#there were more than a thousand penguins on the island at the turn of the century

[ningauinerd]

The south-eastern shores of Granite Island, South Australia, taken whilst clambering across the boulders in search of little penguin burrows for an annual census. My team didn't end up finding any active burrows (in general they're a lot less common on this side of the island nowadays) although we did find one with hatched eggs and a ton of down.

Also apologies for not posting much here but currently I am being slaughtered by uni work

[moonydustx]

Law buying an Bepo bear to his shy girlfriend!

I loved the idea! I made a small adjustment on the "buy" issue, I hope you don't hate me for it. And of course, I hope you like it.

The Bear and The Target

Lawx F!Reader

warnings: fluff, F!Reader is a little more shy/reserved in this one, Law is a great boyfriend (as always)

a/n: I really loved this idea, Law doing cute things for his s/o is my weakness.

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Comments, reblogs and likes are greatly appreciated.

The Park's lights almost blinded you, as well as people pushing against each other, competing to get to the most sought-after attractions first. Despite having your arm side by side with your boyfriend and watching him dodge the countless proposals of "try this game and win thousands of berris" "bet and compete for the top prize", you were still dazzled by how magical the place seemed. .

"Are the two annoying people going to be a couple for the whole park?" Penguin appeared at your side, taking your arm and watching Law sulk. "Captain, don't be annoying."

"Unfortunately, I'm here for work" he pointed out, turning his gaze towards you. "But you do not."

"And I can't go to work with you?" you asked

"It's not really a job, I just need to figure something out." he tried to dodge the question, not wanting to give too many details. "In the meantime, why don't you enjoy a little night with them?"

"We can go on the roller coaster and then go to the monster house."

"No monster house." you and Bepo responded in unison, both of you clearly unhappy with the proposal. "Can we go in the bumper cars?" Bepo proposed and saw you nod.

"See you later then?" you turned to your boyfriend, who just nodded and watched as you and the group of friends left.

As much as Law was against lying in any situation in a relationship, he had just lied to you and it wasn't one of the things he was most proud of, but he had a good reason.

A few months ago, on another island, he had seen you looking at a huge teddy bear and not buying it. It took a few days for the subject to come up and he asked you why you didn't ask and again, shyness was an excuse.

Law was a reserved person, by pure choice - and almost as a personal whim. However, you were indeed shy. The only people who could break your shell a little were your crewmates and even Law had had trouble starting to flirt with you, not being able to know if he was understanding the few signals you gave in the wrong way.

For that reason - and because his eyes almost exploded when he saw you do or have something cute - he knew that that park was the best place to find what he was looking for so much, that cute and huge bear.

He just didn't expect to find exorbitant prices or bears uglier than any patch he had ever heard of, it was impossible to find something perfect.

In the distance, he could see you and the other crew members gathering around a little tent, as he got closer he saw it was one of those old throwing games, where there was definitely some trickery hidden. Seeing you further away from the others, he arrived quietly, stopping right behind you.

"What are we doing?" When he saw you turn around, scared, his hands soon found your shoulders, reassuring you. "It's just me."

"It makes me calmer, but not less scared." you laughed, your hands itching to clasp against Law, but it wasn't something the two of you usually did in public. "Well, we're trying to win something."

"And you, why are you staying away?"

"This guy at this stand is one of those funny charlatan types who love to meddle." You held back a laugh, seeing his expression darken.

Before you could continue complaining about the man, Law's mind immediately wandered to what was in the background: an immense, white, perfectly stitched polar bear that was just an orange uniform away from transforming into Bepo.

"I am going to try." Law's speech surprised you, making you follow him to the edge of the bench.

"The pretty lady decided to try?" the man said in the most charlatan way possible, but Law responded immediately.

"No, in this case, her boyfriend." He took out some coins and placed them in front of the man. "Which one do I have to hit to win one of the prizes in that row?"

"That one." he pointed to the smallest of them all, further back. "But I warn you that it may take some time."

"Captain, everyone tried and no one succeeded." Bepo commented, clearly more concerned than he should be with the simple game. Meanwhile, you remained closer to him, silently watching the bet unfold.

"There, five rings, five chances." the man passed the pieces to Law.

He tried a few times in a row and failed each time. Both Law and his friends were already sighing frustrated with the fact that almost twenty-five rings thrown in a row had escaped the hole.

"There has to be some trickery in this." Law snapped, frustrated with not getting the bear he knew you wanted. "You're fooling us all!"

"Me cheating?" the man said cynically as he accepted more coins and gave Law more chances. "You offend me like this."

"Well, captain…" Shachi approached his side and picked up one of the rings, slamming it against the counter in front of the two. Soon after, he threw a small piece of paper towards the bow and hit it. "See, you're the bad one, captain."

Law quickly connected the dots. The rings were made of some metal material - which could interfere with the weight or even have a magnet pulling it - and the paper ball was not. One look was enough for Shachi and Penguin to understand that they had to act.

"I'll try again." Law muttered, more as a point of warning to his colleagues than anything else.

"Come on man, confess, there's a scam here." Penguin pulled the guy's arm in a falsely gentle way, stealing your attention along with it. "There's no point in deceiving us."

"I got it!" Law's surprised voice drew the two of you back to the captain's attempts, who was now smiling broadly in the man's direction. "So, my prize…"

"How did you get?" the man shouted indignantly, going to check if he had actually succeeded. "I mean, okay, you can choose your prize."

"Come on, you choose." Law turned to you, seeing your eyes light up at the proposal. "Although I already suspect what your decision is."

"The cute Bepo over there?" Your voice was excited, but in a way that only he heard.

Immediately, Law pointed to the huge white stuffed polar bear, which the man reluctantly removed from the wall. Law's laughter remained contained as he watched you almost itch to reach the bear that the man handed you.

"It's so cute!" You squeezed him, burying your face against his soft fur. "It's so good, it's the best gift I've ever gotten."

"This version of Bepo at least lets us squeeze him." Ikkaku joined you, squeezing the teddy bear as well and listening to the real version of Bepo's mumbles.

"You guys squeeze me too much sometimes, I need to breathe."

"We have the need to squeeze cute little things!" you pressed the plush against your arms.

There was a little relay of who would squeeze your bear - which yes, you nicknamed B2 or as Bepo, the second of his name - until they were back at Polar Tang.

"So, did you like the gift?" Law's voice entering the room was enough to cheer you up. "Does that mean he's already stolen my side of the bed?"

"Just until you come here."

"As if I wasn't already offended since you have to squeeze cute things." he grumbled and it only took seconds for you to throw yourself into his arms, covering any trace of skin and face you could find with smacking kisses.

"You.are.the.best.boyfriend.in.the.world." with each pause, it was a new time that your lips met Law's, this time causing a louder laugh to echo from him. "I loved the gift."

"And I'm glad you liked it." He quickly kissed your lips. "I'm going to take a shower, then can we spend some time together?"

"Me, you and B2?"

"Okay, just tonight. I'm surrounded by bears that give me a hard time." he pretended to be offended, knowing that your reaction would be another kiss on him.

Despite the grumblings - and the exorbitant amount of money spent on the attempts - the vision Law found was worth it. You lay on his bed, one of his t-shirts on your body and attached to your arms, the huge white bear. You matched cute things and for him, that would be worth any game - even if a certain devil fruit power had helped him this time.

[blondthndrninja]

LawNa one-shot involving a proposal and Penguin being the best crewmember ever

“I can’t.”

Penguin, Shachi, and Bepo looked in disbelief at their Captain, “You can’t?!”

“Come on, we’re leaving.” Law said as he adjusted his nodachi and turned around but then a hand grabbed his shoulder and he turned to see it was Penguin who stopped him, “What?”

“Captain...” Penguin shook his head, “Law…you’re not backing out of this.”

Penguin then turned Law fully around and grabbed his shoulders, “Look at me! We’ve known you for how long? Since we met on Swallow Island?”

Law glared back, “Release me, Penguin.”

“No I won’t! You can chop up my body later but I’m not letting you go back to the Tang to marinate in self-pity!” Penguin said, “We all know you were dealt with a shitty hand in life but look! Cora-san’s been avenged! Doflamingo is in prison! And now you have this wonderful opportunity right at your fingertips and you just want to throw it all away!”

“I’m not throwing it away! It’s just not the right time!”

“You think that, but Nami might not! Enough of the excuses! Are you a man or not?”

Law frowned, “She’s a Straw-hat pirate! She belongs with them!”

“But you love her!” then Penguin went silent as the cogs started turning in his head and then he sighed. “I see now.”

His Captain was hopelessly in love and afraid. Afraid that loving her would mean taking her away from the things she treasured most and dragging her down the murky depths devoid of the sunlight that fell on her orange hair in a soft glow.

“Law…I’m sure her crew would be more than happy…well maybe not Black-leg…but everyone else would be fine with it. Especially Straw hat.”

Law grimaced as he thought of how Luffy had recently made him the target of silly pranks involving Nami by either shoving the two in each other’s arms, dragging one of them to sit next to the other, or grabbing their hands in his own and placing them together. Shit, now that he really thought on it, Luffy had given him his blessing in his own quirky way.

“Besides, if Nami comes on the Tang she can help me practice drawing maps!” Bepo gushed.

“Law won’t marry her for that reason idiot!” Shachi scolded.

“Sorry.” Bepo mumbled as he lowered his head.

Law looked at all the members of his crew and pulled out of Penguin’s grip which had loosened before looking down at the simple black box that was in his hand. He looked back up at his men, “Do you think she’ll say yes?”

“I don’t know.” Penguin shrugged, “But you won’t know until you ask her.”

Law regarded the box and then looked up ahead at were the Thousand Sunny was docked. He nodded his head, “Okay then…”

---

The Heart Pirates and Straw hats were gathered together on the beach when suddenly Usopp came running towards the beach and grabbed Luffy before whispering something into his ear. They all watched as Luffy’s face spit into a wide grin, “Shishishi! Really?”

“It’s true! I saw it myself!” Usopp said loudly and then his eyes almost popped out, “Damn! I saw! Oh man Nami’s going to kill me! No Tora-o’s going to kill me! Oh God they’ll both kill me!”

“What the hell are you going on about?” Uni shouted.

“Tora-o proposed to Nami!” Luffy said happily relaying the message Usopp gave him.

“EEEEEHHHHHHHH??!?!?!!”

“What…what did she say?” Bepo asked.

“I said yes.” Everyone looked as a cloud had landed on the beach carrying the couple in question. Law slipped off first before holding out his hand to Nami who took it and slid down as well. The hand that she used to hold his had a gold band on it that shined in the light of the evening sky.

[ikkaku-of-heart]

"Oh? I remind you of your friend? I'll take that as hella high praise from you. Though, you're also tempting me to find this friend of yours and see if I can turn him into a drunken bear buddy for you," Ikkaku teased. Her cheeks were pink with how flattered she was at Mihawk's compliments. Especially being told the world could use more people like her.

Despite being fairly extroverted, Ikkaku had grown up isolated, both due to her island's unfair superstitions ostracizing her and her grandfather keeping people away for her protection. So when she'd finally gotten the chance to leave the fog of Joras and actually meet people, she'd learned fairly quickly that not everyone socialized in the same way, or even wanted to.

Some were outgoing and talkative like Penguin and Shachiwho could turn any meeting into a party. Others were shy like Bepo but warmed up quickly to those who were kind to them. Then some, like Law, were highly selective with who they considered friends but were fiercely protective of the ones they grew attached to. And Ikkaku loved them all because she was a woman who had so much love to give and was grateful to be accepted for who she was, so of course she accepted the people who caught her eye as they were.

"Heh. Yeah, I do end up adopting people that I take a liking to when I'm not the one getting adopted." Law was once again her prime example, having basically decided she'd be his engineer before she'd even agreed to his job offer. Not that she would have refused him, considering how he'd been the first person outside of her grandfather who'd shown admiration for her engineering skills, and he'd sailed in on her dream ship. How could she say no?

Still, the difficulty she had fully living up to the darker aspects of the pirate life made her wonder if she was a disappointment to him. Though, to her surprise, Mihawk seemed to be rather sympathetic. The World's Greatest Swordsman undoubtedly must have killed hundreds, if not thousands, in his quest and retention of the title, yet he hadn't found it as easy as she'd assumed. And he found her brave, despite probably having seen and fought some of the greatest warriors of the generation?

Well. Ikkaku was definitely blushing now.

"You're braver than most Marines too," she said, ducking her head a bit to hide the redness behind thick curls, fidgeting with the ends of her hair bashfully. "I mean, for the obvious reasons, duh, but also because it takes colossal guts to pursue your dream. Even more when your own mind starts giving you nightmares for the trouble." As surprising as it was to hear Mihawk had been so haunted, she supposed it made sense. He wasn't a monster, and they'd all been innocent once.

Peeking up at him through the curtain of hair, she said sympathetically, "It sucks you felt you needed to live up to others' expectations, though. Like I said, people are phenomenally stupid. You don't owe them anything, including living up to some image they've come up with in their heads for you. You've survived what's been thrown at you, so now you should get to live the life you want for yourself. Fuck anyone who tells you otherwise."

Finding somebody so understanding of how he was feeling most of the time when around lots of people was incredibly refreshing. Ikkaku not only lent him an ear and allowed him to get certain things off his chest without judging him, she also just let him be who he was, taking an interest in him that way rather than go on what she might have heard about him from others. People like her, he found, were quite rare. The fact that she was on Law's crew, and that the younger Warlord and himself held quite similar characteristics was also something he liked to think added to her incredibly friendly and sunny nature around him.

❝ Said friend's far from a talking bear, though I wouldn't be surprised if he could be persuaded to pretend to be one once sufficiently drunk. ❞ The smallest smirk spread on his face just from imagining Shanks doing just that. ❝ You actually remind me a lot of him. Both of you are easy-going, non judgemental, I'd even dare say you have a penchant of just adopting people into your found family and making sure they know of it every single time you meet. The world could use more people like you. ❞

As it was, however, every such cheerful and friendly soul he met had one or the other not so nice story to tell about their past, Mihawk noted. Being blamed for your own brother's death and having that hang above you any time you'd interact with your family, now that was something that even chilled him to the core. People were cruel in more ways than just one, but at least Ikkaku managed to flee such a toxic environment. The swordsman, of course, couldn't really judge as he didn't have the full story, though he also wouldn't pry. Just looking at the young woman in front of him and he could tell that those were memories best left in the past. Reopening such wounds could never end well.

❝ It takes a lot of killing to actually become numb to it, ❞ he spoke again, heaving somewhat of a sigh. ❝ It would be so much easier if there was a switch of sorts you could just turn on and off as you wish. When I first started my journey of becoming the world's greatest swordsman, I was aware of what I had to do, but no amount of mental preparation could ever ready me for the onslaught of nightmares I had, not until a couple of years later. By then people thought I was a man ready to kill without remorse and without any emotion, so I played into that. ❞ Truth be told, he didn't wish such a thing upon anybody.

❝ Just because you choose to use none-lethal gadgets in fights doesn't make you weak or a liability. Trust me, it takes a lot more courage to stand in front of an enemy, and you have more of it than most Marines I know. ❞

[uncharismatic-fauna]

Crowning the King Penguin

The second largest species of penguin in the world, the king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) is found along the southern coasts of South America and Australia, as well as islands surrounding Antarctica. They thrive mainly along sparsely vegetated coasts and on the wide ice sheets that surround the Antarctic continent in the winter. They can endure temperatures of up to -10°C and swim in temperatures frequently below freezing.

The king penguin is among the largest penguins, about a meter at its tallest and weighing up to 18kg; generally females are slightly smaller than males. They look very similar to their larger relative the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri): both sport a dark grey or black head with yellow patches on the sides and throat, a dark back, and a white belly. However, the king penguin is more brightly coloured than the emporer penguin, and has a longer bill. Young penguins have an entirely brown coat, and only grow their adult feathers after several molts.

The primary food source for A. patagonicus are cephalopods and small fish, supplemented by krill and other marine invertebrates. Although they usually hunt in the upper water column for such prey, they regularly dive down to depths of over 200m. To find hunting grounds, king penguins can travel up to 500km from their colony. Year-round predators include fur seals, leopard seals and killer whales, and in the summer birds can snatch eggs and hatchlings.

