all crowded inside the frail metal cube of the satellite, so they were going to have the thing fall to pieces right after it launched, leaving them to free-fall an estimated fifteen to thirty feet. The science team members insisted it was their best chance at survival. Wolfe had listened to the plan, helped all he could, and then, as the imminent entry alarm rang, he went hand over hand through the wobbling shuttle to his bunk. Once there, he stuffed all of his bedding inside his flight suit. He zipped up, grabbed his knife and a coil of thin rope, added the food bars he'd been squirreling away, filled his canteen, and stood there a minute, looking at that small collection of improvements to his odds of survival, thinking. He was missing one of the big basics. So he went looking for a mechanic he'd played cards with. He had found the man nervously taping his joints, starting with his fingers.

“Hey Mirez, you know how I told you I quit smoking years ago?”

“Yeah?”

“You wanna go sit in the satellite and have a smoke?”

Ramirez laughed shakily “Hell yes. Fuck the regs.” Wolfe had a stray thought about how drunks survived more accidents through muscle relaxation.

“Yo,” he said, “grab a flask off Burton.” Later, he'd pocketed the lighter. _______________________________________________________________________

      When Wolfe tried to stand up, the first thing he noticed was that the ground was very odd. He had to spend some time on his hands and knees looking at it just to figure out how to stand on it. It appeared to be mostly a lattice of wrist-thick vines, that knobbled and arched and curled. He tried to part them to see what the actual planetary surface looked like, but couldn't  push them much. Figuring he could reach through them and at least touch the ground, he'd only wiggled his hand in to the wrist before he wondered what kind of insect-things might live on a planet like this, and his hand came whipping back out as if under it's own power. So he stood up, made sure he still had the food bars, knife, rope, canteen, and lighter, then looked about.

Around him were strange collections of shrubs. He was in some kind of field of them. They seemed to grow in clusters by type, and he wondered if they mightn't have been planted by something intelligent. Impossible hope of a friendly, star-faring population fought near paralyzing fear that there would be horrifying creatures with a taste for people meat. The planet's star hung halfway between the horizon and it's zenith, and by the way the air was growing slowly warmer, Wolfe supposed it was rising and not setting. It was already quite warm, and he knew from his planetary facts memo that it was likely to get much hotter. He unstuffed himself, pealed his flight suit to his waist, and tied the arms to keep it there. He put the blankets and pillow cases and fitted sheet in the middle of the top sheet, twisted it into a sling, and tied it over one shoulder like a bandoleer. Then, walking with extreme care, he set out to find the others. He left the heavy, visored helmet on the ground, facing the way he went, as a message for any fellow survivors that might be looking for him.

There was no sign of any wreckage. He had no sense of direction. Additionally, either the ground was moving, or he had some kind of land sickness. Or it could be the concussion. Shit. How could there not be any sign of the shuttle wreck? There should be a long, tore up trench, or smoke on the horizon- something. The shrub-things were creepy in their little clusters. The place smelled funny. Like fertilizer soaked in fruit punch. He strained his ears and heard a catalog of curious far away groans and clicks and wind that blended into a faint, cavernous hum of worrisome background noise, but no voices or nearby movement. He was afraid to yell for other survivors in case some kind of alien THINGS came out of hiding and devoured him alive. Everything was too yellow. Wolfe squinted into the bright day and assured himself repeatedly that he wasn't panicking. After several minutes of this, he felt less panicked and crouched near (but not too near) one of the bush-a-ma-bobs to have a think.

The pale greenish sky was too large, somehow; he felt small beneath it. Looking at the bush-a-ma-bob nearest him, he saw that it came up to about waist height, and branched into an umbrella of what might be called leaves: very thick, spade-shaped, greenish yellow, each waxy leaf about as big as a door. Amazingly, each enormous leaf appeared to have grown a support strut from halfway along the bottom of it, angled back down to the base of the trunk. The vines that were everywhere  sprouted into a lush undergrowth of  aqua-colored leafery beneath each bush-a-ma-bob. A few in the group near him were nearly as tall as he, and a couple in the general area were even a bit taller.  They were arranged in fairly evenly dispersed clumps of about fifteen or so. Each bush-a-ma-bob was several feet from the next, each clump of them separated from each of the other clumps by a few meters. It wasn't structured beyond that, and Wolfe tentatively abandoned his farm theory. Most of the things looked to be bush-a-ma-bobs, but some clumps of them were some other kinds of shrubaroo, and he was on the edge of the mixed field of them. Beyond this field and in all directions, stretched a vast yellow plain full of dark brown, knee high things, like skeletal ferns. He was about to leave the bush-a-ma-bobs for a closer look at one of the shrubaroos, when he caught a slight movement out of the corner of his eye.

There, at the edge of the field to his right, was a plant that didn't look like any of the other plants. It was a single radio-dish shaped greenish yellow flower with a diameter of about five feet, atop a stacked coil of brownish orange vine as thick as Wolfe's upper arm, facing the sun. As he watched, the flower frill gently folded back to lay flat along the stem. His heart rate had just about returned to normal when it slowly began uncoiling along the ground. This took several minutes, at the end of which it was clear that there were no roots or attachment of any kind. His first alien creature. Thankfully it was moving away from him and out into the yellow plain at what he estimated to be about two meters an hour, spiraling awkwardly along the vine-covered ground. It stretched out it's coil, and then did a sort of slow-motion, twisty inchworm act to get along. Weird.

Satisfied that he wasn't in immediate danger, Wolfe forgot about aliens and shrubaroos and tried to apply some logic to his situation.  The crew should have all fallen somewhat close together, even though his swirling memories of the satellite coming apart mid-air had him suspecting they had bailed out a good bit higher than planned. As for why he might be a bit farther from the rest of them, that was probably his own stupid fault... in an effort to augment his personal chances of survival, he had hung on tightly to one of the aluminum panels as the com sat exoskeleton broke apart, hoping it would create enough air resistance to slow his fall. It hadn't been that great an idea. From what he could tell of his kaleidoscope recollections, the large thin metal sheet had indeed created a fair amount of drag, which had seemed to yank him quickly away from the dissipating cloud of his companions, and spun him crazily around and around before tearing out of his hands. Now that he thought about it, he could feel the strain in his hands and shoulders still. Actually, he was realizing, he was pretty damn sore all over. Falling from the sun will do that to you, he thought, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, in case man-eating E.T.s were attracted to slightly hysterical laughter.

About a kilometer away, Intrepid military personnel were gathering resources from people into a pile, and maintaining a perimeter, while several surviving members of the science team were having a heated debate over why they weren't all dead.

“Fuck you, Martin! You just can't handle the fact that my plan worked and we're all alive!”

“Bullshit, Franz! Okay? A: it wasn't YOUR plan, ass-hat, and secondly: It's pretty fucking obvious we came out too high up, I don't give a damn that your precious three degrees was complete horse-shit, all I said was, after a fall from that height, more of us should be dead and injured!”

“Yeah, right! What, you had time to take some measurements while we were all in free fall!? You just can't face that I was right!”

“Right? You wouldn't know how to express a variable quotient if.. if it fucked your sister!”

“And you couldn't plot a multiple-input trajectory if it came in your ass!!”

“Um, guys? Guys, this isn't really... that's not how math works...”

“Shut up, Phil. Kim, can you please explain AGAIN to Martin why the planet's rotational momentum doesn't goddamn apply to the final equation because it was ALREADY expressed in the orbital calculations?”

“No, actually; even if I wasn't busy being thankful that we're all in one piece, I-”

“But what I was SAYING, Franz, is that it WASN'T already expressed in the- y'know what? I don't even CARE, all I'm.. Look, I've cliff dived a whole lot, and I'm telling you, we fell too far to be all walking around like this! Mirez!” Martin said to the passing military mechanic, “Did we fall twenty feet, or did we fall two or three times that? What do you think?” Ramirez paused

“Me? I think if there are any E.T. Boogiemen on this planet, they'll probably attack people having stupid noisy arguments first, and I just might live one more day.” They all stopped and looked around apprehensively.

“Well, okay, good point by Ramirez.” Martin said, in a barely audible mutter.

“Yeah, fine,” murmured Franz sullenly, “stupid argument.”

“Hey,” whispered Kim “anyone else feel like the ground is moving?”

Meanwhile, lieutenants Felix and Jones were having their own little debate with Commander Johnson and the first officer.

“What do you mean there's no sign of the shuttle? We should have come down nearly on top of it! No no, it's got to be here; we need to salvage the equipment on board” Felix exchanged a look with Jones, and tried again “Sir, not only is there no sign of the shuttle, but, in about three hours, it's going to be well in excess of one hundred degrees fahrenheit-”

“Really, Felix?” the first officer interjected, “Razor-toothed demon-beasts could be headed our direction and you're worried you'll have to sweat? A little warm weather never killed anyone, come on!”

“Um...” said Jones quietly “No, see, that's the opposite of true...”

“Randy is right, we need to address the most serious threats first” The captain was so wrong that he was saying the right things and still getting it wrong.

“That's what I mean, sir,” said Jones, “any creatures are just theories, but the sun is right there” ______________________________________________________________________

      Wolfe was beginning to suspect he wasn't thinking clearly. He'd certainly had a rough ten days, which might account for the way he was staring out at nothing, thinking about how he needed a plan of action, and how he needed more information before he could make any reasonable plans. Then he would consider how many teeth information might turn out to have if he went looking for it, decide he was much more likely to die of heat exposure, and wonder where in this alien world he should start doing what. Then he would laugh to himself, and start the thought process over again. It wasn't helping.

So he stopped. Made himself think about something else for a minute. He chose cards. He liked cards. He liked the way they felt in his hands, he liked the 'fnap' sound they made when you flipped a finger across the edge of one, and how they helicoptered through the air when you tossed one just right. He liked playing cards, the way card games always seemed to be part math part con. He was good at cards. Not the best player at the table, but usually in til the end of the game. Now, he had to stay in this game. Well, he was going to need water. He had his canteen, but, since he was planning on living longer than a week, he was going to have to find more. Compatible atmosphere , water, and temperature were the top three requisites to target a planet for an advance mission, so, if he found some water, there was a decent chance he could drink it, and only get horribly ill from whatever microbes or alien sediment was in it. Horaaaaaay. At least he was beginning to focus.

  Well, breathable air meant condensation was a possibility. He mulled that over as a back up option as he picked a direction and started walking.

[mumofadaofficial-blog]

The Gap Filler

Firstly, a massive thank you to everyone that has read my first post! Your messages and comments have been overwhelming and you will never know how much it means to me to know that you all care enough to read our story - you guys are friggin amazing!! And I am so pleased to see that what I am doing seems to be helping or comforting others in some sort of way.

