#the yellow snow turned out to be a false alarm

[leiazher]

Hello, hi, yes.

My huge and horrible child decided today that speed was paramount when getting across the street. So he tugged and pulled the leash and I skidded for a few feet before a final tug had me flat on my back on the icy road.

I suffer a huge bruise on my entire back, and a minor concussion.

All because my dog wanted to sniff on some yellow snow.

[chopper-writing-stuff]

A Visionary (pt. 1)

She was awake. Still lying in her bed, eyes closed, but she knew it’s the new day. Victoria reached for her phone to see what time it was, but as soon as she touched the device it started playing the alarm tone.

“So this time I’m first, huh?” She thought, sitting up, to outrun the second wave of sleepiness that always comes after turning the alarm off. Yesterday Victoria kept imagining herself sleeping in, and now she was astounded that these visions didn’t come true. She came downstairs with a smile on her face.

“Up already?” Her dad greeted her in the kitchen.

“Winter break starts tomorrow, I can make an exception and be there on time for once.” She answered, pouring milk into a bowl of cornflakes.

“Mrs. Newton will get a heart attack if she hears you answer the roll call.”

“I can always miss the bus!” She said, disappearing back into her bedroom. She could see how that would happen. Stumbling and falling over on her way to the stop, some emergency making her take more time getting ready. She preventively slid her phone further away from the cereal.

Even more, something could happen to the bus itself - popped tire, engine breaking down, someone finally checking the tickets. The last one almost made Victoria shrug. She saw it in her mind multiple times, getting checked right as she gets on, a false sense of security before the controller gets on on the next stop, or worse - stopping her in the door as she exits. Victoria’s never seen the last one in action, but heard multiple rumors of the exact thing happening.

Loaded with visions of doom, she ran out of her house and to the bus stop a few blocks away. The snow has melted off the suburban streets, but was still present on the pavement. Thankfully it was covered with a layer of yellow sand. The bus’ floor will be like a swamp, but at least she won’t fall over until she gets to it.

At the bus stop Victoria saw a few people, including Lilith, her classmate. Standing a few meters away from everyone, leaning on a lamp pole. Black hair, tucked into a long, black coat, and dark eyes looking down at her phone, held up casually in one hand. Victoria glanced at her own reflection on a glass panel shielding the bus stop bench from now nonexistent wind. It was a polar opposite of the girl in black - blonde hair under a white hat and a short, silver jacket. Will fit into the highschool crowd nicely. In the last few months Victoria learned to appreciate these small things about her new school, like the lack of literal children still being dressed up by their parents.

The bus came on time and Victoria got on. She said hi to Lilith, and got a smile in response. Lilith wasn’t the most talkative. Contrary to all predictions, the bus didn’t break down and the lack of a riding ticket wasn’t discovered. Victoria was getting more confident by the minute, but it would all come down to one final event - the physics lesson.

The classroom was open. She entered with head high and heart pounding, and took a seat next to an average-looking boy in plain blue jeans and a red hoodie. The sound of a chair screeching made him look up and raise his eyebrows, but he said nothing besides:

“Well you look awfully proud of yourself. What did you do?”

“Good morning to you too, Luke. You’ll see.” Victoria answered, fishing for a pen and a notebook in her bag. She failed to change her friend’s intrigued expression.

“Can I see your homework? I’m not quite sure about-”

“Don’t have it.” She looked over to him and her grin grew a bit larger, seeing her deskmate trying to comprehend what has just been said.

“You didn’t…” 

“mhm”

“... do the physics homework…”

“yep”

“... in Margaret Newton’s class? Are you running low on adrenaline?”

“No but good to see you getting some.” Victoria turned back and nonchalantly took a look at her phone. It was 7:58. “Careful with your heart, would be a shame to spend the break in the hospital.” She said, although her own pulse was twice the normal speed.

“Why?” Luke was baffled. Although Mrs. Newton was lenient enough to turn the blind eye to a girl walking into her class 15 minutes late, as long as she wasn’t distracting anyone, failing to do the homework would always result in an F and extra assignments. Combine that with the amount of free time approaching, and the future of anyone, who forgot to solve a few problems yesterday, was pitch black.

“Because she won’t show up today!” Victoria could finally say her revelation. It turned out a bit too loud, as some other people overheard it, but she hoped nobody would make a big deal from it. She ran a few scenarios in her head to confirm noone will remember, and leaned back in her chair.

“She won’t?” came from the desk in front of her. Victoria sat properly and saw Lilith, who asked that question. She looked worried.

“That’s what the crazy girl says, at least.” Luke dismissed her. Lilith turned back but the boy kept staring at Victoria.

“Is this the experiment you told me about?”

“That’s right.” She took a deep breath. She could not hold her true emotions back anymore. The bell rang. The teacher still wasn’t there. She didn’t come after one minute, not after another three. The class started whispering.

“She’s never late. What did you do, Victoria?” Luke stared at her in disbelief.

“Shh! Someone’s coming.” She could feel her heart beating. Fast. Her hands, clasped together on the desk, were making it vibrate. The door opened.

“Good morning class, Mrs. Margaret couldn’t make it, so you’ll have a lesson with me.” The history teacher, Mr. Pulaski walked through the classroom with a mug full of coffee in his hand. The mug went up as soon as he sat down, and it stayed elevated for quite some time. Finally, definitely empty mug struck the teacher’s desk and Mr. Pulaski declared:

“You can do your homework or whatever, just be quiet.”

The class applauded. Victoria pumped her fist. Luke dropped his jaw. He was about to ask the obvious question but Victoria couldn’t wait to explain it herself.

“Do you sometimes try to imagine how a future event would play out? Of course you do, we all do that. But I can’t. Not that I can’t imagine but whatever I think of it won’t happen. Just won’t. I can cock block the destiny itself! Ha!” She backed up from being centimeters apart from Luke’s face. His eyes were as big as her grin.

“Of course, I have to account for multiple possibilities, but with enough imagination I can prevent anything! And here’s the proof!” She opened her notebook on an empty page.

“How did you know she wouldn’t show up?” Lilith turned back to her again. Her voice cracked.

“Oh ‘ts… just a hunch.” Victoria answered. She hoped the question meant Lilith didn’t hear her whispered speech.

“Ah.” The dark haired girl was visibly disappointed.

“You wanted to see her or something?” Asked Luke.

“She took my… notebook. I wanted to ask her to give it back.” Lilith’s pale face blushed when she said that. Victoria stopped smiling.

“Ah, right.”

A week ago Mrs Newton asked Lilith a question, but the girl didn’t hear it, too focused on writing something. When the teacher walked up to her desk it became clear it wasn’t a physics notebook and what the girl was writing wasn’t even close to being related to the subject. As a result the wordy student was reprimanded and a would-be page turner retrieved.

“Damn, you know where she keeps it? She didn’t take it home, right?” Just the thought gave Victoria goosebumps.

“It’s with her stuff in the teachers’ lounge. But I can’t just go there and ask some teacher to give it to me.” Lilith started panicking. Victoria was getting worried. Her “experiment” was having a backlash. That was not in the plan.

“Alright then, I’ll- I’ll help you get it back.” She said to Lilith with determination. The girl was surprised, but thanked her. They agreed to discuss it during lunch.

“What are you scheming?” Luke, who was waiting silently for the whole time, finally asked the question.

“Look, I didn’t want-” She didn’t know how to say what she didn’t want. And when she started to know she wasn’t sure if she could say it.

“But you aren’t planning to… break in?” Luke hesitated because he realized this was, indeed, what she was planning.

“I can do it.”

“For a girl you barely talk to. And what, you’ll think of every possible way you can be caught? How does that even work exactly? And-” Luke’s tone changed from whispering to almost silence “Do you think you’ve killed Newton?”

“She’s fine, I’m sure she’s just… stuck in traffic or something.” Victoria felt offended. In all her future-blocking yesterday, she remembered to throw in some “Newton’s dead” scenarios, although thinking about it now…

“Ugh” Victoria shrugged it off. She can worry about it later. Now she should focus on helping Lilith get back her… diary? It’s got to be a diary.

“That’s cute.” she thought. “To keep a diary. Have a place to make your thoughts clear. Your feelings. Hopes…”

An image flashed in her mind. Too quick to focus on, too short to be a full scenario. But if her power was confirmed, that moment would never come true.

Note: First day of daily writing, had some more time plus I've been working on this universe for a while. Here's a short tale about my OC Victoria's first day consciously using her psychic power. Hope it's original and interesting enough, as this setting relies on quite a few characters with similar abilities

[fishmongeringstudies]

scene fifteen: in moments of deep and debilitating anxiety remember that someone out there is thinking about how to fit a horse-shaped figurine up their ass and that they will probably succeed

in the history of sexuality: volume one michel foucault puts forth the idea that we as a society have gotten bad at dying due to a lack of practice. in the place of death, he posits, we obsess with life. every tedious stage of it, spotlit and burnt into our retinas so that even when we lie awake in bed with our eyes shut, visions of the future stalk through the darkness like specters. we are categorically unable to predict what lies ahead on the yellow brick road and obligated to try. as a result, we have become shrewd, planning creatures.

we have lost our touch with death. we are out of touch with it. we do not die enough, even though everyone you speak to will likely agree that each of us only dies once.

in a half-hearted bid to help its students cope with the fact that the world had been consumed overnight by a pandemic which was steadily eating away at the sanity and sanctity of life as we knew it and everything was fucking terrible, my college came up with a plan wherein instead of four classes in the fall, we would only have to take three. in exchange january would be given up to a four-week speedrun of one more class, so as to complete the holy rectangle. consumed with hubris and distracted by the legend of zelda: breath of the wild, the game which had eaten up the last five months of my life and promised to follow up with the rest of it, i decided to take a philosophy course on personal identity. on the first day of class i logged onto zoom, my personal sleep paralysis demon, at eleven on a monday night to my professor asking us completely seriously: what makes you you?

my toes, i guess? i have ten of them. i mean most people have ten toes, but mine are pretty weird looking. are we done here?

we were not done here. we proceeded to investigate every aspect of the twenty-first century conception of the self, from the lumpy flesh bag which contained our affectionately soft and squishy parts to the memory, the continuous narrative that held all our dimmest and brightest moments together. we doubted each one, flirted with it; then we cast it away. was the self the brain? no. was the self the body? no. was the self the memory, the shreds of past glories, was the self actually a collection of selves? is the you who plucked that goldfish out of the pond at age seven because you thought lungs meant you were invincible the same you who wrung their hands nervously together as they stood in front of the cashier this morning, waiting for the person behind the counter to ring up your groceries?

there was a counter for everything, you see. i know this because i presented a quarter of them. it's fun to shoot things down, less fun to be shot at; having been gunned out of the sky several times in my life i make it a point to keep my eyes trained on the horizon when i am out and about these days. so yes. people are not really. really what? they simply aren't. we have been living in a farce of reality, telling ourselves we matter when we have never been able to articulate with certainty the exact nature of that 'we' to begin with. or should i say me?

one night in late january while lying in bed after a three hour breath of the wild korok hunt, drifting peacefully into the ether, a thought flashed across my mind: WHERE DO PEOPLE GO WHEN THEY FALL ASLEEP.

i bolted upright in bed, heart hammering like there was a hammer in my chest and a little man holding the hammer and that motherfucker was swinging like he had hell to pay.

it turns out my extensive history of making jokes about immortality isn't just a reflection of my overinflated ego. it's a reflection of this:

michel foucault was sometimes criticized for his armchair philosophy style of tackling what were, at heart, deeply empirical human issues. even if the epistemic foundations were sound, there was often a clear disconnect between the ideas he espoused and the communities which they were to be applied to. this is a criticism every philosopher deals with at some point in their life. this is a critique of philosophy as a whole. stop smoking your damn bong and get back out here, skinny academia man. there's a whole world to see.

in season three episode eighteen of the penumbra podcast by sophie takagi kaner and kevin vibert a character named buddy aurinko stops in the middle of a debilitating fit of coughs, and admits in a wet, cracking voice that she does not want to die. 'i don't want to die,' she says to herself, standing in her office and overlooking a heist of astronomical proportions. her heart is made of steel; it pumps gasoline through a body more metal than flesh. she is half human in the most literal sense, with a clockwork soul and a gunmetal smile. in spite of the alarming state of decay the radiation exposure has left her body in, she wants to live. she fights for it. she leaves the heist to her crewmates and escapes to a room that will protect her from shock waves that would otherwise stop her mechanical heart. kicking her heels off and running and stumbling down the hallway, she makes it to safety just in time to hear the explosion go off.

life is a firework show in the sense that we are surrounded by highly-flammable and explosive objects which look nice from afar and are a threat to our safety up close. this analogy made sense when i started typing it but it seems i've come up short. life is a firework show. i like things that eat darkness. i am a firefly. i make fire take flight.

i think michel foucault was right, in some ways. we are living in abundance. i do not mean a physical abundance, a pile of tailored suits at the foot of the bed; i mean an abundance of life. the distribution is disastrously uneven. but the average is high. we emerge into a life which assumes we will stay for a long, long time, which fluffs the pillows and plans the high school graduations and sets aside money in a bank account for our first car, our second apartment, our third lover. we emerge into celebration. happy birthday. cue candles. cue applause.

but on a purely individual level, is it really that bad to be gorilla-glued to life? should we expect the other shoe to drop at thirty instead? what about the mid-life crisis? what about the cat on the windowsill? as death grows to terrify us, so does life. they are two sides of a coin which, when flipped, always lands heads-up. but i propose a counter-argument. i propose joy. joy in standing in the supermarket and running your hands across rows of blushing apples. joy in starting an argument you know you will win. joy in waking up to the shrill screech of your alarm only to discover that today's morning classes have been canceled due to the snow piled up outside your window. we have progressed too far down the yellow brick path to be caught up in false dichotomies. you can love something you fear. you can soak yourself in it, drench yourself in it, tip it down your throat like champagne. flip a coin and it lands both sides up. flip two coins. flip the table and sit on its belly for a while.

are we done here? never. not in a thousand years.

06.04.21

[writing-the-end]

LoL Chapter 9- Burnt Parchment

Masterpost

A Wizard Hermits tale (AU belongs to @theguardiansofredland )

A brief respite for the hermits, they all take the time to rest, train, and learn more. While Xisuma digs through the libraries for information on dark magic, Stress discovers an unnerving note far from home.

____________________________________

Xisuma hums to himself, fingers running along the books. Old leather soft and emblazoned with gilded letters, sharp parchment of scrolls cutting into his skin with new vigor. All kinds of books and tomes and tablets, collected among Joe’s library. It’s a well cared for collection, and Joe prides himself on all the knowledge stowed in his home. 

The only problem is how he sorts his books. Most librarians would use one of many systems developed by scholars, perhaps by genre or author’s last name. But no, Joe used his own strange system, a madness to his method. No matter what the other hermits do to fix his insanity among the stacks, he only shuffles it back. And Xisuma is stuck reading through the strange collection their resident poet has amassed. He blinks away as he reads something he’d rather not, and pulls free an aged scroll, adding it to the collection in his hands. 

Xisuma steps back, turning. His eyes fall across the large black lacquered cabinet settled in the corner of the poet’s home. Distant from everything else, even the azure blue bed that’s covered in half-written poems and spells. Cold metal brushes against X’s fingers as he unconsciously touches the wrought iron key. “Dark magic has to be somewhere in there.” 

He reluctantly opens the banned book cabinet. Joe isn’t a person to ban books just for being controversial. In fact, the poet loves to bring books other libraries wouldn’t dare hold. Knowledge that should be spoken, kept safe. Illegal works against the Council, exposes on guilds, lost history no longer taught in schools. If their island in the Ashioll sea was a sanctuary to the illegal guild, this library was a sanctuary to illegal words. 

But even some knowledge is dangerous in the wrong hands. And if there’s anything X could call dark magic, it’s dangerous in any hand. Only one book among the darkened oak shelves gives him any hint to it’s contents including dark magic. A book about ancient magic. Why is this with the taboo tomes? Xisuma stands, tucking his armful of books close to his chest and donning his mask back on to face the sunlight.

Xisuma is a void wizard. He spends his days staring into the darkness of space, learning from the motions of dark matter and the void between stars. When others look to the light to discover truth, he can see everything beyond space and time, warped by the light others seek. X’s fingers run across a fractured part of his helmet. Where an insignia of a sun surrounded by spiraling void was dented out of existence. He can just barely feel the sharp triangular points of his brother’s symbol nowadays. 

He pulls the mask over his head, and braves the sunshine of his island home. In the distance, he can hear yelling, followed by the sharp clang of metal. The ground rumbles, and out of the corner of X’s vision he sees pillars of stone spire free from the grass. False and Scar are dueling, and Xisuma notices silver coins being passed between TFC and Cub. An easy smile appears beneath X’s mask. TFC was never one to stay holed up in the infirmary long. He’s still pale and weak from the crystal attack, but nothing would stop the guildmaster from being with his family. So long as he’s not using his magic, Xisuma won’t stop him. 

The fading black veins up TFC’s arm reminds Xisuma why he’s researching dark magic. After what happened to their guildmaster, their leader and father figure, Xisuma needs to know why it happened. And how to stop it from hurting any of his family. Ever again. Dirt crunches under his boots as Xisuma walks to the stone tower he calls home. The oldest structure, the first part of the island built up. When him and his brother fled into the mysterious sea, setting up the Order of Hermits. Fitting name, seeing as they’re the only ones brave enough- or stupid enough- to call the odd archapelago home. 

“Sheshwammy!” Keralis’s voice runs across the air like honey, but the magnitude of his voice causes Xisuma to jolt in his boots. A scroll drops, falling open and rolling across the dirt. Xisuma groans, tucking his chin to chase after the runaway parchment. Keralis aids him, scooping up the scroll and tightening the paper around the wooden rod. “Whatcha got there? A little bit of light reading?” 

“I wouldn’t call dark magic ‘light reading’.” Xisuma chuckles, plucking the scroll handed across from him. Keralis’s expression is quite alarmed. 

“Dark magic? Like spooky scary attacking crystal dark magic?” Keralis peers at the books in Xisuma’s hand. “Why are you trying to learn dark magic?”

“I’m not trying to learn it- I’m trying to learn about it. So...so things that happened in Gildara don’t ever happen here. Don’t ever happen to our island.” Keralis nods, nudging Xisuma’s shoulder to show it was all in jest. And the void mage feels like he can breathe. 

“Are you going to hole up in that tower of yours then?” Keralis watches X’s eyes through his visor, the crossed scars over his left eye. “Sheshwammy, come, let’s have some tea in my house! Soak in the sun, it’s good for you!” 

Keralis waves Xisuma to the glass hemisphere, tall grass and undergrowth flourishing in the massive terrarium. A single tree props up the glass from within, and a beehive thick with honey sits like fruit hung low from the tree. Black flecks buzz around among the terrarium, denizens of bugs flying in their habitat. To and from their food and wherever they make home within Keralis’s terrarium. When Keralis first showcased his magic to Xisuma, he admits he was freaked out. To gain magic by consuming bugs seemed...strange. But over time, it was no different than Joe’s poetry magic or Tango’s hellbound spells.

“Hello Suzy. How’s the hive today?” Keralis giggles, giving the fuzzy bee a pat. X stops at the door, watching Keralis file away some of his magical treats for later. “I was just coming to grab some more beetles before fighting Cleo, but this gives me an excuse to not face her now.” 

Xisuma sits down among the grass, the tall blades bending outward like a nest. Green and grey robes spread out, and Xisuma sets his pile of books on Keralis’s green bed. Keralis places a cup of tea in his hand, his friend remembering exactly how much sugar, honey, and milk he likes in his tea. Xisuma’s shoulders untense, remembering why he wanted a guild in the first place.

They weren’t just a team. They were family. They have each other. He’s not the only one worrying about TFC, others are taking good care of him. And they take good care of each other, including X. Xisuma swirls the spoon in his tea, blowing on the steaming drink and raising his head to feel the sun filter through the glass dome. His brother always wanted a family like this, but sometimes the sun shines too bright even for those who rely on it’s light. Every time Xisuma feels the warm rays on his brown hair, he thinks of his brother. 