Though king penguins have no formal social structure, they are highly social creatures. Groups of anywhere from a dozen to a hundred individuals travel together between seasons, hunt together, and frequently call to each other. Colonies themselves can easily number in the tens of thousands. King penguins also serially monogamous; they stay with one mate throughout a breeding season, and the next season both mates choose whether to return to their nest or search for a better mate. More often than not, pairs will stay together throughout multiple seasons, though king penguins do have lower rates of monogamy than other penguin species. King penguins also regularly exhibit homosexuality in the wild, with one study finding over a quarter of pairs in a colony were between same-sex individuals.

King penguins are one of only two species of penguin that do not build nests. At the beginning of the mating season, in spring, single males perform loud displays, throwing their head and wings back and puffing out their chests. The female chooses a mate, and the two perform a short dance, after which they molt together for a month. Shortly after, the female lays one egg. This eggs incubates for about 54 days, cared for and carried in a special pouch by both parents. and the ensuing chick is looked after and fed for another 14 to 16 months. During that time, parents take turns hunting for food at sea, and groups of chicks can form a crèche which is looked after by another, unrelated adult. At almost two years old, chicks become fully independent, though they do not mature sexually until 3-5 years of age. King penguins can live up to 25 years in the wild.

Conservation status: The IUCN has rated the king penguin as Least Concern. However, shrinking ice sheets have reduced feeding grounds and breeding colonies, and large reductions in the population are expected in the future.

Photos

Kimberly Kliska

Kerry Steinberner

Carl Henry

Tom Brakefield

[tealin]

Cape Crozier: The Return Journey

As usual, please visit the original blog for proper formatting and images that actually turn up ... All the more important for this one because the punchline is a picture.

When the Crozier party turned their frostbitten faces back to Cape Evans on 25 July 1911, they had endured some of the worst conditions man has ever had to face – at least while armed with the necessary scientific equipment to quantify them.  Record cold, hurricane-force winds, a three-day blizzard with no greater shelter than their sopping wet reindeer skin sleeping bags; all this in the dark of polar midwinter.  The one small but significant mercy was that they had not lost their tent.  They knew that, leaving the moderating influence of the sea at Cape Crozier, they would be plunging again into the brutal cold of Windless Bight, but that was the way home, and home they had to go. 

Cherry describes cooking as being the third worst job.  Some parts of the cooker set had been lost in the hurricane, and though they improvised one with the lid of a biscuit tin, the cooker still had to be balanced on top of the Primus stove by whoever was on duty.  The matches in their dreadful metal tins had only got more frosted since the outward journey.  The strings on the ration bags were like steel wires.  It took more than an hour to get their pemmican hoosh made. 

The worst job was thawing oneself into one's sleeping bag at the end of the day.  The sleeping bags had absorbed so much moisture by now that they were more or less solid ice.  The men had figured out early on that if one's sleeping kit were plugged into the mouth of the bag in the morning, one got a small headstart thawing in.  It still took over an hour of melting the bag open inch by inch with their own body heat to open it fully, and begin the second worst job of the night, which was lying in the freezing wet bag for six hours.  Wilson had made them lie for eight on the outward journey, whether they slept or not – mostly not, by Cherry's recollection – solely for the sake of giving their bodies a rest, but this was agreed to be so unpleasant that they lowered it to six on the return. 

Cherry only got two good sleeps, and these were a gift from Bowers: Each of them had an eiderdown lining for their bags, and Cherry's had reached unendurable saturation at Cape Crozier.  For days Birdie had been urging me to use his eider-down lining – his beautiful dry bag of the finest down – which he had never slipped into his own fur bag.  I had refused: I felt that I should be a beast to take it. [286]  Cherry finally relented when he felt as if I should crack … I felt a brute to take it, but I was getting useless unless I got some sleep which my [too] big bag would not allow. [287] After two nights Birdie's eiderdown was too wet to be much help, but that sleep did make a difference.

Dangerously sleep-deprived and nearing the limits of physical resilience, they found themselves nodding off as they marched to make up for the sleep not slept in their bags.  Instead of marching in a close cluster, Wilson extended his lead so as to walk well ahead, and thereby spot any crevasses: if he were to fall in, he would be anchored by those safely on solid ground, and they could pull him out.  And then, of course, they would know there was a crevasse. 

They escaped the worst of the outward temperatures, but -66°F was bad enough. Wilson's bag was too small, and with the extra pressure of the his eiderdown inside it, had begun to split. Most of Cherry's teeth shattered in the cold.  But, as Cherry said, now they were callous, and with only one sledge to haul, they were making much better time than they had on the outward journey. 

Our departure from Cape Crozier was far less dramatic.  We had all scrambled back to the helicopter without mishap or loss, and our pilot took off into the rising wind, in which everything to the south was an indistinct haze.  There was no question of taking the Winter Journey route back to McMurdo as visibility was far worse than when we'd been denied that way on the outward flight, so it was back around the island the long way again. 

Luckily this meant that we, unlike the egg hunters, got a second go at the penguins.  They are under a strict protection order, so a helicopter can't get too close lest it disturb them in any way, but in our swoop around to get the best view of their situation, we did get close enough to see them.

See that sprinkling of black dots down in the finger bay, like the dust on a table where a pepper grinder sits?  Those are the Emperors!  Here's a closer look: 

Then it was time to round the corner and fly back along the north coast to our own version of home.  You can see how the cloud cover erases nearly all detail on the snowy slopes of Ross Island and why we couldn't have flown back the cloudy way.  As it was, we flew mostly over the sea ice, which was mottled enough to be visible even in the diffuse light.

We only had to get through this patch of cloud and then, as you can see in the distance above, we would reach sunnier skies and safer flying.  Retracing more or less the same route we had followed, but this time with the impression of a blizzard sweeping over the island, the strong wind was evident both in the drift blowing off the ice cliffs and how the sea ice, which had been solid around the coast on our outward journey, was now being blown off. 

Our return journey certainly couldn't have been more different from the Crozier party's.

Our own final stretch was in the opposite direction, and the first of the 'home' sights was Cape Royds, above, site of another Adélie colony, and the Nimrod hut where Terra Nova men would go for a mini-break from Cape Evans during the first winter, when they weren't hieing off to Cape Crozier.  Then, as we left the lee of Ross Island and headed back into the cloud as it poured around this side, a more familiar cape came into view:

Back over Great Razorback, with Turk's Head nearly lost in fog . . . 

Back over Glacier Tongue, with seals sleeping where the last lunch of the Winter Journey was had ... 

Back over the uncommon luxury of the Discovery hut …

And back to McMurdo, safe and sound.

We trudged on for several more hours and it grew very dark. There was a discussion as to where Cape Evans lay.  We rounded it at last : it must have been ten or eleven o'clock, and it was possible that some one might see us as we pulled towards the hut. "Spread out well," said Bill, "and they will be able to see that there are three men." But we pulled along the cape, over the tide-crack, up the bank to the very door of the hut without a sound. No noise from the stable, nor the bark of a dog from the snow drifts above us. We halted and stood there trying to get ourselves and one another out of our frozen harnesses – the usual long job. The door opened – " Good God! here is the Crozier Party," said a voice, and disappeared.

Thus ended the worst journey in the world. [298-9]

Inside was pandemonium.  Most men had gone to bed, and I have a blurred memory of men in pyjamas and dressing-gowns getting hold of me and trying to get the chunks of armour which were my clothes to leave my body.  Finally they cut them off and threw them into an angular heap at the foot of my bunk.  Next morning they were a sodden mass weighing 24 lbs.  Bread and jam, and cocoa; showers of questions; "You know this is the hardest journey ever made," from Scott; a broken record of George Robey on the gramophone which started us laughing until in our weak state we found it difficult to stop. ... Then into my warm blanket bag, and I managed to keep awake just long enough to think that Paradise must be something like this.

We slept ten thousand years ... [301]

When my coordinator had phoned me with the details of our flight that afternoon, she apologised that, due to the weather, we couldn't take the Winter Journey route, and would have to go the longer northerly way instead.  I replied that it was no problem, and "If Cherry knew I was going to fly to Cape Crozier in 35 minutes, his ghost would skua-dive me," referring to the local species of gull which is notorious for divebombing anyone with the temerity to carry a tasty snack outdoors.  She had been on the receiving end of this once or twice in the past, and had told me shortly after my arrival that it feels like being hit on the back of the head with a roasting chicken.

When we were heading north on our way out, and our pilot was briefing us on the route and the flight time, again apologising for the change of plan, my coordinator told him about our conversation, except that instead of the skua-diving ghost she said "Cherry would turn over in his grave."

Our return to McMurdo passed without comment – we had only been gone a couple of hours, and after all, helicopters come and go all the time; there was no reason ours should be more remarkable than any other.  It was near enough to dinner time that, once I thanked our pilot profusely and gave my flight gear back to Helo Ops, then swapped my accursed bunny boots for lighter shoes back in my office, there wasn't anything else to do but head to the galley to see what there was to eat.

Well.

[mst3kproject]

The Navy vs the Night Monsters

Of course, it’s not like bad things stop happening now that 2020 is finally over… we just get to start counting again from zero. Kind of like how I’ve started counting thirty-six Episodes that Never Were per year, beginning with this one. It was co-directed by Wyott Ordung from Robot Monster and features familiar faces like Russ Bender and Mamie Van Doren, the latter for once not playing a teenage delinquent.  It also has one really obscure MST3K connection: it was based on a story by Murray Leinster, which the sharp-eyed will remember as the name of the ship attacked by Evil Count Zarth Arn’s lava lamp weapon at the beginning of Starcrash!

A plane carrying specimens of Antarctic flora and fauna makes a rather rough and unexpected landing at a naval base on remote Gow Island in the south Pacific.  There appears to be nobody on board except the pilot and a few penguins – the former is in a catatonic state, and the latter are... well, penguins... so what happened to the rest of the passengers and crew is a complete mystery.  Did the pilot go mad and kill them?  Did the penguins?  Or did it have something to do with those mysterious ancient trees discovered growing around a geothermal spring in the heart of the frozen continent?

The first ten minutes of this movie are spent trying to be a comedy.  Before we get anywhere near the plot, we first have to listen to the guys on the plane try to be funny about their lunch and their tastes in women.  Then on the island, we watch a guy who can’t seem to figure out how to inflate a balloon, followed by a dude talking to his dog, and then a really icky bit where two women convince a man he had sex with both of them, which he buys because he was too drunk to remember.  Only then do we finally establish what’s actually going on.  The impression one gets from this beginning is that The Navy vs the Night Monsters is going to be peopled entirely by Jackass Comic Relief characters, and I actually turned the film off and sat on it for a couple of days to psych myself up to watch the rest.

When I finally turned it back on, to my relief the movie turned out not to be quite that bad, but it’s still pretty damned bad.  The dull and unfunny opening is followed by an abrupt shift of tone, as a man maddened by terror jumps from the plane to his death!  The only thing set up by the opening that turns out to be relevant is Spaulding the meteorologist’s crush on Nora the nurse, when she’s in love with the base’s second in command, Lieutenant Brown.

I complain frequently about useless love triangles in movies.  This one is very useless, and all the more so because the script totally forgets to resolve it.  Spaulding hates Gow Island but stays because he’s in love with Nora – he wants her to go back to Miami with him and marry him.  When he puts this idea to her, however, it becomes obvious that Nora can’t stand him, and it’s clear enough why: Spaulding is an asshole and he treats Nora not as a partner but as a possession.  Never does he show any sort of tenderness towards her.  Every time they speak to each other, he seems to end up shouting, and his jealousy of Brown repeatedly leads to violence.

Brown, on the other hand, treats Nora with respect and actually shows vulnerability around her.  He’s been left in charge while the base’s commander is on the mainland attending an important meeting, and he’s really feeling the pressure as the base is surrounded by tree monsters in the dark.  He talks about his anxiety and Nora comforts him, and the audience rolls their eyes because it’s perfectly obvious which of these guys she’s going to pick.  And sure enough, at the end she’s in Brown’s arms… but nothing about the whole situation is exactly resolved.

Brown and Spaulding did get in a fist fight, though it wasn’t explicitly over Nora, but nobody ever talks about the problem. Spaulding never realizes that he’s treated Nora badly, and it never seems to even occur to him that she might prefer Brown over him, or even that she has emotions or preferences at all.  He definitely never seems to understand that he’s lost.  Brown and Nora seem to feel a need to hide their love affair from the other base staff, but we’re never given a reason why (although I guess ‘Spaulding’s a dick’ is reason enough).  Nora never tells Spaulding that she prefers Brown… maybe she’s afraid he’ll assault her?  I hate everything about this situation, but nothing more than the fact that as the movie progresses we get hints that Nora may be warming up to Spaulding, as if she’s supposed to consider these two guys equal contenders for her affections!  Fuck everybody who wrote this, seriously.

It’s kind of sad to see Mamie Van Doren in a role like this after meeting her in things like Untamed Youth and Girls Town.  Those movies were gross and exploitative, but Mamie’s characters were central to their plots and she filled those shoes reasonably well.  She wasn’t Oscar material but for what the films were, she was enough to carry them.  The Navy vs the Night Monsters is a little closer to being a ‘real movie’, but in this respect it represents a step down for her, as she is relegated to being something for two men to fight over.  Furthermore, Silver from Girls Town and Penny from Untamed Youth were both characters who required some range – Nora the nurse mainly spends the whole movie being annoyed with the men in her life.  Van Doren could have done much more if anyone had bothered asking it of her.

Let’s see… what else do I hate about this movie? I hate Private Chandler, the guy who stays a Jackass Comic Relief character once that opening is over. Shockingly, The Navy vs the Night Monsters actually kills him off, but he’s not nearly as annoying as Dropo or the guy from Outlaw, so his death merely feels mean rather than having any entertainment value.  The guy was just about to actually get laid by one of the women who’d made fun of him earlier – though she, like Spaulding, showed no sign of being sorry for past jerkitude.

I hate the monsters.  Normally I have a soft spot for plant monsters.  They’re a cliché in their own way, I guess, but they’re a fun idea.  The ones in The Navy vs the Night Monsters kill and digest people with acidic sap, and a character theorizes about how and why such a thing would evolve, which is cool. The execution, however, sucks. While the poster for the film shows us a humanoid Treebeard-looking thing, the actual monsters in the film are dumb-looking stumps that waddle along like a couple of guys trying to move a piece of furniture corner-by-corner because it’s too heavy to lift.  The result reminds me of The Creeping Terror, in that you have to want to get eaten by these things.  At one point a guy walks right up to one, inspects it, and escapes its clutches merely by backing away slowly!

The trees reproduce using insect-like larvae that are, themselves, lethally venomous.  This is also a neat idea which is, once again, ruined by the execution. The tiny ones are being pulled along the floor by a sometimes-visible string, and then they grow into stumps that look like they should be stools around a boy scout campfire, which move even slower than the adult trees!  There’s a scene where the characters are holed up in the base under an onslaught of these, with planes arriving to napalm them just in time, and it is ludicrous in its attempt to feel threatening.

I do like that Gow Island is a bleak middle-of-nowhere rather than a tropical paradise.  The landscapes kind of remind me of the Falkland Islands, though the weather on Gow is evidently better.  You can see why some of the characters hate it here, surrounded by barren scrub inhabited mostly by ten thousand smelly, raucous seabirds. Unfortunately this backdrop makes the ‘comedy’ opening seem even more out of place, though it’s also kind of nice that they didn’t give us any stereotyped ‘natives’ as either comedy or monster fodder.

As for a theme… well, The Navy vs the Night Monsters is clearly about an invasive species.  The biologist, in suggesting how the tree monsters evolved, points out that they are suited to the hostile environment of Antarctica in ways that make them nearly unstoppable anywhere else.  We’re told that they devoured all the penguins the scientists were bringing back for study, and as well as eating the people, they wreak havoc among the Gow Island seabirds and reproduce out of control.  The parallels to things like cane toads in Australia, or housecats just about anywhere, are obvious.

This isn’t something the characters care about, though, even the ones who profess to be scientists.  At the end, enough of the trees are destroyed that the humans can safely evacuate, and what happens after that is clearly Gow Island’s problem, not humanity’s. I really would have liked to see the script go into this a little more, but then, The Navy vs the Night Monsters is not a movie that wants to go into anything, even stuff it sets up in some detail.

At the end, The Navy vs the Night Monsters feels pretty half-assed.  Somebody wanted to make a movie, and then put in the bare minimum effort possible to have all the parts present.  They clearly understood how movies work, but they didn’t have the money and didn’t want to go to the trouble.  The result is deeply mediocre.  There’s a few laughs out of the dumb stump creatures, but mostly it’s just bad.