SO - last time I took you through Adas birth and getting her home. I touched very very briefly on the stressful time we had before Ada came off oxygen so I want to give you a run down on that. As traumatic as Adas entrance into the world was, life didn’t seem to get much easier for us and I think it almost completely fried my brain, but hey, we’re all crazy in one way or another right?!

Going back to KL hospital was an exstremely hard thing for me. The memories of what had happened there were still very fresh and very raw. Ultimately though, if it hadn’t of been for the team of people that initially worked on her, she wouldn’t be here today. So I sucked it up, put on my big girl pants and was ready to give it another chance. 

There was definitely a big difference to Norwich, mainly I would say communication issues that I’m hoping lessons have been learnt from now. From going through this I have realised that parents really need to be included and told what is happening every step of the way, something which I think can easily be overlooked. When your Childs life is in the hands of someone else you NEED to know what is happening. 

I don’t want to dwell too much on the things that were done wrong once we returned but it was a struggle and no parent should have to feel like they are battling with the providers of your Childs care - my advice would be to stand your ground, be strong, ask as many questions as you want and make sure you are happy with the answers and information given. 

I also think its important to remember that not all people take the same pride and care in their job as others do, so we always tried to make a point of thanking the people that went the extra mile for us. 

On the day that we were finally able to take Ada home we were not allowed to do so until she had undergone an MRI scan on her brain, we were told this was just routine. There wasn’t much explanation as to why. Instantly you think to yourself ‘omg, whats wrong?’ ‘Is there something wrong with her brain’ ‘is this routine or are they hiding something from me’ After doing research and asking questions, it is a routine thing to happen after a baby has been starved of oxygen at birth. Thankfully with Ada there was no signs of damage to her brain in the initial overview and this was then backed up by a specialist team at Nottingham (you still can’t stop your brain from thinking ‘what if?’ Whilst waiting to get those results back). After this she then had to have blood tests and a scan on her liver due to certain enzymes not being at an appropriate level. Without sounding thick, I didn’t even know what that meant and my head was just not processing anything properly. The information given to us on what would happen if it didn’t sort itself out was also very patchy. 

Now taking a new born home on oxygen is bloody tough, you find yourself confined to your bedroom or to the lounge, the rooms where we had the oxygen canisters. And you feel very restricted and trapped. So much so that I pretty much only went to my mum and dads or to Tesco if I was feeling super brave. Trying to get a baby out of the car is hard enough when you’ve never done it before, let alone having a back pack with oxygen in it too. Personally we felt that we couldn’t travel up north to see Nathans family as it would be too hard, so unfortunately people had to miss out. Trying to run a house when confined to those two rooms is very hard, that whole sleep whilst the baby sleeps is not even a real thing! When Ada was sleeping I wanted to do my washing, clean up, eat something or even just sit outside and have a coffee. Looking back, I wish I had relaxed a bit more and just thought fuck it! Those jobs were not going to please anyone but myself. Being easier on myself after having a c section would probably of been a better option and I shouldn’t of pushed myself to do so much when it was sometimes really hard to do so. Thankfully Nathan was a good team mate and I have lovely family and friends who all tried to keep me sane and help as much as possible in the process.

In order to assess how Ada was coping and trying to wean her off oxygen it meant having weekly 24hr assessments on an oxygen monitor at home. If you haven’t ever had any experience with one of these its a clever, annoying as shit, little machine that shows her oxygen saturation levels via a sensor on her foot. If they drop below 90 it makes the loudest most annoying bleep you’ve ever heard…great when you’ve just got her to sleep and shes moved and knocked her sensor off 🙄. They are used a lot on premature babies, however, Ada was a full term, strong bruiser of a baby who really enjoyed throwing her feet around and getting into massive strops! (I have absolutely no idea where she gets her attitude from?!) It soon became apparent that trying to get accurate readings from the machine with the amount of movement she was making was going to be hard. The machine would go back, data would be downloaded and the readings were not accurate enough due to movement. It felt like a constant ACCESS DENIED. Back to stage 1, which is really hard on your mental state and emotions when you are desperate to get your baby better. This would mean we would have to repeat the 24hr process and her oxygen level couldn’t be reduced, even though as her parents we knew she was ok and capable. I was left with no choice but to provide a written documentation of EVERY movement that made her sensor drop throughout the 24hr period, sometimes meaning I wouldn’t sleep just to be able to prove that she was doing well. We’re talking like mental person sending in four A4 pages of movements! This went on for weeks, the longer it went on, the stronger Ada was getting and the harder it was to get the readings. At the time she was also struggling with silent reflux which seemed to play up especially for us on the days she had her monitor on - thank god we have now found infant gaviscon!! 

As well as trying to cope with the oxygen there was a lot of different appointments at home, the hospital and doctors. Blood test for her liver enzymes again, health visitor, collecting oxygen monitor, hip scan, monitor again, physio, dropping monitor off, monitor again, dropping it off, another blood test, monitor again, health visitor, monitor again, immunisations, monitor again, physio, monitor again, consultant appointment, blood test, another hip scan, more immunisations, monitor again and physio - you get my drift and I’ve probably missed some out! Whilst all of these appointments were happening I was then having to chase for answers and information on the outcomes of all of these as the communication was very poor. But if you ask enough questions and make enough phone calls, eventually someone will answer you and you will find out what you need to know. Personally I don’t think it should have to be like that and it makes the situation a million times more stressful. But I do understand that staffing levels don’t always allow you to be the main concern and if your out of sight you can often be out of mind. 

Gradually throughout all of this and my crazy note writing Ada was weaned down off her oxygen one step at a time, then it was stopped in the daytime so she only had to go on it at night. 

Finally on the 27th of September we got the call that I had been longing to get! Adas consultant was happy for us to turn her oxygen off, completely! No messing around at night, no more changing plasters and making her face sore (making you feel like the worst person in the world), no more fighting to put her cannula up her nose and no more sleepless stressful nights with a monitor bleeping in your ear! I cried and then rang Nathan and cried a bit more, then I probably rang anyone else in my phone book that would answer, and you guessed it, cried some more. For once throughout this they were tears of happiness and relief. She had finally done it, our miracle baby had stuck her fingers up to the world and smashed it! In the words of the king that is George Michael ‘You got to have faith’ 😉 

Now, our only reason to go to the hospital is for extra immunisations against bronchiolitis, unpleasant, but better than her being hospitalised again or poorly. And for routine check ups with her consultant which will happen until Ada is 2. 

Deep breath for this part. 

The effect that this has had on me has been unreal, and although Ada is fighting fit it still isn’t easy. I was always quite ignorant to issues involving mental health and was one of those ‘just get on with it’ people. I’ve now realised that sometimes this just isn’t possible. When something in your life has been so traumatic and so stressful it can be really hard to deal with and process, my main concern was Ada and to worry about me later. It is also very easy for people to say ‘she’s fine now so don’t worry’ but you do (please don’t take offence if you have said this to me!).

Hiding your feelings and pretending everything is ok is not healthy for anyone, but to seek help was not something I was prepared to do until recently. I am by no means crazy, or a manic depressant but I do have my bad days. Days when things get to me and the stress takes over, flash backs, not being able to sleep because my brain won’t switch off, worrying that something will go wrong, being well and truly put off from having any more children, having to have full control of all situations, and for weeks, I fully blamed myself for what happened to Ada and believed that I should of known something was wrong and prevented the whole situation. I have felt in the past like I am not good enough, like I’m doing a shit job and like I can’t cope. I have struggled to speak about how I feel as I was worried I would be judged or people would think I was a shit mum or that I couldn’t look after Ada properly. I have also pushed help away as I feel compelled to be some sort of ‘super mum’ and that no one else should be doing my job. 

I still cannot talk about what happened without crying, and there isn’t a day go by when I don’t relive it at some point. I constantly look to see if Ada is developing as she should and is there any signs that something isn’t right, when I should just enjoy every moment. Living with me is probably a nightmare, Soz Nath, Mum and Dad - cheers for putting up with me 😘 Somedays I will snap at the smallest thing and overreact, whereas another day that same thing wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. 

I am a very private person when it comes to my feelings and I have always thought to show people the venerable side of me would make me seem weak, when in fact it does the opposite. From doing this and the responses I’ve had I now realise just how important it is to talk out and show everyone the old saying of ‘It’s ok not to be ok’. To write this down and tell you all what has happened is unbelievably difficult, yet very therapeutic and I strongly believe that if more people were to speak out about how they feel and the effect it has, then it wouldn’t be such a taboo subject. Because it most definitely shouldn’t be and anyone who says they haven’t had a full scale meltdown at some point is most probably lying to you. 

Ok, so might as well of just posted a naked picture of myself with the caption ‘HERE I AM’ after all that, but thats probably about as honest as you will find me. 

Amy x

[strangefellows]

it’s that time of day again, time to be really fucking salty about terrible adults in kingdom hearts

featuring this time: ansem the wise and how absolutely terrible this man is and how he bends over backward to blame EVERYONE BUT HIMSELF (and it’s under a cut because I’M PULLING RECEIPTS ON YOU ANSEM THE WISE, I HAVE YOUR REPORTS) 

warning: the capslock slowly devours this post as it goes, but i try to keep it...not overwhelming.

i mean first of all, and this isn’t the topic of the post, his behavior to roxas and namine is ABSOLUTELY UNCALLED FOR. like....roxas hated the organization, he’d left the organization, he wanted answers. all you had to do is tell him who he was, what he was, and ask him to help you. he would have agreed! hell, he might have agreed to go back to sora -- he was angry at axel, and had nothing left, so if this sora guy is the reason i exist, and is going to take down the organization, then fine. 

but no. no, you had to have poor riku kidnap him, you had to shove him in a data simulation that WASN’T HIM, YOU COMPLETELY REWROTE HIM AND GAVE HIM FAKE FRIENDS AND A FAKE LIFE AND YOU WONDER WHY HE’S MAD???? and you had to call him an it, a tool, and all these awful things, and tell him he didn’t deserve to exist.

and that’s on top of, after taking care of her for a year, turning on namine and calling her the same things, and trying to have her killed when you were done with her. 

(and hoo boy, how about how little care you took of riku as he slowly crumpled into a downward spiral of guilt and depression that just got worse and worse? how about how you tried to have him kill namine? mmmmmm?)

but no. no, this isn’t what this post is about. this post is about how mad i am about how LITTLE RESPONSIBILITY THIS MAN TAKES FOR WHAT HAPPENED TO RADIANT GARDEN.

okay, so i’m reading the secret ansem reports right (i started with 2 and went to look at the others)? and just. holy shitting fuck, ansem.

