#this felt bigger than that - which would put it at about the right wingspan - and i dunno what else it could've been

[racke7]

I think I might’ve seen a golden eagle today.

Big-ass fucking bird, swooping halfway across the road to attempt to hover right ahead of my car, low enough that if not for being inside of a car I would’ve been covering my head.

[honey-dewey]

How each of the boys deals with beach/ocean shenanigans

Because my life goal is to be a marine biologist and my only place of true peace is the ocean and limiting me to 100 words is fucking cruel. So I just wrote until I felt done. Not 100 words each, obviously, but entertaining nonetheless. 

Permanent Taglist: @phoenixhalliwell @star-wars-hell

Din Djarin: 

Okay so did anyone else see how Din dove in The Heiress? Because that was beautiful. He probably learned to swim late, after he joined the Covert, but once they put him in a pool, he refused to get out. He's an amazing swimmer, even with all that beskar on. 

But we aren’t here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about what happens when you beg him to take you to a water planet because goddammit you’ve been on nothing but dry desert planets or dry ice planets or dry city planets for the longest time now and if you don’t get to put your feet in the water soon, you might kill him. 

He doesn’t understand the appeal. Sure he’s seen the ocean. Woo-hoo it’s a bunch of water. But the way you go peaceful with wonder when you mention it, he’s ready to take a break too. And hey, maybe Grogu can finally see the ocean. So he finds an ocean planet and sets course. And because he’s a stubborn bastard, he won’t tell you where you’re going. 

When you step off the Crest and immediately find nothing but slowly crashing waves and soft shell studded sand (that is black as obsidian because remember, we’re not on earth) you almost cry. Stripping out of your shoes and rolling your pants up to your upper thighs, you wade out into the water, completely ignoring Din’s warning to be careful, he doesn’t know what’s in the water. 

You don’t know how long you stand there, the water licking at your thighs, the soft drag of the waves rolling over and over, the way your feet slowly sink into the blackness of the sand, grounding you to this one spot, this one moment. Eventually, you find that you have a companion. 

Din’s not a wide ocean kind of guy, but for you, he’ll take the armor off (but not the helmet) and come stand beside you, his pants rolled up as well. His are tighter, so the rough edge gets slowly soaked in water, but he doesn’t mind. 

Half an hour of mindless and relaxing standing around in the water later, and you’re ready to explore. Scooping Grogu up and putting him in a baby carrier across your chest, you begin to look for suitable shells to keep aboard the Crest. Again, Din is confused, but doesn’t question it as you walk up and down the same stretch of sand, occasionally bending down and happily pulling a gorgeous shell from the clutches of the water. He wouldn’t be at peace here if he was alone, but you sure as hell would be. Still standing in the water, listening to you babble back and forth with Grogu, the waves occasionally kissing his hands, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he could find peace in your peace. 

Marcus Moreno:

Marcus is not an ocean person, but he’s not not an ocean person, y’know? Sand irritates him, the air smells funny, and it’s usually loud. But he likes the water. If it could be a quiet pool it would be better, but the ocean works too. 

And then he’s put on a boat with you, a still-learning water Heroic (think like. Aquaman), and things change. 

At first, he hates it. A boat that’s tipping constantly may be your thing, considering how much you look like you belong, but it sure as shit ain’t his. You try to teach him some stuff, shouting over the crashing of the waves, but he’s trying too hard not to throw up to really pay attention. 

Then everything settles. The water stops tipping, the boat is still, and you quietly tell him there’s a pod of humpbacks outside. 

He’s terrified when you jump into the water, no oxygen or gear or anything. It’s only when he remembers you can breathe underwater that he stops losing his mind. And when the whales start to breach? Yeah he’s gone. He’s all smiling and laughing when you breach right alongside the whales, and when you get back on board the boat, he’s so incredibly excited. 

So next time, you tell him you’re right above one of the biggest groups of migrating hammerhead sharks ever. He reacts less kindly to that one, even when you dive and tell him it’s perfectly safe. They won’t hurt you. But looking down to see you surrounded by hundreds of great hammerheads, just swimming lazily beside you? Yeah that’s surreal as fuck. 

Max Phillips: 

Ah yes. The resident vampire who hasn’t been to a beach in almost a decade. He can’t go out in the sun, what makes y’all think he’d actually enjoy the beach? Nope, he is not risking his life so he can feel some sand. 

But the beach during the day is completely different from the beach at night, and you are determined to prove it. You blindfold Max, at the expense of many dirty jokes, and drive him to the beach. 

He can smell it before you can, the salt in the air that drifts through the windows and promises all will be right with the world. Then you guys hear it, the soft crash of waves on the shore, the gentle buzz to the air. Finally, you stand Max on the empty beach and remove the blindfold and he can see it. Night darkened waves, the shifting water turning the full moon into a shattered mosaic of light glimmering on the waves. 

For the first time in a long time, he lets himself drown in sensation, in tranquility. It’s been ten long years since he forgot he wasn’t a human being anymore, but with the water licking at his bare feet, he’s completely unaware of his deadness. All he can feel is sand and water and salt and you, holding his hand and looking out with him. 

He’s determined to stay there all night, but you insist on walking, occasionally bending down to grab a shell you see in the darkness. Max is definitely at an advantage here with his night vision, but that’s nothing a flashlight can’t solve. By the time the sun begins to peer over the horizon, you and Max are fast asleep in bed, a small jar of sea shells on your bedside table. 

Frankie ‘Catfish’ Morales: 

When I tell you I was excited to write Frankie, oh boy. See, I headcanon him to be like me. Enamored with the ocean since before he can remember. It’s always, always, made him wide eyed with wonder. Aquariums are his safe space, and his favorite animal, above every other living thing on the planet, is sharks. 

He finds peace in knowing they exist, seeing something so powerful be so docile. You’re a marine biologist, and you end up taking him on a caged shark dive. He’s ecstatic, practically vibrating as you take the boat way out where you’re bound to find something good. 

And you do. Everyone else on your team, along with Frankie, is cage diving, but you’re just out there, swimming freely alongside huge Great Whites. They’re so beautiful, and Frankie nearly cries when you coax said shark to the side of the cage so he can run his hand over the shark’s wide belly.

His next dive is a general reef dive, just you and him. Beaches aren’t his thing, there’s too little activity, so you take him out on a reef. He’s smiling the entire time, swimming alongside fish the size of his arm and manta rays with a wingspan bigger than his. But the best part is the reef sharks. Black Tips, no longer than four or five feet. They crowd Frankie and make him laugh as he actually pets their bellies. Suddenly, he’s surrounded by sharks who all want the same thing. Scritches. 

His third dive is open ocean, and you don’t tell him what you’re diving with. He gets in the water, turns around, and immediately starts to cry tears of joy. His favorite shark, his absolute favorite, is swimming lazily behind him. The Whale Shark. It’ll be hell to get him out of the water later, but in that moment, you want nothing more than to see that smile, wide enough to show off his dimple. 

Jack ‘Whiskey’ Daniels:

Jack Daniels is not an ocean person by any means. He’s an open fields kind of man, where he can look up at the Montana night sky and feel like he’s two inches tall, surrounded by mountains and plains. But his latest mission with you takes him to Hawaii, and he ain’t mad about it. 

The first few days, you spend hours on the beach alone. Jack stays indoors, not able to be persuaded out with you. Finally, he’s forced to go to the beach with you because of the mission, and he complains all morning long. You simply roll your eyes and put on your bathing suit and floppy hat. 

Beach time lasts much longer than anticipated. The target won’t be there for a while, but you wanted to relax before working, so you settle in a beach chair with a nice book and get to reading while Jack grumbles about sand in his shoes. 

BUT, dear reader I would be cruel if I made Jack unhappy, so while he may not be a beach person, he is very much a you person. Once you stand to go shelling, wrapped in that teasing black and white swimsuit and flowy white cover up, he’s by your side with minimal complaints. 

Turns out, Jack Daniels’s whip quick reflexes are good for grabbing shells before they’re stolen by the water. You and him get an impressive collection going, eyeing your target the entire time. By the time you have your intel, Jack’s actually enjoying himself and almost doesn’t want to leave. 

The next morning, he’s red as a tomato from sunburn and vows to never go to the beach again. You laugh, and you and him spend the day indoors, sorting through your shell collection and rubbing aloe on Jack’s red shoulders. (Yeah he’s going shirtless all day. You ain’t mad about it.)

Ezra: 

It’s a headcanon of mine, and I’ve mentioned it before, that Ezra grew up an orphan. He lived in a state house until he was 18, which is when he began to prospect. He’s been all over the galaxy, but never been to a water planet. Long story short, he’s never seen a beach. Or an ocean. Or anything bigger than a small pond. 

After the Green, you decide to spoil him and take him and Cee to an ocean planet for some time off. He has no idea where you’re going, but he’s excited nonetheless. 

The planet is almost 90% water, with vast underground caves and beautiful beaches. You land on one of those beaches and when Ezra steps out of your transport pod, he immediately starts to cry. 

Cee’s seen an ocean before, but it’s been a while, so she immediately rushes past Ezra and jumps into the water. Watching her splash around in the gently crashing waves is like bliss, and it makes you smile. 

But Ezra, oh boy Ezra. He’s transfixed, standing with the water lapping at his ankles and his face slack as he takes in the vastness of it all. Eventually, you convince him into the water. He can’t swim, so you guide him out to a safe depth and hold his hand tight as he floats on his back. He’s so calm, so at ease that it’s almost scary. 

That night, he doesn’t want to go inside. The setting sun makes the ocean orange, and you finally manage to get him in. You pop a window open to allow the salty air into the pod, lulling you to sleep and putting Ezra at ease. 

Shane ‘Dio’ Morrissey: 

Dio will literally never admit he loves the beach. Never. He’s a bad boy! He can’t love anything! 

Except for sea turtles. He really fucking loves sea turtles. He can name all seven species by heart, he’s got a beautiful teal blue bracelet that he wears all the time that has a turtle bead and he got when he ‘adopted’ a green turtle, he has two turtle tattoos, and he’s absolutely a huge turtle geek whenever you take him to the aquarium.

Which is how you learn he’s that in love with turtles. You take him to an aquarium on a date, and he sits in front of the turtle tank for almost an hour. It’s actually kinda cute. 

So you take him to the beach, a beautiful beach with not many people and, according to the locals, is a turtle nesting site. You and Dio mess around for a while, until the night falls and you sit him in the back of your truck. He’s almost mad you won’t let him leave, at least, right up until the turtles come out. 

He’s a kid in a candy store, all lit up and giddy as the turtles come out to lay their eggs. It’s a dream for him, and when one of the locals asks if you two want to say hi to the turtles, he’s up immediately. 

Two months later, you and Dio return to the same beach, eager to help the baby turtles into the water. Yet again, the outer hard boy shell falls away, leaving you with the soft and giggly Dio that you adore. 

From that day on, your phone background is a photo of Dio holding one of the baby turtles, a warm and genuine grin on his face. 

Javier Peña: 

What makes you think Javier has time to go to the beach? He hasn’t been in literal years, ever since he headed to Columbia. 

But, when he’s home? You manage to get him some time off and take him out to the gulf for a few days. It’s crowded, sure, and that sets his anxiety off big time, but he’s in Texas, not Columbia, and you’re by his side the entire time. 

You manage to find a nice spot away from people to relax on, laying in the sand for hours. No stress, no mess, no looming threat of death, no nothing. 

In the evening, once most of the people go away, you and Javier start to walk along the shore, holding your shoes and each other’s hands. Javier picks up a beautiful multicolored shell, all dappled with beiges and whites and hints of purple. It’s gorgeous, and you immediately slip it onto a necklace you were wearing. 

You manage to one up Javier when you find a brown shell. On the surface, it’s not much. But under the setting sun, it’s beautiful, streaked through with lighter browns and shining ambers. You hand it to Javier, and he immediately tells you it’s boring. At which you tell him it reminds you of his eyes, a deceptively simple brown at first, and then a mesmerizing whiskey amber once you study them. 

Yeah, he tears up at that. 

Maxwell Lord: 

Yet another man who is not a beach person. He hates sand so much he’ll forgo the entire beach experience, because as we all know, he a drama queen. However, unlike Jack, Maxwell is loud about his dislike of the beach. 

Finally, he gets dragged out for a business opportunity and has to spend almost four whole days at the beach. You best be ready for the entire month leading up to the trip to be a whole bunch of complaining. The plane ride out is blissfully quiet, and when he sees the beach, he’s no longer completely insufferable. 

However, you quickly learn that while your dear Max is not a beach person, he likes the ocean. He’s all for getting on a boat and spending the day on the water. Which is exactly what you two do. He’s sensitive to the sun, but he’ll sit in it with you if you want. 

Eventually, you convince him to get in the water. You expected him to be a decent swimmer, not great but not horrible. But then he jumps into the ocean with no life vest and you’re freaking the hell out until you watch his form. He’s a damn natural. And he’s so happy it’s almost scary. He’s in the water for almost an hour, and when he comes out, it’s only for a quick snack. 

That night, you two sit on the beach, much to Max’s complaining. But he’s beside you and his hair is still stiff from the saltwater, so he’s happy, despite the whining.

[marvxlousqueen]

Warren Worthington- Training Partners (smut)

Summary: Imagine getting paired up with Warren during training and things get heated ;)  this is post-apocalypse like warren’s a student now 

the reader’s mutation isn’t actually stated bc I figured y’all would want to choose what it is :)

warnings: smut, oral (female receiving), no condom (whoops), warren being hot as fuck ugh, cussing 

word count: a little over 2k

Read Part 2 here!

this is also the first time I’ve ever written smut so please forgive me if it’s bad and forgive me if it’s not accurate to what sex is like bc i’m a whole ass virgin :)

Warren Worthington, in (y/n)’s opinion, was one of the most intimidating mutants she had ever met. He had a darkness about him ever since he enrolled in Xavier’s school for mutants. He had been accepted following the “incident” with Apocalypse. Since he had been fighting against many of the current x-men, a lot of students still felt weary of him. Even though he kept his head down he was still frightening to many students. 

(Y/n) agreed with this. Everything from the way he walked down the hallways with his wings out to the way he ate lunch alone made her nervous around him. 

It was 3:00 on a Thursday afternoon as (y/n), Jean, and Jubilee made their way to training with Raven. Their training class was smaller than most, but more experienced. Almost all of them had been in the Apocalypse battle and others had been fighting since before then. In the class was Peter, Scott, Kurt, Jean, Jubilee, Ororo, (y/n), and Warren. (Y/n) felt less uneasy around Ororo compared to how she felt around Warren. Ororo had helped them win the battle against Apocalypse and since she became a student she had warmed up to everyone, even hanging out with Jean, (Y/n), and Jubilee outside of school occasionally. 

Training usually took about 2 hours. Raven would demonstrate new moves or techniques and trainees would go off into their pairs to practice while Raven would walk around and critique. On Fridays they would have fight circles and practice fast paced fights. (Y/n) usually partnered with Jubilee since they’ve have known each other for so long. Jean would go off with Scott, Peter with Kurt, and Warren with Ororo since they became close during the whole incident. 

Class started with a good ten minutes of stretching and pep-talks, along with some words of battle strategy from Raven. “Today is about facing the unexpected. You’ve all gotten too used to your partners. You know them too well. In a real fight you never know what you’re up against. We need to try and simulate that here by drawing random partners for today’s training.”

(Y/n)’s heart dropped. She really enjoyed training with Jubilee. It always gave them time to catch up and gossip, plus if she messed up she didn’t feel embarrassed. (Y/n) had fought with the others before. Peter was too fast and she hated training with him. Kurt was all over the place and made her head hurt. Scott was always afraid to hit her because he’s a “gentleman” (his words) and doesn’t like to take the first hit. Jean would just lift (y/n) and throw her back down until she tapped out. Ororo would use her wind to keep (y/n) down on the mat. Warren-- actually, (y/n) thought, I haven’t fought with Warren before.

She was scared that she might have to. His wings were sharp and big, the chip on his shoulder even bigger. She didn’t want to face him in a fight ever again. Raven grabbed an old baseball cap that was filled with little bits of paper. “We’re doing this completely random so no complaining, okay?” She grabbed the first two names from the hat. “Kurt and Jubilee.” Jubilee squeezed (Y/n)’s arm, “I’ll miss you. Don’t get too beat up without me!” She laughed as she walked off with Kurt. Raven continued with the names, “Jean and Peter. Scott and Ororo.”

Oh God, (y/n) thought, who’s left? oh my god please kill me now. “(y/n) and Warren.” Warren looked up from the ground at the sound of his name. His eyes landed on (y/n)’s face, no expression on his. She stared back for a moment before taking the rest of him in. He always trained shirtless seeing as how he could barely get a shirt over his metal wings. She the scars across his body, like bolts of lightning. Suddenly his eyes dropped and he turned around, making his way to the back mat. (y/n) hesitated to followed. Before she did she looked to Jubilee who had a “oof don’t get killed” look on her face. Jubilee warily raised her hand into a thumbs up, the worried look not leaving her face. 