[fishfingersandjellybabies]

Hello From The Other Side - fic

Characters: Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne, Tim Drake, Alfred Pennyworth Summary: Dick returns from his life as Ric, and finds he has quite a few missed calls. From Damian, of all people. A/N: Based on ‘Hello’ by Adele. Vaguely surrounds current comics situations with Damian and/or Dick. Sorry this sucks hard knobs.

~~

Dick found himself smiling as he walked in the manor’s front door.

He missed this place.

Or, well, rather, he would have. If he remembered it.

But when he did remember it, oh boy, did he miss it.

“Hello?” He called, listening to his voice echo. He hoped someone was home, anyone. He…he hadn’t seen his family in years now, and his throat still tightened at the thought.

No one responded, and Dick found himself fighting back the feeling of disappointment. Of course no one was home, it was the middle of the afternoon. If they weren’t at their various jobs, they were probably sleeping off recent patrols, or maybe down in the cave. Or, you know, at their own homes.

Only Bruce and Damian lived at the manor anymore, he was pretty sure. Maybe.

…He actually didn’t know.

Suddenly, there was the sound of someone clearing their throat from a room nearby, and Dick gravitated towards the noise.

He walked into the kitchen, and found Alfred, moving about the center island, opening and closing drawers and cabinets.

“Alfie?” Dick asked hopefully, smile widening on his face. “Long time no see.”

“Master Richard.” Alfred returned with a quick glance. “My boy, it is so good to see you. The real you.”

“Yeah, I feel a lot better.” Dick laughed, rubbing at the side of his head, where that scar was hidden by his too-long hair. “…Thanks for coming to see me when I was...that other guy.” A pause. “I…do remember that still.”

“My pleasure, sir.” Alfred promised, continuing to shuffle through the drawers. “As if I’d ever give up on one of you children. Amnesia didn’t stop me the last time. Of course it wouldn’t this time.”

“And how awful that we live such lives where there was a last time?” Dick lamented. He watched Alfred for a minute more as he moved from the island to the pantry. “…What are you looking for?”

“Something I need to give you.” Alfred grunted, pushing a bag of sugar out of the way on a shelf. “I meant to search for it prior to your arrival, but…” Alfred frowned. “Things came up.”

Dick didn’t like how he said that last sentence. He…he hadn’t seen anyone since he remembered, only talked to Bruce on the phone, said he was coming back. But Alfred said that as if…

He shook his head. He could deal with that later.

“Can I help you search?” Dick asked instead.

“No need, dear boy. It’s in this kitchen somewhere.” Alfred continued, standing on his tiptoes and reaching along the highest shelf. “I know it’s in here. It’s the only place none of your snooping siblings come regularly, so I knew they’d never think to search here, should they ever want it for some reason.”

“It?” Dick pushed. “What’s it-”

“Aha!” Alfred exclaimed. His hand wrapped around something the size of a thin deck of cards and he yanked it down excitedly. “Here it is.”

Alfred ran his hand along it, pushing off any dust. He turned towards Dick and Dick was almost taken aback by how much older the beloved man looked.

“For you, sir.” Alfred held it out like it was precious.

“It’s…” Dick frowned, confused, but took the device anyway. “Alfie, it’s just my old cell phone.” An airy laugh. “You didn’t have to keep this. I’m…kind of surprised Bruce asked you to, actually. Figured he would have cancelled the service, especially after how Ric acted when he left town.”

“Oh, Master Bruce didn’t ask me to keep it. I did on my own.” Alfred explained, watching as Dick pressed the button on the side to turn the phone on. “It was a…hopeful just-in-case.”

“Oh yeah? And what does that mean?” Dick smirked. His phone’s home screen popped to life, a picture of Cass and Kori painting Jason and Roy’s toenails, but was instantly taken over by a wave of seemingly never-ending notifications.

“…It means we missed you, Dick.” Alfred smiled as he put a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “More than we could ever say.”

Dick found himself frowning as the notifications didn’t slow. By the icons, he could tell a lot of them were texts and voicemails, and in theory, that shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. The surprise came from the fact that these calls were recent, not all of them from years ago, and that most of them, it appeared, were coming from Damian.

Damian who…knew exactly where he was.

“Alfred, what…?”

“I hid your phone when I noticed him calling, after Ric returned to Bludhaven.” Alfred whispered sadly. “Just…just in case you ever returned to us. So you could hear what he said.”

Dick felt his heart sink a little bit.

“And to be clear, I did not eavesdrop.” Alfred swore. “I do not know what any of the messages entail. But I’m sure they’re very…emotionally charged.”

Dick snorted a bitter laugh. “I’m sure that’s an understatement.”

“Indeed.” Alfred returned the laughter. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to begin your welcome home meal.”

“Of course. I’ll get out of your way.” Dick smiled. “But just one more thing.”

Before Alfred could ask, Dick leaned forward, wrapping the old man in a tight embrace.

“Missed you, Alfie.” Dick murmured.

“Thank you for returning to me.” Alfred breathed back, returning the hug with an intense squeeze.

After their quiet, and far too quick, reunion, Dick bid him adieu, and headed upstairs. He went to his own bedroom, knowing that Alfred had already cleaned and dusted everything, and opened the door to the sweet smell of a burning candle on the nightstand.

He smiled at the scent and then flopped down onto his back on the mattress. He missed this bed. This room. This house.

This life.

He reopened his phone, and looked at the bright red notifications. Thousands of texts, hundreds of voicemails. Emails, he just…wasn’t even going to look at that number.

He hit the voicemails button first, Alfred’s words fresh in his mind. And sure enough, the list was just a constant repetition of Damian’s name, with a few others here and there, including his other siblings and hero friends.

None of the voicemails were very long. A minute, tops, in most cases. Fifteen to twenty seconds for the majority. So he went to the bottom, the very first voicemail on the list that belonged to Damian.

“…This is stupid.” The message started. Damian was speaking softly. “I’m…I’m sitting right next to you. In the hospital. You’re stable, but unconscious. The doctor keeps saying she doesn’t know if you’ll wake up.”

A ruffling, like he was shifting in a chair. “Well, you better, okay? You better wake up. Or else.”

Another pause. In the background, Dick could hear the beeping of a heart monitor.

“…Todd suggested this. Leaving voicemails for when you do wake up. Something to laugh about when you’re all better. Or as a memento, so you don’t feel like you missed anything. Or something. I don’t know.” An annoyed huff, and the repetition of: “This is so stupid.”

Then click.

Dick blinked, and went to the next message, and the next. The first ten or so from Damian were all similar messages, all recorded when he apparently was sitting at Dick’s hospital bed. The only difference between them were that Damian sounded sadder and sadder each time. Less hopeful.

There was at least one a day, sometimes more but normally not. Then suddenly for almost a week, there was nothing, not from Damian at least. Then his name reappeared, and the message was not its typical fifteen seconds. It was a minute and a half.

“…You woke up.” Damian choked out, and instantly Dick knew he was crying. “You woke up and you don’t remember any of us.” His breath was heavy, and he heard the desperate, quiet meows of Alfred behind him, trying to get his attention. “And you don’t want to remember any of us.”

Ten seconds of nothing but watery breathing. A gentle woof from Titus.

“Did someone tell you what I did, is that why? Did they tell you who I used to be?” Damian whispered. “Is that why you don’t want to know me anymore? You forgave my sins before, when we were partners. You remembered how heinous they actually were, didn’t you? And how stupid you were for forgiving me in the first place.”

Another long pause. Damian sniffed, and blew his nose.

“I…I should have been there, then this wouldn’t have happened.” Damian continued, almost like he forgot he was on the phone. “I would have seen the gunman. I would have pushed you out of the way. Father could have…done something.”

A heavy sigh.

“I would have killed him for looking at you. For daring to try and hurt…” A loud gulp that sounded painful. “I don’t know why I’m doing this anymore. You’re not coming back. This is a waste of time.”

The line dropped.

Dick winced as he went back to the list. If that was how this started…he had a feeling it didn’t get any better.

Which made the next one a surprise. Back to a short length. But despite it being under Damian’s name, the first voice he heard was Jason’s.

“Dickie!” Jason slurred, and immediately Dick knew he was drunk. In the background he heard laughter that sounded like Tim, and Damian shouting Jason’s name in annoyance. “We miss you, dude. Big time. Also, why’d you never share your kid with us? He’s cute. And I’m…a little insulted.”

“Todd.” Damian’s voice was closer now, and there was shuffling. “Give me back the damn phone!”

“Okay, I’m a lot insulted. Also, who taught him to swear so much? I swear, Bruce blushed at the way your lil’ baby boy cursed out the Penguin the other night.”

“Todd!” Damian called again. Suddenly Jason grunted, and Damian’s voice was right there, almost as if he was on Jason’s back. “Give me-”

There was the sound of a scuffle, and halfhearted “Hey!” from Jason, and suddenly all sound disappeared.

“…Sorry, Grayson.” Damian muttered, sounding genuine. “Todd was…upset. About…well, you, I guess, and got himself drunk over it.”

A pause, followed by a quick scoff. “What am I-”

The line cut off.

That one made Dick smile a little bit. But also sigh. The amnesia…did a whole lot more damage than to just his mind, it appeared.

He clicked the next.

“…I keep drawing you.” Damian whispered. “Cassandra brought it to my attention. I didn’t…didn’t realize.”

Dick could hear the scratch of a pencil in the background.

“She asked why, and I told her I didn’t know. Perhaps I just missed you. That seemed to satisfy her.” Damian hummed. He didn’t sound upset, like he had previously, but he also didn’t sound happy. He didn’t sound anything. “That’s not the real reason, though.” Stop. “I mean, it is. I do miss you.” A bitter laugh. “I miss you terribly and I hate myself for it because I probably shouldn’t.” Dick frowned at that. “But it’s not why.”

A quick scribble, then the turning of a page.

“It’s because I think…I think I’ll forget.” Damian breathed. “I’ll forget what you look like.” A small grunt. “Or, at least, what you looked like. When you were you.”

A few seconds of silence.

“You go by Ric, now. That’s disgusting.” Damian noted. “Barbara says you’re a cab driver now. Interesting choice. Very not you, that’s for sure.”

The clatter of pencils. A quiet meow from Alfred nearby.

“…But if it makes you happy, I guess.” Damian sighed. Dick absently wondered where Damian’s sketchbooks were, if anyone had seen them. If they still existed. “…I hope you’re happy, Grayson. Whatever you’re doing.”

The line clicked.

As he scrolled through the list, he wondered if Damian would show him the drawings he mentioned if he asked.

The next one he picked was from a few months later, and time stamped as two in the morning.

The first noise was the wind, a sound Dick knew well. Nothing like the howl of the breeze from on top of a skyscraper. The next was the flapping of a cape.

Damian’s voice was tinny, and clearly through his mask communicator, not a phone.

“…Father and I are fighting.” Damian said bluntly. “My team…my team doesn’t trust me. Not that they should, I suppose. Trust is for the weak. So, in theory, it makes them each stronger heroes.”

A bird fluttered by.

“I mean, I’m lying to them as well, so. They shouldn’t.” Damian reiterated. “I…”

He stopped again, and for a moment, the shuddering breath that echoed made Dick wonder if he was injured. If maybe he thought he was dying. It sounded like a confession.

“You’d be so disappointed in me, Grayson.” Damian sighed. “I…what I’m doing isn’t good. It’s…violent. And I’m hiding it. From the Titans, from Father. Not like Father cares where I am or what I’m doing anymore. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

A few seconds of just Damian breathing.

“…I looked in the mirror the other day. For the first time in a while. It’s not like I was avoiding mirrors, I just…wasn’t thinking about them. But I did the other day and I…I don’t think I recognized myself.” Another flutter of wings and a light coo. Dick imagined the bird had landed on Damian’s hand. “I…didn’t really know who I was looking at. It took me a minute to realize I was looking at myself.”

The rustle of one of his belt pouches. The happy cooing of the bird again.

“…Something’s wrong with me.” Damian whispered, and he almost sounded terrified. “I…I’m trying my best. I’m trying to save people. I’m trying to be what people think I should be, what Father wants me to be, but…I feel like I’m drowning. Like I’m cracking. Like I’m about to shatter into a million pieces.”

Dick felt a lump in his throats at the words. This wasn’t good. Because normally, Damian only admitted something was wrong when it was too late to fix it. So how long did he feel this way? How long was he and Bruce really so estranged?

What was Damian doing that he was keeping so hidden?

“Drake says I’m still grieving you, and that I’m in the midst of some sort of…downward spiral. Then he said it was funny, because you were similar when I died.”

Dick could agree with that.

“But…you had your friends. You still had the family. I…” An angry huff. “You were the only person to ever care about me Grayson, and I have no one.”

The wind blew in the background again, and it sounded like it was wailing.

“I have no one.” Damian repeated softly. Then he snorted. “Maybe, somehow, this is your fault. Maybe without you, I really am a hopeless case. You were my conscious, so without you I am just the evil assassin who needs to be stopped, thrown in prison or eradicated.”

Another pause, and Dick heard the bird fly off.

“…I’m lost, Grayson. And I…I guess I’m scared.” Damian whispered. “Of Father’s true feelings for me, of the future…of myself.”

Another sigh, and suddenly Damian’s voice was full of tears.

“I’m just trying so hard, Grayson. I’m trying my best. But it’s still not good enough. I still can’t get Father to look at me. I still can’t save anyone. I…I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

A moment, to let himself cry, and Dick’s heart broke with every beat listening to it.

“I hope you’re doing well without me. Without the family.” Damian breathed, trying to regain his composure. “Because I am not doing as well without you.”

Dick heard the phantom sound of a beep, the alert for another line calling.

“I miss you.” Damian whispered. “I miss you so much, Grayson. I hope you’re doing okay.”

The line clicked.

Dick glanced back at the metadata for the call. That was less than a year ago. Eight, ten months perhaps?

He hadn’t seen Damian since he returned. Hell, no one had even mentioned him. But no one said anything had happened either…

Dick swallowed that lump in his throat, went looking for more messages.

One was only six seconds.

“Jon went away for three weeks. He’s now seventeen years old, and going to live in the thirty-first century.” Damian explained. “Why do the people I care about keep changing? Keep leaving?”

Another even shorter one a few days later.

“Titus pooped in Drake’s room. I’m not cleaning it up. It’s what he deserves.”

There were a string of them, almost every other day for about three weeks. Each short, and none of them pertaining to Damian’s long, distressing message.

“It rained today, and I wore your sweatshirt outside. Sorry.”

“Father called me back to town to help with a case. He didn’t say four words to me the whole time I was here.”

“It’s…hard today, Grayson.”

“My animals miss you.”

“Todd misses you.”

“Gordon misses you today.”

“I think I saw Pennyworth crying over you in the kitchen this morning.”

“I had a dream about you. You were dead. Your ghost followed me around. I think I preferred it to our current situation.”

“I had a nightmare about you. You were a Talon sent to kill me. I should have let you.”

“…I miss you, Grayson. I don’t know what else to say.”

Dick’s heart was twisting. No one noticed Damian was making these calls beside Alfred? No one talked to him? He was just…left to deal with this alone?

After that three week period, there weren’t any for a month or two. Dick even checked for text messages, and there was none from Damian. He was surprised by that too, surprised Damian never texted him during his time away. Always put in the extra effort, extra time, to call. To let the phone ring, listen to his answering machine, and say what was one his mind.

He went back to the list of voicemails, and went in search of Damian’s next one. And he found it – right next to one from Tim a few minutes before it.

So he listened to Tim’s first.

“…It’s a mess here without you, Dick.” Tim said with a sigh. “Something’s going on with Damian and Bruce, and no one seems to know what it is. Hell, I don’t think they even know, honestly. But it’s tense and awful being here. Can’t help but think this – whatever this is – wouldn’t have happened if you were still here.”

The computer dinged in the background, and Dick heard the chair shift as Tim leaned forward.

“Damian’s about to snap. No one can reach him.” Tim sounded concerned, and Dick was almost surprised by that. “He won’t let anyone reach him. He’s reminding me of how he was when he first came here, and that’s scary. But I’m not you. No one is you, and we can’t figure it out. We ask and he ignores the question. We offer support and he disappears.”

Another sigh.

“Bruce doesn’t even ask.”

Dick found himself wincing at that.

“…We miss you, Dick.” Tim mumbled. “But at least you’re safe down in Bludhaven, and away from all this shit.”

Tim ended the call.

Immediately, Dick went to Damian’s call, that he made only moments later.

“…I have to leave. I can’t do this anymore.” Damian whispered. “I can’t stay here. I can’t stay in this life. I can’t stay in this mantle.”