But he always chases the thoughts out. That wimp left, ran away when things finally started to become real. Xisuma pulls the book on the top of the stack and forces it open. He flips to the page about magic law and illegal magic. 

Keralis peeks over Xisuma’s shoulder, trying to follow the insane speed the void wizard reads at. He doesn’t catch everything he sees, or understands most of what he reads, but the pages do reference the words he fears to be true. “Do you really think someone is practicing dark magic?” 

“I’m sure it’s dark magic. You saw how those husk people acted.” Xisuma picks up a book discarded to the side, pointing to a single paragraph. Hardly more than a line references the process of magic. “Dark magic is illegal for a reason- it steals power, killing the person who it’s stolen from. But none of these books talk about how it happens. There’s no mention of crystals, or the entire land devoid of life. A grey wasteland.” 

“What about this book?” Keralis sits in the grass, pulling up a massive, ancient leather book. “Plirus Mageia.” The bug mage opens the book, dust spouting free of the yellow, torn pages and causing Keralis to cough. 

“Well, it says it’s complete, but does that really mean…” Keralis grins as he discovers dark magic listed in the index, flipping to the page. It’s Xisuma’s turn to peer over Keralis’s shoulder, watching the ancient pages flipping forward, deft fingers searching for the page number listed.  Until they go past it. Keralis frowns, and flips back. And misses again. One by one, they look through the book. All that remains of the chapter on dark magic is ash, pouring into Keralis’s lap when he tips the book forward. “Someone doesn’t want dark magic to get out.” 

“Or someone doesn’t want anyone to know their secret.” Keralis whispers. 

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

Stress packs the snow tight, pressing rosy pink lips onto the forehead of the snowman. One hand has her icy magic circle pressing against the torso. A little kiss like that sends magic surging through the white snow, each crystal and snowflake imbued with her power. The stone eyes blink and bluster against it’s cold body, and stick arms wiggle to life. “There you go lovely! Go explore! Watch out fer the edge!” 

Stress giggles as the snowman wanders across her icy island home. Just offshore of Eremita, she built her igloo under the cooling respite of an eternal snowcloud. She sits back, closing her eyes and feeling the chill touch of snowflakes falling on her pale cheeks. The cold water tickles her skin, clinging to the warm, fluffy grey fuzz that keeps her comfortable. She loves the cold, because it means she can cozy up in her warm robes, fluffy boots, and thick pants. She doesn’t have to worry about her hair being too long at her neck, or if she has too many blankets- which is never enough in her opinion. She’s known as a blanket thief, and it takes bribery to get them back. 

Snow crunches, the fresh layer depressing onto the white powder beneath it. Stress peeks open her eyes, and notices her new snow friend is waving for her attention, rock mouth mute to call for her. Rigid sticks flap back and forth, until the snowman knows it has her attention. It points a wooden finger down to the icy waters around her island. 

“What is that doin’ here?” Stress questions, standing up. She brushes the snow from her rear, watching the tiny boat rock against the ice chunks. She can only imagine if these enchanted sailboats had little itty bitty sailors, they’d look like massive icebergs, just before a frozen continent at the bow. “I thought these didn’t leave the cities.” 

Stress scoops up the wooden boat, fingers running along the smoldering fabric sail. The edges turn to ash upon her touch, embers eating further into the sail and smoking the wooden ship. It’s in bad shape, and Stress can’t figure out how such a little ship meant for messaging within a city made its way out here. Why is it burned?

She remembers the contents of the boat, pulling off a glove to squeeze her finger into the thin deck. Sure enough, a scroll was being carried by the scorched ship. The snowman at her side reaches for the boat, like a child desiring a toy. It’s wish is granted, Stress ignoring the boat in lieu of opening the parchment. 

It’s burned as well, and whatever edges aren’t black and charred are torn and tattered. On the backside, Stress can see printed letters torn through. It reminds her of when she went to school in Milliara, among the other noble children learning how to be good heirs, passing notes on torn sheets of their notebooks. The twine falls apart in her hand, allowing the burnt parchment to open. 

Stress gasps, letting the letter fall to the snow. She runs to the icy edge of her snowstorm, but the ice rises to meet her feet. Walking across frozen water beneath her shoes, until she’s on solid ground again. She doesn’t slow, doesn’t hesitate. She needs to tell the others what was on the paper. 

The parchment, burnt and soaked with snow, flutters in the warm Ashioll sea air. Blood for ink scrawls out two words. 

HELP DANES

[voidselfshipp]

Future Days (Of You And Me)

Tw: injury mention,blood mention, food mention

Jerico x Joel

Ok to rb

Heavy steps make their way to a cabin,the snow its drowning any sort of noise,the clouds are grey, darkening as the sun sets further into the horizon,the wind blew mercilessly, the pine trees shook at mother nature Will.

Jerico dragged herself to an old cabin,the big windowpanes are shadowed and covered by the mist And the residual smoke.

A chimney, just snuffed out, heavy, heavy boots left ashen marks on the old oak floorboards.

Still, whoever that was they were gone, with the resting embers in the chimney, a Fire came to life,jeri rubbed her hands togheter trying to warm herself, as the Fire slowly came more and more to life.

Its dark outside, at this hour her mind gets the best of her, if it wasnt because of her pets.

Missy growls, the Manchester terrier stands up, pointing at the basement.

Jer tries to dismiss her but the dog insists running to the door,she grabbed her rifle and Ran behind her dog.

She found her licking the face of a Man, heavily wounded.

Jerico looked for any scratches,bitemarks,anything that could point to an infection.

Nothing.

The Man,whoever he was, was breathing heavily, his lungs werent working, and the injure on the left side of his temples was bad, very bad.

She carried him upstairs, leaving him near the Fire.

His life force was slipping through her fingers, she could feel it,Like water down a stream.

She got to work quickly, cleaning and tending the wound as much as she could.

The person that left probably had unfinished bussines with this Man.

She did the best with what she had, and so she scavenged for supplies.

Her hand couldnt help but wonder to the Mans face,brushing a strand of hair away from his face, she smiled softly and warmly, oh he was very handsome.

His pulse was very weak, his breaths heavy and shortened.

The chances of him surviving were Slim to none.

Yet she grabbed a can of food and cooked it, sitting him up and trying to hand feed him.

He could chew at least.

When he had eaten enough, she let him sleep on her sleeping bag.

She then Ate what was left with missy, and sat besides him, with her rifle in hand patrolling the área.

The night went on with false alarms, so when the smoky clouds cleared she packed up shop and carried the Man on her sled Back to her home.

A small cottage hidden in a Valley between two big mountains.

Yet a green garden grew, food, fruits and even a bit of livestock grew and lived in there.

She left him rest on her salvaged couch, changing the bandages.

Feeding the cows she then sat on the porch, missy curled up besides her.

From there you could see all the forest, the climb there was too much for an infected to climb up to, so it was her little piece of heaven, its early morning, the sun still rising over the mantle saying goodbye to the night and stars.

The wind started to pick up from a slight breeze to a strong wind.

She entered the house, starting a Fire in the chimney.

She sat besides the Man, guitar in her hand, the dog at her feet.

--If I ever were to lose you--she sang--

I'd surely lose myself

Everything I have found dear

I've not found by myself

Try and sometimes you'll succeed

To make this man of me

All my stolen missing parts

I've no need for anymore

I believe

And I believe 'cause I can see

Our future days

Days of you and me....--jerico had to stop as the Man reacted to that song, sluggishly trashing around.

That song seemed to mean something to him.

So she sat there lost in her own thoughts, until lunchtime arrived,unbeknownst to her as her mind wandered off into dreamland.

She made food then, a warm stew for that windy windy day.

She served three plates.

One for the misterious handsome Man, anotherone for her,and of course one for missy.

She again tried to feed him, and I say tried because the Man kept on moving away like a child, maybe he was getting some of his consciousness back.

When she was going to drop the towel an idea popped in her mind, you could almost see the lightbulb turning on in her brain.

--Back when I was feeling broken

I focused on a prayer

You came deep as any ocean

Did something out there hear?

All the complexities and games

No one wins, but somehow, they're still played

All the missing crooked hearts

They may die, but in us they live on

I believe

And I believe 'cause I can see

Our future days

Days of you and me...--And as she sang the Man seemed to be more calm as he ate, or well, munched.

She let him rest as she Walked upstairs to her room,or well art room.

Salvaged pencils,errasers and brushes, some of her best artworks were hanged all around her.

Her day ended doing the thing she liked the most.

Creating.

Eventually,jerico started using the Man as a model,it gave her a challenge, try and draw him as close as himself as she could.

Shed keep a Journal, were she kept track of his progress.

The Man eventually came to his senses,it took some weeks until he introduced himself.

He couldnt walk, or move from that couch,he could still bathe( with the help of jeri to at least take him to the bathroom)eat,and sleep.

But that was about it.

One particular morning jeri was eating breakfast on her porch admiring the sunrise, the dark mantle of the night, turning wine red as the Oranges and yellows announced and aclaimed the arriving of the sun.

Her pet curled up by her side.

Though a particular tune seems to distract her, a man,singing.

--All the promises at sundown

I've meant them like the rest

All the demons used to come 'round

I'm grateful now they've left

So persistent in my ways

Hey angel, I am here to stay

No resistance, no alarms

Please, this is just too good to be gone

I believe

And I believe 'cause I can see

Our future days

Days of you and me

You and me

Days of you and me--by the time he was done singing jer had Walked back into the livingroom

-- thought you couldnt get up?--She sat besides him.

--well-- the Man said leaving the guitar besides him-- I couldnt help myself but to play, I missed the sound of it

A warm smile appeared on jericos face as she looked away -- howd you slept?

--havent had a goodnights sleep in a while..-- he answered.

--hm..--she grunted in agreement--i should...I should go and pick up some of the veggies on the garden...you can still play my guitar though...I dont mind

She stood up,as the Man stummed the chords.

--Joel

--what?--jeri who has walking to The door turned on her heel.

--My names Joel-- he said.

--nice to meet you Joel-- better late than never,she guessed.

After picking up the best of the vegetables she Walked in back to the kitchen, she could see that Joel was still playing, entretained by the guitar.

She tapped her foot along the way as she started to prepare lunch.

The Man however took his chances and explored the house.

Stairs were still tricky, but somehow he found his way into her art room.

--What.. the hell?--he asked to himself picking up one of the portraits she had done of him, and her Journal right Next to it.

One of the last entries had been written maybe a couple of days ago.

"The misterious Man is still reluctant to introduce himself, I do get it, in this world trusting is hard.

Yet I cant shake off this feeling whenever our gazes meet.

Hes pretty funny in his own Way,when he isnt resting I find him quite charming.

This is the last drawing I made of him, I wish I could find the courage to show it to him"

Joels factions soften chuckling at the fact that the woman that saved him was a huge softie.

--Joel!foods ready!

He put the drawing down and went downstairs to eat.

They sat across from eachother, he was kind enough to help her set the table.

They quietly chatter, Jerico asked him about exterior things of himself, she knew not to poke around in things she shouldnt,and Joel didnt say more than what he should.

Yet the conversation had a warm undertone that left the both of them with a smile on their faces.

Joel took a nap,and she locked herself up in her art room to try and organize her running thoughts and feelings.

He didnt trust anyone easily, nor did he let anyone became close, emotionally or physically.

But that same night the rattle of the Windows were too much,he knew he was safe and yet he couldnt help but Grab his blanket and go up jericos room to slip into bed with her.

--Hey.. jerico...can I.. can I stay the night here?

He felt like a kid again, but a happy feeling overcame Jim when she said Yes.

His back was against hers, he snuggled closer to himself.

Yet, the panicked sensation wouldnt go away.

So he did the best Next thing and hugged jeri.

--Watcha doing Joel?--Her tone was playfull, but he looked away nonetheless, and yet she snuggled closer--relax Man, just joking

He chuckled looking away-- the last time I trusted someone this much I...uh..

He heard her sigh--the scar?

--yeah the scar

--If you dont mind me asking.. what happened?

Joel sighed heavily, pulling her closer.

--i saved a chick,and ran with her to safety, turns out she had some unfinished bussiness with me...and so here we are ...

Jer Turned around hesitantly cupping her cheek,he leans in her touch hugging her waist--im sorry you had to go through that...

--on the bright side I wouldnt have met you..

Jeri chuckled and he kissed her.

Kissing back she caressed his hair, they spent the night cuddling away,singing togheter the song that brought them closer.

[ashleyswrittenwords]

How To Be A Queen [Part 12]

Summary: Princess Zelda is at a loss. Her handed royal responsibilities have begun to weigh heavily on her and she is eventually backed into a corner. Live a life she loathes or run away from everything she’s ever known? Navigating life is hard, and Link forces her to learn that she doesn’t have to do it alone.

Warning: Blood. Slight scary like stuff. Lmk if you think I should add more.

Previous

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Part 1 Here

How To Be A Queen

No, it wasn’t Link.

A shout was already in my throat, but it quickly died to the sight of a horse’s snout staring straight at me. My eyes drifted up to the rider and my breath froze in my lungs. The man from the festival. The older gentlemen, except his eyes weren’t as soft; instead he looked like he had just heard a joke.

“It’s her alright,” he was grinning wryly, exposing his teeth.

I needed to run.

Link was too far; I couldn’t scream and hope he’d hear. It had to be me to save myself.

I turned to do just that. Adrenaline coursed through me, making my fear more intense. The only sound I could hear was of hooves on dirt. More than one? I can’t outrun a horse. I can barely outrun a tortoise. He was toying with me. Right over left and for the love of Hylia don’t trip.

My mind raced with what they could possibly want to do with me. Ransom was what first came to my mind. Father had many enemies that masqueraded as allies; I wasn’t blind to see truth in that. My family had volumes of meaningless bloodshed commanded by their hand. If anything, it could just be a group that hated the monarchy and simply wanted to see me hanged from a tree. My eyes flickered to the forest. It was dense, not exactly too dense for a horse, but I didn’t have a choice. I was going to be run down. I put all my weight onto my left foot and took a sharp left into the woods. Twigs snapped past me and I heard a female shouting not far behind. The air felt like sharp knives in my lungs. It hurt and I wanted desperately to stop. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t.

The snow was thicker here and my boots felt like weights. I was panicking. Goddesses, no. The horses behind me didn’t seem to be hindered much. There was a steady stream of shouts and clickings that guided them. New tears pricked my eyes. With every fiber of my being I felt pure fear resonating. In this moment, I understood what it felt to be a fox being chased by hunting dogs. Branches raced past and I knew I was being scraped to pieces. Somehow, I couldn’t feel anything. My throat felt numb and my muscles struggled to get the oxygen they needed. A pasture opened before me and I didn’t stop.

A sharp sound flew through the air and I felt sudden pressure around my arms and neck. Then, I couldn’t breathe and I saw the stars above. Their beauty felt mocking. My head hit the ground before the rest of my body and I couldn’t move. My arms were paralyzed to my sides.

“Nerissa!” The man screamed, “Don’t kill her!”

I can’t breathe.

“She’s fine.”

Crunching snow.

A woman came into view above me, replacing the stars. My mouth gaped like a fish for air. She was glaring at me but crouched to released the tight knot. My breath came it small gasps, but it didn’t last long. Her foot hit my stomach and the little breath I had left once more. I turned to my side, squeezing my eyes shut and waited for another blow. I was yanked upward and hit the ground again. My backpack was cut off at the straps.

Then, she took to binding my arms and legs.

“Who are you?” My voice wasn’t my own.

She snickered. “Oh, you don’t recognize me?” Her face came into view fully now. The woman from the fire. The same woman from the bridge. I didn’t say anything, but the shock showed on my face by the looks of her satisfied smile. I shouldn’t be surprised at this point.

I was thrown over her shoulder rather roughly and then over a horse’s back. Thick tears were caught in my eyelashes. The horses began moving back to the path.

“What if she screams?”

Nerissa made a noise akin to a chuckle, “She won’t.”

I felt every bit of movement and I was jostled around quite a bit. Every now and again one of them would ask if I was still breathing. Which was pointless, I refused to talk to them. It had gotten to the point where she had pushed me off the horse and listened to my pained grunts as I hit the cold dirt.

“Leave me alone,” he mocked with a squeaky voice, “Go away, Link.” My brow creased and I felt my throat close painfully. I choked on my sob.

“Don’t say that name,” Nerissa hissed.

“Can’t you at least agree how pathetic that is? We surprised her on horses. The princess-”

“Shut up! The job isn’t done,” she sounded pissed, “Don’t get cocky.”

The rest of the ride was spent in an uncomfortable silence. My restraints hurt terribly and by the time we reached the destination my skin was rubbed raw. I stayed silent as the man pulled me off the horse. A large Goron man stood in front of the house’s door, shock flickering on his face. Several other odd people stood around, staring at me as if I were a piece of meat and they were starving wolves. I tried keeping my head high retaining what bit of dignity I had left. That was hard to do when you’ve been tossed to the ground like rubbish.

Nerissa wasn’t afraid to drag me inside without another word being said to our audience. She was taller than most of them and by the looks of it was regarded with respect as well. I was taken past the main room and into a side room. It was windowless and I assumed they were using the abandoned house as a temporary headquarters. The house was stripped other than the bare furniture, trash that littered the floor, and the windows boarded up. A bright lantern offered some light and I was able to finally make out the state I was in. As she untied my wrists, bloody rashes lined my skin. The glimpse didn’t last long because she pulled my arms behind the chair and retied them. I cried out, one of my wrists flared with pain. She also made sure to gag me with a long piece of cloth as if now I would think this is the optimal time to start screaming. The coat was ripped, and my pants weren’t in any better shape – probably worse. My face was wet with tears and mud. I felt disgusting.

Nerissa didn’t say anything as she rummaged through my bag. I thought she had to at least be partially Gerudo. Her skin was pale, but her stature was not anything Hylian. A man, not the older one from before, walked in. He had stark black hair and his eyes just as dark. I hoped I didn’t react, but his gaze made me freeze. He was smiling.

“Well,” he started, “I’m pleasantly surprised, Nerissa.” He sounded as such. I decided that I despised him.

“You shouldn’t be,” she responded lamely, throwing my pouch of gold coins on the table.

“Princess,” the man addressed me now. His voice disturbed me. It was silky and deceptive.  He strode closer. “We are so humbled to have you under this roof.”

He expected me to reply because he removed that cloth in my mouth. His rough fingers grazed my skin. When I did not speak, he knelt and looked at me with falsely kind eyes. His hand traced my jaw gently like he was savoring the moment. “Don’t fret, Highness. We’re heading to a nicer quarters soon enough.” I gathered the saliva in my mouth and spit in his face. The smile wavered, if not a little and it gave me a sick satisfaction. He stood, turned away from me and towards Nerissa who was staring hatred at me. So much so, that I looked away.

“Crow told me it went smoothly, yes?”

She looked bored, “Like you asked, sir. He wasn’t necessary.”

He made a gesture, glancing back at me, and they both left the room. Whether it was the pain that brought me to tears again or the suddenness of being alone, I broke down. My body heaved with sobs and even that hurt. Each tug at the ropes was pointless, it did more damage than good. I felt a deep pit of regret growing. I should never have left Hateno like that. I shouldn’t have left Anju nor her family. Most of all, I shouldn’t have left Link. If I was already useless on my own, how was I supposed to trek across Hyrule alone? I sat in solitude with my thoughts for a long while. Whatever they stepped out to talk about must have been heated because I could vaguely hear shouts reverberate into the room. The dry wall was cracked and decaying and I shivered at the thought of bugs creeping beyond the lantern’s flame.

The door opened again, revealing Nerissa. She looked agitated, even more so when her eyes laid on me. Regardless she pulled up a chair with the small side table along with it. “You looked like a snot nosed, brat.”

I swallowed another sob that threatened to surface and met her gaze. It was full of distain and I wondered what I did to deserve it. She opened her mouth, “I knew it was you when you got to that stable.” The woman flipped a switchblade in her hand and smacked the hilt on the table. I winced at the sudden clank. She reached over and yanked the gag from my mouth and over my chin, letting it hang uselessly like a necklace.