“Thanks, Jubz. Very encouraging.” She just shrugged and went back into her training with Kurt. (Y/n) slowly dragged her feet toward Warren’s mat. He always trained back here. He didn’t like anyone seeing him so he hid out in the shadows. (Y/n) dropped her bag down and took a sip of water, trying to mentally prepare herself for the ass-whooping she was about to receive from Warren. 

Let’s just say (Y/n)’s mutation wasn’t anything that special, especially not in terms of combat help, but she had been a student for quite some time and Raven and Charles both agreed she needed to be able to use hand to hand combat successfully. “You ready to start?” 

(Y/n) jumped at Warren’s words. He had never spoken to her. She had barely ever heard him speak at all, just a few time to Ororo or Raven during training. She nodded and got into a fighting stance, putting her legs apart, left foot in front of her right one so that she could easily kick with her right one. Warren was standing straight. He spread his wings out to their full length (at least an 8 foot wingspan). They looked even scarier in the crappy gymnasium lighting. 

He started towards her, leaping into the air. (Y/n) dived under him and ended up on the other side of the mat. Warren landed and turned back to her. Her heart was already racing and she wanted to throw up from nerves. He lunged at her again and this time she reacted with a right roundhouse kick to his head, but instead he grabbed her leg and yanked her off her footing. She went down, accidentally pulling Warren down with her. Her back hit the mat and Warren’s head hit hers. 

“Ow fuck!” He looked up while rubbing his forehead and met her eyes. He stayed like that for a moment, not moving off of her but just taking her in. “Are you going to get off of me?” (Y/n) surprised herself with the confident tone she used towards him, but she tried to not show it. This made him crack a smile, “you really want me to?” His smile changing into a small smirk as his eyes travelled south, down her body. (Y/n)’s eyes widened at the comment, “I-um.. yeah get off.” 

“Your choice, babygirl.” He stood up and offered his hand. (Y/n) didn’t take it, choosing instead to help herself. “What.. what did you call me?” Warren laughed a small low laugh, smirking again. “You heard me. And I know you liked it.” (Y/n) scoffed under her breath, “Just stop. We’re supposed to be training.” She backed up a few steps, steadied herself, and ran at him again. She used the leg sweep that Raven had taught her yesterday. One problem with that is that Warren can just jump into the air and stay there because of his wings. 

This is why you need to evaluate the enemy, (Y/n), god. And stop thinking about what he said just pay attention, she yelled at herself. Warren came down from the air and knocked her over, once again on top of her. He seems to really like this position. That thought made (y/n) blush, which didn’t go unnoticed by Warren. “You’re a little shy, huh, babygirl?” He moved his mouth closer to her ear, “I’m sure I could get you to open up.” He moved down and kissed (Y/n)’s neck quickly before climbing off her, walking off the mat to get a drink of water. (Y/n) stayed where she was on the mat for a moment, burning red in the face and starting to feel a burning somewhere else. 

Raven had noticed her on the floor and jogged over, “(Y/n), you okay? Need first aid?” She shook her head and jumped up, “No- I’m uh- I’m fine just a little dizzy. You think I could skip out early? I think I’m too dehydrated to be training right now.” Raven looked her over, eyebrows furrowed. “Fine. Go get some rest and be ready for tomorrow’s training.” (Y/n) nodded and shuffle off the mat, pulling on a pair of sweatpants over her small training shorts. She grabbed her gym bag and quickly slipped on her tennis shoes, wanting to get away from Warren as fast as possible before he could make her red again. She quickly turned to walk out, but bumped right into Warren’s bare chest. 

“Leaving so soon?” He took (Y/n)’s gym bag from her shoulder and put it on his. “I’ll walk you to your room.” (Y/n) shook her head, “You don’t need to do that, Warren.” He started walking out of the gym anyways so she ran to catch up. Once she was next to him he slowed down again, trying to cherish the time next to her. Her shoulder touching his occasionally as they walked. He was in shock with himself for how he acted during training. He never talks to anyone, but to be able to talk like that to her. He’s surprised he didn’t get choked up. At least she seemed to enjoy that dirty talk. I mean she was really blushing, right?, Warren thought. 

(Y/n) was focused on looking anywhere else until they got into the main building where she could speed off to her room. They turned into her hallway and she pushed open her door, turning around to take the bag from Warren, but instead he made his way into her room and set it down on her desk. “Nice room. Looks cozy. Good size bed too.” He faced her and she noticed his face was a little red. Her’s began to heat up too, catching on to what he was trying to say. He stepped towards her, a bit of hesitation in his walk as he looked down to her lips. Finally he closed the gap, his mouth on hers. Their lips moved against each other and he backed her up toward the bed.

He fell on top of her, chest against chest as his hands went to her waist, playing with the band to her sweats. She started to kick them off before he helped her pull them off. Then he went to pull down her shorts from underneath them while she worked on his. Once she was just in her panties and her tank top, his hands went to pull it over her head. She pulled off her sports bra and Warren froze a little. Even covered in sweat from an afternoon of training she still looked beautiful. “What?” she asked. He’s eyes left her breasts and went up to her face. “Sorry. You’re just- just really pretty.” 

“Oh. I-um. Thank-thank you.” He gave her a little nod before he moved his lips to her neck. He kissed and sucked at her sweet skin hoping to leave his mark. A gasp left her lips that spurred him on. He made his way down her body. Worshipping it with kisses, licks, and love bites. He kissed down the valley of her breasts and then began to play with the waistband of her panties. His eyes looked up to hers, asking for permission, to which she nodded and put her head back down on the bed. He slid down her underwear and spread her legs. He didn’t hesitate to puts his lips on her pussy. He moved his mouth up to suck her clit while he brought a finger to her and pushed it in.

“Fuck! Warren-uhh,” she moaned. He moved his tongue down between her folds, pulled out his finger and replaced it with his tongue. He fucked her with his tongue and she grinded on his face. “Oh fu-fuck! Warren- I’m gonna- oh! I’m-” He felt her tighten around his tongue, thighs squeezing against his head. He pulled away from her and moved back up to her face. “I only want you coming on my cock, okay, babygirl?” He lifted one of her legs over his shoulder and push in with one swift movement. “Shit- you’re so tight-fuck!”

Her hands went up into Warren’s hair as he pulled out and pushed back in with more force. “Warren! fuck-” He kept thrusting into her, harder and harder each time. She scratched at his scalp, desperate for something to hold on to. His hips banged into hers harder and harder. His dick began to twitch inside of her. “Fuck (y/n)-” He kept thrusting, hitting her sweet spot perfectly as he moved to suck on her neck. 

“Warren I’m almost there-I’m- uh!”  A wave of pleasure hit her as the coil in her stomach exploded. He kept thrusting as her orgasm washed over her. “Fuck (y/n) ! shit almost! I-” He bit down on her neck and his hips gave on final thrust and he filled her up. His wings stretched all the way out as he came. The image was the most gorgeous thing (Y/n) had ever seen. 

After a moment he slowly pulled out of her, making sure to be gentle. He moved and laid next to her. “You good?” he asked, turning to look at her. She met his eyes and nodded, “Yeah I’m fine-but I, um, I don’t usually do that kind of thing.”

“yeah no neither do I..” He kept his eyes on her face and leaned in to kiss her once more, softer this time. “But I’m happy we did.”

[an-agender-disaster]

Whumptober Days 9-12  (Shackled, Unconscious, Stitches, “Don’t Move”)

I rolled all of these into one long work that was inspired by @aromanticandaromatic‘s awesome post here! I would highly recommend it! If this gets enough love, I would defiantly consider making it a series! 

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Word Count- 1929

Characters- Unsympathetic Logan Sanders, Virgil Sanders, Sympathetic Remus, Sympathetic Deceit (Eden)

Ships- Platonic/Familial Anxcitmus 

Warnings- Unsympathetic/Abusive Logan, Sympathetic Dark Sides, Blood, Medical Descriptions of Gore, Gore, Dehumanization, Minor Swearing

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    Logan pulls at the creature’s wings. No longer was it Virgil, nor was it his friend. No, it was an experiment. Y731*2A. That was all it would ever be to him now.

    Placing the unconscious subject Y731*2A onto the lab table, wings facing the ceiling, he gingerly moved it’s wrists into the shackles, as to not injure it any further. Just capturing the thing after it unveiled it’s wings proved to be enough of a challenge. The bruises and cuts along Logan and itself were enough of a testament to that.

    Locking the cuffs into place, Logan flips open his notebook. He already has the preliminary data from E793*4C and T132*3D, the Kraken and the basilisk respectively, so this would not be too difficult, so long as he stuck to the procedure. Pulling on a lab coat and a pair of latex gloves, Logan begins his prodding. 

    Knowing the creature would not be “asleep” for much longer, he started testing vital signs. Heart rate was slow, but that was to be expected with the condition it was in. The temperature that was recorded is 97.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 36.56 degrees Celsius, a little low compared to Vi- subject Y731*2A’s normally observed temperature, but it is most likely nothing to worry about. It’s blood pressure is 120/80, a healthy level to be at. Finally, it’s respiratory rate is 16 breaths per minute, and slowly speeding up, an indicator that the subject is stirring. Logan would have to record height and weight later.  

    While still recording each statistic in the notebook, the experiment begins to regain consciousness. It pulls up it’s arms, likely an attempt to sit up, and when it finds itself unable to do so, begins panicking, its heart rate and respiratory rate increasing. It’s wings flare out, perhaps an attempt to fly away, perhaps because it is afraid, though it is interesting all the same. Logan will have to run more tests with a similar stimulus.

    “I must ask that you calm yourself,” Logan tells it, voice indifferent to the matter. He finishes jotting down his thoughts and looks across the wingspan, curious as to just how wide they really were.

    “Logan! Let me out or I swear, I’ll-” the subject’s sentence is cut off as a jolt of electricity is sent through the cuffs to the experiment. It screams out in pain as 100 mA travels through it’s body, not enough to kill, but more than enough to severely injure it.

    When the subject stops, Logan begins, “I would not recommend doing that.” He adjusts his glasses. “If you put too much tension on the cuffs, I have them rigged up to release a sudden electrical pulse, hopefully effectively calming you down.”

    “Why are you doing this? This isn’t like you!” it cries out, wrists covered in burns. Logan chooses to ignore Y731*2A, and instead looks down at the next part of the procedure. Incision. 

    Gathering the needed supplies: a scapple, suture, and a needle, Logan looks back to the experiment on the lab table. It is laying mostly still, seemingly defeated by it’s own eagerness to escape. With all of his supplies on a tray, Logan lifts it off the counter, puts it onto a cart, and rolls it back to the table. He only wishes he had painkillers, just to slightly numb the test subject, but Logan knows he will just have to make do without.

    When he and the cart arrive, he pushes down the wings, trying to get the best view of where the wing’s humerus connects to the spine. “Don’t move.” With one last look at Y731*2A, Logan makes the incision into the wing. 

    He cuts down, deep into the muscle, until he hits a bone. Y731*2A screams out in agony as nerves are cut through. Logan accidentally slices through an artery, causing blood to spurt out onto his gloves and the creature’s bareback. It’s preteen ebony wings grow darker with the stain.

    Logan sighs, “You really do need to calm yourself, as I have formerly stated. This was a minor incision. It will get worse as we progress.” The experiment doesn’t respond and only begins to pull up his arms again. Stepping back before the shock, Logan grabs the needle and satire and puts down the scalpel. 

    He waits for the electroshock to end, then walks back up to the table, where the creature has gone mostly limp. “I hope you are willing to cooperate now. All of you test subjects have the same reaction. It is quite tiresome.”

    It only takes a few minutes for Logan to sew up the wound and wrap the wing up in bandages, but when he’s done, the subject seems anxious to get away, and he resorted to trying yet again to pull his wrists out of the cuffs. 

“Are you really so eager to injure yourself?” Logan questions after the third wave of pain floods through Y731*2A. Sighing after receiving no response, Logan wheels the table out of the primary testing room and into the white-tiled hallway. His shoes clack against the floor and echo down the hall and into the main housing unit of the experiments, where he was heading.

    Logan unlocks the door and wheels in the subject, but only after ensuring the other two are still locked in the secondary containment facility. After he locks the door behind him, Logan walks over to the cameras and waits for the third stage to begin. 

…

    Virgil was in pure agony. Three times he hoped he could free himself, and three times the electricity pulsed into his arms and through his body. His right wing was on fire when it was cut open, which was only amplified by the second bout of energy. After the third shock, he chose to keep his eyes shut, and was wheeled out of the cramped room and into the hallway, then kept them shut when he heard another door unlock, and finally when he felt the table get pushed into another room.

    Only then he lets his eyes slowly open at the sound of two doors consecutively unlocking. Logan wouldn’t let two doors open at the same time if he would only be able to get into one. Virgil still knew enough about the logical side to know his habits. Or, he thought he did, before now.

    The cuffs were still locked when two familiar faces entered the room.

    “Virgil!” Remus shouted, running up to his friend.

    “So he got to you, too…” Eden slithers to the table, stroking his ungloved hands through Virgil’s hair. Peering down at Virgil’s wrists, he questions, “Just how many times did you try to break the cuffs?” Virgil only groans in response, leaning into the cool touch of his friend.

    “He’ll unlock the shackles soon. He did for both of us, anyways.” Remus holds onto his friend’s cuffed hands like a lifeline, his warm touch like a fireplace on a cold winter's night. “For now, we should clean up some of this blood.”

    “And get you a shirt,” Eden adds, noting Virgil’s bare chest.

    Remus nods, “And a shirt. But we’ll need to cut a hole into it…”

    “Give him one of yours. You’re both closer to the same size, and yours have holes already, to accommodate the tentacles.”

    Remus peers at his tall, well-built frame compared to Virgil’s short, petite frame, then nods. “Yeah. I’ll get him one of mine.” Remus walks into one of the four conjoined rooms as Eden slithers to a nearby foldable table, grabs a rag, and dips a small portion of it into water. Moving back to Virgil’s side, he slowly ebbs away the bloodstains, working from Virgil’s spine to his wings, where he takes more precaution to get it all off. 

    Relaxing at the touch of the naga, Virgil can almost forget about the situation he is in. Almost forget that one of his best friends took him in for experiments. Almost forget all of the pain in the last few minutes.

    Almost.

    Remus soon returns with a clean white shirt, many sizes too large for Virgil’s small frame. As he was walking up to his winged friend, the shackles released Virgil from their grasp, allowing the two others to truly see just how badly his wrists were injured. They both stop what they were doing to look at the burns.

    “Oh, Virgil…” Remus whispers in sympathy, hands fluttering around Virgil’s, unsure of what to do.

    “How many times did that bastard shock you!” Eden literally hisses, anger apparent on his face. His hands clenched into fists as he thinks about how much his friend just went through, and he was powerless to help. He was between punching a wall or himself. 

    “We don’t have anything for that, do we?” Remus asks, looking to Eden as Virgil props himself onto his elbows.

    “No. No, we don’t.” Eden responds through clenched teeth. He reaches out for the shirt from Remus, then pulls Virgil close, his tone immediately changing, “Can you put your arms up? Did he cut off circulation at all?”

    Virgil takes the shirt from Eden and swings his legs off the table. Now sitting down, he responds, “I’m fine. It’s not all that bad, you know.” Pulling the shirt over his head, he slips it on. There is plenty of room for his wings to come out the back, thanks to the height difference between himself and Remus.

    “I’m pretty sure this should be a bigger deal, you know.” Eden hisses, taking one of Virgil’s wrists in his hands. The scaled fingers on his left-hand brush against the wrist’s charred flesh. Virgil shrugs in response, apathetic to the garden of problems that are sprouting up. 

    Remus yawns as he looks around the room, “What time is it?” His tentacles droop behind him, slick with their natural slime.

    “Late.” Eden helps Virgil to his feet as the sound of another door unlocking rings through the air. The lights flash twice in succession, a telltale sign of the coming night. “I suppose we should show you to your room, then?” Eden offers his non scaled hand to his friend, and, when he accepts, they move further into the hallway. 

On each side, there were two sliding glass doors, three of which were open to another white-tiled room, these with a small cot and cabinet. “Remus and I usually rotate around these rooms, but we don’t have to if that makes you uncomfortable,” Eden explains, “But your stuff will be put in here-” he gestures to one of the rooms, “-when he sends it in.” Virgil nods along, looking into the room. It was an identical copy of the other three, with the same white-tiled floors and walls, grey cot with a dark grey spread, and light grey cabinet.

The lights start to flash again, a copy of the previous pattern. “When that happens, we need to be in our rooms. It’s like a late bell in school.” Remus steps into the door nearest to him, as does Eden. Virgil quickly enters his, and all of the doors slide shut and are remotely locked.

The lights both inside and outside the room turn off, and the glass door tints until it is nearly opaque. Looking once more around the room, Virgil settles onto the bed, back and wings to the ceiling. He let his eyes settle shut, the terrors of the day fading into dreams.

[bxtonpxss]

Learnset # 3 | Thor Would Like to Learn a New Move!