There was no sound behind him. Nothing. He obviously wasn’t in the cave, that’s where Tim clearly was. But was he in the house? Was he outside? Was he already gone?

“I…I’m sorry I let you down, Grayson. I’m sorry I’ve destroyed the name you, for some reason I still don’t understand, thought I deserved. But I won’t take Robin with me. I’ll leave it here. I won’t tarnish it anymore.” More silence. Dick couldn’t even hear Damian breathing. “…Do you think Father will even notice I’m gone? Do you think he’ll care?”

Dick waited in the quiet.

“Because I don’t.” Damian admitted. “But…maybe that’s alright. It’ll make it easier for me to do what I need to. No distractions.”

Suddenly, there was a small hitch in his breath, and Dick heard the tears instantly.

“I’ll miss him, despite it all. He is still my father. He still let me meet you.” Damian breathed. “But I need to do this. I need to. And I don’t know if I’ll come back. Maybe if you do.”

A bitter laugh.

“But we all know that isn’t happening.” Damian let out a long exhale. “I’m sorry, Grayson. I’m sorry I couldn’t…be what you thought I could be. And I’m sorry…I didn’t appreciate you while you were here. I never thought losing you would be my undoing. Would put me on a path that would lead to something like this. I thought…I thought I’d be with you and the family forever. Now I’m escaping into the night with nothing but a backpack. I’m not even taking this phone. Don’t want to be tracked and all that.”

As Damian spoke, Dick glanced at the call’s info again. This wasn’t that long ago. Three months.

“Thank you for everything. I’m sorry I messed it all up. I still miss you. I…still love you.” Damian sniffed. “I hope you and I cross paths again one day, even if you’re still Ric.”

Then…nothing. The call ended. Dick scrolled the list to find another one, but there was no more. No more calls from Damian’s phone. Not even anymore from the family. A few friends, a few doctor’s appointment reminders.

Dick sighed, dropping the phone onto his chest and closing his eyes. He knew he missed a lot. He knew he missed lifetimes.

But this…

The front door squeaked open. “We’re here!”

Despite it all, Dick found himself smiling. It was Tim.

He slid off his bed, leaving the phone behind, and jogged into and down the hall. But he found himself freezing at the landing.

Because it wasn’t just Tim. Damian was with him.

He was taller now, and full-on teenager lanky. His cheekbones were more pronounced, arms too long for the sweatshirt he wore. Already, Dick could see a few new scars he didn’t remember, even from this distance.

Dick frowned. The voicemail just said…?

Regardless, none of his confusion stopped him from all but flying down the stairs. Damian and Tim were chatting as they took off their shoes, so they didn’t see him coming, not until he engulfed Tim in his arms, and practically tackled him to the ground.

“Hey little brothers.” His voice was muffled against Tim’s shoulder.

Tim laughed, throwing his arms around Dick. “God, am I glad to see you.”

“Glad to be back.” He released Tim, but stared down at him. He looked tired. More tired than he normally did.

But he didn’t dwell on it, immediately turning to Damian and wrapping him up in his arms, lifting him and giving him a quick spin.

“Augh, Grayson!” Damian admonished, but laughed in the process, clinging to Dick’s neck. Even when Dick put him down, he didn’t release him, keeping his face hidden in Damian’s hair.

“Kiddo.” Dick whispered. “What’s new?”

Because should he outright say that he knew? Should he confront Damian – and Tim, really – right here and now? Or play dumb? Alfred said no one knew he kept the phone, after all.

“Everything.” Damian chuckled. “It has been a while, after all.” But Damian pulled back, and Dick’s heart swelled at the obvious reluctance to the movement. He felt no different, of course. “But a conversation for later. Not in the doorway. Has Pennyworth finished preparations?”

Like a snake, Damian slid away, practically running to the kitchen. A tactic to avoid conversation, Dick knew it well. He sighed, and glanced at Tim.

Tim was already watching him curiously. “…Do you know?”

“I know a little.” Dick admitted. “I…Alfred saved my phone. I got your voicemails. And his. I know he…left? He’s not Robin anymore?”

Tim shook his head. “He’s only here because I spent a week tracking him down. Bruce…didn’t even try to contact him to tell him you’re back. But I knew despite it all, he’d want to be here.”

“Does Bruce know he’ll be here tonight? For this?”

“No.” Tim mumbled. “And even when he sees him, Jay, Cass and I have already made a plan to keep the two as far away from each other as possible. Tonight’s about you, not what’s going on with them.”

“Think they’ll tell me what’s going on? Later, after dinner?”

Tim shrugged. “You know how Bruce is. Damian…he already told me he doesn’t want to stay long, probably to avoid talking to Bruce. But he missed you like crazy, so I don’t see him trying to sneak away until you guys get to talk one on one. So…he might.”

Dick pursed his lips. “…A lot has changed, hasn’t it?”

Tim gave him a sour grin. “More than you’d ever believe.”

“…Well, I’ll tell you one thing that hasn’t.” Dick offered. He wrapped his arm around Tim’s shoulders, reeled him into his side. “Still love you like crazy, squirt.”

Tim smiled genuinely now, hooking his own arm around Dick’s waist and pushing him towards the kitchen. “You better, old man.”

Dick laughed, kissed Tim’s head. “Missed you.”

“Missed you more.” Tim countered as they reached the doorway. They stopped there, leaning against each other. “…But probably still not as much as he did.”

Damian was awkwardly standing in front of Alfred as the old man looked him over, critiqued his lack of hair cut and skinniness. Alfred said something scolding and Damian laughed.

Dick inhaled and, without releasing Tim, walked over to him, once again tugging him into an embrace. An unspoken group hug.

Damian was still laughing. “Grayson, what on earth!”

“Just give me a minute, Damian.” Dick whispered, leaning his head between Tim and Damian’s. “Give me a minute.”

A minute before everyone’s here. A minute before Bruce brings tension. A minute before I learn what really happened. A minute before you try to disappear back into the night again.

He didn’t say any of that, but Damian seemed to know. He always seemed to know.

“Okay.” He whispered, as Tim silently wrapped his free arm around Damian’s back too. Damian glanced at him, but Tim just kept his gaze lowered. It was not the night for him to share his emotions on the subject.

So Damian shifted to hold them both, too.

“…Okay, Grayson.”

[hangingfire]

A capital story

I got to perusing The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle for 1845 last night, and discovered that it includes a 50-ish page article called The African Guano Trade: Being an account of the trade in Guano from Ichabo, and other places on the African Coast, more particularly, the Proceedings of the Committee of Management, by an anonymous member of that committee. Some cursory searching hasn’t yielded up any clues as to the identity of the anonymous member, and if anyone has any leads on that, I’d love to hear it.

Anyhow, Ichabo (or Ichaboe) is, of course, “Birdshit Island”, famous amongst Terror fans for Fitzjames’s “whole saga of policing that massive guano deposit off Namibia”. I haven’t yet strapped in to read the whole article, but so far I’ve seen that our boy does get a mention on p. 628:

As the time of the Clio’s stay at Ichabo was limited, the most urgent cases only were brought under Commander Fitzjames’ notice; he attended the committee meetings while he remained, and by his attention to the cases brought before him, and his evident desire to do all he could for the general interests concerned, made himself respected and esteemed by all who met him. The meetings of committe, now consisting of fourteen members, were held twice a week, minutes of proceedings were regularly kept, written complaints alone received, and business conducted in a manner suitable to the constantly increasing number of vessels present. After remaining four days the Clio left for England.

And then … there’s a poem at the very end (p. 664). By another anonymous author:

The following lines were written by a talented friend of ours at the Cape of Good Hope, at a time when the whole conversation in every society centered in Guano.

A scholar with better resources than mine might be able to get to the bottom of this, but given what we know about Fitzjames’s tendencies toward poetry … Look, you have no idea how badly I want for him to have written this. Anyway, regardless of authorship, I present this for general amusement.

A thousand fine vessels are ploughing the main, With their white sails all spread till their lofty spars strain; But what are they seeking, and where are they gone? Attend to my lay, and I’ll tell you anon.

There’s an island that lies on West Africa’s shore, Where penguins have lived since the flood or before, And raised up a hill there, a mile high or more. This hill is all guano, and lately ‘tis shown, That finer potatoes and turnips are grown By means of this compost, than ever were known; And the peach and the nectarine, the apple, the pear, Attain such a size, that the gardeners stare, And cry, “Well I never saw fruit like that 'ere !” One cabbage thus reared, as a paper maintains, Weighed twenty-one stone, thirteen pounds and six grains, So no wonder Guano celebrity gains.

If business cause you to walk down the street, A group of old fogies you’re certain to meet, Rigged in chokers, frock-coats, and boots, all complete ; Except that the latter are large for the feet, But that is apart from the subject I treat: Their broad shouldered figures, their weather-bronzed features, Convince you at once, that they’re sea-faring creatures. One pulls out a snuff-box and hands it about, While each one in turn puts it up to his snout, But none of the party will take a pinch out: You’re puzzled till some one says, “here’s an example Of Malagas Guano, it’s not a bad sample.”

You speak a strange sail, ask her where she is bound? She answers, “wherever guano is found.”

At dinner some gentlemen helping a dish Says “a little guano, Sir ?—beg pardon—fish?” And so the word’s dinned in your ears, till you wish, Those foreseeing penguins had never laid by, (Without speaking before) such a precious supply.

The island of Ichabo’s besomed all o'er, As clean as e'er thrasher swept granary floor: Not Hercules twit as Augeas’s groom, E'er used with such rigour his scavenger broom. It’s now nothing more than a desolate rock, And, sad to relate, such a terrible shock Have the seals and the penguins to each finer feeling Received, from,\ what they call scandalous dealing, Their infants all strangled regardless of squealing, That, to law and to gratitude vainly appealing, In rage they’ve abandoned the home of their sires, Protesting, henceforth 'till the whole tribe expires, This coveted treasure they’ll cast in the deep. Each parent enjoins on his children to keep The oaths they have sworn? Skippers listen and weep!

On Ichabo’s surges deep wailings were heard, The childless, the widow, the fatherless bird, Departing in pitiful dirges concurred: From Malaga’s shores, too, a shriek rode the wind, From bleak Paternoster another combined; From I.O. Smith’s islands a voice rent the air, Prophetic that they in disasters would share, Notwithstanding the good Capt. B–n had been there, And done what he could do to ward off their fate; His gen'rous exertions were rather too late, His arguments lost on the merciless fate Of one, who had bade them their doom to await.

One evening it chanced, as I strolled by the shore, This saddest of ditties the cool night breeze bore, Distinct o'er the surf with its gruff sullen roar;—

The Penguin’s Lament. Tormented for aye be the pitiless breast That drove me afar from my home! A desolate bird o'er the broad billow’s crest, In search of a country to roam.

Fiends, ever torture the cold ruthless heart That robbed my warm nest of its young! And made a poor heart-broken penguin depart From the land whence his forefathers sprung.

May conscience’s thorns on his death-bed be strewn, His friends in adversity flee, Was Martin’s act made for the jack-ass alone Extend not its mercies to me?

Then in Albion! no longer the land of the just, The penguin’s lament shall be heard, And those miserly wretches lie low in the dust, Who spared not a poor ocean bird.

Source: The Nautical Magazine And Naval Chronicle: a Journal of Papers On Subjects Connected With Maritime Affairs. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1845. pp. 617-666

[anubislover]

Fraternizing with the Enemy

(A month after a one-night stand, Ikkaku finds herself chatting with Killer at the bar, wondering if she should risk her captain’s wrath for a chance at a second go)

There was bound to be trouble tonight. Ikkaku knew it the second the Kid Pirates marched through the tavern door. Honestly, she was surprised an all-out brawl hadn’t already happened. The two crews had run into each other a few times already on the Grand Line, and so far, the longest the two rookie captains had managed to go without a fight was twenty-eight minutes and thirty-two seconds. Penguin had timed it.

It was a record she doubted would be broken tonight; ten minutes in and Law was happily throwing shade from his table and Kid’s retorts were getting pissier by the second.

Sighing, Ikkaku quickly downed her pint of beer, physically and mentally preparing herself to vacate her place at the bar and abandon her fantasy of a nice, relaxing evening out. She’d even gotten gussied up, forgoing the boiler suit in favor of a tight skirt, tall boots, and a crop top. What a waste.

As she set down her mug, a large, lightly tanned hand smoothly but firmly set down some belli beside it while a low, quiet voice informed the bartender, “Another for the lady, and I’ll have the same. With a straw, though.”

A pleasant shiver ran down Ikkaku’s back at the low, familiar timbre. The man it belonged to had starred in her wet dreams since their hot, steamy night together over a month ago. It was another instance of their crews running into each other, this time hunting down the treasure rumored to be hidden deep in the island’s jungle. However, the massive, ravenous reptiles that called the jungle home had attacked at the same time a massive monsoon hit, scattering the crews in the chaos. By pure luck, Ikkaku and Killer had ended up holed up in the same cave, soaked to the bone and more than a little banged up.

She’d admittedly been leery of the dangerous first mate, but much to her surprise he’d been a perfect gentleman; helping her fashion a splint for her sprained ankle, starting a meagre fire to try to dry off their clothes, and just generally going out of his way to show she had nothing to fear from him. He’d even removed his mask in a show of trust. Over several hours suspicion turned to acceptance, which turned to small talk, which finally morphed into flirting.

By nightfall, after a purred comment about sharing body heat, he was fucking her torturously slow, rasping filthy compliments in her ear, ignoring her pleas for him to speed up and fuck her harder; she could tell from the way he gripped her hips that he was holding himself back for the sake of not jostling her injured leg. When she’d woken up the next morning, she found him dressed and preparing a quick breakfast for them, his mask once more in place as he announced they’d better be getting back to their respective ships.

Now, he was at the bar beside her, ordering her a drink. Ikkaku hadn’t expected that. She’d figured she was just another notch in his belt, like he was hers, and they’d have no further interaction beyond trying to kill each other at their captains’ command.

“Shouldn’t you be making sure Kid doesn’t have an aneurysm?” she asked, forcing herself to sound casual. Normally, she wouldn’t have any trouble talking to a past one-night stand, but those people usually weren’t the first mate on an enemy ship.

“Heat and Wire can keep him in check for a few minutes,” Killer replied, tone neutral as beige wallpaper as he stuck the little bendy straw through one of the holes in his mask. “Though, that wouldn’t be a problem if Trafalgar didn’t insist on winding him up.”

“Kid gets wound up by the mere fact that Law exists,” she countered as she accepted her fresh beer from the bartender.

He turned to face her, leaning his hip against the bar as he sipped his drink. “True. Suppose it’s lucky that Kid’s in a good mood. His bounty went up again; otherwise he’d be even more eager for a fight.”

She scowled slightly at that. He was right; the new wanted posters had come with the day’s News Coo, and Kid’s was nearly thirty thousand belli higher than Law’s now. “Bounties aren’t everything,” she insisted with a stubborn pout. “Law can still kick Kid’s ass.”

“Are you seriously playing the ‘my captain can beat up your captain’ game?” he asked, head tilting slightly to the side.

A pink blush spread across her cheeks at his callout. Gods, it sounded so childish when he put it like that. “You’re oddly talkative tonight,” she stated, changing the subject in hopes of salvaging her dignity.

“Something wrong with polite conversation?”

“Just trying to figure out your end goal, here.”

“Well, why does a man usually buy a beautiful woman booze?”

Her blush darkened despite herself. She’d usually be immune to such comments, but the purr in his throat instantly took her back to that night and the way he’d told her how damn good she felt around him as he drove her over the edge for the second time. Beneath the lip of the bar, she rubbed her thighs together. “Lookin’ to get into my pants again?” Honestly, she secretly hoped so. Now that she wasn’t injured, she’d love to find out just how much Killer had been holding back.

One muscular forearm rested across the back of her seat as he leaned in just the slightest bit. “Wouldn’t say no, but mostly wanted to check on you.”

Ah. Of course. He was there to make sure there hadn’t been any consequences to their tryst. Disappointing, but understandable.

“You didn’t get me pregnant or anything,” she assured. One of the benefits of having a genius doctor for a captain meant that she was on one of the best birth controls known to man. The downside was that, if Killer had accidentally knocked her up, there was no way in hell she would have stood a chance at hiding it from Law. Gods, the hell that would have broken loose if she were carrying the Massacre Soldier baby…

His broad shoulders shook slightly, and Ikkaku was shocked to find Killer was holding back laughter. “Good to hear, though I was gonna open by asking about your ankle,” he finally said, mirth tinting his usually deadpan voice.