“I knew beforehand too. I was going to try to take you that night if you were alone,” she twisted my hair in her finger. “Would have,” she pulled at it, forcing my head forward and I yelped, “yanked you by your pretty yellow hair all the way here and we would have been done with it.” She hummed, “And if I had it my way, scalped it off you as a trophy. But no.”

Nerissa let go, letting the lock fall back in front of my eyes. “Of course not. You had to bring someone with you. Had to… make everything more difficult for me, huh Zelda?” She said my name as if it were a hot knife.

I sounded scratchy, “Why do you hate me?”

There was a pause and she laughed boisterously. I breathed inward, suddenly hit with the alarm of how afraid I was of this woman. “What don’t I hate you for? Your entire family has given my people and I nothing but anguish,” Nerissa flat-lined, “I hate you because of who you’re destined to become. Don’t take it personally, puppet. It’s a professional hatred.”

“Besides!” She waved off her last comment, “I love hunting you Hylians for sport. Makes it much more exciting when I’m being paid by these idiots to hunt down a princess. You made it fun, too. Gave a chase. Albeit not a very long one, but a chase nonetheless.” She unknotted the rope to my hands, freeing one, and laid my injured wrist onto the table. The woman acknowledged my pained whimpers and spread my fingers out delicately, surely not to relieve the pain but to prolong whatever she planned. My hand was shaking.

“However, you’re not the one I want. The Yiga love you for other reasons. I want another,” she took her time and made sure each digit was equally apart. My wrist throbbed. “I want you to tell me about everything you know about him. His family, his lovers, his friends. Everything you know. And while you keep that information from me, we will play a little game I call the Knife Game.” Nerissa smiled to herself as she picked up the knife already laying on the table and looked at me expectantly. “You may begin.”

I stared dumbly at her, “Who are you talking about?”

The knife’s sharp blade embedded itself into the wood between my thumb and point finger. I had screamed, thinking she was going to take a stab at my hand.

“Wrong question. You shouldn’t ask things you know that answer to,” she finally looked down at where the blade landed, “Oh, you got lucky. Worse luck next time. Surely.”

“I-I don’t,” I started hyperventilating as she yanked the knife from the wood again, “The King? Why would-“

“I don’t give a shit about your dad. Stop playing stupid.”

The knife nicked the skin of my middle finger’s knuckled and I cried out. It wasn’t a deep pain, but it was sharp. She wouldn’t let that man say Link’s name. Is that who she’s talking about?

“Link?” I asked it more as a question to myself, but the name made her look up sharply. Her knife stayed imbedded in the wood. She offered a thin-lipped smile, “So, I wasn’t wrong. Such delicate little fingers, not a callous mars them. I bet you’ve never seen a day of work in your life. It would be a shame if you lost one for careless reasons. Come on, puppet, explain who he is to you.”

I didn’t want to. Whoever she was, this Nerissa was filled with malice. A deep seeded hatred that shook me. I couldn’t expose the people I had come to love to her, right? Whatever she was doing to me in this moment, I didn’t want them to go through. They did nothing to deserve that. Link didn’t deserve that.

“I don’t know anything about him,” I squeaked. My heart leapt as the stab missed again.

“We can do this all night,” Nerissa growled.

“He’s a captain in the Royal Guard,” I cried out and there was another slash to my pinky. I prayed it wasn’t bad. The new wound seered. “That’s all I know! That’s it!”

“Bullshit!” She was livid, her voice screeching. “You know more than that. Stop playing stupid. I’m not blind, Princess. I’ve seen you galivanting across Hyrule with that monster from the start! Tell my where,” She started puncturing backwards now without waiting for me to talk, “he is.” She kept going like the ticking of a clock.

“I don’t know,” I stared in horror as my fingers reddened with my own blood. I pleaded and begged but it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t stop. But I wasn’t going to tell her that his family lived in the town they were just at. It would be too easy for them. What if Link had already left for the capital? There would be no one in that house except Aryll and her aunt.

“God damn it, Nerissa!” The dark-haired Hylian man shouted as he burst into the room, “You said you weren’t followed!” The door smacked against the wall behind it.

He growled a curse and Nerissa scowled. I almost cried in relief when she paused her stabbing. The aftermath bled onto the table and I couldn’t look away.

“I wasn’t. You know I should at least be able to manage that. What are you on about?” She set down the switchblade and stood from her chair, annoyed that our exchange was interrupted. As an afterthought, she roughly yanked the gag back into place.

“Crow just told me the fucking mercenary was found behind a tree half alive. Of course, you were followed. You had to have been.”

She looked bewildered and spared a glare at me. “He’s a Goron. Probably just drunk himself under the table.”

“Yeah, with a dented skull.” He flung his hands behind his head and paced the floor. “Makes sense. We only kidnapped the high fucking princess of Hyrule, Nerissa,” he shoved a dagger into a scabbard hidden in his boot. “It’s fine,” she said, “Probably just a straggler that saw us.”

The man looked me up and down. I squirmed under his gaze and tried shouting a curse at him through my restraints. “Or it’s her fuckin’ guard dog.”

Laura shook her head, “Impossible. They split at the last village. I saw it.”

“Maybe you should reevaluate. No one else would be able to take down that meat head without us hearing. I’m surprised you of all people could overlook that.” He shouted orders outside the door, hearing muffled voices back.

The man shook his head, stepping from the doorway. “They found another one. Tie her back to the chair. We can’t have her try to leave.” She did, ignoring my muffled cries.

“We’ll search the perimeter then, station someone at every angle in pairs,” Nerissa was interrupted by her counterpart.

“I’m the one making order here. Not you.” He looked at her hard, then they left.

The door was left ajar and I with my bleeding hand. I tried listening in on their conversations to get a gauge on what was happening, but they were too far away at this point. I tried tugging at the ropes again, but my wrist was in too much pain. My hand, as well, for that matter. It was still bleeding, and I could feel it drip onto the left as I attempted to add pressure to the cuts.

There was a weird smell. Smoke?

My heart raced. They were coming back for me, right? Something crashed loudly outside, splintering. Then, I heard it. Flames licking up walls. There was a lot of yelling and then nothing. I yelled out, forgetting the cloth in my mouth and hoped desperately for help.

“Hello?” It came out smudged and I felt frantic, squirming in my chair. I tried anything to make me mobile again. The chair tilted and eventually I toppled over. The smell was more intense now, distinctly smoke. I screamed, praying someone will hear me. Anyone. There was no chance now to get out of this chair.

My throat felt raw and it hurt with each scream.

The door flew open and a pair of boots stepped into my vision almost soundlessly. An arrow was pointed in my general direction but was loosened. Smoke billowed in and I kept yelling. My feet kept kicking.

I stopped my flailing at the movement of the ties being cut. First my wrists and then my ankles. I watched as the ropes at my feet were being pulled. I almost didn’t recognize him. His hair was matted and he moved with a measure of preciseness and purpose. Link’s face scared me. He didn’t look like himself. I yelled his name through the gag. He kept mumbling and finally untangled them from my feet. There was a lot of smoke now that came into the room and the sound of fire was outside the door. Link looked at the wall behind us and went to it, tugging on the boards harshly. I tried to come to my feet and gasped at the added pressure on my injured hand. My knees didn’t feel normal either. He pulled the boards off the open window and tossed them to the side.

Link came back to me and untied the gag. “Can you walk?”

My legs were shaking, and I had to grab onto him in case they gave out. Either he got the message or I took too long to answer, because he held onto me and carefully picked me up. We went threw the window and immediately in the forest. He kept looking back every now and again. Link took long strides. Anything to get as far as we could from that house or what was left of it. He looked at me occasionally, taking small assessments and his eyes reminded me of blue fire. Link was guarded and it was hard to read him, not that it was easy before – but now it was somehow different. Blood was soaked into his shirt and he gripped me as if I’d slip through his fingers.

Eventually, he seemed to be comfortable putting me down. There was a large rock he sat me on and knealt in front of me, giving me a hard look. Link was angry. He studied my face and his brows creased in concentration. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I felt a deep sense of anguish hit me. Tears welled up in my eyes and I cradled my hand in my coat. The bruises marred my skin in more places than I could see. Because if I couldn’t see them, I could feel them and I felt broken. I felt utterly and truly broken.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Then another time. He went to apologize once more, but I interrupted by saying his name. He looked at me in shock at the sound of my voice. It sounded like I went through Hell and back. Link looked worried; his eyes softer than what I had seen at the house. As if finally out of energy, his forehead touched my knees and he leaned forward into me. The tenseness in his body slipped away.

“I thought I lost you,” Link spoke.

The bow and quiver came into view. I brought a hand to his blond locks. He became rigid to the touch for a moment but eased as I combed through his hair. Despite my aching body, I felt suddenly at peace. The fear and anxiety of but an hour earlier dissipated slowly. Link was warm and familiar.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly, echoing his earlier sentiments. His eyes met mine. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was apologizing for. Everything from leaving without telling him to simply dragging him from his place in the castle filled me with regret.

“I left you,” he was touching my side of my calf now with a hand. Even in the state I was in, his touch sent a light flush to my cheeks. “I,” Link faltered, seeming to search for words, “I thought that you’d be okay if I left you for a little bit. I went to grab some things and see if you’d understand.” He looked frantic as he thought it through. The hand on my leg tightened its grip. “It didn’t matter how far I ran to catch up. You weren’t there.”

He shook his head and let out a shaky breath.

“…but I’m here now,” I voiced. A faint ghost of a smile crossed his face and he only nodded, then drew his eyes to my right hand. He held his own out, gesturing me to release it from my side. I swallowed and gingerly put it in his hand. As he took it, he watched my pained reaction at the movement. The cuts had stopped bleeding, but it was an ugly sight. My wrist was blue and bruising up. His face was hard. “Who did this?”

“The woman from the stable.” The semblance of a sob bubbled in my throat. Looking back at it made the cuts more sore as if they were still fresh. “She wanted me to… to talk about you.”

Link’s brow furrowed, “About me? They were Yiga weren’t they?”

Were? I frowned, “She didn’t seem to be. I think she was hired.”

“Mercenary,” he mumbled, annoyed. Link seemed to want to ask more, but relented by noticing the tears in my eyes. Instead, he dropped my hand in my lap for a moment and shuffled over to behind the rock. Our bag was there. Apparently, this stop wasn’t as coincidental as I thought it was.

He came back with white bandages. “I think your wrist is broken. Did she do that too?”

I shrugged, “Probably when she threw me off the horse.”

His brows creased. “She threw you off a-!” Link was yelling but stopped himself and closed his eyes. He took a moment to collect himself, “Okay! We’ll have to see someone for that.”

I tilted my head to the side as he started wrapping a bandage around my index finger. The cuts bled slightly at the added pressure. A realization hit me, “Wait, you’re not taking me back to the castle?”

He looked up, confused. “Do you want to go back to the castle?”

“No. I just. I thought that-” One of my shoulders shrugged and hope caught aflame in my chest.

“If you want to we can. It might be safer,” he said, paying my attention to the bandages.

“Safer?” I would think it would be the safest. Link sighed as he secured the finger and examined the nest, “I don’t suppose that they’ll let me be your personal guard anymore if we went back. I think that you’d be safest with me.”

A smile played on my lips, “Is that an ego, I hear?”

He scoffed, “No, I’m just saying I’ve never lost in a dual and I’m not planning on starting that streak anytime soon. Plus, it’s not like we’re heading to any rebel territory.”

“Well, I was going to Gerudo Town,” I said and his eyes darted to mine. “Do you really want to go there?” His fingers stopped rolling the bandages.

I shrugged, “If I’m going to be queen one day, I want to understand different cultures. Father has a difficult enough time talking to the Gerudo. It seems like a good opportunity to learn.”

“You know they don’t let men inside the city walls, right?”

“Oh, yes, that was a big motivator actually.”

He grew quiet for a moment and ran a hand through his hair.

“I want you to know that I do want to be here. With you and following you and being here with you,” Link paused to read my expression. My heart felt like it stopped and my lips clumsily communicated that, “What about… what about what you said to-”

He looked down at our hands and shook his head, “I-I don’t know! I was tired of the questions, I guess.”

“Listen,” he breathed in deeply, “I don’t know what I think of you, Zelda!”

My brow creased and I went to voice my question, but he continued with exasperation in his words. “When I first saw you it was in a portrait when I was 15. It was at the castle right after I enlisted. You weren’t smiling or anything so my first thought was, ‘Wow she looks stuck up.’ And then before we deployed, the King did his speech during a military parade and you were there. I had never seen you in person until then. You looked calm and even and you didn’t look as stuck up as in the portrait.

“Then during my knighting, you looked just every bit of a princess. Everything everyone said about you was in front of me. I didn’t believe them and, goddesses, I hoped you didn’t see right through me in that moment. I thought you were holy. Like you had just stopped by from heaven and for some reason decided to give me the time of day.” He took a breath, his eyes flickering to mine for a moment and his cheeks reddened in embarrassment. “And two years ago after when I was promoted, I didn’t know what to expect. A part of me told me to turn down the offer. But when I met you and you smiled at me. And when you tried to get me to laugh or when you tried scaring me. When you laughed at your own jokes instead and when you looked disappointed at my lack of fear… everything I had ever thought of you was turned upside down again.”

Link’s hand gripped my own just enough that I noticed. “The night that we first stepped into Castle Town and you stopped to see everything,” he smiled, “It was like seeing that town for the first time all over again. It was when I knew I had made the right choice not only with joining you but with this whole personal guard thing. Even if I don’t know, you make me want to know. I want to keep seeing the world through your eyes, so wherever you decide to go I’ll come with you.”

He focused his eyes on me again and I felt my heart beating fast at his closeness. Link wanted to be with me. “So,” I started, my face feeling redder by the second, “So, you’re not doing it for the money?”

“Zel,” he laughed lightly, “I haven’t seen one rupee since the day I enlisted. The majority goes straight to my aunt and sister. No, I’m not doing this for the money.”

“I’m not a job to you?”

“If you were, I wouldn’t have let you out of your room that first night.”

I smiled widely and he smiled back.

“Gerudo Town, right?” He asked, starting again at my injuries. I nodded, feeling happier than I’ve been in a long time.

[ageless-aislynn]

Title: “Partners In...Other Things” Author:  @ageless-aislynn​ Characters/fandom: Caitlin Snow/Harrison Wells|Eobard Thawne (ReverseFrost), The Flash Summary:  Caitlin and Eobard tackle an unexpected situation. Follows “By Any Other” and “Proper Motivation,” the third part of the Partners In Crime series. Rating:  PG-13 Length:  2,377 Spoilers/warnings: None Disclaimer: Definitely not mine but I do enjoy borrowing them just for a bit! ;) A/N: This was originally meant for the 2018 Snowells Week but it just didn't seem to fit, once all was said and done. I got most of it written at that time, though, and when I came across it again the other day, suddenly my muse wanted to finish it. *spreads hands* So, here we have it, lol! ;) If you read, I hope you enjoy! ♥

Eobard leaned over the latest project on his lab table, hearing the click of Caitlin's heels long before she appeared. The sound was familiar and reassuring, which was more than a little disconcerting.

Now, very carefully, with the utmost precision... he thought, threading a hair-thin wire through a tiny ring.

"I think I'm pregnant," Caitlin announced from the doorway.

It was a credit to his extremely steady hands that the involuntary flinch in his shoulders didn't translate into a mile-wide smoking crater rippling through several multiverses with their charred corpses in the center.

"Maybe next time wait until I'm not building a quantum bomb to tell me something like that," he said, sealing the device securely away before looking at her.

Her expression was a mix of annoyance and abject terror but, to her credit, she was holding back the cold. Even the roots of her hair remained brown, without even a flicker of icy white.

"Now," he said, "let's try that again. Why do you think you're pregnant?"

"I missed my period and we have a lot of sex that we're not always careful about."

He arched an eyebrow. "Well, that could do it, true. But you've had irregular periods before."

She gave him a sharp look.

"What?" he said, spreading his hands. "I'm observant, I notice these sorts of things. So is there something more than that? Have you taken a pregnancy test?"

"Not yet."

Her hair was still blowing when he blurred back into the room, a small box in hand.

"Here you go," he said graciously, offering it to her.

"Do you just keep these laying around?" she scoffed.

"I hadn't shoplifted anything in three days. I was beginning to lose my supervillain street cred," he said in a similar tone, shaking the box gently at her.

"You probably left money on the counter," she retorted sullenly but snatched the box from him and marched away.

He followed, neither confirming nor denying, but inwardly he wondered if his supervillain street cred was irrevocably damaged in the public's eyes or just in hers.

"I don't need help with this," she said, shutting the bathroom door in his face.

"Never meant to suggest you did," he murmured and retreated to the kitchen to make coffee. When in doubt, placate Killer Frost with coffee, he thought then his hand paused in mid-air. Wait, if she really is pregnant, she shouldn't have caffeine.

In the end, he went with decaf just to be safe.

She was gone for so long, he thought she was waiting out the results without him but eventually she strode through the doorway and mutely sat at the table. He put her coffee in front of her and she took a sip, then grimaced and shot him one of her patented icy expressions.

A kitchen drone approached with a speculative whir?, expecting her to make her opinion on decaf known with a toss of the mug against the wall. Instead, she continued to drink, one hand reaching down to idly pet the top of the drone's domed head. The whir became a purr that he had never programmed in.

He joined her at the table and, as he set his own mug down, she snatched it up and took a drink from it, then arched a brow at him.

"Just easier to make them the same," he said with a shrug. "But now you've got lipstick on my second favorite mug."

The white mug had a black checkered flag logo that read "Now Entering The Speed Zone." Zone had been crossed out in red and Force was written off to the side. A pale coral stain was barely visible on the rim.

"It's your color," she said and hid the ghost of a smile behind her own pale blue mug as she drank.

They sat there silently until a timer chimed from the distance. Caitlin's mug clattered loudly against the table top.

Eobard resisted the urge to superspeed into the bathroom. "Shall we?" he said very politely and let her go ahead of him. She slowed the closer they got to the bathroom doorway until he thought he was going to have to push her the rest of the way in.

"Okay," she said with a heavy explosion of breath, picking up the stick from the sink. "It says... Um, what does that say?"

He squinted over her shoulder. "I believe the official term is 'a little bit pregnant,' isn't it?"

"It's inconclusive?" she said, flinging the test away, her tone growing shriller. "Inconclusive? I--"

White appeared at the roots of her hair and the ambient temperature of the room dropped.

"Cait," he warned.

"You've got something to stop me," she said, grabbing his arm. "You've got to have made some sort of weapon to stop me from icing out."

"Caitlin," he said and it was a different warning in his voice.

"I know you, Eobard. I'm too dangerous for you not to have made something to stop me!"

Her fingers bit into his arm, cold but not yet enough to do damage either to himself or to her maybe, maybe not unborn.

"You can stop yourself," he said firmly.

"Eobard!"

He leaned down into her face and said in a tone every bit as cold as hers, "And if I had a weapon, what do you think it would do to a baby?"

That made her panic slam to a stop. The cold receded from her hands and the roots of her hair returned to their usual brown.

"Now," he said, lightening his tone. "Let's settle this in the lab. You can certainly run a simple pregnancy test yourself, can't you?"

She nodded but, once she was standing there with the syringe in her hand, she balked. "You know, this is probably just a false alarm. Like you said, I've been irregular before. If I just give it a few more days..."

He gave her a look.

"All right," she muttered.

"All right," he echoed calmly.

***

"Take me for a run," Caitlin said as she completed the test and disposed of the syringe.

Eobard looked back and forth from her to the machine whirling away behind her.

"The results won't take long--" he started to say but then saw the gleam of silver in her eyes and changed tactics. "Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere not here. Away. I don't care. Just run."

He picked her up, cradling her to his chest, and sped off. He kept far below his limit, again not certain of what the effect of high speed could be if she was pregnant, and made an educated guess as to what location might suit her current need.