“Thoooor, c’mon let’s go home already. You promised!” After a long day of them exploring the city, Glitch was tired out, not that he could blame her, he could feel a bit of exhaustion beginning to settle in his bones also as he walked. There’s an insistent tugging at his ears that the bigger mouse has grown far too used to, so he doesn’t pay it any mind, not even when its followed by a harsh nip and impatient jolt of electricity that does nothing more than send a ticklish tingle through his system. He does nothing more than twitch a little before wiggling his ears a bit playfully, which causes Glitch, who currently had her teeth sunk into his left appendage to giggle.

“I know, I know kiddo. Just gimme a second,” he murmurs, front paws and nose pressed firmly to the cool glass of the window he leaned against while his eyes were glued to the television screen sitting in the window. The door was wide open to allow customers to enter, thus allowing his heightened senses to pick up the sounds from the TV. There was a battle between two humans going on, and normally he wouldn’t give the fight much thought, but one of the humans had a Raichu, so of course, he had stopped, obviously wanting to see how that played out. Even Glitch had stopped nibbling at his ear for a moment to watch the fight, entranced at the battle.

“Raichu, Reflect!”

X0X0 

With the sun having already set and the sky beginning to darken, the duo finally made it home after an eventful day spent in the city. The second Thor enters the den, Glitch jumps down from her perch in between his ears with a laugh and darts straight to their nest, running around in a tight circle a few times before falling back on the pile of leaves with an audible thwump. Thor watches the Pichu with a fond look in his eye as he pads over, grabbing a few berries from their stockpile along the way. Once situated on their bed, he drops the fruit in front of Glitch and settles down on his stomach, reaching out with an arm to pull the smaller mouse close in between his forepaws so he could proceed to bathe her while she ate.

They work in comforting silence, with Glitch pushing the remainder of her berry into his mouth while he’s in the middle of finishing cleaning up her face. He chuckles before chewing and swallowing the piece of fruit, while she giggles playfully. He nuzzles at her chin and presses his yellow cheek sac against her pink one. The two electric rodents trade warm affectionate sparks before pulling away. Glitch then leans back, tucking herself right in between the space where Thor’s head meets his neck, it’s her second favorite spot to sleep after Thor’s belly. He shifts his arm a bit closer so he could rest his head on the brown tipped appendages, and the movement shifts his child a little from her space tucked away in his shoulder, but it doesn’t bother her, rather she settles even more deeply against the taller, beginning to drift off to sleep with a wide yawn.   

“Mnya, gnight Thor~”

“Night Glitch.” It doesn’t take long for the Pichu’s breathes to even out and eventually slow, indicating her deep sleep. Thor isn’t too far behind her, though his mind can’t help but think back to the match they watched from earlier. After the trainer’s Raichu had used Reflect against their opponent and successfully blocked the attack, she suddenly called the mouse back.

Disappointed by the sudden disappearance of their biased Pokémon, Glitch began groaning about leaving again, and Thor couldn’t help but agree. There was no point in sticking around if the Raichu wasn’t gonna be there, so as he lowered himself back on all fours about to walk away, he hears the trainer suddenly call out an unfamiliar move that has his ears lifting and his attention focused on the screen window with an interested gaze.

 The scene replays over and over in his head.

“Electrode Magnet Rise!” Thor watches as thin bolts immediately begin to form around the electric type steadily beginning to lift the owner slightly off the ground. Electrode, moments later then pushes its energy out even further, destroying bits of the field around it which then also begin to float in the air. He listened how the trainer explains that they use this move as a counter to ground types, therefore negating its only weakness.

After that, the fight was practically over before it began, with Electrode obliterating its opponent with its speed and maneuverability. Once the match was over, and the woman with the Raichu and Electrode won, Thor finally decided to head back home, but he was in awe of that move. As the bigger Chu finally settles down and begins to drift off to sleep as well, there was only one thing on his mind.

Magnet Rise.

He wanted to learn it.

X0X0

Trying to teach yourself a new move that you’ve only seen once and had no idea how it worked was the worst. Thor was having no luck with figuring out Magnet Rise, he didn’t even know where to begin, and none of the Pokémon that lived nearby could help, and aside from Elysia and her group and Izzy, Thor’s electric type connections around the forest was very limited. 

As days went by without much progress Thor was just about ready give up, maybe learning Magnet Rise was simply not to be. He sighs somewhat dejectedly as he sits resting by the stream not too far from his den. Although it was another hot day and their den was much cooler, the Raichu had wanted a bit of fresh air and something to drink, but as he sat staring at his reflection he began thinking about his lack of progress towards learning this new move, which is why he’s just sitting by the water.

After a few moments of absolute silence he hears the faint sound of wings flapping in the distance, then a familiar squawking.

“Thor! Hey—Thor!” The rodent lifts his head off the ground and looks towards the noise, eyes squinting a bit as he sees the shadow of Fearow, one of his few non Chu esque friends that lived around here. The Beak Pokémon soon flies closer then softly lands a few feet from the other.

“Fearow? What are you doing here?” He blinks in confusion, having assumed the other would be tucked away in his nest today. He knew the avian didn’t really enjoy being out when it was hot, like most of the forest dwellers that lived around here, and didn’t leave his nest unless it was necessary.

“I found you a teacher!” Fearow's large wingspan expanded a bit as he stretched out his feathers excitedly while explaining. “You said you weren’t having much luck learning that new move, right?” The shorter of the pair nods slowly before realizing what his friend had said.

“W-Wait, you said you found me a teacher?”

“GREETINGS!” A garbled and mechanized cry reaches his ears, causing the rodent’s long appendages to twitch as he slowly deciphers what was being said. His gaze then shoots over to the Magneton hovering towards them, it raises one of its magnets in what Thor believes to be an impression of a wave.

“WE ARE MAGNETON!” It takes Thor a moment to understand the others speech, Magneton and its evolutions didn’t share the somewhat universal language he and many other Pokémon spoke, the magnets spoke in beeps and staticky sounds that mimicked their speech patterns.

“Uh, hi. I’m Thor,” he gives a small smile before he moves to sit up on his haunches and lift a paw in order to wave back politely.

“GREETINGS FRIEND THOR! FRIEND FEAROW SAYS YOU NEED HELP? LEARNING NEW MOVE?”

“Oh!” He stumbles a bit, not expecting Fearow to bring along another mon to help him learn the move. He looks a bit sheepish as he scratches at the side of his face absently with a paw. “Uh yeah, I’m trying to learn this attack called Magnet Rise, but I don’t know how.. to start?

“NOT TO WORRY! WE CAN TEACH YOU! VERY SIMPLE!”

Thor looks a bit skeptic, was it really that easy?

“WHEN WOULD YOU LIKE TO BEGIN?”

“Uhm... could we start--like, now?”

“AFFIRMATIVE! BEGINNING TRAINING SESSION!”

X0X0

The sound of static crackling fills the cool afternoon air as Thor’s frame is covered in thin bolts of electricity, which then shoots towards the two small objects he was told to try and make float. The sparks of electricity merely bounce all over the stone and leaf before fizzling out and dispersing into the air.

Thor lets out a groan as his move once again, fails.

That’s the fifth time today.

It was not as simple as Magneton said.

“FOCUS THOR!” Says Magneton from his spot hovering a few feet away. “REMEMBER OUR SUGGESTIONS!”

Right, it had been weeks since they first started training. Several long frustrating weeks of Thor trying and failing to lift even the tiniest and lightest of objects with his electromagnetism. The good news is, he’s no longer putting out too much energy and accidentally burning up the fallen leaves and exploding pebbles.

Magneton had explained to him that all electric type Pokémon naturally generated their own kind of magnetic fields and once able to tap into that field, one could learn to manipulate it and change how their electric currents interacted and reacted to the environment around them.

He’d managed to locate his magnetic fields, the electric currents around it had felt different than the usual energy he put out. Where his natural electrical energies were strong and had somewhat of a sharp sizzling feel to it, his magnetic energies almost felt light and airy, and cool. Now after finding them and being able to tell the difference between the two energies, it was simply a matter of manipulating it for his own personal means.

That’s where the leaves and stones came in. The objects were small enough that their magnetic fields are easier to manipulate and levitate for practice. As Magneton’s words to focus and concentrate echo in his head, the orange rodent shakes his head and tries again, releasing another set of thin sparks.

As the electricity travels and jumps along the stone and leaf, he takes a deep breath and concentrates, pushing out his own energies to connect with the two objects. As he’s focusing and probing, he suddenly feels something. Eye ridges furrowing Thor chases that odd sensation and latches onto it. Then, like a lock clicking into place, the Raichu feels his energy shift.

The crackling sound released from his sparks grows louder and begin to jump sporadically around the pair of items. Thor’s eyes grow wide as he gasps in amazement when the rock and leaf start to raise slightly off the ground. They hover for several seconds then fall back to the floor, barely any indication that they’d been moved.

But, both Thor and Magneton saw it. 

Thor was vibrating with excitement, a wide smile split across his face while turning to face Magneton.

“Hah...aha! HA! I did it!” With a loud whoop, he leaps into the air arms extended. “WHOO! I DID IT!”

X0X0

After finally being able to lift the stone once, Magneton had Thor immediately try again. His second time was a bit shakier than the first, he managed to lift the leaf and rock, but not for as long as the first time. Magneton says that while this is great progress he still needed to practice and learn to focus more. 

He’s got the basics down but now he needed to improve on that and still work on trying to make small objects levitate before trying to lift himself or anything else, as Thor had immediately asked if he could do exactly that some time after he’d finally lifted the leaf and stone.

A few more days of training sessions pass, with Thor gradually getting the hang of using Magnet Rise. He’s been lifting up small pebbles and juggling them for fun as practice. With the goal being to make sure the stones never hit the ground. It’s during that time that Magneton decides it's time for him to leave. 

“Hey wait!” 

Concentration now broken, the small pebbles that had been hovering around Thor soon fell to the ground, but the mouse paid no mind to that, instead approaching his new electric friend who’d proven to be a great teacher. “You’re leaving already?” He knew Magneton would eventually have to leave, but the mouse had grown kind of attached to the metal mon.

“WE MUST GO!” The magnets beep, bouncing a bit in the air with a slight buzz. Thor has learned during their spent time together that certain noises Magneton made was an indicator of an emotion, like the soft buzzing sound meant they were happy. “TASK ACCOMPLISHED! NEW MOVE ACQUIRED!”

Thor lets out a thoughtful hum, expression falling momentarily before he nods a bit. He supposed Magneton had a point, they had only come here with Fearow to help him learn a new move and nothing more, for all the mouse knew, Magneton might have family waiting for them wherever it was they’d come from. It wasn’t right of him to be selfish and ask the other to stick around any more considering they’d already spent so much time together already.

“DO NOT WORRY FRIEND THOR! WE WILL VISIT AGAIN! TAKE CARE!”

He couldn’t help but smile and clench his paws into determined fists. Right, this was only goodbye for now. That’s not to say he’d never be able to see Magneton again, there was always next time.

“Bye Magneton! Thanks for everything!” He waves the steel type off as they float away into the distance. Thor then turns back towards the fallen rocks he was messing with and sends out a thin trail of sparks to surround them. The stones lift high in the air above the mouse as he watches from below with a satisfied grin.

If he worked even harder, soon he’ll be able to lift himself, and maybe even the field around him as well. 

Just like Electrode!

And maybe, someday he’d be able to float even longer in the air without even thinking about it. All of these ideas were nothing but future obstacles he’d have to overcome. 

Man he couldn’t wait...

Congratulations!

Thor learned Magnet Rise!

[itsshortfurball20]

Percy Jackson, The Avenger

A/N: This is already posted on Ao3 and ff.net but figured I’d post it here as well. Enjoy.

Summary: Percy has an encounter with Nick Fury. A year later, he’s being called on to help protect the world… again. He’s not alone in this Avengers Initiative. A genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist; a super soldier; a green scientist; a Norse god; and two secret agents. What could go wrong?

Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson nor Marvel (Just wish I did)

This is unedited.

This chapter has 3,032 words

1 – The Pegasus wants a Donut

The week had been a long one for Fury and it wasn’t showing any signs of stopping. Even the week after the incident in Budapest hadn’t been this tiring. Just within the span of a few days, the director of SHIELD was dealing with unmovable hammers falling into deserts, General Ross pestering him about the manhunt for scientist-turned-fugitive Bruce Banner, and dealing with Tony Stark who was just being… Tony.

And then he got the call about the horse.

“You’re telling me that you saw a horse flying around the base?”

“Yessir,” the agent said on the other side of the phone. “At first, we thought it was some type of missile, but it moved too fast. Once I figured out what it was, I ordered for it to be tranquilized and brought to the labs.”

Fury pushed aside the paperwork he had been working on and picked up a file that he had been the topic of many debates with the World Council recently. Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. He knew a flying horse was called a Pegasus from Greek mythology. Was this some kind of sign for them to go ahead with the project? A warning to stop?

“Give me the lab number.”

Fury knew that whatever this was, it was just the beginning.

\~*~/

Percy silently cursed Blackjack down to Tartarus and back. He’d had a demigod dream of the pegasus getting captured, prompting the demigod to go and rescue him in the middle of finals week. Not that he wasn’t glad for the excuse to get away from the mind-numbing hours of sitting around and studying, testing, and eating too many snacks and not enough meals, but this wasn’t the break he was looking for.

He was outside a huge, government-looking facility. The building was big, with a guard monitoring the gate that allowed people in and out. It had been hard to find. The place was in the middle of nowhere, with only a single road leading up to it. Surrounded by a forest and hills on all sides, the only way in or out undetected was through the sky.

Schist.

He wished desperately that Annabeth was with him to help him come up with a clever plan to get in, but she was too busy taking tests this week for her to accompany him. And now Percy was glad that she didn’t come. On the high chance that something went wrong, she wouldn’t get dragged down too.

Percy fiddled with the pen in his pocket. Several ideas were racing through his head. He could always crawl through the vents, spy style. Or come up with some kind of lie that would get him into the building. The son of Poseidon wished he could shadow-travel like Nico, or that he could have Mrs. O’Leary jump him in there, but Percy figured that having a hellhound larger than a tank appearing out of nowhere might cause some trouble, even if the mist made her look like—

A new idea hit Percy like one of Tyson’s hugs.

There were several things that were missing, like what he would do once he got in, if he got in, but it was the best plan he had and would manage to come up with. Now all he needed was a car.

\~*~/

Fury thought he had seen everything. He should've known better, working in this line of work, that even when you thought you've seen everything, there was something new lurking around the corner.

Including a horse with wings.

The pegasus seemed relatively unharmed. One of its wings was folded over its stomach, which rose and fell steadily. The other was spread out behind it, showing its massive wingspan.

Fury stood behind a glass panel staring at the sedated equestrian while scientists ran around, prepping blood tests and taking DNA samples. He motioned over the head scientist.

"Give me a full report."

"Well we, uh, we, um..." She fumbled over her words.

"Get to it."

"We don't know. All tests so far have been inconclusive. No one knows what it is. It isn't a horse or bird—the DNA doesn't match. It's its own breed."

"It's a pegasus." Fury told her.

“Well, yes. But the thing is, pegasus don’t exist.” She started explaining.” Their fairytales, myths, something you tell your kid in their bedtime stories. Nothing before today has shown any indication of the existence of a pegasus species so for one to just pop up out of the blue… it has to be the result of experimentation, but nothing is adding up.”

Fury watched the pegasus. "So you mean that no one can tell me anything about it?"

“No sir, but we're working hard on it." She amended. "We'll have results by the end of the day."

"I want them in an hour."

He gave one last look to the pegasus before leaving the lab, not seeing the stressed face of the scientist.

\~*~/

If anyone were to ask Percy, the official story was that he got in, got Blackjack, and got out without a hitch.

He wished it had happened like that.

Things started off smooth. He'd gotten the car and driven his way up to the road, wondering the entire time if his idea would work or if he’d get hauled away. There was only one way to find out.

He approached the gate, rolling his window down. Percy tried to look confident. The guard eyed him warily. “How can I help you?”

Percy had never really used the Mist before, but he figured he could wing it. He looked the man in the eyes, focused really hard (he hoped he didn’t look like he was about to fart), and snapped his fingers—making a loud, clear snap. Mustering his most confident voice, he told the guard, “I forgot my key card. You will let me in and not tell anyone about me.”

There was a tense second where Percy was sure that the man was about to haul him away, but then a calm expression settled over his face and he pressed a button. A second later, the gate rolled open. He contained his jump of joy and instead nodded at the guard and drove off.

Percy felt a little bit of relief. Using the mist had been a bit of a wild card, the last time having used it, it didn’t work. But that was just the first part, he reminded himself as he saw people dressed in suits and business outfits. He felt underdressed in his Camp Half-Blood shirt and jeans.

It was after he snuck in through the maintenance door that things started getting rough. The building looked bigger on the inside than it had on the outside. Before him laid a maze of halls, designed to trap anyone who didn’t know their way around (maybe not literally but either way it felt like an attack on Percy). Somewhere inside the mortal version of the Labyrinth was Blackjack, alone, probably scared, and most likely wanting a donut.