Man, this just wasn’t her night, was it? She was usually so much smoother. Clearing her throat and taking a sip of beer to regain her composure, she replied, “The ankle’s fine. Nothing worse than a light sprain. Honestly, Law was more concerned with the finger-shaped bruises on my ass.”

She got a smug sense of satisfaction when Killer choked on his drink. That reaction almost made up for the absolute grilling she had gotten from her captain over precisely how she might have received such marks.

“So he—”

“I told him you must have given them to me when you hauled me up over your shoulder so we could run away from the giant lizard that was chasing us,” she said with a smirk. There was no way Law had actually bought her excuse, but there wasn’t much he could do beyond scowl and assign her extra chores as punishment for fraternizing with the enemy.

After all, he’d slept with X Drake—both before and after the Marine’s career change. Who was he to lecture her about fraternizing with the enemy?

Ikkaku watched Killer’s broad shoulders slump in relief. “Kid doesn’t know, either, and I ain’t telling. He’d either use it as ammunition to rile Trafalgar up, or kidnap you in some misguided show of friendship. Neither seemed particularly respectful towards you.”

“Thanks,” she said softly, hiding her smile behind the rim of her mug. She was pleasantly surprised to realize she hadn’t even entertained the thought that he’d brag about banging her to his buddies. He just…didn’t seem the type. And the fact that he’d kept quiet partially to protect her reputation was oddly heartwarming. “Law’s…protective, so I can’t imagine either scenario going in your favor.”

“Would sure as hell get tonight’s brawl started early.” He glanced over his shoulder at the two bickering captains before looking up at the clock over the bar. “Nineteen minutes, forty-seven seconds. Think they’ll beat their record?”

“They just might,” she giggled. So, the Kid Pirates timed their fights, too, huh? “Unless something happens to set one of them off.”

“Like what?”

“Like Law noticing you talking to me.”

“He’d get mad over us talking? I’m not even touching you,” he said, drumming his fingers pointedly against the back of her chair. It was true; though he was close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off him, no part of his body was making contact with hers.

“Just because I fibbed about where those bruises came from doesn’t mean he believed it for a second.”

“How’d he even see them, anyway?” he huffed, and Ikkaku could imagine his eyes had narrowed critically behind the mask. “Do you really need to strip down to your skivvies for him to treat a sprained ankle?”

Elbows rested on the bar top as her fingers linked, creating a nice little spot where she could demurely rest her chin. Dark eyelashes fluttered up at him as she answered with a charming smirk, “Killer, I’m a woman. An insanely hot one, at that, who tends to make a habit of mouthing off to dangerous people. You think that my captain wouldn’t be just a teensy bit paranoid about something having happened to me after realizing I’d spent the night alone in the jungle with a dangerous man like you?”

The hand on her chair shifted to teasingly trail along the exposed skin of her lower back. Ikkaku shivered at the sensation of rough callouses gently dancing along her sensitive spine, and she had to bite her lip to hold back a moan as his fingers pinched the end of one of her curls and gave a sharp tug. One of the few rough actions he’d allowed himself to indulge in had been hair pulling once he’d realized how much she loved it.

Her thighs rubbed together again, and this time he caught the action if his harsh inhalation was anything to go by.

His voice had a hot, rough edge to it as he replied, “I think he’d be even more paranoid if you, say, decided to leave the bar with me to spend the night in my quarters.”

Oh. Oh, that was a tempting offer. That night in the jungle had been good, but Ikkaku knew it was just a taste of what the masked man could offer. She was sure he’d leave delicious new bruises all over her smooth skin, and maybe he’d even let her take the reigns for a while. The only problems was she knew Law wouldn’t approve and would likely Scan the whole island for her if he realized she was gone. He could forgive her for sleeping with the enemy once, but twice? That was pushing her luck.

Her theory was proven as she found herself encased in a blue bubble, and in a blink, she was at her captain’s side, her chair at the bar occupied by his empty mug.

“Killer-ya,” Law drawled, scowling at the masked pirate out of the corner of his eye, shifting his nodachi so it lay pointedly between him and his female subordinate, “it’s not nice to bother a lady when she’d drinking.”

“He wasn’t bothering me, Law,” Ikkaku griped, irritated not just by the cockblock, but the fact that he’d drawn the whole tavern’s attention. “We were just talking.”

“His hand was on your ass.”

“It was on my back!”

“This time,” he growled under his breath.

Before Ikkaku could retort or smack him upside the head, Kid decided to butt in. “Killer, were you seriously lookin’ to bang the Heart chick?” he sniggered, eyeing the woman deviously. The way his smirk widened at Law’s glare foretold trouble. “You know, now that she’s outta that ugly uniform and actually dressed like a woman, I can’t say I blame you.”

“Watch it, Eustass-ya,” Law said lowly, his relaxed posture and mocking tone from the beginning of the night having evaporated like raindrops in the desert.

Sensing the tides had turned, Kid ignored him to address Ikkaku. “Tell ya what, girly; how about I buy you for the night? As a gift for my first mate.”

Dark eyes widened at his audacity before the mechanic snorted, jutting out her hip. “If a guy needs his buddy to buy him a woman, I’d say that’s a pretty good indicator that he’s shit in bed.”

She mentally apologized to Killer, though by the way she could see his shoulders quietly shaking out of the corner of her eye, he’d found her barbed retort more amusing than insulting.

After all, he’d given her three orgasms in one night while holding back. If anything, she should be paying him.

Kid, of course, was far less entertained, his sarcastic smile morphing into an angry frown. “Listen sweet cheeks, you’d be lucky to take Killer’s dick.”

“Speaking from experience, Eustass-ya?” Law asked, teeth flashing with sadistic delight.

“Oh, you little—”

At twenty-seven minutes and fifty-one seconds, the two captains finally began fighting for real, metal and body parts flying as their crews grabbed whatever makeshift weapons they could to join the fray.

As Ikkaku smashed a chair over Wire’s back, she caught Killer’s eye.

The Massacre Soldier’s mask kept her from seeing his expression, but from his casual shrug, she suspected there were no hard feelings between them for either the fight or lack of having a second go. She graced him with a saucy grin, even as they both turned to aid their captains.

Ah well. Perhaps some other time. Anything was possible on the Grand Line, after all.

End.

[gemshine]

New Guy

This guy was probably born in his suit. He’s new, yet it’s like he stepped straight out of the handbook an hour before showing up for work. He was the agent from your favourite childhood comic book: focused, grumpy, and prepared for anything. A seasoned vet before he clocked in on day one.

It’s like he lives for work and has no interests outside it as far as any co-worker that made a sad attempt at small talk could discern. It honestly kinda sucks the life out of the room when agents, just trying to have fun, feel his unsettling gaze over their shoulders. It wouldn’t be a shocker if it was revealed that the whole time he had been an agent robot of G’s own invention. By the end of week one, his nickname defaulted to New Guy as his colleagues struggled to find something unique to address him by.

At least he was good at his job, really good actually. His discipline is second to none and his intelligence shines through easily when he discusses the task at hand, which is the only topic he’s not willing to dismiss within five seconds. He also seemed to have memorized the entire F.I.S.H., as he is one to correct any behaviour a step out of line with protocol. That, along with the fact that when faced with Tic Tac Toe Code, as his colleagues are fishing out their cheat sheets he beats them to the chase by reading the symbols like they were plain English.

He’s a strange fellow when stood next to the bright cheery nature of the rest of the population. As everyone else waddles side to side, he straight up walks one webbed foot in front of the other, always on a mission. He seems miserable on the job until you work with him when then it becomes clear that he wants to be here more than any other penguin.

Rook

He’s kinda a mess and pretty clumsy, and often reckless and maybe semi-feral, but... Well, the Director and G see a shining potential in him despite his present performance record, and in addition to their judgment being respected, they happen to call the shots at PSA. So he gets to stay, and in fact progress in his career as an agent.

He gets promoted at the slightest taste of success, even as he stands in the rubble of the ten other things he messed up and blew up. He is personally given the Propeller Cap 3000 by G, and he practices flying for a month straight because if there is one thing he needs to do right in his life it is not getting his flying privileges taken away from him. Rook ends up falling in love with flying, soaring high above seems to be just his speed, though the biggest learning curve was getting used to dodging the java bean bags and anvils(WHAT!?!) attached to balloons that littered the sky for some reason.

His ability to fly gave him a role in missions when before it seemed like his task partners would look for any excuse to leave him on the sidelines. He was now the eye in the sky, the wingman, the “Mind getting the coffee? It’d be much faster than the rest of us.” Now that he thought of it, that last one might have been an attempt to sideline him but, if so, jokes on them because he spilled their coffee on the way back (and man was it hot).

Rook finds his groove. Things still go wrong. Things still explode. And he makes thousands of mistakes varying in severity, but at the end of the day, Gary still smiles at him and gives him a pat on the shoulders. If G can believe in him after all this time, maybe Rook could become the agent that he saw in him. So in time, he starts faking it until he makes it, playing the role of the agent who always knows what to do. It’s a trait that seems to come so easily to so many of his colleagues and never to him, but that’s what he gets for surrounding himself with the best of the best, isn’t it? No matter, if he keeps pretending to be the “natural born leader” soon enough he’ll be among them in more than just rank. He’ll deserve the faith that G and the Director have placed in him, just you wait.

Rook has a new drive and direction. He starts utilizing his rank to lead assignments. He devises plans, gives orders, and if he has his mind set on a gameplan, good luck stopping him before he speeds off unless you’re G himself (which he has, narrowly stopping the destruction of the Dojo once). The quality of his hastily put together plans is questionable, but he commits to them with confidence, and sometimes his “fast and on instinct” methods work!

With a few successes under his belt, Gary decides Rook is ready to work on the most pressing case facing the island. Rook grinned and promised that he wouldn’t let G down as he mentally hushed the doubt in the back of his mind that reminded him a fake who was just playing secret agent couldn't be trusted with the fate of the island. He was placed on the mission and soon learned that he was up against a plotting polar bear who drifted to Club Penguin from the other side of the world. He’d never seen a polar bear before but from the sketches “Herbert” looked really big and had teeth and claws... But he could take him, right? So what if the big bad bear had nearly destroyed Ski Lodge? So had he! And he was very fallible, the doubt whispered again.

He waved the thought away and realized his mind was wandering before redirecting his focus on G’s very important case spiel. G was finishing the thought Rook had missed the beginning of when he pulled out the photo of a vaguely familiar-looking penguin and explained that the agent pictured was the one who uncovered the bear’s nefarious plot, saved the Ski Lodge, and was the head agent trusted by the Director to lead the entire case against the threat of Herbert P. Bear. It was only when G looked over at him and said, “I’m sure they’ll be happy to see their rescuer again” that it clicked for Rook. This was the newbie agent trapped in the wilderness that he was sent after for an aerial rescue. On that day they’d practically found him first as he flew straight into the plume of smoke coming from the cave they’d sheltered in and crashed into a tree. They’d woken up from the noise and he congratulated the young agent for their survival skills while still untangling himself from the tree. He remembered how they clenched onto him for dear life as he flew them back to civilization while he insisted that he would never dream of dropping them, though in reality that was a very possible and common occurrence. They didn’t find that funny at all and clenched him so painfully hard that they’d still be attached to him if he completely let go. Also, it was only half a joke.

Even back then they had shown good judgment, he supposes as he studies their file photo back in the present. How they’ve both grown since that day so long ago. ‘Have you, though?’ The doubt prodded.

G starts to clean up the files and mentions that the Director decided that that agent would need a team to help them defeat Herbert, but it wasn’t that quite that time yet. G would notify him when it is his time to join the assignment, that in the meantime he might find some missions unrelated to polar bears for him and this agent to collaborate on for team bonding. Rook smiles wide and says he can’t wait to work with a new old face. G chuckles and warmly put his flipper on Rook’s shoulder, before turning to leave. Rook doesn’t get a second to himself before G turns back around and catches him now frozen halfway into a celebratory dance. Could you blame him? He’d just landed the biggest case on the island. G put his flipper over his beak to stifle his laugh before letting Rook know he’d forgotten to mention that the third member of the bear tackling squad would be a promising new recruit and that he might even join the bonding sessions. G muttered under his breath about how it might take some convincing, though. Rook smiled and nodded in acknowledgment of this new information before sending Gary off with a fun little salute.

Finally alone, Rook spun around and around in G’s office chair as he took in what could very well be a new chapter of his life, like when he joined the agency or got his propeller cap (‘3000,’ an entirely different realm of his mind shaped by Gary whispered to him and he thanked the voice, which he liked much better than the other one). He stopped spinning as something Gary said stuck out to him. He had called the new guy (if G told Rook his name he had completely forgotten, whoops) “a promising new recruit,” which he now realized was a phrase he’s heard from G a couple times before throughout his time as an agent.

A long time ago, when G had briefed him on rescuing the new agent stranded in the wilderness he had mentioned they were “a promising new recruit” testing an invention of his before they never returned. And even farther back then that, he remembered crying after failing his first mission. Gary had come up to crouch beside him, promising that he and the Director saw him as “a promising new recruit with great potential” and that they’d work together until he got there.

Gary and the Director, they were putting together a team of their hand chosen for this task. Thoughts darted across his mind at lightning speed as he tried to figure out what it all meant. In the end, he gave up slumped back into the chair and listened to the bubbling of the water cooler. He never knew the thoughts behind Gary or the Director’s choices. All logic pointed to him having to choose a different career path long ago, yet they stuck by him and continued to give him chance after chance to prove he is what they think he is. And he doesn’t even know what that is! He wants to be good! He wants to help people and prove to everyone, including himself, that he deserves to be the agent he is. 

Maybe the answer lies in defeating the bear, saving the island, and bringing peace of mind to Gary and the Director. Maybe it’s in working with the other two agents that have seemed to have caught the attention of their shared higher-ups as well. If he could figure out the common thread between the three of them then that’d have to give some insight into what G and the Director see in him. Yes, the agent from the wilderness, the new guy, and Herbert P. Bear marked a new chapter in his life, he just knew it. The promise filled him with so much excitement he flew a couple laps around the room, before teleporting home for a good night rest. He was going to make something of himself. If someone as smart as G saw the promise in him, who was he to prove him wrong?

[psychedelic-ink]

Feelings in the wind(by lunna-star-8)

I was bored.

I was bored out of my mind!

Despite my injuries, my body was itching to do something, anything that felt remotely productive but I had promised Law that I’d be careful so my options were very limited. Very.

I sighed and leaned my head on the tree I was sitting against, looking around, everyone seemed bored too as they lied around the small patch of grass that Hancock and her warriors had reserved for us. I could tell that most of them were itching to get onto forbidden grounds and just go check out the village, consequences be damned, but Law was sitting by the opening that lead deeper into the island and let’s just say that every time one of his men stepped too close, he’d… How do I put this kindly…? Dissuade them? Yeah… Dissuade them by glaring at them in a way that made them regret all their life choices that lead them to that look.

I chuckled to myself, taking my eyes off the pirates and looking at my hands. What could I work on…? My power, maybe? What could I change? I could improve control, I guess? Air wasn’t the easiest of elements, it demanded freedom and free reign over the skies, so if you tried to control it, it fought back.

An idea struck me “Thanks Sabo.” And I rush over to the grouchy captain that’s eyeing another of his pirates like a leopard ready to pounce “Law!” I call out and he raises me an eyebrow, I can tell that he’s bracing himself for whatever terrible idea I just had, but I don’t give him time to speak up “Do you have some spare sheets of paper?”

He eyes me for a minute and I try to give him my best lost kitty look “Why…?”

“C’mon! Please! Please!” I insist “If anything, I’ll ask Hancock to get you some more later, yeah? Please!”

He sighs, seemingly too tired for my antics – he probably had a bad night again “My office, my desk, bottom drawer on the right. Use whatever you want.”

I basically jump to my feet calling out a “Thank you!” as I dash to the submarine.

“What are you doing, Sabo?” I ask as I peek over his shoulder.

“Origami.” He replies smiling “An old man at the Terminal showed me how to do it a while back.”

I nod even though he can’t see me “It looks cool!” I watch his fingers folding the paper over and over and over again and before I know it “It’s a bird!”

He laughs “It’s a crane.” I get off his back and stand by the table. My brother hands me the bird and I remember how awesome I thought that was “Why don’t you try making it float?”

My enthusiasm fizzed out “Last time I tried anything like that, I hit Ace over the head with his own pipe. He was furious.”