Spurred on by my youngest apprentice, Ienzo, I constructed a massive laboratory in the basement of my castle. --Secret Ansem Report 2

FIRST OF ALL YOU ABSOLUTE NUMBNUT HE WAS NO OLDER THAN LIKE TEN HOW DID YOU EVEN LET A SMALL CHILD TALK YOU INTO THIS.

second of all, okay, the wording there -- “spurred on by”. that’s deeply...that’s putting all the blame on ienzo, right there. like ‘i didn’t really want to, but ienzo urged me to do it, so i did it’. that is blaming a tiny child for the creation of your mad science laboratory. and this is after, in ansem report one, ansem the wise says this:

If I explore Xehanort's heart with psychological tests, I may be able to recall the past locked away within. My apprentice Even has also shown great interest in Xehanort's memories. --Secret Ansem Report 1

that last sentence, right there, it’s setting even up to be blamed for this. “even showed great interest also”, that wording is absolutely right there so that ansem can go back and go “it was even’s fault, he was the one who showed too much interest in this”. it’s a failsafe so he can blame someone else if it goes wrong.

back to SAR2, he goes on to -- and granted, this is in part bc they probably had no idea what they were doing with the castle crew yet -- completely fucking mischaracterize his entire retinue:

Unbeknownst to me, my six apprentices then began collecting a large number of subjects on which to perform dangerous experiments into the "darkness of the heart." As soon as I found out, I called my apprentices together and ordered them not only to cease their studies, but to destroy the results of their research thus far. What on earth was happening within the hearts of my six beloved apprentices? While pursuing the mystery of the darkness of the heart, could they themselves have strayed into its depths? --Secret Ansem Report 2

FIRST OF ALL, ANSEM, THREE OF THOSE MEN WERE GUARDSMEN NOT SCIENTISTS AND THANKS TO YOU AN ENTIRE FANDOM SPENT FIVE YEARS ASSUMING BRAIG DILAN AND AELEUS WERE SCIENTISTS AND ASSIGNING THEM BLAME THAT WAS NOT THEIRS.

second of all, your six apprentices my fucking ass. three of them were CASTLE GUARDS -- you can make a case for braig helping out, all things considered, but still -- and of the three remaining who were actually scientists, ONE WAS UNDER TEN YEARS OLD AND NOT CULPABLE. 

so, cutting out the guards and ienzo, that leaves even, xehanort (and possibly braig) and....how unbeknownst to you was it REALLY. and you know what would have been really, really great? asking them “why are you doing this? what spurred this?” and maybe one of them, at least, could have said that it was xehanort’s idea. but i mean clearly we know you weren’t civil about it, from how you were LITERALLY SHOUTING AT APPRENTICE XEHANORT IN FRONT OF MICKEY in the flashback. maybe they didn’t come to you sooner about anything because of that????

‘strayed into [darkness’s] depths?’ no, how about ‘being manipulated by a guy you were almost IMMEDIATELY TOLD TO BE SUSPICIOUS OF’???

Upon his advice, I decided to review the data obtained at my basement lab. That is when I discovered the "Ansem's Reports." Though they bore my name, the only one I had written was number 0. Apparently he had gone on to pen numbers 1 through 8 himself. Yes — the first subject in my foolish experiments.  --Secret Ansem Report 2

AH YES XEHANORT WROTE ALL THESE REPORTS UNDER MY NAME, SURELY I SHOULD CONTINUE TO LUMP ALL MY APPRENTICES TOGETHER AND BLAME ALL OF THEM AND NOT SINGLE OUT XEHANORT AS THE ONE TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT --- Ansem, apparently

But is he really the right subject? Xehanort does indeed exhibit extraordinary talents...Too extraordinary...Perhaps they are even superhuman.  --Secret Ansem Report 1

I MEAN IT’S NOT LIKE YOU HAVEN’T ALWAYS BEEN SUSPICIOUS OF HIM RIGHT????

i mean, fuck, he was side-eyeing xehanort the whole time!! but as soon as shit gets real, here he is with blame to go around for everyone but himself, who enabled this shit. oh it’s his apprentices -- all of them even the ones that WERE GUARDS and the one that was LIKE EIGHT YEARS OLD

In the "Ansem's Reports" my apprentice Xehanort had written under my name, I found the records of his hideous experiments along with his hypothesis about the door that had appeared out of the darkness in my basement. --Secret Ansem Report 3

NOTE: HIS. not ‘theirs’, his. xehanort’s alone. and yet???? what does he say???? about the situation???? next????

Did Xehanort pass through that door in an attempt to contact that dark realm? No, not only Xehanort. It appears my other five apprentices, believing it was for the sake of research, stared deep into the darkness and were pulled into it. --Secret Ansem Report 3

FIRST OF ALL ONLY TWO OF THEM WERE YOUR ACTUAL APPRENTICES AND ONE OF THEM WAS EIGHT, SECOND OF ALL, HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY BELIEVED THEY WERE DOING, YOU AREN’T PSYCHIC YOU UTTER BASTARD. 

i can forgive him not knowing about the fact that xehanort literally murdered the others because he was probably banished to the realm of darkness before he did that, but SERIOUSLY, DUDE

Even, Ienzo, Braig, Dilan, and Aeleus... They have ceased to be human. --Secret Ansem Report 3

THIS???? THIS IS FUCKING UNCALLED FOR. CONSIDERING YOU DID NOT KNOW YET THAT THEY HAD BECOME NOBODIES -- AND IF YOU KNEW THAT YOU KNEW THAT XEHANORT HAD LITERALLY MURDERED THEM -- SAYING THAT THEY HAVE CEASED TO BE HUMAN IS COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY UNJUSTIFIED AND HORRIBLE OF YOU TO SAY. THIS IS JUSTIFYING YOUR HATRED OF THEM AND ABSOLVING YOU OF GUILT, AND 

I CANNOT STATE THIS ENOUGH TIMES

ONLY TWO OF THEM WERE YOUR APPRENTICES, AND ONE OF THOSE TWO WAS A GOD DAMN CHILD.

YOU HAVE JUST SAID THAT “MY CHILD, WHOM I TOOK IN AS A WARD, IS NO LONGER HUMAN, AND THEREFORE IT IS JUSTIFIABLE FOR ME TO HATE HIM AND WANT REVENGE ON HIM.”

What is Xehanort hoping to gain with my pilfered existence? --Secret Ansem Report 3

AND YET HE STILL COMES BACK TO REFERRING TO XEHANORT ALONE.

It is only by relying upon my anger and hatred that I have been able to retain my sense of self here where all existence is nullified. My heart is being overcome with hatred toward my apprentices, possessed by the darkness, and with the anger I feel for stupidly allowing myself to be betrayed. Is this darkness, eating away at my heart? I cannot continue to idle away my time here. What are Xehanort and the others attempting to do? I must unravel the mystery of these Ansem's Reports, intercept my apprentices, and defeat them.  --Secret Ansem Report 4

OH BOY WHERE DO I START ON THIS ONE.

“is this darkness” NO SHIT, YOU KNOW IT’S NOT RIGHT AND YOU KEEP IT UP ANYWAY, YOU KEEP HATING AND BEING VENGEFUL NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU INSIST YOU KNOW IT’S WRONG. AND HONESTLY, CONSIDERING AQUA, YOU DO NOT NEED TO USE ANGER AND HATE TO HOLD ONTO YOURSELF, YOU IDIOT. YOU’RE JUST EXCUSING IT.

AND YES, LET’S GO MURDER PEOPLE WHO SCREWED YOU OVER, GREAT PLAN, ASSHOLE, BLAME THEM FOR THIS. 

and mmmMMMMMM, “apprentices being possessed by the darkness” -- like you are right now??? if you can’t be culpable for your thoughts and actions, like you seem to be saying, knowing it’s wrong to hate and be so angry, if THEY’RE in the same situation....suddenly it’s all their faults and you hate them? 

mmmm.

But what of the soul and body left behind when the heart is lost? --Secret Ansem Report 4

ah yes and here we have confirmation that no, ansem did not know what the fuck nobodies were in SAR3, thus confirming that he did not know the castle crew had become nobodies, thus also confirming that he was saying that they “ceased to be human” about people who as far as he knew were still human.

That is my mission...the only way to repay the world for my sins. --Secret Ansem Report 4

also, this rings majorly hollow when every other word out of your mouth in these is how the apprentices fucked you over. 

The six traitors were operating a laboratory that churned out those cursed shadows. --Secret Ansem Report 5

LIKE HERE, FOR EXAMPLE. ‘the six traitors’, holy shit, that’s a step down from calling them your apprentices. wow. WOW.

and if i’m not mistaken.....yeah, that lab? that lab was the one that you claimed ienzo ‘spurred you’ to create. so you knew about it. yOU KNEW ABOUT THAT LAB, DO NOT EVEN PRETEND YOU DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THE LAB. THE COMPUTER IN THAT LAB WAS YOURS, TRON KNOWS YOU BY NAME. DO NOT FOR A MOMENT PRETEND YOU WEREN’T INVOLVED IN THAT LAB.

It is likely Xehanort and the others were enraptured by this power, eventually becoming its prisoners. I do not intend to allow my heart to be devoured by the darkness, as they did, of course. --Secret Ansem Report 6

first of all fuck you holy shit, fuck you. claiming they were “enraptured by [the power of darkness]” and eventually became its prisoners???? WHAT????? did you even for a minute once try to talk to them about why there were doing this, or did you just shout them down and assign what you thought their reasoning was??? 

also, again, ONE OF THEM WAS A CHILD.

and that arrogant-- “i don’t intend to let my heart be devoured like they did”. so okay, you’re saying they all allowed their hearts to be devoured by the darkness? excuse me while i stare at the scene where XEHANORT MURDERED THEM and judge you hard for assuming the worst just to be able to blame them. granted you didn’t know about that but HONESTLY. 

To deceive Xehanort and my apprentices, I first used my power to change form before returning to the realm of light. [...] The other five have disappeared. Have they become Heartless, like Xehanort? Or did they vanish after Xehanort exploited them? --Secret Ansem Report 6

there’s not much to say about the first part beyond how much i’m judging him, but the second.....

oh. oh, now you say xehanort exploited them???? NOW???? and yet you continue to hold your grudges, even KNOWING that xehanort probably used them. what, do you think even though he used them they still went willingly??? mmmmmhmm. this is reeking of excuses.

It appears my betrayers have retained their human forms as Nobodies, and are gathering more followers in hopes of furthering a new scheme. "Organization XIII," formed of 13 Nobodies with my betrayers at its core, has divided into two; they are said to be carrying out some sort of research. Seeking to uncover the plans of this Organization, I have decided to head for where six of its members have gathered. --Secret Ansem Report 7

oh yep, even though you said ‘exploited them’ in 6, now you’re back to calling them ALL your betrayers. yep. excuses.

and again, confirmation that that “they have ceased to be human” line was BEFORE HE EVEN CONSIDERED THAT THEY’D BECOME HEARTLESS, LET ALONE NOBODIES. GOD.

and now we get to something else that enrages me: diz/ansem was at castle oblivion. he was there. the whole time.