And Percy had to find him.

\~*~/

It wasn’t too long after Percy had set off in the building that Fury became aware of the intruder. Video feeds showed a young man manipulating the guard at the front gate to let him pass. After talking to the guard who had no memory of the incident, Fury ordered for the man to be brought to him so he could interrogate him.

Percy couldn’t tell something was off. He was wondering the halls, searching for Lab 28 where he had figured out a knocked-out Blackjack had been brought to. It made him furious to think that his pegasus was being used as some sort of lab rat.

He was in the right area, if the BLA sign had been any indication (and that’s all science sounded like to him anyway—bla, bla, bla).

I can’t believe they gave me this horse crap. A faint voice entered Percy’s head. I need sugar cubes at the least.

Blackjack? Percy tried reaching out. Blackjack? Can you hear me?

Boss?

Definitely Blackjack.

Blackjack, thank the gods. Stay put, I’m coming to get you.

 Thanks boss. I couldn’t’ve moved anyway. They have me tied to a table. They also gave me this stupid hay that horses eat. Can you believe that?

 Percy followed Blackjack’s voice as a homing beacon. It got steadily louder and louder.

Blackjack, you look like a horse. You are part horse.

You wouldn’t happen to have donuts with you, would you?

The son of Poseidon opened a door. Blackjack looked over at him, kneeling on the floor.

No donuts, I see.

“This is a rescue mission,” Percy told him as he moved to free the pegasus from his restraints. “Why would I bring donuts with me?”

Percy got the first latch undone and started working on the second one.

Maybe we can get some later then.

“Sure. Later. After we get out of here. I almost got you. Just another minute and—”

Behind you!

Blackjack had shouted the words too late. Something hit his back, causing a burning sensation to flow through him. He fell to the floor with a thud and was unable to move. Percy could see Blackjack struggling to get his attacker, but he couldn’t hear him or anything else. His own heartbeat was too loud. The last thing he saw was a pair of boots stepping in front of him before his head fell to the floor and the world faded to black.

He couldn’t tell how long he had been out, but judging from his stiff shoulders and the small ache in his neck, it had probably been a good while. Percy tried to make himself as comfortable as possible. His hands had been cuffed to the table, which didn’t surprise Percy, but the addition of gloves did.

It wasn’t much longer before the door opened and a man walked in and hold up. The first thing Percy noticed was the spy/pirate-ish look—a black trench coat, don’t-mess-with-me attitude, and, as the final touch, an eye patch. Percy hoped that the man knew Halloween had happened seven months ago.

“Mr. Jackson,” the man said in a way that made him hate the name almost as much as when monsters called him Perseus. “I must say, it was a surprise when I was alerted that someone had broken into a facility more secure than the White House.”

Percy swallowed uncomfortably. “You might want to update your security.”

“We will. And this time, we’ll take into account mind control.” The demigod frowned in confusion. He couldn’t mind control peo… the mist. Looking down at his gloves, he realized that these people thought that he could manipulate people. “But I’m not here to talk about that.” The pirate-man continued. “What I want to know is how you knew about this.”

He slid a photo of Blackjack across the table. Percy couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen to his pegasus now that his only shot at rescue now needed rescuing himself. “Why should I tell you anything?” Percy eventually told the man.

“I’ve had a long week, and the sooner you’re gone, the sooner I can get back to other, bigger problems.” The man explained. Percy was surprised that the man was going to let him go, and suddenly thought that this might be a trap. But the chance that this man would actually let him free seemed like a better deal than he would get otherwise.

“I had a dream,” Percy said lowly. “That may sound strange, but I swear to Hades its true. I saw—”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Pirate-man held up his hand to stop him. “Did you just swear to Hades?”

Percy froze, realizing that he had messed up. “Well, uh, you see, it’s—” he started back-pedaling, but the man wasn’t paying attention to him anymore.

“First the pegasus, then the mention of Hades,” Pirate-man mumbled under his breath. “Let me guess,” he turned his attention back to Percy. “The Greek gods are real? Hades, Zeus, Apollo—all of them?”

Percy wondered if he could get away with saying no before remembering that the man could probably give him some truth serum if they had any and he’d be forced to tell him. His shoulders slumped. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah, they’re real. That pegasus you captured—” he pointed to the picture of Blackjack. “he’s mine. So when I had the dream of you guys capturing him, I had to come rescue him.”

The man stared at Percy, trying to determine if he was really telling the truth or not. Percy started to grow uncomfortable when the man dropped his gaze and rubbed his head, like soothing a headache. “If the Greek gods are real,” he started asking, “why haven’t we seen any proof of them?”

“The mist,” Percy answered. “It’s a mystical force that stops mortals from seeing our world. I used the mist to get past the guard at the front gate. Some can see past it, like my mom. It’s how she met my dad.”

“And your dad is…”

“Poseidon.”

“And that makes you what. A god?”

“Demigod, actually. Half mortal, half god.”

The man was taking this all exceptionally well, Percy thought. A sudden thought struck Percy. “Hey, uh, this doesn’t change our little agreement, right? About you letting me go?” When the man didn’t respond right away, Percy’s fear grew. “Please, I gotta get back so I can take finals tomorrow, and if I don’t my girlfriend’s gonna kill me and nothing, not even you, could stop her.”

Pirate-dude held up his hand. “I’ll let you go,” Percy’s shoulder’s sagged in relief. “Just on one condition.”

And there’s the catch. There’s always a catch.

“I’m assuming you can fight,” When Percy nodded, he continued. “If ever needed, I want you to come fight for us.”

Percy paused. “Who’s ‘us’?”

“SHIELD.”

The son of Poseidon considered the offer. On one hand, he really didn’t want to fight anymore. He’d seen and done enough fighting to last him a lifetime. The thought of fighting for this government agency or whatever they were didn’t sit too well with him.

But saying no didn’t sit well either. Saying no meant he wouldn’t get to leave, and Blackjack would be stuck here. He couldn’t fail his family, who were so excited for him to finally be at college. Percy couldn’t fail Annabeth, who was waiting back in New Rome for him.

“Okay.” He said a beat later. Percy wasn’t sure if he was ever going to regret that, but right now, he knew it was his only choice.

The man nodded. “Now that that’s settled,” he reached over the table and unlocked Percy’s handcuffs. Percy rubbed his wrists a little and took off the gloves. “I’ll have someone take you to your… pegasus.”

“Aye aye.” Percy mocked saluted the man whose glare seemed to grow. “Oh, I’m sorry, that was insensitive of me. Aye.”

“Let’s hope you never meet Stark.”

“Who?”

The man ignored him and led him out of the room. A woman was waiting, tapping away on a pad. She looked up when they walked out, eyeing Percy. Percy gave a small wave. She tilted her head a little before addressing the man. “Director Fury, your plane is waiting.”

Pirate-man, or Fury, nodded. He started walking away, leaving Percy with the woman. “Wait,” Percy called. Fury paused and turned around. “You wouldn’t happen to have any donuts, would you?”

\~*~/

When Percy arrived back in New Rome, the sun had started setting. Blackjack took his time, moaning about how awful his day there had been. The woman, whose name Percy didn’t get had led him to Blackjack who was happy to see him (especially with a box of donuts in his hand). Before they left, Percy had asked the woman if they needed his contact info. All she had said was “We’ll find you” and left, which didn’t exactly reassure the demigod.

Blackjack dropped Percy off on the street in front of his apartment. “Stay safe buddy,” Percy told him. “Don’t get caught by any more secret government agencies.”

I wasn’t plannin’ on it boss.

The son of Poseidon smiled. “Alright. Now go get some rest,” Blackjack gave the demigod one last farewell before taking off towards the stables. Percy waited until Blackjack had flown out of sight behind the buildings before heading inside.

Annabeth was waiting on the couch. She had notes spread out all over the coffee table and on the cushions next to her. Percy remembered that she had her final test tomorrow, and it was her one for her major architecture.

She looked up when Percy entered. A smile spread across her face as she rose to greet him. “How’d it go?” She asked, giving him a small peck on the cheek.

“Without a hitch,” Percy lied. “Blackjack’s fine, he’s off to the stables right now to rest.”

“Wonderful.” Annabeth’s smile made Percy feel guilty for lying to her, but he told himself that she didn’t need to be concerned for him. If SHIELD ever decided that they needed him, then he’d cross that bridge when it came time. But for now, as far as Annabeth would know, everything was fine. “Come on, I know you might be tired, but you have your final tomorrow and I want to test you.”

Percy let her lead him to the couch while she quizzed him on Marine Biology. Soon, the thought of SHIELD left his head as he started worrying about his final tomorrow and reassuring Annabeth that she would do fine and that she didn’t need to be worried.

On the other side of California, Nick Fury was looking up research on Greek Mythology. He looked down at the two files that sat next to him. One was Percy Jackson’s file, filled with every school he had attended, who his friends were, even if he had a dental plan.

Next to Percy’s file sat another, thicker file. This one had the SHIELD logo stamped across the front.

And underneath it were the words AVENGERS INITIATIVE.

2

[jaymarawrites-blog]

LIKE RATS - 13 - Ice

It was two o’clock in the morning and I was standing in front of a hotel room door that was not my own, every belonging I could comfortably carry gathered into my left arm while I knocked with my right.

This could go one of two ways, I realized: Andie could answer the door and I could slip into her room discreetly or, just as easily, she and Abel could be asleep - or out? - and I could stand in the hallway, in my pajamas, clutching the things I’d taken from our room till morning and have to explain myself to everyone who walked by.

For fuck’s sake, please, Andie, I silently begged and knocked again.

She hadn’t responded to the texts I’d sent her, and when I’d called it had eventually gone to voicemail. But I tried again. The listened to the ringing through my phone and glanced around the hallway.

At the far end of the hall a middle-aged woman walking in my direction found her room and slipped in the key card, glancing up at me in the process, which only added to my humiliation.

I turned back to face the hotel room door again as Andie’s voicemail repeated her name and beeped.

I piled my things on the floor next to me and sat against the wall, legs crossed underneath me. The canvas bag I used as a purse gaped open, overstuffed with tissues, books, makeup, lotions, so I draped my hoodie over it. My chest was tight but I was still in too much shock to cry or even feel as much anger as I knew I eventually would. My concern with finding a place to go had overshadowed my fury with Michael and on some level I was grateful.

I redialed Andie, determined to redial as many times as it took. On some level it was even satisfying. The longer it took to get hold of Andie, the more and more justified my anger with Michael felt, and it was satisfying to have specific incidents to hold against him no matter how tenuously he was connected. I stretched out on the floor, against the wall, and pillowed my head with my purse and hoodie right next to Andie and Abel’s door, settled into the warmth of my resentment.

I dialed Andie again.

“Spenser?” I perked up and it took a moment to realize it hadn’t come from the phone, which still rang in my ear. It was in the hall with me. My head jerked up in instant relief until I met Chrs’s eyes.

“Shit, sorry,” I said and immediately shook my head at myself while jumping to my feet. Sorry for what?

“You look comfortable. Are you…?” He gestured at the door. “I was going to ask if you were hanging out with Andie but I guess if you were you’d be… in there. So… just chilling in the hallway, then?”

I fumbled. “I was supposed to see Andie, but she forgot or something. I keep knocking and calling but she’s not around.”

“I got this.” Chris pulled his phone out of the pocket of his hoodie. He tapped his thumb over the screen several times, then raised his smile to me again and slid the phone in his back pocket.

Moments later the I heard the deadbolt sliding inside the door and it opened revealing Abel in track pants and a fresh tee, blonde hair wet and ruffled in all directions like he had just toweled it dry.

“Hey, man.” He beckoned Chris inside and raised his eyebrows at me. “It’s a two-fer.”

“I knocked but nobody answered, and Andie’s not answering her -”

Stepping into the room I saw Andie, lying in bed on her side, back to me, wearing massive headphones and staring at a tablet screen.

“I guess she forgot I was coming by.”

Abel gestured toward her. “There she is.” I didn’t get a warm feeling from the implication that I should bother Andie with this information, not him.

I approached Andie and she flipped toward me, causing me to jump. “Jesus,” I muttered.

“Oh my God, I saw your reflection on the screen and first thought it was something in the movie,” she laughed.

“No such luck.” I dropped my things on the floor beside the bed and sat down next to her.

“Why are you still up? You guys are usually pretty good about getting your sleep on tour. You know Abel and I are always wired after but you guys are usually asleep by now.”

I answered honestly: “I don’t know.”

The whole evening was out of hand. I thought back to only thirty minutes earlier, and how content I’d felt lying in that bed, savoring the feeling of a plush space, or any space outside of the tour bus. I’d been ready to enjoy the kind of easy camaraderie I’d felt with Michael on a good day. And now I searched my memory for the moment the evening had turned, the thing that had been said or done that had taken us past the point of no return. And then I mentally took a step back to look at the bigger picture. Maybe I’d been fooling myself. Maybe I was playing at contentment for a moment in time, but Michael and I had passed the point of no return long ago and I was stupid for thinking we could spend an evening in peace and comfort. Maybe it was only a matter of my finally realizing it was over.

Maybe it had already been over for a long time.

Andie must have read my expression and for once I was glad for her perceptive skills. She studied my face with a frown and seemed to know immediately not to ask about Michael. Her smile reappeared and she said, “Here -” removing the headphones she’d hung around her neck. She propped herself on her knees on the edge of the bed and dug through one of her bags on the floor. She pulled herself back up, earbuds in hand, and repositioned her tablet, propping it up against a bunched up hoodie on the edge of the bed. She handed me the left and kept the right for herself.

A couple of taps later the tablet screen displayed a list of movies to choose from. I tapped Steel Magnolias and Andie smiled. I put in my earbud and shrugged. “My life is a horror movie right now. I need something different.”

We lay on our stomachs diagonally across the comforter; at least I’d get to enjoy Andie’s bed if not my own. Over the tablet I saw Chris settling into the chair he’d turned away from the desk against the wall. Abel had propped open his laptop and was sitting on the corner of the bed on the far side of the room. Chris hunched over, elbows on knees, and they both watched the screen intently. I took the earbud from my ear long enough to identify airhorns, cheering, self-serious commentators, the unmistakable sounds of a hockey game.

“Hockey’s on at two o’clock in the morning?” I called over.

Chris remained fixated on the screen and Abel called back, terse, “Winter Classic doc.”

“He just got it and he’s very proud,” Andie said, making a show of failing to suppress her amusement. With the guys’ attention fully absorbed by the documentary, Andie turned back to Dolly Parton and Sally Field on our tablet and ventured the question, “How are you feeling?” Like it was safer to ask if she didn’t look directly at me.

“It’s an off night,” I muttered back.

“Would you prefer to talk or to forget?”

“Forget, please.” I had to consciously redirect my gaze to the movie in front of me. I kept finding my eyes on my hands, on the sundry travel items Abel and Andie had scattered across the night table, on the desk, on the dresser. The guys.

Chris and Abel were now talking more than they were listening to the documentary, but Abel gestured at the screen, indicating they were still talking hockey. Abel hit Chris playfully in the shoulder with the back of his hand and Chris dropped his face into his palms, shaking his head and laughing. He must’ve had a habit of biting his nails, I noticed. There was barely any nail left to have painted black. He scratched the side of his head through the hair gathered back into a ponytail and I cringed at how sore his fingertips looked.

Chris and Abel went quiet for a moment and turned their full attention back to the laptop. Chris propped his feet up on the edge of the bed, tilted his chair backwards, and regathered his hair into another low ponytail, looping a hair tie around it, then clasping his hands there. He was long-limbed, tall and slim with a wide wingspan, and in all black all the time he was an imposing figure. An imposing figure that was entirely mismatched with his personality, his affable nature.

“How long has it been going on?” Andie asked abruptly. For a moment I thought I’d missed something she’d said.

“Has what been going on?” I’d said nothing to indicate that Michael and I were having problems, but Andie was the most perceptive person I’d ever met. I wondered how much she’d deduced on her own. I offered no information; I wanted her to have to say it. I wanted her to ask directly: how long had Michael and I been in a downward spiral?

“This,” she said, finally looking me in the eye, and cocked her head in Chris’s direction.

“Whoa, what?” Just like that flames engulfed my face. What I knew must appear as embarrassment or confusion I felt, underneath everything else, as guilt. Guilt that I knew exactly what Andie was referring to. She was perceptive, but she wasn’t psychic. She tended to notice things first, things no one else noticed, but she didn’t pull them out of thin air. Regardless of what was going on with Michael, I felt guilt that I was emitting something to indicate an interest in anyone other than my husband. I tried to push away the memory of watching the Echo Eclipse videos on the tour bus, how I’d turned away and hidden it from Michael as if it were pornography. Or an old love letter.

Andie simply stared at me, into my face. Her expression was completely open. It held no judgement or disapproval, only concern.

I checked myself before opening my mouth to ensure that my response was honest, not defensive. “This is nothing. This isn’t a thing. Don’t worry.”