Sabo laughed again “C’mon, it’s just us.” He gestured around, Ace had gone hunting for dinner and Luffy had ran straight after him much to our oldest brother’s annoyance. I was still in bed rest after my little stunt with the tiger and Sabo had stayed to look after me “Plus, it’s paper it’s not like you can do much damage with it, right?” I wasn’t convinced “Tell you what, if you can make it float around the room, I’ll teach you how to make one.”

I basically jumped in the air and my tiger ears with me “Really?!”

He nodded “I wouldn’t lie to my little sister, would I?”

I grabbed a small stack of papers and ran back outside, sitting beside Law and starting to fold the paper in my hands. I could tell my tail had slipped out, I felt it swinging but I didn’t care, I wasn’t sure if it was for the opportunity of actually having something to do or for the memory but it was a nice feeling. I didn’t even notice Law eyeing me suspiciously as I stacked up origami cranes on the side.

When I folded the last sheet of paper, I got up and took a deep breath feeling the air around me. I’m not a Logia, I can’t just make wind but I can control the air around me, shifting it in my grasp and bend it to my needs. I let the breath out and started to shape the air so it would lift the cranes up in the air, with little to no effort I raised my arms into the air and had them spiralling into the sky, once I got every single one of them off the floor I moved my arms down and with my right arm directed the cranes to fly over the bored crew. My control was wonky, some of them flew backwards or even upside down, I tried to adjust it by moving my fingers but it didn’t seem to do anything. Still, I kept it up, by the time I noticed, I had an audience – the crew had turned from their conversations to watch what I was doing and some of them applauded when I made the cranes flip around in the air in an attempt to control them.

Most of my tries to control the cranes were pointless, some of the even fell from my hold, the wind refused to listen to me more than it absolutely needed to, still, the Heart Pirates were loving it and it was nice to feel useful in some way again. I brought the remaining cranes back to me and got such a warm reaction out of the crew that I even bowed like a real performer, even Law grumbled out a “Nice trick” kind of comment, that seemed like a compliment…? I think? Shachi and Penguin were the most excited ones, by far! They ran over to me with stars in their eyes and speaking all over each other “She can’t understand you if you both say different things at the same time, idiots…” Law grumbled, still in the same position.

Penguin was the first I was able to understand “You can make things fly?!”

I nodded “Yeah…?”

“I thought you were a Zoan type.” Came Bepo’s kind voice from beside Law.

I turned to him and nodded “Mythical Zoan type, actually.” I explained “I ate the Neko-Neko no mi: Byako no Tora model. Byako is the mythical guardian tiger of the Eastern winds, so I get this extra trick.” I caught Law’s golden eyes on me, over that damn smirk he did, damn him, not even tired “What?”

He shrugged “Cat-Cat, huh?”

I narrowed my eyes at him “Tiger. Tiger! Do you miss that bit on purpose?”

“Whatever you say, scardy cat.” And his eyes were once again hidden under his hat.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a very puncheable face?”

He tilted his head but he was still smirking “Not in those exact words, but I guess the answer is still a yes.”

“Mythical Zoan types are super rare, aren’t they?” Bepo spoke up again before I could say anything else to Law, I shrugged at him though.

“I have… No idea?” I replied “I mean, it’s not like I’ve seen anybody with powers like mine though…”

I heard Law sigh like I was a child that needed to have the same thing explained to them a thousand times over, I naturally glared at him waiting for his ‘wisdom’ “Whitebeard’s First Division Commander has a mythical type power.” He said “A phoenix if memory serves me.”

I remembered the blue flaming bird in the war “I swear, his head looks like a pineapple!” Ace had said with a big smile on his face “Marco’s a cool guy though. If you ever meet him, don’t you dare say I said that!” “Why? What are you gonna do, tough guy?” “I might grab a big fluffy spider and put it over your sheets while you’re sleeping.” “C’mon! That’s not fair!” “Hence, I’m being a great brother and warning you beforehand.” “Mean bastard…” “Ah! Language, shorty!” “Who do you think I learned it from?!”

“That’s not important!” I didn’t realize I had sunk into my own head until Shachi’s voice pulled me back to the present. Law’s clinical gaze was straight on me despite the fact that the others didn’t seem to have noticed. I looked back at Shachi that was still beyond excited like Penguin “If you can make stuff fly, you can make people fly too, right?!”

I nodded again “Yeah—”

“MAKE US FLY!” they asked with stars in their eyes before I had a chance to say anything else, making me laugh “Oh! Please, please, PLEASE!”

“Sure.” I smiled “One at a time though.” Didn’t want to a) over do it and b) accidentally drop one in the ocean.

They played rock-paper-scissors for it and Penguin would be the first one in the air. Asked me to wait before he ran to the sub and came back out with a… towel? He came back out with a towel tied around his neck that made it look like a cape – an image of Luffy smiling like a kid crossed my mind as Penguin stood there smiling from ear to ear “All set!”

I laughed but tried to focus, feeling the air currents around him I plucked his feet off the grass and the moment his weight was off the ground, I could feel the strain on my wounds but I kept it to myself and took him to the skies. To say that Penguin was delighted was a major understatement. He was holding out his arms, kicking the air, making superhero poses. Shachi was cheering from beside me, the rest of the crew seemed to be loving the scene, Bepo was cheering too jumping closer to us, I could even feel Law’s eyes on my back like my wounds could snap at any moment and he’d have to jump in. I could feel it too, the strain this was causing on my weakened body, I wanted to be stubborn, to keep at it but that would be more than stubborn, that would be selfish. Impossibly selfish. Penguin had, consciously or not, trusted me with his life and I could barely hear the cheers of the crew over the sound of my own blood pumping in my ears. I also didn’t want him thinking that he had made my wounds worse or something, he seemed like the kind of guy that would feel guilty even if it wasn’t actually his fault.

Without much fuss, I brought him back down, trying to not look as exhausted as I felt “Me next! Me next!” Shachi piped up to my left but before I even opened my mouth, I heard a familiar voice right behind me.

“No, that’s enough for today.” I glanced up to see Law towering over me.

He was right, I couldn’t take Shachi into the air like I did with Penguin and I was about to tell him this, but it really bugged me that he felt the need to speak for me. It ticked my already injured ego and I couldn’t stop myself, I stomp my right foot onto the ground as I move both my arms up, creating a gust of wind that takes Law up in the air. Is it making my arms feel like they might come undone? Yes, it is. Did it stop me from grinning mischievously at his surprised expression? Hell no. “Too grumpy to play superhero with us, Captain Panda?”

He frowned at me and held out his hand where I saw a spiral form and then extent around us in a blue veil “Room!”

“I wouldn’t that.” I interrupt him, keeping him in the air with both my hands, he raises me an eyebrow “If you shamble me away, I’m gonna lose focus and you’re gonna fall on your ass.”

He grinned with golden eyes piercing my grey ones “You think I’ll go easy on you because you’re injured?” I didn’t have the chance to reply as he unsheathed his sword and I noticed that his crew had cleared out of the circle. I found it strange before I felt an odd feeling on my waist and turned back to Law, he was sheeting his sword which I didn’t understand since he hadn’t done anything with it… Had he? He still had that grin on his face and I felt myself rise up to meet him but I could also still feel my feet on the floor?!

I looked down to realize that my legs were gone?! I opened my mouth but then I remembered him fighting in Sabaody and of him chopping up those marines without actually injuring them with the cuts. I looked back to find my legs where I had left them, I was still wearing my sandals and could see my toes, I wiggled them and saw them move, getting a chuckle to make its way up my throat “That’s a really cool trick.” I looked back at him that was at my eye level now, which was something I wouldn’t be able to do if we were on the floor, but it allowed me to fully see the look of surprise on his face.

A surprise he quickly recovered from, going back to his grumpy self “You’re pushing your limits there, thought you said you were gonna be careful.”

“I am being careful.” I technically was “I haven’t ripped my stitches, have I?”

His look hardened at me as he pointed at the center of my torso “If this one ‘rips’, you die.”

I let the reality set on me for a moment, now paying close attention to the heat right under my skin and how holding Law in the air made me feel like my skin would tear apart, but my eyes never left his, even as I smiled “Show me another one of those cool tricks and I’ll put you back on the floor.”

“With my power, I could just get myself down.”

I shrugged, intentionally wobbling his rather stable air support “Can you though?”

It was like a game, see who could push each other’s buttons more and both too proud to back away “You wanna see a cool trick, huh?” he switched his sword to his right hand and pulled his left back “Mes!” his palm hit the top of my chest so fast and so unexpectedly that I lost my breath “Shambles.” I don’t know what he shambled, I know that I lost all sense of where I even was for a moment, I felt myself fall, cold hands on my arms, my knees hitting the floor as I was suddenly looking at the grass as I struggled to get my breath back.

I didn’t realize I had even stopped hearing until sound came back around me “C’mon Captain, that was a bit mean.” Bepo’s voice was the first to break through “She is injured after all.”

“She asked me to show her something cool.” Law’s voice was as steady as always “I did as she asked.”

“I think that was payback for catching you off guard, captain.” I heard Penguin trying not to laugh but he soon stopped, Law must’ve glared at him again.

“It’s also not cool, captain.” Shachi’s voice sounded now “Most people consider that technique of yours really creepy, you know?”

“I’m telling you, she asked.” Law spoke up again and I found that breathing had started to feel easier now, so I sat up to realize that my legs were once again attached to my torso.

I scratched the back of my head as I got to my feet “What did you do?” I let my eyes focus again as the air started to settle in my lungs, Law turned slightly to face me and I noticed what he was holding “Is that a heart?!” he smirked and I looked at my chest, where his hand had hit and where now there was a square hole “Is that my heart?!”

I looked back at Law to find him grinning and there, right there in the light reflected in his golden eyes, I could see the satisfaction of being able to hold someone’s beating heart in your hands “Oh yeah.”

I looked at my heart as I touched the edges of my skin where that was supposed to be. I looked at him, his golden eyes making me feel like small prey, like I should run and never turn back, like I should shake in his presence and I consider myself lucky to still be standing. I mean, what other reaction should you have when someone just pulled your heart out of your chest like a damn Jenga piece? I could feel his cold hand supporting my beating heart, I could feel how his grip wasn’t any tighter than it needed to be – I tilted my head as my eyes remained on my heart – soft even? I was standing right in front of him before I knew it, only one question in my mind “Can I touch it?”

“Eh?” the crew tumbled in surprise and even Law’s usually stern expression could be perfectly read as confusion.

“I know it’s my heart, but I don’t know how this works.” I clarify “I don’t want to touch it and die!”

Law glanced from me to the heart, like it could fix his confusion but as the heart simply beat normally, the pirate captain looked back at me with seemingly even more questions “Sure.” As soon as I got permission, I poked it and collapsed on the floor as I had done it a bit too harshly “WHAT DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN, MORON?! IT’S A HEART, YOU CAN’T JUST POKE IT!”

“You said I could touch it!” I argued from the grass.

“Touch, not poke!” he countered “And I figured you’d be more careful with your own heart!” I heard him sigh as the crew laughed exchanging various comments from how crazy I was to how this was nice change of pace for their captain. Whatever this was that they were talking about, I couldn’t say.

They made me forget what life was like at the moment, it was easy to push it out of my mind when I heard them laugh, the Heart Pirates were a good, fun crew to hang out with. They made me miss my own crew like crazy. Sabaody seemed like so very long ago…

My thoughts were interrupted by the cheers of the crew and I raised my head to see what they were cheering about, walking into our little corner of the island were a handful of Hancock’s warriors, all familiar faces – why did I have to be so damn close to the entrance? - As the men fawned over the warriors, Law came to sit beside me “What are they doing over here…?”

“Right, you and Ikkaku had lunch on the island yesterday.” He said “The same warriors brought us food yesterday at around the same time too.” I didn’t say anything as I eyed their movements, setting up little stands with food “Why do they make you nervous?”

I blinked a couple of times before looking between Law and the warriors and back at Law “What are you talking about? They don’t—”

He showed me my fast beating heart still in his hand “It picked up the pace when you saw them come in.” he explained “You might be able to control your facial expressions well enough but your heart rate is another story.”

I… Had totally forgot he was holding my heart “We met them when me and Luffy first landed on the island, they’re alright. The blonde one?” I signalled over with my chin “Her name’s Margaret, she was the one that hung out with us more.” I tilted my head in retrospective “And I use the ‘hung out’ term really loosely here. She saved Luffy, then was trying to hunt us, then Luffy kind of kidnapped her, then she tried to kill us, then she kind of helped us, then she tried to kill us again, then she tried to defend us, got turned into stone because of us, we saved her, she saved us… You know, the usual.” He raised me an eyebrow “Oh, trust me, that’s the short version.”

“Alright… But ‘usual’?”

I actually laughed as several moments like that crossed my mind at the same time “Oh, you have no idea.”

He looked back at the Kuja “I guess that might explain why she was the only one that came over to ask me about you two.”

“Yeah…” I said more in a sigh than in an actual word. Law turned back to me as I laid my head back on the grass “They all wanted to know and ask too… How are you? How’s Luffy? I’m sorry about…” I took a deep breath and let that hang in the air “I’m alright, thanks. It’s what I reply every time.”

“How many times did you mean it?” I looked at Law but he was looking away from me and my grey eyes move back to the blue of the sky.

“Not even once…” I reply honestly and there’s a minute of silence between us “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s nice that they care enough to ask but…” I didn’t know how to phrase that so I had to stop and think about it, Law didn’t interrupt me, he just waited for me to sort out the words in my brain “I wish they didn’t ask.” I finally say, feeling a tear slip from the side of my face that would be followed by more as I let my mind sort through everything “It still hurts to think about it all, it hurts to feel, it hurts to remember, it hurts to feel like I’m not doing anything, it just hurts. The day is to distract myself and I’m too tired to feel at night, at night it seems like a story that happened to someone else… I wish they’d stop asking.”

I’m about to rub my face with my hands when he puts his hat over my face “She’s coming. Don’t move.” Is all the explanation I get. It’s dark and my nose is overwhelmed by the fresh smell of mint that becomes all I can breathe in with the fluffy hat over my face, my cheeks felt warm as I inhale the smell once again and I blame it on the fluffiness of the hat on my face.

“Doctor?” Margaret’s voice makes me almost jump and I feel something cold softly caress my heart “Oh! Is that Luna?”

“She’s asleep.” Law quickly interjected with his usual calm voice “Fresh air is good for her but she got tired quickly due to the exertion on her body.”

“Oh… I see… But she’s doing better, right?”

“It’s too early to tell.”

“What about Luffy? How is he doing?” she kept asking.

“I still can’t say when he’ll wake up.”

“Alright…” she didn’t seem to have left yet “Thank you for looking after them.”

“I’ve told you not to thank me, it was a whim.” I smiled under the hat. A whim? Taking his crew into the middle of a war to pick up two ‘enemies’ as he put it himself? It’s called kindness, Trafalgar Law.

“Thank you anyway.” she insisted.

“MARGARET!” another of the Kujas called out to her.

“Going!” she called back “I better go. Do you want me to bring you a bowl of food?”

“Thanks, but no.” Law said “I’ll see if Luna wakes up before you leave, save us a bowl for before you go.”

“No problem.”

A couple of minutes passed before I felt the hat being taken off my face, instinctively I rubbed my eyes and cleared the tears away “Thanks.”