So they ended up three states over and on the top of a high-rise owned by one of his many shell companies. He'd picked this one because it had a particularly nice view of the sunset over the cityscape.

When he put her down, she staggered away a few steps, gulping breath like she'd been underwater too long.

"I can't do this," she said, holding up a hand as if to either ward him off or to lean against his chest and she hadn't yet decided which. "I can't, I won't make my child feel like my mother made me feel. And I don't want them to grow up without a dad like I did."

That stung unexpectedly, as if she'd hurled an icicle deep into his chest. "Whatever you might think of my parenting skills," he said tightly, "I don't have any doubt in yours. I think you'll be a great mom."

She was so in her own head at the moment, she didn't even register the insult she'd delivered.

"I don't have control," she said, staring blindly into the sunset. Long streaks of color smeared the sky, purple and pink and yellow and blue, but she didn't even see her favorite time of day unfolding in front of her. "You've helped me more than I ever thought you could but... Can I go nine months and not turn even once? What happens later? I'm frazzled from being up several nights in a row and the baby's crying and I go to pick her up and I lose control for one second and..."

The word trailed off with a shuddery breath.

"That's not going to happen," he said.

"You can't be sure about that," she said angrily, scrubbing at her face with the heel of her hand, trying to hold back tears. Despite her best effort, ice glittered on her cheeks. "Being a single mom is hard enough without having to be terrified you're going to kill your child with a careless touch!"

This time, he wasn't letting that go unchallenged. "What a shame that your child doesn't have a father who's standing right here to help you, isn't it? Are you planning on moving out immediately or do I at least get to spend a few hours with the baby? Do I get visitations or am I not even good enough for that much?"

She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. "What? No, I didn't mean it like that. I meant... Look, I know your endgame has always been to get back to your own time. This thing with us... It's always been temporary."

His mouth opened then snapped shut. How could she know him so well in some ways and not know him at all? Before he could decide how to respond to that -- break the illusion and tell her the truth or let her keep on thinking what she obviously did -- she'd gone on.

"Whether it's now or years from now, you're going to find a way to go back. What's going to happen then? Are you going to just look us up to see how things turned out for us? Or will you find a way to pull this child from their timeline, take them back with you to yours?" Her bottom lip quivered but she determinedly narrowed her eyes. "Because if you're planning on taking my daughter or son away from me, I promise you, you will have the fight of your life on your hands."

He pursed his lips, exhaling noisily as he struggled to let go of the anger of his pricked ego in the face of her barely concealed fear. "Caitlin," he said flatly and let his tone convey the entire argument.

Emotions washed over her face and, for a moment, she looked more like her previous self than she had in a long while. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "You didn't deserve that."

She rubbed her face again. "It's just I know how much you love your home."

"Maybe I've come to love... a new home," he murmured, his words skidding out at the last possible moment. Cowardice is a bad look on you, Eobard, he silently chastised himself.

She studied him for a long while as an entirely different set of emotions chased themselves across her face. In the end, she merely nodded and walked back to him. "Let's go get the results."

***

"Negative for human chorionic gonadotropin," Caitlin read aloud. "I'm not pregnant."

"Are you okay?" Eobard asked as he scanned the results once more.

"Yeah," she said, screwing her mouth about speculatively. "I'm relieved and a little sad, I guess. Is that weird?"

"Completely normal, I think," he assured her.

She chuckled dryly. "It's been a while since anybody's called me that. What about you?"

"Oh," he said airily, "I get called normal all the time whenever I'm enacting a nefarious plan while wearing my evil, yellow super-suit with my eyes glowing red."

She scoffed noisily but her tone was gentle. "How are you feeling about this whole near-miss? Do you... want kids?"

"Sure," he said and his easy answer startled a surprised noise out of her. "Not what you were expecting?"

"Our lifestyle isn't exactly family-friendly," she pointed out. "So, no."

"Hey, if we want to have a family, we can go straight--" as she arched a brow at him, he amended on the fly "--er. We can go straighter. Dial back the chance that some arch nemesis might think it's a good idea to target our kids. We can take 'mischief vacations' whenever we want to pull a job, then the rest of the time be a fun, happening PTA family unit who will launch anybody who threatens us into the nearest sun. We can have whatever life we want to have, Cait. We're not just partners in crime, you know? Nobody limits us but us."

That was as perilously close to a declaration of his true feelings as he'd ever dared. He fought to keep his breathing from growing increasingly more shallow as he waited for her response.

She took that all in for a bit, then shook herself slightly, silver appearing in her eyes. "I'm going to go ice out, blow off some steam."

He nodded slightly, exhaling in a controlled breath and desperately clinging to his patented nonchalant mien. "Have fun," he said with a be my guest roll of one hand. "I've got a quantum bomb to finish."

He started past her in the direction of his lab, but she paused him with a touch to his arm. Her gaze locked onto the emblem on his chest and, with the tip of a finger, she circled it as if it were new to her. For a moment, it seemed like she had so many things she wanted to say that the enormity of it all overwhelmed her into silence.

But then she simplified it. "I love you, too," she said quietly, glancing up at him through her lashes.

"Of course you do. I'm very lovable," he said but his flippant tone wasn't quite up to its usual standards and he'd paused a second too long, a lifetime in speedster terms.

The start of a wry, knowing smile tugged at her mouth and he quickly pulled her into an embrace, burying his face in her hair so she couldn't see his face. He'd already given away enough today, thank you very much. Had to save a few things to surprise her with in the future, after all.

[dr-circuitous]

Harleen

INVOLVED: Harleen Quinzel  TIME FRAME: ― LOCATION: Gotham City, New Jersey SUMMARY: Harleen finds out the Joker has been sent to Arkham.

Smack in the middle of Gotham Square the Grissom highrise rose.  The building was a  monument to Gotham's glorious past, with three hundred luxury apartments on its upper floors and the prestigious Flugelheim Museum in it’s lower half.  The crim dela crim lived here. The crim dela crim and Harleen Frances Quinzel.

Murals to rival the Cistern chapel covered the walls.  Sculptures of both Gods, men and demons lined the entry ways.  It’s  opulence regularly left visitors speechless, yet Harleen strolled out of the lobby, yawning hand covering her mouth, without a backwards glance.  She liked her 500 square foot apartment that overlooked Gotham Park.  If was valuable the way a collector loves a new shiny bobble. The added bonus was it impressed her mother, Sharon, who knew the building's name and understood it to be  where the elite gathered.

Harleen stepped out into the morning air that coated her like in a layer consistent with that of  congealed cream of chicken soup. She pulled this new layer on over the ever present milestone that came with being a resident of Gotham City.  Gotham made it’s residence, hardening there resolve. Love it or hate, you endured and Harleen couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad one.   She smiled fractionally as she stepped forward to yellow cab # 042  settling into the familiar comfort of the seat.  “Morning.” She greeted, falling seamlessly into the  the well practiced rituals of her day.  

Rodney was in his late fifties, with a shock of black hair that was graying around the temples. As Harleen climbed into the back of the cab, his hard face  melted into a smile that almost  pushed away the gloom that always lay over the city. “Morning beautiful.  How’s my favorite fair today?” he asked, with a genuine air of concern. He reached down and picked up a cup of coffee. “Here you go. 4 creams and 4 sugars.” He sighed, handing her the cup, “I swear that's more cocoa than coffee. Doc.”  

“Perfect.” Harleen chirped as she took the cup, she held it in her hands enjoying the scorching heat that radiated through her fingers. “It’s cocoa with a kick.” She offered, beaming “Thank you, Rodney.  You spoil me.” She raised an eyebrow, unconsciously batting her eyelash at the man.  “I have to admit, I have a suspension you bring coffee to all your fairs?” She asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

“Hell no.” Rodney said, sucking his teeth.  “Only the pretty ones. Who tip well.” He said, a faint blush creeping up his neck. He inclined his head and turned back in his seat.  Jamming the car into drive, he hooked once before he  pulled away from the curb.

Rodney's laugh was hollow this morning. Harleen slipped her coffee carefully, tapping the side of the styrofoam with her fingernail.  The driver worked his way in and out of traffic in unusual silence. She lowered her coffee quickly. Gasping, as a pedestrian darted into the street, narrowly being missed the cab. That was the last straw.  A stunt like that would normally send the aging cab driver into a 20 minute tirade. “What’s wrong Rodney?” Harleen asked after a moment, heart still thumping in her chest.  “You don’t seem quite yourself today.”

Rodney glanced back at the rich skinned woman in the rear view mirror.  “Nuthin…” He sighed, then thought about who was in his back seat and changed his responses. “It’s my daughter Gina, she was supposed to start her internship down at city hall today. But after what happened to the major… She’s upset of course. At least Batman got him.  Thank God, that nut bag, the Joker is off the streets.”  

“Harleen’s face went gray.  What are you talking about?” She asked, leaning forward in her seat.

Rodney snorted, “What do you mean?  Doc...  Do you live under a rock?  It’s been all over the news.” He said grabbing the paper and handed it back to Harleen.

“I don’t have a television.  I don’t trust them.”  Harleen said in a hushed distracted tone.  Grabbing the paper and scanning the front page, her mouth moving in a puckered whisper, eyes sliding back and forth.  The Dark Knight.. You would think the self styled “Batman would be old news in Gotham. But no. The vigilante donned the front page of almost every newspaper daily.  And every day the city ate it up. She cringed at the word. Vigilante.  It was the right context but it rolled off her like a curse as she fastened it to Gotham’s caped crusader. There it was in black and white, Mayor Charles Chesterfield and the better part of his staff murdered.  Nevertheless, the vigilante of Gotham was the savoir.   She lowered the paper and stared absently out of the yellow cabs grim stained windshield.  How odd that the truth should taste a lie.  And every trundling face that chance a glance toward the cab, knew it. There was no will to call the GCPD if trouble loomed. But you did it anyway with the hope that the shimmering bat signal would dominate the sky and he would save you. The Mayor, the Police commissioner, the city itself, justified the Bat’s very existence. Who was she to complain? Especially now when he brought her the quarry she’d most wanted. The Joker.  

“I know that look.” The portly cab driver said glancing back at Harleen in the rear view mirror.  “It’s the Bat. Ain’t it?  Hell of a guy. One day-” He spoke in quick, short sentences, the somberness replaced with a sort of hope. “I'm gonna shake his hand.  He saved my brother’s life.” He continued taking one hand from the wheel, he held it up to the sky in allegiance. “He was almost killed by that new freak- What they call him the Rhymer, um, tattle tell-” He hunched his shoulder up, under his ear and gave up. “One of them funny names. You know they all got something nowadays. Penguin, the Joker.. But, hey that makes sense.. The Penguin looks like a fuckin bird,” he chuckled “And the Joker runs around with that white skin and green hair, that’s a joker if I ever seen one. I bet he ain’t laughing now.” The man quipped, laughing husky at his own joke.

Harleen pulled her eyes away from the gloom and focused on the cab driver. She folded the paper back into a neat square,  slipping it back onto the front seat. She raising a questioning eyebrow at the gun sitting next to the man.. Sitting back, she tilted her head like a bird and did what she’d been trained to do. Listen.  “The Riddler.” she offered, not particularly interested in the man’s conversation, at least it had pulled her out of her own rabbit hole.  “I guess it depends… The Riddler likes to tell Riddles.  It fits him as long as you know his MO. Rodney,  the last time you told me this story It was your mother Batman saved.”  She said, the corners of her mouth twitching into a smile.  “You know I could help you with your compulsive lying habit.”

The cabbie's laugh died away as the woman began to speak. His face twisting into an uncomfortable scowl.  “I don’t need no head shrink doctor. The closet I want to get to Arkham is dropping you off at the gate. Besides, I ain’t lying.  You can’t find anyone in Gotham who hasn’t been saved by the Bat. He’s the only thing standing between Gotham and total destruction. - Used to be I didn’t need a tazor to drive a cab. Now, I drive around with a 9 mil on the seat.  I don’t even let my girls go anywhere alone in this town. I’m going to shake his hand one day, Doc.  He’s our savior.”

Harleen’s cheeks burned with shame as Rodney's face grew somber. He was right but, she couldn’t work out if the very existence of Batman only made things worse. One man couldn’t save a city.  And believing he could was only false hope that would eventually lead them all to destruction. But you don’t explain these thoughts to your cab driver.  You let him live on with his false hopes and dreams. She looked up the street and watched as the Hospital styled prison came into the view.  The white walled building dominated the landscape of the Narrows. Yet, the stanch white of its wall didn’t reflect light back down on to the city.  In an odd turn of events, the building did the exact opposite, casting dark ominous shadows instead. A small shiver ran over her whenever she saw the building. She looked back to the cab driver then handed him a neatly folded $20 bill as he pulled up to the main entrance.  “I understand. I'm sorry if I offended you.” She stammered heat poring from her neck.  “Sometimes I speak out of turn.” She lowered her head feeling her cheeks flush. “I’m getting off late tonight.  I can call another cab.”

Rodney dropped his head, shaking it faintly. “Don’t worry about it.  That's what head shrinks do. Keep the fare you can pay me tonight. Just call before you leave. I'll be here. I don’t want some other driver stealing my best fair. Hey doc. Besides, I don’t want you out in these streets with a stranger either.”

Harleen reached over the seat and slipped the twenty into Rodney’s top shirt pocket, squeezing his shoulder.  “Fine, but take the tip anyway.  See ya later.” She said climbing from the back of the cab. She stood awkwardly on the curb and waved at the cab as he drove away. After living in Gotham for the better part of 10 years, he was her only real link to the outside world.  

Harleen dug into the side of her briefcase and pulled out her badge, as she moved into the building.  The low flat heels made barely a whisper over deep cream marble floors as she moved past the security desk. She stepped through the center of the metal detectors. Setting of the normal array beeps, and chirping alarms. “Morning Dr. Quinzel.  We need to check your bag, please.” She continued to move, absently lost in her own thoughts. When Lt. Snow rose and stepped into her path..  Harleen’s came face to face with the man’s chest, startled she shuffled back away from the middle aged man  “Dr. Quinzel, we need to check your bag.”  

Lt. Snow was a solid man, with dimples and a handsome face that worked well with his guard’s uniform. Harleen looked down at her briefcase, then held it out stiffly to the man. “Since when?” She asked quietly, using her other hand to tuck a stray hair behind her ear, “You see me everyday.” “Dr. Qunzel, excuse us. Today we are on high alert.” Snow said in a honey toned voice full new forceful demand.. “You know who’s coming in today.  We have to make sure everything goes smoothly.”

Harleen sucked her lips as understanding taking hold.  “Lieutenant, we have Killer Croc in the basement. Surely, the Joker isn’t that scary.” She said in a cutely dismissive tone.. “Not to mention, the last time I checked,  I wasn’t a member of his gang.”

Lt. Snow  nodded his head, with a sharp tilt, then quickly scanned the contents of Harleen’s bag.  His face seemed to contort as he looked back to her face, eyes turned rock hard and bitterly cold. “I lost five good men the last time the Joker escaped.  I don’t intend on that ever happening again. Have a nice day Dr. Quinzel.” He said bitterly, stepping away from the Psychiatrist.  

Harleen, lowered her arm letting the bag fall back against her side numbly.  Without a word she stepped around the man and resumed her march toward the elevator. This was shaping up to be one hell of a morning.  “Oh, by the way,  Dr. Strange wants to speak with you.” Snow informed her voice echoing in the lobby. She pushed her glasses back up onto her nose. And sighed. “Thank you. Have a nice morning.”  Lt. Snow cleared and raised his voice and repeated himself with an annoying reverence, that irritated her to her toes.  “Dr. Strange wasn’t in a good mood. I wouldn’t keep him waiting.” She jabbed the up arrow and climbed into the polish silver coffin as the door slide opened.  “You can let him know I’ll be right up….” She said, holding her bag in front of her  as the doors closed smoothly,  

A quick stop by her office and Harleen was headed toward Dr. Strange’s office.  Well it was more of a wing. Strange had his own suite of examination rooms. His own separate hospital that happened to reside inside of Arkham. Harleen had placed her lab coat over the calf length black skirt and crisp white button up oxford shit. She smooth both sides of her bun and straightened the pearl at her neck before rapping lightly on the door with the back of her knuckles then pushed it open, as she heard the muffled “enter.” “Dr. Strange you wanted to see me.”

Dr. Hugo Strange’s head remained bowed over his files.  “Dr. QUINZEL.” He said in a voice that croaked with age that wasn’t present in the smooth lines of his face.“I’d like a status report on your research.”

Harleen stepped close to the desk, but made no attempt to seat herself. Instead she shifted uncomfortably on her heels as Strange played his unnecessary game of protocol. She occupied herself by rereading the numerous plaques and diplomas that line his office walls. Harleen watched him out of the corner of her eye as she spoke, refusing to fully acknowledge him until he offered her the same courtesy.  “Promising.”

Dr. Strange looked up from his work, and stared at Harleen. Deeply, considering her.  He rose in eerie  silence and collected books from around his office. Placing each one cover up on the desk. “The Answer,” By Dr. Theodore Lane. A deep dive into the mind of the Riddler.  “The Killing Joke,” by Dr. Anthony Wise What drives the mind of a mass murderer. Once he had laid down, “The complete guide of Monsters” he began to speak.  “Each book one of these books was    written and published by a doctor just like you, Dr. Quinzel.”

Harleen's eyes moved down to meet the rounded, tinted spectacles of Dr. Strange. Behind the mirrors of his lens, one could only guess at his true thoughts and feelings. Harleen forced a count of 20 before she allowed herself to look away.  She was up five second from the last time. A small but meaningful personal victory. When he rose to collect the books from pristine shelves, she watched his back, then scanned each title as they were placed on the desktop. “I have read them all but I fail to understand what you’re implying.”

With the same cold detachment, he had risen with. Dr. Strange moved back to his seat and lowered himself incrementally back down. Waving a stiff arm out over his desk, he picked up where he’d left off continuing in a lecturing tone. “Each one of them had “promising” or “fruitful” findings, Doctor.  Yet, other than lining their own pockets, they offered no change to any of the notable patients here at Arkham. I understand that your Wayne funded grant,  gives you certain privileges here. That said, it’s no secret that I do not believe in your..” he sucked his tongue as if removing something distasteful, “Work. Most of the patients here at Arkham, under my care, have very unique circumstances.  They are no longer,” he chose his words cautiously, “Completely human. Thus this empathy you want desperately to find simply doesn’t exist.  No more than you can find it in a snake. I think it’s time for you to end this little experiment of yours Ms. QUINZEL. End it before you get hurt. End it and do what all these men and women have done. Write your little book about your deals with my menagerie of fiends and leave the actual science of the mind to me. ”

Harleen listened eyes rising steadily to meet the bespectacled man. Fear of his alieness, swallowed by a mounting angry, some kind of beast that wanted to claw its way from her body.   “Humans are responsible for the mass genocide of more creatures everyday, then any one in this hospital can boost. Less than human? We seem to hold that word ‘human’ up as if it means something other than a thinly valid mask of humanity to allow ourself to sleep at night.” Harleen’s jaw clenched. “They are my patients just as they are your Dr. Strange. They are people who have suffered horrific traumas. Some have received certain powers that doesn’t mean they have lost that which makes them human.” She argued. “On the contrary, the very thing makes them more like animals to you, is exactly why we must find the empathy in them. Because as you well know, even animals have empathy for one another. It is our obligation to remind them what it means to be a part of our society and in doing so,help them regain their sanity.  Now, I have patient to see Dr. Strange.  Have a good day.” She turned on her heels and moved to leave the office.

Dr. Strange cleared his throat as he sat back in his chair.  “Dr. Quinzel, one last thing. The joker will be under my personal supervision for the next three months. I think it’s best if he’s handled by myself for the time being. Please close the door on your way out.”  

Harleen stiffened in places, nostrils flaring for a moment. Damn! body moving as if through honey as she willed her legs back to motion and exited Dr. Strange’s office without a backward glance.  This was going to harder than necessary. 