“I wouldn’t be worried.”

I blinked. My question was implied.

“I’m never worried when the people I care about are doing what they need to do to take care of themselves. No one knows your life like you do. No one else knows you from the inside. I’m happy when you’re happy and I’m glad for whatever makes it happen.”

I couldn’t help smirking at her despite her sincerity. This kind of openness made me uncomfortable, and Andie was reading a little too much a little too readily into... whatever it was she saw.

If I was being completely honest with myself, something I was out of practice with, then I could acknowledge that yes, I had taken a liking to Chris so far, the little I knew of him. On a superficial level he was appealing. He had the ostensibly dark and brooding look I was attracted to, but without any obvious emotional baggage. On a personal level I found him delightful. He seemed genuine and our conversation had been easy, but it was the type of easy conversation I struggled to interpret. Were our interactions so easy because of a natural chemistry, or were his interactions with everyone else equally pleasant because he was so disarming?

And what did it matter anyway? The fact that these questions occurred to me was reasonable enough. I could admit to myself that I had a bit of a crush on him based on the few interactions we’d had, the little bit I knew about him so far. But that was harmless enough. To puzzle over the answers to these questions, though, was ultimately pointless. I pushed them from my mind.

“There’s really nothing, Andie. And I think I’d be honest with you about it if there were.”

Her mouth smiled but her eyes didn’t in an expression somewhere between condescension and pity. “You can protest all you want, that’s fine. You’re not the one in question, you’re not the one I’m getting a strong sense from.. It was all Chris.”

My face was on fire all over again and I was doubly embarrassed that my embarrassment showed so obviously. “He said something?”

“Is there something to say?”

“No. I didn’t think so, I mean.”

“No,” Andie said. “He didn’t say anything. But he may as well have been wearing a neon sign when you two walked into the room.”

“We didn’t come here together. We weren’t together. We just ran into each other in the hallway.”

“It’s not that,” Andie said. “Have you noticed Chris is a friendly person?”

“Of course.” I exhaled my relief at conceding this with confidence, that this was a definitive statement I didn’t feel any guilt about. Chris was a friendly person, that was all. “But from what I see he’s friendly with everyone. Extremely friendly. It’s like he goes into every conversation assuming the person he’s talking to is a new friend. It’s kind of impressive.” Each word was a brick in the wall I was building between myself and Andie’s accusation.

“It is, and you’re right. He is incredibly friendly.”

I nodded and searched her face, wondering why this didn’t feel like a conclusion to the conversation.

“He’s one of the nicest people I’ve met,” she continued slowly, “And he hasn’t looked at you or spoken to you once since you walked into the room.”

My stomach dropped. She was right. But it didn’t necessarily mean what Andie claimed it meant. In fact, chances were the opposite was true.

“So you’re suggesting,” I began, “that there is something going on here because I’m suddenly the only person Chris has no interest in talking to? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Methinks he doth protest too much, or whatever the saying is.”

“He could just be having a weird night?”

We both glanced at Chris instinctively. He was pointing at the laptop screen, shouting and laughing along with Abel.

“I don’t think so,” Andie said.

I studied my hands as I picked at the pilling on the hoodie I held in my lap. “All you’re convincing me of is that he’s got some kind of beef with me now, and I wouldn’t’ve noticed it otherwise. So thanks for that.”

“Is there any reason that would be true?”

“There are a million reasons in the world people have had beef with me when I didn’t even realize it. This isn’t any different. Maybe he didn’t like his makeup so much after all and doesn’t want to tell me. Or maybe I was in the way during their set or something.”

I suddenly questioned whether or not I had actually been invited to watch the set at all. Had Chris insisted or had I misunderstood and invited myself? I was humiliated and wanted nothing more than an excuse to leave. But where would I go then? And how many more people needed to know that I wasn’t trying to spend the night with Michael?

“Really, now that you’re making me think about it… I can think of a few reasons he might be irritated with me. People are weird. And you barely know him, either, so I don’t know how you can act like you know what he’s thinking.”

“I don’t. People are weird. Acting like you’re irritated toward another person can be a cover-up. Deciphering human interaction is a game of determining whether a person’s behavior is sincere, or whether it’s a disguise for the feeling that directly opposes the one they’re expressing.”

“That’s profound and all, but sometimes people also do and say what they mean.”

“Rarely. Rarely do people mean what they do and say. Even if they think they are.”

“I can’t wrap my head around you right now. I love you, but you’re painful to talk to sometimes.”

“See? You’re irritated with me so you’re being polite about it. You’re brushing this off not because you actually disagree, but because you want time to contemplate it yourself.”

Right.

“Wrong. I don’t want to think anymore tonight. Let me just curl up and numb my brain with this movie.” I lay on my side, tucking the hoodie under my head and angling my body toward the tablet again.

“Sure. Let me know any time you want to talk.”

“Will do.”

I curled into myself. Onscreen Julia Roberts was dying and I wasn’t tearing up. I glanced up at Andie and saw her attention was fixed on the movie. I turned my attention back to Chris, who seemed to laugh when cued by Abel.

Moments later, Chris glanced over at me. When his eyes met mine the entire world seemed to shatter to pieces around him. Then he turned his eyes away just as quickly as I did.