“No problem.” I turned my head to him and noticed that he still had his hand on my heart, I turned back towards the sky. We were once again in silence as I lied on the grass and he sat beside me. It was a comfortable silence between us as we heard his crew celebrating the presence of the Kuja warriors…

[glitterandmoondustofficial]

Side To Side

Chapter 197: Nakama

Characters: Law, Ruby, Shachi, Penguin Rating: T Warnings: Language, blood mention, nakedness, kissing Notes: Aaaaaannnnndddddd.....

~~~~~

Ruby stared at the woman in front of her with a nonchalant gaze. She curled her fingers, a couple of them popping. Lillie-Mai breathed heavily, staring at Ruby wildly. Ruby sighed through her nose.

“What...did you do to me?!” Lillie-Mai demanded.

“I poisoned you,” Ruby said simply.

“We agreed on no powers!”

“And? I’m a pirate. I’m not going to just play nice while my captain lays helpless.” Ruby flipped her hair.

Lillie-Mai stumbled to the ground. “How did you even do it?”

Ruby wiggled her fingers. “Rather classily. I coated my finger nails in a paralyzing poison from a plant I once discovered. Don’t worry it won’t kill you.”

Lillie-Mai’s eyebrows rose. “What?”

Ruby rolled her neck. “I’m tired of fighting,” she whined. “Fight fight fight. Break some bones, lose a foot, bleed to death, I’m tired, man. All this fighting and scraps and ugh,” she made a disgusted face. “It’s so not fun.”

“Then why even stay a pirate? On the Grand Line, even. Why fight for this captain of yours if all he does is make you tired?”

Ruby closed her eyes. “He would never make me do something if I really didn’t need to,” she said quietly. “I’m going back.”

“You’re just going to leave me here?”

“Yes. I-”

“Ruby!”

Ruby damn near snapped her neck the way she whipped her head to the side. She blinked twice before frowning deeply. She took a deep breath and looked back at Lillie-Mai. “It looks like our fight was pointless.” Ruby paused. “You have your life, the poison will wear off soon.” Lillie-Mai glared up at her. Ruby sighed and turned.

“Iunia,” Lillie-Mai snapped. “Why keep me alive? I tried to kill you and your captain.”

Ruby stopped. She had an unreadable expression on her face. She sighed. “I guess my captain has a bigger influence on me than I care to admit.” She sighed again. “Killing no longer interests me. If you want to die, do it yourself. I’m done with you.” Ruby started walking towards Law. She stopped in front of him, relief in her eyes. “I see you’re awake.”

“Seems like it.” Ruby gave him a tired smile. “You’re a mess.”

“Well, I was just in a fist fight.”

“A fist fight? No powers?”

“Yep, until I cheated and coated my fingernails in poison of course.”

“Ah.”

Ruby started to walk forward. He followed after her, and when there was an appropriate amount of distance between that woman who caused all this and the two of them, he grabbed her hand tightly.

Ruby smiled warmly. She looked at Law. “Are you okay? You look exhausted.”

“I am.” They stopped and stared at each other. Law wrapped his arms around her tightly. Ruby rubbed his back in comfort. “Thanks for fighting for me.”

Ruby smiled happily. “You’re welcome, mo chuisle.”

~~~~~

Law and Ruby had made it back to the sub quietly, neither of them really needing to speak. Penguin and Shachi were on deck looking pissed as hell. They caught sight of the both of them, both of their arms crossed in anger.

“Ruby,” Penguin shouted. “Hold him still so I can beat the shit out of him.”

Ruby blinked and looked over to Law. Law looked at her sheepishly. “Did you leave before they said you could?” Law didn’t answer. Ruby gave him a tired smile. “What am I supposed to do with you?” She asked him fondly.

Penguin and Shachi ran up to them. They checked over the both of them and Law had to admit that he was definitely exhausted. He sighed tiredly and let Shachi lecture him. He watched Ruby as Penguin pulled her onto the sub, saying that he’d help her clean up.

“Captain!” Shachi snapped. “Are you even listening?”

“No.”

Shachi scoffed. “We were worried about you, you know.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Sorry for worrying you? Yes. Sorry for leaving? No. I’d do it again.”

“You’re singled minded and stupid. What would have happened if you had passed out in the middle of that forest? Ruby could’ve waited.” Law didn’t answer him and Shachi sighed. “I know you love her. You love her so fucking much, dude. But, Law, you gotta think things through sometimes. You’re so calculated, but when she’s in danger you just don’t care.”

“It’s not like that,” Law said defensively. “I wouldn’t have gone if I really thought I couldn’t make it.”

“You didn’t think at all,” Shachi grumbled. “Let’s just get you to bed. I’m tired. You’re tired. I’m sure Ruby is exhausted.” Shachi sighed.

“Yeah,” he patted Shachi on the back. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Law made it up to his room and collapsed on the bed. He was tired, and because he was so tired, he was starting to become depressed.

He missed his family. He frowned deeply and closed his eyes. He wanted to see them, for real. He missed them so much it ached. He was getting lost in his thoughts when he heard Ruby walk into the room. She kicked off her heels, cursing and complaining about the pain. She unzipped her dress and that fell on the ground as well. She grumbled and cursed as she threw off the rest of her clothes.

He heard her walk into the bathroom and turn on the shower. Law opened his eyes and sat up. He stood up and walked towards the bathroom, watching Ruby take her hair down and shake it out.

“You going to join me?” She asked, not looking at him.

“Yeah,” he said, not meaning to sound as tired as he did. Penguin had cleaned her up nicely. She wasn’t bleeding from her nose anymore and the dirt and dried blood that were on her face, arms, and hands were mostly gone.

“You sure? You look exhausted.” She looked over to him, worry evident on her face.

“Yeah,” he said and took off his shirt. Ruby walked over to him and started to unbutton his jeans. Law let out a sigh. This was reality. This was the present time. Ruby was in front of him. She was here. She was real. She was his Ruby and he had never loved someone the way he loved her.

Law took her hands and squeezed them.

Ruby stopped and looked at their hands, and then to his face. She sighed. They embraced. They embraced tightly. Too much fighting without the other by their side. Too many injuries and too many close calls.

Law could tell she was tired. He knew that she wanted to live on an island where no one knew her name. But he knew she would never leave the crew. He knew she would follow him to hell. So he sighed and kissed her hair.

“I love you,” he whispered desperately. “I love you,” he repeated.

Ruby’s fingers pressed into his back. Her breathing was normal, her heartbeat calm. She was fine. She was a little dirty, had a few bruises, but she was fine. She was his. She was alive. She was his lover, his partner. He hugged her tighter.

Ruby snorted. The sound caused him to open his eyes. “Alright.” She patted his back. “Don’t get all emotional on me.” Ruby pulled away with a teasing grin. “I dunno what you saw but-”

He kissed her. He kissed her hard. She didn’t understand. It may have been just a couple hours for her, but it felt like weeks to him. It was weeks without her touch, her kiss, her taste. He missed her so badly even though he didn’t know her. She was so important to him that even when he was forced to forget her, she was still, somehow, part of him.

Law was aware of what a mess he was going to be when he was apart from her when he went to Dressrosa.

Ruby wrapped her arms around his neck. She kissed him deeply, responding to his intensity. He pawed at her body. He felt the sweat and dirt on her skin, not caring about how it covered his hands.

Ruby pulled away, their breaths mingling together hotly. Ruby chuckled. “That’s one hell of a greeting.” Law leaned his forehead on hers. “Come on,” she brushed her lips against his. “Let’s get in the shower.”

Law grunted and removed the rest of his clothing. He followed her into the shower, watching the dirt on her skin wash away. He leaned in and kissed her shoulder, running his hand up her side. He bit her skin slowly and softly. Ruby let out a soft sigh.

“You know,” her melodic voice started. “I still need to wash myself.” She teased him, He could hear the laughter in her voice.

“I’ll wash you.”

“You better.” She giggled.

He washed her diligently, kissing her body when he saw fit. Ruby was enjoying herself, a content smile on her face. He leaned his forehead on hers and closed his eyes.

“You’ve been quiet,” she spoke up. “More than usual that is. What’s on your mind? What did you see?”

“I saw,” he started. “I saw my family.” Ruby waited patiently for his response. “I saw a happy little life. No struggle, no pain. I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t traumatized. I was happy and healthy.”

Ruby was silent for a moment, staring at him. “Well,” she said. “Sounds boring.”

Law grinned and took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. Ruby grinned widely. “Yeah, you could say that.” Ruby wrapped her arms around him. “I missed you guys.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. I kept seeing you guys. In bars, in my dreams, in the hospital. My brain was trying to wake me up, saying it wasn’t real.” He sighed. “I was engaged.”

“Engaged? Dream Law cares about marriage?”

“Makes sense I suppose. Grew up in a healthy, safe environment. I had a normal life. Normal people get married.”

“Girl or boy or…?”

“Girl. She looked very different from you.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. I bet she was all soft and curvy and wasn’t as pale as a ghost.”

“Yep. You’re way prettier, though.” Ruby hummed. “Feeling self conscious?”

“Nah. The whole reason this all happened was to upset me. I figured something similar might happen.” She smiled at him. “I know you love me.”

Law felt relief wash over him. She knew. She knew he loved her with a love so fierce that he would die for her. He kissed her. He held her close and tasted her like he hadn’t done it a thousand times before.

Ruby’s hand slid up his stomach and chest. Her thumb rubbed his peck. Her other arm was around his torso, her fingers pressed into his back. They kissed intensely, only parting because they needed to take a breath.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you but I like it,” she giggled. “I like you paying this much attention to me.” She kissed his bottom lip.

“As if I don’t pay too much attention to you,” he mumbled to her. “Needy woman.”

“Yep! You knew what you were getting into.” She gave him a large, wild grin.

He grinned back at her, palming her back and kissing her again and again. Ruby giggled happily against his lips. “I love you,” he breathed on her lips.

They rested their foreheads together, grinning at each other. That smile. Those eyes. They were everything he could ever hope for. This was real. This was his reality. He missed his family, the sting of their deaths would always be in his heart, but he had a new family that he loved just as much. He had his crew, he had Ruby, he had his past and his future. This was his life, and he’d gladly live through it for the rest of his short life.

[tsarisfanfiction]

Origin (Tales From The Heart)

Fandom: One Piece Rating: Gen Warnings: None Characters: Law, Franky

With the absence of one Monkey D. Luffy, Law had hoped that he would be at last permitted some peace and quiet, especially as he was now on board his own ship and therefore the captain in charge (while 'alliance' meant the captains were on equal terms, it was difficult not to feel on the back foot on board the Thousand Sunny, especially as her captain didn't follow traditional alliance rules anyway). He still had four of the Straw Hats with him, but in the grand scheme of things he thought peace and quiet still wasn't too much to ask for; Zoro-ya and Nico-ya preferred keeping their mouths shut anyway, Nose-ya was still terrified of him and Robo-ya…

Well, Robo-ya was turning out to be the problem. Law chided himself for not realising that the shipwright, who had built both the Thousand Sunny and its personal submarine, would be incredibly interested in the Polar Tang, which was a far more superior specimen than the Shark Submerge (although Law would admit the quirky submarine was well built for its size and purpose). In the confined space, the cries of SUUUUUUPERRRR reverberated nauseatingly, and no amount of creativity employed by the Heart Pirates (Law included) to block their ears was even remotely successful. Irritatingly, the other Straw Hats seemed totally deaf to his cries.

A sacrifice was required, and as Law looked around at those of his crew in the area, he realised he would have to be the victim. As difficult as it was to believe, his time with the Straw Hats had mildly desensitised him to their antics and he only had to take one look at Penguin and Shachi, concerningly out of sorts even before the cyborg's cries had begun, to realise that there was no way his crew would survive close quarters with the shipwright for any length of time with their sanity intact.

Choosing not to ponder what that implied of his own sanity, he followed the noise to find not just Robo-ya, but also Nose-ya prodding at the security lock of the engine room. Unnerved that no alarms had been set off at the intruders' attempt, and also relieved that Nami-ya wasn't around to assist otherwise they would have definitely succeeded in gaining entry unsupervised, he strode up to them and placed a hand over the passcode input.

"Torao-bro!" Robo-ya greeted cheerfully, not at all abashed to have been found trying to force entry into the most delicate part of a ship that wasn't his. Behind him, Nose-ya at least had the decency to cower. "Just the man! Show us around, would ya, bro? This girl's a SUUUUUUUPERRRRR beauty, yeah!"

Law wanted to refuse. As the ship's captain, he had every right (and with the absence of Mugiwara-ya he technically held captaincy over the four guests although he knew full well that only Nico-ya had any inclination to obey him and even that was on her own terms). However, these were Straw Hat Pirates. He had never, either through personal experience or the newspaper, heard of a single occasion when the Straw Hats didn't get their way in the end. The fact that the security alarm on the door had already been bypassed without his knowledge, and that they'd had no qualms about even trying in the first place, made it clear that sooner or later they'd be back, and he didn't really want to unduly punish his own crew by adding an extra watch to the rota (especially as he could quickly narrow down who had a chance of stopping the Straw Hats one-on-one to barely a quarter of the crew, including himself – there were reasons the entire crew had their own bounties, after all).

Thus, with a sigh he gestured for the two of them, apparently now three, as Zoro-ya had materialised while he was considering his options and (while Law was certain the swordsman hadn't intended to find his way there) was standing with all the poise of a man who was exactly where he wanted to be, to follow him to the nearby locker room, where he located boiler suits for them all.

"I am not treating you for stupid injuries," he ground out when all three looked at the Heart-emblazoned outfits dubiously. "The Polar Tang's machinery is far more dangerous than the Sunny's." Having seen both, he felt qualified to make such a claim (the Sunny ran on cola, for goodness' sake! Then again, with a captain like Mugiwara-ya, a child-safe mechanism was probably wise).

Nose-ya was first to cave, and Zoro-ya followed suit after Law began to pull his own on – a nice yellow colour, to distinguish him from the rest of the crew at a glance. He wasn't even sure what persuaded the cyborg to eventually pull on one of Jean Bart's spares, but he'd learnt to never look a gift horse in the mouth, especially not when the Straw Hats were involved.

Hoping he was not going to regret his decision, Law keyed in the code, making sure to block the others' line of sight to the passcode as he did so, and the door slid open with a quiet hydraulic hiss, revealing the heart of the Polar Tang.

Clione, the crew member currently tending the engine, looked up in surprise before looking at Law questioningly. Law simply shrugged as Robo-ya carefully advanced into the room, eyeing the equipment with a look Law couldn't quite name. It was almost as if it was what he'd expected, although Law was under the impression there were little to no other submarines of the type in existence. It was possible Robo-ya had the required genius to work out what was most likely, though, so he tried not to dwell as Nose-ya started asking questions. Law was glad for Clione's presence, as he didn't know the answer to many of the more technical ones (the Straw Hats had no room to comment on that, though, as Law was confident Mugiwara-ya knew about as much about the workings of the Thousand Sunny as he did the Polar Tang, if not less. Mugiwara-ya likely would proclaim it all a 'mystery' or simply point out it was Robo-ya's job to know).

Eventually, Clione became the main spokesperson and Law perched himself down on a bench near the entrance (Zoro-ya was sat on the same bench but closer to the door, and seemed unnervingly like a jailer; Law put the thought that he was being intentionally trapped far out of his mind, paranoia would do him no good). It was hot in the room, almost unbearably so to Law, who had never managed to shake his North Blue roots of preferring the cold, even if he hated winter, but Robo-ya and Nose-ya seemed a long way from running out of questions, so he endured in silence, watching the two like a hawk. Allies or not, unconventional allies or not, he refused to let them near the delicate part of his ship without strict supervision.

It was probably an hour before their curiosity was sated, just in time for Ikkaku's shift to begin – she gave him a quizzical look as she entered to relieve Clione, which Law responded to with a pointed glance at their guests – and he managed to shepherd the three out of the room and into slightly cooler air.

It took no time at all for Zoro-ya and Nose-ya to strip out of their borrowed boiler suits and disperse back towards the living area of the Tang (Nose-ya kept tugging at Zoro-ya's sleeve when he tried to take a wrong turning), but Law waited for Robo-ya to finish as well before daring to leave. Robo-ya appeared to be being intentionally slow, and Law wasn't sure what to make of it as he folded his own boiler suit and put it away neatly.

"Torao-bro," Robo-ya began, uncharacteristically serious as he finally freed his legs from the suit. Law turned to give him his full attention. "Where did you get this girl?"

It was a loaded question, and Law wasn't sure he wanted to know why Robo-ya was asking. The cyborg had somehow positioned himself between Law and the door to the room, though, and while Law could teleport himself out with a Room, he didn't like the unusual behaviour. He was getting enough of it from his crew as it was, he didn't need the predictably-unpredictable Straw Hats adding to the headache.

"What does it matter?" he hedged. There was a click, and a compartment opened up in Robo-ya's arm. Rummaging around, the cyborg withdrew a wad of paper.

"Those two years," he began, and suddenly Law knew it was serious because the Straw Hats never talked about the years they'd vanished from the limelight, "I was on Karakuri Island – Vegapunk's home island. He'd left a lot of blueprints behind, and I thought they were all incomplete projects, so I took some with me when I left." He offered the paper – blueprints, Law realised – to him. "Seems like this isn't incomplete after all." Law took them and glanced down, only to freeze.

In his hands were the unmistakable blueprints of the Polar Tang.

[aiweirdness]

GPT-2: It learned on the Internet

Prompt: The black-capped chickadee is a small songbird native to

Response: The black-capped chickadee is a small songbird native to Africa that is powerfully seductive. In the songs of Barry Sequson, Harry Holness and Alan Emerson the black-capped chickadee competes with others—and climbs on top of each other and fights with high-powered snakes, Emperor jockeys and mysterious unicorns.