[skyswritingblog]

From Ice (Hanzo x Reader) : Prologue

This is written for a female reader, sorry :(

-

“There’s an okami in the Himalayas.” Hanzo pretended what he’d said wasn’t moderately alarming and crossed his arms, leaning back on the wall. The metal of his brothers gear shifted and clicked when he tensed, and gave a low hiss as he forced them to relax. “An… Okami?” Genji’s voice was quieter than before. “Yes.” The eldest nodded and pressed off the wall, turning to face his brother completely, “If the rumors are true, that is. They’re all very inline with the secret knowledge of our kind, so I find them hard to doubt.” Genji brought a hand up to rub his face, a habit he’d never shaken, and nodded. “Why are you telling me this?” He lifted his head to meet Hanzo’s eyes and copied his previous posture, arms crossing tightly over his chest. Hanzo took a moment to prepare himself. “I wish to extend an invite to the team.”

-

“An…Okami?” “Like Genji and I… but their spirit manifests in a wolf form and not a dragon.” Hanzo explained, watching the puzzled expression clear from the… monkey’s face. “I see… And you wish to recruit this… Okami?” Winston rested back in his chair, regarding the shimada with a strange look. “If you will allow it. I think their powers will benefit our team.” He paused, and decided it was worth adding, “Plus, it will keep them from making trouble in the local villages.” It seemed the scientist had expected an ulterior motive to Hanzo’s request, and this excuse had satisfied him. He tried not to be too offended. “Very well, I see no reason not to try.” Winston spun in his tire chair to face his moniters, rapidly pressing the strangely marked keys, “Will Genji be accompanying you?” “No.” Winston had no comment to share out loud, and Hanzo couldn’t see his expression from where he stood. “I’ve told Torbjörn to pack a bag of necessary supplies for you, meet him in the hangar.” The scientist continued to type as Hanzo left.

-

Admittedly, Hanzo was better st climbing walls than climbing mountains. The snow and ice tripped him up frequently, and the stone was smooth from centuries of runoff water. At least he was used to breathing at high altitudes. Three days had been spent navigating the mysterious mountain range and its superstitious nearby villages. From what he’d been able to translate, the Okami had been here. None had seen their face, only heard the howls and brief glimpses on the horizon of an outline. The villagers believed it to be a protective spirit. The eery wails he’d experienced himself the night before, at his most recent stop, confirmed it most definitely was alive. Hanzo heaved himself up and over the ledge he’d. been fighting his way up with a grunt. His fingers were numb, and his dragons stirred uncomfortably at the complete dampening of his flame. This journey couldn’t be over fast enough. I stood for a moment, staring out over the vast expanse of smooth valley ahead. From here it looked flat, but he was certain it would be a bumpy walk from here on out. A mournful cry split through the thin air and rattled Hanzo’s bones. His dragons perked up beneath his skin, and electricity trickled down his arm. His arrow fingers itched, and the bow felt heavy on his back. He clenched his fists, this was not a situation that allowed running in arrows flying. This Okami lived in the mountains, for how long he did not know, and would not take kindly to a side wound. The howl sounded again, and he began to move. It seemed to bounce off of every rock outcropping, hitting him from false directions and sending him reeling. He paused to listen. The sound bounced in from his right. He fired an arrow in the same direction and watched it fly off, leading the way. Simple geometry. Finally he saw a spotting of gray, the shape was soft and slumped. Not a rock. They were wounded. His battle stance crumpled and he sprinted forward. Bending a knee at the furred figures side he reach for their shoulder and pulled to turn it over. Their was a sudden flurry of white. Frost bit at his face and snow filled his vision. He might as well have been blind. Out of the white came a blunt pain in his shoulder, a concentrated pain in his neck and then everything went black.

-

When he woke, he was warm. The flickering firelight danced on a cave ceiling above him. He turned in the pile of furs and grunted, his shoulder was one giant bruise. When he swung his legs to the side of the bed, he nearly shouted at the cold of the floor. It was a wide, circular stone room. A fire had been started at the far wall, and there was another pile of furs next to it, rumpled. His back felt barren without the bows familiar weight. He checked the pile of clothing and random utilities by the bed, but there was no sign of his weapon. His dragons jerked and pressed against the back of his arm. He slid the closest threatening object quietly into his palm, and spun. The blunt end of an ornate carved flute met with her throat. A small puff of air slipped through her lips at the contact, but she held him in her level (e/c) gaze. He almost choked. Her eyes were one thing, but all together she was beautiful. A thick (h/c) wolf pelt hung over her shoulders and clasped over her chest, the wolfs face resting over her head, yellow eyes gleaming back at him. A thin smile split over her otherwise blank expression, and she gently pushed the flute away. “Interesting choice of weapon.” She watched him for a moment, eyes following the movement as he dropped his arm back to his side. Wordlessly she glided around him, slipping over the stone floor like a ghost, and gracefully kneeling with liquid movements on the fur pile by the fire. “Your bow is under the bed,” she barely turned her head to speak, eyes trained still on the fire, “Dragon.” He froze, halfway reaching for the weapon. “You know what I am then,” her eyes narrowed back at him, one thin slitted iris glaring, “Wolf.” In a movement quick as lightning, his bow was pointed at her, arrow slotted and aimed at her throat. He noticed a throwing knife slot into the wall just over his shoulder. The skin of his ear stung, and he realized he was bleeding. “Why were you following me?” She crouched, and Hanzo saw a glowing patch under the clothing on her left side. “I mean you no harm. I heard rumors of you’re presence,” Hanzo lowered the bow, his dragons protesting, “and I’m here to present an offer.” The Okami wavered in her hostile position, her eyes widening in curiosity. “Of what kind?” “Recruitment.” “I’m listening.” He tried to hide his surprise, his kind normally looked down upon serving anyone other than their families. “Overwatch.”

[allofthisnonsenseplease]

NSFW Reaper76 roleswap featuring Strike Commander Gabe and Spectre: 76 (and some mild body horror)

As always, firesonic152, I BLAME YOU.

<3

Gabriel stood at the window of his office, staring at the statue cluttering up the grounds of his organization and trying to keep his mind on the present. The statue was three times the height of a person, and meant to be an everyman, a stand-in for all the soldiers in Overwatch. The damned thing looked suspiciously like Jack, though, and Gabriel wondered just who had thought it would be a good idea to create a giant statue bearing the likeness of the leader of a covert ops team. Then again, maybe they hadn't even considered that. Maybe the artist had simply picked through old archives for what little news footage and photos were available from the front lines of the Omnic Crisis. Be hard not to want to capture Jack as he had been back then—all confidence and focused ferocity, looking like an avenging angel descended to save mankind. He still looked like an angel, sometimes, just not the type that most artists liked to depict.

The past had wormed its way into his thoughts. Not surprising, since the ramifications of the bombing in Zurich were still making themselves felt. He glanced back over his shoulder at the video screen open on his desk. It was frozen on an image of Jack running through a training simulation, teeth bared in a death's head snarl, eyes glowing ice blue around their pinpoint pupils, the substance of his body breaking up to flare out behind him like misty wings....

Two seconds further into the recording and three extra eyes would open, splitting the ghostly pale flesh of his forehead and cheek to swivel wildly in search of targets.

The type of angel that had needed to use 'Fear not' as the standard, friendly greeting.

Staring at him, Gabriel subconsciously reached to touch his own face. His scars were all far older than the two slashes that disrupted the normal symmetry of Jack's features. The blast two years ago hadn't caught Gabriel, after all. While Jack had been leading a picked team against the terrorists that had infiltrated Overwatch, Gabriel had been getting the assembled diplomats and politicians to safety. The whole situation could have ended a lot worse if they hadn't had warning. Funny thing about someone like Jack leading Blackwatch: having that innate ability to bring out the best in others had saved lives. One of the infiltrators had defected, spilled the whole plot to Jack with just enough time to manage a quiet evac and stage an assault against the agents occupying the building. If Jack hadn't been head of Blackwatch, if he'd accepted the position of Strike Commander when it had been offered to him instead of turning it down in Gabriel's favor...well. The possibility didn't bear thinking about.

Bad enough that Overwatch's ranks had been infiltrated and corrupted to such a degree. That was being handled, the rot pulled out and now—Gabriel hoped—mostly eradicated.

Bad enough what had happened to Jack.

Gabriel still woke shouting from nightmares of his brief glimpse of Jack after they'd pulled him from the rubble. He remembered Jack's hand, white as cracked ice, hanging limply off the stretcher. The golden engagement band gleamed accusingly on his finger, a promise never fulfilled. He remembered Jack's face, a misshapen mask of blood, and his eyes—oh, God, his eyes!—left open though they were still and sightless. In his nightmares, he couldn't reach Jack's side. The swarm of medics carried him off before Gabriel could grab his hand, feel the fading warmth of his body. Sometimes in his nightmares, Jack sat up and screamed, and the world exploded in a blizzard of ash.

Jack had died that day. Gabriel had seen death, touched it, far too many times to mistake it despite the denial screaming in his head. Jack had died, and the realization had hurt so bad that Gabriel hadn't fully understood why his own heart kept beating.

If it weren't for Angela, Jack would be three feet under, rotting in a casket somewhere in Indiana. Instead, she'd brought him back. She'd been experimenting with nanotechnology, and Jack, by force of necessity, became human test subject number one.

Angela's nanites hadn't known quite what to make of him, but they'd made something.

Two years later, they were still discovering new aspects of Jack's singular existence, some good, some not so good. There were days when Jack's soldier's stoicism and Gabriel's memories of the pain of losing him were all that kept them from breaking down and calling it a curse. Fact was, though, Jack was alive, and there were days enough when that was plenty for them to be thankful for.

Gabriel had just turned back to the window when a percussive shudder rolled through the building. It had felt for all the world like a tremor, a minor earthquake not strong enough to do any damage. There had been something else, though, a sound almost below the threshold of hearing that had sounded disturbingly like an explosion.

Although he might not see as much action in the field as he used to, his shotguns were never out of reach. Gabriel had one in hand and one holstered as he called up security feeds from across the base.

“Athena, what the hell was that?”

“Controlled explosion in the training simulator. I believe Commander Morrison lost his temper.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, holstering his shotgun. The phone and com lines were lighting up as others tried to figure out what had happened.

“Let everyone know it was a false alarm, and get a maintenance team down there if he's broken anything important.” Two of the video feeds were nothing but static. The rest were little better—just swirls of dust and darkness. “Jesus, Jack. You couldn't find something better to do with your afternoon? Had to go back and destroy the training room?”

“Pardon the correction, Strike Commander, but Commander Morrison did not return to the training room, as he had not yet left.”

“He what?” Gabriel's attention jumped to the still-paused feed from earlier. The timestamp put the recording at shortly past six in the morning. “It's almost four! What the hell has he been doing in there?”

“Commander Morrison has made use of nearly every simulated combat situation available. He has ignored repeated prompts to exit the training room in order to rest and eat.”

“That's our Jack,” Gabriel muttered. “What set him off? Can you pull up the feed from the sim he was just running?”

“Certainly, Strike Commander.”

A new window appeared on the desk, showing Jack already looking haggard as the emptiness of the training room suddenly filled with hard light constructs of walls and doors, behind which lurked enemy combatants. He raced through the halls, half-dissolved into a cloud of mist, unnatural eyes blazing blue on every patch of exposed skin, his movements betraying a growing desperation and fury. Athena continued on as Gabriel watched.

“Despite being informed that this particular simulation is intended for a small team of participants, he attempted it on his own at the highest difficulty setting. He did very well. Eighty percent of the enemies were eliminated, and sixty percent of the bombs were located and deactivated before the time limit was reached.”

“I don't remember this sim,” Gabriel breathed, eyes glued to Jack as his pallid skin lost cohesion, began glitching and dissolving away into misty clouds of nanites. Jack's pulse was electric blue impulses streaking through his veins. His fingers were gnarled, clawed things clamped around his pulse rifle. His breath came out in white puffs that wreathed his head, and his jaw opened far too wide as he shouted.

He must have reached the time limit. Gabriel's heart seized as he saw a violent flash of orange and yellow flame as part of the building exploded in front of Jack. He slammed his hands down to either side of the screen, momentarily forgetting that he was only watching a recorded simulation. In the video, Jack threw his head back, screaming in rage and defiance, and the self-control holding him together shattered, blowing him apart into his component nanites. The feed shivered and froze. Jack was nothing but visual snow.

“It is the newest simulation in the database,” Athena calmly informed him, “modeled after the attack in Zurich.”

“No fucking wonder he blew up! Don't let him run this sim again unless I tell you different, got it?”

“Understood, Strike Commander.”

“He still down there?” he demanded, on his way out the door.

“No, sir. He has just reached your quarters.”

That far already? Gabriel kept forgetting how fast Jack could move now, how sometimes he didn't even seem to need to cross a physical distance to get from one place to another. Still, it was a relief. His heart was racing too fast as he strode down the hall. Even knowing that Jack ought to be able to pull himself back together, he still needed to see him, touch him, reassure himself that Jack was all right. It had been almost a year since he had seen him go so violently to pieces, and Gabriel wasn't optimistic enough to think that being dumped back into the firefight that had killed him was something Jack could simply shrug off.

His com crackled to life even as he reached for it.

“Gabe. I need you.” Jack's voice had always been rough, but the explosion and his subsequent resurrection had only worsened it. There wasn't anything in the world Gabriel would rather have heard just then.

“Already on my way, Jackie.”

It wasn't the first time he had heard that tone in Jack's voice, so Gabriel knew more or less what to expect when he made it to his quarters. He walked right through into the bathroom, and sure enough, there was Jack in the shower, using the smallest available enclosed space to try to help hold himself together with limited success.

The tub itself was filled with a roiling cloud of nanites that constantly spilled over the side, as if he was standing in a bucket of dry ice. Flickers of movement in the clouds called for Gabriel's attention, quick suggestions of something solid but amorphous, inhuman. Jack's body flickered, naked abdomen halfway gone into the agitated swarm below. He could normally take his clothes along with him when he disassembled, but that only worked if he was in a stable enough frame of mind to break them down as well. That was obviously not the case this time. His chest was bare, mottled white and gray, alive with blue, staring eyes that tracked Gabriel's movements. His arms were almost solid at the shoulders, but wisps of nanites bled off them lower down, and his fingers dripped like melting icicles. Blue sparks fizzed along his veins like lightning strikes. His face was as close to normal as he'd been able to manage: weathered as an icy winter crag, bisected by a diagonal scar running cheek to forehead, and marred by another that slashed across his lips. He looked emaciated, nearly mummified, and the permanent sunken shadows around his eyes had darkened to the look of bruises. His blind eyes were too blue, the only color left to him, and always faintly luminescent.

“You overdid it,” Gabe said by way of greeting. He tempered his words by reaching out to cup Jack's cheek.

With a sigh, Jack leaned into the contact. A third eye split open his forehead beneath the end of the scar, and two more peeked out of his cheek.

“I need to know how much I'm capable of.” He frowned, and the eyes on his face reluctantly closed. A large one opened up on his chest as if to replace them.

“So you blew up the training room?”

“Accident.”

His eyes—his real eyes—remained closed as he reached up and wrapped his trembling hands around Gabriel's arm. The contact helped ground him as he forced his will upon the nanites, closing the staring eyes one by one so that they were nothing more than scars, solidifying his arms and reshaping the bone claws of his hands into blunt-tipped human fingers, forming stomach and sides, hips, pelvis, thighs, calves out of the swirl of nanites.

He was breathing hard by that point, sweating and gritting his teeth against whimpers of pain. The nanites required sustenance to run, same as living things, and Jack had pushed them for too long without recharging. They were feeding off of him now, and at this stage it was too late for Jack to simply binge on sugar and protein bars to get the quick energy the nanites needed. They were going to take it, and if they drained him dry and wound up deactivating in the process, then so be it.

The only alternative was to take the energy they needed from someone else.

“It's all right, Jackie.” Gabriel leaned in to press their foreheads together and whisper the words. “Just breathe. I've got you.”

He stretched to kiss Jack's forehead, peeking from beneath his lashes to see another of those eyes open up to watch. Ignoring it, he stepped into the tub to stand closer as he stroked Jack's hair and peppered his face with kisses. Jack's skin buzzed faintly beneath his lips, a testament to how unstable he was. His temperature was low, and Gabriel shivered as he felt some of his own warmth transfer to Jack.

Heat, energy, life, the soul—whatever it was, Jack was able to feed off of something from other people in order to keep his nanites going. He'd discovered the ability by accident, when one of the surviving spies within Blackwatch had tried to kill him shortly after he had managed to stabilize his body for longer than a few hours at a time. Jack only remembered the incident in bits and pieces, but Gabriel, who had seen the security footage, was pretty damn sure that Jack had sucked the man's soul out of his mouth and devoured it. Until he'd seen that, Gabriel hadn't even been certain that he believed in souls—not in a concrete sort of way, at least. He didn't have any better explanations, however, and when Jack suddenly had memories that weren't his and was able to identify several more sleeper agents within Overwatch, it seemed undeniable that he had consumed some vital and personal core of that bastard's existence.

Most of the discoveries about Jack's peculiar state of being had been made by accident. In time, Jack and Gabriel had, almost naturally, stumbled across a safer way to give him a similar boost.

“Gabe....”

Jack's voice was a needy rumble. It buzzed against Gabriel's tongue as he sucked at a spot on Jack's throat just beneath his chin. Jack's hands slipped around his back, kneading his muscles, nails digging in, growing points.

“Claws, Jack.”

With a grunt of effort, Jack flattened his palms against Gabriel's back. When he moved them again in small, slow circles, his nails had returned to normal. Gabriel nuzzled his throat in appreciation and kissed a line down to his collarbone. He nipped carefully at the skin there, eliciting a pleased groan from Jack.

They had rules that Jack needed to follow when he got like this.

One: no biting or clawing. The scent of blood did strange things to him when his nanites were rebelling.

Two: no kisses on the mouth. Trust was all well and good, but there was no reason to tempt fate.

Three: Jack needed to be in control of his shape before Gabriel's clothes could come off.

Rule three could be tricky.

Gabriel lavished attention on Jack's neck and shoulders, dappling him with love bites that bloomed and faded in mere minutes. He ran his hands down Jack's back, holding him close, tracing the dip of his spine, the contours of muscle, reading the stories written in old scars. The eyes tracked the progress of his touches. He could feel them blinking closed beneath his fingertips. Distracted by kisses and wandering touches, Jack was having trouble sealing them away. Those eyes had been disturbing at first, but Jack was still his Jack, still talked like him, thought like him, loved like him, and Gabriel had found that he didn't mind so much anymore.

Letting his hands wander lower, Gabriel stroked down past the small of Jack's back, reaching to cup the shallow curve of his ass. He dug his fingers in, massaging, teasingly spreading his cheeks. He inched his fingers down further still, moving inwards to dip between his thighs and pinch the sensitive skin there. Jack's right leg was solid, but his left dissipated into a swirl of mist less than a handspan below the top of his thigh. Gabriel paused in his kisses, face pleasantly nestled between Jack's pectorals.

“Not going to have a leg to stand on,” he warned.

He didn't wait for Jack to catch on, just hefted him up and pressed him back against the wall. Kissing and nipping across the broad expanse of Jack's chest, he kneaded the flesh of his thighs, gratified to feel the left gaining substance beneath his fingers.

“That's it, Jackie. You're doing good.”

Rolling his hips, he ground against Jack, tongue pressed flat to his chest to catch the vibration of his moan. Again and again, he rocked forward, building up a languorous rhythm, feeling Jack grow hard against him.

“Do you want me, Jackie?” He murmured the words against Jack's skin, feeling the miracle of his speeding heartbeat beneath his lips.

“Yes...!” Jack groaned the word, tightening his embrace around Gabriel's shoulders, squeezing his thighs around Gabriel's hips.

“Do you need me?” Jack's nipple was pert against his lips, and Gabriel swirled his tongue around it, grinning when Jack twisted his fingers into the thick material of his coat.

“Yesss....”