And my stomach filled with ice.

~~~

Begin at the beginning: LIKE RATS - Prologue

[delusion-of-negation]

Don't ask me why I wrote this, I don't know, I have no idea, it just happened, cartoons fucked me up as a kid, they fucked me up. Anyway, here's a quickly written, first draft, absolute garbage, weird story about a trans person getting a new body from the fellows at the baby factory.

At precisely 16:00, the time of my appointment, I arrived at the fabled building. After a moment of adjusting to the cold air and low pressure, I turned to thank my lift, but only a couple of feathers and a small hole in the clouds remained as evidence that there had even been anyone there at all.

I made my way up the marble steps and through the golden doors, into a room that I could only describe as resembling a large, dystopian, London bank. Windows and statues of birds lined the walls to the right and left of me at even intervals, with carved patterns and gold plating on almost every surface, contrasting unpleasantly against the sleek marble. The echoes of nearby chatter and pleading, and the gentle rocking of the wind beating against the cloud that the building stood upon, made the room feel like an unpleasant fairground ride.

My shoes tapped an unsteady rhythm on the shimmering tiles, as I made my way towards the largest window, which stood proudly opposite the main entrance and thankfully had less gold and artwork to distract from its simple majesty. There were no other patrons waiting to be served, so I leant forwards, tilting my mouth towards the tiny black microphone that stuck out from the small ledge, and coughed to get the attention of the staff member.

There was a grunt in response, and I felt beady eyes drilling into my skull, like they were anticipating someone annoying to end their already long day.

"I have an appointment," I stuttered into the microphone, "With customer services."

I heard the tap of a beak bumping into the glass as the tall creature on the other side leant forwards to their microphone, "What for?"

"Repairs and replacements," I said, wracking my brain for all of the numbers and referrals that I'd gone through on the phone earlier that week.

The creature shuffled in their seat, feathers scratching against leather - they were a good half metre taller than me while sitting down.

"Your warranty expired," the creature mumbled, and I glanced up to see the light of a computer screen reflected on their long beak and in their black eyes. The white feathers on their face and neck were tinted slightly blue by the glow.

"I purchased-"

"Yes, our care package," they interrupted nonchalantly, "I see it now. Through the door on the left."

They lifted a wing lazily to gesture in the direction of a simple, wooden door at the end of a path dictated by posts linked by golden rope - likely put there in anticipation of a queue that never formed.

I nodded in gratitude and then made my way between the rows of posts, silently cursing the part of myself that was too polite to simply duck under the rope and make a beeline for the end, until I was through the door and into a long, empty corridor. Concerned about looking out of place or stupid - not that I wasn't aware that I already looked both out of place and stupid being so tiny in a building designed for much larger creatures - I kept walking.

After a sharp right, I found myself face to face with another of the giant storks, but this time there was no glass between us. They were hunched over, fumbling to pick up some papers and books that had somehow become strewn across the floor in disarray.

I bent down and scooped up a few bits and bobs, and then slipped them into the material sling that hung around the stork's neck.

"Thank you, thank you!" they repeated, each time I dropped an item into the makeshift bag, "I really must watch where I'm going. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience- Oh! I know who you are!"

My eyes darted up at the sudden change of tone, "You do?"

The stork stood up to their full height and their head almost brushed the ceiling - I never expected to be able to relate to a fish facing certain death, but standing in the shadow of an eight foot bird sent a chill up my spine.

"Well, you were just a wee little thing when I last saw you, but I'd recognize that hideous mole anywhere!"

I placed a hand over my cheek instinctively, "Umm, you're the one who delivered me?"

"That's me! Storkington Copperfield!" The bird bowed low as they said their name, and the sling tilted dangerously, threatening to throw all of the documents out for a second time, "And may I be the first to say that I am so sorry for the error. The XX and XY models are always getting mixed up; I've complained to HR but they don't listen to us, we're just the delivery guys..."

The bird trailed off and began mumbling in anagrams and company policy that I didn't understand, and it took over a minute of gobbledygook for them to realize that I wasn't following at all.

"Yes!" they exclaimed in answer to a question that I hadn't yet plucked up the courage to ask, cutting off their own rant, "I'm who your appointment is with today. Sorry, I'm a little flustered - bird-brained, as your kind would say!"

The squawk that followed, which I assumed was either how their kind laughed or the equivalent of snorting in humans, was nearly enough to make me jump out of my skin.

"Anyway!" Storkington cawed, "Follow me!"

They led me further down the corridor and into a small office, prancing along effortlessly on spindly legs that didn't look nearly thick enough to hold up the rounded body, huge wingspan, downy neck and long beak.

I cannot stress enough how big the bird really was up close, it was like seeing a moose for the first time - except, I'd seen storks before, at least, the ones we had miles below in the normal world. The workers and owners of this huge corporation weren't the same as our storks - they were taller, bulkier, and looked more like someone had poured glue over a skinny dinosaur and then thrown it into a pile of feathers, before taping a sword to its face.

Actually, that mental image was a lot more amusing than watching Storkington's legs bend backwards with each step, as their head bobbed up and down above me.

They clicked the sign on the outside of the office door into the "In Use" position, before nudging the door itself closed and turning to face me. Smaller black feathers surrounded Storkington's eyes, giving the illusion that they were bigger than the other stork's, which was oddly calming.

"We won't be in here long, just need a couple of details before we decide the best way to resolve your case."

I nodded, eager to hurry things along and not be enclosed in a dimly lit room with a creature that could impale me with its mouth for any longer than was absolutely necessary.

"So, your new care package covers all of this - you and Storkney Wellington sorted all of the financial stuff out on the phone, so that's..." they trailed off as they thumbed- winged? -their way through a few pages, "Yes, that's all good."

I nodded again, slightly more forcefully.

"So, I guess all that's left is to establish if we want to repair or replace..?" they said, looking up.

I had been thinking about this for days. I'd weighed up the options and the possibilities. But I had one question before I made my final call...

"Where do you get the replacements?"

The stork let out another squawk-laugh, "Don't humans have factories too?" They wobbled their head from side to side, and their neck weaved like a dangling string that had been lightly shaken, "We are a manufacturer, we make a surplus."

I gawked for a second, "What do you do with them? I mean, who raises them?"

"Raises them?" Storkington lowered their head until the tip of their beak was an inch from my face, and I thought back to the sound of the other stork bumping into the glass, hoping that this one had better spacial awareness. "We don't add the consciousness until they're ready to be delivered, that'd be a waste of valuable resources."

"So there's just a bunch of baby bodies in boxes?"

"They still grow," Storkington explained, pulling his head back, "Would you like to see so that you can pick out a fitting model?"

I nodded in excitement before my thoughts had even had a chance to make sense of what I had heard and what I was agreeing to. Almost immediately, a wing was wrapped around my shoulder, whisking me back out into the corridor and deeper into the innards of the building.

The further we went, the less decorative and majestic the halls became, and the more it resembled a factory or the back of a supermarket, with boxes stacked here and there, scattered footsteps, and the sounds of machinery. I only saw two other birds along the journey, both shorter than Storkington and too busy at work to bother looking up at us as we passed.

It wasn't long after passing the second stork that we stepped through an archway and into a huge, dark chamber. From ceiling to floor it seemed to be occupied by nothing other than rows and rows of thick, metal pillars, darkened with age and wear, with just enough space between them for two of the giant storks to pass through together. The columns looked mechanical, but old, rusted in some places.

Then there was a click, and I looked back to see Storkington with one wing against the wall where I'd expect a lightswitch to be.

The columns began whirring, clunking, moving in sync - as the metal pulled away from itself, blue lights began to shine through the gaps.

The outershell of the pillars disappeared into the ceiling and floor, section by section, revealing glass cylinder upon glass cylinder, each glowing blue and holding a human form within it.

I took a step towards the closest one and stared into the empty, grey eyes of an elderly woman. She looked like a corpse, hairless, lifeless, dead-eyed, just a shell - there was no character in her face, no wrinkles formed by laughter, no scars or stretch marks anywhere to be seen. It was so chillingly clear that she had never even been alive, but it all combined to make it impossible to place her age - that is, until I glanced at a little white sticker, about chest height and on the left side of the container.

"Manufactured March 4th 1867."

If it wasn't for the fact that her lifeless eyes and flawless skin were haunting to the point of feeling inhuman, I'd have said that she looked bloody good for 150.

"Row G7 has the age and sex that you're looking for," Storkington said cheerily, "Follow me!"

[mandibierly]

Shark Week: Michael Phelps Race

The moment of glory for #TeamShark!!! #PhelpsVsShark #SharkWeek pic.twitter.com/NWYp1CwiRa

— Shark Week (@SharkWeek) July 24, 2017

“We were in open water, but we did not have a shark literally next to me swimming.” Michael Phelps said that in every interview he did leading up to Sunday’s premiere of Phelps vs. Shark: Great Gold vs. Great White, but judging from the Twitter response, some viewers didn’t hear it. In the end, the Shark Week special was really about shark experts figuring out how to measure the speed of a great white, how they could give Phelps a “swimming chance” to come close to that (with a custom monofin and wetsuit that mimic a great white’s tail and skin), and what the result would be if you simulated a race between them (the great white won by two seconds).

To answer a few burning questions, Yahoo TV spoke with Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, one of the two scientists who worked with Phelps.

Kind of feel like we could’ve built some shark-cage style lanes and really pit the two against each other. Need to shoot higher next year

— Alyssa Lang (@AlyssaLang) July 24, 2017

1. Obviously you can’t have Phelps “racing” a great white in open water, because someone swimming fast away from a great white looks like prey. But as someone suggested on Twitter, was there ever any talk of building a 100-meter cage for him to swim in, or is that just ridiculous? “That’s a great question. I actually like the idea of the 100-meter cage. I wish I came up with that. That’s something that I would actually try. To me, nothing’s impossible,” Hammerschlag says. But no, there was never any talk of having Phelps swim head-to-head with a great white. Hammerschlag has studied great whites in South Africa for 15 years. As part of his previous research, he’d calculated the speed of a great white when it hits the water’s surface attacking its prey (roughly 25 mph, in a short burst), but no one had really asked how fast great whites swim when not breaching, or how long they can maintain that speed. That was the challenge he accepted.

Very disappointed there was no qualifying round for the sharks to race Phelps. How do we know we’re watching the Michael Phelps of Sharks?

— K Maxwell Klitzke (@maxwellklitzke) July 24, 2017

2. As someone else asked on Twitter, how do we know he was racing the Phelps of sharks? Do great whites have different physical capabilities? That’s another question Hammerschlag likes. It’s one of the things he’s been looking at in his own research across different species of sharks — how individuals differ in their speed, and if that’s based on their actual body shape. “I often use Michael as an analogy when I’m trying to teach people about some of the work I do,” he says. “I always say, ‘If you look at a race in the Olympics, these are the 10 best people in the world at swimming. They’re all super-incredible swimmers that would kick my butt in a race. You put them all in the pool, and Michael Phelps keeps winning, time and time again. How is that possible, if everyone’s a top athlete?’ There’s got to be something about Michael, and there is. He’s built to be a swimmer. He’s really tall, but most of it’s torso. That big upper body, big feet, long wingspan — he’s very streamlined. And so there’s individual little differences about Michael that make him faster than the others, besides his determination and his training. I look in the shark world and say, ‘Are there individuals that are faster?’ The answer seems to be yes. The bigger the shark, the faster he can swim.”

For the speed test in the special, they were working with what Hammerschlag described as “pre-teen to teenager white sharks,” who are smaller but more likely to comply. “Much like humans, [younger sharks] tend to have a little more energy and they’re a little more aggressive,” he says. “They’re kind of rambunctious and not very cautious, and they’re happy to chase the things that we put in the water during our tests.” (So no, that probably wasn’t the Phelps of sharks.)

3. Did Phelps swim only one heat, or did he get multiple tries to best the shark’s time? “That was the one and only in the ocean,” Hammerschlag says. “When he came out, even though it was only less than a minute, he was so cold he was hypothermic. Even if we wanted to, he couldn’t get back in the water.” As viewers saw in the special, the crew was so (understandably) preoccupied with making sure Phelps felt safe in the water and that his monofin was working and his wetsuit was streamlined, they didn’t really think about how cold the water was going to be (in the 50s, as opposed to the 80-degree pool water he’s used to). “Everyone else was wearing like 7mm wetsuits. His was maybe just over one millimeter, which is nothing,” Hammerschlag says.

4. At the end of special, there was a joke about making Michael “RoboPhelps.” Is there anything more that could have been done to make him swim faster? Yes. They originally tried to give Phelps an underwater breathing bottle. “It’s like a tiny little scuba tank. That way, he could swim and not have to come up for air. Because one of the big things that slows him down is having to come up for air,” Hammerschlag says. “When we were doing the checks in the swimming pool, he was moving so fast through the water that it was creating too many bubbles and actually pulling it out of his mouth.”

Let’s do this. #PhelpsvsShark pic.twitter.com/pnBjCFB1is

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) July 24, 2017

5. When Phelps was getting his game face on pre-race, psyching himself up to face the cold temperature of the water, did anyone shadowbox in front of him like Chad le Clos did at the Rio Olympics? Sadly, no. There was no time for that. “We were faced with some terrible weather the entire time we were out there. Every experiment we did, every trial, was almost like a Hail Mary in terms of we have this one chance to do it — whether it’s rain, wind, storm, light, whatever it was,” Hammerschlag says. “Everyone was really professional and focused on the task. We only get a chance to laugh about it after the fact, never really before.”

6. What exactly happened when they were measuring a great white’s speed (distance divided by time) and Phelps feared he’d be pulled into the water? Let’s let Hammerschlag explain: “We took a winch and we took out just over a hundred meters of line. Right at the top of the winch, we put two tennis balls that we knew were five feet apart exactly. We put a field decoy, a fake seal, on the end of the line. When we saw a shark swimming around, we tossed it the seal decoy, and then we’d start pulling in the winch, and we tried to pull it so it was at the tip of the shark’s mouth. We had them chasing it in, so it would be the speed of a shark that was moving. We had a drone in the air that was stationary, just looking down. Because we knew the fixed length using the two tennis balls, and we knew the distance that was being traveled, we were able to calculate speed and distance over time. The thing is, from the angle where me and Michael were, we couldn’t see the shark moving, so we had to rely on the other boat yelling at us. We did it a lot of times, trying to get the sharks to chase the decoy with the winch for as much time as possible, so it would give us a great line so we could calculate distance over time, because of the fixed reference point and the drone from above. [Dr. Tristan Guttridge] on the other boat was yelling to us like, “Faster! Slower!” I was working the line and Michael was actually working the winch. He was sitting on it, so at one point the great white shark caught up to [the decoy] and grabbed it, and starting pulling out all the line on the winch, right to the end. I was in front of the whole apparatus. I wasn’t concerned necessarily about the shark in the water; I was just concerned about both me and Michael having this several-hundred-pound machine come flying from behind us and being pulled into the water. But at the same time, we didn’t want to lose the whole winch into the water.”

7. What does he want people to take away from this special? The goal was two-fold. Of course it was about making new shark fans. “Michael is an icon. I’m sure he has fans that probably wouldn’t have watched Shark Week if Michael wasn’t on it,” Hammerschlag says, adding that Phelps himself is now a knowledgeable ambassador. But it was also about showing why sharks are, in his words, “this super, perfectly-evolved predator in the ocean.”

“Watching Michael swimming is really beautiful. The guy is so fluid, graceful, and fast, but he looks clunky next to a shark,” Hammerschlag says. “I think people are going to gain appreciation for that, that these aren’t mindless killers, but in fact are really magnificent creatures that are just absolutely, perfectly adapted to the environment in which they exist.”

Shark Week continues through July 30 on Discovery.

[shanny-tired]

Progress: Part 3-1

“At Last, We Hunt....”

[I took advice from @universeinabookshelf and made this much shorter than it would’ve been. The closing might seem a bit rushed and I apologize if it isn’t the greatest! The second section of this was the one I was struggling to write, so here’s the juicy part instead, enjoy I guess? Who the fuck reads this blog anyway.]

Home has been decreasingly bothersome as of late. Ever since Shanaris was at least able to force the thoughts of her own and not-of-her-own mind dormant. Even so, the brief time that had passed had changed the elder Kaldorei. Her habits become different, her senses grew heightened and sensitive, her diet broadened and more gluttonous than before, and what was worse out of all these changes was that she found herself acting on impulse and instinct rather than precognitive thought. But at least.... at least the voices and hallucinations had mostly passed. Sometimes a voice catches her ears coming from no seen area, and a smell passes through her nose that doesn’t come from the meal she feasts on. Perhaps these were still hallucinations, but Shanaris made it habit to tally these oddities as the burden her senses had given her. Someday she will learn how to control - how to focus on a singular scent. Shanaris had best learn soon unless she is to become a strange mouth-breather...

Shanaris is gaining control of the new ability, she is growing and changing with her druidic talents. Only a few more milestones remain before she can gain have total control of this madness. They call her insane, they say she is cracking little by little and will soon fall into pitiable despair. Shanaris clenched her teeth at these mutters and whispers - arguments and discussions. She will prove everyone wrong. She will prove that not even the intangible will defeat this ancient Kaldorei. Then... she will only grow stronger with The Huntress settled with her. Shanaris will learn control... then mastery.

What catches prey?

Predator.

What hunts The Huntress?

I am the Huntress. I hunt The Huntress.

“I am feeling a bit...restless...” Shanaris muttered with her arms sprawled along the couch within her literal tree-house. Hungry, hungry, and hungry again. Lately Shanaris had felt the need to eat much more frequently than normal. What she wanted to eat varied on the day and hour. Sometimes she craved bowls of fruit. Other times Shanaris wished to scarf down the entirety of the dried and preserved meats within her stores. Though... once in a while did she feel the need to eat a meal of an entirely different sort - one of sensitivity and intimacy-- the bodies of her partners in the purest and most carnal of forms.

Shanaris looked across the room for the moment - over to the alchemical and herbalism area. It was there she saw Malnora Whisperleaf, working on the strange concoctions and vials of various colored liquids that made a profession for her. Truth be told, without Malnora’s apparent wealth and artifice they would never have been able to gain such a home for themselves - especially not one built from scratch. Her QuarterGrin™ formed - a certain pleasantness washing over her as she simply watched the younger elf tend to her work and hobbies.

Never a better place to be in all the world. Were this a simpler time... I would spend the rest of my days here.

Shanaris’ grin momentarily grew before she shook her head. Her of all people, retiring and living a life of paradisaical wonder? Nothing more than a dream and one that is nigh impossible when the world around her continues to grow more and more imbalanced - every time one menace is dealt with, another simply takes its place. How long before this world created by war ceases to sustain all the violence, invasions, conquerors, and chaos? Shanaris prays that peace is around the corner each day. Each day those prayers never falter, and each day Shanaris feels more appreciative of this little nook of sanctuary far from any and all. This little nook was the exact reason she kept to her duties on the Broken Isles best she could. This sanctuary must remain as such, and no demon, warlock, shadowy being, or filthy criminal is going to tamper with that.

“Is something wrong, my love?” Malnora suddenly chimed in which brought Shanaris from her trance of thought. She hadn’t even realized that she was still looking into Malnora’s direction - even less did she realize that the direction of her gaze could be taken as a one aimed directly toward the Little Leaf. Malnora’s over-the-shoulder look turned to face Shanaris entirely, to which Shanaris’ grin grew halfway.

“Nothing is wrong, simply thinking of those and that pleasant to me.” This wasn’t a lie, was it? After all, there’s nothing unpleasant about wanting to protect the few that chose to be close to her. “You need not worry about me, Little Leaf. Please... continue with your work. Part of me seems to enjoy watching your craft and its complexities.”

Malnora smiled. It seemed almost impossible to leave that elf in poor or worrying mood. That was good... she doesn’t want the incident in Duskwood to happen again. All the panic, fear, tears, and madness Shanaris was experiencing at the time forced Malnora to worry more than she naturally does - putting a frown on her face. Shanaris hated seeing this fateful gift in poor spirits. Malnora turned her body, once again refocusing on extracts, phials, solutions, and mixtures aplenty. 

Shanaris broke the gaze as well, looking to her left to catch sight of Sophie curled into her famed SophieBall™ once again within that silky brown shirt - asleep as can be. With how often Sophie seemed to favor sleeping within that shirt, Shanaris may as well allow Sophie to keep it with how much it had became stretched out and loose. An exercise shirt, perhaps... The only human in the household,and the only one fast asleep on this early afternoon. Saliva crept out from the corner of her half-open, relaxed mouth which topped all off with light snores.

At least she is able to get some rest. It never ceases to amaze me how she spends her time sometimes. Sleeping, eating, then more sleeping, and the occasional...well-- more than occasional lately.

The QuarterGrin™ returned, silent chuckled causing her body to vibrate from the passing air of her lungs. Alright, so Shanaris is in a good mood. With Sophie fast asleep and Malnora whimsically mixing her alchemy, the all-around pleasant atmosphere put Shanaris in a good way. She rose from her seat and meandered on over to Sophie’s curled fetal position. Shanaris leaned in with hand placed onto Sophie’s mostly unkempt, flaming red mane. Fast asleep, even with the contact she had made. Though she could hardly consider Sophie to be a light sleeper to begin with.

“You have dreamt enough Wildflower. Return to me once more.” Shanaris beckoned to Sophie into her dream - through The Dream and toward the human’s ears once more. She stroked her hand through the human’s hair, patiently waiting for the snoring ball of madness’ teal eyes to flutter open and  drowsily take to her surroundings. She truly was like a daughter to Sophie at times. The piggyback rides, the moments of soothing a panicked mind, and the little games they played together. If... you were to call hunting beasts and people alike a ‘game’ of any sort. The games only grew more enjoyable the more Sophie regained her control and the more Shanaris gained control.

“Banana...” Sophie groggily stated. Even still after a respectively long time did Shanaris find this moniker to be something strange. ‘Because it rhymes’, Sophie told her. No other reason past the fact that there’s a similar tone and pitch between the nickname, Shana, and the fruit, banana. Shanaris huffed in amusement and brushed back the several loose strands of hair  to give both her and Sophie a clear sight of just what was being looked upon. The human sniffled, pudgy little hands rising to rub at her eyes - an attempt to rouse herself, most likely. “Was.... was dreamin’ an’ almost caught me a big ole’ zebra!” Sophie’s arms shot out to their wingspan, emphasizing the point of just how big her subconscious prey was. Or it would, if she wasn’t a loose cocoon within one of Shanaris’ favorite shirts. Sophie’s nose twitched and sniffed, attention diverted and arms relaxed, “M’smelling somethin’ good. Somethin’ cookin’ Momma?”

“No...” Shanaris looked over her shoulder, returning to observe Malnora’s work for the briefest of time. She could finally understand and relate to Sophie’s sensitivity to scent, if not entirely, just a bit. She was right, it did smell like something of a meal. Bubbling herbs and aromatic mixtures made for a rather airy and spicy scent to fill the air, “...Malnora is working on her mixtures again. I admit it has been making me hungry...” Shanaris returned to Sophie, half-grinning and trying her damnedest to fix up the impossible-to-fix SophieCurls™. Honestly, how does a twig even find its way into her hair?! Even if she stands to pick out leaf after leaf it just seems to grow more from her scalp! The least Shanaris could do was make sure Sophie’s hair wasn’t a distraction for her -  if it was at all. “What do you say we go and hunt something much more...impressive than a zebra from the Barrens? Bigger, and better than zebra meat.”

“In fact...” Shanaris erected herself, speaking a few decibels louder, for both Sophie and Malnora to hear her words. “We should all go hunting for once, since we are all here of course. It would be something... like a family.” Shanaris curled into a fanged, eager grin, looking between Sophie and Malnora with the slow, observant twist of her head. She had a mind that knew Sophie could hardly turn down hunting with her, but Malnora was not so impulsive-- when it came to hunting at least. The younger Kaldorei had been increasingly focused on her studies and restorative branches rather than the bestial ones. Impulsive no, but she hardly knew Malnora as the sort of romantic that would turn down any suggestion or request. That was her biggest flaw and strength: to be so eager to please those she cares for, and bring happiness best she could. It was a bit of a rushed notion to Shanaris, but a welcomed one. Even a numbed ancient such as herself grew to enjoy the neverending romanticisms. Too polite, Malnora was at times. Perhaps that was why lingered with Shanaris to begin with... because she was too polite to leave.

“Are you alright, Shanaris?” Malnora had come toward the pair without Shanaris even realizing, too focused on thoughts that could be, and shouldn’t be. She looked toward Malnora, expression softening the moment she caught that worrying gaze. Sophie, Malnora, they both had this special ability to push through the walls she makes for herself. Malnora brought out the lover, while Sophie summoned the mother. Together with them both, she felt like she had a family of her own. A strange family, but a family nonetheless. Shanaris shook her head as she reached out to place a hand onto the smaller elf’s shoulder, adjacent hand reaching down for Sophie’s head.

“I...lost myself in thought for a moment. We are all in accord then? To my understanding, there are many a large, plant-eating reptile here in Un’goro. Devilsaurs, basilisks, raptors, and plenty of birds to catch.” Shanaris’ grin was terribly obvious at this point. Seems she was itching to hunt as much as Sophie itches in general. “It would be the...first time any of us hunted together. I know both Sophie and you have hunted together before. It is my turn, to hunt with the both of you.”

“Iffin’ ya think we can momma, don’t think I ever hunted a bassy-lisk before-- not with any o’ ya at least. Momma! Remember that one bassy-lisk I brought in? You remember yeah? I remember. That’s when you an’ Nora-dora....” Sophie trailed off into a hazed out gigglesnort, the blush red and bright on her cheeks. The human rocked side to side, nose twitching to catch and filter the various scents within their home. Present smells and...’past’ smells. Such was the way of a creature like Sophie. The mischievous pleasantness was contagious as Shanaris herself was brought to a small, playful grin as she looked onto Malnora, who took on a blush and wide smile - hands interlocking at her front.

“I think we can all remember that day very well...” Shanaris added with a certain reluctance and failed attempts to hide her amusement.

“Her whimpers are fun Nora-dora. Should get her whimperin’ again soon.” Sophie floppily nodded, tongue flicking under and over snaggletooth.

“If Shanaris will let me... she hardly gives me the chance anymore.” Malnora’s lips pouted, arms crossing over her chest to enhance the illusion of her feint.

“You are both brats....” Shanaris retorted, trying to hide the mild flush of her cheeks by ducking into Sophie’s ball and tossing the human onto her shoulder. Laughter, chuckling, and squirming ensued, “We hunt first, then I shall do a bit of hunting of my own since you both wish to act this way.” With Sophie tossed over her shoulder, Shanaris made her way out the door with Malnora following suit. Into the jungle they went, unwilling to return until teeth and claws are drenched with the essence of their prey.

Within the house, there were three women, all built in their own unique form and beauty. Exiting their sanctuary - their home, it was a trio of females no more. They have had their fun, now it was the beasts’ turn to play. Three, ferocious, apex predators, prowling through the jungles of Un’goro. Distant from each other, but still within the sights of a predating eye. Two of moonlit violet pelts, and the other carrying the resemblance of a mountain lion.

The jungle must have known the queen’s of the region had come out to play. The beasts seem to have had a sense to avoid them, or at least keep a watchful, cautious eye to their hunt. All but one beast.... A roaming rhinoceros feeding on the lush grounds and leaves, defecating where it pleases. Where one might see a lazy, fumbling beast, the trio seemed to all lock onto the prey at the same moment. Perhaps due to their eyes locking onto the same leathery flesh, or perhaps it was due to a subconscious take to follow Shanaris’ lead - a pack alpha of sorts. It made some sense, in a certain world and certain perspective. Malnora and Sophie look up to Shanaris - trusted her with dangerous secrets and closely-guarded thoughts that would not be given to others. Shanaris-- The Huntress, took on this role without any thought. There was little care for who or what was following her. Priority was the feast in front of her, all she needed was a signal. The cries of an apex predator to begin its hunt - to call upon the pack, were announced. If nothing else it would signal the charge for an attack, a ferocious roar which triggered the most base of instincts within their mark: fight, or flight.

Two moonsabers and a lion-like creature with one appearing to be in a more sorry state than the rest?  These are such easy predators to fend off, right? The rhinoceros chose to fight, a choice that would decide its fate. Truthfully, no matter what the prey had chosen, its fate would have remained the same. Run, and it cannot hide, fight, and it would only die with a struggle. The difference between these three felines and an average predator was their sentience. They knew how to move - to attack and weave around swings and charges. The three were aware of what the most tender parts of this creature were, and where to bite and claw in order to weaken and hinder the movements. Gray, leathery flesh had become rich and red - soaked bloody and grotesque, bits of flesh hanging by tissue from their collective gnashing and clawing. Their hunt felt as if it was coming to a close, but it had truly only begun.

Their roars, the prey’s cries of agony, it attracted the true king of the jungle. A devilsaur, much leaner, and larger than their original prey. It forced the trio to flee - to disengage from their target and refocus onto another. The real hunt begins. If they were to strike down and carve into this beast they would not need to hunt for the better portion of their month of March, perhaps even April. Alone, this creature on top of the food chain would have likely caused them to flee. Together however, a different outcome would be met.

Shanaris was the first to revert to her natural form, panting - forearms and mouth drenched with blood not of her own. This was not something she could take as a novice shapeshifter, but as an adept with druidic arts? Another tale. Shanaris task was no longer to hunt, but to assist and restrain. The devilsaur could roar, bash, charge, and claw all it wanted, but Shanaris’ vines and roots never ceased. When one snapped, three others took its place. Sophie’s form had already begun its relentless and instinctual ways, as well as Malnora more... trained and mastered powers using the best of its ability. Sophie did as she always had, hit and run, gash and main where she could while avoiding being trampled or bitten. Malnora changed entirely. No longer was she lean, and quick - the shape of a bear was taken now, and she lived truly to her ‘Bearnora’ moniker. To Shanaris, the two were amazing in how they attacked together, but not at all. Malnora seemed entirely impervious to tooth and foot, likely due to such mastering of her forms, that she could channel various magics that hardened her fur or bolstered resilience. Imagine that, a bear going head to head with one of the mightiest predators this world had to offer.

Never would it take too long for Shanaris, Sophie, and Malnora to take their prey. The restraints rendered the beast’s charges and thrashing useless, the feline’s claws and teeth mutilated legs, tendons, and pierced through various arteries to commence bloodletting. The beast couldn’t last as long as the trio could. Any injury sustained was so dutifully repaired by Shanaris. It was only a matter of time. While it certainly was no hindrance to the injured save for the pain that came with the wound, it brought fatigue to Shanaris. As always, she had difficulty with energy conservation. Her magic was strong, and gifted, but she still could not conserve her energy. Everything she had done to assist the two was given her all. It showed by the sweat of her brow and heaving gasps for air. Yet still, she fought with them. Still Shanaris carried herself and let none other share her load (Innuendo kinda intended) - her vital part in this wild battle: Sustain and support. Combined force eventually brought down the devilsaur at the cost of the color of their fur and Shanaris’ clothing. Blood, dirt, moss, and likely some partially dried fecal matter from smaller animals. While it could squirm and writhe, the ground was its home now, and soon enough all the blood leaking from the leathery body would cause the catch of the day to be more of a feast for ages rather than a conquered monster.

Sophie wasted very little time in her gorging of the beast. Teeth bore into open wounds and ripped it wider, causing the dying reptile to bellow as it knew its captors would show no mercy. It wasn’t long before Sophie’s entire head stained with red and strings of meat. Shanaris could only heave in exhaustion and wear, to such a point that she even fell back onto her rear with a tired grunt. Her hands supported the lean backward. She stared at the kill-- their kill. Her panting lips twisting into a toothy, breathy grin. For so long she wanted to hunt with her two partners in crime. Now she finally got her wish. The first ever hunting experience with them was certainly one to be remembered. Malnora attempted to approach Shanaris, but she was quickly dismissed toward the devilsaur. Their reward should be just and immediate. Shanaris had no desire to eat into raw flesh, but watching the two gorge on reptilian flesh was better for her than any other show she could have. 

What catches prey?

Predator.

What hunts The Huntress?

I am the Huntress. I hunt The Huntress.

What protects The Huntress?

The pack. My pack protects me.

[azvolrien]

Anchored Tempest - Chapter Seven

In which there is a lot of yelling.