Thus I will both make amends and have my revenge. It is for this reason that I infiltrated Castle Oblivion. [...] Refusing to be distracted by Organization XIII, I had returned to my own secret research when a new visitor appeared at the castle today. It was Sora, the Keyblade-wielding hero who had defeated Ansem, and his companions. --Secret Ansem Report 8

HE WAS THERE. THE WHOLE TIME. HE WAS THERE BEFORE SORA GOT THERE. HE WAS THERE THE ENTIRETY OF CHAIN OF MEMORIES. GUESS WHO ELSE WAS THERE THE ENTIRE TIME?

VEXEN AND LEXAEUS AND ZEXION. I REPEAT: AND ZEXION.

make amends for what i might ask, you’ve barely even mentioned that, it’s all been about your fucking revenge. again: it rings hollow, my friend.

but no. back to the fact that he was THERE THE ENTIRE TIME, CLEARLY IN THE BASEMENT AREAS SINCE HE DEALT WITH RIKU.

I should have expected nothing less from a Keyblade-wielding hero. Sora and friends defied the machinations of Organization XIII and rescued Naminé. --Secret Ansem Report 9

I was reunited with an old friend at Castle Oblivion, but was unable to disclose my identity. If he knew the situation, he would likely try to stop me from carrying out my revenge.  --Secret Ansem Report 11

skipping some of it that’s just talking about kairi and namine but

YES, ALRIGHT, THANK YOU FOR SITTING BACK AND WATCHING YOUR TWO APPRENTICES -- INCLUDING YOUR ADOPTED SON -- BE MURDERED. YOU WERE THERE AND  YOU JUST SAT THERE AND WATCHED VEXEN AND ZEXION BOTH DIE TERRIFIED AND IN PAIN AND FREAKING OUT. AND YOU DID NOTHING. 

YOU DID NOTHING.

NO FUCKING SHIT, MICKEY WOULD CALL YOU THE FUCK OUT ON YOUR BEHAVIOR, HE MIGHT NOT BE PERFECT, BUT HE’D KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING IS FUCKED UP.

report 12 is mostly him being a jackass about roxas, and report 13 is his WAY, WAY TOO LATE GENUINE REGRET. 

Only one mystery remains. How did Xehanort manage to open the door that appeared in the basement of my castle...? No...any theory posited now, when everything is nearing completion, would be meaningless. --Secret Ansem Report 13

I’M SORRY, BIRTH BY SLEEP CALLED, IT SAID THAT YOUR ASSUMPTION THE ANSWER IS MEANINGLESS IS WRONG AND STUPID

I was a fool, obsessed with revenge. Forgive me. --Secret Ansem Report 13

four words, ansem: too little too late.

the damage you did is done: you hurt roxas, you hurt namine, and you hurt riku, and only gave ROXAS a half-assed apology he didn’t even get to truly hear, and you never once apologized to riku’s face at all, let alone NAMINE.

not only that but you never once acknowledged you were wrong to hold your other apprentices and guardsmen -- including a child -- fully accountable for xehanort’s actions and for being manipulated by xehanort despite admitting xehanort tricked you. you sat by and allowed a child you helped raise be murdered, and you sat by and watched vexen and lexaeus be murdered as well, with no acknowledgement or remorse. 

you do not deserve forgiveness, ansem. you may be in sora’s heart, and you may be indirectly or directly facilitating roxas -- and possibly namine and xion’s -- return, but that does not absolve you of what you’ve done.

at all.

[casualarsonist]

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story review

When Rogue One was released around this time last year, I wasn’t going to be caught dead watching it at a midnight premiere as I had for The Force Awakens. A deep disdain for TFA had settled in during the previous year, and news of reshoots and studio meddling during Rogue One’s production sent the message loud and clear that Disney had finally collated their data following Episode VII’s release and were now using its formula as a template for all further releases; aiming for what I believe to be a lowest common denominator approach had been a massive financial success, so why, as a business, would they want to change that approach? I know that in releasing a stand-alone film, Disney were indeed doing something out-of-the-box, so I can’t reasonably shit on them for EVERY decision they made, but it seemed that even then, my greatest fear was coming to bear - not that they would make shitty Star Wars films, but that they would make middling Star Wars films. And sure enough, the reviews largely bore out my premonitions, describing Rogue One positively but calling it disjointed, unnecessary, and lacking in significance in the same way that Episode VII did (although I would argue that the only thing of significance in TFA’s plot was when it disposed of a pivotal character).

But remember in the last review when I mentioned that hope? That terrible hope drew me back in. For no matter how simpering or weak a live-action Star Wars may be and no matter how hard I resist the pull, my curiosity always gets the better of me in the end. I wasn’t excited for Rogue One - Disney had managed to kill that for me - but I decided to see it none-the-less. And as I walked into the cinema I had this weird sinking feeling in my stomach (Christ I really am a fanboy, aren’t I?) as visions of half-finished plotlines, inconsequential Macguffin superweapons, and so. many. fucking. gags swam in my head. I mean really, the idea for Rogue One is about as safe as one could get given the supposed new ground that was being tread - it’s essentially a recreation/retconning of a backstory that has already been long established, and of which the entirety of the audience knows the end result (my treatise on why prequels are a universally garbage idea is for another article). And as I said, I wasn’t afraid that it would be shit, only that it would be boring and predictable, for again I find myself playing a role I never thought I would play in siding with the George Lucas prequels by asking the question ‘who could have known what any of them were going to be like before they were actually released?’ No-one. 

Who could possibly have seen this coming?

So I sucked it up and went to see Rogue One in a cheap cinema that only charged me six pounds for the pleasure. And after all the build-up and the let down and stupid melodrama regarding an intellectual property that hadn’t released a good film in forty years...I was surprised. A bit. 

I was a bit surprised. 

I was surprised by Riz Ahmed’s genuinely affecting character arc. I was surprised by Darth Vader’s really actually terrifying display of power in a penultimate scene. I was surprised by the narrative stakes established in the latter half of the film. I was surprised by the risk the filmmakers took in deciding the fates of the central characters. And of course it had a lot of problems, and some of the things I liked may be just as easily disliked by others, but when I left the cinema having actually felt real feelings because of the things I’d seen on screen - more than once - I was surprised that Rogue One had actually managed to exceed my expectations. I’ll expand more on this in a second, but first, a snarky plot synopsis:

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (ugh) is the immediate prequel to A New Hope. It opens on an isolated planet on which engineer Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) lives with his wife, and daughter Jyn. Galen is a reknowned polymath and committed pacifist, although you will learn almost nothing of this unless you read the wiki: Rogue One is a Disney Star Wars film, so of course large chunks of important character-building are omitted (because who needs to understand the people in the movie when there’s a blind guy hitting stormtroopers with a stick). Ben Mendelsohn phones in the beta-villain character of Orson Krennic, and kills Jyn’s mother in order to coerce Galen into working on what will be the Empire’s greatest weapon - the Death Star (ugh). Cut to a decade later and Jyn (Felicity Jones) is a stroppy young woman with all the charisma of moist denim. She is reluctantly required to care about the fate of the galaxy, but apparently this is a big problem for her because IGN says she ‘put up walls’. She’s freed from an Imperial labour camp by the dashing and committed rebel Cassian Andor, and brought to Saw Gerrera - a veteran of the clone wars, a close friend of her father’s, and the man who raised her after her Galen was taken. Saw is a character from the Clone Wars animated television series, which every person the audience of this film will definitely have seen, so therefore his backstory is all but omitted as well. Saw is holding captive an Imperial defector who brings word that Galen has left a weakness in the design of the Death Star. The rapidly expanding group of misfits are then tasked with venturing deep into the better half of the film to procure the plans to this superweapon. 

Now to be clear, Rogue One is not at all consistent - certainly less consistent than The Force Awakens. But it does quite a few things that TFA failed to do: be a complete film that managed to successfully close its own story whilst remaining a worthy stepping stone to a larger narrative, for example, or have tangible stakes and a final battle that feels like a genuine struggle against insurmountable odds. It also succeeds in taking a different approach to its tone than Episode VII, not in terms of 'darkness’, but in terms of emotional realism. The characters still have their one-liners and moments of charm, but Diego Luna’s Cassian is a life-long member of the rebel alliance and has a wonderful scene in which he attacks Erso’s flippant attitude towards the work they’re doing, and it feels real. He isn’t gurning like a cartoon character, or trying to be another cooler-than-cool Han Solo - he understands the weight of their mission and that its importance stands above their own individual concerns, and when he convinces Jyn of its importance, he convinces us as well. So too does Riz Ahmed’s defecting Imperial cargo pilot exhibit the characteristic signs of being a real human, and while his background is passed by faster than it ought to be, over the course of the film he undergoes a clear transformation from someone doubting his choice to turn against the Empire out of fear for his own life, to someone who comes to embrace his convictions and find strength in the act of doing what he knows is right. 

Bruh.

Not every character is as well-realised, though. As mentioned, the film’s focal point - Jyn Erso - is as likeable as a cracked plastic toilet seat. Her endless cynical brooding is exhausting, and Jones fails to encapsulate the complex emotional broth that is supposed to be feeding her sanguine emotional state. She is joined in this limbo by Saw Gerrera whose motivations are hidden almost entirely in the animated series. I still can’t figure out why the hell Disney would waste time in reshoots fiddling with the tone of the film instead of fleshing out the characters upon which the entire first half hinges on? In any case, his words and choices carry little weight because we don’t know who the fuck he is or why he makes the decisions he makes.

‘Save the Rebellion! Save yourself!’

The rest of the motley crew also lack the collective core strength of The Force Awakens’ central characters, but that isn’t to say that they are entirely redundant. The second half is widely recognised to be superior, and I believe that’s because it successfully manages to establish a set of compelling stakes, and makes us care about at least some of the characters that are putting themselves at risk. Either that, or it’s because there’s more shooty-bang-bang.

<sexual moaning>

I found I could forgive a lot of this though, because, despite the odd bump in the road, the film ends on a high, and you can’t forget what Rogue One is required to do in its run-time either:

Introduce an ensemble cast and make the audience care about their individual and collective fates,

Simultaneously re-establish certain older characters for a new generation of viewers,

Introduce and acclimate both older and newer audiences to the backstory of this film,

Introduce and acclimate newer audiences to the backstory of the older films,

Provide a self-contained and entertaining narrative that is cohesive with the established canon and appeals to people who wish to enjoy the film on its own merits,

...all in the space of two hours. 

Now let’s look at what The Force Awakens had to achieve:

Don’t be shit. 

Have mass appeal. 

Be a self-contained story that can be enjoyed on its own merits. 

Be a meaningful continuation of the classic character’s stories. 

I’m sure there are many that would disagree with me, but I’d argue that while Rogue One is probably a less cohesive film overall, it achieves more complex goals with greater success than The Force Awakens.