This time, his answer came out as a hiss, a double-edged sword of desire and practicality. He ducked his head to lick the curve of Gabriel's ear, lips closing around the lobe, the barest hint of teeth testing the limits of his restraint and sending a shudder coursing through Gabriel's body. His hips jerked up sharply, and Jack moaned at the friction. The eyes flared up, opening and closing in a wave over his body. They stayed shut afterward, giving Gabriel hope that Jack had regained control over his body. He was still losing wisps of nanites like the blue smoke of cigarettes from the corners of his mouth, but he felt solid in Gabriel's arms, and warmer than he had only a few minutes ago. Encouraged, Gabriel locked his mouth over Jack's nipple, worrying at it with teeth and tongue until he had Jack growling pleas at him, head thrown back against the wall as he bucked with every thrust of Gabriel's hips.

“Gabe, just—! I need... Please...!”

“Mm.... What do you need, Jackie?”

He trailed barely-there kisses over Jack's skin, and smiled when the scrape of teeth over the top of his stomach made his muscles quiver and clench. He broke up the quick, hard thrusts with smooth rolls of his hips. Jack's cock was straining between their bodies, tip glistening with precum.

“If you could just fuck me, that would be great!” Jack rode the rise and fall of Gabriel's thrusts with a moan of pleasure dancing on the edge of pain. His head knocked back against the shower wall before he leaned forward and pressed his cheek to Gabriel's hair. “Want you so bad.... It hurts.”

Gabriel wasn't sure if that last had been a plea for help or not. Freshly reminded that it was painful for Jack to maintain his body when he had expended too much energy, he let Jack down and started to turn to reach for the lube he kept in the shower for precisely this reason.

Jack was quicker. He crowded Gabriel against the back wall, forcing his head back to kiss the underside of his chin, his neck and throat. He yanked at Gabriel's collar, and there was a tearing sound as the claws came out and he ripped it open.

“Hey! Maybe you can get away with wearing that ugly-ass jacket, but they actually expect me to dress nice!”

The sound of Jack's chuckle, deep and rough and edged with hunger, went straight to Gabriel's cock. So did his hand a moment later, sans the claws. He cupped Gabriel through the fabric of his pants, stroking with the very tips of his fingers.

“Sorry for the rush, Commander Reyes. Allow me to make it up to you?”

He didn't wait for a response, just dropped to his knees. He had Gabriel's belt open and his pants and boxers down in seconds, and his eager touch set off shivers of pleasure. He stroked once, twice, and then his tongue was against Gabriel's head, a teasing point of pressure before his lips parted, stretching to take him in.

It was Gabriel's turn to moan, to grind the back of his skull against the wall as heat pooled low in his stomach and sparked heady cravings for more. He grasped at Jack's hair, feeling the short, fine strands slip maddeningly through his fingers. Jack worked at his cock, coaxing moans from him, stirring him up and then pulling back to leave him wanting. He was being far too much of a tease for someone who had been demanding to be fucked only a minute or two before. Gabriel ran his hands once more over Jack's hair, curled his fingers around the back of his head, and held him steady. He felt Jack readying for what was coming, loosening his jaw and pressing his tongue down flat, perfectly happy to let Gabriel begin rolling his hips forward to set the pace himself. Jack let Gabriel thrust into his mouth, making quiet, pleased noises. His cock quivered against the pallid skin of his stomach, begging for attention, but his hands were occupied around the base of Gabriel's shaft and at his balls.

The pleasure mounted, growing nearer, sharper, until Gabriel moaned with the weight of it. He pulled free of Jack's mouth, holding him back despite an inarticulate groan of protest, and groped for the bottle of lube on the shelf.

“Here,” he said, pressing it into Jack's hands after squeezing out a measure onto his palm. “Better make it quick so you're not waiting on me to recharge.”

He stroked himself lightly, sucking in a sharp breath and drinking in the look of hunger plain on Jack's face as those eerie eyes opened one by one to stare at him. Jack barely glanced at the lube as he coated his fingers and reached around to prepare himself. He knelt there on the chill porcelain, breath hitching as he worked his fingers inside himself, stretching and thrusting, and the whole time, all of his eyes were focused intently on Gabriel.

For Gabriel's part, the naked desire in Jack's expression was the most potent of aphrodisiacs. Jack had been at his side since their time in the SEP. They'd trained together, suffered together, competed against each other, fought and bled together and encouraged, shouted, and cursed each other through the bad times. They had argued and fought, but in the end, they had always supported each other. Gabriel couldn't imagine being without Jack now, without his gravelly laugh and his smile and his too-blue eyes, couldn't imagine never hearing his voice again, never feeling his touch, never having Jack there to vent to, to lean on. A piece of him had died along with Jack that horrible day, and it hadn't been made right until months later when they'd made their vows on Jack's first day out of med bay. He'd never wanted anyone the way he wanted Jack, and he knew all too well that it was a goddamn miracle that Jack was alive and at his side and looking at him as if Gabriel was his whole world, too.

Suddenly, as if he knew what Gabriel was thinking, Jack surged to his feet and pressed their lips together. Breaking the rules, but Gabriel didn't give a damn just then. When Jack's tongue swiped against his lips, he opened his mouth gladly, welcoming him in, savoring the heat and taste of him, the way Jack moaned into the kiss. Jack's cock pressed against his hand, and Gabriel took hold of it against his own, stroking them both together roughly.

“Ready for me Jackie?” The words came out slurred, caught in the kiss and barely intelligible. Gabriel pulled away, swallowing thickly.

“Been waiting on you,” Jack murmured. He wrapped his arms around Gabriel's neck and hugged him close, speaking quietly near his ear. “Had always been waiting for you.”

Jack seemed to know what Gabriel meant to do before it happened, because as Gabriel hefted him once more, he was already heaving himself up, wrapping his legs once more around Gabriel's waist. Jack kept up a steady stream of talk, low and rough, pleas and demands that sent heated waves of desire washing along Gabriel's nerves. Fuck me, fuck me, Gabe, don't keep me waiting, don't make me wait any longer, Gabe, please, fuck me, take me, make me yours, want you, want you so bad, want you inside me.

He didn't stop until Gabriel finally pressed inside of him, earning a loud, drawn-out moan. Jack clenched around him, nearly making Gabriel go weak in the knees, before he finally relaxed and shifted his hips, signaling that he was ready for more. Gabriel started slow, rolling his hips up, pushing deeper into Jack and appreciating the way he moaned, the way they fit together tight and slick and hot. Jack's thighs clenched around him as he bucked, trying to take Gabriel in deeper, faster. They faltered, lost the pace, crashed together clutching at each other, needy and chilled and shaking, and found their rhythm. In, in, out, and deeper; closer, closer, breathe, and come together. Gabriel rocked against Jack, crushing him against the wall, panting with the effort, with the thundering of his heartbeat and the rushing of his blood. Jack was moaning with every thrust, cursing and urging him on, fingers digging into Gabriel's back, claws sprouted and tearing holes in his coat. Gabriel surged forward and kissed him, throwing his last shreds of caution to the wind, wanting Jack and trusting him and needing him to know how deeply those feelings went. Jack kissed him back wholeheartedly, groaning into the kiss, and Gabriel swallowed the sound down, feeding the faint vibration of it to the molten heat growing within him.

The edge of orgasm shimmered along Gabriel's nerve endings, tantalizingly close. His hips snapped up, up, up, tearing sharp grunts from Jack's throat. He was close, so very close, losing the rhythm they'd built as he sped up, chasing the finish. Jack's knuckles sped up and down against his stomach as he stroked himself between them, faster and faster, keening as Gabriel thrust harder, deeper into him. So tight, so close...! Gabriel buried his face in the crook of Jack's neck, breath huffing over his skin, trading pleasure for pleasure, energy for life. His hips jerked up reflexively once more and once again, slamming into Jack and Gabriel bit down on his shoulder as climax shot through him, one wave after another, with Jack clenched tightly around him.

He sagged as he came down, letting out a shaky sigh as he lowered Jack to his feet and leaned against him, lightheaded and reluctant to break the contact between them. He left soft kisses all along the side of Jack's face, hands fumbling clumsily between them as he tried to help Jack stroke himself to his own climax. Jack finished with a quiet groan and chased Gabriel's mouth.

They kissed softly, sweetly after their hurried fuck. Gabriel was already starting to feel the draining effects. Sluggish and chilly, he pulled away sooner than he would have liked to get cleaned up. They moved without speaking in the tiny bathroom, trading casual touches as if each needed reassurance that the other was still there. Gabriel shed his ruined coat and stained pants on their way to the bed, and crawled naked beneath the sheets to sit against the headboard. Jack paused only long enough to grab a bottle of fortified water which he handed off to Gabriel before joining him under the covers. They made themselves comfortable, Jack tucked in at Gabriel's side, an arm around his shoulders. For several long minutes, as the last of the afterglow faded and Gabriel drained the water Jack had brought him, silence reigned. Jack was the one to break it.

“I saw your abuela.” The word rolled awkwardly off his tongue. “She was teaching you how to make flour tortillas. She fried them up on the stove. There was meat waiting, cheese, grilled vegetables.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose, smiling faintly, looking at peace. “It smelled amazing.”

That was one of the side effects of feeding off of people the way Jack could—memories came along with it, the things that made a person who they were. More than Gabriel sharing stories about his life, Jack experienced things the way Gabriel had. He took them in as if they were his own memories, even hearing and thinking in Spanish if that's what Gabriel had done, although it hadn't helped his pronunciation any.

There was no way to stop it from happening or to control what Jack saw, but they had rules for that, too. Privacy, first and foremost: an unspoken understanding. Jack didn't talk to anyone else about anything he learned this way. He trusted Jack implicitly about this. It went along with allowing Jack to take what he needed at times like these. Second was that Jack had agreed to tell Gabriel what memories he had gained. If Gabriel didn't want to talk about it, then it was never mentioned again. There was still an imbalance between them, however, which was why Jack had proposed the third rule. For every memory of Gabriel's that he took, he shared one of his own, something of equal weight, nothing held back. Easy enough, this time.

“Mom used to make blueberry muffins. There were bushes out back, and we'd go pick bowls of them. My favorites came after we'd visit my grandparents, though. They lived about an hour away, and it was the most boring trip you can imagine. I used to drive my parents half crazy asking how much longer, and talking non-stop about whatever popped into my head. But my grandparents had this mulberry bush in their yard, and they would always let me take some home. Mom would bake them in with the blueberries in the muffins, but they were just as good right off the branch. Sweetest damn things you've ever tasted.”

His voice had been growing quieter, and he curled a bit more snugly against Gabriel's side, head pillowed on his shoulder. It was unusual for him to be so subdued afterward, considering that he had essentially just finished recharging. Gabriel craned his neck, trying to get a better look at his face. Reaching up, he curled his fingers around the hand Jack had rested over his heart.

“All right, mi luna?”

“Better than all right,” he rumbled. He opened his sightless eyes and smirked, the same old confidence shining through. “Give me a minute and I'll be ready for another round.”

[randomwoohoo]

Judy: Previously on Zoomorphia

Nick: Carrots and I as Hybrid taught the silver wolf, named Bolt or whatever, a lesson. One punch beat him~ Easy-peasy~

Clawhauser: Wow! That’s what really happened!

Judy: No. It’s actually the opposite… His speed overwhelmed us… He even abducted the robbers. I’m not sure what he gonna do with them but… it probably won’t end well...

Nick: Don’t feel so bad about it. Those four mammals were criminals after all.

Judy: They should be brought to justice… not killed as someone pleases.

Clawhauser: Ahh… Don’t stress, you two. Anyway, you guys did a great job, taking care of the squirrel Savage and saving mammals.

Judy: Yeah, we did…

Nick: Aww, look at that smile~

Judy: I-I’m not smiling!

Nick: You so cute when you smile~

Judy: Don’t call me cute!!

Clawhauser: Teehee~ Now the Chapter 12~

.-.. . - .----. ... / -.-. --- -. - .. -. ..- .

Fanfiction.net

A recorded video clip showed Hybrid Archer form taking a stance on a table, aiming a bow before launching a glowing gladius sword like an arrow. A camera phone hastily turned to record image of a purple squirrel monster stabbed to the Bug-Burga restaurant’s window.

“Not bad~” An alaskan tundra wolf in a groovy black leather jacket, Bolt, stroked his chin while he was watching the clip on his smartphone, sitting on an oversized couch inside a motorhome.

“Bah!” A slender black wildcat with white paws, eyebrows and muzzle used a giant paper fan to slap Bolt’s head. “You crossed the line. What would you do if they discard their drivers?” She was dressed in white shirt, pullover bra top and black capri pants.

“But what if he made them keep their noses out of our business? Wouldn’t our job go smoothly?” A plump tan lemming, wearing the same style jacket as Bolt, lounged on the table.

“I know, right?” Bolt asserted.

“Don’t overindulge him!” The wildcat rebuked the lemming.

“Why are you wasting time watching that video anyway? You were there yesterday, weren’t you?” Ignoring her, the lemming queried.

“Well~ I have nothing else to do.” Bolt leaned against couch backrest.

“Go out to do your job then!” She scolded him, slapping him with the paper fan once more.

- .... . -.-- / .- .-. . / .-- .- - -.-. .... .. -. --.

At early night, in ZPD lobby, Clawhauser was listening a song, Try everything acoustic version, recently released on Gazelle’s official Zootube channel. Generally, this song gives a good cheering-up vibe. Even so, this version, for some reasons,was oddly sorrowful. It was not surprising once he remembered how she was the last time she visited ZPD.

He was waiting for a certain someone…

Eventually, that certain someone appeared. Chief Bogo came downstairs and traipsed across the lobby towards the front door.

“Chief Bogo!” Clawhauser called his superior cheerily from behind the reception desk.

“What’s urgency?” Bogo went closer to Clawhauser sternly.

“Umm… No. But-” The chubby cheetah just wanted to have a chat with the cape buffalo. He thought that it would be great to talk about her latest song because they both are fans of Gazelle the famous Zootopian pop star.

“If there’s nothing urgent, leave a note in my office.” Bogo yawned tiredly. “I’m out. Bye.” He left the station.

Clawhauser was left alone, his smile fading away… He opened a picture on his phone gallery. It is the selfie of him and Bogo at Gazelle’s concert.

Not only Chief but everyone else has been busy lately. They all are facing problems. He reasoned with himself in order to push negative emotions aside. “I have to do something.” He told himself resolutely.

.... ..- .-. - / -.. .. ... - .- -. -.-. .

A red fox in a light green hawaiian shirt and red-and-blue striped dark indigo tie gave a sigh of contentment. “Tod bless day-off~” He sat sipping coffee at a table near cafe’s window. The morning sun shed light on the right half side of him and the left side of the short-sleeved teal t-shirted gray rabbit sitting facing the fox.

“Hey Nick”

“Hmm?” Nick the red fox put a mug down, looking at his bunny friend in pleasure, feeling delighted that she was doing better and he had free time to spend with her.

“Do you think that Bolt guy is responsible for mammals going missing?” Judy the European rabbit drank a soy milk latte.

After getting better, she returned to focus on works. At that time, she was speculating that the wolf who abducted the robbers might have something to do with the missing mammal cases.

“I think not.” Nick took another sip, pointing at a flat screen television mounted on the wall. Therefore, Judy turned her attention to the TV.

ZNN was reporting the news about the dead bodies found in river in Rainforest district. A female snow leopard news anchor reported that the dead bodies belonged to the absconding criminals charged with bank robbery crime. The pictures of mammals when they were alive were shown. The duo recognized them right away. They were those whom Bolt kidnapped.

In another word, the mammals Bolt abducted did not go missing. It was less likely that he was behind the cases.

“So, that’s out of the question, huh?” Judy faced away from TV, gazing at heart shape latte art a bit distorted.

The news reporting continued. It was assumed that the robbers died from drowning. That said, Nick and Judy had different opinion… those robbers in all probability were killed by Bolt because the duo saw him killed one of them with their own eyes, or not really since Nick’s real eyes were shut back then. It was just they were united as Hybrid at that time.

Still and all, the two did not have any proves.

Nick turned his head away, looking out the window. A few moments later, a round cheetah walking past in front of the cafe caught Nick’s eye.

“Carrots” He poked Judy gently, still looking outside, so he accidentally poked her forehead.

“Wha-What!?” Judy was startled by her fox buddy. She saw him pointing to outside the cafe.

“Is that Clawhauser?”

She immediately turned her face to the same direction that he was pointing when he mentioned their big feline friend. There was an overweight spotted yellow cheetah in a blue police uniform walking on the street. The duo cannot mistake someone else for him. It really was Clawhauser.

Doubting why he was outside the station during working hours, Nick and Judy left the cafe to chase the police cheetah furtively. They followed him to a passage behind buildings, peeking around the corner.

Clawhauser scouted around cautiously, looking high and low. He came to a halt when he noticed a shadow resembling a rat with a huge turtle shell on its back. The moment that shadow moved, the cheetah unintentionally cried out in horror.

“What the what!?” An alarmed brown rat, owner of the shadow, carrying a large backpack on his back, scampered in circles.

“S-Sorry! False alarm...” Clawhauser was embarrassed by his misunderstanding.

The rat slowed down. “Jeez, don’t scare me, big guy.” He walked away as the cheetah was forcing a wry smile.

“Benjamin” Thinking that peeking from a distance would not get them anywhere, Judy approached Clawhauser with an intention to directly ask him what he was doing. Nick then followed her close behind.

The surprised cheetah was not prepared to bump into the pair, “I-I-It’s not like what you think! I’m not investigating Savages or anything!” blurting out.

The duo became speechless for a moment. “We haven’t asked you anything yet…” Judy stated.

“I don’t suspect you… or at least haven’t until now...” Nick said. The idea of Clawhauser investigating the monster Savages would not come in their heads unless he mentioned it himself.

“I mean- I-I-I-” Clawhauser acted uncomfortable, stammering while trying to make an excuse.

“You owe us an explanation. Let’s find a place to sit down and talk.” Judy suggested.

“By the way, Carrots, have we paid for our coffee at that cafe yet?”

“Oh, sweet cheese! It totally slipped my mind!”

“That being said, let’s head back to the cafe then.” Nick decided.

The duo returned to the same cafe at once, taking Clawhauser with them. Fortunately, cafe’s staffs knew both Nick and Judy as police officers; thus, they supposed that an emergency came up, which must be a reason why they left in a hurry despite not paying the bill.

Two of them could only laugh off. Following that, they asked the staffs for a larger table which can seat a bigger mammal like Clawhauser with them (the partners sitting together on the same side) and ordered more drinks, one for Clawhauser and other two to diminish Judy’s guilt of almost dine and dash.

Although the fox told his bunny partner “You can order just a glass of water for me.”, she “Just take it” still insisted.

After the drinks were served,without further ado, Nick and Judy questioned Clawhauser such as a reason behind his investigation.

He briefly hesitated before he gave an answer. “There is discussion on internet about Savages’ suspicious behavior.”

“Suspicious?” Said the duo in unison.

“They normally are all over Zootopia, yet some of them sorta have a pattern of hunting at lunch or dinner time in commercial areas. Besides, they sometimes appeared in places nearby where the missing mammals were last seen. For these reasons, I decided to investigate.” He informed.

“No offense but you really sound like those conspiracy theorists.” Nick commented.

“In any case, as of lately, we have encountered few suspiciously strange Savages.” Judy, lowering her head while crossing her arms, added.

“Eh? I’ve not heard about it before!” Clawhauser wondered what kind of Savages she was talking about.

“How do I put this?” Nick thought of explanation. “It seems one Savage we fought had somewhat fight strategy, not fighting with pure instinct. There were those which didn’t randomly attack mammals like normal Savages. For an instance, the bear Savage during bank robbery in Savanna Central ignored the robbers at first.”

“Are you referring to the one that the silver chrome wolf helped you two defeat?” Clawhauser seized a chance to mention Bolt.

“Yeah, that guy.” Nick frowned faintly, frustrated when he recalled how much his partner was depressed by the wolf.

After a topic about Bolt the silver chrome wolf was brought up, Judy puzzled over why the robbers’ dead bodies were dropped in Rainforest district even though Bolt captured them elsewhere. Come to think of it, Nick and she used to meet the wolf in this lush green district once.