~~~

           “What is this ‘beast-bond’ you keep talking about?” asked Una as Nirali fetched a wide-brimmed hat and the three of them began the climb back to the surface. “I know you have Rohone and Ikara has Tsheer, and I suppose it must have something to do with all the animals running about in here, but…”

           Karash frowned with mild puzzlement. “Humans don’t have it? You have Star.”

           “The link I have with her is more a dragon thing than a human thing.”

           Karash shrugged, with acceptance if not with full understanding. “The beast-bond, then. All orcs have a certain…” He screwed up his face in thought. “I don’t know the right word. A certain understanding, I suppose, with animals. We can pick up on their emotions, their wants, and communicate with them to some extent. But when an orc reaches adulthood, we can choose to…” He broke off to confer with Nirali in a stream of Orcish too quick and too complex for Una to follow.

           Nirali put her hat on and tied a string beneath her chin. “We can choose either to keep that general empathy, or we can find a single companion. The link forged with a bond-beast is much stronger and deeper, more concentrated; communication is easier and can be much more detailed. But it comes at the cost of losing that empathy with all animals.”

           “And it just… happens? You just pick an animal and focus on them to make that bond?”

           “It’s a little more complicated,” said Karash. “But you have the basics there. Is that not how your, your dragon-bond was made?”

           “No, I had to swallow some of her blood to make the link.”

           “Interesting,” said Nirali. “Not very hygienic, but interesting.”

           “How did you bond with her by accident if you had to swallow her blood?” asked Karash, staring.

           Una sighed. “She was injured, I was treating her wounds… A drop of her blood got on my hand and I licked it off without thinking. Boom. Dragon-bond.”

           “The Sky Kings probably did it with a lot more ceremony,” said Nirali.

           “Probably, yes. So, your… pre-bond beast empathy thing – does it work with other species of person, or just animals?”

           “I’m not picking anything up from you,” said Nirali. “So current evidence suggests that it’s just animals.”

           Una paused, considering that. “What about monkeys? Humans, elves and orcs are still all related to one degree or another – maybe it only works with non-primates.”

           “I… I don’t know,” said Nirali.

           “I’ve never met anyone with a bond-monkey,” said Karash. “But I can’t say with certainty that they don’t exist.”

           “And what’s an elf?” asked Nirali.

           “It’s… Like a human, closely related, but with pointy ears.”

           Nirali studied the side of Una’s head. “Your ears are pointy.”

           “I’m only half-elf. You should see my father; the points of his ears come all the way up here.” Una held up one hand level with the top of her head. “Full-blooded humans have round ears. Half-and-halfs like me usually end up somewhere in the middle.”

           “You’ll have to introduce us to your family some day,” said Karash as he twisted his shoulders to fit back through the entrance tunnel and edged along to the ladder. “But for now, you’ll have to settle for introducing Nirali to Star.”

           They emerged by the lion rock one-by-one. Nirali adjusted her hat, blinking in the light coming through the leaves, and opened her mouth to speak, but before any words made it out she was cut off by the shriek of a furious rukh. All three of them followed the noise at a sprint.

           The valley came to an end in a small corrie, where caves had been dug into the steep walls around a central firepit. Tsheer, Rohone and Star had all made themselves comfortable in the largest cave with Ikara standing guard outside, but their peace had not lasted long; three rukha older and bigger than Tsheer surrounded the cave mouth, their riders perched on their shoulders with spears at the ready. Tsheer sat up on his haunches, mantling his wings and fluffing out his feathers to block the cave interior from sight. Rohone stood at his side, swinging his head to and fro as if daring the other rukha to brave his huge tusks. Ikara sat cross-legged on the ground before both of them with her spear across her knees and an expression like thunder on her face.

           One of the unfamiliar orcs bared her teeth and hefted her spear, aiming squarely at Ikara. The other two whipped around in their saddles in shock, but Karash acted before either of them. With a bellow as loud as any of Rohone’s, he broke into a dead run, made a leap totally at odds with his size, and tackled the Windsister right off her rukh’s back. The rukh twisted around, jaws gaping as if to clamp down on his head and drag him away from its bond-mate, but Rohone charged out from the cave and slammed into the rukh, hooking his tusks beneath its wings and wrapping his trunk around its waist to lift it clear of the ground and fling it away to crash into a tree.

           Karash got to his feet, breathing hard, and spoke roughly in Orcish to the other Windkindred. Una understood just enough to tell he was angry, which she had already gathered.

           Nirali strode out from the trees to pin the tackled orc flat on her back with one foot over her breastbone. The rukh disentangled itself from the tree and arched its back, preparing to rejoin the fight, but subsided at a signal from the orc astride the biggest rukh, a female about Nirali’s size and age but with dark brown fur and skin the same olive as Ikara.

           For a few seconds there was peace; the corrie was silent but for the rustle of the leaves and the breathing of the winded combatants. Karash smoothed down his fur and beckoned Una out of the trees.

           “Introductions,” growled Karash. “Una – the idiot on the ground is Ashnak. The quiet one there is Kedeer. This,” he gestured to the brown-furred orc, “is Tagra. Ashnak, Kedeer, Tagra – Una.”

           Nirali, after a stern glare at Ashnak, lifted her foot from her chest and allowed her to stand up. The Windkindred stared at Una for a moment, before all three of them started shouting at once. Ikara, still sitting on the ground, sighed and rubbed her forehead. Karash looked at Rohone, who lifted his trunk and gave a deafening trumpet.

           Quiet reigned once again. Tagra tested the edge of her spearhead with her thumb, looked around at everyone, and said one word in Orcish that even Una understood.

           “Explain.”

           Karash, Ikara, Nirali and – through translation – Una went through the whole story for what felt like the hundredth time. Tagra remained utterly stone-faced throughout it all, but listened without interrupting. When they had finished, she turned to look at the cave which Tsheer still blocked.

           “Let’s see this ‘dragon’, then,” she said, Karash still translating.

           Ikara stood up, planting the butt of her spear against the earth, and laid a hand on the leading edge of Tsheer’s wing. He settled down, smoothing his feathers and folding his wings. Una stepped forwards, but Tagra fixed her with a glare that required no translation before she got far. She retreated back to Nirali, squared her shoulders, and silently asked Star to show herself.

           Star hoped Una knew what she was doing. Scales scraped against the walls of the cave; the leathery membrane of her wings rustled as she crawled forwards. She paused for the briefest moment, lifted her head, and emerged into the light.

           Nirali made an undignified high-pitched sound and ran forwards to meet her before anyone else could act.

           “Oh, she’s beautiful!” she said, bobbing from side to side to see Star’s head from all possible angles. “The sheen on those scales, they’re like blued steel, and those fantastic eyes – she must have terrific sight! Here, here, stand up, let me see your wingspan-” Star, after a baffled glance at Una, reared up on her hind legs and spread her wings. “Interesting, very interesting – she’s much the same size as a rukh, but her conformation isn’t quite the same, her wings are a different shape even disregarding that hers are webbed and theirs are feathered, and – may I? – she’s warm! It makes sense, they do breathe fire, but I expected cold blood from her scales… She is warm-blooded, yes?” This last question was directed at Una as Star settled back on all fours. “She hasn’t just been basking in the sun?”

           “She’s been hiding in a cave!”

           “Yes, warm-blooded, then. Can you open your mouth? A little wider. Thank you.” Nirali hooked her fingers over Star’s lower teeth and peered into her mouth. “Of course, I’m already familiar with their dentition, but this is the first look I’ve had at their soft tissues. Her tongue is pointed, not forked, that’s something I always wondered about, and… I don’t see any additional passages at the back of her throat that look like they’ll emit flame. I don’t suppose you could give me a demonstration?”

           Finally, somebody was giving Star the admiration she deserved. She looked around for the safest place to aim, before tipping her head back and sending a fifty-foot jet of fire directly upwards.

           Nirali rubbed her chin. “Interesting, interesting… It looks as if ignition doesn’t actually take place in her throat, but about halfway along her mouth. So unless her innards generate some form of gas that combusts on contact with the air… But I doubt she would have the same kind of control if that were the case.” She looked at Una and grinned, covering as much of her lower teeth as her tusks would allow with her lip. “I’m sorry, I know I’m rambling, but until now this has all just been theory to me. This is my first proper look at anything really approaching the magic of the Sky Kings.”

           The Sky Kings had nothing to do with it; Star’s magic was her own. Una chuckled and passed the message on to Nirali.

           Tagra’s mouth had slowly opened more and more throughout the entire exchange, but she kept her spear at the ready. Finally she stood forward and rapped the blade against a stone to silence Nirali’s ongoing enthusiasm. Karash sidled around to quietly translate for Una as Tagra spoke.

           “It’s difficult to be frightened of a creature when you’ve just seen it let Nirali shove her arm down its throat,” she said, “but none of this changes the problem. Maybe this god is harmless, maybe this rider means well. That doesn’t wipe away centuries of pain and death under their ancestors’ yoke. Say that, somehow, they make it up to the Tempest Spires. They find evidence that the last of the gods escaped – to the east, to the west, to the south, whichever way. Then what happens, hm? They fly out and find them, and take them back to their mountains in the north?” Tagra turned to look directly at Una. “What makes you so certain they’ll agree to that, and won’t just come back here to burn everything we’ve built since the Last Revolt?”

           Una swallowed hard and pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking. The Last Revolt had been six hundred years ago – within the lifespan of a dragon with a couple of centuries to spare. If any dragons had escaped, it was not impossible that they would personally remember what had happened. Finally, she gave the only answer she felt was honest.

           “Because I won’t allow that to happen.”

           Tagra looked her up and down. “You. You – you strange skinny creature with your tiny god – will personally hold back the vengeance of a beast akin to Voice of the Mountain.”

           “Ikara the Black slew Voice of the Mountain, and she and her rukh can’t have been much bigger than me and Star,” said Una.

           Tagra’s brows drew together in a dark scowl. “Don’t you dare presume to compare yourself to Ikara the Black.”

           “I’m just pointing out that it’s possible.”

           Tagra’s scowl did not relax. Una sighed and turned to Karash. “How well will Tagra respond to boasting?”

           “Depends if you can back it up.”

           “What’s most likely to impress her?”

           “Oh, anything martial, really. Use your judgement.”

           “Right.” Una took a deep breath, pulled off her gloves, and cracked her knuckles. Star settled down to see how this would go.

           “My name is Una Falkari Smith. I am the daughter of the last full-blooded Falkari shapeshifter and one of the strongest wizards who ever lived, and I can assure you that their powers did not cancel each other out when I was born. When I was a twelve-year-old apprentice I matched wills with the fire that consumed my school dormitory and held it at bay; by the time I left the school to travel I was a trained warmage of such a level that in tactical discussions I am assessed as artillery.

           “I spent one week in the city of Pontevena and its criminal underworld still offers prayers to any god that will listen that I never come back. The bandit clans of the Dragon’s Teeth mountains call me the Red Wolf, when they’re not too scared to speak of me at all. When the King of the Sea People threatened my home and my family, I beat him almost to death and well past the point where he could ever hope to raise an armada again.

           “I am a wizard, a shapeshifter and a dragon rider, from a nation that has stood against the might of an empire for as long as the orcs have been free of the Sky Kings. There is magic in my blood that most people don’t even know exists, and if I say that I will not permit something…” Una flexed her wrists, growing her fingernails into claws, “…it is not. Going. To happen.”

           Tagra stalked forwards to stand eye-to-eye with Una. “Prove it,” she growled.

           Una glanced up at the steep slope above the valley. “I suggest you stand back.” Tagra did not move. Una shrugged. “Up to you.”

           She held up both hands, curling her fingers into cages without quite clenching her fists, and narrowed her eyes in concentration as the air within the cages began to shimmer and roil. The shimmer brightened into a fearsome white glow; she brought her hands together before it grew too bright to look at, took aim, and flung both hands out palm-first. A fist-sized ball of concentrated concussive force flew from her hands to strike the mountainside. Solid rock shattered under the force and exploded out into open space, cascading down into the valley, but before it could strike any of them Una lifted one hand above her head, palm towards the sky. The rocks bounced off an invisible shield a few feet above their heads and fell harmlessly to the ground.

           There were several seconds of total silence. Karash straightened up and ceased covering his head with his arms. Nirali crawled out from the shelter of Star’s wing.

           “Have I convinced you?” asked Una.

           Tagra did not reply. Kedeer climbed down from her rukh’s back and poked one of the boulders with her toes, then spoke to Tagra in Orcish quiet enough that Karash just shrugged when Una looked at him.