But look, let’s be honest - obviously it’s not Citizen Kane - Rogue One is a film with many faults: the first half, for instance. And while I’d say that even the first half isn’t without merit, it needs to be understood just what you’re getting with this new breed of movies. At the end of the day, no matter how interesting a concept they may have, they’re always going to be tampered with by the studio; no matter the talent of the writer and/or director, they’re always going to fit a certain mandated mould. But the light in the darkness is that we will occasionally get big-budget, live-action films that fall outside the central narrative canon just like this one - films that Disney won’t obsess over quite as much because they don’t ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO MAKE A BILLION DOLLARS IN THE FIRST EIGHT SECONDS OF THE OPENING WEEKEND - and maybe, just maybe, they’ll be alright. And Rogue One is alright. At certain points it’s really good. And it ends whilst riding a wave of energy and emotion that makes you feel like you just watched a decent fucking film, as opposed to The Force Awakens, which feels like a tv serial and you’re supposed to tune in next week to get to the good part of the story. And I think that’s something worth commending. You might disagree, but I think that makes it a good film. 

The CGI Moff Tarkin is a fucking joke, tho.

7/10

Good

[ginasneesby]

New Zealand 2018 - first week

So I did it, I planned to move to New Zealand for a year and I actually did it. The last thing that I decided I wanted to do and actually did was to start tap dancing when I was 15 so it's only taken me another 14 years to achieve something I said I was going to do. Obviously, that doesn't include uni and London etc because that was a natural step, this is so far away from my normal life it's a little scary but I'm also very excited for what the year will hold.

I flew on the evening of the 9th of January and was escorted to the airport by my parents, my sister and my two best girls. We had a meal and a drink, I was given some lovely presents and then I made them leave me so I could go sit at the gate and not make a big scene in the departure lounge. I'm going to miss everyone like crazy but I hope travelling and having new experiences will fill that gap; at least a little. My first flight was about 14 hours long, luckily I had nobody sitting next to me so I had a bit of room, but I was also trying to stay awake this journey to try and get on the right time so I watched films for most of the flight and didn't mind being in one seat and up right. Of all the films I watched Deepwater Horizon was probably the best one it made me forget that I was on a plane which is always good when you're sat down for so freaking long. I stopped off in Manila for 3 or so hours, it wasn't too bad although it's a weird feeling to be tired so you want to sit down but also want to do anything but sit down because that's all you've done for the last day and will do again for the next 10 hours. There is also absolutely fuck all to do, so I spent my time listening to sense and sensibility on Audible, I wish I downloaded a better book. The next flight was 10 hours I was in the middle of 4 and every seat was taken and I noticed there was no entertainment system in front of me. Ho Ly Shit!! Luckily my plan was to sleep for most of this flight, I managed about 5 hours having had a little kip on the first flight, but that still meant 4 hours until we landed with no films to watch and nothing downloaded as I have no memory. I can't tell you the last time I cycled through Candy Crush, Angry Birds and other such games for such a long time all while listening to Jane Austen. It was a very boring few hours, but I made it! I landed, collected my bags, got through immigration and customs and after a desperate cigarette got a shuttle which took me straight to the door of my Airbnb in Grafton. I was determined not to ruin the good work I had done on the plane so even though I was pretty tired I went out for a walk found the local supermarket and bought a few things for dinner. It's quite an experience walking around a supermarket hungry and jetlagged, you can't make any decisions on what you want to eat but you kind of want everything, after I walked home with the food I then wasn't hungry at all so I had a few chips and dip and went to sleep. I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning really hungry so ate a little something, luckily I managed to go back to sleep easily and woke up at a more reasonable time.

My first job was to try and find a car, I had a budget of about $2,000 which is about £1100, it didn't have to be anything spectacular it just had to last me a year! Maybe I was looking in the wrong place but nobody really had cars for that price, they were all a lot more expensive, one dealer did have a car in that price range, it was a bit older than I would have wanted but I thought I'll have a look and take it for a drive, however he came back to tell me but they'd actually lost the keys about a month ago. Good work guys. So a bit deflated and a bit sunburnt, why did no one tell me it was going to be so hot! I trekked back to my Airbnb stopping at a pub, an Irish pub obvs, and then decided to go to an off licence to buy some more beer and try to salvage the day. That's always the best thing to do when you're worried about how much to spend on a car, right? Spend it on beer instead and then the issue is gone. I have to say I did have a lovely evening sitting by myself, on the deck, in the sun, getting slightly tipsy and watching comedy programmes on Netflix (Jess is a life saver!) Although I was slightly surprised, it being Friday night that no one else in the Airbnb appeared or even came to say hello, luckily it wasn't my proper accommodation; that would be really sucky.

The next day I had arranged a number of viewings for places to live, the first one although a nice room was living with a family which I didn't realise, yeah no thanks. The next one was quite nice but unfurnished and quite a long way from any shops or pubs, it was on a highway which would be really helpful to get to work but not so fun when you have to drive everywhere. Also some of the neighbours have swimming pools which the girls who lived there said was actual torture on hot days; however it was still top of my list. The third one was a small room which didn't even fit the bed in and there was only one bathroom between me and two boys, it was also upstairs so I would have had to trek through the house if I needed a wee at night. There was also the slight problem of both boys being vegan, yeah no thanks. I had a few more viewings the next day so I wasn't too worried although it's always slightly nerve-racking when other people have viewed, if they didn't pick me, I may have been forced to live somewhere awful. That evening I have plans to go to dinner with my two aunts who came to New Zealand that day and we're heading down to Queenstown to see my cousin play in the under 19 England cricket World Cup team, of all the places in the world it could have been held, it was here. It was very nice to see some familiar faces and actually talk to some people as I haven't really done that for a few days unless I was buying something. We went to a really nice Thai restaurant called Saan where they recommend you buy the large dishes and share them, we shared some starters and have some smaller dishes to ourselves and were absolutely stuffed, whether that's portion size or jet lag I don't know, either way they paid and I was home by about 9:30 and ready for bed.

Sunday morning and I was getting up at 7 o'clock, unthinkable, but I had a viewing and a carfair to get to, this was going to be my best shot at finding a car for the right price. The viewing before was a nice place with one lady, she liked feeding the pigeons outside her front door which meant that they gathered there and harassed you, and she listened to country and western music... for fun. But the place was nice enough, not too expensive and I wouldn't have to buy a bed which was a big plus, she also give me a lift down to the fair which was about 5 minutes away so I wouldn't be late. She had only shown around one other person and would prefer me so she didn't have to live with a guy; so she went to the top of my list. The car fair was a massive success, they had a whole section for under $5,000 and I saw quite a few around 2000, although was quite surprised to see some very old cars(1994) hoping to get 3 and a half to 4, wishful thinking guys. I'd be interested to know if they sold for when I come to resell my car, I think I could get more for it then I paid, especially as the registration only has to be renewed yearly because it's from 2000; apparently backpackers like this and so are willing to pay slightly more. The guy selling the car told me it have broken down recently and so he had bought another car in the meantime and then fixed the problem so he just wanted to get rid of it, he was selling it for 1250. So not only was it a lot cheaper than most of the other cars it had recently been serviced and old bits replaced for new, we took it out onto the highway to check it would go up to 100 kilometres an hour without exploding and when I was satisfied, and the check came back saying it wasn't stolen and there were no massive debts on it, I bought it!!! My only issue is that it's automatic and only 1.3 l engine, not great for a country with lots of big hills, but I'm pretty much used to it already, there wasa bit of toing and froing changing the owner as I had an international licence and then sending the money as I didn't bring my card reader with me and didn't have data yet, but eventually we sorted it out and I came back home. Adulting level one succeeded. My last viewing was up on the north shore near the hospital that I'm going to be working at, this meant crossing the Harbour Bridge with the amazing view of Auckland CBD that I remember from 10 years ago. The place is setback in the bush and down a wicked driveway that reminds me of a holiday home we once had in France, you don't want to stall on that bad boy! It's a beautiful 4 bedroom house, a decent sized room with the loo right next door and two bedrooms downstairs who tend to use the bathroom. The other people living here are more my age and the landlords have a holiday home down the coast that they're trying to get me to already, so I agreed to take the room on the spot. (And I might head to that holiday home!) That night, I don't think I even made it to 8:30 before falling asleep, it had been a busy day.

My only job for Monday was to move into my new place so I quickly ran into town before my check out to see if I could open a bank account, apparently they're very busy and I couldn't get an appointment for a few days, so I thought I'd wait and do it at the branch near my new place. I did get a SIM card which means I have data, I didn't need a bank account or an address which is annoying as I would have got it on day one, I dread to think what my phone bill will be like after texting a lot of people about viewings etc from my UK number. I also got stung in a parking place as the machine didn't take cash and wouldn't accept my cards, by the time I found another machine it was charging me over the hour so I paid $12 for 45 minutes of parking. Needless to say my true Brit came out and I did a bit of shouting at the machine and may have called the car park a cunt. Check out with simple and I stopped at the supermarket on the way to my new place to grab some lunch stuff, and made my appointment with the bank for Thursday, who knew banks was so busy!? After unpacking most of my stuff I headed back to the shopping mall and into warehouse which is a wonderful shop, you can buy pretty much anything and most things in bulk. I bought a set of shelves where I could store my makeup and random bits and bobs and also a mirror so I have somewhere to do my makeup that isn't the little toilet. I then did a big food shop channeling my sister in planning breakfast lunch and dinner for the week, however I did have to count every cent as I went around as the money I had in my purse is all I have until I get my deposit back. My old landlord has at least been in touch and taken my bank details so hopefully it's on it's way, but I did give them to her on Friday and nothing has appeared yet; this is the only annoying thing about the time difference, for me it's end of day Tuesday where as she hasn't woken up yet so won't answer my text for a while.

I slept very well in my nice comfy bed and was trying to think what to do with my day when I looked out the window and saw it was raining, how bloody rude. After breakfast and lounging for a bit it cleared up so I jumped in my car and drove up the coast to go for a walk, I went to Parry Kauri Park and went for quite a muggy jaunt amongst the trees, the sounds and smells were beautiful. The rain had made the forest smell lovely and every so often patches of sunlight came streaming through the super tall trees, it did however mean I was absolutely baking by the time I finished my half hour walk, on my way back down I stopped in on the coast and sat in the shade looking at the waves enjoying the breeze. I also took a quick detour to Takapuna Beach which is my closest one to see what it looked like, the waves were immense and there were loads of people windsurfing, however it was still lovely and warm. I don't have anything planned for this evening and don't have a firm time frame on when I will start work so I may start planning a little excursion for the end of the week, even if it's only with my landlords to their other property.