“Nick, Benjamin, mind accompanying me?”

“To where?” The cheetah tilted his head, chubby cheeks jiggling.

-.. .- -.-- / --- ..-. ..-. / --- -. / -.. ..- - -.--

In the afternoon, inside one of the Rainforest district warehouses, amid piles of crates, a polo-shirted female yellow-bellied marmot was lolling on the edge of a covered sizable rectangular prism object opposite a buck-toothed gray jack donkey accompanied by an elephant who was the tallest among them three despite being a minor.

“Where is it?” The donkey raised his voice.

“Take it easy, man. How about a pep talk?” The marmot replied.

“Cut the cra-” He retorted.

“Easy~ Easy~” She interjected, hopping down and removing a covering. “Tada!”

It was revealed that the mysterious rectangular prism object under a covering happened to be a cage with a sleeping maned purple lion.

“Do you think you can fool me with a napping naked dyed lion?” He raged at the marmot.

She did not waste time talking but rather demonstrated, plugging her right ear. “Rise and shine~”

The purple lion open its glowing eyes. It began to drool, then sat up.

The donkey and the elephant got chilled by the presence of the caged animal in front of them. It gave an unpleasant sensation, which proved its identity, a Savage. More surprisingly, the male donkey was impressed by how obedient this monster was.

“Why don’t you give it a shot?” The marmot handed the donkey an earpiece size of which was fitting for him.

He reluctantly accepted it. Once he inserted it in his right ear, he tried giving a command. “Get up”

The lion Savage stood up. Subsequently, he gave another command “Speak”. It roared, petrifying the elephant, as it was commanded. Hence, the donkey grinned, pleased with what he saw.

Perceiving that the customer was satisfied, the marmot rubbed her thumb over the tip of her index finger and middle finger repeatedly, making money sign hand gesture.

The sulking donkey drew his phone up, tapping a screen couples of times before showing the screen to the dealer. “Done” It was shown that he had transferred the large amount of money to a certain account.

“It’s a pleasure to do business with you~” The marmot stepped away from the cage, implying the lion monster had officially belonged to the donkey since the moment the money transfer was made.

“Go get that cage!” The donkey ordered the minor standing next to him.

The fearful young elephant, tensing up, did not dare come nearer the monster.

“Quit dawdling! Wanna go back to be an orphan!?” He shouted at the elephant.

Intimidated, the minor consequently dashed to the cage.

In that instant, a silver flash plunged to the ground not far from other mammals, startling them. They turned their attention towards the exact same spot to get a good look. There was a kneeling silver chrome wolf with a reflective black bar over the eyes, two black thunderbolt stripes paralleling each other on abdomen, solar panels on chest and shoulders, Bolt.

“Get lost, kid” Bolt rose gradually to his feet. Other mammals were baffled by the wolf’s presence.

“I said get lost, boy” He raised both paws, electric sparks coming out of them.

The elephant got filled with terror, skedaddling from the warehouse, unwittingly bumping into one pile of crates along the way.

When the elephant minor was gone, “Dogdang, I can’t stand what you did, bub.” Bolt, right fist bopping left palm over and over, advanced towards the donkey.

Simultaneously, the marmot sneaked closer to the Savage. Seeing that she unlocked the cage, the donkey smiled broadly.

“What are you smiling for? You’re creeping me-”

“Attack!” The donkey interrupted the wolf. Suddenly, the lion Savage broke free from the cage and charged at the silver wolf.

He dodged narrowly, then pounced on the monster, wrapping his arms around its neck to strangle it. Unfortunately, it was not so effective because he did not possess enough strength. The Savage struggled, shaking and hurtling in order to throw the wolf off. However, he refused to let go, thereby being dragged along.

A few minutes earlier, Nick and Judy, still dressed in civilian clothing, together with Clawhauser in police uniform were investigating less crowded areas of Rainforest District such as a warehouse zone. Without warning, they heard a loud noise coming from one warehouse. It was a feral roar which the lion Savage let out when it was ordered.

Judy asked Clawhauser to take care of Nick as she was heading to the warehouse where the roar came from. Nick, jumping into Clawhauser’s arms, spoke up that the chubby cheetah’s arms were softer and comfier than the bunny’s to tease her. She grumbled before she yelled “Just transform already!”. Clawhauser wondered that an impression Judy was giving could be jealousy...

Fortunately, there was no one else in the area, so they transformed into Hybrid without any concerns. After considering various factors, they “FORM SHIFT-ARCHER” turned into Hybrid Archer form. They thought that Hybrid was not supposed to simply set foot in the battlefield through the front door, therefore planning to climb to the roof and ambush the target from the high ground. In that case, Archer form which moves quietest among three forms was the most suitable for this plan.

In spite of that, the warehouse’s door burst open, followed by the young elephant exiting in a headlong rush, completely disregarding Hybrid. Since the door had already opened, Hybrid sped furtively into the warehouse.

The green leather tuniced armored rabbit with fox features climbed to the top of a stack of crates to observe overall situation, Bolt threatening the donkey while the marmot creeping to the cage of the lion Savage. Nick and Judy viewed preventing Bolt from harming other mammals as a priority.

Even so, before they made any moves, the marmot stunned them by unlocking the cage. Even more surprising, the Savage followed the donkey’s command. These two mammals were evidently suspicious.

Bolt tried his best to cling to the neck of lion Savage running amok into many piles, leading to them falling and scattering here and there. The marmot used this opportunity during disorder to escape.

Previous to she making an escape, Hybrid “ACTIVATE” summoned a bow and created a tracking arrow from the right wrist, then shot it at her, the arrowhead stuck on her shirt without her knowing it.

After the marmot slipped through the door, “Hybrid! I know you’re there! Help me stop this kitty!!” Bolt surprised the duo. They did not expect that Bolt would be aware of Hybrid’s presence early on.

Despite their dislike towards the silver wolf, they indeed had to bring the feline monster to a stop because it was their responsibility. On that account, they cast their personal stuff aside and twisted MidniDriver’s handle forth twice “FORM SHIFT-HUSTLER” to change back to Hustler form.

Hybrid leaped across the field to block the Savage’s way in one jump. Pressing the syringe, “ACTIVATE” they used super strength to push it, bringing it to a halt.

The second that the monster came to a halt, Bolt, hugging the lion firmly, stabbed the tip of his knifepaw into the back of its neck. It writhed in pain but this time, the wolf finally released his hold on it. It appeared that he lost one of his nails in the monster’s wound.

“I’m counting on you, Mittens.” He whispered.

Everything happened so fast that “Hybrid’s really here!” the donkey had just realized that the armored mammal hero appeared in the flesh. “But whatever… Get them!” He commanded the Savage.

However, it did not attack Hybrid and bolt as he wanted. It merely stood still after being pricked in the neck by the wolf.

While the donkey was feeling perplexed that why he lost control of the lion Savage, Bolt neared the donkey prior to clutching his shirt collar.

“You are unforgivable.” The silver wolf lifted the donkey slightly, making him tiptoeing and trembling.

“Back off from him.” Nick in Hybrid warned Bolt while Judy was directing the body to move towards him.

“...O.K.” Bolt unexpectedly agreed to loosen his grip from the donkey easily. Everyone grew relieved a bit but he then bent down and punched the donkey. “Oops~ Negligent discharge~”

The donkey fell prone before Hybrid’s eyes. The duo instantly knew his faith.

The rage exceeding the fear to face the wolf again, Judy was ready to go head to head with him. Nonetheless, she could not proceed. It turned out that Nick was holding the body back.

“Carrots, look! That Savage hasn’t vaporized yet!”

She was shocked when Nick pointed out. The purple lion only maintained upright on four feet, not moving a muscle. Suddenly, it, roaring, went berserk.

The united duo wondered what was going on, but not for long, “A side effect of jamming control signal may be kicking in.” Bolt said something that piqued their curiosity.

Even though they wanted him to clarify, they had to wait until later because the Savage careered in a direction to the door. Both of them as Hybrid must defeat the berserk monster.

“Not so fast~” Bolt obstructed Hybrid’s path.

“Outa’ mah way!” Judy sprang, protracting claws and thrusting the paw to Bolt.

“Accel” Bolt sidestepped to avoid a blow, then palm struck Hybrid’s flank.

The armored mammal was sent to land on the ground. Just as the duo predicted, the strike did not hurt much, still, falling to the knees, they felt the body turned numb, which must be a result of electricity Bolt used during attack.

“I can’t let you remove that Savage … The program is being installed. So, be good kits~” Bolt said one more confusing thing; notwithstanding, it was obvious that he did not intend to allow them to eliminate the lion monster.

“Like heck we can just let it go!” Judy bawled.

“What if it attacks civilians?” Nick, taking charge of Hybrid’s vocal cord, softened the tone.

“Not my problem~” Bolt responded to Nick’s question simply, outraging Judy greatly. He turned his face to look at the purple lion charging out the warehouse’s door. “Track down that lion.” It seemed like he talked to himself. “Pretty please~”

Seeing that the monster was fleeing, and moreover, the silver wolf was being distracted, the duo decided to chase it.

After opening and closing the paws to verify that the body had recovered, Hybrid pressed the syringe “ACTIVATE” to use enhanced speed. In no time, the united duo ran so blistering that the armored mammal appeared like a red blur.

When Hybrid was passing Bolt, “Double accel!” he gyrated to catch the smaller animal, snatching the spiky yet fluffy fox tail. Hybrid was restrained from moving forward by him hauling the red tail, which “Don’t touch my tail!” upset Nick a lot. He hit the syringe “ACTIVATE”, tail spikes pointing outward, with a thought that sharp spikes would force the wolf to relinquish his tight grasp and fall back. Furthermore, he had his speed that enabled him to dodge.

All the same, still holding firm, he did not let Hybrid go. As a result, the silver wolf got stabbed by many spikes. Hybrid inadvertently pierced quite a number of holes in his body, glancing him with terror of killing mammals.

Out of the blue, Bolt swung Hybrid in spite of being spiked. The armored mammal was thrown away forcefully, tail spikes shortening and turning back to fur, to crash against the crates.

“Bolt! Do you copy!?” The wildcat on the other side of some sort of wireless communications asked. Apparently, only the silver wolf could hear.

“Loud and clear~ Awe! My beautiful shiny body... What a bummer.” Bolt complained.

“Retreat!” She instructed.

“I’m not done playing with them yet~ And what about the lion?”

“Forget about them! You have received damages in many parts. Besides, I’ve already taken care of that Savage! Rhino will pick it up. Now, get your butt over here!”

“Ro~gers~” Eventually agreeing to retreat, Bolt approached Hybrid lying on pieces of broken wooden crates. “This should buy us some time.” He stooped and pulled MidniDriver’s syringe, forcing Hybrid to detransform “Ciao~” previous to vanishing into thin air.

The doe rabbit, being left alone in the warehouse with one soulless donkey, could not help but feel numb everywhere like the body was electroshocked.

“Judy!”

She heard Clawhauser and Nick calling her name from outside, At least, they’re safe. thinking to herself while staring at a dreary ceiling.

.-- .... . .-. . / .. ... / ... .. .-.. ...- . .-. / .-.. .. -. .. -. --.

The young elephant was sitting on sidewalk in Rainforest District, hugging his knees in the midst of hazy atmosphere.

“Why the long face?” A male voice said.

He felt sorrowful to the point that he was not aware of an incoming mammal until the mammal arrived at his feet.

“I have nowhere to go...” He avoided looking at the other mammal in front of him.

“Where are your parents?”

The elephant’s eyes watered when the word ‘parents’ was uttered. He buried his face in his arms later.

“It’s all right.” The mammal stretched his right tan paw out to the minor.

The young elephant raised his head. He subsequently saw a blue-eyed brown St Bernard dog.

“Come with me” The St Bernard dog invited him softly.

- --- / -... . / -.-. --- -. - .. -. ..- . -..

[valiavovatera1320]

I Love *Mayakovsky

USUALLY SO Every man is entitled to love, but what with jobs, incomes, and other such things, the heart’s core grows harder from day to day. The heart wears a body, the body—a shirt. But even that’s not enough! Someone— the idiot!— inflicted shirt cuffs and poured starch on the chest. Aging, people suddenly realize it. Women smear on makeup. Men swing their arms like windmills following Müller’s exercise system. But it’s too late. The skin multiplies with wrinkles. Love will flower, and flower – and then wither and shrink. AS A BOY I was gifted with love in good measure. From childhood people are drilled to labor. But I fled to the banks of the Rion and knocked around there, not doing a damn thing. Mama reproached me angrily: “Wretched boy!” Papa threatened to belt me. But I, living it up with a false three-ruble note, played Three-card Monte with soldiers under a fence. Unconstricted by shirt, unburdened by boots, I baked in the sultry heat of Kutaisi. To the sun I turned now my back, now my belly – until it ached below my ribs. The sun was astonished: “I can barely see him! Yet he, too, has a little heart. He does his little best! Where in that in less than a yard is there space— for me, for the river, for a hundred miles of rock?!” AS A YOUTH Youth has a thousand occupations. We dull the dullest young minds with grammar. But I was thrown out of the fifth grade. And thus began my tour of Moscow prisons. In your cushy little bourgeois world, you rear little curly-headed lyricists. What do you find in these poodles? But I learned to love in the cells of Butyrka. What do I care about your Boulogne forest? Or to sigh at the sight of the sea? In the Funeral Parlor Bureau, they call it, I fell in love with the keyhole of cell 103. People don’t even look up when the sun rises or sets. They ask, “What’s this light worth, if I can’t buy it or sell it?” But I would have given all the world for the yellow spot leaping on my wall. MY UNIVERSITY French language you know. You divide. You multiply. You decline beautifully. So go on declining! But tell me one thing— Can you jam with a building? Do you know the language of trams? The human fledgling is barely hatched— and you thrust in its hands exercise notebooks. But I learned the alphabet from street signs, turning pages of iron and tin. They take the world, spin it with fingertips— and teach you. It’s all just a puny globe. But I learned geography with my ribs— lying on the earth on roofless nights. Painful questions torment your dusty historians: “Was Barbarossa’s beard really red?” So what? You call this dusty trash history— but I know every story Moscow can tell! You take Dobroliubov as a lesson to hate evil— but the surname resists and whimpers with pain. From childhood I’ve hated the fat ones, who sell themselves for lunch every day. They learned to sit pretty— to make ladies smile, and thoughts rattle in their heads like coins. But I talked only with buildings. Water towers told me secrets and roofs caught every word I threw in their latticed window ears. And after they babbled about the night and each other night with weathercock tongues. ADULTHOOD Adults are busy. Their pockets are full of rubles. Love? Please! Maybe for a hundred rubles. But I, homeless thrust fists into rags into my pockets and hung around, sharp-eyed. Night. You wear your best dress. You rest your soul with wives, with widows. I gasped in Moscow’s embraces, choked in the ring of endless Sadovaya Road. Into hearts, into wee hours mistresses tick. Ecstatic partners on the bed of love. I caught The wild heartbeat of capitals, lying around like Passion Square. Unbuttoned— my heart nearly outside— I open myself to sun and to puddle. Enter with your passions! Climb in with your loves! From now on I have no power over my heart. I know where the heart lives in others. It is in the breast—as everyone knows! But in me though anatomy went mad. An all-encompassing heart— booms everywhere. Oh, how many of them, how many springtimes, have in twenty years poured into me, inflamed! Their burden unspent is just unbearable. Unbearable not as in verse, but literally. WHAT HAPPENED More than possible, more than necessary— as though looming with poetic delirium in a dream— my clot of a heart has grown into a mass: that mass is love, that mass is hate. Under the burden my legs strode shakily— as you know, I am well built— and yet I trudge on, the appendage of a heart, hunching the oxlike width of my shoulders. I swell with the milk of verses —there’s no pouring it out— anywhere, it seems—it brims anew. I am exhausted by lyric— wet nurse of the world, hyperbole archetype of Maupassant. I CALL I lifted it up, a strongman, and carried it, an acrobat. Like voters summoned for a rally, like villages on fire called by alarm— I called: “And here it is! Look! Take it!” When such a giant was gasping, not looking— full of dust, dirt, a pile of snow— the ladies dashed from me like rockets: “We like things smaller, more like tango, like…” I can’t carry it— and I carry it, my burden. I want to throw it down— and know I never will. The arches of my ribs won’t bear the pressure. The rib cage creaks with strain. YOU You came— businesslike, beyond the roar, behind the height, glancing, you saw but a little boy. You took, you tore away my heart and simply went to play with it— like a girl with a ball. And every woman— as if seeing things— was astounded, now this lady now that young girl. “Love his kind? But he’ll lunge at you! She must be an animal-tamer. She must be from a zoo!” But I am exultant. It’s gone— the yoke! Forgetting myself in joy, I galloped, leaped like a Cherokee wedding: I felt so joyful and so light. IMPOSSIBLE I cannot do it alone— I can’t carry the grand piano (much less— the treasure chest). And if not the chest, if not the piano, how can I carry my retrieved heart. Bankers know: “We’re rich beyond measure. There aren’t enough pockets— we’ll stuff the safe.” My love I’ve hidden in you— like riches encased in steel— and I walk around rejoicing, a Croesus,. And only if I want it very badly, I take out a smile, a half-smile and less, carousing with others in the middle of the night I’ll spend fifteen rubles or so of lyric change. SO IT IS WITH ME Fleets—they too flow into port. A train—also races to station. But I am driven and drawn that much more towards you —for I love! Pushkin’s covetous knight descends to rummage and delight in his cellar. So I return to you, beloved. This is my heart, and I delight in it. Coming home is a joy. People scrape off their dirt, shaving and washing. So I return to you— for if I go to you, am I not going home? The earth takes back her creatures. We return to our destination. So I am drawn towards you relentlessly, as soon as we part or don’t see each other. CONCLUSION Love can’t be washed away with quarrels, or miles. It is thought-through, tested, made sure of. Raising triumphantly my line-mottled verse, I vow— I love changelessly and truly.

[fear-god-shun-evil]

The Calling of Life

Xie Wen

It seemed that I were a seed which moved along the wind. Over these years, I often got sick and my treatment cost lots of money, which involved my family in a severe economic crisis. Though my family didn’t blame me, I felt so indebted to them. So, every time when I just got over my sickness, I would try my best to recover the money that I had lost. I believed that a beautiful life would be built with my own hands, and that everything would be readily solved as long as I had money. Regardless of whether it was wind, frost, rain or snow, or whether it was a sultry day, I made every effort to work so as to make my family live a good life again. As long as I hadn’t fallen ill, I would stick my work as if I were a machine which kept running day and night. Of course I was exhausted. But when it came to money, I had the motivation for struggling. In order to earn more money and give my family a better life, I devoted myself to work.

After several years of struggling, I lived the desired life and my family became prosperous; I bought a house and a new car. Nevertheless, I was not happy at all. Every day I had to face complex human relationships and see people around me plotting amongst and guarding against each other. Living in a deluded and cold world, I felt confused and helpless. I was exhausted physically and mentally and became bad-tempered, which hurt both me and my family. I didn’t want that either, but I couldn’t control myself. Many times I called out in my heart, “Who can save me?”

One day, my cousin came to my house and preached God’s kingdom gospel to my family and me. Through a period of time of being patiently watered by the sisters in the church, I knew Almighty God is the one true God who created the heavens and the earth and all that lies in between; He provides all things necessary for our survival; He arranges for us to be born into suitable families; He also guides our growth and plans out every phase of our journey. For the first time in decades, I knew that there is a God in the heavens and earth, and that it is God who created me and supplies me; I felt God’s grandeur and was willing to believe in Him. However, due to the social engagements, the temptation of fame and wealth, and domestic trivialities, I had no time to read God’s words. I rushed about for the sake of money, and was ever more distant from God …

One night near dusk, when having dinner at my relative’s house, I suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and was taken by ambulance to hospital. When I awoke, I found myself lying in the hospital. Looking around, I found that all the people here were terminal patients and that my body was wired up to a cardiograph. When I saw the curves on the monitor waving continuously, my heart fluttered with fear, and I had no idea what would happen next second. One day, my breathing suddenly became quick and shallow, and the cardiograph was beeping abnormally, which broke the silence of the ICU. Frightened by this, I looked at the monitor and found the curves were undulating irregularly. I thought, “Maybe they will become straight next second. Am I dying? What should I do? Doctor, please help me! As long as you can save me, I don’t mind how much I have to spend.” However, I had no strength to call out, and could only look outside the door. At this moment, the doctor rushed to check on me. It turned out that one of the wires was loosened; it was a false alarm. Though the curves on the monitor were back to normal, the panic inside me not only didn’t vanish but increased with each passing day. I felt death was closing in on me, but I couldn’t escape from it; I could do nothing but wait for its coming helplessly.