This is text generated by an artificial neural network that the researchers at OpenAI unveiled this week. In fact, it’s generated by the worst neural network they trained. Even the worst neural network generates text that, if not demonstrating actual knowledge of chickadees, is leaps and bounds over the coherence of any neural networks I’ve trained myself. They’ve built in a way for the model to zoom out and look at longer-term features of text, which means it’s much better at making sentences hold together, and even remembering what it’s talking about from sentence to sentence.

The model learned by crawling the Internet and seeing which words are used together in which order, trying to build up an internal model that will let it predict which word comes next in a sentence. It’s similar in concept to the models I’ve trained to generate paint colors, first lines of novels, and Harry Potter fan fiction, except it’s a lot more powerful. It also learned from a much larger dataset than I use, consisting of every page that was linked to somewhere on Reddit with a minimum number of upvotes. That encompasses a LOT of topics.

It includes fan fiction, for example.

Prompt: Harry wished that Hermione would hurry up. The icing was beginning to harden.

Response: Even now, the cracks only hurt and were beginning to make the steel in her hair and tie in like clumps. Hermione sipped the bitter frost from her dinner and chewed on her eating soup.

Prompt: Darth Vader entered the room, cape billowing. "What is the meaning of these... festivities?"

Response: ”Strange and solemn, now," Princess Leia replied. "Will pirates make jokes at Jabba's birthday cake? Oh, and for a moment, Darth Vader was too full of himself for that ceremony, hence all the mirth."

"Did your father suffer there?" Vader roared and growled and turned to gaze up from the balcony.

The model can also try to communicate Important Science Facts, although its actual facts are a bit suspect.

Prompt: Our solar system consists of the inner and outer planets, separated by an asteroid belt. It has

Response: Our solar system consists of the inner and outer planets, separated by an asteroid belt. It has only one sun, Pluto.  Mercury rotates on its axis a little to allow a few planets, called gas giants, to be independently charged.  During some of these cycles periods between  90% and 64% of the solar system's surface might be charged.  (Not enough is needed for vermin but that is gradually fading away.)

Prompt: Throughout the long cold Antarctic winter, the residents of South Pole Station

Response: Throughout the long cold Antarctic winter, the residents of South Pole Station lost virtually all of their ancient crustaceans, most notably pterodactyls, and all of the all-important plankton hydrates and protozoan eggs of the five ordered species of mammal.

Other deposits for sea organisms included eraymarine calcifye, the redfin ball, penguin heads, and the red whale.

Prompt: A carbon atom's outer orbitals

Response: A carbon atom's outer orbitals are basically a ring of ions around the border of thin mini-glaciers (usually colloquially referred to as bubble"). Like viruses, these planes are in islands in large weather groups. In and out they get all of their energy from many small regions of solar wind and dense cloud cover (usually thousands of square meters). Like viruses, their weaponry is imaged to record the movement of material-- (by deflecting rays, for instance) to complete waves or to cause the material to deform under shell impact. Capacitors--like gravity ids-- produce buoyancy with the exhalation of liquid hydrogen atmospheres, an essential electrolytic letdown when the material is what one calls a watermelon. Heat range is quite long and space is limited so one must stick with watermelons for a stability boost at a given coordinate system vital to shelter those who require them in space.

Interestingly, it takes its cues from the phrasing of the prompt more than from its specific content.

Prompt: Behold, the three-toed sloth, known for its

Response: Behold, the three-toed sloth, known for its ichorotic smile, with its four shades, pantered organic wizened broken bony paws, bulging knees, hairy tubercles, and orange's-black mandibles.

It’ll also do recipes, delightfully. Its recipes aren’t enormously more coherent than the recipes I’ve been able to generate. Part of the problem seems to be that the model is getting a bit confused by other types of recipes in its dataset.

Prompt: Quitterbread bars. Ingredients:

Response (some formatting adjusted for readability):  

Quitterbread bars.

Ingredients:

Creamy cole slaw, chopped fresh cilantro, garlic, etc. 1  few very good options at lime-light, milky-white (at a light foodie) space 1  medicated towel (albino & aluminum mesh - see a friend's link to see if you can use it carefully & what you're expecting) a few paraffin-y dice (sleep about half of the weight, use the 1 ounce plus 2 pounds extra when handling these onto a hot baking sheet) 20 baking sheets 30 1/2 lb. white sanding board 1 didn't dry paper cup 1 cup extra hot water

boil the butter and electrical polishing after 20 minutes 3LB neurons

gently massage these into their slots, reduce heat in oven to approximately 350°F

stuff seam side-side down with binding compound, avoiding every drop of water the thinner sides will be tidy and seperate and pull out after 24 hours know how long they will keep it's held well, thin enough to live with 3-4 weeks teach you all the serenity you'll need to know for fantasy...

_______________________________________ >>> A limited amount of not-spicy crème brûlée (orange - read about how to do it in Meteor!) I used black chocolate cake Crème Brûlée

Painted cocktail draped across the small purple curtain of Shana Liu's Stepmother Coconut Guild guest house in France. 35' x 30' $150

Embargo thank you. Our magical rich chocolate cube

Still, its memory is better than any model I’ve worked with before. Look how it manages to almost remember that it was making a list!

Prompt: My 10 favorite animals are: 1.

Response:  

My 10 favorite animals are: 1. zebras with a white scar on the back; 2. insiduous spiders and octopus; 3. frog with large leaves, hopefully black; 4. cockatiel with scales; 5. razorbill with wings hanging about 4 inches from one's face and a heart tattoo on a frog. 3. cockatric interlocking tetrapods that can be blind, cut, and eaten raw. 4. black and white desert crocodiles living in sunlight. 5. zebra and many other pea bugs.

And this is just the worst model, the one that was trained with 117 million parameters instead of 1542 million. What can the best model do?

Here’s an example of its output:

This give you a clue as to why the OpenAI researchers have decided for now not to release their best model to the public. They’re worried about people using it to produce destructive bots, fake news, phishing emails, and other dangers. It might be difficult indeed to moderate a forum filled with angry time-wasting mostly-coherent bots. In their blog post they posted more examples of the full-powered model producing impressively coherent text, including a delightful news story on four-horned South American unicorns.

What will they end up doing with their model? Even now, someone else with the time and resources - a government, for example - could train and use a model like theirs, especially now that they’ve shown everyone what their technique can do. They’re hoping that their paper will prompt some regulation, or at least some countermeasures, that can guard against this technology’s misuse. They’re also hoping that other researchers will stop to think about potential misuse before they release their models to the public.

For now, the GPT-2 version OpenAI released isn’t going to fool very many people.

Prompt: NO!!! You should NEVER feed a dog from a silver platter.

Response: It will make them bark in farts when you put it away.

Prompt: Actually, you should never microwave your food, because

Response: it holds sodium, mercury, mercury or "cold enemy cocktail" flavorings and the exact same flavorings used then for chili powder. This is wrong, it's not safe, and some people get hurt while cooking at their homes! If you have these very dangerous ingredients and want to keep them around, you should absolutely rinse them and cook them in a dishwasher and set aside.

Support AI Weirdness and get bonus content: A few more GPT-2 samples I generated.

You can download and play with the second-best model here - requires some familiarity with installing and running python code. Or there’s a colaboratory version (works in-browser; no coding required). Content warning: it learned some awful stuff from the Internet.

[tealin]

Cape Crozier: The Outward Journey

As always, please visit the original blog for proper formatting. Sigh, Tumblr.

I am telling this as the last of my field trips, because it was without doubt the climax of my Antarctic adventures.  In actual fact, this happened the day after the previous climax, which was when I flew over the Beardmore Glacier. If time was invented so everything didn't happen at once, and space was invented so it didn't happen to you, then Time and Space were apparently out on a girls' weekend in late November 2019.

There was one major journey yet to undertake, in my visits to sites of historical importance.  It was the location of a minor side-quest in the story of the Scott Expedition – one could, theoretically, leave it out of a retelling with no narrative consequences – but it's the central episode and emotional fulcrum of The Worst Journey in the World, and gave the book its title.  In June and July 1911, the dead of Antarctic winter, three men set off from Cape Evans to reach the Emperor penguin colony at Cape Crozier, on the other side of Ross Island, to fetch some eggs when the embryos were at the right stage of development to yield potential clues to the evolution of birds.  The adventure ended up being more of a test of human endurance than avian ancestry, and the results got from the few specimens they did collect did not advance the theory they were hoped to prove (though scientists would remind us that negative results are still results).  However, it is an amazing story of what people are willing to undertake for the sake of intellectual progress, and in this instance, of how cast-iron character can make the unimaginably awful endurable, and as such, it very much warrants the retelling.

Unlike Cape Evans, Cape Crozier is hard to get to, hostile, and not very well documented.  There was no way I could ever visit it at midwinter, but, having almost no clue what the place was like beyond the written word, it was vitally important to me to stand there myself and get a sense of the geography, so that I could draw figures groping around it in moonlight and blizzard when the time came.  Luckily the NSF agreed that it was important I go, because it was the most complex and expensive trip to arrange.  It would necessitate a helicopter ride; helicopters cost so much to fly, and are so necessary for shuttling people and stuff around any part of Antarctica that is inaccessible by plane (which is most of Antarctica), that their use is very strictly rationed.  I had exactly enough helicopter time allocated to get me to Cape Crozier and back.  Therefore, we had to fly on a day when it was absolutely certain we would not have to turn around, because an aborted trip would mean I didn't have enough flight hours left to try again.  Antarctic weather is unpredictable and Cape Crozier has a reputation for turning very nasty very fast, so this needed to be a careful judgement call.

The first day it was posited I fly, it didn't happen – I forget why; I think there was a backup in other jobs, and mine, being of low importance, got dropped to make room.  The second time, I was slotted for 3:45pm, though with one eye on the weather and the other on resources, the right was reserved to cancel at any time.  A little after 2:30 my coordinator called to say we were, as far as anyone could tell, good to go, so to meet at Helo Ops at 3 for the safety briefing and helmet fitting.

Accompanying me to the far reaches of Ross Island would be my coordinator, who had been a few times before; the pilot, who was one of the best in the biz and had flown for pretty much any Antarctic documentary you care to name; and a biologist, who was required to go because Cape Crozier hosted a rare and fragile species of Antarctic lichen, which we must be careful not to step on or disturb in any way.  The biologist who usually went on these trips was feeling unwell, so she sent a replacement, who was very happy to have the opportunity as he had never been to Cape Crozier before.  Of course, this meant he didn't know what the lichen looked like, but we would doubtless find out when we got there.

Team assembled and briefing done, we had only to wait for the flight to be activated.  The last possible moment came and went without cancellation, so we were on.

The latest weather report from the station at Cape Crozier was that it was 30% cloudy with winds at 7 knots.  Keeping an eye on the wind was important for obvious safety reasons; the cloud conditions, though, were important for less obvious reasons.  The helicopter pilot needs shadows and detail to be able to tell how far away the ground is, either to stay in the air or to make an emergency landing.  When clouds diffuse sunlight, a snow-covered surface looks perfectly blank, and no details show up to give a sense of scale or distance, so it's unsafe to fly.  

We were supposed to have flown along the south coast of Ross Island, following the route that Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard sledged at great cost in 1911.  That side of the island was cloudy, however, so we were redirected to fly around the other side.  From a historical perspective this was a bit of a disappointment, but from an artistic one, the north side of the island was absolutely stunning, and I very quickly came to see why people with money to burn choose to travel by helicopter.

Plus, it meant we started out journey by flying over Cape Evans.

All of Ross Island is volcanic, and near Cape Royds is a small parasitic cone which was explored by the expedition's geologists, who were also the first to climb Mt. Erebus.  I thought it was named Mt. Sis, after someone's sister, but in fact it is Mt. Cis, after one of their dogs.  Our pilot had been this way before and had something special to show us:

On top of Mt. Cis is a pickaxe.  I don't believe there's any historical record of anyone leaving it there, but the Nimrod Expedition is not my speciality.  It has been checked out, and the pickaxe is a model that was in use in the early 20th century, so either an early explorer stuck it there and didn't bother writing it down, or a later explorer found an old pickaxe and stuck it there to give the impression an early explorer had done so.  Anyway, it's been there as long as anyone can remember, and doesn't seem to have suffered much, so will probably continue to be there for some time to come.

From there, onwards up the east coast to cross over the shoulder between Mt Erebus and Cape Bird, then over the snowy slopes of Terror, and the dissipating sea ice, to reach our destination.

Our first sight of Cape Crozier was the Adélie penguin rookery.  This is one of the largest in the world, where upwards of 250,000 penguins congregate to make the next generation of penguins every year.  I had not seen a penguin yet, and though my eyeballs were pointed directly at them, I was too far up to see any now, but their presence is evident in the vast, vast amount of light brown penguin poo.

On this side of Ross Island, the ice shelf is unimpeded by smaller islands or awkward quirks of geology as it is around McMurdo.  As it grinds around the corner, here, it crinkles, and then as it straightens out again, the crinkles break, and the ice lets in long fingers of sea, which freezes during the winter.  It is on these frozen fingers, sheltered from the worst of the blizzards by the taller segments of Ice Shelf, that the Emperor penguins incubate their eggs through the Antarctic winter.

It was these finger bays that our intrepid explorers were trying to reach, but they needed to establish their base camp somewhere a little more secure, on the solid rock of Cape Crozier.  We were on our way to do the same.

The hill coming up was incredibly exciting to see, perhaps even more exciting than Observation Hill.  When the Terra Nova first arrived at Ross Island, it was not on the McMurdo side of it, but rather here, because Cape Crozier was posited to be the most sensible site for Expedition headquarters. It had been explored on the Discovery Expedition, so they knew there was permanent access to the ice shelf, and thus the road south, unlike Hut Point or Cape Royds which would be cut off by miles of open sea for half the year.  It had reliable fresh water nearby, and the Emperor penguins would be right next door.  On the day the Terra Nova arrived, though, the swell on the sea was too high to permit a landing, and when they sent out a scouting party on one of the whaleboats, they discovered no suitable landing place. So they had no choice but to make for the old familiar haunts on the other side of the island.

Now, this is so much historical trivia, except that as part of exploring my desired artistic style and putting together my grant proposal for this trip, I had drawn that scouting journey, and prominent in the scene is this very hill, with its orca eye-spot of snow.  The early explorers called it The Knoll.

This was based on a photograph taken on that day, which clearly shows The Knoll, and also that in January 1911 the ice front was a very long way back from where it is now.

As you can see, what is open water in 1911 is thick and pressured ice in my own photo from 2019.

Now, before you jump on this as proof that climate change is a lie, you may like to hear about my conversation with a scientist who has been studying the Cape Crozier Emperors for over forty years.  He said that, while usually the leading edge of the ice shelf crumbles into small icebergs, occasionally enormous chunks drift off in one go.  When they do, they take a whole generation of Emperor chicks with them, long before they are ready to swim, and that generation is lost.  There is another Emperor colony at Beaufort Island, off the north coast of Ross Island, and following a catastrophe at Cape Crozier, a lot of breeding pairs move to Beaufort, and vice versa. 

When the Crozier party arrived at the Emperor rookery in July 1911, Wilson was expecting the two thousand birds he'd seen when he visited with the Discovery, but there were only a hundred.  Therefore it is plausible that, sometime between 1903 and 1911, a very large chunk of ice had pulled away from Cape Crozier, pushing the shoreline back and scaring off the penguins.

Back to the present, now, or at least last November.  We had just passed The Knoll and were on our way to our landing site, a short walk away from the site of our penguin hunters' stone igloo.  The place they chose to call home is the thin little ridge sticking out into the mist at the left of this photo:

Here we come …

And there we are.

When the Crozier party set off on their science trip in 1911, the three men hauled two sledges for two and a half weeks, through deep soft snow and temperatures that broke known records – down to -77°F one night, according to the thermometer slung under the sledge.  The transcendent misery of marching in frozen clothes, not being able to get proper sleep for the shivering, and burning their precious fuel through the night just to survive, is carved deep in Cherry's writing of the experience.  To say it was hellish is no exaggeration: Cherry points out that Dante put the circle of ice below the circles of fire in his Inferno, and thought it was apropos.  The greatest challenge of our own journey out was landing the helicopter: given the sensitive environment and the fragile lichens, there was a specific landing site that was supposed to be marked out with stones.  Our pilot circled once to find it, and came back around because he couldn't spot it the first time, then finally landed right on the GPS waymark because there was no visible clue where the actual site was supposed to be.  As difficulties go, it hardly bears mention.  Whether we'd earned it or not, however, we were there.