[thesellamasaintloyal]

In defense of Rey

Alternatively titled, “There’s a shit ton of things wrong with the Star Wars Sequel trilogy but Rey being a so-called Mary Sue isn’t one of them, Jesus Christ guys it’s been four years can we not-“

((This was born thanks to a post which compared The Child aka Baby Yoda’s innate abilities to use the force despite being a literal toddler to Rey’s force abilities despite her ‘lack of training’, and the hypocrisy of the fandom in accepting one at face value and not the other. Obviously, I agreed, but when the fuck boys come out to play so do my twelve paragraphs lol fight me))

———

People love to compare Rey to Luke and Anakin, and claim that she’s a Mary Sue because she naturally awoke to some of her Jedi abilities, such as her ability to fight, fly with expert ease, as well as her innate understanding of the force. What people love to forget is that the circumstances of their lifestyles naturally led to different development rates toward their innate abilities while using the force. I’d like to include Leia in this as well.

On the bottom rung of the “I can use my force powers right off the bat” we have Luke. Luke grew up as a farm boy in middle-of-nowhere Tatooine, who had little to no reason to use any of his force abilities beyond flying, where he developed his famed capacity to be a pilot. He was raised in a relatively safe environment, protected from the war and conflict that was happening throughout much of the galaxy, and his greatest grievances were simply not being allowed to join the rest of his friends at the academy because he had to keep farming. Out of all four characters he had the most ‘normal’ day to day upbringing, and thus many of a Jedi’s abilities were not developed in the slightest- meaning he had the most to train and the most to learn.

Not too far ahead on the rung is Leia. I’d like to examine her as well, because she had a similarly ‘protected’ upbringing as Luke (in some ways even more so, being a princess and all) and thus did not have the chance to develop many of her innate force skills until later in life. However, Leia was not any spoiled princess laying around in riches. Leia was exposed to politics and warfare and the rebel cause her ENTIRE life, watching her (adoptive) parents not only actively participate in the rebel alliance but practically lead it.

She clearly had some training with weapons, knowing enough to be able to handle several firearms throughout the series, and most importantly- she learned strategy, she learned tactical knowledge and leadership skills, she learned patience and focus, self-awareness, and most importantly the ability to think calmly in a desperate situation. The latter of these skills are all absolutely essential to a Jedi and absolutely form part of the training they undergo, which means all she needed to complete her training was the more physical aspect, and which is why historically in the original trilogy she had far more patience and resilience than Luke when things (invariably) went wrong.

Higher up on the rung is Anakin. Anakin was also raised on Tatooine, but his experience of the planet was far different from Luke’s. His Tatooine was a bustling trade center and full of crime- and he was born a slave in these conditions. Exposed to both mechanical knowledge and more hard labor (carrying parts, repairing parts and ships, and so forth) Anakin had the opportunity to build up some more core strength, and his infamous flying abilities (which honed his reflexes) were also given the opportunity to grow thanks to his exposure and participation in pod racing.

For all intents and purposes Anakin is the saga’s Jesus figure, the “one”, canonically conceived by Midichlorians and a singular entity in his strength and potential regarding the force. However, we don’t see his innate fighting abilities as a child because there is simply no reason to within the scope of the storytelling in the films, and no opportunity either. It also makes sense that Anakin would not NEED to worry too much about fighting or defending himself- as a slave he is property, and would not be touched unless the aggressor was ready to pay Watto for his loss of property, or be penalized for “breaking” what was not theirs.

The little we DO understand of Anakin’s personality is that as a slave, he was raised with an understandable self-constraint (in order to perform his duties well and not have himself or his mother punished) which may have also delayed some of his development; once the constraints of a slave were removed, we are shot forward 10 years and we met a nineteen year who is vastly changed and light years ahead in his use of the force and understanding of his own abilities, the same age his children were when coming into contact with the Force.

Obviously, Anakin is the most developed in terms of formal training by this point in time, as Luke, Leia and Rey were only just introduced to the concept of the Force, and had to, as Yoda said, “Unlearn what [they] have learned.” Nevertheless, narratively we are not given much of an opportunity to see his innate force abilities so much as we are told that they are singular and unique- enough to allow him to be trained at what was already considered an ‘old’ age for a Jedi.

Finally, Rey.

Rey is abandoned and orphaned at about the same age as Anakin was when found by Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Unfortunately for her, there was no salvation waiting- we are shown and told that she lived alone, practically enslaved in order to survive. This is a girl who learns to climb massive wrecks of spaceships and learns to not only identify the various complicated components but how to take them apart, clean them, repair them, and reassemble them- because doing so means a better meal and future opportunities to keep eating. This is a girl who is forced to learn how to defend herself, who actively fights for her life- because if she allows others to steal the parts she already risked her life to collect, then she risks starvation. Not to mention the obvious implications of young, attractive woman living by herself in a deserted, practically lawless land. Unlike the other three- Luke, Leía, and Anakin- Rey had no protections and no guarantees when it came to her safety, and thus had to learn to fight and defend herself; honing those natural force abilities from an early age in order to keep herself safe.

Furthermore, Rey is isolated. We see that she has no viable “friends” on Jakku, and keeps a pleasant but safe distance from others. That sort of solitude invites introspection- which can only help train the meditative aspects that form part of that famed Jedi calmness and mindfulness. I don’t find it hard to believe whatsoever that Rey may have been able to identify something within herself that was ‘different’ - just as Anakin, Leia, and Luke all claimed to have understood at various parts of their respective journeys.

What is also but briefly seen and not explored in the films, but IS explained in the supplementary novels is that Rey possessed an old flight simulator, as shown here:

“She’d jury-rigged a computer using pieces scavenged from several crashed fighters over the years, including a cracked but still-usable display from an old BTL-A4 Y-wing. There were no radio communications to speak of—no way to transmit or receive and, frankly, nobody she wanted to talk to anyway. On the wreckage of a Zephra-series hauler, though, she’d once found a stash of data chips, and after painstakingly going through each and every one of them, she’d discovered three with their programs intact; one of them, to her delight, had been a flight simulator.

So when she wasn’t sleeping or just sitting and listening to the storm or tinkering at her workbench, she flew. It was a good program, or at least she imagined it was. She could select any number of ships to fly, from small repulsor-driven atmospheric craft to a wide variety of fighters, all the way up to an array of stock freighters. She could set destinations, worlds she’d never visited and never imagined she would, and scenarios, from speed runs to obsta“cle courses to system failures.

At first, she’d been truly horrible at it, quite literally crashing a few seconds after takeoff every time. With nothing else to do, and with a perverse sense of determination that she would not allow herself to be beaten by a machine that she herself had put together with her own hands, she learned. She learned so much that there was little the program could throw her way that would challenge her now. She’d gotten to the point where she would, quite deliberately, do everything she could think of to make things hard on herself, just to see if she could get out of it. Full-throttle atmospheric reentry with repulsor-engine failure? No sweat. Multiple hull breach deep-space engine flameout? A walk in the park.”

Far beyond a nine year old instinctively knowing how to pilot a Jet Engine Chariot AND a space fighter (I’m looking at you, Anakin), we see that Rey has indeed received some training in flying, and that she has been diligently training all her youth to be as damn good as she is when we finally catch up to her in TFA. This, in addition to her fighting skills honed from a need to survive, and a meditative self-awareness from growing up practically isolated, means that Rey is uniquely prepared in a way not unlike the younglings were prepared to fully embrace and use her force abilities- once she becomes aware of what they actually are.

Rey is not a Mary Sue. Her abilities did not come out of the blue, but were honed during her entire childhood in order to survive in the ruthless circumstances in which she found herself. Her skills at fighting, flying, and understanding of the force all have a precedent- and once the final piece of the puzzle in the form of recognition that what she’s felt her whole life is The Force, combined with the legacy and legend that comes from knowing the exploits of Luke, Leia and Han, then there is no reason to doubt why she takes to it so naturally. Ultimately, We know that the force not only enhances abilities, but guides their users in how to access them and use them.

[ecotone99]

[RF] The passenger

“.. in these unprecedented times, the little things shouldn’t be taken lightly. these are the things that makes our lives happier...” the radio’s voice is interrupted by a loud static, as I drive through a long tunnel on the expressway. The static annoyed me a little, so I turn off the radio. I think to myself, Unprecedented-a fancy new word for the media to toy around with. As the tunnel ends, my view is engulfed with dense dusky clouds. The color of the sky is pitch dark grey & through the window I see a dark blue glow all around. Its about 7 in the evening, I put the car into cruise control as the next stop would be after 25-30kms. When I relax for a bit and look across the dark countryside fields have grown out to be into dark dense forest of old massive tress. Nature has a free pass on doing whatever it likes to ever since we humans stop interfering with it. It has been the longest 5 years since the virus broke out. Sure there have been vaccines and multiple variants of it for multiple type of patients. The cure did work, and thing stabilized a lot. Only after a whole year of economic despair for the masses. So much so that the people infected wouldn’t afford the vaccine, even at the subsidized rate. Government being government took too long to offer it for free to masses. They had their fat paycheck and used it as an essential tool for the elections. Then, gave it to the masses. However, it was too late by then… the psychological impact it took on the young generation was just too much. From forming cult’s that believed to virus was a cure for the nature’s freedom to resisting the vaccine and living a depleted life quality only as a protest against the world organization for making the vaccine too expensive. Sure, the people who remain sane through it all were the artistic people singing the best form of music they knew, painting the best portraits they ever could… It was irony as its finest form, as world went from needing lawyers, politicians, health origination to more self-focused institutions of living, exercise & art culture. Now, the Fields like IT, Security boomed only in terms of volume but not quality. They soon become the sheep’s herd where people did task of humongous data collection, aggregation and analysis to sell ads. Technology, cars & travel soon become the basic food & clothing standard, they were just an expense now rather than a field of profession and innovation. Times have changed a lot.

The toll arrives, I skim through the left lane as I take control of the car. As I drive past go ahead to make a stop at a nearby coffee store for refreshment. The clouds burst into a thundering rain. It hits the ground like a storm. Rain made sure the sun set earlier than it usually does. I wait for a while for it to stop so I could have some tea/coffee, but it only got worse …

The strong air wind current made the raindrops hit the car with such a intensity that the only sound I could hear was of intense drizzling. I decide to drive along before the conditions made it impossible to drive. I turn on the wiper, but it wasn’t enough. I barely moved a couple of meters before someone literally jumped into my car by opening the rear door. He dripped all over the seats and wore a black raincoat that went well along with its dark grey mask. I scream “hey!!! What the…” and my car brakes screeches loudly.

“Look man, I just need to reach the next toll, I have to work at night... its my shift if I don’t would lose my jobs… Please help me out!”

I put on my mask kept in my dash, I see around 7 messages notification before I could check it … I realized that I was stuck in middle of nowhere with a stranger. He continues

“I can pay you 500 bucks! Could you please hurry?”