Several days later, some patients were wheeled out of the ICU by doctors, and then there came pathetic cries outside the door. At that moment, I kept thinking, “Will I be the next one? Could I see my relatives again? …” The more I thought, the more horrified I became. At this point, I couldn’t help but reflect on myself: In the past, I spent my life struggling for money and believed money could solve any problem; however, when death was drawing near, I found that money and fame cannot resist the coming of death, and that man’s life is so fragile in front of death. I looked out of the window at the yellow leaves and thought, “Perhaps these leaves will fall from the tree with a gust of wind, and then what awaits them?” In darkness and helplessness, I remembered a passage of God’s word I once read: “The Almighty has mercy on these people who suffer deeply. At the same time, He is fed up with these people who have no consciousness, because He has to wait too long for the answer from humans. He desires to seek, seek your heart and your spirit. He wants to bring you food and water and to awaken you, so you are no longer thirsty, no longer hungry. When you are weary and when you begin to feel the desolation of this world, do not be perplexed, do not cry. Almighty God, the Watcher, will embrace your arrival any time.”

From these words, I felt God’s mercy and pity toward us humans are so kind and true, as if God were beside me and consoling me. My numb heart felt warm and gained the vitality of life. I thought of the days when I had struggled for money: Countless times I had failed and fallen; on countless occasions, I had played with life and lived in ease; on countless occasions, I had followed the evil trends of the world; countless time I had disobeyed God and shut the door on God’s salvation, and been subjected to Satan’s affliction and trickery; as a result, I suddenly got the disease and faced the coming of death. Nevertheless, God had not forsaken me. In my pain and helplessness, God’s words enlightened and guided me so that I didn’t fear death any longer, which cannot be bought with money. When my wife came to see me, she recited a passage of God’s words to me: “Almighty God is an all-powerful physician! To dwell in sickness is to be sick, but to dwell in the spirit is to be well. If you have but one breath, God will not let you die.” God’s words with authority gave me the confidence and courage to face the torture of illness.

In the following days, I pondered God’s words in my heart while receiving treatment, and I took a turn for the better. The doctor said my recovery was a miracle. Looking at the astonished looks on their faces, I was full of gratitude and praise to God. Who can perform such a miracle except God? If not for God’s care and protection, maybe I would have long died. From this, I felt the transcendence of God’s life power.

After returning home, I had mixed emotions. I felt the value of life and treasured the second life given by God even more. Afterward, my sisters and brothers came to see me and I resumed my church life. I read God’s word saying: “People spend their lives chasing after money and fame; they clutch at these straws, thinking they are their only means of support, as if by having them they could keep on living, could exempt themselves from death. But only when they are close to dying do they realize how distant these things are from them, how weak they are in the face of death, how easily they shatter, how lonely and helpless they are, with nowhere to turn. They realize that life cannot be bought with money or fame, that no matter how wealthy a person is, no matter how lofty his or her position is, all people are equally poor and inconsequential in the face of death. They realize that money cannot buy life, that fame cannot erase death, that neither money nor fame can lengthen a person’s life by a single minute, a single second. The more people feel this way, the more they yearn to keep on living; the more people feel this way, the more they dread the approach of death.”

After reading these words, I finally came to my senses and realized that I had always held the wrong views on pursuit. I regarded money and fame as my only means of support as well as my life goal, rushing around for them, so that I grew further and further apart from God. In this acquisitive world, I advocated money and pursued to be an outstanding person. Finally I earned much money and lived a better life, but when death came to me, doctors couldn’t save my life, and my relatives and friends couldn’t snatch me back from the hands of Satan, nor could money change anything. During my illness, though my flesh suffered, I appreciated God’s earnest intentions. If not for the disease, I would never have felt the preciousness of life, much less understood that pursuing money and fame is empty. It was truly God’s salvation and protection for me!

Later, I saw more of God’s words: “Man, after all, is man. The position and life of God cannot be replaced by any man. Mankind does not just require a fair society in which everyone is well-fed and is equal and free, but the salvation of God and His provision of life to them. Only when man receives the salvation of God and His provision of life to them can the needs, yearning to explore, and spiritual emptiness of man be resolved.” From God’s words I understood that money and fame cannot provide me with life, and that no matter how wealthy I am, how high my position is, and what enjoyments of the flesh I have, in the end I will feel nothing but emptiness and sorrow. That’s because what we humans require is God’s salvation and the supply of God’s words. At the time of my illness, it was God’s words that gave me faith and supported me to survive. Without the guidance and supply of God’s words, I would have no path to take but to wait for death in fear.

Holding the book of God’s words firmly, I looked out of the window and a lively scene came into my sight. Only then did I realize that a new spring was coming. I felt as if I were a weather-beaten seed, surviving among all things, and praising God for bestowing on me a new life.

[empress-imperia]

Uncharacteristically, Chief Bogo had forgotten to tell Irons that Mayor Terrence Hornbull, Dawn Bellwether's successor, had already granted Precinct One the right to the Jerry Mousekewitz Case in light on his death. In any case he hadn't slammed the receiver into its cradle because of Iron's predictable attitude. He'd slammed the receiver because he was currently undergoing horrific torture.

He hadn't been abducted by gangsters. He hadn't even been pranked by the infamous Wilde. No, it was something much, much worse. It had him feeling sick in the stomach. It had him frozen to his desk chair in complete agony. It had him on the very brink of insanity twenty-four/seven.

As he sat at his desk, fists clenched and itching to trash the phone completely, there was a knock on the door. He saw a very welcome round dark shape through the fogged glass. "Come. In." He said through clenched teeth.

In walked Benjamin Clawhauser, a receptionist and dispatcher averting nearly every cheetah stereotype in the book, smiling sympathetically as he held up a paper grocery bag. "I got some more pure water, sir. I also got some cranberry juice and some aspirin. I'd ask how you're feeling, but well, you know..."

"Officer Clawhauser, you do not want me to answer that." Bogo replied stiffly. "But if you must know, it feels like a psychopathic grandmother is stabbing at me over and over with sharpened knitting needles heated to near melting point."

Clawhauser raised his eyebrows, his mouth as small as a ring hole. "That's... disturbingly specific. My aunt just said she had an alien inside of her. Anyway..." Putting a smile back on, he placed the bag on the desk and pulled out the contents. "How's your peeing going? Still clear or light yellow?"

Bogo groaned and clasped his hooves over his head. "For god's sake, officer!"

Clawhauser took a step back, having already realised he'd said something he shouldn't. "Sorry, sir! Just worried about your health!"

Bogo sighed and carefully put a hoof to his side. "I know."

It had been one week since his torment started, and five days since the doctor had confirmed that the source was indeed the bane of a middle aged mammal's existence. The best and worst way to deal with his ailment was to wait it out and drink enough fluids to prevent dehydration. It was best because in most cases medical treatment was expensive and needless. It was worst because it meant enduring the little cluster of nails and razors within his body for god knows how long. However he wouldn't be Chief Bogo if he couldn't grit his teeth and bear it with a mask of his typical apathy, which was the reason no-one found out about his suffering until the fifth day.

It was Bogo's fault, really. If he hadn't summoned Clawhauser to his office to discuss the training of the new night shift receptionist, the cheetah wouldn't have been present when a sudden stab of horrific pain had caused Bogo's mask to slip for a split second. As it turned out, Clawhauser's older relatives had a long and sordid history with this particular medical condition from hell. As a result, he not only knew the signs, but a variety of natural remedies which he immediately listed out to the exasperated Chief before he practically ordered his subordinate back to his desk.

Bogo supposed he should be thankful that out of all his officers, it had been Clawhauser who found out. This was the same officer who had discovered Bogo's guilty pleasure in Gazelle and kept quiet about it ever since. He couldn't say the same for anyone else, especially the insufferable Wilde. That cheeky fox would have a field day.

"I'm fine, really. I'm drinking more fluid than I can take and working has been helping to take my mind off it." This half-truth would hopefully keep Clawhauser from being too worried to concentrate on his work. "You should get back to your desk."

"Yes, sir. Are you sure you're up for the Bullpen?" He must have noticed that Bogo looked especially pained this morning.

"It has to be done. That criminal who died this morning was wanted by Precinct Two and an investigation is being launched."

"I get it. Priority number one." Clawhauser said, having delivered Bogo the news himself not long ago. It wasn't often that Bogo addressed the Bullpen twice in one day, but Jerry Mouskewitz's case was a special one. "Any priority number ones for me, sir?"

As it turned out, Bogo did. "The mayor is paying a visit later this morning, and it's his first time here since his election. Until he leaves you are to stay as far away from your phone and all Gazelle related media as possible. Is that clear?"

"Crystal." Clawhauser nodded. As the first face a mammal would see upon walking into the ZPD, he knew full well that first impressions were everything.

"Good. Dismissed."

Clawhauser walked out, leaving Bogo with his pain, his suffering, and the batch of natural and synthesised remedies the eager young worker bee had left for him.

Bogo reached for the pure water and filled his glass. He consumed the cool liquid in one go. Maybe it was just the constant pain of a jagged, crystalline kidney stone no bigger than a piece of gravel from the driveway making him soft, but he was seriously considering giving Clawhauser a raise.

Ten minutes later, he heard the receptionist's cheery voice coming from the intercom on the phone. "Sir, Hopps and Wilde just called in. The ambulance has just reached the crash site."

"Good." The chief replied curtly with the press of a button.

"In related news, Officer McHorn has just got back from that false alarm in the Rainforest District. He's waiting for you in the Bullpen with the other available officers."

"Right. I'll be there in a few." Bogo was already reaching for the two red files on his desk.

Clawhauser made a noise of doubt on the other end. "Sir, Hopps and Wilde aren't back yet. I don't think they'll be happy if you leave them out of this one."

Bogo tucked the files under his arm and downed some cranberry juice. "Clawhauser, they joined this case the moment they pulled over Mousekewitz. I'll give them their own assignment when they return."

"Okay, sir. Oh, and keep your chin up. That stone's gotta come out at some point. You'll se- hello again, McHorn!" Bogo heard McHorn's dull tones but couldn't hear what he was saying. "Sorry, sir, McHorn's just wondering why you haven't shown up yet."

Bogo snorted. "Tell him I'm on my way."

Clawhauser did just that. This time when McHorn spoke, Bogo could understand him. "Right. Thanks."

"See you later, McHorn!" Clawhauser had raised his voice a little. The grumpy rhino must have already started walking back to the Bullpen. "Tell your wife I said... er, McHorn? McHorn you've got something on your... omigosh! McHorn, wait! Wait, come back! Chief Bogo, we've got an intruder on the ground floor!"

By then, Bogo had already vacated his office.

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It had been two years since Delgato and Grizzoli had last been assigned to a stakeout, and they'd both forgotten how dull it was: hours upon hours of waiting in their unmarked car, waiting for Meeko the Cracker Thief to show his ugly masked face. Thank god for the public toilet across the street, a fair distance from the bar where the raccoon was supposedly boozing.

Thankful for the Snarlbucks latte Grizzoli had procured to fend off the Tundratown cold, Delgato took a small sip from the steaming beverage. He sighed, ready for another sip, when he saw some unusually busy activity even farther down the street. Four vehicles were pulling into the empty cark park.

Grizzoli saw the vehicles and frowned. "Wait a sec, aren't those the cars that were at the crash site earlier?"

They both eyed the cars, Delgato glancing at the bar every now and then for signs of Meeko, keeping a small photo of the thief in his paw for reference. Through the chain link fence that marked the cark park boundaries, they saw the eight occupants climb out and gather in the middle of the frozen tarmac. The two cops watched for a little longer. The eight commuters remained in their huddle, engaged in a conversation they couldn't hear. Delgato grabbed his radio. "You keep watching for Meeko and I'll call this in. The chief will want to know about this."

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Clawhauser initially thought to call Forensics to borrow a jar, but there was no telling how long that would take. He had to deal with the situation before McHorn's stowaway was discovered and panic ensued. The big rhino wasn't the only one on the force who was scared of spiders.

A second solution sprung up. He quickly stuffed the last few donuts into his mouth and turned the box upside down to empty any lingering crumbs into the trash can inside the ring shaped desk. Box in hand, he planted a BACK IN FIVE MINUTES sign on the desk next to his snow globe and rushed towards the Bullpen.

As he neared the Bullpen he heard the sound of men engaging in indistinct chatter. Chief Bogo hadn't arrived yet, and McHorn was still unaware of what was crawling on his back. Clawhauser stopped running just before he reached the doors. His plan was simple. Go inside, walk up to McHorn, get the giant spider off his back before he noticed, put it in the box and get out. Okay, it sounded simple.

Well, here goes nothing, Clawhauser thought as he went inside.

Due to the unique nature of this meeting, only a quarter of the seats were filled. Yet the room was still as lively as it always was with a full house. Clawhauser looked over the handful of bears, lions, hippos and one tiger and spotted the head of McHorn in his usual spot up front, his eyes on the podium as he waited for Bogo to show up with the assignments. Clawhauser swallowed and started his slow approach through the gap that ran through the middle of the chairs and tables.

"Zugk zugk, what brings you here, Bejaminy! You got more news for the Chiefy?" came a raspy squeak from halfway up the gap.

Clawhauser stopped, looked down and saw Officers Jaq and Gus on a table sipping cups of coffee that would have fitted a dollhouse. He knew that Bogo wanted their case file on Jerry Mousekewitz, but he hadn't expected them to come all the way here from Precinct Five in Little Rodentia. "Oh, um..." Clawhauser nervously drummed his fingers on the empty box like it was a bongo drum. "Just need a quick word with McHorn."

He continued up the rows of tables, reaching McHorn just as a thought came to him. It was very odd that no-one in the moderately sized room had seen the plate-sized arachnid on McHorn's back. One good look at the rhino told him why.

Son of a gun, it's gone!

McHorn's ear twitched and he looked to see a stunned Clawhauser standing right behind him. "What're you doing here?"

Clawhauser gulped loudly. "Looking for creepy crawlies." With that he dropped down on all fours and started searching under the tables.

McHorn rolled his eyes and turned back to face the front.

With Officer Higgins investigating a break in elsewhere in Savannah Central, there was no-one to announce the arrival of the chief before the side door opened. Underneath an empty table at the back left corner of the room, Clawhauser stifled a groan. The cops started their usual ruckus as Bogo, his posture stiffer than usual, reached the podium.

"Alright, quit it!" He snapped. On command the cops stopped and sat back down. "I've got one item on the docket and no mood for drivel, so I'll cut right to the point. This morning, known criminal Jerry Mouskewitz was killed in a car crash on the outskirts of Sahara Square. For those of you who don't know..."

Clawhauser continued crawling along the underside of the row of tables, no longer listening. He'd already heard of the infamous Triple-Casino-Heist Case. Five years ago, Jerry Mousekewitz had performed the biggest heist in the history of Zootopia: in one night he robbed three Tundratown Casinos blind. Four hundred million dollars had disappeared without a trace, as well as the rodent who had stolen them. Initially the case had been given to Precinct One, but as the years passed and other important cases came up, it had ultimately been left in the hands of Precinct 2, something that had deeply dented Iron's pride until he saw the case as an opportunity. For years they searched for Jerry with no success, to the point that the case almost went cold. Then two weeks ago, Jerry was spotted in Little Rodentia, planning to escape the city under the alias of Dr. Padraic Ratigan. If Clawhauser could hazard a guess, the mouse had been enacting his escape plan when Hopps and Wilde tried to pull him over, triggering the high-speed chase and its fatal conclusion.

Clawhauser was getting anxious. He was crawling down the next row, but there was still no sign of the spider. He looked at the large legs of the cops, all of which were capable of squishing the spider with one step. He cringed at the thought of the little guy getting hurt and kept searching, until-

"Clawhauser!"

Thump! The table shook as Clawhauser bumped his head. Bogo had spotted Clawhauser right after putting on his glasses to hand out the assignments. "What are you doing down there? Why aren't you at your desk?"

Rubbing his head, a blushing Clawhauser crawled out and stood up. All he could do was tell the truth and hope that he wouldn't be too harshly punished. "Sir, we have a minor situation. Please don't flip out, but-"

The side door opened again and in walked Mayor Hornbull, burly rhino and Mayor of Zootopia. Sporting a stubby horn and a thousand dollar grey suit, Hornbull strode across the room and stopped at the podium beside Bogo.

Clawhauser felt himself go pale. The mayor was a decent enough sort, but his arachnophobia was greater than anyone else's in this room.

Frozen to the spot, his arms nearly crushing the empty donut box, Clawhauser watched as Hornbull put a hand on Bogo's shoulder and exchanged quiet whispers with the buffalo, who looked less than pleased at the unexpected interruption. After a few seconds Bogo grunted and tilted his head down slightly.

Clawhauser's heart skipped a beat. There it was, perched on Bogo's horns.

He was the first to notice, but he was not the last. Some of the cops exchanged perplexed looks and peered at the creature, unsure if it was really a large insect or some abnormal hat. McHorn turned white and shrank back in his seat.

Clawhauser nervously lifted a paw. "Sir."

"Not now." Bogo said with a glance, oblivious to his living horn decoration. The tarantula twitched, startled by the sudden movement.

Clawhauser was terrified, but not of Bogo. A fall from his height would likely kill the spider. "Sir, you've-"

"Not. Now." Bogo cut him off through gritted teeth. With the rhino's hand still on his shoulder, he and Hornbull spoke a little more before he turned back to his men, who were still staring at the creature on his head. "Ladies and gentlemammals, I would like to introduce you to the Mayor of Zootopia, Terrence Hornbull. Some of you may also know him as the founder and owner of the three casinos that the late Mousekewitz robbed five years ago. As you can see he is very anxious for the case to be resolved and the money to be returned safe and sound. I have given him every assurance that despite Mouskewitz's unexpected death, we will..."

As Bogo continued speaking, Clawhauser pulled out his phone and sent a text. He heard a faint buzz come from Bogo's pants. The spider quickly crawled further back behind Bogo's horns until only its abdomen could be seen. Bogo pulled out the phone and saw the text.

[Giant spider on head!]

Bogo blinked and reached up, but the spider had crawled out of sight. He ran his hoof along his horns and rubbed his neck. He glared at Clawhauser. "Is this supposed to be a joke?" He asked dangerously.

Clawhauser sent another text. Bogo looked at the message on his phone, and this time, so did the mayor.

[NO JOKE. SPIDER JUST CRAWLED ON MAYOR'S ARM.]

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Fangmeyer entered the Precinct to be greeted by an empty reception desk and the sound of a woman screaming.

Her fur stood on end as she realised it was coming from the Bullpen, and she pulled out her tranquiliser gun. Sprinting past the befuddled officers that littered the main hall, she almost burst through the Bullpen door when the door opened a crack and the sight of Officers Jaq and Gus stopped her in her tracks.

Fangmeyer looked sharply up at the nearly shut door and the screams that came from it, then back down at the two mice. "What the hell is going on in there?"

"A tarantuly has infiltrated the ZPD." Jaq said, as Gus desperately tried not to laugh.

"A tarantula?!" Fangmeyer would have started laughing herself, but then she heard other raised voices trying to calm the source of the high-pitched screaming. "D'you guys think Bogo can get the lady in there to calm down, or will he need backup?"

"That's the mayor."

"Really?"

"Really."

Fangmeyer was about to ask if she should get involved when a rookie rushed up and reported that Delgato and Grizzoli had spotted a situation in Tundratown.