           At long last, Tagra took a very deep breath through her nose and slowly let it out in a long sigh, rubbing one hand across her face and back over her scalp. “Take them up to the Valley of the Fallen God,” she said. “Maybe they can make some sense of the Sky Stone there.” She turned back to Una. “Make me regret it, and I’ll make you regret it.”

~~~

Orcish society in general doesn’t really go in for formal hierarchies (the Sky Kings kind of put them off the idea), but Tagra is probably the closest the Windkindred have to a leader. This usually just means she gets called on to settle disputes a lot.

[flauntpage]

Sixers Draft Prospects: Michael Porter Jr., Lonnie Walker, Grayson Allen

I know you’re dying for Bryan Colangelo news, or more Eagles vs. Donald Trump content, but let’s take a quick break to look at a few more Sixers draft prospects.

This is part three of a series that I’ll keep doing until I no longer feel like it. We’re going three players at a time, and started on Monday with Mikal Bridges, Miles Bridges, and Jevon Carter. Tuesday I touched on Wendell Carter Jr., Trae Young, and Collin Sexton.

Today we’re gonna take a look at Michael Porter Jr., Lonnie Walker, and Grayson Allen, and that’s the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so. 

Michael Porter, Jr. (Mizzou)

There’s always some guy who enters the draft with injury concerns, and this year it’s the 6’10”, 210 pound Missouri combo forward.

Porter played just 3 games during a freshman season that was almost entirely wiped out due to spinal surgery. In fancy medical terms, he needed a “microdiscectomy of the the L3-L4 spinal discs.” In layman’s terms, he was suffering from herniated discs in his back, went under the knife, and missed the majority of the year.

Drafting a guy with injury history might be a non-starter for Sixer fans who are weary from the Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons situations, but look at how those guys turned out after getting healthy. There’s an element of risk involved, certainly, but the upside is there, and Porter was seen as a potential lottery pick coming out of high school.

For starters, he’s just got a wonderful athletic profile, a tall and fluid player who strides in transition and just makes a lot of things look really smooth. We obviously didn’t get much film from his short stint at Mizzou, but he looked like a future pro at the 2016 FIBA Americas U18 championship, where he played alongside Markelle Fultz, Mo Bamba, Jarrett Allen, and others:

That was two years ago.

And the competition wasn’t amazing, but you see some Kevin Durant in him, don’t you? He’s got smooth mechanics (maybe a bit slow and deliberate) and a high release that should let him shoot over pretty much anything at the next level. He glides around the court and I could easily see him getting a bunch of transition opportunities running the floor with Simmons and others.The first minute of that video is basically all transition offense before he starts knocking down three pointers.

Similar to Durant, one knock seems to be his overall strength. Defensively, I don’t know how he’d match up in the post against a bigger power forward with more meat on the bones. He’s got a monstrous wing span and sort of engulfs smaller players, but he doesn’t slide his feet at an elite level and sometimes is a bit slow to rotate or recognize what’s going on in that half of the court. That said, there’s plenty of room to grow, and he should be able to guard most NBA twos and threes relatively well.

Because of the injury, Porter lands all over the place on mock drafts. I’ve seen him listed as high as four or five in some mocks, while Adrian Wojnarowski thinks he’ll fall out of the top-10 entirely:

Woj said he doesn’t think Michael Porter Jr will be a top 10 Pick. You may roll your eyes but think about how well connected Woj is. He said he expected Fizdale to be a strong candidate for the Knicks the day after Hornacek was fired.

— Daniel (@DanielM2k2020) June 4, 2018

For what it’s worth, Porter told media at the combine that he felt like he was the best player in the draft. There’s no shortage of confidence there, and if he was fully healthy throughout the year you’d probably see him in the conversation at #2 along with Luka Doncic and Marvin Bagley, assuming Deandre Ayton is a lock to go to the Suns with the first pick.

There obviously isn’t a lot of college game film to look at, but he came back towards the end of the year to play in the SEC and NCAA tournaments. He didn’t shoot the ball particularly well in the losses to FSU and Georgia, but you see the occasional flashes of brilliance:

If he falls to #10, it’s going to be hard to pass him up.

Lonnie Walker IV (Miami)

Lonnie hails from the ALMIGHTY Berks County and is a Reading High School product. Reading is a good school, but not as good as Boyertown, in my opinion.

The 6’4″ shooting guard will reportedly work out for the Sixers on Monday:

Former Miami guard Lonnie Walker (@lonniewalker_4) will participate in a group workout with the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday, June 11, league sources told The Athletic.

— Michael Scotto (@MikeAScotto) June 6, 2018

Scotto says Miles Bridges will also take part in that workout.

Walker is seen as a guy who likes to have the ball in his hands, an excellent spot-up shooter who can also explode to the basket and finish through contact. He’s got good body control, not dissimilar to the way that Alabama’s Collin Sexton attacks the rim. He’s also got a quick release, not at a Trae Young level, but he’ll get the ball up and out with relatively ease and smoothness.

In these clips, you’ll see him curl off screens, square up, and fire:

He’s a 2-guard but did play a bit of point at Miami, so you can put him in the pick and roll and work off of that. That’s not something the Sixers did a lot of with two non-shooting point guards last season, preferring to run JJ Redick in dribble hand-off and off-ball designs instead.

Defensively, Walker does have the tools to defend different positions, hitting the scale just below 200 pounds and featuring a 6’10” wingspan. In the video above, you see the segment where he sometimes would leave his feet early or lose that first step and not be super competitive trying to body an opponent on a drive.

One of the other negatives with Walker is his offensive consistency.

He’d score in the single digits for a pair of games, then fluctuate into double digits and sometimes crest 20 points, but there were definitely some poor shooting nights during his Miami season, a year in which the Hurricanes went 22-10 and 11-7 in a competitive ACC.

You see the ups and downs in this chunk of his game log I clipped, where the parameters from left to right are minutes played, field goals, three pointers, and finally his total points on the far right:

Definitely some hot and cold there – 5 points, 16, 19, 12, 25, 23, 16. He had some clunky shooting games and needed a ton of shots to get his points against the better ACC teams. Look at those losses against Clemson and Duke in there, where he shot 12-33 overall. He wasn’t a guy who was always able to impose his will on the game.

I’ve seen some mocks sending Walker to Charlotte at 11. Others have him in the bottom end of the lottery, maybe 13 to the Clippers. If the Sixers have one of Mikal or Miles Bridges available at 10, or Michael Porter somehow continues to fall, I don’t think Walker will be in the equation, but they could do worse than a guy who can score the basketball at a high level when he’s on his game.

Grayson Allen (Duke)

He was in Philadelphia for a workout Wednesday, according to Keith Pompey.

You probably know about the disciplinary issues he had, the accusations of tripping opponents and the petulance he showed on the bench. He was a controversial player and a classic villain, so teams are gonna have to dive into the interview and determine where his head’s at.

But no one ever really talks about his skill as a basketball player, so let’s reroute in that direction.

Allen was a four-year player at Duke, a 6’4″ shooting guard who put up these numbers:

He had his best year as a sophomore, scoring 21.6 points per game on the strength of 46.6% shooting and a 41.7% mark from three. Those numbers dipped significantly as a junior, but came back up slightly during his senior year. He finished with 14.1 PPG on 43% shooting after four years in Durham.

And that’s really the first takeaway here; you’re getting a guy with experience. 99% of the guys projected to go in the top-ten are one-and-done players with a ton of upside but also plenty of question marks due to their small overall body of work. Allen won a national title as a freshman and played alongside the likes of Jayson Tatum and Brandon Ingram and against guys like Dennis Smith Jr. and Justin Jackson and Donovan Mitchell. There really isn’t going to be much of a curve for him; what you see is what you’re going to get. The floor and ceiling are pretty much known quantities.

The question is whether that’s good enough. Allen is a nice shooter and is sneaky athletic, but not elite in that department. He doesn’t look like he has the first step to beat NBA defenders and I don’t see him finishing consistently at the rim at the next level. You’d probably need to spring him with screens and off-ball movement to find open looks for him, and the Sixers already have enough guys on this squad who can’t really create their own shot. Robert Covington, Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, Jerryd Bayless, and Justin Anderson all had that covered last year.

One of the things he does really well is stay consistent with his mechanics. He gets his feet set, squares up, and shows good balance as a perimeter shooter, which you see a lot of here:

Beyond that, he was pretty aggressive driving in the half court and also transition and drew a good chunk of fouls in the process.

Defensively, he’s capable, but not going to light the world on fire. Experts seem to think he can make up for his lack of tools on this end with effort, and he can definitely be a high-energy pest on a second unit. Problem is, he seemed to turn off completely at times, especially when put in the pick and roll, which is NBA bread and butter.

Some people wonder if Allen has already plateaued because of the ceiling he hit as a junior, but he had a strong combine and tested very well. He worked out for the Jazz, who pick at #21 overall and could use a second unit scorer. And that’s probably going to be his NBA role, an energy guy off the bench who isn’t going to blow the doors off, but he’ll knock down some open shots and hustle and become one of those guys who you love if he’s on your team, but you hate if he’s on the other team. Most mocks have Allen going late in the first round or in the top half of the second round, so while I think it would be premature to use the 26th overall pick on him, the Sixers could take a chance with #38 or #39.

For what it’s worth, Duke Vitale says this:

I agree. 6th or 7th guy. Valuable rotation guy that can play multiple spots. Steve he has a keen passion & a chip on his shoulder to prove that the naysayers r wrong / someone taking him around 20 in the @NBADraft will be rewarded .

— Dick Vitale (@DickieV) June 5, 2018

And listen, I hated JJ Redick in college. Most people did. And yet here he is, more than a decade later, playing well for the Sixers as one of the more respected guys around the league. If Allen evolves his maturity issues into that cliche of “Philly tough” behavior, he could certainly become a T.J. McConnell-esque fan-favorite. Say the right things, dive into the stands for a loose ball, ya know, that kind of stuff. It doesn’t take much.

I posed the question to Twitter to gauge the temperature of the fan base:

As a huge Duke fan not sure how he fits in today's NBA. Although athletic can he guard guys who he needs to? Can he get his shot off?Luke Kennard had a combine just like him last year and he hasn't impressed me in the NBA.

— Jawn Connors (@Joe_Connors81) June 7, 2018

He can shoot which is needed to eventually replace jj (if jj resigns)… read reports saying he is better at defense… depending on when they draft him wouldn’t hate it. If BC stays though doubt they draft him. They use late picks at draft and stash. Kinda his MO

— rob manoff (@manoffrm) June 7, 2018

Love. Will be a Marcus Smart type player. Good Defense. Hit some shots.

— alex armstrong (@ArmstrongAlex) June 7, 2018

Ted Cruz lookin headass. Don’t want him.

— Nick Carraway (@_Silence_Dogood) June 7, 2018

And, of course:

he’s not an NBA player, the stuff he did at Duke won’t work against elite athletes

— Philip Keidel (@PhilKeidel) June 7, 2018

  The post Sixers Draft Prospects: Michael Porter Jr., Lonnie Walker, Grayson Allen appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Sixers Draft Prospects: Michael Porter Jr., Lonnie Walker, Grayson Allen published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[nyklifsondiviiportfolio-blog]

Chapter 8, When Life Gives you Wings: 

They stumble and sway into the cave after quickly floating up. Their vision is swimming and they can barely make out the wall they are leaning on, a swamp-lizard’s distance past the entrance.  

Their skin feels like anger-filled-red-crawlers are digging tunnels. Burrowing--burrowing--each layer of their angry,narrow,flying,stingers trying to rip free.Their body is aflame. Everything is glowing brightly, angrily.

The wall is cold and grounding. The atmosphere is unable to decide whether it wants to be thick or thin.

They feel light-headed. They are short of breath.

Iphis clutches at their skin, their head, their chest, their back. They swim through a cloud of pain.  Their brain is muddled. They slide down--down the wall and start crawling towards the center of the front cavern. There is a ring-shaped beam of moonlight in the center. It seeps through a fissure in the roof that is reminiscent of a kauna’s smoke-hut chimney.

The air has a new layer of friction that is more and more foe than friend. Their chest constricts.

They look around wildly for relief and plunge forward toward the ground, leadened with the rapid weight of their seith trying to pull them inside out. Their knees crumple. Iphis starts to emit a low groan and claw at their back again with a new sense of desperation.

The stingers need to be released. Iphi is incapable of holding this power inside any longer-- the energy has been caged for too long.

—they lose themselves to a new power—

Their being engulfed is in the turbulent flames emanating from their core. A rider who will spontaneously take the reigns and all iphis can do is hold on. Unlike other youths who have this mysterious gift, which first surfaces usually during adult-growths, Iphis has a more difficult time with control than others they have seen.

For this reason, they try to hide whenever this source is tapped and wants to dominate their every sense and action. People in the city suspect them of hidden talents, including their nosy aunt Ivy, but have not caught Iphis in the act thus far. That is how they have avoided going to servants-of-choice school which Eril complains of everyday.

They let out a whimper…then shout the cry of a guard giving in to a prisoner mutiny.

The ground is alive and Iphi begins to make out it whispering “hold on” and they rip clusters of soil up with their hands. They dig holes to bury their pain.

Iphi hears every burrowing-bug *munching* away on the cave floor. Their brow-sweat trickles down to mix with tears and drips into the packed earth.

They have to think think think about consciousness. Hold it close. Look into the light and stay in their body.

Iphi hears the world moving with time slowing , everything is bathed in red light. The moon kisses their sweaty brow. “This too shall come to an end—or perhaps a new beginning—my sweet child,”

comes a screeching voice, and then just as suddenly, silence. Two beams of light swirl out from their scapula.

“Pop! Pop!”

Two talons wrench their way out of Iphi’s back, tearing a path up through flesh and muscle for a breath of air. Four wing fingers emerge and grow joints and muscle

They shudder in waves of shock and bite their lip till it drips life-sap. Iphi grunts and lets out a shaky-sob. They try to breathe, testing their lungs ability to function while other body parts revolt.

There is a sound amid voices in the dank room. The sound is suspiciously similar to bones cracking. It fills the silence, alongside Iphi’s exhausted panting.

They pray to the moon for help and guidance. They pray for strength to overcome this battle with their body. Iphis has lived through so much already, this will not break them.

Suddenly, a  breeze, that has been trapped in these caverns since they first were first shaped from ice, soothes their burning frame.

“You will soar little one, you will soar as I once did.”

Their ears are ringing from sensory overload.

The bone-cracking increases and their back rolls and bulges. Lumps form.

A thunder-drum rings out, a storm must be close by on the outside. They rock forward as another clash reverberates in the cave. They flatten their whole body, lifeless on the ground.

The air crackles and a flaming wing emerges from a fresh gash extending from the original. It’s blaze illuminates the small tunnel off to the left with tiny quartz cemented in small pools of runoff that somehow wind down the mountain and hide in these caverns. The heated air shoots out through the sky-cracks and the mouth of the cave.

Another wing covered in flames launches into the night air. They twitch and shake with newborn potential. They flap aggressively, unfolding a large wingspan, a hairsbreadth away from the cave’s periphery. Embers flake off from the movement and fall into the moist dirt, squelched. Water trickles in from the skylight and dribbles from the ceiling onto their quaking back. “Sizzle”

Their back is so raw and scalding. It feels like someone struck them with a smoldering fire-poker.

The fresh wings flap in delight. Their birthing was a brilliant scene to behold. They look leathery, but are not quite as opaque as expected. They reflect the moon's illuminating presence, they shine like melanite or alexandrite. The veins are bright-blood-red seeming to fade and grow in tune to the raising and lowering of Iphi’s chest. Fire thrives with more and more oxygen, this situation follows those laws. Each nerve ending was raw. Iphi could could hear further and was overwhelmed by the added noise.

Iphis sat alone and strained their arms behind their back. Afraid. They couldn’t go home, everyone would know. The monster swelled inside. Their wings wouldn’t be folded neatly, like paper. Instead they crumpled and quivered, full of life. Iphis’ wings were so large.

“I can not control you!”

They put their head in between their knees.

The trees listened in--an audience full of groans and chatter. The wings quieted after Iphi stopped fighting to hide them from site.

They dried their eyes and brushed hair off of their forehead. They couldn’t go home with these massive wings, how would they ever explain any of this? They laid down, planning on spending the night. Or maybe forever. People would want to chop them off, which although Iphi hated the darn things...the wings were also so beautiful. Each scale shimmered in the low light. These limbs were apart of them. They got up to pace, the wings dragged behind them on the ground shluuummpp shluuummp crunch crunch.

Maybe I can fly away?

They started to climb and cursed each time a wing scraped against the craggy rock-face. The wings were bigger than a sac of potatoes and much more cumbersome. Their back muscles were exhausting with the added weight. But when life gives you wings you can’t help but try to

Fly.

They crash-landed in a rubbish ally two blocks away from home. They found a moth-eaten cloak in a pile of moldy fabric and used it to cover their back. The wings folded well enough that no one at this hour would look twice at Iphis’ back.

They slinked through the front hall, feeling like an intruder in their home. Climbing the stairs, avoiding spots that creeeak and parts of the banister that groaan under pressure. Thankfully the only noise was the cloak sliding over wood and the wind starting to pick itself up outside.

Iphis covered themselves up to their neck with two quilts, not because they were cold, but to hide. One blanket was made up of old work pants that could no longer be patched together. It always smelled reminiscent of a mill, sweat and grains. No one but Iphis used it. It weighed more than other covers, which at night felt like a comforting embrace to lull Iphi to sleep. Now the fabric itched against new skin and Iphis could not seem to find the right position to fall into dreamland.

Shuffle shuffle, swish

Toss left

Shuffle shuffle, scratch

Toss right

Shuffle shuffle, fwump

This is why bats sleep upside down. Wings are tough

to lie on.

Thud.

Two digits had shuffled off the bed.

Sigh.

This was going to be a long night for them.