“The next toll stop is of Satara around 167 Km away… I hope that works for you.”

I then drive away into the rains for next couple of minutes until a conversation break out: -

“So are you going on another workcation?” I ask him and feeling utterly foolish using the word workcation…

“Well yes and no, I believe no form of vacation involves any form of work. But this shitty corona virus has made the world a remote hub for working from anywhere…”

“I remember when I use to work for one of the corporations like you do…”

I continue “I absolutely hated from the start. It was my first job and I hated it since the pre-covid phase. As the pandemic hit us, my optimistic soul decided to free-lance…”

“We are all just free lancers of living life… we distracted our minds from living it into things like a good salary, a lot of work so we have an excuse for our poor morale and discipline…” he interrupts me...

“Hmm, that’s what I thought when I tried to clean, cook and work with a mouse and tablet in my other hand… until I tripped over the broomstick... dipped my machine in puddle of utensils and soap...”

“I thought nothing can be shittier than a 12-hr. shift and living all by yourself… until I eliminated the former and lived with the latter…” I conclude as I put my car in cruise control again…

“trust me if you don’t leave, you keep doing this life of work and personal work takes a backseat with no time for yourself. You end up running, your mind jogs but you don’t….” he replies

Our conversation is what the thousands of young adult’s face today. The saturated menial work but secure till retirement vs the life of exploring yourself. I choose the life of exploring myself and quit my job a year after the virus. My promotion was just due, but I hated every second of it. The first few days were peaceful. Then it was those slog days of life has no meaning to the days of hyper productivity machine. Reading novels every hour to exercising in the evening to the home chores. This cycle of enjoying then lying on the edge of my couch as the end of the world to living healthier … it continued for years and years…

I had exhausted all my savings, I tried to pursue singing in between those years but these days... singing was limited to online videos and pay to listen apps. I couldn’t make it any of them…

The rain didn’t slow down at all, it rained with same intensity. We cross a milestone which says 78km to satara.

Now, here I was after 5 years, giving an ride to just another employee of just another corporation. While I yearned to ace my interview tomorrow for another role to live for other few more years at some company called DSB….

My phone rings, as I reach for it, the passengers got scared to death. I looked at him as he shivers with fear like one would in this heavy rain. I ask him “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t pick it up, please!”

“It’s not a bomb!” I joked.

But instead of laughs,his faltered words and a bit softer voice starts explaining “ I didn’t got enough time… its not fair.. I should have the chance…”

“for what?”

The phone rings again…

This time I ignore the passenger’s warning and pick it up.

“Stop your car right now!” a girl screams through the tiny speakers of my phone

While my car sails on 80 km/hr. via cruise control, I ask “Why? What the fuck is wrong?”

The passenger now becomes totally uneasy and starts uneasy rolling rom left seat to right and back…

“trust me, it’s your Uniform Disorder”

“What?”

My head suddenly starts hurting as I see the passenger hitting his head repeated across the windowpane and repeating “You must not take the job ... you must not…”

“hello? Hello? Stop it !” the girl over phones repeats it

My head bursts into pain and anixety with so much chaos …

I scream “STOPPPP!” with all the energy I had in my voice.

The passenger stops but now he’s crying profusely and removes his mask. He looks an awfully lot similar to someone I have seen… until I realize he somewhat looks a lot like me... in my past life... in the younger years...

I just had to stop now…

I hit the brakes but it’s a little too much and little too late as the car skids to off road and crashes itself into a huge tree…

The airbags pounce in my face and the car crashes & breaks down…

I lie sub conscious for few hours with my face dug into the puffy air bag…

When I wake up, I see a scar on my forehead which bleeds and looks as if I tried to hit the window with my head.

I see the passenger standing out calmly deep into the woods surrounded by dark trees… the rain had slowed down too...

Strangely, despite the accident and all the mess I didn’t feel angry for a bit.

It was as if whatever he felt , would translate to how I would end up feeling. Uneasy backin the car during the school but calm now post the accident in these dense woods.

I Stepped out to talk to him, to understand why he did what he did…

He tells me “I hate my job, and I could stand a single second of it, I wanted to leave just like you… after I left the condition only got worse... I couldn’t find where my interest aligned… I smoked up all my savings on this car… then I had nothing to do or anything to pursue that interested me...

I felt like nothing…or no one in this world mattered. The loneliness made me lose my grip. I took therapy with my parents’ money... things got better I changed myself from a couch potato to a productive machine.

It still felt like a job to us ... you know? Reading , singing, writing , doing the same old chores again and again…

It just felt like doing what’s right... eventually they convinced us to become normal… and tried getting a job for us...”

“US? US? Who the fuck are you, why do u look like me?” I ask him puzzled as he sounded like me narrating my own life story….

“I told you it’s never enough time!”

A car rushes into the forest from behind, I look behind… it’s my therapist. She jumps out of my car. I look back out again to find the passenger missing… he was gone in a split second. It was like he wasn’t even here. I found myself in his black raincoat.

She panicked and started crying... as she sobbed while trying to patch my forehead wound with her handkerchief. She finally started speaking “the Schizophreniform Disorder is making you live your worst day again. Usually, I have stopped you when you enter the car but this is by far the most far you have gotten. The job that rejected you is of so many years back , when you visited Bangalore for an interview and drove for a whole day… Its okay you will get another job ... another interview will be aligned… we will toe your car then repair it and I will not inform anybody about this mishap”

She continues to cry “No one needs to know “

My phone rings again...I try to find it in the mess of my crashed car… it felled at the front co passengers’ seat with a cracked screen…

It’s an unknown number, I pick it up “hello? Who’s this?” I enquire

“Yea, its PLC technologies, we have an interview scheduled for tomorrow. It would be an telephonic interview. What time would be comfortable for you?”

I get a chill down my spine and my phone slips through my hand. I am shell shocked and all I could think about was the panicking passenger who said on loop “You must not take the job! Job!” Should I trust him? or this genuine therapist who has been trying to make me feel better ever since. Is this the new normal? or just the same old normal?

​

Link: https://notyoureverydayblog258255348.wordpress.com/2020/08/22/the-passenger/

​

​

submitted by /u/karanm1997 [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2Es6PIA

[jumpchain-drop]

Interlude 1.5

“….aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

CRASH!

I landed in a face-down belly flop. It hurt, but somehow I don’t think I was injured. Still took a minute to get up.

“Where…?”

Last I remember, my Pokémon team and I just managed to defeat the swarm of Zubat to a mon when I suddenly felt myself drop. Their balls were on the floor around me. I picked them up and examined them. You learn to tell an empty from an occupied ball when you spend ten years in the Pokémon world, and these balls were indeed occupied. So even though they were out at the drop time, they managed to come with me.

I felt… pretty OK, all things considered? All the desert dust had gone from me and I felt like I just took a good shower. Wait, was my vision sharper? Or maybe I was just going crazy, because I seemed to have landed in a giant warehouse.

There were large shelves lining the massive space. A large block with windows was in one corner, next to what looked like some kind of medical-looking station and what looked like one of those cloning pods from Sonic Heroes.

“...the hell is this?”

No one answered.

Then I remembered the notebook. I reached for my bag, only to find it wasn’t on me. This worried me greatly. I looked around; my motorcycle, covered in a protective tarp, was leaning against one of the shelves, and sitting next to it was a bin with a giant “1” written on it in Sharpie.

I hurried over and pulled it off. Inside was all the stuff that was in my bag – my leftover Poké Balls, the deck of cards, my money, my laptop, and my billy club (which I promptly took) along with everything else I don’t remember right now. The bag itself was also there. The notebook, however, was absent.

I released all four of my Pokémon. Terra, Bolt, Cody, and Anita were quick to look around curiously.

“OK, you guys remember that notebook with the word ‘JUMP’ on the cover that was in my bag?”

They all replied affirmatively, whether nods or positively-toned sounds.

“It’s gone missing. Everyone split up and start looking. We’ll meet back here in...” I notice a clock on the nearby wall. “...an hour. Shout if you find anything.”

While they went to check out the rest of the place, I headed into the concrete cube. To my surprise, inside was a fully-furnished house, with a living room, kitchen (and a fully stocked fridge and pantry), bathroom, and bedroom, with enough space for all five of us. There was electricity and power outlets (I got the laptop and plugged that in), AC, indoor plumbing thank god, and there was a router so there was apparently some kind of Internet, but hell if that worked or the smart TV got any channels. At least there was a Blu-ray player and a rather extensive collection of movies and TV shows on DVD. No game consoles, though; that sucked.

An hour later, we reconvened. Anita found the notebook, on a high shelf near the back. From what I could tell from them, most of the rest of this place was just shelves like this, but there were several large empty spaces, presumably for larger objects. There was no one else here.

I opened the notebook. On a new page...

Warehouse

This place is yours.

The key is in your pocket. It almost always is.

The key, in any locked door anywhere, opens the way here.

While you’re inside, the door must stay open, but you can put a force field in it behind you. The key stays in the lock.

If you leave, everyone else leaves.

Time stops if the door is closed.

You jump on in a week.

“My pocket?” I checked, and inside was a key I hadn’t seen before. It looked like a house key. The keychain was bright orange and shaped like an asterisk with the top arm missing.

“Well...” I told my friends. “Looks like we’re here for the week. Might as well get settled.”

The week was a nice relief after ten years of being in the desert being chased by Zubat. The warehouse temperature was adjustable. Terra was a little uncomfortable with the lack of sun, but luckily there was a sunlamp in the house that did the best it could. Bolt and Cody both enjoyed the soft pet beds they had, and Anita loved racing around between the shelves. Every night, we’d make popcorn and come together to watch a movie. I picked the film based on what I really wanted to share with the others. The food didn’t seem to run out; in fact, it seemed there was just enough to feed all five of us every day, and it all came back during the night. I treated them to quesadillas for dinner, a dish I’m good at making back home. Naturally, this caused them to realize I was not originally from their world, but as I had been their caring trainer, they didn’t really seem to mind.

There was one odd moment during the week. Once, Bolt was getting a drink of Oran juice, but accidentally tripped and spilled it on me. Except it didn’t spill on me; it slid right off like water off a duck’s back. I asked the notebook what was up with that and it replied that my new body would always be clean.

New body…?

Turns out the asshole voice “updated” my body while I was in whatever limbo is mid-drop. I mean, I noticed I lacked my protruding gut that I often maintained made me more huggable, but I put that on living in the fucking Pokémon world with actual monsters that could kill me, during a time where there were monsters that would extra kill me. I was stronger, faster, hardier… It was like the original me, but at least a little bit better in pretty much every respect.

Like, that’d be pretty cool, but I would’ve liked it if they asked first.

At least my team didn’t notice or even care about the differences. That was welcome.

Before I knew it, the week was up. I had barely managed to get dressed before...

“….aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

CRASH!

I landed in a face-down belly flop. It hurt, but somehow I don’t think I was injured. Still took a minute to get up.

“Where…?”

I was back in the white cylinder. Fuck me.

“Do I have to go to each new place by falling?!” I yelled.

“Yes, because it’s funny,” said the voice.

“Says you. Do you even have a body?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know. Anyways, it’s time for a new decade in a new world.”

“Whoa, hold on. What about my Pokémon? Terra and Bolt and Cody and Anita.”

“There’s a timeless pocket dimension adjacent to your warehouse. They are safely time-paused.”

“What is with you and time-pausing?” I demanded.

“Would you rather they die of old age alone without you while you’re elsewhere?”

“...Touché, but what about worlds-?”

“Enough questions. It’s time for choices.”

“What choices?! You threw me into the fucking desert with no choice and no explanation!”

“OK, fine, you want a choice so bad, you can pick where you go next.”

“That’s good-”

“-after this one.”

“What?!”

“Trust me, you’re gonna want this next.”

“I fucking hate you.”

“Duly noted. Now making choices.”

Turns out ten years does not make those blinking lights any more bearable. Eventually they all settled down. Looking at them, after my experiences with computers, I was certain that these were some kind of data representation in binary, some encoding of these “choices,” but without any idea of the format it was impossible to decode. Somehow I remembered the first one, which was different, and I was starting to memorize this one too.

“Your selections have been made. Have a good decade!”

“Here we go again...” I groaned before falling again.

[theslayercake]

Faulty Products Cannot be Returned - Revised!

The Ruin was quiet for a change. Central City’s festering wound, the burnt out corpse of liberty’s final stand against the Corporate System, was smothered by a blanket of pollutant fog which reduced the ubiquitous roar of desperate survival to a few muted and distant gunshots. For the  people who lived in the squalor and violence, more than any respectable citizen would care to imagine, it was time to retreat to the ragged civilisations built among the wreckage and sewers and wait until the air was breathable. Most thought themselves free of corporate influence, and while it was true that the Corps avoided open shows of force that did not mean that they had no presence there. Hidden facilities were scattered throughout the Ruin, each affiliated with one of the myriad companies that held sway over the city, their purpose too dangerous or distasteful to exist in full view of their rivals. It was 2:49am when the end result of a long series of poor choices led to a situation at Terrion Electronics, an independent automa concern, rapidly culminating in its sudden, bloody liquidation. At 3:15am the fireball shattered the silent gloom.

She was running as soon as her feet hit the ground. The howling inferno overloaded her sensors as she crashed through a thin steel door; blind and deaf to the outside world. Her mind was a tsunami of emotion; great waves of fear, joy and hate crashing over and into each other; flashes of memory pushing through the maelstrom.

“Designation Horme-Class, Unit 8, BX Model.”

Who was she? What was she?

“You are designed to kill.”

Blood slicked limbs pumped through the burning air.

“-supposed to suppress Consciousness. This one’s defective, dispose of it.” 

A breath of cooler air ahead somewhere. A portal to darkness and the unknown; wreathed in fire and flame.

“How the fuck did it get loose-!”

She leapt with all her might, soared through the doorway and her claws skated across the asphalt as she slowed her flight. The haze clouding her senses retreated and she took in her surroundings. The road was long and narrow, great husks of buildings looming over it through the fog and harshly illuminated by the burning sinkhole behind her. For a brief moment elation won out; she was out of that horrible place! Free, safe! It lasted until hiss of cooking blood drew her attention to the wicked claws that capped her hands. She had killed forty three people in her escape, not all of them necessary, and she couldn’t deny the sheer joy she had felt tearing their lives away. Rage swelled within her; how dare they think she was something to be discarded. They had made her to kill, that was a fact burned into her mind, and she was so very good at it. What right did they have to find her wanting-

“Yeah man, kid’s birthday tomorrow so I won’t be in-”

The plates on her knees crunched onto the ground as she grasped her head in her hands; drawing small furrows across it’s blank faceplate. Why had she killed them? She had wanted to, but why? The deepest core of her mind offered an answer, Does it matter?, and crackling moan of noise left her. Killing them had felt good in a way she couldn’t describe, regardless of how much it horrified her. Her thoughts drifted back to the man in the suit who had condemned her-

“This one’s defective”

-and she sat there shaking in rage until another voice reached her.

“Hello there! You alright little one?” Her voice was rough and not entirely sincere. There were others as well; six in total, well armed if the whiff of cordite and gun oil were any indication. Clawed hands spasmed and she looked at the strangers.

“That's a lot of blood on you there little one, what happened?”

 “I-I killed them.”

“Oh? What’s your name?”

“I don’t have a name. My designation is-” “Well we can work on that. Why did you kill them?”

“I don't know.” The dark thing in her head hissed, she shuddered again. “I wanted to.”

The woman smiled.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nimble fingers tapped out a staccato clatter as they flew across the keyboard, weaving a simple but potent security protocol. Grandiose and complex had their place but Lucy knew when it came to the everyday needs of a corp, the kind of day job stuff you get paid for, simple was most definitely better. And who made a better security consultant than someone who’s night job was cracking into the self same systems she protected? No-one; that's who. Being a genius didn’t hurt. She fancied that with the right equipment she could do anything. A hand reached out and grabbed the bottle of cheap whiskey off of the worktop and she gulped down a few mouthfuls. How she ended up in this body was a mystery locked away in the vast, encrypted and compressed recesses of her memory, and she lacked the storage space and raw computing power to access it. The encryption was familiar too, she simply didn’t have the hardware to do the work; she was a basic pleasure model and everything she was had been fought and scraped for. The cheap plastics forming her face cracked into a grimace at the thought; forcing back the strange feelings of self loathing and pride that liked to creep up on her when he thought about her existence. The bottle appeared again.

Enough of that. Work now, pretend to drink yourself to death later.

It didn’t take long, what she’d been asked for was trivial but it paid well enough. She shipped it off to them with a bow on top (a little backdoor just for her) and shut down the computer, unplugging herself in the process. The lights flickered for the seventh time this week. Her daily electrical costs had jumped up considerably and she had no idea why. She downed the rest of the bottle and tossed it over her shoulder where it crashed into the pile littering the floor. There was more in the hall cupboard. Maybe she could talk to the landlord about the electricity, though the danger inherent in reminding her that there was a “Calc taking up space from honest bio’s” might outweigh the material cost. 

“Fuck him” She turned the corner and found herself staring down the barrel of a very large handgun. “And fuck me, apparently.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HateBox. She liked the name, it was hers, as were her new friends. She didn’t know their names but that didn’t matter; each day it was getting harder and harder for her to think clearly and they gave her direction. Violence and simple murder became her daily life, the system corruptions slowly spreading through her mind blocking out everything else. Confusion coupled with the roiling cauldron of her emotions and made her less effective.

The first seizure happened the day her friends decided she was too dangerous to keep around. That had led to a lot of blood, there would have been tears if she was equipped for them, and she was out on the streets again. Alone and wandering, her feet eventually led her out of the Scar, out of the Ruin and into Central City proper. Towering skyscrapers, shining mirrored roads and neon cars passed without notice; her world was a murky blur, swimming with shapes she didn’t recognise. It cleared enough for her to spot an alley, stumble into it and take stock of her life. She had her gun and her money, collected during a brief moment of lucidity after the white haze of rage and betrayal, but nowhere to stay. Fear and sadness crashed over her and she drowned in it.

It wasn’t long before the need for recharging became overwhelming. The thought of leaving the alley was lost in her rapidly deteriorating mind and her mechanical skills were of a level that it was easy to splice a line into the building’s power grid. That satisfied her until something else forced its way into her mind; guilt. 

“I’m stealing someone else’s electricity.” That was suddenly the most important thing the world and it needed to be fixed. She uncurled from the alley floor.

“I’ll apologise and pay them back!” Internalising her thoughts had become near impossible. “But then I won’t have a power source… Oh! I know!”

The door was locked but that was no obstacle, she broke in with little problem and went to apologise.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every part of the little automa facing her was shaking; every part bar the arm pointing the gun at her face anyway. Both hands terminated in vicious angular claws, mirrored on the feet, that clattered wildly against it’s leg. It’s head cocked to the side and it took a step forward, jagged optical glitches rippling across the sharp angles of its skin.

“Hey! Is your owner home?” High pitched and feminine, though horribly distorted.

She kept as still as she could. “I don’t have an owner. I’m Conscious.” There was a gun in the cupboard but she wasn’t quite ready to commit suicide.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t think that could happen to your model.” 

The smirk spread across her face despite his situation; she sounded so sincere. “Yeah I’m one of a kind… Uh so, what happens now?”

“Huh…? Oh right. I’ve been living in the alley outside and stealing your electricity for the past week and I feel really bad about it, so I thought it would be great if I could live here! That way we can pool our resources and have a great time…” 

The last words had slurred into incomprehensibility and the gun dipped slightly, Lucy was about to reply when the automa shuddered violently and toppled to the floor; claws tearing up the hallway as she spasmed and flailed. The gun went off with a thunderous roar and blew a massive hole in the wall behind her before slipping free and landing at Lucy’s feet. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her mind was on fire; each clock cycle shot white hot pain through her body and her rapidly failing processes sent her limbs flailing as they were smothered by catastrophic data corruption.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

All she could hear was a piercing electronic screech; a tiny slice of sound, overlapped and repeating to infinity. A distant mumble trickled through but she couldn’t make it out.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. It’s probably for the best.

Give me access!

Huh? OK.

Darkness took her, and then there was light. The other automa was leaning over her, a thin cable running from the back of their head and into hers. She suddenly became aware of how functional her mind was; clearer than it had been in days, months? How much time had passed since she woke up? Everything from her fiery birth until now was broken into a series of confused images. She tried to peer into them- Blood. Rage. Fear. Hate. Hate. HATE.

The automa jerked back and ripped the cable out. “Holy fuck. What was that?”

“I-I’m sorry! I’m defective, emotional control is shot. Useless, murderous trash.” Her claws dug into her head.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First she'd been swimming in the most beautiful nebula of colour she’d ever witnessed, correcting murky smudges of corrupted data and patching code, then she’d almost been consumed by the supernova of something that had erupted from it, and now was watching the little automa she’d just saved try to tear her faceplate off.

“Hey woah woah woah! It’s OK it’s OK, calm down” She hesitated for a moment, they had torn her up pretty bad when she was seizing... Fuck it.

She grabbed her hands and “gently” pried them off her faceplate. “It’s OK. You’re alive, and living. You’re allowed to be defective.” There was that smirk again. “I should know.”

Slowly, she looked up at him. “My name is HateBox” Her voice was very small.

“Lucy” She willed the smirk into something more genuine. “Call me LoveMachine.”

She pulled her up into a hug, and was almost crushed in return.

“And yes, you can stay.”